At 82, groundbreaking Konitz still holds his own

Not long ago, through an NPR music site, I downloaded a Lee Konitz concert recorded earlier this year, and just about wore out my headphones listening to it.

What's amazing is that Konitz is 82 years old now, playing with guys in their 20s and -- well, if he's pacing himself more, he's showing no real shortage of ideas. But Konitz's entree in the jazz world was always in his ability to think on his feet.

Konitz, who plays alto sax, was a contemporary of some of the real giants -- Charlie "Bird" Parker in particular, but while Parker went toward the fast, harmonically challenging genre of bebop, Konitz was clearly in the early "cool jazz" camp. Their instruments were identical, but while Parker went for a full-throated sound, Konitz' tone was a lot thinner and more exacting. More surgical. In a time when every altoist in the world tried to sound like Bird, Konitz didn't even try. But both were amazing improvisers.

On the opening track of this one-hour, 10-minute set, you can almost see the ideas shifting around in Konitz' brain. Admittedly he's a little slower on the musical uptake, and he started a little tentatively to 28-year-old pianist Dan Toepfer's "Green Dolphin Street" intro. His lip isn't as strong as it once was. But by the end of the first song he showed he still has enough gas -- and ideas -- in the tank.

Out-there musical ideas were his calling card. Although he was one of the nine-piece band Miles Davis fielded for "Birth Of The Cool," Konitz is probably best known for his association with pianist Lennie Tristano, one of the great thinkers in jazz. Tristano and his crew played really cerebral stuff, even headier than anything Dave Brubeck ever played. And it was in the late 1940s that Tristano and a few friends decided to try what was probably the most audacious experiment of 'em all.

They decided to make something out of nothing.

I've known musicians who can pick up on a few notes from a bass -- or even a drum pattern -- and improvise on the fly, and build something new from the head arrangement on up. I've been able to do this a couple of times, including an unforgettable set with the late guitarist Chuck Bigbee, where we totally made stuff up for about 45 minutes. I can't think of anything more exciting than coming up with something off the top of your head in a musical context. But even those moments, rare as they are, come about almost accidentally, in the excitement and energy of the moment. But the Tristano/Konitz session was deliberate.

In 1960, Ornette Coleman put together a double quartet, two full bands on opposite sides of the room, and recorded the 36-minute-long "Free Jazz." Nearly all of this was composed on the spot; about the only pre-written parts were some of the transitions between each section. This stuff was so out there -- at the time, anyway -- that trumpeter Freddie Hubbard sounded lost. Coleman's album was one of those that no one was neutral about; it was either a bunch of disconnected skronks on vinyl, or a revelation.

Of course I have "Free Jazz" on CD. It's packaged with an earlier take, one that's kind of a rough draft. The first take was half the length of the released version, and there are plenty of differences between the two. Bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy in particular approached each version as a tabula rasa; it's intriguing to listen to both and hear Dolphy playing two completely different sets of ideas on the same theme.

But the Tristano/Konitz effort, part of which was released on an album called "Intuition," predated "Free Jazz" by nearly 15 years.

Tristano's been dead for years now, and their bassist, Arnold Fishkin, wasn't exactly a household name. But back when I was in college, a local guy named Mac McReynolds had a big band that played World War II vintage stuff, with an Air Force motif. McReynolds' band was called the Planes Of Fame band, and his bassist was named Arnold Fishkin. I wasn't aware of the Tristano/Konitz connection back then so I didn't ask the obvious question, but there can't be two guys with a name like Fishkin.

But Konitz today, he may have lost a lot off his fastball by now, but it's hard to tell from listening.

If you've got the time and want to hear some good playing from an old guy, hop on over to the NPR site and grab the concert. It's free, and it's a treat. The old guy can still bring it.

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Sexy songs: 'Physical' gets nod, not sure why

It's official. "Let's Get Physical" is the sexiest song of all time.

That's what a poll by Billboard Magazine says. Olivia Newton-John's single, released in the early 1980s, got the nod over choices from Rod Stewart and Marvin Gaye.

Somehow I can't see it.

This isn't even my age talking; I was in my early 20s when that song came out, and yeah, I did like it. My then-girlfriend also loved that song; in fact she first called it to my attention and the title became a wry part of our secret vocabulary.

For Newton-John, this was something of a reach. She'd had something of a squeaky-clean image, and the song broke the mold for her. But the video had her working out on all sorts of exercise equipment, just so folks wouldn't read "Get Physical" as a dirty song. It was a nice use of double entendre, I thought. Exercise? Yeah, right.

But the sexiest song? Not likely. While the lyrics are there, the song's beat and tone do not spell sexy. Not even close. It doesn't even make me want to hit the gym, but then I don't visit those places very often.

Besides, subtlety is a big part of sexy. Except for the exercise angle, there wasn't much of that there.

Stewart's best, "Tonight's The Night," had the grooves and lyric that spelled sexy, although the part about spreading wings wasn't exactly subtle.

Back a few years before my heyday, Johnny Mathis was it as far as coming out with sexy songs -- funny when you consider he didn't "roll that way," as the parlance goes. But the lyrics were right there, and the velvety tones of his voice and the arrangements set the stage for many a romantic encounter. Nat King Cole was another from a few years earlier ("Unforgettable" was one of the greatest of all time). I've come to really enjoy Nat, and his piano playing was highly underrated. Check out some of his earlier stuff ("Straighten Up And Fly Right") for a sample there, even though that song wasn't one to set up the mood.

My own choice for sexiest song? "Invisible Lady" by Charles Mingus. He was at the piano for this one, with Jimmie Knepper as the lead instrumental voice. "Invisible Lady" was in the same vein as some of Duke Ellington's songs, kind of like a smooth "Satin Doll," and Mingus employed Knepper in about the same way the Duke used his great trombonist Lawrence Brown. Knepper's trombone work was buttery, melting all over the place, with just the right touch of mystery.

It's an instrumental, but that's all right. Sometimes words just get in the way, right?

Try this with your spouse: Lights low, per normal. Employ all the rest of the romantic things you use. And put on "Invisible Lady."

If that doesn't set the proper mood, stick a mirror under your nose. I'll bet it won't fog.

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Happy Birthday, Stan Getz

Enjoy that great tenor sax. Stan Getz would have been 83 today.

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Getz on allmusic.com

Getz on amazon.com

Kristofferson among music's best double threats

Writing about Kris Kristofferson made me think a little bit about his success in two separate careers -- in music and in acting.

While many stars try their hand at some other art (maybe it's an inherent restlessness in those creative types), few truly excel outside their field.

Of course, Kristofferson's a rare bird anyway. An excellent student at Pomona College (one of the Claremont colleges, the Ivy League of the West Coast and a duck snort down the road from my old neighborhood), he was also a Rhodes scholar. One of those folks who could do anything he sets his mind to do.

Sure, Madonna did her share of acting, but there's a great separation between her success on the screen and on the concert stage. Enough separation to label her a dabbler, so I'm not going to include her in this list. Same thing with Elvis -- his film career couldn't touch his music.

So who are some of the great double threats from the music world? Here are some that come to mind at a moment's notice:

• Michael Jackson is an obvious choice, and I'm not referring to his dancing. He showed some real filmmaking chops with his rock videos, and his "Captain Eo" 3-D movie (which I thought was kind of cheesy) was a mainstay at Disneyland some years ago. His "Thriller" video was deemed culturally significant enough to make it into the National Film Registry earlier this year.

• Frank Sinatra did pretty well in pitchers himself, winning an academy award for his supporting role in "From Here To Eternity." Oh, yes, Ol' Blue Eyes didn't have a half bad set of pipes on him, either. And mustn't forget Bing Crosby's "Road" pictures with Bob Hope. Those were totally insane; if Bing and Bob don't fetch at least one skinny laugh from you, you're in real trouble.

• Also crossing over from music to movies was Dexter Gordon. A tenor sax player in the 1940s and 50s, he started a nice second career playing the lead role in "Round Midnight," one of the best jazz movies ever. In his other film, "The Awakening" (with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro), he had a much smaller part, and not much acting involved there. All he had to do was be catatonic.

• Then there's Milt Hinton. One of the better jazz bassists of his day, he was also an excellent photographer. Some of the best black-and-white photos of musicians I've ever seen were originally sighted through Milt's viewfinder.

• Chuck Berry was also quite a shooter. He was probably more passionate about his photography than he was about his music; he'd built his first darkroom when he was a kid. He wasn't quite in Hinton's league, but he was good with a camera.

• Eddie Henderson's an interesting one. A jazz trumpeter, he's straight out of the Miles Davis style. For years he played on weekends, working his way through medical school. He had dual careers as a jazz player and as a psychiatrist, a not inconvenient choice given the number of head cases there are in the music world.

• Brian May, one of the founders of Queen, got his PhD. in astrophysics a few years ago. And country singer/songwriter Jimmie Davis, who penned that great song "You Are My Sunshine," served several terms as Governor of Louisiana. But then, there's no bigger form of show business than politics.

Writers among the musicians? Again, it's hard to separate the dabblers from the real thing. Most music autobiographies, if they don't suck eggs, were written by a ghostwriter. But Artie Shaw and Sidney Bechet -- both clarinetists -- turned out some good prose. Charles Mingus' autobiography, "Beneath The Underdog," was interesting but ... strange. It was pure stream-of-consciousness stuff, but then a lot of his music rolled that way, too.

You tell me: What other double-threat musicians can you think of? I know I hardly nibbled around the edges here.

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