Tubby Hayes and Paul Gonsalves: A New Look at Change of Setting by Simon Spillett

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

Simon Spillett is back visiting with us again, this time on a subject that’s near-and-dear to his heart - tenor saxophonist [flutist and vibraphonist] Tubby Hayes.

Simon is Tub’s biographer and you can locate more information about the author and the book by visiting his webpage.

This time round, the subject of Hayes is given what Simon refers to as an “Anglo twist” or if you will, “a change of setting,” brought about by the recorded pairing of Tubby with Paul Gonsalves, the latter long famed as a member of the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

© -  Simon Spillett, copyright protected; all rights reserved, used with the author’s permission.

““I like his playing so much”, Tubby Hayes said of Paul Gonsalves in Jazz Journal, 1961. “His sound is completely original. [He] could never be mistaken for anyone else.”

 

The feeling was mutual. Having first encountered each other during Duke Ellington's October 1958 tour of the UK, Hayes and Gonsalves became firm friends, united not only by musical kinship -  both were dazzling instrumental virtuosos, with a fondness for extended improvisation -  but also by their off-stage predilection for high-living. Indeed, the most famous incident bracketing their two names, the night in February 1964, when an inebriated Gonsalves pulled a no-show at Ellington's Royal Festival Hall concert and was subbed for by Hayes, has become the stuff of legend, albeit frequently distorted and inaccurately recalled.

 

The week after that triumph, Hayes and Gonsalves recorded together on an album produced by London saxophonist Jack Sharpe, a friend who made life comfortable for touring musicians both local and foreign, and who would bankroll no fewer than four UK-recorded sessions featuring Gonsalves between 1963 and 1969.

The first Hayes-Gonsalves album, Just Friends (Columbia SX 6003) was a rarity in more ways than one: British jazzmen and their US opposite numbers hardly ever gathered around a recording microphone together in those days, let alone as equals. So successful was the venture, though, that a year later Sharpe repeated the exercise, hiring some of the best local talent, booking a studio and financing the entire enterprise himself. Licensed to the World Record Club, the resulting LP, Change of Setting: Tubby Hayes and The Paul Gonsalves All Stars, appeared in the summer of 1967, gathering a bouquet of favourable reviews (“Great Gonsalves, but one up for the local lads”, reported Melody Maker) before quickly disappearing from view. And that's where it has stayed until now, a sleeping classic, more often talked of than actually heard, as well as having the mystifying honour of hitherto being one of only two Hayes' studio albums to have not received a CD reissue.

For years, fans either searched in vain for it, or if they were lucky enough to own a copy, trumpeted the records many virtues. Original pressings began to change hands for inflated sums; discussion of the album even made it into the Vinyl Freak column of DownBeat, a rare accolade for a British-made recording; and one track – the saxophone slam-dunk that is Don't Fall Off The Bridge – appeared on a sampler album in 2005, but other than that tit-bit, that was it; Change of Setting was off-limits to all but those in-the-know.

 

This new release therefore gives the album new life and – in the wake of both a recent biography and documentary film on Hayes – doubtless a new audience too.

Hayes' folk-legend, that of being one of the few British jazzmen of the 1950s/60s who could truly hold his own against his US counterparts, is, rather surprisingly, not all that well supported by recorded evidence: in fact, he made all too few albums in the company of American musicians, but Change of Setting is without a doubt one of the best entries in his “international” discography. And, like many things Tubby Hayes-related, its back-story has more than its share of mystery and here-say.

The fudged “facts” around Hayes' famous guest appearance with Duke Ellington are echoed in the widely accepted inaccuracies concerning both his albums with Gonsalves, which have often received incorrect recording dates in existing discographies. Only with the aid of one of the participating musicians (Stan Tracey) was the correct recording date for the Columbia set uncovered – a whole year before it was alleged to have taken  place! - while the date of the follow-up session was finally identified by Ellington diarist Ken Vail as February 15th 1965, placing it smack-dab in the middle of a career purple-patch for both its head-liners.

 

Discographical minutiae may be valuable up to a point, but it's the music that matters most and in this regard Change of Setting goes one up on its predecessor by having a more varied programme, allowing Hayes more space both as a soloist and a composer, and a wider-ranging tonal colour, achieved by deft use of the instrumental “doubles” available to many of its participants.

Indeed, for even though it boasts a front-line of saxophone giants, by no means is the record a simple sax-fest. Hayes, for example, plays not only tenor and vibes but also flute, while the remainder of the saxophone section juggle various woodwinds to refreshing effect. In addition, Gonsalves' fellow Ellingtonian Ray Nance switches between trumpet and violin, adding further piquancy.

Yet again, some confusion and misinformation has arisen about exactly who plays what on which track, thanks in part to the album's original sleeve notes. Despite Max Harrison's claim that Don't Fall Off The Bridge is a “workout for the three tenors”, the track includes a fourth tenor solo by Tony Coe, whose close proximity to his idol Gonsalves throughout these sessions reveals a touch of genius to Jack Sharpe's A&R thinking. Coe also features on tenor on Min and Madge Blues, a Les Condon composition the title of which is not a dedication to persons unknown but in fact celebrates an alternating sequence of minor and major keys.

 

Besides all the multi-instrumentalism on display, the recording gives an ample demonstration of how various jazz fashions influenced this generation of British jazz composers: Harry South's Royal Flush has a suitably Ellington-like hue to it, while a further Les Condon theme, the uber-catchy Speedy Gonsalves rides the (then recent) bossa-nova bandwagon. Hayes's compositions are, as expected, characteristically hip: Don't Fall Off The Bridge uses the favourite Tubby device of alternating chord changes with modes; the title track's quick-fire modulations carry a hint of Coltrane's experiments circa. 1960 and Tubby's Theme (a functional title for Hayes' song Soft and Supple) is a gentle, medium tempo vehicle for the composers flute, a reminder that lyricism and muscle were equal partners in his musical DNA.

 

In some ways, perhaps the most noteworthy contributions are those by drummer/pianist Tony Crombie, like Hayes, a musician who had already had the honour of working with Duke Ellington back in the 1950s. Deb's Delight is a prime example of his career-long ability to mix sophistication (a challenging chord sequence) with a danceable beat, while the moody Child's Fancy, essayed by Ray Nance's violin, creates a suitably exotic, gypsy-like atmosphere.

This track also presents one of those quandaries of identification that make recorded jazz history so intriguing: is that really Terry Shannon on piano, sounding those heavy, ever-so-Crombie-esque chords, or, as has been suggested elsewhere, did the composer temporarily take his place at the keyboard?

 

Then there are the two principle soloists themselves, both on top-form, with Hayes' offering mercurial improvisations that, on the title track in particular, reveal his mastery of the quick-thinking demands of post-Bop harmony.

Gonsalves, on the other hand, playing with what Peter Clayton once accurately dubbed his 'fleecy' tone, sounds like a glorious amalgam of Swing-Era values and something far, far more adventurous.

 

The mid-sixties were peak years for both the protagonists on Change of Setting: It was at this juncture that Gonsalves finally began to receive some long-deserved credit for his advanced musical thinking (Ellington: 'For the avant-garde, I have Paul Gonsalves.'), while for Hayes, 1965 marked the apex of his international career, touring and recording in the UK, the US and continental Europe, and enjoying a non-stop work schedule that would shortly fall in the face of addiction and ill-health. In fact, both Gonsalves and Hayes were already on borrowed time, eventually dying within a year of each other in the mid-1970s, barely a decade after their final on-record meeting, with the American expiring in the London home of the producer of this album, Jack Sharpe.

Change of Setting though offers immortal music, as ageless and beautiful as when it was first committed to tape over five decades ago.”