Autumn Leaves in Stockholm
I awoke the other morning out of a Zoot Sims dream. The tenor saxophonist was sitting in with a group of friends who were playing before a convivial local audience much like the crowd that gathers for the weekly Jazz Workshop in Northampton. In between tunes, I was trying to convince him that he was a favorite with the listeners of Jazz a la Mode. I kept tapping my chest to underscore how dearly we hold him in our hearts, and out of concern that he, like other musicians I’ve known, was resigned to being forgotten once he’d passed on. (Sims was a 59-year-old when he died on March 23, 1985.)
In my limited understanding of Jungian dream analysis, I would guess that Zoot was really an unconscious projection of myself, and that my dream was meant to reassure me that I’m on the right track in giving prominence to mainstream icons like Sims on NEPR. But of course it was Zoot whom I focused on that morning, which I commenced by listening to his tribute to Billie Holiday, For Lady Day. With Billie’s former accompanist Jimmy Rowles at the piano, it’s an album that’s long been a part of the core collection that I shelve near the stereo at home, and is all the more in rotation during this centennial year of Lady’s birth on April 7, 1915.
Next I looked for Zoot on YouTube, and promptly came upon this footage of him with bassist Red Mitchell and guitarist Rune Gustafsson playing “Autumn Leaves.” It was an ideal find for the morning, as overnight we’d had a mighty wind and temperature drop that left our lawn blanketed with leaves. Sims had recorded the poignant French ballad by Joseph Kosma and poet Jacques Prevert before, and this superb take is all the more moving in that it may have been his last taped performance.
I posted the video right away on Facebook, and there heard from the great saxophonist and clarinet player Ken Peplowski who, coincidentally, played the Northampton Jazz Workshop in August. Ken wrote, “Pretty sure that’s in Red’s apartment in Stockholm. He invited me up there to play a few times also, and recorded everything– with our consent, for once, I might add!”