Joel Dorn: 1942 - 2007 - “The Masked Announcer” [From the Archives]

“I became a lifelong Horace Silver fan back in the ‘Sister Sadie’/ ‘Senior Blues’ days. I loved the bands he put together as much as I dug his playing and composing. I especially liked his front lines, Donald Byrd and Hank Mobley, Woody Shaw and Joe Henderson and, of course, Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook.

For me, the band with Blue and Junior was special; it had a phenomenal feel. Some of his other quintets may have been more famous or "better," but the group with Blue and Junior (and Roy Brooks and Gene Taylor) had a thing all its own. I used to catch them at The Showboat in Philly in the early sixties. Even on the last set on a Tuesday morning when the joint was practically empty, that band smoked. They always brought it. And on the weekends when the club was wall to wall people -forget about it.

Those Showboat memories and the fact that Junior rarely recorded as a leader make having these two albums in our catalog very sweet. As usual, I won't discuss the music, but I'd like to use this space to make amends for something I did more than thirty years ago.

When I was twenty-three, I wrote liner notes for one of Horace's Blue Note albums, Silver's Serenade. In those notes, I tried to make a point by using a boxing analogy in which I referred to Junior's playing as ‘middleweight.’ Being young and foolish, I didn't realize at the time how condescending and thoughtless that remark was. When I read those notes a few months back, that ill-conceived sentence literally jumped off the page and bit me. Junior Cook was no "middleweight"; he was the real thing.

He's gone now so I can't apologize to him personally, but I truly hope that he wasn't offended the time a lightweight called him a middleweight.”

- Joel Dorn

“I'll tell you one story about Rahsaan. In the late 60s we were in the studio getting ready to mix one of his albums. He wouldn't let me start working with the tapes until I could ‘do it like me.’ I didn't know what he meant. He told me to sit down and close my eyes. He got behind the chair and started to wrap my head, mummy style, with masking tape from the neck up. Enough room was left for me to breathe. When Rahsaan was convinced that I couldn't see, he held a gun to head and said ‘I just want you to know how I feel all the time.’ He wasn't out of control, or crazy or menacing or evil or anything...he was cool. He was just telling me something.”

- Joel Dorn

“Enjoy the music, always say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You,’ and I’ll talk to you later.

Keep a light in the window.”

- Joel Dorn

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights

While doing research for its continuing series on small, independent Jazz record companies, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles recently came across a listing of the Jazz recordings made possible by veteran record producer, Joel Dorn [1942-2007].

We thought it might be nice to “Thank” Joel for all that he’s done for the music with a brief remembrance on these pages.

Dorn, a one-time disc-jockey at a Philadelphia jazz radio station, was perhaps best known for his work with Atlantic Records' prestigious jazz stable between 1967 and 1974. Working alongside the label's Jazz chief, Nesuhi Ertegun, he produced recordings by musicians such as Max Roach, Herbie Mann, Les McCann and Eddie Harris, Mose Allison and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

In the pop field, he helped set Bette Midler and Flack on the course to stardom, producing their debut albums. He and Flack won consecutive record-of-the-year Grammys, for "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" (1972) and "Killing Me Softly With His Song" (1973).

He also ventured into rock with the Allman Brothers Band's second release, 1970's "Idlewild South," and Don McLean's 1974 album, "Homeless Brother." (McLean was the inspiration for the songwriters of "Killing Me Softly...")

In his later years, he formed his own labels - 32 Jazz and Label M - both of which combined in reissuing over 250 classic Muse and Landmark recordings.

Joel also oversaw reissues of classic jazz albums for Columbia Records, Rhino Records and GRP Records including including a 13-CD historical overview of the Atlantic Jazz years, a 7-CD John Coltrane boxed-set entitled The Heavyweight Champion and collections by Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Cannonball Adderley, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Les McCann, Eddie Harris and Oscar Brown, Jr.

In 1995, the Smithsonian Institute added Joel’s works and papers to its permanent collection in honor of his accomplishments as a record producer.

At the time of his death, he was a partner in the roots label Hyena Records, and was working on a five-disc tribute to his mentor, "Homage A Nesuhi."

Here is some of Joel’s own writing in the form of an excerpt from his insert notes to 20 Special Fingers 32 Jazz two-fer [#32125] which is followed by a video tribute to him using the Fiesta Español track from tenor saxophonist Junior Cook’s 32 Jazz Senior Cookin CD 32095 [Cedar Walton, piano, Buster Williams, bass, Billy Higgins, drums. The tune is by Cedar].

© -Joel Dorn, copyright protected; all rights

“Back in the late fifties, when I was in high school and just get­ting into jazz, I read every issue of Down Beat from cover to cover. If I'd paid as much at­tention to my schoolbooks, I might have become a successful orthodontist with two or three offices and a pension fund with eight or nine hundred grand in it. Or maybe I'd be one of those divorce lawyers who gets twenty-five thousand up front just to take your case and is a master of the gentle art of double billing.

But no, I wanted to produce jazz albums, so to find out what was happening "on the scene," I read Down Beat. I might not have known how to figure out the square root of 422 or what the specific gravity of bauxite is, but I could tell you where Cannonball Adderley's quintet played last week and how many stars the latest Horace Silver album got.

When they said that so-and-so was the next great sax or piano or trumpet player, I assumed they were right. What'd I know? I was a kid. But in 1958. some­thing happened that gave me an opportunity to form opinions of my own. A twenty-four hour, seven-day-a-week jazz station, WHAT-FM, went on the air in Philly. For the first time, I could actually hear albums and artists that up to then I'd only read about.

I discovered that Third Stream music and most avant-garde jazz, stuff the boys at Down Beat used to rave about, bored the shit out of me. And while we generally agreed on Cannon, Horace, Blakey and the like, we disagreed on organ/ tenor music (I dug it; they didn't). I could give you many more examples of where we dif­fered, but I think you get the point.

One artist whom Down Beat had an especially contemp­tuous attitude toward was a young pianist from Los Angeles by way of Lexington, Kentucky, named Les McCann. His records regularly got anywhere from half a star to one star from the crit­ics, and their reviews of his work were rife with condescension and disdain. I constantly read about his shortcomings and about how shallow and cliché-filled his playing was.

I'll get back to Les in a minute. During that same time, there were two artists whom

Down Beat and I both loved, The Mitchell/Ruff Duo, pianist Dwike Mitchell and bassist/French horn player Willie Ruff. The big news concerning them was that at the height of the Cold War, they were part of a cultural exchange program with the Russians. If you read the reports of their re­ception by the Evil Empire, you'd have sworn that world peace was just a couple of choruses away.

Years later when I was a disc jockey, one of the records I used to get a great response to was Les' Limelight recording of Franz Lehar's "Yours Is My Heart Alone." Every time I played it, the phones would light up. On one of his visits to the station, I asked Les how he came to that song. He said he'd heard Dwike Mitchell play it. Then he went on to sing Dwike's praises, not only as a great pianist but as one of his three major influences. (The other two were Errol Garner and Miles.)

Just as so many of Les' records were listener favorites, so too was the Mitchell/Ruff Trio's album, The Catbird Seat (they'd added Charlie Smith on drums).

I thought that since there was already a connection be­tween Les and Dwike, that you guys might enjoy these two al­bums in one package. We've been doing this two-different-artists thing lately with Yusef and Rahsaan (Separate But Equal- 32 Jazz, 32111); and we've got one coming that features Fathead and Hank. If these work – that means if they sell - we'll do more.

Despite Down Beat's early opinion of Les, he's had a fabu­lous career as a recording artist and on concert stages and in clubs the world over. I'm not sure, but I think Dwike and Willie have been very active on the aca­demic side of music. Somewhere in the back of my head, I remem­ber reading about a connection between them and Yale Univer­sity.

I haven't read Down Beat in  years. Not because there's any­thing wrong with it. It's just that when you cross that not-so-imaginary line that separates wide-eyed fans from the trenches of the music business, the price of the journey is a loss of innocence. It's not a bad thing, just a one-way bridge. Sometimes I wish I could be that kid again.

Anyway, enjoy the music, and I'll talk to you later.

Keep A Light In The Window,

Joel Dorn

Winter '99

P.S,: Late last year we re­leased a "live" album Les re­corded in 1967 called How's Your Mother? Down Beat gave it 4 1/2 stars. The gentleman who re­viewed it praised everything about Les' playing that the old gang at Down Beat used to put down. Go know.”

Oh, by the way, Joel, we will "put a light on in the window" for you and thanks again for all the great music.

Ben Webster [From the Archives]

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

“As his playing indicates, even if you have never met the man, Ben Webster is a large, passionate jazz musician with great pride in his calling. Ben is capable of many forms of intensity, including explo­sive anger, but he is particularly prone to long bouts of extraordinary ten­derness. Ben is accordingly a superior player of ballads as this album demonstrates with especial consistency. Unlike many of the younger jazzmen who seem afraid or embarrassed to reveal their more vulnerable fantasies and memories, Webster personalizes ballads with as much virility and power as he does the stompers. Ben, moreover, has lived and traveled a good many years. He's paid a lot of dues, and is still paying. When he plays a ballad, therefore, he gives the listener the distilled experience of one of the last American frontiersmen, the itinerant jazzman.

Webster has a number of vibrant virtues as a musician and they all coalesce with most effect on ballads. There is his large, enormously warm tone. There is also his deeply flowing beat which is as pulsatingly relaxed (but not flaccid) in the slowest numbers as in the more rocking [numbers] …. A third character­istic is his thoroughly individual style-phrasing as well as sound.

There is yet a further reason for Ben Webster's mastery of ballads. Like the late Lester Young (who was also able to make even the most familiar standard suddenly new) Ben Webster has a great affection for and interest in the better singers. Several of his ideas for repertory have come from a vocalist's interpretation of a particular song. Like Young, Ben is also aware of lyrics and knows what the intent and particular mood of each song is before he begins to improvise on it….”

- Nat Hentoff

Has there ever been a more distinctive tenor saxophone sound than Ben Webster’s? One breathy buzz before a note sounds and you know immediately that it’s him.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles can’t imagine why Big Ben hasn’t featured on these pages sooner.

To rectify matters, here are some excerpts from Whitney Baillett’s essay about Ben as found in his collection of forty-six pieces on Jazz, The Sound of Surprise, [1959].

The paragraphing has been modified from the original to fit the blog format.

“The saxophone, an uneasy amalgam of the oboe, clari­net, and brass families invented a century ago by a Bel­gian named Adolphe Sax, has always seemed an unfinished instrument whose success depends wholly on the dex­terity of its users. In the most inept hands, the trumpet, say, is always recognizable, while a beginner on the saxo­phone often produces an unearthly, unidentifiable bray­ing. Even good saxophonists are apt to produce squeaks, soughs, honks, or flat, leathery tones.

Thus, the few masters of the instrument—jazz musicians like Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Harry Carney, Hilton Jefferson, and Ben Webster (classical saxophonists usually play with a self-conscious sherbetlike tone)—deserve double praise. Ben Webster, the forty-nine-year-old tenor saxo­phonist from Kansas City, has for almost twenty years played with a subtle poignancy matched only by such men as Hawkins and Johnny Hodges (from both of whom he learned a good deal), Lucky Thompson, Herschel Evans, and Don Byas.

A heavy, sedate man, with wide, boxlike shoulders, who holds his instrument stiffly in front of him, as if it were a figurehead, Webster played in various big bands before the four-year tour of duty with Duke Ellington that began in 1939. Since then, he has worked with small units and his style, which was developed dur­ing his stay with Ellington, has become increasingly puri­fied and refined. Like the work of many sensitive jazz musicians, it varies a good deal according to tempo. In a slow ballad number, Webster's tone is soft and enormous, and he is apt to start his phrases with whooshing smears that give one the impression of being suddenly picked up by a breaker and carried smoothly to shore.

Whereas Hawkins tends to reshape a ballad into endless, short, busy phrases, Webster employs long, serene figures that often (particularly in the blues, which he approaches much as he might a ballad) achieve a fluttering, keening quality— his wide vibrato frequently dissolves into echoing, ghost­like breaths—not unlike that of a cantor. His tone abruptly shrinks in middle tempos and, as if it were too bulky to carry at such a pace, becomes an oblique yet urgent and highly rhythmic whispering, like a steady breeze stirring leaves.

In fast tempos a curious thing frequently happens. He will play one clean, rolling chorus and then—whether from uneasiness, excitement, or an attempt to express the inexpressible—adopt a sharp, growling tone that, used sparingly, can be extremely effective, or, if sustained for several choruses, takes on a grumpy, monotonous sound. At his best, though, Webster creates, out of an equal mix­ture of embellishment and improvisation, loose poetic melodies that have a generous air rare in jazz, which is capable of downright meanness.”

The following tribute to Ben features him on When I Fall in Love with Mundell Lowe, guitar, Jimmy Jones, piano, Milt Hinton, bass and Dave Bailey, drums. It is from Ben’s 1958 Verve recording The Soul of Ben Webster about which Benny Green of The Observer wrote in his liner notes:

“In a way, the story of Ben Webster's career is the story of jazz music itself over the past twenty years. For reasons best known to them­selves, the jazz writers who today fall over them­selves to describe the richness of Webster's ap­proach, ignored Webster (among others) for years, concentrating all their energies on younger, more modern players. It is always a fine thing to welcome young blood and new approaches in any art form, but never at the expense of the great practitioners who have gone before.

Ben Webster's eclipse seemed so complete to one who was living three thousand miles away from the action, that in the early 1950s his name was beginning to convey nothing more than a faint feeling of nostalgia for the elegant structure of his "What Am I "Here For", "Chloe", and "Just a Settin' and a Rockin' " solos with the vintage Ellington of the early 1940s.

The very healthy tendencies of modern jazz over the last few years, the return of the earthiness which should never really be absent from the very finest jazz, the inevitable slackening of stylistic barriers which follows in the wake of any successful artistic revolutions, and the blessed ability of the musicians themselves to ignore the tidy theorisms of the analysts, has meant come­backs for Ben Webster's generation in no un­certain manner.”

Coleman Hawkins and The Jazz Tradition

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

For whatever reason, lately I’ve been spending a lot of time with “the sweep of history” as it pertains to Jazz. Maybe it because the music is only a few years away from celebrating the 100th anniversary of its first recordings which the Original Dixieland Jazz Band made in 1918.

In this regard, I’ve turned to three books to satisfy my historical curiosity: [1] Marshall Stearns, The Story of Jazz; Martin Williams, The Jazz Tradition and Ted Gioia’s The History of Jazz which is now in its second edition.

For sake of simplification, Professor Stearns, the founder of the Institute of Jazz Studies, talks about stylistic developments in the evolution of Jazz; Martin Williams one of Jazz’s most distinguished authors, critics and reviewers focused on key figures in the shaping of the music over its first century while Ted Gioia, the award winning author, teacher and scholar tends to blend both approaches in his seminal work on Jazz history.

Having previously spent time on these pages with the noted essayist Whitney Balliett’s New Yorker Magazine feature on tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins which he simply entitled Bean [Coleman’s nickname among musicians], the editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to return to the subject of the man who almost singlehanded “invented” the Jazz saxophone [apologies to Benny Carter], this time through the capable and insightful work of Martin Williams.

Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane are deservedly considered to be the titans of the contemporary style of Jazz saxophone, but Coleman Hawkins, [along with Lester Young] was The Main Man for many years.

As Dizzy Gillespie said of Louis Armstrong: “No him, no me;” Sonny, Dexter and John could certainly say the same about Coleman Hawkins.

COLEMAN HAWKINS Some Comments on a Phoenix

“Periodically jazz musicians and listeners rediscover tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. Even during the time of major changes in the mid-'forties, the avid bebop partisan accepted Hawkins as a part of the jazz scene, as he accepted no others of Hawkins's contemporaries of the 'twenties and few of his companions of the 'thirties. One might call Hawkins a thorough professional, but he was also a major performer and he belonged to a generation in which these two things might go together as a matter of course.

Periodically Hawkins also seemed to rediscover himself. He listened to everyone, but however much his own playing reflected what he heard around him, Hawkins remained Hawkins.

Probably everyone who knows Hawkins's work has a favorite, relatively late recording on which he feels the saxophonist played particularly well. My own is the Shelly Manne-Hawkins LP called "2 3 4." Not only did Hawkins remain an exceptional player for decades he also recorded prolifically. An exhaustive survey of his records would be a lengthy and perhaps pointless task. But it might be useful to suggest the nature of his early style, indicate the course of his development, and point out what seems to me some of his more durable performances.

Coleman Hawkins's contribution has been so comprehensive that it is impossible for any tenor saxophonist to avoid some reflection of his influence unless that player were to do a fairly direct imitation of Lester Young or perhaps Bud Freeman. Yet, when one listens to Hawkins on his very earliest records, one hears no promise of his stature as a player. One hears a young man performing with calculated and rather superficial raucousness, a slap-tongue tenor player with little more than shallow irreverence to recommend him.

However, one can note that this clowning soloist obviously knows his instrument, knows his chords, and has a sure sense of time and tempo. Thus the Coleman Hawkins heard on his 1923-24 solos with the Fletcher Henderson orchestra. However, the Coleman Hawkins heard on Henderson's T.N.T., recorded in October 1925, is a very different player. The basis of the difference is quite apparent: rhythmically and melodically, Hawkins's brief solo is early Armstrong. The Stampede, made a few months after Armstrong's departure from the orchestra, is even more revealing. Cornetists Rex Stewart and Joe Smith burst forth with brass hyperboles, reaching for Armstrong's excitement. Coleman Hawkins follows Armstrong's lead too, but he treats his style not as a series of effects but rather as a series of definite musical ideas in a cohesive structure.

A year or so later, on Goose Pimples, the young Hawkins has become more himself, cutting through with the hard staccato phrases that characterize his playing of this period. However, on the 1928 version of King Porter Stomp we hear Hawkins still echoing the young Armstrong fairly directly.

The disappointing Hawkins of this period is the Hawkins of the twelve-bar blues. He is not a blues man, and he seems to have known it. But unlike some of the early stride pianists, he was not content merely to play the blues form without the feeling. And unlike, say, Earl Hines or Benny Carter, he was not prone to work out a personal and introspective style within the idiom. Hawkins set out to learn to play the blues with blues feeling. He did learn and he has played some very good blues, but to the end of his life he sounded as if the slow blues were, for him, something acquired.

Blazin’ from early 1929, seems to me one of the best early revelations of a developing Coleman Hawkins style, and in it we hear the increasing reliance on the vertical, on Hawkins's exact and growing knowledge of chords, and on spreads of arpeggios. From a sound, youthful grounding in music, especially in piano instruction, Hawkins knew the notes in chords and learned to form passing chords between assigned ones. He also had the clear example of jazz reed players like Jimmy Noone and Buster Bailey who played arpeggio styles. But it is interesting to learn that an encounter with the harmonic and embellishmental sophistication of pianist Art Tatum was a turning point in Hawkins's development.

His solos on the Mound City Blue Blowers' Hello Lola from 1929, and Henderson's Chinatown from the following year, show some of the dangers of his new approach. It is as if in making all the chords, Hawkins also became determined to make all the beats, and he made them in a more or less regular, heavy/light/heavy/light pattern. At faster tempos, once he was past his entrance, Hawkins's phrasing settled into a rhythmic regularity, and an almost brilliant articulation of proper notes sometimes trails off into a kind of rhythmic mutter. The risks involved became increasingly obvious in later performances: his knowledge of harmony, his regularity of rhythm, and his hardness of tone could lead him to mechanically formed solos delivered with a forced emotion.

On New King Porter Stomp, Underneath the Harlem Moon, Honeysuckle Rose, and other pieces from 1932, Hawkins found a temporary rhythm solution. He would assume a momentary rhapsodic stance: triplets and more complex phrases flutter and curve away from the beat, apparently without intending to swing. Although the ideas in these solos are fine, the rhapsodic phrases are delivered with an earnestness that is almost affected. He was using the same approach as late as 1937 on the justly celebrated recordings of Honeysuckle Rose and Crazy Rhythm done with Benny Carter in Paris.

Hawkins's early celebrated ballads, One Hour with the Blue Blowers (1929) and Talk of the Town with Henderson (1933), are both exceptional and both indicative of the mood that would yield his later masterpieces. But both are imperfect in revealing ways. Talk of the Town is a good improvisation weakened by lush effusiveness. One Hour is a better solo, a combination of lyric ideas and traditional jazz phrases; it makes all the chord changes properly and it is showy without being untidy. But Hawkins's tone is still especially hard and brittle, as if his only protection against sentimentality were to take on the mask of toughness.

A blues man might not have had problems with excess of tone and emotion because he might not have had sentimental temptations. Not that the Hawkins of this period had no emotional protections. On Wherever There's a Will, Baby, with McKinney's Cotton Pickers, he combines a fine sense of musical fun and hokum with firm musical ideas. [1. On Henderson's Sweet Music (1931) and I Wanna Count Sheep (1932), however, Hawkins momentarily returned to Armstrong and, remarkably, the mature Armstrong of 1928-33].

One should also mention Queer Notions that Hawkins made with Henderson, on which the increasingly sophisticated Hawkins provided himself with just the sort of challenging medium-tempo vehicle he wanted. As one would expect, the challenge is largely harmonic. But I think that Hawkins's two choruses on Hokus Pokus from 1934 are probably the best of all his solos with Henderson. They are perhaps not typical, being more directly melodic and less arpeggiated, but they combine the robustness of his early work with a sophisticated melodic sense and a touching, almost nostalgic lyricism. The choruses seem also to have been highly influential: they outline the essentials of the style used by Herschel Evans and his associates and successors, Buddy Tate, Illinois Jacquet, and (most recently) Yusef Lateef. Of course it is possible that Hawkins, as a constant listener, may have picked up such phrases as these touring the Southwest with Henderson, but it is also possible that this so-called Southwest tenor style was first expounded by Coleman Hawkins in a New York recording studio.

When Coleman Hawkins returned from Europe in 1939, he entered his great period as a jazz soloist. He had continued to expand his basic harmonic techniques. He had come to terms with his own lush and sentimental temptations, which means that he had learned to sustain a true lyric mood and therefore no longer needed the sometimes forced and usually brittle edge to his tone that he had apparently found necessary before. The sharpness of vibrato heard on One Hour cannot be heard on Body and Soul.

Rhythmically, however, there sometimes seems to have been no solution, and Hawkins's double chorus on The Sheik of Araby, recorded in January 1940, fails almost as it succeeds. It is a tour de force of the sort which dazzled and delighted his fellow musicians, yet Hawkins's swift, knowing harmonic disentanglements are nearly lost in a predictably regular accentuation. In such moods Hawkins is in effect attempting to be not only his own soloist, but his own harmonist and his own rhythm section as well. However, he does build these choruses gradually, both emotionally and technically, without resorting to bathos or musical banality. Other solos from the same period show Hawkins's final and best rhythmic solution. His chorus on Dinah, recorded with Lionel Hampton a month earlier, is another harmonic delight. Rhythmically it frankly sets up the expectation of more or less regular heavy/light/heavy/light accents and varies them just briefly enough, often enough, and obviously enough to relieve any encroaching monotony.

Body and Soul (1939) is the accepted Hawkins's masterpiece. The record reveals not only Hawkins's knowing use of increasingly sophisticated techniques but his brilliant use of pacing, structure, and rhythmic relief. He saves his showiest arpeggios, opening melodiously and introducing implied double-time along the way. His second recorded improvisation on the Body and Soul chords, originally called Rainbow Mist (1944), is not quite the equal of the original but his absolute sureness and ease at what he is about, and his ability to let the performance build, are the work of a great musician.

They are also the work of a great improviser. I have heard Hawkins's work deprecated as "just arpeggios," and the complaint has been lodged that in his solos he leans heavily for a sense of order on the fact that the modifying chords in popular songs repeat in relatively short cycles. But arpeggios and cyclical patterns of harmony are Hawkins's means, much as they were J. S. Bach's in certain moods, never his end. Anyone who has heard him replay a standard Hawkins piece, or heard him play the same piece successively, will understand the committed creativity with which Hawkins approaches his means.

I would say that the great period that began in 1939 for Hawkins continued through 1944. That latter year was a prolific one in records for an always prolific player, and itfound Hawkins present on several very good sessions and two excellent ones. One of the finer sessions was with players who had also been outstanding in the mid-'thirties, Teddy Wilson and Roy Eldridge, and produced I'm in the Mood for Love. The other excellent session produced Sweet Lorraine, Crazy Rhythm, and the superb The Man I Love by Hawkins and a rhythm section.

Sweet Lorraine, the one slow ballad recorded on the date, shows Hawkins forming his chord-spreads into meaningful melodic phrases. Rhythmically he glides easily from one heavy beat to the next, variously curving around the light ones. His tone is firm but not harsh. Hawkins's decision to play The Man I Love at medium tempo, but with the soloists taking it in "long" meter, set up a dramatic basis for exploring Gershwin's chord changes. Hawkins plays with uncompromising involvement and a plentitude of ideas. A variety of traditional-sounding riffs and blues phrases interplay in surprising cohesiveness with showy arpeggios. Brief phrases which break up Hawkins's regular accents are placed with great effectiveness, and the performance is perhaps Hawkins's masterpiece of relieving rhythmic contrast.

The fact that the years 1939-44 found Hawkins at a peak had a more than personal importance, for in these years most young saxophonists were under Lester Young's influence, and Young often overrode harmony in the interests of melody and his original rhythmic ideas. After 1944 Hawkins fell in easily with the young modernists because his knowledge of chords, both theoretical and pragmatic, allowed him to. Rhythmically, he continued to live in the early 'thirties —  but, again, with more regular accents than many players of that period. Hawkins also did not seem out of place, I expect, because younger players like Dexter Gordon had arrived at a synthesis of Hawkins and Young.

Hawkins did begin to sound dated harmonically by the mid-'fifties. On a Thelonious Monk date, made in 1957, he was momentarily intimidated by some of the thick complexity Monk gives to his chords. However, Hawkins's quick solution, to go ahead and play what he knows, is the solution of a mature man, and his solos show it. Hawkins continued to listen: later he used simple scalar embellishments in his solos that echoed the more complex ones of John Coltrane.

Among Hawkins's more direct pupils, one thinks most particularly of two men. The most brilliant is Don Byas, but Byas was never as successful as Hawkins in varying his phrasing; even the staggeringly sophisticated techniques of finger and harmony on Byas's I Got Rhythm or Indiana are phrased and accented with freight-train regularity. Perhaps the greatest pupil Ben Webster, was almost Byas's opposite. Long an exceptional soloist, Webster became a great one, I think, after he accepted the limitations of his fingers and embouchure and became a simple and eloquent melodist.

The standard term for Hawkins's sensibility is romantic. Terry Martin has suggested, however, that, if Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster were romantic saxophonists, then Hawkins's work was by comparison both too ornate and too detached to be called romantic, and that it would be better to describe his talent as dramatic. I am inclined to agree, and I further suggest that the best critical touchstones and analogies for Hawkins's kind of drama lie outside jazz. His sense of drama was like that of the great aria and lieder singers, the special declamatory drama of the concert singer and the concert stage, a tradition which Hawkins himself deeply admired.

One might call Webster a player of great natural musical instincts, and Hawkins a player of great natural musical curiosity making use of the techniques that his innate curiosity led him to acquire and assimilate. Thus Hawkins survived more than four decades, a player whose commitment to improvisation was essential.”

The following video features Coleman Hawkins with Hank Jones on piano, George Duvivier on bass and Shelly Manne on drums performing Avalon.

Herbie Mann and Jazz Flute [From the Archives]

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

“Herbie Mann is a brilliant flautist with a light, skipping attack and an unfailing rhythmic sureness.

Mann occupies a similar position to Charles Lloyd's in recent jazz history. Influential, but cursed by commercial success and an unfashionable choice of instrument, both have been subject to knee-jerk critical put-down. Where Lloyd's flute was his 'double', Mann's concentration slowly evolved a powerful and adaptable technique which gave him access to virtually every mood, from a breathy etherealism, down through a smooth, semi-vocalized tone that sounded remarkably like clarinet (his first instrument), to a tough, metallic ring that ideally suited the funk contexts he explored in the late 1960s.”

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

“Herbie Mann was the first Jazz musician to establish his career performing only on flute.”

- Christopher Washburne, Bill Kirchner, Ed. The Oxford Companion to Jazz

Herbie Mann [1930-2003] was my introduction to Jazz flute. It came in the form of an album Herbie did for Mode Records in 1956 entitled Flute Fraternity [Mode #114; reissued on CD as V.S.O.P. #38].

Joining him on the LP was fellow flutist [flautist?] Buddy Collette and a rhythm section comprised on Jimmy Rowles, Buddy Clark and Mel Lewis [one of the most underrated rhythm sections of all time].

Over the span of his career,  Mann was a prodigiously versatile instrumentalist and one of the most talented of jazz flutists, playing Latin jazz, bop, cool jazz, and jazz-rock with equal brilliance. He has restlessly explored many other popular and ethnic styles, mixing them and changing from one to another as musical fashion and his own developing interests dictate.

Leroy Ostransky offers this synopsis of Herbie’s career in Barry Kernsfeld, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995]:

“Mann, Herbie [Solomon, Herbert Jay] (b New York, 16 April 1930). Flutist. He studied clarinet from the age of nine and later took up the flute and saxophone. He gained experience of playing during his three years' army service in Trieste, Italy, and after returning to the USA played and recorded with Mat Mathews (1953-4) and Pete Rugolo (1954). He toured France and Scandinavia in 1956, and in 1960 led a group which, under the sponsorship of the US State Department, visited 15 African countries; he became familiar with the bossa nova style on two tours of Brazil (1961—3) and in 1964 toured Japan. He then established a big band in which he played tenor saxophone and which was enthusiastically received when it appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1965. Over the next few years he used elements of ethnic music and blues in his compositions.

In 1969 Mann became a record producer for Embryo, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records. An astute sense of musical trends led him to begin playing rock music in 1971 and by 1973 he had formed his own group, Family of Mann, which incorporated sounds from many kinds of music, including Japanese court music, into its performances. In England in 1974 he experimented with rock once more and also played reggae; his disco recording Hi-jack was a hit in the USA in 1975, but after this success he immediately reverted to the style in which he had played in the early 1960s. Atlantic terminated his contract in 1979 and Mann started his own recording company, Herbie Mann Music, in 1981.”

Mann continued to lead his own groups that played a variety of musical styles including bossa-nova, reggae and Jazz fusion until his death in 2003 while occasionally celebrating his straight-ahead as was the case with a week-long residency at New York’s Blue Note Jazz club in honor of his 65th birthday.

Joe Quinn provided the following liner notes to Flute Fraternity [Mode #114; reissued on CD as V.S.O.P. #38].

“One of the happy by-products of the contemporary jazz scene has been the corporate union of identical instruments into small jazz groups. These ventures are the result of the musicians' experimental nature, and they have had wide popular acceptance as well as giving the performers an opportunity to realize fully the possibilities of their instruments. Jazz fans of varying intensity are thoroughly intrigued by the combination of two or more established jazz stars collaborating within the same framework.

The number of these sessions which have taken place after working hours is incalculable. The origin of such unions might be difficult to trace, but the impact on musician and listener alike is invariably one of stimulation and excitement. This MODE LP, featuring flutists Herbie Mann and Buddy Collette, adds still another chapter to the colorful history of fraternal instrumentation.

These two young men rank with half-a-dozen talented reed players who have lifted the flute from the confines of the classical orchestra to a place in the jazz spectrum. Independently, each man has advanced the stature of the instrument to a point where they have done LPs for various labels with everything from a trio to a full string orchestra. Musically, their lives are dedicated to enlarging the scope of the flute family because they believe that its piercing tone and subtle blending are deserving of full membership in the society of jazz instruments.

Herbie Mann has had a variety of jobs in the music business, relying on his clarinet tenor talents in the reed sections of various dance bands to sustain him during his break-in period. Once his reputation as a jazz flutist began to take shape, he formed his own group and has worked most of the major jazz clubs in America. In the late summer of 1956 he journeyed to Europe as a single and was an immediate success on the jazz-starved continent. His talents, as this LP will show, also extend to writing and arranging,

Buddy Collette is one of the most thoroughly schooled musicians to step into the jazz picture in the past decade. Although he came to national prominence as a member of the Chico Hamilton quintet, Buddy has had the respect of the music trade since his introduction. In addition to his brilliant flute work, Buddy is also proficient on clarinet and the tenor and alto saxophones. Twenty five of his original compositions have been recorded by major jazz stars, and his arrangements— two of which are heard here—have been among the most musically rewarding charts heard anywhere. At this writing, Buddy is fronting his own quartet, and is contemplating a national tour, possibly in union with Herbie Mann.

To support their collective instrumentation, Herbie and Buddy relied on the rhythm talents of three superior musicians who have attracted the approbation of jazz lovers everywhere. Pianist Jimmy Rowles has built a sterling reputation as a modernist with taste and touch adaptable to a variety of moods. Bassist Buddy Clark and drummer Mel Lewis make up 25 per cent of the Dave Pell Octet and contribute in their playing, the rapport that is born of frequent collaboration.”

My favorite track on Flute Fraternity is drummer Chico Hamilton’s bright composition Morning After which was arranged by Buddy Collette for the date and features his clarinet and Herbie's flute. The use of piano to underscore the voicing is in keeping with its classical lines.

You can listen to it on the following video tribute to Herbie Mann.