Jazz Compilation 3: In Memory of Johnny Griffin

As noted in the last post, Johnny Griffin recently left us. The Times obit informs us that he was swinging to the end: he played his last concert just a week ago.

In 1957 he recorded a pair of great albums for Blue Note Records: A Blowin Session, and The Congregation. Both are straight-ahead hard bop, and I recommend both highly. The former featured a front line of three tenor saxes and trumpet: Griffin, Coltrane, Hank Mobley, and Lee Morgan.  Oh, and by the way, the rhythm section was composed of Wynton Kelly (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Art Blakey behind the kit.  Not bad. The second album was a quartet date with Sonny Clark (piano), along with Chambers and Kenny Dennis (drums).

A couple of nominations from these relaxed, free-swinging sessions:

• The Way You Look Tonight (1957): This track kicks off A Blowin’ Session, and it immediately warrants the album’s title. Griffin, Trane, and Morgan thrive with the fast tempo. Poor Hank Mobley—whose lovely, bluesy tone I could listen to all day—seems out of his element and bows out after a single chorus of soloing.
• It’s You Or No One (1957): From The Congregation. Griffin again chooses a relatively fast tempo for this number, but his solo is relaxed and inventive, as is Sonny Clark’s. A highlight here is Chambers’s bowed bass solo.

So listen to some Johnny Griffin this week; his music offers warm, happy consolation.

Rest in Peace, Johnny Griffin

From The New York Times:

Johnny Griffin, 80, Jazz Saxophonist, Dies – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com.

I will listen to A Blowin’ Session and The Congregation today. A moment of silence for the esteemed Mr. Griffin, please.

Jazz Compilation 2: Art Blakey!

Mr. Blakey’s ferocious attack on the drum kit makes necessary the above exclamation mark. If you are not familiar with Blakey, I strongly suggest that you remedy this sad state. For the better part of four decades he fronted a group with ever-changing personel known as The Jazz Messengers, which typified what came to be known as ‘hard bop.’ He founded the outfit with pianist Horace Silver in 1955 and retained the name when Silver left.

The Messengers became a kind of finishing school for great musicians, and Blakey’s eye for talent never failed. A very partial list of distinguished alumni: Johnny Griffin, Benny Golson, Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Curtis Fuller, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Timmons, Cedar Walton, Hank Mobley, and Wynton Marsalis.

I’ve gone through a few Messengers sessions in the last couple of days… one has to be careful, as too much of Blakey’s ballistics in one sitting can, in fact, kill. Here are some nominations:

• In Walked Bud (1957, with Thelonious Monk): I don’t think that any drummer understood Monk’s idiosyncratic sense of rhythm better than Blakey, whose accents and ‘bombs’ under the pianist’s minimalist, angular solo are perfect accompaniment.
• Moanin’ (1958): This Bobby Timmons composition is the Messengers’ most famous number. The call-and-response opening is straight out of the gospel tradition, and Lee Morgan’s trumpet kicks off the soloing with his characteristic bravado.
• Tell It Like It Is (1961): From the album The Freedom Rider, this track is the product of what is, for my money, the hardest swinging of all the Messengers’ lineups, featuring Morgan, Shorter (tenor sax), Timmons (piano), and Jymie Merritt (bass). Blakey doesn’t solo, but he is clearly in charge, as we hear him shouting encouragement from behind his drums. Shorter’s bluesy solo is a highlight here, as he seems to channel late-50s Coltrane.
• Mosaic (1961): Later in the same year, Blakey added the wonderful Curtis Fuller on trombone, and the Messengers became a sextet for the first time. Also new were Cedar Walton (piano) and Freddie Hubbard (trumpet). The result was a richer sound (I would say ‘fuller,’ but that would be an unfortunate choice). Blakey solos like a volcano here, and his propulsive playing dominates throughout. Cedar Walton lends a rhythmic hand in driving the ensemble to a frenzy, culminating in Hubbard’s outbursts in the upper register of his instrument.

More Blakey to come in future posts. Give these tracks a listen, but remember that too much Blakey, like too much good Scotch, might be dangerous.

Jazz Compilation

I’m returning here after months of neglect to write about something very un-Shostakovichian. True, DSCH did write some music for jazz band, but as much as I love the man’s music, he doesn’t swing.

While reorganizing my music collection recently, I realized how long it had been since I had listened to some of it—ten years in some cases. We fall into habits of listening; when I want to hear something, I’ll often automatically turn to favorites… Kind of Blue, Waltz For Debby, Saxophone Colossus, etc. These, of course, will never let you down. But how long had it been since I’d let myself be surprised by Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross or Jack Teagarden or Eric Dolphy or Jackie McLean or, or, or…?

I make no particular claims to jazz expertise. I know more than the average person, but that’s not saying much, since you know more than the average person if you know that Miles Davis played the trumpet. But despite my lack of expertise, many friends over the years have asked me to introduce them to jazz—perhaps because I’m an educator (though in a different field), or perhaps because I have a larger-than-average record collection. I’ve always responded to such requests in a piecemeal kind of way: I’ll let them borrow some Miles or some Coltrane or some Bird.

As I went through my collection, however, I decided that it would be great fun (for me, at least) to respond in a more thoughtful, comprehensive way. So I’m putting together my own jazz compilation on the scope of, say, the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, but with my own idiosyncratic focus. My complaint about such collections in the past (and about Ken Burns’s mammoth jazz documentary) is that they tend to focus on historical significance rather than the pleasure of the music. I can understand why they do this, as these collections are often primarily pedagogical, and, of course, pleasure and historical significance often coincide. However, such an approach is often daunting for new listeners who just want to enjoy some music which is new to them. So for the purposes of this compilation, I will let my own taste be the primary guide for selection. And perhaps in time for Christmas I’ll have this ready for interested friends and family.

I’ll be blogging about my nominations for inclusion as I listen, and doubtless I will nominate far more tracks than I will be able to include, at which point I’ll have to do some culling.

I’ll begin with nominations from the Louis Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens—as good a place to start as any. There are, of course, no jazz recordings more significant than these, but this is one of those cases in which pleasure and significance coincide—at least on some tracks. And here I’ll indulge in my first moment of blasphemy: some of these recordings (particularly the early ones, before Earl Hines joined Louis) do not hold up well. There are moments when Louis is not singing or playing, and we are forced to listen to Lil Hardin Armstrong’s stilted piano or, even worse, her awful vocals (blessedly rare). That said, many of these performances remain breathtaking. My initial list of nominees from these recordings included about a dozen tracks, which I have (with some accompanying pain) cut down to six:

• Heebie Jeebies (1926): This is the first known recorded example of scat. Louis famously claimed that his music fell off the stand, and he was forced to improvise vocally without words. The story should be true even if it’s not. The tune features the original Hot Five, including Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Lil Armstrong (piano), and Johnny St. Cyr (banjo). The highlight is certainly Louis’s vocal, accompanied by banjo and nothing else, which swings like nobody’s business.
• Struttin’ With Some Barbecue (1927): Same personel here. While Dodds and Ory are adept soloists, Louis’s solo and, especially, his restatement of the theme during the polyphonic conclusion, blow away the rest of the ensemble and demonstrate through contrast the difference between straight syncopation and real swing. One might call it the difference between ragtime and jazz senses of time.
• West End Blues (1928): Louis’s opening fanfare here is one of the most famous moments in jazz. This is a different Hot Five (though I count six), with Fred Robinson (not to be confused with the great Old English scholar from Yale), Jimmy Strong, Earl Hines, Mancy Cara, and Zutty Singleton. By far the most important change here is Hines on piano. His shimmering, delicate solo reveals an artist who can hold his own with Louis, who responds immediately with a heart-rending single note sustained with vibrato. ‘OK,’ Louis seems to be saying, ‘here is someone who can play with me.’
• Weather Bird (1928): This duet with Hines continues the dialogue.
• St. James Infirmary (1928): This remarkably dark old song I include for contrast. My favorite version of this tune, actually, was recorded decades later by Jack Teagarden, about which I’ll write eventually.
• Ain’t Misbehavin’ (1929): Actually not a Hot Five or Seven, but from the same period. Despite the rather square accompaniment, Louis’s vocal and trumpet solo on this Fats Waller tune are pure bliss. Note his quotation of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in his solo.