While out shopping for groceries on the weekend my ears were assaulted by some adenoidal tenor on the sound system singing ‘o sole mio’ at the top of his lungs. Sounded to me like he was passing a kidney stone while sliding down a razor blade. I recently had a medical procedure to flush earwax, so perhaps my hearing is too acute at the moment. Nah.. I just hated it. Now, I used to shop at a Trattoria in Rivière des Prairies and there was a butcher there who burst into song every now and again which I absolutely loved, Same type of voice, but not squeezed through a shitty sound system. The cavernous space of a grocery store (supermarket) provides a nice reverberation for a solo voice, but the recording was not designed for this environment.
I don’t mean to disparage the tenor, or the composer, but it got me to thinking about how different people perceive music. It is a subject that intrigues me. Some people cannot stand Bob Dylan for example. I love Bob’s voice in all it’s different presentations and permutations over his 60 year career. I don’t like Elton John’s voice. There is nothing the matter with it, and he has written and performed brilliantly for almost as long as Dylan. I just don’t like it. There was a time in the seventies when you couldn’t turn on a radio without hearing Rocket Man or Honky Cat etc. Maybe I overdosed on it.
I have a book by Carl Wilson (not the Beach Boy) called ‘Let’s Talk About Love (Why other people have such bad taste)’. I bought the book ostensibly to reinforce my rabid dislike of Celine Dion’s overwrought and melodramatic music. He puts the phenomenon of Celine in a social and cultural context which actually helped me develop empathy for people with less sophisticated taste than me. Who am I to say it sucks if others derive enjoyment from it? I recognize my snobbery and it opened up not only empathy, but awareness that other people may have the same visceral abhorrence for music I love. One of my music professors at University used to paraphrase a familiar quote:”Beauty is in the Ear of the Behearer”, or my dad, who often quoted: “chacun à son goût”.
Tastes change. When I was a boy, the mere mention of asparagus or liver would make me dry heave. Turns out it was my mother’s culinary inadequacies that I didn’t like. It’s not like I now wake up craving either of these foods, but I will eat them if presented. I used to wear bell bottoms…..
Many people approach subjects as if there is one way to view them. People like to lump things in categories as if they are a monolith. “I hate Jazz” is one. I used to respond that “the person who says that just doesn’t know enough about it”which is both true and arrogant. The term Jazz refers to styles of music that originated in the late 1890s and contain as many disparate styles as one might expect in over 100 years. Some of the original styles are kind of museum pieces now. Dixieland music, Boogie Woogie and swing music have been displaced by more modern styles. I still like Satchmo, Fats Waller and the Dorsey brothers, but their music fits a sub genre much like Bach is Baroque and Debussy Romantic. The jazz that I am most drawn to is post bop and soul Jazz and even more modern modal and free styles and world music. They all have their place and are as different to each other as human beings are to each other, yet retain enough similarities to be recognized as belonging to a genre. An orange is a fruit, but it is also a citrus fruit and can be found in a section called produce.
Monoliths exist in other areas of life as well. Books: Is it literature, mystery, self-help etc.? Religions: Say the word “Christian” and believers as different as tacit monks to emotive bible thumpers in mansions to humble church goers to self serving hypocrites and everything in between. As much disparity as commonality.
When it comes to pop music, I am of a demographic where the music of my youth is no longer the dominant social guidepost. I am less a consumer of new things and my tastes reflect a different era from the present. I still love protest music and counter cultural music but there is no unifying popular culture like the human rights and anti war etc. like the sixties generated. I dislike much of what I hear in new music these days. The few exceptions are artists that are still writing in a style that has humanistic meaning and reflects an earlier time. I loathe generic country music, auto tune and gimmicks. I change the station.
I care passionately about art and music, and I guess what I am trying to express here is that I care less about what others think if they are not themselves on the path to knowledge and enlightenment. Who cares what I think anyway?
“Some people feel the rain; others just get wet.” -Roger Miller
When I had just started listening to Jazz at the age of eighteen or so, I had a very scant record collection. I had a John Coltrane Twofer called Black Pearls; Tom Scott and The LA Express; Erroll Garner ‘Concert By The Sea’ and perhaps a few others. My favourite pastime in those days was crate digging in used record stores. I also checked out any record section anywhere. One day in a Kresge’s or K Mart store in a mall in St.Jerome, Quebec I came across an artist I had never heard of. Chet Baker.
Something about the artwork and the handsome portrait drew me to this record. That, and the price of 69 cents. It was a “cutout”. A hole drilled in the corner and reduced to clear. I took it home and put it on my turntable in my bedroom and listened to each side in turn. I was attracted to the music. All Ballads. Some of the songs I had heard from my dad’s collection. Ella and Sinatra sang But Not For Me, My Funny Valentine, Summertime. I really liked that this was a quartet. Piano, Bass and Drums with Chet either playing trumpet or singing. His sultry androgynous voice delivered each song in a way that immediately connected with my soul. My collection today consists of 39 albums with Chet Baker as the leader(443 songs). Most of the albums are fairly high quality although some were just attempts to cash in for dope money. Chet, famously, was a notorious heroin addict. Even the ones where Chet is not 100 % have some redeeming qualities.
One night this week I was listening to Luciana Souza on her album “The Book Of Chet” which is a beautiful tribute to Chet’s memory and songs from his repertoire that are associated with him. One of those songs is “I Get Along Without You Very Well” by Hoagy Carmichael based on a poem by Jane Brown Thompson. which is a rueful ode to a lost love and the irony inherent in a statement that is untrue. Beautiful capture of a common life event. Luciana sings it well with a slight hint of her Brazilian accent. Her voice is sultry and her phrasing and pitch are excellent, but there was something missing. I went downstairs in the morning and put on Chet singing the song. To me, Chet’s version (from 1954) seems more believable. Chet’s pitch sometimes a bit flat, his frugal use of vibrato only on certain words. He wrenches the mixed emotion evoked in the lyric and tells the story as if it is his. I don’t mean too disparage Luciana. Hers is plaintive, reverent, perfect, professional, well recorded, sublime, in fact, but to me, it only made me desire to hear Chet’s original.
Chet starts off with a celeste intro (Celeste is a bell-piano…rare in jazz… best known for The Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy by Tchaikovsky) and Chet sings the first A section as if it is an aside. A soliloquy, A private moment. On the second A section Russ Freeman switches to piano and the whole rhythm section supports Chet’s singing gently in two, then some movement in the bass on the bridge. The outro ends with arco bass underpinning “break my heart in two”. A perfect little vignette of suffering and regret.
In my music program on my computer I have 16 different versions of this song from artists as disparate as Amos Lee and Chrissie Hynde, Jerry Jeff Walker, Linda Ronstadt, Kurt Elling, Kandace Springs and Diana Krall. I have four versions by Billie Holiday from very late in her career. Sublime. A second Chet Baker version from late in his career/life which is akin in feel to Billie Holiday. I know what came next and their tragic endings colour my impression of these versions. My favourite of the other versions is Sinatra”s which comes from one of the first concept albums ever “In The Wee Small Hours…” which was an artistic outpouring of his amorous troubles with Ava Gardner at that time. Frank’s version has Nelson Riddle’s strings underpinning his grief and is entirely believable. His emotional warble at times in this song sound unfeigned.
At the top of this blog is a photo of me with a Richard Avedon photo portrait of Chet Baker taken recently at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montreal. It got me to thinking about the different worlds of experience we bring to new experiences. Thousands of people passed by the Chet Baker photo daily, but I am sure I am probably the only one who stopped for a “selfie” because of my intimate relationship with this man’s music. The way I see and hear are unique to me and based on my soul and my experience. A photo of someone else at the exhibition did not stir up similar feelings although I was tempted by the photo of Dorothy Parker whose writings I love.
Likewise the way we hear music. A friend asked me last night if I could guide him on how to listen to Jazz. My listening experience is bordering on fanatical, but is curated. I know (now) what I like, and what I am willing to invest my time in. I have to think about how someone with a different set of experiences would proceed. Many years ago when I was studying music formally I met my brother at a Jazz bar and he said “I don’t understand Jazz”. He reads music, so I brought out my Real Book and showed him what was going on. The pianist was interpreting the melody of a standard. Not quite playing it straight. when the melody ended the rhythm section continued playing the changes and the soloist improvised new melodies over the chord changes. Fairly simple. He wrote me recently 45 years later and said he discovered Miles Davis’s ‘Kind Of Blue’. He said “Now I get it” …lol.
I enjoy watching people expand their knowledge and experience and especially when we can share a mutual love for a particular piece that has particular meaning for me. I feel honoured to have a part in it.
I first heard this 1973 album at my (soon to be) lifelong friend and mentor (Charlie Biddle)’s restaurant in Val David….late 70’s. He loved it and talked excitedly about aspects of the performance that at the time were beyond me, but which I quickly adopted and refined my love for jazz with the same fervour and listened attentively. I made a cassette of this and listened in my car constantly. I would listen to it panned to the left, panned to the right, and in the middle where it is supposed to be. I don’t remember offhand the channel that had more Fender Rhodes, but one of them did(does). The comping on this record is beyond great. Well beyond great. I could listen to it now and still get excited by it. 500 Miles High in particular with Chick playing Rhodes through a wah/volume pedal….I am going to put this on tonight. Joe Farrell’s playing I am hearing in my head as I write. Haven’t played the album in about a year. I remember whole sections of his solos. Stanley Clarke on upright bass is awesome. I can listen to the entire album and focus just on the bass or the keys or the sax. The vocals not so much. I find Flora Purim a bit “pitchy” at times, but I love it still. Her husband Airto Moreira on traps and percussion sounds like a section. I will include a link below so you can listen for yourselves, but I encourage you to listen on speakers or good headphones. Most people don’t anymore which is a shame. I have owned this album as an l.p. As a CD the aforementioned cassette and now mp3: mp3 is the easiest, but the vinyl lived.
I recently retired from my music teaching career. Amid the awfulness of the pandemic and other life drama that crops up I have been fortunate and able to continue writing songs.
One of my concerns with aging and limited outside contact and reduced activity is maintaining my health and my mental acuity. I tried to put these meditations and concerns in this song.
A few months ago a blood relative, someone very close to me who I have weekly contact with, was diagnosed with early onset dementia. The song was freshly written when I heard the news. I thought the song was about me, but I guess this song is about her, me, everybody. It is about the road everyone will eventually travel towards our eventual demise.
I wonder where the wonder went So many miles travelled, they came and went Our Wonder years already spent Wondering what anything meant -Oh-oh-I wonder
I wonder Who I was meant to be If I’ve seen all that I was meant to see Or was this all just a fantasy I wonder if I’m really me -oh-oh-I wonder
I wonder what this is all about If anybody anywhere could have bailed me out If I ever bought in, Or did I drop out Hey, Alfie, what’s it all about
I wonder when I can feel it again If I’ll ever be relieved from residual pain If I ever figure out what’s been driving me insane And where I’ll get off this runaway train
I wonder where my my serenity went The worries in my head should be paying me rent All of my joy has already been spent I wonder where everybody went Oh, oh, I wonder
I wonder how I’m going to cope with these things now If I’m going to wear a smile or a furrowed brow I wonder where I’m going to point my prow Am I going to take everything that life will allow
I wonder why this all seems so strange Why all of my targets are out of range I wonder if I can face the change Pretty sure something can be arranged
I wonder why things turned out like they did Some things in the open, some things hid I wonder was my offer the winning bid? I wonder if it’ll be the same for my kids
I am curating a series of performances based on my favourite songs. This is a very difficult undertaking for someone who loves music the way I do.
Imagine having to choose one’s favourite twenty blades of grass from an enormous lawn.
I tend to revere music that moves me intellectually and viscerally that I feel I could recreate in a meaningful personal way. That being said, it is still hard to refine my choices categorically or by artist.
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The song I opened up the evening with was “Biloxi” by Jesse Winchester. Why Jesse? If Jesse, Why not “Yankee Lady” or “Isn’t That So” or any of the dozen or so of his songs that are in my repertoire? Indeed. My job as a curator is to cull but also point toward the light.
Biloxiwas written at a time when Jesse could not return to the USA because he was evading the draft. The memory and longing for a place unreachable is something most people can relate to. Come to think about it, Yankee Lady is also a longing for a time and place unreachable as well.
I was fortunate enough to hear and see Jesse live many times in very intimate venues like Rose’s Cantina, La Sala Rosa, The Belladonna Ballroom, Le Petit Campus and The Yellow Door among many others.
One story I remember from the Yellow Door was when some regulars were hanging out with Jesse upstairs between sets and this young woman with “issues” burst into the room and flung herself down on the couch beside him while saying: “Oh Jesse I’m so afraid to lose the love we’ve found”. I don’t recall exactly what happened next with any accuracy, but there was much laughter and she was escorted out gently.
One of my daughters visited Biloxi and was underwhelmed. To me, Biloxi is a place like Narnia or Lothlorien or Shangri-La. The lure is in it’s attainability only through one’s imagination. The melody of Jesse’s song stands strong against so many other three chord hymn-like melodies. It build images and tension and the last line of each verse releases with the weather.
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When I was about sixteen I went to a tiny store in a village (Ste. Adele) near my home and they had a rack of about ten LPs and one was by a guy I’d never heard of whose name I thought was pronounced Cock burn (remember I was fifteen). I bought the album, and never looked back. Bruce Cockburn (silent ck) has featured in my listening ever since. I have almost all his albums and have about a dozen of his songs in my songbook.
“Pacing The Cage” is from deep in his career. He is musing on “is that all there is?” The coming of the outbound stage. I relate to this as we all age. The last verse is perfect.
“Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can’t see what’s ’round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage”
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February 1964. I was in second grade. The buzz amongst all the clueless little knobs at my primary school was about something called ‘The Beatles’. Everybody vowed to watch Ed Sullivan and see what all the hype was about. We watched it weekly anyway. First I saw of a band that changed everything in my world and the whole world and who contributed so much to the lexicon of great songs. I was unaware of pop music at all up until this point my experience was liturgical music (I sang in an Anglican choir) Broadway tunes like ‘My Fair Lady’ and ‘Oklahoma’ and jazz standards that Ella or Frank sang and TV themes.
My cousins had the first five or six singles and I got to know the songs very well, and when I could control the radio I did. I’d listen to the local youth oriented radio station much to my father’s distaste.
The first Beatles record I owned was “Beatles ’65 and I love all the songs on it. No Reply, I’m A Loser, Baby’s In Black to name a few. I chose “I’ll Be Back” because of the lovely harmony between John and Paul. My arrangement takes it’s speed and specially tuned guitar from Shawn Colvin while maintaining the two part harmony of the Beatles. I love the way Sharon and I play this and we were each on really great guitars made by renowned local Luthier Michael Greenfield.
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The songs of Bob Dylan got on my Radar quite early on. I loved his songs and singing and loved versions by Peter, Paul and Mary, The Byrds, The Band, The Turtles and everybody else. I made my own CD of his music: https://ianhanchet.bandcamp.com/album/dealin-from-the-bottom-album and have another twenty or so of his songs that I perform. I chose “Queen Jane Approximately” because Sharon and I as Tumbleweed learned it only recently and I feel we do it very well. It is from perhaps my favourite Dylan album (Highway 61 Revisited). I particularly love the Bass note pedal point on the first Won’t you come see me (D/A and G/A ) of each verse. The song is similar to Like A Rolling Stone in that it is a warning to someone who used to be close. It is fun to play and sing.
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Fran Landesman was an interesting character whose poetry and lyrics resonate with me. She is perhaps best known for “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most” and I am partial to “Ballad Of The Sad Young Men” which she wrote with Tommy Wolf. I first heard it sung by Roberta Flack. It is a portrait of loneliness and the relentless passage of time of several subsets of humanity who hang out in bars looking for something or someone to little or no avail. It has been covered by hundreds of Jazz artists like Kenny Burrell and Chet Baker, whose influence on me is great.
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I hesitated to put “Can’t Help Falling In Love” in the show because it is truly a chestnut. Jeff listened to my arrangement and encouraged me to keep it in. It turned into an impromptu choir sing along with the audience. The melody is based on “Plaisir d’Amour” but what I like is the way it was reharmonized and sits well on the guitar in this key.(G)
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I went through a phase of listening to jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and couldn’t get enough of his music. I read he was on an album called “West” by an artist named Lucinda Williams. I bought it and I immediately was drawn to her authenticity and the way the guitars were treated on her album but I especially was drawn to “Everything Has Changed”. The places of our youth transform over time and if we return after a long absence, it is off putting. I relate very much to this. The rural village (St. Sauveur-des-Monts) where my parents are now buried had no traffic lights when I was younger, but now is a bustling urban shopping, skiing and dining hub with dozens of traffic lights. There is a sad release in the song as the lyric “everything has changed” is sung. It is over an A minor (ii) chord and sung with a resigned acceptance of the facts. Up to that point we have heard nothing but G (I) and C (IV) major chords.
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This next song was released a day before my 11th birthday. I heard it for the first time in my family’s car on the way to ski at Chalet Cochand. We were passing under an arced overpass on the autoroute just before turning off to go to Ste. Marguerite when “Strawberry Fields Forever” played and changed my life forever. I never thought about performing it until I heard Bill Frisell play it so beautifully on his Telecaster. I took some of his ideas, but I can sing too. Jeff Deeprose plays a wonderful counterpoint to my melody.
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The British Invasion was not only the Beatles and Rolling Stones, there were hundreds of combos whose songs were heard in North America at that time. One of my favourite bands was Gerry and The Pacemakers. My actual favourite song of theirs is “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying” but I selected
“Ferry Cross The Mersey” because it fit the loss and longing theme and Jeff plays exquisitely on it.
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Even with a limit of only twenty songs, I still decided to choose another Fran Landesman song.I love her songs that much. This one is called “Scars”. She co-wrote this song with Simon Wallace who sent me an encouraging message after hearing my performance on a YouTube video, People who have lived have scars. Nothing to be ashamed of. The lyric has some very deep scars to ponder and forgive.
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It seems this song “Walk Away Renee” been around since I was a choirboy. After choir rehearsals I would walk home singing this at the top of my lungs. Trouble is I only knew that one line…lol. I learned the rest as an adult, but that hook still gets me. I love to sing it with wild abandon. I asked my friend Daniel Frankel to join in on piano.
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I first heard “You Shouldn’t Look At Me That Way” on a film trailer at the movie theatre as I was leaving. Usually I ignore ads, but I heard Elvis Costello’s voice on a song I was not familiar with. I knew immediately that I wanted to hear it again. Elvis’ writing had developed artful sophistication. This had “Jazz chords” and some real surprises in the harmony. I enjoyed transcribing and learning it. It is presented here as one of two Elvis Costello songs in my favourites.
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As a youngster I heard many songs by the Bee Gees, my favourites being “Words” and “I Started A Joke” and I’ve Got To Get A Message To You”. These tickled my pre pubescent intellect. It wasn’t until I heard Al Green sing “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” that I “got” it though.
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As a fledgling guitarist, the music of Cream offered easy to pick out riffs. Almost everybody I knew who played could play the riff for “Sunshine Of Your Love”, “Badge” and “Strange Brew”. I have always wanted to learn “White Room”, so I did. The songwriting in Cream matched the virtuosity of Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker (and Pete Brown lyricist). I still listen to these songs and they are as fresh sounding and yet hauntingly familiar as when I first heard them.
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I have always maintained that the best gig I ever had was being a dad. I have two wonderful resourceful and independent daughters, and even though my marriage to their mother didn’t last, they survived and thrived. My sister told me I should seek out this song called “Daughters” by John Mayer out as she thought it was a fit for me. She was right. I had fun learning John Mayer’s chord voicings of what turned out to be easier than it sounds.
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The next song is perhaps the greatest description of unrequited teenage crushes that I am aware of. David Francey observed one of his step children agonizing and this gem flowed out of him. I have felt it. The imbalance between desire and ability. As we age, we tend to be more realistic and hopefully have the communication skills to follow our hearts. The feelings in “Broken Glass” are wonderful to evoke and experience again through this perfect song. Jeff and I are both teachers, and well aware that this scenario is universal.
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I decided to include a second Bruce Cockburn song. This is also from deep into his career.
“Candy Man’s Gone” is about the false promise of expectations of success and prosperity. It gives pause for thought. “Catch it in a dream, catch it in a song” is one of my favourite lines to sing.
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I heard “At This Moment” over thirty years ago. It was a throwback to R&B from an even earlier era . Billy Vera and the Beaters recorded this and I have always loved it. It tells of a wrenching breakup.
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The song “So Sad” is my favourite of the favourites for now. I first heard it sung by Jennifer Warnes, but it was written by Mickey Newbury. I get to wail on it and use my lung power to wring out the wretchedness. The song name drops iconic figures from American culture which is kinda fun, but the real power of the song is in the chorus “I’m Sooooooo Saaaaad”.
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I concluded this first evening of my favourite songs with “Painted From Memory” which is by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach. We have already established my reverence for Costello’s work, ut the addition of Burt harkens back to the soundtrack of my youth where Dionne Warwick dominated the radio waves for a decade. The premise of this song is so sad. He paints from memory a face that he loves but who no longer loves him. The smile is not for him. “Funny how looks can be deceiving”.
Watermelon season is upon us. It often comes up in my teaching that we categorize things and put them in songs. I like to use music to reach kids on several levels: cerebral, emotional, visceral and olfactory. It is a multi-sensory approach to teaching, storing information in different parts of the brain, a sort of manufactured Synesthesia. Synesthesia can be: hearing colour, seeing sound, tasting emotion etc. My eldest daughter, for example, can see colours as numbers.
One of the things we categorize with young children is “favourite desserts” (primary motivators). I think that watermelon is, if not my favourite dessert, it is at least my favourite fruit and my favourite healthy dessert. Several years back I had a Kindergarten class sing “Watermelon Man” (J’aime le Melon d’eau) by Herbie Hancock (but the Mongo Santamaria version). I put on my helmet as a secret surprise when they were on stage ready to perform.
We had friends over yesterday for an afternoon of camaraderie and music in the garden. We served frozen grapes and fresh strawberries and watermelon ( along with chips and veggies and hummous etc.). Lovely to see friends as we emerge from a year and a half of strict isolation. We were a bit rusty on the music side… but fun and contentment was had by all.
I woke up this morning thinking about watermelon and an incident that happened to me about thirty years ago. I was at a similar party at a couple’s home in the plateau area of Montreal. I had known John for a decade or so, and Adele was a new friend to me, but she knew my girlfriend well. We were all very comfortable around each other. I remember the house and their sweet little girls Camille and Sabine. Those girls were two of the reasons I decided to become a father myself.
The incident was an embarrassing one. At least it would have been if it hadn’t been so hilarious. Adele was being the hostess and was passing around hors d’oeuvre on a platter and had a bowl of sliced up watermelon in the other. I blurted out “I love diarrhea!” and Adele immediately cracked up, doubled over laughing. I apologized exclaiming that I had meant to say “I love watermelon, but it gives me diarrhea!” which in retrospect seems like too much information in the first place. Adele went around telling people who hadn’t been in the room of my verbal faux pas, and suddenly the party came alive.
My constitution has changed and I seldom get gastro-intestinal issues with watermelon anymore. I have some cut up in the fridge and thinking about it made me think about this story this morning. I am still in touch with John and Adele though they are no longer together. I see tidbits from their girls who are now vibrant young women and it was a gift to think of them this morning via this silly little story.
Synesthesiais a neurological condition in which information meant to stimulate one of your senses stimulates several of your senses. People who have synesthesia are called synesthetes.
The word “synesthesia” comes from the Greek words: “synth” (which means “together”) and “ethesia” (which means “perception). Synesthetes can often “see” music as colors when they hear it, and “taste” textures like “round” or “pointy” when they eat foods.
Vignettes and Bagatelles 