TALES OF LOHR: IF YOU DIG RAY BROWN...
Hailing a Bronx-born bottom grandmaster; plus, "This Week in Warhol" gets the brush-off
IF YOU DIG… is a bi-monthly feature at TALES OF LOHR, spotlighting a current jazz artist whose style, influences, and vibe are sure to appeal to fans of old-school jazz cats that the music of these modern-day masters evokes.
If You Dig RAY BROWN…
His name may not be as readily recognizable to the casual jazz listener as some of his more widely discussed marquee-name peers, but ask any die-hard jazzbo, and they’ll let you know: Ray Brown is one of the baddest bassists of all time. His supple, vigorous, cavernous sound turbocharged the rhythm of hundreds of seminal studio and live recordings, and a survey of instrumentalists, vocalists, and bandleaders with whom he toured and recorded reads like simply a list of the greatest jazz practitioners of the mid-to-late 20th century. Born in Pittsburgh, Brown took up formal musical study as a child, switching from piano to bass after noticing a vacancy on the instrument in his high school’s jazz orchestra. He was already gigging regularly before he graduated, and upon arriving in New York City at the age of 20, he was hired almost immediately by Dizzy Gillespie, with whom he played for five years. It was during his Gillespie stint that Brown met vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, whom he would marry in 1947. This union lasted only six years, though they would continue to play and record together on a consistent basis for years afterwards.
In 1951, Brown left the Gillespie band and joined the Oscar Peterson Trio. The elegant Canadian pianist’s group would be Brown’s musical home base for the next 14 years, and he appears on dozens of albums alongside Peterson, drummer Ed Thigpen, and guitarists Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis. It was during his run with Peterson that Brown embarked on his career as a jazz educator, taking on an instructor’s role at Toronto’s Advanced School of Contemporary Music (In 1995, the esteemed Berklee College of Music would award Brown an honorary doctorate.) In 1963, Brown won his first of three Grammy Awards, for Best Instrumental Jazz Composition for his tune “Gravy Waltz,” which later became the opening theme music for The Steve Allen Show.
Musicians far and wide sought out Brown’s services for decades, confident that his brawny, commanding tone and fierce improvisational skills would take their music to the next level. In addition to his work with Peterson and Gillespie, and the dozens of albums released under his own name as bandleader, Brown would become a favorite collaborator of classically inclined pianist Andre Previn and prolific composer Lalo Schifrin. He also played on albums with everyone from Benny Carter and former Gillespie band vibraphonist Milt Jackson, to monumental vocalists Sarah Vaughan, Johnny Hartman, and Frank Sinatra. He was an early mentor to neo-trad vocalist / pianist Diana Krall, and appears on her second LP, Only Trust Your Heart (1995). Brown’s sound also appealed to collaborators from outside a strictly jazz idiom. He played on recordings by idiosyncratic blues vocalist Maria Muldaur; on a trio of ‘60s LPs by Puerto Rican soft-pop star José Feliciano; and on a pair of Linda Ronstadt recordings from the mid-’80s. You’ll hear Brown on the Quincy Jones-composed soundtrack for the Oscar-winning Best Picture In the Heat of the Night; on the Steely Dan track “Razor Boy”; on Elvis Costello’s “Poisoned Rose”; and on tunes by the likes of Lionel Richie, Elton John, and even Blondie. Through it all, Ray Brown never gave less than his considerable best, right up to the end. Indeed, the day he died, in 2002, he was still on the road, prepping for a gig that night in Indianapolis. You may not know the name, but odds are good you already know and love the music of Ray Brown.
…Then You’ll Dig CARLOS HENRIQUEZ
Oftentimes, my If You Dig… recommendations are spawned by similarities between the paired musicians that extend beyond mere granular particularities of sound. Philosophical perceptions of music, compositional influences, and even simpatico sensibilities related to race, sexuality, or gender have just as frequently guided my decisions to link classic and contemporary artists within these columns. But in this case, a lot of it really does come down to the sounds rumbling forth from those mammoth bull fiddles. And I feel confident in asserting that if the tone, style, and acoustic impact of Ray Brown’s playing resonates in your soul, then you are going to find clear, enticing, utterly enthralling echoes of that power in the nimble-fingered, intelligent, muscular music of modern-day bass master Carlos Henriquez.
That is not to say that Henriquez shares no bonds with Brown beyond their similar approaches to their chosen instrument. Like Brown, the Bronx-born Henriquez was brought up with a musical education, taking up the bass (after a brief flirtation with the guitar) during studies at the Musical Advancement program at Manhattan’s august Juilliard School. From there, he enrolled at the city’s equally esteemed La Guardia High School of Music & Arts and Performing Arts, where, with Henriquez manning the bass for the school’s concert jazz ensemble, they emerged victorious at the prestigious Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition in 1996. Two years later, after his graduation, Henriquez joined the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, along with the satellite septet fronted by the ensemble’s musical director, trumpeter / composer Wynton Marsalis. And, much like Brown after signing on with Dizzy Gillespie, Henriquez has simply knocked them dead everywhere his music has been heard since.
Henriquez has appeared on over 25 albums, and in addition to his work with the Marsalis ensembles, he has graced the bandstands of a host of luminaries in the Latin jazz field in particular, playing alongside pianists Chucho Valdes, Danilo Perez, Gonzalo Rubalcava, and Eddie Palmieri; master salsa vocalist Rubén Blades; guitarist / composer Paco de Lucía; and the late, legendary timbalero and bandleader Tito Puente. As with Brown, musicians in other genres have also come calling, and Henriquez has lent his talents to work by Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Lenny Kravitz, Marc Anthony, and Willie Nelson. Henriquez has also begun giving back via his own work as an educator, teaching at Northwestern University and partnering, in 2010, with the LCJO in a groundbreaking cultural exchange with the Cuban Institute of Music. And, naturally, Henriquez has waxed several outstanding recordings under his own name, including 2021’s autobiographically inclined The South Bronx Story, his most recent of three Grammy nods, and last year’s similarly memory-driven suite A Nuyorican Tale.
So, I guess Carlos Henriquez and Ray Brown have a little more in common than I originally implied. And here’s something else about Henriquez that’s a lot like Brown: If you haven’t heard his music, I think you’re going to love it.
To Get You Started…: Since all of Henriquez’s recordings as bandleader to date have drawn on influences from his upbringing, cultural background, and home borough of the Bronx, I think it just makes sense to kick you off with a selection from the recording that made me a true fan, 2015’s The Bronx Pyramid, the first Henriquez solo LP, which I selected, during my tenure with JazzTimes Magazine, as one of my ten best albums of its year. “Cuchifrito” features much of what makes Henriquez such an exhilarating talent: Faultless syntheses of straight-ahead and Latin jazz sonic elements, impeccable taste in sidemen (trumpeter Michael Rodriguez is simply on fire here), a strong assertion of cultural awareness (the title refers to a popular Puerto Rican street food), and both undergirding and dominating it all, Henriquez’s strong, sublime, unforgettable touch on the bass, with that rich, organic woodiness of tone that you can also hear in Brown’s best soloing. Nothing here but pleasure. Hit “play” and enjoy.
THIS WEEK IN WARHOL
SEPTEMBER 14, 1984
Andy Warhol has an awkward encounter, but not really, as he attends the first-ever edition of the MTV Video Music Awards, broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall with hosts Dan Aykroyd and Bette Midler.
Launched in 1981, Music Television has already proven itself quite in sync with Warhol’s image-conscious, celebrity-obsessed, surface-specific gestalt. The Pop artist is tight with numerous performers who come to dominate the early years of the cable music-video network, including Grace Jones, Blondie’s Deborah Harry, and Ric Ocasek of The Cars. Warhol has recently co-directed a video for the latter’s impending single “Hello Again,” from their latest LP Heartbeat City, and he is also in development with the network for a one-of-a-kind talk and current affairs / entertainment series, an outgrowth of several programs he has previously produced for New York-based public access and cable stations, to be entitled Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes.
Warhol’s companion for the evening is another music-world giantess, Diana Ross, still riding the crest of the previous summer’s celebrated concert in Central Park (an event at which Warhol is in attendance). Despite arriving with Ross, Warhol is seated away from her, as she has claimed a berth in Radio City’s very first row, in order to have better access to the stage to claim awards won by her not-in-attendance close friend, Michael Jackson. (The King of Pop is up for six prizes and takes home three, though, controversially, his genuinely game-changing John Landis-directed “Thriller” fails to nab Video of the Year, which instead goes to the whimsical, effects-heavy clip for “You Might Think,” another cut from The Cars’ Heartbeat City.) Other Warhol associates with nominations that evening include The Rolling Stones, contending for Best Concept Video for “Undercover of the Night,” and David Bowie, who wins Best Male Video for “China Girl” as well as a Video Vanguard Award for his overall contribution to the still-burgeoning music video art form.
But it’s another old creative compatriot whose presence draws Warhol’s particular notice that evening, as he shares in his posthumously published diaries: “Lou Reed sat in my row but never even looked over. I don’t understand Lou, why he doesn’t talk to me now.” While Reed, who is not nominated for any MTV Video Music Awards this evening, has never hesitated to acknowledge the debt he and his bandmates in the Velvet Underground owe to Warhol for his early representation and support (not to mention his having produced their debut album), recent years have seen the always truculent Reed more willing to openly cast a skeptical eye on Warhol’s previous, often domineering influence. Frequently, this manifests itself via Reed, when he encounters his former manager / record producer in public, simply giving him the cold shoulder, as he does here. While Reed and Warhol never entirely mend their old fences, the singer / songwriter is sincere in his outpouring of emotion over Warhol’s death two and a half-years later; his grief inspires the song “Dime Store Mystery,” the closing track of 1989’s critically acclaimed album New York, and the following year’s Songs for Drella, a Warhol-themed song cycle written and recorded in collaboration with fellow Velvets founding member John Cale.
After the ceremony, Warhol attends the after-party at the Tavern on the Green restaurant in Central Park, but the traffic jam of guests to get inside, in a torrential downpour, is so backed up that, once Warhol finally makes it in, all he finds are “wall-to-wall celebrities…so humiliated by standing in the pouring rain that all everybody did was complain to each other.” It is as if the entire party has picked up on the gloom engendered by Reed’s snub of Warhol, and carried it over to every single guest at the Tavern.
Reed receives his sole MTV Video Music Award nomination five years later, for Best Male Video for the New York track “Dirty Blvd.” He loses to Elvis Costello’s “Veronica.” Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes premieres in 1985, and airs as a series of five specials over the course of the next two years. The final edition, broadcast in 1987, serves as a quickly reconfigured tribute episode following Warhol’s unexpected passing in February of that year.