Gary McFarland - AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

[JSngry]

Long story here...

I bought this 1969 Skye album 25 or so years ago because it had a bit of a "reputation" to it in ceratin quarters. Listened to it once or twice and put it away. In those days I wanted JAZZ and nothing but. That, this was not.

Still, there was this one haunting theme from the album that would come back to me at the oddest times. So I kept the album. Just never listened to it. Ever. Literally.

Until a few hours ago. Don't know why, just decided to pull it out and play it again.

And...I liked it a LOT more that I did 25 or so years ago. So much so that I played it a second time. And a third. And, yes, a fourth.

Now, this is in no way a "perfect" record. Far from it. A fair portion of it is taken up by fairly uninspired "rock" soloing by Eric Gale, from the days before he discovered(?) that glorously distinctive tone and style that he'd use to such great effect later on. OTOH, most of this soloing is accompanied by Chuck Rainey and Bernard Purdie, and Purdie in particular is a gas. Still, these solo sections don't do too much for me.

However...

There is some magnificent scoring for strings and horns on this album, and plenty of it. Taut, dissonant, and very melancholy, a resigned rage, if you will. OCTOBER SUITE is the closest McFarland use of this type of dissonance that I can refer to, but this is not really like that one. And that theme that has stayed with me through the years turns out to be one that McFarland bases almopst the entire piece on. He turns it inside out, over under and sideways. You can hear it even when it's not there. To me, that's a mark of a statement being made.

And this is definitely a "statement album", a "concept album". The concept being the ongoing destruction of the American environment by greed and shortsighted "convinience". And McFarland does not seem to have been particularly optimistic that thing were going to get better even for a little while. For 1969, that was somewhat counter to prevailing trends...

I recommend this album to people who like "that kind of thing". What "that kind of thing" is, though, makes this a "hesitant" recommendation. The music often resembles high quality film scoring, a genre that I definitely dig, but one that might not have too many fans on this board. But the moments of glory on this album are plentiful enough and strong enough that I can say if you go into with an idea what not to expect, that is, definitely not "jazz", and definitely not the "soft" sound that McFarland is somewhat famous for; as well as an idea what to expect, that is, highly programmatic music that is liable to draw upon any number of sources to make its particular point at any given time, music that "presents" itself rather than "reveals" itself, and music that is more often than not biting in its interior even when its "sunny" on its exterior; then this might be an album you can enjoy more than a little bit.

Like I said, flawed, but worth exploring for those so inclined. Guess it's OOP now in it's DCC CD issue, but used copies seem to abound on net-stores. And Da' Bastids had a Japanese version in stock last I looked. But I don't know that I'd recommend spending J-bucks of a price for it when used DCCs are around for significantly less.

25 or so years after I got this album, I finally GOT it. More proof that life is for living, I suppose.

[jazzbo]

I bought this recently on DCC cd from a board member. . . .

It's "Nice." I'm not sure I am someone who necessarily likes "that sort of thing" but I did enjoy this first few listens. . . or as you accurately state "portions" of this. There ARE some very interesting moments of music and some very intriguing writing. Worth checking out, but not worth losing sleep over if it is NOT a part of your collection!

[JSngry]

I thought that it was "nice" those 25 or so years ago, which is why it went unlistened to for the interim. A lot of the textures are very "soundtrackish", and at one brass segment sounds like a twisted version of the "Mayberry R.F.D." them. I heard the surface but payed no attention to the details and the "message", and just thought, "Oh, this is like that Pat Williams stuff". Now, Pat Williams is one HELLUVA writer, and if I want to hear interesting jazz-informed "commercial" writing, he's definitely on the go-to list. But I can't say that I'm in the mood for that kind of thing all that often, ESPECIALLY back in the day, when I was a Jazz Gestapo, going through phases of considering myself a miserable, failed human being for liking Benny Goodman and The Sex Pistols even a little bit. And this didn't seem to me to be as well-integrated or structurally sound as Pat Williams' work, either.

But either I've decided to accept my failings as a human being (very plausible), or else my perspective has broadened a little bit over the years (which, come to think of it, might be a result of accepting one's failings), because when I heard this last night, I "got" it almost immediately. Weird...

Definitely agree that it's not a "must have" item, not even slightly. But I do think that, those long Gale solo sections aside, that it's a pretty unique statement. Of course, "unique" does not equivocate with "profound", or even "enjoyable", but I do think that after having heard McFarland's early work and his later "soft-pop" stuff that this album occupies a unique place in his discography, and its a piece that, although neither fish nor fowl in terms of musical orientation, ultimately makes a musical statement that deserves a hearing today, at least by people who might appreciate waht McFarland is up to with this thing. It's just that there are so many qualifiers to make. It's a stylistic mish-mash, but it's thematically unified, so you gotta look at like something other than "regular" jazz/pop/ez-listening/jazz-rock/light modern classical/etc., because its all of those things at one time or another, yet ulitimately none of them. It's not "great", but then again, in it's own way and in it's own realm, maybe it is. I don't know.

I do know that there's enough really distinctive writing in some kind of "style" that anybody who can make sense of my ambiguity in recommending this probably would enjoy it. How's THAT for a litmus test?

[couw]

so it's like stoopid music without the fun and with boring gee tarrr solos instead?

[jazzbo]

I'll definitely revisit it soon, I don't plan on leaving it on the shelf for a long time because it's "nice"--I just have so much stuff to listen to that I am unable to really give anything prolonged attention right now, I'm hoping that changes in a few months! I didn't really "get a message" from it but that may come.

John, I don't really think it's "stoopid," but there are fun moments, including the guitar stuff.

[JSngry]

so it's like stoopid music without the fun and with boring gee tarrr solos instead?

No....

[couw]

so it's like stoopid music without the fun and with boring gee tarrr solos instead?

No....

damn! Not even close eh?

[JSngry]

I didn't really "get a message" from it but that may come.

Just curious - does the DCC reprint the original liner notes and the 1958 essay by Marya Mannes? They go a long way towards "setting the tone", I think.

[JSngry]

so it's like stoopid music without the fun and with boring gee tarrr solos instead?

No....

damn! Not even close eh?

Nope.

[couw]

reading your words I got the idea this is yet another of those strange unclassifiable ditties in the space age pop with a mad streak department.

I guess not.

[JSngry]

Oh, I see where you're coming from.

Well, yeah, ok. There are moments of "Space age Pop"-ness. but plenty other moments are anything but. McFarland had serious chops as a serious writer, regardless of how "soft" his work often was, and there's some of that in the mix here, too. Not SERIOUS, ya'know, but serious.

"Unclassifiable" definitely works, though. Definitely.

Now, if you want a stoopid-fun Gary McFarland record, try BUTTERSCOTCH RUM, and album he made with cartoonis/vocalist Peter Smith. People either love it or hate it (mostly hate it), but I myself love it in spite of itself. Imagine Brian Wilson at his very best meeting some hack singer-songwriter at his worst, and that'll give you the tip of the iceberg.

[couw]

many space age pop writers wrote some seriously good music. it just seems that the instrumentation often doesn't throw that fact in your face. plus that the "jazz" audience mostly wants to hear cool dudes solo, not strange guys write weird tunes.

I will not seek out Butterscotch right away, but the title has been stored in the back of the brain. I'll run into it sooner or later.

[doubleM]

I have a DCC copy of this bad-boy that it think I'll put on for respite from the oh-so-boring Brent Musberger's NFL commentary. Thanks for the reminder. If I'm not digging it, I might sell it on this board. I don't think I can wait 25 years!!

[jazzbo]

Oh yeah, the notes are there. I've just been on a sincere "fuck the notes" lately bit due to corpse-kicking, chest pounding and facts-bitching all over this place. I didn't read the notes, and the music itself really doesn't impart a "message" my way, which McFarland might not have liked to hear!

[doubleM]

Track #3 has a definite Bacharach vibe in the brass section, but without the endearing vocalist. So far, I'm not terribly impressed.

[jazzbo]

I just listened to this again as I did some chores. . . . My favorite part is the final movement, how it starts off spare and builds up. I like the writing for the strings and the trumpet best on this disc. It's a good recording and deserves to be listened to again. I'll dig it out next weekend if I remember.

Now its cousin McFarland with the "By the Time I get to Phoenix" on it. . . that has some really good and really bad stuff on it, almost in equal doese!

[Harold_Z]

I haven't listened to this in a long time - like Jim I listened to it a few times when I bought it wayyyyback upon it's original issue. Here's the deal with Eric - he was playing a telecaster on that date and he hated Telecasters. He was a Super 400 guy and an L5 guy - he DESPISED playing telecasters and only used them in the studios because it was the "in" guitar in the NYC studios at the time for the kind of dates he was doing and Eric felt he would lose dates if the producers didn't see a Telly. He would use the Telly for most dates and the Gibsons on dates where he was comfortable with the producer. He eventually felt established enough to use first an L5 and then a Super 400....and those are the axes that delivered the sound he wanted. He also started to charge double scale (again - to producers he felt he could) around that time. He felt if he worked half as much he'd make the same bread.

[JSngry]

Interesting info about Gale, Harold. I wondered about that...

Listened to this album over and over all last night (making up for lost time, I guess...) and the thing that struck me was how unified this thing is compositionally. That "Bachrach" theme (nicely put, btw), that little shy melody that speaks of being battered yet still, somehow, somewhere, retaining an inner optimism, albeit a pehaps fatalistic one, is pretty much the basis for the whole thing, and it gets treated every which kind of way, some/many not readily apparent until you realize that's what's going on. Plus, there's motifs, melodic and rhythmic, that get introduced one way and come back in totally different ways, in the foreground and in the background, all throughout the piece.

To me, that's where the "story" of the music is - following the themes and motifs through their various incarnations/permutations and seeing what "changes" they get put through. It's got this in common with the way some sountrack writers will base an entire film score around one theme and just do all sorts of things with it - invert it, reharmonize it, use the shape of the melody w/different notes, use the same notes w/a different melodic shape, etc. Fascinating to follow, at least for me, and not something I really grasped about this work until several listenings. The "casual" listen is not likely to reveal this to the extent that it occurs (he says from experience...), and maybe that type of listening ain't to everybody's liking, but if it is, this thing is rich in it.

One oddly touching moment - during a string variant of the main theme, a clarinet (iirc) plays a variant of "Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer True" that resolves into a harmony note of the other theme. Something about that gets to me, and it works really well in the context of the work's full title (America The Beautiful: An Account of its Disappearance). Something about that "days gone by, never to return" thing connects well to the concept of an once beautiful and relatively unspoiled country forever changed...

Funny, on the surface, a lot of this music is sort of faceless (and doesn't really encourage deeper, analytical listening), but the more you dig into the innards, the more meat there is. Glad I dug this one up and out after all these years. It's turning out to be very rewarding!