I heard a record by this band ages and ages ago (probably in the 70s) and was delighted to be reminded of them by finding this little clip on Youtube. It’s a bit of an oddity, but I think it’s both fun and fascinating.
The Anachronic Jazz Band is, I think, now defunct but they were from Paris originally. The style they played in could probably be described as like the New York style of the late 1920s, with definite touches of Bix Beiderbecke. On the other hand, the tunes they played all came from the era of modern jazz, such as this one which is the Charlie Parker classic Anthropology. I’ve already posted a version of it by Bud Powell, in fact..
You might think that an uncompromising bebop number like this would pose unsurmountable challenges for a traditional jazz outfit, but I think they pull it off rather well. I think though that they were probably helped by the fact that this tune, like many modern jazz compositions, is actually based on a chord progression belonging to a much more familiar tune. In this case the harmonies actually derive from George Gershwin’s standard I Got Rhythm….
Anyway, perhaps the efforts of this fine little band go some way to showing that there’s more continuity between traditional and modern jazz than one might suppose…
I’m not going to make excuses. This is a piece of pure nostalgia.
We had this old record in the house when I was a little kid. It was quite an innovation at the time. Most of the jazz records my dad had collected were on 10″ shellac discs to be played at 78rpm. This was a very limited format in that you could never get more than about 3 minutes on each side. They were also extremely fragile. Most of the ones we used to have ended up broken into pieces.
But when Humphrey Lyttelton’s band did a concert in 1954 at the then very new Royal Festival Hall in London, the Parlophone label decided to release four tracks on a vinyl EP (extended play). This allowed them to get a longer playing time but also meant that the actual discs survived a bit longer than 78s used to.
I was born in 1963, about nine years after the record was released but I distinctly remember as a kid sitting in our house in Benwell with this record playing on our little gramophone. I never seemed to be able to shout “Onions” on the right beat in the little two-bar interval left for the purpose. But, then again, neither did many in the audience.
Humph himself (who died a year ago) does the announcement in that instantly recognizeable voice of his. The whole band plays wonderfully too, but I’d like to single out the clarinet of Wally Fawkes for special mention. In case you didn’t know, Wally Fawkes is actually a pseudonym for the award-winning cartoonist Trog. Anyway, on this track he gives an object lesson in how to build a solo: starting off in the smoky lower register then gradually building up steam until just after 2 minutes in he steps on the gas, switches to the upper register and wails like a banshee. He never plays anything very complicated and I must have heard that moment hundreds of times over the years but it still gives me a buzz!
Yesterday’s announcement that the 23rd Poet laureate is to be Carol Anne Duffy has generated as much comment about her sexual orientation as the undoubted quality of her verse.
But that’s not the point of this post.
I don’t know why but all the stuff in the papers reminded of a very rare recording I heard years ago the poet Christopher Logue with a Jazz group led by the drummer Tony Kinsey.
Christopher Logue is now in his eighties and is probably best known as a regular contributor to the satirical magazine Private Eye (to which I have not yet cancelled my subscription). Among other things in the Eye, he edits the hilarious Pseuds Corner, a collection of the most pretentious drivel culled from newspapers and magazines.
But he’s also a fine poet in his own right and has been for many years.
The first time I heard this old recording made in the late 1950s, I didn’t listen very carefully to the words. I thought it was just a very funny skit – a posh British guy doing beat poems couldn’t possibly be serious, could it? Especially if it sounds like Allen Ginsberg meets Julian Clary…
..but listening to it again, and especially studying the words it’s grown on me so much I now think it’s a minor masterpiece.
There is an audio-only version on Youtube, but it refuses to be embedded. Click here if you want to hear the performance on record.
Now read the lyrics:
1.
Lithe girl, brown girl Sun that makes apples, stiffens the wheat Made your body a joy Tongue like a red bird dancing on ivory To stretch your arm Sun grabs at your hair Like water was falling
Tantalize the sun if you dare It will leave shadows that match you Everywhere Lithe girl, brown girl Nothing draws me towards you The heat within you beats me home Like the sun at high noon
Knowing these things Perhaps through Knowing these things I seek you out Listening for your voice For the brush of your arms against wheat For your step among poppies grown underwater Lithe girl, brown girl
2.
Steep gloom among pine trees Waves’ surge breaking Slow lights that interweave A single bell
As the day’s end falls into your eyes The earth starts singing in your body As the waves sing in a white shell And the rivers sing within you And I grow outwards on them As you direct them Whither you make them run
I follow for you like a hare Running reared upright to the hunter’s drum You turn about me like a belt of clouds the silence, though it is stupid Mocks the hours I lay Troubled by…… nothing
Your arms – translucent stones wherein I lie Exhausted And future kisses Die Lust Your mysterious voice Folds close echoes That shift throughout the night Much as the wind Which moves darkly over the profitable fields Folds down the wheat From all its height
3.
In the hot depth of summer The morning is close, storm-filled Clouds shift – White rags waving goodbye Shaken by the frantic wind as it goes and As it goes The wind throbs over us Love-making silenced
Among the trees like a tongue singing A warning or just singing the wind throbs And the quick sparrow’s flight is slapped by the wind Swift thief destructive as waves Weightless without form Struck through and through with flame Which breaks Soughing its strength out At the gates of the enormous, silent, summer wind
4.
That you may hear me My words narrow occasionally Like gull-tracks in the sand
Or I let them become Tuneful beads Mixed with the sound
Of a drunk hawk’s bell Flick me your wrists….. Soft as grape skin – yes
Softer than grapeskin I make them Which is a kind of treachery against the world
Yet You who clamber Over all the desolations of mine Gentle as ivy Eat the words’ meaning
Before you came to me Words were all that you now occupy And now they’re no more these words Than ever they knew of my sadness
Yet Sometimes Force and dead anguish still drags them And yes
Malevolent dreams still betimes Overwhelm them and then
In my bruised voice You hear other bruised voices Old agues crying out of old mouths
Do not be angry with me Lest the wave of that anguish Drown me again
Even as I sit Threading a collar of beads for your hands Softer than grape skin Hung with a drunk hawk’s bell
I think these are beautiful poems made even more effective by the musical setting. In fact they are loose re-workings of some of the famous love poems of Pablo Neruda. Logue moved far away from the Neruda’s originals, but put them into impressionistic free verse, which he reads in his plummy English accent, while the band provides appropriate backing for the sentiments of the poetry as well as providing improvised passages in between the verses.
Looking at this now, I have no idea why I thought it was meant to be funny.
Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke became a jazz-age romantic legend by playing brilliant trumpet and by drinking too much bad prohibition liquor resulting his premature death in 1931, at the age of only 28. His short life was punctuated by episodes of very bad health caused by chronic alcoholism in an era when the only booze that was available was bathtub gin or rotgut whisky. Nevertheless, Bix still gave us some of the greatest ever jazz records.
Although he was of middle-class white origins, Bix’s playing was deeply admired by leading black musicians of the day. No less a trumpeter than Louis Armstrong refused to play Singin’ the Blues because he felt Bix’s version was so good that it shouldn’t be touched. High praise indeed. Many jazz trumpeters to this day still play some of Bix’s trumpet licks, though few do them justice.
Bix’s trumpet-playing was all quicksilver virtuosity but, above all, he possessed a beautiful ringing, bell-like tone that is quite unlike that of any other trumpeter before or since. His clarion sound even pierces through the hiss and crackle produced by contemporary recording techniques. My favourite example is this, an old tune called At the Jazz Band Ball, where Bix’s trumpet lead is matched in exuberance and skill by Bill Rank (trombone), Frank Signorelli (clarinet) and, particularly, the superb Adrian Rollini on bass saxophone, who managed to play his enormous and unwieldy instrument not only with great swing but also with a fine sense of humour.
But Bix wasn’t just a trumpeter. He also composed a few pieces for solo piano. I didn’t know about these until about 18 months ago, when I found a recording my Dad had kept of a concert at Newcastle City Hall in which he had played the drums in a trio led by the American jazz pianist Ralph Sutton. Among the numbers they played was a nice tune called, appropriately enough for this blog, In the Dark. The other day I found a clip on Youtube of Ralph Sutton playing the same tune (although not with my Dad). I hadn’t realised that this tune was written by Bix Beiderbecke.
Perhaps I should use it this blog’s signature tune?
Bix composed other pieces for solo piano too. The most famous, and probably the most interesting because of its unusual harmonic structure, is called In a Mist, but for some reason when Bix’s own recording of this tune was released in the United Kingdom it was renamed Bixology. Here it is played by the wonderful Marian Macpartland
I’m sure the Welsh get a bit fed up with everyone saying that they sing so beautifully. But the problem with cliches such as “The Land of Song” is that they are so often true. At Friday’s dinner in honour of Leonid Grischchuk we were treated to a solo rendition of the beautiful old love song Myfanwy in Cardiff Castle, but today I found a much better version featuring the excellent Trelawnyd Male Voice Choir. I think it’s a really wonderful version, but the thing that struck me most was how on Earth can a small farming village with a population of less than a thousand produce so many wonderful tenor voices?
Incidentally, the great Luciano Pavarotti, who died in September 2007, gave his first ever professional performance at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod in Wales, in 1955. It was his success at this festival, with a small choir from Modena that made him decide to turn professional.
I’ve only got time for a quick post today so I thought I’d put up a clip of someone I think is one of the most consistently enjoyable but underrated Jazz pianists of all time. He was probably best known as the long-time accompanist of Ella Fitzgerald but he also played on a number of really important Jazz albums with Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, to name just two. He also loved to play within the classic Jazz trio format of piano, bass and drums as represented here.
Just a quick post in response to a suggestion from a friend:I do requests on here, but only if they’re asked for.
Neville Dickie was born in County Durham in 1937 and did national service in the RAF around the same time as my Dad. He’s still going strong, playing lovely jazz mainly in the Harlem stride piano style of the 1920s with those infectiously bouncing left-hand tenths.
Here is he recorded in 2007 with Danny Coots on drums or, rather, drum. They’re playing a lovely tune by the great Jelly Roll Morton called Wolverine Blues.
The sound balance isn’t great but I think it’s a wonderful version of a classic bit of good time Jazz.
When the great American songwriter Billy Strayhorn saw the beautifully evocative painting (left) by James McNeill Whistler of one of the bridges over the River Thames, it inspired him to write an equally evocative song to be performed by his longstanding musical collaborator and friend Duke Ellington. The song was written in 1941, but it was only years later that he realized that he had named it after the wrong bridge.
The painting was of Battersea Bridge; but he had named the song Chelsea Bridge, a much less romantic location. Nevertheless, the tune quickly became a standard, and a feature for the band’s star saxophonist, Ben Webster who carried on playing it after he left Duke Ellington’s orchestra in 1943.
By all accounts Ben Webster was a drunken brute of a man but when he played ballads like this he produced music of great warmth and delicacy. In fact, his technique on the tenor sax would probably be called “wrong” by a teacher: he didn’t use his tongue properly on the reed so his notes had to be produced by much more lung power than “normal” players use. Instead of a clean attack, each note is wafted in on a sort of phoohing sound. The breathiness of his tone is a consequence of this and, although he produced a huge volume which was good for playing in front of a big band like Ellington’s, it also made him unable to play well at faster tempos. His playing on slow ballads, though, was often exquisitely beautiful. Who says everyone has to be a speed merchant?
Ben Webster moved to Copenhagen in 1964 along with several other great Jazz musicians, to escape the racism and consequent lack of opportunity for black artists in his homeland. He was buried in the part of Copenhagen called Nørrebro when he died in 1973.
I am a fairly frequent visitor to Copenhagen – I’m going there again in June, in fact – and I did visit his grave once. There’s also a restaurant named after him in the city centre.
Anyway, here he is in in 1964 playing Chelsea Bridge with the marvellous Stan Tracey on piano who featured in a previous post of mine.
All of a sudden it seems like Spring. We had a little foretaste a few weeks ago, but this was followed by a return into chilly miserable weather for a while. That even seemed to dampen the spirits of the blackbird that was waking me up and he’s left me alone for a while.
Now, though, it’s sunny and warm and the forecast is set fair until the weekend. My walk through Bute Park takes me past hosts of daffodils, appropriately enough for Wales. The trees are covered once more in green leaves. It’s just a pity there’s another week or so before the Easter holiday so I can’t spend more time outside or make use of the weather to get some necessary house repairs done, such as new window frames and repointing the chimney.
Still, I shouldn’t get too depressed. Spring has come early anyway. The clocks don’t go forward for another couple of weeks.
And if the weather wasn’t enough, my weekly veggie box arrived this morning with further evidence of springtime. After a steady supply of winter vegetables (such as swedes and parsnips), things have suddenly changed. The selection of seasonal vegetables I got today includes lettuce and tomatoes (for the first time in months), as well as Red Russian Kale and Cauliflower.
Oh, and the blackbird was back this morning too.
I haven’t put any music up for a while, so I hope you enjoy the following clip from Youtube which seems to fit the season. Errol Garner was a brilliant musician who invented a very distinctive style of Jazz piano entirely of his own. Many attempted to copy him, but nobody managed to get it quite right. He perfected a style of playing that involved using his left hand to keep a solid rhythm while his right hand usually played behind the beat created by his left. In other hands this lagging effect would probably have made the music drag, but in his it produced a wonderful sense of tension that he always somehow managed to resolve.
On slower numbers, such as most famous hit, Misty,
he tended to be elaborately decorative, something which I don’t like at all. But on the faster ones he could rattle along producing wonderful ad-libbed melodies like no other Jazz pianist, putting in little musical jokes here and there at the same time.
His other trademark was to play lengthy disguised out-of-tempo introductions that kept the audience guessing as to what tune was coming next and what speed it would be played at. I always thought his bass player and drummer were probably in the dark too, until he broke into tempo and played the melody, usually to spontaneous applause and broad grins all round. You can see that happening on this clip, around 2 minutes in, when at last he plays the theme of It Might as Well be Spring, a tune which was a big hit for Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto in the 1960s.
If you’re interested in hearing Errol Garner at his absolute best, you have to get the classic Concert By the Sea, recorded live in Carmel, California in 1955, which is a joy to listen to over and over again. But in the meantime, here is in 1964.
A few weeks ago in my bit about the great jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Monk, I mentioned another great musician, Stan Tracey. He was Ronnie Scott’s house pianist for many years, as well as being a composer and leader of his own band. It’s only the fact that he stayed all his life in England that prevented him from gaining wider recognition. No less a musician than Sonny Rollins asked (of British Jazz fans)
Does anyone here realise how good he is?
Well, I think they do but he remains relatively unknown outside these shores.
Amongst the collection of old LPs that I am gradually making into CDs using the USB turntable I got for Christmas is one of the greatest British jazz albums, Under Milk Wood, which was written by Stan Tracey and recorded by his band in 1965.
Living in Wales, I’m somewhat ashamed that I didn’t do this one before because it is of course inspired by the “play for voices” with the same name by Dylan Thomas. The music is brilliant throughout, vividly evoking the atmosphere of various episodes in the play, but my favourite track is about the very first lines. Stan Tracey’s piano and Bobby Wellins‘ saxophone hauntingly evoke the atmosphere of the opening of Under Milk Wood which, if you’ll forgive me for quoting a rather lengthy extract, shows Dylan Thomas extraordinarily imaginative use of language, superb control of rhythm even in a prose setting. His poems are wonderful to listen to as well as to read, especially when read by the poet himself with his sonorous yet lilting voice; if you want a short example try this example, steeped in a sense of nocturnal melancholy
In My Craft or Sullen Art
In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art.
Anyway, the play Under Milk Wood‘s famous opening goes along these lines:
It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courter’s-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows’ weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.
Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrodgered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yard; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.
You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.
Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.
And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before-dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.
Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, sucking mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman’s lofts like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread’s bakery flying like black flour. It is tonight in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies.
Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding through the Coronation cherry trees; going through the graveyard of Bethesda with winds gloved and folded, and dew doffed; tumbling by the Sailors Arms.
Time passes. Listen. Time passes.
Here are Stan Tracey and Bobby Wellins with Stan Tracey’s meditation on that piece, Starless and Bible Black, played in a way that’s as moving and ethereal as the sound of time passing….
The views presented here are personal and not necessarily those of my employer (or anyone else for that matter).
Feel free to comment on any of the posts on this blog but comments may be moderated; anonymous comments and any considered by me to be vexatious and/or abusive and/or defamatory will not be accepted. I do not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with the opinions or statements of any information or other content in the comments on this site and do not in any way guarantee their accuracy or reliability.
There is an audio-only version on Youtube, but it refuses to be embedded. Click 
In the Dark 