- Steven A. Cerra [C] Copyright protected; all rights reserved.Among Jazz fans, there are those that have long been exponents of its visual dimensions as being essential to enjoying it as a total artistic experience.
Those who hold this view advocate that "The Art of Jazz" is all the more richer because of the photography of Herman Leonard, Chuck Stewart, Francis Wolff, Ray Avery, et al. and the graphic art and illustrations that adorned album covers created by Reid Miles, Robert Guidi/Tri-Arts, and William Claxton [also a master photographer].
To further underscore this proposition, I would add the name of the imminent English painter J.M.W. Turner as his painting of the View of the Grand Canal that adorns the LP cover of their No Sun in Venice album as shown below was responsible for introducing me to the pleasures of The Modern Jazz Quartet.
I had no idea of the Jazz treasures that awaited me as I held this Atlantic album [1284-2] in my hands one rainy night at a Hollywood record store that allowed customers to sample the wares in listening booths before buying.Being so fascinated by the cover art depicting Turner’s painting, I took the record into one of the glassed-in booths for a listening and instantly became a life-long fan of what has to surely be one of the unique groups in the history of Jazz, both in terms of longevity and musical originality.
I am probably not the first Jazz fan to become intrigued about the music contained on a recording as a result of the cover art that adorns an LP cover or a CD jewel case, but I’m certainly glad that I was visually intrigued enough to investigate this one.
In addition to photographs, illustrations and replications of famous artworks as enhancers of the overall “Jazz experience,” I have also found that well-written and insightful writings about Jazz also add a “literary” dimension to the Jazz experience. In so doing, the art of fine writing becomes allied with Jazz to enrich its pleasures.
And no author, with the exception of Gene Lees, writes in a more erudite and cultured way on the subject of Jazz than Gary Giddins to whom we now turn for this piece on the Modern Jazz Quartet from his Visions of Jazz: The First Century [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 376-389] not only because of its excellent style but also because of its comprehensive treatment of the MJQ’s beginnings and its understanding of the group's essential, musical qualities.
The Modern Jazz Quartet (The First Forty Years)
"In creating, the only hard thing is to begin," wrote James Russell Lowell. For the Modem Jazz Quartet, the world's most venerable chamber group in or out of jazz, the beginning was a three-year trial. Few people in the early '50s would have entertained the idea that a small jazz band could flourish over four decades, bridging generations and styles. Big bands had proved durable in part because, like symphony orchestras, they could withstand changes in personnel, and because they counted on dancers to sustain their appeal. No jazz chamber group had ever lasted more than a few seasons.When the MJQ first convened, American music was in one of its many transitional phases. The public's taste changed with frightening alacrity. A decade earlier, the country was jitterbugging to swing. After the war, bop ruled jazz, while big bands struggled for survival and pop songs grew increasingly bland. In 1952, there was talk of a cool school in jazz, while younger listeners were drawn to rhythm and blues. A couple of years down the road, there would be hard bop, soul, and rock and roll. Then the deluge: third stream, free jazz, neo-romanticism, acid rock, new music, fusion, neoclassicism, disco, original instruments, hip hop, grunge, and more.
Yet through it all, the Modern Jazz Quartet persisted and prospered. We do well to remember that the fortieth anniversary of the MJQ in 1992 was only the seventy-fifth anniversary of jazz on records, if we honor as genesis the sensationally successful 1917 Victor release of the Original Dixieland jazz Band's "Livery Stable Blues" b/w "Dixie Jazz Band One Step." Thirty-five years later, on December 22, 1952, John Lewis, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath, and Kenny Clarke met at a Manhattan recording studio leased by Prestige Records and recorded two standards ("All the Things You Are" and "Rose of the Rio Grande") and two Lewis originals with exotic names: "La Ronde," which had its origins in a piece recorded by the Dizzy Gillespie orchestra, and "Vendome," which prefigured the merging of jazz and fugal counterpoint that became an abiding trademark of the MJQ. The records were widely noted, but less widely embraced. With Lewis spending most of his time working toward a master's degree at the Manhattan School of Music, the first session was-notwithstanding a gig in an obscure Greenwich Village bistro called the Chantilly-an isolated foray.
The world was a different place that chilly day. At the very moment the quartet cut those records, President-elect Eisenhower was at the Commodore Hotel a few blocks away, meeting with a group of Negro clergymen to whom he expressed "amazement" that discrimination was widely practiced; he promised to appoint a commission to study the matter, adding that he was determined to abide by the law even if every Negro in America voted against him. Also in the news: the Soviets accused the U.S. of murdering eighty-two North Korean and Chinese POWs; allied fighter-bombers strafed Korean supply depots; more than seven hundred protesters staged a rally for the Rosenberg’s at Sing Sing; Sugar Ray Robinson announced his retirement from the ring. The New York Times' music pages noted a concert by George Szell and Guiomar Novaes and two debuts by Stravinsky, but, as was customary, expended not a word on jazz or popular music, and devoted twice the space to radio listings as to television.
In jazz, 1952 is best remembered for the formation of the MJQ, but it was also the year Count Basie (a profound influence on Lewis) returned to big band music after leading an octet for two years; Gerry Mulligan started his path-breaking quartet; and Eddie Sauter fused with Bill Finegan. Norman Granz took Jazz at the Philharmonic to Europe, where Dizzy Gillespie's sextet was also on tour. Fletcher Henderson died, and trombonist George Lewis was born. Clifford Brown went on the road with an r & b band, while John Coltrane played section tenor for Earl Bostic and Cecil Taylor matriculated at the New England Conservatory. Louis Armstrong had two hit records, "Kiss of Fire" and a remake "Sleepy Time Down South"; George Shearing introduced his "Lullaby of Birdland;” Thelonious Monk recorded with a trio for the first time five years. Charlie Parker didn't record in a studio, but he kept busy, performing "Hot House" with Gillespie on TV, leading his strings at the Rockland Palace and Carnegie Hall, and working Birdland with four musicians who, one month later, would make their recorded debut as the Modem Jazz Quartet.
If it is relatively clear when the MJQ first called itself by that name, the prelude to that moment is as elusive as most historical events, though all the participants trace the beginning to the Gillespie orchestra of 1947. To reach that point, we have to go back further still. In the words Thomas Mann, "The unresearchable plays a kind of mocking game with our researching ardor." So let's arbitrarily start in 1944, when Kenny Clarke of Pittsburgh was stationed at an army base in Rouen, France and encountered John Lewis of Albuquerque.
Clarke (1914-85) had played drums with various bands in the East and Midwest, including those of Roy Eldridge, Louis Armstrong, Ben Carter, and Teddy Hill. During the stint with Hill, in 1939, he met Gillespie, and the two developed a close association. As house drummer at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem, Clarke was a key innovator of the new jazz later known as bebop. Lewis, born in 1920, had been playing and arranging for several years; he led his own dance band ("dance band or jazz band, it was all the same then") at the University of New Mexico where he studied music and anthropology. His education was interrupted in his senior year when Pearl Harbor was bombed. A month later, he was in the army for a four-year stint. He recalls, "You didn't think much about what you were going to do afterward, because you weren’t sure you'd come back. But I played in the Special Services band and r Kenny Clarke in an entertainment unit. Kenny was an original. He had a completely different way of playing drums, unlike anything before since."
Clarke spurred Lewis's ambitions, and together they created a large ensemble. But the younger man was already thinking of jazz as something that went beyond the confines of a dance band. "I knew that jazz had ceased to be primarily a dance music in 1939 when I heard Ellington play at a dance. His music was too exciting to dance to." When Clarke was posted to Heidelberg, he told Lewis that he had connections in New York and to call him when he got out of the army. After his discharge in 1945, Lewis planned to finish his education in New Mexico, but a teacher in Albuquerque encouraged him to return to New York. With aid provided by John Hammond, he enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music.By that time, Lewis had heard live broadcasts of Parker, Gillespie, Milt Jackson, and others and was infatuated with their music. As soon as he hit Fifty-second Street, he began sitting in whenever circumstances permitted. In June 1946, he contacted Clarke, who invited him to a rehearsal of Gillespie's big band and suggested he bring one of the arrangements John had written for the army band, "Bright Lights." Dizzy agreed to listen to the piece and, before the band finished playing it, offered Lewis a post as arranger. "Bright Lights," re-titled "Two Bass Hit," became a defining work of the era. When the band's pianist, Thelonious Monk, left a month later, Lewis took over that role as well. Gillespie's rhythm section now consisted of Lewis, Clarke, bassist Ray Brown, and vibraphone virtuoso Milt Jackson.
Jackson, born in Detroit in 1923, studied piano and guitar, but made his professional debut as a singer in a gospel quartet. When he realized that by slowing the vibrato on the vibraphone (an instrument that had been almost exclusively the province of Lionel Hampton, Red Norvo, and Adrian Rollini), he could simulate the sound he produced with his voice, he put everything else aside. Jackson was additionally encouraged by Gillespie's enthusiasm for the instrument and for Jackson's stunning, blues-driven legato way of playing it. A year after accompanying Gillespie in Detroit and traveling to New York at his request, he was a charter member of bebop's premiere big band. With Lewis on piano, Gillespie realized he had an ensemble within the ensemble. Ever since Benny Goodman introduced his trio in 1935, bandleaders had contrived to give their musicians and arrangers a rest by introducing smaller units to spell them. Goodman, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, and others even recorded those combos, securing acceptance for what was often characterized as chamber jazz.
Thus the MJQ began life as a kind of entr'acte. As Jackson recalls, "From the first time we performed in that band as a quartet, we became prominent and a part of the band. We would play fifteen to twenty minutes, two or three tunes, and everybody loved it, including Dizzy and the band." The pieces were standards, and they weren't arranged. "It was just tunes that everybody knew," Lewis notes, "and, anyhow, it was just a temporary thing, not planned or anything. There wasn't enough musical advancement." But much was learned in the Gillespie band, playing an arduous regimen of one-nighters, including a tour of the South, where those who came to dance were put off by the music's complexity. Among other things, Lewis absorbed Gillespie's example of showing up on time, and the importance he placed on a presentation that respected the audience. Lewis also had the opportunity to perform his first extended work, Toccata for Trumpet and Orchestra, which he now dismisses with a grimace as "juvenilia."The possibilities of fugal jazz had intrigued Lewis as far back as his studies in New Mexico. A few weeks before Gillespie hired him, he attended Ellington's annual Christmas concert at Carnegie Hall and was most impressed by a new piece, "Fugue-a-ditty," that demonstrated one way of using counterpoint in jazz. "It's a very formal piece and for years I tried to tell people about it, but Duke never recorded it. Then, a few year ago, they released the tapes of the concert. Of course, others also used fugues in jazz - Alec Templeton, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw." Lewis abandoned his original toccata to history, but he adapted three selections from the Gillespie book as MJQ staples: "Confirmation," "'Round Midnight," and "A Night in Tunisia." In addition, he retained reworked versions of "Two Bass Hit" and Gillespie's "Woody'n You," which Lewis had co-orchestrated for the big band.
When the Gillespie orchestra broke up, the rhythm section considered continuing as a quartet, playing under Jackson's name. But for the next three years its members went in different directions. Jackson joined Woody Herman's band for nearly a year and then Gillespie's sextet. He collaborated with Thelonious Monk on some of the most admired records of the period. Lewis and Clarke settled in Paris for a while. On returning, Clarke reunited with Jackson in a Tadd Dameron band and with Lewis in the Miles Davis Nonet. Lewis's association with Davis had begun when Davis introduced him to Charlie Parker, with whom he recorded such classics as "Parker's Mood." (Lewis wrote "Milestones" for Davis as an expression of gratitude for introducing them.) For the "Birth of the Cool" project, he arranged "Move" and "Budo" and composed "Rouge," which would reappear in the MJQ book as "Delaunay's Dilemma." Davis subsequently recommended him to Illinois Jacquet, with whom Lewis toured for several months before returning to New York, where he pursued his education and worked on and off with Lester Young. Meanwhile, Ray Brown had married Ella Fitzgerald and was working almost exclusively with her.
Finally, on August 18, 1951, Gillespie brought his erstwhile rhythm section into the studio to record as the Milt Jackson Quartet for his new label, Dee Gee. The arrangements showed little of the polish to come, yet each of the four selections would resurface in MJQ duds a few years later. Lewis's "D and E" is one of the longest-lived pieces in the MJQ repertoire. Jackson and Brown's "Milt Meets Sid" was refashioned as the MJQ's mid-'50s theme, "Baden-Baden," which appeared along with the session's two standards, Jerome Kern's "Yesterdays" and Harold Arlen's "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," on The Modern Jazz Quartet, also known as "the album-without-a-title" because the traffic-stopping cover depicts four musicians sporting matching three-piece suits and much facial hair but has no writing of any kind. Yet if the Dee Gee session held much promise, an immediate hurdle presented itself: Brown was working full-time in support of his wife. They needed a replacement for jazz's leading bassist. Percy Heath was the obvious choice, despite his relative inexperience.
Born in North Carolina in 1923 and raised in Philadelphia, Percy is the oldest of three distinguished musician brothers. But unlike saxophonist-composer Jimmy Heath and drummer Albert Heath, who performed professionally when still in their teens, Percy didn't commit himself to music until he was discharged from the air force, having trained as a fighter pilot for more than two years. He had played a little violin as a kid, but only after returning to civilian life did he switch to bass, inspired by a Coleman Hawkins record featuring bassist John Simmons. Within six months, he was playing gigs. Howard McGhee, who helped many young musicians in the '40s, brought him to New York in 1947. A year later, Heath performed in concert with Lewis and Clarke in Paris at the First International Jazz Festival-all three then accompanied Coleman Hawkins at a matinee. In 1950, Heath joined Dizzy's sextet, which included Jackson, as well as Jimmy Heath and an unassuming section player named John Coltrane. When the Milt Jackson Quartet recorded for Hi-Lo in the spring of 1952, the personnel of the MJQ was in place. Among the four selections recorded were two that became MJQ standards: Jackson's "True Blues" and Sigmund Romberg's "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise."
Now came the moment of decision. "Those records attracted some attention, and we decided to stay together," says Lewis. "Since all four had reputations - Kenny was the most famous - no one could afford to pay the other three, so we had to make the band a cooperative." In Jackson's words, "The quartet became a unit because John was not going to be a sideman for me and I was not going to be a sideman for him. A collaboration had to come about." Here were two powerful personalities, one an adventurous idea-man and accomplished composer, the other a renowned soloist. Did either of them sense or admit the possibility that they might replicate the kind of association symbolized in American music by Ellington and Johnny Hodges? Today they insist they had no such thoughts, but the comparison has been drawn repeatedly by others.In Clarke, who was universally admired, and Heath, who had quickly become one of the hottest bassists in New York, they had the makings of a historic team. All four men were indispensable to jazz in the transitional early '50s. You can sense how critical they were simply by perusing Miles Davis's work in that period: Lewis and Heath appeared together on Davis's first Prestige session and individually on several that followed; Heath and Clarke attained much of their finest work together on four 1954 sessions with Davis, including one with Jackson that produced an incomparable version of "Bags' Groove." Yet Lewis conjured up a different kind of life and music.
As Heath recalls, the key discussion took place in Jackson's old Cadillac:
John had this idea to write some different music for the instruments that were in the quartet, and wrote "Vendome" and a few other very orchestrated pieces. He wasn't interested in writing for Milt Jackson's quartet, so we became a partnership, a corporation-the Modem Jazz Quartet was the performing entity. John's vision for the group was to change the music from just a jam session, or rhythm section and soloist idea, to something more. We were all equal members, and the dress, the wearing of tuxedos, and trying to perform in concert rather than always in nightclubs, was part of what he envisioned to change the whole attitude about the music.
Jackson agrees: "Everything was methodical, a system. We practiced walking on stage, the appropriate attire. We set a precedent in doing that. We wanted to bring back a level of dignity that we all remembered from watching all those great big bands in the swing era. That was a very important part of jazz that I think we lost somewhere along the way." Similarly, Lewis says of the tailored suits, "That's the Ellington-Lunceford tradition." Although Lewis wasn't tempted to add a wind instrument, he did not consider the instrumentation of vibes, piano, bass, and drums ideal. But he knew he had the right musicians and was determined to do everything necessary to keep them together.Because of Heath's relative inexperience, Lewis was forced to do more notation than he originally planned. Indeed, Lewis argues that he did not at first conceive of the MJQ as a highly "composed" group.
It just turned out that way. Percy hadn't started playing until 1947, the rest of us started playing in the '30s, so a lot of things had to be written for him, chords or whatever, and that was the beginning.
We couldn't do what we had been doing before, all the tunes we'd put together with Ray Brown. But that didn't matter because that's the way the other two members, Milt and Kenny, wanted it to be. So the composing evolved by itself, by necessity.
Asked about the notated bass parts, Heath laughs and asks:
Did you think "Vendome" was improvised? John still writes a lot of bass parts, and not only bass but drums. Certain things are written all the way through, but in other compositions there is space in there for me to play. There are other things in the repertoire, holdovers from bebop days, where I'm completely on my own. When we started in '52, I'd been playing about four-and-a-half years, and John told me, "Percy, you don't know enough about what we're going to do, so you better get yourself lessons." So I went to [Charles] Mingus for a few lessons, but his whole political thing got in the way. I had to correct my intonation and read some more kinds of music. Most of what I'd been doing was just getting chord changes to songs and playing a bass line. John's music was a challenge and I appreciated it.
For Jackson and Clarke, John's musical control was more problematic. "There is no leader in the Modem jazz Quartet," Jackson is quick to underscore, "but John is the music director, and his personality dominates the music, just as mine does when I'm the music director of a group. My playing is much different in the quartet than in my own groups. Sometimes, I get tired of playing the same arrangements, but as a dedicated artist you go along with whatever is necessary." Jackson would assert his creativity by contributing many originals, blues and ballads, to the MJQ book while sustaining an incredibly voluminous recording career outside the quartet. Clarke, on the other hand, could not make peace with the new chamber style, despite the large following it soon attracted.
Still, in December 1952, when the four men first recorded for Prestige, the only skepticism came from the label, which was none too sure about putting out a record without a famous name above the title. Three or four cooperative names had been considered before Modern Jazz Quartet was chosen, but Prestige's producer and owner, Bob Weinstock, insisted on putting out the initial ten-inch LP as Milt Jackson and the Modem Jazz Quartet. A year later, when the MJQ played Birdland, management once again used Jackson's name in the billing. Heath contends, "The people in the business had to be programmed because there was no such thing as a no-name group." The audience had to be programmed as well, although it would have few chances to see the MJQ during the next two years. With Lewis studying to complete his master's degree, the MJQ existed primarily as a recording group.The MJQ's second session for Prestige took place on June 25, 1953, and once again produced two dramatically stylized standards ("Autumn in New York," "But Not for Me") and two Lewis originals ("Delaunay's Dilemma," "The Queen's Fancy"). In October, the MJQ accompanied Sonny Rollins at a Prestige session and, a few weeks later, commenced its first major booking, at Birdland. Heath remembers:
We had a hard time getting people to quiet down and listen. At that time in nightclubs, people were talking about hanging out. In order to break that down, instead of trying to play over the conversation, we'd use reverse psychology and play softer. Suddenly, they knew we were up there and realized the conversation was louder than the music. Of course, if it got too loud, we'd come off - just stop playing and walk off. It didn't take long for them to realize they were wasting their time because we weren't going to entertain them in that sense. We didn't have funny acts, we didn't have any costumes. We were conservatively dressed, we played conservative music, and if you didn't listen you didn't get it. We were four instruments going along horizontally, contrapuntally. There was no backup and soloist, the concept was changing.
After the Birdland gig, there were engagements in Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Carnegie Hall, but the MJQ didn't record again for more than a year. Two sessions ensued on December 23, 1954, and on January 5, 1955, producing one standard, "I'll Remember April," Gillespie's "One Bass Hit," and John's expanded version of "La Ronde," now a four-part suite. The new selections were Lewis's "Milano" and a tribute to Django Reinhardt that became an instant jazz classic, solidifying international interest in Lewis and the quartet.
With his master's degree in hand, Lewis was now planning the group's assault on the musical community. He already had the attention of fellow musicians: reviewing the MJQ's debut appearance at Birdland, Nat Hentoff wrote, "If the success of the Modem Jazz Quartet depended only on the support of jazz musicians, this could be the most in-demand unit in the country." Lewis was ready for the general public, for the world. He was determined to undo popular misconceptions about jazz. Contrary to what several skeptics wrote, he wasn't concerned with the kind of prestige conferred by academic respectability - a subject that provokes his most acerbic comments, especially if he suspects any kind of compromise is involved - but with the fundamental consideration accorded every art worthy of the name.
But first the quartet had to deal with a momentous change in personnel. Two weeks after the "La Ronde" session, the group returned to Birdland, and Kenny, who chafed at the direction of the MJQ and expressed interest in returning to Europe, announced his decision to quit. In 1968, he told Les Tompkins that he did so "not because I felt restricted, but because I couldn't accept the overall conception. It should have leaned more towards folklore than to classical music." He had no regrets, he insisted, adding, "Probably, if I'd stayed they wouldn't have been a success!" "He was trying to find himself," says Lewis. "There was a change in the music, but it was early when Kenny left so it was easy to handle and adjust to. If we had to make the change later, it would have been a disaster. We had to give up a lot of pieces we played when Kenny left." Heath affirms, "It had to change, because there is no other Kenny Clarke. Kenny didn't want to have such orchestrated music because he was an innovator and didn't want his part dictated." Jackson emphasizes the idea that Clarke left too early to derail them: "The three years Kenny was in the group was an experimental stage. We were still looking for a direction."
Clarke gave notice on the last night at Birdland. Monte Kay, the jazz producer who helped create the music policies at the Royal Roost and Birdland, was now the group's manager, a fifth member of the cooperative until his death in 1988. He immediately recommended Connie Kay (no relation) as a replacement. "Early the next morning, after they closed at Birdland, Monte called me," Kay recalled:
and asked if I wanted to make the gig. I said yeah, and then he told me the quartet had a one-nighter that very night and two weeks at Storyville in Boston. I had heard the records and liked the music they were playing, so it wasn't a problem, It was written, but the only thing that was kind of different was "Django"; the drum part on "Vendome" was straight ahead. So it wasn't as difficult as it got. The first piece I had to really concentrate and learn fast was "Fontessa." When I first joined the quartet, we would rehearse every day. I had to find a way to be able to play things that I wanted to play and not overshadow what they were doing.
Kay, born in 1927 in Tuckahoe, New York, began playing professionally at seventeen at Minton's with Sir Charles Thompson and Miles Davis. In 1949, he toured with a rhythm and blues show and began a long association with Lester Young, two jobs that defined his career in the years before he joined the MJQ. Though most of his live appearances were with jazz bands (often on tour with Jazz at the Philharmonic), he earned a parallel reputation in r & b that brought him countless early rock and roll record dates at Atlantic. In time, Kay emerged as an adept colorist and an assured rhythm player, seated behind an array of drums, chimes, triangles, and cymbals, sustaining a subtly invincible pulse. In time, the quartet followed him to Atlantic. But first there was another session for Prestige, which now used Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack. On July 2, 1955, the MJQ recorded several standards, including its first ballad medley and the fugal version of "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise," as well as Jackson's "Ralph's New Blues" and Lewis's second major fugue, "Concorde."
The MJQ found ways to handle most of the problems in taking a band on the road. Monte Kay's attentiveness, advice, and influence helped to break down doors, and the quartet divvied up responsibilities: Lewis was in charge of the music; Jackson assumed the duties of public relations; Heath oversaw finances; and Kay attended to accommodations and transportation. The one thing they needed was the nurturing support of a strong record label. The new year brought them a contract with a young but successful company determined to switch from singles to LPs.Before 1955, Atlantic was primarily involved with r & b; its stunning string of hits included records by Big Joe Turner, Ruth Brown, the Clovers, and the Drifters, most of them produced by Ahmet Ertegun, often with Connie Kay on drums. Atlantic also recorded a few jazz sides as early as 1949, but didn't make a commitment to jazz until Ahmet's older brother, Nesuhi, joined the enterprise to create a line of LPs. Nesuhi had the distinction of teaching the first accredited jazz course at a university (UCLA), but his interests were primarily focused on prewar jazz. At Atlantic, however, he began to concentrate on modem sounds, and his first signings were Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz, and the Modem jazz Quartet.
To Jackson, Nesuhi Ertegun was "the most gifted of record producers, the most compassionate and sympathetic when it came to jazz. The sessions with Prestige were just jobs, a way of getting exposed, but with Nesuhi it was always a collaboration between him and John, or between him and myself when I recorded. It was never a question of him saying, "Now, look, this is what I want you to do." "It made a big difference," said Kay. "In Hackensack, we hardly practiced anything, it was more like a business. With Atlantic, we signed a contract so we couldn't get robbed and we had a place to develop." Heath points out that the change in labels complemented the change in the group:
Nobody ever told John what to do. He brought in the music and that's what we recorded, at Prestige or Atlantic ' . But after we started working more regularly, it became a really systematic thing. We played the songs on the job, so when we came into the studio it was like playing a set. A lot of things were one take, with another take just for security. Tommy Dowd, the engineer, and Nesuhi would be in the control room, and the tape would just roll, and we'd play as though we were on the job. It wasn't like other record dates where you go in and the guy scratches out some chords and hands it to you at the date, like a lot of the Miles recordings. Everything was not only rehearsed, it was refined before we got to the studio.
A key to the MJQ's success is the unruffled blend of European finery with the traditions of jazz, which may help to explain why the band was lauded in Europe first. Lewis knew that the European audience was discerning and influential, and he had no intention of taking the group there "until we were ready. And when we did go to Europe, we were ready and everyone knew it." First, they joined a Birdland All-Star tour in 1956 with Bud Powell, Miles Davis, and Lester Young, then played a major engagement at the St.-Germain-des-Pres in Paris. The big breakthrough came in 1957, when they returned to Europe on their own. Heath recalls, "All the American critics were talking about Dave Brubeck and that kind of West Coast cool sound, and we came along with a sound that was also cool. But it wasn't until we made an impression on the European critics-they voted for the MJQ as the group of the year-that American critics jumped on the bandwagon." They toured Germany, France, and the British Isles-eighty-eight concerts in four months. That same year, Lewis completed his first film score, Sait-on Jamais (briefly released here as No Sun in Venice, the source of some of the MJQ's most durable music) and headed the jazz faculty at the Music Inn summer school launched in the Berkshires. The MJQ had become an institution.Without sacrificing its ideals, the quartet performed in halls previously inimical to jazz (including the Mozarteum in Salzburg) and enjoyed the favor of music lovers who didn't think they would like or understand it. Detractors criticized the MJQ for being "academic" or "effete," though its roots in bop and the blues were everywhere apparent. To those who complained of his juxtaposition of the blues and the baroque, Lewis was quick to point out that jazz itself developed along baroque lines, specifically the "linearity of Charlie Parker's music or the call-and-response writing in the big bands." The MJQ is nothing if not a model for creating inventive variations on the most time-honored elements of jazz. Indeed, no contemporary band was more devoted to or as enterprising in exploring and sustaining the worldly elegance of the blues.
In Jackson, the quartet had one of the most passionate blues improvisers in jazz history, a soloist whose every pealing variation is as informed by his background in gospel as by his perfect pitch. For his part, Lewis remains as steadfast an admirer of the paradigms of Ellington and Basie as when he first heard them long ago in the Southwest. As musical director of the American jazz Orchestra from 1985 to 1992, he interpreted their actual scores; but with the Modem Jazz Quartet, he maintained their precepts in the contemporary arena on his terms. Andre Francis has called the MJQ Lewis's finest creation: "From four musicians, he made a sensitive instrument which vibrates in the same universe of sound, achieving at the same time a communion unique in the world of jazz." Martin Williams described the quartet as "perhaps the best small ensemble in jazz history, an important contribution to the synthesis that modem jazz achieved in its second decade." Leonard Feather acclaimed its devotion to "affirmative values of order and reason-melodic invention, harmonic beauty, subtlety of rhythmic pulse-within which limits all the participants have the option to do as they please." Whitney Balliett described the MJQ as "tintinabulous. It shimmers, it sings, it hums. It is airy and clean. Like any great mechanism, its parts are as notable as their sum."
But no one has captured the intent and achievement of the MJQ more plainly than the visionary who created it. John Lewis told Metronome in 1955:My ideals stem from what led to and became Count Basie's band of the '30s and '40s. This group produced an integration of ensemble playing which projected - and sounded like - the spontaneous playing of ideas which were the personal expression of each member of the band rather than the arrangers or composers. This band had some of the greatest jazz soloists exchanging and improvising ideas with and counter to the ensemble and the rhythm section, the whole permeated with the folk-blues element developed to a most exciting degree. I don't think it is possible to plan or make that kind of thing happen. It is a natural product and all we can do is reach and strive for it. Most groups these days do not or cannot stay together long enough to reach a real understanding and project it.
Lewis had other things to say of equal interest throughout the '50s and '60s: "I think that the audience for jazz can be widened if we strengthen our work with structure." "The music will have to swing, but remember that all music must do this, must have a meaningful rhythmic sense." "The most important thing we're doing, the bulk of what we play is improvisation. The rest is to give us a framework. And even those frames get moved or bent to fit what we're trying to project." "All of what we do is relative, and can be different at different minutes in different sets in different nights." "If everybody was like us it would be dull. It could be monotonous if everybody decided to play inventions and stuff. Or if we played only funky kind of music. We are exploring some of the possibilities."
In a taped discussion with Nesuhi Ertegun in 1956, Lewis was asked if his training in European art music influenced the music of the MJQ, and he responded,
"No, it's only one of the means to an end. I'm only conscious of finding a means to some variety. You get sick of the same thing, the challenge runs out. We use an invention form. I use my own imagination to find things, to find a correct way to manipulate tones. Since we are using a harmonic system that comes from Europe, we have to learn to use it." Asked about his preference for clubs or concerts, he said, "We'd almost always rather play concerts than clubs. Clubs are backbreaking, so they make you strong. But if we play three concerts, it's so good it's amazing to me. You can't do that for hours in a club every night. It's good training, but now we have the training."
Another Musical Crusade for THE BEAU HUNKS SAXOPHONE SOCTETTE
The Beau Hunks play the Original Little Rascals Music, Vols. 1& 2 [Koch Screen 8702, 89021].
In 1994, we directed our attention to the works of composer Raymond Scott [1908-1994] with the Beau Hunks Sextette. Scott's compositions for his Quintette from the 1930’s were, again, transcribed from archive recordings by our staff of arrangers and recorded on 2 CD's: Celebration on the Planet Mars [Basta 30-9056-21]
and Manhattan Minuet [Basta 30-9036-2].
The most ambitious project to date materialized in 1997 when the band was expanded to a 35-piece outfit for the purpose of performing Ferde Grofe’s symphonic Suites as composed for the Paul Whiteman band in the 1920s. This was the first project where we could actually use the composer's original scores and parts which were retrieved in the collections of Williams College and the Library of Congress by the Hunks' leader, Gert-Jan Blom. The results of this project are available as The Modern American Music of Ferde Grofe [Basta 30-9083-21].
The present album introduces the Beau Hunks in yet another setting. For this project the brass, strings and piano were omitted, while the woodwind and saxophone sections were dramatically expanded. The aim of this project was to pay tribute to the various saxophone bands from the first four decades of this century, when the saxophone was still a 'new' instrument.
The extremely virtuoso arrangements for this Soc-tette were made by Nathan Van Cleave for a lineup of nine saxes doubling on clarinets, accompanied by two guitars, bass and drums. Four of these Soc-tette recordings were released on 78rpm discs: "Blue Skies"/"What'll I Do?" [Decca 2698] and "I Kiss Your Hand, Madame"/"After You've Gone" [Decca 2467, both recorded 4/7/39]. Van Cleave also arranged Irving Berlin's "Tell Me, Little Gypsy" and "Crinoline Days" [Decca 2694] for the Woodwind Ensemble with a lineup of clarinets, bass clarinets, flutes, oboe, bassoon and rhythm section.
On the original Soc-tette recordings one can hear some outstanding soloists. We dedicate this CD to all of them - but especially to the Soc-tette's first alto and clarinet virtuoso, Alfred Gallodoro.
Over the past three years, Al Gallodoro has become a dear friend, Our saxophone players had worshipped Al's impressive recordings for many years and were surprised to find out that he was still alive. At the initiative of Robert Veen, Al Gallodoro, performed with the Beau Hunks at the 1996 Breda Jazz Festival before a flabbergasted audience. Mr. Gallodoro - who had to obtain a passport for his first trip ever outside the U.S. - moved several audience members to tears with his playing and impressed the musicians with his incredibly accurate memory and wonderful stories about his career and the people he had worked with, including Whiteman, Scott, Grofe, Shield, Toscanini and many others. Al is a living encyclopedia of American music history.
The following year, by public demand, Al returned to Holland for a series of concerts, TV & radio appearances and several Master-classes at music colleges. A funny thing occurred when Beau Hunks' sax players Ronald Jansen Heijtmajer and Robert Veen drove Al to the Hilversum Conservatory where he was to give a Master-class. Robert played the new Beau Hunks recording of the original Nathan Van Cleave arrangement of "Blue Skies" over the car stereo. Hearing the introduction and the first chorus, and believing he was listening to the Whiteman original, Gallodoro remarked, "Yeah, we were great in those days..." As the music continued, he "recognized" Artie Reyerson [guitar], Sal Franzella [clarinet], Art Drelfinger [tenor sax], and even his own virtuoso cadenza in the coda! Having played a couple of our recordings, Robert stopped the car and told Al that what they were hearing was not the original Soc-tette but the Beau Hunks' renditions of the same arrangements. Al couldn’t believe it and was raving about it for the remainder of the trip, thus giving us the best compliment we could have dreamed of. 
Along with Nathan Van Cleave’s Soc-tette and Woodwind arrangements from the late ‘30’s you’ll find some pre-thirties material to illustrate the history and evolution of saxophone bands.
We hope that these recordings will contribute to a better understanding and appreciation of the pioneers of saxophone playing and arranging.
As one would imagine, in the interests of authenticity, special provisions were made in the making of these retrospective recordings and they are described in the insert notes as follows:
In 2003, Contrasts was issued by the Beau Hunks on BASTA CD [30-9128-2] and this sequel carried the following introductory explanation.
During roughly four decades, the saxophone evolved from a rather cumbersome marching band instrument into a hugely popular and versatile Jack of all Trades. In its early years, vaudeville groups, circus bands, novelty acts and early dance bands incorporated the relatively new instrument into their programs. Some of these ensembles, like The Six Brown Brothers, were offered recording contracts, which helped spread the growing popularity of the instrument even further.
In collaboration with the Frank Holton Co. from Elkhart, Indiana, he modified the saxophone to facilitate higher action and smoother projection of the lower notes in order to accommodate his virtuoso style. Thanks to the pioneering contributions of Wiedoeft, the saxophone finally gained the respect of professional musicians as its voice became more mature. By the late 1920s a veritable “saxophone craze” was underway and there was an increasing demand for saxophones of all shapes and sizes, which were eagerly supplied by a rapidly growing industry.
Our previous album [BASTA 30-9089-2] includes all of Van Cleave’s original arrangements for the Paul Whiteman Sax Soc-tette and Woodwind Ensemble. This new album is a further exploration of the history and development of saxophone music in a wide variety of musical dialects and formats. You’ll hear the entire range of the saxophone family, from bass sax to sopranino, including the extremely rare Swanee-sax!”
In closing this Jazz repertory retrospective of early saxophone music by the Beau Hunks, Jeff Sultanof offers these further thoughts about the relevance and importance of such efforts [paragraphing modified].
Terrell Kent Holmes writing in 
And in a separate review from the same source, C. Andrew Hovan had these comments about the recording:
In his insert notes, C. Andrew Hovan points out many aspects about this album’s qualities so incisively that I thought it best to share them in their entirety. Mr. Hovan has written so often and so well about Conrad’s music that it would appear that he has become an authority on the subject and worthy of such deference and respect.
Coming as no surprise to those familiar with his gifts as a composer, Herwig set out to avoid the clichés associated with your run-of-the-mill organ record. As he explains, "I told the guys I didn't think I was going to have any traditional fatback organ stuff on the record and then I ended up writing some because I think it's impossible to escape that sound because it's in the tradition. But the other tunes are more of my kind of thing in the post '60s harmonic language, but transmuted onto the organ. In fact, I would really be remised not to talk about Larry Young, who is one of my all-time heroes. Larry really made the breakthrough on organ by taking John Coltrane's harmonic language and putting it on the B3. So that's the kind of thing that we humbly try to emulate, [but] with the modern harmonic language." 
Containing its share of heated exchanges, Obligation is notable for a remarkable conversation between Herwig and Jackson that finds both men at the peak of their abilities. "Playing with Gene is just amazing," enthuses Herwig. "But then when you listen back to it, you wonder how you had enough energy to come up with your own solo."
Reviewing a concert performance by Conrad’s group of the music from Another Kind of Blue: The Latin Side of Miles Davis that took place on January 31, 2004 at the University of Missouri, Kansas City Conservatory Jazz Festival sponsored by Down Beat, Michael Shutts noted:
“It was back in March of 2003 that trombonist-bandleader Conrad Herwig brought a stellar nine-piece ensemble into the Blue Note for a weeklong engagement billed as "The Latin Side of Miles Davis." Three nights were recorded, subsequently yielding 2004's Grammy-nominated Another Kind of Blue, documenting the group's reinvention of Miles' landmark work from 1959, Kind of Blue, within the framework of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Caribbean rhythms. Volume 2 focuses on another Miles masterwork, Sketches of Spain, his stunning 1960 orchestral collaboration with Gil Evans that has remained an enduring jazz classic.
Appearing with Conrad on this date were old friends Brian Lynch [tp] Ronnie Cuber [bs], newcomer Luis Perdomo [p], Ruben Rodriguez [b], Robbie Ameen [d], and Pedro Martinez [congas]. Eddie Palmieri is the guest star on this date, but as described in Jeff Stockton’s 
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