The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (41 page)

Read The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz Online

Authors: Tom Piazza

Tags: #Discography, #Jazz, #Reviews, #Sound Recordings, #Music, #Discography & Buyer's Guides, #Genres & Styles, #Reference, #Bibliographies & Indexes, #test

BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
11.53Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 156
blues called "Gofor" is hard to believe; at the end, he really sounds as if he wants to burn the joint down and almost does; he plainly wants to keep going even after the rhythm section stops. His sound is heard to great effect on "I Surrender Dear," which begins as a stunning duet with Peterson, then doubles in tempo. This set shows, in a nutshell, what makes jazz so exciting. Given a certain caliber of player, there is always the chance that music like this can happen; a certain spirit can settle, and everything can lift off. This was just one of those nights for Eldridge, definitely one of the most extraordinary musicians jazz has produced.
Dizzy Gillespie
Like almost all trumpet players who came of age in the late 1930s, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie idolized Roy Eldridge. Eldridge's way of accenting notes within long, legato lines, the fire and unpredictable phrasing, and the new harmonic devices were irresistible to younger musicians with an adventuresome beat.
Gillespie used the early years of the 1940s to develop from an Eldridge imitator into one of the most distinctive stylists in the music and, along with a handful of others, a full-fledged innovator of the new idiom, usually referred to as bebop, that expanded the language of jazz. He extended the normal range of the trumpet upward by playing routinely in the highest register and greatly increased the prevailing conception of the trumpet's flexibility by executing faster, much faster, than anyone had before him on the instrument. He attributed his rhythmic sophistication to his close working relationship with Charlie Parker, and Gillespie certainly learned how to set up patterns of extremely intricate accenting within long lines of hurtling, ricocheting eighth, sixteenth, and even thirty-second notes. An avid student of the keyboard, he was known for his enthusiasm for sharing the new harmonic knowledge he worked out there. He also reintroduced Afro-Cuban rhythms as an integral part of jazz by his use of the black Cuban conga player Chano Pozo in his late-1940s band; Gillespie had a lifelong fascination with percussion and with the piano, and the merger of those two primary jazz navigational instruments made for much of Gillespie's authority.
Gillespie always had an ability to establish a rapport with audiences that many of his gifted contemporaries lacked, and he became a well-known entertainer while still upholding the highest musical standards. Although seen in the 1940s as a musical revolutionary, Gillespie was soon recognized as belonging to the jazz mainstream, a musician who contributed something irreplaceable to the music.
 
Page 157
Little John Special
Gillespie was always ready to admit his debt to Eldridge, and we can hear that debt being serviced in his earliest recorded solos, of which "Hot Mallets," recorded in 1939 with Lionel Hampton, is a prime example (available on
Hot Mallets, Volume 1
[RCA/Bluebird 6458-2-RB]). Dizzy had just joined Cab Cal-loway's big band after a stint with Teddy Hill's orchestra (to which Eldridge had belonged earlier), and he was in the studio with perhaps the greatest saxophone section ever assembled - alto saxophonist Benny Carter and tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, and Chu Berry. He opens the track with a muted solo that contains a number of Eldridge mannerisms (he plays one of them twice); Gillespie plainly has no technical problem with the rapid style. But whereas in Eldridge you feel a tremendous push behind each note, Gillespie's accenting is more on top of the beat; he doesn't seem to dig into the four beats per bar as deeply as Eldridge does. One could almost posit from this solo alone that Gillespie was looking for something else.
The process by which he found it is documented brilliantly in
Dizzy Gillespie: The Development of an American Artist
(Smithsonian Collection R004). This recording presents early Gillespie solos with the big bands of Calloway, Les Hite, and Lucky Millinder; Harlem jam session material from 1941 in which you can watch his harmonic sense developing before your eyes like a photograph; "Woody'n You" and "Disorder at the Border," from what is generally considered to be the first full-fledged bebop date, recorded in 1944 under Coleman Hawkins's leadership; up through rare and fully formed 1945 recordings showing Gillespie in total command of what he was doing. The liner notes by Martin Williams, one of the deans of American jazz criticism, point you to all the right places in the music.
The Smithsonian set steers clear of the all-important recordings Gillespie made in 1945 with Charlie Parker because Parker's brilliance has tended to shadow Gillespie's. That's no reason for you to steer clear of them, however; you should drive straight for them. Most of Gillespie's recordings with Parker are discussed in the
Guide
under Parker's name, but certainly their earliest recordings together bear Gillespie's imprint at least as strongly as they do Bird's.
Available on
Dizzy Gillespie and His Sextets and Orchestra: "Shaw 'Nuff
(Musicraft MVSCD-53), recordings like "Groovin' High," "Salt Peanuts," "Hot House," and "Dizzy Atmosphere'' threw down a new kind of gauntlet for musicians in terms of the demands that would be placed on their harmonic knowledge and their ability to execute at high speeds. Gillespie bursts with ideas and energy here; his extroverted style jumps right out at you, and his
 
Page 158
rhythmic equilibrium is still startling today. Notice, too, that these recordings are all routined thoughtfully; they are not, for the most part, what many of the modern movement's records (including Parker's own) became - the head, then a series of solos, then the head and out. Each of the early records uses combinations of breaks, countermelodies, riffs, interludes, and many of the other compositional techniques that had been laid down in jazz in order to create a textured, unified whole.
The set also includes a number of sides recorded in 1946 by Gillespie's own big band, which show just how musically adaptable the boppers' devices were for a large ensemble. Performances like "Emanon," "One Bass Hit" (presented here in both small- and big-band arrangements), and, especially, "Things to Come" feature Gillespie's rocketing trumpet in an appropriately fiery setting. But the sides recorded for RCA Victor beginning in 1947, such as "Woody'n You," ''Manteca," and "Cool Breeze" (mistitled "Cubano Be" on the set) show Gillespie's big band at its best, often incorporating an Afro-Cuban influence by way of conga drummer Chano Pozo (see the Ensembles section for a discussion of these recordings). They are available on
The Bebop Revolution
(RCA/Bluebird 2177-2-RB), along with four good 1946 tracks by a Gillespie small band which also features vibist Milt Jackson and the very influential tenor saxophonist Don Byas. (Another good Gillespie small-group matchup with Byas is "Good Bait" on
The Bebop Era
[Columbia CK 40972].)
As can be heard on the vocal exchanges on "Cool Breeze" as well as small-group sides like "Oop Bop Sh'Bam" and "Salt Peanuts" (on the Musicraft set), Gillespie had a buoyant sense of humor and a flair for entertaining that enabled him to become one of the most visible and publicly recognized of the bop musicians. Increasingly, he began performing bebop-flavored novelty material along with the straight-ahead jazz, especially after he broke up his big band in 1950.
Dizzy Gillespie: Dee Gee Days
(Savoy ZDS 4426) shows the most audience-conscious, good-time-oriented side of Gillespie. Comprised of tracks recorded in 1951 and 1952 for Gillespie's own short-lived independent record label (named Dee Gee), the set is heavy on such well-known Gillespie novelty items as "School Days," "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac," "Umbrella Man," and "Ooh-Shoo-Be-Doo-Bee," most of which feature vocals by Joe Carroll and sometimes by Gillespie himself. A famous track is "Pops' Con-fessin'," on which Carroll does a very creditable Armstrong impression and Gillespie offers an unalloyed trumpet homage to the master. But there is good straight-ahead jazz here as well, often with a crowd-pleasing edge to it, as on "The Champ," an up-tempo blues on which the soloists are goaded by exciting riffs and Budd Johnson takes a tenor solo that sounds calculated to bring
 
Page 159
the house down, even though it was recorded in a studio. Gillespie plays some very strong stuff throughout the set, as do trombonist J. J. Johnson, vibist Milt Jackson, and the great violinist Stuff Smith. For a bonus, "We Love to Boogie" contains the first recorded solo by John Coltrane. But the accent here is definitely on entertainment.
While Gillespie always maintained the entertainment component, especially in live performances, he never let it obscure musical values, and he remained one of the premier improvisers in jazz until his death in December 1992. In the 1950s he recorded a number of albums for Norman Granz's Verve label that leave no doubt about this statement. One of the most potent is
For Musicians Only
(Verve 837 435-2), which, despite the title, can be enjoyed by musicians and nonmusicians alike. A pure jam session led by Gillespie, on which he shares the front line with Sonny Stitt on alto and Stan Getz on tenor (with a rhythm section of John Lewis on piano, Herb Ellis on guitar, Ray Brown on bass, and Stan Levey on drums), the premise here is simple - survival of the fittest. Three of the four tunes - "Wee," "Lover Come Back to Me," and the minor-key "Bebop" - are taken at killingly fast tempos, and the fourth, ''Dark Eyes," at a bright medium-up-tempo that would have made it the up-tempo track on many another date.
This is pure white-hot improvisation, with nothing to draw in the listener in the way of routining, arranged interludes, vocals, or anything else; there's a theme statement for one chorus, then it's every man for himself, one at a time. Of the soloists, Getz comes in third; he swings, but he repeats a lot of phrases and doesn't show the same level of ingenuity that Stitt and Gillespie do. Both of them play at the absolute top of their games, showing total rhythmic and melodic poise at tempos that make it hard to finger the horn articulately, much less conceptualize coherently. Gillespie plays both muted and open over the entire range of the horn, in a stunning display of rhythmic, harmonic, and technical mastery. Listen, for just one example, to the degree of detail in his open-horn solo on "Wee." For those who like their jazz straight, no chaser, this is 151-proof.
The same can be said of two albums on which Gillespie is joined by Stitt and Sonny Rollins,
Duets
(Verve 835 253-2) and
Sonny Side Up
(Verve 825 674-2). Recorded in December 1957, they also show Gillespie at peak form, goaded on by the presence of two master improvisers.
Duets
has Rollins and Stitt on different songs;
Sonny Side Up
features them together.
Duets
has the great fast blues "Wheatleigh Hall" with Rollins, on which Gillespie begins his solo at low volume and low on his horn, building in excitement, volume, and intensity as he goes along, reaching way into the horn's upper reaches and executing some
 
Page 160
ridiculously intricate turns, as well as the Latin-flavored "Con Alma," on which Stitt plays some beautiful tenor and Gillespie makes the most of the undulating rhythmic background.
But for sheer excitement, it's hard to beat
Sonny Side Up
, if for nothing else than for "The Eternal Triangle," a cutting contest between the tenors of Rollins and Stitt, both of whom were at their best and in an extremely carnivorous mood. At another take-no-prisoners tempo, Rollins solos first for five brilliant choruses, then Stitt comes on for eight absolutely roasting ones. After that, Rollins returns and the two saxophones square off for six choruses of exchanges - three choruses of four-bar exchanges and three of eight-bar exchanges. It's a dead heat until about the third chorus, when I would begin to score Rollins ahead on points. This is the closest musical equivalent to the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier "Thrilla in Manila" that I can think of. Oh yes ... Gillespie comes in after the tenors and blows the roof off the studio.
The album also includes a version of "I Know That You Know," on which Rollins plays a phenomenal extended stop-time solo and Gillespie plays some thrilling stuff, in places seeming to holler on the horn just for the joy of hollering. Stitt's solo here is almost the equal of Rollins's. "After Hours" is a slow blues on which Stitt takes the tenor honors and Gillespie plays a mess of blues. (By the way, on "On the Sunny Side of the Street,'' the first tenor soloist is Stitt, not Rollins, as the liner notes say.) This set is one of the most satisfying jazz discs you can buy.
Portrait of Duke Ellington
(Verve 817 107-2) features a Gillespie-led big band doing fine readings of Ellington and Billy Strayhorn material, including rarely played items such as "Johnny Come Lately," and is well worth having. But Duke Ellington's
Ellington Jazz Party
(Columbia CK 40712) has Gillespie sitting in with the Ellington orchestra in 1959 on two tunes, Strayhorn's lovely "U.M.M.G." and an impromptu blues also featuring singer Jimmy Rushing, called "Hello, Little Girl." The prize of the two is "U.M.M.G.," on which Gillespie takes over the part usually played by Clark Terry and brings a whole new dimension to it in an ingeniously paced performance that builds to a real climax.
Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac
(MCA/Impulse MCAD-33121) is a 1967 set recorded live, in which Gillespie's talent for humor is again in the forefront with a long version of the title tune, featuring some funny, impressionistic Afro-Cuban-style chanting and jive from Gillespie and saxophonist James Moody. The other four quintet performances include the samba "Mas Que Nada" and the polyrhythmic "Kush," an exercise in the pentatonic scale over a six-eight rhythmic background. This album gives a good look at Gillespie in other rhythmic bags besides the straight-ahead four-four of the Verves.

Other books

Herald of the Storm by Richard Ford
Hold U Down by Keisha Ervin
The Last Full Measure by Michael Stephenson
Custody by Nancy Thayer
Sorcerer's Son by Phyllis Eisenstein
Rumours and Red Roses by Patricia Fawcett
Heartbreaker Hanson by Melanie Marks
His Forever Valentine by Kit Morgan
Indomitable Spirit by Bernadette Marie