The Marlowsphere Blog (#126)

It is a truism that those you encounter early in one’s career or artistic development who put you on the right path can be important influencers in the short and long-term. Four such people in my early evolution as a musician in the mid-late 1960s are bassist Frank LaGorce and drummer Butch Degener, and later bassist Sonny Jay and drummer Rudy Merino.

Even though I was born into a family with strong classical music roots on both my mother and father’s side, I did not begin to take music study seriously until I was in my early twenties. For me the context was the military, more specifically, I enlisted in the United States Air Force on June 20, 1966 in response to a draft notice from the United States Army earlier in the year. Little did I know that this decision would result in the awakening of semi-dormant musical genes.

Following basic training at Lackland Air Force Base (San Antonio, Texas) in the summer of 1966—where my then meager pianistic skills were put to work playing in a dance band for a retiring general—and a short stint at Chanute Air Force base in Illinois (now closed), where I received some training in B-52 and KC-135 tanker aircraft personal equipment, I ended up at Castle Air Force Base (AFB) (closed in 1996) in Merced, California, right in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley. This was ultimately an interesting assignment. Castle AFB at the time was the training base for all of Strategic Air Command, one of the key military elements of the War in Vietnam.

When I arrived in fall 1966 Merced was a town of 16,000 people (not counting military personnel). When I left in fall 1971 (after almost completing an MBA in General Management from Golden Gate University) the population was closer to 25,000. As of 2014 its population was slightly under 82,000, consisting of mostly Mexicans and several South-Asian cultures.

Almost immediately upon unpacking my duffle bag, I made my way to the base Silver Wings Community Center where I discovered two fairly soundproof piano rooms each hosting a spinet piano. While playing through the nine or ten jazz standards I knew at the time, there was a knock on the door. It was Frank LaGorce, a staff sergeant assigned to one of Castle AFB’s mechanical squadrons who also played jazz bass. He was a “cat” in the jazz sense. Much of his conversation was sprinkled with “jive talk.” How he survived in the military is still a mystery to me, but he played an upright base and (at the time) knew more than I did about chords and changes. And we got along.

We put together a trio with an ex-rock drummer—Butch Degener. Teaching him how to play ballads with brushes—as opposed to sticks—was a challenge. But he ultimately got the idea. I began to play around with some arrangements, including “Sunrise, Sunset” from the Broadway Show “Fiddler on the Roof.” We entered the December 1966 base talent show and, “Miracle of Miracles,” won first place. A few weeks later we landed an off-base gig at the local San Joaquin Club in Merced playing there Friday and Saturday nights, four hours a night, 9 p.m.-1 a.m., for $25 a night. We were there for over a year continuous.

We survived in the early going by playing all 10 of the tunes I knew several different ways: ballad, bossa nova, swing, rock, whatever worked. Almost immediately upon getting the gig I visited the local music store on Merced’s main street and bought a set of Hanon exercises—books I still have. I started practicing at least two-three hours every night after my regular military duties (which is another story) and even more hours on weekends. I worked on expanding my repertoire. At one point I knew over 100 tunes without need of a lead sheet (not much by some standards; there are some pianists who know a 1,000 tunes off the top of their heads). Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” was a sure-fire tune to bring everyone to the dance floor. Just playing the first few notes was like magic.

For a time the trio expanded to a quartet with the addition of Bobby Meyers—a vibraphonist, also an airman at the base—and we became “The We Trio +1.” Ultimately, though, as my pianistic skill improved and my chordal knowledge and repertoire expanded I felt a strong urge to seek greener musical pastures. Before Frank’s fateful knock on the piano room door I had not taken piano study or any music study for that matter very seriously. I had composed perhaps a few dozen jazz pieces, but didn’t have the chops to write them down. In many, many ways, I was musically clueless as a performer. Yet my serendipitous encounter with Frank LaGorce put me on a path that I still walk on to this day. But sometimes there comes a time when you need to cut ties with first teachers.

This is where bassist Sonny Jay and drummer Rudy Merino came into the picture.
More in my next blog.

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
July 20, 2015

© Eugene Marlow 2015

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The Marlowsphere Blog (#120)

HBO, the leading premium cable channel, recently presented a two-part, four-hour documentary on singer and Oscar-winning actor Frank Sinatra, arguably one of the world’s most successful entertainers of the 20^th century, and, as Grammy-award winning radio personality Jonathan Schwartz has pointed out, the most recorded singing voice in history.

A consistent thread throughout the four hours of the programming is Sinatra’s insistence on quality. It is easily observable from the performance clips. There’s never a moment where you don’t understand every lyric of every song he chose to sing. He worked with the best arrangers—Billy May, Don Costa, Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, Ernie Freeman, Eunir Deodato, Sy Oliver, and Quincy Jones. He also worked with some of the best musicians. Among them was violinist/violist Michael (Spivakowsky) Marlow. I know this for fact because Michael (Spivakowsky) Marlow was my father.

But this is not the point of this blog. The stories that are usually told about Sinatra are his relationship with the so-called “Rat Pack” —Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Peter Lawford—his on-again, off-again relationship with President Kennedy, his loose connection with the “mob,” his womanizing, and his off-stage partying and on-stage boozing.

The relationship between “Mr. Sinatra” and “Michael” is not only a musical one, it is also about the little known, sublimated story of Sinatra’s respect for the composers, arrangers, and musicians he worked with, and, perhaps more importantly, his oft-ignored generosity.

There was a time when Sinatra’s orchestra consisted of a string section. The orchestra was contracted by violinist Joseph Malin.  According to Will Friedwald’s book Sinatra: This Song Is You (Scribner 1995), “From 1974 onward, Sinatra’s main accompaniment was the ‘New York Band’ assembled for him by contractor and concertmaster Joe Malin (until his death in 1994). Based in New York, this ensemble would travel with Sinatra to any gigs. . . .” (p. 453).

At the time my father knew him, the Malins lived in New City, just north of the New Jersey/New York State border and the town of Nyack on the western side of the Hudson. My mother and father also moved to New City. The relationship between my father and Joe Malin was fortuitous. It was primarily because of Joe Malin that my father had work at all. Joe was able to look past my father’s irascible nature. He knew quality playing when he heard it. My father was a crackerjack sight-reader, and had an encyclopedic experience in classical, Broadway, and pop music. He was a composer and arranger. He composed a concerto for harmonica and orchestra that is still performed worldwide today! He was also pretty adept at improvising jazz on the violin. Joe hired my father for the Sinatra orchestra between 1974 and 1983 for live performances and recordings.

It was fall 1980 in the small wee hours of the morning. The phone rings. It’s my mother. She informs me my father has had a heart attack and is in ICU in Atlantic City (New Jersey). They were in Atlantic City at the Sands Casino Hotel where Sinatra was performing. (The Sands Casino Hotel operated from August 13, 1980 until November 11, 2006.) At its peak, the Sands headlined top entertainers, such as Tony Bennett, Cher, Liza Minnelli, Bob Dylan, Robin Williams, Whitney Houston and Eddie Murphy, and, of course, Frank Sinatra, among others.

My wife (at the time) and I discussed driving to Atlantic City in the morning after sunrise. My sister, Janet, calls shortly after my mother. She wants to go to Atlantic City right now. She lived then and still lives in Litchfield, CT, so it would take her a couple of hours to drive down. When she arrives, we all pile into one car and take the five hour drive south from New York City to Atlantic City.

When we get there my mother reports my father was not feeling well that afternoon and it was decided to go to the hospital emergency room. While he was on the gurney, apparently, he had the heart attack and technically died. He was revived and placed in ICU in the Atlantic City Medical Center in the Frank Sinatra Wing.

Seeing my father in ICU was difficult enough, but the experience was exacerbated by the fact I had not spoken to him for at least nine months following his totally disrespectful behavior at my Seder earlier in the year. But there he was looking partly in shock, unshaven, vulnerable, and helpless.

We were put up in rooms in the Sands Hotel, courtesy of Mr. Sinatra. My mother reported that Sinatra was prepared to bring world-renowned American cardiac surgeon Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, if necessary, to Atlantic City to care for my father. But the proof of the pudding, so to speak, of Sinatra’s respect and generosity was expressed later that evening. We were invited to sit backstage, in the wings, at one of Sinatra’s performances. We were escorted to stage right. My mother was given a chair. My sister and I stood for most of the performance. A comedian, I think it as Shecky Greene, was warming up the audience in front of the main curtain. Sinatra came onto the stage behind the curtain towards the end of Greene’s act from stage left. He went right to the orchestra string section and gave a full report on my father’s status. I was amazed. He knew exactly what was happening with my father and clearly had spent time to find out so that he could provide the other string players with requisite information.

I do not recall how much time my father was in ICU, but when he was discharged, Sinatra paid the bill for a private ambulance to transport him and my mother from Atlantic City to New City (at least a six hour journey).

It took my father at least three months to recover from the attack. He had lost around 20-30 pounds, which for him was a good thing. He was about 5’6” and weighed over 210 pounds. He ate poorly, smoked occasionally, and never exercised. Those three months were the best three months of my relationship with my father. He was accessible, emotionally approachable, a father I could talk to and relate to. He was human.

It didn’t last.

My father was also a talented painter. Among his dozens of works, he had painted fairly large vertical pictures of several well-known English clowns. Before his heart attack the edges of the clowns were hard and pronounced. During his recovery he repainted the clowns. The edges became soft and compelling. After three months, he repainted the edges again to their original presentation. It was emotionally metaphorical.

Friday, May 13, 1983, I was home in my Manhattan apartment. It was late afternoon. The phone rang. It was a police detective. He informed me my father was driving his car northbound on the Tappan Zee Bridge and had had a heart attack. This one did him in. Miraculously, while in the midst of his attack, my father managed to bring the car to the right hand side of the road next to the railing and stop the car. Ironically, in a car behind my father’s were two nurses who witnessed what had happened. They also had oxygen with them. The doors to my father’s car were unlocked, so they were able to get to him. But it was to no avail.

My father spent about 10 years with the “Sinatra New York Orchestra.” He would often recount that “Sinatra knew how to phrase and to present a lyric.” He also reported that Sinatra would say “Work at it until it doesn’t fail you.” His last recording session (on viola) with Sinatra was on January 25, 1983 at the RCA Recording Studios in New York City.

Sinatra’s respect for my father and generosity in 1980 helped give my father about three more years of life. It also gave me three months of the father I had always wanted. I wrote a note to Sinatra to thank him for what he did. But I was told “don’t expect a reply.” He never did respond. But it didn’t matter.

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.
April 20, 2015

© Eugene Marlow 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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