Milt Jackson [1923-1999] - A Vital Force on the Vibraphone

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“Improvisation is raised to the level of an art when it involves two factors which pull the performer in opposite directions: Imagination, on one hand, and restraint, on the other. Unbridled imagination may be fascinating for brief periods but without a sense of restraint it soon becomes so cluttered with dead ends, fallacious decorations and excursions into musical limbo that the merits are lost under an accumulation of trash..

Because he has both an active, creative imagination and taste which is another way of getting at restraint  —  Milt Jackson holds a leading position among the relatively small group of true and effective improvisers in jazz today. His playing is almost invariably lean, spare and direct, swinging straight along a purposeful line without recourse to a fringe of musical foliage that might distract the listeners ear from any lapses or

shallowness in the main line. Jackson, quite literally lays it on the line in his playing.”

- John Wilson, liner notes to Milt Jackson, Blues & Ballads [Atlantic 1242].

Every so often, I find it fun to reference an article from the Jazz literature, add a video or two which abound on YouTube these days and share these with you.

Such is the case with vibraphonist Milt Jackson [1923-1999] who is probably best known for his 44 year association with the Modern Jazz Quartet.

The following overview of Bags career can be found in Kenny Mathieson’s informative and easy to read Cookin’: Hard Bop and Jazz Soul, 1954-1965. [2002]

“If the 'classical' aspects of their music [Modern Jazz Quartet - MJQ] attracted most comment, both for and against, familiar standards and jazz tunes were an ever-present element at its centre, Milt Jackson's apparently limitless ability to come up with fresh and inventive blues lines and lustrous (if occasionally over-sentimental) ballad interpretations remained equally central to the group's musical identity, and they always swung. Improvisation also remained at the core of their music, and it is often difficult to tell where composition ends and improvisation begins.”

Yet, there were still some Jazz fans who viewed the MJQ as an artificial setting for Jazz and who labelled it a form of “pardon-me-while-I-swing chamber music.   

One of the things which irked those recalcitrant fans most was the idea that Milt Jackson was somehow being prevented from unleashing the full flow of his gutsy, blues-drenched playing in the context of Lewis's imposed classicism. That may have happened in some of the band's projects, but for much of the time, Milt had plenty of space and opportunity to stretch out, especially in a concert setting, and the MJQ's large roster of recordings has no shortage of prime vibraharp solos from the master. Lewis's light, formal structures provided more sympathetic settings for Jackson than has often been allowed, and the sense of exuberant release when the vibraphonist was set loose from some passage of intricate group interplay to spin one of his dazzlingly inventive flights often gave the resulting solo even greater impact than if it had emerged from a driving bop setting. His vibrant solos provided a sharply contrasting coloration within the MJQ's palette, and he profited from Lewis's firm sense of direction and purpose, even where the settings ran contrary to his natural instincts. Jackson never really developed as an innovative leader in his own right, and generally blossomed when others were in charge and he was free just to play, something that applied equally to his work with Monk and Miles.

He was a hugely gifted soloist with a musical conception which was steeped in the earthy pragmatism of gospel and the blues, and had already made classic contributions to jazz with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, trumpeters Howard McGhee and Miles Davis, and the Woody Herman Orchestra by the time the MJQ formed. He was the first musician to work out a viable approach to playing bebop on his favoured instrument, the vibraharp, a slightly larger variant of the more familiar vibraphone. He took a distinctly different route - in both technical and expressive terms - to those established by Lionel Hampton and Red Norvo, developing a linear approach to melody and a style of rhythmic accenting which owed more to the example of Parker and Gillespie than to either of his two great swing predecessors on the instrument.

In addition, he manipulated the actual sound of his instrument by reducing the speed of the oscillator, the rotating vanes which sustain the sound of a note on adjustable models of the instrument. The slower rate provided a richer, warmer sound when he allowed a note to ring, and brought the timbre and expressive qualities of the instrument closer to the human voice. In an interview with jazz critic Nat Hentoff in 1958, Jackson explained his allegiance to the older adjustable instruments by noting that the single-speed vibraphone which became popular after the war failed to provide 'the degrees of vibrato my ear told me I had to have. Having the right vibrato makes a lot of difference in the feeling. It's evident in a sax player, and to me it's something a vibist can have too. My own vibrato tends to be slow.'

According to Thomas Owens in Bebop, “Jackson runs it at about 3.3 revolutions per second, instead of the 10 rps used by Hampton. The result is that his long notes have a beautiful, subtle motion instead of the nervous shimmy that originally was the norm on the vibraphone. He often exploits that beautiful sound by ending a piece with a slow arpeggio of a simple major triad, letting the notes ring for several seconds” (a tactic which was an especially effective device on ballads). When combined with his penchant for subtle shadings of dynamics and expressive weighting of selected notes, it gave him an instantly recognisable signature, and pushed the possibilities of the instrument in a different direction to that explored by Hampton and Norvo, who preferred to work with no vibrato at all.

Milton Jackson was born in Detroit on 1 January, 1923, and was proficient on several instruments by the time he left school, including guitar, violin, piano, drums, tympani, xylophone and vibes. He sang in a gospel group called The Evangelist Singers while simultaneously playing jazz with local groups on the Detroit scene, including working with saxophonist Lucky Thompson, an association which enabled him to make his recording debut with singer Dinah Washington. He almost joined the Earl Hines band in 1942, but instead was drafted, and served two years in the army. On his return to Detroit in 1944, he set up a jazz quartet called The Four Sharps, which Dizzy Gillespie heard while on tour. Suitably impressed, Gillespie encouraged him to move to New York in 1945 with the offer of a place in his band. By this time, he had acquired the nickname 'Bags', derived from the pouches under his eyes (he claimed the name had originated in the aftermath of a heavy drinking session to celebrate his release from the army).

He accompanied Gillespie and Charlie Parker to Los Angeles in 1945, partly as insurance against the saxophonist not turning up for gigs, to fulfil a famous (or notorious) engagement at Billy Berg's club. He remained with Gillespie's sextet when they returned to New York early in 1946, and moved on to the trumpeter's ground-breaking bebop big band. He was playing both piano and vibes at this point, but chose to concentrate on developing the possibilities offered by the latter instrument. He cut sides for Savoy in 1949 with a septet which included Julius Watkins on French horn, and the various sessions gathered on The First Q in 1951-2, but his most impressive legacy of the pre-MJQ period lay in the contributions he made to Thelonious Monk's classic sessions for Blue Note in 1948 and 1951, released in two volumes as The Genius of Modern Music.

Monk was also present on a famous session for Prestige on 24 December, 1954, in which a band led by Miles Davis and featuring Jackson laid down the definitive version of his most famous composition, Bags' Groove. It features one of Jackson's most dazzling solos on record, and was released on LP under the trumpeter's name as Bags' Groove. The tune, a blues, served as a template for many of his subsequent compositions, and was also a signature item in the MJQ's concert repertoire.

Jackson established a pattern of working six months or so each year with the MJQ, and devoting the rest of the year either to leading his own groups, or collaborating with other stellar names, including albums with Coleman Hawkins (Bean Bags for Atlantic in 1958), Ray Charles (Soul Brothers and Soul Meeting, both on Atlantic in 1957-8), John Coltrane (Bags and Trane for Atlantic in 1959), Wes Montgomery (Bags Meets Wes for Riverside in 1961), and, as part of a flood of albums recorded for Norman Granz's Pablo label between 1975-82, two big band albums with Count Basie. He compiled a considerable discography in over five decades of recording, quite apart from the MJQ's also substantial efforts, taking in a variety of settings, from small groups to big bands, all-star jam sessions to carefully arranged outings with strings, but he sounded most at home blowing on bop chord sequences. His own records do not bear out the charge that Lewis radically transformed his approach -the settings are often more down-to-earth, but Milt's flowing solos are instantly identifiable counterparts to his work with the MJQ.

In addition to the Dee Gee, Hi Lo and Savoy sides already mentioned, Jackson cut a session for Blue Note in April, 1952, which featured the MJQ-in-waiting, and alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson. Originally issued as a 10 inch LP, it was later combined with two of his dates with Monk (from 1948 and 1951) on LP, simply entitled Milt Jackson. The Monk material is indispensable, and the later session is only a little behind, with Jackson in fine form, and Donaldson's directly expressive alto fitting nicely on top of the evolving quartet, which stays firmly in bop territory.

The MJQ were an established fact by the time he went back into the studio as a leader for a Prestige date on 16 June, 1954, followed in turn by a second date on 20 May, 1955, and a series of sessions for Savoy in 1955-6 which remain among his strongest outings as a leader. Highlights are not easy to find in Jackson's output, which is notable for having little in the way of peaks and troughs. He played at a very high level of feeling, invention and execution virtually all of the time and in any setting, and the kind of sessions he liked to play when left to his own devices provided scope for consistent quality, but rarely either pushed him to ultimate heights, or threatened to pull the rug from under his feet.

Particular recommendations can sometimes be made on the basis of the company he kept on a given disc, and the Savoy sessions with saxophonist Lucky Thompson fall into that category. Eli 'Lucky' Thompson was born in South Carolina, but brought up in Detroit, and the two men first worked together in the city as teenagers. They made highly compatible partners, and their pleasure in playing together shines through in everything they did on these sessions, recorded on 5 and 23 January, 1956, with a rhythm section of Hank Jones (piano), Wendell Marshall (bass) and Kenny Clarke (Wade Legge replaced Jones on the second date).

The saxophonist's rather light, lustrous tenor provides a beautifully judged complement to Jackson's fluent, endlessly resourceful mastery of his instrument, while the rhythm section swings with a tougher edge than was usual in the MJQ. Otherwise, the idea that Jackson was a very different player away from Lewis's influence is firmly quashed. This material has been issued in various forms, including the individual discs The Jazz Skyline and Jackson's-Ville, and is high on the list of essential Jackson. The quintet date from October, 1955, with Frank Wess on tenor, issued as Opus De Jazz, is also a good one, although a little less absorbing.

The earlier Prestige sessions featured pianist Horace Silver, and took place right on the cusp of the emergence of hard bop. That feel is certainly in evidence in the resulting material, although given Jackson's intense relationship with the blues and gospel (he identified the music he grew up with in church as 'the most powerful influence on my musical career'), that is hardly a surprise. Tracks like Silver's Opus de Funk and Buhaina are tailor-made for the vibraharpist, and he takes full advantage, boosted by a driving rhythm section completed by Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke, with the less familiar Henry Boozier on trumpet.

The second date featured just a quartet, with Connie Kay replacing Clarke. The standout on the latter session is Stonewall, a blues on which Jackson unwinds in classic fashion over thirteen choruses of brilliant, flashing invention. The original discs were issued as Milt Jackson Quintet and Milt Jackson Quartet respectively, but have also been available under various other titles, including Opus de Funk, a Prestige two-fer which also contained Invitation, his solid 1962 date with Jimmy Heath and Kenny Dorham for Riverside.

The MJQ's association with Atlantic inevitably brought recording opportunities for both Lewis and Jackson, including the discs with Coleman Hawkins, Ray Charles (Jackson is heard briefly on guitar on Soul Brothers) and John Coltrane mentioned earlier, and further sessions in January, 1957, which featured Horace Silver on piano in all-star groups with Lucky Thompson and Cannonball Adderley, which can be found on the Plenty, Plenty Soul album. Another significant addition to his roster was Bags' Opus, recorded for United Artists on 28-29 December, 1958, and subsequently reissued on Blue Note. The date paired the vibist with saxophonist Benny Golson and trumpeter Art Farmer, and a rhythm section of pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Connie Kay. Jackson stretches out on his own Blues for Diahann (named for singer Diahann Carroll, who was married to Monte Kay), and spins delicately evocative lines on Lewis's Afternoon In Paris and Golson's two famous compositions, I Remember Clifford and Whisper Not.

He signed to Riverside in 1961, opening his account with Bags Meets Wes, and laying down several more discs for the label, including Invitation in 1962, and Live At The Village Gate in 1963. For Someone In Love, cut in 1962, featured a brass orchestra with fine arrangements by trombonist Melba Liston. He recorded albums for Impulse! and Verve, and had a brief and less productive association with Creed Taylor's CTI in the early 1970s. 

His association with Pablo added a dozen titles, but did not tell us much we had not already known about his playing, also true of his recordings made in the 1990s, including a series of records at the behest of Quincy Jones for his Qwest label. The settings varied from straight blowing quartets to string orchestra, and are consistently and impressively listenable.

Jackson had remained busy while the MJQ lay in abeyance, and continued to be so even after its reformation. He led his own small groups featuring pianist Mike LeDonne and drummer Kenny Washington, toured extensively as a soloist playing with local rhythm sections, and co-led a band with bassist Ray Brown for a time in the late-1980s. Although he was forced to cancel a number of engagements through ill health in 1998, he was able to return to playing, and did so until shortly before his death from liver cancer on 9 October, 1999, in New York City. He was reunited with Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson for an engagement and live recording at the Blue Note club in New York at the end of 1998, and recorded with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra in 1999, a final coda to an extensive and important recorded legacy. Even in these late recordings, Jackson's deep roots in the blues remain evident, and if they do not possess the excitement which marked out his music in his prime, they still have the depth of feeling and sparkling invention which characterised his playing, and made him not only a truly major voice on the vibes, but also one of the great jazz improvisers, irrespective of instrument.”