Why is this here?<\/p>\n
I have always loved music and it was always assumed, in my family, that you would take up an instrument and play. Piano lessons. I think I started too young. I never enjoyed the piano lessons and it was a chore for my parents to make me practice. They gave up on me more than a few times. The best part of playing the piano for me was the pre-musical ideas I discovered while \u201cimprovising.\u201d Nothing more than playing two notes next to each other and moving up and down by one note \u2013 but it wasn\u2019t just the sound that knocked me out, it was the feeling I was getting from playing it. I must have been about 5 years old at the time, but the memory is very vivid among an otherwise cloudy childhood.<\/p>\n
There was always some jazz playing in my house, I can\u2019t tell you everyone, but I know it included; Lennie and his school (of course), Bird, Prez, Getz, Mulligan, Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, Roy Eldridge, Arte Shaw, I could go on, but it stretched back to Louis Armstrong (as all jazz lines do) and fully covered the swing era \u2013 the music of my parents\u2019 youth. The evolution of jazz (for the most part) stopped with Lennie Tristano, my dad\u2019s brother, yet all of the predecessors were necessary to arrive at that evolutionary point in time. By listening to the innovators, you can hear the story of jazz in the musicians. Who needs Ken Burns anyway!<\/p>\n
When I was young, the piano in the living room was always being used. My sister had far greater attention span than did I and progressed with her ability to play. She was always playing these Schumann \ud83d\ude42 exercises and every once in a while, my dad would pull out his horn and amaze me with his technical ability. So even though I didn\u2019t actively listen to jazz, it was always a \u201cpassive\u201d influence in my life.<\/p>\n
In third grade I took up a \u201cband\u201d instrument. My choice (I think) was the alto sax, same as my dad. My parents rented a decent horn (a Bundy) and I began taking lessons. I didn\u2019t remember any particular anxiety about not practicing, but apparently, it was a such a constant battle for my parents to force me to practice, they decided to stop renting the horn. Now, my father owned an alto, but they wouldn\u2019t just let me use it. He had an early 60\u2019s Selmer Mark IV, in beautiful shape. Not something that a 3rd grader should be banging all the way to school. Returning the alto was a matter of money, which was never wasted around my house. If I wasn\u2019t going to practice, then I didn\u2019t need to have nice rental sax.<\/p>\n
I have this great memory of my mother \u2013 it must have been 1973. I had just started playing the sax, maybe 2 or 3 months before, and I was demonstrating for my mom. For some reason, I found it very easy to play \u201cJingle Bells\u201d by ear. My mom was laying on the couch in our front room, smiling and listening to me play this song. Not only was I playing it by ear, I was jazzing it up a little with some cute embellishments (cute for a 7 year old anyway). I was really knocking her out!<\/p>\n
After my parents returned the alto to the rental company, I was allowed to continue lessons at school and join the school band as a tenor player. My cousin Lennie had an old Conn tenor from the thirties that used to be my dads, who bought it from my uncle. I made it through band for a while \u2013 all in all my experience in band didn\u2019t last a month. I remember getting a cool feeling a few times when the whole room played together, but it never became good enough to keep me interested. It just wasn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n
So my parents gave up on the whole horn idea. Every now and then, my Dad would encourage me to start studying again or I would ask my father to try and give me music lessons. He didn\u2019t want to pay for lessons if I wasn\u2019t going to practice, but he jumped at the chance to teach me about the instrument and musical harmony. He had studied with Lennie of course, and so had my cousin Lennie \u2013 what a lucky kid, two LT alums in the house, at my disposal. One important note about my Dad is that he was blind and he was always home. He and my mother ran a pre-school which gave them the freedom to have one parent at home. Instead, he stayed home and did stuff like build furniture, or remodel the house. Once, just my father and I framed and roofed a garage in two days flat. I don\u2019t remember him ever not being there. I was very lucky. There were times when I would have my parents tell my friends that I was grounded. Just so that I could stay home and hang out with just my family. I love them all very much.<\/p>\n
In theory, getting lessons from this marvelous father sounds great. It wasn\u2019t. He was very frustrated with my lack of discipline. He was always telling me stories of how players like Bird and Warne and Lee would practice for 8 to 10 hours a day. He could barely get a half hour a day out of me. In my defense, I don\u2019t know why that when faced with this great opportunity of free lessons, I bailed out. I really don\u2019t remember what was going through my mind. I tried taking lessons from my cousin Lennie too, but I couldn\u2019t get any traction there either. Years later, I would use both my dad and Lennie as a harmonic resource to fill in the gaps of my own self-study of harmony. They almost explained harmony to me, without actually having to know how to play jazz. I realized, quite recently, that to fully understand it, you really gotta learn it with your hands and your horn (axe, or whatever\u2026)<\/p>\n
I gave up on the horn and the piano and bought myself a guitar in 6th grade. It was the Sears, $45, Nylon strung, piece-of-sh*t guitar that many kids used to start with. I had earned the money with my paper route. This guitar was BAD, and by that I mean terrible. The only thrill I got on that thing was placing a small mic inside it and playing it distorted through my stereo system amplifier. In my basement, in the workshop, playing \u201ccat scratch fever\u201d \u2013 around 1978. I eventually bought a \u201creal\u201d guitar and started re-learning the instrument. The guitar is so much different from a horn or a piano. There wasn\u2019t much prior knowledge to transfer over or build upon. I was always very overwhelmed by the amount of notes crammed into such a small place (the fretboard) They\u2019re always staring up at you, daring you to play them faster and more uniquely. It was a few years before I could find my way back to playing at the level of a jazzy rendition of \u201cjingle bells\u201d but I eventually made it. Since that time, I\u2019ve never stayed with a teacher for more than a lesson or two. I guess no one ever really knocked me out enough. I\u2019ve gone to many cats, but never the right one. They all amounted to \u201chey learn all the notes on the fretboard, so you can site read of course, THEN come back\u201d Right. See you in 10 years. I picked up a little here and a little there, but most of my skills were gained through copying solos, and jamming along with led zep, rush and hendrix. I always had my Dad to refer to if I had a harmony question or needed the recipe for a G minor triad \ud83d\ude42 or an ascending melodic minor scale. He still had all that stuff memorized.<\/p>\n
In college, I had to do a paper, more of a thesus, for a class. The topic wasn\u2019t important, it was for a class that was teaching the methodology of research \u201ctechnical writing for business majors\u201d or something like that. Since my dad was also a writer in addition to jazz musician, psychologist and small business owner, myself and my siblings would often have him assist us in working on a writing project. I tried to choose a topic that was interesting enough to hold my attention, something that was \u201ccool.\u201d Since I had to interview an authority for this particular paper, I found someone that I had decent access to for interviews. My dad. I actually quoted him as a resource in the paper. I could do this because he too was in NYC in 50\u2019s and saw the demise of jazz\u2019s popularity. It was perfect, I could utilize my dad as a resource and as an interviewee. I couldn\u2019t stay focused much in college, so the opportunity to do something easy and interesting was alway helpful.<\/p>\n
The thesus of the paper was *Jazz, America\u2019s Only Native Art Form*. I had always heard my dad and my cousin argue about jazz. They were very opinionated \u2013 jazz snobs. There, I\u2019ve said it. No one did shit after Bird, except Lennie and his school of course. Rock, to them, was not a valid style. That didn\u2019t ever stop my dad from letting me blast loud, distorted guitars around the house, or even let my seminal bands practice (loudly and badly) in the basement. It just meant I couldn\u2019t have a discussion regarding rock with him or share my favorite rock musicians with them.<\/p>\n
For this paper on jazz, I started to do some research on the project and my first stop was the library I became quite skilled at the microfilmers that stored old copies of magazines and newspapers. One of the first headlines that caught my eye was \u201cTristano Hits Jazz Cliques.\u201d (Downbeat, 10\/6\/1950) I ran into many other mentions and the research paper turned into a quest to learn more about my uncle\u2019s influence in jazz. I reviewed years and years of issues of Downbeat and Metronome magazine on old microfilmers in the University of Illinois (UIC) Library, less than 10 blocks from where Lennie and my father grew up. I still have many copies of these old articles and my paper is around here somewhere, but as I remember it, it wasn\u2019t that good. You see I became very distracted digging all this stuff about Lennie and jazz and music and well, let\u2019s just say the paper became less important.<\/p>\n
Now, I\u2019m not sure how much I know about my uncle Lennie prior this time \u2013 he was just an uncle that I didn\u2019t really get to hang out with \u2013 but I suppose I couldn\u2019t fully appreciate his fame until I started reading some of these articles. He must have cared about music and the state of jazz quite a bit to be so outspoken about it. I remember enjoying what appeared to me as playfulness with which he teased his contemporaries, almost daring them to \u201cstep up!\u201d<\/p>\n
Before this point in my life, I had not really actively approached listening to jazz. By active, I mean visiting the evolution of jazz from dixieland, to swing and to bop, etc. Now, I started listening to one guy. Lennie Tristano. I began with the atlantic 1224 album Tristano and progressed through my fathers record collection. Was I mistaken, or was I hearing \u201crock\u201d licks coming out of the piano!? East Thirty-Second. That thing rocks\/swings, whatever\u2026 I was hooked on jazz, and it occurred through all these people in my family \u2013 a fusion of sorts.<\/p>\n
My father and his brother are heros of mine, for different reasons and I hold memories of all them very close and this is just part of the reason that I pay tribute to Lennie Tristano and my father, here at LennieTristano.com<\/p>\n
Last Updated on December 1, 2002<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why is this here? I have always loved music and it was always assumed, in my family, that you would take up an instrument and play. Piano lessons. I think I started too young. I never enjoyed the piano lessons and it was a chore for my parents to make me practice. They gave up … Continue reading Why is this here?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-51","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lennietristano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lennietristano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lennietristano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennietristano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennietristano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennietristano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennietristano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51\/revisions\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lennietristano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}