Big Band Ambassador

During the Cold War, the U.S. government sent artists - stars of all stripes - around the world to promote a positive image of the United States. This included jazz musicians. And while Louis Armstrong had a justified image as the “real ambassador,” Dizzy Gillespie was the big band ambassador in 1956 on tours of the Middle East and South America. In the Middle East, this included concerts in the cities of Beirut and Athens, as well as stops in Turkey, Iran, India, and Pakistan. After one concert, the local Pakistani paper stated: “The language of diplomacy ought to be translated into a score for a bop trumpet.” Dizzy's integrated band presented a wonderful image of American society to audiences abroad; too bad the reality of race relations back home didn't always match it.
     He tried to keep this big band intact afterwards, but it wasn't economically viable. Dizzy had gone the big band route in the 1940s as well, and lost money on it. As he said, “I’m tired of going down in history. I want to eat.” This band eventually broke up two years later, ironically just before their first release, “Over the Rainbow,” became a hit.

     But they left behind a recorded history that is available on a 2-CD set from Verve Records called Birks Works. Dizzy’s State Department band had some all-star talent, including Phil Woods on alto saxophone, Benny Golson and Ernie Wilkins on tenor sax, Lee Morgan and Quincy Jones on trumpet, Al Grey on trombone, and Wynton Kelly on piano. The music they play is a muscular and dynamic big band sound, similar to the groups of Charles Mingus around this same time. Dizzy’s solos on trumpet soar above all and there’s also some terrific tenor sax work. Highlights include Dizzy's own "Birks' Works," a playful “Doodlin’” (a Horace Silver tune), “Jordu,” Benny Golson’s “Whisper Not” and “I Remember Clifford,” and “Joogie Boogie.” I personally don’t care for the vocal numbers, which tend toward the Johnny Hartman crooning style. But for big band jazz on some challenging arrangements and with great soloing, check out Birks Works.

The Way It Went Down

Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer (2009) is a warts-and-all portrait of the great jazz vocalist, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 87. The film contains a trove of archival footage covering O’Day’s entire career, extended interviews with O’Day, and comments from other musicians and critics. While the filmmakers obviously adore her, they don’t shy away from the darker aspects of her life. Neither does O’Day herself - shy is not an adjective you could possibly apply to her.
     O’Day was born in Chicago in 1919 and was a chorus girl by the age of 17. She claimed a surgical mistake during a childhood tonsillectomy, which excised her uvula, left her incapable of singing with vibrato or able to maintain long notes. This forced her to develop the more rhythmic singing style that she was famous for.
     She got her big break in the early 1940s with Gene Krupa’s band. A short “soundie” musical film from the time shows a young, flirty O’Day upstaging trumpeter Roy Eldridge on "Let Me Off Uptown." She also spent some time with the Stan Kenton orchestra as the lead singer, although it was not always a happy collaboration.
     She launched her solo career in the late Forties, and this was also the start of her drug problems. She was arrested for possession of marijuana and sentenced to 90 days in jail. O’Day was one of the earliest embodiments of the “hip white chick” and she’s even mentioned in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. She asserts that the controversy actually helped her career.
     She recorded her first album, Anita O’Day Sings Jazz, in 1952 for the new label Norgran Records, Norman Granz’s precursor to Verve Records. In fact, it was the label's inaugural record and proved to be a popular success. O’Day recorded a total of seventeen LPs for Verve. At the same time, she was also arrested for possession of heroin, an addiction that would continue into the late Sixties and lead to her designation as “the Jezebel of Jazz.”
     Her appearance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival propelled her into stardom. Her spectacular performance of “Sweet Georgia Brown” while decked out in a short black dress and showy ostrich-feather hat is featured in Bert Stern’s documentary Jazz on a Summer’s Day, where she steals the show. This performance is shown in full here as well. After this, she continued to record in the 1960s and toured extensively overseas, particularly in Japan.
     She nearly died of a heroin overdose in 1968; in fact, she was pronounced dead before being revived. This experience convinced her to kick the habit. She is quite matter-of-fact about her drug addiction in her 1981 memoir, High Times, Hard Times, and in this film she refuses to sentimentalize or moralize about it. During an interview on the Today show, host Bryant Gumbel sanctimoniously delineates her many hardships: "Your personal experiences include rape, abortion, jail, heroin addiction..." She cuts him off - "It's the way it went down, Bryant" - the icy emphasis on the final “t” in his first name chills any attempt to elicit “valuable lessons learned” from her life. She’ll have none of it.
     This film shows her to be not only a great vocalist and hip white chick, but also - there’s no better way to put it - a tough broad. Her later career was uneven, as was her voice (intonation was not her strong suit), but she continued recording right up to the end - her last LP was the aptly named Indestructible! (2006). 
     Life of a Jazz Singer contains some great vintage material of O’Day: versions of “Let’s Fall In Love” and “Boogie Blues,” as well as “Love For Sale” and “Trav’lin’ Light” with a Japanese big band. Also included are a lightning-quick “Tea For Two” and a sensuous “Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square” from a 1963 Swedish performance. My personal favorite is a version of “Honeysuckle Rose” from a televised concert in Tokyo from 1963. The video quality is mediocre, but the performance is a swinging, joyous experience.

Jazz Giants ‘58

This is not your run-of-the-mill jam. Blowing sessions like this were fairly common in the 1950s – a group of prominent jazz players were chosen, often ones who had never played together before, thrown into a studio for a day or two, and the tapes rolled. Sometimes you got good but unimaginative music, and other times you got magic. This album falls into the latter category.
     Jazz Giants ’58 was put together by Norman Granz at Verve, and he got a stellar cast: Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Harry “Sweets” Edison, the Oscar Peterson Trio, and Louis Bellson. It’s a little bit of old school – Edison (who played with Basie) and Bellson (who played with Ellington) – and a little of the new – Getz and Mulligan. Recorded in August 1957, it comes near a cusp in jazz history, with free jazz forms appearing on the horizon. But unlike the conventional evolutionary timelines in jazz – swing giving way to bop giving way to free jazz – this album shows that the breaks are not so clean and that swing and bop greats can make some wonderful jazz together.
     Nominally a Stan Getz led album, in Jazz Giants ’58 everyone gets a star turn. The music clearly benefits from the presence of Mulligan, who did the arrangements and provides a little structure to the proceedings. The first tune, “Chocolate Sundae,” is a perfect example. It begins with a Ray Brown bass solo, followed by Mulligan on baritone, and a swinging Herb Ellis guitar solo. Then a sweet Oscar Peterson piano riff introduces Getz’s solo, who doesn’t appear until five and a half minutes into the song. The rhythm section really kicks in behind Getz and the song starts swinging hard. But then “Sweets” comes in for an extended solo and steals the show. One can hear the Basie influence in his playing, in the ability to sound just the right note and give it so much meaning and feel. It was Lester Young that gave Edison his nickname for just this quality.

“As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.” 

     Other selections on the album include “When Your Lover Has Gone,” “Candy” (with a classic Mulligan solo on baritone full of swing and longing), a medley of ballads (“Lush Life,” “Lullaby of the Leaves,” “Makin’ Whoopee,” and “It Never Entered My Mind”), and Dizzy Gillespie’s “Woody ‘n’ You” (taken at a very brisk clip). Stan Getz once said, “As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.” The conversation on this session was clearly a warm one among equals. Far from a jam, this is jazz of the highest order.