Dan Fogel: The Soul
Force of the Jazz Organ
By Nat Hentoff
As Duke
Ellington said, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” But deeper than swinging
is what musicians call “finding a groove” – a
pulse that immediately moves an audience and
lifts its spirits. One of the more infectiously
satisfying grooves in all of jazz are the
room-filling sounds of a combo led by a master
jazz organist as you’ll hear in Dan Fogel’s “15 West”.
Dan Fogel
is in the invigorating tradition of Jimmy Smith,
Wild Bill Davis, Groove Holmes, Jimmy McGriff
and the other legends of the jazz organ. But he
has his own passionate voice, and that didn’t
come from any academic setting where jazz was
taught in a classroom. Benny Carter once told
me, after visiting one of those colleges: “The
students can cut any score, but I can’t tell one
from the other.”
The
education Dan Fogel earned was from the sources
of the jazz life, in the clubs. As he says,
“This whole music trip started for me when I
began shining shoes in front of the club Harlem
on Kentucky Avenue in Atlantic City. At 10
years old, I couldn’t figure out why, when
Groove Holmes’s ‘Misty’ came on the radio, I
freaked out and wanted to play organ, Hammond
B-3, of course. I started piano lessons that
year.”
But the
organ was indeed his true calling in the jazz
life. As Pete Fallico wrote in the notes to
Dan’s earlier album “SOUL EYES,” back then
“Jazz organ coursework was unheard of in
academia, so hanging out on Kentucky Avenue was
the most effective and authentic way to learn.”
There’s a
special excitement in the dramatic art of the
jazz organ; and Dan, absorbing the sounds and
sights of the jazz organists who came to
Atlantic City, saw - as Pete Fallico noted –
“the theatrics of this music and witnessed the
magic, close up and real…He felt the groove deep
in his body. And from note one on this album,
the groove will reach into your body.
Also
contributing to Dan’s natural ease in
communicating with an audience are his roots in
a family of entertainers going back
generations. His aunt, Helen Fogel Forrest, was
one of the most personal and
musical of
the big-time band singers. I still can hear
her, in memory, with Benny Goodman and Artie
Shaw. And her authenticity in jazz was
connected to her understanding of the music’s
liberating force whose roots were in the
experience of its black progenitors.
When Helen
Forrest was with Artie Shaw, Billie Holiday was
the other singer on the band. But there were
theater and hotel owners who would not permit
Lady Day to sing in establishments with a white
band. So Helen Forrest refused to appear with
Artie Shaw in Jim Crow rooms until Billie
Holiday also came on stage.
It would
take me many pages to list all the places Dan
Fogel has played in his extensive career, as
well as the jazz luminaries with whom he has
worked. But his peers know his stature.
“Exceptionally gifted” is the demanding Max
Roach’s tribute. And from a younger generation,
Joey DeFrancesco says it plain: “Danny plays the
organ in the tradition of the masters.
But the
sounds that will surround you on “15 West” are
beyond category. He does, however, revive that
extra dimension of excitement that came from the
past masters of the jazz organ who played in big
– band style. As Dan explains, what you’ll hear
is “full organ” register
chording
and soloing that has been on records
since those early glory days of the organ.
His is the
kind of jazz that lifts my spirits when nothing
else will, making me
move with it, and
sometimes just shout in pleasure. And the
grooving is in all kinds of moods and tempos.
Dig the easeful, deeply relaxing feel of “It’s
You Or No One” and the intriguingly intimate
mood of “Out of This World”. On “Willow Weep
for Me,” turn the lights down low and yield to
the fulfillment of romance. So too with “I
Thought About You.” And then dance out the set
with “Broadway,” even if you think you don’t
know how to dance.
Adding to
the emotional, harmonic and rhythmic dimensions
of these embodiments of grooving are guitarist O’Donel Levy, tenor saxophonist Pete Chavez, and
drummer Webb Thomas.
Jazz, as
Max Roach, used to tell me, is the very
definition of democracy – collective
improvisation in which distinctly individual
voices interconnect into a transcendent whole.
O’Donel
Levy has worked with Jack McDuff but has headed
many groups of his own, as well as demonstrating
his range of skills on solo recordings.
Tenor
saxophonist Pete Chavez not only has a deep
sense of the rhythm waves of this music, but
also plays with a lyrical imagination on both
ballads and up tempos, creating a rainbow of
emotions.
As for Webb Thomas, to
stoke the fires of a Dan Fogel combo as its
drummer/percussionist, you must have not only
(expert) “chops” but also a deep appreciation of
the heritage on which you’ve built your own way
of telling jazz stories. When an interviewer
once asked Webb Thomas his favorite drummer, the
first one he mentioned was the dynamically
inventive Chick Webb, whose band included Ella
Fitzgerald as its teenage vocalist and – in a
battle of bands with Benny Goodman’s crew –
Chick Webb swung the Goodman players out of
contention. Webb Thomas honors the spirit of
Chick Webb by having developed his own prowess
as the groovemaker you hear in this session.
One of the clearest
definitions of jazz I’ve ever seen came from the
always surprising clarinetist, Pee Wee Russell:
“It sums down to a
certain group of guys – I don’t care where
they come from – that have a heart feeling
and a rhythm in their systems that you
couldn’t budge. A rhythm you couldn’t take
away from them even if they were in a
symphony organization. They could feel the
beat better than someone who has memorized
the book.”
On “15 West,” these
four guys who fit that definition are heard
totally “live” – in a 19th century
wooden church with a 50-feet ceiling. There are
no overdubs here. This natural of jazz comes
right at you, just as it came from Dan Fogel and
his fellow groovers!
-
Nat Hentoff
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