The Odyssey of Hank Jones
"When you listen to a pianist, each note should have an identity, each note should have a soul of its own." Hank Jones
It is hard to say exactly when Hank Jones stepped out from being the greatest accompanist in jazz, its consummate pro playing behind Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Johnny Hartman, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane and hundreds more to becoming a revered figure that every jazz player dreams of sharing a session or stage with.
It's an almost impossible question to answer, on the eve of the jazz festival's Invitation Series pairing Jones with four wholly different musicians: Joe Lovano, the most prominent saxman of the last 15 years or so, who's recorded three masterpieces with Jones (including last year's duo Kid's Live at Dizzy's, which made dozens of critics' Top Ten lists); Charlie Haden, the bassist who assisted Ornette Coleman in creating "free" jazz in the late 50s, and whose 1994 collaboration with Jones, Steal Away: Spirituals, Hymns and Folk Song, remains a once-in-a-lifetime album; Brad Mehldau, the Gen X prince of piano who, his booking agent says, is "tickled pink" to play with him; and Oliver Jones, heir to Oscar Peterson (in whose memory this year's fest is dedicated) who is recording a duet album with Jones this week. In a festival filled with highlights, this series promises to be one for the ages.
If Jones's masterful musicianship naturally encompasses the two predominant styles in jazz swing and bebop the reason stares you right in face: He will be 90 on July 31, a life that dovetails with the entire recorded history of the music. (His has been involved in a thousand sessions, give or take a few, since 1944.) Listening to Jones, it's as if the time-tested verities of the past and the exciting possibilities of the future have coalesced into a shining present. Jones strikes a perfect equilibrium between a wise left hand and a gamboling right, with a purely crystalline touch and plenty of filigree, but never a wasted note. For this to happen, each hand must know what the other is doing as much a lesson in life as in music.
It is tempting to pigeonhole Jones as the quintessential mainstream pianist (probably because of his mastery of standards). Just don't say that to other musicians. Economy is his thing as opposed to the open-ended excursions of Mehldau, Keith Jarrett or Cecil Taylor. But within his steadfast search for the right notes to fit the moment, Jones adds all kinds of surprising note clusters, dissonances, quotations and motifs that make you scratch your head and ask, How'd he find that? You'll never hear him repeat himself or rely on stock phrases.
For example, on Adderly's classic Somethin' Else album, the last 2 minutes and 20 seconds of Autumn Leaves are all Jones as he lays out a series of wispy notes that indelibly evoke falling leaves in a gentle wind; you could call the passage cinematic, yet his music conjures a personal rendering of loss and nostalgia that film cannot imagine.
As Nat 'King' Cole, no slouch as a pianist in the elegant creativity department, once said: "His style and ideas make him one of the most exciting pianists around anywhere. Anyone who hasn't heard him has been cheated." And Ethan Iverson, the clamorous pianist of The Bad Plus (and perhaps the opposite of Jones), says: "Jones's touch at the piano projects powerfully while still seeming delicate
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But understanding the genius of Jones requires careful listening. The venerable New Yorker critic Whitney Balliett described his "quiet, lyrical, attentive style, so subtle and technically assured as to be almost self-effacing; you have to lean forward to catch Jones properly."
His deep dark face is dominated by a large forehead, lamplighter eyes and a raffish white mustache and chin-tickler. His voice, like his playing, is precise and pithy, speaking in sentences. You will rarely catch him in public without a jacket and tie. He is a sober sides with apple cheeks who laughs easily.
Hank Jones was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on the great river 240 miles northwest of the cradle of jazz, New Orleans. (Vicksburg was also the site of the Civil War battle that ceded the Mississippi to Union control.) In the early 20s his father, a Baptist deacon and lumber inspector, moved the family to Pontiac, Michigan a satellite of Detroit where the first Pontiac automobile was built in 1926.
"I got the interest, enthusiasm and encouragement for music from my parents. My father played guitar at one time, my mother the piano. There was always music in the house, thousands of records. Of course there wasn't much radio early on, but they made good use of the phonograph and the player-piano.
"I learned a sense of morality from my father, a very religious man like a five-day-a-week church man who lived the good life all his life. He tried to give us those kinds of values. I have a great deal of respect for my father. I just wish I had known him better. It's one of those things you don't think about as you're growing up."
It was in Pontiac that his illustrious brothers Thad and Elvin were born. The latter (1927-2004) revolutionized drumming during his tenure with Coltrane from 1960-1966, while the former (1923-1986) was a wonderful big-band leader (with Mel Lewis) and composer, revered by fellow trumpeters. "I had the most reserved temperament. Elvin and Thad were more exuberant, outgoing, hail-fellow men. I was more laid back, that's probably the best way to describe it. We didn't get to play together that much, and that's one thing I really regret."
While in junior high school, Jones awoke each morning to a radio program, beamed across the border from Windsor at 7 a.m., which played records by the flamboyant stride pianist Fats Waller. He began performing in 1931, at age 13. His father didn't approve of playing jazz on Sundays; he recalls a time when his father turned up at a Saturday night dance date at 11:45 p.m. to fetch him. "I won his approval by playing the piano and organ in church," he told the writer Dan Ouellette, "but he thought jazz was a bad influence back then because it was associated with places of ill repute and people of questionable backgrounds."
After absorbing the styles of Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum, he himself became the inspiration for the "Detroit school" of pianists Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris and Sir Roland Hanna. (The city also spawned such greats as drummer Kenny Clarke, guitarist Kenny Burrell and baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, among others.)
Ask Jones why Detroit became such a prominent jazz city, and he quips: "Certainly there was nothing in the water." However, he adds, "it was a very industrial city, and most of our parents worked in the factories. Maybe they encouraged the children to pick up a profession that didn't require that kind of work. It was more of an urgency to do something else than the work they did. My father worked very hard all his life. I'm sure the guys from Detroit had the same experience with their parents. Music was a likely profession because they all loved it, and many of them played it. So they encouraged their kids."
In 1944, while playing in Detroit-based "territory bands" orchestras that hit the wide-open spaces of America he met saxophonist Lucky Thompson, who invited him to New York to work with Oran 'Hot Lips' Page, a Texan billed as "the trumpet king of the west" with a style said to rival Louis Armstrong's, working at the Onyx Club on roaring 52nd Street. While Hot Lips was hardly a modernist, Jones could not help but be attracted by the feverish new bebop sounds that dominated The Street. While many established swing players reacted against the new style, Jones thought it could add to the development of his own. Soon he was playing with Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Howard McGhee and bebop's pied piper Charlie Parker.
"The music was exciting to me. I hadn't heard anything like it, certainly not in Pontiac. It involved a lot more harmonic possibilities than what had happened previously. It required, I believe, a lot higher degree of proficiency and mastery of your instrument, whether it be piano, horns or drums. It was a new thing and most of the established musicians really didn't care for it. But at least they didn't block it.
"All the pioneers were there in the night clubs Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Stan Levy, Al Haig. I think subconsciously what I did was adapt and incorporate certain portions of what they were doing to make my style fuller."
Playing with Parker was "an exhilarating experience because Charlie was doing things that nobody was playing on the horn. Everything he played was absolutely great. It was not only an exciting style, but his tone on alto was just beautiful. A lot of people tried to imitate him, but they couldn't match Charlie's unique tone.
"I never played a club job with him, although I accompanied him on the Jazz at the Philharmonic tours. He did ask me to join his group, but I turned him down, foolishly I guess, because I didn't think I was up to that kind of playing. But I was just honoured to be asked."
By the late 40s his reputation had grown by leaps and bounds. From 1947 to 1953 he became Ella Fitzgerald's accompanist. "When you accompany a horn player you use a more rhythmic approach, while you play a more melodic style with a singer. You offer support without overshadowing the singer. Your volume level is lower, and you play in the open spots." These maxims also went a long way in developing his style.
At the same time he became the "house pianist" for producer Norman Granz's new concept of bringing to concert halls, Jazz at the Philharmonic.
"People weren't used to hearing jazz in the context of symphonic hall venues. When they had the chance to hear it in concert form, I'm sure this was very impressive to audiences, some of whom were hearing jazz for the first time. Norman Granz believed that if jazz were presented in a concert hall it commanded respect, so you got respect. It forces you to concentrate on the music.
"The nightclubs had a different kind of audience. Many were dancers and you would get requests. There might've been a little more freedom. In nightclubs improvisation takes a different level, because you were playing more blues oriented tunes, fast tunes. Remember, when jazz first became recognized it was dance music."
Come the 1950s, rhythm & blues and rock 'n' roll had supplanted jazz as dance music, and work opportunities for jazz musicians plummeted. Jones's versatility put him in good stead as staff pianist for CBS-TV from 1959 to 1976, including the Garry Moore, Jackie Gleason and Ed Sullivan variety shows.
"Between them I played in a lot of different combinations and singers. Most of the music was not jazz-oriented. I worked out of TV Casting for a while and played for a lot of singers auditioning for jobs. Some of this was very challenging because, for example, some singers came in with an aria from an opera that required you to make instant transpositions."
In 1977 he hit Broadway playing Fats Waller in Ain't Misbehavin', the glorious recreation of his childhood hero's era.
"I felt a little awkward because I had nowhere near the girth of Fats Waller, who also drank a lot beer, wine, whatnot. I had a derby hat like him and a cigar which I didn't smoke. At the very end of the show I had my one and only line, but it was a great one: 'One never knows, do one?'"
At this time he formed The Great Jazz Trio with Miles Davis' former 1960s rhythm section, Ron Carter and Tony Williams, both considerably younger men.
"You hear a lot about the generational gap, but in the final analysis the question is: How do you play the music? We all played the same chords. My style was perhaps a little different than theirs. You might say that I came from a different era, but musically speaking I don't think there was that much difference."
Steal Away is a religious album, with little connection to "modern" jazz save the fact that it harkens back to jazz's very earliest roots in the 19th century. Charlie Haden had heard Jones's 1977 recording of It's Me, O Lord in the Smithsonian Jazz Piano collection; the loss of his mother inspired him to tackle material he grew up on in a family that played them professionally in country music. As Jones tells it, they performed a concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival [when], divided into two parts, modern jazz and spirituals.
"You see, my background and Charlie's are quite similar: we both grew up listening and performing spirituals and religious music, so in that respect we came prepared. The reason it was successful was that it was a natural thing for us: we both simply love spirituals."
It is a slow, stately album, with notes that linger, each one carrying humanity on its shoulders. "Well, I think the man upstairs had something to do with that. When I play religious music, I'm very sincere, because I feel a closeness to it. If the right notes were played, then thank God they were. All good things come from God."
Whitney Balliett described Steal Away "as quiet as God's thoughts
unique and irresistibly affecting. The two men work as one, in unison or in harmony, and the recording becomes a subtle meditation on the horrors of slavery as well as a celebration of the great songs that came to be the slaves' solace."
Gary Giddens writes, in his 1998 opus Visions of Jazz: The First Century: "I don't believe anyone made a record before quite like Haden's and Jones's
This isn't one of those albums that wants to get your flesh all bumpy with unbridled hosannahs. It's subtle and sober without being dusty and politic, solemn but never somber, performed with a purity beyond the reach of the kind of pianist who can't resist flashing over the keys to cover a lapse of thought."
He then provides a most cogent descriptions of Jones's genius: "[T]his stands as one of his most seductive yet understated recordings. It's hard to imagine another pianist pulling it off. Only a musician of exceptional maturity would be inclined to hold his technique at bay in theme statements that draw their power from basic harmonies, foursquare rhythms, and a stately resolve to honor the unadorned ingenuity of simple melodies. With his inimitable touch, ringing the keys like chimes, and his cunning use of dissonance and altered changes, he gets to the core of each piece, though the real magic is often in the transition to the second chorus, when he swings into time for improvisations that sustain the initial aura while probing a still deeper level."
During the 1990s, Jones upped the ante in a series of brilliant trio albums (see discography). At the turn of the millennium, Joe Lovano the pre-eminent saxophonist of the last two decades entered the picture. Lovano is not just a great player his deeply personal and forward-looking style coupled with a profound knowledge of what came before (with nothing "neo" about him) but he is also a fan who communicates a boyish enthusiasm for the music.
Half a dozen years ago Lovano, now 55, told me that his first time playing duets with Jones, at Carnegie Hall in 2001, was "one of the highlights of my life it taught me so much." He then built on the relationship with the acclaimed quartet albums I'm All For You (2004) and Joyous Encounter (2006) both with the veteran rhythm section of drummer Paul Motian (77) and bassist George Mraz (63) and last year's duet Kids Live at Dizzy's.
Says Jones: "Joe had played with the Mel Lewis-Thad Jones orchestra for a while, although I didn't know him at that time. I had always known that Joe had a high degree of proficiency, he's a really excellent player. He demonstrated that in the quartet sessions, but it showed even more in the duo date because there was more pressure. It was certainly a great challenge for me because of the dual roles of as accompanist and soloist. It's a two-pronged thing. Accompanying someone of Joe's caliber is a very rhythmic kind of thing, even on ballads, and you have to express yourself in such a manner that you don't get in his way." Jones allows himself a rare bit of self-congratulation. "I think Joe and I did rather well. I enjoyed it immensely."
Lovano has called Jones a "national treasure." (Indeed, in 1989 the National Endowment for the Arts presented him with the NEA Jazz Masters Award, its highest honour. In 2003 the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers gave him the Jazz Living Legend Award.)
Playing with Jones, says Lovano, "has been an amazing period for me. It's been inspiring to explore and develop music together. Working with someone like Hank, who is so enthusiastic and on such a high level of creating in the moment, has given me the true sense of what jazz is all about
It's so joyous, and we get so free in the music. Every time we play together we search and we experience these feelings that we're exploring like kids
Whatever key or tempo, there's no routine with Hank. Some musicians go through the motions each night. Hank creates anew every set."
The album was a critical smash. "Would you believe more than an hour of saxophone and piano duets and not a dull or languid minute in all that time?" wrote Dave Gelly of The Guardian (London). "It's their perfect empathy, inventiveness and wit that does it. Joe Lovano, with his juicy, fibrous tone and endless variety of approach, and Hank Jones, in whose playing virtually the entire history of jazz stands ready to be deployed at a moment's notice, have made a masterpiece."
Looking towards his duet with the brilliant wunderkind Brad Mehdau, 37, Jones says: "I've never met him. I've heard more about him than I've actually heard him play. It'll be very interesting to hear what Brad does. It's going to my job to adjust to his playing. I've learned one thing when you play with two pianos: The pianists cannot play solos at the same time. I try to play subdued when he's soloing. When that happens it can be a very successful thing. But for that to happen, you must concentrate. If you don't, you'll miss things like a chord progression and it's going to be very obvious to everyone, particular your partner at the other piano. It's always about concentration, with any duo situation. There's no other way."
Jones says that preparing for a date with someone he's never encountered before involves "the same thing I do before any session: practice. That's the only thing that really helps you, no matter what you practice scales, exercises or compositions. If you don't practice you don't have the flexibility (in the fingers). If you do, you're prepared for whatever. When I was doing a lot of recording (for the Savoy label in the '50s) I never knew what I was going to do until I got to the studio. But I practiced so I wasn't intimidated. If you don't practice it's obvious to everybody. I try to get in at least a couple of hours a day, some days I can get in more. The more you practice, the better you feel and the better you can do the things that you're supposed to do."
Jones elucidated upon a few Zen-like cardinal rules to Balliett: "Every tune you play has its correct tempo, and you have to find it. When you do, it practically plays itself. It's not what you think it should be, it's what the tune demands
It's difficult not to repeat certain figures and patterns. When you do, it means your concentration is not what it should be. Concentration is the difference between the great players and the players who are not great."
A couple of years ago Jones explained the musician's real travail in life: "I try to improve tomorrow on what I was yesterday. And then when the next day comes I'll try to improve on what I was the day before. And that's the only way you can really make progress."
Eleven weeks before the Dizzy's gig at Lincoln Center, Jones underwent quadruple bypass surgery following a massive heart attack. No sweat: He says there are "no secrets" to longevity. "I've never used alcohol or drugs, never smoked. I've always tried to eat balanced meals, get a certain amount of exercise, drink plenty of water, just tried to lead a normal life. That's how I've patterned my life, not to do anything extreme.
Ask him if there are musicians he wished he recorded with, and the answer is typically down-to-earth: "Not really, although I'm sure there are musicians up there. But I've never said in my mind, 'I want to record with this guy or that guy.' It never occurs to me. If it happens, well, that's fine."
In other words, to quote a Parker album Jones played on: Now's the time.
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
Charlie Parker (Verve) 1947-53: Collected quartet sides, with more emphasis on Birds's solos than his quintet dates, spotlighting Jones's pithy touch. (The best-sounding Parker CD.)
Coleman Hawkins, The Hawk Flies High (OJC), 1957: The first great saxophonist hand-picked his sidemen (including trombonist J.J. Johnson) for this classic "comeback" session.
Cannonball Adderly, Somethin' Else! (Blue Note), 1958: One of the indispensable albums in jazz, its sensitivity matching its swing and lush balladry. (Miles Davis's last session as a "sideman.")
Hank Jones, The Talented Touch/Songs From Porgy & Bess (Okra-Tone, reissue), 1958/60: Featuring Detroit guitarists Kenny Burrell and Barry Galbraith, and brother Elvin on the Gershwin material,
Johnny Hartman, I Just Stopped By to Say Hello (Impulse), 1963: Proof positive that discretion is the better part of valor (sorry, Frank).
The Great Jazz Trio, At the Village Vanguard Vol. 1 & 2 (Test of Time, reissue), 1977: Drummer Tony Williams and bassist Ron Carter, the modernist Davis rhythm section of the 1960s, join Jones in lengthy jaunts, from Monk's Bemsha Swing to moviedom's Laura.
Tommy Flanagan with Hank Jones, Our Delights (OJC), 1978: Subtle duets with the Detroit-based pianist Jones inspired.
Hank Hones, The Essence (DMP), 1990: Trio with Billy Higgins and Ray Drummond is just what the title says.
Hank Jones, Live at Maybeck Recital Hall (Concord), 1990: Solo piano in the beautiful acoustic of a wood-paneled room with great standards to match (What Is This Thing Called Love, The Very Thought of You, 'Round About Midnight).
Hank Jones, Upon Reflection (Verve), 1993: With youngest brother Elvin on brushes, devoted to the music of Thad Jones.
Charlie Haden & Hank Jones, Steal Away: Spirituals, Hymns and Folk Song (Verve), 1994: So singular that it might not even be considered "jazz."
Hank Jones, For My Father (Justin Time), 2004: Beautifully recorded session of standards Ellington's Sophisticated Lady, Strayhorn's Lotus Blossom, Porter's easy to Love with Mraz and drummer Dennis Mackrel.
Joe Lovano, Joyous Encounter (Blue Note), 2005: A dream quartet (including drummer Paul Motian and bassist George Mraz), following up 2004's I'm All For You, fitting like velvet glove.
Hank Jones and Frank Wess, Hank and Frank (Lineage), 2006: Joining saxophonist and flutist Wess, an alum of the Basie band four years his junior, in an effortlessly swinging date. The lightness of being.
Joe Lovano & Hank Jones, Kids Live at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola (Blue Note), 2007: Total empathy and communication, serving songs as varied as Vernon Duke's Autumn in New York to Coltrane's Crescent.