Hessions Looking for Their Own Place in Jazz History

The day Jim and Martha Hession met legendary pianist-composer Eubie Blake was one of the most fortunate of their career. But their 15-year association with the pioneering jazz pianist, who died in 1983 at age 100, also has its down-side.

“When people hear you worked with Eubie Blake, they think that you’re going to sound like a turn-of-the-century ragtime band,” vocalist Martha said in a three-way phone conversation with her pianist husband from their Glendale home. “And that’s hurt us in the jazz world.”

“Well, yes we can do that (style),” she added. “Jim can play (like) Eubie Blake. . . . But Jim’s (own) style is modern, contemporary and post be-bop oriented, different than anybody else because Jim has that strong left hand that stride and ragtime players had. But we have trouble getting the jazz world to listen because they want to pigeonhole the thing.”

Actually, the Hessions pursue dual careers: They are jazz artists--they play tonight and next Tuesday at the Fullerton Hofbrau--as well as jazz historians. They do informative college concerts and clinics exploring jazz and pop styles from the turn of the century and into the ‘40s. They do some as a duo, some with their band and often with tap dancer Chester Whitmore of the Los Angeles-based Black Ballet Jazz dance ensemble.

“Martha does all the vocal styles,” Jim explained. “I do ragtime and stride and boogie-woogie. Chester does the Cake Walk and the Charleston.”

But they also pursue their own, more contemporary direction with their group, the American Jazz Quintet. Blake, as it turns out, heavily influenced the Hessions in both their roles.

The couple met him at a Los Angeles party in 1968. “Sometime during the party, Jim sat down at the piano and Eubie latched on to him,” Martha said. “By the end of the evening, Eubie had asked Jim to record with him.”

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Blake sought the young pianist out on the strength he displayed playing early pieces. “I was always drawn to the harder driving classical styles of Liszt, Rachmaninoff,” Hession, 45, explained. “So when I heard some (jazz) on the radio, I was attracted to its drive, started working on it and latched on to the early styles.

“I learned jazz chronologically, starting with the earliest. A lot of musicians, especially pianists, will learn be-bop first, or that Bill Evans style, and then go back and learn the early stuff. But it’s more difficult to go in reverse and learn that stride bass and the left-hand accompaniment that the early styles require.”

Blake’s emphasis on individual style and avoiding category might have been the biggest lesson he passed on to his friends. “Our relationship with Eubie,” said Martha, “was not about ragtime. It was about music. Yes, Jim can play in that style . . . “

“And Martha can do all the traditional vocal styles,” Jim interjected.

Added Martha: “But one thing that Eubie consistently pushed, in his letters, in the tapes he sent to us, was to play things in our own style.”

The lesson on developing their own style came to the couple just in time, during a period in the ‘70s when traditional piano music was fading into obscurity as its principal practitioners died while the pop audience embraced rock ‘n’ roll.

“We had some concern during that time” Jim said, “that our audience would get older and older and eventually vanish.”

“There was no infusion of youth into that audience at all,” Martha said. “But what’s happened over the course of the last 15 years or so made a difference and young people are coming to this music.”

She cites the return to favor of the acoustic piano after years of electronic-keyboard dominance and the emergence of young stars, such as Harry Connick Jr. and Natalie Cole, who have attracted new devotees to their brand of music.

But the most important thing Blake taught them, according to Martha, was how to enjoin the audience. “He showed us how to entertain at the same time you keep your musical integrity at a high level--how to appeal to an audience that’s knowledgeable about jazz and to one that’s never heard it in their lives. He taught us how to use our chops to create that spontaneous joy that envelopes the audience.”

The Hessions want to make sure that their friend’s legacy lives on. To that end they are working with producer-director Donjean Gardner on a documentary on the legendary composer-pianist entitled “Eubie Blake: In His Own Words.” It is based on the Hessions’ collection of Blake’s memorabilia and correspondence.

“Eubie was like an advance man for various types of music,” said Jim, who cites Blake’s influence on pianists ranging from Earl Hines and Fats Waller to Duke Ellington, Erroll Garner and Thelonious Monk. Blake was not, both Hessions emphasize, strictly a ragtime player.

“Eubie hated the label,” Martha said. “He was amused that he was lumped together with Scott Joplin, but he himself had no relationship with Joplin. They met once. Eubie considered him one of the old men. Joplin was ragtime. But Eubie played so many styles in his career. He was jazz.”

* Jim and Martha Hessions’ American Jazz Quintet with saxophonist Harold Bennett, bassist Greg Eicher and drummer Donald Dean appear tonight and next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Fullerton Hofbrau, 323 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton. No cover. (714) 870-7400.