The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (46 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
10.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 181
nearly out of tempo and played over a series of hushed, Spanish-sounding vamps from the piano and bass. (By the way, the descriptions of "All Blues" and "Flamenco Sketches" in the album notes are reversed; the remarks about the one actually apply to the other.)
Kind of Blue
would rank in just about anyone's list of the top ten (or top five, for that matter) jazz albums ever recorded; if you don't know the album, you are missing one of the greatest musical statements ever made in the idiom.
Two sets of 1960 concert performances recorded in Sweden document Coltrane's last days with the band and a short-lived incarnation of the group featuring Sonny Stitt in Coltrane's place.
Miles Davis and John Coltrane Live in Stockholm 1960
(Dragon 90/91) and
Miles Davis and Sonny Stitt Live in Stockholm 1960
(Dragon 129/130), both featuring the rhythm section of Chambers and Cobb with Wynton Kelly in place of Bill Evans, are deeply interesting if not wholly successful. By the time the Coltrane set was recorded, the saxophonist was unhappy in the band and wanting to leave to form his own group. Here he solos at a dizzyingly fast pace no matter what tempo the rest of the group is playing; on tunes like "On Green Dolphin Street" and "So What," which once brought out his most lyrical side, he sounds as if he is trying to play every possible permutation of every scale as quickly as possible, while the rhythm section just cooks along without anything to grab onto from Trane. Davis sounds just fine. The Stitt set has plenty of good playing from all concerned, but Stitt doesn't fit in that well with the more modal approach of the group.
Davis's next studio album, 1961's
Someday My Prince Will Come
(Columbia CK 40947), while hardly the epochal event that
Kind of Blue
was, and is, is excellent nonetheless. Davis plays three extremely atmospheric slow ballads with the Harmon mute in - the standards "Old Folks" and "I Thought About You" and an original called "Drad-Dog" - as well as a medium-tempo blues ("Pfrancing''), on which Wynton Kelly sets a strong and funky groove, and two waltzes - the lovely version of the title tune and the modal "Teo," which Davis plays open. Although Coltrane had left the band by this time, he appears on the title track and "Teo" for memorable solo spots, alongside Hank Mobley, who was, by then, the band's regular tenor player. If you like Davis's muted ballad style, this is one to pick up right away.
The Davis-Mobley-Kelly-Chambers-Cobb band appeared at San Francisco's Blackhawk jazz club in April 1961; the two discs recorded at that appearance -
In Person at the Blackhawk, Volume 1
(Columbia CK 44257) and
Volume 2
(Columbia CK 44425) - show the most cooking side of this group, the other side of
Someday My Prince Will Come
so to speak. The repertoire basically consists of the classic quintet tunes ("Oleo," "Well, You Needn't," "If I Were a Bell") mixed in with
Kind of Blue
-vintage material ("So What" and
 
Page 182
"Teo," called "Neo" here). Everyone stretches out for long solos that give a good feeling for the kind of excitement the band could generate. If the solo work isn't always as focused and deliberate as it is on the studio sets, it is certainly fiery. Davis, in particular, shows how he could generate maximum heat on tunes like "Walkin'" by just playing strings of coupled, iambic eighth notes. Still, these aren't at the top of the heap of Davis performances.
Live Miles
(Columbia CK 40609) presents material from a May 1961 Carnegie Hall concert; the Blackhawk quintet performs "Teo," "Walkin'," and "I Thought About You," and there is a long version of ''Concierto De Aranjuez," with a big band led by Gil Evans, a re-creation of the same long piece that appeared on
Sketches of Spain
(Columbia CK 40578). None of it is particularly inspired, and the sound isn't too great, either. It's weak, as Davis albums go. A compilation album of material mostly from 1962 and 1963, entitled
Ballads
(Columbia CK 44151), draws almost entirely from the albums
Seven Steps to Heaven
and
Quiet Nights
(another Gil Evans collaboration, not on the level of
Miles Ahead
or
Porgy and Bess
). The material from
Quiet Nights
makes a jarring contrast to the fine muted performances from
Seven Steps to Heaven
("Baby Won't You Please Come Home," I Fall in Love Too Easily," and "Basin Street Blues"), recorded with a 1963 band including new bassist Ron Carter and tenorist George Coleman.
The personnel of the Davis band finally stabilized in 1964 with what is usually thought of as his next great quintet, consisting of Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and the very young Tony Williams on drums. But for a while before this lineup jelled, the same band, with George Coleman on tenor in place of Shorter, hit some very high water marks in group playing. Probably the highest was a concert at New York's Philharmonic Hall in 1964, the results of which are contained in
The Complete Concert: 1964
-
My Funny Valentine
+
Four and More
(Columbia C2K 48821). Working with a repertoire that had been more or less in place for at least five years ("So What," "All Blues," "Walkin'," "Four," "All of You," "Stella by Starlight"), the quintet plays at a sustained level of fire and invention that is hard to believe. Coleman is a volcano of swing and ideas, and Davis plays with a heat and near recklessness that is still startling thirty years later.
But the most amazing thing about this set may be the way the rhythm section adapts itself to every nuance suggested by the soloists, and by each other. Hancock was a virtuoso with lightning-fast reflexes and incredible rhythmic and harmonic flexibility. Tony Williams, at age seventeen, combined the fire of Philly Joe Jones and the polyrhythmic brilliance of Elvin Jones with something all his own. And Carter was one of the preeminent young bass players, espe-
 
Page 183
cially noted for some recordings with the radical reed player Eric Dolphy. Here, again, was a perfect rhythm section with a way of setting up patterns of the greatest subtlety and flexibility for the soloists to play off of. Davis, in particular, seems to be basing many of his phrases on Williams's ride cymbal patterns. Hancock and Williams were, in fact, a true extension of the Red Garland-Philly Joe Jones approach, a sort of abstraction of it, capable not just of generating intense straight-ahead four-four swing (listen to the mind-bending mutual understanding, wit, and imagination the two exhibit during Hancock's solo on "Walkin'," for just one example) but of suggesting all kinds of multiple rhythms and cross-rhythms from within the basic tempo they were playing. The technique created great excitement because it implied many different directions for the music to go in at any given moment. The group was able to shift tempos almost at will by playing in half time or triple meters against the basic pulse of the tune, everyone keeping track of where they were in the form and coming back to the original tempo by a process which at times seems uncanny.
The Complete Concert
marks the culmination of a phase of Davis's career and is one of the most intense jazz recordings ever made.
E.S.P.
When Wayne Shorter joined the band later in 1964, other avenues would begin opening up. Shorter brought with him a compositional gift and a unique sensibility that did for Davis what the advent of Billy Strayhorn seems to have done for Duke Ellington. The band began exploring new kinds of sonorities and compositional techniques. The implications of the kinds of flexibility possible with the new rhythm section could now be extended into the actual forms of the pieces they played; a lyricism was liberated that contributed a new feeling to jazz.
In January 1965 the new quintet went into the studio to make its first album, the stunning
E.S.P.
(Columbia CK 46863). Extrasensory perception was what this group often seemed to have; certainly it was a supergroup in a sense, although its members were still very young: Shorter was already a significant composer and player who had made a big impact while with Art Blakey's band; the same remarks apply to Hancock (except for the Blakey credential), whose recordings for Blue Note had included the rock-flavored hit "Watermelon Man," made under Hancock's name with Dexter Gordon as special guest (available on
Takin' Off
[Blue Note 46506]). With them, Davis was able to extend the kind of work he had been doing on
Kind of Blue
(Columbia CK 40579) and take it much farther, with a lot of input from Shorter's and Hancock's compositional talents (although Carter and Williams also contributed
 
Page 184
fine things to the group's book). They extended the modal concept, explored vamps, and created unusually structured tunes and tunes with flexible structures, songs where the melody was repeated throughout by the horns and improvised around by the rhythm section - freedom, in short, but always with a rationale based in extensions of the kinds of music Davis had grown up with.
Some of the compositions here, notably the title tune and the Davis-Carter collaboration "Eighty-One," echo the work of Ornette Coleman in their free melodic quality and deceptive simplicity. Hancock's "Little One," which can also be heard in a very different version on his own album
Maiden Voyage
(Blue Note 46339), is a fine, quiet ballad, and Carter's "R.J." is a straight-ahead tune over a series of scales. "Agitation," another basically up-tempo piece with all kinds of shifting patterns in the rhythm section (listen especially to Carter here) which make for a fine tension throughout the performance, begins with a fantastic drum solo. Shorter's ''Iris" is a haunting, unique ballad, as is Carter's "Mood," which features some interesting interplay between Davis and Shorter.
E.S.P.
is challenging music; it will reward as much attention as you are willing to pay it and then some. The same may be said for the quintet's astonishing
Nefertiti
(Columbia CK 46113), recorded in 1967. The title tune, composed by Shorter, has no improvisation by the horns, who merely repeat the simple, songlike melody over and over as the rhythm section changes the context, varying the density, the dynamics, and the rhythmic implications of what is, plainly, no longer just the accompaniment. "Fall," another Shorter masterpiece, is one of the best mood performances in all of Davis's recorded work, a real milestone of jazz ballad playing in which the solo statements are compact and melodically imaginative and the work of Hancock, Carter, and Williams is subtle beyond measure. Williams's "Hand Jive," an up-tempo piece, gives a great view of the way Davis and Williams could strike sparks off of each other; the drummer's fills are always unexpected and unusual. Hancock's "Madness" has the rhythmic feel of a straight-ahead, up-tempo piece, with Williams's even ride cymbal beat and Carter's four-to-the-bar walking, but Hancock doesn't play during Davis's solo, and there is a strangely static feel about it. "Riot" is another Hancock composition, this one with multiple rhythms implied, a tension running underneath because of the vamp patterns played by the bass and drums. Shorter's "Pinocchio" is the most traditional-sounding piece on the record, a medium-tempo swinger in which Davis and Williams again engage in inspired dialogue.
Davis's playing with this group had become more rhythmic, even more pointed toward the drums, than it had been before; his old technique of playing fragments of melodic lines, interrupting them, and picking them up at un-
 
Page 185
predictable places, has been recast with less traditionally melodic content and more purely rhythmic value, as he seems to be trying to go head-to-head with Williams's aggressive accenting. Notice, too, that Davis doesn't use the mute once in all of
Nefertiti
. This aggressive side of Davis's playing comes out especially on
Miles Smiles
(Columbia CK 48849), a strong set by the quintet in which they explore vamp-based material extensively, including some very different approaches to the blues in Shorter's "Footprints," Jimmy Heath's "Gingerbread Boy," and Eddie Harris's salty "Freedom Jazz Dance.''
In December 1965 the quintet was recorded live at the Chicago nightclub the Plugged Nickel. Some of this material is available as
Cookin' at the Plugged Nickel
(Columbia CK 40645); it is this band's version of
In Person at the Blackhawk
- long performances of tunes made famous by the original quintet ("If I Were a Bell," "Stella by Starlight," "Walkin'," and "Miles") with long, exploratory solos again lacking some of the focus of the studio recordings. Listen, for just one example of their amazing flexibility, to the way the rhythm section collectively shifts into what sounds like a slower tempo as Shorter enters on "If I Were a Bell," cued by Carter's playing of half-note triplets, on top of which Williams plays a slower walking rhythm designed to make them sound like quarter notes. This is a fascinating record for fans of the quintet, but it lacks the careful structuring that the studio sides have.
The landmark 1968
Filles de Kilimanjaro
(Columbia CK 46116) picks up where much of
Miles Smiles
left off - the generation of mutating, spontaneous vamps in the rhythm section creating a very dense, heavy ensemble sound in "Frelon Brun" and yet a surprisingly delicate and flexible one in most of the other tunes, with some accenting borrowed from rock and funk music. Hancock shifts back and forth between acoustic and electric piano, and Chick Corea and Dave Holland replace Hancock and Carter on two tunes. This was the last album Davis made before he dived headlong into electric music and flat-out rock-derived rhythms. The electric piano is used as a tonal color among acoustic instruments. The album moves through an extraordinary range of moods on a very abstract level; there is no straight-ahead four-four on it at all, yet the accenting and the rhythmic feeling are clearly rooted in the jazz tradition. On "Tout De Suite," Davis plays an open-horn solo, most of which could fit over a straight-ahead background, but the rhythm section instead plays an assortment of vamps and abrupt accents, the only time-keeping function being Williams's chattering sock cymbal. Again, much of the melodic freedom here seems to owe something to Ornette Coleman's music, which Davis at the time was putting down in public statements.
Filles de Kilimanjaro
is a fantastic listening experience, very challenging and full of surprises. It is also the last album in which Davis was dealing primarily

Other books

The Poisoned Island by Lloyd Shepherd
Ravyn's Flight by Patti O'Shea
Rain Music by Di Morrissey
Banana Split by Josi S. Kilpack
World's Edge by Ryan Kirk
The Seventh Night by Amanda Stevens