JENNY SCHEINMAN

ENCORE
Valerie Capers
by Brad Farberman
30 seconds into the
piano solo from
“Bebop”, captured on
the recorded-in-1981
Dizzy Gillespie concert
film In Redondo, the
leader yells, “Whoa!”,
smiles at trombonist Tom McIntosh, plays a little air
keyboard and laughs. That’s high praise coming from a
man who, by that point, had worked with ivoryticklers
like Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou
Williams and Chick Corea, but Valerie Capers earns it.
Over the guitar of Ed Cherry, the bass of Michael
Howell, and the drums of Tommy Campbell, the
singer-pianist scurries, shimmers, splashes and
dazzles, pouring her all into the eighty-eight keys
afforded her that night in Southern California. All said
and done, though, Dizzy’s approval that evening is
merely one highlight from a five-decade career that’s
full of bright moments. And Capers is still on the case.
A lifelong resident of the Bronx, Capers, who has
been blind since the age of six, entered the jazz world
in the early ’60s, after finishing up at Juilliard. Her
brother, the late saxophonist Bobby Capers, had just
joined Mongo Santamaria’s band and encouraged her
to write for the conguero. The sweeping 6/8 steamer
“El Toro”, which opens the 1963 LP Mongo at the Village
Gate, was her first effort. Other tunes for the bandleader,
like “Chili Beans” and “La Gitana”, followed.
“Bobby said, ‘Mongo, I’m gonna get my sister to
write something for you’,” remembers Capers fondly.
“And Mongo said, ‘Okay.’ And then Mongo loved [‘El
Toro’]. So Mongo swore after that that I had to have
had some spiritual existence in another world - another
Latin world - to come up with ‘El Toro’.”
After getting started with Santamaria, Capers
scored a record date for Atlantic through famed
producer Joel Dorn. Her resulting debut album, 1965-
66’s Portrait in Soul, was a stirring exploration of Latin
music, soul jazz and postbop featuring players like
saxophonists Frank Perowsky and Robin Kenyatta.
The questing, John Coltrane-like “Odyssey” towers
above the other tracks in both length and intensity.
“I like Greek mythology and different things like
that,” explains Capers about the inspiration behind
“Odyssey”. “I remember The Odyssey being Ulysses
and his journey. [The song] wasn’t about Ulysses
particularly, it was the idea of journey. A moving-
LEST WE FORGET
Patti Bown (1931-2008)
by Suzanne Lorge
Little has been written about Patti Bown. Even so, she
stands out for her prolific body of work as a pianist,
accompanist and arranger for some of the foremost
jazz and soul performers of the 20th century. (Bown’s
lack of recognition might have contributed to a
common misspelling of her name, which in turn makes
it harder to find her in this digital age; even Columbia
Records, which released her first and only solo album
in 1958, Patti Bown Plays Big Piano, spelled her name as
“Patti Brown” on one version of the album cover.)
Patricia Ann Bown was born on Jul. 26th, 1931, in
Seattle, Washington. Her parents encouraged her
musical interests and Bown began her piano studies
early, demonstrating a keen ear for jazz especially. She
continued her music education on scholarship at
10 March 2013 | THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD
about.”
In terms of studio time, though, the pianist stood
still between the mid ’60s and early ’80s. Capers
wouldn’t cut her sophomore album, Affirmation, until
1982, due to a pileup of personal issues.
“I’d had a fall and I injured my back,” recalls
Capers about the era between her first and second LPs.
“And that came right on top of my brother and father
dying. And I just wasn’t able to [work on a recording].
So when I finally decided that I was gonna go ahead
and do that album, that’s why I call it Affirmation.
Because I figured that this album would represent
affirming myself to be a musician and just to get back
into life.”
Another long wait ensued between Capers’ second
and third albums, but 1995’s Come on Home came in like
a lion. Featuring trumpeter Wynton Marsalis,
saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, bassist Bob Cranshaw
and Santamaria, among others, Come on Home houses
an update on “Odyssey”, the tender Capers original
“Out of All (He’s Chosen Me)” and a take on Gillespie’s
“A Night in Tunisia” in an unusual time signature.
“[Gillespie] had just gotten back from his first trip
to Africa when he came and had lunch with me and he
told me how excited he was about the fact that he
heard this African group play ‘A Night in Tunisia’ with
one of the Yoruba 6/8 rhythms,” remembers Capers
about stumbling upon the arrangement of “A Night in
Tunisia” she recorded for Come on Home. “And so he
sat down at the piano and showed it to me! And I said,
‘Oh, Dizzy, that’s fantastic.’ So I said to him, ‘Listen,
I’m getting ready to do an album. Would you allow me
to use that 6/8 rhythm playing ‘A Night in Tunisia’?’
In his own inimitable fashion, he said, ‘Oh, yeah!’”
Concurrent to her life as a performer and recording
artist, Capers has enjoyed a long career in music
education, instructing at the Manhattan School of
Music for a stretch in the ’70s and at Bronx Community
College from 1971-95. Though she has focused on her
own sounds since retiring, she continues to take on the
odd private student and conduct workshops in the US
and beyond.
“It’s bringing the awareness of music to people,”
says Capers on teaching. “All kinds of music. The other
thing, of course, is to help students develop a sense of
dedication, focus and discipline in their music. Things
are so fast these days. You got American Idol. If you go
on a computer and you don’t get to the internet in less
than two seconds, then things are slow. And then what
you have to do there with the students, who are so
eager, is let them know that this is a long process. This
doesn’t happen overnight. You’ll be learning and
growing all of your life.” v
Seattle University and later at the University of
Washington and by the late ‘40s she was thoroughly
enmeshed in the Seattle jazz scene. There she
established one of her most formative professional
collaborations, with childhood playmate Quincy Jones.
In 1959, the year after the release of her solo
album, Bown toured Europe in the Harold Arlen jazz
musical, Free and Easy, as the pianist in Jones’ jazz
orchestra and, in 1961, Jones released a recording based
on this work - The Quintessence (Impulse) - with Bown
playing on six of the eight cuts. The orchestra
performed with Jones at the Newport Jazz Festival that
same year and the live recording of that performance
includes Bown’s primary contribution as a composer,
the blues tune “G’won Train”.
From the late ‘50s onward, Bown, now in New
York City, remained active in the studio, recording
albums with saxophonists Gene Ammons and Oliver
Nelson; trumpeters Art Farmer, Harry Edison and Cal
Massey; reed player Roland Kirk; drummer Ed
For more information, visit valeriecapers.com. Capers is at
Jazz at Kitano Mar. 23rd. See Calendar.
Recommended Listening:
• Valerie Capers - Portrait in Soul (Atlantic, 1965-66)
• Valerie Capers - Affirmation (KMArts, 1982)
• Valerie Capers - Come on Home (Sony-Columbia, 1995)
• Valerie Capers - Wagner Takes The ‘A’ Train
(Elysium, 1998)
• Valerie Capers - Limited Edition (Valcap Music, 2001)
March 5th
Warren Smith and the
Composer’s Workshop Orchestra
March 12th
Russ Kassoff Orchestra
with Catherine Dupuis
March 19th
Mike Longo’s NY State of the Art Jazz
Ensemble with Dee Daniels
March 26th
Vibraphonist Warren Chiasson
George Shearing Tribute
New York Baha’i Center
53 E. 11th Street
(between University Place and Broadway)
Shows: 8:00 & 9:30 PM
Gen Adm: $15 Students $10
212-222-5159
bahainyc.org/nyc-bahai-center/jazz-night
Shaughnessy and bandleaders Duke Ellington and
George Russell. Bown also worked with many singers
throughout her career: Dinah Washington, Aretha
Franklin, James Brown, Etta Jones, Sarah Vaughan and
Leon Redbone among them.
When jazz slipped from the popular music charts
in the ‘60s, Bown sought out other performing
opportunities. She worked as a pit musician/musical
director on Broadway and gigged locally at highprofile
jazz clubs like The Village Gate and Weston’s.
She played at Carnegie Hall in 1985 in the Kool Jazz
Festival and, in 1997, at the Kennedy Center in
Washington, DC, as part of the second Mary Lou
Williams Women in Jazz Festival. In 2006 this same
organization granted Bown the Festival’s Achievement
Award for her “lifetime of service to jazz”.
In her later years, Bown continued to perform but
also taught and spoke publicly about her jazz career.
She died from diabetes-related conditions on Mar. 21st,
2008, in a nursing home in Media, Pennsylvania. v