Hi!

Sorry I’m a little late in getting this up – got home from work a bit later than usual…  Hope you like it!
Ella Fitzgerald.

“Her recordings will live forever… she’ll sound as modern 200 years from now.” – Tony Bennett

Continuing with our somewhat-delayed look at women jazz vocalists, we’ve got another multi-Grammy (13) winner for your listening delight, Ella Fitzgerald.

Born April 25, 1917, in Newport News, VA, Ella Fitzgerald was raised in Yonkers, NY but was orphaned at age 14.  This didn’t stop her from developing her gift, however, and by age 16 she was appearing at “amateur nights” at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem in 1934.  She won the competition that night, and was son singing with Check Webb’s band.  When Webb died in 1939, the band was renamed “Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra” and continued touring.

“She made the mark for all female singers, especially black female singers, in our industry.” – Dionne Warwick

Her solo career began in 1941, beginning as a swing singer, she also sang bebop, scat, blues, bossa nova, samba, gospel, and Christmas songs.  Her amazing voice, with its pure tone, faultless phrasing and intonation, covered a range of three octaves.  She often added imitations of other artists to her concerts, and her imitations of both Marilyn Monroe and Dizzy Gillespie were said to be dead-on accurate both musically and in terms of her gestures.

After she left Decca Records in 1955, she became the musical nucleus around which her manager formed the Verve label.  She is best known and most critically acclaimed for a series of recordings in the late 1950s into the 1960s of the “songbooks” of great American composers such as Cole Porter (1956), Duke Ellington (1957), Irving Berlin (1958), George Gershwin (1959), Jerome Kern (1963), and Johnny Mercer (1964).  She is also well known for her album “Porgy and Bess” recorded with Louis Armstrong.

“I didn’t realize our songs were so good until Ella sang them.” -Ira Gershwin

She married twice; her 1941 marriage was annulled and she later married bass player Ray Brown, with whom she adopted a son.  She eventually went blind from diabetes and lost her legs in 1993.  She died in 1996 in Beverly Hills, CA, at age 79.

An extensive discussion of her numerous awards and a discography of her many albums is available at the Wikipedia website, as are sound samples.

“Play an Ella ballad with a cat in the room, and the animal will invariably go up to the speaker, lie down and purr.” – Geoffrey Fidelman (author of the Ella Fitzgerald biography, First Lady of Song)

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Vince Guaraldi

Another follow-up from the bossa nova discussion two weeks ago, Vince Guaraldi is someone whose music you have known since childhood without knowing it – He’s the man who brought us the music for all those Charlie Brown TV specials!

Vince Guaraldi was born in San Francisco on July 17, 1928.  He worked locally while in college, not only in clubs but also weddings, high school concerts, wherever he could find a gig.  His first professional job was filling in for Art Tatum at the Black Hawk, a local venue.

His first recording was in 1953, on “Vibratharpe” by the Cal Tjader Trio.  He then left the studio to further perfect his craft in the San Fracisco beatnik club scene.  By 1955, he had formed his own trio with longtime friend Eddie Duran on guitar, Dean Reilly on bass — and tackled North Beach’s bohemian hungry i club.  Later that year he returned to the studio with a different ensemble, composed of John Markham (drums), Eugene Wright (bass) and Jerry Dodgion (alto sax).  

Continuing with the trio from the “hungry i” he developed the sound he would become noted for, light, carefree, swinging, but technically astute. The original Vince Guaraldi Trio, with Duran and Reilly, can be heard on two releases: “The Vince Guaraldi Trio” (1956) and “A Flower is a Lonesome Thing” (1957).

His career started taking off in the late `50’s.  He recorded 13 albums with various groups, 10 of them with Tjader.  He toured with Woddy Herman’s band for a season.  In 1958, performing at the Monterrey Jazz Festival, another breakthrough (from the official site for Vince Guaraldi):

Not too much later, just after midnight during 1958’s first annual Monterey Jazz Festival, some 6,000 rabid but by now quite tired jazz fans came to their feet when The Cal Tjader Quintet blew them away. Thanks in no small part to the “sound of surprise” from the feisty Guaraldi, whose extended blues riffs literally had the crowd screaming for more, Tjader’s quintet received an enthusiastic standing ovation.

But even bigger success was coming.  Inspired by the 1959 film “Black Orpheus,” Guaraldi formed a new trio, with Monte Budwig on bass and Colin Bailey on drums, recording his own interpretations of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s haunting melodies.  The 1962 album was called “Jazz Impression of Black Orpheus,” and “Samba de Orpheus” was the first selection released as a single.  Combing the album for a suitable B-side number, Guaraldi’s producers finally chose and original composition titled “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.”  A Sacramento DJ decided to play the B-side tune, and the rest was history:

“Cast Your Fate to the Wind” became a Gold Record winner and earned the 1963 Grammy as Best Instrumental Jazz Composition. It was constantly demanded during Guaraldi’s club engagements, and suddenly jazz fans couldn’t get enough of him. He responded with several albums during 1963 and ’64, perhaps the most important of which was “Vince Guaraldi, Bola Sete, and Friends,” with Fred Marshall (bass), Jerry Granelli (drums) and Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete. That marked the first of several collaborations with Sete, a musical collaboration whose whole was greater than the sum of its already quite talented parts.

Guaraldi was also a recognized fixture on television, if only in the greater San Francisco region. He and jazz critic Ralph Gleason documented the success of “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” in the three-part “Anatomy of a Hit,” produced for San Francisco’s KQED; later, shortly after his first album with Sete, Guaraldi did a “Jazz Casual” TV show for the same network.

If you’ve never heard “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” it’s definitely worth a listen next time you’re at the listening station at your local CD store.  The same irrepressible joy of life from the Peanuts specials music is present in this tune (and the rest of the album) as well.

His next major work was when Rev. Charles Gompertz of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral selected Guaraldi to write a modern jazz setting for the choral Eucharist. The composer labored 18 months with his trio and a 68-voice choir, and the result is an impressive blend of Latin influences, waltz tempos, and traditional jazz “supper music.” It was performed on May 21, 1965. Guaraldi worked with a new trio for this gig: Tom Beeson, bass, and Lee Charlton, drums.

“I had one of America’s largest cathedrals as a setting, a top choir, and a critical audience that would be more than justified in finding fault,” Guaraldi recalls, on the liner notes of “At Grace Cathedral” (Fantasy 8367*). “I was in a musical world that had lived with the Eucharist for 500-600 years, and I had to improve and/or update it to 20th-century musical standards. This was the most awesome and challenging thing I had ever attempted.”

But his most famous work was still to come (from Wikipedia):

While searching for just the right music to accompany a planned Peanuts Christmas TV special, Charles Schulz, (creator of the Peanuts comic strip) heard a live club performance of Vince Guaraldi’s trio on the radio while traveling in a taxicab in San Francisco, CA. He demanded to be taken to the club immediately and introduced himself to Mr. Guaraldi after the set. He proposed the idea of Mr. Guaraldi scoring the upcoming special and Mr. Guaraldi enthusiastically took the job. He went on to compose scores for numerous Peanuts television specials.

He recorded a few more albums in addition to the Peanuts work; these included 1968’s “Vince Guaraldi with the San Francisco Boys Chorus,” “The Electric Vince Guaraldi” (as with other musicians we’ve discussed, the late `60’s and early `70’s marked a time of experimentation with electric instruments), and his final album, the 1974 “Alma-ville.”

On February 6, 1976, while waiting in a motel room between sets at Menlo Park’s Butterfield’s nightclub, Guaraldi died of a sudden heart-attack.   He was 47.  A few weeks later, on March 16th, “It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown” debuted on television. It was the 15th, and last, Peanuts television special to boast Guaraldi’s original music. He had just finished recording his portion of the soundtrack on the very afternoon of the day he died.

From a tribute at www.peanutscollectorclub.com :

No doubt recognizing Guaraldi’s invaluable contributions, Lee Mendelson and Charles Schulz paid him the highest possible tribute at the conclusion of “The Music of America,” one segment of the “This is America, Charlie Brown” miniseries. Responding to Lucy’s doubts that he might actually have a favorite song, Charlie Brown replies,

“Well, there’s one…and I think it was written in the 1960s. I think it was some of that jazz Franklin was talking about. I believe the composer was a man by the name of Vince Guaraldi. And I think it was called ‘Linus and Lucy’…by coincidence.

“And I think it goes like this…”   …and he hums the first few bars.

Cue the most familiar of all signature themes, which rises and envelops the gang as they walk into the sunset

I don’t think I’m a great piano player,” Guaraldi once said, “but I would like to have people like me, to play pretty tunes and reach the audience. And I hope some of those tunes will become standards. I want to write standards, not just hits.”

Guaraldi got his wish.  Artists who have recorded his Peanuts music include George Winston, Dave Brubeck, Wynton and Ellis Marsalis, and David Benoit.  His tune “Christmas Time is Here” has become a well-known holiday carol.  And many artists have recorded their version of “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.”

In 2004, a previously unknown live performance of the Guaraldi trio performing the eight-part “Charlie Brown Suite” was released, restored from tapes in private collections.  The estate website indicates that there is additional Guaraldi material still to be released in the future, so keep your eyes open!

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Those of you that have been coming in on Fridays know that I often have an anecdote to inflict on you, and tonight is no exception.  It was 1975, and I was in Catholic high school in Philly taking chemistry from a really old, hard of hearing priest.  One day, when he turned to write some formulas on the blackboard, someone quietly whistled the first few notes to “Linus and Lucy.”  He turned around and looked, puzzled.  You could read his thoughts: “Did I hear something?”  But everyone was busily taking notes.  He turned back to the board, and again, “Linus and Lucy,” a few more notes, and a little louder; a few more students joined in.  This happened repeatedly, and each time he turned around we were busting at the seams to keep from laughing.  When we finally got to the part where the piano crescendoes and goes “dah -da-da-da -DAH” he turned around more quickly than we had ever seen him move, and yelled “NOW CUT THAT OUT!”

I’m not sure if this story has any deep existential meaning, but it was funny (at least at the time; maybe you had to be there, and maybe not for the priest!), and that’s what Vince’s music has always been about, and remains for each new generation of listeners – fun and the joy of life.

Your Turn

So, what music says “fun and the joy of life” to you?

Also, any suggestions for topics for upcoming weeks?