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Toujours Toots!

Belgium

13:55 30/04/2012

The jazz giant from the Marolles conquered the world with his harmonica. As he turns 90, Baron ‘Toots’ Thielemans hits the road for a series of anniversary shows

In 2001, when King Albert II ennobled him, Toots Thielemans adopted the credo that has ruled his life: ‘Be yourself, no more, no less.’ In addition to his musical virtuosity, it is his humility and warm-heartedness that have brought the jazz icon international acclaim. There’s a universal appeal to Thielemans’ music. The skills of the renowned Belgian harmonica player, guitarist and whistler are appreciated by both the lay person and jazz fan, adult aficionados and their offspring, whether they be from Belgium or elsewhere. Following his 90th birthday, on April 29, he’s setting off on an anniversary tour of his home country. At the same time, a box set containing a book and a DVD provides a retrospective of his long and illustrious career. A new CD, entitled 90 Years and recorded live with his European Quartet, prove that the father of Belgian jazz is not totally reliant on his past success.

Jean-Baptiste ‘Toots’ Thielemans learned to play the accordion at the age of three. He took up the chromatic harmonica at 17 and almost 73 years later still considers the instrument to be his “second self”. Back then, in the 1940s, the instrument belonged to the world of folk and blues, but Thielemans loved to improvise. He became hooked on jazz during the German occupation and learned to add a jazz sensibility, guided by the music of his teenage heroes, Django Reinhardt – who he started listening to on a wind-up gramophone – and American saxophonist Charlie Parker.

Thielemans made his first major steps in music as a guitarist. In May 1949 he stood on a Paris stage jamming with jazz greats such as Parker, Miles Davis, Sidney Bechet and Max Roach. He also made his first album, The Sound, in the French capital. In 1950, he toured Europe as a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet and the following year he joined the band of Flemish country singer and fellow whistler Bobbejaan Schoepen. But soon, and inevitably, Europe proved too small for his musical talent and natural curiosity. In 1952 he emigrated to the US, the homeland of his jazz heroes.
Almost immediately he began playing with Charlie Parker’s All-Stars. Pianist George Shearing was so impressed he invited him to join his own band, where he stayed until 1959. Two years later he composed his most popular song, Bluesette, which would become a jazz standard. The use of whistling and guitar in unison set the tone for the rest of his career. Later, he would alter this combination by replacing the guitar with his faithful friend, the harmonica. It is the same harmonica that is heard on the original Sesame Street closing titles.

Not only did Thielemans work with jazz giants Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Quincy Jones, Bill Evans and Jaco Pastorius, but members of the pop and movie scene were also eager to add his unique sound to their recordings. His instantly recognisable harmonica playing appears on Paul Simon’s I Do It for Your Love, Billy Joel’s Leave a Tender Moment Alone and Julian Lennon’s Too Late For Goodbyes. To hit movies The Pawnbroker, Midnight Cowboy and Turks Fruit it would introduce a melancholic layer. More recently, the soundtrack of TV series such as the Dutch detective series Baantjer or its Belgian counterpart Witse would be unthinkable without Toots’s characteristic lyrical ‘mouth music’.

Throughout the years, as a leader of swing and bop quartets, he has recorded numerous albums, developing, among other influences, an appreciation for Brazilian-flavoured music. He has stepped on to the biggest jazz stages in the world and received many awards and titles, including the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and honorary doctorates from both of Brussels’ universities. In 2009 he became NEA Jazz Master, the highest honour for a jazz musician in the US. He was the first musician born in Europe to be awarded it. But during all this time, he has never forgotten his roots. “In Belgium I call myself an Afro-Americanised Marollian,” he once said to an American jazz writer, referring both to the musicians who inspired him and his American career and to the working-class Brussels neighbourhood he grew up in. Today Thielemans maintains dual American and Belgian nationality and is respected in both countries.

“Belgium is like a friendly old sweater that you keep wearing even though it’s worn out,” he said to Mike Zwerin, a critic for Bloomberg News who visited him five years ago in his home in La Hulpe. “I still love to wear it. It reminds me of Sophisticated Lady and those other old standards you never get tired of revisiting.” Confronted with Thielemans’s joie de vivre – they were sitting by the swimming pool, drinking Moët et Chandon and watching Thielemans’s wife Huguette doing the garden – he explained why he’s doing so well after so many years. “I never did drugs, I had no expensive divorces, no children to put through college. And for sixty years I’ve been following my father’s advice that if you make two dollars, use one to live on and put the other in the bank and forget you have it.”

“I’ve crossed paths with the great Toots several times; each time was a joyful experience,” recalls the New York-based jazz pianist Chick Corea. “One time in Belgium at a solo piano concert of mine, I invited Toots to join me in some duets and we had an absolute blast playing together. His persistent high level of creativity through his productive musical life is certainly an inspiration to me.” Corea is himself, at 70, a tireless and highly influential performer and musician. These testimonials are common for Thielemans, who has always attracted praise for his humble and modest personality and the warm-heartedness that accompanies his music.

And it’s not just the older generation that’s affected by Thielemans’s music and character. “The interest is mutual,” says Jos Knaepen, Belgium’s most renowned jazz photographer, who befriended Thielemans after he came back from America. “Toots is still eager to play with young people. From time to time he asked for my opinion on this or that bloke. I think it helps to keep his mind young. And I’ve noticed he needs to be pushed, he needs the challenge. Especially before a concert that he doesn’t always feel like performing, but surrounded by young musicians he gets an extra boost and survives. My luck was that unlike many other jazz musicians he likes being photographed. I think here vanity kicks in.”

“I trust my goose bumps, they are my antenna,” Thielemans says in Toots 90, the book that has been published for his birthday and contains exquisite pictures by Knaepen. “There’s a sensory perception that goes from my brain to my heart. Do you think it is possible to get goose bumps from something your head doesn’t grasp? I admire avant-garde artists, but their music doesn’t give me inspiration. Nevertheless, their music does excite me and I’m curious enough to always listen to them. I don’t want to become an antique piece of furniture, which you only occasionally clean.”

TOOTS 90 CONCERTS

APRIL 30 & MAY 1

De Roma, Antwerp

MAY 6

De Bijloke, Ghent

MAY 9

Bozar, Brussels

MAY 10

Cultuurcentrum Hasselt

MAY 11

Concertgebouw Bruges

MAY 17