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JAZZ ARTICLE BY MICHAEL WEST FOR GRAMMY NEWS
The “Best Jazz Vocal Album”
category at this year’s Grammy Awards had a stellar list of nominees.
Included are Randy Crawford’s No Regrets; Kurt Elling’s
Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman;
Luciana Souza’s Tide; T
ierney Sutton’s Desire; and,
notably, Roberta Gambarini’s remarkable So in Love. This was
Gambarini’s second nomination.
“It feels great, of course!”
says Gambarini of her nomination. “I’m especially happy because
so many of the other nominees are friends: I’ve worked with Kurt Elling,
and I’ve known Tierney for almost twelve years, since the 1998 Thelonious
Monk Jazz Competition. I know Luciana Souza, too. So it’s very nice.”
The Monk Competition to which Gambarini refers jump-started her career in the United States. Before that, however, she was already an accomplished artist. Born in Turin, Italy, she inherited her parents’ devotion to jazz and at 17 began singing at a jazz club operated by family friends. She moved to Milan a year later and quickly established herself as a major talent there, winning third prize in a national competition and topping an Italian critics’ poll for favorite jazz vocalist.
However, after several years
of working throughout Europe, “I felt that I had done all 
I could
do there,” she says. “I thought I’d better move so I could really
hone my craft. And in my opinion that could only be done by going to
the States, where the music was born, and trying to get in touch
with the greats who’ve made its history and tradition.” That, in
fact, is what happened: After taking third place in 1998’s Thelonious
Monk Competition, Gambarini met and was mentored by veteran saxophonists
Benny Carter and James Moody. “I was very lucky to meet so many wonderful
musicians,” she says. After these apprenticeships, she made her U.S.
debut as a leader in 2006 with the standards album Easy to
Love (for which she received her first Grammy nomination), following
it two years later with You Are There, a duet recording with
Hank Jones.
So in Love is Gambarini’s
third album, with accompanists including Moody, trumpeter Roy Hargrove,
bassist George Mraz, and drummer Al Foster, among others. “I did some
songs that are a little bit different in the sense that they’re not
Great American Songbook, or written by jazz musicians,” she explains.
“I did a version of ‘Crazy’ by Willie Nelson, a medley of songs
by The Beatles, and also a couple of songs from my home country. So
it was a little bit of a broadening of boundaries, in terms of repertoire,
from what I did before. It’s something that I want to do more.”
It will be a joy to listen to Gambarini as she broadens boundaries and develops her art. In the meantime, So in Love was and is a worthy contender for the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album.
However, Gambarini’s colleague Kurt Elling and Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman were the big winners at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards on January 31, ending a streak of eight nominations without victory. “A little testament to staying in the game and continuing to do what you believe in,” said Elling in his acceptance speech. (Elling also co-hosted the Grammy pre-telecast ceremony, which can be viewed online at http://www.grammy.com/live.)
Front Row Music TV had the Front Row Seat at the Lifetime Achievement Awards at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. Seated beside Blues Legend, David 'Honeyboy' Edwards and Quincy Jones were Six Generations of the Blues producers, Scott Shuman, Lynn Orman and Michael Frank.
In 1996 Honeyboy was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. In 2007 he was honored with a Grammy Award in the Best Traditional Blues category for Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen, produced/engineered by Scott Shuman. The Special Merit Award for his contribution to his life and recording of the Blues was presented by Neil Portnow, President of the Recording Academy in a special Grammy presentation at The Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony during GRAMMY Week.
The Lifetime Achievement Award, established in 1962, is presented by vote of The Recording Academy's National Trustees to performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording.
"After all these years I'm still kickin' it," said 'Honeyboy' at the Lifetime Achievement Awards. The audience gave him a rousing standing ovation. Surrounded by Lorreta Lynn's daughters, Leonard Cohen, The Thomas Edison Family, Michael Jackson's manager, Frank DiLeo and other honorees in good company. Honeyboy is the oldest living Delta Blues guitarist.
One Night, One Stage, Six Generations of the Blues
The way Honeyboy Edwards plays is the way it’s played. Doesn’t make a difference it it’s Sunflower County, Mississippi. or the nightclub “Space,” in Evanston (which is where I caught him last week at the Second Annual Blues on the North Shore Festival). It doesn’t matter who’s playing with him, either, and that fact was clear in the eyes and hands of guitarist John Primer, bassist Aron Burton and drummers Willie Big-Eyes Smith, followed by his son, Kenny. Edwards is 94 years old, and where he takes the song is his prerogative. It may not get there in 12 bars. It may get there sooner. Maybe later. The only flaw is in the listener.
John Primer didn’t just keep his eyes on Honeyboy: at times his fingers never left the steady security of the bass strings. He’d find the rest of the guitar, and take off on a tear, at a nod from Honeyboy, who would take back the song as quickly as he gave it. If you want to understand what accompaniment is, this was as good a lesson as any. It’s about listening, no matter how many times you think you’ve heard the song.
I could say I got to talk with Honeyboy, but mostly I got to listen, throwing out a timid question to keep him going, in hopes of hearing anything like the stories he told to Janis Martinson and Earwig Records founder Michael Robert Frank, whose as-told-to biography of Edwards “The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing” is as close as you’ll get to the canon of Honeyboy’s tales. Just let the man speak and get out of the way.
Jeff Dale, an old Southside bluesman, rescued me by buying Edwards a beer. Frank helped with some whiskey. Before long, Edwards was sliding into extemporaneous riffs of his life in the Delta – jumping trains with Little Walter, the government man asking his mother questions, for the 1920 Census. Some were the 8-bar versions, some 12, some of indefinite time and structure. Quite a few were little more than a killer line (Why’d you hop a train to Oklahoma? We was looking for some (women)…).
The only regret I have is Honeyboy’s tales kept me from the full set of Big Jack Johnson, though the walls shook with his playing, and he managed to get a largely sit-down crowd rocking. Therein is the only drawback of a venue like “Space” and a clientele that had paid for tables and seats. Space is generous in architecture and acoustics, though it sacrifices the elbow-to-elbow feel of Bill’s Blues Bar, where Jeff Dale and the South Woodlawners played the following night, with the Columbia College Blues Ensemble for openers.
For Honeyboy, it seems altogether appropriate to sit down, shut up and listen. For the other players (Bob Corritore, Patrick Rynn, Chris James, John Primer, Willie Big-Eyes and Kenny Smith, Rob Stone, Jack Johnson, among others), it seemed a shame no one kicked over a chair or two and pitched a wang-dang-doodle. It would have done Koko Taylor proud. She was laid to rest earlier that day. But in Evanston, the show went on, around a 94-year-old who’s still telling his story. In his time.
Submitted by Geoffrey Mohan
Check out a live perform video by David "Honeyboy" Edwards recorded at the Blues on the North Shore concert in Chicago by Front Row Music.
http://www.frontrowmusic.tv/node/336
Front Row Music on Tour: Blues, Jams, and Jelly Rolls
Earwig Music CEO and Executive Producer of 'Six Generations of The
Blues from Mississippi to Chicago" chats with NBC national
correspondent, Lester Holt for an upcoming segment on the Today Show
and NBC Nightly News featuring, Earwig Music and Blues Legend, David
'Honeyboy' Edwards. The taping was filmed at Buddy Guys in Chicago and
The Paramount Blues Festival in Grafton, Wisconsin.
Celebrating the launch of Front Row Music Television and the upcoming broadcast of
their Mhz Worldview special, 'Six Generations of the Blues from
Mississippi to Chicago" are partners and producers, Scott Shuman, with
NBC national correspondent, Lester Holt, Lynn Orman and Michael Frank.
On stage at Buddy Guys during the filming of an interview with Blues
Legend, David 'Honeyboy' Edwards and Michael Frank. The segment aired on The Today Show and NBC Nightly News in December.
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