Stan Kenton, Artistry in Rhythm – Portrait of a Jazz Legend

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

“[The ancients Greeks] … knew that Fortune was an idiot’s dance, springing away, and then back, and then again away. And they knew that no one is ever always fortunate.”

- Donna Leon, The Girl of His Dreams [p.109].

With almost 40 years as the leader of a Jazz big band, no one knew better about la forza del destino than Stanley Newcomb Kenton.

Thank goodness for the many fans of Stan’s music that this talented and dedicated musician had perhaps more than his fair share of good fortune over the span of his nearly four decade career [1941-1979].

If you lived in Southern California, particularly in the 1940s and 1950s, the name “Stan Kenton” was closely associated with big band jazz. It also had a similar relationship to Jazz on the West Coast during the decade of the 1950s as most of its principals had been “on” the Kenton band at one time or another.

And when the Jazz clubs began to fold and the Jazz festivals diminished or disappeared, if you wanted to learn to play Jazz, Stan Kenton’s name became synonymous as a source for learning about this fascinating form of music through the many clinics and college concerts his band appeared at in the 1960s and 1970s.

The JazzProfiles editorial staff has recently written extensively on Stan and you can re-visit these past features by clicking on the following segment links:

- Stan Kenton: An Introduction, 10/12/2010

- Stan Kenton: Innovations In Modern Music Orchestra, 10/14/10

- Stan Kenton: Recommended Listening, 10/16/10

- Stan Kenton: The Beginning Days, 10/20/10

- Stan Kenton: The Kenton Era, 10/22/10

- Stan Kenton: New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm, Pt. 1 10/30/10

- Stan Kenton: New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm, Pt. 2 11/05/10

- Stan Kenton: The Later Years, 11/08/2010

Beyond the fact that preparing these blog features on Stan provided us with a focus for spending more time familiarizing ourselves with recordings of Stan’s music, the arrival of Michael Sparke new book – Stan Kenton: This is an Orchestra! [Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press] – a few months after its publication in April, 2010 also served to further our knowledge about the career of this amazing musician.

And now, along comes a magnificent documentary DVD by Graham Carter, the Producer and Director of Jazzed Media [www.JazzedMedia.com], which coincides with the 100th anniversary of Stan Kenton's birth [Wichita, KS on December 15, 1911].

Two ingredients make Stan Kenton, Artistry in Rhythm: Portrait of a Jazz Legend must viewing: Graham Carter’s exceptional skills as a filmmaker and the film’s heavy reliance for source material on Ken Poston, Director of the Los Angeles Jazz Institute, and his knowledge of all-things-Kenton.

During its 117 minutes, the “DVD includes over 20 people interview about Stan Kenton’s career, and over 20 television and movie performances of the Stan Kenton Orchestra. [It] also includes over 300 photos and images from Kenton’s almost 40 year Jazz music career and rare taped interviews with Stan Kenton.”

Notwithstanding the fact that Graham’s DVD is the audio visual equivalent of a nearly two hour gold mine of Kentonia, the pace at which this material is presented never gives its viewer the sense of being rushed or of being lectured.

The experience the DVD affords is more akin to hearing and viewing a good story teller unfold a well-conceived narrative.

Even for those who may already be familiar with certain aspects of the “Kenton story,” they have certainly not heard it told this way before.

Graham keeps the film visually interesting with a sentimental but not maudlin interview with Howard Rumsey, the bassist with Stan’s first band in 1941; footage of Stan with a coat jacket slung over his shoulder talking about where it all began while standing on the beach sand just down from the burned out site of the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, CA [having been rebuilt after a fire gutted it in 1935, it was lost forever in a second fire in 1966]; interviews with former band members Peter Erskine [drummer] and Mike Vax [lead trumpet] explaining the significance of the orchestra in its later years, something not always well-understood or appreciated by the fans of Stan’s earlier bands.

But perhaps what stands out the most among the film’s many attributes is the way in which Graham constantly captures and underscored Stan’s humanity for I would venture to say that never in the history of big band Jazz was a band leader more universally loved by musicians than was Stan Kenton.

Another theme that the DVD emphasizes is Kenton’s constant search for new forms of Jazz expression: here again, not all of his fans stayed on board the USS Kenton as it navigated its way along the Seven Seas of Jazz in search on new musical treasure.

But this was Stan quest: it was his musical soul that was on this journey looking for new forms of musical expression.

In viewing Graham’s DVD, it appears as though Kenton was not always certain of the best direction to take in order to satisfy this search – the expression “we’re lost but we’re making good time”  sometimes comes to mind, but Stan was always very welcoming in allowing both musicians and fans to join him for the ride.

If you are inclined to undertake the adventure that was Stan Kenton’s musical journey through life, I can think of no better way of experiencing it than by watching Graham Carter’s superb documentary DVD on the subject.

Here is Graham’s own annotation about the film.

“Stan Kenton is acknowledged as one of the pioneers in developing contemporary big band jazz, with a career as band leader starting in the 1940s and lasting through the late 1970s. Kenton was also responsible for helping bring to fame many jazz stars including June Christy, Maynard Ferguson, and Lee Konitz. Many great arrangers wrote for the Kenton band including Bill Holman, Bill Russo, Lennie Niehaus, Gerry Mulligan, and Pete Rugolo.

Celebrating the 100th birthday centennial of Stan Kenton in 2011, this almost 2 hour documentary film, produced in association with the Los Angeles Jazz Institute, provides an in-depth look at Kenton s almost 40 years as a big band leader.

Kenton was a leader in combining Afro-Cuban rhythms with big band jazz in America in the late 1940s. The "Progressive" era of Kenton jazz introduced various elements of modern classical music to the big band jazz setting. His "Innovations" orchestra of the early 1950s offered up a touring band combining jazz and classical music elements and featured soon to be worldwide jazz stars including Maynard Ferguson, Bud Shank, and Shorty Rogers. Kenton was instrumental in the formation of jazz education starting in the late 1950s. The 1960s brought further development of additional instrumentation to the band with the "Mellophonium" sound, and later many works written for the Los Angeles Neophonic Orchestra. Kenton continued leading bands through the changing times of the rock influenced late 1960s and 1970s.

Producer & Director Graham Carter has interviewed many people connected with Stan Kenton s life and career including Howard Rumsey, Dr. Herb Wong, JoAnn Kenton, Audree Kenton, Peter Erskine, Carl Saunders, Joel Kaye, Mike Vax, Bill Holman, and Jack Costanzo.

Many famous Stan Kenton Orchestra film and television performances have been included from the big band era of the 1940s through the late 1970s. A large collection of audio music performances are included in the film showcasing the various Kenton bands and their renowned soloists.”

And here are a few comments from the many fans who have already viewed it.

“It's wonderful!!!! Just to see Stan the Man, in all his phases, leading his band, coming to life ... it's priceless. …

Ken Poston does a running narrative (if you've ever been to one of his presentations in L.A., you will appreciate the significance of that) and there are interviews with Jack Costanzo, Herb Wong, Bob Curnow, Eddie Bert, Mike Vax, JoAnn Kenton, Audree, Howard Rumsey, Bill Holman, and many others, and film clips ranging from the earliest beginnings right up to the last band. How this was all compressed and edited into a comprehensive and smoothly flowing narrative is just amazing. …

Congratulations to Graham Carter, and thanks to all who collaborated to produce this marvelous video, which, I agree, every Kenton fan will want to own and play, many times. The music itself hits on so many of his phases! Most of us probably have the full-length recordings, but this is like a nice sampler to remind us how much we've always enjoyed it all. You'll see John Von Ohlen, you'll see Dick Shearer, you'll see June and the early band members and Shelly and ... well, get your copy and see for yourself. Make it your Valentine to yourself. :) ….

- Lillian Arganian”

“This year the legendary big band leader Stan Kenton would have been 100 years old. "Stan Kenton: Artistry in Rhythm – Portrait of a Jazz Legend" is a great way to celebrate the Kenton Centennial. …

This film provides an overview of Kenton's memorable career, one marked by some of the most important and controversial innovations in the history of big band jazz. The story is related through interviews with friends, associates, admirers and family, as well as a variety of photographs and archival performance footage. …

Producer/director Graham Carter has done a marvelous job of gathering together these disparate elements to provide the viewer with a cohesive picture of the Kenton career and personae. The interview segments are masterfully blended into the excitement of the musical footage to keep the story moving along at a rapid pace. At the conclusion of the almost two hour running time, I felt that the elapsed time was considerably less than the actual time. That is always a sign that the creator of the film has been successful in engaging the viewer in a way that justifies the effort that went into producing the final product. (www.JazzedMedia.com) …

- Joe Lang”

“”Stan Kenton - Artistry in Rhythm, Portrait of a Jazz Legend - ****½:

Graham Carter of Jazzed Media has done a Herculean job of documenting through archival footage and 20+ interviews with Kenton alumni and family, the jazz life of Stan Kenton from the early 1940s all the way to end of Stan’s life in the late 1970s. This 40 year period encompasses all the generations of Kenton’s bands from the Artistry in Rhythm Band of the early 1940s; through the 1950s Innovations in Modern Music and Contemporary Concepts; the New Era in Modern American Music and The Neophonic Years of the 1960s; and concluding with The Creative World of Stan Kenton period of the 1970s when Stan created a record label just for his band.

What jumps out to viewers of this extended period of Kenton excellence is Stan’s restlessness. For example, Stan would do largely commercial work to support the costs for his band to incorporate strings in a 43 member band at the beginning of the 1950s, which was an artistic success but a financial failure to tour. He was arguably the first big band leader - certainly on the West Coast - to incorporate Afro Cuban rhythms by using the talents of Johnny Richards.

Throughout this historically well researched near two hour encapsulation of the musical life of Stan Kenton it became clear that he was a father figure to his band. They represented the family that he did not have the time to raise. His failings as a family man were partially “cured” by the love of the musicians he traveled with on lengthy bus trips.

Proper time in the DVD is devoted to Stan Kenton’s role as a jazz educator. He knew full well that fostering jazz education in the schools would keep jazz alive. For that alone he should be honored.

 - Jeff Krow, Audio Audition”

For order information, please click on this banner:

Or you can visit Graham’s website at www.jazzedmedia.com/

Sliding Hammers: Karin and Mimmi Hammar

Karin and Mimmi Hammar, trombonists from Sweden, performing their original composition High Altitude Delivery with Mathias Algotsson on piano, Martin Sjostedt on bass and Ronnie Gardiner on drums.

Dave Pike: It’s Time, Again

“I was in [Roy Harte’s] Drum City in Hollywood one afternoon in 1953, where I saw a vibraphone for the first time, picked up the mallets and started playing. I knew immediately that I had found my means of expressions.”

- Dave Pike

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

Although we went to the same high school, Dave Pike is five [5] years older so I missed him.

He was President of the high school’s Instrumental Music Association, as was I, and for a time, our photos hung together above the wall of the music room.

By the time I graduated and had started gigging around Hollywood, Dave had already left for the East Coast and was gigging around New York.

Given my long association and friendship with Victor Feldman and Larry Bunker, both of whom were exceptional vibraphonists, vibes were always a part of my musical life. Some of my earliest Jazz gigs as a drummer were playing in trios and quartets that featured them on vibraphone.

All three of us were to become great admirers of Dave Pike’s skills on the instrument.

I’ve also always been a big fan of be-bop, a style of Jazz that Dave Pike specializes in and which he plays passionately and with great reverence for its traditions, particularly those established by its principal co-founders, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

Therefore, when Orrin Keepnews, President, Artists and Repertoire man and Chief Cook and Bottle washer for Riverside Records issued his 1961 LP – It’s Time for Dave Pike - it seems that I was destined to own a copy [Riverside RLP-9360].

The 2001 CD reissue of this recording on Original Jazz Classics [OJCCD-1951-2] contains the following annotation on the back tray plate.. Presumably written by Orrin, it is an excellent summation of Dave Pike’s playing:

“Dave Pike occupies a distinctive niche in modern Jazz. A vibraphonist with an attack and sound like no other, he plays with a concentrated strength that makes the improvised lines all but take physical shape.”

The ace graphics team at CerraJazz LTD put together this video tribute to Dave on which he performs Solar, one of the tracks from the It’s Time for Dave Pike, along with Barry Harris on piano, Reggie Workman on bass and Billy Higgins on drums.

We’ve also gathered the following observations about Dave by Thomas Schnabel, Zan Stewart and Mark Gardner, Ira Gitler, and a little more from Orrin Keepnews in closing. The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought these might be helpful in providing some perspective on this marvelously talented and too often overlooked musician.

“The sound of the vibraphone is like no other instrument. At once seductive and ce­lestial, the sound is transparent, cool, and airy, yet it is capable of filling a large room with a soothing warmth. Countless people have been fascinated with its magic sound, yet ironically there are only a dozen mallet players world wide who have mastered the instrument. Of these precious few artists, some have exploited the instrument's gentle pulse, churning out syrupy ballads; others have been seduced by the harpies of com­mercialism, while others have remained sub­merged in the tidepools of esoterica. That leaves the world with just a handful of truly creative and evolving players, an exceedingly small family of gifted artists in which Dave Pike has secured for himself an enduring and enviable niche.

Pike is a gentle and slightly built man, whose ingratiating and soft-spoken manners don't betray the rhapsodic power one exper­iences when watching and hearing him per­form. He was born in Detroit on March 23, 1938, and though not from a musical fam­ily, found himself playing piano, drums, and horns from an early age. A percussive player, the vibraphone perfectly suited his artistic needs. "The minute I touched the instrument", he began in his thoughtful and deliberate manner, "that was it, I knew that this was the instrument I was meant to play. I was physically designed to play it. Your whole body's involved with it, your soul, heart, and mind, just like the drums, but with the enormous universe of harmony and melody. I love the sound, I believe music should be beautiful and strive for a beau­tiful sound, and I just can't imagine playing anything else."

- Thomas Schnabel, liner notes to Let the Mnstrels Play On [Muse Records MR-5203

“The vibraharp, or vibraphone, a descendant of the xylophone developed in the United States in the late 1920's, is an instrument with an unusual, very clear tone. A superior set of vibes can send a reverberating sound across a room, filling that space with a sooth­ing diffused warmth. With the mallets in the hands of a master player, the vibraharp can sing the softest song or wail the wildest waltz, always with that sen­suous, percussive timbre that only it possesses. The vibraharp is, indeed, a magical instrument.

Dave Pike is a magical vibraharpist. He is a player of sensitivity and emotion, of imagination and power. His concept of music is broad and open, allowing for many diverse styles in the make up of the complete musician. Over the years, he has shared the limelight with such heralded compeers as Ornette Coleman, Bill Evans, Charlie Haden, Paul Bley, Herbie Mann and Lee Konitz, and his art reflects the expanded horizons he experienced while working alongside these greats. Whether playing free form or jazz-rock, Dave Pike is a superb modern creator in the jazz idiom.”

- Zan Stewart, liner notes to On A Gentle Note [Muse Records MR- 5168]

“… [Dave’s] style is notble for its well resolved and quicksilver ideas, inspired more by such bop giants as Charlie Parker and Bud Powell than any other vibraphonist. Pike's sound has come in for much praise from his fellow musicians and jazz critics over the years. Dan Morgenstern wrote in 1963: 'Dave's sound is neither excessively vibrato-laden nor excessively dry; it is clear but not brittle, lyrical but never sentimental. The honesty and warmth of his playing is underlined by his habitual 'singing' - as much a part of his improvisation as Hamp's 'grunts' are part of his.'”

- Mark Gardner. Insert notes to Pike’s Groove [Criss Cross 1021]

“The electrically amplified set of metal bars, first made popular in jazz by Lionel Hampton, is known by many names-vibraphone, vibraharp, vibes and bells are some of its appellations. Dave Pike has another name for his set. He calls it the "steam table,”  a humorous title, but one that has accuracy.

Adjectives like "steamin',” "cookin’,” etc. have been used to signify playing with heat, or, to put it even more basically, swinging. The best jazz vibists have always realized the percussive nature of their instrument and have never allowed it to become a purveyor of bland sounds. While Dave Pike is a steamer, he is not a steam fitter. He is a dancer and a singer.

Let me qualify this. Pike's physical approach to the vibes is very active. On up tempos he seems to be interpreting his own modern dance; on ballads his toe-work is gracefully in a ballet bag. Of course, you can11 see this on a record, but you can hear another example of his complete involve­ment with his instrument in the singing with which he underlines his playing. This is common practice among many pianists and vibists, but in Dave's case it is perhaps more intense. Most importantly, you can hear his playing. Inspired more by Charlie Parker and Bud Powell than by other vibists, his conception is original and becoming more so all the time.”

- Ira Gitler, insert notes to Pike’s Peak, [Portrait RK 44392]

“The intensity with which … DAVE PIKE ap­proaches the vibes seems to me so compelling and over­whelming that it surely can almost be felt —  like a ghost at a séance that cannot be seen or touched, but is nevertheless so convincing a presence that you're ready to swear it's definitely there. Having watched Dave at work, I considered the possibility that I was assuming too much in feeling that this aura of vivid excitement comes through clearly on a recording. But a couple of judicious advance experiments with listeners who had never seen him in action convinced me that all that spirit and energy are really audible, and almost tangible, here.”

- Orrin Keepnews, insert notes to It’s Time for Dave Pike [OJCCD-1951-2]

In case you haven’t already done so, it’s time for you to take a hearty sampling of Dave Pike’s music.

Art Ensemble of Chicago

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

“With a mixture of parody and the obtuse, humor and intuition the Art Ensemble of Chicago combined their considerable skills to common cause and emerged as perhaps the most innovative group of the 1970s.”

- Stuart Nicholson, Jazz: The 1980s Resurgence, p. 129.

For a variety of reasons, some to do with preferences, but mostly to do with unawareness, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles, missed much of the Free Jazz movement at its inception.

Perhaps Free Jazz movements might be a better term.

But thanks to a variety of informative sources that have helped to educate us on the subject, it has been great fun to subsequently discover some aspects of this style of Jazz that suit our taste. [“one is never too old to learn something new?”].

One of these discoveries was the Art Ensemble of Chicago, whose music had to be seen as well as heard.

Although AEC did not travel very much during the latter years they were together, I was fortunate to see and to hear the group at the “old” Yoshi’s Jazz and Supper Club in Berkeley, CA in the mid-1990s.

You can get a basic “feel” for their music from viewing the following video tribute to them.

And here are some authoritative descriptions of what’s on offer in the AEC’s approach to Jazz.

“The Art Ensemble, like many other groups and musicians who emerged in this period, was an offshoot of the Chicago musicians' cooperative known as the Association for the Advancement of Crea­tive Musicians. Muhal Richard Abrams, who founded the AACM in 1965 and served as a mentor to a generation of avant-gardists, was a talented pianist and composer whose best recordings, among them Levels and Degrees of Light (Delmark) and The Hearinga Suite (Black Saint), manage a graceful balancing act between ensemble writing and unfettered improvisation.

The Art Ensemble of Chicago, consisting of saxophonists Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell, trumpeter Lester Bowie, bassist Malachi Favors Magoustous, and drummer Famoudou Don Moye, learned much from Abrams. But their approach probably owed even more to the otherworldly showmanship of the pianist-composer-bandleader Sun Ra, who had been a fixture on the Chicago scene for years and served as a kind of spiritual godfather to the AACM. Taking its cue from Sun Ra, the group enlivened its performances with costumes, makeup, poetry recitations, and even the occasional comedy routine.

If the Art Ensemble's music was sometimes in danger of getting lost in the shuffle, it was powerful enough to withstand the onslaught, and it was varied enough to hold audiences' attention. (Jarman, Mitchell, and Bowie were all prolific composers, and all three re­corded several albums as leaders in addition to their work with the Art Ensemble.) Indeed, with its mixture of free improvisation and complex composition, seasoned with an overlay of African and other influences, the Art Ensemble's music arguably merited the label "fu­sion" as much as anyone else's did—although the group itself pre­ferred "great black music." (And as if to suggest that categories are meaningless anyway, in the late seventies and early eighties the Art Ensemble made a series of outstanding albums, including Nice Guys and Urban Bushmen, for ECM Records, supposedly the most "Euro­pean" of all jazz labels.)” – Peter Keepnews in Bill Kirchner, ed., The Oxford Companion to Jazz, p. 494

“The Art Ensemble of Chicago was created in the mid sixties by Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie and Malachi Favors, all members of Chicago's Association for the Advance­ment of Creative Music (AACM). They recorded for Delmark and Nessa, two small independent labels. Later, during a two year stay in Europe, they made a dozen albums for various European labels.

This, I believe, is their most versatile and exciting album yet. It is the complete and unedited non-stop per­formance that they gave at the 1972 Ann Arbor festival. All the excitement, originality, tightness, and brilliance that this group possesses can be heard on this album. Please listen to this record in its entirety without interruption to grasp the full beauty and impact of their performance.

The Art Ensemble of Chicago may be the most sig­nificant and creative group in the new music since the original Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane quartets.”

—Michael Cuscuna, original liner notes to The Art Ensemble of Chicago Bap-Tizum

“The Art Ensemble initially featured Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors, and, for a brief spell, drummer Phillip Wilson. The band ig­nored the division of labor traditionally practiced by most jazz combos. True, Mitchell and Jarman could brandish their saxophones in the front line, but they were just as likely to be accompanists as lead soloists, just as inclined to play percus­sion or unusual wind instruments—conch shells or whistles—as the alto or tenor sax.

Lester Bowie could show off his mastery of a wide range of trumpet styles, covering the gamut from pseudo-early jazz growls and groans to up-to-date funk grooves. But he also might energize an Art Ensemble performance by pounding on the bass drum or engaging in offbeat on-stage antics. Malachi Favors served as bassist for the group, but almost any string instrument, from banjo to zither, might grace his hands, as well as the ever-present percussion instruments that became Art Ensemble trademarks. Indeed, the Ensemble reportedly brought some five hundred music-making implements with them when they moved to France at the close of the 1960s.

The Art Ensemble caught the attention of European audiences in this new set­ting. Within a few months of arriving, the band had recorded a half-dozen projects, including some of their finest work. Recordings were supplemented by frequent concerts, radio performances, and commissions for movie scores. During this pe­riod, percussionist Don Moye joined the band. Although this addition was lamented by some of the band's fans—who saw it giving a more conventional rhythmic foun­dation to the Art Ensemble's free-flowing sound collages—Moye's background in free jazz and his wide-ranging collection of percussion instruments fit nicely with the Ensemble's artistic impulses. By the same token, Moye added a more structured and overtly polyrhythmic, often more insistent, undercurrent to the band's sound. …

Concerts and club appearances conveyed the band's essence in a way that the group's later studio sessions often only approximated. In truth, this band needed to be seen as well as heard. Dressed in African garb, their faces painted or wearing masks, surrounded by their "little instruments"—so many that it took two hours simply to set up the bandstand—the Art Ensemble presented a striking appearance that had few precedents in the jazz world. The group's various live recordings, such as Live at Mandel Hall, Baptizum, and Urban Bushmen, may stop short of presenting the full experience of the Art Ensemble in performance, although they still manage to convey the band's vitality and unpredictability, as well as its kaleidoscopic range.”

- Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz, pp. 357-358 [paragraphing modified].

“As a mix of personalities, the Ensemble has always been in a crisis of temperament, with Bowie's arsenal of sardonic inflexions pitched against Mitchell's schematic constructions, Jarman's fierce and elegant improvis­ing and Favors's other-worldly commentaries from the bass. Sat­ire, both musical and literal, has sustained much of their music; long- and short-form pieces have broken jazz structure down into areas of sound and silence. At their best, they are as uncom­promisingly abstract as the most severe European players, yet their materials are cut from the heart of the traditions of black music in Chicago and St Louis.”

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

 p. 56.

“That generation of musicians, building on the achievements of post-bop apostates who questioned the rules and put their ids on the table, began with the assumption that playing free meant just that. It wasn't a matter of whether or not you used chords or swing rhythms or the tem­pered scale, or of how you measured improvisation against composition, but of having the options—of choosing to do with or without any of the tools of music in any given performance.

One measure of the Great Black Music vaunted by the Art Ensemble was embodied in the freedom to be or not to be free, and followed from a fundamental idea: Jazz is a classical music with an established yet expanding canon of masterworks, wed to a language of rules and structures. In playing off the acknowledged clas­sics, the shared postulates, the new jazz of the '60s kept the intrinsic aesthetic alive, demonstrating to the max that a worthy foundation can withstand every sort of experimentation, however adventitious or pro­vocative it may seem. The jazz avant-garde, like the classical avant-garde, is empowered by the fact that true classicism is impervious to anything but prostration. Imitation, as Emerson pointed out, is suicide.”

- Gary Giddins, Visions of Jazz, p. 503 [paragraphing modified]

If you are looking for a gateway into the world of Free Jazz, the Art Ensemble of Chicago will serve as an excellent entry point.

Joe Morello 1928-2011 R.I.P.

“The drummer is generally the member of the band most underrated by the audience and least discussed in the jazz historical and analytical literature. Since drummers don't play harmonies and melodies in the same way as the other instrumentalists, audience members and even some musicians have a tendency to deprecate the musical knowledge of the person sitting behind the drum set. Many mistakenly assume that the drummer just plays rhythm and therefore doesn't participate in the melodic and harmonic flow of the music. [However] … the drum set represents a microcosm of all the interactive processes … , including harmonic and me­lodic sensitivity.”

- Ingrid Monson, Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction, p.51

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

The following is a reposting of a JazzProfiles feature on Joe that originally appeared on Tuesday, March 25, 2008.

To paraphrase Ted Gioia from his chapter entitled The San Francisco Scene in the 1950’s from his seminal West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California 1945-1960:

“At the start of 1956 Brubeck made a personal decision that proved to be a most important change in his group. After three years with the quartet, drummer Joe Dodge decided to leave. Brubeck took a chance by hiring Joe Morello. Actually, little risk accrued from this decision as Morello was a masterful choice as his polished virtuosity and marked creativity made an immediate contribution to the quartet.

Described by some critics as a sort of purgatory for jazz drummers, Morello was to absolutely flourish in the confines of this supposedly ‘unswinging’ ensemble, especially with its high visibility, daring improvisations and later experimentation with odd or unusual time signatures.

All these factors helped launch Morello to a position of preeminence in the world of jazz drumming and with good cause. The leap into the limelight was no concoction of media hype but well-deserved fame for an exceptional musician.” [p.96].

Morello was born in Springfield, MA and after gigging around New York in the early 1950’s and recording with guitarist Tal Farlow and arranger-composer Gil Melle’s group, pianist Marian McPartland brought him into her trio along with bassist Bill Crow where they appeared together at The Hickory House on New York’s famed 52nd street from 1954-56.

In her book, All in Good Time, Marian talks about how the word on the street was all about this “fabulous” young drummer from Springfield. But given how many times she had been disappointed after actually hearing the Mr. Fabulous in question, she remained skeptical. Nevertheless, given her generous heart, Marian decided to give Morello a chance to sit in although when he showed up “… he looked less like a drummer than a student of nuclear physics.”

"I really don’t remember what the tune was, and it isn’t too important. Because in a matter of seconds, everyone in the room realized that the guy with the diffident air was a phenomenal drummer. Everyone listened. His precise blending of touch, taste and almost unbelievable technique were a joy to listen to…. I will never forget it. Everyone knew that here was a discovery." [pp.34-35.]

As Gioia concludes:

With the Brubeck quartet, this powerful young workhorse on drums continued to have the same effect on audiences, but now in larger concert halls rather than in small clubs. Soon Morello was no longer a discovery, but a known commodity, emulated by a generation of young percussionists. [p. 98 paraphrased]

When in 1938, the legendary photographer Alfred Stieglitz was presented with one of the only 500 copies of Ansel Adams’ photographic masterpiece –Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail – Stieglitz declared: “I am an idolater of perfect workmanship and this is perfect workmanship.”

I, too, am an idolater of the perfect workmanship that is to be found in the drumming of Joe Morello as primarily exemplified in the many recordings he made with the Dave Brubeck Quartet from 1956-68. Sadly, Joe made too few recordings outside the DBQ including those under his own name.

Joe is a complete musician who listens attentively to what the soloist is saying and tries to contribute to it. Equally as important in this context is that Joe can play brushes as well as he can play sticks so he doesn’t mind reverting to these unwieldy clumps of wire to express his drumming; something which cannot be said about many contemporary Jazz drummers [some of whom don’t even carry a set of wire brushes in their kit!].

Joe is a constantly inventive drummer. Unlike an Art Blakey or an Art Taylor or a Roy Haynes, Joe is not a drummer who plays a prepared number of figures over and over again during his drums solos, be these over a few bars or over a chorus or open-ended.

Although he played them with authority, Art Blakey repeated the same configurations in every solo he played. He may have combined these drum figures differently, but throughout his long and distinguished career Art’s arsenal essentially replayed the same “licks,” “kicks” and “fills”.

While Max Roach and Philly Joe Jones were considerably more sophisticated in their approach to the instrument and had a larger repertoire of invented drum figures that they employed, they were also limited to what they had practiced and memorized when it came time to taking a solo.

Joe is from a school of drummers that includes Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson. They are drummers who, for all intents and purposes, know no limits and can create endlessly on the instrument. [Alan Dawson, Ed Shaughnessy and Dave Weckl are also in this category].

Like a professional athlete, these drummers essentially slow down the pace of things and are able to visualize and/or conceptualize how they are going to build a solo, especially an extended one.

What enables them to do this is their technical command of the instrument, a facility that is garnered over long hours of practice, as well as, through the gift of talent.

Bill Evans once remarked to the effect that playing an instrument well was 98% hard work and 2% talent.

As Eric Nissenson has observed in his work Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest:

Any good Jazz musician has developed from hard work and hard thought, a personal conception. When he improvises successfully on the stand or in the recording studio, it is only after much thought, practice and theory have gone into that conception, and it is that conception which makes him different from other Jazz musicians. Once he knows what he is doing, in other words, he can let himself go and find areas of music through improvisation that he didn’t know existed. Jazz improvisation, therefore, is based on a paradox – that a musician comes to a bandstand so well prepared that he can fly free through instinct and soul and sheer musical bravery into the musical unknown. It is a marriage of both sides of the brain ….” [p, 53].

Morello devoted himself to mastering the drum rudiments [originally 26 but later expanded to 40] through long hours of practice essentially using only the snare drum. Drum rudiments are typically practiced slowly at first to gain control. Later the practice pace is increased and they are alternated so as to be able to begin them with either hand. It takes an enormous amount of time and effort to develop the skill necessary to play these rudiments at any speed and from any position on the drum kit.

Once these exercises are brought to a level of controlled speed on the snare drum, they can be expanded to include the tom toms that extend from the top of the bass drum shell and those that rest on the floor beside the bass drum through the use of telescoping legs. They can even be interwoven with the use of the bass drum as played with a foot pedal although very, very few drummers are able to execute this feat [no pun intended].

For those interested in the more technical aspects of drum rudiments, a narrative explanation can be found here: 

For the notation of drum rudiments as well as audio and video examples, click on one of the 40 essential rudiments after going here 

Joe also spent long hours developing the independence of limbs that enabled him to use all four of these at the same time on different parts of the instrument, sometimes playing against one another in contrasting time signatures.

If a drummer doesn’t have to think about how to play a rhythmic pattern, he can begin to think of what he wants to play, how he wants it to sound [what drums and/or cymbals to employ to produce this sound] and how to “tell his story” either in fragments [four bar, eight bar, 12 bar etc. exchanges with the horns] or in an extended solo.

Just as it is incumbent for a horn soloist to “say something” in their solo, preferably something more than just a linking pf phrases that have been heard many times before as played by other musicians, so too the drummer has to originate ideas that fit the context of the piece that is being performed and which generate a certain interest in and make a contribution to the piece in their own right.

Beyond the customary long drum solo piece that is intended as a highlight of many of the DBQ concerts there are a number of tracks that demonstrate what Marian McPartland described as Morello’s “precise blending of touch, taste and unbelievable technique ….”

For touch and taste, one need only listen to his brushwork accompaniment to alto saxophonist Paul Desmond’s enchanting and stirring solo on These Foolish Things from the Jazz Goes to Junior College Columbia recording [CL 1034/Sony Japan Sleeve CD 9523].

Desmond was a lover of ballads and he would use them as a platform upon which to build lyrically layered and titillating textured solos. He also once described himself as “the world’s slowest alto saxophone player." And while he was slowly weaving his wonderful solos he preferred that the drummer stay out of the way and simply keep time [quietly].

Paul was a major exponent of the style of drumming that the legendary tenor saxophonist Lester Young once described as “a little tinky boom.”

While they initially clashed when Joe first came on board the USS Brubeck bringing all of his firepower to bear, Paul and Joe were later to become close friends.

And although Joe is anything but “a little tinky boom” drummer he can lay down sensitive and unobtrusive brushwork behind a soloist, even helping to achieve new heights in the intensity of their solo as is the case with Desmond’s magnificent exposition on These Foolish Things.

More of Joe’s magnificent brushwork can be heard again behind a Paul Desmond solo, this time on a more up tempo version of Tangerine on the The Dave Brubeck Quartet in Europe album [Columbia CL 1168/SRCS 9529] and this album is also an excellent place to hear Joe as a fabulous colorist with his use of tympani mallets on Nomad and The Golden Horde.

These Jazz Impression albums are also an excellent vantage points from which to enjoy his marvelously constructed extended drum solos such as Watusi Drums on The Dave Brubeck Quartet in Europe, his intriquing finger drum solo meant to sound like and Indian “tabla” drum on Calcutta Blues from Jazz Impressions of Eurasia [Columbia CL 1251/CK 48531] and his clattering homage to the noises of Chicago’s on Sounds of the Loop fromJazz Impressions of the USA [Columbia CL 984].

However, Joe may have reached a pinnacle of extended drum solos with the one he recorded on Castilian Drums from The Dave Brubeck Quartet at Carnegie Hall [Sony Jazz 2K61455/Sony Japan 9365-6] performance given at this distinguished hall of the arts in February, 1963.

In 1961, RCA released Joe’s first album under his own name which was fitting entitled It’s About Time [RCA LPM-2486] which finds Joe in the company of a quintet made up of Phil Woods [alto sax], Gary Burton [vibes] John Bunch [piano] and Gene Cherico [bass]. It’s a corker of an album that was subsequently released in CD as Joe Morello[RCA Bluebird 9784-2-RB] and combines the six quintet tracks that made up the original LP with 9 tracks from previously unreleased 1961-62 big band sessions that were arranged and conducted by Manny Albam and which featured a bevy of prominent New York studio players.

Joe’s drumming on these recordings is hard-driving and aggressive and is an example of his ability to play in a cooking, straight-ahead manner which was not always possible in the more formalized and structured setting of the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

I hope that in listening to these recordings and spending time in the company of Morello’s unparalleled talent that they will serve to confirm for you the adage -“God places occasional geniuses in our midst to help inspire the rest of us to greatness.” Joe Morello is one such genius.

Rio

Earlier, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles and the ace graphics production team at CerraJazz LTD did a feature on Buenos Aires, so since we "were in the neighborhood," we thought we'd do one on the city of Rio de Janiero.  The music is pianist Victor Feldman's original composition Brazilian Fire on which he is joined by Tom Scott on flute, Chuck Domanico on bass and drummer John Guerin. Listen for how the mood changes when Johnny switches from a bossa nova beat to straight 4/4 time at 1:57 minutes.

Valery Ponomarev - The Best Thing For You

The vibrant, vigorous and valiant [he's a Jazz musician from Moscow!] Valery Ponomarev is joined on this version of Irving Berlin's The Best Thing for You by Ralph Moore on tenor saxophone, Larry Willis on piano, Dennis Irwin on bass and the ever-swinging Victor Jones on drums.

Be sure and checkout the 8-bar "kicker" that launches Valery's solo at 1:34 minutes and Ralph Moore's at 2:40 minutes, respectively.

Cookin' Jazz at its very best on JazzProfiles.