Pianists From The United States

"And now these days when I drive through a small town, I turn my stereo up and roll my windows down. ’Cause it reminds me of my first kiss And those days that I always miss. Tom Petty on the radio, Going steady with nowhere to go. No money, just time to spend, An old Chevy and a couple friends. Oh how I wish that I could go back in time Just to love you again."

"Maybe I have been on the road too long, Living my life through these songs. I guess loving a music man Really wasn't in your plans. Does it matter if I'm sorry again? And why should I apologize> You knew all along this was my life. You know my ins and outs, All my fears and doubts. It's the life I love, But it's you I can't live without."

"I called you last night in the hotel; Everyone knows, but they won't tell. But their half-hearted smiles tell me something just ain't right. I've been waiting on you for a long time, Fuelin' up on heartaches and cheap wine. I ain't heard from you in three damn nights."

"The black cat is back, in original form, The legible, credible, inevitable storm. Way past the normal, still misbehaving, Finger in the air and the flag still waving. Don't come, don't test the boss Because I got this sewn like Betsy Ross. You can floss and front, you can taunt and tease, But you can't fuck wit rhymes like these."

"Up and down that lonely road of faith, I have been there Unprepared for the storms and the tides that rise. I've realized one thing, how much I love you, And it hurts to see, see you crying. I believe we can make it through the winds of change."

"And when the sunshine showed Her face I felt like I was ready to die. Went lookin' for a place to hide, A hole I could crawl inside. Long lines, Whiskey bottles, And the same old song. I smell death in the air And I know it won't be long."

"I ain't no G, I'm just a regular failure; I ain't straight outta Compton, I'm straight out the trailer. Cuss like a sailor, drink like a Mick; my only words of wisdom are just <>."

"I like AC/DC and ZZ Top, Bocephus, Beasties, and the Kings of Rock, Skynyrd, Seger, Limp, Korn, the Stones, David Allen Coe, and No Show Jones. Yeah! Pass that bottle around, Got the rock from Detroit and soul from Motown. The underground stoned fuckin' pimp With tracks that mack and slap back the whack. Never gayed away, I don't play with ass, But watch me rock with Liberace flash. Punk rock the Clash, boy bands are trash, I like Johnny Cash and Grandmaster Flash."

"For the time bombs ticking and the heads they hang, All the gangs gettin' money and the heads they bang - bang. Wild mustangs, the porno flicks, All my homies in the county in cell block six. The grits when there ain't enough eggs to cook, And to D.B. Cooper and the money he took. You can look for answers but that ain't fun, Now get in the pit and try to love someone."

"I'm an American Bad Ass, watch me kick, You can roll with Rock or you can suck my dick. I'm a porno flick, I'm like Amazing Grace, I'm gonna fuck some hoes after I rock this place."

"I found my thrill On Blueberry Hill On Blueberry Hill When I found you."

"Blue Monday how I hate Blue Monday Got to work like a slave all day Here come Tuesday, oh hard Tuesday I'm so tired got no time to play"

"They call, they call me the fat man 'Cause I weight two hundred pounds All the girls they love me 'Cause I know my way around."

"You made me cry, when you said goodbye Ain't that a shame My tears fell like rain Ain't that a shame You're the one to blame"

"Americans are the most over-entertained people on the face of the earth."

"I've got no talent. Still sing flat as a table. I'm a sort of human spaniel. People come to see what I'm like. I make them feel, I exhaust them, I destroy them."

"It's not a handicap, because when you go to bed, I take [the hearing aid] off, and the phones ring, the maids vacuum, people knock on doors, and I don't hear any of that."

"I just felt like God picked me up in his arms [and said], 'Johnnie Ray, I love you', and kissed me. I'm very humble and grateful for this elevation to the big time. But we all have to come down, and it won't leave me with a complex if I do. I know this thing might go over like a lead balloon, but I can always go back to that movie extra deal."

"I was walking down by the river. I lay down under a tree. I was broke. I felt pretty low. Then I looked up at the sky—all blue except for one little, white, fleecy cloud. The words came to me for the song—quicker than it's taking me to tell it to you. I got up—and I had new hope. That was the turning point in my life."

"What was Godowsky's method of teaching? As everybody knows, he was reported to be "a wizard of technique" (ein Hexenmeister der Technik, as he was dubbed unanimously by the German and indeed the world press). For this reason numerous young pianists from all over the world flocked to him, mainly in the hope of getting his recipe for attaining "virtuoso technique". Alas for them! Godowsky hardly ever said a word about technique in the sense in which these youngsters understood it; all his comments during a lesson were aimed exclusively at music, at correcting musical defects in a performance, at achieving maximum logic, accurate hearing, clarity, plasticity, through a scrupulous observance and a broad interpretation of the written score. In his class, he valued above all the real musician and approached with obvious irony those pianists whose fingers were fast and agile while their brains were slow and dull (and there were several such in my time). He would immediately lose all interest in a pupil whose hearing was inaccurate, who memorized wrong notes or showed bad taste."

"Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept. He and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that’s where it really came from. Almost all of the harmony that I play can be traced to one of those four people and whoever their influences were. And, of course, Miles."

"Most of my harmonic stuff comes from listening, for example, to the Hi-Lo's, and in particular, Clare Fischer's arrangements, which I heard in college. I learned about harmony from Clare's arrangements. Also I used to listen to one particular mood music orchestra--Robert Farnon's. His harmonic sense was incredible, even though it was only background music."

"For my whole life I can’t remember not doing what I’m doing now, and I’m seventy. I was picking out four-part harmony at eight and nine years of age on the piano. Why? I don’t know. I don’t care. All I know is it’s there and harmony is something that really stimulates the hell out of me. I just saw each thing as a logical exposure to something which I developed further."

"I am one of the best kept secrets in jazz history. Many of my early records are hard to find and it is still difficult to release new ones."

"I had a concussion nine years ago, and that changed things. I had always been sensitive musically, but now, since the concussion, I find the emotion is there immediately. There is no build. I hear several chord changes — it could be three or four chord changes from a string orchestra — and, man, I’m just gushing tears. I don’t take it as a weakness. Sometimes it might get slightly embarrassing to observers. On the other hand, I’m not putting it on. I’m in no way trying to exaggerate feeling. My feelings are exactly the opposite. Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t be quite as sensitive because then I wouldn’t have to go through this thing when I write."

"[W]hen I was in high school, I formed a vocal group that was at first more like Four Freshmen harmonies—just this side of barbershop quartet. But then when I heard the Hi-Lo’s and Clare’s arrangements, I started writing more like that, and would write it down trying to figure out what they were doing. That was a big lesson for me on developing more advanced harmonies, and I took that with me to New York and all that. If you listen to Speak Like a Child, his influence is huge on that record, in the voicings and the harmonic devices."

"As a teenager I had already arranged pieces for the school band in exchange for music lessons. I also played cello, clarinet, and some other instruments regularly. Thanks to that experience, as an arranger I was able to understand the specific sound and tuning of an instrument and to work intuitively."

"The harmonic style of Clare Fischer is more chromatic than that of Bill Evans. Like Ellington, he uses several independent lines to develop a rich harmonic texture. His arrangements during the 1950s for the vocal group, the Hi-Lo's, were an important harmonic influence on Herbie Hancock. An essential aspect of his style is that the harmony is rarely resolved completely. There's often new or lingering dissonance, even at the end of a phrase, which gives the music a constant feeling of forward motion. Clare combines elements from Ellington, Konitz, Alban Berg, and Shostakovich to develop a fresh and personal style."

"Nepotism. My brother’s son, André Fischer, was the drummer in the band Rufus, with Chaka Khan. Apparently, the arrangements I made for their early records were appreciated, so in the following years I was hired almost exclusively by black artists. I am surprised that my arrangements are now considered one of the prerequisites for a hit album. People feel that they make a song sound almost classical."

"If I had to make a list of the ten most important solo jazz piano recordings of all time, this recording would definitely be on the list."

"Prince is intelligent. He never visits the studio when I am working for him; and I have never met him in person. He sends me memos and we talk over the phone. Once I sent him my Grammy-winning CD. I heard from people that were present at the time that while he took out the disc he looked away from the cover, saying, 'I don't want to know what he looks like. It is working just fine as it is.' Prince does not want to meet me because he knows that the minute he walks into a studio he will start interfering. It is uncommon that a person with such a strong ego realizes that I have an ego too."

""Quiet Dawn" is somewhat reminiscent of certain aspects of the work of Alban Berg, especially the stacking of either augmented or diminished chords in a manner which stretches tonality to it limits, while always retaining at least a hint of tonal gravity. In measures 10, 12, 13 and 14 Clare uses an interesting combination of conventional 4-3 suspension resolutions combined with tritone relationships in the bass. Measure 10, for example, combines the 4-3 suspension resolution of a Bb seventh chord with an E natural in the bass. The 4-3 suspension voice is also colored here with parallel major second intervals (Db-Eb to C-D natural). Clare has many varieties of this suspension variation in his vocabulary, and he traces them to such diverse sources as bebop chord substitutions and slow movements from Shostakovich symphonies."

"[I]t was many years later that I met Clare—maybe 15 or 20 years ago, in the A&M Studios in Los Angeles. I wasn’t working with him, I just found out he was in the building and I jumped up: “Clare Fischer?! Aw, man, I gotta tell him what he’s done for me!” And when I met him, he had no idea that I even knew him, much less that he was a big influence on me. I explained the whole thing to him and it tripped him out, because he told me I influenced him! It was really pretty cool. We just bonded right away; I could feel it, and I knew that he could feel it, too. There weren’t that many more encounters, but when I got to meet Clare and talk to him just those few more times it was always special. I wouldn’t be me if it wasn’t for Clare Fischer."

"Playing the organ would be the renowned Clare Fischer, a brilliant keyboardist and jazz composer in his own right. [...] I saw Clare in the back of the room by himself, and now that I was feeling a bit more confident, I walked over to introduce myself to this jazz legend. As I approached, I stuck my hand out and began to introduce myself as the arranger and conductor of the upcoming session. Before I could get a word out, he looked up and said, "You're standing on my fucking wires!" Okay, then... nice meeting you too, buddy. Lenny Roberts, the engineer, was standing nearby, setting a microphone. He looked at me in shock before we both started laughing uncontrollably. We laughed for the next few hours during the session, and for the next fifteen years whenever it came up. Clare truly was magnificent and tasteful player, and contributed greatly to the sound of any album he played on. I suppose he was just having a tough day with those wires."

"You have to recognize those writers who are artists in the same sense as the musicians. “Catching colds and missing trains.” Man, I wish I could say something that clever. Johnny Mercer was a wonderful lyric writer. You have to appreciate those. And then you get into the other thing where the lyricist says, “It’s not the composer, it’s what the lyricist did that’s important.” Come on. When I find a song that is equal parts of both, that’s a damn good song, and that’ll be one of the songs I use all the time."

"The vocal group, the Hi-Lo's's, were the greatest aid to me in harmony. I loved the harmonies they were using, especially Clare Fischer's arrangements, which I used to take off the record. By the time I studied theory in college, I breezed through it."

"Clare Fischer is my friend. He’s not only a great musician and an exciting performer, but is an excellent composer and arranger. He’s bi-lingual and can bore you to tears on any subject from medicine and astronomy to politics and world history. I try to avoid all of these in favor of theology (about which he knows more than some preachers in my acquaintance). Since Clare assists me in my choir clinics, we travel by plane together a lot, so we talk about theology a lot (and occasionally disagree a lot)."

"It's funny. People come to my house because I was recommended to them to do some writing. They've never heard of me, and you can see the reticence written all over their faces. Then they look at the walls and see the platinum and gold albums and they say, "Oh. That one's from Prince! That's from Robert Palmer! Oh my God, Paul McCartney!" And then they say, "You're a really fine composer"--without having heard any of my music."

"Clare’s harmonic concepts are not limited to intriguing sonorities created by harmonic appoggiaturas and illusions. He also stretches the limits of the chord structures themselves, structures that remain unresolved, creating entirely new, stationary chord sounds. Read, for example, "Coker’s Blues" (from Extension), and "Quiet Dawn," where you’ll find many examples of new vertical sonorities."

"In 1992 by chance I witnessed a drum and bugle corps competition on television and became aware of three-valve bugles. A year later my wife, Donna, and I attended a performance in La Mirada of the previous year's winner. I have experienced fine concert band performances and also good symphonies in my life, but what was not prepared for what I experienced that day. The entire bugle corps was turned away from us playing softly and suddenly they turned toward us and projected a very thick chord. Every hair on my body stood up (and I have a lot of it) and I decided at that moment to buy some of these instruments. In the next year I purchased approximately $14,000 worth of bugles. After having completed an orchestrational family all the way down to the contrabass bugle, I began writing. This album is the result of this particular interest in my sixth decade in music."

"I pointed to the side of the road and then I pulled over and parked. When the guy got out of the car he was stripped to the waist. A typical young macho stud. He put his face within two inches of mine, and he was telling me what I was and what he was going to do to me. So I did the natural thing. I reached in and got a headlock on him, and I had him very firmly while he thrashed around. I felt I was doing just fine because I had stopped what was going on, but his girlfriend decided that he wasn't doing very well. So she ran and jumped on us. They both fell on top of me and my head crashed into the pavement. I landed on my left ear, got a hairline fracture and concussion. [...] It was like some kind of nether world. Most of the time I didn't know where I was. Like I'd wake up and find I.V. units in my arm, and I'd rip 'em out and say, "What kind of a hotel is this? You tell them I'm never coming here again." [...] When I came home from the hospital I was having terrible nightmares every night, sometimes to the point where I started not wanting to go to sleep. And I still have occasional migraines, dry eyes and short-term memory loss. [...] If I discovered anything in that strange, 10-month period of recovery, it's that music is the one thing that makes me sane."

"When I met Clare Fischer I was 27, and I was very impressed with his beautiful harmonies. At that moment it was very important to me because I was more into jazz than commercial music. And in that sense it changed my harmonic concept and opened up a wide spectrum of possibilities. Later, when I started working more in pop and jazz and in conducting and arrangement, that remained forever, even though those harmonic concepts don't apply to everything. But everything is always there."

"He is a master of thematic development. Like some of the masters of the Classical and Romantic periods of music history, I’ve seen Clare ask for a theme from an audience, then proceed to spontaneously render endless variations on that theme, at the piano, in the manner of a performance. Listen, for example, to his awesome nine and one-half minute performance of Yesterdays (from the album, Alone Together at the Brunner-Schwer Steinway), treated like a theme and variations form, taking it through several keys, in 4/4 and in 3/4, changes of tempo, and several different styles."

"His chord voicings, whether in the left hand alone or in the frequent two-handed block chording, are simply extraordinary. When the inner voices shift while the bass note stays the same, it can be difficult to tell just what the chord is and how it’s functioning in the phrase, but the sense of movement, of progression if you will, remains clear. This dense harmonic interplay reaches an apogee in “Du, Du, Liegst Mir Im Herzen,” a traditional tune that Fischer makes very affecting by keeping the melody virtually intact while the chords quietly tie themselves into knots."

"Playing that music delivered me from the pressures of my life. I played with my eyes closed and found that my backaches ceased and my headaches would go. The response to that rhythm was "My God, this makes me feel good." I never really remembered having that much fun with it before or thought about jazz making me feel good. But, at 46, it suddenly dawned on me that my body had priorities that my mind didn't allow, and I decided to (play Latin/jazz)✱ for myself and started having a helluva fine time."

"Rule #2: In general, the higher notes of the basic chord structure (the 9th 11th, and 13th) should be placed somewhat higher in the voicing than the root, 3rd, 5th, and 7th. There are many exceptions to this rule, and at least one highly respected jazz pianist, Clare Fischer, develops his unusual harmonic colors specifically by violating it."

"They disenfranchised me. It's like giving an award to Woody Herman's sax section, but not Woody, for "Early Autumn.""

"You don't ever get a chance to play what you really do; and if you do, you notice that you can't play, because you haven't been. And often I'd be asked to play like somebody else, like Joe Sample. I'd say, "I can't play like him. He's an original." I'd be asked to try and the producers would love it, but I'd feel rotten. Then one time I ran into Joe and he told me, "Man, I'm tired of people asking me to play like you." My jaw dropped. Then I found out this is a common practice."

"Since suffering a concussion eight years ago, I find my inside emotions are right to the front and as such, when I heard that Antonio Carlos Jobim had died in December of 1994 I was much affected, I experienced happenings like no other time in my life. While sleeping one night, I dreamed that I was conducting a recording session with strings in Brazil and we were performing Jobim's "Corcovado," except that besides thje melody and harmony, there was polyharmonic bass line. As I awakened from this dream, I went to my piano and wrote down what I had dreamed."

"My “super idol” (since the time in the early ‘50s when we played together in dance bands in Northern Indiana at various summer resorts) is Clare Fischer. The consistent, high quality of his work sets him apart. For me, his command of melody, harmony, rhythm, instrumentation and “LINE” is unequaled – he is my present-day Bach!"