The Penguin Jazz Guide (67 page)

He was a great popularizer whose musical mind ran rather deeper than some have allowed. As a vibes-player, he was an able and not quite outstanding soloist, but his interest in Latin rhythms and their potential for blending with West Coast jazz was a genuine one, and his best records have a jaunty and informed atmosphere which denigrates neither side of the fusion. He made a lot of records, and many of them have been awarded reissue, which makes it difficult to choose particular winners. Tjader helped to break Willie Bobo and Mongo Santamaria to wider audiences, some time before Coltrane recorded ‘Afro-Blue’.

What’s immediately obvious to anyone who comes to the
Monterey Concerts
(originally released in two volumes as
Concert By The Sea
, and actually recorded in Carmel as part of the second Monterey Jazz Festival) is that the basic language is bebop. The compilation starts off with Rollins’s ‘Doxy’, followed by ‘Afro-Blue’ and ‘Laura’, picking up again with ‘A Night In Tunisia’ from the second volume. This isn’t necessarily what anyone expects, given his reputation as a Latin-lite musician. The timbre and tonality of his vibes are both quite gentle, but structurally Tjader was an iron-hard musical thinker, and in that he’s matched by the perennially underrated Horn, who made a significant impact on West Coast jazz with Chico Hamilton before pursuing a fusion course. And, needless to say, Santamaria is a big presence.

BLOSSOM DEARIE

Born 28 April 1924 (some sources give 1926), East Durham, New York; died 7 February 2009, New York City

Voice, piano

Blossom Dearie

Verve 827743

Dearie; Herb Ellis (g); Ray Brown (b); Jo Jones (d). September 1956, April 1959.

Producer Norman Granz said (1986):
‘I always thought her musicianship was poorly appreciated, the piano-playing in particular. That name really suited her, but it made her sound lightweight, which she wasn’t.’

Dearie grew up in the Catskills and made her start in New York City as a vocalist/pianist. However, it was in Paris that she made a name and it was there Norman Granz spotted and signed her up. She has ever since attracted adulation out of all proportion to her apparently
quite modest approach. Newcomers who have only heard of her are taken aback by the light, sometimes paper-thin delivery. And yet, there really is something hypnotic about her playing and singing, and one can’t imagine either without the other.

The debut for Granz’s label isn’t a splashy showcase but a subtly nuanced jazz vocal album that puts Blossom’s fine piano-playing squarely in the spotlight. The voice won’t appeal to everyone, but we’ve always questioned the ‘little girl’ label. It’s not a big instrument, for sure, but it has unquestionable authority from ‘’Deed I Do’ onward, and the French songs she picked up while in Paris give it an intriguingly different context, ‘Tout Doucement’ in particular. The reissue includes three later recordings, including a bouncy ‘Johnny One Note’.

FRANK STROZIER

Born 13 June 1937, Memphis, Tennessee

Alto saxophone

Fantastic Frank Strozier

Vee-Jay 12

Strozier; Booker Little (t); Wynton Kelly (p); Paul Chambers (b); Jimmy Cobb (d). December 1959, February 1960.

Jimmy Cobb recalls:
‘Frank came out of Memphis with something new … maybe a country sound.’
And Harold Mabern adds:
‘He was so good John Coltrane used to follow him around, asking questions.’

Frank Strozier’s debut recording scarcely seems radical when placed alongside Ornette Coleman’s first Atlantics, also recorded in 1959, or Eric Dolphy’s first set as leader, which was taped some weeks after the second of the sessions included on
Fantastic.
Strozier’s music has little of the alienating wallop of those two fellow altoists, both of whom were almost a decade older. At first hearing, he more obviously resembles Jackie McLean, but just as Jackie’s early work always had an extra dimension that took it beyond mere Bird copyism, so Strozier doesn’t sound like he’s in thrall to anyone, but finding his individual way in what was still a relatively new idiom. We have long held this record in high esteem and it never fails to deliver.

Strozier made his first significant appearance on disc a year before as one of the Young Men From Memphis – the line-up included Booker Little, Louis Smith, George Coleman and Phineas Newborn Jr – who made
Down Home Reunion
for United Artists. Little was on hand again when Strozier went into Fine Sound Studios in New York on 9 December 1959 to record under his own name for the first time. With him was what was perhaps the most celebrated rhythm section of the time, who nine months earlier had taken part in Miles Davis’s
Kind Of Blue
sessions.

Wynton Kelly had not yet taken over fully from Bill Evans when that iconic record was taped, but he is a key presence on Strozier’s album, which was made for Vee-Jay. He makes an immediate impact on his own ‘W.K. Blues’, a conventional enough line, albeit with varied harmonics, but also one which allows both Little and Strozier enough leeway to shape solos that still fit the hard-bop mould while suggesting something beyond. Strozier’s own ‘A Starling’s Theme’ and ‘I Don’t Know’ – have these strong themes ever been called for since? – add to the impression that something original is afoot, subtly angular melodies that open out onto tautly generous solos. Kelly holds the middle and his deceptive simplicity of approach in the rhythm section sometimes conspires to hide the music’s sophistication.

Little’s ‘Waltz Of The Demons’ lent its name to a further compilation of material from this and the good but sketchier February 1960 date. The tragedy of the trumpeter’s early
death led to this being posthumously co-credited, while the same material has also been issued by Mosaic as part of a compilation of Kelly’s and Paul Chambers’s Vee-Jay sessions. Thus circumstance further eclipsed Strozier’s reputation. It’s hard to think that anyone encountering this record will not be impressed. The saxophone tone is warm and thoughtful, but not without its jagged edges. Little is as impressive as he ever was in that short career and the rhythm section is coach-built and solidly elegant.
Fantastic
sits in very august company, but in our view more than justifies its place.

TUBBY HAYES

Born Edward Brian Hayes, 30 January 1945, London; died 8 June 1973, London

Tenor saxophone, vibraphone

The Eighth Wonder

Jasmine JASCD 611

Hayes; Terry Shannon (p); Phil Bates, Jeff Clyne (b); Bill Eyden, Phil Seamen (d). March–December 1959.

Trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar said (1983):
‘Even as a teenager, he was a monstrous talent. You learned something about music, often something quite basic, every time Tubbs took a solo.’

Hayes was a prodigy who took up saxophone at 11 and made his recording debut at 16 with Kenny Baker. He co-led the Jazz Couriers with Ronnie Scott in the ’50s and visited New York in 1961. His eminence on the British scene was eclipsed by the pop boom and his final years were troubled by illness.

Tubbs has often been lionized as the greatest saxophonist Britain ever produced. He is a fascinating but problematic player. With a big, rumbustious tone and flurries of 16th notes, Hayes often left a solo full of brilliant loose ends and ingenious runs that led nowhere in particular. Most of his recordings, while highly entertaining as exhibitions of sustained energy, tend to wobble on the axis of Hayes’s creative impasse. His studio records consistently fall short of the masterpiece he originally seemed destined to make. It’s tempting to set forward one of the live Ronnie Scott’s dates that were consigned to tape, but that seems an easy option. The studio work wasn’t unfulfilled; it just seemed often to fall short of expectation.

Hayes’s ’50s sessions for Tony Hall’s Tempo label have made their way to CD via Jasmine, though remastering is no more than fair and the designs cheap-looking. Besides Hayes himself, there are glimpses of a whole school of players whose music, especially in this period, was scarcely documented at all away from mere studio work. But it’s Hayes himself that most will want to hear. He’s in his pomp on
Eighth Wonder
, which is the only one of the album reissues that gets top rating. Most of it comes from the sessions for
Tubby’s Groove
, perhaps Hayes’s most ebullient showcase. It’s true that the virtuosity of ‘Tin Tin Deo’ comes out of his horn all too easily, almost as if it were a routine he’d mastered without thinking, but it’s hard not to enjoy the spectacle; and there is much tough-minded improvising on the date too, especially in the magnificent feast he makes out of ‘Blue Hayes’. The other figure to listen to here is Terry Shannon, hardly recalled these days but one of Britain’s most capable small-group pianists.

JACKIE MCLEAN
^&

Born 17 May 1932, New York City; died 31 May 2006, Hartford, Connecticut

Alto saxophone

New Soil

Blue Note 784013

McLean; Donald Byrd (t); Walter Davis Jr (p); Paul Chambers (b); Pete LaRoca (d). May 1959.

Jackie McLean said (1985):
‘I was Bird’s man. Everything Charlie Parker had done, I wanted to do, and I did. It was Charles Mingus who steered me away from that, told me I should be developing my own thing and honouring the tradition by moving it on rather than keeping it packed in ice.’

McLean’s father worked with Tiny Bradshaw, and young John grew up surrounded by music, passing on the discipline to his son René. During a spell with the Jazz Messengers, Jackie struck out on his own, recording prodigally with his quartet and patenting a sound that was compounded equally of bebop and the new, free style. His alto-playing is immediately distinctive, acidulated by a tendency to play slightly sharp; it gives his solos in particular an urgent, headlong quality, but also a curious air of innocence and freshness, as if the harmony is fresh-minted each time.

An immensely prolific player, he made a good many records in orthodox bop style, making his recording debut with Miles Davis at the turn of the ’50s, later working with Charles Mingus and with Art Blakey in the Messengers. His long run of records for Blue Note started immediately after that, 17 of them in a little more than seven years.
New Soil
wasn’t the first of the sessions – McLean had set down the material for
Jackie’s Bag
in January of the same year, but it wasn’t released till later – but it was certainly the most important and a big shift from his work for New Jazz and Prestige. Transitional and challenging,
New Soil
seems tame by later standards. McLean had passed through difficult times and was reassessing his career and direction. The extended ‘Hip Strut’ is perhaps the most conventional thing on the album, but the saxophonist is straining a little at the boundaries of the blues, still pushing from the inside, but definitely looking for a new synthesis. ‘Minor Apprehension’ has elements of freedom which are slightly startling for the period and wholly untypical of McLean’s previous work. McLean would later work with Ornette Coleman on
New And Old Gospel
and it sounds from this as if he has already started paying attention to Ornette’s innovations: Byrd’s playing is untypical and LaRoca delivers a remarkably free drum solo.

& See also
Live At Montmartre
(1972; p. 397)

DONALD BYRD
^&

Born 9 December 1932, Detroit, Michigan

Trumpet

Byrd In Hand

Blue Note BS2 84019

Byrd; Charlie Rouse (ts); Pepper Adams (bs); Walter Davis Jr (p); Sam Jones (b); Art Taylor (d). May 1959.

Donald Byrd said (1974):
‘Jazz communicates universal values. Playing together and improvising together is one way of asserting our common goal. But the audience completes that cycle and if the audience isn’t there – and I mean if they don’t follow the music, or appreciate it – then it’s broken. So the music
has
to communicate.’

Donaldson Toussaint L’Ouverture Byrd II was an obvious pick for the Jazz Messengers and by the end of the ’50s had already recorded prolifically, as the most heavily documented of the hard-bop trumpeters. A crossover period yielded the hit album
Black Byrd
, after which he seemed to drift away from the music, studied to be a lawyer, and only made occasional forays back in the ’80s and ’90s. By the time he signed to Blue Note, Byrd had already recorded
for Transition and Savoy, more than any of the other up-and-coming horn-players of his day. It was his easy-going proficiency that made him sought after: like Freddie Hubbard a decade later, he could sound good under any contemporary leader without entirely dominating the situation. His solos were valuable but not disconcertingly personal, dependably elegant but not strikingly memorable. His records as leader emerged in much the same way: refined and crisp hard bop which seemed to look neither forward nor backwards. Given his neutral quality, it’s often the other players who’ll clinch the choice of an album.

Byrd In Hand
is something of an exception in that Rouse (certainly) and Adams (somewhat) fail to command much individual attention. What’s impressive here is the overall sound of the record, a near-perfect balance of ensemble sound and effective if not charismatic soloing. Byrd contributes three effective lines, including the striking ‘Devil Whip’, that allow him to work at the edge of his comfort zone, expressive enough but never close to falling off the wire. Davis is a terrific bop accompanist and his spacious chords provide enough of a safety net for the music to cohere at every point.