Marian McPartland Swings! (Page 2)

Classical gigs and melody

Eventually, Marian tired a bit of the nightclub atmosphere, which was often not terribly respectful towards the artists. If you listen to live recordings done at some of these clubs, you can hear the bartenders, the customers, glasses and plates rattling, and you can imagine this being a difficult atmosphere in which to concentrate on a performance. Though there are fewer clubs now, many of them do try to keep a focus on the performance while it is going on. In any event, Marian did some work with symphony orchestras, performing the Grieg concerto with the Rochester Symphony. Her orchestral repertoire also included Rhapsody In Blue and various Ellington tunes as well as a variety of standards.

One thing that comes through loud and clear in talking with McPartland is her love of melody and her great admiration and respect for Duke Ellington. I've read that during her Hickory House days she would play an Ellington composition whenever he came to the club to hear her play. During our conversation she refers to "Duke Ellington or any of the great composers" in a manner that suggests, quite rightfully, that Ellington may have been America's greatest composer. I ask her whether perhaps younger musicians have moved beyond being constrained by the stylistic considerations that historians like Ken Burns seem intent on imposing on jazz. Her response speaks volumes about the current jazz scene:

"That's an interesting question. I don't know what to say, it seems to me that a lot of the people, the young people I hear who are pretty successful on the scene, the thing is that they seem to be really quite far out and concentrating on rhythmic kinds of devices and harmonic-I don't know how to describe it, but really there are not too many melodic players on the scene. I guess I'm getting corny, but I do love to hear a melody once in awhile, and there's a lot of very clever stuff out there and rhythmic, terrific technical skill, but not all that much melody."

She goes on to qualify the statement, saying that there are some melodic players, but that a lot of younger musicians are recording entire CDs of their own tunes, which often leaves the listener with no point of reference by which to understand their style. "For the most part I don't find them that memorable. I hardly ever find something that really stands out, and that's something else…I've had arguments with a young guy who says-I accused him of doing that, putting out all his own tunes-he says 'well if we don't write new tunes we'll wind up playing Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn for years'. And I said, 'well that's not bad, but you shouldn't make a whole record of your things, and it might not be a bad idea to listen to some of those people and find out why what they did was so great.'"

I suggest that it has always been important for each generation of jazz musicians to find their own style within the boundaries imposed by the standard repertoire (even Coltrane and avant-garde musicians like Archie Shepp considered this essential to their development), to which she responds "Yeah, it is. But I really wonder if they work hard enough at it. I don't know, I guess I sometimes feel that the need to have something on a CD is more important, that you don't really take the trouble to do something that's memorable. Maybe I'm being too critical…"

It's not that McPartland isn't listening. She acknowledges that she gets "millions" of CDs in the mail from would-be Piano Jazz guests: "I've got a house full of them." The talk turns to the fact that once the great songwriters of Tin Pan Alley, American musical theatre, and jazz passed on, many jazz artists (vocalists in particular) turned to pop and rock music in search of new tunes to record. McPartland has made a variety of newer popular songs a part of her repertoire. She told me about being in Washington working with some kids in the schools and hearing "Killing Me Softly", which was very popular just then. "I thought 'My God isn't that great, to have a beautiful tune like that actually on the charts and kids know it, and then the Jackson 5 had their little tunes which are really cute…and there's a lot of pop stuff that I really have incorporated in my repertoire. I used to play all those Burt Bacharach tunes. Some of those were quite nice too. I guess I'm going back a long way, I'm trying to think of something that's popular right now, and I guess I'm coming up blank." Some might accuse McPartland of being stuck in a bit of a time warp, but I also came up blank trying to think of a pop tune of the moment with the staying power of some of the things she mentioned.

 

Halcyon days

In the 1970s, McPartland formed her own record label, Halcyon, which put out a number of recordings. I asked her why she did that, and what the experience was like.

"I just got mad because I didn't have a record contract. Nobody seemed that interested in recording me after I had been with Capitol. So I just, oh I did make a record for a label, Dot records, and I wasn't too thrilled with that, so I said, I'm going to start my own record company, and I did for awhile, and I don't think I could do it again. It was quite a job. We did manage to put out 18 records on the label, most of which are still around because Concord has leased some of them from me, so they're still out there. It was a nice experience. A lot of musicians were doing it in those days, it seemed, when Chubby Checker and all those people came on the scene, the jazz people were taking a back seat, so a lot of us had our own label. Stan Kenton did. I think Mingus was the first one to do that, but he really couldn't handle it; I don't think he had a good enough business sense, because you really had to take care of business and I remember I used to actually go to a record store like Sam Goody and tell them "I need that money you owe me". Stuff like that I would never think of doing nowadays. But now it's become, I don't know, it's become so easy to make a CD; you can burn a CD in your basement. Who knows, I may decide to do that again someday."

Piano Jazz came into being when Marian's friend Alec Wilder, host of a National Public Radio Program based on his book American Popular Song suggested that Marian would be an excellent person to host a program to replace his, which was ending. Marian suggested the idea of interviewing and performing with other jazz pianists because, as she says, "I thought that would be something that would be easy. And it has been pretty easy because I know most of the people I've had on, and if I don't know them then I get to know them." Her very first guest was Mary Lou Williams, followed by Eubie Blake, Bill Evans, Teddy Williams, Chick Corea, Billy Taylor, Oscar Peterson, and, of course, George Shearing. McPartland and her guests sit at pianos and talk, playing solos and duets in a totally unrehearsed verbal and musical dialogue that is educational, entertaining, and delightful. McPartland has a wonderful way of putting her guests at ease and allowing them the appropriate space to talk about what they want to talk about. A prime example was her program with Teddy Wilson, who was known to be fairly quiet and had not given a lot of interviews. She truly values the individuality of each musician: "I think that the variety overall is what's intriguing, even if it's something that's not really in my style I just can manage to combine with the other person so as not to seem out of step."

Of course, I'm curious as to who the musicians are that Marian McPartland most enjoys listening to. As you might expect, she doesn't get as much time as she'd like to sit and listen to others' music, but her short list is not too surprising: Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, George Shearing, and Mary Lou Williams are but a few names near the top. "What I do is I keep the jazz radio station on at home at all times so there's usually somebody that comes on during the day that I know, or somebody that I don't know that I would like to invite to the show."

She still relishes the opportunity to see and hear musicians performing live: "Actually, I did go last week before I came out here (to San Francisco), and we went to the Village Vanguard and heard somebody maybe you know, Mary Stallings. I love her, she's wonderful. So that was something that I did, and then we went to a restaurant to hear Roland Hanna and Ron Carter, so whenever I get a chance I get out to hear anybody, really, who's around. And of course I love to go to the Village Vanguard and hear their Monday night band, and when I'm in Chicago I spend all my time going to see Judy Roberts, she's really, really my favorite around Chicago. So that's about it, I think I've told you more piano players than you really want to hear!"

 

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