The Penguin Jazz Guide (119 page)

When Sims signed to Norman Granz’s Pablo operation, he wasn’t so much at a crossroads as contentedly strolling down an uneventful path. For a man who could fit effortlessly into any situation he chose – admittedly, he never chose a situation that might cause much trouble – Sims could have spent his final years as a nebulous figure. But his Pablo albums set the seal on his stature, sympathetically produced, thoughtfully programmed and with enough challenge to prod Zoot into his best form.

If I’m Lucky
is, narrowly, the pick of the Pablos, though two more albums with the same group –
Warm Tenor
and
For Lady Day
– and an all-Gershwin set with Oscar Peterson and Joe Pass are also good. This one scores high for its ingenious choice of material, for which Rowles has to take the credit. ‘(I Wonder Where) Our Love Has Gone’ counts as one of Sims’s most affecting performances and there’s uncanny communication between saxophonist and pianist. ‘Legs’ is a Neal Hefti line and Zoot takes it his own way, untroubled by the sequence but reinventing the melody where it suits him. Harry Warren’s ‘Shadow Waltz’ didn’t often get an outing, and it’s another superb performance. In fact, the only familiar item on the list is ‘You’re My Everything’, and Zoot glides through it like a man walking along the tideline at sunset. Glorious jazz.

HAMIET BLUIETT
^&

Born 16 September 1940, Lovejoy, Illinois

Baritone saxophone, alto clarinet

Birthright

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Bluiett (bs solo). 1977.

Hamiet Bluiett said (1991):
‘I fell in love with the instrument at first sight, even before I knew what it sounded like. But I never thought its mission was to mumble in the back row. I thought it should be a lead voice. And when I eventually saw Harry Carney in the flesh, I knew I was right.’

The baritone saxophone enjoyed a boom in the ’50s. Why then? Harry Carney had turned it into a viable solo instrument; there were probably more good ensemble players around, conscious equally of the run-down on paying gigs with big bands and of the attractions of a little solo spotlight; lastly, the prevailing role-models on alto and tenor were, perhaps, a little too dominant. By contrast, no established baritone style developed; Gerry Mulligan was as different from Serge Chaloff as Chaloff was from Pepper Adams; and round the fringes there were players like Sahib Shihab and Nick Brignola doing very different things indeed.

Currently, the situation is much the same. The three most interesting baritonists all play in markedly different styles. The young Amerasian Fred Houn is very much a Carney disciple; Britain’s John Surman blows baritone as if it were a scaled-up alto (which by and large it is); Hamiet Bluiett, on the other hand, gives the big horn and his ‘double’, alto clarinet, a dark, Mephistophelian inflexion, concentrating on their lower registers, but also capable of pushing both horns up to extraordinary heights.

Bluiett settled in with the St Louis Black Artists Group in 1969, and had begun recording on his own account before co-founding the World Saxophone Quartet, which has been his most prominent vehicle. In later years, he experimented with all-clarinet ensembles. Heard unaccompanied at The Kitchen on
Birthright
, he is dark, rootsy and at moments almost unbearably intense. ‘In Tribute To Harry Carney’ is a deeply personal testimonial, redolent of the blues. The saxophonist’s wife Ebu is the dedicatee of a short and heartful song. Other family members, including Hamiet senior, are invoked in ‘My Father’s House’. Recorded without overdubbing or effects, but with multiple microphones to capture a sense of movement, the playing is hauntingly present, a vocalized sound that never becomes discursive but harks back to the most primitive of music-making and the most sophisticated gestures of the avant-garde.

& See also
WORLD SAXOPHONE QUARTET, W.S.Q.
(1980; p. 456)

AIR

Formed 1971

Group

Air Time

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Henry Threadgill (as, ts, f, bf, hubkaphone); Fred Hopkins (b); Steve McCall (d, perc). November 1977.

Henry Threadgill said (1989):
‘Everything we had ever listened to went into that group. I hear elements of boogie, gospel, Mexican music, even hillbilly music, the kind of stuff you couldn’t get away from on the radio. It’s all there, in this “avant-garde” sound.’

Definitive of the Chicago experimental scene of the ’70s, mixing radical free improvisation with the democratic levelling of ‘little instruments’, Air were capable of riveting live performance, but one suspects the intimate, almost hermetic atmosphere of the studio brought out their most characteristic work. The first-ever gig was a theatre performance of Scott Joplin rags as a basis for improvisation. The group placed great emphasis on tightly co-ordinated ensemble work while exploring freedom and the sonic
terra incognita
represented by Threadgill’s alien-sounding automobile accessories.

By the time the masterpiece
Air Time
came along, Air had been performing for more than a half a decade and the music had reached a level of sophistication that would not be surpassed, even after New Air emerged in the ’80s. Listening in detail to
Air Time
’s five tracks – two of them very short and one haiku-like piece emerging seamlessly out of ‘Subtraction’ – helps illuminate the group’s language, its vivid exploitation of splintered tempi, deliberately awkward and raucous phrasing, devices from other traditions (Hopkins had studied Burundi musics), and most particularly the use of voiced and pitched percussion. Threadgill’s masterly control of apparently wayward lines and McCall’s ability to combine forward drive with outbreaks of complete rhythmic anarchy remain the most prominent elements, but as time passes, Hopkins’s role becomes ever more obvious. He is often the still centre, but he is also the trickster of the group, frequently spinning off in unpredictable directions.

LOUIE BELLSON

Born Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francisco Antonio Balasoni, 6 July 1924, Rock Falls, Illinois; died 14 February 2009, Los Angeles, California

Drums

Prime Time

Concord CCD 4064

Bellson; Blue Mitchell (t); Pete Christlieb (ts); Ross Tompkins (p); Bob Bain (g); John Williams (b); Emil Richards (perc). November 1977.

Louie Bellson said (1994):
‘My father owned the music store, so I learned a little about a lot of instruments. But the only one that really excited me? That was when the parade went by – I must have been about three – and the drums found their way into my head, and stayed there.’

Bellson was among the last survivors of a breed of tough and tirelessly energetic drummers who powered big bands and small groups alike with showmanship and sheer muscle. Young Louie won a Gene Krupa competition, which established him in line with his great hero. His work with the big-band elite, with Ellington, Goodman, Dorsey, James, gave him a nearly unrivalled experience, and his own groups are marked out by an authority which is often masked by Bellson’s comparatively restrained style: virtuoso that he is, he always plays for the band.

In later years Bellson recorded extensively for Concord, though most of the work is now deleted. Later still, he became a living historian of the music, recording
Their Time Was The Greatest
as a tribute to the great jazz timekeepers, and a pair of affectionate albums with Clark Terry, who also represented a link with the past. He had, however, sustained a solid career as a working leader and some of his records from the ’70s, otherwise a bleak time for jazz, have staying power. Bellson didn’t always successfully resist the temptations of crossover, but did so often enough to leave a decent legacy from the period.
150 MPH
and
Dynamite!
for Concord are worth finding and are now available as a pair, but the best record for the label was
Prime Time
, a pretty much straight-ahead record that starts in great shape
with a swinging version of Golson’s ‘Step Lightly’, returns to Benny again in a fine medley that includes ‘I Remember Clifford’, and hits a peak with a brilliant version of Duke’s ‘Cotton Tail’. After that, Bain and Richards come in to fill out the band. It doesn’t interrupt the flow, but the later material isn’t as exciting, with the exception of Gillespie’s ‘And Then She Stopped’. The saxophonist’s composition ‘Thrash-In’ sounds a warning note and there are a couple of moments of tiresome bombast. Forgivable, really, and nothing that spoils enjoyment of a first-rate modern jazz record, with fine soloing from all the principals.

LOL COXHILL

Born Lowen Coxhill, 19 September 1932, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England

Soprano, tenor and sopranino saxophones

Coxhill On Ogun

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Coxhill; Michael Garrick (electric p); Veryan Weston (p); Ken Shaw, Richard Wright (g); Dave Green, Paul Mitchell-Davidson (b); Colin Wood (clo); John Mitchell (perc). 1977 & 1978.

Saxophonist Raymond MacDonald remembers:
‘Lol arrived in Glasgow sporting a huge orange raincoat and carrying a battered soprano case with his silver horn – repaired with an intricate arrangement of elastic bands – toothbrush and change of clothes crammed inside. Halfway through the gig the awning that was keeping us dry burst. Lol simply went inside and played ‘Lover Man’. His musicianship, humble charisma and generosity of spirit drew everyone to him. After the gig, we heard stories of playing with Wilson, Betty and Keppel, Hendrix and the Stones; one night busking on Hungerford Bridge a limousine drew up and Joni Mitchell dropped a coin into his cup …’

Most fans are aware that Lol busked on the Thames embankment and many British fans remember him as a drily funny festival MC. His musical quality hasn’t always been properly acknowledged. The CV ranges range from Canterbury whimsy to the beginnings of electronica, free jazz and elements of surreal bebop, and there is a large and scattered discography, including some wonderful free sessions on Emanem, but underlying everything is a deep love of standards jazz. Heath Robinson the Coxhill soprano may be, it is also one of the most expressive around.

Coxhill On Ogun
is a slight cheat, in that it brings together two LPs,
The Joy Of Paranoia
and
Diverse
, from the later ’70s, but it takes in some of his best work.
Joy
began with a live group improvisation recorded in Yorkshire; ‘The Wakefield Capers’ is the perfect illustration of Lol’s ability to play free forms with all the sweetness of Johnny Hodges and little of fellow soprano specialist Steve Lacy’s acidulous attack. Accompanied by the three guitars of ‘Paws For Thought’ – with Mitchell-Davidson on a wibbly bass – he weaves two long, thoughtful solos full of long, bent notes, sliding intervals and melodic ideas that rise up out of nowhere. ‘The Cluck Variations’ is a collaboration with pianist Weston, quite formally cast but full of anarchic invention. ‘The Joy Of Paranoia Waltz’ should be played at all wedding receptions just at the moment when new in-laws start to eye one another across the dance floor; it uses inventive overdubs on a simple riff. The clinching joy of the 1978 album is the pair of standards, ‘Lover Man’ and ‘Perdido’, played as duets with Michael Garrick. The Tizol tune is a revelation, reinvented wholesale.
Diverse
also appeals, a strong and inventive set consisting of one quartet and a ‘solo’ piece which has Lol duetting with a loose floorboard at Seven Dials in London.

SCOTT HAMILTON
^&

Born 12 September 1954, Providence, Rhode Island

Tenor saxophone

From The Beginning

Concord CCD 2117 2CD

Hamilton; Bill Berry (t); Nat Pierce (p); Cal Collins (g); Monty Budwig (b); Jake Hanna (d). March 1977, January 1978.

Concord founder and president Carl Jefferson remembers (1987) meeting Hamilton:
‘This young kid in sneakers, with a little moustache and a pint of gin in his pocket. Looked like a character out of Scott Fitzgerald. Played like it, too.’

He doesn’t double on soprano, bass clarinet or flute. He probably doesn’t know what multiphonics are. He has never been described as ‘angular’, and if he was ever ‘influenced by Coltrane’ it certainly never extended to his saxophone-playing. And yet Scott Hamilton is the real thing, a tenor-player of the old school who was born only after most of the old school were dead or drawing bus passes. His wuffly delivery but clear tone, containing elements of Bean, Chu, Pres, Byas and Zoot, is definitive of mainstream jazz, and the affection in which Hamilton is held on both sides of the Atlantic is not hard to understand.

Hamilton’s Concord debut was called
Is A Good Wind Who Is Blowing Us No Ill
, after Leonard Feather’s enthusiastic imprimatur; more of a breath of fresh air in retrospect and one that refocused attention on the undischarged possibilities of pre-bebop jazz. It and the unimaginatively named
Scott Hamilton 2
are brought together on
From The Beginning
. It may seem perverse to select the very first records of an artist who went on to make so many, and still is recording at the highest level, but it’s important to register the sheer surprise – shock, even – of hearing a 22-year-old playing this way in 1977. Not since the boy Jesus was found disputing with the Elders … The opening lines of ‘That’s All’ confirmed that a special new talent was at work. Already Hamilton had the poise and the patience of a much more experienced player. He runs ahead coltishly a couple of times, but his discipline is impressive.