The role isn’t exactly going to make him a movie star, and most filmgoers probably won’t even recognize the fellow who walks an imaginary dog at the beginning and end of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”
But for anyone who follows jazz, there’s no mistaking the bearded, bespectacled fellow holding a leash with no visible canine on the other end: saxophone-flute giant James Moody.
“Yes sir, Patrick do like his morning walk,” Moody exclaims in the film (twice), portraying a slightly pixilated character in Clint Eastwood’s film of John Berendt’s best-selling book.
That’s the extent of Moody’s dialogue in the movie, though he handles it as adroitly as any musical phrase to come out of his horn during the past half century or so.
“After we filmed my scenes, Clint looks at me and says, `Everything’s fine, Moody, just like you always do it,’ ” recalls the jazz legend turned neophyte actor.
“So I said, `Thanks. Do you think I’ll get an Oscar for that?’ “
Surely if there were an Academy Award for most enduring jazz star to make it onto film as a septuagenarian (tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon was a mere 63 when he starred in Bertrand Tavernier’s ” ‘Round Midnight”), Moody would walk away with it.
For those who study Eastwood’s films, the Moody cameo represents just the latest in a long string of musical references that dot the actor-director’s work. The deejay who spins jazz discs through the night in “Play Misty for Me,” the Secret Service agent who plays piano and listens to Miles Davis in “In the Line of Fire” and the illicit lovers who slow-dance to Johnny Hartman records in “The Bridges of Madison County” point to Eastwood’s long-running affection for the music of his youth.
Moody’s appearance, though, carries added meaning, for he was born in the same steamy, Southern town where “Midnight” is set, Savannah, Ga. He shares that birthplace with the late Johnny Mercer, whose songs (“Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Days of Wine and Roses” and many more) help set the melancholy tone for the film, a kind of murder-mystery dripping with Southern style.
For Moody, however, the belated movie bow represents something more than just another footnote in Eastwood’s sustained love affair with jazz. At age 72, Moody appears to be riding a new high in one of the more storied careers in jazz.
When he performed at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago last month, Moody played with a musical fervor and technical fluidity remarkable even by his high own standards. And his latest recording, “Moody Plays Mancini” (Warner Bros.), stands to enhance his popularity as jazz soloist, not only because of the commercial muscle of the label but thanks to the plush tone and lyric beauty of the music.
“I think he’s just carving it up right now,” says Chicagoan Mike Kocour, Moody’s pianist of choice whenever the saxophonist, long based on the West Coast, is in town.
“It continually amazes me all the new material that has been added to his vocabulary of playing. He seems to be a sponge.
“If you go back and listen to his older records and then the things he’s doing now–there’s certainly a voice there that doesn’t change, but his vocabulary has gotten very complex.”
That’s saying quite a bit, considering that Moody first emerged on the national jazz scene 51 years ago, playing in Dizzy Gillespie’s fabled bebop big band of the mid-’40s. Even then, the ensemble’s music was fantastically complex, its outrageously fast tempos, revolutionary chords and mercurial rhythms at the vanguard of jazz.
“When I started in that band, (Thelonious) Monk was the piano player, Kenny Clarke was the drummer, Milt Jackson on vibes, Ray Brown on bass,” remembers Moody, referring to an all-star cast representing the first generation of the volatile new music called bebop.
“I was young, dumb and didn’t know too much, and that’s good–because, like I always say, if I would have known (the stature of these musicians), I probably would have fainted.”
That Moody was able to hold his own–and then some–in this company seems incredible, considering the obstacles he had to overcome to get there. Born with a hearing impediment (he cannot detect certain frequencies and therefore speaks with what sounds like a lisp), Moody attended a school for the deaf in Newark, N.J.
“You see, I don’t know what I don’t hear, because I don’t hear it. So for me, I hear normal.”
In other words, Moody simply forged ahead, building his art on the sounds that he could hear and not fretting about those he couldn’t.
Still, by 18, an age when most jazz musicians are playing at a professional level, Moody barely could find his way around the tenor saxophone.
“When I went into the Air Force, the bandleader asked me to play my scales,” recalls Moody.
“So I played the C (Major) scale, and he looked at me and said, `Is that it?’
“I said, `Yeah.’
“And he said, `My boy, you’re in for a rude awakening–those other keys on the horn, you’re supposed to play those too.’ “
Eventually, Moody did, advancing from the Air Force Band to Gillespie’s outfit, where he absorbed the seemingly abstruse world of bebop as if it were second nature. By 1949, Moody had recorded one of the most profound tenor solos of all time, “I’m in the Mood for Love.”
Though it didn’t become a hit until 1952, when King Pleasure sang the solo on record as “Moody’s Mood for Love” (using Eddie Jefferson’s famous lyrics), it solidified Moody’s reputation as one of the great men of jazz.
“When I first heard that Moody record, I ranked it with (tenor saxophonist) Coleman Hawkins’ `Body and Soul,’ ” says Chicago tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, invoking another immortal solo.
“Every once in a while someone comes up with a solo that hits the spot, that’s so lyrical, that’s put together so well that everything just falls into place perfectly.
“That’s what Moody did, and it’s still one of those great moments in jazz.”
But Moody, for all his lyric gifts, wasn’t quite on easy street. After continued touring with Gillespie’s quintet in the ’60s, he faded from view, working the pit bands in Las Vegas. Elvis Presley, Ann-Margret, Liberace, Glen Campbell, Milton Berle, Liza Minnelli, Dinah Shore, Steve and Eydie–these were his leaders during the ’70s.
Yet Moody, characteristically, made the most of this scenario, regarding his Vegas stint as a chance to learn to read better and to absorb a range of music he might never have encountered.
Perhaps he was right, for when Moody re-emerged in the ’80s, he quickly became one of the most popular of jazz soloists, his exuberant stage manner and comical song renditions (including his hilarious female pantomime on “Moody’s Mood”) endearing him to a wider audience than many of his more dour colleagues could reach.
If there was a single thread that ran through all these stages of his life and music, it probably was his brotherly relationship with Gillespie.
“Dizzy meant an awful lot, and I miss him,” says Moody, whose confidant died in 1993, at age 75.
“I was with him when he passed–(trumpeter) Jon Faddis and (bassist) Ron Carter and I a few others were in the room,” adds Moody, who scoffs at stories that Gillespie listened to recordings of his own music, smiling as he expired.
“That’s all crap. Dizzy was just gasping for breath, trying to breathe. He was sitting in his chair, I had my arms around him, and I saw him take his last breath. The last one–like, peace.
“His eyes were all the way closed, he didn’t open them at all, and that was it.”
In some ways, Moody carries forth the spirit of Gillespie, both in his oft-comic stage manner and in the perpetually rejuvenating nature of his music. Just as Gillespie continued to extend his musical vocabulary and maintain his phenomenal technique, Moody never seems quite at rest.
“The hip thing is, I learned chords late in life, so I’m still not at my peak as far as reading is concerned,” says Moody.
“I’m still evolving, I still practice, I still want to get better on my instrument, and slowly but surely, I think I’ll get there.”
