The Penguin Jazz Guide (43 page)

Freddy Randall said (1984):
‘I was out of the business for a while in the late ’50s, early ’60s, bad chest. I don’t quite know what happened in jazz around that time. You can blame pop, I suppose, but even the jazz musicians went a bit funny.’

Randall started out with a comedy group but worked with John Dankworth and formed his own traditional band in the late ’40s, recording extensively for Parlophone. Faded from the scene after a spell of illness, but returned to active duty in the ’70s, while running an old people’s home. (This detail has been sufficiently mined for jokes already; Freddy had heard them all.) This disc, one of a pair of reissues on Lake, should be enough to convert
unbelievers to the energy and vitality of the best British trad. Randall’s groups weren’t rough-and-ready outfits. He led by example, his trumpet-playing crackling with conviction and imagination alike, and his groups were hard-bitten but swinging in their doughty way. Randall liked the sound of the Chicagoan brassmen rather than the New Orleans strain beloved by Ken Colyer, and his jazz has an incendiary quality to it which eluded many of his contemporaries. Not that there isn’t a sense of fun in the tracks on the second CD, chosen by Paul Lake from the 70-odd sides he made for Parlophone between 1953 and 1955. ‘Professor Jazz’ still raises a smile, and anyone who calls one of his originals ‘My Tiny Band Is Chosen’ has a reserve of wit as well as commitment. A model reissue, in excellent sound, and it is a pity that Randall himself did not live to see it happen.

CHARLIE PARKER
^&

Born 29 August 1920, Kansas City, Missouri; died 12 March 1955, New York City

Alto and tenor saxophones

The Quintet: Jazz At Massey Hall

Original Jazz Classics OJC 044

Parker; Dizzy Gillespie (t); Bud Powell (p); Charles Mingus (b); Max Roach (d). May 1953.

Max Roach said (1985):
‘The atmosphere was pretty difficult, but when you look at the people in that dressing room and the issues and problems they all had, it would need a whole conference of psychologists to work it all out. People should just be grateful that [the] music was made and recorded at all.’

Perhaps the most hyped jazz concert ever, to an extent that the actuality is almost inevitably something of a disappointment. Originally released on Debut (a musician-run label started by Mingus and Roach), the sound, taken from Mingus’s own tape-recording, is rather poor and the bassist subsequently had to overdub his part. However, Parker (playing a plastic saxophone and billed on the Debut release as ‘Charlie Chan’ to avoid contractual problems with Mercury, Norman Granz’s parent company) and Gillespie are both at the peak of their powers. They may even have fed off the conflict that had developed between them, for their interchanges on the opening ‘Perdido’ crackle with controlled aggression, like two middleweights checking each other out in the first round. There is a story that they didn’t want to go on stage, preferring to sulk in front of a televised big game in the dressing room. Parker’s solo on ‘Hot House’, three quarters of the way through the set, is a masterpiece of containment and release, like his work on ‘A Night In Tunisia’ (introduced by the saxophonist in rather weird French, in deference to the Canadian – but the wrong city, surely? – audience). Perhaps because the game was showing, or perhaps just because Toronto wasn’t hip to bebop, the house was by no means full, but it’s clear that those who were there sensed something exceptional was happening. Powell and Roach are the star turns on ‘Wee’. The pianist builds a marvellous solo out of Dameron’s chords and Roach holds the whole thing together with a performance that almost matches the melodic and rhythmic enterprise of the front-men. The Massey Hall concert is a remarkable experience, not to be missed.

& See also
The Complete Savoy And Dial Studio Recordings
(1945–1948; p. 96),
Charlie Parker With Strings
(1947–1952; p. 106)

BEN WEBSTER

Born 27 March 1909, Kansas City, Missouri; died 20 September 1973, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Tenor saxophone

King Of The Tenors

Verve 519806-2

Webster; Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison (t); Benny Carter (as); Oscar Peterson (p); Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis (g); Ray Brown (b); Alvin Stoller, J. C. Heard (d). May–December 1953.

Oscar Peterson said (1991):
‘I remember one time a bunch of guys waiting round the studio, impatient, wanting to get going. Ben was late and they were displeased. No one saw him arrive but suddenly we heard this saxophone along the corridor, just warming up gently. And everyone just stopped and listened. It was like oil on troubled waters.’

Webster’s unique timbre on the tenor – breathy, swooningly romantic – is high on most lists of favourite sounds in jazz. He played violin, then piano, before taking up sax at Budd Johnson’s suggestion. Webster joined Bennie Moten in 1931 and worked with many bands before gaining his greatest eminence with Duke Ellington from 1940. He left in 1944, rejoined four years later for a short spell, then freelanced through the ’50s. In 1964, he settled in Europe and eventually died in Amsterdam, unpredictable but beloved.

Approaching four decades after his death, his sound still haunts every tenor saxophonist who tackles a ballad. Ben Webster, often identifiable by a single, signature note, played jazz like few other musicians ever have. As he got older and less partial to any tempo above a very slow lope, he pared his manner back to essentials which still, no matter how often one hears them, remain uniquely affecting. Sometimes, all he does is play the notes of a melody, in a time that is entirely of his own choosing, and still he makes it uniquely absorbing. The best of his early work is with Duke Ellington – he remained, along with Paul Gonsalves, one of only two tenormen to make a genuine impression on Ducal history – but his records as a solo player, from the early ’50s onwards, are a formidable legacy.

By 1953, Webster was ready to make his mark on the LP era – 78rpm duration was too short for such a patient improviser – and Norman Granz began recording him for his labels.
King Of The Tenors
blends a date with Oscar Peterson plus rhythm section with another where Edison and Carter sit in too, though the spotlight is always on Webster. ‘Tenderly’ has never been more tender, ‘That’s All’ is sheer heaven, but ‘Jive At Six’ is a good piece of studio knockabout. Peterson may seem an unlikely partner, but just as Webster played superbly next to Art Tatum, so he mastered the potentially open floodgates of Peterson’s playing. This and two other Verve discs,
Soulville
and
Meets Oscar Peterson
, are between them, in modern sound, indispensable mainstream jazz albums of their time.

CLIFFORD BROWN
^&

Born 30 October 1930, Wilmington, Delaware; died 26 October 1956, Pennsylvania Turnpike, west of Bedford

Trumpet

Memorial Album

Blue Note 32141-2

Brown; Gigi Gryce (as, f); Lou Donaldson (as); Charlie Rouse (ts); Elmo Hope, John Lewis (p); Percy Heath (b); Philly Joe Jones, Art Blakey (d). June–August 1953.

Freddie Hubbard said (1991):
‘There’s a lot of dead men’s shoes in this business. I promise you, if Clifford Brown had lived, you wouldn’t ever have heard of me or a lot of other trumpet guys.’

Relative to the length of his career, Clifford Brown had a greater impact on the music than any comparable instrumentalist. In the days after he died – Richie Powell with him – and as the news filtered through to clubs and studios up and down the country, hardened jazz musicians put away their horns and quietly went home to grieve. Only 26, Brown was
almost universally liked and admired. Free of the self-destructive ‘personal problems’ that haunted jazz at the time, he had seemed destined for ever greater things when his car skidded off the turnpike.

To this day, his influence on trumpeters is immense, less audibly than Miles Davis’s, perhaps, because more pervasive. Though most of his technical devices – long, burnished phrases, enormous melodic and harmonic compression within a chorus, internal divisions of the metre – were introduced by Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro, his two most significant models, it was Brownie who melded them into a distinctive and coherent personal style of great expressive power. Almost every trumpeter who followed, including present-day figures like Wynton Marsalis, has drawn heavily on his example; few though have managed to reproduce the powerful singing grace he took from the ill-starred Navarro.

After a first, near fatal car accident, Brown gigged in R&B bands and then worked briefly with Tadd Dameron, before touring Europe with Lionel Hampton towards the end of 1953, where he enjoyed a good-natured and stage-managed rivalry with Art Farmer, and recorded the excellent quartet, sextet and big-band sides now reissued on OJC and sampled on
Blue And Brown
. By this time, he had already recorded the sessions on the confusingly titled
Memorial
(OJC) and the Blue Note
Memorial Album
. The former combined European and American sessions and isn’t the most compelling of his recordings, though Dameron’s arrangements are as challenging as always, and there are some fine moments from the Scandinavians it features.

In their new RVG editions, both
Memorial Album
and the 1954
Jazz Immortal
are tempting buys, even if you have the complete Blue Note edition, since once again the Van Gelder magic has been worked on the sound, which beats any previous issue (even if Mr VG didn’t do the original engineering in both cases). The former has been extended to include all alternative takes and would make a fine introduction to Brown for a newcomer. The latter sets Clifford up with a gang of West Coasters in a series of Jack Montrose charts, and while the set might seem ‘slick’ in comparison with some of Clifford’s playing situations, it does bring out the excellence of Brownie originals such as ‘Daahoud’ and ‘Joy Spring’ and the playing is handsome.

& See also
Alone Together
(1954–1956; p. 168)

GEORGE LEWIS
^&

Born George Joseph François Louis Zeno, 13 July 1900, New Orleans, Louisiana; died 31 December 1968, New Orleans, Louisiana

Clarinet

Jazz Funeral In New Orleans

Tradition 1049

Lewis; Avery ‘Kid’ Howard (t, v); Jim Robinson (tb); Alton Purnell (p, v); Lawrence Marrero (bj); Alcide ‘Slow Drag’ Pavageau (b); Joe Watkins (d, v); Monette Moore (v). October 1953.

Trad fan and collector Russell Sykes said (1999):
‘When I heard this, I said: “That’s what I want at
my
funeral. Just play the CD and then everyone go off for a drink.’
(Duly done: 24 March 2000. RIP Russell.)

A classic New Orleans record and one of the best albums in Lewis’s enormous catalogue,
Jazz Funeral
should be a building block in any decent jazz library. It’s not entirely clear why the record bears this rather mournful title, since most of the music is decidedly upbeat and only the slow version of ‘Just A Closer Walk With Thee’ would be associated with a burial procession, on the way to the cemetery, at any rate. What’s exceptional about this album is that everyone seems to be in top form, with sparkling solos right through the band and tight, well-marshalled ensembles. The opening ‘Ice Cream’ sets things off in great
style. ‘Doctor Jazz’ and ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’ are exemplary. George’s clarinet is clearly pitched and in tune with everyone else, which isn’t always the case at this vintage.

& See also
George Lewis & His New Orleans Stompers
(1943; p. 87)

ELMO HOPE

Born St Elmo Sylvester (or Sylvestor) Hope, 27 June 1923, New York City; died 19 May 1967, New York City

Piano

Trio And Quintet

Blue Note 784438 2

Hope; Freeman Lee, Stu Williamson (t); Frank Foster, Harold Land (ts); Percy Heath, Leroy Vinnegar (b); Frank Butler, Philly Joe Jones (d). June 1953–October 1957.

Saxophonist Johnny Griffin said (1989):
‘I used to hang out with Elmo and Monk at their houses, and I can tell you they both could play in any style: Tatum, Basie, Duke, Fats Waller, Hines. Elmo
chose
to play the way he did, like Monk
chose
to play the way he did. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it any other way.’

A troubled man, burdened by a kind of genius, Hope was fortunate in having wife Bertha (also a formidable piano-player) to watch out for him, but he seemed fated to a short life. Elmo managed to sound sufficiently different from both his main influences, Bud Powell (with whom he went to school) and Thelonious Monk, to retain a highly individual sound. His reputation as a composer is now surprisingly slight, but he had a strong gift for melody, enunciating themes very clearly, and was comfortable enough with classical and modern concert music to introduce elements of fugue and canon, though always with a firm blues underpinning. Like a good many pianists of his generation, he seems to have been uneasy about solo performance (though he duetted regularly with his wife Bertha) and is heard to greatest effect in trio settings.