The Penguin Jazz Guide (143 page)

Piano

The Dark Tree

hatOLOGY 2-2053 2CD

Tapscott; John Carter (cl); Cecil McBee (b); Andrew Cyrille (d). December 1989.

Arthur Blythe said (1989):
‘I met him at a friend’s house, where he was rehearsing with his trio and asked me to sit in. Making contact with Horace Tapscott was like discovering your own people after wandering in the desert. He had that quality about him, to make you belong.’

Tapscott’s music and his views on integration and racial equality cannot be separated, and yet he rarely composed anything resembling programme or agit-prop music, preferring to let the free flow of creativity do the job of discourse for him. Inevitably, given his views, he was held apart from the critical mainstream and, despite a substantial body of recording from the time of his comeback in 1978 onwards, most of it was for his own Nimbus label. He remains, perversely, best known for the compositions and arrangements on Sonny Criss’s 1968 album
Sonny’s Dream
. In 1961, Tapscott helped establish the Union Of God’s Musicians And Artists’ Ascension, out of which grew the Pan-Afrikan People’s Arkestra, both attempts to find uncompromised work for talented, young black musicians. Their work is fiercely disciplined, built up out of deceptively simple elements, but with subtle polychordal shadings that reflect Tapscott’s solo work and his intriguing duos and trios with members of the PAPA. Much of this work was issued on his own Nimbus label.

The Dark Tree
is special in having two neglected giants of modern jazz working with instinctive sympathy, intelligence and bottomless expression. Both pianist and clarinettist are entirely at ease with brusque, angular melodies and more sweepingly lyrical passages. Huge ostinato passages provide a base for fiery improvisation, and while the music is ‘avant-garde’ in sensibility, it is also accessible, in the way of saxophonist Arthur Blythe’s music. Tunes like ‘Lino’s Pad’ exploit unusual and often difficult time-signatures, combinations of metre which present no problems to players as deft as McBee and Cyrille. Alternative versions of ‘The Dark Tree’ can be found elsewhere, on the trio disc
Live At Lobero: Volume 1
and on a valuable Novus/BMG compilation called
West Coast Hot
which pops up every now and then and is well worth the search. The two versions here, though, are the key statements, along with the wonderful, almost Dolphy-like ‘Sketches Of Drunken Mary’; one can’t say ‘definitive’ of pieces that are defined by their fugitive, experimental quality, but the interplay between Carter and Tapscott is astonishing and one’s only regret is that they didn’t choose to make some duo versions as well.

LOUIS HAYES

Born 31 May 1937, Detroit, Michigan

Drums

Una Max

Steeplechase SCCD 31263

Hayes; Charles Tolliver (t); Gerald Hayes (as); John Stubblefield (ts); Kenny Barron (p); Clint Houston (b). December 1989.

Louis Hayes said (1999):
‘I think maybe playing drums is a hereditary thing, like it might be in an African village. I was first taught by my father, Louis Hayes Sr. There was a piano at home as well, and that helps shape your voice, whatever the instrument you choose.’

Louis Hayes remains one of the master hard-bop drummers, a key figure in the Detroit community and a player whose undemonstrative virtue of playing for the band has told against his wider reputation. Whether working with Cannonball Adderley or Oscar Peterson, he’s often the most interesting thing about the music, but without pushing himself into the foreground.

A fine sequence of records for Steeplechase found him making a serious mark as leader for the first time. Besides Hayes’s own playing the first point of interest is the return of Tolliver to active duty after a number of years away. He sounds rusty on
Light And Lively
, but the two later records are better showcases for him. Watson is a shade too slick for the company on the first record, but
Una Max
– it’s a nice pun – is a record that grows in stature on repeated hearings: Stubblefield is in the mood for some grand oratory, Tolliver’s spacious solos accumulate strength, and the rougher, unpredictable alto of the younger Hayes is an interesting wild card. ‘Geri’ and ‘Saudade’ see the leader working in an approximate samba rhythm and sounding completely across it. The title-track is presumably dedicated to Max Roach and, if so, it’s as generous and as challenging a tribute as can be imagined, lots of subtle play on three-against-four, lots of room for improvisation even in a quite modest span.

KENNY WHEELER

Born 14 January 1930, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Trumpet, flugelhorn

Music For Large And Small Ensembles

ECM 843152-2 2CD

Wheeler; Alan Downey, Ian Hamer, Henry Lowther, Derek Watkins (t); Hugh Fraser, Dave Horler, Chris Pyne, Paul Rutherford (tb); Julian Argüelles, Duncan Lamont, Evan Parker, Ray Warleigh (sax); Stan Sulzmann (ts, f); John Taylor (p); John Abercrombie (g); Dave Holland (b); Peter Erskine (d); Norma Winstone (v). January 1990.

Norma Winstone said (1999):
‘Kenny just isn’t interested in recognition. I’ve never known anyone so wholly concentrated on the music. Nothing else seems to matter to him.’

The brilliant Canadian moved to London in the ’50s and after some trad work very quickly became associated with the avant-garde, playing in some of the most advanced groups of the day. It was clear, though, that his limpid, very pure tone was also amenable to other styles and that his interests veered to composition every bit as much as to free improvisation. Wheeler’s body of work for the ECM label is definitive of its devotion to advanced musical language, great purity of sound and a constant trade-off between experimentalism and accessibility. The early ECM records –
Gnu Nigh
and
Deer Wan
– have a rare beauty that remains consistent through the following years, but for sheer sophistication of thought and elegance of execution they pall in comparison to the more ambitious later work.

Music For Large And Small Ensembles
contains some of Wheeler’s most distinctive scores and is perhaps the best place to gain an understanding of how Wheeler’s particular grasp of tonality and instrumental colour works in a mixture of scored and improvised settings. As in Azimuth, he uses Norma Winstone’s voice to increase the chromaticism of his arrangements and further humanize unwontedly personal and self-revealing pieces, full of folk echoes and deeply embedded North American themes (the ‘Opening’ to ‘Sweet Time Suite’ sounds like a variant on a cowboy tune, and there’s a wide-open quality to the voicings that can be heard in fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen’s eclectic jazz–buckskin–
musette
–rock syntheses). The trios that conclude disc two (there are also three duets which do not involve Wheeler as a player) are closer to his free-abstract work than to the thematic improvisations on his best-known ECM records.

OSCAR PETERSON
^&

Born 15 August 1925, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; died 23 December 2007, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Piano, organ, other keyboards

The Legendary Live At The Blue Note

Telarc 8617 4CD

Peterson; Herb Ellis (g); Ray Brown (b); Bobby Durham (d). March 1990.

Ray Brown said (1994):
‘For Oscar, ageing just meant letting younger pianists catch up. He has had his problems over the years, but nothing seems to dent his confidence or slow him down.’

Whatever stiffness crept into Peterson’s fingers in later years – even before the stroke that interrupted his activities for a time – has served only to increase the feeling he injects into his playing. It’s hard to relate ‘Peace For South Africa’ on the first volume of this set to the torrents of sound he conjured up in his big-hall Pablo days. This is quieter, more intimate and more thoughtful, and the ballad medley at its centre shows genuine melodic inventiveness. A must for Peterson fans, and ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ offers a good – albeit second-gear – impression of the Tatum-derived technique which overlaid his earlier commitment to Nat Cole.

The second volume was recorded the following night. It’s a more varied, less familiar programme, but the playing is pretty much by the numbers. The ‘final’ visit and the almost inevitable
Encore
volume are even more subdued and formal. The elegance of Peterson’s segues begins to pall long before the end. Fans will value ‘It Never Entered My Mind’ on the last but one, but more casual purchasers might want to plump for the first volume, simply
Live At The Blue Note
, and leave it at that, even if it means missing the
Encore
performance of ‘I Wished On The Moon’, which, though brief, is exquisite.

& See also
At The Stratford Shakespearean Festival
(1956; p. 193),
Night Train
(1962; p. 290),
My Favorite Instrument
(1968; p. 351)

ODEAN POPE

Born 24 October 1938, Ninety Six, South Carolina

Tenor saxophone

The Ponderer

Soul Note 121229

Pope; Byard Lancaster, Julian Pressley, Sam Reed (as); Glenn Guidone, Bob Howell, Middy Middleton, John Simon (ts); Joe Sudler (bs); Eddie Green (p); Tyrone Brown, Gerald Veasley (b); Cornell Rochester (d). March 1990.

Odean Pope says:
‘I remember going to the studio to record in Brooklyn very early on a bright sunny day and feeling inspired by the musicians’ upbeat expressions. There was a great spirit in the recording studio because the producer from Milan was preparing to put our music out to the world. We had rehearsed for weeks, on a high. However, I have to tell you that
The Ponderer
may be the least favourite of my CDs! I am much more excited by my current work.’

‘I tried to imagine what it would sound like if I played at the bottom range of my instrument like Coltrane played at the top.’ This is pretty much what Odean Pope has done. If he sounds less like his fellow Philadelphian (and native North Carolinian) and more like Sam Rivers or even Jimmy Heath, Pope is nevertheless profoundly influenced by some less exposed
aspects of Coltrane’s approach: its concern with ensembles rather than its torrential outpouring of personal feelings, its rootedness rather than its God-bothering excursions. Pope is a profoundly modest individual who aligns himself with the pianist Ibn Hassan Ali’s belief that Coltrane’s music is a not quite conscious expression of some higher state. Behind Pope’s Saxophone Choir – it succeeded Catalyst, an adventurous group with some crossover potential – is the fiery, inchoate music of
Ascension
, but also something of the voicing of the later Ellington orchestras, as they negotiated with ‘world music’.

Pope rehearses the Choir meticulously and then records live in the studio with no overdubs. The charts are intricate and demanding, a broad orchestral sound punctuated with episodes from a roster of players who, like the leader himself, are not well-known outside this context. Byard Lancaster, also a Philadelphian, has an earthy wail redolent of Jackie McLean and Ornette Coleman, and he blends perfectly with Pope’s multiphonics on ‘The Ponderer’, title-piece on the best of the Choir albums. Like the others, it has a strong internal consistency and is almost written like a continuous symphonic work, from ‘Overture’ to the Spanish-tinged ‘Phrygian Love Theme’. Eddie Brown’s ‘One For Bubba’ serves as an encore piece and a chance for the rhythm section to do its stuff. There are even hints of Ornette’s ‘harmolodic’ approach in some of Pope’s layering of rhythmic figures and melodies. He has such generous gifts as a composer and such a distinctive sound and solo style that it is extraordinary he is not more widely known outside his circle. This record, and even the ambitious but flawed
Epitome
from 1993, documents a bold and rewarding experiment in modern jazz.

EITHER/ORCHESTRA

Formed December 1985 by Russ Gershon, born 11 August 1959, New York City

Group

The Calculus Of Pleasure

Accurate ACC-3252

Tom Halter, John Carlson (t, flhn); Russell Jewell, Curtis Hasselbring (tb); Rob Rawlings (as); Douglas Yates (as, bs); Russ Gershon (ss, ts); Charlie Kohlhase (bs); John Medeski (ky); Mark Sandman (g); Bob Nieske (b); Matt Wilson (d). April–June 1990.

Russ Gershon looks back:
‘Even after 20 years, it’s no surprise what a broad and deep record it remains. It would be quite impossible now to get that talent into a couple of vans for six weeks, but that’s how we got so comfortable with those complicated charts that we could play them like falling out of bed. We were lucky that everybody was at a place in their lives to be able to be so devoted to this music – and each other.’

A modest-sized big band full of outsize talents, Either/Orchestra has for 25 years bucked the almost impossible restrictions that modern budgets set for a band of this kind. It’s a heroic accomplishment that the group is as swinging, exciting and cheerfully cutting-edge as it is, and its importance is underlined by the number of future stars who have passed through its ranks (invidious to choose only three, but Andrew D’Angelo, John Medeski and Matt Wilson immediately spring to mind). Gershon has shrewdly maintained Accurate Records as an outlet for the group. It isn’t that other imprints wouldn’t have taken them on, but they would certainly have vetoed some of E/O’s more venturesome projects: how many majors would have signed off on
More Beautiful Than Death
, the group’s 1999 treatment of Ethiopian pop?