The Penguin Jazz Guide (130 page)

Westbrook; Phil Minton (t, v); Stuart Brooks (t, flhn); Danilo Terenzi (tb); Chris Biscoe (reeds); Brian Godding (g); Dominique Pifarély (vn); Georgie Born (clo); Steve Cook (b); Tony Marsh (d); Kate Westbrook (v, thn, picc). May 1984.

Chris Biscoe says:
‘At first run-through the music seemed relatively straightforward but I’m surprised now how many changes of feel and sound there are. Apart from two trumpets, every instrument stands alone: a Duke-ish sound. Favourite personal moment – 12 minutes into “East Stratford Too-Doo”, at the end of my baritone solo, Danilo tops it off with a gorgeous phrase which has a real first take feel.’

Britain’s neglect of one of its finest postwar composers amounts to little less than a national disgrace. Mike – and Kate – Westbrook’s work covers a wide spectrum from Ellingtonian jazz to music-theatre and reworkings of classical and pop forms. His early Concert Band was a significant crucible of talent, and a first showcase for John Surman. The large-scale suites
Metropolis
and
Citadel Room 315
introduced a new sophistication into big-band writing and arrangement, records that combined imposing structure with considerable improvisational freedom. With his group Solid Gold Cadillac, Westbrook delivered a refined version of jazz-rock. Later projects based around Blake’s poetry and Rossini’s music were
sui generis.

Perhaps the most satisfying single piece in the Westbrook canon to date is
On Duke’s Birthday.
As Chris Biscoe has also pointed out, it opens with a rarity, four choruses of Westbrook on piano plus rhythm section. It also ends with an ambiguous low C# on piano, and one feels throughout that this is the pianist’s most pianistic and most personal large-group record. The leader’s part is vital to the band in the way that Ellington was vital to his.

If it is Westbrook’s finest hour that isn’t because it takes its authority from Duke
Ellington, but because it does not. If this were called
New Compositions
it would still be remarkable, and might even be admired more. It’s music without a hint of self-election to jazz’s pantheon but yet written and executed very much in that great tradition, but with a generation of further musical thought put behind it. The opening piece, ‘Checking In At Hotel La Prieure’, manages to contain an extraordinary range of harmonic and melodic variation within passages of flailing swing. The writing on ‘East Stratford Too-Doo’ and the Gil Evans-like title-track, which form the main section of the piece, are harmonically sophisticated, rigorously arranged and played with dazzling liberty by the soloists: Westbrook imposes Ducal discipline on his ‘sections’ but offers commensurate liberty. A modern masterpiece.

MARTIN TAYLOR
^&

Born 1 January 1956, Harlow, Essex, England

Guitar

Spirit Of Django

Linn AKD 030

Taylor; Dave O’Higgins (ts, ss); John Goldie (g); Jack Emblow (acc); Alec Dankworth (b, cabassa); James Taylor (perc). June–August 1984.

Martin Taylor says:
‘We never tried to imitate the Hot Club. Our instrumentation is different, and I wanted the band to acknowledge the past, but in a contemporary way. I was always fascinated with the idea of what Django might have done had he lived longer, and that’s why we recorded Pat Metheny’s “James”. From what I learned of Django from those who knew him, he would have loved Metheny’s music. And I like to think he would have approved of us, too.’

Given the association with Grappelli, the naming of this group was no surprise, and neither was much of the repertoire; it was Grappelli who suggested the name and gave his blessing. Taylor had decided to give up unaccompanied performance for a while and concentrate on a group sound. It must have been difficult to sustain the level of highly exposed creativity he was bringing to solo concerts. What the group permits him to do is work within a much bigger harmonic and timbral framework, allowing his guitar to thread together ideas rather than sustain them all. What’s clear, though, is that this isn’t a pastiche band. For a start, Taylor doesn’t play like Django Reinhardt but essentially in solo fingerstyle. Equally, the repertoire is kept up to date and relevant, unlike the usual run of ‘gypsy jazz’ groups.

In Dave O’Higgins (one of the best of the younger generation of British saxophonists) and the seasoned Jack Emblow, he has partners who are absolutely in sympathy with what he is doing. Together, they confirm from the first chorus that this is not a Hot Club imitation. In Dankworth, he has a bass-player who can sustain the tempo in a drummerless group (son James has only a bit part at this stage) but who can also lend himself to the other parameters of the music as well. On ‘Night And Day’ and ‘Honeysuckle Rose’, he is creating as much of the musical movement as anyone else. Taylor intended the record to be a tribute to his own father, as well as to the artistic parent namechecked in the title. Playing acoustically and in a setting that juxtaposes Django material (‘Nuages’, ‘Minor Swing’, ‘Swing 42’) against originals and Taylor’s own celebrated reworking of Robert Parker’s ‘Johnny And Mary’ theme, he sounds very different from the solo artist, less busy and layered, but instantly identifiable as himself.

& See also
DJANGO REINHARDT, Django Reinhardt 1935–1936
(1935–1936; p. 51),
Pêche À La Mouche
(1947–1953; p. 111)

RAY BROWN

Born 13 October 1926, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; died 2 July 2002, Indianapolis, Indiana

Double bass

Soular Energy

Concord CCD 4268

Brown; Red Holloway (ts); Gene Harris (p); Emily Remler (g); Gerryck King (d). August 1984.

Rehearsing his trio in the UK, prior to a BBC recording, Ray Brown was caught on-mic growling:
‘
My
tempo!’
Then, after a pause, muttering:
‘… Good enough for Charlie Parker, sure as
hell
good enough for you.’

One of the most recorded jazz artists of all time, the little powerhouse witnessed the birth-pangs of bebop, acted as MD for his wife, Ella Fitzgerald, played with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and appears on so many records he himself must have lost count. In later years, he was a founder member of the L.A.4 and fronted a recording and touring trio for most of his last two decades, recording extensively with Concord and Telarc.

The L.A.4’s festival-friendly sound and repertoire often disguised formidable musicianship, with Bud Shank, Laurindo Almeida, Jeff Hamilton or Shelly Manne.
Soular Energy
is a fine album which perhaps only needs Jeff Hamilton in his usual slot behind the drums to lift it into minor-classic status. King holds a nice, springy beat but lacks sparkle and is inclined to hurry things along. Perhaps in retaliation, Brown takes the ‘ “A” ’ Train’ at a pace which suggests privatization may be around the corner. Slowed to an almost terminal grind, it uncovers all manner of harmonic quirks which Brown and the attentive Harris (who came out of semi-retirement to make the date) exploit with great imagination. Holloway and Emily Remler sign up for a shortish and slightly inconsequential ‘Mistreated But Undefeated Blues’. Brown’s counter-melody figures on ‘Cry Me A River’ and, especially, the closing ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ are signature devices.

PETER BRÖTZMANN
^&

Born 6 March 1941, Remscheid, Germany

Tenor, baritone and bass saxophones, clarinet, tarogato

14 Love Poems Plus 10 More: Dedicated To Kenneth Patchen

FMP CD 125

Brötzmann (as, ts, bs, mouthpiece, clarinets, tarogato). August 1984.

Peter Brötzmann said (1992):
‘It’s a very fragile, delicate thing, playing solo. You go into it with a few ideas – you can’t just turn up with nothing – but maybe you forget them pretty quickly and just keep working. You learn things about who you are, playing solo, so it’s important, but also quite nervous.’

There are other, some might argue superior, solo records in Brötzmann’s worklist, though interestingly not until 2009 was there a record release of a live concert. Whatever the merits of 1994’s
Nothing To Say
or the later
Right As Rain
, the
Love Poems
record was a key moment in the perception of Brötzmann as a more subtly inflected player than the screamer of
Machine Gun
and
Fuck De Boere
. At first glance, the title seemed to offer as absurd a prospect as
Derek Bailey Plays Ballads
, but of course that happened, too.

Brötzmann’s first unaccompanied record,
Solo
in 1976, was more than a multi-instrumentalist’s show-off, but there was around it a certain feeling that these were test-pieces – ‘Humpty-Dumpty’ on bass saxophone, for example – whose successes remained technical first and foremost. Not so
14 Love Poems
, which is gloriously musical from the very start,
even if it is no more ‘expressive’ (in the gushy sense) than any other Brötzmann record. The only named track is Ornette Coleman’s ‘Lonely Woman’, played on baritone. The remainder are divided between his other instruments, tenor, clarinets (including bass clarinet), strikingly good alto on ‘No. 3’ and tarogato on ‘No. 10’, the wooden instrument delivering its usual folksy tone and offering a reminder that this saxophonist’s art is also rooted in the music of his people rather than just in some imported notion of what ‘free jazz’ might be. It would be hard to finesse what was ‘German’ or ‘Germanic’ about the record, but there are ghostly echoes of an older vernacular music floating around it. Unusually, the ‘bonus’ tracks from the same session, dedicated to the anarchist poet Kenneth Patchen, really do seem like a plus.

& See also
Machine Gun
(1968; p. 352)

CHET BAKER
^&

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

Trumpet, voice

Blues For A Reason

Criss Cross Jazz 1010

Baker; Warne Marsh (ts); Hod O’Brien (p); Cecil McBee (b); Eddie Gladden (d). September 1984.

Chico Hamilton said (1994):
‘I hadn’t seen or heard much of Chet in years. I was in Europe on tour, and went into a club in Amsterdam, and there was a photograph of an old man behind the bar. I asked who it was. “Chet Baker.” My eyes fell out. He looked a thousand years old, and with the saddest face I ever saw.’

Chet’s final years were a strange mortal progress: sufficient gigs to feed his habit, permissions to record freely granted in return for enough to pay for a fix; a Dorian Gray story in reverse, with the man shrivelling before everyone’s eyes while the music continued pure and inventive; even the voice remained compelling, whispering lyrics rather than singing them, but conveying oceans of emotion as he did so.

It’s now clear that the near-abstraction and extreme chromaticism of Chet’s last years were a perfectly logical outgrowth of bebop. Warne Marsh’s style has been seen as equally problematic, ‘cold’, ‘dry’, ‘academic’, the apparent antithesis of Chet’s romantic expressionism. When the two are put together, as on this remarkable session, most of the familiar generalizations and categorizations fall flat. While Baker is quite clearly no longer an orthodox changes player, having followed Miles’s course out of bop, he’s still able to live with Marsh’s complex harmonic developments.
Blues For A Reason
stands out from much of the work of the period in including relatively unfamiliar original charts, including three by Chet himself. The best of these, ‘Looking Good Tonight’, is heard in two versions, demonstrating how the trumpeter doesn’t so much rethink his whole strategy on a solo as allow very small textural changes to dictate a different development. Marsh, by contrast, sounds much more of a
thinking
player and, to that extent, just a little less spontaneous. The saxophonist’s ‘Well Spoken’, with which the set begins, is perhaps the most challenging single item Baker tackled in his final decade, and he sounds as confident with it as with the well-worn ‘If You Could See Me Now’ and ‘Imagination’.

The end was not far away, but the music of Chet Baker’s last years was far from a dying fall, but a kind of triumph over mortality. In May 1988, he fell from a hotel window in Amsterdam. The circumstances have never been fully or satisfactorily explained.

& See also
Chet Baker And Crew
(1956; p. 176),
Live At Nick’s
(1978; p. 447)

LOUIS SCLAVIS
^&

Born 2 February 1953, Lyons, France

Clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone

Clarinettes

IDA 004

Sclavis (cl, bcl solo); and with Christian Rollet, Christian Ville (perc). September 1984, January 1985.

Louis Sclavis said (1985):
‘I find strange the dominance of the drummer in jazz, why the music has to take all its energy and direction from the one man at the drum kit. Take that away and jazz is free to move in new directions.’

Potentially the most important French jazz musician since Django Reinhardt (who was Belgian!), Sclavis has attempted to create an ‘imaginary folklore’ that combines familiar jazz procedures with North African and Mediterranean music, French folk themes and
bal musette
, a form that almost certainly played a role in the shaping of jazz in New Orleans.