{"id":10563,"date":"2015-02-02T18:19:27","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T23:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=10563"},"modified":"2015-02-02T18:53:47","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T23:53:47","slug":"dogs-on-the-inside-the-great-clark-terry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=10563","title":{"rendered":"Dogs on the Inside + The Great Clark Terry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DogsOnTheInside_poster\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Opening this Friday at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema<\/a> is Dogs on the Inside<\/a><\/strong> (2014), a tight little documentary about the Don\u2019t Throw Us Away<\/a> program in which inmates train rescued dogs prior to being adopted by families.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible not to be hit by the poignancy of the relationships between emotionally traumatized and physically abused & neglected dogs, and the inmates. Both are given equally time, with the filmmakers\u2019 message \u2013 everyone deserves a second chance \u2013 coming through loud and clear.<\/p>\n

Also reviewed is Anchor Bay\u2019s DVD of Keep on Keepin\u2019 On<\/a><\/strong> (2014), Alan Hicks\u2019 great documentary on Clark Terry, the now 94 year old jazz legend who continues to mentor young talent in spite of some serious health issues. Hicks began the doc when he noticed Terry and his latest student, pianist Justin Kauflin, were both in the process of losing their sight, yet as clich\u00e9d as it sounds, Hicks\u2019 film is a celebration of the human spirit, and passing knowledge selflessly to new generations to ensure an art form and the chronology of its history and pioneers are never forgotten.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been a huge jazz fan for years, but Terry was never among the trumpet players and composers to which I gravitated, something attributed to the sheer wealth of music that was available to take out from my local libraries. This is prior to their inclusion of CDs, so like many, I raided their LP collection to try out and see what exactly was jazz.<\/p>\n

I came to love it by accident, in a way. The library where I worked during high school had a Wynton Marsalis LP (1984\u2019s Hot House Flowers<\/strong>) which was earning a lot of radio play and critical praise. It was a slow, sultry style of performing old standards with a rich orchestra, and that style was initially what led me to jazz. Other albums, perhaps odd in retrospect, were Jackie Gleason\u2019s schmaltzy mood music LPs from the fifties & sixties (one may have been Music for Lovers Only<\/strong>), and that Linda Ronstadt \/ Nelson Riddle collaboration (1983\u2019s What\u2019s New<\/strong>) which won lots of awards and renewed an interest in fifties orchestral jazz ballads.<\/p>\n

These were mainstream albums \u2013 light, non-experimental, smooth productions for the masses \u2013 but that Marsalis LP led me \u00a0to his early work, plus his brother Brandford, whose aggressive style was electrifying.<\/p>\n

Riddle\u2019s album led to Frank Sinatra. The two worked on several classic LPs that were sometimes rather haunting, like Only the Lonley<\/strong>, and Riddle himself scored and orchestrated multiple soundtracks, including Pal Joey<\/a> <\/strong>(1957) with Sinatra, Stanley Kubrick\u2019s Lolita<\/a><\/strong> (1962), and Batman<\/strong> (1966). He also wrote the exquisite arrangements of twenties songs in Jack Clayton\u2019s version of The Great Gatsby <\/strong>(1974), which featured a still heartbreaking version of \u201cWhat\u2019ll I Do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jackie-Gleason-Music-To-Make-You-476144\"<\/a>

Yeah. Like you’ll be EXACTLY as misty as blondie.<\/p><\/div>\n

Gleason, well, he kind of became a marker of sleek schmaltz that I stopped listening to a while ago, but sleek also ties to lounge, which I\u2019d argue has some tendrils wrapped around Italian lounge music, which proliferated Italian film scores by composers such as Riz Ortolani (Mondo Cane<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cMore\u201d) and especially Stelvio Cipriani (Bay of Blood<\/a><\/strong>).<\/p>\n

In addition to the library, other \u2018mentors\u2019 to good music were a pair of co-workers at the store I worked during university, Chris & Tim; the former had a massive encyclopedic knowledge of jazz artists from the thirties thru the fifties, and the latter was a Mingus-ologist, or one who is fully immersed in all things Charles Mingus.<\/p>\n

Chris also introduced me to Stanley Turrentine, whose album Joyride<\/strong> (1965) was produced by Oliver Nelson<\/a>, perhaps one of jazz\u2019 greatest orchestrators, arrangers, and a soulful sax player in need of a serious rediscovery. (The reason the music for Last Tango in Paris<\/strong> is so gorgeous isn\u2019t just Gato Barbieri\u2019s compositions and performance; it\u2019s Nelson\u2019s stunning arrangements with string orchestra. Luxurious, erotic, and enveloping.)<\/p>\n

A number of Nelson\u2019s LPs were produced for Blue Note, who also released many classic Miles Davis LPs.<\/p>\n

So where was Clark Terry? In the background, because while I had heard maybe a little of his music, my ears were tuned to Miles Davis (the Bebop years, the Gil Evans collaboration, the aggressive live sets, and later the electrified Bitches Brew <\/strong>and its spawn); and the film music of Quincy Jones, plus his fifties and early sixties big band jazz albums.<\/p>\n

Jones and Davis were mentored under Terry, so already familiar with much of their work, I think it\u2019s about time to check out Clark Terry\u2019s canon.<\/p>\n

Last point: I\u2019m still waiting for albums of Quincy Jones\u2019 The Pawnbroker<\/strong> (1964) and In Cold Blood<\/strong> (1967) scores. Not the re-recorded albums, but the original recordings, because they are standout examples of jazz scores which perfectly weave their way through dark narratives, supporting troubled characters, and adding deep subtext to the kind of bruised psychologies shared by the inmates in\u00a0Dogs on the<\/strong> Inside<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Cheers,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviews of two affecting docs – Dogs on the Inside (starts this Friday at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema) + Clark Terry, mentor supreme in Keep on Keepin’ On (Anchor Bay), plus some quick thoughts on getting into jazz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10567,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[3321,3319,3342,2562,2563,3345,3323,3346,3343,605,3344,139,3347],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/DogsOnTheInside_featured.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-2Kn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10563"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10619,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10563\/revisions\/10619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}