Anna Mae Winburn (R) led the integrated, all-women International
Sweethearts
of Rhythm—and other incarnations of the same band—for nearly twenty
years.
Son House fretted his guitar with
metal. He played “Death Letter Blues” between the frequencies of urgency and
painfulness, an alarming sorrow that hadn’t yet been communicated. He thumped
the earth with a perfect percussive heel. His prophetic approach would
influence others on this list, notably Robert Johnson. We classify Son House as
a Prophet and Robert Johnson as a Technician but we don’t establish the
importance of Prophets above the importance of Technicians. That distinction,
Dear Reader, we leave up to you.
The classical impulses of Dave
Brubeck may inform some of our decision-making when choosing him to appear
within this framework, yet his ability to conquer intricate time signatures,
the “ebonies and ivories” of 5/4 time, for example, ultimately places him among the Technicians.
We suppose that Technicians can sound prophetic, perhaps owing to the great relationships
they had with their instruments, the nonpareil mastery. “Ella Fitzgerald,” you
may remark, “a Technician?” Oh yes. The voice.
The addition of Bill Evans helped soften the sound of the Miles Davis sextet, and
steer the group towards Kind of Blue, one of the greatest albums in music history.
Imagine Billie Holiday standing
in the spotlight, singing the prayerful “Strange Fruit” while every other sound
vanished, or Lester (“Prez”) Young first equating “bread” with money and “ivey
divey” with cool, all the while cocking his “baby doll” (his saxophone) to the
side, underneath his porkpie hat. The Poets forged new language, true, and in
truth, they wobbled audiences with their beauty and outrage, with the emotional
content of their assertions and their mannerisms. Bud Powell, searching for balance,
perishing from tuberculosis. . . .
If you care, and you will, the
Poet Bill Evans and the Prophet John Coltrane, early in their careers, joined
Miles Davis (plus others) to create Kind
of Blue, one of the greatest achievements (of any kind) in world history. Who
presides over personnel, and the many intervals of creativity, and the virtuosity
of their own abilities but the Emperors or Empresses? Ellington hiring
Strayhorn, Ellington hiring Hodges, Ellington playing with Louis, Ellington
playing with Trane, Ellington in Europe, Ellington at Newport; Duke Ellington led
an Empire for 50 years.
Emperors & Empresses
Owing to his
virtuosity as a trumpeter, band-leading, and gravel-sweet singing,
nobody has had a greater influence on American music than Louis Armstrong.
1. Louis
Armstrong
2. Duke Ellington
3. Miles Davis
4. Bessie Smith
5. Anna Mae
Winburn 6. Sun Ra
Prophets
Known for his bent horn, raspy singing, and puffy cheeks, Dizzy Gillespie
helped to
pioneer bebop and toured the world as
a Jazz Ambassador for the State Department.
1. John Coltrane
2. Charlie Parker
3. Thelonious
Monk
4. Son House
5. Charley Patton
6. Dizzy
Gillespie
7. Art Tatum
8. Sidney Bechet
9. Ornette
Coleman 10. Rev. Gary
Davis
Poets
Art Pepper’s 1979 appearances at the Village Vanguard
presented the ultimate tone-poems
that informed his life as a heroin addict, San Quentin prisoner, and magnificent saxophonist.
1. Nina Simone
2. Billie Holiday
3. Lester Young
4. Bill Evans
5. Mississippi John
Hurt
6. Jelly Roll
Morton
7. Lead Belly
8. Bud Powell
9. Art Pepper 10. Buddy Bolden*
(*See comments, below)
Technicians
Lightnin’ Hopkins bangs away at “Had a Gal Called Sal”
(1954).
1. Count Basie
2. Coleman
Hawkins
3. Sonny Rollins
4. Lightnin’
Hopkins
5. Eric Dolphy
6. Clifford Brown
7. Ella
Fitzgerald
8. Robert Johnson
9. Charles Mingus 10. Dave Brubeck
Also considered: Art Blakey (E), Benny Goodman (E), Lionel
Hampton (E), King Oliver (E), Albert Ayler (Pr), Anthony Braxton (Pr), James Reese Europe (Pr), Steve Lacy (Pr), Max
Roach (Pr), Pharoah Sanders (Pr), Wayne Shorter (Pr), Cecil Taylor (Pr),
Rahsaan Roland Kirk (Po), Ma Rainey (Po), Paul Desmond (T), John Lee Hooker
(T), Wes Montgomery (T).
“You
said,” you say, but I didn’t say, and you reply, “You did,” but I didn’t do. Where
does this leave us, but in love? And what’s love but a neighborhood of stoops
(crumbling) and (artisanal) aimlessness.
A
kid ran out of the park at 3:00 o’clock in the morning only to strike a taxicab.
The kid bounced, without a shirt, the rent fabric of his breath in the freezing
air. A passerby gave him socks. It wasn’t unkind, exactly, but ill-fitting,
emblematic of the post-industrial wasteland that saddens our generational
critics.
There
sat the kid, untying his shoes (still shirtless) beside the flashing hazard
lights of the taxicab, tossing his own socks into the gutter, and replacing
them with the warm, sweaty cottons from the donor. I had little to do but watch
beneath a loud lamp. I’ll never forget the bunch of agitated blue jays, four or
five of them, stabbing the cold with the metallic tone of their vocabulary.
“Word,
comma, your mama.” Did you clarify? Yes, you clarified.
We
were never happier (you and I) than when we were lying to each other. You
texting me selfies on windy afternoons and me pretending to receive them an
hour later. If I stood somewhere other than where I purported to stand, I did
so out of fear, and in losing you, okay, what I lost was this:
[…]
the bus stop is empty when the bus arrives. Instead, a worker sweeps old leaves
into a dustpan. Why is the sinoatrial rhythm of our hearts keyed to the murmurs
of thunder?
I spend about two hours on the rooftop of my building every morning,
writing and singing. Most of this activity must (by necessity) remain
mysterious, as it will appear (fully realized) with a rock ‘n’ roll band. Let
us call this enterprise “Orchestra + Vocal.” You shall be hearing more about “Orchestra
+ Vocal” over the summer, dear reader. Please
stay tuned.
Some of the time, however, I sing to a mockingbird. He is
the dominant bird in my neighborhood. If you hear twenty birdcalls (and siren)
coming from the same beak, it’s him: the polyglot. I especially like it when he
speaks blue jay and nuthatch. I say “dominant” because he’s so loud. He perches
on ladders, smokestacks, the crowns of gigantic trees, rooftops, ledges, et
cetera.
I have been trying to teach him the bebop song, “Salt
Peanuts,” which is usually credited to Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy played the tune
with Bird, but by that, we mean Charlie Parker. I’m not aware of any wild fowls
who scat “Salt Peanuts,” except for maybe this feller. Listen to him. Am I
right? For a few glittering moments, this mockingbird might’ve been a real hep cat.
This
is part of a double issue. If you don’t like songs, you might like a story. Seewhat I lost was this:
If I slept two or three restless hours on the night of
Sunday, March 4, 2018, I don’t remember. All sorts of unsettling scenarios kept
nagging me every time I began to drift—nobody would show up, the historic windstorm
would double back, I would improbably fail my partners Emily and Erich with
some horrendous oversight—until I threw myself out of bed at daybreak and began
hoofing toward the Capital Fringe Trinidad Theatre in Washington’s H Street
Corridor. I carried in my backpack what any good co-producer would carry: a couple
of four-terabyte hard drives and ten home-made (hand-crafted!) sandwiches.
A little back-story: After reading my research-post on the
song “Li’l Liza Jane,” Emily Cohen contacted me last July. She and I had
collaborated on several earlier projects, but hadn’t spoken in a couple years. We
both declared that we required something else in our lives, something bigger than
ourselves. After a typical Emily-Dan conversation (okay: sometimes we quarrel, we’ve had
some classic donnybrooks, but it’s very productive!) we decided to embark upon
a documentary film project. We would call it Li’l Liza Jane: A Movie About A Song. Around Thanksgiving, the luminary
cinematographer Erich Roland joined the team as Director of Photography and we began
planning the production of a fundraising trailer. In time, we settled on the
Trinidad Theatre space and the date, March 5th. Everything would happen there
and then.
A couple days before my night of tossing and turning, a
severe windstorm with hurricane-force gusts pummeled the D.C. area, upending
trees and power lines. It spared the Trinidad Theatre, however, and it spared Emily,
who lives in Wyoming, and who made it to D.C. after enduring a few frustrating air-travel delays. The crew—including Andrew Capino (Assistant Camera) and
Lenny Schmitz (Sound Engineer)—had already begun to load-in a copious amount of
gear when I arrived. Emily and her personal assistant (her father Mike) arrived
with coffee. Our featured musician Phil Wiggins brought a bag of thirty harmonicas to the filming session.
Our featured interviewees Faye Moskowitz, Bobby Hill, and Elena Day appeared,
and all four of our people-to-be-filmed brought their A games. So did the fabulous
Capital Fringe staffer, David Carter, who assisted us throughout the
day.
Phil kept a harmonica in each hand and played both interchangeably
as he cycled through his stirring rendition of “Li’l
Liza Jane” again and again. Faye surprised us not only by singing, but singing “Liza Jane”
lyrics that nobody had ever heard before. Bobby emphasized that African
American people didn’t always have a chance to describe their plight, and so,
told their stories in song. Elena emphasized that, at the heart of “Li’l Liza
Jane,” stands an independent woman who would be an impressive person, now, during
an era when women are empowering themselves. As opposed to the worst happening
(as when I panicked, sleepless) the best had happened, instead. Each person put
her or his stamp on the session.
Check out our trailer [click here] if you haven’t done so
already. The amount of effort and professionalism on display speaks to the great
affection we have for music, for one another, and for the support of a good
cause. The full story of America’s favorite poor gal, Li’l Liza Jane, will be
told, and with any luck, this trailer will be helpful in attracting funders
to the project. Emily and I will be following every lead, tirelessly, in the
days to come. By doing so, and by eventually endowing the film with adequate
resources, we hope to reward the trust of all the crew members and interviewees
who helped us to create this preview. Notably, we want to think of the men and
women—dating back nearly 200 years, enslaved people and hardscrabble fiddlers alike—who recited some
of the original versions of the tune, as well as Li’l Liza Jane herself. . . .
.whoever, and how many different women, she may be.
Trailer Day Trivia
Varieties of sandwiches: 3
Renditions of “Li’l Liza Jane”: 2
Number of fog machines: 1
Crew members: 5
Number of temple oranges: 7
Cans of sparkling “Refreshe”: 12
Number of microphones: 3
Guide to the Photographs
1. Phil Wiggins
2. Emily Cohen, Erich Roland, Andrew Capino, and
Phil Wiggins
3. Faye Moskowitz
4. Tape
5. Elena Day
6. Bobby Hill and crew
7. Emily Cohen and Dan Gutstein
Still photography by Mike Cohen
(1, 3, 4, 5, 6) and Dan Gutstein (2, 7)
