A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, August 5, 2017
Earl “Bud” Powell (1924-1966): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, ensemble leader, arranger, producer, and teacher
SOUND PROJECTIONS AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU SUMMER, 2017
One of the giants of the jazz piano, Bud Powell
changed the way that virtually all post-swing pianists play their
instruments. He did away with the left-hand striding that had been
considered essential earlier and used his left hand to state chords on
an irregular basis. His right often played speedy single-note lines,
essentially transforming Charlie Parker's vocabulary to the piano (although he developed parallel to "Bird").
–– ADVERTISEMENT ––
Tragically, Bud Powell was a seriously ill genius. After being encouraged and tutored to an extent by his friend Thelonious Monk at jam sessions in the early '40s, Powell was with Cootie Williams' orchestra during 1943-1945. In a racial incident, he was beaten on the head by police; Powell
never fully recovered and would suffer from bad headaches and mental
breakdowns throughout the remainder of his life. Despite this, he
recorded some true gems during 1947-1951 for Roost, Blue Note, and
Verve, composing such major works as "Dance of the Infidels,"
"Hallucinations" (also known as "Budo"), "Un Poco Loco," "Bouncing with
Bud," and "Tempus Fugit." Even early on, his erratic behavior resulted
in lost opportunities (Charlie Parker supposedly told Miles Davis that he would not hire Powell because "he's even crazier than me!"), but Powell's playing during this period was often miraculous. A breakdown in 1951 and hospitalization that resulted in electroshock treatments weakened him, but Powell
was still capable of playing at his best now and then, most notably at
the 1953 Massey Hall Concert. Generally in the 1950s his Blue Notes find
him in excellent form, while he is much more erratic on his Verve
recordings. His warm welcome and lengthy stay in Paris (1959-1964)
extended his life a bit, but even here Powell
spent part of 1962-1963 in the hospital. He returned to New York in
1964, disappeared after a few concerts, and did not live through 1966.
In later years, Bud Powell's
recordings and performances could be so intense as to be scary, but
other times he sounded quite sad. However, his influence on jazz
(particularly up until the rise of McCoy Tyner and Bill Evans in the 1960s) was very strong and he remains one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time.
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/budpowell
Bud Powell is generally considered to be the most important pianist in
the history of jazz. Noted jazz writer and critic Gary Giddins, in
Visions of Jazz, goes even further, saying that “Powell will be
recognized as one of the most formidable creators of piano music in any
time or idiom.”
His first recordings were made in 1944, when he
was a 20 year old pianist in the Cootie Williams Band, and his last
recordings were made in 1964 when he returned from several years in
Europe to play at Birdland. Between those dates Bud Powell played
with the greatest jazz musicians of his generation including Charlie
Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon,
Charlie Mingus and Max Roach. The recordings he made for the forerunners
of the Verve label and for Blue Note, as well as many lesser known
labels, are among the greatest jazz recordings of all time. Not as
much of a showman as musicians like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie,
Bud Powell has not received as much public recognition as some of his
contemporaries. Nevertheless his fellow musicians were in awe of his
creativity and skill, which in his prime were considered almost
superhuman.
August 21, 2012 by Howard Mandel Jazz Journalists Association
On Amazon, reviewers so far are unanimous in their five-star appraisal of Peter Pullman’s Wail: The Life of Bud Powell, and
all they write is true. This book is impeccably researched,
compassionate towards its deeply problematic subject without being
mawkish or hagiographic, and multi-dimensional in its portraying of
music, society and the lives of a distinctive coterie of difficult people under considerable strain, some of them among the most gifted American artists of the 20th century.
Pullman is indeed a fine writer, economical and vivid, able to make
the import of abstract music clear without using jargon or musical
notation. He’s especially good when describing the late ’40s – early
’50s midtown Manhattan milieu which allowed bebop to come to prominence,
almost despite itself and the musicians’ professional ambivalences,
often expressed in very self-destructive behavior. Powell was plagued by
those ills, in spades. That the author can sustain his own patience and the reader’s concern
for Powell is just short of miraculous. Although there are hints that
the pianist might have suffered from the condition known today as
autism, this diagnosis was evidently unknown in the ’40s, certainly not
applied to anyone of Powell’s background, and Pullman doesn’t speculate
(as I just have) about its possibility, either. Nonetheless, it is
painful to read of the prodigy who had no life beyond his keyboard, who
behaved with infantile resistance even to many of those who held his
genius in high regard, and who was mercilessly abused by several people
who got quite close to him. Which is not even to mention the invasive,
mind-numbing “treatments” Powell endured from doctors and courts for
virtually all his productive yet sadly attenuated life. The best tribute I can make to Wail
is to say it reawakens my interest in music I have somewhat taken for
granted. Powell’s pianism, at its best characterized by speedy, graceful
and long melody lines fed by spare yet propulsive comping remains to
this day the model for straightahead mainstream jazz keyboardists,
bearing a marked influence on Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett and Chick
Corea, just for starters. If Bud’s style has become foundational, we
tend to forget its innovative qualities. But while reading this work,
one will want to have the works of Powell as well as Kenny Clarke,
Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Monk, Mingus and Tatum at hand. The Complete Bud Powell on Verve, for which Pullman compiled a dozen interviews that set him up to pursue this longer project, is one vital companion piece; The Complete Bud Powell Blue Note and Roost Recordings 1949 – 1958 is another. But as the book unfolds you’ll find yourself reaching for Sonny Stitt sessions on Savoy and Prestige, Jazz at Massey Hall,
and even Powell’s last, disastrous ESP-Disks. Pullman does an exemplary
job of making this music live, usually with just a few words that
convey his expert judgments. Jazz aficionados may long for the return of the hothouse atmosphere
of 52nd St., where Bud et al made their music a public art. Such a scene
is unlikely to come again, but if it does we can hope it will be free
of the corruption, bigotry, exploitation and disregard for creative
genius which Powell experienced and Pullman describes. The book may help
us avoid the return of such failures by the mental health care
establishment, the police, club owners and record producers, fans,
family and so-called friends by depicting what went wrong in Bud
Powell’s life almost from his start. It’s disenheartning that such
horrors should befall a person as sensitive and/or as troubled as Powell
was; it’s pitiable, and maybe tragic. But with Wail, Peter
Pullman has done a great service to many contingents of modern
sophistication — not only jazz fans, and most especially the legacy of
Bud Powell. Just as a p.s.: Wail is currently available only as an
e-book, and I found the format made close attention to Pullman’s
detailed footnotes and endnotes problematic. Bookmarking and search
functions make navigation available, but it’s a challenge to search out
references in past pages when one is farther along in the tome. Also, I
would have enjoyed seeing some of the photos Pullman refers to, which I
suspect the self-publishing budget of this edition precluded. I can only
hope that the value of this book will be discovered and understood by
the libraries and schools as well as individual readers who might
purchase it. Compensation should be available for the amount of
dedication, insight and talent this effort and others like it have
required. A hardbound edition would make it much easier to trace the
strands of story, influence and experience like so many melodies
spinning out with complex quirks and twists potentially without end that
thread through Wail. PPS. Wail includes as an appendix Pullman’s
groundbreaking, comprehensive research of the notorious “cabaret card”
laws that hampered the careers of Powell, Monk, Parker, Davis, Billie
Holiday and lesser-sung entertainers in New York City for some 80 years.
It turns out the “laws” were at best quasi-legal, in practice subject
to wide variance of interpretation and enforcement, kind of double
jeopardy, just as capricious a curse as long assumed. There’s a lesson
here, beyond that pertaining directly to Bud Powell. PPPS — JJANews has learned that Wail: The Life of Bud Powell will be available for sale as a paperback, at the author’s website (www.BudPowellBio.com), from October, 2012.
About the Author:
Howard Mandel is an author, media and events producer,
editor, educator, lecturer and president of the Jazz Journalists
Association.
Bud Powell's music has often been described as adapting Charlie
Parker's bebop style to the piano. Other jazz authorities maintain that
Bud was an originator, along with
Parker and Gillespie, of the jazz style known as bebop. All agree
that Bud is the father of modern jazz piano. Bud was trained in
classical music as a child and his
classical background plays a role in the harmonic sophistication of
his music. He was also intimately familiar with the early jazz piano
style known as stride and one can recognize
this element, sometimes quite explicitly, in Bud's playing. But the
main characteristic of Bud's original piano style is a lightning fast
right hand that expresses on the
piano what up to Bud's time had only been possible on a horn.
Bud was also a composer of approximately fifty tunes of great
originality. Many of his greatest recordings are of his own compositions
like "Tempus Fugit," "Bouncing with Bud,"
"Dance of the Infidels," "Hullucinations," "Celia," "Oblivion," and
many others.
"No one could play like Bud; too difficult, too quick, incredible!"
– THELONIOUS MONK
"If I had to choose a single musician according to his artistic merit
and the originality of his creation, but also for the greatness of his
work, it would be Bud Powell. Nobody could measure up to him."
– BILL EVANS
"He was the foundation out of which stemmed the whole edifice of
modern jazz piano. Every jazz pianist since Bud either came through him
or is deliberately attempting to get away from playing like him."
– HERBIE HANCOCK
"Bud was the most brilliant that a spirit might be, a unique genius in our culture."
– MAX ROACH
"Bud is a genius."
– CHARLIE PARKER
"He laid down the basis of modern jazz piano."
– DIZZY GILLESPIE
"Bud is a genuine genius."
– DUKE ELLINGTON
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Comments about Bud from endorsements of Carl Smith's book:
"In the early fifties I worked with Bud Powell at Birdland in New
York City. We did not communicate verbally very much, but we listened
intently to each other. . . . Bud
knew how to reach the inspirational part of his mind; and when he was
at his peak, his performances were absolute perfection in every
respect. If this book helps to explain
Bud Powell and his influence on generations of pianists who followed
him, it will have done a great service toward the understanding of jazz
and the illumination of an
enigma, Bud Powell, a legendary figure in jazz history."
–DAVE BRUBECK
"Bud Powell was an iconoclast, as unique in his own way as Thelonious
Monk. A lot of my own style comes from what I learned playing with Bud .
. . Bouncing with
Bud explores all Bud Powell's recordings in a very readable way. I
highly recommend it as a way for all jazz lovers to more fully
appreciate the music of this incomparable artist."
– CLARK TERRY
"I knew Bud from Birdland tour days and had the privilege of playing
with him at the Blue Note in Paris in 1960. Although Charlie Parker was
the man, Bud was the role
model for a clearer understanding of chromaticism and harmonic
possibilities in bebop as well as the impetus of forward motion - and
incessant drive and exquisite lyricism.
This book is a lover of this important artist. The book is great. I
loved it. Bravo! Bravo! "
– PHIL WOODS
A book by CARL SMITH
Foreword by CHICK COREA
Covers every recording ever made by Bud Powell, over 800 tracks in
all, as well as information on videos, a bibliography, a biographical
sketch, and 75 pictures. High-quality paperback, 175 pages, 6 x 9
inches.
Born in 1924, Bud's earliest musical experiences occurred when jazz
was emerging as a major force in music. Louis Armstrong was making his
landmark recordings, Jelly Roll Morton was breaking new ground on the
piano,
and the great stride pianists like Fats Waller and James P. Johnson
inspired the young Art Tatum to a level of virtuosity unprecedented in
the world of piano jazz. Bud's own father was a stride pianist and band
leader
so Bud was steeped in the new music of jazz from the beginning.
A book by PETER PULLMAN
Peter Pullman's extraordinary chronicling of Bud Powell's fabulous,
dramatic rise and fall as the modern jazz pianist, told with the
colorful surroundings of the Harlem, midtown Manhattan, and
Paris nightclub milieux, is now available. To read a generous excerpt
from "Wail: The Life of Bud Powell," and to learn how to order the
book, go to
www.BudPowellBio.com
This excerpt, from chapter four, picks up Powell’s story after
his appearance as a sideman on a number of modern-jazz record dates in 1946.
(The e-book includes extensive, scholarly endnotes—though those pertaining
to what follows are not available at this website.)
A contrast will be seen between this first episode, which includes
Thelonious Monk and others, exchanging ideas informally, and a later one,
which narrates the recording session that was led by Charlie Parker.
The excerpt ends with some musing on Powell’s striving for fame in
this period.
Please respect this writing by crediting it when reproducing
it.
The parallel world, of the times when musicians
just hung out together and shared musical ideas, was a much larger one than
that in which the records were made or the nightclub gigs took place. In
Powell’s universe of music thought, felt, and created, the record
dates especially were discrete, even distant objects. They are seen in closeup
today because they were preserved while the more frequent, intimate occurrences
have moved far off, undetected as they were by technological device.
There were countless nights that Powell spent revolving around close colleagues
and friends—and this was where creativity was in constant if elliptical
motion. Of course in this closed system, when he was available, Powell was
in orbit around Monk, who shone on him, and on everyone else, such intelligence
that everyone tilted towards his light.
A favorite refuge where this kind of creative exchange took place was in
the Bronx, at the well-appointed railroad apartment of Fern Daly. She was
a quiet, attractive, aspiring singer who was married to an older, well-off
man. He never appeared in the far room of their apartment, a big living
room where she had put a baby grand piano. In fact, she had three children,
but they never appeared in the back room, either. The door to the room was
always shut; the place was strictly for music.
The Daly residence was a salon for modern ideas. The room even had its
own exit, should guests need to enter or leave quickly or unnoticed. Daly
loved to greet musicians in silk clothes and make them comfortable, too.
She was acquainted with Gillespie, though she preferred her Bronx neighborhood
to the more commercial Fifty-second Street scene. Musicians felt safe at
Daly’s to be themselves, to get high, and to stay as long as they
wanted. Musicians who turned up understood that nearest to Monk in this group were
Elmo Hope and Powell. There was as well a fourth pianist with new ideas,
Al Walker, a shy Bronx resident who belonged in their musical company but
didn’t stick with music, and who later made a living repairing television
sets.
The piano chair constantly rotated amongst these four: As soon as Hope
finished playing, Powell jumped up to play Hope’s idea but put his
stamp on it. Walker got a taste after that, and then maybe Monk took the
piano and said with his playing: Well, I do it this way. But there
was no cutting, no challenging. “Guys played for love; beautiful scene,”
says Walker. “You could play there all night. There was a
catholic church next door. One time they asked us to tone it down. But another
time the priest, [a Frenchman named Bouchier,] came up to listen. And he
played a little, too.”
Walker says: “You had to pick up things from Thelonious—he
didn’t show them. He experimented a lot with quarter-tones and half-tones.
Bent notes. You could learn a lot from him if you really listened. But he
didn’t show you.” Monk’s refusal to show followed
from his maxim, that if a musician couldn’t hear what Monk was doing,
how was he going to play it? Monk had no interest in explaining to those
who’d demonstrated they hadn’t been listening (or couldn’t
hear).
Powell, too, wasn’t about showing anyone there how he played, Walker
says. “He put on an exhibition, play[ed] real fast. But he always
did that: He’d play so fast you’d think he was showin’
off, but he’s only [playing as his ideas dictate].”
Walker is adamant about correcting a longheld view of Powell:
I never thought
that Bud was crazy. Never . . . . Just because he put on an act? Do you
think that Monk was crazy? No? Well, Bud used to do the same things that
Monk did. That used to be the thing with that little group of musicians,
to act crazy. They were actors, good actors. When they had to give respect,
they could switch it on [and] turn off the craziness.
Walker hosted some similarly informal sessions, but he admits that Daly’s
piano was much better than his and was therefore the more popular place
to experiment. Drugs were cool at Daly’s, though he says that in deference
to her and her children, no heroin was done there. In fact, Monk, Hope,
and Powell wouldn’t shoot heroin at Walker’s place, either,
in part because they hadn’t the luxury there of a secluded room for
that and for the piano.
Walker is still willing to have his talent demeaned in order not to be
associated with the other three and their drug use too closely, as much
as he admired them. Many musicians are clear about this divide in their
ranks: Those that got involved with narcotics and those that didn’t.
On the one hand these survivors say with some regret that they were made
to feel square, and might have lost out on gigs, because they wouldn’t
do what the others did; on the other hand they say that as a matter of pride
they wanted no part of it. Walker says: “You couldn’t enter
their world unless you were willing to do what they did.”
Walker suggests that Powell more than Monk or Hope had two sides to him.
One was the quiet genius. But the other side he didn’t like: “You
never knew how he’d be [from moment to moment].” He won’t
say that Powell was mean—but he won’t say that he had the kind
heart that Monk had. Once, when Powell needed money to score drugs, he stole
some shirts from Walker in order to sell them. Monk, Walker says, never
did that. No matter how much he needed to score, he had too much pride to
steal.
Yet the connection between obsessive, unpredictable behavior and heroin
use—as opposed to the desperation exhibited in trying to obtain the
drug—can’t be explained facilely. Powell, admitted his frequent
bassist, Curly Russell, didn’t behave as expected when he was on heroin:
“That’s a funny thing about him. Bud used drugs, but he had
himself under control. But the minute he drank alcohol, he’s in trouble.
. . . [H]e became belligerent behind alcohol.”
But more often, Walker says, Powell’s energy was unleashed with respect
to his music—or even to someone else’s: “He’d be
sitting in your house, playing your piano, and somebody would come in, saying:
‘I was just [up the street], and I heard this really good pianist.’
And Bud would jump up, ready to leave. He couldn’t stand the idea
that anybody could play better than him.”
Bassist Julian Euell was just a teenager when he started showing up at
Daly’s salon. To him, Daly, a bit older than he, was exotic; he called
her Dragon Lady. He was part of what he calls the second wave of bebop players—a
group that included tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins at times, though he
was more advanced musically than the others; alto saxophonist Jackie McLean;
and pianist Walter Bishop. They were there just to learn what the masters
were doing. Euell says: “No one played the bass [or any other instrument].
It was a pianists’ salon. I was just a bass-holder in those days,
[anyway]—I had no idea what they were doing.” 1
There was as well a mystique, a nonmusical language that the pianists used,
Euell says. He confirms what Walker says, that Monk, Hope, and Powell shared
gestures.
At the time the guys had a communicating style, where they would
[just] suggest things. They had certain body movements, sign language, codes
. . . . A lot of people emulated Thelonious’s language, his style.
The strange movements, [suddenly jumping up from the piano], the mysterioso
stuff . . . we all started doing it. We started saying [cryptic] things,
just a word or two, then rearing back and saying: “Ya dig?”
It was like theater.
Euell, sitting on the floor of this salon in awe of these geniuses, was
an outsider—not only looking in but up at these pianist–creators.
He was jealous not only of their enormous individual techniques but of their
intense yet noncompetitive camaraderie. They never talked there of gigs
that they were hoping for; there was no talk of one “cutting”
another (pace the Harlem-piano tradition of the previous generation,
of all-night contests in bars or apartments). To the younger players such
as Euell, who listened and watched, it was as if they had been allowed to
sit in on a faculty meeting of top professors. These masters were “pushing
out, new ideas, a new style . . . and they knew it. They knew they were
on to something . . . .”
As uncompetitive as Monk, Hope, and Powell were, their superior talent
couldn’t but put them on a higher level. Even among pianists, their
superiority was felt. Pianist Art Simmons noticed this, years later, when
he and some other musicians tried to have a casual conversation with Powell:
“He was with you but then he wasn’t with you. He wasn’t
spacing out . . . but he was a genius, he was on another level. [When we
spoke of music] he may have been laughing at us, at some of the things that
we said about it.”
Where the conversation was confined to playing the piano and exchanges
of gestures, such as went on at Daly’s, however, there was no laughing—not
of the cruel kind, anyway. There, words didn’t matter. It was Monk
who, as first among equals in this nonverbal world, provided the daring.
He did things that he knew to be different, but he did them because he knew
what he was doing. And that enabled the others, starting with Hope and Powell,
first to dare as Monk did, then to dare on their own.
_____________________________ 1Walker says
that occasionally a bass was played, and that sometimes Little Benny Harris
pulled out his trumpet. Though Harris was a great reader, he was also, at
this time, a terrific improviser. Though Walker adds: “Playing real
bebop trumpet was very hard; he [mostly] played legato.”
By 1947 there was such diversity emerging in music that bebop revolution,
the catch phrase of the time (and since), couldn’t come near categorizing
it. The following diverse talents were working or trying to get an outlet
for their ideas: Tadd Dameron, Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan, and George Russell,
among those making major contributions as arranger–composers; and
Joe Albany, Erroll Garner, Al Haig, Sadik Hakim, Elmo Hope, John Lewis,
Herbie Nichols, George Shearing, and Lennie Tristano, among those known
primarily as pianists. Then there were such diverse big bands as those of
Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Boyd Raeburn, and Claude Thornhill.
These musicians not only brought their various backgrounds to their playing
but sought disparate influences, many of which were outside jazz altogether—further
increasing the permutations of what was being created. Many of these artists
were listening to Bartók, Hindemith, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky. Russell
wrote a piece, “A Bird in Igor’s Yard” (which got recorded
in ’49), which was only one way that two of many disparate worlds
could meet.
When the January 1947 Metronome released its annual readers’-poll
results, to reflect the achievements in jazz of ’46, Bud Powell placed
twenty-ninth in the piano category. Nat “King” Cole came in
first, Teddy Wilson finished second, and Art Tatum was third. Although twenty-ninth
wasn’t a very good showing for the performer whom musicians already
knew had dazzling technique and a slew of ideas for original compositions,
only two bebop pianists finished ahead of him. Haig placed fifteenth, and
Tristano, who had an original conception that cognoscenti understood as
a radical departure even from bebop, finished seventeenth. (Charlie Parker,
according to the fans, had yet to establish his clear dominance on his instrument,
finishing third to Johnny Hodges and Willie Smith; in fact, the only bebop
player to place first in his category was Gillespie.)
The argot and some of the affectations of bebop were finding their way
into select jazz fans’ speech and gestures, but when the masses voted,
they still preferred the established swing stars.
Powell had been appearing live in a group that called itself Jazz in Be-Bop
on Sunday afternoons at Club Sudan (at 640 Lenox, at 142nd Street, on the
site of one of the former incarnations of Cotton Club) from at least December
1946. Rudy Williams and Artie Phipps joined this crusading group in early
’47. It appeared at Small’s Paradise for its Blue Monday Jam
in early March, and then it began a short tour of one-nighters on the East
Coast. Little Benny Harris was in the band for the tour.2
___________________________ 2 Powell played,
a little earlier, in another combo that charged itself with championing
bebop. Called Three Bips and a Bop, and led by comic singer Babs Gonzales—whose
wordless vocals mimicked the rhythmic and tonal experiments of the horn
instrumentalists—their monicker claimed to be presenting Bop for the
People. Powell played in this group at such venues as Minton's Play House,
where it was sometimes joined by tap dancer Baby Laurence. By the time that
it recorded, though, Powell had been replaced by Tadd Dameron.
Before it left on the tour, Jazz in Be-bop appeared at Club Sudan as Bud
Powell Sextet. The date was March 16, and it was one of the first professional
appearances that Powell made as the leader of a combo. (While becoming known
among some of the high-profile musicians who played on Fifty-second Street,
his work there was exclusively as a sideman.) The evening’s groups
included a battle of the saxes (tenors Eddie Davis and Morris Lane), as
well as a combo that was led by Dinah Washington and one by Joe Guy. But
Powell’s group (Harris, Williams, Steve Pulliam on trombone, Phipps,
and Charlie Simon on drums) got equal billing. Powell had, though, already
had a few brief engagements, at small venues, in Harlem as a solo act. By
now he had gotten others to call him the Earl of Harlem, which got him attention
but which many musicians found obnoxious.
On one such solo occasion in 1946, the last year that Club Baron operated
(at 132nd Street and Lenox Avenue), Powell gave an afternoon recital. Julian
Euell played opposite in a combo.
Bud took the microphone and asked: “Where are all the people?!”
The bandstand was kind of high, and I remember [looking up at] Bud saying:
“There should be an airplane in the sky, writing: BUD POWELL IS
APPEARING AT THE CLUB BARON!” Yeah, people would laugh, but [they]
also were saying: “Oh, God . . . .” He would do audacious stuff like that. . . . He was saying: “Where’s
my audience? Don’t they know that I’m here?” People
would just blow it off, say that he was a little far out.
* * * *
Bud Powell’s appearance in a recording studio on May 8, 1947 was
his first for eight months, and his only one in the studio in that year.
It was done, though, for Charlie Parker, and it remained the only recording
date that the two did together. The session was the chance that Powell had
missed in November ’45—and for Savoy, the small label that was
bebop’s champion.
Bebop had already been recorded, for Victor, a major label. But it was
Savoy that took the risk, repeatedly, to gather young musicians who were
looking to do something new with their art—although the recording
process as Savoy practiced it was a compromise development.
The established record companies, which predated the war, weren’t
interested in risking capital on a new music in 1945, especially one that
had at first no champions in the music press. The times did, however, enable
a number of people who wanted to start record labels to operate. Some of
them had little concern with what the artists were trying to do; their only
concern was with keeping the musicians within the union-imposed three-hour
studio limit, so that there would be no overtime costs. More important,
these producers didn’t want to pay the royalties that were required
when artists recorded already copyrighted songs. (The copyright laws dictated
that one cent of every record sold was paid to the composer, and one cent
was paid to his publisher.)
So when an adventurous composer, one who was looking to get credit for
his creation, borrowed the chord changes of an established popular song,
or he created a new variation on the 12-bar blues, he served both his and
the company’s ends: He got credited for an original work, and no royalties
had to be paid on the copyright of an existing song. This the composer did
sometimes without recourse even to music paper.
Once the “new” song had been titled (often by the company,
without even the artist’s input), the label offered the artist the
chance to license the work through its own company, which would function
as well as music publisher. In exchange, the artist got a small advance
against royalties. Advance is a misnomer, as rarely did any money
flow thereafter from producer to artist, regardless of how well the song
sold.
Parker was the creative avatar of this kind of musical production. He “could
play pretty much what he liked and get quick money up front”, as Parker
scholar James Patrick wrote. Parker created off the top—sometimes
not even producing as much as rough melodic sketches before entering the
studio to record. In such cases he just communicated verbally to his sidemen
what he wanted.
Parker returned to New York in spring 1947 after a troubled fifteen months
of trying to play on the West Coast. Sadik Hakim, from the November ’45
date, said that he and Powell went to see Parker on his first day in New
York. Powell was still in thrall to Parker musically but, when Parker tried
to hum his new, challenging tune, a frustrated Powell suddenly broke concentration
to slap him in the face. Parker grabbed Powell by the shoulders but then
let him go without retaliating, laughing off the hurt.
It was one of many such documented confrontations between the two geniuses—and
in nearly every one, it was Parker who eased the tension by backing down.
He might have already decided to hire Powell for the upcoming Savoy date,
so he wasn’t going to give the slap a second thought. (Or he just
accepted that Powell couldn’t be held to the same behavior standard
as were other people.) For Miles Davis, Tommy Potter, and Max Roach, the May 8 session was the
first of five crucial studio dates in 1947–48 with Parker, for Savoy
and for Dial, which was another label dedicated to recording bebop. These
musicians were working out their new ideas regularly at Three Deuces, Onyx
and, by 1948, Royal Roost (a different kind of venue, which was thought
to be “a little piece of Harlem downtown” as it had afram waiters
and encouraged aframs to enter).
Parker’s sidemen were exploring not just those concepts that he had
rightly been given credit for. The trumpeter, bassist, and drummer were
playing constantly, with other bandleaders as well, in an experimental atmosphere
of musical salugi. Davis, for one, soon led his own groups in these
clubs and in rehearsals, trying other ideas that eventually led him in other
directions.
Powell, on the other hand, though he had been busy in the studios and on
the Street in 1946, had been much less active outside Harlem in the last
half year or so. He made no record dates and appeared infrequently in the
clubs. While he must have remained eager to lead his own gigs, he had to
have recognized that recording for Parker was a step up, even if his vanity
didn’t let him admit that to anyone.
For the May 8 date, Parker’s instincts had him choose, off the top,
three original themes that were very difficult to play—among the most
challenging pieces of his combo-leading career: “Donna Lee”
(most likely Davis’s tune, based on the standard, “Back Home
in Indiana”), the contrapuntal “Chasin’ the Bird”
(based on the chords of George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm”),
and a clever use of the blues, “Cheryl”. Powell, though, wasn’t
at all thrown by the repertoire; he handled the challenge exceedingly well.
And on the fourth tune of the date, a more repetitive, riff-based blues,
“Buzzy”, Powell really shone.
“Donna Lee” is “one of the most perverse of bop heads,
[one of] the tunes that outdo most possible improvisations on their changes”,
according to academic Douglass Parker.
That Davis had chosen for the first
composition of his career to be recorded one that he couldn’t play
was one of many ironic things that emerged about the performance. The piece
had long been assumed to have been written by Charlie Parker, as he was
credited as the composer on the 78.
Powell quickly finds appropriate, unobtrusive accompaniment for Parker
and Davis on “Donna Lee” (even finding subtle variations in
his choice of chords from take to take). He is not given much solo space
on any of the takes. On the third complete take he gets his best solo but
barely finishes eight bars before the ensemble returns.
Evident is his characteristic striking hard of the first note in a flurry,
allowing the succeeding notes to roll off his hand.
Powell, though, steals a chance to shine on “Buzzy”—though,
on the take with his best solo, he gets cut short after twelve bars (the
take winds up a half-minute shorter than the first complete take). Powell
also finds the beats where the horns breathe to insert jocular chord fills,
which might have been taken by the others as sarcasm. He saves his most
subversive accompaniment, though, for the final ensemble.
Powell managed to make himself heard on the session, though it was, Patrick
surmised, “generally rough and disturbingly tense”, which had
only partially to do with the Parker–Powell dynamic. In fact, Parker,
excepting his September 1948 Savoy recording of “Ah-Leu-Cha”,
“never again attempt[ed] such challenging thematic material at a recording
session”.
Davis wrote in his autobiography that he and Roach had always preferred
Powell to Duke Jordan, whom Parker had chosen for his first return engagement
in New York the month before, at Three Deuces:
Bird couldn’t get [Bud,] though, because Bud and Bird didn’t
get along. Bird used to go by Monk’s house and try to talk to Bud,
but Bud would just sit there and not say anything to him. [. . .] Bird would
beg him to join the group, and Bud would just look at him and drink. He
wouldn’t even smile at Bird.
Powell’s refusal to talk to Parker cost him the chance to join the
latter’s quintet when it settled in again at Three Deuces in summer
1947. But if there was any resentment in this period, it should have been
Parker’s towards Powell. It was Powell who had stood up Parker at
the November ’45 Savoy date. Even though Parker wasn’t the type
to hold such grudges (considering his reputation for showing up),
Powell’s behavior toward him was the height of self-destructiveness.
Whatever he felt that Parker had done to him in the past, he could have
relented here and become part of the history-making quintet. Maybe he was
close to relenting when Parker stopped begging him. How differently things
would have turned out if Powell had changed his mind—perhaps if Parker
had asked him one more time.
Bud Powell had been featuring the standard
song “All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm” in his sets for much
of 1949, when he was active in the New York City nightclubs on Fifty-second
Street. Bassist Curly Russell, a regular member of Powell’s trio then,
recalled decades later:
We’d come in in the winter time. It’s cold outside.
And we open up, the first set Bud would jump right down [andsay]: “All
God’s Chillun Got Rhythm”. Racehorse temperature (sic). And
he’d play that for twenty minutes. When he finished that, he’d
go into “Cherokee”. He’d come in cold—no warmup,
nothin—and your fingers are flyin . . . . It got so [that] when I
finished the number, I’d have to peel my fingers off the bass. They
would get cramped in that position [to] where they wouldn’t open.
And he’d do that, he’d start playin, and [then] the time [would]
be up and he wouldn’t want to come down. And the usual thing [was],
we’d get up and walk off the stand; he’d keep on playing.
Russell said that Powell’s continuing onstage alone was no act.
He gave Powell all the credit for being just completely engaged with his
own virtuosity. Further, he felt that the audience had come to expect this.
Yet it wasn’t a rote routine; Powell meant it, every time that he
did it.
At other times, though, Powell walked off the stage in the middle of his
set, leaving the musicians who played in support of him to finish by themselves.
At still other times, at set’s end, he apologized to the audience
for what he thought was the substandard level of his sidemen’s play—to
their astonishment.
“They get away with murder,” Russell said of such geniuses.
“When you see the beautiful side of them, and what they can produce,
musically, you have to go along with them.” When Powell dug in at
the keyboard and poured out seamless yet intricate solos, Russell said:
“[A]ll was forgiven. It had to be. If you played music or you loved
music—all is forgiven.”
* * * *
No musician of Bud Powell’s era had such capacity for improvisatory
excellence and was so ready to unleash it, instantly, in such concentrated
form onstage. And no nightclub celebrity of any type was less available
to his public offstage, especially to explain what he’d done or how
he’d been able to do it.
This book is the story, then, of the least reluctant performer—but
one whose anomie surfaced from the moment that he left the stage, and whose
discomfort was only alleviated again with his next appearance behind the
keyboard. Wail: The Life of Bud Powell is an unsentimental biography—not
hagiography—of a major jazz artist. It’s based as much on an
exhaustive look at the public record and press on Powell, as it is on eyewitness
accounts of his live performances and on personal opinions of his private
life—in addition to subjective assessments of his studio recordings.
The book treats all of these accounts as so many pathways to understanding
the central paradox of the musically explosive yet emotionally impassive
Powell: How could he have played with such rhythmic euphoria (and romantic
feeling!) and, yet, seldom if ever have allowed anyone to see the physical
and psychic pain that he was often enduring?
While I don’t flinch from examining with discernment the era or
reporting with candor Powell’s antisocial behavior, I’ve striven
in the early chapters to place him as much as possible in the company of
other great musicians. I celebrate those whom the emerging artist looked
to for inspiration, as any book that chronicles the jazz life must begin
with an examination of the world that musicians made for themselves, both
in the heat of collective interplay and afterward, when they were between
sets or gigs, or on tour. So many ideas that contributed to the emergence
of modern jazz, in the Forties, were developed offstage, in conversations
that took place wherever two or more musicians met.
As well, where I’ve based my narration on Powell’s private
associations, I only reported what his fellow musicians and intimate fans
have recalled for me. I don’t pretend to have been there for any of
it.
I have concluded, though, that the hours spent with musicians were Powell’s
happiest, and that no one’s company gave him more pleasure (as well,
of course, as direct inspiration) than did Thelonious Monk’s. As they
soloed on the same instrument and, in their early years, in the same Harlem
nightclubs—and were both advancing the language of music—I see
their extraordinary cross- pollination as comparable to that of King Oliver
and Louis Armstrong.
* * * *
Bud Powell’s playing life changed in the early Fifties, though.
For all the musical bonhomie that he’d engaged in as a promising musician,
he became established as a solo, improvising artist. He had a bassist and
drummer in support on almost all occasions, but he was promoted as a star
deserving of singular status. He had long devised beautiful solos without
regard for his rhythm support; if they couldn’t follow him, he went
ahead just the same. But in the early Fifties he became less concerned with
the paths in music that his fellow innovators were forging.
A discomfiting stare, which Powell often put on when in the company of
nonmusicians, was increasingly remarked on as his celebrity grew—though
he’d never liked to talk, even to musicians, if he deemed them to
be less serious about their art than he was. But onstage as well, he showed
little interest in indicating, to his sidemen, what tune he was going to
play. He sometimes did likewise in the recording studio. This reluctance was in part due to some desperate need that Powell had
always had, to cling to his instrument as the default spokesman for his
self and his soul. It came, as well, from the confidence that what he did
was the result of the decade of classical training that he’d had in
his youth. Musical explanations were, he felt, a waste of time; how could
anyone understand what it took him so long to master?
Powell had another reason to talk only reluctantly about what he did at
the piano and why. The new music that he and others had promulgated since
the early Forties was characterized in the press as a wholesale rejection
of the musical status quo, swing music. These modernists were, it said,
jettisoning the rhythmic and melodic conventions that had made jazz so danceable.
So all that they were experimenting with, including unorthodox chord intervals,
was given a catchall epithet—bebop.
The press initially used the term only sarcastically.
Yet for all of the obstacles that the modernists faced, and those that
specifically constrained Powell, he had been lucky to be born in the midst
of Harlem’s great artistic ferment. He was just old enough to have
witnessed, in speakeasies and other informal settings near his home, all
of the great masters on his instrument. Drawn to Harlem as the center of
such musical activity, and through their constant competing with each other,
these performers displayed, for a discriminating and select audience, the
entire history of jazz piano in epic solo battles that lasted all night.
Once Powell had absorbed all of this, his will to greatness was driven
by the courage not just to better these acknowledged titans technically
but to lay out, on the keyboard, his unique, improvised solos— at
the brightest tempos—to best even his contemporary rivals. “‘I’ve
got somethin’,’” he told another young pianist, “‘they
can’t get.’”
From the Harlem crucible of experimentation, which peaked in the early
Forties, Powell and his fellow modernist innovators eventually brought their
music to a wider public. As the postwar era began, they started appearing
in nightclubs all over New York City and in other major cities in the US,
and then they brought their various modern approaches to the major cities
of western Europe and, eventually, everywhere else that jazz was reaching.
So, wherever in the world small-group modern jazz is heard today, no matter
the kind of nightclub, the pianist is going to play some Bud Powell during
his or her set.
* * * *
With this biography I wasn’t satisfied to elaborate an enthusiastic
chronicle of Bud Powell’s performances, even if they had yielded a
natural, narrative arc—from prodigy to early collaboration to recognition
to solo stardom to mature celebrity to decline to death.
For one thing, Powell’s career doesn’t describe a typical
arc. He did rise quickly to preeminence among modern-jazz pianists, attaining
stardom in the prominent midtown nightclubs within four years of his first
professional appearances in Manhattan. And within just two more years, he
had recorded as the leader of his own trio with the two companies with which
his repertoire’s legacy is most secure.
No performing artist created as enduring a legacy within a shorter time.
In fact, Powell’s appearance in a general reference work, Webster’s
Biographical Dictionary—wherein are listed kings, generals, inventors,
and theologians—is predicated on the fame that he’d achieved,
starting from anonymity, in those six years. At the end of that time, he
was twenty-six.
But the arc that jazz lives have famously drawn, of precocious talent
and early fame followed closely by steep decline or early death, was not
Powell’s—even if his life has almost always been characterized
as tragic. He had a second act. His artistic decline was gradual, with the
ratio of great to acceptable performances, a dozen or more years after his
1949–51 peak, high enough to bring out crowds at the clubs where he
appeared. This second (and third?) act lasted two and a half times as long
as had his first.
What never diminished at all in Powell, however, was the necessity he
felt to hold his audience rapt— making them desperate to hear, even
well past his prime, what genius might suddenly erupt from the piano. In
all of the accounts that musicians and spectators gave me was the image
of a truly uncompromising solo artist, one who played his music with the
same intensity whether it was 6 p.m. or a.m., whether what was before him
was a parlor upright or a concert grand, and whether he was fifteen or forty
years of age.
From the moment that Powell entered a venue, he saw nothing but the piano,
blotting out everyone and everything around him. He was determined to play
the instrument, whether he was invited to or not. And once he commandeered
the piano stool, he fought, with his inventive solos, never to give it up.
* * * *
In researching Bud Powell, I first shadowed his goings-to and comings-from
the famed nightclubs that he appeared in and the now-legendary studio sessions
that he made. I then plotted these movements, creating an itinerary of his
professional life. But the more that I learned of his personal life, the
more I realized that I had to shadow him in his goings and comings in it,
too. For one thing, he existed in a world where alcohol and narcotics were
omnipresent. And the consequences of his abuse of them were severe, adversely
affecting his opportunities to play.
For almost a decade, from the mid-Forties to the mid-Fifties, society often
saw fit to dispense with Powell, either by involuntarily incarcerating him
in hospitals or stripping him of his right to play in clubs. These were
the outcomes of court hearings—which Powell chose to ignore, wasn’t
aware of, or couldn’t comprehend. (He did have the eventual good fortune
to be represented by an attorney, Maxwell Cohen who, along with Thelonious
Monk, had the most salutary impact on Powell’s life.)
His time in institutions, as a consequence of the former outcome, amounted
to three and a half years in this period. These years haven’t been
left out of my narrative; in fact, they create a parallel to the one that
jazz fans know, of his great records and thrilling live appearances.
These hospitalizations were cruelly reported in the press. They were also
spread as gossip, in and around the clubs; some of these rumors, it turned
out, had been wholly invented. But once word got around that Powell had
just been released from or was about to return to the hospital, spectators
eagerly looked for signs of emotional improvement or, more often, decay.
They made amateur pronouncements of his psychological state and incorporated
them in their assessments of his musical abilities.
This kind of sordid opining appeared in reviews of Powell’s work.
Critics felt comfortable guessing what his mental state was. For this treatment,
Powell’s only true comparators in his time were Billie Holiday and
Charlie Parker, about whom as well old myths are still believed (and new
ones still being created).
Yet, for better or worse, the nightclub was where Powell was found most
of the time, where he repaired to no matter his emotional condition or employment
status.
And, so, this biography breathes that air most of all. Further, I give
life to Powell’s fans, those loyal people who came to see him play,
as their enthusiasm fueled Powell’s fire, no matter how much he seemed
the aloof, singular performer. Beyond that, though, I look at the complex
interaction that existed between him and specific fans. And, most of all,
I illuminate the complicated relationship that Powell had with Francis Paudras,
which dynamic has already been the subject of a major biopic.
The other unfavorable outcome for Powell, his being intermittently denied
the chance to perform in clubs, was due to the peculiar restrictions that
existed in New York City during his heyday. In my appendix, I look at the
evolution, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, of police
interference with the livelihoods of those who worked in nightclubs—with
reference to the city’s charter and administrative code.
* * * *
My appreciation of Bud Powell’s art has only grown during the years
that I’ve listened, over and over, to his records, and throughout
my investigation of his life. But I admit that I learned only inchoately
what private happiness he’d found when he was not involved with music.
Intuiting what is in another’s mind is, anyway, a dangerous undertaking—even
for a biographer. Those few who felt that they knew Powell well wanted me
to believe that he was “all music”, so they offered little insight
into his life offstage. I’ve documented his time in psychiatric institutions,
but I make no effort to confer my own analysis on him.
This part of my narrative concerns more the social and economic currents
that ran through the lives of jazz performers in mid-twentieth-century New
York City—even those currents that Powell did all that he could to
ignore.
Thus, this is a political book. It looks to explain how one of the most
exciting art forms coexisted, at one of the world’s great centers
for entertainment, with the harsh realities that its performers had to endure.
And it looks to explain the particular obstacles that Powell faced—ones
that made a musician who’d played with him conclude, years later:
“Something within him made it work, even when everything else was
conspiring against him.”
I hope that those who know Powell’s music will find the facts of
his private life, hitherto unknown, illuminating. But I also hope that some
who don’t recognize the name Curly Russell, or don’t know what
took place in the heyday of the nightclubs on Fifty-second Street, will
want to learn about those times, and about the life of its most desperately
talented, uniquely expressive solo artist.
About the Author Peter Pullman While
my passion for jazz dates to my college years, I spent my early twenties working
in theatre. After that, I began a career in international civil service, in
Africa: I worked in Swaziland, in rural/community development, and in Sudan,
in refugee assistance. I also worked for a time at United Nations Development
Program in New York City.
I didn’t write about music till I was past thirty years of age,
when I became the first US correspondent for The Wire (UK). I then
wrote features for the annual issues of Village Voice that were
devoted to jazz. My involvement with the music business followed, in the
Nineties. For seven years I was part of a small creative team at Verve Records
that produced, for issue on CD, that label's classic LP releases. Among the more ambitious projects was a five-CD set of Bud Powell's music.
For it, I wrote and edited a 150-page booklet about him. I conducted more
than a dozen interviews, some with those who had played alongside him and
others with those who derived their inspiration from a distance. My work
was cited by NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences), in
the form of a nomination for a Grammy award. I then looked to how I might expand that work into a biography. The research
ended up comprising more than three hundred formal interviews and more than
five hundred informal ones. I went to Europe several times to do interviews, and other research, and
I wound up moving to Paris. (Okay . . . but only in part to live the charmed
life of an expatriate writer.) In 2004 I returned to live in Brooklyn, New
York, with Joan, the woman whom I then married. We live with two beautiful
cats and a lot of LPs and books.
As time has passed, my sense has grown more certain, that Bud Powell was
among a select group and at the forefront of a unique artistic movement—and
that nothing like him or it will ever be seen again. It has been my greatest
honor to learn what I could of his life and his art, and to write his biography. About Wail: The Life of Bud Powell Along with the moving recollections of musicians and fans who saw and
heard Bud Powell play, his recorded art sustained me as I sought to understand
his private life. I recognized from the start the need to interview MDs
and nurses, and to petition state courts and health administrations, in
pursuit of the truth of his life away from the nightclub stage and recording
studio. But investigating Powell’s life was a long undertaking—for
which loyal colleagues and friends often suspended their own concerns to
advise me. They were sympathetic listeners, strong counsel and, of course,
serious readers of the manuscript at all stages of its development. This help—and the electronic revolution in book publishing, which
has developed much like that in music recording—has given me the incentive
and courage to present Wail to the world. For ongoing commentary on Bud Powell, please visit my blog at thelifeofbudpowell.wordpress.com
Bud Powell pioneered bebop-style improvisation on the piano. Metronome/Getty Images
Ever wish you could travel back in time to New York's 52nd Street —
circa 1950, during the heyday of bebop — and whisper into Charlie
Parker, or Dizzy Gillespie, or Thelonious Monk's ear, and ask them: Who
was their favorite pianist to listen to? They would all give the same answer: Bud Powell.
The
story of Powell's extraordinary genius is often fantastically rendered
in jazz lore. His life was chaotic and improbable, but more often
misunderstood. Most often, his music was mesmerizing. In the new book Wail: The Life of Bud Powell,
biographer Peter Pullman breaks down the myths and mysteries, revealing
the complicated, sometimes tragic social circumstances that conspired
to vanquish Powell's art. But the book also emphasizes the brilliance of
a desperately uncompromising artist.
Pullman recently stopped by WBGO
to celebrate what would have been Powell's 88th birthday, joining
historian Dan Morgenstern to share notable recordings and excerpts from
his book. Here's a list of Pullman's five essential Bud Powell
recordings.
Along with the aforementioned legends, Powell was a
principal participant in the invention of bebop. There's no better way
to be introduced to this aesthetic than with Powell's debut recording
under his own name. The pianist seemingly can't express himself fast
enough in this explosion of notes and ideas. His lightning-quick and
linear phraseology is inimitable — and also the DNA of bebop.
Celia
from Jazz Giant
by Bud Powell
The story behind this 1949 session is one for the ages.
Powell, involuntarily incarcerated in a state hospital for most of the
past 15 months, begged for a day's leave so he could be rushed to the
studio, make this recording and be returned in time for dinner. Weeks
before the session, he was given permission to practice on the psych
ward's piano under one condition: He had to perform a Minstrel Show
benefit concert for the institution.
Un Poco Loco
from The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1
by Bud Powell
This was Powell's greatest studio performance in a trio.
It's a terrific example of how a jazz idea, conceived without strict
architecture or an ending, took shape only by the parallel creative
urges of Powell and drummer Max Roach, who ought to have been credited
as co-composer. This was the first take, of three, from the 1951
session.
Cleopatra's Dream
from The Scene Changes (The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 5)
by Bud Powell
This late-'50s gem unfortunately hasn't yet entered the
bebop canon. Powell's flair for virtuosic melodic runs had calmed a bit
by then, but the tune displayed a late flowering of his writing genius.
Hot House
from Bouncing with Bud [Delmark]
by Bud Powell
Powell's erratic behavior often tested the patience of New
York's nightclub owners. When those gigs dried up, he found refuge at
the Blue Note in Paris in 1959, where he drew full houses for two years.
He was eventually fired from there, but his European rebirth continued,
sustaining a long residency at Copenhagen's Café Montmartre. This 1962
recording was made in a Copenhagen studio, and though his skills had
diminished, he had no problem winning over the hearts of the Danes.
Is it a terrible thing to sound old when you are still young?
Narratives of artistic development often seek greatness in late style
that visionary realm explored as the struggles of the world recedes and
death approaches. Among the many musicians who were early in the next life rather than
late in this one was the great American pianist Bud Powell, whose death
in his native New York City at the age of only 41 came fifty years ago
this past Sunday. The moment passed without commemoration or much
remark, though the British journalist Richard Williams wrote a moving
and perceptive piece marking the occasion on his excellent blog, the Blue Moment. The assaults of racism and drugs aged many jazz musicians at a
viciously rapid rate. The autopsy of Charlie Parker, whose
transformations of jazz were abetted by Powell’s vital pianism from
Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem in the 1940s to the legendary 1953 concert at Massey Hall
in Toronto, judged the age of the thirty-four-year-old saxophonist to
be over 50. One could come to the same conclusion surveying live footage
from the 1960s of Powell, including that of a hugely enjoyable trio
session in Copenhagen’s famed Café Montmarte from
1962, when he was in his late thirties. Powell looks far older, even if
the coursing brilliance of the brisk bop he plays makes one think of
the fountain of youth rather than of the grave. However lively and joyful this music is he not only looks old but
also in comparison to his youthful velocity and incisiveness sounds old.
Even as he feasts on that bebop anthem Anthropology, a tune attributed
to Parker and another of Powell’s fellow modern jazz pioneers, trumpeter
Dizzy Gillespie, the pianist’s razor sharp figurations have been
blunted, the range of ideas shrunken, the mental invention thrumming in
his head clearly outpacing the ability of his fingers to translate it
instantaneously down at the ivories. With mouth open he hummingly groans a version of the racing figures
he imagines, but this background noise seems now to hold him back rather
than urge him on. Yet comparison of the state of his playing in 1960s with the
blistering genius of, for example, the 1949 recording of his minor-key
burner Tempus Fugue-It,should
not necessarily be a cause for despair at what so clearly has been
lost. His music sends grace and warmth into the smoke-filled Copenhagen
bar of 1962. These are not the same qualities often associated with the
rarefied difficulties of bop and of Powell in their earlier mutual
incarnations. Indeed, there is abundant glee and conviviality in his Montmarte
performance, an openness encouraged by Powell’s habit of positioning
himself on the piano bench turned slightly towards his audience, his
left foot rather than his right on the damper pedal. It is too easy to hear in the differing levels of technical
accomplishment a steep decline. Powell was by many accounts viciously
toppled from an even higher peak of virtuosity than that attained with
Tempus Fugue-It and other marvels of his mid twenties; in 1945 a drunken
Powell was beaten badly police in Philadelphia while on tour with
trumpeter Cootie William’s band. Those who knew and played with him
claimed that neither Powell nor his playing were ever the same after
that incident. What followed in the two decades that remained to him was
increasingly erratic behavior and, after the triumphs of the late 1940s,
uneven music. He had repeated and lengthy stints in mental hospitals
where he was even subjected to electric shock therapy. These
debilitations were amplified by the effects of his alcoholism. With his public appearances dwindling as a result of his
deteriorating mental health, Powell moved to Paris in 1959 where over
the next three years he lead a trio made up of another bop founding
father, the drummer Kenny Clarke, and the Frenchman Pierre Michelot on
bass. This is the trio heard on the 1963 Blue Note LP, Our Man in Paris,
fronted by another recently expatriated American jazz giant, tenor
saxophonist Dexter Gordon. Yet another refugee from American racism and
cultural indifference, pianist Kenny Drew, Gordon’s frequent European
collaborator in the years to come, was slated for the date, but when he
couldn’t make it, Powell was called upon. Powell would—or perhaps
could—only play jazz standards, so no originals were recorded on that
spring day in the CBS Studios in Paris. The proceedings open with Charlie’s Parker’s Scrapple from the Apple
from 1947, which already by 1963 must have seemed like the product not
just of another continent but another era entirely. Undaunted by the
past, the group gives the tune a fabulous freshness from the outset with
Gordon’s modal incantation beseeching bop gods to smile on the
expatriates. And smile they do. Gordon launches into a sprawling solo of
some eight choruses that range from scamperingly fleet to blustery
stretches of his characteristic out-of-time ironic humor. In the
aftermath of this mighty improvisation, a landmark of jazz as export
(and import back to the USA on the Blue Note vinyl), Powell seems barely
able to make it through his two choruses. They are just good enough,
but in wake of Gordon’s flagship, the pianist seems perpetually in
danger of capsizing. Powell’s work improves steadily (or perhaps “Scrapple” was recorded
late in the session and his endurance was frayed), and comes into crisp
focus on “A Night in Tunisia.” It’s an infusion of bop lifeblood that
has Powell rising up towards Gordon’s level. Whereas the tenor player sounds forth at the height of his powers,
full of still-youthful strength, Powell comes across as already on in
years, sometimes working to keep up rather than enjoying himself at
rejuvenating play. It comes as something of shock then to realize that
Gordon, who had turned forty just two months earlier, was the older man
by more than a year. It is great comfort, then, on the 2003 reissue of Our Man in Paris to be able hear the bonus trio track of Like Someone in Love.
Powell begins with a brittle slow introduction that owes much to his
friend Thelonius Monk’s simpler, more angular style. A welcoming
grandeur emerges from the musical recognition of newly imposed limits,
and there is pathos in the eruptions of flaming arpeggios that recall
past flights of daring. When Powell starts to swing with the trio he
does so in disarming tenor block chords rehearsing the tune again before
launching into his celebrated right-hand arabesques and jabs, the
phrase lengths and directions allows fabulously irregular and
unpredictable. Especially rewarding is the way you can hear him giving to and taking
from Clarke on the drums. As Peter Pullman so perceptively put it in
his 2012 biography of Powell, Wail, the pianist’s playing
partners “had to anticipate that paradoxical moment, when they should
assert their willingness to be led by him.” No was better at this than
Clarke. There is ease in this interactive performance that, in contrast
to the deeds of a not-too-distant youth, seems to stop time from fleeing
so fast. Powell returned to the United States in 1964. Many already feared he
did not have long. A concert at Carnegie Hall the following year was a
disaster, as his legal guardian Bernard Stollman, the founder of the
ESP-Disk label, put it: “His hands were bruised and bleeding from a fall
and he was unable to form chords.” The best recompense for the tapes of
this concert that Stollman recorded and mercifully destroyed is his
label multi-CD presentation of 1953 live recordings of Powell at Birdland on 52nd Street in Manhattan. In spite of the gulf between past greatness and present decline that
is so often stressed in Powell’s last years and premature death, there
is an undeniable bravery and beauty those performances such as his
“Parisian Like Someone in Love” that ennoble his late style come too
soon.
DAVID YEARSLEY is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His recording of J. S. Bach’s organ trio sonatasis available from Musica Omnia. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com
Bud Powell pioneered bebop-style improvisation on the piano. Metronome/Getty Images
The great bebop pianist Bud Powell
played several engagements at the New York jazz club Birdland in 1953.
Parts of his shows were broadcast on the radio, and one listener
recorded some onto acetate discs. A new collection of those recordings
is out now: Birdland 1953 on three CDs from ESP-Disk'. The sound quality isn't much, but the music is terrific. The players with whom he worked there include bassists Oscar Pettiford and Charles Mingus and drummer Roy Haynes. Powell
had played Birdland before he opened there on Feb. 5, 1953, but this
return engagement was a big deal. That very day, he'd been discharged
from a state psychiatric hospital, after being committed for a year and a
half following a drug bust. (Powell's mental troubles stemmed partly
from a 1945 police beating in Philadelphia.) He was painfully
uncommunicative face to face. But when he sat at the keys, it was a
whole other story.
As with other versions of this material, the sound only gets
cleaned up so far; filter out the surface noise and you also lose most
of the cymbals. But Powell's piano punches through. His quicksilver
lines could echo Charlie Parker's saxophone, breath pauses and all.
Still, Powell's concept was deeply pianistic — he knew how to make the
strings ring, and how to cover the keyboard. Older pianists accused
bebop players of performing with only one hand. But Bud Powell's jabbing
left is always part of the rhythmic conversation. A recent biography of the pianist, the exhaustively researched and thoroughly depressing Wail: The Life of Bud Powell
by Peter Pullman, spells out what a nightmare Powell's life was at the
time. While hospitalized, he was subjected to at least a dozen insulin
shock treatments. When he was released, it was into the custody of Oscar
Goodstein, his legal guardian and business manager, as well as the
manager of Birdland where Powell was appearing — shades of the old
plantation. Then Goodstein pushed Powell into a sham marriage to a woman
he barely knew. It didn't last, but Powell was hemmed in on all sides. Powell
named one evocative new tune "Glass Enclosure," either for the Birdland
radio announcer's booth near the stage, or the apartment his manager
warehoused him in, or maybe the invisible box that walled Powell off
like a trapped mime. You can understand why Powell so needed to play,
he'd nudge other pianists off the bench when he went club-hopping. The
keyboard was the only place where he could fully express himself. It
turned out that 1953 was one of Bud Powell's most productive years.
Besides his series of Birdland engagements, he had some out-of-town
gigs, including a celebrated Toronto concert that reunited him with his
bebop peers Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach. He also recorded a batch of material for the Roost and Blue Note labels, the latter released under the rubric The Amazing Bud Powell. The performances on Birdland 1953 confirm that that adjective was no idle boast.
Brian Priestley celebrates Bud Powell’s place at the forefront of modern jazz, revisits his achievements alongside Charlie Parker at the birth of bebop, and explores the darker side of Powell’s exceptional abilities, which saw him endure spells in psychiatric hospitals and periods taking hard drugs
You have to wonder why it is that Bud Powell only gets lip-service from most fans and even historians. Especially when fellow pianists all acknowledge how important he was. Not only did he have a host of contemporary imitators, but there’s copious evidence that he was much admired by his seniors – Monk, Hank Jones, even Art Tatum – and by younger pianists such as Evans, Tyner, Hancock and Corea. The last-named did a whole album dedicated to Bud two decades ago and, now thatKeith Jarrett has released a version of his tune ‘Dance Of The Infidels’, it’s official that jazz pianists idolise and emulate Powell.
Maybe we should also be listening to the non-pianists who worked with him, and observed him at his best. AsSonny Rollins put it recently, “I think he was a genius. When I was coming up, our prophet wasCharlie Parker, Charlie Parker was the guy. But Bud Powell, his improvisations were definitely on a par with Charlie Parker. If you’re thinking of the bebop style, Bud Powell was supreme. In fact, some people put him above Charlie Parker.” According to Jackie McLean (interviewed for Peter Pullman’s exhaustive Powell biography, Wail: The Life Of Bud Powell), in the late 1940s Sonny was one who held that point of view.
You only have to listen to a couple of live broadcasts where Powell and Parker played together – Complete Live At Birdland with Fats Navarro (RLR, 1950), or Summit Meeting At Birdland with Dizzy Gillespie (CBS, 1951) – to feel the force of the argument. Perhaps the competitive edge temporarily left both Bird and Bud on Jazz At Massey Hall, but the demonic drive and diamond-hard precision of his playing a couple of months earlier on the opening trio tracks of Powell’s Birdland1953 reissue (ESP-Disk) is a startling reminder of his abilities. And it was an up-tempo solo version of ‘Just One Of Those Things’ (Verve, 1951) that inspired drummer John Stevens to compare Bud with Albert Ayler and state that “He almost plays off the end of the piano.”
When you hear the fantastic intensity as well as the accuracy from this early period, it’s perhaps not surprising that he had a troubled history. Born the middle of three brothers in 1924 (the younger Richie played with – and died in the same road accident – as Clifford Brown), he was initially taught by his amateur pianist father. Bud’s tremendous facility inspired the father’s ‘classical’ ambitions and, along with his indulgent mother, created a teenager who believed he could do no wrong. After being taken under the wing of the more senior Thelonious Monk, Bud was soon into the world of alcohol and drugs and, according to bassist Curly Russell (quoted by Pullman), “Bud used drugs, but he had himself under control. But the minute he drank alcohol… he became belligerent.”
The first Verve session, which yielded four brilliant originals and two standards including a coruscating ‘Cherokee’, was made during a one-day release from the psychiatric hospital
The problem of the first drink being one too many persisted throughout his life, and may have been a factor when he was arrested and brutally beaten about the head by cops in 1945, while touring with the Cootie Williams band. This led to a spell in the notorious Bellevue Hospital, but worse followed when, after a couple of years of normal functioning back on the bebop scene, he was committed (following a bar-room fight) to an institution that, among other things, gave him electro-shock treatments. Powell then re-emerged on the scene for another couple of years, until the 1951 arrest alongside Monk on a possibly ‘planted’ drugs charge led to further institutionalisation. (A gruesome ‘first’, in Pullman’s book, is the detailed documentation of these events from police and hospital records.)
The publicity description of ‘The Amazing Bud Powell’ was never more justified than in the music made between these various confinements. Sideman dates for Savoy with Parker, Sonny Stitt and Dexter Gordon, his own trio dates for Clef/Verve, and the trios and quintets (with Fats Navarro and the young Sonny Rollins) for Blue Note and Roost are unfailingly impressive. Yet we’re lucky that some of these recordings were made at all. Pullman’s research reveals the first Verve session, which yielded four brilliant originals and two standards including a coruscating ‘Cherokee’, was made during a one-day release from the psychiatric hospital. And Rollins recounts the following incident:
“He was a very volatile person and, as you know, he had some mental problems. But unfortunately, back in those days, we used to use narcotics. I did have an experience with Bud, but he and I went to a place to use narcotics. It was up on the top floor of a tenement building in Harlem, with the needles and all of this paraphernalia. I was younger than Bud, so I was OK but, after Bud took his, he passed out. I ended up cradling his head and trying to get him to revive. My whole life came before me and, God, ‘if Bud Powell dies and he and I are together using drugs’ – it was just a nightmare scenario. It might have been after he was away for a while so, when he came back on the jazz scene, his body wasn’t used to the drugs, you know. You’re not healthy enough to get to do drugs – a funny turn of phrase. Anyway, as providence would have it, he came back to consciousness.”
The extraordinary composition ‘Glass Enclosure’ goes through four different emotional areas within 140 seconds – and with no improvisation whatsoever
As well as the tumultuous improvisations on standards which have come down to us from this period of Powell’s life, there should be far more attention paid to his original pieces (one of the positive points about the more recent book, The Amazing Bud Powell, by Guthrie Ramsey). There are numerous distinctive versions of the traditional AABA 32-bar song-form, such as ‘Wail’ (aka ‘Fool’s Fancy’), ‘Bouncing With Bud’ (aka ‘Bebop In Pastel’) or ‘Parisian Thoroughfare’, one of his few tunes to be covered by others – in this case, Clifford Brown and Max Roach. All are on Blue Note, as are the far more unusual ‘Glass Enclosure’ and the 1951 mambo ‘Un Poco Loco’, its theme employing polytonality and using voicings no one else used then, while its extended solo (like most latin montunos) is entirely modal. The extraordinary composition, ‘Glass Enclosure’ from 1953, not only has ‘slash-chords’ before slash-chords were invented but goes through four different emotional areas within 140 seconds – and with no improvisation whatsoever.
Listening to this piece brings to mind a phrase from the blog of pianist Liam Noble, concerning “the anger in Bud Powell’s music, anger that in his case was transformed into a kind of ecstatic energy.” If Powell’s playing became less intense and often less accurate after 1953, this may be related to the exclusive management of his career by the owners of Birdland, which included fixing him up with a female minder (his common-law wife Buttercup). Two brief forays to Europe in 1956-57 led to what seemed a new start involving residence in Paris, and a similar exclusive contract with the Blue Note club starting in 1959. It transpires that Val Wilmer, fellow photographer Tim Motion and I all made separate pilgrimages to see him there in the winter of 1960-61. My own recollection of nursing a drink through his three sets (opposite Kenny Clarke’s trio) was that the approximate, rather non-committal playing of the early evening became gradually more focussed as the night wore on. But the recollection of the distant, lost figure sitting at a table between sets is more indelible.
This Paris period, of course, was the inspiration for the movie Round Midnight, wherein Dexter Gordon re-enacts Powell’s life-story but with a saxophone. The film also has some fine music, including Bud’s tune ‘Una Noche Con Francis’, and walk-on parts for both Michael Cuscuna and the real-life Francis Paudras, the French artist who tried to rehabilitate Powell through love and empathy. That hope was crushed by the pianist’s acceptance of a return season at Birdland, which proved far less successful than in the movie, and his death less than two years later at the age of 41. Listening to the records from the second half of his career is rather like the experience of listening to him live, and holding your breath for some semblance of the earlier fire, or at least the melodic cogency and the brilliant execution. But there are sessions where he almost pulls it off, including Our Man In Paris (Blue Note) with Dexter and Essen Jazz Festival (Black Lion, aka Hawk In Germany) with Coleman Hawkins in 1960.
“By the way, did you know thatDuke Ellington was a big fan of Bud Powell?” says Sonny Rollins, and thanks to Val Wilmer we have confirmation of this. Apparently while recording with Mingus and Roach, Ellington told them: “Just think of me as a second-rate Bud Powell” and, though talking tongue-in-cheek, only five months later he chose to produce a Powell album while in Paris. The Duke was clearly aware that, despite the legions of imitators and disciples, there was only one first-hand Bud Powell.
In 1994 when Guthrie Ramsey completed his dissertation on legendary jazz pianist Bud Powell, he didn’t turn the thesis into a book manuscript right away.
He waited 20 years. Ramsey, a music professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has been on the lecture circuit for a few months now talking about his new book, The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History and the Challenge of Bebop. He says he waited two decades to write it because he didn’t want to be pegged as solely a jazz scholar. “I wanted to demonstrate my range, before burrowing in on this,”
Ramsey says. “I did not believe I had the patience to write a biography
of Bud Powell. This book is more a critical study of 20th century creative black manhood, using Bud Powell as its focus.” The first chapter of Ramsey’s book introduces readers to Earl Rudolph
“Bud” Powell, born in Harlem in 1924, by telling the story of his
sudden, tragic death. He died at age 41 from complications of
tuberculosis and alcoholism. Ramsey believes that the story of Powell’s life has been treated more sensationally than insightfully. “There are a lot of things that we know about Bud Powell from the
historical record,” Ramsey says. “I am using my training as a
musicologist, a pianist, a cultural critic and [my experiences] as an
African-American man to reinterpret what we think we know about Bud
Powell.” Ramsey places the facts of Powell’s career and his music within a
historical, cultural and social frame to examine the contradictions of
his life, how he moved from the recording studio and the stage as one of
the greatest pianists of his era, to the psych ward, jail and an
untimely death. The Penn professor unpacks the lore and myth of Powell’s genius
describing his ability to rise above personal demons and societal
pressures that African-American men faced in the mid 20th century. Ramsey says he believes that the number of well-known
African-American musicians and artists of Powell’s era who were
institutionalized points to a flawed mental health care system and
skewed societal views of black men. He cites famed jazz musicians Thelonius Monk, Charlie Mingus and Buddy Bolden, as well as 20th century painters William H. Johnson and Jacob Lawrence as African-American men who spent time in mental hospitals. “What was so amazing to me was that, if Powell wasn’t in a mental institution, he was making very powerful music,” Ramsey says. Ramsey, who is also the author of Race Music: Black Cultures From Bebop to Hip Hop,
plays piano and composes and arranges contemporary jazz, rhythm and
blues and other genres of music with his ensemble, Dr. Guy’s Musiqology.
As a young pianist playing on the South Side of Chicago, he first
became interested in Bud Powell when other jazz musicians told him to
listen to Powell’s records because Powell was “the man.” Ramsey explores this idea of jazz manhood in The Amazing Bud Powell. He says, “When we say someone is 'the man,' we talk about being a complete master of their genre." Ramsey is currently finishing a documentary on Powell called
“Amazing: The Test and Trials of a Modernist.” It will be released on
social media. More information is at www.Musiqology.com.
Guthrie Ramsey
The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History and the Challenge of Bebop. by Guthrie Ramsey. University of California 2013
THE MUSIC OF BUD POWELL: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH BUD POWELL:
BUD POWELL--GREATEST HITS:
THE AMAZING BUD POWELL:
BUD POWELL TRIO--1953:
Bud Powell-Piano Charles Mingus-Bass Roy Haynes--Drums
Bud Powell Quintet: 1959
Tracks 1 to 6 recorded at the Club St Germain in Paris, October 1959 and tracks 7 to 9 recorded at the Blue Note jazz club in Paris, December 1959, for the TV broadcast "Jazz at the Blue Note".
Bud Powell--Piano
Kenny Clarke--Drums
Barney Wilen--Tenor saxophone
Pierre Michelot--Bass
Clark Terry--Trumpet
The Amazing Bud Powell--1949 and 1951 sessions:
Blue Note BLP 5003. The Amazing Bud Powell 10" LP: Max Roach or Roy Haynes - drums. Fats Navarro - Trumpet. Curly Russell or Tommy Potter - bass. Sonny Rollins - Tenor Sax.
Bud Powell Trio plays "Round Midnight" (Composition by Thelonious Monk)
Bud Powell Trio--"Tempus Fugit" (Composition by Bud Powell)
BUD POWELL SOLO--"Hallucinations"--1951 (Composition by Bud Powell):
Bud Powell Trio--"There Will Never Be Another You":
Bud Powell in 1959--Live performances:
1 -0:06- Crossin' the Channel (Bud Powell) Bud Powell: piano, Kenny Clarke: drums, Pierre Michelot: bass 2 -2:40- No Problem (Duke Jordan) Bud Powell: piano, Barney Willen: tenor sax, Clark Terry: flugelhorn, Kenny Clarke: drums, Pierre Michelot: bass 3 -6:07- Pie Eye (erroneously titled "Pie High" in the video, Bud Powell/Clark Terry) Bud Powell: piano, Clark Terry: flugelhorn, Kenny Clarke: drums, Pierre Michelot: bass 4 -8:42- 52nd Street Theme (Thelonious Monk) Bud Powell: piano, Barney Willen: tenor sax, Kenny Clarke: drums, Pierre Michelot: bass 5 -11:34- Blues in the Closet (aka "Collard Greens and Black Eyed Peas", Harry Babasin/Oscar Pettiford) Bud Powell: piano, Pierre Michelot: bass, Kenny Clarke: drums 6 -15:48- Miguel's Party (aka "Subway Inn", Duke Jordan) Bud Powell: piano, Barney Willen: tenor sax, Clark Terry: flugelhorn, Kenny Clarke: drums, Pierre Michelot: bass 7 -20:12- Get Happy (Harold Arlen) Bud Powell: piano, Kenny Clarke: drums, Pierre Michelot: bass 8 -22:54- John's Abbey (Bud Powell) Bud Powell: piano, Kenny Clarke: drums, Pierre Michelot: bass 9 -25:12- Anthropology (Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie) Bud Powell: piano, Lucky Thompson: tenor sax, Jimmy Gourley: guitar, Kenny Clarke: drums, Pierre Michelot: bass tracks 1 to 6 recorded at the Club St Germain in Paris, October 1959. tracks 7 to 9 recorded at the Blue Note jazz club in Paris, december 1959, for the TV broadcast "Jazz at the Blue Note".
Bud Powell. The Amazing Bud Powell PODCAST Book Review Guy Ramsey University of California Press, 2013:
Published on September 10, 2013:
Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. (Author) Available worldwide
Bud
Powell was not only one of the greatest bebop pianists of all time, he
stands as one of the twentieth century's most dynamic and fiercely
adventurous musical minds. His expansive musicianship, riveting
performances, and inventive compositions expanded the bebop idiom and
pushed jazz musicians of all stripes to higher standards of performance.
Yet Powell remains one of American music's most misunderstood figures,
and the story of his exceptional talent is often overshadowed by his
history of alcohol abuse, mental instability, and brutalization at the
hands of white authorities. In this first extended study of the social
significance of Powell's place in the American musical landscape,
Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. shows how the pianist expanded his own artistic
horizons and moved his chosen idiom into new realms. Illuminating and
multi-layered, The Amazing Bud Powell centralizes Powell's contributions
as it details the collision of two vibrant political economies: the
discourses of art and the practice of blackness.
Mark
Anthony Neal sits down with Professor Guthrie Ramsey Jr. to talk about
his new book, "The Amazing Bud Powell", the late Amiri Baraka, and the
state of music. Prof. Ramsey is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term
Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.
BUD POWELL TRIO--"Un Poco Loco"--1951 (Composition by Bud Powell):
Album: THE AMAZING BUD POWELL VOLUME ONE Bud Powell--(p) Curley Russell--(b) Max Roach--(ds)
BUD POWELL--"Dance of the Infidels" (Composition by Bud Powell):
Bud Powell--"Cleopatra's Dream" (Composition by Bud Powell):
Bud Powell--Bud on Bach:
Bud Powell plays "Oblivion" --1953 (Composition by Bud Powell):
Bud Powell Trio--"Autumn in New York"--1954:
The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 2 (1954) Personnel:
Bud Powell (Piano) George Duvivier (Bass) Art Taylor (Drums) Tommy Potter (Bass) Roy Haynes (Drums)
Bud Powell Trio - "Tea for Two"-- (1950) Personnel: Bud Powell (piano), Ray Brown (bass), Buddy Rich (drums)
from the album 'BUD POWELL'S MOODS' (Clef Records):
Bud Powell--"A Night in Tunisia" (Composition by Dizzy Gillespie):
Bud Powell:
Thelonious Monk--"In Walked Bud"--1968 version (Composition by Thelonious Monk--1947):
Lyrics and Vocal by Jon Hendricks:
Play "In Walked Bud"
on Amazon Music
Dizzy, he was screaming
Next to O.P. who was beaming
Monk was thumping
Suddenly in walked Bud and then they got into Somethin'
Oscar played a mean sax
Mr. Byers blew a mean axe
Monk was thumping
Suddenly in walked Bud
And then the joint started jumping
Every hip stud really dug Bud
Soon as he hit town
Takin' that note nobody wrote
Putting it down
O. P. he was screaming
Next to Dizzy who was beaming
Monk was thumping
Suddenly in walked Bud
And then they got into something
[Instrumental break]
Dizzy, he was screaming
Next to O.P. who was beaming
Monk was thumping
Suddenly in walked Bud
And then they got into Somethin'
O.P. blew a mean axe
Mr. Byas blew a mean sax
Monk was thumping
Suddenly in walked Bud
And then the joint started jumping.
Every hip stud really dug Bud
Soon as he hit town
Takin' that note nobody wrote
Putting it down
Dizzy, he was screaming
Next to O.P. who was beaming
Monk was thumping
Suddenly in walked Bud
And then they got into Somethin'
Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell (September 27, 1924 – July 31, 1966) was an American jazz pianist, born and raised in Harlem, New York City. Though Thelonious Monk was a close friend and influence, his greatest piano influence was Art Tatum. Along with Charlie Parker, Monk, and Dizzy Gillespie, Powell was a leading figure in the development of modern jazz, or bebop.
His virtuosity led many to call him the Charlie Parker of the piano.
Powell was also a composer, and many jazz critics credit his works and
his playing as having "greatly extended the range of jazz harmony."[1]
Powell's father was a stride pianist.[2] Powell took to his father's instrument at a very young age, starting on classical-piano lessons at age five.[3] His teacher, hired by his father, was a West Indian man named Rawlins.[4] But by age ten, Powell also showed interest in the swing-era jazz
that could be heard all over the neighborhood. He first appeared in
public at a rent party,[5] where he mimicked Fats Waller's playing style. The first jazz composition that he mastered was James P. Johnson's "Carolina Shout".[6] Bud's older brother, William, played the trumpet (and the violin), and by age fifteen, Bud was playing in his band.[7] By this time, he had heard on radio Art Tatum, whose overwhelmingly virtuosic piano technique Powell then set out to equal.[6] Bud often sought out opportunities to hear Tatum in local venues.[citation needed]
Later life and career
Early to mid-1940s
Even
as an underage youth, Bud often listened to the musically adventurous
performances at the Uptown House, an after-hours venue near where he
lived. Here, the first stirrings of modernism (bebop) were heard
nightly, and where Charlie Parker first appeared as a solo act when he briefly lived in New York.[8] Thelonious Monk had also played at the Uptown House. When he and Powell met (around 1942)[9] the elder pianist/composer introduced Powell to the circle of bebop musicians that was forming at the venue known as Minton's Playhouse.
Monk was resident there, and he presented Powell as his protégé. Their
mutual affection grew and Monk became Powell's greatest mentor. For his
part, Powell eagerly experimented with Monk's latest ideas on the piano.
Monk's composition "In Walked Bud" is an enduring tribute to their time together in Harlem.[10] Powell was engaged in a series of dance bands, his incubation
culminating in his being given the piano chair in the big-time swing
orchestra of Cootie Williams. In late 1943 he was offered the chance to appear at a midtown nightclub with the modernist quintet of Oscar Pettiford and Dizzy Gillespie, but Powell's mother decided he would continue with the more secure job, with the popular Williams.[11] Powell was the pianist on a handful of Williams's recording dates in
1944, the last of which included the first-ever recording of Monk's "'Round Midnight".[12]
His tenure with Williams was terminated one night in Philadelphia, in
January 1945, when he got separated from the other band members once
they had left the bandstand at the end of the evening. Powell was
wandering around Broad street station and was apprehended, drunk, by the
private railroad police. He was beaten by them, and then briefly
incarcerated by the city police. Ten days after his release, his
headaches persisting, he was hospitalized—first in Bellevue, an observation ward, and then in a state psychiatric hospital, sixty miles away. He stayed there for two and a half months.[13] Powell resumed playing in Manhattan immediately upon his release, in
demand by various small-group leaders for nightclub engagements in the
increasingly integrated midtown scene.[11] His 1945–46 recordings, many as the result of his sudden visibility on the club scene, were for Frank Socolow, Sarah Vaughan, Dexter Gordon, J. J. Johnson, Sonny Stitt, Fats Navarro, and Kenny Clarke.[14]
Powell quickly gained a reputation as an excellent sight-reader, and
for his ability to play at fast tempos. His percussive punctuation of
certain phrases, as well as his predilection for speed, showed the
influence of Parker and other modern horn soloists.[citation needed] "Bebop in Pastel" (soon to be known as "Bouncing with Bud") was first recorded on August 23, 1946[14] and became a jazz standard. Powell's career advanced again, when Parker chose him to be his pianist on a May 1947 quintet record date, with Miles Davis, Tommy Potter, and Max Roach; this was to be the only studio session in which both Parker and Powell were to play together.[15]
Hospitalization (1947–1948)
The
Parker session aside, Powell performed on only two other records and
seldom appeared at nightclubs in 1947. In November, he had an
altercation with another customer at a Harlem bar. In the ensuing fight,
Powell was hit over his eye with a bottle. When Harlem Hospital found
him incoherent and rambunctious, it sent him to Bellevue, which had the
record of his previous confinement there and in another psychiatric
hospital. It chose to institutionalize him again, though this time at Creedmoor State Hospital, a facility much closer to Manhattan. He was kept there for eleven months.[16] Powell eventually adjusted to the conditions in the institution,
though in psychiatric interviews he expressed feelings of persecution
founded in racism.[17] From February to April 1948, he received electroconvulsive therapy,[11]
first administered after an outburst deemed to be uncontrollable. It
might have been prompted by his learning, after a visit by his
girlfriend, that she was pregnant with their child.[18]
While the electroconvulsive therapy was said to have made no
difference, the MDs gave Powell a second series of treatments in May. He
was eventually released, in October 1948[11]—though from these early and subsequent hospitalizations, he was emotionally unstable for the rest of his career.[citation needed]
Solo and trio recordings (1949–1958)
After another (though brief) hospitalization in early 1949,[11] Powell made several recordings, most of which were for Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records[19] and for Norman Granz of Mercury, Norgran and Clef.[20] The first Blue Note session, in August 1949, features Fats Navarro, Sonny Rollins, Powell, Tommy Potter and Roy Haynes,
and the compositions "Bouncing with Bud" and "Dance of the Infidels".
The second Blue Note session in 1951 was a trio with Curley Russell and
Max Roach, and includes "Parisian Thoroughfare" and "Un Poco Loco";[14] the latter was selected by literary critic Harold Bloom for inclusion on his short list of the greatest works of twentieth-century American art.[21] Sessions for Granz (more than a dozen) were all solo or trios, with a variety of bassists and drummers, including Ray Brown, George Duvivier, Percy Heath, Russell, Lloyd Trotman, Art Blakey, Kenny Clarke, Osie Johnson, Buddy Rich, Roach, and Art Taylor.[14] Powell's continued rivalry with Parker was also the subject of disruptive feuding and bitterness on the bandstand,[22] as a result of Powell's troubled mental and physical condition.[23] Powell recorded for both Blue Note and Granz throughout the 1950s,
interrupted by another long stay in a mental hospital from late 1951 to
early 1953, following arrest for possession of marijuana, after which he was released into the guardianship of Oscar Goodstein, owner of the Birdland nightclub. A 1953 trio session for Blue Note (with Duvivier and Taylor) included Powell's composition "Glass Enclosure", inspired by his near-imprisonment in Goodstein's apartment.[24] On May 15, 1953 he played at Massey Hall in Toronto with "The Quintet", including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach, which resulted in the album Jazz at Massey Hall by Debut Records.[14] His playing after his release from hospital began to be seriously affected by Largactil, taken for the treatment of schizophrenia, and by the late 1950s his talent was in eclipse.[25] In 1956 his brother Richie Powell, a fellow pianist, was killed in a car crash alongside Clifford Brown.[26]
Three albums for Blue Note in the late fifties showcased Powell's
ability as a composer, but his playing was far removed from the standard
set by his earlier recordings for the label.[citation needed]
Paris (1959–1963)
After
several further spells in hospital, Powell moved to Paris in 1959, in
the company of Altevia "Buttercup" Edwards, whom he had met after an
incarceration in 1954.[27] The couple moved permanently into the Hotel La Louisiane.[28]
She kept control of his finances and kept him dosed with Largactil, but
Powell continued to perform and record. The 1960 live recording of the Essen jazz festival performance (with Clarke, Oscar Pettiford and, on some numbers, Coleman Hawkins) is particularly notable.[citation needed] In December 1961 he recorded two albums for Columbia Records under the aegis of Cannonball Adderley: A Portrait of Thelonious (with Michelot and Clarke), and A Tribute to Cannonball (with the addition of Don Byas and Idrees Sulieman—despite
the title, Adderley only plays on one alternate take). The first album
(with overdubbed audience noise) was released shortly after Powell's
death, and the second was released in the late 1970s. Eventually, Powell
was befriended by Francis Paudras, a commercial artist and amateur
pianist, and Powell moved into Paudras's home in 1962. There was a brief
return to Blue Note in 1963, when Dexter Gordon recorded Our Man in Paris for the label. Powell was a last-minute substitute for Kenny Drew,
and the album of standards—Powell could not by then learn new
material—showed him to be still capable of playing with some
proficiency.[citation needed]
Last years (1964–1966)
In 1963, Powell contracted tuberculosis, and the following year returned to New York with Paudras for a return engagement at Birdland accompanied by drummer Horace Arnold and bassist John Ore. Arnold calls it, "The Ultimate Performance experience of my life".[citation needed]
The original agreement had been for the two men to go back to Paris,
but Paudras returned alone (although Powell did record in Paris, with
Michel Gaudry and Art Taylor, in July 1964). In 1965, Powell played only
two concerts: one a disastrous performance at Carnegie Hall, the other a tribute to Charlie Parker on May 1 with other performers on the bill, including Albert Ayler. Little else was seen of him in public.[citation needed] During these two years, Powell's life started to fall apart, and his
reliance on alcohol led to performances that were ruined after just one
drink, his emotional state becoming significantly imbalanced.[15] Powell was hospitalized in New York after months of increasingly erratic behavior
and self-neglect. On July 31, 1966, he died of tuberculosis,
malnutrition, and alcoholism. Several thousand people viewed his Harlem
funeral procession.[29]
Musical style
Jazz pianist Bill Cunliffe, whose music was influenced by Bud Powell, said in an interview with All About Jazz:
He was really the first guy; before Bud Powell, pianists were playing
boom, chuck in the left hand and a lot of melodic figures in the right
hand that tended to be arpeggios.
But with Bud Powell, Bud Powell was imitating Charlie Parker. So Bud
was the first pianist to take Charlie Parker's language and adapt it
successfully to the piano. That's why he is the most important pianist
in music today because everybody plays like that now.[30]
His playing of melodic lines owed greatly to Billy Kyle,[31] and his accompaniments to horn solos owed most to the style of Earl Hines. At other times, Powell's accompanying recalled stride and, on occasion, the graceful approach of pianist Teddy Wilson.[32] His comping often consisted of single bass notes outlining the root and fifth. He also used voicings of the root and the tenth, or the root with the minor seventh.[33] Powell was greatly influenced by Art Tatum early in his career and more so by Thelonious Monk later on.[34]
Powell often listened to Tatum's records and built upon Tatum's style,
but with less stride in the left and without the "arabesques" and
"flourishes" favored by Tatum. It has been said that Powell is the
linchpin between Tatum and the bebop pianists.[citation needed] Where his solos could be heard to emulate the horn players' attack—with the use of frequent arpeggios punctuated by chromaticism[15]—this
was, in part, because of his determination to see that the pianist get
the adulation usually reserved for the saxophonist or trumpeter.[35] Powell's progressive exploration, on nightclub bandstands, of the harmonic series[clarification needed]
often produced brilliant, thrillingly unexpected solos. But his
generally rough-edged execution was the price that his music paid for
his virtuosic striving. Many later pianists, nonetheless, copied his
daring attack, looking to attain that rarefied status, of the fearless
improviser. They also emulated his lush melodicism on ballads.[citation needed] Powell freed the right hand for continuous linear exploration at the
expense of developing the left. Legend has it that one night Art Tatum
criticized him as he came off the bandstand after playing a set. Powell
responded in his next set by soloing on a piece exclusively with his
left hand.[36]
His favoring the treble was not to avoid integrating the hands, which
is essential to both a solo and accompanying technique. These formed the
basic small ensembles that have dominated jazz since the bebop era (after swing). Before Powell, Art Tatum and Earl Hines had also somewhat explored independent homophony closely resembling later piano playing.[citation needed] The pianist's time was especially solid. So much so, that he was not
dependent on his accompanists. Powell dictated the time when he played,
in particular throughout the strength of the eight-notes in his right
hand, essentially participating in the time-keeping with the bassist and
drummer. This is reminiscent of recordings of Charlie Parker.[37]
Influence
Powell influenced countless younger musicians, especially pianists. These included Horace Silver,[38] Wynton Kelly,[39]Andre Previn,[40]McCoy Tyner,[41]Cedar Walton,[42] and Chick Corea.[43] Bill Evans, who described Powell as his single greatest influence,[44]
paid the pianist a tribute in 1979: "If I had to choose one single
musician for his artistic integrity, for the incomparable originality of
his creation and the grandeur of his work, it would be Bud Powell. He
was in a class by himself".[45] Herbie Hancock said of Powell, in a Down Beat magazine interview in 1966: "He was the foundation out of which stemmed the whole edifice of modern jazz piano".[46]
Legacy
In 1986 Paudras wrote a book about his friendship with Powell, translated into English in 1997 as Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell.[47] The book was the basis for Round Midnight, a film inspired by the lives of Powell and Lester Young, in which Dexter Gordon played the lead role of an expatriate jazzman in Paris.[48] In February 2012 a biography titled Wail: The Life of Bud Powell by Peter Pullman was released as an ebook.[11]
Discography
Years listed are years recorded (not years released).
The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings – Four disc set containing all of the Amazing Bud Powell...
Blue Note sessions plus Roost sessions from 1947 and 1953. The Blue
Note sessions have also been remastered and reissued as individual CDs
(though the Roost material is not included).
Fred Jung (2010). "A Fireside Chat with Bill Cunliffe". all-about-jazz. Retrieved 2010-06-07. When
I was a kid, I was listening mostly to classical music because my dad
had a lot of it in the house. I listened to all the stuff that was on
the radio in the Sixties and Seventies.
10-inch LP release of January 1947 recording session. Roost RLP-401. Later re-issued together with Bud Powell Trio, Volume 2 on a single 12-inch LP, Bud Powell Trio (Roost RLP 2224 / RST 2224)
10-inch
LP release of February 1949 and February 1950 sessions. Mercury MG
35012 (Clef MGC 102 / Clef MGC 502 / Mercury MGC 502). Re-issued
together with (most of) Piano Solos No. 2 as Jazz Giant (Norgran MGN 1063 / Verve MGV 8153)
1951 release of August 1949 and May 1951 sessions. Blue Note BLP 5003, BLP 1503
10-inch
LP release of February & July 1950 sessions. Mercury MGC 507 (Clef
MGC 507). All but the two July tracks re-issued together with Piano Solos as Jazz Giant (Norgran MGN 1063 / Verve MGV 8153)
July 1950 session in trio; February 1951 session solo. Mercury MGC 610 (Clef MGC 610 / Clef MGC 739 and, as The Genius of Bud Powell, Verve 8115) Not to be confused with the Norgran release Bud Powell's Moods
1954 release of August 1953 session. Blue Note BLP 5041, BLP 1504 / Blue Note BST 81504 (pseudo stereo)
10-inch LP release of September 1953 recording session. Roost RLP-412. Later re-issued together with Bud Powell Trio on a single 12-inch LP, Bud Powell Trio (Roost RLP 2224 / RST 2224)
June 1954, January 1955 sessions. Norgran MGN 1064 (Verve MGV 8154) Not to be confused with the Mercury / Clef release Bud Powell's Moods
1955 release of December 1954 and January 1955 sessions. Norgran MGN 1017 (and, as Bud Powell '57, Norgran MGN 1098 / Verve MGV 8185)
January and April 1955 sessions. Verve MGV 8301
April 1955 sessions. Norgran MGN 1077 (Verve MGV 8167)
September 1956 session. Verve MGV 8218
October 1956 session, RCA Victor LPM 1423
February 1957 session, RCA Victor LPM 1507
August 1957 session. Blue Note BLP 1571 (Blue Note BST 81571, CDP 7 81571-2)
October & December 1957 and January 1958 sessions only released in 1997
May 1958 session. Blue Note BLP 1598 (Blue Note BST 81598, CDP 7 46820-2)
December 1958 session. Blue Note BLP 4009 (Blue Note BST 84009, CDP 7 46529-2)
February 1963 session in Paris, produced by Duke Ellington
April 1961 live recording in Milan, Italy (Moon MCD 055-2). The album is split between the Powell session and unrelated 1966–70 European sessions by Thelonious Monk
April 1962 live recordings at the Gyllene Cirkeln, Stockholm,
Sweden. With Torbjörn Hultcrantz on bass, and Sune Spångberg on drums. 5
volumes available as individual discs. Rare Powell vocals on "This Is
No Laughin' Matter".
References
Bishop, Walter (1994), Complete Bud Powell on Verve, New York City: Polygram Records
Crawford, Marc (1966), Requiem for a Tortured Heavyweight, Chicago: Down Beat
Gitler, Ira (1966), Jazz Masters of the Forties, New York: Macmillan, ISBN0-306-76155-6
Hentoff, Nat (1956), Just Call Him Thelonious, Chicago: Down Beat
Morrison, Allan (1953), Can a Musician Return from the Brink of Insanity?, Chicago: Ebony
Patrick, James (1983), Al Tinney, Monroe's Uptown House, and the Emergence of Modern Jazz in Harlem, New Brunswick, NJ: Annual Review of Jazz Studies, IJS, ISBN0-87855-906-X
Paudras, Francis; Monet, Rubye (trans.) (1998), Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell, New York: Da Capo Press, ISBN0-306-80816-1
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
