The latest entry in our "who wrote it" chronicles comes to us courtesy of guitarist Hugo Wainzinger. Hugo told me about this one during a break at a gig last week.
First, a Henry Mancini tune, "Meglio Stasera (It Had Better Be Tonight)," from "The Pink Panther (La Pantera Rosa)." The film was released in 1964:
Here is Astor Piazzolla's "Contrastes," written around 1955. The theme in question starts at 0:40.
As they say, you be the judge. They are both great writing, regardless. I remember "Meglio Stasera" from my big band days, as a stock arrangement that we played as a ballroom samba (not a tango), for dancers.
A few years ago I got hold of O Melhor de Roberto Menescal, a collection of tunes by the great composer and guitarist. Menescal is a pioneer of bossa nova, best known to American jazzers as the writer of "O Barquinho (My Little Boat)" - but he's contributed far more than that.
Recently, I brought in his tune "Voce" to an adult combo class I teach. After the class Carlos, our sax player, checked out Menescal's website. It turns out that pdf's of every chart in the book are available there, as free downloads. If you are interested in checking out some beautiful, well-written bossas, here's the page on Menescal's website. Click the song title; it will show lyrics, and supply a pdf lead sheet for many (though not all) of the songs.
There's been some buzz (no pun intended) about a new plastic saxophone from the Vibrato Co., Ltd. The company is based in Thailand (here's the company website); the saxophone is distributed in the USA by Vibratosax USA (here's the American website).
I haven't played one yet.
Here's a video (thanks, Carlos!) with Jim Cheek doing a side-by-side comparison with a Yanigasawa A901. Jim sounds terrific on both horns, but you can hear the difference. The Yanigasawa has a crisper attack, and a richer sound, with more highs in the spectrum.
I listened to some of the video clips on the company website when my wife was in the next room. Her comment was that when played by a really good player, this horn is like a $10 bottle of Vino Nobile from Trader Joe's. I'll interpret: Not bad, especially considering the price, but it will never be a $50 bottle.
Here's a video interview with Piyapat Thanyakij, president of Vibrato Sax, at the NAMM show. There's a nice demo at the end of the clip by saxophonist Reggie Padilla, brother of the interviewer. Reggie's a great player. My friend Ken in Hawaii actually hipped me to him some while ago, when Ken's son was taking lessons with Reggie. Reggie makes the horn sound very good, but there's still a relative flatness to the tone.
Judging from the video clips on the company website, the mouthpiece makes a large difference in the tone (of course).
But really, why shouldn't someone be able to make a decent plastic sax, theoretically, anyway? We've had plastic clarinets for a long time, and they can be quite good, depending on the manufacturer. And of course, there was the Grafton plastic sax, in the 1950s. Charlie Parker played one at the legendary Massey Hall concert in 1953, and sounded just like he did on any other alto (allowing, that is, for the very low-fidelity recording techniques of the period).
Vibratosax makes several alto models, differing mainly in the composition of the polycarbonate. You can read more about this on the company website. Only altos so far.
Here's a "Repairman's Overview." Matt Stohrer lists some possible issues with the design and materials:
It sounds to me as though all-metal keywork might have been a better idea. In general, I'd worry about long-term durability.
Piyapat Thanyakij's talking point about the "waterproof" qualities of this horn reminds me of this classic video from Hermeto Pascoal. If you are looking to recreate this performance, a waterproof sax might be perfect for you:
I'm looking forward to checking out one of these horns. I'm sure it won't be long until a student walks in with a Vibratosax alto.
If you are an "early adopter" sort of person and just have to check out this horn, you can click here to buy one.
Mestre Acordeon and Mestra Suelly's B2B group is two weeks into their 1-year bike trip from Berkeley to Brazil; they should be somewhere around Santa Barbara right now.
The send-off party in Berkeley on Sept. 1 was a kick (no pun intended). I had the rare pleasure of playing tenor sax in the context of 20 or so capoeiristas playing berimbaus, pandeiros, and agogos, singing capoeira songs, while watching students and mestres playing capoeira in front of the stage. The energy was amazing. It was an honor and a privilege.
The B2B group will arrive in Los Angeles this week, and there are some events scheduled:
The best way to check their progress seems to be through their Facebook page.
So let's think back...why was the old Real Book so successful? I mean the original bootleg one, produced by two Berklee students in 1975. Here's why: because it was so much better than the shoddy fakebooks we had before that. We liked the old RB because:
It included mostly great tunes that were a core part of the standard jazz repertoire, with very few "filler" tunes;
It had mostly (not entirely) correct, jazz-friendly chord changes;
It had nice calligraphy that you could read in dim club light;
Although it was a money-making effort, the old RB was produced with respect for the musicians who would be using it.
The kids who produced it pretty much knew how to produce a practical yet accurate chart.
What did we not like about the old RB? The inaccuracies, in a few cases egregious, and the fact that it was a pirate product, that did not respect copyright (at least that's how I felt, although many musicians couldn't care less about copyright).
Many of the tunes can only be described as "filler";
The changes are often not presented in a jazz-friendly way;
There is an unacceptably high percentage of errors, most of them preventable, if the company had cared enough to edit the book properly;
It's a money-making effort all right, but without sufficient respect for the musicians who will be using it;
And the "World's Largest Print Music Company" in many cases did not seem to know how to produce a practical yet accurate chart.
Positive features: A readable font that mimics the calligraphy in the old RB; and copyright is respected.
Please see my review of Hal Leonard RB Vol. 4 - critical, but polite, I think. Many of the observations about that volume hold true for this one as well.
For this review, I am feeling less generous. This big company should know better.
Except for the respect of copyright and the nice font, this book is a throwback to the bad old days of fakebooks that were full of filler, full of errors, and that required informed interpretation to be useful to the average jazz musician. I don't want to spend too much time on specific cases, but here is a representative example:
The chart for "Anything Goes," like many charts in this book, uses changes that seem to have been copied straight from the original sheet music. In most old sheet music, chord symbols were an afterthought, added to a composed piano part. Changes are often harmonically superfluous; or in the absence of the piano arrangement, need to be carefully voiced to make sense. In the old days, we developed the skill of knowing how to handle these sorts of charts - when to ignore changes, or when and how to rearrange them in a more practical way. Musicians who are accustomed to "modern" lead sheets often don't know how to do this reworking, or have no patience for it. The better, more jazz-oriented charts of the last 40 years (e.g. the old RB, or charts in Aebersold playalongs) took care of the simplification process, taking the burden off the end user. (See this post for comments on how to create a good chart.)
The "Tune-Dex" fakebook of 1949, one of the very first fakebooks, consisted of lead sheets that just copied the chord symbols from the original sheet music, as was apparently done in this Hal Leonard chart for "Anything Goes." As a matter of fact, this HL chart is almost exactly like the Tune-Dex chart of 1949 for "Anything Goes," in the details of its awkward chord placement.
In fairness, a number of the charts are better conceived.
Next, a word about the tune choice in this volume. Out of 400 tunes, I'd say about 80 might be useful. By what stretch of the imagination should a "Real Book" (i.e., a purportedly practical, jazz-oriented fakebook) include:
"Aquarius" (yes, that one)
"The Beat Goes On"
"Billie Jean"
"Dragnet"
"Smooth Operator"
"Somethin' Stupid"
"What's New Pussycat?"
As with HL RB Vol. 4, there are also some extreme retro "trad" tunes like "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," some moderately interesting second-tier bebop, and some forgettable fusion tunes.
Hal Leonard has attached the name "Real Book" to about as many products as it could (Bluegrass, Christmas, Dixieland, Rock, Blues, Worship). In this usage, "Real Book" just means "fakebook," nothing more. The term formerly referred to a product that was by and for jazz musicians, produced with a healthy respect for the people who would be using it. Now it's just a term that is being mined to confer some credibility.
BTW, "Star Eyes" is just about always played in Eb, not F. Don't use this chart.
Apparently, HL's "Real Vocal Book" has editorial problems also. Check out this Amazon page, and scroll down to read the customer review from "PianoJazzMan," including HL's reply.
I guess I won't be publishing anything through Hal Leonard any time soon. But darn it, we should be honest.
The other day, Patricia was listening to Puccini's "Tosca," and noticed how much this piece ("Ah, quegli occhi!") sounded like Charlie Chaplin's "Smile." Check it out for yourself. Here's Placido Domingo singing Puccini, and Nat King Cole singing Chaplin:
There's that old saying: "If you're going to steal, steal from the best."
And here's the Wikipedia entry for "Smile," with lots of interesting info. For example, although the melody is from the music to Chaplin's movie "Modern Times" (1936), Nat Cole was the first to record "Smile" as a song (1954). There's nothing in this article as yet about "Ah, quegli occhi!"
But now check out this one - Joao Bosco's "O Bebado e o Equilibrista" ("The Drunk and the Tightrope Walker"). It's a tribute to Chaplin, and a poetic commentary on the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil at the time it was written. Bosco uses "Smile" as the intro to "O Bebado," then reworks it into a great samba (I also pick up a bit of "La Vie en Rose" and "Aquarela do Brasil" in there):
