Put that thing out Frank, you’ll wreck your voice!

If you’re here, you probably read the column I wrote for this month’s issue of DownBeat—if not, I suggest you pick up a copy (support music media!) and have a look. The gist of the piece is that instrumentalists can really benefit from learning the words to standards—not for any sentimental reasons, but because knowing the words helps you remember the melody, harmony, and form of the tune!

The purpose of this addendum is to share a playlist, which I’ve put together over the past few years, of some of my favorite versions of the kinds of recordings I talk about in the article—that is, relatively straight renditions by the great American midcentury pop vocalists.

As part of this project I also decided to put together the following graphic, which loosely (and subjectively! I welcome your disagreements!) places singers on a straight/loose continuum—with “straight” and “loose” referring to how closely he/she stays to the original written melody of the tune. You’ll notice some people show up multiple times to represent different stages in their careers, and of course most of these singers get much looser on their second time through the melody (though none as starkly as Ella Fitzgerald, who I thought deserved a special mention for it).

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You’ll notice the left side is more populated than the right—this is just because I’ve spent more time listening to those singers (in order to learn the tunes), no disrespect meant to the many amazing jazz singers who take more liberty with the melody!

Regarding the “straight” vs. “loose” labels, don’t make the mistake of thinking that “straight” means unswinging—one of the great things about the experience of digging into all these recordings is discovering how ubiquitously and seemingly effortlessly they swing, even the most genteel versions. You get the sense it was just in the air back then, and as a musician you couldn’t help but absorb it.

Another thing I wanted to mention: you’ll find the quality of the lyrics themselves is… uneven. For every “This will be my shining hour, calm and happy and bright; in my dreams your face will flower, through the darkness of the night,” there’s a “You sew your trousseau, and Robinson Crusoe, is not so far from worldly cares, as our blue room far away upstairs” (or even “Hi-ho, alas, and also lack-a-day,” whatever the hell that means). Again, the main point of this process is to help you internalize the tune, so the odder—or in many cases out of sync with contemporary gender politics—the lyrics, the easier to remember (“but so hard to forget”).

Some singers are more heavily represented on the playlist than others (either because they recorded much more or because I just loved their singing), but I’m willing to bet that if you’re an instrumentalist like me, even a well-listened one, there are probably some people on here you’ve never heard, so I think you’re in for a treat. You can find the whole 340-song playlist here, or start listening below. (Google Music subscribers can go here.) Enjoy!

THANKS TO: my friend the late bassist Sanderson Poe, who loaned me his copy of Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely and kicked off this whole process for me; Loren Schoenberg, who generously gifted me a stack of his Sinatra duplicates; my dad Philip Carey, who helped amass the LP collection that became the raw material for my compilation tapes; Bill Noertker, who confirmed the source of Jerome Kern’s “fraudulent imitation” quote; and my father-in-law Albert Perez, who suggested lots of great singers I hadn’t yet heard of.

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Aaron Novik’s Frowny Frown (with totally unexpected personalized bonus!)

A while back I started a mini-tradition in response to the ubiquitous year-end top ten list–since my own annual most listened-to albums were rarely new releases (and in some cases were super-old!) I chose to focus on records that were New to Me. So here are 10(ish) albums that got me excited in the past year. Some of them actually came out in the past year! But most didn't. (Note: asterisked albums include friends of mine.)

John Hollenbeck Ensemble: All Can Work (2018) I am late to the party on Hollenbeck's bands, but this really hit the spot for me this year. (Also spent time with quite a few of the Claudia Quintet's many great albums.)

Contemporary Composers Series: William O. Smith (1958) Known in the jazz world as Bill Smith, clarinetist and composer of "Concerto for Clarinet & Combo," one of my all-time favorite jazz compositions; I tracked down this long out-of-print LP of some of his early chamber works, and it did not disappoint. Find it if you can! (Hit me up if you can't!)

Marty Ehrlich's Dark Woods Ensemble: Emergency Peace(1991) Loved everything about this album. 

Muhal Richard Abrams: One Line, Two Views (1995) Yet another extremely heavy musician who I unfortunately waited until after his passing to really check out seriously. But better late than never. His combination of dense and heady writing with folkloric freedom was just what I needed at the time. 

Duo Oktava: Pilgrimage (2007) The whole record is great, but I especially dug deep on Walter Piston's absolutely phenomenal Duo for Violin and Cello. 

Bristle: Future(S) Now(S) (2014); Bullet Proof * (2011) Joy and humor and virtuosity. 'Nuff said. 

Anna Webber's Simple Trio: Binary (2016) I forget who suggested I check out multi-reedist Webber's kaleidoscopic music, but thank you, whoever you are! 

Kamikaze Ground Crew: The Scenic Route (1990); Postcards from the Highwire (2007); Madam Marie's Temple of Knowledge (1993) This horn-heavy medium-large band was active while I was in NYC but I somehow never learned about them until this year. Which is too bad, because they're great. Dense compositions (by Gina Leishman, Doug Wieselman, and others), interesting instrumentation/orchestration, great improvisers.

Aaron Novik: Frowny Frown* (2018) Clarinetist, comic artist, and cracking composer Aaron Novik left the Bay for NYC a year or so ago (before I had the chance to play with him much, dammit!). I really love this record/comic set (and not just because he sent me the above sticker with it).

James Newton Ensemble: Suite for Frida Kahlo (1994) I have Ethan Iverson's in-depth profile to thank for introducing me to Newton's phenomenal writing, which ranges from freeish straightahead to full-on chamber. (This, as my friend Lorin Benedict would say, is my shit!) This album, chock full of interesting and woody textures, was my favorite of the many of his I checked out this year. 

Michael Coleman & Ben Goldberg: Practitioner* (2018) If you know anything about me at all, you know I normally hate "[blank] Plays the Music of [Famous Dead Guy]" albums. But: Coleman! Goldberg! Steve Lacy! Original art baseball cards! And super-imaginative interpretations of extremely rarely played tunes. 

Adam O'Farrill's Stranger Days: El Maquech. (2018) O'Farrill is from another planet where the musical gravity is much heavier, so when he arrived here he was immediately imbued with superpowers. We're lucky to have him. 

Sanity-saving Honorable Mention to Walter the dog and James Drummaboy Harris. (2018)

In Need of a Deeper Dive

These are records that came across my radar but that I haven't yet had the time to give the attention they deserve. First look at Top Ten 2019?

Steuart Liebig: Pomegranate (2001) Chock full of amazingly dense and interesting writing in mini-concerto format for a variety of interesting soloists–randomly found this last week and can't wait to dig in. 

Sam Rivers Trio Live (1973) Rivers is a fascinating improviser and I especially want to spend more time with this period of his playing.

Holus Bolus: Pine Barren This 2011 album from composer and reedist Josh Sinton grabbed me on first listen. I'll be back for more.

Ethan Iverson: Live at Smalls (with Bill McHenry, Reid Anderson, & Jeff Williams) (2000) Kasey Knudsen, one of my favorite improvisers (who kindly consents to playing my music regularly) recently mentioned this one to me–I somehow missed it the first time around, but will be rectifying that pronto. 

John Lewis Presents Jazz Abstractions (1960) Especially Jim Hall's Piece for Guitar and Strings!

Rediscoveries

These are albums which I had heard in the past but jumped out at me with a fresh appeal this year. Always be ready to be floored anew by something you thought you knew!

Wayne Shorter: Night Dreamer (1964) (b/w Booker Little & Friend) (1961) I own a 1994 Toyota Corolla (gifted by my wife's parents) which we affectionately call "the Other Car" or "Ol' Bess." In place of the usual satellite radio and Bluetooth, it includes a state-of-the-art cassette deck, which inspired me to dig into my garage and grab a bunch of tapes which I dubbed from CDs and LPs in college–this one actually still worked, so I've just left it in on infinite auto-reverse for the past few months. Night Dreamer wasn't one of the Wayne albums I'd spent the most time with (mostly due to Lee Morgan, who you may remember I controversially don't usually love as much as most of my fellow trumpet players do). But man, does it sound great now–the tunes, the solos, the roiling rhythm section of Elvin, McCoy, Reggie Workman, just one of the finest examples of this music ever. (I listened to it with Mark Levine as we took Ol' Bess to an A's game last summer and he said, "how'd you know to bring my favorite album?") The Booker Little one is of course also a favorite. There's also something great with cassettes about having to just listen to the album in order (unless you want to deal with the dreaded << or >> buttons and risk getting the tape wound into the player), rather than jumping around impatiently and skipping the ballads as we've all gotten used to being able to do.

Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall (2002) After Roy Hargrove's untimely passing I was digging around for some recordings where he really dug into some modern/modal stuff (in addition to all the great standards, blues, etc. that were his regular jam session fare across the world) and someone posted this album, which I'd previously sort of dismissed as an all-star tribute album. But man, does Roy sound great on this, fierce and inventive and lyrical.

Nicholas Payton Trio: #BAM Live at Bohemian Caverns (2013) I listened to this a fair amount when it first came out, but I noticed this year that just checking out a track or two before practicing or playing would immediately fire up some "good musical decisions" machine deep inside me that I'd forgotten was there. Payton has said "Live at the Plugged Nickel" is his favorite Miles, and this record captures some of that same fearless and funky energy.  He plays some ripping piano solos on this, too!

UPDATE, 2019: I originally wrote the piece below in 2011, in response to the flare-up which followed Nicholas Payton's public rejection of the word "jazz," but the fact that it's still the most visited page on this site by a long shot, even eight years later, tells me these questions are still being thought about, which is good to know (whether you agree with me or not). 

By now you're aware that there was another jazz blogo-Twitter-Facebook-sphere conflagration this week (they seem to crop up every few months or so like drug-resistant bacteria)–this one in response to a post by accomplished trumpeter and opinionator Nicholas Payton (who is always a good read, whether you agree with him or not).

The post that set it off, "Why Jazz Isn't Cool Anymore," is a collection of thoughts covering Payton's problems with "jazz" as a word and marketing concept and its place in the history of racism in the music, plus a varety of other stuff including silence and whether it's romantic to be poor (his take: no). It's all interesting and debatable, but that's not what prompted me to write today–my issue is the kinds of reactions these sorts of discussions tend to bring up from some white musicians and fans. (There's that voice in my head telling me to close the laptop and walk away. No? Shit, here we go.)

On the list of topics most white jazz musicians would rather not be talking about, I think issues of race in jazz fall right behind their parents' sex lives or when the biopsy results are due back. It's uncomfortable for all sorts of reasons, which is why most of us choose to avoid getting into it if at all possible. It tends to explode the happy illusion that the jazz scene is a harmonious colorblind family where musical achievement is the only metric that matters. If it is discussed, it's usually among friends in a non-public setting where good faith can be assumed and people can accept some basic facts as givens:

• that jazz is a music that came out of the African-American community and is a deep part of that culture's historical identity;

• that great respect is due to the black masters who shaped it;

• that those masters were on the receiving end of vicious racial animosity for much of the music's history;

• that white musicians unfairly profited from discrimination against black musicians by audiences and the music industry;* but

• that white musicians also played a role in the development of the music; and

• that America isn't yet over these wounds, and people, especially musicians, ignore this to their own detriment.

[*To be clear, this usually wasn't the musician's fault! By all accounts Paul Whiteman was actually a pretty decent guy who cared about his musicians, and Chet Baker openly acknowledged that winning a trumpet poll while Clifford Brown was still alive was ridiculous (and I love Chet, but c'mon). But the fact that nobody calls Paul Whiteman the "King of Jazz" anymore, or thinks the ODJB was actually "original" is a good sign that history is a better judge than short-term marketing hype.]

But on the internet, in public, things are very different. Anybody with a Twitter or Facebook account can instantly jump into the fray with thoughts ranging from well-thought-out arguments to idiotic name-calling–so after a brief honeymoon (ten minutes? 15?) of respectful disagreement with Payton, sure enough, out of the woodwork came (mostly white) people calling him a racist, accusing him of calling them thieves, etc. This is par for the course in American discourse (see here) but disappointing, since I like to think jazz musicians are a little more attuned to how loaded these issues can be.

But as I said in one Facebook thread which I couldn't stop myself from getting sucked into (after it followed the standard devolution from reasoned debate to incoherent jazz Fight Club), it's unfortunately easy for white jazz players to fall into the trap of walking around in a haze of proactive defensiveness, ready to drop Bill Evans on anyone who brings up racism in the music's past or present.

But to those white players who feel themselves veering toward that defensiveness, I would say the following:

• The fact is, you are occasionally going to run into people who think you probably shouldn't be playing this music, or think white people are generally bad for jazz. Some of them may be your friends. Some of them may be your heroes. Some of them may be German tourists who think jazz can only be played in sunglasses. Some of them may know much less about the music than you do. This is just a fact of life and a natural result of the history covered above.

• This is indeed a drag. Trust me, I get it. It's a drag to spend your life (and yes, it takes a lifetime) learning to play a form of music you love, only to discover there are people who think you'll never be authentic because of who your parents are. But:

• Compared to what the black architects of this music went through over the first century of its existence, this is a pretty minor price to pay. No one is throwing you in jail. No one is making you walk in the back door or use a separate water fountain. There is no vast population of white jazz musicians being deprived of work by inferior black jazz musicians. Being called a thief is a hell of a lot nicer than some of the names I'm sure those pioneers heard on a regular basis.

• In case you've forgotten, being white is an advantage in just about every other area of your life, short of the cost of sunscreen. (In case you need a refresher: see here.)

• This doesn't mean you should never respond to a dumb argument or defend yourself, just try to have some perspective and be grateful that you live in a relatively peaceful country and can study music and (God forbid!) occasionally get paid to play it.

But if it still bothers you and you really want to change peoples' minds, take a cue from that Bill Evans guy you're always mentioning and win them over by being a respectful person and playing your ass off.

... WHILE YOU'RE HERE, some other posts to check out:

• The new album: Fire in My Head: The Anxiety Suite

• Jazz Philanthropy & The Gig

• Technique in Jazz: One Guy's Take

• Jazz According to G

• Or you can check out my music here.

Here's another excerpt from my interview in Thomas Erdmann's book How Jazz Trumpeters Play Music Today. (Part 1 is here. )

On "Definitive Versions" of Tunes

TE: When I interviewed Chris Botti he said that after Wynton Marsalis recorded "Cherokee" no one else should ever record that tune. I beg to differ, and your recording of "Cherokee" [from Duocracy with pianist Ben Stolorow) proves my point. You found a unique and original way to approach the difficult changes by playing a series of wonderfully connected short motives before you work yourself into serving as an accompanying voice to Ben's solo... When approaching such defining moment standards, such as "Cherokee," how do you recommend young trumpeters approach the music in order to make a personal statement?

IC: That’s a good question. It’s interesting Botti said that about Wynton, because if you follow that logic, then Wynton shouldn’t have played it because of what Clifford Brown did! But thankfully he did because his recording is pretty amazing. By the way, Wynton probably shouldn’t record it anymore either, because he already set his own high water-mark!

This sounds a little cliché, but I think for "Cherokee" or "Giant Steps," —any of those watershed tunes that are really hard and you have to practice the hell out of—that the answer is that you have to learn them so well you can forget them. I would not have tried to record "Cherokee" 15 years ago, or I might have, but it would have sounded pretty self-conscious.

I talk about this with friends of mine sometimes, where you hear a someone playing along, swinging, then you hear something that sounds like a new lick they just learned. They put the lick in the middle of the solo and it sounds totally prepared and out of context; it doesn’t fit. The solution to that is you need to get tunes like that to a point where it is in the subconscious and subsumed into your musical language. When I listen to our version of "Cherokee," the thing I’m most happy about is how little it sounds like we’re trying to impress anybody.

For tunes like that, the flag-wavers, as one of my old teachers, the great drummer Michael Carvin, said, there are different ways to approach solos. You can start simple and build; or you can take one motive and develop it; or as he said, “You can come in doin’ it, and keep on doin’ it.” I think that’s great, if players are really at that level. For me, I didn’t want it to ever feel like it was a fast tune. Some of the reviews of that recording said we were playing that tune at a "leisurely tempo," or something like that—but it’s not at a leisurely tempo! We did it at something close to 300 beats per minute. That was gratifying, to me, that it didn’t sound like it was fast. I think the reason for this was because we both internalized it to the point where we forgot about the tune. When you're able to forget a tune, you can be surprised, and stumble on things, more so than if you are really conscious of the tune as you're playing it.

On Playing Fast

TE: Talking about playing fast, on "Cherokee" you also play some beautifully constructed improvised contrapuntal lines with Ben after his solo, not to mention the ripping fast notes that are absolutely locked in the rhythmic pocket. You also play fast flawlessly on "Tom/Tom" from Contextualizin’, and rip it up on your Interview Music CD as well. How do you practice in order to be able to play as fast you do, yet still play so cleanly and rhythmically perfect?

IC: Thank you. This goes back a little to what I said about swing earlier, in that I realized, when I was learning lines back in my 20s, that you really want to practice that stuff evenly. I remember Claudio Roditi came to The New School when I was there. His chops were so fluid, clean and smooth. He was giving people a hard time when we were playing Brazilian tunes about how they were swinging too much. He said, “No, no, play straight, play even.” These were kids who had heard all of the (Stan) Getz records; to me Getz doesn’t sound very Brazilian on them. I remember after that going back to my line practicing—like everyone else I was learning ii-Vs and transcribing solos and so on—and taking Roditi’s lessons to heart; trying to practice playing lines perfectly evenly from super slow to fast. If you're trying to learn something and you start at a slow tempo and are swinging it and not playing evenly, then by the time you get it up to a fast tempo it'll be a jumbled mess.

... I also feel like I don’t sit on fast lines for a long time. I like to use them as a color, throw that color and texture out there, let it sit there and allow people to think about it, and not just have a solo be a constant string of fast notes. If you are judicious about playing fast notes they become more effective than if you’re just burning eighth-notes all the time.

A couple of years ago I was asked by author and trumpeter Thomas Erdmann to participate in an interview for his book How Jazz Trumpeters Play Music Today, along with 11 other players of varying renown including Christian Scott, Wadada Leo Smith and the late (great) Ted Curson.

We had a very interesting conversation covering a lot of ground, but since the book has been out for a while, and isn't in a price range where most people can afford to pick up a copy (currently around $200, which I guess is the norm for academic publishing these days), I asked Dr. Erdmann for permission to post a few excerpts, which I'll be posting in bits and pieces. Here's the first:

On Practicing...

One can’t help but know, in listening to you, that it’s obvious you practice the trumpet; people don’t just pick up the trumpet and sound like you do without putting in the time. What does a practice session of yours look like these days?

IC: Thank you—it has not been a straight-line journey as I’m sure any musician in their middle age will tell you. I went through years of really difficult embouchure challenges that I think were formative for me. I was late in getting serious about practicing. I played the French horn up until high school, and didn’t get serious about practicing the trumpet until I was 16 or so. But at that first burst of trumpet interest things came really easy. I had high chops even though I wasn’t doing it in a healthy way; using lots of pressure and making all of the usual mistakes. In college I was unsatisfied with the pace of my progress and felt I had to move things along faster, so I was going to fix my embouchure for good. At the time I played out of the side of my mouth, and so I decided I was going to move my embouchure by playing right in the middle of my chops, and that would be the secret to finding a shortcut. Instead, it ended up leading to 10 years of wandering in the wilderness where I couldn’t count on anything from day to day. It was tough, and there were many times I was on the verge of quitting.

But there were also some really positive things that came out of this, like discovering late Chet Baker after his chops got smashed. I learned how much music there is to be made even if your body is not at its best that day. As messed up as Chet got, he never lost that amazing gift for melody and swing. There’s a version of “But Not For Me” he did (on The Touch Of Your Lips) where he plays a trumpet solo and then scats a solo, and there's almost no difference in feel between the two of them. The trumpet and the chops have nothing to do with what he was doing musically at that time; he was “letting a song go out of his heart,” if you will. To me, that was a valuable lesson.

... As things started to slowly get better, with the help of teachers as well as dumb luck, and as I worked my chops back to regularity—it’s easy to kick myself over that detour—but as I came back to “chops normality” after having learned all of these lessons about music, the trumpet and my chops, I think it took all of that mess to get to the level of self-knowledge that I am now in terms of how my chops work and how to play.

I forget who said it, but the saying goes, “There are two things you should work on, stuff you’re good at and stuff you’re not good at.” The reason is that on the stuff you’re not good at, you need to develop; but with the stuff you are good at, you also want to work on it because it will become your sound, your thing. You don’t want to stop working on things you do well, you want to build on those things!

Read another excerpt from my interview for the book here.

While I'm in my "not here to make friends" mode (see my previous post, The Case for Vibing), I thought it would be helpful to elaborate by sharing a few examples of behaviors I (and many of my fellow musicians) consider to be deserving of a serious vibe-down. Context (open jam session vs. regular gig with guests vs. sideman gig, etc.) is important, and not all are equally vibe-worthy, but if you engage in any of these actions there's a really good chance you'll find yourself on the midnight train to Vibeville. Let's begin!

• Losing the form on a blues (bad as a soloist, worse as an accompanist)

• Losing the form of a tune while reading the chord changes off your phone

• Texting/sexting on the bandstand

• Acting like a bandleader while sitting in (e.g. trying to dictate solo order, trading, or other similar micromanagement--this is worse when sitting in on someone else's gig than on a more chaotic jam session)

• Not knowing what key you sing a song in

• Fumbling through the melody of a tune before the tune has started (Either you know it or you don't. Don't give it away. Especially don't do this before the band has agreed on the tune)

• Noodling behind someone else's solo (I'm not talking about purposeful accompaniment, although you probably shouldn't do that either unless you know the person soloing well and know they don't mind that). Everyone can hear you, especially the soloist, and they will drop a vibe bomb on you when they're done like you wouldn't believe

• Calling any of the following tunes: My Funny Valentine, Summertime, The Girl from Ipanema, My Way, Chameleon, Take Five, Freddie Freeloader (unless it's your gig, in which case knock yourself out but be sure to get some tips)

• Calling a tune which the band finished playing less than 30 minutes ago

• Asking someone in the band "What tune is this?" while they're playing and you are not (goes double for when you are playing)

• Calling a tune with a very notey bebop head but then not playing the melody yourself (piano players, looking at you)

• Calling an obscure tune (not a problem in itself) but having no backup choice if the band doesn't know it

• Cutting off someone's solo on someone else's gig

• Requesting something be played as a funk tune (unless it's a band which regularly plays funk)

• Calling the same one or two tunes every time you sit in on every gig (and making the same mistakes every time)

• Playing many choruses on a tune you obviously don't know either the changes or the form to, hoping you'll eventually get it (which usually results in ending your final chorus in the wrong place). As your high school band director said, practice at home!

But just for fun and in the interest of running the Vibe-o-rail in both directions, here are some poorly-executed vibing behaviors which may result in a serious counter-vibe:

• Vibing the house band on a gig you're being invited to sit in on (for pretty much any reason!)

• Vibing the bandleader on a gig he/she hired you for (sometimes this is indeed necessary, but you better be prepared to never get called again)

• Vibing someone in the band for not knowing that difficult tune (26-2, Slings and Arrows, Countdown, something by Kurt Rosenwinkel) that you really want to show off on--come on, you can show off on something everybody knows (unless your licks are all for that particular tune! Vibe alert!)

• Vibing someone for not wanting to play in 7/4 or a weird key at a jam session (unless those are a normal expectation of said session)

• Vibing someone who's got a good attitude and is looking for pointers (save your vibes for the truly deserving!)

• Vibing someone for playing the Miles version of "Well You Needn't" instead of the Monk version, or vice-versa

• Vibing your fellow-sufferers on an already awful gig

• Vibing the band by introducing yourself and saying, "I usually play more modern stuff than you guys" (true story!)

• Vibing the entire band for not being on your level (maybe that is not the right band for you to be playing with?)

• Vibing someone for vibing you over your excessive vibing

Got more? Throw 'em in the comments!