Here’s a look at how the album Casino Nights, Recorded live at Montreux, Switzerland, July 14 & 15, 1981 at the Montreux Casino, fared on various album charts:
| 1982 | |||
| Date | Billboard Jazz (50) |
Radio & Records Jazz (30) |
Cashbox Jazz (30) |
| Oct 30 | 19 | 22 | 21 |
| Nov 6 | 22 | 11 | |
| Nov 13 | 6 | 16 | 4 |
| Nov 20 | 11 | 3 | |
| Nov 27 | 4 | 11 | 3 |
| Dec 4 | 7 | 3 | |
| Dec 11 | 5 | 3 | |
| Dec 18 | 1 | 5 | 2 |
| Dec 25 | 5 | 3 | |
| 1983 | |||
| Date | Billboard Jazz (50) |
Radio & Records Jazz (30) |
Cashbox Jazz (30) |
| Jan 1 | 5 | 3 | |
| Jan 8 | 4 | 5 | 2 |
| Jan 15 | 5 | 4 | |
| Jan 22 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| Jan 29 | 4 | 4 | |
| Feb 5 | 9 | 7 | 5 |
| Feb 12 | 7 | 4 | |
| Feb 19 | 8 | 10 | 5 |
| Feb 26 | 10 | 4 | |
| March 5 | 10 | 11 | 4 |
| March 12 | 11 | 6 | |
| March 19 | 11 | 14 | 10 |
| March 26 | 30 | 13 | |
| April 2 | 11 | 12 | |
| April 9 | 12 | ||
| April 16 | 19 | 18 | |
| April 23 | 16 | ||
| April 30 | 38 | 14 | |
| May 7 | 17 | ||
| May 14 | 32 | 16 | |
| May 21 | 19 | ||
| May 28 | 32 | 17 | |
| June 4 | 27 | ||
| June 11 | 39 | 25 | |
| June 18 | 24 | ||
| June 25 | 41 | 26 | |
| July 2 | 29 | ||
| July 9 | 41 | ||
| July 16 | |||
| July 23 | 40 | ||
| July 30 | |||
| Aug 6 | 38 | ||
| Aug 13 | |||
| Aug 20 | 41 | ||
| Aug 27 | |||
| Sept 3 | 44 | ||
| Sept 10 | |||
| Sept 17 | 49 |
Liner notes from the sleeves of the LP by Joe Robinson:
There’s a place where they send jazz musicians who’ve been good to their instruments. They have decent coffee there. The sound of sixteenth century church bells is more prominent than the horns of VWs or Datsuns. Large pieces of real estate tend to be castles, no condos. Best of all, the local inhabitants in this splendid retreat regard visiting jazzmen and women with a reverence usually reserved for popes, prophets and downhill racers.
Players get far away from the din of the metropolitan club circuit when they come to Montreux, Switzerland. Snuggled into a steep slope on the eastern edge of Lake Geneva, Montreux declares a state of music each July known as Montreux Jazz Festival. In 15 years it has become the world’s most prestigious jazz event and a lot of it has to do with the music that has been made there. From vintage Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Mingus to the vanguard of Anthony Braxton and Cecil Taylor, the performances have won a reputation for spontaneity that suggests musicians like it in the Alps.
The players on this record certainly do. The panorama of Old World sights and New World sounds had lured Al Jarreau, David Sanborn, Larry Carlton, Neil Larsen, Mike Mainieri and most of the Yellowjackets to Montreux before, in some cases several times. All could vouch for the state-of-the-art facilities and the creative change provided by the Swiss spectacle.
A man synonymous with jazz celebration, Al Jarreau has played Montreux four times. “Any gathering of players and music appreciators is a special place,” he notes. “What’s fascinating about Montreux, though, is the setting. All those people from around the Continent, all the different native tongues. And the music’s communicating to everybody. It’s elegant and down-home at the same time.”
It wasn’t hard imagining a couple of nights at the festival for the lineup on this album. Even if they weren’t on the same record label, they eventually would be on the same bill. These artists belong together like Wyoming belongs next to Colorado. One picks up the peaks where the other leaves off. It’s variations on a very compelling theme, premium contemporary musicianship.
Jarreau, Sanborn, Mainieri, Larsen, Crawford, the Yellowjackets and Carlton are brethern-in-arms to be sure. All are frequent award winners in musicians’ polls around the world. But the context of that fire-power is equally comradely, a sophisticated marriage of rock dynamics and R&B backbone to a highly melodic jazz base. As Al Jarreau says, “It’s not like dragging together a bunch of country and classical players. What’s beautiful about the music we play is the element of improvisation, that environment that’s able to trigger different parts of your performing psyche.” There’s a confidence in technique that allows all these players to have their artistic say and still communicate emotionally.
When Al Jarreau gets off one of his trapeze-act-without-a-net vocals or Larry Carlton one of his stingingly sweet breaks, you can throw out the yin, yang, the baby and the bathwater because the brain has stopped programming and the gut has taken over. This is a very emotional bunch of players here, unabashed heart specialists.
From L.A. came Neil Larsen and band, David Sanborn, producer Tommy LiPuma, engineer Al Schmitt and Larry Carlton; from New York came Mike Mainieri and bassist Marcus Miller – the young phenom who’s worked with Miles Davis, Luther Vandross, Aretha Franklin and was the talk of the session circuit. From L.A. via dates in London came Randy Crawford’s and everybody else’s backup band, the incomparable Yellowjackets. Jarreau’s band was to arrive later from Amsterdam. All told there were seven bands’ schedules to negotiate, including those of Neil Larsen’s group, and Mike Maineri’s and Larry Carlton’s bands, to be featured on an upcoming album.
An intrepid music fan in Montreux can get concert previews by hanging out at the city’s handful of major hotels and theatres, where rehearsals are conducted. Behind the mirrored bar wall of one venerable 19th century hotel, the David Sanborn group was getting into the spirit of things with a chaser of its own, called “Love Is Not Enough.” The sound was torrential, Sanborn raising up on his tiptoes to shake out particularly mean bursts, Robben Ford’s guitar searing the small room. The effects of jet lag and a 10-hour rehearsal day were obvious on some faces. But not those of the Bionic Bottom, Marcus Miller, and the man in the Baked Potato t-shirt, Ricky Lawson.
The Yellowjackets’ drummer confessed he was ‘beat’ with the same solar grin that was to energize weary colleagues and captivate the Montreux audience over the next few days. Lawson has worked with George Duke, Stevie Wonder, Joan Armatrading and Roy Ayers, but topped that total each day out on this project. The iron man was playing in no less than five bands: Sanborn’s, Carlton’s, the Yellowjackets, Randy Crawford and Randy with Al Jarreau. His battle cry, “where’s the next session?” was echoed by Marcus Miller, who had to learn the songs of four different bands, Larsen’s, Mainieri’s, Sanborn’s and the Randy Crawford – Al Jarreau duets.
The good-natured marathoning of Lawson and Miller symbolized an extraordinary pooling of time, talent, and temperament devoid of ego problems. There was no jockeying for solos and everybody worked for scale, though all are accustomed to commanding considerably higher fees. Robben Ford worked in five of the bands; Neil Larsen and Mike Mainieri in three; Lenny Castro, Neil Larsen’s percussionist, played in four; forming a partnership so tight it could only be called family.
★ ★ ★ ★
The swirl of musical activity in Montreux lives up to the ‘festival’ billing as few music extravaganzas do. There is music happening literally around the clock, from morning rehearsals to outdoor afternoon shows free to the public (featuring American college big bands in ’81), to the evening’s official performances, the post-gig jams in the Musician’s Bar and countless informal sessions among performers and would-be performers. All this in a previously obscure town of 20,000 where for the most of the year the only things that swing are the ropes anchoring lakeside pleasure craft.
Montreux was put on the map by the determination, savvy and musical zeal of festival director and part-time harmonica player Claude Nobs. A former employee of the Montreux tourist office, he talked the city and the tourist bureau into a subsidy, and Charles Lloyd, Keith Jarrett and Don Menza into performing a three-day fest in 1967, and he hasn’t stopped talking or booking since.
Nobs was excited. But when isn’t he excited when the topic is music? That’s Claude, for instance, on the intro to David Sanborn’s “Love Is Not Enough.” He introduces every act and serves as yell leader after every set during the three weeks of shows. Not many promoters can even pretend to have that kind of enthusiasm.
“Jazz is the most important art form created by the U.S. in this century,” the crusading Nobs believes. “We try to present a wide rainbow of that form not only for today’s audience but also for tomorrow’s.”
Concerned that there was virtually no visual record of the jazz and blues greats of the fifties and sixties, Nobs began videotaping all the shows at Montreux 10 years ago. Today that invaluable collection is matched only by the live recordings that go along with it. He’s recorded them all, from Count Basie to George Duke to King Curtis.
Another, but very different style of Montreux recording began to emerge at rehearsals in Claude Nobs’ Montreux Sounds studios the night before the show. Tommy LiPuma was seeing to that. As a gaggle of fans and colleagues squirmed in the doorway to view An Event, LiPuma was directing his all-star team through territory very uncharacteristic of live albums – new material.
For the producer of George Benson, Al Jarreau and Michael Franks this wasn’t going to be just a collection of recently recorded pieces inspired by the considerable Montreux vibe. LiPuma wanted to transfer that onstage simulation to some new music, too, making this set as fresh and song-conscious as any studio record. For that he’d encouraged new material from all the artists. And designed the duets.
Al Jarreau and Randy Crawford, swaying softly, song sheets in hand, leaned into their mikes, trading laments on a bittersweet number called “Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong.” The band – Neil Larsen, Marcus Miller, Ricky Lawson, Lenny Castro, Larry Carlton and David Sanborn – took them up through the chorus and stopped. Jarreau shook his head. After several run-throughs he still wasn’t satisfied with his harmony.
Two of the world’s most free-singing stylists, both Jarreau and Crawford had some adjustments to make. This was only their fourth rehearsal together. Moreover, Jarreau had never sung tandem with another vocalist before. But the man who routinely wins international vocal awards saw the duets as a chance to take his craft even further. “There are parts of you that you can’t go to as naturally as you do when you’re working with another singer,” he explained. “It inspires a different part of your creative storehouse.”
Underlining this point convincingly, he and his exquisite friend lit into the finish of “Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong.” There was plenty ‘right’ in the exchange. Jarreau and Crawford are practically unrivaled natural singers, so there’s an instinctive vocal rapport between them. Both pack an emotional charge that can make a duet a vignette instead of two people just singing harmony. Importantly, though, there’s a genuine warmth between them that makes their duets work as only the best have. Maybe that’s why LiPuma turned Al and Randy loose on “Your Precious Love,” the 1967 hit by one of the top teams ever, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.
Randy Crawford is subtler than you would expect a singer with a voice as awesome as hers to be. Shouting is not her way. She radiates a quiet grace. Her phrasing smolders. Most call it ‘class,’ a dignity that comes from being so good at what you do that no embellishment is needed. It’s earned her the respect of audiences around the world, especially in England, where her album Secret Combination managed to beat out the Rolling Stones for the Number One spot on the album charts, and it would win her an ecstatic reception at the Montreux Casino.
★ ★ ★ ★
Ticket hopefuls with signs in three languages hovered around the Casino on the night of the festival’s quickest sellout, searching the stream of faces, hands and pockets for any tipoff to stray tickets. Most would have to wait for this album. Inside, Swiss television cameras were rolling. Claude Nobs was headlong into one of his famous intros. The milling crowd was barely in its seats before it was out of them again.
A turbulent wave of sound rushed over the audience like white water on the Colorado. Down the rapids they shot with Neil Larsen’s band, propelled by his trusty M-3 organ. Old enough to vote, Larsen’s M-3 over the years has taken on a kind of haunting underwater quality giving his music a gauzy, dream-like flavor. But Larsen can be just as hypnotic on piano. His eloquent on “Casino Lights” sent the audience into blissful reverie.
Through the ’70s Neil Larsen and Buzz Feiten concentrated on session work. Larsen also recorded a couple of remarkable solo albums. Together they’ve patented a propulsive music marked bu unforgettable organ-guitar leads and a feastful of gourmet melodies.
★ ★ ★ ★
David Sanborn was up next. The heat was turned up to broil. America’s most popular and quick-witted altoist was ready to work. Bounding out to center stage, Sanborn attacked with a fury that comes only at special gigs when large amounts of adrenaline seize control of every last fiber in the body. Sanborn grew up on a diet of Ray Charles and Hank Crawford and it’s this early R&B bent that fuels his tremendously passionate sax. Though he’s at home with jazz masters like Gil Evans and Major Holley, or pop artists like David Bowie and Paul Simon, Sanborn clearly prefers the personal approach.
He had the direct line crackling on “Love Is Not Enough,” a personal-to-person call to every member of the audience. Sanborn is far removed from the traditional conception of saxman, the aloof, stoic monument of cool lost in technical exposition. When you hear him open up on this song, turning those reeds into wind tunnels, squeezing out one last, sweet twist just as you thought he’d run out of oxygen, you get the message. The man’s out to raise the skin and riot the soul. That’s all folks.
“Love Is Not Enough,” from Sanborn’s 1978 Heart To Heart album, was a triumph for his whole band. The mad dash rehearsals had turned out a seamless unit with action at enough corners to tangle up the video team as they dragged their cables from one soloist to the other, and often to Marcus Miller’s corner. Marcus is no stranger to Sanborn’s music. He collaborated on many of the songs on Voyeur and As We Speak, and Sanborn led the cheers here for his writing partner’s churning breaks.
★ ★ ★ ★
After a short breather, Ricky Lawson and Robben Ford were back on stage, somewhat startled to find themselves in their own band. Yet there was genial Russ Ferrante on the keyboards, and in the rear dependable Jimmy Haslip on bass. And nobody else.
Few bands enjoy themselves as much as the Yellowjackets, or are as visible in expressing the joy of making music. They spare no energy and no shortage of cheer in the service of some of the most advanced ensemble playing around. Drummer Lawson, with his cherubic grin and big, hard kit style is completely contagious. Ford’s dimples get as much of a workout as his 1958 Gibson 335. A lot of the exuberance comes from what Ferrante calls “a genuine fondness personally, as well as musically,” among band members. “We even live close together, which is unheard of for musicians.” Ferrante and Ford go back 10 years in bands together.
“Monmouth College Fight Song” spread the spirit down every Casino aisle. Led by Lawson’s Big Ten beat and Ferrante’s brassy synthesizer, the Yellowjackets gave Montreux and Monmouth something to cheer about. Ferrante doesn’t know if Monmouth College has a fight song (he went to San Jose State), but they could do worse than this open-field charge. Like all Yellowjackets’ music, it’s bright and brash. Robben Ford unloads some particularly juicy screamers of the sort that he’s made famous behind Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Witherspoon and on one solo album.
“Monmouth,” which Ferrante describes as “a march of sorts, but a little demented,” was recorded for the first time here at Montreux in keeping with the drive here for new tunes. It was so new that the band not only performed it a couple of times before the festival, which is unusual for the type of music (i.e. not easy) that the band does. “It turned out nice and spontaneous,” says Ferrante.
★ ★ ★ ★
The Yellowjackets had backed Randy Crawford on her English tour before coming to Switzerland. When the lady glided to the front of the Montreux stage they fell in crisply behind her. Randy has always done well in Europe, ever since she played St. Tropez one summer as a junior in high school. Elegant in a pink and burgundy pleated sun dress, she gave the slow-burning treatment to two of her recent hits in Europe, “You Might Need Somebody” and “Rainy Night In Georgia.” The crowd roared its approval. You don’t learn to sing like that in European churches.
People don’t have much trouble believing what Randy Crawford sings. She was taught in church choirs early on to sing not like she meant it, but because she did. This kind of conviction behind a lyric as powerful as John Lennon’s “Imagine” was a devastating combination on Randy’s encore. Sitting on the end of the stage in a lone spotlight, she propelled Lennon’s vision of a humane world into a force strong enough to penetrate even the calloused cranium of a Pentagon/Kremlin strategist. Turn this one up and feel the chills.
★ ★ ★ ★
The Al & Randy Show brought many familiar faces back out on stage, David Sanborn, Larry Carlton, Neil Larsen, Ricky Lawson and Marcus Miller. Jarreau all in white, led Randy, now in black chiffon, arm in arm to center stage. Randy, beaming up at Al, purred playfully as the band struck up “Your Precious Love.” Jarreau sidled up to her with a breathy “que ce que c’est.” There was romance in the Alps tonight.
There’s something about a man and a woman, equally gifted, matching each other strength for strength, phrase for phrase, in a total, sublime synchronization of artistry that suggests a kind of romantic ideal, whether it’s Fonteyn and Nureyev or Astaire and Rogers. Jarreau and Crawford flirted with the ultimate equality of the sexes on more than one occasion, performing, seemingly, for the sheer romance of it all.
They put the old Motown number through a rigorous new program, subjecting the pop tune to the best in jazz expression. Words were stretched, curved and customized for maximum personal involvement.
No ordinary duet comes close to the emotional pitch they reached on “Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong.” The Richard Page/Kenny Rogers song will never be the same after the torrid exchange produced here by Jarreau and Crawford. Their improvised give-and-take at the song’s climax had the intensity of any great instrumental tradeoff, and more. Whipped up by Sanborn’s lusty sax, Randy poured out anguish that needed no subtitles for non-English speakers. When she wailed, “I tell ya I don’t know about it, brother,” there was only one thing left to say. “Yes, ma’am.”
★ ★ ★ ★
>The man whose guitar sings on “Your Precious Love” is Larry Carlton. Considered by many studio experts the ultimate session guitarist, Carlton is known for a biting, searing guitar style. The ‘Carlton Sound,’ a luminous sounding volume pedal technique, has influenced a generation of players. His work in the Crusaders and on Steely Dan albums such as The Royal Scam and Aja defined the model guitar burst. Rolling Stone has rated his solo on Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne” as “one of the three best licks in rock.”
The finesse and taste that make Carlton so incisive in the studio – the delicate touch, the economy of effort, the knack for sweet sustain – work just as effectively on stage, leading to that inevitable riff of delight described on the backs of so many record sleeves: ‘Guitar Solo, Larry Carlton.’
The last, and certainly not the least of the performers to be talked about here is Mike Mainieri. His own set was so exceptional, in fact, that England’s New Musical Express called it ‘the highlight’ of the entire three-week festival. Though that music will have to wait for an upcoming LP, you can content yourself with his superb solos on “Casino Lights” and “Love Is Not Enough.” The mild-mannered vibraphonist did what Montreux audiences have come to expect from him: he put them away.
Mainieri is the complete music professional: session player with the Brecker Bros., Larry Coryell, Chico Hamilton, Sonny Stitt, Benny Goodman, Elvin Jones, founder of his own production company (which served as a working base for Steve Gadd, the Breckers, Tony Levin, Joe Beck, and Warren Bernhardt before they became well-known figures in the New York session circle); producer of recent albums by Carly Simon, Japanese guitarist Kazumi Watanabe and Stephen Bishop; composer; arranger; solo artist.
He’s the player-coach, the actor-director who knows how to get the most out of his team because he’s part of it. He has a way with a melody that makes a song sound like a standard the first time you hear it, a cinematic sense that sparks the mind’s eye.
★ ★ ★ ★
The best part of the Montreux story is, of course, either inside this sleeve or on your turntable. The music is both a detailed account of the spirit and camaraderie found by 15 American musicians in a small Swiss town; and an exciting report on the movement of jazz into popular forms. The artists on this record may give record shops the filing fits – is it jazz? pop? R&B? – but it’s clear that their sound is giving modern music a badly needed transfusion, melodically, harmonically, and artistically.
This is a meeting of more than like-minded musicians. These performances represent a partnership of musics, too, a solidarity of America’s most expressive styles of music, led by that most American form of all, jazz.
