A Traditionalist Who Makes Every Note Count
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The clarinetist Kenny Davern, who is being saluted this Thursday at the TriBeCa Performing Arts Center, is one of those rare musicians for whom every solo is a statement: He doesn’t just play for the sake of filling space, but because he has something important to say. It’s no exaggeration to state that only a handful of living jazz musicians – Sonny Rollins, Lee Konitz, and Hank Jones are among the rare few – can do what Mr. Davern does with a song.
The perfect Davern solo starts with him playing the melody – usually some Jazz Age esoterica like “Oh Sister, Ain’t That Hot”or “Palestreena”- and flows into an improvisation that’s thematic and harmonic at the same time, in that he utilizes both the melody and the chords. This is already more than what many jazzmen attempt, but Mr. Davern also throws in unexpected growls, outof-tune barks, repeated phrases, blue notes, and altissimo yelps way above the instrument’s normal register. He will croon and shriek as the occasion demands, but he’ll never do anything as obvious as randomly tossing in a quote from another song just to goose the crowd. When Mr. Davern plays a fourminute solo, you know every note has a clear point of departure and an equally clear point of arrival.
During a phone interview last week, Mr. Davern, 70, said the skill he values most is the ability to edit. “Louis Armstrong did it all – he knew how to edit,” Mr. Davern said from his home in New Mexico, where he moved from New Jersey three years ago. “He was making 78 recordings, which was really a good thing. Since the advent of magnetic tape, musicians have been droning on and on without having that much to say.”
Mr. Davern’s preferred format is a quartet that offers musical economy at its purest. Since even a pianist could clutter things up, he usually includes a guitarist – normally a master such as Howard Alden, Bucky Pizzarelli, or, most recently, James Chirillo – to assist the bass and drums with rhythm and provide minimal chordal support. Mr. Davern decries contemporary jazz groups in which every musician solos to his heart’s content on every tune; instead, he takes his inspiration from his own boss of many years, Eddie Condon.
“He was the boss traffic director,” Mr. Davern said.”We would be playing a tune, and Eddie would have the trumpet play 16 bars, then he would point to [trombonist] Lou McGarity, who would play the bridge, and then somebody else would play the last eight bars. Meanwhile, I would be praying, ‘Oh, I wanna play on this tune!’ but he wouldn’t always point to me.Then the next tune would be something I hated, but then he would indicate for me to play on that one! But he knew what would work. We need traffic directors like that – these days, you have to be your own traffic director.”
Condon was not only the first major bandleader Mr. Davern played under; he was one of the first jazz musicians the clarinetist heard.”I was 14 years old when I heard this record on the radio, ‘Memphis Blues’ by Muggsy Spanier’s Ragtimers [with Condon on guitar],and then I heard [clarinetist] Pee Wee Russell for the first time. I heard all these grunts and growls, sounds of spittle – I had no idea even what horn he was playing but I said to myself, ‘This is what I wanna do with my life!’ “
Within a short while, Mr. Davern, who was born in Huntington, N.Y., in 1935 and grew up in Queens, was playing in a high school Dixieland band. Also in the band were two other future notables: soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy and drummer Bobby Grauso, the latter of whom was the son of Condon’s drummer, Joe Grauso.
“Joe used to take Bobby and me to the original Condon’s. We would stand on the side of the bandstand and I was ecstatic to hear those guys play.”Within a short while, the young Mr. Davern was sitting in with the Condon Mob. He worked in local Dixieland and swing bands until 1954. Then he joined the reed section of arranger Ralph Flanagan, who became a national attraction based on his ability to mimic Glenn Miller.
“Even our theme song was ‘Moonlight Serenade’ played upside-down,” Mr. Davern said of Flanagan’s band. “The name of his vocal group was the Singing Winds so of course we all called them the Passing Winds. Then I left that big band, where I was making $400 a week, to join JackTeagarden for $175 – I didn’t care about the money. Jack was wonderful. But most everything he played was in the key of C. I couldn’t imagine why that was. It must have laid good on the first four positions of the trombone. But he was a marvelous guy.”
Ever since, Mr. Davern has alternated between playing as a sideman for living legends like Phil Napoleon and leading his own groups. Some of his most remarkable work has occurred while playing saxophone alongside other reed virtuosos. In the 1970s, he doubled on soprano saxophone and clarinet in the band Soprano Summit (more recently known as Summit Reunion), which he co-led with multi-reed player and arranger Bob Wilber. He also played baritone saxophone with his old friend Steve Lacy on the 1978 album “Unexpected,” a set of free improvisations that lived up to the title.
In the late 1970s, however, Mr. Davern decided to concentrate exclusively on the clarinet. “I didn’t want to divide my attention between two mistresses,” he said. “Besides which, the clarinet was so out of popularity at that time that I wanted to take a stand. You can B.S. a lot with a saxophone but not at all with a clarinet.”
Mr. Davern hit his stride as a leader and soloist in the CD era, recording a series of remarkable albums with his sleek but supple guitar-bass-drums rhythm section. A quartet including guitarist Howard Alden recorded two impressive albums, “I’ll See You in My Dreams” and “One Hour With You,” during a string of sessions in January 1988. In 2001, Mr. Davern recorded an excellent album, “The Jazz KENnection,” with the pan-stylistic reed player Ken Peplowski. His two most recent recordings – “At the Mill Hill Playhouse” (2003) and “In Concert at the Outpost Performance Space, Albuquerque, 2004” (2005), both recorded alongside Mr. Chirillo, bassist Greg Cohen, and drummer Tony DeNicola – are highly recommended.
This week, Mr. Davern will play both with his own quartet and with the allstar band known as the Statesmen of Jazz, featuring Wycliffe Gordon, Houston Person, Harry Allen, Jon-Erik Kellso, and Norman Simmons.
December 1 at the TriBeCa Performing Arts Center (199 Chambers Street, 212-220-1459).