Lennie TristanoJAZZ PERSPECTIVES Lewis Porter, Series General Editor Open the Door: The Life and Music of Betty Carter By William R. Bauer Jazz Journeys to Japan: The Heart Within By William Minor Four Jazz Lives By A. B. Spellman Head Hunters: The Making of Jaz2’s First Platinum Album By Steven F, Pond Lester Young By Lewis Porter The Last Miles: The Music of Miles Davis, 1980-1991 By George Cole The André Hodeir Jazz Reader By André Hodeir Edited by Jean-Louis Pautrot Someone to Watch Over Me: The Life and Music of Ben Webster By Frank Biichmann-Moller Rhythm Is Our Business: Jimmie Lunceford and the Harlem Express By Eddy Determeyer Lennie Tristano: His Life in Music By Eunmi Shim Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser’s Art By Andy Hamilton OTHER BOOKS OF INTEREST Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit, 1920-60 By Lars Bjorn with Jim Gallert John Coltrane: His Life and Music By Lewis Porter Charlie Parker: His Music and Life By Carl Woideck The Song of the Hawk: The Life and Recordings of Coleman Hawkins By John Chilton Let the Good Times Roll: The Story of Louis Jordan and His Music By John ChiltonLennie Tristano His Life in Music ‘THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESSCopyright © by the University of Michigan 2007 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by ‘The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America © Printed on acid-free paper 2010 2009 2008 2007 4 3 2 T No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shim, Eunmi, 1964— Lennie Tristano : his life in music / Eunmi Shim, p. cm. — (Jazz perspectives) Includes bibliographical references (p. ), discography (p. }, and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-472-11346-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: o-472-11346-1 (cloth : alk. paper) x. Tristano, Lennie. 2, Pianists—United States—Biography. 3. Jazz musicians—United States—Biography. I. Title ML 417.T88s5_ 2007 786.2'165092—de22 [BI 2006028156Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Chicago, 1919-1946 5 Chapter 2. New York, 1946-1950 27 Chapter 3. New York, 1951-1978 == 7 Chapter 4. Tristano as a Teacher © 123 Chapter 6. Musical Analysis 169 Epilogue 197 Appendix of Musical Examples 215 Notes 259 Selected Bibliography 291 Discography 297 Index 311 Illustrations following page 120Acknowledgments here are many people I wish to thank. First, I would like to express |=: deepest gratitude to Professor Lawrence Gushee for his contin- uing guidance and encouragement, and Professor Lewis Porter for his insightful advice and excellent suggestions. Special thanks are due to the Tristano family for their generous help; to Judy for her invalu- able assistance in allowing me to interview her extensively by putting me up for several days, cooking wonderful meals, and letting me use her lesson notes and other materials; to Bud for his friendship and enthusiasm for my project; to Carol for her kind help; to Steve for his encouragement; and to Tania for her support. I feel infinitely blessed for having had the opportunities to meet or speak with so many individuals who provided vital information by graciously entrusting their memories and views of Lennie Tristano to me. They include Lynn Anderson, Lennie Azzarello, Billy Bauer, Howard Becker, Richie Beirach, Borah Bergman, Paul Bley, Lynn Bon- giorno, Vince Bottari, JoAnne Brackeen, Jay Bregman, Alan Broad- bent, Jeff Brown, Ted Brown, Dave Brubeck, Robert Calese, Frank Canino, Timmy Cappello, Bill Chattin, Carol Copeland, Connie Crothers, Bill Crow, Gerard D’Angelo, Paquito D’Rivera, Sonny Dal- las, Alex Damien, Harvey Diamond, Virg Dzurinko, Jon Easton, Don Edmonds, Ahmet Ertegun, Ed Fennell, Clare Fischer, Arnold Fishkin, Andy Fite, Stan Fortuna, Gary Foster, Dave Frank, Ronnie Free, Mike Garson, Betty Gartner, George Garzone, Leonard Gaskin, Ira Gitler, Michael Gold, Liz Gorrill, Archie Hall, Jimmy Halperin, Peter Ind, Chubby Jackson, Sheila Jordan, Michael Kanan, Pandelis Karayorgis, Larry Kart, Lee Konitz, Carole Langer, Victor Lesser, Billy Lester, Dori Levine, David Liebman, Lloyd Lifton, Roger Mancuso, Woody Mann, Jack McKinney, Marian McPartland, Lennie Metcalfe, LarryVl ACKWOWLEDEMENTS Meyer, Peter Morris, Sal Mosca, Paul Motian, Joe Muranyi, Eric Pakula, Ed Pastorini, Arthur Phipps, Sy Platt, Lenny Popkin, Nomi Rosen, Ted Rosenthal, Henry Ross, Cheryl Rothwell, Tom Runyan, Bill Russo, Peter Scattaretico, Phil Schaap, Betty Scott, Skip Scott, Charles Sibirsky, Steve Silverman, Joe Solomon, Lou Stelluti, Susie Sunkle, Richard Tabnik, Barry Ulanov, Britt Woodman, Phil Woods, and George Ziskind. They made my experience very special and rewarding, and I cherish many fond memories of them. I am indebted to numerous individuals for making the collection of essential information possible through various means; to Dan Mor- genstern and Vincent Pelote at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University and Deborah Gillaspie at Chicago Jazz Archive for their generous assistance; to Arnold Fishkin for allowing me to use his auto- biography; to Jon Easton for interview tapes and his lesson notes; to Connie Crothers for interview tapes of Tristano; to Safford Chamber- lain for information on Warne Marsh; to Jack McKinney for his biog- raphy of Tristano and interview tapes; to Mark Miller for references to Tristano’s performances in Canada; to Bill Kirchner for his manu- script on Tristano’s recordings; to Mary Ellen Newsom for informa- tion regarding Tristano’s academic records from the Illinois School for the Blind and the American Conservatory of Music; to Cheryl Roth- well for genealogical information on the Tristano family; to Ted Brown for his manuscript on the music of Warne Marsh; to Gary Fos- ter for his transcriptions of Warne Marsh’s solos; to Bill Chattin, Ger- ard D’Angelo, Virg Dzurinko, Dori Levine, and Lennie Metcalfe for their lesson notes; and to Andy Hamilton for his interviews with Lee Konitz. I also would like to thank numerous individuals at the Univer- sity of Michigan Press. Finally, my warmest thanks are extended to my family for their loving support.Introduction ennie Tristano (1919-1978) was a jazz pianist and teacher of jazz improvisation who began his professional career in the 1930s. He emerged as an original voice in the New York jazz scene in the 1940s; during this period, a time of a growing awareness of historical evolution in jazz, he was considered a prime representative of “pro- gressive jazz” by many critics and musicians. A pioneering individual- ist, he transgressed the boundaries of jazz as well as conventional style categories of jazz history through a succession of innovations. How- ever, his historical significance has been largely overlooked, as he is misleadingly labeled as a “cool” jazz musician. Tristano’s music exemplifies a rare achievement of individuality, characterized by his advanced harmonic language, rhythmic complex- ity, and linear construction of the melody. In 1949 he made the first recordings of free jazz,’ a new manner of group improvisation based on spontaneous interaction among band members without any regard for predetermined form, harmony, or rhythm, which predate the free jazz movement by a decade. Then in the 1950s he broke new ground in jazz by his use of multitracking,* which allowed for greater expression of his unique conception of sound ideals. Through mixing tracks recorded separately, he could produce unprecedented sounds in “Pas- time,” “Ju-Ju,” “Line Up,” “East Thirty-Second,” “Turkish Mambo,” and “Descent into the Maelstrom.” He further intensified his use of polyrhythm and chromaticism in the 1960s; in his solo recordings on The New Tristano, in particular, Tristano accomplished a high degree of musical complexity as well as emotional depth and power. Tristano’s recording career started in the mid-r940s and lasted through the 1960s. Although relatively few of his recordings have been commercially issued, an overview of them attests to diverse styles thatLENNIE TRISTAN evolved throughout his career. Unfortunately, his stylistic diversity has presented a problem in assessing his historical position, in that his music defies the tendency toward stylistic categorization and canon- ization in jazz historiography.’ Among the jazz musicians who do not fit into the grossly generalized historical scheme of the jazz canon, Tristano seems to suffer most from the misinterpretation of his work. For example, Martin Williams dubbed him “a dubious jazz man,” pre- cisely because of “problems of category.”* Many other jazz historians and critics have minimized his historical significance by relegating him to the category of “cool” jazz, a historical rubric that is itself elusive and artificial.’ To subsume all his recordings under any one category, however, would be to ignore the full scope of his achievements. For example, the two Atlantic records can hardly be described as “cool.” Indeed, it would be as misleading as evaluating Miles Davis, a pioneer in many areas of jazz, only on the basis of the Birth of the Cool record- ings. In fact, Davis and Tristano exhibit a certain parallelism in that they are considered seminal figures of “cool” jazz, and that they branched out and explored a wide range of styles, although they evolved in very different directions. As Art Farmer noted, “Cool is just a label with no meaning. If you had called Miles a cool player, he probably would have punched you in the nose.” Furthermore, Konitz refuted the negative connotation of the term “cool” by describing Tristano as “one of the hottest players”: “[W]hile Miles’s role in all this has been pretty well documented, I think Tristano’s function in this development has been underappreciated. Of course, in his case, I always thought that cool was a misnomer, since he was one of the hottest players who ever lived, if you ever care to relisten to him... . 1 always aspired to play with that same level of intensity.”7 A crucial issue in discussing Tristano’s music is his aesthetic view of art for art’s sake. He was outspokenly against any commercial ele- ment in music, and detested the music industry, which he perceived as pernicious to the development of jazz. Refusing to comply with com- mercial forces of the music business, he was highly selective of engage- ments and operated largely outside the music industry. Although he considered his independence essential to the evolution of his music, it prevented his music from receiving a wider exposure. In this sense, teaching was a significant aspect of his career in enabling him to pursue his music the way he envisioned it without the interference of commercial concerns. A multi-instrumentalist, he taught students of all instruments from the early 1940s until his deathIntroduction in 1978, producing many generations of musicians. As he withdrew from the public scene in the later part of his life, he became more devoted to teaching. This book aims to reevaluate Tristano’s position in jazz history through a thorough discussion of his life, teaching, and music, The research methods combine oral history, archival research, and musical analysis. Beginning in the summer of 1997 I conducted extensive inter- views with ninety-nine individuals, including his family members, stu- dents, and associates.’ The wealth of information gathered from the interviews made it possible to approach the issues involved in his life and music from a comparative perspective. In archival research I have found extensive data from a meticulous examination of various sources, which enabled me to document his activities and the reception of his music. Transcriptions of his recordings form the basis of detailed musical analysis, with each example focusing on pertinent parameters and artistic concerns and aiming to shed light on the cre- ative process of jazz improvisation. In the transcriptions chord symbols represent the chords implied in the solo line, rather than those of the prescribed harmonic progressions, and they are attached only to the portions where the harmonic impli tion is relatively clear. In the case of “Pennies from Heaven” and “C Minor Complex,” Billy Bauer, the publisher, gave me permission to reprint 50 percent of his publications. My transcription of the latter varies slightly from the published version (Tristano, C Minor Complex [Albertson, NY: William H. Bauer, 2000]) in terms of brackets to indi- cate polyrhythm, as well as several different chord symbols and notes. The first three chapters contain a biographical account of Tris- tano’s life, chronicling his activities as a jazz musician in the context of his musical and social environment. Chapter 4 discusses Tristano as a teacher of jazz improvisation, with a focus on the basic concepts in his teaching, specific methods that he conceived as part of the learning process, and the relationship between the principles of teaching and his own playing. Chapter 5 examines the evolution of Tristano’s music through different periods. A comprehensive analytical approach is taken to illustrate his innovations and stylistic diversity. The epilogue discusses important factors in the formation and reception of his music, including his blindness and personality, the “cult” aspect, the role of the rhythm section, and ethnicity. Concluding with a historical evaluation of his achievements, it also examines his legacy and influence outside the circle of his students.Chicago, 1919-1946 ennie Tristano was born in Chicago on March 19, 1919, one of four sons of Rose née Malano and Michael Joseph Tristano." His mother was born in 1897 in Chicago to Italian parents who immigrated to America in the 1890s; his father, born in 1894 in Italy, settled in that city around 1900.* They were married in Chicago in October 1916; she was nineteen years old and he was twenty-two when the marriage license was issued on August 31. Two census records, one recorded on January 12, 1920, and the other on April 17, 1930, note Michael Tristano’s pro- fession as a pharmacist at a drugstore.’ The 1920 census lists only two sons, Chester, two years old at the time, and Leonard, nine months old, while the 1930 record includes two more, Solvitore, a misspelling of Sal- vatore, ten, and Michael, five; Leonard was eleven. Tristano had an early exposure to music, as he reminisced: “Some- time between two and three years is as far back as my memory goes, and I was playing then. Player pianos were in fashion, and my family got one. I used to listen to it, and apparently I just started playing it.”*+ He made further progress, as Barry Ulanov reported: “Since his fourth year, he'd been able to sit down at the piano and work out simple tunes... . By his tenth year, after a brief and not very satisfying foray with a private piano teacher, Lennie became very adept in the ways and wiles of popular songs. He became, with mixed tricks and an appealing young personality, a pert parlor performer.”’ At age eight Tristano took classical piano lessons, which he did not find valuable: “I learned nothing of value, and had to unlearn everything to go on. Technically, classical training is all wrong for a jazz pianist. It was dia- metrically opposed to everything I was trying to do, which was impro- vise.”* However, he developed a deep understanding of classical music and later used elements of it in his teaching.LENNIE TRISTAN Tristano told Ira Gitler that he started listening to recordings of Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, and Ted Lewis at age nine or ten, and that through elementary and high school he played clarinet, alto and tenor saxophones, four-string guitar, trumpet, and drums; he played the clarinet on his first job in an Illinois whorehouse when he was only eleven years old, and the C-melody saxophone for his first engagement as a leader while still in grade school.” He must have been quite proficient on the tenor saxophone, as Lee Konitz remembered hearing him play it like Lester Young.’ While in Chicago Tristano went through a period when the style of Dixieland jazz was a domi- nant musical experience, but John Wilson reported in 1950 that “Lennie spends very little time listening to Dixie now, but that doesn’t mean that he . . . dismisses it as an inconsequential jazz clement.”® Tristano explained: “I developed with Dixie. . . . I used to buy all the records. But it’s like growing up. When you’ve spent ro years with an art form, it’s time to move on, I’ve listened to it all and now I’m inter- ested in other developments in jazz.”*° Blindness and Education Born with weak sight, Tristano’s vision grew worse and by the time he was nine or ten years old he became completely blind. According to Bob Blackburn, it was “the result of glaucoma probably stemming from his mother being stricken in pregnancy by the post-world War I “flu epidemic.’”** Judy Tristano, Lennie Tristano’s first wife, recalled that Tristano’s parents tried unsuccessfully to cure his blindness: “[T]hey had tried everything to cure his glaucoma. Legitimate doctors, quacks, going to church and everybody praying en masse, praying for his sight. But of course nothing worked. They couldn’t cure glaucoma then or treat it.” Arnold Fishkin felt that the grueling experience of seeking healing service had had an adverse effect, contributing to Tris- tano’s later atheism.* Tristano’s early schooling brought hardships because of his failing eyesight. He told Ulanov that at age four he went to a parochial school; after the nominal kindergarten period, he spent a year and a half in the first grade: “They just didn’t think I learned easily. And I just didn’t think I wanted to stay in the first grade forever. So | moved to another school.”*5 Ulanov reported that Tristano suffered a seriousChicago, 1919-1946 attack of the measles at six, which further damaged his sight, and that he attended his last public school in Chicago at eight, which placed him in a class for handicapped children, “one room holding all forms of disability, all grades from the first of elementary school to the last of high.” Ulanov, however, noted Tristano’s mental capacities were increasing, as he “was able to do long and complicated mathematical problems in his head.”*¢ Then, for about ten years until 1938, Tristano attended the Illinois School for the Blind in Jacksonville, a troubling environment: “The place does one of two things to a student—either it makes an idiot out of him, or a person. I was lucky enough to fall into the second group.” According to Ulanoy, the school accepted “all manner of blind children, babblers, the feeble-minded, the imbecilic and idiotic. The only qualification for entrance was blindness, and the result was a shambles of a school population, rigorously disciplined in its conduct, girls strictly separated from boys for all activities except an occasional, heavily chaperoned party.” The “surroundings were prison-like, the education sparse, the brighter boys were treated like well-esteemed trustees.” Tristano, however, rose to the challenge and overcame the difficulties, studying piano, saxophone, clarinet, and cello, leading his own band, engaging in team sports, and becoming what Ulanov described as “a better than average logician, a skilled mathematician, a highly facile student.” According to the academic records covering his four high-school years, between September 1934 and June 1938, Tristano’s coursework consisted of classes in English, algebra, Latin, science, geometry, ancient history, U.S. history and civilization, biology, and gymna- sium."5 He took piano, cello, and orchestra for all four years, and har- mony, chorus, boy’s glee club, and history of music for two years. His piano repertory comprised Beethoven, Piano Sonata in C minor, Op. 13, Pathétique, first and third movements; Bach, Prelude and Fugue in C minor, Prelude in C-sharp major, and several Inventions; Chopin, Etudes, Op. 10, Nos. 2 and 3, Nocturnes, and Waltzes in D- flat major and E minor; Moszkowski, Polonaise; and Mendelssohn, Piano Concerto in D minor. In addition, he was tuning pianos at school. Bill Boaz, a student at the school and clarinetist, remembered that Tristano was very bright and performed on the piano and cello at annual recitals."* Together Boaz and Tristano listened to jazz, for example, Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, and Earl Hines, and after graduating in 1934 Boaz regularly went back and rehearsed with aLENNIE TRISTAN group that included Tristano, who wrote out arrangements in Braille. Clarence Smith, a younger student at the school who also befriended Tristano, reminisced that listening to Lester Young excited him very much."7 From 1938 through 1943 Tristano attended the American Conser- vatory of Music in Chicago, graduating with a bachelor’s degree of music in performance in June 1941 and staying on for another two years to take graduate courses. He told Ulanov that his teacher from the Illinois School for the Blind took him to the conservatory, warning the school “to pay particular attention to this boy, because he’s going to do everything faster than you’re used to.”** According to Mary Ellen Newsom, during his undergraduate years Tristano took various classes in music, receiving mostly As and Bs. His music coursework included piano 2, 3, and 4; counterpoint 1 and 2; keyboard harmony and ear training 1 and 2; pedagogy; form and analysis 1 and 2; har- mony review; music history 1; composition 1 and 2; piano normal; and orchestration 1. Pieces from his recitals included Bach, Prelude and Fugue, No. 2, Fugue in C-sharp major, and Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue; Beethoven, Piano Sonata in C minor, Op. 13, Pathétique, Andante in F major, and Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 57, Appassion- ata; Weber, Konzertstiick; Mendelssohn, Variations in D minor (Vari- ations Sérieuses); Schumann, Piano Concerto; Chopin, Etudes, Op. 10, Nos. 2 and 4; Liszt, “Forest Murmurs” from Two Etudes; and Debussy, “Danseuses de Delphes” from Préludes, Book 1. Beyond his coursework in music he studied English composition, introduction to psychology, educational psychology, aesthetics and criticism, princi- ples and methods for instructive education, social psychology, sec- ondary education, and logic. Tristano finished the degree program in three years; he actually began as a sophomore, because the credit he had received at the Illinois School for the Blind for music history, har- mony, and piano lessons was transferred to the Conservatory as equiv- alent to the first year in college." Finding his study at the conservatory easy, Tristano remarked, “You know, they were giving me exercises on theory and harmony that were supposed to take a week to finish and I was knocking them out in about half an hour.”*° He must have been very proficient in music theory, as he noted, “I took two-year harmony courses in six weeks—counterpoint—it was so easy,” and that “Until I was in my middle twenties, I never worked hard at anything.”*? As UlanovChicago, 1919-1946 reported, Tristano “sped through the conservatory”: “[He] had com- pleted all the requirements for an M.A. except the final exams, when he decided to skip the $500 or so necessary to sign up for the graduate degree and to make his way as at least a part-time jazz musician.”** The academic record at the conservatory indicates otherwise; he took only two courses toward a master’s degree, two composition classes, and eight hours’ worth of piano, with no evidence of playing at juries or recitals. On the other hand, Gitler reported that Tristano’s master’s degree was in composition: “By getting his BM in three years and his master’s degree in composition in a year, Lennie claims he ‘bugged everyone’ at the school.”* It is noteworthy that Tristano wrote several compositions for piano, symphony orchestra, and string quartet at the conservatory.*+ His string quartet, which he wrote for his master’s,* was performed at a school concert: “It was a jazzy piece, but jazz was so far from that faculty’s experience that they didn’t hear it in the quartet. They simply thought it sounded fresh.”2 During his study at the conservatory Tristano received enormous help from one of his aunts, Theresa, who would devotedly take him to school and write notes down for him, as Judy Tristano reminisced: “His Aunt Theresa . . . would go, pregnant though she was, everyday . and would take Lennie to his classes and write everything down ... fora long time. ... This was a tremendous family.” Early Activites in Chicago and the Jazz Press In his youth in the 1930s and early 1940s Tristano learned about African American culture through his frequent visits to the black ghetto area in Chicago. He recalled, “I was sitting in clubs listening to people all night when I was 15,”27 and told John McKinney that he was the only white man for miles and that he felt accepted on the job and off.8 According to Howard Becker, his piano student from Chicago, Tristano went to black clubs on the South Side by himself: “He told me . .. [hJe would just go in and tell the bartender that he just came to hear the music, he was blind, and if anything happened, the bartender should show him where to hide.” It was in that environment that Tristano became aware of Charlie Parker’s music: “See, I had Jay McShann’s records in 1940 and *41. . . . It was laid on me by a black cat. He said, ‘I want you to listen to Charlie Parker.’”*?1Q_ LENNIE TRISTANG In Chicago Tristano performed professionally in various settings, mainly playing tenor saxophone and piano. Ulanov reported that Tris- tano played in a small rhumba band, the leader of which “took him aside and offered to make him ‘the King of the Rhumba.’ With very lit- tle effort, Lennie was able to refuse the gracious offer and to get on with the piano he had begun to take seriously after playing most of his jobs on tenor sax.”3° During his engagement with a rhumba band in 1942 or 1943 Tristano first met Lee Konitz, which led to their long- term association. Konitz, who was about fifteen years old at that time, recalled that Tristano clued him “in to the fact that this [jazz] was a serious art form”: “I was working at a job across the street in a ball- room and went across to a bar where a piano player friend of mine was working. . . . [Tristano] was. . . playing [piano] with locked hands kinds of things. . . . [W]e started to talk, and pretty soon I asked him if he could help me to learn this music, and I started to study with him.”>* In a different interview Konitz identified his friend as Joe Lipuma and the club as Winkin’ Pup on the southwest side, and later mentioned that Tristano’s “locked hands things” was in Milt Buck- ner’s style.33 Tristano also played clarinet in his own Dixieland band, and per- formed the feat of playing two or three reed instruments simultane- ously while working in a group with an accordion player, alternating between playing two saxophones and three clarinets at once; he later reminisced, “We sounded like a big band.”*+ Lloyd Lifton recalled that Tristano also performed with a band composed of his brother Mickey Tristano on tenor saxophone, his cousin Lennie Aiello on alto saxophone, and a drummer from the neighborhood. George Ziskind, Tristano’s piano student, played with Michael Tristano in a band in the mid-r94os. He remembered that Tristano wrote arrangements for the band, composed of tenor and alto saxophones, trumpet, and the rhythm section, which were “totally through-arranged,” and in which “keys like 5 sharps” were common. In 1943 Tristano began teaching at the Axel Christensen School of Popular Music, where he was told that he did not have to teach their methods; Tristano recalled, “I learned how to teach through my stu- dents.”3 It was in this context that Tristano wrote “Chromatic Boo- gie,” published by Christensen, probably for the purpose of teach- ing.” Subtitled “An unusual piano solo in 13 keys from C to C,” it isChiago, 1919-96. 1] based on the twelve-bar blues form with a left-hand accompaniment in the boogie-woogie style. As the subtitle indicates, it starts in C major and ascends chromatically through all twelve keys, each key lasting twelve bars, and ends in C; the whole piece is composed of thirteen choruses, plus a four-bar coda. Each chorus employs different melodic materials, instead of simply transposing the same melody in different keys. In the second chorus in D major, for example, Tristano quotes Dvoiik’s “Humoresque.” The piece is an interesting study in boogie- woogie piano, reflecting Tristano’s intimate knowledge of the style popular during the time of his musical formation. Some of its elements remained in his music in later years, for example, “Turkish Mambo” and “C Minor Complex.” In early 1944 Tristano began to appear in the jazz press with Phil Featheringill’s report in the “Chicago Telescope” column in Metronome. Featheringill, a Chicago-based jazz critic, owned a record label, Session Records, as well as a record store, and he was also active in organizing jam sessions.‘* Impressed by Tristano’s playing, he wrote enthusiastic reviews that serve as a major source of information on Tristano’s whereabouts in the mid-1940s. Interestingly, in the first article in February 1944 Featheringill commented on Tristano’s ability as an arranger for his quartet: “Watch: Leonard Tristano, blind pianist, who has created arrange- ments that are big band potential for his quartette.”>? Later in July, Featheringill reported on Tristano’s trio performing at the Cave of the Winds on Milwaukee Avenue; then in December, Tristano was appearing at a new club, the Zanzibar, on North State Street, “playing beautifully.”4° There he performed again in January and February 1945, now with a singer, Judy Moore, his future wife. Dubbing them “[a] new voice and a new piano both slated for acclaim,” Featheringill noted, “Between ogling Judy and musicians elbowing their way to the piano after hours you can have a fine time.”#* Down Beat, in its first reference to Tristano in January r945, reported a favorable reception of his music, stating, “Blind pianist Lennie Tristano at the Zanzibar is getting raves,” but without mentioning Moore.# An audience member at the club later wrote an enthusiastic letter to Down Beat about Tris- tano, whom he called “one of the great modern jazz pianists,” and about Moore, “a luscious blonde” whose “very good voice matched the mood of his piano perfectly.” Tristano’s later remark on playing12 LENNIE TRISTANG in cocktail lounges may refer to the Zanzibar, as he told Gitler that in 1945 he worked in “good cocktail lounges. Never did I concern myself with the idea of becoming a great jazz musician. I just dug playing.” Judy Moore Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1925, Judy Moore Tristano grew up in Racine, Wisconsin.*s There she became acquainted with the music of Louis Jordan, Bunny Berigan, Chu Berry, Coleman Hawkins, and Bil- lie Holiday, and played the tenor saxophone in the high school band and in Virgil Whyte’s All-Girl Band.#* After attending Stevens College in Columbia, Missouri, she toured with the big band led by Will Lester, where she was “the only girl,” doubling on the baritone saxo- phone. She described the band as “a nice congenial bunch.” When the band broke up after an accident on the road, she settled down in Chicago, where she “got a hotel room for $3.50 a week.” In or around 1944 she met Tristano, as she reminisced: “The drummer in the band was very familiar with Chicago and Chicago musicians, and he kept telling me about this piano player. Lennie happened to be working at the time at Club Zanzibar, and there were three guys who owned it. One was his uncle, Louis. . . . So Gene, the drummer, took me to hear Lennie.” Later the club owners hired her: “Lennie was known among all the musicians in town, but they don’t come in and spend much money. So they decided to hire me as a singer with Lennie. ... And the club still didn’t do well. I was extremely shy, and they had figured that in between sets I’d sit at the bar and talk to customers.” She recalled, however, that it “didn’t really work out that way, ’cause what Lennie and I used to do is retreat to the storeroom and sit there and talk to each other. .. . And they. . . . stopped paying both of us. So I got a job daytimes . . . and kept on working with Lennie at night.” She also noted that Tristano was “one of the men who didn’t come on to me. And as shy as I was, that put me off when guys came on. So we got pretty tight, Lennie and I, but I’ll never forget, Uncle Louis standing at the back of the bar, and kind of glowering. So that lasted for some months, me working daytimes and nighttimes.”47 Originally a saxophonist, it was Moore’s “first and only gig as a singer,” and when asked whether Tristano gave any instructions on her singing, she answered, “No, he'd suggest some things like notesChicago, 119-166. 193 that would be in harmony, that would be more ad lib than the regular melody. But no, we just each did our thing.” In March 1945 Feath- eringill reported, “Lennie and Judy have left the spot for a rest and the opportunity of an clite hotel spotlight.”** There is no mention of fur- ther engagements for the duet, and subsequently the Zanzibar folded. The early stage of the acquaintance between Moore and Tristano mostly involved discussions on music, particularly Lester Young, one of Tristano’s favorites: “Lennie is the one who turned me on to Lester Young. Who I had liked up until then was Ben Webster and people like that, Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington’s whole band, in fact. ... [H]e’d play all these Count Basie records with Lester Young until I really appreciated Lester.” According to Moore, Tristano was engaged at the time of their meeting: “Lennie had just gotten engaged about a month before [he met me] to a girl, I guess legally blind . . . [whom] he’d been going with for, I think, seven years. ... And he had bought her a ring, a fairly expensive ring, and that broke up. She never gave his ring back. I don’t blame her.”#? Moore’s first visit to Tristano’s house on a cold and snowy winter night was quite memorable: “I had no clothes. I had one black evening gown that I had . . . made myself and a pair of cloth shoes . . . and I was sopping wet from the snow, half way up to my knees. . .. So Lennie had me go in his room and take my dress off and put his bathrobe on, and here it is three o’clock in the morning.” It was the first time she met his parents, whom she found to be generous, warm, and “very loving people”: “His mother gets up out of bed, here’s this girl she had never met before . . . and ‘Oh, hi, honey.’ . . . And she fixed us cream of mushroom soup. . . . I was feeling, gee, what’s she going to think, here I am in Lennie’s bathrobe. And dad, he was just such a sweetheart. They never made me feel one moment’s discomfort about the other girl or marrying their son or anything.” Moore and Tristano were married on July 27, 1945, at the justice of the peace in Joliet, a locale chosen to “avoid some kind of red tape in Chicago.”5° Judy Tristano later wrote, “Lennie was my absolutely deep first love.”5* She was indeed impressed by the fact that her husband’s Italian family was very affectionate: “Mama Rose was just the most darling thing. ... [Y]ou hear her laugh and you just break up. It was so infec- tious. She was short and blonde, and brown-eyed, and short little legs, but most delicate little ankles. And they were so different from my14 LENNIE TRISTANO family; rambunctious, they argue, and they laugh, and they hug, and there’s all kinds of stuff going on.” Judy Tristano also remembered the “big get-togethers,” for which “Mama Rose would make homemade ravioli and all that. . . . I loved it, I loved the whole family, and they were so warm.” However, she felt that Tristano was not part of the gregarious family atmosphere: “Family get-togethers would be ten, twelve people. Lennie wouldn’t be into all the horseplaying, arguing, and laughing. He was somewhat separate. . . . It was almost as though he felt a little removed. . . . It'd be like he was kind of sitting back with the get-togethers.” She noticed ‘Tristano’s tendency to play down his Italian background: “In fact Lennie wouldn’t even eat pasta, that’s how un-Italian he became. . . . | don’t know whether to call it a rebel- lion, a resentment of his parents, or what. So this may be psychoso- matic, It may be actually a simple physical thing, but if he ate pasta, he developed bumps under the skin . . . cysts, he used to call it."5* She also had to be careful with garlic, which she considered to be “kind of a repudiation of his past”: “I’m not meaning to say that this was a great big thing with him. Little things. . . . Probably a great deal because of this blindness. He had to be very strong feeling.” Accounts from the late 1950s and afterward, in contrast, suggest that Tristano enjoyed Italian cuisine.* Tristano on Tatum and Other Pianists Art Tatum, a towering figure in the history of jazz piano, affected Tris tano deeply in the process of his development. He studied Tatum’s style very closely, and learned how to play like Tatum in the early 1940s: “As a pianist in 1944, [had reached the point where I could rifle off anything of Tatum’s—and with scandalous efficiency.”5+ It signifies that he acquired not only a high degree of technical facility but also an understanding of advanced harmonic concepts, which were essential elements of Tatum’s playing. George Ziskind corrobo- rated Tristano’s claim, recalling that Tristano was a great admirer of Art Tatum and could play such recordings as “Elegy,” “Get Happy,” and “Tiger Rag”: “I went to him with some specific requests. I wanted to know how Art Tatum fingered all his runs, and Lennie was able to show me perfectly, and he taught me all the runs. . . . Of course he didn’t sound like Art Tatum, because everybody brings their ownChicago, 1919-1946 touch to it. But he was playing the notes precisely, doing all the stuff.”55 According to Sal Mosca, Tristano was able to play enough like Tatum to be mistaken for him: “He told me that he could play Elegie, which is one of Tatum’s fastest records, and finish ahead of Tatum. Sammy Demaro, a pianist, heard him in Chicago. He was walking along the street, and he heard Art Tatum playing and ran downstairs to hear him, and it was Lennie.”5° A crucial development in Tristano’s music occurred in the mid- 19408, when he began to focus on his individual style rather than imi- tating Art Tatum. Judy Tristano noticed it: “Lennie at the time I first met him was just quitting playing like Art Tatum. . . . That was hap- pening at the Zanzibar. He was . . . far enough in the process of get- ting away from it, so I didn’t hear too much Art Tatum from him.” Tristano’s remark that he “never worked hard at anything” until his middle twenties,” that is, the mid-1940s, may have referred to his quest for musical identity. Tristano certainly respected Tatum, whom he later praised for “a personal sound,”s* and recommended him, along with Lester Young, to Howard Becker. Becker remembered, “Tatum and Lester, those were the two. He wasn’t interested at all in Ellington. I can’t remem- ber him recommending a lot of people to listen to.” However, Bill Russo, another student from Chicago, recalled that Tristano did not like certain aspects of Tatum’s playing: “He played a more modern version of Tatum. . . . It was always in tempo. He was very critical of Tatum as I remember. He was critical of a lot of people. . .. One thing I remember is that Tatum’s runs didn’t end up correctly; that he would play a long run planning to end on a section such as the leading tone of the chord and he didn’t quite get it.” Russo also noted, “Now Tatum was playing out of tempo and it made no difference.” Throughout his career Tristano tended to be outspokenly critical of many musicians, but there were a number of jazz pianists he appre- ciated; the following is Judy Tristano’s recollection: Bup Powe t: Lennie’s absolute contemporary favorite. Teppy Wison: Lennie admired his delicate, tasty, musical, but somewhat bygone touch. Ear. Hines: Respected as a precursor of things to come. Jess Stacy: He liked Jess’s playing. Jess came and sat in at the Zanzibar once or twice, and they enjoyed talking. 1516 LENNIE TRISTANO Farts Water: Another fantastic, but at that time, Lennie was too taken up with Tatum, and probably regarded him as a bit of a deliberate clown. Mir Buckner: Lennie liked him as one of the “moderns.” Nar Cote: Lennie and I used to listen to his records when we first got married in Chicago. The trio. He really liked his piano. The singing was to him not important. In fact, he regretted Nat’s going commercial because he “had” to sing. AL Hava: Lennie thought he played very good modern jazz. Dopo Marmarosa: Lennie liked him a lot. Hank Jones: Same as above. Eis Larkins: Lennie spoke to me of liking Ellis Larkins’ piano accompaniment to Ella.’ She added that Tristano also liked Duke Jordan and Joe Albany. Tris- tano later summarized his influences, citing Earl Hines, Bud Powell, and Teddy Wilson among pianists, Kenny Clarke and Max Roach among drummers, and Charlie Christian among guitarists, but noted that he “was more influenced by horn players than by piano players,” especially Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Roy Eldridge, and Fats Navarro.®° “What's Wrong with Chicago Jazz” In 1945 Tristano published an acute criticism of the situation of jazz in Chicago, in which he attacked the commercial nature of the music industry." He singled out greedy bookers and café owners, in stark contrast to the musicians, who were economically marginalized and forced to feed “commercial” music to the public, thus inhibited from developing originality: The discussion of Chicago jazz, as an entity, is problematical; it simply does not exist. The variegated depravities infecting the Windy City’s jazz and musicians have smothered every evidence of originality. The polluted, acquisitive nature of bookers and cafe owners, who have a strangle hold on the life line of jazz, has instilled in the musician the attitude that they must either con- form, commercially, or starve, causing them to commit artisticChicago, 1919-1946 suicide. Since the high-brows refuse to admit that the jazz man is an artist, perhaps it does not matter. The applied terminology, instead of being artistic suicides, should be commercial casual- ties. Any art form must be allowed to grow unhampered; for, as soon as it becomes vitiated by the demands of the multitude, the infection spreads and the kill is effected. An example of the “depravities” was the popularity of “mickey bands,” short for Mickey Mouse bands, which Tristano contemptu- ously called “deliberately out of tune tenor bands”: “They play the two beat society music, which means schmaltzy fiddles, three part har- mony, stuttering cornets, the frequent wail of a too highly pitched trombone, the throw back tuba, the ‘please let me sing in your band, I'm a has-been, and I promise to sing flat!’ vocalist.” Tristano enu- merated the devastating effects of the mickey bands. First, they brought “the process of educating the public to good jazz to a stand still,” because “People appreciate only what they are told to appreci- ate; and, as long as this sort of thing is shoved down their collective throat, jazz is doomed.” The second effect, which he regarded as even worse, concerned the musician: “The man who of necessity plays in a mickey band loses his tone, develops a wide overwhelming vibrato, becomes accustomed to faulty intonation and breaks contact with the spontaneous and improvisational qualities of jazz, and falls into an attitude of reckless indifference. Most of the work that Chicago has to offer is in this category.” Tristano then criticized Chicago musicians’ tendency toward slavish imitation of established jazz musicians, such as Ben Webster, Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, and Art Tatum. Another source of his discontent was drummers. Consid- ering their style “Part dixieland, part shuffle, and mostly maniacal,” he pointed out that “their tendency is to evade the beat and ‘mop mop” whenever it might confuse some poor frustrated instrumentalist.” Interestingly, this is an early indication of the problems he had with rhythm sections throughout his career. The influx of musicians from other parts of the country also dis- heartened Tristano; they “played havoc with Chicago’s beat.” He argued that they brought in backward musical elements, that is, “dix- ieland style . . . [and] a hangover from a hog calling contest,” thus “putting Chicago boys out of work and cluttering up the honky tonks with odorous reminiscences of the old South, or of the old something 118 LENNIE TRISTANO or other,” which thickened “the accumulating batter of retrogres- sion.”6 The foregoing does not exhaust Tristano’s list of the parties responsible for the decline of the Chicago jazz scene. Also to blame were what he called “characters,” the “frauds, admitted shams, who would feign the part of an artist run-amuck” with the paraphernalia of “colored glasses, ‘oot’ clothes, long dirty unkempt hair.”® They suc- ceeded “only in bringing invective and virulent criticism to bear on the entire field of popular music,” and exerted a degenerating effect on the “younger set.” Another group he criticized consisted of narrow- minded musicians who hung on to only one style, either old or new; to them he recommended a conciliatory attitude: “In this case, the mid- dle ground is always more practical; the procedure must be from the known to the unknown. A gradual process takes hold more quickly and certainly. There should be no conflict between the old and the new; each has its place.” This shows both his respect for the past and his interest in the progress of jazz. Finally, Tristano focused on “the bookers and cafe owners,” whom he cited as the main offenders, protesting indignantly against their oppression and exploitation of musicians, as well as their role as arbiters of public taste: Frankly, the people in Chicago who are really stamping the life out of jazz are the bookers and cafe owners. For the purpose of surviving musicians must keep their mouths shut, or they don’t work, .. . It is enough to say that they have complete control of the jazz ourput, and they are certainly abusing it. Being one of the vicious byproducts of the entertainment field, the parasitic position of bookers should be made known. . . . If you are a pay- ing proposition, they will arrange to own your body and soul. . -. For some unexplainable reason . . . they are positive that they know what the public wants. They make as much money as they can bleed out of you—I'm sure the public doesn’t want that; they cause a musician’s life to be as inconveniently miserable as pos- sible—I’m sure the public doesn’t want that; they invert an artist into a gibbering clown—I’m sure the public doesn’t want that; they flood the market with has-beens, accordionists (frustrated piano players who take up the instrument for consolation), and all sorts of oddities—I’m sure the public doesn’t want that.Chicago, 1919-1946 The article is an early illustration of the forthright and feisty char- acter by which Tristano would be known throughout his career. He speaks with a sense of alarming urgency, authority, and moral obliga- tion, especially in reprimanding the music industry’s unjust control over musicians. His aesthetics of art for art’s sake and his noncom- promising stance would continue to shape his career in ways he may not have envisioned at this stage of his life. On the one hand, it enabled him to cultivate his original and innovative style, but on the other hand, it limited his opportunities to reach a broader public. Association with Emmett Carls and Chubby Jackson (1948) In 1945 Emmett Carls, a tenor saxophonist, was one of Tristano’s stu- dents, as Konitz reminisced: “At that time I remember Lennie saying that his ambition was to play tenor as good as Chu Berry. I heard him play tenor, incidentally, he was giving Emmett Carls a tenor lesson and playing Prez’s [Lester Young’s] chorus on ‘You Can Depend On Me’ for him.”*7 According to Featheringill, Carls organized a big band in Chicago, and Tristano, “the blind piano wizard,” was “doing a good part of his book.”* Don Haynes reported that Tristano’s arrangements, the focal point of the project, involved scoring for strings, which were “years ahead of current bands,” and that the band made a few test recordings.” Carls’s big band, however, was short- lived and “never went beyond the rehearsal state”; Haynes attributed the failure to Carls’s frustration with “the indifference and lack of understanding of booking offices.” Carls left for Washington, DC, later that year.7° Before leaving town, Carls introduced Tristano to Chubby Jack- son, the bass player of the Woody Herman band, who would later play an important role in Tristano’s move to New York. Jackson recalled that when he was in Chicago with the Herman band, he heard Tristano play, and was “completely taken with Lennie’s playing, "cause it was so different.” Jackson explained what impressed him so much: “This was quite a thrill to listen to the tremendous pianistic ability of this man; either hand said anything it wanted to say, tremen- dous chord formations, fantastic time. It reminded all of us as a newer sort of approach than what we'd always idolized as the Art Tatum 420 LENNIE TRISTANO syndromes. A very total, complete musician.” Jackson elaborated: “All of a sudden in the lower register of the piano, for the first time in my life, heard things that 'd always been hearing up in the treble part of the piano. His left hand was just as exciting as his right.” Together with Carls, Jackson, Markie Markowitz, Earl Swope, and Don Lam- ond, Tristano made recordings, probably in March 1945, when the Herman band played in Chicago.” The recordings, not released until 1976, are among his earliest, and contain several harmonized entrances and occasional backgrounds behind the solos.’ Tristano’s solo play- ing and accompanying is characterized by his extended harmonies, fast single-line runs, and block chords. In 1945 Tristano also made solo recordings. In “What Is This Thing Called Love,” in particular, he displays his ambidexterity by reversing the conventional role of the hands: his left hand improvises while the right hand accompanies with chords.”+ Equally noteworthy is that he starts out improvising without stating the melody of the tune, a practice he continued in his later trio and solo recordings. The jazz press made a few references to Tristano in the latter part of 1945, including his appearance at “the Town House in the loop” in July, then at the Town Casino in August.’> Commenting on the latter, Featheringill emphasized that Tristano was not getting his due, and thanked the manager of the club “for not listening to the great unin- formed whose claim [is that] blind musicians depress the funsters at the bar.””° However, he hinted that a change might take place: “Musi- cians in Chicago have been raving about Tristano’s pianistics without much happening for the guy. Now, one of the larger booking offices is planning better things for him. Hold your hat and cross you fingers, for the boy is really due the best breaks as a musician.” Unfortunately, there was no follow-up report. In October 1945 Featheringill mentioned that Tristano supplied arrangements for a quintet that included Mickey Tristano on tenor saxophone, Lloyd Lifton on piano, and Shorty Aiello on the alto.’” Then in November 1945 Featheringill reported, “Lennie Tristano has launched his new big-band experiment”: “All the men work on their own time for the kicks of experimenting with new big-band ideas writ- ten by Lennie . . . who is the leader and ‘father-confessor’ of all the progressive musicians in town.”75 Unfortunately, no further mention was made of the big band. In December Down Beat indicated that Tristano was “coming out of a short and unexplained retirement,”Chicago, 1-196 2] planning a quartet with Lee Konitz, “the 17-year old altoist who plays such great jazz.”79 Acti sin Chicago and Associations with the Woody Herman Band (1946) In 1946 Tristano first appeared in the Metronome All Star Poll, placing fourteenth with 27 votes in the category jazz piano, the winner being Teddy Wilson (410 votes), followed by Art Tatum (330 votes).8° How- ever, references to his public appearances were still infrequent. Feath- eringill commented in January, “[W]e hope Lennie Tristano will really come out of the backwoods and deliver some of that fine piano. Some booking office ought to be bright enough to latch on to him.”** Down Beat also reported that Tristano was not working on a steady basis: “Outside of a brief period as off-night subbing around the Randolph street spots, Lennie Tristano, Chi’s number one musician’s musician, has again stopped jobbing.”™ Even when he performed, Tristano gar- nered interest mainly from musicians, as Featheringill indicated: “Did you catch Lennie Tristano and group playing those sub-dates last month? Musicians flooded the places they played.”*? Becker confirmed Tristano’s strong presence on the scene, but suggested that there was a certain animosity toward him.‘ The reception of Tristano’s music can be attributed to his disdain for the commercial forces in the music industry, combined with the progressive nature of his music, which limited the range of acceptance, generating interest only among the musicians. Indeed his music baffled club managers because it did not serve the expected function of enter- tainment. Tristano quoted what one manager told him, after hearing the band for a couple of hours: “I don’t want you to think this is any- thing personal, but everybody in the place thinks you stink. So I'll be glad to pay you for the three days now, if you'll quit immediately.”*5 Tristano recalled that he drove another to a nervous breakdown: “He just got out on the middle of the floor, pulled some hair out and screamed when he heard us play some things in three keys at once.” Some clubs where he played, Tristano also noted, went into bank- ruptcy—*“Voluntary, I’m sure, after hearing us.” Here Tristano sounds mischievously amused, even proud of his notoriety, especially of the extreme reactions he elicited. Clearly he had no intention of pleasing the club managers, or to let his music be dictated by their22. LENNIE TRISTANO taste. This indicates a perennial problem of working musicians, where musical integrity comes in conflict with the commercial nature of the market, the latter functioning as a necessary evil. Haynes called atten- tion to this problem 1946, referring to a certain Chicago group that was fired from the job on the first night, which might as well have been Tristano’s: “Most jazzmen find working clubs discouraging because of the commercial demands of the spots. If they play jazz they are handed their notice promptly. To work steadily the alternative is to play what they consider commercial junk.”** The solution to the problem, Haynes suggested, would be a compromise, “a system to ‘fool’ the guys who write out the pay checks”: “The first night on a job is the one when an outfit is labeled in the boss’ mind. . . . Play a lot of pretty jazz, not the Gillespie-type stuff. . .. [P]laying a little bit commercial at first, or when it’s needed, means you can play a lot of jazz later. It’s better than being a frustrated and unemployed musician!” This advice, giving financial necessity priority over the integrity of music, would certainly not have met Tristano’s standard. One of Tristano’s sporadic activities in 1946 was “a one-nighter at the Ball-of-Fire on North Broadway” in a trio with Konitz on alto sax- ophone and a drummer, which Featheringill considered one of their “unannounced odd-nighters about the city.”S7 It is in line with other descriptions of his irregular engagements, his “sub-dates” or “off- night subbing.” In April 1946 Tristano played at the Rainbo, which, according to Haynes, was an appearance not well publicized, though he “was easily the standout” who “brought down a small house on several numbers.”** A follow-up article again noted his reclusive ten- dency: “Tristano, one of the favorite musicians around town and almost legendary because of his infrequent appearances, went back into hiding after his performance.”*? Considering Tristano’s dislike of commercialism, one might sus- pect he was very selective about his engagements, which he could probably afford to be, thanks to his income from teaching. According to Howard Becker, however, he advised students otherwise: “Some of the students . . . didn’t want to play anything but real jazz jobs, and Lennie would get very angry. He would say, ‘Listen, somebody calls you up to play with a polka band or a rhumba band, you take the job.” ‘Well, we don’t want to play that kind of stuff.’” Becker offered Tris- tano’s explanation: “ ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I did it... . ‘I don’t do it any more because I don’t have to. I have the experience. You haven't.’ HeChicago, 119-1ME. 73 was very heavy about that. . . . This is very vivid in my mind, him bawling somebody out.” This attitude changed later in New York, as Tristano warned students against becoming professional jazz musi- cians, recommending that they take a day job and play music on the side. Teaching was already an important part of Tristano’s activities in Chicago. He had a number of students, including Lee Konitz, Howard Becker, Lloyd Lifton, Bill Russo, Cy Touff, and George Ziskind, among others. When, at Russo’s suggestion, Ziskind first started studying around 1944, his lessons were held at the Axel Christensen School of Popular Music in the Kimball Building on South Wabash Avenue, but several months later Tristano moved the location to his apartment, says Ziskind. According to Becker, “He lived in an apart- ment on Aldine Street in Chicago. . . . He was almost always in his pajamas. I think he seldom got dressed unless he was going out. And Judy might bring some coffee or something. She was usually very silent... . So you’d go in there for your lesson and often there’d be other guys around who were waiting to get their lessons.”° Among these students, Konitz and Lifton seem to be the only ones who later went to New York to continue studying with Tristano. In the spring of 1946 Tristano wrote arrangements for the Woody Herman band, which performed in Chicago for four weeks, opening on April 26, 1946, at the Hotel Sherman.’ Billy Bauer, guitarist of the band, saw Tristano for the first time at a rehearsal where the band tried out Tristano’s arrangements: “When Woody’s band was rehears- ing in Chicago, Lennie Tristano walked in on the arm of a nice-look- ing blonde. . . . [had never heard of him. I think Chubby knew him. He evidently had been listening to the band quite a lot. He must’ve heard me.”* Bauer also noted that Tristano brought a few arrange- ments, one of which, “Incensation,” included a guitar solo part with “Billy” written on it: “We tried it out but for some reason they shelved it. Years later he told me they never used his arrangement because the trumpets had trouble with their ‘Dizzy Gillespie’ style parts. I also found out the blonde was his wife Judy.” Jimmy Rowles, pianist of the Herman band, stated that Herman did not like Tristano’s arrangement and never played it, and described it as “real weird,” and “a jump tune.”® Rowles also confirmed that Sonny Berman, one of the trumpet players, complained about “the passage that he had to play that he thought was uncomfortable. . . .24 LENNIE TRISTANO Sonny said, ‘I can’t make that thing. Anything I can do about it?’ ‘Well,’ Tristano said, ‘I wrote it down. I heard Sonny Berman play it ona solo on the radio one night.’ He was talking to Sonny Berman. He didn’t know who he was talking to. Sonny just looked at him.” Gitler commented on the incident, “Considering Tristano’s knowledge and formidable ear it is possible he was pulling a few legs.”+ Shorty Rogers, another trumpet player, was impressed by Tristano’s writing, noting its unusually advanced nature: “When I was with Woody’s band, Lennie had someone working with him put down on paper some big band arrangements which we played, and they were pretty wild. It was very good stuff. So, here is this gravely talented musician who's blind, and they whip out these difficult charts.”95 In June 1946 Herman referred to having recently bought Tris- tano’s “Conversation Piece” as proof that he was “just as interested and excited about progress in music as anybody,” thus defending him- self from the accusation of leading a commercial band. Another arti- cle mentioned Tristano’s piece, which “Woody has been eager to praise highly,”®” but his approval turned out to be mere lip service, since he adopted none of Tristano’s compositions in the band’s reper- toire. Leaving for New York In the spring of 1946 Tristano decided to move to New York. His awareness of the adverse conditions in Chicago, as expressed in his 1945 article, must have been one of the reasons. He had certainly been contemplating the move for some time, as Judy Tristano recalled: “We talked about it, like a dream, like we'll get there one of these days.” His decision at this juncture was probably due largely to Chubby Jack- son’s encouragement. Jackson suggested to Tristano the prospect of moving to New York, while “pacing back and forth” and “smoking a joint” at the rehearsal room of the Herman band, according to Konitz. Jackson left Herman around June 1946 for the purpose of forming his own big band, and was back at home in Freeport, Long Island, by the beginning of July, where he invited the Tristanos to stay.°* According to Haynes, who called Tristano “almost a legendary figure because of his infrequent jobbing dates the last year,” Jackson’s plan was to include Tristano in the tour of the prospective band: “Tristano, whoseChicago, 1919-1946 complete sincerity for creative jazz has kept him off several ‘too com- mercial’ jobs, has stuck to arranging and piano instruction for the last few months. . . . While the Jackson tour is far from complete . . . Lennie and his original works will be given featured billing through- out the tour.”°? Haynes added, “Success to an artist of Tristano’s cal- ibre is not merely a matter of financial success, but that of recognition of his work—both as a pianist and as an arranger and composer.” In August 1946 Haynes reported that Tristano had left Chicago and that “[sleveral young musicians here are bemoaning the loss of a fine teacher.” George Simon, one of the editors of Metronome, wel- comed Tristano’s move to New York, stating, “He was too good for Chicago”; Simon saw it as a way to break out of the musical environ- ment in Chicago, which he perceived as pernicious to the development of jazz, echoing Tristano’s earlier criticism: “Chicago is giving us just about nothing right now. This town is currently very mickey-con- scious. . . . Little wonder, then, that the hipper element in Chicago is pretty discouraged. Probably the best example of how really badly they feel is the case of Lenny Tristano.”"*" Simon also described Tris- tano’s playing, noting, “He couldn’t get a steady job anyplace”: “The man is far ahead in his musical thinking and in his technique. His style is predominantly block chords, so predominantly so, that he seldom, if ever, uses a swing bass. Thus, when he’s playing solo for you it’s up to you to supply the intended rhythmic beat.” The advanced nature of Tristano’s music, combined with his uncompromising will, resulted in a lack of acceptance of his music in Chicago outside the orbit of local musicians. Dissatisfied and impatient with the unfavorable milieu there, Tristano moved to New York in hopes of realizing his musical potentials and increasing his opportunities for wider recognition. %) New York, 1946-1950 ennie and Judy Tristano arrived in Freeport, Long Island, in the | sn of 1946, where they stayed with Chubby Jackson and his mother before moving to New York City later that year. Freeport, Jackson's hometown, was populated by many vaudevillians, and Jack- son retained his interest in vaudeville throughout his career as a jazz musician. He described the circumstances of Tristano’s arrival: “Freeport was the home of all vaudevillians. Many years ago, my mother was in vaudeville for forty-two years. ... [ brought him [Tris- tano] out there and Mom played piano. . .. There was a piano in her living room and naturally Lennie went to the piano before he went to the bathroom... . And he impressed Mom very much.” Jackson played an important role in Tristano’s budding career in New York by making arrangements to assemble the members of a trio. They decided on the format of piano trio composed of piano, bass, and guitar, which had gained popularity with successful trios led by Clarence Profit, Art Tatum, and Nat Cole. The Lennie Tristano Trio Jackson, he recalls, contacted Arnold Fishkin, a bassist and his child- hood friend, and said about Tristano, “You have to hear this guy.” The reason why Jackson himself did not play in the group, according to Fishkin, was that Jackson intended to keep Tristano’s group sepa- rate from his own on a tour featuring the winners of the Esquire mag- azine jazz poll.’ For the guitar, Jackson asked Billy Bauer, who was in New York, having left Herman in August 1946. He had already seen Tristano in Chicago, but their meeting did not take place until later in 1]28 LENNIE TRISTANO Freeport. Bauer recalled: “When I came to New York, I was going to pack up and quit everything for a while, because I'd been on the road for three years. ... In the meantime the phone rings and Chubby Jack- son says, ‘Look, I got the guy coming from Chicago and I want you and him and Arnold Fishkin to open at this place in Freeport.’ Tt was quite a steady job. It was a little restaurant.”+ Jackson says the restaurant was Al B, White’s, owned by an ex-vaudevillian friend of Jackson’s. According to Fishkin, the trio was very successful despite the lack of publicity: “[T]here was hardly any advertisement. I think there was one ad in the local paper, and that place was packed every night. It was just amazing, from mouth to mouth, and the thing just took off. It was just one of those things that happened maybe once in your whole lifetime. Playing with Lennie was like a dream. . . . And it lasted about . . . a month or two.”5 During the engagements at the restaurant Bauer observed some- thing unusual about the pianist. Tristano wanted to bypass the state- ment of the tune and rather start improvising right away on its har- monic progressions. He also preferred the comping style on the guitar rather than the rhythm guitar, the latter involving playing chords on all four beats as was typical of the swing style. Bauer described his sur- prises: “We walked in and I didn’t know what to expect. . . . So he says, ‘Here’s what we’d do. No rhythm guitar. No melody. So let’s play.’ . .. Now, I’m not supposed to play the melody, I’m not sup- posed to play rhythm. So he says, ‘Just play anything.’” Following Tristano’s instruction not to “play the melody or straight rhythm,” Bauer “either had to play counter harmonies, counter melodies, or what today they call ‘compin,” which “{njot many people were doing,” especially in a trio setting.© He was frustrated about his new role, which entailed much more freedom than he was used to, and later recalled, “I fell flat on my face every night.”? Fishkin explained that Tristano considered playing the melody too commercial. Another novel aspect of Tristano’s playing was his advanced con- cept of superimposed harmonies. This also frustrated Bauer at first: “[We started and he picked ‘Moon Looks Down and Laughs’ or something like that, And we played and no matter what I did, like if I thought he did something and I'd go and grab it, he’d immediately go away from me and play something else, and I couldn’t catch him and that went on for the whole night.” Bauer, however, realized that it allowed harmonic freedom: “So I got used to this thing and I was veryNew York, 1946-1950 29 free after a while, because you could almost do anything, because he’d cover you up. Now, if you hit a couple of bad notes, he’d make that a harmonic structure. He . . . had a great ear, really.” Bauer further explained: “No matter what I'd do, it would seem like he was playing in another key. Later on I realized he was playing extensions and sub- stitutions. I went along with it because no matter how mixed up I'd get, I’d fall into some kind of counterpoint.”? Fishkin, as a bass player, had a different role, but attested to the same sense of freedom, as Tris- tano’s approach built complex harmonic superstructures on the basic framework provided by the bass. Fishkin recalled, “What Lennie said to me was... ‘Just don’t have any fears about where you are going. Just keep your ears open.’ Just bearing that in mind, it was quite free, because I wasn’t leading, but he was playing off of me. So it was really quite comfortable.”*° Another outcome of Tristano’s association with Jackson was meeting with Barry Ulanov, a jazz critic and coeditor of Metronome, who promoted the music of the “modern” jazz musicians of the r94os. Recognizing Tristano as the most original voice in contemporary jazz, Ulanov wrote prolifically about him with extreme enthusiasm, thus playing a great role in promoting his music, until retiring from jazz criticism in 1955 to pursue an academic career."' Arranged by Jackson, their first meeting took place in August 1946 when Ulanov was teach- ing a summer class at the Juilliard School of Music. Ulanov remi- nisced: “[T]he door burst open and Chubby Jackson blew in. ... After him came Billy Bauer. . . . Then followed Arnold Fishkind . . . and behind him Judy and Lennie Tristano. . . . I didn’t realize the full impact of this music and this musician until that following winter when ...1... encountered his music most forcibly on his first released record, | Can’t Get Started and Out on a Limb.” Later in 1946 Ulanov, with Ruth Hamalainen, wrote a feature article on Tristano, which affirmed his belief in the inevitable progress in jazz and declared Tristano to be at the front of the avant-garde in jazz.2} In this article they noted, “Lennie believes that jazz is a complete art unto itself” and “thinks that modern jazz is a brilliant musical form which has not yet reached its maturity”: “Lennie has put himself in the position of a leader, not a follower. . . . Lennie feels that music is unlimited in its possibilities and in the technique with which to express them.” Inter- estingly, they anticipated the criticism of Tristano’s music as being “devoid of feeling” or “mechanical,” which was occasionally voiced30. LENNIE TRISTANO in later record reviews: “As always with different ideas, it will be some time before the staid public will accept music of this kind, and there will be objections . . . there will be those who say that Lennie’s music is devoid of feeling. But there can be no music without feeling; it’s just a question of what the feeling is, and in Lennie’s case, it is highly orig- inal, beautiful and subtle.” Unfortunately, the tour planned by Jackson was cancelled and the trio broke up, with Fishkin leaving for California around September to join the Charlie Barnet band.*+ In any case, Tristano’s aspiration was to perform in New York City. According to Bauer, the owner of AI B. White’s guaranteed consistent work, even telling them to come back after other engagements, but Tristano did not intend to stay in Freeport. Bauer recalled, “Lennie wanted to get into Manhattan.”*5 In the absence of Fishkin, a quartet was formed with Jackson, Tristano, Bauer, and a drummer, Stan Levey, which played for a short engage- ment at the Downbeat Club on Fifty-second Street."© A review from October 1946 indicated that the poor reception was due to the advanced, that is, “too hip,” nature of the music: “Goateed, hefty Chubby Jackson . . . opened and closed so fast late last month on sand street’s Downbeat club that the Lane’s curious as well as many of Jackson’s followers didn’t get so much as a peek of the big fellow’s arrival and departure let alone a listen to his ‘new stuff.’”'7 Then the review quoted the “club mentors”: “This is supposed to be the most hip street in the world . . . but Chubby’s stuff was a little too hip for any of us—so, we let him go. When Chubby was playing, nothing hap- pened for the masses and we can’t make our tab playing only to the super-hipped.” In the quartet Jackson encountered problems playing with Tris- tano, both personal and musical. First, their approaches to music dif- fered vastly; Jackson, coming from his vaudeville background, was inclined toward theatrical presentations, which Tristano must have considered “commercial.” Jackson reminisced: “I have a certain other type of feelings not only about playing but also presentation . . . I have extra certain ways of visually [performing] and what not, and like to do some happy things and I like to have perfect control, which always looked like it was a total ad lib because that was part of our training . . . but really very, very well prepared.” Part of the problem arose from the conflict between two strong musical personalities, with Tris- tano taking over the direction of the quartet. Jackson recalled that heNew York, 1946-1960 “was looking to have a very musical thing that was labeled Chubby Jackson and His Quartet. However, I immediately found myself play- ing in Lennie’s group, which, of course, wasn’t bad at all musically, because it was wilder by the evening. There were some extremities that we went through that I don’t think I'll ever forget.”"* He continued, describing himself as “a very adamant person”: “I, all of a sudden, musically, and this is not socially, found that I was locking horns with a giant. And I realized this within the first week that I had no longer any charge of the group at all. ... And I had to go what direction he wanted and whatever tempo he wished, or whatever level of emotional sound, or no matter what it was, it was Lennie’s dictate.” For exam- ple, Tristano did not agree with Jackson’s choice of tempo, as Jackson recounted a frustrating incident: “I'd call out a certain tune that we did the night before and it was a certain tempo and a certain melodic line on top . . . and it would get a big hand, then I would get to the microphone and go through my theatrical faces and what not, and the next night I'd call out [the same tune].” Jackson then described how Tristano imposed his own tempo for the sake of spontaneous impro- visation: “While I beat it up, ‘One, two, one two three four, and the group would come in . . . like a peg or two underneath, or the night after that, a peg or two above what I had. In other words, he . . . didn’t ever hear the direction that somebody else was dropping on him.” Tristano’s clash with Jackson seems partly due to Tristano’s wish to avoid commercialism. Even though Jackson played an important role in introducing Tristano to the New York jazz scene, they subse- quently followed separate paths, performing together only occasion- ally on club dates."® Even though Jackson planned a Swedish tour in the fall of 1947, which was intended to include Tristano along with Conte Candoli, Frankie Socolow, Bauer, Tony Aless, and Art Mardi- gan,° Tristano did not go with him. After the dissolution of the quar- tet, Tristano went back to the trio format with Bauer on the guitar and a series of different bassists. Keynote Sessions In August 1946 Tristano’s trio with Leonard Gaskin on bass made a V- disc, one of a series of “Victory” discs for the armed forces, with “I Can’t Get Started” and “A Night in Tunisia.”** Then on October 8, J32. LENNIE TRISTANO 1946, the trio, with Clyde Lombardi on bass, recorded for Keynote. Produced by Harry Lim, who was very interested in Tristano’s music, the session resulted in an unusually large number of recordings, fifteen altogether, composed of multiple takes of four tunes and an untitled blues.** Two of them, the third take of “Out on a Limb” and the sec- ond take of “I Can’t Get Started,” were released in 1947 on the first commercially available record of the trio (K647); Tristano’s use of counterpoint, chromaticism, and polyrhythm in the former is exam- ined in chapter 5. Contemporary reviews clearly indicate the novel nature of the trio in the contrapuntal interaction between piano and guitar and the inno- vative harmonic approach reminiscent of the early twentieth-century composers. Michael Levin of Down Beat, while criticizing some pas- sages as contrived and “almost self-consciously arty,” insightfully pointed out aspects of polyphony, polyrhythm, and advanced har- monies: “Tristano has some of the freshest pianistic approaches to conventional small group playing. . . . [H]e uses constant intermixed figures with Bauer, and a melodic and harmonic line that depend on linear development rather than repeated riffs. . . . Granted that there are places on both sides, where the group doesn’t ‘swing’ as we con- ventionally use the term.”*} Then Levin defended Tristano: “But on the other hand, there is no reason to limit jazz to 2/4 and 4/4 for the rest of its existence. A lot can happen in 3/8 and 5/2 too. . . . [T]his record also represents the attempt of three musicians to take jazz as they have heard it, combine it with a developing classical tradition and still keep it freely improvisatory in nature.” Levin also commented, “Td like to hear a little more melodic quality, restraint and more care- ful use of polyphony.” The reviewers of Metronome, especially Ulanov, evaluated the record highly, pointing out “a linear construc- tion and dissonances out of Hindemith,” and selecting the trio as one of the month’s best small groups.*4 In the same issue, Ulanov justified his enthusiasm for Tristano by reporting positive reactions to the record from musicians he met on the West Coast, including Sonny Burke, André Previn, Les Brown, Babe Russin, and Mel Tormé.*s Other musicians who praised the record include Mel Powell, Fats Navarro, and Billy Eckstine.*¢ It is also interesting that Schillinger House, later Berklee School of Music, presented “Out on a Limb” as one of the piano solos for students to analyze during their regularNew York, 1946-1950 93 courses; in addition, in the students’ poll Tristano placed third in the instrumentalist category.*7 The Keynote record had a particularly strong impact on Bud Free- man, who considered Tristano “one of the great jazz musicians” and called him for lessons. Ulanov found it striking that Freeman, who is representative of an older school of jazz, sought guidance from Tris- tano, an epitome of “the new, the modern, the progressive”: “The facts are that Bud Freeman heard .. . Out on a Limb, and went hur- riedly in search of Lennie’s phone number the next day. . .. He'd heard that Lennie took on pupils in general jazz theory and harmony; was it true? Why, yes, Lennie assured him. . . . At this point, Bud has been studying with Lennie for 3 months.”*5 Ulanov also reported that Free- man “had trouble getting back into form” after returning from Rio de Janeiro, and quoted him on his study with Tristano: “I never knew how much freer I would feel getting down to the basic principles. . . . I thought it would be instructive to study with a great musician like Lennie; I didn’t know it would be so much fun.” Freeman further remarked on Tristano’s encouragement: “In one month he had my confidence back, and one day when I started to get this big sound he said, ‘That’s great!””29 Tristano closed his first year in New York with a short engage- ment at the Three Deuces. Bauer, who had to miss the last day, rec- ommended Ray Turner, a tenor saxophonist, as a substitute: “I think he was hoping we'd be held over another week. He finally said ‘Get me a horn. There'll be less conflict with the harmonies.’ I recommended a sax player. When I got back I asked Lennie how it went. He said ‘I knew every riff he played. After the first set, to make the night inter- esting, I played harmony to him.’ I thought that was funny.”3° The poor reception Tristano experienced during his early club engage- ments in New York must have been disappointing. As he put it, he “bombed” on Fifty-second Street.3* In 1947 Tristano appeared in the all-star polls in both Metronome and Down Beat. In Metronome he placed seventeenth as pianist with 31 votes, and twenty-fourth as arranger with 7 votes; Nat Cole was the winning pianist with 299 votes.* In Down Beat he was ranked thirti- eth as pianist with 35 votes; Mel Powell won first place with 1,249 votes. In March Tristano made his first concert appearance in New York at Town Hall; presented by Lim, it featured other musicians34 LENNIE TRISTANO signed to Keynote.3+ Levin reported that “Tristano’s piano, solo and with a group, was a pleasure to hear,” and an audience member, highly impressed, considered Tristano the “future for the art of jazz.”35 On May 5, Tristano performed at Carnegie Hall as one of the guest performers for the Jazz At The Philharmonic series, including Coleman Hawkins, Harry Carney, Billy Strayhorn, Oscar Pettiford, Charlie Parker, and Kai Winding, among others. Levin comple- mented Tristano’s playing, but considered it too advanced for the audience: “Lennie Tristano came in for a group of three solo numbers which sorely puzzled the house, it not even being able to guess the tunes, let alone follow the ideas. Musically his was the most fertile playing of the evening, even if emotionally a shade over-cerebrative in spots.”3” Levin’s reference to the intellectual aspect of Tristano’s music is significant, as it echoes later criticisms. The second Keynote session took place under John Hammond’s supervision on May 23, 1947, with Bob Leininger on bass; there are four extant recordings, “Blue Boy,” “Atonement,” and two takes of “Coolin’ Off With Ulanov.” Later that year Keynote released an album of three 78-rpm records containing six selections, three from each of the two sessions (K147). This album drew a great deal of atten- tion and thus played a significant role in the reception of Tristano’s music. For example, reviewers of Metronome chose it among “the month’s best” in August 1947, noting Tristano’s “striking originality and rich equipment.”* Levin also wrote a favorable review in which he praised Tristano’s playing as “loaded with ideas and possessed of considerable technical skill,” dubbing him “one of the best young musicians in the country, minor complaints notwithstanding”; his complaint was that “certain ideas are deliberately superimposed in the whole pattern of what he is playing for the ‘shock’ effect.”3° Down Beat, stating that “the album is one of the outstanding contributions to modern music,” paid special attention to it by commissioning Lou Stein, a jazz pianist, on an additional review for the purpose of “an unprejudiced and complete analysis of Tristano’s work.” In his lengthy and glowing review, Stein praised Tristano as a “prophetic figure” who had “musically broken his bonds to explore the undis- covered,” and as a “courageous fellow” who consistently refused “exploiting himself” for commercial success.#* Noting Tristano’s “unquestioning and instinctive need to express himself honestly,”New York, 1946-1950 95 Stein keenly pointed out the use of counterpoint, dissonances, block chords, extended harmony of “augmented rrths against major 9ths,” and polyrhythm achieved by “playing 5/4, 3/4, 6/4 etc. against the basic 4/4 of the bassist and guitarist.” Other musicians had differing opinions. Nat Cole, on Leonard Feather’s blindfold test, spoke about “Blue Boy” in a disapproving tone. Mistaking Tristano for Previn, perhaps perceiving the classical background, he remarked: “That guitar and the piano—if one would give the other a chance to play, they’d sound better; they’re both try- ing to play solos. . . . Piano nice in spots.” Considering that “Blue Boy” contains intense contrapuntal interactions and exchanges of ideas between the two instruments, Cole’s observation is reasonable. Teddy Wilson, upon listening to “I Can’t Get Started,” also on a blindfold test, commented on the ambiguous nature of the harmonies: “They have everything but the kitchen sink in here—splashing weird chords around; they seem to enjoy it. Use of all that harmony is indis- criminate, not significant. They must have had their ears glued to Delius and Ravel . . . sounded like really free improvisation, and they did run into some very good things at times.”43 Although not too com- plementary, Wilson’s comment about free improvisation is significant; the trio recordings give an inkling of Tristano’s later free improvisa- tions based on group interaction. The recording of “I Can’t Get Started,” a ballad by Vernon Duke and Ira Gershwin (1935), is interesting in that Bauer states only the first two measures of the melody, while Tristano accompanies with thick and seemingly unrelated chords. Tristano took advantage of the slow tempo to construct a complicated harmonic superstructure over the standard chords and to manipulate rhythmic values and pacing. The extraordinary and adventurous harmonic concept prompted the jazz historian Gunther Schuller to consider it sitting “on the cusp of tonality and atonality”: “The original song is the merest pretext for a whole new concept of jazz in which tonality and atonality, harmony and counterpoint, meet on common ground, in brand new functions. . . . Tristano builds a remarkable improvised superstructure of great harmonic, melodic, and even to some extent rhythmic invention.” # Taking note of “criss-crossing counterpoints, metric cross-rhythms, and alternatingly dense and lightweight textures,” Schuller also pointed out that the chromatic harmonies were extensions of the basic chord progression: “As ‘far out” as Tristano’s chordal blocks may be if36. LENNIE TRISTANO taken separately, they are always anchored in the song’s root progres sions. . . . Technically, many of these harmonic constructions might be called ‘bitonal,’ while others are so near the border of atonality that a clear distinction is no longer possible.” Then Schuller perceptively described the recording as “an achievement that in 1946 could only be accomplished by a harmonic ear of genius calibre.” The use of such complicated harmonic structures without clear functional references is an important factor in understanding Tristano’s daring use of har- monies. On the emotional level, it effectively reflects on the sentiment of the lyrics, that is, unrequited love, by evoking a brooding mood. The trio recordings are early examples of Tristano’s polymetric and polytonal inclinations, as well as of remarkable virtuosity in his playing of block chords and rapid runs; the block chords remained in his vocabulary, later to become much more complicated and dense in their harmonic content. In his later recordings Tristano intensified aspects of linearity, chromatic harmony, and polyrhythm, and contin- ued to explore the spontaneous and dense contrapuntal activity in the context of group interaction. “What's Wrong with the Beboppers” and “What's Right with the Bebopners” In the summer of 1947 Tristano penned another criticism of jazz, now focusing on bebop; by then he had had firsthand experiences with the newer style of jazz. In two articles published in Metronome, he again exhibited his historical awareness and unfailing conviction with adamant forthrightness. Reflecting the teleological tendency in con- temporary jazz criticism, he expounded keenly on jazz history and the course that jazz should take in order to transcend bebop. Tristano opened his first article, “What’s Wrong with the Bebop- pers,” by asserting that bebop is an advanced form of jazz: Bebop is a definite step forward in the art of jazz. As with any art form, this progress has met with multiple and varied opposition. Jazz has not yet found acceptance with the American public; and bebop, an advanced and complex outgrowth of that jazz, exists precariously above the uncomprehending ears of the average person. But it is the musicians themselves, the vendors of jazz, who in many cases make their own lives difficult. The protago-New York, 1946-1960 nists of Dixieland regard bebop as a war-time fad. However, the supercilious attitude and lack of originality of the young hipsters constitute no less a menace to the existence of bebop.* In this context he charged “most boppers,” whom he called “little monkey-men,” with slavishly imitating Dizzy Gillespie, “the master of the new idiom”; Tristano recommended instead “studying and analyz- ing modern jazz with the aim of contributing something original to it.” Explaining the nature of bebop based on the criteria of “harmonic structure, unique inflections, and phraseology,” Tristano cited “light- ness, fleetness, and facility” as the “attributes of modern jazz”; these were to “be integrated with originality and knowledge to form an expression which may be similar in style but different according to individual personalities.” He also contrasted bebop with earlier styles of jazz, and criticized the phenomenon of labeling; it is ironic that he later became a victim of what he called “pigeon-holing,” that is, as a “cool” jazz musician: A fashion of present-day erudition is the procedure of pigeon- holing. . . . Accordingly, this idiom had to be labeled. It was tagged “bebop.” . . . It must be understood that bebop is dia- metrically opposed to the jazz that preceded it (swing as applied to large groups, and Dixieland as applied to small ones). Swing was hot, heavy, and loud. Bebop is cool, light, and soft. The for- mer bumped and chugged along like a beat locomotive; this was known in some quarters as drive. The latter has a more subtle beat which becomes more pronounced by implication. At this low volume level many interesting and complex accents may be introduced effectively. The phraseology is next in importance because every note is governed by the underlying beat. This was not true of swing; for example, the long arpeggios which were executed with no sense of time, the prolonged tremolos, and the sustained scream notes.* The rhythmic dimension of bebop, which Tristano characterized as enabling “many interesting and complex accents,” is an area that he extended to a level far exceeding bebop. Interestingly, he perceived bebop as “cool” and “soft” at a “low volume level”; he was not alone on this view. In 1949 Feather regarded bebop as “cool” jazz, stating that “[a] main characteristic of bebop rhythmically . . . is the change d36. LENNIE TRISTANO from ‘hot jazz’ to ‘cool jazz,’” and that Lester Young “was a radical in that he symbolized the gradual evolution from hot jazz to ‘cool’ jazz.” Determined to take part in “the battle to educate the public,” Tris- tano, with a strong sense of mission, as if on a crusade, singled out obstacles to “combat”: There are many people who refuse to let jazz grow beyond their capacity to hear and understand it. There are others whose response to jazz is so completely emotional that they are unwill- ing to concede the aesthetic and intellectual progress that is demonstrated in bebop. There is a group of critics whose inabil- ity to understand and discuss bebop forces them to cling vio- lently to the old familiar patterns. . .. The musicians who refuse to yield to the new are a little less objectionable since a feeling of security forms such an important part of any man’s existence. On the other hand, if these same musicians deny the validity and the necessity for progress, then they must be ruthlessly disre- garded.** He then reasserted his view of jazz as an art form and projected his optimism in the acceptance of jazz as such: “Jazz will eventually become an art form which will be taken seriously by those hitherto unappreciative of it. It will not be held back by the dancing public, profaned by the deified critics, or restricted in its growth by its poor imitators, even when they imitate jazz at its best.” In the second article, “What’s Right with the Beboppers,” Tris- tano highlighted the merits of bebop against the shortcomings of Dix- ieland. For example, declaring that “[t]he music of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker constitutes the first major break with Dixieland,” he dismissed Dixieland’s harmonic simplicity and lack of a good melodic line.” Even though he acknowledged “a single and crude form of counterpoint” and collective improvisation in Dixieland, he criticized it because “its contrapuntal development ends in a blind alley” and because “[alnything that requires a degree of intelligent comprehen- sion is ruled out.” In discussing the characteristics of bebop, Tristano first stated that it had “made several contributions to the evolution of the single line.” His recognition of the importance of linearity is significant, as this wasNew York, 1946-1950 99 a crucial element in his own music. Second, he described the rhythm section as using “a system of chordal punctuation,” whereby “the soloist is able to hear the chord without having it shoved down his throat. He can think as he plays.”° Third, Tristano pointed out that “[a] chorus of bebop may consist of any number of phrases which vary in length” and that a phrase “may contain one or several ideas.” Fourth, he discussed the rhythmic characteristics of bebop: “Given a long series of eighth notes, the Fig would play them as dotted eighths and sixteenths, which effects an underlying shuffle beat. A bopper would accept [sic] every up-beat, producing a line which pulsates with a modern, a more exciting feeling. This type of accenting also prevents the soloist from stumbling into a boogie groove, a musical booby- trap.” Embracing bebop wholeheartedly, Tristano argued that it “is a valiant attempt to raise jazz to a thoughtful level, and to replace emo- tion with meaning,” and that it was “successfully combatting the putrefying effect of commercialism.” Tristano also defended bebop from criticisms that it was “mechanical, ‘over-cerebrative,’ sloppy, technical, and immoral.” In explaining the lack of understanding and acceptance of bebop, Tristano first blamed the younger musicians for having “gone over- board in attempting to emulate their idols,” and then “the so-called giants of jazz,” who had “absolutely refused to be influenced”: “The feeling of security which comes from playing in a well-worn and worn-out groove, and an unwillingness to admit that jazz has advanced beyond their personally-generated auras suggest an immi- nent degeneration.”5* He ended the article on a high note, calling for support from the society: “And here society has a real obligation. It must foster the arts and encourage the artists even if understanding is not immediate. Bebop, one of the more mature levels of jazz, must be listened to, scrutinized, supported. That way it will assure progress and all the inevitable maturation of jazz will be one large step further along.” There are several underlying concepts in these articles. First, Tris- tano believed in the inevitable progress in jazz, and even envisioned the “the next step after bebop”: “The boppers discarded collective improvisation and placed all emphasis on the single line. This is not unfortunate, since the highest development of both would probably not occur simultaneously. Perhaps the next step after bebop will be collective improvisation on a much higher plane because the individ-4Q) LENNIE TRISTANO ual lines will be more complex.”5} His emphasis on combining linear- ity and collective improvisation foreshadows his later endeavor with the sextet. Second, he articulately spelled out his aesthetics of jazz as an art form and his antagonism toward commercialism: “Jazz. is not a form of popular entertainment; it is art for its own sake. Its popularity or unpopularity is coincidental. The man who plays to entertain is not as objectionable as the man who plays to entertain and at the same time protests that he is playing jazz.”5+ Third, Tristano considered Gillespie “the master of the new idiom.” This may reflect the general tendency of the contemporary media, which treated Gillespie as the main spokesman of the style. Tristano soon revised his view, regarding Charlie Parker as the progenitor and main force of bebop.‘ ‘These articles mark Tristano’s final foray into jazz criticism. In comparison with his 1945 article, “What’s Wrong with Chicago Jazz,” his discussion of bebop concentrates more on the music and musicians than criticism of the music industry, exhibiting his acute understand- ing of bebop as a new phenomenon. Tristano is more optimistic in his 1947 articles, assured of further progress in jazz and its acceptance. However, the tone of unswerving authority and his fierce conviction of the validity of his arguments remained the same in all his writings, along with his evocation of moral obligation on the part of the society and the need to educate the audience. Meeting Charlie Parker In 1947 Tristano met Parker and felt strong empathy with him, as Tris- tano appreciated not only his music but also his caring personality, which had a profound impact on Tristano, who formed a lifelong alle- giance to Parker. Tristano remembered how they met at the Three Deuces, where his group was playing opposite Parker’s quintet: Bird was sitting on the side listening, So he very casually walked up to the piano. . . . He told me how much he enjoyed my music and while he’s doing that, he kind of puts his arm around me, and we're walking off the stand together. So he’s doing both things. He’s telling me how much he enjoyed my music, but he’s making sure I'm not gonna break my neck, either. And he was so hip in doing it . . . if Thadn’t been around a long time, I wouldNew York, 1946-1960 not have known that’s what he was up to, which to me is com- pletely beautiful. Because, in my experience, musicians rarely show that much compassion. That's my experience.s® In September 1947 Tristano had opportunities to play with Parker on two radio shows of “musical battle” in which the “moderns” were pitted against the “moldy figs,” that is, Dixieland musicians. The septet, called Barry Ulanov’s All Star Modern Jazz Musicians, com- prised Tristano, Parker, Gillespie, John LaPorta, Bauer, Ray Brown, and Max Roach. According to Ulanov, “It was my privilege to gather the modern clan which battled the fixed personnel of Rudi Blesh’s This Is Jazz show on Larry Dorn’s Bands for Bonds program on successive Saturday afternoons.”57 It is only fitting that Ulanov selected Tristano and his coterie, Bauer and LaPorta, the latter a Tristano student, con- sidering both his enthusiasm for Tristano and Tristano’s critical view of Dixieland. Tristano, on the contrary, gave a different recount of the event, stating that Parker was the one who selected him: [T]hey put this battle of the bands together, and Bird included me. Now, I said to him, “What you really should do is use Bud [Powell].” . .. There were two things happening at the time. Bird and everybody who copied him, and what I was trying to do through my playing and through my teaching, which ’'m not saying I was anywhere nearly as great as Bird. But it wasn’t copying Bird. Right? So he thought it would be a good idea to mix the two. And some of it came out pretty good. In fact, I think on some of the takes Bird plays his ass off.5* After the two shows aired on September 13 and 20, listeners were invited to vote for their preference, and “the results were overwhelm- ingly in favor of the modernists.”5° This led to another radio show on November 8, 1947, which featured the winners, Parker, Tristano, Bauer, and LaPorta from the first session, along with Fats Navarro, Allen Eager, Buddy Rich, Tommy Potter, and Sarah Vaughan. On the first show Ulanov featured Tristano in a quartet with Bauer, Ray Brown, and Max Roach in “I Surrender Dear”; here Tristano again performed in a small setting, a trio this time, with Bauer and Potter, playing “Don’t Blame me.” Significantly, Tristano strongly identified with Parker, considering Ml4) LENNIE TRISTANO his own harmonic style more compatible with Parker’s playing than with other musicians on the show: “I was sitting at the piano, playing something. He started playing with me, and he played his ass off. He wasn’t used to the chords I played. I play sort of my own chords. Ina lot of ways, they were different. .. . [W]hatever I did, he was right on top of the chords, like we had rehearsed.” Tristano explained that Parker had “always been limited by the people he played with. . .. The right chord structure is not behind him. Most of the kids who played piano for Bird and played in his style, they always used the same chord progression.” Tristano certainly took a great pride in that Parker liked his playing, suggesting that Parker appreciated his originality: “I was never a copier. That’s not to say what I came out with was great, but I was not a copier. And I think that’s one of the things that Bird enjoyed about listening to me. . . . I really do believe, and this is just my own belief, that Bird enjoyed playing with me. Because I was not imitating him and everybody in the world was.”* Tristano further explained: “See, if you went down the Street and walked into a club and heard a ten-piece band, everybody stood up and took about 50 choruses of Bird’s licks. And it stayed that way until, say maybe the middle fifties. And it finally caught up to Bird. It really bugged the shit out of him. Because he told me so.” In fact, there was mutual respect for each other, as Parker remarked: “As for Lennie Tristano, I’d like to go on record as saying I endorse his work in every particular. They say he’s cold. They’re wrong. He has a big heart and it’s in his music. Obviously, he also has tremendous technical ability and you know, he can play anywhere with anybody. He’s a tremendous musician. I call him the great acclimatizor."% More Recordings and the Return of Fishkin During the latter part of 1947 Tristano had a few recording sessions. On September 23 he made solo piano recordings for RCA Victor, including “Ghost of a Chance,” “Spontaneous Combustion,” and “Just Judy.” When the record company later tried to issue some of these in the early r950s, Tristano withheld his approval. Joe Muranyi, who “used to work at RCA in the early 1950s,” told Tristano about the company’s plan to issue his recordings: “But he said, ‘What? They what? No.’ And he did take a stance, because two weeks later anotherNew York, 1946-1950 43 paper came around and said the issue had been cancelled due to tech- nical problems. And then it was issued without the two Lennie sides. . .. [H]e said they hadn’t cleared with him, or he didn’t want them to issue it.”°+ One of the recordings, “Ghost of a Chance,” was released in 1952 on Modern Jazz Piano, a compilation record of various jazz pianists (Victor LPT31). While Ulanov singled out Tristano as the best, Ralph Burns, who recognized Tristano upon hearing the recording in a blindfold test, stated that it sounded “like Lennie Tris- tano on a bad day, when he didn’t have too many ideas.”*% However, Burns acknowledged Tristano’s originality: “[IJt’s original, though there are a lot of things I don’t agree with—sometimes he keeps going on the same chord or the same idea, in a whole-tone thing; but I like it, because it’s something to make you pick up your ears and listen. It’s a change from listening to things that you’ve heard so many people do every day.” A month later, on October 23, 1947, Tristano’s trio with Bauer on guitar and John Levy on bass recorded “On a Planet,” “Air Pocket,” “Celestia,” and two takes of “Supersonic” for Majestic. Singer Mil- dred Bailey was to record with the group, but only trio recordings were made, issued later in 1954 on Savoy (XP 8084). Hentoff wrote a warm review, defending Tristano from accusations of “cerebration” and dubbing the record “a delightfully meditative collection”: “All four extensions of standards are quite absorbing, not only as harbin- gers of later Tristano but as swinging excursions into the farther side of the probable. The rapport between Bauer and Tristano leads to close relistening. . . . It should also be added, in view of the loose talk about cerebration from non-cerebrators, that all this is relaxed and relaxing.” Since Fishkin’s departure, Tristano had hired a series of bassists, but considered Fishkin his ideal bass player. He asked Fishkin to come back to New York in two letters, both dictated to Judy Tristano. At the time of the first letter, dated November r+, 1946, Tristano was not in a good position to convince Fishkin, since he had been out of work after the quartet with Chubby Jackson broke up. His second letter, from November 15, 1947, Was more coaxing; in it Tristano assured Fishkin that he was the only one that fit his group. Tristano also stated he was now confident and optimistic about his success, referring to the improving prospect of job opportunities and his ascendancy in the poll results. Interestingly, Tristano proudly mentioned that he flatly turned44 LENNIE TRISTANO down the request of Irving Alexander, owner of the Three Deuces, for his trio to perform at the club again; he thought Fishkin would find this amusing, for some reason. This letter actually prompted Fishkin to drive back to New York later that November.°* Fishkin recalled that the first engagement of the original trio took place at the Bohemia, where the tap dancer Steve Condos sat in.®? A review in Down Beat noted that the group “closed five days later after spotty business,” attributing the lack of success to poor publicity and “the split crowd drawn”: “The established trade at the spot was utterly bewildered by Tristano, while the musicians attracted by his rep were intensely annoyed by the slightly square antics of the audi- ence. The trio . . . is dickering with several clubs for a January open- ing.”7° The reunited trio recorded for Disc on December 31, 1947,” including some quartet tracks with John LaPorta on clarinet, who had misgivings about the session”? One of the trio recordings, “The Blues,” was released on Folkways in 1953 on an anthology album fea- turing various jazz pianists.” It also became part of a 1954 album intended to introduce different jazz styles, with Langston Hughes's narration; it presented Tristano’s group as one of the postwar small combos, which played “a cool kind of jazz termed modern or progres sive jazz,” influenced “most directly by bop.”74 The quartet tracks, “Speculation” and “Through These Portals,” were issued earlier, in 1948 (Disc 5500). A favorable review in Metronome pointed out “a del- icate contrapuntal exchange” among the members on the latter, prais- ing the recordings as “the most remarkable sounds in the jazz world.”75 The Tristano Residence When the Tristanos moved to New York City in 1946, they lived in the St. James Hotel for a year before moving to an apartment at 313 East Seventy-third Street. Judy Tristano described the apartment as “bed- buggy, cockroachy place, full of mice”: “[Y]ou could count like eleven of them at a time, running around in this crummy little place. Ah, housing in New York was very difficult to find. . . . The bathtub was in the kitchen, with a wooden cover over, and the holes in the walls ... in one tiny little room. So we had that room and we slept in kind of an alcove of the kitchen. . . . So the kitchen was the largest andNew York, 1946-1950 45 brightest room.” While there, they made acquaintance with Bud Free- man and Ulanov, as she further reminisced: “Bud Freeman was one of his first students at that place. He and Lennie would have a great old time talking, I think we met Barry Ulanov at that point. He used to come there. He and Lennie were pretty tight for a while. Leonard Feather, Lennie never got tight with.” She also recalled, “Fifty-second Street was in full swing” at that time, and they would “go and hear Dizzy and Bird, Allen Eager, Zoot Sims, Billie Holiday.” After the apartment, they moved to a flat in a fourplex in Flushing, Long Island. She described the hardship of finding a larger place to live while Tris- tano continued working on his music: “I would take Lennie to the Lighthouse for the Blind, where he could practice on a piano, and I would go out and walk on the streets, answering ads in newspapers to try to find us a place to live. Oh, it was rough.” She remembered that the flat, with seven rooms, was very comfortable: “[It] was quite large and nice. And that’s where we bought a Baldwin baby grand, a lovely piano, and that was in our living room and Lennie taught there. . . . My mother paid for the Baldwin, a belated wedding gift for $1,50: It was in Flushing that the Tristanos socialized with the Shearings. Judy Tristano recalled that Tristano and Shearing had a close friend- ship and shared funny stories about their blindness, especially the way people treated blind people, but Shearing “had to compromise, com- mercialize, and he and Lennie just drifted apart.” There was a period when the Tristanos lived temporarily with the Fishkins at their Levittown house on Long Island, during which time Fishkin observed many interesting aspects of Tristano’s personality, especially concerning blindness.7* For example, Tristano asked Fishkin to walk him through the house and show him where every object was, and then not to move anything. Fishkin also remarked on Tristano’s highly sensitive hearing and his ability to solve difficult mathematic problems in his head, as well as the fact that he had mem- orized much music. In addition, Fishkin noted Tristano’s fascination with psychotherapy, especially writings by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud. 1948 The year 1948 marked the beginning of a crucial period in Tristano’s career in terms of public recognition. He received continuing support46 LENNIE TRISTANO from Metronome, especially through Ulanov’s enthusiastic reviews and editorials. Ulanov, who shared with Tristano a belief in the progress of jazz as art music, considered his music the most important event in the recent development of jazz. Most notably, Metronome nominated Tristano as the “Musician of the Year” in January 1948.77 The editors, George Simon and Ulanov, noted, “1947 will go down in jazz history as the year Lennie Tristano’s remarkable formulations were released on records,” and selected all Keynote recordings except “Blue Boy” among the best albums of the year.7* In the magazine’s all- star poll Tristano placed second as pianist and thirteenth as arranger.” However, reports of his public appearances dwindled throughout the year.*° It may have been due to Tristano’s antagonism toward club owners, which, Fishkin noted, provoked Tristano to alienate himself from the night club scene.** If Tristano was inactive as performer, he was consistently active in teaching. For example, it was reported in 1947 that he was spending most of his time teaching," and in 1948 that he was planning a recital of his students.*5 A significant development in 1948 was the expansion of Tristano’s group to a quintet by adding an alto saxophonist, Lee Konitz, and a drummer; it eventually grew to a sextet in 1949. Konitz, who had stud- ied with Tristano in Chicago, moved to New York via his work with the Claude Thornhill band: “I left Chicago with that band with the intentions of getting to New York where Tristano was in °47. And it took me ten months to get to New York. I could have gotten there faster on a covered wagon.”*4 Upon arriving in New York in the sum- mer of 1948, Konitz not only took up his study with Tristano again, but also began rehearsing with him as a member of the quintet.’5 One of the first engagements of the newly formed quintet occurred late in 1948 at the Royal Roost with Mel Zelnick on drums.** The change in the makeup of the ensemble and the work entailed in forging its style may explain the infrequency of Tristano’s public appearances during 1948. 1949: Quintet and Sextet In 1949 Metronome continued to promote Tristano, citing him as a fixture of the New York jazz scene and as one of the “Influences of the Year” along with Lester Young and Sarah Vaughan.” On the Metronome All Star Poll he again ranked second among pianists toNew York, 1946-1950 47 Nat Cole, and became a member of the Metronome All Star Band.'* On January 3, 1949, the band recorded two pieces for RCA Victor, Pete Rugolo’s “Overtime” and Tristano’s “Victory Ball,” the latter scored for a small ensemble comprising Gillespie, Winding, DeFranco, Parker, Ventura, Bauer, Safranski, and Manne.‘? Metronome reported that Tristano, Bauer, and Parker rehearsed separately “to work out their intricate passage in Victory Ball.”°° On January 11, 1949, Tristano’s quintet with Shelly Manne on drums recorded for New Jazz; it was the first session for the group and for the label that later became Prestige. According to Konitz, the ses- sion was originally for trumpeter Tony Fruscella: “Bob Weinstock suggested that Tony and I get together. . .. Tony didn’t want to do it, so Bob asked me if I would. I asked Lennie to take the date. I just wanted to do it as a sideman.”9* The addition of a saxophone and a full rhythm section created a marked departure from the trio in timbre and texture. They also had their own repertoire of tunes, fixed lines constructed on the harmonic progressions of standards. Although a common practice in jazz, the intricate nature of the melodic writing of the Tristano group is unprecedented. For example, “Subconscious-Lee,” a Konitz line based on “What Is This Thing Called Love?” is distinguished by its sophisti- cated character and chromaticism. Tristano later explained that the written line “sets the scene in a definite way; it tells what’s going to come.”®* Many such lines by his students were actually assignments for their lessons, as Tristano encouraged them to write solos on the harmonies of standard tunes. When “Subconscious-Lee” and “Judy,” the latter written by Tris- tano over the harmonies of “Don’t Blame Me,” were issued a few months later, several favorable reviews appeared, most of which noted their contrapuntal nature. Metronome pointed out “the Tristano group’s polyphonic penchant,” and Tom Herrick of Down Beat mentioned “the fabulous contrapuntal interweavings” between Tris- tano and Bauer. Edgar Jackson, who praised the record as among “the finest examples of small combo jazz in the modern manner,” made a similar observation by singling out the “unusually ingenious exploitation of the art of contrapuntality.”°’ Contrapuntal interplay was indeed the most essential element that Tristano’s group retained from the trio years. Four of the quintet recordings were issued in 1950 on an LP, along with later recordings by Konitz (New Jazz NJLP tor). Levin acknowl-48. LENNIE TRISTANO edged Tristano’s originality, while suggesting that the music was cere- bral, self-conscious, and “too cool”; this is one of the first instances of the term specifically applied to Tristano’s music.°® Oscar Peterson, on hearing “Tautology” in a blindfold test, recognized Tristano and Konitz and described them as his favorites, but made a clear distinc- tion between musical and commercial values, indicating that the music was not commercially viable: “Musically it’s a fine record. Commer- cially I don’t think it holds much value; the public isn’t up to that stan- dard in music.”97 Tristano’s group soon became a sextet with the addition of another student, the tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh (1927-1987). Born in Los Angeles, Marsh first heard about Tristano from the trum- pet student Don Ferrara, and his first study with Tristano took place in 1947 for about nine months while he was in the army, stationed in New Jersey: “By this time, I had heard Charlie Parker and Lester Young, and been completely turned around. I spent every spare minute in New York, listening to Parker and studying with Lennie Tristano.”® After a short return to Los Angeles, Marsh went back to New York in October 1948 at the end of “a three-month cross try road trip with Buddy Rich’s first big band,” and resumed his study with Tristano.” He was to remain one of Tristano’s most faithful stu- dents."°° Another member of the sextet was a drum student, Harold Granowsky, who participated in one of the Capitol sessions and left the group shortly afterward. According to Marsh, the sextet members worked hard: “We worked our butts off. Lennie was strong on com- petence in individuals and groups. Discipline. So a lot of work went into those Capitol dates. About four months . . . Billy Bauer, Arnold Fishkin and I.”*° Curiously Marsh left out Konitz, a vital part of the ensemble, considering that the two saxophonists often performed together with immaculate accuracy and rapport, while Bauer and Fishkin, whom he mentioned, did not remember rehearsing much." The first reported engagement for the sextet was at the Clique in New York City in January 1949, where they reappeared later in March." coun- Capitol Recordings On March 4, March 14, and May 16, 1949, Tristano’s group recorded for Capitol, with Granowsky on the drums for the first session andNew York, 1946-1950 49 Denzil Best for the last. These recordings are historically significant, and exerted a long-lasting impact on listeners. They belong to two cat- egories. First, along the same line as the New Jazz recordings, Tris- tano’s sextet recorded original tunes based on preexisting harmonic progressions, such as “Wow” (Tristano), “Crosscurrent” (Tristano), “Marionette” (Bauer), and “Sax of a Kind” (Konitz and Marsh). Sec- ond, “Intuition” and “Digression” are the first recorded examples of free jazz performed by an ensemble, comprising the members of the sextet without the drummer.*% In addition, Tristano recorded Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays” with his original trio members during the second session, harking back to the earlier trio recordings. “Wow” and “Crosscurrent,” recorded on March 4, were the first to be released in 1949 (Capitol 57-60003). A favorable review in Metronome selected them as the best small-group recordings, noting the use of polyrhythm.*°5 According to Ralph Sharon, a British jazz pianist and arranger, the record marked a drastic departure from Tris- tano’s earlier trio recordings. As for the latter, for example, “I Can’t Get Started,” he expressed amazement that “a pianist could play with so little feeling and be apparently unaware of what the guitarist was playing,” and wondered “how any pianist could be so completely uninfluenced by what was going on around him musically in the States.”*° In contrast, Tristano’s recordings with the sextet and with the Metronome All Stars impressed Sharon greatly, who considered Tristano “a young man who is going to make his mark on modern jazz”: “Tristano has a completely original conception of modern music. . .. Here is a pianist who makes a much fuller use of the piano key-board than most of the other bop men. . . . I don’t class Tristano as a true bop pianist. His style is vastly different . . . in that he extends his melodic line much further.” Then Sharon made an interesting observation, reflecting on the fact that Tristano often prioritized lin- earity and that his concept of time differed from the conventional jazz idiom: “Sometimes, in fact, he extends it to the detriment of the ‘beat, which is not really a good idea, because if music doesn’t swing, then ... it ceases to be jazz. But when he isn’t too unconventional, Lennie has ‘beat’ enough.” Sharon also stated, “He is a brilliant technician of the Tatum school. Listening to his almost endless double tempo phrases, I get the impression that this is music of the brain rather than of the heart. But there is a certain tension about his playing which also gives an impression of terrific concentration.” Sharon concluded:AQ) LENNIE TRISTANO “[Hlis music has already made a deep impression on progressive musi- cians, for, like Miles Davis, he can be counted as an intellectual of the jazz world.” The second Capitol record contained “Sax of a Kind” and “Mar- ionette” from the second session, which earned enthusiastic reviews from both Metronome and Down Beat (Capitol 57-60013).*7 Greatly impressed, Levin stated, “Many of the objections to Tristano’s work T’ve had on previous records go right out the window on this record,” and that “Marionette,” in particular, was played with “ease and relax- ation” and “a quality of warmth that it has heretofore lacked on records.”" Although Levin had often emphasized the lack of emo- tional warmth on Tristano’s earlier records, citing “the technical celer- ity or cerebration” and the lack of “feeling of communicative enthusi- asm,” he regarded the Capitol recordings highly, selecting “Marionette” and “Subconscious-Lee” among his best picks of 1949.79 “Intuition” and “Digression” “Intuition” and “Digression,” the first recordings of free group impro- visations, were recorded on May 16, 1949. They represent the most pioneering and innovative approach of the group as fascinating mani- festations of contrapuntal interaction. It was in a way a fulfillment of Tristano’s 1947 statement about “the next step after bebop” being “collective improvisation on a much higher plane.”"™ Although the trio already displayed considerable interplay between Tristano and Bauer, these free improvisations demonstrate a further development in dispensing with any preexistent material as the basis. Tristano’s inter- est in free improvisation can be actually traced back to his childhood experience: “When I was seven we got a phonograph. I would listen to the old jazz records and then just sit at the piano and play anything— no particular tune. You might say that this was the start of those Capi- tol sides ... which were intuitive music—no tunes, no chord progres- sions, no time. This you might call the start of free form. I wouldn’t like to be definite on the subject.” It was on the last day of the Capitol sessions that Tristano decided to record free improvisations. In the absence of a prescribed harmonic or formal framework, the contrapuntal interaction between the musi-New York, 1946-19505] cians functions as the structural principle. According to Marsh, Tris- tano told them that they “were going to improvise strictly from what we heard one another doing” and, prior to recording, discussed the order of, and durations of playing between, entrances: “The only thing that was set was the order of entrances, with Lennie starting off—set- ting the tempo and the mood—that and the fact that we'd play for three minutes, because we were making 78s. So we would give cach other approximately 15 or 20 seconds and then come in.”' Tristano reminisced about the circumstance, mentioning that “some significant things happened” during the session: “After we did the conventional part of the date, we did the two free sides. . . . As soon as we began playing the engineer threw up his hands and left his machine. The A & R man and the management thought I was such an idiot that they refused to pay me for the sides and to release them.”**4 He then explained, “Free form means playing without a fixed chord progres- sion; without a time signature; without a specified tempo. I had been working with my men in this context for several years so that the music which resulted was not haphazard or hit and miss.” Konitz confirms that members of the group, including Tristano, Marsh, Bauer, and himself, played free improvisations prior to the recording; he was not sure whether Fishkin was present during rehearsals. Konitz recalled: “[W]e had had some experience in playing intuitively. At that date, Barry Ulanov was in the studio, functioning in some capacity . . . and Pete Rugolo [composer and Capitol pro- ducer] was in the booth. After we had played a couple of tunes, Lennie said, ‘Just let the tapes roll for three minutes,’ and we played this intu- itive thing.”"*5 Konitz then noted that they recorded four free impro- visations: “Barry was to signal one of us at the end of two minutes approximately. We did four takes, and in each one we stopped at approximately about three minutes. I don’t know what it means, except we did do that kind of playing, and it was a great feeling. We did it once at a concert in Boston, and it was very exciting.” Marsh also noted that selected members of the group had experimented with the procedure before the recording session: “This was normal for us. We had practiced it some and done it in clubs, and this was our second date together for Capitol, so we were ready. When I listen to those sides now, I'm amazed at how far ahead Lennie was, at what great music he was playing. And it’s free improvising—free, right straight off the top of his head.”"* According to Bauer, “Lennie would say52 LENNIE TRISTANO ‘You start it! Play anything you want to play.’ No key, no tempo, no nothing! Whoever felt like comin’ in or droppin’ out; spontaneous, not premeditated sounds; no arrangement.” "7 Ulanov called the recordings “the most audacious experiment yet attempted in jazz,” but reported that Capitol erased two of the four sides: “Capitol was bewildered by and uncertain about what it heard. ‘Asa result, two of the sides were erased from the recording tape, and the remaining two, those chosen as the best of the four, were put aside, with their date indefinitely postponed.” #8 Capitol finally issued “Intu- ition” in late 1950, then “Digression” in 1954. Tristano credited Sym- phony Sid for their release: “Several months after that Capitol date, Symphony Sid, who was a prominent disc jockey during that period, managed to grab a copy of those two free form sides. He played them three or four times a week on his nightly show over a period of several years. Through that, Capitol records received enough requests for those two sides to warrant releasing them. And, of course, they did pay me for them.” Tristano then referred to the historical significance of the recordings: “In view of the fact that 15 years later a main part of the jazz scene turned into free form, I think this incident is very significant. These two sides were completely spontaneously improvised. A lot of people who heard them thought they were com- positions. To my knowledge Miles Davis is the only noted musician who acknowledged in print the real nature of the music on those sides.”"2° Ulanov was also instrumental in informing the audience of Tris- tano’s free improvisations before their release. In September 1949, he published an eloquent praise: “[T]hese adventures in jazz intuition may very well be the high point of all of jazz until now, possibly the breaking point which will send jazz far away from its too well tested paths and far along the speculative road which every art form has had to follow to achieve greatness.”! Again affirming his belief in the progress in jazz, Ulanov stated, “Intuition, both the record and the procedure which it names, is the inevitable development of Lennie Tristano’s last three or four years of laboratory, living-room and lounging-pajama experiment. . . . It marks a strong parallel to the development of the twelve-tone structure in classical music in the twentieth century, a parallel but not an imitation.” Then he con- cluded: “Here jazz comes of age. Lennie labored at his music under many difficulties. ... Whether or not Capitol has the courage and theNew York, 1946-1960 enlightenment to issue these brilliant sides, Lennie Tristano has made the first break. This is the way jazz must go, not necessarily with these sounds, but certainly with these means.” When Capitol issued “Intuition” along with “Yesterdays” in 1950 (Capitol 7-1224), Ulanov, ecstatic, wrote that “the contrapuntal form which underlies the great years most clearly identified by and with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach has been revivified.”* A review in Metronome by Hodgkins, Simon, and Ulanov echoed that sentiment: “In reaction to both sides, Barry’s joy knows only alphabetical bounds. . . . To Barry, it [“Intuition”] is the peak of modern jazz, in which the solos of Lennie, Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh and Billy Bauer match their contrapuntal setting in subtlety of form and breadth of musical resource used intuitively.” Levin’s review, on the other hand, did not fully acknowledge the significance of “Intuition,” rather pointing out the “cool” aspect: “Intuition is a series of parallel run- ning lines, well integrated. Once again, this is cool, reflective, limpidly- expressed jazz, backed by some extraordinary musicianship on the part of Tristano.” "+ “Digression” was not released until 1954 on a 45-rpm record con- taining three other recordings from the Capitol sessions, “Crosscur- rent,” “Intuition,” and “Sax of a Kind” (Capitol EP EAP 1-491). Nat Hentoff, an important jazz critic at the time, wrote an enthusiastic review: “The newly issued side, Digression, is a fascinating study in presumably ad lib counterpoint along the principle of Intuition. . . . The more involved the web becomes, the more emotionally as well as cerebrally rewarding the performance grows. These sides point up the gap in present-day jazz recording due to the prolonged absence of Tristano.”"5 A supporter of Tristano, Hentoff began to write prolifically for Down Beat in the early 1950s. Like Tristano and Ulanov he believed in the progress of jazz and recognized Tristano’s contribution to it. Charlie Parker’s reaction to Tristano’s free playing was docu- mented in a 1953 interview, in response to the interviewer’s difficulty in understanding the “collective improvisation with no theme, no chorus . . . no chord changes”: “[I]f you listen close enough, you can find the melody traveling along with . . . any series of chord structures. [RJather than to make the melody predominant . . . in the style of music that Lennie and them present, it’s more or less heard or felt.”*° Aaron Copland was deeply impressed by Tristano’s group impro- i5d LENNIE TRISTANO visations, proudly considering them a uniquely American develop- ment: “When American musicians improvise thus freely . . . the Euro- pean musician is the first to agree that something has been developed here that has no duplication abroad.”"7 Later, however, he com- mented on Tristano’s music as compositions, praising Tristano’s “sense of harmonic freedom and his ability to write a piece on one expressive thing without being dull”; he also acknowledged that Tris tano “knows how to unify a piece. He sticks to the point. .. . It seems like real composition to me, not happenstance.” #° Tristano’s group performed free improvisations at club engage- ments. According to Bauer, they played free jazz at Birdland almost every night, pieces that “ran about ten minutes,” sometimes to unap- preciative patrons"? Konitz described it as a difficult experience: “It was difficult for us to do it in a club, as it was even to just play tunes, so that we didn’t play together any more for quite a few years. We really goofed. We had a lot of things going.”"° Instead, Konitz recalled, Tristano incorporated free playing into the process of impro- vising on standards: “At some point Tristano didn’t want to do that any more. What he wanted to do was . . . get into the groove of the tune as far as possible and open up at any point in the tune. So the tune could just go free at any point for a spell and then back into the tune. That was also very interesting and somehow, more logical.” Konitz further explained: “At some point, maybe during the counter- point playing, we just have a feeling of leaving the tune and just impro- vising freely . . . for some period of time and then someone would bring it back. Usually Lennie, I think, would state the melody, frag- ment, or something. ... Whoever had to lead, we'd all go in that direc- tion. . . . until another voice sticks out and everybody follows that.” Marsh, recounting that the group regularly performed free for two years, suggested, “[T]he first times were perhaps the best. They were so spontaneous; they were unbelievable, man, just three lines going.” He felt that it became “more difficult,” possibly implying that the improvisations became predictable, or lacked inspiration: “Lennie, Lee and I experimented with playing free music and I think our first attempts were the most successful. In order to play that way we felt that the musicianship had to be OK and the results had to be valid music. But we stopped playing free music, the more we played, the more difficult it seemed to be—and today we don’t take chances like that when we play.”* In fact, he stated, “by the time we did the album we were beginning to get shaky with it.”533New York, 1946-1950 55 It is worth noting another facet of free improvisation: stimulation through the use of marijuana, which, Konitz said, put the musicians “in that kind of receptivity to try this particular way of playing together”: “I must say in all honesty... we used to get stoned fre- quently at the rehearsals and do the things that we prepared to do, and this one time .. . Lennie suggested . . . to just try to play. . . . Immedi- ately it was meaningful to everybody, just the act of doing it, and then we did it a few times and, of course, each time it was another revela- tion.” Noting that they “made the record without any knowledge that he was going to do that,” Konitz also mentioned that “I attribute some of what we did to that influence, because you’re really into a very impressionistic kind of world in that condition, and also very stimu- lating, to say the least”: “It was always a trip, but getting stoned had something to do with that area of functioning, I think. . . . It can relax you and somehow bypass all of your immediate neuroses and concerns and you get right to the point, so to speak. . . . [I]t felt like it opened the door for me, and things were more acute.” However, he indicated that the impact of playing was so strong that it caused anxiety: “The effect was profound, sometimes quite shocking to me, the reality of this music coming together so strongly. It was scary to me. And that’s another reason why we had to stop. . . . It was too serious. .. . [never knew what condition everybody else was in, but within that context that usually we were in, it was marijuana, as far as I was involved.” It is difficult to assess how directly Tristano’s free improvisations influenced developments in free jazz in the 1960s. One thing that is clear, at least, is that Tristano was not content with the general notion that free jazz was a new phenomenon of the 1960s; he felt overlooked. In particular, he had misgivings about the fact that “a lot of people thought free form began with Ornette Coleman,” and noted that his accomplishment was appreciated more in Japan and Europe than in America." Tristano’s view on 1960s free jazz is discussed in chapter 3. Reception of the Capitol Recordings Jazz critic Leonard Feather, who considered Tristano to be “20 years ahead of the beboppers,”*55 was intrigued by the Capitol recordings, and frequently sought musicians’ reactions to them in his blindfold tests. Interestingly, those who could not identify the musicians catego- rized the music as bebop, as with Lionel Hampton on “Wow” and Bil-AG LENNIE TRISTANO lie Holiday on “Sax of a Kind.” Louis Armstrong was particularly puzzled upon hearing “Marionette”: “This sounds like they took a bunch of solos, put them together and made a tune out of it. . . . It’s close to the bop category. .. . They made a lot of runs. It’s on papers I know they rehearsed it long enough.”"37 Marian McPartland, on the other hand, recognized Tristano and praised the Capitol recordings as “wonderfully played,” and Ralph Burns was fond of “Wow,” includ- ing it as the third among five records he chose for Christmas gift items."58 An important element in the criticism of Tristano’s music was that it was considered too advanced even for jazz musicians. Tadd Dameron complained: “Miles is the farthest advanced musician of his day, and Boplicity is one of the best small-group sounds I’ve heard. Tristano is so far advanced that it’s hard to get with it and understand what he’s playing.” Oscar Peterson concurred with Dameron, after listening to “Intuition” and “Yesterdays”: “They’re too weird for me. I don’t know what he’s saying, but I wish I did. That’s too advanced for me.”*4° Al Haig, one of the most representative bebop pianists, made a similar remark: “I guess I’m kind of reactionary. I like what Tve been used to hearing. I can’t always understand what the Tristano group is doing.”"#" The trio recording of “Yesterdays,” in particular, invoked nega- tive responses from pianists ranging from Earl Hines and Joe Bushkin to Dave Brubeck. Hines stated: “I’ve got two sides on that. As to the general public . .. it’s too far-fetched. Speaking from the public's view- point, I don’t like the record. As a musician, I think he’s got some wonderful ideas. . . . It’s not actually from the soul, but more from the mechanical side of it. It’s trying to knock the musicians out.”'# Bushkin, while acknowledging “the harmonic development and nice playing,” commented on the impressionistic harmony and the absence of conventional features of jazz: “I am as bewildered as the pianist who plays this. . . . This is getting away from the whole premise of popular music. . . . If this sort of thing keeps up, Debussy is going to win the annual jazz polls!”'+3 Brubeck, on the other hand, criticized the accidental nature of contrapuntal interplay: “Tristano could never have played that bad, could he?. . . . You've got to be more careful than that with counterpoint. You can’t have clashes that go against the grain of hundreds of years of what’s right and what’s wrong.” "#4 Another element of criticism was that Tristano’s music wasNew York, 1946-1950 57 “cold,” a notion closely related to the view that it lacked comprehen- sibility and accessibility. Nat Cole flatly declared that “Tristano is cold” at a 1949 panel discussion with Woody Herman, Mel Tormé, and June Christy."45 Tormé considered coldness a matter of the musi- cians’ disregard for the public, making a distinction between artistic merit and public acceptance, the latter, of course, an essential element of commercial success." Cole and Herman largely agreed, advocating showmanship and making concessions, respectively. The discussion concerned a dilemma for many musicians, the dichotomy between musical and commercial values; the panel expressed a position dia- metrically opposed to Tristano’s, a staunch believer in the aesthetics of art for art’s sake. Teddy Wilson showed a similar viewpoint to the panel's, pointing out what he saw as a problem in Tristano’s case, that is, the need to appeal to “the mass of listeners”: “I admire his musicianship; but for me, he lacks an emotional impact. It is true, as Dizzy Gillespie said, that Tristano hasn’t the kind of jazz beat one could dance to, but I think he’s abstracted that deliberately. . . . I don’t believe jazz is ready yet to cut itself off from the mass of listeners. As of now only musi- cians can understand Tristano.”"47 Stan Kenton, who created a controversy by promoting his brand of “progressive” jazz, also openly criticized Tristano: “He’s a good musician, but very cold and utterly lacking in emotional communica- tion.”"48 Kenton also stated, “In modern and progressive jazz and bebop there is such an urge today for new harmonic sounds . . . that the music has suffered greatly from the lack of rhythmic assertion and the lack of real emotional character. . . . That’s what’s wrong both in the jazz world and in the contemporary world of the classics.”"4? In particular, he argued that Tristano failed to communicate with the public: “You can criticize Tristano for the same thing for which you can criticize Schénberg. Music is created because of the people and for the people. And there’s too much of an attitude today that the masses are peasants, and there’s too much of a feeling of wanting to shut yourself away in an ivory tower, and create, because you were born a hundred years too far ahead.” Kenton, however, had made a contra- dictory statement earlier: “Public likes and dislikes have nothing to do with the progress of modern music.”#8° The lack of appreciation was mutual, as Tristano criticized Kenton’s music: “Stan’s writers gener- ally don’t write things that swing—and by that I don’t mean they have5g. LENNIE TRISTANO to be in 4/4. There’s just no inherent pulsation. Stan is supposed to be a very sincere person, but I wonder if he’s really with the music, enjoys it himself. Personally, even when I enjoy his things I still don’t think they're jazz.”*5* Tristano also charged Kenton with placing too much emphasis on writing, neglecting improvising: “Primarily, Kenton’s perspective is that of a composer throughout, and my feeling is that all the great jazz will come from improvising, not writing.” Kenton, how- ever, shared Tristano’s view in pointing out the forces of music busi- ness as a serious obstacle in the development of jazz as an art form, mentioning “men who make money from music. The bookers, the promoters, the dance hall owners who try to make everything conform to rule and rote, and try to keep musicians from making jazz progress as an art.”*5* It should be noted that Tristano’s personality was partly a factor in the negative reception of his music. In his writings and interviews he expressed strong convictions, exhibiting a character that was forthright and even dogmatic, which may have evoked antagonism from other musicians. Becker offered a sociological explanation: “Now I’m just guessing, a sociologist guessing. If Lennie was right, a lot of people were wrong. If that was the way it was going, then what a lot of people knew how to do was going to be worthless. And they resented it... . Whenever there is some major innovation, what it does essentially is devalue the skills that are already around. Lennie’s harmonic ideas were way ahead of what people were doing. Still are.” Tristano was also known for his outspoken criticism of many musi- cians, which Chubby Jackson considered tactless: “I think he owns as little tact as any human I’ve ever met in my life. . . . He wouldn’t bother to. . . have to worry that he was upsetting somebody or insult- ing them or making them feel inadequate.”*5> Jackson illustrated his point with a radio show where Feather asked Jackson, Herman, Ellington, and Tristano to comment on records: “The dynamite came from Lennie, because in almost nine out of ten records that were played, Lennie would in essence say that they all stunk, that that was the lowest, that they’re not doing this right, they’re not doing that right, and this is what they should have been doing. . . . So the whole thing ended up like a total critical viewpoint just coming from Lennie.” This factor of his personality, in combination with the close circle of students evoking suspicions of cultism, played a significant role inNew York, 1946-1950 59 the reception of Tristano’s music. Despite criticism, the sextet record- ings marked an important accomplishment for the Tristano group and as such elicited considerable interest, negative and positive, among musicians and critics. Birdland and Other Engagements When Birdland, the jazz club named in honor of Charlie Parker, was scheduled to open on September 8, 1949, it was to feature several musi- cians, including the Tristano sextet, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Stan Getz, and Harry Belafonte, and the owner Monte Kay’s policy was to “encompass only ‘cool’ jazz; no blues artists, no swing, nothing but the relaxed music typified by Charlie Parker.”*+ However, complica- tions in attaining a liquor license delayed the opening, and Kay instead presented the Tristano sextet, Powell, and Belafonte at the Orchid Room.*s In a favorable review, John Wilson stated that the Tristano sextet was “greatly improved,” and even though “[mJany of their experimental pieces” were “so far out in left field they fall harshly on the ears of the average listener,” they were “offset by some very pol- ished and provocative numbers with a lovely lyric quality.”*5 He also commented that the group had “stuck doggedly together despite lack of work.” Birdland finally opened on December 15, 1949, with “A Journey through Jazz,” a show intended to illustrate different styles in jazz his- tory by “presenting Maxie Kaminsky, Lips Page, Lester Young, Char- lie Parker, Harry Belafonte, Stan Getz and Lennie Tristano, in that order.”#57 The club now adopted a broader policy “to try a little of everything in an effort to lure as many patrons of diverse tastes as pos sible.” Significantly, the historical overview ended with Tristano, representing the most modern stage. Tristano recalled, “That was a wonderful show”: “For the first few nights I was very happy. Before we opened I was afraid that some of the Dixie fans might boo Parker or the boppers might put down Max, but everybody was very happy. Nobody on the stand or in the audience put anybody down and every- body seemed glad to get together. I had some very good talks with Max and with George Wettling during those nights.”'5° Tristano indeed appreciated the opening show, as Wilson reported: “The ideal way to present jazz to the public, according to Lennie, is to follow theGQ. LENNIE TRISTANO format of the opening show at Birdland last winter. That show exhib- ited the major elements of jazz and included Max Kaminsky’s Dixie group, blues shouting a la Hot Lips Page, Lester Young’s combo as a bow to the swing era, Charlie Parker’s bop outfit and Lennie and his tristanos.”*6° Tristano’s sextet, composed of Konitz, Marsh, Bauer, Joe Shul- man, replacing Fishkin on bass, and Jeff Morton on drums, performed at Birdland for five weeks." In a review of the sextet’s performance, Wilson commented that it “pulled off the greatest surprise of the evening,” considering that it had “not been particularly successful audience-wise,” because their music had “been too far gone to hit the average listener’s ear with any appreciative comprehension.” He attributed the success to Morton, a Tristano student, in making “a vast difference in the receptability of the sounds they put out.”*® During the extended stay at Birdland, according to Bauer, the group performed in a relaxed atmosphere, sometimes switching instruments or band members: “At Birdland we used to switch instru- . Lennie played the saxophone good. Sometimes played the . [W]e also mixed the bands. Charlie [Parker] would come up and play with us or sometimes it was none of the band you were with.” It is noteworthy that Tristano’s group went beyond the bound- aries of conventional jazz performances, playing not only free impro- visations but also Bach’s contrapuntal pieces. Ronnie Ball, Tristano’s piano student, sketched a night at Birdland, sharply contrasting the nervous and indifferent “boppers” with the attentive and serious Tris- tano group: “‘Bird’ was playing, and though he himself was in pretty good form, some of the other guys were playing loud, frantic stuff. ... Amid the noise of the crowd, the Parker boys finished and left the stand, and Lennie sent Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz up there.”™+ Interestingly, Ball made a psychological explanation: “[E]veryone was chattering louder than before. Then, through the confusion, came the mellow strains of one of Bach’s two-part inventions—melodic, precise. And in a few minutes the crowd was hushed. ... Then Lennie went on with the rest of the boys and with a definite psychological advantage over the stilled crowd.” Then Ball described the free improvisation, “in which the boys start with no set chord formation; no key-signa- ture—and use just their own imagination and creativeness. Either Lee or Warne will start off on his own, play a few bars; then the others joined in. It’s a kind of musical telepathy. And right through the ses-New York, 1946-1950] sion, while not playing, the musicians sit listening intently to every- thing their colleagues play. The whole time they want to learn.” Tristano remarked later on playing Bach with jazz feeling: “Another thing we used to do in those days, 1949, Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz and Billy Bauer used to play Bach fugues. And it sounded beautiful; with a good strong jazz feeling.”*6 With Tristano’s back- ground in classical music, Bach was probably the main source of inspi- ration for his interest in linearity and counterpoint. In the fall and winter of 1949 the Tristano sextet made a few other appearances. On October 9, 1949, it performed at a concert in Boston, which also featured Mary Lou Williams’s trio. Ulanov, functioning at the concert as a commentator along with Hentoff, praised Tristano’s group, whose performance closed with free improvisation, generically titled “Intuition.” In November the sextet toured in the Midwest, traveling to Chicago for a two-week engagement at the Club Silhou- ette with Shulman, again replacing Fishkin, and Mickey Simonetta, a Chicago drummer. Becker went to hear the group led by his former teacher, and recalled that the performance of Bach’s inventions left an indelible memory on him: “[T]he thing I remember . . . vividly, because it was so exciting, was he had Lee and Warne play a Bach two-part invention as a duet, and then Bauer would join them and play some of the three-part inventions, which was pretty wild to hear in a bar on Howard Street. ... And the sound was fabulous because they played them beautifully.” Pat Harris of Down Beat wrote an enthusia event, while reporting that there was no publicity and noting the neg- ative reaction to the music: “Tristano and his band . . . combine to form the most cohesive and purposeful unit we’ve ever heard. . . . [I]t is meaningful and significant music. The popular reaction to Lennie and his work appears to be more than apathy—a bitter and hostile revulsion. . . . We frankly were frightened at the prospect of hearing Tristano for the first time.”*67 Harris also referred to the phenomenon of cult: “A number of musicians have made him an esoteric cult, a closed group it seems too difficult to bypass. But Lennie says he prefers listeners who do not analyze too minutely, who do not make mental notes of everything that is going on, trying to compare it to the works of various classical composers.” In this review Harris quoted Tristano discussing why other musicians disliked his music, which offered an interesting explanation: “My technique is a means to an end . . . just tic review of theG2. LENNIE TRISTANO as a printing press is a means toward an end. I play what I feel. And it’s for the majority of the people as well as for musicians. . . . Most musicians like to play the melody. They listen to what we do and know they are unable to duplicate it, so they begin to dislike us.” After Chicago the sextet went to Milwaukee for a two-week engagement at the Continental for the remainder of November. On December 10, 1949, New York Amsterdam News advertised the sex- tet’s performances at Soldier Meyer’s in Brooklyn." Then on Decem- ber 25, the group appeared in a concert at Carnegie Hall, which also featured Charlie Parker’s quintet and Bud Powell’s trio, among others. Composed of Tristano, Konitz, Marsh, Bauer, Shulman, and Morton, the group performed “You Go to My Head” and “Sax of a Kind.”7° During this period there are references in the jazz press to the lack of work for the sextet. Ulanov attributed it to external factors such as “[p]oor pianos, the envy of other musicians, the tin ears of many night club owners,” which kept Tristano “from working under the right conditions or from working at all.”"7" Ulanov, however, forecast that “that long series of obstacles seems almost out of the way now.” His optimism, unfortunately, did not turn out to be well founded; Marsh noted that the sextet “really worked very little.” It was the paucity of work that led to the change of the sextet’s personnel. Fishkin was the first to leave, opting for steady studio work in order to support his family. He attributed the group’s infrequent performances to the decline of the jazz club scene on Fifty-second Street and Tristano’s mistrust of club owners.'73 1950 In 1950 Tristano marked the top of the piano category in the Metronome All Star Poll; as arranger he placed third, which sugg: a favorable reception of his writing for the All Star Band’s recording, “Victory Ball.”"%4 A short article accompanying the poll result sum- marized his achievements, describing Tristano as “dean of an always growing musical school and prophet of what may be jazz’s atonal future”: “Lennie Tristano . . . last year was second to Nat Cole, this year edged out George Shearing in a battle of considerable intensity between two men who have all but dominated the keyboard in the past year.”175 This statement may be an exaggeration, considering theNew York, 1946-1950 §3 repeated remarks on the lack of understanding of Tristano’s music. Interestingly, the article also pointed out Tristano’s teaching activity, recognizing him as the father figure of his students: “[H]e is also engaged in a heavy teaching schedule, and adds to that function one as advisor and confidant of the large brood of youngsters which nestles under his wing.” As a result of the poll, Tristano became part of the Metronome Alll Stars band again in January 1950, composed of Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding, Buddy DeFranco, Konitz, Stan Getz, Serge Chaloff, Bauer, Eddie Safranski, and Max Roach, which recorded Rugolo’s “Double Date” and Tristano’s “No Figs” for Columbia (1-557).176 In the spring of 1950 Down Beat mentioned a “European tour with dates in nine countries being lined up for Lennie Tristano and his group.”*7? This, however, did not materialize, and there appears to be no further reference to it. On March 19, 1950, the sextet performed again in Chicago, this time at Orchestra Hall, where Erroll Garner’s trio was also featured.'”* Jack Tracy of Down Beat was assured that Tristano’s performance was far superior to Garner’s: “Erroll Garner should sue somebody. Namely the guy who even booked him . . . with the Lennie Tristano sextet, let alone trying to spot him following Lennie. Not that Garner was really boring, he just sounded that way compared to the offerings put down by the sextet. Lee Konitz and Tristano himself were standouts.”"” Tracy also noted that “Intu- ition,” that is, free improvisation, was the closing piece: “Konitz con- tributed several fabulous bits, including . . . some spine-chilling work on the eerie Intuition, which closed the concert. Lennie played pre- cisely, cleanly, magnificently throughout the whole concert, totally lacking in any of the ‘coldness’ for which he too often has been criti- cized.” An audience member also wrote enthusiastically, describing Tristano’s music as “the most inspiring music I have ever heard.”"8° ‘A major venue for Tristano’s sextet in 1950 was Birdland. Ulanov wrote an uncharacteristically mixed review about the sextet’s perfor- mance there: “Lennie Tristano jumped into Birdland last month with both feet, a variety of drummers and a much freer attitude toward the organization of his sets and solos. As a result of the last, he, Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh and Billy Bauer took as many solos as they felt like blowing, instead of the customary two between opening and clos- ing lines.”*** Then he suggested that the sextet had become perhaps rigid in their presentation of the music, and wished for more commu-