Starting today I will slowly eliminate my “Notebooks” from this blog. The title for the blog will remain. If anyone wants to read the “Notebooks” in full I suggest that he or she go to Scribd, their new home, and access the book through my name and its title. I will keep all the jazz compilations and references on this blog. I will continue to slow blog and to post my thoughts on old and new media, politics, Washington, my critiques of the press, an occasional review or two about films, television and even books, and my columns as they appear on The Digital Journalist. Thank you for reading and for your loyalty.
January 4, 2010
Thoughts on Blogging for 2010
Thoughts on Blogging for 2010
By
Ron Steinman
Despite my having a blog, I am not a blogger by nature. That is why there is sometimes as long as three or four weeks between any blog I write and post. I am more of a deadline person based on many years as a working journalist. Having a deadline means that you are constantly fighting the clock. In fact, you devote your life to beating time, to stay ahead of the curve, in order to rise above your competition. These days competition is everywhere, especially among the mostly amateur bloggers, many of whom seem to have nothing else to do. Being a full time blogger means that one has to actually sit at a computer, pontificate, and even muse about almost every little thing that comes his or her way. That is not who I am. I have a busy life, one that engages me fully and one that I enjoy. I subscribe to the muted theory of slow blogging, but even with that in mind, I am even slower than most.
Questions arise about how to proceed. What should I write about? Is there something that engages me more than something else? Should I write about how bi-partisanship in Washington, and probably everywhere else, is a dream denied? It is dead. Everyone knows this, so why the pretense? Do I say again that President Obama can only succeed, by forgetting the other party and go his own way? Everyone knows this so why write about it again?
I am a democrat. I often lean left. Call me liberal. I know, that is dirty word among some of you. I believe that unless government helps those who cannot help themselves, we will do undue harm to the nation. It is easy to say that my wayward brothers and sisters in the Republican Party have few, if any new ideas. Perhaps that is what being a conservative means. The Republican mantra is negative, negative, negative. Everything for those in that party begins and ends with money. They believe that the deficit is going to sink America. Maybe it will. I, however, think not. America has always lived on deficit spending, except during part of the Clinton years. But everyone knows this, really, so why waste my time on the obvious.
Should I blog that too many in the Congress give lip service to the oft repeated, “folks at home, ” whoever be the birthers, tea baggers, progressives, you name it. Should I write that Congress is dysfunctional? No kidding. For some, the government is too intrusive. Too bad. I don’t think so but it has become a tired story. Many have said that in the past and they say it now. It is boring to write about the same things that everyone else has.
Health care reform is the centerpiece of the Obama administration. The bill is far from perfect. But it is a necessary start. And, if there is something wrong with wanting to see an additional 30 million plus have health insurance where none was available before, show me why not. In the end, a healthier society costs the taxpayer less money. Do I write about this and add a few hundred words to the millions already out there floating in space? Nah. It is easy to add to words already in print. In fact, it is too easy.
I can sit here at my computer and design sentences to make any point I want. It is the beauty of words on paper. Who, though is listening? Who is reading? Is an audience of one or more worth any time I may spend on making coherent all the ideas floating inside me? I wonder.
Do you want to know my opinion about overpaid college football coaches and the hypocritical intuitions of higher learning that hire them? Should I write about Tiger Woods? I like to watch some sports on TV and when I hear one announcers refer to college players as “student athletes,” prepare to hear me scream.
I get tired of reading movie reviewers who spend too much time on theory and never get around to saying what they really think of the film in question. I could write forever how commercials on TV are often better and sometimes more fun to watch than the shows they sponsor. But that is meaningless to a serious worldview unless you happen to be an advertising account executive. Ultimately, having a sense of the how the world functions is far more important than TMZ, the leader in Web site trash and awful TV. However, the folks at TMZ and similar sites have a formula that works and an audience that would rather overdose on celebrity foibles than the need for say, understanding nuclear disarmament. There is more, so much more but I’ll stop here and let you, dear reader, fill in the blanks if you agree or disagree with me.
I enjoy writing. I wonder, though, do I have that much more to say that will interest a reader, especially a reader who has thousands of other writers, and so-called writers, and dedicated bloggers bouncing around his or her computer screen with abandon searching for one reader, two readers, three readers and more? Ah, there is the heart of what I have been trying to say. Dear reader, do you really care or has the enormous overload of words on the Internet drugged you into placid submission? Do not get me started on commenting on online social networks. That is a whole other subject for analysis.
Having, as all of us have, lived through the economic mess we are still fighting our way out of, we deserve something more than hearing the same things repeated. Because of that, you should not expect any regular blogging from me in the future. I am still a slow blogger at heart and I mean to stay that way. I have a busy life. Because of that, I may not concern myself with any of those subjects mentioned above. That said there might not be much else left to write about.
I just thought I would let you know how I feel. Blogging is infectious, though. Check me out when you can, just to see if I have put any new words to paper.
Until then, have a great year.
February 20, 2009
Survival Manual Jazz Memories
“Survival Manual” Jazz Memories
By
Ron Steinman
For a number of years I have been working on a book about serious illness, near death and finally, survival. Through the years the work has had many titles. I call the latest edition, “Survival Manual.” It is the basis for my new blog, SurvivalManual.wordpress.com. Though the book takes place in 1992, memories of past events are a big part of it. Those who have read my thoughts and experiences with jazz in the “Notebooks, “ know there was a time when jazz was very significant in my life. It still is, though it is different now than it was in the past. My memories of those years are more important than any experience with jazz that I have today. I have not been to a jazz club in years. I listen to jazz on disc and on tape. I still have my favorite small groups and a few big bands from the late thirties, through the forties, and of course bop, particularly hard bop, meaning Charlie Parker, early Miles, Dizzy, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Christian, Max Roach, John Coltrane and many others. The following excerpts are from “Survival Manual.” First, there are a few short notes. Then there is a long section about my visits to Minton’s Playhouse on 118th Street in Harlem when I was a teenager living in Brooklyn. In those days, I purposively trekked to places that were mysterious and unknown for the sake of hearing music that moved me in unexpected ways.
****
1992
I have a small boom box alongside my bed. Red Garland is playing “All Mornin’ Long” with John Coltrane on tenor. Though bed-ridden, I sway as best I can, as gently as I can, to the looping piano sound. I nod my head knowingly with the music.
I listen to Miles Davis play “Round About Midnight” in two consecutive versions, one with John Coltrane on tenor, the other with Sonny Rollins on tenor. Philly Joe Jones plays drums on both versions. Two consecutive sets with Miles and Philly Joe. Trane and Sonny.
A Sonny Rollins tape is playing “Freedom Suite” in the background. The rich honk and lilting tone of the saxophone fills the spaces and dark corners of the room, enriching my soul.
Laying in bed in recovery my mind wanders back many years when I wandered the far reaches of Greenwich Village. I think of the Half Note on Spring and Hudson. I need a Sunday afternoon session of listening to bop from the small center stage above the bar, an ice-cold beer, a plate of baked ziti and a hot burning Camel that I remembering that I inhaled between chews of pasta and sips of Schaefer. I sigh with sweet remembered pleasure.
In the hospital, after what physicians called an “event” my mind again gravitated to jazz, the music I loved. This following is from my memory bank.
Despite the hubbub (in the hospital), I could hear, and see, Thelonious Monk blowing “Bemsha Swing” at the Five Spot on the Bowery. Monk sat in the corner at the piano, alone and within his self. The piano clearly beaten and battered from thousands of days of use, scarred with cigarette burns and the permanent rings that came from hundreds of wet glasses casually place on its top. A glass of whiskey was always half full to his right on the piano’s top. His fingers gently prodded the keys to make music you had to think twice about because it seemed to come from another dimension, yet it was swinging, always swinging. Monk, the genius, seated well back from the keyboard, dreamily creating those other worldly sounds of his, oblivious to the clinking glasses and muffled voices in the audience.
Charlie Parker’s alto oozes and honks, bleats and chirps, from the cassette player at the foot of my bed. I listen to “Cool Blues,” and “Orthinology.” Both are on the same tape that I made after culling them from old seventy-eight records that I bought in a garage sale in eastern Pennsylvania when I was in college forty years before. They have a flat, scratchy sound, not the almost hollow CD echo of perfectly placed mikes and well-tuned, well-balanced instruments. It is a sound that reminded me of Minton’s in Harlem, and Birdland in midtown Manhattan, where the notion of acoustics was as foreign as I was, a lone white boy standing at the bar, smoking and drinking, mesmerized by the music and wondering if it would ever be possible for me to create similar sounds of swinging pain and joy in words, music, or even thought.
On nights when I could afford it, I rode the subway to 42 Street from deep inside middle class, Jewish, white Flatbush. If I didn’t go to Birdland, I changed to the Eighth Avenue line and sat on a beige wicker covered seat in a clean, pre-graffiti free train to 125th Street. On the train, I read The Nation and Downbeat to keep me occupied. I made my notes in small lined pocket pads about everything that interested me and that impressed me at seventeen, especially the good looking girls that I lusted after and dreamed about late at night alone in my attic room. Yes, I had an attic room, my very own where my thoughts floated through nights of sleeplessness when I was alone.
Once in Harlem, I walked swiftly through the streets. I looked straight ahead, making sure even in those days that I avoided eye contact out of fear as an alien. I arrived quietly at Minton’s entrance where pale light filtered into the busy street. I pulled the door and entered slowly, carefully, self effacing, pulling at my invisible forelock. The heavyset bartender, who had seen me many times previously, and who winter and summer always had a sheen of sweat on his dark black skin did not welcome me or greet me as he did other customers, most of who were black. I knew I was out of place. In the eyes of many Minton’s patrons I knew that as a white, I did not exist. At first I experienced what I thought was their hatred. None of them seemed curious about me, who I was, where I came from. Not one offered their friendship. It was something I craved and desired along with more hair on his cheeks and less acne on his forehead.
I had learned to play it cool after more than a dozen trips to the jazz club. It was not necessarily be-bop, Dizzy cool, but it was my version of Jewish white–once again–teenaged cool in a black bar in Harlem. I knew it would have to do. As long as I did not make a fool of myself I would survive to listen and watch for another night. I lived with how they received or did not receive me. After I learned to play their game of “cool” the bar regulars seemed to have learned to live with me. In time I accepted the regulars at Minton’s and their ability to look directly at me and see through me as if I did not exist. I understood that for them, I was invisible. I never really understood their attitude having spent my life in Brooklyn and not really knowing much about civil rights. Years later I understood what was going on, especially after covering civil rights stories in the South. At seventeen, I did not believe it was my fight.
I was there to listen to live jazz, known as race music to many of my friends. Broadcast by uptown radio stations with weak signals in the New York area, I regularly listened and dreamed, fanatically after midnight in the silence of my room. This night, as on many other nights, I spent the next three hours standing alone at the bar, sipping my Ballentine Ale. I swayed effortlessly to the music, transported into a world of mysterious ecstasy. I smoked one Camel after another, lighting my matches with one hand. My cigarette hung loosely from my thin upper lip, an obvious copy of some film noir character. I picked the white paper from my dry lips when the cigarette stayed too long in a dry corner of my mouth. I slouched against the bar, one foot on the brass rail below, one hand tightly wrapped around the wet, long neck of the ale bottle as if afraid it would fly away were I to take my fingers off the glass bottle, already dripping with droplets of water.
I said nothing to anyone, a silent counsel to myself. A times there were a few other whites that were not musicians in the long, narrow room with its small bandstand at the far end away from the door. They were a fleeting curiosity for me. To them, I was apparently the same. They gave me the compulsory, occasional sidelong glimpse to make certain I was not a mirage, as they were not to me. After casually observing me once, they sometimes glanced back quickly to see if I was still standing at the bar. Then they turned away from me to face the tiny bandstand shrouded in a blue tobacco haze filled with minute flecks of snow-white dust dancing intuitively to the sound of the music. They, like me, focused attentively on the musicians and listened intensely to the sharply invoked music darting around their heads in millions of invisible, impossible to formulate notes. The audience has come to hear and see musicians make music they knew from the bleats and honks and trills and runs and yes, melodies, that had entered their hearts like crystal mites, would live forever if they gave them a chance to circulate in their emotions.
I wondered as a teenager why the music, at times melodic and bluesy, at times dissonant, at times fiercely graphic, gave me all that unadorned delight, allowing me those special moments of escape from the turmoil that seemed grafted onto my young soul?
More than forty years later as I recovered from near death, I still had no answers. Especially when I was ill, I continued to have deep and lasting gratification when I listened to jazz. Often nothing else was necessary or mattered.
Today jazz still moves as no other music does, except for Bach, Mozart, some Brahms and Stravinsky. Thinking about jazz reminds me that as a boy I wanted to play clarinet. I wanted to be Benny Goodman, Pee Wee Russell, Sidney Bechet, and Barney Bigard. My mother refused to let me play the clarinet because she said, “I would blow my brains out.” I took piano lessons for ten years instead and can barely play a note, though I can read music. Trying to play gave me an enormous appreciation of classical music. In the end, I knew soon enough that I could never be a musician. Just as well. Listening and watching fine musicians do their stuff still works for me.
Read RonSteinman’sSurvivalManual Blog
January 26, 2009
Notebooks Compilation 1958-1961: Jazz, Reading, Movies
Final Notebooks Compilation 1958-1961: Jazz, Reading, Movies.
By
Ron Steinman
In the late 1950s my working life went into high drive. I had less time for keeping notes about what I was reading, the jazz I saw and listened to and the intimate details about my life. Late in 1960, I moved to Washington to start what became a long career as a journalist, filmmaker, writer and author. Here are the last lists from my “Notebooks.” In 1966, I went to Saigon as bureau chief for NBC News. I recorded that experience in my book, “Inside Television’s First War: A Saigon Journal” published by The University of Missouri Press. It is the only memoir of the Vietnam War by a television bureau chief.
****
1958
One cannot sing holy songs at the grave.
Only the blues will do.
Earthy and wrenched from the gut.
Horror-filled.
The blues.
From here.
A strung heart.
Gaunt: Face, body, mind.
So sing the blues and feel the blues and know the blues can answer our trouble, man, because the blues are born in trouble and can’t die. The soul only knows the blues.
We are born with the blues and it’s our fate to die with the blues.
****
September 13, 1958. Saw the “Bespoke Overcoat”, a short British film. It was damn near-perfect.
****
1959
“Benny Golson & The Philadelphians” is a fine album
I listen to the blues. Leadbelly. Blind Lemon Jackson. I listen to the blues and wait for a woman to appear like magic from the smoke of my cigarette. But nothing happens. There is no magic. Reality is in charge.
“He Who Must Die” is terrific film noir from Jules Dassin. It’s worthwhile.
Reading “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk and E.B. White. Reading The Wall by John Hersey. It’s quite a book.
August 5, 1959. Late at night I listen to Harlem radio stations as I did when I was a kid. The music is great and pure, everything infant rock and roll is trying to be. Fats Domino. Ray Charles. Big Maybelle. Ruth Brown. Mahalia Jackson. I even hear Cootie Williams, Duke Ellington’s former trumpet man, blowing a combination of pure blues, rhythm and blues and gutty jazz. Maybe rock and rock will succeed. Now it seems nothing more than a pale imitation of the roots of blues and jazz.
Miles Davis is at Birdland. He had an altercation with the police last night and he is threatening to sue the city.
“Doctor Sax” is possibly Kerouac’s worst novel. His “Maggie Cassidy” is sweet.
I listen to Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Horace Silver, Max Roach, Lee Morgan and Thelonious Monk and hear them repeating themselves. I believe they all are looking to breakout out of the similar mold they find themselves. They sound the same, from side to side, club date to club date. But I love listening to everything they do, in spite of their momentary similarities.
September 11, 1959. I never have trouble with Joyce, Faulkner and Kafka. The Beat poets are growing in numbers. Lawrence Ferlinghetti is probably the best. Kenneth Patchen has been around too long to belong to any movement. Henry Miller is very much the unrecognized father to the Beat generation. Ginsberg is a poet if he would only take time to concentrate on his writing instead of his chanting. Gregory Corso is finding himself on a mountain top somewhere. William Carlos Williams is confused and has been an old man from the day he was born. William Boroughs is so self pitying that he is funny, especially in Naked Lunch. Brother Antonious is trying to be Rabelais without getting laid. Give me Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Boccaccio, Petrach, Milton, Dante, Byron, Whitman, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats.
I read the following: “Borstal Boy” by Brendan Behan, “Mass Leisure,” Vance Packard’s “The Status Seekers” and the really important one, “The Restlessness of Shanti Andia” by Pio Baroja, a Basque writer and said to be an influence on Hemingway.
Norman Mailer’s “Advertisements for Myself” knocks me out. More than anything I’ve lately read, this book makes me want to write.
I’m listening to Herbie Mann and his flute on the radio.
I’m currently reading a retelling of the “Greek Myths” by Robert Graves, a new translation of “The Iliad” by Richard Lattimore and “The Golden Bough “by James Frazer. I’m having a ball reading the three as if they were one. They set things right for me about the way the world was once. Next up will be Robert Graves’, “The White Goddess.”
****
1960
Books for 1960 will include, “Between Man and Man” by Martin Buber, “The Natural History of Love” by Morton Hunt, “A Handbook of Greek Mythology” by H.J. Rose, “Existence and the Existential Image” by Martain, “Four Existential Theologians” by Herberg.
“The Objective Society” by Everette Knight is a winner for the existentialists. Ernest Jones’ first volume of his life of Freud is excellent. Robert Grave’s book, “They Hanged My Saintly Billy” is not worth the effort. Associated Press reporter Jack Bell’s, “The Splendid Misery” is very good on power politics and the presidency. Joseph Alsop’s “The Reporter’s Trade” is entertaining. After reading it I want more than ever to get on with my new career. I continue my effort to read “The Golden Bough” and it goes slowly, slowly.
February 28, 1960. I saw another Bergman film tonight. This one, “Three Strange Loves,” photographed by Gunnar Fischer. Again Bergman uses the sea and the city for his symbols. But he is depressing. Just what I needed.
I’m reading “Finnegan’s Wake” and it is amazing. I hardly understand a word of it. The cumulative effect on my ears as I read Joyce aloud and his new language on the page as I see it blur before my eyes are what count. I think. How much of what he wrote can I dismiss as pure nonsense? Is it a big joke? I can feel him caught in the labyrinth of his rhythms struggling his way to his next thought.
The new Nat Adderly and Wes Montgomery recording called “Work Songs” on Riverside swings.
I saw the Camus play, “Caligula.” It got panned, except the performance by Kenneth Haigh who played Caligula. Camus was in full flight with his theory of the absurd.
The other night in New Jersey I saw a new French film, “Lovers.” Made in France by the new wave, led by former critics who tired of the Bridget Bardot drivel and decided to make their own films.
Buy the latest Miles Davis-Gil Evans recording called “Spanish Concerto.”
Read “Zorba the Greek” and I found it fun and stimulating, alive and passionate. “The Hamlet” by William Faulkner is magnificent.
I saw the film “Pull My Daisy” written and narrated by Jack Kerouac, staring Alan Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. It runs maybe thirty minutes, is in foggy black and white and, though the images are unclear, the story, in its way, is clear. It’s about a day in the life of famous beats. I still laugh when I use the word beatnik. It sounds too Yiddish. Too funny. Kerouac wrote the sneering, searing, growling, almost howling, mocking, crying, laughing, at times Lewis Carroll voice-over mimicking commentary. Sometimes his voice acts the other voices. It is badly shot, badly edited, but provocative, different, unusual, and, ultimately, good fun.
April 15, 1960. I’m writing in a dark movie house because I’m watching a motion picture called “Blood of the Poet” by Jean Cocteau. It’s supposed to be a masterpiece. Rarely have I seen an experimental film so excruciatingly bad. Surrealism, yes, but what I see proves the worthlessness of the genre. I know he was an opium eater. This movie is the proof.
July 9, 1960. “Blues For Night People” is a new, sweet sounding album by guitarist Charlie Byrd.
August 1, 1960. I am reading “Film Technique and Film Acting” by Pudovkin in an Evergreen paperback.
The jazz I hear swings. I hear early Dizzy, Red Allen, Chu Berry, Sidney Cattelet, Roy Eldridge.
December 21, 1960. I’m reading “The Sacred and the Profane” by Mircea Eliade, “Gallipoli” by Alan Moorehead, “The Great Chicago Fire” by Cronin, “Heyday for Assassin”s by John Williams, and “Gates of Fear” by Conrad.
“Existence” edited by Rollo May.
****
1961, Washington
The Felix Grant Show on WMAL has good jazz. Finally. It’ll help me get through dull evenings.
I sit in shorts and Haitian slippers listening to Thelonious Monk, Gustav Mahler, Igor Stravinski and reading T.S. Eliot.
The Modern Jazz Quartet rules my radio.
January 21, 2009
Jazz in the Notebooks:1958
Jazz in the “Notebooks” – 1958
By
Ron Steinman
Listening to jazz on the radio and seeing jazz in the many clubs then in New York in the late 1950s was an important part of my life. They were not expensive places to hang, beer was cheap and the bartenders never pushed to make you drink more than you could afford. Finding jazz on free radio is now almost impossible, unless one subscribes to satellite radio. Today in New York there are also far fewer jazz clubs. The following is from the “Notebooks” about some jazz clubs I visited and what I heard on the radio.
***
January 11-22, 1958. I’m at The Half Note on Spring and Hudson Streets sitting at the bar listening to Charlie Mingus’ very weird group. God, good sound. The
night wraps itself tightly in something beyond comprehension. My head is taut. It’s pounding. I feel it grinding into the earth and becoming fine dust. Not coarse powder. Fine dust. We ride on the top headed toward the veritable legion of the insane, the hopeless. Allow the mood to eat its way into what we call the brain. Soul man. At least it appears as such to the outsider. Why the blackness? Why
my demons? Maintain my mood of tension. I must shout above the
imperceptible roar of do-nothings. I must make my voice heard. Loose. Swinging. The music is fine. I’m on a wild, uninhibited, unyielding, unrestrained round of fearless fate. We have so little time. Don’t take that time from me.
Copulate with life and learn to lie on the thorny bed of time. The money I have is going very fast. The mile per hour ratio is very high. Will it come back? It never returns. Words from a jazz song: “Man, like it makes it here. Not Delaware with Jack the Brother Bear.” So it goes. Don’t let it get away. Lionize the self forever. I think of you, Heather, in the middle of the Mingus set. Why? Is it love? After all
the things I’ve done and all the things I know, why should you come into my life now? Lilting. Free. Floating. Damn. The world dies more each day while you move farther from my view. Your movement will probably be swift and inventive. No. It’ll be premeditating. Fear imprisons my restless feet, wandering heart and my storm-tossed brain. There is fear of the future, fear of lack, just plain lack. When will the time come for me to know me? Mostly I believe it will not come and my ceaseless search will be endless. My mouth is sour from too many cigarettes and the decaying food eating into my teeth, pitting the enamel.
I am next in the Cafe Bohemia where I watch Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers blow up a storm. His music is driving, sensuous, powerful, primeval. A blast. I drink vodka and tonic, with a twist or a splash of lime juice, for ninety cents. Drinks are getting to be expensive. I spend the remainder of the night hopping from bar to bar, joint to joint, drinking vodka and tonic everywhere I can, which is, surprise, surprise, everywhere. I get drunk as hell and now with a rotten hangover, I feel oppressed with massive guilt for allowing this weekend to get away from me.
***
March 11, 1958. Sketches.
Jazz club. The people are quiet, almost too quiet for what is happening in front of them on the small, poorly lighted stage. The drummer raps the tight skins softly with the back ends of his brushes. The guitarist strums the catgut strings quietly. He uses his long thin nails instead of a plastic pick. The alto, who can wail when he wants, stands loose on the stage blowing wispy bop chords. The cat on piano forgets his left hand is alive and delicately entwines the fingers of his right hand quickly and surely along the upper octaves. The bass, tall and thick, the man, short and squat, hums as he works along one string seeing what kind of sound he can make. They are together, in love and loving.
There’s a new jazz bar on Broadway near 109th Street. It needs a visit.
It’s the first warm day after the recent big snow. It’s almost April and I’m going to dress in my tweed jacket, black slacks, Italian loafers and a white button-down
shirt, open at the neck. No tie. The shoes are light and soft and they are like I’m wearing nothing on my feet. I’m going to make it to a session, a bash, a meeting of musicians who play for money and make me feel good because they play well. I’ve never heard Gil Mele in person but I know his name from music magazines and records. He once blew a lot of tenor but he has recently switched to baritone. I hope he sounds like himself, an original.
I’d only been to this club once before and then at the tail end of a late session. I recall it being wild, free and loose. I forget how the room looks, except the drinks at the bar were inexpensive and the joint not too dirty. The barmaid is out of place. She is square, not of the music world, and scared. She knows they might fire her because she’s a holdover from the previous management. Jazz joints are not to her liking. I entered, picked out a good stool to watch everything and ordered a vodka and coke with lemon. The cola keeps me awake while the vodka chases my mind elsewhere. I teased the barmaid while we, the small crowd and I, waited for the music to start.
I try, but I can’t relax. I chain smoke. My mouth feels hot. I have chapped lips. The musicians drift onto their platform and get ready for their set. Out comes Mele. He is tall and lean with broad shoulders and he swings his baritone sax as if it’s a walking stick. A wide, protective strap rests around his neck. He has a moustache thick, full, strange and straggly. Women must go wild over him. The bar starts filling with people. I start to relax and feel at home. After several drinks I’m less edgy. The solid oak bar has a funny shape. It’s long and wide at one end and narrow at the other. The shelves carry the best in booze. A lone goldfish swims majestically in a huge martini glass. The sign attached to the glass says, “For Martini Connoisseurs.” Sitting next to the cash register is a box of Hartz Mountain Fish Food. Joan, the barmaid, comes by and I order another drink. In walks a chick named May. She goes from stool to stool saying hello to everyone. She swings in her own way, is about forty, short, starting to get heavy and has blond hair with a dip in front and a bun in back. May smiles, runs around, bustles about. She’s the manager and she digs the sounds like a neophyte. Mainly she likes what she hears and that’s important.
It’s an unusual jazz club, off the beaten path. The bandstand is near the front door and people have to pass directly in front, almost through the group as it’s playing. I watch a man walk in with three beautiful, blond haired children. They don’t hear or listen to the music and stand quietly and dutifully behind their father. He wants a double rye and ginger. Any rye will do, he says. An old lady walks in as Mele plays “Arabian Strut.” She peers meekly through the darkness and shyly walks through the growing crowd to the back of the bar and takes the last single seat. She orders bourbon neat, drinks it neat, orders another with ice water on the side and then settles in for the evening. From the look on her face, I believe she is wondering what happened to those once quiet hours for drinks at the Columbia Bar & Grill.
I watch a chick sitting at the bar. She swings. Her head moves gently and she sways in time to the music. Not pretty, but because she swings neatly, she becomes beautiful and erotically desirable. The bartender tells me she belongs to the drummer with a Napoleon haircut wearing a Brooks Brothers’ suit. He’s a solid drummer, not oppressive, whose sounds come through softly because he uses the brushes. The bass is wonderful. The guitar makes a gutty-like, cool, feathery sound. The baritone is mean and earthy. At times Mele creates the lisp and squeak of a tenor and at other times he approaches Jerry Mulligan or even Harry Carney. I think he’s searching for his sound from deep inside, trying to wring out his emotions. The group is working to find its sound, not an easy task in a neighborhood bar turned jazz club. Their book of arrangements is thick and they play long sets. They blow many original compositions and obviously enjoy their work, their art.
Despite the fine music, the room isn’t relaxed. The atmosphere is tight. There aren’t enough people at the bar or tables. Maybe if there were more, the room would be better. Some new arrivals are unsure where they are. They don’t swing. Some rock. Most don’t. A waiter appears offering a hot dish filled with tiny meatballs, the kind they call Swedish meatballs. A gift from the management. I accept a toothpick, jab a tiny brown ball and insert it into my watering mouth with tender ferocity. It’s good and I want more but the waiter is elsewhere, serving others. There are other mouths to feed and I’ll have to stand in line, hoping the waiter returns this way. Damn the other mouths.
Acoustics in this makeshift club are not great but the sounds do bounce and the group does wail. Mele’s group also blows sweetly and I can see how the guitar adds to the group’s sound. The evening wears on and the longer I stay glued to my stool, the higher I get. The vodka helps move me about a foot off the ground. I realize as I sit, I have, as usual, spent a drunken weekend, what with a half gallon of Chianti, assorted quarts of beer and ale, and now vodka and coke. And the bash is not over. A child runs by hurrying to the head. Two more old ladies are now part of the festivities. But this event isn’t that festive. Most of the barflies are regulars who have no other place to go Sunday night. They don’t really enjoy the music. They stand still at the bar while the music vibrates around them. They don’t realize how the music can enter their souls. They don’t know the hidden power music can have over their emotions, especially when mixed liberally with alcohol, smoke and darkness. But they don’t bother leaving. It’s their bar and the price of the drinks is low. That’s all that counts.
Then it’s over. One last set. Last call. Closing time. Relaxed, I now make friends with May. She says she likes me and wants me to stay and talk to her but I don’t understand what she’s after. I’m too drunk to think straight. Nothing makes sense. I start to leave but before I do, a very wild chick is suddenly on the small stage playing piano as if the devil is in her. She sounds like Monk or Tristano through the filter of my wasted mind. She plays with fury. She has a tough face but up close I see the light texture of her dark skin. I can tell she isn’t a virgin. I yearn for her tight little ass so lovingly enclosed in her red velvet, fake toreador pants. I depart, floating, longing for the woman I won’t have. At least for that night, destiny isn’t on my side. All that waits is a meal, another drink and my typewriter.
***
October 25, 1958. Saturday night. I am alone. Man. It feels good. There’s no one here but me. Phil is in the Tombs, doing five days for speeding down the Westside Highway, reckless driving and other assorted charges. The fine was twenty-five dollars. The court wouldn’t let him make bail. He won’t be out until Monday. I’m playing the hi-fi at maximum loud, listening to Brahms, Art Blakey and John Coltrane. I have a three-quarter empty half gallon jug of California burgundy. There’s food in the freezer. Outside it’s raining hard but the Steinman pad, home of the Second Existential Church (there is no First) is dry and warm.
***
The Half Note is the only swinging place in New York. It’s near the docks on the West Side. Lee Konitz is there with the very fine Bill Bauer on the guitar. Charles Mingus will be in next. The owners are trying to sign Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers. I have become close with the owners, especially Frank, the father of Sonny and Nick, who run the club. I spend many afternoons at the bar eating
zitti and meat sauce with Italian bread and drinking tap beer. Because of my new schedule and new responsibility at NBC, I can only be here early in the evening, late at night or all day Saturday. They feed me, talk to me, keep my thirst happy. They have the swingingest juke box in town.
November 2, 1958. It is 3:45 a.m. I came in high tonight and that was a big mistake. I went to Birdland where Machito, the Afro-Cuban jazz artist, played a set. It sounds too much like dance music. It was a hell of a lot of noise. Heavy brass, big trumpets, some good bongos and a wild singing group that reminded me of the Four Freshmen but they had two guys and a chick. The chick was mad, an animal, wild and flipping. They were good listening. Buddy Rich did a set, almost gentle, a shadow of his former self. Herbie Mann, also there, crisp and understandable, his flute dancing with the melody. Nothing subtle about his music, but it was easy to hear. Finally, a cat named Curtis Fuller came on and he was sensational. He’s part of the Coltrane album I have and he was terrific to hear and see in person. He blew everyone else away. Most of the people cheered and applauded, even yelled in unison. It wasn’t even prom night but the squares had invaded my sanctuary.
I’m at the Half Note with Dave. It’s mid-afternoon. We are fortunate to listen to Charles Mingus warming up for his nightly gig. Mingus prowls the small stage in the middle of the bar, his huge hands cradle the bass as if it were a violin. He runs through his chords, listens to the acoustics and growls they aren’t very good. He finishes his practice session and says the sound will be okay, especially
when the room is full. Then he troops off. Other than the waiters who are setting the tables, Dave and I are the only other people in the club. It was a great moment.
January 15, 2009
Jazz in the Notebooks: 1956-1957
Jazz in the “Notebooks” – 1956-1957
By
Ron Steinman
Listening to jazz on the radio and seeing jazz in the many clubs then in New York in the late 1950s was an important part of my life. Finding jazz on free radio is now almost impossible, unless one subscribes to satellite radio. Today in New York there are also far fewer jazz clubs. The following is from the “Notebooks” about some jazz clubs I visited and what I heard on the radio..
1956
November 1956. I am at Birdland. Digging Duke Ellington. Suddenly I feel free. Suddenly there is freedom. Bliss. Unbound.
1957
June 10, 1957. In front of Child’s on BroadwayStreet musicians are on the corner. Trumpet, violin. An old man and a young man. They play jazz with a Caribbean island beat.
June 14, 1957. I’m at The Hickory House digging Billy Taylor play his swinging but orderly jazz.
June 15, 1957. I’m in 7th Avenue South. It’s another jazz joint in the Village. The music swings. It’s a lovely place. But—it’s three deep with fake Bohemian’s. The club is for rapidly aging youth seeking salvation in togetherness. There’s a cat
really jumping on the bongo’s and the big jungle drum. Young chicks float everywhere. I have no money. The joint jumps. People clap and stomp their feet. I wish I knew the name of the group. The whole scene is wonderful. Fill her up. One for the road. But I feel the joint is square. Something is missing. It’s as if
everyone here is on stage and trying too hard. It’s very hot. “Day-day de. Day-dea-die. O-lakay. Yeah. Knock- tick. Knock-tock.” Dying out. Sound a small solo. Each sound answers the other. The crowd says, yea. I say, yeah. There’s a Negro
cat in a beret and sweatshirt moving sweetly to the music. He’s real. The whole atmosphere is stuffy and smoke clogged. He’s real. The room fills with sex-starved chicks. The tempo in the room picks up fast. It’s at least 8/8 time. The joint is sweaty. I’m sex starved. My fevered brain plays with my mind. The
Negro cat moves like nothing I have ever seen. “Go man, go,” I shout. He flashes his teeth, cracks a huge smile, and talks to himself as he bops to the music. I’m too warm. Sweat drips down my back and into the crack of my ass. Watching all these chicks, I want a woman. There’s the usual stirring in my loins. Joint keeps jumping. I keep making notes. Where does the dancing man get his sustained beat? Heavy lighting. The lights in two basic colors throw weird shadows against the walls and across the floor. A lot of fucking great chicks wandering through this place and I can’t touch any of them.
The Hickory House is my next stop. Then if I have any jack, on to the bar on 47th Street. Things are still good. I didn’t have a fight with my best friend. I’m starting to float. My scribbles are worse than usual because I’m trying to write while the train keeps moving. Handwriting is all fucked up. Serves me right for changing to the express at 14th Street. I feel good. Why can’t I always reconcile that feeling? It’s an unusual feeling. I hope Suzanne is still playing the Hickory House. I dig the music and I dig her. She’s blond and she swings. Now I’m at 42nd Street. I get off at the next stop. Fuck. Fuck. Great. I feel good and this cat, me, doesn’t protest too much. I’m drunk. I hate it. Suzanne is playing the piano in the middle of the bar at the Hickory House. She’s changed her dress. The tourists are in. Steaks are on tables. Waiters move about on clay feet. Rattling silverware corrupts my ears as I try listening to the music. For me it is pure. For everyone else, it’s background music. Such jerks. She’s still playing the same way, playing the same numbers. The same. But I still love her. Stability is good for my life. She seems very intellectual tonight, very introspective. She hardly looks around. She sits there on the bench at the piano in her sleek black dress with its black lacy sleeves. She wears low heeled shoes to work the pedals effortlessly. As I write she swings on I Love Paris. The audience ignores her, but I don’t.
I’m at the Strand Bar on 47th Street. Billy Taylor really swung during his last set. The feeling, the emotion, the rapport is there. The nodding heads, their eyes opening and closing to the beat, the defined feeling they experience together. The harmony between Taylor on piano, the bass and drums is near marvelous. They truly swung. It makes it. The sounds from the trio are beautiful, not beer-beautiful, but beautiful to remember. The kind of thing you want with you always. It’s the kind of thing to always live for. It’s later and I’m still on 47th
Street at the Bar, the bar with sounds called the Strand. What is jazz (jass—Jelly Roll Morton) to me? It’s feeling and emotion. It sweeps me up in the tide of feeling, of romance. And it carries me along the path to the never never land of the lost. It leaves me filled with warmth. Not cold as much of modern jazz, which I’m listening to now, that seems to leave many people empty. I looked up and I’m glad I did. My head suddenly spun gloriously. Will wonders never cease? Gerry Mulligan is playing what I think is band two or three on his Pacific Jazz Album. Dave Brubeck played previously. It’s quiet in the room. We hear no other sound. Everyone listens intently to the music on the jukebox. It swings, lovely and lovingly. I love this bar as I love the French Canadian chick who ran away with Dave, as I love the jazz pianist Suzanne F. It seems like hours later and I’m still here. The bar never closes. I never leave. We make a terrific couple. I think I’m drunk again. Another Mulligan side rotates on the turntable. This is “Bernie’s Tune.” Really swing gently and Mulligan’s baritone sax lifts the music from the mundane to the profane. Out of nowhere echoes in my swinging mind. A group of tourists flapping their lips as they look inside from the street. I would like to sleep with all the women who look my way. Maybe not my way, but in my direction. The bartender John is a German sauerbratten type. I’m about to leave and sitting in front of me is a full bottle of ale. It isn’t like me to leave anything sitting in front of me, ever. Fuck it. Cussing. Out. Get out. Get some down my throat. One last slug, then I’ll split. Away I go.
Listening to Al “Jazz Bo” Collins on his all-night jazz show. I would love his job if I knew music as he does.
I met a chick who works at Y&K and I must see her again. She loves jazz, is pretty, has the prettiest eyes I ever did see. Her eyes are green and they glow in the dark.
Next week I’m looking forward to Jazz Under the Stars in Central Park with Lady Day, Errol Garner, Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, Lester Young, Miles Davis and Jo Jones.
I tuned in WOR and listed to a broadcast of live jazz, worth getting up. They had Miles Davis from the Bohemia and the Modern Jazz Quartet from the Village Vanguard. Everything swung beautifully. The muted, arranged efforts of the MJQ are sometimes a bit too mechanical. They are too chamber-like for my taste and the group doesn’t let itself go often when I feel they should, when it’s time to swing, to let loose and create off the cuff, to improvise. They only let loose occasionally. But most of the time they swing with effortless ease and with enormous dignity. Miles Davis seems to have moved away from the arrangements he lately uses. It’s almost as if he is riding in the jump-seat of an old convertible. I don’t think Miles has lost his lip, as some say. He seems caught in the web of modern jazz’s avant-garde that feels the arrangement is more important than what the musicians are saying, than its roots. Of course, jazz has to jam to be truly creative, whether it is classical New Orleans or bop, the pinnacle of all the modern sounds.
January 11, 2009
Jazz in the Notebooks: 1954-1955
Jazz in the “Notebooks” – 1954, 1955
By
Ron Steinman
Listening to jazz on the radio and seeing jazz in the many clubs then in New York in the mid 1950s was an important part of my life. Finding jazz on free radio is now almost impossible, unless one subscribes to satellite radio. The following is from the “Notebooks” about some jazz clubs I visited and what I heard on the radio.
***
I bought a gallon of Gallo red to drink by myself. Now, the big test. How do I handle the weekend? I sat, the radio on, twisting the knob for New York and Philadelphia jazz stations but the many clouds reduced a sharp signal, to static. I consumed bag after bag of salty potato chips followed by one plastic cup of wine after another. Finally, ready for bed, I started thinking, but very little came into my head. I wondered about jazz, women, wine, love, lust, peace, freedom, education, the masses, me. All in no particular order.
***
I read in the New York Times that jazz great Hot Lips Page died. His trumpet stilled forever. We (meaning my college buddies and myself) gathered and then jumped into a car, drinking beer all the way, drove through the rain and fog of Pennsylvania and New Jersey to the Lower East side and the Stuyvesant Casino. It cost a few bucks to get in for a memorial concert in his honor. The atmosphere was remarkable. Crowds kept piling in. Most of the people were white and young, looking like college, just the same as us. We flipped. The overexcited audience couldn’t keep the noise down. We had a rollicking time. Almost every big name in New York Dixieland music appeared. There were also some modern sounds. Most of the people were there for effect, to say I was there, and you were not. I felt an emptiness coming from the crowd. I had a wonderful escapist time. Photographers were everywhere. The night, hot and sticky, gave us a taste of New York humidity at its worst. Our folding chairs were too hard to sit on for very long. Someone filmed the concert. Dancers filled the aisles. The stage held as many as one hundred musicians in the two huge, open rooms. I didn’t drink too much. After the concert we went to nearby Chinatown and the Chinese Rathskeler filled with a big date crowd. The lousy food reminded me of neighborhood joints in Flatbush. We found our way uptown to Broadway and Lindy’s for cherry cheesecake and endless cups of coffee. Our waiter forgot to charge us one cheesecake and I claimed it for the highlight of my night. Did it mean my luck would change? Hardly. We slept in the car back to Easton. Home without incident.
***
“If Love is Good to Me,” Nat King Cole.
“Penthouse Serenade,” by anyone, anyone at all.
Chet Baker and his beautiful, liquid trumpet.
Woody Herman’s great recording, “The Story of an Itinerant Musician.” Woody’s gravel voice, “. . . when they first met, they gassed each other.” Have another beer. It’s so great. I want what he’s talking about.
More Woody. “I’m Sorry About The Whole Darn Thing.” Last line, “You goofed baby.” How true, how very true.
Saturday” by Sarah Vaughn. “Weary as a party girl in last years
clothes. . . “ Terrific line. It implies so much.
Gerry Mulligan’s marvelous baritone sax.
“Take The A Train,” Duke’s great piece played by Dave Brubeck and friends. Great immersion.
The Dave Pell Ochtette, a fine group, chamber in its makeup, almost symphonic with its bell-like horns.
Sauter-Fiunnegan big band sound. Very clever musical arrangements. Who will recall them in ten or twenty years?
***
Listening to the radio and a show called, “Jazz Corner.” It’s filled with the sounds of Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, Oscar Petersen and others. Listening to them with a glass of cheap red wine helps make my day.
***
At Basin Street. Duke Ellington and Don Shirley. Duke is sensational. Shirley is light, refreshing, delicate. When I get the money to finally start collecting records I must get some of both. The music is fine, the beer is good, the place is half empty. I need a good laugh.
***
Words heard in clubs, heard on the radio, heard on barstools.
Land of Oobladee.
Feeling the worst.
Real wild basket of ribs and a bottle of juice.
Joint. Three meanings with each in hand.
Lay it on her.
Skin, as in, gimmee some.
Pops.
She’s feeling kind of beat.
Wild.
Fall in.
Fall by.
Crazy.
Pad.
The same old jazz.
It’s a gasser.
The most to say the least.
How do you come on?
The greatest.
Somebody goofed.
The swingingest.
Cut out.
Don’t hand me that jazz.
Your timing was like the end.
Are the lowest, like in you are the lowest.
Broad.
Crack. A sexy broad.
Forgive me for coming on so square.
You are out of your skull.
Weirdsville.
The whole thing is real nervous.
Let’s fall upstairs and find out the skam.
Somebody has been making it.
There’s been a scuffle in my pad . . . Too. The three bears in 4/4 time.
Take it from the top.
Jack, don’t bug me. I’m beat.
January 2, 2009
Addendum to the Notebooks
Addendum to the Notebooks
by
Ron Steinman
Despite the millions of words that pass before the eyes of the millions upon millions who surf the World Wide Web, reading now seems less important in 2009 than it was when I was young. I hope I am wrong, but if anyone cares, and I am sure a few might, here are the books I read in 1954. Other years will follow. I include quotes and ideas that impressed me then, and the odd word or two I used to expand my vocabulary. Many of the books are certainly out of print. If anyone seriously wants to read them, they can probably, as with most things, find them online.
1954
Thoughts: “When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.” Winston Churchill.
“Knowledge is power for good or evil. Confusion is created when it is in the hands of the few or the grasp of too many. Education is an important stepping stone but it is only the beginning.” Who said that? I can’t find the attribution. I would love it attributed to me. Fat chance.
Richard Wright’s, “The Outsider.” Painful, searing book.
Bismark once called the English and their imperialistic wars,
“sporting wars.” Maybe that’s why they couldn’t hold on to their empire.
“Here sit I, forming mankind /In my own image, A race to
myself,/To suffer and to weep, /Rejoice, enjoy, and heed thee not, as I.” Goethe, Prometheus.
“. . . the delighting in man as man in man’s body as well as in his mind.” Boccaccio. Neo-paganism at its best.
“A military triumph is the most obvious form of national success.” Of course. Who owns this line?
“Si vis pacem, para bellum.” If you want peace, prepare for war. And who said this?
Words: Harbinger. Penurious. Eleemosynary. Recalcitrant. Iniquitous. Desiderata. Ebullition(s).
Psychic, psychical, fear, love. personage.
Existentialism. Organized religion. Personification of the self. Isn’t that a tautology?
“The Moldau,” a symphonic poem. Powerful and moving. It is the theme for Hatikvah.
World War I. The French are at Verdun February 21, 1916 through December 1916. The French and Germans are in a long, brutal, bloody battle. One million are killed. 1,000,000 killed! How long, under normal circumstances would it take for one million people, mostly men, to die? Petain was the commanding general for the French. The French were “sustained” (sustained!) by the famous battle cry, “Ils ne passerant pas!” They shall not pass!
“Pain is necessary for nobility.” Nietsche.
“Man is nothing but the ensemble of his acts.” Sartre. In other words, emphasis on action.
Charles Erskine Scott Wood’s “Heavenly Discourse” is very funny.
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” Carpe diem. A wonderful practice. I am trying very hard, although it is frustrating but so are many things.
Finished “The Delicate Prey and Other Stories” by Paul Bowles. Also completed “Point Counter Point” by that fraud Aldus Huxley. Bowles is a wonderfully slight stylist and Huxley is a write“
“As the arts proliferate with prodigious fecundity, his lot is an increasingly hard one.” Learned Hand.
Calderon says, “ The greatest of man’s sins/ Is that he was ever born.”
Othelo to Iago, “I’d have thee live/ For, in my sense,/ ‘tis happiness to die.”
Palmira to Mohammed in Voltaire’s tragedy: “The world is made for tyrants; live and reign!”
Schopenhauer says that egoism is the form of the will to live.
“Neither good nor bad can men be deemed. As they can, they live one day at a time.” Strindberg and his brilliant pessimism.
James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon.” I stayed in the perfect mood for its extreme romanticism so for the moment an excellent story for me. But not forever.
Bought a paperback book of short stories by Damon Runyon for 30 cents.
Reading “The Moon and Sixpence” by Somerset Maugham.
Finished reading “God or Ceasar” by Vardis Fisher, “The Short Story in America” and “The Literary Situation “ by Malcolm Cowley.
From “Beyond Good and Evil” by Friedrich Nietzsche. More words: Intransigence. Tartuffery. Pariahs. Rococo-taste. Nuances. Minotaur. Exoteric. Esoteric. Lassitude. Insidiously. Debilitates. Attenuated.
Where there is neither love nor hatred in the game, woman’s play is mediocre.” Nietzsche, again.
And, “In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man.”
“To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame—and something precious.” This, more than many other things that Nietzsche says, requires an explanation. Why? What does he mean by vigorous, intimacy, shame?
