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Coleman Hawkins
Lester Young
Sarah
Vaughan
Charles Mingus
Betty Carter
Cassandra Wilson
Dexter Gordon
John Coltrane
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"Body and Soul" Once Banned from
Radio
Leading Ballad for Jazz Instrumentalists
Reviewed by Mtume ya Salaam & Kalamu ya Salaam
--from
Breath
of Life
1939. A very important event in jazz history.
Coleman Hawkins
cut a version of “Body and Soul” that
established the song as the leading jazz ballad for
instrumentalists. From Louis Armstrong and Lester Young
to John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, nearly every great
jazz musician has taken a turn at blowing “Body and
Soul.” The song is also the archetypal torch song, a
staple with singers that range from lounge acts and pop
stars who want to demonstrate their range, to hardcore
jazz vocalists such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald
and the singers featured here. It is unusual to find a
song that both instrumentalists and vocalists favor.
Coleman Hawkins’ 1939 recording is often credited with
establishing the tenor saxophone as the major instrument
of jazz. Before Hawk, jazz was trumpet dominated, thanks
in no small part to Louis Armstrong. Although it simply
sounds like a regular jazz song,
Hawkins’ version was a
startling and innovative recording at the time of its
release. For one thing, the majesty of Coleman’s sound
was captivating. His burly, rough hewn tone would be the
dominant sound of the saxophone until the advent of
Lester Young. Secondly, while most instrumentalists
favored embellishing the melody,
Hawkins
built his solo
on variations based on the harmonic structure. Although
at that point bebop was a number of years off, Hawkins
reading of the standard prefigured the bebop approach.
At least several hundred singers have taken a turn at
“Body and Soul.” Few have approached the song with an
instrument equal to the "Divine One," aka Sassy
Sarah
Vaughan. Flawless over four octaves, she ranged from
baritone to soprano. But beyond the beauty of her voice
there was the incomparable artistry of her phrasing. A
trained pianist who held down the keyboard chair in the
Billy Eckstine Orchestra, when it came to improvising,
Sassy was wings compared to the plodding feet of most
vocalists. Even though Sassy could emote with the best
and could whoop and holler, she became the progenitor of
the style of singing that became known as “cool.”
Sarah’s expert backing trio of Joe Malachi on piano, Joe
Benjamin on bass and Roy Haynes on drums offers sterling
support.
On the instrumental side, “Body and Soul” became a
favorite for swing musicians who combined melodic
variations with strong rhythmic accents in their
playing. The
Charles Mingus version illustrates this
trend in spades given that the two main soloists are
trumpeter Roy “Little Jazz” Eldridge and saxophonist
Eric Dolphy. Eldridge plays with a blustery, broad tone
that is drenched in blues tones and connotations. This
epitomized a Louis Armstrong-derived, swing approach.
The pyrotechnics of bebop replaced swing. The major
improviser of bebop was alto saxophonist Charlie Parker.
Dolphy’s dazzling technical proficiency superbly
mirrored Charlie Parker’s sound and approach, and in the
second half of Dolphy’s solo, Dolphy gives us a taste of
the oncoming avant garde. It would take a
forward-thinking composer and bandleader like Charles
Mingus to give us strong examples of both the way things
used to be as well as the sound of the future all within
one performance.
Betty Carter represents the masterful sound of young
musicians who grew up on bebop but swang in a cool
style. Betty and her trio (Norman Simmons on piano,
Lisle Atkinson on bass, and Al Harewood on drums) do the
near impossible: they swing hard, hard, hard at a very,
very slow tempo. And on top of that, Betty takes to an
even higher level the bebop penchant to quote other
songs while improvising. In a moment that is both
profound and comic, Betty segues seamlessly from “Body
and Soul” to another standard “Heart and Soul.” It’s a
brilliant interpretation taken from Betty Carter’s
album,
Finally.
The hard bop movement that followed bebop is exemplified
by
Dexter Gordon and his Coltrane-influenced version of
“Body and Soul.” Gordon borrows a chord sequence and
rhythm pattern from Coltrane who introduced a new way to
play “Body and Soul” on one of Coltrane’s most famous
albums, My Favorite Things. Even though Gordon was older
than Coltrane and had also served as an influence on the
younger musician, Dexter charges out the gate and
produces a long, 17-minute performance. Coltrane had
popularized quarter-hour and longer improvisations.
Gordon’s band of George Cables on piano, Rufus Reid on
bass and Eddie Gladen on drums is right with Gordon
every second of the way.
Interestingly, Gordon’s huge tone is reminiscent of
Coleman Hawkins, but his slow, deliberate,
behind-the-beat, lyrical phrasing is a take-off from
Lester “Prez” Young, whom Billie Holiday nicknamed
“Prez” (short for "president") to honor Young’s position
as the leader of a totally different approach to the
tenor saxophone. Gordon in his own way combines the past
and the future. Gordon even ends using another Coltrane
stylistic development when he plays an unaccompanied
cadenza as a coda at the end of the selection.
Singer
Cassandra Wilson, with a voice as deep as Sarah
Vaughn’s and an improvising sense as agile as Betty
Carter, also uses a Coltrane approach as a launching pad
for her interpretation of “Body and Soul.” Particularly
noteworthy is Wilson’s employment of long tones that
float over the churning rhythms. At time she even sounds
like the clear, high tones of a soprano saxophone, an
instrument newly popularized by John Coltrane. Also of
interest is the combo format favored by these musicians:
lead vocalist or instrumentalist supported by a
piano-bass-drum trio. In Wilson case, the band consists
of Rod Williams on piano, Kevin Bruce Harris on bass and
Mark Johnson on drums.
The final version is the most radical interpretation of
all. It’s, no surprise,
John Coltrane working with a
sextet of Pharoah Sanders on tenor saxophone, McCoy
Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison and Donald Rafael Garrett
on bass (Garrett uses his bow throughout), and Elvin
Jones on drums. Coltrane’s instantly identifiable tone
takes flight atop a bubbling rhythm section that
percolates and churns rather than swings. Coltrane veers
in and out of the song’s melody like a race car driver
swerving through heavy traffic. You can hear the obvious
bebop references in McCoy Tyner’s fleet solo, but Tyner
also plays peek-a-boo with the song’s structure. The
third soloist, Pharoah Sanders, completely jettisons the
standard melodic/harmonic basis for improvisation.
Sanders focuses on texture and sound as he takes a solo
that soars like a bird above the turbulence of rough
waters. Although he understands the standard harmonic
structure, Sanders takes the Coleman Hawkins approach of
multi-note runs to an outward-bound conclusion. Sanders
has a big tone akin to Hawkins’ sound but Sanders also
has a free approach that is as radical in the Sixties as
Hawkins was in 1939. The performance ends with Coltrane
offering a summation that includes a brief solo cadenza.
From Coleman Hawkins in the late Thirties to
John
Coltrane in the mid-Sixties, “Body and Soul” is the
chosen vehicle for the expression of innovative, and
even radical, variations on traditional approaches to
jazz improvisations that end up being classic covers of
an American songbook standard that in the process became
a jazz classic.—Kalamu ya Salaam
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History in miniature
This week’s Cover reminds me of
Kalamu’s great post from August ‘05, the one on
"Summertime." Usually, when Kalamu breaks down a jazz
standard, I really like one or two of the versions, I
kind of dig another one or two and I could take or leave
the rest. But in the case of these covers of "Body And
Soul"—as with "Summertime"—I like all of them.
Listening to the way the
instrumental versions developed and evolved as the
decades passed is like listening to a history of jazz in
miniature. And the vocal versions are just amazing.
Sarah Vaughan is flawless. Cassandra Wilson is as
heavenly as she always is. Betty Carter is a soulful
technician—an oxymoron, but accurate, I think.
Great,
great post. Wonderful music.—Mtume ya Salaam
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Body & Soul
My heart is sad and
lonely
For you I sigh, for you, dear, only
Why haven't you seen it?
I'm all for you, body and soul
I spend my days in
longin'
And wond'ring why it's me you're wrongin'
I tell you, I mean it
I'm all for you, body and soul
I can't believe it,
it's hard to conceive it
That you'd turn away romance
Are you pretending? It looks like the ending
Unless I could have one more chance to
prove, dear
My life a wreck
you're making
You know I'm yours just for the taking
I'd gladly surrender / myself to you, body
and soul
Source:
BluesforPeace
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History of "Body and Soul"
While in London,
Hollywood songwriter/conductor Johnny Green wrote “Body
and Soul” for Gertrude Lawrence. Jack Hylton & His
Orchestra recorded the ballad first in Britain, but it
was Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra (Jack Fulton, vocal)
who popularized it. Their recording hit the charts on
October 11, 1930, and held the number one spot for six
weeks. . . .
On October 15th,
1930, “Body and Soul” appeared in the Broadway revue,
Three’s a Crowd. The show would run for 272
performances with Libby Holman performing the song as
Clifton Webb danced. “Body and Soul” was one of the
revue’s standout songs, and Holman’s recording rose to
number three on the recording charts.
Although instantly
popular, “Body and Soul” was banned from radio for
nearly a year because of its suggestive lyrics, which
leave little doubt as to their sexual nature. In spite
of, or possibly because of, its racy lyrics, an
astounding number of renditions made the charts in the
1930s and 1940s . . .
Out of all the hit
recordings of “Body and Soul,” Coleman Hawkins’ is the
best remembered. . . . In 1973, the National Academy of
Recording Arts and Sciences inducted Hawkins’ 1939
recording into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The original
recording is on Coleman Hawkins’ Body and Soul
CD. An interesting reworking of the tune can be heard as
the title cut on Hawkins’ 1944 Rainbow Mist
recording on which he lays a new melody over the chord
changes of “Body and Soul.” – JW
Although Louis
Armstrong was the first jazz artist to record “Body and
Soul” in 1930, his version clung close to the song’s
written melody. In 1935, Armstrong’s New Orleans
colleague Henry “Red” Allen’s version begins to plumb
the improvisational possibilities of the tune. In a
recording made for the indie label Commodore in
November, 1938, tenor saxophonist “Chu” Berry explores
the changes in a manner continued a year later by his
mentor Coleman Hawkins. But it is the blistering,
double-time solo by Roy Eldridge on Berry’s recording
that steals the show and clearly points the direction
that the trumpet would take in the work of Dizzy
Gillespie.—Chris Tyle, Jazz Musician and Historian
Source:
JazzStandards
posted 18 February 2007
mingus 5 tet in belgium /
Freedom
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Beneath the Underdog
By
Charles Mingus
"Mingus
was something else. A pure genius. I loved
him." Miles Davis; "The jazz world has seen
its fair share of compelling autobiographies
but none to rival the quality of
Beneath the Underdog. A shocking and
brilliant book. Five stars." Q; "There has
never been an autobiography like
Beneath the Underdog. A riveting
work of highly subjective reminiscences and
tortured self-analysis." Richard Williams;
"[Mingus'] autobiography teeters between
derangement and genius." Time Out; "An
outlandish, brilliant autobiography."—Newsweek
Mingus
by Mingus. From the shabby roadhouses to
fabulous estates, from the psychiatric ward
of Bellevue to worlds of mysticism and
solitude, these are the celebrated, demonic,
anguished and, above all, profoundly moving
memoirs of the great jazz bassist and
compose Charles Mingus. First published in
1971,
Beneath the Underdog is a
masterpiece of memoir, a riveting insight
into one of the giants of twentieth century
music.—Publisher, Canongate Books |
Mingus,
Sue Graham. 2002.
Tonight at Noon: A Love Story.
New York: Pantheon Books.
|
Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 6 July 2008
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