Ted Gioia on Paul Desmond

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

The following is from the Third Edition of Ted Gioia’s The History of Jazz [2021] a must volume that any serious Jazz fan should have on their bookshelf. 

For as Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post declares on the book’s back jacket:

"If you are looking for an introduction to jazz, this is it. If you know and love jazz well, this is your vade mecum [a reference book kept constantly at hand]. Me, I expect to be reading around in it for the rest of my life... [It is] the definitive work: encyclopedic, discriminating, provocative, perceptive and eminently readable. With its publication, it can no longer be said that the literature of jazz falls far short of the music itself."

When I was first learning about Jazz, I never realized that there was a group of alto sax players who approached the instrument in a way that was totally different from the legendary Charlie Parker.

That’s because I first experienced Jazz in California where the likes of West Coast Jazz or “Cool School” alto saxophonists was commonplace. 

Bud Shank at the Malibu Inn or Lighthouse Café, Lennie Niehaus with Stan Kenton’s Orchestra, Art Pepper performing with “The Rhythm Section” on Contemporary Records, or Paul Desmond in various club, college and concert venues with Dave Brubeck’s quartet - all were readily accessible to me on a regular basis.

Charlie Parker? Well, he was “just” legendary because he was dead by the time I discovered Jazz and it was only much later that I sought him out via records he made primarily on Norman Granz’s various labels which were all ultimately subsumed under Verve. Of course, once I got into him, Bird was a revelation.

Given my preference for the music of the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet, I heard more of alto saxophonist Paul Desmond’s work than the other West Coast alto saxophonists and in time, for all the reasons mentioned in the following excerpt from Ted’s book, Desmond became one of my favorite Jazz musicians.

“For a time in the 1950s, a West Coast alto style was taking form, a more mellifluous alternative to the astringent Parker-inflected lines of the other coast. Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Lennie Niehaus, and Paul Desmond, among others, exemplified this warm, dulcet-toned approach. In time, the styles of these players diverged. 

Of this group, Paul Desmond stayed truest to the ultra-cool aesthetic. He had little interest in adopting a flashier style, jokingly referring to himself as the "world's slowest alto player." On the surface, Desmond’s solos appeared to offer a lush romanticism, but only careful listeners were apt to catch their richer implications. Desmond carefully avoided excesses of sentimentality with a range of devices: witty references to other songs and solos, playful call-and-response motives, oblique references to an odd assortment of substitute chords and modes, even quasi-aleatory [elements of random choice] exercises in translating phone numbers into musical phrases using intervals relating to each digit—a steady stream of melodic surprises linked by Desmond's exceptional skills in thematic improvisation. 

A single solo from the Dave Brubeck Quartet's twenty-fifth anniversary reunion tour finds Desmond celebrating these old acquaintances with a snippet of "Auld Lang Syne"—followed by allusions to "52nd Street Theme," "The Gypsy," "Taps Miller," "Drum Boogie," and "Organ Grinder's Swing"—all in the context of a complex piece that shifts back and forth between 3/4 and 4/4. The next night, in a different town, Desmond no doubt initiated the process all over again, drawing on still other sources in his artfully constructed saxophone stream of consciousness. Yet these clever asides were never forced, and Desmond somehow made the cerebral and the plaintive coexist in the same solo, even in a single phrase. For much of his career, Desmond served as an appropriate foil for Brubeck. Their collaborations were experimental in the best sense of the term: open to new sounds, but never (as with so many progressive works) in a doctrinaire manner. 

After the breakup of the Brubeck Quartet, Desmond's music became even more introspective and delicate. His guest pairings with Chet Baker and Jim Hall, and his final quartet recordings with guitarist Ed Bickert, are neglected gems of the improvisational arts, jazz performances that bespeak a serene mastery as rare as it is affecting.”

Desmond also made a series of recordings under producer Creed Taylor’s supervision for the A&M label and one of my favorites is Summertime from which the following YouTubes are drawn: Theme from Lady in Cement, Samba with Some Barbecue, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and Autumn Leaves - all featuring Herbie Hancock on piano when he was still a session player and all arranged by Don Sebesky.