Someone who seemed well on her way to being one of the premiere jazz guitarists departed this earth twenty-two years ago ... and a well-deserved look at the life of Emily Remler will follow after the jump ....
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Last autumn, I wrote a Top Comments diary that highlighted just a few of the quite numerous, interstellar
female blues guitarists whose playing came over my radio, or cable TV station. And they seem to be getting younger.
Yet by contrast, the field of jazz has surprising few female 'name' players on guitar (with the German-born Leni Stern as an exception; she is also one of my favorites). To be sure, there have been ones throughout history - such as Carline Ray, Mary Osborne and Marian Grange - and you'll find talented players in big city jazz clubs across the nation. Indeed, someone more known as a bassist is session performer Carole Kaye - yet who, to my surprise, is also a featured guitarist.
Still, as compared with blueswomen Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Bonnie Raitt, Deborah Coleman and Susan Tedeschi ..... comparatively few female guitarists have managed to become known to the general public in the field of jazz.
And that's why Emily Remler was so special. Although born in Manhattan, she always characterized herself as a "nice girl from New Jersey", and grew up in Englewood Cliffs: the home of Rudy Van Gelder and his famous recording studio.
She played a variety of musical styles before entering Boston's noted Berklee College of Music in the 1970's. That set her on her career path, and after a stint in New Orleans (performing in the house band of the Fairmont-Roosevelt Hotel and other gigs) she wound up as a touring musician. Part of her career involved backing vocalists (including the Brazilian bossa nova singer Astrud Gilberto, as well as Rosemary Clooney, Robert Goulet and Nancy Wilson) .... and Emily was quite a sympathetic player, to my ears, in that genre.
Yet she seemed more comfortable in an instrumental format; with the veteran guitarist Herb Ellis representing one of her two 'big breaks'. As a 20 year-old in 1977, she heard that he was to perform locally, and arranged a ruse by asking him after the show to help her repair her .... Herb Ellis model guitar. He continued:
I was working in New Orleans in 1977, when this young girl, she couldn’t have been 20, came and asked me for a lesson. I asked her to play something for me, and when she did, I just couldn’t believe what I heard. Forget about “girl”, she’s going to be one of the greatest jazz guitar players who ever lived - she can do anything.
Herb Ellis was so blown away that he arranged a spot for her at the Concord Jazz festival that year ... along with guitar legends Charlie Byrd, Joe Pass, Tal Farlow, Barney Kessel ... and the nonpareil bassist Ray Brown. Needless to say, one took note of this young player, and he and Emily recorded an album together six years later.
All along, though, she struggled with the rigors of touring as a woman in a male-dominated world. As she told Gene Lees the Canadian jazz writer:
"I’m not into sitting and crying about it, I’m into doing. I never was bitter about the fact that there are so many band leaders who have told me face to face that they couldn’t hire me because I was a woman, or that there have been so many instances where I wasn’t trusted musically and they handled me with kid gloves because they figured my time wasn’t strong. You have to believe in yourself. It never did occur to me to stay in one place and bitch about this, about how I wasn’t given a chance. I think it gives me more merit – to get really good, so good that it doesn’t matter: to get so good that you surpass it".
She married the Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander in 1981, but the stress of life on the road ended their marriage just a few short years later. And she also suffered from bouts of depression and loneliness, as she told one flautist. This woman worked steadily in the New York area, and was envious of Emily's success (her having just returned from a tour of Japan). Emily, by contrast, told Jan Leder just how lucky she was to have a 'normal' life ..... which made Jan reconsider.
Meanwhile, Emily's career had taken off - now with her own recording contract and leading her own band - and with her second big break to follow a few years later in 1985. I consider it to be so, because I discovered Emily Remler when she was championed by one of my heroes: the jazz guitarist Larry Coryell who had been in the vanguard of jazz-rock, equally at home in both worlds.
They recorded the album Together (middle photo, below) which the jazz radio stations played regularly. Now she had been accepted not only by the old guard, but by the younger and more edgy musicians of the post-Beatles era (such as Pat Metheney) .... and she had a number of critically acclaimed albums through the rest of the 1980's.
Alas ... as you've noticed, the quotes about her are in the past tense - and that's because she shared one problem with many jazz greats of the 1950's: a heroin problem. She had been trying to become clean when she agreed to tour in Australia in the spring of 1990 .... and seemed to have made progress.
The rest is conjecture: some stories have it that while on a difficult tour in Sydney (and feeling homesick) she sought out a fix ... not knowing that the dealer she purchased it from had not 'cut' it ... and thus she took a much more potent dose than it would have appeared to her.
Either way: she died on May 4, 1990 at the age of only thirty-two (a heart attack was listed as the cause on her death certificate). Sixteen years later in 2006, the Skip Heller Band recorded The Lonesome Death of Emily Remler in tribute, and there were also two albums recorded by many of her fellow musicians. In a better world, she'd have celebrated her fifty-fifth birthday earlier this month.
Yet twenty-two years later, we still have her recordings and videos to remember her by. And the hope that other women - regardless of style - will be able to fill the void that she left.
What to choose as musical selections? Numerous choices; here is one with a quartet playing the Sigmund Romberg/Oscar Hammerstein classic Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise and also accompanying Astrud Gilberto on "The Girl from Ipanema".
But I'd like to feature two works of hers on solo guitar: one is from one of her instruction videos, playing Afro-Blue - the Mongo Santamaria classic at this link ....
... and the other is the classic Rodgers and Hart tune My Funny Valentine where she backs the vocalist Kim Parker - the stepchild of the legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker - at this link ....
My funny Valentine
Sweet comic Valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable
Unphotographable
Yet you're my favorite work of art
Is your figure less than Greek
Is your mouth a little weak
When you open it to speak
Are you smart?
But don't change a hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little Valentine stay
Each day is Valentine's Day
Now, on to Top Comments:
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From mikedallas23:
In the front-page story about Mitt Romney's trouble with the electorate - both self-inflicted and not of his doing - alasmoses has a comment which I humbly nominate for this evening.
From
Mets102:
Two from my own diary: about how Wolf Blitzer took on the 'poll truthers' claiming the polls are biased against Romney/Ryan ....
... first, this comment from Inland mocks the 'poll truthers' by combining the term into one word - and alludes to the effect they're having on the discussion .....
... and then Beetwasher has an apt description of the Romney presidential campaign: with bonus points for bad wine.
And from
Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the diary by gf120581 about the saga that is Todd Akin ..... Paul Rogers advises us to beware those in the GOP who publicly berate him ... and perhaps with good reason.
TOP PHOTOS
September 27, 2012
Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful PictureQuilt™ below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo.
(NOTE: Any missing images in the Quilt were removed because (a) they were from an unapproved source that somehow snuck through in the comments, or (b) it was an image from the DailyKos Image Library which didn't have permissions set to allow others to use it.)
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And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
1) Kroger's should fire that man. by ConfusedSkyes — 159
2) More skewed liberal bullshit... by Trix — 152
3) asdf by GayIthacan — 123
4) Ed Rendell looks like the cat who by Its the Supreme Court Stupid — 116
5) You had me at by Blue Boy Red State — 104
6) That would be Cherokee Nation Principal Chief by second gen — 103
7) President Obama may not need Arizona by Steveningen — 101
8) thanks for being there for us - a voice of reason by p gorden lippy — 99
9) I dunno, but I can't wait to find out. by edwardssl — 95
10) Every time Mitt opens his mouth... by David Kroning II — 94
11) Fire him, then watch his actions by realwischeese — 91
12) I recommend that anyone by lynne1 — 87
13) WOW! by Oliver Tiger — 86
14) I saw this story by pat of butter in a sea of grits — 86
15) Cue the Redstate freakout by techiechick — 85
16) I've worn out my finger hitting replay. by marabout40 — 84
17) Yes, looks like the GOP is being BAINED! by War on Error — 80
18) The man can't share credit with anyone by blue aardvark — 80
19) The kind of war-whooping, tomahawk-chopping... by Meteor Blades — 80
20) WE ARE WINNING! by TomP — 78
21) At this point, the Romney campaign has by blue jersey mom — 77
22) Gallup shows this now because by tbounnak — 76
23) Yeah...that was cringe-worthy. by koosah — 76
24) Some more details by cishart — 73
25) G-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-A-L-L-L-L-L!!!!! by ontheleftcoast — 72
26) It hit home by Jabus — 71
27) Perhaps the Romney team will steal that for their by Mother Mags — 69
28) But who will think of the poor starving by Horace Boothroyd III — 68
29) what the fuck does that have to do by terrypinder — 68
30) he could actually try to open a window by jfromga — 67