Zeitlin’s ‘lost and ‘found’ album.
Denny Zeitlin (solo piano) – With a Song In My Heart: Exploring The Music of Richard Rodgers – [TrackList follows] – Sunnyside SSC 1781, 77:32 [6/6/25] ****1/2
(Denny Zeitlin – acoustic piano; co-engineer, co-mixing, co-mastering (tracks 7-11))
The music of composer Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) is truly timeless. There are over 900 songs credited to Rodgers in collaboration with songwriting partners such as Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. In addition, Rodgers was the first to win the top American entertainment awards in theater, film, recording and television – an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony – known as an EGOT. He also won a Pulitzer Prize, making him the first person to win all five awards.
The latest Rodgers tribute is jazz pianist Denny Zeitlin’s solo piano project, With a Song In My Heart: Exploring The Music of Richard Rodgers. The 11-track, 77-minute album has both well-known and obscure Rodgers tunes; is split between live recordings and studio material; and is thematically balanced between finding romance and losing love.
Cuts one through six were taped at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, CA, on December 13, 2019. Pieces seven to eleven were recorded at the Double Helix Studio, in Kentfield, CA (just north of San Francisco in Marin County) during November and December, 2019. The Piedmont Piano Company is a venue which should be familiar to Zeitlin fans. He has previously released live records at the Piedmont space which focused individually on compositions by Wayne Shorter, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Billy Strayhorn and George Gershwin.
On the thrill of fresh romance “Wait Till You See Her” – from the 1942 musical By Jupiter – is a standout. Hart’s lyrics tell about the flush of meeting one’s soulmate. Rodgers’ music is pensive and sublime and so Zeitlin furnishes “Wait Till You See Her” an appropriately unhurried waltz with a melancholic touch which evokes Ella Fitzgerald’s and Frank Sinatra’s versions.
Another from By Jupiter is “Ev’rything I’ve Got,” also titled “Ev’rything I’ve Got Belongs to You,” done by many artists including Fitzgerald. It’s about a woman overly obsessed with her swine of a man. She states she won’t ever give him up (the song sometimes flips the genders). Most adaptations are upbeat and Zeitlin follows suit. His lengthy translation includes concentrated harmonies and an energetic rhythmic foundation. During nearly 11 minutes Zeitlin encompasses every keyboard component including striking or manipulating piano strings. It’s doubtful anyone else has done this piece with such potency.
Another from the ‘found’ category is “Have You Met Miss Jones?” – from the 1937 musical I’d Rather Be Right – which centers on that moment when a man is smitten hard and suddenly. Most musicians supply an uptempo or mid-tempo swing and Zeitlin’s 8:29 interpretation also has a similar verve. Zeitlin points out in his liner notes, “the bridge of the tune [is] likely [one of the] progenitors of the ‘Coltrane changes.’ To celebrate this, I explore the bridge in three different keys.”
Impending hope and happiness sprinkles through “I Have Dreamed” from the 1951 musical The King and I. Zeitlin takes things easy and gradual with a lovely, slow bossa nova treatment.
Yet another ‘found love’ tune made popular by Fitzgerald is the aptly optimistic “Happy Talk” from the 1949 musical South Pacific. Over the course of almost nine minutes Zeitlin investigates various musical motifs and creates some inventive details which provide a lightly exploratory edge.
Zeitlin concludes the ‘found love’ topic and his album with the title track, “With A Song In My Heart,” from the 1929 musical Spring Is Here. Zeitlin keeps things brisk with just a dash of zesty flavoring.
Zeitlin commences his ‘lost love’ content with opener “Falling In Love With Love” from the 1938 musical The Boys From Syracuse. The song is a meditation on the despondency of unredeemed love. Zeitlin utilizes a loosely improvised introduction and then re-harmonizes and uses modulations on Rodger’s melodic theme.
There’s a sense of ‘love found’ in “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” – from the 1938 musical Too Many Girls – but a close look at the lyrics yields a clue the singer was in love but is now older and no longer naive, so it can also be listed in the ‘lost love’ territory (Zeitlin prefers to put it in the ‘love found’ area). Zeitlin offers a stimulating creation in 7/4 time. Zeitlin also employs re-harmonization during the poignant “He Was Too Good To Me,” a tune which was deleted from the 1930 musical Simple Simon but subsequently became a jazz standard.
The one outlier from the love found/love lost concept is novelty number “Johnny One Note” from the 1937 musical Babes In Arms. The lyrics are a narrative about an egotistic opera singer who drowns everyone out and is rebuked by being forever limited to one note. Zeitlin makes this a fun frolic with a dynamic samba spirit.
Both studio and live material was impeccably recorded by engineer Vadim Canby (who has also worked with Huey Lewis and the News and The Doobie Brothers) with mixing and mastering by Canby and Zeitlin. The only other live solo piano records which come to mind which are every bit as beautiful to hear are the long-running Maybeck Recital Hall Series which came out from 1989 to 1995 and included Denny Zeitlin at Maybeck (Concord Jazz, 1993).
—Doug Simpson
With a Song In My Heart: Exploring The Music of Richard Rodgers
TrackList:
Falling In Love With Love
I Didn’t Know What Time It Was
He Was Too Good To Me
Johnny One Note
Wait Till You See Her
Ev’rything I’ve Got
This Nearly Was Mine
Have You Met Miss Jones
I Have Dreamed
Happy Talk
With A Song In My Heart
