Ronnie Cuber - The Early Years

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Sixty Years after he made his first appearance on the Jazz scene in 1960 with the Newport Jazz Festival Youth Band, Ronnie Cuber is still going strong, most recently, as a recording artist for Nils Winthur’s Steeplechase label and in numerous club and concert dates both at home and abroad.

The man is a Force of Nature!

Ronnie has been such a fixture for so long that it's hard to remember where it all began for him as a recording artist under his own name.

The earliest recording by Ronnie as a leader in my collection is Cuber Libre which was recorded on August 20, 1976 on Don Schlitten’s Xanadu label [Xanadu 175]. 

Thank goodness for Don Schiltten as during the vast wasteland that was recorded Jazz in the 1970s and 80s, Xanadu produced over 100 LPs by such established mainstream artists as Red Rodney, Barry Harris, and Tal Farlow, among many others. The label also gave a start to artists who had been around a while but had not recorded their own albums like trumpeter Sam Noto [whose work on Xanadu was covered earlier on these pages], guitarist Ted Dunbar, and Ronnie Cuber.

As was the case earlier with Bob Weinstock at Prestige Records, the Jazz author and critic Ira Gitler became a sort of aide de camp to Don at Xanadu and helped with production and marketing duties including writing many of the liner notes.

Here’s what he had to say about Ronnie on Cuber Libre which provides an overview of the early years of Ronnie’s career as well as some keen observations about the music and the musicians on the recording.

“In 1960, while a member of down beat's record reviewing staff, I had occasion to write about Marshal! Brown's Newport Youth Band Recorded Live at the Newport Jazz Festival. I liked the band — with reservations. Various soloists were singled out for praise. One in particular was Ronnie Cuber. "Cuber's baritone solo will gas you," I wrote in the vernacular of the time. "His 'break' on Tiny’s Blues at the beginning of the solo shows a wonderful sense of time."

The ability to swing with the rhythm suspended has always been an informal, unofficial, yet revealing test for jazzmen and to hear it done so well by one so young made me mark Ronnie Cuber in my mind as a "File For the Future," as in the feature of the same title used to herald bright, up and coming musicians in the pages of Metronome years ago.

That future is now, which is not to say that Ronnie has not been an excellent, ever-deepening player from the time of Tiny’s Blues, nor that he hasn't been featured as a soloist in a variety of contexts, but that this is the first opportunity he has had to step into the spotlight as a recording leader. This did not happen overnight anymore than did his development. Don Schlitten had admired his work for a long while and when he formed Xanadu it was just a matter of finding the right time to record him.

Ronald Edward Cuber was a Christmas present to his parents in 1941, 18 days after Pearl Harbor. His father played accordion; his mother piano. In this musical atmosphere Ronnie began studying clarinet at age nine. At Alexander Hamilton High School, in his native Brooklyn, N.Y., he played tenor sax, the instrument on which he auditioned for the Newport Youth Band. There were just so many chairs to be filled and an abundance of tenor players but no baritone saxophonists. Marshall Brown obviously heard something in Cuber because he offered to buy him a bari if he would agree to anchor the reeds.

"Over the years it got to be my horn," says Ronnie whose first idol was Stan Getz. When he bought a Gerry Mulligan sextet record it was more for Zoot Sims than the leader. At 16 friends took him to the Cafe Bohemia to hear Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins. "When Sonny came up to the mike to play, that was it," he reminisces.

There were other tenor influences, too, after he was full into baritone. He liked Hank Mobley and tried to simulate some of that sound on the baritone. He also had begun listening to Pepper Adams at the time he joined the Newport Band in 1959. Adams was the new baritone man on the scene at the time and Ronnie's cohorts urged him to try to get a sound like Pepper — "more edge."

Other influences, according to Cuber, were Cecil Payne, John Coltrane and Harold Land. There Are certain places in this album when Ronnie reminds one of the late Leo Parker. Had he heard Leo? "Not very much," he replied, "but Don Schlitten played a track for me recently and it flipped me out.

"I listened occasionally to Serge Chaloff," he continued. "His dynamics were something. I heard Cecil Payne with Randy Weston and that made me go back and play his older records with Dizzy. They were tremendously spirited with a big, fat sound."

Ronnie also paid close attention to altoists, trumpeters and pianists. "In the '50s I listened a lot to Horace Silver and his type of sound. I always wanted to have or be part of a group like that."

The Newport Youth Band was a valuable learning experience for Cuber, and among the benefits derived from playing in an orchestra is the acquisition of a personal sound and a sense of shading and phrasing. Ronnie continued to develop these with Maynard Ferguson (1963-65), Lionel Hampton (1968) and Woody Herman (1969) with whom he toured Europe. He also did a couple of weeks with Kai Winding's four trombone unit except with Ronnie it was only three trombones. He played the bass trombone parts on baritone. There was much jamming in a downtown Manhattan loft with tenorman Joe Farrell, pianist Gil Coggins, bassist Henry Grimes and drummer Vinnie Ruggerio. He was around Slide Hampton's little band and, as a result, did some playing with it and its baritone saxophonist, Jay Cameron.

Although Cuber had some exposure in all these situations the jazz public really became aware of him in the George Benson quartet in 1966-67. He recorded four albums with the guitarist and received more stretching room. "We got a hard-hitting rhythm and blues feel," he explains. "Since it was an every night thing I did most of my playing on that band." It was in 1966 that he won the down beat International Critics' Poll as baritone sax deserving of wider recognition. Check out The George Benson Cookbook on Columbia.

In 1970-71 Cuber played with a jazz-rock mixture band called White Elephant and in 1972 was with King Curtis. This group evolved into Aretha Franklin's backup band. Then he jumped into another kind of experience with Eddie Palmieri from 1972, following up in the Latin-jazz vein with Bobby Paunetto in 1975.

It was also in 1972 that he studied flute with Danny Bank. This new instrument and his doubling bass clarinet has helped him to do studio work during the 70s, no small aid toward helping a serious jazzman survive. Ronnie is not afraid of being harmed by versatility. "I feel I can play disco just as well as play '50s, '60s or '70s jazz," he says.

This album is strictly for blowing, however, and it properly shows off Cuber's command of the big horn's many aspects from steam rolling forward motion to tender, throaty love calls. The supporting trio is most sympathetic.

Albert "Tootie" Heath, youngest of the illustrious Heath brothers, spends his time between the U.S. and Scandinavia. He is a young drum master capable of functioning at top level in a variety of settings. As Dexter Gordon once put it: "Tootie is very loose. You can play anything with him."

Mention Sam Jones’ name to any of the multi-factioned, hypercritical New York players and you will receive nothing but positive feedback from all quarters. The unflagging time and the quality of each note have marked him as just about everyone's favorite bassist in the Apple.

Anyone who has heard Barry Harris knows the kind of magic he can weave as leader or sideman. In the latter role he is unusually empathic and supportive. He and Cuber had never played together before but Ronnie felt "a lot of rapport with Barry. It went naturally that way."

From his very first notes on Star Eyes, the Don Raye-Gene De Paul song Charlie Parker helped immortalize, it's obvious that Ronnie's sound has that "edge" and a most attractive one it is, cutting benignly through the lovely melody and harmonies. Everyone in the group gets a chance to work out.

Cuber unleashes his tidal swing on Rifftide, the Coleman Hawkins line on Lady Be Good which Hawk first revealed as the out chorus of the Gershwin evergreen in an Asch recording with Mary Lou Williams. Ronnie's tone and intensity on this one was what prompted me to ask him if he had ever listened to Leo Parker.

Tin Tin Deo dates originally from a 1948 recording by James Moody, Ernie Henry, Cecil Payne, Dave Burns and Chano Pozo, all members of the Dizzy Gillespie band at the time. The pretty, mysterioso Latin opus is a collaboration between congero Pozo and Gillespie's chief arranger of the period, Gil Fuller. Ronnie uses a growl effectively in the theme statement and goes to create and sustain a completely effective mood.

Luiz Bonfa's Samba D'Orfeo puts him in another kind of Latin groove which metamorphoses into straight-ahead North American swing after the theme. Barry, with Tootie's help, mixes his idioms to advantage.

The ballad of the date, Erroll Garner's classic Misty, is treated languorously and lovingly before it is swung and bluesed but never bruised by the benevolent bludgeon of a baritone. Ronnie's is a mailed fist in a velvet glove.

Sudwest Funk is a down blues by Donald Byrd, first recorded by the composer in 1959 with Pepper Adams and Jackie McLean. Harris opens with some vintage bebop blues, setting the stage for an impassioned statement by Cuber that flows naturally back into the funky Sudwest.

Back in 1949 Kenny Dorham and Max Roach combined to conceive Prince Albert, a lovely, intricate line on the chords of All the Things You Are. Later, in the '50s, Art Blakey's Messengers used to play it when Dorham was a member of that quintet. It is still a very valid vehicle for improvisation as Cuber and Harris so ably demonstrate. Ronnie's out chorus utilizes All the Things You Are as well as Prince Albert.

Ronnie has put in a lot of hard work on his natural talent in the more than fifteen years since he zoomingly rumbled through that break on Tilly's Blues. Cuber Libre is Cuber free—free to pursue his natural inclinations to honest, hard-driving, beautiful music. Cuber Libre is the gateway. The door is open.”

Notes: IRA GITLER

Cover Photo: DON SCHLITTEN

Recording: PAUL GOODMAN

Produced & Directed by DON SCHLITTEN

Tony Fruscella & Stan Getz Quintet - Blue Bells

Steve Wilkerson – Sure Enough!

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

“Steve Wilkerson swings hard one moment and lyrically mesmerizes the next; he is beautifully showcased by the writing of Sandy Megas and nine swinging musicians. Swinging new music for the swinging new millennium. Bravo!!”

- Pete Rugolo, composer-arranger

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles has a very dear friend who lives nearby and with whom it meets periodically to have “coffee and a nosh” and to talk about Jazz.

He is a fountain of knowledge on the subject, along with being one of the nicest human beings that you’d ever want to meet.

During one such chat and chew a number of years ago, the conversation turned to Jazz baritone saxophonists.

After listing our many favorite players on this bulky piece of plumbing, my Jazz buddy brought up – “Steve Wilkerson” - a name that I had never heard associated with the instrument before.

When the look-of-the-unknown-Jazz-musician crossed my face, one of satisfied delight came over his and he said: “I’ll send you a Steve Wilkerson album.”

True to his word, a few days later, Shaw ‘Nuff, a CD that was self-produced by Steve and his Jazz vocalist wife, Andrea Baker, arrived in my mailbox.

Listening to it for the first time was a jaw-dropping experience.

During sixty plus years of listening to recorded Jazz, I’ve heard a lot of great instrumentalists.

Steve Wilkerson’s performance on this recording was right up there with the best of them.

What made listening to the album even more enjoyable were the arrangements that Sandy Megas scored for the nine-piece group accompanying Steve.

It was comparable to hearing Marty Paich’s arrangements for alto saxophonist Art Pepper + Eleven forty years later.

In other words, I experienced the equivalent of a musical feast while listening to Steve and the other fine musicians on Shaw ‘Nuff  play on Sandy’s charts.

Pianist George Shearing once said that the hardest thing about improvising Jazz was “… getting it from your head into your hands.”

Listening to Steve Wilkerson execute his ideas on the rather cumbersome baritone saxophone, you’d think that he had never heard of the difficulty that Shearing describes.

Steve’s playing just flows – idea after idea, swinging phrase after swinging phrase – an uninterrupted torrent of musical expression done at the very highest level all aided and abetted by Sandy’s beautifully crafted charts.

For fear of hyperbole, there are times when it’s best to let a musician’s playing “speak” for itself, and this is one of those times.

If you wish to garner more information about Steve and Sandy’s respective backgrounds and recordings, each has a website which you can locate by going here and here.

In the meantime, you can experience the pleasure of Steve’s artistry in the following video tribute to him featuring his performance of Sandy’s arrangement of  Horace Silver’s Nica’s Dream.

See if you can pick-up the manner in which Sandy has trombonist Greg Solomon playing trombone in unison with Steve’s baritone saxophone on the tune’s melody and then switching to playing in harmony with him –[0:53] - from the tune’s bridge and on to the closing repeat of the melody.

Pianist Marc LeBrun takes the first solo and Steve’s solo kicks in at 2:53 minutes.

In addition to Steve, Greg and Marc, the other musicians in the group are Gary Halopoff [tp], Ray Reed [ss/as], Jim Quam [as/fl], Terry Harrington [ts], Andy Simpkins [b] and James Gadson [dr].

Ronnie Cuber - Tin Tin Deo

Ronnie on baritone sax with Barry Harris on piano, Sam Jones on bass and Albert Heat on drums.

Johnny Coles Talkin' About

Gil Evans & Ten = The "Mystical Number Eleven"

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“This album should not be evaluated alongside those Gil did with Miles, rather, it should be viewed as the first document of Gil's work on his own. In it he was liberated from the exigencies of writing for Claude Thornhill, the constraints imposed by various singers, and the ambitious challenge of creating a "setting" for Miles Davis.”

- Stephanie Stein Crease’s - Gil Evans: Out of the Cool 

Some musicians make Jazz through a particular instrument; others prefer to “play it” by combining a number of instruments into an arrangement - by playing band, so to speak.

Enter Gil Evans. [1912-1988]

Although Gil is most widely known through his association with trumpeter Miles Davis, with whom he made a number of LPs for Columbia in the late 1950s, when the opportunity allowed, Gil also recorded his own projects the first of which was Gil Evans & Ten [Prestige P-7120; OJCCD 346-2].

As Ira Gitler recounts in his notes: “This album is an important first for it presents Gil at the helm of his own recording group in a set of his own arrangements.”

Gil’s recordings with trumpeter Miles Davis - Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain - would overshadow Gil Evans & Ten which was released in 1957.

Indeed, until the notoriety associated with the Miles projects came his way, Gil’s position in the Jazz world is neatly summed up in the following statement by Richard Cook and Brian Morton from their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD 6th Ed.:

“His name is famously an anagram of Svengali and Gil spent much of his career shaping the sounds and musical philosophies of younger musicians.”

Major characteristics of Evans’ arranging style as noted by Cook and Morton include “oblique and intelligent modern jazz with scores that have a floating feel; immediacy and elasticity, relaxed sophistication that is typically built upon quite simple materials that are well-paced.”

Nothing sounds forced in Gil’s music, it just seems to unfold. It’s the aural equivalent of a mural one which guides the listener through a series of panoramic highlights.

Here are Ira Gitler’s insert notes to Gil Evans & Ten which offer a further delineation of the textures [sonorities] contained in Gil’s music as well as a description of the musicians who appear on the recording.

This is followed by the relevant sections from Stephanie Stein Crease’s definitive biography - Gil Evans: Out of the Cool - which provide more background on how the recording evolved and its significance in Gil’s career.

“With the maturation of the modern idiom during the late Forties came a new awareness in the area of sound. While this was fostered by the sounds of new, individual instrumentalists, due, in part, to improvement in playing technique, the main impact was registered through the efforts of arrangers. Foremost as an influence among them was Gil Evans, first with the orchestra of Claude Thornhiil and then in the historic Miles Davis nonet of 1949-50.

Orchestration is Gil's forte but he is not merely an orchestrator; he is a composer-arranger of magnitude. Gil states, "Orchestration is one of the elements of composition. You might say that it is the choice of sound units and their manipulation as part of expressing a musical idea."

It is Gil's genius as an orchestrator which binds all the elements of his work into the beautifully integrated whole that it is. Both his skill in voicing and ability to notate with a feeling for the individual, as well as the ensemble, are strong reasons for his high value.

Gil relates that there are three basic approaches to orchestration. One is to pre-determine the instruments to be used; second is to select them after the composition is completed; third is the simultaneous method of incorporation as the ideas grow out of one another. Evans, who has used all three, knows that instrumentation is what can make an idea come across. The same arrangement can sound very different with a dissimilar instrumental format.

In the Thornhill band, Gil was given an unusual instrumentation to work with. As he has stated before, the use of French horns and tuba were Claude's innovations but it was what Gil did with them then and later, in an even more personal manner, on the Davis recordings, that was important.

Gil has operated as a free-lance arranger in the Fifties; his connections with jazz were, up until 1957, more tied in with people mentioning his name then

with actual activity. This album is an important first for it presents him at the helm of his own recording group in a set of his own arrangements.

It is also his recording debut as a pianist, a lesser known role but one which he has followed in conjunction with his arranging career. He appeared at various times with the Thornhill band in the Forties; in the Fifties he played with Gerry Mulligan at Basin Street and in a duo with Nick Stabulas in a Greenwich Village club. His style is a singular one, spare, uncluttered, dotted with grace notes and oft-times sounding like a modern Count Basie.

Some of the personnel is made up of men who were associated with Gil before. Trumpeters Louis Mucci, Jake Koven and altoist "Zeke Tolin" (anyone for anagrams?) were all with Thornhill in the 1946-48 period and trumpeter Johnny Carisi was one of the composer-arrangers for the Davis session. The trumpeters all have been active in studio work; Mucci has also appeared with John La Porta and at several concerts at Cooper Union and Brandeis University. Koven is with the Broadway musical Bells Are Ringing and Carisi is still active as a composer-arranger. "Tolin" continues to be an important solo voice with groups of his own and more recently with Gerry Mulligan. His is a supporting role in this album.

The remainder of the brass is handled by trombonists Jimmy Cleveland, Bart Varsalona and French hornist Willie Ruff. Cleveland, formerly with Lionel Hampton, has been with Johnny Richards during 1957. He is one of the brightest solo voices on the trombone today; he reiterates this in his solos here. Varsalona, of the bass trombone, is well remembered for his work with the Stan Kenton orchestra while the versatile Ruff is regularly heard on both French horn and string bass with pianist Dwike Mitchell in the Mitchell-Ruff Duo.

Filling out the reeds are soprano saxist Steve Lacy and bassoonist Dave Kurtzer. Lacy, who has brought himself as a young, dedicated jazzman with a highly promising future, is one of the main soloists here. Steve can also be heard with his own quartet in Soprano Sax (Prestige 7125). Kurtzer, who has been heard on baritone sax in many of the leading Latin bands (Tito Puente, etc.) plays an effective supporting role on the double-reeded, bassoon in this set.

The rhythm section is manned, for the most part, by Paul Chambers and Nick Stabulas. Paul, bassist with Miles Davis for the past two years, is equally effective in support and solo. Stabulas, heard in the combos of George Wellington, Phil Woods —Gene Quill and Zoot Sims, shows his capabilities in the context of a larger-sized group with Evans. Grand old veteran, Jo Jones, is on Remember.

- notes by IRA GITLER recording by Van Gelder supervision by Bob Weinstock

Gil Evans Out of the Cool His Life and Music - Stephanie Stein Crease

“Back then you didn't have to be paid to play, and you didn't have to pay to get in to hear other people play. That was a golden age. Music was accessible and all the giants were on the scene, and there was a truth—the menu was much smaller than now. Everybody—all the different schools of players were active and in their peak. I worked with people from New Orleans, from Chicago, from Kansas City. These people were in their 50s and 60s, and then there were the young radicals, the experimentalists, and the traditionalists. You couldn't get away with any funny business. If there was a new bass player in town all the other bass players would come check him out. Everybody knew who could play and who couldn't. Now it's just a sort of flim-flam going on—most of the giants are gone really. But back then, it was a very beautiful time.”

-STEVE  LACY

“While Gil worked on his masterpieces with Miles, he continued to attract a growing cadre of musicians and artists as friends and collaborators. He had his own corner at Charlie's Tavern at 55th Street and Seventh Avenue, where friends congregated to shoot the breeze or talk music or shop. His marriage to Lillian, calm and stable on the surface, began to grow stormy. Friends who knew them as a couple perceived that Lillian in fact had a difficult time living with Gil the artist—a person so rapt in his work, who needed to spend endless hours at the piano, whether he had arranging jobs to complete or not.

Gil stayed in touch with his old West Coast friends, the Carpenters, who had also befriended Lillian. Pete was now an established studio arranger in Los Angeles, and in the spring of 1957 the Carpenter's son graduated from high school. Gil wrote them a cheerful letter for that occasion, and, true to form, did not get around to actually sending it until mid-September.

Dear Pete and Maybeth:

Petie's graduation announcement was unbelievable— Please tell him that upon request, or even not upon request, I will gladly pass along to him any of the worldly wisdom I have picked up during my (ahem) 40 years on this globe. For example: 'New ways to prepare the lowly minor seventh chord' and other related formulas are his for the asking, so please tell him to feel free—

All the very best to all of you from us here in the Apple, Gil

Also true to form, Gil doesn't bother to mention his own accomplishments, the imminent release of Miles Ahead, or the fact that, just days before, he had finally recorded his first album as a leader.

Gil Evans & Ten was recorded September 10, 1957, at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, for Prestige. For this project, Gil created a wholly different sound environment than that of Miles Ahead. He had to scale back to using eleven musicians again, a number that took on almost mystical significance for him; eleven was the maximum number of musicians hired for a tight-budget recording that aimed at a big sound. Gil eluded the strictures of this adeptly and viewed the number limit on personnel as a creative challenge. Evans lined up an unusual combination of five brass and three woodwinds (plus rhythm—piano, bass, and drums): two trumpets, trombone, bass trombone, French horn, soprano sax, alto sax, and bassoon.  The resulting sonorities are startling and lush, with the extremes of the bass trombone and the upper reaches of the soprano sax creating a spacious breadth.

The album features a fresh-sounding instrumentalist: Steve Lacy, a twenty-three-year-old soprano saxophonist (three years before John Coltrane repopularized the instrument). Gil hired him after hearing him only once, five years before, playing with a Dixieland group on the radio on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour. Gil was so dazzled by Lacy's sound—-he played in a style inspired by jazz pioneer Sidney Bechet—that he called the station on the spot to ask his name. When Gil began thinking about his new album, he remembered Lacy and decided to give him a call.

Lacy was then eking out a living in Greenwich Village with various Dixieland bands while artistically committed to exploring an emergent "free jazz" with pianist Cecil Taylor. Though a well-schooled musician who had been professionally active in New York since he was a teenager, Lacy did not know everybody in town. When he received a phone call from someone who identified himself as Gil Evans, he had no idea who that was. The phone call began a profound musical and personal friendship that lasted, like Gil's friendship with Miles, until Gil's death.

In Gil Evans & Ten, Evans broke away from the star-centered approach of Miles Ahead. Lacy was often the soloist, but trombonist Jimmy Cleveland was featured as well, and the individual voices and surrounding textures enhanced one another in a shifting series of focal points. Gil mixed and matched not just unusual combinations of instruments but strong musical personalities. Lacy said, "He knew how to combine certain people that would never have played together, old and young and different styles, different schools— He had Jimmy Cleveland next to this old bass trombone player, me and Lee Konitz, and Jake Koven and Louie Mucci. These were unheard of combinations but they worked." Evans paired Cleveland, a young post-bop trombonist with a gorgeous sound, with Swing Era veteran trombonist Bart Varsalona; Mucci and Koven were paired similarly. Their differences, expressed through phrasing, intonation, and the use or lack of vibrato in their sound, created a richness in the mix.

Lacy also appeared as the lead voice in several ensemble passages, an unusual role for soprano sax. The quasi-piercing cry of his instrument cut through the ensemble, feeding off the arrangements. Gil took a risk letting the twenty-three-year-old loose. This was one of Gil's strong tendencies, both as a bandleader and collaborator. He trusted those he hired to come up with the right stuff—be it as a strong improviser, unique instrumental personality, or, in his late career, assistant arranger (Maria Schneider became Evans's assistant right out of graduate school, in 1985). In this case, he trusted Lacy to carry much of the album.

Lacy had no idea his role would be so large or that the music would be so challenging. "At that point I couldn't read music very well, and I was the worst one in the band. They had to do things over and over again because I kept messing up the reading. It wasn't that the notes were so very hard, it was the rhythms—they were very precise and very subtle, they were like speech rhythms. The other guys in the band were very accomplished readers, and that experience forced me to learn to read as fast as I could.

Another fresh instrumental voice on the album was Evans's own—he was heard prominently on piano for the first time on record. Technically he was no rival of modern jazz piano masters such as his idol Bud Powell or his friend Jimmy Rowles. Still, Evans's playing, as a soloist or accompanist, expresses all the beauty, economy, and individualism of Basie's or Ellington's. Like them, he's a helmsman. By playing certain harmonies, or melodic or rhythmic riffs, he steers the music in the direction he wants the ensemble to go; one can also hear his conception of the music in its entirety. Evans's playing confounded his low opinion of himself as a player, which some friends thought bordered on neurotic.

The compositional sources for this album are all American and African American. Evans's arrangements pay tribute to the work of Irving Berlin, Leadbelly, Leonard Bernstein, Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, and Tadd Dameron. Also included is a new arrangement of Evans's own "Jambangle," expanded to great effect from the McKusick recording of the previous year. (The opening bars of "Jambangle" were reworked in the late 1960s by the rock group the Doors as a main motif for "Light My Fire.")

Two key things inspired Gil's selection of thematic material for his arrangements: the emotional quality and the "sound" element—how he envisioned the sound of the piece as played by a particular musician or group of instruments. He was always attracted to a certain melancholy, pieces that had an inherent "cry," such as Kurt Weill songs or the Charles Mingus tunes he wrote arrangements for later on ("Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blue" and "Goodbye, Pork Pie Hat"). He loved the songs of strong melodists like Rodgers and Hart, and the quirky angular melodies of Thelonious Monk. He was inspired by folk music, ethnic music, and twentieth-century composers. At this stage in his career, his thematic choices also had to align with his vision of the album as a whole—how moods and textures would vary through the course of an album, as well as an individual arrangement. Jimmy Cleveland once said that Evans always called him to make sure he liked the tunes on which he would be featured; this was true of other musicians as well.

Gil typically took liberties with the material, Berlin's "Remember," originally in 3/4 time, is now in 4/4. Leadbelly's blues, "Ella Speed," turns into a modern jazz swing number with an arco passage by Paul Chambers. One can hear Gil's love of bass sonorities: his rich voicings for low brass, conspicuous use of bass and tuba, and duets for trombone and bass trombone. He played with textures that he would reuse and expand in Porgy and Bess. This is particularly apparent in his treatment of "Nobody's Heart."

The producer constantly pressured Gil about time and money in the making of the album. Years later, Evans said:

You'd have thought it was the most expensive album in the world. It cost $2500 at the time, but Bob Weinstock thought that was a lot. He was used to having groups come out in a van, and every time they'd practice a little bit, he'd get so uptight. He'd say, "Okay now, play a blues!" In one afternoon, he'd expect to get a record out.

We went out there with a 10-piece band, and after the sessions were over, he wouldn't even let me take the time to clean it up. So what happens — years later I start getting statements from the Bahamas, because they don't have anything in New York anymore, that the album cost $2500 in 1957 and I still owe them $800!

Evans's innovations on this record — his unusual choice of instruments and couplings, his scrambling of tempos and themes, and his elongated phrasing — are obscured by the album's blithe spirit and breezy swing. This album should not be evaluated alongside those Gil did with Miles, rather, it should be viewed as the first document of Gil's work on his own. In it he was liberated from the exigencies of writing for Claude Thornhill, the constraints imposed by various singers, and the ambitious challenge of creating a "setting" for Miles Davis.”

Lee Konitz Obituary - Gordon Jack

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journal and a very generous friend in allowing JazzProfiles to re-publish his insightful and discerning writings on various topics about Jazz and its makers.

Gordon is the author of Fifties Jazz Talk An Oral Retrospective and he also developed the Gerry Mulligan discography in Raymond Horricks’ book Gerry Mulligan’s Ark.

The following obituary was published in the April 21, 2020 edition of Jazz Journal. 

For more information and subscriptions please visit www.jazzjournal.co.uk

© -Gordon Jack/JazzJournal, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

“Lee Konitz was one of the very few alto players of his generation not to be overwhelmed by the genius of Charlie Parker. Totally free of cliché he was able to navigate his way through performances without concerning himself with what was hip or commercially expedient. He was born in Chicago on 13 October 1927 and began on clarinet because he was very taken with Benny Goodman. After saxophone lessons with Santy Runyon he began playing in the Senn High-School band in Chicago together with Bill Russo, Milt Bernhart and Cy Touff. His first professional job around 1942/43 was with a dance band at the Paradise Ballroom in Chicago on tenor. While there his friend Joe Puma introduced him to Lennie Tristano who was playing in a rhumba band nearby. He soon began studying with Tristano which is when he “Decided to take music more seriously”. Lennie became something of a father-figure to him and all his students like Warne Marsh, Don Ferrara, Willie Dennis, Sal Mosca, Ted Brown and Lee went on to develop highly individual voices.

In 1945 he played with Jerry Wald’s band briefly before joining Teddy Powell’s orchestra thanks to a recommendation from his friend Milt Bernhart. He replaced Charlie Ventura which meant he had all the hot tenor solos to perform. Apparently when he stood up to play on his first booking, Powell walked off the stage and started banging his head against a wall. Lee sat in the section next to Boots Mussulli who was very helpful to him. After studying at Chicago’s Roosevelt College he joined Claude Thornhill’s Orchestra and his first recorded solo was on Anthropology in September 1947. He was featured on Yardbird Suite three months later and trumpeter Ed Zandy said that Lee’s advanced ideas, “Scared the hell out of us at first”. While with Thornhill he also rehearsed at Nola’s studio with the Miles Davis nonet that created a Thornhill-like sonority on its influential recordings for Capitol.

His first recording with Lennie Tristano in January 1949 included his best known composition Subconscious-Lee. It was based on What Is This Thing Called Love and it began as one of his weekly exercises for the pianist. Arnold Fishkin apparently came up with the title. Three weeks after the last Miles Davis nonet recording, Lennie Tristano’s sexet with Konitz, Warne Marsh, Billy Bauer, Arnold Fishkin and Denzil Best recorded Marionette, Sax Of A Kind, Intuition and Digression for Capitol. The first two titles were contrafacts based on September In The Rain and Fine And Dandy but the other two were totally free improvisations where Best sat out.  A little later Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland visited Lennie’s studio to listen to the recording which they both enjoyed. They asked to see the score and were amazed when they were told there was nothing written down. Intuition and Digression pre-date Ornette Coleman’s free experiments by about ten years.

He carried on working very occasionally with Tristano and in 2014 Uptown Records released a previously unissued live date from 1951. It was recorded at Chicago’s Blue Note with Lennie, Lee, Warne Marsh and Willie Dennis. Around this time he also had a day-job in the mail-room at the Rockefeller Centre to help support his family. Then in August 1952 Stan Kenton called and offered him a job at $175.00. a week. In his excellent Kenton biography Michael Sparke quotes Konitz as follows: “I was raising a family and needed a steady job and the thought of making $175 was monumental to me. I intended staying on the band until Christmas and getting a little bit out of debt. Today I am very pleased when I hear the things I did with Kenton. Overall I feel proud of the body of work I produced and I am delighted to have had that experience. The camaraderie and whole- life investment that goes into that kind of situation is unparalleled and it was a memorable time”. Lee’s first studio recording with the band was Kenton’s ambitious This Is An Orchestra which includes his dramatic verbal introduction for each sideman who then solos briefly. Stan really knew how to sell the band and this is what he said about Lee on the recording: “Someone for whom perfection is not enough.”

Vinnie Dean played lead and Konitz had the jazz alto chair. He joined on the same day as Richie Kamuca and their first job with the band was at the Moonlite Gardens, Coney Island Cincinnati. Over the next eighteen months he had several features including Young Blood, Swing House, My Lady, Lover Man and In Lighter Vein which was his favourite solo with the band. In January 1953 when Kenton was appearing at the Los Angeles Palladium, Gerry Mulligan invited Lee to sit-in with his quartet at the Haig. Several titles were recorded there and at Phil Turetsky’s house but Mulligan was initially unwilling to release them because he felt his and Chet Baker’s playing was under par. He changed his mind because of the brilliance of Lee’s playing on Too Marvellous For Words which sums up all his performances with the quartet. He remained with Kenton for the band’s hugely successful European tour and finally left in March 1954.

With the high profile he had acquired with Kenton supplemented by Down Beat and Metronome Awards he was at last able to form his own quartet with fellow Tristano students -  Ronnie Ball, Peter Ind and Jeff Morton. It was managed by George Wein who booked them in clubs across the USA including one memorable occasion when they appeared at Basin Street in New York opposite Louis Armstrong’s All Stars where the house was packed every night. Early in 1956 he did a series of concerts in Germany with Hans Koller and Lars Gullin. A particularly significant recording from this period was his 1957 album Very Cool with Don Ferrara where they performed Billie’s Bounce. It climaxes with the horns playing a transcription of Charlie Parker’s famous four choruses from his 1945 solo on the Savoy label. They appear to be reading it because the unison is so perfect but Don Ferrara assured me some years ago that the solo (one of Parker’s longest) had been memorised. It had been another of Tristano’s exercises for his students. In the late fifties he did several recording dates with Miles Davis, Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan and in 1958 he performed on a European tour with Zoot Sims, JJ Johnson, Kai Winding, Phineas Newborn, Oscar Pettiford and Kenny Clarke.

He was still studying with Tristano but in 1962 he decided to move out to California for a change of scene. He did some teaching there and along with Warne Marsh he occasionally played at Kim Novak’s house on Big Sur in Monterey because she was quite a jazz fan. In 1965 he appeared at Carnegie Hall in a Tribute To Charlie Parker with Kenny Dorham, Dizzy Gillespie and JJ Johnson where he performed an unaccompanied Blues For Bird. It was not an extravagant display of prodigious technique but a highly charged emotional homage.  In 1967 he recorded a series of duets with Marshall Brown, Joe Henderson, Dick Katz, Jim Hall, Ray Nance and Richie Kamuca. Over the years he often returned to the duo form with Sal Mosca, Red Mitchell, Jimmy Giuffre, Jimmy Rowles, Gil Evans and Martial Solal.

In 1972 he was a member of an all-star band that included Jon Faddis, Eddie Bert, Gene Ammons and Gerry Mulligan that performed at Avery Fisher Hall in a concert titled Charles Mingus And Friends.  During the seventies he was occasionally reunited with Warne Marsh and then in 1976 he formed his nonet which worked quite regularly at Stryker’s and the Half Note. It was a wide ranging repertory band touching all the bases from Struttin’ With Some Barbecue to Giant Steps. The group recorded four albums one of which was at Laren in Holland where Red Rodney sat in. He continued to find common cause with a diverse range of performers like Derek Bailey, Paul Bley, Harold Danko, Kenny Barron, Brad Mehldau and Richie Beirach. In 1992 he went on the road with Gerry Mulligan’s Re-Birth Of The Cool band and that was the year he received the prestigious Danish Jazzpar Award. He was a prolific recording artist – Tom Lord lists 591 albums with 270 as a leader. His final recording was in 2019 on an album titled Old Songs New with a nonet including three string players. The arrangements are by his former student Ohad Talmor and one of the titles is Kary’s Trance which he wrote for his daughter in 1956.”

Lee Konitz died on 15 April 2020 from pneumonia complications as a result of COVID-19.

Too Marvelous For Words - Lee Konitz & Gerry Mulligan

Lee Konitz [1927-2020] was - "Too Marvelous For Words."

Close your eyes and listen to this brilliant example of improvising on the melody.