Music for a Personal Autumn

Sounds for the beautiful season

Welcome music lovers!

Autumn is here and I am happy that my favourite season has come around again. For me, music is an essential part of enjoying fall and I have a long playlist of recordings that I enjoy listening to starting in September and continuing into November. The below essay is a brisk travelogue through some of the highlights of my playlist. I hope you enjoy it and will share your thoughts as well. What is your go-to music for autumn?

As of today (October 20), I am on a week’s vacation in New York so it will be a little longer than usual until I am next in touch. Stay tuned on November 3 for another roundup of new and upcoming music that I think is worth your attention.

As well, my first paid subscriber-only post will be out in mid-November and will include some thoughts on what I’ve been listening to recently, other ephemera related to music as well as an update on how my Substack is doing. Thank you to everyone who has taken out a paid subscription to support my work here as well as to all my subscribers. I appreciate you all!

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Except for Christmas, no other time of the year finds me relying on music to imbue what is happening and what I am feeling and what I am seeing with meaning as when the calendar turns to autumn. The season demands engagement. As leaves turn and then eventually fall, the landscape, which has had a constancy since the height of spring, shifts to a watercolour, varying from day to day.

Then there’s the crunch of fallen autumn leaves as they are walked over and the swoosh of them as they are kicked up. The air, finally relieved of the closeness of humidity, is replaced with crisper, fresher air, requiring the cocoon of a sweater, coat and, depending on the wind, a scarf. Even as the season represents decay, personified in those falling leaves, there is a profound feeling of renewal that it brings. Once autumn weather comes to my town and I breath it in, I am a new man, the best version of me.

And with this yearly revitalization comes the need to soundtrack it. Not just in an indiscriminate way, mind you, but in a way that directly dialogues with what is occurring all around me. This can make the experience of autumn very rich and invigorating. For example, as I write this paragraph on a bus travelling down Highway 401 seeing trees just starting to mark their change, Frank Sinatra’s rich recording of ‘I Wished on the Moon’ from 1965 is playing on my Spotify, making the few leaves that are now crimson red as hard-earned as Sinatra’s deeply felt interpretation of Ralph Rainger and Dorothy Parker's song.

I know that silence is important. Never has it arguably been more urgent to cut out all the noise at least once in a while. That is something I have not really done for a long time now. I should explain. As someone with tinnitus, silence often exacerbates it; the lack of silence leading up to my diagnosis likely made it inevitable. In addition, I find silence eerie, a sign that something is missing. Sound implies motion; that there is something going on. The best kind of sound is music and so I’m usually the one who is focusing on what is being piped in when I’m not myself listening to music, which is almost all the time.

No surprise then to say that for me, music is a constant, heightening and bringing meaning to pretty much every aspect of my life. And over my years of listening, there has emerged a fairly consistent and ever-growing collection of music that heralds and celebrates autumn. I suppose everyone has their own selections for this season. Here is some of the music that forms my personal autumn. Some of it may be part of yours as well.

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There is something luminous when the sun shoots through the trees this time of the year. It is profound. It is peaceful. It is simplicity. It brings to mind this scene: “we have a rocking chair / someone is always there / rocking rhythms while they’re waiting / with the candle in the window.” That’s from ‘Sisotowbell Lane’ from Joni Mitchell’s debut, Song to a Seagull, an acid-folk masterpiece. The sparseness of the record—it’s almost entirely Mitchell and her guitar—lends itself very well to October. There is a narrowing in this month. Being outside begins to necessitate motion to fight the chill but also to see what is all around.

It unfolds like the sonic landscape of David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name. Vibrant yet trippy and encouraging one to take it all in slowly, like the six minutes of ‘Song With No Words (Tress With No Leaves),’ with Crosby and Graham Nash repeating over and over again a wordless figure, allowing its resolution to conclude in its own due time or treating the spectacle of a tree after its leaves have turned and shed like an abstract painting, flowing with the grace of Jerry Garcia and Jorma Kaukonen weaving and bending around each other on ‘Tamalpais High (At About 3).’

Texture seems important in making a piece of music seem autumnal. On If I Could Only Remember My Name, there’s a split second during the communal opener, ‘Music is Love.’ The canon of the song’s title ends and after a moment of calm, a vibraphone rings out against a conga rhythm—both played by Neil Young—before Crosby, Nash, Young, Mitchell et al offer a final benediction. It’s a brief moment; it doesn’t last more than ten seconds. But it has such vibrancy that it feels like you can almost grab hold of the sound as it travels through the air and peters out into oblivion.

Similarly, hear the softly strummed guitar chord halfway through Laura Nyro’s ‘You Don’t Love Me When I Cry.’ which begins her masterwork, New York Tendaberry. It sticks out not only because of how methodically each string is played but also that it is a rare ornamentation on a very quiet song. It is another moment that suggests autumn—walking by a fairground or a park that was once bustling and is now barren.

New York Tendaberry is an album that is right at any time but if I’m being honest here, it is best played late in October or early in November once fall’s chill has settled in and made itself at home. Then, the album’s moments that break the stillness seem revelatory—the sharp bursts of brass on ‘Captain for Dark Mornings’ and ‘Gibsom Street,’ the brisk sweep of the slightly dissonant strings on ‘Tom Cat Goodbye’ and the extravagant coda on ‘Save the Country’ are all prime examples.

Much of this also has to do with place. Here, of course, that place is New York and Nyro, in my opinion, is the city’s preeminent songwriter and chronicler. Autumn and New York are a natural pairing. Its many parks comes alive, blazing with autumn’s ardour. Bryant Park, once its Winter Village skating rink opens, becomes the spot to people watch. The air off the Hudson has an extra bite.

Of course, these feelings are captured in ‘Autumn in New York.’ written by Vernon Duke in 1934 and first appearing in the musical Thumbs Up! (the other song of note from the score was ‘Zing! Goes the Strings of My Heart.’) The melody often resolves into a sigh of contentment—a chief example being the opening lines, “Autumn in New York / why does it seem so inviting.” On Bud Powell’s recording of it from 1953 with George Duvivier on bass and Art Taylor on drums, he follows it with a daring, Bachian flight up the keyboard.

Above all though, ‘Autumn in New York’ is a vocalist’s song and two interpretations of it from over 65 years ago remain sturdy pillars upon which its reputation rests untarnished. Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s recording is muted, narrowing the song’s opulence and suggesting the scene of a couple walking close together, perhaps sharing an umbrella. Sinatra’s recording from Come Fly With Me with a lush string arrangement by Billy May swaps the grey for a scene composed for widescreen technicolour, particularly in the repeat of the B section—compelling proof that May’s writing extended well beyond scooping saxophone lines and snap-brim swing.

I’ll take Manhattan, as the Rodgers and Hart song proposes, any time of the year—even summer—but never as much as I’ll take it in the fall. The original version of ‘Manhattan,’ penned for the musical Garrick Gaieties, at one point references the show Abie’s Last Rose. When Fitzgerald recorded it in 1956 for the second of her essential series of songbook collections, Abie’s Irish Rose was swapped out for My Fair Lady, then the toast of Schubert Alley with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison.

Of the songs in Lerner and Lowe’s score that gained wide currency—and there were quite a few—’I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face’ is a ballad that, even today, is played as a ballad. Johnny Mathis recorded it in 1957 for his third album, Warm. It’s good that Mathis is still here and still performing at the age of 89. He’s one of our last links to the golden era of pop singing in the fifties and sixties. He’s remembered for early hits like ‘Chances Are,’ ‘The Twelfth of Never’ and ‘Wonderful! Wonderful!’—bulwarks against early rock and roll that today stand are pretty fine records (no less than Sonny Rollins deconstructed the very pretty melody of the latter for Newk’s Time).

Those hits, however, only tease at Mathis’ artistry as a song interpreter that was explored at great length and depth on the series of LPs he made for Columbia between 1956 and 1963. They are among the most exquisite collections of popular song ever created.

The results were rich, to be sure, both in how Mathis’ voice glides through a line, ending occasionally with a quavering vibrato and in the thickness of the string writing, especially when easy-listening titan Percy Faith was in charge of the charts. But it’s a richness that served the material well, a kind of cozy familiarity that vibes well with autumn. On many of the records, Mathis sings a song's opening verse, such as on his version of ‘Autumn in New York’ from 1963 with Don Costa, furthering their pristine quality like a carefully assembled collection of pumpkins, gourds and hay at one’s doorstep.

Think of pumpkins and think of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. It was the second prime-time special featuring the Peanuts gang and like A Charlie Brown Christmas and the many that followed, scored by Vince Guaraldi. Amid the more incidental compositions is ‘The Great Pumpkin Waltz,’ a lilting piece in 3/4 time that ends with a memorable ascending phrase that, like Mathis, luxuriates in splendour.

Sounds that suggest some kind of rapture hit hard right now. Here, I think of trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and the fullness of his sound—declaratory and adventurous. Gnu High, his first for ECM Records and featuring Keith Jarrett, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette, feels like autumn should right down to the burnt orange that enfolds the album’s front and back cover.

‘Heyoke,’ the suite that covers all of its first side, starts with a slightly astringent line by Wheeler that powers the first part of the composition, including the glistening solos by the trumpeter and Jarrett. And the feeling—one of wonder and deep engagement—doesn’t end until one reaches the last groove of the album’s second side.

Spending weeks at this time of the year listening to ECM and nothing but ECM is something that can easily happen. So much of the music that Manfred Eicher has overseen at the label evokes autumn to me. The dark mystery balanced with an electric ecstasy on Steve Kuhn’s Traces. The exploratory ethos of Craig Taborn’s Daylight Ghosts. The dark magic of Bennie Maupin’s The Jewel in the Lotus. The vast amount of space spinning around Enrico Rava’s New York Days. There are many, many others. Enough for a dedicated essay of its own.

Jazz is an autumnal music when it peers inward. That can be through the thickness of the voicings—think here of Gil Evans’ scintillating arrangement of ‘Where Flamingos Fly’ or the Evans-like sound Hancock coaxes from the horns for the theme statement of ‘I Have a Dream’ or how Woody Shaw, Hubert Laws and Maupin engage in a dialogue with Chick Corea, alternating between piano and electric piano, on his 1969 recording of his ‘Song of the Wind.’ It can also be, when centred on stillness, about Bill Evans and Chet Baker during their time on Riverside. Joe Henderson’s initial version of ‘Black Narcissus,’ particularly during Hancock’s slightly trippy solo on electric piano, also succinctly illustrates this point.

The substantive tradition of vocal jazz, as already teased in this essay, is inextricably linked with fall through, and just for starters, the innumerable readings of standards like ‘Autumn Leaves,’ ‘Early Autumn,’ the aforementioned ‘Autumn in New York,’ ‘Autumn in Rome’ and ‘Autumn Serenade.’

Where else does music find the spirit of autumn? The orchestrated soul of the late sixties and early seventies, for starters. Isaac Hayes’ grandiose productions, both in scale and length, suggests the richness of an autumn day in October, full of colours but cold enough to require layers, such as in his opening up of Bachrach and David’s ‘Walk on By’ and their ‘The Look of Love.’ The Philly soul movement, from Gamble and Huff’s early productions like the Intruders’ ‘Cowboys to Girls’ and their brief partnership with Jerry Butler (‘What’s the Use of Breaking Up’ is a good shorthand here) to their triumphs with the O’Jays, the Three Degrees and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes with Teddy Pendergrass, is also thick with fall's pleasures.

How about country music in the Nashville sound era, full of filigree and finesse? For all the sneaking suspicion that the music made during that time wasn’t actually country—maybe more like country-adjacent—it was dynamic, connecting it to the autumn season. The cleanliness of the production, the sweetness of the background vocals, the precision of the musicians, whether on recordings by stalwarts like Charley Pride, Don Gibson or Brenda Lee, or Johnny Paycheck, Waylon Jennings or Willie Nelson before they turned outlaw, fits fall like a snug pair of leather gloves.

And then there’s the colossus of classical music, the repertoire stretching back through the centuries and evolving still today, much of which hints at autumn’s bountifulness. Here, Gustav Mahler is a boon companion—the slowly unfolding first theme of the opening movement of his first symphony, the rush of the strings in the first and last movements of his fourth symphony and the two serenade movements (the second and fourth) of the seventh are all portraits of the mystery of fall and even more so when Leonard Bernstein is wielding the baton.

My list could go on and on and on as I wish autumn would also. But the season is here today and as a certain song of the season says, “it’s good to live it again.”