The Penguin Jazz Guide (64 page)

Michel Legrand said (1982):
‘I didn’t start writing for films because I could not make money playing jazz, or I would have given up jazz the moment I made money doing something else. The truth is that as a young man I promised myself I would play any and every kind of music that came along. Jazz is one of them.’

Legrand’s name is so widely known as a pop and movie composer that his jazz leanings are largely ignored. But his small discography is worth much more than a passing look. The sessions for the
Legrand Jazz
album are uniquely star-studded, and the quality of the writing matches up to the cast-list. Legrand chose many unexpected tunes – including ancient history such as ‘Wild Man Blues’, as well as the more predictable ‘Nuages’ and ‘Django’ – and recast each one in a challenging way. ‘Night In Tunisia’ is a controlled fiesta of trumpets, ‘Round Midnight’ a glittering set-piece for Davis, ‘Nuages’ a sensuous vehicle for Webster. The last is placed alongside a trombone section in one of the three groupings devised by the arranger; another is dominated by a four-man trumpet group. The third has the remarkable situation of having Davis, Coltrane and Evans as sidemen, playing Waller and Armstrong tunes. Many of the arrangements are tellingly compact, seven not even breaking the four-minute barrier, and it ends on a
fast
treatment of Beiderbecke’s ‘In A Mist’.

LOU DONALDSON

Born 1 November 1926, Badin, North Carolina

Alto saxophone

Blues Walk

Blue Note 46525-2

Donaldson; Herman Foster (p); Peck Morrison (b); Dave Bailey (d); Ray Barretto (perc). July 1958.

Lou Donaldson said (1989):
‘Playing jazz without the blues is like cooking potatoes without salt. You have something, but it doesn’t have any flavour. The blues are at the heart of everything I do. Even if I’ve added some Latin flavours – and I was the first to put in a conga player – it’s still the blues.’

Lou Donaldson has remained among the most diligent of Charlie Parker’s disciples. His playing hardly altered course in 40 years of work: the fierce tone and familiar blues colourings remain constant through the ’50s and ’60s and, if he’s as unadventurous as he is assured, at least his records guarantee a solid level of well-executed improvising. He replaces Parker’s acidity with a certain sweetness which can make his work pall over extended listening. Donaldson’s stack of Blue Note albums has drifted in and out of circulation.

Blues Walk
, true to its title, is Donaldson at his bluesiest. The shades get lighter and darker as the context dictates, but the general effect is highly consistent throughout. It’s probably at this point that Donaldson puts aside the more obvious aspects of his Parker fixation and starts to play in an earthier and more straightforward idiom. He puts Denzil Best’s ‘Move’ in second place, right after the title-track, almost as if to show how things might be different. ‘Blues Walk’ itself is a great line, with a solid bounce and ample opportunity for blowing effective choruses on either the melody or the sequence (he manages both), and he brings the same attack to ‘The Masquerade Is Over’ and even ‘Autumn Nocturne’, which might be subtitled ‘Nocturne Detourned’ (but only by the very pretentious). Lou doesn’t do crepuscular jazz; it’s all neon-lit, and none the worse for that. Bailey and Barretto make a propulsive combination, and even the little-known Foster seems spot on for the date.

BUD POWELL
^&

Born Earl Rudolph Powell, 27 September 1924, Harlem, New York; died 31 July 1966, New York City

Piano

The Amazing Bud Powell: Volume 5 – The Scene Changes

Blue Note 46529

Powell; Paul Chambers (b); Art Taylor (d). December 1958.

Bud’s friend and protector Francis Paudras said (1986):
‘Even when he was
distrait
there was something grand and hopeful in Bud’s playing. I never heard it express anything other than beauty and love.’

The cover photograph is heartbreakingly symbolic: a lowering Bud looks down at sheet music on the piano in front of him, rapt, private, shut away with his thoughts, while round his left shoulder a little boy peers guardedly, like his own lost younger self. These 1958 performances for Blue Note were an attempt to rekindle the fires. All the material is original and, though most of it harks back to the bop idiom rather than forward to anything new, it contains some of his most significant statements of any period. ‘Comin’ Up’, of which there is also an alternative take, is in the released version his longest studio performance, and one of his most exuberant and playful, almost Latinate in feel. ‘Down With It’ is generic bebop and not a particularly effective idea, a long melody-line over orthodox changes, and only really distinguished for Chambers’s fine
arco
solo. There was an earlier tune called ‘Crossin’ The Channel’; this, though, is Bud’s alone and is the most formally constructed piece in the set, the one item that marks him down as a significant composer. ‘The Scene Changes’ is the final track on the original LP. It’s a curious piece in that it looks back more than forward, almost as if the next scene were fated to be like the last.

& See also
The Amazing Bud Powell: Volumes 1 & 2
(1951–1953; p. 120)

MAL WALDRON
^&

Born 16 August 1925 (not 1926); died 2 December 2002, Brussels, Belgium

Piano

Mal/4: Trio

Original Jazz Classics OJC 1856

Waldron; Addison Farmer (b); Kenny Dennis (d). September 1958.

Saxophonist George Haslam says:
‘In 1995 when Mal celebrated his 70th birthday I asked why reference books gave 1926 as his year of birth. He explained that back in the ’40s/’50s, when Americans had to serve a year’s compulsory national service, the young black guys didn’t count that year as part of their life – so they would always say they were a year younger than they actually were. Anyone working out their year of birth would get it a year out.’

Waldron had two careers, divided by a nervous breakdown in 1963 and subsequent emigration to Europe. Up to that point, he had played with Ike Quebec (with whom he made his recording debut) and Big Nick Nicholas, working in a soul-jazz vein. However, he also caught the ear of Charles Mingus and was present for the recording of
Pithecanthropus Erectus
and other sessions. Between 1957 and 1959, he was Billie Holiday’s accompanist, staying with her until her death, but also continuing his own recording career. After his illness he had to begin his solo career afresh, re-learning piano by listening to his own recordings and emerging from the shadows with a new sound: percussive, dark, minor-keyed and long-lined. In reality, it wasn’t so much new as a chiaroscuro version of his earlier style, as heard on this, his first trio recording.

It is, on the face of it, surprising that Waldron did not make more trio records. He launched the ECM label in 1969 with a trio set, but they do not figure prominently in his discography, which majors on solo, duo (with Steve Lacy, George Haslam, Marion Brown and others) and larger group recordings.
Mal/4
is by some way the best of the Prestige discs. Its predecessors had been for quintet and sextet, but here the stripped-down sound and spacious delivery and distinctive, investigative use of repetition as a structural device are already in evidence. Waldron was in the middle of his association with Lady Day and would shortly make a first recording with Steve Lacy, who shared a devotion to the music of Thelonious Monk. Waldron’s compositions of the time might be described as Monkian. There is nothing on
Mal/4
in quite the spirit of his classic ‘Soul Eyes’. His originals, ‘Splidium-Dow’, ‘J.M.’s Dream Doll’ and ‘Love Span’ intersperse the four standards like sombre interludes. ‘Like Someone I Love’ and ‘Get Happy’ (the latter laden with allusions to Bud Powell) are good examples of how Janus-faced Waldron was, even in those days, but the real killer is his reading of ‘Too Close For Comfort’, a long
tour de force
that remains a career highlight.

Waldron lived on until 2002, a trickster figure whose tragic mien at the keyboard was countered by the most playful of spirits, a paradox heightened by the shock of black/white hair he carried from his moment of crisis.

& See also
No More Tears (For Lady Day)
(1988; p. 526)

ROY HAYNES
^&

Born 13 March 1925, Roxbury, Massachusetts

Drums

We Three

Original Jazz Classics OJCCD 196

Haynes; Phineas Newborn Jr (p); Paul Chambers (b). November 1958.

Roy Haynes said (2004):
‘The difference between Max [Roach] and me? Well, he liked to go “ba ba BOM”, and I like to go “BOM ba ba”. I think that just about sums it up!’

Nobody in modern jazz has so consistently punched beyond his weight. The little man played with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk, Lester Young and Eric Dolphy, and in the John Coltrane Quartet, and is still around in the 2010s leading a band he has the cheek to call his Fountain Of Youth outfit. What Haynes lacks in sheer power he gains in precision and clarity, playing long, open lines that are deceptively relaxed but full of small rhythmic tensions. He’s fascinating to listen to behind a soloist, following every compression of the bar-lines, anticipating moves in an uncanny way, providing a steady rhythmic commentary.

In 1958, his work still clearly bears the mark of stints with Monk and Miles. Bar-lines shift confidently or else are dispensed with altogether, without violence to the underlying pulse. Phineas Newborn’s recent association with Charles Mingus had helped pare down his slightly extravagant style, but he’s still devoted to long, liquid runs. The key track is a long, long version of ‘After Hours’, on which pianist and drummer lock together in a remarkable tension between lyrical outburst and restraint, with Chambers sustaining the line with effortless ease. Haynes himself sounds wonderful on ‘Sugar Ray’ and the romping ‘Our Delight’, where he is almost tuneful.

& See also
Praise
(1998; p. 628)

DAVID ‘FATHEAD’ NEWMAN

Born 24 February 1933, Corsicano, Texas; died 20 January 2009, Kingston, New York

Tenor, alto and soprano saxophones

Fathead

Atlantic 8122-73708-2

Newman; Marcus Belgrave (t); Bennie Crawford (bs); Ray Charles (p); Edgar Willis (b); Milton Turner (d). November 1958.

David Newman said (1992):
‘How’d I get my nickname? That was my music instructor in high school. I had a bad habit of memorizing the music instead of reading it. He caught me one day with my score upside down on the stand. He came up behind me, gave me a thump and called me “Fathead”. It kinda stuck. Ray Charles didn’t like it, though. He called me “Brains”.’

An ornery, driving saxophonist whose R&B background – including 12 years with Ray Charles – left him with a consummate knowledge in the use of riffs and licks in a soul-to-jazz context, Newman always swung and his unmistakable Texan sound is highly authoritative, but like so many musicians of a similar background he had trouble finding a fruitful context and only in his later years did he start making the kind of straight-ahead jazz records that might once have been his natural turf. Equally typically, such opportunities only really came once his chops had started to waver and it’s probably best to listen to Fathead earlier in his career, when the iron-hard sound and flow of riffs was unstaunchable.

It’s worth considering that when he made the
Fathead
sessions for Atlantic, under his boss’s patronage and a ‘Ray Charles presents’ strapline, his old Texan bandmate Ornette Coleman was playing a residence with Paul Bley at the Hillcrest and just about to join the same label. Not as much as one might think separates them at this stage. Listening to individual tracks, Newman’s music is pitched a little awkwardly between jazz, R&B and proto-soul sax, but taken as a whole the album delivers a raw kind of bebop, perhaps a reminder that one of Newman’s teachers was Buster Smith, who also exerted an influence
on Charlie Parker. ‘Tin Tin Deo’ is sparklingly delivered, and with a weight of sound few bop combos could muster. The band plays well – Bennie Crawford, incidentally, is Hank Crawford – and there is consistently more to
Fathead
than meets the ear. It would be foolish to present him as an innovator manqué, but Ray Charles’s imprimatur may have hindered rather than helped.

RAY BRYANT

Born 24 December 1931, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Piano

Alone With The Blues

Original Jazz Classics OJC 249

Bryant (p solo). December 1958.

Benny Golson says:
‘Ray Bryant and I grew up together in Philadelphia. He was a genius at age 14. Anything he knew he could play in any key, even then. We played together on many occasions with John Coltrane.’

Bryant’s greatness goes unquestioned by musicians, and he’s adored by his fans, but he’s not always on the list of blue-chip piano moderns. Bryant is not an orthodox bopper in the way Hampton Hawes once was, and his solo performances are even further from the predominant Bud Powell model of bop piano. Noted for an imaginative and influential alteration of the basic 12-bar-blues sequence on his ‘Blues Changes’, Bryant is a distinctive pianist who, unlike Hawes, has often been content to record solo. He had a jukebox hit with ‘Little Susie’ and it became the focus of his first Columbia record, along with some other tunes which didn’t have quite the same impact. They all seem much of a muchness now, though listenable enough. What happened was that he seemed to get more vital and, as Tiny May suggests, youthful as the years went by. There’s no division into ‘early’ and ‘late’ or ‘promising’ and ‘mature’. Bryant came into his voice early and just got better at it. He’s a feelgood performer, whatever the material and the company.