Blue Note

Tonesmith

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Trumpeter Louis Smith passed away on August 20 at the age of 85. Memphis-born Smith, who finally settled in Ann-Arbor, Michigan, was in the limelight very shortly, when Blue Note released Here Comes Louis Smith in 1958. Originally, that session was recorded for Transition. As the story goes, when Transition folded, Cannonball Adderley recommended the session to Blue Note boss Alfred Lion. Adderley, under contract to Mercury, appeared on the album as ‘Buckshot La Funke’. The album showcases a crackerjack trumpeter who played in the Clifford Brown/Fats Navarro tradition and added steaming, sizzling blues phrases, a style best likened, perhaps, to Blue Mitchell. Smith’s second album, Smithville, included pianist Sonny Clark.

Smith recorded for Steeplechase throughout his career but stayed under the radar mostly, concentrating on teaching instead. Dutch pianist Rein de Graaff, always eager to lure unsung heroes out of hiding, invited Smith to The Netherlands for a series of acclaimed performances in the eighties. Recently, De Graaff recounted to me a sojourn in Detroit, when Louis Smith took De Graaff to a gig, ‘deep in the bowels of the Afro-American community. The kind of place where white people usually do not dare thread. There was this big hall, and I was the only white person around. Honestly, I was a bit scared, there were more than a few hostile glances from the audience, you know. But once I’d sat in, the hostility disappeared. Louis was great. Jazz is the shared language, you know.”

Louis Smith - Just Friends
Louis Smith - Here Comes Louis Smith
Louis Smith - Smithville

More Than Meets The ‘Ear’

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RVG

Engineer Rudy van Gelder passed away this week on Thursday, August the 25th. Mr. Van Gelder, not surprisingly, is a trending topic. Already during the pioneering engineer’s lifetime, Van Gelder acquired a mythic status among jazz lovers around the globe. Serious jazz collectors discuss ‘original’ pressings of Van Gelder’s Blue Note albums and the famous ‘ear’ mark in the dead wax on the world wide web on a daily basis. Van Gelder isn’t the only audio legend (For instance, Roy DuNann and Tom Dowd enjoy a dedicated following) but certainly has been the most widely revered in jazz history. Besides his brilliant, revolutionary engineering, RvG’s association with Blue Note is responsible for his status. There was a certain mystique as to how Van Gelder created the label’s poignantly warm, transparent and spacious sound. Occasional criticism – through the overuse of reverb Van Gelder recordings sometimes seem personal soundscapes instead of palettes attuned to the special features of the involved artistic personalities – seems, if justifiable serious audio geek-critique, a bit presumptuous to me in the light of Van Gelder’s countless gifts to the jazz world. It is evident that Rudy van Gelder’s role in shaping modern jazz is everlasting and paramount.

Naturally, Van Gelder didn’t work exclusively for Blue Note in his legendary Hackensack and Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey studios, but also for Prestige, Impulse, Atlantic, Verve, CTI and a few other labels. The list of albums that Van Gelder is associated with is endless. A peek through DG Mono‘s helpful Van Gelder jazz discography up to 1966 – the classic years – has a dizzying effect. To name but a few classic Van Gelder albums: John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus, Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder, Eric Dolphy’s Out To Lunch and Miles Davis’ Walkin’.

Below, I have listed a few lesser-known albums that were engineered by Rudy Van Gelder. Exceptions to the RvG rule for a number of, hardly shocking but evident, reasons:

Signal 1206, 1957
Signal 1206, 1957
Portrait Of Sheila, Blue Note 9002
Portrait Of Sheila, Blue Note 9002
Impulse, A25, 1962
Impulse, A25, 1962

Van Gelder rarely recorded for Signal. Figures, the label was short-lived and the catalogue was taken over by Savoy in the late fifties. RvG engineered Gigi Gryce, Duke Jordan, Red Rodney… And?; Blue Note eschewed singers but made an exception for Sheila Jordan. Van Gelder rarely worked with singers – Johnny Hartman for Impulse, Etta Jones for Prestige – but captures Jordan at her spine-shivering best; Van Gelder is synonymous with quintet line-ups, the classic hard bop format. However, his job with swing giant Count Basie turned out pretty swell.

Prestige 8321, 1965
Prestige 8321, 1965
Blue Note 8297, 1963
Blue Note 8297, 1963
Prestige PR 7800, 1963
Prestige PR 7800, 1963

Latin Soul is one of the few latin jazz recordings that Van Gelder did for Prestige. Commercial but swinging stuff; African High Life was characteristic West-African dance music, the album’s an odd Blue Note release; Must’ve been somethin’ else for RvG to check in folk singer Dave van Ronk after a few days with the front-liners of Blue Note like Andrew Hill and Grachan Monchur III! However well-prepared, it’s like eating kidney stew after a long-awaited evening at El Bulli.

God’s a kind of a less-is-more kind of guy. In fact, the penultimate silence is His trade. Which may be the best music after all. But I know RvG is gonna change that scene.

Jackie McLean A Fickle Sonance (Blue Note 1961)

- Francois 4 Comments

If Jackie McLean’s career would’ve ended right after recording A Fickle Sonance, people would certainly have pointed out the alto saxophonist’s development from one of Charlie Parker’s most proficient disciples to an alto saxophonist that made his mark with a series of excellent Blue Note recordings from 1959 to 1961, employing his highly emotional, piercing sound: already a great legacy. However, McLean raised the bars considerably the following years, breaking and entering hard bop’s living quarters with a series of vanguard recordings in cooperation with avantgardists like Ornette Coleman.

Jackie McLean - A Fickle Sonance

Personnel

Jackie McLean (alto saxophone), Tommy Turrentine (trumpet), Sonny Clark (piano), Butch Warren (bass), Billy Higgins (drums)

Recorded

on October 26, 1961 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Released

as BLP 4089 in 1961

Track listing

Side A:
Five Will Get You Ten
Subdued
Sundu
Side B:
A Fickle Sonance
Enitnerrut
Lost


Fickle means ‘liable to sudden unpredictable change’. Sonance is an archaic synonym of ‘sound’. By calling his album and title track thus, McLean reveals to be a conscious commentator of the dual nature of both his own sound and style and jazz in general, which is all about surprise.

All Music states that ‘the playing’ on A Fickle Sonance ‘remained in a swinging, blues-oriented style, showing no hints of the direction his music was about to take’. Not entirely accurate. The title track certainly foreshadows McLean’s modal jazz. McLean’s solo in A Fickle Sonance borders on the abstract.

The angular quality of McLean’s lines and his probing, biting tone set McLean apart from his contemporaries. He’s a passionate player with a dark-hued sound, involving macabre, if occasionally frivolous overtones. A fickle sonance for sure. The way McLean lends substance to ballads was striking as well. McLean’s powerful statements on his original composition Subdued suggest a passionate singing voice.

Tunes like Sonny Clark’s Sundu, Tommy Turrentine’s Enitnerrut (Turrentine spelt backwards) and Butch Warren’s Lost fit into the ‘codified’ Blue Note message: deceptively effortless hard bop tracks from a rhythm section that would work together two weeks later on Sonny Clark’s splendid swan song as a leader, Leapin’ And Lopin’ on November 13, 1961.

Sonny Clark’s Five Will Get You Ten is more unusual. It’s a rip-off from one of Thelonious Monk’s unreleased cuts, Two Timer, that Clark presumably overheard Monk play and plagiarized in order to raise quick cash for his increasingly alarmous drug habits. (Monk never found out, but undoubtly would’ve forgiven the younger Clark, who was taken under his wings by Monk for quite a while at the famous jazz mecenas Nica “Pannonica” de Koenigwarter’s residence) Clark’s title arguably alludes to the drug scene; ‘five’ would be cash, ‘ten’ would be a certain amount of dope.

Who wouldn’t kill for an unreleased Monk track? It’s an alluring tune with a bridge that resembles Bemsha Swing and McLean jumps at the opportunity, alternating note-bending wails that stretch the boundaries of the melody line with rapid glissandos. Monk’s tune is fitting, since in A Fickle Sonance’s set of tunes, air and spaceousness are dominant features. To create a relaxed atmosphere while operating on a strikingly emotional as well as a highly proficient level is no small feat of Jackie McLean’s outstanding quintet.

Horace Parlan Quintet Speakin’ My Piece (Blue Note 1961)

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Horace Parlan is a very interesting pianist, not only because of his peculiar playing style that is due to his handicapped right hand. He’s an essential hard bop player and made a lot of recordings in the post bop-style. But the borders weren’t strict, Parlan puts a lot of blues in post bop and a big dose of adventurous lines in his bluesy output.

Horace Parlan Quintet - Speakin' My Piece

Personnel

Horace Parlan (piano), Stanley Turrentine (tenor saxophone), Tommy Turrentine (trumpet), George Tucker (bass), Al Harewood (drums)

Recorded

on July 14, 1961 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as BLP 4043 in 1961

Track listing

Side A:
Wadin’
Up In Cynthia’s Room
Borderline
Side B:
Rastus
Oh So Blue
Speakin’ My Piece


Take Up In Cynthia’s Room from Parlan’s second album as a leader on Blue Note, Speakin’ My Piece. It’s a medium-tempo swinger with graceful blues licks and blue notes, elegant, like the whole album, but many choruses are embellished with idiosynchratic entrances and percussively stamped-out glissandos as well. Parlan also doesn’t shy away from suddenly going up an octave. Pleasant elements of surprise.

Horace Parlan was stricken with polio as a baby, which resulted in the partial crippling of his right hand. The playing style of the Pittsburgh-born pianist – poignant left hand lines and voicings and sparse, rhythmic right-hand comping- attracted the attention of visiting jazz pros in the early fifties. From 1952 to 1957, Parlan played with Sonny Stitt. Thereafter, Charles Mingus invited him to work in his Jazz Workshop. Parlan’s singular style is a great asset of the classic Mingus albums Mingus Ah Um and Blues & Roots.

In 1972, Parlan moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. Parlan became a fixture of the Danish scene (and its major jazz club, Club Montmartre), which already was graced with the presence of other American expatriates as Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, Ben Webster and Archie Shepp. With Shepp, Parlan recorded the influential, gospel-drenched Goin’ Home in 1974, the recording of which, alledgedly, brought tears to the duo’s eyes during each tune. Throughout the seventies and the early eighties, Parlan recorded prolifically on the Danish label Steeplechase.

Nowadays, Parlan still lives in the small village of Rude near Copenhagen. The 86-year old retired and blind pianist, who has been living in a nursery home for some time now, talked to BBC World Service in 2015. I wrote about that touching portrait just a while ago.

Speakin’ My Piece is part of a series of consistent, top-rate albums that Parlan made with his regular trio for Blue Note in the early sixties. The trio, including bassist George Tucker and drummer Al Harewood, came to be known as Us Three, a classic rhythm unit of the Blue Note roster with an unusually unified sense of purpose. The line-up’s first album for Blue Note was named Us Three (1960). Parlan is the last man standing, as George Tucker died from cerebral hemorrhage in 1965 (allegedly while performing with Kenny Burrell) and Al Harewood passed away in 2014. As you may well know, the jazz dance outfit US3 used the catchy name and hit big with 1993’s Hand On The Torch, sampling several classic Blue Note recordings in the process.

But why bother with forgettable hybrids when the real deal is available?

Hank Mobley The Flip (Blue Note 1969)

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In the late sixties Hank Mobley’s round tone had become a bit rougher around the edges and his style was more hard-driving. This is evident on 1969’s The Flip, which boasts hi-voltage blowing but is short on finesse. Mobley, always the prolific songwriter, wrote all five tunes on The Flip. The compositions that turn out best are the ones that resemble Mobley’s songwriting of the late fifties and early sixties.

Hank Mobley - The Flip

Personnel

Hank Mobley (tenor saxophone), Dizzy Reece (trumpet), Slide Hampton (trombone), Vince Benedetti (piano), Alby Cullaz (bass), Philly Joe Jones (drums)

Recorded

on July 12, 1969 at Studio Barclay, Paris, France

Released

as BST 84329 in 1969

Track listing

Side A
The Flip
Feelin’ Folksy
Side B
Snappin’ Out
18th Hole
Early Morning Stroll


Examples of the latter are Feelin’ Folksy, 18th Hole and Early Morning Stroll. Feelin’ Folksy swings suavely and is a coherent group effort. Mobley’s solo is a mix between his earlier bluesy style and new, more advanced bag. Clearly, Mobley is in fine form, in spite of the increasing alcohol abuse of that time in his life. Late 2014, I talked to Dutch pianist Rob Agerbeek, who toured in Europe with Mobley in 1968/69 and remembered that Mobley was playing very well indeed. Incidentally, Mobley wanted Agerbeek to play on the sessions of The Flip in Paris, but Blue Note boss Francis Wolff had already booked Vince Benedetti, so Agerbeek had to be cancelled.

18th Hole is an intricate, hard-swinging tune with great three-horn harmony. Philly Joe Jones keeps the guys on their toes, especially in Early Morning Stroll, a bop figure that makes good use of tension and release with an lengthy bridge.

Hank Mobley’s the quintessential musician’s musician. That isn’t front page news. Key words: killer chops, smart songwriting, unique round, warm tone, inventive storytelling, smokin’ hot to boot. Great storytelling, however, has become a minority on The Flip. More often than not, Mobley reaches an early climax in his solo’s, which doesn’t leave much room for a story to develop. Where to go when the gunpowder has faded?

To my pleasure, on Early Morning Stroll, Mobley cuts short his initial flurry of over-excited notes and instead tells an interesting, swinging tale. Trademark Mobley.

Snappin’ Out is a typical Latin hard bop tune and an easy head to blow on. Slide Hampton blows swift and assured. The tune is more satisfying than the title track and opener of the album, The Flip, which, arguably, is a conscious effort to reach the same popular status as Mobley’s earlier winner of 1965, The Turnaround. But conscious efforts, like femme fatales, rarely give you what you want.

The Flip swings hard and is sure to enliven a party. But unfortunately, it also swings wild and uncontrolled, favouring a strained, hi-octane tension over a sophisticated build-up. If Philly Joe Jones would be alive today to comment on The Flip, I’m sure he would agree that boogaloo wasn’t his long suit. I’m sure he would laugh and say, ‘Man, I better stick to modern jazz drumming, leave that boogaloo to Idris Muhammad!’ Jones possessed the humor and self-mockery. The drum legend faultlessly imitated Bela “Dracula” Lugosi on a 1958 Riverside album, remember.

Speaking of faultless jobs, considering Mobley’s abilities The Flip is quite a distance away from douze points.

Kenny Dorham Trompeta Toccata (Blue Note 1964)

- Francois 1 Comment

Nothing prepares you for what’s going to happen after Kenny Dorham’s lyrical opening statements in duet with the piano of Trompeta Toccata’s title track. What follows is a buoyant Afro-Cuban gem, the opening track of one of the trumpeter’s finest recordings.

Kenny Dorham - Trompeta Toccata

Personnel

Kenny Dorham (trumpet), Joe Henderson (tenor saxophone), Tommy Flanagan (piano), (Richard Davis, bass), Albert Heath (drums)

Recorded

on September 14, 1964 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as BLP 8418 in 1964

Track listing

Side A:
Trompeta Toccata
Night Watch
Side B:
Mamacita
The Fox


Trompeta Toccata suggests Dorham played cousin to Blue Note’s front-line albums of the period like Andrew Hill’s Point Of Departure and Herbie Hancock’s My Point Of View. Dorham played on Point Of Departure alongside Richard Davis. But those albums are more dark-hued. Trompeta Toccata bears a lithe charm all its own. Like his colleagues, Dorham stretched the boundaries of hard bop, playing more freely, with a varied, more percussive style. At the same time, Dorham retained his trademark lyrical style and sweet-sour tone. The combination of the experimental Richard Davis, combative Joe Henderson, elegant Tommy Flanagan and versatile Albert Heath guarantees a lot of interesting textures.

Trompeta Toccato didn’t suddenly came out of the blue. Both Dorham’s albums that preceded it, Matador (with Jackie McLean) and Una Mas broadened the horizons of the trumpeter. Dorham had cooperated with Joe Henderson as well, notably on the abovementioned Una Mas and Henderson’s dates Page One (that included the oft-covered Dorham winner Blue Bossa), Our Thing and In & Out, a title that suggests the same modus operandi as Trompeta Toccata. A key figure on a lot of Blue Note’s vanguard sessions (A series of Andrew Hill albums, Joe Henderson’s In & Out, Booker Ervin’s The Freedom Book) and the iconic Out To Lunch from Eric Dolphy) is the brilliant bassist Richard Davis. Davis’s cutting edge bass playing, including virtuoso sliding technique, is strongly featured on Trompeta Toccata. His work on the title track, advanced but firm and coherent at the same time, is a gas. The contrast between the experiments of Davis and Tommy Flanagan’s impressionistic voicings is very enjoyable.

Meanwhile Dorham and Henderson are preoccupied with the melody, stressing staccato runs that start or finish with unexpected notes. Dorham’s husky edge and playful growls mix well with Joe Henderson’s virile, angular phrases. Dorham had been a premier advocate of the Carribean theme in jazz since the early fifties. The title track, consisting of a contagious 6/8 rhythm pattern, is one of his liveliest performances.

Joe Henderson’s Mamacita is equally catching. It’s a more mellow, less pithy take than Henderson’s re-visit on his 1967 Milestone album The Kicker. The medium-tempo Night Watch’s elaborate structure doesn’t take anything away from its unmistakable blues feeling. Dorham sprinkles the landscape of the fast-paced The Fox with a shower of elegant, fluent lines.

I like the fact that Blue Note resisted the temptation to go for a hit record by putting a more straightforward danceable track like Mamacita at the start of the album, as the label often did. (which worked out pretty swell, by the way) But for Dorham’s album, Blue Note favored the lengthy title track as the opener. It immediately states Dorham’s intentions and attributes to the album’s coherence. I’m fond of the album’s brisk, ebullient atmosphere.

Unfortunately, it was Kenny Dorham’s last album as a leader. In hindsight, the underappreciated Dorham, ‘the uncrowned king of the trumpet’, as Art Blakey so aptly put it in his 1955 live show introductions for the original Jazz Messengers (as captured on Live At The Bohemia I & II), was ready for public acceptance. More than ready, having stood at the helm of bebop alongside Charlie Parker in the late forties and early fifties and with a batch of classic albums as Afro-Cuban and Quiet Kenny and sideman appearances on a series of outstanding hard bop recordings in his pocket. Instead, Dorham slid into obscurity and untimely passed away in 1972 due to kidney disease.

But if you’re going to have a swan song, Trompeta Toccata more than qualifies.

Donald Byrd A New Perspective (Blue Note 1963)

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Besides honing his craft as one of the premier hard bop trumpet players of the day, Donald Byrd had other things on his mind, chief among them the exploration of new forms. A New Perspective, Byrd’s intriguing, daring dive into spiritual music, doesn’t bring the gospel in broad slices but instead presents it with delicate, hymnal strokes, with pathos lingering in the background.

Donald Byrd - A New Perspective

Personnel

Donald Byrd (trumpet), Hank Mobley (tenor saxophone), Herbie Hancock (piano), Donald Best (vibes), Kenny Burrell (guitar), Butch Warren (bass), Lex Humphries (drums), Duke Pearson (arranger), Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (choir direction)

Recorded

on January 12, 1963 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as BLP 4124 in 1963

Track listing

Side A:
Elijah
Beast Of Burden
Side B:
Cristo Redentor
The Black Disciple
Chant


In hindsight, of course, everything sticks. Firstly, the jubilant Pentecostal Feeling from Byrd’s adventurous album Free Forms pointed in the direction of A New Perspective’s spiritual concept. Free Forms was recorded a year earlier on December 11, 1961, but the album was shelved until release in 1966. Quite amazing that such a high quality session was sent to Blue Note’s dungeons. However, Blue Note sometimes shelved sessions from their most prolific artists to avert market overflow.

Secondly, A New Perspective takes its logical place in a career that was highly diverse. Byrd not only recorded prolifically as a leader (and as co-leader with bariton saxophonist Pepper Adams) but was extremely productive as a sideman, courtesy of Byrd’s immaculate chops, versatility and a big hunk of funk. The list is endless. Check out some of the world-class albums Byrd appeared on: Kenny Clarke – Bohemia After Dark (1955), Art Blakey – The Jazz Messengers (1956), John Coltrane – Black Pearls (1958), Sonny Clark – My Conception (1959), Hank Mobley – The Turnaround (1963), Herbie Hancock – My Point Of View (1963), Dexter Gordon – One Flight Up (1963). Then, solo-wise, onwards from 1969’s Fancy Free Byrd explored fusion and r&b, which culminated in the 1973 hit album Black Byrd. A career move Byrd was as much derided as applauded for. In any case, it was an unusually succesful turn of events for a jazz musician. Finally, everybody remembers Byrd’s equally succesful cooperation with hiphop artist Guru on 1993/1995’s Jazzmatazz Vol. 1 & 2.

The story of how it took me years to finally shake off my resentment towards the clean, smooth choir of A New Perspective is not something I’m going to bore you with. More preoccupied with introspection than with the act of driving out demons, more cultivated than red-headed, Byrd’s pieces may not possess the grittiness that’s usually associated with the black gospel, they have a charm all off their own. Mellow doowop voices flavour Beast Of Burden, a piece with a lopin’ tempo that includes an understated, minor blues-drenched solo by Byrd. Hank Mobley’s relaxed, smokin’ solo is a gem. The angelic choir of Cristo Redentor exudes high drama and brings about the soothing feeling of a dirge. The opener Elijah is upbeat and includes a Hit The Road Jack-type bass cadenza, but Byrd is in a restraintive, pensive mood.

After the propulsive hard bop mover, The Black Disciple, follows the mid-tempo Chant. Byrd sounds joyful, employing a more open ‘round’-toned approach. Herbie Hancock, who was mentored by Byrd at the start of the decade and whose recording debut took place on Byrd’s 1961 album Royal Flush, spins beautiful, long lines. Hancock’s impressionistic playing, completed with lithe, sparse blues phrases, contributes greatly to A New Perspective’s characteristic mood. A cerebral mood that grows on you.