"A Musical Conversation With Benny Golson"
New College Theatre, 4 P.M.
10-12 Holyoke Street, Cambridge, MA
Thursday, April 16, 2008
Musicians just have different brains than we do. Maybe this is true of artists of all stripes - painters, dancers, writers, hell, maybe even reporters. Unlike the rest of us, who can’t recall what we ate for breakfast, their memories are accessible on demand. Benny Golson proved this today.
Dapper in a tailored black suit set off by a pink polo shirt as he sat facing the audience at the New College Theater a few steps from Harvard Square, he could have been a visiting entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs have a feel for what people want or need. Benny Golson has been doing just that for 62 years. The 79 year-old tenor saxophonist had arrived at Harvard for the college’s annual spring jazz residency. During the week, he’d teach students, be the subject of this ninety-minute “Musical Conversation With Benny Golson,” and have his music be featured in a tribute concert at Sanders Theater on Saturday night.
Steve Schwartz, WGBH radio host, asks, “You’re teaching students here at Harvard, do you present yourself as composer, arranger, musician?”
“I create something that had no previous existence, something that reaches the heart with romantic melody, memorable for melodic content that will last.”
Schwartz cues up a two-minute sample of Golson’s music and asked him comment on it. Golson settled back in his chair, “I wrote that song in Boston, in Copley Square, in the downstairs of a club that was called…hmmmm,…Storyville, No one was in the club that afternoon, I wrote it in about twenty minutes.” The year was 1956.
Golson’s recollections began in the wax era with 78 rpm records powered by hand-cranked victrolas played in his mother’s living room. When he and a 17-year-old friend were turned away from performing in his hometown Philadelphia, Golson’s mother said, “Don’t worry, some day they wont be able to afford you.” How true.
During the span of ninety minutes, the affable Golson was a one-man professor of musicology. He’s rubbed shoulders with every jazz great of the last fifty years. If you have the faintest idea of jazz, you’ll recognize names like Sonny Rollins, George Shearing, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, and Art Blakey.
Benny Golson remembers anecdotes about each of them and others, like Lucky Johnson, whom he heard when he was fifteen, and Bull Moose Jackson, with whom he played in the early days.
“Lucky Johnson made me sound conscious, his style evolved but his sound remained the same. He knew how to fill a sax up, fill and release it. In ballads, the way to prove your mettle is to slow down, there’s no place to hide. It's not how fast you play.”
He chuckles when he recounts how Bullmoose Jackson would tell him exactly what to play and how he’d improvise, not to steal some of the leader’s thunder but simply because he couldn’t stifle the music genie within him. Performing with these unheralded bands, he made friendships with musicians who would emerge as the best of his generation.
Clifford Brown was one of these young lions. “I learned about Clifford’s death in an auto accident while on a break at the Apollo Theater on 126th Street,” Golson says. Shortly after, I wrote “I Remember Clifford,” a standard still played today.
Google Benny Golson. I stopped clicking after forty pages of “Golson”. If you were to choose one of the entries and ask Benny, odds are good that he’d remember a story to go with the entry.
Psychologist William James summarized the fundamental principle of memory in a single phrase: "The secret is … forming diverse and multiple associations with every fact we care to retain." Some authorities call that ‘chunking.”
Clearly, Golson cares about retaining. He must use all the strategies of chunking memories together, making patterns, visualizing them, probably associating them with melodies and images, and maybe even the cars he’s slept in on his trips around America in his early days.
His pal Jimmy Heath says, “There’s enough music in life for everyone,” Golson has made sure that means music for every taste as well.
Along with the 30 albums and 300 compositions he’s created, he’s written for Hollywood - M*A*S*H, Mannix, Mission Impossible, Mod Squad, The Partridge Family, The Academy Awards - and composed commercials for, Canada Dry, Carnation, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Clorox, Dodge, General Telephone, Gillette, Heinz Foods, Jack in The Box, Liquid Plum'r, MacDonald's, Mattel Toys, Monsanto, Nissan, Ohrbachs, Ore-Ida Frozen Potatoes, Parliament Cigarettes, Pepsi Cola, and Texaco.
He’s not done. “As I keep listening, I will hear dreams I haven’t heard yet,” he says. And we know he’ll play them for us.
New College Theatre, 4 P.M.
10-12 Holyoke Street, Cambridge, MA
Thursday, April 16, 2008
Musicians just have different brains than we do. Maybe this is true of artists of all stripes - painters, dancers, writers, hell, maybe even reporters. Unlike the rest of us, who can’t recall what we ate for breakfast, their memories are accessible on demand. Benny Golson proved this today.
Dapper in a tailored black suit set off by a pink polo shirt as he sat facing the audience at the New College Theater a few steps from Harvard Square, he could have been a visiting entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs have a feel for what people want or need. Benny Golson has been doing just that for 62 years. The 79 year-old tenor saxophonist had arrived at Harvard for the college’s annual spring jazz residency. During the week, he’d teach students, be the subject of this ninety-minute “Musical Conversation With Benny Golson,” and have his music be featured in a tribute concert at Sanders Theater on Saturday night.
“I create something that had no previous existence, something that reaches the heart with romantic melody, memorable for melodic content that will last.”
Schwartz cues up a two-minute sample of Golson’s music and asked him comment on it. Golson settled back in his chair, “I wrote that song in Boston, in Copley Square, in the downstairs of a club that was called…hmmmm,…Storyville, No one was in the club that afternoon, I wrote it in about twenty minutes.” The year was 1956.
Golson’s recollections began in the wax era with 78 rpm records powered by hand-cranked victrolas played in his mother’s living room. When he and a 17-year-old friend were turned away from performing in his hometown Philadelphia, Golson’s mother said, “Don’t worry, some day they wont be able to afford you.” How true.
During the span of ninety minutes, the affable Golson was a one-man professor of musicology. He’s rubbed shoulders with every jazz great of the last fifty years. If you have the faintest idea of jazz, you’ll recognize names like Sonny Rollins, George Shearing, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, and Art Blakey.
Benny Golson remembers anecdotes about each of them and others, like Lucky Johnson, whom he heard when he was fifteen, and Bull Moose Jackson, with whom he played in the early days.
“Lucky Johnson made me sound conscious, his style evolved but his sound remained the same. He knew how to fill a sax up, fill and release it. In ballads, the way to prove your mettle is to slow down, there’s no place to hide. It's not how fast you play.”
Clifford Brown was one of these young lions. “I learned about Clifford’s death in an auto accident while on a break at the Apollo Theater on 126th Street,” Golson says. Shortly after, I wrote “I Remember Clifford,” a standard still played today.
Golson (R), with relative of Billy Strayhorn (L).
If you had time to drive from Boston to Baton Rouge with Golson, you’d be filled in on details describing fellow musicians, their style, manner of dress, and musical talent. The man is thoughtful, extroverted, and plays an audience as deftly as he plays his saxophone.
Google Benny Golson. I stopped clicking after forty pages of “Golson”. If you were to choose one of the entries and ask Benny, odds are good that he’d remember a story to go with the entry.
Psychologist William James summarized the fundamental principle of memory in a single phrase: "The secret is … forming diverse and multiple associations with every fact we care to retain." Some authorities call that ‘chunking.”
Clearly, Golson cares about retaining. He must use all the strategies of chunking memories together, making patterns, visualizing them, probably associating them with melodies and images, and maybe even the cars he’s slept in on his trips around America in his early days.
His pal Jimmy Heath says, “There’s enough music in life for everyone,” Golson has made sure that means music for every taste as well.
Along with the 30 albums and 300 compositions he’s created, he’s written for Hollywood - M*A*S*H, Mannix, Mission Impossible, Mod Squad, The Partridge Family, The Academy Awards - and composed commercials for, Canada Dry, Carnation, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Clorox, Dodge, General Telephone, Gillette, Heinz Foods, Jack in The Box, Liquid Plum'r, MacDonald's, Mattel Toys, Monsanto, Nissan, Ohrbachs, Ore-Ida Frozen Potatoes, Parliament Cigarettes, Pepsi Cola, and Texaco.
He’s not done. “As I keep listening, I will hear dreams I haven’t heard yet,” he says. And we know he’ll play them for us.
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