moi@thebearcave

Way, way back in the late 1960s I attended the performance by Duke Ellington and his orchestra that celebrated the opening of the new Alumni Hall at the University of Western Ontario. It was an evening like no other for a kid from rural southern Ontario and it ignited a life-long love affair with Jazz in general and Billy "Sweet Pea" Strayhorn in particular. Billy was The Man back then.

James Gavin: Homophobia in Jazz
[Jazz Times]

A few years back, I visited a jazz pianist who had made his mark in the '70s with a reflective series of albums on the ECM label. This was one of my first interviews for a now-finished biography of his former employer, Chet Baker [out in April 2002 from Knopf]. As the recorder ran, my host-known for his fierce intelligence and for the refinement of his playing-kept referring to "that faggot" who had produced a somewhat homoerotic documentary of the once-beautiful trumpeter and singer. After gorging himself, grunting and burping, on Chinese food, he listened with me to a vocal recording that Baker had made in 1955, when his singing suggested a shy little fawn. The pianist spat out in disgust: "He sounds like a girl!"

The jazz world is one of the last cultural frontiers of old-fashioned macho, and in it, homophobia runs rampant. Since interviewing that pianist, I've met a multitude of jazz figures who pride themselves on soulfulness and sensitivity, yet are as sensitive as rednecks on the subject of homosexuality-especially its presence in jazz, which is not inconsiderable. Many of the same musicians who would flatten anyone who called them or a friend of theirs a "nigger" haven't hesitated to tag somebody a "faggot," if that person threatened their standards of masculinity.

[Continued here]

• John Murph: Rhapsody in Rainbow: Jazz and the Queer Aesthetic [Jazz Times]

When discussing the soundtrack to contemporary mainstream gay life, jazz is often treated as an allergen on a musical landscape more devoted to vocal pop, club hits and electronica. At the risk of stereotyping, gay culture feels more allegiance toward Lady Gaga than Lady Day. As someone who frequents gay bars with almost the same regularity as jazz clubs, I often sense a great divide between the two worlds. "It is extremely polarized," argues saxophonist and clarinetist Andrew D'Angelo, "so much so that when my ex-boyfriend came to one of my gigs, some of his gay friends were so disproportionately removed from my [jazz] scene. If they come to one of my shows it feels like a huge statement."

Steven Watson: The Harlem Renaissance
[xroads.virginia.edu]

Homosexual and Lesbian Nightlife Advertised largely by word of mouth to those "in the life," homosexual and lesbian nightlife thrived in Harlem. Greenwich Village and Harlem were the city's main areas that countenanced homosexual gatherings, and homosexual Richard Bruce Nugent recalled that the two bore many similarities. "You didn't get on the rooftop and shout, "'I fucked my wife last night.' So why would you get on the roof and say 'I loved prick.' You didn't. You just did what you wanted to do. Nobody was in the closet. There wasn't any closet." Harlem churches were strictly antihomosexual, but the community provided a model of tolerance. Many of the Harlem Renaissance's key literary figures were homo- or bisexual (among them Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Alain Locke, Wallace Thurman, Richard Bruce Nugent, and perhaps enigmatic Langston Hughes) as were many of Harlem's best-known performers (among them Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Jackie "Moms" Mabley, Mabel Hampton, Ma Rainey, and Ethel Waters).

In the homosexual iconography of the period, the black male vied with the swarthy Italian youth and the sailor in uniform as the iconic love object. Negroes were also regarded as sexually flexible. (A common pick-up line at that time among available blacks: "I'm a oneway man-now, which way would you like?" And in a period when syphilis was rampant, sex between men was popularly rationalized, "Better a little shit than a chancre."86) The Mafia looked upon black men's attractiveness to white men as a phenomenon to exploit (nor did it hurt that Al Capone's cousin was homosexual and poet Parker Tyler reported numerous attempted seductions by gangsters).

The best known of the homosexual and lesbian hangouts was the Clam House, a long, narrow room on 133rd Street's Jungle Alley, described in Vanity Fair as "a popular house for revelers but not for the innocent young." Downtown celebrities went on bisexual sprees- among them were Beatrice Lillie, r Tallulah Bankhead, Jeanne Eagels, Marilyn Miller, Princess Murat from Paris, and-dressed in matching bowler hats-came chanteuse Libby Holman and her heiress lover,Louisa Carpenter du Pont Jenney. The only performer to publicly exploit her lesbian identity was Gladys Bentley, the Clam House's headliner. The 250- pound alto singer dressed in top hat and tuxedo, belting out double-entendre Iyrics to popular songs like "My Alice Blue Gown," or "Sweet Georgia Brown," and encouraging her audiences to join in on the lewd choruses. "If ever there was a gal who could take a popular ditty and put her own naughty version to it," observed one journalist, "La Bentley could do it."

Harlem's homosexual haunts were varied bars like the Yeahman and the Garden of Joy catered to mixed crowds; "pansy entertainment" spots such as The Ubangi featured a sepia- toned female impersonator called Gloria Swanson, who belted out "Hot Nuts, get 'em from the peanut man!"; buffet flats such as Hazel Valentine's Daisy Chain offered sexual tableaux-both hetero and homo- staged in apartment chambers; homosexual house parties like those hosted by Casca Bonds and Alexander Gumby. The most spectacular homosexual events were the costume balls held at the cavernous Rockland Palace on 155th Street.

"Of course, a costume ball can be a very tame thing," reported the gossipy black weekly The Inter-State Tattler, "but when all the exquisitely gowned women on the floor are men and a number of the smartest men are women, ah then, we have something over which to thrill and grow round-eyed." These drag balls were reported in the black press and surrealistically dramatized in America's first unashamedly homosexual novel, Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler's The Young and Evil (1933). Not all the guests were homosexual; many came to gawk. These onlookers ascended a gold-banistered staircase to the box seats that ringed the huge ballroom and looked down on the Grand March of ersatz divas promenading beneath a colossal crystal chandelier and a sky-blue ceiling. The women mostly dressed in drably colored loose-fitting men's suits (rarely a tuxedo) while the men outdid themselves as extravagant señoritas in black lace and red fans; as soubrettes in backless dresses and huge spangles; as debutantes in chiffon and rhinestones; and as a creature called "La Flame" who wore only a white satin stovepipe hat, a red beaded breast plate, and a white sash. The Savoy Ballroom also hosted gala drag balls, where the sartorial achievements were given prizes. (Artist "Sheriff" Bob Chanler, hostess Muriel Draper, and Carl Van Vechten comprised one panel of judges, and they awarded first prize to a man who wore only a cache-sex, silver sandals, and apple-green paint.)

Harlem's gaudy conglomeration of homosexual and lesbian hangouts reflected a zone in which sexual ties of all stripes could flourish. "In Harlem I found courage and joy and tolerance," observed a homosexual character in Blair Niles's 1931 novel Strange Brother. "I can be myself there.... They know all about me and I don't have to lie."

[Continued here]

• Eric Garber: A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem [xroads.virginia.edu]

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a homosexual subculture, uniquely Afro-American in substance, began to take shape in New York's Harlem. Throughout the so- called Harlem Renaissance period, roughly 1920 to 1935, black lesbians and gay men were meeting each other [on] street corners, socializing in cabarets and rent parties, and worshiping in church on Sundays, creating a language, a social structure, and a complex network of institutions. Some were discreet about their sexual identities; others openly expressed their personal feelings. The community they built attracted white homosexuals as well as black, creating friendships between people of disparate ethnic and economic backgrounds and building alliances for progressive social change. But the prosperity of the 1920s was short-lived, and the Harlem gay subculture quickly declined following the Stock Market crash of 1929 and the repeal of Prohibition, soon becoming only a shadow of its earlier self. Nevertheless, the traditions and institutions created by Harlem lesbians and gay men during the Jazz Age continue to this day.

A history of jazz at The Guardian

A history of jazz in 50 key moments, as chosen by Guardian and Observer writers

• Jazz index [New York Times]

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (2012)

Where would jazz musicians and vocalists be without the Gershwins' score
from Porgy and Bess to draw on for inspiration?

A New Storm's Brewing Down on Catfish Row [New York Times, January 12, 2012]

The hurricane that's said to be headed for Catfish Row has yet to arrive early in the second act of "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess," which opened on Thursday night in a new, slimmed-down reincarnation at the Richard Rodgers Theater. The climate so far might be described as mostly cloudy and mild, as might this version of the show. But suddenly an elemental force takes possession of the stage, and its tremors course through the audience.

That's the storm raging within a woman who's tearing herself to pieces before our eyes, fighting with her infernal attraction to a man she knows she should be fleeing. For devastating theatrical impact, it's hard to imagine any hurricane matching the tempest that is the extraordinary Audra McDonald's Bess at the moment she is reunited with her former lover, Crown, played by Phillip Boykin. And no matter what they're calling it these days - a musical, I believe - "Porgy and Bess" has suddenly risen to its natural heights as towering, emotion-saturated opera.

[Continued here]

• Scott Brown: Theater Review: The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess and the Weight of History [New York magazine, January 12, 2012]

I'll admit: I don't miss the goat.

Granted, the goat and I were never properly introduced. The new, goatless production of Porgy and Bess-judiciously trimmed for Broadway and very daintily "updated" by director Diane Paulus and latter-day librettist Suzan-Lori Parks-is my first in-person visit to Catfish Row, the mythic black enclave that serves as both backdrop and chorus for George Gershwin's famously troublesome, uncontestably beautiful American folk opera. Porgy, since its birth in 1935, has always been a mass of potentially disastrous tensions: between "white" art and "black" idiom, drama and exoticism, rarefied culture and popular entertainment. With nothing to compare, I can only celebrate this production for what it is, a gorgeous and transportive theatrical rapture that consistently overspills the banks of its own limitations. The literal, the formal, and the sociopolitical are all swept away by a superior, torrential force: the musical.

• Original (1935) Porgy and Bess Cast Member Naida Rasbury Talks The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess [Broadway's Best Shows, November 15, 2011 ]

"One of the things about Porgy and Bess is that we were a family. I was in the first three productions, and for the most part we had all of the same people there. You got to know everybody. It was like you were really living what went on onstage. There wasn't Porgy and Bess tonight and everything else in between. We were Porgy and Bess all the time! That, to me, particularly as a kid, that was great. For me, as a youngster, that was fun.



• The Music Of Porgy And Bess with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (2009) [eMusic]
• Porgy And Bess (2010) with Miles Davis [eMusic]



• The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (2012) — Bess, You Is My Woman Now [YouTube]
• Porgy and Bess (1959) — Summertime, Bess, You Is My Woman Now and I Got Plenty o' Nuttin' [YouTube]

(Click on image to enlarge)

Dave Koz

The Sunday Conversation: Dave Koz [Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2010]

"Hello Tomorrow," L.A. saxophonist Dave Koz's first album of original material in seven years, recently debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Contemporary Jazz Album chart. Koz, 47, a platinum-selling artist and six-time Grammy nominee, comes to the Cerritos Center on Dec. 17 and 18 for "A Smooth Jazz Christmas 2010" with guests Jonathan Butler, Brian Culbertson and Candy Dulfer.

LAT: "Hello Tomorrow" comes out on the 20th anniversary of your first album. How do you think you've grown as an artist over those years?

DK: It's probably better to count the ways I haven't grown, because there's just been a complete sea change in how I approach things. But one thing that hasn't changed is why I play the saxophone. An obvious reason why I picked the saxophone is that my brother had a band when we were growing up, and they didn't have a sax player, and that was the only way I was going to get in the band. But truthfully, when I picked it up and played it, it was like finding another part of my body, as strange as that sounds. It became my best friend, my most trusted ally and confidante.

I started when I was 13, and like most kids, my world was exploding and a lot of stuff I couldn't figure out how to get out in words. So the sax became my vehicle for self-expression and getting out some of those emotions that I couldn't find the words for. That's probably been consistent throughout my career. I think everything else has changed.

[Continued here]

• Dave Koz: gay, single and lookin' for love [QNotes]



• Dave Koz — Hello Tomorrow (2010) [eMusic]



• Dave Koz — This Guys in Love with You (2011) [YouTube]
• Dave Koz and Brian Simpson — 9/11 Remembrance (2011) [YouTube]

Heather Bambrick

Heather Bambrick takes on weekday morning radio at Jazz.FM91 [XTRA, September 30, 2011]

Toronto jazz singer and award-winning radio personality Heather Bambrick has been named the new host of JAZZFM.91's popular morning-drive slot. It's a big promotion for Bambrick, who previously hosted a weekly show at the popular station.

And there are some pretty big shoes to fill. CBC icon Ralph Benmergui reigned supreme in the morning slot for six years, helping to introduce the station to new local and international listeners. When Benmergui left the station last year, veteran talk-show host John Donabie stepped in but departed after only 10 months. It was while filling in for Donabie that Bambrick decided to throw her hat into the ring for the role of the station's new permanent host.

"My fear was whether or not I could maintain it, and how it would change my life" says Bambrick. "Not to mention waking up at 4:30am. It's way busier than when I would host my Sunday show and be all alone at the station."

She need not have worried. Listeners have responded positively to the station's decision and have embraced Bambrick's warm and witty personality. Cheerful without being chirpy, and funny in that Jann Arden sort of way, Bambrick strikes the perfect balance of music and talk that made Benmergui so popular. She also relishes the interplay with JAZZFM's resident Puck, Jaymz Bee, whose mischievous banter with Benmergui was a program highlight.

[Continued here]

• Heather Bambrick [The Canadian Jazz Archive]

Heather Bambrick (vocalist) was born on January 19, 1971 in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. She moved to Toronto in 1993 to begin her studies in jazz, graduating from the University of Toronto where she is currently a member of the Faculty of Music (Jazz Studies).



• Heather Bambrick — Those Were The Days (2006) [eMusic]



• Ann Hampton Callaway and Heather Bambrick sing at Hugh's Room (2011) [YouTube]

Steven Gallavin

The jazz of Steven Gallavin: Crooner salutes gay men with Mad About the Boy [XTRA, February 1, 2012]

In 1932, "Mad About the Boy," a tender ballad about unrequited love written by Noël Coward, was first performed at the Adelphi Theatre in London, England. It was covered over the years by female vocal greats such as Julie London, Eartha Kitt and perhaps most famously, Dinah Washington. Those fine ladies may have been surprised to learn that Coward wrote that song about his own not-so-secret love, one he held for another man.

Singer Steven Gallavin wants that love to be known and celebrated. Inspired by Coward and his contemporary, Cole Porter, Gallavin has recorded an album of songs especially for gay men. The result is Mad About the Boy.

"I originally wanted only songs by gay authors, but I quickly realized that some other songs match perfectly, though their authors were straight, so I opened the field to gay stories."

[Continued here]

• The Gay Jazz Project [reFRESH, July 29, 2011]



• Steven Gallavin online



• Steven Gallavin — Mad about the Boy (2011) [YouTube]

Fred Hersch

Giant Steps: The Survival of a Great Jazz Pianist [New York Times, January 28, 2010]

Never a grandstander, unconcerned with publicity, Hersch has been a fiercely independent but unassuming presence on the New York jazz scene since he moved to the city at age 21 in 1977. He has made more than 45 albums as a solo performer, composer, bandleader or duo partner since 1991, when he released his first record of original material, a collection of unclassifiable songs composed for jazz rhythm section, tenor saxophone and cello, aptly titled, "Forward Motion." His body of work is clearly recognizable as a manifesto of contemporary jazz. "Some people think I sound like Fred," says Mehldau, who like Iverson is a former student of Hersch's. "That's because Fred was a major influence on me and on a lot of the players around today. Fred's musical world is a world where a lot of the developments of jazz history and all of music history come together in a very contemporary way. His style has a lot to do with thinking as an individual, and it has a lot to do with beauty. I wouldn't be doing what I do if I hadn't learned from Fred, and I think that's true of quite a few other people." ...

His determination to do things the Fred Hersch way has intensified considerably since the early '90s, when he made public his diagnosis of AIDS. Indeed, Hersch's range and prolificacy are such that he has needed half a dozen record labels for as many purposes: Nonesuch for Hersch the solo pianist; Sunnyside for his unorthodox quartet, the Pocket Orchestra; Palmetto for his quintet, the Fred Hersch Trio +2; Naxos for his hybrid jazz-classical concert music; various labels for his duet projects with singers as varied as Janis Siegel of the Manhattan Transfer, the veteran Brazilian vocalist Leny Andrade and the classical soprano Renée Fleming; and Concord for his concert at the Maybeck Recital Hall.

[Continued here]

• Fred Hersch [NPR]
• Embracing the Piano and the Material: Fred Hersch Trio, Live and Recorded, at the Village Vanguard [New York times, February 8, 2012 ]

In the quest to describe the music of Fred Hersch in a word - a preposterous task, but not a pointless one - you could do a lot worse than "refinement." Mr. Hersch, 56, is a pianist of cultivated taste and erudition; he's also the sort of jazz musician who brings a lissome elegance to his playing, disinclined to accentuate the effort behind it all. But there's another definition of refinement that has to do with painstaking progress, the incremental stretch toward an elusive ideal. That's the connotation he called to mind during his opening set at the Village Vanguard on Tuesday night.

Like most jazz pianists near his stature Mr. Hersch has history with the club, some of it preserved for posterity. "Alone at the Vanguard," his most recent album on Palmetto, is up for two awards at the Grammys on Sunday. "Live at the Village Vanguard," his 2003 Palmetto debut, captured the earthy finesse of what was then a new trio. This week's run is also being recorded for release, which means Mr. Hersch will have a similar document of his current trio, with John Hébert on bass and Eric McPherson on drums.



• Fred Hersch — Alone At The Vanguard (2011) [eMusic]



• Fred Hersch — Mood Indigo — Chivas Jazz Festival [YouTube]

Ann Hampton Callaway

Ann Hampton Callaway [Drama Queen, July 10, 2009]

Ann Hampton Callaway — the multiplatinum-selling pop and jazz singer/songwriter best known for writing and singing the theme from the TV hit "The Nanny" as well as songs for Barbra Streisand and others — will perform at Dizzy Club Coca-Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center from February 17 to March 1 to celebrate her new CD "At Last."

She has now started talking about her personal life in public for the first time. She and her partner Kari live in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. Ann likes to say "Ann Hampton Callaway's new CD is coming out on February 3 and so is she!!!" ...

DQ: Why now?

AHC: This was a long time in the happening. I've been out to my friends and my peers for many, many years. But I was also with a previous partner who didn't want me to be out, and I had to respect her wishes. But in the past year I've been much more involved in political activities, trying to elect a president who can bring about change, realizing the struggles we have with Prop 8. I also realized how short life is, and how important it is to give yourself a chance to be the most honest and real you. It seemed like the extra step I needed to take not only as an individual but as a citizen. I think that artists have the opportunity to offer inspiration to people who may still need it and I think even thought we've come a long way in this community, we still have a long way to go.

[Continued here]



• Ann Hampton Callaway — Easy Living (2005) [eMusic]



• Ann Hampton Callaway — How High the Moon [YouTube]
• Ann Hampton Callaway and Liza Minnelli — Stormy Weather [YouTube]

Patricia Barber

Patricia Barber [Wikipedia]

Patricia Barber... is an American jazz and blues singer, pianist, songwriter, and bandleader. She was awarded Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 in Creative Arts — Music Composition field. ...

Her music is centered on her singing, in a fairly low register and a traditional blues-jazz style, and her piano playing, which is technically accomplished. Her repertoire includes original compositions and standards drawn mostly from classic rock, including "Ode to Billie Joe," "A Taste of Honey," and "Black Magic Woman." She is known for imbuing her songs with intelligence and a wide and unusual vocabulary, which results in complex and witty lyrics. ...

Barber is a lesbian; interviews with her suggest that she does not try to hide this fact, but that she 'tires' of the public interest in her sexuality and dislikes the fact that it contributes to her fame....

[Continued here]

• Patricia Barber [NPR]



• Café Blue [eMusic]



• Patricia Barber — Use Me [YouTube]

Andy Bey

"Black, gay and HIV-positive-that's kind of a heavy load!"

Ashley Kahn: Andy Bey: A Vocal Master Returns [NPR, January 10, 2008]

It's said that if you truly want to hear a musician's talent, slow down the tempo. Andy Bey sings some of the slowest tempos today: Listening to him is like looking over a master artist's shoulder as he meticulously applies paint to a canvas.

"I like to take my time, but it can be still with an edge," Bey says. "You can still feel the groove, no matter how slow it is. So slow is all right with me, because slow can be very suspenseful."

But Bey isn't just about singing slowly - and calling him simply a jazz singer misses the point. There's the passion of gospel in his baritone, plus an operatic sense of drama.

"You know, I'm a lot of things," Bey says. "I don't mind being called a jazz whatever. Anybody can put a name on the thing. But it's much broader than that. It's about music."

[Continued here]

• Tony Cox: Andy Bey's 'American Song': Collection of Ballads Puts Jazz Singer Back in the Spotlight [NPR, February 3, 2004]

Bey recently joined NPR's Tony Cox to talk about his new CD, American Song, due in stores February 24. Critics are hailing Bey's latest effort, calling him one of the greatest singers of ballads in jazz today. Bey has also gained notoriety for speaking out about being a gay man and HIV positive.



• Shades Of Bey [eMusic]
• American Song [eMusic]



• Andy and The Bey Sisters — Love [YouTube]
• Andy and the Bey Sisters In Paris [YouTube]

Gary Burton

Gary Burton On JazzSet [NPR, September 1, 2011]

Rehearsing for the concert with all these friends, "I saw my life flash before my eyes," Gary Burton says with pleasure from the stage.

In 1960, at age 17, Burton came from Indiana to study at Berklee, a music school in a Boston brownstone. He stayed and helped transform the school into the educational powerhouse that it is today. This concert celebrates Berklee's golden anniversary. ...

"The simplest things that Gary does are incredible - from coordinating logistics to preparing sets, even things as small as how to write emails to members of the band," Lage says. "You step back and say, 'Oh, that's how you run a band.'"

[Continued here]

• Gary Burton [Wikipedia]

A true original on the vibraphone, Burton developed a pianistic style of four-mallet technique as an alternative to the usual two-mallets. This approach caused Burton to be heralded as an innovator and his sound and technique are widely imitated. He is also known for pioneering fusion jazz and popularizing the duet format in jazz, as well as being a major figure in jazz education. ...

Following an early marriage in his 20's, Burton married for a second time in 1975 to Catherine Goldwyn, granddaughter of film producer Samuel Goldwyn (1879-1974). Together for nearly a decade, the couple had two children, a daughter Stephanie (born 1978), and a son, Sam, (born 1980). In 1985, Burton publicly declared himself as a gay man, making him one of only a few openly gay jazz musicians. His longtime partner is Jonathan Chong.

• Gary Burton to Instruct Online Jazz Improvisation Course [Downbeat, December 6, 2011]

When he was a student at Berklee College of Music, Gary Burton was very interested in improvisation. When he became an educator, he took his incredible improvisation skills and laid the foundation for what would become the "Berklee approach" to teaching improvised music.

"I felt like that was something that I could uniquely offer to the students, because I was an active professional and what I was teaching them was, for me, the real thing," Burton said in a cover story in the October 2011 issue of DownBeat.

Now, the vibraphonist and six-time Grammy award winner is bringing this unique curriculum to a virtual classroom.



• For Hamp, Red, Bags, And Cal [eMusic]



• The New Gary Burton Quartet — Live at Porgy & Bess Vienna 2010 11 22 — Afro Blue [YouTube]

Billy "Sweet Pea" Strayhorn (1915—1967)

In fact, Mercer Ellington told Vanity Fair in 1999 that he always assumed that his father and
Strayhorn at least experimented together. "I just presumed as much," he said. "So did
the cats [in the band]. — The Advocate, February 13, 2001

Billy Strayhorn [Wikipedia]

William Thomas "Billy" Strayhorn... was an American composer, pianist and arranger, best known for his successful collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington lasting nearly three decades. His compositions include "Chelsea Bridge", "Take the "A" Train" and "Lush Life". ...

Strayhorn's relationship with Ellington was always difficult to pin down: Strayhorn was a gifted composer and arranger who seemed to flourish in Duke's shadow. Ellington was somewhat of a father figure and the band, by and large, was affectionately protective of the diminutive, mild-mannered, unselfish Strayhorn, nicknamed by the band "Strays", "Weely", and "Sweet Pea". Ellington may have taken advantage of him, but not in the mercenary way that others had taken advantage of Ellington; instead, he used Strayhorn to complete his thoughts, while giving Strayhorn the freedom to write on his own and enjoy at least some of the credit he deserved. Though Duke Ellington took credit for much of Strayhorn's work, he did not maliciously drown out his partner. Ellington would make jokes onstage like, "Strayhorn does a lot of the work but I get to take the bows!" ...

Strayhorn was openly gay. He participated in many civil rights causes. As a committed friend to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he arranged and conducted "King Fought the Battle of 'Bam'" for the Ellington Orchestra in 1963 for the historical revue My People, dedicated to Dr. King. ...

Strayhorn was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1964, which eventually caused his death in 1967. Strayhorn finally succumbed in the early morning on May 31, 1967, in the company of his partner, Bill Grove.

[Continued here]

• Independent Lens "Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life" [PBS]
• Lush Life by David Hajdu [Amazon.ca]



• Billy Strayhorn — Piano Passion (2005) [eMusic]
• Billy Strayhorn & Johnny Hodges — The Stanley Dance Sessions (2005) [eMusic]



• Independent Lens Preview "Billy Strayhorn — Lush Life" [YouTube]

Etta James (1938—2012)

The New Yorker's Mary Ellen Mark calls James "a singularly butch performer" who "knew something about loneliness, and, from time to time, what to do with it." — The Bilerico Project, January 22, 2012

Etta James [Wikipedia]

Etta James (born Jamesetta Hawkins...) was an American singer whose style spanned a variety of music genres including blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, gospel and jazz. Starting her career in the mid 1950s, she gained fame with hits such as "Dance With Me, Henry", "At Last", "Tell Mama", and "I'd Rather Go Blind" for which she claimed she wrote the lyrics. She faced a number of personal problems, including drug addiction, before making a musical resurgence in the late 1980s with the album The Seven Year Itch.

She is regarded as having bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and is the winner of six Grammys and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Grammy Hall of Fame in both 1999 and 2008. Rolling Stone ranked James number 22 on their list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and number 62 on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists. ...

James encountered a string of legal problems during the early 1970s due to her heroin addiction. She was continuously in and out of rehabilitation centers, including the Tarzana Rehabilitation Center, in Los Angeles, California. Her husband Artis Mills, whom she married in 1969, accepted responsibility when they were both arrested for heroin possession and served a 10-year prison sentence.

[Continued here]

• Etta James Dies at 73; Voice Behind 'At Last' [New York Times, January 20, 2012]

Ms. James was not easy to pigeonhole. She is most often referred to as a rhythm and blues singer, and that is how she made her name in the 1950s with records like "Good Rockin' Daddy." She is in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame.

She was also comfortable, and convincing, singing pop standards, as she did in 1961 with "At Last," which was written in 1941 and originally recorded by Glenn Miller's orchestra. And among her four Grammy Awards (including a lifetime-achievement honor in 2003) was one for best jazz vocal performance, which she won in 1995 for the album "Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday." ...

"A lot of people think the blues is depressing," she told The Los Angeles Times in 1992, "but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I'm singing life. People that can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies."

• Etta James dies at 73; acclaimed blues and R&B singer [Los Angeles Times, January 20, 2012]
• Etta James photographs [Los Angeles Times, January 20, 2012]



• At Last! (2011) [eMusic]



• Etta James — Something's Got A Hold On Me [YouTube]
• Etta James — Tell Mama [YouTube]

George Gershwin (1898—1937)

George Gershwin [Philosopedia]

Self-taught as a piano-player, Gershwin began writing songs and musicals as a teenager, quickly advancing from Tin Pan Alley to Broadway musicals. Considered by many to be America's greatest song composer, Gershwin wrote memorable standard after standard, including: "Lady, be Good!" "Strike Up the Band," "Funny Face," "The Man I Love," "Embraceable You," "Somebody Loves Me" and "They Can't Take That Away from Me." His more serious work: Rhapsody in Blue (1924), Piano Concerto in F (1925), Porgy and Bess (1934-5), and Three Preludes (1926). ...

Alan Jay Lerner described Ira as the only man he knew who was "cute." Harry Warren said Ira never had had a bad word for anyone. Louis Calhern told a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman he needed no such work because he knew Ira.

Gershwin, who liked to play Maurice Ravel's work, is said to have visited Ravel in France and, introducing himself, inquired, "Mr. Ravel, is it possible that you would give me piano lessons?" Ravel, who knew Gershwin's works, is said to have responded to the effect, "Mr. Gershwin, do come in. Is it possible you would give me some piano lessons?"...

        "You knew George was gay?" Stuart casually asked. I was nonplussed. One of my all-time favorite composers was gay, the person who wrote "The Man I Love" and "Rhapsody in Blue"?

        What Caesar had told Stuart is that showbiz cognoscenti knew about Gershwin's homosexuality, but the subject was not written about, in order to protect important people's reputations. George was only one of many whose sexual orientation was not mentioned and, in fact, still remains secret.

[Continued here]

• George Gershwin index [New York Times]



• George Gershwin plays Gershwin (2007) [eMusic]
• Gershwin on Screen I: "Girl Crazy" and "Rhapsody In Blue" [eMusic]
• Gershwin on Screen II: "Shall We Dance", "Damsel In Distress" [eMusic]
• Gershwin on Screen III: "Strike Up The Band", "Broadway Rhythm", "Ziegfeld Follies" and "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim" [eMusic]



• Rhapsody in Blue — Original 1924 Recording [YouTube]

Cole Porter (1891—1964)

Cole Porter [Wikipedia]

Cole Albert Porter... was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike most successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote both the lyrics and the music for his songs.

After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 30s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me, Kate.

Porter's other musicals include Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady, Anything Goes and Can-Can, and his numerous hit songs include "Night and Day", "I Get a Kick out of You", "Well, Did You Evah!" and "I've Got You Under My Skin". He also composed scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s. He was noted for his sophisticated, suggestive lyrics, clever rhymes and complex forms. ...

Porter maintained a luxury apartment in Paris, where he entertained lavishly. His parties were extravagant and scandalous, with "much gay and bisexual activity, Italian nobility, cross-dressing, international musicians, and a large surplus of recreational drugs."[3] In 1918, he met Linda Lee Thomas, a rich, Louisville, Kentucky-born divorcée eight years his senior,[1] whom he married the following year. She was in no doubt about Porter's homosexuality,[14] but it was mutually advantageous for them to marry: for Linda it offered continued social status and a partner who was the antithesis of her abusive first husband; for Porter it brought a respectable heterosexual front in an era when homosexuality was not publicly acknowledged. They were, moreover, genuinely devoted to each other and remained married from December 19, 1919 until Linda's death in 1954.

[Continued here]

• Cole Porter [PBS]

A contemporary of George Gershwin, Richard Rogers and Jerome Kern, Porter broke from the simple sentimentality that dominated Tin Pan Alley. His urbane wit and musical complexity won him the affection of the nation. Songs such as "What Is This Thing Called Love," "I Get A Kick Out of You," and "Too Darn Hot," became instant hits and have remained classics. While his name was associated with many of these upbeat show toons, a more melancholy side could be seen in such wonderful songs as "Miss Otis Regrets" and "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye."



• Cole Sings Porter: Rare and Unreleased Songs From Can-Can and Jubilee [eMusic]



• Cole Porter — You're The Top [YouTube]

Lester Young (1909—1959)

Just after the death of saxophonist Lester Young in 1959, Robert Reisner, writing in Down Beat, launched
a tradition by heatedly denying the rumored homosexuality of Young — a musician whose colleagues in
the Basie orchestra reportedly called him "Miss Thing." — James Gavin (JazzTimes), December 2001

Lester Young [Wikipedia]

Lester Willis Young..., nicknamed "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. He also played trumpet, violin, and drums.

Coming to prominence while a member of Count Basie's orchestra, Young was one of the most influential players on his instrument, playing with a cool tone and using sophisticated harmonies. He invented or popularized much of the hipster ethos which came to be associated with the music. ...

In September 1944, Young and Jo Jones were in Los Angeles with the Basie Band when they were inducted into the U.S. Army. Unlike many white musicians, who were placed in band outfits such as the ones led by Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw, Young was assigned to the regular army where he was not allowed to play his saxophone. Based in Ft. McClellan, Alabama, Young was found with marijuana and alcohol among his possessions. He was soon court-martialed. Young did not fight the charges and was convicted. He served one year in a detention barracks and was dishonorably discharged in late 1945. His experience inspired his composition "D.B. Blues" (with D.B. standing for detention barracks).

[Continued here]

• Lester Young [PBS]



• The Alternative Lester — Original 1936—39 Recordings [eMusic]



• Lester Young [YouTube]

Chet Baker (1929—1988)

Chet Baker [Wikipedia]

Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker... was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer. Though his music earned him a large following (particularly albums featuring his vocals, such as Chet Baker Sings), Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit." He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

[Continued here]

• Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker by James Gavin [Amazon.ca]

The 1988 funeral of famed trumpet player and vocalist Chet Baker in L.A. was emblematic of the disorder and dysfunction of his life though he was world famous, only a small clique of loyal fans and family attended, and they were fighting with one another. Even his death in Amsterdam (possibly an overdose or drug-related murder) was an unsettled, sordid enigma.

• David Hajdu: The Life and Death of Cool [New York Times, June 30, 2002]

The author is fearless in his exploration of the mixed sexuality at play in Baker's life, work and career. When ''Chettie'' was a tot, we learn, his favorite toys were a baby doll and a Tinker Toy car, and his mother taught him songs of girlish yearning. That photogenic youthful face of his was boyishly pretty, like his singing voice, which was often mistaken for a woman's or derided as ''fey'' and ''effete.'' Even in his final years, when the fashion photographer Bruce Weber made the documentary ''Let's Get Lost,'' Baker seemed to have taken on the mystique of a tragic gay icon, a jazz Camille.

• Chet Baker [New York Times index]

As much as any musician of his generation, Baker epitomized a romantic coolness whose mystique involved an alluring strain of danger. Handsome and talented but imperiously self-destructive, the man who has been called ''the James Dean of jazz'' was a connoisseur of fast cars, women and drugs. Addicted to heroin for most of his adult life, he died last May at 58 after a fall from a hotel window in Amsterdam.

The West Coast cool jazz that Baker distilled was languid, passive, taciturn. Even though he was a supreme melodist who brought a singing lyricism to every vocal and instrumental phrase, the underlying mood of his music was one of impenetrable sadness and lonely self-absorption.

• Phil Johnson: Pop & Jazz: As though he had wings [The Independent, May 21, 1999]

In an era when masculinity in America appeared to be in crisis, and when the voices of artists as diverse as Johnny Ray, Frank Sinatra, and the rockabilly singer Charlie Feathers all seemed to be choking with tears, Chet's smacked-out, emotionally deadened, high tenor struck a powerful chord. On "Someone to Watch Over Me", Chet is that little boy lost in the wood; his creamy crooning of the corny sentiments of "My Buddy" make it into an unintentional gay anthem, and when he sings "Let's Get Lost", the listener is transported into a kind of dreamy, narcotic haze. Like heroin, it's powerful stuff.

Despite having more albums in print than any other jazz artist, alive or dead, Chet Baker has never been given the credit that he deserves by hardcore jazz critics and fans, for whom almost all vocalists are disdained as unreconstructed softies. It's a matter of sexual politics as much as music. While he was alive, Baker's androgynous voice, recessive trumpet style and dreamboat looks all seemed too feminine to count as "real" jazz for macho commentators. Even today, his entry in the reference work, Jazz: the Rough Guide, is derisively short for such an important figure.



• Chet Baker In Paris (2011) [eMusic]



• Chet Baker — Time After Time [YouTube]

Bill Evans (1929—1980)

Bill Evans [Wikipedia]

William John Evans, known as Bill Evans,... was an American jazz pianist. His use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines influenced a generation of pianists including: Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, John Taylor, Steve Kuhn, Don Friedman, Marian McPartland, Denny Zeitlin, Bobo Stenson, Warren Bernhardt, Michel Petrucciani and Keith Jarrett, as well as many other musicians world-wide. The music of Bill Evans continues to inspire younger pianists like Fred Hersch, Bill Charlap, Lyle Mays, Eliane Elias and arguably Brad Mehldau, early in his career. He is considered by some to be the most influential post-World War II jazz pianist. Evans had a distinct playing style in which his neck would often be stooped very low, and his face parallel to the piano. ...

Evans's drug addiction most likely began during his stint with Miles Davis in the late 1950s. A heroin addict for much of his career, his health was generally poor, and his financial situation worse, for most of the 1960s. By the end of that decade, he appeared to have succeeded in overcoming his addiction to heroin. However, during the 1970s, cocaine use became a serious and ultimately fatal problem for Evans. His body finally gave out in September 1980, when - ravaged by psychoactive drugs, a perforated liver, and a lifelong battle with hepatitis - he died in New York City of a bleeding ulcer, cirrhosis of the liver, and bronchial pneumonia. Evans's friend Gene Lees bleakly summarized Evans's struggle with drugs to Peter Pettinger as "the longest suicide in history"....

[Continued here]

• Jazz Pianist Bill Evans to Appear [Posthumously] on Queer Eye For the Straight Guy [All About Jazz, April 1, 2004]
• 30 years later, the Bill Evans magic does not die [Globe & Mail, January 31, 2012]

Jazz musicians tend to love Evans's work for slightly different reasons. Start with his sense of harmony. A dedicated student of Debussy and Ravel, Evans admired the tonal ambiguity the impressionist composers brought to their lushly harmonized compositions. He was also a student of jazz theorist George Russell, whose modal technique based improvisation on scales instead of chords, and that side of his playing was a key influence in the creation of Kind of Blue.

• Bob Kenselaar: Breakfast with Bill Evans [All About Jazz, February 16, 2012]

We sit down in Evans' dining area. I've got my notepad and tape recorder, and he has his omelet and fresh-squeezed orange juice. It's funny to be with Evans at the breakfast table -- a peculiarly ordinary situation to be in with one of the most important contemporary jazz musicians around, possibly the most accomplished and influential practitioner of the improvising trio format. But then it's a somewhat fitting setting, since Evans is an extremely relaxed, humble and unassuming man, a straightforward person whose approach to life and music is direct.



• Live in Nice 1978 [eMusic]



• Bill Evans — Waltz For Debby [YouTube]

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (1886—1939)

Ma Rainey [Wikipedia]

Ma Rainey... was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues.

She began performing at the age of 12 or 14, and recorded under the name Ma Rainey after she and Will Rainey were married in 1904. They toured with F.S. Wolcott's Rabbit Foot Minstrels and later formed their own group called Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues. From the time of her first recording in 1923 to five years later, Ma Rainey made over 100 recordings. Some of them include, Bo-weevil Blues (1923), Moonshine Blues (1923), See See Rider (1924), Black Bottom (1927), and Soon This Morning (1927).

Ma Rainey was known for her very powerful vocal abilities, energetic disposition, majestic phrasing, and a 'moaning' style of singing similar to folk tradition. Though her powerful voice and disposition are not captured on her recordings, the other characteristics are present, and most evident on her early recordings, Bo-weevil Blues and Moonshine Blues. Ma Rainey also recorded with Louis Armstrong in addition to touring and recording with the Georgia Jazz Band. Ma Rainey continued to tour until 1935 when she retired to her hometown.

[Continued here]

• Lesbian Blues [Uncensored History of the Blues, September 22, 2005]

Male guitar players get most of the attention in blues discussion. I thought I'd devote a little time to the women. Particularly to the women who like other women. There's a treasury of blues songs by and about lesbians....

Ma Rainey was the first superstar of the classic blues women. She was a married woman, of course married to Pa Rainey, but in the 1920s, her love of women was no secret. She was arrested in 1925 after a police raid at a party where several women including Ma were found together naked and having sex....



• Ma Rainey's Black Bottom [eMusic]



• Ma Rainey — Booze And Blues [YouTube]

Bessie Smith (1894—1937)

Bessie Smith [Wikipedia]

Bessie Smith... was an American blues singer.

Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and, along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent jazz vocalists. ...

By 1923, when she began her recording career, Smith had taken up residence in Philadelphia. There she met and fell in love with Jack Gee, a security guard whom she married on June 7, 1923, just as her first record was released. During the marriage — a stormy one, with infidelity on both sides — Smith became the highest paid black entertainer of the day, heading her own shows, which sometimes featured as many as 40 troupers, and touring in her own railroad car. Gee was impressed by the money, but never adjusted to show business life, or to Smith's bisexuality. In 1929, when she learned of his affair with another singer, Gertrude Saunders, Bessie Smith ended the relationship, although neither of them sought a divorce.

Smith eventually found a common-law husband in an old friend, Richard Morgan, who was Lionel Hampton's uncle and the antithesis of her husband. She stayed with him until her death.

[Continued here]

• Bessie Smith [NPR]
• Bessie Smith [PBS]
• Chris Albertson: Lesbianism in the life of Bessie Smith [xroads.virginia.edu]



• Empress Of The Blues [eMusic]



• Bessie Smith — St. Louis Blues (1929) [YouTube]

Alberta Hunter (1895—1984)

Alberta Hunter [Wikipedia]

Alberta Hunter... was an American blues singer, songwriter, and nurse. Her career had started back in the early 1920s, and from there on, she became a successful jazz and blues recording artist, being critically acclaimed to the ranks of Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith. In the 1950s, she retired from performing and entered the medical field, only to successfully resume her singing career in her eighties. ...

Hunter was a lesbian, though she kept her sexuality relatively private. She began a relationship with Lottie Tyler while living in Harlem, and Tyler traveled to France with Hunter in August 1927. Though their relationship later ended, the two remained friends until Tyler's death.

[Continued here]

• New York Send-Off | Of Honky-Tonks and Supper Clubs [New York Times, August 16, 2010]

In the late '70s she was in her 80s, but to hear her version of the blues was to believe that she was enjoying a most delicious sex life - a raunchy, randy, endlessly entertaining time in the sack - the sort that my pals and I, in our early 20s, hadn't yet even dared to imagine. Alberta was a total charmer, loving her music, loving her audience, in a space so intimate you could see the silver in her hair and the naughty twinkle in her eyes. I was seduced. I packed up and moved north.



• Beale Street Blues (2008) [eMusic]



• Alberta Hunter — My Castle's Rockin [YouTube]

The Village Vanguard

The Village Vanguard [Wikipedia]

The Village Vanguard is a jazz club located at 178 7th Avenue South in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22, 1935, by Max Gordon. At first, it also featured other forms of music such as folk music and beat poetry, but it switched to an all-jazz format in 1957.

Over 100 jazz albums have been recorded at the venue since the (originally single) album under Sonny Rollins' name in 1957. The two most famous engagements in the club's history are probably those of Bill Evans and John Coltrane, both of which took place in 1961....

[Continued here]

• Embracing the Piano and the Material: Fred Hersch Trio, Live and Recorded, at the Village Vanguard [New York times, February 8, 2012 ]

In the quest to describe the music of Fred Hersch in a word - a preposterous task, but not a pointless one - you could do a lot worse than "refinement." Mr. Hersch, 56, is a pianist of cultivated taste and erudition; he's also the sort of jazz musician who brings a lissome elegance to his playing, disinclined to accentuate the effort behind it all. But there's another definition of refinement that has to do with painstaking progress, the incremental stretch toward an elusive ideal. That's the connotation he called to mind during his opening set at the Village Vanguard on Tuesday night.

Yvonne "Miss Dixie" Fasnacht (1910—2011)

Yvonne "Miss Dixie" Fasnacht Dies at 101 in New Orleans [The Advocate, November 19, 2011]

Whoever said good booze and good times wasn't healthy hadn't met Yvonne "Miss Dixie" Fasnacht, the quirky, plain-talking, and fun-loving lesbian owner of two infamous New Orleans gay bars. When Fasnacht died last Sunday, in her Metairie, Louisiana home, she was 101.

Dixie's Bar of Music became a place where LGBT folks mingled comfortably with luminaries like Helen Hayes, Danny Kaye, Walter Cronkite, and more than one congressman, long before coming out of the closet was considered an option. According to NOLA.com, Dixie's was opened on St. Charles Ave. in the Central Business District in 1939. A decade later she moved it to Bourbon Street in the French Quarter.

"Dixie's was the kind of place where Uptown and downtown, straight and gay, celebrities and regular folks rubbed shoulders," a customer said in a 1996 Times-Picayune interview that included this observation from another former regular: "Everybody who was anybody ended up at Dixie's."

Despite that lofty reputation, "it was a gay bar," said Frank Gagnard, a former Times-Picayune critic, who was a customer.

"It was more a social center than it was a pickup bar," he said. "It was where gay people went to meet friends. Miss Dixie didn't allow any hanky-panky at all."

[Continued here]

• Yvonne 'Miss Dixie' Fasnacht, bar proprietor, dies at age 101 [NOLA, November 16, 2011]

The bar got its name because Ms. Fasnacht, a lifelong New Orleanian, was a musician who played the saxophone and clarinet and pounded the tambourine.

In her youth, she joined a local group called the Harmony Maids. When the Smart Set, an all-girl band, came to town and the saxophone player left, Ms. Fasnacht filled in.

The band later called her to join the musicians in Pittsburgh, where, Ms. Fasnacht said in a 1996 interview, she saw snow for the first time.

Because that bowled her over, one of the musicians said, "We're not calling you Yvonne anymore. We're calling you Dixie," Ms. Fasnacht said in the interview. "Anyhoo, I've been Dixie ever since."

• Rocking the Cradle of Jazz [Ms. magazine, Winter, 2004]

Dixie's Bar of Music holds another distinction in New Orleans' history: It was considered one of the city's first gay bars. Sexuality is not something people of Miss Dixie's generation discuss easily, but she will agree that the gay crowd was "very loyal."

So were the Fasnacht sisters: In 1962, when an entire gay Mardi Gras Carnival Krewe was arrested, Miss Dixie posted their bail. In 1997, she was honored by the gay and lesbian community of New Orleans as a "living testament to the history of gay New Orleans."

• Bourbon and Coke: 1937 [Shorpy, July 10, 2010]