Word: birdland
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...noses in flames" and of a suicidal lover who "picked up a blade, and pressed it against his smooth throat." Redondo Beach, set against a catchy reggae beat, tells of lesbian love. Other Smith songs like the hard rocker Free Money are easier to take. In surrealistic blues like Birdland, her mordant fragments of verse can be evocative...
...house with singers. In fact, you can call me a prodigy, the point needs little stretching. When I was five, I could operate the bulky, clumsy Magnavox console that occupied a corner of our living room. By seven, I knew what I wanted to hear: Ella at Birdland, Sinatra's 45 of "Chicago," with "Witchcraft" as the flip, Sammy Davis when he was still Junior, Sinatra's Christmas Album (only recently replaced in stereo), the two double albums of Ella Fitzgerald with Duke Ellington, with emphasis on "Satin Doll," and "A Train." Van Morrison sings in the same tradition. Like...
Time: 1950. Scene: Birdland, the now defunct Manhattan cellar where the faithful gathered to hear the latest sounds of bebop. Backstage, the goings on were something less than harmonious, even for bop. The band was taking a vote. It seemed that the house pianist would not contribute to the group's heroin kitty. In fact, he was not interested in drugs at all. That would hardly do, and consequently Billy Taylor was voted out. "I don't know," recalls Taylor, "maybe they thought I was trying to give jazz a good name...
Soon nobody was gonging off Bird. In his 20s, he had already become a legend. He had given his name to Birdland, and along with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell had founded a whole new jazz idiom called bebop. The beginning came one night while Parker was playing Cherokee in a Manhattan chili house: he reached up and got his line by filching the top notes off the chords. By mingling spontaneous pirouettes of fanciful improvisations with a tune's melody he vastly expanded the freedom of musicians...
...night was a perfectly rendered fifties version of Erroll Garner's "Misty." Slightly electrified, the song was a magnificent example of transplanted, uptempo, fifties nightclub jazz. The bass line walked brilliantly and the piano fills and the piano solo could've come from the late show at Birdland. And Van's gourd, subtle vocal would have made King Cote proud...