The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (58 page)

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Authors: Tom Piazza

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BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
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thrown-together feeling about it.
Things Are Getting Better
(Riverside/OJC-032), a collaboration with vibist Milt Jackson and an ace rhythm section of Wynton Kelly, Percy Heath, and Art Blakey, is somewhat better, although still a bit casually assembled. The sheer firepower of talent in the studio seems to have put Adderley on his mettle, though, and Jackson plays well, as always, in a basically blues-oriented program.
Recorded late in 1959 with Adderley's working band,
The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco
(Riverside/OJC-035) is a minor jazz classic for the presence of the gospel-influenced waltz "This Here," written by the band's pianist, Bobby Timmons. "This Here" became a big hit for the band and pointed Adderley toward the soul/roots bag he was to follow increasingly for the rest of his life. Also included are new versions of "Bohemia After Dark'' and the blues "Spontaneous Combustion." This is punchy, energetic music all the way, if not especially subtle.
The Cannonball Adderley Sextet in New York
(Riverside/OJC-142), recorded in 1962 with a band including brother Nat, Yusef Lateef on reeds, and Joe Zawinul on piano, fits the same description, as does
The Cannonball Adderley Quintet Plus
(Riverside/OJC-306), which has two takes of the sprightly favorite "Lisa."
Eric Dolphy
Multireed man Eric Dolphy was known primarily for his alto saxophone playing, although he was more than proficient on flute and bass clarinet. Dolphy came along toward the end of the hard-bop period, and he was one of those who, like John Coltrane, became part of the 1960s avant-garde after serving a thorough apprenticeship in earlier forms. An extremely fiery player given to unusual interval leaps rather than straight-ahead scale passages or standard arpeggios, Dolphy sometimes used these unusual note intervals to undercut the conventional tonality of a piece; in some respects, his almost perverse way of outlining a song's harmonies resembles that of alto player Benny Carter. But where Carter's attack was always smooth, Dolphy's was piercing and aggressive.
A good place to get introduced to Dolphy's playing is
The Complete Candid Recordings of Charles Mingus
(Mosaic MD3-111). The reed man is to be found here in several very different settings, the most famous of which is certainly the quartet date, available on its own as
Mingus Presents Mingus
(Candid CD 9005), which produced "Folk Forms No. 1," "Fables of Faubus," "All the Things You Could Be by Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother," and the amazing "What Love," which contains an extraordinary dialogue between Dolphy's bass clarinet and Mingus's bass. This material, as well as most
 
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of the rest of the box, is discussed in some detail in the Ensembles section. Besides the quartet tracks, Dolphy is heard with a larger ensemble on the surging, riff-based blues "MDM" and on a small-band date on which trumpeter Roy Eldridge sits in. In every session, Dolphy's playing is immediately identifiable, very vocal-sounding on both alto and bass clarinet, adventuresome, and challenging to listen to.
Dolphy was seen, or at least promoted, as a somewhat far-out player in the early 1960s, as the titles of some of his albums -
Outward Bound, Far Cry
, and
Out There
, for example - attest. The liner notes for
Outward Bound
claim that "this is the sound of tomorrow, the sound of the Atlas missile, the sound of the Pioneer radar blip from outer space." At times some of Dolphy's compositions, such as "The Prophet" on
Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot Volume 1
(New Jazz/OJC-133) or "Straight Up and Down" on
Out to Lunch
(Blue Note 46524), sound as if he were trying to live up to this description. As a result, such tunes sometimes sound downright corny, as often happens when a deliberate attempt is made to come up with unusual sounds. But much of this music sounds surprisingly mainstream today.
Probably most enjoyable are
Far Cry
(New Jazz/OJC-400) and
Outward Bound
(New Jazz/OJC-022). Both sets find Dolphy in the company of the extremely flexible, inventive, and spontaneous pianist Jaki Byard and the under-sung drummer Roy Haynes.
Far Cry
has the brilliant Booker Little playing trumpet;
Outward Bound
has Freddie Hubbard. Both present a good mixture of original cookers and ballads (and one or two standards) in straight-ahead time signatures, with lots of interesting commentary from the rhythm section.
Far Cry
has two Byard compositions dedicated to Charlie Parker, a tricky medium-up-tempo blues known as "Bird's Mother" and a lovely ballad, "Ode to Charlie Parker," on which Dolphy plays flute. The standard ballad "Tenderly" is a great showpiece for Dolphy's unaccompanied alto and shows his expressive tone in all its glory. The quartet performance of "It's Magic" does the same for his bass clarinet playing.
Outward Bound
has a similar mix of good material, including Dolphy's reading of the standard "Green Dolphin Street.''
On records like
Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot Volume 1
(New Jazz/OJC-133),
Volume 2
(Prestige/OJC-247), and
Eric Dolphy and Booker Little Memorial Album
(Prestige/OJC-353), all recorded in 1961 at the famous downtown New York jazz club, Dolphy has more room to indulge his vice, which is to play multinote patterns full of his own stock scale passages and devices. I think that many times, in the rush of expressing all that fire he had inside, Dolphy loses sight of the actual content of what he is saying. This is not to say that what he plays is random, only that it can be repetitive and studded, at its worst, with
 
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corny-sounding devices. But there is much exceptional music on the Five Spot sets, despite this tendency, and these have been some of the most popular items among true Dolphy fans.
One of the most extreme records Dolphy made, and one that is still challenging to listen to, is
Out to Lunch
(Blue Note 46524), recorded in 1964 with Hubbard again on trumpet, Bobby Hutcherson's vibes in place of a piano, Richard Davis's bass, and the drums of the young genius Tony Williams. The set is full of unusual song forms, shifting rhythmic patterns, and an unusual group sound. Particularly interesting here is the way in which Williams works off of the various rhythmic motifs that are set up throughout, especially on the title track. The interest here is primarily cerebral.
Ornette Coleman
In the 1960s Ornette Coleman's name was almost synonymous with what was called, variously, the New Thing, the avant-garde, or free jazz. He provoked widely varying and even violent reactions for years after his arrival on the scene in 1959; in the late 1960s
Down Beat
magazine was still full of argument over his merits. Many, including Miles Davis, said he was a charlatan with no knowledge of music; others, including John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, felt that Coleman was a true innovator who had unlocked a way of playing melody that was not based primarily on the chord-changes approach of bebop.
I agree wholeheartedly with the second group. Almost everything about Coleman's music is songlike, natural, and emotionally direct. Moreover, it uses all of the compositional devices integral to jazz - riffs, breaks, backgrounds to solos - as well as the other elements - swing, blues techniques, a call-and-response sensibility, the sensitivity to Latin rhythms that Jelly Roll Morton called the Spanish tinge - that define the music. In his playing, Coleman had, and has, a lyricism that aims for the heart as well as the head, with one of the most expressive sounds of any instrumentalist in jazz.
Coleman's first two records -
Something Else!!!
(Contemporary/OJC-163) and
Tomorrow Is the Question!
(Contemporary/OJC-342) - have been somewhat passed over by critics in favor of the slightly later recordings with his classic quartet that included trumpeter Don Cherry (who appears on the first two, as well), bassist Charlie Haden, and either Billy Higgins or Ed Blackwell on drums. But as showcases for his alto playing - and as complete musical statements - both sets are highly recommended. Coleman's alto always swings, and he takes a number of different tacks in his solos, depending on the material (which consists exclusively of his compositions). Sometimes he plays pure
 
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melody; at other times his solos sound like abstracts of bebop solos, phrases darting here and there, posing questions and answering each other. Notice how much Coleman uses dynamics in his playing; within one solo he will move from a shout to a muttered aside to a singing, lyrical line. One has to think hard before one can think of another "modern" saxophonist who paid so much attention to dynamics.
There is a lot to listen for in both records. After
Something Else!!!
, his first album, Coleman did not record with a pianist for quite a while. Although Coleman jettisoned the keyboard from his band in order not to be directed by the chordal framework the piano almost inevitably set up at the time, pianist Walter Norris doesn't get in the way here, and the set is a kick. Coleman's lines, played with trumpeter Don Cherry, who would be his musical companion for the next few years, are still deeply bebop-influenced, except for "The Sphinx," a two-part song with contrasting thematic material, which suggests the direction Coleman's writing would take. Throughout, Coleman's sound is drenched in the cry of the blues and is also intensely rhythmic at the same time as it is most melodic - another key to his music's jazz character. Many of the tunes incorporate breaks for the drummer (Billy Higgins) into the melody. To hear Coleman swinging hard on the most traditional material there is, listen to his solo on "When Will the Blues Leave?"
Tomorrow Is the Question!
, recorded a year later, in 1959, moves a little farther out; the piano is no longer present, and the compositions move away a few steps from the bebop-oriented material of the previous set (although material like "Tears Inside," "Giggin'," and ''Endless" refer unmistakably to bebop). The title tune shows just how deeply Coleman was steeped in the jazz tradition; it incorporates a rhythmic figure that goes back to James P. Johnson's stride piano showpiece "Carolina Shout," as well as bebop figures, breaks, a Charleston beat, and even the suggestion of a Spanish tinge in the way the horns are voiced in thirds. But increasingly the relation between lead and background is being implicitly questioned, as in the shifting accompaniments to the solos on "Tears Inside." Compositions like "Compassion" and "Lorraine" extend the freedom of line of "The Sphinx." Yet on "Giggin'," Coleman takes a solo that shows clearly just how acquainted he was with Parker's language.
A little later in the year, Coleman began his great series of recordings for Atlantic, in which his group conception really crystallized. Everything he did for Atlantic is collected on
Beauty Is a Rare Thing - The Complete Atlantic Recordings
(Rhino/Atlantic R2 71410), a six-CD set that includes a number of previously unreleased performances and things issued only in Japan. This is
 
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one of the best collections of its type, not just for the music but for the beautiful design of the box itself and the excellent booklet contained therein.
If you miss the intelligent programming to be found on the original albums, several of them are available individually. One of these, which everyone should hear, is
The Shape of Jazz to Come
(Atlantic 1317-2), probably the greatest album Coleman recorded. It is discussed in the Ensembles section. Coleman is even more adventuresome in his playing here, as on "Eventually" and "Focus on Sanity," where he sometimes plays groups of notes that form shapes, or gestures, rather than discrete lines, or on "Peace," where his song-like melody leads wherever it likes, not hewing to a set of chord changes yet never discordant sounding. He never, even at his most abstract, seems to be playing anything just for effect, as Dolphy, for example, often seems to. This is, finally, extremely joyous music.
Change of the Century
(Atlantic 7 81341-2) is another of Coleman's best quartet records; it includes the classic blues "Ramblin'," the Latin-flavored ''Una Muy Bonita," and a homage to Charlie Parker called "Bird Food."
Coleman and Dolphy maybe heard side-by-side on 1960's
Free Jazz
(Atlantic 1364-2), which is discussed at some length in the Ensembles section.
Free Jazz
presents two trumpeters (Freddie Hubbard and Don Cherry), two altoists (Coleman and Dolphy), two bassists (Charlie Haden and Scott La Faro), and two drummers (Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell) in a "collective improvisation" punctuated by Coleman's ensemble interludes. This set may sound initially like chaos, but when you begin to hear what's going on, its roots in the entire jazz tradition become clear.
The Art of the Improvisers
(Atlantic 7 90978-2) is an extremely worthwhile set made up of quartet items from 1959 through 1961 that didn't make it onto the originally released albums, but there is nothing inferior about the material. The set tends toward the more convoluted of Coleman's compositions, such as "The Alchemy of Scott La Faro," "Moon Inhabitants," and "The Circle with the Hole in the Middle." But it also includes one of the most beautiful things Coleman ever recorded, the ballad "Just for You," on which Coleman and Don Cherry phrase around each other at a slow tempo in a way that recalls the exquisite beauty of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis in the final chorus of "Bird of Paradise" (available on
The Legendary Dial Masters, Volume 1
[Stash ST-CD-23]; another take can be found on
Volume 2
[Stash ST-CD-25]). For those who may already own the LP, the CD is worth having for two additional tracks, "Music Always" and "Brings Goodness."
If you like Coleman, you can hear a few different sides of him on a number of albums.
At the Golden Circle, Volume 1
(Blue Note 84224) and
Volume 2

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