Happy Tunes

The late Arnie Lawrence, my musical guru, once said that he didn't like playing "I Can't Get Started," because the title and the lyrics are pessimistic. Arnie was definitely a man who found it easy to get started, which I'm not. But I don't share Arnie's aversion to that song, because it's also full of self-aggrandizement. Another song about having the world stacked up against you is "Everything Happens to Me," here sung with convincing self-pity by Chet Baker (his improvisation on the trumpet doesn't sound sad at all, by the way). I bet Arnie never played it once. Another song that seems to court disaster is "Comes Love," which is too cute to inspire sadness. This is Artie Shaw's version, a man to whom love came often enough.

The repertoire of standards also contains a bunch of optimistic songs, like "Happy Talk" from South Pacific, "I'm just a Lucky So and So," "What a Wonderful World" (which is played so often, it's beyond a cliche), and "Oh What a Beautiful Morning (a particularly corny version)." In general I'm fairly indifferent to the lyrics of the standards I play, aside from the title, which, I know, is an error. But in this historical moment, in the midst of a pandemic and a failing economy, it's not such a bad idea to sing something hopeful. When a song is happy, beyond its title, it carries you along.

A lot of Schubert's Lieder are pretty maudlin. Maybe you're supposed to feel good when you hear them: at least I'm not as miserable as him! And a lot of blues songs are also full of self-pity. But I've always been drawn to the peppy songs, like Louis Armstrong and his Hot Fives. It's inspiring that those oppressed black people were able to find and communicate so much joy in music.

Recently I've been working in several musical directions. With a pianist friend, I've been playing Piazzola pieces on the flute, and I've also been working on a pretty difficult set of flute sonatas by Locatelli. Piazzola tends to be a bit over the top, but it's great to be called upon to express so much emotion. Locatelli is inventive and decorative, fun to play (or it would be fun, if I could play up to speed). But the most fun for me is to sit down with the Realbook or something similar and play a bunch of standards. Just this morning I played "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" on the baritone sax and couldn't get over how brilliant Richard Rodgers was. Where the lyrics go, "and it looks like it's climbing clear up to the sky," the melody stays on the same note!

The other thing I do is play whatever I remember by heart, or just phrases, and then noodle around on the instrument. Sometimes I do something sort of technical, like playing all the pentatonic scales, but mainly I keep trying to connect my mind, my ears, and my instrument more and more closely. That makes me happy.