The Penguin Jazz Guide (133 page)

This is the first time Wynton sounds completely relaxed and in possession of his own language, and though it was a record that intensified the debate about neo-traditionalism against experiment and contemporaneity, the actual music gives no sense of that. ‘Much Later’ seems to reference Miles Davis in some obscure way. ‘Skain’s Domain’ and the beautiful ‘Presence That Lament Brings’ touch the opposite boundaries of the trumpeter’s range, suggesting that his great quality is not after all virtuosic flash and fire but a deep-rooted expressiveness which maintains its integrity all the way from fiery individualism to elegiac regret. ‘After’ is a richly expressive slow number, and ‘Melodique’ is sweetly executed with the mute in place. Roberts is in exceptional form, playing in a style quite remote from his usual one of the time.

Aspects of Marsalis’s technique are still open to discussion, and there are places here where the connective tissue seems absent, fine phrases but insecurely pulled together. They’re few and far between, though.

& See also
Standard Time: Volume 6 – Mr Jelly Lord
(1999; p. 638),
Live At The House Of Tribes
(2002; p. 677)

PAT METHENY
^&

Born 12 August 1954, Lee’s Summit, Montana

Guitar

Song X: Twentieth Anniversary Edition

Nonesuch 7559-79918-2

Metheny; Ornette Coleman (as, vn); Charlie Haden (b); Jack DeJohnette, Denardo Coleman (d). December 1985.

Pat Metheny said (2004):
‘I think some of the best stuff wasn’t put on the record! Ornette and I talked for about three weeks about the material and other stuff. Denardo was there sometimes, though Jack and Charlie didn’t come in till later. It wasn’t like I was part of a working band, but it didn’t just happen spontaneously. A lot of thought went into that record.’

Metheny’s great departure still seems like a bolt from the blue, but it stands for all the other bold side-turns he has taken, and it’s important to locate it in a desire to improvise with freer and more abstract forms round this time: so, not quite the aberration it was thought to be. None the less, it’s the most astonishing move ever made by a middle-of-the-road jazz artist. Not only does the guitarist power his way through Coleman’s itinerary with utter conviction, but he sets up opportunities for the saxophonist to resolve and creates a fusion with which Coleman’s often impenetrable Prime Time bands have failed to come to terms. Melody still has a place here, which suggests that Metheny’s interest in the original Coleman legacy may be carrying forward in his own work more intently than it is in
the composer’s. Either way, on many of the more raving episodes here both men sound exultant with the possibilities. Twenty years after its initial release, Metheny went back to the original tapes and prepared a new edition which restored six pieces left off the vinyl album. In a curious move, they appear as the first six tracks on the CD. ‘Police People’ and ‘The Good Life’ are especially interesting since they include blowing sections based around chord changes, an environment almost unthinkable for Coleman yet one which he handles with typical aplomb. ‘Word From Bird’, the slapstick ‘Compute’ and ‘The Veil’ put a further spin on what the group could do.

& See also
Bright Size Life
(1975; p. 429)

JIMMY RANEY
^&

Born 20 August 1927, Louisville, Kentucky; died 10 May 1995, Louisville, Kentucky

Guitar

Wisteria

Criss Cross 1019

Raney; Tommy Flanagan (p); George Mraz (b). December 1985.

Allan Holdsworth said (1986):
‘Jimmy is amazing. Everything seems low-key and quiet, even when he’s playing quite intricate lines, and then every now and then something goes by you, and you think: “Hang on, what
was
that? how did he
do
that?” And I’m a guitar player!’

The early ’80s saw some vintage Raney on record and the Criss Cross set-up offered him an alternative to Steeplechase as an outlet for his work, and perhaps a more receptive producer. It’s hard to make an informed choice between
Raney ’81
,
The Master
and the record above, and tempting to say that Flanagan and Mraz make the difference. At first hearing, the mix sounds slightly woolly, but this is perhaps because the three voices are arranged quite democratically. Flanagan’s right hand sometimes recedes, but the material more than makes up for any purely technical quibbles. From the opening ‘Hassan’s Dream’, with its big, dramatic gestures, to ‘I Could Write A Book’, the drummerless group plays at the highest level and ‘Out Of The Past’ is very special indeed.

& See also
A.
(1954–1955; p. 154)

Part 2:
1986–1990

BOBBY WATSON

Born 23 August 1953, Lawrence, Kansas

Alto and soprano saxophones

Love Remains

Red RR 123212

Watson; John Hicks (p); Curtis Lundy (b); Marvin ‘Smitty’ Smith (d). November 1986.

Bobby Watson says:
‘This was the first Red date not recorded in Italy with Italian musicians. Sergio Veschi wired the money from Milano, allowed me to hire the musicians, and book the studio. The MRC studio on 14th Street in Manhattan was workable with no frills. Sergio even let me do the mixing and mastering and mail the finished project to him. It was huge for me as an artist, to have that trust. I guess it came out on the recording.’

Though he has never sounded like a Bird knock-off, Watson grew up in the same Kansas City environment and has something of Parker’s omnicompetence, product of many, many local gigs in tough and unforgiving company. Though these days he is a distinguished academic just over the state line at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, he has had a remarkable – and one might say old-fashioned – recording career, working with a huge range of musicians in many different styles. Watson had a formal music education, too. He was a contemporary of Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny at the University of Miami before trying his luck in New York City, where he worked for nearly five years as Art Blakey’s musical director in the Messengers.

The distinctive components of Watson’s sound are a very direct approach to phrasing, a wailing, blues-drenched tonality with seamless slides down the register and a battery of sharply percussive reed and mouthpiece sounds. The project that followed
Love Remains
was a thoroughly unexpected tribute to Johnny Hodges,
The Year Of The Rabbit
, not the kind of record young players were expected to make in the ’80s, but it pointed to another important source for Watson. At his most lyrical, he is, indeed, a descendant of Ellington’s most expressive soloist.

Watson has recorded with a number of groups, Horizon and the High Court Of Swing, and as an unaccompanied improviser (on another Red disc,
This Little Light Of Mine
) but for us nothing has ever topped this magnificent quartet and the record it made in November 1986. Over a late-night malt whisky in 2006, the authors of the
Guide
decided that it was probably our favourite modern jazz album of all. It is absolutely reliable, delivering musical intelligence, fantastic group interplay, high emotion and an almost unearthly beauty. From the Parker-tinged but by no means slavish ‘Mystery Of Ebop’ to the solemnly funky ‘Dark Days’ (originally an apartheid protest but retasked as a tribute to Nelson Mandela), it has a complete unity of purpose and tone. The title-piece, jointly credited to Bobby and Pamela Watson, is built round a three-note motif which means the same thing in any language. Hicks’s solo is a perfect foil for Watson’s plangent second entry, while Lundy and Smitty Smith sustain a dark, rolling pulse. Lundy’s ‘Sho Thang’ is the only non-Watson composition, testimony to the closeness of their working relationship at the time. The quartet had been gigging for a period before the recording and what Watson describes as a good hook-up is evident in every track. Pam Watson’s ‘The Love We Had Yesterday’ rounds off a wonderful set. Retrospect and repetition have never dulled this one. We’ve no hesitation in hailing it as a modern masterpiece.

MULGREW MILLER

Born 13 August 1955, Greenwood, Mississippi

Piano

Work!

Landmark LCD 1511

Miller; Terri Lyne Carrington (d). April 1986.

Mulgrew Miller said (1999):
‘It’s a huge mistake to think of the piano as this big, inflexible thing that does what it does. A piano has to be wrestled into shape, in order to get it to do the things you want from it: play like a horn, sound like drums, whatever.’

Miller emerged as a major pianist in the ’80s, following stints with Woody Shaw, the Ellington Orchestra and the Jazz Messengers. He recorded prolifically through that decade, in a
style that seemed to draw loosely from McCoy Tyner, but with sufficient originality and maturity to set him apart from more slavish copyists.

The debut
Keys To The City
set him on course, and by the third album Miller was fronting a serious body of work.
Work!
is a terse, efficient album that might sound routine to inattentive ears. In fact, it’s very carefully inflected and Miller’s writing always seems to hearken back to bop without ever slipping into the hard-bop formulae with modernistic flourishes that passed for inventive jazz at the time. The originals ‘Sublimity’ and ‘The Sage’ are the only extended performances of the set, committed performances that find the leader typically attentive to the rhythm of the band, alert in particular to the drummer’s line. The Monk title-tune gives him a chance to flex some muscle, but typically Miller highlights the song’s sophistication rather than its rootsier dimensions. On ‘My Man’s Gone Now’ he plays solo, a good test-piece for those who find him anonymous. The harmonic thinking is original and inventive, though by no means avant-garde.

After Landmark, Miller was at Novus and did some good work there, too, but the vicissitudes of jazz recording have left the discography becalmed somewhere and it wasn’t until MaxJazz starting putting out live material in 2002 that he became properly prominent again.

DENNIS GONZÁLEZ

Born 1954, Abilene, Texas

Trumpet

Stefan

Silkheart SHCD 101

González; John Purcell (bcl, bf, eng hn, syn, v); Henry Franklin (b, v); W. A. Richardson (d). April 1986.

Dennis González said (1995):
‘Keith Knox [of Silkheart] had written this big piece about me, in a Polish jazz magazine. Next thing I knew I had a $20,000 cheque through the mail and we were talking names, all these guys I knew and didn’t think anyone else did. So I basically said yes to them all.’

The most exciting musician to come out of Texas since Ornette Coleman, González has followed his own course doggedly and with little home support. For a time he ran his own record label, Daagnim, but became briefly prominent when taken up by the new Swedish-based Silkheart label. González speaks up for what might be called a ‘new Southern’ jazz which has evolved over 25 years and is now represented by Yells At Eels (‘Yes, it is’ in a strong Southern accent!) and various other line-ups involving the trumpeter’s sons.

González’s recordings for the Silkheart label were part of a determined effort to wrest creative initiative back from New York and the West Coast. The band assembled for
Debenge, Debenge
goes under the name New Dallasorleanssippi, which is more awkward than the music, wonderfully coherent and direct. González’s other great achievement is to have tempted the great tenor-player Charles Brackeen out of a self-imposed semi-retirement.

Stefan
is a minor masterpiece. The opening ‘Enrico’, dedicated to a fellow trumpeter, opens a path for magnificent flugelhorn figurations over a bass/bass clarinet accompaniment. ‘Fortuity’ is calm and enigmatic, like the title-track (a dedication to González’s son) a simple theme on open chords, but with a dramatic interlude for voices. ‘Hymn For Don Cherry’ is based on ‘At The Cross’. ‘Boi Fuba’ less successfully explores Brazilian materials, while John Purcell’s closing ‘Deacon John Ray’ features his Dolphy-ish alto, and the trumpeter flirts with total harmonic abstraction.

González went on to make
Namesake
and
Debenge, Debenge
for the label, the former with Brackeen and Douglas Ewart, the latter with Kidd and Marlon Jordan, both with the great Malachi Favors from the Art Ensemble. It was a short-lived association but a remarkably
fruitful one and Silkheart’s late-’80s catalogue is still required listening for any modern jazz fan.

SAMMY RIMINGTON

Born 29 April 1942, Paddock Wood, Kent, England

Clarinet, alto saxophone

The Exciting Sax Of Sammy Rimington

Progressive PCD-7077

Rimington; David Paquette (p, v); Walter Payton (b); Placide Adams, Stanley Stephens, Ernest Elly (d). April 1986–April 1991.

Sammy Rimington said (1992):
‘After working with Ken [Colyer], it was nice to break out a bit and do some different things, but you can’t beat a grounding like that, that kind of discipline.’