howard wrote:Jew. Not really white.
Of course. But also daughter of partner in the Rothschild banking empire (her maiden name was Rothschild), so she was at least an honorary white.
I believe the Rothschild family excommunicated her for moving to NYC and joining the bebop crowd. Though she must have still had enough of her own money to own luxury apartments and a country place, as well as serving as a quiet patron for so many bebop musicians, famous and not.
The interplay between blacks and Jews in the music industry of the 50s has long interested me. Several genres which are typically seen as 'black music' actually were dynamic partnerships between blacks and Jews -- who at the time were seen by many as bitter enemies.
There were certainly Jewish jazz musicians in that era. But moreover, many of the label owners, producers and engineers who made the classic records of the bebop era were Jewish. Certainly money was involved. But there wasn't much in this genre. Without a very close working relationship between bebop musicians and a small number of bebop-obsessed label owners, producers and engineers, this form of music would not have flourished the way it did.
Small independent record labels were at the core of the bebop scene. They recorded jazz musicians well before the established labels had any interest. Blue Note was the major independent. It was run by Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, both Jewish emigres. Lion also produced many of their bebop sessions. Bob Weinstock's Prestige was perhaps the second most significant player. Both employed the engineering genius Rudy Van Gelder, an optometrist who ran his own recording studio in New Jersey. If you look at the credits on hundreds of the greatest jazz recordings from the late 40s to the early 60s you will find many with Lion or Weinstock as the producer, and Van Gelder as the engineer -- and his New Jersey studio as the recording location.
If you erased Lion, Weinstock and Van Gelder from history, then bebop may have no more significance today than dixieland jazz. They took struggling, marginal, often drug-addicted musicians who typically had little rehearsal time and sometimes no actual jazz group into the studio and quickly produced what were to be the iconic records of 50s bebop. Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, and Cannonball Adderly were some of those who recorded with them.
Blue Note was distinctive in actually paying the musicians to rehearse before recording them. Prior to that, featured musicians like Charlie Parker would just show up (often in less than a sober state) and blow, on songs that were lifted with minimal alteration from existing standards (to capture writing royalties), playing with whomever a record label put in the studio with them. Parker was a genius, but this was not the optimal way to capture his ability. Jazz fans benefited greatly from the financial risk that Lion and Wolff were willing to take with musicians who were not then selling many records, and sometimes who could not reliably get gigs in NYC.
I did not know her story. Fascinating. I am woefully ignorant of Monk; better start to remedy that.
Monk takes some effort to listen to. He is certainly not in the free jazz school. But he also did not care to tread the tracks of those before him. So he used some unusual meters, odd melodies, and his piano playing is often fragmented and sparse compared to the melodic rapid-fire note-generators like Bud Powell, Art Tatum, and Errol Garner. As off-putting as Monk sometimes chose to be, close listening pays dividends. There is a reason that great jazz musicians who were also great composers would cover Monk's tunes.
I'd start with Monk's early works with combos. Look for sax player Charlie Rouse, one of the few who could play with Monk, on the small labels. Monk's recordings in the mid 60s with bigger labels get more attention, because of the label's marketing power and the his burgeoning reputation. But at that point he was often in bad shape, and often just re-hashing prior work and assorted covers.
That will go on my play list. She is a fascinating historical figure, only partly due to her almost silent role -- at least until the demonic Parker scandalously died in her luxury apartment -- as patron of the bebop scene. You can imagine how the straight world and media worked this over.
The only thing I've seen about Nica on video was a bit in Clint Eastwood's movie
Bird where she was briefly depicted on-screen as Bird died alone in her apartment. This is a great movie by the way. Yes, it's Eastwood. And he shot it with no money, no time, and with no original Parker recordings. I think it bombed at the box office -- I recall seeing it in an empty theatre in the late 80s. I recall this well because I had smoked a joint in the parking lot and was a little concerned about standing out in a crowd of five; I thought I was going to blend in with the crowd. But Eastwood is a genuine lover of jazz, and this is a work of art unlike anything he has been otherwise associated with. A young Forrest Whitaker excels as Bird. He's on screen all the time, so this is a big part.
I am highly critical of how music is used in films about musicians. I saw the Jimi Hendrix movie featuring Andre 3000 last week. I liked the movie, and Andre is a very credible Jimi. Eerie in fact. But I was in a bad way when I realized the movie would be completely absent any actual Hendrix tracks or even re-recorded compositions. I presume there was bad blood between the producer and the Hendrix estate.
Bird, despite having no actual Parker recordings (probably inadequate from a technical recording point of view), actually has great music. They used isolated Parker solos from tracks that may not have even been released, and blended them with tremendous combo work that was technically excellent and captured the spirit of the time. That can only be a meticulous labor of love, that Hollywood studios would not generally undertake.
