Red Garland... Jackie McLean... Rob Brown/Joe Morris... King Oliver... Count Basie/Frank Sinatra...

Red Garland leads a quintet for the long title track of his 1957 album 'Soul Junction.' A name very much of its time... The pianist leads in a slow blues with several choruses of rippling funky lines. Something always cleanly hit about Garland's technique, a finely calibrated springiness. The trademark block chords arrive later on, alternating with the single note strategy.. Coltrane enters, changing the mood into something more questing – as always, he seems to move the music into a different zone. Looking in front of the day while still secure on the back foot of the blues. Donald Byrd is secure and fleet while Art Taylor stirs sporadically behind him with some Blakey-like prodding. Garland returns for some rolling two-fisted sport to take it out.

Jackie McLean recorded the splendidly titled 'Swing Swang Swinging' in 1959 from which I have selected 'Let's face the music and dance.' Something I would have a problem with at the moment, reduced to gimp mode by the broken toe. Let's face the music anyway... Straight in at a sprightly bounce, McLean leads a solid quartet on this 1959 Blue Note date who all sound as if they are enjoying themselves. Art Taylor is on tough form, Garrison runs fast and deep, Bishop looking after the chords. Alto takes a joyous solo followed by piano - channelling Bud, slap bang in the bop tradition as is the whole of this session. Bishop had played with Bird before his death and McLean was seen as one of the heirs to Parker - this reminds me slightly of some of those later quartet sessions Bird made. Recorded 4 years after his death, something of a looking back perhaps, at a time when McLean was about to launch forwards into his own take on the coming New Thing, blown on the winds that Ornette was to send west to east.

'The music needs no further explanation. As Alfred Lyons said: “They came, swung, they split. That's why we called the album 'Swing, Swang, Swinging.' (from Ira Gitler's liner notes).

The Rob Brown/Joe Morris quartet playing 'Results.' Opens on splats, bangs and squiggles – or pointillism, mes braves. The bass starts to run free, with some stops and starts, the drums suddenly roll violently and sax and guitar spar in snatched grapples. Brown takes it up, with Morris occasionally throwing in a shard of comping and an answering or complementary line before he emerges to solo as the others pull back to let him through. The storm rises soon enough – this track never comes completetly to rest. Brown comes back to riff behind the guitar before Parker takes an arco solo. Rob Brown next, jumping across intervals with a Dolphy-esque skip across Morris's acid chording. Free for all to fall into the drums of Krall before they all return - Brown especially passionate and vocal, taking another fine section after the bass and drums indulge in a quieter interlude. Finely positioned quartet work that shows both ensemble and solo in perfect balance.

Back to the roots – King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, the avant garde of 1923 I put 'Dippermouth Blues' up some time back – but what the hell, here it is again, such a joyous piece of music. And I get the chance to riff: 'Oh play that thing!'

Another King Oliver, to make up for the repetition... 'Snake Rag.' There is a very good blog post on this track here (this blog dedicated to Louis Armstrong's life and work). By the way, this is the Gennett version. You have to make a certain leap of the imagination to really get to this music I think – disregard the fact that Baby Dodds' drums were reduced to woodblock minimalism by virtue of the early recording techniques, for example – but if you can create a channel, what joy... King Oliver in his heyday firing out the twin cornet breaks that thrilled the audiences at the Lincoln Gardens in Chicago with his protégé young Louis Armstrong, who was about to blow out the ramparts of New Orleans collective improvisation. Oliver is another tragic figure, in many ways – apparently when he was in New York a few years later he turned down the Cotton Club gig – which launched Duke Ellington and his band to greater glories...

Ring a ding ding – here's Francis Albert essaying forth on 'Hello Dolly,' backed by the mighty Basie ork. (Barbra Who?) 'This is Francis, Louie.' Some show biz fun... Recorded in 1964, a year or so after I saw Bill Basie and co at the Leicester De Montfort Hall. Ah, the memory of the messianic clenched craziness of a teenage jazz fan...

So: I came. I swung. Time to split. Man...



Red Garland
John Coltrane (ts) Donald Byrd (t) Red Garland (p) George Joyner (b) Arthur Taylor (d)
Soul Junction
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Jackie McLean
Jackie McLean (as) Walter Bishop (p) Jimmy Garrison (b) Art Taylor (d)
Let's face the music and dance
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Rob Brown/Joe Morris 4
Rob Brown (as) Joe Morris (g) William Parker (b) Jackson Krall (d)
Results
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King Oliver, Louis Armstrong: (c) Johnny Dodds (cl) Honore Dutray (tr) Lil Hardin (p) Bill Johnson (b, banjo) Baby Dodds (d)
Dippermouth Blues
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Snake Rag
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Count Basie Orchestra plus Frank Sinatra (v)
Hello Dolly
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Charlie Parker... Evan Parker/John Stevens... Joe Morris... Clifton Chenier...

Back to the source...

Miles leads in with youthful almost hesitant poignancy then Bird takes over to run double time in the main, all round, over and through this slow ballad theme 'Don't Blame Me.' Tommy Potter holds the line, Duke Jordan chords somewhere in the next room alongside equally sonically discreet Max Roach. After the bravura alto, Miles returns for a brief snatch before they end. The flash of Bird is not mere technique venting forth – his sound had such a strong yet vulnerable timbre, his alto saxophone truly a 'vocalised' instrument, that makes his speed integral to his overall concept. Head and heart locked in a mighty embrace. Perhaps one of the defining characteristics of jazz, apart from improvisation (which is linked to it as a moving ever-renewable expression of individuality), is the manner in which an instrument is so heavily connected to a player. This requires the high technical standards necessary in the search for and achievement of individual expression, the way in which a listener can pick out different players from each other by their 'signatures.' But technique alone is not enough - the notes would be 'empty' without emotion. Much of the excitement of jazz comes from this identification with individual concepts and their shifting relationship to the communal. Here – Miles's fragile muted trumpet is instantly identifiable – and Parker even more so. These are voices we know and cherish... Which reminds me of an apposite story that a friend of mine (The Blessed Frank Marmion) recently told me. When he was at sea as a young man a clarinet player came over the radio whom he correctly identified within a few bars – Jimmy Noone, I think. Someone mocked him, in effect saying 'How can you possibly know that – a clarinet is a clarinet, could be anybody.' He had to eat his words when the announcer gave the personnel at the end of the number...

Another mighty player – Evan Parker, in a duet with John Stevens. Coming from a totally different emotional and cultural area, drier, more rarified. Opening on small fragments over spartan percussive patterns. This is '19.44,' taken from the album 'The Longest Night.' Operating on the higher end of the spectrum – cymbals and sharp hits as Parker's soprano crabs its way onwards - this is very intense music, a record of two musicians listening and responding to each other with great intimacy. Going up to bat-squeak sqiggles – yet always under tight technical control. Towards the end, clenched drum rolls and spattering cymbals spur Parker to a longer line - the point where you can see very clearly the lineage back into 'jazz.' Evocative of two friends having a long-ranging late-night conversation that develops its own rules as it moves on through.

My favourite contemporary guitar player Joe Morris, with a trio session from 1997 , playing 'Stare into a lightbulb for three years,' from the album 'Antennae.' Commences with a jerky, fragmented theme, progressing into a three-way collaboration between Morris, bass Nate Morris and drummer Jerome Duepree. The guitarist splats out knotted, gnarled lines with odd intervallic jumps to keep you on your toes, unremitting and remorseless linear improvising. Morris has a purist gunslinger ethos, little tinkering with the sound of his guitar which harks back to earlier modern jazz styles, but a total dedication to his art that takes no prisoners. Actually, once you enter his world, it becomes more friendly – much joy to be had following his logic.

"Morris has gone to the avant-garde well to test the brink of improvisational reason, but at the same time developed a quintessential jazz-guitar tone, dark and dulcet, its vibrato squarely modulated and inimical to sonic overkill. If Ornette Coleman were Jim Hall, he would be Joe Morris."

Said Gary Giddins, quoted from here... 'If Ornette...' Sort of – but Morris is very much his own man... And his cohorts balance him perfectly here – Duepree takes a rippling ripping solo followed by one of some eloquence from the bassist. Morris explains where the inspiration for the album came from in the liner notes:

'This set of pieces was originally named The Green Book. Inspired by a collection of visual graphic aids by that name created by the late composer/improviser/pianist Lowell Davidson... Lowell's Green Book was intended to be used as a guide for improvisation. It consisted of a set of color Xerox images made by the copier running on it's own without source material. The results were dense blotches of random pattern and color. Lowell considered the Green Book to be one of his most advanced devices to be used to steer himself and his players. Others included index cards with different sizes of notes (these were similar to the work of other composers from the 50s and 60s) and his invented staves which were intended to isolate certain musical zones and sounds. He also notated on materials other than paper and used methods of notating such as making holes in aluminum foil and placing it in front of a light bulb. Lowell said that by looking at the foil you could imprint the pattern of light on your synapses and then transfer the pattern to your instrument. In one of Lowell's most extreme experiments, he stared into a high wattage chrome coated light bulb every day for what he claimed was three years-I didn't know him at that time.' (From here – scroll down).

Brief Wikipedia article on Lowell Davidson here... sounds like he was an interesting dude...

Some Zydeco - Clifton Chenier essays a slow-rocking mean old twelve bar - 'I can look down at your woman.' Smouldering stuff - and Chenier transcends the old musicians gag about accordions here with some fine playing. ('The definition of a gentleman is someone who knows how to play an accordion - but doesn't...')

Uploading this as Thelonious Monk solo piano moves into the Velvet Underground playing 'Sister Ray' on my Last Fm feed – whip it on me, Jim... Between those two polarities I can live easily... One of the joys of Last Fm – just when you think it ticks off stuff you know in the background something totally different comes blasting through – the latest being guitarist Pat Martino the other week, whose playing I did not really know before - what a blast that was. Stopped me in my tracks... I have some of his music arriving soon...



Charlie Parker
Miles Davis (tp) Charlie Parker (as) Duke Jordan (p) Tommy Potter (b) Max Roach (d)
Don't blame me
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Evan Parker (ss) John Stevens (d)
19.44
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Joe Morris
Joe Morris (e-g) Nate Morris (b) Jerome Duepree (d)
Stare at a lightbulb for three years
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Clifton Chenier
I can look down at your woman
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Joe Morris/Rob Brown... John Coltrane... Lennie Tristano...

Some of my favourite contemporary musicians – the Joe Morris/Rob Brown quartet, enclosing William Parker and Jackson Krall, playing 'Pivotal,' from their 1995 album, 'Illuminate.' Spirals of interlocking melody as the bass runs deep and the drums spatter: Krall has one of those especially dustbin-liddish cymbals that splash a grimy metallic shimmer across the soundspace. Not surprising to learn that he's a bespoke drum-maker and sound-sculptor (see here...). Morris emerges eventually, repeating a cranky fragment over and over until his usual linearity surfaces, albeit a craggy line - there is a scouring, almost Calvinistic purity to his playing, shorn of effects but not slipping back into the more cosy timbres of classic jazz guitar – informed by rock although transcending it. Parker comes up next, a twisting bounce that ebbs away to silence briefly – then Krall steps in, rolls across the kit in short phrases that drop off to a quick silence before extending his rhythm into a longer breath. Back for more collective weaving and sparring that ebbs away over sharp accents from Krall - eventually to
silence .

I truly dig Joe Morris:

'I'm not interested in being part of any doctrinaire, dogmatic scene led by anyone. I mean, I vote and I obey the law. I have a family and I pay my taxes. I'm not an anarchist because it's too organized around set principles. I prefer to be a kind of old fashioned hipster who doesn't fit in anywhere, quietly pissing off the people who spend their lives pissing off people with their anti-social contrivances. It's all been so predictable for so long. ' (From here...).

Indeed...

John Coltrane's first session as leader. Red Garland holds the piano chair on this session, alternating with Mal Waldron. I put up another track from this date a while back – interesting to contrast Waldron with Garland. Red G has a sparkle and bounce to his touch that renders him instantly recognisable, bubbling single note lines alternating with 'locked-hand' dense chordal passages – which he can overdo at times – I find monotony can set in, the sound become sludgy. Here – he's fine, a marvelous foil to Coltrane, whom, the more I listen to of his earlier stuff, the more I appreciate how far he stretched the music and what an innovator he was. It's all here – the seedbeds of the later fiery flights, although this is relatively brief, a heartfelt, deep performance of 'Violets for your furs,' introduced in late-night style by Garland before Coltrane beds down on the theme. A ballad player supreme – this is world-weary, questioning - and beautiful. Garland takes a solo, parallel chord style throughout, but only a chorus, undersprung by Paul Chambers' deep, supple bass. Coltrane then, to take it out, reshaping the theme with a few sudden flurries. A straight, short reading, but the pleasures here are the sheer finesse of the performance, the unique sound of the Coltrane tenor saxophone...

I suspect that Lennie Tristano would have concurred with the sentiments expressed in the Joe Morris quote above. From sessions he recorded in his studio in the early sixties, this is 'Scene and Variations: Carol/Tania/Bud.' Interesting review from 'Downbeat' here...

Starting off in two-handed fashion – apparently he may have influenced George Shearing's adoption of the locked-hands style, although the English pianist alleges here that he took it straight from Milt Buckner – ah, the minutiae of critical obsession - the first of the three sections is a dense chordal passage – suddenly breaking off for part two into a loping bass line that underpins the more familiar long-vista linearity. One interesting solution to playing solo piano. The third section is a long, flowing single line, mainly in the bass, returning to both hands briefly to thump out some chords. Unsung, old Lennie, unsung... and no one-trick cool jazz pony, let me tell you...





Morris/Brown Quartet
Joe Morris (g) Rob Brown (as) William Parker (b) Jackson Krall (d)
Pivotal
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John Coltrane
John Coltrane (ts) Red Garland (p) Paul Chambers (b) Albert "Tootie" Heath (d)
Violets for your furs
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Lennie Tristano
Lennie Tristano (p)
Scene and variations: Carol/Tania/Bud
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Thelonious Monk/Gigi Gryce... Sonny Rollins... Joe Morris... Blind Lemon Jefferson... Bob Wills...

'Brake's Sake' is a less well-known Thelonious Monk composition, taken from an album under Gigi Gryce's name (who played alto saxophone on this date). Recorded in 1955 – the golden age of Monk, perhaps, when everything was still fresh. Gryce states the theme shadowed rhythmically by Monk. An appealing player, the altoist was to become better known for his composing skills. The higher range of his saxophone gives an airier feel than usual (Monk's bands were usually fronted by tenor players). Monk takes a sparkling solo, expanding the theme in his usual asymmetric manner – Blakey and Heath are steady as you go – with the drummer letting go a few figures towards the end to mark his presence...

Sonny Rollins: 'Someday I'll find you,' taken from his 1958 album, 'The Freedom Suite.' Recorded at a time when cultural and political freedoms were to become a dominating issue in American life. Yet a corollary musical freedom breathes throughout – one of the roads out of the bop box was taken by many in the fifties with the decision to drop the piano – I've talked about before about Gerry Mulligan, Jimmy Giuffre – and the most famous piano-less quartet of Ornette Coleman's – here Rollins follows suit. (No pun intended). So: different but related takes on freedom - read more here about the liner notes - Rollins original, concerned with explicit oppression and Orrin Keepnews more distanced take that moves the focus to themusical search for freedom, which was the one used by the record company. In itself, a reflection on the times... This version of an old Noel Coward song opens on a bouncing three four, with much pattering of clenched hihat from Roach, before settling into a sturdy four four. Anchored by the bass, Rollins and Roach take it out, the drummer especially busy, giving the saxophonist plenty of rhythmic stimulation. Sax and drums exchange tight one bar to and fro before the theme restatement. 'Someday I'll find you, moonlight behind you, true to the dream I am dreaming.'

More from Joe Morris's solo acoustic guitar album, 'Singularity.' This is 'Flight,' another exercise in stripped-down abrasive purity. Probing and grittily dissonant... Morris displays his mastery with his ranging runs up and down the neck of his instrument – at one point a brief section of fast-strummed chords gives a distant echo of Derek Bailey...

If you wanted portability and easy moving, a guitar was your instrument – capable of accompaniment for vocals and instrumental work – or the two combined. The early country blues singers evolved a style that still cuts and also demonstrates various enduring elements of african-american music/culture. There is a loose freedom to the blues before it became more codified, (although in the public domain, one could argue it was already set in form quite early on, via W.C. Handy et al), a spirit that I think returns, in a more explicit way, with the avant-garde in the sixties. Here's Blind Lemon Jefferson with the old staple 'Easy Rider Blues.' The form allows for considerable space where the guitar echoes and answers the voice in an ongoing dialogue... Those who regard(ed) this music as 'primitive' and count the bars to see when the canonic twelve are overridden are maybe missing a point - 'form is never more than an expression of content, ' after all, if you follow Creeley - via Olson...(Quote from here... I also like the revamp from Denis Levertov: 'Form is never more than a revelation of content.' (Quoted from here... scroll down...

For no other reason than it's on my hard drive, but there is a relationship – Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys http://www.texasplayboys.net/Biographies/bobwillsbio.htm like Blind Lemon, came from the Lone Star State. Music for dancing and fun – there's a joyful exuberance to Wills' music. And I have a kind of theory that the manner in which his bands stacked styles – country, dixieland/jazz, folk etc. - into a newly minted whole, while expressing the vitality and cross-fertilisations of Texas musics – in a way fore-runs Ornette Coleman's Prime Time bands... something in the soil? Or the air... Wills had a gig early on at the Crystal Ballroom in Fort Worth, if I remember correctly, toured all over and would also have been heard on radio throughout the south west... Here you have hoe-down fiddles, jazzy piano and electric guitar, countrified vocals and the inimitable Wills' high-piched yiha interjections: 'Aw, Brother Al Strickland now.' Stay all night, stay a little longer...


In the Videodrome...

Bob Wills and 'Ida Red'



Ornette in 1980...

and in 1974...

...and some immaculate T Bone Walker...

Gigi Gryce/Thelonious Monk
Gig Gryce (as) Thelonious Monk (p) Percy Heath (b) Art Blakey (d)
Brake's Sake
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Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins (ts) Oscar Pettiford (b) Max Roach (d)
Someday I'll find you
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Joe Morris (g)
Light
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Blind Lemon Jefferson (g, v)
Easy Rider Blues
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Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys
Stay all night, stay a little longer
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John Carisi... Jimmy Giuffre... Booker Ervin... David S. Ware... Joe Morris...

Sometime back I posted a Cecil Taylor track from the album released under Gil Evan's name ('Into the Hot'), but featuring on the original LP a side each by Taylor and John Carisi. To redress the balance, here is 'Ankgor Wat.' A sound world away from Taylor, Carisi had been around – a self-taught trumpeter he is mainly known for his writing and arranging skills – and most notably for the tune 'Israel,' recorded by the Miles Davis Birth of the Cool band in 1949. There is little of his work available – this track shows a hint of his lineage to Claude Thornhill, who stands behind both the Davis recordings via Gil Evans in the velvety sonorities of french horn and tuba... all these interesting trajectories... No doubt an attempt at invoking the mystery and grandeur of the site in Cambodia via an extended composition... some bluesy lines by Costa and Galbraith across some near-gospelly cadences that hints at hard bop's forays into 'soul jazz.'

Jimmy Giuffre, another Texas jazz maverick... originally finding success as composer/arranger with the Woody Herman band, then with his own small groups – before his plunge into the early avant-garde secured for him many years of unjust neglect. This is 'Chirpin' Time,' from his album 'Tangents in Jazz.'

'Giuffre's career has always been a matter of plotting a trajectory, but then the same could be said of Coltrane. The degree of exclusivity between the two men is pronounced, and according to a glib interpretation, it could be said that one moved towards Africa, musically speaking, whilst the other moved towards Europe. In both cases, their efforts expanded the jazz vocabulary, and Giuffre's music as it was caught here amounts to the formative work of a singular intelligence.' (From here...).

'[G]lib'- yes – but interesting, in a (very) broad brush sense. Perhaps it might be instructive to also consider the influence of folk forms on his music and map this onto the cultural bi-polar chart – the blues (Africa) and folk/country (Europe)... This track demonstrates that straight away – the woody clarinet playing a line at once bucolic and bluesy followed by the contrapuntal blend of the trumpet. The drums are held back – brushes used, employed more melodically than rhythmically, the bass plays an integral role in the composition- proceeding melodically rather than via the standard walk. Call and response... Acres of space... blues and the abstract truth, anyone? How one reacts to this music may depend for some on how much one feels that the 'jazz' component has been retained... For my part, alongside the European drift, at the back of it always I seem to hear Lester Young – and the blues... Giuffre was to move into more abstract areas but the seeds of his later strategies can all be found here...

Another Texas horn – the mighty Booker Ervin. 'Deed ah do,' as basic a blues as you can get – a repeated riff spread across its first eight bars before a small elaboration to round it off in the final four. Ervin takes the first solo at full throttle – the backing an almost four-square stomp that reminds of the Art Blakey classic 'Blues March.' Richard Williams next, a sparkling solo moving between the usual fleet bop lines to invoke earlier trumpet styles in places with figures drawn from yesteryear. George Tucker's bass comes up for a sparse but effective couple of choruses. Parlan was always a bluesman, moving into a block chordal section before the riff returns...

More mighty tenor – David S Ware and his group playing 'Quadrahex.' Starting down low, slow, ominous and brooding. Susy Ibarra brought a different range of textures to the drum chair during her tenure with the quartet - her cymbals introduce the next section after a brief pause. Then Ware goes for a high squall... a track from one of the best groups in contemporary jazz... Parker as always granite-like in underpinning and Shipp suprememely resonant - battering dark chords and probing lines.

Another member of the same loose grouping of contemporary free jazzers– the guitarist Joe Morris (who has switched predominantly to acoustic bass atterly. A solo acoustic outing on steel string guitar, here's Joe playing 'Light,' from the album 'Singularity.' An austere sound - but Morris doesn't go in for much sonic frippery on electric either, leaving his lines very clean in the tradition of jazz guitar, however busy they get. Chasing, scurrying, dense and thoughtful here... there is an appealing purity to Morris's work...


I found this article about the recent memorial to Alice Coltrane performed by her son Ravi – stumbled on it here...

In the videodrome...

Jimmy Guiffre and trio playing 'Train and the River.'

Ravi Coltrane with Elvin Jones...


More Elvin...

Cannonball Adderley playing an uppish 'Straight no Chaser' from 1974 with brother Nat...

a long clip of Cannonball's sextet from 1963...

Herbie Hancock and co – 'So What'

Gil Evans/John Carisi
John Carisi, Johnny Glasel, Doc Severinsen (tp) Urbie Green (tb) Jim Buffington (frh) Harvey Phillips (tu) Phil Woods (as) Gene Quill (as, ts) Eddie Costa (vib, p) Barry Galbraith (g) Milt Hinton (b) Osie Johnson (d) Gil Evans (arr, cond)
Angkor Wat
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Jimmy Giuffre
Jimmy Giuffre (cl) Jack Sheldon (t) Ralph Pena (b) Artie Anton (d)
Chirpin' Time
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Booker Ervin
Booker Ervin (ts) Richard Williams (t) Horace Parlan (p) George Tucker (b) Danny Richmond (d)
Deed ah do
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David S Ware
David S Ware (ts) Matthew Shipp (p) William Parker (b) Susie Ibarra (d)
Quadrahex
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Joe Morris (g)
Light
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