Parkeology 016: Can of Worms

Really, all Bird needed was some dope. If Bird had had any dope right then, he’d have turned around and played like a champ. But at the time these records were made, he was without sufficient drugs. – Howard McGhee (Interview WKCR)

It’s hard to discuss the “Lover Man” date without being sucked into the self-perpetuating melodrama surrounding Bird’s “nervous breakdown.” I’m referring, of course, to the infamous July 29, 1946 Dial recording session.

The best antidote I know of is to stick with Howard McGhee’s melodrama-free account. He was there, and he contradicts Ross Russell’s highly self-serving version on many key points. But I don’t want to get bogged down in rebuttals, either. All I really want to talk about is the intro to “Lover Man.”

Here it is:

The following observation isn’t mine, and I’d like to give credit where credit is due, but I don’t remember where I read it.

The fact that Bird seems late on his entrance may have had nothing to do with his physical/mental condition. Dizzy, Bird, and Sarah Vaughn recorded “Lover Man” for Guild on May 11, 1945, and that rendition had a five bar introduction:

Bird re-recorded “Lover Man” for Mercury (Verve) on August 8, 1951, and that opens with a six bar introduction. As it happens, Bird comes in with the first note of the melody at the beginning of bar six. This raises the possibility, rather unlikely, that he was expecting a five bar intro here, as well: 

[You will find complete versions of all three tracks below.]

What motivated Bird to re-record? I can make a plausible guess, based on a blurb in Down Beat magazine, published June 29, 1951. Asked to name his “best on  wax,” Bird replies as follows:

I’m sorry, but my best on wax is yet to be made. When I listen to my records I always find that improvements could be made on each one. There’s never been one that completely satisfied me. If you want to know my worst on wax, though, that’s easy. I’d take “Lover Man,” a horrible thing that should never have been released. It was made the day before I had a nervous breakdown. No, I think I’d choose “Be-Bop,” made at the same session, or “The Gypsy.” They were all awful.

This response would have still been fresh in Bird’s mind at the time of the August 8 recording session.

The new “Lover Man” is identical to the original in structure, Intro–AABABA–Ending, standard operating procedure for three-minute recordings. Nevertheless, I think all similarities are intentional, as confirmed by the trumpet taking the last eight of the melody. It’s as if Bird hoped reproducing it exactly would erase the original from the face of the earth.

He might have been better able to forget and move on had Ross Russell not reissued “Lover Man” and “Bebop” in January 1949! 

Russell had originally rushed them out in November 1946, while Bird was still in Camarillo. As morally bankrupt as that had been, it was at least understandable. He was, after all, hanging on by his financial fingernails in a cutthroat business, at the same time documenting a lot of valuable music. But reissuing them in 1949 was just plain mercenary, revealing his true nature twenty-five years before Bird Lives shouted it from the rooftops.

When you get down to it, though, the Dial “Lover Man” is nothing to be ashamed of. As Howard McGhee put it, “Even though he wasn’t in the best of shape, I think he still played it beautiful.” What’s more, Mingus named it his favorite Bird recording. It also has a lot in common with subsequent ballad masterpieces, and previous ones, “Meandering” in particular.

So Bird doesn’t exactly miss his entrance. He comes in at the beginning of bar six, in keeping with the Guild arrangement. Realizing there’s no fifth bar, he immediately adjusts, and from there on makes no mistakes of any kind.

The performance has real flaws, of course, but none of them musical. Bird spins badly off mic in a number of places, his reflexes are obviously shot, and tone production is impaired.

I admit the recording conveys a certain pathos, but jazz writers overhype it in their rush to psychoanalyze Bird. The mood is vastly more nuanced than the critical consensus, which holds that the performance is the pure distillation of every single painful emotion and experience Bird ever suffered while in LA, with madness dropped on top like a giant cherry.    

It would be impossible to catalog all the lies in Russell’s account of the “Lover Man” session, so we’ll stick to the intro:

There was a long, seemingly endless piano introduction as Jimmy Bunn marked time, waiting for the saxophone. Charlie had missed the cue. The alto came in at last, several bars late.

That’s three. It’s impossible for a four-bar intro to seem endless, Bunn wasn’t marking time, and Bird wasn’t several bars late. While we’re at it, here’s Russell’s description of the ending:

There was a last, eerie, suspended, unfinished phrase, then silence.

This pig pile of adjectives is one hundred percent hogwash. The ending is fine:

An unintentionally amusing image comes from Chuck Haddix’s commendable Bird biography. His editor should have flagged it:

When Charlie veered off-mike [sic] during the last bars of “Lover Man,” Russell wrapped his arms around him and squeezed out the last few notes.

This makes it sound as though Russell performed a heroic, ballad-ending Heimlich maneuver, surely not Haddix’s intent. But the image makes an apt metaphor. Ultimately, Russell did indeed squeeze out of Bird every penny he could get. As Miles put it:

Ross Russell–a jive motherfucker who I never did get along with because he was nothing but a leech, who didn’t never do nothing but suck off Bird like he was a vampire! Fuck that jive white boy! I told Ross Russell he could kiss my ass!

Somebody had to say it.

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Here are all three complete “Lover Men,” in chronological order: Guild, Dial, Mercury.