Post by the Scribe on Oct 26, 2023 1:17:26 GMT
CARLA BLEY
Carla Bley (born Lovella May Borg; May 11, 1936 – October 17, 2023) was an American jazz composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader.[2] An important figure in the free jazz movement of the 1960s, she was perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator over the Hill (released as a triple LP set), as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other artists, including Gary Burton, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Art Farmer, Robert Wyatt, John Scofield, and her ex-husband Paul Bley. She was a pioneer in the development of independent artist-owned record labels, and recorded over two dozen albums between 1966 and 2019.[3]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Bley
WHY
musicaficionado.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Why.mp3
(youtube blocked this song from the USA)
Linda Ronstadt
38:45 Why
44:54 Doctor Why
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalator_over_the_Hill
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4587FC0B422E40F5
The Music Aficionado
QUALITY ARTICLES ABOUT THE GOLDEN AGE OF MUSIC
musicaficionado.blog/2021/03/01/escalator-over-the-hill-by-carla-bley/
MARCH 1, 2021 • 4
Escalator Over the Hill, by Carla Bley
At the tender age of nine Carla Bley started writing her first opera. Growing up in a musical house she remembers: “I began learning music before I was able to walk, and I was surrounded by music at home from as early as I can remember. As a very young child I assumed everyone was a musician.” She only had a couple of songs but she already knew how to call the opera – Over The Hill. The aspiring girl did not know it at the time, but 25 years later she would be working on an opera of a slightly bigger scope. Her collaborator was poet Paul Haines, who provided the libretto. The musical endeavors of his musical partner as a child unbeknownst to him, he named the opera Escalator Over The Hill. A serendipitous coincidence that ignited the creation of perhaps the most ambitious recorded experimental music project in history, the mammoth triple album Escalator Over The Hill. This is the story of that album, with a few short audio samples to give you a taste.
Escalator Over The Hill features 20 vocalists and over 50 musicians. The writing of the lyrics and music took three years and the recording sessions yielded 100 hours of material. As we said, ambitious. The album is unclassifiable, simply because nothing else sounds like it. If I had to describe it, it is modern jazz and avant-garde meet wild psychedelic rock, free-form electronic freakouts and beautiful melodic ballads, all topped with bizarre stream-of-consciousness poetry. What’s not to like?
Reading through the credits list for the album, you start to appreciate the magnitude and scope of the work Carla Bley put into this project. There are numerous participants, mostly from the jazz and experimental music scene of the time, plus many more that just happened to be available at the right time and place. As Carla Bley mentioned, “I said yes to everyone even if they couldn’t play or they couldn’t sing. If anyone wanted to be on the album, they could be on it. Everybody, anyone who walked in off the street. ‘Sure, you can be on ‘Escalator Over the Hill.’”
Even kids and baby sitters found themselves playing on the album. Carla Bley talked about Peggy Imig, a friend of hers who baby sat Karen, Bley’s four-year old daughter: “Peggy suggested that I consider using people I didn’t have to pay in the opera, like family and friends. ‘What do you play?’ I asked her. ‘Tenor saxophone,’ she said, ‘but it’s in Oregon. I haven’t touched it in nine years, and besides, I have a tin ear.’ ‘Send for it,’ I told her, and the original Amateur Hotel Lobby Band was born.” Some of the musicians in that amateur band were not amateurs at all, but were asked to play like amateurs to sound authentic. The more you listen to this album, the more layers you find. Oh, and the daughter is Karen Mantler, an excellent musician in her own right. At the tender age of four she got to utter the words “Riding uneasily” In the role of Ancient Roomer on the title track.
Bley acted not only as the artistic director, but due to scarce financial resources also the administrator who calls, schedules and books the recording times. This must have taken quite a large effort with this cast of thousand musicians. No wonder that the recording sessions for this album spanned several years.
Carla Bley, EOTH back cover
The odd one out in the impressive list of credits is Linda Ronstadt, not a name you would associate with this type of music. She portrays Ginger, of which Bley said: “The role of Ginger was most important. Ginger’s voice and appearance (an eventual film production was always on my mind) had to match Jack’s (portrayed by Jack Bruce).” It was drummer Paul Motian who suggested reaching out to the singer and “Luckily her manager at the time, John Boylan, knew about JCOA (Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Association) and thought it would be a good thing for her to do.”
Ronstadt‘s sweet voice, known to millions of fans now throughout her rich career, works like a charm in the more conventional pieces on the album. Here is “Why”, also giving us a rare opportunity to hear Charlie Haden sings as ‘His Friends’:
Why
After the recording of the album, Linda Ronstadt said she had never been confronted with music so difficult. Although she got the ‘easy’ pieces, they are still worlds apart from ‘Different Drum’, ‘Blue Bayou’ and ‘You’re No Good’. Nothing wrong with them, all great popular songs.
Somehow Ronstadt’s name is linked to another musician from the less-commercial spectrum of music. Frank Zappa, whose music was rightfully compared to some of the tracks on EOTH, recalls an episode: “In 1967 we were living in New York and I got a request from an advertising agency…So, Linda Ronstadt happened to be managed by Herb Cohen, who was our manager at the time. Ian Underwood and I put together this track, and Linda did the vocal on top of it, and we made a demo. They paid a thousand dollars for the demo, and that was the last I ever heard from ’em. They didn’t like what I did.” Oh well.
And one last note about Linda Ronstadt. The only other recording I know of hers that crosses beyond her comfort zone of rock, pop, country, folk and jazz standards, is her participation in Philip Glass’ album Songs From Liquid Days in 1986. Highly recommended.
Linda Ronstadt, 1971
We mentioned Frank Zappa in passing but there is a tighter link to Zappa on this album. Don Preston, at the time with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, has singing parts in the roles of Doctor and Lion. Preston remembers: “I met Carla Bley in L.A. when she was married to Paul Bley, and the three of us used to jam together. I also played bass with Carla and Paul for a year or so. In the late sixties Carla married Michael Mantler. They asked me if I would perform on her first album, ‘Escalator Over The Hill’. They asked if I would be on it – just singing – which I found very strange. I said, ‘sure, I’ll do it, why not?’”
FULL ARTICLE: musicaficionado.blog/2021/03/01/escalator-over-the-hill-by-carla-bley/
Carla Bley (born Lovella May Borg; May 11, 1936 – October 17, 2023) was an American jazz composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader.[2] An important figure in the free jazz movement of the 1960s, she was perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator over the Hill (released as a triple LP set), as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other artists, including Gary Burton, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Art Farmer, Robert Wyatt, John Scofield, and her ex-husband Paul Bley. She was a pioneer in the development of independent artist-owned record labels, and recorded over two dozen albums between 1966 and 2019.[3]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Bley
WHY
musicaficionado.blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Why.mp3
(youtube blocked this song from the USA)
Linda Ronstadt
38:45 Why
44:54 Doctor Why
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalator_over_the_Hill
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4587FC0B422E40F5
The Music Aficionado
QUALITY ARTICLES ABOUT THE GOLDEN AGE OF MUSIC
musicaficionado.blog/2021/03/01/escalator-over-the-hill-by-carla-bley/
MARCH 1, 2021 • 4
Escalator Over the Hill, by Carla Bley
At the tender age of nine Carla Bley started writing her first opera. Growing up in a musical house she remembers: “I began learning music before I was able to walk, and I was surrounded by music at home from as early as I can remember. As a very young child I assumed everyone was a musician.” She only had a couple of songs but she already knew how to call the opera – Over The Hill. The aspiring girl did not know it at the time, but 25 years later she would be working on an opera of a slightly bigger scope. Her collaborator was poet Paul Haines, who provided the libretto. The musical endeavors of his musical partner as a child unbeknownst to him, he named the opera Escalator Over The Hill. A serendipitous coincidence that ignited the creation of perhaps the most ambitious recorded experimental music project in history, the mammoth triple album Escalator Over The Hill. This is the story of that album, with a few short audio samples to give you a taste.
Escalator Over The Hill features 20 vocalists and over 50 musicians. The writing of the lyrics and music took three years and the recording sessions yielded 100 hours of material. As we said, ambitious. The album is unclassifiable, simply because nothing else sounds like it. If I had to describe it, it is modern jazz and avant-garde meet wild psychedelic rock, free-form electronic freakouts and beautiful melodic ballads, all topped with bizarre stream-of-consciousness poetry. What’s not to like?
Reading through the credits list for the album, you start to appreciate the magnitude and scope of the work Carla Bley put into this project. There are numerous participants, mostly from the jazz and experimental music scene of the time, plus many more that just happened to be available at the right time and place. As Carla Bley mentioned, “I said yes to everyone even if they couldn’t play or they couldn’t sing. If anyone wanted to be on the album, they could be on it. Everybody, anyone who walked in off the street. ‘Sure, you can be on ‘Escalator Over the Hill.’”
Even kids and baby sitters found themselves playing on the album. Carla Bley talked about Peggy Imig, a friend of hers who baby sat Karen, Bley’s four-year old daughter: “Peggy suggested that I consider using people I didn’t have to pay in the opera, like family and friends. ‘What do you play?’ I asked her. ‘Tenor saxophone,’ she said, ‘but it’s in Oregon. I haven’t touched it in nine years, and besides, I have a tin ear.’ ‘Send for it,’ I told her, and the original Amateur Hotel Lobby Band was born.” Some of the musicians in that amateur band were not amateurs at all, but were asked to play like amateurs to sound authentic. The more you listen to this album, the more layers you find. Oh, and the daughter is Karen Mantler, an excellent musician in her own right. At the tender age of four she got to utter the words “Riding uneasily” In the role of Ancient Roomer on the title track.
Bley acted not only as the artistic director, but due to scarce financial resources also the administrator who calls, schedules and books the recording times. This must have taken quite a large effort with this cast of thousand musicians. No wonder that the recording sessions for this album spanned several years.
Carla Bley, EOTH back cover
The odd one out in the impressive list of credits is Linda Ronstadt, not a name you would associate with this type of music. She portrays Ginger, of which Bley said: “The role of Ginger was most important. Ginger’s voice and appearance (an eventual film production was always on my mind) had to match Jack’s (portrayed by Jack Bruce).” It was drummer Paul Motian who suggested reaching out to the singer and “Luckily her manager at the time, John Boylan, knew about JCOA (Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Association) and thought it would be a good thing for her to do.”
Ronstadt‘s sweet voice, known to millions of fans now throughout her rich career, works like a charm in the more conventional pieces on the album. Here is “Why”, also giving us a rare opportunity to hear Charlie Haden sings as ‘His Friends’:
Why
After the recording of the album, Linda Ronstadt said she had never been confronted with music so difficult. Although she got the ‘easy’ pieces, they are still worlds apart from ‘Different Drum’, ‘Blue Bayou’ and ‘You’re No Good’. Nothing wrong with them, all great popular songs.
Somehow Ronstadt’s name is linked to another musician from the less-commercial spectrum of music. Frank Zappa, whose music was rightfully compared to some of the tracks on EOTH, recalls an episode: “In 1967 we were living in New York and I got a request from an advertising agency…So, Linda Ronstadt happened to be managed by Herb Cohen, who was our manager at the time. Ian Underwood and I put together this track, and Linda did the vocal on top of it, and we made a demo. They paid a thousand dollars for the demo, and that was the last I ever heard from ’em. They didn’t like what I did.” Oh well.
And one last note about Linda Ronstadt. The only other recording I know of hers that crosses beyond her comfort zone of rock, pop, country, folk and jazz standards, is her participation in Philip Glass’ album Songs From Liquid Days in 1986. Highly recommended.
Linda Ronstadt, 1971
We mentioned Frank Zappa in passing but there is a tighter link to Zappa on this album. Don Preston, at the time with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, has singing parts in the roles of Doctor and Lion. Preston remembers: “I met Carla Bley in L.A. when she was married to Paul Bley, and the three of us used to jam together. I also played bass with Carla and Paul for a year or so. In the late sixties Carla married Michael Mantler. They asked me if I would perform on her first album, ‘Escalator Over The Hill’. They asked if I would be on it – just singing – which I found very strange. I said, ‘sure, I’ll do it, why not?’”
FULL ARTICLE: musicaficionado.blog/2021/03/01/escalator-over-the-hill-by-carla-bley/
http://instagram.com/p/Cg9gLelOdeZ
companion thread
conservatism.freeforums.net/thread/10461/music-illumanati-interview-linda-ronstadt
excerpt:
JM: How did you get involved with that, and what was that experience like?
LR: You know, all I remember about Carla Bley is that she smoked a corn cob pipe. She was very eccentric and extremely talented, and I didn’t know what her songs were about. I didn’t have a clue. I was trying to fit them into something of my own. I remember “Escalator over the Hill”, that line. I thought that was kind of a neat line. But I was singing to her direction, the best I could. I wasn’t using my own instincts quite so much. Sort of same way as it was working with Philip Glass years later.
JM: Yeah, that was another thing I wanted to ask you about. How did you get involved with that?
liquid
LR: Again, I can’t remember how I met Philip Glass [laughs]. He asked for me. I thought there were some really nice things on Songs from Liquid Days. The Roche sisters, what they sang really worked, I thought. Paul [Simon] wrote an interesting piece about the hum in a room that was pretty subtle – too subtle for the room. But Glass’ stuff was really hard to sing. He didn’t write singer-ly stuff, he wrote eccentric stuff that would make odd jumps in a human voice.
The opposite of him would be Brian Wilson, who writes stuff that just so beautifully fluid for the human voice. He really knows how to write for singers. I love him the best. He’s one of favorite composers. Maybe not more than Paul Simon, but he’s right up there. I love his work. Musically, he’s unbeatable.
conservatism.freeforums.net/thread/10461/music-illumanati-interview-linda-ronstadt
excerpt:
JM: How did you get involved with that, and what was that experience like?
LR: You know, all I remember about Carla Bley is that she smoked a corn cob pipe. She was very eccentric and extremely talented, and I didn’t know what her songs were about. I didn’t have a clue. I was trying to fit them into something of my own. I remember “Escalator over the Hill”, that line. I thought that was kind of a neat line. But I was singing to her direction, the best I could. I wasn’t using my own instincts quite so much. Sort of same way as it was working with Philip Glass years later.
JM: Yeah, that was another thing I wanted to ask you about. How did you get involved with that?
liquid
LR: Again, I can’t remember how I met Philip Glass [laughs]. He asked for me. I thought there were some really nice things on Songs from Liquid Days. The Roche sisters, what they sang really worked, I thought. Paul [Simon] wrote an interesting piece about the hum in a room that was pretty subtle – too subtle for the room. But Glass’ stuff was really hard to sing. He didn’t write singer-ly stuff, he wrote eccentric stuff that would make odd jumps in a human voice.
The opposite of him would be Brian Wilson, who writes stuff that just so beautifully fluid for the human voice. He really knows how to write for singers. I love him the best. He’s one of favorite composers. Maybe not more than Paul Simon, but he’s right up there. I love his work. Musically, he’s unbeatable.
