It's a Cracker

Here is a traditional post- Christmas treat, a performance of Ellington and Strayhorn's adaptation of The Nutcracker Suite by The Eric Felten Orchestra recorded live at Blues Alley Jazz Club, Washington DC in December 2019...

And he leads his children on...

The Duke Ellington Society UK's celebration of Clark Terry's centennial in their series Uptown Lockdown may be found here.

The finale to the programme was a recording made in 2000 by the Sun Prairie High School Jazz Ensemble, Wisconsin. Clark terry was in town and spent a day in workshop with the students, participating also in the performance that evening to an audience of 1 000.

Clark was seventy nine years old at the time and in a wheelchair. The limits of his physicality are evident in the flugelhorn solo he plays in the recording here of Ellington's Launching Pad but he remains irrefutably, recognisably Clark Terry. As you can hear from this extract, he uses his limitations to humorous advantage, sparring with a needle-sharp muted trumpet and finally surrendering with a comical 'parp'. As ever he holds the audience in the palm of his hand.

Young musicians featured include Adam Braatz on piano, Mike Ganz on flugelhorn, Paul Gerneyzke on trombone, Adam Kuhn on tenor saxophone and Trent Austin on lead trumpet. They learn here at the feet of a master.

The students would have been, I suppose, between 14 and 18 years old. They'll be in their late thirties by now. I wonder how they used this launching pad? If you read this, do get in touch via the comments section.

Teaching was always central to Clark Terry throughout his career. He may well have considered it the most important aspect of his work. The many young musicians he inspired are certainly a vital part of his legacy. Thank you for Clark Terry. All the kids in the band want you to know that they do love you madly. 

Here's an excerpt from that performance of Launching Pad...

Terry's All Gold

I am joining members of the committee of Duke Ellington Society UK today for their webcast Uptown Lockdown to help celebrate Clark Terry's 100th anniversary.

Clark's recording career spanned more than sixty years, far more than we cover in a little over sixty minutes, so for further enjoyment additional to the selections played on this afternoon's programme, here are two videos of music created in significant chapters of Clark's career.

Firstly, the music of the Clark Terry/Bob Brookmeyer quintet is celebrated in their appearance on BBC Televison's Jazz 625 from 1965. 

Secondly, a performance - or part of a performance - by the 'Big Bad Band' Clark led in 1970 featuring such luminaries as Horace Parlan, Jimmy Heath and Richard Williams. 

Clark Terry: Let's Talk Trumpet

Tomorrow, Clark Terry's centenary will be celebrated on Duke Ellington Society UK's broadcast Uptown Lockdown at 5:00pm UK time. 

The hour or so's duration of the broadcast is hardly long enough to cover the many aspects of Clark's career so today and tomorrow, here are some 'additional tracks'.

Both videos here demonstrate what a superb communicator Clark Terry was. His respect for, engagement and wonderful relationship with his audiences comprise the subject of the first video where Clark converses with long-time colleague Louie Bellson.

The second video is a superb demonstration of Clark's talent as a teacher. It is more than instructive...

Clark Terry's CenTenary...

Today is the 100th anniversary of Clark Terry's birth. In celebration of the day, here is an article I wrote in 2015 while Editor of Duke Ellington Society UK journal Blue Light.

In 1999 when Columbia Legacy released Such Sweet Thunder in stereo for the first time, much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued when it came to light that the alternative stereo version of Up and Down, Up and Down the producers had selected for inclusion did not include the famous coda played by Clark Terry quoting Puck’s line ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be’. 

 Those few bars seem to capture the very spirit of the musician. Of the brass players in the studio that day, 24 April 1957, one can imagine the phrase being played by no other soloist than Clark. In its measure are all the candour, warmth and humour of not just Clark Terry’s approach to playing the trumpet or flugelhorn but his approach to life. 

Approaching his thirty-first birthday when he joined Ellington, he was, of course, a different musical generation to Stewart and his playing spoke - like his contemporary Paul Gonsalves who had joined the orchestra a year before - rather, the language of be- bop. The Ellington orchestra was more than ready to absorb and reflect this musical development, however. Earlier that year The Coronets had recorded Hoppin’ John – a bop-flavoured variation on the chords of Perdidio which was incorporated subsequently into later performances of the Tizol standard itself, including the version on the album Ellington Uptown. This version was Clark’s first major solo excursion on record with the Ellington aggregation. His two solo statements in the piece, separated by a trombone choir à la Cosmic Scene and the aforementioned Hoppin’ John, demonstrate the fecundity of ideas, the technical facility and the predilection for quotation (amongst others, here, a reference to the obscure pop standard  Cynthia’s In Love) characteristic of the bop school. They herald the arrival of a brilliant new star within the Ellington firmament more than capable of holding his own against the rest of the brass team as the stand off which occurs towards the climax of the arrangement proves. 

The sound was instantly recognizable: buoyant and confident, as modern and sleek as the lines on a Cadillac convertible or perhaps one should say, rather, the ‘longest automobile you’ve ever seen, eighty-eight cylinders’ driven through town one night at 440 miles per hour by Madam Zajj. It is Clark’s inventive, cupped, pungent boppish brass figures one hears behind Ellington’s narration during this number from A Drum Is A Woman.

Typically for this rich, allegorical fantasy – parallel to the history of jazz – Ellington cast against type: whilst Clark brought a modish new contemporary sound to the Orchestra – a breath of fresh air - it was a solo in the most traditional fashion Ellington sought from his new star turn. The responsibility with which he was tasked prompted Terry to aspire to heights beyond his stature and depths beyond his sounding. So adept a musician with such a range, Clark was not found wanting in the challenge. It was a story he told many times himself, in that chuckling, intimate tone – brandy warming in a glass – which in many ways was characteristic of the way he played the horn: 

“I told him, ‘Maestro, I don’t know anything about Buddy Bolden. I wouldn’t know where to start.’ Duke said, ‘Oh, sure, you’re Buddy Bolden. He was just like you. He was suave. He had a good tone, he bent notes, he was big with diminishes, he loved the ladies, and when he blew a note in New Orleans, he’d break glass across the river in Algiers. Come on, you can do it.’ I told him I’d try, and I blew some phrases, and he said, ‘That’s it, that’s Buddy Bolden, that’s it, Sweetie.’ That’s how Maestro was. He could get out of you anything he wanted. And he made you believe you could do it. I suppose that’s why they used to say the band was his instrument. The Buddy Bolden thing is on the record, and Duke was satisfied. So as far as I’m concerned, it was Buddy Bolden.” 

Participation in sessions for Ellington’s next album, Such Sweet Thunder, were sandwiched between studio time for Clark’s own first full album as leader, Serenade to a Bus Seat on the Riverside label. As early as 1954, Ellington seems to have been quite relaxed about sidemen such as Jimmy Hamilton, Paul Gonsalves and Clark Terry participating in numerous sessions under their own name. No sideman’s efforts in this area were more conspicuous than Clark’s, however. He had led several sessions for Emarcy Records, which were compiled in various configurations as albums. It was a session as last- minute sideman for Thelonious Monk’s album  Brilliant Corners which brought his potential to the attention of producer Orrin Keepnews (who passed away a little over a week after Clark Terry on 1 March, 2015). As Keepnews himself related the story in the original album’s liner notes: 

“A jazz-magazine editor had suggested that we do a Clark Terry album. At precisely that time we were in the midst of cutting a Thelonious Monk LP. One sideman unexpectedly left town on a long road trip, Terry happened to be in town, and Monk unhesitatingly picked him to fill the gap. That meant a lot all by itself: Monk’s approval, never loosely given, has always counted for a great deal around this label. The clincher came in hearing Clark at the session.” 

The album’s title was an allusion to ‘the story of my life’ as Clark called it: a life on the road, travelling with the big bands. 

In his liner notes, Keepnews asserted that “...while his work with Duke has brought him to the attention of many, it has also had to mean fairly limited solo opportunities and a general subordination of his personal style and ideas to the quite specific requirements of the Ellington sound.” 

The album found Clark in a much more contemporary setting: two thirds of the rhythm section on the date – Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums were making waves as two thirds of the rhythm section on what became known as the ‘First Great Quintet’ of Miles Davis (the group’s first album for Columbia, ’Round About Midnight had been released in March, 1957, just a month before this session with Terry) and the third member of the rhythm section – Wynton Kelly – would join Davis for one track (Freddie Freeloader) on the seminal album Kind of Blue before taking up a place permanently with the Davis group for the next four years. 

The title track finds Clark doubling with tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin in the freewheeling, durable, long lines characteristic of the school of hard bop. ‘Jaunty’ perhaps describes Clark’s solo work here; not an adjective one would apply to his sometime pupil and fellow denizen of St Louis, to whom Clark always referred as ‘Dewey’. Six years his junior, the career of Miles Davis described a very different arc. Davis’s clinical, probing solos, the very sound of isolation, couched in those dark, spare, linear arrangements could hardly stand in more stark contrast to Clark Terry’s music and approach. 

Serenade to a Bus Seat was later often mistaken as a reference to Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks. Whatever iniquities Clark Terry suffered in that way (and he did), this was not an aspect of his life he ever chose to bring to an understanding of his work. This makes a larger and very important point about the man and his music. It was no coincidence that as a graduate of ‘the University of Ellingtonia’, his commitment to his history or heritage expressed itself professionally in a very similar way to ‘Maestro’. 

In his essay Duke Ellington’s legacy and influence (in the recently published Cambridge Companion to Duke Ellington) Benjamin Bierman argues that one of the most important influences Ellington had over the young brass player was as ‘showman’. He says: 

“What makes it all work, of course, is the extremely high level of musicality that even the casual listener can appreciate. That, in conjunction with his sense of humour and his obvious desire to embrace and entertain his audience, has made him a consummate musician and entertainer. Artists like Terry continue to show us that entertainment and high art can work together in an extremely effective and appealing manner – another important element of the Ellington legacy.” 

All of this is certainly true. Equally, if not even more important, however, is the figure that Clark Terry cut within the entertainment business and his achievements within that industry because his achievements were at such a high and uncompromised level, despite the inherent social disadvantage of the times and the not inconsiderable difficulties of negotiating the politics of Civil Rights. At a time when the stereotype of black musicians as feckless, dissolute, unreliable players was an effective bar to the lucrative and secure world of studio session work, Clark Terry held down a lengthy tenure as a member of the NBC Tonight Show band. Whilst many of his contemporaries were constrained financially to leave the States for careers on the European continent, Clark forged ahead with a successful career in the most unforgiving of artistic environments, conducting himself with absolute professionalism, grace and good humour. 

Not that Clark Terry’s art was all sunshine. True, it is difficult to imagine an album entitled The Happy Horns of Miles Davis, but there was darkness, too, in Clark’s work. I am reminded of Ian Carr’s memorable description that Terry’s ‘trumpet sound became full and non-brassy, with often a cry in the note or phrase, rather like a disembodied human voice’. 

By and large, however, if Clark Terry chose, rather, to dwell in the sunlit uplands of his prodigious talent, his classical discipline, his consummate professionalism, well – in the end, such a choice, such values – a life lived well – proved themselves to be enduring when the light grew dim through the debilitating illness of his final years. His passion for teaching burned ever more brightly, however, documented movingly in Alan Hicks’s film Keep On Keepin’ On and Clark’s mentoring of the young pianist Justin Kauflin. 

And always, there will be the sound of that horn, “the effortless rhythmic buoyancy, the bluesy phrases and the quicksilver surprises of articulated thought,” (Carr again); the sound that puts to flight our mortal folly. 

Thank you for Clark Terry. 

 

Cherchez les femmes...

Excellent news from The Duke Orchestra and Laurent Mignard. Next year sees not one but two new albums from this organisation celebrating the  influence and involvement of women in Ellington's music. The press release says...

Women hold a central place in Duke Ellington's universe.The maestro dedicated more than a hundred melodies to them, painted portraits and cultivated precious collaborations adorned with tailor-made arrangements.In his new opus, Laurent MIGNARD Duke Orchestra offers a wide instrumental and vocal range in homage to the fairer sex. Eight guest artists join the jazz women of the orchestra to embody with talent and generosity the many facets of Ellingtonian elegance.

Les chanteuses invitées : Natalie Dessay, Roberta Gambarini, Nicolle Rochelle, Myra Maud, Sylvia Howard

 Les instrumentistes invitées : Rhoda Scott (orgue), Aurore Voilqué (violon), Rachel Plas (harmonica)

 

Le Duke Orchestra : Aurélie Tropez (sax alto, clarinette solo), Julie Saury (batterie), Didier Desbois (sax alto, clarinette), Fred Couderc (sax tenor, flute, clarinette), Olivier Defays (sax ténor), Philippe Chagne (sax baryton, clarinette basse), Carl Schlosser (sax ténor), Claude Egea, Malo Mazurié, Jérôme Etcheberry, Richard Blanchet, Sylvain Gontard (trompettes), Nicolas Grymonprez, Michaël Ballue, Jerry Edwards (trombones), Philippe Milanta (piano), Bruno Rousselet (contrebasse), Laurent Mignard (direction)

Duke Ladies Volume 1 will be released in Spring 2021 with   Duke Ladies Volume 2  to follow in Autumn/Winter.

Here is a 'teaser' for the albums...

Good News

Duke Ellington's Concert of Sacred Music, Coventry Cathedral, 21 February 1966, the European première of his suite In The Beginning God, has now been released on limited edition DVD by Network On Air.

This particular recording was unearthed in the archives of Coventry Cathedral by Dr Nicolas Pillai and restored by Kaleidoscope.

From the Network On Air website...

A staple genre on ITV from its early days and much loved by the viewing public, Light Entertainment shows transcended class, religion and age – their joyous mix of comedy, variety and music firmly establishing them as undeniable highlights of the weekly TV schedule. Producer of key shows across the ITV Network from the mid 1950s, ABC Television was perfectly placed to create both popular series and ratings hit specials – and this release contains four classic Light Entertainment shows from the 1960s:

SAMMY DAVIS JR MEETS THE BRITISH (1960)

Hot on the heels of his bravura Royal Variety Performance Sammy starred in this high profile TV spectacular.

STEAMBOAT SHUFFLE (1960)

The sole surviving edition of the Dixieland music series, featuring jazz legend Kenny Baker.

BIG NIGHT OUT PRESENTS THE PEGGY LEE SHOW (1961)

The incomparable Peggy Lee in her first ever British TV Show - with special guest Bing Crosby!

CELEBRATION (1966)

This trailblazing fusion of secular and sacred featured the European premiere of Duke Ellington's Concert of Sacred Music.

The DVD, which is Region 2 PAL, may be ordered here.