"How Lester Young Altered the Course of Music" by John Edward Hasse

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

Bob Cooper, Richie Kamuca, Bill Holman, Bill Perkins, Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Hardaway, Gary LeFebvre, Med Flory, Pete Christlieb, Warne Marsh, among many other tenor saxophonists, were all known to me before I knew anything about from whence they sprang - Lester Young.

As Lewis Porter writes in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz:

“Young was one of the most influential musicians in jazz. His style was viewed as revolutionary when he was first recorded during the late 1930s, and it was a primary force in the development of modern jazz in general and the music of Charlie Parker in particular (... ). The only influences Young ever admitted to were two white saxophonists of the 1920s, Jimmy Dorsey and Frankie Trumbauer, especially the latter. Both possessed exceptional classical technique and a light, dry sound. Dorsey was fond of timbral effects achieved through low honks and alternative fingerings, and Young carried these further. From Trumbauer, Young adopted a strong sense of musical form, which was apparent even in his earliest recordings, such as Lady be Good (...) with its short motivic and rhythmic constructions, each building upon its predecessor. Young's beautiful and delicate sound must be heard in order to appreciate fully the impact of this solo. Sixty years after the death of the jazz saxophonist[1959], he’s still remembered as an outsider’s nonconformist who swung to his own beat as recounted by John Edward Hasse in the March 13, 2019 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Hasse is curator emeritus of American music at the Smithsonian. His books include “Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington” (Da Capo) and “Discover Jazz” (Pearson). His short pieces for the Wall Street Journal are always full of insights, well researched and offer accurate information and written in a style that easy and fun to read.

“He looked different, he played different, he was different. Lester Young stood out: green eyes, reddish hair that earned him the boyhood nickname “Red,” a porkpie hat, an ankle-length black coat, his saxophone held at a 45-degree angle. In a musical field known for individuality, he was an outsider’s nonconformist, swinging to his own beat: shy, sensitive, averse to loudness and ostentation, inventor of his own eccentric lingo, and progenitor of cool as hipness in music, language and persona. If he didn’t invent “cool” to mean “hip,” he popularized it and other phrases that spread well beyond jazz. Most important, he created a poetic new aesthetic, altering the course of music. Sixty years after his death, the tenor saxophonist continues to rank as one of the most influential jazzmen in history.

Born in Mississippi in 1909 and raised in nearby New Orleans, by the time he was a teenager he was touring with a family band led by his father. But before he was 20 he decided to go out on his own. He went on the road, living for a time in Albuquerque, N.M., Minneapolis, and then in Kansas City, Mo., a jazz hotbed hosting dozens of nightclubs for listening and dancing. As part of Count Basie’s soon-to-be-discovered, quintessential swing band, Young made his first recordings. In 1936, on “Lady, Be Good,” he plays a wondrous two-chorus solo that sparked a sensation among musicians.

His solo on Basie’s 1937 “One O’Clock Jump”—Young hits a B-flat 20 times in a row—was memorized by legions of tenor sax players. Young’s 1939 showpiece “Lester Leaps In”—rife with rhythmic surprises—spotlights his superior note choices and interlinking melodic ideas. These recordings have much to offer listeners today.

A decade earlier, cornetist Louis Armstrong had crystallized the model jazz solo; Lester Young—a brilliant soloist and melodist—reimagined how an extempore statement could sound. Young’s feathery-floating tone; dearth of vibrato; long, flowing lines; and seemingly endless melodic ideas grabbed listeners’ ears. Inspired by the white saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer, Young presented a lyrical contrast to the hot style of the dominant tenor saxophonist, Coleman Hawkins. Young’s approach played down harmonies and emphasized melodic invention. He nailed his solos on the first take, spinning out golden melody lines at the speed of thought.

Achieving a balance between lyrical and earthy, between poise and punch, Young’s new paradigm made him the most influential jazz musician between the rise of Armstrong in the 1920s and saxophonist Charlie Parker in the mid-1940s.

Young and singer Billie Holiday forged a warm friendship, crowning each other with admiring nicknames. He called her “Lady Day” (short for Holiday) and she dubbed him “The President” or “Prez”—the top man in her realm. Their recordings of 1937-41—such as “Mean to Me” and “I Must Have That Man”—still sparkle after 80 years.

If Young’s sound was essentially romantic, his life arced toward the tragic. In 1944, shortly after appearing in a celebrated, arty movie short, “Jammin’ the Blues,” he was drafted into the U.S. Army, one of the worst possible fates for someone introverted, soft-spoken, detached and suffering from epilepsy. The Army charged him with smoking marijuana and placed him in disciplinary barracks for nine months, a trauma from which he never fully recovered: “a nightmare,” he said, “man, one mad nightmare.”

As Young’s alcoholism grew worse in the 1950s, his tone grew huskier, his vibrato wider, and his pitch range lower. He died on March 15, 1959, at age 49, ending a recording career of just 23 years. Four months later, his musical soulmate Billie Holiday expired in a Harlem hospital at age 44.

Young influenced scores of saxophonists—such as Stan Getz and Dexter Gordon—as well as bebop, cool jazz, bossa nova and Hollywood soundtracks. Beyond music, such beat writers as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac hero-worshiped Young, and Bertrand Tavernier would base his 1986 movie “’Round Midnight” on the lives of Young and pianist Bud Powell.

The premature deaths of Young and Holiday testify to jazz musicians’ hard road then: irregular incomes, often-itinerant work, ever-present temptations of substance abuse, unscrupulous club owners and record producers, and vicissitudes of public taste.

If you were an African-American musician, you also faced the psychic brutality of widespread racism, discrimination, segregation and the risk of physical violence. “It’s all bullshit,” said Young, “and they want everybody who is a Negro to be a Uncle Tom or Uncle Remus or Uncle Sam.” And yet, despite sustained assaults on his dignity and humanity, Young and other musicians of color, fortified by the strength of their character and culture, produced so much splendid, evergreen art.”

The Swinging Guitar of Howard Roberts The Swinging Guitar of Howard Roberts

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

“In his prime, Howard Roberts played on more than 900 studio dates annually and recorded the hippest guitar records of the era. His legion of fans still revere his incalculable influence and musical legacy.

Vesta Roberts, who grew up in a family of lumberjacks, gave birth to Howard just three weeks before the Wall Street Crash in October of 1929. Howard’s dad, a cowboy, wasn’t happy about the boy’s affinity for music.

But his mother prayed for her baby to be a musician. And Howard Roberts often told the story about, “When I was about eight years old, I fell asleep in the back seat of my parents’ car one very hot summer afternoon. When I woke up I just blurted out, ‘I have to play the guitar!’” So when his dad saw the youngster’s attempt to build one from a board and bailing wire, he acquiesced. For Christmas, he bought young Howard an $18 Kalamazoo student-model acoustic manufactured by Gibson.

By age 15, Roberts’ guitar teacher, Horace Hatchett, told the boy’s dad, “Howard has his own style of playing and there’s nothing else I can show him. He plays better than I do.” Howard was already playing club dates in their hometown Phoenix area – usually blues and jazz gigs on which he would gain playing experience and develop his improvising skills. He was receiving an extensive education in the blues from a number of black musicians, one of whom was the brilliant trumpeter Art Farmer. Journalist Steve Voce, in his 1992 article in The Independent Newsletter, quoted Roberts on those nightclub gigs, “I came out of the blues. I started in that scene when I was 15 and it was the most valuable experience in the world for me.”

Roberts had created an heroic practice regimen with his roommate, guitarist Howard Heitmeyer. The two would practice three or four hours in the morning, catch an afternoon movie, then return to practice until it was time to hit the clubs, gig or not. Heitmeyer would remain Roberts’ lifelong friend, and someone with a comprehensive talent Roberts found staggering.

At age 17, Roberts was drawn to a class created by composer/theorist Joseph Schillinger, whose students included George Gershwin, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Oscar Levant. Noted musician Fabian Andre was commissioned to teach.

Schillinger’s system of applying mathematical principles to art piqued Roberts’ curiosity, so he arranged a deal with Andre; he’d sweep the floors after class to defray his tuition. That attitude was indicative of the teenager’s precocious intellect and passion for music and science. ...

“Howard really blurred the lines among guitar players, and reached so many of them,” Ted Greene said in 2003. “Jazz guys, country players, and rockers all loved him because he played with such feeling and authenticity. Those first two Capitol albums were no doubt an introduction to jazz guitar for hundreds – maybe thousands – of young players. He didn’t water anything down, but it was all still accessible. And he had a recognizable sound. You immediately knew it was Howard.”

-Jim Carlton, Vintage Guitar Magazine

I always thought of guitarist Howard Roberts [1929-1992] as the Left Coast equivalent of Tal Farlow: long, knuckle-busting runs executed in a lightning fast manner, inflected, here-and-there with a heavy dose of the blues, and played with phrases that were framed in a relentless swing.

When I was a part of the music studio scene in Hollywood in the late 1950s and 1960s, Howard seemed to be everywhere. Maybe that’s because he was  - everywhere.

His Jazz recordings from this period are hard to find and not all of them have made it to digital, but thanks to Jordi Pujol at Fresh Sound Records, two of his dates, one under his own name which he made for Norman Granz at Verve and another on the same label but as a sideman in Swedish drummer Bert Dahlander quartet have been made available on CD as The Swinging Guitar of Howard Roberts [Fresh Sound Records, FSR CD 963].

The Fresh Sound recording can be had as an audio CD and in an Mp3 format, and you can locate order information on the Fresh Sound website by going here. You can also sample the album via that link.

More information about Howard and these recordings can be found in the following always informative sleeve notes by Jordi Pujol.

“When Howard Roberts (1929-1992) decided to teach himself guitar, he visited every black jazz club in his native Phoenix, Arizona. "All we did was play the blues. And that's what I came out of—the blues." Roberts, however, felt the need to learn more about the complexities of the profession, and so he started studying harmony and composition. Looking for more musical activity, he moved to Los Angeles in 1950, where he gigged around the city in jam sessions at after-hours clubs. There, he developed his dazzling technique and fine harmonic sense. Having played with the best instrumentalists and composers, he started getting calls for session work.

He established his reputation with the Bobby Troup trio, which appeared on TV from coast to coast, and consolidated the fame of Troup's group with some brilliant playing of his Gibson guitar, so much so that the Down Beat jazz critics accorded Roberts the New Guitar Star Award of 1955. In the years following, he continued recording with top jazz singers and instrumentalists, and eventually made his first albums as a leader for Verve.

In 1959 Roberts started getting more and more work on TV and film, but not content with settling down in the Hollywood studios in a kind of prosperous obscurity, he kept very active in the jazz scene, playing concerts and recording his own albums.

Howard Roberts was a skilled guitarist with a fondness for direct and unencumbered jazz playing, his tone always bright and penetrating, never twangy. A fine technician, he was able to execute difficult passages cleanly and forcefully. He forged a sound of his own. fiery and hard-swinging, creative and unpretentious. These sessions are an example of his jazz work, as a sideman and as a leader.

Born October 2, 1929, guitarist Howard Roberts was pretty much self-taught. His roots were in the blues, which he got while gigging at black jazz clubs in his native Phoenix, Arizona. "I first began playing in those clubs, and all we did was play the blues. And that's what I came out of—the blues."

By the time he was sixteen, his superb artistry and technical proficiency started attracting aspiring guitar players, who watched him play with the likes of Art Farmer and Pete Jolly. Howard, however, felt the need to learn more about the complexities of the profession, so at 17 he became associated with Howard Heitmeyer, and started seriously studying the larger formal and technical problems of music and guitar—including the Joseph Schillinger method—as well as composition with Albert Harris and Fabian Andre. In the meanwhile, he continued to delight audiences with the best jazz he could perform in any and all gigs he could find near his hometown.

It wasn't enough though, so late in 1950 Roberts, looking for a more active musical community, moved to Los Angeles carrying only his guitar and amp. In the early days he lived a vagabond life, subsisting on chocolate chip cookies, sleeping in cars, and jamming in after-hours clubs. But after about a year of trying to find a job, he was engaged to work on "The Al Pierce Show," a radio broadcast that a prescient 10-year-old Howard had told his mom he'd be on someday. It was the first folding money he was to make in L.A.

By 1953 he had become the director of Guitar Curriculum at the Westlake College of Music the first accredited vocational music school in the U.S.A. That same year he also joined Bobby Troup's Trio which included Bob Enevoldsen on bass. It seems that the jazz backgrounds of Enevoldsen and Roberts rubbed off on Troup with excitingly salutary effects.

With the encouragement and assistance of Johnny Mercer, the trio became a permanent panelist on the CBS-TV musical quiz-variety show "Musical Chairs." One of the reasons for the success of this television musical panel was the steady stream of fine music turned out by Troup's group.

That is where Roberts developed his rich style of chordal playing, which in turn was instrumental in creating a "new" trend in jazz that replaced the use of piano. The first album to present this "new sound" would be the Chico Hamilton Trio, a recording which featured Chico, Howard and bassist George Duvivier.

Roberts helped Troup's group reach fame with some brilliant playing on his Gibson guitar, so much so that the Down Beat jazz critics accorded Roberts the New Guitar Star Award of 1955. In December 1955, he was playing with Troup and Enevoldsen regularly at Pasadena's Huntington club.

Between 1954 and 1955, Roberts made several recordings with Pete Rugolo's orchestra, and with a septet led by composer and French horn player John Graas. The latter was a forerunner in the intellectual circles of the modern sounds, particularly in Graas' Jazz Studio and Jazz Lab albums for Decca records where they played in 6/4 time in jazz for the first time. Roberts, along with bassists Red Mitchell or Curtis Counce, and drummer Larry Bunker, managed to make that meter swing.

He also appeared on several albums by Bobby Troup, and others by such greats as Bob Cooper, June Christy, Terry Pollard, Bobby Scott, Pete Jolly, Frank Morgan, Helen Carr, Bob Enevoldsen, Jack Millman, Dennis Farnon, Elmer Bernstein, John Towner Williams, and Russ Garcia.

In August 1956, Roberts joined the Buddy DeFranco quartet to play at Zardi's, sharing the stand with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Then in November, they went to NYC, and after a stint at Basin Street, moved on for a tour of the East Coast, with Jim Gannon, bass, and Bill Bradley, drums.

The guitarist was gaining some traction and was a regular face in record and TV dates. This caught the attention of Norman Granz, who signed him to an exclusive contract with Verve to record his first album as a leader. It came out with the title "Mr. Roberts Plays Guitar." Early in 1957, he was also the featured guitarist on Joe Morello's first album, and not long afterwards he appeared on recording sessions led by Bud Shank, the Candoli Brothers, Herbie Harper, Herbie Mann, Rusty Bryant, and in the album "Skal" by the Swedish drummer Bert Dahlander.

His studio recording activities continued intensively throughout 1958 and 1959, recording with Claude Williamson, Buddy Collette, Marty Paich, Shorty Rogers, and singers Ruth Olay and Julie London. In January, he also recorded his second album for Verve, called "Good Pickins," where he was joined by Bill Holman, Pete Jolly, Red Mitchell and Stan Levey.

That same year. Roberts moved into the TV and motion picture field. By then, his friend and mentor Jack Marshall was set to score the classic TV series "The Deputy," starring Henry Fonda, Searching for an artist who, on the spot, could improvise jazz-guitar against more traditional orchestrations, he thought of Roberts and offered him the job. He quickly became a first-call session player who would eventually, and later routinely, log more than 900 sessions per year.

Still, not content with settling down in the Hollywood studios — in a kind of prosperous obscurity — he kept very active in the jazz scene, playing concerts and recording. He signed a new record deal as a leader with Capitol Records, and released an excellent and eclectic series of albums for the label during the 60s.

Roberts, like many of the Hollywood studio musicians, grew up playing jazz. Many of them made solid professional reputations as jazzmen before succumbing to the lure of the lucrative livelihood that was certainly not to be found in playing only jazz for a living. Yet most continued to kid themselves that they hadn't lost their jazz touch. Some played jazz clubs whenever available. That was the case of Roberts, one of the most capable jazz guitarists.

Roberts was a skilled guitarist with a fondness for direct and unencumbered jazz playing. His tone is bright and penetrating but never twangy. A fine technician, he was able to execute difficult passages cleanly and forcefully. He forged a sound of his own, fiery and hard-swinging, creative and unpretentious.

In 1970 Howard became more deeply involved with groundbreaking educational programs, and wrote an innovative series of instruction books, as well as organized seminars. That was a rewarding labor that he continued to develop until his death on June 29, 1992, at the age of 62.”

—Jordi Pujol

Elmo Hope: A Jazz Composer Of Significance

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

“… Hope had a strong gift for melody, enunciating themes very clearly, and was comfortable enough with classical music to introduce elements of fugue and cannon [in his compositions], though always with a firm blues underpinning.”

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

“… [Elmo]Hope … received far more recognition posthumously than during his abbreviated career. … [He] was dead before his mid-forties, leaving behind only a handful of recordings to testify to .. his potent re-workings of the jazz tradition. … Hope's visionary style came to the fore on recordings made, both as a leader and sideman, in New York during the mid-1950s, but the revocation of his cabaret card due to drug problems limited his ability to build on these accomplishments. After relocating to California, Hope undertook sessions under his own name, as well as contributed greatly to the success of Harold Land's classic recording The Fox. Like Monk, Hope found his music branded as ‘difficult,’ and few listeners seemed willing to make the effort to probe its rich implications. He continued to work and record sporadically after his return to New York in the early 1961 until his death six years later, but never gained a following commensu­rate with the virtues of his steely and multifaceted music.”

- Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz [p. 248, paraphrased]

If you are a fan of the music of Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, and Benny Golson, then the music of Elmo Hope will also strongly appeal to you.

Frustratingly, however, as Ted Gioia states in the opening remarks to this piece, few people know anything about Elmo’s music, for the reasons he explains and because his recorded legacy was poorly treated for many years following his death in 1967 at the age of forty-four.

Thankfully, a number of CD and Mp3 reissues by Orrin Keepnews [Riverside and Milestone Records], Michael Cuscuna [EMI/Blue Note] and Jordi Pujol [Fresh Sound] have helped to make the music of this skillful composer available for wider dissemination.

Hope’s career was the subject of the following, brilliant recapitulation by J.R. Taylor, the former curator/director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University who was later to become a principal at the Smithsonian Institution Jazz Program.

© -J.R. Taylor, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Despite performing and composing talents that draw painfully near to the first rank of jazz, pianist Elmo Hope seems destined to remain virtually unknown.

He was born in New York of West Indian par­ents on June 27, 1923, and fully named St. Elmo Sylvester Hope, after the patron saint of sailors. Growing up in Harlem, he studied piano from his seventh year, and by 1938 he was winning solo recital contests. Even in the face of the over­whelming contemporary prejudice against blacks, he might have tried for a career as a "classical" performer, but other forces were already drawing him in a different direction. By now his circle of friends included two other young pianists who would wholly alter the course of their instrument in the next decade-Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. The three were often together in those years, their chords and lines rubbing off of one another in informal cutting/learning sessions. Bob Bunyan, another pianist-associate from this period, recalled "Bud had the powerful attack, and Elmo got into some intricate harmonies." Thirty-five years after the fact, we can hardly say who influenced whom among these rising talents, but in light of his later work it seems reasonable to con­clude that Hope contributed his share to the emer­ging modern piano style.

By the mid-1940s, Monk and Powell were beginning to establish themselves at the center of the jazz scene with Coleman Hawkins, Cootie Williams, John Kirby, Dizzy Gillespie, and other major leaders; later they would move on to jobs of their own.

But Hope remained on the fringe, away from the pinspot illumination of 52nd Street, working the dance halls and clubs of the Bronx, Coney Island, and Greenwich Village with such as Leo "Snub" Mosley, a capable trombonist who had taken to doubling on a bizarre hybrid instrument, the slide saxophone. Later still, his contemporaries stayed around New York, recording and building up their reputations; but Hope spent a great deal of time on the road, often with the rhythm and blues band of ex-Lionel Hampton trumpeter Joe Morris, or with singer Etta Jones. Though the musical fare of these groups was surely not what Hope would have chosen for himself, his 1948-51 Morris band-mates were stylistically sympathetic, and many of them—saxophonist Johnny Griffin (another ex-Hamptonite), Percy Heath, Philly Joe Jones-remained friends and associates throughout his life.

In June of 1953, Hope got his first important recorded exposure on a Lou Donaldson date for Blue Note. He was somewhat overshadowed, how­ever, by the presence of another newcomer-trumpeter Clifford Brown. A string of records fol­lowed in the next three years. There was another Donaldson date for Blue Note, and two ten-inch LPs for the same label under the pianist's own name. Prestige followed suit, recording Hope as the leader of a trio (still available, as The Elmo Hope Memorial Album, Prestige 7675), and as co-leader (with Frank Foster) of a quartet-quintet date. There were also sideman appearances with Sonny Rollins and Jackie McLean. And there was the all-star date presented here.

None of this helped Hope to advance beyond the level of a capable sideman, scuffling from one job to the next. He seemed to be overshadowed at every turn. Reviews fairly observed that he sounded rather like Bud Powell—and in the mid-1950s there was no lack of pianists who resembled Powell to some degree.

Then, too, he had the inconvenient habit of recording with young musicians who were first hitting their strides, and thus were apt to outshine him in reviewers' eyes. This is emphasized in past reissues of the first of the enclosed albums. It originally and briefly appeared under Hope's name as Informal Jazz, but subsequent issues were en­titled Two Tenors, stressing the presence of John Coltrane and Hank Mobley.

By 1957, record companies were losing interest in him and opportunities for live performance in New York were severely limited. Specifically, at that time a performer with a felony conviction was unable to obtain a New York City "cabaret card," a necessary police authorization to work in clubs that sold alcoholic beverages. So Hope must have been glad to accept trumpeter Chet Baker's offer of a road tour. When they reached Los Angeles, he decided to remain. The southern California climate eased his persistent upper respiratory infections, and the easier pace of California living may have seemed refreshing after years of New York's hustle to survive.

But if Hope thought to establish himself as a bandleader or composer in Los Angeles he missed his guess. He got a foothold in the group of musi­cians around tenor saxophonist Harold Land-drummers Frank Butler and Lawrence Marable; bassists Curtis Counce, Jimmy Bond, Red Mitchell, and Herbie Lewis; trumpeters Dupree Bolton, Stu Williamson, and Rolf Ericsson. But the late 1950s was a bad time for jazz in Los Angeles, with few clubs open to uncompromising groups, particularly if they were local and predominantly black. Hope was developing rapidly as a composer, and it was painful for him to lack a regularly performing group that was familiar with his work. His only extensive interview (with John Tynan, printed in Down Beat, January 5, 1961) reflected this deep frustration: "The fellas out here need to do a little exploring. They should delve more into creativity instead of playing the same old blues, the same old funk, over and over again. . . . There's not enough piano players taking care of business. . . . Matter of fact, after Thelonious and Bud-and I came up with those cats over 15, 16 years ago-I haven't heard a damn thing happening. Everybody now is on that Les McCann kick. And he's getting his action from Red Garland. I'm not lying. ... If any of them who read this think I'm jiving, let 'em look me up and I'll put some music on 'em. Then we'll see who's shuckin'."

Despite these acerbic remarks—particularly blunt in light of the typical musician's tendency to over­praise colleagues—Hope is remembered by Los Angeles associates as a warm friend, generous with encouragement and musical knowledge, and pos­sessed of a warm sense of humor that only dis­appeared completely when the time came to rehearse and perform his music. Nor was his Cali­fornia period entirely without its satisfactions. In 1959, he met his wife-to-be. Bertha, a professional pianist of several years standing who was trying to learn some of his compositions. They were married soon after; and Monique, first of their three child­ren, was born the next year. There were also recordings: several tracks that cropped up on World Pacific samplers; a Curtis Counce date for Dootone; and two records produced for HiFiJazz by David Axelrod (now an active composer, ar­ranger, and producer)—a quintet date led by Land, and a trio session.

The HiFiJazz albums made Hope's critical repu­tation, but otherwise had little effect on his diffi­cult situation. During a 1960 trip to California, Riverside producer Orrin Keepnews had expressed interest in recording the pianist; he was mildly nonplussed when Hope unexpectedly returned to New York in the following year, but the second of the two albums in this package resulted, as did a Riverside album that combined solo piano with some duets between Hope and his wife. In the same year, there were also a couple of trio albums for the obscure but related Celebrity and Beacon labels. But after this initial surge of activity, New York gave few new opportunities to Hope. There was some work with Johnny Griffin, but the pianist was still legally restricted from fully follow­ing his trade. He compensated by selling some of his compositions as arrangements to various estab­lished groups, and by doing some outright commer­cial arranging. In 1963, he had his final chances to record, on sextet and trio albums for Audio-Fidelity. The sextet album, Jazz from Riker's Island, traded heavily on its assertion that most of its musicians had past narcotics problems. The pro­ducer of that session delivered himself at length in his liner notes on such problems, observing that some musicians "become easier victims because of the places where they're forced to make a living— and they don't even make a good living." This same producer also awarded himself co-copyright of the six Hope compositions on the album-presumably with an eye toward bettering the pianist's living.

By 1966, Hope's health had slipped badly, and he was rarely able to perform. Late in April 1967, he entered a hospital for treatment of pneumonia. Three weeks later, he seemed on the way to recovery, and his release was planned. But his heart stopped without warning on the 19th of May. …”

You can checkout Elmo's composition So Nice on the following video as performed by the Curtis Counce Group with Rolf Ericsson [tp], Harold Land, [ts], Elmo [p], Curtis [b] and Frank Butler [d].

Max Roach - Masterful, Magisterial and Momentous

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

“Where Kenny Clarke's bombs occurred every few measures, Roach's fall every two to four beats ... Where Clarke played just an occasional snare-drum fill to supplement his ride-cymbal pattern, Roach played so many that his snare drum often was more active than his cymbal ... Roach's ride cymbal sounded different from Clarke's, partly because its tone quality was clearer and more bell-like, and partly because of a different accentuation pattern. [Each of these assertions is accompanied by a musical example in the book.]

[But] the most dramatic difference between these two bebop pioneers was in their respective solos. Roach soloed far more frequently, both as a sideman and as a leader or co-leader, than Clarke did. Musicians use the term 'melodic drummer' to describe someone who develops rhythmic ideas throughout a solo instead of simply showing off technique.

In that sense, Roach is a supremely melodic drummer; his solo in 'Stompin' at the Savoy' is a striking case in point. He often starts his solos with simple patterns and gradually increases the complexity, as in Parker's 'Cosmic Rays'. He is a master of motivic developments and sometimes uses rhythmic motives drawn from the theme of the piece. He also plays solo pieces, including, since the late 1950s, solo pieces in asymmetric meters.”
- Thomas Owens, Bebop: The Music and its Players (1995).

“I was going to the Manhattan School of Music and...paying for my tuition by

playing on 52nd Street with Bird and Coleman Hawkins. The percussion

teacher asked me to play as a percussion major and told me the technique

I used was incorrect...(His) technique would have been fine if I had intended to

pursue a career in a large orchestra playing European music, but it wouldn't have

worked on 52nd Street where I was making a living.

On the one hand, I was playing with people like Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker and emulating people like Jo Jones of Count Basie fame, Sydney Catlett, Chick Webb and Kenny Clarke… the technique I was using then, that I use today, that I was trying to learn and am still learning about today, couldn't be used in European music.”

— Max Roach

“What young drummers had been studying in challenging drum instruction books by Edward B. Straight and George Lawrence Stone began to make sense after we heard Max Roach. The great teachers laid out the raw materials. But we didn't know how to apply them —until we heard Max. When we got into his coordination, the way he used cymbals, the snare and bass drum, the answers to the puzzle began to fall in place.”

- Vernel Fournier

“... Until we heard Max” pretty much sums it up for a lot of aspiring Jazz drummers who came of age in the fast and furious World of Bebop.

Max created a logic, a structure, a formula through which drumming rudiments and techniques could become the rhythmic pulse that would drive modern Jazz in all of its manifestations.

And he did it on such a broad scale for not only was Max the drummer on the Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie recordings that introduced the bebop style of Jazz, but he also played on the Miles Davis-Gerry Mulligan Birth of the Cool albums.

“Max played so well on the sessions that I fell in love with his work. He understood just what we were doing and just laid things in that made them perfect. He viewed the pieces as compositions. What Max did was melodic and quite incredible.” [Gerry Mulligan]

As Burt Korall asserts in Drummin’ Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz - The Bebop Years:

“In many ways, Max Roach lived a great success story, almost movielike in its positive progression. He—and certainly Kenny Clarke before him— changed the manner in which drums were used in jazz and popular music. Soon, everyone yielded to the obvious. Roach was the defining figure on drums—certainly in modern jazz. He had an explosive, wide-ranging effect. …

Max Roach's alliance with Charlie Parker was one of the most fortunate and meaningful in the history of the music. The Bird-Max pairing, on records, tells a story of great mutual creativity.

The twenty-one-year-old drummer had developed a declarative, expanded language on the instrument that, in many ways, was quite new. Kenny Clarke and Roach broke up the rhythm around the drums, particularly on the brutally fast tempi. The ride cymbals and the hi-hat served as time sources. A linear, unimpeded pulse was established in the timekeeping hand—generally the right. The left hand and both feet provided counterpoint and accents—rhythmical ideas to support and play against the primary pulse, the ensembles, and the soloists. Because of Roach's increasing technique, dexterity, and independent usage of hands and feet, the drums assumed multilevel musicality.

The drums no longer played just a limited, circumscribed, timekeeping role in the rhythm section. The drummer became a major participant, much more of a partner in what was done in the small group and big band. Expressing time and a variety of rhythms, color, and personality, Roach and Kenny Clarke before him related more directly to the music and musicians than their predecessors. The instrument was reborn.

Not only did Roach understand the needs of Parker and Gillespie and bebop, he had the technical resources and the vision to make the music work. As he plays, you sense the structure of the tune, its inner and outer movement, its drama, the unfolding of the developmental process. He inventively embroiders material, playing surprising fills and rhythmic combinations, adding to the quality of the music and its sense of thrust.

Unlike some others, who don't really understand music, drum set function, and liberation, Roach never turns his back on the time foundation of all jazz drumming. Nor does he encumber a band or soloist with overwhelming detail. Balance in his performances is very important to him. While moving through a performance, he takes chances with ideas and techniques that can upset and offset the time and continuity, if not well placed and played correctly. But he seldom fails in his responsibility to the music and himself. Roach is simultaneously dangerous and very much in command. …

Parker's Savoy, Dial, and Verve recordings make clear that Roach played a significant role in making the music work. He enhanced the thematic material. His time, manner of accentuation, ideas, and solo commentary were certainly central to increasing the rhythmic substance of this music. He simultaneously was a leading player, setting the pace, and a character actor, bringing background color and dimension to the music.

The new music made certain demands on the drummer that were not a factor in earlier forms of jazz. One of the most notable was using both hands and feet with equal ease and having the capacity to dexterously play different rhythms in each of the hands and feet.

Parker was conscious of the importance of "independence." Only with this kind of facility—well applied—could the modern drummer bring multiple rhythms and levels to music that openly asked for this sort of treatment. He sat Roach down one early evening in the Three Deuces on 5ind Street and demonstrated on drums what he was talking about. He played a different rhythm with each hand and foot and then put them together. He looked up at his drummer, giving him that insinuating smile of his, and asked if Roach could do that.

Roach had been intuitively simulating in performance what Parker illustrated. It was, in fact, a characteristic of bebop to play one rhythm against another. Later he achieved complete independence by studying and practicing exercises—much like the ones in Jim Chapin's book [Advanced Technique for the Modern Drummer] —  that made it possible to achieve this sort of dexterity.

In the early years of bebop, young drummers were both challenged and mystified by Roach's performances. When he dropped in his little rhythmic gifts—behind Parker or Davis, or in breathing spaces during ensembles— he made everyone wonder: ''Where did he get that idea? How did he do that? Why did he do that?" What he played could be as uncomplicated as a revised rudiment, broken up between his hands and the bass drum foot, or something a bit more complicated.

While enlarging jazz's general rhythmic base, Roach revised how the drum set and cymbals were used. He gave each drum, each cymbal, and the hi-hat expanded functions and more subtle treatment. He introduced new or revised sounds and textures suitable to the music played. ...

Roach had still another major virtue. He knew when to be relatively silent and allow the music to take itself forward. He might subtly help move things along but essentially would stay out of the way.

What Roach brings to all three is a deep groove—the sort of feel more characteristic of Kenny Clarke and Art Blakey. Intense without being loud, l£ suggests "2-and-4" accentuation, in the manner in which he plays the top cymbal, or directly defines it, closing the hi-hat on those beats of each measure. The time takes on clarity and a stronger sense of swing.

Soon this means of giving the beat heat and more of an edge would be widely adopted by jazz drummers, particularly after Art Blakey began doing it and made the hi-hat a primary center of his volcanic energy. This technique ultimately permeated jazz percussion to such a degree that it became almost a cliche’. …

Because of "Ko Ko" and other key Parker-Roach and Gillespie recordings, good-time primitivism in jazz, latter-day minstrelsy, and other elements of black show business no longer seemed at all feasible or possible. Because of these innovative musicians, jazz had become a thinking man's music. Things would never be the same again.”

Max Roach is arguably the greatest drummer of the century, and not just in jazz. He is a master musician of the first rank whose ability to lift a band with the propulsive surge of his drumming marked him out as the cream of the handful of truly great modern jazz percussionists. Even when simply playing fills behind a soloist in any of the many settings in which he has worked, his remarkably subtle and intricate drumming can set the music flowing and floating on a complex wave of polyrhythmic activity and rich tonal and timbral colouration. Equally, his solo performances have elevated the art of playing the jazz drum-set to a new level of musical achievement.

In his Giant Steps: Bebop and the Creators of Modern Jazz, 1945-1965, Kenny Mathieson explains Max’s significance this way:

“Max Roach is arguably the greatest drummer of the century, and not just in jazz. He is a master musician of the first rank whose ability to lift a band with the propulsive surge of his drumming marked him out as the cream of the handful of truly great modern jazz percussionists. Even when simply playing fills behind a soloist in any of the many settings in which he has worked, his remarkably subtle and intricate drumming can set the music flowing and floating on a complex wave of polyrhythmic activity and rich tonal and timbral colouration. Equally, his solo performances have elevated the art of playing the jazz drum-set to a new level of musical achievement. …

Roach took the supposed limitations of the standard jazz drum-kit, typically made up of bass drum, snare drum, large and small tom-toms, ride cymbal, snare cymbal and hi-hat, and turned them into an intricate vehicle for expression. Interestingly, Roy Haynes, another of the great bebop drummers, has recalled that Roach had no tom-tom when he first heard him play and while he admits he was not sure whether this was dictated by musical or financial considerations, he promptly took the tom-tom out of his own kit!

The old four-to-the-bar bass drum accompaniment of traditional and swing-jazz styles gave way in the bebop era to a more fluid style characterised by a shift away from the bass drum as an audible steady time-keeper towards a greater development of the concept of shifting the pulse on to the the cymbals. In turn, this created a flow or wash of sound/time behind and around the ensemble and soloists, something which had demonstrably already begun in the swing era with players like Jo Jones, Cozy Cole, Dave Tough and Buddy Rich, but was taken much further by the bebop drummers.

The increased fluidity and additional responsiveness of this approach, with accents placed in less regimented and predictable fashion and dictated in response to the specifics of what the soloist or the ensemble played rather than a programmatic rhythmic scheme, was crucial to the emergence of the new music. With it came an expansion of the importance of the idea of 'co-ordinated independence', an expression which refers to the less inhibited way the drummer combines and manipulates the rhythmic layers created from the different facets of his kit, with the primary emphasis being on bass drum, snare drum, ride cymbal and hi-hat.

There is, too, the matter of the actual sound of Roach's drums. In the booklet accompanying Verve's very useful Clifford Brown - Max Roach two-CD compilation Alone Together: The Best of the Mercury Years, drummer Kenny Washington relates a story about how he physically destroyed his first juvenile drum-kit in a desperate attempt to tune the drums to capture Roach's sound. What had caught his ear in particular was the fact that 'the high-pitched tom-tom tuning was so musical and gave each drum its own identity'. To this day, Washington concludes, ‘I still tune my drums like that'.”

Later in his career, Max would take his distinctive drumming “voice” into a variety of Jazz contexts, among them the brilliant recordings that he made with Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins, co-leading the Debut Records label with bassist Charles Mingus from 1952-1955, tour Europe with Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic, spend time as a member of bassist Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars in Hermosa Beach, CA and, along with Art Blakey, go on to become one of the few drummers to successfully lead their own combos, the most notable of these being the quintet he co-led with trumpeter Clifford Brown.