By Derrick Bang, Entertainment Editor
Davis Enterprise (October 11, 2005)
Overnight successes aren’t, of course; we simply overlook the decades of dues-paying that takes place beneath our radar.
Even so, few musicians have made a transition as dramatic -- or as methodical -- as Nashville-based jazz pianist Beegie Adair, who got her start in the biz back in the late 1960s, as an in-house pianist for ABC-TV’s “The Johnny Cash Show.”
Let’s face it: Not many people go from backing Willie & The Red Rubber Band to fronting their own jazz trios ... three decades later.
Adair, teamed with Bill Douglass (bass) and Mat Marucci (drums), will make her Sacramento debut from 5 to 8 p.m. Sunday at Savanna’s, in the Red Lion Hotel, 1401 Arden Way.
In the minds of many fans, Adair’s actual career began with the release of her first album on the small Green Hill label: 1997’s The Frank Sinatra Collection.
How does one get from there to here?
“One spends about 30 years being a hack, and playing studio work for other people,” Adair admitted, during a lengthy phone call from the kitchen of her home in Franklin, Tenn. “I moved to Nashville in the early 1960s to pursue a graduate school degree in classical piano performance, but that was really just for the degree.
“I started getting paid while playing in jazz bands in college. I’d always wanted to be either a jazz pianist or, at least, a working pianist. I got hired away by one of the local TV stations, and it was so much more fun to play than it was to study, that I never went back. I like to play for singers, and I did a lot of studio work in western swing, hard country and pop.
“I never did finish my graduate degree. I was all over the map until I began recording my trio albums.”
During the 1970s and ‘80s, she worked on a lot of high-profile radio and TV shows, and had lots of connections, but nobody ever approached her with an offer to make her own record.
“At that time, this part of the country wasn’t geared to that; I was always making records for other people.”
Finally, a longtime college friend named Mike Longo came to her assistance; he was well connected in the New York jazz business, and had a small, artist-run label called Consolidated Artists.
“You could do your own album, and then his company did all the PR and distribution,” Adair said. “so I actually paid for the session and the musicians, but I had a leg up, because I had his name and brand on my record, and he had a good distribution deal.”
The result was 1991’s Escape to New York, the first album under her own name. It sold well and has been reprinted twice.
Even so, six more years passed before The Frank Sinatra Collection. Family obligations and local work simply kept her too busy to make albums.
“Recording just wasn’t a priority right then. I was committed to earning a living as opposed to making art.”
Adair quickly rejected the notion that perhaps her chosen home was part of the problem.
Contrary to popular image, Nashville always has had a jazz presence. The original WSM radio station begat WSM-TV, which went on the air in 1950; it featured lots of big band, pop and jazz programming. And while Nashville’s jazz community went underground in the 1960s, it never vanished completely ... and in the late 1990s it re-awakened with a vengeance.
“There’s a huge jazz community here now. There’s more going on here now than there has been in the 40 years I’ve been here. When people go to a wedding here, they’re liable to hear somebody who’s really famous in the jazz world.”
Adair has been part of that revival, and Nashville acknowledged her passion with the 1998 Nashville Music Award for Jazz Album of the Year, for The Frank Sinatra Collection.
Exciting as that moment must have been, Adair actually is prouder of a more recent honor: In 2002, she was invited to become an official Steinway pianist.
“I enjoyed getting the Nashville award; I had the total stage fright/out of body experience when I went up to accept it. You really do feel like you’re floating up above yourself.
“But getting that call from Peter [Goodrich], and being told I was being added to the roster of Steinway performers ... that was a big deal.”
The Steinway endorsement come with a great bonus, in that venues are encouraged to provide top-quality instruments. “They’d really rather I play a Steinway than something else.”
Quite a change, from bygone times. One must remember that pianists, unlike most musicians, cannot travel with their own instruments.
“What you saw was what you got,” Adair laughed, her honey-soaked Southern accent an invitation to afternoon mint juleps on a humid verandah somewhere.
“Back in the old days, when I was playing in dance bands at casuals and country clubs, I’d get coffee tables that had keys on them. I’ve played on some where the top of the key was missing, so I was striking wood, or others where the whole key was missing ... you’d get to the top note of a run, and your finger would go down through the keyboard.
“I’ve shed blood at the keyboard.”
Today, thanks to the growing popularity of her various concept albums, Adair is becoming more of a presence in her own right (“...although I still run into a lot of people who say, What was your name again?”). The Frank Sinatra Collection was followed by albums devoted to Nat King Cole, Johnny Mercer ... and Elvis Presley.
Adair wasn’t sure about the latter, but executive producer Greg Howard insisted it would be an excellent move. He turned out to be correct … Love, Elvis has sold more than 75,000 copies … but Adair made her own artistic trade; in exchange for doing the Elvis collection, she was allowed to do a CD devoted to Cole Porter (2001’s Dream Dancing).
And, of course, touring is a big part of the equation.
“I want to get out there and play more, and do more traveling,” Adair said. “I wanted to do that when I was 20, and now I’m finally getting to do it.
“You can listen to music for days, on CDs or the Internet or whatever, but there’s absolutely nothing like sitting somewhere and watching and listening to somebody do it.
“Live music is really what’s happening.”