The Penguin Jazz Guide (153 page)

KEITH NICHOLS

Born 13 February 1945, Woodford, Essex, England

Piano

Henderson Stomp

Stomp Off CD 1275

Nichols; René Hagmann (c, tb); Bent Persson, Guy Barker, Mike Henry, Rolf Koschorrok (t); Alistair Allan (tb); Claus Jacobi (ss, as, bsx, cl); Nicholas Payton (as, cl); Michel Bard (ts, cl); Martin Wheatley (bj); Graham Read (sou); Richard Pite (d). November 1993.

Keith Nichols says:
‘We took great pains to match the sound of the original instruments. Trombonist René Hagmann managed to find a pre-war instrument – the same model Jimmy Harrison played in 1927. The pieces were taken from 1924–31, ranging from the Louis Armstrong period to early swing. Playing and arranging styles in hot dance music evolved out of all recognition during that time, demanding great versatility from the musicians on this CD. It was an education for us all and we’re very proud of it.’

Nichols is a British specialist in American repertory: ragtime, hot dance music, New York jazz of the ’20s, Blake, Morton, Berlin, whatever. He has a versatile background in acting and entertaining, but is primarily a practising scholar of ragtime and early jazz repertory. His piano-playing and Hoagy Carmichael-like singing are less important than the mastery of old form that he successfully displays on his records.

Henderson Stomp
is surely his finest hour to this point and one of the most convincing pieces of authentic-performance jazz ever set down. Stomp Off producer Bob Erdos has always been keen on authenticity, with the accent on lesser-known pieces. Transcriptions were done by Nichols, Claus Jacobi and Bent Persson. Twenty-two of Fletcher Henderson’s most effective pieces – from several hands, though many of Don Redman’s somewhat familiar charts are bypassed in favour of other arrangements – are re-created by a picked team of some of the most talented repertory players and revivalists in Europe: the brass team alone is gold-plated, with the amazingly versatile Persson and Barker set alongside the brilliant Hagmann. The reed section seems totally schooled in the appropriate section sound of the period – Guy Barker sits almost unnoticed in the section, but is just as good as Marsalis, or Payton, at this kind of thing – and each of the tunes emerges with the kind of rocking swing that is properly flavoursome of the era. With such a strong team of soloists, the various breaks and carefully fashioned improvisations have the nous needed to transcend any scripted mustiness.

GLENN SPEARMAN

Born 14 February 1947, New York City; died 8 October 1998, San Francisco, California

Tenor saxophone

Smokehouse

Black Saint 120157

Spearman; Larry Ochs (ts, sno); Chris Brown (p, DX7); Ben Lindgren (b); Donald Robinson, William Winant (d). November 1993.

Glenn Spearman said (1992):
‘I got saddled with the reputation of being this crazy/John Coltrane/screamer/out-there type and that never left me. I don’t think it’s done any real harm, but it maybe didn’t do that much good either.’

Spearman’s death from liver cancer left a sense of things undone and of a major talent not yet properly recognized. His blues-soaked sound bears comparison with anyone from Illinois Jacquet to Archie Shepp. He’d got involved in creative music-making in Oakland in the ’60s, but was a relative latecomer to recording. Spearman was over 40 before he made
Utterance
for Cadence, so not surprisingly he already sounded settled into a strong and individual voice. He started out as a Coltrane-influenced screamer but quickly recognized that a more thoughtful delivery might well bear dividends.

Spearman made a couple of fascinating records for Black Saint in the early ’90s with a group that included ROVA’s Larry Ochs, percussionist William Winant and others on that Californian free scene. Dedicated to Ornette Coleman (and to the structured freedom on Ornette’s
Free Jazz
),
Mystery Project
consists of a large three-part suite, in which the direction of the music is dictated not so much by notated passages as by the distribution of the personnel. As in ROVA man Larry Ochs’s ‘Double Image’, the basic group is a palette from which various colours and shadings can be drawn. Spearman’s personal colour-code would seem to be black and red. He’s a fierce player, overblowing in the upper register and virtually incapable of anything less than full throttle. He never sacrifices subtlety to power, though. This is intelligent music that never palls or sounds dated.

The follow-up record has the same line-up and makes similarly effective use of doubled instruments. It’s a long – 75-minute – suite with an intermission built in, not because an LP version required a break, but because the music is so unremittingly present that one couldn’t absorb any more without some surcease. Spearman’s time in Europe opened up many interesting compositional ideas to him, but these performances are squarely in the tradition of the ’60s avant-garde, and their strength comes from Spearman’s profound conviction that the ideas adumbrated at that time are far from exhausted but still constitute a
lingua franca
for improvisation. The ‘in-take’ and ‘out-take’ of ‘Axe, Beautiful Acts’ exude a fierce poetry that is worthy of Cecil Taylor.

REGGIE WORKMAN

Born 26 June 1937, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Double bass

Summit Conference

Postcards POST1003

Workman; Julian Priester (tb); Sam Rivers (ts, ss); Andrew Hill (p); Pheeroan akLaff (d). December 1993.

Reggie Workman said (1995):
‘I spent a lot of time supporting other artists in their projects, and I realized that it wouldn’t be easy to jump back in and assert myself with my concept, which might not be something the industry wanted at that time. But I know that those who have followed my evolution will understand.’

As befits his name, Workman has clocked up a formidable number of credits: with Coltrane (
Olé
, the 1961 European tour, the
Africa/Brass
sessions) and with Wayne Shorter, Mal Waldron, Art Blakey, Archie Shepp and David Murray. It has often been asked what might have happened had he remained with Coltrane, but it’s academic: impending personal loss and other responsibilities meant he had to move on and it seems both patronizing and potentially hurtful to dwell on it as if his life stalled at that point. He played R&B as a teenager, then worked in New York hard-bop groups in the ’60s before moving towards the freer styles of Coltrane and Archie Shepp. Far from being a closeted avant-gardist, Workman is a
communicator and a selfless teacher. But he is also a forceful composer and leader who has moved on to explore areas of musical freedom influenced by African idioms and frequently resembling the trance music of the
griots
.

There are Latin tinges, too, in the music, African-Cuban rather than ersatz south-of-the-border stuff. It energizes
Summit Conference
and the equally superb
Cerebral Caverns
, which followed from a similar high-octane group. It’s a wish-list line-up. Rivers and Priester are in boilingly good form; akLaff keeps the pace up. Hill isn’t a delicate player and it worried us at first that he didn’t seem to be coming through the mix, but he’s there, under it all. The bulk of the session is uptempo, often in subtly fractured metres that still get their information across straightforwardly. The Sonelius Smith tune ‘Conversation’ shows how much Workman stays close to his roots, but there’s still room for a heart-on-sleeve ballad, Rivers’s ‘Solace’, introduced by trombone, piano and sax before the composer goes up a gear and delivers his most magisterial solo for years. Priester’s ‘Breath’ is pitched in a distant, sharp-ridden key, and the set closes with Rivers on flute, duetting with Hill on the pianist’s ‘Gone’. Workman is self-effacing on his own date, but he marshals the energy and one is always conscious of him at the centre of the music. On another day, we might pick
Cerebral Caverns
ahead of this one, if only for Geri Allen’s unpredictable presence, but …

BARRY GUY
^&

Born 22 April 1947, London

Double bass, chamber bass

Study – Witch Gong Game II/10

Maya 9402

Guy; John Korsrud (t); Ralph Eppel (tb); Bruce Freedman (ss); Graham Ord (ss, ts, picc); Saul Berson (as); Coat Cooke (ts, bs, f); Paul Plimley (p); Ron Samworth (g); Peggy Lee (clo); Clyde Reed, Paul Blaney (b); Dylan van der Schyff (d). February 1994.

Barry Guys says:
‘The score, one large-format sheet, is graphic in nature and is designed to take into account the mixed abilities of this co-operative ensemble. Various “modules” of musical material hover over a dark void which can be brought into play via flash cards. This void is graphically indicative of the fragility of co-operative groups where the passing of time may implode or explode the artistic intentions of its members.’

Guy is relatively unusual in the field of improvised music in having kept up a parallel career in composition and in performance of the baroque. What impact this has on his improvisations is a matter for discussion, but one senses the presence of other musical influences, as a kind of ‘back story’. Guy has been at the hub of British free music and organized improvisation since the end of the ’60s, when he was a member of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Iskra 1903 and Amalgam, who along with AMM staked out British free music’s field of enquiry. He is also the founder and motive force of the London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra, whose long history provides a barometric reading of current musical philosophies. In addition, Guy has performed in trio with Evan Parker and Paul Lytton.

Apart from some of the LJCO works, Guy’s large-scale compositions and improvisation structures are still not as widely regarded as, say, Braxton’s, which is surprising and somewhat unjust. Few figures in the field so confidently blend intellectual sophistication with the flexibility one associates with improvising ensembles.
Study – Witch Gong Game II/10
was commissioned by the New Orchestral Workshop in Vancouver and is performed by that group here. It is an important work, inspired by the Scottish painter and saxophonist Alan Davie’s series of paintings of the same name and it has continued to be part of Guy’s working repertoire.

The Canadian group take to the discipline vigorously, but one senses that discipline is the operative word and that Guy controls the procedures quite strictly. That shouldn’t imply a work of conservatory dryness, for
Study – Witch Gong Game II/10
has a dark and scarifying cast, a musical
Walpurgisnacht
that makes for very unsettling, but also very satisfactory, listening. The other piece on the record, ‘Study’, is a briefer, drone-based work that uses minimal material to push the ensemble steadily towards a breakout point for improvisation. Its lighter presence complements the main recording’s uncanny sound-world rather well.

& See also
Odyssey
(1999; p. 644);
LONDON JAZZ COMPOSERS’ ORCHESTRA, Ode
(1972; p. 393)

HAROLD DANKO

Born 13 June 1947, Youngstown, Ohio

Piano

After The Rain

Steeplechase SCCD 31356

Danko (p solo). 1994.

Harold Danko says:
‘Staying in Italy with my friends Enzo and Claudio Verdelli, right before coming to Denmark for the recording, I was slightly overwhelmed by the prospect of making a permanent pianistic document of the great music of John Coltrane. Turning from practice, I scanned one of the only English books in the house, dealing with the Japanese tea ceremony. (I drink coffee, particularly in Italy, so this was nicely off-topic.) I found one of those wonderful words for which there is no English counterpart:
wabi
, which translates roughly as “appreciation of the imperfections in art over time”. Pragmatist rather than philosopher I immediately sought to apply this to my situation, and it came in very handy. During playbacks, instead of being overly critical I simply acknowledged the many instances of future
wabi
I may have created.’

Steeplechase producer Nils Winther has an instinct for piano-players and gives Danko, who’s not a showy or histrionic player but someone who shapes his music with warmth and intelligence, a nicely expansive sound that helps it all communicate. Where Tommy Flanagan treated a similar date as an occasion for richly abstract meditations on Coltrane material, Danko approaches it both more modestly and more radically. He tackles no fewer than 14 Coltrane compositions, ranging from ‘After The Rain’, ‘Lonnie’s Lament’ and a brilliantly re-conceived ‘Syeeda’s Song Flute’ to less obvious material like ‘Dahomey Dance’, ‘Mr Day’ and ‘Straight Street’. What is remarkable is that Danko makes these tunes sound both naturally pianistic and utterly his own. To be sure, he doesn’t take on anything from
Interstellar Space
and treats each theme in an essentially song-like way, but that isn’t to suggest that this is Coltrane-lite. Even his reading of ‘After The Rain’, which has become something of a piano cliché, with all those tumbling chords and lavish voicings, has solid structural muscle. Though clearly intended as a homage, there is no obstacle to wholesale reinvention, and Danko recasts ‘Mr Sims’ and ‘Wise One’ with a free hand.

Danko’s a modest fellow, but among contemporary piano-players he is one of the wise ones, a musical thinker who’s worth the outlay of time whatever the context, but never more revealing than when he plays solo.