My friend and teacher Harry Likas in Berkeley knows of my love of this style of piano. One of the songs I do in my band is “High Blood Pressure,” a Huey Piano Smith song. I’ve never seen the culture of New Orleans music analyzed so precisely and entertainingly.

Floyd Domino shows how to use the “jazzy” pentatonic scale to solo on “Bye Bye Blackbird.” The scale works really well with many types of songs. 

I have to say I was somewhat relieved that Chip McGrath was mainly interested in my writing, although it was a privilege to have him attend my band’s gig - and to mention my teacher, Floyd Domino, in the first paragraph!

Floyd Domino on Bill Payne – and His Own Piano Romance

                           Bill Payne and Magic Steinways

   Bill Payne has a place in Rock ‘N  Roll history. If you have heard Little Feat, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, James Taylor—the list goes on— you hear a Bill Payne lick in your head. And you are better off for it. So, when he contributes to the Boogie Woogie Blog, I just have to say, “Yes!”

   I met Bill the night before my latest birthday. What a present for Birthday Eve. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright, who plays keyboards for WhoDo, introduced me to him. We went on the bus and hung out before the Little Feat show at La Zona Rosa in Austin.

   Bill and I have a mutual friend. His name is Edd Kolakowski. He lives in Spain, but used to work in the Steinway concert department until he went on the road with Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, and all the other artists that manager Peter Asher could persuade him to get on the bus with. Edd is easygoing, upbeat, and a magical piano technician.

  In Bill’s post, he writes of the magic of Richard Manuel’s piano. It’s an old Steinway that has a soulful tone, action and response that is like ‘buttah’, and “plays itself.” Those two words will make a piano player’s ears go to full alert, like my dachshund’s do when she hears a car pull up in the driveway.

  Man, I’ve got a piano just like that. It’s a 1911 Steinway O. First, the touch. You know how iphone/ipad/ipod users LOVE their phone/pad/pod? Well, it’s tactile, it’s response. Replace aural with visual, add in a lifelong devotion to the instrument, all your feelings, how you make a living, bake for decades, and it is pretty wonderful.

  Edd Kolakowski did some work on my piano in 1976. He stayed at my house in Bastrop, Texas, and charged me (maybe) $75. Between Edd and Selby Barnett, it sounded like magic. Sure, it was 65 years old, and keys moved side to side. There were some knocks, clicks, burbles, rings, but it had the ‘stuff.’

  When I moved to New York, to play in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, in 1978, there was no room for the piano. When I moved to Nashville in 1983, to play with Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, and the Crickets, the piano made it’s way to Nashville. Perfect time clean up those knocks, clicks, etc. Little did I know…

  CBS had bought and sold Steinway. At one time CBS owned the New York Yankees, Fender, and Steinway. Many old Fender guitars and Steinway pianos are advertised as “pre-CBS.” That means, before CBS messed them up. Since CBS had sold Steinway, I was assured that we were post-CBS. Little did I know that Teflon had been replaced with Teflon II. So, Hollywood is not the only place for lame sequels.

  I had the action replaced, and invited fellow pianist Barry Walsh over to play it. “It’s really heavy, isn’t it?” I knew it. It was. It sounded different, too. “The tuner says it’ll break in.” The tuner couldn’t understand it either. From light and responsive to cement. I will spare you the details, but 4  technicians, 3 rebuilds and 27 years later, one more try. Turns out that every 9 years my musicolgical clock sounded an alarm, and I tried to reclaim the old magic of the 1911 Steinway O.

  So, doing some birthday assessing, I thought of how, in 2003, Karla Pfennig had brought the piano to a pretty good place. Nice sound and action. Was my memory of the old magic just my own idealizing? Was it my youth that I missed? The early days of owning a Steinway? The days of discovering a new lick, of barnstorming with Asleep at the Wheel? Maybe the piano was like this in the ’70s.

  I casually mentioned to Bill Cory, my tuner, that when I met Steinway O, #147337, it was my dream instrument. I still loved it. Was there a chance we could get it back, or get me back to that place I inhabited 27 years ago? “Sure, we can do that.” Just like that? Really? In the last few years things have chnged. Go for it. One more time.

  Bill took the action for ten days.  Computers are used now to custom design the parts. No, one size fits all. The knuckles on the hammer shanks are back to 1911 specs, 1.5 milimeters from where they have been since 1985. 4.5 llbs of lead came out of the keys, lurking beneath the ebony and ivory. Added as a necessary evil to give force to move the hammers, the lead created an inertia of its own. He installed Abel hammers prepared by Wally Brooks.

  Bill brought the action to the house on May 11 and put it back in the piano. I played a few notes. It’s back. Just like that. I can’t stop playing it. It “plays itself.”

Here’s a love story between a man and his piano, beautifully told by Bill Payne of Little Feat, who sent this along. I’ve always been fascinated by the intense attachment one can develop with an instrument. In this case, it’s a menage a trois, with Bill providing the third leg – suitably so, for a piano romance.

Richard Manuel’s Piano

I was told Johnny Lee’s recording studio housed Richard Manuel’s piano. Paul Barrere had suggested we make use of Johnny’s place to record our next project. Not that I needed any persuading—Johnny’s studio is legendary. It is a converted garage separated from his home in the back on a quiet street in Studio City. What gives the studio a feeling of comfort is not just the coziness of the place, it is the man himself. The studio’s compact style and country-western art (as in Roy Rodgers and Gene Autry) with Gunsmoke and Have Gun - Will Travel on a television up on the back wall are a reflection of Johnny Lee and his laid-back style. You feel like you are at home, and you are. He’s a great engineer and a wonderful musician—he plays just about everything. During Little Feat’s time there for the Rooster Rag sessions he sang some amazingly soulful and sophisticated background vocal arrangements on “Church Falling Down,” “Rag Top Down,” and “Salome”—I’d been completely unaware of his considerable vocal abilities. Still, I was intrigued by what the piano might sound like, what condition it was in, and how Johnny would handle the leakage from other instruments and amps given the tightness of the room—the piano was in the control room. We would all be in the control room during the recording process, with the exception of Gabe Ford, who spent his time almost directly behind the piano through a thin wall and door in a room used for vocals and drums.

  When I played the piano for the first time, all my questions were answered and then some.

“The piano damn near plays itself!” was my thinking.

Tony Braunagel, a great drummer, producer, and long time friend of Little Feat, and I were talking about that very subject up in San Francisco a few weeks later. I was sitting in with Tony and Johnny Lee, along with Texacali horns Darrell Leonard and Joe Sublett (who played on our record), for a gig with the Blues Brothers.

Tony said, “You can’t play anything on that piano that doesn’t sound good.”

I laughed, telling him I felt the same way. The truth is, it’s a Steinway. This one in particular has the “magic” (a word I tend to use a lot, but I always mean it).  A few weeks later I called Johnny Lee and asked him about the history of the instrument, starting with when he first became acquainted with it.

  Shangri La studios in Malibu, 1979 

Johnny Lee was at Shangri La studios recording a project with Ian McLagan, his second solo album. And although he was there to play guitar, he would show up early just to play the piano. Johnny knew it was Richard Manuel’s. He loved the touch and the way it sounded—always a winning combination for a musician and an instrument. A good handshake. The studio, which had played host to many artists over the years: Bob Dylan, The Band, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits, Eric Clapton, and others, was not too long after put up for sale, along with the gear, including the piano. Money changed hands, the piano took a journey to Connecticut, did an about face not too long after and headed west again, this time landing in storage in Tarzana, CA. (Yes, Tarzana has a lineage to Edgar Rice Burroughs character, Tarzan.) Thankfully, through a series of maneuvers and continued changing hands, the piano eventually wound up, through barter, with Johnny Lee Schell.

   As Johnny was familiar with the instrument and had a warm place in his heart for it, he made some repairs: replaced a couple of broken keys and other minor fixes, and had the piano restrung. There were marks on the inside of the sounding board where a Helpinstill pickup had been placed—the device was used to amplify the sound at live venues. It was something straight out of the Spanish Inquisition, not very good for the cosmetics of the interior of the piano.

   I still wanted to know what the deeper connection to Richard Manuel was. Johnny continued the story.

Vincitore’s Hudson Valley Piano Center

Somewhere between 1967 and 1969 (‘67 the year consequently that I graduated from high school), Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson went on a search for a piano. The quest led them to New York, Chicago, and other places in the United States and Canada. They tried out a dozen or so pianos in the process, according to Johnny Lee.

   Based on that information, I placed a call to Garth Hudson and had a brief conversation about what transpired. And while the details of how it exactly went down are somewhat foggy (he wasn’t able to tell me what other cities, if any, were visited), the search ended (or began and ended) in Poughkeepsie, NY, at Vincitore’s Hudson Valley Piano Center. Garth remembers the two of them going there and that Richard picked out the piano.

   The Steinway Richard chose was from the “L” series, measuring just under six feet, Steinway’s smallest concert grand—otherwise known as a baby grand. I would imagine that one of the features Richard and Garth were looking for was something small enough to haul around on

tour (which Garth confirmed) and, of course, possessed a wonderful tone and touch. Apparently, they were taking it out on the road with the Band and Bob Dylan. Crews are notorious for giving keyboard players hell for having to tote a piano around the world, or just about anywhere, for that matter. One can hardly blame them. (On Waiting For Columbus I promised our crew it would be the last piano they would have to lug around on my behalf. But I insisted on using a real piano for those recordings.) The size of the piano nearly made for a major disaster, as you will read later.

   I was intrigued by where the instrument was finally found. Garth had mentioned Vincitore’s, so I looked them up on the Internet. I was more than pleasantly surprised by what I discovered.

It is a family-owned store that has been in business since 1946. I noted from the website some of its history. Joseph Vincitore’s philosophy, the founder of the company, still resonates today: “Enrich Your Life through Music.”

   Mr. Vincitore is now ninety-four and plays the clarinet and saxophone every day—a true testament to that philosophy. His oldest son, Jon P. Vincitore, took over managing the business in 1977. He was twelve years of age when he first started working for the family business. His brother, Michael J., has hands-on experience with the technical aspects of the piano, having served an apprenticeship in his early twenties with Daniel Mazzilli, a foreman for Steinway Pianos in New York City.  Their sister, Marta Vincitore Robinson, handles the sheet music part of their enterprise along with the bookkeeping responsibilities, which she does in her spare time. I called the store and Marta answered. I told her I was interested in speaking to someone about a piano that Richard Manuel, from The Band, bought in the late sixties. She cheerfully put me through to her brother Michael, and we had a wonderful conversation.

  Michael, who was seventeen at the time—which would put the date at 1969—remembers three or four members of The Band coming into the store. As they were famous musicians, this was pretty exciting. The level of their musicianship was something Michael made note of. They could really play. He told me his father, a graduate of Julliard, was impressed in particular with Garth Hudson, who played the saxophone as well as keyboards. Michael thought it was a nice piano, that he liked it. Once the decision to buy it happened, he remembers the piano going out for delivery.

Qualities of The Piano

My discussion with Michael ranged into the broader concepts of what goes into the making of pianos. He told me there is something serendipitous about Steinways. There are certainly many factors that draw people to an instrument: tone and touch the two biggest components. Michael is schooled in the art of regulation, which brings consistency throughout the keyboard by controlling the factors of touch and sound, including its dynamic range (from soft to loud), and the responsiveness to the keys (a hard action or a light action). Does the person sitting down at the instrument want a lighter touch—as Glenn Gould used to demand for his work, in particular, with Bach, or a harder action so one can dig in deeper? How about a less strident high end in the upper part of the keyboard—the highest notes produce a “ringing sound” because of the lack of damper (suppressing the string’s tone by means of inserting felt between the three strings at the top of the instrument for each note, thus the notes ring out less). You can control that and all of the tactile and tonal qualities with regulation of the instrument.

   Richard’s piano is very forgiving in its touch—it is easy to play, and yet the sound is surprisingly deep and rich on the low end of the sonic spectrum for an instrument under six feet. It is a very soulful piano. I’ve never played one quite like it. Johnny Lee had made a statement to me about its diversity in regard to the styles one could play on it: rock & roll, ballads, and jazz, for example.

With the broad vocabulary of any Little Feat album, this was good news, as I played a wide array of musical styles on the album, all of which fit like a glove.

   Many recording studio pianos are manipulated by technicians, lacquering the hammers, being one method, to brighten the sound in order to compete with raging guitars, drums, etc. This was not the case with the piano in Johnny Lee’s studio. Richard’s piano has a softer tone that signifies the Steinway “sound.” And although each Steinway is different, Michael insisted to me that the standard employed in manufacturing them is based on creating consistency. Tone and touch can be abetted in an amazing fashion, dramatically, in some cases—thus deviating from the standard and the model of consistency—by any trained technician who has a sense of what the artist wants or wants to explore.

   I visited Steinway Pianos on 57^th Street in New York City in the mid-eighties with Ed Kolakowski, who was the piano tech on the James Taylor tour I was a part of. He introduced me to Franz Mohr, the head of Steinway’s technicians. I was taken down to the basement where I played six or seven of their instruments. Franz casually asked me, but with a twinkle in his eye, if I would care to play Horowitz’s piano—he had just returned from the Soviet Union. Of course I said yes! I sat down and played the low end of the instrument first, which had a thunderous response. I then played the very top end of the piano. The sound was noticeably softer, not dramatically so, but caught my attention. It was when I hit the middle region that I looked up incredulously at Franz—the sound was as if I had pressed the sostenuto pedal, very soft. With a slight shrug of his shoulders and a smile he told me, “That’s the way he likes it voiced.” I never knew how malleable a piano could be until that day. Franz Mohr had taught me an invaluable lesson on how to view a piano and how it might conform to my needs as an artist.

   I also believe an instrument should challenge the musician, leaving room for growth through exploration, trial and error, while keeping an open mind and making the most of a potent imagination, all of which form a vital link to what is literally one’s relationship with the instrument, a relationship that can last for many, many years. Richard Manuel was looking for and found the “handshake,” which formed his relationship with this wonderful, and in my mind, “magic” piano.

College Girls, Hashish, & Confrontation

Enter Butch Dener into the conversation. Butch was road manager for the Band for many years. I called him to get his take on not only the instrument but some of the dates being tossed about. The Band played at his high school in New Paltz, NY, before a one-off gig with Bob Dylan at the Isle of Wight in 1969, and on Dylan’s two-month concert tour in 1974. It is more than probable that Richard was playing the Steinway purchased from Vincitore’s.  I asked Butch if he had any stories about the piano. He led me through the following that took place in 1972. It involves a stash house, some college girls, and a crazed hashish dealer.

   The Band had some rental properties in and around Bearsville. One of the homes, nestled down a dirt road path deep in the woods, was sublet to four college girls who used it as a “stash house.” The girls were “mules,” transporting drugs to the house, making inventories of what they had, sitting on the load until things cooled off, and then distributing the goods onto the open market. As it happened, the Steinway was also stashed there. Richard Manuel and Rick Danko innocently went over to look in on the piano. The girls, known as the Screaming Mimis (no relation to the group), were working for a hashish dealer, a dangerous character, who had at one point threatened Butch Dener’s life in close proximity to a policeman. The girls happened to make a call to their boss mentioning that the guys were coming over. The dealer (who shall remain nameless) stormed over to the house in an absolute rage. Richard and Rick were confronted with a flailing, shouting, screaming, madman, who told them he was going to destroy the piano. He even made an attempt—he was a black belt and strong as a proverbial ox—to actually lift up the piano from one end and toss it on them. Somehow they were able to talk him off the roof. He finally calmed down as the boys were of no consequence to him or his operation. The piano, along with Richard and Rick, lived to see another day.  

    In investigating this saga I will freely admit that the dates don’t match up with some of the storytellers. Understandable given the number of years ago the events took place.

 (My friend and writer, Michael Simmons, gave me considerable help and guidance with regard to those shifting sands, amongst his other helpful suggestions for this article. Dennis McNally, my friend, manager, writer and thoughtful editor, kept me on track, as well. My heartfelt thanks to them both.)

   That said, there is no doubt that Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson traveled the short distance from Woodstock to Poughkeepsie (roughly thirty-two miles apart) and found the instrument I played some forty-five years later in Johnny Lee Schell’s studio for the recording of Little Feat’s Rooster Rag.

   It was a piano well chosen. I enjoyed playing it. I can’t wait to play it again on the next studio recording. I’ve got some songs made for it.

Bill Payne

One of the main challenges of learning to play by ear is anticipating the chord changes. That’s why the blues and rock and roll are so great - it’s easy to learn the changes and apply them to new songs. 

Jazz standards are a different matter. I’ve heard forever about the ii-V-I progression, and how so many songs are built on that, but in practice, it seems that there are more exceptions to this rule than adherents. It’s always seemed to me to be an annoying myth. 

This year, however, I’m determined to learn more about the architecture of jazz standards. Lately I’ve been studying Jim Van Heusen’s moody ballad, ”Here’s That Rainy Day.”  Like so many other standards, the ii-V-I progressions are not always so obvious. On closer examination, however, I found them all over the place. Once you get past the initial walkdown that is such a great lead-in, going from F- down to Bb-7, there is the first of the progressions. G-, C7, F. that’s followed by a C-7 F7 that leads directly to Bb- Eb7 Ab. And so on throughout the song. 

There are only a few surprises. For instance, in the second chorus, we go from Bb to G-7 C7 then, instead of F, it moves to A-, which is practically an F chord, and then the walkdown to Ab diminished to the final ii-V-I, the G-7 C7 F. 

Anyway, I’m encouraged to be able to see this same progression littered throughout the song. Floyd says that every time I spot a minor chord, it’s a clue that it is probably followed by the dominant chord a fourth above it. 

One day, I hope I’ll just be able to hear a song and know immediately how the progression moves through it. Until then, I’ll be studying the ways that songs are made. 

Here is Floyd explaining things better than I:

I’ve been avoiding ballads lately, concentrating on my boogie licks, but I started taking voice lessons recently, and my vocal coach put me onto this old classic. It’s a telling experience to attempt to sing or to play, but putting both together is a real challenge! Fortunately, Floyd is helping me out with this rendition, inspired by Ray Charles, which gives it lots of room to breathe.

At the last Pianorama I asked Johnny Nicholas what that terrific song was that he played, with the Big Joe Turner lyric:

Bill Payne’s musical memories really brought back so many similar memories of my own, but I’d forgotten all about Chico Marx as a pianist! So I went through some great YouTube footage. This one shows off Chico’s technique, especially his characteristic trigger finger, but the apple takes it to new heights!

Greetings from the road. Tonight I’m in Charlottesville, VA. I was looking through some of the articles I wrote for Player Magazine (a japanese publication) and thought this one might be a good one to share with those interested. As noted below, this is part Three in my series for the magazine. I thought this was a good place to start on this blog. 

   We are all influenced by someone or something. These influences form the core of who we are as musicians. Playing any instrument is challenging. Finding your voice, even more so. Influences can scare the hell out of you or inspire you to greater goals (often at the same time). Read on…

Bill Payne

INFLUENCES (Part Three)

 

   Brahms used to speak of the “Tramp of Giants”. He was acutely aware of those that preceded him. Brahms heard the reverberations of Bach, Mozart, Hayden, Beethoven.

They were his heroes, giving inspiration to his aspirations as a budding artist and composer, and conversely they caused him untold agony in his perception of his own work. After all, how does one measure up to Beethoven or Bach?

 

  Oscar Peterson, in an interview I heard? read?, spoke of being so intimidated by Art Tatum that he nearly gave up playing piano. Oscar, thankfully, carried on with his own wonderful “voice” only to scare the hell out of other unsuspecting pianists in search of themselves. I am certain that Oscar had other influences that were more benign that truly gave him inspiration rather than self doubt.

 

   I have finally come to the moment of truth as to stating my musical influences. Previously, I had mentioned dutifully intoning: The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Little Richard, The Band….the Tramp of Giants. Simply giving their names doesn’t begin to illustrate their hold on me. All have significantly provided me with a path for my own artistic exploration, but there are deeper undercurrents at work.

 

  My father took me to the Ventura County Fair when I was three or four years old. It was there I heard a calliope for the first time. I remember little else, other than the smell of diesel fuel, but both sensations have accompanied me a lifetime. It was not until many years later I made the connection between calliope music and the early zydeco music from Louisiana. Both have an other worldly quality, combining elements of mystery, celebration, and earthiness. (A few days after writing this I was in New Orleans and happened to hear a distant calliope playing in the French Quarter confirming my thoughts on the matter). I have always loved carnival music. There is something that speaks to the forbidden impulses in all of us; letting go, the essence of having fun, forbidden or otherwise-Bon Ton Roulet (Let the good times roll). Clifton Chenier, the King of Zydeco, and his accordion gyrations has been a major influence on my playing. I also fell in love with the mexican polkas I heard performed on the radio in southern California by unnamed accordionists, which I tried to emulate on piano, and later on synth.

 

  I have a pile of albums (yes, albums, not c.d.’s in front of me). The first one I’ve pulled out is a Southern Folk Heritage Series: Sounds Of The South. Lowell George had this album in his house when I first met him in 1969. On Little Feat’s live album, Waiting For Columbus, there is an opening song the band sings as we wind our way to the stage and building applause. We are singing acapella, Join The Band (by John Davis & group) from Sounds Of The South. The blues plays a large part in my musical life. Howlin’ Wolf’s album, Back Door Man, is one of the defining works for me. There are the great songs of Willie Dixon throughout: Little Red Rooster, Smokestack Lightning, Wang Dang Doodle, that bring interesting changes that far outstretch the predominant  1, 4, 5 changes. The combination of Dixon’s unique songs, Howlin’ Wolf (Chester Burnette’s) powerful vocals and gut wrenching guitar licks, and his loose (in the best sense of the word) rhythm section, create what I love about the blues-earthly lyrics, syncopated phrases, driving can’t sit still grooves, and a collision of the minds as to where a verse or chorus starts or ends. Somehow, it all works. One of the highlights of my life was meeting Willie Dixon. Paul Barrere, Richie Hayward and I had the honor of working with Mr. Dixon on a tribute to John Lee Hooker (who, a few years later, I had the joy of working with, too) at Madison Square Garden in New York City. At rehearsal, Dixon, a towering man in a off white suit, vest, tie and hat, cautioned us to play very softly. Intense but soft. I have never heard Richie Hayward play drums that quietly in my life! The rehearsal experience was something that had a profound effect on all of us. We were playing music with one of the men that defined the blues-in song, in lifestyle. George Porter, from the Meters, playing bass on the date, filled out the rest of the band and kept us all on track.

(I saw George last week, July, 2011, in Wyoming at the Targhee Festival. Little Feat, The Meters, and Bonearama were playing. I reminded him of the experience of rehearsing and playing with Willie Dixon. It was an amazingly fun concert to play. It was truly wonderful to get to play some music with George Porter Jr. again, as well as striking up a new relationship with the band Bonearama, who later joined Little Feat onstage. More of this in another blog!)

 

    Two of the early artists to catch my attention were Elvis Presley and Little Richard (they obviously caught everyone else’s attention, too!) My sister was into Elvis, having graduated high school in the late fifties (pink poodle skirts, two tone shoes, soda shops and sock hops). My main attention, music aside, was on the RCA dog on the single, which happened to be, “You Ain’t Nothing But A Hound Dog.” I loved the dog listening to the gramophone. There was something magical (that word again) about the tactile experience of holding a record in your hands. The song itself set me spinning, quite literally, around the room. There was, and still is, energy in rock and roll. No one exemplified that concept more than Little Richard. As an experiment, when my son was about four years old, I put on the song Slippin and Slidin from Little Richard’s greatest hits. Evan spun around the room very much like I did (although I was a few years older when I first heard Richard’s music). The sax solo in that song is something that left an indelible impression on me. I’ve coped that lick more than a couple of times on records. You can hear it on Little Feat’s Let It Roll album (c.d.) at the top of my piano solo in Hate To Lose. People have said rock and roll is dead. They aren’t listening to Little Richard.

 

   I love movies and the music in them. West Side Story is probably one of the first musicals I saw in the movie theater that made me want to learn every song from the production. Leonard Bernstein’s score was magnificent. I was not aware at the time the amount of influence Aaron Copland infused into Bernstein’s compositions. Copland’s music is quintessential “American” music. Copland and Bernstein’s voicings are an integral part of my piano musings at home. Both composers made extensive use of latin american rhythms that, eventually, found there way into my musical vocabulary.  Those rhythmic explorations, not unlike Gershwin’s, were a bastardization of the real thing. Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue” (borrowing heavily from his visits to night clubs in Harlem in New York), is something I first heard Roger Williams perform on a Kapp High Fidelity album. Oscar Levant performed the same piece in Hollywood’s version of Gershwin’s life, which I saw on television, aptly titled Rhapsody In Blue, and was yet another door to a number of Gershwin influences, not the least of which were the musicals:

 Shall We Dance (1937) starring Fred Estaire and Ginger Rodgers, with the great songs, They All Laughed, Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off, They Can’t Take That Away From Me; Porgy And Bess (1935) (although I saw the 1959 Samuel Goldwyn film version with Sydney Potier, Dorothy Dandrige, and Sammy Davis, Jr.) with songs, Summertime, I Got Plenty Of Nuttin’, Bess, You Is My Woman Now, I Loves You Porgy…such a wealth of truly wonderful songs from George Gershwin far to numerous to state here. The impact of hearing that style of music also carried itself into a couple of my favorite movies by the Marx Brothers: A Night At The Opera, and A Day At The Races (which I borrowed the title idea for a Little Feat instrumental, A Day At The Dog Races, from the album, Time Loves A Hero). The Marx Brothers are a huge part of my thinking when it comes to composition and soloing. The ending to Paul Barrere’s, Old Folks Boogie, has a Marx Brothers ending that I lifted from one of their films. My piano solo’s occasionally have the flair of Chico Marx in them. Chico combined a classical flair with bordello style piano-a mode I still go into when soloing on Dixie Chicken.

 

     I was very fortunate to have visited IsaoTomita in early 1980, on one of my trips to Japan. Akiko Yano was kind enough to make the introduction. His landmark album, Snowflakes Are Dancing, was a beautifully rendered work and greatly impressed me. At his apartment, he very graciously provided me with some insight which would grow with the years. He told me, “I feel as if I have so little time.” What he conveyed to me was his realization that life was short, and one had to focus on what was important. Life drifts by. At age fifty one (fifty two, by the time you read this), I, now, more than ever, feel the same way. I am grateful for his words, for they have inspired me to make as much of every moment count as I possibly can. I am grateful for his music, for it speaks of commitment from an artist that takes his work, and the works of others, in thoughtful and meaningful consideration, the ultimate tribute.

 

(As you can see, this article, with the exception of the aside I put in about George Porter Jr., was written 2001. My influences continue to mount up in 2011.  I hope to revisit this conversation. The importance of  the subject is worth elaborating on. Please weigh in as to who and what your influences are.)

 

 

 

 

                                               Bill Payne

                                               Los Angeles, CA

                                               February, 2001