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Alden’s life
By Burl Burlingame
on a six-string
Star-BulletinA couple of years ago, Howard Alden managed to amaze filmmaker Woody Allen by showing an actor where to place his fingers.
Jazz guitarist Alden had been drafted as Sean Penn's guitar coach for Allen's gently funky "Sweet and Lowdown," about a musician on the ethical skids. One day Alden got a call from keyboardist Dick Hyman, Allen's musical director.
"Dick said, hey, can you play like Django Reinhardt? I said, 'Doesn't everyone?' Ha-ha, says he. A producer will call you in a day or so concerning guitar music in a new Woody Allen movie," said Alden, laughing over the phone, long-distance from his mother-in-law's.
"I thought I'd record for a couple of days and that would be it. At the most. But no. Sean threw himself into it and it took six months of following Sean around and showing him stuff, and when filming started, I was at the set every day. It was a real treat. Sean hadn't played before, but he was a good study, and he really got into it.
"The soundtrack was prerecorded, and Sean was going to finger-synch with the music. The important thing was that he looked comfortable with the guitar, and his body language and mannerisms were great. I've seen movies where the actors had clearly never held the instrument before; it's so awkward. But Sean had it. And he actually learned to play.
Concerts: HAWAII GUITAR FESTIVAL 2000
Slack key guitar master Dennis Kamakahi joined by his son David on ukulele, 8 p.m. Saturday.
Where: Concerts in the Orvis Auditorium; workshops in the University of Hawaii at Manoa Music Building
Tickets: $15; $12 students, seniors, UH faculty and staff per performance. One workshop $30; $50 for both
Also: The guitarists will perform "all-star" concerts Sunday on Kauai and June 10 in Hilo.
Call: 956-3836 or go online at http://www.outreach.hawaii.edu.
"One day, Woody Allen walked by and when he saw Sean and I playing together, he stopped in his tracks. Good God, he said, Sean, you're really playing the guitar! I thought you were going to fake it!"
The completed movie pleased Alden to no end. "Sean did most things right on the money, and the others -- you'd have to be a jazz guitarist, and paying attention, to see the errors. He had it cold. It was great."
Alden has no idea if Penn has kept it up since. "Sean's wife Robin has a nice guitar in the house, so it's there if he gets the urge. I'd better give him a call and see if he's still doing his homework."
Alden will be teaching others at the Hawaii Guitar Festival, which begins Saturday. Alden himself is in his early 40s, a tad young to be an afficionado of Reinhardt, George Van Eps, Barney Kessel, Charlie Christian, Bucky Pizzarelli, Tal Farlow, Kenny Burrell and others who play a smooth, swingin' orotund tone upon the foundation laid by Louie Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
"I just grew up liking jazz. Didn't much care for rock 'n' roll," he shrugs. "There I'd be at the corner record store going through the itty bitty jazz bin, treasure hunting, thrilled to find something by Louie Armstrong. Nowadays, with CDs, it's easier to find this stuff. But then ..."
Alden claims to have come around on rock and blues, but when asked to name some influential artists in those genres, he pauses for the only time in the interview. "Buddy Guy? Beautiful player. And the Kings -- B.B., Albert, Freddie, of course. Clapton? Yeah, Clapton, naturally."
The jazz kings, though, the masters of syncopation and beautifully crafted archtop guitars, their names fall off his lips like a waterfall. And he's lucky enough to have played with many of them. And even luckier that they prefer playing with him.
"Utter assurance ... crystalline sound, each note articulate and complete. His solos are succinct, orderly and swinging," noted The New Yorker.
"Alden's fresh balanced performance was enough to reaffirm my belief he's one of the finest guitarists of his generation," said a reviewer in the New York Post.
Other critics and publications are equally effusive. But Alden might have become just another banjo picker. That's what he first played professionally -- "shopping malls and pizza joints, that was me!" -- before switching to six-string guitar.
And in the early '90s, he switched to the seven-string guitar, which at the time had to be custom-made for him by master luthier Bob Benedetto's shop.
"Oh, the seven-string gives more complex harmonies, and all the notes are in one place," enthuses Alden. "You know how on a six-string so much stuff is in the open tunings? Keys of E, A and D? You can play flat keys, like B-flat easily, like jazz horns -- at least, that's my theory. It's a finer guitar for jazz."
Sticking to a guitar that has to be custom-made "eliminates temptation. There are SO many fine six-string guitars out there, I wouldn't know where to start. Or stop."
But if there was a six-string sitting there idle before him?
"Of course I'd pick it up, just to hear how it sounds. I can't help myself."
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