The Penguin Jazz Guide (85 page)

Four For Trane
is one of the classic jazz albums of the ’60s, and a fascinating glimpse into how thoroughly different what was already thought of as the Coltrane revolution might sound. Shepp immediately sounds more deeply soaked in the blues than the man he is paying tribute to here; Shepp’s interpretation of ‘Cousin Mary’ is stunningly good, and his entry on ‘Syeeda’s Song Flute’ is one of those musical moments that stay embedded in the skin like a bee-sting, painful and pleasurable by turns. Without a harmony instrument, the group has a loose, floating quality which Coltrane himself would never have attempted. The sound is totally open and without walls. Shorter, Rudd and Tchicai (who was to play such a significant part on Trane’s
Ascension
) are all in spanking form, and the altoist’s solo on the unforgettably titled ‘Rufus (Swung, His Face At Last To The Wind, Then His Neck Snapped)’ has a raw urgency that recalls the very roots of this music. This is Shepp’s only composition of the set and, following the love-ballad ‘Naima’, it makes a dramatic end to a set of powerful and committed music, as if Coltrane’s dark twin had risen up and gained speech.

& See also
Attica Blues
(1972; p. 391),
Looking At Bird
(1980; p. 456)

TONY WILLIAMS
^&

Born Samuel Anthony Williams, 12 December 1945, Chicago, Illinois; died 23 February 1997, Daly City, California

Drums

Life Time

Blue Note 99004

Williams; Sam Rivers (ts); Herbie Hancock (p); Bobby Hutcherson (vib, mar); Ron Carter, Richard Davis, Gary Peacock (b). August 1964.

Tony Williams said (1991):
‘I think there’s a misunderstanding about musical “greatness”. It isn’t about being so good on your instrument that you never make mistakes. It’s about being willing to make mistakes, all the time; make them, learn from them, accept them as part of what you are, and move on. That’s what Miles Davis did.’

Tony Williams’s death following a relatively innocuous surgical procedure was doubly shocking, because it came at a time when his career was in marvellous resurgence. Williams had his baptism of fire in the Miles Davis band while still in his teens; everyone who owns it treasures the live recording from the south of France on which the MC announces: ‘
le jeune Tony Williams à la batterie … il a dix-sept ans.
’ Tony gave Miles a raw and unfinished sound, one that didn’t know it was breaking the rules. It was clear even then that he would go places, and recordings under his own name weren’t slow in coming. Williams’s early Blue Notes are intense, inward-looking explorations of the rhythmic possibilities opened up by bebop. Much of what he had learned to date was concentrated into
Life Time
. Compare the crisp attacks and precise, undistorted cymbal sound with what Williams had to put up with in later years and judge how worthy the tribute is on both sides. On ‘Memory’, Williams turns in a remarkable trio performance with Hancock and Hutcherson (and it should be remembered that his most shining moment before this point was on Eric Dolphy’s
Out To Lunch!
session, on which Hutcherson and Davis both played). Rivers’s angular approach was ideally suited to the young drummer’s multidirectional approach and attack.
The album title was later appropriated for Williams’s crossover band Lifetime, which took him in a new and fruitful direction.

& See also
LIFETIME, (Turn It Over)
(1970; p. 374)

LUCKY THOMPSON

Born Eli Thompson, 16 June 1924, Columbia, South Carolina; died 30 July 2005, Seattle, Washington

Tenor and soprano saxophones

Lucky Strikes

Original Jazz Classics OJCCD 194

Thompson; Hank Jones (p); Richard Davis (b); Connie Kay (d). September 1964.

Soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome says:
‘When you listen to the Lucky Thompson on
Lucky Strikes
you hear how the soprano sax can sound just as at ease playing bebop as the tenor sax does in the hands of Dexter Gordon. If you want to hear how to play traditional New Orleans music on the soprano, listen to Sidney Bechet. But if you want to hear how to play bebop on the soprano, listen to Lucky.’

Thompson was a perennial outsider, whose life belied the name that had been stitched across a childhood sweatshirt. He drew on the swing era, played bebop on both the tenor and the soprano horn (of which he was an early reviver) and in retrospect seemed to prefigure much of what went on in the ’60s and ’70s, after his playing career was over. A highly philosophical, almost mystical man, he eventually turned his back on the music business, publically retiring in 1966, after spending some time in Europe. Though his upbringing was harsh – he had to raise siblings by himself and legend has him practising saxophone fingerings on a broom handle before he had a proper horn – the beginning of the career was garlanded with promise. He recorded with Charlie Parker just after the war (a rare example of that chimera, the bebop tenor-player), but then returned to Detroit, where he’d grown up, and became involved in R&B and publishing. Like Don Byas, whom he most resembles in tone and in his development of solos, he has a slightly oblique and uneasy stance on bop, cleaving to a kind of accelerated swing idiom with a distinctive ‘snap’ to his softly enunciated phrases and an advanced harmonic language that occasionally moves into areas of surprising freedom. Only uneasy longevity denied him a place with the greats.

There are some fine Thompson albums around and we have dithered in the past between
Tricotism
and
Lord, Lord, Am I Ever Going To Know?
and there are wonderful things on both records, but it is this relatively ‘late’ record that seems now best to sum up his artistry. Thompson moves easily between tenor and soprano. He had made significant bounds in his understanding of harmonic theory since
Accent On Tenor Sax
a decade earlier and he attempts transitions that would have been quite alien to him then. All his characteristic virtues of tone and smooth development are in place, though, and the solos are models of development, though punctuated with gentle epiphanies where Lucky seems to be rising up through the layers in real time. He subtly blurs the melodic surface of ‘In A Sentimental Mood’ (a curious opener) and adjusts his tone significantly for the intriguing ‘Reminiscent’, ‘Midnite Oil’ and ‘Prey Loot’. A classic.

HORACE SILVER
^&

Born Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silva, 2 September 1928, Norwalk, Connecticut

Piano

Song For My Father

Blue Note 99002-2

Silver; Carmell Jones, Blue Mitchell (t); Junior Cook, Joe Henderson (ts); Teddy Smith, Gene Taylor (b); Roy Brooks, Roger Humphries (d). January & October 1964.

Horace Silver said (1987):
‘Music passes from father to son like the shape of your head or some special skill in craft. I know I was shaped by countless generations of musicians before me, and I feel a real bond with that.’

Silver’s father – pictured on the cover in the autumn of his life – was from the Cape Verde islands and the vernacular music from there played an important part in Horace’s upbringing. A later Blue Note – and there were to be another score and more for the label – was called
The Cape Verdean Blues.
Here, at a point where he was disbanding one group and starting a new one, Silver imports some striking elements of island rhythm. Whatever the supposed provenance of ‘Calcutta Cutie’, it’s audible there, and it certainly plays a part on the title-track, which might seem familiar from somewhere else: it was plundered for the line of Steely Dan’s ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’. Silver always seemed to have that crossover appeal, but the interesting thing about
Song For My Father
is the unwonted level of abstraction. Henderson’s awkward ‘The Kicker’ comes late in the set and seems to take the music off in a different direction from the gentle Latin pulse of the opening title-track. The track that follows Henderson’s is ‘Lonely Woman’, not Ornette Coleman’s famous dirge but a beautiful line by Silver, which stands among his very finest. The CD reissue brings in some other material which heightens the exotic air of the date. ‘Silver Threads Among The Soul’ came from the old band, and Silver had warmed up the new group on this material, recording a vast number of takes while at Pep’s in Philadelphia in August, presumably with a live album in mind. By the time the recording was made in October 1964, the music fell under the fingers very easily but with real sophistication in the solo parts. A wonderful record that never fails to deliver.

& See also
Blowin’ The Blues Away
(1959; p. 243)

HUBERT LAWS

Born 10 November 1939, Houston, Texas

Flute

The Laws Of Jazz

Rhino 71636

Laws; Jimmy Owens (t); Garnett Brown, Tom McIntosh (tb); Benny Powell (tb, btb); Chick Corea, Rodgers Grant (p); Richard Davis, Israel Cachao Lopez, Chris White (b); Jimmy Cobb, Ray Lucas, Bobby Thomas (d); Bill Fitch, Carmelo Garcia, Raymond Orchart, Victor Pantoja (perc). April 1964–February 1966.

Hubert Laws said (1997):
‘I got to New York in the fall of 1960 with nothing. I was bound for Juilliard, and I was down to my last few dollars when the phone rang and I was offered something at a place called Sugar Ray’s in Harlem. And I think I’ve been working ever since, thank goodness.’

One recent publication referred to him as a ‘floutist’, which may well be a Freudian slip because the jazz mafia has always been diffident, if not openly hostile to Hubert Laws. He plays flute for a start, which isn’t everyone’s favourite instrument, but he also plays fusion, which is enough to damn him unheard. Laws is a formidable technician, and brother Ronnie is a pretty decent player as well. Like Herbie Mann, Hubert began his career as a pretty straight jazz player. He sounds very crisp and dynamic here on both flute and
piccolo, making a surprisingly convincing solo voice of the latter instrument. His articulation is exact but the phrases still swing and there are enough blue notes and syncopated measures to justify the jazz standard waved in the title. Almost all the material is original and ‘Baila Cinderella’ is an idea that resurfaces later in the flautist’s career. The Latin tinge is heightened by the inclusion of Corea, but it’s a pity that none of the pianist’s compositions are included.

Anyone who thinks of Laws as a fusion colourist should sample this reissue of his Atlantic debut, packaged with his sophomore effort,
Flute Bylaws
, which was a more ambitious but ultimately less engaging disc.

DON RENDELL

Born 4 March 1926, Plymouth, Devon, England

Tenor saxophone, flute

IAN CARR

Born 21 April 1933, Dumfries, Scotland; died 25 February 2009, London

Trumpet

Shades of Blue / Dusk Fire

BGO Records BGOCD615 2CD

Rendell; Carr; Colin Purbrook (p on
Shades Of Blue
); Michael Garrick (p on
Dusk Fire
); Dave Green (b); Trevor Tomkins (d). October 1964, March 1966.

Ian Carr said (1986):
‘We were very confident with what we were doing, and while we admired the Americans, I don’t think we ever felt in awe or inferior. We were making our own way in the music.’

The Rendell–Carr Quintet are honoured presences in British jazz. These records aren’t the work of fumbling journeymen, marking time professionally as Carr waited for the epiphany of jazz-rock. But nor do they have the individuality and coherence of musical vision of Stan Tracey’s 1965
Under Milk Wood
, Graham Collier’s 1967
Deep Dark Blue Centre
or even Carr’s slightly later proto-jazz-rock Nucleus albums, which are also worth searching out. An insistence on original material (there isn’t a single standard as a reference-point) suggests a robust self-determination, but it also makes straightforward comparison harder. Writing a whole album in blue tones doesn’t mean you can play the blues. Line and swing (Green and Tomkins aside) were probably less important than colour and texture.

The front line worked to an interesting chemistry. Carr is all fire, with anger and melancholy mixed in varying proportions. But Carr is also often exact and punctilious where Rendell, seemingly the more sophisticated soloist, is approximate. The trumpet is full-voiced and ringing while Rendell’s soprano pitching (particularly on ‘Dusk Fire’) is sometimes drab. Despite a functioning democracy, Carr only puts his name to two tracks on the first record, the formulaic ‘Sailin’’, and ‘Big City Strut’, a loose-limbed set-closer. With the second album, Mike Garrick came aboard, an immediate bonus. ‘Prayer’ is instantly recognizable as his, though he surely can’t have imagined ‘Dusk Fire’ so sourly etched. It works despite that.

This is music of its time, and it is necessary to listen on its terms, without interference from the almost cultic reputation of the band. It remains an important moment in modern British jazz none the less.

CHARLES MCPHERSON

Born 24 July 1939, Joplin, Montana

Alto saxophone