Roger Kellaway - STRIDE!

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

Bill Crow - bassist, author and all-round good guy, has a rule-to-live-by, one which he stresses over-and-over again, and it is that -  “Jazz is supposed to be fun.”

To my ears, no one better exemplifies this approach to Jazz than does pianist Roger Kellaway.

But please don’t misunderstand this to mean that Roger isn’t serious about his music or that he is in any way belittling Jazz.

Roger’s music is full of joy, happiness and unexpected adventure and, as such, is full of the fun of finding new wonders in Jazz. Listening to Roger play is like being let into the funhouse at the amusement park. For Roger, as for Bill Crow, Jazz is fun. That’s the point of the whole thing.

The first time I heard Roger Kellaway with Clark Terry and Bob Brookmeyer’s quintet [talk about two guys who knew how to have fun with Jazz], I burst out laughing. It was the laughter of delight based on the thrill and disbelief of what I’d just heard him play.

Whenever Roger soloed during this first hearing, it was the musical equivalent of “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” - Walt Disney’s famous cartoon adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s Wind and The Willows.

Roger was all over the place: dense bop lines followed by stride piano licks; dissonance followed by melodically beautiful phrases; propulsive rumbling out of the lower register that led to cat-running-along-the-piano-keys tinkling in the high notes.

Not surprisingly, given his predisposition to stride, Roger made an LP for World Pacific Jazz … wait for it … Stride! [WP-1861].

John William Hardy wrote these informative liner notes for the recording.

“When pianist Roger Kellaway made his playing debut on records about three years ago [1963 A Jazz Portrait of Roger Kellway, Regina Records reissued as Fresh Sound CD 147] , it was, to say the least, an awe-inspiring event. For like no artist in the history of jazz, this man Kellaway had a deep and personally abiding ability to play, not only in a uniquely modern way, but in a driving two-handed stride piano style. Beyond that, he showed a familiarity with the compositional roots of traditional and modern jazz that allowed him on the same album to invoke the stride and in an obscure Sidney Bechet ditty called Broken Windmill, to deal out a gang of highly original originals in the beyond Bill Evans bag. It is completely safe to say that the world had never before encountered a pianist like Roger Kellaway. He is one of a handful of the most original modern improvisors, and he is one of the best stride pianists in the history of that interesting and difficult style. This album is built around Roger's love for the older facets of his musical personality, and for the kind of happy, carefree melody that seems to lay best with the striding medium-tempo feel. To top things off, the album offers us Kellaway's debut as a conductor and arranger. He has provided simple, uncluttered, but highly effective arrangements to augment the sound of the piano, bass and drums.

The music, as you will hear, has historical importance and contemporary value that should be assessed. So, like, what is stride piano and where does it fit in the history of jazz? Stride piano grew out of ragtime. Jelly Roll Morton was a ragtimer but only occasionally showed evidences of stride methods. Some of the later ragtime pianists, who had been largely followers of Morton in their earlier formative years, became the most prominent stride players.

Contrasting stride to ragtime, one may note the greater independence of the rhythmic left hand and the largely melodic right hand (ragtime found the two hands working in unison both rhythmic and melodic). Also, stride, as contrasted to ragtime, revealed greater rhythmic flexibility and a tendency for linear improvisation in the right hand while the left hand maintained the rhythmic drive playing a single note on the first and third beats and a chord on the second and fourth. While this is the basic form of the style, no stride pianist worth his salt ever held rigidly in that pattern but found infinite variation of the roles of his hands and the general feel of the music. Friends, I'd be more than happy to tell you that Roger Kellaway was a natural outgrowth of his vast experience with all the old striders... if it were true. "We could," says Kellaway, "get all involved in historical data that would nicely lead to such a conclusion, but it would be a pack of lies. I play stride piano because I want to play all of the piano and because this is a way of exploring the instrument that no other pianistic form will allow. Actually, in developing my abilities in stride, I began with listening to only a smattering of old Waller records to get the basic idea of it. Since then, I've relied totally upon my personal development of the style — plus my love for and interest in older forms of jazz in the most general way. Specifically, I like looking for older compositions of worth and beauty to which I can address myself in the older stride style, tunes like Lazysippi Steamer Going Home."

Kellaway continues: "Stride piano is happy piano and that feeling, plus the method itself, was the original basis for this album. We've tried to retain the feeling but we've diverged somewhat in the end result in the method. Stride still pervades most of my playing and when I do diverge from it as In Your Own Sweet Way, or a couple of other places. I still try to keep the same feeling and simple charm of the playing

I like contrasts in my playing —in fact, you can say that in any performance I give-any tune —I hope there'll be at least two quite diametrically opposed feelings involved. But in transition from one to the other, even within a few minutes as in these tunes, I've tried to remain as graceful and natural as possible. Eclecticism is fine, but when an eclectic such as I chooses to incorporate various styles from many eras into his work, he can truly speak of developing an original style from these parts only if he is successful in achieving the blend.”

As for the selections: Side One begins with the top 40's Sunny. That, in itself," says Roger, "was not the reason for playing it. It's a beautiful song. I've really looked forward to recording it for some time. Just like I fell for a couple of Beatle tunes that I've recorded. Hurry, It's Lovely Up Here! is from "On A Clear Day," the Broadway musical. Again a song I've wanted to do for some time. In fact, I recorded the original demo records of it for Lerner and Burton in New York. Lazysippi Steamer is an old Louis Armstrong tune that is one of the prettiest songs I've ever heard. I never play it without getting a great feeling inside, and I try to play it on every gig. It's become one of my most requested tunes. I never fail to announce its origin. It's beautiful, but I'm afraid a little puzzling to some people to know that you can find such great material in the jazz archives that is just aching to be played now. Porkette, My Love is light-hearted, but sad. Porkette was —darn it —a pet Guinea Pig that died. This is In Memoriam. Cherry is the Dizzy tune that Mulligan and Chet Baker did earlier on Pacific Jazz. This one illustrates what I meant about two moods, in the things I do.

Side Two begins with Cabaret from the musical of the same name. This is a... a fun tune. I superimposed the stride over the strings in the first chorus. The second chorus gets more sophisticated and then we move to a humorous ending. Ain't Misbehavin' is pure stride material of course, and one of Waller's favorites. This is one of the first tunes I ever played professionally— 13 years ago. Shows you how long I've been into this thing. In Your Own Sweet Way is probably Dave Brubeck's most famous composition and one that is performed by almost all jazz players. This is our most serious divergence from the general feel of the album. Dick Bock [owner of World Pacific Records] suggested it abruptly just to see what I would do with it in a spontaneous situation. To My Way Of Thinking incorporates more than one mood again, but in a more complex interrelationship. It incorporates the prepared piano and uses the time signatures of 3/4, 5/4 and 4/4. It is the most sophisticated and important piece in the album, from the standpoint of my own development."

Throughout all of this album, Roger Kellaway plays like a long lost legend of the stride piano, composes and arranges and even conducts like the fresh and markedly humorous young artist, with an understanding and respect for the past, that he is. He provides us with a musical sum total that won't let our minds wander or our feet keep still. Surely, that is what most of this music is supposed to be about.”

You can sample Roger’s stride stylings on the following video which features him playing Pops’ Lazysippi Steamer Going Home.

Roger Kellaway and Finding New Wonders

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

Alto saxophonist, Phil Woods calls him Jazz’s Boswell. Phil ought to know as he has been around long enough to have been involved in over half of the history of Jazz. 

Most of us know said Boswell as Bill Crow - bassist, author and all-round good guy.  And if Bill has a rule-to-live-by, one which he stresses over-and-over again, it’s that “Jazz is supposed to be fun.”

To my ears, no one better exemplifies this approach to Jazz than pianist Roger Kellaway. But please don’t misunderstand this to mean that Roger isn’t serious about his music or that he is in any way belittling Jazz.

Roger’s music is full of joy, happiness and unexpected adventure and, as such, is full of the fun of finding new wonders in Jazz. Listening to Roger play is like being let into the funhouse at the amusement park. For Roger, as for Bill Crow, Jazz is fun. That’s the point of the whole thing.

Roger, too, has his own Boswell. Gene Lees, the eminent Jazz writer and reviewer, has devoted an entire chapter to him in his Arranging the Score: Portraits of Great Arrangers [New York: Cassell, 200]. Appropriately, the chapter on Roger in Gene’s book is entitled “Soaring.”

In another of his compilations, Gene Lees tells the story of  how when pianist Alan Broadbent first encountered the music of Bill Evans as a young boy growing up in his native New Zealand, he burst into tears at the sheer beauty of it.

The first time I ever heard the music of Roger Kellaway as a young man, I burst out laughing. It was the laughter of delight based on the thrill and disbelief of what I’d just heard him play.

Whenever Roger soloed during this first hearing, it was the musical equivalent of “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” - Walt Disney’s famous cartoon adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in The Willows.

Roger was all over the place: dense bop lines followed by stride piano licks; dissonance followed by melodically beautiful phrases; propulsive rumbling out of the lower register followed by cat-running-along-the-piano-keys tinkling in the high notes.

The Power of Positive Swinging [Mainstream 56054; Mainstream Legacy JK 57117] was the source of my initial Kellaway encounter. The album also introduced me to the Clark Terry and Bob Brookmeyer quintet which featured the trumpet-flugelhorn sound of the former blended with the valve trombone tone of the latter.

Brookmeyer had played with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet in the late 1950s so I was not surprised to find bassist Bill Crow and drummer Dave Bailey from Geru’s quartet continuing with Bob in the new group that he had formed with Clark. Roger Kellaway joins in as the piano player on the album. It was a name I had never heard before, but one that I would never forget after hearing him perform on this LP.

The shock was immediate. It began on the opening tune. With a title like Dancing on the Grave, I should have guessed that something unusual might be going on.

In a band led by Terry and Brookmeyer, two of modern Jazz stalwarts, I’m listening to this ultra hip, slick and cool arrangement when quite suddenly, its piano player begins to interject licks made up of an admixture of stride, honky-tonk and boogie woogie styles!

I couldn’t believe my ears and found myself laughing at the sheer boldness of expression. It was almost the musical equivalent of the verbal idiom: “Wait a minute, you can’t do that” or “Did you hear what he just did?”

Did I get a prize because I had found this musical anachronism? Didn’t I just find the transistor radio in full display next to the driver on the buckboard wagon?

And if Roger was stylistically “all over the place” on the first tune, he didn’t let up on the second one – Battle Hymn of the Republic.

On The King by Count Basie he plays the most marvelous straight ahead solo with some phrases ending in train wrecks [clusters of notes that sound as though their crashing into one another] in the upper and lower register before closing out with licks from the Dixieland anthem - 12^th Street Rag -  played in a ragtime style. Who was this guy?

Dissonance and rhythmic duets with himself on A Gal In Calico, the most sublime and swinging introduction on Brookmeyer’s original Green Stamps with a marvelously sustained tremolos in the left hand that becomes another delightful surprise during a piano solo that creates the feeling of riding on a cloud, followed by blurted tonal clusters and more unexpected diversions in his solo on Just an Old Manuscript: who was this guy?

In his liner notes to the album, Nat Hentoff quotes Bob Brookmeyer “… in a rare surge of adjectives,” as saying: “Roger is one of the most impressive, versatile talents I’ve heard in recent years. He can play any way; and no matter what way it is, it’s clear he’s not jiving.  He really is able to become part of a wide range of contexts.”

Well, that cleared that up; if Brookmeyer says Kellaway’s “not jivin’” then at least I could be reassured that this wasn’t a put on.

But with Roger resident on the east coast in a group that didn’t travel to the west coast [my home was in California], this was the extent of my exposure to Roger and his music.

That is until he showed up a couple of years later on the West Coast!

Roger’s move to California a few years later provided me with an opportunity to hear him in performance a few times.

Along the way I had also gathered-up his earlier trio recording for Prestige and some sides he did with guitarist Jim Hall.

Being already predisposed to Roger’s distinctive pianism, I next heard him on Spirit Feel [ST- 20122] an LP for Pacific Jazz he recorded in 1967 on which he is joined by Tom Scott [soprano & alto saxophones], Chuck Domanico [bass], Johnny Guerin [drums]. On some tracks Paul Beaver adds musique concrète effects through the use of a tape recorder.

Spending time with this album, it wasn’t long before I recognized that I was in the presence of a unique, musical mind; a mind that would have to encompass genius to know all the things that Roger demonstrated in his music and put them together as well as he did.

Many years later, I encountered the following writings by the late Gene Lees and the late Richard Sudhalter that confirmed my original assessment of Roger's genius.  It was comforting to have my opinion of Roger's exceptional and extraordinary talents be in such good company.

At the conclusion of these narratives, you will find a video tribute to Roger that was developed by the ace graphics team at CerraJazz LTD and features as its soundtrack, Roger’s trio performance of Milt Jackson’s Spirit Feel replete with Paul Beaver’s tape recorded musique concrète effects.

© -Gene Lees/John Reeves, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“No one has had as much influence on my musical thinking as Roger Kellaway. When you write songs together, and Roger and I have been doing that for nearly twenty years, you get to know how your asso­ciate's mind works.

Once we were at a party at Henry Mancini's house. Roger was playing piano. Hank listened, shook his head in admira­tion of Kellaway's protean and unorthodox gifts, grinned, and said, "Roger, you're crazy."

No one I know can work in so many styles. He's recorded with everyone of note in jazz. One song Roger and I wrote had a simple country and western style melody. Yet Roger is an established and highly respected symphonic composer.

His jazz playing can be poignantly lyrical or rhythmically powerful, and when it's the latter there is a certain wildness in it, for Roger has a taste and talent for polytonality. His hands have an astonishing rhythmic independence.

Roger's icono­clastic Cello Quartet records, with an instrumentation of cello, bass, percussion, and piano, are now considered classics.

Roger is a product of the New England Conservatory in Boston. He worked pro­fessionally as a bass player as well as a pian­ist, and sang in the conservatory chorus, on one occasion under Charles Munch. His tastes run all the way from the earliest music to the most experimental.

For all the scope of his accomplishments, Roger sometimes has attacks of the uncertainty that plague all artists. Once we attended a rehearsal of the music he wrote for a George Balanchine ballet. He asked me to tape it for him. Later we sat in his car and listened, and at the end he said with a sort of sigh, ‘Well, I guess I do have some talent.’” [Jazz Lives: 100 Portraits in Jazz, Buffalo, NY: Firefly, 1992, p. 144].

© -Richard M. Sudhalter, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“My first realization that Roger Kellaway might be something out of the ordinary came, I think, because Bud Farrington left his drums in my basement.

It was 1954, or thereabouts. We were high school students, crazy about listening to, and playing, jazz. Bill Haley and the Comets might be the frisson du jour on the pop charts, but as far as we were concerned they might have been active on Mars; our world consisted only of Lester Young, Bobby Hackett, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong and other major jazz figures.

We'd had a weekend jam session, a regular event in our tight little circle in suburban Newton, Massachusetts, just outside Boston.  I played cornet in a self-consciously Bix Beiderbeckish manner; Dave Shrier brought his tenor sax, Don Dygert his trombone. Frank Nizzari, our 14-year-old prodigy, was on clarinet, and Fred Giordano was the pianist.

Roger played bass. We knew he also played piano; but his use of "modern" chords, and his busy, boppy ways of comping behind a soloist were a source of eternal contention: Roger played great, we thought, but he played too much. He filled the gaps, never left a soloist room to breathe; led you down what whatever harmonic path took his fancy in a given moment. Giordano, if technically half the pianist, was also about half as cluttered: his economical, swing-based approach generally kept everybody happy.

Bud - now Gen. Anthony j. Farrington, USAF, ret. - had left on a two-week family vacation directly after the session. Seeing the drums there, set up and begging to be played, was too good a chance to pass up. I phoned Kellaway.

"Hey, Rajah," I said, using a nickname whose full genesis would only be comprehensible to a fellow-New Englander, "want to have a crack at Bud's drums? All the cymbals are here, and he's even left sticks and brushes. Come on over." Within half an hour he did just that, and we set to work jointly unraveling the mysteries of jazz percussion.

I went at it with more enthusiasm than skill, gradually working up an energetic (if home-cooked) simulacrum of George Wettling's Chicago-style ensemble shots and devil-take-the-hindmost approach to four-bar solo breaks. (It was to serve me well some years hence when, through a chain of accidents not worth repeating here, I found myself playing drums on a rockabilly record date in pre-Olympic Atlanta, Georgia).

But never mind.  Roger tinkered with the set for about an hour, figuring out how every element worked; suddenly, it seemed, he was quite at home, playing along with - was it a Basie record?  He just had it down: elegant time, light touch, Jo Jones-like use of the cymbals. With or without technique, he could easily have fit into most anybody's rhythm section then and there.

Bud came home, reclaimed his trap set, and life went on.  I heard Roger play drums a couple of times after that, usually sitting in for a number during the last set of a dance gig. My abiding sense of it is that, had he so chosen, he could have made himself a quite respectable career as a drummer.

But that's the way it's always been with Kellaway.  He listens, watches, has a go and he's got it, now and forever. We often played tennis on Saturday afternoons: all it took was figuring out how the various strokes worked, and all at once he was Jimmy Connors, mopping up the court with me.  Sure, I won one now and then -- but even now, all these years later, I can't escape a hunch that he let me cop a few just to keep me believing I could do okay against him.

He'd picked up bass that way, too, when we were both at Levi F. Warren Junior High School. The bandmaster, one Vincent J. Marrotto, needed a bassist for the school orchestra.  Kellaway, in turn, needed little persuasion: he just took the damn thing home one day, figured it out, practiced himself into some technique, and -- Shazam!  He was a bas­sist. And it was as a bassist that he went on the road for the first time, as part of a band cornetist Jimmy McPartland was taking to Canada.

But it soon became obvious that piano was his major instrument, and had been all along.  It remained the locus of his creativity, and over the following decades he became one of the most versatile and inclusively creative pianists on the New York jazz scene.  I say "inclusive" because stylistic categories and distinctions seemed to mean little to him: he was equally at home, equally comfortable, playing for Don Ellis or Bobby Hackett, Tom Scott or comedian Jack E. Leonard; or accompanying Joni Mitchell or Bobby Darin. Whatever the setting, Kellaway was - as Ian Carr put it in The Penguin Rough Guide to Jazz – ‘a technically brilliant and often exceptionally adventurous pianist as well as an excellent composer.’

So it has remained. Mark well the word "adventurous": part of what makes Roger special is his willingness, even ardor, in accepting challenges. Whether composing a ballet for Balanchine or knocking off a raggy closing theme for the eternally popular TV sitcom All In The Family, he's forever in control, forever fresh -- and never, ever, predictable.

For awhile he and Dick Hyman appeared at Michael's Pub and various jazz events as a piano duo. That the two of them should have taken to one another comes as no surprise; they learn the same way, figuring out how something works, how a sound is produced, then just wrapping it into an ever-expanding arsenal of skills. Hyman has worked duo with many pianists, some of them - Derek Smith and Roland Hanna, for example -- his technical peers.  But it's no disservice to any of them to say that Roger may have been the only one who both matched him technically and teased (some would say bullied) more out of him, forcing him to burrow beneath his own glossy surface to find richer stuff.

An album of Kellaway-Ruby Braff duets not long ago resulted in some of that cornetist's most inspired playing -- again, playing up to and beyond his own rigorous standards. Kellaway's own "Cello Quartet" --cello and rhythm section -- produced composi­tion and playing of a rare beauty.

But you can read all that and more in any jazz reference book. What's significant here is that, one day in 1987, Roger accepted my invitation to play a solo piano recital at New York's Vineyard Theatre.  Fortunately the concert was recorded, and appears in its entirety on this CD. Beginning to end, he plays with wit, style, consummate skill. And -- perhaps most important - there's not a moment when he loses the quality that lies squarely at the core of his work: a deeply felt sense of melody.

‘I think there'll always be people around who gravitate toward a melodic ability,’ he said in a between-sets conversation. ‘There will certainly be all the others - those people who do the flash-and-dazzle and tap-dance, and can play a skillion notes, and maybe impress you on the surface.’

‘But, looking at my life and getting older, [I'm] realizing how important it is to play a melody and a ballad, until you finally reach a point of understanding where you say, “Oh, yeah -- that's what music is about.”’

A visit to Israel some years ago resulted in a deep-going study of Jewish history, philosophy and law (which led him at one point to contemplate conversion).  The Endless Light, his trio for piano, violin and cello, came out of a sojourn in Jerusalem; one movement, David Street Blues, was played by the National Symphony Orchestra on the 40th anniversary of the state of Israel.  Further plans envisioned a large piece, perhaps a cantata, to be performed at the Citadel in the Israeli capital by orchestra, jazz quartet and up to 100 voices, with libretto in English and Hebrew. ‘I'd want that to be a glorification of man's relationship to God,’ said Kellaway.  ‘Not fear -- there's plenty of that around already -- but the glory. Consider the psalms, and the majesty they contain.’

As Roger sees it, a life in music must be one of universality, of interconnectedness.

Consider this recital: whether in the romanticism of Johnny Mandel's Emily or the gentle self-mockery of You Took Advantage of Me the roll-and-rumble of Ellington's early Creole Love Call (which is a blues) or trombonist Charles Sonnastine's Blackwall Tunnel Blues (which isn't), he finds new and poignant things to say. He can stride, as he shows on a playful When I Grow Too Old To Dream, then explore the light-and-shadow of Hoagy Carmichael's brooding New Orleans. And, ending the program, tender his own heartfelt plea for world understanding, in the new-age accents of "Un Canto Per La Pace," A Song for Peace.

In a sense, Roger Kellaway remains the same kid who mastered Bud Farrington's drum kit in my basement more than four decades ago. Musically omnivorous, intellectually tireless, energy undiminished, he's sui generis, his spirit growing and deepening by the day.

‘What's happened to me, I think, is that I've renewed what I can call my sense of spiritual responsibility: responsibility to myself to grow spiritually, and have that effect everything in my life.  Now, when I sit at the piano, I never waste time.  If I'm here it's to play, to get to the heart of as much music as I can, and to share it, communicate it.’

Which is, beyond any doubt or argument, precisely what he does here.”

[Insert notes to Roger Kellaway: The Art of Interconnectedness, Challenge Records, CHR 70042].

Eddie Daniels and Roger Kellaway - "Just Friends" on Resonance Records

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

Some of us have been around the Jazz World long enough to remember when pianist extraordinaire Roger Kellaway first joined the Clark Terry - Bob Brookmeyer Quintet in the early 1960s and rocked and rumbled his way through a history of Jazz piano during some of his fascinating and fun solos.

And when he moved to the Left Coast, we continued to follow his electronic adventures on the Spirit Feel Pacific Jazz LP he made with a monster quartet made up of multi-reed and woodwind player Tom Scott with Chuck Domanico on bass and Johnny Guerin on drums.

We also dug him with cellist Edgar Lustgarten in The Roger Kellaway Cello Quartet which also highlighted the talents of guitarist Joe Pass.

In the decade of the 1980’s Roger’s duo album with bassist Red Mitchell, his quartet LP with guitarist Jim Hall, and his work on select recording with Paquito D’Rivera allowed for a continuing appreciation of his many talents both as a performer and as an arranger composer.

In 1991 we were thrilled to have a chance to hear him play solo piano on Volume 11 of the Concord Jazz series recorded in the wonderful acoustic confines of the Maybeck Recital Hall in Berkeley, CA.

More recordings with Red Mitchell, Ruby Braff as well as additional solo piano on Soaring and Live at The Jazz Standard populated the 1990s and early 2000s.

Along the way, I was particularly impressed with a recording that Roger made with clarinetist Eddie Daniels in 1988 for GRP -Memos from Paradise: The Music of Roger Kellaway.

Eddie Daniels blew us all away [pun intended] when he joined the Thad Jones Mel Lewis Orchestra during its maiden voyage in 1966 on tenor saxophone.

A single clarinet solo recorded with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis orchestra, "Live at the A single clarinet solo recorded with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis orchestra, "Live at the Village Vanguard" garnered sufficient attention for him to win Downbeat Magazine's International Critics New Star on Clarinet Award. This conversion to clarinet was not new, for Eddie began clarinet at age 13 and received his Masters in Clarinet from Juilliard. “Winning numerous Grammy awards and nominations, Eddie Daniels revolutionized the blend of Jazz and classical.”

The latter synthesis culminated in Breakthrough a 1985 GRP recording that Eddie made with The London Philharmonia Orchestra on which he played exquisite clarinet interpretations of C.P.E. Bach, J.S. Bach and Jorge Calandrelli’s Concerto for Jazz Clarinet and Orchestra.

Throughout the decades of the 1980s and 1990s, I collected all of Eddie’s GRP albums including, Nepenthe, Blackwood, To Bird With Love, This Is Now, Benny Rides Again [with vibist Gary Burton] and Under The Influence.

But I kept coming back to Memos from Paradise: The Music of Roger Kellaway because of the affinity I heard in the musical personalities of Eddie and Roger. They just clicked so well together. It didn’t hurt, too, that the rhythm section was made up of Eddie Gomez on bass and Al Foster on drums. Reams of well-deserved accolades have been accorded Eddie’s work on bass but I’ve always considered Al to be one of the most underrated and unappreciated drummers in Jazz; impeccable time and superb colorist, he is an extraordinarily sensitive accompanist.

Imagine how delighted I was when Chris DiGirolamo of Two For the Show Media informed me of EDDIE DANIELS & ROGER KELLAWAY Just Friends: Live At The Village Vanguard which was released on Resonance Records Deluxe CD & Digital Editions on September 29, 2017.

Here’s Chris’ press release in which he describes how, when and why the recording was made and its distinguishing features. At the conclusion of Chris’ media release you’ll find a video produced by Resonance Records that contains a graphic description about this historic recording.

Resonance Records is Proud to Present

EDDIE DANIELS & ROGER KELLAWAY

JUST FRIENDS: LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD

Previously unheard recording from clarinetist Eddie Daniels & pianist Roger Kellaway joined by Buster Williams on bass and Al Foster on drums

Recorded live at the historic Village Vanguard on November 26, 1988

Vital addition to the Daniels/Kellaway discography includes 20-page booklet with vintage photos, essays by Resonance producers George Klabin and Zev Feldman, jazz writer John Murph, plus interviews and reflections from Daniels, Kellaway and Buster Williams

Deluxe CD & Digital Editions Available on September 29, 2017

Los Angeles, August 2017 — Resonance Records is proud to announce the release of Just Friends: Live at the Village Vanguard, a spirited never-before-heard live recording by clarinetist Eddie Daniels and pianist Roger Kellaway featuring bassist Buster Williams and drummer Al Foster. Recorded by Resonance Records founder George Klabin in the front row at the storied Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village, New York City in late 1988, Just Friends is a revelatory meeting of two jazz masters, with one of the best imaginable rhythm sections, deep in dialogue on a set including the venerable standard “Just Friends” and two original pieces each by Daniels and Kellaway.

Klabin received permission from the band to record on this Saturday night of their weeklong run at the Vanguard, and came prepared with a high-quality cassette recorder and a single Sony stereo microphone. “I just placed the mic on the table facing the band, hit ‘record’ and let it run. It was as simple as that,” Klabin recalls in his liner note essay. “The tape sat in my personal collection ever since I recorded it. Nearly three decades later, in 2016, I pulled it out and listened to it. Immediately I was transfixed again. I decided to send digital copies to Roger and Eddie for their enjoyment.” Discussions ensued. Klabin got the go-ahead from all four quartet members and began laying plans for this remarkable DIY recording to finally come to light. The album cover photo is by the legendary jazz photographer William Claxton, with interior images by Tom Copi and Richard Laird, all beautifully assembled into the CD package by longtime Resonance designer Burton Yount.

Never intended for commercial release, Klabin’s recording is nonetheless notable for its clarity and intimacy. It also documents a significant period in the Daniels-Kellaway relationship, born from a suggestion by Jack Kleinsinger that they perform together for his beloved “Highlights in Jazz” concert series some years before the Vanguard date. By now, Daniels and Kellaway have documented their inventive partnership as a duo on a number of recent recordings including Live at the Library of Congress, Duke at the Roadhouse: Live in Santa Fe and A Duo of One: Live at the Bakery. They’d also recorded in various ensemble contexts years ago on such albums as To Bird With Love and Memos from Paradise: The Music of Roger Kellaway. Now with the release of Just Friends, the historical record of this special musical bond is even more complete. The lyricism, swing and sheer unpredictability that Daniels and Kellaway bring to the date, as to every encounter, is truly stunning — not least on the abstract rubato intro of the nearly 20-minute-long title track. The presence of Buster Williams and Al Foster, who had never before worked as a rhythm section with these two co-leaders, only adds to the music’s spontaneity and spark.

And yet, as John Murph observes in his liner notes, Just Friends is “Not only a fascinating musical snapshot of Daniels’ early years playing with Kellaway, it introduces the larger jazz world to rare compositions penned by the two.” Kellaway’s fiercely uptempo but strikingly multifaceted “The Spice Man” is something the pianist hasn’t revisited and doesn’t intend to (“I just don’t want to play that fast”). His “Some O’ This and Some O’ That” reveals a Thelonious Monk influence, perhaps Art Blakey as well, in its driving shuffle feel and dazzling solos. Daniels’ contributions, the gorgeous ballad “Reverie for a Rainy Day” and the Mozart-inspired “Wolfie’s Samba,” are also rarities, never again performed by the clarinetist.

Just Friends also offers a window into a particular period in jazz history, when Daniels was a “roving studio rat” on multiple reeds who had logged many hours on the Vanguard bandstand with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. Williams, as noted in his booklet interview, had just begun working with Kenny Barron in the supergroup Sphere, as well as the Timeless All-Stars featuring Cedar Walton and others. Al Foster, still in the midst of his long Miles Davis association, was also playing with the likes of Joe Henderson, John Scofield and more. Kellaway, with sideman credits including Wes Montgomery, Oliver Nelson, Clark Terry, Sonny Rollins and Herbie Mann, was recording sporadically but always superbly as a leader, bolstering the case for himself as one of the most compelling if overlooked pianists in jazz. Just Friends adds to our understanding of this elusive but important figure.

Adding to the auspiciousness of Just Friends is the fact that Bill Evans ’Some Other Time: The Lost Concert from the Black Forest, a landmark Resonance release from 2016, won top honors for Historical Album of the Year in the annual DownBeat, JazzTimes and Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) critics polls. As Nate Chinen of WBGO.org remarked in a story this April about Resonance’s efforts tying in to the annual Record Store Day, the label has built a one-of-a-kind profile with its deluxe historical releases, including recent items by Wynton Kelly, Wes Montgomery, John Coltrane and Jaco Pastorius. “Each release is a gem,” wrote Chinen, and Just Friends certainly upholds that lofty standard.

Track Listing:

1.     Some O’ This and Some O’ That (9:32)

2.     Reverie for a Rainy Day (5:37)

3.     Wolfie’s Samba (9:09)

4.     Just Friends (17:47)

5.     The Spice Man (15:57)

Resonance Records is a multi-GRAMMY® Award-winning label (most recently for John Coltrane’s Offering: Live at Temple University for "Best Album Notes") that prides itself in creating beautifully designed, informative packaging to accompany previously unreleased recordings by the jazz icons who grace Resonance's catalog. Headquartered in Beverly Hills, CA, Resonance Records is a division of Rising Jazz Stars, Inc. a California 501(c) (3) non-profit corporation created to discover the next jazz stars and advance the cause of jazz. Current Resonance Artists include Richard Galliano, Polly Gibbons, Tamir Hendelman, Christian Howes and Donald Vega. www.ResonanceRecords.org

For more information please contact:

Chris DiGirolamo at Two for the Show Media:

Tel: (631) 298-7823 — Email: Chris@twofortheshowmedia.com