The Penguin Jazz Guide (112 page)

KENNY DREW

Born 28 August 1928, New York City; died 4 August 1993, Copenhagen, Denmark

Piano

Dark And Beautiful

Steeplechase SCCD 37011/12 2CD

Drew; Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (b); Albert ‘Tootie’ Heath (d). May 1974.

Kenny Drew said (1979):
‘A good piano, good food and people, no prejudice, and a real appreciation of what we do. If anyone asks why I’ve been here [in Denmark] so long, all they have to do is visit.’

Drew’s first influences were Art Tatum and Fats Waller, and these were so deeply inscribed that later contact with Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk wasn’t overwhelming. The gracious New Yorker spent many years in Europe, first in Paris, and later in Copenhagen in a long-lasting and well-documented residency at the Jazzhus Montmartre. He made a great many records and it may sound like damning with faint praise to say that they are
consistent, low-key and rarely startling, in the sense that they continue in the same furrow he established in the ’50s. The most sensitive of accompanists, Drew is sometimes understated as a solo performer and there are passages on all the records where little of moment occurs. And yet what does happen has a graciousness that is often more inspiring than showy pianism.

Essentially a group player, he benefited hugely from the presence of able – and sometimes brilliant – sidemen. He’d been in Copenhagen for a decade when
Dark And Beautiful
was recorded and the trio was an established draw at the Montmartre. This was their first recording in that format, two sessions on consecutive days, and originally released as two LPs. The playing time generous but not a whit too long. Drew’s ‘Dark Beauty’ is a lovely line that should be better known, limpid and angular by turns. Brubeck’s ‘In Your Own Sweet Way’ is a quiet meditation, ‘A Stranger In Paradise’ avoids the slushiness that tune sometimes conjures up, and the closing ‘Oleo’ is confirmation, if it were needed, that Drew can swing with the best of them on a bop staple. His phrasing is almost conversational, but never prosaic, and the solo development has a logic that leaves no loose ends but doesn’t sound pat or contrived.

JOHN ABERCROMBIE

Born 16 December 1944, Portchester, New York

Guitar

Timeless

ECM 829114-2

Abercrombie; Jan Hammer (p, ky); Jack DeJohnette (d). June 1974.

John Abercrombie said (1999):
‘It was quite a freedom to start playing things
rubato
, or more like a classical player. It isn’t something you do on the blues circuit! I hadn’t done it much until I started to record with Manfred Eicher at ECM. But I still – I guess – just want to play like Wes Montgomery or Jim Hall. They’re my models.’

Like several other gifted young guitarists, Abercrombie got a professional start – after four years at Berklee – with Chico Hamilton’s group, before going on to record with drummer Billy Cobham. His characteristic style, which some would regard as definitive of the ECM label, is limpid and evocative and makes imaginative use of electronic sweetening and extensions. There’s more filigree than flash on the early
Timeless
, and it’s left to DeJohnette (the first of several tough-minded drummers Abercrombie has used as foils) and the underrated Hammer to give the set some propulsion. Abercrombie plays with a tremendous ear for dynamics, helped, no doubt, by ECM production. The two long tracks are Hammer’s ‘Lungs’ and the closing title-track, both of which extend the improvisations. The remaining tunes, including the lovely ‘Ralph’s Piano Waltz’, are much shorter and more songlike but Abercrombie gives each of them a weight of dramatic interest that exceeds their modest durations. There’s always more to Abercrombie’s playing than meets the ear and even fleeting detail is made to carry some expressive baggage, particularly on ‘Timeless’ itself. It’s a session that continues to grow with familiarity, an altogether tougher and more resilient label debut than anyone remembers.

GIL EVANS
^&

Born Ian Ernest Gilmore Green, 13 May 1912, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; died 20 May 1988, Cuernavaca, Mexico

Arranger, keyboards

Plays The Music Of Jimi Hendrix

RCA Victor 09026 638722

Evans; Hannibal Marvin Peterson, Lew Soloff (t, flhn); Tom Malone (tb, btb, f, syn); Peter Gordon (frhn); Pete Levin (frhn, syn); Howard Johnson (tba, bcl, b); David Sanborn (ss, as, f); Billy Harper (ts, f); Trevor Koehler (as, ts, f); David Horovitz (p, syn); Paul Metzke (syn, b); Joe Gallivan (syn, perc); John Abercrombie, Ryo Kawasaki, Keith Loving (g); Warren Smith (vib, mar); Don Pate, Michael Moore (b); Bruce Ditmas (d); Sue Evans (perc). June 1974, March 1975.

Gil Evans said (1998):
‘I don’t think of his [Hendrix’s] music as belonging to a particular time. He was a great composer, and would have been whenever he chose to come to earth.’

Recognition came late for Evans. There was even a struggle to claw back royalties for his pioneering work with (or was that
for
?) Miles Davis. But the growing celebrity of Evans’s regular Monday night stint at Sweet Basil established him as one of the music’s elder statesmen. It didn’t hurt that he was also hip to at least one composer that the young people had heard of. Arguably, Gary Burton was the one who first started to mix rock music with jazz procedures, but, in his championing of Hendrix, Evans refreshed the big-band repertoire for a second time in his career.

The great guitarist’s ‘Little Wing’ became a signature-piece, and it’s difficult to tell, while listening to these powerful tracks, whether the quality of the music is testimony to Hendrix’s genius as a composer or Evans’s as an arranger, or to some strange posthumous communication between the two. Some of the tunes are inevitably moved a long way from source; ‘1983 A Merman I Should Turn To Be’ takes on a new character, as does ‘Up From The Skies’, two takes of which are included. ‘Little Wing’ remains the touchstone, though, and the recording, from spring 1975, is superb.

& See also
Out Of The Cool
(1960; p. 261)

PAUL RUTHERFORD
^&

Born 29 February 1940, London; died 5 August 2007, London

Trombone, euphonium

The Gentle Harm Of The Bourgeoisie

Emanem 4019

Rutherford (tb solo). July–December 1974.

Trombonist Gail Brand says:
‘Paul Rutherford opened up the trombone and the listener to infinite possibilities of sound which many musicians, not just trombonists, found liberating, beautiful and dynamic. On “Osirac Senol” Paul plays without mutes or effects, revealing that vibrant, orthodox sound, which scotches any sense that Paul was only a master of the left-field approach.’

The trombone is said to be the musical instrument closest to the human voice. When Paul Rutherford spoke or sang through his horn, it sounded like no instrument anyone had ever heard, a sound as lyrically potent and as expressively stressed and freighted as a whole ensemble. Rutherford played in RAF bands, then studied at the Guildhall. Notwithstanding his role as a prime mover in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Iskra 1903 and the London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra, he remained deeply rooted in the blues and the straight-ahead jazz on which he had cut his teeth. In addition, Rutherford showed a lifelong interest in language and in political thought and action, concerns which to a degree distanced him from his contemporaries, though his own rebarbative personality and proneness to depression also had an impact. It may fairly be said that, more than most of them, Rutherford
expressed himself most coherently in solo performance, using mutes and other devices, and often utilizing ‘multiphonics’, where he played and sang simultaneously.

The pieces that are documented on
The Gentle Harm Of The Bourgeoisie
, are as wryly subversive as the title suggests. Devotedly recorded by Martin Davidson at the Unity Theatre, it’s now infinitely more listenable. Rutherford’s grasp of multiphonics is already assured; additional sounds and overtones come from mutes, microphone knocks and from spittle in the horn, part and parcel of the process. On ‘The Funny Side Of Discreet’, the use of effects is taken to the point of comic parody, and then miraculously beyond. Rutherford never deploys technique for its own sake, but always musically. ‘Osirac Senol’, recorded a week before Christmas 1974, is very different, in that it scarcely steps outside orthodox brass-playing. In the process, though, it attains a kind of mournful transcendence, a warped chorale that conjures up Rutherford’s solid grounding in classical technique. A mournful Grock with a strong fire of political passion, Rutherford eventually self-destructed, but not before creating a body of work unsurpassed for intellectual spontaneity and sheer sonic impact.

& See also
Gheim
(1983; p. 480)

ANTHONY BRAXTON
^&

Born 4 June 1945, Chicago, Illinois

Saxophones, clarinets, flutes, piano

New York, Fall 1974

Arista AL 4302 / Mosaic MD8 242

Braxton; Kenny Wheeler (t, flhn); Julius Hemphill (as); Oliver Lake (ts); Hamiet Bluiett (bs); Leroy Jenkins (vn); Richard Teitelbaum (syn); Dave Holland (b); Jerome Cooper (d). September & October 1974.

Saxophonist and Braxton student Steve Lehman says:
‘When I first heard it I was stunned. I didn’t know that you could articulate new kinds of saxophone-playing and of small-group writing while paying homage to Parker and Ornette. That you could structure a piece to compress and expand at the same time. Or that you could include electronic music, sax quartets, and blistering individual solos on the same recording. It continues to reshape our understanding of what a small-group recording can be.’

Anthony Braxton’s vast discography presents a problem. How to represent such a huge body of work without over-representing one – albeit exceptional – artist. We have chosen to pick out three relatively early works, one justifiably famous mid-period one (the ‘classic’ quartet on its breakthrough European tour) and one very recent and encyclopedic live documentation that saw Braxton ringing down the curtain on one phase of work and embarking on another. Such generous coverage would only be justified by work of the highest quality and a career that shows a significant evolution, and we are persuaded that this is the case, guiltily secure in the awareness that at least another dozen Braxton CDs, particularly from the ’80s and ’90s, might just as easily stake a claim on our attention.

The story of Braxton’s time at Arista has been told – and told well – by Bill Shoemaker and others. Ironically, for all their importance, these records were out of circulation for nearly 30 years until restored by Mosaic. Three of the cuts are by the quartet with Jenkins as second lead voice. ‘Composition No. 23b’ finds Braxton in boppish mode, reaching back to Charlie Parker in what he describes as an ‘atonal version of “Donna Lee” ’, while ‘Nos. 23c & d’ explore aspects of metre and tone duration, the former track accumulating detail like a snowball. Coming from a different composition group is a duet with Teitelbaum, which shows that Braxton, like Miles Davis, had been listening to Stockhausen; Teitelbaum would become a regular collaborator. The remaining material is played with three
quarters of what would become the World Saxophone Quartet. Braxton plays everything from sopranino saxophone (with the WSQ men) to a contrabass clarinet, one of the clearest early public showings of his multi-instrumentalism. He plays with consistent fire on all of them, scorching on alto, drily effective on clarinet with the synthist and eerily out-of-body on flute, as if he were channelling Eric Dolphy.

Sometimes dismissed as Braxton lite, or performed with the requirements of a commercial label too much in mind,
NY, Fall 1974
is an excellent entry point into Braxton’s music. Much as
For Alto
laid out his personal idiom (if the subjectivity is there at all), this one lays the foundations of what the composer himself would describe as his ‘vibrational philosophy’. More ambitious and controversial work would follow shortly.

& See also
For Alto
(1968; p. 355),
Creative Orchestra Music
(1976; p. 431),
Quartet (London / … Birmingham / … Coventry) 1985
(1985; p. 495),
Nine Compositions (Iridium) 2006
(2006; p. 714)

MODERN JAZZ QUARTET
^&

Formed 1954

Group

The Complete Last Concert

Atlantic 81976 2CD

John Lewis (p); Milt Jackson (vib); Percy Heath (b); Connie Kay (d). November 1974.

British broadcaster Benny Green dismissed them as:
‘four guys dressed like head-waiters, standing around, hitting things’
, while original drummer Kenny Clarke decided he no longer wanted to play,
‘eighteenth-century drawing room music’.

The MJQ’s celebrity and ‘crossover’ appeal was so great, the group even made an appearance on the Beatles’ Apple label, but it couldn’t go on for ever. Given the closeness of the relationship, the prolific output and the separate ambitions of the members, it wasn’t entirely surprising that the four should have decided after more than 20 years as a unit to give their individual careers a little space and air. What was billed as the last concert was very much considered to be just that, rather than a shrewd marketing ploy at the start of a short sabbatical. It would be wrong to say that the music was inspired or more intense than usual, but certainly these are all very fine performances. The short bebop section in the middle – ‘Confirmation’, ‘Round Midnight’, ‘A Night In Tunisia’ – gives the lie to any prejudice that the group were uneasy with those jaggy changes and rhythms; they had, after all, cut their professional teeth in such a context. But it’s the other, more familiar MJQ material that is most impressive. There are several blues pieces carried over from the previous year’s
Blues On Bach
, versions of ‘The Golden Striker’ and ‘Cylinder’, and a few of Lewis’s more impressionistic compositions, such as ‘Skating In Central Park’ and ‘Jasmine Tree’. One additional outstanding performance was the arrangement of Rodrigo’s Miles-blessed ‘Concierto De Aranjuez’.