RADIO AND PODCASTS

I did a fun podcast with Jeremiah Cymerman. We talked about the music scene inthe East Village in the 1980's and lots of other things. Have a listen: http://www.5049records.com/podcast/

A mainstay of the Lower East Side, saxophonist Paul Shapiro has played on hundreds of records with artists as diverse as John Zorn and Jay-Z, David Byrne and Michael Jackson. He has a huge and rich tenor sound and has released four deeply soulful records onTzadik’s Radical Jewish series, all of which feature killer bands playing Paul’s original compositions. Paul came over just two weeks ago for a lively conversation on a day when there was a lot of construction in my building. Please forgive the noise!

Paul Shapiro, Steven Bernstein and Roberto Rodriguez on NPR with Jon Kalish

http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=15237368

Paul Shapiro on John Schaefer’s New Sounds on WNYC

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/newsounds/2008/apr/13/

Paul Shapiro on WBAI’s Beyond the Pale with host Esther Kaplan

http://archive.org/details/BeyondthePale10192008B

Transcript of Paul Shapiro and Nat Hentoff on the Louie b. Free Radio Show

Louie Free

Nat Hentoff is back with again today and this time we are talking music with Paul Shapiro. Let me say to you first Nat Hentoff, as always I am honored to have you back on the show.

Nat Hentoff

Well thank you sir, I am honored to talk to Paul Shapiro. He’s brought me back to my roots with his recording Essen.

Louie Free

Let me get right into it. Paul, how does it feel when you hear Nat Hentoff say that about your work?

Paul Shapiro

I’m just as honored as can be to be on the same show as Nat and I’m really looking forward to hearing some of his comments about the music I put on this record, that’s for sure.

Louie Free

Well. Lets start, Mr. Hentoff when you say that (Essen) brought you back to your roots, tell us about that?

Nat Hentoff

Some years ago Charles Mingus and I were talking about what kind of music first goes through each of us that changed our lives that you couldn’t do without afterwards. And for him when he was a kid he was taken to the Holiness Churches, the call and response between the preacher and the congregation, the moaning and the riffs. And as I told him I as a kid was sitting next to my father in the shul, the synagogue, and the one thing that really hit me hard was the chazzan, the cantor. That was the man who was the musical and in some respects the soul, the soulful center of the whole proceedings. He used to sing what is called melisma. For each syllable there are three, four or six notes that climb and entwine. And he did with it with such passion that as a kid it seemed he was arguing with God. But in all of this music I could hear the krecht, in Yiddish that is the cry. And then when I was older I was listening to black blues and there it was again. They all intertwine. And this is the kind of music that once you hear it, you can’t get enough of it. And that’s why I like Paul Shapiro’s album because the music, and as a matter of fact, there is something in the notes that struck me hard. When I was, I don’t know, about 14 or 15 I was listening to… I was collecting records in the Depression, and I was working on the food team as a delivery boy, and whatever money I could get, they were three for a dollar you could get 78 rpms and eventually I got a Cab Calloway recording and I couldn’t believe it. He was singing Yiddish! That’s mentioned in the notes to Essen.

That’s incredible. Nat, you had that 78.

Yeah. I was a kid. Of course, you mentioned the Andrews Sisters. I used to hear them singing in Yiddish along with the Barry Sisters.

Yeah. No, its amazing. I tell you I was over in YIVO, the archivist place that has all of these wonderful Yiddish recordings and books. I found a recording that I put on my record of Sophie Tucker singing “Mama Goes Where Papa Goes” and it was on OKEH Records which was of course the home of all the blues records. And there it was- an OKEH 78 with Hebrew, with Yiddish, on the label. And I was like, oh… I tried to get it on my record, (the artwork) on my record, but I couldn’t quite do that. Just to see that label with the Hebrew writing on it was really something

Another kind of Yiddish music that really got to me when I was very young- the synagogue where we went also had a catering business. And every once in a while I’d be running down the street, sometimes with my mother behind me who didn’t want me to get hit by a car, because I knew at the weddings there would be a klezmer band. The klezmorim would use itinerant musicians in the old countries that would go from country to country and largely improvise. Like Duke Ellington when he would go abroad, the culture from the various countries that they went to would become part of their music. They swung! And I remember. It was very interested in the clarinetist because I am a failed clarinetist and I once went up to him and said something to him like “wow” and he winked at me and said “where do you think Benny Goodman came from?”

Right. Its an amazing tradition. You know I have been reading about the klezmers too. They had a rough time. They had edicts against them. They could only work at certain times and stuff like that. They could only have three men in a band, and all kinds of stuff. They always borrowed from the music around them. That’s a classic part of Jewish music too. I think it’s a part of world music is that everybody listens to everybody else you know. And everybody that is good is influenced by everybody else.

It becomes something you really needed sometimes. I was talking some years ago with one of my favorite country music singers and writers, Merle Haggard, who by the way knows a lot about jazz. I don’t think he knows anything about Yiddish music. But he was talking about how as he put it “there are times when things get so far down that nothing will lift me up except music.” And that happens to me. If I’m spending the morning writing about Mugabe and Zimbabwe or anything like that. The terrible genocide that goes on and on. Sometimes I have to stop and put on a recording.

That’s really great. It is a great uplifter of people and a reminder of the good of life and the reason we are here. We need to make the world better, but we also need to celebrate the fact that we live and we love and we are alive and that we should never forget that.

Paul Shapiro. Let me ask you when were you first aware of Nat Hentoff and his work? What can you tell us?

I think it was reading Coltrane liner notes.

How long ago?

You’re asking a personal question.

Everyone

Laughs!

It wasn’t the year the record was released! It was probably a couple of years after that. Probably in the early 70’s or so.

That reminds me of something. You know Stalin banned jazz and then after he left it was still banned in the Soviet Union. And I found out when in Moscow there was a tenor player who translated some of my Coltrane liner notes and put them into what they called samovars. Those were like secret messages that they could send around to other musicians. That was an honor I can tell you.

That is an honor. That is really amazing. You wrote that “cleansing mirror into the soul” line, didn’t you Nat?

Something like that.

I remember that clearly as being something that wow, I really had to think about that. It helped me to understand intellectually a little bit more about the artistic experience. I was feeling these things, but like wow, I really had to think about that.

Nat Hentoff, from Dylan to Coltrane, you’ve written liner notes, did a lot with Lenny Bruce. How did that come about? You’d get contacted by the record companies, the musicians. Tell us a little bit about the liner notes.

Over time I’d get a call from whoever the producer was and they’d ask if I’d want to do it. Of course if I knew who it was I’d say sure. Coltrane I wouldn’t hesitate. As a matter of fact every time that happened we went through a ritual, John and I. I’d call up and say ‘John. They asked me to do this liner note’ and he’s always say ‘I wish you wouldn’t. If the music can’t speak for itself, what’s the point.’ And John was a kind man and I’d say “John, it’s a gig.’ OK, he’d say, ‘what do you want to know.’

Everyone

Laughter.

And when I don’t know the musician, I’d say to them, ‘send the record.’ If I like it, I’ll do the notes. I turned a lot of them down too. You can’t do these notes … its all a matter of feeling. Its like Art Blakey once said, somebody would say to him ‘jazz is difficult music.’ He’d say ‘anybody can dig jazz if they can feel. And of course the same is with Yiddish music. Another thing when I was a kid, there was a man named Aaron Lebedeff and he had a recording that I played all the time “Romania, Romania.” Boy that sounded like Louis Armstrong with a New Orleans group. It was so joyous.

There was amazing stuff. It does cross over you know. People hear it. I got to tell you putting out this record has put me in touch with people. I got a recording somebody sent me over the internet of Slim Gaillard doing a version of a song that he retitled As You Are, and its “Oif’n Pripetshik.”

I’ll tell you something really extraordinary. What knocked me out, one of my favorite cantors was Yossele Rosenblatt. I still have a lot of his records. There’s a new book out by Ben Ratliff whose the Jazz critic of the (New York) Times and it consists entirely of conversations he had in the homes of musicians where he played them recordings, not blind fold tests, just what do you think of this. And he played Ornette Coleman who is about as far out as a hipster or a hip player. I am a big fan of Ornette’s. In fact I did the notes for one of his first records. Anyway, he plays this Yossele Rosenblatt cantorial record and Ornette is dazed. He starts to cry. The music hit him so hard. He said ‘I never heard those notes. Where did you get this?’

That’s unbelievable.

You think about the music when it’s really honest and soulful. There are no barriers. On my street here in the Village there’s a friend of mine, Jim Hall, who is a world-class guitarist and he plays all over the world. He said to me one night on my street ‘you know I play with these musicians. I don’t know their language. I can’t speak to them in their language. But we have no trouble at all communicating once we play.’

Paul Shapiro, let me ask you this. Why Essen? Why now? Why this CD? Why now?

Well it has to do with the fact that I had the opportunity in early 2003. I had the opportunity to make a record for John Zorn’s Tzadik label. I was just like Nat. I too sat with my father in shul when I was young. I decided that since this was a radical Jewish culture label of Zorn’s stuff, that I would use some of the melodies that I remember from the synagogue, as a kid particularly. And to put them on my saxophone and to play them as jazz compositions, and to re-imagine them as the jazz composer I am now, as opposed to just singing them in synagogue. I looked at them and really kind of re-imagined them. From that I started to search more and more into Jewish music because it became fascinating to me. I knew something about Jewish music but I kept searching. Then I found these really wild 30’s and 40’s Slim Gaillard stuff. Cab Calloway stuff. All this wonderful cross over that I knew a little bit about. I found more of it. I had always loved that music. Loved the early Jazz and R&B like Louis Jordan kind of music. It was swinging but it had a back beat. It had great improvisation. Great writing. It was also humorous. It just really reached me. So I decided to put together a band to play that kind of music because I had always loved it. Now I realize there was a way to do it with some Jewish and Yiddish crossing over into Jazz. I said let me have some fun. I just figured I’d do a couple of gigs and then I realized it just kept growing and I kept finding more and more fun music from that era that was really unique. I mean Sophie Tucker singing in Yiddish with a blues inflection in 1923. This was some stuff that was really crossing over and it wasn’t just to make a buck or just to steal a melody from here or there. There was genuine interplay. It became more fascinating. I’d do these gigs and people would come up to me and say you got to play Essen. I’d do a little research and somebody would bring me a CD they had burned from an old 78 or whatever. Gradually the material would build up. We did a tune that my singer, whose an African-American singer brought in called “Yes My Darling Daughter.” She had a jazz version of it. We started playing it. She thought it sounded good with the rest of the material. We started playing it. People came up and said that “Yuh, Mein Tiere Tochter.” We didn’t even know it was a Yiddish song! But it felt right in the material. Part of the whole genesis of this stuff has been, and continuance of it has been people coming up and saying ‘you know, have you heard of this one, have you heard of that one, and sending me material. That’s when I realized there is quite a bit of it, quite a bit of crossover. That’s why I decided to do the record with Zorn. I had done two records and I had an opportunity to do a third one and I said you know I should do this “Ribs and Brisket” project, so that’s what we did.

Your reaction to that.

I’ll give you a crossover story. The first Jazz music that I heard that really turned me on and I never stopped. I was about 11 years old going down the main street in Boston. In those days the record stores had these public address systems, and I hear this music and I shouted. You don’t do that in Boston at least in those days. I ran into the record store, Krays Music and said ‘what was that?’ And he said that was Artie Shaw’s “Nightmare.” It really was so powerful. I didn’t find out until, I don’t know, 50 years later. Artie Shaw wrote this in one of his notes he composed that record that “Nightmare”, his theme song for a while, based on a niggun, a melody that he heard from a chazzan when he was a kid.

You know, its amazing how music moves around and how we all, I think people are fascinated to hear people use music that comes from their ethnicity. It’s funny how deep this stuff is. You hear it when you are a little kid. You hear it around the house. Your parents play it and you grow up and you hear all this different music but then you put in something from your own early background and it starts to resonate like crazy.

What’s interesting is when you hear about that and see how its developed in to going into other cultures, your audience is who for this? This isn’t just Jews, this crosses so many cultures, correct Paul?

Absolutely! Its very multicultural. I think that the great musicians... look at Dizzy Gilllespie running into Chano Pozo. I think that people that have big ears really borrow from other cultures continuously and that’s what moves music forward, when people put things together that brings bridges to different culture and different people.

I am talking with Nat Hentoff and Paul Shapiro. I remember Nat Hentoff one of the first times we spoke and I asked you about how did your first get into jazz, if I recall accurately you said about being a little boy and hearing the klezmer sounds and then how that progressed into the jazz that you became famous for writing for. Correct?

That’s right. You know the conversation we’re having, if there are teachers in the public schools that have access to some of these cross cultural recordings. Imagine if you played this for elementary school kids, or middle school kids. Now because of No Child Left Behind , the law and they keep testing and testing for Math and Reading which is OK but most schools dropped their music sections. This would be the kind of music to use a phrase the politicians use to really bring the people together. I just did a piece recently for the Wall street Journal in Queens which is part of New York where John Coltrane lived for the last years of his life, where he did a lot of his composing. And his home was taken over by a real estate developer and they were going to destroy the home and makes coops out of it. There was a guy around there who tried to stop that. And he told a second grade teacher Christine Passarella in the local public school. She teaches, talking about cross cultural with a guy at Harvard University, I think it is Howard Gardner who teaches that everybody has their particular strengths based on what passionately involves them. It leads to math people to people who live on reading to people who live on music. When you are in school teaching you ought to draw on those things on the individual kids. She has taken these second graders to the Metropolitan Museum so the could see what goes on in paintings and who the characters were and she started to play music to them and for some reason Coltrane really go to them. As a result , she told the kids about trying to save Coltrane’s house and the kids got involved with bake sales and they had a whole session at the elementary school which they had choreographed dances like ‘Chasin the Trane,’ etc. It was a wonderful story to hear. And now she’s moved on to the third grade, where she’ll have a lunch time session once a week for any of the kids in the school who want to come and hear the music and talk about it.

That is something. It is a very interesting thing to really engage children passionately and get them excited in what they are doing as opposed to just dry learning which is boring and just goes in one ear and out the other.

Music can do this because once they get interested in the music then they might want to know who was this <<chazzan?>> , who were these cantors, these cantors who could have become opera singers they were so good but they wouldn’t do that. They had to stay within their faith. There are all kinds of stories you can tell.

Nat hentoff tell me about this song Essen. What does this mean to you?

It reminds me not only of klezmer music. The jazz historians talk about the Harlem rent parties where people would come in and help pay the rent. They’d get Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith or Duke Ellington, or whoever and there always food around. The kind of parties that I went to when I was a very young kid back in Roxbury, which is part of Boston, it was that kind of thing as well. I once said to Lion… I think Paul would be interested in this. Willie The Lion Smith was one of the most influential pianists in the history of jazz. He was a master of what was called Harlem stride piano. He was a great influence on Duke Ellington. Duke once said when the Lion came into the room you were with a living legend. Now the Lion I got to know. We had the same doctor, the same internist. I saw on the doctor’s wall one day the Lion’s business card. It was in English and Hebrew. I figured what is that? And I found out that I knew there was one synagogue in Harlem, probably more than one, that the Lion was a member of the shul and there were times when we was the chazzan. So that shows you there were no unnecessary barriers between music.

I know about him and have been looking for his book. Its like $50 online.

I just ordered that book.

Did you really?! I looked in the New York library system. Its up in the County Cullen library only. And its strictly a resource. You got to go up there and sit there. I think I’ll come over to your house after you’re done Nat and I’ll borrow the book.

No, no no. Call me later. There is a very good outfit called Jazz Line. I’ve used them before for jazz books. I figured I’d ask them for this one. I knew it would be hard to get. So the next day he called and said yeah, I think we can get it for you. Its going to be pretty expensive. I think its $28.

I’m going to look for them, Nat. I really want to read that book. I am aware of him and knew that he was a cantor and that he spoke Yiddish and believe he had a Jewish father.

Oh yeah, yeah.

The music transcends. Paul, you and I were just chatting about this. The music is much broader. You didn’t do this for just a Jewish audience. Or did you?

No. I did it for the audience of anybody who loves music and also loves jazz and loves classic 40’s and 50’s particularly . I didn’t do it with any in particular per se. I just love this music and I think anybody who comes and see us live gets into it. It’s not for Jews only or for African Americans only or whatever you want to say.

Tell us about the band.

Wait. That reminds me of a lesson. A life lesson that I got from Duke Ellington. When I was in my teens I knew Duke. He was like a mentor of mine. He said to me ‘kid, one thing I want you to remember, don’t get caught in categories. Just take it one musician at a time. One cultural experience at a time. And what Paul just said is exactly why what he records is not limited by any means to Jewish audiences. If you want a good time, listen to Essen.

If you want a good time listen to Essen. Its funny, Paul Shapiro I know you’ll be able to relate to this. There in no else in the world to talk with that will say ‘I got this lesson. Duke Ellington told me once… well, when I was talking with Art Blakey… Louis Armstrong used to say… John Coltrane would call and say Nat …’ Who else but Nat Hentoff. its unbelievable.

You have any Cab Calloway or Slim Gaillard for me?

I used to have them but at one point. This place where I work is so crowded, my wife never gets in here because she figures something will fall on her. I’ve got all my 78s and I gave them to the Buck’s Library at NYU. Gaillard was an extraordinary performer. And not only that, a superb bass player as well.

Slim played guitar and piano and Bam Brown or Slam Stewart were the bassists that he always played with. How about Coltrane, did he ever have any interaction with chazzanut or Jewish Klezmer clarinet? He got into that soprano and very middle eastern in sound.

We used to talk about the kind of music he would listen to. He would listen to all kinds of music. Klezmer music or any kind of Jewish music never came up. I should have asked him. His whole idea was he thought that here was …the music he wanted was to reflect the universe as a whole and that meant for him getting spiritual guidance if you will from all kinds of music. He used to listen to African pygmy music , near eastern music , far eastern music. I wouldn’t be surprised. After all if Ornette reacted that way to a Yossele Rosenblatt, I wouldn’t have doubted that Coltrane would have heard some of that.

Isn’t that funny.

When you first heard it (Essen) Nat, you said it took you back. Tell us a little more about that?

Once you are open to music, I really feel for people who for whatever reason don’t have that experience. Because it really is. The way I describe jazz often is that it is a life force. It’s a way to keep your own life rhythms alive, especially in this increasingly technological universe we have. We hear all kinds of information from all kinds of sources. Where is the knowledge in all that information. You can get inundated by all of this noise whether its people speaking or the kind of music you hear on the radio. I keep going back to it whenever I can. I love Paul Shapiro’s recording. I’ll never forget when I was a kid there was a very famous Benny Goodman recording “When the Angels Sing”. In the middle of it Ziggy Elman, the trumpet player plays <<a niggun?>>. That is the kind of good feeling, let’s have a drink or let’s eat that you’ll find with Essen. I mean Ziggy Elman could be in Paul’s band.

I love that. I love all kinds of music. And I love all kinds of feelings. Its good to be serious and its good to think intently about the world. And its also good to have a drink and have food with people, to sit and to share life and to enjoy good times. That leads to other things. Everything doesn’t have to be serious to be worthwhile. Its important for people to dink and eat and have fun together, to make and all that stuff.

When I heard on the cd ‘gay cock’n offen yam’ I cringed at first because I thought if I said that when my father was alive I would have got hit. That wasn’t something you would have used openly- not in my house. My father would have forbidden it. He could have said it but you wouldn’t have said it as a kid. When I first heard it, I never heard it recorded. I’ve heard it said, I’ve used the expression, but to hear it like that was shocking.

That’s an interesting age kind of thing, a generational kind of thing. I remember learning that kind of stuff in high school when I learned some of those funny Yiddish dirty stuff, you know curses or whatever. But its true- it didn’t have the import. I wouldn’t have gotten spanked or thrown out of the house for using it because it was another era.

I didn’t say it Dad! Nat what do you think of that. With the Yiddish on the CD Essen?

What you were talking about, it starts with what you hear in the house. I absorbed all of that because we didn’t have those strictures. In my neighborhood in Roxbury, Yiddish was the primary language. This was also the time, the most anti-Semitic city in the country. Charles Couglin, who was the most anti-Semitic person in the country had a radio show and that was the most popular show. So we were in a ghetto and we talk to each other. In terms of language when I get really angry at people, they all come back. I won’t do it on the air now because of the FCC these days. It part of your whole being… what you heard as a kid. It never really leaves you unless you try to stamp it out, and then where are you?

Paul Shapiro, I have to ask you, when you hear Nat Hentoff talk about how much he enjoys Essen. When you hear praise like that, tell me your reaction to that. You’ve got to be freaking out.

I am freaking out. Nat has spent so many hours listening to the best music ever created, and listening and talking with the best musicians that were ever on this planet and in particular in jazz and the fact that he’s got an ear for something that I did and that it touches back to something that he felt when he was growing up is really a thrill, a big thrill for me. We make music and never know what happens. I love music. It is the career I have chosen. These days its tough to make a living and sometimes you wonder what am I going to do? Then you get to talk to Nat Hentoff and he makes you feel all good. Beautiful.

All

Laugh.

As this culture becomes more homogenized. It used to be, I’m old enough to remember going to another state and there’d be different kinds of people, different accents, different stories. Now its all like the same thing. You take this recording by Paul, how many radio stations now would play that recording? Even in country music, even a person like Merle Haggard isn’t played any more on country music stations except for what they call ‘old’ country because difference is knocked out. You don’t want difference, you want what everybody is supposed to hear… supposed to hear. So it’s a great thing what John Zorn has done with his label because this music will last as long as we have a civilization. Of course that’s a rough step.

At least 20 more years Nat! Right?

Everyone talks about how diversity in this country, how multicultural we are. Well yes we are if we express it. I wonder about kids coming up where what ever backgrounds they come from, how much they know about where they came from.

Nat you’re saying that radio has changed and will not play this type of stuff. I’m not sure, I want to make sure I understand what you’re saying.

Look at most of the music you hear on the radio, especially so called popular music or whatever. There are some jazz stations and I think a few of them will play Essen like WBGO. But most of the stations either have playlists that are arranged for them ahead of time or they don’t want to be different. They see the audience as absolutely all the same at least the mass audience and they don’t want to something that might drive some of them away.

We talk about technology and I think there is something afoot. Radio stations now are streaming more and more. And somebody in any part of the world can go to the station’s web site and that can be their radio station 24/7. That’s very different because it used to be where radio was just where it was beaming. I am hoping that things are changing- they have changed so dramatically these days in terms of the way records are sold. I’m hoping that more interesting radio stations are going to listened to by more people all over the planet and that that will encourage a backlash against this total homogenization of stations. So many jazz stations have a thin style orientation that they play. They either play acoustic classic sounding jazz, new fusion sounding jazz. Nobody plays modern, nobody does this or that… I think it is possible with this streaming thing that people are honing in on certain kinds of different radio stations that they like and I am hoping this breeds more fresh air.

What’s needed is the people who run the radio stations and you’re idea certainly makes sense. We need more Louie Free’s to be in charge of radio stations. Maybe Louie cold start a school for Program Directors and owners.

I’m so happy this is happening. I’m kvelling. Paul you were saying about Billie Holiday, go ahead.

People have been sending me interesting things as I said. Will Friedwald sent me a CDR of Billie Holiday singing “My Yiddishe Mama.”

That was done in somebody’s house. She was singing it to a kid.

It was in Tony Scott’s living room apparently. She clearly knows it very well. It just like every other fabulous recording of hers. Its classic Billie Holiday but its “My Yiddishe Mama.” Do you know anything more about that?

Just that its part of a marvelous recording by ESP disk is the company. They have a researcher who put it together. Its full of air checks <<?>> things that have never been heard before. It’s the most extraordinary collection of Lady Day as Lester Young called her that I’ve ever heard.

So that’s where it comes from.

It’s a 5 CD set. And the liner notes unlike most liner notes put all the songs in an historical context… where she was as that time in her life, what it was, who were the players. You’d enjoy it a lot.

The hour blew by. An hour with Nat Hentoff is so precious. My world of thanks to you. Paul Shapiro. Your music. We were on the way to a tough medical visit. On the way up we put the CD into the player and had one of the most enjoyable rides. We forgot all the tsouris, all the trouble. It was so hot, such a great CD Essen. I want to thank both of you for doing this today.

It was a pleasure Louie and Nat, thank you so much for sharing all of your stuff. I took notes as I was sitting here talking with you and it was really a thrill for me.

I don’t play anything but Paul you’re a musical therapist. That’s what this music does.

All

Laugh.