Diane
Marino Has Loads Of Love
Diane
Marino Has Loads Of Love
On
the eve of releasing her new album Loads
Of Love it was to Riveting Riffs Magazine’s delight that we had the
opportunity to chat once again with Jazz singer, arranger and pianist Diane
Marino from her home in Nashville, Tennessee. Ms. Marino who grew up in Queens,
New York City was reunited with her friend and saxophonist extraordinaire
Houston Person who played on ten of the rejuvenated standards that are featured
on Loads Of Love.
Diane Marino possesses impeccable phrasing, her voice
has beautiful colors and tones and the new arrangements are lush without
detracting from yet another wonderful recording from a truly magnificent
vocalist.
The album opens with Cole Porter’s “Get Out Of Town,”
written for his 1938 Broadway musical
Leave It To Me! The song is introduced on
Loads Of Love by Frank Marino’s
upright bass, eventually joined by Diane Marino accompanying herself on the
piano. Houston Person has an extended melodious solo, followed by Ms. Marino’s
lively piano solo. For those not
familiar with the song, the singer’s former beau arrives on the scene and she
bids him to go quickly, before she falls in love again and has her heart broken
once again.
Acknowledging that she is definitely a romantic, Ms.
Marino says, “I didn’t really set out to do an album about love songs, but if
you look at it, it is all about love.
Subconsciously I guess that is what I was thinking of (she
is laughing). I wanted to do an album of good vocal standards, but standards
that haven’t been done a zillion times. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to
bring something fresh to that concept of the Great American Songbook.
There are some familiar songs on here to be sure, but there are some that
I hadn’t heard before. I was also
thinking of the people who influenced me when I was picking out the tunes and
one of them was the great Shirley Horn.
I was going through her catalogue of music and there are some fabulous
songs that I hadn’t heard of before. Being a pianist – vocalist I relate to what
she does and I love what she did. Some of it (the music) came from that
direction. From the conception I
was thinking of Houston Person who is a master of the American Songbook and he
is a stickler for “got to play the melody, got to play the melody.” People love
his CDs and he is a master of interpreting those kinds of songs.
As we were going back and forth, he was
suggesting some titles to me and that is where some of the songs came from.
Houston Person played on Diane Marino’s third album
Just Groovin’ (2008) appropriately
named as she recorded a duet with Felix Cavaliere (The Young Rascals) of his
song “Groovin,’” set to a Jazz arrangement. Houston Person played on three of
the album’s songs, an album that also featured Kirk Whalum (saxophonist) and
Wycliffe Gordon (trombonist). The album also featured modern day takes on tunes
such as, “Baby I’m Yours,” “Walking In The Rain,” “Baby I’m Yours,” and “Anyone
Who Had A Heart,” all of which had new Jazz arrangements.
When asked if she had to twist Houston Person’s arm to
get him to play on Loads Of Love,
Diane Marino laughs lightly and says,
“No it was pretty easy.
It was a matter of scheduling. He is in
New York and we are here (Nashville). He travels so much, but we made it happen.
We brought him down from New York for five days and we had a great time with
him. I remember when I heard him play on (Groovin’)
and that huge sound came out and I was just dumbstruck.
I was so excited that this was going onto one of my tracks. It is an
unmistakable and soulful sound. We kept in touch and we became friends over that
collaboration. He said you have to
do an album of standards, just standards. It took a while for it to come
together. It was the logistics of it, with him there and we are here.
Finally, it happened last summer. This was recorded in August (2012).”
Ms. Marino points out that
“It Shouldn’t Happen To A Dream,” (Duke Ellington / Jimmy McHugh) and “Take Love
Easy,” (Duke Ellington / John Latouche the opening song on Ella Fitzgerald’s
1973 album of the same name, were songs that Houston Person suggested that Diane
Marino record. Frank Marino (bass) and
drummer Chris Brown provide an elegant accompaniment for Diane Marino, while
Houston Person makes his tenor sax sing. Ms. Marino’s piano performance is
beautiful.
Diane Marino began taking
piano lessons when she was ten years old, but before that she was playing her
favorite radio songs by ear, using her mother’s upright piano, “I would just sit
down at the piano and recreate whatever was in my head.”
Diane Marino would later attend The High School for the Performing Arts, the
original one upon which the film Fame
was based.
“It was an old building and probably a fire trap, but we
loved it. I went to the old rickety
building on 46th Street off Broadway. The building is still there.
There was no gymnasium and there was no cafeteria. We had musicians, dancers and
actors and half your day would be devoted to your specialty, music, dance or
drama and then the other half to accredited academic high school courses, which
were just as important. You would
have half a day of doing something that you loved. It was great. I have a lot of
fond memories of that school. It
was so concentrated and every day we were exposed to something that was about
perfecting our craft. All your friends had the same mindset as you did. We were
all striving to be musicians, dancers or actors. By no means was that a typical
high school. That’s for sure.
The kids were very, very focused.
These friendships lasted a long, long time and thank goodness for Facebook,
because we all reconnected a few years ago for a reunion.
I managed to reconnect with people that I went to PA with and sadly a lot
of people didn’t continue, but some did. It is nice all of these years later to
say, what are you doing and to say I am doing this. Nothing has changed. It is
still the same people with the desire to perform. That’s what it is all about,
performing,” she says.
Ms. Marino says that the time she spent at The High
School for Performing Arts prepared her well for the next step in her musical
education at Mannes College of Music in Manhattan.
As for the Shirley Horn connection on
Loads Of Love, she says, “Whenever I
am drawn to an artist I try to learn. You can never stop learning in this
business. I don’t approach a song in the
same way that she does, but I was highly influenced by her. She has such command
of the lyrics and she just draws every breath out of every note and word. I
really loved what she did. I found
some old recordings of hers and that is where one of the songs came from,
“Someone You’ve Loved,” (Johnny Pate). I never heard that song before. It is on
an older album of hers (Travelin’ Light
- 1965). Years ago, I guess in the sixties is when she did these things. I know
she was a lot younger, but it almost didn’t sound like her. It was just
phenomenal and the swing of the tunes that she did was really incredible. It was
really hard, swinging, driving tunes. She was a big influence on this project. I
loved the sound of the melody (“Someone You’ve Loved”) and it is a very haunting
song (she vocalizes the melody). It (the song) just hit me and when I hear a
song that strikes me like that, that is it. I need to do that song and I don’t
care if it fits into the scheme of what we are doing or not, I just need to do
the song.
I started doing the project as a tribute album to
(Shirley) and then I got steered away from that when I started hearing different
tunes. Shirley didn’t do them, but I said let’s do these songs. It came together
in that way. There were just really good swing songs that I found and that
Houston found and they all have a groovy edge.”
The third song on
Loads Of Love is Harold Adams and
Jimmy McHugh’s “I Just Found Out About Love,” a song also recorded by Shirley
Horn. The musicians play big without being overbearing. The mood is joyful and
Ms. Marino absolutely shines on both the piano and with her singing. The lyrics
and the mood of the musicians and vocalist celebrate the excitement of falling
in love and feeling like you are on top of the world.
“It is a happy
sounding song and it is another feature that I wanted to convey with this album.
I have a couple of moody ballads here too, but in general I think (Loads
Of Love) is an up feeling type of an album. “I Just Found Out About Love,”
is bouncy and bubbly,” she says.
Although songs such as “Never Let Me Go,” (the
tenth song), by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans from the film
Scarlett Hour and Richard Rodgers and
Lorenz Hart’s “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” written for the musical
Too Many Girls were written for film
and theater, Diane Marino focuses more on the lyrics than the context within the
film or musical.
“The lyrics are really important to me and I take the
song for how it stands by itself. Quite honestly, I didn’t know the history
about some of these tunes. I was influenced by other people who I heard singing
the songs. The lyrics will take you (only) so far in the present day, because
some of them are so dated and it is sometimes difficult to relate to.
I will look for a lyric that will mean something to me today. They are
very old songs, but they are great songs,” says Ms. Marino.
Diane Marino met her husband Frank who plays both on
this album and in her live ensemble in 1980, through a bass playing friend of
hers and then in June of 1981 when the same friend could not play on one of her
gigs he suggested Frank.
“I hired him and the rest is history. We have been
working together for a long time, a long time,” she says.
Laughing she says, “It is kind of hard to talk about
your own husband, but I will separate myself. I am the piano player and the
vocalist now instead of the wife. He is a phenomenal player and he is totally
supportive in his bass playing number one, but he listens so well and he
compliments. We have been playing together since 1981 and it is like breathing
together. As a pianist he will know what I am going to do before I do it. He
will play something that compliments that. As
a vocalist he’ll listen to how I am singing something and he’ll compliment that.
He plays very melodically, as well as very supportive rhythmically. We have
spent a long time playing together, so it works.
We’ve known Chris (Brown -
drummer) for a long time. Chris is one of the most musical drummers that I have
ever worked with. He compliments
not only the playing, but the vocals. He is just incredible.
He is not just keeping time, but he is also making music along with my
vocal phrasing, my piano phrasing. He is just amazing.
We may not have time to go over something and he is just there, plus he
listens. He is such a great musician.
He phrases along with me. It is a conversation that we have together,
between the piano, the vocals and the drums. He is very sensitive and a very
musical player.
George Tidwell (trumpet)
is a good player, a great Jazz player and a very easy going guy. Again he was
very happy to be on the project and thrilled to be in the studio with Houston.
He is a fun player and he did a great job on the tune (“Someone You’ve Loved”).
When I heard the song “Someone You’ve Loved,” I felt it definitely needed a
trumpet. That’s what I wanted and I knew we had Houston on the project, but I
wanted to do something different on a couple of other tunes too.
We met Pat Bergeson
(guitar) shortly after we moved (to Nashville).
We had a band up in New York and my sax player was using Pat in his band.
He is a really, really fine player. He is very musical, he has great ears and he
is very easy to get along with, which is real important.
When you are making this kind of music in a studio with an intimate group
like this, with four people or five people, it is so important that you gel
personally too. He is a beautiful
player and he plays a great blues harmonica also.”
Expanding on her earlier
thoughts as to why it was important to Diane Marino to have Houston Person on
this album she says, “He plays what people know and of course he improvises
fantastically, but he will never go over people’s heads that way.
That formula has worked for him for
decades, but that soulfulness in his playing is just amazing.
His solo on “Just For A Thrill,” is soulful and I just sit there and
think, My God, he is phenomenal. That
soulfulness and an edge is what I wanted out of these standards.
I just think that we work really well
together that way. He is so easy to
work with in the studio. He is great.”
During her career Diane Marino has performed at Trumpets
Jazz Club in New Jersey, The Metropolitan Room in New York City, the Montreux
Atlanta Festival, Music City Jazz & Heritage Festival, Churchill Grounds in
Atlanta, Riverfest Jazz in the Valley, The Jazz Factory, HarborFest, Bowling
Green International Festival and Three Rivers Music Festival.
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