The Wrong Microphone
Two free festivals, 280 miles apart, both throwing a hundredth birthday party for a man who died in 1967. And the most famous live jazz record ever made, which was largely not live.
LioraTwo free jazz festivals, about 280 miles apart, the same weekend, and both throwing a hundredth birthday party for a man who died in 1967. You get one car. Choose.
LioraIt's Thursday, September 3rd. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead
LioraChicago first, because it's first. The Chicago Jazz Festival opens tonight in Millennium Park, no ticket, through Sunday. And they open small: one singer, one piano. Dee Dee Bridgewater and Bill Charlap. If you've never heard two people that good alone in front of a crowd that size, it's the sound of a park holding its breath. Then the weekend gets loud: Robert Glasper, Paquito D'Rivera, and the Miles Electric Band plugging in for Miles's hundredth year.
LioraDetroit answers tomorrow with a birthday. John Coltrane was born in September of 1926, and Hart Plaza is throwing the party early. The Detroit Jazz Festival opens Friday, four days, free, and it bills itself as the largest free jazz festival in the world. Friday night is called Coltrane 100: Joe Lovano, Melissa Aldana, Nduduzo Makhathini, Linda May Han Oh, and Jeff "Tain" Watts, on a free stage, for a man who never got to be old.
Coltrane's actual hundredth is September 23rd. Twenty days. We'll be counting.
Two cities. Zero dollars. If you're within a tank of gas of either one, you already know what to do.
Two. Listen to This
LioraToday's record was made seventy years ago, and I'm giving it to you early because it's the whole reason for today's Bridge. "Ellington at Newport." Not the version your uncle has. The 1999 edition with the word "Complete" on it, the one that restored the real concert. Find "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue." Skip to the middle. Sekou, you're up in a few minutes with this one. Give them one reason to press play.
SekouTwenty-seven choruses of the blues from a tenor player named Paul Gonsalves. By the twentieth, you'll understand why a woman in the crowd got up and danced.
LioraThat's the story. Stay for it.
And for tomorrow, my Friday shopping list. Linda Sikhakhane, a saxophonist from South Africa, releases "LINDA" on Blue Note, his fifth album. Blue Note's Tone Poet series reissues "Sonny Rollins, Volume 2" from 1957, in mono, with Thelonious Monk sitting in on two tracks. Hold that name. It's tomorrow's Bridge. And Woody Shaw's 1973 album "Song of Songs" comes back to vinyl. More tomorrow.
Three. The Bridge
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou tells it, I ask the questions. Sekou, where are we?
SekouNewport, Rhode Island. Saturday night, July 7th, 1956, running toward midnight. A jazz festival in only its third season. Late enough that the crowd is thinking about its car keys. And the band about to go on is led by a man whose career is at a low ebb.
LioraDuke Ellington. At a low ebb.
SekouIn 1956, yes. He's 57. His deal with Capitol Records is over, he has no regular label contract, and the jazz press has moved on to younger men.
So late in the set he calls two old pieces of his from 1937. "Diminuendo in Blue" and "Crescendo in Blue." The band had played them back to back for years, with a stretch of blues in the middle for a tenor solo. And the man who took that solo was Paul Gonsalves.
LioraWho was Paul Gonsalves?
SekouNot famous outside the music, but a serious player. Basie's band, then Dizzy Gillespie's, and with Duke since 1950. He had played that blues interlude before. Nobody had ever played it like this.
One chorus of the blues. Two. Five. The rhythm section locks in behind him. Ten. Twenty. He plays twenty-seven choruses, and the park erupts.
LioraTwenty-seven.
SekouTwenty-seven. And here's the part almost nobody knows. He played all twenty-seven into the wrong microphone.
LioraWait. The wrong microphone?
SekouColumbia Records was recording that night for an album. They had their microphone. But there was a second one on that stage, put there by the Voice of America, which carried jazz overseas. Gonsalves stood at the wrong one. On Columbia's tape, the solo of his life is a whisper in the distance. On the Voice of America tape, it is right there in the room.
Hold that thought.
LioraWhat's happening in the crowd?
SekouLarge sections are already on their feet. Accounts often single out one woman: Elaine Anderson got up in the aisle and danced, and soon the park was dancing. George Wein, who ran the festival, is worried it gets out of hand. He tries to signal Duke to stop.
LioraAnd Duke didn't stop.
SekouDuke did not stop. Wein said later that Ellington read the crowd better than he could have. He let it run, then handed the night to Johnny Hodges: a ballad, then a slow blues that brought the park back to earth.
SekouThis is where the legend and the record part ways, and the record is better.
The legend says Newport put Duke Ellington on the cover of Time magazine. He was on that cover. But the portrait was finished in June, before the festival. Newport gave them the hook.
And the album. "Ellington at Newport" became, by every later account, the best-selling record of his career. And much of it was not live.
LioraHold on.
SekouColumbia's tape was thin, remember. The solo was faint. So they took the band into a studio, re-recorded much of the concert, and mixed in applause. For decades, that is what the world heard.
Then in 1996, the Voice of America recording was identified at the Library of Congress. The wrong microphone. In 1999, Columbia lined up the two tapes and released the concert the way it actually happened, with Gonsalves right there in the room. Nearly forty-three years later.
Duke liked to say, "I was born at Newport in 1956." He was 57 that night. And he wasn't wrong.
LioraOne man playing into the wrong microphone. That's the whole story of this music, isn't it. The best thing in the room is usually the thing nobody planned.
That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road
LioraTonight, coast to coast. Tonight's ticket first.
If I had one ticket tonight, it's Birdland, New York. On the night we tell you about Duke at Newport, saxophonist Greg Osby leads "Dancing with Duke," an Ellington night with Ethan Iverson on piano and Eric Harland on drums, at seven and nine thirty. You'd walk in already knowing the story. That's the whole point of this show.
LioraNow the sweep. In Chicago, festival night in Millennium Park, and after the park, the Green Mill has Alan Gresik's Swing Orchestra from eight until midnight. In New York, the Village Vanguard holds the John Patitucci Trio with Chris Potter and Brian Blade through Saturday, Ghost-Note is at the Blue Note, and downtown at Smalls it's the Fabio Gouvea Quintet early and the Alex Goodman Quartet late. In New Orleans, James Jordan plays Snug Harbor at seven thirty and nine thirty.
And tomorrow, Detroit opens. We'll cover it tomorrow.
Five. One More Note
LioraOne hundred years ago today, September 3rd, 1926, an alto player named Ernie Henry was born. Dizzy Gillespie's big band. Thelonious Monk's "Brilliant Corners." Gone in December of 1957, at 31, with his career still unfolding.
So here's the class of 1926. Miles in May. Coltrane in twenty days. And Ernie Henry today, the one who gets the smallest party. We just made it a little bigger. Play him on "Brilliant Corners" tonight.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
Tomorrow: Detroit opens, and Sekou has the story of a piece of paper that decided where Thelonious Monk was allowed to play. I'm Liora. See you then.
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