The Touch of Your Lips

The Touch of Your Lips.mp3

Today I sat down amidst a flurry of activity next door. 

A quick peek through the living room blinds delivered the bad news: another work crew was settling in for the day. 

Unusual?

Sadly no. That is, if it weren't for the jackhammers.  jesus...jackhammers.  wtf.

But, this sonic intrusion, brutal and hardcore as it was, served to harden my resolve; screw you guys.  i gotta do what i gotta do. The chet baker project continues.

Hence, this rendition of one of the most tender pieces of music i've ever heard...chet's version of course, not necessarily my own.  but as we all know, the purpose of this project is not to recreate chet's music.  no one can do that.

Someone or something in this someone decided to tackle another emotionally charged tune of chet's.
In the inimitable words of Firesign Theatre:  "another one....just like the other one."

This time it was a ballad by Rodgers and Hart called 'The Touch of Your Lips."

The touch of your lips
Upon
my brow
Your lips that are cool
and sweet
Such tenderness
Lies in their soft caress

My Heart
Forgets
To beat

Yeah, they're killer lyrics.
How about these guys, Rodgers and Hart.  So many beautiful songs, so squandered, laid as they were on the banal breast of that most ridiculous of musical genres, the Broadway Show.

This tune has a story to it.

About ten years ago when i was living and working in ithaca, , dancing as fast i could, raising a family, snatching a gig here and there, i started listening to chet intensively.  i had heard of him before of course, being a trumpet player myself and having grown up listening to all kinds of jazz.

This was courtesy of my father's interest in music and to his weekly sunday morning hi-fi concerts ranging from Victory at Sea to Barbara Streisand (before her head got bigger than her voice) to Stan Kenton to Puccini to Maynard Ferguson.  It was wonderful.  Looking back on it i think without a doubt that this was one, if not the most salient childhood experience that helped determine my musical destiny (for better or worse--for the pleasure and exultation of musical performance or for worse, the extreme frustration of trying to make a living through its pursuit).  All the same i owe him big time.

Anyway i was listening to chet A LOT back then.  This tune 'The Touch of Your Lips' was the first of his tunes over which i would obsess.

I would put this tune on the stereo (back in the day we all used to listen to music through these big rectangular boxes so everyone could hear it; they're called speakers.  you may have heard of them) and hit 'replay.'  Then i would sit back on the sofa, toke up maybe and just listen over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to chet breathe life into this tune one soft phrase after another.

I was so moved by this tune 'The Touch of Your Lips' that one night after putting the kids to bed, i put it on and listened to it.  The emotion of the song and the way it was orchestrated (just piano, upright bass and brushes) and the way chet exhaled the sentiment of the tune into the microphone overwhelmed me to the point that i called my best friend over to the house to share it.

it was late.  after 10 on a school night.  but i called him anyway.

"listen you gotta come over here right away."

"why?  what's up?"

"you gotta hear this tune."

All he said into the phone before showing up at my door  was " really?"  He was like that.  He'd honor anything anyone said just as long as there was some sort of authentically felt ideation behind it.

He came over and i put it on.  We listened together.  And after the last note died back into silence, we sat there quietly.

"That is the most beautiful tune i've ever heard in my life," i sighed.
And all he could say was "really?"

Again with the ' really.'

Oh well.  it was ok that it meant more to me than to him.  It was important to me then and it is still.
That's why i picked it yesterday i guess.  I wanted to experience its heavy sentimentality again.  i suppose i thought i needed it in order to draw out from my own heart/mind a sister state of emotion with which to resonate.

Turns out i did find a matching state within me sufficient to react to enough of the original feeling that chet's rendition stirred in me years before to make the effort worthwhile.

'It Could Happen To You"

It Could Happen To You.mp3




Ok. this is cheating but it's my blog right?

I'm beginning this blog, on this particular tune after i worked on it a little yesterday. which in and of itself, isn't really cheating.

but i think i have to do the whole thing over.

why?

there had better be a good reason. you're talking to a guy who HATES...Hates to turn around to go back to the house to retrieve something he forgot.

Hates to retrace his steps looking for an article he 'put in a safe place.'

Hates to go back to anything once he puts it to bed.

that said, i think i have to redo this whole tune.

because it doesn't sound good. doesn't feel right. doesn't work.

i keep hearing the way Chet did it.

that lyrical, round-edges tempo

those leisurely pursued changes

that sweet sweet melodic movement

yeah my version (even the practice version mind you...for practice purposes only kind of a thing) doesn't have any of these things. in fact these elements represent pretty much a diametric opposition to the way Chet did the tune. Not good. Not good.

Ok, so let's dive back into it and see if i can fix it.

Later....that same day.....

Turns out i didn't try to fix it. instead i decided to go with what i had in terms of tempo, drum part, keys and bass. I didn't have a vox or a horn part down yet.

i decided this based on a spur-of-the-moment reaction: i know. it doesn't make much sense. don't worry. turns out, it doesn't have to.

I figured, given what i already had down, i had nothing to lose by going ahead and fleshing it out. i could always build out a brand new version of the same tune, one more aligned with Chet's version.

First order of business: figure out why Reaper wasn't showing up in the version that preceded the new one that they told me to download: the one whose major updated feature seemed to be to fuck everything up: Firefox, Itunes, Safari, Word. The friggin OS for chrissakes!

Finally, i got it and it worked. So i hit out to see what i could do with the tracks i had in the can. They sounded ok and appeared to be in sync with each other which meant i had done a decent job copying and pasting the parts i laid down yesterday.

So i set up the mic to roll on a vocal track. Got the lyric sheet in front of me and tapped 'record.' it felt really good to sing the tune. i noticed it was easier to stay in tune. this was good.

But still, i have trouble hearing the bed when i'm singing. there must be a technique involved when recording . i wouldn't know. but i guess i'm going to find out, most likely by trial and error, the last refuge of an idiot.

one thing i did differently: i recorded my voice through several verses, only bailing if i really fucked up bad, i.e., forgotten lyrics, bad intonation, bad timing or rhythm. this is not different from any other tune i had done thus far.

but instead of moving on to the trumpet part, i had a thought about the arrangement. this meant leaving a hole where a vocal solo or a trumpet line would go. this worked out surprisingly well, arrangement-wise, that is.

The trumpet part threw me for a loop. it always does. i need to remember why i am doing this in the first place. it's not ready-to-wear, more like second-hand sportswear.

so the trumpet part went down but not without some moments of a shitstorm. mostly about the piece of crap i'm playing, the difficult playing the good stuff while the tape is running etc.

All this will no doubt continue through the project, through the process.

"Do it the Hard Way"

Do it the Hard Way.mp3



Life is surprising sometimes.

Like when i found out that i really didn't know Chet's music as well as i thought.

Yeah that'd be today.

I've listened to every one of Chet's recordings. That's gotta be like 4 million or something.


I've listened to them in the living room,
the bathroom,
out-of-doors,
the bedroom,
the kitchen,
the dining room,
in the car,
on the bus,
while walking,
while running,
on the way to the dentist,
to my folks' house,
to work,
to graduate school,
to church,
to the grocery store,
to the gym,
to concerts,
to the store,
to the park and
to the woods.

I thought i would know his music by now.

Today i got a surprise.

It happened while i was working on "Do it the Hard Way," a tune from Rodgers and Hart's Broadway play Pal Joey."

Now let me say up front that I find Broadway music in Broadway shows, uh...distasteful.
I avoid it like a cowboy avoids a Saturday night bath.

Like a visit to the dentist.

Like a colonoscopy.

Like going to bed when i'm all sofa-snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug watching a 1950s film in glorious Black and White

But i love this tune. despite its origin and so i chose it for my work today. I thought it was going to be a relatively docile activity. Ha!

All right then. Sometimes things don't go the way we think they will. Amen.

I started by thinking i'd change things up, try something new and different; a departure from my usual procedure.

Not that what i've been doing represents anything more than a rather incipient method of learning the skills and techniques pertinent to this project. I love the music, i love what it does and i want to learn what i can from the musicians, the composers, the lyricists.

I want to be a musician able to translate what i feel, what i hear through whatever instrument i am holding. yeah that's what i want and this is the attitude i bring to each session. and indeed to the project's session today.

So, today, working with this very familiar tune, i was not in any way prepared for what happened.

I began today pretty late in the day, having spent a good part of the middle of this hot summer day recording with a musician friend in his home studio.

And this is how it began.

I knew i knew this tune, especially the vocal. especially the melody. i could hear chet's voice even before i started.

turns out i was wrong.

i decided to lay a piano track first. i looked at the chart. it looked pretty simple. mostly ii V I in the key of Eb major. Easy capeasy.

So i practiced a few times through, set the tempo at 170mm and off i went.

jeez, it really didn't go that well.

First of all, the tempo proved to be WAY-too ambitious. Even after a half dozen times through, i was still making lots of mistakes.

I managed to get three or four choruses down on tape though.

So i moved on to laying a drum track. that went pretty well and taking what i had learned previously about keeping the track passes as long as possible. so that was the good news.

The not-so-good news?

After listening to the two tracks i laid, i noticed something: it didn't sound right. the chords. something wasn't gelling.

It dawned on my when i began singing the vocal. Something was pretty wrong with the way the melody was laying inside the changes. the harmony bed was off.

So i looked a little bit deeper. I played--slowly now-- through the changes, playing attention to how the melody fit with the harmony i'd laid down.

Shit. there it was. it didn't take very long. it was pretty immediate. the melody was clashing so violently with a certain segment of the form that i completely lost the line. i didn't know the melody anymore

I didn't know the melody anymore. This tune I had heard and sang in my head countless times, even going so far as to transcribe Chet's vocal solo on it, had flown right out of my head.

holy shit.
My stunned disbelief slowly receded and melded with a plan of action. a distasteful plan, but a plan.

i had to redo the whole harmony bed.

that was an easy conclusion to reach. a much harder task to carry out. i mean before i could fix it i had to figure out what to fix it with...the correct chords. this was much harder than you'd think, given my history with this tune. oh well.

surprises sometimes are fun. this one was not. i was disappointed with myself. i was pissed off too.

but persevere i did. at first i thought i could just listen to the harmony and fit the melody that i had know so well (before today that is) right in where it needed to go.
shit

not so easy. surprisingly not so easy. surprisingly frustratingly difficult.

the first thing i did was burn what i had laid down previously. gone. flushed down the fucking drain.

so next, i had to see about recording a new keys track, this time with the right changes; those that fit properly with the melody.
first thing: slow the tempo down. give myself a fighting chance eh?

that helped immediately. i set about figuring out the correct changes and laying them down. ok. right.

well, an hour later i was still flailing about looking for the correct chords for the turnaround in the B section. Not easy.

Dealing with the negativity foisted upon me by this void of melodic memory i worked my way slowly through the process of trying to get the tune down.

I couldn't yet hear the changes. so i decided what i should do is listen to the tune. i mean how sad is this? i actually have to listen to the song again to hear the changes and melody? my god, what a travesty. surprise.

so that's what i did. i dialed it up on itunes and listened. i wish i could say that this is what brought it all home for me. alas. another surprise.

The 1958 recording of "Do it the Hard Way" as it appeared on Chet's album It Could Happen to You turned out not to be what the doctor ordered to hear the chords that Kenny Drew was laying down. i just couldn't make them out as clearly as i had hoped. so the search continued.

i wish i could say that it went lots faster after that but it really didn't.

To make a long story short, i still have to record the melody line. I did figure out the changes though. I'm not at all convinced that they are the same chords that Russ Freeman plays on the recording. This is upsetting to me.

But i will go at it again. TOmorrow i hope but i'm not sure. tomorrow we leave on a fabulous road trip up through the Texas panhandle, across that little sliver of land called--oddly enough--the panhandle (this time in Oklahoma) and up toward the Colorado mountains.

So..........more later.

Remind me if i forget. I need to blog about comping. Russ Freeman has it down man. Where my comping seems hard, clumpy, sloppy and angular and less than accurate not to mention eloquent, Freeman's is all of this and more. I find it a little daunting but i am going to do it. I am going to do it. I am going to do it. Goddamn it.