1960-1962
After Marian McPartland's Hickory House gig came to an end,
she operated as a freelance musician, dividing her time between New York
dates, and taking her trio on the road. The decade of the sixties was an unsettling
period for jazz musicians, with rock stars rather than jazz stars dominating
the charts. 'It got to the point where, I think, that's when I started in the
schools. Rock was taking over, and there were not as many gigs. Clubs were
changing their policy, and I didn't have a record date any more' (Hansson, Interview of Marian McPartland,
November 2, 1999). However, Marian did seize one opportunity to record an album
in Chicago for Time Records with Ben Tucker on bass and Jake Hanna on drums
in 1960 - Marian McPartland Plays Music Of Leonard Bernstein.
Marian McPartland returned to Britain in 1961 for an eight-day working
holiday, and to visit her family in Eastbourne, Sussex. On March 4, 1961, while in
the UK she featured on the BBC's Jazz Club, backed by bassist Kenny
Napper and drummer Allan Ganley (Press clipping, March 4, 1961). A few hours before leaving
London Airport she guested again with Napper and Ganley on David Nixon's BBC-TV's
Sunday Showtime, and told Metronome Magazine that she
planned to form a new octet with American trombonist and arranger, Melba Liston.
On her return to the States, she was booked to open a season in Detroit with
drummer Art Magyar and bassist Russell George (Melody Maker, March 11, 1961).
In
May 1961, Marian McPartland played an extended engagement in Columbus, Ohio,
backed by George and Magyar. One Columbus newspaper reported inaccurately that
Marian was considering making Columbus her home, when she simply said, 'Columbus
people are so friendly that whenever I return here for an engagement I almost
feel as though I'm coming home.' The Eagle-Gazette noted that, 'Miss
McPartland conceals any awareness she may have of the fact that she is a musical
phenomenon - doing what is commonly considered a man's work in a man's world'
(Romano, 1961).
After the performances with her trio in Columbus, the reviewer wrote that, 'Unusual and spontaneously appealing harmonies and progressions are the hallmark of her work. The warmth of her disposition is unmistakably apparent in the sound she produces. British or American, Marian McPartland encounters little difficulty in expressing herself to jazz lovers the world over' (Romano, 1961).
This article goes on to quote from liner notes to one of Marian McPartland's albums:
On first appearance, Marian would appear to have few of the background characteristics to fill the bill (as a jazz pianist). Born in England, reared by parents who looked with suspicion at any type of professional life for a woman, educated in a convent school, Marian would seem a most unlikely subject for a career in jazz.
On the contrary, she is very much at home in the world of jazz and jazz musicians. Although her speech approaches the scholarly, she descends to 'hep talk' and speaks it fluently when the occasion calls for it (Romano, 1961).
On November 5, 1961, Marian McPartland was billed as pianist
and guest star at The Playback Club in New Haven, Connecticut. As two-thirds of her trio had gone home on vacation, owner of the
club, bass player Willie Ruff, suggested that he and the regular drummer, Charlie
Smith, join Marian on stage. Critic George T. Simon assessed this spontaneous performance:
To these ears, Miss
McPartland never played better. Combining such seemingly disparate elements
as Debussy-like chords with a real old-fashioned, down-home beat, she explored
jazz harmonically and rhythmically with complete confidence.
As these three musicians had never played together before, this event was a powerful demonstration of the power of spontaneity in jazz (Simon, 1961).
1963 - Benny Goodman
On July 23, 1963, Jimmy McPartland opened a two-week stay at Friers Tavern in Toronto, Canada. With Marian's trio taking a break, she became the pianist with Jimmy's group, the first time they had performed together in more than three years (Toronto Telegraph, July 23, 1963).
After the Hickory House ended and Marian McPartland was freelancing, she was in a position to be offered a place in a new jazz group being rehearsed by Jimmy's childhood friend, clarinettist Benny Goodman. When approached, Marian suggested what she thought was a reasonable fee. Benny quibbled, but at her first rehearsal at Benny's apartment, she realized that he could not express what style he really wanted to hear from the pianist accompanying him. The group, with Steve Swallow on bass and Ron Lumberg on drums started out with a concert in York Pennsylvania:
Steve Swallow knew how to play for him, and Benny seemed quite happy. Then later on it got to be a bigger group, with [cornettist] Bobby Hackett, [vibraphone player] Red Norvo, and a saxophone player whose name I can't recall (Enstice and Stockhouse, 2004: 240).
However, Marian McPartland accepted this opportunity to work under Goodman as a bandleader, and during a band rehearsal, she had her first taste of how enigmatic the clarinettist could be:
At one point he walked out of the room, so I played a couple of tunes as I waited for him to come back. It seemed that hours went by and there was still no sign of Benny, so I started looking for him. Lo and behold, there he was, in one of the other rooms, trying to choose a reed from several on the table. He saw me standing there and said, 'Oh, are you still here? That's when I knew the rehearsal was over (McPartland, 2003: 94).
From a previous tour, Marian realized that Benny was more comfortable playing the same material time and time again:
He would rehearse new tunes but then he would never play them. I know because I played with him. I remember how furious the musicians were with him when we went to Russia. We spent a lot of time rehearsing new material, but when we went on tour he took all his best-known things out of the bag (Silverman, 1988: 30).
After the band rehearsed for this particular tour, Marian had the distinct feeling she wasn't fitting in. Bobby Hackett would come up to her and ask her not to play such far-out chords behind Benny, and she would wonder why Benny didn't say something to her himself. Marian realized again that Goodman was dissatisfied with her style, but was incapable of articulating what he required of a pianist.
On October 24, 1963, she accompanied
Benny Goodman on The Tonight Show on NBC Television Network to publicize
the upcoming jazz-and-classics tour billed as 'The Worlds of Benny Goodman'.
Bobby Hackett's one-year contract had expired and was not renewed; in his stead
vibraphone player Red Norvo returned. The new group included Norvo, Modesto
Bresano, Marian McPartland, Jimmy Wyble, Gene Cherico on bass, and Bobby Donaldson.
The Berkshire String Quartet continued to provide the classical part of the
program.
The group performed at Philadelphia's Academy of Music, the Philharmonic
Hall, the Lincoln Center, New York, and the Donnelly Theater, Pittsburg. The
jazz portion of a concert on November 28 in Houston's Music Hall was recorded,
with pianist John Bunch taking the piano chair in the Quintet, and Marian McPartland
billed as the Benny Goodman/Marian McPartland Quintet. This was followed by
a subsequent cross-country tour where Marian was treated as 'one of the boys',
the first time she had worked under another bandleader other than her husband,
Jimmy McPartland (Hansson, Interview of Marian McPartland, November 2, 1999).
Marian could never understand what was bothering Goodman, and why he
kept directing a dissatisfied stare towards her:
In any event, we went on the road and we played a lot of dates,
and Benny kept giving me the famous 'ray'. One day we played a tune, 'Rose Room',
or something. He said, 'Do you know that tune?' I said, 'Well, we just played
it, didn't we?' And he said, 'Ha, ha!' or something like that (Enstice and
Stockhouse, 2004: 241).
The clarinettist's dislike of rich chords behind him constricted Marian's
playing, and his lack of communication meant that she could never fathom what
he expected from her. It seemed that Marian's modern harmonies bothered Goodman,
and despite hiring her in the first place, he was glad to let her go when she
decided to leave for her own peace of mind. Marian recalled, 'I remember at
one point being at a party given for the band, and after a drink or two I plucked
up the courage to say, "Benny, I know you're not happy with my playing - why
did you hire me?" Benny gave me a blank stare and mumbled, "I'm damned if I
know"' (McPartland, 2003: 95).
At Marian's suggestion, Benny hired John Bunch to play his
part of the show, and Marian continued to play her feature numbers with the
trio. On one occasion at a concert out west, when Bunch arrived to take Marian's
place, Goodman decided that Marian would play the whole show. 'So I played
the show but at the end Benny asked John Bunch, who was watching the show from
the wings, to come out and play a duet with me. That was a surprise, but John
and I loved playing together, and we had a great time playing four hands. At
the end of the tune we got a standing ovation; the people wouldn't let us go'
(McPartland, 2003: 95).
According to Marian, Goodman's ego was hurt, and out of jealousy, he never asked them to play a duet again. For the remainder of the tour, Marian performed only her trio numbers, and John Bunch played with the band. On November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was shot as the band was driving towards Dallas, the tour was abandoned after a concert in Topeka, Kansas.
When Marian finally resigned, Goodman simply said, 'Thanks!' (Hansson, Interview of Marian McPartland, November 2, 1999).
Interviewed at a Summer Jazz Camp in 1970, Marian was asked if
Benny Goodman was difficult to work with. She responded:
Benny is strange. He's really very strange, strange to work for. You always get the feeling that he doesn't like what you do, but you really
don't know why, or what he really wants. You know, Teddy Wilson's been his
favorite player, and I did a piece about Benny once for a magazine, and I was
talking to Teddy about Benny and he said, 'Well, Benny doesn't really know what
he wants to hear. He can always tell you what he doesn't want, but he doesn't
know what he does want.' Teddy, evidently, was the perfect player for Benny.
I just worked for him for about six months, and it was a lot of fun. Benny can
be very changeable like the English weather, blows hot and cold. One minute
he's in a good frame of mind, and next minute he's introverted and not talking
to anybody and you never know why. In fact, I remember going to a job with
him one night, a concert, and we were riding along in a cab. I was saying something
to him and he's looking at me and he doesn't see me, and he's fingering passages
on the clarinet, and staring me in the face and kind of whistling passages under
his breath. And I'm talking and he didn't hear a word I say because he's rehearsing
the piece (Douglas, Interview of Marian McPartland, 1970).
When asked in a 1983 interview what it was like working with Benny Goodman, Marian McPartland admitted that she wasn't the right person at all:
My basic mistake was probably playing those accursed harmonies, flatted fifths. Benny, I realized later, loves those sheet-music changes. We were playing Dallas when the President was shot, and the tour kind of ended right there. Nobody was in the mood to hear music. We got back to New York, and I never went back to work for him (Lyons, 1983: 171).
Benny Goodman's uncommunicative personality and big ego crushed Marian's spirit, and after a short period in therapy, she resolved never to work under another bandleader again. She jokes to this day that Benny 'drove' her to the Menninger Clinic where she underwent therapy to regain her confidence (Hansson, Interview of Marian McPartland, November 2, 1999):
Everybody was so wonderful, and they had a great piano and all the music magazines, DownBeat, etc. I thought the patients were a lot hipper than those of us on the outside. It turned out to be a very good experience, because the doctors recommended an analyst for me to go to in Long Island. I was in analysis for a long time after that (Enstice and Stockhouse, 2004: 241).
Marian McPartland expressed her need for help as a feeling that she wasn't getting anywhere, that she was stepping all over herself, and not really being happy with her marriage. 'I think even before I went with Benny, I felt I wasn't improving, job-wise. I wasn't getting any good recording dates. In fact, that's what led me to start Halcyon later on, trying to get a recording. I think rock had pretty much taken over, and I was doing a lot of school concerts and workshops' (Enstice and Stockhouse, 2004: 241).
Interviewed in 1978, Marian described her stint with Benny Goodman as 'not a thrilling experience. He's hard to work for, but I thought I was the one who could change all that, but I couldn't' (Nutile, 1978: B11). However, when interviewed in 2000, Marian looked back on the period as a valuable learning experience.
After that period in therapy, Marian McPartland returned to the trio format with renewed energy and confidence. She derived insight into her own playing, and in terms of working with others, from the Benny Goodman experience. After all, he was the bandleader whose style of music came to be known as 'swing' (a feel she had to learn as she crossed over from classical, to novelty piano, to traditional jazz, to modern jazz), and it was he who experimented with the small group/chamber jazz concept that she embraced when she began to lead her trios. Apart from that one experience with a bandleader other than Jimmy, Marian McPartland has steered small groups from that period on.
1964-1968
Back home, Marian McPartland performed trio dates in Detroit, and she managed to secure engagements at New York clubs such as Strollers Theatre Club in 1964. The Marian McPartland Trio appeared at Strollers, in the old East Side music hall called The Establishment, on January 16, 1964.
She appeared in Baltimore in 1965 playing piano with
the Jimmy McPartland band, the personnel being Jimmy McPartland on cornet, Cutty
Cutshall on trombone, Andy Fitzgerald on clarinet, Bobby Hackett on trumpet,
Bob Haggart on bass and Mousie Alexander on drums. The Lounge at Les Champs was the venue for Marian McPartland on January 3, 1966.
Opening on Monday, February 27, 1966, Marian
McPartland returned to The Apartment Supper Club on 1068 Second Avenue in New York with Linc Milliman on bass
and Jim Kappes on drums. This event was billed as a return engagement for 'The First Lady Of Jazz'. Described as 'Jazz floating down the Shinnecock', Marian McPartland presented a sextet on The
Barge in Quogue, while Eddie Condon was blowing up a storm at The Yardarm in Westhampton (Press Clipping, 1966).
Another two-week engagement in Toronto, Canada, with her husband Jimmy
on cornet in the Park Plaza's Plaza Room began on August 23 of the same year. These performances were reviewed by the staff writer of The Toronto Daily Star, and published with along with a review of an Earl Hines performance during a season at the Colonial Tavern:
Marian's piano is something nice to hear. But in comparison to Earl Hines' sound, Marian's seemed more free-form in its improvisations, more quicksilvery in its touch, more intellectual in its approach - and slightly innocuous in its end result.
Jimmy, on the muted horn, or intimately delivering a lyric (with next to no voice, mind you) is a pleasant entertainer. And Marian is an excellent pianist. But, unless you are a dyed-in-the-wool jazz aficionado, hanging on their every note, the McPartland's act too easily slips into the background, especially in a huge room like the Plaza (Zeldin, 1966).
After
this engagement, Jimmy was booked to perform at Blues Alley in Seattle, Washington, and it was reported that the Marian McPartland Trio, with Jack Gregg on
bass and Joe Cocuzzo on drums, were returning to The Apartment.
On March 2, 1967, Marian was again booked for a month's stay at The Apartment Supper Club.
Two months later, on May 2, 1967, Marian began a season at Art D'Lugoff's Top of the Gate in Greenwich
Village with Linc Milliman on bass and Jim Kappes on drums, billed alongside
Spanish jazz pianist Tete Montoliu. Shepheard's nightclub on Park Avenue,
New York, was the setting for Marian McPartland and her trio on June 28, 1967.
1969
1969 was a highly significant year for Marian McPartland's career. A prestigious engagement on January 25, 1969, involved the
Marian McPartland Trio with musical director Lawrence Smith and the Westchester
Symphony Orchestra in an event billed as 'January Jazz-ical' at White Plains
High School. For this event, she performed with Linc Milliman on bass and Charles
Perry on drums. This concert, featuring Marian as pianist, composer and interpreter
of Bernstein and Beatles tunes, may have been the forerunner for her later collaborations
with symphony orchestras. A Press Release for the event states that the '"fun"
program will be based on an entertaining exploration of the differences, and
areas of compatibility, between jazz and classical music' (Press Release, 1969).
Background to the collaboration between Smith and Marian McPartland is described as:
Lawrence Smith was responsible for getting her interested in playing Symphony concerts, and due to this opportunity tonight, she will be working with other symphonies this year. She is also participating in 'Group Jazz Interactions', which will bring jazz to the New York Public Schools and to deprived areas. Miss McPartland has her own radio program on WBAI - FM. She opens in March at The Apartment (Press Release, 1969).
This paragraph covers the scope of Marian McPartland's involvement with symphony orchestras, her programs in public schools and deprived areas, and her broadcasting career at the end of the 1960s - all of which continued into subsequent decades.
Program notes also list
Marian McPartland's television highlights, including network television shows such
as those of Steve Allen, Arthur Godfrey, Patti Page, Garry Moore, Jack Paar,
Dave Garroway and Johnny Carson, and numerous albums released on Capitol, Savoy, and Time labels, and promote Marian's just-released
My Old Flame on the Dot label.
Feature numbers combined the Marian McPartland Trio with the Orchestra performing a fantasia based on Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, as well as 'Eleanor Rigby' variations, and Pandemonium on Two Pianos featuring Marian McPartland and Lawrence Smith (Program notes, 1969).
When bassist Linc Milliman returned to his hometown of Rochester,
NY, Marian replaced him with Michael Moore:
I was bemoaning to a friend of mine
that I desperately needed a bass player and he mentioned Michael Moore, who apparently
had just arrived in New York from Cincinnati. He had been in New York for just
three days. So I called him up immediately. I had a demo to do with Jimmy
- funnily enough at the same house (Sherman Fairchild's) where we did those
two piano things. Anyway I invited Michael along to play and the minute I heard
him I knew he was a terrific musician. It doesn't take long - about eight bars.
So I hired him and he started working with me at The Apartment, and then through
him I met Jimmy Madison who is also from Cincinnati and who has worked with
Mike for years. So it seemed like a built-in rhythm section - guys who had
worked together and knew each other played well together (Gardner, 1973: 6).
Critic Whitney Balliett referred to him as 'a young bassist
who has played a good deal with Marian McPartland. Moore is still another of
the extraordinary corps of solo bassists spawned by Charlie Mingus and Ray Brown.He
has a big tone, his melodic lines are succinct, and he imparts to each note
a bearded gravity' (Balliett, 1977: 53).
On April 8, 1969, Marian McPartland
appeared with Moore on bass and Jimmy Madison on drums at a Living Music Concert
in the Auditorium of the Library and Museum of the Performing Arts. The musicians
were provided by the Recording Industry Trust Fund, with the cooperation of
Local 802 (Musicians' Union), the American Federation of Musicians, and the
co-sponsorship of the Mayor's Committee for Living Music (Program Notes, 1969).
Marian McPartland continued
to take the stage with Jimmy whenever the opportunity arose. However, towards
the end of the decade, the musical couple parted company amicably. In the Voice
Of Broadway, Jack O'Brian announced that 'The McPartlands are parting - Fine
jazz pianist Marian McPartland and great tailgate trumpeter Jimmy McPartland
were divorced after 23 years' (O'Brian, 1969). The McPartlands married in 1946, and divorced in December
1969.
According to Marian McPartland, there were many reasons for the divorce, but they
remained friends, resided a short distance apart on Long Island, and relied
on each other more than ever. Marian always maintained that the divorce was
a failure, and they remarried just weeks before Jimmy's death in 1991.
If she had experienced any prejudice as a female musician, Marian McPartland encountered another form of prejudice during a tour in the 1960s. She had not known much about prejudice against blacks until Marian's trio did a road tour in South Carolina. Two black musicians were playing in the club opposite the trio, and the manager ordered her not to fraternize with colored people nor appear on the same stage:
Needless to say, we immediately got very friendly, and both of them are fantastic musicians. Anyway, during one of my sets I played a tune of my own that Willie [Ruff] liked, and he wanted to play it on the French horn, so I invited him up on the stage, and we played it together. Surprisingly, nothing was ever said (Enstice and Stockhouse, 2004: 245).
[Author's note: In 1961, Marian McPartland appeared at Willie Ruff's club The Playback in New Haven, Connecticut. Besides bassist Ruff, his group included Charlie Smith on drums, and Dwike Mitchell on piano].
In 1969, Marian McPartland was about to embark on another
form of leadership - that of founding her own record company. As fashions go,
jazz was no longer commercially appealing, and Marian's reaction to this was
to diversify. She took revenge on the large recording companies, who were no
longer interested in jazz artists, by forming her own company, Halcyon Records, in 1969.
During the sixties when rock 'n' roll was rampant, big record companies turned
away from jazz leaving many important jazz artists without contracts, and Marian was determined to fill the gap by showcasing major jazz artists, including
herself. Marian continued to perform wherever she could, and in that fallow
decade for jazz, she devoted her energies to spreading the gospel of jazz in
other ways.
Marian McPartland's burning desire to make jazz accessible to young children was
one weapon against the demise of jazz in the ears of the public. Her first
invitation to take jazz into schools had actually come about in 1956 when a
disc jockey, Will Moyle, heard Marian's trio at a club called the Band Box and
asked the group to perform at a local high school in Rochester. In the early 1960s, the Marian McPartland Trio played a series
of concerts for the Huntington area high schools in Long Island under the auspices
of the Performing Arts Curriculum Enrichment program (PACE). In 1969, Marian appeared
on the front cover of the supplement The Arts as 'guest teacher' at Utah
University (Press Clipping, 1969).
An article with the Marian McPartland byline 'Jazz Goes To Grade School' documented the concert at Rochester high school (McPartland, 1961). Marian McPartland was then invited to present articles for DownBeat
magazine featuring well-known musicians, and to write reviews and instructive
tutorials on all aspects of the jazz pianism. Two well-crafted articles on Benny Goodman and Mary Lou Williams were subsequently published in DownBeat Magazine (McPartland, 1964).
Short pieces on the music of John Coltrane and Quincy Jones appeared in Down
Beat in 1969 (McPartland, 1969). Marian McPartland also contributed columns on keyboard pedagogy as part of a series
entitled DB Music Workshop (McPartland, 1968 and 1969). Marian McPartland's talent as a jazz writer had opened up another career pathway.
Another dimension of Marian McPartland's career began during
the 1960s, a lean time for jazz performers. She began to host a radio program in New York, A Delicate Balance, on WBAI:
I just wanted to do something, because at that time jazz was being
taken over by people like Chubby Checker and Bill Haley. So I called Chris
Albertson at WBAI and said I'd like to come up there and play some records and
talk about jazz. It was a good grounding for me because I did a lot of interviewing
with people like Herbie Hancock, Benny Goodman and Bill Evans (Stewart, 1999).
Just as jazz is a tree with many branches, Marian McPartland
had the knowledge, skills and initiative to branch out into other activities
associated with jazz to keep active and to keep the music alive.
References
Press Clipping (1961) 'Marian McPartland Back In Britain', Unknown source, March 4
Press Clipping (1961) 'Marian McP To Form Octet', Melody Maker, March 11
Romano, A. (1961) 'Noted Female Jazz Pianist, Native Of England, Likes US', Eagle Gazette, Lancaster, Ohio, May 1
Simon, G. T. (1961) 'A Brushed-In Beat For Swinging Trio', New York Herald Tribune, November 5
Unknown author (1963) 'Wife To The Rescue', Toronto Telegraph, July 23
Hansson, C. (1999) Interview of Marian McPartland, Port Washington, NY, November 2
Enstice, W. and Stockhouse, J. (2004) 'Interview With Marian McPartland', in Jazzwomen: Conversations With Twenty-One Musicians, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 230-251
McPartland, M. (2003) Marian McPartland's Jazz World: All In Good Time, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press
Silverman, R. (1988) 'The Lady Swings', The Piano Quarterly, no. 141, pp. 27-31
Douglas, N. (1970) Interview of Marian McPartland, Summer Jazz Clinic, University of Utah, August
Lyons, L. (1983) The Great Jazz Pianists, New York: Da Capo Press Inc
Nutile, T. (1978) 'McPartland Challenges Male-Dominated Image Of Jazz', The Courier News, May 8, pp. B7, B11
Unknown title, Press clipping (1966), August 3
Zeldin, A. (1966) 'The McPartlands', Toronto Daily Star, August 23
Program Notes/Press Release, 'Westchester Symphony Orchestra And Workshop: A January Jazzical', January 20, 1969
Gardner, M. (1973) 'The Jazz Journal Interview: Marian McPartland Talks To Mark Gardner', Jazz Journal, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 4-7
Balliett, W. (1977) New York Notes: A Journal Of Jazz In The Seventies, New York: Da Capo Press Inc
Program notes, April 18, 1969
O'Brian, J. (1969) 'McPartlands Are Parting', Voice Of Broadway, Reporter Dispatch, December 15
Press Clipping (1969) 'Pianist Marian McPartland Is Guest Utah Teacher', December 7, p. 1
McPartland, M. (1961) 'Jazz Goes To Grade School', DownBeat, September 28 (Reprinted July 1994, p. 70)
McPartland, M. (1964) 'Benny Goodman: From The Inside', DownBeat, April 9, pp. 20-22
McPartland, M. (1964) 'Into The Sun', DownBeat, August 27, pp. 16-17
McPartland, M. (1969) 'John Coltrane', DownBeat, May 1, p. 45
McPartland, M. (1969 'Quincy Jones', DownBeat. March 4, pp. 39-40
McPartland, M. (1968) 'How To Comp', DownBeat, May 3, pp. 40-41
McPartland, M. (1969) 'Voicing Piano Chords', DownBeat, June 6, pp. 43-44
