Fans of swing music and/or jazz guitar will perk up at the name Bucky Pizzarelli. He played with such luminaries as Benny Goodman, George Barnes, Les Paul, Stéphane Grappelli, Benny Green, and Antônio Carlos Jobim, over a professional career that began at age 17 in 1944 and continued until he died from COVID in 2020, aged 94.
His son John Pizzarelli is rather less well known, but has had a tremendous career in jazz guitar as well, releasing more than twenty solo albums(!) and playing on more than forty others. I first heard John’s music in the ‘90s when I checked out his CD Dear Mr. Cole (a collection of Nat King Cole songs) from my local library.
Today’s song is his rendition of Claude Thornhill’s “Snowfall,” a wintry, free-verse type of tune that wafts about like a flurry on a breeze.
The song’s structure approximates the experience of going for a walk on a snowy day. Initially the dense, nervous horns create a drone that’s hard to find a rhythm in, then things gradually relax a bit as we gain comfort with our stride on slippery sidewalks. Soon the Imagist lyrics welcome us into the subtly surreal experience of seeing our everyday world fully transformed by ice and snow. There’s no grand revelation, no grace note, just quiet, gentle pleasure in being cozily warm in a cold world.
Notes:
This isn’t technically a Christmas song, but since it’s on an album called Let’s Share Christmas I decided it counts.
Another piece that evokes an icy day for me is Christopher Parkening’s recording of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s “Etude no. 11 in E Minor.” It’s from his album In the Spanish Style, which was the first CD I ever bought and which I’ve probably listened to once a month for thirty years.
To continue this tangent: I saw Parkening give a concert in Des Moines when I lived up there, probably in 1998. He played much of the material from In the Spanish Style, and was joined for part of the show by Jubilant Sykes, just the two of them up there in a stunning performance, guitar and voice. When we left the theater it was snowing as hard as I’ve ever seen, and the 45-mile drive home to Ames took about three hours because in a blizzard like that, the only smart play on the Interstate is to fall in behind a snowplow and creep along at its pace.
One more story about that night, since I may never be on the subject again: Before the show we ate dinner at what was then Des Moines’s only Thai restaurant. When I ordered, the Thai woman waiting on us asked me if I wanted it mild, medium, or spicy. I asked for spicy, since I love spicy food and Iowa palates tended to curve toward mild. She said “Are you sure? I think you should have medium.” I chuckled and assured her that I love spicy food and eat it all the time and I would be fine.
She looked at me sternly. “You can have medium,” she said, and went to the kitchen.
When she brought the food it was so insanely spicy that as I ate, my tongue went numb and I was sweating heavily from the crown of my head. I knew I had made my bed with my foolish braggadocio, and pride compelled me to eat the whole meal. It was delicious, of course, but I definitely learned a lesson that day.