Blue Note

Sonny Clark Leapin’ And Lopin’ (Blue Note 1961)

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Find me a bummer moment in Sonny Clark’s discography and I’ll buy you a drink. But I won’t because it’s a fruitless search. One of the essential hard bop pianists, Clark had taste written all over him. His swan song as a leader, Leapin’ And Lopin’, includes some of his most enduring tunes and classiest performances.

Sonny Clark - Leapin' And Lopin'

Personnel

Sonny Clark (piano), Tommy Turrentine (trumpet), Charlie Rouse (tenor saxophone), Ike Quebec (tenor saxophone A2), Butch Warren (bass), Billy Higgins (drums)

Recorded

on November 13, 1961 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as BLP 4091 in 1962

Track listing

Side A
Something Special
Deep In A Dream
Melody In C
Side B
Eric Walks
Voodoo
Midnight Mambo


Does it top 1958’s Cool Struttin’, Clark’s best known (and best-selling) album? A foolish question, perhaps. Brilliant Clark moments weren’t reserved for his leadership dates only but occured just as frequently when he appeared as a sideman for the myriad of fellow legends of the day, particularly for Blue Note, where Clark was a more than welcome pianist in his heyday of 1958-62.

Take his tremendously swinging and inspiring accompaniment and soloing on Dexter Gordon’s masterpieces Go and A Swingin’ Affair. Or that fabulous solo on Airegin from the sessions that would be released posthumously (for both of them) as Grant Green albums Nigeria (Airegin spelled backwards) and Oleo, wherein both musicians really get down with it. It’s a typical Clark mix of elegance and raw power.

I guess it’s this mix, steeped in the blues, that has kept luring musicians and incrowd into the Sonny Clark realm both during his lifetime and for decades thereafter. Clark, one of the most infamous jazz casualties, died from an overdose in New York City on January 13, 1963. To name but a few admirers, note that Bill Evans composed a touching tribute to Clark in 1963, the anagram NYC’S No Lark, and that John Zorn recorded Clark or ‘Clarkian’ tunes for years. 1985’s Voodoo is a well-known album of Zorn’s The Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet.

Also very attractive are Clark’s long, fluent lines that often stretch over bars extensively. Like those your hear in Leapin’ And Lopin’s third cut, Melody For C, a shuffle that swings both smoothly and intensely, all the while showing enough eccentricity to make you laugh and leap sideways.

In the uptempo Something Special, a very attractive melody that, not unlike a Horace Silver tune, benefits from effective use of stop time, Clark leaves plenty of space as an accompanist for Charlie Rouse and Tommy Turrentine to freely swing their way through the changes. The manner in which Rouse starts his solo, building on the melody, suggests the influence of Thelonious Monk, whose outfit Rouse had been part of since 1959. Voodoo is jazzified blues at its very best: intricate enhancements on the blues form coupled with heartfelt blowing. It’s the one track that would fit right in on Cool Struttin’.

The abovementioned tracks are accompanied by Deep Dream, a ballad that combines wry wit with pathos (including Ike Quebec’s breathy tenor), bassist Butch Warren’s quirky, intricate Eric Walks and Midnight Mambo, a buoyant Tommy Turrentine composition. They round off the most diverse album in the brilliant pianist’s book.

Hank Mobley Hank Mobley Quintet (Blue Note 1957)

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Pick anyone of Hank Mobley’s extended string of Blue Note albums of the late fifties and the early sixties and you’re in for a treat. Soul Station (1960) is widely regarded as the tenor saxophonist’s masterpiece. It’s hard to disagree! However, 1957’s Hank Mobley Quintet also ranks among’s Hank Mobley’s finest efforts. At its centre is Mobley’s unique silky sound.

Hank Mobley Quintet

Personnel

Hank Mobley (tenor saxophone), Art Farmer (trumpet), Horace Silver (piano), Doug Watkins (bass), Art Blakey (drums)

Recorded

on March 8, 1957 at Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey

Released

as BLP 1550 in 1957

Track listing

Side A:
Funk In Deep Freeze
Wham And They’re Off
Fin De l’Affaire
Side B:
Startin’ From Scratch
Stella-Wise
Base On Balls


Mobley once described his tone as ‘round’. Veteran Dutch pianist Rob Agerbeek, who toured Europe with Mobley in 1968-69 and whom I talked to a year ago for Flophouse Magazine, succinctly put it like this: “It came out naturel, like breath, ‘whooosh!’”

Tone wasn’t Mobley’s sole asset. The man possessed first-rate chops and a gift for writing unconventional, smoky tunes. The way Mobley embraced a melody and spun lyrical, flowing lines is exceptional. What more could one ask for?

There’s the famous remark of legendary critic Leonard Feather, who dubbed Mobley ‘the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone’ in the liner notes of 1961’s Workout. Feather believed, in terms of both fame and style, that Mobley belonged neither to the heavyweight category of Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, nor to the lightweight school of Stan Getz. Feather suggested that Mobley’s uncommon, relaxed but driving phrasing unjustly kept him under the radar.

But among musicians and label bosses Mobley was indisputed and in constant demand. The tenorist from Philadelphia recorded with, among others, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Lee Morgan, Cedar Walton, Kenny Dorham, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Donald Byrd, Kenny Drew, Elvin Jones, Grant Green… The list is endless. His well-known cooperation with fellow original Jazz Messengers Art Blakey and Horace Silver is of the utmost historic value. Mobley’s subtle methods gelled surprisingly well with the explosive approach of Blakey. It’s a rather mysterious but inspiring blend that’s showcased on the landmark albums that were quintessential in spawning hard bop, Horace Silver And The Jazz Messengers and At The Bohemia I and II. The line-up of Hank Mobley Quintet constitutes the original Messengers line-up of the above-mentioned albums minus Kenny Dorham.

Mobley’s Soul Station is remarkable for the fact that the relaxed but insistent swing of Mobley seems to nurture a gentler Blakey attack: a quiet storm. Blakey places more pushy accents, press rolls and cymbal crashes on Hank Mobley Quintet. That’s pretty swell too. Wham And They’re Gone sizzles, boils and, like a jolly giant, threatens to tear out of its turtleneck sweater. Mobley goes about his business of stacking breathy flurries of notes while retaining a sense of elegance and sophistication. Cuts like Funk In Deep Freeze, a twisty-turny melody taken at medium tempo, are gems of a group of players that know each other inside out.

Mobley knew how to handle ballads. His original ballad, Fin De l’Affaire, is a gorgeous melody that leans heavily on the dark-hued bass of Doug Watkins, and which Mobley graces with understated pathos. Horace Silver plays ‘full of silence’, a beautific way of giving substance to a solo that’s both romantic and bluesy. Art Farmer is an authoritative presence on the album, alternating between open horn and mute. These guys are pioneers of hard bop that lift more average material like Stella-Wise and 12-bar blues Base On Balls to a higher level. Hank Mobley functions as suave leader of the pack.

What a refined player, nary a corny phrase around.

Tina Brooks True Blue (Blue Note 1960)

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In spite of being the Einstein and Heisenberg of the modern jazz recording business, Blue Note label bosses Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff occasionally seemed to suffer from a black out. Why else did they release only one album – True Blue – out of four excellent sessions of tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks?

Tina Brooks - True Blue

Personnel

Tina Brooks (tenor saxophone), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Duke Jordan (piano), Sam Jones (bass), Art Taylor (drums)

Recorded

on June 25, 1960 at Van Gelder Studio, Inglewood Cliffs, NJ

Released

as BLP 4041 in 1960

Track listing

Side A:
Good Old Soul
Up Tight’s Creek
Theme For Doris
Side B:
True Blue
Miss Hazel
Nothing Ever Changes My Love For You


Fifty-five years after the fact, one can only speculate. Jack Chambers, in a May 2005 Coda issue, suggested that Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff effectively killed the career of Brooks. (Who Killed Tina Brooks? – read here) A lot of conjecture. I’m sure that The Lion & The Wolff couldn’t be bothered with the fact that Brooks, a reserved, shabby-dressed, corner bar jazz cat, didn’t look as good on a record cover than Hank Mobley. They used Brooks on only a handful of sessions, but Jimmy Smith’s The Sermon, Kenny Burrell’s Blue Lights Vol 1 & 2 and Freddie Hubbards’s Open Sesame were notable albums, not cautious try-outs destined to be shelved. Whatever the reasons, it definitely is a pity that a career as a leader for Blue Note didn’t work out for Brooks in his heyday of 1958-61.

Another mystery though: why didn’t Brooks, seeing that Blue Note apparently had other priorities, tried to find a place in the roster of related companies like Prestige?

If it weren’t for ace producer Michael Cuscuna, whose influential re-issue company Mosaic released The Complete Recordings Of The Tina Brooks Quintets in 1985, (which in turn led to seperate re-issues of his albums by Blue Note in the nineties) we wouldn’t have known that not only True Blue showed potential, but that other sessions displayed a mature instrumentalist with a sinewy yet edgy tone and ability to string together cliché-free line after line. Brooks was also a prolific writer.

And stood his ground amidst a bunch of top-notch figures of the day, like Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, Lee Morgan and Paul Chambers. 1958’s Minor Move, 1960’s Back To The Track and 1961’s The Waiting Game were mastered, numbered and designed but, ultimately, shelved.

It’s hard to pick a winner. I would say the quintessential Tina Brooks-statements were ignited by Philly Joe Jones’ blistering sparks on The Waiting Game.

True Blue was recorded a week after Freddie Hubbard’s Open Sesame, the debut album of the promising trumpeter, which depended significantly on the input of Tina Brooks as composer and sideman. Brooks had functioned as Hubbard’s mentor for some time.

Fitting the company’s hard bop aesthetic like a velvet glove, the album boasts such almost inexplicably charming, blues-based, minor key tunes as Good Old Soul (including a great off-centre solo by Brooks) and True Blue. (the tune is upbeat, catchy and the employment of tension without release is nifty) There’s the langourous, beautific melody of Miss Hazel, wherein Brooks and Hubbard are right on the money and Art Taylor puts in stunning rolls, and the moody but sprightly Theme For Doris.

Brooks may not have been a pioneer like Dexter Gordon or an innovator like Joe Henderson. But his all-round package of chops, authority, melodic panache and gift for writing should’ve led to more than just one album as a leader. Addicted to heroin and suffering from liver damage, Brooks passed away at the age of 42 in 1974.

Kenny Drew Undercurrent (Blue Note 1961)

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Kenny Drew’s Undercurrent isn’t called Undercurrent for nothing. The opener and title track is the pièce de résistance of the album in which every member of the band is on fire. Following it up with a set of excellent hard bop is quite an achievement.

Kenny Drew - Undercurrent

Personnel

Kenny Drew (piano), Hank Mobley (tenor saxophone), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Sam Jones (bass), Louis Hayes (drums)

Recorded

on December 11, 1960 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as BLP 4059 in 1961

Track listing

Side A:
Undercurrent
Funk-Cosity
Lion’s Den
Side B:
The Pot’s On
Groovin’ The Blues
Ballade


That hard bop was a development from bebop to more expressive playing of the down-home kind is true, but there was more to it. Near the end of the fifties, there were many different tastes. Pianist Kenny Drew, who played with Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins and Howard McGhee, among others, possessed his share of ‘funk’, but his touch was light as a feather, as opposed to the more common percussionist approach. Drew spun precise, logical but animated lines and was a fine accompanist, who worked extensively for Dinah Washington.

Drew’s blues tunes – Funk-Cosity and Groovin’ The Blues – are medium tempo groovers, distinctive for articulate, swinging Drew solo’s. The Pot’s On is a Horace Silver-type tune with an attractive old timey feeling. Lion’s Den (Obviously, Blue Note boss Alfred Lion’s pad) is a happy swinger that makes use of trademark hard bop interludes of suspended rhythm that boost the soloists considerably.

Ballade is a-typical for the period, eschewing double time or louder four/four-sections, instead opting for balanced, sweet and sour balladry. It’s charming.

Not only Kenny Drew, who wrote all six tunes, is in top form, Hank Mobley and Freddie Hubbard are spot-on as well. At the time, Hank Mobley, a young veteran of classic Art Blakey groups, had completed future classic albums Soul Station, Roll Call (including Hubbard) and Workout. Freddie Hubbard was a young, versatile lion who’d made a big impression on colleagues, recording his first two Blue Note albums in 1960 (Goin’ Up including Mobley) and appearing on dates of Tina Brooks and Eric Dolphy. He would appear on Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz ten days later on December 21 and join Art Blakey in 1961 for a stunning stretch of Blue Note and Riverside albums.

To complete the Blakey pedigree in this respect, Kenny Drew also played with the famed drummer and band leader, albeit for the shorter time of two months in 1957. However, Drew’s most renowned effort in that year is his work on John Coltrane’s imposing Blue Train album. Drew was part of many other sessions of the period, among them those of Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean and Kenny Dorham. Drew struck up a long association with Dexter Gordon onwards from the early fifties (Daddy Plays The Horn, Dexter Callin’, One Flight Up) and, like Gordon, became a longtime, widely acknowledged expatriate in Paris and, especially, Copenhagen. In a weird twist of fate Drew and Gordon even appeared in a Swedish, hippy-ish soft porn movie called Pornografi!

By then, about a decade had passed since Drew recorded the title track of this album. The partly modal theme includes the swirling arpeggios that aptly explain the sea-image title, which give an otherwise noteworthy composition even greater distinction. Best of all, the band is inspired almost beyond belief, with the essential inclusion of drummer Louis Hayes and bassist Sam Jones. Their experience as a rhythm tandem of many sessions of the day and Cannonball Adderley’s Quintet in particular stands them in good stead. They’re red hot, with a controlled intensity that would keep many a devil at bay. Louis Hayes’s temperature especially surpasses that of Lucifer with more than a few degrees!

The title tune is not only crisp and driving, it’s also full of immaculate solo work. Kenny Drew’s ideas keep flowing, his lines stretching over bars extensively. Mobley and Hubbard, triggered by Drew, Hayes and Jones, work up a sweat, and there are no parttime choruses. Mobley’s smoky sound and Hubbard’s buoyant style contrast pleasantly.

Undercurrent was Drew’s last album in the United States before he went to Paris in 1961 and settled in Copenhagen in 1963. Not a bad way to say goodbye to the American jazz life.

Fred Jackson Hootin’ ‘N’ Tootin’ (Blue Note 1963)

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In the fifties and sixties many rhythm & blues and rock & roll orchestras harboured musicians with jazz chops. Making a living was the main objective. A jam session freed them from their ties now and then. Rarely would a bandleader, who had no dealings with anything other than straightforward backing, let them cut loose. It was only after record companies hired some of these men – sometimes at the suggestion of arrived jazz men – that the jazz world would take notice of their appetizing blend of skills and down-home aesthetic.

Fred Jackson - Hootin' 'N' Tootin'

Personnel

Fred Jackson (tenor saxophone), Earl van Dyke (organ), Willie Jones (guitar), Wilbert Hogan (drums)

Recorded

on February 5, 1962 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as BLP 4094 in 1962

Track listing

Side A:
Dippin’ In The Bag
Southern Exposure
Preach Brother
Hootin’ ‘n’ Tootin’
Side B:
Easin’ On Down
That’s Where It’s At
Way Down Home


Fred Jackson, who played with Little Richard, Lloyd Price and B.B. King, was that kind of earthy, jazz-oriented player in the r&b realm. People definitely took notice when he blew off the lids of the garbage cans at producer Rudy van Gelder’s Studio in New Jersey, assisting organist Baby Face Willette on the exciting organ jazz album Face To Face in 1961. Thereafter, Alfred Lion, intent on the growth of Blue Note’s soul jazz roster, thought it proper to record Jackson as a leader. The result is Hootin ‘n’ Tootin’.

It’s as down home as it can get. But down home doesn’t mean anything if the protagonist isn’t cut out for it. Fred Jackson certainly lives up to the earthy challenge that the song titles suggest. His wailing style, hard-edged pitch and controlled, relaxed phrasing lend substance to tunes as the slow blues Southern Exposure. Organist Earl van Dyke – who would later become part of the esteemed Motown backing band, The Funk Brothers – puts in an elevating blues solo that ows much to the style of Brother Jack McDuff.

Snappy lines like Dippin’ In The Bag are played out well by a tight group. Wilbert Hogan and Willie Jones are not as fiery and sophisticated as Ben Dixon and Grant Green on Face To Face, but they do a solid job nonetheless. On similar cookers such as Hootin ‘n’ Tootin’ Fred Jackson shows considerable agility, employing both repeated r&b tricks and deft, confident jazz phrasing. Snippets of the styles of Gene Ammons and Arnett Cobb come to the fore.

That’s Where It’s At is another of those appropriate titles. It’s a lilting medium-tempo tune wherein Jackson and Van Dyke trade quotes of the gospel traditional Wade In The Water. It stayed on their mind during this session, as Van Dyke also threw in a snatch of the traditional in Preach Brother. Resembling Nat Adderley’s Work Song, it has the excitement of a congregation. Van Dyke’s solo is a torrent of raunchy figures. Fred Jackson leads the congregation with witty and assertive statements. As far as clear-headed, deft jazz playing is concerned, Fred Jackson certainly was where it’s at. Unfortunately, after recording with organist John Patton in 1963/64 on Along Came John and The Way I Feel, Jackson disappeared from the jazz scene.

Don Wilkerson Shoutin’ (Blue Note 1963)

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For his third and final release on Blue Note, tenor saxophonist Don Wilkerson teamed up with a cookin’ crew that suits his style to a T. His debut on Riverside in 1960, The Texas Twister, hadn’t quite fulfilled his potential. His Blue Note-sessions were elevating and more successful. Shoutin’ maintains the enamouring blend of r&b and jazz of his previous Blue Note recordings, Elder Don and Preach Brother!. Not in the possession of a big sound, Wilkerson instead relies on a lilting tone and uplifting, bouncy phrases.

Don Wilkerson - Shoutin'

Personnel

Don Wilkerson (tenor saxophone), John Patton (organ), Grant Green (guitar), Ben Dixon (drums)

Recorded

on July 29, 1963 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as BLP 4145 in 1963

Track listing

Side A:
Movin’ Out
Cookin’ With Clarence
Easy Living
Side B:
Happy Johnny
Blues For J
Sweet Cake


Wilkerson was born in Louisiana and had spent a big part of his life in Texas. He played with rhythm and blues artists Amos Milburn and Charles Brown, as well as jazz luminaries Sonny Clark, Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray. He was part of the early Ray Charles band and functioned as featured soloist on classic hits such as I Got A Woman and Halleluja I Love Her So. So Wilkerson gained a bag of priceless experience.

It isn’t hard to imagine what those men presumably liked in Wilkerson. His alluring tone and candid delivery are at the heart of the medium-tempo Movin’ Out. Coincidentally, it has the structure and bounce of the early Ray Charles tunes; and their fresh elan as well. Wilkerson also displays subtle swing, which he employs to great effect in the ‘breathy’ ballad Easy Living. In it, the influence on Wilkerson’s style that shines through most prominently is that of Paul Gonsalves.

Cookin’ With Clarence is an example of this group’s solid interplay. These men share a lot of r&b experience. John Patton and Ben Dixon both had been part of Lloyd Price’s popular rhythm & blues orchestra. Grant Green played r&b and blues during the early part of his career in St. Louis, notably with Jimmy Forrest. The tune is an uptempo showcase for all involved, stimulated considerably by the climactic sections at the end of the ensemble choruses, that catapult the soloists into action. Don Wilkerson is swift as a rattlesnake. Grant Green is a spirited presence. His phrasing is fluent and his strumming confident and aggressive. John Patton’s lines are crunchy and fiery, inspired by the unisono background figures of Wilkerson and Green. Meanwhile, Ben Dixon’s probing rolls and cymbal crashes stoke up the fire. Both Movin’ Out and Cookin’ With Clarence are Wilkerson originals.

The modal-type tune Happy Johnny is also a Wilkerson composition. The variation in Wilkerson’s solo is more on the rhythmic than melodic side. Blues For J is a slow blues of the afterhours-kind, relaxed but driving. Sweet Cake, a tune from Wilkerson’s Louisiana friend Edward Frank, is a shuffle that strolls along nicely and includes a dynamic John Patton solo.

Wilkerson would continue to perform in the r&b field in the sixties and seventies. There are few, if any, players like Wilkerson today. The type of musician in the mixed zone of r&b and jazz, that matured after traveling the route of the chitlin’ circuit: the black neighbourhood music scene of local bars and small clubs. Nowadays those kind of musical breeding grounds are largely non-existent. Hence the virtual absence of contemporary saxophonists in the straighforward but sophisticated vein. Therefore, Shoutin’, is an example of a bygone era. It may be history, but it sounds lively as hell.

Dexter Gordon One Flight Up (Blue Note 1964)

- Francois 3 Comments

Dexter Gordon’s marvelous stretch of early and mid-sixties Blue Note recordings occured both in the US and in Europe. As one of an increasing number of American jazz expatriates in the sixties, the tenorist had settled in Copenhagen, Denmark. When back in the US for short periods, Gordon recorded at Rudy van Gelder’s studio. Our Man In Paris – obviously – was recorded in Paris, just as Gordon’s outstanding, daring 1964 album, One Flight Up. Gordon beautifully explores new (partly) modal grounds.

Dexter Gordon - One Flight Up

Personnel

Dexter Gordon (tenor saxophone), Donald Byrd (trumpet), Kenny Drew (piano), Niels Henning Orsted-Pedersen (bass), Art Taylor (drums)

Recorded

on June 2, 1964 at CBS Studios, Paris, France

Released

as BLP 4176 in 1964

Track listing

Side A:
Tanya
Side B:
Coppin’ The Haven
Darn That Dream


Just over 19 minutes long, the free-flowing Tanya, a Donald Byrd composition, occupies the whole of side A. It has an easygoing yet urgent swing from start to finish. During the two opposing sections of tension and release that comprises the song’s structure, Dexter Gordon carefully builds his solo, phrasing assertively and fluently. He displays strong, wailing lines. Gordon’s standard is incredibly high. Obviously, his extended engagements at Copenhagen’s foremost jazz club, Club Montmartre, had given him the opportunity to further hone his already impressive craft.

Kenny Drew and Donald Byrd alternate well between atmospheric and pungent playing. But the key to Tanya’s succes undoubtly is the work of Art Taylor and Niels Henning Orsted-Pedersen. They keep the extended groove going not only by keeping steady time, but also by their free-spirited playing. Basically their voices are as important as that of the front row. Orsted-Pedersen was only 18 years old and already one of Europe’s prime bass players. A great technician, his strongly plucked notes are perfect companions to Art Taylor’s snap-crackling, syncopated, powerful drum rolls. Art Taylor – also an expatriate at the time – had always been in great demand and recorded with almost all the major jazz figures of the fifties and sixties. His work on One Flight Up, especially on Tanya, is definitely one of his greatest achievements on record.

The Paris production of Taylor’s drums is amazing; lively, spacious. Indeed, the whole album benefits from excellent engineering. No worries for Rudy van Gelder at the other side of the big pond. Kenny Drew’s Coppin’ The Haven has a similar structure as Tanya. Gordon’s immaculate execution and long phrases are the pillars of a fullfilling tenor tale. Kenny Drew delivers a good mix of inside and outside phrases, alternating between the impressionism of McCoy Tyner in the modal section and funky, fiery lines in the swinging part. Gordon finishes the set with a lush, vigourous interpretation of the DeLange/Van Heusden standard, Darn That Dream. It’s on par with the like-minded ballads of his previous Blue Note albums, such as Dexter Calling and A Swingin’ Affair. Because of the coherence in sound and high quality interplay, Darn That Dream blends well with Gordon’s forays into modal jazz.

Thus ends a courageous, mesmerising classic album in the catalogue of the great Dexter Gordon.