The Penguin Jazz Guide (55 page)

& See also
A Night At The Village Vanguard
(1957; p. 216),
This Is What I Do
(2000; p. 653)

DUKE ELLINGTON
^&

Born Edward Kennedy Ellington, 29 April 1899, Washington DC; died 24 May 1974, New York City

Piano

Ellington At Newport 1956 (Complete)

Columbia C2K 64932 2CD

Ellington; Cat Anderson, Willie Cook, Ray Nance, Clark Terry (t); Quentin Jackson, John Sanders, Britt Woodman (tb); Johnny Hodges, Russell Procope (as); Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton (ts); Harry Carney (bs); Jimmy Woode (b); Sam Woodyard (d). July 1956.

André Previn said (1996):
‘This was the occasion when Paul Gonsalves “saved” Ellington, or so they say, and it’s part of that debunking idea that the Ellington band was “really” about the soloists, great as they were. That’s nonsense: the band was his entirely. I think he saved them from potentially very dull careers.’

The 1956 Newport Festival marked a significant upswing in Duke’s critical and commercial fortunes. In large part, the triumph can be laid to Paul Gonsalves’s extraordinary 27 blues choruses on ‘Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue’, which CBS producer George Avakian placed out of sequence at the end of what was to be Ellington’s bestselling record. Gonsalves’s unprecedented improvisation (which opened up possibilities and set standards for later tenor saxophonists from John Coltrane to David Murray) was clearly spontaneous, yet in a way it dogged him for the rest of his life, and Ellington continued to introduce him, years later, as ‘the star of Newport’. Gonsalves himself suggested that a particularly competitive edge to the band that night was the real reason for his playing. Johnny Hodges had just returned to the fold after a brief stint as an independent bandleader. His beautiful, almost stately solo on ‘Jeep’s Blues’ was intended to be the climax to the concert, but Hodges found himself upstaged in the subsequent notices, and the concert firmly established Gonsalves as one of the leading soloists in jazz. Unfortunately, much of the solo was played badly off-mic (of which more later) and in the past it was slightly difficult to get a complete sense of its extraordinary impact. It does, nevertheless, dominate the album, overshadowing Hodges and, more significantly, the three-part ‘Festival Suite’ – which was heard in its original live form for the first time on this release – which Ellington and Strayhorn had put together for the occasion. The first part, ‘Festival Junction’, is more or less a blowing theme for a parade of soloists, including a first excursion by Gonsalves, who gives notice of what’s to come with some blistering choruses (though not 27) on the third part, ‘Newport Up’.

Columbia’s new edition of the music puts an entirely fresh slant on the occasion. The circumstances of how a ‘virtual’ stereo production came about are too complex to detail here (go to Phil Schaap’s notes in the booklet for that), but essentially Columbia’s mono tape was combined with a
second
mono recording of the music, made by Voice of America. It was their microphone which Gonsalves was mistakenly playing into. That recording (rediscovered at the Library of Congress in the ’90s) is on one channel and Columbia’s on the other, meticulously synchronized.The result is an astonishing advance on previous versions. The attempted ‘re-creations’ of the live event on the following Monday, such as the repeat of ‘I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good’ with two notes repaired and canned applause added, are here, as is the studio ‘Newport Jazz Festival Suite’ with Norman O’Connor’s remarks from the live event spliced in. There are no fewer than ten new tracks too, mostly from the concert itself. The overall sound is excellent and fully conveys the near-pandemonium of the occasion!

& See also
Duke Ellington 1927–1929
(1927–1929; p. 28),
Duke Ellington 1937–1938
(1937–1938; p. 64),
Never No Lament
(1940–1942; p. 81),
The Duke At Fargo
(1940; p. 81),
Black, Brown and Beige
(1944–1946; p. 91),
The Far East Suite
(1966; p. 336)

NAT COLE
^&

Born Nathaniel Adams Coles, 17 March 1919, Montgomery, Alabama; died 15 February 1965, Santa Monica, California

Piano, voice

After Midnight

Capitol 520087

Cole; Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison (t); Juan Tizol (vtb); Willie Smith (as); Stuff Smith (vn); John Collins (g); Charlie Harris (b); Lee Young (d); Jack Costanzo (perc). August–September 1956.

Lyricist Gene Lees said (1996):
‘You have to remember he was from the South. Nat’s stage persona was deliberately unthreatening; even his approach to romantic material was done in a self-mocking way, as if he was saying he was no threat to dominant white men.’

Cole’s one latter-day jazz date has a huge reputation, but there are disappointing aspects to it: he didn’t seem to want to stretch out and the tracks are all rather short; Tizol was a strange choice for horn soloist and Sweets tends to stroll through it all. ‘Paper Moon’, ‘Route 66’ and ‘Blame It On My Youth’ are outstanding tracks and the CD reissue includes material with an even larger jazz element – surprise, surprise. It’s not all successful and there is an air of undue polish and a certain self-protective stance in the insistence on guest horns, but the music is still an unblemished and beautifully groomed example of small-group swing, and Cole proves that his piano-playing was undiminished by his career switchover.

& See also
Nat King Cole 1943–1944
(1943–1944; p. 92)

SONNY STITT
^&

Born Edward Boattner Stitt, 2 February 1924, Boston, Massachusetts; died 22 July 1982, Washington DC

Alto and tenor saxophones

New York Jazz

Verve 517050-2

Stitt; Jimmy Jones (p); Ray Brown (b); Jo Jones (d). September 1956.

Jesse Davis said (2005):
‘People say he was a Charlie Parker disciple. I don’t hear that at all. I think Stitt came out of something different and he took it in a direction all his own. You just have to listen to the way he phrases and the way he builds a solo.’

It is open to dispute how much Stitt absorbed from Charlie Parker and how much he developed for himself. Album titles like
Don’t Call Me Bird!
(admittedly a posthumous reissue) and
Stitt Plays Bird
point to market savvy as much as to any perceived or actual ambivalence. He played tenor in a band co-led with Gene Ammons from 1950, and thereafter drifted between that and the alto, occasionally picking up the baritone. A definitive example of the ‘road musician’, Stitt took every opportunity to record, often with undistinguished pick-up groups, and while his impassive professionalism meant that he seldom sounded less than strong, he diluted his reputation with an approach simultaneously dedicated and careless, and his records need careful sifting to find him genuinely at his best.

Still young and at the peak of his powers – ‘lean, plunging Sonny Stitt’, Nat Hentoff’s note calls him – this is the Stitt that’s most worth remembering and listening to again. He is helter-skelter on ‘I Know That You Know’, casts lyrical alto spinners on ‘If I Had You’ and cruises through ‘Alone Together’ in lightly bruised tenor mode. It’s lushly melodic, yet
the different astringencies he gets out of alto and tenor put an acidly personal edge on the improvising. Here and there one still gets the notion that he’s just laughing at both us and the material, but this is surely the real Stitt, the ‘public servant in music’ who both valued his art and shrugged it off.

& See also
Constellation
(1972; p. 395)

CECIL TAYLOR
^&

Born 15 March 1929 (some sources state 25 March and 1930), Long Island, New York

Piano, voice

Jazz Advance

Blue Note 84462-2

Taylor; Steve Lacy (ss); Buell Neidlinger (b); Dennis Charles (d). September 1956.

Tony Herrington, publisher of
The Wire
, says:
‘As a black, gay, intellectual, jazz piano-player in mid-’50s America, Cecil Taylor projected (or maybe harboured would be a more accurate way of putting it) a 24/7 alien identity as profound as Sun Ra’s.’

Taylor learned piano at the age of six and went on to study at the New York College and New England Conservatory. He worked in R&B and swing-styled small groups in the early ’50s, then led his own band with Steve Lacy from 1956. He became the most daring of modern artists, with his music leaving tonality and jazz rhythm and structure behind. The complaint that he doesn’t ‘swing’ is both literally accurate and beside the point. Playing on the on-beat did suggest that but his purpose was new and radical and by the ’70s the work was entirely
sui generis
, incorporating poetry and a form of dance.

Taylor’s first record remains one of the most extraordinary debuts in jazz, and for 1956 it’s an incredible effort. The pianist’s ’50s music is even more radical than Ornette Coleman’s, though it has seldom been recognized as such, and, while Coleman has acquired the plaudits, it is Taylor’s achievement which now seems the most impressive and uncompromised. While there are still many nods to conventional post-bop form in this set, it already points to the freedoms in which the pianist would later immerse himself. The interpretation of ‘Bemsha Swing’ reveals an approach to time that makes Monk seem utterly straightforward; ‘Charge ’Em’ is a blues with an entirely fresh slant on the form; Ellington’s ‘Azure’ is a searching tribute from one keyboard master to another. ‘Sweet And Lovely’ and ‘You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To’ are standards taken to the cleaners by the pianist, yet his elaborations on the melodies will fascinate any who respond to Monk’s comparable treatment of the likes of ‘There’s Danger In Your Eyes, Cherie’. Lacy appears on two tracks and sounds amazingly comfortable for a musician who was playing Dixieland a few years earlier. And Neidlinger and Charles ensure that, contrary to what some may claim, Taylor’s music – at this period, at least – still swings.

& See also
Nefertiti, The Beautiful One Has Come
(1962; p. 289),
Conquistador!
(1966; p. 339),
Celebrated Blazons
(1990; p. 541)

MAX ROACH
^&

Born 10 January 1924, New Land, North Carolina; died 16 August 2007, New York City

Drums

Alone Together

Verve 526373-2 2CD

Roach; Clifford Brown, Kenny Dorham, Booker Little, Tommy Turrentine (t); Julian Priester (tb); Ray Draper (tba); George Coleman, Harold Land, Hank Mobley, Paul Quinichette, Sonny Rollins, Stanley Turrentine (ts); Herbie Mann (f); Ray Bryant, Jimmy Jones, Richie Powell, Bill Wallace (p); Barry Galbraith (g); Joe Benjamin, Bob Boswell, Nelson Boyd, Art Davis, Milt Hinton, George Morrow (b); Boston Percussion Ensemble; Abbey Lincoln (v). September 1956–October 1960.

Max Roach said:
‘We were learning how to work in the business and with the business. Sometimes someone says that the music here sits oddly alongside
We Insist! [Freedom Now Suite]
but I can’t figure that out. It seems to me that with those recordings we were making our own language and nothing is more radical than that.’

The fierce metres of bebop, with the accent taken on the hi-hat instead of the bass drum, were created by Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey and Max Roach, who in terms of long-term influence may be the most important of the three, and he has continued to create a radical, often politically engaged brand of jazz in which the drum is at the centre of the action. His group M’Boom took this to the extreme.
Alone Together
is a very valuable compilation and an excellent introduction for anyone who hasn’t caught up with Roach. There are two tracks from
Max Roach + 4
and just one from
Jazz In 3/4 Time
, which was Roach’s attempt to free jazz from the constant thump of a 4/4. Most of the rest is later, some of it from less well-known records like
The Many Sides Of Max
(1959, with Little, Priester and Coleman) and
Quiet As It’s Kept
(1960, with the Turrentines and Priester). ‘Max’s Variations’ is based on ‘Pop Goes The Weasel’ and is performed with the Boston Percussion Ensemble, a foreshadowing of later drum orchestra projects like M’Boom.

& See also
We Insist! Freedom Now Suite
(1960; p. 258),
Historic Concerts
(1979; p. 454)

MAYNARD FERGUSON

Born 4 May 1928, Verdun, Quebec, Canada; died 23 August 2006, Ventura, California

Trumpet

The Birdland Dreamband

RCA Bluebird ND 86455

Ferguson; Al Derisi, Joe Ferrante, Jimmy Nottingham, Ernie Royal, Al Stewart, Nick Travis (t); Eddie Bert, Jimmy Cleveland, Sonny Russo (tb); Herb Geller (as); Al Cohn, Budd Johnson, Frank Socolow (ts); Ernie Wilkins (bs); Hank Jones (p); Arnold Fishkind, Milt Hinton (b); Jimmy Campbell, Osie Johnson, Don Lamond (d); collective personnel. September–December 1956.