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.

Bootsie Barnes and Larry McKenna - The More I See You

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

Bootsie Barnes passed away on April 22, 2020 at the age of 82. The editorial staff at JazzProfiles is re-posting this piece as a tribute to his long and fruitful career on the Philadelphia Jazz scene.

“Their resumes are only a shadow of who these men are. To really know the true Larry McKenna and Bootsie Barnes, you have to meet them. They are as men just as their music sounds: giving, open, genuine and deeply funny. Working nearly every night, Barnes and McKenna are consistent, positive forces on the scene. Deeply admired by younger generations of musicians, they show us that a life in music should be lead with grace, joy and honesty.”

- Sam Taylor, insert notes author

The More I See You is the title of the recently released Cellar Live CD [CL 050718] featuring Bootsie Barnes and Larry McKenna and if you are are a fan of the two tenor sound dating back to Al Cohn and Zoot Sims or Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott or more recently Eric Alexander and Grant Stewart [aka Reeds and Deeds], then this disc belongs in your collection.

And the more you listen to The More I See You, the more things you’ll find to enjoy starting with Bootsie and Larry’s robust, vibrant, "take no prisoners" tenor blowing and continuing through to the driving rhythm section which is formed by Lucas Brown on Hammond B-3 organ and Byron “Wookie” Landham on drums.

Essentially Bootsie and Larry have taken the traditional tenor sax, guitar, organ and drums format and substituted a second tenor saxophone to alter the sonority of this configuration.

Then there are the marvelous choices that make up the nine tracks on the CD which include one original each from Bootsie and Larry, solo ballad renditions - You’ve Changed for Larry and My Ship for Bootsie - two fun-to-play-on  Jazz standards - For Minor’s Only by Jimmy Heath and The Break Through by Hank Mobley - and three selections from the Great American Song including the title tune, The More I See You Sunday in New York and Hank Mancini’s theme to the TV series Mr. Lucky that provide textured melodic vehicles to show off the two tenors unison sound to perfection.

Another quality on display throughout this recording is balance: no one solos for too many choruses; all the players have an opportunity to solo; the tempos are a mix of burners, ballads and medium finger-poppers each long enough to settle into a groove; as referenced, the song selections are a nice balance between familiar popular songs, Jazz standards and original compositions; the performances are consistently played in a straight-ahead Jazz style.

The end result is a satisfying beginning-to-end listening experience encompassing over 60 minutes of brilliantly conceived and executed quartet Jazz.

Sam Taylor contributed the following insert notes which frame the context for The More I See You [Cellar Live CD CL 050718] as fitting squarely into the modern Jazz scene that encompassed Philadelphia in the second half of the 20th century, a period that also served as the formative years in the development of the styles for both Bootsie and Larry.

In his notes Sam also recounts his personal experiences with Bootsie and Larry’s music in the Philadelphia Jazz club scene.

Following Sam’s informative annotations you’ll find Pierre Giroux’s review of The More I See You [Cellar Live CD CL 050718]  in the October 9th edition of Audiophile Audition, as well as, a video montage and an audio-only Soundcloud file featuring two tracks from the music on the CD.

“What defines the sound of a city? Ask three Philadelphians and get four opinions, as the joke goes. The people, their collective spirit both past and present, is a good place to start. Philadelphia, a city overflowing with history is home to a proud, passionate, willful, and fiercely loyal people. The city's jazz legacy is no different and has always been a leading voice. Shirley Scott, McCoy Tyner, Benny Golson, Trudy Pitts, Lee Morgan, the Heath Brothers, Stan Getz, Philly Joe Jones and countless other Philadelphia jazz masters are bound together by the same thread. These giants played in their own way, without concern for style or labels. They had an attitude; an intention to their playing that gave the music a feeling, a rhythm, a deep pocket. In Philadelphia today, there is no question who preserves that tradition, embodies that spirit and who defines the "Philadelphia sound": Bootsie Barnes and Larry McKenna.

Now elder statesmen of the Philadelphia jazz community, Bootsie Barnes and Larry McKenna were born just a few months apart in 1937. The times in which they lived often dictated their career paths, but no matter where their music took them Philadelphia was always home.

Bootsie Barnes credits his musical family as the spark that began his life in music. His father was an accomplished trumpet player and his cousin, Jimmy Hamilton was a member of Duke Ellington's band for nearly three decades. "Palling around with my stablemates, Tootie Heath, Lee Morgan, Lex Humphries" as he tells it, Barnes began on piano and drums. At age nineteen he was given a saxophone by his grandmother and "knew he had found his niche". Over the course of his decades long career, Barnes has performed and toured with Philly Joe Jones, Jimmy Smith, Trudy Pitts and countless others, with five recordings under his own name and dozens as a sideman.

Mostly self-taught, Larry McKenna was deeply inspired by his older brother's LP collection. It was a side of Jazz at The Philharmonic 1947 featuring Illinois Jacquet and Flip Fillips that opened his ears to jazz. "When I heard that I immediately said: 'That's what I want to play, the saxophone'", McKenna recalls. Completing high school, McKenna worked around Philadelphia and along the East Coast until the age of twenty-one, when his first big break came with Woody Herman's Big Band. McKenna has played and recorded with Clark Terry, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett and countless others. He has four recordings under his own name, with extensive credits as a sideman.

Their resumes are only a shadow of who these men are. To really know the true Larry McKenna and Bootsie Barnes, you have to meet them. They are as men just as their music sounds: giving, open, genuine and deeply funny. Working nearly every night, Barnes and McKenna are consistent, positive forces on the scene. Deeply admired by younger generations of musicians, they show us that a life in music should be lead with grace, joy and honesty.

The first time I heard Barnes and McKenna together was at Ortlieb's Jazz Haus in the mid 1990s. As an eager but shy young musician of about fourteen, I somehow found my way to the storied club on Third and Poplar Streets. A sign out front proudly stated "Jazz Seven Days" - the only place in the city boasting such a schedule. The bouncer working that night took one look at me and with what I can only imagine was a mix of pity and amusement, hurriedly waved me in. Eyes down and hugging the wall, I made my way along the long bar, past the mounted bison head's blank stare, towards the music. My go-to spot was an alcove next to the bathroom: a place just far enough from the bartender's gaze so as not to be noticed, (did I mention I was fourteen?) but close enough to the stage to watch and listen. The house band was the late Sid Simmons on piano, bassist Mike Boone, and drummer Byron Landham. (Anyone who was there will tell you: this was an unstoppable trio.) Barnes and McKenna were setting the pace, dealing on a level only the true masters can. The whole room magically snapped into focus: the band shifted to high gear, the swing intensified and the crowd had no choice but to be swept up in the music. They had a story too incredible to ignore. I sat there in disbelief at the power and beauty of what they were doing. It is a feeling that has never left me.

How they played that night at Ortlieb's those many years ago is exactly the way they play today. In fact, they are probably playing better than ever. The track Three Miles Out is a shining example. Barnes solos first, hitting you with that buttery, round tenor tone with a little edge as he gets going. His ideas are steeped in the hard-bop tradition delivered with a clear voice all his own. There is no ambiguity, no hesitation, just pure, joyful, hard-swinging tenor playing. McKenna follows, with his trademark tenor tone, both beautiful and singing, strong and powerful. He swings with natural ease, a wide beat and always makes the music dance. He has what I can only describe as a deep melodic awareness thanks largely to his mastery of the American Songbook. McKenna is unhurried and speaks fluid bebop language. This is classic Barnes and McKenna.

The most challenging thing to describe is the way someone's music touches your heart. I hope my fellow native Philadelphians will allow me to speak for them when I say we are all forever in the debt of Bootsie and Larry. May we live and create in a way that continues to honors them and their music.

I can't wait to hear what they play next.”

- Sam Taylor/New York City, July 2018

A

Part 2 - "1959: The Beginning of Beyond: A Critical Debate at the End of the 1950s" - Darius Brubeck

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

Part 2 from the Darius Brubeck’s essay - 1959: The Beginning of Beyond - which in its final form, it serves as Chapter 10 in Merwyn Cooke and David Horn, The Cambridge Companion to Jazz [2002].

As noted in the first posting, it’s a long piece, so we have used the subject headings within the essay as a means of presenting it on these pages in smaller samplings.

Darius is not the first to observe 1959 as a pivotal year in the evolution of Jazz but he is one of the few to have written about it in a broader context, one that goes well beyond the immediate impact of developments that took place that year. We wrote to him to request his permission to offer it as a blog feature and he kindly gave his consent for us to do so.

Not much as changed in the world of Jazz criticism since the publication of the articles by John Mehegan and André Hodier in the Down Beat Special Silver Anniversary Edition [August 20, 1959].

In various manifestations, the anti-intellectualism in Jazz argument espoused by Mehegan’s The Case for Swinging continues to find itself in direct opposition to the Jazz-as-art position put forth by Hodier.

This polarity persists to this day although it would appear that Hodeir’s argument that Jazz is an art form which demands an active role in the service of its creation from an elite audience may have won the day one consequence becoming less than 3% of the listening public favors Jazz today. 

A further elaboration and explanation of these differences of opinions forms the next segment in Darius’ essay about why 1959 was such a pivotal year in Jazz.

© Copyright ® Darius Brubeck, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

A critical debate at the end of the 1950s

“The relationship between theory and practice, the pros and cons of jazz changing into a formalised discipline and getting closer to classical music

and further from 'pop', are the background dynamics for ongoing musical and critical developments in jazz. Much of the jazz from around this time entered the canon and so did the issues debated. The arguments in favour of 'intellectualism' in jazz take on new, unanticipated meanings in the present era of academic Jazz Studies, but anti-intellectual attitudes have remained the same. I believe opposing sides of the intellectualism issue as understood around 1959 are well represented by two articles summarised below. Much of the jazz criticism written in the 1950s revolves around ideas about music, which criteria should apply, what jazz is and is not, the search for 'direction' and the catch-phrase 'where jazz is going'. Readers and writers, musicians and critics, often identified themselves with opposing, prescriptive concepts of jazz' in the abstract, and must have wanted very much to influence others. Participation in an ongoing debate about jazz was apparently part of the joy of being a jazz fan.

Down Beat: Special Silver Anniversary Edition (20 August 1959) features an article entitled The Case for Swinging by John Mehegan, which sums up the history of jazz as 'evolutionary', but argues against further evolution. It also contains Andre Hodeir's Perspective of Modern Jazz: Popularity or Recognition (translated by Eugene Lees), a prescient rumination on the nature of jazz-as-art.

Mehegan was a working jazz pianist and academic, and an influential pioneer in jazz pedagogy - perhaps the first to believe jazz was teachable in a systematic way. Given this background, it is surprising that he espouses a vehement, anti-intellectual line, although it was common in those days to do so. Let me assure the reader that I am not unfairly quoting Mehegan (with whom I studied briefly) in order to make fun of him or his ideas but, rather, because he is the best-informed and most coherent representative of this persuasion. He was not, though it is hard to tell from this article, against modern jazz, but indeed an admirer of Lennie Tristano and Bill Evans and a modern-jazz player himself. Because of his technical knowledge, arguments he used count as an insider's informed opinion and bear consideration if only to arrive at a better understanding of the underlying issues. In other words, they are not the vapourings of a disaffected journalist who 'couldn't swing a rope'. However, in print he adopts a crusty, hostile tone. Near the end of the article he writes:

If we continue to smother [jazz] with a superstructure of complexity and intellectuality it cannot possibly support, we will eventually destroy it. This applies specifically to the cabalists, the metaphysicians, the formalists, the pretenders, the beatniks, the Zen Buddhists and the been-zoolists.

[Mehegan 1959b]

Given the date of publication, exactly at the time of the Lenox School of Jazz (this will follow as a separate blog feature), I believe that his real targets are Gunther Schuller, George Russell and John Lewis, although his shotgun blast takes in the whole avant-garde. Collectively these three were promoting the principles of third-stream music, a meeting of jazz and classical music on an equal basis which contrasts with the random couplings of the distant past. Russell, as we shall see, might indeed qualify as a 'cabalist’ and 'metaphysician', and Schuller and Lewis were uninhibited advocates of intellectualism.

One of Mehegan's pet hates is formalism, which 'has not been generally successful musically speaking for the reason that jazz is basically a folk music employing visceral or non-intellectual materials and, like all folk art, is preponderantly content with a minimum of form'. This attitude should prepare us for the mindset of an academic but anti-intellectual conservative, with certain implicit beliefs about the world. Taking it 'from the top', Mehegan's article (drastically edited) reads:

Did Charlie Parker leave a rich nourishing heritage for future jazz men - or did he finish off the art form?... The time composite of jazz has undergone extensive changes since 1920 ... these changes, coupled with expanding instrumental and writing techniques, express in capsule the morphological history of the art form ...

Although the jazzman has displayed great ingenuity in the areas of time and horizontal extension, he has been singularly uninventive in dealing with the problems of vertical sound (harmony).

This is an odd opinion coming from a jazz pianist, but he does not stop to give reasons for it:

Jazz is and always has been a tonal music employing the diatonic scale as its frame of reference.

Parker himself never questioned the diatonic system in jazz harmony and never made any attempt to destroy it. In fact, as is well known, Parker returned to the most primitive harmonic materials, the blues, in order to deal freely with the horizontal line.

If the opposite of tonality is atonality, then few would fundamentally disagree, however much we might wince at the term 'primitive'

With authoritarian bravura (and spectacular unintended irony), Mehegan concludes with a list of 'essentials' musicians in 1959 would question - or, using his words, 'attack' or 'destroy' - in order to arrive at a fresher conception of jazz:

suppose we accept the circumscribed limits of a diatonic harmonic system, 4/4 time, eighth-note, quarter-note, half-note time composite, eight bar sections and the various attendant qualities we have been accustomed to. The point is that if we learned anything in the past 20 years, we have learned that to abandon or seriously alter any of these basic essentials of a jazz performance results in what can no longer be called jazz.

The four albums mentioned at the beginning of this chapter [Kind of Blue, Time Out, Giant Steps, The Shape of Jazz to Come] are remembered best for doing everything that 'results in what can no longer be called jazz. Thus, in a strange way, one agrees with Mehegan. What was called jazz before 1959 is different from what is called jazz now, supporting the dichotomy between the historical and contemporary mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

But we are not quite through with Mehegan's case. If we accept the circumscribed limits of jazz he proposes (and his is not a bad description of what - in a statistical sense - jazz is), then his later statement that 'all, it would seem [is] in a state of exhaustion' logically follows. For Mehegan writing in 1959, 'the evolution of jazz' is at an end.

Hodeir's article is not 'the case against swinging' but it is in all other respects an opposing and, indeed, formalist view. In contrast to Mehegan, he is not worried about the 'exhaustion' of jazz as creative music, but rather the time it takes for an increasingly specialised form of creativity to make it into the mainstream. Hodeir demands an active role in the service of creativity from an elite audience. He plunges the readers (of Down Beatl) into the historical and aesthetic problems of modernism, high culture and popular art:

Carried along by the prodigious cadence of constant renewal, jazz dies almost as quickly as it is created... But it happens that the public... does not keep correct time with the rhythm of change... This phenomenon has been observed in European art [when] Cezanne and Debussy unveiled the beginnings of a 'modern art' that is in no way of popular origin.

[Hodeir 1959]

The new problem for modern jazz, according to Hodeir, is that recognition (for an artist or work of art) comes before and perhaps without popularity. For example, Monk was recognised as historically important (in 1959) without having experienced popular acclaim. Like Mehegan, Hodeir constructs the narrative of jazz history around the theme of 'evolution', but they really mean different things by it. Hodeir's evolution is punctuated by outstanding masterworks which show enough strength and strictness of conception to transcend the norm. Mehegan wants to set out rules that define jazz in technical terms that are normative for the genre. (These rules and a concept of 'jazz' itself, rather than any particular manifestation in the form of jazz masterworks, are what evolved out of chaos.) Hodeir does not define jazz at all. Like Ellington and most musicians, he believes that an artist must be free to create without reference to predetermined categories and that there must be valid 'universal' criteria of musical value not limited by genre (see heading quotation on page 153 - “Jazz Among the Classics and The Case for Duke Ellington”).

For Mehegan, generic boundaries are all-important because he is trying to rule out 'what can no longer be called jazz', so 'popular music, and jazz,

while undeniably similar, are really antagonistic terms. The worst outcome of Mehegan's kind of evolutionary theory is that jazz musicians (he does not name any) looking for a way out of the 'cul de sac' of formalism (provided they have admitted they no longer live in the realm of ‘folk-music’) might opt for

The final solution [which] is the oldest one in the world ... Give the people what they want... So at last jazz has joined the other entertaining crafts that form the basis of what we call show business ... The real difference between an art form and an entertaining craft is that an art form has a continuity which demands some contribution from each artist in order to insure its own succession; an entertaining craft makes no demand except that of popularity.                                                              

 (Mehegan 1959b]

Hodeir spends rather more time considering the meanings of the term 'popular'. Although frankly elitist in outlook, he never equates popular with vulgar. He also does not slip into the present-day assumption that popular equals commercial:

A musical work can be popular in two very different ways: by its origin and by its audience. They do not always coincide.

... the art of Ellington, and still more that of Armstrong, remained rather close to the popular origins [note the strict sense of 'popular' here] wherefrom jazz was little by little emancipated. Both won popularity before the cultural interest in jazz was fully realised. And it is only fair to add that they contributed powerfully to the recognition of jazz as an art. Better yet, jazz recognition was identified with their recognition.

With the advent of modern jazz, however, the problem of achieving popularity truly began to pose itself... For having wished to invent a complex language, suitable to convey a certain number of new truths, jazz became an art of specialists; in cutting itself free of its popular sources, it voluntarily limited itself to an audience of connoisseurs. Then it became risky to seek popularity if, deep down, one did not wish to give up what had been gained in modern jazz.

True popularity for a 'difficult work' is recognition by a reasonably large elite. The most celebrated masterpieces have taken this cultural route to success; it is a route that is necessarily long. A work, an artist, is recognised only thanks to the diffusing influence of a few clairvoyant souls...

And on a cultural level, the demand that this work show enough strength and strictness of conception to reach those whose sensibilities were nourished and developed by the greatest artists remains the least deceptive criterion of recognition.

Aside from those happy few who today appreciate it, the most advanced jazz has already launched invisible missiles toward the public of tomorrow.

[Hodeir 1959J

To be continued .... [including more discussion of “invisible missiles”]