A Conversation Rich in History and Humor
Kudos to Gary Smulyan, who was deputized by Vandoren, the Parisian manufacturer of woodwinds, mouthpieces, and reeds, to host a conversation with Jimmy Heath and Phil Woods a couple of years ago that’s now on YouTube. Gary’s assignment was eased considerably by the loquaciousness of both these jazz greats, who share a gift for witty and candid storytelling, a mutual love for Charlie Parker, and a common lineage as sidemen with Dizzy Gillespie, Heath in the forties, Woods the following decade.
Smulyan, who’s a perennial Downbeat Critics Poll winner on baritone saxophone, can hold his own with virtually anyone in jazz, but here he plays the part of an enthusiastic fan in his role as interlocutor. This is the side of Gary that I got to know in recent years when he and his wife Joan Cornachio, a pianist and conductor, lived in Amherst. They moved back to New York this summer, but when Gary was off the road during his years in the Valley, we got together frequently to discuss jazz and books. I’ve known a fair number of renowned musicians over the years, but have rarely had the opportunity to spend so much time with one so passionate about music and familiar with seemingly every significant jazz record ever made.
Gary’s a voracious reader of jazz history and periodicals, including The Note, the journal published through the Al Cohn Memorial Collection at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania. Woods writes a regular column for The Note, where he’s reported extensively on his upbringing and early musical development in Springfield, a background that Smulyan is eager to explore with him. Note how Phil begins his account of jazz in Springfield by mentioning that Dizzy’s mother grew up there. Makes me wonder how much that sealed the bond between the trumpeter and alto saxophonist? As you’ll hear, Gillespie played a powerful role in Phil’s life.
Jimmy Heath’s autobiography, I Walked With Giants, is propped up on the table between him and Woods. His recollections here are both poignant and elegiac; the former for the Jim Crow customs he survived, including an incomplete high school education, which still pains him to recount. But he warms to the memory of playing with Nat Towles and other territory bands; of the band he led in Philadelphia in the mid-forties that included Johnny Coles and John Coltrane; and of the inspiration he drew from Swing Era big bands, their aura and sound and style, the blue light gleam of Glenn Miller’s saxophone section among other magical elements.
Give it a listen for yourself. If you love this music like Gary Smulyan and his guests do, you’ll be glad you did. The interview is broken up into six segments; click the forward arrow at the end of each to proceed.
Smulyan will be back in Northampton on December 9 for his sixth appearance with the Green Street Trio in the Tuesday night Jazz Workshop series at the Clarion Hotel.