BUD POWELL, "PIANO SOLOS" EP, CLEF RECORDS EP-508 (REL. ?/1953)

Today is a significant day in American history. The people are in the streets all over the nation to decry and resist the horrible Christfascist agenda being peddled by a minority of ignorant crackpots who resist science, logic and the real meaning of Christianity. Their inverted, twisted and demented worldview is all about greed, acquisition and selfishness. I take a huge steamin’ poop on all of them.

My marching days are over, but my spirit remains strong, and I’m there with every person who takes to the streets to make their voice heard today. Here, for a musical break from an intense Saturday, is something quite different from our usual fare.

My mother was born in 1929 and became a wayward soul early in her life. She moved to New York in the late 1940s and was a part of the modern jazz scene there. Her life was beleaguered with problems, and her undiagnosed, untreated depression, borne of a dysfunctional family life and things I can’t know and will never know, haunted her to the day she passed on in 1995. She did her best as a single parent—another long story not suitable for this occasion—and she instilled in me a curiosity and a sense of healthy skepticism. Don’t take anything for granted, and don’t just accept whatever someone says as the gospel truth, I was told. Question, study, examine, test, posit. I am grateful this framework was made clear to me as a child.

She also inspired me to consider all forms of music as something valid; there was a lot of dross out there, but the search for meaningful, affecting music was worth the effort. I heard a lot of bebop jazz growing up, and one artist really spoke to me. Earl “Bud” Powell was one of the leaders of the modern jazz movement that began during World War II and crested in the 1950s. Powell’s graceful, sometimes-florid keyboard mastery lent itself well to whatever the man chose to play: standards, show-tunes or, best of all, his original compositions.

Powell was a victim of racism and police brutality. A beating he received by New York cops caused him severe brain damage. He was never the same after this random 1945 attack and spent a few years in and out of hospitals. In the early days of medical understanding of traumas and brain-related injuries, Powell self-medicated his way out of pain, became a narcotics user and alcoholic, and was sentenced to a mental hospital following a bad scene while incarcerated. The horrors Powell endured I won’t go into here. The music he made after this bleak period was a far cry from the elegant, tense and fleet-fingered efforts of 1947-51, when he was considered a premier jazz pianist of the new style.

Today we’ll hear the contents of a 1953 EP released by Norman Granz’s Clef imprint. It consists of three originals and one show-tune, taken from his first sessions for Granz in early 1949. Powell is accompanied by bassist Ray Brown and percussionist Max Roach. This was Powell’s best setting: no-frills trios, with his intricate piano work to the fore.

Knowing what was to come in his life, these vibrant, focused early recordings now have a painful poignancy. This doesn’t detract from their power as pieces of exquisite jazz chamber music. Powell’s melodies feel like paintings or drawings to me. The first side of this well-programmed EP demonstrates the contrasts of his approach as composer and performer.

“Tempus Fugue-it” is a spidery minor-key melody taken at breakneck speed. This brooding, nightmarish theme is decorated with its composer’s fluid improvisations. The ability to think, invent and play at a roaring tempo was a hallmark of bebop jazz, and at this point, Powell had no equals. Listen to the flow and rampage of his variations-on-a-theme. This is, to my ears, one of the classic jazz recordings of all time. One and done in 2:20!

“I’ll Keep Loving You” is a meditative ballad of a tormented romanticism. It’s a more conventional melody; one can imagine a Broadway lyricist writing lyrics to it and someone like Tony Bennett recording the results. Powell’s playing and its moods—which span delicacy and anguish—make this piece of music as affecting as “Tempus Fugue-It.” This is a solo performance and its elegance and tension are something special and moving.

>>> Hear them HERE! <<<

On the second side, “Celia” is a bold, inventive performance with a lexicon of modern jazz themes, chord progressions and phrases. Playful, pensive and volatile, “Celia” remains as fresh-sounding and revolutionary as it did when this rare EP, with its almost-unreadable dark purple cover (seen above) briefly graced jazz record shops. Brown and Roach are almost invisible; one becomes aware of Brown’s bass as it buoys this thoughtful performance along.

“All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm” might be familiar to anyone who’s seen the M-G-M “Tom and Jerry” cartoons of the 1940s. The studio’s cartoon music composer, Scott Bradley, was fond of this theme, which first appeared in the 1937 Marx Brothers film A Day at the Races, where it was sung by Duke Ellington’s female vocalist Ivie Anderson.

Powell deconstructs this melody and builds new shapes from its raw parts—all to a galloping, breathless pace with his fingers doing a fast dance over the piano keys. He’s creating as he plays, based on his innate knowledge of harmony and of the mechanics of songforms. Exploding popular songs was at the heart of modern jazz performers. They turned Edsels into hotrods with a playful subversion. Black musicians retooling white-composed pop songs and standards was a revolutionary act in the segregated 1940s and ‘50s. It was accepted by the mostly-liberal, hip and progressive audience of modern jazz, who welcomed these acts as examples of racial and musical harmony. Now that we’re back in the dark ages, perhaps jazz musicians would be wise to resume this policy.

>>> Hear them HERE! <<<

The majority of Bud Powell’s recordings were available on CDs in the 1990s and 2000s. His work for Blue Note is the most focused of his career, and his material for Norman Granz shows the artists in a range of emotional and psychological states—from manic to near-catatonic. Powell’s music is challenging but rewarding. This man suffered for his art and stayed with it with an obsessive grip. Music was his lifeline against a world that, he felt, wanted him dead and gone. His is one of the most tragic stories in all of Black music and his work is the essence of raw humanity and dignity.

However you express yourself today, be safe and brave. We must fight against the monsters who have seized control of our democracy and intend to destroy it. There will be a day of reckoning for them; it will make the Nuremberg Trials look like a Sunday picnic.

Tomorrow: Ann Cole waxes soulful for Sunday, with a scarce Otis Blackwell song and a remake of an earlier ballad. An M-G-M platter from 1960.