Nina Simone: Little Girl Blue

No other place to start but here: My Baby Just Cares For Me.  Hearing this for the first time was my introduction to the work of Nina Simone.   Go on, watch it through to the end.  And then once more if you like, I can wait.  Seeing this perfectly crafted little movie I too wanted to watch it over and over again.   Knowing a little more about music now, I can feel/hear the structure of it, how the solo matches the tune in length, tempo, and chord progression.  Knowing more, helps me understand more.

I can also marvel at how Nina crafts her solo: how she builds up from very, very simple phrases, increasing in complexity with complete precision and assurance until it feels like she is about to run out of road, but in in the nick of time she pulls up and returns to the simplicity.  Not once, but twice in that very short solo.  A trivial song? - yes, maybe - but done with poise and panache: beautifully sung and craftily performed.


Now look at/listen to this one: Love Me or Leave Me.  Such intensity - such a look!.  She plays with great precision, and I just love how that solo very soon morphs into something with very clear baroque influences, almost Bach-like.  


Here's a contrast: Summertime.  I am in awe of her jazz musical sensibilities here.  This is just so delicately judged, dark, almost hypnotic.  Some people see "Summertime" as an optimistic piece: I don't - I see it as ironic, the reassuring lyrics undermined by the melancholy melody.  As Nina Simone plays it, her piano work allows me to feel the atmospheric heaviness of the building up of a summer storm: even summertime has its dangers.


And perhaps this is the key to why I find her music so fascinating.  There is a sense of depth there, of complexity - even in the simple tune we started with, the frivolity of the tune is tackled with complete professionalism.  In other tunes there is a sense of the strength born of survival, the joy that comes from pain endured:

Try this: Feeling Good.  "It's a new dawn / it's a new day / it's a new life for me ... and I'm feeling good".  Of course these are optimistic words, but her voice doesn't quite tell the same story - it's a voice that has just been through a trial:  it's a new life because the old one has had to be left behind ...

This blog is about the music, but of course Nina Simone was also very involved in the civil rights movement: how could she not have been, being Young, Gifted and Black at that time and place?


What engages me especially in her music is that throughout all these tunes, whatever the style, there is evidence of an intensity, an intelligence, a willingness to tackle everything, even playfulness, with complete seriousness of intent: Like these: Ain't Got No ...,  How it Feels to be Free and of course Little Girl Blue

Inspiring stuff: may it never be forgotten.

PS. And then I found this and this: "it's meant for a queen, and I am a queen."  Yes indeed.

Walkin' After Midnight

The Blues Brothers, on arriving to play a gig out in the sticks, are told "We got both kinds [of music]. We got country *and* western."  Not to Jake and Elwood's taste, but they give it their best.  It's not to my taste either: I'm not ambivalent about it, I don't like country music.  And yet, sometimes we come across specific instances that make a nonsense of our prejudices based on generalisations.


Some years ago I was pointed in the direction of the Cowboy Junkies, and in particular their breakthrough album, The Trinity Session, which starts with this track.  Well, the "Cowboy" in the band's name notwithstanding, I listened and I was won over.  Find it, listen to it, it is a modern classic.  And that's the closest I have come to liking country music (and part of me still says the Junkies are not real cowboys).


Now the closing track of The Trinity Session is "Walkin' After Midnight", originally recorded by Patsy Cline.  As you can see, you can't get much more country than Patsy (or should that be western?), and as she sings it, it is pure C&W.   But hold on, even in Patsy's take, is there a hint of a bluesy feel there?  A note that flattens by a semitone in bar 3 of the melody ("out in the moonlight"), coupled with that strange lyric that tells of obsession.  Perhaps this tune can stray a little too, go out walking to some different places:

• Madeleine Peyroux taking a jazzy approach with a voice which has more than hints of Billie Holiday.
• Or this from Imelda May.

All of which leads me think about the labels we like to place on musical genres, and ask if these are simply lazy assumptions that may be keeping us from richer experiences. By saying "I don't like that sort of thing", I might be filtering some good stuff from my experience.  After all, music has always been about cross-fertilization and as ever, the most interesting places are always edges and boundaries.

Other versions of "Walkin'" that I found along the way and liked:

• Analog Velvet (she has a great great voice for this song).
• The Kentucky Headhunters (nice "rollin'" rhythm - hint of Rawhide - and a rare male vocal)

and

• Melissa Lauren Pisarzowski (the upload post makes my point "Patsy Cline tunes are great to sing on a gig. Sometimes we do them really bluesy, sometimes really country...")

But of course, I always have to come back to the Cowboy Junkies version: Margot Timmins' dreamy, floaty voice over that muscular, somewhat grungy guitar, laid back but still insistent.

And of course, I'm fooling with this on my tenor sax, and, well, here's how it's going ...

Reflections

It seems presumptuous to write about Thelonious Monk.  He baffles the brain.  His playing can seem disjointed, halting, spikey, unpolished (like this).  His pieces are full of strange harmonies and jumps.  In some way they can seem uncomfortable - especially if you're trying for the first time to turn those dots on the page into something with a shred of musical sense.

In "Jazz", Garry Giddins and Scott DeVeaux tell us that Monk is the second most widely performed jazz composer, second to Duke Ellington.  Consider though, that Ellington wrote over 1500 pieces: Monk wrote around 70.  What is the something that keeps performers coming back and back to those strange and beguiling pieces?  If you go and look at the leadsheet for "Reflections" you'll see just 32 bars sparsely sprinkled with notes. Yet this musical DNA, in the hands and minds of talented artists, gives rise to a whole family of musical offspring, each different, each resonant with Monkishness. Try Reflections enigmatically from Donald Fagen & Steve Khan, or quirkily from (anonomous ukelelist) or smoothly, beautifully from Wynton Marsalis.  Seems you can even  dance to it (if you have to).  

I don't have the musical theory to know why this is so: why Monk's DNA, his musical memes, are so fruitful.  I just rejoice in them, and in that feeling of triumph when somehow, from the jagged jumpiness of the notes on the page, I manage to get something that briefly reveals that flow and that Monkish feel.  Which of these many versions inspires me most?  Why, this one: Caleb Curtis's dreamy, beautiful rendition.

Oh, and Thelonious Monk's middle name was Sphere. Really.  How cool is that?

California Dreaming

It does seem like a dream.  48 hours ago I was leaving springlike San Diego to return to wintry Surrey having attended the annual Adult Jazz Camp hosted by the America's Finest City Dixieland Jazz Society.  (AFCDJS)
A wonderful time, playing LOTS of Jazz in the company of the most interesting and talented folk.  The instructors are versatile, tolerant and inspiring, the students equally so.

Even though the students are of varying skill levels, everyone seems to gain a great deal from it, and for someone so close to the start of their musical journey it is a great privilege to play with those who have so much more experience than I, and to feel that I'm making a contribution: it's a team effort.

In fact, you can do worse than to take a Traditional Jazz Band as a great example of a working team.  While each player is given a chance to shine in their solos, the ensemble choruses demand close attention to both the music and what the other players are doing.  The bandleader (by default the trumpeter/cornetist), has the task of managing the whole show, either through a carefully worked out roadmap, or more freely, responding to the flow of the performance. Success comes through everyone's efforts, not least the ability to pull it back when things start coming off the rails.  I leave you to draw your own lessons for life.

Some dreams linger on waking.  I'm hoping I can hang on to those good feelings of teamwork and fellowship.

Anything Goes

Should I start at the beginning?   I think not, that would be tedious.  In other posts I am sure I will go back, and record the memories of the joys and frustrations of getting the first notes out of my alto sax.  That was two years ago, and so much of how I think and feel about music has changed in that time.

Every week seems to bring new insights, insights that seem to me, now, to be worth capturing.  It's a good thing, in middle age (there, I said it) to discover that you have the capacity to learn, to feel the joy of discovery of fresh ideas and new thoughts, a joy that seemed to have been left behind in youth.

I warn you though, some of these new thoughts are slippery as fish.  No sooner does it seem that you have grasped them, than they wiggle and flip and they are gone. I hope this blog can become an album of snapshots of these leaping, flipping, lively ideas.  Get 'em while they're fresh!