A JOURNEY THROUGH THE PAST WITH A FORT WORTH JAZZ INSITUTION
By Ken Shimamoto
Approaching the 25th anniversary of his long-running gig at Sardines Ristorante Italiano, where he’s performed six nights a week since 1983, the prolific jazz pianist Jhon Kahsen, AKA Johnny Case -- who’s been recording and releasing his own music since 1969 -- has good reason to be contemplating the past.
My mother says that she’s never alone because all the people that made her who she is are with her all the time. Case/Kahsen seems to view his own musical history in the same light. As he writes in the liner notes to one of a trio of new discs -- one of which is available now and the other two of which are due for release in September to coincide with his Sardines anniversary – Johnny’s recording efforts were originally intended to document the work of collaborators whose work would otherwise have gone unrecorded. He embraces and celebrates his own origins in western swing and country music as much as he does his avant-garde and modern classical influences.
Letting first things be first, Four Roses Suite: A Blend is Johnny’s “remix album,” if you like, a sampling from over 20 releases which he edited into a single 45-minute track. Over its course, you’ll hear straight ahead trio blowing; steel guitar jazz and western swing featuring steelmeisters Tom Morrell, Maurice Anderson, and Chuck Caldwell; hot jazz violin by Buddy Wallis; ruminative solo pieces by Johnny and his 7-string guitarist brother Jerry Case; and a setting of the closing speech from the controversial French dramatist Jean Genet’s play The Maids, sung by operatic soprano Donna Thompson -- a sonority that Alban Berg fan Johnny also included in his “Peace and Justice Suite” Love’s Bitter Rage in 2005.
When I profiled Johnny for the FW Weekly a few seasons back, one story that didn’t make the editorial cut went a long way, I thought, to illustrating the relationship between veteran musos like Case and the many younger cats that he’s mentored and fostered over the years. It concerns Byron Gordon, bassist on Johnny’s Waiting for the Moment and Love’s Bitter Rage CDs, who’s probably better known for his work with the rock band Calhoun. Years ago, while majoring in classical performance at TCU, Byron was also a busboy at Sardines. At that time, the late Charles Scott was Johnny’s regular bassist, and towards the end of his life, Charles went through a period when he was experiencing equipment problems – first with his amplifier, then with his bass. Johnny recalls that a very diffident and respectful Byron offered to bring first his amp, then his own instrument up to the restaurant and left them on the stand for “Mr. Scott” to use.
One day, Byron hesitantly approached Johnny and asked if he could sit in on a tune; Johnny agreed, and within three or four bars, he heard “that thing” that he looks for in a bassist. When Charles’ health declined to the point where he was unable to make the gig, Johnny called Byron to sub, and Gordon ultimately took over the gig when the elder musician passed. “I’ll do it,” Johnny remembers Byron saying, “but I wish Mr. Scott was playing instead of me.” Both men are heard to good advantage in the Four Roses Suite.
Of the 14 tunes included in the mashup, ten are Case originals. Inasmuch as most of the material he plays on his Sardines sets comes from his extensive knowledge of jazz and Tin Pan Alley standards (and indeed, of any music he’s encountered in the course of 60 years on the planet), it’s easy to forget that composition is also an important part of his artistry. Special mention also needs to be made of Jerry Case’s playing. While Jerry’s fretwork might lack the flamboyance of a Clint Strong, Tom Reynolds, or Paul Metzger, he comes from an older school of guitarissimo where players would try to wow each other with new chord inversions rather than hot licks. Country fiddler turned symphony geek turned rocker Reggie Rueffer once demonstrated a similar attitude during a listening session at his house, when he ripped a Stefane Grappelli record off the turntable with a dismissive, “He’s just doing tricks!” and replaced it with a more satisfying Svend Amundsen side. (Perhaps Sam Walker is the closest analog to Jerry on the current Fort Worth scene.)
Johnny’s compositional acumen and Jerry’s guitaring come to the fore on Texas Sunset Suite, a set of western swing-inspired Case originals (with one cover – guitarist Jimmy Bryant’s “Bryant’s Bounce”) that serves as a kind of memorial for frequent Case collaborator Tom Morrell, who left the planet last January 29th.
Texas Sunset Suite is, in Case’s words, “jazz influenced by a bastardized form of jazz.” Western swing was born in 1930, when Milton Brown and Bob Wills teamed up as the Aladdin Laddies (later the Light Crust Doughboys) over the airwaves of WBAP, right here in Fort Worth. (For a good read, check out Duncan MacLean’s Lone Star Swing, a Scottish enthusiast’s account of a journey through Texas in search of the music’s “true meaning.”) Basically jazz wearing a cowboy hat, western swing was dance music without a drummer, with fiddles and steel guitars as its dominant solo voices, and it enjoyed tremendous popularity through the ‘30s and ‘40s. By the time the Case brothers arrived on the set in 1963, the music’s popularity had waned, although it enjoyed a somewhat resurgence with the early ‘70s arrival of still-active revivalists Asleep At the Wheel. Unlike AATW, Case writes, “Wolf” Morrell never considered the music “retro.” Starting in 1995, Morrell released 16 volumes of western swing under the rubric How the West Was Swung. (Thanks to my former bandmate Frank Logan, himself the son of a western swing fiddler, for letting me hear the first couple of those when they were new.)
A steel player booked for the date was unable to make the sessions, so it’s left to the Case brothers and a rhythm section to evoke the spirit of the music without the sounds of either of its signature instruments. Mark Abbott on bass and Billy English on drums are more straightforward timekeepers than the teams that usually accompany Johnny; for comparison’s sake, dig the disc’s final track, “Crudscraper Blues,” a Love’s Bitter Rage session outtake (excerpted in the Four Roses Suite) with Byron Gordon on bass and Joey Carter on drums. Similarly, the chord voicings the pianist employs here generally seem brighter and less abstracted than we’re used to hearing from him. The lovely country ballad “Drifting Back” is especially fine; here and elsewhere, Jerry Case plays with great warmth and sensitivity. His blues-drenched, octave-enhanced solos are a particular treat, evocative of ‘50s Blue Note Records mainstays like Kenny Burrell and Grant Green.
Last but far from least, Strays…and Other Songs is a trio date with busy bassist Jeremy Hull (whose multitudinous rock/jazz/country/Latin activities would require a paragraph of their own just to enumerate) and Daniel Tcheco, the most ebulliently assertive percussionist Johnny’s ever worked with. Sometimes at Sardines, Danny’s Elvinesque energy threatens to overflow off the bandstand and propel the whole room into orbit.
The selection of tunes here pays tribute to music Johnny remembers from his earliest days as a musician and beyond: “I do not forget the music that meant something special to me in my early years as it is part of my total musicality,” he writes. Thus, Jerry Goldsmith and Pete Rugolo’s “Three Stars Will Shine Tonight” will be recognizable to listeners of a certain age as the theme from the old Dr. Kildare TV show, while “Ten High” (here credited to pianist-bandleader Elliott Lawrence) is a theme Case originally heard on a transcription disc of a radio show marking the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Air Force’s Continental Air Command. “I Want To Be With You Always” is a Latin arrangement of an early ‘50s country hit penned by Lefty Frizzell. “Dewey Dex” weds a 12-bar Dexter Gordon blues line with a middle eight Johnny composed in honor of a Dex admirer, the late Fort Worth tenorman Dewey Redman, while “One Bud Left to Blossom” grafts 16 bars composed by Case onto another 16 he originally heard on a homemade recording by violinist Buddy Wallis.
The CD’s final track, “From Where Strays Never Call Home,” is an example of the totally improvised music you could hear at Sardines now-defunct Avant-Garde Tuesdays between August 2006 and March 2008. The interplay between the three musos here is near telepathic, and the music’s impact is visceral and stunning. I realize this is the third time in a week I’ve written something crabbing about free jazz’s continuing pariah status here in the Fort, but whatthehell. If you never made it out for one of the evenings, you really missed out. If you ask Johnny, maybe he’ll burn you a copy of Toby Guinn’s recording of the very first one, which featured Chicago percussionist Joshua Manchester.
Three new Johnny Case CDs in one week is almost too much goodness to hope for. You’ll have to wait until September to hear most of this music, but the wait will be worthwhile. The FW Weekly was correct to induct Johnny into its Fort Worth Music Hall of Fame’s inaugural 2004 class, but I’m of the opinion that his best work is being done in the now. Check him out any night except Monday at Sardines; you owe it to yourself.
Web Resources:
Johnny Case/Jhon Kahsen -- www.myspace.com/johnnycase
Western Swing -- http://www.yodaslair.com/dumboozle/western/westdex.html
Tom Morrell -- http://www.westernswing.net/morrell/
Audio excerpt from Joshua Manchester’s recording of Sardines first avant garde evening: http://odeo.com/audio/1706593/view