Harry´s Blog

I had the honor
of playing with Connie and Sam.

Connie sings the lyrics
as if they were her story,
and sometimes they are.

When you hear her sing
I Fall in Love too Easily ,
she makes you think
that it could be her story.

“I fall in love too easily
I fall in love too fast
I fall in love too terribly hard
For love to ever last.”

Sam’s guitar backs Connie
in a way that makes
the words and music one,
and I know that my brush stroke
has to bind that unison.

There’s no haste about it.
There’s no reason to hurry
if the words and music are right.

When you start at the beginning,
there’s no problem about
getting to the end.
The end comes
when you get to the end.

Ballads don’t have to be belted.
What they need is a soft touch.

You don’t have to force
an audience to listen.
You have to make an audience
want to listen.

That’s what it’s all about.

Who needs more than a guitar
and drums with a vocal?

That’s the way I felt
when I played

with Connie McKay
and Sam Kulok.

- Herbert Kuhner

Herbert Kuhner
from Swing Man and Women

Louis

Louis played a fine Dixie horn
then he went on to swing
and he swung.

And what’s more,
Sing, Sing, Sing
is to his credit,
as well as other tunes
like Robin Hood
and Oh Babe.

Whenever and whatever Louis played,
he played pretty for the people.

This Louis,
like his namesake,
was good at scat
and got his act going
and went on to be a performer.

He teemed up with Keely Smith
and tenor man Sam Butera.
Keely had a melodic foggy voice
and she and Louis
did jivey-jokey vocals
with Sam providing sassy riffs
in a rock ‘n’ roll style.

Every one of their numbers,
like Angelina and Oh Marie,
is a humdinger,
with Louis dishing out
pommarola
over spaghetti and meatballs,

I know they’re not jazz,
which is okay,
everything doesn’t have to be jazz.

But my question is
didn’t Louis, Keely and Sam
ever get the urge to jam?

Didn’t Louis Prima
ever have the itch
to go at it again?

Couldn’t there have been
one more recorded session?

Did those wonderful commercial pieces
cancel jazz out?

Why is it that once you sell something else,
there seems to be no coming back?

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 “Harry’s Fest”
Freitag 16. April, ab 19:00, Studio Leander Kaiser, 1100 Wien, Pernerstorfergasse 47/3b

Louie Bellson died on February 14th.
A great drummer has left us.

Here’ something I wrote about Louie.

Look! No Hands!

Two is better than one,
and that goes for bass drums.

Now there are double bass drum peddles
for one drum
so that you can use the hi-hat as well,
while you’re at it.

Ray McKinley started using two in ‘41.
That went almost unnoticed.
Louie Bellson made a big splash with them,
or rather big thuds, nine years later.
But to this credit, he credited Ray.

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Nat Hentoff

From Swing Men and Women by Herbert Kuhner

You could call Nat Hentoff,
the Dean of jazz critics.

I’ve already expressed my
admiration for him.

Nat has always been politically minded
and he certainly knows how to write
a political sentence,
as well as a sentence about music.

Nat is now “pro-life.”
He’s opposed to,
what some refer to
as murder before birth.

Abortion is not exactly
a desirable procedure,
but to quote the title
of an instrumental number
by Lester Young:
“I’m fer it!”
Or rather I’m for
keeping it legal.

If abortion is murder,
bringing unwanted children
into the world is murder double-fold.
Making abortion illegal
means bringing the knitting needle
into play again
and reviving the back street abortion.

Read more »

Harry Kuhner reads one of his great Jazz Poems about Billie Holiday and Lester Young. Taped live in Vienna 1999.