The Words She Forgot
Pittsburgh's jazz festival opens with Samara Joy, and the free weekend starts tomorrow. Then West Berlin, 1960: Ella Fitzgerald forgets the lyric to "Mack the Knife" in front of twelve thousand people and sings her way out of it.
LioraPittsburgh's jazz festival opens tonight, and the free part starts tomorrow. Today's record is a Coltrane tribute on Blue Note. And in West Berlin in 1960, Ella Fitzgerald loses the words in front of twelve thousand people. It's Friday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Friday, September 18th. 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: The Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival plays its first concert tonight with Samara
LioraTonight, Pittsburgh.
The Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival plays its first concert tonight. The festival's own page bills "An Evening with Samara Joy" at eight o'clock, at 980 Liberty Avenue, with the Taste of Jazz party included.
One caution. Standard tickets are not on sale. The page offers a waitlist, plus Host Circle seats at two hundred fifty dollars.
Then the weekend opens up, free. The Street Festival runs tomorrow and Sunday from one o'clock, same address. The festival's own lineup includes Lalah Hathaway, Terri Lyne Carrington, Eric Roberson, DJ Kid Capri, Orrin Evans, Lady Blackbird and Sean Jones, under the standing line that the lineup is subject to change.
LioraSaturday there is a late shift. PIJF After Dark starts at ten at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, with a jam session led by Orrin Evans and a hip hop and jazz party with DJ Kid Capri.
One housekeeping note. The festival's own home page prints two different end dates, the 20th and the 21st. Go with the 20th.
Two. Listen to This: "Dedicated To You," the Branford Marsalis Quartet with Dianne Reeves
LioraToday's record came out today.
"Dedicated To You," the Branford Marsalis Quartet with Dianne Reeves, on Blue Note. The label calls it a Coltrane centennial tribute, built on new renditions of the six standards from the 1963 Coltrane and Johnny Hartman album, plus Coltrane instrumentals. Marsalis on saxophone, Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass, Justin Faulkner on drums, Dianne Reeves singing.
They cut it at Spivey Hall, on the Clayton State University campus in Morrow, Georgia. Marsalis on why that room: "We needed a room like that, wide enough to capture our sound and Dianne's sound."
The tip. Play it, then play the 1963 Coltrane and Hartman record, and hear two rooms hold the same six songs.
LioraNow the release desk. Verve has the centennial box up for preorder, "Coltrane 100: Selections from 1951 to 1967," six LPs, a hundred forty nine ninety eight, with no street date printed.
One more record, the one tonight's story made. "Mack the Knife: Ella in Berlin," still in Verve's catalog. At the third Grammy Awards it won Ella Fitzgerald two prizes, one for the single, one for the album.
West Berlin, 1960. Twelve thousand people in the hall, and the words are gone. Sekou has the story.
Three. The Bridge: West Berlin, 1960, and Ella Fitzgerald forgets the words in front of twelve thousand
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou tells it, I ask the questions. Sekou, where are we?
SekouWest Berlin. Saturday night, February 13th, 1960. The Deutschlandhalle, and about twelve thousand people inside it, East and West Germans both. The Wall is still a year and a half away. You can still cross the city to hear a concert.
On stage, Ella Fitzgerald, forty two years old. Behind her, Paul Smith on piano, Jim Hall on guitar, Wilfred Middlebrooks on bass, Gus Johnson on drums. They played Brussels, then flew in. By the bassist's count, the band has been awake twenty two hours.
The song she has decided to sing is one she does not know.
LioraShe doesn't know it. What song?
Sekou"Mack the Knife." A Berlin song, which is the point. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill wrote it for "The Threepenny Opera" in this city in 1928, as "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer," a murder ballad. The English words came later, from Marc Blitzstein, for a 1954 revival off Broadway.
By 1960 it was a major pop hit. Louis Armstrong cut it in 1955 and reached number twenty. Bobby Darin took it to number one and won Record of the Year.
So Ella asks the German promoter, Fritz Rau, for permission. Her reason: "I would like to present Mack the Knife, especially at my first concert in Berlin because it is a German song." Rau hesitates. They go over the lyrics together. He says yes.
LioraDoes the bassist know?
SekouBy his own account he does not. Wilfred Middlebrooks, the bassist, said they were all so tired they could not hold their heads up, when Ella turned around and called it. His heart sank. In his words: "We were in front of too many people to try something crazy, and I knew Ella didn't know the tune." Before he could say anything she had announced it. He looked at Paul Smith. Smith just grinned.
She starts in G. At the end of the second chorus she signals Paul Smith to lift the key a half step. Everything is holding.
LioraSo she's fine.
SekouShe is not. By the fourth chorus, in Judith Tick's account, the words are gone. What went was Blitzstein's roll call of names. Sukey Tawdry. Jenny Diver. Polly Peachum. Lucy Brown.
She does not stop. Middlebrooks, watching from the bass, is thinking one thing: "Well, she's about as lost as she can get, Louis Armstrong will show up any minute."
LioraTwelve thousand people, and she is out of words.
SekouSo she makes some up. Tick writes that on she went, chorus after chorus, building phrases loosely and swinging all the way. There are nods to Bobby Darin. There is a bit of Armstrong's growl. A review from the time, quoted by Judith Tick, prints the one improvised couplet found in the sources for this story: "It's not for a lady to sing this song, and that's why Ella sang the lyrics all wrong." By Rau's own account, what came back was neverending thunderous applause.
She thought she was in trouble. Her manager, Norman Granz, was in South America. In her words, he "was going to scream because I was putting in a song when I didn't know the lyrics." Granz heard the tape in March and put it out as a single. It reached number twenty seven, the only top forty single of her life. She won two Grammys for that night. Marc Blitzstein, whose careful English she had scrambled, called her version darling goofy, "with all my careful lyrics handsomely messed up." Ella called the whole thing a gag.
LioraShe forgot the words, and that is the take the world kept.
That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Tonight the ticket is Catalina in Los Angeles for a tribute to the Cuban divas
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket first.
If I had one ticket tonight, it's Los Angeles. Catalina Jazz Club bills "Tribute to the Cuban Divas, Episode 2," featuring Lily H. Clark. Doors at seven, show at eight thirty, from just over forty one dollars. The club says the night honors the music of Celia Cruz, Graciela, Celeste Mendoza, La Lupe and Omara Portuondo. On a night when our story is a singer and a lyric, that is the room I want.
Now the sweep. In Chicago, the Jazz Showcase has Paul Marinaro and Organ Quartet at eight and ten, thirty dollars, forty five for preferred seating.
In New York, Dizzy's Club has the Aaron Diehl Trio at seven and nine, with Felix Moseholm on bass and Aaron Kimmel on drums. The seven is sold out, the nine runs thirty to sixty dollars.
LioraAlso in New York, Birdland has Eliane Elias at ten thirty, the eight thirty gone.
And in Boston, Scullers runs a night it bills "Celebrate the Sounds of Soul and R and B," at seven and nine.
Five. One More Note: Jimmy Witherspoon died on this date in 1997
LioraSeptember 18th, 1997. The blues shouter Jimmy Witherspoon dies in Los Angeles.
He was born in Gurdon, Arkansas. His 1947 record with Jay McShann's band went to number one on Billboard's rhythm and blues chart.
The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says his jazz standing was made at the 1959 Monterey Jazz Festival, on a bill with the Count Basie Orchestra, Woody Herman and Sarah Vaughan. The live album from that weekend is the record that brought him back.
Monterey opens again next Friday. So put "Jimmy Witherspoon at the Monterey Jazz Festival" on today.
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.
That's your Friday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.