By Howard Mandel

Jazz, blues, pop, rock, country, movie music, show tunes—the best which is what we remember—are all about the American “vernacular”, defined by Webster’s as “the common everyday language of ordinary people in a particular locality.”

Albert Ayler knew the value of the vernacular, expressing his holy joy, fear, awe and passion in saxophone shrieks out of quasi-hymns and marches. All this was recalled by guitarist Marc Ribot’s Spiritual Unity quartet at the Knitting Factory’s 20-act winter jazzfest a couple weekends back. Frank Loesser, whose words (and sometimes music) for mostly forgotten Hollywood films from the late ’30s through early ’50s were celebrated in the opening program of the Lyrics and Lyricists series, now in its 36th season at the 92nd Street Y, had enviably complete, seemingly inherent command of the vernacular. Never thought you’d see Ayler and Loesser linked? One was a prophet of transcendent freedom, the other a poet of wise guys and sharp dolls. But they shared an unshakable faith in songs and speech that all their fellow citizens could partake of, believing the divine and sublime belonged at least as much to regular folk as to any high falutin’, self-absorbed elite. 

In order to express the bursting fervor in his heart, Ayler, who apprenticed in Cleveland rhythm ‘n’ blues groups and then served in a U.S. Army band from 1959 to 1961, began with American standards. He was so eager to record his debut album that he blew the first eight bars of “Bye Bye Blackbird” before the engineer could get the tape rolling; he attacked Charlie Parker’s “Billie’s Bounce” before he had really mastered its tricky line, and he evoked the deep sultriness of Gershwin’s “Summertime” with a mile-wide vibrato, offsetting gruff claims and an undertone of fainter musings.

 Ribot, in absolutely unfettered mode at the Knit (with equally rampant brassman Roy Campbell, bassist Henry Grimes and drummer Chad Taylor), wrung Ayler-like shakes, cries and shards from his ax, interpolating a bit of “Summertime” into one of his hero’s original anthems, segueing without pause into ever higher realms of riot. It was unrepentantly defiant, the extreme opposite of acquiescent or complacent. Spiritual Unity (with an album on the Pi label) was asserting the rights of musicians to roar however they want to, and that set the tone for the variety of the evening. Pyeng Threadgill sang upbeat, yet somehow subversive revisions of Robert Johnson’s blues to New Orleans brass band backup. Philadelphian Dave Burrell used the oddest meters to upend conventions assumed to apply to piano trios. Trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s acoustic-electric Flow ensemble thinned out the density of highly amplified models, like Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, without reducing plugged-in jazz to vapid “smoothiness” (that’s my shout-out to Steven Colbert).

 There was much hybridization at this jazzfest, thanks to Balkan-born guitarist Goran Ivanovic, South Asian-Americans Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa and Rez Abassi, Cuban drummer-composer Dafnis Prieto and Colombian harpist Edmar Castaneda, among others, but their contributions fed the vernacular rather than diminishing it. We now understand and embrace the theory that music evolves by miscegenation, don’t we? That’s a beauty of instrumental music: new sounds and ideas permeate any proposed boundaries. The vernacular is inclusive, unlike slang, which is developed to distinguish the speaker and exclude those who don’t get it, which may explain my problems with rap.

 I had no such problem, and found very little dated, in the words Frank Loesser wrote for such olden-day notables as Betty Hutton, Danny Kaye, Esther Williams, Ricardo Montalban and Gracie Allen during his pre-Broadway period of Hollywood employ. Loesser’s qualities of brevity, clarity and wit were gloriously evident in a program organized by B’way music director Ted Sperling, featuring five stage and cabaret singers and a jazz-steeped (of course) quintet. The mid 20th-century American vernacular used in boy-girl situations, remains so immediately recognized that what’s not said in Loesser songs like “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is what we hang on. One sophisticated 13-year-old (and rap initiate) of my acquaintance was on the edge of her seat as Mary Testa sang “I Said No,” relating the valiant but failed resistance of a maid to a man pressing her to subscribe to a magazine. 

 Loesser plumbed the American vernacular for its goofiness, adaptability and syncopation. He took a gambler’s phrase, “I’d love to get you on a slow boat to China” (“you” being a well-heeled, steadily losing mark) and transformed it into a lyric of simmering lust. He used slang to ridicule it: “‘Murder,’ he says/Every time we kiss/‘Murder,’ he says/At a time like this/‘Murder,’ he says/Is that the language of love?” He liked words with resonant effects (“Jingle, Jangle, Jingle”), but could also say exactly what was meant: “Now I see, what one embrace can do/Look at me, it’s got me loving you/Madly.../That little kiss you stole/Held all my heart and soul.”

Putting Loesser’s words to Hoagy Carmichael’s childlike tune resulted in a corny classic, and everyone at the Y sang along. The vernacular, whether free improvisation or enduring ditty, unifies. Just what we need in times like these.