Love's Bitter Rage

Jazz pianist Johnny Case has held down Fort Worth's longest-running jazz gig, at Sardines Ristorante Italiano, for over 20 yrs. So when he announced last fall that he was changing his name to the "muslimized" Jhon Kahsen in protest against U.S. military adventures in Iraq, some sensible folk on the set figured he must have been either 1) kidding or 2) out of his mind. "My name-change is no joke," sez Johnny in the liner notes to his new CD, and having visited with him a few times in the past year, I'd say he's still in possession of his faculties. He is, I think, putting his political convictions on the line in the most appropriate manner -- that is, creating a work with programmatic content that the listener can take on whatever level they choose, rather than haranguing the diners at Sardines. Lotsa musos will tell you one-on-one that they oppose the current administration's foreign policy. I can't think of any others offhand who've chosen to comment on it via their art (and no, Spector 45 re-recording the Nervebreakers' "My Girlfriend is a Rock" w/new lyrics as "My Girlfriend's in Iraq" does _not_ count).

Johnny...er, Jhon's new CD, Love's Bitter Rage, is subtitled "A Peace and Justice Suite" and was inspired by the testimony of a Guatemalan woman whose family was murdered by death squads trained at the School of the Americas (since renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) at Fort Benning, Georgia. To get the backstory, you can read the essays in the accompanying booklet by Ramsey Sprague, Maureen Tolbert, and Kitty Case. There's all kinds of precedent for this kind of statement in the jazz canon. Just think of Billie Holliday's "Strange Fruit." Or Mingus compositions from "Fables of Faubus" and "Meditations" to "Remember Rockefeller at Attica" and "Free Cell Block F, 'Tis Nazi USA." Or Charlie Haden's "Song for Che" with Ornette, which got its composer arrested at the airport in Lisbon after he dedicated the piece to Angolan freedom fighters during a 1971 concert there. Or Haden's series of albums with his Liberation Music Orchestra.

Case / Kahsen has released a slew of rekkids over the yrs, encompassing everything from straightahead jazz to free improv to country to western swing to musique concrete. Never one to damn with faint praise, I'd say this one has the feel of a masterpiece. The main theme, with its Spanish tinge and air of elegiac melancholy, appears no less than four times, in trio and quintet versions and in vocal arrangements with the lyrics sung (in English and Spanish) by operatic sopranos Chelsea Coyne and Claudia Gonzalez. As one who was force-fed on Strauss and Wagner operas as a youngster, I'll admit that's not my fave style of vocalismo, but the Ellington-inspired vocal pieces (with bassist Byron Gordon on first-time cello, no less) provide a suitably weighty setting for the text. The somber mood of these pieces gives way to a feeling of freedom and openness on the Tyneresque modal piece "Global Jubilation" (which appears in trio and quintet versions) and the pensive "No Little Lament," a dedication to the trumpeter Booker Little (who played on Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, an inspiration for the current project). The free improv "Run Free" sounds like it could be an outtake from one of Cecil Taylor's classic '60s Blue Note albums (that'd be Unit Structures and Conquistador). In between the toons, Joey Carter (whose crisply-swinging trapwork throughout the album gives the music a lift) contributes percussion interludes that alternately evoke African, Near Eastern, and Latin American root sources.

As always, Case / Kahsen's playing is harmonically rich and lyrical, and his accompanists appear to have dug particularly deep for these sessions. Bassist Byron Gordon came to the jazz fold from the TCU Symphony, the Jim Squires Band, and countless Tim Locke projects, initially motivated by his love and respect for his predecessor in Case's trio, the late Charles Scott. He says he's proud to have played on this album, and he and Carter (who we're more accustomed to seeing behind the vibes with four mallets flying at the Black Dog on Sunday nights, or playing keyboards with Bertha Coolidge whenever they reconvene to do their funk-fusion thang) provide solid and sensitive support for Johnny's explorations. I haven't heard much of tenor saxophonist Sylvester Jones; my bad -- he's a player of great feeling and invention, with the Texas tenorman's trademark big sound. To these ears, the big news here is Chris White's standout work on flute and trumpet. Chris is a ubiquitous presence around town, whether he's playing bass in the pit band at Jubilee Theater or with Saint Frinatra at Fred's, or adding his solo voice to Dave and Daver's front line. He's even recorded with Johnny several times in the past, but I doubt I've ever heard him play as beautifully as he does here, particularly on the Booker Little dedication and the flute feature "Orphan World."

One thing to remember: If you want this CD, you're gonna have to go to Sardines when Johnny's playing to cop it. So far, it's not available from Johnny's website, and it wasn't on the wall devoted to his stuff at Record Town when I was there the other day. Then again, that's not a bad thing; myself, I'm always looking for an excuse to scarf some good Italian chow while listening to great jazz. When you get yr copy of Love's Bitter Rage, you might wanna ask Jhon to play "Adrift" or "No Little Lament" or even the title track from the CD to pique the interest of some of the other diners, too.