Tag: jazz

Categories
Music Music Features

The Twin Lives of Stephen M. Lee

Steve Lee (Photo: Darius Williams)

Though you may have read about Steve Lee in the Memphis Flyer before, none of those articles have really been about him. That’s the paradox of being an educator who devotes so much time to public service, as Lee has done since founding the Memphis Jazz Workshop (MJW), one of the city’s premier institutions in music education, in 2017. The scope and impact of that nonprofit have been so great that it’s easy to forget about Stephen M. Lee, the virtuoso jazz pianist and recording artist. He’s getting in two lifetimes’ worth of existence for the price of one.

A clue to the mystery of how Lee manages to accomplish so much in both worlds can be found in the title of his new album, In the Moment. That’s clearly where he lives, as one listen to his deft improvisations will tell you. Composing in the moment, on the spot, is at the heart of jazz, and jazz is at the heart of Steve Lee. But beyond the album itself, one senses that it’s been his ability to improvise as the director of MJW that’s led to its impressive staying power. “We’ve been at about seven locations in the last seven years,” he says. Yet the MJW not only survived the onset of Covid; it has thrived ever since. “We’ve averaged from 50 to 70 students for each session since 2020,” he adds, and those numbers are only half the story. 

While those individual and group lessons, taught to teens during spring, summer, and fall sessions every year, are at the core of what Lee’s nonprofit has accomplished, perhaps the greater indicator of MJW’s success has been the degree to which its students have been performing for live audiences. Case in point, this Friday, July 13th, the MJW students will command the stage at the The Grove at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC), featuring “the area’s most talented young jazz musicians in a variety of combos, ensembles, and even a big band,” as the GPAC site notes. 

“This will be our third year [at The Grove],” Lee says. “It’s a great location, and they pretty much donate the space to us. Paul [Chandler] and his staff are great — the only thing we have to do is show up. It’s a great opportunity for the organization.” Moreover, MJW players can be seen on the third Saturday of every month as the featured attraction at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (the next event being August 3rd, noon to 2 p.m.).

And this is where the two lives of Steve Lee begin to meet, as some MJW students distinguish themselves enough to finally play on the bill with the maestro himself. That too will be apparent this Sunday, the day after the GPAC show, when Steve Lee will headline at the Sunset Jazz Series at Court Square. 

“A few students will be playing on July 14th with me,” he says with a hint of pride. “The drummer, Kurtis Gray, is just 18. He just graduated from high school.” Flyer readers will know his name from our story on the Jazz Ensemble of Memphis, produced by David Less in emulation of the classic 1959 album, Young Men from Memphis: Down Home Reunion. “And the bass player’s also one of my former students, the drummer’s brother, Kem Gray Jr.,” Lee adds. “And then the sax player, Michael Price, just graduated from UT-Knoxville. He’s about to go to [grad school] at Rutgers.”

When Price was just a junior at UT, he shared some thoughts with the MJW Instagram page that may stand as the greatest endorsement of the program to date, saying, “The life skills that I gained from the Memphis Jazz Workshop were discipline, communication, honesty, support, love, mentorship, and community. … Understanding the intricacy of these different skills and their relationship to music is vital and you need to have all of these qualities in order to seriously pursue music, and I’d go as far as to say to succeed in life.”

In a way, it harks back to the glory days of Manassas High School, which trained generations of jazz greats here, starting in 1927 with educator Jimmie Lunceford, who polished his school band into a nationally recognized recording group, the Chickasaw Syncopators. “I think [MJW] is a continuation of what he was doing,” Lee told me in 2018, speaking of Lunceford. “But Memphis never had a jazz workshop like the workshops we have now. They always had jazz in the schools.” Today, Lee is forging that culture of excellence on his own, outside of any infrastructure, finding venues to hold classes anywhere he can, albeit now much more recognized by funding institutions, and always recruiting his faculty from among the city’s best jazz players. 

He benefited from local greatness himself, when he studied under the great Memphis pianist Donald Brown (on the faculty at UT-Knoxville for many years), which in turn led to Lee’s years in New York City, prior to his return to Memphis. All that may explain the dedication and determination with which he’s thrown himself into leading the MJW. And the organization’s success has reflected well on both Lee and the city, a fact that was commemorated this past April when Lee received the Memphis Symphony Orchestra’s (MSO) Eddy Award, recognizing him as community leader in music.

“As chair of the Eddy Award selection committee, we agreed that Steve Lee embodies the award’s meaning as his incredible career has brought young people from all backgrounds, races, and life experiences together through the power of jazz music,” said Jocie Wurzburg in a statement on behalf of the MSO. Now, this weekend will show off both the MJW and Lee in their best light. 

And, as he explains, his two skills feed each other, though balancing them has been demanding. “I have to be the teacher, the principal, the janitor, all of it,” he laughs. “I’m not one of those executive directors who just lets other people do it. Because, you know, it helps me. I don’t really have a lot of time to practice. So showing information to these students, that’s a part of practicing because I still have to sit at the piano and show them what I want them play. So it helps. That’s why I enjoy doing it. Because it is a form of practice, and you know, the students motivate me.” 

Categories
Music Music Features

Lisa Nobumoto’s Timeless Sound

Singer Lisa Nobumoto launched the Jazz Masters Series nonprofit. (Photo: Wilcox Photography)

For Lisa Nobumoto, jazz is more than just a genre. It’s a mission, a way of life. That much is obvious with last week’s release of A Tribute to Jazz Singer Nancy Wilson by Nobumoto and the Jazz Masters Orchestra, arguably one of the most ambitious jazz projects to come out of Memphis in decades, and a labor of love for the singer that’s been years in the making.

That’s partly due to the scale of the ensemble, a 20-piece orchestra that’s a veritable who’s who of jazz heavyweights working in Memphis today. The album’s arrangements were done by Rhodes College faculty member Carl Wolfe, co-founder of the Memphis Jazz Orchestra, and the group was conducted by Jack Cooper, director of jazz studies at the University of Memphis. Pianist Eric Reed, the sole non-Memphian, is a lecturer and artist-in-residence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the remaining players are similarly well-schooled professionals. And the proof is in the listening, as the group brings Wolfe’s arrangements to life with fluidity and nuance. Sailing over that swinging foundation, of course, is Nobumoto’s voice.

Album Art: David Lynch

A native of California with family roots in the Mid-South, Nobumoto relocated to Memphis some five years ago and promptly founded the Jazz Masters Series nonprofit to pursue her vision of fine jazz. That vision was honed over decades of performance on the west coast and touring the world. Her late husband, George Gaffney, was Sarah Vaughan’s pianist, but Nobumoto worked with many greats in Los Angeles. “I worked with Teddy Edwards for 32 years,” she says, “and the other players in that band were Jimmy Cleveland, Gerald Wiggins, Al ‘Tootie’ Heath, Nolan Smith Jr., and Larry Gales.” In short, she’s worked with some of America’s greatest musicians.

During her L.A. days, none other than legendary jazz scribe and composer Leonard Feather wrote, “Lisa Nobumoto’s distinctive phrasing and timbre could earn her a significant role on the upcoming vocal scene,” and indeed, Music Connection magazine named her the top unsigned artist in Los Angeles at the time.

Bringing that experience to Memphis, Nobumoto knew early on that she wanted to pay tribute to Nancy Wilson, a master of not only straight-ahead jazz but blues, soul, pop, and R&B as well. Beginning in the early ’60s, “The Girl with the Honey-Coated Voice,” as she was known, was a pop star of sorts, back when such a thing was imaginable for a jazz artist. “My mom played Nancy Wilson over and over and over again when I was a child,” says Nobumoto. “I knew every song.” Later, as she delved into Wilson’s work more deeply, Nobumoto found who Wilson had found her inspiration from: Little Jimmy Scott.

To those familiar with Scott’s soaringly high, somewhat androgynous delivery, that makes perfect sense. “He’s my favorite male singer vocalist of all time,” notes Nobumoto. “I met him and heard him perform on several occasions, and he’s the only man I’ve ever seen start a show with a ballad — and then go on to a slower ballad. He could have you crying, where you can’t hold your tears back. And Nancy basically took his sound. I mean, she studied him a lot. They came from the same part of Ohio.”

Nobumoto has a gift for interpretation, negotiating this material with a grace akin to Dinah Washington and echoing Wilson’s conversational style — but always with Nobumoto’s individual stamp. “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” is transformed into a steamy, confessional ballad, worlds away from Frankie Valli’s pop stomper. Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” is more up-tempo than either the original or Wilson’s 1966 version, taking it into boogaloo territory, yet with a relaxed delivery that brings wit and humor to the song. With Wolfe’s arrangements, the album’s timeless jazz classicism makes it hard to pin down chronologically: It could have been made any time in the last half century.

Recalling the two legendary singers who most inspired her is bittersweet for Nobumoto, who performed with so many jazz greats before moving to Memphis. “They’re just gone. Everybody I knew from that era, so to speak, has passed. But when you get to a certain age, you stop thinking about money or fame and you’ll give up everything just to live this broke-ass lifestyle. And I get to see things like this manifest. I really want the nonprofit to build into something that I can leave behind for someone else to carry on.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Michael Wolff’s Life in Jazz: A Memoir

Michael Wolff (Photo: Courtesy Michael Wolff)

Memphis has produced its share of jazz legends, from Lil Hardin Armstrong to the famed graduates of Manassas High School like Hank Crawford, Charles Lloyd, and George Coleman. Now, an autobiography released last year reveals a new name to be added to that list: Michael Wolff, a pianist who emerged from the Memphis Jewish community. Though his name may not be as familiar as the others, readers may have unwittingly seen him perform more than all the rest put together, at least those who were fans of The Arsenio Hall Show back in the ’90s — Wolff was the show’s musical director.

Yet that achievement hardly does justice to Wolff’s musical accomplishments or the fascinating tale of his life. That’s what makes his memoir, On That Note: A Memoir of Jazz, Tics and Survival (Redwood Publishing), so enlightening, as he details the highs and lows of one completely devoted to jazz. Indeed, it’s practically a how-to book for those who hope to rise above any obstacles to become lifers in the world of music.

“When I was four years old,” Wolff writes, “my father had my maternal grand­mother’s big upright piano shipped from Covington, Louisiana, to our little house in Memphis. He stuck it right in the living room and immediately taught me ‘St. Louis Blues.’ ‘I hate to see that evening sun go down,’ he’d sing as I accompanied him. I loved playing on that old piano, and it’s still in the family. It’s beat to shit but has a lot of the original ivory keys on it, though they’re pretty chipped up.”

That passage evokes the flavor of Wolff’s prose, sprinkled as it is with the casual profanities of gigging musicians who call it like they see it. Such language, though, should not be conflated with the Tourette’s syndrome that Wolff has grappled with all his life. As Wolff puts it, his experience with Tourette’s has chiefly involved nervous tics, noisemaking, or eye rolls, but typically not “the tic that involves yelling out inappropriate words in public for no apparent reason. Thanks to television, this behavior is probably what most people think of when they hear the term Tourette’s.” Yet the other “habits,” as he and his family called his symptoms, still stirred up feelings of shame and alienation as the young Wolff grew up in Memphis.

“I was lucky to have parents who allowed me to be myself,” he writes. “They accepted me and my Tourette’s, and both of them encouraged me to become a musician.” He needed no great encouragement. As he puts it, “The piano was really my saving grace. Just touching the ivory keys on our old upright soothed me and deactivated my need to tic — to make noises, to shrug and blink and snort and cough and clear my throat and clench my anus. The energy of the music swam up my arms, dove into my body, and protected me from the evil compul­sions I was trying to conquer.”

And music was everywhere, from his father’s collection of jazz records to the Black gospel and blues he’d hear in Memphis or when visiting family in Indianola, Mississippi. He was more open to such experiences than most kids his age, for, as he writes, “Jews in the South — and I’m including the big cities, like Memphis, now — were comfortable around Black people, but they didn’t view them as equals. My father and mother were ahead of their time in that way. In 1959, my parents held one of the first civil rights meetings in their home, with a group of whites from their temple and a group of Blacks from a local Black church.”

From there, his parents moved to Berkeley, California, where his mother threw herself into progressive activism, and where young Michael was exposed to brilliant jazz players like Bill Evans. Ultimately, he went on to work with the likes of Cannonball Adderley, Cal Tjader, and Sonny Rollins, as well as leading his own groups and releasing 21 albums. Through it all, he never lost touch with the Bluff City, and he counts Representative Steve Cohen as a close friend. “His father was a pediatrician when my dad was an intern in Memphis. Later, I met Steve through one of my best friends, Warren Zevon,” he tells the Memphis Flyer. “We have been friends for decades.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Peter Bernstein at The Green Room

Peter Bernstein (Photo: Jimmy Katz)

Peter Bernstein is a jazz cat’s jazz cat, straight out of the New York scene. As such, he’s a perfect exemplar of what Crosstown Arts has dubbed “jazz month” — that is, a March calendar bursting with shows that reveal the many facets of what’s called jazz today. There’s quite a stylistic spread under that umbrella, but Bernstein, who’ll appear with the Ted Ludwig Trio at The Green Room on Tuesday, March 14th, is that rare player who has full command of standards and bop, yet revels in stretching out beyond anything safe or “traditional.”

As a leader, Bernstein has released nine albums, and as a sideman the guitarist has backed the likes of Sonny Rollins, Bobby Hutcherson, Lou Donaldson, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Fathead Newman, Joshua Redman, Diana Krall, Lee Konitz, Jimmy Cobb, and many more. Memphians will especially appreciate Bernstein’s work with George Coleman, the saxophonist who parlayed his music education at Manassas High School into a career that established him as a legend of 20th- (and now 21st-) century music.

Bernstein reflects on his time with Coleman as he prepares for his Memphis appearance with the Ted Ludwig Trio. “For the Green Room show, I feel like it’s really Ted Ludwig’s gig and I’m the guest,” says Bernstein, “so I told him we’d play whatever he wants to play and we can go from there. It’s all about finding a way to have some fun, whatever the format is. We’re going to do one of my tunes, ‘Dragonfly,’ and we have some standards and different things. It’s nice to play gigs where you don’t know what you’re going to play. I did a gig with George Coleman and we did three nights, and not only did we not repeat any tunes, he would just say a bunch of tunes before the set and then maybe play one of them. He would just call the tunes on the bandstand, and sometimes not even the keys. Just start playing the tune, and you have to figure out what key it is, and hopefully we knew the song. So I’m kind of in that space right now, and not preparing too much. It’s fun to just play what you want in the moment, and hope that everyone comes along with you.”

Indeed, seeing Bernstein at New York’s Village Vanguard last fall with his own quartet (featuring Sullivan Fortner, Doug Weiss, and legendary drummer Al Foster) was a study in spontaneity, as the loose-limbed ensemble would chat between numbers before settling on the next tune. At one point, they hit upon a lesser-known Ray Charles tune, “The Danger Zone,” a soulful blues with some minor chord tweaks that lend it an especially melancholy mood. It was a loose, relatable number that brought a bit of earthy Beale Street flavor to the Manhattan club, and it revealed just how important the blues are to Bernstein’s playing.

“I don’t know if anyone from Memphis would consider me an authentic blues player,” he confesses, “but to me, it’s a part of all the jazz I’ve ever loved, from early Ellington and Louis Armstrong all the way up through Ornette Coleman. And all the guitar players I really love can play the blues, from Grant Green, to Wes Montgomery, to George Benson, to Jim Hall, or Kenny Burrell. I like guys that are not coming from that place, also. But when I play gigs, that’s a form that’s a given. It’s a place we can start from. Everybody is down with playing the blues and playing the blues different ways. We’re not going to sound like Mississippi John Hurt, but we’re playing blues. I try to play the blues in everything, even when there’s a million chord changes. ‘Oh my god, there’s so many chord changes, what do I do?!’ Well, just play the blues. You play the blues because there are so many chord changes.”

As for playing with Ludwig, another guitarist, Bernstein relishes the opportunity to not be the only guitarist onstage. “I play with a lot of guitar players and I always enjoy the challenge to not just have it sound like one 12-string guitar. To distinguish yourself tonally and personality-wise, so people can see and hear a conversation. We guitar players hang out anyway, so if we can do it on a gig and make it work for people to listen to, then it’s always a lot of fun.”

Catch Peter Bernstein with the Ted Ludwig Trio at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts, Tuesday, March 14th, 7:30 p.m., $20-$25.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday (on Tuesday): Frog Squad Live

Technical difficulties delayed this week’s Music Video Monday until Tuesday, but we’ve got a special treat for you today. Memphis jazz ensemble Frog Squad recently played the Crosstown Arts Green Room. The group, which consists of saxophonists Chad Fowler, Hope Clayburn, Franko Coleman, and Aaron Phillips, keyboardist Cedrick Taylor, bassist Khari Wynn, drummer Jon Harrison, and the bandleader, guitarist David Collins, loves to reset the music of composers from across the ages to their psychedelic free jazz mood. For this performance, it was eccentric French composer Erik Satie. Memphis Flyer Music Editor Alex Greene said, “One might compare it to the finer instrumental work of Frank Zappa, or perhaps the wilder, latter day efforts by Gil Evans, but ultimately it was its own sound. There were even lighthearted moments, as when the horn section’s oom-pah-pah dynamics were amplified by all the players doing knee bends in time to their parts. And an intriguing bit of futurism was added by effects pedals that Clayburn and Phillips played through, not to mention some fine synth renderings by Taylor.”

Justin Thompson filmed the performance for Crosstown Arts, with music mix provided by engineer Daniel Lynn and mixer Shelby Edwards. You can see the entire performance here, or if you just want a beautiful 7-minute jazz respite from the world, you can watch “Gnossienne No. 3” below. Frog Squad are currently crowdfunding their first full-length studio album Special Noise, so if you like what you hear, drop a few coins in their Indiegogo.

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

All That Jazz

Photo: Aronbrand | Dreamstime.com

A small choir shuffled through a throng of guests to take the “stage,” a corner in an office, performing for its grand opening. They honed in on their director Demetrius Robinson and launched into a gospel song. I don’t remember the song, but I remember the silence that fell over the crowd as these young people sent their voices to the heavens within the genre of gospel. The word “transcendent” comes to mind.

A recent article may have suggested that jazz and its incorporation in classroom instruction is a key marker of quality in high school music programs. Though I’m a lifelong student of jazz music, I still believe the following statement to be true: An educator’s lack of background in jazz should never be considered a hindrance to realizing the dreams of students or predicting student success in music.

Memphis undoubtedly left its mark on jazz history, but honing in on jazz as the sole predictor of teacher and student efficacy ignores the multitude of educators with no background in jazz who have helped students realize their dreams. The best educators of Memphis come from a variety of backgrounds, as diverse as the musical legacy of the city in which we live and treasure.

I’ve seen popular music, music production, and show-style marching band programs grow and expand in high schools. Are we in the educational field really committed to saying that jazz is the only way and any lack of it is a detriment to the level of quality a music program can reach? I firmly cannot nor will not. My jazz background is invaluable, but so are my experiences playing the blues, classical music, and with rock bands.

In high school I joined the Ridgeway High School choir. There I felt connected to music in a way I’d never felt. Literally resonating with classmates as we sang together was a revelation — a turning point that further convinced me music would be my path.

My choral teacher Jeff Brewer never professed to be a jazz musician, yet he is one of the finest educators to ever lead young people to musical excellence. Jazz is not the only path to success and to suggest otherwise discredits the efforts of music educators and students who choose a different path. So what indicates potential future success? A fierce commitment to young people and the pursuit of musical excellence regardless of genre. — Victor Sawyer

I am an advocate for music education and the teaching of improvisation in our school systems. I wanted to make sure that my statements were clear, as I am a product of school band programs. I truly enjoyed all of my junior high and high school band experiences. Additionally, I played in marching bands, orchestras, jazz bands, and wind ensembles throughout my collegiate career.

Improvisation and understanding music in relation to history and culture are skills that are one of the first tenets recommended by the National Standards for Music Education and were developed by the National Association for Music Education. With that said, Memphis is widely regarded as one of the most culturally rich cities in the world, and its music legacy has been verified by gospel, blues, jazz, rock-and-roll, R&B, and hip hop legends.

Memphis’ legendary musical status is connected with American Root Music, and it is a language worth continuing in our schools today. I am a fan of the current band directors/music teachers in the greater Memphis area because a lot of them are friends of mine and they have an incredibly difficult job.

Locally, there are several professional jazz bands that provide opportunities to play America’s original art form. There are even two New Orleans-style brass bands that use improvisation to extend their arrangements.

There are music support programs in Memphis like the Stax Music Academy (where I teach), which is an after school music program that offers classes to middle and high school students on how to improvise and play Memphis’ legacy music of both R&B and jazz. Additionally, Stephen Lee is founder/executive director of the Memphis Jazz Workshop and has one of the best youth jazz programs in the country.

Learning about improvisation through jazz offers the opportunity to deepen your musicianship in the area of self-expression. You have the chance to be spontaneous and create new ideas in the moment. Jazz encourages musicians to work together, and I have found that there is great joy that comes with emotional musical expression.

In conclusion, it is imperative that we support our music and fine arts programs, and it is my sincere hope that we continue teaching Memphis’ legacy music to all of our students of music.
— Paul McKinney

Victor Sawyer is a trombonist who works with Stax Music Academy and oversees music educators for the Memphis Music Initiative; Paul McKinney is a trumpet player and director of student success/alumni relations at the Stax Music Academy.

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Is It Time To Worry About Mike Conley?

What’s going on with Mike Conley? His shot is cold from midrange and from deep. While he’s shown surprising speed and burst — considering he’s only been playing full speed basketball for about a month after having not played since November 13th, 2017 — his floaters and shots close to the rim aren’t falling.

I think it’s still too early to know for sure what Conley’s new normal is, but currently he appears to be experiencing a shooting slump and hasn’t gotten his legs back. He’s consistently mentioned the importance of — and that he’s working on — his conditioning in the few weeks he’s been back on the court.

In Ten Takes after Ten Games, Chris Herrington broke down a couple things that alarmed him about Conley in Wednesday’s game against the Nuggets. There was a moment where Conley sped between two Nuggets defenders to tap a loose ball downcourt for a Garrett Temple dunk, instead of handily beating his defenders to the ball and pushing the fast break himself. Herrington also pointed out that Conley often looked a little tired, and struggled to turn the corner like he used to in the game against Denver.

Are these things indicative of new physical limitations that Conley (and the Grizzlies) will have to deal with? I don’t know yet. But consider that the Grizzlies played Wednesday night’s home game coming off of a West Coast road trip that featured the Jazz and a back-to-back ending against Golden State.

Conley played heavy minutes in each game, including both back-to-backs. He was guarding Steph Curry till late Monday night in Golden State, flew back to Memphis, and played the 9-1 Nuggets on Wednesday. Jamal Murray nearly had a 50 point game against the Celtics before his visit to Memphis. I don’t think we have to hit the panic button on Mike Conley yet. We’ll need more time, and he’ll need more time to get his legs back.

It is somewhat alarming that Conley is playing heavier minutes this year (31.5) than he did in his short stint last season (31.1). And this is happening when Conley has much better backup in terms of handling the ball and initiating the offense.

We’ve seen Wayne Selden, Kyle Anderson, and especially Shelvin Mack afford Conley the ability to play off the ball, and that’s kicked the Grizzlies offense up a notch from when Conley had to facilitate everything. If Conley’s experiencing a shooting slump and conditioning is a work in progress, I think the Grizzlies offense could vault higher than where it currently resides, in the middle of the pack.

I’m not sure what Coach Bickerstaff could’ve done to get Conley more rest on the West Coast road trip and the home game against Denver. The Jazz and Nuggets games were close, and the Grizzlies collapsed in the second halves of the Suns and Warriors games. As improved as the roster is, the Grizzlies can’t live without Conley when trying to come back or close out a game.

Conley remains the crux for the Grizzlies’ hopes for a meaningful playoff run. To me, his game looks like it’s almost back where it used to be, minus shooting and conditioning, but maybe he isn’t the player he used to be. How will it all play out?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Amy

There’s a strange contradiction in the hearts of performers. On the one hand, being the center of attention of a large group of people (“public speaking”) regularly tops surveys of people’s biggest fears. On the other hand, being the center of attention of a large group of people is the ultimate goal of any performer. If you want to get rich — or even make a living — as a musician, you’re going to have to be able to thrive in conditions that the vast majority of people would call hell.

That’s the big takeaway from Amy, the new documentary on the rise and fall of Amy Winehouse directed by Asif Kapadia. This is the director’s second documentary after 2010’s excellent Senna. But while the story of Formula One racing legend Ayrton Senna was mostly triumph, Winehouse’s story is a slow-motion tragedy that makes for a much more complex and challenging film.

As in Senna, Kapadia uses all archival footage stitched together with a keen editing eye. There are no talking heads — the few contemporary interviews are all presented as voice-only under relevant footage. We first meet Winehouse in 1998 at age 14 singing “Happy Birthday” with her friends Lauren Gilbert and Juliette Ashby. Her prodigious talent is already evident, even though she’s just a fresh-faced “North London Jewish girl,” as Island Records president Nick Gatfield calls her. Even then, she was a woman out of time. As Britpop and hip-hop dominated the London airwaves and the beginnings of dubstep seeped through the underground, Winehouse was idolizing Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett. Her first producer Salaam Remi puts it, “She had the styling of a 70-year-old jazz singer.”

There’s no shortage of images of Winehouse as a dead-eyed junkie, but Kapadia is able to show her humanity, because he won the trust of her first manager Nick Shymansky, who happened to obsessively chronicle her early tours with a handheld digital camera. Of all the people in her orbit, Shymansky comes off the best. He apparently had a bit of an unrequited crush on Winehouse, but even after she fired him in a fit of pique, he still had her best interests at heart. That is not true about literally anyone else she surrounded herself with after her 2003 album Frank became an unlikely hit in England. She started hanging out at London’s trendy Trash nightclub, where she met her husband Blake Fielder-Civil. If you’ve ever known a pair of mutually reinforcing junkies, you already know what their relationship was like. Booze, pot, coke, crack, meth, heroin — you name it, they took it. Fielder-Civil was also a musician, but when Winehouse became the biggest star in the world in the mid-2000s, he became a professional enabler.

Not that Winehouse needed much enabling. The film depicts her as never recovering from her parents’ divorce at the age of 9. She was severely depressed as a teenager and a bulimic from age 15 until she died at 27. She wrote the songs that propelled her to stardom as a way to deal with her many issues, but it was one song in particular that seemed to have doomed her. “Rehab” was written about a failed intervention Shymansky, Gilbert, and Ashby staged for her, which was squelched by her increasingly careerist father. It was kind of an afterthought on the carefully crafted Back To Black album, but when it became her biggest hit, it took on the air of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Amy functions a companion piece to Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. The two self-destructive musical prodigies had similar trajectories, but they were treated differently by the press and public. Cobain’s junk-induced suicide was an unexpected tragedy, while the world was practically taking bets on how long it would take Winehouse’s body to give out under the onslaught of a $16,000-a-week polysubstance habit. Amy does not hesitate to point the finger at the gawkers and paparazzi who fed them, even as Kapadia depends on their copious footage to fill out the overly long end of his film. Amy succeeds at humanizing Winehouse but leaves you feeling queasy at your own eagerness to watch the trainwreck.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Benefits for Joyce Cobb and Bobby Memphis

Everybody loves Joyce Cobb, the Memphis jazz singer, WEVL DJ, and sometime actress who was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Cobb’s longtime bandmate, multi-instrumentalist Hank Sable is ready to take that love to the next level. “I’ll tell you what I think,” he says. “I think Memphis would be better off if we made Joyce mayor of the city. She represents the best of who we are. When she sings there’s no black or white or anything else.”

Joyce Cobb

Sable, who’s played violin and guitar with Cobb’s band for 10 years, is just one of the many artists scheduled to perform at a benefit show at Boscos Squared on Sunday, March 29th. The event will include an open bar and food, a silent auction, and music performed by the Stax Academy, members of Cobb’s band past and present, and a long list of friends and musical collaborators.

And, even if you’re not a Memphis music aficionado, chances are you’ve seen Bobby Memphis (aka Bobby Jordan). Long before there were bike lanes in Memphis, Jordan, a cycling enthusiast who’s played bass and sung with bands like the Mudflaps and the Great Indoorsmen, could be seen pushing pedals all over town. Jordan was hospitalized after suffering a heart infection that lead to a stroke, and benefits have been scheduled in both Memphis and Nashville.

The Memphis benefit is Monday, March 30th, at Lafayette’s Music Room featuring performances by Amy LaVere and Will Sexton, Susan Marshall, the Bluff City Backsliders, and Papa Tops West Coast Turnaround. The show starts at 6 p.m. There is no cover charge, but donations are being accepted.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Charles Lloyd: Arrows Into Infinity

In one of the first scenes of the 2012 documentary Charles Lloyd: Arrows Into Infinity, recently released on DVD and Blu-ray, the saxophonist tells a radio interviewer, “I’m a Pisces, the water sign . . . When I was born, when my mother was pregnant, there was a big flood in Memphis. This thing was set up for me to come.” The quote is followed by a few bars of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” It may seem an odd way to begin a film about a jazz saxophonist, but Lloyd is nothing if not enigmatic. With him, a change was always sure to come.

Born in Memphis in 1938, Lloyd attended Manassas High School and earned his chops playing with the likes of Howlin’ Wolf and B.B. King. His parents would put up Duke Ellington and Billy Eckstine when those stars passed through town. Lewie Steinberg, the original bassist for the MGs (that’s him you hear on the 1962 recording of “Green Onions”) says, “The first dollar I ever made was with Charles Lloyd, bless him.”

Charles Lloyd

Lloyd eventually moved to New York where, during the 1960s, he managed crossover success that few have experienced in any genre. Having first migrated from blues to jazz, he then ventured into the pop and rock worlds. San Francisco bands such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane were eager to play on bills with him. “He captivated all of us,” says John Densmore, drummer for the Doors.

Pianist Herbie Hancock calls Lloyd a “jazz rockstar.” Lloyd played both jazz and pop festivals and was the first jazz artist to play live at the iconic Fillmore Auditorium. His 1966 album Forest Flower, recorded live (without his knowledge, he intimates on camera) at the Monterey Jazz Festival, is still considered one of the great jazz LPs of all time.

By the ’70s, Lloyd, a deeply spiritual man, had had enough of the music business and the demands it placed on him. He simply walked away and, like Greta Garbo and J.D. Salinger, became famously reclusive on a plot of land in Big Sur, California. “You can’t shoot an arrow into infinity if you’re always in motion,” he says in the opening scene. “You have to pull the bow back, then the arrow can fly.”

Directors Jeffery Morse and Dorothy Darr, who is Lloyd’s wife, do a masterful job of capturing the artist’s life in motion. There are beautiful shots of him walking along forested roads and surf-beaten beaches as well as in recording studios and onstage — all environments where Lloyd flourishes.

Through Darr’s personal connection, it’s obvious she knew the questions to ask and of whom to ask them. Interviews with the likes of Hancock, the Band’s Robbie Robertson, producer Don Was, and Darr herself give us an intimate look at a man who flew through the air like an arrow before going away to recharge.

He came back to the world in the late ’80s after a near-death experience that is mentioned, though not expanded upon. “I came out of that, and I rededicated myself to this beautiful tradition,” he says.

With the help of longtime friend, jazz drummer Billy Higgins, he began recording and touring again. In one of the film’s most touching scenes, Lloyd wraps a blanket around his old friend’s shoulders as Higgins, suffering from liver failure, nears the end of his life.

This is an important film as Lloyd is a bridge between the music’s architects – Ellington, Basie, Coltrane, Bird – and today. “It’s the wisdom of the ancients with modernity,” Lloyd says of today’s jazz. “It’s arrows into infinity.”