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You Can't Buy Swing

Eli Yamin

Label: Yamin Music LLC
Released: 2008
Duration: 00:57:12
Views: 1,534

Tracks

I Want To Be A Teacher You Can’t Buy Swing Getting Somewhere Well, You Better Not Bop to Normal Rwandan Child Just One Katiana’s New Start Jacquet’s Meditation Waltz On the Hudson In Walked Barry

Personnel

Additional Personnel / Information

Lakecia Benjamin: alto saxophone on tracks 2, 6, & 8 Chris Byars: soprano saxophone on track 1: alto sax on tracks 4, 7, & 11: tenor sax on tracks 3, 5, 6 & 9: flute on track 10: conga on track 2

Album Description

Eli Yamin stepped into the jazz world at the first Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition. It was 1987, and he was “pushin 20,” a decade before his CD Pushin 30.

In keeping with his personal style at the time, Eli liked to sit low at the keyboard. So at the semifinals, when the bench was too high, he turned over a metal wastebasket and sat on that. Improvising his furniture and his music, Eli played Monk compositions for an impressive panel – Sir Roland Hanna, Barry Harris, Hank Jones, Roger Kellaway and Dado Maroni.

The judges encouraged him but pointed out a weakness. “Are you a saxophonist?” asked Judge Harris, one of the greatest living pianists in the bebop tradition. Thinking back, Eli explains that most of his action was in his right hand; he had “nothing going on in my left hand.” Yet it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, still going strong on track ten of You Can’t Buy Swing – “In Walked Barry.”

I was in the audience that day -- we were coworkers at WBGO Jazz 88.3 in Newark, New Jersey -- and I was certain that Eli had made it to the finals. On "You Can’t Buy Swing," he enters with a Monk-like, whole-tone cascade – two-handed, I’m sure. “I Want To Be a Teacher” is his rewrite of Thelonious’s “Let’s Cool One.” Despite the continuity though, a lot has happened in two decades.

After graduating from Rutgers University, working in jazz radio, and reaching the semifinals, Eli musically directed the 29-city, tenth anniversary tour of Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies, staged by Mercedes Ellington. Then Eli tried out for the Illinois Jacquet Big Band. And “even though I wasn’t ready,” he says, Illinois hired him and took the band to Europe. Jacquet himself was old school, from an early generation of orchestra leaders, but in an odd coincidence, it turned out that he and his enthusiastic new pianist followed the same yoga guru, inspiring Eli to write “Jacquet’s Meditation” – track nine.

Yamin’s next job was Artist-in-Residence at Louis Armstrong Middle School in Queens. There, in a burst of creativity, he and teacher Clifford Carlson wrote and produced a student play entitled When Malindy Swings. Part Little Red Riding Hood, part self-help musical, it was a challenging showcase for young talent. Malindy – a sub-teen heroine – lives near a deep, dark forest that she must traverse to procure milk for her family. Finger-snappin bebop cows give her confidence to enter the woods, with a song. Scary trees undulate to the free improvisation of a seventh-grade clarinetist. Throughout the journey, Eli’s score for a little jazz band demonstrated styles from New Orleans to the avant-garde. This time, Eli played standing up, and conducted with hollers, stomps, arm waves, head tosses, whatever it took.

In future productions, he hired his friend, the Queens drummer Walter Perkins – heard on the LP Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (1963) and with vocalist Carmen McRae – to notch up the energy. Walter’s favorite expression was “You can’t buy swing, baby sweets!” The students adored him. All told, Eli and Clifford produced five original Jazz Dramas in nine years at LAMS. More than a thousand young people and parents came to see each one. Eventually, the creative team established The Jazz Drama Program, a nonprofit corporation, to support the work. “It’s a miracle we were able to do that. It was our Cotton Club,” says Eli, referring to Duke Ellington’s first stage, “our place to discover, to invent and to serve a community with jazz, theatre and dance.” Two Can’t Buy Swing compositions – “I Want to Be a Teacher” and “Well You Better Not” – come from those amazing plays.

In 2005, based on his success with Jazz Drama, Eli was hired by Jazz at Lincoln Center to help design and direct its first hands-on instrumental program, the Middle School Jazz Academy. Fifteen competitively selected sixth through eighth grade musicians receive group and individual attention, to connect their own creativity with the ingredients of jazz – blues, swing, improvisation and communication. Guest artists visit and share their stories and knowledge. And yes, over the school year, the Academy teachers transform the student body into one impressive ensemble. If you close your eyes and listen, you will think they are older than they are; but keep your eyes open because – from the shy players to the extroverts – they are a joy to watch. And they are engaged in the music. As participant Yasiel Sanchez says, “Jazz is a new step on the staircase, a new number in the phone book, a new room in a house, a newborn baby brother, a new life. Jazz is everything to me and anything. It is the music of my soul.”

Last summer, Yamin and two bandmates on this CD – MSJA faculty drummer Alvin Atkinson and bassist Ari Roland – made a State Department-sponsored “Rhythm Road” tour, hitting eight cities around the world in four weeks. (Ari reads about international diplomacy for pleasure.) In the capital of Mali, they exchanged ideas and jammed with the Bamako Orchestra. The hosts in India – in Kolkata and Chennai – invited the US group back. The last stops were Guangzhou, China, and the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Chengdu, now familiar in the West because the city was struck by the huge earthquake in May, 2008.

Once home, Eli decided to take the “Rhythm Road” rhythm section and two favorite saxophonists into a New York recording studio. Alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin, whom Eli taught at LaGuardia High School, found time among her gigs with drummer Rashied Ali, trumpeter Clark Terry, and yes, Prince. Chris Byars -- who plays soprano, alto, tenor, flute and congas on You Can’t Buy Swing – sang from age 6 to 14 with the Metropolitan Opera. Then he shifted his full attention to jazz. Byars has rediscovered and breathed new life into the music of a number of instrumentalists (currently vibraphonist Teddy Charles), performing alongside these players when possible. Chris moves among projects the way he switches instruments, and says he didn’t choose which saxophone to play on which song until the recording session -- just one day in the studio, with no redo’s or overdubs.

He plays soprano on “I Want to Be a Teacher.” The title refutes the old saying “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” (Alvin prefers to say “When you teach, you learn twice.”). Ari takes his first bowed bass solo – swinging and cool. Lakecia steps in for the title track. “Getting Somewhere” is a new slant on “Out of Nowhere.” Eli wrote it during cancer treatments (successful). Lakecia plays the lead on the bluesy “Katiana’s New Start,” in which Eli shows more of his left hand, and bassist Ari goes back to his bow (a/k/a arco playing). If you’ve been listening to jazz for a while, you’ll think of an earlier player – Major Holley – who bowed his solos and sang along. Alvin’s drum solo is melodic. In a radio show, a chorus from Alvin could stand alone as a “button.” “Rwandan Child” is the heart of the sequence.

I asked Eli how – when in the studio – he holds onto his concentration through complete takes. Wouldn’t it be easy to get ahead of yourself, to stumble? His answer is that the group dynamics carry this band, and the next tunes showcase the interaction. On the slower “Jacquet’s Meditation,” Byars delivers a prayer of a tenor solo. Eli plays the foil as Ari has a dialogue between his arco and pizzicato (bowed and plucked) selves.

If You Can’t Buy Swing sounds like the work of a gifted organizer, it is. In fact, Eli reminds me of another instrumentalist with high ideals – Pete Seeger. They both see a better world on the horizon, and music as a path to get there. As talent scout, opportunity-finder, generation-binder, justice-seeker and audience-builder, Eli Yamin doesn’t want to just play for you. He wants the essence of his jazz to infiltrate your community. He feels that society has undervalued several generations of jazz musicians who have so much to offer. Why, just last week he was teaching non-musicians on the staff at Jazz at Lincoln Center how to play Latin rhythms – the clave, cascara and tumbao – and then fit the parts together as a model for teamwork.

So when he says You Can’t Buy Swing, he means it. Yes, you study – if you’re lucky, with a teacher like Eli. You practice and seek the wisdom of the elders, but at some point, you’re on the bandstand, lifted by the moment, and you realize that your music is doing the talking. Your band is swinging! It’s not material, you can’t put a price on it, and it’s everything you believe in. Thank you, Eli and everyone, for sharing that music with us.

Becca Pulliam
June, 2008

THIS ALBUM IS DEDICATED TO WALTER PERKINS (1932-2004)
who used to say, “You can’t buy swing, baby sweets. You can take the biggest name musicians and pay ‘em a whole bunch of money and it’s not NECESSARILY going to swing.”

To me, this means, swing is about believing in one another, trust and commitment. We hope these essential qualities come through and touch you with the good feeling we have making the music.
Eli Yamin

released October 30, 2008

This CD is dedicated in loving memory to Walter Perkins (1932-2004), mentor, friend, jazz saint.

Rwandan Child is dedicated to the wisdom of children all over the world.
Katiana’s New Start is for our niece Danielle
Waltz On The Hudson is for Lorraine
In Walked Barry is for Barry Harris

Special thanks to Ari Roland and my family: Mom, Dad, Ariana, Lorraine and Manika! Many thanks to Alvin Atkinson, Chris Byars, Lakecia Benjamin, Dave Gibson, Kate McGarry, Claire Daly, Judith Greentree, all my friends at The Jazz Drama Program, WBGO and Jazz at Lincoln Center. May our efforts on behalf of the jazz message resonate throughout the globe and bring expanded opportunities, deeper creativity, great joy and mutual understanding to people of
all ages and backgrounds.

Recorded February 10, 2008 at Avatar, NYC
Engineer and live mix, Jim Anderson
Assistant Engineer, Justin Gerrish
Mastering, Alan Silverman, Arf! Mastering
Session Photographer, Enid Farber
Additional Photos, Nick
Art Director, Daryl Long
Graphic Design, Charles Watlington

All compositions and arrangements © 2008 by Eli Yamin and published by Yamin Music (BMI)

(p) © 2008 by Yamin Music LLC

Made in U.S.A. All Rights Reserved.