The Advent of Jackie McLean: The Blue Note Years [From the Archives]

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

“He patented a sound that was compounded equally of bebop and the new, free style. Raw and urgent, no one else sounds quite like him.”

- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.

“McLean's mix of plangency and something inscrutable is very striking.”

- Richard Cook, Jazz writer and critic

“...there aren't more than a handful of jazzmen who sound as passionately involved in their music.”

- Michael James, liner notes to Jackie McLean: Capuchin Swing

In a recent posting on the Texas Tenor Sound, I quoted the late Cannonball Adderley description of a key aspects of this blues-drenched, wide-open style of playing as a sound that had a “moan within a tone.”

Cannonball’s tonal characterization reminded me of the plaintive wail that I always associated with Jackie McLean’s alto saxophone sound, especially when I first encounter McLean's on the recordings he made for the Blue Note label in the 1950s and 1960s.

Richard Morton and Brian Cook in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD 6th Ed. offered this explanation of Jackie’s uniqueness:

“He patented a sound that was compounded equally of bebop and the new, free style. Raw and urgent, no one else sounds quite like him.”

Like Messrs. Morton and Cook,  I always thought that Jackie was “straining at the boundaries of the blues” as though he was always poised between “innovation and conservatism:” “an orthodox bebopper who was deeply influenced by the free Jazz movement.”

His playing could range between “complex, tricky and thoroughly engaging” to “diffident and defensive.”

Impassioned, fiery, full of brio, the sound of Jackie McLean during his Blue Note years was, to my ears, the personification of what was referred to at the time as “East Coast Jazz.”

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it might be fun to recount some of the highlights of Jackie tenure with Blue Note on these pages with some selected excerpts from Richard Cook's history of Blue Note Records.

© -  Richard Cook, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Of all the new signings, the most important individual was Jackie McLean, an alto saxophonist from - a local man at last! - New York, who had been on the city's scene since the beginning of the fifties. McLean had had a difficult few years. Despite several high-profile stints with other leaders - including Miles Davis, Art Blakey and Charles Mingus - McLean had made no real headway as a leader himself. His records for Prestige were mostly spotty, unconvincing affairs (he later rounded on the company, comparing working for them to 'being under the Nazi regime and not knowing it'), and trouble with the police over his use of narcotics had led to the dreaded loss of his cabaret card, the same problem which had afflicted Monk's progress. Yet, in 1959, he signed up with Lion and also began working with the cooperative Living Theatre, a freewheeling stage group which staged various 'events' from poetry to performance art, culminating in the production of a play by Jack Gelber, The Connection, which dramatised aspects of the jazzman's life.

McLean's first Blue Note as leader was New Soil (BLP 4013), made on 2 May 1959 (material from an earlier session was subsequently released out of sequence).

Although pitched as a typical hard-bop quintet session (with Donald Byrd, Walter Davis, Paul Chambers and Pete La Roca), the music might have puzzled the unwary. McLean brought two pieces to the date, 'Hip Strut' and 'Minor Apprehension' (often better remembered as 'Minor March', which was the title used by Miles Davis in his recording of the tune). 'Apprehension' is a useful word to describe the music. Although 'Hip Strut's structure eventually breaks out into a walking blues, its most striking motif is the suspension on a single, tolling chord, over which the soloists sound ominously trapped. In this one, McLean suggests the patient, rather effortful manner of one of his acknowledged influences, Dexter Gordon, but in the following 'Minor Apprehension' he sounds like the godson of Charlie Parker, tearing through the changes with the scalded desperation of the bebopper locked in a harmonic maze. The rest of the record, dependent on several Walter Davis tunes, is less impressive, but McLean's mix of plangency and something inscrutable is very striking.

Not always, though, particularly likeable. McLean is a player whose music has often aroused admiration over warmth. The sense that he is always playing slightly out of tune lends an insistent sourness to the tonality of his music, and it is the recurring problem within a diverse and often fascinating discography for the label. His fellow alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, who has also been accused of playing sharp, remembers a session with himself, McLean, Dexter Gordon and Ben Webster: 'After the session I shook Jackie's hand, thinking how nice it was to play with him, and then it occurred to me I was thanking him for playing sharp!'

Swing Swang Swingin' (BLP 4024) gave McLean the limelight as the sole horn, with Walter Bishop, Jimmy Garrison and Art Taylor behind him. This session tends to restore the emphasis on McLean's bebop origins, with big, powerful improvisations such as those on 'Stablemates' and let's Face The Music And Dance' - a standard which very few jazz players have chosen to cover - suggesting that he still had a lot of juice to squeeze out of his bop sensibilities. But McLean began to change, in part, perhaps, because of his experiences with the Living Theatre, and his Blue Note albums would come to document a personality with a high degree of artistic curiosity. …

Jackie McLean might have shared a similar fate [to that of pianist Sonny Clarke who died from complications of heroin addiction], but his stint with the Living Theatre had stabilised his professional life and he eventually overcame his addiction. McLean's Blue Notes are a sometimes problematical lot and the string of dates he made for the label in the sixties continue an intriguing if often difficult sequence. Capuchin Swing, made on 16 April 1960, is a sometimes rowdy affair which shows up how awkward it could be to accommodate McLean even within a group of his own leadership. His solos on 'Francisco' (named for Frank Wolff) and 'Condition Blue' make a glaring contrast to those of his bandmates. The tension in McLean's records from this period lies in a sometimes aggravating contrast between himself and his fellow horn players in particular. Michael James is quoted on the sleeve note to Capuchin Swing to the effect that 'there aren't more than a handful of jazzmen ... who sound as passionately involved in their music', but McLean's passion often seems to have more to do with being outside, rather than being involved. Mclean himself later said: 'A lot of my performances have been very emotional because I wasn't putting any work into it.' Bluesnik, recorded the following January, has some of the same intensity, though apparently under more control: in what is actually a rather dull programme of blues pieces (the title track must have taken all of five minutes to 'compose'), the saxophonist's fast, biting solos shred the skilful and comparatively genial playing of Freddie Hubbard.

A Fickle Sonance, recorded the following October, assembled the same band which would record Leapin' And Lopin', with McLean in for Charlie Rouse. It is, again, the trouble-making McLean who makes all the difference: where Clark's session would be elegant and composed, this one seems taut and angular. 'Five Will Get You Ten', once credited to Clark but now thought to be an otherwise unclaimed Monk tune, and the chilling title piece, where the alto leaps and twists against a modal backdrop, are strange, rootless settings for playing which can seem by turns anguished, stark and sneering. McLean's next record, Let Freedom Ring, would make a more explicit pact with matters removed from his bebop history. ...

Jackie McLean had become as much a Blue Note regular as Hank Mobley (by the end of his tenure with the original company, he had played on nearly fifty sessions), but he was one hard-bopper who had begun to question his own ground. For the sleeve of his 1962 Let Freedom Ring album, McLean asked to write his own notes: Jazz is going through a big change, and the listener or the fan, or what have you, should listen with an open mind. They should use a mental telescope to bring into view the explorers who have taken one step beyond, explorers such as Monk, Coltrane, Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Kenny Dorham, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Ornette and, of course, Duke Ellington.'

McLean doesn't choose to be very specific about how he feels his own music is changing, other than expressing a general dissatisfaction with chord-based improvising, but earlier in the essay he does say: 'Ornette Coleman has made me stop and think. He has stood up under much criticism, yet he never gives up his cause, freedom of expression. The search is on.'

What was this search? Perhaps McLean himself was not so sure, since most of Let Freedom Ring is a frequently awkward truce between his bebop roots and the new freedoms which Coleman had been putting on display in his music. But Coleman, too, had a debt to Charlie Parker and to blues playing. Why does

McLean sound, in comparison, to be struggling with his 'freedom'? It may be that he is, in effect, trying too hard. Listening to Coleman's music of the same period, one is constantly taken aback by how unselfconscious the playing is, as if the musicians in Coleman's famous quartet were free-at-last. McLean takes a much sterner route: if his earlier records sounded intense, this one is practically boiling. He seems unsure as to how best to use his tone, whether it should be flattened or made even sharper than normal, and there is both overblowing in the high register and a deliberate emphasis on oboe-like low notes. His three originals are open-ended and exploratory, but the one ballad, Bud Powell's Til Keep Loving You', is a distinct contrast, with the saxophonist playing it in a way which sounds in this setting weirdly direct and unadorned. Although the pianist, Walter Davis, was a near contemporary of McLean's, the other players were young men: bassist Herbie Lewis and drummer Billy Higgins.

McLean's decision was not so much a conversion as a progression. Many of his generation had been scathing about Coleman's new music, while at the same time being uneasily aware that the Texan saxophonist was on to something. No experienced musician who heard the music of Coleman's first Atlantic recordings of 1959 could have been under the impression that the guiding hand was some kind of charlatan, even if they didn't agree with his methods or his way of expressing himself. At this distance, it seems odd that Coleman's music could even have excited so much controversy: not only does it sound light, folksy and songful, its accessibility follows a clear path down from bebop roots (a point best expressed in Coleman's first two recordings for Contemporary, with 'conventional' West Coast rhythm sections. The music there gives drummer Shelly Manne no rhythmical problems at all, but the two bassists involved, Percy Heath and Red Mitchell, both later remembered asking the leader about harmonic points which Ornette more or less waved aside).

In 1963, McLean built on the work of Let Freedom Ring by forming a new and regular band, with players who could accommodate what he saw as his new direction. Three of them were individuals who would have their own Blue Note engagements soon enough: vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, trombonist Grachan Moncur and drummer Tony Williams. All three featured alongside McLean on his next released session, One Step Beyond (although three other sessions which took place in between were shelved by Lion at the time). What is awkward about One Step Beyond - and the subsequent Destination ... Out! - is that McLean is the one who sounds like the backward player. Just as Miles Davis found himself initially perplexed by Williams (who joined the Davis band in 1964), so did McLean struggle with the language of his younger sidemen. …”

To give you an opportunity to listen Jackie’s playing from The Blue Note years, the following video tribute features him on Walter Davis Jr.’s Greasy from McLean’s New Soil LP with Donald Byrd on trumpet, Walter on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Pete La Roca on drums.

Wynton Kelly: 1931-1971 - Revisiting “A Pure Spirit” [From the Archives]

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

“Wynton’s situation … is worth noting as a startling example of the strange irrelevance of merit to fame in Jazz.”

- Orrin Keepnews, Jazz Producer and Writer

“Nothing about his playing seems calculated .. there was just pure joy shining through his conception.”

Bill Evans, Jazz Pianist

Amazingly, given his background, Wynton Kelly is an often overlooked figure in modern Jazz circles.

One would think that a pianist who had worked with Lester Young, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie’s 1950s big band, Dinah Washington, Miles Davis and Wes Montgomery, let alone with his own trio made-up of Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums, would be more widely known and respected.

But such is not the case for Kelly who is sometimes more acknowledged because he has a first name in common with the phenomenal trumpet player and leader of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra – Wynton Marsalis – whose father, Jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis, named him after Kelly.

The editorial staff thought it might be fun to spend some time developing a JazzProfiles feature about Wynton, Kelly that is, as a way of paying tribute to his memory.

In the liner notes that he wrote for Kelly at Midnight, one of the earliest album’s that Wynton made under his own name [VeeJay VJ-03], Nat Hentoff commented:

“Miles Davis was being asked one afternoon for a verbal analysis of Wynton Kelly's musical worth. Miles character­istically scoffed at using such imprecise tools as words to describe what happens in jazz; but finally he said: ‘Wynton's the light for a cigarette. He lights the fire and he keeps it going. Without him there's no smoking.’

Another judicious tribute came from Cannonball Adderley who had worked with Wynton in the Miles Davis band. ‘He's a fine soloist, who does both the subdued things and the swingers very well. Wynton is also the world's great­est accompanist for a soloist. He plays with the soloist all the time, with the chords you choose. He even anticipates your direction.’

Somewhat earlier, I'd been talking to King Curtis, a Texan now in New York and a specialist in rhythm and blues. ‘Wynton worked with me for a while, and naturally I've heard him with Dinah and with Miles. What struck me was that wherever Wynton worked, he fitted in. He's not limited to one kind of playing. With Dinah, he had the taste and supportive power of a superior accompanist. With me, he had the fire and the straightaway swinging my bands have to have. And with Miles, he can be as subtle as Miles requires.’

As is usually the case, Wynton was being discussed enthusiastically by musicians before there was much atten­tion paid him in the public prints. …”

And in another of Wynton’s VeeJay LP’s, Kelly Great [VeeJay VJ-06], Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, the great alto saxophonist and, as noted previously, Wynton’s bandmate in the Davis group, said this about Kelly:

“When Sid McCoy of VeeJay Records asked Frank Strozier (phenomenal young alto saxophonist) who did he wish to play piano on his VeeJay record date, Frank immediately said Wynton Kelly. So answered Bill Henderson and Paul Chambers. It is next to impossible to evaluate the role played by Wynton Kelly in a band, for he has a ‘take charge’ quality in a rhythm section such as a Phil Rizzuto or Eddie Stanky had on a baseball team.

Many jazz listeners are unaware that such intangible qualities as fire and spirit make the margin between greatness and ‘just good’. Leading jazz musicians, such as Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis (Wynton's current employer), are cognizant of this fact. A short time ago Miles Davis made an album using another pianist, who at that time was a member of his band, but added Wynton for one selection, explaining, ‘Wynton Kelly is the only pianist who could make that tune get off the ground.’

What does Wynton have that is so different?”

Perhaps the difference lies in what Richard Cook and Brian Morton have described in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6^th Ed.  as “… his lyrical simplicity or uncomplicated touch… [or] the dynamic bounce to his chording …,” or because, as Cannonball Adderley, asserted: “Wynton combined the strength of pianists Red Garland and Bill Evans, his predecessors with Miles Davis.”

Or maybe this difference lies in the following description of Wynton’s playing by fellow pianist Bill Evans as quoted in Jack Chambers, Milestones:

“When I first him in Dizzy’s big band [in the mid-1950s], his whole thing was so joyful and exuberant, nothing about it seemed calculated. And yet with the clarity of the way he played, you knew that he had put this together in a carefully planned way – but the result was completely without calculation, there was just pure spirit shining through the conception.”

Like Bill, Brian Priestley may have also identified the essence of what made Wynton Kelly so unique as a pianist in the following description of his style in Jazz, The Rough Guide: An Essential Companion to Artists and Albums:

“An important stylist, but largely unrecognized except by fellow pianists, Kelly’s mature style was hinted at in his earliest recordings. He combined boppish lines and blues interpolations with a taut sense of timing quite unlike anyone else except his imitators. The same quality made his equally individual block chording into a particularly dynamic and driving accompanying style that was savored by the many soloists that he backed.”

More about Kelly’s special qualities as a pianist can be found in the following paraphrase from Peter Pettinger’s biography of pianist Bill Evans – How My Heart Sings:

“Evans held Kelly’s bright and sparkling style in high regard since hearing him in Dizzy Gillespie’s big band, responding to Wynton’s particular blend of clarity and exuberance. This reaction was typical of Evans’s appreciation of the work of his fellow pianists; from Oscar Peterson to Cecil Taylor, he was full of admiration for their diverse talents and generous in his praise.”

As detailed in Groovin’ High,  Alyn Shipton’s life of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, the unique character of Kelly’s piano style may have been the result of combining years of experience in playing in rhythm and blues bands with a fine Jazz sensibility.

Of his work with his own trio, John A. Tynan had this to say in a Down Beat review:

“It is one of the most cohesive and inventive rhythmic groups in small-band Jazz today.”

Musicians commenting about Wynton’s work on their recordings state: “The presence of Kelly may account for the difference …,” “… the album would not have been excellent without Wynton Kelly’s sterling support,” and “… he is disarmingly pleasant to work with, the very model of a mainstream pianist.”

The Jazz writer and critic, Barbara J. Gardiner closed her insert notes to the 1961 VeeJay 2-CD compilation Wynton Kelly! [VeeJazz-011] with the declaration that “You would expect Wynton Kelly to be comprehensive as well as creative. Hasn’t he always been?”

Although she was referring to the material on these CDs “… tried and proven, mixed in with a bit of the fresh …,” this could also serve as an apt way of describing Wynton’s approach to Jazz piano: wide-ranging and inventive.

One is never far away from the Jazz tradition when listening to Wynton Kelly, but what he plays is himself; he has incorporated his influences into his own musical “personality” and recognizably so. Four [4] bars and you know its him.

Wynton is not a pianist who overwhelms the listener with startling technique or originality of conception.

But what he does offer is playing that is full of joy, funk and a feeling for time that fills the heart with happiness, sets the feet tapping and get the fingers popping the beat.

Wynton Kelly is the pianistic personification of swing, or if you prefer: “smokin’,” “cookin’” or “boppin’.” 

When Wynton plays Jazz piano, you feel it.

Nothing cerebral here in any deep or complicated sense, just – “Clap hands, here comes, Wynton.”

Hear it for yourself in the following tribute to Wynton that features him along with Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones. The tune is Winston's original Temperance from Kelly at Midnight [VeeJay-03] .

Mr. P. C. The Life and Music of Paul Chambers - Rob Palmer

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

“Jazz musicians are their music. Absent that, they're just people making a living, eating meals, paying bills — no different from cops or politicos. But that's just the point: the music can't be subtracted: it's the defining essence, which sets musicians apart, makes them special and ultimately a little mysterious. Makes their various complexes and misbehaviors interesting to writers, chroniclers, fans.”

- Richard Sudhalter, Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz, 1915-1945

Since “Jazz musicians are their music,” what better way to write a biography of a Jazz musician than to centered it on the musician’s music as it appears on his recordings?  This is especially the case when the subject it being treated retrospectively without the benefit of an interview.

And this is exactly what bassist Rob Palmer has done in his comprehensive overview of the career of Paul Chambers - Mr. P.C. The Life and Music of Paul Chambers [Bristol, CT: Equinox Publishing LTD, 2012]. Valerie Hall, the Editorial and Marketing Manager at Equinox is offering JazzProfiles readers a 25% discount using the code Jazz when ordering from the Equinox website.

Rob explains how and why he chose this format in the following Introduction to his book:

Miles Davis, Relaxin'

Miles Davis, 'Round about Midnight

Miles Davis, Miles Ahead

Miles Davis, Porgy and Bess

Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain

Miles Davis, Milestones

Miles Davis, Kind of Blue

John Coltrane, Blue Train

John Coltrane, Giant Steps

Jackie McLean, Capuchin Swing

Hank Mobley, Soul Station

Hank Mobley, Workout

Sonny Clark, Cool Struttin'

Wynton Kelly, Kelly at Midnite

Joe Henderson, Four

Oliver Nelson, Blues and the Abstract Truth

Wes Montgomery, Full House

Wes Montgomery, Smokin' at the Half Note

Art Pepper, Meets the Rhythm Section

Sonny Rollins, Tenor Madness

“The above list could easily be representative of every interested forty-something’s top twenty favourite jazz albums; a panoply of hard-bop, be-bop, orchestral and modal jazz. There will be very few genuine jazz enthusiasts who do not own at least a small handful of the recordings mentioned above and there are more than a few that will have all of them on their shelves at home. The list incorporates some of the most listened-to and talked-about jazz of the 1950s and '60s, if not of the history of the idiom itself. Kind of Blue is one of, if not the, best-selling jazz albums of all time (depending on your definition of jazz), with sales of the numerous re-issues and re-mixes reportedly exceeding the three million mark. It was the most commercially successful recording of Miles Davis's career. Although many precedents had earlier provided the opportunity for players and listeners alike to explore the potential of this particular sub-genre, it is this Miles Davis classic that is often credited as introducing the concept of modal playing into the mainstream field of jazz.

Giant Steps the title track of the second of Coltrane's three celebrated masterpieces (the first being Blue Train and the third A Love Supreme) is a further example of ground-breaking innovation in the field of jazz music, albeit of a very different kind. This recording, while involving more than one of Miles Davis's sidemen from Kind of Blue, was, in Alyn Shipton's words, "the antithesis of simplicity.' While occasionally acknowledged as the pinnacle of expression in terms of melodic invention around the use of complex forms, this track, at the very least, drew the music community's attention to a specific and demanding sequence of chords that is still referred to by musicians as "Giant Steps changes" despite the fact that the sequence had been heard before in more than one setting. Even today, in many circles, a musician's ability to negotiate these particular changes freely and creatively is considered a fundamental measure of competence.

It is not widely known that the recording sessions that produced Kind of Blue and Giant Steps were undertaken within a matter of weeks; Miles entered the CBS recording studio on Thirtieth Street, New York, on 2 March 1959, with some small scraps of paper on which he had scribbled the material that was to become part of Kind of Blue while most of the material on Coltrane's Giant Steps was recorded on 4 and 5 May 1959, around eight weeks later (although earlier sessions that featured the material Coltrane had prepared for that LP were under way by 1 April). There were several other classic recordings that took place during the early months of 1959 and it would not be unreasonable to suggest that, creatively speaking, the spring of that year could be described as a fertile period in jazz history.

Miles Davis's recordings of the material for the Columbia LPs Sketches of Spain (1959 and 1960) and Porgy and Bess (1960), both orchestrated by composer/arranger Gil Evans, are still two of his best-loved works, even amongst less committed jazz fans. The origins of these two works, neither of which was originally conceived as "jazz" in any conventional sense, both benefit from what could be considered an informal relationship with mainstream popular culture. For the layman, this allows each piece a degree of familiarity that, in turn, renders the Davis/Evans versions exotic and interesting rather than alien and inaccessible.

At the time of his Tenor Madness recording in 1956, Sonny Rollins was considered to be one of the most respected tenor saxophonists in jazz. His reputation as one of the idiom's most advanced thematic improvisers was all but unassailable. His status amongst jazz musicians was, and remains, legendary and his periodic withdrawals from live performances (1959 to 1961 and 1969 to 1971) leave little doubt that Rollins was one of the most

uncompromising performers recording at that time and "a man of unquestioned artistic courage" The music recorded on Tenor Madness pays testimony to his reputation and provides evidence of his talent.

The recording of Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, another classic album from the period, took place shortly after Pepper's release from prison in 1957. It is interesting to note that the publicity department at Contemporary Records, the producers of Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, saw fit to package Pepper's post-sentence "re-launch" (one of several) on the basis that he had been teamed up with the rhythm section of the day and not just a rhythm section. The fact that this release was marketed on the basis that Pepper's improvisations were accompanied by the personnel that the great Miles Davis was then using as his rhythm section is testimony to the esteem with which these three musicians were held at that time. It is apparent, from his biography, that Pepper was thrilled at being afforded the opportunity to record with what was generally agreed to be the greatest rhythm section of its day. His delight at the quality of the music produced during the session and subsequently released is also a matter of record.

Among the albums listed above, we can hear the work of at least five trumpet players, around eight saxophonists, six pianists and at least five drummers. The list, however, represents the work of just one bass player. What makes this list of iconic jazz recordings special is that it amounts to only a tiny part of the immense discography of the work of a single man: the double-bass player Paul Chambers, the young musician who inspired Coltrane to write his legendary minor blues, the evergreen jam session staple, Mr PC Red Garland to pen The P.C. Blues and Tommy Flanagan to compose his own Big Paul.

Chambers recorded over 300 LPs for record labels as varied as Columbia, Riverside, Blue Note, Savoy, Veejay, United Artists, Prestige and Impulse. He played with almost every great instrumentalist from the mid-fifties to the late sixties, including Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Stanley Turrentine, johnny Griffin, Wayne Shorter, Clark Terry, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Grant Green, Kenny Burrell, Art Blakey, jimmy Cobb, Philly Joe Jones, Max Roach, Roy Haynes and Paul Motian. The list is extensive. Chambers played bass on some of the top-selling jazz albums in the history of the music and contributed significantly to some of the most critically acclaimed and historically important LPs of all time. As one critic said: "Even when you couldn't hear Paul Chambers, ... it was clear that everything was built around him".

Like many bass players in the history of this music, Paul Chambers has often gone unnoticed in the discussions around these recordings, the emphasis remaining on the so-called front-line players like Davis, Coltrane, Rollins and Monk. The purpose of this book is to pay homage to the unsung heroes of jazz, its bass players, and to specifically explore the life of and contributions made to this most noble of musics by the quiet legend that is Paul Chambers.”

In the ensuing ten chapters, Rob takes us through the highlights of Paul Chambers recording career which began in 1954 and ended in 1968 [Paul died on January 4, 1969 from complications associated with tuberculosis.]

Upon reflection, it is amazing what Paul accomplished in a performing and recording career that lasted a mere 13 years.

Two constant and recurring elements or themes in Rob’s examination of Chambers’ work in all of its stages are contained in the following excerpts:

[1] “Paul Chambers was an ordinary man, a man who took a raw talent and worked hard with that talent to become the best musician that he could possibly be. He wasn't good because he was black. He wasn't good because he was from Detroit. He wasn't good because he knew Doug Watkins or Ray Brown or because he bathed in the glow of legends like Miles Davis and John Coltrane. He was good because he worked hard, because he invested considerable time and effort, blood and sweat, in developing the techniques required to master his chosen instrument. There is no magic here, no folklore; these skills were earned the hard way, through hours of systematic practice, day after day, night after night, week after week and year after year. Chambers spent time processing musical concepts, considering harmonic theories, learning and practising chord sequences, playing solo bass etudes with a bow, building up his strength and his calluses, talking to his peers, wheeling his bass across Detroit and New York, jamming with other musicians, some younger, many older, listening to those who influenced him both live and on record, immersing himself, body and soul, in the music they call jazz and investigating elements of the classical repertoire.

The skills that allowed him to hold one of the most prestigious bass chairs in the world were not handed to Chambers on a plate. He had to go looking for them himself. Chambers was no autodidact - he had at least three teachers of considerable experience and ability - but there are no shortcuts to acquiring the skills made evident throughout his thirteen-year professional career. His concept of swing was not made available through his genes or his cultural heritage but through work sustained over nearly twenty years as a practicing musician.” [pp.335-336]

[2] “Paul Chambers's contribution to the development of the bass is not easily defined. He was not an innovator in the conventional sense. His time playing finds precedent in the work of Ray Brown and Wendell Marshall. His arco soloing is an extension of the work of Slam Stewart and Major Holley and there are, in any event, some credible sources that are critical of this aspect of his playing. His bebop soloing has its origins in the work of Oscar Pettiford, Charles Mingus, Red Mitchell, Ray Brown and Red Callender. To suggest that Chambers was an entirely fresh voice on the instrument does not bear close scrutiny. What he did do, however, was to consolidate a series of important but independent innovations, bring them all together in the person of a single musician and introduce some of those concepts to the listening public for the first time.

Chambers was an extremely skilled and competent journeyman bass player, a musician who could deliver on all areas of his instrument to a consistently high standard and, most importantly, to the benefit of the music being performed. Much of his work, however, was that of a professional craftsman, able to deliver a consistent product to order. There were moments of supreme excellence, many of which have been discussed here, but to deify the man as a unique voice is to distort the real contribution he made to the idiom. Nevertheless, Chambers's contribution to the development of his chosen instrument cannot be entirely dismissed. As is so often the case with the history of an instrument's role in any musical genre, its innovators and groundbreakers are not necessarily its most renowned practitioners.” [p. 331]

Rob’s observations about Paul’s style and his place in the scheme of things form underlying themes as he follows the evolution of Paul’s career from its earliest years on the “Motor City Scene” [Detroit, MI] to his years as a member of the Miles Davis Quintet from 1955-1963, to the after Miles years which included touring with pianist Wynton Kelly and drummer Jimmy Cobb and becoming involved in “the session work that was starting to role in.” [p. 276].

Of particular interest to me as Rob takes us through Paul’s recording career as a sideman and as a leader is the way in which he brings in other bassists to describe what Paul is actually doing on bass and how many of the tunes that he plays on are structured. He offers a kind of insider’s perspective on how Paul played as well as what is going on in the music.

Here’s an example of the former with bassist Peter Washington commenting on a technical aspect of Paul’s playing:

“It's hard technically to play like Paul... It's just hard in a different way. It's very hard to play melodically in half of first position which Paul did. And make it clear, and make it ... you know, all those interesting intervals he plays. I think it's hard to do that as it is to do what Scott LaFaro did, in a different way... A lot of Paul's solos, you can play without moving out of half position, and when you think about how melodic it is, his hand is just like this the whole time. Pretty amazing! And that's why he's very clever to play like that. Because when you play like that, you get consistency of power in the sound. And you are playing things that are in the character of the bass ... The power of sound that Paul had, and play low on the bass, and clearly. That's something else ... He had a complete unity between what he wanted to do creatively, and his mastery of the instrument. Everything he learned about playing the bass technically served his creativity. I mean, he knew that to play most of the songs in one position is going to give him a stronger, more consistent, clear sound.” [pp. 105-106]

And more of the same, this time from bassist Christian McBride:

“... the first record I heard Paul Chambers on was Kind of Blue. Just the overall feeling of the way he walked, his pulse, the combination of his sound and his feeling, particularly his sound. I was 11 years old and I'm thinking "Wow, this guy has to be one of the greatest bass players in the world". I later heard him on a bunch of Blue Note records, like John Coltrane's Blue Train and Kenny Dorham's Whistle Stop, Sonny Clark's Sonny's Crib. There are so many records I heard Paul Chambers on after that, but it all started with Kind of Blue.” [p. 182]

Chuck Israels, bassist with the Bill Evans Trio amongst others, had another take on Chambers’s playing:

“Chambers would sometimes find some notes in between the note..., putting four pitches in a line in which there was only room for three. For example, if he had to get from D to F and he had to play four notes in there and he happened to be going chromatically, he would go from a D to a flattened E flat to a sharpened E flat to an E to an F. Maybe he played the D on the downbeat of one measure and wanted the F to be the downbeat of the next measure and didn't want to break the chromatic nature of the line, so he made the line even more chromatic, micro-tonally chromatic. It was a very beautiful thing.” [p. 176]

Bassist John Goldsby comments on Paul work on Giant Steps from the Coltrane Atlantic album by the same name: “Chambers negotiated the bass lines with great grace and aplomb, while playing lines that outlined the jagged [chord] progression’s root movement.” [p. 191]

Rob also includes comparisons between bassist styles to help elucidate how Chambers evolved his own, distinctive style:

“Although Chambers was influenced by Ray Brown's playing a lot, each one had his own identity. Both Brown and Chambers know the instrument so they use all the notes from the lower to higher register on the bass fluently. In Brown's case, he uses open strings more often in his bass lines so he is in tune more of the time; also he could jump from note to note and come back with less risk, and his using open strings mixed with other notes (including harmonics) became almost patternised sometimes. His plucking would be much harder when he swung madly with the band, especially in mid-tempo. He varies the mood by using different rhythmic variations - triplet, irregular accents on the beat, and sixteenth note figures especially on ballad tunes, which Paul doesn't do much - during his walking bass. On the other hand, Paul hardly moved his left hand - he would play all the notes in one hand position; also he keeps the consistency of every note he plays. His tone may have seemed rather blunt because of the length of notes - rather short - and rare slides on the bass, but it was pure. [p. 176 as drawn from S. Shim, “Paul Chambers: His Life and Music,” 1999 Masters Thesis, Rutgers]

As someone who has always been interested in what makes a Jazz special and interesting, one of the outstanding aspects of Rob’s treatment of Paul’s recorded career are his descriptions of the structure of the tunes on the seminal albums listed at the beginning of his Introduction.

In addition to the 341 pages of text that make up the body of his work, Rob provides a select bibliography and a listing of footnotes per chapter. The book is particularly notable for the inclusion of a 64-page discography.

If you are a fan of Jazz from this era, you simply can’t go wrong using a copy of Mr. P. C. The Life and Music of Paul Chambers as your aural narrative through the music associated with Paul’s career.

It’s not often that a book about Jazz comes along that offers both a cogent and coherent biography of one of the principals of the post World War II Modern Jazz movement, as well as, an illuminating [and easy-to-read] guide to what’s going on with and within the music.

Rob’s book on the life and music of Paul Chambers is one of those rare occasions when this hoped for alignment occurs and, as such, you may wish to include it on your gift list for the upcoming holiday season.