The Penguin Jazz Guide (111 page)

The most influential bassist/leader since Mingus and one of the busiest musicians of his time and place, Parker turns up in a bewildering number of contexts, though much energy in recent years has been devoted to a version of the experimental workshop which later transmuted into the Little Huey Creative Music Ensemble. His sepia-tinged bass tone was first heard in the Improvisers Collective in New York, but is now ubiquitous.

Acceptance
is an important early record by the bassist, originally on Centering and now reissued with one new track. In many respects, it looks forward to the larger bands of the ’90s, but here Parker develops his ideas with a series of smaller ensembles and with more emphasis than later on free blowing. Kondo is an interesting figure who has made an intermittent impact. On trumpet here, he’s reminiscent of Leo Smith in declamatory form – which is much of the time – but with a roundness of tone that almost suggests cornet. He’s also featured on alto horn. The smaller groups favour strings and could almost be playing classical pieces. The bigger ensembles, though, are the surest indication of what was to come. Parker delivers a recitation on the final piece, which some may find taxes the patience, but his sincerity and the completeness of his musical vision are hard to argue with, and though his bass-playing is more readily appreciated in small-group sessions, this is a fine early example of his work.

& See also
Mayor Of Punkville
(1999; p. 645)

BENNIE MAUPIN

Born 29 August 1940, Detroit, Michigan

Tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, others

The Jewel In The Lotus

ECM 172350

Maupin; Charles Sullivan (t); Herbie Hancock (p); Buster Williams (b); Billy Hart (d); Freddie Waits (d, mar); Bill Summers (perc). March 1974.

Bennie Maupin said (1982):
‘I think in pictures, and though I don’t expect you to see the same images I do, that’s what I look for when I make music. One day, I’ll do something with dance and theatre. For now, though, you have to enjoy the theatre in your head.’

Always more than a spear-carrier in modern jazz, but all the same insufficiently recognized, Maupin exemplifies better than anyone the continuities between hard bop and fusion, having worked in one of trumpeter Lee Morgan’s later groups, before helping to hybridize jazz and rock with Miles Davis and, crucially, with Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters.

The Jewel In The Lotus
was a belated reissue. The first surviving evidence of Maupin as leader is a mysterious, quite avant-garde record that refuses to conform to any labels of the time or after. It doesn’t even sound particularly like Bennie’s album, so much does he play for the music rather than for himself. Marked by clever percussion effects (Summers’s water-filled garbage can, Waits’s marimba) and Hancock’s floating electric piano, it’s a record that steals into the room and leaves again without introductions, but without attempting to be pointlessly enigmatic. ‘Ensenada’ begins the album mysteriously, emerging out of a poised silence, with Maupin’s flute in syrinx territory. It’s all very elemental, like a slow curtain on a mostly empty stage. How quickly, though, Maupin fills the space with business.

‘Past + Present = Future’ contains some intimations that Maupin might once have played jazz-funk, but it’s in a remote form here and nothing on the record approaches the Headhunters sound. Hancock seems entirely easy with his role, though it’s a relatively unfamiliar one, and Williams delivers some beautiful-sounding bass in unexpected places, often pitched up quite high. A neglected record, its return to circulation confused even some of those who had barracked for it, expecting something dirtier and more downhome.

ELLA FITZGERALD
^&

Born 25 April 1917, Newport News, Virginia; died 15 June 1996, Beverly Hills, California

Voice

Ella In London

Pablo 2310-711

Fitzgerald; Tommy Flanagan (p); Joe Pass (g); Keter Betts (b); Bobby Durham (d). April 1974.

Tommy Flanagan said (1987):
‘I played behind her on tour for a month once and I think she made one mistake in all that time, and even that no one much would have noticed; she just slipped into place and moved right along. Incredible technique.’

Back with Norman Granz again, Ella recorded steadily through the ’70s, but there was little to suggest she would either repeat or surpass the best of her earlier music. If encroaching age is supposed to impart a greater wisdom to a singer of songs, and hence to the interpretation of those songs, it’s a more complex matter with Fitzgerald. While her respectful delivery of lyrics honours the wordsmithing, she brought little of the personal gravitas to the American songbook which was Sinatra’s trademark. Her scatting grew less fluent and more exaggerated, if no less creative in its construction; her manipulation of time and melody became more obvious because she had to push herself harder to make it happen. There are still many good records here, but nothing that seems hallmarked with greatness. A first Montreux visit was merely OK, and much better is the London date from 1974. Probably the final chance to hear Ella in a club setting, and it’s a racy and sometimes virtuosic
display by the singer, a fine souvenir of a memorable visit. There was some pressure to do more recent pop repertoire, so Carole King’s ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ creeps in – and out again – without tarnishing any of it. Ella could have swung an anvil, even at this point in her life, but she’s more comfortable with ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’, ‘The Man I Love’ and ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing …’, the latter two being big chunky performances.

& See also
The Enchanting Ella Fitzgerald
(1950–1955; p. 125),
Sings The Cole Porter Songbook
(1956; p. 180)

GARY BURTON
^&

Born 23 January 1943, Anderson, Indiana

Vibraphone

Hotel Hello

ECM 835586-2

Burton; Steve Swallow (b, p). May 1974.

Gary Burton said (1993):
‘Steve was introduced to me by Jim Hall and I recommended him for Stan Getz’s band. When I persuaded him to come with me, he became a third hand, someone I could talk to about any aspect of the music.’

Though not so highly regarded as Burton’s other duos for ECM (
Matchbook
with Ralph Towner, and a fine
Duet
with Chick Corea), this is a quiet, musicianly masterpiece. There is scarcely a track that jumps out with any attempt at assertion, but the harmonies are oceans deep and the ability of both players to switch to keyboards (a touch of organ in Burton’s case as well as some parts on marimba) gives the whole set a rich but elusive texture. Almost all the compositions are Swallow’s, from the high-point of his creativity as a composer. They are all pitched around the same cycle of tones, but the variations and angles of approach are remarkable for their avoidance of familiar ground. The title-track and ‘Sweeping Up’ are substantial performances, each with an almost cinematic quality, as if some quietly dramatic scena had been compressed into five-minute span.

& See also
Country Roads And Other Places
(1968; p. 355),
For Hamp, Red, Bags And Cal
(2000; p. 654)

DAVID LIEBMAN
^&

Born 4 September 1946, Brooklyn, New York

Tenor and soprano saxophones

Drum Ode

ECM 159493-2

Liebman; Richie Beirach (p); John Abercrombie (g); Gene Perla (b); Bob Moses (d); Badal Roy, Collin Walcott (tabla); Steven Satten, Patato Valdes (perc); Elena Steinberg (v). May 1974.

David Liebman says:
‘The feeling in the studio was exhilarating; after all, drummers know how to enjoy themselves more than any other instrumentalists in jazz. I think Manfred Eicher was a bit upset with the goings-on, but in any case this remains one of my most popular recordings.’

Liebman studied with Lennie Tristano and Charles Lloyd and began his professional career with Ten Wheel Drive, before joining the Elvin Jones group and one version of Miles Davis’s
electric ensemble, where the young saxophonist’s skills were almost deliberately and insultingly overlooked. He was also co-founder of two innovative groups, Lookout Farm and Quest, with pianist Richie Beirach. For a period, he abandoned tenor saxophone in favour of the soprano, and has occasionally dabbled in wood flutes and other wind instruments.

Liebman was still part of Miles Davis’s band when he recorded this remarkable album, and the influence of Miles’s extended percussion sections is evident in the augmented percussion and the free-form vamps and quasi-modal heads.
Drum Ode
is one of the classics of the early ECM catalogue. Where many recordings of this kind are simply loose confederations of session-players, Liebman was wise enough to recruit percussionists who were already or would be shortly stars in their own right: Moses, Walcott, Roy, Altschul would all be significant recording stars. The result is an album with an almost orchestral unity and complexity. One hears individual voices rising and falling in an impeccably choreographed mix, with his own Coltrane-influenced saxophone at the centre: an ode in an unexpectedly literal sense.

& See also
The Loneliness Of A Long-Distance Runner
(1985; p. 496);
QUEST, Redemption
(2005; p. 710)

TETE MONTOLIU

Born Vicenç Montoliu I Massana, 28 March 1933, Barcelona, Catalunya; died 24 August 1997, Barcelona, Catalunya

Piano

Catalonian Fire

Steeplechase SCCD 31017

Montoliu; Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (b); Albert ‘Tootie’ Heath (d). May 1974.

Tete Montoliu said (1978):
‘Learning Braille was like having a new limb. I had always been listening to music, but now I felt I had the key to it as well. The world suddenly got bigger.’

He was born blind and started to lose his hearing, too, in later years, but Montoliu learned to play Tatum-inspired jazz piano with ‘Catalonian fire’. His technique was fast, fleet and dextrous and brought in elements of other musical styles – Spanish, Catalonian, North African – that were simmered together into a distinctive voice that never sounded like generic hard bop. Discovered in Spain by Lionel Hampton and deeply influenced by having Don Byas live in the family home for a time, Montoliu played with a wide range of senior American musicians (including the blind Roland Kirk and even Anthony Braxton on
In The Tradition
), but he was best heard either solo or in small groups of his own.

Montoliu seemed to release a lot of records in the ’70s, but actually he had only a few concentrated bursts of recording. There are three albums from the May 1974 date, two (
Tete!
is the other) with the trio, and the solo
Music For Perla.
All three are played with both elegance and stern commitment; Montoliu’s improvisations on favourite themes have a poise and dash that make one overlook the frequent appearance of many familiar runs and manipulations of the beat. Pedersen, who loves to play with a pianist of outsize technique, holds nothing back in his own playing, while Heath’s rather gruff and unfussy drumming makes him a nearly ideal timekeeper for the situation. There’s an epic version of ‘Falling In Love With Love’, a no less impressively proportioned ‘Body And Soul’ (on which the three men gel almost uncannily) and a fine, incandescent ‘Au Privave’. Montoliu preferred his home culture to the world stage; otherwise he would be considered one of the very greatest of modern pianists.

PAUL MOTIAN

Born 25 March 1931, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Drums

Tribute

ECM 519281-2

Motian; Carlos Ward (as); Sam Brown, Paul Metzke (g); Charlie Haden (b). May 1974.

Paul Motian said (1981):
‘I played 4/4 for three hours a night for 1,000 nights in a row. I think I earned the right to play “free”, or “abstract”, whatever that means, once in a while.’

An enormously experienced drummer, Motian had played with many of the most important moderns before the age of 40: Coleman Hawkins, Herbie Nichols, Oscar Pettiford, Paul Bley, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans (for several years and including some of the pianist’s iconic recording), Lennie Tristano, Tony Scott and even John Coltrane, who asked Motian to join his group as a second drummer.

Motian is not only a remarkable percussionist but has proved to be a very fine composer and a doggedly creative bandleader, even if his more recent work with the Electric Bebop Band has drifted in formulae. The first ECM records were startling when they first appeared, and they have retained their vigour and freshness. The single unaccompanied track on the earlier
Conception Vessel
, ‘Ch’i Energy’, provides a good representation of his basic sound-palette: sweeping cymbals, soft, delicately placed accents, a sense of flow and togetherness that is difficult to break down into components. Max Roach is the only other modern drummer who can sound anything like this, but Roach is a soapbox orator by comparison.

This 1974 album is a small classic. Ward is used sparingly, but the twinned guitars (destined to be a feature of Motian’s groups; he started out as a guitarist, but took it no distance) are a key component and, given the prominence of Bill Frisell in later years, it’s interesting to note his early use of it. The session consists of three Motian tunes, of which ‘Sod House’ and ‘Victoria’ are the best-known; also on the session, wonderful readings of Ornette’s plangent ‘War Orphans’ and Haden’s mournful but defiant ‘Song For Ché’. The leader is seldom far from the centre of things, creating a pulse even when not playing strict time, but always playing with grace and composure, even when the mood is urgent.