The Modern Jazz Quartet: Impressions and Reflections

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The MJQ, as it is universally known, is an incredible delight to listen to. John Lewis (…) the scholarly, soft-spoken, diffident music director of the group, plays what sounds like a simple style of piano. Be not deceived.

His col­league Milt Jackson reigns as the most powerful voice on vibraharp in jazz, with a bluesy style and chromatic fluency that prompted someone to dub him the Steel Bender. John accompanies him in a spare, delicate counterpoint rather than the chordal style common to bebop. Some­times John will play, say, two or three select notes behind a passage. They are the per­fect two or three notes, expressions of the man's exquisite taste and unfaltering musicality.

Percy Heath (…) is a powerfully rhythmic bassist, again one of those players who produces exactly the right notes. Connie Kay's style on drums is unlike that of anyone else: you can rec­ognize it on a record immediately. It is a rather soft style, and he has a way of set­ting up an almost lacey sound with brushes on cymbal that, for all its delicacy, swings strongly. ….

They are a remarkable ensemble with an almost telepathic rapport. The MJQ was original from the moment of its foun­dation, and it still is.”

- Gene Lees

The MJQ was originally the rhythm section in Dizzy Gillespie’s post-war band…. Often quietly understated and with a conservative image, the MJQ nevertheless created thoughtful and often innovative structures, a reminder that the rhythm section has always been the engine-room of innovation in Jazz.”

-Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6^th Ed.

“…, no group went farther in establishing a valid chamber-music style for jazz. This was more than a matter of tuxedos and concert halls. The MJQ's music cap­tured an intimacy and delicacy, and a sensitivity to dynamics, that was closer in spirit to the great classical string quartets than to anything in the world of bop or swing.

But unlike their classical world counterparts, the MJQ thrived on the tension— whether conscious or subliminal—between their two lead players. The young Niet­zsche made his reputation by untangling the Dionysian and Apollonian tendencies in art—analysts of the MJQ need to do the same. The Bacchic tendency, in this case, is epitomized by Jackson, a freewheeling improviser, at his best when caught up in the heat of the moment. Lewis the Apollonian, in contrast, served as Jackson's collabo­rator, adversary, and spur, all rolled into one. He constructed elaborate musical struc­tures for Jackson to navigate, embellish, and, at times, subvert.

Such tensions between opposites often underpin the greatest art, but rarely make for stable partnerships— and, in fact, Jackson's desire to perform in less structured musical environments led to the MJQ's breakup in 1974. But a few years later, the quartet came back together, for the first of many reunion concerts, tours, and recordings.”

- Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz, [p. 284, paragraphing modified]

Arduous in its own way, I’m sure it must have also been a wonderful life.

Especially the frequent trips to France and Italy where the Modern Jazz Quartet was adored.

The architectural beauty of Paris and Rome, the gorgeously appointed concert halls and outdoor amphitheaters, some located in Roman ruins, the delicious cuisines and fine wines, the frequent appearances on radio and television programs; all this and more for over forty years for four, black Jazz musicians.

Not a bad way to make a living.

It seemed that pianist John Lewis, the group’s primary composer and nominal leader, was always looking for melodies that he could set to counterpoint.

Bassist Percy Heath did his best to keep the group swinging while assuming a Stoic stance about those prospects during some of Lewis more elaborate compositions.

Drummer Connie Kay was always finding new gizmos to hit or strike; his drum kit with its suspended triangles, finger cymbals and chime trees at times took on the look of a pawn shop window.

And vibraphonist Milt Jackson, whose long-suffering countenance earned him the nickname “Bags,” often seemed embarrassed by it all while trying to insert the best in bebop and blues licks wherever possible into the MJQ’s repertoire.

“The Modern Jazz Quartet were something of a phenomenon in a world where jazz groups tend to be ephemeral creatures, often living no more than a single night, and reaching the veteran status after a half-dozen years. Not only did the MJQ clock up over four decades in action, but they achieved most of that longevity with only a single change of personnel, and that took place in 1955. The pre-history of the band can be traced to the Dizzy Gillespie big band in 1946, when pianist John Lewis, vibes player Milt Jackson, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Kenny Clarke formed the rhythm section, and often played as a quartet within the band, to allow the horn players to rest their lips. They recorded in 1951-2 as the Milt Jackson Quartet, and when Brown went off to concentrate on working with his then wife, singer Ella Fitzgerald, he was replaced by Percy Heath, and the MJQ was born.

The familiar line-up was completed when Connie Kay replaced Kenny Clarke in 1955, and the rest, as they say, is a long, long history, punctuated only by a lay-off from 1974-81, brought about when Jackson announced his intention to leave the band, citing the limitations on his playing freedoms, the constant touring schedules, and financial considerations, and they decided to quit rather than replace him. In later years, drummer Mickey Roker occasionally took over the drum chair from an ailing Kay, who died in 1994. Albert Heath joined briefly as his replacement, but the group finally broke up for good the following year.

In terms of hard bop, the MJQ were certainly on the periphery of the genre, with other priorities to follow. The essence of their distinctive contribution to jazz lay in tracking a middle path between the competing directions implied by hard bop and cool jazz, fiery improvisation and lucidly textured arrangements. 

The members of the band all had impeccable bop credentials, but the particular direction which they chose to cultivate extended the possibilities of their music in a more carefully structured, compositional fashion. At the same time, they offered an alternative public image for jazz to that of the familiar hipster stereotype, adopting a sober, businesslike, dignified demeanor in which, to quote Ralph J. Gleason's memo­rable phrase, they 'made promptness and professional, responsible behavior almost into a fetish'.

If Milt Jackson was their most dynamic and bop-rooted solo­ist, the overall direction of the band was down to pianist John Lewis, the shaping force behind their musical strategy. Much of the distinctive quality of their music grew out of the implicit creative tension between Jackson's driving, rhythmically-complex improvisations on the vibraphone and Lewis's classical leanings and concern with structure, form and order, which were evident in firmly jazz-based compositions as well as those which drew more directly on European models, notably of the 18th century Baroque era, his favored period.

Rather than simply resorting to standard bop chordal accompaniments underneath Jackson's forays, Lewis also developed a more contrapuntal style of playing, pointing up the improvisation by introducing a counter-melody, as well as writing complex independent polyphonic textures for the group as an alternative to the standard melody-over-chords model. The resulting music sounded cooler and more cerebral than the denser, heated outpourings of bop.

…, Lewis was also a primary motivator in the development of the experiments which Günter Schuller, his chief collaborator in that regard, called Third Stream music. The pianist's Three Little Feelings', recorded on 20 October, 1956, with Miles Davis as soloist, and available on The Birth of the Third Stream, remains a high point of the genre. That development expanded the pianist's interest in the cross-pollination of jazz idioms and improvisation with musical forms and structures based on European classical music, always a consistent feature of his music with the MJQ.

The Quartet's enduring worth, however, was firmly based on their qualities as a jazz ensemble. Their improvisational virtuosity, a group sound which was light and airy but also driving and always swinging, a finely-honed ensemble understanding, and the elegant textural and rhythmic complexity of their music all appealed to a wide spectrum of the potential jazz audience. Their success established the band as one of the most famous of all jazz groups, and a major draw in international festivals and concert halls. While many of their concerns were tangential to hard bop, it is easy to forget in the light of their 'chamber jazz’ experiments that all of the band's members - very definitely including John Lewis - were seasoned bop players, and the style was the foundation stone of their music. Although Lewis subsequently dictated much of the musical direction of the group, Jackson has always maintained that the concept was mutually agreed at the outset….” Kenny Mathieson, Cookin’: Hard Bop and Soul Jazz 1954-65 Edinburgh, Canongate, 2002, pp. 107-109]

“The standard evaluation of the MJQ has stressed the division in approach between Lewis and Jackson (…) and Jackson occasion­ally seemed to fuel that impression. In his later years, however, he reacted angrily to any suggestion of antipathy within the band, blaming the media for seeking scandal or - his own word -dissension where none existed.

He has acknowledged he did not see eye to eye with Lewis on certain matters, at the same time, he made the point that 'the MJQ has been together for forty years, and there's no way a group can be that successful for all that time if ‘we didn't get along'. Jackson also acknowledged that when all was said and done, they all did better as the MJQ than they did on their own.

If Jackson was the star soloist in the band, Lewis was undoubtedly its primary shaping force. … While Lewis was firmly rooted in jazz, he was equally well versed in classical music, an interest which went back to his childhood piano studies, and remained firmly on his agenda as a composer ….

Much of Lewis’s creative effort went into the MJQ, and he had very firm ideas on exactly what he wanted from the band. They included establishing a dignified stage presence, and setting standards of dress (usually performing in tuxedos) and conduct which ran contrary to the popular image of jazz musicians, and especially bop musicians. …. [Mathieson, Ibid, excerpts from 110-111]

Their first recording session for Prestige in 1952 set the musical pattern for the MJQ which would develop over the ensuing decade and that would sustain the group over its long lifetime.

Of the tunes recorded on this first Prestige date, the real marker of things to come was Lewis’ Vendome, the first of his many fugues.

“A fugue is a European classical form which employs complex contrapuntal imitation of a given theme or themes, technically referred to as 'subject(s)', with Bach as its great exemplar. As writers like Martin Williams and Francis Davis have pointed out, Lewis was also drawing consciously on a jazz heritage. Counterpoint was also fundamental to early jazz, and if Bach was a model, so too was the Basic band of the 1930s and 1940s, the inspiration behind what Lewis described as the MJQ's pursuit of 'an integration of ensemble playing which sounds like the spontaneous playing of ideas which were the personal expressions of each member of the band'.

Their distinctive combination of piano and vibraphone as their front line instruments was always central to the airy, refined group sound which Lewis cultivated, ….

Once launched, the MJQ quickly set about defining their particu­lar direction. Their next three sessions for Prestige were gathered on the LP released as Django, and confirmed their unique approach. The title track, a tribute to Django Reinhardt, who had died in 1953, is one of Lewis's most successful and widely admired combinations of carefully structured compositional elements with flowing improvisations.

The slow 20-bar opening introduces all of the thematic material, which is then utilized in inventive fashion in the improvisations, comprising two 32-bar choruses each from Jackson and Lewis, with a dividing 4-bar interlude which aids in emphasizing the symmetry of the piece. The intro­duction is reprised at the end, giving a very deliberately balanced structure which nonetheless sounds quite unforced and organic.

As with other of the MJQ's early works, later versions would extend and refine the music further than they achieved in this original recording, but it remained a perennial favorite in their repertoire. ….

Even at this early stage, the template had been definitively laid out, with Jackson singled out as the lead soloist, and Lewis's formal aspirations firmly established as the guiding influence in their musical direction.

The pianist's lightness of touch and his lucid, highly thematic improvisations were less spectacularly virtuoso than Jackson's, but fascinating in their own right, and at different times the rhythm section was employed both conventionally and also as individual voices within the independent polyphony which characteristically made up the musical texture.

At the same, time, Lewis also looked to develop a more controlled shape to the group's ensemble playing. As Martin Williams points out in The Jazz Tradition, 'Lewis's suggestion to the other members of the Quartet, that they attempt a more cohesive and singular emotional rise and fall in a given piece, may have begun as a piece of self-knowledge. But far from being a matter of audience pandering, it is the most legitimate sort of aesthetic refinement for Jazzmen to undertake - and, incidentally, one that Ellington has used for many years.'

If the 'classical' aspects of their music attracted most comment, both for and against, familiar standards and jazz tunes were an ever-present element at its centre. Jackson's apparently limitless ability to come up with fresh and inventive blues lines and lustrous (if occasionally over-sentimental) ballad interpretations remained equally central to the group's musical identity, and they always swung.

Improvisation also remained at the core of their music, and it is often difficult to tell where composition ends and improvisation begins. Lewis told Len Lyons in The Great Jazz Pianists: 'In all the years I've written music, there have never been any piano parts, not on anything where I've been the pianist. I invent the piano part each time. For me, improvising is the main attraction, not having to play the same thing every time.” ….

They were always impeccably prepared, rehearsing endlessly and performing new material thoroughly before recordings, with the result that, as Percy Heath told Gary Giddins, the material was 'not only rehearsed, it was refined before we got to the studio'. The MJQ raised the hackles of many jazz fans over the years, but they were a unique institution as well as a band who developed in their own singular and unshakeable fashion.

One of the things which irked those recalcitrant fans most was the idea that Milt Jackson was somehow being prevented from unleashing the full flow of his gutsy, blues-drenched playing in the context of Lewis's imposed classicism. That may have happened in some of the band's projects, but for much of the time, Milt had plenty of space and opportunity to stretch out, especially in a concert setting, and the MJQ's large roster of recordings has no shortage of prime vibraphone solos from the master.

Lewis's light, formal structures provided more sympathetic settings for Jackson than has often been allowed, and the sense of exuberant release when the vibraphonist was set loose from some passage of intricate group interplay to spin one of his dazzlingly inventive flights often gave the resulting solo even greater impact than if it had emerged from a driving bop setting. His vibrant solos provided a sharply contrasting coloration within the MJQ's palette, and he profited from Lewis's firm sense of direction and purpose, even where the settings ran contrary to his natural instincts. Jackson never really developed as an innovative leader in his own right, and generally blossomed when others were in charge and he was free just to play,….” [Mathieson, Ibid, excerpts from 113-115]

As Doug Ramsey stated in Jazz Matters:

“Creating a quartet setting that would encompass both Jackson, one of the most unrestrainedly earthy soloists in jazz, and Lewis's preoccupation with formalism presented a challenge brilliantly met. Although Lewis was to be accused of bridling Jackson, recorded evidence clearly shows that the vibraharpist functions most effec­tively in an organized context.

It is often assumed that Lewis im­posed tightly arranged structures on the quartet, but many of the "arrangements" are meldings of written material, variable patterns growing out of the members' collective experience, and spontane­ous creation.

The fact is that among listeners to the MJQ, only ex­perienced jazz musicians are likely to know what is written and what is improvised, and many of them have been fooled often enough to be amazed at what seems to be the group's extrasensory perception.” [p. 245]

Whatever distinctions one chooses to draw or preferences to express about the Modern Jazz Quartet, I’m just sorry that in the forty or so years of its existence, auditions were never held for the drum chair as I would have no doubt enjoyed the lovely European settings, all that great food and the many fine wines on offer.

But then, I suspect that each member of the group did, too.

The audio track for the following video tribute to the group was recorded at the 1987 Jazz Festival in Bath, England.

Eddie Daniels: Masterful and Magnificent

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Daniels’ clarinet sound is exemplary, as everyone knows: throaty but not too throaty down low and mellow but not too mellow up top .… His execution [is almost]  flawless no matter how resourcefully his imagination roams, or how swift the tempo. He woos the ear rather than wrestled it, daring, in this post-Coltrane world, to please…and even to elaborate on (get ready) the melody.”

- Tony Gieske

“Eddie Daniels is truly a phenomenon. Musically, he is matchless in his proficiency, accuracy, technique, and purity of style in both jazz and classical arenas. On an artistic level, his drive to be the best has earned him a position unequaled by any of his contemporaries. On a personal level, it is frequently evident that he is intent on this purpose.

His often gentle, resonant, speaking voice sometimes hides this constant, under-the-surface intensity, but conversation with Eddie soon reveals his passion and enthusiasm for life-love: his music performance. His enthusiasm for his mission seems unlimited.

A certain sense of humor belies his seriousness about his chosen path and reveals a tinge of mischievousness which characterizes his demeanor and displays itself in his playing.”

- Kim Richmond

“Eddie Daniels is a rare example of a post-bop musician specializing on clarinet.”

- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6^th Ed.

Sometimes I write from recollection.

As the years go by this can be a dangerous source, therefore, the following story may be fact or it may be fiction.

In either case, it’s a great story and if it isn’t true, then I’m happy to be writing it into fiction.

Although his principal instrument is the clarinet, when Eddie Daniels first joined the Thad Jones – Mel Lewis Orchestra, he did so as a member of its saxophone section.

Unlike the Glenn Miller, Swing Era days, there was little call for clarinets in modern big band arrangements except to add a bit of “color” here and there.

So Eddie went on Thad and Mel’s band as a tenor saxophonist

One night when Eddie’s solo turn came up on Thad’s Little Pixie following those of saxophonists Joe Farrell, Jerry Dodgion and Jerome Richardson, instead of taking it on tenor saxophone, for whatever reason, he decided to take the solo on clarinet.

Eddie’s clarinet solo knocked everybody out, so much so that he was urged to take more and more solos on the instrument [this despite the fact that Thad Jones was no fan of the clarinet as a solo instrument].

After leaving Thad and Mel’s orchestra and gigging around New York for a few years, Eddie was eventually able to reunite was his first “love” and launch a “new” career as a Jazz clarinetist in the 1980s when he became a GRP recording artist.

Eddie Daniels is in good company as a number of brilliant Jazz saxophonists, notably, Lester Young, Art Pepper and Phil Woods [who majored in clarinet at Julliard], have also performed on the instrument.

But Eddie took it the other way and I’m sure glad he did.

To put it in somewhat dated bop-speak: Eddie is a gas on the axe.

And, as a result of playing it more, he just got better and better and better.

Clarinet is a wickedly difficult instrument to play, let alone to play well. Squeaks and squawks abound as does bad intonation and reedy tones.

Impoverished, improvisatory ideas make some clarinetists sound as though they are in a death struggle with the instrument and are trying to strangle it.

But in Eddie Daniels’ hands, I am reminded once again of how magnificent the instrument could sound when played by masters like Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Buddy DeFranco.

Oddly enough, Eddie and I have a common starting point in Jazz – Benny Goodman.

“Benny Goodman was my first idol,” Eddie said to Leonard Feather in the insert notes to Daniels’ GRP CD with Gary Burton entitled Benny Rides Again [GRD-9665].

“Most people who know my music might not think that, but between the ages of 13 and 15, I was inspired by him. He really blew me away! I had all his records. Later, I moved the away from Benny a bit and got into Bird [Charlie Parker], [John] Coltrane and [Sonny] Rollins.

A similar sequence of events happened in my life, although, in my case, it was drummer Gene Krupa with Benny Goodman’s band serving as an early inspiration and not Benny, himself.

Here’s a little more background on Eddie’s career as written by Leonard Feather in the Benny Rides Again insert notes:

“Few musicians can claim to have scaled the heights twice, on two different instruments, in the course of a single career. Eddie Daniels has that remarkable and possi­bly unique distinction.

In 1966 he took part in an international jazz competition held in Vienna, and won first prize — as a tenor saxophon­ist. Today, of course, he has numerous awards to his credit as a clarinetist and has virtually given up the sax.

Throughout most of his career, until 1986 (the year his Breakthrough album was released on GRP), Daniels had divided his time between the two horns. He studied alto and then clarinet as a pre-teenager. He earned clarinet credits while at the High School for The Performing Arts in New York, and in 1957, just before his sixteenth birth­day, he played alto sax with Marshall Brown's Newport Youth Band.

He earned an MA in 1966 after study­ing clarinet at Julliard, and in that year he became one of the pillars of the sax section in the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis orchestra, playing tenor. 'Thad really didn't want me to play clarinet,’ he recalls, ‘but on one record I did man­age to get a short solo — and that one opportunity was enough to earn me a “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition” listing in the clarinet category of the Downbeat poll.’

Daniels was never satisfied to be pigeonholed in one area. He studied classical flute for ten years. His men­tors included Julius Baker, Harold Bennett and Thomas Nyfenger. He even took up trombone and played it on a record with La Playa Sextet.

After leaving Jones/Lewis in 1973, he took up a variety of jobs in and around New York, but the decision to concen­trate on clarinet became a turning point that enabled him to acquire a new and distinct image.”

And here are some excerpts from an interview with Eddie which was conducted by Kim Richmond, the wonderful saxophonist based in Los Angeles, CA, and published in the May/June 1995 edition of The Saxophone Journal. You can locate more about Kim by visiting www.kimrichmond.com and back issue order information to obtain a copy of the full article at www.dornpub.com.

“Eddie Daniels is truly a phenomenon. Musically, he is matchless in his proficiency, accuracy, technique, and purity of style in both jazz and classical arenas. On an artistic level, his drive to be the best has earned him a position unequaled by

any of his contemporaries. On a personal level, it is frequently evident that he is intent on this purpose. His often gentle, resonant, speaking voice sometimes hides this constant, under-the-surface intensity, but conversation with Eddie soon reveals his passion and enthusiasm for life-love: his music performance. His enthusiasm

for his mission seems unlimited. A certain sense of humor belies his seriousness about his chosen path and reveals a tinge of mischievousness which characterizes his demeanor and displays itself in his playing. Several years ago he made the decision that the clarinet would be his exclusive instrument. During the next few years, he established himself as the jazz clarinetist on the scene, as well as a high contender in the classical field. In the last two years, he has resumed performing on tenor saxophone as well, much to the delight of his many saxophone fans.” …

What was behind your decision to go, several years back, with the clarinet exclusively?

Well, the clarinet is a great challenge as an instrument, an unlimited challenge;

it just doesn’t yield. I tend to be a stickler for punishment. I like punishment. The saxophone yields easier, not that it’s an easy instrument, because it’s not easy to play musically, but I felt that maybe I could do something unique and play the clarinet in a way that would make people more inspired to want to play the instrument.

It seems to me that you bring so much more to the jazz clarinet because of your

classical background.

That was the way I was taught to do it. I can’t let myself play any instrument

until I can really master the sound of that instrument. I look at the jazz sound as coming out of the classical sound, as really being controlled, beautiful, manipulative, and colorful. Most people approach the clarinet from just the jazz sound; they make

one kind of color. It’s a kind of “woofy” sound. I have, however, recently returned to performing the saxophone. It was at the request of friends. Also, I want to expand my audience a little more.

I know of people who wouldn’t listen to you because they were not fans of the clarinet, perhaps because of other jazz clarinet players they had heard and didn’t

care for.

That’s right. Also, I felt that because I had become a clarinet player I was kind out of the “fold.” To the young jazz student in school, the clarinet is still a strange instrument; the saxophone isn’t. The saxophone is so much a part of my bloodstream that it unites me with young people a little bit more directly; then I can introduce the clarinet to them. Saxophone players didn’t relate to me that much. Now that I’m back to playing tenor again, we speak the same language. I’m playing their instrument. I’m loving the tenor. I feel like I have a special affinity for that instrument and I’m having a great time playing it. Now I can go to colleges and talk to kids who play the saxophone. I’m a saxophone player; they identify with me. I can transmit something of what I feel about good saxophone sound because the saxophone has gone in a certain direction lately that I’m not so pleased with.

What is that?

I love Michael Brecker’s playing, but every student has tried to become a Michael Brecker clone. He’s an amazingly great player, but he’s not the only direction. They have kind of gone away from what the tenor really was meant to sound like. Not that I’m really the one to make it sound that way, but there was Ben Webster, Getz, and Coltrane. You know, there’s a whole gamut of other sounds and this whole, funky, fusion, tenor sound that they’re all going towards is great for Brecker, but not great for everybody. ….

“Eddie Daniels is unquestionably included among the very best musicians on the scene today. He is an excellent example of the results of talent, hard work and drive.

Herb Mickman [bassist and Eddie’s close musical companion from their formative years] has a multitude of anecdotes about Eddie dating back to those early days.

He sums it up best when he says: ‘Eddie’s goal in life is to be better than himself!’”

I’m glad that Eddie brought the clarinet back into Jazz.

Maybe you will also feel that way after listening to him play I Fall in Love Too Easily n the following tribute video.

Lou Levy: A Most Musical Pianist

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“For all of his modesty – and it is real, not affected – Lou, in an instrumental setting, is a fleet, inventive and brilliant soloist.”

- Gene Lees

“Lou Levy is quite a musician. Long an established and a highly respected pianist among his fellow musicians, he has been woefully neglected by the public and even by jazz fans. In his approach to the piano, there is always a great sense of assurance, of playing on a larger scale; there is intensity, reflection, humor and showmanship.”

- Andre’ Previn

“Lou Levy is two things that seem incom­patible: the archetype of the bebop pianist and the most sympathetic possible accom­panist for singers.”

- Gene Lees

Like so many other teenagers growing up in the 1940s, Lou Levy was captivated by the language of Bebop.

Unlike many of those teenagers, however, Lou Levy developed the facility, skills and melodic inventiveness to play piano with the best of the Beboppers.

Lou’s Dad played piano by ear and, as a result of his father’s encouragement, he began studying piano at the age of ten in his hometown of Chicago, IL.  Lou’s early idols were Bud Powell and Art Tatum.

In 1945, at the age of seventeen, Lou took his first professional gig with Georgie Auld’s band. Thereafter he performed with artists like Sarah Vaughan, Chubby Jackson and Flip Phillips and bands like the Boyd Raeburn Orchestra and Woody Herman's Second Herd, the bop band that featured saxophonists Zoot Sims, Stan Getz and Al Cohn.

He joined Tommy Dorsey’s band in 1950. Tommy fired him after telling him: “Kid, you play good. But not for my band.”

In recounting this story to Gene Lees, Lou went on to say: “And he was right, I didn’t like it and he didn’t like it.”

Lou never got fired again.

In the early 1950's Lou dropped out of jazz for two years to live in Minneapolis and work in the medical-journal publishing business.

However, it has never been possible to keep a natural and accomplished a musician as Lou away from his chosen instrument for too long a time, and in 1954 he capitulated to numerous requests to return to music and opened at Frank Holzfeind's Blue Note in Chicago, playing solo intermission piano.

Woody's band was booked into the club, and suddenly the sidemen were paying Lou one of the great musi­cians' compliments: they were using their intermissions to sit around the stand, listening closely and passing the word around that Lou was back and in great form. On the last Sunday of their engagement, Al Porcino, the wonderful trumpet player, lugged in his tape recorder and took down some fifteen or twenty of Lou's solo efforts.

These tapes soon achieved almost a legendary status. Musicians all over the country heard them, some had them copied, others remembered them in detail, and "Hey, did you hear those Blue Note Lou Levy tapes?" became the opening gambit of many a jazz discussion.

In 1955, Lou moved out to Los Angeles and began gigging around: with Conte Candoli, Stan Getz and Shorty Rogers, on record dates and one-nighters.

He also began an 18-year association (including some breaks to take other jobs) with the singer Peggy Lee. From then on he became known as a particularly sympathetic accompanist for singers. Like Lester Young, one of his idols, he believed that a musician should know the lyrics of a song he was interpreting and said that a bandleader -- even if not a singer -- should be considered a voice.

As Gene Lees has observed: “Lou Levy is two things that seem incom­patible: the archetype of the bebop pianist and the most sympathetic possible accom­panist for singers, including three of the best: Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Peggy Lee. Peggy calls him ‘my good gray fox,' both for the color of his hair and the clever yet sympathetic nature of his accompaniment.”

After settling in California, Lou became a staple of the studios.   

And he worked with a number of other singers: June Christy, Anita O'Day, Lena Home, Nancy Wilson, Tony Bennett, and Frank Sinatra.

He played with the big bands of Terry Gibbs and Benny Goodman, and with Med Flory’s group, Supersax, which specialized in the solos of Charlie Parker orchestrated for five saxophones.

When Gene Lees asked him about those jazz pianists who are reluctant to accompany singers, Lou simply said, "They're crazy.”

Gene observed: “Lou has a love for the words of songs. It is manifest in the way he plays. He has had a long personal rela­tionship with Pinky Winters, a subtle and sensitive singer little heard outside Cali­fornia.”

Over the years, Lou had a very close and long working relationship with composer, arranger and trumpeter, Shorty Rogers. Along with Pete Jolly, Lou was Shorty’s pianist-of-choice for his own quintet as was drummer Larry Bunker.

In the 1950s, Shorty was hired by RCA to become the head of its Jazz artists & repertoire department and, not surprisingly, Shorty signed Lou to a recording contract with the label.

Thank goodness that Shorty stepped up with the RCA offer as the limited discography of recordings under Lou’s own name would have been significantly smaller.

In addition to a solo piano recording and a trio LP, Lou put together a quartet album for RCA with Stan Levey on drums, whom Lou had worked with dating back to their days together with the Boyd Raeburn Orchestra in 1947, bassist Leroy Vinnegar, everyone’s favorite bassist on the West Coast Jazz scene in the 1950s and Larry Bunker, who in addition to being an excellent drummer, was also an outstanding vibraphonist.

Lou’s quartet album for RCA was entitled Jazz in Four Colors: The Lou Levy Quartet [reissued on CD as Fresh Sound ND-74401].

Here’s what Shorty had to say about the evolution of the album:

“In planning this album, Lou and I spent much time try­ing to figure out a "different" instrumentation. This was no small problem in face of the fact that so many albums are being made today. While trying to figure out an instrumentation, Lou went to work on a job that enabled him to renew one of his favorite musical acquaint­ances: Larry Bunker on vibes. Lou and Larry enjoyed playing together and made a wonderful nucleus for a quartet. This also presented the possibility of forming a group that could record and appear in public.

This album could be called "the birth of the Lou Levy Quartet," and I must say that it was a privilege and a great thrill to be a witness to the birth of this swingin', tasty, musical baby.”

The following video tribute has as its audio track Miles Davis' Tune Up as performed by Lou Levy on piano, Larry Bunker on vibes, Leroy Vinnegar on bass and Stan Levey on drums. It is the lead track on Jazz in Four Colors: The Lou Levy Quartet [Fresh Sound CD; ND-74401].

Orfeu

If you have ever wondered what a samba-beat infused with hip-hop and Portuguese rap sounds like, checkout the audio track in this video tribute to the music of Caetano Veloso's score for the movie Orfeu.

Chris Potter: A Saxophonist With His Own Voice

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

 "Chris was in my composition class at the New School [for Jazz and Contemporary Music, NYC] for about a year. When he called me for a private lesson, I had no idea how he played. We started with a bebop tune; but he went further out on the second thing we played, and on the third tune he was playing in the language of my contemporaries, guys who grew up following all of Miles' bands and aspiring to the kind of spiritual strivings that defined Coltrane's music. By the fourth tune, I wanted to take a lesson from Chris."

- Kenny Wheeler, Jazz pianist

“I try not to allow myself any preconceived ideas of what I should sound like, what kind of music I ought to be writing, or what I ought to be listening to. In this way I hope to discover what I actually do sound like, and what I enjoy in music. The moments of greatest beauty and originality always seem to happen when there's no agenda.”

- Chris Potter, Jazz saxophonist

“Potter is growing into one of the major saxophonists of today. [He is an] astonishingly confident and full-bodied player and shows prowess on any of his chosen horns, each of which he plays in a muscular post-bop manner that are full of surprising twists ….” [Paraphrase]

- Richard Cook, Brian Morton, Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6^th Ed.

“He’s something special. It’s funny. Of all the youngsters out there today, they didn’t find out about Chris until after all the ballyhoo. But he’s the man.”

- Red Rodney, Jazz trumpeter

I’ve always had a lot of respect for the late Jazz trumpeter, Red Rodney, both as a person and as a musician for reasons that will be discussed at length in a future JazzProfiles feature about him.

I’m also always on the lookout for “new voices” on the Jazz scene.

So when I heard Red Rodney declare during a radio interview words very similar to the ones in the following quotation, I paid attention.

I’m glad I did because it helped me discover the Jazz saxophone playing of Chris Potter sooner, rather than later, and I have really enjoyed making the journey “with him” over the past twenty years or so as he has become one of the premier saxophonists in today’s Jazz world.

Here’s what Red had to say about Chris:

“I first played with Chris Potter at the South Carolina Main Street Jazz Festival, an annual thing we do. Three years ago the producer said, we've got our young hot shot here. Every town has one so I said, yeah, OK. Not to be nasty I let him play a tune. Well he wound up playing the whole set.

This young kid knew everything, the entire repertoire. He was not quite eighteen then, but very mature. He went on to win a Presidential scholarship for academic and musical excellence. He also won the Zoot Sims scholarship for the New School, and the Hennesey Jazz Search scholarship. I told him, when you come to New York, call me and I would introduce him around.

Coincidentally, he called just as Dick Oatts was leaving. Dick Oatts had been in my band for five years after Ira Sullivan. So I asked this young man to come and play with us and he's been there ever since.

Everywhere we go, he just breaks it up. This young man is mature. I think with a young man like Chris, you have to let him alone. You have to nurture him but let him do it his way. Eventually he'll swallow the world. In addition, he's a great pianist. We could have recorded a piano solo by him and he would have played beautifully. And he's also a writer.

His style is highly original but, he absorbs something from everyone. He is not, however, like many young ones are, a Coltrane or Michael Brecker clone. That's very important because the main idea of Jazz is to become original, to gain your own style. This is the epitome of Jazz.

When you hear Clark Terry, in two bars or four bars, you know who it is. The same for Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker. There are so many others that you can tell within two or four bars, you know them immediately. That's what I've always tried to get in my playing. If it's original, you've succeeded.

So when you find a youngster like Chris Potter who develops his own style, it's wonderful.” – Red Rodney [as told to Bret Primack].

Following Red’s radio interview, I searched out Chris Potter’s first CD under his own name which Gerry Teekens appropriately entitled: Presenting Chris Potter [#1067].

Neil Tesser insert notes to the CD contain the following observations about Chris’ uniqueness:

“In the current proliferation of baby-faced jazz musicians — many of them gifted, and almost all of them hitting the ground with far more training than their counterparts of earlier generations — we can certainly grant the modern listener a certain skepticism. A well-earned reserve. An instinctive tendency to survey the landscape and wonder where the hell so many similarly skilled youngsters came from. Can they all be that good? What does it take for a musician to rise above the rest, to leave an imprint on the music as a whole? And how soon can such a player really establish himself as a leader of this pack?

At the heart of such conjecturing stands the unpretentious young saxophonist named Chris Potter, who with this album makes his five-star debut as a leader. …

"He's been with me three years now," brags [trumpeter] Red Rodney (warming to the role of surrogate father). "I watched him grow. When he got to New York, he went all over, listened to everybody, soaked it up like a sponge — then spit it out like Chris Potter.

He has his own sound, his own style, and his time is by God sensational. Every place I bring him all over the world, people just stand up and cheer, and he's not the kind of player who plays screech music for that kind of attention; he gets it by sheer artistry."

Ah, youth.

And yet, Potter invites and survives comparisons with musicians who have three times his experience. Two days shy of his 22nd birthday at the time of this recording, he shows a maturity in his improvising, as well as his writing, that obliterates the qualifiers attached to so many in jazz's youth movement. Potter doesn't play well "for a 22-year-old"; he plays well, period.

He brings to each of his saxes a separate personality and the makings of a distinct and recognizable tone, in each case descending from his first horn: his tenor work has a comparatively light timbre — more alto-like — and his soprano sounds rich and full. What's more, Potter doesn't restrict himself to the bebop and post-bop idioms favored by so many of his contemporaries; he frequently edges a solo outside the expected boundaries, yet always with ‘form and structure, and a melodic bent’ in the words of Red Rodney.

Beyond anything else, Potter improvises like someone with an ancient soul; on each tune, he spins a knowing, patient, and yet excited and exploratory solo. He finds deeply effective melodies everywhere and at any tempo, ….”

As is the case with many of today’s Jazz artists, Chris has his own website which you can locate by going here. It contains a full discography, a number of videos and photographs and lots more information about his career including the following overview of his career written by the highly respected Jazz writer, Bill Milkowski.

At the conclusion of Bill’s retrospective, you will find two videos containing audio tracks that provide samples of Chris’ powerful saxophone work. The first of these is a tribute to Chris which features him along with trumpeter Ryan Kisor on Charles Mingus’ Boogie Stop Shuffle.  The second has Chris performing his original composition Juggernaut with John Swana on trumpet as the audio track to a feature on The Art of Jazz Drumming, Part 2.

We’ve also included Bret Primack’s video “interview” with Chris entitled Way Out in the Southwest [you can close out of the commercial at the outset of the video by clicking on the “X” in the upper-right hand corner] and two videos from the Jazz Open Stuttgart concert of December 22, 2010 on which you can hear and see Chris performing Duke Ellington’s The Single Petal of a Rose and his own composition, The Wheel, with his current group, Underground.

 “A world-class soloist, accomplished composer and formidable bandleader, saxophonist Chris Potter has emerged as a leading light of his generation. Down Beat called him "One of the most studied (and copied) saxophonists on the planet" while Jazz Times identified him as "a figure of international renown." Jazz sax elder statesman Dave Liebman called him simply, "one of the best musicians around," a sentiment shared by the readers of Down Beat in voting him second only to tenor sax great Sonny Rollins in the magazine's 2008 Readers Poll.

A potent improviser and the youngest musician ever to win Denmark's Jazzpar Prize, Potter's impressive discography includes 15 albums as a leader and sideman appearances on over 100 albums. He was nominated for a Grammy Award for his solo work on "In Vogue," a track from Joanne Brackeen’s 1999 album Pink Elephant Magic, and was prominently featured on Steely Dan’s Grammy-winning album from 2000, Two Against Nature. He has performed or recorded with many of the leading names in jazz, such as Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland, John Scofield, the Mingus Big Band, Jim Hall, Paul Motian, Dave Douglas, Ray Brown and many others. 

His most recent recording, Ultrahang, is the culmination thus far of five years’ work with his Underground quartet with Adam Rogers on guitar, Craig Taborn on Fender Rhodes, and Nate Smith on drums. Recorded in the studio in January 2009 after extensive touring, it showcases the band at its freewheeling yet cohesive best.

Since bursting onto the New York scene in 1989 as an 18-year-old prodigy with bebop icon Red Rodney (who himself had played as a young man alongside the legendary Charlie Parker), Potter has steered a steady course of growth as an instrumentalist and composer-arranger. Through the '90s, he continued to gain invaluable bandstand experience as a sideman while also making strong statements as a bandleader-composer-arranger. Acclaimed outings like 1997’s Unspoken (with bassist and mentor Dave Holland, drummer Jack DeJohnette and guitarist John Scofield), 1998’s Vertigo, 2001’s Gratitude and 2002’s Traveling Mercies showed a penchant for risk-taking and genre-bending. "For me, it just seemed like a way of opening up the music to some different things that I had been listening to but maybe hadn’t quite come out in my music before," he explains.

Potter explored new territory on 2004’s partly electric Lift: Live at the Village Vanguard (with bassist Scott Colley, drummer Bill Stewart and keyboardist Kevin Hays) then pushed the envelope a bit further on 2006’s Underground (with guitarist Wayne Krantz, electric pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Nate Smith). As he told Jazz Times: "I've wanted to do something more funk-related...music that seems to be in the air, all around us. But also keep it as free as the freest jazz conception."

He continued in this electrified, groove-oriented vein with 2007’s Follow The Red Line: Live at the Village Vanguard (with guitarist Adam Rogers replacing Krantz in the lineup). Says Potter of the adventurous new path he’s carved out for himself with his bass-less Underground quartet: “There was a point where I felt like the context I had been using before wasn’t quite working to express what I wanted or to move forward in some kind of way. My aesthetic as a saxophonist has always been based in Bird and Lester Young and Sonny Rollins and all the other greats on the instrument. What I’ve learned from them in terms of phrasing, sound, and approach to rhythm I’ll never outgrow. However music’s a living thing; it has to keep moving. I’ve been touched by many forms of music, like funk, hip hop, country, folk music, classical music, etc., and for me not to allow these influences into my music would be unnecessarily self-limiting. The difficulty is incorporating these sounds in an organic, unforced way. It helps me to remember I want people to feel the music, even be able to dance to it, and not think of it as complicated or forbidding. If I can play something that has meaning for me, maybe I’ll be able to communicate that meaning to other people, and the stylistic questions will answer themselves.”

With the ambitious Song For Anyone (released in 2007 also and dedicated to the memory of Michael Brecker), Potter flexes his muscles as an arranger on original material for an expanded ensemble featuring strings and woodwinds. "That was a learning process," he says of this triumphant tentet project, "because I hadn’t done anything on that scale before. I just decided to sit down and write, and it was extremely gratifying to see how it translated into live performance."

Looking back over his 20 years since arriving in New York, Potter says, “I’ve had the chance to learn a lot from all the leaders that I’ve worked with. Each gave me another perspective on how to organize a band and make a statement. It’s taught me that any approach can work, as long as you have a strong vision of what you want to do.”

His initial gig with Red Rodney was an eye-opening and educational experience for the 18-year-old saxophonist. “I wish I had had the perspective I have now to appreciate what a larger-than-life character Red was.” Potter's years with Paul Motian's Electric Bebop Band represented a wholly different approach from Rodney’s old school bebop aesthetic on stage. “Motian has really had a big affect on the way that I think about music,” says the saxophonist. “He approaches things from such an anti-analytical way. It’s so different than so many of the other musicians that I’ve had a chance to work with. Motian more relies on his aesthetic sensibility and his instinct. He’s basically just trusting his gut and he’s so strong about it that he can make it work. And it takes a lot of courage to do that.”

From bassist-bandleader Dave Holland he learned about the importance of focus and willpower. "Dave is determined to make his music as strong as possible and present it in the best way," says Potter, who has been a member of Holland's groups for the past 10 years. "Playing with him, you have the feeling there’s this mountain standing behind you that you can completely rely on. Working with him over the years has helped me see the true value of believing in what you’re doing.”

Potter also cites his time on the bandstand with guitar legend Jim Hall as inspirational. “The way that he can be both melodic and sweet and deeply inventive and open-minded at the same time made a big impression on me," he says. Touring and recording with the enigmatic duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker (Steely Dan) offered further insights into the artistic process. “They totally went their own way," says Potter. “I have a lot of respect for them and their commitment to their art.”

And Potter has remained committed to his art since his formative years. Born in Chicago on Jan.1, 1971, his family moved to Columbia, South Carolina when he was 3. There he started playing guitar and piano before taking up the alto saxophone at age 10, playing his first gig at 13. When piano legend Marian McPartland first heard Chris at 15 years old, she told his father that Chris was ready for the road with a unit such as Woody Herman’s band, but finishing school was a priority. At age 18, Potter moved to New York to study at the New School and Manhattan School of Music, while also immersing himself in New York’s jazz scene and beginning his lifelong path as a professional musician.

Now a respected veteran (as well as a new father), Potter continues to work as a bandleader and featured sideman. Surely many interesting chapters await. As his longtime colleague, alto saxophonist-composer Dave Binney, told Down Beat, “Chris is open to anything now. From here on anything could happen.” -Bill Milkowski