The Penguin Jazz Guide (169 page)

Two Stomp Off discs follow a similar line of homage without artifice.
Sugar Blues
is a tribute to King Oliver that walks a very difficult line. Tyle’s aim was to fashion the sound of the Oliver Creole Jazz Band and put it to use not only on Oliver’s repertoire but also on contemporary tunes that he might have played. Tyle is a shrewd judge of tempos and he gets amazingly close to a hi-fi treatment of Oliver’s band sound. Even tougher to pull off is the Freddie Keppard homage,
Here Comes The Hot Tamale Man
. With so little surviving evidence to go on, Tyle has still managed to weave together 19 tracks and a sound that seems like a plausible echo of Keppard’s terse, often relentless music.

On
New Orleans Wiggle
, the style isn’t really Dixieland, revivalism or even ‘New Orleans’: it’s a modern methodology applied to classic principles, and the results are entirely of their own time. The material goes as near in as ‘St Louis Blues’ and as far out as Lovie Austin’s ‘Stepping On The Blues’ – a mix of populism and connoisseurship which ought to appeal to anybody. Tyle and Kellin play with stinging spirit and not
too
much finesse, Pistorius finds all the right feeds and stomps with superb élan, but if one player stands out it’s Gill, whose tumbling bravado and dazzling sticksmanship make the quartet into an orchestra. Essential.

MATT WILSON

Born 27 September 1964, Galesburg, Illinois

Drums

Smile

Palmetto 2049

Wilson; Joel Frahm (ss, ts, bcl); Andrew D’Angelo (as, bcl); Yosuke Inoue (b). March 1999.

The irrepressible Mr Wilson says:
‘
Smile
was an easy album to name. Why? Because the music reflects a team effort that is possible only through doing a whole bunch of gigs. You hear the joy of us being together and how a band is a living and breathing life form. Woo! Hoo!’

Wilson moved to Boston in the late ’80s and immediately won a reputation as an intelligent, subtle, and often very playful percussionist who could adapt his approach to any situation. Unusually for a drummer, he has been able to record regularly as leader. The debut album,
As Wave Follows Wave
, was pretty much stolen by fellow Palmetto star Dewey Redman, whose own recording opportunities have been dismayingly few over the years. The subsequent
Going Once, Going Twice
featured an auctioneer (Ned Sublette), which is a first for this book. It’s a very funny, very cleverly conceived track, also featuring banjoist Pete McCann in a role that might have suited Bill Frisell. It’s a set that combines intelligent jazz themes with Pete Seeger’s version of Ecclesiastes, ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ So, no ordinary kind of jazz drummer/leader.

Smile
– no obvious connection to the Beach Boys epic, but we wouldn’t put it past him – was a big jump forward, a set that mixes in the humour ever more comfortably. ‘Take Me Out To The Ball Game’ is hilarious, as is ‘Go, Team, Go!’, though what’s interesting is how seamlessly Wilson and his men weave their larking into some fairly robust outside jazz. Frahm’s bass clarinet work was likened to Eric Dolphy on this record’s first appearance, and while it’s an absurd comparison at face value, you can hear what was meant. ‘A Dusting Of Snow’ shows what a fine impressionistic drummer Wilson can be in a more thoughtful mood, while ‘Daymaker’ is just great small-group arranging. Of the brought-in material, Monk’s still rarely played ‘Boo Boo’s Birthday’ is outstanding and there is a fine reading of ‘Strangers In The Night’, which is virtually unrecognizable as such until it’s almost over.

BUCKY PIZZARELLI

Born John Paul Pizzarelli, 9 January 1926, Paterson, New Jersey

Guitar

April Kisses

Arbors ARCD 19227

Pizzarelli (g solo). March 1999.

Bucky Pizzarelli said (1991):
‘I took things from just about everyone I ever heard, like a sponge. It was George Van Eps who developed the seven-string guitar, for Epiphone. It gives you extra weight, a little muscle.’

He was hidden away in NBC studio orchestras for many years but began an association with Benny Goodman in 1966 and since then has become a regular contributor to mainstream-modern small groups on record and on the road. His son John is a chip off the old block.

Pizzarelli’s more vigorous ensemble playing can be found all over the place, but this charming solo disc shows off his more gentle and sweet-toned style on the seven-string acoustic guitar. The first disc is mostly music from the books of his first influences: Eddie Lang, Carl Kress, George Van Eps. Kress’s ‘Helena’ is a superb choice of opening cut. It has
a decided Spanish or Catalan tinge, and though Bucky’s articulation rarely suggests the fire and show-off virtuosity of flamenco, it has something of those. He says one of the finest moments of his life was playing Django tunes with Stéphane Grappelli and ‘Tears’ here is a nice tribute to that repertoire. There are nods as well to Slam Stewart (the dance-like original ‘Slamerino’) and to Duke (‘Come Sunday’), but it’s the Kress stuff that dominates the list, eclipsing even Van Eps’s ‘Squattin’ In The Grotto’. Not the kind of record that will have the neighbours banging on your walls, but an hour of quiet delight, and the follow-ups discs – further chapters of musical autobiography – are good, too.

BOBO STENSON

Born 4 August 1944, Västerås, Sweden

Piano

Serenity

ECM 543611 2CD

Stenson; Anders Jormin (b); Jon Christensen (d). April 1999.

Bobo Stenson said (2005):
‘I come from a small city, though perhaps quite a big one by Swedish standards, and one with a surprising number of musicians. Maybe we had something like critical mass, because I feel we had to do things and think about things for ourselves. That means you don’t get too influenced by others, except the people you meet every week.’

Stenson has been a major figure on the Stockholm post-bop scene since 1966. As co-founder of Rena Rama in 1971, he seemed embarked on an effort to hybridize jazz with Balkan and Indian folk music, a somewhat quixotic enterprise which coloured his work for many years. Stenson’s career began with Börje Fredriksson, and after a brief apprenticeship under the Swedish tenor saxophonist he branched out with high-profile gigs for Stan Getz (in Africa, of all places) and Red Mitchell. Increasingly in the last ten years he has been associated with ECM’s efforts to reshape and redefine modal jazz, in addition to making records with Jan Garbarek, Charles Lloyd and Thomas Stańko, among others. At times, he has seemed the label’s
de facto
house pianist.

This is a towering achievement. The integration of free jazz, serialism and atonality, elements of bebop and a folkish lyricism yield a double-set of great power and almost inexhaustible invention. The pianist and his two associates both contribute originals, and there is a wonderful version of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Swee’ Pea’, but it is the reworking of themes by Charles Ives, Alban Berg and Hanns Eisler that impresses most thoroughly. In Berg’s ‘Die Nachtigall’, Stenson takes the basic row and transforms it into a softly lyrical jazz theme that sounds like nothing else in the canon. He does something similar with Eisler’s ‘Die Pflaumenbaum’, though here the music already seems more susceptible to such treatment. It is interesting how French some of the leader’s keyboard strategies are; the sources notwithstanding, his harmony seems to draw on Debussy and Ravel more than anyone and his melodic touch owes little to the Austro-German school. Jormin and Christensen, both of whom are represented early on by strong compositions – ‘T.’ and ‘North Print’, and ‘East Print’, respectively – add their idiosyncratic touches to a sequence of pieces that demands patient and attentive listening.

RYAN KISOR

Born 12 April 1973, Sioux City, Iowa

Trumpet

Power Source

Criss Cross 1196

Kisor; Chris Potter (ts); James Genus (b); Gene Jackson (d). June 1999.

Freddie Hubbard said, during a ‘blindfold test’ (2001):
‘He’s listened to a lot of the older guys: Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan, me? Dizzy. But he’s got his own voice, and he doesn’t play the horn as if it’s a saxophone, like a lot of the younger men do. Who is it? He’s good.’

Kisor has some of the ebullience of the young trumpet masters of hard-bop yore. He doesn’t have that measure of originality or capacity to surprise, but there’s a kindred energy in his playing, and he has quite a personal, immediate sound. His two deleted Columbia albums put him in heavyweight company, as major labels like to do, but his more recent work has seen him at the head of
simpatico
groups who work well behind him and don’t crowd him out.

With no keyboard on
Power Source
, Kisor takes a risk which he is fully up to facing and, with the invincible Potter standing at his shoulder, the music has a feel of synthesis which takes in all manner of post-bop jazz directions. As he gets older, the tone’s losing some of its brassy snap, taking on a faintly cloudier edge, and with the saxophonist if anything moving in the other tonal direction, it makes for an attractive contrast. The covers are a superb lot, with Jimmy Heath’s ‘New Picture’ outstanding. We’re not so keen on ‘Boogie Stop Shuffle’, which doesn’t really scale down, but the closing ‘Bird Food’ was an audacious choice that the players peck off in the hungriest manner.

TERENCE BLANCHARD

Born 13 March 1962, New Orleans, Louisiana

Trumpet

Wandering Moon

Sony Classics SK 89111

Blanchard; Aaron Fletcher (as); Branford Marsalis, Brice Winston (ts); Edward Simon (p); Dave Holland (b); Eric Harland (d). June 1999.

Terence Blanchard says:
‘It came from my experiences on the road. There were times when I missed my family dearly and would really rather be home. During those times, I would look at the moon and realize that that same moon would be over my family’s head in just a few hours. That would make me feel much closer to them.’

When Terence Blanchard replaced Wynton Marsalis in the Jazz Messengers, the term ‘post-Wynton’ was heard for the first time. In fact, the two trumpeters had come up together – Marsalis is the older by six months – and the young Blanchard had taken lessons from Ellis Marsalis among others. For a time, he seemed to align himself with a modernist strain in jazz, taking the Booker Little role opposite Donald Harrison in a latter-day version of the Dolphy–Little quintet, but as the years have gone by Blanchard and Harrison have largely returned to their Louisianan roots. Where the saxophonist has been involved with the ‘tribal’ band scene, with its distinctive traditions, Blanchard has evolved a kind of grand neo-traditionalism, related to Wynton’s but in a less doctrinaire way. He has also become a highly successful film composer, soundtracking most of Spike Lee’s work and contributing a passionate score for the Hurricane Katrina documentary
A Tale of God’s Will.
In fact, so thoroughly overdetermined by film work is Blanchard’s CV now that his other recordings have tended to be overlooked.

Sadly, most of Blanchard’s fine run for Columbia, including the wonderful
Romantic Defiance
, is now not consistently available. Under benign exile to Sony Classics, Blanchard
goes for a long (over 75 minutes), ballad-orientated record which seems full of near darkness. Originals such as ‘Luna Viajera’ and ‘If I Could, I Would’ distil a sense of melancholy which is mitigated by the serenity of the playing. Holland’s intro to ‘My Only Thought Of You’ is sublime, even by his high standard, and what follows from Blanchard and Marsalis is the equal of it. Blanchard’s line on ‘Sweet’s Dream’ gives an ironic twist to the ‘post-Wynton’ tag. Even though there are one or two tear-ups, from Marsalis in particular, what one remembers about the record is its poise, its cool dedication to instrumental mastery. None is more masterful than the leader himself. The closing version of ‘I Thought About You’, taken at the slowest of tempos, is a definitive treatment which silences criticism and in its final moments leaves the listener dumbfounded.

BARRY GUY
^&

Born 22 April 1947, London

Double bass, chamber bass

Odyssey

Intakt CD070

Guy; Marilyn Crispell (p); Paul Lytton (perc). 1999.

Barry Guy says:
‘The piano trio has played a significant role in my musical life, representing a “classical” formation in terms of instrumental demarcation and sonic compatibility. This “classical” notion is, however, open to creative impulses that welcome a degree of alternative strategies devised with very special musicians in mind.’

Guy has been so much associated with large-scale projects over the years – the London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra and his
Witch Gong Game
ensembles, ECM recordings with his partner Maya Homburger – that one tends to forget what a formidable small-group player he is. His bass-playing in trio situations has all the authority and presence of his early work in these forms. In addition to this remarkable trio, there are also recordings with Evan Parker and Paul Lytton.

A number of the pieces on
Odyssey
– ‘Harmos’, ‘Double Trouble’, ‘Odyssey’ – are Guy compositions, more or less familiar from other projects, and only four tracks are collectively improvised. The tonality is mostly quite sombre, though ‘Rags’ is a loud and skittish idea, and after the bass/percussion introduction ‘Harmos’ turns into a brooding processional that brings out the very darkest colours in Crispell’s palette. The level of interaction is very high and there is constant empathy between the players. How much of this is down to Guy’s scores and direction is difficult to gauge from the outside. These don’t sound like dot-driven pieces; the emphasis is still very much on improvisation, but within very definite structures and trajectories. It’s not without humour: ‘Heavy Metal’ gives Lytton a chance to explore his expanded kit and for the others to lean back a bit as well. Hearing Guy’s bass at the centre of the mix offers insight into his compositional procedures, an approach that often implies excluded areas, abysses or moments of silence that punctuate and impel the music as black holes punctuate and drive the universe. It’s quite dizzying listening to him at some points. What is said is much less important than what is left out.