This Week on Jazz Spectrum - 9/27 - 9/29

Song of the Week – “Whisper Not” – Music by Benny Golson; lyrics by Leonard Feather

By Fritz Byers

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

Hi Aly,

I’ve often wondered about the reasons behind the oodles of ironic references to jazz that Big Time cultural tastemakers shoehorn into their pop concoctions.  For instance, I have a dim memory of there being a slightly mocking reference to the nonpareil bassist Charles Mingus in Jerry Maguire, although I’m not curious enough to verify this by rewatching it.  But I do wonder, What itch was the scriptwriter scratching?  I think I know, but I’d like to know more.  I’ve been hosting Jazz Spectrum for more than 35 years -- on more than a few occasions the subject of jazz has come up with friends and the occasional rando.  I have in my mind a built-in home movie of the reactions, ranging, as you would expect, from, well, let’s just say it spans the gamut.  Next time we’re hanging out I can pantomime a few of them.  

On the other hand, there’s one striking instance of jazz having found its way into an unexpectedly prominent place in mainstream culture: a Steven Spielberg movie, starring Tom Hanks.  As my gramps would have said, if he had ever uttered a word, “Sonny, it don’t get much bigger ‘n that.”

In The Terminal (2004), Tom Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, an international traveler whose country of origin is a fictionalized nation placed vaguely in Eastern Europe.  (In the real-life saga that to some degree undergirds the movie, the traveler was an Iranian.). As a result of painfully realistic passport snafus, Viktor is stuck at JFK airport, unable to enter the US but unwilling to return to Krakozhia because of a coup d’etat that is roiling things back home.  

Over time, the reason for Viktor’s trip to New York emerges: his father, now dead, was a jazz fan who, like many of us, had an unshakeable attachment to the fabled 1958 photograph taken by Art Kane for Esquire Magazine, which captured 57 of the most prominent jazz musicians, loosely posed in front of a Harlem home on East 126th Street.  (The photograph and surrounding circumstances are masterfully explored in the documentary, A Great Day in Harlem.  If you’ve not seen it, stop reading now and go do so.)
Turns out, as one of his life’s missions Viktor’s father set about collecting the autographs of all 57 musicians who appear in the Kane photograph.  And he did pretty well, falling just one short.  So, in the kind of filial dedication we can all hope for, Viktor sets about tracking down the missing signature -- it’s that of the tenor saxophonist and composer Benny Golson.  

I could hardly believe it when this movie came out.  Spielberg and Hanks, in a heart-warming portrait, including a loving nod to jazz, that will leave you believing, or at least hoping . . ., well, just watch it.

I watched the movie again the other night after word reached me that Benny had died last Saturday, aged 95.  Our co-contributor Kim Kleinman and I play all sorts of texting games about jazz, and one we return to often is manufacturing lists of great composers.  The chairs in the pantheon are easy to fill, but beyond that the exercise gets interesting.  Kim has of late been advocating for Benny’s primacy.  And, Aly, having listened for the last five days to almost nothing but Benny’s compositions, I have to say, Kim has a point.

I was listening earlier this week to an interview with the incomparable popular historian Robert Caro, during which he traced back to The Iliad the simple power of lists, a power he deploys to great effect in both The Power Broker and his multi-volume LBJ biography. So, herewith a partial list of Benny’s enduring compositions:

• Along Came Betty
• Stablemates
• I Remember Clifford
• Whisper Not
• Killer Joe
• Blues After Dark
• Step Lightly
• Blues March
• Are You Real?
• Five Spot After Dark
• Minor Vamp
• And You Called My Name
• Strut Time
• Park Avenue Petite
• Beauty and the Blues

Throughout this weekend on the various Jazz Spectrum shows, you’ll hear these songs, and more, performed by Benny and by the legion of jazz greats who found melodic grace and harmonic sophistication in his compositions, thereby transforming them into standards, essential parts of the jazz repertoire.  (The Friday 10pm hour will be given over to Benny’s great 1959 recording, Groovin’ with Golson, and to a survey of some of the best work by the Jazztet he co-led with the trumpeter Art Farmer.)

For the song of the week, we’ll focus on “Whisper Not.”  Benny recounted his composition of the tune in a 2012 interview with Marc Myers, claiming, completely plausibly, that he wrote it in 20 minutes.  It’s a marvelous tune, with a sort of misty minor-key mood and a surging chorus.  Leonard Feather added the lyrics.  Here’s a nice line to sample and reflect on: “Whispers of troubles are an echo of the past.”

We’ll begin the survey with Benny’s recording of the tune from New York Scene (1957), on which he voices the tune’s intricate harmonies with trombone, French horn, trumpet, and alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones.  It’s a defining version. 

Then, Anita O’Day, whose evocative 1962 reading of Leonard’s lyric supports the inference that he had her in mind when he wrote it.

The guitarist Wes Montgomery is next, from his 1959 trio date with the organist Melvin Rhyne and the drummer Paul Parker.  This album, underappreciated at the time, is a centerpiece in Wes’s wholesale reimagining of how jazz guitar can be played and of the architecture of guitar solos.

The first set concludes with Ella Fitzgerald.  I find her restrained use of her subtle vibrato here to be particularly effective.  This is one of the recordings that led me to yield to our friend John Bigelow’s adamancy that I don’t adequately appreciate Ella’s singing.

The second set opens with Marlena Shaw.  Marlena is one of those vocalists who jazz fans think of as an R&B singer, and vice versa.  She’s wonderful on this recording.

Thad Jones put the tune first on his 1957 release, Mad Thad, in a version that was arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones.  You won’t be surprised to hear both how well Quincy conceived the tonal setting and how perfectly Thad teases out the tune’s implications.

Carolyn Leonhart has been a favorite since I saw her, on a whim, in New York in 2004, right around the time New 8th Day was released.  Her version of “Whisper Not” is from that recording.  Her reading of the lyric has a melancholic strain that registers with me, as does her great dynamic range.

And we finish with a typically visionary deconstruction of the tune by the pianist Fred Hersch, from his 2017 solo date Open Book.  In writing about this recording, Fred said that by this time in his long career he found that his best approach was to sit down at the piano and think, “Let’s see what happens.”  Listening to him assay “Whisper Not,” you get the sense that this is exactly how he made this surpassingly brilliant recording.

Aly, when you have time, plunge into a bit of Benny Golson, and in any event I hope you enjoy these tunes.

F