The dominant view of greatness
in a capitalist society
(and let's face it, the entire
world is a capitalist society
at this point) is that of the Triumphant
Hero. The individual who overcomes adversity, defeats the elements, and
is just plain better than everyone else.
But there are other ways to be great.
Take Mal Waldron, who died
on Monday in Brussels. He achieved greatness by being the sulfur,
not the match. He was the spark for a whole slew of Triumphant Hero types,
from Billy Holiday to John Coltrane to Frank
O'Hara, all of whom died young. He lived to be 77, though apparently he
had to move in with our European
friends to do it.
Mal Waldron's GoogObit below
shows how he served the art of Billy
Holiday to John Coltrane,
but it doesn't mention the way I came to know Mal Waldron. I was an astonished
poetry student when I first read one of the greatest poems in the American language,
Frank O'Hara's "The Day Lady Died", which ends with the vision of
Mal Waldron accompanying greatness.
**********************************************************
The Day Lady Died
It is 12:20 in New York
a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don't know the people who will feed me
I walk up the muggy street
beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn't even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Mike I just stroll
into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it
and I am sweating a lot
by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
From Lunch
Poems, by Frank O'Hara, published by City
Lights
**********************************************************
Mal
Waldron, Composer of the Jazz Ballad 'Soul Eyes,' Is Dead at 77
December 6, 2002
By BEN RATLIFF
Mal Waldron, Billie
Holiday's last accompanist
and the composer of the
jazz classic "Soul Eyes," died on Monday in Brussels,
where he had lived for about a decade. He was 77.
The cause was cancer, his
European management company said.
Mr. Waldron's long
career as a pianist and arranger included leading his own bands around the
world. For much of the last four decades he played and lived mostly in Europe,
but his recordings with companions like Eric
Dolphy, John Coltrane
and Steve
Lacy kept his ideas in the ears of American fans, especially other musicians.
Listening to Mr. Waldron
was a fascinatingly dry, dark pleasure. He belonged to no particular school
or style, and his curt piano style reflected that outsider status. He repeated
short motifs endlessly, as if meaning to grind them into the keyboard; a stylistic
descendant of Thelonious Monk,
he pared down Monk's already quite cropped melodic lines to percussive nubs.
He focused his attention toward the lower half of the keyboard, and completely
avoided sentimentality.
Toward the end of his life
he had a soft, muffled keyboard sound, almost as if he were playing parlor
music — but a kind of parlor music infused with bebop
harmony and rhythm.
Mr. Waldron grew up in New
York and graduated from Queens
College with a bachelor's
degree in composition.
His first recordings were with Ike
Quebec in 1950,
and later in the 50's he joined Charles
Mingus's Jazz Workshop. By 1956 he had formed his own quintet and became
a mainstay of Prestige
Records.
Though the musicians were
chosen by Bob Weinstock,
the head of that label, Mr. Waldron was frequently called upon to create on-the-spot
themes for albums by Gene
Ammons, among others. Between 1956 and 1963, he appeared on more than 40
Prestige albums, including several by Coltrane, Dolphy and Jackie
McLean. It was also during that period, from 1957 to 1959, that Mr. Waldron
worked in Holiday's band.
His ballad "Soul Eyes"
— first recorded on "Interplay
for Two Trumpets and Two Tenors" (1957), then magnificently recast
by Coltrane in 1962 on the album "Coltrane"
— was Mr. Waldron's most famous composition and has been part of the basic
repertory of jazz performers ever since.
He is survived by seven
children and two grandchildren.
Like so many jazz musicians
in New York, Mr. Waldron fell into drug use; he overdosed on heroin in 1963.
His recovery came slowly, and he said later that he did not realize how badly
the overdose had affected him until he tried to play in a recording session
with Max Roach and could not remember
much about the keyboard aside from the position of middle C. He made no recordings
from 1963 to 1966, and had to teach himself how to play again, partly by listening
to his own records.
While working at the Five
Spot in New York, where he took part in some of the great live jazz recordings
with the Dolphy quintet in 1961, he met Mr. Lacy, the saxophonist, who would
be one of his most consistent colleagues. They specialized in duet performances,
often playing the music of Monk and, together with the bassist Jean-Jacques
Avenel, they recorded "One
More Time" (Sketch) last January in France.
In 1965 Mr. Waldron moved
to Europe, eventually settling in Munich.
In the 1990's he relocated to Brussels, where he kept up a career that often
took him throughout Europe and to Japan
and for a time to the United States, though less so during the last decade.
A brown cigarette between
his long fingers was part of his image, along with his tuft of white hair. After
many jazz clubs in the United States banned smoking in the mid-90's, he seldom
played in them.
Copyright
2002 New York Times
10:25:25 AM 
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