Enjoyment

Can’t wait for Sunday afternoon for your Dabbler music fix? Never fear, here’s a midweek special from Patrick Kurp…

What these performances have in common besides the pleasure I take in watching and listening to them is the evident pleasure the musicians take in performing. The Miles Davis, back-turned-to-the-audience pose squelches any enjoyment I might find in a piece of music. Arrogance and narcissistic preening have an effect identical to saltpeter’s in another setting. I’m likelier to have a good time when a musician or any artist appears to be doing the same.

Slim Gaillard (1916-1991) is a sui generis American oddity, a pianist, singer and all-around performer best known for an absurdly hip jazz language he invented and spoke fluently, Vout. Think of it as a bop-inflected Esperanto, and keep in mind that Gaillard was so confident of his own hipness, he couldn’t take it seriously. What’s evident from this performance of “Cement Mixer” is that Gaillard was a happy performer who enjoyed making his audience happy.

 

Stan Rogers (1949-1983) may be the least likely musician to appear on a list of pleasure-giving, pleasure-taking performers: He was a folk singer and Canadian. “Barrett’s Privateers” is a sea shanty, of all things, and appeared on his 1976 album Fogarty’s Cove. It’s rousing and irresistibly catchy, a natural drinking song that makes you want to pump your arm, stomp and bellow. Rogers wrote it and here performs it in someone’s kitchen. His baritone is splendid and his early death absurd…

Another oddity: Norman “Hurricane” Smith (1923-2008), who engineered all the EMI studio albums by The Beatles through Rubber Soul and later worked with Pink Floyd. I remember hearing “Oh, Babe, What Would You Say?” in 1972, loving the song for its straight-faced goofiness, and having no idea of Smith’s connection with The Beatles. Here Smith performs his biggest hit on The Tonight Show, and note his unembarrassed sense of fun despite his wardrobe. And speaking of hipness, check out the alto player.

Such a list would be incomplete without the presence of Louis Armstrong, who never saw the alleged inconsistency in entertainment as art, or vice versa. Here he performs “Mack the Knife” on The Flip Wilson Show in 1970, the year before his death.

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5 thoughts on “Enjoyment

  1. dave_lull@yahoo.com'
    Dave Lull
    September 28, 2010 at 13:38

    Before I even started listening to any of Patrick’s choices, I couldn’t help but think of Erroll Garner, and now that I’ve listened to Slim Gaillard, whom I didn’t know about, I’m sure Mr Garner belongs among these choices.

    Here’s Terry Teachout on Erroll Garner:

    ‘Garner was a self-taught musician who could not read music. (Asked why he never bothered to learn, he famously retorted, “Hell, man, nobody can hear you read.”) Though he worked almost exclusively with trios, his irresistibly buoyant playing had a near-orchestral feel. At medium and fast tempos, he brusquely “strummed” close-clipped chords with his left hand—four to a bar, just like the rhythm guitarist in a swing band—while his right hand, which often lagged tantalizingly behind the beat, alternated between bustling single-note lines and delectably squashy chordal riffs….

    ‘One of Garner’s albums was called The Most Happy Piano, and that sums him up very nicely. As Joseph Epstein wrote of H.L. Mencken, “He achieves his effect through the magical transfer of joie de vivre.” You simply cannot listen to his best recordings without breaking out in an ear-to-ear grin. What’s more, Garner was by all accounts as likable as the music he made. As George Avakian, his producer at Columbia, recalled, “He was really like a pixie or an elf. When you split with Erroll at the end of an evening you left with a happy smile and a good feeling. No worries at all. Off to bed feeling great. That’s what Erroll did for people.”‘
    http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/archives20060129.shtml#104935

    And here’s an example of his most happy piano:

    I get a kick out of you
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VHUpGxFJJ8

  2. Gaw
    September 28, 2010 at 14:20

    Slim Gaillard is a great find – I’d never heard of him. Lovely bit of blues at the end of that clip, which, perhaps wrong-headedly, reminded me somehow of Jimi Hendrix! I looked up Gaillard’s Wikipedia entry and amongst a number of remarkable biographical details is this:

    Gaillard’s childhood in Cuba was spent cutting sugar-cane and picking bananas, as well as occasionally going to sea with his father [who may have been Greek or possibly German]. However, at the age of 12, he accompanied his father on a world voyage and was accidentally left behind on the island of Crete. After working on the island for a while, he made his home in Detroit.

  3. finalcurtain@gmail.com'
    mahlerman
    September 28, 2010 at 14:47

    Like Gaw, I have to thank you Patrick for unearthing Slim Gaillard – the name rang a bell, but off-stage. And yes, what does a smile cost? His joy in making music simply spins across the footlights. Is it me, or were his hands Guinness-Book-Of-Records huge?
    Saw/heard Miles doing that back to the audience thing several times, most recently toward the end at Hammersmith Odeon, but the buffs just lapped it up. His Bobness is guilty too; a couple of years ago at Brixton Academy he just looked fed-up, couldn’t be arsed – but the music was superb.
    Perhaps when you get that big, and you have been going for that long, and you have that much sugar, you can do as you please?

  4. fchantree@yahoo.co.uk'
    Gadjo Dilo
    September 29, 2010 at 05:37

    Ah, you’re a man after my own heart, Mr Kurp, lovely stuff!

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