Friday, August 23, 2024
Jazz guitarist, Albany native Russell Malone passes away
Jazz guitarist, Albany native Russell Malone passes away
ALBANY, Ga. (WALB) - WALB has confirmed that Russell Malone, an Albany native and famed guitarist, died on Friday. He was 60.
Russell had a storied career playing with Jimmy Smith, Harry Connick Jr., George Benson, Ron Carter, Dianne Reeves, Freddy Cole, David Sanborn and many others. He also released several solo albums.
Malone was a guest on WALB’s “Dialogue This Week with Karla Heath-Sands” on two occasions, with the last being in 2018.
Though he remained busy touring throughout his life, he frequently returned to his hometown.
Funeral arrangements are still pending.
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Sunday, August 18, 2024
A Haunting Jazz Ballad at 80
‘’ ROUND MIDNIGHT’ ( 1944), BY THELONIOUS MONK
THELONIOUS MONK’S best-known composition, “’Round Midnight,” was first recorded 80 years ago this month. His slow, moody ballad ranks as among his finest work and one of the most enduring in jazz.
Born in Rocky Mount, N.C., in 1917, Monk grew up in New York, where he studied classical and jazz piano. By the early 1940s, he was performing in Harlem nightclubs. He developed an unorthodox and controversial style, with limited right-hand flash, sweet-and-sour dissonances, skeletal rather than crowded chords, surprising silences and manifest inventiveness. He composed more standards than any other jazz artist save Duke Ellington. Monk gained a reputation as reclusive and elusive.
In the early 1940s, he penned the piece he called “’Round Midnight,” one of his most evocative titles, and it won favor among his coterie of listeners. The band of Cootie Williams—an alum of Ellington’s orchestra—cut the premiere disc on Aug. 22, 1944. Williams was listed as co-composer for adding an interlude that subsequent musicians have disregarded.
The composition opens with a striking five-note motif that sets a minor key, recurring eight times as an anchoring leitmotif. Monk’s two main themes—sinuous, seductive and unpredictable—are among the most memorable in jazz. The piece artfully balances ascending and descending lines, weaving in rich, unexpected harmonies that heighten its allure.
Enter Dizzy Gillespie, the virtuoso trumpeter who pushed jazz beyond its limits into a new style called bebop. When Gillespie recorded “’Round Midnight” in 1946, he added a dramatic prelude and cadenza, which most later artists have adopted.
Another trumpeter, Miles Davis, lifted the piece onto a pedestal, gave it a blazing spotlight and immortalized it. Until he recorded “’Round Midnight” in 1956, 62 recordings had been made. On his first album for Columbia Records, titled “’Round About Midnight,” his hooded and brooding version, played with a Harmon mute and arranged by Gil Evans, proved consequential for his career and the song.
As Davis admitted in his autobiography, “It’s a hard tune to learn and remember,” adding it “was very difficult because it had a complex melody and you had to hang it together.” And yet “’Round Midnight” has become the fourth most-recorded jazz work, with over 2,000 different versions, a testament to the composer, the piece and the musicians who have embraced it.
So revered is “’Round Midnight” that it has been called “the national anthem of jazz.” Unlike playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” to start major sporting events, however, performing “’Round Midnight” is never obligatory for musicians. But learning it is. That’s because it’s part of the core repertory and essential knowledge of being a jazz artist.
As Monk’s instrument was piano, it is unsurprising that his showpiece has attracted many other pianists. Composer-pianist Jason Moran first heard “’Round Midnight” at age 13, and it changed his life as Monk showed him that at the root of hip-hop is jazz. Piano man John Lewis re--corded it 20 times, Bill Evans 26 times and Monk himself 39 times.
Late-night lyrics were written by the little-remembered songwriter Bernie Hanighen, who also supervised Brunswick Records sessions by Ellington and Billie Holiday.
It begins to tell ’Round midnight, ’round midnight.
I do pretty well Till after sundown. Suppertime I’m feeling sad. But it really gets bad ’Round midnight. The emotive words and melody have lured such jazz singers as Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Tormé and Betty Carter and such pop singers as Eydie Gormé, Sting and Amy Winehouse.
Tempo is key to interpreting “’Round Midnight.” Monk typically performed it at somewhere between 62 and 78 beats per minute. Many other instrumentalists have slackened it to good effect—for example, guitarist Kenny Burrell at 57 bpm. Singers have tended to milk more emotion from its lyrics by relaxing it further: Tormé to 55 and Fitzgerald to 50 bpm. Pianist Luke Gillespie even dialed it down it to a serene 40 bpm and transformed it with atmospheric figurations drawn from the nocturnes of John Field and Frédéric Chopin.
In 1986, Bertrand Tavernier chose “’Round Midnight” as the name for his nostalgic, bittersweet film featuring saxophone star Dexter Gordon, based on the lives of pianist Bud Powell and saxophonist Lester Young. The title tune was rendered by pianist Herbie Hancock and Bobby McFerrin singing a novel, trumpet-like wordless vocal. In 2002, the Italian classical pianist Emanuele Arciuli took the extraordinary step of commissioning 19 composers—including Uri Caine and Fred Hersch—to reimagine “’Round Midnight” in their own styles.
Whether evoking a smoky jazz club, elegiac loneliness or longing in the dark, after 80 years “’Round Midnight” remains poignant and unforgettable. Mr. Hasse is curator emeritus of American music at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. His books include “Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington” (Da Capo) and “Discover Jazz” (Pearson).
Monk’s jazz standard remains a core repertory piece.