The Penguin Jazz Guide (156 page)

DAVE DOUGLAS
^&

Born 24 March 1963, Montclair, New Jersey

Trumpet

Constellations

hatOLOGY CD 673

Douglas; Brad Schoeppach (g); Jim Black (d, perc). February 1995.

Label boss Werner Uehlinger reports Dave Douglas’s reaction to the record:
‘Yes, that was a good day!’

Fifteen years ago, the authors of the
Guide
were calling – together and severally – for a moratorium on the cult of Miles Davis and due attention to a rising generation of trumpet masters, and most particularly Dave Douglas. He wasn’t the least obvious horse to back, a player of staggering technique and laconic but capacious musical vision, who seemed effortlessly to take in early jazz, the avant-vernacular of Lester Bowie, Balkan music and much else in between. He began improvising while an exchange student in Spain and had an extended musical education; not just the requisite Berklee sojourn, but the New England Conservatory and New York University as well. The alumnus is an individualist whose grasp of history is apparent mainly in elision and omission rather than homage. Here was a contemporary jazz artist confident enough to include Webern in one early set-list and with a purview that went beyond music to world affairs: no closeted aesthete or style-policeman.

Douglas has led a number of different groups, more recently Charms Of The Night Sky, which is named after a fine Winter & Winter record. The Tiny Bell Trio with Brad Schoeppach (now Shepik) and Jim Black was perhaps his first important ensemble, a lean, flexible group with an intriguing Balkan-improv remit.

The best of the Tiny Bell records,
Constellations
was recorded off-road but mid-tour. One hears immediately that this is a working unit. Douglas’s Balkan interests – both musical and political – come through strongly. ‘Taking Sides’ is inspired by the brutal civil war in the former Yugoslavia, a raw, powerful expression of anger and mourning. In an entirely different vein, ‘Maquiladoras’ takes up cudgels for low-paid migrant workers. ‘Scriabin’ is a thoughtful essay in extreme chromaticism, almost serial in quality, and ‘Hope Ring True’ sounds like ’60s agit-prop jazz. To underline his eclecticism and sense of history, Douglas hands the pianoless group a forgotten Herbie Nichols theme, ‘The Gig’, and makes it sound utterly contemporary as well. Douglas seems confident in his partners, allowing Black in particular to stretch out and express himself. Schoeppach throws deliciously complex harmonic shapes, a crushed-velvet foil to the trumpeter’s bright lines.

& See also
Convergence
(1998; p. 623)

TONY COE

Born 29 November 1934, Canterbury, Kent, England

Clarinet, tenor saxophone

Captain Coe’s Famous Racearound

Storyville STCD 4206

Coe; Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra. March 1995.

Saxophonist John Dankworth said (1998):
‘French players and fans ask you about
Tonee Coe
, the Danes have given him this big jazz prize, an American lady asked me if I knew Tony
Co
-
ay
… the only place he doesn’t seem to be appreciated is England.’

Possessed of a glorious clarinet sound and an approach on tenor saxophone that often resembles Paul Gonsalves (who spent his last period in the UK, so there may be a connection), Coe is at home in almost any style from Dixieland to free, and has even – like his mentor, Alan Hacker – experimented in more formal settings. He took over the Plas Johnson saxophone role in later
Pink Panther
films and it is rumoured he played on a Beatles recording, though Coe himself has forgotten the occasion.

His albums are dotted about all over the place, on labels as improbably matched as Nato, hat ART, Storyville, between the line, Hep and Zephyr, and despite the warm admiration of
fans he has always seemed to work just under the radar. Fortunately, there are exceptions. In 1995, Coe was deservedly awarded the Jazzpar Prize, which brings a big-band performance as part of the award. The title-piece makes a strong and lyrical climax to an album that combines large-scale charts with a small combo that included Bob Brookmeyer, David Hazeltine, Henrik Bolberg Pedersen, Thomas Ovesen and Steve Argüelles. In addition to Coe, there are compositions by Brookmeyer, Argüelles and Maria Schneider. Unusual for a Jazzpar winner to be so retiring about his own work, but Coe won his award primarily as a player, one suspects, and so ‘Fools Rush In’ and ‘How Long Has This Been Going On?’ (the latter for full orchestra) are both superb. Coe’s tone is as pure as spring water, with none of the quavering ‘oboe’ sound he so much dislikes in the post-Coltrane players.

JOE MORRIS
^&

Born 13 September 1955, New Haven, Connecticut

Guitar, double bass

No Vertigo

Leo CD LR 226

Morris (g, mand, banjouke solo). April 1995.

Joe Morris says:
‘This is the manifestation of 20 years of figuring out that my interest in music was going to present itself in more than one approach. One producer I knew found fault with my plan to separate the different tracks by instrument. He thought I should mix up the sequence. But it really has to be the way it is because they are all so different.’

The Boston-based guitarist has a highly distinctive playing style, almost always in fast, single-note lines, with distinctive mid-phrase trills and a notable use of space. A charter member of the Boston Improvisers Group, Morris was an actively eclectic sideman and local star before he made it big as a recording artist. He has a facility for straight blues and fusion playing, but works in a pumped-up free style that works in quite stark, abstract ways. His self-determination extended to putting out records on his own Riti label, which has undergone a renaissance.

It may seem excessive to include two Morris records from within essentially the same time period, but it is our conviction that the guitarist – who also plays double bass when occasion demands – is one of the most important musicians of recent times and it is testimony to his prodigal talent that no artist in this book provoked more changes of mind as to which records to highlight. If there were a new edition tomorrow, there might be two different choices.

No Vertigo
is a solo
tour de force
. Morris has obviously been influenced by British improviser Derek Bailey. His acoustic work is very reminiscent of Bailey’s ’70s work but with a hint of a jazz groove always hovering in the background, which Bailey seldom permits. He also includes tracks on an electric instrument (the long, very detailed ‘For Adolphus Mica’), banjouke (‘Long Carry’) and even mandolin (a sequence called ‘The Edges’). There is nothing slipshod about this music and neither do the individual instruments fall back into stereotypical ‘voices’ – ‘banjo means folk, electric means rock’ – something that even Bill Frisell has been guilty of. Even without playing partners Morris is a stern disciplinarian and the defining characteristic of all his music is a kind of responsiveness to context and a willingness to let the music exist spatially, as an object of attention, rather than as simply a passing phenomenon, each moment eaten up by the one that follows.

& See also
A Cloud Of Black Birds
(1998; p. 631)

ROY HARGROVE

Born 16 October 1969, Waco, Texas

Trumpet, flugelhorn

Parker’s Mood

Verve 527907-2

Hargrove; Stephen Scott (p); Christian McBride (b). April 1995.

Roy Hargrove said (1996):
‘Bop, rap: it doesn’t seem to me so far apart. Parker’s tunes were like parts of solos, with everything going round to the beginning again. You listen to that and you listen to … LL Cool J or KRS-One, and it’s not so very different.’

Spotted by Wynton Marsalis – who probably doesn’t share his insistence on the continuity of black vernacular music from hot jazz to rap – Hargrove was one of the first post-Miles trumpeters to show an equal facility in post-bop and other forms. He went on to record eclectically, but with jazz always in the foreground. Interestingly, Hargrove only spent a year at Berklee. He’s a raw, self-determined talent, who doesn’t appreciate academic solutions. Recorded in Parker’s 75th anniversary year,
Parker’s Mood
is a delightful meeting of three young masters, improvising on 16 themes from Bird’s repertoire. Hargrove’s luminous treatment of ‘Laura’ again suggests he may be turning into one of the music’s pre-eminent ballad players, but it’s the inventive interplay between the three men that takes the session to its high level. One clever aspect of the record is that it isn’t always three guys. ‘Chasin’ the Bird’ is done as a trumpet/bass duet and other tracks are taken as solos. Scott, sometimes burdened on his own records, plays as freely as he ever has, and McBride is simply terrific. No musician of his time provokes more curiosity in us, even if at times the signs of greatness refuse to break through.

DJANGO BATES

Born Leon Bates, 2 October 1960, Beckenham, Kent, England

Piano, keyboards, peckhorn, tenor horn

Summer Fruits (And Unrest)

Winter & Winter 919065

Bates; Sid Gauld, Chris Batchelor (t); Roland Bates (tb); Richard Henry (btb); Eddie Parker (f, bf); Sarah Homer (cl, bcl); Iain Ballamy (ss, as); Steve Buckley (ss, as, bcl); Mark Lockheart (ts); Barak Schmool (ts, picc, bsx); Julian Argüelles (bs); Stuart Hall (g, vn, bj); Steve Watts, Michael Mondesir (b); Martin France (d); Thebe Lipere (perc). 1995.

Django Bates said (2003):
‘I’m not really interested in jamming, that side of jazz. I need every piece to have its own character and shape and that comes from knowing the musicians you work with and writing things that you know they can play – not just in terms of technique but that they might do something interesting with.’

After stints with London bands Borderline and Zila, Bates worked with his own small group Human Chain and was a central player in the big band Loose Tubes, whose sophomoric humour sometimes camouflaged Bates’s brilliance as a composer. He remains committed to a view of jazz that allows play and playfulness full rein, but inevitably Britain took revenge on his creativity by starving him of commissions. Bates wisely decamped to Denmark and his occasional home visits are paid for in
kroner
.

Summer Fruits
is the first part of a loose, seasonal cycle of records that also includes
Winters Fires (And Homes Ablaze)
, the solo piano album
Autumn Fire (And Green Shoots)
and, belatedly,
Spring is Here (Shall We Dance?)
. The first record, originally on JMT, where
everything was subject to a cold seasonal wind, alternates big-band arrangements with tracks from Bates’s Human Chain. It’s not an entirely happy combination and, for once, one feels a need for two discs to reflect what sound like rather different aspects of his musical personality. The vices of Loose Tubes are still in evidence: over-writing, a blokey exuberance and a callow suspicion of straightforward expression. Bates’s dense scores and the pieces for Delightful Precipice (the big band) are thickly notated. They’re undeniably lively, but the circus pieces, inspired by an earlier collaboration, are glibly ironic, and some of the most virtuosic scoring is lost in ‘off-the-cuff’ gestures. The Human Chain tracks, notably ‘Food For Plankton (In Detail)’ and ‘Little Petherick’ (which provides the best Bates solo of the disc) are much more coherent.

SAM RIVERS
^&

Born 25 September 1923 (some sources still cite 1930), Reno, Oklahoma

Tenor and soprano saxophones, flute

Portrait

FMP CD 82

Rivers (ts, ss, f, p, v solo). June 1995.

Sam Rivers said (1996):
‘It’s important to make contact with yourself from time to time, see who’s in there, what he’s doing, whether there’s anything you can take from it and apply to your work.’

A self-portrait presumably and of the artist at over 70, espousing what he describes in a notably effusive liner-note as an ‘uninhibited emotion-driven free-flowing river of vibrant, bold, melodic inventions’. It’s a piece of text that runs dangerously close to self-review: ‘dazzling’, ‘musical perfection’, ‘eloquently phrased’ and so on. What saves it is that there is hardly a word with which one might disagree. These unaccompanied essays, with their characteristic one-word titles – ‘Image’, ‘Reflection’, ‘Shadow’ and the overlong ‘Cameo’ – are magnificently crafted and thoroughly imbued with the creator’s personality. Full attributions are given for all the instruments used, Keilwerth saxophones, a Bösendorfer Imperial and a Gemeinhardt flute, while under ‘voice’ it says laconically ‘Sam Rivers’, which is a version of ‘model’s own’ on the fashion pages. Again, it makes complete sense, for this is the most thoroughly individual thing he has done for many years, a magnificent testament to his creative range, his generosity of spirit and his great, great intelligence.

& See also
Fuchsia Swing Song
(1964; p. 311),
Colors
(1982; p. 471)