The Penguin Jazz Guide (150 page)

Redman’s first albums caused a sensation: few discs from this period have communicated such sheer joy in playing as these. Academically gifted, it looked for a time as though music might be a part-time avocation for him. Although he had already made some interesting sideman appearances, the saxophonist’s eponymous set was a stunning debut: a canny blend of bop, originals that don’t sound so much cobbled together as natural and unforced, standards (a very sober and straight ‘Body And Soul’), the odd tricky choice (Monk’s ‘Trinkle Tinkle’) and young man’s fancy (James Brown’s ‘I Got You (I Feel Good)’), all of it buoyed up
on the kind of playing that suggests an instant maturity. His lean tone turned out to be as limber or as weighty as he wished, his phrasing had plenty of spaces but could cruise at any bebop height, and his invention sounded unquenchable. The euphoric but controlled feeling extends to his sidemen, Hays, McBride and Hutchinson (two odd tracks were drafted in from other sessions). And it’s beautifully recorded, which is how you know it’s a modern record.

JOHN LINDBERG
^&

Born 16 March 1959, Royal Oak, Michigan

Double bass

Dodging Bullets

Black Saint 120108

Lindberg; Albert Mangelsdorff (tb); Eric Watson (p). June 1992.

John Lindberg says:
‘These were the first performances by this assemblage of three diverse yet kindred spirits. Seemingly effortless, magical and joyful moments unfolded one after another … and the session was swiftly done. Not much talking. Smiles all around.’

A member of the Human Arts Ensemble at just 19 and of Anthony Braxton’s quartet shortly after, Lindberg was also a founding member of the String Trio Of New York, one of the most distinctive and innovative standing groups in modern jazz. His solo output has been steady and impressive, perhaps less showy and innovative than his fellow bassist Mark Dresser (also a sometime Braxton sideman) but with more sustained compositional muscle. Dresser uses a number of imaginative add-ons that significantly expand the language of the double bass; Lindberg on the other hand sustains the instrument’s core values and strengths, producing a big, stringy sound that first came to wider notice on an early solo recording,
Comin’ And Goin’
, for the Leo label.

He made his Black Saint debut with
Dimenson 5
in 1981 and followed up with the fine
Give And Take
and the ambitious
Trilogy Of Works For Eleven Instruments.
A decade into his association with Giovanni Bonandrini’s imprint, he delivered an early masterwork with
Dodging Bullets
. With the addition of Ed Thigpen, this group made two more records for Black Saint, but neither of them – no blame attaches to the drummer – comes up to the joyous spontaneity and almost magical understanding of the first one. All three members take a recording credit, and Watson plays a closing solo version of Lindberg’s ‘Ceilings’, an unexpected but very effective end to the set. There are a couple of improvised numbers in the middle, gaspingly short but not a note too long. Mangelsdorff’s ‘The Horn Is A Lady’ and ‘Fersengeld’ are subtly done and what one takes from the very first track is an impression of three players comfortably bridging the avant-garde and jazz tradition. Lindberg went on to make an album that meditated on the legacy of Ives and Gottschalk. Those concerns aren’t far away here. In fact, Ives is a very good composer to keep in mind while listening to John Lindberg, the same couthy wit, the same structural daring, the same sense that everything is possible, but only within understood bounds. Exhilarating.

& See also
String Trio Of New York, Rebirth Of A Feeling
(1983; p. 483)

DAVE MCKENNA

Born 30 May 1930, Moonsocket, Rhode Island; died 18 October 2008, Moonsocket, Rhode Island

Piano

A Handful Of Stars

Concord CCD 4580

McKenna (p solo). June 1992.

Dave McKenna said (1986):
‘Someone praised my “technique”, but all I was doing was playing the song, and it needed all those things. I don’t think I have much technique, not like some of the great players and the new, good players. I just try to deliver the song I think I know.’

McKenna hulked over the keyboard, a big man with an imposing presence. One of the most dominant mainstream players on the scene, and his immense reach and two-handed style distributed theme statements across the width of the keyboard. He possibly quite rightly demurred at comments about his apparent virtuosity because often what he did was quite physical, flat-thumbing three notes at once in the middle of an otherwise open-plan passage, or playing a locked-hand accent that seems to interrupt a flowing passage of arpeggios. McKenna never sounded inept or amateurish, though. His improvisations proceeded with impressive logic.

He worked with Charlie Ventura, Boots Mussulli, Woody Herman and Gene Krupa, all situations that required a firm hand, and he was nearly 30 before he began recording on his own account. Concord took him up in a big way and Carl Jefferson allowed him to develop his favourite programmes of thematically related songs. These only look contrived on paper, like a ‘Knowledge Medley’ which takes in ‘Apple For The Teacher’, ‘I Didn’t Know What Time It Was’, ‘I Wish I Knew’, ‘You’ll Never Know’, and so on but work superbly in performance, where titles don’t really matter. McKenna’s attitude seemed to be that with so many great songs out there, one principle of organization was as good as any other. He gave Concord a set of Hoagy Carmichael tunes in 1983, an Arthur Schwartz tribute a little later. He did a Maybeck recital in that beautiful Berkeley hall, and then it began.

Our favourite of the medley-records is
A Handful Of Stars
, not because it’s meltingly romantic, but on the contrary because McKenna takes ‘Star Eyes’ at a clip and squeezes the mush out of others. His touch always seems appropriate to the moment, and the choice of material, which stretches to the Brazilian pop song ‘Estrela Estrela’ is always imaginative. The Concord catalogue is much reduced, and though the new owners have brought back some classic items, here’s one that cries out for reissue.

STEVE GROSSMAN

Born 18 January 1951, New York City

Tenor and soprano saxophones

I’m Confessin’

Dreyfus FDM 36902

Grossman; Harold Land (ts); Fred Henke (p); Reggie Johnson (b); Jimmy Cobb (d). June–July 1992.

Steve Grossman said (1993):
‘I got going on Charlie Parker when I was about eight years old. Then I started checking out John Coltrane, and that has continued pretty much ever since.’

Grossman was working with Miles Davis in his teens, making appearances on the Fillmore live records and the
Jack Johnson
sessions and it’s tempting to suggest that his career peaked too early. He has been out of the American loop for much of the time since, making his way in France and Italy, but rarely appearing in the US since the time of the French recording selected here. Though Miles edited out all his tenor solos, he has a prodigious command of
the bigger horn and a fearless energy, which puts him in the same class as Michael Brecker and Bill Evans, but a sometimes faceless facility can also make him appear as just another hired-gun Coltrane/Rollins disciple.

Persistence made Grossman into an impressive character. For consistency, he’s hard to beat, but if the sheer strength of his playing usually transcends banality, he seldom goes for broke either and the impression is of a very centred, very uncompetitive player, content to say what he says without bluster. It’s a rare quality. The difference here is in the calibre of his accompanists. This meeting with Land, which seems to have been reissued in 2007, is a relaxed affair. The older man settles Grossman into an easy groove, and there’s palpable enjoyment in his playing.

THOMAS CHAPIN

Born 9 March 1957, Manchester, Connecticut; died 13 February 1998, Providence, Rhode Island

Alto saxophone, flute, other saxophones

Night Bird Song

Knitting Factory KFRCD 240

Chapin; Mario Pavone (b); Michael Sarin (d). August–September 1992.

Mario Pavone remembers:
‘One chorus from Thomas contained as much info and soul as most players put out in a whole set. I recall an electrifying midnight performance in Portugal in 1994. After an hour and a half onstage the audience was going crazy. The promoter asks: “Can you calm them down?” Two concise ballad choruses from Thomas on his “Aeolus”. Complete satisfaction. We feasted until dawn with the entire village.’

Chapin’s first influences were R&B saxophone and the timbrally and tonally adventurous Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Through his short career, he experimented with saxophones outside the normal range, including a mezzo-soprano instrument in F. He was, though, primarily an alto player, with a wonderful ‘cry’ in his tone and, for all his musical and actual wanderings, a deep grounding in jazz and the blues.

Many of the early recordings drifted out of circulation even before Chapin succumbed to leukaemia, but there was a flurry of issues around his death and many of his earlier discs were reissued. Towards the end of his life, Chapin turned to a more meditative style, but there is energy aplenty on
Night Bird Song
. It was only released posthumously, having been recorded, mastered and even designed during Tom’s lifetime. The album is as tightly woven as the Panamanian
mola
cloth on the cover art. Three of the tunes – the title-track, ‘Alphaville’ and ‘Changes Two Tires’ – also appeared on a companion piece from 1996 called
Sky Piece
, which suggests how assiduously Chapin rethought and reworked his compositions. The former pair are welded together with a dark, almost chordal tonality on saxophone, supported by Pavone’s bass. ‘Cliff Island’ is played on sopranino, as is the cartoonish ‘Tweety’s Last Adventure’. Ever searching for new sounds, he blows a reedless alto on ‘The Roaring S’, but most moving of all is the flute track ‘Aeolus’, a soaring, anchored, paradoxical duet with Pavone, which half a decade later was to be the last piece he played in public.

LEROY JENKINS
^&

Born 11 March 1932, Chicago, Illinois; died 24 February 2007, New York City

Violin, viola

Solo

Lovely Music 134

Jenkins (vn solo). October 1992.

Leroy Jenkins said (1991):
‘Someone described us [Revolutionary Ensemble] as “ahead of our time”. I don’t think so, and, you know, we got work back then. It’s now, with Wynton Marsalis’ music defining what people think of as jazz, that things are difficult and hostile.’

Jenkins’s percussive, rasping delivery rarely departed from an identifiable tonal centre or melodic logic and had an almost classical sense of form, deriving from his early love of Jascha Heifetz. His preference is for looping statements, punctuated by abrupt rhythmic snaps. In jazz terms, the most obvious influence is Stuff Smith, but much of his language was made fresh in keeping with the self-determined spirit of AACM. He joined the organization on returning to Chicago after a period spent teaching in the South. He was later a founding member of two influential but short-lived groups, the Revolutionary Ensemble and Sting, the former a collaborative trio, the latter a vehicle for his own work.

It isn’t clear whether the solo record was a long-cherished plan or simply a reflection of how difficult it was to form lasting ensembles. There is a grizzled majesty to
Solo
, a confident conflation of traditions. Tackling ‘Giant Steps’ and Dizzy’s ‘Wouldn’t You’ on fiddle and viola bespeaks some courage, but Jenkins skates across those familiar harmonics with breathtaking ease. The recording is in close-up, an intimate glimpse of a master at work but, sadly, on his last surviving record.

& See also
REVOLUTIONARY ENSEMBLE, Revolutionary Ensemble
(1971; p. 388)

PHAROAH SANDERS
^&

Born Farrell Sanders, 13 October 1940, Little Rock, Arkansas

Tenor saxophone

Crescent With Love

Evidence ECD 22099 2CD

Sanders; William Henderson (p); Charles Fambrough (b); Sherman Ferguson (d). October 1992.

Pharoah Sanders said (1985):
‘John [Coltrane] never said much to me. We didn’t talk much about music, but sometimes he’d give me some little thing to work on, maybe a little bit of rhythm. And these things are turning up in my work now, unannounced, nearly 25 years after he passed.’

The 25th anniversary of Coltrane’s death spawned a rash of tribute albums, few of them as apostolically convincing as this. A perfectly balanced band, with Henderson steadily growing in stature and Fambrough showing once again what a responsive and intelligent player he can be in the right company. Five Coltrane tunes, opening with ‘Lonnie’s Lament’, then ‘Wise One’, ‘Naima’ and ‘Crescent’ and closing disc two with ‘After The Rain’, these interspersed with ‘Misty’, ‘Too Young To Go Steady’, ‘Feeling Good’, Pietro Piccioni’s ‘Light At The Edge Of The World’ and one original, Henderson’s ‘Softly For Shyla’. Sanders sounds thoughtful and even a little wistful, as befits a tribute to his friend, but he never lets his playing drift into sentiment. A strong, creative record, and one of the few of its type that doesn’t merely doff a cap to Coltrane but takes his music on a ways.