The Penguin Jazz Guide (148 page)

He was a fascinating pianist, taking whatever he wanted from free- and post-bop piano language. A bravura delivery, involving tumultuous climaxes and moment-by-moment contrast, makes him hard to follow or even like at times, but he was surely a European original. In the ’80s, he recorded with a series of power trios, using bassist Johnny Dyani before his premature death, drummer Erik Dahlbäck and bassist Torbjörn Hultcrantz, and turning out such varied records as
Coyote
, with its massive ‘Strange Adventures Of Jesper Klint’, or
Deep In A Dream
, with its offbeat standards playing.

He came back from the accident with seemingly little of his power depleted. The shade most closely evoked here is Thelonious Monk, since ‘Nu Nu Och Då Nu Går Då Och Nu’ sounds like a perversion of ‘Round Midnight’, and other Monkish melodies drift through the remaining tunes. But the level of interplay here – confrontational and conspiratorial in equal proportion – goes against the impression given by much of his earlier work that Wallin is best by himself, although his long solo ‘J.W.’ is a wonderfully expressive tribute to a painter friend.

The permutation of solos, duos and full trio tracks is intelligently balanced and it’s only just to point out that this is a collaborative record rather than Wallin’s own. Gustafsson is gothically powerful and jagged, Nordeson works with military intensity, nobody misses the bass and it’s all splendidly recorded. Almost as an afterthought, Wallin concludes with ‘I Should Care’, underlining that what he cared about wasn’t necessarily orthodox, but was always stimulating.

CHARLES GAYLE

Born 28 February 1939, Buffalo, New York

Tenor saxophone, piano

Touchin’ On Trane

FMP CD 48

Gayle; William Parker (b); Rashied Ali (d). October–November 1991.

Charles Gayle said (1996):
‘When you live on the street, it isn’t like you can play at a street corner and then pack up and go home. There’s something else involved, and I need that. I miss that. I might follow a sound, but not to play with it: because it was there and part of that situation. It’s a different thing entirely.’

Like a latter-day Moondog, Gayle played as a street musician, apparently homeless and without possessions, until his late-’80s lionization as an heir to Ayler and folkloric savant. Gayle’s music has become more accessible, in the sense of being more melodic, in recent years, and he has added piano to his armoury, but his saxophone-playing still has a raw urgency and, without sentimental projection, a survivalist’s urgency which makes the usual critical considerations seem like mere aesthetics.

Gayle’s records of the ’90s still astonish, even in the aftermath of so many kinds of free-jazz outrage, largely because of his starkness and simplicity. He has clearly developed the iron chops that go with playing in the open for hours on end, but the conception and realization of these records is monumental. His holy, holy delivery makes one think of both Coltrane and Ayler at their most consciously spiritual, but there is also Gayle’s own superbly harsh lyricism. He is unusually adept at both the highest register of the tenor and control of the most outlandish overblowing. Solos are not so much fashioned as drawn straight
from the moment; nothing seems to be created in advance, and a performance might run on seemingly without end. This is the outright masterpiece; and it seems likely to be a central document in the free music of the decade. The three men touch on Coltrane from moment to moment (Ali renews his old relationship in triumph), but this is new, brilliant, eloquent free playing.

BENNY GREEN

Born 4 April 1963, New York City

Piano

Testifyin’: Live At The Village Vanguard

Blue Note 98171

Green; Christian McBride (b); Carl Allen (d). November 1991.

Benny Green said (1993):
‘Jazz isn’t really about numbers. It’s about communicating your self, and your humanity, to as many people as turn out to hear you. In a concert hall, with the lights in your face, you might as well be alone in some ways. In a club, the audience is always there, close to you and therefore part of what you do.’

Green came to prominence as pianist with Betty Carter’s group, and his mastery of bebop piano – particularly the chunky rhythms of Horace Silver – was leavened by an apparent interest in swing styles as well. His main influence is Oscar Peterson, but it isn’t slavish. Green hits the keyboard hard on uptempo tunes, and has a preference for beefy chords and straight-ahead swing. The albums for Criss Cross feature a lot of piano, but there’s nothing particularly outstanding about them. The deletion scythe has been through his Blue Note work as well, but
Testifyin’
stands upright and remains as listenable as ever.

It’s a top-notch club date from a sanctified venue, and has some of the pluses and few of the minuses of a live recording. The tracks don’t go on for ever, though Green solos so punchily one can’t imagine him plugging away at it for more than a few minutes at a time, plus his ballad playing is of a briskly unsentimental sort, which doesn’t require long balcony scenes.

A lot of artists fall back on very familiar material for live dates, but Green has confidence in his sidemen and can stretch out with new material to some degree. His own compositions are bouncy enough and harmonically subtle; they’re intelligent pieces rather than roof-lifters. ‘Bu’s March’ (for Art Blakey) and the title-track are the best of them, but ‘Sheik Of Araby’ and the gospelly ‘Down By The River Side’ are the surprise items. Time to bring back the other Blue Notes, but you can’t go wrong with
Testifyin’
.

JOE LOVANO

Born 29 December 1952, Cleveland, Ohio

Tenor and alto saxophones, other saxophones, clarinets, percussion

From The Soul

Blue Note 798363

Lovano; Michel Petrucciani (p); Dave Holland (b); Ed Blackwell (d). December 1991.

Joe Lovano says:
‘We had never played together as a unit until the downbeat of the first tune “Evolution” and the spontaneous collective free-flowing music that follows is alive and full of magic to this day.
From The Soul
tells a story not only about who we are as musicians but what jazz music is all about. On the eve of my 39th birthday this session was a springboard to the future in the blessed world of music.’

Joe Lovano stands at the heart of contemporary jazz, a figure who, solo by solo, album by album, demonstrates the continuing fertility of the genre. He worked with Woody Herman in the late ’70s, and in trio with Bill Frisell and Paul Motian the following decade, but made his mark with an impressive run of Blue Note recordings. His stance on the jazz tradition – whether it is Coleman Hawkins or John Coltrane – is always respectful but creatively rather than slavishly so.

Lovano’s ‘Body And Soul’ wins him lifetime membership of the tenor club. Interestingly, though, he takes John Coltrane’s rarely covered ‘Central Park West’ on alto, as if doing it on the bigger horn were unpardonable arrogance. What’s wonderful about the record is how beautifully modulated the tracks are. There’s not a cliché in sight. Lovano’s own writing – ‘Evolution’, ‘Lines & Spaces’, ‘Modern Man’, ‘Fort Worth’ and the closing waltz, ‘His Dreams’ – has a clean muscular edge, and from the opening fanfare of ‘Evolution’ onwards it’s clear that the album is going to be something special.

Petrucciani established such a presence as a recording artist in his own right that it’s easy to forget how superb an accompanist he could be. The Frenchman’s responses on ‘Left Behind’, unfamiliar territory for him, are startling. He sits out ‘Fort Worth’, leaving Holland and Blackwell to steer a markedly abrasive theme. Though ailing and by no means as dynamic as in former years, the drummer still sounds completely masterful. His delicate mallet figures on ‘Portrait Of Jenny’ are one of the instrumental high-points of a thoroughly compelling record.

LARRY CORYELL

Born 2 April 1943, Galveston, Texas

Guitar

Twelve Frets To One Octave

Shanachie 97015

Coryell (g solo). 1991.

Larry Coryell says:
‘This was the first time I took a budget from a record company and used it to my discretion. I chose the studio, borrowed some vintage guitars from friends that I felt would give more variety to the tracks, and some microphones from my old friend, the late and great recording engineer David Baker. So it was very hands-on, the first time I self-produced. I used my sons on one track each and took the opportunity to write something about my daughter, Allegra; that was a good memory.’

Coryell started out in Mike Mandel’s group before joining Chico Hamilton and Gary Burton, where his Hendrix-influenced rock-tinged sound came to wide notice. He played with Sonny Sharrock on Herbie Mann’s
Memphis Underground
and showed that the excitements of rock could be married with the subtleties and intellectual sophistication of jazz. In the ’70s, he played jazz-rock, first with Mandel in Foreplay and later with his own Eleventh House, one of the few groups that managed to avoid the blandness of ‘fusion’. More recently, he has moved between pure-bop, fusion and Latin styles, limpidly delivered but with real power and with a trademark sensitivity to dynamics.

Coryell’s return to straight jazz playing has been fascinating. He credits Ellis Marsalis with the revelation that ‘Giant Steps’ could be done as a solo guitar piece, recast in waltz time and slowed down. It’s one of the high-points of an earlier Shanachie record,
Dragon Gate
, along with a fine interpretation of Wes Montgomery’s ‘West Coast Blues’. On
Twelve Frets To One Octave
, he relies even more on pure technique and simplifies the programme dramatically. From raw, rootsy blues to the sober, classical shapes of ‘Bartók Eleven’ to the lovely lilt of ‘Transparence’, Coryell has it all taped. His single-note runs are fleet and dexterous, his chording has harmonic mass, and his rhythms and counter-rhythms
frequently create the impression that more than one musician must be involved. A beautifully shaped album, it starts out nakedly personal with ‘Allegra’s Ballerina Song’, changes pace and direction with ‘Blue Monk’ and builds to the climax of ‘Alfonsina Del Mar’ (he called the flautist Nestor Torres to check that he was playing the line correctly), which ranks with Coryell’s very best recorded solos.

JOHN TCHICAI

Born 28 April 1936, Copenhagen, Denmark

Alto, tenor and soprano saxophones, other reeds

Grandpa’s Spells

Storyville STCD 4182

Tchicai; Misha Mengelberg (p); Margriet Nabrier (syn); Peter Danstrup (b); Gilbert Matthews (d). March 1992.

John Tchicai says:
‘Matthews, Danstrup and Mengelberg were the perfect choice for the very varied repertoire I chose for this concert series and recording. Few could skip through the genres with such grace and inventiveness as they did it then. Since those days Mengelberg has been ill so I’m glad we were able to do this when he was still in fine form.’

The saxophonist is half Danish, half Congolese. He started out on violin and, after switching to saxophone, was noticed by Archie Shepp and others on the European festival circuit. Tchicai moved to the United States in the early ’60s and joined Archie Shepp and Bill Dixon in the New York Contemporary Five; but he went on to lead a more significant, if less well-known, group, known as the New York Art Quartet, with percussionist Milford Graves and trombonist Roswell Rudd. In the following year he played alongside fellow altoist Marion Brown (whom he somewhat resembles in approach) on John Coltrane’s epic
Ascension
, before returning to Europe to work on a number of individual projects.

Originally rather dry and papery in tone, Tchicai has become more emotionally nuanced over the years. The ’80s saw him shift away from alto saxophone. His tenor and soprano work was initially competent but rather anonymous, and it really came into its own only during the following decade, as on the excellent
Grandpa’s Spells
. The Jelly Roll Morton title-piece is a perfect vehicle for both the leader’s rowdy neo-traditionalism and Mengelberg’s surreal approach to melody – they also tackle ‘Cannonball Blues’ – but the outstanding cuts are the collectively improvised tracks, Mengelberg’s strange, Monk-referencing ‘Elevator No. 2’ and an entirely unexpected and very beautiful version of a Carl Nielsen melody, which underlines a slow recognition that, even when Tchicai was playing hard-edged free music, he was still a romantic at heart.

TOM VARNER

Born 17 June 1957, New York City

French horn

The Mystery Of Compassion

Soul Note 121217-2

Varner; Steve Swell (tb); Dave Taylor (btb); Matt Darriau, Ed Jackson (as); Rich Rothenberg, Ellery Eskelin (ts); Jim Hartog (bs); Mark Feldman (vn); Mike Richmond (b); Tom Rainey (d). March 1992.

Tom Varner remembers:
‘I went for broke: Mingusy swing, free bop morphing into funky blues, 12-tone mini-concerto for violin, thrash punk quickies, odes to
Ascension
, and a sombre prayer. My friend Bobby Previte produced. We fought a bit – I’d never had a producer before – but our tensions helped to make the recording the best I had ever done. Our friendship survived, too!’

Varner’s decision to apply french horn as a weapon in the New York avant-garde might once have seemed improbable, but with every kind of instrument pressed into service in that milieu, no longer. Nor was he the first. David Amram and Julius Watkins had tried to make the horn a jazz voice, and it was Gunther Schuller’s instrument, too. There is an unavoidable first impression that it’s a trombonist we’re listening to, but Varner has taken pains to develop his own vocabulary, and breaks down the horn’s intractability.