Instead of cooking the dinner, that would be my job. “He ’d come in and say, ‘Well, I got a record date tomorrow and I need six hot ones, ’ ” she divulged in Contemporary Keyboard. During this period Bley began composing, mainly through her husband ’s prodding. They were married in 1959 and moved back to the West Coast, where they kept company with some of the most important avant-garde jazz musicians of the 1960s, notably saxophonist Ornette Coleman, bassist Charlie Haden, and trumpeter Don Cherry. It was also at Birdland that Bley met her first husband, Canadian pianist Paul Bley. In those surroundings she first began seriously listening to jazz, and the influences of the musicians she heard at the time -pianist Thelonius Monk, trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie, saxophonist John Coltrane and many others -can be detected in her compositions and solo improvisations. ’ ”īley quit school at age 15, worked briefly at a music store, and then moved to New York City, where she found a job as a cigarette girl at the famed Birdland jazz club. According to an interview in Jazz, she composed “twelve variations on ‘Onward Christian Soldiers, ’ one a march, one a waltz, a polka version, ending up with a dirge and a ‘Hallelujah Chorus. ” But even in this environment her witty and irreverent approach to music began to take shape. ![]() Bley ’s earliest musical experiences revolved around the church as she recalled Contemporary Keyboard, “I spent the first 15 years of my life playing music only for Jesus. ![]() Her mother died when Carla was eight years old, and Bley was raised in a strict religious atmosphere by her father, a choir director and piano teacher. That she accomplished her success with no formal training -and in a male-dominated field -is proof of her talent and perseverance.īley was born Carla Borg in Oakland, California, in 1938. As an entrepreneur in the recording and publishing businesses, her creativity and financial savvy have nurtured the careers of many new artists who, because of their reluctance to conform to set standards of commerciality, found difficulty securing financial support from traditional channels. As a musician and composer, her flair for the outrageous and her engaging sense of humor, combined with a profound dedication to her art and audience, have continually placed her on music ’s cutting edge. Carla Bley has been a vital force in the jazz world for more than 30 years.
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