IN MEMORY OF…
JOÃO GILBERTO
6/10/31 – 7/6/19
By Luciana Souza
João is a very common name in Brazil. John. So many Johns. Too many Johns. But this João, this João Gilberto, was no ordinary man. He singularly shaped an entire generation of arrangers, musicians, and singers.
My first memory of hearing João was probably in my mother’s womb. His record, Chega de Saudade, came out in 1959, several years before I was born, and it was always playing at the house. It became the soundtrack of my youth. And my meditation. His guitar playing, the indescribably relaxed and swinging beat, the hip and understated singing, all of it was so interesting and attractive. The best school for a young singer like myself.
As a child, I heard many stories about João. My dad grew up with him in Juazeiro da Bahia. Both were guitar players and singers, and they shared a vocal group called Enamorados do Ritmo. My dad followed João to Salvador, the capital, and a few years later, João asked my dad to join him in Rio. They lived in the same boarding house for a while. And when the first record of bossa nova was to be recorded, Canção do Amor Demais by the great Elizeth Cardoso, João and Jobim asked my dad to help with the background vocals. I can still hear each of their voices.
Because João was born in 1931, he grew up under the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas, and lived through a real change as Brazil became something of a cultural colony of the United States. Army and naval bases were built in the 1940s in the northeast of Brazil, and American music played constantly on the radio. That, plus Hollywood movies, helped shape the mind and soul of young João.
My dad used to say that João knew every samba written since the 1920s, and that he had impeccable memory for lyrics. That he could recite poems for days and days, and was very cultured for someone coming from a small town at the edge of a long river, the São Francisco. Geography can shape people, some say. It seems João was born curious, and restless.
Everyone knows João would always rehearse things to exhaustion. A perfectionist, he would lock himself in a room for days and practice the same song for hours. He was methodical about his guitar playing. The repetition of songs, chorus after chorus after chorus, allowed him a deep absorption of the material. Anything João sang, he made it sound familiar. Time felt solid yet elastic under his breath, a universe of indefatigable possibilities.
João was a purist, who focused on the most basic elements of music. His singing favored a clear and absolutely in-tune pitch; his tone and diction were unclouded; his breath support was enviable; his phrasing was so free and personal it made him inimitable. And with all that, in the end, you are left with a sense that João’s singing was not really singing, it was more like speech, like a conversation.
For all of the neurosis and depression João was said to carry (as many brilliant artists and poets do), he brought immense joy and beauty to the world. He changed the landscape of Brazilian music in a way that we have not seen since. That quiet, restrained singing and playing taught us to meditate; to feel, rather than think.
Obituary: João Gilberto
HAROLD MABERN
3/20/36 – 9/17/19
By Eric Alexander
I remember vividly the day I met Harold Mabern. He was the first instructor I encountered when I went to William Paterson University, and I had no idea who the man was. (That was my fault; I was completely ignorant.) But he was my combo instructor, and from that day on it was off to the races. Even without knowing who he was, I knew that this was an important person. I climbed on his back and just took a piggyback ride through life.
He had these harmonic devices that he employed so regularly and that confounded people. They confounded me as well, and I had to figure them out over time. He knew more tunes than anybody I’ve ever met. That wasn’t limited to just the typical jazz-standard repertoire, but the American Songbook and the value of that Songbook are what he hung his hat on. He believed that, sure, you could listen to Wagner’s Ring cycle, but you could get the same information out of a Richard Rodgers 32-bar tune. That’s how strongly he felt about it, and he said so often. He said the same things over and over again, not because he was suffering memory loss but because he wanted to beat it into your brain that it was the truth.
So I learned from him to respect the integrity of the tune, and with that I figured out those substitute harmonies that he played that intimidated the hell out of everyone. Everything he would play worked with the tunes. It worked with your improvisations too; it was like writing a term paper and having someone dot your i’s and cross your t’s and polish your syntax as you go. You just had to have faith. You didn’t need a drummer or bassist: You played with him and you were just fine.
People don’t realize how great a musician he was, but more important, he was a truly decent, helping and nurturing person, even at his own expense. We came home from Japan in 2002. As we were getting off the plane, he told me, “Something’s wrong with Beatrice,” his wife. “I don’t know how available I’ll be going forward.” She was getting into a borderline advanced stage of Alzheimer’s, and from that day, for 10 full years—unless it was something he felt like he absolutely could not miss—he did not play. He did not practice. He just sat every day, day by day, at his wife’s bed. He cared more about sitting next to her and caring for her than doing anything to ensure he had any kind of musical legacy. And I know, because I was waiting that whole time, until Beatrice passed away in 2012, for him to take a gig and he wasn’t taking them.
We were clamoring and begging to get him an NEA Jazz Master award, but that wasn’t going to happen, so John Lee and I put together a tribute at the South Orange Performing Arts Center in New Jersey last year. It was meant to be a “genius” award, a kind of counterweight recognition to what he truly deserved. So we had it all set up … and then Harold died. But we didn’t cancel it; we just turned it from a tribute to a memorial and presented the award to his son and daughter.
He was my greatest teacher, my mentor, inspiration, lighthouse, and when I look back on it, he was my best friend. I know that I’ll never have an opportunity to play music with another person in such a profound way.
[as told to Michael J. West]
Feature: Harold Mabern and Eric Alexander in 2006
DORIS DAY
4/23/22 – 5/13/19
By Judy Carmichael
People associate me with stride piano, but long before I heard Fats Waller or Count Basie, I was an obsessed old movies fan, lucky enough to that featured top-tier films, each of which would run for a whole week, airing twice a night. As a child I watched every airing, memorized the music and lyrics, and tap-danced my way around the house.
