This Week on Jazz Spectrum - 8/2-8/4

Song of the Week – “The Last Time I Saw Paris” – Music by Jerome Kern; lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

By Fritz Byers

Each week, Fritz exchanges thoughts with Aly Krajewski about the Song of the Week featured on Jazz Spectrum Saturday.

Dear Aly,

In a documentary on the life and art of the saxophonist Charlie Parker (aka “Bird”) that I saw in the late 1980s – I think it was Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker, directed by Gary Giddins and closely tied to Gary’s unrivaled book of the same title – a fellow be-bopper of Bird’s -- I think it was the alto saxophonist Frank Morgan -- reminisced about the thrill of hearing him in full flight.  I recall his using the phrase “fast mind, genius mind” to describe how quickly Bird would get and then express new ideas, whether in music or in conversation.

I also recall Frank’s recounting hearing Parker wing through seemingly endless variations of the opening melody statement of “The Last Time I Saw Paris.”  So obsessed was Bird, and so rhapsodic, that Frank found himself thinking, “Bird, what happened the last time you saw Paris?”  

I like imagining the scene, which is all we can do because, as best I can tell, there is no recording, at least not an authorized one, of Bird playing the tune.  But it’s a wonderful tune, so let’s spend some time with it this week.  (I’m surprised by how few jazz versions there are, given the song’s engaging melody.)

Oscar Hammerstein II wrote the lyrics, and Jerome Kern added the music, reversing Kern’s preferred order of composition -- he was famous for insisting on writing the melody first and then turning it over to the wordsmith to work out a suitable lyric. The song was published in 1940.  Given the timing, I don’t think it’s merely sentimental to surmise that Oscar’s lyrics reflect his heartsickness at the Nazi occupation of Paris in June of that year.  He was scarcely alone among writers of the day in feeling a deep affection for the City of Light.  At the close of a deftly written verse that evokes the heart, cafes, trees, lovers, and birds of Paris, Oscar vows “no matter how they change her, I’ll remember her that way.”  

(Devotee of Buffalo Springfield, I remember hearing Steven Stills’s first solo album in 1970 and being immediately swayed by the gentle lovelorn ballad, “To a Flame,” which, after mentioning heartbreak, concludes “It’s like saying goodbye to Paris for the first time.”  It would be decades before I would say goodbye to the city for my first time, but you can be sure that on that occasion I was singing that line to myself on the way to the airport.)

Oscar and Jerome’s song was a hit from the get-go, winning the Oscar for best song, which was shoehorned into the movie Lady Be Good, where it was sung by Ann Sothern.   Jerome was offended that people might think that he’d written the magnificent music on spec for a movie; he apparently was equally offended to be given an Oscar for a song that wasn’t really part of a movie score. Touchy guy, I guess.  He got his way – the Academy changed the rules so this kind of outrage can’t happen again.

The first ear-grabbing version of the tune is by Kate Smith, and that’s where we’ll begin our survey.  She won a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her culture-shaping version of “God Bless America.”  But long before that and similar performances made her reputation, she was a radio sensation.  I’ve never quite understood how she finagled it, but she had “exclusive radio rights” to the song for a while, and she made the most of it, dominating the airwaves in the year the song was published.

Next up, Claude Williamson, who recorded this version as part of a series of trio recordings in 1956.  The series in general, and this track in particular, document his fluidity and lightness of touch, which explain his prominence in rhythm sections behind the most visible West Coast front-line stylists of the day, such as Art Pepper, Bud Shank, and Conte Condoli.

Sort of like the career arc of Kate Smith, Dinah Shore was a prominent and valued big-band singer before she became a popular host for television variety and talk shows and then tabloid fodder for her romantic stint alongside Burt Reynold, who was twenty years younger than she, which set all sorts of tongues wagging.  I knew about her latter years and narrow fame long before I encountered her jazz-inflected singing, which I’ve grown to admire.  This is a beautifully realized version of the song.

The first set concludes with the saxophonist Buddy Collette.  Almost no one I know listens to Buddy as much as they should.  Here’s a crucial fact that may change that: he and Charlie Mingus were besties in their early teens and started a band together.  So there!  Buddy’s version of this week’s tune is from a 1958 session with Frank Rosolino on trombone and the guitarist Howard Roberts providing the chordal basis in lieu of a piano.  Howard also provides a tasty solo that finds some interesting parts of the tune’s structure that neither horn located.

If you weren’t there, you can’t quite imagine the role that Dean Martin played in 60s mainstream-adjacent American pop culture.  Well, I know you can, Aly, because we’ve talked about it many times.  Which is why I just had to include Dean’s version to start the second set.  (Marilyn McCurdy Byers had a thing for Dean, too, so I had her in mind as well in making this pick.)  And, as you well know but many others might not – Dean was a terrific singer.  Here’s the proof of that.  

Duke Ellington said all sorts of witty and slightly racy things about the effect Johnny Hodges’s alto playing had on the Orchestra’s audiences.  I’ve experienced this multiple times, listening alone or with others to recordings of Johnny’s sinuous, seductive tone.  His version of this week’s tune stands with any across his long career as proof of his taste and impact.  Taken at an achingly slow pace, Johnny’s treatment of the melody is a sort of caress, and then it gets even more sensual.  Maybe Jerome Kern would find something in this version to beef about, but I’d like to think not.

You and I have talked, although not enough, about Tony Bennett and what he represents in male vocal style.  He’s up next, with the incomparable accompaniment of Bill Charlap, who comes naturally by his thoroughgoing immersion in the ways and means of the Great American Songbook.  The pair recorded an entire album of Kern tunes, from which this fine version is taken.

I saved for last the pianist Bud Powell’s be-bop-flavored whirlwind through the tune.  I believe I heard the omniscient Don Was say that of all the musicians represented in the Blue Note catalog his favorite is Bud Powell.  Understandable.  In this solo track, recorded for Verve in 1951, Bud presents at least five distinct piano styles, including a devastatingly engaging stride interlude, in the space of just over 3 minutes.  And I love the ending, which is a sort of aural bow,  a run of notes that seems to say “Any questions?”  Not from me, Bud.

Last time we hung out, Aly, we spent time trading travel aspirations.  And for the last two weeks of Song of the Week, we’ve listened to songs with a London theme.  Sothis week, I’m sending you a little bit southward onto the continent.  I can’t wait to read what you make of it all.

Todd Marcus & Virginia Macdonald at Small’s Jazz Club

LIVESTREAM and ALMOST-LIVE: TODD MARCUS/VIRGINIA MacDONALD with Bruce Barth, Blake Meister, and Eric Kennedy, SMALL’S JAZZ CLUB, 23 JULY 2024, 7:30 and (partial) 9 p.m. sets (available at smallslive.org/livestream) 

By Kim Kleinman
Contributing Jazz Spectrum Writer

What a find!  

Billed as a two-clarinet front line, with the pianist Bruce Barth (sold!), I was ready to watch the later set during the day (and I did).  But I came in the middle of the early set in real time just to get a feel for the set, and I stayed.  Todd Marcus, it turns out, plays bass clarinet; notably, he  is an Egyptian American.  I came in the middle of the first movement of his Suite Something. which was dedicated to the 2011 uprising that was central to the First Arab Spring.  Clarinets of course suit such music, so I was hooked.

Marcus is from Baltimore and seems to play regularly with the bassist Blake Meister and the multi-percussionist Eric Kennedy, so they are a solid, established rhythm section.  Kennedy can be too exuberant but he has a rich and bright style.  Barth is always good to see and he provided a steadiness and heft.  Virginia MacDonald is a more recent collaborator, and she really is the co-leader, contributing tunes and her own approach to the clarinet (and organizational chops for this band’s recent tour of her native Canada, and the Northeast).  She, like Anat Cohen and Ben Goldberg, is a thoroughly modern player on clarinet, although not she wasn’t always as woody as they tend to be.   She would sidle up to soprano-sax territory, while not crossing the line.  She was fluid and inventive and wove around Marcus as he wove around her.  Her composition, Retrogression, a contrafact on George Shearing’s Conception, made that complex tune even trickier, and Up High, Down Low was a catchy closer to the second set.

Marcus had another Middle Eastern tune, Cairo Street Ride, that was the gem of the first set.  But, damn, if the following ballad had a commanding quiet with Barth playing an important role.  That tune was probably MacDonald’s; the closer, Windmills, was Marcus’s, and it was both easy and pensive.

These folks create compelling music in those paradoxes.  I hope to see more of them.