Finding New Friends in the Jazz Songbook

Janet Planet ‘Storylines—The music of Susan Weinschenk’Stellar RecordsAllan Harris ‘Swingin’ Love Songs’ (Songs by Ike Joseph)Love ProductionsClassical musicians play from a formal canon of music, much of which was composed well before their own lifetimes, while rock and pop stars are expected to write — or at least generate — their own material. Jazz is the only major musical style that is largely driven by a second-hand repertoire. There have always been composers working within the music, most notably the Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn collective, but few songwriters have created consistently great original works of words and music for jazz purposes: Jon Hendricks, Abbey Lincoln, Oscar Brown, Jr. Even so, most jazz singers rely most heavily on what we call the Great American Songbook, which is primarily songs that originated on Broadway and in Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley, mostly before 1970.This season, there are two new albums by veteran jazz singers that consist entirely of original songs, although not by the artists themselves: “Storylines—The music of Susan Weinschenk” by the Oshkosh, Wisconsin-based singer and educator Janet Planet and “Swingin’ Love Songs” by the Harlem-based singer and guitarist Allan Harris. While these are two of my favorite living vocalists, I must confess that both of these songwriters were completely unknown to me until now. Original repertoire is, as always, a tricky issue. Even when hearing an artist that’s new to them, most jazz audiences expect to hear a lot of songs that they already know, whether they’re by Gershwin, Strayhorn (Mr. Harris did one of the best albums of his music in 2001), or Dylan (Ms. Planet actually did two exceptional albums of original, jazz interpretations of his songs). The last thing that the crowds at Birdland or Dizzy’s expect to hear is newly-written songs, especially an entire program of them. I well remember the late Lorraine Gordon, the feisty proprietor of The Village Vanguard for many decades, encouraging (that’s putting it gently) young musicians to play more standards. “Nobody’s going to walk out of here humming that original you wrote five minutes ago,” she would bark.In terms of present-day songwriters, the hardest thing to do is to write songs that actually sound like what we call the traditional songbook. But there are musicians writing memorable tunes — Kenny Barron, for one came out with a memorable album of his own songs around a year ago — even as there are composers still doing great work in the contemporary musical theater. But the one thing that almost no one can do is write new songs that sound like the old ones — which, we might argue, is kind of an irrelevant expectation in that there’s not really any need for “new old”-style songs when there are tens of thousands of great old old ones. These two new albums explore that notion in different ways. Susan Weinschenk, who composed the 12 songs on “Storylines,” is a breast cancer survivor and friend and student of Ms. Planet. The album notes inform us, “Susan Weinschenk writes jazz songs about being human. A behavioral scientist by profession and a songwriter by passion, she is drawn to the ways people make sense of their lives through the stories they tell themselves and others.”Ms. Planet usually works in a distinctly jazz milieu, but “Storylines” touches on a wide variety of genres, and much of the album is mixed and equalized like a pop project. The opener, “Unconditional Love,” sounds like a 1970s soul hit that somehow escaped one’s notice until now. “Our Love is an Ocean” opens with acoustic guitar, as does “The Silence of My Room” with twinkly electric keyboard, and both lean in the direction of Brazilian samba and bossa nova. “Let Me Be the One” has an innocent quality, like a folk song or a piece of children’s music. “Everything You Want But The Blues” is an example of truth in advertising, with funky backbeats and electric bass. Two songs make a point to use an acoustic, more customarily jazz-centric rhythm “What Are You Waiting For” is the track I would pick that most sounds like it could enter the general jazz repertoire, and “Where Do I Go from Here” also is the kind of song that will catch on with other singers.Allan Harris’s “Swingin’ Love Songs” makes the same point from a different perspective. Here, the songs really seem like they could have come from the big band era because the composer was actually born in the mid-1920s. We don’t know much about Ike Joseph, other than that he was apparently writing songs in the late swing era, and succeeded in placing a few with renowned artists, among them the trumpeter Cootie Williams and the rock-era pop star Paul Anka. Mr. Harris recorded a program of his songs, apparently at the composer’s behest, about 20 years ago. Ike Joseph, who was then well over 80, died a short time later and everyone forgot about the tapes.The album cover for ‘Swingin’ Love Songs’ by Allan Harris. ScreenshotThe title of the album, “Swingin’ Love Songs,” genuflects in the direction of Sinatra, who pioneered the art of swingin’ with an apostrophe (“Songs for Swingin’ Lovers,” “A Swingin’ Affair”). However, the dominant spirit hovering over every song of the album is that of Nat King Cole. Throughout, guitarist Miles Okazaki, bassist Jon Flaugher, and the pianist (who is not identified on the album, but who may or may not be the arranger Eddie Montilla) stay true to the harmonic and rhythmic legacy of the legendary King Cole Trio. The track “How Wrong They Were,” which features violinist Russell Farhang seems to be deliberately evoking Cole’s classic “After Midnight” album, celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. The tracks featuring two saxophonists, tenor Hayes Greenfield and alto Jesse Jones, Jr. also supply first-rate obbligato work throughout and also evoke the “After Midnight” atmosphere. The warm crooning of Mr. Harris, one of Cole’s greatest living devotees, also places this entire project solidly in the King Cole court. Most of the numbers are cheerful love songs, like “When You’re Young and in Love” and Mr. Harris’s effortless baritone makes it easy to imagine Nat Cole’s voice on any of the nine songs here. “Any Moment Now” is a highly romantic, slow dance and “The Other Side of the Fence” is more of a philosophical ode, a cheerful look at the bright side of life. “They Said It Before,” which is just piano, guitar, and bass, could easily be a hitherto unknown Cole Trio track from circa 1947. “Soft Spoken,” which is an accurate description of both the late King and now Mr. Harris, is a lovely example of how Mr. Harris keeps Nat Cole’s musical legacy alive, even when singing material outside of the familiar King Cole canon. The entire package, which is brief and tidy at nine songs and 36 minutes, is a genuine flashback, not just the 2000s when the album was taped, but to the swing era many generations before that. Listening to two albums of previously unheard songs is rather like walking into a room full of strangers and making new friends. This is the first time I have heard these songs, but I have a feeling that it won’t be the last.

Finding New Friends in the Jazz Songbook

Finding New Friends in the Jazz Songbook

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