RUTHFULLY YOURS

FOR LOVERS OF JAZZ; MARIAN McPARTLAND R.I.P.- TERRY TEACHOUT

Posted By Ruth King on August 30th, 2013

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324591204579037091425839068.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopBucket

When Marian McPartland died last week at the age of 95, the obituaries devoted roughly equal time to her career as a jazz pianist, her second career as the founder and longtime host of NPR’s “Piano Jazz,” and the fact that she was a woman. That’s fair enough: “Piano Jazz” was the most influential jazz program in the history of U.S. network radio, and Ms. McPartland came to fame at a time when you could still count the number of successful women jazz instrumentalists on the fingers of one hand. But the flood of tributes failed to make clear what her admirers had always known: that she was a performer first and foremost, a soloist of strong personality and real quality whose shimmering, iridescent harmonies were instantly distinctive. “Piano Jazz” may have made Ms. McPartland famous, but it was her playing that made her important.

illustration by Paul Rogers

Ms. McPartland always made a point of playing duets with her guests on “Piano Jazz” (on which she interviewed everyone from Dave Brubeck to Steely Dan). The chameleonlike ease with which she accommodated their varied styles could suggest to casual listeners that she had no style of her own. Nothing could have been further from the truth: Never for a moment did she submerge her own quiet yet unmistakable individuality. Nor should she have done so, for she worked unremittingly hard to develop it, much harder than most of her fans realized.

Born in England in 1918, Ms. McPartland was a classically trained prodigy who became interested in jazz as a teenager. Not until 1944, though, did she work for the first time with an American jazzman, the cornetist Jimmy McPartland, a Bix Beiderbecke protégé whom she married and with whom she moved to the U.S. after World War II. There she heard bebop and turned herself into a thoroughly modern jazz soloist. In 1952 Ms. McPartland and her trio began an eight-year residency at the Hickory House, a popular New York restaurant that was one of Duke Ellington’s favorite hangouts. At length she got up the nerve to ask Ellington what he thought of her playing. His reply was elegantly and characteristically enigmatic: “You play so many notes.” Eventually it hit Ms. McPartland that he wasn’t paying her a compliment: “After a while I thought, ‘He probably is telling me I’m playing too many.’ It was one of the best criticisms I ever had.”

Over time Ms. McPartland pruned her style, enriching it with subtle chromatic gestures that owed as much to Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel as to Ellington and the boppers. She was no less fascinated later on by the delicately lyrical playing of Bill Evans, which inspired her to move away from the hard-swinging “straight-ahead” playing (as jazz musicians call it) that never came naturally to her. Instead she began composing pastel-shaded original pieces with titles like “Afterglow,” “Ambiance” and “Twilight World” that showed off her newly personal approach to arresting effect.

In 1978 Ms. McPartland launched “Piano Jazz” and cut an impressive trio album for Concord Jazz called “From This Moment On.” For the rest of her life she recorded regularly for Concord, and it was those albums that finally established her as a soloist of consequence. Among them is “Silent Pool,” a 1997 recording on which she plays 12 of her own compositions, accompanied by a 20-piece string section led and arranged by Alan Broadbent. It’s an exquisite collection containing some of Ms. McPartland’s finest playing, and it scarcely seems possible that she recorded it at 78, an age when even the best jazz musicians are usually more than content to settle for repeating themselves.

Last year Paul de Barros published an unusually candid biography of Ms. McPartland called “Shall We Play That One Together?” (the genial phrase that she liked to use to introduce duet performances on “Piano Jazz”). Written with her cooperation and approval, it revealed Ms. McPartland to be, as Mr. de Barros observed last week in the Seattle Times, “imperious, demanding, highly critical—sometimes even derisive and mean.” In a word, she was tough, and for all the seeming gentility of her well-bred manner, she never let anyone push her around. Those who knew her more than casually knew not to be surprised on the frequent occasions when she made crisp, pointed use of the 12-letter obscenity starting with “m” that was beloved of such fellow jazzmen as Louis Armstrong and Lester Young. She knew one when she saw one.

Did she rank among the all-time greats? Perhaps not quite, and she certainly would never have claimed such a thing for herself. But Ms. McPartland was without question one of the finest jazz pianists of her generation, and years from now her records will be making that fact perfectly clear to youngsters who’ve never heard of “Piano Jazz,” or radio.

A version of this article appeared August 30, 2013, on page D8 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Marian McPartland: A Jazz Soloist Above All.

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