Monk in Copenhagen - 1963

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

It’s always an event when’s there more newly discovered recorded music by Thelonious Monk to enjoy, whatever the period and whatever the context.

The composer of 70 tunes, many of which have become Jazz standards, when performing in night clubs and concerts, Monk was constantly reworking his repertoire and to some extent, even recomposing it.

And, of course, there’s also what the other members of the band brought to the music: Johnny Griffin, John Coltrane and Charlie Rouse [1924-1988], his long-time associate, on tenor saxophone and the bassists and drummers who made up his various rhythm sections over the years.

Unfortunately, the sound quality of potential reissues is often a challenge, but thankfully,  the sound recreation techniques available today are often a remedy for audio distortion problems.

Thankfully, too, the quality of the audio on Monk in Copenhagen [Gearbox GB 1541 CD], a reissue ot the most recent discovery of one of Monk’s “live” performances, is first rate as is the playing of Charlie Rouse on tenor, John Ore [1933-2014] on bass and Frankie Dunlop 1928-2014] on drums.

Here’s more about this wonderful addition to the Monk discography from James Hale in an article that appears in the December 2018 edition of Downbeat.

“If the 1990s represented the golden age of the CD box set, we might be amid the Age of Found Sound. "Lost" recordings by John Coltrane have made a huge splash, and last year, jazz sleuth Zev Feldman unearthed a 1960 soundtrack by Thelonious Monk,

Now, Monk again is in the spotlight, thanks to the discovery of a March 5, 1963 Danish concert featuring the pianist alongside saxophonist Charlie Rouse, bassist John Ore and drummer Frankie Dunlop. Released by London-based Gearbox Records on a number of media formats — including a deluxe, limited-edition LP — Monk captures the pianist's long-running quartet amid a triumphant European tour.

"That tour was a great success for Monk," said Robin Kelley, the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA and author of 2009's Thelonious Monk: The Life And Times Of An American Original (Free Press)- "In 1962, he hadn't done that much, but suddenly things were happening for him. Personally, he was in a great place, and in terms of his career, he was a rising star."

Kelley pointed to the pianist's new contract with Columbia Records, the stability of his quartet and his pending cover story in Time magazine as signs that Monk never had found himself in a better situation.

"He was recording a lot, the band had been together for two years, and this return to Europe gave him the opportunity to really showcase his music," Kelley said. "The tour was pretty well documented, but this Copenhagen gig [at the 210-seat Odd Fellow Palwet] has never surfaced before."

The recording's journey to the consumer market is the stuff of audiophile's fantasy, and it began with the decision by a Danish producer to purchase almost 90 reels of tape about 20 years ago.

"He was going to use them for samples," said Gearbox's Darrel Sheinman. who helped master the recording. "He never got around to it, and he was going to give them to the Danish National Jazz Archive. I knew him through buying some rare jazz records in Copenhagen, so I bought the tapes from him about five years ago."

Sheinman said he began making his way through the tapes, discovering that most of them were "cracking titles procured by the Danish Debut label, which was Charles Mingus' franchise label," run by another Dane.

"It took us an age to review them all," he said. "Since they were mostly broadcast tapes, they were either quarter-track or halftrack recordings, made at either 3.75 or 7.5 inches per second. To save money, broadcasters often used both sides of the tapes."

Despite its age and provenance. Sheinman said the Monk recording was in great shape — probably the best of his purchase, making restoration remarkably easy.

"We simply did some high-frequency riding on EQ to deal with dropouts, but that was it.  We were very lucky with this tape; it was recorded onto quarter-inch tape at 15 inches per second, then straight to all the formats, from vinyl to CD and digital."

Gearbox prides itself on using a completely analog signal chain to create its products, even when the final format is digital.

"We feel analog sound has a bigger soundstage and some gentle, natural compression, while keeping good dynamic range," Sheinman said. "It often depends on the equipment used. We like Studer machines, and their tube ones, in particular, are astonishing."

Sheinman admits that staying true to the analog commitment and refusing to go down the road of full digital restoration is always a challenge.

What Monk showcases is a particularly raucous concert, with the pianist and his bandmates digging deep into their standard repertoire, including "Bye-Ya," "Nutty," "Body And Soul" and "Monk's Dream."

Kelley said that while this was standard fare for the quartet, the music continued to yield new secrets.

"Monk was a composer," Kelley said, "and he tried to make these songs perfect. He played this music in so many different ways. Take "Body And Soul" as an example. He played it over and over, and it reveals him as this master piano player who has this deep knowledge of structure. He could turn it around so many different ways, yet keep returning to that melody."”  

                     

Count Basie by Alun Morgan - Part 8

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

"'I don't think that a band can really swing on just a kick-off, you know; I think you've got to set the tempo first. If you can do it the other way, that's something else. Anyway, we do it our way; I set it with Freddie, sometimes for a couple of choruses. That's it, see. We fool with it and we know we've got it, like now'. The simplicity of the statement is typical of the Basie philosophy over the years but so many others have tried and failed; they have found that 'simple is difficult'. The creation of a floating beat, a four-man rhythm section which thinks, breathes and plays as one, is something which has eluded many, even the Basie band itself when Count was absent."

Born in Wales in 1928, Alun Morgan became a Jazz fan as a teenage and was an early devotee of the bebop movement. In the 1950s he began contributing articles to Melody Maker, Jazz Journal, Jazz Monthly, and Gramophone and for twenty years, beginning in 1969, he wrote a regular column for a local newspaper in Kent. From 1954 onward he contributed to BBC programs on Jazz, authored and co-authored books on modern Jazz and Jazz in England and wrote over 2,500 liner notes for Jazz recordings.

All good things come to an end and such is the case with this wonderful tour of Basieland from the pen of Alun Morgan whose treatment of his subject contains more than a modicum of reverence and respect.

Chapter Eight

The show must go on and show business people are endowed with supernatural powers at moments of crisis. Count Basie came back to work after his heart attack and although he may have slowed down, this was certainly not apparent to those who heard the band after Nat Pierce and Clark Terry relinquished the joint leadership role. In january, 1977, three months after the tragedy, Basie was back in the studio for the recording of the Prime Time album, another of Sammy Nestico's sets of arrangements. (Nat Pierce was on hand for the three dates which went into the making of the LP and Basie had him take over the piano bench on Ya gotta try. 'I feel very privileged to be Basie's Number One substitute pianist' Pierce told Stanley Dance. 'That's what he told me I was.’ Pierce played piano on a number of Basie recordings, usually uncredited; he remembers There are such things from the album with Sarah Vaughan and Tell me your troubles with Joe Williams.

In Las Vegas the following month Basie got together with Dizzy Gillespie on an album which found the two principals exploring a surprisingly large tract of common ground. And then there was the eternal round of the international jazz festivals with Count playing a very large part at Montreux, both with the full band and at jam sessions. The orchestra now had a new and driving drummer in Butch Miles and an eclectic but commanding tenor soloist in Jimmy Forrest. Forrest could bring an audience to its feet with his quote-filled version of Body and Soul. Metronome magazine was proved right; the Basie band never again spawned soloists of the calibre found at the Reno Club or the Roseland Ballroom. At the same time it had to be recognised that the band was playing an entirely different set of venues to audiences who were content simply to see a world famous leader and his well-drilled, efficient band in the flesh.

This was to become the pattern until the end with the difference that Basie's failing health kept him away from work more than at any time in the past. Yet he struggled manfully to take his place in the rhythm section as much as possible. As Chris Sheridan wrote in his uncredited obituary in Jazz Journal, 'the band held together doggedly through Basie's latter-day periods of convalescence, even when, in the last few years, Basie himself was needing six weeks rest for every four on the road. He fought off a heart attack, pneumonia and, latterly arthritis to continue his musical life'. When he came to Britain for the last time, in September 1982, he came riding on stage in a motorised wheelchair equipped with a special hooter to announce his arrival.

He looked for, and found, the easy way much of the time but, thanks to Norman Granz, we have some exceptional examples of his piano playing both in solo and as an accompanist. On the Basie/Zoot Sims album, for example, there is an animated and two-handed solo on Honeysuckle rose following the tenor choruses, as if Count wanted to play his own personal tribute to composer Fats Waller. And in a Las Vegas recording studio on November 1,1981 Norman Granz put Basie at the keyboard with his so-called Kansas City Six to make music as blues-filled and as timeless as anything he had ever done before. With trumpeter Willie Cook, alto saxist Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson, guitarist Joe Pass, bass player Niels Henning Orsted Pedersen and drummer Louie Bellson the clock was wound back to the halcyon days for 40 minutes of superb music.

Basie was the last of the great piano-playing band leaders, outliving Duke Ellington, Earl Hines, Fletcher Henderson, Claude Hopkins and the rest. He would probably not have put himself in that category for modesty was an omnipresent characteristic of this man. Yet he probably achieved more than any of the others as an influence. He showed what could be done with a big band in terms of keeping the dancers happy while still providing musical interest for the dedicated jazz lovers. His timekeeping was impeccable and the very mention of his name in a description of someone else's musical style immediately implants an accurate idea in the mind.

Some stock arrangements for big bands are still marked 'Basie style' or 'Basie tempo' as a guide to budding musicians anxious to learn the finer points of orchestral jazz. Some of his best performances were heard live, or at least as recordings of a concert event, for they enabled Basie the luxury of getting the tempo right over a series of opening choruses by just the rhythm section. A lasting favourite was I needs to be bee'd with written in 1958 by Quincy Jones for the Basie-One More Time album on Roulette. The original studio version opens with a brass shout before leading into one piano chorus which acts as a prelude to Al Grey's solo. A number of ‘live' versions, both on record and video, made over the ensuing years, open with as many as nine choruses of rhythm section only before the band makes its appearance. Bill Coss described the way Count eases the band into a performance: 'you'll often see and hear Freddie and the Count playing introductions which may be several choruses long, changing tempos, checking with each other, finding the groove which pleases them most, (Basie smiling with evident glee and Freddie nodding with sophisticated satisfaction when they reach that point), then the Count's right foot, which is most often wound around the chair until then, kicks out, there is a sound of command and the band is unleashed in all its fury'.

Basie himself was probably thinking of the time-restrictions of record-making when he spoke of getting started; 'I don't think that a band can really swing on just a kick-off, you know; I think you've got to set the tempo first. If you can do it the other way, that's something else. Anyway, we do it our way; I set it with Freddie, sometimes for a couple of choruses. That's it, see. We fool with it and we know we've got it, like now'. The simplicity of the statement is typical of the Basie philosophy over the years but so many others have tried and failed; they have found that 'simple is difficult'. The creation of a floating beat, a four-man rhythm section which thinks, breathes and plays as one, is something which has eluded many, even the Basie band itself when Count was absent.

Johnny Mandel tells the story about listening to the Basie band rehearse one afternoon while the Count wandered about the empty nightclub, paying no attention to his band or its playing. The musicians were obviously uncomfortable and they practically forced him to the piano. Suddenly the band smashed right and left as it had not done earlier. That was no reflection on the other three members of the rhythm section. The Basie magic was hard to explain.

Harder to explain was the Count himself for he allowed very few people ever to get close to him. 'No member of the jazz pantheon smiles so much and says so little as Count Basie' wrote Nat Hentoff in 1962. '"Except for Freddie Green nobody really knows Bill" says a veteran member of the band. "He keeps in most of what he feels, and the face he presents to the public is usually the one we see too. Once in a great while he'll explode or do something else that isn't in keeping with the usual picture of him, but he quickly picks up his customary role. And from time to time, we'll see Freddie Green lecturing him off to one side- never the other way around. But I don't know what those conversations are about"'. Basie as leader was unlike any of his contemporaries. For years he travelled in the band bus with everyone else, unlike Duke Ellington, who always travelled in Harry Carney's car or some bandleaders who drove their cars a mile or so behind the band bus to ensure there was no stopping en route. Count fostered the happy family atmosphere, a rare commodity in a touring band with all the pressures that that throws up.

When his fortunes improved Basie invested money in a 132nd Street and Seventh Avenue club named after him. He also bought a house in St. Albans, Long Island, which became home for his wife, Catherine, and their daughter Diane. On the few occasions he was at home he relaxed in front of the television set or operated his model railway layout down in the basement. In an obviously ghosted article in 1955 Down Beat he wrote 'Not too long ago there was a real "crazy" dog in our household with a pedigree a mile long and natch we called him "One O'Clock Jump". All house broken and lovable, he was a nice little fella, but we had to get rid of him because he just couldn't get used to the two-legged man of the house, namely me. You see, in the past so many years I just haven't been around home long enough for him to dig me. You know, that darn "mutt" wouldn't let me get past the first crack in the door. But don't get me wrong, I love the road. It may be a little tough on my wife and kid, never seeing their father and husband until Birdland time comes around, but it has and will remain a great thrill and challenge to me'. Like many others, Basie had been around so long that he could not envisage a time when he would fail to answer the band call.

His wife, Catherine, first met Bill Basie when he was touring with the Bennie Moten band. She was one of the dancing Whitman Sisters (although her maiden name was Morgan). They were married for more than forty years and her death, in April, 1983, was a severe blow at a time when Count's own health was at a low ebb. He looked for, and sometimes found, solace and companionship on the bandstand where the roar of the crowd provided a satisfaction equal to none.

We are fortunate that Basie left a huge legacy of recorded work and also enabled a large number of young musicians to develop their talents as soloists. Everyone played better when Basie was at the piano and no band has ever swung more. As an epitaph that sentence tells half of the story. The other half is that Bill Basie brought a warm feeling of happiness to millions.”

Hank Mobley - Michael James in Jazz Monthly, 1962

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

Thanks to a Jazz mate in New Zealand, this second, rare article on Hank Mobley by Michael James from the short-lived Jazz Monthly magazine is now available as part of our ongoing series about Hank and his music.

Michael James wrote the annotation about Hank Mobley that appears in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Barry Kernfeld, editor, in which he references in the bibliography two articles that he wrote about Hank for Jazz Monthly; one in 1961 and another in 1962.

Along with the recent published on the blog of Simon Spillett pieces -”Hank Mobley’s recordings with Miles Davis - UPDATED” and  “Looking East: Hank Mobley in Europe 1968-1970,” the John Litweiler interview that appeared in Downbeat in 1973, Bob Blumenthal’s booklet notes to the Mosaic Records box set of Hank’s 1950s Blue Note recordings and Derek Ansell’s book Workout: The Music of Hank Mobley which was published by Northway in 2008, the two Jazz Monthly essays by James are the most extensive writings ever done about Hank’s career, especially its early years.

Of course, there’s a whole host of sleeve or insert notes to the 26 LPs that Hank recorded for Blue Note and we’ll be presenting separately from the body of article on Hank in the Jazz literature.

Yet, sadly, the James articles are virtually unknown [let alone virtually impossible to find].

For my taste, Michael’s style of writing is a bit too complicated and convoluted in places, but I doubt you’ll find a more thorough and exacting description of Hank Mobley’s style, both improvisationally and compositionally, in any other source on Hank [meager though they are].

Here is the second of Michael’s pieces on Hank which appeared in Jazz Monthly, viii/10, 1962. The paragraphing has been modified to make it easier to read in a blog format.

Only since, 1958 or thereabouts has Hank Mobley been a really consistent player. Before that he could not always be counted on to turn in performances of a high order. This weakness derived not so much from lack of imaginativeness as from an intermittent failure properly to translate into musical terms the intricacies of the ideas that entered his mind. It may be that the light tone he favoured at that time, a tone which reminds one of Ihe Stan Gelz of 1950 more readily than of any other saxophonist, aggravated the problem of executing rhythmically complex phrases with the necessary precision; and it is probably no coincidence that since 1958 the sound he has produced has been firmer texture than it usually was before. However, there are several albums from this earlier phase of his career that do contain some really brilliant tenor playing; and at least one wherein he maintains a musical level akin to that of his more recent work.

This record, entitled quite simply Hank Mobley, and released in the United States (though not, as yet, in Britain) as Blue Note BLP 1568 has further attractions in that it finds Mobley supported by a cast whose quality is as undeniable to this observer as its reputation amongst the more conservative critics wait, and in some cases still is highly dubious. For the purposes of the session, which was held on June 3rd, 1957. Mobley chose Art Blakey's current trumpeter, Bill Hardman. and Charles Mingus's alto and tenor saxophonist. Curtis Porter, now better known as Shafi Hadi, to complete the front line; whilst the rhythm section was made up of Sonny Clark on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and the ubiquitous Art Taylor ai the drums. The material was obviously selected with the same eye for variety comprising as it does three original themes, two from Porter's pen and one by the leader: an engaging but not overworked evergreen, Falling in Love With Love; and a virtual classic of the modern jazz repertoire. Milt Jackson's Bag’s Groove. It is a safe bet that not many record companies would have been prepared to chance their arm with so evidently uncommercial a choice of tunes and personnel, and a portion of the credit for the date's artistic success must go to the Blue Note directors themselves,  whose sensitive handling of musicians —witness Max Harrison's recent remark apropos of a Bud Powell release - has paid rich dividends on other occasions.

Mighty Moe and Joe, the opening tune, was written by Porter. In his helpful sleeve note Ira Gitler explains that this composition is dedicated both to bassist Ollie Mohammed and to tenor player Joe Alexander, whose robust work was so agreeable a feature of Tadd Dameron's Fontainebleau album. The first and third eights are couched in question-and-answer form with the other two horns replying to Porter's urgent alto figures. The piece also composes an opening vamp played by the horns and an eight-bar bridge passage which leads into the first solo, taken by Porter. His alto playing is distinguished by a remarkable variety of melodic shapes, the attack of a whiplash, and a tonal command whose virtuosity very nearly rivals Dizzy Gillespie's. Some notes he invests with a fast, plaintive vibrato: others, with a hoarseness which in the context emerges as the very acme of ferocity; whilst others still he plays with a hard, clean sound as if to intensify the effect of those that are coloured or distorted in any way. His style, in fact, is an original one, though evolved, broadly speaking, within the Parker tradition.

Bill Hardman, who follows him, is an individualist of the same stamp. Having dealt with his work at some length in the December 1961 issue of this magazine, I shall not go into detail here, except to mention his liking for multi-noted phrases that often start with a flourish in the high register before cascading downward through the range; his obstinately asymmetrical approach: and his use of a thin, brassy tone which, supplemented by the slurs and inflections that also characterise his style, makes for an atmosphere of nervous violence.

Hank Mobley takes over from the trumpeter so confidently that one feels sure he will play well throughout the record, and this impression, I hasten to add. is fulfilled to the letter. His solo evokes in a more logical way than Hardman's, and is also a shade better constructed than Porter's. His melodies move across and over the beat with great freedom, yet never sound gauche or rhythmically spineless, and his tone and execution contrast effectively with Porter's clipped, astringent attack.

Sonny Clark, the next soloist, programmes his improvisation intelligently. Starting with fragmented phrases that suggest he may have been affected by Silver's conception at that time, he very soon resolves the tension thus created with a succession of longer figures more reminiscent of his present keyboard approach. As always, his solo here benefits from that unforced, seemingly natural swing that he has possessed ever since be made his first records. A bowed passage by Chambers leads back into the theme and the track closes with a repetition of the bridge section which preceded Porter's opening solo and of the vamp that served as an introduction. The fade-out ending, which seems to me unjustified, is fortunately the only instance of its kind in the album.

Not unnaturally with musicians of this calibre, the various soloists do not change their basic conceptions to any marked degree in the other pieces; so rather than subject each track to the same sort of examination as I have accorded Mighty Moe and Joe, I shall ask the reader to assume that, unless otherwise stated, the members of the group function in a similar way and at a similar level, and shall limit myself to picking out the highlights.

News,  Porter's other contribution to the repertoire employed at this session, is certainly one of these. I think it its best described as a personal and very successful adaptation of Tadd Dameron's compositional method. Porter achieves the same sort of flexible melodic line m the main eights, a line that splits at times to give the piece a slight contrapuntal flavour, but which makes its impact chiefly through the richness of the trumpet-led voicings: and the release, too, recalls Dameron, comprising as it does a rhythmically contrasting section set over a Latin beat. Although this composition in less personal than the other one Porter contribute to the date, the craftsmanship of which it clearly speaks affords us a more exact notion of his potential as a writer. To leave News without mentioning Mobley's solo would be an injustice. His phrases grow more and more complex in shape until at the end of the first eight of the second chorus he resorts to some well-executed double-timing. At this point it seems that he is about to lose all sense of structural compactness, but he rescues the situation halfway through the release, and his last twelve bars, less prolix and tied more closely to the beat, imbue the whole improvisation with a unity of purpose that is paradoxically the more striking for its having tottered for a while, as it were, on the brink of incoherence. In this connexion credit must also be given to Art Taylor, whose accompaniment to the tenor solo connotes a deep understanding of Mobley's style.

In his written work Mobley has never been compromised by the uncertainty which marred certain of his earlier solos, and has often dealt in shapes that are sparer in outline if just as free of the beat. This is very much the case with Double Exposure, for each of its three main eight-bar constituents ends with a descending phrase comprising three groups of two notes each. Also of interest is the introduction, which comprises a written figure for the horns followed by a drum break, reversed, this introduction acts as a bridge between the theme statement and the solo sections, and minus the drum break is also pressed into service as a coda. Everyone except Paul Chambers is featured in this piece, even Art Taylor taking a solo chorus.

Particularly well worth noting is the two-chorus chase between the tenor players. It was a wise decision, I think, to have them share sections of eight bars rather than of the more customary four, because both like to indulge in fairly long runs. Mobley leads off this series of exchanges and to my mind emerges as slightly the more polished and inventive artist, though the emphasis is not so much on rivalry as on musical contrast. The third of his breaks, which consists of an intricate yet graceful molif that rises by degrees out of the lower register, is especially arresting.

Although Mighty Moe and Joe of is taken at a livelier pace than the other pieces so far dealt with, all three are set in a fairly bright tempo range. This is not the case with Bag’s Groove, even though the band's interpretation of it is faster than the original Miles Davis recording. My first impression on hearing this track was that the slight increase in tempo was an error of taste, but I have now come to accept this difference and feel that I was perhaps prejudiced by my great affection for the Davis version, and have also grown more partial to the piano figures with which Clark answers each of the three identical phrases that make up this simple yet highly evocative blues composition. The mood established by the soloists is less exuberant than in the three originals, and all, including Paul Chambers, who contributes two plucked choruses, reach a high creative standard in this most revealing of jazz forms. Particularly affecting is Hardman's exceptionally sober improvisation. Over the course of his three choruses he builds up the tension with extended phrases. that reveal a harmonic conception which is free but by no means wilfully eccentric, and then releases this tension at the close with a characteristically drawn-out motif. A curious point about this passage. and one that probably helps explain its insidious effect is that in contrast with conventional methods, the trumpeter plays more softly as it moves toward its climax.

Falling in Love With Love, which has Porter playing alto, as in the opening selection, is taken at the kind of ambling pace which best brings out its wistful charm. Hardman, working over the rhythm section's relaxed beat opens with a highly personal reading of the melody, similar to the treatment he was later to accord Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise in Lou Donaldson's Sunny Side Up album. Obviously inspired by the trumpeter's incisive statement of the theme. Mobley takes over from him to construct an essentially romantic variation on its melody, and then, after choruses by Porter and Clark, returns to like vein to bring the performance to its close. His work here, distinguished by acute melodic sensitivity and a tonal command that is all the more impressive in view of the leisurely tempo and the sustaining of notes it induces, seems to me the artistic peak of the album, and serves. incidentally, to remind us of the emotional breadth of Mobley's talent.

Any musician who can interpret a ballad with the finesse of a Stan Getz — and this is no casual comparison — and then, only three years or so later, delineate, in his solo in on Roll Call, a state of mind that can only be termed the epitome of aggressiveness, is clearly possessed of extraordinary potential. Bearing this in mind, it seems lively that although he has already matured as a consistently engaging player, his expressive powers will continue to broaden as the years go by. The thought that one is privileged meanwhile to follow the unfolding of such talent makes listening to records like this still more enjoyable.”

Afro Cuban - Kenny Dorham

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

Here’s another of our features based around favorite recordings, this time focusing on trumpeter Kenny Dorham’s Afro Cuban album for Blue Note which has been reissued on CD as CDP 7 46815 2.

Leonard Feather, the distinguished Jazz critic, producer and author of The Encyclopedia of Jazz, wrote the following insert notes Afro Cuban, Kenny’s first session for Blue Note as a leader

“THE contents of this LP provide a revealing dual portrait of Kenny Dorham. One side of him, the side with the Afro-Cuban leanings, can be observed in the first four tunes, featuring an eight-piece band, previously released on a 10" LP. The other side, both of Kenny and of the record, can be observed in the last three tunes, which were recorded with a quintet and have never previously been released.

It has taken McKinley Howard Dorham quite a few years to earn the recognition that should have been his during the middle 1940s. For a long time, during the halcyon era of the bop movement, Kenny was Mr, Available for every trumpet choir in every band and combo. If Dizzy wasn't around and Howard McGhee was out of town, there was always Kenny. And so it went from abou! 1945 to '51, always in the shadow of those who had been first to establish themselves in the vanguard of the new jazz.

Slowly, in the past few years, Kenny has emerged from behind this bop bushel to show the individual qualities (hot were ultimately to mark him for independent honors. Numerous chores as a sideman on record dates for various small companies led to his inclusion in the important Horace Silver Quintet dotes for Blue Note (BLP 1518), and, as a result of his fine work on these occasions, to the signing of a Blue Note contract and his first date for this label as a combo leader on his own.

If the Kenny Dorham Story were ever made into a movie (and the way things are going in Hollywood at the moment, don't let anything surprise you) it would begin on a ranch near Fairfield, Texas on August 30,1924. The actor playing Kenny as a child would be shown listening to his mother and sister playing the piano and his father strumming blues on the guitar.

Then there would be the high school scenes in Austin, Texas, with Kenny taking up piano and trumpet but spending much of his time on the school boxing team; and later the sojourn at Wiley College, where he played in the band with Wild Bill Davis as well as majoring in chemistry. In his spare time Kenny would be seen making his first stabs at composing and arranging.

After almost a year in the Army (during which his pugilistic prowess came to the fore on the Army boxing team) Kenny went back 1o Texas, joining Russell Jacquet's band in Houston late in 1943 and spending much of 1944 with the bond of Frank Humphries.

From 1945 to '48 Kenny was on the road with several big bands, including those of Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Lionel Hampton and Mercer Ellington in that order. Then he spent the best part of two years playing clubs as part of the Charlie Parker Quintet. Lurking on the edge of the limelight occupied by the immortal Bird, he began to lure a little individual attention as something more than the section man and occasional soloist he had been for so long. One of his important breaks was a trip to Paris with Bird in 1949 to take part in the Jazz Festival.

Settling permanently in New York, Kenny became a freelance musician whose services alongside such notabilities as Bud Powell, Sonny Stitt, Thelonious Monk and Mary Lou Williams gradually impressed his name and style on jazz audiences.

During 1954-5 Kenny worked most frequently around the east with a combo that constitutes the nucleus of the outfit heard on these sides - Hank Mobley, Horace Silver and Art Blakey.

Mobley is an Eastman, Georgia product, born there in 1930 but raised in New Jersey. Making his start with Paul Gayten in 1950, he rose to prominence with Max Roach's combos off and on from 1951 -53 and with Dizzy in '54.

Mobley as well as Silver and Blakey are of course familiar figures at Blue Note, abundantly represented in the catalogue through their sessions with the Jazz Messengers (1507,1508,1518). Horace and Art are also on such other sessions as the Horace Silver trio (1520) and A Night At Birdland (1521,1522).

Jay Jay Johnson, whose eminence was saluted on 1505 and 1506, was recently elected the "Greatest Ever" by a jury of 100 of his peers in the Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz "Musicians' Musicians" poll.

Cecil McKenzie Payne, a baritone sax man with a long and distinguished record in modern jazz circles, is a 34-year-old Brooklynite whose career as a bopper began right after his release from the Army in 1946 and took him through the U.S. and Europe with Dizzy Gillespie until '49, when he began freelancing in New York with Tadd Dameron, James Moody and Illinois Jacquet.

Carlos "Potato" Valdes, the conga drummer; come over from Cuba a couple of years ago. It was Gillespie who first told Kenny Dorham about him and "Little Benny" Harris who dug him up and brought him to Kenny's rehearsal. "He gassed them all," recalls Alfred Lion succinctly.

Completing the octet, Oscar Pettiford provides the indomitable boss sound that won him the Esquire Gold Award in 1944 and '45 and the Down Seat Critics' poll in 1953.

For the four tunes with the Afro-Cuban rhythm motif, Kenny says, "I tried to write everything so that the rhythm would be useful throughout and would never get in the way." As a consequence, the Cuban touch sounds as if it is a part of the whole, rather than something that has been superimposed on a jazz scene, as is sometimes the case.

Afrodisia is a title that has been used before, but this is a new composition. The theme and interpretation recall somewhat the Gillespie approach to material of this type. Like the patriot who is plus royaliste que le roi, Kenny and his cohorts achieve a more interesting and more Cuban atmosphere here than you will hear on many performances emanating direct from Havana. The "Potato" is really cooking on this one.

Lotus Flower, after Horace's attractive intro, shows how the Cuban percussion idea can be applied effectively to a slow, pretty melody. Jay Jay's solo, though short, has a melancholy quality that compliments the mood set by Kenny's delicately phrased work here.

Minor's Holiday didn't get that title only because of its minor key; it was also named for Minor Robinson, a trumpet player in New Haven. A mood-setting rising phrase characterizes the opening chorus, leading into a loosely swinging, pinpoint-toned trumpet solo that shows, like all his work on this date, the high degree of individuality Kenny has achieved. Mobley and Jay Jay also have superior solos.

The session ends with an original commissioned by Kenny from Gigi Gryce, the talented ex-Hampton reedman. Basheer's Dream has a minor mood of singular intensity sustained by Kenny, Hank and Jay Jay, with Valdes and Blakey allied as a potent percussion team and Horace, the Connecticut Cuban, contributing some discreet punctuations.

The reverse side features four of the principal protagonists from the Afro-Cuban dale — Dorham, Mobley, Payne and Blakey - with Percy Heath of Modern Jazz Quartet fame replacing Pettiford. The session opens with K. D.'s Motion, a medium-paced blues, partly in unison and portly voiced. After an eight-measure bridge, Kenny dives into four choruses of fluent ab libbing. The blues being at once the lowest and highest common denominator of oil true jazzmen, Kenny is greatly at ease here, the solo offering a first-rate sample of his ideation and continuity. Payne, Mobley and Silver also cook freely before the theme returns at the end of this effective five-minute exploration of the 12-bar tradition.

The Villa, another Dorham original like all the music on these sides, is a melodic theme that could make a good pop song, though at this fast tempo it serves as a fine framework for trumpet, tenor and baritone solos, with Horace comping enthusiastically like a coach urging his team on from the sidelines. Kenny and Art trade fours for 24 measures before the ensemble returns.

Venita's Dance is a rhythmic yet somehow reflective and wistful theme, taken at a medium pace. Kenny's solo, constructed mostly in downward phrases, maintains the mood established in the opening chorus, after which Mobley's virile, assertive tone and style are in evidence, followed by excellent samples of Payne and Silver.

Whichever side of Kenny Dorham intrigues you most, whether you dig him particularly as composer or trumpeter, Afro-Cuban specialist or mainstream jazzman, most of what you will hear on this disc will offer a high protein diet of musical satisfaction.”                                                                   

The CD’s producer Michael Cuscuna added this postscript about its two additional tracks:

“K.D’s Cob Ride was an unfitted composition that first came out in Japan in the early 80's in a boxed set anthology entitled The Other Side Of the 1500 Series. We titled it as such because Hank Mobley confirmed that it was a Kenny Dorham composition and was the sort of tune that he might write in the cab on the way to a record date. It has since come to light that Kenny had already titled this piece "Echo of Spring" The alternate take of "Minors Holiday" preceded the master take in recording order and was marked on the session logs as being equal to the master take.”

You can check out Afrodisia, the opening track of Afro Cuban, on the following video montage.