Milestones
Baby names and jazz standards
At four months old, Remy is consistently smiling and laughing. The easiest way to get her to smile is to get into the swing in our recently established family dance breaks before dinner. So, let me tell you about some of the music heard in our little one-bedroom dance hall.
There are a few hundred songs that are commonly accepted as “jazz standards” which most experienced jazz musicians can play from memory, even transposed, on the fly. Think Autumn Leaves or Summertime. Uncommonly, there are two different songs, both accepted as jazz standards, complete with different melodies and chord progressions, and both associated with Miles Davis, called Milestones1. Remy hasn’t heard either Milestones yet, to the best of my knowledge, but it felt apt to mention them when writing about both music and baby milestones. Some come early and others take their time, but Elizabeth and I are definitely not in a hurry for them. We are savoring every moment instead of comparing her to the four month old in her gymnastics class who can already sit up on his own. That kid is an impressive little freak.
Elizabeth is taking Remy to every free infant music or gymnastics class that she can find, which is where she learns classic baby music standards like Alligator in the Elevator. I’ve been lucky to attend the classes on weekends. I’m smiling like a goober in all the pictures that Elizabeth has taken of me in them, holding a smiling Remy above the floor. She’s tried her hand at some percussion in these classes, but she’s not quite stage ready.
I can’t help myself but still try to introduce Remy to the jazz idiom during her wake windows at home. For example, I do know that Remy prefers the Charles Mingus composition Moanin’ over the Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers song of the same name.2 She seems to prefer my my scat singing (my bari sax impression is pretty good) over my actual singing voice. When Elizabeth and I could see the need to scream bloody murder building in Remy’s eyes in a crowded subway car a few weeks back, we were saved only by my attempt at the Moanin’ melody and by marching Remy’s legs along to the beat in the bassinet.
Elizabeth’s building a repertoire of music for Remy, too. The two top songs right now are Day O and The Happy Song.3 She’s picked up a number of songs from the baby music classes, which usually include harmonies between the Juilliard-trained-baby-music-class-teacher and the the unwitting parents who signed up for the free class. In one of the classes, Elizabeth introduced me to the teacher by warning her that I am tone deaf, to which I take great offense. Elizabeth also believes I have no rhythm, so I’m thankful for all the musicians in my life who can cover for when I play live, given that I can’t keep a tune or time.
Even with that lack of musical talent, I’ll continue to persevere in Remy’s musical education (albeit at a relaxed pace). The first two or three weeks of Remy’s life, the songs heard most often in our apartment were Round Midnight from my Wes Montgomery vinyl and Benny Golson’s Whisper Not. I have my reasons for these two tunes. Round Midnight is the most recorded jazz standard written by a jazz musician, rather than being from Broadway or some other popular genre. I chose Whisper Not because I was watching bass lessons and a line from one video was “If you’re at a jam and somebody calls Benny Golson’s Whisper Not, you better know how to play it.”
I was watching the lessons to prepare for my last run with the New York Jazz Academy before Remy was born. I usually played guitar in the NYJA, but for that eight week session I decided to play bass. We had five other tunes we were working and I was definitely struggling with the transition. Most instruments in jazz get to rest a few bars or even a chorus, but the bass never stops. I was just trying to keep stamina through rhythm changes each week, until week four when the session leader came in with another lead sheet to add last minute. So, there I was playing a song I didn’t know off the page and the tune was no other than… Whisper Not. I played just fine, but that was signal enough that Remy definitely needed to know the tune, too.
The vast majority of the songs I play for Remy are not for jazz education purposes, but because they are my favorites. I hope whenever she hears Goodbye Pork Pie Hat or Softly, As In a Morning Sunrise, she’s met with memories of her Dear Old Dad scatting them to distract her from her tummy aches.
Other songs are having a moment in our lives, too. We were sent a few videos of our friend’s daughter singing along to songs from The Sound of Music. That renewed my appreciation for My Favorite Things, which John Coltrane completely changed from the original song into something that once I read described as more like a whirling dervish4 than a Broadway tune. I like both versions of the song, enough that the original melody was one of the few chord melody arrangements I worked on back in high school.
To close this half jazz tour / half Remy update out, one milestone we’ve passed is that it now feels less like we named Remy and more like its obviously her name. At first, it felt odd telling other people her name, like it was embarrassing for us to get to choose something as important as that. Now it feels like anything else wouldn’t make sense. One of my favorite things about Remy’s name is that it is kind of part of the solfège, if you squint a little, which of course is also featured prominently in The Sound of Music. Whether or not she really takes to music long term or not, she’s definitely enjoying being danced around to it now and I hope that doesn’t pass like so many milestones will.
The less commonly known one is from 1947, while the more popular one is a modal tune from 1958 which is a precursor to 1959’s extremely popular So What. What is surprising though is that the less commonly known one is actually more popular in the current New York City jazz scene and is referred to as “Old Milestones” and is the one that I once learned, though I wish I knew both.
This is also the only other example of two popular jazz tunes having the same name other than Milestones that I can think of, though I wouldn’t call the Mingus song a standard.
Elizabeth introduced me to this song by saying it was scientifically created to make babies happy, which I happily accepted until I realized it was by Imogen Heap, who I remember only from Current TV specials. Current TV, founded by Al Gore, was my favorite TV channel for most of my high school years.
Speaking of whirling dervishes, I’ve also been listening to spiritual or ritualistic music from other cultures (not Christian pipe organ music), so Remy has heard a good bit of Indian Carnatic music, but I stopped playing that in the apartment because it’s a little overstimulating for a baby.