Jimmy Giuffre and Scintilla

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

“It’s just one way and every man must go his own way.”

- Jimmy Giuffre, Down Beat, November 30, 1955

“Jimmy is an innovator and much has been written about his contributions to clarinet playing style and to Jazz composition, but this is secondary. It is the basic quality of his music, with its uncontrived simplicity and glowing inner feeling that sets Jimmy apart.”

- Gary Kramer, liner notes to The Jimmy Giuffre 3 [Atlantic 1254]

“the spirit of Jazz suffuses all of these performances …and important step in the long Giuffre musical odyssey …  they are simply marvelous, full of life brimming with ideas, and chock-full of rich, rewarding, imaginative writing and playing.”

- Peter Keepnews, liner notes to the PAUSA: Jazz Origins reissue of Giuffre’s 1950 Capitol LPs

“When one listens to Giuffre's music for what it is—and not for what one thinks it should be—the beauties of this rich and strange musical land­scape begin to emerge. Or rather, landscapes. For Giuffre never found a single musical Garden of Eden, a definitive style or format he could stay in for long. Like his more celebrated contemporary Miles Davis, Giuffre remains a musical chameleon, a distinctive stylist who constantly feels compelled to change his sonic setting.”

- Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1969 [p.227]

Almost forty years after I first heard it, I tracked down Jimmy Giuffre and wrote him a letter about how much I enjoyed the music on his Capitol LP – Tangents in Jazz [T-634].

Jimmy was living in Massachusetts and I in San Francisco at the time. Because of  health issues, his wife Juanita helped compose his response. Juanita, a professional photographer, also kindly enclosed a portrait of Jimmy which he had autographed,

In my letter to him, I explained that I had been particularly taken with the four relatively short pieces on the Tangents in Jazz LP entitled Scintilla I-IV.

On the album, the four-parts of Scintilla are sequenced: Scintilla II, Scintilla I, Scintilla IV and Scintilla III.

On a lark, I had decided to re-track these four Scintilla parts and record them in consecutive, numeric sequence.

I had included a copy of a tape recording with the re-sequenced Scintilla I-IV along with my letter to Jimmy.

In his reply, Jimmy shared that this was the first time that he had heard this music in its original order since he wrote and recorded it in June, 1955!

He also explained that although Will McFarland’s liner notes to the LP indicate the four Scintilla pieces being played in numerical order, somehow when the album was being prepared for pressing, it was sequenced according to the Master numbers assigned to each track when they were recorded on June 6,7,10, 1955.

Interestingly, when Mosaic Records reissued these recordings as CDs & LPs as part of their The Complete Capitol and Atlantic Recordings of Jimmy Giuffre [Mosaic MD6-176], Mosaic also used the master track sequence instead of grouping the four Scintilla tracks as a consecutive, inter-connected musical “suite.”

So what you hear as the audio track to the following video tribute to Jimmy is the four-part Scintilla suite in the original sequence. And unless one has re-tracked and recorded this music in a similar manner, no one has heard this music quite this way before.

The video is followed by Jimmy’s “Questions and Answers” about the music on the album which form the original LP’s liner notes, excerpts from Will McFarland’s descriptions of Scintilla I-IV and a postscript on the album by Ted Gioia.

As an aside, I got to know Artie Anton, the drummer on these tracks, quite well as he was for many years a drum shop proprietor and drum teacher in near-by North Hollywood, CA. He always considered his playing on Jimmy’s 1950s Capitol recordings as “one of my most enjoyable times in music.” He would also declare to anyone who would spare him the time to listen to them that his “… playing on these cuts proves that the drums are a musical instrument [big smile – His]!.”

The puckish trumpet work is provided by the inimitable Jack Sheldon; also prominent on all these performance is the robust bass tone of Ralph Pena who sadly left us much-too-quickly at age 42 because of his involvement in a fatal car accident in Mexico.

“A top-level soloist and writer makes his most daring move to date: Jimmy Giuffre sets forth a bold new form for improvised music.

The music is revolutionary; yet its advent was a foreseeable, logical step in jazz maturation. Giuffre's new concept is con­troversial ; its evidence here is a must for serious jazz-followers, yet the range of its appeal is so unpredictable that its cham­pions could include bouncing dilettantes, hard-shell tradition­alists, even jazz-apathists.

Specifically, this music puts on view a quartet that functions without an audible beat — no walking bass, no riding cymbal; yet thanks to Giuffre's indomitable folksiness, this flouting of tradition results in jazz that out-thumps the music of most of his heavy-handed neighbors.

Jimmy answers some leading questions...

Q What is this music?

A Jazz, with a non-pulsating beat. The beat is implicit but not explicit; in other words, acknowledged but unsounded. The two horns are the dominant but not domineering voices. The bass usually functions somewhat like a baritone sax. The drums play an important but non-conflicting role.

Q Why abandon the sounded beat?

A For clarity and freedom. I've come to feel increasingly in­hibited and frustrated by the insistent pounding of the rhythm section. With it, it's impossible for the listener or the soloist to hear the horn's true sound, I've come to believe, or fully concentrate on the solo line. An imbalance of ad­vances has moved the rhythm from a supporting to a com­petitive role.

Q But isn't the sounded beat an integral part of jazz?

A The sounded beat once made playing easier, but now it's become confining. And to the degree that the beat was there to guide dancers, it is, of course, no longer necessary to con­cert jazz. I think the essence of jarz is in the phrasing and notes, and these needn't change when the beat is silent. Since the beat is implicit, this music retains traditional feel­ing; not having it explicit allows freer thinking.

Q Hasn't this been done before, particularly by you?

A Several of today's writers have dropped all sounded beat for contrast, but never for an entire work. I've written works completely lacking sounded beat, but the difference between this music and all previous work is the use of the drums. My previous attempts at this approach, while achiev­ing some of the clarity I sought, were always vaguely un­satisfactory to me until I realized the trouble: the drums, by their nature, cannot carry a simultaneous or overlapping line; when the drum is struck, any other note is obliterated, and attention is torn away from any other line. In this music, the drums' lines are integrated but isolated.

Q How is it possible to ensure this isolation during solos, when tacit is usually unpredictable?

A By writing rests in the ad lib parts, allowing the drums to fill. I strive to write the rests at natural phrase endings, holding restriction to a minimum.

Q But isn't there generally more restriction — don't the solo­ists have a good deal less freedom than before?

A In a sense, they have more freedom. No longer fed a stream of chords, or fighting a pounding beat, they are free to get a more natural sound out of their horns, and try for all sorts of new effects.

Q Didn't you have to select your musicians with extra care?

A Yes, I discussed my plans at length with each of them to make sure they were completely attuned to the project. Artie Anton, the drummer, has had wide band experience; from the beginning he was sympathetic to my new ideas. He is a skilled reader, as is Ralph Pena, a bassist with great sound, jazz feeling and a classical background, who has worked with many big bands and Stan Getz. Pena has re­corded previously with me, as has Jack Sheldon, an ex-Lighthouse trumpeter who has also recorded under his own name. Sheldon is a major soloist, and fits perfectly into my conception of the quartet.

Q This music is such a sharp departure; do you have any mis­givings about making the leap?

A This music is no novelty; it's the result of almost a decade of formal study, the culmination of all my thinking, writing and blowing. To me, it seems like sheer insanity to continue to play against that hammering beat. Classical music, once the rhythm is stated, assumed the freedom to move un­accompanied, and if jazz is going to continue to grow, it needs this same freedom.

Q New styles usually provoke extreme reaction; what sort of general judgment do you hope for?

A Early works in a new style necessarily grope; each new tune helps to expand and define the form; this album is not final. All I really ask for this music is an isolated judgment —for what it is, rather than for what it isn't. It isn't an attempt to compete with, or supplant other forms; I knew when I took the step that I must sacrifice a large segment of the usual jazz audience. It is, I think, jazz, and a swinging music, but those are ambiguous terms. Does it excite in­terest? Is it pleasurable? Does the interest hold up? These are the real questions.

Q You've been considered one of the great blowers with the very sort of rhythm you now flee; are you abandoning it for good?

A As a working musician, I must continue to play other music until the quartet works more steadily, and there are prob­lems — such as the extreme awkwardness of any turnover in personnel. I still enjoy playing with a stomping rhythm section occasionally, but my heart lies here; I believe in this music.

Will McFarland comments on the four Scintilla selections ...

Scintilla One — This bright brief opener, mostly ensemble work, serves both as an introduction to the album and as a basis for three subsequent sparkling variations. There is no improvisa­tion or development as yet, but extensions of the form are heard.

Scintilla Two — The ensemble plays the first eight bars of Scintilla One to introduce a development of that theme — minus extensions. This fast, tough, earnest variation is used as a basis for blowing; it's Giuffre's tenor all the way, very free.

Scintilla Three — Another variation on the root Scintilla, lighter and cute this time, stars the trumpet. Jack Sheldon's depth in running ideas is given plenty of leeway, and the clarinet comments from the middle-ground, half written, half spontaneous.

Scintilla Four — Climaxing the album, Giuffre unveils a stir­ring development and finale: the drums are fingered; there is imitation; all four players take a final four; all previous Scintilla material is recapitulated and used; a couple of canons, and the concert closes.

– Ted Gioia,  West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1969 [pp. 235-36, paragraphing modified]

“Despite Giuffre's rhetoric, the pieces on Tangents in Jazz do swing. In many ways the listener is even more drawn to the rhythmic element of the music, by the way it moves from instrument to instrument, instead of resting solely with the "rhythm" section. On Tangents Giuffre was again joined by Pena, Sheldon, and Anton, and though none of them stretches out at length during the course of the album, each is very much put in the spotlight as Giuffre employs a wide range of compositional de­vices: call-and-response figures, two- and three-part counterpoint, unison and harmony lines, canonic devices. These take the place of solos in Giuffre's new conception.

As a filmmaker conveys a sense of momentum through a sequence of rapidly shifting camera angles, Giuffre's constant movement from one musical device to another achieves a similar effect. Part of the achievement of Tangents in Jazz is that, despite the leader's stated disre­gard for a "propulsive" beat, these pieces are constantly propelled, if not by a metronomic beat, certainly by Giuffre's constant changes in compo­sitional focus. If anything, Giuffre overcompensates on Tangents, avoiding lengthy solos and shifting musical gears with abandon. The result is a highly concentrated music—which may be pleasing to the listener, but also makes severe demands on the attention.”

Viva Conrad!

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

When we posted our 2-part profile on trombonist Conrad Herwig which you can locate by going here and here, the crackerjack broadcast services at CerraJazz LTD had not as yet developed a video to accompany it.

The graphics team has now rectified this omission.

The audio track was chosen from the second category of Conrad’s work as described in this opening sentence to the earlier piece:

“Conrad Herwig is one of the leading trombonists on today’s Jazz scene. This piece explores his work from two perspectives: [1] the Criss Cross Jazz recordings that he has made under his own name and also with groups led by tenor saxophonist Walt Weiskopf and trumpeter Greg Gisbert and [2] the theme albums that he has developed both as a tribute to Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter and as a way of interpreting their music in Latin Jazz contexts.”

The tune used in this video is tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter’s  “Ping Pong” which gets its name from the rhythmic vamp that underscores the theme.

You can hear this vamp at the outset up to 0:09 seconds and again during the last 8 bars of each solo.

The melody is played from 0:10 to 1:06 minutes.

This track has a little bit of everything going on in it:

[1] a fiery trumpet solo by Brian Lynch which begins at 1:07 minutes,

[2] an intricately conceived solo by Conrad that shows his mastery of the trombone starting at 2:02 minutes,

[3] a fluid and graceful piano solo by relative newcomer Luis Perdomo which commences at 3:48 minutes and

[4] a well-crafted drum solo by Robby Ameen beginning at 4:38 minutes. Robby’s brilliance with Latin rhythms is such that rarely is a Latin Jazz album made in New York without him in the drum chair.

Gary Giddins – Visions of Jazz – A Review

“Giddins is one of our best writers, and if the balance he strikes between the measured, thoughtful prose of Martin Williams and the poetic imagery of Whitney Balliett prompts the rereading of a few of his phrases or sentences for sheer pleasure, then the many years he has spent in honor of his love have been well spent.”

- Jack Sohmer

“This massive volume is a history of sorts of the first century of jazz....Unlike too many others inside the little world of jazz, Giddins has an expansive, welcoming view of it....It may not have been intended as such, but Visions of Jazz is a celebration and reaffirmation of precisely that.

 - Jonathan Yardley The Washington Post”

 “...Giddins is our best jazz critic....Visions of Jazz is the finest unconventional history of jazz every written...brilliant, indispensable...comprehensive enough given the certainty that a total history of jazz at this point...invites a shallow inclusiveness.”

- New York Times Book Review.

 “[Giddins'] writing, like the music he loves, is joyously polyphonic, with history, legend, musicology, biography, and performance all rising out of the mix.

- Alfred Appel Jr., New Yorker”

“Giddins has become a master of the lightning insight, the unexpected connection (his use of literary analogies is particularly apt).”

- Kirkus Reviews

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

It has been a while since the JazzProfiles editorial staff has written an extended book review so please bear with us as we regain our stride.

What better place to begin anew than with a work by Gary Giddins who, as the introductory accolades underscore, has long been considered one of the best writers on Jazz. He has also been one of our preferred Jazz authors. His 1988 book on the life of Louis Armstrong entitled Satchmo is a particular favorite. Its photographs of “Pops” alone are worth the price of a copy of the book.

Recently, after we became aware that a loaned copy of Gary’s seminal work – Visions of Jazz: The First Century – had never been returned, we went on-line and found a “very good,” used hardbound copy for a nominal fee.

When it arrived, we noted that the inside title page was marked: “Apache Junction [AZ] Public Library – Withdrawn.”

WITHDRAWN!

For goodness sake, why?

This book should be on the corner of every student’s desk as a testimony to American creative genius in the Twentieth [20^th] Century – not to mention the literary genius of Gary Giddins.

The book’s seventy-nine [79] chapters are one of the best personal retrospectives on Jazz and its makers ever written.

By way of example, here’s a snippet from the chapter on Ella Fitzgerald:

“When Ella Fitzgerald was singing at her peak – in good voice, with good song, arrangement and accompaniment – nothing in life was more resplendent.”

Or how about this opening sentence from Gary’s Chapter on Bobby Hackett:

“Bobby Hackett was known primarily by two fringe audiences that otherwise barely recognized each other’s existence: one actively pursued Dixieland [also known as Traditional Jazz], the other passively approved elevator music [i.e.: Muzak; Hackett appeared on a slew of Jackie Gleason’s Capitol albums in the 1950’s, all of which eventually found their way into the world of “canned music”]. Such was the absolute individuality of his approach to the cornet that you could immediately recognize his playing in either context.”

Here’s how he thematically sets the stage for his take on John Coltrane:

“By the time … [Coltrane] arrived at The Village Vanguard in November 1961, …, he was a true Jazz celebrity,  basking in the afterglow of a huge and improbable hit, ‘My Favorite Things,’ and buoyed by an auspicious contract with an unfledged record label called Impulse. A few weeks later, Down Beat caught up with him in Hollywood. Coltrane, it reported, had plunged into ‘musical nonsense’ and ‘anti-Jazz.’ A chasm opened between the Coltrane available on records and the one appearing down the street, and it never really closed during his few remaining years [Coltrane died in 1967].”

Gary’s treatments of musicians from all eras of Jazz abound with chunks of his very personal observations, knowledge and opinions. One simply cannot approach his writing casually, its much too dense and rich for that.  It has to be savored slowly and with much reflection.

The following video contains a fairly sizeable sampling of the musicians and groups that Gary writes about in Visions of Jazz: The First Century. The music is by the Clayton Brothers from their Brother-to-Brother ArtistShare CD [AS0085]. Joining Jeffrey on alto sax and John on bass are Terell Stafford on trumpet, John’s son Gerald on piano and Obed Calvaire on drums. “Strap-in” for Jeffrey’s solo which begins at 1:22 minutes. Whew!

As its titled delineates, the book’s scope affords the reader a look at Jazz’s growth and development from its rarely considered “Precursors” such as the minstrelsy of Bert Williams and Al Jolson, to the “New Music” of Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, then on to the “Popular Music” of Benny Goodman, Count Basie and Artie Shaw.

The middle chapters offer studied considerations of the “Modern Music” of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Stan Kenton; “Mainstream Music” Gerry Mulligan, Nat King Cole and Sonny Rollins; the “Alternative Music” of Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman and Henry Threadgill.

The closing chapters are grouped under the heading of “Struggling Music” which includes profiles of Jimmy Rowles, Dee Dee Bridgewater and Abbey Lincoln and “A Traditional Music”  with features on Rosemary Clooney, Joshua Redman and Cassandra Wilson, among others.

The diversity of Gary’s offerings is simply amazing: he has listened broadly and writes with a deep understanding of how the music has grown and developed over its first century of existence.

As this partial listing indicates, not all of the artist that Gary selects are subjects for treatment in the more typical Jazz anthologies. Few authors bring to the subject this range and depth of understanding; the man simply knows what he’s talking about and it is a pleasure to share in his wisdom.

Here are a few more examples of Gary’s thoughtful reflections and discerning opinions.

Chick Webb [King of the Savoy]

“The story of William Henry Webb, nicknamed Chick for his small size, seems to cry out for novelistic scope and nuance. His musical accom­plishments were diverse: he was the first great drummer of the swing era, the leader of a fiercely competitive and innovative orchestra, a pace­setter for dancers during the golden age of ballroom dancing, and a nurturer of talent whose fabled generosity was rewarded when he discovered and groomed Ella Fitzgerald. But the nearly unconquerable King of the Savoy Ballroom was also a dwarfed hunchback, mangled by spinal tuberculosis, who lived most of his short life in pain and died within a year of his first major commercial success. He overcame staggering ob­stacles with a tenacity that awed other musicians, and he did it with élan, never asking for or requiring handicap points. He was as much adored by dancers as by musicians, and no one dared patronize him.”

Frank Sinatra [The Ultimate in Theater]

“That Frank Sinatra was a towering figure in the music of his century few would care to dispute. He overhauled the interpretation of popular song, revising its rhythms and instrumentation, burnishing its lyrics, establish­ing the postwar code in phrasing. As a radio and television entertainer, movie actor, and concert artist of matchless grace (and occasional dis­temper), he enjoyed a momentous career—even a dangerous career. Per­haps no one since Francois Villon played the troubadour with more bra­vado. Though he may have been, at his much documented worst, a foul-mouthed misogynist, unthinking lout, violent drunk, friend to crim­inals, sore loser, and political hypocrite, he was first and last The Voice. When he recovered from a professional crisis that left him for dead, he remade himself so completely that he remade his generation in the pro­cess. This most fastidious of singers was never exclusively a performing artist. He was also a presence.”

Charlie Parker [Flying Home]

“In 1945, just twenty years after Louis Armstrong jolted and essentially redefined jazz with his initial recordings as a bandleader, Charlie Parker made his recording debut as a leader and redefined jazz once again. A virtuoso alto saxophonist, Parker was the only musician after Armstrong to influence all of jazz and almost every aspect of American music—its instrumentalists and singers, composers and arrangers. By 1955, his in­novations could be heard everywhere: in jazz, of course, but also in rock and roll, country music, film and television scores, and symphonic works. Parker altered the rhythmic and harmonic currents of music, and he produced a body of melodies—or more to the point, a way of melodic thinking—that became closely identified with the idea of jazz as a per­sonal and intellectual modern music.”

Miles Davis [Kinds of Blues]

“In 1949, Davis demonstrated for the first time his powers as a vision­ary and persistent organizer. He assembled some of the finest writers and players in New York to put into practice the ideas they'd been dis­cussing and that Gil Evans—at thirty-seven, the senior conspirator—had been developing in his arrangements for Claude Thornhill's dance band. They met at Gil's pad, a cellar room on West Fifty-fifth Street, to consider new methods of instrumentation, improvisation, and orchestration that would offset the steeplechase rigors of bebop. Evans, a phenomenal au-todidact whom Thornhill discovered writing charts for Skinnay Ennis on Bob Hope's radio show, venerated Armstrong, Ellington, and Parker and found inspiration everywhere. Combining swing, bop, and classical tech­niques, he was known for cloudlike chords in which the harmonies slipped seamlessly one to the next and breathlessly long phrases. The prolific Gerry Mulligan did most of the writing, but Miles was in charge. He formulated the nine-piece combination (heavy on brass), secured an isolated gig (two weeks in a club, the only time the group performed for an audience), and contracted for three record dates, producing twelve sides eventually collected as Birth of the Cool.”

Nat King Cole [The Comeback King]

“A few aspects of Cole's musicianship are immediately evident: the astonishing independence of voice and piano, for one—he rarely settles for mere pacing chords, preferring octaves and chromatic bass lines and subtly configured harmonies that complement and deepen the vocal in­terpretation. Then there is his wit and speed, lightning reflexes that hard­ly ever call attention to his technique but constantly spice his solos, in­terludes, intros, and codas. Then there is his lucidity and swing: on practically every one of those relatively rare occasions in which he per­formed with major jazz soloists, he stole the limelight. His solos are me-lodically sure, often sounding through-composed. His famous quote-heavy version of "Body and Soul," of which there are several versions, is a spectacle of compression and relaxation.”

Henry Threadgill [The Big Top]

“In the fallow years of 1970 to 1975, the hunger for genuine jazz ensem­bles—as opposed to leaders with rhythm sections—was met largely by groups from Chicago: the Art Ensemble of Chicago (Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Malachi Favors, and Don Moye), the Rev­olutionary Ensemble (Leroy Jenkins, Sirone, and Jerome Cooper), and Air, the most accessible and elusive of the three. At first Air recorded for a poorly distributed Japanese label (Whynot) and was not widely heard. But in New York, where it made an instant splash, Air had an irresistible quality. Part of its appeal was its driving rhythm section, but, inevitably, the axis of the group was [Henry] Threadgill, who played baritone, alto, tenor, flute, and a percussion instrument of his own invention called a hubkaphone (two tiers of hubcaps). His saxophone playing had a gritty edge that at times recalled Earl Bostic, and his compositions were at once smart and funny, elemental and sophisticated, direct and askew.”

Joe Lovano [The Long Apprenticeship]

“How to place him: my first thought is to suggest Hank Mobley coming of age in the era of Ornette Coleman, but that might lead one to conjure Dewey Redman. Well, fine; now imagine Redman with an inclination less to Coleman than to Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins. Lovano is a bop player with a predilection for free jazz. Because he shares with Redman a warm and woolly sound, a throaty timbre that negotiates the tenor's entire range and often subsumes quicksilver phrases in a generously whirring vibrato, one can safely locate Ben Webster in his ancestry as well. One benefit of a big band apprenticeship is that you learn to make the most of every bar; another is that you are encouraged to feed on several generations of stylists.”

Although Hamilton Basso is by now a largely forgotten mid-twentieth [20^th] century writer of fiction, one aspect of his writing has remained with me: I have always been intrigued by the title of his most “famous” book – The View from Pompey’s Head.

Given the lasting impression this obscure book title made on me, perhaps I might be allowed to revive it and to ascribe it to the writings of Gary Giddins in the form of the following paraphrase – “The View from Giddins’ Head.”

For fans of Jazz, such a view is a splendidly knowledgeable and informed one and, as such, one which he has thankfully decided to share often and at length in Visions of Jazz.

It is a view of Jazz and its makers unlike any other.

Treat yourself to a copy before they are all “withdrawn” [perish the thought!] from circulation.

Lee Morgan: Incandescent, Incendiary & Insouciant

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

 “Wherever the Jazz winds blow, you’ll find Lee Morgan blowing straight ahead and swinging. He blows with unflagging zest tempered with superb control. Add to this, a few more Lee Morgan fundamentals such as a sense of good taste and perception, and you have clues to his charismatic powers. From his debut as a teen-age trumpeter, Lee Morgan’s style and sound have always abounded with a warm joi de vivre.”

- Dr. Herb Wong, San Francisco, CA

“[Until his death in 1972 at the tragically early age of 33], …  Lee Morgan was a prime contender for the title of the quintessential hard bop trumpet player. … He will be remembered chiefly as the man who took on the mantle of Clifford Brown (with more than a little influence from Fats Navarro - although that is implicit in Brown anyway - and Dizzy Gillespie, including adopting the latter's trademark upturned trumpet for a time), then went on to develop his own distinctive voice from those models.

He cast the definitive mould for hard bop trumpet style in the process, ….”

Morgan was always capable of both fireworks and a genuine expressiveness, and wrote some of the most memorable compositions to emerge from this genre.

At his best, he was simply incandescent.”

- Kenny Mathieson Cookin’: Hard Bop and Soul Jazz 1954-1965 [pp. 143-44].

[I thought I'd take advantage of YouTube's continuing liberalization of music copyright privileges with a re-posting of this feature on Lee, which had been without the inserted video for quite some time.]

There’s the word I was looking for – “incandescent” – as in bedazzling, brilliant, bright; then there is lucent, lucid or luminous; or how about radiant, refulgent or resplendent!

Other words that come to mind when I think of how best to describe the music of Lee Morgan are incendiary as in “explosive” and insouciant as in “carefree” and charming, but never to the point of indifference.

At times, one gets the feeling that Lee Morgan doesn’t play the trumpet, he attacks it! Sturm und drang seems an apt phrase to associate with Lee’s music: it’s always full of action, excitement and the free range of emotion.

Although his early fame was, in part, based on records he made with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band and a series he did for Blue Note in the 1950s, I first heard Lee on recordings that he made for VeeJay Records, a relatively obscure label based in Chicago.

A DJ friend-of-the-family gave me a fistful of VeeJay demo’s [short for “Demonstration Copies” – do they still send these out?] including The Young Lions [VJ-001 with Lee joined by Frank Strozier on alto saxophone and Wayne Shorter on tenor; how’s that for a front line?], Here’s Lee Morgan [VJ-005] and Expoobident [VJ-008], both of which find Lee paired with Clifford Jordan on tenor.

All three albums were recorded in Chicago in 1960, by which time the Jazz critics were asserting that Lee’s style had “matured,” this concerning someone who had reached the ripe old age of twenty-two!?

You can hear one of the tracks from these VeeJay recordings on the following video tribute to Lee.

Lee uses a number of stylistic devices to give his trumpet playing added power and pep. Among these are a half-valve technique, pecking and squeezing notes through the horn, and a heavy reliance on staccato phrasing  - all of which served to create a super-charged tension in his solos.

In many ways, Lee’s approach to trumpet was a lot like Dizzy Gillespie’s and yet it was uniquely different.

Author and commentator Alyn Shipton explains the complimentary/complementary relationship between the Gillespie and Morgan styles this way in Groovin’ High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie:

“More notes are implied rather than played: there are half-valve effects, momentary hesitations and speed-ups, all of which personalize the playing…. [When] Lee Morgan came into the band … Dizzy had a trumpeter of comparable individuality to his own, and Morgan’s contribution to …  ‘That’s All,’ despite a furious tempo, proves that it was not necessary to play similarly to Dizzy to hold down a trumpet chair in his band.

Morgan’s buzzier embouchure, squarer phrasing, and entirely different approach to the building block motif that ends his solo [on ‘That’s All’] displays a new kind of musical imagination at work. It’s one that draws on Dizzy’s approach, to be sure, but does not depend on it for survival.” [p. 287].

More similarities and distinctions between Dizzy and Lee can be found in this excerpt by bassist Paul West in Dizzy memories, To Bop or Not to Bop [paragraphing modified]:

"Lee Morgan and I joined the band at the same time, and we were the two babies in the band. We were the two youngest in the band. Lee was eighteen, and I think, at that time, I was twenty-one. This was the greatest thing that could have happened to Lee Morgan at that time, his association with Dizzy. He was the baby, and he was very cocky and very happy-go-lucky and very comical. He was almost like a baby Dizzy. When you heard Lee play that solo on 'Night In Tunisia* he was aspiring to be that kind of Dizzy, the artist, the per­sonality.

Basically, this is one of the big differences between Lee Mor­gan's playing, and a lot of the younger musicians, trumpet players. Lee's playing had a lot of character, a lot of personality. He wasn't trying to prove how skillful he was, how highly technical his ability was, but he used that technical ability and skill to bring out his per­sonality, his character, and this is typical of Dizzy's playing. Dizzy is not just a technician who aspires to try to convince somebody that he is technically astute, but he uses his technical ability to bring out his personality.

His playing has personality, it has character, it's not just exercises, and that's the basic difference. And this, I think, is one of the things Lee got from Dizzy as well as Brownie, whom he loved and adored. The relationship between Dizzy and Lee was one of master and student, and you can see that.” [pp. 436-37]

Lee Morgan was the kind of Jazz musician who made you take notice: he played stuff that turned your head around.  Even experienced listeners like critic and writer Nat Hentoff were impressed as he described in the following reminiscence from Jazz Is:

“Dizzy Gillespie’s big band was at Birdland in New York. Coming down the stairs I heard a crackling, stunning trumpet cadenza, brilliant in content as well as in its reckless virtuosity. And yet, it wasn’t Dizzy. I looked on the stand and there was a teenager from Philadelphia, Lee Morgan, for whom Dizzy had just opened the door to the Big Apple. [p.47]

This first hearing of Lee Morgan made such an impression on Nat that he described it again in his insert notes to Lee’s The Gigolo [Blue Note CDP 7 84212 2 paragraphing modified]:

“With certain musicians I associate certain striking events. Sarah Vaughan scat singing at three in the morning at Minton's years ago. Sonny Stitt one night in a club long since disappeared suddenly stunning the audience, stilling all conversation, with a solo that literally turned heads. And Lee Morgan, not yet twenty at the time, at Birdland in the late 1950's. He was in Dizzy Gillespie's big band, and although I'd heard about Lee from friends in Philadelphia, I'd never heard him play. The band was into A Night in Tunisia, and the arrangement had a long break—a cadenza really—in which Dizzy usually exploded into a musical equivalent of the Aurora Borealis.

But that night, the thin, jaunty kid from Philadelphia took over that challenge, and in front of Dizzy himself, Lee split the sky. In a manner of speaking, of course. But the impact was such that you knew something had happened you'd never forget. In the years after, and into now, Lee became one of my favorite musicians.

… My favorite musicians are those who make me feel, especially those who can make me feel good as well as vulnerable, sanguine as well as mortal. That's why I loved Billie Holiday so much—she could make you feel like the first day of spring and also like it is having Christmas lunch alone in a self-service cafeteria. She had range.

What I've also dug about Lee is that he can plunge into blues, soar with crackling high spirits, and play his horn on a ballad …. All done with authority, with crispness, with a strong sense of self.”

In other writings about Lee and his music, Nat uses phrases like “carefree ebullience,” “dazzlingly technique” and a style that is “brisk, witty and strutting with confidence”  - all of which seem to me to be particularly apt descriptions of Lee’s style of playing.

Commenting about Lee in his Blue Note Records: The Biography, Richard Cook asserts that “Morgan’s early flowering is a salutary reminder to many who think the getting of wisdom in Jazz is the preserve of older hearts and minds. … the history of the music is full of players who were already masterful at an indecently early age and Lee Morgan is only one of many.

… the Morgan of these first [Blue Note] dates did have much development to come, even as one listens back to this early music and wonders at the elusive brio of this brilliant young man.” [p. 95]

Fortunately for me, I was eventually able to catch-up to Lee’s early Blue Note recordings especially after the nice folks at Mosaic Records reissued them in a boxed set entitled The Complete Blue Note Lee Morgan Fifties Sessions. And although this limited edition is now sold out, most of Lee’s recordings from this nascent period in his development are still available as individual Blue Note CDs.

Bob Blumenthal, one of our favorite Jazz writers, prepared the insert notes that accompany the Mosaic set and he along with Michael Cuscuna, one of the label’s founders, have allowed us copyright permission to reprint the following excerpts from the booklet.

© -Mosaic Records and Bob Blumenthal. Used with permission, copyright protected, all rights reserved.

“After more than a decade during which the jazz world has been inundated by teenage and even a few preteen "young lions," it may be difficult to appreciate the sensation that Lee Morgan created in 1956. Today we tend to shrug when another 18-year-old phenomenon steps forward (usually with a recording contract from one of the multinational major labels); but teenage trumpeters with any level of facility were less common when Lee Morgan was 18, not to mention teenage trumpeters advanced enough to not only sit in the trumpet section of Dizzy Gillespie's big band but also to assume solo duties on Gillespie's signature piece, A night in tunisia. Morgan was indeed exceptional, and the subsequent flood of young musicians blessed with facility but not half of Morgan's soul only emphasize what rare gifts he possessed.

What has not changed is the mythic nature of Morgan's tragically short career. His early start was balanced by his premature death from gunshot wounds inflicted at Slug's Saloon in New York by his common law wife, months before the trumpeter's 34th birthday. In between were enough reversals to inspire a movie — international acclaim before becoming an adult, then obscurity at age 24; renaissance on the back of a catchy blues tune that became a popular hit, followed by general indifference as the music Morgan favored was eclipsed in the public eye by the rock boom of the late '60s. The present set, which collects the six albums that Morgan recorded for Blue Note between 1956 and 1958 (and which includes three alternate takes, two of which are previously unissued), are among the highlights of Act One, where the young trumpeter causes an initial sensation on the national jazz scene, then proceeds to create music that only solidifies his enfant terrible status. One can imagine other opening scenes for THE LEE MORGAN STORY — Gillespie, on the bandstand at the Newport Jazz Festival, introducing Morgan's Tunisia feature, as he does on the live recording of the event (reissued on Verve 314 513 754-2), or the earlier image of a skinny junior high school kid's legs, observed through the street-level window of a basement jazz club in Philadelphia where the touring bands performed and Morgan hung around to catch the sounds. Without question, however, this is the music that would reveal why Lee Morgan, the Gillespie sideman, turned so many heads.

We may assume, from the sketchy biographical infor­mation that survives regarding Morgan's youth, that he took full advantage of his proximity to several great musicians. He was born in Philadelphia on July 10, 1938. Leonard Feather has alternatively reported that either his father or his older sister played piano for a church choir. He began his trumpet studies with a private instructor, and continued them at Mastbaum Technical High School, where he also played the alto horn. A jazz fan from the outset, Morgan soaked up as much live music as he could, and there was plenty to be heard in Philadelphia, which had produced the Heath and Bryant brothers, Bill Barron (soon to be joined by his brother Kenny), John Coltrane, Benny Golson, Cal Massey, Bobby Timmons and many others among the second and third wave of modernists. By the age of 15, Morgan was leading his own professional group on week- end jobs, with bassist James "Spanky" DeBrest as his partner, and taking part in Tuesday night workshops at the Music City club that brought him into early contact with Miles Davis and his primary early influence, Clifford Brown.

Things really started to happen for Morgan in the summer of 1956, after he graduated from Mastbaum. First, he and DeBrest subbed with the Jazz Messengers when Art Blakey arrived in Philadelphia short two musicians. "Spanky stayed on," Morgan explained to Leonard Feather in the notes to his first Blue Note album. "I could have stayed too, but I didn't want to sign a contract, so I left after two weeks. Then very soon after that, Dizzy came back from his South American tour. I'd met him a couple of years before at the workshop and he knew about me. He needed a replacement for Joe Gordon, and I needed some big band experience, so it worked out fine." The Gillespie job brought Morgan into close contact with some new and inspiring musical friends, and one invaluable hometown associate. Benny Golson, nine years Morgan's senior, had already amassed playing and writing experience with various rhythm and blues bands as well as with Tadd Dameron, Lionel Hampton and Johnny Hodges, and had joined Gillespie as Ernie Wilkins's replacement prior to the South American tour mentioned by Morgan. Golson's reputation, at least as a composer, was starting to build, thanks primarily to Miles Davis's 1955 recording of STABLEMATES, which Golson had penned for the band trumpeter Herb Pomeroy led at the Boston club The Stable. Soon to be acclaimed as one of the major jazz voices of the late '50s, Golson's image was built in no small measure on the 14 compositions he contributes to the first four Lee Morgan Blue Note albums. So this boxed set can also be seen as an essential Benny Golson package, even without such classics as STABLESMATES, ALONG CAME BETTY, BLUES MARCH or KILLER JOE.

One more individual, through his absence, was critical to the early emergence of Lee Morgan, and that is Clifford Brown. The brilliant young musician, who promised to overshadow all of his fellow trumpeters for decades to come, had died in an automobile accident on June 26, 1956, and his death triggered a search for the new Clifford much in the way that Charlie Parker's passing the previous year sent producers and managers scurrying to find the new Bird. Morgan was the primary beneficiary of this attention, as Cannonball Adderley had been a year earlier; and, like Adderley, Morgan was recorded early and often. Fortunately, Alfred Lion brought Morgan into the rarefied environment of Blue Note Records, and showed his commitment to the young trumpeter by recording him as a leader six times over a period of 15 months, giving full exposure to Morgan's instrumental talents while presenting him in some of the most intelligently conceived small-group programs of the period.

…

POSTSCRIPT

Lee Morgan's career as a leader on Blue Note temporarily ends at this point. His career as a Gillespie sideman ended as well, with the breakup of the big band in January 1958. Morgan remained active in New York, however, and participated in several excellent recordings during 1958, most of which were on Blue Note. A week after the final candy session, he paired with Hank Mobley for the tenorist's quintet album PECKIN’ TIME, where the cover design gave the misleading impression that Morgan was the co-leader. Also in February, Morgan participated in another Jimmy Smith jam session (currently collected on THE SERMON CD), which included a feature on the Ellington-associated ballad FLAMINGO. Tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks, another participant in the Smith jam, used Morgan on his own Blue Note debut as a leader, which is included on the COMPLETE BLUE NOTE RECORDINGS OF THE TINA BROOKS QUINTETS (Mosaic 106). Some of the heady Monday night action at Birdland, with Morgan joined by several Philadelphians (Ray and Tommy Bryant, drummer Specs Wright and saxophonist Billy Root) plus Mobley and Fuller, was recorded and released on two Roulette albums.

A more permanent and vastly more influential conclave of Philadelphians was on the horizon. Benny Golson, who had also been freelancing since leaving Gillespie, was asked by Art Blakey to serve as musical director for a new edition of the Jazz Messengers in the summer of 1958. The saxophonist had to look no further than his hometown for the rest of the personnel — Morgan, Timmons and bassist Jymie Merritt. Blakey returned to Blue Note to record the band on October 30; and the resulting album, containing the hits MOANIN', ALONG CAME BETTY and BLUES MARCH, launched a new era for the Messengers.

By 1960, Lee Morgan had become the musical director for the Jazz Messengers, developing into a composer of considerable strength and bringing Wayne Shorter into the fold. (The complete output of that edition of the band can be found in THE COMPLETE BLUE NOTE RECORDINGS OF ART BLAKEY’S 1960 JAZZ MESSENGERS on Mosaic). As a leader, he made LEEWAY for Blue Note in 1960 as well as two albums for Vee-Jay, one for Riverside and half an album for Roulette.

In the summer of 1961, he took himself off the scene for almost two and a half years to deal with personal problems, not the least of which was heroin. When he emerged in November 1963, he returned to Blue Note where he participated in Grachan Moncur's evolution before cutting his own album THE SIDEWINDER. After the release of that album, Morgan, Blue Note and jazz itself would never be the same. But that story, and the highs and lows that followed, are for another day. Now is the time to enjoy the first chapter in the professional life of this extraordinary musician.

Bob Blumenthal

August 1995”

Paul Horn - Profile of a Jazz Musician

 

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

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles has commented previously on these pages about the important role played by Paul Horn in its early musical development.

You can locate this earlier piece by going here.

As such, we wanted to develop a video tribute to Paul using one of the tunes that he wrote for his quintet which made such an impression on us when we first heard and subsequently played it.

The tune in question is Paul’s Half and Half which has two introductions: the first centered around the piano and bass improvising on two chords and the second introduction consisting of a 12-bar section in 6/8 time.

The tune itself breaks down into three phrases: [1] the first 12-bar phrase in 4/4 which is made up of 8 bars of ensemble or horn solo and 4 bars of drum solo, [2] an 8-bar phrase in 6/8 and [3] a final 8-bars in 4/4.

I particularly liked this one because, as the drummer, I got to finish the last four bars of every one's solo in the first 12-bar phrase. :)

Joining Paul who plays alto saxophone on this track are vibraphonist Emil Richards, pianist Paul Moer, bassist Jimmy Bond and drummer Billy Higgins.

 

In the early 1960s, the distinguished film producer David Wolper made the following documentary about Paul’s quintet.  Although the passage of time makes it seem a bit dated and quite innocent, we thought it might be of interest as a reflection of the place Jazz once held in the country’s culture and because more of Paul’s music from this period can be heard throughout the film [which is segmented into three-parts for the purpose of displaying it on YouTube].

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

David Wolper Documentary: The Story of a Jazz Musician