It wasn’t very orderly, and it took a long time. Meanwhile, he was corresponding to me from India. “I wrote right back, and said the opera is beginning. It was called “Detective Writer Daughter.” That was the first piece for Escalator. And his poem gave me the next phrase that I was missing. It fit exactly, syllable by syllable, into what I was writing. He was living in Paris, and he sent me a poem. I had a piece I was working on for myself, and I was sitting at the piano. It really started without my knowledge or permission. He was a writer of words, and I was a writer of notes. He was a poet who had written liner notes, and we talked about doing something together. “I came every night as well as this guy Paul Haines. How did Escalator Over the Hill start?Ĭarla had gone to the Five Spot to see her former husband Paul playing with Charles Mingus for an extended date. But Steve turned Gary on to it.” Burton recorded it in 1967 with Carla on keyboards and artists such as Swallow on bass, trombonists Jimmy Knepper and Howard Johnson, saxophonist Gato Barbieri, and trumpeter Michael Mantler – all of whom Bley soon enlisted for the beginnings of Escalator Over the Hill. “I had abandoned getting anyone to record it. One night he needed five tunes for an album and I came up with all five in one night.” How did Carla get introduced to artists playing new music?Īs she was making her name as a composer and arranger, bassist Steve Swallow was bringing her music to every band date he played, including Art Farmer, Steve Kuhn, and vibraphonist Gary Burton, who “adored” her composition suite, A Genuine Tong Funeral. Every time he needed a tune, he would ask me for one. “I guess he just liked the way I looked or walked…I don’t know if I was that special… But I was useful as a composer and arranger. In 1956, Paul Bley bought a pack of cigarettes from her even though he didn’t smoke. How did she meet her first husband, pianist Paul Bley?Ĭarla started playing regular piano gigs at coffeehouses in the afternoons, and would go to Birdland in the evenings. The music would influence her and inspire her to write new arrangements of songs, such as “Lullaby at Birdland” that she re-envisioned in a John Lewis style. I got a hotel room about a block from Birdland where a lot of the musicians stayed.” She listened to the radio constantly. “At the time, Birdland was a mob-run club. Not long after she read an ad in the newspaper, she applied for a job as a cigarette girl at Birdland. I can’t explain it in words, but only in notes. I heard Miles Davis play my first night there. But then I almost immediately went to Café Bohemia in Greenwich Village and I just listened. Strange and romantic.” The first place she lived in New York was on a bench in Grand Central Station. I saved all those mistakes and I used them daily.” How did Carla get to New York City? And what impact did it have on her?Īt 17, Carla ran away from home and made the cross-country trip to New York City. “I heard all the scales and all the mistakes of those poor students who were being forced by their parents to learn music. My excuse was to find music I liked and skate to it.” Back home, there was a succession of students coming to her house with a curtain between her room and the room where her father gave piano lessons. She skated in competitions but never placed high. My father called it the devil’s music.”Ĭarla left school in 10th grade and became a serious roller skater when she was 14. The band was marching up and down the aisles, and it was unusual music that I had never heard in church. That’s the kind of music I wanted to pursue. When she was 12, she went to the Oakland Auditorium to hear Lionel Hampton. Even then, I knew I wasn’t playing for free.” I would go around in the church playing songs like ‘This Little Light of Mine’ with a cup in my hand and people would put coins in. Her father was a pianist and a fundamentalist Baptist church choir master who encouraged her to play. Lovella May Borg was born in the flatlands of Oakland on May 11, 1936, not far from the city’s airport. In Rolling Stone, Jonathon Cott wrote of the result: “Like an electric transformer, Escalator Over the Hill synthesizes and draws on an enormous range of musical materials – raga, jazz, rock, ring-modulated piano sounds – all brought together through Carla Bley’s extraordinary formal sense and ability to unify individual but diverse musical sections…The opera is an international musical encounter of the first order.”įor those unfamiliar with the album, this article intends to answer some of the key questions about what is one of the most impressive records ever released. “It’s insane.” She pauses with a smile and adds, “Insane is good.” Today, she reflects back on her youthful magnum opus: “It takes a long time to listen to,” she says. Nonetheless, Bley persisted in making her debut album as a leader.
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