Jack Hutton can’t get over stride piano player Paul Asaro’s left hand. That’s the hand that can play “Tea for Two” while the right hand tinkles out “Indian Love Song” or whatever other tune takes Asaro’s fancy. Together, Asaro’s gifted hands and equally flexible voice dazzled and delighted an appreciative audience crowding the Gravenhurst Opera House on the evening of Saturday 9 July 2011.
Once again an artist of the ragtime persuasion has triumphed over the Steinway on that venerable stage. Occasional high and mighty visiting pianists may have been overheard complaining about the keys being “stiff”. Yet, magically, the ragtime guys and gals who come to Gravenhurst year after year, thanks to Jack Hutton, manage to electrify the staid Steinway with sheer joy and boundless enthusiasm.
The great Mimi Blais, “Ragtime” Bob Darch and Dick Hyman love to play “stride”, but seemed only to mention it in passing, as if we all knew what it was. To my recollection, they never stopped long enough to spell out exactly what stride is. It sounded big, very masculine like a cowboy marching toward a bull to ride. I was poised with flashlight and notebook for heroic, loud sounds to be diligently analyzed. Those were there, all right, but only when called for. The dynamics were subtle and varied as were the rhythms. I relaxed, entranced.
“Carolina Shout” has a robust and tuneful bass, with a delicate treble accompaniment that occasionally picks up the melody, then throws it back to the left hand. This piece by “The Father of Stride”, James P. Johnson was “a major rite of passage for aspiring Harlem stride piano players” according to Ted Gioia.
Johnson himself can be heard on youtube playing “Carolina Shout” recorded from a piano roll - hence no scratchy 1920’s recording sounds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSFGyipsNsg
And so I gathered, at last, that stride is an intricate and sophisticated school of music that arose in the 1920’s when ragtime met jazz. The blending of these two streams opened out new freedom to improvise, new demands for virtuosity and oceans of fun. The stride style demands more of the left hand than ragtime ever did. The bass no longer thumps out an oom-pa-pa tuba part derived from military marches, as in early ragtime - around the 1860’s and the American Civil War. The left hand of a stride pianist ranges widely up and down the bass register, with the little finger sometimes assigned to a melody of its own. For an example of this, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68c6XrIT0_w&feature=related
No doubt about it, Paul Asaro is, as one reviewer called him, a “one man band”. In fact that’s what a ragtime piano player is, all the more so when s/he moves into stride. You can hear the brass band in the bass, while clarinets, trumpets, flutes and violins warble in the treble. As it happens, Asaro’s is possibly the most colourful piano playing I’ve ever heard, from the classics onward.
Inspired by “Professor” Ragtime Bob Darch, young Paul put on a playful professorial hat to give us a crash course in What Ragtime Is All About. We heard Scot Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” played first in ragtime, and then in stride. After “Riffs” by Johnson we were treated to Willie “The Lion” Smith’s delicate, almost Chopin-like “Echoes of Spring”.
The upright piano on centre stage was all set for Asaro/Hutton duos beginning with “Ain’t Misbehavin’” by Fats Waller. There hadn’t been time for a rehearsal, but it was easy to guess the spontaneity on stage sprang from long experience and pure improvisation. As Jack wrote following the show: “Paul and I have played together twice at Alexandria Bay, N.Y., and have developed a pretty good sense of what the other one is going to play. We fit together very well because we have both been listening for many years to the same recordings.”
Clip from duo above on 9 July 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuJf1wgO4Lo
All this listening to legacy recordings must be part of the training for ragtime and stride piano players. The first time Jack heard Paul playing in another room, he wondered momentarily whether Fats Waller had come back to life. And no, this was not Jelly Roll Morton either, fitting his fingers into the keys of a player piano at full speed.
After intermission an exuberant Paul Asaro treated us to Jelly Roll Morton’s beginnings in New Orleans, when Mamie, the lady next door, used to play the blues every morning with eight fingers - she was missing two. Mamie’s blues evolved into Morton’s. We heard “The Jelly Roll Blues”, “Mr. Jelly Lord”, the tango-like “Crave”, “Animule Dance” and a roaring “Tiger Rag”. (First time I heard that piece with such a ROAR in the bass.)
Jack returned for a duo “China Boy”, lots of fun for both players, and for us.
Then it was “Aloysius, Do The Dishes”, a haunting tune that you can hear Paul Asaro perform at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8TXge1OKgQ
“Handful of Keys” was a foretaste of the final piece, and “The Blind Pig Blues” is an Asaro composition.
The grand finale was Paul Asaro’s interpretation of Jelly Roll Morton’s “Fingerbreaker”, which Jack Hutton classifies as “an incredibly difficult piece that I will NEVER be able to play. Paul Asaro makes it sound easy. Our audience heard one of the best stride piano players on this planet last night -- and he is only 43!”
Notes from Jack Hutton about winding down in the Trillium Court:
Downstairs, Paul and I played together until close to 11 p.m. That included “Honeysuckle Rose” by Fats Waller, “Echo of Spring” by Willie “the Lion” Smith and “I’ve Got My Fingers Crossed”, which Fats Waller played in the Lena Horne movie, “Stormy Weather”. That last tune was our best of the whole night -- very close to the way Fats played it!
We did Willie the Lion’s signature tune, “Relaxing”, before we finished. I started playing it after Paul got up to leave and he rushed back to join me. Willie used to play it late at night and play it differently with every chorus. Paul and I had great fun doing the same thing. Have you noticed that many of my concerts last longer downstairs than they do upstairs!
Dale Peacock wrote asking what is stride piano, and I’ve tried to incorporate some notion of this while writing a review, which is something like playing two different pieces with each hand.
Dick Hyman’s demonstration “from ragtime to stride” can be found on youtube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo_365T1B2o&feature=related
And finally, here is Paul Asaro playing "Fingerbreaker":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf3ozxMjsLU&feature=related
Thank you, Paul and Jack for a wonderful melodic, rhythmic evening.
http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/
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