Heritage: Joshua Redman

Joshua Redman: I Had A King

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Here's another example of the fruit not falling far at all from the tree. Joshua Redman, the brilliant free-form saxophonist, learned his craft at his father Dewey Redman's knee. Dewey was known for his solo free-form/bebop recordings as well as collaborations with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett, especially, as well as with Pat Metheny, Paul Motian, and Charlie Haden.

I treated you to a song by Joshua Redman (St. Thomas) during Saints week. This time I'm sharing a Joni Mitchell cover that he borrows and makes his own.

Saints: St. Thomas

Joshua Redman: St. Thomas

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Poor St. Thomas. (To be more specific, poor St. Thomas the Apostle, not to be confused with St. Thomas Aquinas, or St. Thomas More, or St. Thomas of Becket, or any of the other dozen or so Thomases who are also Roman Catholic saints.)

Thomas had a long and productive saintly career. He is said to have travelled to India and introduced Christianity there (er, well, maybe not so productive there). But we know him best from one New Testament episode, and the story goes like this (with embellishment):

Thomas was not with the other disciples one fateful day---they probably sent him off for the beer and snack run. And when he returned, his apostolic buds had amazing news.

"Guess who was just here visiting with us? You'll never guess!" they told him.

"Dudes. Just tell me."

"Jesus!"

This must have struck Thomas as a really tasteless joke, since Jesus had recently gone through the "crucified, dead and buried" part of the familiar story.

"Yeah, right. Pull the other one, lads, it's got bells on."

"No, really. You just missed him."

"Look, next time, you can fetch your own damned beer if this is the thanks I get."

And then he said the famous words that he soon came to regret: "Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe you."

And for this, a statement of incredulity that I bet every one of us would have come up with in some form, he is best known by the not-very-cool epithet, "Doubting Thomas."

A week later, the resurrected Lord pops in again, but this time Thomas is hanging around. Now I don't think Jesus was at all harsh about Thomas's earlier doubts. He must have had a pretty good sense of humor, because you have to admit, the whole notion of resurrection was pretty unexpected. So Caravaggio is probably taking artistic liberties with the sort-of-icky scene above. I'm sure that Thomas, when invited to act out his earlier words, just said, "No, that's okay, Lord, I'm good, thanks anyway."

Thomas did get a pretty sweet Virgin Island named after him, though, so there's that.

The real reason I'm posting this song is that I just saw Joshua Redman in concert on Sunday and wanted to share something from one of the great tenor saxophonists alive today. This is a tune written by Sonny Rollins, performed in 1995 by Redman at the Village Vanguard. You may recognize the melody after the long introductory solo, at about 4:30.

Joni Covers: Jazz Saxophone Tributes

Herbie Hancock, ft. Wayne Shorter: Both Sides Now

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Paul Desmond: Song to a Seagull

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Joshua Redman: I Had a King

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Let's check out some jazzy Joni covers, yeah? Here are three that focus on the saxophone. I used to play this amazing instrument, but sadly, none of the songs I ever learned were nearly as cool as these. It may seem counterintuitive to feature songs of a remarkable lyricist that have been stripped of the lyrics, but this allows us to focus on the melodies. Which are also remarkable, as we'll see.

I'll start with the low-hanging fruit. Herbie Hancock, the genius jazz keyboardist who's played with everyone who's anyone in the jazz world, released an entire tribute album to Joni in 2007, called "River: The Joni Letters." To everyone's surprise (except those of us who, you know, actually listened to it), Herbie's tribute ended up as the Grammy Album of the Year. How could it not? I'm going with one of the few instrumentals on the CD, but even then, it features Wayne Shorter, who is every bit as awesomesauce as Herbie. If you're a Steely Dan fan, you've heard him on "Aja". If you're a jazz fan, you know him from later Miles Davis, Weather Report, and, um, other Herbie Hancock recordings.

If you've ever listened to "Take Five," that idiosyncratic, arrhythmic, and classic ode to the 5/4 time signature, then you've heard Paul Desmond's alto saxophone. His was a defining musical voice of West Coast (aka Cool) Jazz. Here's his 1973 take on one of Joni's earliest songs, recorded before even Joni herself began to follow the jazz muse of her later work. And if you pay attention to these sorts of things, Grammy winner Don Sebesky is the arranger.

Another west-coast jazz musician, this one a son of saxman Dewey Redman, gives us our last saxophone tribute to Joni. Joshua Redman has other credits to his name, including the PBS TV shows Arthur and Reading Rainbow, and, and, and OMG he's the saxophonist on the anime series Cowboy Bebop, an oeuvre from which I'll try to work in songs in future posts….oh, where was I? Oh, right. Here's a 1998 Joni cover.