SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

FALL, 2019

VOLUME SEVEN NUMBER THREE

MAX ROACH

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

BEN WEBSTER

(September 7-13)

GENE AMMONS

(September 14-20)

TADD DAMERON

(September 21-27)

ROY ELDRIDGE

(September 28-October 4)

MILT JACKSON

(October 5-11)

CHARLIE CHRISTIAN

(October 12-18)

GRANT GREEN

(October 19-25)

ROY HARGROVE

(October 26-November 1)

LITTLE JIMMY SCOTT

(November 2-8)

BLUE MITCHELL

(November 9-15)

BOOKER ERVIN

(November 16-22)

LUCKY THOMPSON

(November 23-29)

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tadd-dameron-mn0000016759/biography

Tadd Dameron

(1917-1965)

Artist Biography by Scott Yanow

The definitive arranger/composer of the bop era, Tadd Dameron wrote such standards as "Good Bait," "Our Delight," "Hot House," "Lady Bird," and "If You Could See Me Now." Not only did he write melody lines, but full arrangements, and he was an influential force from the mid-'40s on even though he never financially prospered. Dameron started out in the swing era touring with the Zack Whyte and Blanche Calloway bands, he wrote for Vido Musso in New York and most importantly, contributed arrangements for Harlan Leonard's Kansas City Orchestra, some of which were recorded. Soon Dameron was writing charts for such bands as Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie, Billy Eckstine, and Dizzy Gillespie (1945-1947) in addition to Sarah Vaughan. Dameron was always very modest about his own piano playing but he did gig with Babs Gonzales' Three Bips & a Bop in 1947 and led a sextet featuring Fats Navarro (and later Miles Davis) at the Royal Roost during 1948-1949. Dameron co-led a group with Davis at the 1949 Paris Jazz Festival, stayed in Europe for a few months (writing for Ted Heath), and then returned to New York. He wrote for Artie Shaw's last orchestra that year, played and arranged R&B for Bull Moose Jackson (1951-1952) and in 1953 led a nonet featuring Clifford Brown and Philly Joe Jones. Drug problems, however, started to get in the way of his music. After recording a couple of albums (including 1958's Mating Call with John Coltrane) he spent much of 1959-1961 in jail. After he was released, Dameron wrote for Sonny Stitt, Blue Mitchell, Milt Jackson, Benny Goodman and his last record but was less active in the years before his death from cancer. Tadd Dameron's classic Blue Note recordings of 1947-48, his 1949 Capitol sides and Prestige/Riverside sets of 1953, 1956, 1958, and 1962 are all currently in print on CD.

https://tadddameron.jazzgiants.net/biography/

Biography

Tadley Ewing Peake “Tadd” Dameron (pianist, composer, arranger) was born on February 21, 1917 in Cleveland, Ohio and passed away on March 8, 1965 at the age of 48.

Dameron grew up with music all around him, his mother first taught him to play piano, “not to read, but by memory.” But, it was Dameron’s older brother, Caesar, a saxophonist, who got his brother interested in jazz by listening to the records of the big bands of the 1930’s like Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and the Casa Loma band that was playing unique arrangements at the time.
Cleveland jazz musician Andy Anderson said he first heard Dameron in the 1930s when Caesar brought his kid brother to a nightclub, and asked if the boy could sit in with the Snake White Band. Anderson said he was amazed when Tadd started playing piano. Anderson said, “He’s got ten fingers and all of them went down on the keys and all of them were on different notes. You didn’t expect to hear anything like that.”

Before long, a Central High School friend, trumpeter Freddie Webster, persuaded Dameron to join his band playing in Cleveland. By 1938 at the age of 21, he began to write arrangements for a band that had been formed in Cleveland by James Jeter and Hayes Pillars. In 1940, Dameron went on the road with bands led by Zack Whyte and Blanche Calloway and went to New York with Vito Musso’s band. When Musso’s band folded, he went to Kansas City where he composed and arranged for Harlan Leonard’s Rockets. Among his compositions for the Leonard band were “400 Swing,” “Rock and Ride” and “A La Bridges.” At this point in his life, Dameron was writing almost pure swing. There was no evidence yet of the modern sounds he would later pioneer.

Tadd_Dameron3

Dameron continued to write and arrange, including his best known composition, “If You Could See Me Now,” recorded by Sarah Vaughan and Dameron’s old boyhood buddy Freddie Webster. After recording a couple of albums as “Mating Call,” with John Coltrane in ’58, he spent much of 1959-61 in Federal Prison in Lexington KY, on narcotics charges. After he was released, Dameron wrote for Sonny Stitt, Blue Mitchell, Milt Jackson, and Benny Goodman.

Tadd Dameron’s last session recording was “The Magic Touch of Tadd Dameron,” (1962) a definitive set that sums up much of his career. The record showcases all originals as; “On a Misty Night,” “Fontainebleau,” “If You Could See Me Now,” and “Our Delight.” Recorded with a large group of all-stars, Bill Evans on piano, tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin; trumpeters Charlie Shavers, Joe Wilder, and Clark Terry; trombonist Jimmy Cleveland; Julius Watkins on French horn; and drummer Philly Joe Jones. Barbara Winfield was the vocalist on two of the selections. This record is an appropriate farewell from be-bops finest arranger, whose time was cut much too short.

Dameron suffered from cancer and had several heart attacks before he died at the age of 48 of cancer in 1965.

https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/tadddameron

Tadd Dameron

Biography
Articles
News

Tadd Dameron as a composer and arranger was the man who in the 1940s and ‘50s was among the first to use the sometimes raw and undisciplined devices of the then- new style of jazz called bebop in well-developed arrangements for big bands and small groups. Perhaps more than any other musician, Dameron added form to the then-emerging style of bop.

Born in Cleveland in 1917, Dameron grew up with music all around him, his mother first taught him to play piano, “not to read, but by memory.” But, it was Dameron’s older brother, Caesar, a saxophonist, who got his brother interested in jazz by listening to the records of the big bands of the 1930’s like Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and the Casa Loma band that was playing unique arrangements at the time.

Cleveland jazz musician Andy Anderson said he first heard Dameron in the 1930s when Caesar brought his kid brother to a nightclub, and asked if the boy could sit in with the Snake White Band. Anderson said he was amazed when Tadd started playing piano. Anderson said, “He’s got ten fingers and all of them went down on the keys and all of them were on different notes. You didn’t expect to hear anything like that.”

Before long, a Central High School friend, trumpeter Freddie Webster, persuaded Dameron to join his band playing in Cleveland. By 1938 at the age of 21, he began to write arrangements for a band that had been formed in Cleveland by James Jeter and Hayes Pillars. In 1940, Dameron went on the road with bands led by Zack Whyte and Blanche Calloway and went to New York with Vito Musso’s band. When Musso’s band folded, he went to Kansas City where he composed and arranged for Harlan Leonard’s Rockets. Among his compositions for the Leonard band were “400 Swing,” “Rock and Ride” and “A La Bridges.” At this point in his life, Dameron was writing almost pure swing. There was no evidence yet of the modern sounds he would later pioneer.

He began to experiment with a few new ideas while writing arrangements for the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra. He was soaking up all the new bebop he was hearing and was beginning to use some of the new style in his big band arrangements. Dameron recalled, “I started writing in my own style when I got on Count Basie’s band.” In 1942, Trummy Young, a trombonist Dameron had known on the Lunceford band, introduced Tadd to Dizzy Gillespie. Arranging for Gillespie’s big band, Dameron took the long phrases, powerful upbeat rhythms and chord changes of bop that Dizzy and Charlie Parker were pioneering, and used them in big band arrangements. Among his early compositions for Gillespie was “Good Bait.”

Dameron was honored by Esquire magazine in 1947 as “The Best New Jazz Arranger.” That same year, he formed his own small group that featured Fats Navarro, an amazing young trumpet player. They recorded some classic sides for Blue Note and Capitol. After Navarro died in 1950 at the age of 26, Dameron found another young trumpeter who would become a jazz legend. Dameron was preparing for a recording session and later recalled he had decided to hire a relative unknown, Clifford Brown. On June 11, 1953, they went into the recording studio in New York City. Clifford Brown’s trumpet soared brilliantly above the chanting nine-piece ensemble. By 1956, only three years after Dameron had introduced him on record, Clifford Brown had become one of the most respected trumpeters in jazz. Dameron continued to write and arrange, including his best known composition, “If You Could See Me Now,” recorded by Sarah Vaughan and Dameron’s old boyhood buddy Freddie Webster. After recording a couple of albums as “Mating Call,” with John Coltrane in ’58, he spent much of 1959-61 in jail, on narcotics charges. After he was released, Dameron wrote for Sonny Stitt, Blue Mitchell, Milt Jackson, and Benny Goodman.

Tadd Dameron’s last session recording was “The Magic Touch of Tadd Dameron,” (1962) a definitive set that sums up much of his career. The record showcases all originals as; “On a Misty Night,” “Fontainebleau,” “If You Could See Me Now,” and “Our Delight.” Recorded with a large group of all-stars, Bill Evans on piano, tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin; trumpeters Charlie Shavers, Joe Wilder, and Clark Terry; trombonist Jimmy Cleveland; Julius Watkins on French horn; and drummer Philly Joe Jones. Barbara Winfield was the vocalist on two of the selections. This record is an appropriate farewell from be-bops finest arranger, whose time was cut much too short.
Tadd Dameron died in 1965.

https://www.npr.org/books/titles/173731119/dameronia-the-life-and-music-of-tadd-dameron#excerpt

Books

Dameronia

The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron

by Paul Combs

Hardcover, 264 pages, Univ of Michigan Pr,
List Price: $50 | purchase

NPR Summary

Tadd Dameron, one of the most significant figures in jazz history, was a private man, and despite his musical significance, his personal life is little-known. This biography sheds light on Dameron's musicical impact and the forces in his private life that led him to withdraw from the center of the jazz world.

Read an excerpt of this book

Genres:

NPR Reviews, Interviews and More
Read An Excerpt

Note: Book excerpts are provided by the publisher and may contain language some find offensive.

Excerpt: Dameronia

The Early 1940s — Kansas City

Harlan Leonard's Rockets, an offshoot of the original Benny Moten Band, was one of the premiere bands in Kansas City, after those of Count Basie and Andy Kirk. The Rockets had a long history in Kansas City, but not until late 1939 did they — and the Jay McShannn band — begin to be known outside of the Southwest. Much of the Rockets' growing visibility came thanks to some good press in Down Beat. In the October 15 issue, George Avakian wrote favorably of the band, and in the following issue, the magazine announced that Leonard had signed with Music Corporation of America (MCA). The promotion people at MCA went right to work, with Harlan Leonard's picture showing up in the December 1 issue of Down Beat and a "Season's Greetings" ad in Leonard's name in the December 15 issue. On January 11, 1940, the Rockets made their first recordings for RCA Victor's Bluebird label in Chicago.

From early February to late March, Leonard and the Rockets were in New York for an extended engagement at the newly opened Golden Gate Ballroom. This is where they crossed paths with Dameron. As Leonard recalled, "One day I ran into Tadd Dameron at the Woodside Hotel. He was broke and looking for work. I took him along with me to Kansas City and for awhile he played piano in the band as well as writing a lot of our arrangements." Leonard was going to need fresh material for the tours and recordings that he was anticipating, now that the Rockets were signed with MCA and Bluebird, and the eager young arranger was likely just the man he was looking for. With his next big job lined up, Tadd went back to Cleveland and worked with his brother for a few weeks. On their way back to Kansas City, the Rockets picked up Dameron in Cleveland. By the first of April 1940, Tadd, along with Marguerite, had taken up residency in Kansas City, where he lived for the next few months and wrote his first recorded work. His even briefer tenure as pianist must have taken place in June, for the Kansas City Call reported that he was introduced to Rockets' fans on June 9. Since William Smith is in the piano chair on all of the Rockets' recordings before and after that time, we are left to assume that he was unavailable for those few weeks, and Dameron sat in for him.

Tadd also met Charlie Parker while he was in Kansas City. Later, he recalled his first meeting with Bird:

Bird was cleaning up the club. I never knew he played horn until one jam session he pulls out this raggedy alto with this pipe tone he had then. I couldn't hear anyone but him because I could hear his message. So we got together and we were playing "Lady Be Good" and there's some changes I played in the middle where he just stopped playing and ran over and kissed me on the cheek. He said, "That's what I've been hearing all my life, but nobody plays those changes." So we got to be very good friends—heused to come over to my house everyday and blow ... And my wife would cook. And the people used to knock on the door, and I'd say, "Oh, I'm sorry we're making so much noise." "No" they'd say, "we want you to leave the door open" because he was playing so pretty.

Another friend Dameron made while in Kansas City was Mary Lou Williams, the brilliant and often overlooked pianist, composer, and arranger who was, in a way, the heart and soul of the Andy Kirk band. Williams felt that, "though very young, [Dameron] had ideas even then that were 'way ahead of his time." Suggestions of these ideas can be heard in the arrangements recorded by the Kansas City Rockets. In the collection of Mary Lou Williams's papers, there is a piano part for Dameron's "Rock and Ride," which shows moderate signs of wear and has a revised ending with the original crossed out in pencil. One has to wonder just how this got into Mary Lou's possession. Was it from the original parts for Leonard, or was it from parts for another band? It has been said that Dameron was under contract to Leonard, which would have made his writing for other bands unlikely. However, his relationship with Leonard was probably more open.

Excerpt from Dameronia: The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron by Paul Combs. Published by the University of Michigan Press, www.press.umich.edu

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/09/arts/tadd-dameron-s-music-with-love.html

TADD DAMERON'S MUSIC, WITH LOVE

by Robert Palmer

April 9, 1982

New York Times

The list of world-famous modern jazzmen who recorded compositions by Tadley Ewing Dameron goes on and on. But mention Tadd Dameron to many younger jazz fans today and he will be remembered, if at all, as a vaguely familiar name on a record jacket. ''The Fabulous Fats Navarro'' is an album no serious student of post-World War II jazz should be without, but while Mr. Navarro had star billing on the album, in fact he was only the featured soloist. The man who led the bands on that album, and who wrote and arranged ''Lady Bird,'' ''Good Bait,'' ''Our Delight'' and the other celebrated jazz compositions those bands played, was Tadd Dameron.

Philly Joe Jones, the formidable drummer who powered the mid-1950's Miles Davis quintet that included the young tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, has not forgotten the late Tadd Dameron, and he would like to make sure that nobody else forgets him either. Tonight and tomorrow night at Lush Life, the Greenwich Village jazz club at Bleecker and Thompson Streets, Mr. Jones is leading a special eightman band dedicated to keeping Tadd Dameron's music alive

But ''Dameronia - To Tadd With Love,'' as Mr. Jones is calling his musical program, is not a dry scholarly re-creation, nor is it a trip down Memory Lane. Mr. Jones and his hand-picked musicians are convinced that Tadd Dameron's music is as alive and as exciting today as it was in the late 1940's, when the finest young musicians in jazz were flocking to hear the Tadd Dameron band at the Royal Roost, the modern jazz emporium on Broadway. Swinging the Blues

Mr. Dameron was a key figure in modern jazz, or be-bop as it is often called, but his roots were in earlier jazz, especially in the big swing bands of the 1930's and early 1940's. Mr. Dameron was born Feb. 21, 1917, in Cleveland. By the beginning of the 1940's, he had gravitated to Kansas City, where the young Charlie (Bird) Parker was beginning to spread his wings, and big bands led by Count Basie and Jay McShann were already teaching musicians from other parts of America how to swing the blues. Mr. Dameron began writing arrangements for Harlan Leonard and his Rockets, an orchestra that was not well known compared to most of the Kansas City bands but was respected by musicians. When Charlie Parker left Kansas City for New York, so did Mr. Dameron.

It did not take long for Mr. Dameron's compositions to become some of the most widely performed in all modern jazz. But only insiders were aware that some of Mr. Dameron's tunes, such as ''Good Bait'' and ''Lady Bird,'' were considerably older than the modern jazz era; both were written around 1939.

In fact, Mr. Dameron had created some of the same innovations that Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie used as premises for modern jazz, and about the same time. Mr. Dameron arrived at these innovations independently.

''Tadd was a genius,'' Philly Joe Jones stated during a break from a rehearsal at Lush Life the other day. ''I worked with him as long ago as 1951, when we were both in Bullmoose Jackson's band, but later on I roomed with him for nine years, and that's when I really got to know him. Whenever he got an idea in his mind, he would just sit down and start writing. He could write out a whole composition just lying on the floor. Once in a while, he would get up and walk over to the piano to check what he had written, and it was always right.'' Careful Musical Architect

A number of the jazz composers whose works were performed frequently in the 1940's and early 1950's were content to sketch out a theme for the musicians to play together at the beginning and end of the piece, leaving the rest to improvising by the soloists. But Mr. Dameron was a musical architect who thought in terms of complete, balanced performances. He frequently inserted arranged ensemble passages between solos and more often than not he dictated the order of solos. When his bands included improvisers as resourceful as the trumpet player Fats Navarro or Clifford Brown, he often waited until the other musicians had soloed and then turned Mr. Brown or Mr. Navarro loose, so that his pieces flowed naturally and inexorably toward an intense and frequently spectacular climax.

Mr. Dameron's career was hampered by his shyness and by his refusal to take himself seriously as a pianist. At the time, composer-bandleaders were expected to master the piano, or another instrument, and Mr. Dameron was hardly a virtuoso at the keyboard. In the mid-50's, though, he recorded a lovely album called ''Mating Call'' accompanied by bass, drums, and the great jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. The album proved that while he was never a great pianist he was a master at accompanying soloists, building performances by prodding and prompting the musicians, conducting from the keyboard, and creating vivid, haunting moods.

In the mid-50's, Mr. Dameron fell victim to the narcotics epidemic that plagued so many jazz musicians at the time. He left New York in 1956 and returned in 1961, cured, a healthy man. One of his most lyrical and joyous compositions celebrated his victory and undoubtedly that of many other musicians over hard drugs. The tune was called ''The Scene is Clean.''

Tadd Dameron's compositions are recognizable principally for their economy, their symmetry and proportion and, above all, for their exceptional melodic beauty. He played intelligently supportive piano when the need arose, but he thought of himself as a composer first, and that was how he wanted to be remembered. He died of cancer on March 8, 1965, having recorded only a handful of albums. A Whole Night of His Music

''Tadd has never been given credit for all the beautiful music he left us,'' Philly Joe Jones maintains. ''These days when people play his music they usually play just one or two of his compositions. We're doing 19 of them, including some of the later pieces he wrote for larger groups, like 'Fountainbleu.' We figured is we were going to do his music justice, we should do as much of it as we could.''

The group Mr. Jones has assembled recalls a number of Mr. Dameron's bands in that the players were chosen for their superior musicianship and understanding of the material rather than for ''name'' value. The trumpeter is Johnny Coles, whose unruffled lyricism and poignant tone have been heard on some remarkable mid-60's albums. Britt Woodman, the group's trombonist, worked with the Duke Ellington orchestra and played an important role in Charles Mingus's orchestral masterwork, ''The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady.''

In addition, two Tadd Dameron scholars, Don Sickler and John Oddo, have overseen the arrangements. In many cases, no written scores survive, and Mr. Sickler and Mr. Oddo painstakingly transcribed Mr. Dameron's arrangements directly from vintage recordings.

''We've played this music in Philadelphia with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts,'' Philly Joe Jones noted. ''And the National Endowment is also helping us here. We'd like to take it on the road, take it to Europe so that more people can hear it. But right now we aren't going to take just anybody because Tadd's music has to be played right, and these are the cats that can play it like nobody else.''

A version of this article appears in print on April 8, 1982, Section C, Page 18 of the National edition with the headline: TADD DAMERON'S MUSIC, WITH LOVE. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tadd-Dameron

Tadd Dameron

American musician and composer

by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Full Name: Tadley Ewing Dameron

Tadd Dameron (born February 21, 1917, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.—died March 8, 1965, New York, New York), American jazz pianist, arranger, composer, and bandleader, especially noted during the bop era for the melodic beauty and warmth of the songs he composed.

Dameron was initially known as an arranger and composer for big bands, in particular for Harlan Leonard and His Rockets in the early 1940s. Dizzy Gillespie introduced some of his finest songs, including “Good Bait” and “Our Delight”; Gillespie also premiered his extended orchestral work Soulphony at Carnegie Hall in 1948. The small groups Dameron led on the East Coast and in Europe from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s were the height of his achievement; they included outstanding musicians such as trumpeters Fats Navarro, who was his most sympathetic interpreter, and Clifford Brown.

Though he wrote the occasional pensive ballad, such as “If You Could See Me Now” (for Sarah Vaughan), Dameron’s songs in general featured optimistic melodies (“Hot House,” “Lady Bird,” “Casbah”) and provocative harmonies, typically based on standard chord sequences. A pianist with a light touch and percussive attack, he seldom chose to solo himself; one of his most acclaimed works, the extended composition Fountainebleau, includes no improvisation at all. Beginning in 1961 he composed scores for recordings by soloists with large ensembles.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager.

https://jazzdagama.com/masthead/tadd-dameron-beauty-in-the-rarefied-realm-of-music/

Masthead

Tadd Dameron: Beauty in the Rarefied Realm of Music

by Raul da Gama

June 1, 2019

Jazzdagama

Tadd Dameron: Beauty in the Rarefied Realm of Music — **Photograph by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress**

Like too many other musicians – especially black musicians – of his and almost any era, the incomparable composer, arranger and pianist Tadley Ewing Peake “Tadd” Dameron passed away young, on March 8, 1965 at the age of 48. However, like many of the geniuses of his day he blazed a meteoric musical trail all the way to the heavens before leaving the earth with an amazing repertoire of music, the beauty of which is still enjoyed and celebrated today. Sadly, like many artists, Mr Dameron’s music has been kept alive by just a handful of musicians who are inexorably drawn to its riveting beauty.

It is no accident that Mr Dameron’s music emerged from his pen the way it did. In 1947 he told an interviewer with Metronome magazine that, “There’s enough ugliness in the world. I’m interested in beauty.” And every time that a black dot appeared from his pen onto staved paper he kept his word. And as his fingers – and those of many others – made the music leap off the page and float into the rarefied realm musicians and listeners around him who were paying attention discovered a striking new voice in virtually all music; not just Jazz.

Composing nearly all his glorious repertoire during the Bebop era, Mr Dameron stood out among his peers as he brought form to the kinetic new music. He said his sense of harmony came from the classical impressionists. “It’s more on a vein of Debussy or Ravel,” he once told the radio host, Harry Frost. “I try to make it flow.

Try to make everything go — you know, it’s just like reading a book. It’s a regular story. You just can’t have one idea and jump to another one. I try to make it flow coherently.”

Embracing the new sound of Bebop, with its driving rhythms and difficult harmonies, Mr Dameron began writing for the new movement’s pioneers, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Soon his charts such as “Hot House” became a bebop standard, as did Dameron’s compositions “Good Bait” and “Lady Bird”. Following this Mr Dameron started arranging for Billy Eckstine, who led the first bebop orchestra.

Throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s, Mr Dameron worked with everyone who was anyone in jazz, from Miles Davis to Artie Shaw, Count Basie to John Coltrane. An enormous amount of his recorded output was also made with the incomparable trumpeter Fats Navarro including such magnificent recordings such as the 1948 classic Good Bait for Riverside.

Years later, the composer, arranger, educator and saxophonist and writer Paul Combs took notice. While Mr Combs is not alone among musicians to recognise and pay homage to Mr Dameron’s music (Jimmy Heath, Kenny Barron and Slide Hampton are others) Mr Combs went the distance and then some. Mesmerised by Mr Dameron’s music since his teenage years, Mr Combs dug deeper than almost anyone else and came up with the wherewithal to write an extraordinary (and the only) comprehensive biography of Mr Dameron. The book, Dameronia: The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron was published by the University of Michigan Press in 2013.

Six years later Mr Combs also finally recorded his homage to Mr Dameron by unearthing a host of rare gems from the composer’s songbook. Although not as complete as he would have liked it to be Unknown Dameron (Summit Records, 2019) is a masterful production and includes not simply rarities but completely unheard and certainly unrecorded music by the inimitable composer. All the music on that album has been arranged by Mr Combs with a larger ensemble. Everything Dameron touched had one thing in common, says Paul Combs, “Almost everything that he writes has a very lyrical grace to it.” All of this unfolds throughout Mr Combs’ arrangements of Mr Dameron’s work.

Of course Mr Combs revealed much more in a wide-ranging interview that covered not only the recording, but much of what he had learned about the great composer as he unearthed these songs as well as aspects of his life that went into his seminal biography. Here are excerpts of that interview.

JazzDaGama: First of all congratulations on the new album Unknown Dameron.

Paul Combs: Thank you.

JDG: More importantly thank you for putting the spotlight on Tadd Dameron. Vanessa Rubin also recorded an album of his songs, but it bears mention that it is rare for musicians these days to resurrect a Jazz Composer.

Not many musicians (even those serious about their art) deign to pay homage to Jazz composers (exceptions being Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Charles Mingus)… even Mary Lou Williams has never been given her due…
PC: This is sadly true. In the case of Dameron – and with no disrespect to Herbie Nichols who while worthy of attention was not particularly influential, at least not in the manner of the others mentioned – I believe that his (Tadd Dameropn’s) importance cannot be overstated. His influence in developing the harmonic language of modern jazz, pointing the way for the evolution of small group jazz, and mentoring of significant musicians makes him a historically important musician of the first order, along with Mary Lou Williams, who as you point out, has never fully been given her due.

JDG: Clearly there was not any one song that drove you to Tadd Dameron, but please talk about – if you will – what made you look at doing this project?

PC: To answer I quote from my forward to the book “I was touched by the spirit of Tadd Dameron in the early 1960s. As a fifteen year old boy who lived for music and wanted to compose and perform, I was profoundly inspired by Tadd’s famous words, “There is enough ugliness in the world, I’m interested in beauty,” reprinted in Barry Ulanov’s A History Of Jazz In America. Dameron was already known to me, I had heard some of his writing for mid-sized bands, and had already been to my first jam session where I called “Good Bait” and nervously attempted to solo on it. Over the years Dameron’s spirit stayed with me, and after writing a tune in which his influence was very evident, I went to the library to find a book on the man. “Surely there must be a book about so great a musician,” I thought, but there was not. So, for better or worse, in 1987 I decided that I would write this book. I had never written a book before and had no idea what I was in for, but as I interviewed musicians I have admired for most of my life, they all made me promise that I would see this project through.”

JDG: Did it grow out of your book on Dameron?

PC: Ever since I took stock of all the music by Dameron that I uncovered in my research, I hoped to make a recording like this. Initially I planned a 2 CD set, and organized a quintet to record it. As I explain in the notes to Unknown Dameron, “As a result of the research for my book on Dameron, Dameronia – the Life and Music of Tadd Dameron, I uncovered many more works by this important musician beyond the eight for which he is generally known; some on rare recordings, others in copyright deposits, and still others in scores tucked away in various libraries. It was my hope to share as much of this music as possible.

To this end I organized a quintet devoted to playing the music I had found. In the end, the original idea of a two CD set had to be abandoned due to copyright complications, and a general lack of resources. Fortunately, after I moved to San Diego, Ken Poston, fellow researcher and now general manager of KSDS Jazz88, one of the world’s premier jazz radio stations – asked me if I would like to perform Tadd’s music on one of their live broadcast concerts. We settled on, as it turned out, Dameron’s 100th birthday, February 21, 2017. This garnered the interest and support of Summit Records, and made this recording possible.

JDG: Where do you think that Dameron’s music comes from? The Blues and elsewhere, perhaps…?

PC: According to Dameron himself, his primary influences were Ellington, Gershwin, movie musical in general, and later on turn-of the-century European composers like Frederick Delius. Since the blues informs much of American music, its influence is felt in his work, but subtly. The few tunes he wrote in the twelve-bar form reflect this in his application of harmonic sophistication to the music.

A possible exception for this might be made for a couple of late pieces like “Just Plain Talkin’,” recorded on The Magic Touch, and an eight-bar Blues he wrote for Sonny Stitt, “The Four Ninety.” Good question, though, as it opens up an area of speculation about what he might possibly have been thinking about the Blues in his final years.

JDG: Dameron is unique, isn’t he? I mean not many writers were lyricists too.

PC: Well, he really is not anywhere near as good a lyricist as Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, or Frank Loesser, who set the bar for composer/lyricists. And I do believe other composers have a lyric in mind for some of their works. Horace Silver told me, and others, that he almost always had a lyric to go with his pieces. Further only a couple of Dameron’s early lyrics survive. The songs on this CD, and Vanessa’s for that matter, have lyrics by someone else. However, I have good reason to believe that these lyricists were working from a concept or model lyric provided by Tadd.

JDG: There is something else about Dameron: he seems to think like a creator on a large canvas… very much like a playwright; an opera librettist…

PC: Dameron composed three long-form works that used compositional techniques that were different from those he employed in his song-form work. In addition we know of two other lost works that were likely in the long-form category.works that were likely in the long-form category.

After he returned to the scene in 1961 he stated that he was most interested in developing himself as a composer, as opposed to as an arranger or performer. We will never know what he might have given us, but it is quite possible that he had a larger vision than just composing short-form works.
JDG: Can you make the case for Dameron being recognized as someone equal to – if not greater than – many of the writers of music now considered part of the Great American Songbook?

PC: No, his body of work in the area of songs with words is not large enough to be compared with that of Porter, Berlin, Gershwin, or Rogers and Hart. In addition I am not comfortable with this notion of “greatness” as something quantifiable. However, that he made beautiful contributions to the repertoire identified as “The Great American Songbook” is, in my opinion, beyond question.

JDG: Have you, in the course of your research, come to discover anything interesting that would set Dameron’s work apart from any other writer… his idiosyncrasies, if you like?

PC: I feel that his variety of melodic designs is extraordinary, along with his very subtle use of harmony. There is also an interest in a particular harmonic relationship between the tonic key of a melody and a temporary tonic a minor third above. While this relationship is not uncommon, it is the variety of ways in which Dameron treats it that is noteworthy.

JDG: Would you talk a bit about what you think are the ways in which Dameron influenced Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey and Charlie Rouse? (Please expand as much as you can on the influence on each of the aforementioned musicians).

PC: Tadd and Dizzy were colleagues, and shared concepts, so the influence was no doubt mutual. I don’t think he had a direct influence on Blakey, although as drummer with the Billy Eckstine’s band he would have been playing Tadd’s arrangements. If we consider Dameron’s arranging concepts’ influence on hard bop, a movement in which Blakey as an important band leader, we could make a case for this being an indirect influence. As far as we know, Blakey did not write arrangements, but he was particular about hiring players who did, such as Benny Golson. Golson was indeed directly influenced by Dameron, not only harmonically, but as an arranger, as he has said many times. Charlie Rouse first met Dameron as a member of the Eckstine Band, and worked with him later not only in New York, but in Ohio and probably elsewhere in the “mid-east” as Charlie put it to me.

Another relationship that began in 1945 with the Eckstine band was Tadd’s relationship with Miles Davis, who was deputized to cover one of the trumpet chairs when the band played and early gig in East St. Louis. Tadd was one of the musicians who took young Miles under their wing when he came to NYC to study at Julliard.to NYC to study at Julliard.

Horace Silver was greatly influenced by Dameron’s writing for small groups, even though they did not meet until sometime in the 1950s. He felt that in listening to Tadd’s late 40s recordings he was “mentored” (Silver’s word) by Dameron. Frank Foster, Gigi Gryce, and Quincy Jones have all expressed similar sentiments.

JDG: What made you want to do a record particularly with this repertoire?

PC: It was a combination of worthiness of better exposure, and accessibility from a rights standpoint. There are many other Dameron tunes I would like to record, but which are tangled up in copyright disputes of various kinds. The vocal selections have all been recorded once or twice, but deserve to become part of the general repertoire. While one of the instrumentals was recorded in 1940, it is only available on rare out of print recordings. And one more, “Sando Latino” was unknown to almost everyone until Joe Magnarelli recorded it last fall.

JDG: How did you gather the cast of musicians?

PC: Bill Cunliffe, Alex Frank, and Charles Ruggiero were engaged by Ken Poston of KSDS to play with us on the Jazz Live concert. Derek Cannon, Melonie Grinnell, Kamau Kenyatta, Rob Thorsen, and Richard Sellers are all highly respected San Diego musicians, whom I have the good fortune to count among my friends. Danielle Wertz worked with me in D.C. when I gave a concert at the Smithsonian Art Museum. She has relocated to the SF Bay Area where Ken Cook, an old friend, and excellent pianist lives. Ken engaged Jeff Denson and Alex Aspinall to round out the band.

JDG: Now that this one is out of the way, what’s next?

PC: Well, I expect to be performing and educating about Tadd’s music for the foreseeable future. I have given some lectures and workshops on his music at the collegiate level, as well as lectures for general audiences, and hope to do more of this. For instance, I spoke at the talk tent at the Detroit Jazz Festival in 2013, and will be doing so in just a few weeks at this year’s Trip-C Festival in Cleveland. I do have a couple of other projects I would like to get to work on. One is the development of repertoire for jazz improvisers to perform with concert bands. The concert band community is one that I have had experience with as a wind player and conductor. I see this project as a way to help expand the wind bands’ audience, and give jazz players another venue for performance. I am also always trying to expand my own performing repertoire, not only with my own work, but with music I feel deserves greater exposure.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Raul da Gama

Based in Canada, Raul is a musician and an accomplished writer whose profound analysis is reinforced by his deep understanding of music, technically as well as historically.

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/paul-combs-dameronia-the-life-and-times-of-tadd-dameron-tadd-dameron-by-victor-l-schermer.php?pg=1?page=1&width=1920

Paul Combs: Dameronia: The Life and Times of Tadd Dameron

by VICTOR L. SCHERMER
June 13, 2014

AllAboutJazz

Dameronia: The Life and Times of Tadd Dameron
Paul Combs
264 Pages

ISBN: # 978-0-472-03563-2
The University of Michigan Press
2013

"There is enough ugliness in this world; I'm interested in beauty."—Tadd Dameron

"Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay. " —Robert Frost

Composer, arranger, and pianist Tadd Dameron (1917-1965) was a creative force in jazz whose "dawn went down to day" due to his personal anonymity, heroin and alcohol addiction and finally through cancer. Dameron played a crucial role as a composer/arranger for big bands and became a central figure in the transition from swing to bebop and hard bop. A dreamer, but with a keen ear and impeccable skill, he always sought the "gold" of beautiful voicings and structures. He was respected, admired, and hired by the greats: Harlan Leonard, Jimmie Lunceford, Billy Eckstine, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Ted Heath, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro, Charlie Rouse, Benny Golson, John Coltrane, Chet Baker (the list goes on and on). He composed jazz standards such as "If You Could See Me Now," "Our Delight," "Hot House" "The Squirrel, "Good Bait," "Lady Bird," and "Soul Trane," and longer compositions for ensembles of every kind, of which "Fontainebleau" and others have been compared with works of Gershwin and Ellington. A modest and self-effacing man who was capable of disappearing into the streets of his birthplace, Cleveland, even after he had become a New York and international icon, Dameron's legacy was kept alive by his fellow musicians such as Benny Golson, Philly Joe Jones, Milt Jackson, Don Sickler, and Barry Harris, but the renown he deserved by virtue of his contributions has eluded him to this day. Fame knocked at Dameron's door more than once, and then went away. "Eden sank to grief."

Recently, after 25 years of devoted work gathering information and pondering his subject's nature, and encouraged in his efforts by Dameron's friends, especially Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Golson, musician and educator Paul Combs has published Dameron's definitive biography. (An earlier biography by Ian McDonald:Tadd, the Life and Legacy of Tadley Ewing Dameron (Jahbero Press, 1998) was a good start, but less comprehensive, especially with regard to musical analysis.). Paul Reyes' review of Comb's excellent book in Jazz Times provides a rich summation, which need not be repeated here.

Suffice it to say that, because Dameron was a very private figure, Combs had to "comb" multitudes of documents, recordings, and conversations to develop a full picture of the man and his music. Over time, many of Dameron's compositions, arrangements, and details of his life were lost. Therefore, the author's meticulous efforts give the impression of putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but in the end a portrait of the man and his music emerges clearly.

Combs takes pains to fill the gaps with careful inferences, never overstepping his bounds as biographer. He provides numerous and detailed analyses of Dameron's music, in itself a major contribution to jazz. Musicians and scholars will learn much from these studies, which provide insights into what Dameron accomplished musically, much of which was far-reaching and ahead of his time. (Any serious composer/arranger should investigate these analyses, which, thanks to Combs' acumen, illuminate the subtleties of their craft.)

Jazz aficionados and the general public may have to struggle with some of the advanced musical material contained in the book, but it is well worth doing so, for the author has not only fleshed out the details of Dameron's musical aesthetic. He has also reconstructed the true dimensions of the life and work of an African American musician over the course of epochal changes in our society: the Great Depression, World War II, the "American Dream" fifties, and the revolutionary sixties. The story is about a man who expressed beauty and spirit during times when blacks were shamed by segregation and prejudice. Dameron should be included in the company of Marian Anderson, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Dexter Gordon, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, and many other African Americans in that respect. A modest, even self-effacing, man, Dameron swallowed his pride many times, whether with financial struggles, racist cabaret card regulations, manipulations by agents, record dates that never materialized, and incarcerations. A particularly poignant episode in this respect occurred, when as a model prisoner/patient in the drug tank in Lexington, Kentucky, he was allowed to go off grounds to serve as a domestic for a well-to-do family. To their credit, the household let him use their piano to do his composing and arranging. However, to anyone who appreciates the jazz greats, that is like letting Prince William clean your house, and then perhaps use your horse to practice polo. Combs diligently sought out and reports details that at times are either heartbreaking or edifying depending upon how you look at it.

Rather than repeating the biographical story line that Combs provides so well, it would be more useful to focus on three important issues that are emphasized in the book: Dameron's "mysterious" personality, his skill as a composer/arranger, and his role in the transition from swing to bebop and hard bop.

The "Mystery Man" Unmasked

Combs depicts Dameron's persona as "mysterious," on the basis that he rarely disclosed personal matters to his friends and fellow musicians. Combs digs deeper into the personal life of Dameron than any previous writer. He finds many gaps and unknown factors in the story. As a result, he claims that Dameron was a "mysterious" figure and "secretive almost to the point of paranoia." Moreover, according to Combs, "He [Dameron] didn't seem to write many letters and he didn't keep a journal or a diary." However, in this reviewer's opinion, calling Dameron "mysterious" doesn't bear up under scrutiny. "Mysterious" implies a cultivated attempt to convey a mythic self- image, aloof, inscrutable. Dameron did lie on a few occasions, such as telling an interviewer that he went to medical school (which he did not), and fictitiously describing a bird that he saw in Africa as the basis for a song he composed. But who doesn't lie occasionally, and jazz musicians in general are known to confabulate information, often with mischievous intent. According to Combs' own reckoning, people usually remembered Dameron as an affable person, ready to mentor and teach, devoted to his work, accessible to comrades and even strangers. There is little evidence that he concealed aspects of his life to create a persona, as was the case with, say, Duke Ellington, who privately was far from the upright gentleman he presented to the world, or that he went out of his way to perpetuate grand images of himself, as did Miles Davis with his attire and sports cars. Combs provides few if any instances where Dameron tried to create an inscrutable image or conceal facts about himself. He surely was not a mystery man.

What Combs describes as "mysterious" can perhaps better be described as "introverted" or "self-effacing." It appears that from an early age, as Dameron became aware of his musical gifts, he felt a need to avoid special attention. This seemed especially true in relation to his brother, Caesar, also a musician. For much of his career, Dameron, even while being the innovator, worked mainly for others. He did the composing, arranging, rehearsing, accompanying, mentoring, and sometimes conducting for more famous band leaders who employed him. He never put together his own touring band. Only later did he form his own groups, which quickly disbanded after projects were completed. If our destinies are determined by ourselves, not our stars, fame eluded Dameron because he arranged it that way. He avoided the limelight because it did not match his deeper striving, which was to create beauty in music and because he was a giver rather than a self-seeker. It could be added that his heroin addiction caused him to withdraw socially as well. There's no mystery about this.

A Ground-Breaking Composer and Arranger

Combs fully documents and elaborates Dameron's gifts as a composer and arranger. (Many know of Dameron's brilliance in these respects, but his art form wasn't systematically described until Combs.) Dameron invented nuances of writing jazz, transforming basic ideas. He adjusted chord progressions to increase their interest and expressive capabilities. He conceived melodic lines that avoided clichés. He structured the relationship between sections and soloists in original ways that enhanced the trajectory of the piece and flattered the instrumentalists. In addition to Combs' book, one way to really get the scope of what Dameron accomplished is simply to listen to his recordings with a fresh perspective and attention, as if hearing them for the first time. His sonorities are simultaneously parsimonious and lush. The clarity of the presentation is almost startling. The voicing and harmonies are compact and uncluttered. In a brief correspondence with Combs, this reviewer reflected that the book ought to have a "sound track." To that end, Combs' preface does supply a list of key recordings, some of which could accompany the reading.

A Pioneer in Bebop and Modern Jazz

The question of who "invented" bebop is frequently asked, and it is unanswerable. Jazz is a communal effort, and it's never been clear who invented the musical vocabulary of the bebop idiom, which eventually congealed in the work of Parker and Gilespie. Dameron played a significant role. He was using bebop types of harmonies in the early 1940s, and he worked and had conversations with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and others in the mid- to late-'40s, when bebop was formally conceived. Around that time, he and Miles Davis formed a group that went to Paris, and many of the proponents of modern jazz were using him as a pianist and arranger.

It is incontrovertible that Dameron laid much of the groundwork for bebop, cool jazz, and hard bop. Combs carefully documents Dameron's innovations and the frequency with which others like Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, John Coltrane, and many others used his tunes, arrangements, and piano accompaniment on their recordings and live gigs. Dameron had an instinct for taking a group of four to eight or nine players and giving them just what they needed to shine. This was a crucial skill when the big bands dissolved and the smaller groups needed the sophistication and subtlety he could offer. Any mainstream group today owes much of its operating function to Dameron.

Another key role which Dameron played in the evolution of the modern idioms was to provide a balancing center for the new developments, which were rife with experiments and musical cul-de- sacs. He was often the one who would bring the music back to the basics of melody, harmony, sonority, and self-expression. Dexter Gordon referred to him as the "romantic" of the beboppers. That didn't mean so much that he was sentimental as that he embodied an idea of beauty that acted as a rudder in the stormy seas of the creative process. For example, he went against the prevailing tendency to get a group of musicians into a studio and do a recording without any rehearsal. He meticulously rehearsed bands, and musicians marveled about the ways in which his guidance enhanced the outcome. He went "modern" without sacrificing the virtues of the swing era, such as rhythmic accuracy, melodic emphasis, and a balance between ensemble work and solos. He carefully worked out his harmonies, voicings, and structures to create a coherent composition from beginning to end. He set the stage for the Birth of the Cool sessions and subsequent work of Gil Evans, who became his good friend. The big band work of Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, and, most recently, Maria Schneider owe much to Dameron's example.

Combs' biography leaves no doubt that Dameron was not just a prodigious talent who appeared on the scene for a while, was revered, and vanished into thin air. Rather, he was a true jazz master who belongs in the pantheon of those who shaped the music. In one sense, the musical gold he created was the "hardest hue to hold," but in another respect, his legacy lives on in many aspects of jazz today and, very likely, in the future. In Combs, Dameron has found a biographer who has portrayed him in his human dimensions and shortcomings but has also lifted him out of time and given him his proper due as a musician for the ages.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dream-is-you-vanessa-rubin-sings-tadd-dameron-review-a-tribute-to-the-romanticist-of-the-bebop-movement-11553100456

‘The Dream Is You: Vanessa Rubin Sings Tadd Dameron’ Review: A Tribute to the Romanticist of the Bebop Movement

Vocalist Vanessa Rubin honors Tadd Dameron with an album that highlights his compositional genius.

by Martin Johnson

March 20, 2019

Wall Street Journal

The great composer and arranger Tadd Dameron (1917-1965) wrote “If You Could See Me Now,” one of Sarah Vaughan ’s signature songs, but until now the rest of his formidable catalog of music, which includes jazz standards like “Lady Bird” and “Good Bait,” has rarely featured vocals. Vanessa Rubin, a vocalist who like Dameron is a Cleveland native, has long been a fan of his compositions. Now she’s released a recording more than a decade in the making, “The Dream Is You: Vanessa Rubin Sings Tadd Dameron” (Nibur).

Let a streaming service build a playlist around Dameron’s music and it’s likely that his songs will be mixed in with those of Gigi Gryce, Melba Liston and Oliver Nelson, colleagues of his whose work is now frequently overlooked as jazz has come to favor virtuosos and bandleaders. Yet Dameron was immensely respected in his time. Saxophone great Dexter Gordon called him the romanticist of the bebop movement, thanks to his penchant for lush harmonies and beautiful melodies, and Dameron’s music captures a distinctively postwar American sensibility. Compositions like “Bula-Beige” have the stately gleam of early Phillip Johnson architecture, and tunes like “The Scene Is Clean” embody the eager insouciance of Jack Kerouac ’s beatniks from “On the Road.”

In creating her tribute, Ms. Rubin looked to Carmen McRae ’s classic 1988 recording “Carmen Sings Monk” (Novus), 13 well-known songs by Thelonious Monk delivered with an appropriately wry sensibility and presented with the band on equal footing with the vocalist. Ms Rubin’s recording takes the same approach. She commissioned arrangements for her eight-piece band from Frank Foster, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Willie “Face” Smith—each either played or studied with Dameron—and Bobby Watson, whose talent for melodies seems descended from the great composer and arranger.

Ms. Rubin’s voice is leaner than Vaughan’s and McRae’s, but she delivers the lyrics with a smooth storytelling confidence. The recording opens with Mr. Foster’s jaunty arrangement of “Lady Bird,” which is sung as a contemporary love song bolstered by solos from trumpeter Eddie Allen and pianist Kenny Davis. Ms. Rubin’s take on “If You Could See Me Now” presents a more grounded character; tender and tough, she’s less in need of love for validation than Vaughan’s. Her take on “Good Bait,” which was arranged by Mr. Smith, captures the witty tone of the original. Ms. Rubin wrote lyrics for the song “The Dream Is You” and renamed it “Reveries Do Come True.” The number is a crisply sung, midtempo paean to love.

Ms. Rubin, who recently turned 62 years old, emerged on the New York scene in the ’80s and recorded frequently in the ’90s. After being dropped from her label in 2002, she began working on this recording while doing guest spots on others, including “Full Circle” (Creative Perspective), a release she co-led with saxophonist Don Braden. The arrangements are more faithful to the originals than is in fashion today, yet that serves a vital purpose. In highlighting Dameron’s compositional genius, it’s easy to hear a through-line from him to the work of composers like Thad Jones and Bob Brookmeyer, two of the leading influences on contemporary large-ensemble music. Perhaps someday soon a vocalist influenced by their compositions will put words to their music.

Mr. Johnson writes about jazz for the Journal.

http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2017/04/tadd-dameron-career-overview.html

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Tadd Dameron - A Career Overview

In Search of Tad(d) Dameron by Ian MacDonald - 9.12.2014

© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“... Dameron is a much underrated performer who stands at the fulcrum of modern Jazz, midway between Swing and Bebop. Combining the broad-brush arrangements of the big band and the advanced harmonic language of bop, his own recordings are difficult to date blind. The title of one of his most renown tunes - On A Misty Night - catches the sense of evanescence which seems to surround both the man and the music.”

Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.

At the time [1948] that Miles began spending more time at Gil's basement apartment, the New York scene was vibrant but also in another state of upheaval. Big bands were bailing out, and the 52nd Street clubs were closing one by one or converting to strip joints. Yet New York's jazz world, drastically shrunk now in its venues, was still innovating. The seeds of a post-bop direction were already in evidence, not just among Evans and his friends.

Arranger/composer/pianist Tadd Dameron, who had written for Gillespie's big band, was fronting a medium-sized combo; his current music had a light, fluid approach that veered off from the more frenetic side of bop.6 Dameron's music and working groups provided an alternative to Miles Davis's work with Charlie Parker in the late 1940s and had a formative impact on Davis’ evolving style.”

- Stephanie Stein Crease, Gil Evans, Out of the Cool: His Life and Music [pp. 154-55]

“‘I taught Tadd, you know,’ recalled Dizzy. ‘You can tell that his writing was very much influenced by my harmony, by what I had worked out on the piano by myself.’”

-- Dizzy Gillespie to Alyn Shipton, Groovin’ High, The Life of Dizzy Gillespie [p. 163]

While doing research of the music of Tadd Dameron, mainly to increase my own knowledge of it and to enjoy listening to more of it in the process [blog master’s perquisite?], I came across this information about Ian MacDonald’s own search for information about Tadd that resulted in his self-published book on the subject: Ian McDonald, author of TADD: The Life and Legacy of Tadley Ewing Dameron.

I have yet to obtain a copy of Ian McDonald’s TADD: The Life and Legacy of Tadley Ewing Dameron, but while I continue the search, I thought you might find this article about Ian’s Tadd-quest of interest. It was published online by the Jazz Institute of Chicago.

In Search of Tad(d) Dameron by Ian MacDonald

“The following material is based on the author's research into Dameron's life and music, which culminated in the recent publication of Tadd—the life and legacy of Tadley Ewing Dameron….

In October [2003], a compilation CD titled "The Lost Sessions" will hit the stores which will include previously unreleased material from the Blue Note vaults. Featured will be various bands led by Charlie Rouse, Ike Quebec, Duke Pearson and...Tadd Dameron.

The Dameron session dates from December 1961, a few months after his release from the Lexington Federal Narcotics Hospital and four years before his death. It will provide the only available record of his piano playing since the 1956 "Mating Call" session with John Coltrane. The band features Donald Byrd, Curtis Fuller, Julius Watkins, Sam Rivers, Cecil Payne, Tadd, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. It was produced by Michael Cuscuna and it includes material originally listed as "rejected."

A couple of years back, when I was researching my biography of Dameron, I asked Cuscuna about this unreleased session. He said that, "The ensembles were a mess. There had been trouble with the copyist." He added that he hoped "to revisit the tapes at some stage to see if they could be released—for historic importance."

Happily, that has now happened, although Cuscuna stresses that the issue will include a caveat about the flaws. This is not likely to bother true Dameron followers, who will be keen to know if Dameron's piano playing changed during his three year stay in Lexington, where he not only led the "house band' but also practised piano most days. [See George Ziskind's essay about the post-Lexington Tadd Dameron.]

Until now, only a few people have heard the post Lexington piano of Dameron. A few lucky souls heard a tape of his solos made privately for Chris Albertson, in December 1961, which went missing after being loaned to Lil Harding. Another private tape that year, made at Ray Bryant's apartment, was stolen.

In 1947, a numerologist had advised Tadd, "To be lucky, you need to add an extra letter to your name." Thus Tad become Tadd. He must have wondered about the wisdom of that change. His run of bad fortune continued in early 1962 when master tapes from a studio session featuring Dameron directing a band led by Milt Jackson and Kenny Dorham were destroyed in a fire.

The "Lost Sessions" from Blue Note will include Dameron tunes Aloof Spoof, The Elder Speaks, Bevan Beeps and Lament For The Living. The first two have not been recorded, but Beeps and Lament were recorded by Chet Baker.

Many Dameron stories have entered into jazz folklore—an Oberlin pre-med doctor story; a Sir Thomas Beecham connection; I Love Lucy theme rumors; Dimitri Tiomkin and the Love Theme from the film Giant; a Mexican ballet; and more. As I researched my book, I naturally sought the truth.

Interviews with people who knew Tadd going back to the 1930s (including someone who saw Tadd make his public debut playing Stardust with the Snake White band in 1936), research at the Oberlin alumni archives, talks with Beecham's road manager, and with Tadd's widow Mia, brought us most of the answers. You'll have to read the book. For now—the Mexican ballet story is untrue.

I wanted to build up as complete a picture as possible of Dameron's compositions and recorded output. I started with a core of about 100 known Dameron tunes and was greatly aided by Dameron buffs such as Andrew Homzy, Brooks Kerr, Bob Sunenblick and Don Sickler in finding more. The tune and song list is now at 190, with the probability of more to come. Along the way I found Sermon On The Mount, a nine part religious suite written by Tadd, Irving Reid and Ira Kosloff (co-writer of Elvis Presley's early hit I Want You I Need You I Love You).

Some of the songs were collaborations with Carl Sigman, Irving Reid, Bernie Hanighen, Maely Daniele, Shirley Jones, Jack Reynolds, Charles White, Albert Carlo, Darwin Jones, Ira Kosloff, and Ann Greer. Boxes of manuscripts, some without chord symbols, are still to be sorted and catalogued. Many of these are likely to be Dameron compositions.

Putting together a Dameron discography proved a lot easier, which ran to almost 300 recordings as player, arranger or conductor. Many have been issued under Tadd's leadership, but others sessions were under the names of Harlan Leonard, Jimmy Lunceford, Sabby Lewis, Billy Eckstine, Georgie Auld, Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughan, Dickie Wells, Earle Warren, Dizzy Gillespie, Don Redman, Illinois Jacquet, Louie Bellson, Pearl Bailey, Babs Gonzales, Fats Navarro, Dexter Gordon Coleman Hawkins, Anita O'Day, Kay Penton, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, Miles Davis, Tony Proteau, Ted Heath, Bull Moose Jackson, Billy Paul, Clifford Brown, John Coltrane, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Carmen McRae, Blue Mitchell, Milt Jackson, Sonny Stitt and Chet Baker.

Scores in Tadd's hand were unearthed for Duke Ellington, Boyd Raeburn and Stan Kenton, none of which was ever recorded. Tadd collaborated early on with Billy Strayhorn—they regularly compared notes and ideas at the home of Billy Taylor—but apparently they did not write anything down. Scores written for Gil Evans exist but are missing. Detailed searches by Bob Sunenblick and Gil's son, Miles, have failed so far to unearth them.

I listened to many Dameron tribute albums. Not just the well known material by the Philly Joe Jones Dameronia repertory band, but also albums by Slide Hampton, Jimmy Heath, Muriel Winston, Barry Harris, the Japanese big band The Blue Coats, Per Husby, Andy LaVerne, Warren Rand, Dave Cliff and Geoff Simkins. This led me to the beautiful voices of Dameron admirers Vanessa Rubin and Jeri Brown.

I found professionally-recorded versions of Dameron tunes for which I possessed sheet music or lead sheets, but had never heard. These included I'm Never Happy Anymore (three different versions), Lovely One In The Window, Love Took The 7.10 Tonight, Never Been In Love, Take A Chance On Spring, That's The Way It Goes and Weekend.

I owned two versions of Dizzy Gillespie's band playing A Study In Soulphony In Three Hearts but also unearthed a piano solo based on one portion of the longer orchestral piece. Pianist Clifton Smalls told me that Tadd had given him a copy of that piece. He said that Tadd was writing a whole stage act for singer Brook Benton, much in the style of his stage act writing for the 1953 Atlantic City Harlem Revue.

Research into the 1953 Atlantic City period unearthed an agonizing "might have been." I located a tape of Tadd's band which included Clifford Brown which was made privately by cab driver, and occasional baritone saxist, Kellice Swaggerty. He sometimes sat in with the band and taped not just the jazz proceedings, but the whole revue—comics, dancers, singers et al.

Unfortunately Swaggerty's tape machine sounds as if it was placed too near to a bandstand air-conditioning unit. The sound is so distorted that it is unlikely that this could ever be packaged for a wider audience—not even for historical purposes

The search for more tunes and missing tapes goes on. In the meantime Dameron fans have those 1961-vintage "Lost Sessions" to look forward to.

[Ian MacDonald, a journalist and editor for 35 years, is the secretary of the Sheffield (U.K.) Jazz Society and author of Tadd—the life and legacy of Tadley Ewing Dameron. It includes a foreword by Benny Golson and is published by Jahbero Press (ISBN 0 9533778 0 6) and distributed by Cadence (North America), Norbert Ruecker (Germany) and Cadillac Jazz Distribution (UK). For more information, email Jahbero@aol.com or write Jahbero Press, 38 Wadbrough Road, Sheffield S11 8RG, England. Copies of photos of Dameron may be obtained directly from Val Wilmer at 10 Snyder Road, London N16 7UG. Send a SASE for details.]

[Caution: the above contact information dates back to 2003 when this piece was published by the Jazz Institute of Chicago and it may no longer be accurate or active as of this posting].

Reviewed by Don Rose for The Jazz Institute of Chicago

“Tadd Dameron, born in 1917, seamlessly bridged the crucial musical years from swing to bebop. He wrote and arranged for late-1930s bands such as Lucky Millinder, Andy Kirk and Vido Musso before he was 20, jammed with his fellow musical "outlaw" Charlie Parker in Kansas City in 1939 and went on to become an indispensable—though undersung—part of the modern music scene of the '40s through the early '60s.

His compositions "Hot House" and "Good Bait" were heralds of the bebop era. The latter was first introduced by a Dizzy Gillespie small band at one of the first bop-age recording sessions, though the Basie band played it occasionally as many as three years earlier. The former, an unusual ABCA riff on "What is This Thing Called Love," was part of the first Gillespie-Parker small band session that essentially launched the era.

He first recorded another of his masterpieces, "Lady Bird," in 1948 with a remarkable group that included Fats Navarro on trumpet and Wardell Gray and Allen Eager on tenors. It became an instant classic—Miles Davis wrote the counter-melody "Half Nelson" for a recording session that included Parker on tenor—and we're still hearing the lovely tune today, though it actually dates from 1939!

The Cleveland-born composer-arranger-pianist led the band that backed Sarah Vaughan's landmark recording sessions of 1946 and wrote one of the great hits from that session, "If You Could See Me Now." (He adapted a Gillespie coda to create the line.) Two years later the Gillespie big band introduced Dameron's "A Study in Soulphony," the first extended composition of the bop era—but sadly no studio performance was ever released. Most of that year, however, Dameron led what was essentially the house band at the legendary Royal Roost in New York, frequently with Navarro, sometimes with Davis.

He recorded with Navarro for Savoy and Blue Note— almost every side a classic—mentoring the brilliant horn man along the way. (Dameron, like Thelonius Monk, was an excellent teacher, even to the extent of helping horn players improve their tone. Another mentee was Clifford Brown.) Eight years later, Dameron recorded his most impressive extended work, "Fontainebleau," which remains one of the epic jazz compositions. The same year, 1956, he accompanied an emerging tenorman named John Coltrane on an album of Dameron originals.

Like so many of his compadres, Dameron was also hooked on heroin and, two years after the Coltrane date, served three years in the federal narcotics prison at Lexington, Ky. He emerged to find a rapidly and radically changing musical scene in 1961. But he went right back to work playing, composing and recording until his death from cancer in 1965, leaving behind a repertoire of close to 200 songs, including many ballads that have been set to words—even an amazingly popular commercial jingle "Get Wildroot Cream Oil Charlie." (Some of his other well known tunes, done for Gillespie's big band as well as his own groups, include "Cool Breeze," "Gnid," "Our Delight," "The Tadd Walk" and "On a Misty Night.")

This is just the quickest sketch of the life and achievements of this extraordinary musician — one who should be ranked right up there, just behind Ellington, Monk and Mingus as a composer — but who still remains an undersung hero even though several tribute bands exist and testimonial albums have been issued.

Author MacDonald set about accumulating the facts of Dameron's life, mainly through clippings, discographical material and interviews with dozens of the admiring musicians who knew and worked with Dameron. This self-published biography (the publishing house name is another Dameron tune) is a great tribute to its subject and reveals a trove of forgotten or ignored facts. It also includes several discographical appendices, which are interesting and useful, albeit a bit confusingly organized and lacking in detail.

This work is far from fine biography and almost devoid of musical analysis—rather, it's a fan's appreciation, richly and extensively quoting scores of players who knew or worked with its subject. As such it can't compare with works such as Lewis Porter's exemplary bio of Coltrane and works of that caliber, but it's serious in its effort to tell a story that well deserves telling. Dameron fans and relative newcomers alike will be enriched.”

The following video montage features Dameronia under the direction of Don Sickler performing If You Could See Me Now with Charlie Rouse doing the honors on tenor saxophone. It was performed at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, NYC in August, 1988 and, to my knowledge, it has not been released as a commercial recording.

Below Ian’s overview of his book,you will find the review of it that Don Rose posted to the Jazz Institute of Chicago’s website.

We are planning to add future features on Tadd’s music by Max Harrison and Dan Morgenstern.

In Search of Tad(d) Dameron by Ian MacDonald

“The following material is based on the author's research into Dameron's life and music, which culminated in the recent publication of Tadd—the life and legacy of Tadley Ewing Dameron….

A couple of years back, when I was researching my biography of Dameron, I asked Cuscuna about this unreleased session. He said that, "The ensembles were a mess. There had been trouble with the copyist." He added that he hoped "to revisit the tapes at some stage to see if they could be released—for historic importance."

The search for more tunes and missing tapes goes on. In the meantime Dameron fans have those 1961-vintage "Lost Sessions" to look forward to.

[Caution: the above contact information dates back to 2003 when this piece was published by the Jazz Institute of Chicago and it may no longer be accurate or active as of this posting].

Reviewed by Don Rose for The Jazz Institute of Chicago

Tadd Dameron - Fontainebleau - Max Harrison 9.15.2014

Fontainebleau originates from Tadd Dameron’s last full year of freedom [1956] before the term of imprisonment that more of less ended his career [he was released from prison in 1962 and died of cancer in 1965].

It is a fine set with no clutter in the horns. The title piece if entirely written-out with no scope for improvisation.

Here is Jazz critic Max Harrison’s of it from the February, 1960 edition of the Jazz Review.

“Dameron should have been one of the most prominent jazz composers, arrangers and bandleaders in the immediate postwar years for he was certainly among the most gifted. He lacked technical slickness, and that was surely a disadvantage in the busy world of the record makers, but nearly everything he wrote was modestly yet firmly individual. The melodic style, warm but fresh, was the most distinctive single aspect of Dameron's work, yet his orchestration for small and medium-sized groups was instantly recognisable, too. Confining himself mainly to conventional instrumentations, and never seeking really unusual sounds, his textures are almost always striking.

The concise inventiveness of many of his themes, such as Ladybird, Cool breeze, Stay on it, Jahbero, Our delight, The Squirrel, Half step down, please, Symphonette, Hothouse and Good Bait, won them classic status in the jazz of the 19408, and they gave rise to remarkable improvisations by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro and others. Navarro was, indeed, the finest interpreter the composer ever found, and they recorded together often during those years. Following the great trumpeter's premature death in 1950, Dameron's career appeared to lose its impetus, and from then until his own demise in 1965 little was salvaged except bits and pieces. Malcolm Lowry (Dark as the Grave, London,1969) compares an artist to a fireman rescuing valuables from a burning house, that house being the work of art, unscathed, intact in the mind which conceived it, but which the artist has had to set on fire before he can exteriorise it. What he finishes with—the 'completed work' —is a small heap of salvaged objects. This will scarcely serve for the greatest works of art, but it would be hard to better as an image of the last decade and a half of Dameron's life.

He had the more gifted jazzman's usual ambition to break out of the straitjacket of repeating twelve- and thirty-two-bar choruses, and wrote an extended piece called Soulphony for Gillespie to play at Carnegie Hall. This has sunk without a trace, but he made further attempts, and the most convincing is Fontainebleau, which he first recorded in 1956 (American Prestige D7842). It tries to suggest, rather than directly portray, the palace of that name (described in the sleeve note of the original American issue as "where the Bourbons used to cavourt"!) and the surrounding forest.

According to Dameron, the quite simple formal plan has three parts. The first, Leforet, opens with a brooding introductory theme that is heard first on the string bass, then on bass doubled with baritone saxophone, then on the remaining horns—trumpet, trombone, alto and tenor saxophones. This leads to the main theme of the section, and of the whole work, stated by Kinny Dorham's trumpet. It is a flowing, lyrical melody characteristic of the composer, and, though perhaps unsuitable for large-scale development, is entirely suitable for its limited use here. This theme is extended in a written-out (not improvised) alto saxophone solo played most expressively by Sahib Shihab, and by the ensemble. A transitional piano solo from Dameron himself leads to Les cygnes.

This opens with a brief ensemble that manages to suggest the main Foret theme without direct statement, and then a baritone saxophone ostinato bridges to the Cygnes theme, the other principal idea of Fon-tainebleau. It is announced on baritone saxophone and trombone accompanied from above with another ostinato by alto and tenor saxophones. As this is developed, trumpet and alto interject motives derived from the main Foret theme.

Transition from Les cygnes to L'adieu is ill-defined and the third section introduces no fresh material. It begins with another ensemble suggesting the chief Foret theme, followed by the baritone saxophone ostinato that earlier appeared at the be ginning of Les cygnes. Over this a modification of the Cygnes theme itself is given out by alto and tenor saxophones, and it resolves, still supported with the baritone ostinato, to the introductory Foret theme on alto, then on both alto and tenor. This, too, is in modified form—almost jaunty compared with its sombre initial appearance. Restatements of this motive, by trumpet, then by alto and tenor saxophones, alternate with two further ensembles, the last of which brings Fontainebleau to a close.

It is typical of Dameron to proceed by suggestion rather than direct statement, but his thematic cross-references from one section to another help to produce a satisfyingly tight structure. And the listener's interest is sustained by real melodic invention. As usual, the orchestration is effective, and recalls a comment by Dexter Gordon (Quoted in Ira Gitler, Jazz Masters of the 40s, New York, 1966), made after playing some Dameron scores, that every line—all the subsidiary parts—had melodic significance, not just the top one. In fact variety is achieved here with diversified themes and the melodic extensions arising from them, by line, that is, not colour. Colour and texture have their place, however, and the composer gets a notable effect by introducing two of his themes— the Foret introduction and Les cygnes—in low register and then transposing them to high on their reappearances. Similarly, the baritone saxophone ostinato is succeeded by an alto and tenor one in Les cygnes.

These changes, allied to the slowly quickening tempo, produce a feeling of increasing brightness as the work moves from its brooding start to an affirmative conclusion. The weaknesses, as noted, are the vague demarcation between Les cygnes and L'adieu, and the fact that the latter, because it introduces no material of its own, does not constitute a truly independent third section: another theme was needed, and it is hard to believe that Dameron would have found it difficult to think of one.

Fontainebleau leaves no room for improvisation, but this performance is considerably aided by Dorham's trumpeting, by Sahib Shihab's alto and Cecil Payne's baritone saxophone, and by Shadow Wilson's drumming. The ensemble playing is scarcely in the highest class, yet a more cleanly executed reading by a larger group which the composer recorded in 1962 (American Riverside RLP419]) has a rather unpleasant routine-session glibness which robs the piece of some of its character. Dameron often complained about the poor quality of the performances his work received, and insisted that he was poorly represented on records, but Dorham and Co. showed a proper understanding of his pithy yet relaxed music ….”

Jazz Review, February 1960

Dameronia: Theatre de Boulogne Billancourt/Paris 9.24.2014

“There are artists who create beauty but whose character fails to reflect it; Tadd was not one of those."

-- Dan Morgenstern

Here’s another installment in our ongoing feature about the late composer and arranger Tadd Dameron [1917-1965], this time from the perspective of Dameronia, a tribute band originally created by Tadd’s close friend, drummer Philly Joe Jones.

The origins, personnel and music of Dameronia are discussed at length by the esteemed Jazz writer and critic Dan Morgenstern in the following insert notes which he prepared for the Soul Note CD - Dameronia: Live at The Theatre Boulogne-Billancourt/Paris [121202-2] - and which Dan has graciously allowed us to reprint on these pages.

“It is both touching and ironic that a band (Dameronia) that was formed in memory of a great musician (Tadd Dameron) by another great musician (Philly Joe Jones) who had learned much from him was in turn reincarnated some four years after Philly Joe's death to commemorate both Tadd and Philly Joe, and that this performance by that band, now issued five years later, becomes a further memorial to two fallen heroes who performed so well on that occasion, Walter Davis Jr. and Clifford Jordan.

And what was the occasion? A concert held at the Theatre de Boulogne Billancourt, not far from Paris (whose denizens know it as TBB) as part of the fifth season of spring jazz events, in 1989 dedicated to the theme "Around Charlie Parker." And that theme certainly fits the music of Tadd Dameron, whose most famous Parker-associated tune is the opener on this program, Hot House.

Dameron was a very special presence on the modern jazz scene. Like Thelonius Monk, who also was that rare thing - a quintessential jazz composer - Tadd was in but not of bebop.

To be sure, many of his pieces lent themselves well to bop (among those included here, that would fit the two blues, Good Bait and The Squirrel; Lady Bird and the aforementioned Hot House). Moreover, it was in particular Dizzy Gillespie, who came to love Tadd's writing while in the Billy Eckstine band, who took many of Tadd's charts into his own big band after Mr. B had given up band leading. Also, it was Dizzy's replacement in the Eckstine band, Fats Navarro, who became perhaps the supreme interpreter of Dameron's music.

Yet the rich and warm harmonies and essentially romantic melodies that flowed from Tadd's imagination were neither structurally nor rhythmically bebop per se. A piece like the lovely tone-poem Fontainebleau may be closer in spirit to Duke Ellington, and to the world of big band music into which Dameron was born.

Professionally, he came to music relatively late, at age 21, after he'd given up studying medicine because he couldn't tolerate the sight of carnage and suffering. His first recorded arrangements and compositions appeared in 1941/42, on discs by Harlan Leonard and his Rockets, a Kansas City band. He subsequently wrote for Lunceford (who recorded some of his charts) and Basie (who didn't, but played them; we have airchecks), and Don Redman (who performed Tadd's For Europeans Only in 1946 in Copenhagen, where I first heard a sample of Dameronia).

By next spring, I'd emigrated to the U.S., and in 1948, I found myself at the Royal Roost, listening to Tadd's fine band with Fats Navarro, Kai Winding and Allen Eager. I was escorting not one but two quite stunning girls, one of whom knew some of the cats in the band. When they came by on their break, the only one who took the slightest interest in me was Tadd, who was so friendly to and curious about this 19-year-old European import that I never forgot it.

Years later, Tadd and I became friends. There are artists who create beauty but whose character fails to reflect it; Tadd was not one of those. He was a gentle and noble soul, and consequently, life kicked him hard. Drugs became a way to hide from pain; but they cost him dearly: first his freedom, then his health.

Had Tadd Dameron had an orchestra, or a permanent smaller group at his disposal, there's no telling what his legacy could have been. Meanwhile, we must be thankful that he was productive enough to leave us more that a few works of substance. In Dameronia, there was finally, if only temporarily, a first-class ensemble to interpret them.

Dameronia wasn't launched overnight. Philly Joe had long nursed a dream of forming a band to give Tadd "credit for all the beautiful music he left us," but first that music had to be put together. Sadly, almost all Dameron's scores had been lost over the years. lt was when the drummer met multi-faceted Don Sickler- trumpeter, transcriber, researcher, publisher- that Dameronia began to take shape. Don and his friend and fellow transcriber, pianist John Oddo (perhaps best known today for his excellent work with Rosemary Clooney) went to work on Tadd's recorded music, mostly following the original instrumentation, but sometimes (as in the case here of Soultrane, a quartet recording) adapting Tadd's piano voicings to an expanded instrumental!urn- and very idiomatically, it must be acknowledged.Eventually, a library of 19 scores was ready for performing.

Dameronia made its debut in Philly Joe's hometown, where he'd first worked with Tadd in singer-saxophonist Bullmoose Jackson's band, and after its Philadelphia engagement, the band opened in April of 1982 at the short lived but well remembered Lush Life club in Greenwich Village.

The reviews were ecstatic. As Robert Palmer wrote in the New York Times, "word spread that something extraordinary was happening...... By the weekend, the club was packed for every set, and people had to be turned away. A loving and scholarly re-creation turned into a box office smash." Two months later a record was made for the small but enterprising Uptown label.

That original group included several players also on hand for this recreation; Sickler, of course; saxophonists Frank Wess and Cecil Payne; bassist Larry Ridley, and Walter Davis Jr. By the time Dameronia made its second album for Uptown in July 1983, Virgil Jones and Benny Powell were also on hand. So this 1989 version was a very authentic Dameronia. It was a wise choice to let young Kenny Washington fill the late leader's shoes; Kenny loves Philly Joe's playing and understands it so well that he doesn't need to copy. As for Clifford Jordan, he was a more than able replacement for the group's original tenor sax, Charles Davis.

Indeed, this was a formidable saxophone section, led by a master, Frank Wess, and anchored by one of the bosses of the baritone, Cecil Payne, who'd worked and recorded with Tadd back in 1949. As for the brass, the underrated Virgil Jones is among the most able of trumpeters on the New York scene, while Benny Powell has continued to grow in stature as a soloist since leaving Basie many years ago, and director Sickler, when he lets himself take a sole role, shows he can hold is own fast company. We've mentioned Kenny Washington; his rhythm section mates leave nothing to be desired. Professor Larry Ridley knows and loves Tadd's music, and Walter Davis Jr. was a true master of both solo and accompaniment, and never played better than during the final years of his life.

Ensemble figures work well behind the soloists on Hot House; they are Jones, Powell, Payne and Davis. This is an expansion of a quintet piece, while Mating Call (like Gnid and Soultrane) stems from the famous quartet album of the same name, with Coltrane and Philly Joe. Jordan's solo is the centerpiece here, and Clifford certainly had Trane in mind. Fine Davis here, too. Gnid's pretty melody is in Wess's good hands for openers; after the piano solo, Powell comes into his own. Benny's humor here brings to mind his early favorite, Bill Harris. Wess returns for the recapitulation of the theme, authoritatively.

There was a time when no jam session was complete without a rendition of Lady Bird- it's the kind of piece that makes musicians want to play. Clifford is outstanding here, and Ridley has a fine solo spot. Good fills by the drummer spruce up the finale. (There was a big-band version of this piece in the Gillespie book, but the most famous recording, of course, was the Blue Note one with Fats.) Good Bait is taken at the right tempo-relaxed. Both trumpeters are heard here, as well as Powell and Davis- the latter is outstanding; at times, he came closer to the essence of Bud Powell than any other pianist but always with his own accent.

Soultrane belongs to Frank Wess, who here reminds of the still-so-fresh Benny Carter. Frank's tone is gorgeous, without ever becoming too sweet, and his intonation is impeccable. Payne's fat sound adds to the ensemble flavor, and Frank tops it all off with an elegant cadenza. (I'm looking forward to playing this cut on the radio.)

The Squirrel is a blues that captures the motions of its namesake. Davis's fills are in a Tadd groove, Payne takes five booting choruses, there's an ensemble variation (probably based on a solo from one of the many recorded versions), nice Jones trumpet, and an agile arco solo by Ridley. Philly Joe Jones is one instance where all original recording had the exact instrumentation of Dameronia. The changes remind of Dizzy's Woody'n You, and while Kenny is marvelous here in the featured role, using dynamics, space and imagination brilliantly, we should also mention Jordan's best solo (I think) on this disc, and the fine piano. This piece builds to a genuine climax and Larry was right to ask Kenny to take a bow.

We conclude with a masterpiece- the mini-suite Fontainebleau inspired by a visit when Tadd was in France for the first time for the 1949 Paris Jazz Festival (where Miles Davis, James Moody and Kenny Clarke were sidemen in his group). The three segments (La Foret, Les Cygnes, L 'Adieu) are performed without interruption, and the shining instrumental textures allow each instrument a moment in the sun. The playing here does justice to a composition that indicates what Tadd might have been capable of creating in larger forms had he been given the opportunity.But we're lucky to have what we have of Tadd Dameron's legacy, which this recording further enhances.”

- Dan Morgenstern

The following video montage of images of drummers Philly Joe Jones and Kenny Washington is accompanied by the Dameronia version of Tadd’s Philly JJ that was recorded at Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York City in August 1988. Kenny’s drum solos on the piece give a nod to Philly Joe Jones’s influence but are powerfully Kenny’s statement from conception to execution. Today’s Jazz drummers tend to be in the ambit of Elvin Jones and Tony Williams, but Kenny found his muse in Philly.

I Remember Tadd by George Ziskind 10.1.2014

“George Ziskind is an ex-Chicagoan, pianist, and child of the bebop age, who has lived in New York City since the mid-'60s. He was one of Lennie Tristano's first students and notes that, "The low point of my career was a month spent as musical director for Brenda Lee. The high point is yet to come." He believes in: "God, Country, and Art Tatum (not necessarily in that order).”

Here is another in our continuing series about the late, lamented composer-arranger Tadd Dameron [1917-1935]. It was original posted to the Jazz Institute of Chicago website as a remembrance-cum-interview and is featured here with George’s kind permission.

As the conclusion, you’ll find a video tribute to pianist Tommy Flanagan with Tommy performing Tadd’s Our Delight. George Mraz is on bass and Kenny Washington plays drums on this track which is from radio broadcast of a concert held at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City in August, 1988.

I had the great good fortune—and it was totally fortuitous—of having my life path cross with that of Tadley Ewing Dameron, in 1958. Tadd saw right away that I had ears and knew what I was talking about on these subjects, and took an interest in me. Thank God! Tadd and I formed a close and symbiotic friendship that lasted until his untimely death in 1965.

If you want to talk about "Been there, done that" in the modern jazz business, well, that's Tadd Dameron. What Bird was to the alto, Dizzy to trumpet, Tadd was in the category of composer/arranger of the new music of the '40s. Most casually-interested jazz fans only know Tadd as the composer (with lyricist Carl Sigman) of "If You Could See Me Now." This standard was just the tip of Tadd's musical iceberg.

He intuitively knew that I greatly respected him and his accomplishments. He also was drawn to my harmonic sense at the piano. One day we walked from his NYC apartment on West End Avenue in the 80s over to Gil Evans' apartment for an unannounced social call (!!!). (He dragged me over to Miles' brownstone, on 77th, another time.) After introducing Gil and me, he blithely said, "George, play something for Gil." Well, I could have shot Tadd, and wanted to die right there. PLAY FOR THE GREAT GIL EVANS? I think I ended up doing "How Long Has This Been Going on?"

In Gil's work area, on a draftsman's table, was a score pad with an arrangement in progress. I went over and looked. It was the Rodgers and Hart tune "Wait 'til You see Her"—which finally appeared on the last Miles and Gil collaboration. I believe this one also had some Lincoln Center concert material on it, too.

During many of the long conversations Tadd and I had about harmony, melody, voicing, rhythm, and other meat-and-potatoes aspects of crafting this new music, he would let drop little crumbs of wisdom—all as casual parts of the conversation of the moment—which I regarded (and still do) as priceless and which could never be learned in such a succinct manner in the leading music schools.

MAKE LITTLE SONGS

This was Tadd's most basic advice to the improviser. When playing one's chorus(es) on a tune, it is not sufficient to know the harmony (backwards and forwards, so to speak!!); to be 100% comfortable with its figurations; and to have more than a passing familiarity with the composer's conception. Tadd stressed that the above were merely starting points. They were the basic building blocks necessary to construct a credible solo and only when you had those items fully covered could you be ready to deal with the heart of the matter, i.e., to make "little songs" as you played—little self-contained melodic bits—that could be two beats long, or two bars long, or nine or ten bars long.

The length of these motifs was not the important thing; rather, he believed that there should be lots and lots of little melodies within your solo—little songs—and that this was one of the most important defining factors when analyzing the work of any great improviser, no matter what the instrument or the style.

Stop and think for a moment of just a few of the jazz giants whose careers began under the impetus of Tadd's direction or support. Three heavily melodic players instantly come to mind: Clifford Brown, Benny Golson and John Coltrane. Three players, with almost completely disparate playing styles, shared a mastery of harmony and a capacity for pouring out torrents of heavily melodic improvisation.

BARI AS INDEPENDENT VOICE

We had a standing joke between us—whenever I'd leave his place after a hang. (I'd be there to talk music or have a quick informal dinner that Tadd would rustle up—great cook! One thing he could whip together with great dispatch and panache was simply to buy a couple pounds of large cubes of good beef, and throw together with some fresh veggies—potatoes, carrots, beans, etc—and saute the whole mess in a large skillet with a lid on it. Nothing elaborate—but good! Of course these were the days before anyone knew not to eat a lot of meat.) More often than not, Philly Joe Jones would be crashing at Tadd's place and would be present for many of these hangs. Anyway, upon my departing, he'd stick his head out in the hallway and call out, "You know, I specialize in writing for saxes!" Then, about 5 seconds later, as I neared the elevator, his head would come out again and he'd say, "I also specialize in writing for brass!" And so on...through all the sections. We both cracked up, every time he did it.

But, to get serious about his saxophone section writing. He dropped this clue on me once: in a five-man section, harmonize the two tenors and two altos and use the baritone sax as an independent voice, moving it any which way with or against the other four, contrapuntally, in contrary motion, or whatever strikes the writer's fancy, as long as it sounds good.

This is similar to something I learned from Warne Marsh many years later: "You can write or play anything you want, as long as you keep it moving!" There's a world of wisdom in that seemingly simple statement.

PLAY THROUGH THE TURNAROUNDS

The statement is self-defining, but I'll elaborate anyway. Many improvisers are locked into the habit of playing four- or eight-bar phrases, terminating their last phrase (on a 32 bar tune) at the end of bar 30 or so—or on bar 10 or so if it's a blues. A musical statement, Tadd said, sounds much more interesting if you play right through the turnaround. No matter what changes are being employed, just play on those changes all the way through. Better yet, terminate the phrase a couple of bars into the next chorus.

Although a bit off-topic, I want to pass along an anecdote that Tadd told me. Around 1940, Bird and Tadd were on the same bandstand at a jam session in Kansas City. This was the first time they had met. The tune was "Lady Be Good." On the last four bars of the bridge, Bird played two beats each of | E-9 A9 | D-9 G9 | and then on the final two bars of the bridge, the usual bar of | G-7 | and then a bar of | C7 |. Tadd, at the piano, was comping exactly the same thing. At the end of the bridge, Bird ran over to Tadd at the keyboard, threw his arms around him, and exclaimed, "I KNEW someone else would hear it that way!"

These are some small insights that were pointed out to me by Tadley Ewing Dameron, one of the great musical minds of the new jazz music that came into being in the early 1940's.

Jazz Institute of Chicago–MP: You mention the tune, "If you could see me now." Were there other tunes that Tadd was particularly proud of—that he felt really captured what he was trying to do? If so, which ones and why?

GZ: He never expressed an opinion of "his favorite tune" but I know that he wanted to be remembered as a composer and not as an arranger. And CERTAINLY not as a pianist. He did feel that his mini-suite "Fountainbleu" was a composition to be proud of. Although he comped with great rhythmic authority and swagger, his solos were always, to my ears and those of observant others, mainly him spelling out, serially, the notes of the particular chord at hand. Giant that Tadd was, I know of no one who considered him a great pianist.

There was a tune he showed me (I mean at the keyboard, so that I could play it) that killed me. It appears in big band form on his Riverside record of 1962, "The Magic Touch." The title of the tune is "Look, Stop and Listen." For me, this tune shines as a solo piano piece—and it is a certified chopbuster! Tadd wrote it while on Rikers Island and the original title of the tune was "The Great Lockup."

What recordings best illustrate Tadd to you?

Can't answer that—and he felt the definitive one hadn't been done yet.

Did Tadd tell you anything of his early training—how he got interested in music, who were his teachers and influences?

Like many of us, "The University of the Streets," plus God-given talent, and hanging out with other talent, and jamming. The usual routine—which sadly doesn't exist in the same form any more. Nowadays, all you have to do is attend Berklee.

How did you get started in jazz?

I attended Senn High School [on the north side of Chicago.] My early associates are largely mentioned in Marty Clausen's piece [Growing up musically in Chicago]. Also Eddie Baker, Sandy Mosse, Lew Ellenhorn, and Lou Levy. In an incident Lou and I still laugh about, I beat him in a North Side High School Council boogie-woogie contest play-off. Also Hotsy Katz, Cy Touff, Red Lionberg, Ira Sullivan, Wilbur Campbell.

Caught the boogie-woogie bug at age 12; then, when 14, while in a rehearsal band run by Irwin Tunick, my world changed: I stayed behind to explore the delights of their Steinway "D" and a janitor with push broom quietly sidled up to me and said "Ever hear of Art Tatum?" Within a year, Bird had been added to the mix. What more could one need after those two, unless you want to add Bach?”

Tadd's Back - The Return of Tadd Dameron 10.10.2014

“Do you know Hot House?, asked the piano player

The bassist replied: “No, I don’t.”

The pianist asked: “Do you know What Is This Thing Called Love?”

The bassist said: “Yeah.”

“Then you know Hot House,” the pianist said. “Tadd Dameron just superimposes a new melody on the chords to the tune [circle of fifths].”

That was the first I ever heard Tadd Dameron’s name or played his tune, Hot House.

It has been one of my favorite bebop tunes ever since for as Ted Gioia explains in his always informative The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire:

“Many bop charts were built on the foundations of older standards, but Hot House is one of the more effective examples. I especially admire the unexpected tet, starting in bar nine, where Dameron inserts an ardent new melody when me expects a repetition of the first theme. The chart is drenched in chromatic color tones, and the altered higher extensions of the chords are more than just passing notes here. Jazz fans and even other musicians must have been unsettled, back in 1945, to hear a melody where phrases ended on flat fives and flat nines.” [p. 147]

Next up in our continuing series on the late pianist, composer and arranger Tadd Dameron [1917-1965] is the following feature by Bill Coss which appeared in the February 15, 1962 edition of Down Beat magazine.

Tadd’s Back

“TADD DAMERON says he is the most "miscast person in the music business." So? Who is Tadd Dameron?

Few new jazz listeners would know.

But Dameron is responsible for some of the most-known bop tunes, as well as being partly responsible lor some of the most significant talents in the big world of bop.

Miscast he was because never was he really a pianist or arranger yet he is always written about as such.

Miscast he is because he is an important member of modern music, but practically unknown to all who deal with modern jazz.

They called him "The Disciple" in the early days of bop, but, as critic-author Barry Ulanov has said, "maybe The Mentor” would be a better name for Tadd Dameron, since so many of the young beboppers crowded around him, demanding and getting opinions and advice. He had no formal music education. He wrote music before he could read it. He regarded bop as just a steppingstone to a larger musical expression. Yet no one who gives bebop serious consideration can omit Tadd from the list of prime exponents and wise deponents of this modern jazz expression."

Who is Tadd Dameron? Hughes Panassie quaintly has said he is good, "but his work often strays into modern European music."

Who is Tadd Dameron? Leonard Feather says that only a few of the "men who have enobled the jazz pantheon as arrangers, Fletcher Henderson through Tadd Dameron to Gerry Mulligan, have surmounted technical limitations as pianists to offer solos of piquant quality."

Who is Tadd Dameron? He wrote songs or arrangements recorded by Dizzy Gillespie: Good Bait. Our Delight. Hot House, and I Can't Get Started. For Georgie Auld: Air Mail Special; Just You, Just Me; and One Hundred Years from Today. For Billy Eckstine: Don't Take Your Love from Me. For Sarah Vaughan: If You Could See Me Now and You're Not the Kind.

These records of these songs are universally acclaimed. Dameron calls them "turkeys, all of them. I've never been well represented on records."

Who is Tadd Dameron? Miscast, he says, but his songs are played by jazzmen over the world, his arrangements remain as standards in the jazz world, and some of those whom he "coached" were the most important voices in the new jazz.

"I'm a composer." he said, and his many excellent compositions attest to that.

"But, see," he continued, "you're not prepared to accept what I say. I wrote most of the songs you praise me for in 1939. See, I was just a composer. My brother and I played them then. But no one else would. I couldn't get an arranger to work on what I had written. They thought I was weird. So I had to become an arranger to get my music played. Just by research I learned the range of the different instruments. Suddenly, I was an arranger. I still am. But I'm not. I'm only an arranger because there was no other way to get my music played."

Dameron is sometimes listed as a pianist.

“I've played since I was 5," he said, "but I never was a piano player. Actually, I began as a singer in Freddie Webster's band. But, one night. Don Byas called me up. He was playing at the Onyx on 52nd St. with Dizzy Gillespie, George Wallington. Oscar Pettiford, and Max Roach. He asked me to take George's place on piano for the night.

"First I said no. Then he talked me into it, but I told him I couldn't take any solos, and he said all right. So, we begin, and everyone takes a solo, then Don points at me and says, 'You take it.' I had to play. That's how I became a piano player."

Miscast, as he says, but even more so, because from 1958 until 1961 he spent his time in the federal "hospital" in Lexington. Ky., as a narcotics addict.

Now. back in New York City, he says he has to find out who Tadd Dameron is.

"Just a composer — that's what I am," he said. "Of course, I'll arrange. That's a way to make bread. I don't think I'll play much. I'm too old for that. But I'd like to record some. I play much better now than I ever did before. I'd like to do an album of just lovely music."

He has a lot to recapture.

And there are a lot of musical moments to remember.

Born in 1917 in Cleveland, Ohio, as Tadley Ewing Dameron, with a father who played several instruments, a mother who played piano for the silent movies, and a brother, Caesar, who taught him the rudiments of jazz, young Tadd ("please spell it with two of those") fell naturally into the musical scene. Some of that was spoiled though because his high school teachers, intent upon teaching him in conventional methods, lost him. "I flunked the courses in theory and harmony." he said.

Discouraged away from music, Dameron decided to become a doctor, entered Oberlin College as a pre-med student, and then turned against it after a few years of study because he caught sight of a severed arm.

"There's enough ugliness in the world," he said. "I'm interested in beauty."

So, in 1938, he joined a band led by the late Freddie Webster ("Freddie got me interested in music again"). There was no piano in the band. Tadd was the singer.

He spent a year there and then went with bands led by Jack While and Blanche Calloway. Immediately afterward, he played piano in his saxophonist brother's band in Cleveland. Dameron said the absence of a bassist in this band is the reason why his own left hand is so strong—and has been so strongly criticized. But this was the band that played Hot House, Good Bait, and such, leading into the times when Dameron would extend himself further.

By this time, a Cleveland friend, Louis Bolton, had helped him to understand some of the techniques of arranging. That helped him considerably after he had been fired by Vido Musso when that leader's band came to New York City in 1939. Immediately afterward, he went to Kansas City with Harlan Leonard's band. "I had an apartment there," he remembered, "and the spirit was fantastic. Everybody would drop by."

In 1941 he went into a defense plant for a year. Then, from 1942 until 1945. he arranged for Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie, Billy Eckstine, and Georgie Auld.

In 1945, Dameron and John Birks Gillespie came to know each other, and the former's songs and scores enlivened many a big-band Gillespie performance. It was also a time tor an increase in his own personal problems, an increase in his help to other artists, and a phenomenally long booking at New York's Royal Roost — 39 weeks as a kind of house-band leader.

The Gillespie performances are, thankfully, mostly a mailer of record. So are some of the others. Certainly Sarah Vaughan's If You See Me Now is one of the most beautiful jazz ballad renditions known to jazz.

What is not so well known is the amount of actual "coaching" Dameron did in those years. It began with Freddie Webster.

"He and I talked about the business of singing on your horn," Dameron said. "Breath control was the most important thing if you had the other things. So many people forgot that. I would work with Fats Navarro. Freddie, Sarah, and Billy, and tell them to think this way — sound the note, then bring it out. then let it slide back. Another thing so many musicians forget is what happens between the eighth and ninth bar. It's not a place to rest. What you play there is terribly important. It should be. It should make all the difference between the great musician and just someone else.

"It's funny, I thought differently about things right from the beginning. Like that. Or, like, about arranging, I never wanted to be that, but once I did. I would never go to a piano to write until I had the whole thing in my head. For example, you remember The Squirrel I thought that out in Central Park, New York, one day, watching a squirrel — the jerky motion they move in. After you know what you have, then you go to the piano. I guess you prove things at the piano, but only after you've written them. At least, that's the way it is with me."

The long stay in New York began in the middle 1940s at a 52nd St. club, the Nocturne, managed by Monte Kay and Symphony Sid Torin. There, Dameron led Doug Mettome. Charlie Rouse ("Wow! has he improved!"), Nelson Boyd, and Kenny Clarke in 1947. Before the year was out, Dameron had moved to the Royal Roost on Broadway with Fats Navarro, Allen Eager, Kai Winding, Curly Russell, and Clarke.

Dameron remembers Navarro joining the group at $125 a week. "But Fats," he said, "used to do things—now that I look back at it. I believe he did them on purpose— so Id fire him. Then, I'd try someone else for a while and get so disturbed I'd go back to him and hire him back. Each time I did, he'd ask for a raise. Of course, I'd have to pay it to him. By the time we were through, he was making $250 a week. I fired him again. Then I went back to him, and he wanted more. I told him, like I always told him, that he way too expensive. He told me, like he always did. that he didn't want to play for anyone else. But that was it as far as I was concerned. I told him he was drawing leader's salary, and it was about time for him to be a leader."

Immediately afterward, Dameron went to Paris for a 1949 jazz festival with the Miles Davis Quintet and then to England as an arranger for Ted Heath, returning to the United States to arrange for Bull Moose Jackson during 1951 and 1952. The next year, he formed his own band again, playing that summer in Atlantic City, N.J., with Clifford Brown and Benny Golson.

The long summer of addiction settled in. From then, Tadd was mostly legend even to those who appreciated him most. Finally, in 1958. he was arrested and sentenced. Now he is very much back again.

This article is meant to be a recommendation. Much of the assessment has been suggested earlier. In most simple terms. Tadd is a superior musician who took superior, simple, swing melodies (for example, Hot House is based on the chords of Cole Porter's What Is Tim Thing Called Love? and applied devices. With his most original compositions, he was one of the first, certainly one of the most disciplined, of the young arrangers who brought modernity to jazz. About all that, he said only. "I'm a much better arranger now."

He always has been a fascinating pianist, not really technically proficient but always melodically rewarding. "I've had time to practice." he said. "I can play better now."

But about it all, he remains constant in that he is "really only a composer. The years have gone by. I've learned a lot. One of the things I've learned is to concentrate on what you can really do. In the end. it will make you more of a person, and happier."

"I'm a composer." he repeated. "If you want to say what I am, or what I'm doing, or what can people expect from me, just tell them that. I'm a composer. That's what I'm going to be doing."

If you are old enough to remember the Tadd Dameron of yesterday, there is a treat held in store for today. It you are young, you may wait with confidence and anticipation. In either event, you will hear your first present-day Tadd Dameron composition and want to hear it again. That is the test. He's been graduated with honors.”

[Tadd died in 1965, three years after this article was written.]

The following video features alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in a 1951 TV appearance performing Tadd’s Hot House.

The Significance of Tadd Dameron 10.16.2014

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles concludes this ongoing feature on composer-arranger Tadd Dameron with three, distinct assessments of his music, all of which point to his significance in the world of Jazz.

The first is by Jazz composer and tenor saxophonist Benny Golson which was prepared as a Foreword to Ian MacDonald’s Tadd: The Life and Legacy of Tadley Ewing Dameron. A discussion of Ian’s self-published work was the basis of our first posting on Tadd and his music.

Next up is Andrew Homzy’s The Importance of Tadd, which serves as the Introduction to Ian’s biography of Tadd.

The third segment focuses on Matt Lohr’s review of Paul Combs’ Dameronia: The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012].

Benny Golson on Tadd Dameron

AS A YOUNG ASPIRING SAXOPHONIST in Philadelphia in the mid-forties, I began listening, not only to other saxophonists, but arrangers as well. Tadd Dameron quickly came to my attention because of his penchant for melody. His compositions were memorable. They always lingered after the fact like the taste of a fine, gourmet meal.

Some tend to think of Tadd Dameron as a composer, whereas others think of him as an arranger. He was both!

Those talents were entwined with each other. Even when he was arranging he was composing, because his concept of melody was so flowing. Even

I eventually came to alliteratively and lovingly call him the 'melody master'. It's no wonder, then, that since he was my idol, I, too, developed an affinity for melody . . . until this very day I aggressively pursue it.

It was in 1951 that I first met Tadd. He was the pianist with Bull Moose Jackson who was from the same town of Cleveland, Ohio. They knew each other as kids.

'Moose' had offered him an interim job as pianist while he was deciding what to do with his own group.

That meeting was a glorious fantasy fulfilled. I was in awe of his ability to make a quintet sound much fuller than a quintet usually sounded.

Being a completely unselfish person, he later showed me everything he knew, including how to arrive at a fullness of sound in a dearth situation (few instruments).

After hearing me play on our first one-nighter together, he excitedly approached me at the intermission and said, "I love the way you play. I'd like you to do some things with me sometimes, perhaps even go to Europe with me".

I couldn't believe my ears. This was a solid stamp of approval as far as I was concerned. And from that day onward, we were fast friends right up until the day he died.

He taught me how to listen for logical chords to a tune even if I didn't know the tune. His harmonic prowess was unequalled. Because of him I learned how to move around smoothly in harmonic concepts, without causing emotional 'bumps' in the musical scheme of things.

While we were together in Moose's group, he often wrote things for other people.

I remember once he was writing something for the Duke Ellington orchestra. I was so excited that he shared the entire score with me from beginning to end.

In fact, I copied the arrangement for Duke just so I could eviscerate it even more.

It was instances like this that helped me on my journey of moving progressively forward. Tadd was completely illuminating and I was the direct recipient of his talent and years of practical experience. Many of the things he lovingly passed on to me in my early days of immaturity and development still hold me in stead today.

It was Tadd who drew upon the talents of young Clifford Brown. He hired him to play in his group in Atlantic City in 1953. He also hired Philly Joe Jones (whose name was then simply, Jo Jones), Jymie Meritt, Gigi Gryce, Cecil Payne, Johnny Coles and me.

During the existence of the group we recorded the album 'Dameronia'. It was during this album that he changed Jo Jones’ name to ‘Philly Joe Jones’ so as to distinguish him from Jo Jones who used to play with Count Basie. He, in fact, featured him on one of his original tunes called 'Philly Joe Jones' which was why the ‘Philly' handle came about.

We all loved Tadd because he always had a way of pulling things together and making them work in a quite natural way.

None of his music ever sounded artificial, arbitrary, or manufactured. It always had depth and personality - his personality. It touched not only our minds but hearts as well. This is what's really important.

Though he never permitted his creativity to be pressed between the pages of other people's history, he was flexible enough so as not to hinder his growth and power of reason.

He had an acute sense of comprehensibility (assimilation) and could intellectually approach his music on the deepest levels, however, his heart was always the true crucible - barometer of emotional fulfilment; it took his music in directions only he and his heart would indefatigably go.

The pages of this book will explore - on the deepest level - who and what Tadd Dameron really was, the effect of his music on the jazz scene, and its longevity as in the case of 'If You Could See Me Now.’

Ian MacDonald has been inexhaustible in his research: looking into the man, his music, his life as well as people associated with him. He gives us privy into many things never before seen or heard, things that have never reached the eyes and ears, and possibly the hearts of people.

Of course, we'll not be able to hear all of these, but we will have the knowledge of their existence. Tadd wrote many things that not even I know about. Ian MacDonald magnificently and amazingly brings all of this to our attention ... no small feat.

I'm hoping readers around the world will enjoy and remember the things brought to life and frozen for all time within the quadrilateral boundaries of these two dimensional pages.

Would that Tadd Dameron could tell his own story. But, Ian MacDonald has masterfully done that for him.”

Benny Golson

Friedrichshafen, Germany

1997

Andrew Homzy - The Importance of Tadd

“WHILE COMPLETING MY MUSICAL STUDIES at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, I played in a weekend Dixieland band led by trombonist Ralph Gnigel. Our club, Pagan's Beacon House located where the Cuyahoga River empties its industrial filth into Lake Erie, was a place where sailors and longshoremen used to relax - but they were essentially pushed out on weekends as the pre-yuppie crowds filled the club in search of the exotic.

Near the end of Winter in 1967, after the gig one Saturday night, Ralph asked me to meet him on Sunday afternoon, and to bring my horn. He then took me to a place on Cedar Avenue that had seen the charm of another era. But despite the slum-like decay of most buildings there, I saw a few that maintained an imposing elegance.

As we walked up to one, Ralph told me to be quiet and look confident. He then rapped a rhythm on a large door and to my surprise, a small plate slid open with the demand: "Who's there?" Ralph gave his name, and after a few seconds, the large door swung open and we were led into a beautiful dance-hall decorated with large photos of black servicemen and their friends seated at the very tables I could now see neatly placed around the perimeter.

We were then led to one of these tables and asked what we would like to drink. I then realized that since the consumption of alcoholic beverages was prohibited in Ohio on Sundays, that we were in a genuine speakeasy.

I saw some musicians gathering on the elevated stage and Ralph told me to bring my horn; there was someone I should meet. 'This is Caesar Dameron" said Ralph, "He plays alto sax and runs the Sunday jam sessions." 'Welcome" said Caesar; and then with some concern, "Is that your horn? "Yes", I said, lifting up my tuba. "We've never had a tuba player here before, but Ralph said you can play modem jazz as well as Dixieland, so come on up and join us."

The truth is that I believe Ralph overestimated my abilities. But, my love of playing music and youthful naivete" blinded me to any shortcomings I may have had. We played a variety of modern tunes such as On Green Dolphin Street and variants of I Got Rhythm and the blues.

I was thoroughly enjoying myself and after the session Caesar and the other musicians welcomed me to come back. I did return on several occasions and once I met a great tenor saxophonist named Joe Alexander. He and Caesar were very, very good. Later, I was to learn that Caesar was Tadd's brother and that Joe Alexander was a local hero on the Cleveland jazz scene.

That September, I moved to Montreal to continue my studies at McGill University.

In Montreal, I inevitably learned more about modern jazz and began playing my tuba with the Vic Vogel Big Band - Pepper Adams sat in with us a few times and we once accompanied Gerry Mulligan.

The importance of Tadd Dameron became clearer to me. And perhaps the combination of playing with his brother and pride in my home town led me to pursue any leads concerning Dameron and his music.

Almost thirty years later, and now teaching Jazz Studies at Concordia University, I've done my utmost to help keep Dameron remembered among my students and Montreal audiences. Last year while surfing the Internet, I heard of someone working on a Dameron biography.

Through the miracle of news groups and e-mail, I met Ian MacDonald, a Londoner now living in Sheffield, England. Ian told me about his book which was nearing completion. Since I had always wanted to write something about my Cleveland mentor, I suggested to him that I contribute a brief appendix -perhaps a study of Dameron's Fontainebleau. Ian, to my grateful surprise accepted the idea.

That idea has since grown into a whole chapter of his book. I hope you, the reader, enjoys my contribution, and while there are a few musical examples, I hope my text conveys sincere love and enthusiasm for this beautiful music.”

Matt Lohr A Review of Paul Combs - Dameronia: The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron

Paul Combs’ Dameronia: The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron which is described on the University of Michigan’s website as “the first authoritative biography of Tadd Dameron, an important and widely influential figure in jazz history and one of the most significant composers and arrangers of jazz, swing, bebop, and big band. This book sets out to clarify Dameron’s place in the development of jazz in the post–World War II era, as he arranged for names like Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Jimmie Lunceford, and Dizzy Gillespie and played with Bull Moose Jackson and Benny Golson It also attempts to shed light on the tragedy of his retreat from the center of jazz activity in the 1950s. By tracing Dameron’s career, one finds that until 1958, when he was incarcerated for drug related offenses, he was at the forefront of developments in jazz, sometimes anticipating trends that would not develop fully for several years. Dameron was a very private man, and while some aspects of his story will probably remain an enigma, this book manages to give an intimate portrait of his life and work.”

Paul Combs -Dameronia: The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron by Matt Lohr, JazzTimes 5.27.2013

Paul Combs set himself a considerable challenge in Dameronia, his new biography of arguably the most influential composer and arranger of the bebop era. By Combs’ own admission, the record of Tadd Dameron’s personal history is a sketchy one. Dameron was “secretive almost to the point of paranoia,” and frequently provided interviewers with false or misleading information about his life (such as an occasionally mentioned stint as a premed student that never in fact took place). The inevitable result of this guardedness is a book that is only intermittently satisfying in its treatment of Dameron’s biographical background. But musicians and composers will find Combs’ book invaluable in its precision analysis of the seminal works of this singular jazz talent.

Given the problematic sources at hand, Combs delves as well as anyone could into the life and frequently hard times of his subject. The author traces Dameron’s upbringing in Cleveland and his early gigs writing and arranging for Harlan Leonard and Jimmie Lunceford. He follows Dameron through collaborations with such illustrious figures as Milt Jackson, Mary Lou Williams, John Coltrane and Benny Golson (who in his foreword marks Dameron as a major influence on his own songwriting). He tracks the composer’s checkered romantic relationships as well as his all-too-typical battles with heroin addiction, a curse that resulted in arrests, incarceration and the hobbling of his musical output during what should have been his peak years. (These struggles likely exacerbated the illnesses that led to Dameron’s premature death in 1965, at the age of 48.)

Combs makes a valiant biographer’s effort and occasionally unearths a particularly illuminating quote or anecdote—notably a painfully poignant barroom encounter between two touring musicians and Dameron, dressed in workman’s overalls while on break from a factory job he took between stints on the jazz scene. But the hazy nature of the historical record vis-à-vis Dameron lends the book’s prose an unavoidably oblique tone; many points are prefaced with “apparently,” “it is reported that” and other non committal verbiage that protects Combs from making potentially incorrect assertions but nevertheless results in a muddling of the narrative flow. This is not helped by the sparse presence of quotations from Dameron himself. Combs makes the most of the limited interview material available, but as he asserts, “[Dameron] was a man of few words, and those few words were generally reserved for music.”

It’s when Combs turns his own attention to the music that Dameronia proves its worth as a piece of jazz scholarship. A composer and music educator, Combs is fully equipped to tackle the technical particulars of Dameron’s work, and the book features detailed beat-by-beat, sometimes bar-by-bar breakdowns of “Good Bait,” “Hot House,” the ambitious Fontainebleau album and numerous other Dameron classics. Many of these analyses are accompanied by staff notation, and Combs’ explanations are heavy on musical jargon that may prove dry or impenetrable to those not schooled in theory. (I’m not ashamed to admit I had to look up “contrafact,” a term Combs utilizes with some frequency.) But to readers with a musical background, particularly those interested or educated in jazz composition and arranging, these probing and intelligent explorations of an unsung great’s work make Dameronia an essential addition to their library.”

https://jazztimes.com/reviews/albums/vanessa-rubin-the-dream-is-you-vanessa-rubin-sings-tadd-dameron-nibur/

Vanessa Rubin: The Dream Is You: Vanessa Rubin Sings Tadd Dameron (Nibur)

A review of the singer's album celebrating an overlooked modern jazz giant

JazzTimes

April 25, 2019

**The cover of *The Dream is You: Vanessa Rubin sings Tadd Dameron* by Vanessa Rubin**

More than a labor of love, The Dream of You is a reckoning, a polished-to-a-sheen tribute to bebop’s greatest orchestral mind. Like Tadd Dameron, vocalist/producer Vanessa Rubin came up in Cleveland, and she’s spent years developing a program devoted to his seminal, often lushly romantic music. Directed and co-produced by Cecil Bridgewater, the album hits all the right notes, with a thoughtful array of Dameron’s standards and lesser-known works arranged for a talent-laden octet.

In many ways this project highlights the vital, ongoing presence of bop-era masters and their unprecedented creative longevity. Although Dameron died in 1965 at the age of 48, afflicted by addiction and a lack of playing and recording opportunities in his final decade, Rubin makes brilliant use of nonagenarian stars Jimmy Heath and Benny Golson, and the late Frank Foster and Willie “Face” Smith (a Cleveland jazz institution) for arrangements. The results are consistently lovely, and often revelatory.

A fine singer, Rubin has never sounded better than on the ballad “Whatever Possessed Me” and moderately swinging “I Think I’ll Go Away.” Wrapped in Heath’s sinuous brass charts, which key on Alex Harding’s pleasingly gruff baritone sax, she makes a compelling case that both songs should be rescued from obscurity. Likewise with Bobby Watson’s strikingly beautiful arrangement of the ballad “Never Been in Love” and Foster’s exquisitely detailed chart for “You’re a Joy,” pieces that provide welcome reminders of Dameron’s melodic genius. Rubin contributes an original lyric for another gorgeous ballad, “Reveries Do Come True (The Dream Is You).” Throughout, she’s well-served by her top-shelf rhythm section featuring pianist Jon Cowherd, bassist Kenny Davis, and drummer Carl Allen.

Recorded within months of Tadd Dameron’s 100th birthday, The Dream Is You is a belated but fully realized celebration of an overlooked modern jazz giant.

https://www.jazzwax.com/2019/06/five-tadd-dameron-clips.html

« Paul Combs: Unknown Dameron | Main | Perfect Album: Mating Call »

June 20, 2019

Five Tadd Dameron Clips

The beauty and sophistication of Tadd Dameron's compositions and arrangements are impossibly seductive. Let's extend our Dameronia week with five YouTube clips:
Here's Vanessa Rubin singing Dameron's On a Misty Night...
Here's John's Delight in 1947, named for a line guitarist John Collins conceived...

Here's Dizzy Gillespie's big band in 1947 playing Good Bait...

Here's Barry Harris playing Casbah...

And here's a young lady with a wonderful tone playing Ladybird...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadd_Dameron

Tadd Dameron

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tadd Dameron, New York, between 1946 and 1948

Tadley Ewing Peake Dameron (February 21, 1917 – March 8, 1965) was an American jazz composer, arranger, and pianist. Saxophonist Dexter Gordon called him the "romanticist" of the bop movement,^[1] while reviewer Scott Yanow wrote that Dameron was the "definitive arranger/composer of the bop era".^[2]

Biography

Tadd Dameron, Mary Lou Williams, and Dizzy Gillespie in Williams's apartment, c. June 1946

Born in Cleveland, Ohio,^[3] Dameron was the most influential arranger of the bebop era, but also wrote charts for swing and hard bop players.^[4] The bands he arranged for included those of Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Jimmie Lunceford, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, and Sarah Vaughan. In 1940-41 he was the piano player and arranger for the Kansas City band Harlan Leonard and his Rockets. He and lyricist Carl Sigman wrote "If You Could See Me Now" for Sarah Vaughan and it became one of her first signature songs.^[5]^[6]^[7] According to the composer, his greatest influences were George Gershwin and Duke Ellington.^[8]

In the late 1940s, Dameron wrote arrangements for Gillespie's big band, who gave the première of his large-scale orchestral piece Soulphony in Three Hearts at Carnegie Hall in 1948. Also in 1948, Dameron led his own group in New York, which included Fats Navarro; the following year Dameron was at the Paris Jazz Festival with Miles Davis. From 1961 he scored for recordings by Milt Jackson, Sonny Stitt, and Blue Mitchell.^[9]

Dameron also arranged and played for rhythm and blues musician Bull Moose Jackson. Playing for Jackson at that same time was Benny Golson, who was to become a jazz composer in his own right. Golson has said that Dameron was the most important influence on his writing.

Dameron composed several bop and swing standards, including "Hot House", "If You Could See Me Now", "Our Delight", "Good Bait" (composed for Count Basie)^[8] and "Lady Bird". Dameron's bands from the late 1940s and early 1950s featured leading players such as Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Wardell Gray, and Clifford Brown. In 1956 he led two sessions based on his compositions, released as the 1956 album "Fontainebleau" and the 1957 album "Mating Call." The latter featured John Coltrane. Dameron developed an addiction to narcotics toward the end of his career. He was arrested on drug charges in 1957 and 1958, and served time (1959–60) in a federal prison hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. After his release, Dameron recorded a single notable project as a leader, The Magic Touch, but was sidelined by health problems; he had several heart attacks before dying of cancer in 1965, at the age of 48. He was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.^[10]

Legacy

Dameron has been the subject of many tributes since his death:

In the 1980s, Philly Joe Jones, drummer for the Miles Davis Quintet, and trumpeter Don Sickler founded Dameronia, a tribute band to Dameron.^[11]
Continuum: Mad About Tadd: The Music of Tadd Dameron is an album released in 1982 by a group consisting of Slide Hampton, Jimmy Heath, Ron Carter, Art Taylor, Kenny Barron. The LP has since been reissued on CD.
In 1975, jazz pianist Barry Harris recorded Barry Harris Plays Tadd Dameron for Xanadu Records.
In 2007, pianist Richard "Tardo" Hammer recorded Look Stop and Listen: The Music of Tadd Dameron for Sharp Nine Records.
In 2015, drummer Ferit Odman recorded Dameronia with Strings as a tribute to Tadd Dameron for Equinox Music & Entertainment

Discography

As leader/co-leader

Year recorded Title Label Notes 1948? The Dameron Band (Featuring Fats Navarro) Blue Note

1949? Anthropology Spotlite

1949? Cool Boppin'

1949? The Miles Davis and Dameron Quartet in Paris – Festival International du Jazz, May 1949 Columbia

1953 A Study in Dameronia Prestige With Clifford Brown (trumpet), Benny Golson (tenor sax), Idrees Sulieman (trumpet), Gigi Gryce (alto sax), Herb Mullins (trombone), Oscar Estell (baritone sax), Percy Heath (bass), Philly Joe Jones (drums); most tracks also issued on Memorial 1956 Fontainebleau Prestige With Kenny Dorham (trumpet), Henry Coker (trombone), Cecil Payne (baritone sax), Sahib Shihab (alto sax), Joe Alexander tenor sax), John Simmons (bass), Shadow Wilson (drums) 1956 Mating Call Prestige Quartet, with John Coltrane (tenor sax), John Simmons (bass), Philly Joe Jones (drums) 1962 The Magic Touch Riverside With Clark Terry, Ernie Royal Charlie Shavers and Joe Wilder (trumpet), Jimmy Cleveland and Britt Woodman (trombone), Julius Watkins (French horn), Jerry Dodgion and Leo Wright (alto sax, flute), Jerome Richardson (tenor sax, flute), Johnny Griffin (tenor sax), Tate Houston (baritone sax), Bill Evans (piano), Ron Carter and George Duvivier (bass), Philly Joe Jones (drums); Barbara Winfield (vocals) added on two tracks

As arranger or conductor

For Blue Mitchell

Smooth as the Wind (Riverside, 1961)

For Milt Jackson

Big Bags (Riverside, 1962)

For Sonny Stitt

Sonny Stitt & the Top Brass (Atlantic, 1962)

References

Nisenson, Eric (1996). 'Round About Midnight: A Portrait of Miles Davis. Da Capo Press. p. 65. ISBN 0-306-80684-3.

Yanow, Scott (2008), "Tadd Dameron biography", AllMusic.

"Tadd Dameron | American musician and composer". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2017-05-15.

Hound, Music (1998-01-01). Jazz: The Essential Album Guide. Music Sales Corporation. ISBN 9780825672538.

"Jazz Standards Songs and Instrumentals (If You Could See Me Now)". www.jazzstandards.com. Retrieved 2017-05-15.

Gioia, Ted (2011-05-09). The History of Jazz. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199831876.

"Sarah Vaughan | About Sarah Vaughan | American Masters | PBS". American Masters. 2005-10-08. Retrieved 2017-05-15.

Rosenthal, David, H. Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music 1955-1965. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505869-0.

Harrison, Max. "Dameron, Tadd." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. April 2, 2011.

"Funeral Rites for Jazz Arranger Feature His Own Compositions". newspapers.com. The Arizona Republic. March 12, 1965. Retrieved March 2, 2018. Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

Carr, Ian; Fairweather, Digby and Priestley, Brian, Rough Guide to Jazz, Rough Guides, 2004. ISBN 1-84353-256-5, ISBN 978-1-84353-256-9.

External links

THE MUSIC OF TADD DAMERON: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH TADD DAMERON:

Welcome to Sound Projections

Saturday, September 21, 2019

Tadd Dameron (1917-1965): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, conductor, producer, and teacher

SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

FALL, 2019

VOLUME SEVEN NUMBER THREE

Tadd Dameron

(1917-1965)

Artist Biography by Scott Yanow

Tadd Dameron

Dameronia

The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron

NPR Summary

Genres:

Excerpt: Dameronia

TADD DAMERON'S MUSIC, WITH LOVE

Tadd Dameron

Tadd Dameron: Beauty in the Rarefied Realm of Music

Paul Combs: Dameronia: The Life and Times of Tadd Dameron

‘The Dream Is You: Vanessa Rubin Sings Tadd Dameron’ Review: A Tribute to the Romanticist of the Bebop Movement

Vocalist Vanessa Rubin honors Tadd Dameron with an album that highlights his compositional genius.

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Tadd Dameron - A Career Overview

© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Marc Myers writes daily on jazz legends and legendary jazz recordings

June 20, 2019

Five Tadd Dameron Clips

Tadd Dameron

Biography

Legacy

Discography

As leader/co-leader

As arranger or conductor

References

Further reading

External links

Tadd Dameron - Fontainebleau (big band version

Editor's Bio

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