“Fine As [Phineas] Can Be”: Phineas Newborn, Jr. [From the Archives]

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved

[New Introduction for the previous posting of this piece plus the addition of a YouTube of Phineas playing Blues Theme for the Left Hand Only].

The annotation that accompanies the video of his appearance on Jazz Scene USA 1962 states that: "Now that the dust of history has settled, there can be no question that Phineas Newborn, Jr. [1931-1989] was one of Jazz's most important and enduring pianists." 

Blinded by his dazzling technique during the time he was on the scene, many critics dismissed him without catching on to his brilliant musicality.

We are fortunate that some producers (most notably Lester Koenig at Contemporary) saw fit to capture Newborn's artistry on record with at least some regularity."

Bassist Ray Brown had a great deal to do with keeping Phineas in the studios at Contemporary. After Les Koenig passed away, Ray enlisted the aid of Norman Granz at Pablo to record the reclusive Phineas.

While Norman's massive efforts on behalf of Jazz and its makers has finally been well-documented in Tad Hershorn's biography - Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz For Justice - one wonders if the impresario efforts of Ray Brown will ever be documented in such fine fashion.

Dating back to his days with Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band in the mid-1940's until his death in 2002, Ray did so much to produce in-performance and recorded Jazz at the highest levels, efforts which, in many cases, remain anecdotal and largely undocumented.

Thank goodness Ray held Phineas near-and-dear-to-his-heart and created scenarios that brought him into the recording studio from time-to-time or the career of this great Jazz pianist would have been largely confined to recordings he made from about 1955-1965 [Phineas died in 1989.].

In addition to Phineas, Ray formed trios with pianists including Gene Harris, Benny Green, Larry Fuller, Geoff Keezer, Dado Moroni, not to mention his legendary association with pianist Oscar Peterson in the 1950s.

And then there are the numerous artists that Ray managed, including, for many years, vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, the almost countless number of recordings he made with artists that Norman Granz represented on his Verve and Pablo Records labels, and the Jazz concerts he produced both domestically and internationally for over forty [40] years.

I doubt that this side of Ray Brown's contributions to Jazz will ever be researched and written; I hope I'm wrong.

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

“This is the greatest thing that ever happened to Jazz – the greatest pianist playing today.  In every respect, he’s tremendous. He is just beautiful. A wonderful Jazz musician,”

- Jazz pianist, Gene Harris

“Technically, he was sometimes claimed to run a close second to Art Tatum. In reality, Newborn was a more effective player at slower tempos and with fewer notes; but he could be dazzling when he chose,…. A sensitive and troubled soul, even the lightest of his performances point to hidden depths of emotion.”

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

“I hear in him all that is emotional, as well as all that is cerebral and virtuosic, about jazz piano in one of its most sophisticated forms.”

- Leonard Feather

Legendary bassist Ray Brown, along with Les Koenig of Contemporary Records and Norman Granz at Pablo Records, were largely responsible for insuring that one of the greatest Jazz pianists of all-time – Phineas Newborn, Jr. [1931-1989] - didn’t slip into total obscurity following his initial acclaim.

Although Phineas was not a celebrity, he was highly regarded by knowledgeable Jazz fans, especially in the 1950's and 60's. ''In his prime, he was one of the three greatest jazz pianists of all time, right up there with Bud Powell and Art Tatum,'' said the late Leonard Feather, who for many years served as a Jazz critic for Downbeat magazine and The Los Angeles Times.

There was a time when Phineas looked set for stardom, but mental problems forced him to return to Memphis in the '60s, where he spent his remaining years struggling against the alcohol and drug problems that exacerbated an already fragile emotional state.

Whenever Phineas [who prefers to pronounce his name - “Fine as, ” with the accent of the first syllable, hence the title of Ray’s tribute tune] could pull himself together, Ray Brown brought him into the studio and recorded him in a trio setting along with Ray on bass and such drummers as Jimmy Smith or Elvin Jones on drums.

I got to know Phineas a little during the early 1960s when he played one of the week nights at The Manne Hole, drummer Shelly Manne’s venerable club in Hollywood. He usually worked with bassist Jimmy Bond and drummer Milt Turner, but drummer Frank Butler often performed with him, as well.

One night he told me “his [my] Count Basie story.  It seems that Bill Basie was a friend of his Dad, a drummer who led a Rhythm & Blues band on Memphis’ famous Beale Street during the late 1930s.  Basie nicknamed Phineas, Jr. “Bright Eyes” because ‘as a boy his eyes would light-up as soon as he heard the music!’”

It was staggering to try and take-in all that Phineas had to offer. His technique was phenomenal and he tossed off so many ideas while improvising that if you stopped concentrating even for a second you were lost.  Listening to him in such an informal and personal setting was an exhilarating experience. Sadly, it was often not much of a shared experience as he hardly drew an audience.

The legendary Jazz pianist George Shearing once said that the “trick” to this music is getting it from the head and into the hands. Based on my first-hand observation of Phineas, I had the feeling that he had invented the “trick!”

With his technique, harmonic mastery, rhythmic displacement, and brilliant tone, Phineas Newborn, Jr. was nothing short of a Jazz piano phenomena.

But prodigious technique is frequently more of a curse than a blessing in Jazz circles and is often heavily criticized.

As the late Jazz writer, Leonard Feather, pointed out in his liner notes to Phineas Newborn, Jr.: A World of Piano [Contemporary LP S-7600; OJCCD 175-2]:

“There has always been a tendency among music experts, and by no means only in jazz, to harbor misgivings about technical perfection. The automatic-reflex reaction is: yes, all the notes are there and all the fingers are flying, but what is he really saying? How about the emotional communication?

Art Tatum at the apex of his creative powers suffered this kind of treatment at the hands of a not inconsiderable pro­portion of the critics. Buddy De Franco, of course, has been a consistent victim. Phineas has been in similar trouble, and not because of any lack in his ability to transmit emotion but possibly, I suspect, because of the listeners' reluctance or in­ability to receive it. Nat Hentoff, in the notes for Maggie's Back in Town, pointed out that Phineas has "harnessed his prodigious technique during the past couple of years into more emotionally meaningful directions!" True, though conservative; I would lengthen the harness to four or five years. During that time, too, the technique has taken on even more astonish­ing means to accomplish even more incredible ends — witness one ploy that is uniquely remarkable: the ad lib use of galvanic lines played by both hands two octaves apart. Today, bearing in mind that Bernard Peiffer is French and Oscar Peterson Canadian, it would not be extravagant to claim that Phineas has no equal among American jazz pianists, from any standpoint, technical or esthetic. He is a moving, swinging, pianistically perfect gas.”

George Wein, the impresario who founded the Newport Jazz Festival, wrote these thoughts about Phineas and his music in 1956 as the liner notes to Phineas’ first album for Atlantic Records Here is Phineas [#1235; reissued on CD as Koch 8505].

“For years now I've listened to people scream at me about unknown pianists they have discovered. "He’s greater than Bud . "He cuts Oscar . "He leaves Tatum standing still". As many times as I have heard these cries, that is how often I have been disappointed. In­variably, these unknowns are, at their best, simply minor talents, and, at their worst, pale copies of great pianists.

About a year ago I began to hear stories about a fan­tastic pianist in Memphis, Tenn. with the almost quaint sounding name of Phineas Newborn. Jr. Men I re­spected, such as John Hammond, Willard Alexander and, of course. Count Basic, among many others, insisted that I must hear this guy. Due to my previous sad experiences, I could not get excited. However, when I got a chance to really hear Phineas in Storyville [a nightclub in Boston which Wein owned], for the first time I was not disappointed. The unknown had lived up to his press notices.

Phineas Newborn, Jr. was born December 14. 1932 in Memphis. Tenn. I believe this makes him all of 23 years old at the recording of this album. In all my years of listening to music I have never encountered a music­ian of such tender years who had such a fantastic com­mand of his instrument. Perhaps my reaction to Phineas can be traced to my personal concern with the piano. If this was my only reason for liking him, then I say it would be sufficient, for to my knowledge the only pianist who has as great, or greater command of the piano is Art Tatum.

Phineas is a two handed pianist, as opposed to the tendency of modern pianists to dwell on the single finger, right hand style. The only time he can be ac­cused of being a one-handed pianist is when he puts his right hand in his pocket and plays two choruses of a ballad, such as Embraceable You. exclusively with his left hand. Unfortunately, he does not do this in this album, but when you see him in person, ask him to play a left-handed solo for you. His left hand is de­veloped to such an extent that he can and does execute any passage or chord with his left hand that he would do with his right. When you realize that he has the fattest right hand of anyone since Tatum (he might even exceed Tatum for sheer speed) then you get an

idea of just what happens.

However, technique is only one facet of music. What of Phineas' basic musical style? From whence does he come and where is he going?

First, let me warn the reader of what not to do upon first hearing Phineas. Do not be so overpowered by his technique that you neglect to listen to the music he plays. Through all his technical intricacies I hear a wonderful musical mind, a mind that without copying has absorbed the music of the jazz masters. I get a funny feeling when I hear Phineas. I concentrate on his fan­tastically-"Bird'-influenced ideas and then I can't help but get the feeling that at any moment he is going to swing right into a Waller-James P. Johnson stride piano effect. He never quite does and I sometimes wish he would.

Phineas says his first jazz idols were Bird, Dizzy and Bud Powell. Later on, after he had begun to develop his own style, he heard Tatum. There is no doubt of the influence that these men left on Phineas. There is also evidence that he has listened to Erroll Garner.

However, there is never a question that Phineas has a unique approach to music. (In this album I believe Daahoud comes the closest to defining the Phineas Newborn style).

The only real criticism I have of his playing can be traced to his immaturity, both musically and in years. He tends to want to play everything in the same tempo. To be more explicit, he feels so relaxed at up-tempos that even in ballads he resorts to double-timing in order to utilize his technique. Also, he has a few figures of which he is fond. These appear a little too often in his playing. As soon as Phineas gets over the idea that he must create an impression the first time around the nightclub circuit, I am sure these minor faults will disappear.

Biographically, Phineas' history is not startling. The son of Phineas Newborn, Sr., a fine drummer and band leader in Memphis, he and his brother, Calvin, one year his junior, had an early musical beginning (Calvin plays guitar in the Phineas Newborn Quartet and is heard on some of the sides in this album). Phineas started the study of piano at the age of six with the pianist in his fathers band. He continued right through high (trumpet, tuba, baritone horn, French horn). Later on, he learned the vibes, and in college and the Arm/ he acquired the baritone, tenor and alto saxophones. Those who have heard him say he is nearly as fantastic on these various instruments as he is on the piano. For­tunately, Phineas has concentrated on piano and does not try to impress us with his versatility.

His formal education, in addition to graduating from the Memphis School System, consists of two years as a music major at Tenn. A & I. Later on he spent a year at Lemoyne College in Memphis, before he was drafted into the Army in August 1953. He was discharged in June 1955, and played with his father's band until last month when he made the break after the Willard Alex­ander agency convinced him he should come North and let the world hear his talent. I am sure that Count Basic, who is Phineas' greatest booster, had much influence on his decision.

As in any record, the music in this album speaks for itself. My personal favorites are the Clifford Brown Daahoud, and a very Tatumesque Newport Blues. I also like his treatment of the Ellington standard I’m Beginning to See the Light. He is accompanied very ably by two jazz greats, Oscar Pettiford on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums, in addition to his brother Calvin on guitar.                                             

- GEORGE WEIN”

Leonard Feather, who, as noted, became an early and frequent champion of Phineas’ music, offered these cogent observations about him and comparisons with other Jazz pianists in the liner notes to Phineas’ 1969 Contemporary album, Please Send Me Someone to Love [S-7622; OJCCD 947-2:

“For a more than a half century, there was a series of evolutions in keyboard jazz, which originated in ragtime, then was marked by the successive advent of stride, with its volleying left hand; horn-style piano, characterized mainly by a fusillade of octaves or long runs of single notes in the right hand; bebop piano, with its central concern for harmonic experiments and relatively limited left-hand punctua­tions; and a 1950s trend marked by a concern for rich, full chords and a more expansive left-hand concept.

The only pianist who succeeded in absorbing many character­istics of each of these phases, in fact the first authentic and com­plete virtuoso of jazz piano, was Art Tatum. His death in 1956 seemed to close the book; there was no room for development, no area to examine that he had not already explored.

Time has shown that there were indeed other directions. The atonal improvisations of Cecil Taylor were acclaimed by many observers as taking jazz forward into a freer, more abstract music. Bill Evans launched what I once characterized, in an essay on jazz piano for Show magazine (July 1963), as the Serenity School, cre­ating new harmonic avenues, new voicings, swinging without hammering, asserting tersely yet subtly, rarely rising above a mezzo-forte. McCoy Tyner, armed with exceptional technical facili­ty, moved along still another route with extensive use of modes as a departure from the traditional chordal basis.

All these changes during the late 1950s and throughout the '60s did nothing to demolish the theory that Art Tatum represent­ed the ultimate. Coincidentally, it was during the year of Tatum's death that Phineas Newborn, Jr. first came to New York and emerged from Memphis obscurity (he was born Dec. 14,1931 in Whiteville, Tenn.) to establish himself as the new pianistic pianist, in the Tatum tradition.

In the abovementioned Show article, I wrote: "Most astonish­ing of the dexterous modernists is Phineas Newborn, Jr. As small, timid, and frail as Peterson is big and burly, Newborn belies his meek manner with a relentlessly aggressive style. His technique can handle any mechanical problem and he has, moreover, a quick, sensitive response to the interaction of melody and harmo­ny." Commenting that most critics tended to be skeptical of tech­nical perfection, I wrote of Newborn's A World of Piano! album (Contemporary S-7600) that it was "the most stunning piano set since Tatum's salad days in the 1930s."

A year later, in 1964, I went out on a rare limb to declare unequivocally, in Down Beat, "Newborn is the greatest living jazz pianist."

Five years later, while perfectly content to let that categorical statement remain on the record, I reflected on what esthetic, what ratiocination led me to this conclusion. Under the spell of a set by Peterson in top form I might have made a similar remark. In either case, my reaction would have been primarily emotional, but the emotions in evaluating a work of art are often guided, per­haps subliminally, by a consciousness of the craftsmanship required for its creation.

Despite the chattering of the anti-intellectuals, I cannot see how any possible advantage can be found in technical limitation. Clearly technique can be abused, or used without imagination; 1 can think of a dozen popular pianists, some of them well-known via network television, who have made this point painfully clear. But a man like Newborn, who reached his present command of the instrument by practicing perhaps six or seven hours a day, automatically has an advantage over the simplistic artist, who resorts to simple figures and clichés only because that is as far as his fingers and mind will take him.

Phineas demonstrates all the virtues and none of the handi­caps (if there are any) inherent in knowing how to use the piano. Taking him on his own terms, he's an involved, committed artist, for whom the instrument is virtually an extension of the man. This would not be possible if he were in any way hamstrung by not being able to execute whatever idea may cross his mind.

I won't deny that when he uses a personal device, such as the parallel lines in unison an octave apart, I am impressed by the ease with which he dashes off such passages; but even more meaningful to me is the originality and artistry of the melodic structure he has been able to build.

When Phineas plays the blues, as he does on at least three tracks in this album, it is not down-home, backwoods blues, but it's just as deep a shade of blue, and comes just as straight from the heart, as if he were a primitive trying to make something meaningful out of three chord changes and a couple of riffs. I hear in him all that is emotional, as well as all that is cerebral and virtuosic, about jazz piano in one of its most sophisticated forms.”

If you spend some time listening to the music of Phineas Newborn, Jr., I think that it would be safe to say that you, too will “… hear in him all that is emotional, as well as all that is cerebral and virtuosic, about jazz piano in one of its most sophisticated forms.”

After all, if Leonard Feather is indeed correct, there have only been two other Jazz pianists comparable to Phineas in the history of Jazz: - Bud Powell and Art Tatum.

Not bad company, eh?

Dameronia: Theatre de Boulogne Billancourt/Paris

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

“There are artists who create beauty but whose character fails to reflect it; Tadd was not one of those."
- Dan Morgenstern

Here’s another installment in our ongoing feature about the late composer and arranger Tadd Dameron [1917-1965], this time from the perspective of Dameronia, a tribute band originally created by Tadd’s close friend, drummer Philly Joe Jones.

The origins, personnel and music of Dameronia are discussed at length by the esteemed Jazz writer and critic Dan Morgenstern in the following insert notes which he prepared for the Soul Note CD - Dameronia: Live at The Theatre Boulogne-Billancourt/Paris [121202-2] - and which Dan has graciously allowed us to reprint on these pages.

© -  Dan Morgenstern; used with the author’s permission; copyright protected; all rights reserved. [Paragraphing modified to fit blog format.]

“It is both touching and ironic that a band (Dameronia) that was formed in memory of a great musician (Tadd Dameron) by another great musician (Philly Joe Jones) who had learned much from him was in turn reincarnated some four years after Philly Joe's death to commemorate both Tadd and Philly Joe, and that this performance by that band, now issued five years later, becomes a further memorial to two fallen heroes who performed so well on that occasion, Walter Davis Jr. and Clifford Jordan.

And what was the occasion? A concert held at the Theatre de Boulogne Billancourt, not far from Paris (whose denizens know it as TBB) as part of the fifth season of spring jazz events, in 1989 dedicated to the theme "Around Charlie Parker." And that theme certainly fits the music of Tadd Dameron, whose most famous Parker-associated tune is the opener on this program, Hot House.

Dameron was a very special presence on the modern jazz scene. Like Thelonius Monk, who also was that rare thing - a quintessential jazz composer - Tadd was in but not of bebop.

To be sure, many of his pieces lent themselves well to bop (among those included here, that would fit the two blues, Good Bait and The Squirrel; Lady Bird and the aforementioned Hot House). Moreover, it was in particular Dizzy Gillespie, who came to love Tadd's writing while in the Billy Eckstine band, who took many of Tadd's charts into his own big band after Mr. B had given up band leading. Also, it was Dizzy's replacement in the Eckstine band, Fats Navarro, who became perhaps the supreme interpreter of Dameron's music.

Yet the rich and warm harmonies and essentially romantic melodies that flowed from Tadd's imagination were neither structurally nor rhythmically bebop per se. A piece like the lovely tone-poem Fontainebleau may be closer in spirit to Duke Ellington, and to the world of big band music into which Dameron was born.

Professionally, he came to music relatively late, at age 21, after he'd given up studying medicine because he couldn't tolerate the sight of carnage and suffering. His first recorded arrangements and compositions appeared in 1941/42, on discs by Harlan Leonard and his Rockets, a Kansas City band. He subsequently wrote for Lunceford (who recorded some of his charts) and Basie (who didn't, but played them; we have airchecks), and Don Redman (who performed Tadd's For Europeans Only in 1946 in Copenhagen, where I first heard a sample of Dameronia).

By next spring, I'd emigrated to the U.S., and in 1948, I found myself at the Royal Roost, listening to Tadd's fine band with Fats Navarro, Kai Winding and Allen Eager. I was escorting not one but two quite stunning girls, one of whom knew some of the cats in the band. When they came by on their break, the only one who took the slightest interest in me was Tadd, who was so friendly to and curious about this 19-year-old European import that I never forgot it.

Years later, Tadd and I became friends. There are artists who create beauty but whose character fails to reflect it; Tadd was not one of those. He was a gentle and noble soul, and consequently, life kicked him hard. Drugs became a way to hide from pain; but they cost him dearly: first his freedom, then his health.

Had Tadd Dameron had an orchestra, or a permanent smaller group at his disposal, there's no telling what his legacy could have been. Meanwhile, we must be thankful that he was productive enough to leave us more that a few works of substance. In Dameronia, there was finally, if only temporarily, a first-class ensemble to interpret them.

Dameronia wasn't launched overnight. Philly Joe had long nursed a dream of forming a band to give Tadd "credit for all the beautiful music he left us," but first that music had to be put together. Sadly, almost all Dameron's scores had been lost over the years. lt was when the drummer met multi-faceted Don Sickler- trumpeter, transcriber, researcher, publisher- that Dameronia began to take shape. Don and his friend and fellow transcriber, pianist John Oddo (perhaps best known today for his excellent work with Rosemary Clooney) went to work on Tadd's recorded music, mostly following the original instrumentation, but sometimes (as in the case here of Soultrane, a quartet recording) adapting Tadd's piano voicings to an expanded instrumental!urn- and very idiomatically, it must be acknowledged.Eventually, a library of 19 scores was ready for performing.

Dameronia made its debut in Philly Joe's hometown, where he'd first worked with Tadd in singer-saxophonist Bullmoose Jackson's band, and after its Philadelphia engagement, the band opened in April of 1982 at the short lived but well remembered Lush Life club in Greenwich Village. 

The reviews were ecstatic. As Robert Palmer wrote in the New York Times, "word spread that something extraordinary was happening...... By the weekend, the club was packed for every set, and people had to be turned away. A loving and scholarly re-creation turned into a box office smash." Two months later a record was made for the small but enterprising Uptown label.

That original group included several players also on hand for this recreation; Sickler, of course; saxophonists Frank Wess and Cecil Payne; bassist Larry Ridley, and Walter Davis Jr. By the time Dameronia made its second album for Uptown in July 1983, Virgil Jones and Benny Powell were also on hand. So this 1989 version was a very authentic Dameronia. It was a wise choice to let young Kenny Washington fill the late leader's shoes; Kenny loves Philly Joe's playing and understands it so well that he doesn't need to copy. As for Clifford Jordan, he was a more than able replacement for the group's original tenor sax, Charles Davis.

Indeed, this was a formidable saxophone section, led by a master, Frank Wess, and anchored by one of the bosses of the baritone, Cecil Payne, who'd worked and recorded with Tadd back in 1949. As for the brass, the underrated Virgil Jones is among the most able of trumpeters on the New York scene, while Benny Powell has continued to grow in stature as a soloist since leaving Basie many years ago, and director Sickler, when he lets himself take a sole role, shows he can hold is own fast company. We've mentioned Kenny Washington; his rhythm section mates leave nothing to be desired. Professor Larry Ridley knows and loves Tadd's music, and Walter Davis Jr. was a true master of both solo and accompaniment, and never played better than during the final years of his life.

Ensemble figures work well behind the soloists on Hot House; they are Jones, Powell, Payne and Davis. This is an expansion of a quintet piece, while Mating Call (like Gnid and Soultrane) stems from the famous quartet album of the same name, with Coltrane and Philly Joe. Jordan's solo is the centerpiece here, and Clifford certainly had Trane in mind. Fine Davis here, too. Gnid's pretty melody is in Wess's good hands for openers; after the piano solo, Powell comes into his own. Benny's humor here brings to mind his early favorite, Bill Harris. Wess returns for the recapitulation of the theme, authoritatively.

There was a time when no jam session was complete without a rendition of Lady Bird- it's the kind of piece that makes musicians want to play. Clifford is outstanding here, and Ridley has a fine solo spot. Good fills by the drummer spruce up the finale. (There was a big-band version of this piece in the Gillespie book, but the most famous recording, of course, was the Blue Note one with Fats.) Good Bait is taken at the right tempo-relaxed. Both trumpeters are heard here, as well as Powell and Davis- the latter is outstanding; at times, he came closer to the essence of Bud Powell than any other pianist but always with his own accent.

Soultrane belongs to Frank Wess, who here reminds of the still-so-fresh Benny Carter. Frank's tone is gorgeous, without ever becoming too sweet, and his intonation is impeccable. Payne's fat sound adds to the ensemble flavor, and Frank tops it all off with an elegant cadenza. (I'm looking forward to playing this cut on the radio.)

The Squirrel is a blues that captures the motions of its namesake. Davis's fills are in a Tadd groove, Payne takes five booting choruses, there's an ensemble variation (probably based on a solo from one of the many recorded versions), nice Jones trumpet, and an agile arco solo by Ridley. Philly Joe Jones is one instance where all original recording had the exact instrumentation of Dameronia. The changes remind of Dizzy's Woody'n You, and while Kenny is marvelous here in the featured role, using dynamics, space and imagination brilliantly, we should also mention Jordan's best solo (I think) on this disc, and the fine piano. This piece builds to a genuine climax and Larry was right to ask Kenny to take a bow.

We conclude with a masterpiece- the mini-suite Fontainebleau inspired by a visit when Tadd was in France for the first time for the 1949 Paris Jazz Festival (where Miles Davis, James Moody and Kenny Clarke were sidemen in his group). The three segments (La Foret, Les Cygnes, L 'Adieu) are performed without interruption, and the shining instrumental textures allow each instrument a moment in the sun. The playing here does justice to a composition that indicates what Tadd might have been capable of creating in larger forms had he been given the opportunity.But we're lucky to have what we have of Tadd Dameron's legacy, which this recording further enhances.”

- Dan Morgenstern

The following video montage of images of drummers Philly Joe Jones and Kenny Washington is accompanied by the Dameronia version of Tadd’s Philly JJ that was recorded at Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York City in August 1988. Kenny’s drum solos on the piece give a nod to Philly Joe Jones’s influence but are powerfully Kenny’s statement from conception to execution. Today’s Jazz drummers tend to be in the ambit of Elvin Jones and Tony Williams, but Kenny found his muse in Philly.

Roy Hargrove: "Moment to Moment"

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

Roy Hargrove, like a generation of “Modernist” trumpet players who made the Jazz scene primarily in the 1980s through to the present -  a group that includes Wynton Marsalis, Terell Stafford, Terence Blanchard, Nicholas Payton, Scott Wendholt, Tim Hagans and Ryan Kisor - “are all formidable technicians with a deep respect and understanding of the trumpet tradition going back to Louis Armstrong.” [Randy Sandke in Bill Kirchner, editor, The Oxford Companion to Jazz].

I recently came across a radio broadcast of Roy Hargrove performing with The Metropole Orchestra on July 15, 2000 at the The North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland and was particularly impressed by his rendition of Henry Mancini’s title theme to the 1965 movie Moment to Moment, a tune that has always been one of my favorite ballads.

It prompted me to do a bit of research on Roy that led to this synopsis of his approach to Jazz as contained in Richard Cook and Brian Morton’s The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed which includes sentiments about Roy’s playing with which I very much agree.

"While much of the new jazz of the 1990's attracted criticism for excessive orthodoxy or mere executive showmanship, it's less often remarked that many of today's younger players exhibit a rhythmic bravado and harmonic lucidity which are a natural step forward from (and within) the tradition. After the sideways evolutionary paths of fusion, the so-called neo-classicism which players like Hargrove represent offers a dramatic refocusing, if not any particular radicalism. Hargrove is a highly gifted trumpeter whose facility and bright, sweet tone bring a sense of dancing fun to his music. But he is steadily working towards a gravitas that places him in the trumpet lineage as surely as [Wynton] Marsalis or [Jon] Faddis."

The following video features Roy’s radio broadcast performance of Moment to Moment from the July/2000 NSJF with the Metropole Orchestra conducted by Vince Mendoza. The arrangement is by pianist Larry Willis.

Social Aide & Pleasure Clubs And Jazz in New Orleans

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

Strutting and jumping and high-stepping underneath their decorated parasols, blowing whistles and waving feathered fans, the African-American members of New Orleans’ social aid and pleasure clubs are the organizers, originators, and sponsors of the second line parades for which the city is famous. The brass band that follows the parade’s grand marshal and club members, who are always dressed in coordinated suits and classy hats, blast out exuberant rhythms to propel everyone’s high-spirited march through the streets. The club and brass band are known as the first line, and the audience that forms behind the parade to join in the festivities is the second, hence the term second line parade.

African-American social aid and pleasure clubs aren't just about parading, however. They grew out of organizations of the mid to late 1800s called benevolent societies, which many different ethnic groups in New Orleans formed. Serving a purpose that today has largely been supplanted by insurance companies, benevolent societies would help dues-paying members defray health care costs, funeral expenses, and financial hardships. They also fostered a sense of unity in the community, performed charitable works, and hosted social events. Benevolent societies always had strong support in the African-American population, and some scholars trace the roots of the African-American societies back to initiation associations of West African cultures from where the majority of New Orleans blacks originally came.

For the burial of a member, African-American benevolent associations would often hire bands to play somber, processional music on the way from the church to the cemetery. On the way back, the music would become upbeat and joyous with mourners now celebrating the deceased’s life; tears about the person who had passed gave way to gratitude that the person had even been blessed to exist. The brass bands that played in these processions, known as “jazz funerals,” mixed military marching music with African rhythms.

In modern times, social aid and pleasure clubs no longer serve all the former functions of benevolent societies, but they do continue to unify communities and neighborhoods and are source of cultural pride among African-Americans. Club dues normally cost hundreds of dollars a year along with additional expenses for the sharp suits, shoes, and general finery that members wear.

Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans African-American social aid and pleasure clubs numbered in the forties, and a different club “rolled” just about every Sunday except during the summer. While the parades were rarely advertised or well publicized, second line devotees would know the time and location of the route. Social aid and pleasure clubs are now struggling, but some are still parading. Those who love the tradition come out and bring a handkerchief to wipe away tears and to wave aloft.

In New Orleans, about 40 such clubs hold "second line" parades on Sundays from August to May. A second line parade is led by the club captain and members, followed by the grand marshal and the brass band. Everyone who joins the spontaneous dancing behind the band is in the second line, hence the name.

"I try to make 'em all," says Richard Martin of the Young Men's Olympian Junior Benevolent Society, "I just like good second-line music, At the end of the day,we used to empty all our pockets just to keep the band around for a few more hours."

A brass band led by an umbrella-toting grand marshal is a quintessential symbol of life in New Orleans. It's meant to convey the flamboyant and funky spirit New Orleanians can muster for the most common or uncommon of occasions. Less well known is the history of the organizations that developed and carried on the legacy.

During the days of Jim Crow and segregation, insurance companies wouldn't sell policies to African-Americans. To take care of their families and communities, African-Americans banded together in benevolent societies that paid for doctors and provided funerals for deceased members. The original benevolent societies maintained their own cemetery plots. The Young Men's Olympians still hold a large plot in St. Joseph's Cemetery.

The Olympians will celebrate their 130th anniversary at its annual parade this September/2014. While the group has joined the second-line trend and wears elaborate outfits, their funeral marches adhere to the old customs. They wear black and white and observe solemnity during the first half of the procession. "You don't play jazz 'til the body is in the ground," Martin says. "It's different from the second line because that is when you get funky." The ubiquitous tune "When the Saints Go Marching In" is a traditional hymn played by brass bands in what came to be known as jazz funerals.

Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs provide members with jazz funerals but don’t own cemetery plots. Walter “Twiggy” Taylor is the President of the Scene Boosters Social Aid and Pleasure Club, founded in 1973. Several years ago, his uncle received a full Jazz funeral from the Boosters. “We sent him out in style - the way he lived,” Taylor said. “It’s his last go-around. So in the neighborhood where he was well-known we took the body out of the hearse and walked the casket. If there was somewhere he hung  out a lot we put the casket on the porch.”

For the annual parades, clubs work all year to raise money and design new outfits. The Scene Boosters started the trend towards identical outfits. Matching clothes from head to toe. Members also wear sashes, dangling corsages and hats and carry elaborately decorated fans and umbrellas.

“We compete against ourselves - to do better than we did last year,” Taylor said. “When we hit the street, our work speaks for itself. We don’t have to say anything.”

Here are two video montages that may help provide the look and feel of New Orleans on parade.

The first features the photography of William Claxton set to Cry Me A River as performed by the Eric Alexander-David Hazeltine Quartet with Dwayne Burno on bass and Joe Farnsworth on drums. [Click on the "X" to close out of the ads.]

The second video montage contains many of the posters used at the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and features bassist Ark Ovrutski’s quintet performing his original composition New Orleans with Michael Dease, trombone, Michael Thomas, soprano saxophone, David Berkman, piano and Ulysses Owens, drums.

Dick Grove: "Little Bird Suite" [From the Archives]

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

Although we couldn’t remember exactly when, an Internet friend informs us that we acquired our LP copy of composer-arranger Dick Grove’s Little Bird Suite [Pacific Jazz #74] in 1963.

Dick was very active in Southern California Jazz and musical circles dating back to the mid-1950s when, as its pianist, he was a member of the Westlake College of Music Quintet that won the “Easter-week, Intercollegiate Jazz Festival” sponsored by bassist Howard Rumsey and the famed Lighthouse Café in Hermosa Beach, CA.

Under the direction of John Graas, one of the few French-Horn players who specialized in Jazz and who was also a composer-arranger, the award winning quintet recorded an album for Decca – College Goes to Jazz: The Westlake College Quintet [DL 8393]. 

Dick would subsequently teach at Westlake, the archetype for Jazz conservatories. The college was founded in 1945 in a Beaux-Arts house located near 6^th and Alvarado, not too far from downtown Los Angeles. The college is no longer in existence.

He later formed his own Dick Grove School of Music in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles. Dick’s school offered classes in harmony & theory, composition, orchestration and arranging, keyboards, songwriting, et al. For a full list of Dick’s credits go here.

I spent some time in one of Dick’s rehearsal bands. He was a marvelous educator, an extremely kind and gracious person and one of the few composer-arrangers who actually knew how to write a drum part that keyed the drummer into what was going on in the music instead of simply writing “8-bars of swing on the hi hat” and having a few downbeats noted here and there for “bass drum” or “cymbal crash.”

Leonard Feather wrote these informative liner notes for Dick Grove’s Little Bird Suite and they are followed by two videos that features the Circlet and Doodad tracks from the album with Paul Horn on alto saxophone and Bill Robinson on baritone saxophone as feature soloists,

“It seems that there is always a stage in the career of every major artist at which the remark is made by surprised listeners: "Where has he been all these years?," or "Why hadn't I heard of him before?" With the obvious exception of child prodigies, most of the important contributors have to go through this phase; in the case of Dick Grove there can be no doubt that it will be the near-unanimous reaction to this album.

As was the case with Clare Fischer, Gil Evans and others now recognized as important arrangers, Dick Grove had to wait until he was in his thirties before he could make any impact on the jazz scene. Unlike the others, he is a latecomer in the actual craft of writing. "It's only in the last three years," he says, "that I really learned to write, to the point where I could say I wanted to."

Born December 18, 1927, in Lakeville, Indiana, he was not seriously interested in music until about 1942. "My mother and brother were both musicians; he was quite a bit older and played in movie houses, piano and organ. I didn't study until I got out of high school and went to Denver U. for a couple of years. I'm mainly self-taught, trial and error style. I picked up piano and-used to double on vibes."

In 1954 he moved out to California, concentrating for the most part on backing singers, writing and teaching. He played with Alvino Rey for a while (but then, who hasn't?), and lately has done some effective playing and writing (without any credit for the writing) on records with Mavis Rivers.

"Didn't you ever try to submit anything to any of the name bands?" I asked him.

"No, I got into sort of a trap, by getting things going in my own direction. If I were to submit something to Harry James, say, I would have to write the way the Harry James band plays. Or if I wrote for Basie in the Basie style, it wouldn't be me at all. I almost got to the point where I was going to have to do something like that, but I feel I have something of my own to say and it finally dawned on me that anything I do is worth more to me under my own name."

In this manner, the necessity for personal expression became the mother of orchestral invention and the Dick Grove Orches­tra came into existence.

The band has been together, with a few personnel variations, for three years, but chiefly as a rehearsal group. Lately there have been a few in person appearances at college concerts; the plan, now that the group has finally been committed to records, is to keep together, play more concerts and go on the road if and when the demand warrants it.

Of his influences, Dick says: "Naturally I admire Gil Evans, mainly for the mature conception he has; but rhythmically I write very differently." An important difference also is that Gil's best known ventures have been arrangements of standard material, whereas Dick essentially is a composer-arranger who concentrates on his own original themes.

Of the instrumentation, he comments: "I use the regular basic set-up of reeds, brass and rhythm, but I don't write by sections. There are so many ways to create variety through unusual voicings or instrumental combinations.

"All the trumpets double on flugelhorn, which gives a better blend with the woodwinds. I use the piano occasionally, but only as an orchestral thing, not in the rhythm section.

"All the originals in this album except Little Bird were origi­nally commissioned by Dave Robbins' Jazz Workshop. Dave is a trombonist and conductor; his orchestra is heard every other week from Vancouver in a government-subsidized Canadian radio series. I've been writing for him regularly for a couple of years. The versions in the album are slightly different.

"As for Little Bird —it started out as a thing called Blues Two Ways. Pete Jolly took the background theme of the minor part and made a separate 16-bar thing out of it, as a bossa nova. Tommy Wolf added lyrics and it became Little Bird. As it turned out, we were pretty lucky with it; we got seven recorded ver­sions, and my own makes it eight."

There is a suite-like relationship, Dick says, between the three tunes on the first side and the first two on the second side. In other words, the five compositions with bird references in the titles, though they stand by themselves as entities, are tied together in the sense that they make logical continuous listening.

Nighthawk, the moderately paced but firmly-swinging opener, gives immediate exposure to Grove's extraordinary flair for color and variety of timbres in orchestration. There is also a prompt introduction of the soloist who, on the strength of this album, seems certain to earn the belated publicity as an instru­mentalist that Grove will acquire as a writer. His name is Joe Burnett; coincidentally, he is Grove's age. Dallas-born, he has played with just about every name band from Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson to Woody Herman and (of course) Charlie Barnet; but he has never had any substantial solo exposure on records. His solo vehicle here is the flugelhorn and his work shows a lyrical beauty that establishes him as the orches­tra's most remarkable instrumental voice.

Bird of Paradaiso, the longest and most brilliantly variegated track, is practically a concerto for Burnett. His lonesome wistful sound, unaccompanied, serves as an introduction and main­tains a sense of tension until, a minute and a half in, a tempo is established by Pena and Jeffries. By using a cluster type of voicing, Grove achieves special moments of rich orchestral texture, these passages being skillfully interwoven with the flugelhorn’s statements.

Mosca Espanola is a vivid pastiche of sounds all the way from the opening F and B Flat triads, through the opening ensembles into the sharply delineated Bill Robinson baritone solo, the gracefully swinging Dick Hurwitz trumpet, and on to the closing passages throughout which bass and drums are ingeniously integrated. The instrumentation in a passage near the beginning, in which I thought I heard muted trombones, actually is played by four open horns, with flugelhorn on top, two tenor trombones and bass trombone.

This voicing, Dick points out, is used at other points, some­times with bass clarinet added, as is the case in Canto de Oriole. The latter is a moody, almost stately piece, performed with an obviously keen, sensitive ear for dynamic and phrasing requirements on the part of every man in the orchestra. Both here and on the preceding track, Little Bird, one is constantly aware of the importance of Jeffries' and Pena's roles, not only as resolute swingers but as part of the overall sound. (Pena's parts in Oriole and Paradaiso were all written out.) Little Bird is noteworthy also for the work of Paul Horn, one of the most accomplished flutists in contemporary jazz; and for the tenor by Bob Hardaway.

Doodad and Circlelet, as noted above, are in a slightly dif­ferent bag from the rest of the compositions, though they retain the ingredients essential to the very personal Grove palette. Paul Horn is the featured alto soloist on both; his sound on alto for several years has been one of the very few distinctive ones on this horn. Circlelet also provides another glimpse of Bill Robinson's full-blooded baritone. Doodad is perhaps closer to the standard big band concept, in structure and sounds; than any of the other works in this set.

Repeated hearings of the album will reveal much more than can be outlined in any verbal summation. There are so many intricate or unusual uses of various tonal colors —the flute dou­bling the lead an octave higher, the woodwinds above the brass, the added warmth obtained through the use of the flugelhorns — that the whole set of performances takes on more interest at each hearing, both technically and harmonically.

Not the least noteworthy aspect of Dick Grove's success is his ability to achieve these results without resorting to such devices as atonality or continuous meter-shifting. "There are so many things that can be done within the present frame­work," he says, "and my feeling is, if you can't hear it, you shouldn't write it."

Clearly there are so many things he can hear that the lis­tener's ear is engaged from the first moment and never allowed to wander as the album follows its polychromatic course.

If orchestral jazz is going to survive, the strength of its will to live must depend on the initiatives of men like Dick Grove. And because of men like him, I am confident that its survival is assured.

-LEONARD FEATHER”