Double Play

Commentary by Richard Hadlock

It is indeed a funny little world. While chatting with Jim Goodwin about his recent Portland partnership with Dave Frishberg I discovered that it was I who introduced one to the other nearly twenty years ago!

“You took me to hear Jack Sheldon’s band at El Matador in San Francisco,” Jim remembered. “Dave was the pianist and he did a solo feature on ”Willie the Weeper,” complete with the Jelly Roll Morton-ish ‘Spanish tinge.’ We were very impressed.

“Yes,” recalls Dave. “That was a special band. Nick Ceroli was on drums. Sheldon, a wonderful trumpet player, brought along Cat Anderson and Blue Mitchell on trumpets. Jack played electric keyboards a lot. Art Pepper and Joe Mondragon were there as well. What a group!”

The foregoing remarks might lead you to conclude that in Jim and Dave we have a couple of eclectic performers, unburdened by pigeonhole portfolios. You would be quite correct. The sources of the music these two men make up on the spot may be found in the work of, say, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Wild Bill Davison, Count Basie, Bix Biederbecke, Al Haig, Billie Holiday, Jelly Roll Morton, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington and on and on.

David Lee Frishberg, about to tum 60 as this is written, has played his way through the history of jazz, from early recordings with Bud Freeman and club work with Carmen McRae, Ben Webster and others to gigs with Jimmy Rushing and Kenny Davern, then satisfying stands with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims and Herb Alpert. Dave played solo piano at Condon’s in New York City and for a while was part of folk singer Odetta’s band, along with trumpeter Buck Clayton and trombonist Roswell Rudd. He loved his crazy quilt musical life and relished every opportunity to learn more by moving from one kind of music to another. There are traces of many of these experiences in Frishberg’s highly personal piano style.

James Robert Goodwin, now entering his 50th year, has also confounded those who might try to hang musical labels on him. His musician father (backed by Jim’s sympathetic mom) saw to it that the kid heard mostly good stuff on records. It didn’t take long for Jimmy to learn which trumpet player was Louis and which was Bix. Or Roy Eldridge. Or Bill Davison. Music was a natural gift for Jim and he taught himself to play both cornet and piano. He picked them up sort of the way Bix did – all ear and no manuscript. At a tender age he began playing dance jobs with his father, learning hundreds of the kind of standards, waltzes, pop songs and novelty tunes which carry one through ordinary casual engagements.

At times Jim has been urged by well-meaning musician friends to commit himself to a style, an era of some sort of musical concept which comes in a ready-made, carefully measured box. Whenever this happened, those doing the urging (including the late band leaders Turk Murphy and Freddie Martino by the way) would never be treated rudely. Instead they would be left with the slow realization that Jim had – very politely – just walked away.

Almost casually, though, Goodwin learned to play confidently inside Chicago/New York dixieland boogie woogie, “righteous” New Orleans, Harlem and Kansas City swing, riffing blues bands, duo trios, anything. But whatever the setting, Jim remains committed only to improvising on tunes he likes in the undated style he chooses.

And that’s what is happening here.

Dave grew up in St. Paul. By the time he began high school he had taught himself to play boogie woogie which is, of course, the blues.

“I could play blues in C and G,” he recalls, “But it was mostly a private matter, carried on at home. Ididn’t perform for others.”

After a stab at some courses in journalism and a stint with the Air Force in Salt Lake City, Frishberg got to New York, where he found he had been right to choose a career as a professional musician. His great skill as an improvisor and his familiarity with many styles made him a valuable sideman in any sort of jazz band.

“Dave accepts and reacts to just about everything,” observes Goodwin. “Whatever offbeat tune we play he jumps in, usually gets it right the first time, makes up good endings and really listens to the other player. He is a wonderful accompanist. When we improvise together we both operate on some kind of radar, especially on those endings!”

Along the way Frishberg fills and expands with traditional stride devices, walking Dave McKenna-ish bass lines, complex cross-rhythms a la Earl Hines and good old “comping,” which might also  feature elements borrowed from Morton, Monk, Tatum, Sullivan, Wilson or Basie. In all, it’s a most attractive and distinctive musical stew, perfectly suited to Jim Goodwin’s jazz appetite.

While Dave cooks, Jim lays down his version of the melody, couched in dirty growls, plungered shouts and tin cup wah-wahs beyond notation. He has never been a “clean” player and Jim cannot understand why so many listeners seem to admire studied correctness and grandstand technical tricks in jazz musicians. Most of Goodwin’s heros are highly individualistic “shaggy dog” players – guys such as Hot Lips Page, Vic Dickenson, Bill Davison, Sandy Williams, Pee Wee Russell and Red Allen.

Jim grew up in Portland and returned to it after years in New York, the San Francisco Bay Area and Europe (mostly Holland). He likes being away from the mainstream marketplace and today lives still farther out on a farmette near Astoria, Oregon. Dave enjoys Portland for similar reasons. He prefers to lie low between appearances on the worldwide club/concert circuit.

Both men love to play no-nonsense jazz, as they do here. Both have had to wear other hats for money. Frishberg is, as everyone knows, a celebrated song writer and singer; his highly engaging and-then-I-wrote concerts are much in demand. Like Nat Cole, Dave is a victim of his own success as his superb jazz piano playing is sometimes overlooked by his “other” audiences.

Goodwin’s problem is that he plays traditional jazz better than most of that field’s best trumpeters. Banjo bands with funny names keep trying to pull him into their world, but before succumbing to them Jim would choose tosit quietly on his farmhouse porch, scratching his faithful hounds between theears.

Actually, when Jim isn’t working with Dave most of his music jobs these days are on piano.

The tunes selected by Jim and Dave come from the ‘twenties and ‘thirties. Neither player tries to imitate any earlier performance, to be sure, but sometimes the original recordings of these pieces do serve as a reference backdrop for what goes on here.

“Russian Lullaby”and “Rosalie” are numbers which Jimmy Rushing enjoyed singing. “There Ain’t No Sweet Man,” “Blue River,” and “Clementine” are associated with Bix Beiderbecke (and Bing Crosby). “My Kinda Love” kinda goes with Jack Teagarden (and Bing Crosby). Louis Armstrong probably inspired the selection of “There’s a Cabin In the Pines,” “Dear Old Southland” and “Willie the Weeper.” And maybe “Star Dust,” too.

“in a Sentimental Mood” and “Shout ‘Em Aunt Tillie” are royal Ellingtonia. (Dave worried that they had left out an important section of Aunt Tillie Jim thought it a quite forgivable matter, as long as the rest of the piece felt good.) ”Say It Isn’t So” is a splendid tune which makes me think of Connee Boswell. ”One, Two, Button Your Shoe” must come from Billie Holiday’s radiant ‘thirties session with trumpeter Bunny Berigan and pianist Clyde Hart. “Easy Come, Easy Go” is borrowed from Lee Wiley’s catalog. “Shoe Shine Boy” is developed from the Count Basie 1936 version (Lester Young’s first record) and “Winin’ Boy” is vintage Jelly Roll Morton.

Dave knows better than to try reshaping Jim by introducing pre-set arrangements. Instead, he walks the same musical tightropes and hangs by his fingertips as often as does Goodwin. Here is high-risk but wonderfully spontaneous jazz, bristling with untested anddaring ideas, last-second saves and a few out-and-out fluffs. And here are unique dialogues involving two remarkably talented instrumentalists, each listening with obvious pleasure to the other from the first note to the last.

“There’s a Cabin In the Pines” is as good an example as any of the way these musicians can build a logical and satisfying performance. After both players settle into the tempo and general feel of the tune, Dave plays a beautiful, understated solo, made more dramatic by Armstrong-like pauses (phrasing behind the beat, that is). Jim, clearly inspired by the piano solo, returns for a marvelous final chorus. While free and exciting, Jim’s playing never abandons good pacing, balanced construction or responsiveness to Dave’s co-inventions. There are otherwise accomplished studio musicians who cannot get close to this level of professional jazz playing.

For a taste of how Jim’s lead can bring out the best in other musicians, listen to “Clementine.” Jim keeps the melody going (in his special way) and that seems to help Dave to freely develop a set of delightful Earl Hines-like pianistic puzzles. And like Hines, Dave furnishes each improbable rebus with a surprise solution. Perhaps a lesson of some kind can be found here; when one musician elects to explore the unknown, his playing partner might do well to keep things simple and close to the basics of the piece. Examples of this more-or-less maxim abound in recorded jazz, from melodic Johnny Hodges over capricious Ellington piano and understated Ben Webster intertwined with ornate Art Tatum to the fundamental, steady pulse of Charlie Haden’s bass underneath the “free” improvisations of saxophonist Ornette Coleman.

In the hundreds of occasions I have played with Goodwin not once have I heard his remarkable intuition for making such appropriate musical choices fail him. And whatever it is that his special inner ear does,. it is obvious in these recordings that it works as well for a duo as for a full band.

Every number in this program speaks of mutual admiration between two gifted men. (I refer to musical admiration now. The fact that both of these fellows are nuts about baseball and its history is only significant here in terms of the amazing cover photo.)

“We just look at each other and play,” says Jim. “I don’t know exactly hIDY.it comes out okay, but it is partly due to Dave’s desire to reinforce the other person’s playing. It is a joy to work with him.”

“Playing with Jim is one of the high points of my life,” declares Dave. “His sense of time is beautiful and he is simply inspiring to play with.”

That says it all.                                           

–  Richard Hadlock, March 1993

( RICHARD B. HADLOCK was described in the February, 1991 issue of The Mississippi Rag as a “Man of Many Talents”. He is the author of “Jazz Masters of the 20’s” and has written jazz criticism for Downbeat, The Jazzjoumal, Jazz Quarterly, Billboard, Metronome as well as The New York Times and San Francisco Examiner. Since 1959 he has hosted “The Annals of Jazz”, one of the longest running radio shows which until recently was heard on station KCSM in San Mateo, California. He has now started a second radio program “Reminiscing in Tempo”, which is heard on the same station. He lives in Berkeley where he is an active musician, equally adept on the soprano saxophone and the clarinet (one of his teachers in the 1950’s was Sidney Bechet). He has also found time to be an elementary school teacher, an amateur anthropologist specializing in American Indian culture, a writer, a record producer and a life long friend of jazz.)