Ivan Lins - "My Heart Speaks" - Resonance Records

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

RESONANCE RECORDS IS PROUD TO PRESENT

BRAZILIAN LEGEND IVAN LINS WITH A SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

IN THE MOST SUMPTUOUS ALBUM OF HIS CAREER

Out September 15, 2023, My Heart Speaks features Jazz Vocal Icons Dianne Reeves and Jane Monheit, Rising Star Singer Tawanda, and Trumpet Great Randy Brecker

Follow Up to Eddie Daniels’ 2020 Acclaimed Resonance

Tribute to Ivan Lins, Night Kisses

Ivan Lins is one of the most treasured and recorded Brazilian composers in the world and a melodist with few equals. The winner of four Latin Grammy Awards, Lins has recorded nearly fifty albums since 1970; they contain countless songs, notably “Madalena” and “Começar de Novo” (To Begin Again), that have become standards in his country. “Love Dance,” co-written with his longtime arranger, Gilson Peranzzetta, and lyricist Paul Williams, is Lins’s English-language classic. Its performers include Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Mark Murphy, Shirley Horn, Blossom Dearie, Carmen McRae, George Benson, Nancy Wilson, Barbra Streisand, and Quincy Jones, who helped maneuver Lins’s U.S. breakthrough in the early ‘80s.

On September 15, 2023 Resonance Records—the award-winning diamond of independent jazz labels—will release My Heart Speaks, the most extravagantly lush album of Lins’s career. Performing rare gems from his catalog, the composer is backed by the 91-piece symphony of Tbilisi, capital of the Republic of Georgia. Kuno Schmid, the extraordinarily prolific Los Angeles-based composer and arranger, wrote the orchestral charts. One of Schmid’s fans was his legendary predecessor, Johnny Mandel, who earned one of his five Grammys for an arrangement of Lins’s “Velas,” featured on Jones’s 1981 album The Dude. Mandel called Schmid’s work “so good that I’m jealous.”

My Heart Speaks holds a feast of discoveries for Lins’s American fans. It also boasts appearances by Randy Brecker, Dianne Reeves, Jane Monheit, and an exciting newcomer, Tawanda, winner of the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. The liner notes, containing extensive commentary by Lins, were written by James Gavin, the acclaimed biographer of George Michael, Peggy Lee, Chet Baker, and Lena Horne and a two-time winner of ASCAP’s Deems Taylor-Virgil Thomson Award for excellence in music journalism.

Lins’s reedy, impassioned voice is one of the iconic sounds of Brazilian pop, and in My Heart Speaks he gives intense performances of songs he hand-picked. The sumptuous ballad “Renata Maria,” about a dreamlike goddess who appears on a beach and drives a man crazy, is one of Lins’s two collaborations with a fellow Brazilian legend, songwriter Chico Buarque. “Corpos” (Bodies) dates from the darkest years of Brazil’s military dictatorship when political dissenters were disappearing. Lins wrote it with his foremost collaborator, Vitor Martins, one of Brazil’s most profound lyric writers.

Jane Monheit, a frequent interpreter of Lins’s songs and a gifted and evolving lyricist, wrote two of the English adaptations heard here. “The Heart Speaks” was first recorded instrumentally by trumpeter Terence Blanchard on his 1995 album of Lins’s songs; Monheit’s lyric is introduced here by five-time Grammy-winner Dianne Reeves. Monheit sings “Rio,” a valentine to the city where Lins spends half the year (he also has a home in Lisbon). Tawanda performs “I’m Not Alone,” an English version of Lins’s classic “Anjo de Mim.” Its lyricist, Will Jennings, has written two Oscar-winning No. 1 hits, “Up Where We Belong” and “My Heart Will Go On.”

Lins’s core band on this album spans several countries. Josh Nelson is a Los Angeles-based pianist whose work was called “lyrical, harmonically rich, and elegant” in DownBeat. Uruguayan guitarist Leo Amuedo has been a fixture of Lins’s groups for over a decade. Cuban bassist Carlitos Del Puerto founded the Grammy-winning Latin band Irakere.

My Heart Speaks was a dream of Resonance founder George Klabin. It follows Night Kisses, a 2020 Resonance album of Lin's tunes played by clarinetist Eddie Daniels and a string quartet.

From the time Klabin founded the label in 2008, Resonance has earned consistent acclaim both for its gold-standard issues of newly discovered material by such legends as Wes Montgomery, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Freddie Hubbard, and Stan Getz, and for its new recordings by Claudio Roditi, Toninho Horta, Christian Howes, and others. Resonance’s albums have so far earned two Grammys and four nominations.

Now comes a release that, for Klabin, may be the label’s pinnacle. “In my opinion,” he says, Lins “is as great a composer of Brazilian music as Tom Jobim. The journey of creation of this masterpiece will remain with me as the most spiritual and loving experience I have had in the field of music production.”

For order information, go here.

IVAN LINS - BIOGRAPHY

“It was in 1970 that Ivan Lins. a middle-class youth with a degree in chemical engineering, made a life-changing transition into music. One of his fledgling efforts as a songwriter, Lins's "O Amor E o Meu Pais" (Love Is My Country), placed second in the fifth edition of the prestigious International Festival of Song competition in Rio. Within the same period, Brazil's greatest young singer. Elis Regina, gave him his first hit when she recorded his song "Madalena." In 1972. Lins was driving in Rio when he heard a heart-stopping sound coming from his car radio: It was Ella Fitzgerald singing "Madalena."

Today Lins stands as one of the world's most admired and recorded Brazilian composers after Antonio Carlos Jobim. His song "Love Dance," coauthored by his longtime arranger Gilson Peranzzetta and lyricist Paul Williams, has been recorded by dozens of American stars, among them Sarah Vaughan. Barbra Streisand. George Benson, and Lins's first American champion. Quincy Jones. The U.S. jazz community has embraced him as one of its own.

Born on June 16. 1945 in Ituverava. a city in Sao Paulo state, Ivan Guimaraes Lins was the son of a naval engineer. As a child he lived for a time in Boston, where his father was studying. Both the U.S. and Brazil figured heavily in his musical development. Lins's family was living in Rio when bossa nova exploded; enraptured by the art of the bossa trio, Lins taught himself piano. By the age of twenty he was leading a trio in a nightclub.

His remarkable gift for creating sophisticated melody and harmony emerged through a close study of two of bossa's founders, Carlos Lyra and Jobim. Henry Mancini, whom he calls "one of my heroes," and other American songwriters left strong marks on him as well. Then Lins discovered samba, and the rhythmic side of his composing took wing.

He went on to obtain an engineering degree, but did nothing with it; he preferred to play and sing his own songs in bars. In 1970 he released his first singles. A Brazilian singer named Eva recorded one of his earliest tunes. "Agora" (Now); it became a modest hit. But when Elis Regina adopted "Madalena" (with words by Lins's first steady Lyricist. Ronaldo Monteiro de Souza), the Brazilian music world at large began to pay attention to him.

Like other songwriters of his generation. Lins vehemently opposed the military dictatorship that had taken over Brazil in 1964. Bs the late "60s. every artist was subject to fierce censorship. Politically minded lyricists had to learn to convey political messages in encoded, metaphorical language.

That issue helped define Lins's partnership with Vitor Martins, a profoundly poetic and oftentimes political lyric writer. Starting with their first collaboration. "Abre Alas" (Open Your Anns), in 1974. Lins and Martins created a body of work that helped define that turbulent decade in Brazilian life. Many of the songs, including "Aos Nossos Filhos" (To Our Children) and "Corpos" (Bodies), had political themes; others-- "Bilhete" (Ticket). "Antes Que Seja Tarde" (Before It's Too Late). "Lembra de Mini" (Remember Me). "Velas Icadas" (Hoisted Sails) — dealt with embattled life and love.

In that period. Lins recorded a string of important albums on EMI and Philips; Elis Regina and nearly every other significant Brazilian singer sang his work. But when he met Quincy; Jones in 1980, his career took an international leap. "He was really the person who opened doors for me here," Lins told the Boston Globe.

Jones did much to popularize Lins in the U.S., notably by facilitating the writing of English words for his songs. Alan & Marilyn Bergman transformed a Lins classic. "Comecar de Novo" (To Begin Again), into the torrid "The Island"; Sarah Vaughan gave it one of the first of its many recordings. Mark Murphy released an entire Lins collection, Night Mood, trumpeter Terence Blanchard did the same with The Heart Speaks. In 2000. Telarc issued A Love Affair: The Music of Ivan Lins, featuring Sting, Vanessa Williams. Chaka Khan. Brenda Russell, and Lisa Fischer. That October, Khan, Russell, Williams, and others joined the composer for a Carnegie Hall concert. Lins became an in-demand guest on albums by American artists, including Michael Bublé. Paula Cole, and Jane Monheit.

All the while he toured the world, headlining frequently at jazz festivals and clubs while making his own albums for GRP, Philips, and Reprise. The 2000s brought Lins to an even higher level of acclaim; he earned four Latin Grammy Awards, two for his album Cantando Historias (Singing Stories) and one each for Ivan Lins and the Metropole Orchestra and America, Brasil.

Today, Lins — who divides his time between Rio de Janeiro and Lisbon — is touring as busily as ever. His recent association with Resonance Records, the celebrated. Los Angeles-based boutique jazz label, has yielded two albums. In Night Kisses: A Tribute to Ivan Lins, clarinetist Eddie Daniels and a string quartet play the composer's earlier works. And in the forthcoming (September) Resonance album My Heart Speaks, Lins performs rarities from his catalog in the company of the 91-piece symphony orchestra of Tbilisi, capital of the Republic of Georgia.”

Ivan Lins Biography courtesy of Ann Braithwaite of Braithwaite & Katz Communications.

More Bill Evans on Resonance - The Buenos Aires Concerts

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

It is amazing to reflect on the wonderful job Co-Presidents George Klabin and Zev Feldman, in association with their marvelous team at Resonance Records, have done in issuing over the past decade [2012-2022] new recordings by iconic pianist Bill Evans and his trio. 

The Resonance Association with the estate of Bill Evans began in 2012 when the label released Bill Evans: Live at the Top of the Gate which features performances taped at Art D’Lugoff’s club in 1968. 

This initial offering established the format for the recordings by Bill on Resonance. No expense was to be spared in the packaging of these dual LPs and CDs; the audio was to be of the highest quality; photographs of Bill and the setting in which he was recorded would be plentiful; relevant interviews with band members and colleagues close to Bill would be represented along with essays by some of the more notable, contemporary Jazz writers.

The high artistic quality represented in Bill’s music was to be matched by the way it was in turn offered to the public by Resonance.

In 2016, Resonance released Bill Evans, Some Other Time: The Lost Sessions from the Black Forest followed in 2017 by Bill Evans, Another Time: The Hilversum Concert followed in 2019 by Bill Evans in England followed in 2020 by Bill Evans: Live at Ronnie Scott’s. Also in 2019 the label released Smile with Your Heart: The Best of Bill Evans on Resonance which, as the name implies, is a sampler drawn from the growing repository of Bill’s recorded music on the label.

In 2022, Resonance is treating us to not one, but two recordings by Bill’s trio done in performance in Buenos Aires, Argentina separated by a span of approximately six years: Bill Evans: Morning Glory and Bill Evans: Inner Spirit [N.B.: The limited edition LP versions of these recordings will be available as Record Store Day releases on April 23rd and the CD and digital downloads will follow on April 30, 2022].

The first was recorded in a 1973 concert at the Teatro Gran Rex, Buenos Aires with Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums [a trio which stayed together nine years] while the second was recorded in a 1979 concert at the Teatro General San Martin, Buenos Aires with the members of Bill’s last trio, bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe La Barbera.

Following Bill’s recordings for Orrin Keepnews at Riverside during the late 1950s and early 1960s and his output on Verve under producer Creed Taylor in the mid-1960s, and with the exception of a smattering of recordings  the 1970s on Columbia, Fantasy and Warner Bros, the seven recordings on the Resonance label represent a concerted and consistent reflection of his work during the second half of his career before his tragic, early death on September 15, 1980.

Resonance makes available the press releases and descriptive information for each of its Evans releases on its website along with audio samples and you can access this information by going here.

Each of the Buenos Aires recordings is made up of thirteen tracks that feature a blend of Bill’s original compositions, selections from the Great American Songbook and a couple of Jazz standards - Tadd Dameron’s If You Could See Me Now [a tune that Bill played infrequently - regrettably] and Nardis [which Bill often used as a set closer]. 

What is very much in evidence on these new Resonance recordings of Bill in Buenos Aires is that they offer the listener examples of many of the elements that had always been characteristic of Bill’s style, except now they can be heard and appreciated in a much more mature form.

Perhaps the most definitive exposition on the elements that made up Bill’s unique style is contained in fellow pianist Enrico Pieranunzi’s loving tribute to Bill Evans, a man who unquestionably, was his greatest influence. It is entitled Bill Evans: Ritratto d’artista con pianoforte/Bill Evans: The Pianist as an Artist.

This book, using a side-by-side Italian/English format, was published in Rome in 1999 by Stampa Alternativa with Darragh Henegan providing the English translation. Each edition of the book included a CD entitled Evans Remembered featuring Pieranunzi in solo piano settings including a track displaying 6 variations of Bill’s composition Very Early. Also included are four, sextet tracks in which Enrico plays his or Bill's original compositions or tunes closely associated with Bill in a group made up of a number of prominent Italian Jazz musicians.

The book is featured on JazzProfiles and you can find the complete post via this link.

In addition to Pieranunzi’s treatment of the characteristics of Bill’s style, many of them can also be discerned in the following excerpts from writers who are extremely knowledgeable on the subject of the piano in Jazz.

Peter Pettinger - Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings

“Then my friend brought along the trumpeter's latest — something called Jazz Track. The piano on this stunning record was being played by an unknown musician with an ordinary name: Bill Evans. But the way he was shading his tone was anything but ordinary; he sounded like a classical pianist, and yet he was playing jazz. I was captured there and then — the archetypal pivotal moment. The concept of the "Bill Evans sound" instantly enshrined and distilled what I had always hoped to hear. It was the plaintive harmony, the lyrical tone, and the fresh textures that captivated so; it was the very idea that one style of music could be played with the skills and finesse normally only brought to another; it was a timeless quality, a feeling that the music had always been there; and above all, it was a yearning behind the notes, a quiet passion that you could almost reach out and touch.

I began to collect the records. So, I later learned, had hundreds of other people. But at the time I felt, strangely, that I was the only one who knew and responded to this music. Many Evans connoisseurs have had this experience and jealously guard what they regard as their exclusive found treasure. It surely stems from this artist's ability to communicate at a very personal level, a quality emanating from his character, which was quiet, introverted, and modest. He was not a glamorous person, and he appeared to play not for the masses but for himself. A listener felt like an eavesdropper, communing on a privileged, one-to-one level. Through this quality — this "presence" — Bill Evans today gets through to listeners from all walks of life in a way that many other musicians do not.

Evans's artistic development was long, slow, and, as he put it, "through the middle." It is fitting that his recognition today progresses in a similar way. Over the years since his death in 1980, his niche on the retail shelves has grown slowly but steadily, so that now the big stores offer a generous selection of his CDs. Gradually, the message of this giant is being valued for its true worth; one senses a slowly developing appreciation. He is especially "big" in France—but then, he always was—and it was there rather than in England or America that a portrait for television was made in 1996.

He was a supremely natural pianist. Indeed, he even looked like part of his instrument—an extension of it, rather than someone sitting at it. Or rather, it was an extension of him; he did not so much play upon it as coax it into life. His diffident and slightly awkward appearance when walking onto the bandstand was transformed when he began to play; then, somehow, he was complete.

His influence is pervasive, extending generally throughout jazz and specifically to countless instrumentalists. The interactive, chamber-music concept of the Bill Evans Trios has even permeated an entire recording label (one for which he never recorded); the whole aesthetic of Manfred Eicher's ECM company has been defined by the Evans approach to economy and

Silence.”

And on the subject of rhythmic displacement, a technique that was critical in creating the unique “feeling” of Bill phrasing:

“Evans had entered his last great period. One manifestation was the recapturing of a sense of the unexpected in his timing, but with a new precision and a confident edge, left-hand displacements being placed against the beat with an outright intent that shocks us into acceptance, part of an accelerating trend toward the communicative point.”

[On the subject of rhythmic displacement], The occasion, issued on Jazz Alliance as Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz, with Guest Bill Evans, brought out the graciousness of the man as well as what Helen Keane called his "forthright, gentle majesty."

Bill got in gently with more or less the printed version of "Waltz for Debby" before the conversation turned toward rhythmic displacement. As demonstrated on the just-recorded Affinity, this pursuit was a higher priority for him than ever before. He explained: "I think the rhythmic construction of the thing has evolved quite a bit. Now, I don't know how obvious that would be to the listener, but the displacement of phrases, and the way phrases follow one another, and their placement against the meter and so forth, is something that I've worked on rather hard, and it's something I believe in. It has little to do with trends. It has more to do with my feeling about my basic conception of jazz structure and jazz melodies, and the way the rhythmic things follow one another. And so I just keep trying to get deeper into that, and as the years go by I seem to make some progress in that direction."^

There followed an astonishing display of deliberate phrase displacement, using "All of You," which Marian McPartland eventually slotted into with the melody itself. She did the same on Bill's next demonstration, a restructuring of "The Touch of Your Lips," using pedal points and chordal enhancements. For comparison, he played what the fake book might give. A discussion of key choice in general (Evans nominated A and E as two of his favorites) led to a complete solo performance of "Reflections in D." Along the way there were delightful two-piano explorations of some standards.”

Andy La Verne, who was playing the piano in Stan Getz's group on this tour (sometimes a day after Evans, sometimes as a double bill), recalls that Evans would tape the gig each night to listen to on the road, always intent on learning from his shortcomings. "He was working on some linear things at that point," said LaVerne. "What he was doing was playing ahead of the changes. His right-hand line would be ahead of where the changes were happening in the harmonic rhythm. That way he could create tension and release; when the changes caught up to his line, obviously that would be a release."9 This displacement of phrases came absolutely naturally to Evans, developed through feeling, not intellect. He was not trying to throw his listeners but to say more within the form of jazz.

Len Lyons - The Great Jazz Pianists 

“Bill Evans was a warm, good-hearted, and extremely intelligent man. He stood for honesty, integrity, and beauty in music, and he never backed away from choosing high standards. Evans was the most influential pianist of the 1960's. The tone, touch, texture, and harmonic richness of his playing affected the majority of pianists who followed him.

Though acclaimed as a pianist, Evans was probably underrated as a composer. His "Waltz for Debby" and "Peace Piece" are acknowledged as classics, but Evans wrote other fine compositions, such as "Blue in Green," "Show-Type Tune," and "T.T.T." Like his improvising, his composing was typified by clear, melodic lines and rich, colorful harmonic sound on the acoustic grand.

Prior to my conversation with him at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1976, Evans had become a father for the first time. He rejoiced in the birth of his son (Evan Evans) as an apt symbol for a regeneration that was apparent in his music. "I think the most important element is the spiritual content of whatever you're doing," he told me. "My personal life has become so happy in the last couple of years, getting a whole family thing going, buying a home, becoming a father-all of this contributes to my motivation, which is a mysterious element in anybody's life. You can't turn it on or off very easily, and I feel like my motivation is returning. I'm just feeling more alive now, alive in a broader way than just being a musician. . . . When you have children, it seems you're more tied to the future and to everything that's going on in the world.

The earliest evidence I had heard of Bill's enlivened playing was on the 1973 album Intuition (on Fantasy), a collection of piano/bass duets with Eddie Gomez. Compared to his earlier work, the melodic lines are longer, the ideas more definite, and the rhythms more forceful. There is new weight added to the bucolic lyricism of his past. He uses primary colors instead of pastels. Bill was articulate on the subject of his own development. His style was built on his personal interpretations of both classical and jazz influences. His acutely sensitive and lyrical technique or touch is unsurpassed on the keyboard. Bill worked ceaselessly to develop his music, and his achievements were hard-won.” 

Ted Gioia - The History of Jazz, 3rd Ed.

“He brought to his jazz playing a deep knowledge of the classics, especially late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century composers such as Ravel, Debussy, Scriabin, Bartok, Prokofiev, and Rachmaninoff, supplemented by a keen appreciation of the jazz work of Powell, Tristano, Konitz, and others. In time, these disparate influences would coalesce into a unique, integrated style of Evans's own creation. Although previous jazz pianists had experimented with chords built on higher intervals, Evans refined a comprehensive and systematic understanding of voicings, derived primarily from the French impressionist composers, which made extensive use of ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth chords. At times, Evans would craft richly layered block-chord solos, as on the Davis recording of "On Green Dolphin Street"—a technique largely abandoned by the pianist in later years but which persuasively set forth the varied and subtle palette of sounds at his disposal, akin to a Maurice Ravel playing cool jazz. These same higher intervals figured prominently in Evans's melody lines, which employed altered ninths and sharp elevenths the way earlier jazz pianists had used blues notes: to add color, tension, and release to the improvised phrases. Evans's touch at the piano was equally noteworthy, tending toward a smooth legato, softening the staccato attack preferred by his bop predecessors. In time, Evans would learn how to construct phrases that broke away almost completely from the gravitational pull of the ground beat—a technique he would master with his later trios and teach by example to the next generation of jazz players—but even on these early recordings with Davis, Evans's attenuated approach to melodic development was evident, furthered by the frequent use of triplets and three-against-two rhythms, as well as the sometimes aeriform, free-floating quality of his solos.”

Edward Murray, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Barry Kernfeld, ed.

“Evans was one of the most influential jazz musicians of his generation, and the pianist who most successfully assimilated and developed a bop language based on the style of Bud Powell. He brought exceptional refinement and freshness to the jazz harmonic idiom, and this, together with his insistence on a more independent, quasi polyphonic role for his accompanists, his sensitive, well-modulated touch, and an often introspective, lyrical personality, had a lasting influence on many musicians, including Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, and Steve Kuhn.

Evans acknowledged a debt to most of the prominent figures of the bop era, and his early work bears the obvious stamp of Powell, Lennie Tristano, and - strikingly - Horace Silver. His relatively aggressive attack and strong links to the bop style in this period gradually receded in favor of a more lyrical approach including idiosyncratic melodic figures of irregular lengths and subtle voice-leading and harmony (ex.1). Still, his basic bop orientation never changed, and he showed little interest in the experiments of the 1960s and 1970s; even the use of the electric piano remained somewhat foreign to him.

Relationships with a few key double bass players (and, to a lesser extent, drummers) were important in Evans's career. Perhaps the most significant of these bass players was Scott LaFaro, who worked with Evans and Motian from 1959 to 1961. LaFaro's light sound, extraordinary facility, and melodic imagination were a fine foil for Evans, and the two evolved contrapuntal textures distinguished by rhythmic complexity and an elusive relationship to the pulse. This interplay was less in evidence in Evans's work with LaFaro's successor, Chuck Israels, though it re-emerged in his later recordings with Gary Peacock and Eddie Gomez. A similarly complex interaction may be heard in his recordings with Jim Hall, a performer whose capacities and temperament had much in common with Evans's. Here, too, Evans excels as an accompanist, combining discretion with rhythmic flair, an inexhaustible invention in the voicing of chords, and a wide variety of touch.

Evans chose his repertory of tunes carefully: over the years he increasingly emphasized his own compositions (Waltz for Debby, Comrade Conrad) and standard numbers unlikely to interest most other jazz musicians (Beautiful Love, Some day my prince will come). In his own tunes the progression of chords is often elaborately chromatic, though the tonality is always

in evidence. Evans also favored irregularities in phrase length (Show-type Tune) and metrical shifts (Peri's Scope). His recasting of familiar melodies was exceptionally resourceful: in My Foolish Heart, for example, by the careful placement of a few substitute bass notes and nonharmonic tones and a sensitive use of register, he produced a striking transformation of the original tune.”

Bill’s stylistic contributions to the evolution of Jazz piano is obviously a complicated subject, but one that has been made easier to explore with the addition of these new Resonance’s releases of more of Bill’s recorded music.

One can never get enough of a good thing!

Wes Montgomery on Resonance Records

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

When I was working on the recent blog feature - “How the Rhythm Section Got Its Name,” which was derived from Jerry Coker’s excellent book, How to Listen to Jazz [Jamey Absersold Jazz], I came across the following reference by Jerry about the late guitarist Wes Montgomery [1923-1968] and it immediately sent me back to the pre Verve, A&M and CTI recordings he made in the 1960s which ensured his fame and fortune [relative terms when it comes to a Jazz artist].

Since I had already covered the three organ-guitar trio recordings that Wes made for Orrin Keepnews in 1962-1963 and also put up a feature by Orrin in which Keepnews describes his friendship with Wes and what made his artistry so special, I sought out the six recordings that Resonance Records issued that really begin at the beginning, so to speak, when Wes was living and performing in Indianapolis in the late 1950s.

But before turning to Wes on Resonance, here’s the quotation about Wes and his significance as a Jazz guitarist that put the development of this feature in motion [ I have italicized it to distinguish it from my comments].

“The great master of jazz guitar, Wes Montgomery, was a self-taught player with a bittersweet career. Wes played with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra in the forties, and though already a very accomplished player and ripe for stardom, he returned to his home, Indianapolis, to live a more conventional and stable family life. It took him away from national exposure before he could rise to early fame, but the people in the Indianapolis area, especially the jazz musicians, were intensely aware of his mastery. Wes and his two

brothers, Monk (bass) and Buddy (piano), teamed up with Pookie Johnson (tenor) and Sonny Johnson (drums) to form a quintet that was legendary, performing for many years at the Turf Bar. It ranked among the finest jazz groups ever assembled. Individually, every player was an excellent soloist, and as an ensemble, their repertoire (mostly originals) was enormous, yet full of complexities in the arrangements, which were all played from memory. It was a perfect example of a group of self-taught players whose music nonetheless was expertly crafted and stylistically abreast (or ahead of) the times.

Wes Montgomery's improvising style was revelatory, especially in terms of building a solo to a point of climax, which he accomplished by playing the guitar in different ways (in themselves innovative). The first part of his solo, perhaps the first chorus or two, would be played as most players do, that is, in a single melodic line. Then in the middle of the solo, Wes would begin playing in octaves (two notes that are eight scale steps apart, bearing the same letter name but in different registers), which he could do at about the same speed as other guitarists would play single lines. Incidentally, most guitarists today will, at times, play in octaves in the manner invented by Montgomery. Then, in the next stage of his solo, Wes enlarged the octaves into tightly-compressed chords that moved in a melodic fashion, which harmonized his melodies. Finally, the compacted chords would open up into very full, widely spaced chords. By combining the various textures (single line, octaves, tight chords, and open chords), in their particular order, his solo would grow in intensity throughout its length, and the solo acquired an acute sense of order. Montgomery's sense of form also extended itself into the weaving of his melodies, each melodic fragment getting repeated, developed, and played in variations.

Suddenly, around 1959, Wes was rediscovered by the rest of the world, almost overnight, resulting in many semi-pop albums, in which Wes played tunes like "Goin' Out Of My Head" in octaves and little else. For those who knew him well musically, it was frustrating that he finally gained deserved recognition and economic reward for his genius, but at the expense of much of his musical greatness. Wes Montgomery died just a few years after his rediscovery.”

Where I’m going with this piece is to try and underscore the magnitude of the accomplishment and the gift to Jazz fans represented in the six Resonance Recordings described below.

To begin with, Executive Producer George Klabin, Producer Zev Feldman and their associates at Resonance are carrying on the tradition of the independent Jazz Record Producer which has its roots in the first Jazz recordings ever produced dating back to 1917.

Subsequently, operating out of the New York City record store from which his label drew its name, Milt Gabler formalized the role of the independent record producer with the creation of Commodore Records in 1938. In the 1940’s and 50’s, impresario Norman Granz used his Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts and artist management firm [Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, etc] as a springboard to launch Clef and Norgan which he later merged into Verve Records.

In the 1950s, Richard Bock at Pacific Jazz and Les Koenig with Contemporary Records were matched on the East Coast by Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff at Blue Note, Bob Weinstock at Prestige and Orrin Keepnews at Riverside as independent record labels that produced high quality Jazz recordings funded from personal investment and record sales.

This is just a representative list, and a limited one at that, but the point is Jazz as we know it has been so poorly documented for most of its existed that Jazz fans everywhere owe a debt of gratitude to these pioneering independent producers for the repository of recorded Jazz that they left for us and future generations to savor.

These independent Jazz record producers provided additional dimensions to the music with photographs by such artists as Herman Leonard Gijon Mili William Claxton , illustrations by David Stone Martin, Reid Miles, and Robert Guidi/Tri Arts and informative and educational liner notes by Nat Hentoff, Ira Gitler and Leonard Feather - to cite just a few examples.

[Budgets were so lean at Riverside that Orrin oftentimes worked, not only as a producer, but also as a co-recording engineer, photographer and liner note writer for many of his albums. Under some less sparse conditions, he would later go on to found Landmark and Milestone Records. I guess once bitten by this independent record producer bug, it’s difficult to get it out of your system.]

Of course, most Jazz performances wind up in the etherworld - the music is played and then disappears - which is all-the-more the reason why we should be grateful to these independent entrepreneurs for immortalizing some of this music in recorded formats which also gives it a timeless quality.

During the big band swing era from about 1935-1945 and the modern Jazz era that followed circa 1945-70, when Jazz was still a music with a fairly large popular following, the major recording labels like RCA, Columbia and Decca had the clout to market and sell enough recordings to help make some artists a commercial success.

One of these was Wes Montgomery who had a number of “hit” [a relative term in Jazz] recordings in the 1960s for Verve, A&M and CTI before his untimely death on June 15, 1968 of a heart attack. He was only forty-five years old.

Thanks to the three, trios albums for Riverside and with other artists with whom he appeared on that label, we are fortunate to have a narrow yet unfettered view of Wes the performing Jazz artist.

But for those who want an expanded view of the pre-commercialized Wes, there’s only one place to go and that’s to the Resonance Records catalogue of six recordings which feature Wes in a variety of in-performance settings with groups and musicians based in and around his home town of Indianapolis. 

With each of these Wes on Resonance recordings, Executive Producer George Klabin, Producer Zev Feldman and their marvelous team of associates have really taken things to the next level in terms of quality of sound [George along with Fran Gala engineer and master the recordings], the almost work-of-art way in which the music is packaged, offering it, in some cases, in both digital and analogue formats, and in every case gathering a slew of never-before-seen photographs, all wrapped in beautifully designed Burton Yount insert booklets which contain interviews and commentaries conducted and written by a who’s who of Jazz notables including, Ashley Kahn, Bill Milkowski, Duncan Schiedt, Quincy Jones, Peter Townsend, Paul De Barros, Jim Wilke, Alain Tercinet, Dan Morgenstern, Dr. David Baker, Michael Cuscuna, Jamey Abersold, Lewis Porter, and John Edward Hasse, among others.

Observations about what it was like to work with Wes are also included by surviving family members Buddy and Monk Montgomery; some of the musicians who appeared on these recordings including pianist Harold Mabern, drummers Jimmy Cobb and Walter Perkins, and bassists Ron McClure and Bob Cranshaw; musicians who reflect on Wes’ influence on their own music including guitarists George Benson, Pat Martino, John Scofield and Russell Malone, pianists David Hazeltine and Michael Weiss, and bassist Jay Leonhart.

Executive producer Zev Feldman sets the tone for each release with an opening, behind-the-scenes introduction of how each of his discoveries came about; and believe me, these Wes Resonance issues involve a quest on his part.

I mean, can you imagine the smiles going on in Independent Record Producers Heaven from this outpouring of conscientious, creative and caring effort from the Resonance Team on behalf of a - wait for it - Jazz musician?

If you have a serious interest in the music, then you owe it to yourself to consider adding these Resonance Wes Montgomery recordings to your collection by a musician who, along with Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian, changed the sound and the style of the Jazz guitar forever.

Fortunately, you can read more about these recordings and sample the music on them via the annotations contained on the Resonance Records website. Just click on the link below each album cover to be redirected.

https://resonancerecords.org/?product=wes-montgomeryechoes-of-indiana-avenue

https://resonancerecords.org/?product=wes-montgomery-in-the-beginning

https://resonancerecords.org/?product=wes-montgomery-one-night-in-indy

https://resonancerecords.org/?product=wes-montgomery-with-the-wynton-kelly-trio-smokin%c2%92-in-seattle-live-at-the-penthouse-1966-cd

https://resonancerecords.org/?product=wes-montgomery-in-paris-the-definitive-ortf-recording

https://resonancerecords.org/?product=wes-montgomery-back-on-indiana-avenue-the-carroll-decamp-recordings