Please forgive the Off-Topic post, but I think everybody should check out
this very unusual release. Geoff Muldaur has always been one of my favorite
musicians, a remarkable guitarist who delves very deeply into archival
African-American blues and spirituals -- well, that's not half of what he's
done. If you saw the movie "Brazil" (and if you haven't, you should,
now more than ever) his lush version of the title crooner tune is in
it.
Everybody talks about Bix Beiderbecke, but few modern people
have actually heard him play or heard his compositions. Now you can. I predict
great pleasure if you do.
Stereophile
magazine / October 2003
Recording of
the Month:
Private
Astronomy: A Vision of the Music of Bix Beiderbecke
reviewed by
Robert Baird
GEOFF
MULDAUR'S FUTURISTIC ENSEMBLE: Private Astronomy: A Vision of the Music of Bix
Beiderbecke
Edge 028947458326 (CD). 2003. Conceived & arranged by Geoff Muldaur; Dick Connette, prod.; Joe Boyd, exec. prod.; Eve Seltzer, Gary Carroll, Tristan Leral, Scott Lehrer, Dave Winslow, Mark Linett, Keith Weschler, Neil Couser, engs. AAD? TT:42:18
Performance
*****
Sonics ****
Sonics ****
The short
life of Leon "Bix" Beiderbecke is the second most enigmatic and
revelatory American musical tragedy after that of bluesman Robert Johnson. One
corner of the considerable and ever-expanding mythology surrounding Beiderbecke
is the weird, otherworldly dimension heard in the five original piano pieces
transcribed before his death. Although Bix himself managed to record only one of
these, the rambling "In a Mist," the others, set to paper with the
help of arranger Bill Challis, have always had a powerful allure to anyone
infected and affected by Bixology.
Geoff Muldaur
heard the siren call of Bix's music, particularly his piano works, many years
ago. Once a member of such groups of the 1960s and '70s as the Jim Kweskin Jug
Band and Paul Butterfield's Better Days -- and, yes, once married to Maria
("Midnight at the Oasis") Muldaur -- Geoff was raised by parents
enamored of the jazz age, who listened to Bix and told their son tales of his
sordid life and musical genius.
Since the
early 1980s, Muldaur has worked intermittently on arranging Bix's piano pieces
for a somewhat unorthodox chamber ensemble that, as recorded in 2002, consisted
of clarinet, alto and baritone sax, cornet, trombone, and violin. Once famed
producer-engineer Joe Boyd came aboard, the two-decades-old project began to
take wing.
"When I
heard arrangements that Bill Challis had done [of the Bix piano works] for Bucky
Pizzarelli sometime in the '60s or '70s," Muldaur said in a recent
interview, "I thought 'Man, there's a whole other world in there that
they're not getting.'"
One listen to
Private Astronomy and it's clear that Muldaur, like Ry Cooder before him on his
album Jazz, has gotten some of that world. Along with Bix's five piano pieces,
the 13-track disc is filled out with renditions of other tunes associated with
Beiderbecke, including his ne plus ultra, "Singin' the Blues."
The trick
inherent in making this very interesting and difficult project work was not only
how to second-guess how Bix might have wanted these often meandering pieces to
sound, but also how to revivify music meant for the swinging, improvisational
rapport of a small 1920s jazz ensemble -- like the Frank Trumbauer Orchestra,
with which Bix made many of his best recordings. To revivify, that is, without
drawing unfavorable comparisons to the original, because no one's ever gonna
play like Bix. When talking about the record, Muldaur mentioned capturing the
sound, if not the spirit, of such famed 1920s players as saxman Adrian Rollini
and fiddler Joe Venuti, both Bix contemporaries. In the non-piano pieces, the
challenge was even greater: How and for what instrument to transpose Bix's
cornet solos? Muldaur likened the process to being faced with "10,000
decisions every six bars."
Finally, the
entire project had to have a dusting of the warm, open, fun-loving spirit that
made the jazz age so appealing and, in retrospect, so notorious. Beiderbecke,
that heady time's most famous devotee of excess, drank himself to death in a
cheap apartment in Queens in 1931, at the age of 28. Finding the right players
was half the battle of making Private Astronomy work.
"These
parts really required more of a classical chair than a jazz chair," Muldaur
said, "but the players had to have jazz sensibility. For the cornet parts,
chops were really the thing, and it was brutal. Many of the top session guys in
New York left [the tryouts] bleeding."
Arranged and
played more formally, in an almost chamber-music-like take on jazz, the Bix
piano pieces "In the Dark" and "Candlelights" have the moody
feel of Ravel and Debussy, of whom Bix always spoke as his primary influences.
New intros, evidently never played, were found and added to these renditions.
While six of
the pieces are instrumental, the other seven have vocals, which can be jarring
for anyone expecting a Bix tribute or an instrumental showcase. Happily, all
these pieces, including the opener, "Take Your Tomorrow (And Give Me
Today)," and Irving Berlin's "Waiting at the End of the Road,"
both with lead vocals by Muldaur, fit in beautifully. "Waiting,"
originally sung by Al Jolson, was one of the final recordings that Bix (who
didn't sing) appeared on. "There Ain't No Sweet Man That's Worth the Salt
of My Tears" features one of the most unusual of those "10,000
decisions" of which Muldaur spoke: Venuti's fiddle part transcribed for
baritone sax.
Perhaps the
disc's most startling track is "Singin' the Blues," on which Martha
Wainwright (daughter of Loudon, sister of Rufus) oozes into a bluesy,
appropriately yearning version of the tune's "waiting for my daddy to come
home" lyrics. Wisely, Muldaur has given the number's famous solo a wide
berth; slowing its tempo and transcribing it for clarinet and violin. While
lacking the energy and invention of the original, the choice fits with the
album's easygoing nature while staying true to its aim: to nod respectfully
toward the original.
As many
yawning pitfalls as this project approached and could have fallen into, it's
managed to tread the razor's edge between celebration and replica, being both
tribute and objet d'art in its own right. After 20 years' work, its primary
visionary admitted to some satisfaction.
"So we
can't figure the whole thing out," Muldaur said, still fretting over
details a little, "but hopefully the music is magic,
right?"
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