The Penguin Jazz Guide (90 page)

LOWELL DAVIDSON

Born 1941, Boston, Massachusetts; died 1990, Boston, Massachusetts

Piano

Lowell Davidson Trio

ESP 1012

Davidson; Gary Peacock (b); Milford Graves (d). 1965.

Boston guitarist Joe Morris says:
‘He was a unique musician and much more than his one ESP recording suggests. He was constantly expanding his range. His piano trio music grew to be more subtle, slow moving and sonic in presentation. In the 1980s when I worked with him he played drums, and aluminum acoustic bass. The music we played could only be described as early electro-acoustic/spectralism improvisation.’

Davidson’s father was a theologian. He himself studied biochemistry at Harvard, but moved to New York and played with Ornette Coleman and briefly as drummer with the New York Art Quartet. His already obscure career was foreshortened when a laboratory accident undermined his health. He died of tuberculosis, aged only 49.

Davidson is one of those obscure figures who always seems on the brink of rediscovery. Nothing hampers his rehabilitation more than the lack of adequate recordings. His only released studio recording – apparently made by ESP without a prior audition – is a technical disgrace, shoddily balanced and with almost no bass presence. The music is fascinating, immediately different from what’s considered to be the dominant Cecil Taylor school. One might say Mal Waldron is closer in overall sound and spirit. Davidson nudges at small areas of sound, moving them around his keyboard until he has built up edifices of surprising complexity. ‘L’ is a brilliant opener, a kind of musical self-portrait that is much more openhearted and direct than the man’s reputation might lead one to expect. The resemblance to Waldron is clearest on the sombre ‘Stately 1’, while ‘Dunce’ has a nervous and subversive energy. Graves is a brilliant partner, the acme of free-jazz drumming; Peacock’s solo on ‘Strong Tears’ would be easier to appreciate if it were properly recorded.

A fascinating might-have-been, he continued to develop through his short life, constantly stimulating a powerful imagination through hard work, sheer intuition and, as Joe Morris observes, ‘extensive use of psychedelic chemicals’. But the tapes weren’t rolling.

HUGH MASEKELA

Born 4 April 1939, Witbank, South Africa

Trumpet, flugelhorn

The Lasting Impressions Of Ooga Booga

Verve 531630

Masekela; Larry Willis (p); Harold Dotson (b); Henry Jenkins (d). 1965.

Hugh Masekela said (1990):
‘For me, America was Louis Armstrong, and Louis Armstrong changed the world. I came to the United States [in 1960] at an exciting time. There was civil rights and talk of change, and you could walk down one street and see John Coltrane and down another and see Max Roach, or Abbey Lincoln, or Ella. And still live on what you had. That part has changed, South Africa is going to change, but music never changes.’

Masekela is one of the key figures in South African music, a passionate voice whose sound has the throaty urgency of a street corner preacher and the delicacy of emotion associated with Miles Davis and Chet Baker. At 20, Masekela was a founder member, with Dollar Brand and Kippie Moeketsi, of the Jazz Epistles, South Africa’s first significant jazz group. Masekela then married singer Miriam Makeba and left South Africa for the US, recording classic songs like ‘Grazin’ In The Grass’ (which sold four million copies) and becoming a spokesman and icon of the anti-apartheid movement. He also went through periods of personal self-indulgence, frankly admitted in interview and in his autobiography, which is named after his biggest hit. Some felt that the addictive ‘grazing’ had done his art no good, but Masekela has a survivor’s instinct and sufficient brilliance as a musician to paper the cracks even in the most unpromising circumstance.

The Lasting Impressions Of Ooga Booga
is a compilation of two records taped live at the Village Gate. The original LP,
The Americanization Of Ooga Booga
, was not initially followed (largely because the company had no faith in the project), and it was only after the success of Masekela’s blend of mbaqanga and what he himself dubbed ‘township bop’ that the remaining tracks were released as
The Lasting Impression Of Hugh Masekela
, one track of which has been omitted on this reissue for reasons of space. Masekela’s plangent, vocalized tone is unmistakable and these tunes, written by himself, Makeba, Willis and Caiphus Semenya, are among the strongest he ever recorded. Herbie Hancock’s ‘Canteloupe Island’ is a reminder of how different he was from American jazz musicians of the same generation; the familiar changes are utterly transformed, pushed out into new harmonic and rhythmic territory.

SUN RA
^&

Born Herman Sonny Blount (also known as Sonny Bourke, Le Sony’r Ra) 22 May 1914, Birmingham, Alabama; died 30 May 1993, Birmingham, Alabama

Piano, space organ, keyboards

The Magic City

Evidence ECD 22069

Sun Ra; Walter Miller (t); Chris Capers (t, perc); Ali Hassan, Teddy Nance (tb); Bernard Pettaway (btb); Danny Davis (as, f, perc); Harry Spencer (as); Marshall Allen (as, f, picc); John Gilmore (ts, perc); Pat Patrick (bs, f, tymp); Robert Cummings (bcl, perc); Ronnie Boykins (b); Roger Blank, Jimmy Johnson Jr (d); James Jackson (perc). 1965.

Novelist Ralph Ellison said (1983):
‘It’s no metaphor. For Sun Ra being a black man in the American South meant you might as well have been from Alpha Centauri, let alone Saturn. That music, and
The Magic City
in particular, is about a very specific and actual alienation, not science fiction.’

Largely recorded in Babatunde Olatunji’s loft, this is a key Sun Ra recording, free and abstract, but still with a weight of jazz tradition behind it. This record is about a futuristic place trapped in the present, rather than a past civilization swallowed up by history. ‘The Magic City’ was a promotional slogan for Birmingham, Alabama, to boost it as a commercial centre. References to slavery and race in an accompanying poem are bound up with imagery borrowed from the Bible or
Paradise Lost
, suggesting the rootedness of Sun Ra’s fantastical vision in contemporary reality and in African-American tradition. The piece itself was collectively improvised, though the confident synchronization of small-group sections within the main piece strongly suggests either an element of ‘conduction’ or of predetermined sequences. This was the period of Ornette’s
Free Jazz
and, more to the point, of Coltrane’s huge
Ascension
, and
The Magic City
stands up remarkably well in that company.

The title-track opens in mystery and chaos with Boykins’s bass-lines drifting unhoused in the middle distance, clavioline sounds from Sun Ra and eventually a human touch in Marshall Allen’s flute. The sense of estrangement here is complete and wonderfully sustained. The shorter ‘Abstract “I” ’ pieces are group improvisations, stinging pungent in impact but actually more diffuse than the long title-piece. Sun Ra’s made many more fine records, but probably never improved on the work of this period.

& See also
Jazz In Silhouette
(1958; p. 230),
Mayan Temples
(1990; p. 541)

MICHAEL GARRICK

Born 30 May 1933, Enfield, Middlesex, England

Piano, harpsichord, celeste

October Woman

Vocalion CDSML 8420

Garrick; Shake Keane (t); Joe Harriott (as); Coleridge Goode (b); Colin Barnes (d); Elizabethan Singers. 1965.

Michael Garrick says:
‘I wrote “October Woman” for Shake and “Little Girl” for Joe. I felt their combined sound had an authority and magic that was unique and deeply moving – and hold that opinion even stronger today. They needed minimal notation; nowadays the “jazz-trained” guys thrive on maximum detail: exact note lengths, dynamics, etc. It was an unlooked-for benison to have them with me.’

Garrick is one of those composers of a certain age whose early work is extravagantly admired whenever it is reissued, often with no more than token recognition that he is still writing and performing. We may seem guilty of the same myopia in picking out this early record, but for the recognition that Garrick did in his quiet way set a stamp on a whole style of jazz composition in Britain. He’s still probably best known for his
Jazz Praises
, which took Duke Ellington’s sacred music on a step, using jazz as the basis for a body of liturgical and spiritual music which swings with the gift of tongues

Garrick’s a national treasure, but it’s depressing that some of the most exciting British releases of recent years have been reissues of records made 40 years ago.
October Woman
reappeared with an additional EP of ‘Anthem’ and ‘Wedding Hymn’. The project came out of the ‘Poetry And Jazz In Concert’ event which is also now available on Vocalion. The Argo label wanted more of the music, but without so much of the verse. By his own admission, Garrick was new to recording and the label weren’t completely
au fait
with the jazz sound so, as Garrick puts it, ‘Colin Barnes’s Art Blakey inspirations were relegated well to the rear.’ The piano also isn’t quite up to the task, but the session as a whole has a wonderful presence that has if anything grown down the years. It may be technically unsophisticated by modern standards, but it’s an intensely beautiful record.

FRANK WRIGHT

Born 9 July 1935, Grenada, Mississippi; died 17 May 1990, Berlin, Germany

Tenor saxophone

The Complete ESP-Disk Recordings

ESP-Disk 4007

Wright; Jacques Coursil (t); Arthur Jones (as); Henry Grimes, Steve Tintweiss (b); Muhammad Ali, Tom Price (d). November 1965, May 1967.

Saxophonist Peter Brötzmann said (1993):
‘He was a wild man, in a good sense: made music and lived life in his own way. He was one of the first black Americans we got to know really well, and we all learned a lot from that.’

An effective but never celebrated figure of the avant-garde, Wright left a small recorded legacy but exerted a certain influence on like-minded younger players. He played bass guitar in R&B situations round Cleveland, where he met Albert Ayler and borrowed something of his fiery expressionism. Wright moved to Europe, like many others of his kind and age, but never attained any kind of stardom even there, preferring the company of musicians to the lure of an audience.

This ESP compilation at least restores some of the small but neglected Wright canon. It’s padded out with some interesting but inconsequential chat with label boss Bernard Stollman, which sits oddly amid such fiery music. The debut LP, just three tracks long, wasn’t as good as the sequel,
Your Prayer
, but the little-known Price and the now almost mythical Grimes do a very respectable job behind Wright, who screams and wails in the approved Ayler manner. It’s a big ask, even over the scanty, half-hour duration of the first record, which is why it’s a relief to turn to the quintet tracks from 1967. The set begins with Jones’s ‘The Lady’ and culminates with Wright’s own keening title-track. Coursil was no slouch and this rhythm section seems if anything better suited to Frank’s torrid approach, tempering some of his excesses.

It isn’t a revelatory reissue, of the kind that can reposition a reputation. There was a further ESP record in 1974, called
Unity
, and
Uhura Na Omoja
from 1970, with Noah Howard in the front line, has also been reissued, but it’s a scant body of work on which to build anything other than a musicianly reputation.

PAUL BLEY
^&

Born 10 November 1932, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Piano

Closer

ESP/Calibre 1021

Bley; Steve Swallow (b); Barry Altschul (d). December 1965.

Paul Bley said (1980):
‘Forming a creative music label in the 1960s was like swimming against the tide with a rock tied to your feet, but can you believe it? People were even pirating ESP records. I admired what Bernard Stollman was doing, but I think he lacked a philosophy, and would put out anything that interested him.’

No other pianist currently active has a stylistic signature as distinctively inscribed as Paul Bley’s – which is ironic, for he is a restless experimenter with an inbuilt resistance to stopping long in any one place. He favours curiously ambiguous diminuendo effects, tightly pedalled chords and sparse right-hand figures, often in challengingly different metre; working solo, he creates variety and dramatic interest by gradually changing note-lengths within a steady pulse and generates considerable dramatic tension by unexpectedly augmenting chords, shifting the harmonic centre constantly. Bley was one of the first pianists of any stature to experiment with electronic synthesizers. He also established the experimental label Improvising Artists.

Bley played hard bop in New York (where he married Carla Borg, who became Carla Bley) and began recording in 1953, for Charles Mingus’s Debut label. Five years later he helped introduce the music of Ornette Coleman when the saxophonist worked with him at the Hillcrest Club in Los Angeles. Bley’s Canadian background – a mixture of English reticence and French
courtoisie
– lent him a certain reserve. Instead of leading the charge
in terms of stylistic innovation, he has tended to work away at his own ideas, which have consequently sometimes been overlooked. He also deferred to what he considered better composers: Coleman, Carla Bley, Annette Peacock, and yet in the case of the latter two, at least, he made their music his own. Songs like Peacock’s ‘Blood’ and Carla’s ‘Ida Lupino’ became staples at his hand.