The Penguin Jazz Guide (82 page)

Patton was one of the most entertaining of the players who followed in Jimmy Smith’s footsteps, and a pile of Blue Note albums became his principal legacy. Most of these have drifted out of print, though the material turns up on acid-jazz and rare groove collections.
Along Came John
is probably his great moment. After a long apprenticeship in R&B situations, he was ready to make a statement and hadn’t yet become part of Blue Note’s soul-jazz set-up. Green is a master of his craft and never better than on dates like this. By common consent among musicians, Vick was a giant and he proves his quality here. It all boils down to the opening ‘The Silver Meter’, an irresistible loping groove. Patton probably never bettered it, but then he rarely dropped below excellent.

JOE HENDERSON
^&

Born 24 April 1937, Lima, Ohio; died 30 June 2001, San Francisco, California

Tenor saxophone

Page One

Blue Note 98795

Henderson; Kenny Dorham (t); McCoy Tyner (p); Butch Warren (b); Pete Sims (d). June 1963.

Joe Henderson said (1992):
‘I’ve always sounded the same way. I was playing like this before some of the people who were supposed to have “influenced” me were even on the scene. I don’t get offended by it, but it’s plain wrong. Besides, I learned as much about jazz from Stravinsky as I did from any saxophone-player.’

One of the last great tenormen of the original hard-bop generation, who it’s hard to imagine not in the middle of some grand, involved solo, Henderson was a thematic musician, working his way round the structure of a composition with methodical intensity, but he was also a masterful licks player, with a seemingly limitless stock of phrases that he could turn to advantage in any post-bop setting; this gave his best improvisations a balance of
surprise, immediacy and coherence few other saxophonists could match. His lovely tone, which combines softness and a harsh plangency in a similar way, is another pleasing aspect of his music.

Page One
was his first date as a leader, and it still stands as one of the most popular Blue Notes of the early ’60s. Henderson had not long since arrived in New York after being discharged from the army, and this six-theme set is very much the work of a new star on the scene. ‘Recorda-Me’, whose Latinate lilt has made it a staple blowing vehicle for hard-bop bands, had its debut here, and the very fine tenor solo on Dorham’s ‘Blue Bossa’ explains much of why Henderson was creating excitement. Everything here, even the throwaway blues ‘Homestretch’ is impressively handled.

& See also
The State Of The Tenor
(1985; p. 494)

PAUL DESMOND

Born Paul Emil Breitenfeld, 25 November 1924, San Francisco, California; died 30 May 1977, New York City

Alto saxophone

Glad To Be Unhappy

RCA Victor 7432 131311

Desmond; Jim Hall (g); Gene Cherico, Gene Wright (b); Connie Kay (d). June 1963–September 1964.

Dave Brubeck said (1991):
‘He played very high up, an octave up on most players, and all these teachers would tell him he would go and ruin his tone if he persisted with it. I told him to play what he really felt because it was obvious that he nosedived if he tried to play differently.’

Jazz history has overstated Desmond’s significance in making Dave Brubeck a star. They met in the ’40s and Desmond was part of the pianist’s octet set-up, though their main association came later, compounded of almost telepathic understanding, some personal hurt, and a degree of professional jockeying. The saxophonist’s flowing lines are unmistakable, but Brubeck gave him a winning context, almost never bettered. Desmond’s glowing tone and melodic ease are almost definitive of the cool saxophone. Such was the Californian’s importance to Brubeck, for whom Desmond wrote ‘Take Five’, that there was an agreement Desmond would never record with another piano-player. He did, however, sustain a solo career, which remains somewhat overlooked.

Desmond’s recordings for RCA Victor are the pinnacle of his career, consistent and richly inflected.
Glad To Be Unhappy
is a set of torchsongs chosen to highlight Desmond’s sound. They’re not by any means obvious picks: ‘By The River Ste Marie’ and Mel Tormé’s ‘Stranger In Town’ are superb choices for Paul, and even ‘Poor Butterfly’ justifies its place. Hall’s in nicely supportive form and the rhythm players keep it from getting too static. Desmond’s tone and quiet, lyrical delivery almost never vary from date to date. Occasionally, he will throw in a discordant interval or roughen up his timbre to add a measure of drama. It is astonishing, listening to this music in bulk, to discover how modern, even avant-garde, it is in impact. For all Anthony Braxton’s insistence on Desmond as a primary influence, no one has ever quite taken the point at face value. These extraordinary sides point up how immensely thoughtful Desmond was, and how brimming with harmonic intelligence.

GRACHAN MONCUR III

Born 3 June 1937, New York City

Trombone

Evolution

Blue Note 784153

Moncur; Lee Morgan (t); Jackie McLean (as); Bobby Hutcherson (vib); Bob Cranshaw (b); Tony Williams (d). November 1963.

Jackie McLean said (1985):
‘If anyone asks me about the “state of jazz” in this year or that year, I say to them: “Easy way to tell … how many nights this month did Grachan Moncur actually work?” That way, you get a pretty good idea. Most months you might not get a very big number, and that really bugs me; guy like that can do anything.’

Moncur’s father, Grachan Moncur II, played bass with the Savoy Sultans. Our man started trombone pre-teens and became one of the first on the instrument to explore free jazz.
Evolution
wasn’t the first or last attempt to convey the broader movements of humankind in a jazz setting; one thinks inevitably of Mingus’s
Pithecanthropus Erectus
or George Russell’s
The African Game
. Moncur’s composition is less ambitious: the actual track is much shorter for a start and hovers between bop orthodoxy (strong J. J. Johnson influence) and some attempt to keep up with the free movement.

He probably had the wrong line-up to take that second route any further. Morgan’s strengths were considerable but tramlined and only Hutcherson and Williams showed much interest in the avant-garde. That said, Moncur handles the players with great skill. The looseness of ‘Evolution’ reflects more a desire to imbue the idea with the new freedom than any lack of arranging skills. He liked to treat the rhythm section as an independent unit. That much is obvious on the opening ‘Air Raid’. Moncur had debuted with Jackie McLean’s band earlier the same year for One Step Beyond and that title seems even more relevant here as Jackie plays some very untypical stuff. Recorded a day before JFK was shot in Dallas (was there something in the air in America?), the whole record has a dark,
misterioso
quality that the lowering trombone sound (not prominently featured, but always there in attendance) strongly accentuates. ‘The Coaster’ subordinates strict metre to pulse, a device typical of Thelonious Monk, who is celebrated on the fourth track, ‘Monk In Wonderland’. It’s the most rigorous of the tracks, completing an invigorating and intellectually satisfying set.

BOBBY HUTCHERSON
^&

Born 27 January 1941, Los Angeles, California

Vibraphone, marimba

The Kicker

Blue Note 21437

Hutcherson; Joe Henderson (ts); Grant Green (g); Bob Cranshaw (b); Al Harewood (d). December 1963.

Bobby Hutcherson said (1983):
‘Pee Wee Marquette used to blow cigar smoke in my face and introduce me as “Babba Hutchkins”, until I gave him a $5 tip. After that, mysteriously, he remembered my name.’

Along with Gary Burton, Hutcherson reinvented vibes-playing in the ’60s. He follows, loosely, in the Hampton/Bags lineage, but throughout his career has looked for new ways to extend the range and expressive potential of an instrument whose entire history, almost uniquely, lies within jazz. In the process, Hutcherson won himself an avant-garde label, which sits a little awkwardly on his uniform, for his work is almost all concerned with deep continuities in the jazz tradition: harmony, rhythm, fresh melodic invention.

In the ’60s he made a series of superb albums for Blue Note, the equal of any of the classic dates from that label, though their release history suggests a measure of canny ambivalence on the part of the label’s owners, anxious to balance artistic enterprise
against commercial concerns. The availability of those records has been very intermittent, although some have returned as limited editions. More surprising is the number that were never issued at the time. Hutcherson’s first release for Blue Note,
Dialogue
, made in April 1965, only returned to the catalogue in early 2002. It is arguably the most adventurous thing Bobby ever did, though he had not yet found his confidence as a composer as well as soloist. Three of the group assembled – Hutcherson, Hubbard and Davis – had been involved in Dolphy’s epochal
Out To Lunch!
sessions, and they carry over some of the energy and excitement of that great record.

The Kicker
wasn’t made available until 1999. Even if Hutcherson’s standing was thought to be marginal, the presence of Joe Henderson should have been enough to see this fine, imaginative session into the light of day. The saxophonist is the main composer and Bobby is represented only by the rather slight ‘For Duke P.’, a tribute to Blue Note’s musical director. Joe’s ‘Kicker’ and ‘Step Lightly’ are cracking tunes and blistering performances from all concerned. Hutcherson’s fleet, ringing lines have rarely sounded more buoyant and persuasive, and it remains a mystery that this record should have lain unreleased for 30 years. As such it stands not just as a minor modern classic but also as an emblem of the industry’s aesthetic and commercial vagaries.

& See also
Cruisin’ The ’Bird
(1988; p. 519)

LEE MORGAN
^&

Born 10 July 1938, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; died 19 February 1972, New York City

Trumpet

The Sidewinder

Blue Note 95332

Morgan; Joe Henderson (ts); Barry Harris (p); Bob Cranshaw (b); Billy Higgins (d). December 1963.

Bassist Reggie Workman said (1992):
‘Lee Morgan had a
giant
record collection. Seemed like he had everything and had listened to it and got it down as well. We were round the neighbourhood in Philadelphia and he was the guy who knew all the records.’

Though he gets the month wrong, David H. Rosenthal’s history of
Hard Bop
gives central symbolic place to the death of Lee Morgan, victim not of overdose or car crash like so many of his peers, but gunned down in Slugs’ by a jealous girlfriend. If Morgan’s passing in 1972 felt like the end of an era in jazz, it was one he had helped to define. Masaya Matsumara’s painstaking website discography lists 151 sessions at which Morgan was present. We would not presume to suggest there were more, but there were certainly umpteen undocumented live dates in that same 16-year period, a prodigious outpouring of music. In ‘The Sidewinder’ he created what may usefully stand as the representative hard-bop tune. If he was to repeat the formula to the point of redundancy in years to come, he had the justification of having shaped the formula in the first place.

Like fellow trumpeters Fats Navarro, Booker Little and Clifford Brown before him, Lee Morgan lived fast and died young, playing with a swagger based on solid technical know-how and even when playing ballads showing a glint of steel under the velvet. Remarkably for someone who made so many records, we still tend to think of what might have been. Would a 70-year-old Lee Morgan have been one of the music’s imperious balladeers?

Morgan played with the Jazz Messengers and with Hank Mobley and Donald Byrd, but was already making records under his own name. He was one of the very few top-flight players to adopt former boss Dizzy’s trademark ‘bent’ trumpet, a homage to his biggest influence, though Morgan’s punchy, out-of-kilter phrasing is all his own. He had a number of Blue Note dates in the bag before
The Sidewinder
slithered along.

Famously, the title-track was written in the heads towards the end of the session, a glorious 24-bar theme as sinuous and stinging as the beast of the title. It was both the best but also the worst thing that was ever to happen to Morgan before the awful events of 19 February 1972, and in its ambivalent way seemed to reflect something of the mood of America in the weeks after the Kennedy assassination. ‘The Sidewinder’ was an instant jazz hit, one of those themes, like ‘So What’, that insinuate themselves into the subconscious and remain there for ever. Unfortunately, it also established a more or less unbreakable pattern for future LPs, a bold, funky opener – often with a title intended to recall ‘Sidewinder’ – followed by half a dozen forgettable blowing themes, or, if you were lucky, another swinger to kick off the second side. The other pieces on the record have never been acknowledged to the same degree, but ‘Totem Pole’ and the superb ‘Hocus Pocus’ are the best available evidence for Morgan’s gifts as a writer: vivid, often unexpectedly angled lines with every potential for extended blowing and not just off the back of a few algebraic chords. Of the other members of the group, Henderson stands out for his solo on the title-track and on ‘Hocus Pocus’. Harris is rock solid from start to finish, and the bass-and-drums team can hardly be faulted.