Month: August 2005

Here’s To Life

Call it coincidence, or the work of spirits, but a few hours after I posted yesterday’s blog entry, Shirley Horn’s husband had his California friend to call John again. Shirley is indeed conscious, aware of what she sees and hears, even though she is unable to speak. John was able to call and speak to her while her husband held the phone to her ear; “she smiled when she heard your voice,” he told John.

The voice, whether used in speech or song, is a powerful instrument. When I was in the hospital with a breathing tube that rendered me speechless, the voices of friends calling from the opposite coast were comforting, but the most uplifting call of all was Joe Williams singing Here’s To Life a capella over the phone. I wish Joe were still here to sing it to Shirley.

Here’s To Life is a beautiful song by Artie Butler* who originally intended the song for Sinatra. Ol’ Blue Eyes passed on it, so Artie gave it to Joe, who performed it many times in concert, especially when accompanied by an orchestra. Joe wanted to record it, but only if he could do so with strings. The record company didn’t want the expense and so when Gitane came up with the money for Shirley to record with strings, Shirley called Artie, Artie called John who then called Joe, who, being his gracious self said, “but of course Shirley can record it.” Shirley’s CD, “Here’s To Life” was released by Polygram in 1992. Two years later, Joe recorded in England with Robert Farnon’s orchestra, and his “Here’s To Life” CD was released by Telarc.

Shirley is a fighter, and your prayers and well-wishes will give her strength. Cards and flowers may be sent to her at:

Gladys Spellman Specialty Hospital and Nursing Center
2900 Mercy Lane
Cheverly, MD 20785

*lyrics were written by Phyllis Molinary

Difficult Discussions

A month ago my husband got the call: Shirley Horn is gravely ill and not expected to live much longer. The caller was not someone John knew, but the man said Shirley’s husband had asked him to call and tell John that Shirley was brain dead and on life support that might soon be stopped. John called Shirley’s husband and daughter repeatedly, but there was never an answer; and so we’ve been waiting for news. For the past two days, a single email message from singer Gail Marten has been circulating and it says that Shirley is conscious. I don’t know if it’s true, but I hope so…or do I? What does Shirley want? To me that is the only question that matters. We don’t often talk about one’s quality of life; the brief flurry of discussion caused by Terry Shivo’s case having died along with her.

In some ways, I feel it to be a simple matter, albeit one that can only be defined on an individual basis. One feels his or her own quality of life either to be, or not to be, up to a tolerable level. But defining that level is not something you can really do in advance. We think we know today what we consider to be minimal quality of life, but unless you have experienced a truly serious illness, you simply do not understand how profoundly your views and opinions about what is important can change. What you think would be intolerable today may feel to be only a minor nuisance tomorrow.

I believe we must think about such things, and plan as best as possible, but the best plan is an ongoing dialogue with those you love. A slip of paper in your wallet can help with the legalities, but you should re-read that directive often and and re-write it as needed. Those who find it to be an easy discussion probably should think again. It may seem simple today, especially if you’re talking about what you want for yourself, but it may not feel that way later. It is a discussion that fits hand in hand with the right to die, and letting a loved one go is never easy.

Joyce Alexander Wein: October 21, 1928 – August 15, 2005

The following announcement was released today and I share it with you courtesy of publicist Sue Auclair:

Joyce Wein, wife and business partner of jazz impresario George Wein, passed away quietly Monday, August 15, at New York Presbyterian Hospital following a battle with cancer. She was 76.

Joyce Alexander Wein was born in October 21, 1928, in Boston, Massachusetts, the sixth of seven children of Columbia and Hayes Alexander. Her mother was the youngest of thirteen children, two of whom were born into slavery. Joyce attended Girls Latin School and at the age of 15, entered Simmons College, where she graduated with a major in chemistry in 1948 at the age of 19. After graduation, she started her career as a biochemist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and later in New York at Columbia Medical School.

In 1959, Joyce Alexander married George Wein, founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, and gave up her career in biochemistry. Mr. Wein, an internationally known impresario, leaned heavily on her advice and partnership in the Newport Opera Festival and Newport Jazz Festival, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Hampton Jazz Festival, and the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France. In 1963, Mrs. Wein joined her husband and Pete and Toshi Seeger in founding the Newport Folk Festival, a major engine of the 1960s folk revival; her tireless work behind the scenes was critical to that event’s success.

A woman of great intelligence and tremendous dignity, she was a renowned art collector, extraordinary hostess, devoted friend and avid supporter of the arts.

A founder of the New York Coalition of 100 Black Women, the forerunner of coalitions around the nation, Mrs. Wein has been deeply involved with philanthropy and the arts. She was responsible for establishing the Joyce and George Wein Professorship Fund in African-American Studies at Boston University, and recently set up the Alexander Family Endowed Scholarship Fund at Simmons College. She has served on the Board of the Studio Museum in Harlem for ten years, and has partnered with her husband in amassing an important collection of paintings and drawings by African-American artists. (The George and Joyce Wein Collection of African-American Art will be shown at an exhibition at the Boston University Art Gallery from November 18, 2005 through January 22, 2006.) For the past ten years, she and her husband have partnered with Kenneth and Kathryn Chenault, the CEO of American Express and his wife, to host an annual dinner for Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone, raising over $500,000.

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Wein leaves two sisters, Eugenia Manning of San Francisco, California and Theodora McLaurin of Hingham, Massachusetts and many nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews.

Funeral Services will be held on Friday, August 19, at 11:30 a.m. at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel, 81st & Madison. Interment following service at Woodlawn Cemetery. Donations can be made in her name to Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street, NY 10027.

Frank E. Campbell The Funeral Chapel
1076 Madison Avenue at 81st Street
New York, NY 10028
Telephone: 212 288 3500
Toll Free: 800 423 5928
http://www.frankecampbell.com/

[Photo of Joyce & George Wein in Newport, 2004 copyright Sue Auclair]

A Reviewer’s Nightmare

It was a sad night. Sad to see an old friend who no longer has what it takes, surrounded by second or third rate musicians. He wears a suit jacket that looks slept in and no one on the bandstand smiles. He wanders on stage alone, and starts to play. I wonder if he begins his program solo, then works up to duo and builds on – then I realize he’s just warming up almost as if unaware he’s on stage. The pianist arrives, as does the sax. The drummer gets seated. He counts off and they begin just as the bassist walks on stage. They’ve begun anyway.

We hear the pop when the bass connects to the amplifier. What happened to “the presentation”? Why no announcement, no disembodied voice of introduction, no reverence, no respect. And now the flash bulbs are popping as Japanese and German tourists take pictures of a relic. The drummer is too busy, his licks inappropriate. The first tune ends and the voice finally says “Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome the Quintet.” He nods and then they hit, sounding more like they should have to start with. Maybe we can all forget the preamble?

They overplay, as if to cover up for him – instead they should provide a simple swinging support in which he could shine. Here he scuffles. The sax is masturbating and even he doesn’t get himself excited. The pianist doesn’t know the right chord changes, or maybe he just can’t find the right voicings. Everybody looks independently bored. He plays a ballad accompanied at first only by the piano and then the trio joins in – you can hear the poignancy and lyricism that marked his playing for all these years. Even if not all the notes are perfectly hit.

I would hate to have to review this show! What would I say? That he should have retired? That’s a death sentence. What would he do then? It’s like not wanting to see someone in the hospital, preferring to remember them in their better days, but now is when they need you.
The audience has no idea what it’s hearing – no clue as to whether it’s good or bad musically. Volume and velocity elicit the only major reactions. There’s no music education, no basis on which to form a discerning opinion. Perhaps, on nights like this, that’s a good thing.

Why him?

Luther Henderson is not a household name, not even a B-list celebrity in the eyes of the general public. Finding a publisher for his biography has been a lengthy and difficult process, but I am pleased to say that I have been offered a contract, am in negotiations right now, and hope to announce the signing very soon. Meanwhile, people are asking me “Luther who?” and “Why him?”

I was unaware of Luther’s accomplishments when I first met him. I do not remember how that first meeting came to be. He was close to many people who are, or were, important in my own life. Still, I don’t recall any one of them making the introduction. My earliest recollection is of a planning meeting in the mid-1970s for the annual Jackie Robinson fundraiser, “An Afternoon of Jazz,” held outdoors on the grounds of Robinson’s home in Connecticut. Someone had recommended me to assist jazz pianist Dr. Billy Taylor with booking the artists, and I was in Marion Logan’s living room with Rachael Robinson, Luther Henderson, Billie Allen, and a few others. I may have grown up as a liberal, supported Rev. Martin Luther King’s work, and taken part in the March on Washington, but back then, I was unaware that Mrs. Logan was married to Arthur Logan, Duke Ellington’s doctor, and that they were close to Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I knew that Mrs. Robinson’s husband was a famous baseball player, but I did not know that it was he who broke the league’s color barrier. (Not being a sports fan, and not yet born when it happened, I guess that was understandable, but they really should have taught us about it in school.) There was no reason for me to know that Ms. Allen was an actress and stage director, or that Mr. Henderson had graduated from Julliard in 1942, but had he been properly credited on recordings, being a jazz fan, I might have known that he had written orchestrations for Duke Ellington. They didn’t seem to mind my ignorance; I was just a college kid there to do a job.

Over the following years, I would return on several occasions to the annual summer concert at the Robinsons’, no longer as naive booker, but as guest. One year I went with saxophonist Jerome Richardson, who I was dating at the time. Jerome and Luther were great friends, and Luther hired Jerome to work on his projects whenever possible. While living in New York City, I got to know Luther’s third wife, Margo, and we would occasionally shop together or have lunch at Café Des Artistes. I soon moved to California with Jerome, and we saw Luther on many occasions, most often during the productions of Ain’t Misbehavin’ in California and France when Jerome was in the band. After a lengthy run close to our home in Los Angeles, the show ran for six months in Paris, where I joined Jerome for a month that included Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Margo had died two years earlier, and Billie Allen flew to Paris to spend the holidays with Luther; just after New Year’s they announced their plans to marry.

By the time they married, Jerome and I had split up. The new man in my life was John Levy, later to become my husband. John’s client, jazz singer Joe Williams, introduced us, and both Joe and John were old and dear friends of Luther’s. I was to return again several times to the Robinsons’ with John and with Joe (by then I was Joe’s publicist), and there, while the crowd enjoyed the music outside, we would always steal a moment in the gracious Robinson living room to catch up on the latest Henderson news.

Distance makes it difficult to stay connected, and we lived on opposite coasts, but whenever John or I went to New York, or whenever Luther or Billie would come to Los Angeles, we would get together. I had been in New York to see Black and Blue when it opened on Broadway, and John and I both saw Jelly’s Last Jam, first in Los Angeles and later in New York. We knew that Luther was ill; we knew that he had cancer, but we thought he had beaten it. We would hear that Luther was very sick, and then we would talk to him and he’d tell us about a new project he was working on. This happened more than once. When the end finally came, we were blindsided, and unable to get to New York in time to see him. At least John was able to say a few words to him on the telephone during that last week when he was in hospice.
Later we learned that just a few weeks before Luther went into hospice care, Billie told him that he was to receive a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Fellowship, an honor that pleased him greatly. She said that he responded with just one word: “Recognition.” He had little energy to say more, and died not long thereafter. John and I were not able to attend the New York memorial service, but we were there in 2004 when Billie Allen Henderson, accompanied onstage by Luther’s son, Luther Henderson III, and his daughter, Melanie Henderson, accepted the NEA Jazz Master Award in his memory.

As I watched the video montage of Luther’s life, I realized not only how little I really knew about this man and his legacy, but also how few of the three thousand people sitting around me in the immense ballroom of the Hilton hotel had even heard of him. I knew it was a situation I wanted to change.

Your Own Story

Awhile back, a young musical artist I know wanted to write a book about an older musical artist who had been an influence but who died before they really got to know one another. [I am not mentioning names, not to be coy, but because it’s not germane.] The young artist, wanting to know more, and also wanting to pay tribute, interviewed many of the older artist’s friends and colleagues, and then sent me a manuscript with a request for my opinion. To be completely honest, I was so profoundly disappointed by what I saw that, at first, I did not know what to say. Clearly the young artist had done a great deal of research and leg-work in contacting folks, interviewing them and transcribing their thoughts; also in compiling large portions of other people’s writings. And that was the problem. The manuscript was one large compendium of other peoples work and words and as such was little more than a copyright nightmare. I know a lot of people who are not Writers with a capital W, by which I mean that they are not writers by profession and/or they have not studied the craft, either formally or through years of practice. They are either hobbyists or professionals in another field who have a burning interest, message, and/or a story to tell, and they need guidance. Here’s the gist of what I told the young artist.

What is missing, first and foremost, is YOU. I know you wanted to tell the artist’s story in the artist’s words, but you can’t. Furthermore, readers want to go on a journey with the author — that’s you. You have a unique perspective from which to tell your story of the older artist and how the experience impacted your life. You probably think that you don’t have enough to say about that artist on your own, but I am not suggesting that you not use the research, rather that you make it part of the story of your journey to discover and get to really know the artist after death took away the person-to-person opportunities.

* There is your life before actually meeting the artist – when did you first hear the artist’s music? On record? Radio? Live? What did you think/how did you feel? Who was with you and/or with whom did you discuss it later? How did the artist’s work influence your musical and professional growth?

* Then one day you met the artist in person. How? When? Where?

* Describe the events where you were in contact and/or worked with or around the artist.

* The artist’s funeral

* Then, feeling the loss of the opportunity to learn more from the artist, you decided to get to know the artist by interviewing friends and colleagues, and by reading everything you could find.

Get into all these events and focus on that artist as seen through your eyes – what did you feel? What did you think? What did you learn? Try to remember what you thought/felt back then, and if time has given you a different perspective today, say so. If someone tells you about something that artist did or said, share your thoughts and reactions with the reader.

As an artist yourself, you think about things like the relationships between leader and sidemen, criteria for picking material, and such. You can explore these topics by sharing what you learned from the artist, from firsthand observation and from what interviewees said. The interviews should be woven throughout, but you have to use only the golden nuggets, then paraphrase any salient info, and lose the rest. Readers don’t want to wade through the transcripts; that’s your job. The golden nuggets are those that share insight and perspective, rather than obvious historical facts.

Writing is a craft, and, just like music, it takes training and practice. Of course there are many books on the market written by people who are not professional writers, but most of those ‘writers’ hire editors, book doctors, or ghost writers to help them create a publishable manuscript.

I still believe you have a story worthy of telling, but the materials you sent represent only the accumulated research. What you need now is to prepare a proper structure and to tell your story. The structure can be mostly chronological, and one way to find your story is to look at each little section you compiled and ask “what does that mean to me.”

Craft

“To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself…Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”
~~Mark Twain, in a Letter to Emeline Beach, 2/10/1868

Fifty Writing Tools: The workbench of Roy Peter Clark

Clark, a Senior Scholar at the Poynter Institute, has written a series of instructional tips for nonfiction writers , and this amazing crash course in the craft of writing, from the “sub-atomic to the metaphysical level” (in the words of Pulitzer Prize winning feature writer Tom French), is posted online and it’s free.

Clark writes:

“At times, it helps to think of writing as carpentry. That way, writers and editors can work from a plan and use tools stored on their workbench. You can borrow a writing tool at any time. And here’s a secret: Unlike hammers, chisels, and rakes, writing tools never have to be returned. They can be cleaned, sharpened, and passed on.”

And as he says, “These are tools and not rules.” Clark succintly defines each tool, then explains, examplifies, and end with suggested exercises. These lessons are invaluable for novices and experts alike.

Browsing Online

At Sketch For Nothing I found the fortune cookie that should have been mine yesterday.

At culturespace I found this post that I would describe as a prescription good for all that ails you.

At The Missouri Review, a web exclusive – On Reading Nonfiction by Michael Piafsky – where he quotes Samuel Johnson:

“the two most engaging powers of an author are to make something familiar new and to make something new familiar.”

Piafsky is partial to:

“a piece so skillfully crafted that despite its seeming mundanity, the author is able to bring to life for me something I’ve seen a million times but never quite looked at so closely, a piece whose writer could rivet me detailing an ant’s walk across my front yard.”

While Piafsky’s description could apply to fiction, here he is describing a genre called by many names, among them creative nonfiction or literary nonfiction. The University of Oregon, has online a good definition – What is Literary Nonfiction? – as well as a series of Q&As with some terrific writers including Ted Conover (Newjack), Melissa Fay Greene (Praying for Sheetrock) The New Yorker‘s Susan Orlean (The Orchid Thief), Alex Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here, The Other Side of the River), Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickle and Dimed), to name a few.

I’ve Got Mail: Addendum 2

I had really been hoping that Kenny Harris would not see my faux pas before I had corrected my mistake. Alas, no such luck. And to compound my embarassment, he informs me that he resides in Bermuda, not England, though he did hail from there at one time. This was truly sloppy work on my part, definitely not up to my journalistic standards. Geez! A gander at an email address will tell — .uk stands for United Kingdom, and I’m guessing .bm must be Bermuda . Mea culpa. I apologize.