Author:
Geordie
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Date Posted: 07:18:40 04/25/03 Fri
STARK REALITY NOW
Last week, as I sat in an Echo Park studio re-mastering the Stark Reality
master dubs with lover-of-things-funky Dave Cooley, certain phrases
punctuated our work. "Amazing!" "So tight!" "Man, were these guys good!" At
one point, Dave looked back and laughed the obvious, "Man, how would you
explain this music to anyone outside of our circle?"
Our circle. Meaning there were "outsiders" who simply wouldn't catch on to
the glory of this music? I thought about it for a second or two, and came up
with two replies. One - Dave had hit upon the same question I'm sure others
had asked, through the years, as they discovered the wonderful music that
the Stark Reality recorded. The term "outsiders" had, I'm sure, branded
different groups of people in the past thirty years! Two - when I first
heard the Stark Reality's AJP-released album, in the home of a New
Haven-based hip hop producer when I was still in high school, he had summed
it up in one, neat sentence: "I love this one 'cause it's so distorted."
Distorted. That might work! Not in the general, ugly sense of the word.
Rather, in the artistic sense - as in the way a surrealist's painting
distorts his perception of the world. The sounds on their 1970 LP - from
Monty Stark's fuzz-toned vibraphone solos, to John Abercrombie's wah-wah
fluctuations, to Phil Morrison's slipping and sliding up and down the neck of
his bass guitar, to Vinnie Johnson's marching funk - all depart from the
sound one might expect to emerge from a late 60s jazz quartet. Monty's
rearrangement of famed composer Hoagy Carmichael's children's songs
certainly distorted the ideas Carmichael had originally conceived. All for
the better, of course.
I have the distinct feeling that many who buy this reissue already know
about the Stark Reality. That these kind of simplistic summations are
wasted. That many of those "outsiders" who don't know the group are going to
listen to this music like Peanut Butter Wolf did, as he heard "Junkman's
Song" pouring out of my bedroom speakers one afternoon. "Now this is the
kind of music that should be reissued!" Right on.
I'm going to spare you play-by-play commentary on the group's work. That
kind of academic bullshit always comes across as condescending anyway. But
I'll try to distill some of the history of this most-important project into a
series of vignettes of the folks behind its creation, and release. A magical
journey awaits - and I'm happy you're along for the ride.
Egon
Los Angeles, November 2002.
HOAGY CARMICHAEL
In the preface to his Carmichael biography, Stardust Melody, Richard M.
Sudhalter quotes William Zinsser. "Play me a Hoagy Carmichael song and I
hear the banging of a screen door and the whine of an outboard motor on a
lake - sounds of summer in a small-town America that is long gone but still
longed for." Even if those of the present generation might not be able to
immediately rattle off a list of Carmichael's hundreds of original
compositions, one would be hard pressed to find someone unfamiliar with "Star
Dust" or "Georgia on My Mind;" someone not enthralled by their timelessness.
Nearly every six year old learning to coordinate his right and left hands
pounds out "Heart And Soul" on his piano. Remember that one? Hear the
banging of that screen door yet?
Born in Bloomington, Indiana in 1899, Carmichael studied to be a lawyer
before settling his heart in the realm where it rightly belonged - music.
Like Duke Ellington, Carmichael was a composer and a performer, deeply
rooted in jazz. Early influences included a close friend, cornetist Bix
Biederbecke. Amongst those he early-influenced included one of Beiderbecke's
peers, Louis Armstrong, who recorded Carmichael's "Rockin' Chair" in 1929. A
few years later and Carmichael was lauded and loved as one of America's
great songsmiths.
By 1950, Carmichael had established a strong presence in Hollywood - for his
acting talents, as well as his musicianship. He appeared in movies like To
Have and Have Not, and Young Man With A Horn, alongside a young Kirk
Douglas. But at the same time, the emerging rock n' roll culture heralded a
change in popular music. Composers like Carmichael felt displaced. By the
1960s the entertainment industry that Carmichael had thrived within for over
thirty years was a different place altogether. Perhaps even foreign.
Luckily the composer's youngest son, Hoagy Bix Carmichael, was in tune with
what made the kids tick, and he was determined to keep his father's music
fresh. In the late 60s, a project would emerge at Boston public television
station WGBH that would change the perception of a small number of
Carmichael standards forevermore.
HOAGY BIX CARMICHAEL
"I've spent a fair amount of my life trying to promote dad's music," Hoagy
Bix Carmichael states. "And to find new and unusual ways to use the stuff.
Actually, we've been rather successful." He's not exaggerating - and his
crusade began at WGBH.
In the late 60s, tired of a stockbroker's existence on Wall Street, Hoagy
Bix called WGBH to offer his services as a volunteer. "I said, 'I just can't
do this,'" he states in reference to his New York-based profession. "GBH
in Boston was the greatest public television station in the country. I went
up there and got a job for myself." Serving as one of the station's on staff
producers, Hoagy Bix discovered a young vibraphonist named Monty Stark, who
had just recorded the theme for the Say Brother program with his fledgling
band, The Stark Reality.
"I heard the jazz in (his music), of course. And they had some rhythms going
there that were fabulous - Monty's a master at that," Hoagy Bix now
reflects. "Monty has killed me, forever." Soon, Stark was working with Hoagy
Bix as the music-man behind a season's worth of one-hour dramas entitled On
Being Black. Guest appearances by laureates such as Abby Lincoln, Bill
Cosby, Moms Mabley, Alvin Ailey and Morgan Freeman leant prestige to the
show. But this isn't to say that Stark produced the show's music under ideal
circumstances. "He did (the music) with the Reality - for nothing!" Hoagy
Bix exclaims. "We used to do it in people's apartments. And that's how we
really got cemented."
Thus, when Hoagy Bix conceived of an educational television program that
would focus on his father and a series of children's songs he'd composed in
the 50s (some of which found release on the 1958 LP Hoagy Carmichael's
Havin' A Party on Golden Records), the Stark Reality was called to give the
songs a contemporary work out. "I thought, 'Kids are into this rock stuff. I
can hire the Lawrence Welk Quartet, but I don't think that's what they
want," Hoagy Bix offers about the thought process behind hiring Stark's
group. "I think I have a great marriage of a guy who has a great band, and
some wonderful songs, and an idea to use the songs to educate kids to the
elements of music. It was pretty simple."
Delivering Stark's masterpiece to his father, however, was anything but. On
May 11th, 1970 - nary ten days after recording the Stark Reality's 15
Carmichael covers - Hoagy Bix rushed them off to his father in Palm Springs,
California. "Your music has turned a lot of people on here," he cautiously
wrote. "Have a listen and tell me what you think (Sudhalter 324)."
The elder Carmichael's reaction, tempered by a few scotch and sodas with
Hoagy Bix's brother Randy, is captured in his liner notes on the AJP LP.
"Out rolled some of the damnedest music either of us had ever heard. This is
children's music!?. I say, 'Stark mad,'" Carmichael wrote. "Monty's
voice? somewhere between the filings on the edge of a pie pan, and the
singing of a guru during one of his most exalted moments." In other words,
Carmichael acknowledged a job well done.
"Dad wasn't out there trying to understand what made Jefferson Airplane
work. He tempered (the music) with a lack of cutting edge understanding."
Hoagy Bix clarifies. "But he heard the musicality, he heard the chops. And
he bought into the chops. He liked the way that these kids were playing his
children's songs." He liked the Stark Reality enough to bring the group onto
the Dick Cavett show to perform their seven-inch single "Junkman's Song."
Enough to co-write a composition or two with Stark. Hoagy Bix colors the
cross-generational meeting of the minds: "Monty sorta lays back there and
those wonderful wheels are going like mad. Dad's got a drink in his hand and
Monty's smoking something weird. They were communicating without saying a
lot. And, they'd talk a little, and play a little, and do nothing."
*Note: Hoagy Bix Carmichael is referred to by his first and middle names to
differentiate him from his father, referred to by his surname.
CARL ATKINS
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Carl Atkins found himself in Boston in the late
60s by default. After starting on the clarinet at age 8, moving to the
saxophone at age 10, and completing undergraduate studies in music in the
Midwest, he moved to New York to audition for the role of clarinetist in a
touring opera company. He ended up in Boston in January of 1968, and he
stayed with the company for five months before accepting a job at the New
England Conservatory of Music. He was 24 years old.
"I don't recall how I met Monty, I may have known Phil Morrison first,"
Atkins states. "When Monty first started, he wanted to have a big band."
Atkins was part of the group that recorded Say Brother for WGBH. "Say
Brother was one of those shows that was designed to deal with the issues of
the black community. 'Cause up to that point the black community had been
left out of all the TV stations," Atkins recalls. "GBH was making a big
effort to do something." Atkins felt akin to Stark and when Stark scaled the
band down, Atkins was asked to join on saxophone.
In this early incarnation, the Stark Reality primarily played Stark's
all-inclusive compositions, which ran musical genres back, forth and center.
Atkins couldn't have been happier, "...Rock, country-western, there was a
whole lot of stuff going on in that band. I think we all got off on the
fact that it was such an eclectic thing," he offers. "My thing about music -
then, as it is now - is that I like to play a whole lot of different kinds.
A lot of it was right there."
And Stark's lyrical codings? "You know, a lot of it was Monty's view of the
world. They didn't really tell a story per se, or necessarily need to mean
anything," Atkins states. "When I listen to those songs again, the thing
that still struck me about it was that the words - I won't say they made
sense - but they brought a kind of imagery that represented a happy time for
me. The times I spent with those guys were some of the happiest times,
because they were just good people and we enjoyed playing that music."
Six representations of "that music" were recorded due to the location of the
Stark Reality's weekend rehearsal space - in a recording studio. Ahmad
Jamal, upon hearing the mix downs of their album-demo, was so impressed with
the material that he bank-rolled the recording of their Hoagy Carmichael
covers - recorded after Atkins left the band to lead his own group, the New
Music Ensemble. Atkins, although conceding that "some of it was a bit, uh,
smokey," wisely maintained copies of the group's unissued master reels,
which has lead to the inclusion of "Roller Coaster Ride," "Too Much
Tenderness" and "Sunday's Song" here.
JOHN ABERCROMBIE
Born in Portchester, New York, John Abercrombie was a young guitarist, well
into the rock n' roll of the 50s, before he discovered jazz through a Barney
Kessel record. Thus, in 1962 when he moved to Boston to attend Berklee, he
"was into jazz, but couldn't really play it." Great instructors, practice
and hard work ensured that by the time Abercrombie left Boston, he "was
pretty much playing the best commercial gigs in town." It started with a gig
lead by Prestige-signed organist Johnny "Hammond" Smith. And it continued
on, as he honed his chops with Monty Stark and the Stark Reality. "I
remember receiving a phone call from Monty to do the music for the Say
Brother show which was on GBH," Abercrombie recalls. "The Stark Reality was
actually a quintet - I think I became the fifth member."
As the youngest member of the group, Abercrombie had to put up with some
well-placed ribbing. Especially coming from saxophonist Carl Atkins. "I
remember playing at My Apartment Lounge 'cause I had just got my fuzz tone,"
Abercrombie remembers. "And I plugged it in and I remember Carl looking at
me and saying, 'What are you doing, I'm the sax player here!' Making fun of
me in a nice way, but that's what I wanted to do."
When asked about Stark himself, Abercrombie states, "He was a real bonafide
genius of a jazz musician. I remember being completely mesmerized by the guy
and how deep he was. He was technically well-equipped, but the music wasn't
about that to him. He was going for a sound." A sound that collaborator Phil
Morrison helped bring to the table as well. "Phil would randomly find places
to slip and slide and then come back to playing the rhythm. It created this
effect - you felt that the band was gonna explode," Abercrombie explains.
"It suspended the band, and kinda set us apart from a rock band in that the
rhythm was steady, but what was going on around it was pretty bizarre. I
think Phil was the main culprit in that!"
Now, Abercrombie is regarded as one of the finest jazz guitar players. But
30-something years ago in Boston, he was but a hungry young man, eager to
play with a dynamite group of musicians. "I loved the band. And listening to
that music again brings me back to how brilliant Monty was," Abercrombie
states, echoing the comments of his Stark Reality band mates. "I think of
that again, and again. He had something that was so unique - in the way he
played and put things together, that I think was very profound."
VINNIE JOHNSON
Vinnie Johnson was born in Boston, in 1937. His father, a military man with
a knack for the drums, "was more of a mentor than an instructor," Vinnie
remembers. "One day, out of nature, it just happened," he states, of his
first encounter with the instrument that would come to define his life. "I
just picked up some sticks, and started tapping a little bit." Shortly
thereafter, he would study with famed educator George Lawrence Stone, and
join the drum corps. His time in the corps honed his chops, and defined his
sound. "With the drum corps, it's very disciplined - I didn't mind that,"
Vinnie states. "As time went on, I saw it was a good way to have gone."
Johnson attended the Lieutenant Norman Prince Drum Corps before enrolling at
the Berklee School of Music, previously known as the Schilinger House, in
the late 50s. He studied drums, vibes and "a little bit of writing" with
Alan Dawson. In his off time, he listened to jazz radio stations, marveling
at selections played by DJs like Symphony Sid.
He was drafted into the army in 1961 but luckily he shipped off to Fort
Sill, Oklahoma to play in the 77th army band after basic training. Nine
years in the drum corps ensured that Vinnie was a league ahead of his
military instructors, and he emerged from the army - in Boston again - a
veritable drumming machine.
In Boston and on the road, he played straight ahead jazz with a group lead
by organist Ernie Goldsmith, and for a time, backed singer Tommy Hunt. After
a brief departure for New York City, he returned yet again to Boston and
signed on to back singer Mamie Lee with a pianist named Carl Schroeder and a
bass player named Phil Morrison. "Phil was playing upright; we got along
rhythmically," Vinnie fondly recalls. "Monty and Phil knew each other, so
when Monty started writing stuff, he said to Phil, 'Do you know any
drummers?' Phil is the one who brought me into Stark Reality."
His first recording with the Reality would be the theme to Say Brother, on
which he played thumb piano and tambourine. The record hinted at the
direction that Stark - and frequent collaborator Morrison - were leading the
group. "Some of it was gonna be funk, so I had to get it together," Vinnie
states. "Doing some 'shedding helped me, and going to hear groups." Though
Vinnie was an accomplished jazz drummer, attending concerts by the likes of
Wilson Pickett and James Brown (with the mighty JBs) helped inform Vinnie's
developing funky drumming. By the time the group recorded their six song
album-demo, Vinnie was ready to tie together Stark's outward-leaning
compositions with a heavy backbeat just begging to be hugged by Morrison's
slippery bass lines. "That's the beauty of Stark Reality, we took a lot of
the shit that was around at the time and made it ours," Vinnie argues.
"People like to categorize things. But they couldn't categorize what Stark
Reality was doing. A vibes player, from Oklahoma - with that twang - playing
with some funk oriented shit. It was great!"
*Note: At Vinnie Johnson's request, he is referred to above by his
abbreviated first name.
PHIL MORRISON
Born in Boston in 1934, Phil Morrison "appreciated" music before he decided
to give it a go. He took his sweet time - after 19 years of listening to
bebop records by the likes of Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and Dizzy
Gillespie, Morrison decided to pick up a set of drum sticks while serving in
the armed forces in Japan. But it would be with the upright bass that
Morrison would make his name. Upon retuning to Boston, in the late 50s, he
discovered "there weren't too many bass players around. But there were some
great drummers!" Morrison decided against competition, and began playing
bass in a group with Sam Rivers and a young Tony Williams in 1960.
And although this might come as a surprise to anyone who's heard his amazing
chops, Morrison never learned how to read music. "You get by - and chord
changes I can read," he states. "But you know the main thing was playing,
and being creative. Sam (was) a very free type player, with some serious
background. Fortunately, by osmosis, I learned a lot of it."
After an ill-fated attempt to play free jazz for vacationing mainlanders in
Hawaii, Morrison returned to Boston in the mid 60s and hooked up with Monty
Stark. "He had this gig at a small nightclub, called The Crossroads, near
Berklee. I had heard about him, so I went down and met him and we hit it
off," Morrison remembers. "Someone had told me there was a good vibe player
there and, you know, you're local and you want to see the jazz cats out
there." So did Stark live up to his expectations? "He was just a genius,"
Morrison replies. "I admired his spirit, and definitely his playing. Here's
this Oklahoma country boy, playing these sophisticated vibes! He was very
hip, you know what I mean?"
Stark and Morrison went onto become the nucleus of the Stark Reality.
Morrison's upright skills were featured prominently on the band's first
recording, "Say Brother," and - if Stark's memory is correct - it was his
electric bass solo on the previously unissued "Pretty Music" that convinced
Ahmad Jamal to sign the band to their AJP deal. On the Carmichael covers,
Morrison's uncanny ability to stretch the funkiest notes from his bass guitar
strings shines bright. (He's playing a Morse Code message on "Rocket Ship.")
Speaking of which, how did an out-song like "Rocket Ship" fit into the Music
Shop program? "Well, the meat of the show would be Hoagy singing that song
like it was originally done," Morrison laughs. "You can rest assured that Hoagy
didn't do the "Rocket Ship" the way the Stark Reality did! But there's
probably a segment of our "Rocket Ship" which was a little palatable - maybe
30 seconds - and they'd play that behind credits."
Morrison sums up the zeitgeist of the times in three words: "searching,
experiencing, experimenting." "To this day, I look back with great
fondness," Morrison states of his time spent with Stark and his crew.
"Monty, he was the so called spiritual leader of the group. And with him, it
was like anything goes. There was no such thing as a wrong note. And so that
gave you the freedom." He laughs, then continues, "The more wrong the
better, probably!"
MONTY STARK
"It's always been there, that's the curse," says Monty Stark, in reference
to the passion that's defined his life. "I have to keep making new music,
and understanding music more. This has happened as long as I can remember."
This would explain why, as an Oklahoma-reared youngster, Stark would find
himself a child-phenom of a square dance caller, a guitarist and a
songwriter before settling into the vibraphone - at the ripe ol' age of 14.
"It was just a logical instrument for me to play," Stark remarks. "I was
primarily a writer, arranger and orchestrator. And vibes stayed in tune."
Stark left the Midwest to attend the Berklee School of Music in 1958. But he
discovered that there was little left for him to learn with his instrument
of choice. "I went to see Alan Dawson, he was to be my vibes instructor,"
Stark recalls. "He flat out told me, 'I can't teach you anything.'" Stark
laughs, then continues, "I hate to admit it, but I was almost as good then
as I am now! I've been working at it ever since."
After paying dues touring the chittlin' circuit with Red Prysock and
healming jazz gigs with the Monty Stark Trio on the eastern seaboard, Stark
returned to Boston in the mid 60s where he promptly found work at WGBH. "I
was the guy that everybody called to do the gigs," Stark says
matter-of-factly. "The on-staff music man." When WGBH asked Stark to record
a big-band tinged theme for the Say Brother program, Stark formed a group
and dubbed the ensemble the Stark Reality.
As 1968 turned into 1969, Stark slimmed down the band to a core - largely
assembled with the help of Phil Morrison. "He knew everybody, and at that
point Phil and I knew each other," Stark reflects. "I just asked Phil to get
me what I needed. He knew the sound I was looking for."
That sound delved deep into the wide range of black, American music. "There
were two separate cultures in this country at the time. 'Negro,' as it was
called, and white," Stark states. "The one that was beautiful and loving and
everything else I wanted to be a part of was black. So, of course that was
the music I loved." And Stark put his own quirky touch to the music. For
one, he sang lead vocals in a colorful, distinctly Midwestern patois. "I'm a
white kid from Oklahoma, I have a country voice," Stark laughs. "I don't
even know why I sang, but there were some things I wanted to say with words
because it could be done." And he played his individually-miced vibes
through a psychedelic series of fuzz tones and pedals that allowed him to
play conventionally or in a jarring, heavily distorted manner.
It's fortunate that Hoagy Bix Carmichael foresaw the possibility of the
Stark Reality reinterpreting his father's children's songs, and that Stark
jumped at the opportunity - though he'd never heard the songs before. "He
gave me the book and I reharmonized the living daylights out of them," Stark
states. His reworkings gave the songs swinging jazz rhythms or deep funk
grooves, often touched by bop sensibility and free jazz's musical coloring.
But this isn't to say that the band noodled without direction. "I wrote out
the music. I arranged the music," Stark says. "Like on something as spacey
as "Rocket Ship," I might write: 'Takes off, I'm going to be playing
something that sounds tonal, but you establish your own tonality and stay
there. Ignore me.'" His reworkings, well, worked. Both Carmichael's were
impressed (the elder Carmichael "loved the harmonies and rhythms I gave his
melodies," Stark remembers), TV Guide raved, and the band - with assistance
from Ahmad Jamal and Hoagy Bix - journeyed west for gigs in San Francisco
and Los Angeles.
Who would have thought? Certainly not Stark. "Everything has a beginning and
end. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow," Stark opines. "Then
either. The Stark Reality's music is an artifact from the past which is
able to express something today. It's gratifying."
Here's to another beginning.
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