Losing Marty

Since moving to LA in the early 90's, I've been so blessed to meet and work with so many legendary musicians and performers. Being a fanatic for jazz, I always gravitated to the older cats, artists who've been around the block more than a few times, and they have been like mentors to me. Beginning with Leonard Reed, then Earl Palmer, George Gafney, Ross Tomkins, Ron Anthony, Tony Russell (to name a few). I can't begin to recount how much I've learned from all of them over the past 15-20 years. You hang out with a group like this, you end up meeting, hanging out with, and playing with some of the best, hippest talent in the world.

The downside to all of this is that I tend to lose them entirely too soon, and last week's passing of Marty Harris has saddened me beyond words. I can't remember when I first met Marty; he was just always around, backing up wonderful singers and playing with the best groups in town. I ran into him everywhere, and I ended up playing with him at Micelli's, The Money Tree, Monteleone's, Barone's, private parties, casuals, etc. He was so opinionated about singers, I considered it a huge honor that he would want to play with me. We never used charts, never had to. Charts got in the way, and for the kind of music we were doing, we all knew the basic roadmap anyway, and every night was magical.

Marty could play anything. Anything. He had played with Anita O'Day (my hero! He loved telling stories about Anita O'Day), Woody Herman, Clark Terry, Diana Ross and Tom Jones. He could make anyone sound good, even me when I completely lost my voice before a show last year. He didn't feel well and he was in pain, but he played like the monster he was, making up for my deficiencies that night.

One thing about Marty - To play with Marty, you had to have ears. And you'd better know what you're doing. The women in the two stories below shall remain nameless.

A few years ago, I was asked to sing at a birthday party for an actress' mother, and I called Marty for the job. It was just the two of us. This particular celebrity wanted me to sing "Stardust", and she wanted to dedicate it to her mother. I'm sure she wanted a lovely ballad. I had written up a chart (which of course Marty ignored). After I sang the verse rubato, Marty broke into a wonderful swinging stride which brought the tune to life, and everyone started dancing. A few songs and a couple of glasses of wine later, our celebrity host wanted to sing a song (a standard) to her mother. She wasn't a singer, per se, and she had probably learned the tune listening to someone's recording of it. When she stood up in front of Marty, she became completely thrown by his chord changes and inversions, and it was pretty disastrous. Not used to being caught with her pants down, she blamed it on Marty. He wasn't "playing it right". (You gotta love it when singers blame the musicians. It gives the rest of us "chick singers" a bad name.)

Another time, I walked into Micelli's, where Marty was playing with a flamboyant French diva. It was the same thing. This poor woman clearly wasn't used to singing with a pianist of Marty's caliber. She came in at the wrong places, forgot where she was, and hit some very questionable notes. Marty trudged on, playing through it, trying to help her find her place.

"Terrible!" she furiously whispered to me during the break. "I have NEVER had such a night! This pianist does not know what he is doing!" " She retreated to the bar.

"Terrible!!" an exhasperated Marty said. "This woman's got no idea what she's doing! Hey, you want to get up and sing a song?"

A few times during our shows, after I finished singing, he'd say, "You know, Laura, a better ending would be this...." and he'd play it for me. He was always right. I hope I still remember those endings.

Right up until the very end, Marty played with a full heart. He looked great and never lost his chops. He was truly one-of-a-kind, and there will never be another Marty. We're all getting older, and I'm no spring chicken any more. I know, it's life. But it's just getting harder and harder to lose my friends.

 

                                                             Marty Harris, 1933 - 2011

Recommended: The Financial Lives of the Poets, by Jess Walter

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the first time I've read anything by Jess Walter, and I really got a kick out of his self-deprecating, clever wit and ironic style. The main character's tragedy is played out like a comedy, and Walter captured the desperate financial times we now face. Our unemployed hero, Matt, heads out to a 7-11 one night to buy milk, but he makes one wrong turn in the throes of desperation. One wrong turn leads to another, and before he realizes what's happened, he is a fledgling, hapless drug-dealer in training. He's also lying to his wife about the fact that they are about to lose their house, and his wife is preoccupied with an internet/facebook/texting affair with a guy from her past.




Matt (of course) is caught by the authorities and forced into being a narc - a dreadfully unsuccessful narc. After losing just about everything, Matt has to recalibrate his life and what's left of his marriage. It sounds dismal, but there is something wildly cathartic about this novel. Matt's desperate spiral into denial, horrendous decisions and complete financial ruin parallel the current descent of the American economy. The recalibration of reality. The realization that at the end of the day, if you still have your own coat pockets to share with another pair of cold hands...maybe everything will be ok.




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A disturbing read: Runaway Horses, by Yukio Mishima

Here's my review on Goodreads:

Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima

Well, I got through it. This book is beautifully-written and repelling at the same time. I did at times feel like I was reading the story through the eyes of a terrorist, which held its own brief fascination.




The bio of the author is actually even more interesting than the book, which I found unsatisfying at the end. Mishima seems to have been a man born in the wrong era - he was born into a Samurai family and was a descendant of a Shogun. Incredibly prolific, he wrote 30 novels, 18 plays, 20 volumes of verse and 20 volumes of essays. He was an avid swordsman and body builder and became extremely proficient in Kendo. Possibly bi-sexual, he posed in the nude and was enamoured by the strong male physique. Yet he was married with 2 children. He was charismatic, self-aware and apparently had an uncommon genius for conversation. He lamented the Westernization of Japanese culture, and his last works were the The Sea of Fertility 4-volume epic. Runaway Horses is the 2nd volume in that series.



And, like the protagonist in Runaway Horses, at the age of 45, this author committed ritual suicide after staging an unsuccessful (and publicly mocked) coupe on the Eastern Army of the Japanese Self-Defense Force.



Disappointing. Especially disappointing because it's so cliche and such a waste. Did he descend into madness? In Runaway Horses, he seems to speak through the character of Honda (a judge), who is the sole voice of reason in the novel. Yet he followed the way of Isao, the protagonist, in a grand gesture of life imitating his own art.
 
I'm a bit confused by the whole experience.  Thus, the 2 stars.