The Penguin Jazz Guide (59 page)

He formed the two-alto band with Gene Quill in 1957, though they’d recorded the previous year on
Pairing Off
. So
simpatico
was the partnership that at moments one wonders whether one is hearing some kind of studio trick, one musician doubletracked with himself. There are subtle differences, however, not least in how each of these superb players (Quill is nowadays much underrated) weighted a phrase, and the interplay between them is too obviously dynamic to be an artefact.
Phil & Quill
doesn’t have an ounce of spare fat in the solos, and the spanking delivery on, say, ‘A Night At St Nick’s’ is as compelling as anything Prestige was recording at the period. Quill’s duskier tone (obvious once you register it) and more extreme intensities are barely a beat behind Woods’s in terms of quality of thought. There are a couple of bonus tracks on the CD reissue, including a spanking version of Rollins’s ‘Airegin’, which confirms that these were worthy keepers of the bebop flame.

& See also
Bop Stew
(1987; p. 514)

CLIFFORD JORDAN
^&

Born 2 September 1931, Chicago, Illinois; died 27 March 1993, New York City

Tenor saxophone

JOHN GILMORE

Born 28 September (other sources give 29 October) 1931, Summit, Mississippi; died 19/20 August 1995, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Tenor saxophone

Blowin’ In From Chicago

Blue Note 42306

Jordan, Gilmore; Horace Silver (p); Curley Russell (b); Art Blakey (d). March 1957.

John Gilmore said (1981):
‘John Coltrane asked me for a lesson once. He heard me sitting in with Willie Bobo and I couldn’t make head or tail of all the percussion, so I just played across it and Coltrane rushed up, shouting ‘You got it!’ That’s maybe what he got from me, the idea of playing rhythmically and melodically at the same time.’

Is this the neglected masterpiece of Blue Note hard bop? It certainly features two figures whose standing in the music is far lower than it ought to be. That’s routinely said about Gilmore, who devoted much of his career to Sun Ra and the Arkestra, and saying it repeatedly doesn’t make it any truer. In point of fact, Gilmore probably found his creative niche with Sun Ra. His occasional recordings suggest a powerful talent whose band-width was narrower than most of his rival tenors of the time and certainly not the potential rival to John Coltrane’s crown that is often suggested. He had, in fact, two distinct approaches: fluent hard bop and an eldritch abstraction, the latter his required mode with Sun Ra. Jordan, though, is simply accorded an admiring nod and passed over. He’s an immensely muscular player, but one who brings real thought and logic to his solos.

It’s worth getting
Blowin’
out of the box every now and then. It’s all to easy to forget the impact of its opening track, John Neely’s driving ‘Status Quo’, on which Gilmore leads with a beautifully crafted solo. The pace changes sharply on the second track, Jordan’s Latinized ‘Boi-Till’, which gives place to Gigi Gryce’s ‘Blue Lights’, the only tune so far that’s made it into the regular repertory. ‘Billie’s Bounce’ is more familiar, but rarely done with the foot pushed as far down as this. The solo exchanges are ferocious. Silver asserts himself towards the end of the date, with a great solo on Jordan’s minor blues ‘Evil Eye’ and then with his own lovely composition ‘Everywhere’. Even seasoned writers pass over this record with the comment that it’s ‘another’ of Blue Note’s noisy tenor jams, and with the usual acknowledgement of egregious neglect of Gilmore’s talent. However, it’s not a record that figures often in anyone’s playlist and it’s time it did.

& See also
CLIFFORD JORDAN, Royal Ballads
(1986; p. 508)

RED MITCHELL

Born Keith Moore Mitchell, 20 September 1927, New York City; died 8 November 1992, Salem, Oregon

Double bass, piano

Presenting Red Mitchell

Original Jazz Classics OJCCD 158

Mitchell; James Clay (ts, f); Lorraine Geller (p); Billy Higgins (d). March 1957.

Red Mitchell said (1984):
‘Putting cellists and bass-players together in the orchestra is like putting cats and dogs in the one pen. Different tuning. A bass is “normally” tuned in fourths. There used to be just three strings because a gut C string would have been like a cable. My dad knew the science of all this, but I knew I was going to struggle, until I altered the tuning back to the same as a cello: C G D A, an octave down, and a bottom string that’s a major third down from normal E.’

Mitchell was known for a fluent improvising style in which pulled-off (rather than plucked) notes in a typically low register (he used a retuned bass) suggest a baritone saxophone rather than a stringed instrument; Scott LaFaro was later sanctified for a broadly similar technique. Mitchell is also an accomplished pianist, with a hint of the romantic approach of his former colleague, Hampton Hawes. His brother Whitey was also a bass-player. Red did much of his early work on the West Coast, from 1954, but left for Scandinavia in the ’60s and became a European star. Most of the available recordings come from the later period. They’re all technically terrific, but Red’s showy personality and addiction to his own voice sometimes got in the way of the music. This early stuff on OJC with the short-lived Lorraine Geller standing in for Hawes is good, boppish jazz consistently lifted by Mitchell’s singing lines. His writing is nicely idiomatic for his own instrument, particularly on ‘Rainy Night’, but most of the set is given over to bop material: ‘Scrapple From The Apple’ is a joy and a delight; Sonny Rollins’s ‘Paul’s Pal’ doesn’t get covered often and Clifford Brown’s ‘Sandu’ is an ideal vehicle for Clay’s rootsy-modern sound. A nice read of ‘Cheek To Cheek’, with the emphasis on cheek, rounds out a strong set.

CLARK TERRY
^&

Born 14 December 1920, St Louis, Missouri

Trumpet, flugelhorn

Serenade To A Bus Seat

Original Jazz Classics OJC 066

Terry; Johnny Griffin (ts); Wynton Kelly (p); Paul Chambers (b); Philly Joe Jones (d). April 1957.

Clark Terry says:
‘St Louis is a trumpet players’ town. I don’t know why. We all have some traits in common. We’re like cousins who don’t know one another or don’t meet very often, but we always recognize the kinship when we hear it. You wouldn’t have heard of these guys: Charlie Creath, the king of cornet, or Levi Madison, who laughed more than he played … he could laugh for an hour at a time.’

Known as ‘Mumbles’ after his famously indistinct scat style, the prodigiously hard-working Terry, who is probably the most extensively documented horn-player in all editions of the
Guide
, held down jobs in both the Basie and the Ellington bands, as well as countless other recording dates, before disappearing into the studios for more than a decade. He eventually returned in the ’70s, with expressive flugelhorn added to his armoury.

Though not reducible to his ‘influences’, Terry hybridizes Dizzy Gillespie’s hot, fluent lines and witty abandon with Rex Stewart’s distinctive half-valving and Charlie Shavers’s high-register lyricism; he is also a master of the mute, an aspect of his work that had a discernible impact on Miles Davis. Miles, though, remained unconvinced by Terry’s pioneering development of the flugelhorn as a solo instrument; later in his career he traded four-bar phrases with himself, holding a horn in each hand. An irrepressible showman with a sly sense of humour, Terry often fared better when performing under other leaders.

The ‘early’ – he was 37 –
Serenade To A Bus Seat
combines a tribute to civil-rights activist Rosa Parks with pungent versions of ‘Stardust’ and Parker’s ‘Donna Lee’. Terry isn’t an altogether convincing bopper, but he’s working with a fine, funky band, and they carry him through some slightly unresolved moments. ‘That Old Black Magic’ has a nice easy swing,
with a Latin twist. Griffin makes an unexpectedly natural partner and Kelly’s bluesy chord shapes keep the music moving at a brisk but not hectic pace. Terry’s characteristic sound, quite breathy and with a little flange to each terminal note, is immediately recognizable. Over the next 50 years, it was to become one of the signature sounds of jazz.

& See also
Color Changes
(1960; p. 260),
Memories Of Duke
(1980; p. 457)

PAUL QUINICHETTE

Born 17 May 1916, Denver, Colorado; died 25 May 1983, New York City

Tenor saxophone

On The Sunny Side

Original Jazz Classics OJC 076-2

Quinichette; Curtis Fuller (tb); John Jenkins, Sonny Red Kyner (as); Mal Waldron (p); Doug Watkins (b); Ed Thigpen (d). 1957.

Rolling Stones drummer and bebop bandleader Charlie Watts said (1990):
‘He’s maybe not the best-known name on my wishlist, but I’d ask Paul Quinichette to be in the band. Only I think he’s dead now.’

The Vice-Pres, but more than a slavish Lester Young copyist, who managed to convey something of the great man’s tone and spirit. Very much a middle-order batsman, Quinichette was best in the loose, jam session format that Prestige favoured in the later ’50s, and a complete set of sessions for Dawn sees him fairly swamped by the players around him. Nevertheless, he had a beguiling tone and a crafty way with a solo and there’s a good deal to enjoy in all his work, even if it rarely raises the rafters. Mal Waldron does all the new writing on
On The Sunny Side
and his ‘Cool-lypso’ hands Paul a line he can do something elegant with. At this vintage, it’s clear that he’s no John Coltrane, but he’s certainly worth more than the passing mention he now gets from aficionados.

CURTIS FULLER

Born 15 December 1934, Detroit, Michigan

Trombone

With Red Garland

Original Jazz Classics OJCCD 1862

Fuller; Sonny Red Kyner (as); Red Garland (p); Paul Chambers (b); Louis Hayes (d). May 1957.

Curtis Fuller said (1981):
‘John Coltrane must have seen something in me, because he picked me for
Blue Train
, my first recording. I had a lot to learn then, about life even more than music, and I think Trane was trying to give me a message …’

Curtis Fuller made his mark on one of the most memorable intros in modern jazz, the opening bars of Coltrane’s ‘Blue Train’. For many the story stops there, ironically so, since the Blue Note session with Trane was hardly representative of what this mellifluous trombonist was about. Possessed of an excellent technique, slightly derivative of J. J. Johnson, he occasionally found it difficult to develop ideas at speed and tended to lapse, as he had on ‘Blue Train’, into either repetition or sequences of bitten-off phrases that sounded either diffident or aggressive. The saxophone-influenced delivery helped create a tonal ambiguity not accessible to valved or keyed horn-players.

There was some excitement about Fuller in 1957, and the early sessions for Prestige, supervised by the redoubtable Teddy Charles, promised much. Sonny Red was the working name of Sylvester Kyner; a raw player, he none the less acquits himself on both sets to come out of the sessions with enthusiasm and some ruggedly straightforward ideas. The first LP was called
New Trombone
and was designed to showcase Fuller in sympathetic company. There’s a slightly different group on the second date, with Garland crucially in place of the lighter and less driving Hank Jones. Both Sonny Red and the leader are more convincing on the later date, kicking off Garland’s cleaner-cut blues chords. The rhythm section is also strengthened by the addition of Chambers, who comes through powerfully, blending nicely with the trombone in unison passages. A good mix of material – including a big saxophone feature on ‘Slenderella’ and a gorgeous original from Fuller, ‘Cashmere’ – gives everyone plenty room to express themselves.

MILES DAVIS
^&

Born 26 May 1926, Alton, Illinois; died 28 September 1991, Santa Monica, California

Trumpet, flugelhorn, organ

Miles Ahead

Columbia CK 65121

Davis; John Carisi, Bernie Glow, Taft Jordan, Louis Mucci, Ernie Royal (t); Joe Bennett, Jimmy Cleveland, Frank Rehak (tb); Tom Mitchell (btb); Tony Miranda, Willie Ruff (frhn); Lee Konitz (as); Sid Cooper, Romeo Penque (woodwinds); Danny Bank (bcl); Paul Chambers (b); Art Taylor (d); Gil Evans (cond). May 1957.

Miles’s biographer Ian Carr said (1990):
‘It really did put him “miles ahead” of anyone else in the jazz world. Musicians recognized it for what it was; critics jumped on it as if the earlier small-group records had been building up to it, which ignored the fact that, marvellous as it was, it wasn’t necessarily better than them, just different.’

Having combated his personal problems with real fortitude, Miles made a comeback around 1954 and set out for Prestige a body of work that established a new standard in combo jazz. These records, with their instinctively clever titles –
Relaxin’
,
Workin’
,
Steamin’
,
Cookin’
– offer one of the first detailed documentations of Miles Davis at a key development moment. There is a tendency to think that the big live packages and the posthumous box sets of album ‘sessions’ were the first time this had happened. The Prestige records, in their own way, fulfil the same function and, listened to carefully, they reveal an artist who is not so much at the pinnacle of his art as anxious to break its internal barriers and move on to something larger.