The Penguin Jazz Guide (88 page)

PETE LA ROCA

Born Peter Sims, 7 April 1938, New York City

Drums

Basra

Blue Note 875259

La Roca; Joe Henderson (ts); Steve Kuhn (p); Steve Swallow (b). May 1965.

Keith Jarrett said (1990):
‘Pete La Roca? You’d never mistake him for anyone else. He has a unique sense of time, very fluid and alert. You’d know who that drummer was from the first few bars.’

Blue Note collectors will always remember him as Pete La Roca, the nickname he picked up through his expertise as a timbale player in Latin bands, 50 years ago; but he prefers plain Pete Sims. An accomplished hard-bop drummer, he came to prominence in the late-’50s Sonny Rollins group and made a couple of records of his own. The unsung hero of many a hard-bop date, he was with Coltrane right at the start of the quartet, and arguably set the bar for Elvin Jones. His early work as leader is represented by just one record. In 1968, he gave up music to practise as an attorney and has only recently returned to playing, albeit on a part-time basis. He did record
Swingtime
with erstwhile colleague David Liebman, but it isn’t an easy record to find now.

The title-track is an intriguing one-chord vamp and seems to draw something from what Pete was doing in timbale bands, as does the opening
Malagueña
, though not in a conventionally ‘Latin’ way. It’s a formidable group, the equal of the Gilmore/Corea/Booker line-up La Roca recruited for the later
Turkish Women At The Bath
, a record with a chequered release history. Kuhn is a brilliant accompanist, in all metres, and while Henderson seems a touch withdrawn on some of this material, nailing the difficult line of ‘Tears Come From Heaven’, he does it without much input of his own, and that’s fine, for this is very much a group performance. Joe sounds easier on the standard ‘Lazy Afternoon’, or more willing to put his own stamp on things. As if it were needed,
Basra
provides further evidence of Swallow’s gifts as an ‘upright bassist’. He stands more than tall. It’s the drummer’s date, though, and it’s always worth pausing to work out what La Roca is doing in the background. The count’s often hard to pin down, flowing and idiosyncratic, but without self-conscious eccentricity. A marvellous record which benefits hugely from modern sound.

STAN TRACEY

Born 30 December 1926, London

Piano, vibraphone

Under Milk Wood

Jazzizit 9815

Tracey; Bobby Wellins (ts); Jeff Clyne (b); Jackie Dougan (d). May 1965.

Bobby Wellins remembers:
‘I was watching TV one night, some detective thing, and “that solo” was playing on the stereo in someone’s house. I tried to phone Stan, but it was over in a moment.’

Stan Tracey is one of Britain’s few genuinely original contributions to world jazz and now in his 80s a very senior figure indeed. The notion of him as a second-hand, Old World version of his original mentors Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk has been as persistent as it is misleading. Tracey doesn’t play ‘white man’s blues’, but his own distinctive form, which combines insistently percussive left-hand figures, a quirky melodism and something of Duke’s capacious structural understanding. His recorded work ranges from big-band projects to free-jazz duos with fellow pianist Keith Tippett (the well-named T’N’T) and saxophonist Evan Parker. Ironically, perhaps the best-known item in his entire canon of work is a saxophone solo from the 1965
Under Milk Wood
suite, played by Scottish-born Bobby Wellins.

Though nowadays Tracey is appropriately garlanded, it is depressing to report that when we were preparing the very first edition of the
Penguin Guide to Jazz
, in 1992, not a single Stan Tracey record, not even
Under Milk Wood
, was in print, which meant according to our very strict remit that he was excluded from that book. The situation is much better now, not just in terms of new recording, much of which appears on bassist/photographer Andy Cleyndert’s Trio label, but also in the steady reappearance of Tracey’s substantial ’60s back catalogue. Early records like
Showcase
and
Little Klunk
catch him at the very end of his period with Ted Heath and just before he became house pianist at Ronnie Scott’s, a seven-year postgraduate course whose immediate benefits can be heard in the more authoritative and individual style heard on his Columbia recordings in the ’60s.

Opinions vary whether
Under Milk Wood
is the best, as well as the first, of these. In terms of musical sophistication, powerful swing and pungent writing, there were equally impressive discs to come – notably
Alice In Jazzland
in 1966, the solo
In Person
and the big-band
We Love You Madly
from a couple of years later – but Tracey’s meditations on Dylan Thomas’s radio play are now almost as iconic as the source material, and Wellins’s great solo on ‘Starless And Bible Black’, all aery breath, space and quiet motion, has a haunting presence that takes hold of everyone hearing it for the first time.

Wellins had been part of Tracey’s New Departures Quartet the year before. He brought an easy but muscular swing as well as powerful atmosphere and it’s often overlooked how many of the charts on
Under Milk Wood
are upbeat or mid-tempo pieces. Wellins’s four-bar exchanges on ‘Cockle Row’ reflect the broad, clever humour of the original just as well as ‘Starless’ captures its bleak beauty. Nor are the contributions of drummer Jackie Dougan and bassist Jeff Clyne (who died suddenly in 2009) sufficiently acknowledged. Dougan’s crisp, business-like percussion recalled some of the old swing drummers in small-group settings rather more than the bop orthodoxy of the time, and Clyne’s ability to master the beat and still deliver a richly resonant accompaniment is well attested on ‘Llareggub’ (like Sonny Rollins and Horace Silver, Dylan Thomas was fond of backward spellings) and ‘I Lost My Step in Nantucket’.

Later and live versions of the suite exist, some with narration, but none have surpassed the original.
Under Milk Wood
remains one of the most distinctive records of its era, a spare,
unadorned setting whose purely musical virtues should be obvious to all. It remains a pioneering work and a rare instance of jazz accommodating an outside inspiration in a way that honours the qualities of both.

WOODY HERMAN
^&

Born 16 May 1913, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; died 29 October 1987, Los Angeles, California

Clarinet, alto and soprano saxophones, voice

Woody’s Winners / Jazz Hoot

Collectables 6678

Herman; Gerry Lamy, Bill Chase, Dusko Goykovich, Bobby Shew, Don Rader, Lloyd Michaels, Linn Biviano (t); Henry Southall, Frank Tesinsky, Donald Doane, Jim Foy, Mel Wanzo, Bill Watrous (tb); Al Gibbons, Steve Marcus, Bob Pierson, Gary Klein, Sal Nistico, Andy McGhee (ts); Tom Anastas (bs); Nat Pierce, Mike Alterman (p); Charlie Byrd (g); Tony Leonard, Bob Daughery (b); Ronnie Zito (d). June 1965, March 1967.

Woody Herman said (1977):
‘I dislike the term “survivor”, even when it’s meant kindly. It conjures up a picture of you clinging to the wreckage. I think we’re still in full sail and still doing good work. That’s the best you can hope for in this business.’

Even with pop and rock firmly in the saddle, Herman had solved the problem of artistic longevity. He simply got going, evolving his sound but sticking as closely as he dared to what he was good at and what the fan base expected.
Woody’s Winners
is one of the best big-band records of its time, and it still sounds terrific. For sheer excitement, none of Herman’s contemporaries could have outgunned the team he had here. Live at San Francisco’s Basin Street West, the band roar through the likes of ‘23 Red’, Sal Nistico’s burn-up of ‘Northwest Passage’, Woody’s serene ‘Poor Butterfly’ and the climactic demolition of Horace Silver’s ‘Opus De Funk’. Here it’s been coupled with
Jazz Hoot
, a vinyl set which was made up of out-takes from both
Woody’s Winners
and the subsequent
Live East And West
. It might seem baffling that all this music is available only through the work of smaller labels licensing it from its owners, Columbia, but at least it’s out there.

& See also
Woody Herman 1939
(1939; p. 78),
Blowin’ Up A Storm
(1945–1947; p. 102)

JOHN COLTRANE
^&

Born 23 September 1926, Hamlet, North Carolina; died 17 July 1967, Huntington, New York

Tenor, soprano and alto saxophones, flute

Ascension

Impulse! 543413-2

Coltrane; Freddie Hubbard, Dewey Johnson (t); Marion Brown, John Tchicai (as); Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp (ts); Donald Garrett (bcl, b); Joe Brazil (b, perc); McCoy Tyner (p); Art Davis, Jimmy Garrison (b); Frank Butler, Elvin Jones (d); Juno Lewis (perc, v). June & October 1965.

Saxophonist John Tchicai says:
‘It was a feast, incomparable. On the day of the recording, ecstasy and excitement were the prime movers. All of us did our very best to contribute and to carry out the few instructions the Master had given us. It was very African! Our Ancestors were definitely among us more than usual!’

There is nothing else like
Ascension
in Coltrane’s work; indeed, there is nothing quite like
Ascension
in the history of jazz. By the middle of 1965, Coltrane had done as much with the
quartet, technically speaking, as he seemed likely to. Even so, no one could have foreseen what was to emerge from the session of 28 June. If ever Eric Dolphy was missed, it must have been on this occasion, but Dolphy had died in Berlin the previous year.

In the simplest way,
Ascension
continues what Coltrane had been doing on
A Love Supreme
. The pattern of notes which begins the piece is a clear reference to the fanfare to ‘Acknowledgement’, but the vast collective improvisation which follows is almost antithetical to the highly personal, almost confessional quality of the earlier piece. The group was similarly constituted to the Ornette Coleman double quartet which recorded
Free Jazz
, though much less schematic. Coltrane devised a situation in which signals – from Hubbard and Tyner, in the main – could be given to switch modes, introducing new scalar and harmonic patterns. Soloists had a measure of freedom, and distinct ideas do seem to emerge within a broken field of gestural sounds. Everything is determined by the first few bars; nothing is determined entirely. It is a work that synthesizes the rules of classic jazz with the freedoms of the New Thing. Its success is difficult to gauge; its impact is total, overwhelming. Only slowly has it been recognized, not just as an iconic record, but a great composition. Thanks to ROVA’s efforts to establish it as a performable work, that aspect of it is now more clearly understood.

As ever, the original release was hopelessly confused. It seems that Coltrane had originally authorized the release of the first version recorded, and this was issued in late 1965 as Impulse! AS-95. Then the saxophonist decided that the ‘wrong’ master had been used, and the second take was substituted, leaving ‘Ascension – Edition I’ as a piece of jazz apocrypha. Hearing them on this compilation, it is difficult to argue with Marion Brown’s support of Coltrane’s position. The second take is more cohesive and more expressive. The involvement of players like Brown and Tchicai – and Shepp and Sanders in particular – afforded a first chance to hear the ‘school of Coltrane’ in action. Predictably, no one sounds anything like the master, but the overall impact of the piece does suggest that warriors were gathering round the standard.

Individual performances serve a very different purpose here from those on previous records and on other large-scale projects of the time like Coleman’s. On
Free Jazz
, solos emerge out of the ensemble and impose a rather normative structure. Here, they provide an internal commentary that does not even threaten to disrupt the integrity of the piece. The main obvious difference between the two versions is the order of play. On the revised release (
Edition II
) the solos run: Coltrane, Johnson, Sanders, Hubbard, Brown, Shepp, Tchicai, Tyner and a bass duet, while on
Edition I
Shepp and Tchicai are in front of Brown, and Elvin Jones solos near the end. Coltrane must have had reasons for his preference, but there is not so very much separating the two versions qualitatively. After a time, they resemble a rock formation seen from a subtly different angle, but still unmistakably the same grand and forbidding outcrop.

& See also
Giant Steps
(1959; p. 248),
A Love Supreme
(1964; p. 314)

DAVE PIKE

Born 23 March 1938, Detroit, Michigan

Vibraphone, marimba

Jazz For The Jet Set

Atlantic 8122 73527-2

Pike; Clark Terry, Melvin Lastie, Martin Shellar (t); Herbie Hancock (org); Billy Butler (g); Bob Cranshaw, Jimmy Lewis (b); Bruno Carr, Grady Tate (d). October & November 1965.

Jazz DJ Detmar Roegg says:
‘I was shocked to find that Dave Pike wasn’t fashionable and was maybe a bit of a laughing stock with modern jazz fans. I think he was ahead of his time, harmonically and rhythmically.’