Love Brothers in the Holy Land

AARON at the age of 18

By way of our common membership in the Jewish community in Indianapolis, I had known Aaron Leve casually for quite a few years, but we became fast friends during our senior year at North Central High.   As things stood in those days, he belonged to a rather rich family that lived in a large, yellow brick home just outside the Broad Ripple neighborhood,  not far from Butler University.  He liked to entertain me in his room, sometimes along with his younger brother David.  

Aaron was shorter than I, not particularly handsome, small of frame.  His light brown hair contrasted to that of his dark-haired sibling.   Both of them, it seems, were rebellious teens, but their parents apparently didn't know the shenanigans they were pulling.

He held court there, as it were, introducing me to topics and discoveries he made over the years.  I found him quite interesting because of his intellectual refinement and knowledge of a wide variety of subjects.  He showed delight, for example, over some of the more raunchy passages by the Roman poet Catullus.  In his enthusiasm and with a slight lisp, he was likely to pronounce the name "Catulluth".

Somewhat contrary to the prevailing opinions, he preferred the plays of Christopher Marlowe-- Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta-- to those of Shakespeare, and he loved composing Elizabethan-style lines of his own, describing his ogling of "yon bawdy serving wench" in some imaginary Sixteenth Century tavern.  Among other favorites, he introduced me to Tristes Tropiques by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss , from whom he inherited a deep distrust of modern Western society.  He was quite familiar with contemporary New Wave films-- Jules and Jim, La Dolce Vita, Breathless-- (though we did occasionally indulge in the sort of smut exhibited at the Fox Theatre downtown on Illinois Street, a former burlesque theater which then advertised itself as the "Home of Unusial Art Film", extremely tame stuff compared to the porn of the present day.

Aaron introduced me to books I'd never heard of (Tristes Tropiques, Outlaw Blues), movies (Mondo Cane, Jules and Jim)and magazines:  music magazines (Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, Cheetah).   For Aaron's most significant and long-lasting influe)nce on me was his keen appreciation of music.  It was he who first hipped me to  The Kinks, a lifelong passion.  He also reinforced my great love for The Beach Boys by introducing me to the writings of Paul Williams, one of the first of the new breed of rock critics to emerge in the late '60s.

But the greatest influence he exerted on me was undoubtedly his interest in  jazz, within which he most admired the practitioners of the "New Thing":  Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, and John Coltrane.   Looking back to the past, he was particularly fond of the pianist Lennie Tristano, whose "Requiem" and "Line-up" were often played for me.  I know I'll never forget the time, a few years after high school, the sensation of listening to Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come on my first encounter with hashish, the horns flying high above the ceaseless, churning rhythm section.  I might also mention that Aaron provided my first real exposure to the music of Duke Ellington,  whose Piano Reflections launched me on a listening quest that continues to the present day.

Aaron preferred Jimmy Smith's recordings arranged by Lalo Schifrin over those done by Oliver Nelson, The Cat over Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?   Highly discriminating taste, but this particular comparison remains meaningless to me.

The whole album

The single only

Aaron introduced me to "The Place," on College Avenue near the old Kirschbaum Jewish center, one of the city's few espresso houses.  The establishment regularly featured poetry and jazz combos, especially trios led by trombonist  David Baker (at that time he was playing bass, rather than trombone, because his embouchure had been harmed in a car accident).  In those days, I generally appeared in my ugly yellow turtleneck and affected hipness as best I could.  Espresso tasted like mud; I've never tasted it since.

Upon the death of Indianapolis guitarist Wes Montgomery, I recall Aaron's grieving "Why did he have to die?  Why couldn't it have been Chet Atkins?"

*

Jubilee City escapades.  Known also as"Jew City," the place was a large, grungy discount store, much like a Kmart,  on the east side of town off  Keystone Avenue.  They were distinguished, however, when it came to their large stock of vinyl LPs, especially jazz albums.  Aaron introduced me to this emporium  in about 1968, when mono LPs were being superseded by new stereo versions. With Leve's guidance,the whole gamut of jazz labels-- Blue Note, Prestige, Atlantic, Verve--almost an entire world of jazz became available at a more than reasonable price:  the mono albums were marked down to $1.99, affording a nice little boost to my record collection.   It was there I acquired such beauties as Bobby_Hutcherson's Components,  Herbie Hancock"s Maiden Voyage, Jimmy Giuffre, and other jazz essentials.  We also became adept at surreptitiously removing some of the cheap price stickers and using them to cover up price tags on stereo albums, and consequently purchase them at greatly reduced prices, until the time I got caught and was banished for good from wonderful Jubilee City.

When, in the fall of 1966, we both became freshmen at IU, we were expecting to be roommates in  McNutt Quad, in vain as it turned out.  Instead, my roommate turned out to be Russell Clark Beiber, a true know-nothing business major who had been tossed out of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon frat house for poor grades.  As a contemporary jingle had it:

Half the world is white and free.
The other half is SAE.

Russ was an asshole, and I grew to hate him and his loutish buddy who lived in another wing of the quad.  The two of them were unrelenting in calling me "Mouse" and Aaron "Squirrel," laughing like morons at how clever they were.  Among other cruel pranks, they tricked me into "isometric sit-ups," in which the victim ends up with his face buried in someone's ass.  I recall that Russ took much pride in his bedspread, a gift from his parents, which was patterned to mimic a Ferrari.  It seems he was also a devout Christian Scientist and became upset with me for mocking his idiotic religion.

At any rate, I wasn't heartbroken when Russ flunked out of school by the end of the term.  I suppose he went back home to Michigan City to sponge off his parents and fuck the local teenagers.  But still I was unable to share a room with Aaron:  My next roommate was Bruce Bloy, a true shift in my axis mundi.

Aaron himself was kicked out of  IU the following spring, having led a raucous panty raid at one of the women's dorms.  I believe somewhere there may be a photo of Aaron at the top of a tall ladder, accepting underwear coming out an open window.   The next thing I knew, he'd enrolled at Butler University back home.

At that time, he had a girlfriend from Indianapolis,  Cheryl Diamond.  I recall my father meeting her and using the Yiddish word mees (ugly) to describe her, but I never thought of her in that way.  When she enrolled at IU, we maintained a friendship close enough for her to tell me one morning of the previous night she'd spent with Aaron.  "He took my flowers," she said, not quite knowing what to make of that situation.

Cheryl Diamond

Even after his expulsion, Aaron retained a rented house in Bean Blossom, a few miles east of the Bloomington campus, where he  spoke of getting his "financial trip" together.   It was also there that he introduced me to John McLaughlin's Devotion, one of the first records to bear the designation of "fusion."

If there is one thing I'll always remember about Aaron, it would be the story of his and brother David's trip to Israel, although I'm not certain of the year it happened.  They were part of a tour group that travelled to various locations around the country.  Somehow, through someone's misreading their surname, the Leves became known as  "the "Love Brothers" along the way.

The tour took them out to the countryside, where the group stayed at a kibbutz, but it was when they visited Tel Aviv that the trip became really interesting.  Aaron succeeded in scoring a large slab of fine hashish, brought it back to the hotel, and began holding court, as he had at his parents' house in Indianapolis.  One or two at a time, the other kids were invited in to be corrupted by their first toke of hash, and eventually this activity came to the attention of the leaders of the tour.  Within hours, the State of Israel declared the brothers personas non grata, and they were deported back to the U.S. forthwith.  I wasn't there to witness any of this, but it was easy to imagine the activity in that hotel room, as I'd experienced it earlier back home.

Since about 1972, I lost track of Aaron altogether.  We parted ways without saying goodbye, as I went on to make my home in Chicago, got married, and started a new chapter in my life.  The last time I saw him, in the early '70s, to my recollection he was living in a tent in Indianapolis with a 14-year-old girl.

I'm not sure, but I believe brother David died young, decades ago.

 If Aaron is still living free as of this writing, he is one lucky son of a bitch.

Stanley Jordan, Eighth Wonder of the World

IN ROTATION:

• Bob Brookmeyer & Friends (Columbia, 1964) sextet:  Brookmeyer and Stan Getz, plus four rhythm players:  Gary Burton, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Elvin Jones (who at times seems too "modern" for the hornmen.  It's odd to hear Elvin churning away underneath some of the solos.

Tony Bennett guests on Billy Strayhorn's "Day Dream."

Burton's vibes, though not present on every tune, help put sparkle into the arrangement.  I wish he could have played more.  Burton wrote a short memoir about these sessions, following notes by Dan Morgenstern.

Program includes three Brookmeyer originals.  Remainder is standards plus a sprinkle of the obscure.

• Steve Lacy, Reflections (New Jazz/ OJC, 1958)

with Mal Waldren, Buell Neidlinger, and Elvin Jones

The album's title is a little vague.  Lacy's refections on Monk?  Monk's tune of the same name? Monk's own reflections helping to create that piece?

Well-chosen, all-Monk program.  Most of the selections are from the early '50s, Monk's recordings for Blue Note and Prestige.

• Jimmy Heath, Nice People:  The Riverside Collection (Riverside/ OJC, 1959-1964)

compiled from the six albums Heath recorded as a leader for Riverside

ensembles range in size from an informal sextet to a ten-piece orchestra

almost all of the compositions and arrangements are by Heath

Jimmy's brothers, Percy and Albert are often at hand.  Other sidemen were drawn from the label's stable of players.

Many of the arrangements include parts for french horns and tuba.  Recalls Max Roach's similar experiments around the same time.

• Miles Davis, Vol. 2 (Blue Note, 1953-4)

Heath's "CTA" brings me back to Miles's older version, part of my DNA now.  That number came from the second of three sessions Davis recorded during his brief association with Blue Note.

• Wondermints, Bali (Varese Sarabande, 2000)
• Bob Brookmeyer, Traditionalism Revisited (Pacific Jazz/ Essential Jazz Albums, 1957)

• Sathima Bea Benjamin, A Morning in Paris (enja, 1963)
• Van Morrison, His Band and the Street Choir (Warner Bros. 1970)

•  Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band, The Dust Blows Forward (Warner Bros. 2-CD compilation, 1966-1982; released 1999)

 Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band,  Grow Fins: Rarities 1965–1982 (Revenant 5-CD compilation, 1999)

Freddie Hubbard Quintet, Rutgers & Amsterdam (no label, 1970)

Paul McCartney, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (Capitol, 2005)

Bill Evans, The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961 (Riverside 3-CD boxed set)

• Duke Ellington, Never Before Released Recordings, 1965-1972

Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (Blue Note, 1954, 1955)

LIGHTLY & POLITELY:

• Lee Morgan, The Sidewinder (Blue Note, 1963)
• Richard and Mimi Fariña, Memories (Vanguard, 1968)

various sources, including tunes from the Newport Folk Festival and a pair sung by Joan Baez

• Hiromi, Place to Be (Telarc, 200?)
• Joni Mitchell, Clouds (Reprise, 1969)
• Susannah McCorkle, No More Blues (Concord,, 1989)
• Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Drum Suite (Columbia, 1956-7)

Art Blakey's Percussion :  with Ray Bryant + percussionists

1.  The Sacrifice

2.  Cubano Chant (Ray Bryant)

3.  Oscalypso (Pettiford)

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers:  with Bill Hardman, Jackie McLean, Sam Dockery, Spanky DeBrest

4.  Nica's Tempo (Gryce)

5.  D's Dilemma (Mal Waldron)

6.  Just for Marty (Hardman)

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, earlier lineup:  with Donald Byrd, Ira Sullivan, Kenny Drew, Wilbur Ware

7.  Lil' T (Byrd)

8.  The New Message-1 (Byrd)

9.  The New Message-3

• Dick Gregory, In Living Black and White (Colpix LP, 1961)
• Barry Harris Trio, Magnificent! (Prestige/ OJC, 1969) with Ron Carter, Leroy Williams; includes "Bean and the Boys" a la Bud

• Chet Baker and Art Pepper, Playboys, AKA Picture of Heath 
• Hiromi, Place to Be (Telarc, 2009)
• Oscar Pettiford, Bass Hits (Topaz Jazz, 1943-1946)
• Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George & Ira Gershwin Songbook (Verve/ Not Now Music, 1959)
• McCoy Tyner, The Real McCoy (Blue Note, 1967)
• Susannah McCorkle, Sabiá (Concord, 1990)
• Harry Nilsson, A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (RCA, 1973)
• Steve Turre, Rainbow People (High Note, 2007)

Our Car Club

NEXT: The Pet Sounds Box Set

In a state of grace: Bud's ups 'n downs

Bud Powell was probably my first serious interest in jazz, from undergraduate days on.  I met Jackie McLean in 1976 in his dressing room at Joe Segal's Jazz Medium on Rush Street.  This was during the intermission after the first set, and Jackie was still practicing a particularly difficult passage on his horn, "trying to find out where it turns at."  I knew of his relationship to Bud by reading the chapter devoted to McLean in A. B. Spellman's Black Music:  Four Lives (Schocken Books, 1970) hat Jackie had know Bud Powell closely and over a long period of time.

Alfred Lion with Bud Powell and family

What follows of our conversation has been edited into a monologue.

I knew Bud Powell very well from about 1947 until he died in 1966.  I was closest to him between 1947 and 1949.  After that time I just knew Bud intermittently through out the years.

If anything, he was very aware of the exploitation that was happening to him, and preparing me for a life in music and for the exploitation ahead, which I didn't know anything about.  I was nineteen at the time.  Bud told me about the things that were happening to him in the business, about record company ripoffs, club owner ripoffs, the whole thing.

And that hasn't changed, though things always grow more sophisticated.  War becomes more sophisticated, but blood is shed any way you look at it.  Whether a cat throws a stone in antiquity and wounds another cat, or throws a bomb and kills a hundred people, all the way up to nuclear weapons, it's still war.  And slavery:  musicians haven't been emancipated, as far as I'm concerned.  They don't have anything to do with their own product.  You can't have any music without the musician, but he gets the least reward from it, and Bud is the perfect example of that.  I hear critics talking about piano players who sound like Art Tatum, but there was nobody that interpreted Art Tatum felt more than Bud.

He was my teacher, and he helped me at a time when I needed help.  When I came to him, I had only been playing about a year and a half, but by the time I had played four or five years I was working with Miles [Davis].  That can give you an idea of the kind of inspiration he gave me.  He wasn't the kind of teacher where you go into a studio, and here's your lesson for today.  I just used to go down to his house on weekends.  Sometimes he would play with me, and sometimes he wouldn't.  Sometimes he would go to the piano and invite me to play, and sometimes he would just go and play alone.  Sometimes he would talk.  I look at the time I spent with Bud as a whole studdy in music which I was fortunate enough to get.

At the time I first met him, Bud was just coming home from the hospital on weekend leaves.  He used to ask me sometimes who Sonny Stitt was, or to tell him about Charlie Parker again, because they had given him shock treatments and he had forgotten things.  I would sit down and talk to him, but I was really aghast, because I didn't realize at that time what could happen in those institutions, how men could play with other men's minds.  Whatever the reason, the most horrible thing they did to Bud in the hospital, he revealed to me later, was that they didn't know he played the piano at first.  One day he was in the solarium, and he went to the piano and started playing.  And they immediately got the bright idea to give him shock treatments, and then send him to the piano to see what he could do.  These are some of the things he went through.

Cootie Williams and Bud Powell duet on "Echoes of Harlem"

Bud was a very beautiful person.  He was in a state of grace, all the time.  As far as his playing is concerned, I can only listen to the records he made before I met him and the ones he made during the time I knew him.  The shock treatments might have had an effect later on.  I don't know that much about the brain and how electricity affects it.  But he did tell me that such things happened to him on a couple of occasions.

He used drugs sporadically, from time to time, but he wasn't an addict.  I read that he had been hit in the head by the police in Philadelphia, and that was the beginning of his having trouble with his head.  I used to take him to jobs and bring him back.  As I was a friend of the family, his mother would send me out with Bud on jobs.  I would taker him to jobs and bring him back.  He had to be taken to jobs in '47 and '48, and he was taken to jobs until he died.  If he would go somewhere by himself and stop for a drink, that'd be it.  He would've never arrived for a job.  Anything could have happened to him.

Bud was a very beautiful person.  He was in a state of grace, all the time.  As far as his playing is concerned, I can only listen to the records he made before I met him and the ones he made during the time I knew him.  The shock treatments might have had an effect later on.  I don't know that much about the brain and how electricity affects it.  But he did tell me that such things happened to him on a couple of occasions.

"Una Noche Con Francis"

I met him in Europe in '61.  I think that Bud had gone over there with a concert tour or something and had just remained.  I don't think it was an independent decision on his part:  "I think I want to go to Europe."  I don't think he thought like that.  In that time, the European scene was clubs.  I worked on the Left Banque in a club called Le Chat Qui Peche, and Bud was working at the Blue Note on the Right Banque.  I used to go back to my jobs after taking him home, and sometimes I would take him to work.  I( was really around him quite a bit during that time.  That was a strange reunion, because I hadn't seen him in many years.  He was on the stand, and when he stood up to come off he looked at me, and I could see by the expression on his face that he recognized me.  And I was very pleased by this, because I loved Bud very much.

It's very difficult for me to describe a genius, very hard for me to find words.  I think the best way I can describe Bud is by saying he was in a state of grace.  Sometimes he was very childlike, at other times very strong, and always very sensitive to every thing around him.  I think the person he loved most among musicians was Monk, because I would go down to his house and see Monk there.  Monk might come in on a Friday or Monday, and I'd come back on Wednesday and they'd still be there.  Bud idolized Monk.  I think that Bud was a true interpreter of Monk's music, as a piano player.  He interpreted Monk's music probably the way Monk envisioned a piano interpretation of his music, other than his own.

Bud was a genius and totally out front at all times, speaking exactly what he felt at all times, reacted immediately to life as it affected him.  If you did something cruel, he would respond in a very hurt way.  If you did something beautiful, he would react in that way.  It was just spontaneous.  I don't think there was any foregoing thought about what he was going to say or do.  He just did, as children do.

It's hard to say whether he felt any rivalry toward Bird.  He loved Bird, but I think the only person I ever heard who played as much as Bird, or more than Bird, was Bud.  Being on the bandstand together with Bud was probably a new thing for Bird to experience, because wherever Charlie Parker played, he was the most dominating musician, the most powerful interpreter of what he created.  But Bud played as much or more than Bird, and I think sometimes Bird may have reacted to this.  But Bud was never aware of it, I don't think.

I saw Bud's father on one occasion playing piano.  He played stride piano very well and was also an electronics buff.  He had all kinds of radios and equipment.  I think Bud was a classically trained pianist, but I think his father also taught him things about jazz.  I'm not fully aware of Bud's youth or musical background.

In closing, I was with Bud the last hours of his life when I went to the hospital to see him.  He was alive, but in a coma.  When I left and came back that same day, he was gone, so I think I was probably one of the last musicians around when he died.  And on a few occasions, just months before he died, I went to Brooklyn and hung out with him some.  I don't think it was his decision to come back to the United States.  Buttercup, his wife, came back, and he came back with her.  Perhaps it was some kind of proposal from some jazz impresario to bring Bud back and exploit him some more on the side, bleed him a little more.  Some prick that owned a record company that had a lot of avant-garde music on it paid him fifty dollars to do a record date.  And please, when write this down, spell "PRICK" in big, black letters, because you have to be a prick to do that to somebody like Bud.  Nobody's ever grieved for Bud.  Music is an intangible thing, a very beautiful thing that most people can relate to.  But some people are so greedy, so involved with making money on anything, that they don't have any feeling for something as beautiful as music, and certainly not for any of the performers of it.  One of the last things in his life that Bud did was to make a record date for-- I forget the name of the label.  Some label that Ornette and Albert Ayler recorded for.  Paid him fifty dollars for it!

By his own testimony, Bud's two biggest influences were Art Tatum and Billy Kyle.

The common assertion that Bud "adapted" Charlie Parker's saxophone inventions to the keyboard is misleading, for the two musicians grew up in completely different milieux and didn't hear each other play until both had developed their own styles in the early 1940s.  While it is perhaps an overstatement to say that there was a historic inevitability in the development of jazz from swing to bop during this period, the postwar state of jazz was marked by a decline in big bands in favor of small groups and the appearance of new styles of playing by such figures as Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, and Kenny Clarke contributed to the ferment.

His facility is artfully artless, like Ellington's.

• Bud Powell, Ups 'N Downs (Mainstream, 197?)

 

 

Bud was almost entirely ignored by the ten-part Ken Burns documentary series on jazz, which spawned a wave of more than twenty compilations devoted to individual artists; my point is not to denigrate any of the others, but why not put out one devoted to Bud Powell?

Bud Powell Discography Project

IN ROTATION:

BUD POWELL'S "MYTHIC SOUND" SERIES (10-CD series, Mythic Sound, 1989)

 Vol. 1: Early Years of a Genius, 44–48     

B.  Frank Socolow

"Reverse the Charges"

• Dexter Gordon, Dexter Rides Again (Savoy, January 29, 1946)

Bud co-wrote the title tune with Gordon, but had only a half-chorus to solo-- but damn: what a solo!

"Long Tall Dexter":  Bud gets a full chorus on this medium-tempo blues, after Gordon, the trumpeter??, and Leo Parker.

Bud is the last of five soloists in 3 minutes.  Max Roach takes the middle eight of the out-chorus.  "I Can't Escape from You," a pop standard, ballad; note Gordon's deep, rich tenor tone, Bud's lacy runs behind his solo.  No piano solo; Gordon takes the entire length of the tune-- it is his session, after all.  Bud plays the middle-eight of the theme on the AABA barnburner, "Dexter Digs In" and a half-chorus solo, but again he is strutting' his mature stuff right here, at the age of twenty-one.  Over his playing, one can clearly hear his vocal expressions.

Bud co-wrote the title tune with Dexter, but is allowed only half a chorus to solo.

• Sarah Vaughan, 1944-1946 (Classics, May 7, 1946)

"If You Could See Me Now"

From a session best-known for Tadd Dameron's own "If You Could See Me Now," the May, 1946, session (under Dameron's direction) also included "I Can Make You Love Me," wherein Bud is allowed a short solo, by turns reminding one of Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum.  Originally issued on the Metronome label.

• J. J. Johnson,  J.J. Johnson's Jazz Quintets (Savoy, 26 June, 1946)

Johnson, with Cecil Payne, as; BP, p; Leonard Gaskin, b; Max Roach, d.

attractive "Jay Bird" (= bebop theme of old?)  Bud devises an incredible intro and generous solo space.

"Mad Bebop" (riffing off "Just You, Just Me," another AABA tune; Bud is flawless throughout, displaying his mature touch, timing, and ideas.

"Coppin' the Bop":  A "mop-mop" stop-time tune by Max Roach.   After Payne and Johnson, Bud gets only a half-chorus in which to solo; he also plays the intro ?????

"Jay Jay":  

Both "Jay Bird" and "Mad Bebop" are primordial AABA bebop themes, as if J. J. had found them somewhere, rather than written them.

• The Bebop Boys:  three sessions in 1946 (Savoy, August 23, 1946); RCA Victor, September 5, 1946; Savoy, September 6, 1946)

My sources are The Modern Jazz Piano Album (Savoy compilation), The Fats Navarro Story (Proper 4-CD box), and The Bebop Boys (Savoy compilation).

Henceforth, Bud would very rarely perform as a sideman, or in any other format than a trio.

Unless otherwise indicated, all session took place in New York

Bud Powell Session of January 10, 1947:

Bud Powell, with Curly Russell, bass and Max Roach, drums.

These recordings were first issued on four double-sided 78-rpm discs on a mysterious label called The Three Deuces, whence they were not released until 1949.  I try to envision the astonished reactions of musicians when they finally appeared.  They must have been entirely flabbergasted after hearing these sides.  There was something unabashedly modern going on here.

In 1957 these tracks, along with material from a 1953 session,  were finally published on the Roost label.  I might mention again that it was this recording of "Somebody Loves Me" that made me a Bud Powell fanatic fifty-odd years ago.

Here is Bud's first recorded performance in a trio, a format which became standard for most of the rest of his career.   The session included six popular tunes and two that have become jazz standard in the years since, including Monk's urgent "Off Minor" in its first recording (Monk himself would not record it until months later),  and a tune here credited to Powell, "Bud's Bubble," elsewhere known as Parker's "Crazeology" or "Little Benny" after its true inventor Benny Harris, is taken at a quick shuffle beat.

Most of the group's tempo's are slow to moderate, except "Indiana," which is taken at breakneck speed.  This record represents a distillation of Bud's discoveries as a pianist, beginning at an already high level with the Cootie Williams band and becoming an astonishing musician, full of fresh ideas and taking complicated risks with ease.  All of these tracks, even the slow ballads, show the sort of streamlining and ornate cadenzas typical of modern jazz piano.

Benny Harris

At the time of this session, Max Roach was still a sideman with Parker.  His playing here is on brushes exclusively to mesh perfectly with the rest of the trio.  Especially absorbing is the chase chorus he plays with Bud. 

"April in Paris"

"April in Paris"

"Off Minor"

  

• Charlie Parker, The Charlie Parker Memorial Album, Volume 1 (Savoy, 1947)
  

Parker, with Miles Davis, tp.  Bud Powell, p. Tommy Potter, b. and Max Roach, d.

session of May 8, 1947, in NYC

"Donna Lee"

"Chasin' the Bird"

"Cheryl"

"Buzzy"

Norman Granz

Following his stunning debut, Bud's sessions with Norman Granz, beginning in February, 1949  for the Verve label (and its predecessors); and from August of the same year,  produced by Alfred Lion for Blue Note Records, constitute most of the recordings he made before his move to Paris in 1959.

• Piano Solos (Clef, February 1949)

Piano Solos

Piano Solos, Volume 2

Jazz Giant

 

• The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1

Session 1:  Bud Powell's Modernists' with Fats Navarro and a very young Sonny Rollins (8/8/49)

four tunes: "Dance of the Infidels," "Wail,""Bouncin' with Bud," "52nd Street Theme"

• Sonny Stitt/ Bud Powell Quartet (Prestige)

two sessions, 12/11/1949, 1/26/50

• Charlie Parker and the Stars of Modern Jazz at Carnegie Hall, Christmas 1949 (Jass CD)

1989 CD release:

This memorable concert took place the same month as the opening of Birdland.  It was organized by Leonard Feather on behalf of Voice of America radio, deejay Sid Torin, and jazz promoter Monte Kay.

The Roost recordings Bud made two years earlier had already been released, but musicians--pianists particularly-- who heard those records and this concert must have been flabbergasted.

It opened with a trio made up of Bud Powell, Curley Russell, and Max Roach, kicking the jams out of "All God's Chillun."  Four all-star hornmen-- Sonny Stitt, Serge Chaloff, Miles Davis, and Bennie Green-- join the trio for Denzil Best's "Move," Tadd Dameron's "Hot House," and Charlie Parker's "Ornithology" (which cuts off before Bud's solo).  Bud blows all of them out of the water with chorus after chorus of sheer inventiveness at forbidding tempos.  Had Bird shared the stand with Bud that night, Bud would have kicked his ass, too.

Good liner notes by Bill Miner accompany this release.

• The Charlie Parker Quintet, Live, One Night in Birdland (Columbia, 1950)

• Sarah Vaughan, 1946-1947

7/27/1950

• Charlie Parker and the All Stars, Summit Meeting at Birdland

3/31/1951

•  The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 2 (Blue Note, May 1, 1951, August 14, 1953)

completes the second BN session and presents the third, on the same disc

Session 2:  5 titles,  (1951)including "Un Poco Loco," trio version of "Parisian Thoroughfare"

Session 3;  9 titles, including "Glass Enclosure," "Reets and I," "Autumn in New York"

Solos throughout are characteristically virtuosic at any tempo

Single lines, unison, block chording, amazingly logical runs

• Birdland, 1953

• Inner Fires (Electra Musician, April 5, 1953)

• The Quintet, Jazz at Massey Hall (Debut/ OJC, May 15, 1953)
• Bud Powell Trio, Jazz at Massey Hall, Volume Two (May 15, 1953)

• Bud Powell Trio (Roost,  September, 1953)

• Bud Powell's Moods (Verve/ Norgran,  June 2, 1954)

• Jazz Original (Verve, December 16, 1954; January 11 and 12, 1955, January 13, 1955)

Three sessions on consecutive days in January, with a personnel change on the final session

January 11, Fine Sound Studio, New York, with Lloyd Trotman, b; Art Blakey, d.

"Thou Swell," two takes

"Someone to Watch Over Me"

"Bean and the Boys"

"Tenderly," two takes

January 12, same location, same personnel

"How High the Moon"

"I Get a Kick Out of You," three takes

"The Best Thing for You," two takes

"You Go to My Head"

January 13, same location, with Percy Heath, b; Kenny Clarke, d.

two originals and four standards:

"Mediocre" Powell original, like a playful take on Monk

"Dance of the Infidels"

"Salt Peanuts"

"Sweet Georgia Brown" aka "Hey George" 

• The Lonely One (Verve, April 25 and 27, 1955) 

• Piano Interpretations by Bud Powell (Verve, April 25 and 27, 1955)
  

• Blues in the Closet (Verve, September 23, 1956)
  

• Strictly Powell (RCA Victor, October 5, 1956)

• Swingin' with Bud (RCA Victor, February 11, 1957)

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• Bud! The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 3 (Blue Note, August 3, 1957)

"Blue Pearl" a basic, lazy blues.  quotes a very familiar tune, "Walkin'," in the melody line."Keepin' in the Groove" medium-up 32-bar AABA.  Bud's playful, sunny solo."Some Soul" slow, lyrical ballad, in the manner of "Ruby My Dear."Frantic Fancies" AABA, uptempo.  fleet solos full of surprise, yet seemingly inevitable:  musical logic."Bud on Bach" riffin' on Johann.  enlightening, astonishing performance.  Bud alone solos.  

• Time Waits: The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume 4 (Blue Note, May 28, 1958)
  

• Bud Plays Bird (Roulette/ Blue Note, October 14 and December 2, 1957 and January 30, 1958)
  

• Time Waits: The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 4 (Blue Note, May 28, 1958) 

something-- a certain flash, spark?-- is missing from the post-1953 recordings.

PC bows a lot on session 4 and 5

AT is a longtime simpatico

"Idaho," "Don't Blame Me," "Moose the Mooche" (session 4) feature guest trombonist Curtis Fuller

• The Scene Changes: The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 5 (Blue Note,  December 29, 1958)

"The Scene Changes" 

"Down With It"

"Comin' Up" (2 takes)

"Duid Deed"

"Cleopatra's Dream"

"Gettin' There"

"Crossin' the Channel"

"Danceland"

"Borderick"

EUROPEAN RECORDINGS

RETURN TO USA

• Ups 'N Downs, Mainstream,  (1964-1965)

Here's the single Amazon review.  It seems like it might be an update-- 13 years ago--  of the views expressed in his book.

ccex

4.0 out of 5 stars Painful yet proud

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2008

When I first hear this almost 30 years ago, it was the more tragic and painful than anything I had heard before (or since). This album probably contains the last recordings of Bud Powell, although its circumstances have always been shrouded in mystery. The liner notes by Nat Hentoff, who says that this is from the mid-'50s and some of Bud's best playing is obviously wrong on both counts. Bud Powell experts agree that this was made in New York after he lost his late 1964 Birdland gig.

The most painful track of all is the solo "Round Midnight", which is probably from the Charlie Parker Memorial Concert in March of 1965. His guardian at the time, Bernard Stollman of ESP-Disk, swears that he destroyed the concert tapes, since he saw that Bud was in no shape to play, had fallen down, and was bleeding on the keyboard. Still, this track remains, showing Bud as a mere shadow of the keyboard technician he used to be, but as intense as ever. Compare this to the version of the same song he recorded with Bird and Fats Navarro in 1950, and you'll hear the tragedy of Bud Powell.

"Like Someone In Love" was Bud's mini-concerto late in his career, and this version still shows his early stride influences and some vestigial arpeggios.

The rest of the album sounds more together than most of what he recorded at Birdland in '64 or late in his stay in Paris. He keeps the groove burning on mid-tempo numbers, even though his once celebrated technique vanished after years of electro-shock therapy, tuberculosis, largactyl, and alcohol. No one knows who the drummer and bass player are, but they aid and abet wonderfully. They even navigate Coltrane's "Moment's Notice".

Bud Powell freaks know that ESP-Disk's Bernard Stollman tried to get Bud to record at Town Hall in May, '65, and again later in the year, and finally with Rashied Ali and Scotty Holt in Jan. '66 (Bud finally died at age 41 in July, '66). Nothing is known of those attempted sessions, or how this one came to be.

I hope to be able to play so passionately on my deathbed! I recommend this heartily only for other Bud Powell fans.

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IV.  Recommended compilations

Bud Powell recorded 7? albums for Verve and 5 for Blue Note over roughly the same period of time, 1949-1958.  

• The Complete Bud Powell on Verve (Verve 5-CD set, 1949-1956)

• The Complete Bud Powell Blue Note Recordings, 1949-1958 (Mosaic  5-LP set)

• The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings
  

• The Classic Recordings, 1949-1956; The Classic Recordings, 1957-1959 (Enlightenment)

V.  Reading

Bud Books

Précis descriptions of my four books on BP.  Obviously, not nearly the attention lavished upon Bird or Monk, yet it was Bud much more than Monk who set the course for jazz piano to come; even now.

• Alan Groves and Alyn Shipton, The Glass Enclosure:  The Life of Bud Powell (Bayou P, 1993) 144 pp

• Francis Paudras, Dance of the Infidels:  A Portrait of Bud Powell (Editions l'Instant, France 1986;  Da Capo P English translation, 1998) 353 pp

• Carl Smith, Bouncin' with Bud:  All the Recordings of Bud Powell ( Biddle Publishing, 1997) 175 pp

• Peter Pullman, Wail:  The Life of Bud Powell (Bop Changes, 2012)  415 pp

• Guthrie P. Ramsey, The Amazing Bud Powell:  Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop (U California, 2013) 240 pp

IN ROTATION...

• Reginald R. Robinson, Euphonic Sounds:  Never Before Recorded Pieces by Louis Chauvin and Scott Joplin (Delmark, 1998)

• Miles Davis, Miles in the Sky (Columbia, 1968) needle-drop from the "Columbia Jazz Masterpieces" LP reissue.

• The Byrds, Sweetheart of the Rodeo (Columbia, 1968)  1997 EU reissue with 7 bonus track, plus a "hidden" track at the end.

NEXT:  Aaron Leve