Cannonball Adderley Quintet At The Lighthouse

Grooveyard (Remastered 1993) - Phineas Newborn, Jr.

Jazz Piano A Reader Volume 2

 These are currently in production at Kindle Direct publishing and should be available as a paperback and eBook shortly.

A Preface, an Introduction, 50 chapters and 361 pages of articles, interviews and commentaries by a variety of Jazz authors and critics highlighting the careers of significant Jazz pianists including Bud Powell, Nat “King” Cole, Al Haig, Michael “Dodo” Marmarosa, Joe Albany, George Wallington, John Lewis, Art Hodes, Erroll Garner, Lennie Tristano, George Shearing, Duke Jordan, Billie Taylor, Oscar Peterson, Dave McKenna, Dick Twardzik, Phineas Newborn Jr., Barbara Carroll Jr., Ronnell Bright and Hank Jones.

After the production costs are met, I am donating 50% of all royalties to the local high school and community college to help individual students purchase musical instruments.

You support in helping with this initiative would be greatly appreciated.

With everyone so busy these days, all of these Readers [scroll the sidebar for additional books in the series]] are formatted in such a way that most of the articles can be read in 15-30 minutes.

That Old Feeling - Remembering pianist Cedar Walton [1934-2013]

Johnny Costa – Flying Fingers [From the Archives]

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

After a while, the kids became accustomed to it and stopped starring at my half-shaven face when I stood with a razor in hand and mouth agape while pianist Johnny Costa performed during one of the episodes of Mr. Rogers [a public television program for children that starred the late, Fred Rogers and generally aired around 7:00 AM].

I couldn’t help myself; Johnny’s playing was so spellbindingly beautiful it was as though a large magnet was pulling me to go and look at the TV screen in the den. [And it seemed smarter to wander out in this manner rather than to rush and cut myself whilst shaving].

Often when Johnny had finished playing, I’d shake my head in quiet disbelief, at the incredible creativity that he had just tossed off so effortlessly while returning to the bathroom to deal with my by-now, dry lather.

Based in Pittsburgh and rarely traveling, thanks to the national prominence of the television show, which was also filmed there, I along with countless others were given the gift of being allowed to share in Johnny’s virtuosity.

Johnny talks about himself and his playing in the following interview he gave to Hank O’Neal and Bill Hillman, who produced his Flying Fingers CD for Chiaroscuro Records [CRD 317].

[The questions were not explicitly stated in the interview, but you can infer them by John’s responses.]

“There’s very few things that I do that I’m completely satisfied with.

When it happens, it’s the most pleasurable thing in the world.

You say: ‘You know, that’s perfect. Or as nearly perfect as it can be.’

And what a great feeling that is.

But you know what?

With music as in living; you can’t really achieve what you want to all the time.

So you have to take what is good at the moment and go on to the next.

The reason the ‘first take’ [in making a recording] is often the best is because the ideas just flow. And then what happens when you do the ‘second take’ is that you try to recapture what you thought you had in the ‘first take.’

Somehow you can’t do that.

When we are taping the Mr. Rogers, one of the hardest things is to have to do things over and over again because of maybe a camera glitch or somebody blows a line or something and so invariably your taking the fourth or fifth or seventh cut; it’s somehow lost something at that point.

That happens which is why the first time is usually the best.

Jazz, as wonderful as it is, always leaves you open to walking away and saying: “I should have done this and I should Have done that.’ Or ‘why didn’t I use this chord?’

There are so many ways to play these things.

The minute it is recorded and it’s done, your walking home when you suddenly say: ‘Gee, I wish I could do that again. I try it this way or that way.’

But that’s the fun of Jazz.

The reason that I don’t want to do anything that sounds like anybody else is two fold.

First of all, I only want to play the songs that have endured, those by the great popular composers. They have been done so many times and in so many ways that I thought I should bring a fresh approach to them.

For instance, how many recordings are there if Stardust?

I had to try and do something with that song that is different.

And I don’t want to get into much of the newer music because I’m not sure that it is something that I can handle.

Talking about how you would play a certain piece brings up so many ideas.

For instance, you have what you feel you want to play; something tugs at you and say, ‘Well now, do you want to make it sound modern?’

You want to make it technical enough so that the people are not bored with it and yet you want to always make sure that the melody is there.

I have always tried to respect the melody.

The songs that I chose, I love the melodies. They are great songs by great composers and I want to keep that pure.

But at the same time, maybe you need to show what the left hand can do. Or maybe what both hands do together.

Maybe you want to be compared to Art Tatum or some of the greats. And sometimes you just want to be yourself.

And somewhere in this maze, you kind of find which way to approach these things.

But it needs a lot of thought; it just doesn’t happen.

I guess if you are playing in a saloon or something and you are running through some of these songs, you don’t have to give it so much thought and just enjoy and have fun with it.

But it does require thought and I think Jazz is getting more that way.

It used to be a lot easier and a lot more fun and more spur of the moment.

But now I think it is quite mental.

I think it has gotten to the point now where it is an extraordinary art form and it needs to be thought about.

Sometimes what I do is interject a Classical piece in the Jazz that I’m playing.

I never thought about it but I guess the reason I do that is kind of a surprise. I think it was a gift from Tatum because he would always do that.

Once in a while I’ll do the scales and a few exercises, but I really don’t practice that much at all.

I say this humbly but for some reason, the fingers work whether I practice with them or not. I know that’s not the case for most people so I guess I’m just lucky that way. But just because I don’t have to practice, that doesn’t make it the right way.

What I have is a gift from God, but you do the best you can with what you have.

[At this point in the interview, Johnny talks about some of the tunes on the Flying Fingers CD].

Tea for Two is one of those songs that whatever I learned I could kind of put it in this song because it kind of leant itself to that.

I started building my arrangement way back in the 1940’s and just added things to it as I went along. Today it has almost taken its form.

The first time I heard Art Tatum and the wonderful things he did with Tea for Two I thought, ‘Well, I gotta try a little of that, too.’

Before that, I had a chance to get and hear Mel Hinke in Chicago. He did something with the beginning of the tune where he went around the cycle of fifths.

And then I heard a man called Alec Templeton, a blind pianist and it was uncanny what he was able to do. The right-hand would play one melody and the left-hand would play another. He would put them together.

I thought, ‘How nice. I can try that with Tea for Two because I can put the verse in the right-hand and the melody in the left-hand. So that’s in there.

Another time, Ravel’s La Valse and it almost lends itself perfectly to Tea for Two, so that’s in there.

When I was learning to play boogie-woogie, I thought some of that would be good to also put into tea for Two.

My arrangement of Manhattan came about quite early in my life. I had never been there but I saw movies and was fascinated with the city. And I wanted a kind of ‘inexpensive’ version of [Gershwin’s] Rhapsody in Blue, in which I bring out what I think is in New York City from viewing the films like the traffic noises, café society, Chinatown, and The Bowery at the end of it.

I thought it would be like a little musical trip around the city of New York and that’s the way I try to play it.

The very first time I sat down to play Over the Rainbow, I want to thing about the movie [The Wizard of Oz] and what it means. That song makes me want to go someplace else; someplace maybe that’s better.

But then when I do I always want to come home. We all do, if we can get back home.

One of the things that I thought about when I played that song was that I wanted to keep it pure and keep the thought of it as beautiful as I could.

[John’s original composition] Flying Fingers came about because I wanted to write something for Mr. Rogers’ wife who is a concert pianist. Also for myself to use at the end of my concerts when I want to do something quick and fast.

I called it Flying Fingers because that’s he way it sound.”

You can get some idea of Johnny’s fabulously facility and interpretive ability on the piano by viewing the following video which is mislabeled "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square." It is a Gershwin Medley.

Autumn in New York: Hank Jones’s late-flowering mastery - Gary Giddins

 © Introduction Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected, all rights reserved.

Often associated with the Detroit school of pianists which included Tommy Flanagan [1930-2001], Barry Harris [1929-2021] and Roland Hanna [1932-2002], Hank Jones [1918-2010] was a central piano figure on the world scene for well-over half a century.

As Leonard Feather comments in his notes to Hank Jones: Live at Maybeck Recital Hall, Volume Sixteen [Concord CD-4502]: ”Hank, like most other pianists of the day, was strongly impressed by Bud Powell, but like Tommy Flanagan and others from the Detroit area, he transcended the bop idiom to become an eclectic interpreter of everything from time-proof ballads to swing and bop standards.”

The following appeared in the June 4, 2007 edition of The New Yorker. It will also be included in my forthcoming Jazz Piano A Reader Volume 2.

“Jones’s casual authority has an effect not unlike Fred Astaire’s dancing; he makes it look easy, not simple, and you want it to go on all night.”

- Gary Giddins 

© Copyright ® Gary Giddins, copyright protected, all rights reserved, used with the author permission.

“In mid-May, Hank Jones, slim and dapper, accepted a hand-up to the stage at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola and approached the piano with regal but nimble bearing. His first chords, close and luminous, were reassuring, and, in the circumstances, this was welcome. Jones had initially been scheduled to play three nights of duets with the saxophonist Joe Lovano, but shortly before the event they announced that Jones would limit himself to half a set, with Lovano’s nonet rounding out the hour. Eleven weeks earlier, Jones had undergone a quadruple bypass after a massive heart attack. No big deal, according to Jones, who remarked, before going on, that performing helps him maintain muscular control in his hands and arms. In July, he will celebrate his eighty-ninth birthday. 

Jones is perhaps the most venerated of contemporary jazz pianists, and not just because he has outlived so much of the competition. Jazz taste oscillates between decorum and expression, usually favoring the latter. In the years when jazz piano was dominated by obdurate, percussive modernists like Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor, Jones was often perceived as a genteel professional, and admired more for the reliability of his technique than for his wit. In today’s more ecumenical musical climate, in which pianists like Bill Charlap and Jason Moran tend to mediate percussive dynamics with lyricism, Jones’s approach seems almost prophetic.

In truth, Jones’s playing isn’t all that genteel: mannerly, yes, but at the core resolute and spare. As his most intricate phrases skitter over the keyboard, he barely seems to depress the keys, yet each note is cleanly articulated. His touch has always been unmistakable, but it has never felt quite as personal as in recent years, and his sound has taken on a soft, steady glow, like a candle with a small wick. His variations burn with infallible confidence and precision, and he can afford to hold much of his technique in reserve. Although many sides that Jones cut with Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, and Ella Fitzgerald during the forties and fifties are rightly regarded as landmarks, his most bewitching performances have emerged during the past decade and a half.

Jones’s extraordinarily supple time — the rhythmic sensibility that generates swing and equilibrium — reflects his apprenticeship. He began performing near his home, in Pontiac, Michigan, at the age of thirteen, in 1931, a time when jazz piano was by no means a settled practice. In the twenties, ragtime habits had given way to the free-spirited, resilient rhythms of the Harlem stride masters, chiefly James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, and their style was given further impetus by the improvisational bravura of Earl Hines. Jones chose Hines and Waller as models, and soon added the most adventurous pianists of the early thirties: Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum. Tatum, whose virtuosity galvanized a generation of musicians in and out of jazz, told Jones that everyone makes mistakes, but that quick resolutions cover them up. Jones didn’t believe that Tatum really made mistakes, and he doesn’t make many, either; the economy of his style, for all the polish and cunning, is too transparent to allow them.

In 1944, Jones came to New York. Within months, he was working with the jazz élite. He was also soaking up innovations of the new jazz, called bebop, pioneered by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Few established swing stars could make the leap into its harmonic complexity and rhythmic volatility, but Jones grasped it immediately. He didn’t trade in his old style but, rather, modified what he already knew. By the mid-fifties, he had developed an ingenuity that appealed to musicians but escaped the notice of many fans and critics. Its defining characteristic is an aversion to cliché. He is fond of transforming material usually neglected by jazz improvisers, from “We Shall Overcome” to one of his longtime signature pieces, a melancholy meditation on “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.” When playing well-worn standards, like “My Funny Valentine,” he recharges them with substitute chords and melodic inversions. His improvisations start on familiar ground, flirt with the listener’s expectations, and then lead somewhere entirely unanticipated. In a recent recording of “The Shadow of Your Smile,” he undermines the expected Latin rhythm, ends the theme with a sudden discord, and, in the course of his improvisation, nods at other tunes —“Pretty Baby,” “Volga Boatmen,” “Hot House”— without quite acknowledging them. These are not the standard jazz quotations, jimmied into a solo, but ideas weighed, rejected, and alchemized.

From the late fifties into the seventies, Jones was on the staff of CBS, appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and many other programs. He made good money and was in the vanguard of integration at the networks, but, musically, he slipped from view. Then, in 1976, he started making up for lost time. Within two years, there were eight new albums, and the tide has yet to ebb. In 1978, he appeared on Broadway as the onstage pianist in the Fats Waller revue “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” and he later recorded an album, “Handful of Keys,” that subjects Waller’s antic themes to ruminative treatments. Jones’s versatility has given rise to a  fascinating spread of collaborations with other artists. He seems equally comfortable recording a hushed, prayerful album of hymns and spirituals with the bassist Charlie Haden (“Steal Away”) and playing alongside the West African musician Cheick-Tidiane Seck (“Sarala”), whose sound-world, rife with overblown flute and exotic percussion, spurs Jones to invent rhythmic aphorisms and so uncover another facet of his art. He has also recorded with his youngest brother, Elvin, who radicalized jazz percussion as a member of the John Coltrane Quartet and might therefore seem to be the opposite of his brother. But Jones negotiates Elvin’s pounding polyrhythms with equanimity, especially on the album “Upon Reflection: The Music of Thad Jones.” Thad, the middle brother, was a trumpet player, composer, and bandleader who revived big-band music in the nineteen-sixties. (Hank, the eldest, is the only survivor.) All in all, Hank Jones can be said to have had the most impressive second act in jazz history.

At Dizzy’s, Jones and Lovano opened with “Lady Luck,” written by Thad Jones and Frank Wess when they were members of Count Basie’s band. Based on the harmonies of “Taking a Chance on Love,” but with an initial melodic phrase that recalls “You Took Advantage of Me,” the piece goes its own way, as did this performance, motored by Jones’s plush stride and Lovano’s fuzzy,

Ben Webster-in-spired timbre. Jones’s casual authority has an effect not unlike Fred Astaire’s dancing; he makes it look easy, not simple, and you want it to go on all night. Lovano is an ideal match for him. At fifty-four, he has synthesized the music of his generation in an almost Jonesian way, combining big-band apprenticeship with avant-garde curiosity. Since he and Jones began playing together, in 2003, they’ve made three CDs. The first two are quartet albums: “I’m All for You,” in 2004, was widely acclaimed, but the follow-up, “Joyous Encounter,” in 2005, demonstrates a deeper symbiosis; its version of “Autumn in New York” has the spacious commitment of a weathered classic.

With the new duet album, “Kids,” the Jones-Lovano partnership ascends to a new level, and the record will surely make many of the year’s best-of lists. Shorn of the rhythmic support of bass and percussion — Jones is, in effect, the rhythm section — the piano and tenor take on a conversational immediacy. In Thelonious Monk’s “Four in One,” the speed and precision of the playing all but meld piano and saxophone into a single instrument, recalling some of Monk’s own collaborations. Other highlights include Lovano’s portrait of Charlie Parker (“Charlie Chan,” a pseudonym that Parker once used); Jones’s harmonically challenging “Lullaby”; a wistful “Lazy Afternoon”; and a sensational reprise of Jones’s solo-piano arrangement of “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.” At Dizzy’s, they also played Monk’s “Monk’s Mood”: Lovano pulled away from the final chorus of his solo after an intense and convoluted flurry of eighth notes. Jones, with impeccable protocol, looked up before starting his own solo to make certain Lovano was done. Lovano nodded, and Jones’s right hand instantly shot into an eloquent distillation of the chords, reshaping the melody. Lovano looked at him for a moment, and then admiringly shook his head.”

The Wind featuring Chet Baker with Strings. Tune composed by Russ Freeman

The Wind - Shelly Manne & his Men

The tune is pianist Russ Freeman's beautiful- THE WIND.
Charlie Mariano, alto sax
Stu Williamson, trumpet and valve trombone
Russ Freeman, piano
Leroy Vinnegar, bass
Shelly Manne, drums