Caesar the Balladeer: A Friend Destined For the Stars

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Caesar the Balladeer: A Friend Destined For the Stars

As I sit here poised to write the liner notes for what is sure to become the beginning of an era, I can’t help but reminisce over the first time I heard Caesar’s magnificent voice over five years ago. It was in the wee hours of the morning as I casually strolled down the avenues and musical alleyways of the internet, as I’m prone to do at that hour in the morning.
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But on that particular morning, as I strolled awash in the lush sounds of Bird, Dexter Gordon, Lorez Alexandria, and Sarah Vaughan, I began to hear the faint sounds of a voice that I’d never heard before, as it caressed the opening chorus of the beautifully haunting "I wish You Love." The tune itself was always one of my favorites. It had previously been done to exquisite perfection by the late Gloria Lynne, but this voice . . . this voice that I was only now hearing for the first time, could only be described as . . . breathtaking.
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It expressed the type of excellence, attention to detail, and depth of feeling that I assumed had died with the great artists of the past. While it celebrated the suave sophistication, perfect diction, and round velvet baritone sonance of Nat King Cole, it was deeper, more in the range of Arthur Prysock or Billy Eckstine, yet, with the intimate Earthiness and modern appeal of Luther Vandross. But that said, there was absolutely no doubt who had influenced this voice. It represented a vibrant and passionate tribute to the life, times, and artistry, of the fabulous Nat King Cole. Just to hear it put the chill of reminiscence in the air.
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Caesar was born, Irvin R. Caesar, in Chicago, Il. He's a graduate of Southern University, and a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. He began his professional music career at the very top, opening for such people as George Duke, Stanley Clark, Al Jareau, Lou Rawls and Herbie Hancock.
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Later he auditioned for Julio Iglesias at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Naturally, he nailed the audition to become the only baritone vocalist to perform with Iglesias - the world renowned romantic icon who has sold over 300 million records - on his Tango World Tour, and with good reason. Caesar’s soulfully romantic baritone voice has the capacity to turn some of the greatest ballads ever written into pure honey that he then pours with abundance at his audiences’ feet. So Caesar is not just another crooner, he’s a world-class masseur who specializes in turning the soul of the listener to putty in his well-forged and expert hands, and this CD is graphic evidence of that fact.
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As promised, the current CD is Caesar’s rendering of some of the most timelessly beautiful ballads that has ever been written, and done only as Caesar can. They include, I wish you Love, Autumn Leaves, Mona Lisa, My Funny Valentine, Nature Boy, Quiet Nights, the Very thought of You, and many more - and Caesar literally owns every note and nuance on every tune.
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The most pervasive quality that characterizes this entire effort, aside from the flawless musicianship and arrangements throughout, is how perfectly they’ve managed to blend the old with the new. Virtually every tune on the CD has long since been established as a timeless standard, and their stature in the annals of jazz has been meticulously respected. But Caesar and his cohorts were not the least bit timid about slapping on a new coat of paint to make them glisten like new.
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In addition, the project has a pronounced international sophistication to it, because Caesar is an international personality. Prior to launching his musical career, and upon obtaining his degree in Business Management from Southern University, Caesar went on to work as a Procurement Officer, and then Operations Manager, for American Manufactures in Houston, Texas. They provided humanitarian assistance to over 40 countries around the world. Then he went to Islamabad, Pakistan as a contractor for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He worked to provided humanitarian assistance to Afghan rebels, who were then at war with the Soviet Union. So Caesar sings in several languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and Japanese.
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"Autumn Leaves" is a perfect example of the cross-cultural flare of this magnificent crew. The tune begins with Peter White’s winsome, and beautifully ethereal caress of his classical guitar. He sets the stage perfectly. You can literally see him in your mind’s eye, casually leaning back on the veranda of some exotic location, lovingly strumming his guitar under a starlit sky. Then Caesar makes his entrance with a soft, airy hush, reminiscent of Luther Vandross. He starts the song at the bridge, softly singing in Japanese. Then when they reach the first chorus, the band slips into a slow and laid-back Bossa nova, Caesar transitions into English, and then they escort us on a journey that makes the heart soar.
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The CD is very much like that throughout, taking us on one romantic journey after another. Thus, this is not just a good musical effort - it’s a GREAT one. With this project we may very well be witnessing the birth of a voice that will speak to the ages. So when you listen to it, listen with reverence - and remember the moment, and what you were doing, when you heard first it, because you're sure to be discussing it with others in years to come.
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com

Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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A Message to the Black Community

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

A Message to the Black Community

The hip hop community takes great pride in "keeping it real." But are they really keeping it real, or are they simply struttin' around saying, "look at me," while the corporate elite have them unknowingly doing an updated version of Steppin' Fechit - right down to the ape-like body language?

Now, it's not my intention to broad-brush an entire community of artists, because old-schoolers make that mistake every generation. Their ears just aren't attune to a new and different approach to music - Swing musicians did it to Dizzy and Bird when they developed be bop, and many musicians and critics did it to Miles and Coltrane (especially Trane) when they began to push the boundaries. But in the case of hip hop, it's a little different.

Dizzy, Bird, Miles, and Trane were all well schooled musicians with total control over content. These musicians were the best in the world. They knew more about music than a brain surgeon knew about medicine. In addition, they were totally focused on the art, not self-aggrandizement. But many young hip hoppers, on the other hand, are young, undereducated brothers off the street who are paid large sums of money to portray the Black community in their own image. So while Miles and Trane represented the genius within the Black community, many of these young brothers - certainly not all, but far too many - are rewarded by corporate manipulators to magnify Black dysfunction - and the more dysfunctional, the better.

This is not just my opinion. My position can be substantiated by facts. The fact is, most of these young people don't even have the skill to create their own music - they have to "sample" the music of their predecessors who understood the importance of taking the time to learn music theory, or at the very least, learning to play scales and chord progressions on a musical instrument. And spoken word artists like Oscar Brown Jr. and Gil Scott-Heron were actually poets who took the time to learn the rules of English grammar so they could uplift and educate the community with their eloquence. So to listen to one of these brothers not only constituted a class in history, poetry and English grammar, but they also had the ability to inspire the next generation to educate themselves.

But many of these young brothers who pass for stars today specialize in dumbing down the Black community. Their lyrics are amateurish, their rhymes are clumsy and predictable, their grammar is atrocious, and their message is dysfunctional - they denigrate black women, promote crime and drug abuse, and drag the Black community through the mud. In short, they promote the position that ignorance is bliss. As a direct result, instead of inspiring their fans to a higher level of intellectual achievement, it leaves them unable to speak simple business English, which is essential to getting through a job interview.

And this is not happening by accident. Since the corporate elite in this country can no longer physically enslave the people, they've decided to enslave our minds. In the sixties and seventies the Black community began to move forward, then in the eighties Ronald Reagan flooded the inner cities with drugs in order to support his illegal war in Nicaragua. That effectively took out an entire generation of Black people. As a result, in the following generation we were left with young people who were raised by dysfunctional parents - which means that they were severed from everything in their heritage that took place prior to their parents. These young people are not even Black anymore, at least culturally speaking, they just have dark skin. Am I lying? Count the dark skinned sisters in their videos.

The corporatists continued their assault on our identity by mounting a brutal attack on the nation's educational system and depriving young people to an exposure to history. They then took over all of our access to information by repealing the Fairness Doctrine and taking over the media, leaving our young people completely vulnerable to corporate programming. Consequently, the very same thing is happening to them - and to you - that FOX News is doing to the Teabaggers; it's just a little more subtle. So is there any wonder why young people are prone to promote a form of "music" that's anti-Black, and denigrates the very womb of their own culture? I think not.

And this situation has not only impacted the hip hop community. We now find ourselves in a community where Black people in general are just as racist towards other Blacks as any racist Hillbilly. Think about how you're treated on your job by many of your Black managers and superiors. Many Black people who work for the U.S. postal service, for example, are treated so badly by they're Black superiors that they're literally praying that these Black overseers be replaced by White people.

So if we want to save the Black community, we have a Herculean effort before us. The first thing we must do is stop allowing ourselves to be distracted by all the little goodies that appeal to our hedonism. We've also got to limit the time we spend partying and shakin' our booties and start paying more attention to our kids and what's going on around us. Excessive partying is for kids. When you're an adult it time to take care of business.

Being a parent is about much more than just sitting our kids in a room in front of the television set and feeding and watering them like plants. One of the reasons that we often wonder why we don't understand our own kids is because they're being raised by BET, MTV, and ESPN. Even as I write this sentence they're probably somewhere being programed by a radio or television whispering in their ear, teaching them twisted corporate values instead of your own.

And consider this. If they're being taught by the media that the only thing women are good for is sex, what kind of husbands are they going to become? If they never see the pimps on television riding around with kids in the backseat, what kind of fathers are they likely to become? And if they're being taught that drugs, big cars, and bling are the only things that make life worthwhile, yet, they're too illiterate to get a job, what do you think they're going to turn to? That's right - crime.

Now that, my people, is keeping it real.



MILES

We knew him as Miles,
the Black Prince of style,
his nature fit jazz to a tee.

Laid back and cool,
a low threshold for fools,
he set the tone
of what a jazzman
should be.

Short on words,
and unperturbed, about
what the people thought;
frozen in time, drenched
in the sublime,
of the passion
his sweet horn
had wrought.

Solemn to the bone,
distant and torn,
even Trane could
scarcely get in;
I can still hear the tone
of this genius who mourned,
that precious note
that he couldn't
quite bend.

Wattree

Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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