Surprise No. 1: After 44 years in jazz, and records as a sideman on at least 11 labels, Jodie Christian at last has an album under his leadership. The new CD is titled ”Experience,” issued by Delmark, and-surprise No. 2-it`s a solo piano collection.
True, discreet bass and drums join on three of the 10 songs, but
”Experience” mostly is Christian alone with his piano and imagination. The result is music with his characteristic outgoing qualities, bubbling and splashing streams of bop melody.
Lyricism is at the heart of Christian`s art, so this music is generous and very active, with a crystal touch, but without extraneous flourishes.
He doesn`t often play solo piano, for throughout most of his career he has been among the most in-demand rhythm section players on the large, lively Chicago jazz scene.
Christian`s a favorite because he offers the same ingenuity and sensitivity to young lions such as trumpeter Brad Goode and saxman Art Porter as he does to major, longtime jazz stars on tour-and he has certainly accompanied many stars over the years.
They`ve included Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Ira Sullivan and Johnny Griffin, with whom Christian made his first records in 1958. He`s played with swing giants Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter (who, after their third song together, raved, ”A great pianist!”).
Most often, though, Christian plays with modernists, from fiery boppers like Gene Ammons and James Moody to cool alto saxist Lee Konitz and free jazz innovator Roscoe Mitchell.
How does Christian work with such diverse musicians? ”As a rhythm player, you`re always trying to complement that front man, and you have to understand what he`s doing. If he`s a fluent player, I lay down chords, pushing him. But if he plays in spurts, like Lee Konitz, space is important too; sometimes you might have to breathe with him, so it`s more or less a conversation.
”Sometimes when you`re playing, everything is exciting, everything is moving, and all you have to do is just create. Other times it`s like pulling teeth. At a certain point, your subconscious takes over in your playing;
especially if you`re playing up-tempo, your hands take over. It`s when you play a ballad that you have time to think-then you can really create something.”
”I always knew I wanted to play piano.” Christian said. His mother played piano and directed a choir in church, and his father played piano in speakeasies. During the Depression, before Christian was old enough to attend school, he earned money by dancing-at taverns near the steel mills on Fridays, paydays, and at amateur shows in theaters on Saturdays.
He attended the Chicago School of Music and Crane Junior College, but
”most of the things I learned were in the street, from other musicians, singers,” he says.
In his youth he joined choirs that ”sang everything from light opera to blues. I sang all the parts sometimes, because I had a real high voice.” He credits his early singing for his harmonic quickness: ”A lot of times I wouldn`t know a song, but I could anticipate what was coming next because I had experience doing that, singing parts.”
Since then, the 60-year-old Christian has played engagements in every kind of venue from clip joints and strip joints (”Eight hours of continuous music, and I never took an intermission. When it was over, I couldn`t get up”) to international concerts, festivals, nightclubs.
On tour with Hawkins in the 1960s, he played in a Milwaukee club owned by a jukebox distributor: ”We got paid for that week in change. We had to sit there four or five hours and count that bag of money.”
He was a mainstay of two historic Chicago bands, led by Ira Sullivan and Eddie Harris, and he was among the founders of Chicago`s bold free jazz cooperative Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.
Nor is Christian`s versatility limited to his piano music. In ”Blues Holiday,” on the ”Experience” CD, he whistles a bebop solo. ”I`ve always wanted to do that. I wanted to dance on the record, too, but I`ll have to save that for my public appearances. And I sang a commercial-in fact, when I saw the check, I almost decided to stop playing and start singing!”
