Ella rediscovered

Herman Leonard Photography L.L.C./CTSimages.com - A Herman Leonard photograph of Ella Fitzgerald performing at the New York nightclub Downbeat in 1948. Watching rapturously are Duke Ellington, center, and Benny Goodman, in glasses behind Ellington.

Ella is one of those few people who is instantly recognizable, and who needs but one name. Her voice is unique.

Verve has just released “Twelve Nights in Hollywood,” a four-CD boxed set of Ella Fitzgerald singing 76 songs at the Crescendo, a small jazz club in Los Angeles, in 1961 and ’62 — and none of it has ever been released until now.

These aren’t bootlegs; the CDs were mastered from the original tapes, which were produced by Norman Granz, Verve’s founder and Fitzgerald’s longtime manager.

The story in the Times has full audio stream of three songs; well worthwhile listening. I shall look into having HWPL buy the CD set when I get back from Mexico.

There’s nothing rare about a joyous Ella Fitzgerald recording; the woman exuded joy in nearly every note she sang. Yet the level on these sessions soared higher and plumbed deeper.

Why these tapes stayed locked in the vault for nearly half a century — and what it took to set them free — is a tale of a producer’s neglect, a jazz sleuth’s obsession and a string of happy coincidences.

Norman Granz was recording Ella a lot that year. The tapes were vaulted after a dozen of them were issued in an LP, and did not do well. For a quarter century the tapes were forgotten.

Then, in 1988, Phil Schaap, a dogged jazz scholar well known for excavating long-lost treasures from studio archives, was contracted by PolyGram (which had recently bought Verve) to compile a discography of all the recordings — issued and unissued — that Fitzgerald ever made for the label.

Our intrepid Mister Schaap.

Early on in the task, riffling through PolyGram’s vast tape facility, then in Edison, N.J., Mr. Schaap unearthed the never-released tapes of a 40th-birthday concert that Fitzgerald recorded at the Teatro Sistina in Rome on April 25, 1958. He urged PolyGram’s executives to release them. When they did, as an album called “Ella in Rome,” on the concert’s 30th anniversary, it soared to No. 1 on Billboard’s jazz chart. Stephen Holden, in The New York Times, hailed it as “a treasure for the ages.”

It was soon after this triumph that Mr. Schaap came across the tapes from the Crescendo Club — not just the tracks that Granz had picked for “Ella in Hollywood,” which was long out of print, but the other reels, which nobody had unspooled for nearly three decades. Mr. Schaap listened to all of them and thought that here was another trove of hidden jewels.

Max Roach always spoke very highly of Phil Schaap and his historiographical efforts.

But by this time Verve was busy producing CD reissues of Fitzgerald hits. There was no appetite for sifting through what appeared to be the rejects of an old flop. And there things stood until late last year, when Mr. Seidel was re-reading a biography of Fitzgerald by Stuart Nicholson. In the back of the book was an expanded version of Mr. Schaap’s discography — 61 pages long — as commissioned by the author.

Mr. Schaap has listened to hundreds of Granz recordings over the decades, including the released master takes and the unreleased alternate takes. Granz, he said, was “a great man of profound vision,” but as a record producer, he “infrequently dwelled at length on what takes should be issued.”

Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies and a former good friend of Granz, agrees. “Norman was maybe the most lavish record producer there ever was,” he said, but he was often “unconcerned or careless” when it came to preparing and issuing the albums. (Granz died in 2001.)

Herman Leonard, the great photographer, once took a picture of Duke Ellington sitting at a front-row table in a small New York nightclub, beaming at Fitzgerald while she sang. More than any other album, “Twelve Nights in Hollywood” gives us an idea of what Ellington was smiling at.

Salsero reborn

Rubén Blades, Panama's former tourism minister, at an Upper West Side restaurant on Monday.













Video: Rubén Blades with Calle 13 (YouTube)

Federico Garcia Lorca - Ode to Walt Whitman

In reading Ian Gibson's biography, Federico García Lorca : a life, I came across metnion of a Lorca poem, Ode to Walt Whitman.


Federico Garcia Lorca - Ode to Walt Whitman

By the East River and the Bronx
boys were singing, exposing their waists
with the wheel, with oil, leather, and the hammer.
Ninety thousand miners taking silver from the rocks
and children drawing stairs and perspectives.

But none of them could sleep,
none of them wanted to be the river,
none of them loved the huge leaves
or the shoreline's blue tongue.

By the East River and the Queensboro
boys were battling with industry
and the Jews sold to the river faun
the rose of circumcision,
and over bridges and rooftops, the mouth of the sky emptied
herds of bison driven by the wind.

But none of them paused,
none of them wanted to be a cloud,
none of them looked for ferns
or the yellow wheel of a tambourine.

As soon as the moon rises
the pulleys will spin to alter the sky;
a border of needles will besiege memory
and the coffins will bear away those who don't work.

New York, mire,
New York, mire and death.
What angel is hidden in your cheek?
Whose perfect voice will sing the truths of wheat?
Who, the terrible dream of your stained anemones?

Not for a moment, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies,
nor your corduroy shoulders frayed by the moon,
nor your thighs pure as Apollo's,
nor your voice like a column of ash,
old man, beautiful as the mist,
you moaned like a bird
with its sex pierced by a needle.
Enemy of the satyr,
enemy of the vine,
and lover of bodies beneath rough cloth...

Not for a moment, virile beauty,
who among mountains of coal, billboards, and railroads,
dreamed of becoming a river and sleeping like a river
with that comrade who would place in your breast
the small ache of an ignorant leopard.

Not for a moment, Adam of blood, Macho,
man alone at sea, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
because on penthouse roofs,
gathered at bars,
emerging in bunches from the sewers,
trembling between the legs of chauffeurs,
or spinning on dance floors wet with absinthe,
the faggots, Walt Whitman, point you out.

He's one, too! That's right! And they land
on your luminous chaste beard,
blonds from the north, blacks from the sands,
crowds of howls and gestures,
like cats or like snakes,
the faggots, Walt Whitman, the faggots,
clouded with tears, flesh for the whip,
the boot, or the teeth of the lion tamers.

He's one, too! That's right! Stained fingers
point to the shore of your dream
when a friend eats your apple
with a slight taste of gasoline
and the sun sings in the navels
of boys who play under bridges.

But you didn't look for scratched eyes,
nor the darkest swamp where someone submerges children,
nor frozen saliva,
nor the curves slit open like a toad's belly
that the faggots wear in cars and on terraces
while the moon lashes them on the street corners of terror.

You looked for a naked body like a river.
Bull and dream who would join wheel with seaweed,
father of your agony, camellia of your death,
who would groan in the blaze of your hidden equator.

Because it's all right if a man doesn't look for his delight
in tomorrow morning's jungle of blood.
The sky has shores where life is avoided
and there are bodies that shouldn't repeat themselves in the dawn.

Agony, agony, dream, ferment, and dream.
This is the world, my friend, agony, agony.
Bodies decompose beneath the city clocks,
war passes by in tears, followed by a million gray rats,
the rich give their mistresses
small illuminated dying things,
and life is neither noble, nor good, nor sacred.

Man is able, if he wishes, to guide his desire
through a vein of coral or a heavenly naked body.
Tomorrow, loves will become stones, and Time
a breeze that drowses in the branches.

That's why I don't raise my voice, old Walt Whitman,
against the little boy who writes
the name of a girl on his pillow,
nor against the boy who dresses as a bride
in the darkness of the wardrobe,
nor against the solitary men in casinos
who drink prostitution's water with revulsion,
nor against the men with that green look in their eyes
who love other men and burn their lips in silence.

But yes against you, urban faggots,
tumescent flesh and unclean thoughts.
Mothers of mud. Harpies. Sleepless enemies
of the love that bestows crowns of joy.

Always against you, who give boys
drops of foul death with bitter poison.
Always against you,
Fairies of North America,
Pájaros of Havana,
Jotos of Mexico,
Sarasas of Cádiz,
Apios of Seville,
Cancos of Madrid,
Floras of Alicante,
Adelaidas of Portugal.

Faggots of the world, murderers of doves!
Slaves of women. Their bedroom bitches.
Opening in public squares like feverish fans
or ambushed in rigid hemlock landscapes.

No quarter given! Death
spills from your eyes
and gathers gray flowers at the mire's edge.
No quarter given! Attention!
Let the confused, the pure,
the classical, the celebrated, the supplicants
close the doors of the bacchanal to you.

And you, lovely Walt Whitman, stay asleep on the Hudson's banks
with your beard toward the pole, openhanded.
Soft clay or snow, your tongue calls for
comrades to keep watch over your unbodied gazelle.

Sleep on, nothing remains.
Dancing walls stir the prairies
and America drowns itself in machinery and lament.
I want the powerful air from the deepest night
to blow away flowers and inscriptions from the arch where you sleep,
and a black child to inform the gold-craving whites
that the kingdom of grain has arrived.

Jeanne-Claude: 1935-2009

* REMEMBRANCES
* NOVEMBER 20, 2009

Part of a Creative Powerhouse Behind Ephemeral Artworks

By STEPHEN MILLER and KELLY CROW

With her husband, Christo, Jeanne-Claude was part of an inseparable artistic duo that produced some of the world's most well-known and monumental works of art.

Jeanne-Claude, who died Nov. 18 in New York City at age 74 after suffering a brain aneurysm, created landmark public displays using textiles, including the 18-foot-high, 24-mile-long "Running Fence" in California and "Surrounded Islands" in which the couple installed giant lily pad-like structures in Florida's Biscayne Bay with 6.4 million square feet of bright-pink fabric. Their 2005 creation, "The Gates," a series of 7,503 orange nylon panels erected for 16 days in New York's Central Park, drew crowds in the middle of winter.

One of their most notable works was the 1995 wrapping of the Reichstag, the seat of the German Parliament in Berlin, in silvery fabric, a project the couple had contemplated for more than two decades. The logistical headaches were so large, Jeanne-Claude once said, that it turned her husband's hair gray and hers red.

Forceful and outspoken, Jeanne-Claude was fond of telling interviewers that there were only three things the couple never did together: fly in an airplane (they took separate flights); make sketches (Christo's job); and manage their taxes (Jeanne-Claude's job). Adding to the vision of two artists merging their creativity was the fact they shared the same birthday.

Jeanne-Claude took the lead in raising funds for projects through the sale of Christo's sketches and other materials to collectors and museums. Such self-financing of large projects is rare in the art world, but the couple said they feared relying on sponsors would compromise their artistic freedom, said their longtime lawyer, Scott Hodes.

Jeanne-Claude avoided galleries, selling directly to collectors. When funds were scarce, she would offer prospective buyers a discount for cash upfront.

To finance a project, Jeanne-Claude told The Wall Street Journal in 1984, "I'll sell almost anything but our son."

Christo often said Jeanne-Claude's contributions to their work went beyond finance and logistics; the basic conception of "Surrounded Islands," he insisted, was hers.

Jeanne-Claude de Guillebon was born June 13, 1935, in Casablanca, Morocco, where her father was stationed as a general in the French military. She attended schools in France, Switzerland and Tunisia before moving to Paris. In 1958, she met Christo when he was commissioned to paint a portrait of Jeanne-Claude's mother. According to the couple's Web site, "By the time Christo had done an impressionist portrait, a classical portrait and a Cubist portrait of the mother, Christo and Jeanne-Claude were in love."

Soon, she was collaborating on works such as installations of large stacks of oil barrels in Cologne, Germany, and Paris. She personally took charge of wrapping a fountain and medieval tower in Spoleto, Italy, in 1968, at the same moment Christo wrapped an art museum in Bern, Switzerland.

Two years ago, the Smithsonian American Art Museum bought a trove of drawings and photographs documenting the "Running Fence" project that will be exhibited next spring as "Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Remembering the Running Fence."

George Gurney, the museum's deputy chief curator, said, "She couldn't draw, but she collaborated aesthetically on every other decision. It was always a joint endeavor."

The couple never flew together so that in the event of a crash the surviving partner could complete their projects, according to Mr. Hodes. Christo is determined to go ahead with "Over the River," a fabric roof over a six-mile stretch of a river in Colorado, Mr. Hodes said.

God is in the House

Sightings - November 14, 2009

You Never Saw Art Tatum Sweat

That's why the centennial of his birth went all but unnoticed
Terry Teachout

For the critic, the word "best" is like a grenade without a pin: Toss it around too freely and you're likely to get your hand blown off. But you won't get many arguments from musicians if you toss it at Art Tatum, who was born a century ago last month. Tatum was—and is—the most admired jazz pianist who ever lived, a super-virtuoso whose whirlwind technique left his colleagues speechless with envy. "When that man turns on the powerhouse," Fats Waller said, "don't no one play him down." Nor was his renown restricted to the world of jazz: Vladimir Horowitz loved Tatum's playing so much that he made his own arrangement of "Tea for Two," a song that was one of Tatum's specialties. Yet outside of Toledo, Ohio, Tatum's home town, the centennial of his birth on Oct. 13 went all but unnoticed. And though the greatest of all jazz pianists is as revered today as he was in his lifetime, he is essentially unknown to the public at large.

On the other hand, Tatum, who died in 1956, was never a full-fledged celebrity, not even in the days when he got written up in Time magazine and made occasional appearances on such popular TV programs as "The Tonight Show." Unlike Waller, Duke Ellington or Ella Fitzgerald, who knew the profitable secret of mass appeal, he was an artist's artist known mainly to those who were already in the know.

What was it about Tatum that kept him in relative obscurity? Part of the problem, I suspect, is that his personality was almost entirely opaque. We're told that he liked baseball and drank Pabst Blue Ribbon beer by the quart, but little else is known for sure about his private life. James Lester's "Too Marvelous for Words," published in 1994, is the only biography of Tatum, and it fails to give much of a sense of what he was like offstage, not because Mr. Lester fell down on the job but because Tatum was unforthcoming on the rare occasions when he talked to journalists. In his most extended interview, a conversation with Willis Conover of the Voice of America, he is well-spoken but frustratingly noncommittal. The only surprise comes when he confesses that "I don't feel that I have all of the technical facilities that I would like to have." That's the musical equivalent of hearing Alfred Hitchcock tell a reporter that he wished his movies were scarier!

Not only did Tatum keep his own counsel, but he broke a cardinal rule of success for the performing artist: He made it look too easy. Just as most of us prefer to watch a trapeze artist work without a net, we like to be absolutely sure that a virtuoso is giving us our money's worth, and a seemingly effortless performance, no matter how spectacular it may be, deprives us of that slightly sadistic thrill.

Needless to say, anybody who can stumble through a C-major scale knows that Art Tatum always gave his audiences 10 times their money's worth. I can't count the number of jazz pianists who have described the experience of hearing Tatum for the first time in words similar to those of Gerald Wiggins: "I thought it was two guys playing the piano." But there was nothing to see in person, just a burly, impassive man who sat quietly at the keyboard, never moving his hands a millimeter more than necessary. In one of the few surviving film clips of Tatum's playing, a 1954 TV performance of Jerome Kern's "Yesterdays" that can be viewed on YouTube, you can see for yourself what Jon Hendricks meant when he said that on the bandstand, Tatum looked "like an accountant—he just did his work." Close your eyes and it sounds as though someone had tossed a string of lit firecrackers into the Steinway. Open them and it looks as though you're watching a court reporter take down the testimony of a witness in a civil suit.

Is it possible to wow the public without tossing your hair around? Yes and no. Fred Astaire never let you see him sweat, but he sweetened his deceptively casual virtuosity with just enough charm to make it irresistible. Tatum, by contrast, was more like Jascha Heifetz, a titan of the violin who brought off his stupendous feats of technical wizardry without ever cracking a smile or looking anything other than blasé—and though Heifetz was immensely famous, he was always more respected than loved.

The great violin teacher Carl Flesch got to the bottom of this paradox when he observed that "people would forgive Heifetz his technical infallibility only if he made them forget it by putting his entire personality behind it." The operative word here is forgive. To the small-d democrat, virtuosity is an insult, a tactless reminder of human inequality that can only be forgiven when the artist makes clear through visible effort how high a price he has paid for his great gifts. Art Tatum, like Heifetz, was too proud to make that concession. He did all his sweating offstage. That's why his exquisitely refined pianism will never be truly popular: No matter how much beer he drank, you could never mistake him for one of the guys.
—Mr. Teachout, the Journal's drama critic, writes "Sightings" every other Saturday. He is the author of "Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong," out next month from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Write to him at tteachout@wsj.com.

Self-assigned stories

Slideshow









Roy DeCarava, a retrospective Q 779 DeCarava
Roy DeCarava, photographs Q 779 DeCarava


Interesting tie-in to jazz musicians, including Coltrane.


Photographer Roy DeCarava is pictured in his Brooklyn home in 1991.