Tenor Giants – Das Tenorsaxophon im Jazz

(Wardell Gray – Photo von Francis Wollf)

A kid . . . who stood slumped with his horn and blew like Wardell . . . and we all stumbled out into raggedy American realities from the dream of jazz. —Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody

Die bizzarre Story zum tragischen Ende des wunderbaren Wardell Gray

Light Gray

Song of the Thin Man
Wardell Gray’s Princely Lament

By Stuart Mitchner Tuesday, Jun 3 2003

Wardell Gray, Stan Hasselgaard (photo: courtesy Richard Carter)

A kid . . . who stood slumped with his horn and blew like Wardell . . . and we all stumbled out into raggedy American realities from the dream of jazz. —Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody

The author of a 1954 Melody Maker piece, „Return of the Thin Man,“ compared interviewing tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray to „attending a literary tea . . . with copious comments on chess, Shakespeare, James Jones, Norman Mailer and other Gray favorites.“ Since Gray also read Sartre and Camus and was involved in leftist politics and the NAACP to the extent that the FBI had a file on him, he would have found much to interest him in Norman Mailer’s 1957 essay „The White Negro.“ As a black jazz musician nourished intellectually and creatively by a predominantly white culture, he might even have taken the title personally. In Mailer’s depiction of the white hipster, it’s the other way around, of course: „The source of Hip is the Negro“ who „must live with danger from his first day.“

Wardell Gray could never have read „The White Negro“ because the dangers he lived with killed him at 34, less than a year after the Melody Maker interview. If the manner of his death—an unsolved mystery involving narcotics and abandonment in the desert—was a grim illustration of Mailer’s dynamic, the character of his life suggests something else. While it’s true that he lived and died in Mailer’s „Wild West of American night life,“ he managed to play chess, read broadly, become a culinary virtuoso, and enthuse about a wide variety of subjects including classical music and other arts. According to Hampton Hawes in his autobiography Raise Up off Me, „When white fans in the clubs came up to speak with us, Wardell would do the talking while the rest of us clammed up and looked funny.“

In Abraham Ravett’s 1994 documentary, Forgotten Tenor, a white friend who knew him in Michigan when she was in her teens suggests that he was „ahead of his time as far as knowing who he was as a person and he wasn’t about to back off or be treated unfairly.“ She saw that he „would have a problem because he didn’t have that better-know-your-place attitude.“

One place Wardell Gray knew he belonged was the jazz hierarchy. Sought after and admired by Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Earl Hines, Benny Carter, and Charlie Parker, among others, he was praised in Jazz on Record for his „unparalleled ability to create long swinging solos devoid of the tautology which mars so much of the work of LP-era musicians.“ When asked by Leonard Feather who the best player of the post-war generation was, Lester Young „gave a blanket endorsement of Wardell Gray.“ Having been quoted more than once on his distaste for bop, Benny Goodman heard the Thin Man firsthand at a California concert and admitted to a Metronome interviewer, „If Wardell Gray plays bop, it’s great. Because he’s wonderful.“ Within months, Goodman formed a new septet featuring Gray. Even after being chosen by the King of Swing, Gray’s sense of „who he was“ was so strong that when people were congratulating him for being with Goodman, he told his wife he wished somebody would talk about how Goodman was playing with him.

Still, he lived with the day-to-day knowledge that no matter how accomplished a musician he became, no matter how much he read, thought, or hoped, he would never escape the prison defined by prejudice. Nor would he escape heroin after spending most of his life resisting it and counseling against it. Prejudice was the place he lived in and died on May 25, 1955, his body found in a drainage ditch in the desert near Las Vegas with a broken neck and head injuries. If he’d been white, the police would have conducted a thorough investigation. As it was, they were in a hurry to close the case, leaving questions that inspired Bill Moody’s 1997 detective novel, The Death of a Tenor Man.

Seven years before his death Gray was onstage at the Flamingo in Jim Crow Las Vegas playing with Goodman’s big band. Thanks in great part to his exposure with Goodman, he had jumped from 27th to fourth in the tenor sax division of the 1948 Metronome poll. He was the only African American in the band, and its star soloist and bandmaster, expected to lead in the leader’s absence. He was not expected to eat in the dining room, however, nor permitted to enter through the main entrance, and he had to room apart from the others in a house in the black district. In Forgotten Tenor, trombonist Eddie Bert tells of the night when Goodman was absent during the dinner show, and Gray led the band while performing a send-up of the Goodman manner that had the musicians and the audience laughing. For a prop, he used one of Benny’s clarinets, loaned to him when the two had traded instruments at a New Year’s Eve party in New York. He had all the moves down, including the famous Goodman glare known as „the Ray.“ He was probably unaware that his boss happened to be dining in the room. Incensed, Goodman charged up to the bandstand, fired him in front of everyone, and then pursued him through the kitchen loudly demanding the return of his clarinet. The next day Goodman rehired him.

From all accounts, he got along well with his bandmates. In Swing, Swing, Swing, Ross Firestone’s biography of Goodman, however, Chico O’Farrill says that Wardell „sometimes felt the brunt of racial discrimination in a very strong way,“ and Buddy Greco claims that racism drove him from the band: „There were times when he couldn’t check into the hotel or eat in the restaurants. And then, when we worked down in Virginia, some Ku Klux Klanners burst into the little apartment Doug Mettome and I shared with him and threatened to lynch him . . . We had a lot of problems with racial situations and Wardell finally had enough.“

Forgotten Tenor features interviews with Wardell’s first wife, Jeri, and his widow, Dorothy. Both women speak of him as if the news from Las Vegas had come four months rather than 40 years ago. Asked about how he died, Jeri is still angry: „It was a bad death . . . Wardell died from a broken neck. He didn’t die from overdose of drugs, he died because he was left in the desert with his neck broken.“ Dorothy Gray reads aloud from some of the letters he wrote to her between 1950 and his death. In a 1951 letter, at the time he was leaving the Basie band and hoping to settle down in Los Angeles with Dorothy and his stepdaughter, he imagined how home life would be for them: „All working hard, studying, going to school, perfecting ourselves for one another. What a vast sense of accomplishment there will be in the atmosphere.“

While Charlie Parker and Lester Young were his most significant influences, Gray was no less inspired by the challenge of the many Los Angeles sessions where he played head-to-head with Dexter Gordon. „At all the sessions,“ Gordon told writer Stan Britt, „there would always be about ten horns up on the stand. Various tenors, altos, trumpets, and an occasional trombone. But it seemed that in the wee small hours of the morning—always—there would be only Wardell and myself.“ The two tenors turn up in On the Road „blowing their tops before a screaming audience that gave the record fantastic frenzied volume,“ and again when Dean and Sal play catch to „the wild sounds of Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray blowing ‚The Hunt‘ „—two heroes of the Beat generation playing along with two heroes of the swing-to-bop generation.

Their tenor battle in „The Hunt“ invites boxing analogies—Dexter the hard-hitting Joe Louis, Wardell the float-like-a-butterfly sting-like-a-bee Ali. Wardell comes out of his corner dancing while Dexter’s first moves are comparable to solid body blows, except the only body is the audience and in case anyone doubts the true nature of the event, his first quote is from the „Wedding March.“ The closest they get to a real punch-counterpunch confrontation is when Wardell begins the third round and Dexter breaks in briefly; when it’s Dexter’s turn, Wardell returns the favor with a quick, playful knock on Dexter’s door. As the other players begin riffing in the background, the excitement peaks with a loop-the-loop from Dexter followed by a move of Wardell’s that provokes an ecstatic shout from someone in the audience. Flights like this are what Mike Zwerin is getting at, in Close Enough for Jazz, when he writes that „the sound of Wardell“ with Basie’s big band at the Royal Roost in 1948 has never left his head—“I will go to my grave with it.“ Zwerin calls that sound „the cry“: „A direct audial objectification of the soul. You know it when you hear it.“

On those Central Avenue nights when they had people standing on tables and chairs cheering them on, Dexter and Wardell were so deep in tenor heaven they left the rest of the band behind. In Central Avenue Sounds, an oral history of L.A. jazz, pianist Gerry Wiggins reports that he and Charlie Mingus simply gave up and left the stage one night after the two tenors had been through 20 or 30 choruses „and they didn’t stop. They went right on with the drummer. Didn’t miss us at all.“

While it may seem to clash with the image of a hard-swinging, crowd-pleasing battling tenor, at least one writer has referred to Wardell Gray as a „princely“ figure, an image that is implicit in the critical language his playing inspires („rare grace and beauty,“ „elegant yet powerful“) and in photographs taken at various times in his life. He looks especially princely in a photograph of him smilingly enduring the playful embrace of Stan Hasselgaard, the Swedish clarinetist who played with him in Goodman’s septet and considered him „the best tenor in America today.“ In films of Basie’s small group made in 1950, Gray is the only musician who seems to have no time for the camera. Swaying along to the music, he shows such a tender regard for his instrument and for the act of improvising that when he steps forward to play his solos he looks less like royalty than a divinity student absorbed in prayer. Playing a courtly, warmly insistent preface to Helen Humes’s ebullient vocal on „I Cried for You,“ he treats the tenor as if one false or unfelt note would permanently wound it. The song of the Thin Man cries for us all.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-06-03/home/song-of-the-thin-man/

:: Ergänzung ::

Aus der Juli 1955 Nummer des Schwedischen Jazz-Magazins „Estrad“.
Mehr dazu hier.

„ugly story, ugly foto“ ist wohl die beste Zusammenfassung des ganzen.
Aber zu Wardell Grays grossartiger Musik werde ich immer wieder zurückkehren!

Ich würd mal zu folgenden raten:

Lee Konitz & Warne Marsh (Atlantic)
Music for Prancing (Mode)
All Music (Nessa)

Und wenn Du die Kombination der beiden magst, nail, dann sollte die Storyville 4CD-Box noch immer billig zu finden sein!

Einen richtig guten Überblick hab ich auch noch nicht bei Marsh. Im Mosaic-Set ist auch noch sein eigenes Atlantic-Album enthalten, gefällt mir auch ganz gut. Ebenso die Sachen, die ich bisher von der Gruppe mit Ted Brown gehört habe (auf der „Intuition“ Capitol-CD, welche die absolut essentiellen Capitol-Sessions von Tristano mit Konitz, Marsh und Billy Bauer enthält, findet sich ein Album, ebenso hat Freshsound eine Doppel-CD im Angebot, auf der besagtes Album auch enthalten ist – ist aber eine Mogelpackung, da das andere Album „Free Wheelin'“ von Art Pepper, Marsh und Brown ist, vor dem Bestellen genau hinsehen!).

Auch „Star High“ (Criss Cross) ist sehr schön, mit Hank Jones am Piano. Ich hab das als LP, die CD enthält ein paar Bonustracks (weiss grad nicht, ob Alternates oder zusätzliche Stücke).

redbeansandricenur um das klar zu halten, das ist die oben verlinkte CD, und das sich findende Album ist Jazz of two Cities

Ja, entschuldige – wollte nicht noch weiter verwirren! Hab grad meine Raubkopie der Freshsound Doppel-CD hervorgesucht… der Inhalt:

Warne Marsh Quintet: Jazz of Two Cities (Imperial LP 12013) (CD1 #1-8 + #13-14)
Warne Marsh (ts), Ted Brown (ts), Ronnie Ball (p), Ben Tucker (b), Jeff Morton (d)
Radio Recorders, Los Angeles, CA, Oct. 3, 1956
(Die komplett unterschiedlichen Mono-Takes von „Jazz of Two Cities“ und „I Never Knew“ sind auch enthalten, auf der 1996er Capitol CD „Intuition“ von Lennie Tristano & Warne Marsh finden sich zudem die Mono-Takes von „Ear Conditioning“ mit einem unterschiedlichen zweiten Tenorsax-Solo und „Lover Man“ mit einem unterschiedlichen Piano-Solo.)

Marsh(/Brown)s vier Stücke von Modern Jazz Gallery (Kapp KXL 5001) [CD1 #9-12]
Warne Marsh (ts), Ted Brown (ts), Ronnie Ball (p), Ben Tucker (b), Jeff Morton (d)
Radio Recorders, Hollywood, CA, Oct. 24, 1956
(Die anderen drei Titel von dieser Session, „Casino“, „Decisions“ und „Up Tempo“, die auf Discovery DSCD945 zu finden sind, sind falsch betitelt und es handelt sich um drei der vier Kapp-Tracks)

Ted Brown Quintet: Free Wheelin‘ (CD2 #1-9)
Art Pepper (as), Warne Marsh (ts), Ted Brown (ts), Ronnie Ball (p), Ben Tucker (b), Jeff Morton (d)
Los Angeles, CA, December 21, 1956
(Die ganze Session ist auf diversen Vanguard LPs und CDs zu finden sowie auf einem Lonehill Twofer, der auch die Master Takes von der Art Pepper/Warne Marsh Contemporary Session vom 26. November enthält, die unter dem Titel „The Way It Was“ erschienen ist… eine mühsame Geschichte, da die OJCCD auch nicht die ganze Session enthält, und ich erinnere mich schwach, dass die Lonehill-CD noch einen Bock drin hat, ein falsches oder verdoppeltes Stück oder sowas… die Kommentare dazu sind auf einem gelöschten Blog gestanden, hab das nicht mehr präsent leider.)

Stars of Jazz TV-Show (CD2 #10-15)
Warne Marsh (ts), Ted Brown (ts), Ronnie Ball (p), Ben Tucker (b), Jeff Morton (d)
KABC Television Studios, Hollywood, CA, March 11, 1957
(Wo diese Stücke herkommen weiss ich nicht, gemäss der Online Marsh-Disko sind sie zuvor nie veröffentlicht worden, was ich mir eigentlich kaum vorstellen kann.)

Das ist an sich eine schöne Doppel-CD, bloss würde ich sie mir wegen der vier Kapp-Tracks und dem ABC-Broadcast kaufen, was dann doch eher übertrieben wäre… die beiden Ann Richards Tracks von der „Stars of Jazz“ Show fehlen übrigens (sie wird auch von anderen Musikern begleitet).

Alles Weitere zu Marshs Diskographie hier:
http://www.warnemarsh.info/discography_2.htm

Übrigens, auf diesem Fresh Sound Twofer gibt’s „Music for Prancing“ und „Warne Marsh“ (Atlantic) kombiniert. Die „Music for Prancing“ gibt’s aber auch hier vom Inhaber der Rechte und Aufnahmen einzeln. Wie die meisten Mode-Alben ist sie kurz (um die 30 Minuten), aber ich möchte sie nicht missen! Weitere Mode-Tipps gebe ich gerne ab, aber nicht hier sondern irgendwo, wo’s besser passen würde…

nail75Danke für die Informationen. Scheint überraschend kompliziert zu sein!

Ich denke, im Vergleich dazu, die rhythmischen Nuancen eines Marsh-Solos zu transkribieren, ist die Klärung der editionstechnischen Fragen ein Kinderspiel!