Michael Blake has worked his share of Halloween parties. “They’re always super fun,” he says. “But I don’t remember any of them having really interesting music. I definitely played ‘Monster Mash’ more times than I’d care to.”
Blake, a multi-reedist known for inspired eclecticism, now has his own grab bag of tunes for the occasion. His engaging new album Halloween Tales features a selection of seasonal themes, by composers like Duke Ellington, Vince Guaraldi, even John Carpenter. The results are sometimes frightful, and always delightful — thanks to the unforced rapport of an acoustic quartet with Blake on tenor and soprano saxophones, Gary Versace on piano, Ben Allison on bass, and Michael Sarin on drums.
Talking with WRTI this week, Blake touched on the deep rapport between those musicians, his childhood memories of Halloween in Montréal, and a few of the themes he chose to interpret. Here is an edited excerpt of the conversation.
This album begins with a jump scare: the theme from Halloween. Do you have a relationship with scary movies?
I’m not a horror freak or anything; I'm pretty normal in terms of the type of films I've come up with. I know I saw Friday the 13th when it was in theaters, and there are soundtracks you instantly recognize, like Psycho. But I didn't want to get too carried away doing movie themes. The theme from Halloween just fit so well as a jumping-off point for some kind of conversational jazz thing. It's got three sections, and these familiar harmonic rhythms that are moving and creating suspense. Yet it’s constantly churning and ramping up, lots of layers. When I asked Ben Allison to play the song, I was like, “How about we do this opening with just the bass and the tenor?” Then Gary did some great stuff inside the piano to kind of create a creepy effect. But I didn't really want to make “scary jazz,” although the humor of that was intriguing to me.
I’m struck by how you just talked about John Carpenter's Halloween theme in musical terms. So many horror soundtracks, especially in the modern era, don't have a lot of space for melody or harmony.
Yeah.
It’s more atmospheric, more about building dread than introducing a melody. And this is really a song-forward album. Whatever themes you're playing — and a bunch are more seasonal than scary — you're really approaching them as jazz compositions.
Exactly, and “seasonal” is a good point. I got a little confused, as I started planning this album. I thought, “Well, maybe I should make it more about the harvest.” In It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, the most memorable piece for me was “The Great Pumpkin Waltz.” But then I already had “The Creep,” this song I had written so many years ago, and I thought, “Let’s just keep it about Halloween.” And of course, the Halloween and Christmas comparisons are fun.
That brings up one of my favorite selections here, which is “Sally's Song” from A Nightmare Before Christmas. A couple years ago, I saw the film with a live score by The Philadelphia Orchestra. I expected to have a good time, but I was not prepared for how incredible the music is — and the movie's almost entirely scored through.
Right, there’s so much music in the film.
There's a lot of humor in Danny Elfman's lyrics, but there's also just pure melody — like this theme, which is so plaintive and vulnerable and sweet.
I think people forget — and I even forgot until she passed away — that Catherine O'Hara sang it. I grew up in Canada, so I grew up watching her, and was a huge fan. That was a tough one. But it's such a beautiful song. It took a minute to figure out how to do an interpretation. When we tried it at Smalls, I played flute, and it just didn't work. Ultimately I'm a saxophone player, and I feel like I have maybe even more of a personal voice on the soprano than I do on the tenor. This song just fits so perfectly in the range of the horn. It's a magnificent piece; it keeps kind of sliding between E minor and F. It has these lovely triads that are moving around, but you keep going back to the minor. Poor Sally, you know: she's just unraveling before our very eyes.
Another analogous piece is “Transylvanian Lullaby,” from Young Frankenstein. Was that originally sung by Madeline Kahn?
In the film it's the opening theme on violin, and then every so often Cloris Leachman is playing it. I think she might be playing that when they discover the laboratory. She's playing and playing, and he's like, “So you're the one that did this!” And she says, “He vas... my boyfriend!"
I need to revisit that movie, it's been a while.
I'm not great with Top 10 lists, but it's probably my favorite comedy. I also saw that in the theater when I was a kid. And, yeah, what a great theme. I didn't discover it was titled “Transylvanian Lullaby” until I was doing a search for the mechanical royalties. Another searing minor, you know — a piece that’s kind of heart-wrenching.
We’ve mentioned “The Creep.” Is “Stalking Monster” a new composition?
That's from Duke Ellington's Night Creature suite. I think he had a symphony orchestra with the band. And that album, I had it on vinyl, and there was a lot of distortion. I wonder if maybe it didn't get released because of some issues with the recording.
Oh, wow — I thought it was one of your themes that had been Ellington-inspired.
I started transcribing some of the background, the piano, and then Gary really captured the piano part that Ellington plays. It really does tie the piece together beautifully.
Let's talk about the band, because these are amazing musicians — and you have long relationships with all of them. How did that rapport among the four of you play out on this album?
I think the thing that comes through the most, now that we're older, is how much less forced everything seems. I think we show more of a sense of trust — you know, like, “Oh, if I actually just listen and wait for the next idea, or the idea after that…” Then it gives somebody else a chance to play something, and that might change the direction it's going in, but it certainly benefits the fact that you're not playing. So yeah, there’s a lot more patience.
Yeah.
The day of the recording was intense. I’m up at 7 to get the rental van, drive all over the city to pick up each of the guys. Drive out to Matt Balitsaris' studio in Pennsylvania, pick up the sandwiches. We started getting sounds around noon, and then recorded ten pieces in six hours. I'm always a little bit of a nervous wreck going into a recording, but we started playing the first tune, and I just immediately was like, “Oh, this is a good day.” I felt comfortable on my horn, I could hear the guys, and it sounded great in the headphones, but we were really close together. Three out of four of us were in the same room. That felt really good.
When I say the phrase “Trick or Treat,” are you more trick or more treat?
Oh, I'm such a treat person. I live for treats. And I'm always seeking some kind of reward for my labors. But Halloween was a little different in Canada. We had fireworks like Americans have on the Fourth of July. So you know, a lot of kids were getting into tricks with that, I'll tell you that. I had a cat, and I always made sure my cat was locked in the house on Halloween. But mostly, it was fun, it was so exciting, and of course, we would go without our parents back then. There was a little bit of fear involved, going up to strangers' houses. You never know what you're gonna get.
The Michael Blake Quartet celebrates Halloween Tales with a series of performances in New York; for details, visit his website.
