Music Notes 3-3-24

This week we welcome back our fabulous band.  The postlude music this week will be provided by pianist Jeff Colella.  Jeff was conductor and pianist for Lou Rawls for 16 years and for Jack Jones for several years before that.  His legendary piano is all over the musical world and he has recorded several jazz albums, excerpts of which you can listen to here - http://jeffcolella.com/music/ .  The piece he’ll be playing is Lotus Blossom by jazz great Billy Strayhorn.  We are very lucky to have him with us and sharing his music.

Duke Ellington was a very spiritual man, who carried a Bible and crucifix everywhere he went.  He studied scripture every day, and so when he was approached in 1962 to create and execute a concert of music for the opening of the new Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, it was dream come true.  Finally, he was allowed to write the music HE wanted to write – it didn’t have to be commercial to make the publishers happy, and it didn’t have to be 2 ½ minutes long to play on the radio.  Most of all, it could be music that came from his soul, a soul that was deeply rooted in the church.  He undertook what he called “the most important work I’ve ever done” and created what ultimately became three concerts that became known as “The Sacred Concerts”.  He stated publicly many times that he was trying to avoid writing “a mass”, and observers at the time commented that he brought the Cotton Club revue to the church.  The music was familiar Ellington, and yet had modern esoteric elements that even today make music aficionados sit up and take notice.  The most lasting thing to come out of all that is the song we know from the hymn book, known variously as “Come Sunday” or “Savior God Above”.  Like all good composers, he took that tune and reused it in a variety of places in the concert, including the tap dance number “David Danced” – yes, there were tap dancers in church.  Today’s anthem, Ain’t But The One, is the 4th piece in the original concert.  The original 1965 concert was filmed and can be seen on YouTube.

How Marvelous! How Wonderful! was composed by Charles Hutchinson Gabriel (1856-1932) in 1905.  It is also known by the first line “I stand amazed”.  The tune My Saviors Love shows up in 127 hymnals.  He is said to have composed between 7,000 and 8,000 songs, which were published under several pseudonyms, including Charlotte G. Homer, H. A. Henry, and S. B. Jackson.  There is one folklore story, that the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Wilton (Pastor Pollock or McAulay) once saw Gabriel walking in town early in the week. He asked Gabriel if he knew a good song to go along with his sermon.  The pastor shared the sermon topic and by the end of the week the boy had written a song for that Sunday, words and music. The Rev. N. A. McAulay was a pastor at the Wilton church for many years, and it is also said that young Gabriel wrote the music for one of McAulay's songs. The song, How Could It Be, was later published in Songs for Service, edited by Gabriel, with the music being credited to "Charles H. Marsh," possibly one of Gabriel's pseudonyms. He eventually served as pastor of Grace Methodist Episcopal Church in San Francisco.  He died in Hollywood and was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1982.

Jesus Christ Superstar began as a concept album in the late 1960’s, with Webber working with his school friend Tim Rice.  They began recording the music piecemeal, and released I Don’t Know How To Love Him as a single in 1970, which peaked at #28 in the U.S in 1971.  The lead role of Jesus was sung by Ian Gillan, who had just joined the English rock band Deep Purple and brought with him a degree of fame and following to the project.  Mary Magdalene was sung by Yvonne Elliman, who was born in Honolulu (Irish father, Japanese mother) and was singing in London clubs at the time she was discovered by Webber and Rice.  She and Barry Dennen (Pilate) were the only cast members to do the original concept album of 1970, the first authorized stage performance at the Pittsburgh Civic Auditorium in July of 1971, the original Broadway production, which opened in October of 1971, and the movie, which was released in 1973 (starring Ted Neeley as Jesus, who was the Jesus understudy for the original Broadway production).  Music director on the movie was Andre Previn, who began his career scoring movies and was hired to be the music director for the London Symphony in 1968.  He told me about his experience working on the movie while we were preparing a performance of the Britten Spring Symphony.  “I was knee-deep in the London Symphony when Norman Jewison called and told me he needed me for a movie.  I told him I didn’t have time.  He said “It’s Jesus Christ Superstar” and I said “Then especially NO, because I hate the piece”.  He told me that Webber had insisted on being music director and they had spent 18 three hour sessions with the London Philharmonic and had only 2½ minutes of usable music.  I agreed to go look at what they had, and when I saw it, I told him that the problem was that the music wasn’t laid out for a movie (aside – all movie music has to be time-coded, so that it can be syncopated to the action on the screen).  After much groveling, I told him that I would do it, but I needed 2 orchestrators and 6 copyists at my disposal immediately, there was a specific music editor that he would fly out from Hollywood first class and, sorry to be crass, but it’s going to cost you a lot of money.  Jewison said “Fine.  Right now, I have no movie”.  I rewrote the score and we recorded it in 6 weeks.”  I Don’t Know How To Love Him was originally written in 1967 with different lyrics and called Kansas Morning (people in the know commented on how similar the melody sounded to a theme from Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor).  The lyrics were re-written, and the piece re-named, in January of 1970 to give the character of Mary Magdalene a primary solo song.  When presented with the song, Yvonne Elliman was puzzled by the romantic nature of the lyrics, because she thought that the Mary she’d been recruited to play was Jesus’ mother.  The song is one of those rare songs to have 2 versions reach the top 40 of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart at the same time - Elliman’s at #28 and Helen Reddy’s cover at #13.  Recorded in 1 take in June 1970 at Olympic Studios in London, it has been universally acclaimed as the high point in the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack since the album's September 1970 release.  In 2003, The Rough Guide to Cult Pop would assess Elliman's performance: "It's rare to hear a singer combine such power and purity of tone in one song, and none of the famous singers who have covered this ballad since have come close."