Author: Devra Hall Levy

What’s Good for the Goose…

After questioning the intent of a sentence on Rifftides earlier this month, turnabout became fair play. The grammar police, in the person of Doug Ramsey, emailed me regarding my Village Memories post:

Isn’t “still remains” redundant ?, i.e. * …its famous facade, including the clock tower, *still remains* — ?

He is quite correct, and I have edited the text to read “still stands.”

While we may seem to tease a bit, I do believe that a good editor is a writer’s best friend. (The corollary, however, is not true; best friends generally make lousy editors.)

Village Memories

The Greenwich Village stores and institutions that I grew up with in the 1960s are, for the most part, gone. But there have always been a few locales that have been in place for so long that you think they’ll exist forever…nothing is forever, not even Jon Vie, the local Sixth Avenue bakery with a city-wide reputation. Back in the days when roller skates were metal contraptions with four wheels that you fastened onto your saddleshoes and tightened with a key, I would roll around the corner, look in the bakery window, and one of the counter ladies would come to the door with a free cookie. One by one, the ladies retired and new clerks came and went, but the bakers remained and their rye bread and challah was the best in town. Now, I’m sad to report, it’s a store called Jeans USA stocked with brand new apparel made to look old.

Some of the long-gone landmarks that I remember include

    the Women’s House of Detention, a hi-rise jail built in the 1930s that rose above the old courthouse and took up the rest of the block from ninth to tenth street on the West side of Sixth Avenue, and from which windows the inmates would hollar to people in the street below. The Jefferson Market Courthouse was built in the 1870s by Vaux and Withers, and its famous facade, including the clock tower, still stands — now it’s the Jefferson branch of the New York Public Library, and the demolished prison is now a garden.

    Sutter’s Bakery on the northeast corner of Tenth Street and Greenwich Avenue where it was a treat to sit at one of the cafe tables and have a sandwich for lunch — now it’s a party store;
    International, just south of the south-west corner of Sixth Avenue and Thirteen Street, was a supermarket where I used to clerk; now it’s a Rite Aide. For a while there was a store on the corner where I would pour over huge Singer and McCall’s pattern books; I liked to sew. Across Sixth Avenue was a tiny little grocery/deli called was Smilers, where I used to buy the best rare roast beef sandwiches on rye break with Russian dressing, or Bialis for Sunday brunch. I think it became a Korean market (now closed and for rent) or maybe it was where the stationary store is – it’s hard to remember.
    Shopping for gifts was best accomplished at the Japanese store on Sixth Avenue, between Ninth and Tenth Streets, I think, where I could buy tea cups or pretty rice paper note cards, lanterns, or paper-covered boxes for cuff links and such. Then there was Fred Leigton’s on Eighth Street, where I was more likely to leave with a peasant blouse for myself than a present for someone else, or Papier Marche over on Greenwich Avenue, or in one of the many jewelry stores along those routes.
    Lowe’s movie theatre took up the whole triangular block bordered by Twelfth street, Seventh and Greenwich Avenues. It was there that I saw many a movie for 75-cents to a dollar-fifty, and paid 25-cents for a bag of popcorn. Across Twelfth Street was the Maritime building with windows made to resemble portholes — now part of the expanded Saint Vincent’s Hospital.

Expansion seems to be the name of the game, and I guess it’s a sign of prosperity, at least for those doing the expanding. The movie house on Fifth Avenue between Twelfth and Thirteenth Streets was taken over by The New School many years ago. Now I find that the bank where I had my first accounts has moved and that corner is being renovated for The New School. In fact, Walking about the Village I find lots of buildings now bearing the name of either The New School or New York University. I also see way too many nail shops, hair salons, and drugstores all within a few short blocks of one another. Ansonia drugstore on Tenths Street and Sixth Avenue has probably been there for more than fifty years (I can personally attest to at least forty-five), and Bigelows a block and a half south is ancient too. Both used to have a soda fountain, and I loved Ansonia’s root beer floats and Bigelow’s butterscotch sundays. But what I miss most is the diversity of all the little shops and unique stores.

Johnny Pate 80th Birthday Celebration Concert on CD

Having attended this concert, I was honored to be asked to write an account and reveled in the 4,000-word space they allowed me. What follows is but a brief snipet. You can read the whole piece here, but better yet, buy the CD.

When jazz aficionados ask me, “Johnny who?” I wonder how someone so important in the lives of so many stellar jazz giants could slip beneath their radar. Monty Alexander, Kenny Burrell, Ron Carter, Shirley Horn, Harvey Mason, James Moody, Marlena Shaw, and Phil Woods, who were all on hand, are but a few in a longer list legendary collaborators that also includes Ahmad Jamal, B.B. King, Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Smith, and Joe Williams.

Johnny Pate, mild-mannered and unassuming, has been slipping underneath the radar all his life. But March 30, 2003 is the day he has to face the music – his music – and accept the love and affection of those who have come not only to play his music, but also to say thanks.

The program begins with a proclamation from the Govenor of Nevada celebrating Pate’s musical legacy, and in keeping with his lifetime of accomplishments, the ‘whereas’ clauses go on forever, acknowledging his roles as bassist, songwriter, arranger, producer, teacher, composer and conductor of symphonic and film scores, and mentioning many of the great artists with whom he has worked.

The first of many emotional moments comes when Pate introduces Phil Woods. It may not seem like such a long way from Pennsylvania to Nevada, but for someone battling emphysema and down with the flu just days earlier, it is a very long way indeed. Still, Woods would not have missed today’s events. He tells the audience about his life as a struggling musician in the 1960s. “I couldn’t get arrested. ‘Buy a flute, be a studio man,’ they told me. I said ‘forget it.’” Woods moved to Europe . Tracking him down in France, Pate offered Woods a record deal with a dream rhythm section (Herbie Hancock on piano, Richard Davis on bass and Grady Tate on drums), augmented by a string section led by Gene Orloff. The album is titled Round Trip. “I’m talking the truth,” Woods tells us. “I went back to France with a shitload of money, and a few months later I was invited to play at Newport. I was back, baby! I was back, and that’s ’cause of Johnny Pate, and I want to say thank you.”

One by one, these featured artists augment the UNLV Jazz Band. By the time Monty Alexander, Ron Carter and Harvey Mason finish driving the band through the blues, the audience is cheering and we haven’t even reached intermission yet. “I promise you we won’t play anymore lullabies,” quips Pate. “It’s smoking up here.”

Johnny voice cracks more than once with unshed tears – when introducing Phil Woods, when Shirley Horn emerges from the wings in her wheelchair and procedes to play piano for the first time in public using a prosthesis in place of her amputated leg, and when he speaks of his dear friend Joe Williams, no longer with us.

The show is over all too soon. After the encore, the applause begins to die down, but not because the audience is ready to leave. Applause gives way to a spontaneous audience rendition of “Happy Birthday, dear Johnny, Happy Birthday to you.” They know his birthday is actually nine months away, but it doesn’t matter.

No one could be immune to the outpouring of love and appreciation that filled the theater. It’s just ten days since America invaded Iraq and people are still glued to the news reports, but for a few hours at least, all of that was put from our minds. Ten days after the concert, columnist John L. Smith writes in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “…I found myself not thinking about war,” and he thanks Pate “for reminding us of the beauty that is still in the world.” I like to think he speaks for everyone who hears this live commemorative recording.

Words for Today…and every day

Today will be my last full day of research in what used to be Luther Henderson’s office. The artifacts of his life are in boxes, soon to be sent off to the Library of Congress where hopefully future generations will not only discover him, but also recognize and appreciate his talents as well as his thoughts about music and life and humanity. He was a truly gentle soul with a utopian outlook and I am feeling very honored to be allowed to write his story.

I leave you today with two quotations. I did not find them in Luther’s archives, but knowing Luther, both personally and through the volumes of correspondance I read yesterday, I am sure that he would concur:

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
~ Leonard Bernstein

The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?
~Pablo Casals

Taps

So here I am in New York, and this morning had to decide how I was going to travel uptown. I was born and raised in this city, and have been riding subways since I was a child…but not today. As I was heading toward the subway station I began to think about recent events in London, and suddenly I was hailing a taxi cab. Tomorrow I’ll probably take the subway, ’cause I felt rather silly not doing so today, but in a way I was glad for the reminder because it is so easy to go about one’s business without thinking about the horrors taking place in other countries.

Thinking about all the people dying, and recalling the days and weeks following 9/11, made me think of Taps. It is perhaps the most famous of all bugle calls, and is comprised of just 24 notes. I don’t know for sure when I first heard that haunting melody. I keep thinking that it was probably at summer camp signaling ‘lights out’ – the original purpose of the call – or perhaps in an old war movie soundtrack, playing as darkness enveloped the barracks of the good guys. Fond memories aside, my first exposure was most likely while watching television coverage of John F. Kennedy’s funeral – I was barely eight years old. Over the last forty years, the American public has come to know Taps all too well. For many days following 9/11 we heard it several times a day, and now as soldiers and civilians in all corners of the world die at terrorist hands in political and religious wars, I only hope that we never become inured to the sadness that Taps evokes.

Taps, as we know it today, was first sounded in July of 1862 for the Third Brigade, First Division, Fifth Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, under the command of Union General Daniel Butterfield. Its origins are much disputed, and the truth is confounded by verbal accounts that have grown into myth. Master Sgt. Jari A. Villanueva, a longstanding member of the United States Air Force Band and respected bugle historian, traces today’s Taps back to an earlier version of the call Tattoo used “to signal troops to prepare them for bedtime roll call.” In his comprehensive essay that covers the history and the mythology of Taps, Villanueva writes, “In the interest of historical accuracy, it should be noted that it is not General Butterfield who composed Taps, rather that he revised an earlier call into the present day bugle call we know as Taps.”

Other stories of Taps’ origin include a Union Army father finding the musical notes on a slip of paper in the pocket of a dead Confederate soldier…his own son. Villanueva has traced this tall tale back to a Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” story that was later spread by re-telling in an Ann Landers or Dear Abby column.

Villaneuva also explains the circumstances under which Taps was first used at a military funeral during the Peninsular Campaign in 1862. Captain Tidball, worried that a loud gun volley would alert the enemy nearby, ordered Taps to be played at the burial of a fallen soldier. “The custom, thus originated, was taken up throughout the Army of the Potomac, and finally confirmed by orders.” Taps can be heard as many as thirty times a day at Arlington National Cemetery. Villanueva, himself a bugler, says that this duty “is the military musician’s equivalent of ‘playing Carnegie Hall.’”

“Taps should be played by a lone bugler,” says Colonel Arnald D. Gabriel, Commander and Conductor of the United States Air Force Band from 1964 – 1985. “Some have tried to harmonize it, but it destroys the simplistic beauty of the lone bugler. The most heart tugging time to hear it is at Arlington Cemetery when a veteran is buried and there are no family members present, just the Chaplin, the honor guard and the pallbearers. To hear taps in that setting is gut-wrenching.”

Music is a powerful communicator.

Summer in the City

A mini journalism scandal erupted not long ago when a sports reporter wrote a story about a game he didn’t attend – I don’t remember the details because frankly I thought two things: 1) it was a minor infraction from a well-respected writer and it did not involve any intended deception or fabrication. I think it was more a matter of going with the advance lineup and not hearing about a substitution, or something like that. And 2) I would never do anything like that, even in a pinch. Weeeelll, maybe not, but I came close enough to see how it could happen.

Last night, sitting at home on the left coast, I thought I’d get a head start on today’s blog entry. I figured I knew pretty much how my trip would be, what kind of reception I’d get at this end, so why not write the draft and then edit in a few details if need be and post? It would just take a few minutes that way, and I was bound to be tired.

This is what I wrote last night:

Thanks to JetBlue’s new nonstop service from Burbank to New York, I was spared the hassle of getting to, and through, Los Angeles’ main airport (LAX for short). My flight left at 7 AM, a tad early, even for me who usually arises around 6. My husband was kind enough to drive me to Burbank and we left the house at 5:30 — those of you who know him well know that we arrived in no-time flat. Security was thorough, but less uptight than at LAX, and I had plenty of time for a cup of Starbucks to rev my own engines.

The flight was smooth and I spent the time thumbing through a 400+ page catalogue of the Luther Henderson archives that I will be visiting tomorrow, and at the recommendation of Rifftides, reading The Shadow of the Wind, which I had ordered a few weeks ago and had been saving for this trip.

New Yorkers typically escape the city on summer weekends, and I knew that arriving at JFK on a Sunday afternoon would mean a lot of traffic heading back into the city. Luckily, the taxi fares from JFK into the city are flat rate, and the cab was air conditioned.

I’m not sure who was happier to see me, my mom or Django, who, though four-footed and only 25 pounds, is perfectly capable of knocking me over. (Dad’s still on tour in Europe.) I am posting this from my parent’s living room, using my mom’s computer and cable modem as the library with free wifi is closed on Sundays.

So there you have it. I have arrived and will be blogging from New York for the next two weeks.

And this is what really happened on the way to the airport:
My husband wanted to leave at 5:30 and I was running a few minutes late, no big deal. We got about 3 blocks from home and I realized I forgot my glasses, so back we went. Still nothing to really worry about, with my husband behind the wheel, we only live about 15 minutes from the airport (20 when I drive). We’re cruising along, traffic light and moving swiftly….until we rounded the bend onto the Golden State Freeway and everything came to a complete stop. Nothing was moving at all, and we couldn’t see what was causing the problem. It was five minutes before six, my flight was at seven, and I had luggage to check. I turned on the radio, couldn’t find the traffic report, and realized that it didn’t matter what the cause was — nothing was moving. I got on my cell phone and calmly called the airline to see if there is a later flight, which there was, but showing only one seat open. Should I grab it? I asked about LAX, still not awake enough to remember that Jet Blue does not fly out of LAX. “Four seats on the 10:30 out of Long Beach” the lady was saying just as a few cars began to inch forward. I said “thank you” and hung up. Just a minute longer and the traffic was moving as if nothing had happened. I don’t know whether that got my adrenaline going or stopped my heart. We pulled up to the terminal at ten minutes past the hour, I checked my bag, got through security, and as I apporached the gate, they announced boarding. No Starbucks. Thankfully, the flight was smooth and uneventful. I got throughthe first 300 pages of the archives catalogue, but I haven’t started reading The Shadow of the Wind yet.

My husband always teases me about being outgoing; he says I can get on a elevator and know everybody’s life story before we get to the lobby. He’s right,and I say that you never know who you’ll meet. Just yesterday we hired a building contractor to repair our roof – I met the contractor while on jury duty last year; he had been talking about his company and I liked what I heard and took down his number. I didn’t have any jobs in mind, but you just never know. Anyway, waiting on a long line to get a cab from JFK Airport, I got into a conversation with a fellow ex-New Yorker/California transplant. In a sleeveless tee-shirt and blue shoes, he didn’t look like a litigation attorney, and he had sense of humor, too. Turned out his destination was within about four blocks of where I was headed so we shared a taxi and exchanged email addresses — you never know when you’ll need a good lawyer. The taxi was air-conditioned, but the traffic wasn’t bad at all.

My reception was as anticipated, but now it’s after midnight and I am using my own laptop connecting to the Internet via telephone modem. I never could have imagined today’s events, so it’s a good thing I didn’t post last night’s pre-written account. “One never knows, do one?”

Word Trips

Just about two and a half months ago, my second day on the blog, I mentioned the Internet Anagram Server and shared three of the anagrams derived from DevraDoWrite. (Click here for a reprise.) Today, as I prepare for a two-week trip to the other coast for a mixture of business and pleasure, two more phrases seem particularly apropos. I am truly a Road Wired Vet, ready for virtual action anywhere I go, lugging laptop, palmpilot, digital recorder, digital camera, wireless connector, and myriad cables power sources, and of course, a cell phone. A quick google has provided me with a list of locations with free wi-fi access, so I should have no technological excuse for not blogging. The next blog posting will come from an undisclosed location in big metropolis.

The first few days will be devoted to research for my next book, a biography of Luther Henderson. I will be blogging about Luther as the project progresses, but meanwhile, if you don’t know anything about him, read this brief bio on The African American Registry® website, and then check out this amazing CD (you can listen to some clips online). Don’t, however, pay any attention to the Editorial Review posted by Amazon.com because it lacks both understanding and accuracy. Clearly this guy was not aware that Ellington himself referred to Luther as his classical right arm, that their professional/musical relationship began in the 1940s, and their personal relationship even earlier than that when Luther, just a child, became neighborhood buddies with Duke’s son, Mercer.

It is with increasing frequency, and not a little dismay, that I notice and/or hear about factual inaccuracies created or perpetuated by the media. Just today, my husband sent off a Letter to the Editor at Jazz Times magazine to correct some misstatements in the Wes Montgomery feature. (If they don’t print his letter, I will post it on this blog.) But that is a rant for another day.

After a few days of intensive research in Luther’s personal archives, I will relax and visit with family and friends. On Thursday, July 21, 2005 at 8 PM, I will be at the 92nd Street Y (1395 Lexington Avenue) to hear a concert: Jazz Legacy – Portrait of Jim Hall, featuring Peter Bernstein, Bill Charlap, Terry Clarke, Tom Harrell, Steve LaSpina, Joe Lovano, and Strings. (The Box Office telephone number is 212-415-5500 — I heard tickets are going fast.)

By the time I cross back to the left coast and get home on Sunday, I am likely to wish that I had Arrived Towed.

The Sound of Silence

“A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.” ~Leopold Stokowski

“Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hands on the strings to stop their vibration as in twanging them to bring out their music.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

“The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.” ~ Marianne Moore

“Jazz on a String”

About a month ago, I shared an email from Los Angeles Times writer Don Heckman. In part, he wrote:

…writing an attack is easy, and sometimes it’s the appropriate thing to do. But writing something which points out problems with possible solutions is much harder and, I believe, demands more of one’s writing skill.

I admire his position, but there are times when I feel the public would be better served by his powers of critical thinking and his years of musical experience. Monday was one such time. Don and I both attended the sixth annual Instrumental Women’s show, “Jazz on a String” this past Saturday at the Ford Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, and as my husband put it, “you two must have seen different shows.”

Don’s review opens with “An array of first-rate talent showed up…” but he never mentions that they could not be properly heard due to poor sound (a deficiency either of the sound system or the engineers) that turned the 18-piece string section into mud. And perhaps it was the chilled night air that troubled the strings’ ability to stay in tune. He describes Lesa Terry’s solos as “briskly swinging, jazz-driven” and mentions Cheryl Keyes “inventive flute soloing and dark-toned vocal,” but does that mean they were good? Lori Andrews “demonstrated a remarkable capacity to produce blues-bent improvised lines,” but to what end? Phyllis Battle may have been ebullient, but was she in good voice?

The two performances that he found “most intriguing” were Nedra Wheeler and the string octet from the Pasadena Young Musicians Orchestra. They were my favorites, too. I’ve written about Nedra before, and one of the things I love about her is that she embodies the music, she is jazz, and it comes through her playing and vocals, as well as her stage presence. The eight pretty high school violinists have a long way to go, but they played well on Lesa Terry’s arrangement of Horace Silver’s “The Preacher.”

Don’s only serious criticism was “the far too many announcements and introductions,” and he concludes, “It was, in sum, a fine evening of music.” I feel that while it was an entertaining evening, musically it was far from excellent.

Duke Ellington used to say that there are only two kinds of music, good music and the other kind. Arts education is virtually nonexistant in our schools, so it is up to the critics to inform John Q Audience that musical pyrotechniques do not mean that the music is good. Contrary to popular opinion as observed in myriad audience responses — opinion I suspect is largely based in ignorance — playing fast, bending notes, and changing keys does not make a musician a virtuoso. And singers who use over-the-top vocal tricks, growling and shouting, have forsaken the art of the song. A concert may be entertaining, and there is value in that, but does that mean the music was good? I think not.

And by the way…

Check out the Rifftides blog of Doug Ramsey. Maybe I’ll try to rev up my engines with his recipe (see the Food section under Doug’s Picks).

Add plenty of walnuts to a cup of yogurt and drizzle the honey over the top. I like to add raisins and mix it all together. My wife finds the mixing esthetically objectionable. Either way, it works, and it tastes terrific.

What I want to know is, what works? Is it adding the raisins, or that his wife finds it esthetically objectionable?