Congressional Black Caucus' annual meeting 9/14/04

by Alan Greenblatt

You have to remember that it was free. As usual, the concert presented as part of the Congressional Black Caucus' annual meeting last week at the Washington convention center was a mix of dull talk and pretty good music. They rearranged the seating this year so that there was a bit more of a club ambience, but it's still a great big room and the acoustics were echoey enough to be annoying.

Still, there were some good sounds. Andy Bey kicked off the music portion of the evening with a solo set. Bey is someone I have praised pretty highly in the past and still think he's great, although I've come to think he's less of a jazz artist and more of a pop singer, in the sense that his renditions don't change noticeably over time. He performed mostly tunes on his latest CD, "American Song," which I'll get around to reviewing for you all one of these days.

Bey is wearing chin-length dreadlocks these days and had on a dark suit over a red tee-shirt. His voice comes in two forms. He has an incredibly low, breathy, quavery baritone, most of the time, but occasionally, when he starts to speed up a number, he'll switch to an energetic -- almost shouting -- brassy tenor.

I think he's a great caresser of lyrics (he did "Paper Moon, "Never Let Me Go," "Midnight Sun" and some other familiar tunes, and the less regularly performed Depression anthem, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime") but as I say since he doesn't vary his delivery it doesn't sound quite as fresh and inspired as it might. He often uses some of the same vocal effects, for instance, tip-toeing up to an ending and closing with a falsely low, foghorn-sounding note. His piano playing is spare, just dropping some chords in, but he made some solos that sounded more spontaneous than his singing.

James Moody was next. Moody is one of the few real showmen in jazz and he was fully in that mode. He played some good flute and a meaty tenor sax but most of his time was taken up with his "vocalese" numbers "Benny's From Heaven" and "Moody's Mood for Love."

Vocalese, class, refers to the act of taking a famous instrumental solo on a recording of a song and setting that new melody to words. That's what happened with Moody's instrumental recording of "I'm in the Mood for Love," which was transformed into "Moody's Mood." In any event, his singing is full of yodeling and little tricks but there's really no resisting Moody's self-satisfied charm.

He told many old jokes along these lines: "There are only three words you don't want to hear when you're making love -- 'Honey, I'm home!'"

His delivery is quick and good. What lifted that joke toward greatness is that he told it apropos of nothing as he was being presented with a copy of a Congressional Record statement about his career by Reps. John Conyers and Mel Watt. It was the best deflation of the occasional pomposity of the evening and much appreciated for that.

The evening began with the lead musicians and some NEA and professorial types talking about the fate of the jazz musician. This was much the same, slightly ponderous discussion as last year. The gist was that young people, if only exposed to this real music, would get a lot out of it, but since jazz will never be popular on its own somebody should provide funds to spread the word. (One suggestion was that professional athletes tithe a portion of their earnings to the cause.)

It seemed like the long evening was finally over but out came Ron Carter, leading a quartet of guys in tuxes. Ron Carter is a name any jazz fan knows because he played with Miles Davis and has been on about 10,000 recordings or something like that. But what is the Carter sound? It's Carter's sound, really, that you think of when you think of jazz bass -- deep, solid yet flexible and responsive to the other players.

He's tall and has great long fingers. His set was about 45 minutes of tunes run together as a sort of endless medley, all with a Latin tinge, Jobim melding into "My Funny Valentine." There was a bass, of course, the great Stephen Scott playing a subdued piano and a drummer and percussionist whose names I'm not sure I caught correctly. This was the only real jazz of the evening, ambient and quiet and reliant on subtle effects but offering you a shifting aural landscape, like a slowly changing view from out a train window.