Mitchell Jazz in the New Millennium

Live and Well
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9905148-1-7
Verlag: Dharma Moon
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 162 Seiten

This book offers the first comprehensive overview of jazz in the 21st Century, with nearly 60 conversational profiles of major jazz artists, from living masters such as Wayne Shorter to rising stars such as Esperanza Spalding. The artists discuss their lives, their music, and the state of the art form. In his 6000 word introduction, author Rick Mitchell concludes that despite economic struggles, jazz is continuing to thrive creatively 100 years after its birth. In addition to black and white photographs of each artist, the book includes approximately two dozen color photographs of the artists in performance at the DaCamera Jazz Series in Houston. The book is intended for musicians and fans, and should be of special interest to jazz studies programs at high schools, colleges and universities.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mitchell, Rick

Leseproben

Andy Bey: Tune Up (2005/2006) Ten years ago, Andy Bey had arrived at a crossroads in his life. His singing career – which had taken him from local child stardom in the 1950s and European tours in the Sixties to the respect of his peers as one of the top male vocalists in modern jazz in the 1970s – was in the doldrums. He had not put out a record under his own name since 1974, and he was no longer in demand as a featured vocalist with prominent instrumental jazz artists. “I never left the scene. I never quit,” Bey says. “I was just being passed over in some ways, not having any recordings.” His personal life was also in transition. In 1994, he was diagnosed with human immunedefiency virus, better known as HIV. A longtime practitioner of yoga, he devoted his full attention to maintaining his health. “I was cleaning house of everything that got in the way,” Bey says. “I was determined to survive. I was taking all kinds of alternative medicine, acupuncture, Chinese herbs. Because I needed to take something.” It was not long after he came to this crossroads that he met a man named Cornelius Pitts, who in turn introduced him to record producer Herb Jordan. These two helped him first to resurrect his career, and then to take it to a higher creative level. In 1996, he released Ballads, Blues and Bey, an album of piano and vocals produced by Jordan. This was followed, to ever-widening critical acclaim, by Shades of Bey in 1999, Tuesdays in Chinatown in 2001 and American Song in 2004. With Jordan’s direction and encouragement, he broadened his repertoire to include contemporary pop tunes by Nick Drake and Sting as well as Brazilian songs by Dorival Caymi and Milton Nascimento. At the same time, he revisited timeless jazz standards, adding a more intimate dimension to his reputation as a post-modern blues-belter. The result has been a late-career renaissance reminiscent of the autumnal comebacks enjoyed by singers Betty Carter and Shirley Horn. Bey has been voted the top male vocalist in jazz for two years running by the members of the Jazz Journalists Association. At 65, his crushed-velvet baritone sounds even more regal than it did 30 or 40 years ago, when he toured and recorded as a featured singer with Horace Silver, Lonnie Liston Smith, Frank Foster and other jazz leaders and orchestras. As author and lyricist David Ritz wrote in the liner notes to American Song, “Andy Bey has finally come into his own in the new millennium, his artistry wondrously mature, his style wholly unique. His emotional range has widened. His sound has deepened. He’s embraced the paradoxes – he’s whimsical; he’s profound; he’s melancholy; he’s bright – and arrived at that softly swinging place called serenity...” Bey appreciates the opportunities he’s been given, but he’s not taking anything for granted. “Everything came together at the right time,” he says. “But it’s still a struggle. Even with the awards and the great reviews, there’s still a lot of resistance in the music business. There’s still a lot of racism. They always want to put you in a category.” Bey grew up in Newark, New Jersey, one of nine children of a Christian mother and a father who converted to Islam. He started banging on the piano before he was two, attempting to pound out boogie-woogie tunes he heard on the radio. By the time he was five, he was performing around the neighborhood. “I had a pretty good ear. I could emulate very well,” he says. “‘Begin the Beguine’ by Eddie Heyward, ‘Afterhours’ by Avery Parrish. That kind of thing. Although I did the same kind of things the other kids did, playing games like hide-and-seek, I was always looked on as someone with a special talent.” When he was 11, he met Nat “King” Cole. At 12, he shared the stage with Louis Jordan at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He regularly appeared on New York-area television programs such as Star Time Kids and Spotlight on Harlem, where he performed opposite Dinah Washington. All the while, Bey was soaking up the rich blend of jazz, blues and pop influences available to an aspiring musician coming up on the East Coast in the early 1950s. “Sarah Vaughan, by far, was my hero when it came to the voice. But there were so many others – Nat Cole, Billy Eckstine, Ella, Dinah, Billie Holiday, who, to me, is still the purest jazz singer of all time. Ruth Brown... Al Hibbler at one time was a tremendous influence. I also liked some of the pop music of the time. Frank Sinatra; I was never influenced by him, but I thought he had a lot of talent. I liked Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney.” Bey was equally influenced and inspired by the great instrumentalists of the swing and bebop era. “Lester Young was a huge inspiration for me, particularly the records he made with Billie. Sonny Rollins, Miles, Dizzy, Clifford Brown, Dexter Gordon, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum... Horace Silver, even before I met him, was an influence. The trio records he made in 1954 I still love to this day. His concept was very different. His solos had a simplistic, linear approach that I liked a lot. Later, when I met him, he told me he was coming out of Monk and Teddy Wilson.” With two of his sisters, Geraldine and Salome, Bey formed a group that worked clubs in New York and toured Europe. The group never recorded, but they became favorites of fellow musicians such as Aretha Franklin, who at the time was struggling to establish herself as a jazz singer in New York, and John Coltrane, who once described Bey as his favorite vocalist. “We played cabarets. We did things with language, impressions. It was entertainment,” Bey recalls. “But I wouldn’t say it was a cabaret act. I was a little too serious to consider myself a cabaret act. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do.” By the early ’70s, Bey had established himself as in- demand vocalist among prominent musicians influenced by the spirituality and political ideals of the black jazz avant-garde. In addition to an extended gig with Silver – where his ebulliently earthy vocals proved a perfect fit for Silver’s witty lyrics – he worked with Eddie Harris, Max Roach, McCoy Tyner, Gary Bartz, Lonnie Liston Smith, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Frank Foster, Duke Pearson and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. In 1974, Bey finally released an album of his own as a leader, Experience and Judgment, which has since become an underground collector’s item. He continued to tour nationally with jazz artists, but by the 1980s, the gigs were becoming scarce, as a generation of new traditionalists led by Wynton Marsalis competed with smooth-jazz popularizers to control the future of jazz, or so it seemed. Bey resurfaced in the early ’90s, singing on four tracks on Horace Silver’s comeback album, It’s Got to Be Funky, and recording a rare original, “Tune Up,” with saxophonist Karl Denson’s retro-fusion band. Although his health was shaky, his voice came through loud and clear. The lyrics of the latter song, originally recorded 20 years earlier on Experience and Judgment, provide a revealing glimpse into Bey’s frame of mind at the time. The chorus goes, “Tune up, enjoy the strength of state of mind and body/Tune up, get close to all that’s pure and beautiful/Let’s tune up...” But nothing that Bey had recorded previously prepared a listener for the confidence and range of the albums he has recorded with Jordan as producer. Supported by a band featuring guitarist Paul Meyers and various top-notch rhythm sections, with arrangements by pianist Geri Allen, Bey has established himself as living master of vocal jazz, on the exalted level of his childhood influences. “An artist has to evolve,” he says. “You get to a point where you find out what your natural voice is. Of course, I’ll always be rooted in the jazz genre, jazz and blues, or whatever you want to call it. But I love Brazilian music. I love modern classical music, Béla Bartók. I love Indian music, especially the women singers. I used to listen to that back in the Sixties.” Bey says the next step in his artistic evolution is to introduce more original material. He’s been reworking songs he wrote earlier in his career, resetting them in lower keys. He’s also shopping for a new record label. His four previous albums have been released on three different labels. “Record labels are bad news,” he says. “We make our own CDs, then take them to the best bidder.” As for his health, Bey says he’s never felt better. He takes medication twice a day, plus vitamins, herbs and food supplements. He also works with a trainer. “It’s nothing to be proud of,” he says of his HIV condition, “but in a way, I’m very grateful that it happened. It’s made me who I am today, made me stronger. I’m in good spirits. It’s about using your adversity for inspiration. You’ve got to pull yourself out of yourself at times.” Selected Discography Gary Bartz Ntu Troop, Harlem Bush Music -- Uhuru, Milestone, 1971 Horace Silver, It’s Got to Be Funky, Columbia, 1993 Andy Bey, Shades of Bey, Evidence, 1998 Andy Bey, American...