Resources
WARDELL GRAY RELATED LINKS:
Jazz on the Tube Audio Interview (2019)
Jazz Institute of Chicago
WARDELL GRAY DISCOGRAPHYS:
EASY SWING the Wardell Gray Discography by Coover Gazdar
available from Arthur L. Newman, Tel.# 714 968-3706
WARDELL GRAY PUBLICATIONS:
Bernhardt, Milt. "A Day in the Life of a Musician on the Road"
The Bandstand. January 25, 1989
Grogan, David W. "Frank Morgan"
Matthews, Paul B. and Susan F. "Eddie Bert: Interview Part One"
Cadence. January 1992
Lucraft, Howard. "Wardell Gray Verdict: 'Accidental'"
Melody Maker. June 11, 1955
James, Michael. "Wardell Grey"
Ten Modern Jazzmen. (Cassell) 1960
Ladenson, Mark. "Remembering Wardell Gray A Fone Remeniscence"
Coda Magazine. Issue 227, August/September 1989
Morgan, Alun. "The Master Swingers! Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray"
Friedwald, Will. "The Hunt For Wardell Gray"
Voice Jazz Special. June 21, 1988
Meeker, David. "Jazz in the Movies"
New York, DeCapo Press, Inc. 1981
Hawes, Hampton and Asher, Don. "Raise Up Off Me"
New York, DeCapo Press, Inc. 1972
Gitler, Ira. "Swing to Bop: An Oral History Of The Transition In Jazz In The 1940's"
New York, Oxford University Press. 1985
Gitler, Ira. "Jazz Masters Of The 40's"
New York, DeCapo Press, Inc. 1966
Gordon, Robert. "Jazz West Coast"
London, Quartet Books. 1986
Reviews:
Daily Hampshire Gazette 9/30/94-
Eulogy to a Talent Lost too Soon, by Bruce Watson
If a soul can be blown through a tenor sax, then Wardell Gray sent his
soul soaring, only to be forgotten. But Hampshire College filmmaker
Abraham Ravett sensed Gray's soul the first time he heard the late musician
play.
"I was just astounded by the quality of his playing," Ravett said. "Who
was this guy? I'd never heard of him."
Though he performed with jazz legends from Count Basie to Charlie Parker,
Gray, who died at 34, is scarcely a household name in jazz circles. Now
his music will come to light again in Ravett's film, "Forgotten Tenor."
Ravett's film will be shown at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow in Wright Hall at Smith
College, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday in Stirn Auditorium at Amherst College and at
7:30 p.m. Oct. 8 in Franklin Paterson Hall at Hampshire College. Admission
is free and open to the public. Donations will be accepted for a memorial
fund to purchase a headstone for Gray's gravesite in Detroit.
Ravett's two-hour experimental film is not a traditional documentary.
Though it includes footage of Gray performing with Count Basie and
interviews with several musicians and friends who knew him, the film
explores both Gray and the filmmaker's labor in piecing together a forgotten life.
"I wanted to acknowledge in a self-reflective manner, the process of
constructing a life from archives, letters and phone calls," said Ravett.
From a few tunes heard on a local jazz program several years ago, Ravett
built his film piece by piece. His search for the forgotten tenor began
when he learned of a forgotten medium-- Snader Transcriptions. These
three-minute film segments, recorded in the l940s, were once playable in
bars and record stores for 10 cents. The precursor to music videos, they
provided Ravett with his visual introduction to Gray. And they provide
viewers with their first glimpse of Grays smooth, melodic genius in the
film.
"That clip where he plays a solo on 'I Cried for You' just drew me right
in," Ravett said. "I could watch it endlessly."
When he finished watching, Ravett began to track down the other musicians
performing with Gray. He found and interviewed four, including trumpet
legend Clark Terry. But along with the interviews, the film traces
Ravett's search for Gray's past, blending musical vignettes and interviews
with recordings of futile phone calls, outtakes from interviews, and scenes of Ravett raking leaves. In one memorable scene, one of Gray's former wives negotiates with Ravett for a percentage of the film's profits.
"A film is not seamlessly constructed by some voice that comes from on
high," Ravett said. "So many things go on - negotiations over money, people
who wouldn't talk to me, people who were too sick to talk. It comes across
not as a story of Wardell Cray but as a mosaic of his time and what it
meant to be an itinerant African-American musician in the '40s."
Despite Gray's involvement with drugs and his violent death, "Forgotten
Tenor" does not portray the musician as a romantic or tragic figure.
Instead, it relies on the memories of people who knew him - his first wife
reading a love letter while Ravett plays with still photos of old Chicago,
fellow musicians remembering Gray but refusing to talk because "it was a
long time ago," and Gray himself blowing his soul through his sax.
Why do so few remember Wardell Gray? "It's a matter of circumstance,"
Ravett said. "He was one of the pre-eminent players of his day, but he
died at an early age. As his wife says the times weren't right for him. He didn't have the opportunity to record enough."
"We tend to talk about those that are the best, the top in any art form,"
Ravett said. "But there are always multiple histories and multiple
contributions made in art and it's important to record those as well."
Rochester, NY City Newspaper 8/7/96-
A Remembrance of a Forgotten Tenor, by Dan Bindert
With the re-emergence of heroin as the drug of choice for musicians with
an appetite for self-destruction, it's no longer surprising to hear that
another young rocker has fallen victim to it. Likewise, in May of 1955,
news of jazz saxophonist Wardell Gray's drug-related demise probably
wasn't shocking. The 34-year-old Gray died only three months after jazz
great Charlie Parker, who was also 34.
Gray's death, in fact, may not have been news at all. While he was an
important figure during the bop era, to the general public he was
basically an unknown. He died under mysterious circumstances: he had a
blow to the head, a broken neck, and possibly a heroin overdose, and his
body was dumped into a patch of weeds a few miles outside Las Vegas. His
death was hardly even investigated by the authorities, however. He was
only the latest in a long line of dead boppers.
A further look into Gray's death, and perhaps more importantly, a look
into his music and his life, has been a long time coming. On Saturday,
August 10, at 8 p.m., a 1994 documentary on Gray, Forgotten Tenor, will be
screened for the first time locally at the Dryden Theatre at George
Eastman House. Filmmaker Abraham Ravett will be on hand to introduce the
film, as well as answer questions afterwards.
Ravett, who teaches filmmaking and photography at Hampshire College in
Amherst, Massachusetts, spent five years working on the film. Forgotten
Tenor is his first film focusing on a musical subject.
"I don't necessarily see it as a 'jazz film,"' says Ravett, "though it
does highlight and pay tribute to an unheralded musician. I think what led to my making this film was a program I heard on the radio 10 or 15 years ago highlighting Wardell Gray. I had never heard of him before, even though I had been listening to this music for a number of years, and I just loved the way he played."
"What really interested me was the way that he died," says Ravett. "It was
not just the circumstances under which he died, but it was the idea that
here was this great musician, just like there are great scientists, and
great talents everywhere, but we don't know about them. Why? What are the
historical implications of why we know about somebody in history or don't
know about them?"
"The notion of unheralded lives: there are people who live their lives and
make their contribution and then just go away. Maybe they are killed, or
they disappear, or just pass on and we never know about them. I'm really
interested in the idea of whose lives we continue to remember and whose we
forget. That idea got me interested in Wardell Gray, to find out more
about him and his story. He is a musician, and it's a film about a
musician, but it is also about paying tribute to an unheralded life."
Gray's life began in Oklahoma City, and while he grew up in Detroit, he is
best remembered for the jazz recordings he made while on the West
Coast--specifically in Los Angeles--during the late '40s. It was in LA in
1947 that Gray played alongside Dexter Gordon on "The Chase" and "The
Hunt," two of the classic tenor saxophone battles of bobop's glory years.
His solo on "Twisted" was the basis for an Annie Ross "vocalese" classic,
which has become something of a jazz standard over the years.
While he often worked on his own during his short career, Gray also did
stints in a number of prominent bands, including groups led by Earl Hines,
Billy Eckstine, Tadd Dameron, and Louis Bellson.
Gray was with a small Count Basie group around 1950 when it recorded a
series of musical film shorts (part of a series known as the "Snader
Telescriptions"), which make up some of the only live-action performances
of Gray in existence. Ravett says witnessing Gray's solo on "I Cried For
You," sung by Helen Humes and performed by the Basie band, helped spur him on to making the documentary.
"After many, many attempts, I finally was able to locate this private
collector in New York City who allowed me to look at the 'Snader
Telescriptions,'" says Ravett. "When I watched them, Wardell's playing
just really knocked me out. His melodic sense, his brooding style, his
beautiful lyrical tone--it really got me more interested."
The only other live-action footage of Gray to be found was a series of
home movies, shot on 8 mm film by Eddie Bert. Bert played trombone in the
Benny Goodman band during the late '40s, when Wardell Gray had joined the band as a part of Goodman's "bop experiment." Bert had carried his movie camera with him while traveling with the band and shot film while the band was offstage.
In addition to that footage, Ravettwas able to obtain the use of an
extensive collection of private photographs from one of Gray's former
wives. Ravett also filmed interviews with family members and friends,
including musicians like Art Farmer, Clark Terry, and Teddy Edwards, all
of whom helped unravel Gray's life and death.
Forgotten Tenor, Ravett stresses, is a fairly unconventional documentary.
Ravett himself and his search forWardell Gray's story become part of the
film.With a running time of slightly over two hours, "it can be challenging
to watch," says Ravett. "Some of the scenes were long, but I allowed them
to unfold over time. There is also a 13-minute musical interlude with only
shifting gradations of color on screen. Some people may be taken aback by
that."
"And of courseWardell Gray is not exactly on people's Top 10 1ists as a
major figure," says Ravett. "I may have made a film that takes an obscure
figure and...," Ravett laughs: "I hope I haven't made him more obscure."
"But," he says, "I'm not interested in profiling Louis Armstrong on film
again. We all know what Louis Armstrong contributed. There's no doubt
about it. I'm interested in people who made a contribution but whose
contribution may not have been quite that stellar. I don't think history
is written only by the greats. I think Wardell Gray was a wonderful
contributor to the evolution of this music."
Village Voice 12/3/96-
Forgotten Tenor
Demonstrating the process of oral history, avant-documentarian Abraham Ravett constructs the life of a largely unknown bebop saxophonist out of a few film traces, some fading memories, and a handful of soaring records. All that's missing from this self interrogating, experimental bio pic is the story of Ravett's own fascination with the material--but then that's the movie itself. Friday through Sunday, Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, 505-5181.
Pacific Film Archive 9/15/96-
Film Notes, by Kathy Geritz
Like many of his films, Ravett's Forgotten Tenor is about remembering and
forgetting; its focus is on the life of a largely unknown bebop
saxophonist who was a contemporary of Count Basie and Charlie Parker.
Ravett is interested in why some figures are inscribed in history and
others are not, but he is primarily concerned with the process of
investigating a person's life--the attempt to construct a vision of a figure
from incomplete and fragmentary documents. Wardell Gray's story is pieced
together from both willing and reluctant witnesses, film snippets,
personal letters, home movies and photographs, and a number of incredible
recordings. The inevitable gap between a life lived and a life remembered
is suggested by Ravett's use of animation and recreations. Whether trying
to connect with a potential interviewee by phone, examining a photograph,
or explaining the economics of avant-garde productions, Ravett reveals the
stories behind oral histories. His portrait not only provides a face to
the sound, it evokes a sense of what it is like to be a black musician in
postwar America.
Abraham Ravett has been making films for over forty years and
teaches at Hampshire College.