DJANGO LIVES . . . !

I first tuned in to the playing of Django Reinhardt, the legendary manouche (French Gypsy) jazz guitarist, in the mid-1970s via an LP that I borrowed from my local public library. As I recall, that particular recording did not include Django’s equally legendary stable-mate, violinist Stéphane Grappelli: the other solo voice on the album was a clarinetist. I would not encounter Grappelli until, a couple of years later, I bought a cassette tape of the Quintette du Hot Club de France, a combo that confirms unequivocally that sometimes the whole is indeed greater than the sum even of its awesomely estimable parts. (Thirty-some years later, I still have that cassette, though by now I have all of the tunes on CD and on iPod as well.) Django died young, in 1953; but one of my abiding regrets is that I took a pass on two opportunities I had to see Grappelli perform: the first time in Dublin in 1978 (backed, I think, by Canadian-born British guitarist Diz Disley), the second time in Boston (backed, I suspect, by brilliant Scottish-based guitarist Martin Taylor), shortly before his death in 1997.

Maybe those missed opportunities were somewhere in the back of my mind when I decided, almost literally at the last minute, to head out to Scullers Jazz Club last night to hear John Jorgenson perform with his quintet. I arrived late, just as the show was about to start, and the room was filled almost to capacity—I was lucky to get a ticket. Really lucky. I wonder how many conversion experiences one is allowed to have in one’s lifetime. My most profound Saul-of-Tarsus-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment occurred back on July 8th, 2001 when I saw a performance by the New Guitar Summit—Duke Robillard, Jay Geils, and Gerry Beaudoin, six-string swingers in the tradition of the iconoclastic-become-iconic Charlie Christian—at a dive called The Rendezvous in Waltham, Mass. On our way home from that show I said to my wife: “That’s what I want to do with my life . . .” I suppose I should be grateful that I was converted to playing in a tradition and style that afforded me a chance at reasonable competence; what John Jorgenson does is at least as exhilarating . . . but considerably more daunting!

What Jorgenson does is bring to life the music of Django and Grappelli and the Quintette du Hot Club de France—who flourished in Paris between 1934 and 1939—with a flair and a finish in person that exceeds even what he has laid down in the recording studio on highly acclaimed CDs like Franco-American Swing and Ultraspontane. Playing tunes associated directly with Django as well as originals composed and arranged in the manouche style, Jorgenson is yet no mere imitator: he has fully mastered the style and the technique—the attack and the inflections—to the point that he has made Django’s music utterly his own. (As a gauge of just how “utterly,” check out Jorgenson’s fascinating and entertaining account of how he came to play the role on-screen of Django in Head in the Clouds, a 2004 feature film starring Charlize Theron, Penélope Cruz, and Stuart Townsend.)

I have to apologize—to myself!—for not having paid attention to John Jorgenson long before now. He has many claims to guitaristic fame—not the least of them a long-term hitch as a member of Elton John's backing band. He was also a member of the highly successful country music group The Desert Rose Band during the 1980s as well as co-leader of a group of Telecaster-slinging guitar heroes called The Hellecasters. As he displayed on the Scullers bandstand last night, he also plays clarinet and sings—he has multiple musical personalities!

But back to Scullers . . . As jaw-droppingly amazing as Jorgenson himself was on guitar—his fingers just flying up and down the fretboard in breathtakingly Django-esque arpeggios—the rest of his quintet confirmed further that indeed the whole is sometimes greater than the sum of its parts. In fact, one of the sweetest moments of the night came just before the combo’s final tune when Jorgenson took a few minutes to introduce his backing musicians at length, giving each of them his well-deserved due: Dutch-born Simon Planting on bass, British-born Kevin Nolan on rhythm guitar (the absolutely crucial role filled by Django’s brother Joseph Reinhardt in the Quintette du Hot Club de France), Alabama native Rick Reed on snare drum, and—last and by no means least—twenty-something Jason Anick, of Marlborough, Mass., on violin . . . a remarkable stand-in for Stéphane Grappelli!

But the ultra-sweet moment of the evening was the encore, when the quintet returned to the bandstand to perform—unplugged, just as Django Reinhardt and company would have—Django’s literally anthemic “Nuages.” This capped one of the best concerts I’ve ever attended in my life: I’ll be watching for John Jorgenson to come to town again.

THE THRILL OF THE GRASS

So . . . this afternoon I attended a girls high school fastpitch softball game. It was the final home game for my daughter’s friend Devin, the team’s catcher and senior co-captain, and I had promised her that I would make it to a game before the end of her career. Unfortunately I had to leave after only three innings, but Devin was calling a good game behind the plate and she had gotten on base twice: evidently she has a reputation as a slugger, and the other team pitched to her cautiously and ended up walking her each time. It was nice to see Devin get recognized before the game as one of three graduating seniors on the team, and I had a funny moment during that little ceremony when I asked a woman sitting alone in the stands who she was “at the game for.” She replied: “I’m here for Devin. I’m her grandmother.” That made two of us, anyway.

I have to say that being down close to the ballfield for the first time since the final game of my youngest daughter’s career in youth softball—5 or 6 years ago—brought back many memories related to what preeminent writer of baseball fiction W. P. Kinsella phrased “the thrill of the grass.” (Kinsella first uses this phrase in his wonderful and wonder-filled novel Shoeless Joe and then borrows it from himself to re-use as the title of both a terrific short story and a fine short story collection.) Perhaps my favorite memory is of a game about 8 or 9 years ago when I was head coach of my middle daughter’s team. We were a lousy team and I was a lousy coach and on that particular evening some of the spectators at the game thought I was a lousy parent too. What happened was that my daughter, who I had put in left field to avoid any appearance of nepotism on my part, had been busy twirling her hair or chewing on her glove’s rawhide lace or watching the ice cream truck pull into the parking lot (or all three at once) and had thus allowed a catch-able ball to roll past her for extra bases. I suppose I shouted at her from the bench: “Wake up out there!” When she came in at the half-inning, she used her outfield error as the reason why she should have a turn in the infield. So the next inning I put her in at third base—and of course within a few pitches she got hit on the ankle by a low line drive. And of course I shouted from the bench, “That’ll teach you!” Which of course prompted some gasps and tut-tutting from the other parents (from both teams) gathered behind the backstop. What could I say? Well, what I said—as if it made the matter any better—was: “Hey, she’s my daughter . . .”

And hey, we ended up winning the game in the bottom of the last inning! Trailing by multiple runs to a team that, as one of my assistant coaches observed, looked “like East German Olympians”—for 10-year-old girls, they were built like Amazons—I pulled out all the stops . . . literally: somehow our players were getting on base—mostly on dropped third-strikes, I think—and coaching at third base, I waved player after player to keep running for home, shrewdly calculating that the odds were not very likely for the fielders on the other team of 10-year-olds to execute both an accurate throw and a successful catch on the same play. At the end of the day we truly ran away with the victory—a victory made that much sweeter by the utterly baleful look the opposing coach gave me during the obligatory post-game handshake.

I ended my coaching career as an assistant for my youngest daughter’s team a few years later. But that losing coach from a few years earlier is still involved in the game, leading the girls varsity team at a local private academy. I see her in Starbucks pretty much every week. I can’t imagine that she remembers me. If she did, I’m sure that she would still hate me.

JANE MONHEIT . . . LIVE AT SCULLERS JAZZ CLUB

The first time I saw Jane Monheit perform “live and in person” proved very memorable for me . . . though not exactly because of Monheit’s performance. As I recall, while her singing was crowd-pleasing—and I remember being personally pleased that she sang “Please Be Kind,” the opening song on her debut CD, Never Never Land—she was surprisingly lacking in stage presence and seemed truly to be swallowed up by the venue, the Sanders Theatre at Harvard University. For me the most memorable aspect of that evening was the playing of guitarist Rodney Jones, whose name I knew but whose impressive chops I had not been exposed to previously. The musical director for the Rosie O’Donnell Show and also for vocal legend Ruth Brown, he just happened to be guesting with Monheit that night, but for my money he stole the show and I eventually got my hands on a couple of really fine CDs that feature his expressive playing: his own session titled Dreams and Stories and also The Opening Round, a session led by tenor saxophonist Houston Person.

That was quite a few years ago and I have not seen Monheit in the meantime, though she does visit Boston fairly often. But last night my wife and I treated our middle daughter and one of her friends to the 10:00 show at Scullers Jazz Club . . . and once again Monheit pleased the crowd, though this time with considerably more stage presence. Although confessing to jetlag—she and her trio (piano, bass, drums) had just flown in from Japan—she gave a warm and satisfying performance . . . despite no “Please Be Kind” this time. But her set did include nicely-swung versions of “The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” and “Taking a Chance on Love” as well as a fine rendition of the classic Jobim bossa nova “Waters of March.” Monheit seems to incline more toward slower numbers, though, and last night those included three showstoppers: Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust,” the Julie Christie anthem “Something Cool” (as my wife whispered, this could be a theme song for Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire), and “Over the Rainbow,” which has become Monheit’s signature tune. While I would have appreciated another “solo voice” in the mix—a saxophone or a guitar—I was probably in the minority in that regard: this evening was all Monheit’s and she owned the room.

CRUISIN' WITH ARLEN ROTH . . .

Channel surfing on a Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, I just happened to pause on the local cable station NESN (New England Sports Network). Specifically, I happened to pause on an episode of a series called “Cruisin’ New England,” which according to the NESN website “showcases premiere antiques, street rods, muscle cars and special interest vehicles from all over the Northeast.” I’m not a “car guy” by any stretch . . . but something about that episode caught my eye. Well, actually it caught my ear first: a familiar voice that I yet could not quite place. When I paid closer attention, I realized the speaker’s face was also familiar—but there was no way I could have placed him in the context of vintage and classic automobiles and related memorabilia.

But as soon as Paul Mennett, the show’s host, spoke his guest’s name, it all came back to me: that familiar voice and that familiar face belonged to guitarist extraordinaire Arlen Roth, whom I have gotten to know over the past year or so by checking out his free lessons on the Gibson.com website. Not only a brilliant guitarist but also a brilliant teacher, Roth—still known in the music world as “The Master of the Telecaster”—obviously has switched guitar brands from Fender to Gibson . . . at least for the terrific series of short and to-the-point instructional videos posted on the guitar-maker's website. Roth also has an interesting blog that he maintains on the Gibson website: filled with anecdotes, advice and musical wisdom, it’s both engaging and informative.

Perhaps I should have known about—or remembered—Arlen Roth’s obsession with cars: now that I think about that dimension of his life, I realize that sometime in the past year I read an article on him in Martha’s Vineyard Magazine that focused as much on his cars as on his guitars. (Roth lives in Aquinnah on the Vineyard.) One way or the other, my serendipitous happening upon him on “Cruisin’ New England” prompted me to look beyond those free guitar lessons, and I have so far managed to track down three of his well-worth-tracking-down CDs.

The first one I found was Toolin’ Around Woodstock, a collaboration with Levon Helm, legendary drummer with The Band. Released in February of 2008, it has an unapologetic “retro” emphasis as the tunes include Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen,” Joe South’s 1960s folk-ish anthem “The Games People Play,” and the Buck Owens classic “Cryin’ Time.” It also has nice vocals chipped in by Roth’s daughter Lexie on Willie Nelson’s “Night Life,” and she is joined by Helm’s daughter Amy for some fine harmonizing on “Just One Look.” But the common denominator among all the tunes is Roth’s guitar work: whether straight-ahead blues, slithering slide, or jazz-inflected country, it is always just scintillating. Clearly he practices what he preaches—or applies what he teaches . . .

I have to admit, though, that I was briefly confused when I discovered that Roth has another, earlier CD with a very similar title—simply Toolin’ Around. First released in 1993 on the Blue Plate label, it was re-released in 2005 on Roth’s own Aquinnah label (apparently with an accompanying DVD documenting the making of the album). It’s hard to track down and expensive when you find it, but I managed to get my hands on a copy of the original Blue Plate release—and it’s just great. Mostly instrumentals, many of the tunes are also duets—or duels!—with other guitarists: “Tequila” with another “Master of the Telecaster,” the late Danny Gatton; “Let It Slide” with Jerry Douglas and Sam Bush; “Rollin’ Home” with first-call Nashville session man Albert Lee; “Black Water” with Duane Eddy, whose “twangy” guitar sound helped to define early rock ’n’ roll; the aptly titled “Housafire” with blues maestro Duke Robillard; and a surprisingly subdued “Six Days on the Road” with latter-day rockabilly star Brian Setzer. But the tunes I keep returning to are the staggeringly beautiful instrumental versions, featuring just Roth, of “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” and “When a Man Loves a Woman.” I think that Roth himself would be quick to admit that his treatment of these three tunes owes a debt of influence—or at least of confluence—to yet another “Master of the Telecaster,” the late Roy Buchanan (one of my boyhood heroes), whose handling of the Patsy Cline hit “Sweet Dreams” on his first album set the high bar for the sort of double- and triple-stopped melodic arrangements and sinuously-phrased improvising that Roth lays down here. Toolin’ Around is just filled with highlights: it’s a pity that this CD is not more widely available . . .

(Incidentally, Roth and Gatton performed “Tequila” on the Conan O’Brien Show back in 1994: it’s well worth checking out on YouTube.)

I guess that in moving forward with adding Arlen Roth to my iPod, I moved backward in time. The third of his CDs that I picked up is titled simply Arlen Roth; released by Rounder Records in 1987, it’s apparently a selection of tunes from two earlier albums recorded in the late ’70s. While it has its moments (mostly instrumental), I have to say more accurately that it is “of its moment”: the music is very laid back soft rock-ish, reminiscent to my ears of “Peaceful Easy Feeling” by The Eagles, pre-Joe Walsh. ’Nuff sed? If not, then perhaps the CD cover photo speaks volumes about much of the content! Still, Roth is a guitar force to be reckoned with, and the earlier of his Toolin’ Around CDs might rightly be considered a six-string classic.