The Penguin Jazz Guide (54 page)

In 1953, Dorham led a fine quintet with Jimmy Heath and Walter Bishop Jr, an outfit that romped through gulping blues passages on a minimum of harmonic oxygen. There’s little apparently to keep the music moving, but Kenny always finds something inventive to say,
which is one reason why he survived in the Jazz Messengers. He was modestly ambitious, though, and went off to form his own Jazz Prophets, who made some sides for Chess. It wasn’t until Blue Note signed him up that he produced something close to a masterpiece. The history of live recordings for the label is slightly chequered, alternating masterworks and duds. Kenny’s Café Bohemia date is one of the former, or close to it.

The hour might well have suggested a handful of minor keys. Dorham always had a predilection for a unified mood, and this session, combining the Monk tune ‘Autumn In New York’ with ‘A Night In Tunisia’ and three originals, manages to sustain a slightly brooding, intensely thoughtful atmosphere. As a foil, Monterose was an excellent recruitment. Burrell swings with the usual horn-like attack and Timmons vamps righteously, though without ever really showing his mettle. Dorham’s own solos are models of grace and tact, always giving an impression of careful construction and development. Francis Wolff’s subtly doctored cover shot offers an intriguing impression of the man, showing Dorham in a bright check jacket, but with a faraway look in his eyes as he clutches the microphone; above him, a ghostly image of an American townscape, vivid but also fleeting. He was what we have called elsewhere a heartland musician, not really a man for the big cities at all, but happy to ply his quiet craft in a steady narrative way.

FRIEDRICH GULDA

Born 16 May 1930, Vienna, Austria; died 27 January 2000, Weißenbach am Attersee, Austria

Piano

Friedrich Gulda At Birdland

RCA Victor PM 1355

Gulda; Idrees Sulieman (t); Jimmy Cleveland (tb); Phil Woods (as); Seldon Powell (ts); Aaron Bell (b); Nick Stabulas (d). June 1956.

Austrian-born keyboards player Joe Zawinul remembers (1992):
‘Gulda? He was a crazy man, a real eccentric, but he put it over all those guys, because he was a better musician than anyone else. Better than anyone else I can think of. Any style.’

If Gulda had had his way of it, the death date above would have been some months earlier. In 1999, he tried to hoax the media into thinking he had passed away, in order to stage his own resurrection. It was a typical gesture from a man who regarded any boundary – national, stylistic, philosophical – as something to be transgressed. Classically trained, he steered a path between straight music and jazz, but was sceptical of attempts to blend the two. He did, however, take up the cause of Joe Zawinul when the former Weather Report man was experimenting with large, ‘symphonic’ forms, and Gulda himself often took part in quite
outré
projects, as when he collaborated with the radical ‘Krautrock’ group Anima (Sound).

Gulda was exotic fruit when he arrived in the United States, somewhat as Joe Zawinul was to be. He reversed the usual jazz musician’s trajectory by playing Carnegie Hall first, in 1949, and only then ‘playing Birdland’, though this record was actually not a live gig but a studio session. In his jazz playing, he put the lie quite definitively to the notion that classically trained musicians could not swing. Here, along with ‘A Night In Tunisia’ and the Leiber–Stoller ‘Bernie’s Tune’, his band works through a set of somewhat sombre originals, including ‘Dark Glow’ and ‘Air From Other Planets’ (an indirect reference to Schoenberg). The piano sound isn’t great, but Gulda’s comping is absolutely spot on and there is enough solo action from the horns to make this more than a novelty record. Gulda’s musicianship was of the highest order.

MELBA LISTON

Born 13 January 1926, Kansas City, Missouri; died 23 April 1999, Los Angeles, California

Trombone

And Her ’Bones

Fresh Sound FSRCD 408

Liston; Jimmy Cleveland, Bennie Green, Al Grey, Benny Powell, Frank Rehak (tb); Slide Hampton (tb, tba); Marty Flax (bs); Ray Bryant, Walter Davis Jr (p); Kenny Burrell (g); Nelson Boyd, George Joyner (b); Frank Dunlop, Charli Persip (d). June 1956, December 1958.

Melba Liston said (1990):
‘I really think I was born to play trombone. The very first time I saw one, I wanted it, even though I wasn’t very sure what it was. And even though I couldn’t reach most of the positions, it felt like it was part of me.’

There’s something about trombone-players. More than any of the other horns, they like to gather together
en masse
. Melba Liston is best known as an arranger, but she was a more than decent player in her day. She doesn’t have much of a showing on record, though everyone will have heard her fine sophisticated arrangements. Most of these cuts are from two trombone-and-rhythm dates made in Christmas week 1958. She loved the sound of the horn so much she didn’t use either trumpets or woodwinds. It’s not clear why the two dates have been interwoven on this compilation. If a change of texture were called for it would have made more sense to intersperse the 1956 cuts, with Liston paired with baritone and rhythm. The material is mostly by Liston, Hampton, Rehak and Leonard Feather. Melba’s ‘You Don’t Say’ and ‘Insomnia’ (the latter by the smaller 1956 group) are the best of the cuts, but there’s much to enjoy and it’s a feast for trombone lovers.

Slowed by a stroke in the mid-’80s, she spent her last few years confined to a wheelchair, but still mentally active and still able to write arrangements, including some for her admirer Randy Weston.

MARK MURPHY
^&

Born 14 March 1932, Fulton, New York

Voice

Crazy Rhythm: His Debut Recordings

Decca/GRP 050670-2

Murphy; orchestra including Ralph Burns (p); Don Lamond (d). June 1956–1958.

Mark Murphy said (1986):
‘It took me a long time to make contact with the audience. Listening to these things after thirty years, it sounds like I’m singing to myself. That got easier later on, but there’s something about it I still quite like.’

Mark Murphy’s been hip all his professional life. His first sessions, released as
Meet Mark Murphy
and
Let Yourself Go
, were rarities which are welcome on CD. The sheer youthful ebullience of these dates comes as a tonic after the self-absorbed mooning of so many of today’s would-be jazz crooners. Murphy hits the demanding tempo of ‘Fascinating Rhythm’ so quickly and confidently that it makes one gasp to think this was his first outing in a studio. Beautiful intonation, every word immaculately there, and, with helpful charts from Ralph Burns, Murphy hardly takes a false step. On ballads he sometimes strains for a big
bel canto
sound, and just occasionally he tries too hard or attempts to do too much, but that is a young man’s fancy, and it’s kept the records alive.

& See also
Bop For Kerouac
(1981; p. 463)

ROLF ERICSON

Born 29 August 1922, Stockholm, Sweden; died 16 June 1997, Stockholm, Sweden

Trumpet

Rolf Ericson & The American Stars

Dragon DRCD 255

Ericson; Lars Gullin, Cecil Payne (bs); Duke Jordan, Freddie Redd (p); Tommy Potter, John Simmons (b); Joe Harris, Art Taylor (d); Ernestine Anderson (v). June & July 1956.

Rolf Ericson said (1981):
‘Clark Terry recommended me to Duke, but he’d taken on too many trumpeters and Cat Anderson had just come back. But I kept hoping. I literally missed the band bus on one occasion, and on another had to say no because I was working with Maynard Ferguson. I eventually got the job, though.’

Sweden was one of the few countries on earth to which a gifted jazz musician might have chosen to return after a spell in the US, other than in abject defeat. Ericson went to America in 1947 and played with Charlie Barnet, Woody Herman and Charles Mingus, eventually joining Ellington in 1963. He returned home, only on tour, but his presence invigorated the jazz scene in Scandinavia: one of their own, making it before returning home to energize the band scene there, and, ironically, to welcome visiting American stars.

The gifted and likeable Ericson left a fine legacy on record, though comparatively little under his own name. A totally reliable section player, he tended to hide away a gentler and more lyrical side, though it came out at the end of his life, when he had made flugelhorn a firm double. These 1956 recordings date from a Swedish tour when Rolf was asked to front a band of Americans. The first tour was wrecked by the narcotic problems of two of the visitors (all four were sent home), and only four tracks survive. The bulk of the disc has Ericson and Gullin in the front line, with Redd, Potter and Harris in the rhythm section. Despite the problems, the tour helped bring hard bop to Sweden, previously drawn more to American cool. Ericson and Gullin are in brimming form, though the live recording isn’t ideal. Anderson sings on six tracks. The instrumentals tend to be better, and ‘A Night In Tunisia’ is as hot as any of the great (all-)American versions. A significant talent, Ericson, who claims more than a footnote.

DIZZY GILLESPIE
^&

Born John Birks Gillespie, 21 October 1917, Cheraw, South Carolina; died 6 January 1993, Englewood, New Jersey

Trumpet

Birks Works: The Verve Big-Band Sessions

Verve 527900-2 2CD

Gillespie; Joe Gordon, Quincy Jones, Ermit Perry, Carl Warwick, Talib Daawud, Lee Morgan (t); Melba Liston, Frank Rehak (tb); Rod Levitt, Ray Connor (btb); Jimmy Powell, Phil Woods, Ernie Henry (as); Billy Mitchell, Benny Golson, Ernie Wilkins (ts); Marty Flax, Billy Root, Pee Wee Moore (bs); Walter Davis Jr, Wynton Kelly (p); Paul West, Nelson Boyd (b); Charli Persip (d); Austin Comer (v). June 1956–July 1957.

Saxophonist Jimmy Heath said (1987):
‘Dizzy never stopped teaching. Any time I saw him, he’d have me over to the piano, show me chords, ninths alongside tenths, that kind of thing, stuff I still use. Listen to those big bands, you can tell he’s the teacher.’

Jazz became part of America’s mission to the world in the ’50s and while much paranoid ink has been spilled over CIA and State Department involvement in the presentation of jazz as a shining example of democratic freedom (a piece of spin that casually ignored the treatment
of African-Americans within the US) it is. Long awaited in a comprehensive edition, these tracks cover the work of a band that Gillespie toured with as a cultural ambassador, though this is all studio work. The three original albums remain comparatively forgotten, or at least neglected, perhaps because big-band jazz wasn’t quite the fashion, perhaps because the first two titles were functionally dull and the third,
World Statesman
, might not have quite sat well with the young. Nevertheless, these are essential performances, a link between bop and swing values, and with Dizzy’s African-Cuban experiments subtly integrated into an ensemble sound that moved like a coherent mass.

Studded with great players, the orchestra also benefits from some of the most perceptive scoring of the day – by Liston, Wilkins, Jones, Golson and other hands – and, with Gillespie in stratospheric form as soloist, the band could hardly have failed. ‘Dizzy’s Business’ and ‘Whisper Not’ are classic performances, soloist and band in absolute balance.

& See also
The Complete RCA Victor Recordings
(1937–1949; p. 68)

SONNY ROLLINS
^&

Born Theodore Walter Rollins, 7 September 1930, New York City

Tenor saxophone

Saxophone Colossus

Original Jazz Classics OJCCD 291

Rollins; Tommy Flanagan (p); Doug Watkins (b); Max Roach (d). June 1956.

Sonny Rollins said (1987):
‘For some reason, people speak as if that was my first record, as if I’d appeared in the world at precisely that moment. In fact, I’d been recording since 1949 and practising 12 hours a day since I was in my teens. It was no surprise that something came of it!’

The Master. Arguably the most compelling improviser in the entire history of the music, Rollins has never settled into a permanent style. Even in his 70s, he continues to exert severe authority over his recorded output, rejecting anything that smacks of repetition or that falls a degree below first rate. The body of recording is quite astonishing, in both amount and quality, and selecting even three or four of his records is problematic.

His older brother was taking classical music lessons and Rollins himself began on piano, switched to alto saxophone, then settled on tenor. He recorded as a teenager with Bud Powell and J. J. Johnson, later with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, and worked in Max Roach’s group for two years. For the last half-century, he has been a leader in his own right. The approach is essentially melodic and even while Rollins is negotiating complex harmonic transitions, his improvising always sounds effortlessly logical.

The undisputed masterpiece from the mid-’50s period is
Saxophone Colossus
, and although Rollins plays with brilliant invention throughout the run of earlier records, he’s at his most consistent on this disc. ‘St Thomas’, his irresistible calypso melody, appears here for the first time, and there is a ballad of unusual bleakness in ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’, as well as a rather sardonic walk through ‘Moritat’ (alias ‘Mack The Knife’). But ‘Blue Seven’, as analysed in a contemporary piece by Gunther Schuller, became celebrated as a thematic masterpiece, where all the joints and moving parts of a spontaneous improvisation attain the pristine logic of a composition. If the actual performance is much less forbidding than this suggests, thanks in part to the simplicity of the theme, it surely justifies Schuller’s acclaim.