The Penguin Jazz Guide (120 page)

The follow-up was recorded almost immediately afterwards, perhaps too soon in retrospect. The absence of Berry was unfortunate, and the addition of guitar makes for a rather smoother and less pungent product. For the moment, Hamilton seems content to fall back on predetermined ideas. Though everything on the record is played with exemplary professionalism, it never seems to get beyond that point and remains rather formulaic. After the giddy start, Hamilton took time to regroup and set out on what has been a tireless course.

& See also
Plays Ballads
(1989; p. 529)

JOHNNY MBIZO DYANI
^&

Born 30 November 1945, East London, South Africa; died 11 July 1986, Berlin, Germany

Double bass

Witchdoctor’s Son

Steeplechase SCCD 31098

Dyani; John Tchicai (as, ss); Dudu Pukwana (as, ts); Alfredo Do Nascimento (g); Luiz Carlos De Sequeira (d); Mohamed Al-Jabry (perc). March 1978.

Trumpeter Don Cherry said (1992):
‘Johnny was amongst us like a hot wind. He was fierce and strong and that blinded us to how great he was. Then suddenly he was gone, and there was a great emptiness after him.’

Mbizo was by turns calmly visionary and volcanically angry. More than any of the South African exiles, he absorbed and assimilated a wide variety of styles and procedures. He joined Chris McGregor’s Blue Notes in 1962 and came to London with them in 1965. Five years later he settled in Denmark, though he eventually died in Germany. In Scandinavia, he forged close artistic relationships with John Tchicai, Don Cherry and Abdullah Ibrahim. The music is strongly politicized but never programmatic. This and the slightly later
Song For Biko
, also with fellow exile Pukwana but with Don Cherry on cornet, come from Dyani’s most consistently inventive period. A lot of the material here is traditional, arranged by Dyani with the horns and bass in mind. ‘Ntyilo Ntyilo’ is delightful and there are two fine takes of it, along with a couple of other bonuses from the session that suggest this music was conceived fairly tight but with opportunities for Tchicai and Pukwana to take it out and away as they chose. The bassist’s own ‘M’bizo’ is included, and Pukwana brings in his own ‘Radebe’ (also two takes), which dances. The real showstopper, though, is ‘Magwaza’, a long improvisation over a springy bass-line that changes with every repetition but never misses its cues. Dyani never played better; less than a decade later, he was gone.

& See also
BLUE NOTES, Live in South Africa, 1964
(1964; p. 315)

ISHMAEL WADADA LEO SMITH
^&

Born 18 December 1941, Leland, Mississippi

Trumpet

Divine Love

ECM 529126-2

Smith; Lester Bowie, Kenny Wheeler (t); Dwight Andrews (af, bcl, ts, perc); Bobby Naughton (vib, mar, perc); Charlie Haden (b). September 1978.

Wadada Leo Smith says:
‘
Divine Love …
was the hardest of all my music to record. Why? Because the composition has multiple paths along which to construct each instrumental line, with the opening and closing sections being improvised.’

One of the few practising Rastafarians in jazz music, Smith joined the AACM community as a young man and subsequently formed the Creative Construction Company, an innovative trio with Anthony Braxton and Leroy Jenkins. Neither it nor his later group New Dalta Ahkri has ever received the attention due to it but Smith has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years, playing in a variety of creative contexts and making a parallel career with guitarist Henry Kaiser as a member of the tribute/re-creation group Yo! Miles.

Since the ’70s Smith has organized his music according to the principles of ‘rhythm-units’, which seem to call for a mystical equivalence of sound and silence, and of ‘ahkreanvention’, a method of notating improvised music. ‘Tastalun’ on
Divine Love
is the first of these pieces Smith had an opportunity to record, three muted trumpets weaving an extraordinary extended spell. So closely integrated is the playing by Smith and guests Wheeler and Bowie that it is probably pointless trying to sort out who is playing which line. The basic group, on both this record and the one below, is Smith with Naughton and Andrews.
Divine Love
opens on a long meditation for alto flute, Andrews at his atmospheric best, before Smith’s tight, compressed sound comes through. The title-piece is another of his ritual works. Naughton’s vibes are a key element on this record, not least because there is no conventional percussion part. He opens the last track pitched against Charlie Haden’s bass, marking the pauses that constitute the work’s stately rhythm unit. Andrews’s bass clarinet intones ancient wisdoms while Smith sounds elevated, rapt, almost tranced.

& See also
Golden Quartet
(2000; p. 647)

JOHNNY GRIFFIN
^&

Born 24 April 1928, Chicago, Illinois; died 25 July 2008, Availles-Limouzine, France

Tenor saxophone

Return Of The Griffin

Original Jazz Classics OJCCD 1882

Griffin; Ronnie Mathews (p); Ray Drummond (b); Keith Copeland (d). October 1978.

Johnny Griffin said (1989):
‘My record company told me to go to Europe to promote the music, and I was saying: “Why? What’s there for me?” But when I went I realized that jazz was more appreciated by Europeans than by Americans – it’s true! – and that there was already a jazz family there. It kept me working and it kept me away from the so-called avant-garde. I liked those guys, but I didn’t appreciate the shit they played.’

Griffin returned to the US without ever really having been away. The 1978 album was the product of his first visit since 1963, during which time he had become a favourite in Scandinavia, working steadily but recording virtually nothing under his own name. With the avant-garde in the ascendant and then fusion capturing the middle of the market, his style of playing had been at something of a discount for a time. To a new generation of fans, who’d come along towards the end of the ’60s, if they hadn’t already been programmed by rock, he might well have seemed the kind of mythological beast that graces the cover of
Return
. But the tide was turning slowly for jazz and the Galaxy recordings – this one and the subsequent
Bush Dance –
were explicitly intended to revive his fortunes, much as Dexter Gordon’s had been earlier. Griff recorded
A Little New York Midtown Music
with Nat Adderley in September, played with Dexter Gordon at Carnegie Hall (
Great Encounters
) and a few weeks later was in the Fantasy studio in Berkeley to make the comeback record.

It kicks off with an ‘Autumn Leaves’ that has a distinct spring in its step and it’s immediately obvious that Mathews is a key player, bright and responsive, and by no means put off by Griffin’s hustle. The standard is deftly repositioned, with a slightly altered melody statement, which delivers a wry ambiguity. ‘A Monk’s Dream’ is a fine original, and ‘The Way It Is’ suggests Griffin has been listening to some of the newer stuff and is prepared to go this far at least in the direction of jazz-funk. Copeland has never been a highly regarded player, except by other musicians, but here he’s a revelation, strong, determined and always in the service of the song. ‘Fifty-Six’ is another nice blowing line, and it plays out on a fairly routine ‘I Should Care’, with the drummer in the saddle. It’s not so much an anti-climax as a promise that Griffin was back and had energy in reserve.

& See also
A Blowing Session
(1957; p. 209)

CHET BAKER
^&

Born 23 December 1929, Yale, Oklahoma; died 13 May 1988, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Trumpet, voice

Live At Nick’s

Criss Cross Jazz 1027

Baker; Phil Markowitz (p); Scott Lee (b); Jeff Brillinger (d). November 1978.

Gerry Mulligan said (1990):
‘I never knew a musician who was so unafraid to take risks. He thought – that’s the wrong word; he just did it – so quickly that mistakes just became part of the idea.’

Demonstrating that there are second acts in American lives, Baker came through all his vicissitudes more or less intact. He had to develop a new embouchure after the loss of his
teeth in a beating and he had a habit to sustain. Apparently, he owed dealers money and they exacted revenge. For the remainder of his life, Chet was a damaged vessel, someone one watched with a kind of fascinated horror, but listened to with a kind of awe. As the outer shell shrank, the inner man – the Oklahoman boy with the innate genius for music – remained true and pure.

Sceptics will tell you that Baker did nothing but sing falteringly and play ‘My Funny Valentine’ for the last 20 years of his life. It isn’t so. His records for Criss Cross are distinguished by a notably fresh choice of material. Richie Beirach’s ‘Broken Wing’ was written specially for Chet, but the long version of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Beautiful Black Eyes’ is the product of an unexpected enthusiasm that fed the trumpeter with new and untried material. Markowitz is a responsive accompanist and merits his ‘featured’ billing on the sleeve. The Shorter track is by far the longest thing on the session, though two CD bonuses, the standards ‘I Remember You’ and ‘Love For Sale’, are both over ten minutes. Gerry Teekens is too sophisticated and demanding a producer to have settled for just another ballad album and, with the exception of the last two tracks, this is extremely well modulated, and one of the later Chet records that should be considered essential.

& See also
Chet Baker And Crew
(1956; p. 176),
Blues For A Reason
(1984; p. 488)

HORACE PARLAN

Born 13 January 1931, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Piano

Blue Parlan

Steeplechase SCCD 31124

Parlan; Wilbur Little (b); Dannie Richmond (d). November 1978.

Horace Parlan said (1988):
‘There were a lot of reasons for leaving America. Rock music was all that was being recorded, it seemed, and violence, especially racial violence, was on the increase. I was mugged, more than once. I won’t be the first to say that in Scandinavia jazz music and jazz musicians are treated with respect and admiration. Not such a hard decision!’

Horace overcame physical handicap – a polio-damaged right hand – to make a career. His blues-based playing, influenced by both Bud Powell and Ahmad Jamal, is solidity incarnate. He worked with Mingus and recorded for Blue Note (though these are only now available in a Mosaic box), but like other American players of the time, facing a slackening demand for jazz recording, he emigrated to Scandinavia, which he had visited on tour with Miriam Makeba. Once established there, he pursued a workmanlike and unspectacular career, documented by Steeplechase from
Arrival
onwards with almost redundant thoroughness, although the sequence ends in the ’80s. The only high-spots that call for separate treatment are the very fine 1978 trio with Wilbur Little and Dannie Richmond (also, of course, a Mingus man) and the much later
Glad I Found You
, where Parlan and the late Thad Jones shrug off a rather diffident setting to produce some sparkling performances.

Blue Parlan
takes a walk through some significant chapters in his earlier life, opening with ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ and including Jamal’s ‘Night Mist Blues’. There’s also a Cedar Walton composition and a line from Frank Strozier, so this isn’t just another run of the mill blues date but a carefully thought-out package that has a clear internal logic. Not much from the leader in writing terms, just one modestly ambitious blues outline, but some cracklingly good playing and rock-solid support from the bass and drums. Steeplechase’s loyalties sometimes stretched past any obvious utility, but steady documentation did sometimes throw up sets of this quality. Thirty years on, it’s still a vigorous performance.

LOUIS MOHOLO(-MOHOLO)
^&

Born 10 March 1940, Cape Town, South Africa

Drums

Spirits Rejoice! / Bra Louis – Bra Tebs

Ogun OGCD 017 / 018 2CD

Moholo; Claude Deppa, Kenny Wheeler (t); Nick Evans, Radu Malfatti (tb); Jason Yarde (ss, as); Toby Delius, Evan Parker (ts); Pule Pheto, Keith Tippett (p); Johnny Dyani, Roberto Bellatella, Harry Miller (b); Francine Luce (v). 1978, 1995.

Ogun founder Hazel Miller says:
‘Louis is the sole (soul?) survivor of the original Blue Notes, back home at last, and still carrying the flame of this marvellous music.’

As a young man Moholo-Moholo led a group called The Cordettes and won the drum prize at the Johannesburg Jazz Festival in 1962. On the strength of his performance he was invited by pianist Chris McGregor to join the Blue Notes, who left the Cape for Europe in 1964, eventually settling in London.

He continued to work with McGregor’s Brotherhood Of Breath but also formed his own Spirits Rejoice and Viva La Black. At the end of apartheid he returned to South Africa, where he is an honoured figure and an inspirational teacher. More than most of the South African exiles active on the jazz scene in Britain Moholo was able to make the transition between time-playing and free drumming without undue strain. His own bands have always contained free or abstract elements, and Moholo has always been in demand as a more experimental improviser, where his drive and intensity are comparable to those of Americans Milford Graves, Sunny Murray and Andrew Cyrille.