The Penguin Jazz Guide (104 page)

Guitar

Solo Guitar: Volume 1

Incus CD10

Bailey (g, syn solo). February 1971.

Derek Bailey said (1992):
‘There are all these musics out there where you don’t really play. You just perform a function. I’d found that even in those dance halls I was playing free, certainly freer than just playing someone’s chords, so it wasn’t some big new thing that came along and hit me one day.’

It’s usual, but unhelpful, to describe Derek Bailey’s music by all the things it was not: not swinging, not idiomatic, not melodic or blues-based, resistant to any hint of groove or linear direction. What such characterizations routinely fail to convey is how consistent with itself a Bailey performance always was, how geometrically expressive and how completely defined by the instrument he was playing; for a ‘non-idiomatic’ musician, Bailey was first and foremost a guitar-player. He learned his trade in northern clubs and dance halls and retained a love of vernacular music in all its forms, even when his own work seemed to exist at a remote extreme from any populist content.

Born into a musical family, he studied guitar formally but began playing straight-ahead jazz and swing before embracing – without in his case a transition via ‘free jazz’, a concept he distrusted – free improvisation. He was a member of Joseph Holbrooke, a legendary improvising group which evolved out of a relatively conventional jazz trio. He was later a member of various important improvising ensembles, including Music Improvisation Company, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and groups led by Tony Oxley, Paul Rutherford and others. He co-founded Incus records with Oxley and Evan Parker, and also curated Company, a long-standing improvisation ‘congress’. In the main, though, Bailey went his own course, pioneering a line of solo improvisation which involved mostly minimal manipulation of the guitar sound, often only a swell pedal, and a huge technical resource: hard-picked single notes, fiery scrabbles on the fretboard, floating accidentals and overtone effects.

Solo Guitar
now sounds curiously old-fashioned, an attractively primitive Early Church version of Bailey. There are other records from the period, including
Fairly Early
and
Domestic & Public Pieces
, which also includes cassette ‘postcards’ from Bailey to Emanem owner Martin Davidson. Part of the guitarist’s musical life was the network of relationships that grew round the recording, cottage industry production and distribution of Incus discs, much of the work being done by partner Karen Brookman. These mostly short pieces emerge with conversational directness, but also with extraordinary discipline; none sounds a second longer than it needs to be. As well as an early glimpse of Bailey’s splintery but eminently logical sound,
Solo Guitar
affords a rare glimpse of him playing the work of other composers: Willem Breuker, Misha Mengelberg and Gavin Bryars, whose ‘The Squirrel And The Rickety-Rackety Bridge’ is a high-point of the record. There’s a rare touch of VCS3 synth on Mengelberg’s ‘Where Is The Police?’, another piece that gives the lie to any sense that this is po-faced and abstract music. It’s packed with life and humour and it feels like a setting-out: the musical journey was to last another 30 years …

& See also
Ballads / Standards
(2002; p. 673);
SME, Quintessence
(1973–1974; p. 406)

GERRY MULLIGAN
^&

Born 6 April 1927, New York City; died 20 January 1996, Darien, Connecticut

Baritone and soprano saxophones, clarinet

The Age Of Steam

A&M CDA 0804

Mulligan; Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison (t); Bob Brookmeyer (vtb); Jimmy Cleveland, Kenny Shroyer (tb); Bud Shank (as, f); Tom Scott (ss, ts); Ernie Watts (ts, bs); Roger Kellaway (p); Howard Roberts (g); Chuck Domanico (b); John Guerin (d); Joe Porcaro (perc). February–July 1971.

Gerry Mulligan said (1990):
‘There’s no sensation in the world as good as standing in front of a good band, in a warm shower of overtones … unless it’s standing on the footplate of a classic locomotive!’

Almost unrecognizably long-haired and bearded, posed in denims in front of one of the locomotives that are his other great passion, Mulligan might almost be some mythical footplateman from the great age of the frontier. In 1971, he hadn’t recorded on his own account for nearly seven years. Stephan Goldman’s production is recognizably modern, with Mulligan making extensive use of electric piano and guitar and both ‘Country Beaver’ and ‘A Weed In Disneyland’ include strong rock elements. That’s modified with a swing rhythm on the opening ‘One To Ten In Ohio’, which reunites Jeru and Brookmeyer. The two finest tracks, though, are ‘Over The Hill And Out Of The Woods’, which Mulligan opens on piano and with a lovely Sweets solo, and the hauntingly beautiful ‘Grand Tour’. The latter must be accounted among the saxophonist’s most beautiful compositions, its meditative theme and misty timbre explored by the composer and Bud Shank. Even when playing solidly on the beat – ‘swing’ was at a discount in 1971 – Mulligan is an unmistakable voice and this was an important, possibly career-saving return to form.

& See also
The Original Quartet
(1952–1953; p. 137),
What Is There To Say?
(1958; p. 228)

LIONEL HAMPTON
^&

Born 20 April 1909, Louisville, Kentucky; died 31 August 2002, New York City

Vibraphone, drums

Salle Pleyel 1971

Laserlight 36133 2CD

Hampton; Roland Connors (t); Bob Snyder (cl); Tommy Gambino (ss, as); Illinois Jacquet, Chuck McClendon (ts); Milt Buckner, John Spruill (org, p); Billy Mackel (g); Eustis Guillemet (b); Kenny Bolds (d). March 1971.

Lionel Hampton said (1990):
‘In France, they understood it was important to put on a
show
. Even the highbrow critics understood that.’

In later years, Hampton became a kind of roving ambassador for jazz. In the year of Louis Armstrong’s death, he seemed to pick up the mantle again. Later still, he was even close to the White House – jokes about the ‘
vibe-
president’ abounded. There are earlier live recordings from L’Olympia in Paris, from 1961 and again halfway through the decade, when Hamp was one of the few jazz bulwarks against rock’n’roll. The 1971 concert gives plenty of space to Jacquet and Buckner, neither a shrinking violet, and something like the Sam Price blues ‘Big Joe’ works up a monumental head of steam. Hamp browses through a few standards that take his fancy – ‘Summertime’, ‘Avalon’, ‘Who Can I Turn To’ – and Jacquet gets beefy on ‘Ghost Of A Chance’. Working with a smaller group, the set has more of an R&B feel (he helped invent it, after all), and although the second disc is packed with warhorses, there’s lots to listen to.

& See also
Lionel Hampton 1937–1938
(1937–1938; p. 62)

SLAM STEWART

Born Leroy Stewart, 21 September 1914, Englewood, New Jersey; died 10 December 1987, Binghamton, New York

Double bass, voice

Slam Bam

Black & Blue 861

Stewart; Milt Buckner (p); Jo Jones (d). April 1971.

Slim Gaillard said (1989):
‘My man Slam, wham! oop bop, shoo bop, paradaba, bam!’
(or as close to that as can be transcribed).

Stewart was already a star when he appeared in the movie
Stormy Weather
in 1943. During the ’30s he had been a stalwart of the New York scene, playing with Art Tatum and forming an evergreen partnership (love it, hate it; it sold records) with Slim Gaillard which exploited the less serious side of Stewart’s virtuosic self-harmonizing (an octave apart) on bass and vocals. However corny he now seems, few modern bass-players have taken up the technical challenge Stewart posed (though Major Holley had a stab, singing in unison with his bass), and the purely musical aspects of his work are of abiding value. The very oddity of Stewart’s technique is initially off-putting, but on repeated listening its complexities begin to make an impact. It’s perhaps a shame that Stewart wasn’t able – or didn’t choose – to record with more of the younger modern bassists. If Mingus and Pettiford are now thought to have set the instrument free, much of what they did was already implicit in Stewart’s work of the ’30s. By the early ’70s, though, Stewart was stuck in a manner rather than a style.

CARMEN MCRAE

Born 8 April 1920, New York City; died 10 November 1994, Beverly Hills, California

Voice, piano

Sings Lover Man

Columbia CK 65115

McRae; Nat Adderley (c); Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis (ts); Norman Simmons (p, cel); Mundell Lowe (g); Bob Cranshaw (b); Walter Perkins (d). June–July 1971.

Carmen McRae said (1983):
‘Billie was my idol; always was; always will be. She scared me, she was so good. I believed when I was younger that it wasn’t possible to be better than her. And I think you can hear that in my singing, that fear of anticlimax.’

An accomplished pianist, Carmen McRae was something of a late starter as a featured vocalist, not recording a vocal session under her own name until 1954. Her fame has always lagged behind that of her close contemporaries Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday, but eventually she did achieve something like the honour she deserved, and her commitment to jazz singing was unflinching. The CD era has not been very kind to her. Universal’s stewardship of her Decca catalogue has been insultingly negligent. It eventually took the British arm of MCA to double up
Torchy
and
Blue Moon
, although the latter has subsequently been released as a Verve Master Edition, albeit with a miserly playing time.

There’s always a tigerish feel to her best vocals – no woman has ever sung in the jazz idiom with quite such beguiling surliness as McRae, and because she never had the pipes of an Ella or Sassie, she did have to rely on that sheer force of character to put a song across. She was briefly married to Kenny Clarke in the ’40s and had to go the usual route of band singer (with Basie, Mercer Ellington) and intermission artist before she got a respectable break. McRae’s original tribute to Billie Holiday was something she had wanted to do during her Decca period. At Columbia, where she made only one other album, she got her chance. The deft arrangements are by the often undersung Norman Simmons, and Adderley and Lockjaw Davis take on the Harry Edison and Ben Webster roles. Though she follows Holiday’s manner almost to the letter on some songs, notably ‘Them There Eyes’ and ‘Trav’lin’ Light’, this is all Carmen McRae. She is quite imperious on ‘Yesterdays’, finds a deadly, almost sardonic note in ‘Strange Fruit’ and is ineffably tender on ‘If The Moon Turns Green’. The musicians play superbly alongside her.

KEITH JARRETT
^&

Born 8 May 1945, Allentown, Pennsylvania

Piano, soprano saxophone, other instruments

El Juicio (The Judgement)

Atlantic 7567 80783-3

Jarrett; Dewey Redman (ts, cl, Chinese musette); Charlie Haden (b, perc); Paul Motian (d). July 1971.

Charles Lloyd says:
‘I first met Keith when we were both playing in Boston and I was blown away. I was playing downstairs with Cannonball [Adderley] and he was playing upstairs with a woman singer and he would come and check me out and I would check him out. He was amazing even then, a very spiritual, very brilliant musician who gets some strange comments behind all the adulation.’

A child prodigy, Jarrett learned his craft in the Boston area and with the Jazz Messengers before achieving stardom with Charles Lloyd’s crossover quartet. A restless experimenter who pioneered long-form solo improvisation but also, with his Standards Trio, rewrote the American songbook and then unexpectedly delved back into free music for a time.

In a series of intensive sessions in the first two weeks of July 1971, Jarrett taped enough material for
El Juicio
,
The Mourning Of A Star
and
Birth
. Haden’s presence, and the fact that Atlantic had picked up Jarrett a little over a decade after the last of the classic Ornette Coleman records, inevitably conjured up comparisons: while not as radical as Ornette’s music, Jarrett was no less rich in creative potential. The group sound is expanded by his own use of soprano saxophone, notably on
El Juicio
and on
Birth
’s ‘Mortgage On My Soul (Wah Wah)’; Redman also deploys clarinet and musette, and there are steel pans and other percussion when called for. Though it has its detractors, for us
El Juicio
remains a high-point, and it is now available in a couple of editions from different labels, on one of them paired with the fine early trio
Life Between The Exit Signs
. The joyous countrified swing of ‘Gypsy Moth’ and ‘Toll Road’ could hardly be more infectious, or more loosely structured, at an opposite remove to the dour atmosphere of ‘El Juicio’ itself, a strange, brooding tone-poem which if the cover art is anything by way of confirmation conjures up first and last things, a musical eschatology. Also very different, and also confirming the Atlantic lineage, is the experimental melodism of ‘Piece For Ornette’. It exists in two forms, one at nine and a quarter minutes, the other at 12 seconds! It isn’t a long record and the compilation option shears out ‘Pardon My Rags’, but it has a freshness of approach and depth of musical intelligence that has never tarnished.