The Penguin Jazz Guide (96 page)

JIMMY ROWLES

Born James George Hunter, 19 August 1918, Spokane, Washington; died 28 May 1996, Los Angeles, California

Piano, voice

Our Delight

VSOP 99

Rowles; Max Bennett, Chuck Berghofer (b); Larry Bunker, Nick Martinis (d). April 1968.

Bassist Red Mitchell said (1984):
‘He’s a very sweet guy, but you don’t take Jimmy on when there’s an issue about what music’s good and what isn’t. He’s inclined to lay down the law on that, and there is no chance of moving him. Ever.’

Rowles had a good deal of big-band experience under his belt before settling in Los Angeles, where he did years of studio work interleaved with club gigs, occasional feature recordings, and much work as accompanist to singers, including Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee. Rowles decamped for New York in the ’70s but eventually returned West. A character player in the music, but a player full of wit and sly humour and with an encyclopedic knowledge of the American songbook.

Rowles’s discography is very scattered and many of his own-name records are out of print, but there are riches even in what’s left out there. Only Rowles could have got away with an album called
Grandpa’s Vibrato
, though
Subtle Legend
is probably a more accurate one.
Our Delight
is a souvenir of one of his regular club gigs of the ’60s, at The Carriage
House on Burbank, and though the recording is of mediocre amateur standard the surviving pieces have a lot of definitive Rowles, including ‘Moon Of Manakoora’ and ‘America The Beautiful’. This was taped during a period when Jimmy wasn’t making records, so it’s all the more valuable for that. Some will baulk at the recording quality, but the music is sublime and covers an astonishing range, including a Wayne Shorter melody.

OSCAR PETERSON
^&

Born 15 August 1925, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; died 23 December 2007, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Piano, organ, other keyboards

My Favorite Instrument

MPS 981129-6

Peterson (p solo). April 1968.

Oscar Peterson said (1991):
‘It’s a cliché that in this business you don’t play piano, you play pianos, and when you find one you like, or one that likes you, it’s like a human relationship. You allow it its idiosyncrasies. It forgives you some rough handling.’

Between 1963 and 1968, Peterson recorded a series of six LPs for the MPS label in the Villingen home of German producer Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer. These were made in the presence of a small group of the producer’s friends and the sessions are notably relaxed as a result. These sessions were available for a time as
Exclusively For My Friends
, a comprehensive four-CD set augmented with a further disc of ‘lost tapes’. To mark the 40th anniversary of these recordings, MPS reissued the original discs. Frankly, and against our usual custom, we preferred the music in boxed-set form. Though the recordings spanned some five years and some changes of personnel (a number were for trio with Ray Brown, Louis Hayes and others) there was a consistency of spirit to the whole sequence that was somehow lost when divided up into separate records. Because of that, it is difficult to make clear qualitative comparisons between them, except to say that
My Favorite Instrument
, incredibly Oscar’s first solo record, is far and away the best place to start with this period of his career, even if it means back-tracking. He obviously loves this piano, and it responds warmly to him. ‘Perdido’, ‘Who Can I Turn To?’ and ‘Little Girl Blue’ are fantastic performances by any standard. Elsewhere, there is a lovely balance of relaxation and risk in the playing.

& See also
At The Stratford Shakespearean Festival
(1956; p. 193),
Night Train
(1962; p. 290),
The Legendary Live At The Blue Note
(1990; p. 539)

RAHSAAN ROLAND KIRK
^&

Born Ronald T. Kirk, 7 August 1936, Columbus, Ohio; died 5 December 1977, Bloomington, Indiana

Tenor saxophone, manzello, stritch, flute, assorted instruments

The Inflated Tear

Warner Jazz 8211-736142

Kirk; Ron Burton (p); Steve Novosel (b); Jimmy Hopps (d). May 1968.

Ken Vandermark says:
‘ “The Inflated Tear” is one of the more exquisite pieces I’ve ever heard and, yet, how can it be defined or categorized? I believe that this erasure of boundaries is essential work for an artist, and Kirk suggested ways in which a myriad of musical aesthetics could be brought together, without sacrificing any creativity or reducing the nature of what made the styles exciting in the first place.’

The Inflated Tear
was Roland Kirk’s first studio album for Atlantic and a triumphant confirmation of his improvising powers. The title-track relates to his blindness and conveys the dreamlike oddity and human passion of his music to perfection. ‘The Black And Crazy Blues’ is one of his most affecting performances, unexpectedly quiet and unemphatic for an opening track, but subtly constructed on many levels. ‘Creole Love Call’ receives a definitive reading, but it’s the other Kirk originals (which mystifyingly have rarely been picked up by other musicians) that establish a faintly mournful, sometimes throat-catchingly emotional mood: ‘Many Blessings’, ‘A Handful Of Fives’, the gorgeous ‘Fly By Night’ and the unpronounceable ‘Lovellevelliloqui’. The band isn’t by any means a top-drawer outfit, but it is perfectly adapted to Kirk’s needs and Burton’s handling of the chords is always surprising in its oblique fittingness.

Though there were to be many more sessions for Atlantic, and some remarkable musical moments, none quite had the emotional simplicity and directness of this one. A leftfield classic.

& See also
We Free Kings
(1961; p. 278);
AL HIBBLER, A Meeting Of The Times
(1972; p. 394)

PETER BRÖTZMANN
^&

Born 6 March 1941, Remscheid, Germany

Tenor, baritone and bass saxophones, clarinet, tarogato

Machine Gun

FMP CD 24

Brötzmann; Willem Breuker, Evan Parker (ts); Fred Van Hove (p); Buschi Niebergall, Peter Kowald (b); Han Bennink, Sven Åke Johansson (d). May 1968.

Peter Brötzmann said (1990):
‘It’s not about self-expression. It’s about reacting to the world you live in. Around 1968, we maybe thought we could change the world, which was probably f***ing stupid, but you can make small steps, just by getting someone to hear differently. It’s not revolution, but it’s a step.’

Brötzmann originally studied art in Wuppertal, and still exhibits his work on occasion. He was playing traditional jazz before moving into free, but from 1968 he was in a trio with Fred Van Hove and Han Bennink, playing in the new style. From there, he has become one of the leading Europeans and is now well known – through a strong creative connection in Chicago – to American musicians and audiences as well, and he stands as example to a whole new generation of improvisers.

By the time of
For Adolphe Sax
in September 1967 – originally pressed and distributed by the saxophonist himself – Brötzmann was already an established stylist of some intensity and focus. The huge, screaming sound he makes is among the most exhilarating in the music, and while he has often been miscast as a sonic terrorist, that does insufficient justice to his mastery of the reed family. The only precedents are to be found in the ferocious three-way assault of Albert Ayler’s
Spiritual Unity
, although Brötzmann arrived at his methods independently and through the later intermediacy of Frank Wright, a Cleveland veteran who based himself in Europe.

Machine Gun
raised the bar. The three saxophonists fire off a ceaseless round of blasting, overblown noise, built on the continuous crescendo managed by the two drummers. As chaotic and ‘’68’ as it sounds, the music is formed by an iron purpose and control. Although the recording is crude, the grainy timbre is a fitting medium for this. The CD has two alternative
takes which match the released version in their fearsome power and there’s now a
Complete Machine Gun
Sessions
disc which rounds out the picture further, but, as is usually the case, the release version makes the greatest impact, out of all proportion to its duration.

& See also
14 Love Poems Plus 10 More
(1984; p. 487)

ELVIN JONES

Born 9 September 1927, Pontiac, Michigan; died 18 May 2004, Englewood, New Jersey

Drums

Live At The Village Vanguard

Enja 2036

Jones; Hannibal Marvin Peterson (t); George Coleman (ts); Wilbur Little (b). May 1968.

Elvin Jones said (1975):
‘Club owners don’t like live recordings: too much stuff lying around the place, guys crawling around fixing wires getting in the way of the drinkers! But it’s the purest way to record and the most honest – people are getting what you are, and what you do, not something you’ve worked up in the studio.’

The kid brother of the Jones family spent five intense years with John Coltrane before being supplanted by Rashied Ali’s even more radical approach. It’s a period that has somewhat overdetermined our view of Elvin’s career, given that he continued to work for more than 35 years
after
Trane’s death, leading his own Jazz Machine and other groups and extending his polyrhythmic approach into new areas of post-bop.

Though later he would work with Ravi Coltrane and take part in various Coltrane tribute events and recordings, in the late ’60s Elvin seemed content to distance himself from the legacy, turning back to a heightened hard bop with a strong African inflexion. His records tend to be drum-led, not in the sense that percussion is well forward in the mix and there are lots of drum solos, but in that the music is all driven from the kit. This 1968 date was a tough gig in terms of its abrasive, compellingly forceful soundscapes, but also because what we are hearing for most of the time is a pianoless trio, a form Jones was to experiment with for some years. Working without a harmony instrument, and leaning very heavily on big Coleman’s very sophisticated and often lateral harmonic sense, Jones plays as if he’s conducting an entire orchestra – but also on occasion as if he has a personal grudge against each and every member. Little is something of a passenger in this setting and spends most of his time laying down steady, patient figures with just the odd embellishment to keep himself interested. Peterson gatecrashes on ‘Mr Jones’, taking the shine off another perfectly good trumpet.

SONNY CRISS

Born 23 October 1927, Memphis, Tennessee; died 19 November 1977, Los Angeles, California

Alto and soprano saxophones

Sonny’s Dream

Original Jazz Classics OJCCD 707-2

Criss; Conte Candoli (t); Dick Nash (tb); Ray Draper (tba); David Sherr (as); Teddy Edwards (ts); Pete Christlieb (bs); Tommy Flanagan (p); Al McKibbon (b); Everett Brown Jr (d). May 1968.

Saxophonist Teddy Edwards said (1991):
‘Sonny was a sweet guy and seemed to think that music might change the world or make everyone love one another. Funnily enough, in 1968 everyone thought that and the world just passed him by.’

Criss was perhaps a little too tightly wrapped for the destiny that seemed to await him. Though it was the altogether more robust Sonny Stitt to whom Charlie Parker promised ‘the keys of the Kingdom’, it was Criss out on the West Coast who inherited most of the ambiguities of Parker’s legacy. He came to Los Angeles from Memphis as a teenager and struck up with Howard McGhee and others in the Californian bebop community.

Subtitled
Birth Of The New Cool
,
Sonny’s Dream
features six Horace Tapscott compositions and arrangements. Though he has only recently begun to receive wider recognition, Tapscott has had an enormous influence on the West Coast, and this was a rare chance for Criss to play in front of a carefully orchestrated mid-size band. ‘Sonny’s Dream’ is an astonishing opener, with luminous solos from both Criss and Tommy Flanagan. Criss switches to soprano for the brief ‘Ballad For Samuel’, dedicated to a respected teacher, but profoundly marked by Coltrane. Tapscott’s inventiveness and political sensibilities are equally engaged on ‘Daughter Of Cochise’ (an unusually relaxed solo from Criss) and ‘Black Apostles’, originally dedicated to Arthur Blythe but transformed into a ferocious lament for the three martyrs of the black liberationist movement. A remarkable album that lapses only to the extent that the band is sometimes reduced to providing highly coloured backdrops for Tapscott’s American history lessons and Criss’s soloing.

Criss’s subsequent life was chequered. He got into community work and seemed to have found some kind of balance, but took his own life in 1977 after being diagnosed with stomach cancer.

EDDIE JEFFERSON

Born 3 August 1918, Detroit, Michigan; died 9 May 1979, Detroit, Michigan

Voice

Body And Soul

Original Jazz Classics OJCCD 396