~gd~ Not Music of the Last Century no. 8: "Straight No Chaser" - June 27, 2018
In which I try to behave myself because Demetrios Tsimon and Shaukat Husain have been filling this jazz program slot with treasures for 30 years. And I am aware of how I can make audiences flee.
Not Music of the Last Century, no. 8: fill in for Straight No Chaser; June 27, 2018
Gil Evans - Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser ● Carmen McRae - Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser ● Jean Derome et Évidence - Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser ● Jean Derome et Évidence - Thelonious Monk: Dreamland ● Jean Derome: Vamp ● Jeff Beck - Charles Mingus: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat ● Joni Mitchell - Charles Mingus: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat ● Northwest Girlchoir - Oscar Peterson: Hymn to Freedom ● Hakam Martinsson - Oscar Peterson: Hymn to Freedom ● Claude Léveillée et André Gagnon Poisson ● Claude Léveillée et André Gagnon Rupture II ● Duke Ellington Orchestra: Black, Brown and Beige - Parts 1-3 ● Duke Ellington Orchestra: Black, Brown and Beige - Parts 4-6 ● Chicago A Hit by Varèse ● Elvis Costello and Hal Wilner - Charles Mingus: Weird Nightmare ● Dr. John and Hal Wilner - Charles Mingus: Freedom
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Contents in order of appearance:
0:00 ending of previous show (Lazro-Parker-McPhee)
2:14 Georges Dupuis: extro, show intro
2:32 station tag
3:18 advertisement
3:48 gd: ID, land acknowledgement, intro
♪ 4:23 Gil Evans - Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser
11:13 gd: extro, time check, intro
♪ 12:07 Carmen McRae - Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser/Get It Straight
16:19 gd: extro
16:47 advertisement
17:24 gd: Time check, intro
♪ 17:31 Jean Derome et Évidence - Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser
♪ 19:32 Jean Derome et Évidence - Thelonious Monk: Dreamland
24:53 gd: extro, re Jean Derome, intro
27:23 ♪ Jean Derome: Vamp
30:06 gd: extro
30:22 station tag
30:51 gd: more extros, later: Ellington’s Black Brown and Beige; intro
♪ 32:58 Jeff Beck - Charles Mingus: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
♪ 38:28 Joni Mitchell - Charles Mingus: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
43:48 gd: extro, intro
♪ 45:34 Northwest Girlchoir - Oscar Peterson: Hymn to Freedom
49:32 gd: extro, re Black Brown and Beige (Scott Deveau)
51:21 gd: intro
♪ 52:29 Hakam Martinsson - Oscar Peterson: Hymn to Freedom
56:39 gd: extro, intro
♪ 58:26 Claude Léveillée et André Gagnon Poisson
1:02:00 gd: time check, land acknowledgement, hosts will be back next week.
♪ 1:02:04 Claude Léveillée et André Gagnon Rupture II
1:04:38 gd: extro, re Black Brown and Beige, intro
♪ 1:07:18 Duke Ellington Orchestra: Black, Brown and Beige - Parts 1-3
1:28:19 gd: extro
1:29:10 station tag
1:29:46 advertisement
1:30:31 gd: later on the show, re Black Brown and Beige
1:33:01 gd: concert listings, intro
♪ 1:34:28 Duke Ellington Orchestra: Black, Brown and Beige - Parts 4-6
♪ 1:51:15 Chicago A Hit by Varèse
1:53:25 gd: extro, next show
1:53:47 program promo
1:54:06 gd: intro, show extro
♪ 1:55:08 Elvis Costello and Hal Wilner - Charles Mingus: Weird Nightmare
♪ 1:58:14 Dr. John and Hal Wilner - Charles Mingus: Freedom
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Transcript and y2bs of tracks played
0:00 (ending of last piece on previous program, Music of the Last Century no. 22 “Hello Summer” which is on the October 12 substack with my transcript.)
x-♪ Evan Parker, Joe McPhee and Daunik Lazro The Emmet’s Inch part 4 (conclusion)
2:14 gd: Evan Parker, Daunik Lazro and Joe McPhee in concert and it’s 6:02, dix-huit heures deux, as we say in français, and this is Straight No Chaser. In a minute.
2:32 station tag
3:18 advertisement
3:48 Georges Dupuis: It’s 6 oh three p.m. You are listening to CFUV 101.9 FM in Victoria, broadcasting also on line. Ah, you can go to cfuv dot ca and we are broadcasting from the traditional Coast Salish territories of the Lekwungen and SENĆOŦEN speaking peoples.
And Demetrios is going to be back next week. Shaukat has taken the week off. My name is Georges, I’m the host of the show that usually precedes this summer, ah Straight No Chaser but yes, indeed, this is Straight No Chaser.
♪ 4:23 Gil Evans - Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser
11:13 gd: And what better way to create the Canada Day weekend and the Canada Day-Week celebrations with a Canadian, Gil Evans, leading his orchestra in 1959. Ah, this was recorded at Webster Hall, New York City and it’s obviously Straight No Chaser with the soloists Curtis Fuller, ah, Gil Evans on piano, Johnny Coles and Steve Lacy who ah, treads a lot often in the world of experimental music and composition that I like to program on my show called Music of the Last Century. My name is Georges. Ah, Demetrios will be back next week and it is now, what time is it? It’s 6:11 p.m. And this is Straight No Chaser. (with a false start in which I switch from the vinyl to the CD)
♪ 12:07 Carmen McRae - Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser/Get It Straight
16:19 gd: Carmen McRae and her interpretation of Straight No Chaser and with new lyrics by Sally Swisher. They call it Get it Straight and that was performed live, find that on an album called Carmen Sings Monk, ah, with Carmen McRae on vocals, Al Foster on drums, George Moraz on acoustic bass, Clifford Jordan on soprano and tenor sax, ah, Erik Gunnison on piano, Charlie Rouse on tenor sax and Larry Willis on piano.
16:47 advertisement
17:24 gd: And it’s 6:17 p.m. and what’s the name of the program? You got it. Straight No Chaser.
♪ 17:31 Jean Derome et Évidence - Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser
♪ 19:32 Jean Derome et Évidence - Thelonious Monk: Dreamland
24:53 gd: Évidence. A Montréal trio of Jean Derome, Pierre Tanguay and Pierre Cartier and ah, they are Évidence is ah the trio plays only Thelonious Monk music. In fact, ah, in researching for this program in the little time that I had (chuckles) ah I found out that they actually performed a marathon of all of Thelonious Monk’s works in one long, I think a 14 hour session, something like that. I’ll try and find out more about that.
Jean Derome is a musician who’s been around since the 1970s, ah, many formations. He’s – I think played at the Victoria Jazz Festival in the past. Ah, he was associated with René Lussier and they had a duo called Les Granules which sometimes added many, many musicians to their, ah, works either in studio or in performance.
25:54 Ah, Derome has also been the leader of a band called Les Dangereux Zhoms, which translates to “the dangerous men”, kind of a pun in French. It doesn’t really work in English, ah and they came out with a couple of albums and if you listen to my program Music of the Last Century, you’ll probably hear more of that.
And ah, Jean is also very good at experimenting and trying new forms. And boy, did he ever find a new one in his latest record called Résistances. It’s a large big band – it’s a jazz big band, ah, the way that the instrumentation works but it’s had a couple of things added to it because Résistances as you might guess from the title, is about electricity
And Jean had the great idea to even go to the point of tuning some instruments like a kalimba and an autoharp and a couple of other instruments – ah, maybe not an autoharp, I’m guessing at that – but they did tune some instruments to the actual frequency of sound that is generated by electric static, and they’ve incorporated that into a large work.
27:04 Ah, Résistances is actually a sixteen part work that was premiered at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, way back. Too many details. How about just one track to give you a taste of the other side of Jean Derome, from Résistances. This is his big band and Vamp.
27:23 ♪ Jean Derome: Vamp
30:06 gd: Jean Derome and the track Vamp from Résistances and the first big chord of the big band coming out of seclusion while they had the ah, mouth harp solo there at the end.
30:22 station tag
30:51 gd: And before Vamp we heard Jean Derome and Dreamland which is a track of Thelonious Monk that is apparently quite rare – not many people have recorded it. Ah, and a great lullabye as well. Ah and before that they did of course Straight No Chaser.
Now the Straight No Chaser, I think that was part of the Monk marathon because it appears on an album called Live à la Casa and La Casa is the club where they did that wonderful feat. Ah, and Dreamland itself comes from a different album that they did, Évidence, and it’s called Monk Work.
31:50 So, tonight, ah, as you may know from my own program, I like to feature major works that don’t get played very often and for this program, we’re going to play the entire Black Brown and Beige from Duke Ellington. And, um, I knew of the piece – ah, I wasn’t quite familiar with it, so I borrowed my friend’s university library card and wow, is there ever a lot of stuff written about it in academic journals.
From the Music Quarterly, Lisa Berg and Walter Van Deleure, they conclude that, “Ellington’s approach to programmatic expression in Black Brown and Beige reflects a fluid dynamic in improvisatory form of music narrative relations, and by extension a concept of a musical program as a kind of malleable blueprint or set of associative meanings that can, like historical imagination itself, be transported, reframed and transformed.”
32:27 So yeah, academic language but pretty interesting ideas. Maybe we should get Carmen McRae to sing those. A little bit of Charles Mingus now. Two interpreters that you might not expect to do them – or maybe the second you might. But this is ah, to me, one of the most beautiful versions of it. Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, by Charles Mingus, and done by Jeff Beck, followed by Joni Mitchell.
♪ 32:58 Jeff Beck - Charles Mingus: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
♪ 38:28 Joni Mitchell - Charles Mingus: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
43:58 gd: Joni Mitchell from Mingus and Goodbye Pork Pie Hat and preceding that, Jeff Beck’s ah same song taken from his album called Wired, ah, Wired 1977, Good Bye Pork Pie Hat, I think 1981. And ah, Mingus did I think participate in the creation of that last album, but enough details, I’ve been giving details all day.
44:28 To get to more music and since we are, as I had said last hour, halfway between the St.-Jean-Baptiste and Canada Day, ah, (bad French accent) allows me to come out with my French side and ah, the next piece of music, ah (normal) it’s not going to be French but we’re going to have a couple more pieces by Canadians.
Ah, well actually these two next pieces are by the great Canadian Oscar Peterson. Ah, they both do these two versions are – two versions of his Hymn to Freedom. First one is from the Northwest Girlchoir, located in Seattle and that’s in the general direction of ah, if you go to Mount Doug and you look in that general direction, you might see the San Juan Islands, and I don’t know if you heard but Oprah Winfrey is moving to the neighborhood. Might get a festival out of that, maybe? You can hope. From Instription of Hope, the Northwest Girlchoir under the direction of Rebecca Rutsook, and Oscar Peterson’s Hymn to Freedom.
♪ 45:34 Northwest Girlchoir - Oscar Peterson: Hymn to Freedom
49:32 gd: The Northwest Girlchoir from Seattle and Oscar Peterson’s Hymn to Freedom. You are listening to Straight No Chaser. My name is Georges, I’m filling in for ah both Demetrios and ah Shaukat and Demetrios will probably be back next week. Ah, probably – we know he will be back and playing much greater selection and knowledge of jazz as I have, but I’m doing my best here.
50:00 Ah we’re going to be playing the full Black Brown and Beige in the second hour and here’s a couple of more teasers. This is from Scott Deveau’s article, The Black Music Research Journal – I tell you there are some really neat things in the deep catacombs of the databases of the university papers that don’t require you to take a course.
Anyway, Scott Deveau says, “Black, Brown and Beige was designed to call attention to the cultural integrity of negro life and to connect Ellington’s music forcefully with the aspirations of black people generationally. Generally.
One may argue with the particular means Ellington chose to advance those aims, and either question the need to cross the boundary into European concert music, or find both with Ellington’s musical powers of development and formal structure. But it is hard to deny that Ellington’s broader project ultimately succeeded. In accepting jazz today as an African-American art, perhaps we are learning to integrate listening with social issues, so that we hear all jazz as tone parallel to the history of American Negro.
51:07 So – if – if so, Ellington’s social significance thrust will have been a lasting impact and Ellington’s deeper hopes will have been fulfilled.” That he wrote about Black Brown and Beige which we’re going to be hearing in a while.
51:21 This is – I found a pipe organ version of Hymn to Freedom and it’s kind of cool. By Hakam Martinsson, I think Finland, ah, the liner notes were all in Finnish and I really tried to understand what the Google translate told me it was. It made no sense of it. W just know that the song is there. Ah, we find these things in the Naxos Music library, at – ah, it’s the streaming service that’s available through the Victoria Public Library, and if you do a search for Hymn to Freedom you’ll find that many classical musicians or orchestras have ah selected – it has something to play.
But we’re going to play ah Ha-, ha-, Hakam Martinsson’s version playing on the organ of Osterhannig and I didn’t find it to be Canadian enough, I kind of added a sound effect just for the fun, because, ha, Canada day right? Oscar Peterson’s Hymn to Freedom.
♪ 52:29 Hakam Martinsson - Oscar Peterson: Hymn to Freedom (including the sound of ice hockey players, not on the you tube version)
56:39 gd: I hope that that ice hockey sounds in the background, ah, cooled you off. Hopefully we’re going to be getting out of that humid weather that we had this afternoon. Ah, and that was Mr. Hakamson (sic) playing Oscar Peterson’s Hymn to Freedom.
A couple of other, a couple Canadian pieces, very short ones. Ah, Claude Léveillée and André Gagnon are two greatly celebrated in pop and folk music in Quebec. Ah, but they started out or in their early days, they were a jazz duo. And this is – these are two virtuoso pianists and they came out with two albums, one just basically their names, Léveillée-Gagnon and the second one Une nuit un moment about in the 1970s.
Ah, but this one I think is 1962 and part of what’s really neat, aside from the fact that’s dual pianists and they – they actually separate the pianists from left and right channel but it’s also, ah, their own virtuosity, ah, you can hear, especially with André Gagnon who’s (chuckles) tends sometimes towards Liberace but he does have that classical training and it shows up.
57:57 And there’s a really funny part about halfway through one of these two pieces, where ah, the band – the two pianists actually start outpacing the drummer who has just a slight off-syncopation that tries to keep up. So two pieces from the early album, by Claude Léveillée and André Gagnon. Here’s Poisson followed by Rupture. Check out the stereo split on this, it’s awesome (though this is a monoaural aircheck, so check out the split on the you tube!).
♪ 58:26 Claude Léveillée et André Gagnon Poisson
1:02:00 gd: It’s 7:01 p.m. and you are listening to CFUV 101.9 FM broadcasting from the traditional Coast Salish territories of the Lekwungen and SENĆOŦEN speaking peoples and this episode of Straight No Chaser is hosted by me Georges, and your regular hosts will be coming back next week.
♪ 1:02:04 Claude Léveillée et André Gagnon Rupture II
1:04:38 gd: From their 1965 eponymous – that means untitled – album ah Léveillée, Claude and Gagnon, André. And on that track was Don Aziz on bass, Roger Simard on drums, ah, Nick Ayoub on sax and clarinet and Yvan Landry on vibraphone.
1:05:05 One more, ah commentary upon Black, Brown and Beige. Some time, I’ll ah do a much greater preparation and really show the cultural importance of this work.
Ah, this is from let’s see – The Composer as Historian at Carnegie Hall, the author is Harvey Cohen from American Quarterly. “Ellington’s achievements during this period range beyond the realms of black music and history. He forwarded a new vision of American music, culture and identity, free from the dictates of the conservatory, which he sought to endow with the respectability and status usually accorded in this period only to the classical big shots.”
This was premiered in 1943. Carnegie Hall wasn’t actually ah well, received.
“Years before the works of Aaron Copland and Charles Ives became nationally popular in the late 1930s, Ellington, particularly with his extended pieces, had been hailed on both sides of the Atlantic as a serious American composer and genius. Ellington was a leading figure in establishing a domestic and international respect for American art at a time when universities offered almost no courses on American art of any kind, and when European precedents were held as the sole standard by American critics and educators.
1:06:24 “In championing Black history and American art, Ellington clearly did not resemble a maestro of the old school – he was creating a new school and many after him followed.”
Part one of Black, Brown and Beige, this is the 1958 recording featuring Mahalia Jackson and we’re going to hear the first three parts – he broke it down into six parts. Parts 1, 2 and 3 are mostly instrumental, called Work Song and Come Sunday instrumental, ah followed by Work Song and Come Sunday. I guess (chuckles) variations on the same themes. Anyway, parts 1 to 3 of the monumental beautiful work by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, Black, Brown and Beige
♪ 1:07:18 Duke Ellington Orchestra: Black, Brown and Beige - Parts 1-3
The full work is also here, broken down by track:
1:28:19 gd: Part 1 of Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, featuring Mahalia Jackson in the second section. Black, Brown and Beige from the Columbia Records, ah from 1958 I think. The ah first full recorded version of it. Alto saxophone Bill Graham, baritone sax Harry Carney, bass Jimmy Woode, drums Sammy Woodyard, piano Duke Ellington of course, the soloist on violin was Ray Nance, tenor saxophone Paul Gonsalves. Britt Woodman and Quentin Jackson on trombone, William “Cat” Anderson, Clark Terry, Harold “Shorty” Baker on trumpet, ah, and John Sanders on valve trombone.
We’ll be hearing part two of that ah, very shortly.
1:29:10 station tag
1:29:46 advertisement
1:30:31 gd: And you are listening to Straight No Chaser here on CFUV and my name is Georges, also known as DJ NDY and it’s no coincidence that I’ve chosen some of these pieces ah tonight because ah, I have not hosted this program before, and what follows me is our contemporary music program – contemporary classic, new music, twentieth century music, ah, very similar to what I do in my one hour except that he’s been doing it for a long time. That’s Brian Woolcock’s Just Say Nono that starts at eight o’clock.
And we’re going to be actually tied into that. I’m going to be finishing off the program with more Charles Mingus but played on the instruments of the American composer Harry Partch. Ah, that’s a little bit later.
1:31:22 But first let’s get back to, ah, Duke Ellington and his orchestra. I’ll just find one more quote that I’d like to read from ah all these researches that I’ve been able to do. This is from Wolfram Knauer in a magazine-journal called The Black Perspective in Music. And he’s talking about simulated improvisation that can be found in the structure of Black, Brown and Beige.
He says, “through precise planning of all phases of the movement, Ellington is able to mediate external contrasts between themes and between composition and improvisation, through the internal elements of arrangement and composition.
“He chooses not to rely on the individual styles of his musicians, which he knows well, and thus might rather safely employ in his compositional plan, but rather invents melodies which are organized in detail as regards mode of structure.
“This approach in any case throws some light on Duke Ellington’s attitude towards these aesthetics of jazz composition. In addition to [...] several soloists after bebop developed a technique of mode – motivic improvisation of which the most important are pianist Lennie Tristano and John Lewis and tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins.
“The assimilation of such compositional and improvisational techniques in their work is characteristic of Third Stream and is of importance for the understanding of early free jazz. But Duke Ellington was a pioneer in employing simulated improvisation, a compositional concept that up to now has been mostly neglected in the study of his music.”
1:33:01 Um, that’s going – I forgot that we are also going – wanted to ah do a few concert listings before we play part two. So, um, let’s see what’s going on tonight, still on – Karaoke Wednesdays featuring Yah You Rocker, that’s at nine o’clock at the Copper Owl so you can still catch that. Ah, 9:45, Hermann’s first jazz festival – first annual jazz festival tonight will feature the Emmet Cohen Trio featuring Houston Person and that’s at Hermann’s Jazz Club at 9:45 tonight.
At 11:00 the jazz festival continues with late night jam sessions hosted by John Lee, still at Hermann’s Playhouse, which is I think is a side room, ah, I haven’t been at the jazz club yet. Ah, what else is on tonight? Well from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. at – Blender Night at Katie Savard’s Birthday Bash, the split-personality Savard, Lake Placid, Trophy Dad, Stevie Wise and the big fiddles. And if you’ve got a ticket to Macy Gray, well, you’d better make it there, because it started three minutes ago. My name is Georges and this is part two of Black, Brown and Beige, a composition performed and created by Duke Ellington and his orchestra.
♪ 1:34:28 Duke Ellington Orchestra: Black, Brown and Beige - Parts 4-6
1:49:23 gd: Mahalia Jackson, singing the 23rd Psalm, Duke Ellington’s version, attached at the end of Black Brown and Beige. One more comment.
Ah, Maurice Peress from the Black Music Research Journal says, “Ellington’s deliberate decision to compose “improvisations” is an important step toward the fulfillment of his challenge: integrating improvisational elements of African-American music into an organic whole to produce an American Classical Music. Thus, Dvorak’s imperative was realized in a way no one, including Duke’s erstwhile teacher, Will Marion Cook, could have imagined.”
1:50:05 gd: That’s many, many comments about Black, Brown and Beige and I hope to play it again and give it even more background so that you can really appreciate how great this was in terms of the creation of American music in the 20th century.
Now, couldn’t resist this. Um, because I’m being followed by Just Say Nono, that would be the place most likely that you would hear the music of Edgard Varèse. Number two would probably be my show and number three would probably be the Fiji Mermaid Radio two hours.
But I learned about Varèse the very first time, from Chicago, the rock-jazz band – more emphasis on rock and pop later on, but ah, they had a song called A Hit By Varèse. Got nothing to do with him but this is the time to play it. Chicago, from Chicago V, a little bit of Hit by Varèse.
♪ 1:51:15 Chicago A Hit by Varèse
1:53:25 gd: Chicago and A Hit by Varèse, and no, no – no Varèse in that, whatsoever. You are listening to Straight No Chaser. My name is Georges. Coming right up is Just Say Nono with Brian Woolcock.
1:53:47 program promo
1:54:06 gd: And to finish off the program, listeners of Just Say Nono might be familiar with the music of Harry Partch. Well, Harry Partch not only invented a microtonal system, he invented his own instruments in which to use them. And in a wonderful project from the 1990s, Hal Wilner took the music of Charles Mingus and combined it with different musicians as he’s done in other projects for Kurt Weill and ah, Thelonious Monk and others.
But in the music of Charles Mingus, he took the original instruments – and there are (chuckles) none like these in the world – of Harry Partch. And so we’re going to hear two tracks from that album, ah, Declan McManus, followed by Mac Rebenack, but you guys would know them most likely as Elvis Costello, playing Weird Nightmare by Mingus, followed by Dr. John, playing Freedom by Mingus.
1:54:58 gd: Hope you’ve enjoyed these two hours. The regular guys will be back on Straight No Chaser next week. My name is Georges and merci beaucoup for having listened.