Art Pepper - Unreleased Art Pepper Volume Eleven: ATLANTA '2020

Tracks list

Tracklist:

CD1 
01. Blues for Blanche 
02. Talk: Band Intros 
03. The Trip 
04. Talk: about playing standards 
05. Avalon 
06. Talk: about Patricia 
07. Patricia 
08. Talk: about Landscape 
09. Landscape 
10. Talk: about new book 
11. Straight Life 

CD2 
01. Untitled #34 
02. Talk: about How Milcho Escaped from Bulgaria 
03. A Song for Richard 
04. Talk: about Swing Journal 
05. Mambo Koyama

 THE SONGS“Blues for Blanche”
Art usually started his sets with an uptempo blues. In this case, it’s
his original about our cat, Blanche (see photo). Art adored this cat. When he
was at home, Art generally spent his time fully dressed, on his bed, prone,
watching the news, sports (whatever), reading the paper, occasionally rising to
sit on the edge of his bed to play the clarinet. When he was lying down, Blanche
would join him and sometimes she’d go after the newspaper Art was
reading. And hed encourage her. He’d start waving it, and she’d go
nuts, ripping at the paper and at him. Drawing blood! Art loved her passion and
murderous beserk-a-tude, and he’d chuckle with delight.
The tune which conjures her starts off with the worst audio in the set. I must
have gotten out of my seat and adjusted it a little, after. So. the sound
improves. A little. Later. Anyway, the drums and bass tend to drown out the
piano. Wayne Peet did the best he could remastering. This was originally
recorded on a regular cassette tape on a Sony TCD 5 using a really good Sony mic
which I taped to a pole or music stand or to a chair. The poor audio, though,
doesn’t distract me from Art’s rocking solo. It swings.
It’s logical,; it’s wild and funny, just like Blanche was, ripping
at the paper and attacking Art. Milcho’s solo is solid and it swings like
mad. At this point, as he usually did after the first tune, Art introduced the
band. Then he took this opportunity to talk, affectionately, about his neurotic
pussycat.

“The Trip”
A perfect track. This is a gorgeous performance of one of my top ten Art Pepper
compositions. “The Trip” is an opium dream, shared. I love its
murky, plodding Voyage to Byzantium vibe, and then here comes the bridge, light,
and pretty. Hopeful.. An oasis. I always imagine this as a sea journey or a
camel journey. It sways and hypnotizes. Then Milcho, our Eastern European (half
Jewish, I might add), understands this tune as no other pianist ever did. His
solo ups the ante, and so Art takes another solo of his own. Not to be outdone.

“Avalon”
I love this old standard. As a kid, living in L.A., I took the boat from San
Pedro to Catalina Island (26 miles) and thought the little town of Avalon
magical and romantic. Not much later, I enjoyed, without cynicism or sneering,
an old ’78 of Bing Crosby singing this song—including its dumb
rhyme, “And so I think I’ll travel on, to Avalon”. Art
introduces “Avalon” by explaining to the audience why he rarely
plays standards. And then he says he’s going to play one. And, to me, the
song is as sweet as it ever was. And it swings more than it ever did with that
easy sound that’s just like a summer day on a little green and sunny
island. Art’s solo is a delight. You can hear my “Yeah” from
the audience. People have said that Milcho’s solo sounds a little Erroll
Garner-ish. I hear a little Monk in it. And Rocco Bertels, Widow’s
Taste’s consigliere, tells me, yes. It’s there:
“Milcho directly quotes Blue Monk from 4:15 to 4:18 and when he comes back
to it, he introduces the quote (5:05 to 5:10) before actually quoting it (5:10
to 5:17), and then kind of says goodbye to the quote. As if he is strolling away
from it, looking back and it gradually fades from view (5:17 to the end of his
solo). Those 20 seconds from 5:05 to 5:25 fit in so beautifully with the theme
of telling stories - a beautiful little story with an introduction, a middle and
an end in itself. All in 20 seconds!! And of course his entire solo is a wild
story bouncing all over the musical landscape!
With all that, it’s just completely Milcho-ish, playful, witty,
inclusive, and show-offy. But what really gets to me is that bit of
“stride” piano he throws into the middle. It grabs the audience,
too, as they spontaneously applaud it (and you can hear me shriek). What Milcho
plays behind Bob’s solo, is so great, and it makes me wish again we could
hear all of Milcho’s comping better than we can throughout this session.

“Patricia”
When I interviewed him for our book, Straight Life, Art referred to this song,
offhandedly, as “probably the prettiest thing I’ve written to this
day.” To me this performance of it is the best, and I believe I’ve
heard them all.
Art was telling me, then, about how he started writing his own original tunes in
the early 1950’s, after the army, after leaving Kenton’s band. (He
wrote the tune, “Straight Life” back then; you’ll hear it
later in this set.) He wrote “Patricia” for his daughter and
recorded it on the Jazz West label in 1956. He didn’t play it again for
more than 20 years. In1978, he was probably thumbing through old charts, hunting
for an original ballad to play at his first recording session at Fantasy
Records. He saw it, brushed the dust off, and brought it to the studio. Why he
didn’t play it for so long, I never asked, and he never said. It must
have stirred up griefs and regrets he couldn’t bear to face? After that,
he played it frequently in clubs and concert halls. And each performance was
magnificent.
But as I said, this is the one that absolutely wrecks me. It wrecked Art, too.
Listen to his ohhs and ahhs, his little mutterings of pleasure during
Milcho’s solo. Listen to what he says about the whole thing when
it’s over—the song (“there’s a whole life happening
in that song”) and his performance, Milcho’s, Bob’s, the
audience response. We’ve all been lifted up together in an evanescent
moment, by a song of love and loss, shared and transformed into something new
and deep and lovely by these artists on a spring night in Atlanta, and
Art’s voice breaks as he says, “That’s jazz.”

So we have two definitions of jazz, one from Milcho (see above), and one from
Art. And both seem true enough.

“Landscape”
I like Art’s introductory talk about how “Landscape” got its
name almost as much as I love the tune itself, and I adore this tune. From the
first note. That first chord. This music is so exciting, so intense and driven,
that it sounds as if it was already en route (to God knows where!) before we
even arrived at the show. It’s not terribly fast compared to other tunes
Art played, but oh, it moves. It’s on the move and listen to how
powerfully Bob jogs along beside it. (His solo is so good; one of the best I
think I’ve heard him play). Art’s solo is a marvel of narration.
Milcho’s solo is outrageous. By which I mean it swings, it talks, it
takes you to the distant planets; it lights a cigarette and opens a bottle of
Scotch. Meanwhile, the whip Carl wields thrills both the band and audience and
adds to the excitement, even though that seems unnecessary. Give the chart its
head! Oh, dear. This particular “Landscape” inspires me too much for
my own good, and at this point I don’t know what kind of metaphor I ought
to settle on—to praise this song Art Pepper built, which shifts its gears
so deftly, which carries and impels, which gives the melody its force.
It’s a train, the wind. And I’m in awe.

“Straight Life”
Speaking of awe: A young musician who was jamming with Art one night after a gig
in San Francisco said to me that Art had such BIG ears. Forget Red Riding Hood.
He meant Art heard and responded in the moment to absolutely everything that was
happening musically. Then he said, “And Art has a metronome in his
head.” I never thought about that until today, when I listened to this
particular rendition of “Straight Life”. I thought this one was
faster than any I’d heard played. I decided to listen to other recordings
of it. In this one, the statement of the melody takes 30 seconds. And
it’s the same in all the others. 30 Seconds. All of them (if the bands
were up to it).
In our book, Straight Life, Art mentions that Jimmie Lunceford’s band,
back in the ‘30s, recorded a super-fast tune called “White
Heat”, fastest thing Art or anyone had ever heard back then. I found
“White Heat” online today. It’s very fast. I timed the
melody. 30 seconds.
The song, “Straight Life,” is based on the chord changes to
“After You’ve Gone”, a tune written in 1918 which changes
chords in almost every measure and with an abbreviated, tricky structure,
different from most standard pop songs. Jazz musicians took to it right from the
start and often played it faster than intended.
“Straight Life” was one of the first tunes Art ever wrote. He wrote
it and played it to wow his audience, to show off his chops, to test the band.
And everybody in this band is flying right alongside Art (how does anybody play
an upright bass that FAST?) And Milcho. Just listen to that guy! His solo,
totally coherent and musical.
And listen to the audience. Art usually played this (or a hot hot “Donna
Lee” or blazing “Cherokee”) at the end of a set. He wanted to
leave the audience aquiver, the music and its tempo tingling and buzzing in them
on into the night. The applause, the whistling and shouting, shows that once
again he did it. They did it: This band.
Possibly because he’s over-mic-ed a bit, I’m really hearing Bob
much better than I ever have and understanding better than I ever have the
burden and the power of the bass in a quartet. I’ve always thought that
it’s the drummer keeps the beat. I’m starting to believe the bass
is beat and music all at once. Art’s endless praise of Carl and emphasis
on his importance to the group, it seems to me, was as the crucial synergist,
the unifier. Bob is the base on which it the whole thing rests. And he is solid.
I emailed him to ask whether he thought my thought had merit. He wrote me back:
“It might be an old bass player cliche, but I tell my students ‘the
bass is heartbeat of the band.’ I’ll never forget when I joined
the Sarah Vaughan trio in 71, Sarah told me that she ‘sings off the
bass.’ As if I wasn’t nervous enough already.”

“Untitled #34”
It was typical of Art to open a set (“#34” begins the second set)
with an up-tempo blues. He wrote a lot of them. I named this one. All the songs
in the band’s “book” were numbered, so Art could call them
out onstage and the guys could find them quickly. This was the 34th piece added
to the catalog. It’s a simple blues, but the arrangement has a cast-iron
structure as does the next song. I think Art learned to love a reliably
well-organized chart in his earliest days, playing in Lee Young’s, Benny
Carter’s, and Stan Kenton’s bands. They grounded him and let him
dance on it, fly over it, at will. Many of his apparently simple blues, like
this, were solid well-built roads, a lot of fun to travel on. And travel they
all do. #34 is a swinging showpiece to loosen up the audience.

How Milcho Leviev Escaped from Bulgaria (talking track)
One of Art’s great raps: The Milcho Origin Story (loosely based on a true
story: see above). It became a frequent improvisatory solo piece enjoyed by
everyone including Milcho.

“A Song for Richard”
Art loved to play this tune. He admired its composer, trumpeter Joe Gordon who
recorded in the early sixties, when Art did, for Les Koenig of Contemporary
Records.
Gordon died suddenly, too young, aged 35, as a result of massive injuries
sustained in a house fire caused by a dropped cigarette. Art identified with
Gordon and always assumed that Joe was on the nod when the cigarette fell from
his fingers and smoldered and then flamed and woke him when it was too late and
killed him. Art, himself, often burnt holes in his surroundings while under the
influence and could easily imagine something like that happening to him.
The second tune Art played in any set was usually something odd or in an
interesting time. This chart is in 4/4, but, like Art’s
“Ophelia” (also a second-tune selection), it moves in an interesting
way and it’s in a minor key. Art and the band play free, to introduce it,
and then the song begins its elegant, unhurried, start/stop progress. So,
here’s another well-defined arrangement, and you can hear Art use the
built-in structure, like a sculptor does an armature. He respected a tune that
had an interesting shape inside it and would remind us of it when he soloed. As
for the band, Well, Milcho’s solo starts off so melodic and so soulful
it’s a song in itself, wistful and balladic. And Bob’s bass is,
again, all warmth and sweetness. (Listen to the applause he gets.) At this
song’s end Art brings the start/stop pattern back emphatically in an
extended coda, so the band does, too, whereupon Art is freed to soar above it.

“Mambo Koyama”
While Art lived and toured, Kiyoshi Koyama was editor of the sumptuous magazine,
Swing Journal, and he was a friend to us. A useful friend, because the magazine
promoted Art and all his albums in Japan. So, yes, of course, this tune was
named, by me, strategically. But Koyama had to know that. And he had to know we
truly liked him. He told us that when he was in his teens, his nickname had
actually been “Mambo.” Because he was so mad for Latin Music. Well,
so was Art.
I’m afraid I may have used up my superlatives and metaphors on
“Landscape.” On the other hand, this track is, after
“Patricia”, my favorite track of the whole set.
It starts off with that growly bass line, and Art’s solo starts off
growling back, all sexy. Between Bob, Milcho, and Carl we’ve got a
bedrock of oh-so-solid FUNK of which Art takes advantage. His solo is just
perfect. And, as I keep saying, it is narrative. A beginning, a middle, an end,
and then it’s tied up with a bow, that little bridging pattern, and then
Milcho comes in. Growling, too, on the deepest notes on a piano! And swinging so
subtly and so hard all at once. I do adore this band. This band could wake the
dead. Listen to Bob absolutely rrrroll his chords beneath the fray. And I
apologize! My fault my fault! The tape ran out during Bob’s spectacular
solo. But would you rather I hadn’t included this track because the end
is missing? No. You wouldn’t.

SUMMING UP
For a few years, I got to travel with these bands—they included
me—a dream come true. I’ve tried to take you on a trip with me and
Art and the bands while reliving all of it a little—in writing it, in
pictures I took, scenes and conversations I recall. And in the music Art asked
me to record. About which I feel absolutely safe in saying it: That’s it.
That’s jazz.

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