When Phil Woods steps onto the Eastman Theater stage at the
Rochester International Jazz Festival he will be carrying on a tradition that
has enriched his career for six decades. As a young man Woods idolized Charlie
“Yardbird” Parker. After a long career steeped in his
hero’s legacy, he will be bringing some of Parker’s least-heard music back to
life.
The album Charlie
Parker with Strings, recorded live at a 1950 Carnegie Hall concert, was a best seller. It was also a controversial chapter
in Parker’s short, brilliant career. The idea of presenting the greatest jazz
saxophonist of the time with a string section, playing classical arrangement of
standards, was not universally embraced by the jazz world. But it was part of
Parker’s legacy and Woods is proud to be involved in its resurrection in the
“Bird Lives” concert.
“I remember all the reviews,” says Woods. “‘All Charlie
Parker is doing is playing the melody.’ And I feel
like handing them the horn and saying, ‘Here, you play the melody.’ It’s only
the hardest thing in the world. Anybody can play 64th notes; it’s playing one
meaningful note and minding the intent of the lyricist and the composer. I know
Bird was very proud of the string group.”
Woods re-wrote the arrangements, adding flute and clarinet
and expanding the ensemble to 24 string players. “It’s a joy — I updated the
harmonic structure, but I tried to remain true to the original,” he says.
Every serious jazz
saxophonist from the mid-1940s on has absorbed some of Parker’s influence,
but Woods was more deeply involved. Although just a teenager when they first
met, he got to know Parker well and eventually played with him. After Parker’s
untimely death at the age of 34 in 1955, Woods grew closer to Chan, Parker’s
common-law wife. He married her in 1957 and helped raise Parker’s children.
(The marriage ended in divorce.)
In high school, in the mid-1940s, Woods admired other
saxophonists, including Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges, but Parker made a deep
impression. “It was pretty hard to escape the presence of the man who changed
the planet,” he says.
Woods says the time was ripe for innovation: “The frenzy of
the Second World War was over and the culture was booming. Bernstein was
writing, film noir was happening, Eugene O’Neill was starting to be discovered
and Bartók was heard. John Cage was talking. That’s
what happens after a war; the artists start to come back out of their garrets
and hovels and it was a wonderful time to be in New York City. I was at the Julliard School of
Music studying clarinet in the daytime and studying Charlie Parker at night.”
Although Woods has done many “Bird Lives” concerts in
Europe, the RIJF performance is the only one in the United States. Woods, who doesn’t
hesitate to speak his mind, believes that Europe
is ahead of the States in ways that go beyond an appreciation of jazz.
“Most of my interesting work occurs in Europe.
I regret that but it’s always been that way since I went to Europe
in 1968,” Woods says. “Europeans are older and wiser, they’re not all going to
war and they still have a middle class.”
Woods has never shied away from mixing jazz with other musical forms. For a while in the 1970s, his
sax burned up pop radio. Listen to Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years album or “Doctor Wu” from Steely
Dan’s Katy Lied.
“I am Doctor Wu,” says Woods. “I inspired them to write the
song.” And the list goes on. “I worked with that Canadian girl on a project.
She drove me crazy. I ended up on the cutting room floor.” So
much for Joni Mitchell.
But perhaps his best known solo can be found on Billy Joel’s
“Just The Way You Are.” Woods recalls, “I was working
a club somewhere and a kid came up and says, ‘Are you the guy on the Billy Joel
record?’ I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ He said, ‘Have you done anything on your own?'”
As for “Bird Lives,” Woods points out that fusing jazz with
classical instrumentation has a long history going back to Artie Shaw, Paul
Whiteman and Duke Ellington. In fact, he sees the meeting of African-American
music with the European tradition as the key to jazz.
“Where would Charlie Parker be without Jerome Kern? As music
developed harmonically in that period — Gershwin, Porter, Harold Arlen —
the songs were incredibly sophisticated. Except for Ellington, most of the jazz
was kind of diatonic and not too interesting,” Woods says. “The classical
composers were way ahead of us. But the theater writers and the movie writers
— and Bird — it went hand-in-hand in the development.
“Jazz was utilizing field hollers — yes — but it was
going into a more sophisticated region with those white composers, with the
exception of Strayhorn, Ellington, Fats Waller and a
bunch of other cats,” he continues. “But it was really no color; it was an
American thing. It was a Black-Hebraic thing because 90 percent of the
composers were Jewish — new immigrants well schooled in the European techniques.”
Today, Woods sees
jazz as in a bit of a slump. “Sometime I think there’s more happening in
the other camp. Sometimes I think the rappers and the hip-hoppers are being more bold in their approach. Jazz musicians have a
three-piece suit and business managers and they’re still playing warmed over
Miles Davis,” he says.
But when Woods talks about his youth, it’s enough to make
you want to hop on the nearest time machine. By the age of 15 he was studying
with famed pianist Lenny Tristano. He and a friend
would take a train from Springfield, Massachusetts, to Manhattan.
“We’d have a bowl of spaghetti at Romeos and then go and get
the latest Charlie Parker records. Then, if we still had a dollar, we’d go to 52nd Street. You’d
get a Coca Cola. We got to know the waiter and he’d put us way in the back and
we’d stay there ’til 4 a.m. It only cost a dollar and then we’d get on the bus
at 5 a.m. and go back to Springfield.”
It gets better.
“Talk about a field trip! One time we went for a lesson and Tristano says, ‘Are you kids going down to 52nd Street?’We said, ‘Yes, why do you ask?’ He says, ‘I’m opening for
Charlie Parker, perhaps you’d like to be there.’ I said to myself, I’ve always
wanted to meet God. Sure enough, we’d held back on the records and the pasta
and we had $2 so we could get two Coca Colas and we showed up.
“The Tristano Trio opened and
somebody came and got us and took us back stage. Behind the curtain, there was
the great Charlie Parker. He was sitting on the floor and he had a big cherry
pie. He said ‘Hi kids, welcome! Would you like a piece of cherry pie?’ I said
‘Oh, Mr. Parker, that’s my favorite flavor.’ And, with that, we sat on the
floor and Bird cut me a big slice of cherry pie. I’ve always treasured that
moment.”
That was the first of many encounters. “He was a man who was
very kind to young musicians, which is often overlooked,” Woods says. “He’d see
me in Charlie’s Tavern; he’d say, ‘Did you have lunch today?'”
To find out more, Woods says, you’re going to have to buy
his forthcoming autobiography, Life in E
Flat. He also has a new DVD out and is recording a children’s suite that he
wrote in the 1960s based on the poems of AA Milne.
“Slowing down?” Woods asks. “No man, it’s just getting’
good.”
“Bird Lives,” An Evening with Phil Woods and Strings, takes
place at the Eastman Theatre ,26 Gibbs Street, on Tuesday, June 13, at
8 p.m., as part of the Rochester International Jazz Festival. $27.50-$50.
www.rochesterjazz.com.
This article appears in May 31 – Jun 6, 2006.
