The most surprising aspect of the score for The Russia House is its simplicity in instrumentation and repetition. It's hard to imagine how a score of this minuscule size and scope could be so overwhelming in its appeal. That might say something about Goldsmith's raw talent, and perhaps it speaks to three years of development on the concepts.
His base elements are simple; a jazz trio handles the majority of the themes and underscore, with saxophone performances by Branford Marsalis (both scripted and improvised) that are nothing short of spectacular. Never once does he quiver unintentionally or even slightly miss a note. Perfection is bliss.
Michael Lang is equally renowned for his fabulous piano performances, and he delicately establishes an elevated level of classy bar room atmosphere for Marsalis' sax. The bass, performed by John Patitucci, has a larger role in the score, not only providing a rhythm for the other two jazz performers, but also handling a large portion of the underscore.
[The trio restatement of the theme kicks in at around 5.50 minutes of the video.]
"downbeat: How did you decide to record In Crowd? It isn’t exactly an obvious song.
Lewis: I was in Washington D.C. playing at the Bohemian Caverns. We had a record session coming up on the weekend. This was like on Tuesday. We were gonna do like nine tunes, and I think I had seven down. So one afternoon, I was having lunch in this place, and this waitress came over and she said, "What are you doing?" I was getting my notes together for the album, what I was gonna play. She said, "Why don’t you record The In Crowd?" The in what? She said, "It’s on the jukebox.” And she played it. So I said, maybe. I was kind of desperate at that moment. The session was three days away and I needed two more tunes. So I went by a record store, I bought the 45, took it back to my hotel, and played it, wrote out the changes, and we had rehearsal that day. And it felt good. But I said, well, at least it’ll fill the album out — because as far as I was concerned that was not one of the major tunes on the album. So we played it that night, and the people started reacting to it. So I said, maybe this will do good for the album. That following night, we recorded it, and the audience participation was out of sight. They were clapping and carrying on and, of course, it’s history now. " - Ramsey Lewis to Michael Bourne, downbeat 10.25.1977
I know I’ve shared this view before, but it bears repeating. Over the years, my enjoyment of Jazz has been considerably enhanced by the wise and thoughtful liner notes that graced the back of LPs or by the more recent insert notes that can be found in CD jewel cover booklets. Initially, these liner notes made up for the dearth of books as a source of knowledge on the subject of Jazz when I first began listening to the music in the 1950s. Holding the jacket cover in hand while listening to the album, my eyes poured over what Ira Gitler or Nat Hentoff or Leonard Feather, to name only a few of my early “mentors,” had to say about the music that was filling my ears and my heart with pleasure. Since I was also a student of the music for the purpose of wanting to become a Jazz musician myself during those early days, I was especially intrigued by writers that explained song structures, chord sequences and, especially, anything to do with rhythmic patterns or time signatures since these were particularly important to an aspiring, young Jazz drummer. It is safe to say that I owe an huge debt of gratitude to Leonard Feather, Ted Gioia, Bill Kirchner, Doug Ramsey, Whitney Balliett, Jack Tracy, Gary Giddins and others for helping me to learn and to appreciate more about the music that I have been in love with since I first heard it over 50 years ago. And because my appreciation of Jazz benefited so greatly from the information and knowledge that I gleaned from the writers of the annotations, comments and explanations that appear on album covers and CD booklets, I have decided to repay the favor with the inclusion of and reliance on these materials in many of the pieces that are prepared for Jazz Profiles. So when, to my immense delight, I found that the insert notes to the Grant Green: Complete Quartets with Sonny Clark [Blue Note CDP 7243 8 57194 2 4] had not one, but three different sets of insert notes, and that these were by the likes of Ben Sidran, Michael Cuscuna and Bob Porter, the decision to prepare a piece using their remarks on this recording became axiomatic. As a point in passing, for reasons explained in these notes, Grant Green recorded so often and produced such an abundance of riches for Blue Note that these sides with Sonny Clark were not issued until 1979 – 1980, when most of the music on this 2 CD set was released as three, separate LP’s. First up are Ben Sidran’s notes to that portion of these tracks that comprised the 1980 Blue Note album Nigeria [LT 1032]. “TIME passes. What was fresh and important recedes under the collected weight of new fresh and important stuff. Enough time has passed since this collection was recorded that a lot of people reading these notes and hearing this music weren't even born on that winter day in 1962 when Grant Green went into the studio.
Back in 1962, Grant's guitar voice was one of the sparkling new additions to a musical universe that seemed to be expanding exponentially. It's hard to imagine-or even to remember- just how explosive the jazz scene was then, particularly in light of the mechanical music which has flourished these last ten years. One indication of the scene then might be the wealth of previously unreleased material, such as this record which is only now showing up in the stores. When Grant came to New York, he walked on to a stage crowded with stars. And he shone with the best of them.
He didn't blaze a trail to the city. He followed a more comfortable path, arriving to join Lou Donaldson's band in 1960. Some compared his hollow-bodied guitar style to that of the earliest pioneer, Charlie Christian. One also hears touches of that other great popularizer, Les Paul. For while Grant was not a radical player, he excelled at the basics and subtleties: he could swing like crazy and he played the prettiest phrases. Grant Green made esoteric music easy for the average listener to get to, just as jazz singers have done for years. Grant Green was a popularizer and a singer on his instrument.
Perhaps the greatest testament to his musical gift was that at a time when the guitar had fallen out of favor, suddenly, Grant Green could be heard everywhere, recording with several of the finest rhythm sections in New York. Within a year of his arrival in the city, he recorded three albums as a leader, featuring a rhythm section of Sonny Clark on piano. Sam Jones on bass and Louis Hayes on drums. Those albums, "Gooden's Corner," 'Oleo,” and "Born To be Blue," have only recently been released on Blue Note in Japan. This album, "Nigeria," falls in the middle of that period of time and has Art Blakey in place of Louis Hayes. It is the only time that Blakey and Green ever recorded together. Grant was a simple, elegant stylist. When he played a melody, with that kind of dressed-up strut, it was a reminder of just how classy bebop could sound. His interpretation of the title track "Airegin" (ingeniously encoded backwards to ward off the uninitiated) is no exception. It is interesting to note that in the early sixties, Grant performed and recorded an unusually large number of Sonny Rollins tunes, including "Solid ' " "Oleo " "Sonnymoon For Two," and, of course, "Airegin." After Grant states the head Sonny Clark hits one of his patented full keyboard slides and then strolls for a chorus while Blakey gets the groove settled Yawn. Sonny 's solo is a swinging compliment to Grant's, ignoring Green’s reference to 'When Lights Are Low" and turning the spotlight full up on the flowing snakes that were his specialty. Sonny, who had worked with both Rollins and singer Dinah Washington during the late fifties, is able to play both sides of the street here; he acts as the ideal accompanist to Grant's vocalized guitar work.
For my money, the highlight of the album is the stylized arrangement of "It Ain't Necessarily So." Blakey puts down a 12/8 Latin feel, and Grant plays the head in a totally unexpected series of phrases, altering the original melody to such an extent that he might well have called the song "So It Ain't Necessarily" and taken the publishing for himself. But it is the endlessly good groove that is the star of the cut. Interspersed with Blakey's press rolls, this fat-back groove - like those Art played on innumerable Jimmy Smith jam session dates - gets Grant all the way up on his toes. His tone is singing six different ways to Christmas, until he finally gets Blakey singing, for it is the drummer you hear shouting “whoa!” and grunting in response to Grant's precise preaching. By the time Sonny's solo arrives, Blakey is putting as much vocal into the overhead mikes as the cymbal. Clark seems to goad him on, and finally, when he’s taken is ninth chorus and seems read to turn it back to Grant, Blakey won’t let him go. You can hear Art laughing and shouting to Sonny, "No, go ahead, go ahead.” And go ahead he does, until Blakey finally turns him loose with an escalating series of strokes. As the song fades behind that Latin feel, I'm ready to do it all over. Side two sounds as if it will open with Miles Davis' "Four" but after the classic bebop introduction, the song abruptly half-steps into a very polite "I Concentrate On You." The tension between the tip-toe lounge groove and the powerhouse bebop minds that are playing it is never really resolved, and that is part of the charm of the piece. Grant is so sweet when he plays the melody, but his choruses become bittersweet fast, and soon, he's skipping down some dark memory lane, concentrating hard on some private "you." The song goes out with a vamp reminiscent of a neither the introduction nor the song itself; altogether, a very curious arrangement.
"The Things We Did Lost Summer" also opens with a rather bizarre waltz section, but then settles down into a very delicate ballad. The attitude Grant maintains playing the melody - particularly the little chromatic insertion he uses at the end of the first bridge - is a lovely balance of the benign and the mischievous. This is Grant's power, as a soloist or stating a theme, and it is something great jazz singers like Johnny Hartman are also known for: there is no better way to grab a listener than to lull him into bliss and then grab him by what Lord Buckley used to call 'your most delicate gear."
The record closes with a flag-waver, 'The Song Is You," in which we are reassured that straight ahead is the direction to go. Blakey is once again singing in his mikes, and Sam Jones, God bless him, is walking and shaking his head, There are few things in life more pleasant than walking along with Sam Jones shaking your head. Down home. Just folks. Kind of corny at times, but very hip. Grant Green was a perfect candidate for what today is called "cross-over hype," but back then was probably not called anything at all. Perhaps it was only natural that record companies would try to make Grant Green into a commercial product, a sow's ear out of a silk purse, as it were. I don't know how or why he turned from the hard, low life grooves he used to spark, towards the cocktail lounge which surely sealed his obscurity by the time he died in early 1979. Often, commercial pressures overwhelm players. After all, they are only musicians,, not lawyers and accountants that's why we buy records. If lawyers and accountants made records, nobody would buy them. At least, that used to be true, and it may be part of the reason why Grant didn't make a major mark on the music scene during the lost years of his life.
I, for one, kept looking for him around every corner, particularly as various guitar players, like Gabor Szabo, or George Benson, or even Eric Gale, would pop into prominence. I kept waiting for Grant to make his move. Unfortunately, his best recorded moves are those from more than fifteen years ago, when he truly was a fresh and important face on what may be the wildest contemporary jazz scene we'll ever know.”
-BEN SIDRAN 1980, original liner notes from "Nigeria” And here are Michael Cuscuna’s comments from the 1980 Japanese Blue Note release – Gooden’s Corner.
“THE tragedy of Grant Green's death in early 1979 was compounded by the fact that his recorded output for the last decade or more of his life was, for the most part, commercial, uncreative and lacking in individuality. He deserved better, but the economics of keeping a bond working and holding down a record contract forced him into situations far below his talent.
Fortunately, Blue Note thoroughly documented his artistry on a number of sessions under Grant's leadership in the early sixties. Moreover, he was the resident guitarist for Blue Note's stable of premier organists such as Jimmy Smith, John Patton and Larry Young and participated in dates by Lee Morgan, Horace Parlan, Don Wilkerson, Lou Donaldson and others.
Unknown outside of his hometown St. Louis except through his Delmark recordings with tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest, Grant was brought to the label and to New York in 1960 by Lou Donaldson. Blue Note always operated on a family basis, developing an impressive, cross-fertilizing repertory group of musicians. Grant was quickly and fully instated in mid 1960.
Green represented not only a fresh, vibrant new voice on an instrument that had become rather sleepy in style in the fifties, but he was also a major link with the all too often neglected pioneer of the hollow body electric guitar in jazz, Charlie Christian. Grant executed bright, clean lines that never fully abandoned the melody, emphasized concise, linear, single note improvisations and possessed a unique rhythmic momentum that remains unmatched. He absorbed Christian, then bypassed such heroes of the day as Tal Farlow, Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery and moved directly to the formation of his own identity.
This album "Gooden's Corner", recorded on December 23, 1961, features a beautifully compatible quartet of Grant, pianist Sonny Clark', bassist Sam Jones and drummer Louis Hayes. Ike Quebec joined the group for one tune 'Count Every Star", which was then extracted and used on Quebec's album “Blue And Sentimental” (Blue Note BST 94098). The rest of the session, previously unissued and without Quebec, is presented here in its entirety.
This particular quartet had a run of sessions for Blue Note under Grant's name, all they all remain unissued. On January 13, 1962, the band with Art Blakey subbing for Hayes recorded. On January 31 the quartet with Hayes back again recorded yet another album. And finally on March 1, 1962, the same group, this time with Quebec playing throughout the session, made yet another album's worth of material. Why these dates were never issued will never be known. Most likely, it is because Grant, like other Blue Note artists, recorded prolifically during these years, and there was just no way to get everything released. As this set bears out, the Green-Clark-Jones-Hayes combination is completely compatible and comfortable. Each man has an easy, natural sense of swinging that interlocks perfectly with his fellow musicians.
Sam Jones has been previously present on a handful of Blue Note dates, led for the most part by another guitarist Kenny Burrell. Louis Hayes was a familiar face at the label through his long term membership in Horace Silver's quintet and his frequent sideman appearances with Curtis Fuller and other Blue Note artists. From the fall of 1959 well into the mid sixties, Jones and Hayes were the pivot of Cannonball Adderley's successful band. They had been together in that capacity for more than two years when this album was recorded, and their empathy is clearly evident.
Although none of the Green dates with Sonny Clark at the piano have ever been issued, their pairing was a natural. Both men possessed the ability to swing hard in an effortless, instinctive manner. Clark is his usual brilliant self here, adding richly to the group texture and urging Grant on with some inspired comping. His solo work is typically two-handed, cooking and always interesting. It is a testament to Grant Green that he can breath such life into On Green Dolphin Street and What is This Thing Called Love as well as the overdone Henry Mancini hit of the day Moon River. He swings on What Is This Thing ... like no one else on his instrument could. And Moon River is a perfect example of his ability to construct a solo using the tune's melody as the substance of his variations. His rhythmic sense is best illustrated on Shadrack.
Grant contributes two originals, Gooden's Corner and Two For One. Gooden's Corner is a solid blues, given an irresistible performance by the entire group. Two For One, not to be confused with the Sonny Clark tune of the same name, is based on Miles Davis' modal So What, but after the theme, Grant breaks into some straight ahead playing.
This album is a lovely freeze frame in the career of one of the foremost guitarists of modern jazz, a man whom we lost to the commercial world in the late sixties and whom we lost forever in 1979.
-MICHAEL CUSCUNA 1979, original liner notes from "Gooden’s Corner" We close this piece with Bob Porter’s 1980 original liner notes from Oleo. “THE business of jazz is extremely difficult to describe to someone not involved in it. Most fans are aware of the qualities that make a great jazz musician: an individual sound; the ability to improvise melodically ("telling a story," in Lester Young's phrase); to swing, etc. There are any number of great jazz musicians who may be deficient in one of these areas, but generally they make up for it by doing one of the other things much better than other players. Yet in all this discussion, there has been no mention of playing melody. Name me a great jazzman who couldn't take a melody and make it uniquely his own.
Grant Green was widely known for his ability to play melodies. It didn't really matter what kind of melodies because Grant could do Latin tunes (see Blue Note 84111 - The Latin Bit); Gospel songs (Blue Note 84132 -Feelin' The Spirit); Western melodies (Blue Note 84310- Goin' West) as well as standards, blues, or jazz tunes. he had a great guitar sound and knew instinctively how to make melodies come alive.
Grant really arrived in 1961. He had made records in 1959 with his hometown friend, Jimmy Forrest, for Delmark and the following year he recorded with organist Sam Lazar, another St. Louis musician, for Argo. but when Lou Donaldson heard him playing in East St. Louis, he convinced Grant and clubowner Leo Gooden to come to New York and talk with Alfred Lion of Blue Note. From 1961 through 1965, Grant Green made more Blue Note lps as leader and sideman than anyone else. Clearly, he was a favorite, not only of Lion, but of Ike Quebec who did much of the A and R work for Blue Note until his death in 1963.
Considering Grant's versatility, it is not unusual that Blue Note used him in a variety of contexts: Herbie Hancock, Lee Morgan, John Patton, Lou Donaldson, Ike Quebec.
At a time when Down Beat was still giving New Star awards, Grant won in 1962. but critical raves have never helped in earning a living. Grant worked often with Jack McDuff during those early years, and was really scuffling for money. In addition to everything else, Grant had a narcotics habit. Now it may be hard to understand in the jazz world of 1979 when musicians, have generally learned to avoid the excesses of heroin and get their business together, but jazz players were very low in the economic strata of the early 60s, and one consistent source of revenue was the record company. It seems likely that Blue Note recorded Grant frequently during those years because he was always drawing money from Blue Note. Grant did at least six LP sessions under his won leadership for Blue Note in 1961. The furious recording pace continued right into 1965, and try as they might, Blue Note could never issue the LPs as fast as Grant could record them!
In a sense, Grant's situation and that of Sonny Clark were similar. They had the identical problems and each was a Blue Note favorite. The initial pairing of these two talents came just before Christmas, 1961, and resulted in the album, Gooden's Corner. Sam Jones and Louis Hayes were still members of Cannonball Adderley's band at the time, and their appearance together is another reminder of Blue Note's care in assembling rhythm sections. Alfred Lion's choice of bass and drums almost always reflected an ability to play together in support of the leader, rather than to demonstrate individual brilliance.
The tunes played here are not unusual for Grant, although it should be noted that he had an attraction for Sonny Rollins lines. He also recorded "Solid' and "Sonnymoon For Two" during this period. A later version of 'My Favorite Things" was issued on the Matador album.
Grant never does get the tricky theme of "Oleo" exactly right, but it doesn't deter him from fashioning a solo of lightening-like inventiveness. Sonny Clark has always been considered a disciple of Bud Powell and perhaps the chief reason for that is the dynamic flow of his ideas. When playing standards, he sometimes would adopt a lighter touch (reminding one of Hank Jones in his delicacy), but his work throughout this session is in the cooking Powell mode.
If Grant has problems with "Oleo", he has none with "Tune Up." The melody, introduced and long-credited to Miles Davis, was actually written by saxophonist-bluesman Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, who gave the tune to Davis during a period when he – Vinson - was not recording. Virtually the some thing happened with another Vinson compositions, "Four."
Green was always at home with the blues and "Hip Funk" is his adoption of the classic form that was definitely hip (meaning fashionable) for 1962. Sonny Clark was also a blues master as his work ably demonstrates. Hearing the music on this album (and Gooden's Corner) makes one immediately interested in hearing more. Alas, there is no more by the quartet, but a bit more than a month later, these same four players joined forces with Ike Quebec for an album that will be forthcoming on Blue Note [Blue and Sentimental].
Between 1965 and 1968, Green was still active as a performer, but his recorded appearances were few. When he returned to Blue Note in 1969, he had rid himself of the narcotics problem, but had acquired a new attitude toward music. The huge success of Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, and George Benson was very much on his mind. He considered himself the musical equal of all of them, yet he was the only one not to have made a significant commercial breakthrough.
His repertoire tended more toward rhythm & blues during his late Blue Note period. He would use repetitive vamps rather than chord changes as harmonic underpinning and his attention to phrasing melodies (always an outstanding feature of his work) become even more pronounced. And the commercial break happened for him! From 1969 to mid-1974, his Blue Note LPs were consistent best sellers and he was a popular attraction at clubs across the USA. He split with Blue Note shortly thereafter and made an LP for Kudu and another for Versatile.
Grant spent much of 1978 in the hospital with a variety of ailments, and he was not a well man when released in December, 1978. His doctors advised him to rest, but there were expenses to meet, so he went back on the road almost immediately. He died of a heart attack on January 31, 1979 - seventeen years to the day of this recording.
During 1969 and 1970 when I was producing records for Prestige, I got to know Grant Green well. He played on albums with Rusty Bryant, Don Patterson, Charles Kynard, and Houston Person which I supervised. I used to marvel at the ease with which this man with enormous hands could make that guitar sing. At one session, during a break, he treated everyone to a solo rendition of "Oleo" which was stunning. After his death, I thought many times of how his career would be judged by historians, since so much of his later recordings were in a commercial vein. But with albums such as Matador, Gooden's Corner, and now Oleo, his stature is assured. Without question, Grant Green was one of the major artists on the guitar during his lifetime. His friend, Lou Donaldson, put it best when he said:
"All the top guitarists who came later - like George Benson and Pat Martino - they've got some of Grant's stuff."
"Red's version of "Billy Boy," with Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers on bass, is a classic illustration of the perfectly structured solo, the superb interplay of the trio, and Garland's powerful use of block chords."
It seemed to be over so fast for William “Red” Garland.
One minute he’s making all those great Prestige and Columbia records as the pianist with the classic Miles Davis quintet that also featured tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer “Philly” Joe Jones, but after 1959, he seemed somehow to become relegated to total obscurity.
Bill Evans and then Wynton Kelly replaced him with Miles and, with the advent of the 1960’s, Jazz clubs began to close calling for great adjustments by those who continued to work in the music.
Red was not one of the Jazz musicians who successfully navigated the sea of changes that swept over the Jazz World, returning instead to Dallas and choosing to live in his father’s home in a state of virtual retirement.
The recordings that “Red” made with Miles and under his own name for Orrin Keepnews at Riverside Records during his brief period of ascendancy were my first introduction to what some referred to as an “East Coast Jazz rhythm section.”
Red along with Paul Chambers and “Philly” Joe Jones opened a whole new world for me of keeping time and playing behind horns in a style that was on top of the beat, hard driving and full of intensity.
The epitome of what Red, Paul and “Philly” Joe got going as a rhythm section was contained on their trio performance of Billy Boy on the Miles Davis Milestones LP. I practiced to it so often that I learned to play every accent, fill and solo that Philly Joe Jones plays on this track from memory.
Before he faded from the Jazz scene, Red also made a series of recordings for Prestige as a leader and as a sideman for John Coltrane that included, in addition to Chambers and Jones, bassists George Joyner, Sam Jones, Peck Morrison and Wendell Marshall, as well as, drummers Art Taylor, Specs Wright, Charlie Persip, Frank Gant and Larry Ridley.
But whether he was out front or just on the date, and irrespective of who joined him in the rhythm section, the “feel” and sound of Red’s approach to the piano remained essentially the same.
“Graceful yet unaffectedly bluesy, Red Garland's manner was flexible enough to accommodate the contrasting styles of both Miles Davis and John Coltrane in the Davis quintet of the mid-1950s. His many records as a leader, beginning at about the same period, display exactly the same qualities. His confessed influences of Tatum, Powell and Nat Cole seem less obvious than his debts to Erroll Garner and Ahmad Jamal, whose hit recording of Billy Boy from the early 1950’s seems to sum up everything that Garland would later go on to explore.
All of the listed trio sessions feature the same virtues: deftly fingered left-hand runs over bouncy rhythms, coupled with block-chord phrasing which colored melodies in such a way that Garland saw no need to depart from them. Medium-up-tempo treatments alternate with stately ballads, and Chambers and Taylor are unfailingly swinging, if often constrained, partners. The later sessions feature a slightly greater empathy, but we find it very hard to choose a favorite among these records.” [Richard Cook and Brian Morton, Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed., p. 548].
In this excerpt from his interview with Len Lyons, “Red” described how it all began for him:
“When did you begin playing piano?
I didn't begin on piano. In fact, I never played the piano until I was in the army. You couldn't call me a child prodigy. I started on clarinet because my father wanted me to. It was his idea. He loved Benny Goodman, so he wanted me to play the clarinet. The truth is I've always wanted to play trumpet. At least I did then. At the dances we used to go to as kids, the brass section seemed to have the most fun. They'd sit there with the trumpets across their laps, clapping to the music.
I took up the piano when I ran across Lee Barnes, a pianist in the army band. He started teaching me how to play, and I soon grew to love it. He inspired me. Nobody had to tell me to practice because I was playing piano all day. Lee even wrote out exercises for me. When I left the army, I bought an exercise book by Theodore Presser, and that was a great help to me.
In 1945 I played my first gig on piano. It was with a tenor player, Bill Blocker, who had a quartet in Fort Worth, Texas. We played mostly in the dance halls. During those years I was listening to Count Basie. He was my first favorite. He didn't have a lot of technique, but I thought he was very tasty. I started to copy him for a while. Then I began to copy Nat "King" Cole, who was more of a pianist than most people know. He was tasty, too, and he didn't have a bad technique. Then [trumpeter Oran] Hot Lips Page came to town with his band. We used to call him just Lips. Anyway, his piano player got fired while the band was down in Texas. I think it might have been because of drunkenness. Then Buster Smith, the alto saxophonist, came to my house at four o'clock in the morning to tell me to hurry and get dressed because Lips wanted me to go with him. I told him, no, I wasn't ready. I wasn't good enough yet. But they talked me into it anyway, and we toured all the way across the country into New York City.
When I got to New York, I ran into the tenor player Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, and I asked him where all the good piano players were. He told me Bud Powell was about the baddest cat in town. ‘Who's Bud Powell?’ I asked him. ‘Don't worry, you're going to find out,’ he told me. Well, one night I was working at Minton's with Max Roach, and I looked over toward the door, and in walked Bud. I could hardly play because of everything I had heard about him. I froze. Bud came over and started forcing me off the bench. ‘Let me play,’ he kept saying to me. ‘Let me play.’ Max was yelling to me, ‘No! Get him away. Keep him away from the piano.’ Max was afraid he was crazy or something and was going to ruin the gig. I got up anyway. I figured if Bud wanted to play that bad, I wasn't going to stand in his way. Well, he sat down at the piano and scared me to death-he played so much piano! I told Max, ‘I quit! Give him the job!"’See, Bud took my cool.
But a few days later I went over to Bud's house, and he showed me some things. In fact, I came back day after day to learn from him, and we became buddies. He was really friendly to me and the greatest influence on me of any pianist, except for Art Tatum. I still don't believe Art Tatum was real.
There was a club named Luckey's [Rendezvous], owned by Luckey Roberts, and it was just for piano players - no bass or drums allowed. There's where we'd separate the men from the boys, when you can't lean on the bass or drums. Art Tatum was a frequent visitor there, and I'd stand over his shoulder to watch what he was doing. One night he stood behind me as I was playing. ‘You're forcing,’ he told me. ‘You're forcing. Don't play the piano. Let the piano play itself.’ I was tight, so he gave me that piece of advice, and I've always remembered it. He gave me some arpeggios to work on, too, and I'm still working on them.
Then I was working in a small club in Boston with Coleman Hawkins when Miles [Davis] came in to hear me. He told me during the intermission that he wanted to get a group together with me on piano, Philly Joe, Curly Russell on bass, and Sonny Rollins on tenor. Two weeks later I heard Sonny couldn't get released from his rehabilitation program, so I left town for Philadelphia. A while later I got a telegram from Miles asking me if I knew anyone in Philadelphia who could play tenor sax. I told him I knew a cat named John Coltrane, and Miles asked me, ‘Can he play?’ and I told him, ‘Sure he can.’ John and I met Miles in Baltimore. Meanwhile, Miles had found a kid out of Detroit, named Paul Chambers, and he played bass for us. Philly Joe was still on drums. We had never played together until the night of our first gig, so we got together about five in the afternoon and jammed. From the opening tune we clicked. We just clicked right away, and that was that. We stayed together from '55 to January 1959. I did a few trio gigs by myself and then went home, like I told you.” [The Great Jazz Pianists Speaking of Their Lives and Music, pp. 146-147].
With the help of the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD and the production facilities of StudioCerra, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles put together the following video tribute to Red with he along with Paul Chambers and “Philly Joe Jones” featured on their memorable performance of Billy Boy.
John Hasse.: Earlier you mentioned composing at the exact moment you're improvising. Could you elaborate a little?
Roland Hanna.: When you write the printed note on a page, that note is there. It is supposed to be there as long as the paper lasts, you know? It's supposed to be just so, just right. If you play a C7 chord on the piano, C E G B-flat, you hear the notes and they sound — ping. If a band plays a C7 chord, it's got to be voiced a certain way. If it's not voiced a certain way, it's not going to get a quality. And in order to learn what quality you want, you have to work a long time listening, trying to understand how the instruments play the notes, what kind of overtones they give, and how the notes work together. So it's the same thing when you're playing spontaneously at the moment, when you're actually performing; you have to hear in your mind the notes that you want to perform. You have to know exactly what sounds you want in a given structural composition or song. The notes develop—your mind is constantly working, thinking of how you want these notes to move—and the notes develop and you begin to hear things that actually create mental images or pictures or whatever. And if you have developed yourself to the point where you are playing everything you hear, then the music starts to flow and your playing makes logical sense to someone listening. The tradition I was talking about is that with Charlie Parker you sense and you hear and you know—after many repeated listenings, of course, because everyone who plays music doesn't hear it the same way but develop so that it all goes in the same direction—you hear in listening to someone like Charlie Parker that the sounds he makes have been well-coordinated in his mind before he's produced them. And having as many avenues of movement as he has through all the years of practicing and working and listening to himself, he's able to move through all the channels of music that he makes. This tradition, again, that I'm talking about is in the sense of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms— any of the great classical, romantic, baroque, impressionistic, or modern composers. It's in that tradition because the composer who sits down to write music has to hear in his mind before he puts it on the paper exactly what he wants. He has an advantage over the musician who's improvising because he has time to correct the notes if they aren't exactly what he hears in his mind. You see—he's got all the time in the world to put the notes down and then change them. If it's an F he hears, and then he reworks the chord or the sound of the whatever and the F isn't right for that instrument, he can change it to make it right. Whereas the improviser must be able to hear that right then and there, and strive to reach the same point that the composer or arranger or orchestrator is working for and has the time to work for.
J.H.: So it's a lot more than having a good ear; it's being able to hear it in your mind—hear it ahead of time. It's kind of a good ear in advance.
R.H.: Much more. It's like having a thought or an idea, having no words for the idea, and then taking your time and letting the thought come through, evolve, so that it comes through coherently.
Answer. Jazz, with a non-pulsating beat. The beat is implicit but not explicit; in other words, acknowledged but unsounded. The two horns are the dominant but not domineering voices. The bass usually functions somewhat like a baritone sax. The drums play an important but non-conflicting role.
Q. Why abandon the sounded beat?
A. For clarity and freedom. I’ve come to feel increasingly inhibited and frustrated by the insistent pounding of the rhythm section. With it, it’s impossible for the listener or the soloist to hear the horn’s true sound, I’ve come to believe, or fully concentrate on the solo line. An imbalance of advances has moved the rhythm from a supporting to a competitive role.
Q. But isn’t the sounded beat an integral part of jazz?
A The sounded beat once made playing easier, but now it’s become confining. And to the degree that the beat was there to guide dancers, it is, of course, no longer necessary to concert jazz. I think the essence of jazz is in the phrasing and notes, and these needn’t change when the beat is silent. Since the beat is implicit, this music retains traditional feeling; not having it explicit allows freer thinking.
– Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1969 [pp. 235-36, paragraphing modified]
“Despite Giuffre’s rhetoric, the pieces on Tangents in Jazz do swing. In many ways the listener is even more drawn to the rhythmic element of the music, by the way it moves from instrument to instrument, instead of resting solely with the “rhythm” section. On Tangents Giuffre was again joined by Pena, Sheldon, and Anton, and though none of them stretches out at length during the course of the album, each is very much put in the spotlight as Giuffre employs a wide range of compositional devices: call-and-response figures, two- and three-part counterpoint, unison and harmony lines, canonic devices. These take the place of solos in Giuffre’s new conception.
As a filmmaker conveys a sense of momentum through a sequence of rapidly shifting camera angles, Giuffre’s constant movement from one musical device to another achieves a similar effect. Part of the achievement of Tangents in Jazz is that, despite the leader’s stated disregard for a “propulsive” beat, these pieces are constantly propelled, if not by a metronomic beat, certainly by Giuffre’s constant changes in compositional focus. If anything, Giuffre overcompensates on Tangents, avoiding lengthy solos and shifting musical gears with abandon. The result is a highly concentrated music—which may be pleasing to the listener, but also makes severe demands on the attention.”
