Holiday Notes Across A Hallway article @ All About Jazz

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Miles Davis, you know Miles Davis? Miles told him that if he couldn’t stop playing, to try taking the horn out of his mouth! You can read up on that sometime. That’s all jazz history! Like in the old Rubanks: lots to learn there too!”

The boy perked up at the mention of Miles Davis, he had heard of Miles Davis, and if the guy from across the hall knew something about John Coltrane and Miles Davis, maybe he knew something after all, even if he never played complete songs in the afternoon.

“Let me go get my horn,” Cannataro suggested, “and we can play together, some slow Coltrane. Interested?” The boy wrinkled his face as if to say no. But his mother intervened. “Oh, Mr. Cannataro, that would be great. It would be wonderful to hear you play.”

“You can call me Augie,” he offered.

He walked back across the hall and came back minutes later with a couple of compact discs and some sheet music he had downloaded and printed from a quick internet search. He gave Angela the disc, Giant Steps, asked her to cue up the sixth selection, and let it play. She offered him some of those promised snacks, and a glass of wine. The boy had cocoa.

Augie introduced the song’s beginning. “You dig Coltrane, but you only want to play fast. Here’s Coltrane playing slow, about one beat a second, beats per minute we call it, the sheet music calls for 57 of them here, in a song called “Naima.” He’s working directly from the scales.” He showed the boy the opening measures in the sheet music and pointed out what they had heard.

“It’s in 4/4 time, it’s written here that’s the time signature, four beats to a measure. It starts here with a half note with a dot, making it a half note plus a quarter note of value. One note, one tone, but held for three beats of time.” Augie explained the rest of the first line, as the notes led down and back up, a held whole note, and on across the line. He offered for them to play it together. Augie continued with the lines after that, slowly, pointed out each note, and the finger placements, especially for quick and tricky flats.

“You know these notes, right? The fingerings for each?”

“Well, yeah, but they’re so boring.”

“But you know them. You know where to put your fingers in the right places. And you can read,” he complimented the boy. “Not everybody knows how. But because you knew that, you could play the whole first line of ‘Naima.’ Let’s start with that opening note again. It’s the same note that Coltrane plays, the very same, you and Coltrane. Imagine that! Let’s do it together.”

The Listening Journey

Augie walked Joseph through the first page, showing how measures varied in structure and repeated, explained the math, which to Joseph’s amazement made sense, wasn’t boring. Augie suggested they get back to playing. The boy looked skeptical but gave it a try. Augie slowed the tempo down to even half its 55 beats per minute and finished a full page of a version of Coltrane. “Slowly, but Coltrane all the way,” Augie rewarded. What they had accomplished, Augie said, was “Close enough for jazz, as they say.”

“Who are they?,” Angela and Joseph asked simultaneously.

“Augie laughed again. “Well, the ‘they’ who don’t know what it’s supposed to sound like. Who don’t understand it and think it’s all sloppy and crazy. Or who want to shred past it.” He pointed playfully at Joseph. “Or players who go far out or fall short in improvising, creating, trying to reach beyond what they hear or can do, and just leave it there, that as close as they can get is good enough, as good as it’s going to get anyhow.”

“Close enough isn’t good enough for jazz?,” Joseph asked.

“Well, no,” Augie replied, “not if you want to play precisely, not if you really care. And if you really like the music, then you treat it with care, even if you’re shredding it. It’s that important.” He paused, considered: “But for now, close enough is good enough for us. We’re on a journey.”

“That’s beautiful,” Angela offered.

“It’s a beautiful song,” Augie replied. “A love song, to his first wife, but timeless.” He considered too late that Angela, with that “ex” she had mentioned, might not have enjoyed a song about an ex, memories and all that, perhaps already as that former wife herself. But not to linger on that thought, he offered up another slow Coltrane piece. He had brought over the CD for the album Mating Call. Too late, he feared that too might have been perceived as something subliminal, but let that pass also.

“Here’s another well-known Coltrane song, written by a pianist named

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Tadd Dameron, Coltrane and Dameron together here. Not enough people remember Tadd. Too bad; he wrote some great songs, in different styles, over many years. Some of his work with Coltrane gets reissued now under Coltrane’s name, as Coltrane became more famous.

“This one kind of makes sense for tonight,” said Augie. “It’s a little damp outside, but not cold enough to snow. But it’s cool: ‘On a Misty Night.'”

Augie asked for the disc to be played, directed them to the gentle introduction and how it began to swing as it progressed, and then paused the recording. He went back to the sheet music, showed how it started, pointed out the notes and fingerings, and suggested they play together as far as they easily could, Joseph was amazed at how they could follow and approximate what Coltrane had done. Augie continued past where it would have been too complicated for the boy and stopped at the bottom of the first page.

He spread out the sheet music, and pointed out the way through it, as they returned to listening, to later in the song where Coltrane put together chains of sixteenth notes.

“That’s a whole note, which would normally be held for four beats, but is divided up sixteen times, sixteen beats, sixteen notes, in the space that originally took four. And Trane has shredded it, but gently. See? It’s all written down. See how it moves across the page, in order, not just all over the place? All those notes in order and moving by quickly.”

“Those songs are lovely,” Angela said. “Why hasn’t Joseph heard of them?”

“Well, when you start with Interstellar Space, one of Coltrane’s last works, unless you go back into his history you miss where he started from. You might miss all the people he played with along the way. That’s where things get really interesting, like exploring the branches of a tree. Instead of going way outside, you can go deeply microscopic. History, like I said. Science even.

“Some people, Joseph for example, only know Coltrane for being way out. He did lead to what’s called free jazz, where it seems almost anything at all is played. But even then, he had complete control of his horn. Not all the free cats could play ballads, these slow songs, not all of them ever learned the basics, their Rubank.

“But Coltrane could. And Joseph, you can too, and once you get a handle on that, then you can blow!”

Augie honked loudly a low C. Joseph and his mother jumped at the sound, and they all laughed. “That is kinda fun too, I must admit.”

Augie and Joseph played the beginning of “Naima” again together, and then let the whole song play out on the Giant Steps CD, and then listened again to all of “On a Misty Night,” and then back to the beginning of the whole Mating Call album. Joseph liked the beginning of the title song. Coltrane’s sharp notes satisfied the boy’s desire for an approximation of shredding. Dameron’s piano established a Caribbean rhythm as Angela started dancing her own gentle rhumba. The album continued to the skipping melody of “Gnid,” the warmth of “Soultrane,” a groovy shuffle in “Romas,” and Philly Joe Jones’ drum beats at the start of “Super Jet” with Coltrane’s fast playing there energized everyone.

The evening passed, under the spell of Coltrane and Dameron. Augie sipped at his wine, the boy sipped at his cocoa, Angela joined them with more wine of her own. Augie pointed out some listening details, tried to be educational but not boring. He shared what was meaningful to him. He spoke of giving each note its full value. Separating notes, breathing, and silence. “What we call a rest. You saw them in the sheet music. Like in ‘give it a rest.'” He smiled at Angela’s mom duties, and Joseph’s enthusiasm, and with irony over his own irritation at the boy’s noise emanating into the hallway.

“And starting and ending notes cleanly. One note ends where the next one begins. Sound isn’t, then it is, and then it’s not. If you’ve ever stayed up late, past midnight, it’s today, and then one second later it’s tomorrow. Like today isn’t yet Christmas, but tomorrow will be. But you’ll have New Year’s and next year to look forward to. And you’ll have further opportunities to learn the material.”

Augie considered that he was drifting into being a tutor as he, uncharacteristically, imagined teaching the boy. Any discipline the kid gained would reduce the noise in what had been those damned efforts at blowing freeform. With the kid trained to enunciate each note, that deliberate staccato would get on Augie’s nerves too, he knew, as he would hear it through the apartment walls, and he’d have to fix both the kid’s impatient playing and Augie’s own too-easy irritation. Augie would over time wish for more flow.

But the kid wasn’t a bad kid. Angela was single it seemed, but for the ex and who knows what else, and quite good looking he granted. Better by far than whomever else Augie didn’t come home with that evening, nor on most other nights. And they were just across the hall. Maybe they would become friends. Casual, as she had invited, or more. Who could tell?

Before the night grew too late, he said his farewells, with friendly hugs all around, and returned to his own apartment. So, the evening had been an unexpected success. This Christmas wasn’t so bad, he admitted to himself. The swells back at the party at least had asked for “Chestnuts Roasting,” although too many times, and they hadn’t really been listening. But it was a good song; they could have requested “Holly Jolly Christmas,” which would have put him up the wall before he was out the door. The New Year might bring some changes.

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