Bridging Sonny Rollins [From the Archives with Additions]

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

“I just happened to be on Delancey Street one day and I looked up and saw these steps going up to the Williamsburg Bridge [which connects Manhattan and Brooklyn]. So I walked up the steps and here was this big empty space and nobody there. So I walked across the bridge and I said to myself, "Wow! 

I can come up here and practice. There's nobody here!" Very few people were walking across the bridge, even when I began going out there regularly. A few people used to go across as if for exercise, but not many.

It was a beautiful, perfect place. I had the view of the river and all the boats going back and forth and I was able to be on a part of the walkway where I wasn't visible to the subway trains and traffic which were crossing. I felt like it was God-sent. So I said, "Wow! This is it!" So I went. I could blow as loud as I wanted. It was exactly what I wanted.

I brought a few musicians up there just to show them the spot. [Soprano saxophonist] Steve Lacy came up there. I think Jackie [McLean]. Nobody went up there a lot, but it became my studio.”

- Sonny Rollins

“We do practice on a bridge. … We don't have any particular material that we're rehearsing, just whatever comes to mind. We're just trying to find out about ourselves musically. We practice fingering, intonation, scales, intervals, everything. I've never seen anyone as in love with the tenor saxophone as Sonny is. He's the best player of that instrument I've ever seen.”

- Steve Lacy

After a two year absence from the Jazz scene, The Bridge was Sonny Rollins’ first album when he joined RCA Records in 1961. 

The format of the quartet on this album involves a guitar with bass and drums and it served to transition Sonny away from the hard bop he was so closely associated with throughout the 1950s and move him toward a looser and lighter atmosphere in which he was the featured soloist with accompaniment.

Even more shocking at the time was Sonny's choice of guitarists, Jim Hall, who was usually associated with fewer notes, open spaces and quietude. 

But all of this - the two year hiatus, the group’s framework, the choice of Hall as the guitarist - was thoughtfully designed to help bring Sonny to his next level of development in his “world of improvisation.”

Here’s more about this period in the career of Sonny Rollins from Eric Nisenson’s Open Sky: Sonny Rollins and His World of Interpretation [2000]. 

“In late 1961, after two years of intense work, Sonny decided it was time to return to the scene. He felt that he was playing with more confidence. In addition, he felt more certain of his direction, with respect to both his technical mastery of his horn, and his musical direction as a player and composer.

Alfred Lion's fear that Sonny would be "forgotten" if he stayed away too long turned out to be unfounded. If anything, Sonny's withdrawal from the scene had added to his renown and increased the public's interest in him. There had been published a story about his practicing on the bridge, and by now it had become a jazz legend. His return excited people.

Sonny had had plenty of time to think about what kind of group he wanted. He put together a quartet, instead of the trios he had been playing with for most of the late 1950s. The bassist was Bob Cranshaw, who had played in one of Sonny's trios a few years earlier. Cranshaw would become a favorite Rollins sideman for decades, playing in various groups with him right up until the present.

Cranshaw, who was two years younger than Sonny, was born in Evanston, Illinois, and first gained notice playing in the Chicago jazz scene. He came to New York in 1960, where he joined a band called MJT+3 until he hooked up with Sonny and through him gained notice as one of the better young bassists on the scene.

The drummer for Sonny's new group was either H. T. Saunders or Ben Riley (as usual, Sonny had a hard time finding the right drummer).

As the fourth member of the quartet, Sonny decided to use a guitar player—a great one: Jim Hall.

Many in the jazz world were surprised that Sonny had chosen Hall; some even questioned his choice because Jim Hall was white. Sonny described his reasons:

Number one, because I wanted a more airy sound. I wanted a little more freedom. A piano can be constricting. That's why I wanted a guitar, because I felt that a guitar was not as constricting as a piano.

I had met Jim a couple of times before, when I was on the West Coast and he was with Chico Hamilton. Then I saw him in New York with Jimmy Giuffre. I admired him and he was no slouch musician, you know, I thought he was a good, good musician. I love Jim Hall.

Hall had been born in the same year as Sonny, 1930, in Buffalo, New York. He moved to Los Angeles early on and became associated with the West Coast jazz scene. He first gained fame for playing in Chico Hamilton's chamber jazz quintet and a little later joined another chamber jazz group, the wonderful Jimmy Giuffre Three (which for a while consisted of Giuffre's reeds, Bob Brookmeyer on trombone, and Hall—no rhythm section). His resume made Hall a surprising choice for playing with Sonny, at least at first glance. But this view was merely an attempt by writers, and some fans, to put musicians and music into pat categories.

Sonny's choice of Hall made a lot of musical sense. Hall's trademark is his rounded, luminous tone, which makes his playing instantly recognizable. At its best, his playing is lean, subtle, sinuously lyrical, full of nuance and quiet charm, almost always inventive, and emotionally profound. If this sounds as if his playing was a great contrast to Sonny's bravura tenor, it was. Many jazz groups have included this kind of contrast; think of Miles Davis's reticent sparseness and angular lyricism, and John Coltrane's wailing outpour of notes. Miles understood the power of such a pairing, having offered a similar contrast to Bird when he was in Parker's quintet during the 1940s.

Hall had admired Sonny for a long time and jumped at the chance to play with the tenorman:

I first met Sonny at a jam session with Clifford Brown and Richie Powell. They helped carry in my equipment from the taxicab. I loved the [Brown-Roach] group. I knew Sonny a bit. I didn't understand what a great player he was, although I remember liking his playing a lot. Actually, I always preferred his playing to that of John Coltrane. I thought it had more components to it. And as much as I admire John Coltrane, there was always something slightly one-dimensional about his playing. And I especially loved Sonny's sense of humor.

Hall was surprised to learn that Sonny wanted to hire him:

I had been working with Jimmy Giuffre when John Lewis called me while I was in California and told me to come to New York, that there were a lot of things for me to do there. So I sublet [pianist] Dick Katz's apartment in the Village. One day I got a handwritten note in my mailbox saying, "Dear Jim, I want to talk to you about music," and it was signed by Sonny Rollins. That was typical Sonny Rollins.

So eventually we made an appointment. When Sonny came over to my apartment, he was carrying a little plastic bag, which he put down on the table. So we sat down facing each other and he started talking to me. And he was offering me a job with his quartet. And then the bag started to kind of wiggle. So I said, "Sonny, what's in the bag?" He said, "We'll talk about that later."

I thought about it later—this guy had offered me probably the most important job of my life, and he is so incredibly dignified and gifted, and his bag is wiggling away. After he offered me the job, he opened the bag and smiled; there was a lizard or chameleon in it. "Look at this!" he said. "Isn't it great?"

After he had joined the group, Jim Hall's respect for Sonny as a musician grew even deeper. He found playing with Sonny a challenge:

I was discovering every night just how great a player he is and then I had to play a solo after his. So it was kind of frightening. It really got my attention. I was practicing a lot back then. Boy, I was practicing a lot. I was also working on a John Coltrane type of thing, on the guitar, the kind of arpeggiated things that Coltrane would do.

We did rehearse a lot, but as I recall, the rehearsal had more to do with getting sensitized to one another than anything else, because he's liable to do anything on the bandstand. It had nothing to do with what we rehearsed, although we did have a few things that we were supposed to do together.

Boy, there were always lots of surprises on the bandstand, which was part of the charm of it. For example, we would be in the middle of a tune, romping along, and then suddenly he would be playing and somehow brought us to completely stop, just by the strength of his playing. He was such a strong player that he could stop us like stopping a freight train, just by playing something. Then he would play alone for a while and then he would bring us back in, maybe at a different tempo. So that was a big influence on me, all that stuff.

I played at the Apollo with Sonny and it was great fun. We in the rhythm section would start off playing onstage and then Sonny would come stalking out from the wings and everybody would go crazy. We would milk that a little bit. And the audience would get on me, which was flattering, and Sonny would be standing in front of me sometimes, saying, "Don't let them get you." But that audience would get on everybody.

Sonny hired Jim Hall for reasons beyond his musical ability:

I wanted to have an integrated band. I definitely wanted to make a statement by having an integrated band. I took a lot of flack for it, a lot of flack. There was one well-known black writer who gave me a lot of grief for hiring Jim. For a long time I couldn't understand it. But then I looked back and said, "These guys feel that since I did The Freedom Suite I would feel the way that they did about this stuff. Before that I wrote "Airegin." And I played "The House I Live In" and the Negro National Anthem at the end of it. This was very race-conscious stuff! So I guess the militant end of the black community-jazz community felt betrayed by me. I couldn't understand this. You know, Miles's first band was made up almost completely with white guys! Miles was always hiring white guys—Bill Evans, Lee Konitz, Gil Evans. So at first I was really befuddled about why they would come down on me. I figured they thought I was even more of a black nationalist than these other guys, like Miles. But you cannot say that it is all right to be a racist as long as it's against white people.

Despite the flack that Sonny received, this quartet was a superb unit. The contrast between Hall's lyrical guitar and Sonny's speech like phrasing gave the group a sound all of its own. Hall was able to keep pace with Sonny even at the fastest of tempos (although he does not like playing very fast), and he was sensitive enough to stay constantly tuned to Sonny's wavelength no matter what new corner Sonny turned. Sonny was experimenting with chugging tempos, or at times playing completely out of tempo as a group and then at the right moment once again playing with the original tempo. Doing this virtually required his sidemen to have ESP in order to anticipate his every spontaneous move. This type of playing indicates the direction of Sonny's music—toward a freer conception, in terms of both the group and his own playing.

Sonny's withdrawal from the scene and the mystique that had arisen concerning his lonely jaunts on the Williamsburg Bridge gave rise to a great deal of interest when he finally returned. Sonny now found himself in demand by several record labels. The best offer was from RCA Victor. For the first time, Sonny was signed to a major label rather than an independent. He was given an advance of approximately $90,000, which even today is extraordinary for a jazzman. It was not just the large advance that made the deal with RCA so attractive: a major company could both back more costly projects and market albums far more successfully than an independent jazz label such as Blue Note or Riverside. But there were aspects of the deal that made Sonny uncomfortable:

After they signed me, RCA didn't know what to do with me. Part of the reason they signed me was because of the bridge and the romantic legend, and that was about it. It was a tremendous thing for these guys in the business: "We can really use this and use this guy. Wow, he's going to make some money for us!"

Much to his credit, Sonny did not deviate from his musical agenda, despite RCA's commercial concerns; in fact, he now entered the most avant-garde period of his entire career. Much of the music Sonny recorded for RCA was hardly the stuff of radio play and mass consumption.

In January 1962, Sonny made his first album since Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders in 1958. Titled, naturally, The Bridge, it was the most traditional of all his RCA albums, a straight-ahead date with his new group. Although many consider it a great album, it does not compare to what he was playing in live performance with this group, according to those who heard him play then.

The Bridge clearly exhibits the fruits of Sonny's work during his years of withdrawal. He sounds far more confident and certain of his direction than on his previous album, Contemporary Leaders, and his tonal shadings are far more developed. As Loren Schoenberg wrote in the notes for The Complete Sonny Rollins RCA Victor Recordings: "With the slightest variance of pitch and timbre, he can make a 180° turn on a dime."

Sonny's rhythmic conception had advanced, too, during his time "on the bridge." His new rhythmic mastery is most obvious on the album's two up-tempo pieces, both of which he composed: "The Bridge" and "John S." This last tune is not named after the New York Times jazz critic of that time, John S. Wilson, as many have thought. "I used that title because a guy came to me and wanted me to give him lessons. I told him that he should ask Coltrane instead because his approach to playing was much more conventional than mine. So I was thinking about him and me and this was my private code—'John S./ John and Sonny."

In comparing these fast-tempo pieces with similar ones from the 1956 Tour de Force, such as "B. Quick" or "B. Swift," Sonny's rhythmic advances are quite apparent. On the earlier pieces, his ideas are fragmented and thin. Sonny was simply trying to play ridiculously fast, not even attempting the kind of cohesive musical statement he was able to create at medium or slow tempos. His mastery on The Bridge was due to the musical sprung rhythm that he had been working toward for a long time and apparently achieved during his absence from the scene. On The Bridge's fast pieces, Sonny does not seem to be holding on for dear life; he is in full command, improvising with the same sense of logic, design, and melodic inventiveness as at less sizzling tempos. From here on, Sonny's playing at up-tempos brings to mind a man standing on a surfboard, riding a huge, fast-rushing wave. Despite the watery onslaught, he remains standing and triumphant, conquering the forces of nature.

The most emotionally profound piece on The Bridge is Sonny's version of the Billie Holiday classic "God Bless the Child." Sonny had known Holiday, who died in 1959, the same year as his withdrawal from the scene, and he never forgot her:

I was thinking about her the other night, 'cause I was in a cab with her one time, and when the cab stopped short, she almost fell out of her seat. This was not too long before she died. I tried to know her because I was really in love with her, just as a person. I was more of a fan than anything. She gave me her book [her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues] and she autographed it. I befriended her and she let me accompany her home. It was wonderful to know that Billie Holiday could trust me.

Sonny takes "God Bless the Child" at a mournfully slow tempo; this is some of the most impassioned playing of his career. Perhaps he was recalling the ironic smile on Billie's face when she sang this particular song. Those who believe that Sonny's music is not as emotionally valid and heartfelt as that of anyone in jazz should listen to this track. It is, quite simply, a devastating performance.

The Bridge completely validates Sonny's choice of Jim Hall. Hall's solos seem to glow with warmth, and with a pianist's sense of logic and melodic economy. His ability to select just the right note, made him a perfect complement to Sonny's more garrulous style. This was undoubtedly one of Sonny's greatest groups, comparable in its way to such great jazz combos of the 1960s as the Coltrane quartet and Miles Davis's Hancock-Williams-Carter-Shorter quintet.”

The Dublin Concert - Louis Stewart and Jim Hall

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

LIVIA RECORDS - Press Release

Louis Stewart with Jim Hall

THE DUBLIN CONCERT

Unique 1982 Live Recording of 2 Guitar Masters with 16 Page Booklet and Photos

THE DUBLIN CONCERT is a previously unreleased album of Louis Stewart and Jim Hall

Recorded live in concert to a delighted Dublin audience on 26th December 1982.

Tapes discovered in 2022 have been carefully digitized and mastered to present the

captivating, empathetic and poetic playing of this outstanding duo.

This album will be a delight for Louis Stewart and Jim Hall fans alike as it is the only known recording of them performing together.

Key Points About the Release

Recorded in Dublin's Maccabi Hall on 26th December 1982, THE DUBLIN CONCERT captures both musicians in top form, performing standards with stunning close interaction and improvisation.

Bill Frisell's biographer, Philip Watson, wrote the detailed sleeve notes which also include photographs and recollections from musicians who attended the gig to see their local hero and the then leading exponent of jazz guitar.

Catalog #: LRCD2402/ LRLP2401 and Format: CD, Vinyl and Download. 

Release Date: 6th September '24

The concert was hastily arranged when it was learned that Jim was holidaying in Ireland.

It is believed that Jim and Louis met in 1981 during Stewart's New York Bechet's residency.

Louis was a big admirer of Jim, particularly the duet albums with Bill Evans.

Both musicians had previously recorded in duet settings.

Though masters in different styles, they carefully listened and complimented each other.

"Look at what Santa brought us for Christmas" is how Louis introduced Jim.

The onstage recording set up was simple, just a mic on each guitar amp.

For Interviews/more detail, Contact Dermot Rogers: dermot@liviarecords.com / +353-86-2488233.

As you would imagine, with the JazzProfiles blog and Cerra Substack platforms, I get many preview copies and downloads of new recordings.

Every so often one comes along that allows me to talk about the musicians and the music from the standpoint of mutual familiarity. 

Bassist, composer-arranger and bandleader Chales Mingus was quoted as saying - “We have to improvise on something.”

For me, given my proclivities and predilection of mind, when that “something” involves songs from the Great American Songbook and/or tunes from the repertoire of Jazz Standards, I am most pleased because these recognizable melodies give me a place to put my ears, so to speak.

To put it another way, I can hear where the improvisations are going more easily because the underlying melodic structure is more familiar to me.

The process reflects where I come from; my entrance into the world of Jazz was from a time when it was commonplace to play Jazz based on familiar tunes or songs. 

Imagine my delight, then, when Dermot Rogers sent along his latest homage to the late Irish guitarist Louis Stewart [1944-2016] in the form of The Dublin Concert - Louis Stewart and Jim Hall on his restored Livia Records label [LRCD2402]. 

Not only do I get to enjoy the Jazz improvisations of two world-class guitarists, but of the eight tracks on the album, six are from the Great American Songbook and two are Jazz standards.

From a strict approach to the instrument stand point, Louis and Jim make for an odd couple: Louis burns with rapid note runs while Jim simmers with short, open phrases leaving plenty of space in his solos.

Oddly enough [pun intended], they compliment and complement each other perfectly because they blend when they play together and allow each other to assume the solo spotlight when they are apart.

Frankly, it’s the only way this could have worked because essentially what we have here is a jam session involving two world class guitarists doing their thing in the presence of standard material. There wasn’t much rehearsal time and the duo itself was not a formed group with arrangements in place. So relying on known material allowed both Louis and Jim to do what they do best - make Jazz guitar happen!

One of the Jazz standards - 2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West - first featured way back in 1956 on pianist John Lewis’ Pacific Jazz LP - Grand Encounters: 2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West.

John, of Modern Jazz Quartet fame, also wrote the title tune and the album subtitle signifies a meeting between two East Coast based Jazz musicians, John and bassist Percy Heath [also a member of the MJQ] and three West Coast based players - guitarist Jim Hall, saxophonist Bill Perkins and drummer Chico Hamilton.

Of Jim’s playing on this recording, Whitney Balliet, the distinguished Jazz writer and critic wrote:

“Jim Hall was born in New York [1930] and is twenty-five. He, too, has been a professional for only a few years. His style is remarkably similar to that of Charlie Christian, especially in the direct way he strikes his notes, and in his practice of repeating certain single notes and simple figures. Some of the best modern guitarists have a tendency toward slipperiness and laciness. Hall, however, gives each note weight, with such intent that his work occasionally has a kind of puggish, lumbering quality about it, which is not at all unpleasant.”

The other Jazz Standard is Sonny Rollins’ “calypso-tinged signature tune” St. Thomas. It was first recorded in August 1955 as “Fire Down There” by Randy Weston and released in February 1956 on the “Get Happy” album. The tune started as “The Lincolnshire Poacher” and evolved into a nursery song in the Virgin Islands which Sonny Rollins’ mother sang to him and on which he based the song “St. Thomas”. It was Rollins’ 1956 release which popularized the song and it is still his most readily recognized composition.

The joyous theme is a tune to have fun with and both Louis and Jim have a jaunty good time doing just that. In his booklet notes, Philip Watson wrote: “One of the highlights of the evening was a rousing and irresistible version of Sonny Rollins’ exuberant calypso-tinged signature tune [there’s that phrase again] St. Thomas; Stewart’s solo even included a brief quote from traditional Irish reel The Sligo Maid.”

Elsewhere in the booklet notes, Philip quotes the pianist Jim Doherty who comments that Louis and Jim “were kindred spirits and shared a very dry and quick wit.” You can hear their humor on St. Thomas and throughout The Dublin Concert. As the bassist Bill Crow is fond of saying: “Jazz is meant to be fun” and Louis and Jim are having a ball and so will you as you listen to these marvelous guitar mates perform.

Among the six standards is one of my favorites from the Great American Songbooks - Stella by Starlight - about which Ted Gioia has this to say in his definitive The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire, 2 Ed. [2021]

“The structure is conventional in length, with the melody filling up the expected 32 bars. But everything else about it breaks the rules. Instead of the usual repeats found in American popular song, "Stella by Starlight" is a masterpiece of through-composed misdirection. At bar eight, where one would normally get a repeat of the A theme in most Tin Pan Alley songs, we do go to the tonic chord, but this is actually its first appearance in the piece. We might now expect that the repeat will come in bar 16, but here Young has another surprise in store—a gut-wrenching modulation, in which the melody is held on an altered note of the chord for a full bar. The final eight bars are as close as we will get to a recapitulation of the main theme, but even here [Victor] Young tinkers with his melody and chords, only lingering on the familiar opening motif for two bars before heading off toward a different path to a final resolve.

This bold framework, which violates our ingrained expectations, was precisely what made me embrace "Stella by Starlight" as a bracing iconoclastic composition….”

One couldn’t serve up a better melodic platform for Louis and Jim to improvise on and they take full advantage of the unconventional structure of Stella by Starlight to create brilliantly inspired solos.

But this is just the beginning - literally as Stella serves as the opening track - and is followed by masterful interpretations of Jerome Kern’s All the Things You Are, Irving Berlin’s How Deep is The Ocean, Rodgers & Hart’s My Funny Valentine, Jimmy Van Heusen’s But Beautiful and Duke’s In A Sentimental Mood.

To paraphrase Ted Gioia: “These songs' cross-generational familiarity and popularity have made them frequent choices when musicians of different eras collaborate on a project.”

This is no less the case here and is one of the reasons that this first-time pairing of these two Jazz greats comes off so well. Each had been playing these melodies since the inception of their careers at jam sessions, on studio recordings and in club and concert appearances.

Along the way, they had devised clever chord substitutions or augmentations from those originally assigned to the songs by their respective composers. Maybe they played them in different keys than the original, at slower or faster tempos, or with other stylistic inflections.

So when all of this familiarity and experience was brought together in the hands of two masters like Louis and Jim, magic happened on the evening of December 26, 1982.

And now, thanks to the commitment and dedication of Dermot Rogers to reestablish Livia Records, you can share in the enchantment of Stewart and Hall, two of Jazz’s most formidable guitarists.

In his Jazz Encyclopedia, the late Richard Cook observes of Louis:

“A perennially unruffled bebop stylist somewhat in the Tal Farlow mould, Stewart has rather more of a reputation among musicians than listeners, partly because he comes from a territory with very little jazz clout, and further because he has never had much interest from record labels: a sympathetic company could yet get a classic out of him.”

Sadly, Richard Cook passed away in 2007, but the champion he wished for Louis did materialize when Dermot Rogers revived Gerald Davis’ Livia Records and began issuing Stewart recordings on that label in 2021 among them Out on His Own and Some Other Blues in 2023 and Louis the First which was released the following year.

You don’t want to miss The Dublin Concert. Jazz guitar, times two, at its very best.

For order information, please see www.liviarecords.com. 

"These Rooms" - Jim Hall Trio Featuring Tom Harrell [From the Archives]

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

It seems like Herb Wong, the late Jazz author, education, record and concert producer and all-around good friend of Jazz was everywhere in the 1980s, and it’s a good thing, too, as Jazz and it makers were having their fair share of trouble surviving during a time when fewer resources were supporting the music.

In an earlier piece, we described Herb’s role with the Stanford University Jazz Artist in Residence program in Palo Alto, CA and Blackhawk Records which was based in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1980s.

During this period, Herb was also active as a producer for DENON - Nippon Columbia for which he along with Executive Producer Tatsunori “Tats” Konno developed one of my favorite recording by guitarist Jim Hall with his trio made up of Steve LaSpina on bass and Joey Baron on drums. Tom Harrell is featured on trumpet and flugelhorn.

Issued in 1988 as These Rooms: Jim Hall Trio Featuring Tom Harrell [Denon CY-30002], it is an exquisite recording. Here are Herb’s instructive and insightful insert notes about the musicians on the date, which was recorded live to 2-track on February 9-10, 1988 at Sorcerer Sound in NYC with Tom Lazarus serving as recording engineer, and the ten tracks featured on the CD.

Just to be clear, here, had it not been for Dr. Herb hearing these musicians play together in his head, this record wouldn’t exist. His Jazz soul made this album happen.

“Among jazz guitarists, Jim Hall exceeds comparison. Unarguably he stands alone and is the one guitarist who can be spoken in the same breath as Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. The mere mention of Jim sparks lively responses of praise. For several decades he has earned this top position of respect, but more important is his body of brilliant recordings, as what guards the unanimity of success is his conspicuous artistic integrity and finery. He is a superlative who embraces unique sound and design of his notes; every note selected is a needed choice fitting perfectly in the ultimate sculpture of his music.

His exceptional technique combined with confidence to use or not to use this or that in creating a mood is central to the lull resonant quality his guitar achieves, showing deep devotion and acute alertness to sound.

In producing this recording I was impressed once again by Jim's ability to minimize the use of amplification, sounding nearly like an acoustic instrument. In 1977 my interview with Jim elicited comments germane to this issue: "It's easy to overplay the amplifiers so we play really softly compared to the general dynamic level prevailing today. We begin very softly so we have someplace to go. And then it can sound like it's loud when we're just playing with moderate volume. You can draw the sound out of the instruments a lot better and not push the amps."

Jim's music is drawn from the heart core of the guitar and the heart of his own inner soul, unveiling the truth about their capacity. His horn-inspired solos are lyrical, impassioned and swinging — reflecting a fertile sense of composition. Moreover, his phrases develop in a natural flow from one to the next, his melodically and harmonically resourceful ideas are delivered with taste and logic, and rhythmically his sense of balance is without deflection.

Jim was born on December 4, 1930 in Buffalo. N.Y. and spent his childhood in New York, Columbus and finally in Cleveland. At 10 his Mother, a pianist, gifted Jim with a guitar and quickly at 13 he became a precocious pro in Cleveland. The great innovator Charlie Christian was introduced to him via hearing his famous solos with Benny Goodman. Subsequently, Jim became acquainted with the legendary Django Reinhardt's playing. "After high school I attended The Cleveland Institute of Music where I became seriously interested in classical composition. However, my desire to become a guitarist was so compelling. I had to check it out for fear of long term regrets." explains Jim. So he dropped out of a master's degree program to "pursue my fantasy". Thus began the long, distinguished odyssey of performing and recording. His associates stretch from Chico Hamilton (some 33 years ago). Bob Brookmeyer, Jimmy Giuffre. Ben Webster, Hampton Hawes. and Stan Getz to Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins, Art Farmer, Paul Desmond, Zoot Sims, Lee Konitz, Ron Carter. Herbie Hancock, Red Mitchell and Wayne Shorter plus so many more.

Prior to this recording, a musician Jim had not had an open opportunity to include in his own recordings is Tom Harrell. I had ruminated over the sumptuous thought of Jim and Tom together — hearing their consonant blends and solos on guitar and flugelhorn in my head, with assuredness that a record of their respective and compatible geniuses should be produced in order that their absorbing subtleties and plentiful imagination could be shared. Both spin their own musical tales. In fact, including Steve LaSpina and Joey Baron, all four musicians on the project are fascinating story tellers who speak fluently thru their instruments.

My esteem for Tom's playing stems from his young teenage years in the San Francisco Bay Area playing in campus bands, jamming in many, many clubs and at the famed Jazz Workshop in S.F. with many name musicians. Born on June 16, 1946 in Urbana, Illinois, he was reared in the S.F. area from age 5 and started trumpet at 8. His gigs began at age 13. Early on, he modeled himself mainly after his inspiration — Clifford Brown and remains a torch bearer of the tradition and spirit of Brown but does tip his hat also to the likes of Blue Mitchell, Kenny Dorham. Lee Morgan, Dizzy Gillespie. Clark Terry and Woody Shaw. Tom notes, "Clifford was such a strong force and expressed so much warmth and joy." Today, Tom is one of the most sought musicians and has been climbing the rungs of jazz polls steadily. After 6 years on the road with Woody Herman and Horace Silver, he settled in NYC for the last decade recording on more than 70 records and is a main stay in the Phil Woods Quintet.

Phil has said to me, "Tom is the most complete musician in my experience. I continue to be impressed with his total harmonic recall, his knowledge of tunes of the past and his compositions reflecting the future." Tom indeed has perfect ears and an uncanny sense of time. He tries not to think when he solos, allowing "my playing to go beyond conscious thoughts". Like Jim, Tom places a premium on Ihe linkage between feelings and sounds — the fundamental pay off. On several previous recordings, I have invited Tom to participate: I simply value his ability to erupt without notice adding an enigmatical, special dimension.

There is unanimity on Tom's impact on any group. At one point in the studio Joey Baron said admiringly: "Tom, how in the world do you play trumpet like that?"

Bassist Steve LaSpina first played with Tom in the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra 10 years ago. “When Tom picked up his trumpet and blew his first notes, I couldn't believe it. I had never heard anything like it and I've enjoyed playing with him since, and he is just marvelous on this date."

Steve was born on March 24, 1954 in Wichita Falls, Texas and raised in Chicago. "My Father Jack, also a bassist, started me on his bass when I graduated from high school and he also taught me the electric bass." Steve was involved with rock and roll, yet his Dad tried to turn him on to jazz by playing records by Oscar Pettiford and Ray Brown. Noi until age 13 when Steve heard Fred Alwood at a music camp at the University of Illinois did he catch the jazz fever.

He came to New York in 1979 and "playing with Jim Hall is like a fantasy corne true. Seems like it's always right... I can feel what he's going to play." Just a partial roster of people Steve has played with verifies his gourmet taste — saxophonists Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Stan Getz and David Liebman; pianists Jimmy Rowles. Marian McPartland and Steve Kuhn; vocalists Joe Williams, Mark Murphy, Morgana King and Helen Merrill. Steve obviously listens to many horn players. As for bassists, the key influences of Charles Mingus. Paul Chambers and Scott LaFaro stick out. Just listen to his story-telling on this recording.

"I love the way Steve sounds," Jim says with glee, "and we've worked together off and on for nearly 4 years. I sit in the car a lot in New York and I listen to jazz on WBGO radio and notice lots ol terrific bassists are being recorded, but I'm not pleased with the bass hitting you right in the face, whereas Steve's warm bass sounds like there is more room and depth being used. Steve recently put gut strings (G & D) in place of steel strings. He's definitely a virtuoso bassist." Take note Steve had acquired a more than 100 year-old French bass with great gut strings on the day of rehearsal and he was ecstatic over it. Its timely availability for the recording was a boost to the quality of sound.

"I look for guys who listen well and react well together, similar to what Jimmy Giuffre has drawn as an analogy between a 'mobile sculpture' and his trio (Giuffre-Brookmeyer-Hall) as not being uni-dimensional I've always kept that philosophy — meaning we should not sound like a guitar with a rhythm section!"

Joey Baron is a very in-demand drummer performing with Jim and Steve close to 2 years on a fairly regular basis. This is the first record of his membership in the trio. "Joey was recommended to me by numerous musicians coast to coast." The consensus is not surprising as Joey's long list of associations in the last 13 years is replete with unique voices of jazz; e.g., Dizzy Gillespie, Art Pepper, John Scofield, Toots Thielemans, Randy Brecker. Blue Mitchell, Pat Martino, Lou Rawls. Carmen McRae, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Red Rodney, Stan Getz, Bill Frisell, Al Jarreau and so many others.

Regarding Jim, Joey pours emotively: "He's a great musician — not so much the instrument itself, but that he plays the music! And I'm attracted to those who do. In Jim's case, you can pick him out of 1000 players every time. In playing with him, his concept of time is a model to emulate. I hope to approach Jim's level some day. He lets you relax and you don't have to baby sit... he opens the ground up for trust in an unspoken way. Lots of things happen between us that way. Jim's sound is the way he pulls people into him."

"I feel I can talk to Joey while he's playing.standing right in front of his cymbals, explains Jim. "Joey gets inlo high intensity without being loud in volume. He has perfect touch."

There's truly something distinctive about guitar and drums — a guitarist can't play 8-note chords all the time like many pianists who fill up the room and leave little space for the drummer. "Jim plays but a few notes, leaving space for conversations with me." Joey emphasizes, "and the way he accompanies, the way he puts intervals in — like he could just hit 2 notes over a chord and it pushes a different sound out of the chord, in contrast to someone who plays a straight chord."

The Music In This Collection

From the very first notes of Jim Hall's guitar on the 1929 Rodgers and Hart WITH A SONG IN MY HEART, you just know he's special. Then enters Joey Baron's melodic brushes and Jim counterpoints. The first rate solos by Jim, Steve and Tom are unpredictable in construction and have gorgeous sounds spilling out. It's plain all four are like vocalists singing their stories on the uplifting 6/8 waltz version — its format matching the spirit of the tune. Jim arranged a half step up modulation in the middle when Tom comes in on the first chorus, giving it more of rising feel. The tune moves along at a good pace but the chords are stretched out and move more slowly.

CROSS COURT — an appealing 24-bar blues is the first of several Jim Hall originals. It's a key of G blues but moves up a half step in the last 4 bars. It's not the routine "let's just play some blues, guys" type of piece, but an architectural piece. The title of ihe tune comes from Jim's love for tennis. "I took my first tennis lessons from the great Don Budge who's a big jazz fan, from Lester Young to Bill Evans." His specialty was a back hand cross court — therein lies the inspiration for the name. "The line of the tune in the beginning — the unison or octaves with bass and guitar is extremely hard to play on the bass and the guitar. It's supposed to sound easy but I keep writing these things because Steve can play them!

"I love the rhythm section feeling. Joey has a grin on his face most of the time which got me to write the last chorus — the jolly sound with the little breaks with Joey." And dig the trace of Stravinsky in the out chorus, spiking the music with quasi-humor.

A flugelhorn/guitar duet carries the unstrained conversation ol the hauntingly charming ballad SOMETHING TELLS ME composed by Jim's wife, Jane. Beginning with E-flat major it wanders thru different keys, finally settling on B-flat "I added a coda at the end," says Jim. "I wrote it specifically for Tom and I love the way Tom plays it." The two of them capture the beautiful mood and possibly the true mood of the tune.

When Jim performed and recorded with pianist Michel Petrucciani and Wayne Shorter at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1986, he wrote BIMINI on commission — a bright calypso similar to what he did with Sonny Rollins. The light, loping Caribbean line has nice “islandic” flavors. Joey is like a gang of percussionists rolled into one!

Ben Webster was a consummate master of improvising jazz ballads. ALL TOO SOON is one of these soothing Ellington compositions recorded in 1940 featuring Ben's suave tenor saxophone, "I first met Ben at one of the once a month concerts sponsored by my friend Dr. Lorin Stephens, an orthopedic surgeon in Arcadia, California during the early days. Red Mitchell and Hampton Hawes played with us frequently, too." Jim certainly narrows his concentration with intense sensitivity on his magnificent solo guitar essay. I felt an unaccompanied interpretation would bring out further colors to add to the whole.

"After turning on to the enticing concept about recording with Tom for the first time, I was inspired to catch Tom's sound," Jim recounts his process in designing THESE ROOMS — the title selection in three sections. "I jotted a little motif with low register for Tom's horn ... examining some intervals — little groups of 2 notes. It gradually took shape with Steve coming on with his counterpoint. Bartok influenced my linear writing: he was my hero. I tied it with the guitar section, including a whole chordal phase before Tom and Steve check in, just ahead of the start of the last section." Jim wrote the third section with some exciting surprises — a gospel. New Orleans street band sound with Joey's authentic marching drums heralding Tom's hip swinging. It gets a little more abstract and ends with the beginning motif. It leaves everyone with a good up feeling.

A segue to the durable 1939 ballad DARN THAT DREAM ushers in another ring of colors by way of a delicate development between Jim and Steve. Both converse with telepathic manifestation of melodic motifs. Steve's close link to Scott LaFaro's highly vocal quality is apparent. And Jim ... well, every note he plays sounds larger than life. Originally planned for the trio to play, it just felt intriguing for a duo, adding a different miniature theater.

MY FUNNY VALENTINE is the one track featuring the working Jim Hall Trio. The tasteful swing powers vitality into individual statements while they merge as three. Remember how people were knocked out by the superb ad hoc interpretation by Bill Evans and Jim on Bill's 1962 "Undercurrent" album!

WHERE OH WHEN is partly dedicated to Freddie Green who passed away in 1987. "Freddie was truly a big hero of mine," Jim says with deep sincerity. The format is fashioned to give generous opportunities for the group to express lyricism with ease.

Tom Harrell's own FROM NOW ON winds things up with chops and finesse. "This was inspired by the collaborations of Jim and Bill Evans," relates Tom, "and also by Dizzy's writing of his "Con Alma" and a little of the way Benny Golson uses certain sounds. It's a good vehicle for Jim's beautiful, sensitive playing". Indeed its harmonic movement is reminiscent of what Jim and Bill did on their iwo duo albums, especially the kinds of motion and colors — sort of a mood of sadness, but something positive rising out of dejection. The ABA structure of the tune finds its way thru different tonal centers. A nice ride to close the recording.

"This project brought Tom into my consciousness as I had never truly played with him, I was in my room writing almost everyday or at least thinking about it for two solid months. And I think it really paid off." Jim continues "I wanted tunes that represent variety not only between tunes but within the tunes to keep the interest burning. So for me, it was a lot of preparation — tons of paper! I just dug in there and I'm grateful for the motivating idea behind it. I'm thoroughly delighted!"

In the final analysis, it really matters little how Jim does it. At times he's like a Japanese brush painter's unfettered improvisations. Jim surprises often and disrupts prediction. His music always sound fresh. Perhaps his jazz life has been a quest for quality fulfillment. Jim Hall surely picks the choicest notes in the world.”

— DR. HERB WONG