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Freddy Gardner (the not Charlie Parker) and Jay White : not exactly modern jazz, but still saxophone giants??

11 Oct

Back on August 21, 2016 (when Barack Obama was still happily President of the USA) one so-called Wile E. Coyote reviewed a two-CD collection of some 51 tunes by the noted UK alto (and other) saxophone artist Freddy Gardner (1910–1950).

Mr. Coyote wrote : “Freddy Gardner had been the consummate alto saxophonist in England during the dance band years … Granted, those interested in alto saxophone recordings expecting something similar to Charlie ‘Yardbird’ Parker will be disappointed, as Gardner plays more in a ‘concert’ style.” He was “nonetheless a virtuoso on his instrument.”

* * * *

“There Are No Winners” by Michael Seward, October 2022.

I grew up in a half-old-school Canadian world of the late 1950s and early 1960s where Freddy Gardner and not Charlie Parker was the exemplary alto saxophone artist. It was not until my late 20s and even 30s, I think now (in my late 70s), that I finally seriously discovered the altogether awesome brilliance of Charlie Parker — on recordings and in Omnibook transcriptions.

All too many years after this discovery, I certainly know that, whatever else, Freddy Gardner was not Charlie Parker’s successor (he was 10 years older, for one thing, and died about five years before) or even a serious precursor. There are nonetheless a few intriguing parallels. (Once you set aside the disparate hard facts that Freddy Gardner was born in London, England in 1910 and Charlie Parker in Kansas City, Kansas in 1920.)

To start with, both men were recognized more or less early in their careers as the leading alto saxophone players in their respective musical worlds. Gardner was (again) “the consummate alto saxophonist in England during the dance band years” (1930–1950 in Gardner’s particular case), with special reference to London. Parker was the same in the USA, with special reference to New York City (where he was happiest and would finally die), c. 1940–1955.

Tragically early deaths in their 30s is something else that Freddy Gardner and Charlie Parker shared. Parker died in his mid 30s, Gardner when he was 39.

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Wynton Marsalis and Bill Maher accidentally help celebrate the 100th birthday of the Charlie Parker who largely invented modern jazz

29 Aug
Charlie Parker (far right with cigarette) and friends contemplate some charts — with Lennie Tristano (piano), Billy Bauer (guitar), and Eddie Safranksi (bass). Photo by Herman Leonard.

There are many ways to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Charlie Parker, who largely invented modern jazz, on Saturday, August 29, 2020. Just google “charlie parker 100th birthday.” And eg “Join Jazz at Lincoln Center for the virtual Bird Lives! Charlie Parker at 100 Festival! … Aug 25–Sep 4.”

Or : “Jazz saxophonist and composer Charlie Parker, whose nickname was ‘Bird,’ was born in Kansas City on August 29th, 1920. For the past month, his hometown has been celebrating his 100th birthday, culminating in a series of public parties on Saturday.”

“Last Days of Summer” by prize-winning Toronto artist Michael Seward, August 2020.

Or yet again, for a view from New York City — where Charles Parker Jr. from Kansas City spent the arguably most creative and happiest years of his all-too-short life (1920–1955) — you can : “Commemorate Bird’s legacy with a digital celebration featuring a historic walk through Tompkins Square Park and a visit to Parker’s house …”

Finally, back in the old hometown(s) : “Jazz great Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker was born in Kansas City, Kansas, on Aug. 29, 1920, and grew up across the state line [in Kansas City, Missouri], establishing his reputation here before moving to New York City to become a legend … The 100th anniversary of his birth will be celebrated in Kansas City and beyond … A sunrise ceremony will kick off the daylong activities of “Spotlight: Charlie Parker” at 6:15 a.m. Aug. 29 at the Charlie Parker Memorial Sculpture on the north side of the American Jazz Museum.”

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Early recordings of Charlie Parker’s Cherokee — from the Trail of Tears to Ko Ko in NYC, November 26, 1945

14 Jun

According to the first volume of Stanley Crouch’s masterful biography (Kansas City Lightning, 2013) both parents of the Charles Parker Jr. who largely invented modern jazz could trace at least part of their most visibly African American ancestry to the first peoples of North America.

This seems especially (and perhaps most openly) true of “Charlie Parker’s mother, Addie.” She “was from Oklahoma, the region once called Indian Territory … She was part Choctaw, her Indian blood probably the result of President Andrew Jackson’s policies.”

These policies had led to the infamous Trail of Tears — “a series of forced relocations of approximately 60,000 Native Americans … from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States, to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as Indian Territory.” The Trail followed “the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830,” and “included members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations.”

“Paradise Effaced” (pen and ink) by Michael Seward, June 2020.

On another account : “Taking place in the 1830s, the Trail of Tears was the forced and brutal relocation of approximately 100,000 indigenous people … Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole … to land west of the Mississippi River. Motivated by gold and land, Congress (under President Andrew Jackson) passed the Indian Removal Act by a slim and controversial margin in 1830.”

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Remembering “Petite Fleur” : Sidney Bechet, Andrea Motis, and the remarkable Municipal School of Music in Barcelona

5 Dec
One version of the Sant Andreu Jazz Band in Barcelona. Photo by Joan Chamorro.

I woke up with the tune “Petite Fleur” stuck in my head. Later I had a chance to look into it on the world wide web (particularly the musically remarkable side of YouTube).

All this finally led to Joan Chamorro at the Municipal School of Music of Sant Andreu in Barcelona, whose graduates include the brilliant 24-year-old Andrea Motis (sax, trumpet, voice), her younger sister Carla (guitar), and Èlia Bastida (sax, voice, and especially violin — “tributo al gran violinista Stéphane Grappelli”).

Petite Fleur and Sidney Bechet

The good enough Wikipedia entry on “Petite Fleur” is one beginning. The tune is “an instrumental written by Sidney Bechet and recorded by him in January 1952 … In 1959 it was an international hit as a clarinet solo by Monty Sunshine with Chris Barber’s Jazz Band … peaked at No. 5 on the US Hot 100 and No. 4 in the UK charts.”

I remember the Monty Sunshine recording. (I am that old.) Somewhat later, I learned a little about Sidney Bechet. He began as a clarinet player but added a “straight” soprano saxophone to his act in his early 20s. He grew up in a musical family in early 20th century New Orleans, where he learned to play several other instruments more casually.

According to Scott Yanow at allmusic.com : “Sidney Bechet was the first important jazz soloist on records in history (beating Louis Armstrong by a few months).” In his mature incarnation he played the soprano saxophone with “a wide vibrato that listeners either loved or hated.” I find his sound suitably distinctive and intriguing, without exactly wanting jazz today to emulate it.

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Democracy is what finally makes America great (& Canada too etc, etc)

11 Jun

What does talk about democracy have to do with music and the arts — to say nothing of “REDISCOVERING MODERN JAZZ 1940–1970″?

For a starter try Woody Herman’s version of Aaron Copland’s 1942 classic, “Fanfare For The Common Man … An Anthem For The American Century.”

For the main course, according to a recent report on the CBC News site, “Democracy is in retreat” everywhere. An “annual ranking of 209 nations and territories, prepared by the US-based democracy watchdog Freedom House, recorded an overall decline in global freedom for the 13th straight year.”

In the June 6, 2019 issue of The New York Review of Books, the British historian currently at Columbia University in New York, Adam Tooze, pondered a similar theme in “Democracy and Its Discontents” — a review of four recent books with such ominous titles as The People vs. Democracy, How Democracies Die, The Road to Unfreedom, and How Democracy Ends.

This spring has also revived the aggressively right-wing American concept urged by Donald Trump’s former Federal Reserve nominee Stephen Moore : “Capitalism is a lot more important than democracy.”

“Temporal Infrastructure,” 2019 — by Toronto artist Michael Seward.

(And yet when the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville visited and wrote about the early United States he admired — the side of the experiment that would soon fight a civil war to at least start to end African American slavery — he called his work Democracy in America [v1, 1835 ; v2, 1840]. “Capitalism” [or Das Kapital] was something the German intellectual Karl Marx would later criticize, researching and writing as a political refugee in London, England [v1, 1867, and then posthumously from Marx’s notes by Friedrich Engels, son of “an owner of large textile factories in Salford, England and … Barmen, Prussia,” v2, 1885 ; v3, 1894].)

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Ornithology today : looking for light in new dark times?

9 May

Charlie Parker had a vast appetite for all forms of human experience, including food.

TORONTO, CANADA. MAY 9, 12, 2019. “Birdhop” started quite a while ago, as the “culture” (and especially music) companion of a much more political website.

It had some time online as “BIRDHOP — Rediscovering Modern Jazz, 1940–1970.” But then in a more general technological update, it was cast adrift as the political preoccupations of the companion site seemed to grow more urgent.

Now, when the urge to escape from what increasingly seem like potential new political dark times ahead (maybe) finds itself combining with our increasing age, we (or should it just be I?) aspire to some fresh, new cut at Birdhop. (Possibly with half a political edge, but gently, lightly? Too much of politics today is just too mean-spirited.)

Charlie Parker, recording star!

This view of democracy in North America 2019 aspires to somehow fit at least part of the very broad view bequeathed by the late great Charlie Parker, whose nickname was “Bird” — and to whom Birdhop is meant as some kind of tribute, in the age of hip hop and all that … and far beyond.

The end of it all may be yet another imperfect set of notes on the Charles Parker Jr who was born in Kansas City in 1920 and died in New York in 1955.

And this raises the question : why is Charlie Parker so interesting in 2019, even if you are not deeply into either the alto saxophone or the story of modern jazz?

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