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NAT HENTOFF, LINER NOTES TO "THE SWEET BITTERSWEET"
For
decades, a continuing debate within the factious jazz community is who
are the authentic jazz singers. For the 2004 Thelonious Monk
International Jazz Competition, the judges were given these
criteria: control, time, swing, dynamics, concept, taste,
originality, interaction with their rhythm section.
Omitted
was a key element that all jazz singers - and instrumentalists - who
have lasted possessed. Long ago, I would hear musicians asking about
some players they hadn’t heard yet: “Can they tell a story?” That’s
what Charlie Parker meant when he said that a jazz musician - in the
act of creating - tells about just about everything he or she has
experienced. And that “wisdom,” as Bird put it, becomes part of the
music.
Anna
de Leon is one of more beguiling - and moving storytellers I’ve heard
in a good many years. As for the criteria in the Thelonious monk
competition, she has all of these; and because her musicianship is
infused with her life stories, Anna evokes from the songs she chooses
much more than their composers and lyricists could have imagined.
In
this set, she moves the listener into a twilit groove that, I expect,
will result in this recording being played often, at special times. As
she says, this set “evolved from a desire to record some of my favorite
songs, the ballads of rainy nights, the songs that light a candle on
dark days.”
She
brought into the studio musicians who, as she put it, “have the heart
for these songs.” She and they, in two afternoons, acted on their
knowledge that the essence of the jazz experience - for musician and
listener - is spontaneity in both the playing and the continual sounds
of surprise that music such as this gives listeners whenever they
return to it.
Neither
Anna nor the other musicians wanted “to rehearse the life out of these
songs.” So they were all done in one take, except for Black Coffee,
which took two. Duke Ellington once told me that he greatly preferred
to do no more than two or three takes because he said, “Otherwise, the
music dies.”
As for
Anna de Leon’s roots - where she comes from in the rainbow of sounds
that formed her - she notes: “From the first time I heard them,
Lightnin’ Hopkins, Elmore James, Bobby Bland, and too many more have
touched me. And for gospel, Miss Mahalia, The Staples family
(especially Roebuck and Mavis) , the Soul Stirrers, the early Mighty
Clouds of Joy, and other quartets.” She adds: “My own music must be
influenced by blues and gospel, even though I don’t hear the precise
sound influences in my voice.”
But
ti’s the soul thrust of blues and gospel that fuels the spirit in her
voice; and the blues and gospel, after all, are at the core of the jazz
that endures.
As
for the pulse of jazz, Anna says, “I love the music, the endless
possibility, the ‘conversation’ with the other musicians. When the
sound itself is beautiful, and when the groove joins to the music,
then, happy or sad, I love it and it can’t be denied.”
Her
ability to tell compelling stories comes from an unusually diverse
life. At U.C.L.A., she earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in art/philosophy.
And in her twenties, as part of the jazz and poetry scene in Los
Angeles, she sang in small clubs and later, with small combos in the
San Francisco Bay Area, as well as being the “chick singer” for the
Delancy Street Jazz Band for a couple years. Also, she was part of a
gospel trio.
But
there was another life that joined with the music to give her more
stories to tell. A graduate of Boalt Hall School of Law at the
University of California at Berkeley, she was a civil rights lawyer for
some twenty years. As she notes, Anna “represented literally thousands
of political demonstrators and litigated police misconduct cases.
Moreover, with her prodigious commitment to meaningful activism, Anna
served two terms on the Berkeley School Board, was elected president
twice, and her principles ignited fierce opposition. Anna, she recalls
(who could forget?) “was the focus of hundreds of death threats which
originated in Soldier of Fortune magazine because I led the fight for a
high school curriculum that includes alternative to military service.”
Wherever
she goes, she leaves change. For instance, she developed a legal
education program that is used now in the local juvenile court - as an
alternative to being placed behind bars.
Anna
raised a daughter, Aya, and parented several foster children. “I sing
the children to sleep, to make work end more quickly and I sing in the
car. I sing to stay alive.”
As
if all of this would not have been enough for one biography, a quote
from Billie Holiday in Billie’s biography that Anna read opened another
dimension in her life. Billie has said, “All I ever wanted was a little
place where I could serve good food and sing whenever I felt like it.”
Ending her law practice, in 1997, Anna opened Anna’s Jazz Bistro in
Berkeley, and moved it to a larger venue there in November 2004,
calling it Anna’s Jazz Island.
A
rather rare phenomenon in jazz, she is a club owner who, to say the
least, identifies with the musicians. Every night, local players
perform at Anna’s place, and she often sings with them. There is a
weekly jam, hosted by the distinguished and distinctive guitarist,
Calvin Keyes. The credo of this club is “all jazz, all ages welcome,
all the time.”
Earlier,
I pointed to Anna’s attraction to the conversation with other musicians
that is the core of this music. So easeful and intimate is that
“conversation” in this set that you become part of it - along with
pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Peter Barshay, drummer Harold Jones, and
on two memorable vocals, Taj Mahal.
Having
cited some of her blues and gospel influences, it’s worth adding -
because her singing will, I expect, make you want to know even more
about her - that her large list of jazz influences includes Sarah
Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat Cole, Hoagy Carmichael, Joe Williams,
Johnny Hartman and Cesaria Evora whose “Morna,” Anna says, “inspired
this project.” And at the beginning, her father playing piano in her
home led to her deep and deepening pleasure in Thelonious Monk, Otis
Spann, Ray Charles, Hank Jones and Ed Kelley.
From
the first track of “The Sweet Bittersweet,” it’s clear how Anna de Leon
exemplifies what will keep jazz alive: so long as there are musicians
who have the life experience to answer Duke Ellington’s song, “What Am
I Here For?”
They knew why, as Anna de Leon does, and now you can share her stories.

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