Claire Daly Preview (Showcase)

By Bob PROTZMAN

For Claire Daly and the baritone saxophone, it was love at first sound.

Beginning at age 12 when she began playing the alto sax in school in Yonkers (a New York City suburb), Daly went on to play flute, tenor and soprano in jazz and rock bands throughout her studies at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston and at the beginning of her professional career.

She continues to enjoy playing those horns, but life changed for her shortly after she moved to New York in 1985, and bought a baritone.

“What I remember is that when I first heard the SOUND that came out of it, I immediately fell in love. I thought, oh, there I am. I have found my voice," said Daly in a phone interview.

Daly was thrilled by the bulky instrument’s burly tone, especially in the low register. “The low register is why I play it, and when I play, I often aim low," Daly said.

Daly will bring her baritone to Erie and the Papermoon on Saturday night, where the band will include Erie guitarist Frank Singer, an old pal from their days together at Berklee. Singer also backed Daly when she played Scotty’s in April, 2005.

Though tenor saxophone arguably is the most revered instrument in jazz, baritone sax also has had its share of great players.

Harry Carney anchored the Duke Ellington Orchestra's sax section for 50 years, while Cecil Payne had the same role with the Count Basie band. Gerry Mulligan was a West Coast or "cool jazz"icon, Pepper Adams a bopster extraordinaire, and today there are a number of outstanding baritonists, from the bombastic James Carter (a recent Erie performer in a JazzErie concert), the avant Hamiet Bluiett and a dozen other guys.

Playing baritone is unusual for women, who usually have chosen or been “assigned" the alto by school band directors, because its small size was a better fit physically, especially for more petite players.

“I’m not petite," says Daly, “so the baritone suits me just fine. “Except," she adds, “over the years its size takes a toll. For proof, I have a lot of chiropractor appointments."

Daly doesn't know of another female baritone player in the U.S. , but isn't sure that she's the only one.

She thinks saxophone is a very special instrument and agrees with others that it comes closest to the sound of the human voice.

Also a sometimes vocalist—she sings the title tune on her current CD “Heaven Help Us All" (Daly Bread Records)—Daly, in fact, says she thinks of herself as “singing through her horn."

"Heaven Help Us All" is very much a political statement from Daly and her band.

"We did it in 2004 before the presidential election and went on a 10,000 mile tour in the U.S. to promote it. We combined the gigs with a get-out-the-vote campaign. People clearly knew where we stood, but we didn't tell them how to vote, only to try to be part of a real democracy and go out and vote."

The CD's repertoire was shaped by President Bush's campaign talk about the "axis of evil" and other "good versus evil" statements, Daly says.

"We came up with songs using heaven and hell as a theme," she said, and that included tunes like "Old Devil Moon," "Evil Ways," and "My Blue Heaven."

Daly describes on her website what she calls the epiphany that convinced her that she wanted to be a jazz saxophonist.

Her dad, a saxophonist as a young man, had begun taking his daughter to jazz concerts in New York once she started studying sax.

On Sept. 23, 1971—only three months after she had started playing—dad and daughter went to hear the Buddy Rich Big Band.

When the saxophone section stood to solo as one, little Miss Daly jumped on her chair and screamed. Afterwards, she stood in line to gain the great drummer’s autograph.

“That’s when I knew I wanted to be a saxophone player," she says.

Daly recalls another emotional event when she was 20 and heard tenor titan Sonny Rollins play the opening lines of “In a Sentimental Mood. “I burst into tears. Something that Sonny was giving just grabbed me," she says.

Not surprisingly, then, she says she needs to be “moved by music."

“When a player shows me that he’s been practicing and practicing, but I don’t hear any life experiences in his playing, that bores me. I need to feel the music, rather than be impressed (with technique). I want to hear a joyfulness--or sadness--something with heart in it, and that’s what I try to reach my audience with."

Daly, whose saxophone heroes include Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Dexter Gordon and Paul Desmond, has done just about every imaginable kind of gig in the Big Apple, and traveled extensively, often playing with local musicians, as she will here. “I’m a hired gun," she laughs. “But I’m happy to meet musicians wherever they are."

She carries on the music of Kirk in a band she calls Rah! Rah!, and Gordon in the group, Joy of Dex a group. She also does a kids workshop based on Kirk's life and music.

Her resume includes several CDs as leader and at least a half dozen other albums. She spent seven years with drummer Sherrie Maricle’s all-woman DIVA Big Band, and backed in performance multi-genre stars like Joe Williams, Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Rosemary Clooney.

She may be the only jazz musician with a recording as part of the collection in a presidential library. In October, 2005, the William Jefferson Clinton Library requested a copy of Daly's first CD, "Swing Low'' (Koch). It is included in a listening station as significant to the former president (and saxophonist) while he was in office.

Daly has been named the No. 1 baritone player the last four years in the “Rising Star" category of Down Beat magazine’s International Critics Poll. The Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) voted her the best on her instrument in its 2005 poll, and she has been nominated again this year with Bluiett, Gary Smulyan, Joe Temperley, and Ken Vandermark.

Modestly, Daly says winning polls “mystifies" her. “I’m grateful. It’s wonderful just to be on the list, but I idolize all the other players."

Baritone saxophonist Claire Daly
With Basil Ronzitti, piano; Tony Stefanelli, fretless bass; Nick Ronzitti, percussion; Joe Dorris, drums; Frank Singer, guitar
8:30-11:30 p.m. Saturday
Papermoon Restaurant & Jazz Club
1325 State St.
Donation at the door
For information, reservations, call 455-7766

For more information on Claire Daly, check the website www.clairedalymusic.com.

Bob Protzman has written about jazz for five decades and hosts "Everything Jazz," 9 to midnight Sundays on WQLN-FM 91.3. You can reach Bob at protz@verizon.net or jazzhosts@wqln.org.

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