The Penguin Jazz Guide (62 page)

He had Neal Hefti (who’d scored the hottest numbers in the band’s recent book) do the whole record, and the arranger’s zesty, machine-tooled scoring reached its apogee in ‘The Kid From Red Bank’, ‘Flight Of The Foo Birds’, ‘Splanky’ and the rest. Just as Ellington had Gonsalves, Basie had Lockjaw Davis, and his splenetic outbursts gave just the right fillip to what might otherwise have been too cut-and-dried. His playing on ‘Flight Of The Foo Birds’ (a variation on ‘Give Me The Simple Life’) is a high-point of the decade and further ammunition for those who consider Jaws critically underrated. The complete edition that appeared in 1994 revealed still more riches, but the original LP sequence still has punch, even if the original LPs, which were not well pressed, have long since been unplayable.

& See also
The Original American Decca Recordings
(1937–1939; p. 61),
The Jubilee Alternatives
(1943–1944; p. 90)

SONNY ROLLINS
^&

Born Theodore Walter Rollins, 7 September 1930, New York City

Tenor saxophone

A Night At The Village Vanguard

Blue Note 99795 2CD

Rollins; Donald Bailey, Wilbur Ware (b); Pete LaRoca, Elvin Jones (d). November 1957.

Sonny Rollins said (1990):
‘People ask: “Are you playing in a trance?” Someone even asked if it was like a state of grace. I prefer to say it’s a “stream of consciousness”. I can’t separate it out – you couldn’t separate out the drops of water in a stream – but it is conscious! I’m not sleeping up there.’

There are so many remarkable Rollins records from the ’50s that picking one or two is impossible, if not invidious. For all its arch cleverness,
Way Out West
is a highly accomplished record, playful and deceptively light in tone.
Newk’s Time
is another.
The Bridge
, from a little later, has reinforced one key element of the Rollins myth: that he once took his
saxophone up onto the Williamsburg Bridge and practised there; the reality is that he did so to prevent disturbing a neighbour, but something of the lonely artist shaping his craft on high has persisted. Nothing quite captures the saxophonist at his headlong greatest than this Village Vanguard date.

The live material, originally cherrypicked for a single peerless LP, has now been stretched across two CDs, and in its latest incarnation the in-person feel is heightened by the addition of some more of Sonny’s announcements. In the past we felt that the abundance of this material slightly checked the power-packed feel of the original LP, but in the new RVG edition the sound is extraordinarily deep and immediate, and the sheer impact of Rollins on top form is close to overwhelming – this is a model example of a classic record given its proper treatment. Working with only bass and drums throughout leads Rollins into areas of freedom which bop never allowed, and while his free-spiritedness is checked by his ruthless self-examination, its rigour makes his music uniquely powerful in jazz. On the two versions of ‘Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise’ or in the muscular exuberance of ‘Old Devil Moon’, traditional bop-orientated improvising reaches a peak of expressive power and imagination. Overall, these are records which demand a place in any collection.

& See also
Saxophone Colossus
(1956; p. 188),
This Is What I Do
(2000; p. 653)

WILBUR WARE

Born 8 September 1923, Chicago, Illinois; died 9 September 1979, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Double bass

The Chicago Sound

Original Jazz Classics OJCCD 1737

Ware; John Jenkins (as); Johnny Griffin (ts); Junior Mance (p); Wilbur Campbell, Frank Dunlop (d). October–November 1957.

Charlie Haden said (1983):
‘At one time he played this bass that was pretty much held together by Scotch tape, but he managed to play solos on it like it was a Stradivarius violin. No one else played like him, all those thirds and fifths, very clear and distinct and with a really rhythmic quality – because Wilbur was also a drummer – that always struck me as very pure bass-playing.’

Though much of what Ware did stemmed directly from Jimmy Blanton’s ‘Jack The Bear’, he developed into a highly individual performer whose unmistakable sound lives on in the low-register work of contemporary bassists like Charlie Haden. Ware’s technique has been questioned but seems to have been a conscious development, a way of hearing the chord rather than a way of skirting his own supposed shortcomings. He could solo at speed, shifting the time-signature from bar to bar while retaining an absolutely reliable pulse. Significantly, one of his most important employers was Thelonious Monk, who valued displacements of that sort within an essentially four-square rhythm and traditional (but not European-traditional) tonality; the bassist also contributed substantially to one of Sonny Rollins’s finest recordings. He grew up in the sanctified church and there is a gospelly quality to ‘Mamma-Daddy’, a relatively rare original, on
The Chicago Sound
. The only other Ware composition on the record, ‘31st And State’, might have come from Johnny Griffin’s head; the saxophonist roars in over the beat and entirely swamps Jenkins, whose main contribution to the session is a composition credit on two good tracks.

Though the Ware discography is huge (with numerous credits for Riverside in the ’50s), his solo technique is at its most developed on his own records. ‘Lullaby Of The Leaves’ is almost entirely for bass, and there are magnificent solos on ‘Body And Soul’ (where he sounds
huge
) and ‘The Man I Love’.

TONY SCOTT

Born Anthony Joseph Sciacca, 17 June, 1921, Morristown, New Jersey; died 28 March 2007, Rome, Italy

Clarinet

A Day In New York

Fresh Sound FSRCD 160/2 2CD

Scott; Clark Terry (t); Jimmy Knepper (tb); Sahib Shihab (bs); Bill Evans (p); Henry Grimes, Milt Hinton (b); Paul Motian (d). November 1957.

Tony Scott said (1991):
‘Making music is inextricable with the life you lead and the energy you put through that life. That’s one of the reasons I am obsessed with the lives of the jazz greats. Know who they are and you understand their music. Know their music and you understand who they were.’

Scott studied at Juilliard, worked as a New York sideman in the ’40s and ’50s, and led his own groups from 1953, playing his own version of bop on the clarinet. In 1959, he turned his back on America, wounded by the death of several friends (Hot Lips Page, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Lester Young) and by what he considered the ‘death’ of the clarinet in jazz terms. He became a wanderer, exploring the culture and music of the East, trading in the sometimes aggressive assertions of bebop for a meditative approach to harmony that at its best is deeply moving, at its least disciplined a weak ambient decoration.

Scott enjoyed a close and fruitful relationship with Bill Evans, and perhaps his best recorded work is the session of 16 November 1957 with the Evans trio and guests, tackling a copious roster of originals and well-worn standards (including a lovely ‘Lullaby Of The Leaves’ with Knepper). The clarinettist’s opening statements on Evans’s ‘Five’ are almost neurotically brilliant and a perfect illustration of how loud Scott could play. ‘Portrait Of Ravi’ and ‘The Explorer’ are Scott originals, directed towards the concerns that were increasingly to occupy him. Evans’s light touch and immense harmonic sophistication suited his approach ideally.

JIMMY SMITH

Born 8 December 1928, Norristown, Pennsylvania; died 8 February 2005, Scottsdale, Arizona

Organ

Groovin’ At Smalls’ Paradise

Blue Note 99777-2 2CD

Smith; Eddie McFadden (g); Donald Bailey (d). November 1957.

Jimmy Smith said (1983):
‘I taught myself, working out the stops. I got my first organ from a loan shark and had it shipped to a warehouse. For six months, I hardly left the place, trying to work it all out.’

Jimmy Smith got going rather late as a jazz organist. He allegedly didn’t even touch the instrument until he was 28, but he quickly established and personified a jazz vocabulary for the organ: tireless walking bass in the pedals, thick chords with the left hand, quick-fire melodic lines with the right. It was a formula almost from the start, and Smith has never strayed from it, but he so completely mastered the approach that he is inimitable. At his best he creates a peerless excitement, which is seldom sustained across an entire album but which makes every record he’s on something to be reckoned with.

Smith made a great stack of albums for Blue Note, and as with others in that position their quality was inconsistent, as has been their availability. On
Groovin’ At Smalls’ Paradise
, Smith is in his element in a club setting, and while McFadden also gets plenty of space (and
doesn’t do badly, in his modest way), the master’s big, sprawling solos are definitive: ‘After Hours’ is perhaps the classic Smith blues performance, although the entire record works to a kind of bluesy slow burn. The original albums have been turned into a double-CD and, in the Rudy Van Gelder edition remastering, the years fall away.
Back At The Chicken Shack
from three years later is better known, but this is the one to get. Probably no single figure so dominated his instrument for so long as Smith did the Hammond organ – even the tenor saxophone has its alternative-division heavyweights – and everyone since has been compared to Smith, even if there is virtually no stylistic connection.

JIMMY DEUCHAR

Born 26 June 1930, Dundee, Scotland; died 9 September 1993, London

Trumpet

Pal Jimmy!

Jasmine JASCD 624

Deuchar; Ken Wray (tb); Derek Humble (as); Tubby Hayes (ts); Eddie Harvey, Harry South (p); Kenny Napper (b); Phil Seamen (d). March 1957–March 1958.

Jimmy Deuchar said (1983):
‘I was in the air force and posted to Uxbridge, so I got into London from time to time and managed to meet Johnny Dankworth at Club 11. He told me to get in touch when I got out. I joined the Seven in 1950, and that was like my university. I learned everything from him, from him and from Tubby Hayes.’

A hybrid of Bunny Berigan and Fats Navarro, Jimmy was usually recognizable within a few bars – taut, hot, but capable of bursts of great lyricism. Some of his best work is with Tubby Hayes, but these precious survivals – which exist solely through the dedication and enthusiasm of Tony Hall – are fine too. Deuchar’s not well served by the recordings at this time, but the playing is of a standard that will surprise those unfamiliar with this period of British jazz, technically sound, expressively bold and utterly self-confident. If these players were in thrall to the Americans they don’t sound it.

Pal Jimmy!
brings together the whole of the LP plus a stray track from a compilation. Sonny Stitt’s ‘Swingin’ In Studio Two’ gives everybody room to move around. The trumpeter’s solo on the title-track blues is a classic statement. Original vinyl copies command a king’s ransom, so even uncertain CD sound is very welcome indeed. Deuchar’s recreational interests certainly undermined his health and he died unseasonably young having lost both legs to circulatory problems. But while he was at his peak, he was unmatched.

JIMMY CLEVELAND

Born 3 May 1926, Wartrace, Tennessee; died 23 August 2008, Lynwood, California

Trombone

Cleveland Style

Emarcy 53194

Cleveland; Art Farmer (t); Benny Golson (ts); Jay McAllister, Don Butterfield (tba); Wynton Kelly (p); Eddie Jones (b); Charli Persip (d). December 1957.

Jimmy Cleveland said (1984):
‘I was happier in the orchestra and the studios. Working with small groups brings a lot of pressure. Thelonious Monk was a curious person, very brilliant, but strange, and I didn’t go for that. I’m happy to play my little piece and then move back into place.’

A terrific technician, Cleveland was one of the first significant trombonists to emerge after J. J. Johnson. Much of his career was spent in the studios, but he did manage to cut some sessions for Emarcy and Mercury –
Introducing
,
Cleveland Style
,
Map Of Jimmy Cleveland
,
Rhythm Crazy
– all of them gimcracked round Jimmy’s dextrous slide technique and singing tone. Hard to pick out highlights, and for some the Lone Hill
Complete Recordings
might offer more generous pickings, but this 1957 record stands up fine on its own. Ernie Wilkins’s arrangements are spot on for a group of this size, with tuba filling out the bottom end warmly, and Ernie brings in a couple of nice charts of his own, ‘A Jazz Ballad’, which highlights Jimmy’s romantic side, and ‘Goodbye Ebbets Field’, which ends the set on a mildly elegiac note. One’s always conscious of how exact a technician Cleveland is, though he lacks the fast, saxophonic delivery of a J.J., and that quality spills over into his one composition credit; ‘Jimmy’s Tune’ is only a blowing theme, but it has structure and energy and a trajectory very like the trombonist’s solo formation, which is always logical but not predictable.

BERNT ROSENGREN

Born 24 December 1937, Stockholm, Sweden

Tenor saxophone