Piano Jazz
Elvis 2003 appearance on the radio show Jazz Piano is due for release on July 12 and is now available for pre-order on Amazon
Elvis and the programmes host Marian McPartland spoke about it recently -
On Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz with Elvis Costello, recorded in 2003, the legendary pianist continues a more recent tradition of taping episodes with guests who represent genres of music beyond jazz. “My first reaction was one of surprise, as I am neither a jazz musician nor a pianist,” says Costello of receiving McPartland’s invitation. “However, I am an admirer of Marian McPartland, and her humor, ease of manner, and depth of understanding of the repertoire made this an absolute pleasure.”
“I like hearing somebody else take the song and do whatever they want,” says McPartland, encapsulating her philosophy at 87 years-old. “I try to play chords that will make him or her feel good and not get in their way, and listen a lot, and not play lots of runs.” As always, McPartland complements Costello with beautiful voicings and pithy solos, and elicits first-person testimony from the singer on the ways in which jazz has influenced his own aesthetic.
“We had a wonderful time, because everything he sang was something that I knew well,” McPartland says. “I had never met Elvis, and I found him a very charming guy. We sat and talked about tunes and keys, and just did one after another. It was all very easy.”
The eight-tune program primarily features “blue ballads,” including two Costello originals. Each song connects in some way to Costello’s personal history, and he sings them in a velvet-to-husky baritone, resonant with vibrato, which he deploys with in-the-moment presence.
“I have never been tempted to record a ‘Standards’ album, but I have recorded at least an album’s worth of such material over the years,” says Costello, who first reached a mass audience playing Punk-inflected Rock-and-Roll two years before Piano Jazz kicked off. “Revisiting songs I had known my whole life, such as ‘My Funny Valentine,’ which I recorded 25 years previously, was exactly what this opportunity was all about. The feeling for songs changes in time just as the voice changes. ”
Aside from “My Funny Valentine,” Costello reprises earlier versions of “Gloomy Sunday,” “They Didn’t Believe Me,” “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” “The Very Thought Of You,” and his own standard “Almost Blue.” He concludes the program with the then-unreleased “I’m In The Mood Again,” from North, which Costello was preparing at the time of this recording. The repertoire on that album contains, in Costello’s words, “harmonies, instrumental timbres and rhythms derived from jazz, but they are just songs and music that I imagined.”
After Costello’s final breath on “The Very Thought of You,” McPartland remarks, “You did that like a jazz singer,” referring to his fresh phrasing and identifiable-in-one-note sound. “I might have suggested we perform Mingus’ ‘Weird Nightmare’ or one of my lyrics for Mingus’ ‘Self-Portrait In Three Colors’ or Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Blood Count,’” Costello says. “But then we would have no repertoire for a return appearance on the show.”