Word: sound
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...films can fail to appreciate how effectively he uses the scores to reinforce the visuals -- from the Gershwin themes of Manhattan to the Django Reinhardt and Louis Armstrong ballads of Stardust Memories to the brooding Schubert string quartet of Crimes and Misdemeanors, which premiered last week. For the sound track of Sleeper, Woody even went to New Orleans in 1973 and recorded himself playing with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. (The old musicians there had never heard of Woody's films, and one of them, trombonist Jim Robinson, called him Willard.) He hopes one day to devote a whole film...
Lewis, who died in 1968, spent most of his life playing obscure New Orleans dance halls and parades until his "discovery" in the mid-'40s. Yet he had something that touched people all over the world. Wherever his records were available, young musicians strove to copy his sound. Woody first confronted this phenomenon in 1971, when he went to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage ! Festival and sat in on some French Quarter jam sessions. "There was a Japanese George Lewis and a British George Lewis and a Jewish George Lewis. It was really hilarious...
...feels, "is that I am genuinely crude." Another advantage is his ability to reproduce the powerful, wailing tone of the original jazzmen. The biggest compliment he ever got as a musician, Woody says, was when he was jamming in New Orleans and local people told him how "indigenous" his sound was. Jazz clarinetist Kenny Davern agrees: "He has sought to get that New Orleans plaintive sound, and he has really captured the thing...
Woody goes after that sound in two ways. First, by using a wide open mouthpiece and a very hard reed -- a Rico Royale No. 5 -- which provides a lot of volume but requires cast-iron lips to play. (Benny Goodman once borrowed Woody's clarinet for a sit-in and had to shave the reed down with a kitchen knife before he could get a toot out of it.) Second, by playing an Albert System clarinet -- an antiquated, wide-bore instrument based on a virtually obsolete fingering method. Why the Albert System? "Because all the guys I liked played...
...other musicians, most of whom come from the slick Dixieland school, share Woody's abiding passion for the rough-hewn New Orleans style or his aversion to tuning up. Despite the different approaches, says pianist Dick Miller, the band tries mightily "one night a week to create the collective sound that resembles the music he loves...