Jazz Hands and Second Dinners

Me with my faithful pet skunk named Flower,

In the very early days, the school bus dropped us off at the bottom of Arroyo Road, and it was over a mile to my house. Pete's house was about a quarter of a mile up from he highway. I was tired of walking, so I'd follow him home...I was also nearly a year younger than most of my classmates, so I was really a baby walking that long walk home.

Pete's mom, Chuck Sutton would feed us peanut butter sandwiches, and she sometimes gave me a ride home in the green VW bus. Peter never ditched me, though he could've, having two brothers. Even when they made a blanket fort and wouldn't let me in because I was a girl. I'm sure I was a pest. I remember building Lincoln logs with him. I'd never seen Lincoln logs, I was fascinated.

I was devastated when the Suttons moved to Lagunitas. No more free lunch. No more playmates. Nobody ever had any money in those days, and feeding the neighborhood kids was the norm. I remember eating cereal at 5PM with Adair Lara Dalys mob in Lagunitas too. Tony the Tiger. Roarrrrr!

Apparently I had a voracious appetite. I went from house to house grazing with the other kids. Scott Waver's mom made the most outrageous sugar doughnuts. Billy Joe Bianchi's grandmother fed me spongecake and raviolis, saying, "Mangia, mangia." "Eat, eat." And so I did, but I was a skinny kid, so skinny, Jimmy Bohman used to sneer and call me "Skinny" in eighth grade.

Stephanie Stone's blended family was so big, they never even noticed another ravening mouth at the table. Micaela Wall Marsden's stepmom Betty Lang Wall had an open larder policy too. I practically lived hat her house when we were tweenies. Then, I'd go over to another neighbor's house, usually our next-door-neighbor Agnes Vincilione's house for Second Dinner. I must've had a tapeworm or something. Now I'd love to be able to eat like that and still be called Skinny.

Pete Sutton's famous dad once played a concert for us at Lagunitas School. Kevin McConnell reminded me. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven....so cool. The original Loony Tunes. What were we, 2nd graders? We all danced and made jazz hands, little starfish hands keeping rhythm to the tunes. And Steve Tristano playing his dad's (Lennie) famous boogige-woogie chords on the piano afterwards, I thought Mrs. Burges was going to have a stroke. No wonder we were so delightfully warped.

Pete posted a ditty that spurred this memory:

Over in the meadow where the grass grows so even, 
Lived an old mother frog and her Little froggies seven. 
"Spring," said the mother, "We spring," said the seven, 
and they sprung all day where the grass grows so even.

The silly ditty. Think of the soundtracks of those old cartoons from the 50s, that was Pete's dad at the keyboard playing stride piano. Of course, he played more famous jazz tunes too.So what rainsong would Ralph Sutton play, if he was still with us, this morning? Was a time you couldn't find anything on him on the internet. Didn't realize he lived in Aspen. He's been rediscovered. I found references to Ralph on the internet, but (no mention of "Chuck.")

Katelin asked, Wasn't it Tristani?

Lennie Tristano. Another name out of childhood. When I was a kid, I thought all good piano players had to be blind, like Lennie, and also Kent Weaver (Scott Weaver's bro), so when someone offered us a piano (and lessons), I didn't want it. NO siree! I liked my eyes.

Lennie played cool jazz bebop, using chord progression. The Wiki article says Steve only met him once after 1956, but I remember meeting him walking down the road (SFD Blvd) to the Lagunitas store—two blind piano players and their entourage cut quite a swath in the imagination of childhood.

Cool Jazz Rooms

"Jazz Memories" by Various Artists, is a stellar introduction to the Ultimate Jazz Experience—Whether you're relatively new to jazz, like me, or a dyed in the wool blue note aficionado, this compilation is an extraordinary 20-year retrospective of jazz history with some of the best works from the golden age of jazz.

The double album collection features jazz divas including Billie Holiday crooning My Man, Sarah Vaughan's Embraceable You, and Ella Fitzgerald's sultry How Long Has This Been Going On—all national jazz treasures. A real surprise was Dinah Washington's Easy Living. I've only heard her warhorse renditions and it was refreshing to hear her sing a sweet ballad.

Then we have the jazz immortals "Satchmo" Louis Armstrong viscerally trumpeting us through Dixieland with Dear Old Southland, and Count Basie's bebop rendition of Shoe Shine Boy; while on the other side of the jazz continuum, we've got Stan Getz tickling the ivories, Thelonious Monk's classic Blue Monk as well as Duke Ellington's Lotus Blossom. And then there's the cerebral Miles Davis' groundbreaking Tune-Up (say, is that 'Trane on the sax?).

"Jazz Memories" is yet another Amie Street solid gold sleeper. I love the fact that we get to hear such a wide range of music on Amie Street Music—from new indie artist hot off the press, er, Garageband—to fabulous vinyl classics that I would never otherwise listen to. It made me curious and want to know more about these musicians. (Keep an eye out for a copy of Herman Leonard's companion book which has some great stories about the musicians.)

I was surprised to learn that the longest track on the album, Tune-up, which, at first I found difficult to connect to, was really two songs in one. About 4 minutes in, When the Lights are Low kicks in and it's sonorously beautiful with several solos.

From what I can glean, the track Tune-Up/When the Lights are Low is from Miles Davis' groundbreaking 1956 Prestige album, Cookin' With the Miles Davis Quintet.

There's a great backstory attached to the Prestige label—it seems that Miles had to fulfill his Prestige contract with new work and so he just kept jammin' with his newly formed quintet.

The music Miles' quintet produced during the 24-hour marathon mother of all jammin' sessions was so hot, it resulted in three groundbreaking albums including the last one Cookin'—which also debuted My Funny Valentine. Whether it's Rollins or Trane on the mellifluous sax is moot, it's still all pure Miles on the trumpet and it put both Davis and Coltrane on the map.

These are all clean tracks of major hits from the major jazz label vaults—not muddied side B recordings. Blue Monk is my personal fave and Art Tatum's Willow Weep For Me is a close second. No, make it Frenesi, no, make it St. Thomas...aww, just buy the whole album. I suspect we'll be seeing some more compilation albums from this label in the near future.

An aside, I noticed that some tracks seem to cut out early, most noticeably Jitterbug Waltz and My Man. But then I had trouble downloading the album and had to download it song by song. You can hear some faint hissing on Blue Monk but considering when it was recorded, it's pretty clean. I checked Tune-up against another
download music services and the Amie Street track is definitely cleaner, clearer, brighter.

As I sad earlier, jazz is not normally my forte, so I was delighted to find how accessible and personable the album was with its collage of songs with just the right juxtaposition of cerebral and visceral. "Jazz Memories" is one of those rare albums that opens up new rooms in your head.

                         —Maureen Hurley
© 2007 12/9/2007 for Amie Street Music

go to Amie Street News to read the review.