Salon | Sharps and Flats

HEAR IT:

Summertime
(852k)

RECENT REVIEWS:

Lee Feldman
Living It All Wrong
Pure/Mercury
(10/13/97)

Grant McLennan
In Your Bright Ray
Beggar's Banquet
(10/10/97)

Chris Knox
Yes!!
Pop/Rock
(10/09/97)

Portishead
Portishead
Pop/Rock
(10/08/97)

Paul Geremia
Live From Uncle Sam's Back Yard
Pop/Rock
(10/07/97)

- - - - - - - -

Sound Salvation
By Sarah Vowell
True blue tributes
(09/19/97)

- - - - - - - -

Table Talk
Irrational Hatred: What music makes your ears bleed? Which albums are worse that sharp nails on chalkboards?

- - - - - - - -

Almost Heaven:
John Denver 1943-1997
Dawn Eden remembers the man whose music left no room for cynicism (10/14/97)

joe henderson++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++----> Porgy and Bess <---- verve

[Joe Henderson]

BY MICHAEL ULLMAN | In 1926,George Gershwin wrote a letter to South Carolina writer DuBose Heyward about Heyward's novel "Porgy," which he had read and admired. A year later, when the stage adaptation of "Porgy" appeared on Broadway with great success, its depiction of African-American life, complete with onstage singing of spirituals, piqued Gershwin's interest again. But it wasn't until the mid-'30s that the composer wrote the opera "Porgy and Bess" with his brother Ira and with Heyward's libretto in hand.

Already alerted to Gershwin's show tunes, jazz players picked up on "Porgy and Bess" immediately, with its now seemingly immortal songs, "Summertime," "Bess, You Is My Woman Now," "It Ain't Necessarily So" and "I Ain't Got Plenty o' Nuttin'": Their interest was reawakened in the LP era by the 1959 film version, featuring Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge. The LP meant that the whole opera could be addressed by jazz arrangers, so the 1959 record by Bill Potts and, the most celebrated of all, the bleakly sonorous Gil Evans/Miles Davis rendition of the year before were added to the 1957 Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong collaboration. Evans omitted the most cheerful songs, "I Ain't Got Plenty o' Nuttin'" among them.

Because saxophonist Joe Henderson is both a more upbeat and gentler soul, he not only includes a spirited "I Ain't Got Plenty o' Nuttin'," but an achingly tender "Bess, You Is My Woman Now," played as a duet with Tommy Flanagan. Flanagan's introduction is worth the price of admission, but there's much more here: the exuberant solos by bassist Dave Holland and the slickly hip drumming by Jack DeJohnette on "There's a Boat That's Leavin' Soon"; Henderson's intimate, hushed rendition of "I Loves You Porgy" over Scofield's obligato; and the playing of guitarist John Scofield and Flanagan and Henderson throughout. There are also two vocal solos, by Chaka Khan on "Summertime" and (surprisingly) by Sting on "Nuttin'."

For a jazz listener, the one problem with Henderson's conception may be the range of approaches to the material. Henderson's arrangements don't suggest the coherent vision of someone like Evans. Nor is he absolutely true to the plot of the opera -- we get "Oh Bess, Where is My Bess?" after "There's a Boat That's Leavin' Soon." In the opera, of course, Porgy finds Bess missing before he vows to follow her (via goat cart) to New York. No matter. The opera as Gershwin wrote it was ravishing, but Henderson's jazz version is sensitive, deft and swinging.
SALON | Oct. 15, 1997

Michael Ullman is a regular contributor to Salon.