Andy Williams: a Gift of Great Timeless Songs

Andy Williams: a Gift of Great Timeless Songs

Many folks are remembering Andy William’s TV show today (Andy passed away September 25^th), how his Christmas specials brought their families close together on the holidays. Andy’s masterful singing popularized many great American songs. For me, being carried away downstream by the song, “Moon River,” which became the theme song of Andy’s show, is one of the good memories. What is the story behind this wonderful song?

The composer Henry Mancini selected the great lyricist, Johnny Mercer (1909-1976) to write the words for his melody. I was already a big Henry Mancini fan in 1961, in love with the Peter Gunn big band soundtracks that he composed for the detective TV series, and also where I learned my first jazz chords on piano.

The Academy Award winning song “Moon River” was first sung by Audrey Hepburn in the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Johnny’s career as a songwriter, dormant since the 50s, was reinvigorated by the success of this song.

Last year, our daughter’s boyfriend made a long truck delivery from the San Francisco Bay Area to a museum in Savannah, Georgia.  “I drove right across Moon River,” he told me.

“Really! I didn’t know it was a real river,” I said.

But of course, I immediately thought—Johnny Mercer was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia!  Those who’ve seen the 1997 movie (or read the book), In the Garden of Good and Evil, might recall it was filmed in the historic Mercer House in Savannah. Built for Johnny’s great grandfather General Hugh Mercer, the house had not actually been in the Mercer family for years although the family still lived in town.  Doing more research, I read that Johnny grew up in a different house overlooking Moon River.

After creating several hit songs with composers like Harold Arlen like “Ac-cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,” (recently recorded by Paul McCartney) Johnny went on to Hollywood where he helped to found Capitol Records. Capitol built the famous round tower housing recording studios that became a hit factory for Nat Cole, Frank Sinatra, Diana Krall and many others (see previous blog item, The Legendary Capitol Studios and Engineering Legend, Al Schmitt).

Johnny Mercer was not just a lyric writer. He also wrote and recorded his own songs, great ones like “Blues in the Night,” “I’m An Old Cowhand,” and “Something’s Gotta Give.”

One of the “facts” I learned as I read up on Mercer’s career is that Moon River was formerly called Back River, and was renamed in honor of Savannah’s successful native son. I guess I had romanticized the origin of the song, visualizing Johnny dreaming wistfully out the window at the southern vista of his “Huckleberry friend” rolling by, romantic as Johnny must have felt in writing it. “We’re after the same rainbow’s end …” http://georgiamusicmag.com/moon-river-the-geography-of-a-timeless-song/

 Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini teamed up again two years later (1963) to write two more hits for Andy Williams, songs from the movies, “The Days of Wine and Roses,” (another Best Music, Original Song Academy Award winner), and “Charade (an Academy Award nominee).”

(Dave Holt)

Happy Birthday Jon Hendricks! Part 2: The James Joyce of Jive

Happy Birthday Jon Hendricks!   

Part 2: The James Joyce of Jive

Two years and four months after sitting in with Charlie Bird Parker (1949), Jon Hendricks followed his music muse which took him to New York City. He walked into The Apollo Bar, where Bird was appearing. Bird was in the middle of a solo as Hendricks passed the bandstand.

   Bird said, “Hey, Jon!  How y’doin’, man?  You wanna’ sing some?”

   Hendricks held on to the wall to keep his knees from buckling then collapsed into a chair. 

“Gerry Mulligan was on baritone saxophone with his thick shock of blood-red hair, raggedy once-blue jeans and tennis shoes, no sox and playin’ pure Be-bop like a demon!” he remembered. “Bud Powell was on piano, inspiring the whole wide world.  Curley Russell, Bird’s buddy from Jay McShann and the K.C. days, was on bass and The Little Giant, Roy Haines, was on drums.”

Jon described what happened next. “After intermission, Bird called me up to sing. ‘Naw, Bird,’ yelled drummer, Roy Haines, ‘this is our last set. We don’t want no singers, man, we wanna’ play.’  I thought I was going to die from embarrassment, but Bird cooled Roy out and presented me.  After that night I knew everything was going to be cool because Bird was my PR Man, and I started giggin’ almost immediately all around the City.”

Not long after that, Hendricks heard “Moody’s Mood for Love” by King Pleasure and immediately recognized new possibilities for telling whole stories in poetry using great established Jazz big-band instrumentals. Listen to his lyric writing on “Four Brothers,” the Jimmy Guiffre composition for Woody Herman’s Third Herd:

   “We're in the modern school, we always play it cool, we never play the fool/ The honkers and the squeakers might be stealin' the show/ But we don't go for that, so while we blow Hi-ho, lackadaise, for it's a natural fact/ I ain't no kin, but I would like to get in the act!”

This led to a recording with singers organized by Dave Lambert, Bird’s favorite Be-bop singer. A partnership was born when the two men decided to arrange a vocal album of Count Basie’s music. Looking for someone to sing the higher trumpet parts, they found Annie Ross. This led to the formation of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross and the release of “Sing a Song of Basie,” in 1957. They became the Number One Jazz Vocal Group in the world and were together for five years from 1957-1962. They introduced what Jazz Critic, Leonard Feather, dubbed “Vocalese,” and changed jazz singing throughout the world. It is Americana as much as Appalachian fiddle music and old time country is, though still an unacknowledged part of the new genre.

Little Johnny had grown up to become Jon Hendricks, famous singer, lyricist and drummer, and now a founding father of the vocalese tradition.  Lambert Hendricks and Ross released their second tribute album to Basie’s music in 1958. This time, “Sing Along With Basie,” was recorded with the orchestra of the Count himself. Chappell and I sometimes perform one of the tunes, “Goin’ to Chicago Blues” in our live show.

 

Other jazz songs (non-vocalese) by Jon Hendricks that Chappell and Dave perform are “Gimme That Wine,” “Yeh Yeh,” (see photo, a hit for Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames in 1964) and we get our audiences to enjoy vocalese scat-singing on “Doodlin’” (Horace Silver and Jon Hendricks). 

1985 was a great year for vocalese. Hendricks wrote an album titled “Vocalese,” for The Manhattan Transfer. Here is some of Jon’s poetry from the song “Joy Spring”:

“Life is over in a minute an' they never dug it/ in it or enjoy a minute of it/ 'cause they put too much above it that was gross/ somethin' that was worth a couple bucks at mos'/ So there is the reason that the maker of man included there in his plan/ A certain fountain deep within' where there was laughter, youth 'n gold/ for human beings t'have 'n hold …”

   The album won a total of seven Grammys, including one each for Jon Hendricks and Bobby McFerrin, guests on the album.

Ninety one years old today, September 16^th, Jon is still be-bopping, creating jazz lyrics, and teaching master classes at the Jazz Jiversity, the University of Toledo.

This article is partly based on Jon’s recollections found at

http://www.gailboyd.com/index.php/roster/jon-hendricks

The Legendary Capitol Studios and Engineering Legend, Al Schmitt

The Legendary Capitol Studios and Engineering Legend, Al Schmitt

   The PBS broadcast of Great Performances of September 7 featured Paul McCartney’s new recording, Kisses On The Bottom, a newly released collection of pop standards and two originals. The TV program was filmed at the same Capitol Studios where much of the album was created. In the show, we were briefly introduced to the “dream team” that recorded Paul’s project, Engineer Al Schmitt with producer Tommy LiPuma (left, Al on right of Paul). 

Currently our Chappell and Dave Holt CD recording is being produced and engineered by Michael Peterson of Harvest Moon Studios (925-370-8718) whose hero/role model is the famous engineer, Al Schmitt. Michael starts to bow towards the East at the mention of his name.  He told us he met Al when he attended a one-time recording engineer seminar at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco. Al gave the workshop as part of an NARAS conference.

   Mr. Schmitt has won 19 Grammys for Best Engineering, the first received in 1962 for Henry Mancini’s soundtrack album for Hatari, one of my favorite albums when I was a kid. Al also engineered Steely Dan’s Aja and won the Grammy for his work on this milestone album in 1977. He has worked on all Diana Krall’s albums and she was hired to be musical director of Paul McCartney’s project at the Capitol Studio where she recorded many of the tracks.

Speaking of the famous studio where Nat Cole and many others made their classic albums (the Capital Records Tower is nicknamed “The house that Nat built”), Al said, “All the tube gear is kept in great shape, and all the microphones. I still use the same mike they used on Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin on vocals.” He also later said in an interview, “We still have Nat Cole’s piano.”

   Michael Peterson told us about the tube preamps still used at Capitol Studios, and the vintage Neve console. Al Schmitt still mixes down to analog tape some of the time (per his interview with Larry Leblanc).

There is a new preamp in the industry, the UA 710 Twin-Finity, (UA stands for Universal Audio) that has a tone blending knob. This knob allows you to combine the vintage sounding classic warmth of UA tube design with the transient bite of solid state tones.

Al also said about Capitol studios:  “Very few choose to record in the open room with the orchestra, although Frank Sinatra and Natalie Cole come to mind.” Paul McCartney recorded in this very same way (pictured above) on the recent TV special, “Kisses on the Bottom.”

   Look for repeat showings of this studio concert as we are sure that it will be re-shown on PBS.

Photos from the special are from: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may12/articles/mccartney.htm

The photo of Al with Natalie Cole is from web site: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan04/articles/classictracks.htm

 

Say Do You Remember Dancing in September?

Say Do You Remember Dancing in September? 

"Do you remember the 21st night of September?

Love was changing the minds of pretenders

while chasing the clouds away, our hearts were ringing

in the key that our souls were singing. 

As we danced in the night, remember how the stars stole the night away."

-  September, Lyrics by Maurice White, Charles Stemney and Verdine White (Earth, Wind & Fire)

August opened with a performance at Chester’s Bayview Cafe, Berkeley, CA, on August 2^nd.  This was a special evening where we experimented with presenting American Indian song and poetry as a mini-set within our regular music set of original songs and standards. One of Dave’s American Indian poems, Sky Gods are Weaving a Basket of Light, also included some Native-style singing with Chappell accompanying him on guitar.

We invited Nanette Deetz, Cherokee/Dakota poet, to read in English and also from the translations she has done in the Dakota language. She joined Chappell and Dave on drum as we sang the Chippewa Praise Song together (music collected by Frances Densmore, lyric by Dave Holt). Bob Loomis accompanied both poets with soulful performances on his Native American flutes (Bob performs with six different types of Native flutes). Bob also read his poetry. The show was very well received especially by local Berkeley poets who attended: John Rowe, President of BAPC, and Jan Dederick of Poetalk magazine (published by BAPC).

We will be returning to Chester’s Bayview Cafe on Sunday September 16. Dave will also be playing piano for the Unity Church, Center of Walnut Creek on Sunday, September 9. If you need some spiritual recharging, Unity Church offers an inviting, supportive and open community for individuals to freely pursue their own spiritual path. It is also a place of worship that values music highly. They have a fine choir, and an experienced band of musicians, Scott Towne on drums, Neill Castro on bass, budget permitting. 

We returned to Coffee Katz, Sebastopol, on August 26. We used this local coffeehouse hangout for our photo shoot because of the beautiful baby grand piano lit by an overhanging chandelier. Our daughter Kelsey was able to get some wonderful pictures. We had the additional delight of a soft afternoon Sonoma County light. It came in through the paned glass windows to add a wine country, honey chardonnay, hue to our photos. Those of you who follow our Facebook news have already been enjoying the ones we chose for new profile and cover pictures.

Bob Loomis stopped in to Coffee Katz on his way back from the California Bluegrass Association’s Golden Old Time Music gathering and campout at Lake Sonoma (http://www.cbaontheweb.org/). Bob is a very versatile musician and he played some decidedly non-bluegrass style flute with us on Horace Silver’s Doodlin’, Ellington’s In a Mellotone and others (see photo).

Happy Birthday to Jon Hendricks! Jon is a vocalese lyricist, composer of the song lyrics I mentioned above, and master jazz singer, former  member of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross!  He will be 91 this month, September 16th. (See our blog item on August 15th about Jon).