Dutch Jazz Guitarist Jesse van Ruller: From Amsterdam, Bilthoven and Utrecht

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

“Jesse van ruler is an old soul whose musical personality is firmly embedded in the here-and-now, he plays the lingua franca material with fresh perspective and idiomatic nuance.”

-Ted Panken, Jazz DJ and author

“While American audiences like to think they have a corner on the jazz market, there's no denying the fact that this art form native to the Unites States has also become a universal language being practiced throughout the world. One might even further suggest that there have been several key contributors to the jazz legacy who have come from foreign lands, thus leaving their own personal stamp on a music that now is multi-faceted and multicultural in scope.  From a guitarist's perspective, few would deny that European artists such as Django Reinhardt and Rene Thomas hold their own in the pantheon of jazz plectrists alongside American heavyweights such as Kenny Burrell or Wes Montgomery.

Add to the list of distinguished European guitarists the name of Jesse Van Ruller, the first non-American to win the illustrious Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition and an Amsterdam native who is beginning to perk the interest of American audiences with his original style and talents as a composer.”

- C. Andrew Hovan, Jazz author

One wonders, where does the Jazz path begin for a young guitarist born in Amsterdam in 1972, who grew up in Bilthoven, a small village near Utrecht in The Netherlands?

Next to drums, guitar is perhaps the most popular instrument in the world.

But one would think that contemporary youngsters who are interested in popular music, grow up dreaming of becoming a rock guitarist and not a Jazz instrumentalist.

With Jazz radio and television broadcasts vanishing at hyper speed, where does a youngster even hear Jazz today?

Put another way: Holland has a population of 16,696,00; Utrecht has a population of 316,448; Bilthoven has a population of 31,592: how does someone “find” Jazz from such a limited population base [cf: the population of Beijing alone exceeds 20 million]?

For Jesse van Ruller, his journey into Jazz began serendipitously as suggested in the title to his first Criss Cross CD Here and There [1217] and recounted by Ted Panken in these insert notes  to the recording:

"As a kid, I liked the Pop music that was on the radio, like Queen and Van Halen, and the music my parents listened to, like Fleetwood Mac, the Stones, the Beatles and Bob Dylan," Van Ruller relates. "When I started playing guitar, it was Classical first. I started electric guitar at 11, and started improvising a little bit, without the harmony, but on one chord most of the time. When I was 14 and heard George Benson, who plays jazz harmony, but in a Pop way that I understood and was used to, I loved it immediately.

The jazz aspect was completely new and mysterious to me, the notes he played were so different than the notes you heard from Rock players, and I wanted to figure out how it worked.

Then I found out about John Scofield, and went to the library and borrowed Still Warm.  It was a new world. From that moment, it took me and it's never let me go."

The aspirant gobbled up guitar vocabulary, paying close attention to iconic recordings and occasionally traveling from Bilthoven to nearby Utrecht to hear local guitarists. "I never got into transcribing much," Van Ruller says. "I listened, and then figured things out by ear, not in a systematic way, but more playful, trying this and that.

"I don't think I play like John Scofield, but he was my bridge from Pop music to Jazz. Probably what I liked so much about him was the dissonance of his lines, and the way he phrases; he sounds like a saxophone player to me, which is something I've always wanted to get.

Then I read an interview where Scofield mentioned other guys, older guitarists like Jimmy Raney and Wes Montgomery, and also Pat Martino and Pat Metheny, whom I didn't know at that time. So I went to the library and found some of their records.

"Wes Montgomery is like our godfather for his unparalleled groove. Jimmy Raney was probably the first guitarist I heard who was not a Fusion or Jazz-Rock player; I love the way he outlined the harmony so tastefully within his very melodic lines. And Pat Martino was a huge influence in terms of emphasizing notes or accents in lines and playing dynamically.

"When I got to the Hilversum Conservatory, I discovered Peter Bernstein, who is now a friend. I got a lot from hearing how he treated the tradition, taking the whole background of Wes Montgomery and George Benson and Pat Martino, and making his very own voice. He confirmed that it was possible for someone closer to my age to play in the tradition, but still make your own music, have your own sound. Where I was learning, everybody had to play at least Fusion, everything new was cool, but you were considered old-fashioned and boring for liking music that had been played before, and it was hard to dare to play it.  Peter gave me hope."

During conservatory years, Van Ruller developed his talent with a vengeance. Not long after his 1995 graduation, a friend (the singer Fleurine, who brought him to New York that year as a sideman on a record with Christian McBride, Ralph Moore and Tom Harrell) urged him to attend that year's Thelonious Monk Competition, which he entered and won, the first European to earn the prestigious prize.

"It had a big impact on my career," Van Ruller acknowledges. "I had a lot of press attention in Holland; it was quite special for a Dutch guy to win a competition like that. From that moment on, I made records, and I played a lot."

As you can see, for someone of his generation, it was more a matter more of good fortune and lucky associations that helped Jesse discover the secrets of Jazz.

Jazz fans of all ages are certainly a major beneficiary of Jesse’s voyage of self-discovery.

Jesse appears with trumpeter John Swana performing John’s Philly Jazz with bassist John Patitucci and drummer Eric Harland.

Joe’s Bar Mitzvah, an original by fellow Dutchman, alto saxophonist Benjamin Herman, finds Jesse performing with Hammond B-3 organist, Larry Goldings and drummer, Idris Muhammud.

Jesse is the resident guitarist with the Amsterdam-based, Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, and he and this excellent big band perform his original composition The Secret Champ on this closing video.

The Cal Tjader - Stan Getz Sextet

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

“Getz’s session with Cal Tjader looks forward with some prescience to the bossa nova records that were to come. Certainly the coolly pleasant backings of Tjader's rhythm section make up a cordial meeting-ground for tenor and vibes to play lightly appealing solos,....”

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

Although the title of this feature is very formal, in reality, the Cal Tjader - Stan Getz quartet was never a working group.

It was a “one off” that came together to produce a February 1958 Fantasy LP with the same title as this piece [Fantasy F-3266/OJCCD-275-2].

In today’s terms, the sextet on The Cal Tjader-Stan Getz Sextet was a hybrid made up of two players from vibraphonist Cal Tjader’s regular working group at the time - pianist Vince Guaraldi and guitarist Eddie Duran - and two musicians from the quartet then on tour with tenor saxophonist Stan Getz - bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Billy Higgins.

Ralph J. Gleason offers this background as to how the LP came about in his insert notes to the recording:

“WHEN STAN GETZ played the Black Hawk in San Francisco ..., the time was ripe for the recording of an album that had been under discussion for a long, long time.

Cal Tjader had been an admirer of Stan Getz ever since the latter first shot to national jazz fame as the tenor saxophone star of the Woody Herman band and Stan had heard Cal and played with him at various sessions since Cal first went out as a member of the Dave Brubeck Trio. However, recording Stan with the Tjader group wasn't easy. They never seemed to be in the same part of the country at the same time. It wasn't until Stan came to the Black Hawk to fulfill a short engagement, during a period when Cal was laying off prior to reforming his group, that it was possible to work it out.

Getz' group at the Black Hawk featured two young jazz players who were totally unknown then: bassist Scotty LaFaro and drummer Billy Higgins. But they gassed Tjader as they had gassed everyone who heard them in the club. And it was decided to use them on the date along with Vince Guaraldi, Tjader's regular pianist, and Eddie Duran, the wonderful young guitarist who has been growing in stature in recent years for his in-person appearances and his work on his Fantasy albums.

Most jazz record dates, as anyone who has ever attended one knows, begin late and are one long tortured attempt to get enough material done right to fit on one LP. Once in a long while a date will jell from note one. This was one of those dates.

A critic journeying across the Bay to San Francisco to catch what he thought would be the last two hours of the date almost missed the whole thing. The album was recorded in record time (no pun intended) with less than three hours work. No tune, except two, had more than one take and even then it was a tossup as to which to use. …

As Vince Guaraldi, the swarthy Borgia of the piano, put it when the date was over, ‘When you got it, you got it.’ And they have.”

This album has long remained one of my favorites for the reasons mentioned in this excerpt from Ted Gioia’s West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960: [paragraphing modified]

“Tjader suffered to some extent from the general lack of imagination that characterized much of Fantasy's jazz product in the late 1950s. While other jazz producers of the day, such as Norman Granz or Orrin Keepnews, constantly strived for different formats, personnel, and concepts for their artists, Fantasy tended to churn out a steady stream of similar-sounding albums, usually featuring Tjader's working band.

One of the few exceptions to this rule, Tjader's collaboration with Stan Getz showed the benefits of mixing Cal with new blood from beyond the occasionally anemic Fantasy roster. In addition to Getz, the session featured Scott LaFaro, Billy Higgins, Vince Guaraldi, and Eddie Duran. The band drew on some of the permanent fixtures in the Tjader repertoire—Cal's waltz Lizanne, the blues Crow's Nest, and Guaraldi's Ginza Samba—with Getz leading the way with a charged tenor performance.”

This video is set to Vince Guaraldi’s Ginza Samba to give you a taste of what’s on offer in this wonderful recording.

"Grazie!" - Marco, Enzo, Lorenzo and Matteo

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

By way of background Marco Pacassoni graduated cum laude from the Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Gioachino Rossini"  a music conservatory in Pesaro, Italy and with the same distinction in Professional Music from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA

In the broadest sense of the term, Marco is a percussionist with a particular emphasis on mallets.

He has studied with Gary Burton, Ed Saindon, Victor Mendoza, Daniele Di Gregorio, Eguie Castrillo, John Ramsey, Steve Wilkes.

In 2005 Marco won the award of the best Italian Jazz talent at "Chicco Bettinardi Competition" organized by Piacenza Jazz Festival.

Marco has been played with Michel Camilo, Alex Acuna, Horacio "el negro" Hernandez, Steve Smith, John Beck, Amik Guerra, Trent Austin, Italuba, Gerrison Fewell, Chihiro Yamanaka, Partido Latino, Bungaro, Malika Ayane, Raphael Gualazzi, Luca Barbarossa, Francesco Cafiso, Massimo Manzi, Marco Volpe, Massimo Moriconi, Filippo Lattanzi, Daniele Di Gregorio, Alessandro Ristori, Paolo Belli, Luca Colombo, Cesare Chiodo and many others...

Marco is on the percussion faculty at Liceo Musicale Rinaldini in Ancona and at Urbino University which provides for “Italian Semesters” for students from University of Texas, San Antonio.

Marco has taught Master Classes of Vibraphone at prestigious american colleges such as Oberlin Conservatory (Ohio), University of Minneapolis (Minnesota), Eastman School of Music (Rochester), Columbus University (Ohio), Cleveland University (Ohio). In 2014 Marco’s book on harmony and composition book was published by Rodaviva Edizioni.

Marco leads his own quartet whose members are Enzo Bocciero, piano and keyboards, Lorenzo De Angeli, semi-acoustic bass and Matteo Pantaleoni, drums.

They have released a number of CDs the most recent of which is entitled Grazie [2016]. You can located order information about Grazie and the group’s other CDs via this website: www.marcopacassoni.com. Some of the Marco Pacassoni Quartet’s earlier CDs are also available through Amazon.

Grazie is comprised of ten original tracks: five by Marco and five that were penned by Enzo Bocciero, who also wrote the insert notes for the disc. The recording is an homage to Marco’s late father and is intended as an appreciation for his father’s efforts to assist him with a career in music.

In many ways the music on this CD is exactly the way you would expect to hear Jazz at the outset of the 21st century. Even the fact that the musicians who made this music are based in Italy is not surprising because of Jazz’s international expansion since its inception a hundred years ago.

The music on Grazie is contemporary and very reflective of the one world influences made possible today by social networking and the instant connectivity of the digital transmission of information brought about by the world wide web.

Marco, Enzo, Lorenzo and Matteo have taken the Jazz influences from the music’s 20th century forms and combined it with how they hear the music today. Compositional structure and the basic forms of melody, harmony and rhythm remain essentially the same but the musicians have added their own textures and their own unique styles of improvisation.

Modal Jazz, irregular tempos, “complex rhythmic-harmonic weaves,” counter-melodies, riffs, and a host of other elements common to modern or mainstream Jazz are applied to new stylistic influences to create wholly different sonorities.

So while you know upon listening that the music on Grazie is Jazz, you’ve never heard it played in this manner before.

What is apparent throughout the recording is the very high level of musicianship on display. Marco, Enzo, Lorenzo and Matteo are all accomplished individual musicians who also perform very well as a group.

The "Grazie" or "Thank You" in the title of this piece also has a personal connotation for me in that listening to the music of the Marco Pacassoni Quartet helped move my ears in new directions.

All too often, those of us who evolved with the music from previous periods in its development know where Jazz has been and we get comfortable within these established forms of the music.

Yet, Jazz has always grown and developed, in today's parlance, it has morphed into new forms by incorporating new and different influences. Young musicians are particularly receptive and willing to try new approaches. So, in this regard, my thanks to Marco, Enzo, Lorenzo and Matteo for helping me keep current in the music.

I found Grazie to be a very rewarding musical experience. See what you think by listening to the following audio only file that features the group’s performance of Violet Wall, the opening track on the CD.

The Shark’s Pretty Teeth: Pops on Mack The Knife

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

The following by Terry Teachout appeared in the July 28, 2017 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

How Louis Armstrong turned a song about the vicious exploits of a murderer in 18th-century London into a jazz hit.

“For all the enduring success of their other collaborations, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill are both best remembered for “Die Dreigroschenoper” (“The Threepenny Opera”), their caustically witty 1928 adaptation of John Gay’s 1728 “Beggar’s Opera,” which portrayed low life in 18th-century London. But it was not until 1955 that the American public at large first heard any part of “The Threepenny Opera”—and it was Louis Armstrong, the most important figure in the history of jazz, who introduced them to it.

In September of that year, Armstrong and His All Stars recorded “Mack the Knife,” Marc Blitzstein’s English-language version of “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer,” a “murder ballad” about the vicious exploits of the show’s principal character that was the most popular number in “The Threepenny Opera.” Armstrong’s deliciously swinging cover version became a hit single, one of a handful of small-group jazz recordings ever to do so, and he would perform it the world over until he died in 1971.

Armstrong was introduced to “Mack the Knife” by George Avakian, his producer at Columbia Records. Mr. Avakian, who was determined to put his beloved Satchmo back on the pop charts, had recently seen the 1954 off-Broadway revival of “The Threepenny Opera.” While the original 1933 Broadway production had closed after just 12 performances, this small-scale staging, newly translated by Blitzstein, the author of “The Cradle Will Rock,” became a sleeper hit, ultimately running for six years. Mr. Avakian came home certain that “Mack the Knife” had the makings of a hit single, but he was unable to persuade any of Columbia’s other artists to play his hunch. Dave Brubeck, Erroll Garner and Gerry Mulligan all turned him down flat, finding the simple tune to be too repetitious.

It was Turk Murphy, a San Francisco trombonist, who suggested that the song might suit Armstrong. Murphy wrote and recorded a combo arrangement that Mr. Avakian brought to the trumpeter, who agreed on the spot to record it. His attraction to “Mack the Knife” was easy to understand. Not only was Weill’s riff-like melody instantly appealing, but Blitzstein’s rendering of Brecht’s lyric, an acid-etched portrait of a switchblade-wielding street thug, was no less immediately memorable: “Just a jack-knife has Macheath, dear / And he keeps it out of sight.” Armstrong found the song richly evocative of his New Orleans childhood, laughing out loud as he listened to the demo. “Oh, I’m going to love doing this!” he told Mr. Avakian. “I knew cats like this in New Orleans. Every one of them, they’d stick a knife into you without blinking an eye!”

Murphy’s arrangement was a spare sketch well suited to the talents of the All Stars, the instrumental combo that accompanied Armstrong. “Dig, man, there goes Mack the Knife!” the trumpeter rasped genially by way of introduction. Arvell Shaw and Barrett Deems laid down a springy, pulsing two-beat accompaniment on bass and drums over which Billy Kyle, the All Stars’ pianist, strewed Basie-like twinkles. A muted Armstrong played the penny-plain melody, with the clarinetist Edmond Hall and the trombonist Trummy Young riffing softly behind him. Then he put down his horn and told the tale of the bloodthirsty Macheath with a glee that had nothing whatsoever to do with the grim lyric, translating it into New Orleans-flavored Satchmo-ese: “Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear / And he shows them a-poi-ly white.” Armstrong also overdubbed a trumpet obbligato behind his vocal. At the end he pulled out his mute, shouted “Take it, Satch,” and led the band through a rocking out-chorus.

The results were irresistible, and no one tried to resist them. Released as fast as Mr. Avakian could slap it onto vinyl, “Mack the Knife” rose to No. 20 on Billboard’s pop chart. Though Bobby Darin’s cover version, cut three years later, sold even better, it was Armstrong who turned “Mack the Knife” into a jazz and pop standard that has since been recorded by such artists as Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Haley and the Comets, Peggy Lee, Sonny Rollins and Frank Sinatra. But Armstrong’s version remains sui generis, a quintessential example of his fabled ability to take unlikely sounding songs and make them his own.

In 2015 “Mack the Knife” was made part of the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, a roster of “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” audio recordings “of enduring importance to American culture.” The other recordings enshrined in the registry range from Judy Garland’s “Over the Rainbow” to Martin Luther King Jr's “I Have a Dream” speech. Satchmo would have been proud.

—Mr. Teachout, the Journal’s drama critic, is the author of “Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong” and “Satchmo at the Waldorf,” a play about Armstrong. This essay, commissioned by the Library of Congress for the National Recording Registry, was adapted from “Pops.”

Tad Shull - Deep Passion in the Land of the Jazz Tenor Saxophonist

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

My introduction to Tad Shull’s big, blustery and boisterous Jazz tenor saxophone sound came from two CD’s he made for Gerry Teekens’ Criss Cross Jazz in the early 1990’s.

When listening to Tad, legendary tenor players like Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas, Johnny Griffin, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and Lucky Thompson come to mind. Not bad company to be in, but make no mistake, Tad is his own man.

As Richard Cook and Brian Morton have remarked in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.: “Shull is a big-toned tenor specialist out of Norwalk, Connecticut. … Having taken the trouble to get himself a decent sound and to learn the changes inside out, he’s not afraid to tackle ungarnished D-flat blues. An unabashed traditionalist, there is plenty of evidence on his recordings that Shull keeps his ears open.”

Here’s more about Tad’s background from drummer Kenny Washington sleeve notes to Deep Passion: Tad Shull Quintet [Criss Cross 1047 CD].

In an era when it seems like all you have to do to record for a major label is to be 20 years old, wear an imported suit, look cute, and have an attitude, it is refreshing to see someone record who really deserves it.

I've played with just about every young 'star', and I've found that if you take them out of their world of vamps, and phrygian and mixolydian modes, and you stick a standard tune or the blues in front of them, you really hear that they sound like beginners. A young musician (who will remain nameless) was playing in an all-star concert with Dizzy Gillespie. Diz called Ellington's In a Mellow Tone, and this musician asked me to hum the melody to him! That was six years ago, and I wouldn't be surprised if he still didn't know it now.

The two main reasons for this are, one, that the record companies are snapping up these players before they get any experience. Between a musician's looks, personality, and record companies' marketing strategies, they turn a young jazz musician into a boy wonder (or, as I call them, boy blunders!). In short, the last thing on some of these record bigwigs' minds is the music. They themselves are not into the music, but only their ill-gotten gains. All this helps to lower the once very high standard of this music. The second reason is that the young musicians themselves have not taken the time to study the history of this music. The average tenor saxophonist today knows almost nothing before Sonny Rollins' Prestige recordings. There are a lot of transitional figures that were around before Rollins. Tad Shull is definitely someone who has taken the time out to check out all musical styles.

Tad was born in Norwalk. Connecticut on October 15,1955. At age 11 his music teachers gave him a saxophone, saying his ear wasn't good enough for any other instrument (imagine that!). Tad says, 'I pictured a sound like Don Byas', though I had yet to hear him, and that's why I stuck with it. A local musician played me Coleman Hawkins' Body and Soul, and some Duke Ellington, a few years later.'

At age 16, Tad studied with Dave Liebman, who was playing with Elvin Jones at the time. Liebman turned him on to the other big-toned tenors, like Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis and Johnny Griffin.

Tad went on to study at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where he studied the mechanics of jazz with two legendary figures, Jaki Byard, and Joe Allard. Tad says he owes his whole approach to the horn itself to Joe.

In 1978, he made the big move to New York City. Tad caught the tail end of the midtown jazz scene that was left from the 'forties, playing at Eddie Condon's and Jimmy Ryan's before they closed. He got a chance to work with masters like Roy Eldridge, Connie Kay, Eddie Locke and John Bunch. Tad looked especially to Roy and also Jimmy Rowles not only as musical influences, but for attitudes towards the jazz life in general.

In 1980, Tad toured the U.S. and Canada with the Smithsonian Jazz Repertory Ensemble, led by Bob Wilber. A year later, he joined the Widespread Depression Jazz Orchestra, where he has held that chair ever since. In addition to playing with WDJO, he has continued to lead his own groups.

I met Tad in 1985 after playing with the WDJO, and was completely knocked out

by his sound and knowledge of the music. What you should keep in mind while listening to him is that this young tenor titan has checked out all saxophone styles. You hear everything from Hawkins to Coltrane. Also, you can hear how Tad was especially intrigued by some angular, more harmonically daring tenor players. I'm speaking of tenor masters like Chu Berry, Don Byas, Lucky Thompson, Paul Gonsalves, and Lockjaw Davis. These players had a different way of approaching rhythm and harmony. You could never tell what they might play next. From listening to these masters, I can tell that Tad has the same kind of approach. The amazing thing about it is that although he has listened to these great men, he's his own man on the horn.

For years it bugged me that Tad wasn't better known. It also bugged me that he didn't have a date out under his own name. I talked to Gerry Teekens, the owner of Criss-Cross, and urged him to check him out. After hearing a demo by Tad, he was thoroughly convinced that Tad had something to say.

This brings us to Deep Passion, which is Tad's first as a leader. The title simply means the feelings that are conveyed when this man plays his horn. His big, round, smooth tone conveys beauty, intimacy and love at all tempos -- but especially the ballads.

The musicians at hand here [Tad, Kenny, Irwin Stokes on trumpet, Mike LeDonne, piano and Dennis Irwin on bass] should meet with any jazz chef's taste buds. Jazz is like making a sauce. If you don't have the right spices it won't have the right flavor. The spices here are right. We get together to simmer and cook a soulful, swingin' jazz sauce….”

Tad shred these thoughts on his approach to Jazz in the insert notes from his second Criss Cross CD In The Land of the Tenor [Criss Cross 1071 CD].

“The best writers on jazz understand that there is only so much words can add to the music itself.   Having to speak on my own playing carries added risks.   I could fall into congratulating myself, or fuss over pet details.   Now, owners of this brand new CD must want to know something about the background of the person they are listening to. The best approach might be to offer something about my attitude towards the tenor saxophone and what it's like to learn to play it.

In terms of musical apprenticeship, I went backwards in time. While I struggled to grab a piece of whatever incredible things my idols were able to do, a part of unraveling the mystery was to find out what each guy listened to when he was coming up — what made him tick.

When I started, Coltrane was not long gone, and like many other tenor players at the time I was caught up in the wave. But it didn't seem as though Coltrane himself, different as he was, could have just sprung up from out of nowhere. Over a period of years, it turned out, Coltrane led me to Lockjaw Davis and Johnny Griffin, then Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, and of course Charlie Parker. Bird himself could not have been Bird but for the rich musical culture he had been nurtured with since day one. So curiosity about Bird then meant checking out Lester Young, and then finally Coleman Hawkins, and Hawk-inspired players like Don Byas and Lucky Thompson.

The more I went back, the more I discovered that the styles of these older men following Hawk were even harder to "cop" than the ones who came later, who I

think relied more on set patterns. There was something "whole" and personal there. Technique they had aplenty. But so does everyone else. It struck me that these classic tenors made technique the servant of an almost vocal, speechlike expression. Every note molded tone, attack, harmony, you name it, into something complete. I think that kind of split-second control over every facet of music at once is what we mean by the term "melody"—and that's always personal.

Thinking about the personal approach of these past masters of the tenor gives me the moxie to keep going in the future. Jazz has already seen many, many tenor players come and go. I keep hearing more new ones that can really play every day. After so much tenor, why still more?  Maybe it's because, in this music where the performer is also the composer, it's an ideal medium for self-expression. The tonal range of the tenor provides a raw, unformed piece of plastic material for each soul to shape or imprint as he likes. The classic tenors showed that the possibilities just overflowed from the bell of the horn, and their descendants proved the source couldn't be drained (ever notice that even bad tenor players "sound like themselves"?). With a hundred years of jazz behind us, it's still hard to believe that newcomers can't add to the choruses already played.

Now that it comes to painting myself into this tableau of tenor history, the job gets tricky.   Naming some of my worthy forebears, and rhapsodizing about jazz individualism, I risk comparing myself with them.   In my case, their breathtaking originality or technical innovation may still be a distant goal. But with so many

tenors listen to, there is a point where you can't help doing things your own way. The problem, as I said up front, is to put into words what that "way" is.

You probably guessed I am not an avant-garde player.   Even though I have some idols who were born before World War I,  I don't see much need to hone safely to "the tradition." How about something in between "trad" and avant-garde, then, say straight ahead? But I think you will hear that I do not sound like other straight-ahead players.

In the end, I can tell you something about what I'm not. But if you want to know what I am, you will have to listen and judge for yourself.”

This video with give you a taste of the sound of Tad Shull’s tenor “in action.” The tune is Mike LeDonne’s Tadpole on which he is joined by Irvin Stokes, trumpet, Mike on piano, bassist Dennis Irwin and drummer Kenny Washington.