Wes Montgomery’s Cool Jazz

Wes Montgomery Verve Records - Billboard, page 1, 19 November 1966

So, Paul probably won’t remember this story. I barely do—memories are hard to lose—absent a real brain.

Back then, Paul was my soon-to-be brother-in-law. I was explaining Clapton was God when he recommended Wes Montgomery. Said he played a cool jazz guitar, and he proved it by putting one of Montgomery’s album on the stereo. In his parents’ house in Sandy Springs, just outside Atlanta. This was around 1966? Paul won’t remember; I barely do.

I was still in high school and had peach fuzz for a beard, and Paul, before he knew better, was practicing kindness to the kid brother. If I hadn’t taken to the boy, Susan would have married him anyway; she was that kind of sister.

That’s the intro.

Wes was a smooth, accomplished jazz guitarist. His bio on Wikipedia says he died shortly after I first heard him–died in 1968 of a heart attack at 45. Except for a bad ticker, he might have hung around to learn how important he became to the jazz world. He was a self-taught guitarist, who styled his playing after Charlie Christian. He was around the jazz scene long enough to have played with Charlie Mingus, Freddie Hubbard, Cannon Adderley, Percy Heath, Tommy Flanagan. If you played with Mingus, you were blessed.

Wes didn’t die with a place like Graceland where they charge you at the gate to come in for worship. Wes wasn’t as famous as all that, but he left a legacy in music, ephemeral as that is.

I have a Pandora station called ‘Brian Hughes’ and I listen to it nightly because he’s one reincarnation of Wes. Listening to a jazz guitarist from north of the border–does he have a passport? He does a mean Wes without the thick thumb plucking Wes was known for. Hughes also plays a cool Spanish style. My Brian Hughes channel plays regularly when I’m writing. Vocals are a distraction, so it’s either him or the Al Di Meola channel.

Back in the 90s, there was a short-lived radio station in Washington, Cool Jazz, whose call letters have long since been forgotten, even by that big brother, Google. I sent a prayer to Saint Google but she didn’t answer. In a year, the FM radio station was gone–changed to a lame pop format–but for a brief shining moment that was known as Cool Jazz.

Mainstays on the station included Peter White, Basha, Pat Metheny (when he was with Lyle Mays), George Benson, Boney James, Jonathan Butler, Lee Ritenour, Acoustic Alchemy, Rippingtons, Larry Carlton. But the station also played Weather Report, Return to Forever (Chic Korea’s project) Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder and Steely Dan–even an occasional Mahavishnu Orchestra, so the station lived up to its monicer.

The radio channel was a throwback to times when FM radio had DJs who loved the music they played and didn’t slot it into ‘market shares.’ In early 1990s before the country’s radio channels were all bought by Clear Channel Broadcasting, aka Clear Channel Media aka IHeartMedia (and I wish I made up that last one).

Miles Davis recorded Sketches of Spain in 1959. Al Di Meola (along with Stanley Clarke and Jean-Luc Ponty) recorded The Rite of Strings in ca. 1995. The Di Meola supergroup produced one hell of a CD. Someone in marketing must have heard about Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and hoped the fat boss did too.

Then Brian Hughes recorded And Dreaming.

So to speak of the smooth jazz genre, a good bit is derivative–pleasant elevator music, but the best of it gets into Fusion–or recalls the earlier music. Wes showed a number of musicians the way: Earl Klugh, Marc Antoine–and my hero, Brian Hughes. I bought all of Hughes’s CDs (remember CDs?) Hughes could lay in four notes to one for most guitarists, and his melody lines are, well, melodic. We saw him at a local music festival once, though never in a full concert.

Promise You is about as pretty as it gets. Another of his is Pamala. One more: Sesimbra Sun and the last one: And Dreaming Just let them run in the background while you’re reading; they’ll clear out the brain.

Peter White came through the DC area about the same time, touring with the Al Stewart–the Year of the Cat guy. They performed at the old Birchmere in Alexandria, one of the funkiest music taverns you ever saw, and one of the best music venues, though I’d skip the chicken wings. I came for Peter White, but was surprised by Al Stewart as well. D and I sat at the foot of the one-riser stage and watched Peter play his Ovation guitar.

On our honeymoon to Kiawah Island–on the South Carolina coast, driving right past Paul and Susan’s place south of Charleston–we traveled with a handheld CD player and tiny speakers. Peter White, Brian Hughes, Counting Crows–it was a mixed bag. We set the player on a backpack, pretty much by ourselves, and enjoyed the ocean. Most other folks on Kiawah were chasing little white balls across the Bermuda grass.

For my tastes, Kiawah was a too-manicured place–not like the Outer Banks. Though more and more, the Outer Banks are looking like Kiawah. Why would anyone plant palmettoes and expect them to survive Outer Banks nor’easters? And why the hell do you need an irrigation system? Something about GQ southerners wearing yellow sweaters and loafers with no socks…

Paul and his brother, Steve, are musicians at heart–unlike the under-nourished high school punk who grew his hair out but never got much further than strumming a mediocre guitar.

And the brothers hung with other musicians back in high school. Paul’s buddy, Dave Gallagher plunged the whole way in. If you were tone deaf in the 70s you needed your head examined. I saw Dave Gallagher’s band perform–a few years out of Julliard in a band composed of Georgia boys playing in a club in Boca Raton, Jamin’ Sammy’s, Slammin’ Jammy’s, Slutty Mommas or some such. Playing music to make their way–to make a living.

The place was ginormous, and just as thunderous. Southern rock being hot, that’s what the band played. But between numbers, I watched the drummer leave his kit totake up a fiddle, and the guitar player get behind the keyboards, switching roles easily while the teenage crowd got drunk and smoked to choke a horse.

My sister was scandalized by the stories. She and Gallagher’s wife were friends. Music can’t support a family! Granny was speaking through her, far as I could tell. It’s a hard life, no lie, and back then it was a health hazard. But seemed she missed the point of the why–or maybe she felt threatened by living life as a gypsy. Losing her father at six years old–I know why she felt threatened.

Last I heard, Dave Gallagher had a weekly blues show on a radio station in Mobile thereabouts.

Live at ej’s

In the 70s, Steve worked on his father to open a restaurant in the Buckhead section of Atlanta, a dinner jazz place called ej’s–his parents first initials. I never saw it, but knowing his father, Ed, the place was upscale–his downtown restaurant was indeed. In the late 70s, if you were on the modern jazz circuit, eventually you’d come across ej’s. A man who lured Dexter Gordon to play at his nightclub couldn’t be all wrong. Live at ej’s became a record label, appropriating the club’s logo.

Steve has stories to tell. But the one I’m passing along is about Lyle Mays (Pat Metheny’s co-writer, composer and keyboardist who we saw at Constitution Hall–what a show.) Seems Lyle played at ej’s too. So let Steve tell it:

“Yes indeed, Lyle was a true musical monster... The other was Yancey Korosi... If anything, he was Lyle's master. On Easter morning of 1977, Lyle was playing e.j.'s. We shut down and drove out to a friend’s house near Sandy Springs where Yancey was waiting for us. It was just Lyle, Yancey, Trish and myself.

“In the living room there was a Steinway A piano and a Hammond X organ, both top of the line instruments. Trish and I were treated to a concert the likes of which I'd never heard, and would never hear again. Two monster pianists exchanging music like an audible mind meld. And then they would swap instruments and take it to another level. It lasted an hour while the sun came up, and made for the most heavenly Easter morning of my life.”

So if you read between the lines, Lyle finished his set at ej’s sometime before dawn, then jammed the sun into the sky with Yancey. Yeah, it’s a tough life, but it surely has its moments. He died this past February but left some fine music behind.

I got a phone message from Paul last Sunday. He was laughing over last week’s blog about Tysons Corner. Always happy to oblige a brother. If I could play a guitar as well as either of them, I’d have left architecture in a heartbeat and wouldn’t be still talking to the ones down in the pit. But as the brilliant philosopher, Clint Eastwood said, “A man has got to know his limitations.”

While I’m paying tribute, here’s Wes live. The difference in styles from later jazz is immediate, down to the swishing cymbals.

Nice tats, but aren’t they a cultural appropriation? Photo by John Fornander on Unsplash

Call Me Ishmael

White Fantasies, Colorful Interiors  The problem with cultural appropriation in home design  By Beeta Baghoolizadeh on Medium

My name is Bill. About the most boring name I can think of next to Mike or Bob–and so I’m going to change my name to, let’s see–Ishmael. Better than Herman. I keep telling people I’m the second most famous Bill Evans in history, but most of them don’t know who the first one was. So, I digress.

As for cultural appropriation, it apparently has reached pandemic proportions in home design (known in our house as interior desecration). Though I’m not sure why this is a crisis; interior design is only a passing fancy, so whatever you appropriate will need to be replaced soon enough or you’ll be out of fashion–sooner than you buy your next car. Unless you’re like me and only replace your cars and couches on threat of divorce. I think of interior design as I do clothes fashion only more expensive with a poorer return.

OK, I lied, here’s the one by Brian Hughes that reminds me of Sketches of Spain Nasca Lines.

Perhaps I should start over on this bit...

Every advice article on writing I’ve read–even Stephen King’s book–says to do your reading first. So one might conclude that strong writing is based on first absorbing then appropriating the work of other authors. Me, I’m partial to Dave Berry and Gene Weingarten. Of late, Kyrie Gray is a writer I enjoy. I’d style my writing like hers except she’s this young, droll woman living on the West Coast and I’m not. But really, how else are you going to learn if you don’t emulate someone?

I’ll be dead before I finish writing like Proust. He’s only known for one book, In Search of Lost Time, but it runs to 4,300 pages in translation, which writing gurus all agree is too long for a single novel. So long that the first English translator got the title wrong. But people don’t snipe about writing like a Frenchman; when you’re at a cocktail party the women gather round murmuring Ah, he writes like Proust!

But Beeta feels strongly that throwing a Kashkuli gabbeh (rug) over the back of an embossed Moroccan leather couch is just, well, reprehensible. And with Martha Stewart tableware set atop a distressed wood dinner table to boot, apoplexy sets in for her. I suppose if you’re an Algerian immigrant, you might could be forgiven? Certainly not if your surname derives from the Celts. For shame.

Appropriation has become another minefield in the ongoing war. Appropriate? I think not. Same stem word, way different meaning.

“Veronica Webb, a former Vogue cover girl… [lives in a] remote Key West mansion [that] incorporates arches and elaborate tile work. When describing her arrival to the style [did she arrive in a limo or a Lyft?], Webb told AD, ‘I can do Moroccan,’ I said to myself, and I liked the idea of a paradise in isolation from everything.’

“Her pursuit of ‘doing Moroccan’ resulted in a lavish mansion that AD suggests could be taken for a royal pavilion in Marrakech or Taroudant.  AD [Architectural Design] notes that her home ‘reflects the spirit found in the intricacies of French Orientalist paintings of the later 19th century, with their diverse styles of Arab North Africa, Egypt, and the Middle East—here mixed with touches of Muslim India.’ Ah, yes, French Orientalist paintings, famously inspired by Napoleon’s invasion of Ottoman territories in the late-18th century and later spurred on by harem fantasies of languid odalisques.” 

from White Fantasies, Colorful Interiors

Why not say it’s bad taste in design and call it a day? Besides, the only thing Architectural Design and architecture have in common is the root word. But oh! pray, those Oriental odalisques–even the noun is salacious, bringing back such sweet memories.

I’m not altogether clear what most upsets Ms. Baghoolizadeh, the act of borrowing, white privilege in general or the fact of the income levels being demonstrably obvious. Adding an ogee curved arcade carved of teak to one’s living room may not be the most creative use of expendable income–like playing dress-up for gown-ups–but aside from not being age-appropriate (that word again) is it a mortal sin like the nuns used to teach? The nuns didn’t preach against interior design, but I’m using them to stretch a point.

“The result? A lack of cultural competency that reduces people of color to their objects, rejecting any meaningful interactions with people and their lived realities. It also privileges designers who cater to white fantasies, boxing in designers of color to the rules and regulations of the broader white community.”

from White Fantasies, Colorful Interiors

Back when the Victorians were painting their houses chartreuse, were they fantasizing about green liquor or their lovely odalisques? 

Tomato Pie

There’s a hang out in Duck where they they used to make the best tomato pie to be had in any of the southern states. And it has nothing to do with the Pom Julio cocktails the bar ladies serve. When we last landed on the Outer Banks in late June, Layla was wiped and the two of us were numb from five hours of driving, and D asked where I wanted to go for dinner, like it was a question.

Tomato pie is a serious endeavor, requiring ripe, summer tomatoes, fresh basil, cheddar and croutons. At Roadside Café they do it in these little ramekins with the cheese bubbling over the top. You can find recipes for a pie, i.e. the crusty kind, but don’t follow them. I’m pleading. I have nothing against pie per se, but trust me, I’m trying to lead you to the light on this one, y’all.

I emailed the family last year telling them we’d finally decrypted the Roadside Café’s tomato pie. I was mostly right on the ingredients, but hadn’t yet gotten the quantities and prep down. I would ask one of the servers at Roadside except they’ve had this on the menu for so many years they’ve forgotten the original recipe. Chefs and servers on the Outer Banks are mainly surfers looking for work between runs. They do a new variation every time we come–like the blind wisemen describing the elephant.

After graduating from Clemson and hanging around, I was living in a slum lord’s house, we were paying $60 rent split three ways and still it was a close thing working minimum wage. I called my mother one evening asking for dinner recipes, needing them badly. Neither Lewis nor I had been trained particularly well growing up, and our third roommate, Mike I don’t think knew which end of a pot to use. I could fry bacon and burn eggs, but dinners I didn’t have a concept. We did lots of flank steak and hot dogs. One recipe I asked her for was a tomato casserole we’d eaten plenty of times at home. Stewed tomatoes from a can, a bit of sugar, maybe croutons, I can’t remember. Tomato casserole, tuna and mushroom casserole, she kindly advise were safe for amateurs. Lewis called it tomato surprise on account of it was surprising how often we made it–and how it turned out. Like he was a damn chef.

When I first came across Roadside’s tomato pie, I asked my sister, Janet if she remembered Mother’s version. It surprised me when the family’s sole scientist said she didn’t remember. I was on my own.

So after nursing several Pom Julios, D and I decided we’d reverse engineer Roadside’s recipe. Cheese and ripe tomatoes, well that was easy, and the fresh basil stood out, but the tricky part was figuring the croutons. Too much bread and it might as well be a tomato sandwich, too little and they don’t absorb enough tomato juice. If you cook the tomatoes to reduce the liquid, you might as well use canned tomatoes; it kills the summer brightness. D makes her own croutons, which are nicely crisp. I found a recipe online that called for scallions, so I tried a sautéed onion and she said to throw in garlic for good measure.

Beefsteak tomatoes, sliced thin, make a very nice presentation–provided you can get them baked well enough. Cherry tomatoes are about the best you can find off season, though they’re never as good. We tried layering the tomatoes and cheese, thinking the cheese would help cook the tomatoes, which sorta worked, but you can lose the cheese that way. Besides, you’re looking for that golden brown cheese bubbling over, and too much cheese kills the tomatoes. See how hard this is?

Last night’s version was close. The tomatoes were perfect, and the basil was fresh from D’s garden, except the tomato juice turned the croutons soggy. Possibly we should just lay the croutons on top and cover them with the cheese… or fix another Pom Julio.

Before I go, here’s the Bill Evans Trio Live at the Village Vanguard. He’s the one tickling the ivories. This is cool jazz. Hug your children and kiss your pups. Life’s better than the alternative. I’m going into the Hallmark poster biz.

Y’all think this about covers it?