Cecil Payne - December 14, 1922 – Nov. 27, 2007

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

“Although he was one of the finest baritone saxophonists to emerge from the bop era, Cecil Payne has been underrated and frequently overlooked throughout his long career. Payne, who played guitar, alto and clarinet (and spent 1943-46 in the military) first played baritone with Clarence Briggs’ band in 1946, giving up alto around the same period (after making his recording debut on the smaller horn with J.J. Johnson). Payne made his reputation as a key member of Dizzy Gillespie’s classic bebop big band (1946-49), appearing on virtually all of the orchestra’s famous recordings. Payne played with Tadd Dameron, James Moody and with the popular Illinois Jacquet band (1952-54), but then spent a period working at a day job. He returned to music in 1956, starting a long-term association with Randy Weston, and he had periods with Machito (1963-66), Woody Herman (1966-68) and Count Basie (1969-71), but despite appearing on many records over a five-decade period, fame (except among musicians) has always eluded Cecil Payne. He led dates as a leader for Decca (1949), Savoy (1956-57), the Charlie Parker label (1961-62), Spotlite, Strata-East (1969-70), Muse and Empathy.”

— Scott Yanow, All-Music Guide

“This powerfully voiced New Yorker gave up playing alto and switched to the big horn in 1946 while working with JJ Johnson. If bebop seemed resistant to the tenor saxophone, it was even more so to the baritone. Payne, though, established a limber, articulate touch while with Dizzy Gillespie, and he has continued to make convincing bop-tinged jazz ever since, albeit with a lighter tone which owes a debt to Lester Young.”

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

I wanted to remember Cecil Payne, the late baritone saxophonist, on these pages and went searching for stuff about him on the internet where I found a touching description of his last years on the Jazz Foundation of America’s website and Peter Keepnews moving obituary in The New York Times.

It is very difficult for Jazz musicians to grow old with any degree of security and comfort because for most of them ther work is very inconsistent and its is difficult to accrue the necessary savings and resources to provide for the needs of old age.

Typically, when they do find work, their wages are paid into the Musicians Unions of the big cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles where dues and other fees are collected out of them before a check gets issued to the musician.

Many of these unions do make available basic medical and hospital health insurance plans, but in order to gain and maintain the coverage, the musician has to generate enough hours worked to qualify for them.

What more typically happens is that the work of playing and/or recording Jazz is so sporadic that the musician essentially leads a hand-to-mouth existence, skips going to the doctor or getting health care on a regular basis and puts very little away for a “rainy day” or for retirement.

Rent controlled apartments are a blessing as are cheap restaurants and fast food stores as Jazz musicians usually generate enough money to pay the rent and eat junk food - barely.

For many years, Jazz musicians who were skilled at reading music could find studio work recording sound tracks for movies and television shows, TV commercials and radio jingles.  But such work was only available to a small coterie of Jazz musicians and has since largely dried up with the advent of digitally developed music that relies largely on electronic “instruments” that can synthesize a wide variety of sounds.

For many Jazz musicians, this world of “studio security” largely passed them by including Cecil Payne. But he bravely carried on through the years forming small combos with musicians in the greater New York area, playing at clubs and festivals, doing a little touring abroad until one day he just disappeared.

Fortunately for Cecil, the Jazz Foundation of America afforded him some comfort and dignity during the closing years of his life.

If you are one of the lucky beneficiaries of the joys of Jazz, you might want to consider visiting the website of this fine, charitable organization and supporting their work on behalf of those Jazz musicians who have brought so much pleasure into your life. Here’s a link to their website - Jazz Foundation of America.

Jazz Foundation of America

“Cecil Payne has proved to be one of the bebop era's strongest baritone saxophonists. Payne joined the most progressive big band of the era, Dizzy Gillespie's, where he made his reputation as a fluid player on a sometimes cumbersome instrument and played on the orchestra's groundbreaking recordings, including Cubano-Be/Cubano-Bop. Payne later freelanced in NYC with Tadd Dameron and Coleman Hawkins, and later working with the Illinois Jacquet.

About nine years ago, Cecil had gone into seclusion because his eyesight was failing due to severe glaucoma, which could have been prevented if he'd had access to proper health care. He didn't reach out to friends for help because he had been a strong and independent man all his life, and he "didn't want to bother anyone." One night Jazz bassist Ron Carter ran into Wendy Oxenhorn [Executive Director of the Jazz Foundation of America] at a club in Harlem and said, "I'm worried about Cecil. No one has seen him in a year."

The next day Wendy called Cecil and spoke with him. He said he was "fine" and didn't need any help. He admitted that he had been going blind. When Wendy asked him how he managed to shop and cook for himself, he confessed that he could only walk as far as the local corner 7-11. He had been living off two cans of SlimFast and a package of M and M's a day for over a year and a half. After hearing that, Wendy tried to tell him that they could at least get "Meals on Wheels" delivered to his home, and he'd get a wonderful meal each day. Cecil wouldn't hear of it. He hung up the phone immediately. The next day, Wendy called him again and said, "Cecil, I was up all night worried about you - please would you let us try the Meals on Wheels just once." "Well, I don't want you to worry about me…actually...Meals On Wheels…sounds cool," he said slowly in his Cecil way, "Meals...on Wheels..."

As it turned out Cecil loved the Meals on Wheels. He called up Wendy the next day and told her, "The volunteer was so nice, and the food was great. I forgot greens were green!"

Because of these nutritious meals, his health improved. He came out of seclusion and started to play again in New York City at Smoke with Eric Alexander, Harold Mabern, John Farnsworth, John Weber and others he loved dearly. We were able to help Cecil in other ways too. We looked into housing organizations for the blind and got him a home health aide to help him out with laundry and shopping. When he discovered he had liver cancer, we were able to help him with his medical needs as well.

Payne had remained highly active during the decades since; even though his eyesight had begun to fail him, his songful sax, flowing lines, and warm tone remained fully intact well into his 80's.

Cecil had the chance to play the Jazz Foundation's Annual "A Great Night In Harlem" benefit concert at the Apollo Theater, where he was reunited with many old friends like Quincy Jones, Ron Carter, Frank Foster, Freddie Hubbard, Candido, Ray Baretto, Clark Terry, Frank Wess and many others. You would have thought he was 25 again if you had seen his face light up when being reunited with his peers.

After this, Cecil found time to perform in the local nursing homes in the Somerdale area, entertaining elderly patients for free. When it became time for Cecil to enter an assisted living situation, we were able to facilitate a smooth transition for Cecil to move into a very good nursing home in Stratford. Never complaining about the pain of his cancer, just the same optimistic Cecil who would say, "The Sun is up and so am I...it's a good day."

In 2007, Cecil said to Wendy, "I want to go home." He said he was tired and ready. He said, "It's time to go." He passed at 6:30 AM on November 27th. He did not die alone. Bucky, his friend and landlord, called to say "He's gone." The sun came up this morning and Cecil rose with it.

Cecil Payne was one of the truly great human beings on this Earth. His positive attitude and his endlessly optimistic nature, no matter how bad things were, always got you a "It is what it is" and "Everything is Everything" and never a complaint or a negative word was uttered from his mouth. The Earth is a little emptier from his passing.”

Cecil Payne, Baritone Saxophonist, Dies at 84

By PETER KEEPNEWS DEC. 6, 2007 NY Times

“Cecil Payne, who in the 1940s was one of the first baritone saxophonists to master the intricacies of modern jazz and who for more than half a century was a leading exponent of his instrument, died Nov. 27 in Stratford, N.J. He was 84.

The cause was prostate cancer, said Wendy Oxenhorn, director of the Jazz Foundation of America, which provides support to musicians in need and had been helping Mr. Payne.

Mr. Payne spent virtually his entire career out of the spotlight: he never led a band of his own, recorded only a few albums as a leader and played an instrument that rarely takes center stage in jazz. But he was highly regarded by his fellow musicians, especially those he worked for — a list that included Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Randy Weston and many others — and by the critics.

The beginning of Mr. Payne’s career coincided with the birth of bebop. With its complex harmonies, tricky rhythms and blistering tempos, the new music posed challenges to all musicians, but some instruments were better suited to its demands than others. While the often cumbersome baritone saxophone was not an ideal vehicle for modern jazz, Mr. Payne’s highly fluid and melodic approach effected a seamless marriage between instrument and idiom.

One of his first high-profile jobs, shortly after he was discharged from the Army in 1946, was with Gillespie’s big band, an ultramodern ensemble that played a famously demanding repertory. He remained with Gillespie’s band for three years and was prominently featured on some of the band’s best-known recordings. Few if any baritone saxophonists recorded as many memorable solos in the early days of bebop.

Cecil McKenzie Payne was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 14, 1922. As a teenager he studied alto saxophone, and his earliest recordings were made on that instrument. By the time he joined Gillespie, after a brief stint with Gillespie’s fellow trumpeter Roy Eldridge, the baritone had become his primary horn.

After leaving Gillespie in 1949, Mr. Payne worked with various other bandleaders, notably the tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet. But by the mid-1950s he was essentially a freelance sideman, and he remained one for the rest of his life.

In his later years he battled glaucoma and other health problems, but he continued performing and recorded several albums for the Chicago-based Delmark label. Encouraged by a group of younger musicians who worked with him, and given financial and medical help by the Jazz Foundation, he was a frequent attraction at the Upper West Side nightclub Smoke and, more recently, at the Kitano Hotel at Park Avenue and 38th Street.

Survivors include his sister, Cavril Payne, a singer.”

For many years, Cecil has a close association with pianist Randy Weston and he performs Randy’s original composition J & K Blues on the following video montage along with Ray Copeland on trumpet, Randy, Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass and Wilbert Hogan on drums.

The Brothers Candoli

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

Being around the Southern California Jazz scene in the second half of the 20th century was great for so many reasons, not the least of which were the many opportunities to hear trumpeters Pete and Conte Candoli perform in a variety of settings.

Pete (left in photos) and Conte Candoli would be high on anyone's list of illustrious brothers in jazz. Both came to the fore in the exuberant First Herd of Woody Herman, the band that included Ralph Burns and trombonist Bill Harris. Pete had played in the bands of Sonny Dunham, Will Bradley, Ray McKinley, Tommy Dorsey, and Teddy Powell, but it was Herman who featured him to fullest advantage.

Because he was so handsome and so powerful a trumpet player, Pete took on a Superman status, and finally Woody featured him in that role. In a Superman costume made by his wife, Pete would leap onstage from the wings, trumpet held high, and blast out the high notes. It was very funny, and typical of that brilliant, crazy band.

Conte Candoli first played with Woody in 1943 during the summer vacation months, when he was still a sixteen-year-old high school student. On graduation in 1945, he joined the band full-time, where the brothers Candoli sat side by side in the trumpet section.

Pete is primarily a lead-trumpet player. Rob McConnell has said, "Give me a great drummer and a great lead trumpet and I'll give you a great band." The lead-trumpet chair is a strenuous and demanding position. Pete is one of the best.

After leaving Woody, Pete played lead for Boyd Raeburn, Tex Beneke, Jerry Gray, Les Brown, and Stan Kenton. He settled in Southern California and immediately found himself in demand in the studios. If you ever see the Marlon Brando film One-Eyed Jacks, note the solo trumpet in Hugo Friedhofer's haunting score. That's Pete.

Conte is a bebopper inspired by Dizzy Gillespie. He has played with so many major jazz performers that it is impossible to list them all. Gerry Mulligan, Teddy Edwards, Shelly Manne, Terry Gibbs are only a few. Like many jazz musicians, Conte is active as a teacher.

From time to time, Conte and Pete performed together. You can hear the differences in their playing. And you can notice the warm fraternal love they have for each other, which John Reeves has captured so well in these portraits.

The Brothers Candoli are no more, but you can enjoy some of the magic they made while playing together with a sampling of their music on the following video tribute to them.

The Individualism of Gil Evans

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

“Born with the Victorian-sounding name Ian Ernest Gilmore Green, and first marketed by major record labels in the 1960’s as a middle-aged hipster in a business suit, Gil Evans … was a unique American artist who rebelled against stereotypes of class and race. Born in Canada of Australian parentage in 1912, Evans was raised mainly in California.   He seemed to live with a spirit that was marked by the Californian dream in its purest form: to create the impossible in everyday life, through means that are both peaceful and sensual. It was this humble fire, expressed through an unpretentious demeanor and relentless musical curiosity, which fueled Evans' works and won him the respect of such younger rebels of the 1940’s Jazz scene as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan and Max Roach.”

- Eliot Bratton

I wanted to spend time doing blog features about some of my favorite recordings and The Individualism of Gil Evans [Verve 833 804-2] certainly ranks high on that list.

As Richard Cook and Brian Morton observe in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.: “Evans’ name is famously an anagram of Svengali and Gil spent much of his career shaping the sounds and musical philosophies of younger musicians. … His peerless voicings are instantly recognizable.”

Beginning with New Bottle, Old Wine with its very revealing subtitle - “The Great Jazz Composers Interpreted by Gil Evans - and continuing with his orchestrations for Miles Davis on their Columbia epochal associations including Miles Ahead and Porgy and Bess, my repeated listening to Gil’s arrangements revealed a relaxed sophistication, use of very simple materials, and lots of open measures and other forms of space that created a texture in his music that was unlike any other that I’d ever heard before - and with the rare exception - since.

“Texture” joins with melody, harmony and rhythm [meter] as a fourth building block used to create a musical composition? Ironically, of the four basic musical atoms, the most indefinable yet the one we first notice is – “texture.”

“Texture” is the word that is used to refer to the actual sound of the music. This encompasses the instruments with which it is played; its tonal colors; its dynamics; its sparseness or its complexity.

Texture involves anything to do with the sound experience and it is the word that is used to describe the overall impression that a piece of music creates in our emotional imagination.

Often our first and most lasting impression of a composition is usually based on that work’s texture, even though we are not aware of it. Generally, we receive strong musical impressions from the physical sound of any music and these then determine our emotional reaction to the work.

By the time of its issuance in 1964 The Individualism of Gil Evans represented a major step away from the close Columbia collaboration that Gil had formed with Miles and a major step into his own music on Verve [and later Impulse!] which allowed the sonority [texture] of Evans’ arrangements to become even more pronounced.

As Stephanie Stein Crease explains in her definitive biography Gil Evans Out of the Cool: His Life and Music:

“ … Gil held his own first recording session for Verve with Creed Taylor as producer in September 1963. Gil lucked out with Taylor (founder of the Impulse! label and producer of Out of the Cool). Arriving at Verve not long before, Taylor made an immediate splash as producer of the first wildly successful bossa nova records (with Stan Getz, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Joao and Astrud Gilberto), including "The Girl from Ipanema." Verve gave Taylor carte blanche, which he passed along to Gil. Gil was allowed the number of musicians and recording time he wanted. He was even able to record some sketches on studio time—an unheard-of luxury for a composer/arranger. Gil was also allowed to record one or two pieces at a time, whenever he had something ready, instead of conceiving of an entire album beforehand. Taylor was confident that an album would eventually materialize if he gave Gil free reign.

At the first session, Gil recorded two of his own compositions, "Flute Song" and "El Toreador," It wasn't until April 1964 that he recorded another two arrangements; then, in the following six months he recorded six new arrangements for large ensembles and several sketches with a quartet. The resulting album became The Individualism of Gil Evans, released in late 1964.

The album contains some of Gil's best music on record. Selections include Kurt Weill's "The Barbara Song" and four Evans originals: "Las Vegas Tango," "Flute Song," "Hotel Me," and "El Toreador." Several of the musicians, including Johnny Coles, Steve Lacy, Al Block, Jimmy Cleveland, Tony Studd, Bill Barber, Elvin Jones, and Paul Chambers, played on all the sessions, preserving a consistency in the textures, mood, and overall sound. Other stellar personnel—Eric Dolphy on various woodwinds, Wayne Shorter on tenor, Phil Woods on alto, and Kenny Burrell on guitar—were on hand for some sessions and recorded with Gil for the first time. Gil plays piano on every track, and his performance, particularly on "The Barbara Song," functions as an indicator of his conceptual direction. On the Weill song, the mood is full of pathos, with Wayne Shorter's tenor sax taking up the cry. "El Toreador," built on one chord, sounds like a development of one of the Barracuda cues; Johnny Coles's plaintive trumpet is the foremost voice, cutting through the rumblings of the low brass and three acoustic basses and a whirring tremolo in the high reeds.

The musicianship on all the Verve sessions is of the highest order. The musicians dig deeply into the music, both as soloists and as ensemble players. Again there is an Ellingtonian parallel; the musical personalities are so strong on these recordings that horn voicings and ensemble passages are characterized by the collective sound of the people playing them.”

And here are excerpts from Gene Lees’ original liner notes to  The Individualism of Gil Evans:

“The gifted young composer, arranger, and critic Bill Mathieu once wrote of Gil Evans: "The mind reels at the intricacy of his orchestral and developmental techniques. His scores are so careful, so formally well-constructed, so mindful of tradition that you feel the originals should be preserved under glass in a Florentine museum."

Mathieu's feelings about Evans are not unusual. Without doubt the most individualistic and personal jazz composer since Duke Ellington, Evans is held in near-reverence by a wide range of composers, arrangers, instrumentalists, and critics. This feeling is only intensified by the fact that he is a rather inaccessible man — not unfriendly, or anti-social; just politely, quietly inaccessible — whose output has been small, and all of it is indeed remarkable.

What is it that makes Evans' work unique? This is impossible to say in mere words, but with your indulgence, I'm going to try to clarify some of it. What I want to say is not for the professional musician but the layman; the pros are invited to skip the new few paragraphs.

Every "song" is built of two primary components: its melody and its harmony. Rhythm is the third major factor, but I want to confine myself to the first two.

As the melody is played, a certain sequence of chords occurs beneath it. Now the bottom note of these chords sets up a sort of melody of its own. This is referred to as the "bass line" and it has great importance to the texture and flavor of the music. As a first step to the appreciation of Gil Evans, try not hearing the melody but listening to the bass line on some of these tracks.

Between the bass note and the melody note fall the other notes of the chord. You can put them down in a slap-dash fashion, so that you've got merely chords occurring in sequence like a line of telephone poles holding up the wire of melody; or you can link the inner notes of one chord to the inner notes of the next one, setting up still other melodies within the music. These new lines are called the "inner voices" of the harmonization. How well he handles inner voices is one of the measures of a composer's or an arranger's writing skill.

Gil's handling of them is often astonishing. His original melody, his bass line, and his inner lines are always exquisite. The result is that one of Gil's scores is faintly analogous to a crossword puzzle: it can be "read" both vertically (up through the chords) or horizontally in the form of ihe various melodies he sets up. Heard both ways simultaneously, his music can be breathtaking.

That's part of it.

Another and important part is his use of unusual instrumentations. Evans has virtually abandoned the standard jazz instrumentation of trumpets - trombones - saxes. He uses flutes, oboes, English horns (the standard classical woodwinds), along with French horns and a few of the conventional jazz instruments to extend the scope of the jazz orchestra. Evans was one of the first to use French horns in jazz, in the days when he was chief arranger for the celebrated Claude Thornhill orchestra. Not only does Gil use "non-jazz" instruments (usually played by jazz players, however), but he puts them together in startling ways, to create unearthly and fresh lovely sounds.

Finally, there's his sense of form, of logical construction. Everything he writes builds to sound and aesthetically satisfying climaxes, beautifully developing the previously-stated material. I know of no one in jazz with a more highly-developed sense of form than Gil Evans.

Yet, with all his gifts, Gil is oddly down-to-earth about his music. Once, when I told him that some people were having trouble deciding whether an album he had done with Miles Davis was classical music or jazz, he said, "That's a merchandiser's problem, not mine." Another time he said, "I write popular music." What he meant, of course, is that he wanted no part of pointless debates about musical categorizations; that he was making no claims on behalf of his music; and that since that music grew out of the traditions of American popular music, he was content to call it that.

On another occasion he said, "I'm just an arranger" This comment I reject. Even when Gil is working with other people's thematic material, what he does to it constitutes composition. …

To say that this album has been long-awaited is no cliche. It is the first Gil Evans recording in three years. "I stayed away from music for two years!' he said. "I wanted to look around and see what was happening in the world outside of music."

Welcome back.

We've missed you.”

The following video montage has on offer the Nothing Like You track from The Individualism of Gil Evans.

Eric Alexander: 25 to 50

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

"Developing your sound is a lifelong endeavor. Ninety percent of the practicing I do is working on my sound."

"I guess more than anything, strong piano players make me play better: the stronger they are, the more in my face, the better I play. It's almost like I don't have to come up with anything on my own — they just steer me along.”

"I've always been partial to soulful playing, the stuff that connects with people; to me, that's everything. I don't want to play down to people, but I always want to maintain those elements that have made jazz what it is."

"I'm just not interested in that kind of obligation right now," he says with easy acceptance. "I don't really want to be in charge yet. I'd really rather be in other people's bands, because I feel I have a lot to learn in that respect. I'd just like to play my role within the larger context."

"I think I'm just naturally akin to that kind of sound and phrasing [referring to Dexter Gordon.] More than anything, I've always loved the bigger sounds. But harmonically, I'm more in tune with people like Hank Mobley — even though I don't particularly sound like him — and Sonny Stitt, for sure. When I first delved into playing, I sort of lived and breathed Sonny Stitt, because he was just so perfect."

"Right now, I just pick tunes that really reflect where my heart lies, the kind that feel most comfortable, most natural. But I find that different tunes lead my solos in different ways, so I pick them with an understanding of what kind of solo each tune will bring out of me."

- Eric Alexander, tenor saxophonist

It’s hard to believe that it’s been twenty-five years since I first heard tenor saxophonist performing on record, but then, most things these days “seem like it was just yesterday." [Eric turns 50 in August of this year]

The occasion was his 1992 New York Calling Criss Cross Jazz CD [1077] which I bought at the time primarily because it featured Kenny Washington on drums.

Boy, was I in for a big surprise as in addition to Eric's super playing, the disc also introduced me to John Swana on trumpet; Richard Wyands, piano and Peter Washington, bass along with Kenny round out a first-rate rhythm section.

Since then, Eric has gone on to develop a formidable career in the Jazz - not an easy thing to do these days - with his own quartet which is usually made up of Harold Mabern on piano, John Webber on bass and Joe Farnsworth on drums.

John and Joe also join Eric when he performs with the group One for All, a unit that is very much reminiscent of the classic Art Blakey Sextet. Pianist David Hazeltine joins John and Joe in the rhythm section and Jim Rotondi on trumpet and Steve Davis on trombone make up the front-line along with Eric.

Eric is also a member of Mike LeDonne’s Hammond B-3 organ Quartet along with Peter Bernstein on guitar and Joe Farnsworth once again on drums. Eric works regularly with Mike’s combo at Smoke’s in New York City.

Either leading his own group or as a member of One for All or Mike LeDonne’s foursome, Eric is a fixture on the New York Jazz scene as well as the International Jazz Festival circuit and makes frequent trips to Japan and to Chicago [he was born in Galesburg, IL, about 200 miles west of Chicago].

Over the past 25 years, Eric has made over two dozen recordings as leader for labels including Delmark, Hep, Milestone, Criss Cross, Sharp Nine, Venus and High Note. You can locate information about these recordings by clicking on the following link to Eric’s page on Discogs.

Eric talked about his early and formative Jazz experiences in The Windy City and The Big Apple with Neil Tesser who incorporated them into the following insert notes to New York Calling [Criss Cross Jazz CD 1077].

New York Calling

“In some ways. Eric Alexander at 25 is just an old-fashioned boy. When he lifts the tenor saxophone to his lips, the notes spill out on a plush carpet of sound that brings to mind the sax founts of earlier years: Hawkins, Gordon, Rollins, Coltrane, and the giant-toned Chicago tenor men, like Gene Ammons and Johnny Griffin, Ira Sullivan, and Von Freeman. ("Developing your sound is a lifelong endeavor," Alexander admits with a mixture of awe and pride. "Ninety percent of the practicing I do is working on my sound.")

He prefers a rhythm section that shoves right up against him — accompanists who rank subtlety several notches below unadorned swing and the independent line. You can find the model for this hard-driving, no-holds-barred style in the explosive fire of bebop and the earthy percussion patterns of the 50s, that decade when hard-bop roamed the planet. ("I guess more than anything, strong piano players make me play better: the stronger they are, the more in my face, the better I play. It's almost like I don't have to come up with anything on my own — they just steer me along.)

He insists, with sure instincts about jazz's earliest roots, that his music communicates above all with immediacy and warmth — one reason he has long loved the soulful organ bands of the 50s and 60s. No wonder, then, that when he arrived in Chicago, shortly after college, he quickly made his way onto the city's south side club scene, and from there into the touring band led by the organist Charles Earland. ("I've always been partial to soulful playing, the stuff that connects with people; to me, that's everything. I don't want to play down to people, but I always want to maintain those elements that have made jazz what it is.")

The old-fashioned can become suddenly new, though, in the right context. For instance, we live in a time when a truckload of jazz's young lions can barely restrain themselves from establishing their own bands; so when Alexander states his desire to hook on as a sideman with established mentors, it strikes us as something novel. ("I'm just not interested in that kind of obligation right now," he says with easy acceptance. "I don't really want to be in charge yet. I'd really rather be in other people's bands, because I feel I have a lot to learn in that respect. I'd just like to play my role within the larger context.")

And in an era way past the demise of the cutting session, the "battles of the bands," and the idea that competition gets in the way of music's loftier goals, Eric Alexander arrives largely as the result of a contest — the Thelonious Monk Institute's 1991 competition for tenor saxophonists, in which he finished second to Joshua Redman (and a notch above his Criss Cross labelmate, Chris Potter). Not bad for a guy who started playing the tenor — in fact, who had begun concentrating on jazz at all — just five years earlier.

Born in 1968 in western Illinois, Alexander grew up in Washington state, but headed back to the midwest to attend Indiana University — as an alto saxophonist studying classical music. Before that year ended, however, he had discovered an unexpected affinity for jazz, leading him to transfer to the exceptional jazz program at William Paterson College in New Jersey.

He had also discovered the tenor saxophone, in a story worthy of those "girl-next-door" stories that dot fiction and cinema, and always seem too obvious to be true.

Alexander's father had purchased a tenor sax for him years earlier, but he had paid little attention to it. "The first time I really played the tenor was at a wedding gig, my freshman year in college," he remembers. "It was just a borrowed horn, but it just felt so much better than the alto did." In fact, says Alexander, it felt better than the alto ever did, even though he had been playing the smaller horn for more than five years. "It was right at that point that I decided I wanted to switch to jazz. The alto felt so horrible to me afterwards that to this day, I haven't been able to play it at all." Not long after making this recording, Alexander simply sold his alto, with the firm conviction that he had found his one true instrumental love.

Any chorus of any tune on this album and you'll understand the romance. Despite Alexander's protestations about the work he must do on his tone, he commands a huge and supple sound: like an extension of his own voice, it suggests that tenor players are in fact born, not made. He devours chord changes, the more the better, with both an inviting urgency and a focus on the details of finding new linkages between those changes: eloquent testimony to his tireless study of harmony. And his pinpoint control of the time allows him to regularly lag ever-so-slightly behind the beat, giving even his most ferocious improvisations the unflappable quality of a man truly in charge.

For all those reasons, Alexander's playing has drawn comparisons to that of Dexter Gordon. Alexander certainly doesn't mind such comments (Dexter being one of the many tenorists who've shaped his music); but he quickly points out that any such similarities involve something other than conscious imitation: "I think I'm just naturally akin to that kind of sound and phrasing. More than anything, I've always loved the bigger sounds. But harmonically, I'm more in tune with people like Hank Mobley — even though I don't particularly sound like him — and Sonny Stitt, for sure. When I first delved into playing, I sort of lived and breathed Sonny Stitt, because he was just so perfect." Don't ignore, either, the important guidance of Von Freeman, the legendary Chicago saxist who regularly presides over late-night blowing sessions at which he encourages younger players with both his words and his remarkable musical actions.

Alexander's Chicago experience remains a pivotal one for the saxist, who surfaced in the midwest shortly after college. "I was always kind of obsessed with living there; my mother's family is from Chicago, and of course, I was fascinated with the idea of playing with those organ groups on the south side." After his time with Charles Earland, Alexander heard New York's call, settling there in the summer of 1992; but he has re-created his Chicago jam-session experiences with sessions at the club named Augie's, where he can be found most weekends performing with such storied older players as the baritone saxist Cecil Payne and the altoist John Jenkins.

Alexander's Criss Cross debut finds him in the company of John Swana, the great Philadelphia trumpeter whose two Criss Cross albums have showcased his pure melodies and effervescent tone — and a rhythm section with whom Alexander knew he could comfortably work. After all, pianist Richard Wyands, bassist Peter Washington, and drummer Kenny Washington made up the rhythm section that boosted Alexander to his second-place finish at the Monk competition. The two unrelated Washingtons have developed a tasteful, versatile, and potent partnership reminiscent of earlier such pairings (Paul Chambers & Philly Jo Jones; Bob Cranshaw & Billy Higgins). But it takes nothing away from them to suggest you pay special heed to the solos, and even moreso the accompaniments, of Wyands, a mature and steadying player who was one of the young tenorist's instructors at William Paterson.

Alexander selected the material for this date without much fuss: "Right now, I just pick tunes that really reflect where my heart lies, the kind that feel most comfortable, most natural. But I find that different tunes lead my solos in different ways, so I pick them with an understanding of what kind of solo each tune will bring out of me." New York Calling resembles a typical, well-spiced Eric Alexander set, with highlights everywhere. You'll find your own: I lean toward the Rollinsesque nature of his version of Swedish Schnapps, as well as the way he has turned Wives And Lovers into an Afro-Cuban dynamo . And anyone who chooses to resurrect the lovely and forgotten Arthur Schwartz ballad Then I'll Be Tired Of You — with verse intact, no less! — deserves kudos for that alone.

In the early part of this century, the American novelist Edith Wharton spoke of what she considered a "common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before." Eric Alexander, like many of his contemporaries, has no such fear. But his utter mastery of the jazz fundamentals sets him quite apart from most of the pack. That skill allows him to provide new twists on old ideas — which here serve as brand-new inspirations to a saxophonist of unquestioned accomplishment and boundless promise.”

NEIL TESSER

You can check out Eric’s powerful and propulsive tenor playing on the following video montage that features his original composition One for M which is the opening track on New York Calling.