| A few notes on the music of the play:
Side Man is about jazz musicians: from their heyday, after the war,
through the decline of the big bands and bop, through the rise of rock and roll, to the dark years of the seventies and eighties. A time when
many great musicians cobbled together a mix of club dates, unemployment checks, and cash gigs in order to make a living. It is about the
sacrifices the musicians, and their families made in service to the sidemen's passion for the music.
It is also a play about the music.
From the first draft, I wanted the play to be musical. I wanted each
scene to have its own rhythm, whether hard driving, or romantic, or mournful, or bluesy. Early on, director Michael Mayer and I discussed
one major production question: should the actors play instruments, live,
on stage? Michael argued the parts were demanding enough as written. The
sidemen--Al, Ziggy, Jonesy, and Gene--age over thirty years in the course of the evening, and they grapple with harrowing emotional
choices. Asking them to play like world- class musicians on top of this
would be asking for the impossible. Especially because three of the four
sidemen in the show are trumpet players. You simply can't take a few lessons and fake your way through a trumpet solo--it is far too
demanding an instrument.
They realized, then, they would need to have recorded solos that brought to
life the characters, and the music of their world. With the help of two Sound Designers (first Roger Raines, and later Ray
Schilke) I cobbled together a dream team of jazz trumpet solos.
They are supposed to believe
the solos they hear in the play are those of the play's titular sideman: Gene Glimmer--somehow he is Roy Eldridge, Miles Davis, Clifford Brown,
and Lee Morgan, rolled into one. Which is of course preposterous. But Genie is a beautiful player, a musician's musician. And as jazz fans
will tell you, on any given night, a true sideman can step forward and play a solo that will break your heart, or leave you breathless. Then
he'll sit back down, and blend in so well with the band, that no one but
the other musicians will ever remember his name. For a sideman, the possibility of that solo, of that night, made everything else bearable.
About the songs:
I Remember Clifford--is Benny Golson's memorial to
Cliffored, and it is the first song they hear in the play. It is the ballad Gene is playing the
moment his son Clifford, whom he named after Clifford Brown, enters the Melody Lounge. Says Clifford: "I walk in and I hear him before I see
him. Playing a ballad. You could play me a hundred trumpet solos and I'd
know which one was his. My father's voice."
Later in the play Clifford learns that even though he hasn't seen his
father in five years, his father plays the song every week. To which
Clifford replies: "Genie on a ballad, break your heart, every time."
Rockin Chair--is the first solo Terry hears Gene play. She tells her son
about it more than thirty years later, because the first night she heard
Gene play, is the night she fell in love with him: "Gene couldn't get me
a ticket, so he met me at the stage door. He told me to stay in the basement--but I snuck upstairs and watched from the wings. (they listen
with Terry to a soaring trumpet section, and soloing above them, a heartbreakingly beautiful solo) He has a beautiful tone." From the
moment she hears him play, she is hooked.
(I Don't Stand a)Ghost of a Chance--The title alone makes this ballad
right for Terry's wedding night. A night, she tells Clifford about years
later: Jonesy danced with me while Gene sat in with the band. Everyone cut in
all night long. Not to dance with me, but to sit in with Gene and the band.
Clifford Brown's warm, knowing tone, and Richie Powell's delicate piano intro
capture the mixed emotions of the evening.
Dahoud--Ghost of a Chance ends, and Terry hopes Gene will dance with her.
Instead he launches into Dahoud, an up-tempo, hard-bop number. Terry asks her
protector Jonesy, "How do you dance to this?" He replies, "You don't.
You drink to it. That's another reason why jazz is dying. Let's go to the
bar."
At the bar they marvel at Gene's solo (they should, it's Clifford
Brown). Jonesy explains, "Every solo has a beginning, middle, and end when he
plays." Terry asks, point blank, "Do you think he'll make it?" And Jonesy tells
her the truth: "Honey. He's made it. This is it."
Cristo Redentor--Jonesy has been arrested for dope, and he's spent the weekend
in jail. He now limps on stage to meet Gene and they understand that his life as
a trombone player is over. It is the moment in the play when they first understand the suffering and sacrifices that are part of the sidemen's
life.
Donald Byrd's stunning gospel work also plays the show out at curtain
call.
ACT 2
Land's End--This great rhythm section (Max Roach, Richie Powelll, George
Morrow) helps drive the opening of the second act. The trumpet/saxaphone duet
feels intense, the melody complicated and moody. Before a word is spoken
in Act 2, the atmosphere has been established: On stage they see the same
apartment, ten years later, with ten more years of inherited furniture, broken
lamps, tchotchkes... Laid out on the couch is a very pale, seemingly dead
Gene. Dressed in a tuxedo. Arms folded over his chest. The apartment is still.
Dark.
Chelsea Bridge--Michael Mayer felt that, if they were going to use trumpet
players to give musical voice to Gene, Ella's voice could stand in for Terry.
In this almost other-worldly version of the Strayhorn tune, Ella's haunting,
wordless intro captures Terry on a night when she feels alone, and desperate,
and on the edge of darkness.
A Night in Tunisia--The side men's careers are in twilight. Packing up after a
long, miserable club date, Al pulls a cassette out of his pocket: "Dig
this. Jonesy gave me this tape, it's going around. Brownie. Clifford. Some
guys in Philly found this live recording of him, from the night he died." And
withthat begins one of the scenes I'm most proud of in the show. For almost
four minutes, dialogue stops, and the side men, and the audience, listen in
awe to
this astonishing solo. As they watch Al, Ziggy, and Gene listen to phrase after
phrase, chorus after chorus, they finally understand their profound connection
to their music, a connection they can only share with each other. Many thanks
to the production's director, actors, sound and lighting designers for making
this scene a true tribute to Clifford Brown's transcendent solo. And yes,
sadly, it was recorded on the night he died.
Time--is a mournful Clifford Brown/Sonny Rollins duet that underscores a
fifteen year time passage on stage. Clifford, his childhood over, watches
Terry and Gene circle each other warily in the living room: In time to themusic, and his parents' final slow dance, Clifford explains: "I kept
hoping they'd be like old Generals at war, finally realizing they're all they
have; that their memories of how they tried and failed to kill each other
would eventually give them a bond. It didn't work that way.
It Never Entered My Mind--Mile's muted horn is Genie's last solo in the play.
Clifford listens to his father on-stage, and delivers the play's coda: "When
he's up there, blowing, he's totally in touch with everything that's going on
around him. Ziggy bends a note, he echoes it instantly. A car horn sounds
outside, he puts it into his solo, or harmonizes under it, a second later. I
used to wonder how he could sense everything while he was blowing, and almost
nothing when he wasn't. Now I just wonder how many more chances will I have to
hear him blow. If I have kids...
These guys are not even an endangered species any more. It's too late. There
are no more big bands, no more territory bands. No more nonets, or
tentets. No more sixty weeks a year on the road. No more jam sessions 'til dawn in
the Cincinnati Zoo. When they go, that'll be it.
No one will even understand what they were doing. A fifty year blip on the
screen. Men who mastered their obsession, who ignored, or didn't even notice
anything else. They played not for fame, and certainly not for money. They
played for each other. To swing. To blow. Night after night, they were just
burning brass. Oblivious.
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