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