Reviews for Alec Wilder and his friends

The average rating for Alec Wilder and his friends based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-03-27 00:00:00 Cristian Rl Risdon Nine articles from The New Yorker magazine from the years 1968-1974, with portraits of ten people, all written by Whitney Balliett, then the jazz critic for that magazine. All but one of these people were performers, mostly in the field of jazz. One of them, remarkably, is still living as I write this in 2021. They are: Tony Bennett (1926 - living) singer Ruby Braff (1927 - 2003) jazz trumpeter and cornetist Blossom Dearie (1924 - 2009) jazz singer and pianist Bob Elliott (1923 - 2016) comedian, part of a team with Ray Goulding Ray Goulding (1922 - 1990) comedian, part of a team with Bob Elliott Bobby Hackett (1915 - 1976) jazz trumpeter and cornetist Marie Marcus (1914 - 2003) jazz pianist Marian McPartland (1918 - 2013) jazz pianist and composer Mabel Mercer (1900 - 1984) singer Alec Wilder (1907 - 1980) composer, songwriter, critic Whitney Balliett, author of the book, was born in 1926 and died in 2007. Each of the subjects is interviewed by Balliett. The reader learns about not only their professional careers but about their families, their childhoods, their other interests. Most of them are quick to praise others who worked with, helped, or inspired them. Elliott and Goulding stand apart from the rest, naturally, as they are the only ones whose careers are not based on music (although Balliett says that "the heart of their work is an ingenious, native improvised verbal music"). Much of the material about music has little meaning to me. I simply don't know enough about music or about other performers. Here is a passage from the article about Marie Marcus: At first, her style seems a simple mélange of chunky chords and brief connective runs, but on closer examination it is a repository of the jazz piano playing of the thirties and forties. In her left hand, she uses Waller oompahs and Teddy Wilson tenths and quick, stabbing Nat Cole punctuations, and her right hand works through short Tatum runs and dense Bob Zurke chords and spacious Jess Stacy intervals. But the book is primarily about people, and that requires no special knowledge. It is also about talent and hard work and about glorious accomplishments. And constantly looking for opportunities to work and to make a living. There are threads that run repeatedly through the book. One is that, in addition to the obvious importance of New York for performers, many of these people have ties to Massachusetts. Everyone seems to have lived or worked there. Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding, Ruby Braff, and Marie Marcus came from there. Bobby Hackett and Marie Marcus were living on Cape Cod at the time of these interviews. The primary such thread is Alec Wilder, who seems to have been connected with everyone who ever hummed a tune. When these articles first appeared (in a "slightly different form"), I don't recall noticing Wilder's ubiquity. But it is obvious in reading them all together. The notes inside the dust jacket, partially quoting directly from Balliett's text, state: They also have in common Alec Wilder, song-writer, composer, critic and indefatigable conversationalist. This eccentric genius of American music is their unofficial spokesman, symbolic ringleader, their touchstone. And he is everywhere in the book - evaluating, chastising, cheering, listening, talking. I recall reading about Wilder in The New Yorker, and thinking that he sounded interesting, and then forgetting about him. Years later I heard the singer Hillary Kole's recording of Wilder's "Blackberry Winter" and loved it. I have since listened to albums of Wilder's songs and liked many; "Blackberry Winter" remains my favorite. Much of the book consists, of course, of material from Balliett's interviews. Balliett's own commentary is graceful and frequently funny. Here is the opening paragraph from "In the Wilderness," the section about Marie Marcus: The number of jazz musicians in this country who piece out their lives in the shadows and shoals of show business has always been surprising. They play in roadhouses and motel lounges. They play in country inns and small hotels. They appear in seafood restaurants in ocean resorts and in steak houses in suburban shopping centers. They play in band shells on yellow summer evenings. They sit in, gloriously, with famous bands on one-night stands when the third trumpeter fails to show. They play wedding receptions and country-club dances and bar mitzvahs, and they turn up at intense Saturday-night parties given by small-town businessmen who clap them on the back and request "Ain't She Sweet," and then sing along. Occasionally, they venture into the big cities and appear for a week in obscure nightclubs. But more often they take almost permanent gigs in South Orange and Rochester and Albany. There is a spate of reasons for their perennial ghostliness: The spirit may be willing but the flesh weak; their talents, though sure, are small; they may be bound by domineering spouses or ailing mothers; they may abhor traveling; they may be among those rare performers who are sated by the enthusiasms of a small house in a Syracuse bar on a Friday night. Whatever the reasons, these musicians form a heroic legion. They work long hours in seedy and/or pretentious places for minimum money. They make sporadic recordings on unknown labels. They play for benefits but are refused loans at the bank. They pass their lives pumping up their egos. Some of them sink into sadness and bitterness and dissolution, but by and large they remain a cheerful, hardy, ingenious group who subsist by charitably keeping the music alive in Danville and Worcester and Ish Peming. And a brief passage from the section devoted to Blossom Dearie: She has a tiny voice, smaller than Mildred Bailey's or Astrud Gilberto's or Wee Bonnie Baker's; without a microphone, it would not reach the second floor of a doll house. But it is a perfect voice - light, clear, pure, resilient, and, buttressed by amplification, surprisingly commanding. The writing may not be the equivalent of, say, Tony Bennett singing "Just in Time," but it's very good. Ten talented people brought to life by one also-talented author.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-06-09 00:00:00 Joseph Downey Blossom Dearie!