Don Grusin plays 4 standards and 8 new compositions for
his tribute album to Old Friends and Relatives…it was recorded
on his beautiful Yamaha C7FII at Bad Dog Music Studio in Monte
Nido California, mixed by Don Murray, mastered by Robert Vosgein
at Capital Studios, Los Angeles.
Don Grusin
Presents
OLD FRIENDS AND RELATIVES
An Acoustic Piano Album dedicated to my old friends and relatives, some alive and some gone.
Played,
Produced,
Arranged,
Engineered by Don Grusin
Mixed,
Edited,
Mastered by Don Grusin, Don Murray and Bob Vosgein at CMS Digital, Pasadena California
All songs recorded at Bad Dog Studio, Monte Nido, California
(1) AT LAST 5:06
Written by Harry Warren (lyrics by Mack Gordon), EMI Feist Catalogue, inc.
Notes: When I was a kid I used to listen to Etta James sing this song, and was always thrilled by her expression, the heart in her delivery. The melody and the form, the way the chords amble through the song is the master mold from which so many songs were copied. It still gets me. The song itself is a definition of an Old Friend.
(2) A Walk With Leonard 4:51
Written by Don Grusin, Bad Dog Music
Notes: Leonard Feather was the music critic for the Los Angeles Times, and also a well-known composer for many artists of the 40s and 50s, including with and for Billie Holiday. As he was to many musicians around the world, he was a friend of mine. For about 7 years every spring we would stay in the same house for a week in Boulder while we attended the University Of Colorado Conference on World Affairs. Daily wed have breakfast and then walk to the campus together and discuss matters important to us both, usually not music so much, but life, art, sometimes politics. Because he was such a believer in acoustic instruments, there was always some friction between us about my using synthesizers and Fender Rhodes Electric Piano for which I became known. ( A Videotape exists showing Leonard actually PLAYING A SYNTHESIZER in concert during the conference. I showed it to him. He smiled. ) I wish I had written this song and had played it for him while he was alive, because it sounds like him. Id guess he probably enjoys it from his current space in the universe.
(3) FIRE AND RAIN 5:40
Written by James Taylor, EMI Blackwood Music, Inc. and Country Road Music
Notes: Growing up as a jazz player primarily, James Taylor was one of the few popular singer-songwriters that I accepted as one of us musicians. I didn’t mean to have such a lofty view that jazz-related music was the true source of every other American style of music, but I was, along with my fellow players, fairly narrow minded. Can you believe it?! James, however, was OK with me, and his melodies, and chords, his honesty in the delivery, I always appreciated. In the 70s, in Aspen Colorado, and San Francisco I played his song Fire and Rain as if it were my own. This is about the time when I was just starting to jazz-fusion-ize music I knew from other styles. I probably played this classic 1000 times or more. When I met James later on while we concertized in Tokyo, I was inspired to re-introduce myself and the listener to his song and now, finally, this version.
(4) Flora 4:41
Written by Don Grusin, Bad Dog Music
Notes: Living in San Francisco in the 70s I was finally able to hear musicians that our landlocked Colorado didnt permit. One of the highlights was seeing and later meeting and playing with Flora Purim and Airto Moreira. Although this song is not really Brazilian in any way, I wanted to say or speak this piece to her, and so the title. It means flower in Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish. I later on recorded with her, and wrote the title song with her daughter Diana, This Magic, on her Speak No Evil album.
(5) Foreign Service 5:06
Written by Don Grusin, Bad Dog Music
Notes: I was supposed to have been an economist, having trained at the University, and having taught that subject at a few colleges. While I was in graduate school, I met many students that are now doing what I had hoped I was preparing for, a career with the UN, or the US State Department as an economist, developing countries. For about a year I was close to it while in Mexico on a Fulbright teaching fellowship, but music was too strong a force. So I am dedicating this song to my old friends, some in the military, in Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America, who gave and are giving their lives to creating greater well being to our near and distant relatives in the developing world.
(6) Estate 5:15
Written by Bruno Martino and Bruno Brighetti, MCA Inc. & Santa Cecilia Casa, Ediciones Musica (Spain)
Notes: If there was one melody that defines Brasil, but thats not from Brasil, it is Estate…meaning spring, in Italian. I first heard it in Brasil played by Luis Essa, (a marvelous pianist who lived and died in Rio) then I recorded it in the US a long time ago with Joe Pass, Oscar Castro-Neves, John Pisano. Because it has a melody that circles around and around and ends up where it started out, it has the shape of a classic story about life, or love, or spring, as its titled, put to music. Besides, all my musician friends know and love this song. 
(7) Circles 4:51
Written by Don Grusin, Bad Dog Music
Notes: Circles means circle of 5ths, a sort of exercise that musicians practice in order to perfect their ability in playing easily in different keys. This piece is really an exercise, and its dedicated to musicians, with the spirit that even such practice can evoke some music thats at least a little interesting. The improvising is the meaning of the song with the simple melody giving room, benchmarks, for the circling chords showing up to do their job 2 or 3 times a bar. You can use this format for your own practice. Just start in C-minor.
(
Theme from High Noon (Do not forsake me) 5:18
Written by Dimitri Tiomkin, with lyrics by Ned Washington, Leo Feist Inc.
Notes: When I was little, my father and mother would play records, old 78s and later, LPs on our record player. This is before television, and most every family had a record player. We had lots of classical records, (my father having been a classical violinist), and just a few jazz or popular records. My mom seemed like she appreciated classical music, but her favorite stuff was what was called popular music, including songs like The Tennessee Waltz and this song, High Noon, which was the theme of the great Stanley Kramer western film. The source of our greatest enjoyment was attending the Vogue movie theatre in my little town in Colorado on a Saturday afternoon or night, and I have been listening to this melody from that movie in my head for years and needed to put it somewhere. The lyrics still make sense in 2010:
Do Not forsake me oh my darlin
On this our wedding day
Do not forsake me oh my darlin
Wait, wait along
(sort of like git-long little doggies, the cowboy anthem)
I do no know what fate awaits me
I only know I must be brave
And I must face a man who hates me
Or lie a coward, a craven coward
Or lie a coward in my grave
Oh, to be torn twixt love and duty
Sposin I lose my fair-haired beauty
Look at that big hand move along, near
High Noon
He made a vow while in states prison,
Vowed it would be my life or hisn,
Im not afraid of death but, oh
What will I do if you leave me?
Do not forsake me, oh my darlin
You made a promise as a bride
Do not forsake me, oh my darlin
Although youre grievin, dont think of leavin
Now that I need you by my side…
Wait along…. 
(9) New Age Cowboy 4:28,
Written by Don Grusin, Bad Dog Music
Notes: I was raised in a cowboy town, with a railroad station, horses, and cattle; I knew everyone there, walked and rode bicycles everywhere, but I never was a real cowboy. My brother Dave was (and is) but I wanted to be so cool and at the time, cowboys were not so cool. I knew a lot of them, and my father had a jewelry store where cowboys would come in and buy rings, and get their watches repaired. And even though I worked on their farms and ranches, I knew I wasnt really a cowboy. Once I wrote a song for a Kenji Omura record called I Never was a Cowboy, just so there would be no confusion about my background. This New Age Cowboy song is just a little joke about how lots of present-day cowboys live and act. You can fill in the blanks.
(10) Serious Romance 3:32
Written by Don Grusin, Bad Dog Music
Notes: Growing up never seems to stop. When I was a kid, I thought when I grew up Id probably never have thoughts about romance, you know the theme here… because Id just grow out of it, be mature, wait for football season to come around every year, and pretty well keep those tricky notions buried and out of sight. So this is a little music about how serious romance can sometimes be, and how the engine for it mostly doesnt go away.
(11) Sadie 3:37
Written by Don Grusin, Bad Dog Music
Notes: I wrote this song for my daughter when she was born. I asked my brother Dave to play on my initial JVC record, and he did, but before he had actually seen Sadie for the first time. When we finished I took him home to see her and he said…oh man! If I had known she was this beautiful, I would have added a few more curly-cues (trills, turns, filigreed notes) into the music! So I have reconstructed the song about my daughter to fit the times. It’s a new version, and so is she.
(12) Well, its about you 4:26
Written by Don Grusin, Bad Dog Music
Notes: I get questioned frequently about what this or that song is about. I wrote this one especially for you. Tell anybody.
(13) Lost And Found 1:45
Written by Don Grusin, Don Grusin Music
Notes: All my life I’ve wondered about how to handle loss…loss of people, pencils, memory, names, so this is an invented melody that says here I am and it takes a few unorthodox pathways, changing keys, fighting almost, to find its way back… and finally a progression that restates the theme and gives it an anchor, as if the melody was first lost, and then found. So there is always a way to be Found, after being Lost, if only in the music.
(14) The Re-Education of DG 4:20
Written by Don Grusin, Don Grusin Music
Notes: As we get older, we know and understand more. I think its a rule. And our patience grows, and our spirit to meet our challenges gets stronger. I think it is a natural phenomenon and I think the best way to describe this evolution in words is… Re-Education. There you have it.
Special thanks to old friends and relatives, who taught me, acted as mentors, appreciated my own sense of things musical and worldly, and helped to cultivate my musical ground of being. Enjoy.
