Tuesday, April 12, 1994
Jon Hendricks still treasure of jazz world
By Peter B. King
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
At 72, Jon Hendricks is still making headlines in the world
of jazz. A week ago Sunday, he talked to a reporter by
telephone after singing in the premiere of Wynton Marsalis’
“Blood on the Fields” at New York’s Lincoln Center. The
next morning, an image of Hendricks in performance beamed
from the cover of The Living Arts Section of The New York
Times.
On the telephone, Hendricks described “Blood on the Fields”
as “kind of an Ellingtonesque extended composition having
to do with the entire slave experience, something on the
order of ‘Black, Brown and Beige,’ with a narration written
by Wynton and some songs with lyrics also by Wynton, which
I sang. It was a full house and very well-received —
standing ovation at the end of both nights.”
It was certainly well-received by Times critic Jon Pareles,
whose rave included the observation that Hendricks
“sprinted through bursts of scat- singing that had the
other musicians on stage beaming with appreciation.”
Hendricks’ scat singing — vocal improvisations on nonsense
syllables in the style of a jazz instrumental solo — has
impressed musicians and fans for decades. But he made jazz
history with his mastery of vocalese — a direct descendant
of scat in which lyrics are written to jazz solos and
ensemble parts. It’s a rather astounding genre in which
intricate music and witty, stream-of-consciousness lyrics
flow from the mouth at a mile a minute.
Hendricks, who will perform at the Balcony Friday and
Saturday with singers Judith Hendricks (his wife), Aria
Hendricks (his daughter), Kevin Burke and a rhythm section,
began his singing career at age 7 in Toledo, Ohio.
“By the time I was 10, I was a local celebrity in Toledo. I
had offers to go with Fats Waller when I was 12, and offers
to go with Ted Lewis and be his shadow when I was 13. He
had that song ‘Me and My Shadow.’ And he had this little
Negro boy who was his shadow, that did everything he did.
That was his act.”
When he was 14, Hendricks worked with piano genius Art
Tatum. “I have no formal training. The only training I’ve
had was two years singing with Art Tatum at the Waiter’s
and Bellman’s Club in Toledo.”
Time Magazine once called Hendricks “the James Joyce of
Jive,” and he sees some truth in that. “I was an English
major all through college. I wrote poetry for my school
paper at the University of Toledo. I studied Shakespeare
and all that,” says the man who once owned a nightclub
called “Jazz You Like It.”
“I learned how to construct dramatic sequences, to
delineate characters. So what I did was to translate all
that into the jazz idiom. Like I would take the title of
the song, and that would be the subject on which I was
going to write. And then the theme would be the plot, and
then the horns would become the cast of characters. The
saxophone and the trumpet would be part of the cast and
would make certain commentary on the subject of, say, the
Woodside Hotel, you know, from ‘Jumpin’ at the Woodside.’
It was really the transmutation of literature into jazz
music. That’s what I think vocalese really is.”
After finishing his undergrad work, Hendricks was well on
his way to earning a law degree when Charlie Parker came
through Toledo and made him think twice. “I sang with him,
and he said I should come to New York.” Two years and four
months later, Hendricks made the move. He found Parker up
on 125th Street and 7th Avenue playing at the Apollo Bar.
“When I walked in, he said, ‘Hey Jon, how ya doin’? You
wanna sing something?’ And he had spread my name all around
New York pretty much, so that Miles, Dizzy, Bud (Powell)
and Bags (Milt Jackson) and all those guys, they knew who I
was.”
Hendricks teamed up with the late Dave Lambert, whom he
credits with bringing scat singing into the bop era. The
two recorded “Four Brothers” in 1955, with vocalese lyrics
written by Hendricks to the Woody Herman big band hit.
With singer Annie Ross, the Lambert, Hendricks and Ross
trio enjoyed great success in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s,
hitting first with two albums of vocalese to the music of
Count Basie and winning a Grammy in 1961.
Hendricks traces the history of writing lyrics to jazz
solos at least as far back as Red Foxx’s lyric to Roy
Eldridge’s “Exactly Like You,” written in 1936. He notes
the early vocalese of Pittsburgh singer Eddie Jefferson and
reserves special praise for Clarence Beeks, aka King
Pleasure, who had the first vocalese hit with “Moody’s Mood
for Love.”
“He was the one who recorded the lyric by Mrs. Eddie
Jefferson (to a sax solo by James Moody). And he was the
most direct influence on me. I heard him do “Moody’s Mood
for Love” and immediately wrote “Four Brothers.” And that,
the big band versions, became what is known as vocalese.
The other two guys, King Pleasure and Eddie Jefferson, did
only small group things, single horn things. And I expanded
it to the full orchestra and did arrangements, like writing
a libretto to an opera.”
Besides singing in Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, Hendricks
wrote R&B- flavored tunes for jump saxophonist-singer
Louis Jordan, including “I’ll Die Happy,” “Messy Bessie”
and “I Want You To Be My Baby,” a huge hit for Pittsburgher
Lillian Briggs.
Hendricks’ musical, “The Evolution of the Blues,” ran for
five years in San Francisco. His TV documentary, “Somewhere
to Lay My Weary Head,” won an Emmy, an Iris and a Peabody.
Hendricks sang on and wrote the lyrics for Manhattan
Transfer’s 1985 album, “Vocalese,” which won a slew of
Grammys. He was nominated again for a Grammy in 1990 for
his last album, “Freddie Freeloader,” on the Japanese Denon
label. (Despite his successes, Hendricks has been ignored
by American labels for a while.)
During the ‘70s, Hendricks worked as a staff jazz critic
for the San Francisco Chronicle for two years. “I love
speaking about jazz in a supportive way. I based my career
as a critic on George Bernard Shaw’s essay on criticism,
that you should never degrade the art form that you are in
the process of criticizing. That you should always uplift
the form, and if necessary criticize the performance.”
On occasion, it was necessary, like the time he panned a
famous jazz pianist whose name he now won’t reveal.
“What the guy was doing was playing rock music. In the
first place he was playing electric piano, which to me is
an abomination as an instrument. And then he called me up
and said, ‘Why did you come down so hard on me?’ I said,
‘Because you advertised yourself as a jazz pianist and you
played no jazz.’ So we still don’t get along very well.”
If you gather that Hendricks’ tastes, like those of his
friend Marsalis, run to traditional notions of jazz, you
get the idea. Some people might see at least a little
resemblance between the rhythms and wordplay of vocalese
and those of rap. Hendricks sees none. He calls rap and
hip-hop “manufactured entities” and “not generic from the
Negro culture.”
He is optimistic about the future of the acoustic jazz he
loves.
“The sales of old jazz records that have been re-released
have been so phenomenal that all the record companies are
going back into their archives and pulling out the Lester
Youngs and the Buck Claytons and the old Basies and Dukes
and putting them on the market. And they’re selling like
hot cakes. There’s even a dim awareness now that music did
not begin with the Beatles.”
(Peter B. King is a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer.)
