The Penguin Jazz Guide (37 page)

Jackie Cain said (1981):
‘Charlie was the star and resented anyone else getting the spotlight, which is a difficult situation when you are a singer. I think he also disliked the whole thing with [my husband] Roy [Kral], for the same reason. But he was a fantastic musician and it’s sad that he’s been forgotten.’

Ventura worked a day job in a navy yard but jammed after hours with local players. He worked with Gene Krupa during the war years, then ran his own big band and small group, as well as making Jazz At The Philharmonic appearances. His own ‘Bop For The People’ projects ran from the late ’40s. Ventura was very popular in his day, but has since been entirely marginalized in jazz’s history. Unfairly so, on the evidence of the early sessions, since his playing had chutzpah and skill, even if he was entirely derivative of Coleman Hawkins and took on the bop vernacular as only a sideline to his main swing language.

There is plenty of Ventura around to choose from, thanks to Classics’ documentation and a fine Properbox,
Bop For The People
, but the famous Pasadena concert is a good place to start, not least because it features rising stars Roy Kral and Jackie Cain, who would achieve stardom on their own account subsequent to this, somewhat to Ventura’s chagrin. It was a famous occasion at the Civic Auditorium. Ventura’s introduction of the musicians (to ‘The Peanut Vendor’) gives some indication of this group’s crowd-pulling quality. All the obvious stuff is featured, including ‘High On An Open Mike’, ‘How High The Moon’, ‘Body And Soul’, ‘Lullaby In Rhythm’ and ‘Birdland’, standard Bop For The People fare delivered by the septet with carefully drilled swing. A nicely preserved moment.

LEE KONITZ
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Born 12 October 1927, Chicago, Illinois

Alto and soprano saxophones

Subconscious-Lee

Original Jazz Classics OJC 186

Konitz; Warne Marsh (ts); Sal Mosca, Lennie Tristano (p); Billy Bauer (g); Arnold Fishkind (b); Denzil Best, Shelly Manne, Jeff Morton (d). January 1949–April 1950.

Lee Konitz said (1987):
‘Everyone thinks that what I learned from Lennie [Tristano] was harmony and order, control! discipline!! What I got from Lennie was permission to be free.’

The redoubtable Chicagoan came under the influence of Lennie Tristano early and along with Warne Marsh shaped the definitive cool saxophone sound (he was a part of the
Birth Of The Cool
project and won Miles’s always begrudged admiration), but later he assimilated bebop and free playing as well. Konitz is one of the most extensively documented of contemporary musicians and his published conversations with British critic Andy Hamilton are required reading.

Astonishingly, Konitz spent what should have been his most productive years in limbo: teaching, unrecognized by critics; unrecorded by all but small European labels. Perhaps because of his isolation, Konitz has routinely exposed himself in the most ruthlessly unpredictable musical settings.
Subconscious-Lee
brings together material made under Lennie Tristano’s leadership in January 1949, with quartet and quintet tracks made a few months later, featuring Marsh on ‘Tautology’ and four other numbers. The alto sound is light, slightly dry and completely unlike the dominant Charlie Parker model of the time. The remaining group material with Mosca and Bauer is less compelling, but there is a fine duo with the guitarist on ‘Rebecca’ which anticipates later intimacies.

& See also
Motion
(1961; p. 278),
Star Eyes
(1983; p. 483)

MILT JACKSON
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Born 1 January 1923, Detroit, Michigan; died 9 October 1999, New York City

Vibraphone

Wizard Of The Vibes

Blue Note 32140–2

Jackson; Lou Donaldson (as); Thelonious Monk, John Lewis (p); Percy Heath, John Simmons, Al McKibbon (b); Shadow Wilson, Kenny Clarke (d); Kenny Hagood (v). July 1948–April 1952.

Milt Jackson said (1982):
‘I usually like a slow vibrato, the kind you could get before single-speed instruments started coming out. I think that’s the key thing for me, getting the vibrato just right.’

‘Bags’ moved to New York after his studies and joined Dizzy Gillespie at the start of recorded bebop in 1945. He was with various leaders before rejoining Gillespie in 1950, after which he formed his own quartet with members of the Gillespie rhythm section; it was this group that became the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1954 and occupied much of Jackson’s energy for the rest of his life.

Playing with two mallets – most contemporary players have followed Gary Burton in playing with four – he created rapid bop lines with a ringing tonality that seemed to sweep
overtones across everything in the line, creating a one-man-band effect that was all too rarely exploited solo.

Eight of the Blue Note tracks can also be found on records under Monk’s name, while a quintet date with Donaldson and what was to become the MJQ was first issued as a 10-inch LP. The tracks with Monk are classics, rising to their greatest height with the riveting version of ‘I Mean You’. The other date, though at a less exalted level, finds Jackson quite at home with Donaldson’s uncomplicated, bluesy bop, and ‘Lillie’ is a handsome ballad feature for the vibesman. ‘Bags’ Groove’, which became a kind of signature tune, receives a fairly definitive reading. Donaldson’s presence keeps up the blues quotient, something that was always central to Jackson’s art. Few players remained so close to that spirit, even if they weren’t playing a strict blues sequence. The Rudy Van Gelder edition of this material adds five alternative takes, not one of them mere padding.

& See also
Bags Meets Wes
(1961; p. 281),
At The Kosei Nenkin
(1976; p. 432);
MODERN JAZZ QUARTET, Dedicated To Connie
(1960; p. 254),
The Complete Last Concert
(1974; p. 417)

TURK MURPHY

Born Melvin Edward Alton Murphy, 16 December 1915, Palermo, California

Trombone

Turk Murphy’s Jazz Band Favourites

Good Time Jazz 60-011

Murphy; Don Kinch, Bob Scobey (t); Bill Napier, Skippy Anderson, Bob Helm (cl); Burt Bales, Wally Rose (p); Bill Newman (g, bj); Pat Patton, Dick Lammi, Harry Mordecai (bj); Squire Gersback, George Bruns (b, tba); Stan Ward, Johnny Brent (d). 1949–1951.

Turk Murphy said (1981):
‘The modern way is to consider ensemble playing as a kind of necessary evil, something that needs to be endured until it’s time for your own solo. Few even professional musicians understand the very precise harmonic co-ordination that you need in the front line, and the instrument that takes the brunt of demand is always the trombone.’

Murphy’s music might have been more credible if he hadn’t gone on making it for so long. At the time of his earliest recordings, when he was a member of the Lu Watters circle, the Californian traditional jazz movement had some nous as revivalists of music which had lain, unjustly neglected, for many years. In that light, this Good Time Jazz compilation – there’s another, similar one too – is both interesting and enjoyable, hammy though much of the playing is, and often painfully (as opposed to authentically) untutored, though the intention doubtless was to reproduce a group sound that reflected the values of the early bands. At this early stage, with the traditional jazz revival standing at an opposite tack to modernism, Murphy’s work made a good deal of polemical sense, if nothing else. But after more than 20 years of this kind of thing, Murphy’s one-track traditionalism began to sound tiresome and soulless.

FLIP PHILLIPS

Born Joseph Edward Fillipelli, 26 February 1915, Brooklyn, New York; died 17 August 2001, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Tenor saxophone

Flippin’ The Blues

Ocium 0011

Phillips; Harry Edison (t); Bill Harris (tb); Hank Jones, Dick Hyman, Lou Levy (p); Billy Bauer (g); Ray Brown, Gene Ramey, Jimmy Woode (b); Buddy Rich, Jo Jones, Joe McDonald (d). December 1949–August 1951.

Flip Phillips said (1990):
‘Who is it who describes themselves as “the best of the best”? Is it the Marines? Jazz At The Philharmonic was like that: the best … the … best players in the world. I used to be asked if I felt I’d had enough coverage on my own account. Working in that company was career enough for me.’

Phillips had a rather uneventful time in big bands, before joining Woody Herman in 1944. He then became closely identified with Jazz At The Philharmonic, jousting in an old-fashioned style far removed from the Lester Young consensus. His famous solo on ‘Perdido’ was one of JATP’s defining moments. From 1960 he was living and working outside music in Florida, although he still played gigs and there have been a few albums since 1981, when he broke his studio fast.

Much of his work for Norman Granz’s Clef label has been gathered together by the Ocium imprint, who always add a video or enhanced element to their packages. Not many listeners will want all that stuff, but the originals are long gone, so we have to recommend a compilation. While he was best known for his Jazz At The Phil blowouts, Flip displays a much more amenable and classic manner on most of the Ocium tracks. He was perfectly at ease in hardcore bebop company like Howard McGhee and Sonny Criss, but he also cruises along in the company of such players as Billy Butterfield, Harry Edison and Charlie Shavers and plays ballads in the lustiest Hawkins manner.

Of the Ocium releases, we slightly prefer
Flippin’ The Blues
as the most musicianly. It pairs Flip with Bill Harris on ten bop-influenced titles, some with Sweets and Billy Bauer as part of a septet, other later cuts from August 1951 with Dick Hyman comping. Anyone unfamiliar with Phillips’s work will be surprised how much it stands apart from anything else happening at the time. He’s not so much a forgotten man as one who’s never been readily pigeonholed and is therefore frequently ignored.

BUD POWELL
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Born Earl Rudolph Powell, 27 September 1924, Harlem, New York; died 31 July 1966, New York City

Piano

The Amazing Bud Powell: Volumes 1 & 2

Blue Note 781503 / 781504

Powell; Fats Navarro (t); Sonny Rollins (ts); Tommy Potter, George Duvivier, Curley Russell (b); Roy Haynes, Max Roach, Art Taylor (d). August 1949, May 1951, August 1953.

Kenny Drew said (1979):
‘As years go by, Bud Powell seems greater and greater. I know he’s admired, and some people revere him, but I don’t think he gets his due in the history of this music.’

From the age of 16, sponsored by Thelonious Monk, Powell was jamming at Minton’s Playhouse. Though he adopted certain devices of the older piano-players Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson, Monk was his main influence, using unfamiliar intervals and adapting saxophone-lines. For much of his life, he suffered mental disturbance, possibly innate, but exacerbated by a racially motivated beating in 1945, from which he never recovered.

The chronology of Bud Powell’s issued records is slightly complex. It was an intermittent career and Bud had bad performing nerves, so it’s sometimes difficult to follow any ‘development’. The sheer erratic brilliance of the Blue Note recordings has tended to cloud the
outstanding work that Powell did for Norman Granz, but in the final balance the Blue Notes are remarkable. Despite the linking name and numbered format and the existence of a magnificent boxed set, the Blue Note CD transfers can quite comfortably be bought separately; indeed
Volume 1
– with its multiple takes of ‘Bouncing With Bud’ (one of which was previously on
The Fabulous Fats Navarro: Volume 1
), the bebop classic ‘Ornithology’ and Powell’s own barometric ‘Un Poco Loco’ – was out of print for some time, and the fourth volume was issued only in 1987.
Volume 3
and
Volume 4
have to some extent been superseded by the magnificent
Complete
, which is a must for every Powell enthusiast, though perhaps too dark and troublous (as well as expensive) for the more casual listener. The multiple takes of ‘Un Poco Loco’ are the best place for more detailed study of Powell’s restless pursuit of an increasingly fugitive musical epiphany. ‘Parisian Thoroughfare’ contrasts sharply with an earlier unaccompanied version, on Verve, and is much tighter; Powell had a more than adequate left hand; however, since he conceived of his music in a complex, multilinear way, bass and drums were usually required – not for support, but to help proliferate lines of attack. The quintet tracks are harshly tempered, but with hints of both joy and melancholy from all three front-men; Navarro’s almost hysterical edge is at its most effective, and Powell plays as if possessed.
Volume 2
, which includes solo material, contains one of the most famous Powell performances: the bizarre, self-penned ‘Glass Enclosure’, a brief but almost schizophrenically changeable piece. There are also alternative takes of ‘A Night In Tunisia’, ‘It Could Happen To You’, ‘Reets And I’ and ‘Collard Greens And Black Eyed Peas’ (better known as ‘Blues In The Closet’).

& See also
The Amazing Bud Powell: Volume 5 – The Scene Changes
(1958; p. 225)

MILES DAVIS
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