The Arm Set to Play
Jimmy Heath was born one hundred years ago today, and Philadelphia plays for him this afternoon: a free Temple Jazz Orchestra tribute under Terell Stafford, a posthumous big band album on November 20, and a radio broadcast already booked. Then Oklahoma, 1948, where a crash on icy roads wrecks Les Paul's elbow and the doctors have to decide what to do with it.
LioraJimmy Heath would be one hundred today, and Philadelphia plays for him this afternoon. Later, Les Paul's smashed elbow. It's Sunday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Sunday, October 25th. 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: Jimmy Heath was born one hundred years ago today in a row house at 5710 Ludlow Street in
LioraJimmy Heath was born one hundred years ago today.
WRTI, the classical and jazz station in Philadelphia, has the address. A row house at 5710 Ludlow Street, October 25th, 1926. Heath's own book explains why it was a row house and not a hospital. "I was in a hurry to get here," he wrote, "so I couldn't wait for my mother to get to a hospital."
The bebopper they called Little Bird. The Heath Brothers, which he formed with Percy Heath on bass and Albert "Tootie" Heath on drums. He came up in Philadelphia alongside John Coltrane, and he was a close compatriot of Miles Davis. WRTI notes that his centennial comes on the heels of theirs.
LioraPhiladelphia plays for him at three this afternoon. Temple University has the Temple Jazz Orchestra under Terell Stafford, with Antonio Hart and Jeb Patton and his trio. It is free and open to the public, it streams, and WRTI will broadcast it on November 22nd.
And WRTI reports a record. BCM+D Records, the label at Temple's Boyer College of Music and Dance, will release "The Newest One" on November 20th. Heath cut it with his big band in 2018. Antonio Hart, who plays on it and helped get it out, calls Heath one of the greatest composers and arrangers in the history of jazz.
Heath died in 2020, at ninety three.
Two. Listen to This: Dave Holland's Freedom Call, out October 2 on Edition Records
LioraToday's record is a box.
Dave Holland, "Freedom Call," on Edition Records, out October 2nd. Six LPs and three compact discs of live recordings nobody has released before, from three of his bands. The sextet is Holland on bass, Antonio Hart on alto, Alex Sipiagin on trumpet and flugelhorn, Robin Eubanks on trombone, Mulgrew Miller on piano, Eric Harland on drums. The Prism band is Holland, Kevin Eubanks on guitar, Craig Taborn on piano, and Harland again. A hundred and twenty pounds for the numbered vinyl box, thirty five for the three discs.
LioraHere is the tip. Start on the sextet side, for two men who turn up elsewhere in this show. Antonio Hart plays Philadelphia this afternoon. Robin Eubanks turns seventy one today, and his brother Kevin is the guitarist in the Prism band. Edition does not say when or where the tapes were made.
Now Oklahoma, 1948. Icy roads, and a crash that left Les Paul's elbow smashed to smithereens. What the doctors did with that arm kept him playing guitar into his nineties. Silas has the story.
Three. The Bridge: Oklahoma, 1948: a crash on icy roads leaves Les Paul's elbow smashed to smithereens
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasOklahoma, January 1948. A storm, and icy roads. Les Paul, the jazz guitarist, is heading home to California after a holiday visit to his parents in Waukesha, Wisconsin. With him is Colleen Summers, a country singer and guitarist. You know her by the name she takes later: Mary Ford.
Near Chandler, Oklahoma, as Les's own book has it, the car goes off the road. A 1952 magazine profile says it hit a wooden bridge and dropped fifty feet into a stream of icy water. Later versions give other numbers. Two books agree on this much. As the car goes down, Les puts his arm around Mary's head to protect her face.
LioraAnd then? Does anyone come?
SilasNot for a long time. Les later said he had "a terrible blank from the time of the accident." But this is how he told it: "There was no traffic due to the storm, so it was hours before we were found."
Both are taken to Wesley Hospital in Oklahoma City. In Les's words, his elbow joint is "smashed to smithereens." A wire story the next day carries the headline "Les Paul Doing Fine But Fear Arm Injury May Hinder Guitarist." His private nurse says he is "very badly hurt."
LioraA guitarist. With a smashed elbow.
SilasAnd it gets worse. By March, Billboard reports he has recovered from the accident, "but is now bedded with pneumonia at Wesley Hospital, Oklahoma City." One reference book says doctors feared the arm might have to be amputated. Reader's Digest, looking back in 1993, put it bluntly: "Les Paul was about to become a one-armed has-been."
LioraSo how does he get out of that?
SilasBy one account, one of his Oklahoma surgeons suggests a move. Les goes to Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, to a surgeon his book calls Dr. McKeaver. Reader's Digest tells the repair this way. The doctors "rebroke his arm, joined it with screws, and set it so his hand was pointing permanently toward his navel." Another account says a steel plate, not screws.
The elbow can only hold one position now. So the point is to make it the one a guitar player needs.
LioraWhose idea was that?
SilasThat's where the story gets slippery. The National Endowment for the Arts says he "chose to have his right arm set at a permanent right angle that would allow him to continue playing." Other retellings have him giving the surgeon orders. Those are mostly later accounts, and we haven't been able to read Les's own full telling. Even the angle varies, from 45 degrees to 90. What survives from Les himself is a fragment: an "angle I still live with today."
Then the long part. A year and a half of recovery by one count, two years by another. Goldmine magazine said he "had to virtually relearn the mechanics of guitar playing." In that stretch he teamed up with Colleen Summers, the woman whose face he shielded. They married in 1949. And in 2007, NPR found him in his nineties, still playing, his right arm locked at about a right angle.
LioraThey couldn't give him back his elbow. So they gave him a guitar player's arm instead. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: The Village Vanguard closes six nights of the Fred Hersch Trio plus two with general
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in New York, and the advance seats are gone.
The Village Vanguard closes six nights of the Fred Hersch Trio plus two. Eight and ten, forty five dollars. General admission is sold out on both sets, with a door sale tier at the same price and twenty seats held per set. The plus two is Tony Malaby on saxophone and Ralph Alessi on trumpet.
Also in New York, Smalls has the Tad Shull Quartet at six and half past seven, the Ben Solomon Quartet at nine and half past ten.
Now the sweep.
In Seattle, Jazz Alley closes a four night Brian Culbertson stand at half past seven, ninety five dollars, handling fee included.
In Oakland, Yoshi's has Marion Meadows at seven, thirty nine to eighty nine dollars.
LioraIn Nashville, Rudy's Jazz Room has Jimmy Sullivan's Swingin' Scene from six to a quarter past eight, twelve in advance and fourteen at the door.
In New Orleans, Preservation Hall has six sets, the Legacy Band from half past two and Rickie Monie and the Preservation All-Stars from five. Every one of them is marked sold out.
Five. One More Note: The Library of Congress files Eddie Lang's birth as October 25, 1902
LioraOne more birthday. The Library of Congress files the guitarist Eddie Lang's birth as October 25th, 1902.
Its record gives his given name as Salvatore Massaro, puts him in Philadelphia, and says he recorded with Lonnie Johnson under the name Blind Willie Dunn. One caution, from the library itself. The only source in that record that gives the exact day is an encyclopedia entry.
The bassist Chubby Jackson shares the date, born in 1918 in New York.
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 Sunday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.