Monday, September 30, 2019

Phil Woods Fill The Woods With Laughter

Composed and arranged by Johnny Pate -
Phil Woods (alto saxophone); Frederick Buldrini, Julius Held, George Ockner, Henri Aubert, Dave Mankovitz, Julius Schachter, Julius Brand, Tosha Samaroff, Leo Kahn, Joseph Malin, Max Cahn, Raoul Poliakin, Max Pollikoff, Harry Katzman, Paul Gershman, Emanuel Green (violin); Julien Barber, Cal Fleisig, Alfred Brown , Harold Coletta (viola); Seymour Barab, Charles McCracken , George Ricci, Kermit Moore, Anthony Sophos (cello); Jerome Richardson, Romeo Penque (woodwinds); Thad Jones (trumpet, flugelhorn); Jimmy Cleveland, James Buffington, Ray Alonge (trombone); Tony Studd (bass trombone); Herbie Hancock, Roland Hanna (piano); Grady Tate (drums).


Itchy Fingers and the Origins of the Saxophone Quartet

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


“Formed in 1986 as an offshoot from Mike Mower's 12-piece band Hiatus, ITCHY FINGERS has since achieved an international reputation as one of the world's leading jazz saxophone quartets. Shortly after its formation, ITCHY FINGERS won Britain's only national jazz competition. Since then, the quartet has toured the world, playing in over 40 countries on five continents. Leader Mike-Mower writes for ITCHY FINGERS as if it were a big band, and it is this mixture of compositional complexity, razor-sharp tightness of performance and fiery improvisations which has given the quartet its unique identity. Although the group has had some personnel changes over the years, the spirit has always remained up-beat, drawing inspiration from the “new blood” and thereby ensuring a constantly exuberant spectacle on-stage.

Full English Breakfast is ITCHY FINGERS' fourth album, and marks an important stage in the group's continuing development. After the excitement and frenetic atmosphere of a live gig, so effectively captured on Itchy Fingers Live in Europe (Enja ENJ 6076 2), leader Mike Mower has made use of studio techniques to produce an album that explores new worlds of sound and creativity not possible in a “live” environment, for instance, soloists find the rest of the band accompanying every twist and turn of their improvisation in intricate harmony and counterpoint, as if by some miraculous form of musical telepathy. In fact, of course, it's the result of Mike craftily adding accompaniments to fully exploit the subtleties and nuances of each soloist’s phrasing. The interactive impression always conveyed by the group’s playing becomes, on this album, virtually seamless - the ultimate example of the band playing like one.” - Simon Canney

The following by the German journalist and Jazz author Hans-Jürgen Schaal will provide you with a then and now overview of the evolution of the saxophone quartet from its beginning in the 1850s until the end of the 20th century.


“The idea of four saxophones playing together was born with the saxophone itself. Having invented the horn in the 1840's, Belgian instrumental manufacturer Adolphe Sax (1814-1894) started to produce the new instrument in eight sizes ranging from sopranino to subcontrabass. Following the model of the string quartet with its two violins, viola, and cello. Sax himself suggested and performed pieces for a quartet made up of the soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone sax. Jean-Baptiste Singelee (1812-1875), Sax's compatriot, was one of the first composers to help introduce this format as a vehicle of chamber musical expression. Today Singelee’s opus 53, the first of his three quartets tor saxophones, is acknowledged as a standard work in the classical repertoire for saxophone quartets. Written in 1857, it reflects the styles of four of Singelee's favourite composers, Rossini, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Meyerbeer, to whom he dedicated one movement each.

Although several composers of his time praised Sax's invention -among them Berlioz, Bizet, Rossini, and Massenet — the saxophone had a long way to go until being estimated as an instrument of full value. Originally Sax had intended to build a horn able to close the gap between the reed and the brass sections of the military marching hands. While he succeeded in this purpose, his invention seemed to fail in the realm of serious music. The saxophone class at the Paris Conservatory led by Sax himself was dissolved during the war of 1870/71 and not be re-established until the 1940's.  When Adolphe Sax went bankrupt in 1877, the career of the saxophone seemed to have ended before it began.

However, it was the military music that spread Sax's message all over Europe reaching even the Creole marching bands of Louisiana, the former French colony. When the patent protecting Sax's invention ran out at the turn of the century, the interest in his instrument quickly arose. In 1907 respectively 1908 Gustav Bumcke, Germany's very first saxophone teacher, and Belgian Raymond Moulaert wrote remarkable compositions for saxophone quartet carrying on the artistic spirit of the baroque and romantic ages. A totally new chapter in the history of the saxophone was opened when parts of the U.S. Forces were demobilized after World War I, leaving many army instruments to the American market. Only a few years later, these saxophones made their brilliant entrance into jazz music and created a thrilling sound Monsieur Sax would have never dreamed of. With Frankie Trumbauer on C-melody, Benny Carter on alto, and especially Coleman Hawkins who kind of re-invented the tenor sax. Sax's brassy reed instrument unexpectedly became a symbol of swing and syncopation.

As the French were the first to recognize American jazz as a genuine art form, the rise of jazz advanced the development of saxophone playing in their own country. Not incidentally, in 1928 a musician named Marcel Mule formed the first continuously working saxophone quartet in Paris. A member of the French Republican Guard, Mule had become acquainted with the saxophone first within the limits of marching music. His ensemble started out as the Quatour de Saxophones de la Garde Républicaine, changing its name inio Quatuor de Saxophones de Paris when Mule left the guard, and was later known simply as the Quatuor Marcel Mule. It was this ensemble that established the saxophone quartet as a species of chamber music inspiring many standard works for saxophone quartet that were to he written tor Mule's group from the 1930's on. Re-founding the saxophone class at the Paris conservatory in 1942, Mule became Sax's direct successor after an interruption of some 70 years. When he started to arrange classical compositions tor the quartet, he selected popular genre pieces by Albeniz and Debussy as well as contrapuntal works by Bach and Scarlatti, splitting their concerted textures into four independent voices.

Russian composer Alexander Glazounoft (1865-1936) who lived in Paris for reasons of health was the first to create an important work for the Mule quarter. Glozounoff’s opus 109, written in 1932, turns out to be sort of an early post-modern reflection on historic styles, similar to Singelee's quartet trom 1857. The first movement, being an allegro in sonata form, was dedicated to the rather recent spirits then of Dvorak, Wagner, and Brahms. The second movement, based on a Russian choral, presents five variations in the styles of romantic composers such as Schumann and Chopin. The third variation, built as a rondo, is dedicated to J.S. Bach. Being a youngster among classical formats, the saxophone quartet thus virtually started out with re-arrangements and recapitulations of musical history.

It was the much easier two-movement size that helped the saxophone quartet gain popularity. Both Gabriel Pierne’s Introduction et variations sur une ronde populaire (1934) and Eugene Bozza's Andante et Scherzo (1939) consist of a slow and soulful first movement and an effectively gay second one only. Jean Rivier's Grave et Presto that was composed in 1938 but had its first night not until the 1960's, follows the same model. A highlight of the literature however is Jean Francaix's Petit Quatuor pour Saxophones, a humorous musical portrait of the city of Paris, written in 1935 hut not performed before 1947. Fifty years after composing this work, 73-year old Francaix was to write his second saxophone quartet. La Suite, which is dedicated to a juvenile French ensemble called Quatuor de Saxophones de Versailles. Besides, several other composers wrote pieces for the Mule quartet, among them Florent Schmitt, Pierre Vellones, and Georges Migot.

When Mule's ensemble was in vogue in the late 30's, jazz saxophone pioneers Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins were touring Europe extensively. Having developed the saxophone section into a highly agile and inventive 'reed organ' within his big band. Carter decided to emancipate the four-sax unit as an independent group just when staying in Paris in April 1937. Probably impressed by the Mule sound. Carter, Hawkins, and the French saxophone players Alix Combelle and Andre Ekyan, known for their work with Django Reinhardt, installed the saxophone quartet in jazz history. 

Accompanied by a rhythm section including guitarist Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli on piano, their versions of Honeysuckle Rose and Crazy Rhythm became jazz classics. Together with Combelle, Fletcher Allen, and Bertie King, Carter arranged and recorded further tunes for four saxes when starring in London the following year. Over the decades. Carter and Hawkins kept to the tradition of saxophone quartets and quintets accompanied by a rhythm section. In the late 50's, the Hawk initiated records such as Very Saxy and The Big Sax Section featuring some of his pupils on this instrument, Eddie Davis, Arnett Cobb, and Frank Foster among them. In 1961 and 1965, Carter added his Further Definitions to this kind of ensemble playing, arranging (among other tunes) Hawk's legendary solo on Body And Soul from 1939. Even in 1988, half a century after his stay in Paris, Carter arranged the complete music for a CD of an All-Star Saxophone Ensemble, including Frank Wess, Jimmy Heath, and himself. Meanwhile in Paris, Claude Tissendier's group Saxomania entered the scene resuming Benny Carter's initial work of the 30's.

Interrupted by World War II, the tradition of the classical saxophone quartet was continued in the 50's and 60's when Pierre-Max Dubois (born in 1930) and Alfred Desenclos (1912-1971) wrote their well-known compositions commissioned still for the Mule Quartet. Following Mule's example, some important quartet groups were formed from the 60's on. In 1969, one of them was founded by saxophone virtuoso Sigurd Rascher whose artistry had inspired more than 160 works by composers such as Gladzonoff, Hindemith, Ibert, and Milhaud. Now led by his daughter Carina, the Rascher quartet still devotes its activities exclusively to contemporary works of the avantgarde. In Paris, the Quatuor Deffayet and a new Quatuor de Saxophones de Paris carried Mule's spirit through the 70’s. In Britain, Paul Harvey's London Saxophone Quartet, also founded in 1969, excelled in arrangements of historical works from the 17th to the 20th century.

In the late 50's, an American producer became interested in the work of Marcel Mule and suggested to try some of this repertoire with American musicians. As no true tradition in classical saxophone playing existed in the U.S., the players of the New York Saxophone Quartet came out of the cool and west coast jazz that had seen many inventive saxophone ensembles. Following the Four Brothers section of the Woody Herman band, varied saxophone formations had been founded in the 50's by players as Stan Getz, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, or Jimmy GiufFre.

Besides, cool jazz had given birth to the duets improvised by Lee Konitz  and Warne Marsh and to diverse saxophone ensembles with Phil Woods as a leader. In later years, California saw the rise of Med Flory's Supersax and Ira Schulman's Four Winds.

The founding members at the New York Saxophone Quartet whose activities introduced pure saxophone playing to the U.S., were Stan Getz, Danny Bank, Al Cohn, and Hal McKusick. Soon McKusick was replaced by Ray Beckenstein who became the band's leader for many years. In the same way as the Mule Quartet had inspired French composers to write for this format, the New York Saxophone Quartet called forth a series of works by American third-stream composers like Johnny Carisi and Eddie Sauter. Phil Woods' rather jazzy Three Improvisations written tor this group in 1962, have now become a standard work among classical-oriented saxophone quartets despite Phil's warning: "If you can't play the last movement fast... and I mean really fast, don't play it". Thanks to the New York Saxophone Quartet, the Chicago Saxophone Quartet (founded in 1968), the San Francisco Saxophone Quartet (founded in 1977), and many others, classical saxophone works are familiar to American audiences today.


Influences from the French tradition and the section playing of cool jazz bands put aside, saxophone quartets in jazz have certain roots in the horn battles of late-night jam sessions. Out of the custom of coping with one another hornwise, various saxophone summits emerged over the years until unaccompanied quartet playing actually found its entrance into jazz. The revolution of free jazz was necessary to establish jazz bands that work continuously without a rhythm section. In 1974, avantgarde player Anthony Braxton recorded the first pure saxophone quartet in the history of jazz. His partners on this occasion, Hamiet Bluiett, Julius Hemphill, and Oliver Lake, later teamed up with youngster David Murray to form the World Saxophone Quartet in 1976. Out of the spirit of free jazz, this group has been developing techniques of collective improvisation and backed-up soloing never heard in jazz before. When in 1980 the quartet's members stated that the saxophone quartet was to become America's answer to Europe's string quartet, it sounded quite improbable. But within a few years, saxophone quartets sprang up all over the jazz world of all continents.

Connecting contemporary composing techniques with avant-garde jazz, the Rova Saxophone Quartet has become the other leading ensemble of this kind in today's jazz. Founded in 1977 and having repeatedly performed with Anthony Braxton, Rova now disposes of a large fund of commissioned works by artists Fred Frith, Henry Threadgill, and the late John Carter. In contrast to Rova' seriousness, the 29th Street Saxophone Quartet rather tends to the funny side at saxophone playing. According to its name, this group featuring alto virtuoso Bobby Watson, started out with street performances for New York's pedestrians. Other American quartets who contribute music of importance and strongly develop their own styles, are Your Neighborhood Saxophone Quartet, the Microscopic Septet (including a three-piece rhythm), and Tony Dagradi's New Orleans Saxophone Quartet, featuring Roger Lewis on baritone sax, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band's anchorman. 

On the other side of the Atlantic, remarkable saxophone groups arose alike. In Scandinavia, the Swedish Position Alpha (a quintet) and Norwegian Lille Froen were among the first to pick up the message. Germany saw the rise of the Kolner Saxophone Mafia, a saxophone sextet now reduced to a quintet, and is getting to know the Munich Saxophone Family. In the U.K., the Hornweh Saxophone Quartet and Mike Mower's highly spirited Itchy Fingers are the prominent groups. Mention must also he made ot the saxophone sextet Six Winds, a cooperation of European and American musicians, featuring John Tchicai.

Obviously, the saxophone quartets' success in jazz called attention to the French quartet tradition again, calling forth a lot of young classical ensembles in the 80's. Among them are Harald Bergersen's quartet from Norway, the New Danish Saxophone Quartet, the Dutch Aurelia, the Swedish all-woman quartet Rollin' Phones, the Berliner Saxophon Quartett, Swiss Quatuor de Saxophones de Genève, Italian Quartette de Sassofoni Accademia, French Quatuor de Saxophones de Versailles, and the young Prism Quartet from the midwest of the U.S., to name just a few. There is also a growing number of ensembles stepping across the borderlines between jazz and so-called classical music, such as the French Quatuor de Saxophones Gabriel Pierne, the Dutch Rijnmond (now: Selmer) Saxophone Quartet, Britain-based all-female The Fairer Sax, and the Canadian Saxophone Quintet inspired by Ralph Gari's band Clancy's Clowns...

The history of the saxophone quartet  has only just begun. Look forward to its future adventures!”

 —Hans-Jürgen Schaal


Sunday, September 29, 2019

Great God - Donald Byrd & Pepper Adams 5tet

Franck Amsallem - Gotham Goodbye

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


Franck Amsallem releases his tenth album as a leader, in the evocation of the twenty highly productive years he spent in New York City where he performed with some of the greatests from Harry Belafonte to Roy Hargrove. Backed by a brilliant international quartet in which shines the Cuban saxophonist Irving Acao, the French pianist showcases his impressive talent, both as a player and a composer. Goodbye Gotham? Bonjour Paris!

Lately, it seems, we’ve been spending a lot of time with Jazz pianists based in Paris, first with Fred Nardin and now with Franck Amsallem.

Franck’s latest CD - Gotham Goodbye [Jazz & People JPCD 19007] was released on September 20, 2019 and for those of you fortunate enough to have ready access to Paris, the CD Release Party is scheduled for October 29, 2019 at Sunside.

Information about how this CD evolved as well as background on Franck and the other members of his quartet can be found in the Vincent Bessières insert notes as reproduced below.

For the most part, Franck’s approach is straight-ahead Jazz with modern overtones, the latter is mostly reflected in the modal scales, sophisticated harmonies and unusual time signatures he selects for the eight original  tunes that make up this CD along with the Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg standard Last Night When We Were Young [which seems an appropriate choice from the Great American Songbook for a recording with a theme of leaving New York and returning to Paris].

The other main characteristic of Franck’s music is that it swings hard, all the time, which is due not only to his percussive piano style but also results from his choice of rhythm section mates: Viktor Nyberg and drummer Gautier Garrigue.

Tenor saxophonist Irving Acao, his choice for the “other voice,” has a big bold sound on tenor saxophone and exhibits great facility in getting around the instrument to express his ideas.

Franck assumes the role of “older brother” in relation to his younger colleagues and his maturity is both a steadying as well as an inspiring influence throughout the program of tunes on Gotham Goodbye. And this mentoring role is no doubt a welcomed one as the music is very challenging.

Amsallen’s writing is full of interesting twists and turns such that you are never quite sure where the music is going; in that sense, it’s full of surprises, just what you want in a good Jazz recording.

There’s a very professional or “finished” quality to the music on Gotham Goodbye; it feels and sounds very complete both in terms of concept and execution.

Fun tunes, great improvisation and an in-the-room audio quality makes Franck’s latest recording a joyful listening experience.


Gotham Goodbye insert notes Vincent Bessières [translated by Jerome Reese] 

“Goodbye Gotham, bonjour Paris... In evocation of twenty highly productive years in New York, Franck Amsal-lem has recorded an album as a sort of adieu to the American megalopolis, and asserts with a brilliant quartet that jazz as he conceives it can be played just as well in Paris now.

Having gone to study in the United States in 1981, obtaining his diploma at the Berklee College of Music two years later, Franck Amsallem spent two decades as a professional jazz musician in New York, where he played with many of the greats, led his own groups, and recorded a series of acclaimed albums with major jazz musicians. For twenty years the Big Apple nourished, inspired, overwhelmed, transported, exhausted him. The permanent creativity keeping pace with the urban intensity, the pressures of a city that never sleeps combined with the necessity of making a living, the density of the number of musicians and the level required, all this contributed to shaping his technique, to forging his style and to inspiring his art. In 2001, exactly twenty years to the day when he first set foot on American soil, Franck Amsallem made the decision to return to France, without disavowing what his years in New York had given him.

Having become well established on the Parisian scene since then, Franck Amsallem assumes his role in jazz in France today while remaining strongly attached to the values he learned in the United States and the way in which jazz survives there, and is firmly rooted in tradition without being confined by it, combining a spirit of play with collective energy, the taking of risks in improvisation with a certain instrumental excellence. After two albums of standards in which he explored his talents as a singer, his new album «Gotham Goodbye»features original compositions, signaling his return to a leading position in French jazz. 

Inspired by the international quartet of younger musicians he has selected and who prove their engagement in this music and with whom he is proud to share his experience, he has devised an entirely new repertoire of original compositions, comparable to those that made his reputation at the beginning of the 1990s, and consistent with the formal preoccupations that inspire jazz players and improvisers in Paris as in New York today. 

From odd metrics to revamped latin rhythms, from lyrical compositions to funky grooves, intense ballads to straight-ahead swing, dream-like moods to dizzying unisons and without forgetting a quirky blues, "Gotham Goodbye » showcases a series of works that are far removed from simple pretexts for improvisation but worlds in themselves, and invested with the personalities of those inhabiting them : the tenor saxophonist Irving Acao who's playing is both voluptuous and fleet, gifted with a tone of remarkable richness, and who reveals himself to be a soloist with formidable phrasing ; providing a dynamic foundation for the group, Viktor Nyberg imposes himself as a bassist with an ironclad presence ; the vivacity of Gautier Garrigue's drumming never alters his sense of colors, ever quick to swing while propulsing the collective play with his confidence and his impulses. 

Driving this high-flying quartet as much as he challenges and stimulates it, Franck Amsallem reminds us just what a formidable pianist he is, combining in a personal style the influence of greats from Bud Powell to Keith Jarrett by way of Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. His touch biting or sensual, incisive in attack but unpredictable in his phrasing, he transforms each solo into a highlight.”


Friday, September 27, 2019

Dave Brubeck's Time Out : Why It's So Great

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


Dave Brubeck’s secret is that his music is beautiful — unerringly, dreamily, laughingly beautiful. Paul Desmond’s playing, Joe Morello’s, Eugene Wright’s: all beautiful. He wrote new standards. Jazz or no jazz, he wrote songs, and each solo within the song was also a song. Dave Brubeck made music like no one else. That is his secret, and that is his legacy.

Written by Kile Smith and originally published in 2015, this piece was re-posted to the Philadelphia FM radio station [90.1] WRTI Jazz Blog in April 2019 as part of its Jazz Appreciation Month under the banner - 1959 The Year That Changed Jazz.

The year 1959 saw the release of Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, The Shape of Things to Come by Ornette Coleman, Mingus Ah Um by Charles Mingus and Time Out by Dave Brubeck all of which collectively introduced new elements into Jazz that moved it away from improvising on 32-bar melodies, 12-bar Blues, chord based harmonic progressions and standard 4/4 time signatures which had been the basic features of the music throughout the Swing and BeBop eras.

Written from the vantage point of the 60th anniversary of the Columbia LP Time Out it’s interesting to read this “take” by a writer of the current generation concerning what makes Dave Brubeck’s music on this album “so great.”

Frankly, aspects of this assessment of the significance of Dave and the classic quartet’s landmark recording had never occurred to me before. Perhaps they will be new to you, as well.

“In Jailhouse Rock, Elvis plays an ex-con rube hoping to make it in the music business. He’s dragged to a swanky party, where he’s wedged between society snobs who try to look intellectual and hip by discussing modern music. They toss around lingo like “dissonance” and “atonality,” and the names of some musicians, including that of Dave Brubeck. Elvis’s increasing discomfort wells up when the hostess asks his opinion. Rather than revealing his ignorance, he barks crudely at her and stalks out.

Hollywood knows a good stereotype when it sees one, hick or slick, and “Brubeck” meant cerebral, cool, West Coast. The Dave Brubeck Quartet was already one of the hottest ensembles in jazz in the ’50s, playing hundreds of concerts, and releasing multiple LPs, every year. Brubeck’s face had been on the cover of Time magazine in 1954, Jailhouse Rock came out in 1957, and it would still be two years before the Quartet had its incandescent burst into the stratosphere — and into jazz history — with the release of Time Out.

Led by the hit single “Take Five,” written by alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, Time Out was the first jazz album to sell a million copies. It broke many conventions in achieving that. For one thing, it was a jazz album with nothing but original pieces. No comforting “standards” were on it to reassure buyers wary of new music.

For another, the cover art was a contemporary, abstract painting. People like to look at faces, especially of celebrities, but there were no photos of the popular musicians greeting the public, just egg shapes and abutting slaps of color.

But the biggest risk, of course, was the music. “Take Five” added one little beat to the normal 4/4 pulse and made it 5/4, an unheard-of time signature for jazz. It’s found in avant-garde music or in folk traditions tucked away in Hungary, India... or in Turkey, where Dave discovered it. On tour, he heard local musicians playing odd rhythms and decided right there that he’d make a jazz album employing unusual time signatures. “Blue Rondo à la Turk” in a crazily sliced 9/8 was born there, and so was Brubeck’s lasting popularity.

These are beats you can’t dance to and can’t sing to, or so we’d think. The album was a gauntlet slammed into the ground of jazz. With Time Out, it’s as if Dave Brubeck were announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one rule in jazz. It’s got to swing. And we can swing in 4, 3, 5, 7, 9, or anything. Here we go.” And off they went. “Take Five” was not only the Quartet’s biggest hit, it is still the biggest jazz single in history.

Desmond’s tune, and his sound, epitomize the ice-smooth and pungent spice of his talent. He likened his own playing to a dry martini, and there’s never been a better description. His supple, mid-air twists still amaze, but he’s a giant because of the non-headlining gifts he prized above all others. In a letter to his father he listed them: “beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity.”

He was Charlie Parker’s favorite alto player. Desmond admired Parker and other bop musicians, but knew he could never be one. He joked, “I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness.”

Joe Morello is the kind of drummer whose talent knocks you down in stages. He’s not the freight train that Art Blakey was, nor a Buddy Rich Formula One race car. Philly Joe Jones played like he was falling down a flight of stairs and then strolled away smiling, but Joe Morello was Picasso, painting himself into cubist corners and turning the trap set into a mirage. Or like M.C. Escher, with finely detailed, perfectly executed stick-work leading you down a stairwell and out onto a roof.

But he could shout, too. His solo on the “Take Five” single sneaks in, stutter-stepping, but before long he’s slamming doors, or the same door, over and over, until he’s satisfied that it’ll say shut. Then he skips away on the ride cymbal.

With time-bending sax and shape-shifting drums, the bass player had better be strong, and Eugene Wright is that rock. His playing has been described as “Kansas City,” which, to my ears, in the context of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, means solid and fluid at the same time. It’s steady but always singing and tuneful. Wright is more than just the reliable springboard for the others, but a master technician of blues and feel. The little laugh at the end of “Unsquare Dance,” a blues Rubik's Cube from the Time Further Out album, is Wright’s relief that their layered syncopations over 7/4 actually worked!

“Take Five” may be the most thankless of songs for a bassist, since he’s little more than a metronome on this chart, recycling the same notes over and over. But listen closely. He’s not just keeping the beat, he’s handing it on. Even in “Take Five” you’ll hear Eugene Wright’s unbearable lightness of time.

Dave Brubeck may be the most unlikely of jazz pianists. He almost was tossed from college in his senior year, he related, because they discovered that he hadn’t learned to read music. A few players, early in jazz history, didn’t read notes, working music out by ear. But Brubeck’s sense of harmony is so intricate that we're surprised by the story. They were surprised then, because in four years of college nobody had caught it.

His style of playing also sets him apart, and some wished that he'd cut loose during solos like other pianists. But he wasn’t like other pianists, and his music isn’t like other music. His block chords and rolling ruminations lend themselves to the sometimes-punishing chromaticism of the tunes. (Take a look at the sheet music to “The Duke” sometime to feel your head lean to one side.)

He was always trying something new, looking for sonic breakthroughs that would illuminate the bones and sinews of a piece. That was his swing, and his jazz, and it works.

The secret of Brubeck’s music, though, and of his success, has nothing to do with style. His impact on jazz isn’t because he's cool or West Coast. It’s not that Brubeck didn’t play standards (he did). It’s not even rhythm or time signatures or the supposed braininess Hollywood made him the poster boy for. If you want intellect, after all, bop’s your game.

No, Dave Brubeck’s secret is that his music is beautiful — unerringly, dreamily, laughingly beautiful. Paul Desmond’s playing, Joe Morello’s, Eugene Wright’s: all beautiful. He wrote new standards. Jazz or no jazz, he wrote songs, and each solo within the song was also a song. Dave Brubeck made music like no one else. That is his secret, and that is his legacy.”

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Curtis Amy - Testifyin’ Texas Tenor

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


That Texas tenor sound is a phenomenon in itself. David “Fathead” Newman, Don Wilkerson, Booker Ervin, James Clay, King Curtis,Budd Johnson, Arnett Cobb, Buddy Tate, and Wilton Felder were some of its major exponents to emerge in the fifties. As different as their styles were, they shared a rich, hard, vibrato-less sound and a clear, deliberate articulation.

The sound is strong, sure and prideful, but with an underlying vulnerability. It's pas­sionate. … Cannonball Adderley described it as ‘a moan inside the tone.’ …”
- Michael Cuscuna, 1997

One could certainly add the name of Curtis Amy to the above list of Texas Tenor saxophonists.

Soul and Funk were the big, new discoveries of a number of Jazz record companies in the early 1960s. With their heavy backbeats and simple melodic refrains, the soulful and funky Jazz styles appealed to a wider audience, particularly those who liked their Jazz laced with a heavy dose of rhythm and blues.

The origins or “roots” [an “in” word for those times] of soulful and funky Jazz supposedly were to be found in their connection to the religious music that was sung and played in southern Baptist and Pentecostal churches. Music, as well as, prayer was one means of penitence, or, in the parlance of the times, testifyin or signifyin’ one’s spiritual allegiance.

Bluesy albums set to a boogaloo beat were another by-product of this era of Jazz commercialism and words like “funky” and “groovy” and “soulful” were plastered all over LP covers.

It was a fun music to play, especially if you were a drummer. Nothing complicated. Music played at slow-to-moderate tempos, with melodies mainly derived from 12-bar blues and lots of rim shots or two-beat shuffles tapped out on the snare and bass drums.

The vocal epitome of this style of music was “brother” Ray Charles whose tambourine-totting background singers were always there to show the audience where to clap their hands or stomp their feet on the second and fourth beats of every bar of the music.

But, hey, even Jazz musicians have to eat and pay the rent and the popularity of Soul and Funk provided lots of gigs until the dramatic rise of Rock ‘n Roll took things in a different direction in the 1960s.

Tenor saxophonist Curtis Amy came to prominence during this era and the titles of some of his recordings – The Blues Message, Meetin’ Here, Way Down, Groovin’ Blue, - are reflective of it.

Texas tenorman Curtis Amy had a long and distinguished career as a jazz artist, studio musician and  record executive. During his years with Pacific Jazz, he recorded six superb albums that revealed an artist who constantly challenged himself as an improviser and as a composer.

With the exception of Katanga which was issued as a limited edition CD in 1998 by Blue Note as part of its West Coast Classics series [CDP 94580], none of Amy’s output for Pacific Jazz was reissued digitally until Michael Cuscuna and his team at Mosaic Records collected all six of the Amy Pacific Jazz LP’s and put them out as a 3-CD Mosaic Select boxed-set in 2003.

Here is the text from mosaicrecords.com announcing this set.


The Bluesy Drive of a Great Texas Tenor.

“There’s nothing quite like the mournful cry or the bluesy drive of a great Texas tenor saxophonist. Curtis Amy was of the same generation as Booker Ervin, David Fathead Newman, James Clay and Wilton Felder, but his time in the jazz spotlight was brief. Amy had a beautiful sound and a style that was both muscular and lyrical. Although he had a long and successful career in his transplanted home of Los Angeles, much of it was spent doing high profile studio work and working with his wife, the extraordinary Merry Clayton.

During his years with Pacific Jazz (1960-63), he recorded six superb albums that revealed an artist who constantly challenged himself as an improviser and as a composer. After The Blues Message and Meetin’ Here, two soulful collaborations with organist Paul Bryant, he moved into more textured hard bop surroundings, fronting sextets with varied instrumentation. He and Frank Butler co-led Groovin’ Blue, which features Carmell Jones and Bobby Hutcherson. Way Down includes Roy Ayers, Marcus Belgrave, Victor Feldman and valve trombonist Roy Brewster among others.

Tippin’ On Through was recorded live at the Lighthouse with Ayers and Brewster among others. Amy’s final album for the label Katanga is regarded as his masterpiece; it featured the legendary trumpeter Dupree Bolton as well as Ray Crawford and Jack Wilson. From the furious be-bop of the title tune to the lament "Lonely Woman" to the hypnotic, extended performance of "Native Land", Amy's work as an improviser and composer is at its zenith. Trumpeter Dupree Bolton, who made an impressive debut on Harold Land's "The Fox" three years earlier, is absolutely dazzling with a brash attack, formidable chops and very original ideas.

Although he made two more albums (in 1966 and 1994) and recorded with Gerald Wilson and Onzy Matthews, the six albums that he made for Pacific Jazz – all contained in this Mosaic Select set represent his greatest legacy. Amazingly, five of them make their appearance on CD for the first time.”

Thomas Conrad offered the following review of the Mosaic Select: Curtis Amy set in the May 2004 edition of JazzTimes.


© -Thomas Conrad, JazzTimes, May 2004, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“For all those who have regarded Mosaic boxed sets as the gold standard among jazz reissue programs, the recently introduced Mosaic Select series requires some spirit of compromise. The seventh release in the series, for example, provides only six short paragraphs of current retrospective on the career of tenor saxophonist Curtis Amy. In a "real" Mosaic collection, we would have gotten a full-size catalog, an extravagance of session photos and a new in-depth essay by a leading Amy authority with voluminous discographical data. In this three-CD set, we get only the undistinguished original liner notes.

But if the Select series is budget-challenged, it is also free to go where big Mosaic boxed sets cannot-for example, to artists whose recorded output is sparse, and/or whose appeal is limited to (in Mosaic founder/producer Michael Cuscuna's words) "a relatively small but discerning audience."

Case in point, Curtis Amy. He came out of Houston, Texas-a fact that is announced with his entrance on the very first track of disc one, "Searchin'." After Paul Bryant's plaintive prologue on Hammond B3, Amy emerges with a huge, long, braying wail, a sound that only emanates from one (Lone Star) state.

Unlike the other great Texas tenors who came up in the '40s and '50s (Illinois Jacquet, Arnett Cobb, Booker Ervin, David "Fathead" Newman, et. al.), Amy went west. He settled in Los Angeles in 1955, became active on the L.A. scene and recorded six LPs for Richard Bock's Pacific label between 1960 and 1963. All six are here, and only one of them, Katanga!, has ever been previously reissued on CD. Between 1963 and 1994, Amy recorded only once under his own name. During these years he played in L.A. big bands, toured with Ray Charles, and worked as a studio musician, record company executive, and actor. He died at the age of 72 in 2002.

Amy was more than just a special player. He was a commanding figure with a big, blustering sound and chops to burn, a teller of definitive tales of the soul. The first two albums represented, The Blues Message and Meetin' Here, with the little known Bryant, are examples of the tenor/organ combo genre as powerful as anything that ever came out of New York. Amy could testify with anyone, and he was also an exceptional ballad interpreter ("Come Rain or Come Shine," "Angel Eyes").

The progress of these six albums moves from deep blues grooves to more textured and sophisticated-but still soulful-approaches. Along the way, a door is opened to a subset of West Coast jazz much earthier than the famous "cool school," while still reflecting a sunnier environment than that of East Coast hard bop. Amy surrounds himself with some of the best players of that time and place, like Carmell Jones and Dupree Bolton and Frank Strazzeri and Frank Butler. But his own clarion, assertive voice always dominates.

The collection culminates in what Michael Cuscuna calls "Amy's masterpiece," Katanga!. It is indeed an album where everything magically works, from inspiration through execution. Pianist Jack Wilson and guitarist Ray Crawford use their allotted space beautifully, and Amy, in a stunning purity of tone, introduces his new instrument, soprano saxophone. But Katanga! will always be remembered as the last documented appearance on record of trumpeter Dupree Bolton, one of the most mysterious and tragic figures in the history of jazz. Bolton could spit fire and turn the flames into music on a level approaching Clifford Brown. But after Katanga! he disappeared into prisons, institutions and a life on the streets.”