The Penguin Jazz Guide (118 page)

A Night In Dublin
is what it says on the box: Dick in an Irish bar, recorded by Ralph O’Callaghan on his then new reel-to-reel tape recorder, the tape sitting on his shelf for the next 23 years until Kenny Davern found it. He does ‘Giant Steps’ and a Paganini theme, alongside the more familiar ‘Carolina Shout’ and ‘Maple Leaf Rag’; Trane’s test-piece, ‘Giant Steps’, gets taken to the cleaners. Not quite as good as the 1986
Live At The Sticky Wicket
marathon, but it’s not far off, and the sound has been neatly cleaned up.

JAY MCSHANN

Born James Columbus McShann, known as ‘Hootie’, 12 January 1909, Muskogee, Oklahoma; died 7 December 2006, Kansas City, Missouri

Piano

Last Of The Blue Devils

Koch Jazz 8525

McShann; Joe Newman (t); Paul Quinichette, Buddy Tate (ts); John Scofield (g); Milt Hinton (b); Jack Williams (d). June 1977.

Jay McShann said (1984):
‘I didn’t start playing the blues because I wanted to play the blues, but because people asked me. I’d play behind Joe Turner and play some blues then, but I’d be doing my own thing at the piano and some one would come up and say “Hey, man, ain’t you gonna play no blues tonight?” Wasn’t healthy to say no.’

Historically, McShann’s swing band will always be remembered as the incubator for Charlie Parker’s raw talent. The orchestra packed a Kansas City punch that stands squarely as second-generation Basie, but McShann as both pianist and bandleader managed to spend his
entire career pretty much removed from the evolutions of jazz that were taking place on the two coasts and round the lakes. His brand of boogie-woogie and blues, inspired by James P. Johnson and still more by Pete Johnson, was best suited to solo performance and small groups. The end of the big bands was perhaps the spark for Hootie’s own career; otherwise he might have continued to wander the Midwest, playing dance halls.

Last Of The Blue Devils
boasts a remarkable line-up and the music more than matches up. One of the problems with the McShann discography is the relatively limited range of tunes and songs, but even familiar things like ‘Hootie Blues’, which he famously co-wrote with young Charlie Parker, and ‘Jumpin’ At The Woodside’ are as fresh-minted as if they’d just been written on the piano lid. The two tenors give even the lightest of tunes a resonance and warmth and both Tate and Quinichette get off some very fine solos. The surprise in the personnel is, of course, the young Scofield, working on his formidable chops. McShann pays tribute to his greatest influence with a surprisingly gentle stride reading of Pete Johnson’s ‘Just For You’: possibly the highlight of the record.

RON CARTER

Born 4 May 1937, Ferndale, Mississippi

Double bass, piccolo bass, cello

Third Plane

Original Jazz Classics OJCCD 754

Carter; Herbie Hancock (p); Tony Williams (d). July 1977.

Ron Carter says:
‘We made this one hour after finishing a trio date for CBS, which was Herbie’s label at the time. We’d just come in from Washington, having played a VSOP concert the previous evening.’

Carter was destined to be a classical cellist, but the racist deafness of the music establishment in Detroit hadn’t cleared, even postwar, and as a 17-year-old he switched to the double bass instead. In later years, he would return to his first instrument, notably with Eric Dolphy, but classical music’s loss turned out to be jazz’s gain. Ron Carter is possibly the most recorded instrumentalist in this book or any of its predecessors: a glance at the index in past editions will make the point. He was a member of the classic Miles Davis quintet and has played in virtually every context between Dixieland and the extreme avant-garde, always bringing the same virtues of dead-centre accuracy, strong sound and lyrical soloing, both plucked and bowed.

Inevitably, Carter hasn’t made many records of his own, relative to his enormous discography, but even those who treasure his solos for Dolphy and Miles aren’t aware just how many he has produced down the years. Some enthusiasts will point to the early
Where?
with Dolphy or the subsequent
Uptown Conversation
for Atlantic, but for us
Third Plane
is the outstanding document, and an interesting record to set alongside the dull corporate ‘supergroup’ settings some of these men drifted through in later years. As Carter suggests, these were players at the pinnacle of their careers, but very much working musicians rather than ‘jazz stars’ and their approach to the set is immaculately professional. There wasn’t a big market for acoustic piano trio records in 1977 and some of Williams’s drumming suggests a recent diet of fusion music, but the group playing on ‘Stella By Starlight’ and on Hancock’s ‘Dolphin Dance’ is immaculate. Carter somewhat dominates the sound with his big, beefy fills, but there’s musical substance in them all. His place in the music is assured, but it’s time for renewed attention to the records he made under his own name. He’s still making them.

PAUL BLEY
^&

Born 10 November 1932, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Piano

Axis

Improvising Artists 123853

Bley (p solo). July 1977.

Paul Bley said (1980):
‘It makes complete sense – in fact, no other situation makes complete sense – for a record company to be run by a musician. Who else would you trust with your music?’

By the mid-’70s, Bley was documenting his performance at a remarkable rate and his work was turning up on a wide array of labels, including the nascent ECM, which was to play an important part in his working life later on. Bley had established the I.A.I. imprint as a means of controlling both production and distribution of improvised music. It was a relatively chastening experience, as he discovered just how little money rebounded to the artists in what is one of the most exploitative branches of the economy, particularly given how little money is involved in the first place. It is at this point in his career that Bley, having started out with Charles Mingus’s quixotic Debut and destined to see most of his work appear on independents like Steeplechase or the very successful ECM, was at his most self-determined. The jut of his jaw on the cover, albeit with an extravagant pipe clamped there, says it all, though it is also a rather quiet and solitary image.

Axis
stands somewhat apart in Bley’s output. It’s a meditative and in some ways rather melancholy set that draws on both familiar material – Carla’s ‘El Cordobes’ – and the much less familiar ‘Music Matador’, a theme by saxophonist Prince Lasha, a schoolfriend of Ornette Coleman and associate of Eric Dolphy. The opening ‘Axis’ is introduced inside the piano and develops into an extended improvisation that is one of the richest timbral essays in Bley’s catalogue. It’s not all abstraction, though. Perhaps the best track of all is a dazzling interpretation of ‘Porgy’. An intriguing blend of styles and ideas, but was the piano properly tuned, and why doesn’t full personal control over the music prevent the kind of bass buzz that spoils some of Bley’s romantic chorales?

& See also
Closer
(1965; p. 330),
Not Two, Not One
(1998; p. 624)

BUDDY TATE

Born George Holmes Tate, 22 February 1913, Sherman, Texas; died 10 February 2001, Chandler, Arizona

Tenor saxophone

The Legendary 1977 Encounter

Chiaroscuro 165

Tate; Abdullah Ibrahim (p); Cecil McBee (b); Roy Brooks (d). August 1977.

Buddy Tate said (1978):
‘Everyone knew that Basie loved Herschel Evans. It was hard to fit those shoes, but I did my best and Basie always knew when you were trying to please and appreciated it.’

Tate replaced the late Herschel Evans in the Basie band, which shows how much faith the Count placed in his high-register work. He’d worked with the Clouds Of Joy before that and was later to become a solo artist. He was one of the greatest and most durable of swing tenormen, a major performer for over half a century and a much-loved and amiable man;
but the records under his own name are perhaps a little disappointing in the light of his grand reputation, and his reticent standing as a leader may be the reason why he’s never quite secured the wider fame of some of his peers. His great records were made with Basie – whom he joined following Herschel Evans’s death in 1939 – and his old friend from the band, Buck Clayton; in 1947, he was still with the band but did some moonlighting in an anonymous ensemble which cut some two dozen sides that are worth listening to.

Our choice of Buddy as leader, though, comes from three decades later, when he had adopted, though not quite adapted to, that ‘elder statesman’ role that fell on jazz survivors from the great age. For once, Buddy rose to the occasion. The 1977 session was, of course, billed ‘Meets Dollar Brand’ on first release. It’s not clear how much the pianist enjoyed the outing, for he seems to disappear every now and then when Tate is soloing, though instinct suggests out of admiration rather than irritation. The saxophonist seems completely at ease with Ibrahim’s ‘Doduka Mfundi’, but equally the piano-player sounds easy enough on a standard like ‘Poor Butterfly’, even if the accompaniment on these is pretty skeletal; more Basie, one might say, than Ellington. Tate often seemed to thrive on that, and it’s a fine and collectable set which also includes a couple of tracks for just trio, apparently recorded after Buddy had gone.

FRANK FOSTER

23 Born September 1928, Cincinnati, Ohio

Tenor saxophone, flute

Well Water

Piadrum 0701

Foster; Sinclair Acey, Cecil Bridgewater, Joe Gardner, Charles Sullivan (t); Bill Lowe, Charles Stevens, Kiane Zawadi (tb); Leroy Barton, C. I. Williams (as, f); Bill Saxton (ts); Doug Harris (ts, f); Bill Cody (ts, f, picc); Mickey Tucker (p); Earl May (b); Elvin Jones (d); Babafume Akunyun (perc). October 1977.

Frank Foster said (1989):
‘When I got out of the service I went back to Detroit. I met a friend who I hadn’t seen since Cincinnati. “Count Basie is looking for you.” “How can he be looking for me? I just got here.” I went to find him at the club and asked for an audition. All he said was “I’ll be in touch.” Then, nothing for two, three months, until one day I got a telegram from Mr Basie with a ticket to New York, one-way. The dream came true!’

Foster turned to the tenor saxophone to free himself of the all-pervasive influence of Charlie Parker but remained profoundly influenced by bop, even as leader of the Basie band, a role he took over in 1986 after the Count’s death, returning to the orchestra he had left in the mid-’60s to go freelance. He carried that torch loyally, even though his saxophone style bore a strong imprint of John Coltrane, and the loyalty probably cost him visibility as a leader and stylist in his own right. Perhaps the only arrangement most listeners associate strongly with him is ‘Shiny Stockings’. Notwithstanding, he has a strong solo style, with distinctive, off-centre phrasing and an uncanny ability to lie behind the beat even as he seems to drive it along.

For a guy who worked long and hard in some of the most prestigious company in jazz, Foster didn’t have much luck with his own recordings. Having been shelved by Blue Note at the end of the ’60s, these 1977 recordings by the Loud Minority Big Band were not released for 30 years. Mystifying, really, since the idiom is really rather advanced (unless that is the explanation), and there are moments when one might almost be listening to a Coltrane ensemble; the unmistakable presence of Elvin Jones adds to that impression. Foster’s saxophone
sound is broader, less hard-edged, though, and there are distinctive flourishes on Clifford Brown’s ‘Joy Spring’ and the original ‘Cecilia Is Love’ which give away the leader’s identity. He switches to soprano for the closing track, ‘Three Card Molly’, a bonus quintet cut, but the abiding impression from the main recording date is of a tenor-player who really ought to be mentioned more often among the successful modernists.

ZOOT SIMS

Born John Haley Sims, 29 October 1925, Inglewood, California; died 23 May 1985, New York City

Tenor, alto, soprano and baritone saxophones, voice

If I’m Lucky

Original Jazz Classics OJC 683

Sims; Jimmy Rowles (p); George Mraz (b); Mousie Alexander (d). October 1977.

Zoot Sims said (1980):
‘I like to have things written out, but still loose. Same way as I like playing unfamiliar things, just so long as I have them down in mind. I don’t want the music to be too arranged that I can’t enjoy myself. That’s why I play: to enjoy myself.’

A Californian, and one of Woody Herman’s ‘Four Brothers’ saxophonists in the ’40s, Sims continued to play in big-band situations on several tours, but from 1950 was primarily a solo artist who worked in almost countless studio and live situations. One of his most frequent collaborators was fellow tenorman Al Cohn. Instantly recognizable, and among the most consistently inventive and swinging of musicians, Sims was a paradigmatic jazzman. He died of cancer in 1985, having played for as long as he was able.

Like Jack Teagarden, Zoot Sims started out mature and hardly wavered from a plateau of excellence throughout a long and prolific career (oddly enough, Sims’s singing voice sounded much like Teagarden’s). As one of the ‘Four Brothers’, he didn’t quite secure the early acclaim of Stan Getz, but by the time of these sessions he was completely himself: a rich tone emboldened by a sense of swing which didn’t falter at any tempo. He sounded as if he enjoyed every solo, and if he really was much influenced by Lester Young – as was the norm for the ‘light’ tenors of the day – it was at a far remove in emotional terms.