A friend on Twitter shared this ad with me. The ad copy is awkward, but interesting. It does indeed acknowledge and celebrate Mary Osborne's talents, but also has mildly condescending, definitely sexist tone as well. ("Love a quick, easy action!") And of course, we can't have Osborne holding the guitar like an actual guitarist, right? Hmm. Of course, this approach to advertising guitars and saxophones hasn't changed all that much in the 21st century, for women or for men.
Here's what Connie Crothers has to say about Osborne in her interview in my book:
Mary Osborne is one of the most important musicians in jazz. She's the missing link between Charlie Christian and the guitar players who came afterwards. The missing link the historians have been looking for is her. She was Charlie Christian’s only protégé. She's major. Billie knew about her, and hired her for that TV special. So there were two women in that band. [laughs] — Connie Crothers to the author, 2013
Saturday's speakers and panelists include John Nova Lomax, Roger Wood, Rick Mitchell, Dr. Robert Morgan and many others. I'm really looking forward to learning much, much more about Houston's musical history. Hope to see you there!
Zydeco dancers at PT's Cajun BBQ House in Clear Lake, which closed in 2005.
Suga' In My Bowl's memorial broadcast for pianist Connie Crothers is now archived online. Sadly, Connie left us August 13. She graces the cover of my book Freedom of Expression: Interviews With Women in Jazz.
The broadcast incorporates a recording of the interview I did with Connie back in April 2013 for my book, as well as remembrances from her fellow musicians, including trumpeter Lewis 'Flip' Barnes, drummer Warren Smith, and dancer Patricia Nicholson Parker.
Suga' In My Bowl host Joyce Jones did an amazing job putting this show together in a very short amount of time. I'm pleased to have contributed in some way to Connie's memory.
This Sunday, 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. ET, tune in to Suga' in My Bowl on WBAI 99.5 FM for a memorial tribute to pianist Connie Crothers. You can listen to the show online at wbai.org. Crothers passed away last Saturday after a brave battle with cancer. The broadcast will include a recording of my interview with Crothers which appears in my book Freedom of Expression: Interviews With Women in Jazz. Trying to capture the "voice" of an interviewee in print is very challenging. Needless to say, hearing Connie's actual voice and her descriptions of her first attempt at improvising, her studies with Lennie Tristano, and the pervasive sexism that existed in the jazz world before the women's movement is a special experience. I hope you can tune in. Here's a little more information about the broadcast: "Connie Crothers expressed her musical life as performer, recording artist and teacher releasing feeling–her source–through spontaneous improvisation. This edition is a memorial broadcast in honor of Connie Crothers by guest contributor Chris Becker, who provides an interview he recorded for his book released earlier this year titled Freedom of Expression: Interviews with Women in Jazz. Additional remembrances will be provided by Arts for Arts/Vision Festival organizer Patricia Nicholson Parker, percussionist/drummer Warren Smith and trumpeter Lewis "Flip" Barnes. "This program is engineered, produced, hosted and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our "On the Bandstand" segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with associate producer Hank Williams."
Pianist Connie Crothers, one of the giants of jazz, passed away
in the early hours of August 13, 2016 after a brave battle with cancer. She was 75. As one of jazz music's great virtuosos, Crothers was a bridge between strains
of seemingly disparate musical camps, especially so-called standard-tunes players and free
improvisers. Like her mentor pianist Lennie Tristano, her approach to free (or “spontaneous”)
improvisation was founded in a deep knowledge of and appreciation for the earliest practitioners of
jazz (e.g. Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Billie Holiday). But while she saw herself as part of a lineage, she considered
jazz to be an evolving art form, and believed the music was in fact “heading into
something incredible.”
It is Crothers who graces the front cover of my book Freedom of Expression: Interviews With Women
In Jazz. (She is one of 37 musicians interviewed.) This powerful image of Crothers at the piano, all ten fingers on the
keys, her head tilted back, perfectly captures the feeling of transcendence that comes from
playing music, as well as the sacrifices necessary to achieve such a state of
grace. Not surprisingly, the image has resonated with many women, as it conveys the
struggles and triumphs uniquely experienced by women in jazz.
Photo of Connie Crothers by Peter Gannushkin
The cover’s gold, rose, and turquoise colors were inspired
by the stained glass windows of artist Henri Matisse’s Chapelle du Rosaire de
Vence. For many of us, music is our religion; dogma doesn’t work when your
craft requires you to be open and receptive to influences and inspiration from
the past and the present, and to play in response to what’s in your heart, not in your head. That's a pretty good description of the kind of
spontaneous and freely improvised music Crothers played so masterfully, both as
a soloist, and in collaboration with some of the great improvisers of our
time.
Crothers began studying classical (or “European”) piano at
age 9 and went on to major in composition at the University of California at
Berkeley. At Berkeley, her teachers emphasized “procedure and structure” and
“compositional rigor” over emotional expression, which didn’t sit well with
Crothers. She began listening to jazz, and upon hearing Tristano's recording “Requiem,” had a shamanistic vision that inspired her to leave school and travel to New
York to study and master a completely different musical language:
“ . . . during the length of the track ["Requiem"], I had an amazing
experience where I saw my future. . . . I knew nothing about New York City; I
knew nothing about improvising or about jazz, but I knew that that’s what was
going to happen. It was almost as if it had already happened.”
Tristano, who was blind, told Crothers singing along with
records was an important key to developing an ear for improvisation. In her own
teaching, Crothers emphasized the importance of learning and internalizing a tune's melody,
not its chords, in in order to improvise more freely and creatively:
“What I try to get to instead with [my students] is have them play
the strict melody of a tune with no ornamentation whatsoever. . . . like how
they would sing it, just very simply. And then, instead of trying to think
chords, just hear the melody, and let the melodic line get released . . . I
like to say the melody has everything in it. It has the harmonic sound, so
you’re getting the harmony from your ear, rather than thinking ‘C7’.”
For those of you scratching your head and wondering how this
concept is applied practically in a performance setting, it can be helpful to
understand free improvisation does not necessarily begin with common-practice
musical building blocks, such as chord progressions, Western European song forms, or
clearly stated time signatures. Bassist William Parker, who has described
Crothers at the piano as “a queen at her throne,” describes instead an alternate
“periphery” of sounds that musicians tap into when playing free. The resulting
sounds are limited only by a musician’s imagination and technique. (And Crothers' imagination and technique were formidable!) Crothers
believed playing free is one of the most challenging things for a musician to
attempt:
“. . . if you have that understanding of music, you’re never
going to be able to fake it. You can’t. You have to tap into that deep well of
understanding every time you express your music. . . . With no parameters to
guide you, it’s on you to create music that’s beautiful and has an inner logic.
I find this extremely intriguing and really exciting — thrilling in fact!”
This is music that is the opposite of walls, borders,
paranoia, prejudice, and hate. In fact, Crothers equated freedom with truth
plus beauty plus love, with love being an ever-present and wholly accessible source for musical and spiritual inspiration.
(Henry Grimes and Connie Crothers in performance, April 26, 2016.)
When Crothers and I first spoke, she told me
how pleased she was to be asked to be included in a project that focused on and
celebrated the contributions of women to jazz. She named several pioneering
jazz women, including pianist and bandleader Lillian Hardin Armstrong,
saxophonist Vi Redd, and guitarist Mary Osborne, who each made major
contributions to the development of this music. For Crothers, New York in the years before the women’s
movement was a place where men a generation ahead of her and her peers still
thought women were inferior and not be taken seriously:
“When I first came to New York City in 1962 . . . when I
went to a club, it was like walking a gauntlet. It was just understood that if
there was a woman on the premises, the men were gonna hit on her. . . . A lot
of women in those days were kicked off of bandstands and out of the recording
dates because of the prevailing notion, which was very strong then, that men
were better, that women were not as good as men.”
I mention this to make it clear that Crothers was both an activist and a
feminist. She was also a strong advocate for independent artists. In 1982,
Crothers and drummer Max Roach co-founded the label New Artists Records when no
label expressed interested in releasing an album of their duets. New Artists Records would later become a cooperative, with each artist contributing to its
operating expenses and receiving 100 percent of their album sales. It is an
excellent place to sample and purchase some incredible recordings by Crothers,
including the aforementioned album of duets with Max Roach titled Swish and her epic live solo piano
recording Concert in Paris.
What remains to be seen is where a new generation of
musicians go with the music. Like Duke Ellington, Crothers was an optimist, and
she made her feelings about the future of jazz plain to me:
“For many years, the jazz world was sort of divided into
groups. . . . there was a kind of division between the free improvisers and the
jazz musicians who played tunes, as well as other divisions based on other
considerations. But now we’re moving into a new era. I feel that is already underway
. . . I call it a jazz renaissance.
“But the thing that I think has to happen . . . is that all
the groups need to open up and find out about each other, because there are so
many valuable musicians in each group. And if they find out about each other,
the art form will just blossom! I look forward to that. I hope to be a part of
that.”
And I’ll just leave it at that for now. Connie, we love you madly.
Please enjoy this excerpt from my recent interview with singer Jane Monheitfor the Los Angeles Review of Books.Jane's most recent album The Songbook Sessions: Ella Fitzgerald is excellent, a truly adventurous program of newly arranged classics made famous by the great Ella Fitzgerald. Jane Monheit is one of the 37 musicians interviewed in my book Freedom of Expression: Interviews With Women in Jazz.
CHRIS BECKER: Ella Fitzgerald was so many things to so many people. Tell me who she was to you.
JANE MONHEIT: She was one of the true originators of the art form. She was one of the first singers to really take the influence of the instrumentalists around her and bring them into her singing. But more importantly, in addition to all of the technical things she did as a singer — the swinging, the scatting, and all of that — she sang with such great warmth. I know a lot of people who knew and worked with Ella, and they all say she was like that in person.
When were you first introduced to her music?
I was at home with my mom. My mother was a singer and because I loved to sing, she was very conscious of playing singers for me that I could learn from. Little kids tend to copy. She knew I was going to be singing along with records and wanted to make sure they were singers with good technique. I remember her putting on Ella for me, and saying to me, “Listen to this!” and me just losing my little mind over how beautiful it was.
Was it just the sound of her voice that moved you?
Yes! I remember that specifically, the sound of her voice.
You have described Ella’s songbook albums as “biblical.” Why are those particular albums so important to you?
As a child, they were what I chose to focus on. I don’t know why. The songbook albums are more of the pop music of their time. She’s not doing a ton of improvisation, so they were wonderful records to learn these songs from. But Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book, which is by far much more of a jazz record than the other ones, has always been my favorite. She’s looser on that record, and she’s singing more jazz.
In Ella’s later recordings, one hears so much joy in her singing, but there’s also wisdom, and even some sadness in the material as well. Could you connect to that?
Ella was someone who was able to sing with complete and utter sincerity, but without any histrionics. That’s a place I need to get to! [Laughs.] She was a total sage. That’s the mark of any great singer, to be able to distill life experiences into a song and help people understand other people’s experiences. Ella was brilliant at that, but she did it in such a calm, collected way. That’s something I do not know how to do. For all of her influence on me, I sing in this crazy emotional way. Ella was able to sing something so calmly, and you would believe her. I can’t do that yet.
Quincy Jones has spoken about the “open wound” that pushed Ella, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, and other singers to greatness. Is that what you’re talking about as well? Having those painful experiences and then being able to speak about and share them through singing?
You want to use your experience to help provide some catharsis for others. But I think it’s the same with your joyful experiences. It doesn’t have to be just the things that hurt us. As a singer, you get used to having your heart on your sleeve. It’s about accessing all of it, and having it at the ready. I always tell my husband, if I’m being overly emotional or overly dramatic, “No, no, no. This is cool. It makes me good at my job.” [Laughs.]
Here's an excerpt from my recent interview with filmmaker Judy Chaikin, director of the award-winning documentary The Girls in the Band. Judy's film was an important source of inspiration and historical reference for me while writing my book Freedom of Expression: Interviews With Women in Jazz. You rent or buy Judy's film from iTunes or order the DVD from The Girls in the Band website.
CHRIS BECKER: The initial spark for the film was your discovery of a female drummer who played in big bands during World War II, correct?
JUDY CHAIKIN: Yes: Jerrie Thill, the composer and producer. Alison Freebairn-Smith first told me about her. Jerrie was active in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and had an all-girl band. She ended up being a drummer out here in Los Angeles and played a regular gig at a place on Hollywood Boulevard for about 20 years. She died at 93, and had been playing up until the year before. She was pretty phenomenal.
Were you surprised to discover there was so little about women who played jazz?
It was totally surprising, and that was one of the things that really spurred me on. When I realized how many women there were, and that no one had paid any attention to them, that really got me going.
How did you start with your research for the film?
It started with learning about Jerrie Thill, and then talking to various musicians I knew who gave me a couple of other names like saxophonist Roz Cron, who lived out here in Los Angeles and had been in the International Sweethearts of Rhythm; contemporaries like the DIVA Jazz Orchestra, who were big in New York, and also the all-female big band, Maiden Voyage, that was here in Los Angeles. I just started contacting these women and talking to them and one by one they started giving me other names, like Clora Bryant. One person led to another, and the story started to unfold.
What was the initial audience reaction?
The reaction was so surprising to me, because it covered such a wide audience: a lot of young female musicians literally came up to me crying afterward saying, “I can’t thank you enough. I thought I was the only one!” Older people who were big band fans said, “This is phenomenal. I can’t believe this. I had never heard of these women!” And then professional musicians, a lot of them said, “Boy, this is shame that these women are not known, and that I don’t know about them. They were so fantastic.” So the sense of wonder was across the board.
One of your earliest screenings was in Dubai. What was the response there to these women musicians?
The screening in Dubai was a little strange. It was an outdoor screening on the beach, and people were just sort of wandering around like they were at a rock concert. [Laughs.] But people came up afterward and said they enjoyed it.
The greatest overseas screening that I attended was in Sweden. The film screens somewhere in Sweden almost every other week. They absolutely adore it. It’s playing on television as well, and we keep getting requests for it. When I was there, it played at a film festival, and it played at a college, and it played in a theater. The response was fantastic.
I think one of the reasons for that is because a lot of the women in the early years of jazz, who could not have careers in the United States, went to Europe and had careers there. In some of the places where the film showed, these women were known. Generally, there is such a big interest in jazz in Europe, so much more than there is here. You walk through public places and jazz is playing, in stores, in restaurants — it’s always jazz you hear.
Dr. Billy Taylor, the late musician and composer, and Woody Herman, who is also now deceased, are both in the film. These men, in different ways, were strong advocates for women in the bandstand and providing equal opportunities for women jazz.
Right.
Has your film helped to open any dialogue between jazz men and women — either performers or educators?
Not being a musician myself, and not being in the studios having face-to-face contact with the men in the business, I don’t know about that dialogue. What I know is from hearsay. The men I know have said to me how wonderful it was that I brought this to their attention. That’s the only thing I can go on.
