Playing Jazz
The very first LP I bought was Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis and Gil Evans. I bought it in 1964. I was 11.
I was raised on live performances of classical music and Broadway musical theater. But I loved jazz. I listened to the radio programs that either featured R&B or jazz artists like Sinatra, Satchmo, Nat King Cole. In the 50s and 60s I watched variety TV shows like The Mike Douglas Show, Merv Griffin, Ed Sullivan, and others that featured former, current, and the up-and-coming entertainers and musical performers. I watched Johnny Carson to hear Doc Severinsen more than the opening monolog.
When I moved into Manhattan, I looked for an apartment only in Greenwich Village. In my mind that was where all the music and artistic venues thrived. I rented an apartment at 4th and McDougal across the street from Folk City (where Bob Dylan used to perform) and down the street from the Blue Note Jazz Club. It was one room, tiny, noisy and expensive. But it was where I felt I was finally home.
When I started to get serious about studying and playing the English Concertina, I told Boris Matueswitch I wanted to play classical music. He immediately started me on a steady daily diet of classical etudes and Bach eventually filling out my repertoire with some light classical pieces. Then we moved to, what at the time were more difficult, concertos of Bach and Vivaldi. The EC is tuned to concert pitch, just like a violin. So, all the music I played was arranged for the violin. Some of the music was transcribed, arranged and handwritten by Boris. Otherwise, I would trek to Carl Fischer Music on the East side to find music for violin and piano accompaniment.
Boris also gave me music for more “popular music” as he called it. Simple arrangements of tunes like Autumn Leaves or Never on Sunday. I would work and memorize it and ask for something else every week. Again, all this music was arranged and handwritten by Boris. He eventually bought a small used Xerox machine to copy his music, so he didn’t have to spend the laborious time of hand copying. He charged me $1 for each. Cash only.
In one of our lessons, Boris handed me his arrangement of Gershwin’s Summertime. He played through it once and had me make a go. It was at first quite difficult with its odd chord structures and layered melodies. The fingering had me tied in knots but as I practiced, I began to understand exactly how chord structures and counter melodies could be played along with the melody line. Something quite different from the classical music I was playing on the EC.
There really wasn’t enough (if any) of the music I knew and loved arranged for the EC. So, I began making trips to Colony Records on 49th Street where the vast catalog of sheet music was available. I began to arrange tunes for myself. I also found music stores that carried more ethnic sheet music: A third floor Spanish music shop and a place on Mulberry Street in Little Italy that had sheet music imported directly from Italy.
I was told by just about everyone, including the Matueswitch Brothers, that the EC was a novelty instrument. It was one thing for me to play it in my circus act or perform a periodic classical recital or in a café, but jazz on the EC would never be accepted. Maybe they were right. I began to doubt myself and my desire to play jazz on this weird, bellowed instrument.
Then an event occurred that gave me the validation I needed.
It was once said that a successful artist is someone who has their choice to work in any restaurant in NYC. In 1978 I had an accident that curtailed me performing in shows as an acrobat. In need of funds I contacted a friend who ran a jazz supper club in the West Village, The Knickerbocker, and he gave me a few shifts a week waiting tables. The house musicians were famed Dr. Billy Taylor on piano and Victor Gaskin on upright bass.
After the end of one evening, I was getting ready to leave and had my EC with me. One of the waiters asked what it was, and I pulled it out of its case to show him. I started playing Summertime at the same moment Dr. Taylor was walking by. He stopped to listen and then asked me a few questions. The next thing I know I was standing by the baby grand in the restaurant as he accompanied me. We played Summertime together. At first I was extremely nervous, but as we played, I suddenly felt a calm, playing and improvising. The moment was one of true bliss. When we finished, Dr. Taylor looked me in the eye, and said “Keep doing what you’re doing. Its right”
Now I have never been and probably never will be a realist about the expected outcomes of many of the choices made in life. It is probably why I started playing the EC in the first place. But Billy Taylor’s advice was some of the best advice anyone has ever given me. It validates my personal and artistic philosophy. I have few illusions that to the world of jazz there really is not major commercial potential for jazz EC. However, before the pandemic shut everything down, DC Ambiance, a quartet where I play swing jazz in the style of Django Reinhardt, performed a few times a month. Paid gigs at that. I had a regular gig at a café playing my music solo. I even have my music mate in our traditional music duo, 2Many Buttons, playing some jazz pieces.
It just feels right.
