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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 9/20/2022: September? Check. Rain? Check. [1]

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Date: 2022-09-20

Okay, let’s start here: when the Beatles were playing all-night sets in Hamburg, they of necessity covered more or less any song any of them had ever heard of. When they auditioned for Decca in early 1962, this was one of the songs they performed. (In a decision that I bet kept somebody awake nights for years after, Decca rejected them, preferring instead to sign Brian Poole and the Tremeloes.) [2:00]

The Dave Brubeck Octet made this recording in San Francisco in 1950. Personnel (per the YT comments): Dick Collins (tp) Bob Collins (tb) Bill Smith (cl,bar) Paul Desmond (as) Dave Van Kriedt (ts) Dave Brubeck (p) Jack Weeks (b) Cal Tjader (d) [2:54]

Here’s that great Dinah Washington recording (from her 1960 album of the same title) that apparently everyone on earth has posted to YouTube. I picked this copy because I liked the picture. [2:03]

This is a Charlie Parker solo, from a March 1947 performance at the Hi-De-Ho Club in Los Angeles with the Howard McGhee Quintet. As you can see, someone has painstakingly transcribed it so we can follow along on the music. [2:08]

Here’s a longer-form version from trumpeter Roy Hargrove and his band, live at the Village Jazz Festival in Washington Square Park, NYC in 1995. (If you’d like to hear more from them, there’s a playlist with a couple more songs from that performance.) [12:29]

I needed to include this 1945 recording from the Willie Smith Orchestra, crackly as the recording is, because of Les Paul on guitar. [3:04]

This is an unusual 1954 vocal arrangement by a group called The Notables, singing with Vic Schoen and His Orchestra. Schoen, a prolific arranger, almost certainly created this arrangement, although I can’t find anywhere it says that. He arranged, among many other things, virtually every Andrews Sisters song you’ve ever heard of, making this right up his alley. [2:15]

Saxophone great Lester Young recorded this track in 1951. Young’s nickname was The President, or Prez. Billie Holiday named him after FDR, who she felt was “the greatest man around”; in turn, Young is the one who named her Lady Day. [3:07]

Jazz vocalist Johnny Hartman teamed up with Erroll Garner and his trio in 1949 for this track. [3:12]

This version by the George Shearing Quintet was recorded in 1949 as well. Personnel: George Shearing (piano), Margie Hyams (vibraphone), Chuck Wayne (guitar), John Levy (bass), and Denzil Best (drums). [3:13]

Sarah Vaughan did this live performance in Sweden in 1958. The trio backing her are: Ronnell Bright (piano), Richard Davis (bass), and Art Morgan (drums). [2:17]

Here’s a track to demonstrate that good jazz is not all in the past. Young Korean-Canadian bassist John Lee is just a few years out of Berklee College of Music and, after a long delay due to Covid, has managed to get his band together for his debut album, released this past April. [5:50]

Al Hibbler was a vocalist with Duke Ellington and a couple of other bands, before going solo. He recorded this in 1956, a very successful time for him. His career started to struggle a few years later, though, when he got arrested at a couple of civil rights protests; from other discussions we’ve had here, can you guess who stepped in and signed him to his personal label? If you said Frank Sinatra, you are correct! [2:37]

More saxophone! Zoot Sims’ real first name was John; he got the name Zoot when he started playing in Kenny Baker’s big band when he was 15. Each music stand had a nonsense word on it, and his said “Zoot”. Personnel on this 1956 track: Zoot Sims (tenor saxophone), Bob Brookmeyer (valve trombone), John Williams (piano), Milt Hinton (bass), Gus Johnson (drums). [5:10]

The Platters recorded the song in 1956, a recording that is also not exactly jazz. Although they had original hits too, they had great success with new arrangements of older standards like Twilight Time and their huge hit, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, and this fit right in. [2:53]

Pianist Red Garland played on five albums with the Miles Davis Quintet, before forming the Red Garland Trio with bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Art Taylor. This 1956 arrangement features one of the bowed bass solos that Chambers was known for. [4:47]

Vocalist Joe Williams and trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison, both alumni of the Count Basie Orchestra, toured together in 1961-2 and recorded a live album at New York’s Birdland jazz club that included tonight’s song. [2:09]

Peggy Lee recorded this 1945 track with Dave Barbour & His Orchestra; Barbour was her husband at the time. He’d joined Benny Goodman’s band while she was the vocalist, and they fell in love and got fired because “fraternizing“ with the “girl singer” was against the rules. Unrelated: I learned in the course of writing this that Miss Piggy was originally named “Miss Piggy Lee” and her creation was “inspired by” Peggy Lee. [3:08]

I saved this one for last, not only because I like it so much, but because there is SO much written, even just in Wikipedia, about both men, it’s hard to not tell you way too much. Yehudi Menuhin was an extremely distinguished classical violinist; Stéphane Grappelli was a very distinguished jazz violinist. Their collaboration began when BBC talk show host Michael Parkinson invited them to play together on his show in 1971. It went so well that they recorded three albums together, with Grappelli arranging songs and writing out parts for Menuhin, while he improvised around him. They sound like they’re having fun, and they’re fun to hear. [3:38]

(Okay, I have to add just one thing, of many: when Menuhin’s parents became citizens in 1919, they wisely changed their family name from Mnuchin, apparently foreseeing how thoroughly disgraced it would be 100 years later.)

In case you have no rain, I got you some autumn-evening rain on a pretty lake, from a dry porch with candles and a firepit to keep the chill off. There is certainly comfortable seating just out of frame, and no doubt beverages and snacks of your choice too. [8:09:37]

PUERTO RICO: five years later comes Fiona Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria nearly leveling Puerto Rico, leading to the infamous paper-towel toss and years of infrastructure not getting fixed and homes still having blue-tarp roofs. By way of taunting us, I suppose, Hurricane Fiona took the opportunity to dump as much as two feet of rain on Puerto Rico, at last report, causing flash floods and river flooding, mudslides, loss of power to the entire island, loss of potable water, and all the sequelae of that. Denise Oliver Velez has a diary that includes links to help local organizations that are on the ground and know the situation.

that includes local organizations that are on the ground and know the situation. The Hispanic Federation has established a Fiona fund.

has established a Fiona fund. World Central Kitchen is responding in both Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic to aid Fiona victims. (They are also responding in Alaska for typhoon victims, as well as Jackson, Mississippi, Pakistan, and many others.)

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/20/2123712/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-9-20-2022-September-Check-Rain-Check

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