A Tribute:
JIMMY WOODE - A Master Musician and a Man of Elegance,
Charm, Wit and Wisdom
By Mike Hennessey
The death last April of Jimmy Woode, as a result of post-operative complications
following surgery for a stomach aneurysm, leaves an unfillable gap in the
hierarchy of Jazz bassists.
Jimmy, who died on April 23 at his home in Lindenwold, New Jersey, at
the age of 76, made an enormous contribution to the music to which he dedicated
his life. He was a man of multiple talents - musician, composer, lyricist,
arranger, vocalist, journalist and music publisher. He will be sorely missed
by his legion of friends and admirers, not only for his consummate musicianship,
but also for his amiable personality, for his deadpan humor and his prodigious
gift as a hugely entertaining raconteur.
In the course of a career spanning six decades, Jimmy Woode played with
a Who's Who of Jazz musicians, among them Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong,
Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Lionel Hampton, Earl Hines,
Zoot Sims, Toots Thielemans and Johnny Griffin and singers Billie Holiday,
Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae and Ella Fitzgerald. He was a regular member
of the superb Clarke-Boland Big Band and of the highly acclaimed Paris Reunion
Band.
James Bryant Woode II was born in Philadelphia on September 23, 1928.
The son of a music teacher, he started out on baritone horn and also studied
piano and double bass, initially at the Philadelphia Music Academy and then
at the Boston Conservatory. He finally settled on the double bass as his
chosen instrument and, in 1946, after military service as a radar operator
in the U. S. Navy, he sang and played piano with the Velvetaires and then
formed his own group, which worked in the Boston area. He later toured with
Flip Phillips and worked with Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.
In 1950, he made his first visit to Sweden, where his father, Jimmy Woode
Sr., had settled three years earlier, following dates with Hot Lips Page.
For two years, in the early 1950s, Woode was a member of the house band
in George Wein's Storyville Club in Boston and played with a long list of
major Jazz names, including Charlie Parker, with whom he recorded some live
dates in Boston's Hi-Hat Club in January 1954.
In 1955, Jimmy Woode replaced Junior Raglin in the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
He remained with Duke, in his words, "for five years, four months,
two weeks and two days - the most invaluable period of my life."
During his time with Ellington, Woode also worked as a sideman in the
Johnny Hodges band and with Clark Terry. In 1957, he recorded the album,
"The Colorful Strings Of Jimmy Woode", with a septet which comprised
Clark Terry, Mike Simpson, Porter Kilbert, Paul Gonsalves, Ramsey Lewis
and Sam Woodyard. Incredibly enough, this recording, according to the Tom
Lord Jazz Discography, is his only album as leader.
In 1960, Jimmy Woode moved to Europe, settling first in Stockholm, where
he worked for the Swedish Radio service and recorded with many visiting
American Jazzmen, including Eric Dolphy, and top Swedish musicians, and
then moving to Paris, where he appeared in the Blue Note with Kenny Clarke
and also played in the Mars Club, Le Chat Qui Peche and the Living Room,
with such eminent Jazzmen as Dexter Gordon, Donald Byrd, Ben Webster, Sahib
Shihab, Sonny Criss and Bud Powell.
In December 1961, Jimmy Woode became a founder member of the Clarke-Boland
Band, with which he remained until it disbanded in April 1972. He also recorded
with Don Byas, Albert Nicholas, Johnny Griffin, Ted Curson, Booker Ervin,
Milt Buckner, Benny Bailey, Mal Waldron, Helen Humes and a host of other
major names.
In 1964, Woode moved from Paris to Cologne in Germany, where he formed
the Cawoo music publishing company with Gigi Campi. He subsequently moved
to Holland (1966) and then to Munich (1975).
Over the next 30 years, Jimmy Woode recorded with an enormous variety
of artists, demonstrating his versatility and adaptability. In the early
1980s, he moved to Vienna and then, later, to Berne, Switzerland where he
lived for 14 years.
In 1985, Jimmy Woode became a founder member of the Paris Reunion Band,
an eight-piece unit which was created in an endeavor to capture the mood
and spirit of Paris in the 1960s - a period when the Jazz scene of the French
capital was enriched and enlivened by the presence of a substantial colony
of expatriate American Jazzmen.
The PRB also represented a tribute to the great Kenny Clarke, the spiritual
leader of the Paris Jazz community, who was originally to have been the
band's drummer. Sadly, Kenny never got to play with his former Paris colleagues.
He suffered a fatal heart attack in January 1985, five months before the
band embarked on its first European tour, with Billy Brooks substituting
for Klook.
Over the next four years the Paris Reunion Band toured around Europe
and recorded four albums for the Swedish Sonet company and one for the East
German Amiga Jazz label.
In November 1987, the Paris Reunion Band, with Nat Adderley, Woody Shaw,
Nathan Davis, Joe Henderson, Curtis Fuller, Kenny Drew, Jimmy Woode and
Idris Muhammad, played a week at Ronnie Scott's Club and recorded the Sonet
album Hot Licks - a session which included a memorable vocal rendition by
Jimmy Woode of his delightfully sardonic original, "I Don't Want Nothin'
".
British writer Brian Priestley has described Jimmy Woode as "the
standard bearer for the friendly invasion of Europe by US musicians."
He was the archetypal musicians' musician. The level of public appreciation
afforded to him was far below what his talents and accomplishments deserved.
John Clayton says of Jimmy: "There was a life, a buoyancy to his
playing that was also very solid and grounded. It was the perfect carpet
for Duke's magic to ride upon. He played his personality: joyful, and a
lover of life."
Jimmy Woode's funeral was held at the 10th Street Baptist Church in Camden,
New Jersey on April 29 and a memorial service was held for him in the Mahogany
Hall, Berne, Switzerland, on May 10.
Jimmy was married and widowed twice. He is survived by three daughters
- singer Shawnn Monteiro of Providence Rhode Island, Deirdre Woode of Santa
Barbara, California, and Anne Frederickson of Stockholm, Sweden; a son,
Patrick Bergmans of Berlin, two sisters - Ruth Fullard of Camden, New Jersey
and Edwina Reese of South Ozone Park, New York, four grandchildren and two
great-grandchildren.
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Friends and Family Bid a Fond
Farewell to Jimmy Woode
The gathering in the Mahogany Hall in Berne, Switzerland, on May 10,
for a memorial tribute to Jimmy Woode, was eloquent testimony to the great
respect and affection his family and friends had for him.
More than a hundred and fifty people crowded into the hall for an evening
which reflected the warmth and spirit of James Bryant Woode II. Among those
present were Jimmy's daughters, Shawnn Monteiro and Deirdre Woode.
It was an evening of which, if he were watching from up there, Jimmy
would have wholeheartedly approved.
Vocalist Ron Ringwood, a long-time friend of Jimmy's, was master of ceremonies
and he made the point that Jimmy would not have wanted it to be an occasion
for tears and sorrow, but an opportunity to celebrate the contribution he
made to music and the pleasure his music and his company brought to so many
people.
Ringwood delivered a moving tribute to Woode and read the poems "Come
Into This House," written by Shawnn Monteiro's daughter, Amana Woode,
and "The Bottom Line Is," by Alice Day.
And, of course, it was an evening filled with straight-ahead, hard-swinging
Jazz and blues, thanks to the many musicians who turned up to pay their
respects to Jimmy.
Among the selection of "good old good ones" were "Perdido,"
"Drop Me Off In Harlem," Jimmy's lively blues, "The Man From
Potter's Crossing" (dedicated to Duke Ellington's drummer, Sam Woodyard)
and "Every Time We Say Goodbye," sensitively sung by Sandy Patton,
who was the principal organizer of the evening, together with alto saxophonist,
George Robert.
Shawnn Monteiro delivered distinctive versions of "I'm Beginning
To See The Light," "Never Let Me Go" and, as a personal salute
to Jimmy, "I've Grown Accustomed To His Face." And everybody joined
in a rendition of Jimmy's favorite vocal number, "Georgia."
Other singers taking part included Joan Faulkner, Bernetta Bush and Tommie
Harris. Instrumentalists included Roman Schwaller, George Robert and Stephan
Abel (saxophones), Francis Coletta (guitar), Dado Moroni and Gustav Csik
(piano), Reggie Johnson, Michel Poffet and Isla Eckinger (bass), Mario Gunzi
and Peter Schmidlin (drums) and the groups of Joe Haider and Franz Biffiger.
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Neils-Henning Ørsted Pedersen 1946
- 2005
A Truly Great Dane
|
"Arguably the most inventive bassist in Jazz, His virtuosity on
the bass surpasses anything else that I have known" - Oscar Peterson
The emancipation of the double bass has been one of the most vital developments
in Jazz since Jimmy Blanton, from St. Louis, Missouri, brought a new eloquence
and flexibility to the instrument - with Fate Marable in the late 1930s,
and between 1939 and 1941, with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
Blanton revolutionized bass playing. In the words of Leonard Feather,
"he exercised an incalculable influence in transforming the use of
the string bass in Jazz."
Since then, the liberation process has continued in the United States,
through the work of men like Oscar Pettiford, Charles Mingus, Red Mitchell,
Ray Brown, Paul Chambers, Richard Davis, Charlie Haden, Stanley Clarke,
David Izenzon, Scott La Faro, Eddie Gomez and Jaco Pastorius. There has
also been a significant European contribution to the movement, by George
Mraz, Miroslav Vitous, Eberhard Weber, Aladar Pege, Dave Holland and Peter
Ind. In fact, Ind was one of the very first Jazz musicians to give solo
bass recitals. |
However, it is no exaggeration to say that, of all the contributions
made to the bass emancipation movement by European musicians, easily the
most outstanding has been that of Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen,
the Danish virtuoso.
N-HØP suffered a fatal heart attack at his home in Ishoej, south
of Copenhagen, last April 2005 at the age of 58, bringing an untimely end
to a brilliant career spanning four and a half decades, during which he
played with a who's who of musicians, and participated in more than 400
recordings. He is survived by his wife, Solveig, and three children.
It is a fact that music students whose aim in life is to become instrumental
virtuosi tend to seek to excel on the pianoforte, the violin, the cello
and, rather more rarely, the guitar. The awkward, cumbersome and unglamorous
double bass does not engender much enthusiasm in the average conservatory
alumnus - and it is a telling fact that a large number of bass players took
up the instrument only because there were no vacancies in the student orchestra
for players of the more manageable instruments.
Even the legendary Giovanni Bottesini (1822-1889), who is widely regarded
as one of the greatest double bass virtuosi of all time, was a reluctant
convert to the instrument. When he applied for admission to the Milan Conservatory,
he found that the establishment had only one vacancy - and that was for
a student of the double bass. So that is what Bottesini became and, despite
himself, he developed into a peerless master of the instrument.
Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen was born in Osted, Denmark, on May
27, 1946. The son of a church organist, he took piano lessons at the age
of seven and first picked up the double bass in 1959, at the age of 13.
It was not that the instrument had an irresistible appeal for him, but he
was the youngest of five children and the family band needed a bass player.
NHØP, too, went on to become a virtuoso of the instrument, learning
his art in the tough but thoroughly efficacious school of public performance
with some of the world's greatest Jazz musicians.
It is interesting to speculate just what the distinguished classical
bass players - Bottesini, Dragonetti and Koussevitzky - would have made
of Pedersen's extraordinary expertise on the instrument. I suspect that
they would have regarded his playing with very much the same degree of awe
and admiration as Yehudi Menuhin had for the improvisational flair of Stéphane
Grappelli.
The fact that NHØP achieved such rare mastery of an instrument
to which he was not particularly attracted in the first place, lends support
to the view that, where musical creativity and integrity are concerned,
the medium is far less important than the message. If the Ørsted
Pedersen family band had required a trombonist or a glockenspiel player
instead of a bassist, I have no doubt whatsoever that NHØP would
have taken either instrument in his confident stride.
He once told me: "The bass, as such, doesn't interest me. It's an
awkward, clumsy instrument. I like to think of myself as playing music -
not playing the bass."
Denmark is a most propitious country in which to study music and musical
instruments because, as NHØP once observed, teaching standards are
very high. And certainly, as far as the double bass is concerned, the country
has produced some extremely talented practitioners, including Hugo Rasmussen,
Bo Stief and Mads Vinding.
But perhaps the most effective educational establishment in Niels-Henning's
case was the Montmartre Jazzhus. The Montmartre, on Dahlerupsgade in Copenhagen,
which first opened its doors in 1959, was one of the world's most celebrated
Jazz clubs, with a house rhythm section normally comprising Kenny Drew,
Albert "Tootie" Heath and either NHØP or Mads Vinding.
At the age of 16, Niels-Henning worked in the club with the legendary
Bud Powell. "Playing with Bud," he once told me, "was the
best possible introduction to what Jazz is all about, due to the fact that
he wasn't well at the time and rehearsals were out of the question. So I
learned by watching him every night, and picking up the changes by reading
his left hand."
During his stint at the Montmartre, NHØP worked with Ben Webster,
Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Art Farmer, Roland Kirk, Bill Evans, Johnny Griffin
and Sonny Rollins, among other major names.
At 17, he was invited to join the Count Basie Band but declined the offer
in order to continue his studies. Between 1964 and 1982 he was a regular
member of the exemplary Danish Radio Big Band.
When I interviewed NHØP back in 1978, preparatory to writing the
liner notes for his SteepleChase albums, "Live At Montmartre,"
Volumes 1 and 2, he told me: "Of course, I have been very lucky to
have had the opportunity to work with so many fine musicians. One of the
guys who really lifted me up was Sonny Rollins - and I have also drawn great
inspiration from people like Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, Ben Webster and
Don Byas. And, of course, Oscar."
Niels-Henning first played with Oscar Peterson in 1971, at the age of
25, when he was a last-minute replacement for George Mraz, who was unable
to make an engagement in Zagreb. A couple of years later, he became a permanent
member of the trio, a position he held until 1987. He was hired by Peterson
on the recommendation of Ray Brown, who is reported to have said, "He's
the only bass player I know that might keep up with you."
After relinquishing his permanent position in the Trio, NHØP continued
to work with Peterson from time to time, their last record date, "A
Night In Vienna" - with guitarist Ulf Wakenius and drummer Martin Drew
-being released on DVD in July 2004.
Oscar Peterson's concern to set his musical standards dauntingly high
certainly rubbed off on Niels-Henning. He told me: "Oscar is such a
demanding man that, whatever loose ends you have as a musician, he'll straighten
out. He is impatient of mistakes, especially his own. What I learned from
him was the discipline to fight my own lack of interest. Instead of asking
myself whether I felt good, I started telling myself that, as a professional,
I owed it to the people out there to play as well as I possibly could every
night. Oscar should really get a lot of credit for the sense of professionalism
he gives to people who work with him."
NHØP's aim ever since he first took up the bass was to eliminate
the technical problems as far as possible so that he could concentrate on
creating music - a precisely identical philosophy to that of Oscar Peterson.
He once explained: "I feel that a lot of people fight the instrument
and waste energy pulling strings in all directions. All you get out of that
is noise and less technique." He told me that his heroes on the instrument
were Walter Page, Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, Scott LaFaro and Jaco Pastorius.
Niels-Henning had a phenomenal technique. Early on, he developed a method
of playing pizzicato passages using all four fingers of his right hand and
this made it possible for him to perform with perfect intonation at extremely
fast tempi.
It always struck me, when I watched NHØP with Peterson, that he
manifested an extraordinary composure, even when playing at furious tempi.
It was the composure of a person who not only had almost complete mastery
of his instrument but who was also an extremely well-adjusted, quietly confident
human being. For someone who achieved so much celebrity and acclaim at a
comparatively young age, he was remarkably unassuming. He had an unobtrusive
assurance, an engagingly amiable manner and a passionate enthusiasm for
his craft.
In 1991, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen was awarded the Nordic
Music Council Prize, the first time this prize for composition was given
to a performing musician. In recent years he led his own groups of mostly
Scandinavian musicians and taught at the Rytmiske Musikkonservatorium in
Copenhagen.
Writing about NHØP in his autobiography, "A Jazz Odyssey,"
Oscar Peterson described him as a prolific and stunningly gifted soloist.
He added: "Niels Pedersen is the type of player whose talents on his
instrument are such that he is almost unaware of what he does. His melodic
sense is impeccable, his choice of harmonic sequences is a pure delight
to play with and his time is flawless. The ease with which he executed linear
unison lines with me was a particular cause of astonishment. He is now arguably
the most inventive bassist in Jazz."
And in a valedictory statement following the announcement of NHØP's
death, Oscar said, "Niels-Henning was a player of unbelievable talent
and dexterity, but selfishly speaking, personally, he became my closest
friend and brother, and I shall never forget him or his talent. God bless
you, Niels, and may you brighten up the musical world in Heaven as you have
done on earth." |
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