Musician’s Folk Piano Style Celebrates American Roots

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

Pianist George Winston will be performing at Pepperdine University on Friday, Jan. 20. The artist spoke to the Malibu Surfside News this week about his music.

The piano is often viewed as a classical instrument, but Winston, for the past 35 years, has explored its range as a folk, jazz and improvisational instrument. He describes his style as rural folk piano, combining elements of jazz, folk, rhythm and blues, ragtime and stride-a piano style developed by black jazz pianists in Harlem and New Orleans in the 1920s and 30s that involves the left hand “striding” across the octaves of the keyboard from tonic to chord.

Winston says that the new age label that stuck when he signed with Windham Hill in 1979 is inaccurate and he also isn’t comfortable being called a composer, preferring to describe what he does as “interpretation.”

Winston's distinctive musical style works brilliantly for the artist's interpretations of the music of jazz composer Vince Guaraldi and The Doors. The musician’s own compositions create a musical impression of the changing seasons, the rush of flowing water, falling leaves, or the swift, elusive flight of a hummingbird.

“I started on organ,” Winston told The News. “I switched to piano, which has just one sound. I wanted more.”

Winston began playing organ in 1967, inspired by the Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek. In 1971 Winston switched to the acoustic piano after hearing recordings from the 1920s and '30s of stride pianists Thomas “Fats” Waller and Teddy Wilson.

Winston’s website indicates that it was during this period of experimentation while he was studying stride piano that he developed his own style of melodic instrumental music that he calls folk piano.

Other sources of inspiration include Appalachian and old time American folk music; Hawaiian slack key guitar, which Winston also plays; New Orleans pianists Henry Butler and James Booker; Henry Roeland Byrd, aka Professor Longhair; composers Frank Zappa, Randy Newman, Sam Cooke, Curtis Mayfield, Laura Nyro, and longtime friend Philip Aaberg, among others.

In 1972, Winston recorded his first solo piano album, “Ballad and Blues” for the late guitarist John Fahey’s Takoma label, followed in 1979 by “Autumn” for the new record label Windham Hill. Subsequent albums “Winter into Spring” and “December” went platinum. “December,” with its austerely beautiful settings of Johannas Pachelbel’s Canon, “Carol of the Bells” and Winston's original composition “Thanksgiving” that evokes falling snow and winter stillness, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.

Winston continues to experiment and develop his folk piano technique. In addition to playing the piano's keys, Winston will sometimes reach into the inner workings of the piano to pluck or dampen the strings, create harmonics or cause the hammers to buzz, not unlike harp techniques.

“Harp is an influence on everybody,” Winston said. “I like the sustain, I like it better than organ sustain. One of the reasons I like [the piano’s] percussion and plucked notes is the decay.

“Every instrument has its limitations,” Winston added. “What do you want to express? If you want it, you’ll find a way to do it, whatever the song needs, a certain sound.”

Winston spent much of his childhood in Montana, later moving to Mississippi and Florida.

“When I was a child in Montana there was no TV, and just one radio station. The seasons were everything. In summer, swimming; in winter sledding; autumn, leaves. I’d look out the window [instead of at a TV]. “I didn’t miss it because it didn’t exist,” he said.

When television did enter his life he was captivated by the music of jazz composer Vince Guaraldi, which was an integral part of the “Peanuts” animated specials, starting with “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” in 1966.

“Guaraldi’s music is seasonal—Christmas, Valentine’s, Thanksgiving. That appealed to me.

I recorded each new “Peanuts” episode on a cassette recorder,” Winston said. “I still check through [the episodes]. There may be a 12-second little bit used to bridge into another cue.”

Years later, Guaraldi’s family gave Winston access to the jazz composer's original tapes and handwritten notes. Winston released his first album of Guaraldi’s music, “Linus and Lucy,” in 1996. His second album of Guaraldi’s music, “Love Will Come-the Music of Vince Guaraldi” was released last year.

“I play 55 of his compositions,” Winston said. “More than any other composer” [in his repertoire].

Winston, who lives in Northern California, will be touring for much of the spring and summer. “I tour most of the time,” Winston told the Malibu Surfside News. “I’m used to it. It’s like home.”

Winston uses his tours not only to promote and share his music but to raise funds and awareness for causes he believes in.

In 2001 George released “Remembrance-A Benefit Concert,” a six song CD of piano, guitar and harmonica solos, to benefit those affected by 9/11. Two of his recent albums-Gulf Coast Blues 1 and 2-were recorded to benefit the work of groups such as The Voice of the Wetlands organization, which was established by musician Tab Benoit in 2004 as a volunteer-based non-profit organization that raises awareness about the loss of the wetlands in southern Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina and the catastrophic BP oil spill.

“The Louisiana wetlands are the biggest eco-disaster in the U.S.,” Winston explained.

Winston asks that concert-goers bring canned food to his upcoming concerts, which will be donated to local shelters. Donations brought to the Pepperdine concert will be donated to the Malibu Labor Exchange. Proceeds from the concert will benefit City of Hope’s cancer research program.

“I’ve wanted to do something for City of Hope for a while,” Winston told The News. “They help so many people. This is my only [concert] in the Los Angeles area, so it just seemed right.”

His audience at the Malibu concert can expect to hear selections from the music of Vince Guaraldi and The Doors in addition to Winston’s own compositions. They may also be treated to a harmonica solo, or a Hawaiian slack key guitar song or two. Winston, who is a passionate advocate and patron of the traditional Hawaiian finger style, enjoys sharing it with audiences. “I don’t have a concept of recording [at this time]. It’s not an expression of that instrument,” he told The News.

Winston’s own Dancing Cat Records label was founded in 1983 with the goal “to record both the musicians who have influenced his music and musicians whose music he felt needed to be preserved for future generations,” including performances by masters of the Hawaiian slack key guitar style.

Winston will be performing at Pepperdine University’s Smothers Theater on Friday, Jan. 20, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $35-$45.

More information on the Malibu concert is available at www.arts.Pepperdine.edu. Information on Winston and his music is available at www.georgewinston.com