Carla White

It was early 1979. After 11 years in the Trotskyist movement, I had found myself on Manhattan's Upper East Side. After a Chaplinesque stint in Kansas City as a spot welder, trying--and failing--to make the turn to industry, I had returned to Manhattan, determined to put revolutionary politics behind me. The yuppie-infested Upper East Side seemed like an appropriate place to live, since as far as I knew it was the last place in the world you would run into a Trotskyist. Working once again in the software business, my attentions would now be turned to writing the Great American Novel.

At the time I did not appreciate how difficult it would be to create a new social life, since I had spent my entire adult life around "the prophet's children," as Tim Wolforth had put it. In tow with an old high school friend, I made the rounds in singles bars where the conversation revolved around what kind of work you did, or what your astrological sign was. Since the Trotskyist movement had left me clinically depressed, I found myself in these bars more often than not. Staring into a scotch on the rocks, I tried to figure out why I had been too weak to make the transition into industry. I felt like a lapsed Catholic.

One of my favorite bars was Hanratty's, a piano bar a block from my house that featured some of the great names in the old-fashioned stride piano style of Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller. Dick Wellstood was a frequent performer as was Ralph Sutton who served as music director for a number of Woody Allen movies. The audience appeared to be old-line wasps from the surrounding neighborhood: men in lime-green pants and madras shirts who probably attended the same prep schools and worked at the same investment banks on Wall Street.

That's where I met Carla, who was working as a waitress. I loved chatting with her, since she shared an interest in jazz. Eventually I discovered that she was a performer as well and made a point of attending her next gig, at another bar in the neighborhood.

As co-leader of the Carla White-Manny Duran quintet, she functioned more as a surrogate saxophonist than as a singer. Her scat singing incorporated phrasing and harmonic progressions pioneered by Charlie Parker. Her lightning-fast solos, hitting high C's in rapid succession, were improvisations on bebop anthems, such as Parker's "Ornithology" or Miles Davis's "Dig".

Carla was well-equipped to navigate this difficult terrain, after having spent years in training with the legendary Lennie Tristano on Long Island. The blind pianist was regarded as one of the great geniuses of modern jazz. Although a reclusive figure who made few recordings and even fewer public appearances, Tristano was open to teaching what he knew, which was substantial.

Closely associated with saxophonists Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz, the Tristano style incorporated shifting tempos and long linear improvisations over complex chord progressions. Although the style would seem to lend itself to the piano or saxophone, Carla was what one might call the ultimate Tristano-esque singer. After Tristano's death in 1978, White continued her exploration of the voice as an instrument with Warne Marsh.

Manny Duran played the trumpet in a style that was similar to one of the bebop greats, Kenny Dorham, who died in 1972. Manny grew up in San Antonio and first began playing the trumpet in local mariachi bands. His group was called "Los Gallos" because they played all night long and welcomed the dawn like roosters ('gallos'). He remembers the first time he heard Louis Armstrong on the radio in the 1930s. It was like St. Paul on the road to Damascus hearing the word of god. He resolved to learn how to play like that.

In the late 1980s, Carla heard Joe Williams at the Blue Note in New York. Years later, according to a January 13, 1994 Denver Rocky Mountain News interview, she spoke of that night this way, ''Man, he did that with words. . I had been ignoring this whole side of my life and my art - the words.''

Soon afterwards, Carla and Manny parted ways musically although they remain good friends. Since she would now concentrate on bringing out the words, this meant working in a more conventional trio setting. Accompanied by piano, drum and bass, Carla now performs many more ballads than she used to. The songs are carefully chosen, with an emphasis on lyrics that address complex human relationships. As she introduces each song, she offers wry commentary on episodes in her life that the songs seem to echo. For my money, her commentaries and songs achieve a high standard of the kind usually expected from the greatest cabaret singers like Mabel Mercer. Unlike the cabaret singers, Carla knows how to swing and frequently scats to create a kind of background color for the lyrics.

Last night Carla performed at NYC's Jazz Standard with pianist Frank Kimbrough, bassist Dean Johnson and drummer Tony Jefferson. As always, she held the audience spellbound.

For me it was a particular treat to hear Kimbrough as well, who Carla has begun to work with lately. Kimbrough is a composer-in-residence at the Jazz Composers Collective in NYC, an outfit that I have made modest financial contributions to over the years. Their website at http://www.jazzcollective.com describes their philosophy:

"The need for the Collective stems from a pervasive feeling among its constituents that without such an organization much of the music it fosters and presents would never be written or heard. In an industry that is highly profit-driven and competitive, the artistic integrity of contemporary composers and musicians must sometimes be compromised in order to fill the demand for 'sellable' material. The Collective is attempting to address this problem by providing artists with the opportunity to organize and present their music on their own terms. This form of self-empowerment encourages a creative process that is especially appealing to independent-minded composers and musicians precisely because it is not reliant on the trends of the mainstream music industry."

I suppose one of the reasons that there has been an affinity between socialists like myself and jazz musicians over the years is the degree to which each group understands that they are fighting for a more human voice in a "highly profit-driven and competitive" society. I strongly recommend a visit to the Jazz Composers Collective website and to Carla's at: http://www.jazzcorner.com/white/. It will be good for your ears and good for your soul.