Registering for World War I

At the rather ripe age of 41, at least in military terms, my great grandfather, John Bowie, registered for the World War I draft. By 1918, the US government required men between the ages of 18 to 45 to register, so he wasn’t quite at the top of the age pool.

In browsing these records, I also came across the records for Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. Only Armstrong described himself as a musician at the time. Ellington was a government messenger in Washington, DC, while Ferdinand Joseph Morton gave his occupation as actor. According to Morton biographies, in his early years he travelled the country as part of a vaudeville troop.

On this form, he gave his date of birth as September 13, 1884. As far as I can tell, this date hasn’t been reported anywhere else. I’ve seen dates of September 20, 1885 and October 20, 1890. His tombstone has 1890 for the year of his birth. (He died here in Los Angeles in 1941.) Morton was also known to stretch the truth quite a bit. Some of these dates may have been due to vanity or in support of his claim of inventing jazz in 1902. Or course, it may have been simpler than that – in the days of home births and non-recorded births, he might not have known when he was born!

The Sincerest Form of Flattery....

A few minutes of Soprano Saxophone

The soprano sax is a very difficult instrument to control. In the wrong hands, it can make for a painful listening experience. Fortunately, there are some great masters.

National Public Radio recently did a feature entitled on the instrument entitled Soprano Sax: The Story of a Skinny Horn. They mentioned the main practitioners of the instrument, Sidney Bechet and John Coltrane. But the soprano sax was not unrepresented in the swing era, the time between the heydays of Bechet and Coltrane. I’d like to add Johnny Hodges and Charlie Barnet.

Johnny Hodges was a Bechet protege . He can be seen playing soprano sax in this clip from “Check and Double Check”, a truly horrible Amos and Andy movie. In 1940, Hodges decided he should be paid extra to double on soprano. Ellington refused and Hodges abandoned the instrument.


Charlie Barnet was a big band leader who had a few big hits in the Swing Era, but is unfairly neglected these days.

A man walks down the beach and finds a bottle on the shore. He picks it up and rubs it. A Genie appears and grants him one wish. Since the man is a humanitarian, he asks the Genie to solve the conflicts in the Middle East. The Genie asks for a map and studies it for a while. The Genie apologizes and says that he can’t grant the wish because the problems are too complicated and started even before he was put in the bottle….

So, the man is granted another wish. Well, since the man is a musician as well as a humanitarian, he asks for a soprano sax that plays in tune. The Genie pauses for a minute and asks….”Uh, can I see that map again???”

Jazz Stamp

A few months ago, I suggested it was time for some more postage stamps honoring jazz artists. That hasn’t come to pass yet, but next month will see a stamp that honors the art form itself. Please go out and buy them & use them. The powers that be love to use sales figures as a reason to do (or not do) projects. Since this is a ‘forever’ stamp, you can hoard them and still use one for first class postage ten, twenty, a hundred years from now!

Appropriately, it will be launched in New Orleans in March. This great looking piece of art was designed by Paul Rogers; you can get the story behind the stamp at his website.

Barrie Lee Hall, Jr. (1949-2011)

I sent an email to Ellington trumpet virtuoso Barrie Lee Hall, Jr. in early September of last year in the hopes of talking with him about an Ellington related project (details to follow soon). I didn’t hear anything, so I re-sent the email at the beginning of this year. This time I received a reply and we set a time to talk. I was a little nervous about the impending talk since his emails were rather terse. After talking with him, I found I couldn’t have been more wrong; he was a very warm and open person in conversation. (What I took for reluctance was probably just someone who just didn’t like to type!)

Part of our talk was on the Super Bowl IX half-time show in the previous blog entry. I had sent him a link to the video the day before I spoke to him. His simple reply was:
“Man, that made me happy! Thank you!”

If you’re over 40, you remember the days where if you weren’t in front of a TV to watch a televised sports show, it was gone forever. The summer, of course, was for reruns of regular shows, but not of things like ’live’ events. Since Mr. Hall was an active participant in the half-time show, he had never seen it. (He’s the tall trumpet player in the back, second from the left.) He had forgotten that Grambling was there, but he vividly recalled that the Ellington band’s white dinner jackets provided little protection from the cold on the field.

He thought he would be in the LA area in the near future; he’d give me advance notice and we would meet up for dinner or something. That was on Saturday, January 8th. This morning, I was saddened to find out that he passed away at age 61 on Monday, January 24th.

RIP, Barrie Lee Hall and “Thank you!”

Jazz at the Super Bowl

It’s a fair bet that there won’t be any jazz during the halftime show at this year’s Super Bowl. But once upon a time, they not only used the whole halftime show to pay tribute to recently deceased jazz legend; they didn’t even cut away to commentators or commercials! (Duke Ellington had died a little over seven months prior to this event. The death of Satchmo inspired a similar gesture in 1972.)

Super Bowl IX was supposed to be played indoors at the newly constructed New Orleans Superdome, but it wasn’t completed in time. Instead, the January 12, 1975 game was played outside in Tulane Stadium.

At halftime, the Pittsburgh Steelers led the Minnesota Vikings by the score of 2-0. The temperature on the field was in the mid-40s. Anyone who has played a musical instrument can tell you that it’s hard to stay in tune when the weather is cold. As the Grambling band marches onto the field, you can hear the effect it has on their intonation.

After Grambling’s overture, the Duke Ellington band, under the direction of son Mercer Ellington, takes over. (Dig Mercer’s jacket!) Fortunately, they don’t fall prey to the same intonation problems.

The band is crowded onto a relatively small float. As they play, Ellington themed cupcakes surreally swirl around the field. The last of the old guard, Cootie Williams, gets a significant amount of solo time on Take the “A” Train and “C-Jam Blues.” He’s in fine spirits, even though increasing health problems would make this his last year with the band.

The halftime show is spread between these two video clips. It starts about 3 minutes in on the first one and concludes on the second one.

The King of American Jazz

While browsing through Amazon a few days ago, I came across a DVD title I was unfamiliar with. The release, Duke Ellington et son orchestre, had no accompanying information – date of recording, personnel, location, nothing. Since I didn’t want to buy a pig in a poke, I decided to Google the title. The full title turned out to be Le Roi du Jazz Americain – Duke Ellington et son Orchestre (The King of American Jazz – Duke Ellington and his Orchestra). Lo and behold, the source of the recording was the National Archives and Records Administration. Best of all, the video is in the public domain and can be downloaded legally and for FREE! Thanks, Uncle Sam! [There are other interesting videos on the site - Jack Teagarden with Hoagy Carmichael, Bobby Hackett, John Scofield, a cartoon featuring the voice of Dizzy Gillespie – (The Hole).]

In September of 1963, Duke Ellington and his Orchestra embarked on a goodwill tour of the Middle East sponsored by the US State Department. The stops included Damascus, Amman, Kabul, New Delhi and Tehran. Ellington was out of commission for some of the dates due to hospitalization for a virus.

Fortunately, Ellington is back by the time of this recording. The source of this film might be from a concert on November 14, 1963 in Khuld Hall, Baghdad, Iraq. According to Ken Vail’s Ellington diary book “This concert is televised live.” It definitely seems to be from a television broadcast, since Ellington is periodically checking to see if he needs to insert a break in the proceedings. A few days later, the tour was canceled upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The sound and video have a few blemishes here and there, but overall, it’s a great concert. Cootie Williams is an audience favorite with his showcase Tutti for Cootie. Billy Strayhorn gets a solo spot on his famous composition Lush Life and then takes things out with Take the “A” Train.

The songs are: Afro-Bossa; Stompin' at the Savoy; Guitar Amour; Perdido; Honeysuckle Rose; Tutti for Cootie; Kinda Dukish /Rockin' in Rhythm; I Got It Bad; Things Ain't What They Used To Be; The Eighth Veil; Hits Medley [Satin Doll, Solitude, Don't Get Around Much Anymore, Mood Indigo, I'm Beginning To See the Light, Sophisticated Lady, Caravan, Do Nothin’ 'Till You Hear from Me, I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart & Don't Get Around Much Anymore]; Diminuendo in Blue/Blow by Blow; Lush Life; Take the "A" Train .

The personnel is: Cootie Williams, Rolf Ericson, Herbie Jones, Cat Anderson – trumpets, Lawrence Brown, Chuck Connors, Buster Cooper – trombones; Johnny Hodges, Russell Procope, Jimmy Hamilton, Paul Gonsalves, Harry Carney – reeds; Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn – piano; Ernie Shepard –bass; Sam Woodyard – drums.

Harry Carney at 100

Harry Howell Carney was born on April 1, 1910 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Earlier, I had written about how Benny Goodman inspired me to take up the clarinet. Not too long afterwards, my musical horizons expanded to include the great Duke Ellington. There were a lot of unique sounds in the band, but the one that stood out most for me was the deep baritone saxophone sound of Harry Carney.

Carney was an integral part of the Ellington sound, not only as a tonal foundation, but also as a nearly constant presence. He joined the band at age 16 in 1926 and was there until 1974. He was heavily featured, and even when he wasn’t, you knew he was there. One musician has remarked that Ellington had two sax sections – Harry Carney and the other guys.

Last year, I blogged about La Plus Belle Africaine. This version features Victor Gaskin - bass, Russell Procope –clarinet, Rufus Jones –drums, and the birthday boy.

When our high school jazz band needed a baritone sax player, I jumped at the opportunity. (At the time, the instrument and I were about the same size, so it should have been carrying me instead of vice versa.) I played it up until I graduated from college in 1981 .

Harry Carney was one of the first jazz musicians to use circular breathing. Rahsaan Roland Kirk learned it from him and it became one of his trademark concepts. (In a sense, Carney taught me circular breathing, too. The night Ellington died, they showed a video of him holding a long note in a concert performance of Sophisticated Lady. Until I had a visual image of what was going on, I couldn’t get the concept down.) This isn’t the same performance I saw back then, but it is of about the same vintage.

I never got a chance to see Ellington in person and was crushed when he passed away in May of 1974. When I heard that his son Mercer was continuing the band, I consoled myself with the thought that I could see Harry Carney. I’ll never forget one of my bandmates telling me that “that saxophone player you like” died; it was less than 5 months after Ellington. I guess he didn’t think I believe him, so he presented me with the newspaper clipping.

Happy 100th Birthday to Harry Carney!

Presidential Centennial

One hundred years ago today, Lester Willis Young was born in Woodville, Missisippi. Happy Birthday, Prez!

1959 - The Year Everything Changed

Recently, 1959 The Year Everything Changed arrived at our bookstore. Things like the Cuban revolution, a couple of new states, amongst many others, make up the thesis of this book. From a jazz standpoint, the author covers the changes that occurred in jazz with albums like Miles' Kind of Blue, Coltrane's Giant Steps, Brubeck's Time Out, Mingus' Ah Um and Ornette's The Shape of Jazz to Come.

And another reason I liked this book: yours truly was born 50 years ago on this date. You know you're old when your baby pictures are sepia toned. There's no truth to the rumor that this photo was taken by Matthew Brady.....