Tommy Flanagan

[Mark Stryker]

Here's one from August 2001, about three months before Tommy died. I think it's the last major piece anyone wrote about him but I may be wrong.

Detroit Free Press

AUGUST 26, 2001

A LEGENDARY TOUCH THE DETROIT-BORN PIANIST TOMMY FLANAGAN BRINGS HIS SAGE, SATINY AND SWINGING BEBOP HOME FOR THE JAZZ FESTIVAL

BYLINE: MARK STRYKER FREE PRESS MUSIC WRITER

DATELINE: NEW YORK

Tommy Flanagan descends the steep staircase leading from Seventh Avenue to the Village Vanguard and briefly surveys the empty club before shuffling to the piano. His hands fall lovingly on the keys as if he were shaking hands with an old friend.

Flanagan -- one of the finest musicians produced by the golden age of modern jazz in Detroit and a headliner at the Ford Detroit International Jazz Festival -- first played the Vanguard as a sideman with trombonist J.J. Johnson in the late 1950s. More recently, Flanagan's all-world trios have spent many nights in residence at this hallowed temple of jazz, and he's recorded two exemplary albums here.

But now, in the afternoon stillness, he plays for himself and the ghosts of Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and the other departed jazz heroes whose photos line the smoke-stained walls of the world's most famous basement. One soft-spoken chord meanders into another until a melody emerges from the mist -- "Gone with the Wind," a 1937 gem that reminds you Flanagan doesn't know every tune, just the best ones. He glides into a walk-in-the-park tempo, improvising fluid ideas ripe with insouciant swing, fine-spun counterpoint and elegant bebop melodies whose single-note lines hang on the chords like Christmas ornaments.

Flanagan's lyrical touch is legendary -- each note sounds like a pearl wrapped in silk -- and this is the first topic he addresses when the songs ends. "My touch comes from listening and trying to get a sound that I had in my head," he says in a gentle voice that rarely rises above a stage whisper. "I never did get much out of playing too hard. In fact, when I thought I was playing too loud, I'd use the soft pedal. I liked that -- you play harder but get a softer sound. I had an old, harsh-sounding piano at home, anyway."

At 71, Flanagan plays like the hippest angel in heaven, seducing listeners through a sublime marriage of grace and guts, swing and sagacity, wit and warmth. It's been two years since he last performed in his hometown -- illness forced him to cancel a 70th-birthday concert at Orchestra Hall last year -- and his festival appearance marks the local debut of his latest trio, with veteran drummer Albert Heath joining bassist Peter Washington.

Flanagan's poetic brand of modernism is so universally admired today that it's sobering to remember it wasn't always that way. Until launching the second act of his career in the late '70s, he was a secret to almost everyone but his fellow musicians. Most observers regarded him as a career accompanist.

Flanagan's self-effacing personality and his resume worked against him. He spent 14 years as Ella Fitzgerald's pianist, from 1962 to 1965 and 1968 to 1978. (In between was a brief stint with Tony Bennett.) Flanagan recorded sparingly as a leader, releasing zero records under his own name between 1960 and 1975. He recorded prolifically as a sideman, however, appearing on such classic '50s LPs as Miles Davis' "Collectors' Items," Sonny Rollins' "Saxophone Colossus" and John Coltrane's "Giant Steps."

The turning point came in 1978, when a heart attack put him in the hospital for 17 days. He quit smoking, cut down on drinking and gave his notice to Ella. Soon he formed the first in a series of trios specializing in nattily tailored interpretations of exquisite standards and underplayed jazz originals by Thad Jones, Monk, Tadd Dameron, Billy Strayhorn, Ellington and others. Flanagan became a fixture in the New York clubs and recorded a string of thrilling albums, mostly for small European labels. Not until 1998, when Blue Note released "The Sunset and the Mockingbird," did a major American label support Flanagan. By then his brilliance was received wisdom.

"Flanagan's position is less a matter of besting the competition than bringing his powers to a peak where competition is irrelevant," critic Gary Giddins wrote a few years ago. "He's perfected his own niche, a style beyond style, where the only appropriate comparisons are between his inspired performances and those that are merely characteristic."

Flanagan's style is deceptive. He is known for his satin touch, but he can play with a cunningly sharp attack and swings as deeply as anyone. He is a child of bebop and a master of bop's rhythmic displacements, harmonic challenges and the horn-like style pioneered by pianist Bud Powell. But Flanagan's roots also reach back to pre-bop pianists like Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, the transitional Nat Cole and the early modernist from Pontiac, Hank Jones -- all pianists with active left hands and refined elan.

"I was first influenced by Teddy Wilson," says Flanagan. "He was a firm player, but he also had a beautiful touch. If that's your first inspiration, you really want to improve on it. In the last 20 years or so my volume has increased. In fact, I had a drummer once who left the group because he said the piano was too loud." Flanagan laughs at the irony: "Imagine that -- a drummer telling the piano player he was too loud."

Michael Weiss, one of the legion of younger pianists who revere Flanagan, points out that a large part of his identity is his pianistic approach to dynamics, attack, pedaling and orchestration. "Each note or chord has a carefully considered sonority, as opposed to a generic kind of voicing," says Weiss. "He might start a melody in single-note lines, then play something in thirds, octaves or full chords. That carries over to his improvising. If he's soloing and ascends to a climax, he'll orchestrate that moment -- put a chord under the melody note to color or accent what he's doing."

Flanagan manipulates the keyboard pedals like a classical virtuoso, employing the sustain pedal to connect his ideas in a smooth legato without allowing his notes to bleed into a puddle. "Sometimes guys just come and watch my feet," says Flanagan. "You know, there's a way of breathing when you use the pedals. It's like phrasing."

Flanagan is a handsome, distinguished man, but he is more frail than in years past, and his clothes hang loosely on his small frame. He has a long face, tender eyes, a sweet smile and wears large round glasses. He lost his hair early, and only a wisp of white remains above and behind his ears. A bushy gray mustache almost hides his dimples. Flanagan does nothing in a hurry, least of all talk. He answers questions in stages, leaving long gaps of silence and looking past his interviewer into an undefined middle distance. Still, when the mood strikes, he is an agile conversationalist with a martini-dry wit.

"Tommy may not say much, but when he does speak, it's the truth," says Weiss.

Flanagan has lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan since the 1950s, for the last 25 years on 82nd Street with his wife, Diana, a vivacious woman whom he married in 1976. Married once before, Flanagan and has three children from his first marriage and six grandchildren. The apartment is tastefully decorated and cluttered with Diana's books -- a former singer, she was a literature major in college and devours fiction, poetry, history, biography and music tomes. A Steinway grand piano stands in one corner of the living room opposite a sitting area by the window.

Photos of jazz musicians like Charlie Parker and Ellington are scattered about, along with paintings, including a small landscape by Nancy Balliett, wife of New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett. A framed caricature of Flanagan by the cartoonist Al Hirschfeld watches over the piano.

On this afternoon, Flanagan and Diana nuzzle on the sofa while paging through the recently published "Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit, 1920-60" (University of Michigan Press, $24.95). Flanagan points and smiles at the photos of lifelong friends like Barry Harris, Kenny Burrell, Elvin Jones, the late Pepper Adams and others who were part of a remarkable eruption of jazz talent in mid-century Detroit. Diana squeals at the pictures of her husband working around town as a teenager. "Oh, sweetheart! What a darling you were! I would have loved you!"

"Stand in line," Flanagan deadpans.

He lays the book down on a table and begins to reminisce about his salad days. In 1953, he joined the famous house band at the Blue Bird Inn, working alongside saxophonist Billy Mitchell, trumpeter Thad Jones and drummer Elvin Jones. At the Blue Bird, Flanagan first played with many of the musicians with whom he would later work in New York. "I couldn't have gotten very far without those days in Detroit," Flanagan says. "We had good role models. They didn't use that term then, but we had some people we respected who played as well as those people who came into town that we'd go see. We had people like Milt Jackson, Yusef Lateef, Lucky Thompson, Wardell Gray."

Flanagan grew up in northeast Detroit in Conant Gardens. He was the last of six children. His father was a postman, and both parents loved music, especially his mother. Flanagan started on the clarinet at 6, but by then he was already climbing up on the piano bench, imitating the lessons he heard his brother practice. Encouraged by his mother, Flanagan started piano lessons at 10 and still has a fondness for Chopin and Ravel. He got interested in jazz when his brother started bringing home the latest Billie Holiday records, which featured Teddy Wilson on piano.

"I've been living with this music since I was 6 years old," he says.

Flanagan attended Northern High School, where pianists Roland Hanna and Bess Bonnier were classmates. In 1949, after Flanagan backed Harry Belafonte at the Flame Show Bar, Belafonte offered him a gig in New York. But Flanagan's mother thought her baby was too young to leave town, so a disappointed Flanagan stayed put. Then he was drafted and spent two years in the Army. When the orders came to ship out to Korea, he wanted to take the newest music with him, so he stuffed Thelonious Monk's Blue Note 78s into his suitcase. Eventually, Flanagan made it to New York, moving there in early 1956. Outside of music and family, his memories of Detroit are not all pleasant.

"I always wished I'd left earlier," he says. "Detroit started to grind on me. There wasn't much freedom to move around. The police were horrible then. They'd hassle you in your own neighborhood. One night when I was about 12, I was walking by a printing shop where they'd found some subversive material and they stopped me, guns drawn. I said, 'What are you going to do? I'm just a kid.' "

In New York, things moved swiftly. Within a year, Flanagan had subbed for Bud Powell at Birdland and recorded with both Davis and Sonny Rollins. He cherishes the memories: At the first recording session with Davis, he recalls, the trumpeter pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket containing a barely legible sketch of Brubeck's "In Your Own Sweet Way." Davis supplied the chord voicings for the famous introduction that Flanagan plays, but Flanagan devised the rhythm.

Then there was the time J.J. Johnson's Quintet alternated sets at the Vanguard with Jack Kerouac, who would read from his books or extemporize. One night, Flanagan, Elvin Jones and Kerouac -- a world-class drinker -- ended up at Flanagan's apartment. "Before the morning was over, Elvin threatened to kill him," Flanagan recalls. "Kerouac said something outrageous and Elvin took offense. I think I did too, but Elvin was more menacing."

Talked out, Flanagan stands up and slowly makes his way to the piano. Stacks of popular songbooks sit on a nearby shelf, and on top of the piano is a folder of compositions by Modern Jazz Quartet founder John Lewis. The pianist had sent the music to Flanagan for a possible CD before his death in March. Flanagan plays a few enigmatic arpeggios before slipping into the the Jimmy McHugh ballad "Where Are You?" with a fanciful twist of harmony that unlocks a back door to the song. He plays a chorus sotto voce and then a second with more volume, dialogue and emotion. The results are so eloquent that a visitor quickly requests "Last Night When We Were Young" to keep Flanagan at the keyboard.

It's an unusually abstract pop song; Harold Arlen's melody and harmony move in odd patterns. Flanagan hasn't played it in ages, and he watches his hands with a puzzled look on his face, as if his fingers belonged to another pianist. When he gets stuck for a note, Diana, who seems to know as many songs as her husband, softly sings Yip Harburg's mature lyric from the sofa. The music shudders with feeling. When it's over, Diana has a tear in her eye and Flanagan a faraway look in his.

{END}

(SIDEBAR:)

TOMMY FLANAGAN ON CD

Tommy Flanagan has recorded prolifically as a leader since the late 1970s, and his work is remarkably consistent. The finest overall introduction to his trio is probably "Jazz Poet" (1989) with George Mraz and Kenny Washington, but it's hard to go wrong with any of the following: "Elypso" (1977), "Super Session" (1980), "Sea Changes" (1997), "The Sunset and the Mockingbird" (1998) and "Beyond the Bluebird" (1990), the latter featuring Kenny Burrell.

Flanagan has also recorded a series of brilliant songbook albums devoted to John Coltrane ("Giant Steps"), Thad Jones ("Lets"); Thelonious Monk ("Thelonica") and Ella Fitzgerald ("Lady Be Good"). "Our Delight" is a gorgeous duet album with the Pontiac-bred pianist Hank Jones. Two early albums worth seeking out are "Overseas" (1957) and "The Tommy Flanagan Trio" (1960).

Among Flanagan's countless appearances as a sideman, don't miss Coltrane's "Giant Steps," Sonny Rollins' "Saxophone Colossus," Miles Davis' "Collectors' Items," Kenny Dorham's "Quiet Kenny" and Ella Fitzgerald's "Ella in London."

Edited April 19, 2008 by Mark Stryker

[Chas]

I enjoyed reading that Mark . Thanks for sharing .

[Michael Weiss]

Diana squeals at the pictures of her husband working around town as a teenager. "Oh, sweetheart! What a darling you were! I would have loved you!"

"Stand in line," Flanagan deadpans.

An audience member was pestering Tommy to play "Chelsea Bridge." Flanagan finally replied, "Take a leap."

[Lazaro Vega]

"Flanagan's lyrical touch is legendary -- each note sounds like a pearl wrapped in silk -- and this is the first topic he addresses when the songs ends. "My touch comes from listening and trying to get a sound that I had in my head," he says in a gentle voice that rarely rises above a stage whisper. "I never did get much out of playing too hard. In fact, when I thought I was playing too loud, I'd use the soft pedal. I liked that -- you play harder but get a softer sound. I had an old, harsh-sounding piano at home, anyway.""

A sound he may have gone for after hearing Earl VanRiper.