Art Simmons - Boogie Woogie Piano Stylings LP (1959); Ursula Davis - Art Simmons in Paris (1996)
Ethnicky jazz to parade your snazz
It was 2007, my partner in experimental noise, Hellen and I had just plunked down the deposit for a 500 copy run of our LP on lavender vinyl, and now that our funds were near depleted we brainstormed "creative" ideas for packaging. It seemed we could do better (and hopefully cheaper) than professional printing or blank jackets. Almost the entire signal chain for the recording was DIY built from salvaged electronics and surplus parts* - mics, preamps, the cello pickup, distortion and modulation boxes, compressors, even the cables; something with a human touch seemed more appropriate? Large stickers, spraypaint/stencil, foldout poster, and bleeding actual blood on cardboard were all considered. A craigslist ad then caught my eye one day and in minutes I was in an unassuming San Leandro residential garage, stuffing a car trunk with hundreds of random LPs. The plan was to screen print Hellen's art over existing jackets (and leave the old records in too). There was something really fun and parasitic about this, and it was vaguely Crust-aligned, which is the way I felt about our band.
The mass movement of junk records is a world I don't understand. It feels like there's a cabal of old-guy dealers and hoarders in every town, with warehouses full of vinyl. Some of these guys give up, retire, and/or pass away, collections get liquidated and then some other guy buys them up? It's like cyclical commodity trafficking. Anyway, this nice East Bay retiree was up to his eyeballs in random but serviceable (for our purposes) LPs that he could not part with fast enough, and told me to name my price. I grabbed all that I could, barely making a dent in his on-hand inventory. In the aftermath, I think it came to 15 cents per record, which still beat the cost of new jackets.
Back at the Chinatown loft, now I was up to my eyeballs in thrift vinyl. I had indiscriminately loaded stacks of stuff without much regard for the content or genre, as it didn't really matter to me. Soundtracks, show tunes, pop vocal, novelty, sound effects, comedy. It seemed I now had an endless supply of physical listening material, and in the mess I did find many gems, including a few cool ‘70s jazz/fusion test presses, 4 or 5 different versions of West Side Story (ok not necessarily "gems" but I thought it was neat to have them), several Blue Note releases, and this hot slab:
There isn’t a surfeit of ready information on Art Simmons out there on the web; his Wikipedia page and obituary outline the life of an expatriate American jazz pianist eking out a living in post-WWII Paris. In her Art Simmons in Paris: A Biographical Sketch of an African-American in Paris during the 1950’s and 1960’s (in academic journal International Jazz Archives from 1996), Ursula Davis fills out the canvas with vivid (and often lurid) color. Through extensive interviews with assorted players, witnesses and Art himself, she is able to cast Simmons as the central scene-maker and fixer for the community of African Americans that got comfortable (and celebrated) in France during that period. This role had Art managing a teetering balance of: vibrant, revolutionary art; boozing; a steady traffic of Black celebrities, artists, and intellectuals; and frequent manipulations by a US Intelligence apparatus constantly on edge. They were paranoid of this group that had plenty of frank and critical things to say about racism Stateside (and how that could play into Lefty political movements and undermine US projection of power abroad), and the CIA could act without hesitation in sinister ways on foreign soil.
Davis’ piece is a fascinating read and I have it linked here (grab it before I get the cease and desist). However, overshadowed by the love affairs with heiresses and political intrigue, is Art’s art. After being drafted into the war, Simmons moved to Paris and studied at the Conservatory of Paris on the GI Bill. In his residencies at the city’s major clubs, Art played with every major figure and innovator in jazz, and is said to have capably worked in the gamut of styles, from traditional to the avant garde. He could play. The recorded evidence of Simmons’ abilities is unfortunately scant. A 1949 session with saxophonist James Moody was released on Blue Note; a 10”/LP of his own quartet was tracked in 1956 and released on the BAM label; Pianos Duet with French pianist Jack Dieval is from 1966; and I believe as a studio player he went uncredited supporting various singers and groups. I can’t find Boogie Woogie Piano Stylings from 1959 streaming anywhere.
I first got interested in barrelhouse-style piano as it was an outgrowth of blues collector- and reissue trends for a bit. Boogie Woogie Piano Stylings is not that exactly (though Simmons does cover Albert Ammons and Pinetop Smith on this record); Simmons seems more to be channeling that style through the modern (for the time) piano-based trio format, with covers and a batch of original tunes co-credited to Quincy Jones. For the Wing subsidiary of Mercury Records, this release seems to have been an easy-to-digest, novelty showcase of a nostalgic style, immaculately captured by their high tech recording facilities. Half of the back sleeve is curiously devoted to detailing all of the studio’s technical recording innovations; engineering dorks will delight in some of the claims. “Carbon composition type resistors are employed in the [Telefunken] W 66 [faders] to insure smooth and noiseless adjustments.” Was Wing schlepping recording consoles out of their back lot?
I don’t imagine BWPS moved a lot of units or blew any minds, or even got a mention in The Jazz Review. I’m the casual-ist of jazz listeners and I have my preferences among the accepted landmark or historical works, but this is something different. I have an affection for this record and love listening to it. It is distinctive, upbeat and has a palette cleansing effect on the genres that normally make up my listening diet; yet there are fine threads and an American DNA that connect it to that contemporary niche crud that is normally at the forefront of my attention. Boogie piano is rock n’ roll. The secret engine of Chuck Berry’s big records is not the guitar, it’s the piano. Some of my favorite electric bass guitar tones make it sound like the bass keys of a piano. The train-like rhythms match the rhythms of life. And the smoothness of those carbon comp resistors!
As Art tells it, the scene in Paris dies in 1968, concurrent with the revolution and street violence there that summer. The unionization of musicians meant that the US players could not find work, and mysteriously, Art “sees” something he declines to elaborate on, that permanently alters the course of his life. After a failed attempt at recreating the Paris experience in Spain, and a disasterous State Department tour of Algeria, wherein it is obvious but unsaid that the CIA was coercing Art to seek out the fugitive Eldridge Cleaver, Art trades Europe for his native West Virginia, and the piano for the bottle.
In the 70s and 80s, jazz graduated from the nightclubs to the ivory towers. I’m learning that the rise to prominence of many formally fringey cultural corners during the Cold War era was accomplished in concert with machinations of the US government. State Department-sponsored tours and exhibitions abroad seemed to have always had strategic and tactical objectives, but they were nonetheless lucrative for artists struggling to make ends meet and it also afforded them international exposure. For those willing to play ball, one could imagine that relationships with dignitaries, statesmen, and elites could be leveraged into faculty posts. For those African Americans in Paris that were more defiant, there was always the threat of passport non-renewal, restricted travel and/or deportation if certain messages and directives from the US Embassy were not passed or heeded. Art Simmons found his misadventures with US intelligence terrifying, and after moving back to the States, he remained in the isolated mountains of West Virginia until his passing in 2018.
Thanks for writing up this obscure album. My aunt owned this album, and I listened to it over and over. Interesting to read your take, and thanks also for linking to the article with interviews with Art Simmons.