The Penguin Jazz Guide (152 page)

CECIL PAYNE

Born 14 December 1922, Brooklyn, New York; died 27 November 2007, Camden, New Jersey

Baritone saxophone, flute

Cerupa

Delmark DE 478

Payne; Freddie Hubbard, Dr Odies Williams III (t); Eric Alexander (ts); Harold Mabern (p); John Ore (b); Joe Farnsworth (d). June 1993.

Cecil Payne said (2000):
‘Once I’d heard Lester Young that was it, I wanted to be a saxophone-player. My father wanted me to be a dentist, but can you really imagine getting your teeth fixed by “Dr Payne”?’

Payne switched from alto to baritone in 1946 while working with J. J. Johnson, but developed a light, limber approach with a Pres-like tone. Along with Leo Parker, Payne did much to adapt the hefty baritone to the rapid transitions and tonal extremities of bebop.

Payne’s work for Delmark was something of an Indian summer. The formula is pretty much the same on all three records: a weighty, two-saxophone front line (Lin Halliday is pacemaker on
Scotch And Milk
, with Marcus Belgrave on trumpet), and parts for Freddie Hubbard and the little-known Odies Williams on
Cerupa
, trombonist Steve Davis on
Payne’s Window
. The rhythm section is anchored by Mabern, who is one of the great post-bop pianists. Eric Alexander is a Mabern pupil and has absorbed much of the pianist’s vast knowledge of the idiom, creating solos that bespeak historical awareness as well as formidable technique.

Cerupa is C. Ruth Payne, the saxophonist’s wife. He gets out his flute for the title-track and demonstrates an unusually individual touch on it. There are unexpected Latin elements here and there, though not on ‘Cuba’. After a free-blowing opening, ‘Bolambo’ shows some acquaintance with the free movement, but moves into a stately dance theme. ‘I Should Care’ is the only standard and is played with insouciant ease. Payne’s reputation isn’t large and he’s virtually unacknowledged as a flautist. This one redresses the balance more than a little.

PAGO LIBRE

Formed 1990

Group

Shooting Stars And Traffic Lights

Leo CD LR 345

John Wolf Brennan (p, mca); John Voirol (syn, ss, ts); Tscho Theissing (vn); Daniele Patumi (b); Alex Cline (d, perc). 1993.

John Wolf Brennan says:
‘The title appeared as a metaphor to point at the “ultrafast” and “stop-in-this-very-fraction-of-a-second” method we used as a group in various of the pieces.’

There have been all sorts of efforts to explain the band name, some of them quite plausible for music of such freedom and abandon, but very simply it derives from the initial letters of group members, which at first included violinist Steve GOodman and trumpeter Lars LIndvall, though that rationale has vanished with changes in personnel. The most recent incarnation is a drummerless quartet with Arkady Shilkloper on French horn and flugelhorn.

A unique line-up and instrumentation, the music takes much of its energy from
Brennan’s playful but thoughtful aesthetic, which combines an almost classical order with a strong measure of aural surrealism. There have been many recordings over the years, but
Shooting Stars And Traffic Lights
is the group at its most luminously free. Theissing plays a quite formal melody on the title-track and one might almost be bound for an episode of chamber-jazz, but for the cheerful anarchy of what overtakes the lead-line. ‘Toccattacca’, in several parts, is a typical Brennan conception, using classical form (and some Messiaen chords) against the drive of a jazz group. ‘Ognatango’ works similarly, but it’s misleading to imply that this is satirical music. Cline’s ‘A.L.P.traum’ combines the ‘Anna Livia Plurabelle’ chapter in
Finnegans Wake
, where the washerwomen of Dublin try to guess the personalities of the wearers from tell-tale signs in their underwear, with the German word for a nightmare,
Alptraum.
Such references are all integral to the performance and not just a way of leading the listener astray.

Almost any of the records are worth investigating, but this little masterpiece was so long out of circulation that it is worthy of special attention.

BILL DIXON
^&

Born 25 October 1925, Nantucket, Massachusetts

Trumpet

Vade Mecum / Vade Mecum II

Soul Note 121208 / 121211

Dixon; Barry Guy, William Parker (b); Tony Oxley (d). August 1993.

Bill Dixon says:
‘It might seem there were too many imponderables – the group had never worked together before – and the faint-hearted might have wondered what we might be able to achieve. But things worked out well; in fact they worked out marvellously; all of the players indicated that they wanted to play the music we were confronting that day, which, incidentally, was a beautiful and sunny Italian day totally fit for the recording that we made.’

Dixon not only relied on a European label. He also found European – in this case, British – musicians to be responsive to his music. Inside almost all of Dixon’s small-group recordings there is a dark pressure, like the imprint of a much larger composition that has been denied full expression. That is profoundly evident on
Vade Mecum
, which begins Dixon’s association with British percussionist Tony Oxley; it later resulted in a pair of Soul Note CDs called
Papyrus
. It might be argued that both Oxley and compatriot Guy are too ‘strong’ to conform to Dixon’s exceptionally disciplined approach, and there is a hint that this may have resulted in conflict when one finds Oxley’s role dismissed as ‘background’ on the later duo records. The two bassists take very different parts: Parker is sonorous and inward, while Guy flitters rapidly on what may be a chamber bass. ‘Anamorphosis’ on the first record is one of Dixon’s most thoughtful conceptions, and it is clear that the group responded very positively to the forms he proposed. For a time we considered the second volume, recorded at the same session, the stronger of the two – ‘Ebonite’ and ‘Reflections’ are both immensely powerful ideas, anchored in the bass and coloured with Oxley’s unique spectrum of sounds – but really this is just a single superlative record that might easily have been released as a double disc. Too much to absorb in one sitting, perhaps, but richness for the ages in the music.

& See also
November 1981
(1981; p. 466)

JAN GARBAREK
^&

Born 4 March 1947, Mysen, Norway

Tenor and soprano saxophones, other instruments

Twelve Moons

ECM 519500-2

Garbarek; Rainer Brüninghaus (ky); Eberhard Weber (b); Manu Katché (d); Marilyn Mazur (perc); Mari Boine, Agnes Buen Garnås (v). September 1993.

Saxophonist Tommy Smith says:
‘Garbarek’s sound possesses the call from the wild and the planet’s soundscapes. The sonic experience, whether it’s live or from the studio, is extremely important to Jan. The wonderful trait that he shares with Arild Andersen is the desire for their audiences to hear their live concerts as if they were studio recordings.’

The end of the ’70s established a pattern whereby Garbarek went into the studio at each year’s end to consolidate and capture what had been learned in performance and to send out new feelers for the year ahead. It is what a village bard might have done in winter quarters, spin tales about the year past and boast about what would come when the sun returned, and the folkloric strain became more evident as Garbarek’s music moved in the direction of improvisational folk music.

Star
in 1991 was widely hailed as the saxophonist’s return to straighter jazz playing, but it was a curiously woolly album – the contributions of Miroslav Vitous and Peter Erskine notwithstanding – that never quite delivered on its promise, and it was
Twelve Moons
that restored something of the atmospheric beauty and deep pulse of
Dis.
Appropriately, it was Garbarek who was chosen to front ECM’s 500th release. It finds him at an interesting point of development, still exploring folklore but again espousing a jazz-orientated programme. There’s an emphasis on soprano saxophone, perhaps to blend better with the voices, but even here the tone is stronger and heavier than of yore. Katché is essentially a rock drummer, with a crude but immensely vibrant delivery. One thinks occasionally of Ginger Baker, but among previous associates he is closer to Edward Vesala than to Jon Christensen. This time around, in addition to Sami
joiks
, Garbarek includes an arrangement of national composer Edvard Grieg’s gentle ‘Arietta’, and a new version of the late Jim Pepper’s ‘Witchi-Tai-To’.

& See also
Dis
(1976; p. 436)

MICHAEL MOORE

Born 1 January 1954, Eureka, California

Clarinet, alto saxophone

Chicoutimi

Ramboy 06

Moore; Fred Hersch (p); Mark Helias (b). September 1993.

Michael Moore says:
‘Having been active with ICP, Clusone trio, Guus Janssen and Maarten Altena for a few years this was a date I needed to do to balance my musical life. I had been going in this direction before I realized that Jimmy Giuffre had done it all 30 years before me. My biggest regret is spelling his name wrong on the cover! Everything was easy working with Fred and Mark and there is clearly a Dutch influence in the music.’

After training at the New England Conservatory, Moore moved to Europe and has been based in Amsterdam ever since. His associations there have included Han Bennink, Misha Mengelberg and the Instant Composers Pool, and he has also been at various times a member of Available Jelly, Clusone 3 and drummer Gerry Hemingway’s small group. Much of his work has been issued on his own Ramboy label. Moore’s multi-reed approach always bristles with pawky intelligence. He has a firm, almost vocal tone on his main horns and his solos resemble quirky monologues.

Chicoutimi
– and the subsequently released
Bering
from the same group date – is a beautiful record, exquisitely executed and thoughtfully expressed, poised between modernist and mainstream, edgy and sentimental by turns. The opening ‘Anomalous Soul’ is absolutely in the spirit of Giuffre, its lopsided line seemingly detached from Hersch’s chords and Helias’s muscly but contained accompaniment; its logic only becomes entirely clear when it’s over, by which time the group has moved into the more abstract territory of ‘Bruce’, one of a number of tracks that sound collectively improvised. The bassist’s
arco
work doesn’t get quite enough of an outing here for us, but it’s devastating when it does appear and the closing sequence is as satisfying as anything of the period, with an Astor Piazzolla tango playing out a programme that has a strong internal logic. Coming around mid-way, ‘In The Company of Angels’ is Moore’s show-stopper. Listen to it, and you might understand what he means by a ‘Dutch influence’ on the music.

ERNIE WATTS

Born 23 October 1945, Norfolk, Virginia

Tenor and soprano saxophones

Reaching Up

Samson Music 29932

Watts; Arturo Sandoval (t); Mulgrew Miller (p); Charles Fambrough (b); Jack DeJohnette (d). October 1993.

Ernie Watts says:
‘This was the first session I played on a brand-new saxophone, my Julius Keilwerth SX 90R, which I got just two weeks before – and have now used continuously for 16 years. So I had to get to know my saxophone at the same time I was making the recording, which made it even more of an adventure.’

Ernie Watts describes himself as an analog man in a digital world; he even used that designation for a recent album. One might add that he is something of an invisible man as far as the recording world is concerned. Few of his records have stuck in catalogue, despite their obvious merits, and apart from his membership of Charlie Haden’s Quartet West and a few other high-profile situations, he remains largely unknown to a wider jazz public or else dismissed as a world music and fusion dabbler.

His chief influence is Coltrane, but the Coltrane of the earlier, sheets-of-sound period. Watts is essentially a romantic player, but he’s far from undaring and the failure of his work to remain in catalogue is more a reflection of its uncategorizability than of its quality, which is consistently high. In 1991, he recorded
Afoxé –
say it ‘aff-oshay’ – a set of tautly dancing world grooves that would have intrigued Miles Davis had he lived to hear it.

Reaching Up
, from two years later, is more obviously a jazz record, and a pretty headlong one, too. If Watts was trying out a new saxophone, he wasn’t breaking it in gently. The solos are driving and intense. Some profess to hear a resemblance to Michael Brecker, and there is a brittle edge here and there that points in that direction, but it’s unmistakably Watts in his own voice. Jack DeJohnette, who had contributed drums and keyboard kalimba to
Afoxé
, provides the fuel, but credit also goes to that underrated composer and bassist Charles Fambrough, who brings ‘The High Road’, ‘Sweet Lucy’ and a good deal of invention and class to the set. Sandoval is featured on just two cuts, which is just about right; any more
and he might have overheated things. Miller’s comping is exact but attractively loose. Watts includes a Coltrane tune (‘Mr Syms’) and a standard (‘I Hear A Rhapsody’), but his own material dominates, particularly the concluding pair of ‘Angel’s Flight’ and ‘Sweet Rhapsody’. Some might find the multi-noted approach a little excessive, but there’s structural iron in every solo.