Courtesy of Bill Charlap

A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH BILL CHARLAP

(September 24, 2002)


Bill Charlap's playing isn't groundbreaking, but in a time when music is nothing above predictable, Charlap's elegant voice at the piano and his affable approach is welcome. This earned his Blue Note debut, Written in the Stars, raves and will do the same for his follow up, Stardust, selections from the Hoagy Carmichael songbook. In an earlier life, Charlap's music would have been date music for me, but alas, those times are all but a lingering memory and Charlap's Blue Note career has just begun. And at this rate, he will be a Blue Note megastar in no time. You should get a listen to Stardust. Heavies like Shirley Horn and Tony Bennett even went along for the ride. Charlap and I spoke from his home as he had just finished one tour date and was on the way to another at my hometown hang, the Bakery, here in Tinseltown. He spoke about his admiration of Carmichael's music, his fondness for the American songbook, the success of his Blue Note debut, and the future, unedited and in his own words.


FRED JUNG: When we last spoke, Written in the Stars was just hitting the store shelves. Warmly received, congratulations are in order.

BILL CHARLAP: Sure, it is always great. It's like a gift. It's really nice that people are enjoying it and that it has done well on both accounts. I'm not surprised that Hoagy's music has that kind of appeal and the wonderful people that were on the album were received well, but it really is very gratifying.


FJ: You have been a proponent of the American songbook.

BILL CHARLAP: It just kind of came naturally because I was surrounded by that music. My mom is Sandy Stewart, who is a great singer, sang with Benny Goodman and who's nominated for a Grammy in the 1960s for her album, My Coloring Book, and my dad was "Moose" Charlap, who among other things wrote most of the music for many songs that were recorded by major vocalists like Joe Williams and Sarah Vaughan and Rosemary Clooney and many others. So I was surrounded by that aesthetic and by also many of the composers and lyricists of major theater writers and American popular song, so it just sort of came naturally. I'm just doing stuff that I really love and what comes naturally to me. I've recorded many albums with singers.


FJ: Why don't you record the Bill Charlap songbook?

BILL CHARLAP: Well, I'm not a composer, Fred, so I don't really have my own tunes to do. It is not that I can't compose. I think there's a difference between someone who can compose and someone who is a composer. I don't feel a calling, if you will, and I also don't, my dad wasn't a jazz pianist and neither was Richard Rodgers. Gershwin sort of was, whatever jazz was at that time. It was kind of undefined, exactly what the parameters were. Those composers spent their time composing all day. They didn't sit and worry about performing jazz piano. I think it is not something you dabble in. It is just I don't think it is something that I have a natural affinity or talent for.


FJ: Let's touch on you latest Blue Note release, Stardust. You feature your trio with Kenny Washington and Peter Washington (no relation). What do they bring to the table?

BILL CHARLAP: Not just to my album, but to my development as a musician. I've learned as much from those two gentlemen as I have from any of my great teachers. They are, of course, they are not related. They just happen to be named Washington. I just thought I would let people know in case they were wondering. Both of them have a very comprehensive view of their instrument, their respective instruments and how they fit into the pantheon of the great jazz instrumentalists. They're both very well read if you will in an analogy and being very important players on their instrument. Kenny understands very well, Jo Jones and Art Blakey and Lou Hayes and many, many others. Peter understands Doug Watkins, Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, Ray Brown, and Jimmy Blanton. Of course, this is not an exhaustive list for either guys. They are also a beautiful combination together and I've learned a great deal about what the players that they love and the people that come through them and the things that they hold very important in rhythm section playing has been influential to me. Of course, those are all players that I also have loved. I don't just listen to pianist. I've always listened to all the instrumentalists. But playing with them and playing with players at that level has been highly educational and very, very rewarding. Quite a few years ago, I was playing a solo piano gig. I'm talking about maybe fifteen years ago that was on the Upper Westside of Manhattan. Tony (Tony Bennett) came in with Bill Evans' manager, she has since passed away, and he just came into listen and that was the first time I met Tony. Then one night, maybe about seven years or so later, I was playing with Phil Woods at the Blue Note and someone came upstairs and said that Mr. Bennett was at the bar and he'd like to speak to me and so I went downstairs and of course, it was great to see him and he said that Ralph could not make a gig next week and could I come and sub for him. Ralph Sharon was Tony's accompanist for upwards of thirty years. Of course, I was very honored and intimidated to fill those shoes, but I said yes and I went and we became good friends and it was a natural musical rapport and I subbed a number of gigs for Ralph over the years, maybe about ten or so. Tony and I became friends and I asked him if he wouldn't sing a song on this album and he said yes and that's how that worked. Shirley and Tony, they are really the two, you can't say the greatest, there are many, many greats, but I will say of whom there are none greater and who in my eyes are just about as great as it gets in terms of male vocalist and a female vocalist. Shirley is also a master pianist and accompanist and has a complete musical dynamic that she inhabits within her trio and her piano playing and singing. That was quite another thing to be the pianist for Shirley, who is already about the greatest accompanist in the world. That came about just from, I think we had some mutual friends who perhaps played Shirley some of my piano playing and she liked it and my dear friend, Joel Moss, who is the producer of this and the previous album asked Shirley if she would sing on it and we're fortunate that she said yes. You know, Fred, I can't say enough about Tony Bennett and Shirley Horn. They are master musicians. To have them on the album was such a wonderful musical experience for all the members of the trio. They are consummate professionals and consummate artists and the reason for having singers, particularly for me is that I always hear the lyrics when I'm playing and it was nice to have everyone else hear them too, in the case of those two songs and of course, what they bring to those performances is magic. I try to, I'm a great fan of the history and the present and the future of this music and so all of those things are in there, even if they don't appear in a more obvious way. There is angularity as well and there is rhythmic bite and all of the other things that are part of jazz. They are perhaps not always put there in an obvious way, but I think that they are there and they come naturally because I'm a fan of all the great pianists and hopefully, I am learning lessons from all of them all the time.


FJ: Why does Americana need to preserve the legacy of Hoagy Carmichael?

BILL CHARLAP: I first would say, and I appreciate how you are putting that, Fred, but I don't think it needs to be preserved. I think it is quite living. All of those songs are alive, not just of Carmichael, but of other major songwriters like Gershwin and Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers, Frank Loesser, they are all, this is as great as popular songwriting has ever gotten. It hasn't gotten better than that yet. Hoagy particularly is a very unique figure in his relationship to the jazz man, in that he was something of a jazz man himself and related musically and personally to guys like Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong and his music has particular qualities that are outside most of the theater writers. Indeed, Hoagy was not a theater writer himself. All his songs are popular songs for the most part. He didn't have the unique disciplines of theater writing, but it gave his music, perhaps another style. The thing also about Hoagy is that it is both, his music is both rural and it also has the feeling of the city. There's a great quote about Hoagy that says, "Play me a Hoagy Carmichael song and I hear the banging of a screen door and whine of an outboard motor on a lake. Sounds of summer in a small town America that is long gone, but still longed for." There is something about that, but at the same time, those images like I say are also urban. It's not just country. It's got the urban beat of jazz, so Hoagy's music is particularly attractive to jazz musicians, I think.


FJ: Stardust features Tony Bennett and Shirley Horn, do you have plans to record a full length album with a vocalist?

BILL CHARLAP: It is unlikely that I would do an entire album with a singer that is my own album, just because it would become the singer's album and clearly they would be perceived as being in the forefront and they would be.


FJ: And the future?

BILL CHARLAP: I'm going to be in Los Angeles at the Jazz Bakery from the 1-6 of October and then in San Diego and Philadelphia and Carmel, the San Francisco Jazz Festival and Santa Cruz and in Seattle. That takes us through October. I've got some solo gigs and some gigs with the Phil Woods Quintet and even a night with my mother, Sandy Stewart, in New York.


FJ: You've been a member of his quintet for a handful of years.

BILL CHARLAP: First of all, I've been going and hearing Phil since I was a high school kid. Me and Jon Gordon used to go down and hear him all the time and we always admired the band and in a phrase, their standard of excellence. Phil has a standard of excellence and a standard of playing which is so high that it never, on his worst night, he sounds great and that is really what it's all about in being a professional. That is what Dick Hyman told me Teddy Wilson told him, that "on your worst night, you should be the only one that really knows it," and that's how it is with Phil. Besides the fact of his command of the bebop language and the jazz language, his virtuosity on his instrument and the grits and gravy that is in his music, as well as the great sophistication. All of those things are in Phil's music. He is just a major force in this music. I can't say enough about what a thrill it is and what an education it is to play with Phil.


Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and yearns for the simpler days when Big Pussy was still a part of the crew and not spokesman for a piss poor cigar.. Comments? Email Him