The Marlowsphere Blog (#119)

On April 2, 2015, The Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives concert series  (of which I am honored to serve as co-chair) at Baruch College (City University of New York) will present a quartet led by twenty-something jazz pianist Justin Kauflin. The concert will take place in Baruch’s Engelman Recital Hall, part of the college’s Performing Arts Center.

There are certainly many young, talented jazz pianists being educated and nurtured in high school and college jazz programs across the country (around the world, for that matter). But what makes Kauflin stand a little taller than the rest is the fact that he was mentored by the very recently departed, great trumpeter and educator Clark Terry.

I became familiar with Kauflin and his relationship with Terry through a showing of the award-winning film “Keep On Keepin’ On.” I reviewed this film in a previous blog.

To quote from this review:

Clark Terry became acquainted with Kauflin when he was studying at William Patterson College. The relationship between these two musicians—an age difference of over 60 years—evolved into more than just a professional exchange. It became a friendship founded on the mutual respect and, yes, love, between these two artists.

But there’s more to this story. During the course of the documentary we learn of Justin’s eyesight problems at a very young age and ultimate loss of all his sight at age 11. We also learn—and see first-hand—of Clark Terry’s battle with diabetes and the ultimate loss of both his legs late in life (around age 90). Here, then, are two musical artists with serious physical challenges who share their pain with each other, but encourage each other to “Keep on Keepin’ On.”  (Click to read full review.)

The documentary has earned an armful of awards.

Clark Terry, one of the most popular and influential jazz trumpeters of his generation and an enthusiastic advocate of jazz education, died on Saturday, February 21, 2015 in Pine Bluff, Ark. He was 94. (Read New York Times obituary.)

Justin Kauflin is also keepin’ on.

But the pain that these two artists have dealt with—Terry with diabetes, and Kauflin with his loss of eyesight at the age of 11—begs the question: how do some people deal with physical adversity given their creative impulses? In particular, how do people with musical genes overcome their lack of sight to express their sonic visions?

At first blush, the perception is that the vast majority of musicians do not have to deal with “sight“ issues. But even a cursory look at the musicians who have achieved success in the music world gives one pause. The number and quality of blind American musicians who have battled past a lack of sight to become successful at making sounds is impressive. Here are a few examples of the many blind musicians in the jazz/pop genres, courtesy of http://blindamericanmusicians.blogspot.com/:

RAY CHARLES (1930 – 2004) – Ray began life with sight but was blind due to Glaucoma by age 7.  He attended the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind.  It was here he received a formal education in classical music.  With this base and his growing interest in Jazz and Blues he began to develop his musical style.  He listened to Country, Blues, Gospel, Pop and Jazz on the radio.  His 1955 hit “I Got A Woman” was the beginning of finding his unique musical voice.  He loved how music allowed him complete freedom of expression.

SAMMY DAVIS Jr. (1925 – 1990) – His dad, Sammy Davis Sr. was a well-known vaudeville entertainer. Davis never attended school and was self-taught through the school of hard knocks. In 1955 he lost his left eye in a car accident. His music was very traditional in Broadway, Light Jazz and Pop Standard vein. Davis was famous for his stage presence, acting ability and singing style. He had more than a hand full of big hit songs, “Love Me Or Leave Me”, “The Candy Man”, “That Old Black Magic”, and “What Kind Of Fool Am I” to name just a few.

JOSE FELICIANO –  a Puerto Rican/American born blind, Jose has become one of America’s best known entertainers internationally. He belongs in the upper echelon of the great guitarist of our time. His version of the national anthem performed at Tiger Stadium in Detroit in the late 1960’s was controversial at the time but has become recognized as one of great interpretations of the song. In the United States he is best known for his million selling hit “Light My Fire” and the Christmas classic “Feliz Navidad”  He helped to mainstream Latin music influence on Rock ‘n’ Roll.

TERRI GIBBS – Terri was born in Florida in 1954 and the family moved to Augusta, Georgia. She comes from a family steeped in Gospel music. She began playing the piano at age three and began performing at an early age. She did take music lessons to help improve her understanding of the art. Like Ray Charles, Ronnie Milsap and other great artists from the South, she grew up listening to Country, R&B, Rock ‘n’ Roll and Gospel. Her debut single “Somebody’s Knockin’” became a huge hit and a crossover success.

RAHSAAN ROLAND KIRK (1935 – 1977) – He performed as a multiple instrumental artist. Jazz was what he performed and was famous for his stage antics and the ability to play more than one instrument at a time.  He left a legacy of over a dozen albums.

MARCUS ROBERTS – He is one of America’s great jazz musicians who happens to be blind since age five. His mother also was blind and a gospel singer who helped him to learn to play the piano. He attended the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, the Alma Matter for two other great musicians, Ray Charles and Charles Atkins. He went on to college at Florida State University. He believes strongly in the traditions of the great Jazz artists. Marcus is a perfectionist and very tradition minded when it comes to his art.  Yet, he believes the artist needs to play for the audience and not for themselves.  He is an Assistant Professor of Jazz Studies at Florida State University.

DIANE SCHUUR – Two-time Grammy award-winning jazz singer. While she was self-taught on the piano, she did attend Washington State School for the Blind for formal education in music and piano. She was influenced by the great Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington and Ray Charles to name a few. She has had several hit albums in the Jazz genre. While Jazz is her forte, she has performed in nearly every popular genre.

SIR GEORGE SHEARING, OBE (1919 – 2011) – was a world-renowned British-born jazz composer and musician. Shearing became involved in the jazz scene in the greater London area.  When he immigrated to the United States in 1947 he was swept into the New York jazz world. He melded the two worlds of classical orchestra music with jazz.  He has over 300 songs to his credit as a composer, as well ass two Grammy’s and 100+ albums. His music has been heard in more than a dozen films and TV shows. In 2007 he was Knighted by the British Crown and given the official title of “Sir.

ART TATUM  (1909 – 1956) – Tatum was not totally blind.  His vision was little more than light perception. At a very early age he taught himself to play the piano. Both parents were skilled musicians. During his high school years he attended the Ohio School for the Blind.  He studied braille and music. He has over four dozen albums to his credit.  His piano styling has had a lasting impact on jazz musicians. Great musicians he influenced are Oscar Peterson, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Parker, and Herbie Hancock. He is noted for his impressive speed playing of the piano. He was posthumously honored with  the prestigious Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

LENNIE TRISTANO (1919 – 1978) – He was born in Chicago and was one of the nation’s leading jazz educators.  He acknowledged fellow brother in blindness, Art Tatum, as influential in his music.  He also credited Charlie Parker and Nat King Cole. He had more than a hand full of recordings to his credit.

STEVIE WONDER – a world famous singer/songwriter, was born blind in 1950. At a very early age he began to master the piano.  Later he mastered the harmonica, drums and bass. He attended the Michigan School for the Blind where he studied classical music. Perhaps, what might have been more important were the impromptu jam sessions in the dorms at the school. Ronnie White of the Miracles discovered Stevie which led to him being signed by Berry Gordy of Motown and Tamla records. He has two dozen Grammys (including the Grammys is the coveted Lifetime Achievement Award), a Golden Globe, and an Oscar for best song in a film.

There is truth to the observation that when one loses, either partially or totally, one of his/her senses, the other senses compensate by becoming more sensitive. Perhaps there’s truth also in the observation that the jazz/pop musicians presented above achieved their artistic success, in strong part, because of their loss of sight. Their loss of vision accentuated their musical vision.

But the other significant thread among all these musicians is that they did not let their sensory handicaps to deter them. They kept on keepin’ on.

If you have any questions or comments about this or any other of my blogs, please write to me at
meiienterprises@aol.com.

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
March 30, 2015

© Eugene Marlow, March 30, 2015

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The Marlowsphere Blog (#116)

Google the name of famed saxophonist Frank Foster (who died of kidney failure in 2011) and you’ll discover a long list of accomplishments. Here’s a snippet from his July 26, 2011 New York Times obit by Nate Chinen:

Frank Foster, a saxophonist, composer and arranger who helped shape the sound of the Count Basie Orchestra during its popular heyday in the 1950s and ’60s and later led expressive large and small groups of his own, died on Tuesday at his home in Chesapeake, Va. He was 82.

. . . Mr. Foster had a varied and highly regarded career as a bandleader, notably with his Loud Minority Big Band, and he was sought after as an arranger for large ensembles. But it was the strength of his contribution to the so-called New Testament edition of the Basie band, from 1953 to 1964, that anchors his place in jazz history.

Mr. Foster wrote and arranged a number of songs for the band, none more celebrated than “Shiny Stockings,” a puckishly genteel theme set at a cruising medium tempo with a slow but powerful crescendo. Recorded by Basie on his classic 1955 album “April in Paris,” it subsequently became both a band signature and a jazz standard, often performed with lyrics (there were two sets, one by Ella Fitzgerald and one by Jon Hendricks).

He was one of two musicians named Frank in the band’s saxophone section, the other being the tenor saxophonist and flutist Frank Wess. Their contrasting styles as soloists — Mr. Foster was the more robust, with a harder husk to his tone — became the basis of a popular set piece called “Two Franks,” written for the band by Neal Hefti.

After leaving Basie, Mr. Foster worked for a while as a freelance arranger, supporting the likes of Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan.

He returned to the Basie band in the mid-1980s, this time as its leader. (Count Basie died in 1984.) He held the post for nearly a decade and earned something like emeritus status: when the Count Basie Orchestra was enlisted for Tony Bennett’s 2008 album “A Swingin’ Christmas,” Mr. Foster was the arranger.

Even as he spent a good portion of the late 1960s and ’70s exploring harmonic and rhythmic abstraction, Mr. Foster never quite surrendered to it. And he was no purist about jazz-funk — “Manhattan Fever,” one of his best albums, released in 1968 on Blue Note, has several effervescent backbeat-driven tunes.

In 2001 Mr. Foster had a stroke that hindered his ability to play the saxophone. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master the following year, and continued to write and arrange music, often as a commission for organizations like the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. He also became active in the Jazz Foundation of America, a nonprofit organization that delivers aid to musicians in need.

Quite a resume: a long-standing tenure with the Basie Band as a player/arranger and then as leader, composer of numerous jazz standards, and NEA Jazz Master, among other accomplishments. These are highly admirable musical credentials not easily come by.

Then you read Foster’s autobiography bluntly titled A Jazz Master Frank Foster: An Autobiography (PFDGS Media, 2013). With expectations high, a reader would expect masterly insights into the jazz world from this renown, world traveled jazz master. Instead this 254-page work provides more than a glimpse into the real personality of this famed, highly regarded jazz instrumentalist/ composer/arranger. And the picture isn’t pretty.

The first sign of trouble starts on page iii, the table of contents. Yes, the table of contents. There are 12 chapters to this book and each chapter in the table of contents is described in the following manner:

Chapter 1……………………….1
Chapter 2……………………….13
Chapter 3……………………….19

And so on. When you get to each chapter itself each does indeed have a title, such as Chapter 1 is “3025 Stanton Avenue” where Foster grew up. Why then did the editor choose not to name each chapter in the table of contents? The reason:  as one reads the book it becomes increasingly apparent that there was no editor, and by this I mean a professional editor. Foster’s autobiography is clearly self-published. And it shows glaringly.

In numerous places there are complete lapses of content segues. For example, in one of the middle chapters all of a sudden he’s married to Vivien! WHO’S VIVIEN AND WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN? In another chapter he’s moved from Scarsdale to Chesapeake, Virginia! WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN AND WHY?

But this is the least of it. The most jarring aspect of Foster’s autobiography is the following: While there are descriptions of his musical development—teachers, colleagues, jazz notables—the most prevalent content is his focus on women, not a few mind you, but almost everyone he ever bedded. In one of the later chapters he offers up a list (in great detail) of all the women, city by city, whom he slept with, mostly while he was with the Count Basie Band. The descriptions border on the pornographic. I have not done a mathematical analysis of the number of pages, but I feel confident in saying more than half of the book is given over to his sexual predilections.

Hand-in-hand with this catalog of women is his use of language. In a few instances his language is clear and articulate. In most other instances, his language is that of the street, of the hood, of the low-life. In this regard, the autobiography is at its most real. There’s no attempt to clean up or whitewash his expression. His use of low-class, sophomoric, street language is pervasive—at once disturbing and honest.

These two aspects distract in a way from the very real racism Foster experienced, both as a student and a soldier (during the Korean War). This racism seems to color (no pun intended) his apparent deep hatred of bigots. It is clear from what he writes he feels deeply about his black roots and expresses it at every opportunity.

In a way Foster redeems himself—after so many chapters of page after page of retelling sexual exploits in graphic detail—in  a couple of chapters towards the end of the book, especially those dealing with the Basie Orchestra. Here we get some behind the behind details that are informative and revealing. His very last chapter is an attempt to reflect on his life with some wisdom. It works for a while, but the parade of one woman after another in previous chapters is too present for this chapter to have much impact.

There is a reason why this book was self-published. Sex sells, but sophomoric descriptions of a young man’s sexual conquests does not. Foster could have risen in writing to the heights apparent in his musical performance and composing. But he does not. If you want class, read The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor. If you want late night titillation, Foster’s book is for you.

If you have any questions or comments about this or any other of my blogs, please write to me at meiienterprises@aol.com.

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
February 2, 2015

© Eugene Marlow 2015

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Here’s something new you don’t see every day: the combination of technology, music produced by local musicians and composers, and the use of street space under an elevated subway track, but that’s what’s happening in the Bronx, New York City.

The news release reads:

The NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Design Trust for Public Space unveiled [on July 19, 2014] “The Boogie Down Booth,” the second prototype for the Under the Elevated project in collaboration with the Bronx Music Heritage Center (BMHC) of the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDco).  Located at the Freeman Street station bus stop underneath the 2/5 subway tracks in the Bronx, this temporary resting spot provides solar-powered lighting and directional speakers playing Bronx artists’ music to enhance the space beneath the train tracks. The community, including the Southern Boulevard Merchant Association, provided guidance on the design and function of the installation through multiple workshops. It serves as a test to make the area a more hospitable place for community residents and visitors and has attracted support from the NYC Department of Small Business Services (SBS) through a competitive Neighborhood Challenge grant.

The temporary installation on celebrates the rich culture of the Bronx expressed through music. The speakers installed at “The Boogie Down Booth” play tunes by local artists, including Grammy-recognized musicians, to counteract the sound pollution caused by trains above the street and the surrounding traffic. The playlist, compiled by WHEDco’s Bronx Music Heritage Center (BMHC), reflects the thriving music born in or inspired by the Bronx. Although over 10,000 live music seats in dozens of clubs and theaters in the neighborhood have been lost over the years, artists from a wide array of cultural backgrounds make the Bronx their home and create new music in the borough. There are Freeman Street and Southern Boulevard>plans by WHEDco for two additional booths to be installed at a different location on Southern Boulevard and in Melrose, where the BMHC’s permanent home will be housed, providing multiple points to listen to Bronx music in the neighborhood. The installation also encourages users to share their thoughts on how the underused area can be improved.

The installation at the Freeman Street station, which will be installed through September 15, 2014, is the second of several that will be developed as part of the Under the Elevated initiative led by the Design Trust for Public Space. The citywide effort is aimed at developing strategies for maximizing the function, use, and spatial qualities of the millions of square feet of space underneath NYC’s bridges, and elevated highways, subways, and rail lines. The temporary installations will pave the way for a systemic change across the city that will transform the environment around its vast transit infrastructure.

Numerous musicians and composers born and/or raised in the Bronx are represented on the soundtrack, including: Afri-Garifuna Jazz Ensemble, Will Calhoun, Circa 95, Akua Dixon, Ilu Aye, Malang Jobarteh, James Lovell, Ray Mantilla, the Mariachi Academy of NY, Norka Nadal and Bambula, Rebel Diaz, Willie Rodriguez, and Bobby Sanabria/Eugene Marlow.

It was my honor that Maestro Sanabria chose the big band piece I wrote for him in 2006, “El Ache de Sanabria,” to be one of the two pieces he chose for the “Boogie Down” soundtrack loop. This piece appears on his 2007 Grammy-nominated album “Big Band Urban Folktales.” Sanabria was born in the Bronx and still lives there. Not so coincidentally, while I was born in London, England, I was raised in the Bronx; went to PS 24 and then JHS 7 in Kingsbridge. I also attended Herbert Lehman College—all educational institutions in the Bronx.

The New York Times reported this story—“Under the Tracks, a Kiosk with a Bronx Beat” on July 26, 2014.  A print version of this article appears on page A19 of the July 26, 2014 New York edition with the headline: “Under the Tracks, a Kiosk with a Bronx Beat.”

About the Bronx Music Heritage Center

The Bronx is the birthplace of thousands of musicians and entire music genres, and was once home to some of the best performing arts spaces in the City. Today, too many communities have limited access to cultural resources and events. WHEDco is celebrating the rich history and creative spirit that defines Bronx music – from jazz and salsa to R&B and hip hop – at the Bronx Music Heritage Center, which will have a permanent home in our newest Bronx Commons mixed-use housing development. Programming for the Bronx Music Heritage Center Lab is organized by Bobby Sanabria and Elena Martinez of City Lore.

About the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDco)

WHEDco is a community development organization founded on the radically simple idea that all people deserve healthy, vibrant communities. WHEDco’s mission is to give the South Bronx access to all the resources that create thriving neighborhoods – from high-quality early education and after-school programs, to fresh, healthy food, cultural programming, and economic opportunity.

About The Design Trust for Public Space
The Design Trust for Public Space is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the future of public space in New York City. Our projects bring together city agencies, community groups and private sector experts to make a lasting impact—through design—on how New Yorkers live, work and play.

Please write to me at meiienterprises@aol.com if you have any comments on this or any other of my blogs.

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
July 28, 2014

© Eugene Marlow 2014

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