CHAPTER 6

The Art of Arrangement

A specific performer or original interpretation can make a song memorable; that process is not completely dependent upon the writer’s talents. When Ray Charles passed away in June 2004, several performances were held to honor him and his music. Jeff Clayton played on two of the events and commented, “Ray Charles knew how to pick good songs.” Though he was not known for his writing, he could turn almost any song into a classic. Ray Charles was an innovative singer and pianist who combined blues and gospel in a way that pioneered soul music and earned him the nickname given to him by Frank Sinatra, “the Genius.” A partial list of his hits includes “Hit the Road, Jack,” “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Busted,” “Makin’ Whoopee,” “I Got a Woman,” “Drown in My Own Tears,” “This Little Girl of Mine” (covered by the Everly Brothers), and “Let’s Get Stoned,” the first hit for the singer/songwriter team Ashford and Simpson. His version of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia on My Mind” was named the Georgia state song in 1979. One of the most moving recording was his rendition of “America the Beautiful.”

Ruth Brown could also pick good songs. Often she sang songs brought to her by fellow musicians. “Frank Wess would say, ‘This is a good song for you,’ the musicians would come out with the arrangement, and we’d swing.” She and Ray Charles were good friends, and he advised her wisely, “I won’t tell nobody, but I like you very much because you are singing what people know, and you are singing, and people know what you are singing about!”

Eric Reed observed in the first edition of this book that

Jazz musicians have recorded those songs of Sting, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, and such. A great song is a great song, and it depends on how it speaks to you. A musician did an arrangement of “One,” a Marvin Hamlisch song. I’m not a big fan of Hamlisch’s music, nor was I blown away with the guy’s arrangement of the song. There’s nothing that says that you can’t take that kind of a song, and if you have any intuition or creativity, you can make it into a masterpiece. Who knew that Ramsey Lewis would make a great hit out of “Wade in the Water,” an old Negro spiritual? He turned it into this crossover hit. It does not matter how complex or simple the song is.

One such song, covered through the years, by the songwriting team Jay Livingstone and Ray Evans, is “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).” It was introduced in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock film, The Man Who Knew Too Much, sung by Doris Day. It was a simple song that won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and became Day’s signature song, which she used for her sitcom (1968–1972), The Doris Day Show. In 1973, on their Fresh album, Sly and the Family Stone recorded their rendition, giving it a funky, soulful sound. The song has found a new, modern, urban iteration on bassist Marcus Miller’s Grammy-nominated release Laid Black (2018), which combines his signature sound with elements of present-day music drawing on the Black musical experience. I must admit that I like all three renditions. All resonate with me. The first two evoke memories of my youth; Marcus Miller’s version brings me into the present.

Arranging is the adaptation of an existing composition for performance on an instrument, voice, or a combination. Jazz is replete with prominent big band arrangers: Sammy Nestico and Neal Hefti for the Count Basie band, Billy Strayhorn with Duke Ellington, Benny Carter with Fletcher Henderson, and others. When Bobby Sanabria taught Manhattan School of Music’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, he focused on arranging. Out of that class came his award-winning adaptation of the masterpiece West Side Story. He recalled,

In terms of West Side Story Reimagined, the germ of it came about twelve years ago, when I did a concert at Manhattan School of Music with the ACJO, based on movie themes. It was called “Latin jazz in the movies.” The concert was constructed around melodies from different movies done in various Latin styles. The last song had to be the mambo scene from West Side Story as a cha-cha-cha. So I assigned the arrangement to my student, baritone sax player Danny Rivera (he was a budding arranger at that time who had showed a talent for it while in Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts). I told him what I wanted him to do, and he did it. The gym scene is composed of many aspects. One is the opening scene, where you see the gangs dancing to a slow blues in a big band style like the Count Basie Orchestra. When [the character] Tony walked into the gym, both bands were dancing (I told Danny to include the blues), then it morphed into the mambo. Before it goes into the mambo, there’s a kind social worker named Mr. Gladhand played by John Astin (of hit TV show The Addams Family fame, and I think this was his first film role) trying to bring both gangs together. He had them in a circle facing each other, so when the music stopped, they were to dance with the facing person. [The attempt at unity quickly faded away; it didn’t work.] The next scene was the music/dance exploding into the mambo—the most exciting scene in the movie and the only time you see both gangs in ecstasy . . . the reason why is that the music brought everyone together. Like in the 1950s (West Side Story debuted September 26, 1957), it united all cultures. For me, the thing was to capture the intensity of the Basie band, then exploding into the mambo but orchestrated and arranged for my big band and then to feature the musicians as a soloists. We tell the story without any lyrics. There’s very little singing (except on “Maria” and chanting on “Jet Song”). The whole story was told through the rhythms, not the lyrics. My intent was to update the score, which was a hard thing to do, because Leonard Bernstein’s music is so advanced; hard to do. It’s the most difficult score written for a Broadway show, as it combines lyrics, opera, chamber music, and vaudeville with jazz and Latin music and was done in a cohesive and authentic way. On top of that, West Side Story is really a ballet created by Jerome Robbins.

To put a fine point on arranging, Michael Wolff keeps it real simple. “Be cautious. Do not use the same chords.”

NOTES

• Don’t use the same chords.

• Be creative.

• Take chances.

• Add your voice to the piece.