The Penguin Jazz Guide (42 page)

Which one to pick? To catch the excitement of these sessions, the best is
Volume 2
: a buzzing crowd, bandstands full of the hottest players; with 25 minutes of previously unreleased material, this one’s a best buy. Sound is at times more atmospheric than accurate, but it’s a terrific document of those sessions. The first volume is also excellent, with some fine work by Hawes. Watch out, too, for
Lighthouse At Laguna
, an off-territory appearance, and the good
Music For Lighthousekeeping.
Of Rumsey himself, it’s fair to say that neither Charles Mingus nor Paul Chambers lived in fear of his technique, but he made things happen like Eddie Condon in another place and earlier era and he’s a heroic figure for that alone.

GERRY MULLIGAN
^&

Born 6 April 1927, New York City; died 20 January 1996, Darien, Connecticut

Baritone and soprano saxophones, clarinet

The Original Quartet

Blue Note 94407-2 2CD

Mulligan; Chet Baker (t); Bob Whitlock, Carson Smith, Joe Mondragon (b); Chico Hamilton, Larry Bunker (d). August 1952–June 1953.

Gerry Mulligan said (1992):
‘It’s said that that group came about because there was no piano in the club we were about to play. That’s not the case: there was a piano there, but I decided not to use it.’

Mulligan coaxed pure poetry out of an apparently cumbersome horn, though he himself said he had always felt the baritone was perfectly balanced and easily manoeuvred. He made a precocious start, writing and arranging ‘Disc Jockey Jump’ for Gene Krupa, and his influence as a composer/arranger continued to be felt on the
Birth Of The Cool
project, nominally led by Miles Davis. The story behind Mulligan’s famous pianoless quartet with Chet Baker has been told so many times and in so many ways the details no longer matter. It was an influential group with a unique sound.

Everyone has his own version of how the quartet came to be – Chico Hamilton gives his own convincing, if self-serving account – but the audible reality is that Mulligan understood clearly that his baritone sound occupied sufficient of that middle-to-low register to be able to fill in that part of the sound, and touch in some implied harmonies as well. It became one of the epochal jazz groups, even if it had no such aspirations, formed for nothing more than a regular gig at The Haig (where some of the tracks were recorded) and even though many of its sessions were recorded quickly and with little preparation. In retrospect, it’s the simplest pleasures which have made the music endure: the uncomplicated swing of the varying rhythm sections, the piquant contrast of amiably gruff baritone and shyly melodious trumpet, the coolly effective originals like ‘Nights At The Turntable’ and the irresistible ‘Walkin’ Shoes’, and the subtle and feelingful treatments of standards such as ‘Lullaby Of The Leaves’. Cool but hot, slick but never too clever, these are some of the most pleasurable records of their time. The two-disc set includes the basic library of 42 tracks and is an indispensable part of Mulligan’s legacy.

& See also
What Is There To Say?
(1958–1959; p. 228),
The Age Of Steam
(1971; p. 383)

WILBUR DE PARIS

Born 11 January 1900, Crawfordsville, Indiana; died 3 January 1973, New York City

Trombone

Uproarious Twenties In Dixieland / Rampart Street Ramblers / New New Orleans Jazz

Collectables COL-CD-6614 2CD

De Paris; Sidney De Paris (c, v); Doc Cheatham (t); Omer Simeon (cl); Don Kirkpatrick, Sonny White (p); Eddie Gibbs, Lee Blair (bj); Bennie Moten, Harold Jackson (b); Wilbert Kirk (d, hca); George Foster, Freddie Moore (d). September 1952–April 1955.

Doc Cheatham said (1985):
‘Sidney could play, but Wilbur took care of business, and he took care of it real good.’

De Paris ran a revival band with a difference. Since he and brother Sidney had been in the music first time around, and were not beholden to so-called New Orleans ‘purism’, he took an unusually free-spirited approach to what was basically revivalist repertoire. He was never more than a functional player, but he’s the centre of gravity on these dates and they shine out in their period.

The music on these discs includes such ancient steeds as ‘Hindustan’, ‘Colonel Bogey’, ‘In A Persian Market’ and ‘Twelfth Street Rag’, but De Paris and his men took care to play them their way. There are numerous interesting touches and unexpected twists in the delivery. The front line is outstanding: Wilbur himself was no great shakes on either the slide or the valve trombone, but Sidney and Cheatham made up an impeccable brass one-two, Simeon was still in fine fettle, and they were later joined by Garvin Bushell, who replaced Omer and brought in bassoon and piccolo. The band was at Jimmy Ryan’s in New York throughout the time they were making these records, so it was a tough and professional outfit. Atlantic gave them a clean studio mix, and although the rhythm playing is sometimes ordinary, they’re never tired.

LESTER YOUNG
^&

Born 27 August 1909, Woodville, Mississippi; died 15 March 1959, New York City

Tenor saxophone

The President Plays

Verve 521451-2

Young; Oscar Peterson (p); Barney Kessel (g); Ray Brown (b); J. C. Heard (d). November 1952.

Ray Brown said (1992):
‘He was falling apart, but he was also Lester Young. It was like listening to a wise man having a delirium, coming in and out of it and sometimes speaking very wisely, but in amongst all this rubbish. It was sad, but it was also grand.’

Young’s Verve story is a lot more complex than mere inexorable decline. The first seven sessions for the label were all tenor-plus-rhythm with, in succession, Nat Cole, Hank Jones, John Lewis and Oscar Peterson. The material was blues, a few workouts on familiar chords and standards, some of them rather surprising choices. None of the performances are bad, and Young contributes something fine to each of them – an unpredictable curlicue, a pale flurry of melody, a bashful beeping on a single note. Yet, at the same time, there is something wrong with all of them. Sometimes a solo will seem ready to fold up and die, and he will have to pull it round at the last moment. Other passages find him strong and hale, only to tamely crack a note or suddenly stumble, a beach jogger tripping over driftwood. It wouldn’t matter so much if it happened only here and there – but it happens on every tune, to some degree.

It’s a sad business and there are moments when it makes for extremely uncomfortable listening. But it would, again, be wrong to suggest that all is loss. Immediately after the war there was evidence of some of the less desirable traits that crept into his ’50s work (a formulaic repetition and a self-conscious and histrionic distortion of tone and phrasing akin to his friend Billie Holiday’s around the same time); it’s clear that he is trying to rethink harmonic progression. A new device, much noted, is his use of an arpeggiated tonic triad in first inversion (i.e. with the third rather than the root in lowest position), which, whatever its technical niceties, smoothed out chordal progression from ever-shorter phrases. Some of that is evident in 1946 trios with Rich and Cole, and on other augmented line-ups from that time, which illustrate Pres’s ability to reshape a theme and send it off in a new direction, while still using the same basic roster of melodic devices.

This 1952 session for Norman Granz (previously believed to have been made in August, not in November) includes the slightly bizarre sound of Young lewdly singing the lyric to ‘It Takes Two To Tango’: ‘Drop your drawers, take them off …’ It’s a curiosity, but the rest of the session is very good indeed.

There is a complete box of Young’s Verve sessions. The exceptionally handsome booklet quotes a remark made by Coleman Hawkins, the earth to Lester’s air sign: ‘That Lester Young, how does he get away with it? He’s stoned half the time, he’s always late, and he can’t play.’ It was and it wasn’t true.

& See also
The Complete Aladdin Sessions
(1942–1947; p. 86)

RED RODNEY

Born Robert Rodney (or Ronald) Chudnick, 27 September 1927, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; died 27 May 1994, Boynton Beach, Florida

Trumpet

Red Rodney Quintets

Fantasy 24758

Rodney; Jimmy Ford (as); Ira Sullivan (ts); Phil Raphael, Norman Simmons (p); Phil Leshin, Victor Sproles (b); Phil Brown, Roy Haynes (d). 1952, 1955.

Red Rodney said (1982):
‘I learned some good lessons from Bird and some very bad ones. I wish I could say it all comes out in the music. Some of it comes out in the wash. Bird never had that. I was lucky, and did.’

Rodney was the red-haired Jewish boy in Charlie Parker’s happiest band. Though diffident about his own talents, the young Philadelphian had done his learning up on the stand, playing with the likes of Jimmy Dorsey while still a teenager. Rodney was perhaps the first white trumpeter to take up the challenge of bebop, which he played with a crackling, slightly nervy quality. It sat well with Parker, and Rodney was an integral part of Bird’s quintet in 1950 and 1951, having first worked with him slightly earlier than that. Rodney was not a prolific recording artist, and his career succumbed from time to time to one of the more common jeopardies of life on the road – there was a bankruptcy later on, and a stretch in jail – but there is some excellent stuff on disc.

Rodney’s best work, the 1955
Modern Music From Chicago
, now forms half of this valuable set, along with a slightly less compelling release,
Broadway
. The trumpeter is in great form on the first set, blowing intricate and deeply felt solos, especially on his own ‘Red Is Blue’. Roy Haynes helped invent bebop rhythm, and he sounds totally in command of the idiom here, with Ira Sullivan and Norman Simmons filling out the harmony richly.

The earlier group has a much less distinguished line-up (most of them called Phil), and though there are some good things – ‘Red Wig’ and ‘Coogan’s Bluff’ – there is nothing to match the delightful muted solo on ‘Laura’, which remains the outstanding moment on
Chicago
.

SHORTY ROGERS

Born Milton Rajonsky, 14 April 1924, Great Barringon, Massachusetts; died 7 November 1994, Van Nuys, California

Trumpet

The Sweetheart Of Sigmund Freud

Giant Steps GIST 009 2CD

Rogers; Conrad Gozzo, Maynard Ferguson, Pete Candoli, John Howell, Ray Linn (t); Harry Betts, Bob Enevoldsen, Jimmy Knepper, Milt Bernhart (tb); John Graas (frhn); Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Cooper, Bill Holman, Bill Perkins (reeds); Marty Paich, Russ Freeman, Hampton Hawes (p); Gene Englund (tba); Curtis Counce, Don Bagley, Joe Mondragon (b); Shelly Manne (d); also orchestras led by Woody Herman, Red Norvo, Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson, Louie Bellson and Howard Rumsey. May 1946–July 1953.

Reed-player and arranger Jimmy Giuffre said (1987):
‘I don’t think playing ever meant so much to Shorty. I think he regards himself as one brushstroke among many and he’d be quite happy if someone else was making it, as long as the music was working as he imagined it.’

Rogers grew up on the opposite seaboard, but he is forever seen as a kingpin figure in the West Coast jazz of the ’50s and after, scoring several of the classic big-band dates of the period and subsequently writing a lot of music for TV and Hollywood. His own playing was lithe if unremarkable, but it did the job and in context was exactly the right one for the occasion.

Much influenced by the Davis–Mulligan–Lewis
Birth Of The Cool
, and even claiming a revisionist role in the creation of that movement, Shorty Rogers turned its basic instrumentation and lapidary arranging into a vehicle for relaxedly swinging jazz of a high order. His arrangements are among the best of the time. If they lack the gelid precision that Lewis and Mulligan brought to
Birth Of The Cool
, Rogers’s charts combine the same intricate texture with an altogether looser jazz feel. While never an especially memorable soloist himself, he could call on the top players of the day on a regular basis. Rogers seemed to be in the studios all the time in the ’50s and early ’60s, and although his Atlantic albums are currently out of circulation, several of his RCA sets have made a comeback. The classic
Cool And Crazy
sessions (alias
The Big Shorty Rogers Express
) have now been gathered in on this set, along with another disc of early Rogers charts for Herman, Norvo and Kenton, plus a few later dates with Ferguson and Rumsey. It is a quite irresistible package, excellently remastered and with a fine sleeve-note. The tracks which made up the original 10-inch
Cool And Crazy
still act as a benchmark in the appreciation of West Coast jazz, and their energy and ingenuity seem completely undimmed a half-century on.

FREDDY RANDALL

Born 6 May 1921, London; died 18 May 1999, Teignmouth, Devon, England

Trumpet, cornet

Freddy Randall And His Band

Lake LACD123

Randall; Roy Crimmins, Norman Cave, Dave Keir (tb); Archie Semple, Dave Shepherd, Al Gay (cl); Betty Smith (ts); Dave Fraser, Harry Smith (p); Ron Stone, Ken Ingerfield, Jack Peberdy (b); Lennie Hastings, Stan Bourne (d). March 1953–July 1955.