Hip, dude

L.A. Is My Lady; Quincy Jones and his orchestra; Frank Sinatra, vocals

The first time I heard Quincy Jones was when I stopped in to see Greg and Sam across the hallway in Brown Hall at SDSU. Sam: “Erik, you’ve got to hear this CD.” Greg: “We don’t think that you can find any dude hipper in this world to announce the ‘arrival' of a dude than this dude on a track called ‘The Dude’ on Quincy Jones’ album called … wait for it … ‘The Dude’.” They were right. We sat in their dorm room and tapped into a level of hipness and funk that our Midwestern bland, straight and narrowness could barely contain. You guys, I said, I don’t think I can ever be that cool. “We don’t think that we can either.”

The first time I saw Quincy Jones was in the State Dining Room at the White House in December of 2000. Mr. Jones, along with several other artists, would receive the National Medal of Arts the next day, but this evening, the President hosted a reception for the recipients. I had played the piano for a host of other guests who had come to enjoy the Christmas decorations in our nation’s “first house” and was told to remain for a little while longer. It turned out that they needed someone to entertain the Medal winners in the State Dining Room “holding room”. I tried not to be star-struck and to concentrate on what I was doing. But just as the guests left the room, Quincy Jones tapped on the piano and said, “Dude, that was cool.” Well, who am I to argue?

My first real exposure to Frank Sinatra was on one of his last albums called “L.A. Is My Lady”, produced by Quincy Jones and featuring an all-star band. On the closing verses of “Mack the Knife”, the Chairman of the Board sings:

Ah, old Satchmo, Louis Armstrong, Bobby Darin

They did this song nice, and Lady Ella, too

They all sang it, sang it with such feeling

That Old Blue Eyes, he can't add nothing new

__________

But with Quincy’s big band, right behind me

Swinging hard, Jack, I know I can’t lose

When I tell you about Mack the knife, babe

It’s an offer you can never refuse

__________

We got George Benson, we got Newman and Foster,

We got the Brecker brothers, and Hampton bringing up the rear

All these bad cats, and more, are in this band now

They make the greatest sounds you ever gonna hear

This album has more sentimental value to me than musical. I really enjoyed it at the time that I initially heard it in my college days. But as I’ve gathered more of his albums over the years, I’ve found that his work on “L.A.” barely hangs onto that old refinery and polish that he had fostered over the course of forty or more years.

But, I groove on Quincy’s arrangements. They’re cool, dude.

Credits: To Kurt Weill, for “The Three Penny Opera”. I don’t know if you ever thought “Mackie Messer” would sound so cool, but it does, dude.