Jimmy Amadie, Part 2
Liner Note Series, #5
In the transcript posted a few days ago, I mentioned that toward the end of my interview with the jazz pianist Jimmy Amadie a thought popped into my head, equating his decades-long battle with severe tendinitis with the never-give-up determination of his favorite baseball player, Pete Rose. I knew immediately that it was a perfect simile for my liner notes to Amadie’s upcoming album, given that Rose had such a high public profile. Thus, this became the angle for my opening paragraphs – indeed, for the whole piece.
These two posts exemplify how even with a Q&A roadmap and plenty of research, those who write liner notes or bios, or for that matter anything that portrays any individual, it’s imperative to stay alert for things that pop up unexpectedly even in the middle of an interview. Happily, Jimmy loved my draft – which, when writing on an artist’s or publicist’s dime, is the point.
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If you already know Jimmy Amadie’s music, go ahead and spin Something Special now. You’ll recognize immediately his varied touch, his deep sense of swing, the adventurous harmonic concepts that inform his solos.
But I would advise first-time listeners these initiates to hold on for a minute and put his performance into context. And since I share Jimmy’s love for baseball, I might refer to a player he and I particularly admire to cast some light on this extraordinary pianist and his story.
It was perhaps a coincidence that Jimmy happened to see both the first and the last major-league games played by the great Pete Rose. I prefer, though, to think of it as a kind of cosmic synchronicity. In an era dominated by home run sluggers, Rose exemplified the old school, relying on finesse as an alternative to power. By his own admission, he wasn’t a natural athlete, but he compensated by working twice as hard as everyone else, sprinting rather than trotting to first when given a base on balls, practicing mentally when not out on the field. By temperament, Rose was scrappy and not inclined to back down. And his passion was immeasurable; asked to describe his love for the game, he once replied, “I’d walk through Hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.”
Change a few of these details and you’ve got Jimmy Amadie. Think of fleet-fingered, technical dynamos as the long-ball brutes of jazz. They blow heroically through their solos, tweaking their favorite patterns to fit the tune. Jimmy is a more artful batter; knowing his own capabilities intimately, he drops notes and lines into just the right places, like bunts between second and short.. He, too, rehearses constantly in his mind, so he knows all of the music he is playing.
Each also confronted a pivotal challenge in his career. But here the differences become apparent. For Rose, the issue was an unfortunate propensity for gambling. Though he never put money down against his team, he nonetheless engineered his downfall by violating baseball’s injunction against players and managers betting in any way on games.
Amadie’s hurdle was also self-inflicted in a sense, though his response to dealing with it has been ceaseless, often painful, yet in the end triumphant. During his early years in Philadelphia, he alternated between sports, specifically baseball and football, and playing the piano. Characteristically, he dove into both worlds headfirst, with more determination to excel than, perhaps, judgment on pacing himself. Classically educated, he came full-speed out of the gate, touring with Woody Herman, accompanying Mel Tormé, playing with Coleman Hawkins, Red Rodney and Charlie Ventura, and leading his own trio, while spending some 70 hours a week on top of that building up his already formidable technique.
Eventually, this routine took its toll, as Amadie developed tendinitis in both hands. But where Rose’s mistake exiled him from the work he loved, Jimmy responded by redefining his approach. No longer aiming for the fences, he learned to take his time, move his practice routine from the keyboard to his mind and thus develop deeper insights into who he is and what he can offer. He began teaching, writing books on harmonic theory, while learning to conserve his energies to the point that he could play at full power maybe two or three days in the span of a year. By monitoring what he could do and nurturing his expression through arrangements and mental reflection, Amadie grew in ways that he might not have had he been able to follow a more conventional routine. Further, he did so without bitterness though with resolution.
All of which brings us to Something Special. Like his eight preceding albums, this one was necessarily recorded with no rehearsal in the usual sense. Rather, Amadie wrote out charts, got together with bassist Bill Goodwin and drummer Tony Marino from Phil Woods’ group, talked through the arrangements and, as always, rolled tape long enough to capture one take of each tune. With that, when the last tune wrapped, Jimmy began another six or more months of treatments before allowing himself to play again.
Any musician would find these conditions for recording difficult, being accustomed to a world where second and third takes were possible. Amadie doesn’t live in that world, but he has adapted to circumstances while keeping his standards of excellence high. This is one reason why the tempos range from medium up to up throughout Something Special, even on tunes normally played as ballads, including “My Funny Valentine.” It also explains why he concentrated on familiar tunes, aside from two originals, “Happy Man’s Bossa Nova” and a remembrance of his much beloved silky terrier, “Blues for Sweet Lizzie.”
“I chose the great standards because I want to be compared to other players,” he says. “I didn’t want to hide behind irregular tunes. And I played at up tempos because I want to play my instrument. Anybody can run fast. But it’s not about playing 64th notes or running scales; playing up-tempo things and swinging, that’s what chops are about. It’s all about making music; that’s all I’m trying to do.”
And so he does. Where tunes like “All the Things You Are,” “Autumn Leaves” and “Con Alma” practically beg soloists to wind scales around the basic chords, Amadie builds on insights derived from his harmonic extensions of those basic voicings. Yet when that single take is going down, his solos are fully extemporized in the moment. As a result, even without knowing anything about Amadie, the results on Something Special sound fresh and exciting. The music speaks fully for itself; knowing what it took to produce it only enhances its eloquence.
Like Pete Rose, Amadie has worn that gasoline suit. But he makes his fiery walk every day and through every moment of Something Special. If anybody belongs in a Hall of Fame, it’s these two.
Robert L. Doerschuk, a two-time ASCAP Deems Taylor Award recipient, is author of the book 88: The Giants of Jazz Piano.