Red Mitchell’s Goal: Songs on Every Subject

Ask jazz bassist-pianist Red Mitchell who he is, and he’ll sit at the keyboard and sing you one of the 100 or so songs he’s written.

“Strawberry nose, sugar-cube teeth, a pear-shaped body and my real’s name Keith,” he intoned in a gravelly yet warm and pleasant voice, playing a tune that had a swinging jazz sensibility. “Bet my soul on the whole human race. Write songs sometimes and play some bass.”

The Manhattan native, who spent 14 years in Los Angeles in the ‘50s and ‘60s but now lives in Stockholm, started hooking up words with music when he moved to Sweden in 1968.

“I had fooled around with lyrics since I was a kid, but I became serious in Stockholm,” said Mitchell, who is currently house-sitting a friend’s apartment in Culver City. “One thing I wanted to do when I moved was to try and verbalize my feelings through writing lyrics. Ultimately, I want a song for everything. I’d like to be be able to tell it like it is through jazz. It’s a lot cheaper than analysis,” he added with a typical twinkle.

Mitchell, whose song titles include “I Do Love Love,” “My Body’s My Buddy and Jazz Is My Jones” and “Declaration of Interdependence,” said that while many of his tunes have political themes, “they’re just about real life. Really, most of them are about love.” His “When I’m Singing” LP on the Enja label features Mitchell offering his originals.

The 60-year-old musician is in Los Angeles to record, to play selected nightclubs--he’ll be at the Grand Avenue Bar with Mike Melvoin on Tuesday--and to participate in the International Society of Bassists Convention at UCLA. (See related story on Page 7.)

And while professing a keenness for his songwriting, Mitchell is still very much a bass player. He defines his role in a group: “The bassist should the foundation, be the accompanist. The foundation doesn’t necessarily have to be hip, but it must be in the same place as the house, and the same shape. The No. 1 thing on my gig is to allow the pianist to play his or her best, maybe even play over their heads. If I can also get off a good solo, that’s to my credit.”

Mitchell splits up his musical year working in Sweden and on the Continent, making a jaunt to the Southland, and spending a couple of months in New York, playing in duos at Bradley’s, a small club near Washington Square. He’ll be there next month, working with such pianists as Kenny Barron, Bill Mays and Melvoin.

Bradley’s has become special for the musician. “It’s the only place in the world where I can go and work as much as six weeks in a row with my favorite players and do exactly what I want to do, which is express myself through jazz.”

New York was also a special place when Mitchell was a teen-ager, growing up in New Jersey. “I got to meet my idols, like the men in Dizzy’s (Gillespie) big band before I started playing (jazz), and it was as much the people that drew me into jazz as it was the music.”

Mitchell moved to Los Angeles in the early ‘50s and became one of the town’s most successful bassists, playing and recording with the likes of drummer Shelly Manne, reedmen Gerry Mulligan and Ornette Coleman and pianists Hampton Hawes and Andre Previn.

But in the late ‘50s when the jazz scene dried up, Mitchell turned to studio work. But by 1968, he’d tired of that and decided to move to Sweden.

“I was very impressed with the fairness and honesty of the people when I was first there in 1954, on a tour with Red Norvo and Billie Holiday,” he recalled. “I said to myself then, ‘This must be the place,’ and I still feel that way now.”