[78-L] Martin Williams (was: Blistering exchange between Leonard Feather and Chris Albertson

[Michael Biel]

From: Jeff Sultanof <jeffsultanof at gmail.com>
> Dr. Biel,
> Would you please share a couple of Martin Williams stories?
> I had a brief encounter with him at an International Association
> of Jazz Educators convention back in the eighties when it was in
> D.C. and whatever respect for him that I'd had went out the window.

I've told these stories before and I hope repeating these gems does not
bore the group!

In 1984 I was program chair for the ARSC Conference at Bowling Green
(Ohio) State U, and on the final day Martin was giving a talk.  Over the
years I had seen many presenters (including myself) given the hook and
forced to end early, followed by a talk which ran under-time or
something similar.  I vowed when I was in charge to be lenient with time
and I quickly discovered that it all evened out in the end, and it
allowed for a more pleasant and informative experience for presenter and
audience.  But I just HAD to go photocopy some things including the
attendee list for distribution, and Bill Schurk would have to take me
way across campus to do it.  So I left the conference in the hands of
the previous program chair, Charlie Simpson.  Now Charlie was a stickler
for time, and many of us had been given the hook by him.  I thought he
had seen the error of his ways by watching how I handled things, but he
apparently reverted to form and yanked Martin off the stage just as he
was about to do the climatic last five minutes of a precisely planned
presentation.  I returned  a few minutes later, and found Martin and
Charlie literally in a wrestling match/fist fight in the lobby of the
Holiday Inn where the conference was being held!  I actually had to
break up the fight!  In this case it turns out that Martin was right,
because some of the following things ran undertime, but he didn't have
to beat up on poor Charlie!

During his final years Martin became a devoted cheerleader for Sarah
Vaughn.  I don't know if it extended into the physical like the
relationship between Lenny Kunstadt and Victoria Spivy had apparently
been, but he was DEVOTED.  His final ARSC presentation was an overly
gushing tribute to her, and in the Q&A I think I might have discussed
her inappropriately jazzy performance as Bloody Mary in the absolutely
disgustingly dreadful recording of South Pacific staring tenor Jose
Carreras in a role written for a basso, and Kiri Te Kanawa who couldn't
have convinced a deaf person that she was from Little Rock, Arkansas. 
The worst miscasting job ever foisted on the world, with the exception
of their prior year's recording of West Side Story which had Kiri from
Australia trying to sound Porto Rican and Spanish Jose trying to sound
non-Porto Rican.  Well, in the video of the South Pacific recording
session, Sarah V concludes her totally non-Tonganese native rendition of
Bali Hai with a statement "That ought to show them that I am more than a
jazz singer."  No, Sarah, that showed them that you are ONLY a jazz
singer who can not shake the urge to sing a song in YOUR character
instead of doing the REQUIRED job of singing the song in HER character. 
It would be fine for an album "Sarah Vaughn Sings Her Versions of Rogers
and Hammerstein" but not for a recording of the songs as sung by the
characters in the show.  In my explanation that she could sing jazz but
not serious music, Martin GLARED down at me -- he was on a stage and I
was in the front row videotaping -- and SNEARED "So you think that jazz
is not serious music?"  In this context, no it is not.  Jazz is a
performers music.  Classical music and broadway show music like R&H is a
composer's music.  You perform it as it is written, not how you feel and
re-write it.  They are two entirely different things, and Sarah Vaughn
had proved that she could not cross the bridge from one to the other
even thought she thought she had.  I thought he was going to leap off
the stage and have a go at me like he had at poor Charlie a few years
earlier, but someone dragged him off the stage in the opposite direction
because his time had ended!

My last story involves two consecutive ARSC conferences.  When Martin
did his series of re-creations of Smithsonian original cast albums of
shows which preceded the concept of original cast albums, some of them
were very controversial.  He edited out some performers from records if,
for example, the band had performed in the show but the vocalist had
not.  He gave a presentation about the series and defended that
practice, and additionally said that these albums were worthy of
musicologist study because in many cases the original scores had been
lost and some of these recordings were the only way the scores might be
able to be re-created.  (This was years before many of those lost scores
were discovered in a Seacaus New Jersey warehouse.)  He also discussed
how he had Jack Tower do some "creative editing" to fix some skips in
George Gershwin's piano performance of "Someone To Watch Over Me."  The
recording was from one of the Feenamint programs "Music By Gershwin"
that the Gershwin family had allowed George Garabedian release on Mark
56 records, and then donated the originals to the Library of Congress
where I had examined them.  I knew there were two sets of lacquer dubs
from the lost celluloid floppies (except for side one where one copy had
been waterdamaged and peeled.)  In the case of Someone, Garabedian had
used the discs that missed a couple of notes in the transition from side
two to three, and where there was an uncorrected skip about ten seconds
into side three.  Martin had Jack repeat a whole section without skips
in place of the part that had skips.  In the Q&A I asked if he explained
this in the notes because perhaps some musicologist might use this
recording to re-create and analyze Gershwin's improvisational playing
style.  He said that it mentioned in the notes that Jack Tower had done
some "creative editing".  I slammed him for not being detailed enough,
pirating the recording without permission off of Garabedian's album (I
had asked George if Martin had asked) instead of going down the mall to
LC and using the original discs which probably could be dubbed properly
without the skips.  

Well, the very next year it happened!  A very young Artis Woodehouse did
a presentation at the first ARSC in Nashville, and ARSC had gone all out
and rented a grand piano for her.  I had intended to write to her when I
saw that her topic was an analysis of Gershwin's improvisational piano
style, but unfortunately didn't have a chance.  She started by saying
she was going to present analysis of three pieces using the printed
scores, the printed improvisations, and recordings.  I said a silent
prayer that she was NOT going to use Someone To Watch Over Me.  And then
2/3s of the way thru a brilliant presentation, she said, "Lastly I am
going to discuss 'Someone To Watch Over Me.'"   I whispered "Oh No!" to
Fred Williams who was sitting next to me.  And over in the back of the
auditorium I saw Martin Williams slump lower and lower into his seat. 
She had written out the notation of the creatively edited recording and
played it note for note, including the place where the editing had
Gershwin repeating a measure exactly the same way twice.  There were two
mics set up for questions, and to my surprise Martin got up to one near
him, so I figured I would let him do his confession.  He asked the
question that he OBVIOUSLY already knew.   "Did you use the Mark 56 or
the Smithsonian version of Someone?"  "I'm not sure," she replied,
"because I borrowed the record without the jacket."  "I think you might
have used the Smithsonian.  Did you know that there was some editing on
it?"  She turned pale.  "No," she weakly replied.

At this point I stepped up to the other Q&A mic.  "Martin, last year I
told you that your editing would get you in trouble, and now the
chickens have come home to roost.  You had bragged about how
musicologists could use these recordings to re-create lost scores.  Miss
Wodehouse, this is not your fault.  Even if you had the liner notes you
could not have known what had been done with this recording because
details had not been given. Martin, you should have not used
Garabedian's recording without permission and you should have gone down
the mall to LC to use the original."  I then explained the side change
and skip had been covered over by a ten second repeat.  I had compared
both recordings and was able to detect where the splices had happened
and could undo what Jack Tower had done.  She was devastated, and I told
her it was not her fault, it was Martin's, but it proves how important
using ORIGINALS can be.  (This is especially important in film studies
-- remember the problems with the DVD of The Jazz Singer that I could
analyize by comparing it with other earlier prints -- and other things
like literary and paintings, etc.)  

About ten years later a new AUTHORIZED release of the Gershwin
recordings came out, and this time the producers went back and had the
Library of Congress dub off both sets of the lacquer dubs, and this time
Jack Towers was able to find the missing notes and put the program
together without covering up with repeats.  I phoned Jack to ask him
about it, and it turns out that he had completely forgotten about doing
the creative editing for Martin Williams!!  And a year or two later
Artis did an article on Gershwin for Keyboard magazine and once again
did a printed score of the Someone improvisations from the Feenamint
program.  When I saw her a few months later I congratulated her on the
article and reminded her that I was the one who explained about the
editing.  "I used the correct version this time, didn't I?" she
anxiously asked.  "Yes" I replied as she heaved a sigh of relief.  

Mike Biel   mbiel at mbiel.com