Ooo Baby Baby

Papa Jo

There is a smile of love,
And there is a smile of deceit,
And there is a smile of smiles
In which those two smiles meet.
- William Blake

This is wondrous, truly a smile in which all the smiles meet. And who but Louis himself smiles better than Jo Jones?

Some missing from so much music: wit. Even rarer: wit that is profound.

In Memoriam Maria Tallchief

Maria Tallchief died a few days ago. She was a truly beautiful dancer – just look at her hands alone in this video.

She had few equals.

Forgive me for striking a somewhat sour note at her death. I was first introduced to the name Maria Tallchief in elementary school as a “great Native American.” What bullshit. That’s like introducing Duke Ellington as a “great African American.” The impulse to celebrate these artists is admirable, but they can’t be pigeonholed. As Duke says,

Let’s see. My people. Now, which of my people? I mean, you know I’m in several groups, you know, I’m in…let’s see. I’m in the group of the piano players; I’m in the group of the listeners; I’m in the group of people who have general appreciation of music; I’m in the group of those who aspire to be dilettantes; I’m in the group of those who attempt to produce something fit for the plateau; I’m in the group of what? … Now, oh yeah- those who appreciate Beaujolais. Well, and then of course…..I’ve had a strong influence by the music of the people. That’s the better word- the people, rather than my people, because the people are my people.

We should know about Maria Tallchief and Duke Ellington not because they represent minorities, but because they represent us. They are us – at our very best.

A New Mandolin

I just bought a mandolin – mostly for my daughter, who plays violin (which is fingered like a mandolin). We’ve both been having fun figuring it out. Neither of us is quite up to this yet.

Pound for Pound

Billy and Dad recently saw The Bad Plus, one of Dad’s favorite working jazz bands, give a really great show at the Mill in Iowa City. The first song they played, also the first song off their new album, was “Pound for Pound.” It begins with and is dominated by a simple pleasing riff on the piano, but if you give yourself over to the song and let it hypnotize you, something really magical begins to happen with David King’s superb drumming about 4 1/2 minutes in (and builds to the end). There are certain drummers who play ecstatically, and King is among them. You begin to feel the drumming in your blood, like a spirit wanting to get out. Here’s a performance fairly similar to the one we saw (the video quality improves as it goes along).

Billy’s face just beamed with fascination as he watched the band in action, particularly King. After “Pound for Pound” came to a close, he leaned over and whispered, “I didn’t know that was possible.”

If you just want to hear the version off the album, it’s here.

Sláinte!

In Praise of the Suzuki Mom

From Alec Wilkinson’s profile of Jason Moran in the new New Yorker:

A piece of Moran’s called “Cradle Song” memorializes his mother. When Moran was a child, she would attend his lessons and take notes. “I’m trying to play, and she was scratching away,” he said. “She’s writing down ‘Watch your fingering,’ and ‘Work on your tone.’ I wanted to say, ‘Can you please stop that.’” The song begins with a simple, almost exercise-like figure. The sound of a pencil scratching against paper intrudes, as if his mother had begun immediately to find a reason to criticize. The scratching persists, then becomes fainter until, about three-quarters of the way through the song, it disappears, as if she had begun to listen, or as if she were gone and he were continuing alone. The scratching, Moran says, is actually him writing to her, saying, “I know I yelled at you a long time ago, when I was a kid, but I almost wish you were here writing notes now.”

Moran’s mother died of cancer.

The “almost exercise-like figure,” as Billy well knows, is the tender “Cradle Song” by Carl Maria von Weber, from Suzuki Piano Book 2.