Watch What Happens

Composer(s)

Michel Legrand
(b Paris, 24 Feb 1932). French composer and arranger. A musical prodigy, Legrand enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11. He attended from 1943 to 1950, studied conducting with Nadia Boulanger and harmony with Henri Chaland, and graduated as a first-prize winner in composition. In the 1950s, he became a popular band leader, singer and songwriter, also writing and conducting ballets for Roland Petit. A brilliant orchestrator, he won a prize in 1953 from the Académie Charles Cros for his arrangements for a recital recording by Catherine Sauvage. In 1954, he became the band leader and conductor for Maurice Chevalier, and travelled with him to New York. That same year he issued the first LP, I Love Paris. In the late 1950s his arrangements for the album Legrand Jazz (Col., 1958) featured the playing of Miles Davis, Ben Webster and John Coltrane, and he also began writing film music, thereafter dedicating himself almost exclusively to the medium. His first important collaborations were with some of the masters of French cinema, including Godard, Carné and Jacques Demy, with whom he worked on eight films. He achieved his greatest success with Demy’s Les parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), which brought worldwide recognition to both the director and the composer. In the late 1960s, Legrand moved to the United States and for the next three decades divided his efforts equally between France and Hollywood, not always with the same measure of success.

Legrand’s career has alternated between contemporary subjects and period pieces, and he has used many different styles in his scores. From an early age Legrand’s style leaned towards light popular music and jazz, and he often emphasizes thematic unity, though many scores are often overshadowed by a central popular theme. Les parapluies de Cherbourg, with lyrics by Demy met with considerable critical acclaim. The director’s vision was to make a musical film in a completely different vein from the Hollywood musical tradition, a ‘mixture of poetry, colour and music’. The film is entirely sung, in free verse, the direction was regulated by the music, and all aspects of the productions were subordinate to the musical rhythm. The score contains a wide range of styles, from haunting ballads such as I Will Wait For You, to jazz, tangos, mambos and several light popular melodies. Thereafter, Legrand had a number of successes including The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Summer of ’42 (1971), and his jazz score for Lady Sings the Blues (1972), the biographical film of Billie Holiday.

In recent years, Legrand has struggled to adapt his craft to contemporary musical styles. His popular idiom, well-received in the 1960s and 70s, subsequently lost some of its appeal, and has often been modified to reflect evolving aesthetics, though not always successfully. His recent achievements include the Streisand film Yentl (1983), the jazz score for Dingo (1992), co-written with Miles Davis, and the sweeping, dark music of Les misérables (1996). He has been nominated for Academy Awards for his contributions to Les parapluies de Cherbourg, Les demoiselles de Rochefort, The Happy Ending, Pieces of Dreams, Best Friends, The Thomas Crown Affair, Summer of ’42 and Yentl, winning Oscars for the last three. He is the son of musician and film composer Raymond Legrand (b 1908) and brother of singer Christiane Legrand (b 1930).

Milt(on) [Bags] Jackson
(b Detroit, 1 Jan 1923; d New York, 9 Oct 1999). American jazz vibraphonist. After an early engagement in Dizzy Gillespie’s sextet (1945–6) and big band (1946) he worked with Howard McGhee, Charlie Parker, Woody Herman and others (1948–9). In 1948 he recorded the blues Misterioso and other titles as a participant in Thelonious Monk’s celebrated sessions for the Blue Note label. He returned to Gillespie from 1950 to 1952, and during the same period issued some recordings under the name of the Milt Jackson Quartet. By the end of 1952 this group was renamed the Modern jazz quartet. Jackson’s career was centred around the MJQ until 1974; only in the summer months when the MJQ did not perform did he regularly take on other jazz engagements as a leader or sideman. Following the group’s dissolution he toured alone, performing with local bands in various cities, but from 1981 until 1997 he rejoined his African-American colleagues in the MJQ on a regular basis.

Jackson was the first vibraphonist (he actually played the Deagan vibraharp) in the bop style. His improvisations exhibit great rhythmic variety, with sudden outbursts of short notes often adjoining languid, sustained phrases. He utilized a wide range of dynamics to highly expressive ends. His great control of rhythm and dynamics is clearest in his masterly improvisations at slow tempos, but he also had a fondness for the 12-bar blues, and has recorded many excellent blues solos. He was one of the first vibraphonists to slow the speed of the instrument’s oscillator to about 3·3 revolutions per second (as opposed to Lionel Hampton’s vibrato speed of about 10 per second), thus warming his long notes with a subtle vibrato and avoiding the nervous shimmy on shorter notes that is heard in the work of earlier players. Jackson wrote a number of well-known jazz tunes, such as Bluesology (1951, Dee Gee), Bags’ Groove (1952, BN), The Cylinder (1959, on the album Ballad Artistry, Atl.) and Ralph’s New Blues (1955, on the MJQ’s album Concorde, Prst.), the simple pentatonicism and formal design of which often contrast sharply with the complexity of his improvisations.

Ralph Rainger [Reichenthal]
(b New York, 7 Oct 1901; d nr Palm Springs, CA, 23 Oct 1942). American composer and pianist. He studied music at the Damrosch Institute, where his teachers included Gallico and Clarence Adler, and law at Brown University. He began a career as a lawyer, but in 1926 became a pianist for Broadway musicals and also toured as a vaudeville accompanist and arranger. While playing in a piano duo with Adam Carroll in Arthur Schwartz’s The Little Show (1929), he composed ‘Moanin’ Low’, which was the most successful song of the production. He then went to Hollywood as a rehearsal pianist. From 1930 until his death in an aeroplane crash he composed songs for over 50 films for Paramount (1930–38) and 20th Century-Fox (1938–42), mostly with the lyricist Leo Robin. Many were for Bing Crosby, others for Betty Grable; ‘Thanks for the Memory’, introduced by Bob Hope in The Big Broadcast of 1938, won an Academy Award. Rainger’s songs are mostly in the contemporary light, romantic style, but have a particular elegance and sophistication in their integration of music and lyrics.

Wes [John Leslie] Montgomery
(b Indianapolis, IN, 6 March 1923; d Indianapolis, 15 June 1968). American jazz guitarist. He began to teach himself the guitar about 1943 and was soon playing in local bands. He toured and recorded with Lionel Hampton from 1948 until the beginning of 1950. In 1959 he organized his own trio with organ and drums, and its first recording, The Wes Montgomery Trio, initiated a series of albums for Riverside. These represent Montgomery at his peak, accompanied by the finest rhythm sections available, and brought him belated recognition.

Montgomery worked with John Coltrane in 1961–2. In 1964 his recordings began to make use of string orchestras and large jazz bands. Though unrepresentative of his talents, these considerably broadened his audience; his rendition of Goin’ out of my Head (1965, Verve) won a Grammy Award, and A Day in the Life (1967, A&M) was the best-selling jazz LP of 1967. In live performances, however, Montgomery continued to appear in small groups, notably with the Wynton Kelly Trio and in a quintet that included his brothers Monk (double bass) and Buddy (piano and vibraphone). He died unexpectedly at the height of his career.

Critics generally consider Montgomery the most important and influential jazz guitarist after Charlie Christian. Like Christian, whose recorded solos he memorized in his youth, Montgomery invented perfectly shaped phrases with tremendous rhythmic drive. But he also took advantage of contemporary developments in jazz harmony and melody, as well as improvements in the construction of electric guitars, to create an individual style. Instead of a plectrum he used his thumb for various kinds of strumming, achieving a softer attack and leaving his fingers free to pluck octaves and chordal passages. His mastery of technique created a sensation among younger guitarists, and the playing of octaves, in particular, became a trademark of the Montgomery style.

Montgomery tended to build his solos from melodies in single notes to octave passages and finally to chords. He had a highly original melodic imagination and, at his best, constantly produced refreshing ideas that broke off unexpectedly. Even when he paraphrased a melody he managed to invest it with rhythmic excitement. Montgomery’s playing abounded in subtle embellishments, deep blues sentiment and a highly expressive use of portamento, tremolo and other effects. In his sincere, unsensational way, he expanded the resources of the jazz guitar, and his influence has been acknowledged by many later guitarists. Two volumes containing transcriptions of Montgomery’s solos have been published.