5yo Album: Ella and Louis (1956) - Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald
This could take a while. I simply dont know which was more important - the record itself, the household in which it played for years & years or the impact it all had on your humble servant.
Lennon & McCartney. Diz & Bird. Jagger & Richard. Miles & Trane. Four creative juggernauts who've never been in my kitchen, yes, but also all duos who had less standing & joy in the creation of music than Pops and Miss Ella. Others may have understood more about the when, where & how of music (tho i'm not stipulating that), but THIS is the why. You wanna understand the elements which make us make such a fuss over what comes into our ears & mind, it's right here. The notes, the foundation, the guesses at immortal moments, the joy.
Now a moment for the couple who played it ALL the time. Me Da was Atlas - pulling a full credit load @ UVM, working fulltime in the freezers at Sealtest Ice Cream, research fellowship & AT work, raising two kids and still helping on his invalid father's farm, all the while a smile. Me Ma's relentless shanty-Irish pursuit of household perfection, loving me & sis but still wishing she could have us laminated in case company came over, always mad that she wasn't doing more. Music is where they split the difference - Da would sweep into the room with this or Glenn Miller on the hifi and kidnap me Ma from her apron-bound world for three spins round the living room floor. 500 pounds between them, but a dozen jitterbug trophies on the shelves, a sight to behold.
I was a performing seal for the first ten years of my life and it began in earnest by being able to sing like Satchmo from the time i was four. Werent a family or social, occasion or gathering where i wasnt out front doing
Up a Lazy River or
Jeepers Creepers at some point and, when
Hello Dolly became a hit....oy gevalt.
But i knew where all the notes lived. Ella and Pops taught me where all the notes lived, where they could have gone as much as where they went. And that's why, with no training, playing ability or special skill, i've been able to talk music & process its making with some of the great talents of my time and musicians at every level.
Best example was my ol' pal Natman. I was dating a Reno lounge singer (ETA: we have a son who turns 23 tomorrow), dealing with a lot of "why him?!" from jealous & far more attractive players, including this one cat who looked like Louis Gossett and played like Jimi Hendrix. Kathy & i had done a coupla weddings together (the first time i'd performed publicly since an incident when i was 10 which gave me lifelong stagefright) at the request of friends and she was making a fuss about it to musician friends at the weekly Blues Jam night at the local players' favorite club who were all rightfully BFD about my meager offerings. I was sitting at the bar trying to disappear into a glass. This Nat comes sits next to me and chats me up trying figure out what i got that his Kathy wants. Wasted me counters by asking if, since his name was Nat but he looked like Scatman Crothers could i call him Natman. It almost turned into a "What about you?! Yeah, what about YOU?!" thang but i poured myself back into my glass cuz fighting w her friends might blow it w Kathy.
Well, it's all gotta come out somewhere.. After the mindfire of another bathroom line, i came out to the jam band doing kind of a jazzy thing. Sat at my stool and the scatting ghosts of Ella & Pops come up in me, so i start scatting along to the tune. Natman was within earshot and heard a few minutes of this apparently. I'm sitting there, he turns me around, i figure he's gonna swing on me, but he asks, "Where'd you learn to sing like that?" Told him i been singing like Satchmo since i was 4yo. He says he never heard a white man hit the notes likat, asks if i can do it onstage. "If Kathy's up there so i dont get the sweats, yeah". Dont remember the tune (cocaine, cognac and dares are powerful drugs) but, at the breakdown, i scatted for a half dozen choruses from a place inside me far past the performing seal, the peeps cutting the rug or anything else, back to an ancient place Pops & Ella had suggested and it was more powerful than all the other stimulants combined. I was Natman's Robin from then on, our duet of Bonnie Raitt's "Love Sneaking Up on You" was the best i've ever performed anything anywhere and we had a moment around me freestyling ten minutes "Hey Joe" in a mindless C&C haze i've told about before which Natman said was the greatest experience he ever had onstage. That's where music lives. nufced
ETA: check out the band personnel on this - Oscar Peterson on piano, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, Buddy Rich
and would like to do italics lyrics.
and liked the riffed one-liners- even if I didn't understand most of them.
