Keystone (Greenleaf Music)
Dave Douglas
Released September 25, 2005
Grammy Nominee Best Contemporary Jazz Album 2006
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lKK_CJHIL6BAYnu3Yq4mFIsLXeUBI7tYA
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/6NQzTVbZ8zjRc5cf1N1lqu?si=-mt0t2tXSpqB1ePc7fBrnw
About:
Life is a tight rope. We never know when we’re going to fall or how far. Some never do. Some ride the edge for the longest time, always pushing the boundaries and giving us a glimpse of immortality. Others shine for a brief moment only to be destroyed.
Of the many celebrity trials we have witnessed in the last century, one of the most tragic and unfair was also one of the first. It was the trial that caused Roscoe Arbuckle’s third jury, after deliberating a total of six minutes, to issue him this extraordinary apology:
“Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done. We also feel that is was only our plain duty to give him this exoneration. We wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgement of 14 men and women who have sat listening for 31 days to the evidence that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from blame.”
At the height of a brilliant, innovative creative career, one of the best paid entertainers in the country, in 1921 Arbuckle was destroyed by the scandal (with the collusion, it seems, of the studio heads) and never regained his place as a pioneering film maker and funny man. A few friends, Buster Keaton, Mabel Normand, and his wife, Minta Durfee, stuck by him and pestered the studios to put him back to work. But his films were removed from circulation and only the darkest rumors persisted, even to this day.
Roscoe Arbuckle (born March 24, 18…) lived a tough life. He did not like being called Fatty. He seems to have wished he could slip out of the fat suit the way Chaplin slipped out of his oversized suit (initially lent to him by Arbuckle, the suit became Chaplin’s trademark). By all reports a sweet, funny, private man, his films spoke to me when I was researching early silent film history. I like these early films the most because it seems as if the telling of the tale is more important than the tale itself. You can watch an Arbuckle short, thoroughly enjoy it, and then find yourself asking: What just happened?
There is a levity and a fast pace to his work that made me feel it would work modern music. Fatty and Mabel Adrift, shot in 1915, was on the cutting edge of narrative filmmaking. The technology was exciting and new. It must have been a thrill to come to work each day and dream up new scenarios and new ways of capturing them. In a way, working with electronic music I feel in the same situation.
These scores are meant to evoke the atmospheres and feelings in Roscoe’s early work. Innocence, caring, devotion, and a wicked, winking sense of humor and the absurd. On the DVD side, my music is timed up to the film. On the CD side the pieces are represented in their entirety.
I personally have to thank Jon Yanofsky at The Paramount Center of the Arts, housed in an old movie house in Peekskill, NY, for asking me long ago to initiate this project.
Dave Douglas
Track Listing:
1. A Noise From the Deep 6:54
2. Just Another Murder 4:51
3. Sapphire Sky Blue 4:55
4. Butterfly Effect 6:14
5. Fatty’s Day Off 2:31
6. Mabel Normand 4:47
7. The Real Roscoe 4:31
8. Famous Players 6:52
9. Barnyard Flirtations 1:42
10. Hollywood 4:19
11. Tragicomique 5:18
Personnel:
Dave Douglas: trumpet
Jamie Saft: wurlitzer
Gene Lake: drums
Marcus Strickland: saxophones
Brad Jones: bass
DJ Olive: turntables
Recorded January
– May 2005, in New York
Pre-recording and programming at Frank Booth, Ansonia Clockworks, Pond Meadow
Lane, and Olive’s Place.
Main tracking at The Hit Factory on January 20, 2005
Produced by Dave Douglas and David Torn
Engineered by Michael McCoy
Mixed and Mastered by David Torn
Art & design by Stephen Byram
Review:
Keystone is an incredibly mature-sounding album
from Dave Douglas—not because his work up till now has not been complete, but
because he has fully integrated the technology and mode of the music first
espoused by Miles Davis. Yet he has moved beyond that reference point and
created a group sound that is thoroughly modern and doesn’t need to push itself
to musical extremes to demonstrate mastery.
Dedicated to and inspired by early film comic
Fatty Arbuckle, Keystoneuses the actor as a reference for musical
themes without mimicking the usual aural images associated with early
films. Keystone—like Douglas’ tributes to Wayne Shorter, Booker
Little, and Mary Lou Williams—is a unique dedication that’s tied to its source
but not hindered by it, either.
To this end, Douglas has put together another
strong group of players capable of everything he is looking for. The sextet
features saxophonist Marcus Strickland, bassist Brad Jones, drummer Gene Lake,
and turntablist DJ Olive, as well as another impressive performance from Jamie
Saft on Wurlitzer, following strong showings on John Zorn’s Astaroth and
Jane Ira Bloom’s Like Silver, Like Song. The set is also
co-produced by David Torn, the often unnoticed but omnipresent seventh member
of the group.
Douglas sometimes works the extremes of the
group sound, as he did with Freak In, occasionally undercutting the
album’s effectiveness with the need to showcase every facet of the group.
But Keystone is streamlined and consistent in its palette.
Saft’s Wurlitzer often sets the stage with a mid-tempo spacey-funk feel that
the others pull away from and return to. DJ Olive is in line with DJ Logic’s
mode of working within a group context in real time, rather than adding
contributions in post or simply sitting by the wayside till his next feature.
His contributions to the overall enveloping album sound provide a direct
contrast to the up-front feel of Douglas and Strickland’s horns.
“The
Real Roscoe is but one of many highlights that show off the entire group’s
strength. The bed seems to embrace found sounds until Lake comes in with a
driving beat, to which the horns introduce a theme. Douglas, here and
throughout the album, is in complete control of his horn. He’s rarely sounded
better. His solos mine the middle ground of his instrument, rarely diving off
cliffs or soaring into the stratosphere, expressing a lot because he
articulates so clearly.
With obvious reference points to Bill Frisell’s
masterful Buster Keaton albums for Nonesuch, Douglas has composed music can
stand independent from the Arbuckle films or work within them as an
accompanying soundtrack. Included in the package is a DVD with the
34-minute Fatty and Mable Adrift (1916) and a “Just
Another Murder” music video, so you can watch this music in action.
Michael McCaw (All About Jazz)
