Caution: Ear Expansion May Cause Aesthetic Discombobulation

I went to a show at the Outpost 186 on 3.24.16. The group was an adventurous cohort that included: 

Charlie Kohlhase/Alipio C. Neto – saxes / Daniel Rosenthal – trumpet, flugelhorn / Bill Lowe – tuba / Curt Newton - drums

They played almost all original material and some by John Tchicai. As a group and as soloists, the musicians demonstrated their command of jazz innovations of the last 60 years-angular heads, group improvisation, harmonics overblowing, dissonance, bi-tonality, world music influences and non-swing rhythm section approaches.

After this solid musical foray, I went to a friend's house to continue my aural immersion.

Rob put on Cannonball Adderly's 1961 Riverside album "Know What I Mean," And, although a great admirer of Cannonball, I found his playing conservative and unadventurous. 

Then, I asked for some Lee Morgan and he put on "Search for the New Land" from 1964. Lee and Wayne are brilliant, but the tunes less so. The title track, an extended composition, aims high, but is not substantial; much pentatonic noodling, tremolos, ostinati. The other tunes are more squarely in the Lee hard-bop mold, but they seem kind of tepid in the light of compositions that Ornette and others had been producing and compared to what I heard earlier that night at the Outpost. 

The moral of the story: when your ears have been recently opened up, be prepared for some disjunctions when you listen to your old musical pals. 

Songs That Deeply Move

After my recent interview with Sheila Jordan, Jeff Turton made this comment: "She sang at my wedding and I always loved "You Are My Sunshine..."[see below]. I asked if she would sing it but she told me that she wouldn't sing it because to her it was a sad song. Growing up it was always a song that they sang when there were problems in the mines and lives were lost, which happened on a regular basis back then... Since that time I have never heard the song in the same way and I now hear that sadness in her voice."

There are often universal, or at least consensual emotional responses to music. Minor and major are more than just the mechanical act of flatting the third. But, we always bring our own backstory too, sometimes conscious, sometimes not and once in a while we are blindsided by our own reaction and deeply moved by music that other people find merely "pleasant," or "well-crafted."  

Abbey Lincoln

I'm not talking about the effect of music at the transcendental end of the spectrum-Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and others. That music summons up large vistas and profound cosmic spaces. The songs I allude to here move us to a very personal inner space and often, a deep melancholy. Sometimes we understand why this happens, as in Jeff's story above; sometimes not. The fact that we may not know why we are emotionally stirred seems to deepen the experience.

In "Dinji," from Wayne Shorter's "Super Nova" album, a very personal vocal by Maria Booker is bookended by music evoking a wider, more cosmic palette. This deepens the effect of the vocal, which enters at about 4:00.

In the LP "Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie," comes Ella with "Good Morning Heartache," a beautiful marriage of music, lyric and musician. No surprise at its effect.

Here's "You Are My Sunshine," off the album "The Outer View." The arrangement George Russell wrote showed that he grasped the many layers of subtext in the song and Sheila Jordan's relationship to it.

Rahsaan and "A Laugh for Rory." Why this song? I'm not sure, but the combination of the real child's voice, the bubbling lightness of the head contrasted with the dramatics of the solos tripped a wire in me.

Finally, the song with a mojo that struck me like thunder is "Throw It Away," by Abbey Lincoln from "A Turtle's Dream." Why? I'll let the mystery continue to breathe.

"Tears, Performance and Dindi" by S.G.Provizer

Recently, a comment was posted in response to my piece about Abbey Lincoln and her intense song Throw it Away. "I'd like to sing it," the commenter wrote, "but I'm afraid I'd start sobbing onstage."


I immediately thought of the Antonio Carlos Jobim song "DIndi," as recorded on Wayne Shorter's 1969 LP "Super Nova." it is the only performance I know-live or recorded- which actually includes a performer crying. 

The first part of the track is percussion-mainly Brazilian-and soprano sax outbursts, which in no way prepares you for the vocal, which comes in at about 4:00. The vocal lasts about 3 minutes and the song ends with several more minutes of percussion and sax, alternatingly spacey and aggressive.

The vocalist is Maria Booker. Maria was bassist Walter Booker's wife and Shorter's sister-in-law. She was not a professional singer, but Bluenote producer Duke Pearson had heard her emotional version of Dindi. The accompaniment was just Walter Booker on classical guitar-a stark contrast to the other sections of Shorter's arrangement.


The lyrics of the song are fairly evocative and, indeed, from the beginning, Maria sounds deeply invested. As the song proceeds, she clearly becomes more and more emotional and barely manages to finish, gasping out the last few lyrics. Then, she starts sobbing softly. 


I heard Super Nova a few years after its initial release and my first response was shock. I felt Dindi was lovely, but was unsure if the crying was just a show-biz add-on. My willingness to release deeply into the song hung on whether or not I believed in the veracity of Maria's tears.  After a moment's hesitation, I bought in.

Now, so many years later, I read that Maria and Walter separated just after the recording. What seemed real, apparently was.