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Bebop, Swing, and Bella Musica: Jazz and the Italian American Experience
World War II and the atomic bomb changed not only the political landscape, but art, architecture and music as well. In architecture, "Googie" or "Ray-Gun Gothic" combined many of the traditional elements introduced by Frank Lloyd Wright almost forty years earlier—the use of large windows and glass, natural elements such as rocks and greenery—with new symbolism of the atomic age. These included the use of bright, pastel colors, stars, amoebae, saucer shapes, and atomic models and images. The result was a spate of coffee shops, drive-ins, motels, restaurants, and other public buildings that are largely gone but still admired by a small but loyal and educated following. There is a similar comparison in jazz, yet on a much more profound and intellectual level. Bebop was already taking form before the end of World War II, and cool jazz was born as a direct reaction to the fury of bebop. But one artist took some of the elements of bebop, cool jazz, and even traditional jazz and added more unique innovations like time sequences in 7/8 or 5/4 time, Latin and Middle Eastern rhythms, and studio techniques like overdubbing. That artist was Lennie Tristano.
Tristano was, and continues to be, a cult figure, known and admired primarily by jazz scholars and musicians. According to his son, guitarist Bud Tristano (named after pianist
Bud Powell
piano1924 - 1966
"There are two major misconceptions about my papa: that his music was cold and intellectual, and that he often intimidated drummers," says Tristano. "The first one is silly. He wasn't a robot; he played his music with passion. And the second one is kind of an urban legend. There was an occasion early in his career when a drummer couldn't make a recording session, so a drummer unfamiliar with his music took his place and played minimally for that reason, by his own choice. It was a new style. I could see how some musicians, drummers or otherwise, had a hard time following him, but he didn't deliberately go out there and try to stump people."
Lennie Tristano was born in Chicago into an Italian immigrant family. Initially, many thought that the family hailed from Basilicata, but, in recent years, Bud Tristano and other family members have been trying to pinpoint the exact birthplace of their ancestors.
"Some relatives are trying to verify this but the Tristanos were apparently small-town farmers in Italy," Tristano says. "We're pretty sure they were from Basilicata but we've also discovered a small town near Naples named Aversa which has both a jazz club and a street named after my father. My sister went there and many of the local people kept telling her, 'No, there were many Tristanos from this town.' So now we have to check this out."
Blind by the age of 9, Tristano turned his attention to music at a young age. This was due mostly to the influence of his mother, a pianist and opera singer. Tristano's earliest childhood memories of going to a special school for handicapped kids in Chicago haunted him. Says Bud: "He disliked that school...It wasn't like today, where you have specialists in different fields....Kids who had handicaps, whatever the handicap was, were thrown together in one big school. It was chaotic, more of an institution than a school. Papa hated it."
After spending ten years studying at a school for the blind in Chicago, Tristano attended The American Conservatory of Music in downtown Chicago from 1940-1943. During this time, he gave brief lessons to future jazz greats
William Russo
composer / conductor1928 - 2003
Lee Konitz
saxophone, alto1927 - 2020
Stan Kenton
piano1911 - 1979
During his early twenties, Tristano developed an intense and disciplined practice approach that would rival that of the greatest classical performers. This practice incorporated a strict, mathematical approach. In the liner notes for The New Tristano, critic Barry Ulanov writes: "The mathematics of this procedure can be deducted. If someone has practically infinite patience he can sit down and copy the notes Lennie plays. Or, with somewhat less perseverance, he can sit down with Lennie and discover what sort of exercises go into the preparation of such performances. There are, for example, the exercises of the left hand, one finger at a time, in which the single hand is divided up into lines. He will practice improvising with say, two fingers assigned to the bass line and three the melody, then three on the bass and two on the melody, and so on and so on until the finger drops from exhaustion."
Tristano had a deep respect for the early pioneers of his art, in this case, piano jazz in the form of
Jelly Roll Morton
piano1890 - 1941
Charlie Parker
saxophone, alto1920 - 1955
This technique gained Tristano fast acclaim and many local gigs. Yet, while Chicago was a still a hot bed of jazz, Tristano realized that the "action" was in New York. It was here that his greatest influences, Charlie Parker and pianists
Art Tatum
piano1909 - 1956
Dizzy Gillespie
trumpet1917 - 1993
Instead of the pulsating, driving beat of drummers like
Max Roach
drums1925 - 2007
Philly Joe Jones
drums1923 - 1985
While Tristano's music was often "cool" in its tone, it should by no means be compared to the "cool" jazz of
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
Stan Getz
saxophone, tenor1927 - 1991
Chet Baker
trumpet and vocals1929 - 1988
This is best demonstrated on the cut, "Turkish Mambo." Like much of Morton's work, it is solo piano with varying rhythms. But with "Mambo," Tristano turns Morton and the jazz world on its ear. Using overdubs—one of the first jazz musicians to employ this technology—Tristano overlaps himself playing in three time sequences of 7/8 to 7/4, 5/8 to 5/4 and 3/8 to 3/4.
The result is a cascade of intensity, comparable to several manic mice running through a gasoline-soaked maze in which each step they take ignites the very area upon which they are running. This type of rhythmic alteration typifies Tristano's most notable works, Lennie Tristano, (1955) and The New Tristano (1962). Of these albums, Barry Ulanov writes: " In most of these tracks he works with multiple time sequences, setting 5/4 or 3/8 or some other time against a steady 4/4. But the 4/4 is not so much a fixed measure of our quarter notes to the bar as a continuity of beats—1,1,1,1, without any bar-line restrictions. On top of that Lennie constructs a fresh contour of triplets. He alters the basic structure by adding a fourth note to the triplet, borrowing one note from the second triplet to make four notes to the first one, or picking up a whole triplet from the next bar to add to the one on the third, etc. The result is an astonishing contour...."
This innovative form and anti-rhythmic structure did little to help Tristano sell records or incorporate him into the mainstream world of jazz. Tristano earned the majority of his income from teaching, so he was not economically tied to either the recording or club industry. While many musicians sometimes fraternized with their peers to get playing or recording gigs, Tristano very seldom did so. Quite the opposite: Like Morton, he was not afraid to directly criticize his fellow musicians, often calling them out by name. In 1950 he told Downbeat: "If you give watered-down bop to the public, they'd rather hear that than the real thing. Has
George Shearing
piano1919 - 2011
His attitude also offended many critics and fans. In The New York Times' Essential Library of Jazz, author Ben Ratliff writes: "He was an early example of the stiffly opinionated jazz musician, the artist as ideologue, which we've seen much more often since."
It is ironic to note that Ratliff refers to Tristano as being "early." Jelly Roll Morton criticized the work of everyone from Ellington to Armstrong throughout the 1920s and 30s. Unlike Tristano, however, Morton did so while extolling his own self-described genius. As one who preferred not to defend himself in public, the more humble Tristano was vulnerable to misconceptions.
Says his son Bud: "He got negative reactions because he spoke his mind. It's as simple as that. It was never personal. And there's this notion floating around that my dad, like other white musicians, was somehow trying to change jazz or take credit away from black artists. Nothing could be further from the truth. He often used a litany of names to describe a certain lineage of jazz development:
Louis Armstrong
trumpet and vocals1901 - 1971
Roy Eldridge
trumpet1911 - 1989
Lester Young
saxophone1909 - 1959
Billie Holiday
vocals1915 - 1959
Charlie Christian
guitar, electric1916 - 1942
After recording The New Tristano in 1963, the artist practically disappeared from the jazz scene. Concentrating on giving lessons in New York, he shunned the jazz world. Yet although Tristano found the modern jazz scene uninteresting, he continued to give back to jazz via his role as a teacher.
"My father always had the air of a teacher," Bud Tristano says. "Even when he lived in Chicago, people would come up to him and ask him for his advice. He had this ability to crystallize things so that people would get it. And, as a teacher, he actually got freer and more open-minded as he got older. In the beginning, he had a set progression which everyone had to follow. He later allowed students to bring in copies of other types of music to either follow or sing along with. I heard that people were bringing in rock-and-roll music and other such things, which is pretty funny to think about considering my father's supposed reputation as a stickler."
Tristano left an impressive legacy. His label, Jazz Records, is still in existence today, run by his daughter Carol Tristano, a jazz drummer. In 1999 a bassist, Peter Ind, released the book Jazz Visions: Lennie Tristano and His Legacy. Equally important has been Tristano's lasting influence on jazz music. He has inspired, among others,
Charles Mingus
bass, acoustic1922 - 1979
Herbie Hancock
pianob.1940
Bill Evans
piano1929 - 1980
Anthony Braxton
woodwindsb.1945
Bud Tristano rejects the symbolic public persona of his father as an ice-cold, self-absorbed intellectual : "Critics use the term avant-garde when describing his music. I don't like that term; it's very pretentious. My father wasn't like that at all. He was a very interesting and engaging conversationalist. His students all loved him. And he was very progressive in terms of working with female students. He felt that they had a lot to give to jazz music and that their talents had been ignored for decades."
One of Bud Tristano's favorite childhood memories flies in the face of his father's perceived jazz image:
"Growing up, I remember playing a 'stop-and-freeze' type of game with him and my sisters when we were younger," he says. "He would play on his piano and we would dance completely in free form. Then he would suddenly stop playing and we'd 'freeze' in whatever position we were in. He even used to play children's songs to us with a bass line!
"My father talked to you like a real person, even if you were a little kid," concludes Tristano. "He wasn't like a typical adult, who talks down to children or is condescending. I believe that he envisioned an environment for raising children that would enhance their development as artists. He showed as much respect to a child as he did a fully-grown adult."
Reprinted from Bebop, Swing, and Bella Musica: Jazz and the Italian American Experience 2015 by Bill Dal Cerro and David Anthony Witter by permission of Bella Musica Publishing.
Tags
Lennie Tristano
Book Excerpts
Bill Dal Cerro
Bud Powell
Chicago
William Russo
Lee Konitz
Stan Kenton
Jelly Roll Morton
Charlie Parker
New Orleans
Art Tatum
Dizzy Gillespie
Max Roach
Philly Joe Jones
Miles Davis
Stan Getz
Chet Baker
George Shearing
Louis Armstrong
Roy Eldridge
Lester Young
Billie Holiday
Charlie Christian
Charles Mingus
Herbie Hancock
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