Francis 'Scrapper' Blackwell... Max Roach... Donald Byrd... Booker Ervin... Art Blakey... Derek Bailey...

I promised a commenter some more Francis 'Scrapper' Blackwell – so here's the man giving out 'Blue Day Blues.' He really is one of the missing links between twenties country blues and later urban styles – introducing more linearity via the single-string breaks, for example. No mean singer either...

From his 1967 album 'Blackjack,' this is Donald Byrd heading up a septet on 'Pentatonic.' Sonny Red solos first, a querulous piping sound to his alto. Byrd takes over, an assured performance, fast and accurate. Hank Mobley next, playing on his harder edge here. Cedar Walton, tumbling, rippling piano. Billy Higgins ensures that no one sleeps, punching the track along.

Max in Paris, 1949. This group is essentially the Charlie Parker quintet from that year with Bird out and James Moody in to partner trumpeter Kenny Dorham up front. 'Maximum,' the track. Bop of the highest calibre, stunning drums at a rapid tempo where everyone is locked onboard, not daring to jump off the rollercoaster ride – falter at this speed and you are dead...

Some more from one of my favourite big-hearted power tenors – the late Booker Tellefero Ervin and a track from one of his 'Book' series, 'Tex Book Tenor,' '204.' Woody Shaw at his shoulder guarantees superior front-line backup... Opens on stabbing piano before they hit a smooth uppish line – nothing more than an expanded riff, really, before the Book roars out straight from the blocks. Some high wild playing but always a strong thread of melody – a mix of accessible tinged with a tough bluesy edge that timbrally links old tenor keenings to the more recent avant-garde hollers – pretty much the same thing really, only changed by context and concept. Some dizzying playing here... Woody Shaw comes screaming in after him and unreels some beautifully knotted lines. The young Kenny Baron next, fleet and sure. Billy Higgins whams it all along in grand style, tracking every move, stepping up to trade with the horns . Jean Arnet solid throughout under the fire. A certain similarity to the Donald Byrd track above – the presence of Higgins on both maybe the defining factor – rhythmically supple and continually thrusting and prodding. Recorded a year later for the same label, part of that sixties Blue Note take on hard bop crossed with hints of the freer moves of the time.

Following on from that point, here's the mighty Buhaina leading one of his greatest congregations of Jazz Messengers on the stunning album 'Free for all.' I upped the title track a ways back, so here is the Freddy Hubbard composition 'The Core.' Curtis Fuller really thickened the usual band sound, adding deeper sonorities and expanded instrumental options apart from his soloing skills – this is BIG sonics. Wayne Shorter takes off first, sounding urgent – as how could he not with Blakey's firepower at storm force behind? Freddy Hubbard next, speed, accuracy and ideas – a man who was at the height of his game. Fuller cools things a fraction – the trombone does not quite soar timbrally as much as tenor and trumpet over the thunderous, dense backdrop. Fluent – you are aware of the J.J. influence perhaps, but with a more 'tromboney' sound, if that makes sense, a pleasing gruffness hinting at earlier stylists. Cedar Walton stomps in for his piece of the action before the razor-sharp ensemble returns for the theme. Blakey is just plain WILD throughout... I remember hearing this when it came out in the U.K. so many years back and it excites me just as much now... and I saw Blakey with a late manifestation of his band in a rather odd venue and when he was getting on in years - but the sheer force of his drumming was intoxicating, belying his age...

We like to jumpcut...

Opening on overspeeded drums (courtesy of DJ Ninj) as the mighty Derek Bailey slashes in and pours his hard scrabble guitar all over the first track of his 1996 album 'Guitar, drums and bass.' 'N, J, BM (remix)'. Improv meets the London street sounds of the time... I think this is a very underrated album: oddly, the rather staid programming lets Derek fly, acting as an earth to his fire... Or something...


Francis 'Scrapper' Blackwell (g, v)
Blue Day Blues
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Donald Byrd
Donald Byrd (tp) Sonny Red (as) Hank Mobley (ts) Cedar Walton (p) Walter Booker (b) Billy Higgins (d)
Pentatonic
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Max Roach
Kenny Dorham (tp) James Moody (ts) Al Haig (p) Tommy Potter (b) Max Roach (d)
Maximum
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Booker Ervin
Booker Ervin (ts) Woody Shaw (t) Kenny Barron (p) Jan Arnet (b) Billy Higgins (d)
204
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Art Blakey
Art Blakey (d) Wayne Shorter (ts) Freddie Hubbard (t) Curtis Fuller (tr) Cedar Walton (p) Reggie Workman (b)
The Core

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Derek Bailey (el-g) DJ Ninj (drum/bass programming)
N, JZ, BM (remix)
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Back Door... Derek Bailey... John Zorn...

I knew a guy a long time ago – Steve Williams, wonder where he is now? – who told me that he used to go out to a pub on the Yorkshire moors – the Blakey Inn – no relation to Art Blakey, I don't think, but a nice thought - to see this band, Back Door. I'd heard of them before (Steve and I met in Dublin in the mid-seventies), I bought the vinyl but can't remember where – London or Dublin or – wherever... but unluckily never saw them live. Anyway – when I was listening to Megaphone Man last week while writing my review, the way the bass functions in that trio reminded me of Back Door's Colin Hodgkinson - Back Door – in one of those weird synchronicities, as I type those two words I am listening to the Akron Family – just singing 'The sun's going to shine in my back door someday.' Wonder if there is a connection. Spooky... Anyway... this is Ron Aspery on alto, Colin Hodgkinson on electric bass and Tony Hicks on drums playing 'Vienna Breakdown.' With a sound that foreshadows, for me, Ornette Coleman's later Prime Time musics – this was recorded in 1972 . I don't suppose there is any chance that Ornette dropped in to The Blakey Arms for a pint? Looking for Art? Just had an absurd flash of various American jazz musicians wandering around the North of England in the seventies... Ornette spotted in to the Rover's Return – 'Eh, Jack, in't that Ornette Coleman?' 'Nay, Vera, it's freejazz night down the Legion next week.' Eeh, our Vera - sadly missed... (A tribute to the inimitable Vera Duckworth and her bereaved spouse. See, Murray, I win the bet!). Hodgkinson was a monster bass player – hence the connection in my head to Neil Fountain of Megaphone Man. All the tracks on the album are short, sharp bursts of energy that cross-wired jazz, blues and rock into a unique sound. Ron Aspery unfortunately passed away in 2003 – there is a long and fascinating interview with him here...

Haven't put up any Derek Bailey for a while, it seems... Here he is with Japanese band Ruins, belting through 'QuinkaMatta,' from 1995. Derek starts off on shards of electric guitar - then suddenly Ruins crash in at high speed, like the Spanish Inquisition. ('No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.' Enough of the jokes, already...). Furious bass and drums - Ruins compress so much into such a short space of time. A couple of repeated bass figures open up the density of sound here and there, setting up a groove at one point - that Derek gloriously surfs over...

Thrumming bass and cymbal-led drums as the two horns weave through the theme. John Zorn with his Masada cohort – Dave Douglas, Greg Cohen and Joey baron – playing 'Piram.' From the album: 'Masada Vol 2: Beit.' For me, a track of stunning brilliance, everything locking into place... Baron is a powerhouse, driving the band on remorselessly. Both horns take care of business, solo or chasing each other in dizzying flights. A swift Google of 'Piram' yields:

'Meaning: like a wild ass...
a king of Jarmuth, a royal city of the Canaanites, who was conquered and put to death by Joshua (10:3, 23, 26).'

Not sure if this was before or after he fit the battle of Jericho... But this track kicks like 'a wild ass.'

A swirling deep dark bass loops vertiginously, soon joined by some indeterminable rustling shard and high swooping electronics... Wolf Eyes! Track 4 from 'Mugger.' Power electronics/improv at its most electronically powerful -yet there is always a shaping intelligence to this band, however rough the going gets... this will test your speakers... If they are good enough for Anthony Braxton, they are good enough for me...





Back Door
Ron Asprey (as) Colin Hodgkinson (el-b) Tony Hicks (d)
Vienna Breakdown
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Derek Baily/Ruins
Derek Bailey (g) Masuda Ryuichi (b) Yoshida Tatsuya (d, v)
QuinkaMatta
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John Zorn/Masada
John Zorn (as) Dave Douglas (t) Greg Cohen (b) Joey Baron (d)
Piram
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Wolf Eyes (Aaron Dilloway, Nate Young, John Olson)
Untitled track 2
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Johnny Griffin... John Coltrane/Don Cherry... Grachan Moncur III... David Sylvian/Derek Bailey... Frank Sinatra... Jelly Roll Morton... Keiji Haino

Little chat - all music...

Johnny Griffin has always been a favourite of mine, for the powerful speedy brilliance of his playing, imagination moving at full throttle alongside formidable technique. He recorded the album 'Change of Pace' in 1961 with an unusual line-up – two basses, drums and french horn – an echo of John Coltrane in that rhythm section, whom he replaced in the Thelonious Monk Quartet a couple of years previously – and had played with on some of those wild hardbopping Prestige blowing sessions. The double strings give a totally different feel to the usual small combo backdrop of the time - the lack of piano makes this track seem quite free while still rooted in the harmonically orthodox. Zeitgeist? Nice mixture of arco and pizzicato bass...

Here is Coltrane with Don Cherry – the Coleman band without Ornette - playing the Monk tune 'Bemsha Swing,' taken at a sprightly bounce here. Cherry solos over bass and drums and demonstrates the new freedoms acquired – but he would be used to playing with Haden and Blackwell.. An odd album overall – 'The Avant Garde' title is a bit of a hostage to fortune - but on this track Coltrane stretches out and seems to enjoy the rolling acres available.

The splendidly-named Grachan Moncur III, from a session recorded in 1969, 'New Africa,' the track 'When.' A track dominated by a haunting, simple vamp from the piano that sounds throughout – and Andrew Cyrille's drumming which dominates and drives the band onwards and upwards. A reticent, almost hesitant solo from Moncur, which is followed by a fascinatingly pithy jigsaw puzzle offered by Mitchell. Shepp is muscular and raw. Red meat. Burrell keeps the vamp going with his left hand while he serves up some almost Basie-ish minimal treble figures. Some more Moncur - wry figures as the saxes sporadically comment. But the drummer's track, I would say. A fascinating (yet sad) interview with the trombonist here...

David Sylvian recorded his album 'Blemish'in 2003, after the break-up of his marriage. Uniquely, he added the late great Derek Bailey for three tracks – here's 'How little we need to be happy.' Soft, pained vocals against a backdrop of Bailey's spiky shards, like some cruel reality breaking in to shred happiness – sadly grasping after consolation.

Continuing in this vein – Frank Sinatra from 1959, the album of saloon songs 'No one cares.' 'I don't stand a ghost of a chance with you.' Tragic stuff, delivered superbly, the ambiance of a guy in a raincoat and hat that only Frank could get away with, sat in a bar somewhere over a bourbon... the despair of someone who will not even get the chance to love and lose...

We have got this far down the track on the doom quotient – here is Jelly Roll Morton's late flowering band from 1938, with the New Orleans mordant comment on mortality, 'Didn't he ramble,' an elegy, perhaps, for the style of music he pioneered but which had been supplanted by the late thirties by swing and a small band style that was about to explode into bop within a short few years.

Fast-forward - Keiji Haino with Greg Cohen and Joey Baron. The Japanese guitarist skitters out some fast strummed chordal figures, sounding like a more conventional Derek Bailey at times. Bass and drums dance round him joyously...

Johnny Griffin
Julius Watkins (frh) Johnny Griffin (ts) Larry Gales, Bill Lee (b) Ben Riley (d)
As we all know
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John Coltrane/Don Cherry
John Coltrane (ts) Don Cherry (t) Charlie Haden (b) Ed Blackwell (d)
Bemsha Swing
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Grachan Moncur III
Grachan Moncur III (tr) Roscoe Mitchell (fl, as) Archie Shepp (ts) Dave Burrell (p) Alan Silva (b)Andrew Cyrille (d)
When
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Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand 'Jelly Roll' Morton (p) Sidney De Paris (t) Claude Jones (tr) Albert Nicholas (cl) Sidney Bechet (ss) Happy Cauldwell (ts) Lawrence Lucie (g) Wellman Braud (b) Zutty Singleton (d)
Oh didn't he ramble
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David Sylvian/Derek Bailey

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Frank Sinatra
I don't stand a ghost of a chance with you
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Keiji Haino
Keiji Haino (g) Greg Cohen (b) Joey Baron (d)
Rolling on the time and tide spreading the colour red
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