The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (63 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
5.47Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 269
this is just as well; as the decade went on (he died in 1959), illness and alcoholism took their toll on his embouchure and, on the evidence of the recordings, on his agility of mind. Still, some of his 1950s work counts as first-rate jazz. One example is the extraordinary
The President Plays with the Oscar Peterson Trio
(Verve 831 670-2), recorded in 1952. From the first notes of "AdLib Blues," Pres is in control of his game, playing with a bouncing swing and a happy and cagey imagination in a set that rivals anything he did after leaving Basie. In addition to the opener and several other medium- and up-tempo tracks, including a masterful "Indiana," the set features a number of definitive performances of standard ballads like "These Foolish Things," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," and ''I'm Confessin'." As a bonus, an informal version of "(It Takes) Two to Tango" shows up, with a funny vocal by Pres and some studio conversation.
Lester Young - The Jazz Giants
(Verve 825 672-2) is a 1956 session featuring Pres in the company of his true peers, trumpeter Roy Eldridge, trombonist Vic Dickenson, pianist Teddy Wilson, guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Gene Ramey, and drummer Jo Jones. Although his embouchure shows signs of weakness here and there, what he plays is very definite and beautiful; the program includes four fine standards (including "This Year's Kisses," a rarely done tune recorded almost twenty years earlier by Pres on his first session with Billie Holiday, under Wilson's leadership) and an up-tempo blues. Everyone is in good form, especially Teddy Wilson, and the set is an excellent example of the continuing vitality of the small-group style these men had pioneered in the 1930s.
Pres and Teddy
(Verve 831 270-2) was recorded the very next day, with only Young, Wilson, Ramey, and Jones, and is also a strong program, consisting of standards like "Taking a Chance on Love," "Louise," and "Prisoner of Love." Wilson really sparkles here, and Young's phrasing of the melodies is as relaxed and swinging as can be. My favorite track is a CD-only bonus recorded at the same session, a medium-tempo blues called "Pres Returns," on which the President weaves a fantastic blues sermon through which an unmistakable note of triumph is sounded. That is as it should be; despite all the pain and bad news in his life, Lester Young left the world an irreplaceable beauty.
Don Byas
In his way, Don Byas was as big an influence on younger tenor players as Lester Young was. Three years younger than Pres (whom he replaced in the Basie band, after tenorist Paul Bascomb's brief stay), Byas was more in the Hawkins mode, heavy-toned but never rough, with a harmonic sophistication
 
Page 270
that led him into the company of the still-younger bop players of the time, foremost among them Dizzy Gillespie, with whom he made some important early recordings. Byas's predilection for running changes, his exploration of the new and so-called substitute chord progressions favored by younger musicians in the 1940s, his fleet execution at even the fastest tempos, and his often unusual interval leaps and note choices had a big effect on younger players such as Lucky Thompson, Paul Gonsalves, Benny Golson, and Johnny Griffin, and he has not received his due in jazz history as a major stylistic influence.
There isn't a lot of Byas currently available. Perhaps the most revealing examples of his playing are three tracks, included on
Ben Webster/Don Byas: Giants of the Tenor Sax
(Commodore 7005), from a 1945 Town Hall concert, which pair Byas with bassist Slam Stewart (pianist Teddy Wilson joins them for one). Byas's and Stewart's whirlwind five-minute treatment of "I Got Rhythm" shows Byas's facility, his warm tone, his mastery of scalar sequences, and also, despite his harmonic affinity for what the hoppers were doing, his steadfast roots in swing's rhythmic approach. "Candy" is a great example of his sensuous ballad style with further evidence, in his occasional choice of wide intervals, of his exceptional ear.
Byas participates in a thrilling, privately recorded 1946 jam session on "Sweet Georgia Brown" with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, included on
The Complete "Birth of the Bebop"
(Stash ST-CD-535); he holds his own in the electric exchanges that are all we have of this performance, swinging hard in his instantly identifiable style. He also participated in a February 1946 recording session with Gillespie; four tracks from this session are included on
The Bebop Revolution
(RCA/Bluebird 2177-2-RB), including two takes of the "I Got Rhythm''-based "52nd Street Theme," on which Byas plays many of the same scalar patterns he plays on the Town Hall "I Got Rhythm."
The hard-to-find two-LP set
Don Byas - Savoy Jam Party
(Savoy SJL 2213) brings together several sessions from the 1944-1946 period, with solid, deeply felt blowing from the leader on cookers and ballads alike. A listen to this set will leave you wondering why Byas isn't better known. He was a master storyteller on the horn. It includes a stunning "Cherokee," on which Byas shows why he was held in such high esteem by the younger players. A quartet date from 1946, with Max Roach on drums, includes some fascinating interplay between Byas and the little-known pianist Sanford Gold, who went on to become a widely respected piano teacher.
Don Byas on Blue Star
(EmArcy 833 405-2) is a mixed bag of performances recorded in Paris between 1947 and 1952. With the exception of one year, Byas was an expatriate from the late 1940s until the end of his life in 1972. These tracks showcase his ballad playing especially; check out his specialties "Laura"
 
Page 271
and "Old Folks" (not "Old Folks at Home," as the notes say). This set includes an excellent booklet with rare photos of Byas with Dizzy Gillespie, Ben Webster, Paul Gonsalves, and others.
Ben Webster Meets Don Byas
(MPS 827 920-2), a late-1960s meeting between the two expatriates, is a little disappointing because Webster is in somewhat rocky shape, but Byas plays very well.
Some of the best Don Byas on record languishes in Columbia's vaults, a 1961 Paris session with Bud Powell on piano, available briefly in the early 1980s as
A Tribute to Cannonball
. Let's hope some hip soul sees fit to reissue it.
Texas Tenors
When Lester Young came to New York with Count Basie in 1937, he wasn't the only tenor player in the band. Herschel Evans also played tenor with Basie but in a very different style-heavy-toned, Hawkins-influenced, and even more steeped in the blues-and the contrast between his style and Young's was a great element of the Basie band's sound. You can hear them together throughout
Count Basie: The Complete Decca Recordings
(Decca/GRP GRD-3-611), which includes Evans's classic ballad performance of "Blue and Sentimental."
While nothing like the innovator that Pres was, Evans, who was from Denton, Texas, became the prototype of a sort of loose subschool of tenor saxophonists, usually called Texas tenors. Like most such terms, it is a convenience and best when used only half-seriously. But it does point to the dominance of the blues in the Texas/Oklahoma area in the 1920s and 1930s (and beyond), and players such as Buddy Tate (Evans's replacement with Basie), Arnett Cobb, and Illinois Jacquet, as well as younger men such as David "Fathead" Newman, bear a definite family resemblance.
Buddy Tate, from Sherman, Texas, can be heard very much in the Evans mold in brief solos on the three volumes of Columbia's
The Essential Count Basie
. But a much fuller picture of Tate's big talent and sound may be had from
Tate-a-Tate
(Prestige/OJC-184), on which he is joined by trumpeter Clark Terry, who is truly inspired here, pianist Tommy Flanagan, and a good rhythm section, in a solid, varied program of blues, swingers, and a poignant Tate version of Duke Ellington's ballad "All Too Soon." Tate and Terry engage in some exciting exchanges on "Take the 'A' Train." Equally good is
Buck and Buddy
(Swingville/OJC-757), a session in which Tate shares the front line with his old Basie cohort, trumpeter Buck Clayton.
Tate is present also for an all-tenor album under Coleman Hawkins's name,
Very Saxy
(Prestige/OJC-458), on which Tate and Hawkins share the solo space with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Arnett Cobb (they are accompanied by organist Shirley Scott, bass, and drums). Cobb was a star with Lionel Hampton's
 
Page 272
big band in the 1940s and had a good-sized hit with an instrumental called "Smooth Sailing." Here he nearly steals the show from his better-known colleagues on a program of jumping tunes including "Lester Leaps In." This set, however, is almost too much of a good thing - four heavy-toned, aggressively swinging tenor saxophonists, cooking away relentlessly. It's a bit like eating four steaks at one sitting. Keep some Bach piano music close at hand to restore your perspective afterward.
Cobb's own
Party Time
(Prestige/OJC-219) is a very good showcase for his extroverted, witty style. It consists mainly of blues and standards in medium grooves, most of which Cobb grills up to a strong climax. His up-tempo "Lonesome Road" is exhilarating, but he really turns up the heat on the riff tune "Flying Home," which had been a big feature for him with Hampton (he inherited it from Illinois Jacquet); this is the kind of roaring, infectious playing that could make people jump out of theater balconies in ecstasy.
Party Time
is as good a definition as anything could be of the essence of Texas tenor. Both Hampton versions of ''Flying Home" (Jacquet's 1942 original and Cobb's 1944 remake, called "Flying Home No. 2") are available on
Lionel Hampton: Flying Home
(Decca/MCA MCAD-42349). An interesting Texas footnote is that on the original 1942 "Flying Home," Jacquet pays tribute to none other than Herschel Evans by leading into the bridge of his solo with a phrase Evans used in his 1938 "Texas Shuffle" solo with Basie.
Illinois Jacquet, born in New Orleans but raised in Texas, managed (and manages) to combine the Texas feeling and certain strategies of phrasing with influences from Lester Young and the bop players of the late 1940s. A good introduction to his playing is
Illinois Jacquet: The Black Velvet Band
(RCA/Bluebird 6571-2-RB), which includes a number of honking, shouting sides by his late-1940s small big-band. This set also includes a version of "Flying Home" recorded at the 1967 Newport Jazz Festival, on which Jacquet is reunited with the Hampton big band for a very raucous and exciting performance which sounds as if it nearly precipitated a riot.
Banned in Boston
(Portrait RK 44391) is a good 1962 set of well-recorded sides by a small Jacquet band including trumpeter Roy Eldridge. "Frantic Fanny" shows the real Texas side of Jacquet, while on the title tune he sounds much more like Pres. There are a couple of nice ballads here, too, and a fast "Indiana" on which Jacquet plays some startlingly Parkerian alto. On 1968's
Bottoms Up: Illinois Jacquet on Prestige!
(Prestige/OJC-417), the tenorist single-handedly (with the help of a super rhythm section of Barry Harris, Ben Tucker, and Alan Dawson) generates as much momentum as the entire Hampton band on such Jacquet favorites as "Port of Rico," "Jivin' with Jack the
 
Page 273
Bellboy," and the title track. Harris is a consummate bop pianist and a perfect foil for Jacquet's swinging, riff-based work. The party-time groove of the title track is the essence of Jacquet, on the rocks, no chaser.
Dexter Gordon
When Dexter Gordon really began leaving his mark in the mid-1940s, after a five-year apprenticeship in the big bands of Lionel Hampton, Louis Armstrong, and Billy Eckstine, it was as the first tenor player who was neither primarily Hawkins- nor Young-derived, playing within the framework of the new music called bebop. Still, Gordon's biggest inspiration, he once told me, was Young's playing - not his sound or even his specific phrasing but rather his "philosophy" of playing. By this, I think, Gordon was referring to Young's attitude toward the beat, legato attack, and emphasis on melodic creativity wed to harmonic sophistication. Once Gordon found his own voice, though, it didn't resemble Young's; his sound was harder, his swing more driving.
Gordon was one of jazz's aristocrats, a suave man well over six feet tall (hence one of his nicknames, Long Tall Dexter), whose career was a varied course of ups and downs that included a late-1940s tenor reign (during which he was a profound influence on younger players like Jackie McLean and, especially, John Coltrane), an early-1950s California prison stay for a narcotics conviction, a classic string of 1960s albums, a long period as an expatriate living in Copenhagen, a triumphant late-1970s homecoming to the United States during which he became a hero to a whole new generation of jazz fans, and even a 1987 Academy Award nomination - not for a musical score but as Best Actor, for his portrayal of saxophonist Dale Turner in the 1986 Bertrand Tavernier film
Round Midnight
.
Gordon's best recordings were made during the 1960s for Blue Note and Prestige. He still owned all his early fire and had added to it a maturity that made him one of the great ballad players in jazz. The best of the best are
Go!
(Blue Note 46094) and
A Swingin' Affair
(Blue Note 84133), recorded two days apart with the same excellent rhythm section of Sonny Clark, Butch Warren, and Billy Higgins. You can't go wrong with either album; both have Gordon showing earthshaking swing and ultra-warm ballad wisdom. Of the two,
A Swingin' Affair
may have a slight edge, if only for the unique and pungent "Soy Califa," on which Gordon is endlessly inventive, dancing over the fascinating beat, a kind of Moorish samba, with a hint of Brazil and Haiti in there, too. The set also includes fantastic versions of the ballads "Don't Explain" and "Until the Real Thing Comes Along," on which Gordon actually seems to be

Other books

Love, But Never by Josie Leigh
The Jury by Gerald Bullet
The Blonde of the Joke by Bennett Madison
The Angel's Cut by Knox, Elizabeth
The Night We Met by Tara Taylor Quinn
Accounting for Lust by Ylette Pearson