Duke Ellington (piano); Russell Procope, Jimmy Hamilton (alto saxophone, clarinet); Johnny Hodges (alto saxophone); Paul Gonsalves (tenor saxophone); Harry Carney (baritone saxophone); Cat Anderson, Mercer Ellington, Herbie Jones, Cootie Williams (trumpet); Clark Terry (flugelhorn); John Sanders, Lawrence Brown, Buster Cooper, Chuck Connors (trombone); Aaron Bell, Jeff Castleman (bass); Steve Little, Sam Woodyard (drums).
Las dos últimas composiciones escritas por
Billy Strayhorn fueron
U.M.M.G. (por Upper Manhattan Medical Group) y
Blood Count. Ambas fueron grabadas, junto con otras obras de Strayhorn, en el disco
…And His Mother Called Him Bill, por la
orquesta de Duke Ellington, pocos meses después del fallecimiento del músico el 31 de mayo de 1967.
Yo conocí este disco por un monográfico de la revista Cuadernos de Jazz, dedicado a Ellington, y pude comprarlo, en Rennes (!), ese mismo año. Me parece un disco sencillamente soberbio y absolutamente recomendable.
A propósito del tema Blood Count, escribe Robert Palmer en el librillo del disco lo siguiente:
“Blood Count in particular has an immediate and devastating impact, speaking simultaneously of fear, longing, resignation, pride, doubt, faith and many more apparently conflicting emotions, all balanced on the knife’s edge of a man’s life, all vividly brought to life whenever the music is heard.
This is one of Johnny Hodges’ greatest performances. He is still angry that Strayhorn has been taken, and for once the familiar adjectives –serene, unruffled– cannot be applied to his playing. He sings, from deep inside, the certain knowledge that any moment can be a man’s last moment, and his playing cuts right to the heart."
Esa es la interpretación que puede escucharse en el vídeo de esta entrada.
Stan Getz, Kenny Barron, Eddie del Barrio, Frank Zottoli, Alex Blake, Terri Lyne Carrington. (1990)
En las siguientes palabras del crítico John McDonough vemos que la vida de un músico de jazz no es tan "bonita" como uno podría imaginarse cuando era más joven. ¿Cuántas noches como éstas conocería Stan Getz, por poner un ejemplo? Como se habla del tema de Billy Strayhorn, he aquí esas palabras:
"The lyricism of Stan Getz is a wondrously compelling power. In the spring of 1987, he was playing in a elegant but tiny jam-packed Chicago spot called the Gold Star Sardine Bar. (“There’s no cover, no minimum, and no sardines,” I wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “unless you count the coustumers.”) The crowd was a noisy one as Getz galloped through various middle and up tempo pieces. Then he switched off the microphone and blew the first notes of Billy Strayhorn’s “Bloud Count.” Within eight bars, all you could hear from the floor was the ice cubes melting in the glasses."
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