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Robert Dietsche died last year at age 85. Family and friends held a memorial for him last weekend. Dietsche was among the preeminent chroniclers of Portland’s jazz scene, documenting the lost nightclubs of North Williams Avenue in his 2005 book, Jumptown: The Golden Years of Portland Jazz. Those with long memories may recall that before Dietsche wrote books and hosted radio shows on KBOO and OPB, he was the jazz critic for WW. What follows is one of his columns that appeared the earliest iteration of WW’s arts pages, called Fresh Weekly.
This story first ran in the Sept. 12, 1978, edition of WW.
Do you have a friend who dislikes jazz? I’m not talking about the type who reaches for a revolver every time you mention the word, but the more usual sort who, after hearing an immortal passage by Charlie Parker, looks at you with a glassy-eyed stare, yawns and says, “Well, it’s different.” Oh, the crush of faint praise!
Instead of lecturing your insensitive companion on the virtues of our national music, try the following:
Rush down to your nearest outlet and buy two tickets to the Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan concert this Friday, Sept 15, at the Civic Auditorium.
Don’t mention a word of this to your unsuspecting friend. Simply say that, out of regard for your relationship, you are going to blow him or her to a big surprise on the town. Suggest you both dress up and be ready to go at 6 pm (performances are at 7 pm and 10 pm).
Arrive early enough for a romantic stopover at the Forecourt Fountain and a glass of wine in the auditorium lobby. This should loosen any resistance once your ploy has been discovered.
If possible, sit close to the main stage so that your culturally deprived companion can enjoy the visual antics of the Basie Band, an important extra for the uninitiated spectator.
Don’t narrate during the concert and above all don’t proselytize. Nothing is more aggravating to the neophyte than to be told how great the artists are. There will be an almost irresistible temptation to dissertate on the laurels of Basie and Vaughan: how many jazz polls they have won; the great soloists who have passed through the Basic Band. Sit back, relax and let the Count work his magical charms.
With the addition of “The Divine One,” Sarah Vaughan, your unwitting friend will witness one of the most exciting jazz packages ever to come to Portland. Since her debut with the Earl Hines Band back in 1943, she has been the toast of jazz musicians everywhere, mostly because of her ability to sing like an instrument. Leaping difficult intervals with a single bound, Vaughan invariably lands unscathed (sometimes octaves away from her departure). This virtuosity, combined with an unusual vibrato and a keen sense of dynamics, has made her one of the greatest jazz singers of all time.
Yet with all her class, she hasn’t the persuasive power of William “Count” Basie But then who does? Performing in every possible setting from Buckingham Palace to the Division Street Corral, the 74-year-old band leader has spread the gospel of jazz all over the world. Brubeck, Shearing, and George Benson are popular, but no one has the pedestrian appeal of the “little old groove-maker” from Red Band, N.J. He cuts across individual tastes like a baby’s smile, subduing Juilliard graduates and musical illiterates alike. It’s been said, and I believe it, that if you don’t like Basie, you probably don’t like music.
What’s the secret to his success? Simplicity, in part. Most of his popular arrangements, like “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” and “One o’Clock Jump, " are no more than “heads”—arrangements made up on the spot. Basie must have a couple of hundred of these in his book, all with approximately the same structure: repeated musical phrases, called “riffs,” played over a 12-bar blues pattern. Add a pace-setting boogie-woogie-like introduction, some well-placed plinks of Basie’s piano, and a couple of good soloists. Mix the ingredients well, letting them simmer for a few choruses. Result: standing ovations and rave notices.
So seemingly elementary is Basie’s style that many bands over the years have tried to copy him in an attempt to ingratiate themselves to the general public. They follow his time-tested formulas carefully, recreating every nuance. Yet it’s never quite the same, and therein lies the real truth behind the Basie mystique.
In the first place, no one has ever been able to duplicate the Basie piano—a sort of Chico Marx-like style, complete with pistol-finger doodlings. succinct single-line exclamations, glissando runs, and a sense of time that defies imitation.
When these are integrated with rhythm guitar, bass and drums, they make a combustible unit capable of swinging a leviathan.
The key word here is “swinging,” an epithet that has become synonymous with the Count Basie Band since it began 42 years ago. Critics have tried to explain what “swing” means, sometimes spending two or three pages reducing the elusive rascal to the scrutiny of fine print. But to no avail. What remains is just a lot of fancy rhetoric that makes little sense to the reader and even less to Basie. It’s so simple to him. Swing is “whatever makes people pat their feet.”
You’ve got to love a guy like that.