Jazzletter PO Box 240= O'ai1 CA 93024-0240 March 2000 Vol
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Gene Lees Jazzletter PO Box 240= O'ai1 CA 93024-0240 March 2000 Vol. 19 No. 3 King Cole another, up to and including such junk as Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days ofSummer. It was a repertoire much closer to Part Three v Perry Como’s than Sinatra’s. _ It was about this -point that Nat advanced the career of a Rumor in the business always had it that Nat’s hunger for gifted arranger named Nelson Riddle. I have never told this hits was the consequence of Maria’s hunger for money. story before, but it is what Nat told me that day in Louisville. Epstein says, “Of course, she loved money and luxury and We must have been talking about arrangers. I have always security, but who doesn’t?” I been an admirer of great arranging and orchestration. There is an astonishing passage on page 294 ofEpstein’s Somehow Nelson Riddle’s name came up, perhaps in book: conversation about Sinatra. “Carol Cole remembers the day her father telephoned Nat said, “Frank didn’t discover Nelson Riddle. I did.” Capitol and the receptionist answered brightly, ‘Capitol In a corridor at Capitol Records in Hollywood, a young man Records, Home of Elvis!’ And Nat said, trying to hide his approached him and said, “Mr. Cole, I’m an arranger, and I’d astonishment, ‘Excuse me?’ He had built the tower, but at like to write for you.” the moment Elvis was more important than he.” Cole, with what I can see in my mind was his manner of First: Nat and Peggy Lee built that tower. unfailing politesse, said, “I’d like to hear your work.” Second: Anyone with an even rudimentary knowledge of “You’ve already recorded some of it,” the young man popular music in America knows that, excepting the early said, “but it didn’t have my name on it.” He had been sides he made for Sun Records, Elvis Presley’s entire body ghosting for someone else. ofrecorded work was for RCA Victor. What Nat really heard “What’s your name?” Nat asked. that day —- and I got the story from both Johnny Mercer and “Nelson Riddle.” Paul Weston — was “Capitol Records, home ofthe Beatles.” “Let’s have a talk,” Nat said. Nelson worked directly for There is a comparable mistake on page 86 of the book. him afier that, and then Frank Sinatra signed with Capitol Speaking of the store Glen Wallichs owned, Music City, and his career blossomed again, never to fade until he died; Epstein writes: “This was a record store, where Wallichs and Nelson Riddle became known as his arranger. soon began making his own records —— 78 rpm wax cylinders I could feel that the friendship between Sinatra and Nat — with a single microphone.” Cole was an uncomfortable one, even though Cole named Where did Epstein get that astonishing bit ofmisinfonna- Frank as his favorite singer in a Leonard Father survey,, and tion? fmally (in his soft way) said something a little testy. He said, Aha. On page 49 of the Leslie Gourse book, one finds “Do you want to know the difference between Frank and this: “In music city, which (Wallichs) ran with his brother, me? The band swings Frank. I swing the band.” the records were 78 rpm cylinders.” This is a classic example Every musician to whom I have ever told that seems to of the replication of errors, a replication that to some extent raise his eyebrows a little and say, “That’s right!” underlies Voltaire’s statement that history is an agreed-upon But while Sinatra, from the time he joined Capitol, set fiction. about recording the very finest songs in the American In fact, the cylinder record went out, as they say, with “popular” (to my mind, classic) repertoire, Cole continued to button shoes — almost at the same time. The first disc do a lot of bad songs. Not that Sinatra didn’t do a certain records were manufactured in 1894, and by about 1904, amount of trash — eventually including My Way and cylinder recording had all but ceased. Oliver Read and Strangers in the Night — but the vast body of his work at Walter L. Welch wrote in From Tinfoil to Stereo: Evolution Capitol and, later, Reprise, comprises the truly great songs. ofthe Phonograph: Nat Cole left no such legacy. “Although musical cylinders were sold by Thomas A. He seemed to have a perpetual hunger for hits. Sinatra had Edison, Inc., until it retired from the field in 1929, the comparatively few real hits. His records sold big, but Cole’s ultimate doom of the cylinder had been sounded with the sales were massive, as he found one commercial hit after announcement of the Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph in i l9l2.” Roland Gelatt, in The Fabulous Phonograph, cites wrong with good cocktail piano, and as the ritzy Rainbow the Milan recordings of Caruso in 1902 as the first fully Room-type decor on the original cover implies, this is just satisfactory disc recordings. By 1902, Columbia was market- about the cocktail-iest, lacking nothing except tinkly glasses ing its product in both disc and cylinder format. Roland and inebriated sophisticates trying to remember the words.” wrote: “Already (1902) a distinction had been drawn be- It is one of the finest albums Cole ever made. I acquired tween the disc public and the cylinder public: discs were it in Montreal as soon as it was issued. I listened to it so meant for the Main Street parlor, cylinders for the other side much that it lies deep in my subconscious. I keep a tape of it of the tracks.” in my car, even today. I know every note, every chord of it. Thomas A. Edison, who was a stubbom man, continued Donald Byrd said to me many years ago, “Alter all my years to make both cylinder and disc recordings, but his company in this business, I have concluded that the hardest thing to do retired entirely from the record business in 1929. (My thanks is play straight melody and get some feeling into it.” Listen to James T. Maher, the patron saint of everyone who writes to Bill Evans playing Danny Boy and you will know exactly about popular music andjazz in America, for researching the what he means. And thus it is with Penthouse Serenade. It is subject for me.) a gentle, loving, introspective, beautiful examination of the I called Leslie Gourse about this odd error in her book, tunes, and all the glories of Cole’s piano-playing are on replicated by Epstein. “I wonder where I got that?” she said. display. That old question, “What album would you take to Ten years after you write a book, it is hard to remember who a desert island with you if you could choose only one?” told you what. She will try to have the error corrected in the elicits from me without hesitation: “Nat Cole’s Penthouse new edition of her Cole biography. Serenade.” And I have taken it with me, to desert islands of Daniel Mark Epstein is at his most embarrassing when he the mind, and into dark nights of the heart. It is a master- dissertates, with unshakable aplomb, on technical matters of piece, a crown ofjewels in the history ofjazz, and because music. He talks about a flatted third chord. Other than a of its directness and deceptive simplicity it is terribly minor chord, I haven’t the slightest idea what he’s talking overlooked. about, and neither apparently has he. He talks about “Hebraic minor chords.” Is he trying to tell us the Jews have invented Steve McQueen said once in an interview that there was a minor chord that contains something other than a root, flat nothing hard about movie acting. He was probably right. The third, and fifih? And Epstein almost drools over Cole’s use movie industry has always taken in men and women who oftriplets, failing, apparently, to understand, that 12/8 is the have achieved fame in fields other than drama, including essence of jazz melody-making. (He should try McCoy swimmers (Esther Williams, Buster Crabbe, Johnny Tyner.) Epstein surrounds commonplace musical terms like Weissmuller), a skater (Sonja Henie), football players, “pedal point” and “tenths” with quotation marks as if they dancers, and above all singers: Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee, are esoteric argot. One gets the feeling that he consulted Dick Powell, Tony Martin, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, people with at least a smattering of knowledge, took notes, Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, Doris Day among them. That and passed their commentary off as his own without really makes a certain amount of sense: a singer’s job is to put over understanding it. He sounds like the dialogue in that French the emotional content of words. And some of those singers, “jazz” movie, Round Midnight, which makes you think that particularly Sinatra and Dick Powell, tumed into remarkably director and writer Bertrand Tavemier followed some jazz good actors. Nat Cole aspired to follow their example. musicians around, writing down what they said without But his position was not unlike that of Billy Eckstine. grasping it and using it in dialogue. Eckstine first came to the attention of “the kids” — one of Marvin Cain, who went on to become president of whom was me — when he recorded with the Earl Hines Famous Music and is now retired, was unable to finish band. One of the times was Jelly Jelly, one of the most reading the book. I called him to check some of its “facts.” notoriously sexual of songs onceyou knew what “jelly” “It's bullshit,” he said, not being a man given to evasion.