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This most detailed and revealing survey of
jazz saxophonists begins with early 20th-
century origins and continues to the latest
musicians on the worldwide scene today.
Masters Of Jazz Saxophone offers clear
analysis and beautiful illustrations,
probing further than ever before into the
vibrant world of jazz saxophone players
and their music.

KEVIN ALEXANDER is a professional

saxophonist and writer. He also teaches
media studies.

RONALD ATKINS has written for several

magazines. His reviews and feature
articles on jazz have appeared in The
Guardian for over 30 years. He compiled
and edited the coffee-table reference work
Jazz, and has contributed to other books.

RICHARD COOK is the editor of Jazz

Review and is the co-author of The
Penguin Guide To Jazz On CD.

STEVE DAY is a published poet, the author

of Two Full Ears - Listening To Improvised
Music and Ornette Coleman: Music
Always, a contributor to Avant and Eureka
magazines, and a writer of CD liner notes.
He is active in jazz education.

DAVE GELLY has been writing and

broadcasting on jazz and allied topics for
30 years. Jazz critic for The Observer, he
writes and presents for BBC radio and has
written several books. He was Jazz Writer
Of The Year in the 1999 British Jazz
Awards. He maintains a parallel career as
a tenor saxophonist.

MARK GILBERT has written for Jazz

Review, Gramophone Good Jazz CD
Guide, Jazz: The Magazine, Jazz On CD,
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Masters
of Jazz Guitar, Guitarist magazine, The
Daily Mail and The Stage. He is
contemporary jazz consultant to Music
Choice cable and satellite audio provider.

FRANK GRIFFITH is a saxophonist,

composer/arranger and jazz
educationalist, currently Director of
Performance at Brunel University in
London. He has arranged for and/or
‘layed with Lionel Hampton, Jon
\\endricks, Ron Carter, the Mel Lewis
‘irchestra, Mel Torme and Norma
i\instone. He leads The Frank Griffith
Mipnet.

Wi. RICHARD PALMER is a schoolmaster

vivid Open University Tutor, and is currently
(iad of English at Bedford School. He
vtites for Jazz Journal International; other
jcitz work includes Sonny Rollins: The
(Hing Edge and monographs on Oscar
Paterson and Stan Getz. He co-edited
\tn#erence Back: Philip Larkin’s Uncollected
Jazz Writings 1940-1984,

continued on back flap

 oy whe 5
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78857
MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE The story of the players and their music

A BALAFON BOOK First British edition 2000

Published in the UK by Balafon Books,
an imprint of Outline Press Ltd,
115j Cleveland Street, London W1P 5PN, England.
Copyright © 2000 Balafon. All rights reserved.
No part of this book covered by the copyrights hereon may be
reproduced or copied in any manner whatsoever without written
permision, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
articles or reviews where the source should be made clear.
For information contact the publishers.

ISBN 0-87930-622-X
Printed in Hong Kong
Art Director Nigel Osborne
Commissioning Editor Dave Gelly
Editor Tony Bacon
Picture Research Peter Symes
Production Phil Richardson
Print and origination by Colorprint Offset
00 O01 02 038 0454321

@
1976
Harlem
Library
Cullen
Countee
 THE SAXOPHONE BREAKS THROUGH Dave GeLiy +

COLEMAN HAWKINS Loren SCHOENBERG 12

SWINGING OUT RicHaArD Cook 20

\ STILL SWINGING PETER VACHER 30

\ LESTER YOUNG Dave GELLY 38

CHARLIE PARKER Bbarian PRizsTLey 46

BEBOP SAXOPHONES RicHAarD PALMER 54

THE COOL SOUND AzLun Morcan 64

STAN GETZ & THE BROTHERS Jiu Tomzinson 72

HONKERS & SCREAMERS Tony RusseLy 80

SONNY ROLLINS AicHArRD PALMER 88

THE HARD BOPPERS RowALp ATKINS 96

SOUL SAXOPHONES Kerra SHADWICK 106

JOHN COLTRANE Brian PRIESTLEY 114

THE MODALISTS Keiry SHApwick 122

POST-BOP INDIVIDUALISTS RonALp ATKINS 130

ORNETTE COLEMAN AzLyn SHIPTON 138

FREE JAZZ Srrvi Day 146

MICHAEL BRECKER Mark GILBERT 154

FUSION: SWITCHED-ON SAXOPHONE Mark GILBERT 162

CROSSOVER AND SMOOTH JAZZ Kevin ALEXANDER 170

EUROPEAN VOICES Mic#aet Tucker 178

THE NEW SWING D4ve GELLY 188

CONTEMPORARY TRADITIONALISTS FRANK GRIFFITH 196

THE FUTURE OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE Mark GILBERT 204

RECOMMENDED LISTENING 216

INDEX 220

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 224
 DAVE Gli THE SAXOPHONE BREAKS THROUGH
JAZZ AND THE SAXOPHONE HAVE BEEN FIRMLY LINKED FOR
THE BEST PART OF A CENTURY, BUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP GOT
OFF TO A VERY UNCERTAIN START.

Masters of Chicago jazz: tenor saxophonist Consider the following jewels in the Belgian crown: Cesar Franck, Rene
Bud Freeman’s Summa Cum Laude band Magritte, Django Reinhardt, Georges Simenon, Tintin, moules frites, the
in 1938 (above), also featuring Eddie Brussels sprout. For such a small country, Belgium has made many
Condon (guitar), Pee Wee Russell remarkable contributions to the arts and to civilised enjoyment, but perhaps
(clarinet), Max Kaminsky (trumpet) and the greatest, and certainly the most far-reaching, is the work of that peppery
Brad Gowans (valve-trombone). genius Adolphe Sax and the musical instrument which bears his name.
The saxophone is unique in one important respect. A violin sounds like a
violin, a trumpet sounds like a trumpet, a barrel-organ sounds like a barrel-
organ, but a saxophone can sound virtually any way the player wants it to.
In the erudite words of the Harvard Dictionary Of Music, “Being intermediate
between the timbres of wood and brass, it may pass from the softness of the
flute to the broad, mellow tone of the cello to the metallic strength of the

CHAPTER ONE f
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER ONE

cornet.” That is how the world of European orchestral music values the
saxophone, for its versatility, but that is by no means the whole story.
It was jazz which discovered the truly magical quality concealed inside the
saxophone: that it resembled the human voice. A voice expresses the style,
mood, origins, age and all-round personality of its owner, and the same is true
of the jazz saxophone. As we shall see in the course of this book, the variety
of saxephone voices is infinite.
Since Adolphe Sax is responsible for the existence of this marvellous
instrument, and hence for all the music that has ever been played on it, it
would be churlish not to begin with a few words about the man himself. In
the first place, his name was not really Adolphe at all; it was Antoine Joseph,
but everybody called him Adolphe. He was born, the son of an instrument
maker, at Dinant in 1814 and was brought up in Brussels. Sax appears to
have been a singularly accident-prone child. He managed at various times
during his youth to drink by accident a number of noxious substances,
including arsenic. He swallowed a pin, was scalded by a frying pan, and blew
himself up with gunpowder. Despite these tribulations, he became an excellent
clarinettist and was already devising improvements to the instrument as a
teenager. In his early 20s he designed the first reliable bass clarinet.
His saxophone began in about 1840 as an experiment in matching a
clarinet mouthpiece to a cone-shaped tube. Sax’s original idea was to make
the whole thing in wood, but he soon adopted brass as his material. In 1842
he moved to Paris, to be near the centre of musical activity. Berlioz was so
impressed with Sax’s ingenuity that the composer lent him the money to start
his own business. It was Berlioz who put on a concert in 1844, at his own
expense, featuring Sax’s inventions, including the first saxophone.
Like many original thinkers, Sax was impatient and contemptuous of
other people working in the same field. He spoke his mind freely and made The ever-dapper Bud Freeman, managing
enemies as a result. There was even an attempt on his life, during which his to look immaculate in braces.
assistant was stabbed to death by mistake.
In 1846 a complete family of eight saxophones, from tiny sopranino to
elephantine contrabass, received a patent. The following year the instrument
was officially accepted as part of the French military band. Within ten years
saxophones were in general military use throughout Europe. A Professorship
of Saxophone was established at the Paris Conservatoire in 1857. It seemed
that Adolphe Sax was made for life, but in 1870 the Franco-Prussian war
broke out, military bands were cut, and within three years Sax was bankrupt.
His sons kept the business going on a reduced scale, and Sax himself survived
until 1894, living on a small government pension, cursing his luck and the
perfidy of his competitors.
Meanwhile, his invention was making its way in the world. By the time of
Sax’s death it had crossed the Atlantic to the United States and was thriving
in the “wind bands” that were hugely popular at the time, the most
celebrated being that led by the “March King”, John Philip Sousa. A full-
sized wind band employed several saxophones, mainly altos and tenors, and
American manufacturers were not slow in responding to the demand. By the
turn of the century the saxophone was among the main products of a thriving
US band-instrument industry.
The saxophone also found a home on the American vaudeville stage. Its
remarkable flexibility meant that it could be made to produce all manner of
novelty or comic effects — laughter, sobbing, the neighing of a horse and other

~
0 CHAPTER ONE
-=
CHAPTER ONE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

farmyard noises, a peculiar popping sound known as “slap-tonguing”, and so

on. On a more elevated level there were the “saxophonic virtuosi” who
astonished listeners with technical tricks and speed. The leading figure in this
genre was Rudy Wiedoeft whose flashy but amazingly accomplished
showpieces made him a big star in the years following World War I.
It was about this time that jazz and the saxophone first became
acquainted. A lively form of popular music known loosely as ragtime had been
in favour since around the turn of the century, and the word “jazz”, meaning
pep, vigour and enthusiasm, first appeared in print in 1913. The unbuttoned
music of New Orleans arrived on the national scene soon afterwards, adding
the unique rhythmic element which later came to be known as swing. The
whole mixture was simply named “jazz”. It grew into a craze during the
hedonistic post-war years, allied to a widespread mania for social dancing.
The saxophone was not originally a New Orleans contribution, but was
imported from vaudeville by the early dance bands of Art Hickman, Ben
Pollack and others. The first records by New Orleans bands such as the
Original Dixieland Jass Band (1917) and Ory’s Sunshine Orchestra (1922)
stick to the old cornet-trombone-clarinet format. King Oliver’s Creole Jazz
Band (1923), the first indisputably great jazz ensemble to record, followed a
similar pattern, using two cornets, but it was already old-fashioned. If we
glance forward three years we find Oliver leading a ten-piece band, the Dixie
Syncopators, featuring three saxophones. Why did he make the change?
Because by 1926 the idea of a hot dance orchestra without saxophones was
unthinkable. The saxophone had become the icon of the Jazz Age.
“All night long the saxophones wailed the Beale Street Blues,” wrote F
Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, published in 1926. Moaning or wailing
saxophones feature largely in writing of the period. They stand as a kind of
musical shorthand for the spirit of the age — for doomed youth, the Lost
Generation, fashionable nihilism, and other high-minded excuses for getting
drunk and having a good time. The fact that prohibition had been imposed in
1919 served only to add a mild but enticing flavour of criminality to the
whole affair.
Young men bought saxophones in the 1920s in much the same way as
their grandsons bought guitars in the 1960s. Possession of a saxophone
identified the owner as a truly modern young person. Saxophones sold in tens
of thousands, although they were by no means cheap. A new standard-model
alto cost around $70 (about £45), but as used instruments in various states of
dilapidation passed down through the nation’s pawnshops and secondhand
stores they gradually came within the reach of all classes.
A five-piece dance band of, let us say, cornet, violin, piano, banjo and
drums could get by without much in the way of formal arrangement.
Similarly, New Orleans jazz bands worked according to a tradition which
allotted a specific role to each instrument. But once you have a couple of
cornets, a trombone, two or three saxophones, piano, brass bass, banjo and .
drums, you are faced with a problem. That number of instruments playing
together is bound to lead to chaos without someone to impose order. Enter a
new figure, the arranger, who writes down what each instrument must play.
Among the leading early band arrangers were Ferde Grofé and Bill Challis
of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra and John Nesbit of McKinney’s Cotton Pickers,
as well as Don Redman and Fletcher Henderson. By the mid 1920s dance-
band arrangers had settled on a standard format consisting of three elements:

CHAPTER ONE 6
 CHAPTER ONE

Jimmy Dorsey leading his band in New

York during 1938.

brass; saxophones; and rhythm. The brass and saxophone “choirs” (later
known as sections) took the leading and backing roles by turns, interspersed
with instrumental solos and whole-band passages — a method still widely used
today. A practical tutor, Arranging For The Modern Dance Orchestra by Arthur
Lange, was published in 1926 and reprinted nine times in its first year.
Yet for all its popularity and its identification with jazz in the public
mind, the saxophone did not at first take easily or successfully to jazz. That,
at least, is the impression one gains after listening to a selection of 1920s
saxophonists struggling through attempts at jazz solos. The tone tends to be
weak and diffuse, and even the best players seem unable to shake off the
novelty connotations of the instrument. A good example is to be found in the
work of Stump Evans (1904-28). His alto solo on Jelly Roll Morton’s ‘Wild
Man Blues’ (1927), for instance, reveals exceptional facility, but hampered by
an apparent compulsion to cover the entire range of the instrument in a few
brief phrases, liberally garnished with explosive slap-tonguing. Evans died
young, so we have no way of knowing how he might have developed.
By contrast, Bud Freeman (1906-91) survived to become an imaginative,
compelling and splendidly idiosyncratic tenor soloist from the mid 1930s
onward, but even as late as 1930 his solos had tended to proceed in a series of
damp belches while his tone suggested a kazoo played into a rubber hot-water
bottle. ‘Barrel House Stomp’ (1930) by The Cellar Boys is a prime instance.

7 CHAPTER ONE
Tenor saxophone pioneer Prince Robinson In many respects the saxophone resembles the clarinet. It uses a similar
(above right) playing with Roy Eldridge’s single-reed mouthpiece, and the fingering system is akin to that of the
band in 1939. The other saxophonists are clarinet. But the similarity is deceptive, as many clarinettists discovered when
Franz Jackson (on tenor, left) and Joe they took up the saxophone in the 1920s. The result of approaching the
Eldridge — Roy’s brother — on alto. saxophone as though it were just a big clarinet is a strangled tone, appalling
intonation and great physical discomfort for the player. Early saxophone
sections — that of Oliver’s Dixie Syncopators, for instance — often consisted of
“doubling” clarinettists, and the effect could be quite woeful.
Nevertheless, there are exceptions to this gloomy picture. Prince Robinson
(1902-1960) displays a clear, open tone and terse tenor style on ‘Four Or Five
Times’ (1928) and other brief recorded appearances with McKinney’s Cotton
Pickers, while the alto of Joe Poston (1895-1942) proved to be an
indispensable ingredient of Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra. On the face
of it, Poston’s was a rather thankless task. He punched out a straight lead
while Noone’s clarinet gambolled and capered around him like an excited
puppy, but with such grace and restraint that he deserves to be remembered.
‘IT Know That You Know’ and ‘A Monday Date’ (1928) are both little gems.
Poston’s economical approach was highly untypical of saxophone style in
the 1920s, particularly alto style. The ornate and inescapable influence of
Rudy Wiedoeft made itself felt in many curious ways. For instance, Jimmy
Dorsey (1904-1957), one of the finest alto players of the period, would
sometimes interpolate passages of ready-prepared virtuoso material into his
solos. Dorsey was also a technical innovator, pioneering the practice of
multiphonics (playing two notes at once) and other tricks. So far we’ve talked
about players of altos and tenors, the two members of the saxophone family

CHAPTER ONE 8
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER ONE

which went on to become dominant in jazz. But the finest jazz saxophonists
of the early period were exponents of less common varieties.
The bass saxophone is rarely heard nowadays. Its monstrous size renders
it unwieldy to play and inconvenient to carry around, and there is no obvious
role for it in contemporary jazz. In the early days, however, the bass
saxophone had a number of uses. It was sometimes employed in the rhythm
sectiog, instead of a string or brass bass. At other times it took the place of a
trombone or other melody instrument. Often, it just blundered around,
getting in everyone's way. In the hands of Adrian Rollini, however, the bass

Frankie Trumbauer is pictured here with

an alto saxophone at a concert in 1936.
The other players are Jack Cardaro
(clarinet), Jack Teagarden (trombone)
and Larry Binyon (tenor).

saxophone found true eloquence. Rollini (1904-1956) developed a crisp, clean

attack and a remarkably nimble technique, enabling him to build imaginative
and coherent solos. At a time when most alto and tenor players sound as
though they're wading through glue, Rollini gives the impression that he is
dancing on tip-toe. He has rightly been hailed as one of the first truly original
saxophonists in jazz, and made a large number of records to prove it. ‘At The
Jazz Band Ball’ and ‘Jazz Me Blues’ (both 1927) by Bix Beiderbecke & His
Gang catch him at his best. Rollini also had a disarming weakness for silly
novelty instruments such as the “hot fountain pen” and the “goofus” which
even he was unable to save from well-deserved oblivion.
Like the trumpet and the clarinet, the saxophone is a transposing
instrument. That is to say that its “open” scale, equivalent to the white notes
of a piano, is not C but B-flat (in the case of soprano, tenor ‘and bass) or E-
flat (alto, baritone). This is not the place to go into the technicalities of the
matter, except to point out that transposition is confusing to beginners, and
that players of transposing instruments cannot read off the same sheet of
music as their accompanying pianists.
In an attempt to solve the problem, manufacturers came up with a
saxophone between alto and tenor in size and pitched in C, named the c-
melody. It proved quite popular with amateur players, and_ several
professionals made use of it. In jazz the most prominent was Frankie
Trumbauer (1901-56) whose charming, light tone is instantly recognisable on a
number of classic records, notably the opening chorus of ‘Singing The Blues’
(1927) with Bix Beiderbecke. Trumbauer was also adept at the Wiedoeft-style
showpiece solo, of which ‘Trumbology’ (1927) is a remarkable example.

9 CHAPTER ONE
 Sidney Bechet jamming in New York in
1940, with Pops Foster (bass) and
James P Johnson (piano and cigar). The
record (below) is from Bechet’s time in the
1940s with clarinettist Mezz Mezzrow.

THE PRODIGIOVUS

quzmrEr a “Barrer
i,

Trumbauer’s other main claim to jazz fame is that he was an early idol of
Lester Young. But the figure who towers above all others in the early history
of the jazz saxophone is Sidney Bechet (1897-1959). Growing up in New
Orleans during the first flowering of jazz, Bechet was recognised as
exceptionally gifted while still in his early teens. Like many French-Creole
children he was encouraged to learn an instrument, and began taking clarinet
lessons from the New Orleans master-clarinettist Louis “Big Eye” Nelson. But
Bechet preferred to teach himself. At the age of 20, having played with
virtually every first-class band in New Orleans, he followed the general exodus
of musicians to Chicago and soon became established there.
Throughout these early years Bechet changed bands with bewildering
frequency, usually following a row of epic proportions. Indeed, he was driven
by a personality so explosive and choleric that it made him virtually
unemployable. He expected to be the centre of attention, the prodigy, the star
- and would accept nothing less. Allied to this was a wanderlust which kept
him constantly on the move. His travels took him across the United States
and Europe — to Britain, France, Germany and even as far as Russia. He went
as a featured virtuoso soloist, first with Will Marion Cook’s Southern
Syncopated Orchestra and later with the show La Revue Negre, starring
Josephine Baker.
Bechet’s music was the first jazz of any kind that most people in these
places had heard, and such was the passion and vitality of his playing that

CHAPTER ONE 10
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER ONE

they were often quite overwhelmed. The Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet
hailed him as a genius after hearing him play in London in 1919. It was
during the same visit that Bechet bought a soprano saxophone and thus found
his true musical voice. From it he produced a broad, commanding tone with a
florid vibrato, ideally suited to the sweep and dash of his phrases. The soprano
was also much louder than the clarinet, which enabled him to drown out any
possible opposition.
In ‘1924, Bechet and Louis Armstrong found themselves together in a
recording studio, as members of a pick-up band called the Red Onion Jazz

Alto saxophonists Benny Carter and

Russell Procope (far right) at a reunion of
former Fletcher Henderson band members
at New York’s Café Society in 1940.

Babies. The result, after a no-holds-barred contest and a series of stupendous

solo breaks on ‘Cake Walking Babies’, was a dead heat.
Bechet’s footloose life prevented him from building a career. At one point
he was reduced to opening a tailor’s shop in order to live. But he managed to
record some superb music throughout the 1930s and °40s. The tracks by his
New Orleans Feetwarmers are particularly fine, especially a hell-for-leather
version of ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ (1932) which fully confirms the words of Bechet’s
pupil, Bob Wilber: “To grab the listener’s attention, to carry him away on a
continuously rising curve of excitement, that was Bechet’s credo.” Curiously
enough, in view of Bechet’s pugnacious character, some of his finest records
are those on which he shares the billing as leader. The Spanier-Bechet Big
Four (1940) with cornettist Muggsy Spanier and the Mezzrow-Bechet Quintet
(1945) with clarinettist Mezz Mezzrow reveal his intense lyricism and a
surprising gentleness beneath the bombast.
Bechet’s fortunes were utterly transformed in the final decade of his life.
In 1949 he appeared at the Paris Jazz Fair, the first-ever European jazz
festival, and met with a reception so ecstatic that it amounted almost to an
apotheosis. Not only was Bechet a bona fide jazz master, but as a New
Orleans Creole he was also a species of Frenchman. He moved to France and
graciously accepted his elevation to the position of National Treasure.
The sound of Bechet’s soprano saxophone, throbbing with Gallic passion,
instantly conjures the atmosphere of 1950s Paris. When Bechet died, on his
62nd birthday, France mourned. A square near his home in Antibes was
named in his honour and his statue still watches over it.

11 CHAPTER ONE
 LOREN SCHOENBERG COLEMAN HAWKINS
“WE ALL HAD OUR MENTORS,” SAID BENNY CARTER IN 1983.
“FROM WHOM DID HAWKINS COPY? I DON’T THINK HE
FOLLOWED ANYBODY. HE WAS A CREATOR. HE LED.”

Coleman Hawkins single-handedly created the idiom for the tenor saxophone in
jazz. He was not by any means the first person to play the saxophone. Before
Hawkins came to maturity, Sidney Bechet and Adrian Rollini had already
taken giant steps, establishing the idea that saxophones could be used to make
great jazz. It was left to Hawkins to process the innovations of Louis
Armstrong in an intensely personal way, and fashion out of them his own voice.
CLE LL LLILEDD
There are very few musicians in any genre who made as many
transformations throughout their careers as did Coleman Hawkins. Not only
was his chosen instrument considered a joke at best, there was as yet no
model for coherent jazz improvisation. Miraculously, at the age of 35 he would
have a hit recording that remains one of the most sophisticated and
challenging items ever to come remotely near the bestseller list. And by the
age of 59 Hawkins would more than hold his own in studio encounters with
John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins — both of whose careers would have been
unimaginable without Hawkins’s precedent.
Fletcher Henderson and his Orchestra Coleman Randolph Hawkins was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on
(above) in Atlantic City, 1931. Back row, November 21st 1904. There were many variations in African-American life
second from left, is Coleman Hawkins; on during the early 20th century, though all too often the sort of poverty that
his left is Russell Procope; extreme right, Louis Armstrong experienced in New Orleans is thought typical of how other
back row, is guitarist Clarence Holiday, contemporary jazzmen were raised. Certainly, Hawkins’s childhood was a
Billie Holiday’s father. Pictured opposite comfortable and stable one, lived in relatively middle-class comfort. Young
is Coleman Hawkins jamming at the Coleman was given lessons on the cello and also played the piano before
Greenhaven Inn, Mamaroneck, New York, settling on the saxophone as a teenager. The attractive tone of the cello and
in 1939. With him are Hot Lips Page on the harmonic world made explicit by the piano would greatly benefit him over
trumpet, clarinettist Joe Marsala, and the next decade and a half as he moved toward musical maturity.
Artie Shapiro on bass. Hawkins continued to play the cello through his adolescent years as a
student at the Industrial and Educational Institute in Topeka, Kansas, and
he doubled on the c-melody saxophone with local dance bands and in theatre
orchestras in nearby Kansas City.
Mamie Smith was still tremendously popular after the huge success of her
1920 recording ‘Crazy Blues’, and she came through Kansas City on a tour,
supplementing her band with local musicians. The 16-year-old Hawkins
immediately impressed her with his skills at reading music and improvisation.
Although Smith’s first attempts to take him on the road were rebuffed by
Hawkins’s grandmother, his mother eventually granted permission several
months later — seemingly because she was only too happy to have her son part
company with a certain local girl. The following year on the road with Smith’s
vaudeville troupe gave Hawkins a life’s worth of professional and personal
lessons. He was by now concentrating on the tenor saxophone, and though

CHAPTER TWO 12
 CHALE
TEE RL WO) MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

still a teenager his incontestable mastery of the instrument made him a

standout by the time he settled in New York in the summer of 1923. He soon
came to the attention of bandleader Fletcher Henderson, who. hired him for
many recording sessions.
The early 1920s was a burgeoning time for jazz, and a virtuoso like
Hawkins could make an excellent living freelancing in nightclubs, playing
theatre dates and recording. Henderson was eventually able to offer Hawkins
full-time employment, and the saxophonist remained a featured member of
the band for a decade.
Musically, there is little to distinguish the Hawkins of 1922-24 from the
other lively jazz tenor saxophonists of the time. He would spell out the basic
chords, and articulate in a forceful manner known as slap-tonguing. It seems
that his already growing reputation came more from his sheer volume and
gusto, as well as his superlative skills as both a reader and a soloist. The
arrival of Louis Armstrong in the Henderson band in late 1924 for a year-long
stint was to have a profound impact on the music world in general and on the
20-year-old Coleman Hawkins in particular.
Armstrong created jazz phrases out of a vocabulary that drew heavily
upon the blues and the “irrationalities” of African rhythms. This frightened
Coleman Hawkins in concert in the 1950s. some, and woke up many more. Within a decade there would be Armstrong-
inspired singers and instrumentalists all around the world. Hawkins was one
of the first to begin transforming Armstrong’s example into personal terms,
but it would be a lengthy process. He had given up the cello during his stint
with Mamie Smith and picked up the cumbersome bass saxophone in the
interim, even recording with it through 1926. He gradually concentrated on
the tenor saxophone exclusively, only playing his “doubles” when called for in
orchestrations.
There are Hawkins solos on literally hundreds of Fletcher Henderson
recordings during the 1920s, in addition to sessions with Bessie Smith and
others, and they reveal a very slow yet inexorable evolution. On Henderson’s
‘The Stampede’ (1926) Hawkins played an inspired chorus that entranced the
young trumpeter Roy Eldridge. Ultimately, this “saxophonistic” trumpet
style would lead to Dizzy Gillespie.
But of all the recordings Hawkins made in the 1920s none reveals the
scope of his conception at the time better than the Mound City Blue Blowers
disc of ‘Hello, Lola’ and ‘One Hour’ (1929). On the first title, an up-tempo
romp, he sounds animated, rhythmically agitated, and as emotionally subtle
as a buzzsaw. The other side, however, contains the seeds of the tenor
saxophone ballad, a style that he would cultivate for his greatest innovations.
At once, the occasional jerkiness of his playing at more rapid tempos is
eschewed for an over-arching lyricism and an almost operatic fervour. His
harmonic imagination blossoms here in a fashion impossible at faster tempos —
impossible, that is, for 15 years until Charlie Parker showed the way.
The early 1930s found Hawkins trying to adapt his ballad style to all
tempos. This called for an extreme use of rubato: not in the original sense of
the term of slowing down or cessation of tempo, but rather “robbing” from
one part of a musical measure and “paying it back” in another (as has become
commonplace in playing Chopin’s piano music, for example). His ballad
features were already widely known and loved by the time he recorded ‘It’s
The Talk Of The Town’ and ‘I’ve Got To Sing A Torch Song’ (1933). Jazz
players around the world were taking these solos as models of every aspect of

CHAPTER TWO 14
 CHAPTER TWO

Hawkins, firmly re-established after his

long absence in Europe, playing at a New
York Club in 1941.

improvisation. Tenor players such as Ben Webster, Chu Berry and Herschel
Evans were all developing their own dialects within the expressive language
that Hawkins was creating.
One facet of his musical personality was his competitiveness. As soon as a
new man came anywhere near him, either on the road or at home in New
York, there would be a jam session where, inevitably, Hawkins would
predominate. This remained the case until one fateful night late in 1933 when
Lester Young countered every punch that Hawkins aimed at him. In many
ways, Young's style was an inversion of that of Hawkins. Hawkins’s basic
orientation was harmonic, whereas Young’s was indisputably melodic. When it
came to up-tempo playing, Young took his cue from Armstrong and would
float as lightly as Hawkins trod heavily. And in terms of tone, where Hawkins
was declamatory and fervent, Young seemed to be whispering and even, on
occasion, just thinking his solos. What they shared was total originality and a
seemingly limitless capacity for extended improvisation.
The Depression altered the entertainment business radically, and
Henderson was having trouble finding steady work for his band as 1933
turned into 1934. In addition, since the departure of Armstrong in late 1925,
Hawkins had been shouldering the great bulk of the band’s solo load. The
sheer responsibility of having to do so night after night and year after year
must have been wearying.
A chance encounter with June Clark, a bassist just returned from an
extended stay in Europe, led him to a contract with British bandleader Jack

5 CHAPTER TWO
 CHAPTER TWO MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

COLEMAN Coleman
HAWKINS eebeee
M EMOR “AL Webster

Coleman Hawkins
+ Lester Young
Eddie “Lockjaw”
Davis
Julian Dash

Hawkins’s large body of recorded work is Hylton. He spent the next five years in Britain and on the Continent,
constantly being reissued in new formats appearing as a featured soloist with a succession of dance bands and radio
and compilations, as in this selection. orchestras, while recording prolifically. There had been other visits by great
American jazzmen — most notably Duke Ellington, Sidney Bechet and Louis
Armstrong — but none of them lived and worked among European musicians
to the extent that Hawkins did.
During this period he wrote many letters, and they provide much insight
into his complex character. First brought to light in John Chilton’s superb
biography The Song Of The Hawk, they show him to be a highly literate and
compassionate observer of the human condition. Hawkins kept up on musical
happenings in America through recordings and radio broadcasts, and had good
things to say about Benny Goodman, Roy Eldridge.and Duke Ellington,
among others.
In Europe he recorded in settings ranging from duets with a pianist to big-
band sessions. He even sang on occasion, something he never did again. One
session that has attained classic status took place in 1937, when Hawkins was
reunited with his former Henderson bandmate Benny Carter (who spent three
years in Europe) alongside the Belgian gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt.
‘Out Of Nowhere’ and ‘Crazy Rhythm’ contain definitive Hawkins solos, full
of drive and harmonic sophistication, where he plays like a man possessed.
During his European years, Hawkins not only enjoyed a lifestyle he could
not experience back home, but he also had the opportunity to play concerts
where he could begin and end his pieces with long, out-of-tempo solos — which
would have been impossible in the almost exclusively dance-based music he'd
been playing with Henderson. Nonetheless, a desire to play once again with
his peers back home, as well as the imminence of war in Europe, brought him
back to the States in the summer of 1939.
No one knew precisely what to expect from a Coleman Hawkins who had
been away from jazz’s native land for half a decade. Some thought his
creative powers must have withered. It was partially to answer them that he —
recorded his masterpiece on October 11th 1939. “Body And Soul’ had long
been a Hawkins feature, but the sheer perfection of the two choruses captured
that day were extraordinary even by his own recorded standards. It is rare
that any performer reaches their zenith within the confines of the recording
studio, but ‘Body And Soul’ captured a truly perfect improvisation that has
all the hallmarks of a great composition. Melodically and harmonically, it
opened new musical vistas that remain timeless. Equally exceptional was the

CH AP TEE DVO 16
 CHAPTER TWO

XTRA

fact that the record became something of a hit, indicating that a significant London in the mid 1960s, and Jazz At The
segment of the public were receptive to such a complex and sophisticated set Philharmonic’s touring group plays a
of harmonic variations. This gave hope to a new generation of jazz musicians concert. Pictured left to right: Coleman
that their music might have wide appeal — although this was a hope that was Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter,
ultimately unfulfilled. Clark Terry, James Moody, Zoot Sims.
Hawkins fronted a big-band for a couple of frustrating years, but he was
just not cut out for that sort of job. A virtuoso with impeccably high
standards, he found it distasteful to pander to what the various ballroom and
theatre owners wanted. Despite the popularity of ‘Body And Soul’ and a
significant following who respected his status as an artist, he was unable to
sustain his career as a big-band leader.
Throughout the war years there evolved a pattern of single engagements
with pick-up bands alternating with location jobs in New York. There were
rumours that he would join Count Basie’s band, making a two-tenor team
with Lester Young. There were also many recording dates, and one of the
most outstanding was a sextet of ex-Hendersonites with Roy Eldridge and
Benny Carter which produced the classic ballad ‘I Surrender, Dear’ (1940).
Unlike most of his peers, Hawkins actively sought out young musicians
with unorthodox ideas. Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach and Thelonious Monk all
received encouragement, nightclub work and recording dates from Hawkins at
a time in their careers when they were far from celebrated. Bassist Oscar
Pettiford was featured on Hawkins’s inspired long-metre version of “The Man
I Love’ (1943), on a pair of 1944 big-band (minus trombones) sessions that
showcased Gillespie’s music (‘Woody ’n’ You’), and on a series of 1945 small-
group sides.
Much has been made of the bad reception for Gillespie and Parker when
they played at Billy Berg’s club in Los Angeles late in 1945. But it’s often
forgotten that Hawkins had a band out there a year earlier that played the
new music coming from 52nd Street, to much acclaim.
After returning to New York, Hawkins continued to record with the best
young players, showcasing Fats Navarro (‘I Mean You’ and ‘Half Step Down,
Please’), Hank Jones (‘lL Love You’), J J Johnson (‘Indiana Winter’) and Miles
Davis (a short solo on ‘Bean-A-Re-Bop’) who was heard frequently with Hawk
on 52nd Street. The jazz impresario Norman Granz came into Hawkins’s life
in the post-war years and was able to offer a healthy season of tours with the
Jazz At The Philharmonic troupe — the first of which paired Hawkins with
Lester Young — and the concomitant recordings, both live and in the studio.

CHAPTER TWO
 CHAPTER TWO

Hawkins in his final years, bearded like a

patriarch. Toward the end he virtually gave
up eating, subsisting mainly on a diet of
brandy and chicken soup, and appeared to
lose all interest in life.

During the off times, Hawkins continued to appear as a single both in the
States and abroad. In the 1950s he started an association with Roy Eldridge
that was to last irregularly for the rest of his life. They made a great team,
both on and off the bandstand. Hawkins was known to be super-sensitive
about his age, which set the stage for all sorts of badinage with his
bandmates. Stanley Dance captured a typical scene in his book The World Of
Swing. “When the Eldridge-Hawkins Quintet was once playing the Heublein
Lounge in Hartford,” wrote Dance, “an eight-year-old girl insisted on getting
the autograph of Coleman Hawkins, and his only. ‘How is it, Roy,’ he asked
afterwards, ‘that all your fans are old people? They come in here with canes
and crutches. They must be anywhere from 58 to 108. But my fans are all
young, from eight to 58 years old!’ “That little girl thought you were Santa
Claus,’ said drummer Eddie Locke. ‘Is that so? Well, who’s got more fans
than Santa Claus?’”
One of the very best live recordings he made at the time is Coleman
Hawkins And Roy Eldridge At The Opera House (1957). They are accompanied

CHAPTER TWO 18
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWO

by pianist John Lewis, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Connie Kay. Two
superlative studio sessions also appeared, made with Henry Red Allen
(including trombonist J.C. Higgonbotham) and with Thelonious Monk (also
featuring John Coltrane). And Hawkins played a major role in the best jazz
TV show to date, The Sound Of Jazz, broadcast live on CBS in 1957. One of
its joys was the reaction of the other musicians when Hawkins played — and
his solo\on ‘Rosetta’ was particularly fertile.
Hawkins weathered stoically the advent of rock’n’roll and the attendant
diminution of work for musicians of his generation. Caught in between fetishes
for traditional jazz and “the new thing”, Hawkins only gradually got the kind
of adulation and employment that was truly his due. He spent more and more
time in his elegant apartment in New York City where he was surrounded by
a world-class collection of classical music, with an emphasis on piano music
and opera. Friends fondly recall the “musicales” Hawkins would host, always
with superlative pianists (mostly from Detroit) present. He formed a quartet
with just such a pianist, Tommy Flanagan, alongside bassist Major Holley and
drummer Eddie Locke, and they recorded some outstanding albums for
Impulse Records, as well as working sporadic live dates.
An appearance with his disciple Sonny Rollins at the Newport Jazz
festival also spawned a record date, for RCA Victor. Rollins pulled no
punches; after all, Hawkins was known for his love of the civil-but-very-
serious cutting session. The younger man unleashed a barrage of eccentric,
expressive devices, challenging Hawkins to re-assert the levels of creativity
that had established him in the first place. What resulted was a vivid image of
the late Hawkins’s true identity as improviser, made starker by the startling
context in which Rollins placed him.
As he approached his mid 60s Hawkins began to fall apart. For four
decades he had been renowned for his sartorial splendour. Now he seemed
indifferent to how he and his clothes looked. The music also suffered as he
stopped supplementing his heavy drinking with the food necessary to act as
ballast for the alcohol. A decade earlier he had struggled to get a sadly ailing
Lester Young to eat. He did not heed his own advice. Hawkins eventually
grew a beard that in its unkempt state made him look like a veritable
Methuselah. Friends including Thelonious Monk and, notably, Eddie Locke
did their best to steer him off this course of self-destruction, but to no avail.
His musical instincts never faltered. A vital key to his ability always to
have fresh things to play was remembered by bassist George Duvivier in
Bassically Speaking. “Despite his problems [in later years] Hawk never
stopped listening,” wrote Duvivier. “He took many of the new things and
superimposed them on his own basic style. You never knew what would come
out. It was almost unnerving how intently he could listen. You’d be playing
and suddenly you'd be aware of someone standing off to your right. If you
looked over you'd see him, arms folded and head down just a little, watching
and listening to everything. He did that for as long as I knew him.”
Probably we'll never know the reasons underlying those sad last few years,
though the fact remains that Coleman Hawkins died on May 19th 1969, just
days after a final concert with Roy Eldridge. But the vast majority of his life
was spent spreading joy through his intense and intricate music that never
went for the lowest common denominator. Hawkins explored the area where
the best attributes of composition and improvisation intersected. He had truly
learned Armstrong's lesson.

CHAPTER TWO
 RICdvAR DAG OW SWINGING OUT
AS BIG-BAND SAXOPHONE SECTIONS GREW IN SIZE AND
VIRTUOSITY DURING THE SWING ERA, MANY GREAT SOLOISTS
CAME TO PROMINENCE. EVERY LEADING PLAYER OF THE PERIOD
SERVED AN APPRENTICESHIP IN THE RANKS OF A BIG-BAND.

The 1930s was a fertile decade for saxophonists, whether they were ambitious
individual voices or dedicated section-men. While the brass players in the
frontline already had much of their vocabulary mapped out by 1930 through
such overbearing giants as Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden, the
saxophone was still a relatively untutored horn.
Coleman Hawkins had established the primary sound for tenor players —
and, indeed, many alto players too — but the saxophone was ready to
Harry Carney (opposite) was Duke accommodate an enormous stylistic range. Lester Young’s emergence may
Ellington’s longest-serving musician, a have startled those who thought that the Hawkins gospel was not to be
friend from his youth and his close argued with, but that only made clear how broad and accommodating the
confidant. The sound of Ellington’s instrument could be in admitting individual methods of delivery.
orchestra was built on Carney’s massive While Hawkins recreated himself as lone wolf after leaving Fletcher
tone and self-assured delivery. Henderson in 1934, many of the saxophone’s most interesting exponents plied
their trade in big-bands. The major swing orchestras could each boast sections
of extraordinary capability: Lester Young, Herschel Evans and Marshall
Royal with Count Basie; Babe Russin, Arthur Rollini and Vido Musso with
Benny Goodman; Budd Johnson, Darnell Howard and Omer Simeon with Earl
Hines; Eddie Miller, Matty Matlock and Gil Rodin with Bob Crosby.
Their work as section-players was what counted on a professional basis, a
harmonious fraternising which essentially distinguished each band from
another and set much of the tone in the sometimes misleadingly-named “swing
era” (since many of the surviving records and airshots show how much the
bandleaders relied on ballads and jazzless material). But it was the colour and
shading of the reed sections which became a prime flavour in big-band music.
The most notable example was in Duke Ellington’s orchestra, which
entered one of its greatest periods from the mid 1930s onward. By then,
Ellington was in charge of a saxophone section which had already been with
him for many busy years: Johnny Hodges, perhaps the most eminent alto
player in the music; Harry Carney, the imperturbable anchorman on baritone;
the selfless veteran Otto Hardwick, who rarely took solos; and with the arrival
of Ben Webster in 1940 — he had previously joined for a very brief spell a few.
years earlier — a major tenor soloist.
More than any other leader, Ellington saw the value of his saxophonists as
both individual spirits and a richly integrated collective. The key man in this
regard was Harry Carney (1910-74) whose sonorous baritone was effectively
the signature sound in the Ellington orchestra for close to 50 years. Carney
took relatively few solos then, but on almost every record by the orchestra of
the 1930s and ’40s it’s the baritone which has the most multifaceted role, as
bass counterpoint and harmonic ingredient: the tonal paterfamilias. Carney

CHAPTER THREE 20
TERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE Cael
AW OSM IER Sle

CHAPTER THREE
 CHAPTER THREE

JOHNNY HODGES
AT THE SPORTPALAST, BERLIN
with
Lawrence Brown
Harry Carney
Ray Nance
Sam Woodyard
Aaron Bell
Al Williams

Johnny Hodges (right) looking typically

inscrutable. His stone-faced demeanour
contrasted strangely with the passionate
romanticism of his music. Even away from
Ellington’s band, its members and ex-
members tended to stick together, as for this remained to the end of his days an unobtrusive personality, even if his musical
recorded concert (sleeve, above). self was grandly powerful. The same could hardly be said for the dryly
combative Johnny Hodges (1907-70). He began playing music in Boston,
where Ellington first heard him, and took some lessons from Sidney Bechet.
Although he only occasionally played soprano with Ellington — and gave it up
altogether after 1940 — it was originally his first instrument, and in the alto’s
high register he never lost the singing attack which reminds one of the
prodigious Bechet.
An early solo on the 1928 Victor version of ‘Cotton Club Stomp’ recorded
during his first year with Ellington shows how masterful he already was at 21.
Over Wellman Braud’s fingerbusting beat he sails across the bar lines,
unafraid to swoop on a note and, with a luxuriant dollop of vibrato, to hold it
for a couple of beats. Barney Bigard, who comes next, seems so rattled that
he lets off a dreadful reed squeak.
As the 1930s progressed, Hodges relaxed further into himself, honeying his
tone and eventually fashioning such a shamelessly poetic sound on the alto
that Ellington felt compelled to use him as his premier romantic — an amusing
fate for a taciturn professional. Features such as ‘Magenta Haze’ (1946) were
little more than recitations of a gorgeous melody; but Hodges had to keep

CHAPTER THREE 22
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER THREE

himself interested, and he always had the blues close to hand in much of his
improvising. The small-group dates from the late 1930s and early 1940s, under
his nominal leadership, are superb examples of his mastery of blues phrasing
within what was effectively an instrumental pop-song format, in the likes of
‘Good Queen Bess’, “That’s The Blues Old Man’ (both 1940) and above all
‘Squatty Roo’ (1941), almost a concerto of stock phrases given riveting life by
Hodgeg's sly variations as he bounces off Jimmy Blanton’s bass parts.
Hodges was always going to be a master executant rather than a
maverick. It was this comprehensive ability which made John Coltrane
nominate him as the greatest saxophonist in jazz. Right up to his valedictory
‘Blues For New Orleans’, at Ellington’s New Orleans Suite sessions (1970), he
played for his context. Ben Webster, on the other hand, always sounded too

Two examples from Ben Webster’s classic

series of albums recorded in the 1950s.

big and hulking for whatever environment he was in. Ellington gave Webster
his first really appropriate setting, but the saxophonist had already worked
for several of the major black orchestras of the 1930s, and when he joined
Duke he admitted that Hodges himself was a prime influence on his playing.
Webster (1909-73) took the Hawkins model and pared it back, turning his
ballads into voluptuous hymns, his up-tempo vehicles into growling, cornered-
animal statements of aggression. It was one of the ironies of his career that
Ellington’s main concerto for him, ‘Cotton Tail’ (1940), was actually set at a
tempo which Webster disliked — far too fast. While Hawkins would always
harvest chords for many-noted variations, Webster preferred a more stately
progress. He had no shortage of harmonic curiosity, having trained as a
pianist, but he liked to float his solos at a poised mid-tempo. ‘All Too Soon’
(1940) is a fine instance of Webster’s early maturity with Ellington. In later
years, the huge sound of his saxophone, with. the vibrating husk of the air
column seeming to surround every note, became almost too thick and
congested. In this earlier period, although recording never quite catches its full
measure, it is more mobile, more expertly languorous.
Every Ellingtonian who followed Hodges and Webster (Carney had no
successors) was effectively obliged to follow in their blueprinted footsteps:
Jimmy Hamilton, Russell Procope, Al Sears, Harold Ashby. Perhaps only
Paul “Mex” Gonsalves, who arrived in 1950, forged a markedly different style,
sidelong and resolutely avoiding cliché — although even his first inspirations
were surely Hawkins and Webster. But that was the story of most big-band
sections, who patterned their routines around in-built band lore as much as

23 CHAPTER THREE
 TER THREE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

CHAPTER THREE
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER THREE

through specific charts and arrangements. Where the orchestras had fewer Ben Webster built a new career in Europe
individual stars in their section, they relied more on a swinging compatibility. during the 1960s, living first in Holland
Yet several saxmen of the period became familiar almost by default. There are and later in Denmark. The shot of Webster
few better examples than New Orleans-born Eddie Miller (1911-91), perhaps opposite was taken at the Metropol Club in
the central figure in the orchestral-Dixieland style which the Bob Crosby band Oslo in 1965.
perfected in the ’30s. Miller took up a position somewhere between Hawkins’s
ebullieiice and the still brisk but more cajoling manner of Bud Freeman.
Miller was a very able clarinettist — his solo on Crosby’s famous hit ‘South
Rampart Street Parade’ (1937) is probably the most renowned thing he ever
did — but tenor playing was his real forte. His ballad feature on The Bobcats’s
‘Can't We Be Friends’ (1937) sums him up: measured, full-bodied, but fluid
enough to keep the melody supple and make what was quite an exaggerated
vibrato seem appropriate to the treatment. Miller could be a hard-driving
tenorman, as in ‘Stomp Off, Let’s Go’ (1939), but his liking for a long melodic
line suggests a kinship with musicians such as Bobby Hackett, and it comes as
no surprise to learn that in the 1950s he played on countless uncredited
sessions, playing solos-to-order but keeping enough of himself in them to save
the sound from complete anonymity.
Miller’s name was, nevertheless, hardly known other than to die-hard
Crosby fans, and he was one of many swing-era players whose achievements
are now remembered mostly by scholars. Vido Musso (1913-82) made hundreds
of records with — in turn — Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Harry James,
Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey and finally, as the swing era was closing,
Stan Kenton. Yet he left scarcely any signature pieces behind him.
‘Did You Mean It?’ (1936), an early Goodman entry, has a brief but rather
surprising solo which goes against the superficial politeness of the
arrangement. That was Musso’s rather cheeky method: he was a larger-than-
life figure who chafed against the discipline of sight-reading and

Ben Webster and pianist Billy Kyle

recording with Jack Teagarden’s Big Eight
in New York, December 1940.

25 CHAPTER THREE
oe
 CHAPTER THREE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

regimentation, and eventually faded away as a partial consequence. His

contribution to Stan Kenton’s ‘Painted Rhythm’ (1945) is a boisterous, rather
bad-tempered development of the Webster manner, and. hints at the
rock’n’roll saxophone vocabulary which would grow up in the next decade.
But Musso never really flourished under Kenton, or anywhere else afterwards.
Buddy Tate (b. 1915), two years younger than Musso, might have followed
a similar path. But Tate’s Texas-Tenor feet were more firmly grounded, and
he liked to stay in places where he felt comfortable, such as the Basie band
(nine years from 1939), or a long subsequent residency in a Harlem nightspot.
Where players such as Musso made styles out of disparate bits and pieces,
Tate’s implacable blues playing always anchored every solo. He didn’t really
become well-known until he struck out as a touring attraction in the 1960s
Keo2 JUMPIN’ and "70s. et page soo oe had honed AS ee toa iN Ls muscular essence,
AT THE with familiar licks coming to seem like effortless — inevitable parts of an
SAVOY unstoppable flow. Perhaps the legacy of the saxophonists who emerged intact
from the big-band period was that sort of repertorial assurance. Untroubled
by bebop’s demands for a constant striving for newness and reinvention, they
seemed rooted and nourished in the tradition, mountainous, and impervious to
bad stylistic weather. Buddy Tate may be the consummate example.
Or perhaps that accolade should go to Joseph “Flip” Philips (b. 1915), who
at 85 released in 2000 one of the best records of his career. In the 1930s he
was working in Brooklyn clubs as an alto player, but when he switched to
tenor in the 1940s he found his métier. For most of the last 50 years he has
been somewhat miscast as an impetuous exponent of rabble-rousing marathon
solos — of the type allegedly loved by the crowds who flocked to Jazz At The
Philharmonic concerts, where he was a regular for many years.
Although there were only nine of them, The It would be more fitting to turn to some of his lesser-known recordings to
Savoy Sultans proved more than a match understand the real Flip. “You can be angry, you can be soulful, you can play
for many star big-bands appearing at —_soft, you can play loud...” he said. Philips loved the tenor’s 57 varieties, and
Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. his booting side was softened by an ineffable touch on ballads, made the more
effective by a certain obliqueness. If one expected him to be in thrall to
Hawkins, it was Lester Young who was his real compadre: Flip’s ‘Salute To
Pres’ (1952) is one of the warmest homages from one tenorman to another.
The tenor never lacked for stylists in the swing period, even if many of
them impressed more by their facility than their individuality. The brief solos
which swing-era 78s allowed were just the medium for players such as Ray
McKinstrey, Arthur Rollini and Dick Wilson to make their modest mark on
jazz history. In the case of Gene “Honeybear” Sedric (1907-63), a tenorman
enjoyed massive exposure on record without the audience ever much realising
who he was. As the saxophonist with Fats Waller & His Rhythm, Sedric was
featured on scores of sides, yet — like fellow frontliner, trumpeter Herman
Autrey — he had to suffer the indignity of most of his solos being interrupted
by Waller’s yells of encouragement. As successful as he was in this band, it
probably didn’t bother Sedric too much.
Nor did comparative obscurity hamper the progress of the masterful Budd
Johnson (1910-84), a Texas Tenor of supreme accomplishment who remained
more of a musicians’ musician for most of his life than a star property. Most
were scarcely even aware of his powers as a soloist until he started making
infrequent albums under his own name in the 1960s and ’70s. Yet he was a
considerable force as a section-leader and arranger in the Earl Hines band of
the 1930s, and subsequently with Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Eckstine in the

CHAPTER THREE 26
=
1940s where he helped bridge the swing and bebop vocabularies. Johnson’s A rare glimpse of Flip Phillips playing
own sound was lean, tonally opaque, yet curiously powerful — a Lester without clarinet, the saxophonist’s traditional
the enigmatic depths. ‘Blues By Budd’, from his Prestige date Let’s Swing “double”, at Kelly’s Stable on New York’s
(1960), shows how accomplished an improviser he was. 52nd Street in 1940. With him are Harry
For the most part, swing-era saxophone was dominated by tenor players, Prather (bass), Eddie Dougherty (drums),
with the great spectrum of shadings between the seemingly opposite poles of Frankie Newton (trumpet) and Pete
Young and Hawkins. But it’s two alto players who bring this discussion Brown (alto saxophone).
almost full circle.
Among alto section-players, the supreme exponent in the period was surely
Willie Smith (1910-67). Throughout the 1930s he was both the leader of the
Jimmie Lunceford saxophone section and the outstanding soloist in
Lunceford’s outstanding orchestra. He was writing charts for Lunceford as
early as 1934. In his hard, cutting tone one can hear the precision which set a
benchmark for saxophone sections throughout the decade. At the same time,
Smith was a soloist who could milk the emotions. His adroitness could be used
te crowd-pleasing ends and, as with such different stylists as Musso and
Philips, he proved to be a favourite with Jazz At The Philharmonic audiences.
He joined Harry James after leaving Lunceford, and was for a long time
the major soloist in that band, after James himself. It is fascinating to hear
him on the 1946 JATP performance of ‘I Can’t Get Started’, where he
immediately follows Charlie Parker. Bird sounds rather bleary and ill-at-ease
in his solo, and Smith’s rejoinder is in comparison very proper and
symmetrical; yet it buttonholes the listener because of the fierceness of his
delivery, every note articulated as if it’s grabbed off the scale. Smith’s
professionalism is its own reward, but perhaps it says something about why,

ne ~I CHAPTER THREE
 CHAPTER THREE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

WILLIE SMITH
ALTO SAXOPHONIST SUPREME!

Willie Smith was an alto saxophone

virtuoso, a brilliant soloist and an
immaculate section leader. He’s pictured
(right) with bandleader Jimmie Lunceford
at New York’s Kit Kat Club in 1938.

for all his undoubted talent, he seems a far less interesting player than Parker.
Some of that paradox attends the reputation of Benny Carter (b. 1907),
the other leading swing alto. Carter is a survivor from the original jazz age,
arranging for Henderson and even Ellington by the late 1920s, doubling on
trumpet and piano, and leading an occasional band which worked almost as a
graduate school for the better players in New York. Carter’s methods,
scrupulous in their finesse, seemed indivisible from the man and his style of
playing. Everything about him proposed jazz as a civilised, higher activity:
there was no more reliable pro in the game, yet most of his work was done for
commercial situations — he never proposed jazz as art music.
In the early 1930s he worked for various bands and led a handful of record
dates, but he found wider exposure on record when he went to Europe in
1935, eventually ending up in London and working as staff arranger for the
BBC Dance Orchestra. His own originals, such as ‘Blues In My Heart’ and
‘When Lights Are Low’, are memorable works which cross the bridge between
jazz and tin-pan-alley standards. He returned home in 1938 to New York and
his orchestra: the only other alto player who also led a big band of any

CHAPTER THREE 28
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER THREE

“Nobody writes for saxophones with such skill and flair as Benny Carter.”— Stanley Dance, JAZZ magazine

Benny Additions to
Carter Further Definitions

moment was Jimmy Dorsey, something of a stylistic kindred spirit. But where — Benny Carter was a musical phenomenon
Dorsey's group had great success, Carter’s was, hindsight has suggested, too — who played reed and brass instruments, as
good to succeed. Records such as ‘Midnight’ and ‘My Favorite Blues’ (both — well as being afirst-class arranger. He is
1941) are impeccable extensions of Carter’s style, a cultivated balance between seen (left) leading his own band in 1941.
what was by then a rather old-fashioned hot feel and a sophisticated balancing Despite his brilliance, he never had much
of the orchestral colours. In the end, it made little difference to Carter’s career success as a bandleader.
that the band didn’t succeed: from 1945 he stayed permanently in Hollywood
where his skills found reward in film and TV work, as well as occasional
foraying into more hardcore jazz work.
His manner on the alto — with its genteel vibrato, unfailingly courteous
relationship to the beat and smooth, consistent tone — is unmistakable. Even
into his great old age (he eventually gave up the trumpet) his chops remained
intact, and only occasionally does he really indulge himself in an exaggeration
— a slurped note or a heavy-handed phrase. His 1950s sessions with Oscar
Peterson, Cosmopolite and Plays Pretty, are some of the best examples of his
work as a featured soloist. To pick one example, ‘I’ve Got The World On A
String’ (1952) is a melody he has fun with, guying its jauntiness with a series
of variations that are as clever as they are faultlessly delivered.
But that very urbanity has arguably hindered Carter’s standing. He has
never been much of an influence on players or arrangers. Some critics have
seen his sound as “Republican”, a conservatism which for some might be
antithetical to what jazz ought to be about. Carter’s fine taste has forever
isolated him from the eminence which more colourful jazz characters have
enjoyed, and it is even hard to think of defining moments in his discography.
Perhaps that mix of elegance, professionalism and exuberance is, though,
the quintessence of swing-era saxophone. Its exponents were among the last
jazz musicians who would be obliged to play strictly by the rules, and their
consummate craft, in the years before the arrival of bebop, is a unique part of
the language of the music.

29 CHAPTER THREE
PETER VACHER STILL SWINGING
ENDLESS TRAVELLING AND INTENSE COMPETITION FOSTERED
THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIVIDUAL, HIGHLY RECOGNISABLE
STYLES. BUT MANY FINE MUSICIANS FAILED TO ACHIEVE DUE
RECOGNITION BECAUSE THEY WERE IN THE WRONG PLACE AT
THE WRONG TIME, WITH NO OPPORTUNITY TO RECORD.

When publicists first came up with “swing” as a descriptive term for the
music they were seeking to promote, they were concentrating on the output of
the great big-bands of the 1930s. Their brief was clear: keep the bands and
their leaders in the public eye, and high record sales and well-attended
engagements would surely follow. Happily, the dancing public knew a good
thing when they heard it, and swing took off. It generated new levels of
prosperity for some prominent bandleaders, and allowed their better sidemen
a fair crack at fame as well.
Since those heady days, “swing” has proved to be a useful portmanteau
term to describe much of the jazz played and recorded from 1930 through to
1945. These were the pre-bebop years, of course, when rhythm sections stayed
closer to an unvarying four-four beat and soloists began to improvise with
increasing certainty on the harmonic structures of standards and originals.
While most of the musicians earned their living in the touring orchestras
which proliferated in this period, it was in small groups that their solo
capabilities were best able to flourish. If Louis Armstrong cast an ample
shadow over jazz as a whole, it was as we've already seen the ground-breaking
efforts of Coleman Hawkins which inspired the tenor saxophonists. In 1929,
Hawkins had set out a new solo approach for the instrument on ‘Hello Lola’
and ‘One Hour’, building a series of choruses which appeared fully-formed and
seamless — and incidentally providing a new definition of excellence for
aspiring jazz saxophonists.
It became commonplace for these younger instrumentalists to try out their
skills at jam sessions, often going head-to-head with an established player like
Hawkins. There’s a well-documented tale of an encounter in Kansas City in
December 1933 when Hawkins (then playing with Fletcher Henderson) came
up against Lester Young, Ben Webster and Herschel Evans at the Cherry
Blossom Club, an after-hours spot. These three were then up-and-coming tenor
saxophonists with strictly local reputations, but they gave the visitor such a
hard time that he made himself late for Henderson’s engagement in St Louis
the following night. Drummer Jo Jones, who was present, claimed: “That was _
the first night that Hawkins was really challenged.”
If Hawkins was a prime target for such a musical ambush, other incidents
of lesser impact were taking place in Kansas City all the time, fuelled no
doubt by KC’s legendary “wide-open” reputation. In fact any town or city
with a substantial black population — from Seattle in the North-West to San
Antonio in Texas — had its share of late-night spots where soloists from
visiting bands could engage with local men. Most areas of the US supported a
number of “territory” dance bands, white and black, some minor-league and

CHAPTER FOUR 30
 CHAPTER FOUR

Pete Brown was a pioneer of “jump jazz”,

and is shown (left) at Jimmy Ryan’s club
in New York during 1942. Brown’s
forceful style marked the early stirrings of
what was to become R&B.

likely to remain so, others with ambition and an eye on national success. Each
might contain a selection of committed jazz players who were anxious to pit
themselves in friendly musical combat against the best opposition of the day.
These informal get-togethers often allowed lesser-known musicians to surprise
established jazz stars. The tenor man Teddy Edwards, then playing alto with
the Ernie Fields Orchestra from Tulsa, Oklahoma, came up against the little-
known Harry Pettiford, brother of Ellington’s great bassist, Oscar Pettiford.
“{Pettiford] was just one of the greatest saxophonists that ever lived,” said
Edwards. “We'd go through Tulsa a lot and that’s when we’d run into Harry.
There’d be guys from about four bands there and we'd jam the whole night.
At the end, it would be just Harry that was playing. He was fantastic.”
Edwards was illustrating one of the truisms of jazz, that personal
circumstances and the failure to be in the right place at the right time
sometimes combined to keep outstanding musicians away from the limelight
and out of the recording studio.
One combative individual who knew his way around a jam session was
Leon “Chu” Berry (1910-41), whose career was cut short at the early age of
31. It has been argued that Berry was the only tenor saxophonist to mount a
serious challenge to the omniscience of Hawkins in the swing era. He had the
same rich and voluptuous tone, and loved to test himself against all-comers.
Born in Wheeling, West Virginia, Berry had the build to make it as a
footballer but decided on music while at college.
His nickname was a reference to the 1930s movie character Chu-Chin-
Chow, called to mind by the goatee beard and moustache that Berry wore as a
young man. Summoned to Chicago to join Sammy Stewart’s band, he first
arrived in New York in 1930 when Stewart played the Savoy Ballroom. Berry

31 CHAPTER FOUR
 CHAPTER FOUR

West Coast tenor saxophonist Teddy

Edwards, pictured playing in London in
1993, began his career in the travelling
swing bands of the South-West.

stayed on and began to attract the attention of leaders like Benny Carter and
Charlie Johnson. After a period with Teddy Hill, in. 1935 he joined the famed
Fletcher Henderson orchestra (where Hawkins had made his reputation).
The British writer and arranger Spike Hughes was among the first to
recognise Berry’s talents and used him to good effect (in tandem with
Hawkins) on a 1933 session. Berry was also featured on a John Hammond
date for English Parlophone, again in 1933, under the name ot The Chocolate
Dandies. Records such as ‘Blue Lou’ with Henderson reveal a confident
soloist, warm-toned and surging. Berry went on to cut many more fine sides
before hitting the headlines when he joined Cab Calloway in 1937.
Something of a Calloway favourite, Berry was given many chances to
shine by the vocal prankster, most notably on ‘A Ghost Of A Chance’ (1940),
a rhapsodic ballad feature. He was also the star turn in the orchestra’s band-
within-the-band, The Cab Jivers. Inevitably, given his tendency to unfettered
solo playing, Berry was at his best in small groups, such as the magnificent
‘Shufflin’ At The Hollywood’ (1939) with Lionel Hampton, often cited as his
definitive achievement. He was killed in a car crash in October 1941. Hawkins
provided an appropriate, if laconic, epitaph: “Chu was about the best.”

CHAPTER FOUR 32
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER FOUR

Another shortlived talent, Herschel Evans, left fewer recordings than Berry
yet is remembered with almost equal enthusiasm, as much for his version of
‘Blue And Sentimental’ made with Count Basie in 1938 as for his influence on
a later generation of Texan saxophonists. Evans (1909-39) was born in
Denton, Texas, and came to musical maturity early in his teens, performing
with territory bands from: 1926 onwards. He made his first recordings with
Troy Fhyyd’s 10,000 Dollars Gold Orchestra in 1929, although the tenor solos
scarcely hint at his later qualities.
In 1933 Evans travelled to Kansas City where he played alongside Lester
Young in the Bennie Moten band. After Moten died on the operating table,
many of his musicians dispersed, Evans to Chicago and then to Los Angeles in
1935. Once there he took part in the burgeoning Central Avenue scene,
working with Lionel Hampton and trumpeter Buck Clayton in their big-
bands. Sadly, neither of these was recorded.

Three top saxophonists of the swing era:

Bud Freeman, Johnny Hodges and Chu
Berry. Berry’s early death in a road
accident robbed jazz of a major talent.

Clayton was invited to join the Willie Bryant band in New York; on his
way East he stopped off in Kansas City, accepted an offer from Count Basie,
and persuaded Basie to send for Evans, who was thus reunited with Young.
The contrast in their styles was an essential ingredient in the band’s rising
success. Evans soloed in the grand manner, influenced by his idol Hawkins,
but with his own windswept, slightly wheezy approach, while Young favoured
a lighter sound with unusual rhythmic placements.
Aside from some well-received small-group sessions, one with Hampton,
another with trumpeter Harry James, the Evans legacy is best represented by
his contributions to Basie’s Decca sides. “Texas Shuffle’ (1938; composed and
arranged by Evans himself) and “Doggin’ Around’ (1938; co-composed by
Evans and trumpeter Edgar Battle) are among his finest recordings.
His eventual successor with Basie was George “Buddy” Tate (b. 1914),
another Texan, born in Sherman. Tate, who today lives in quiet retirement in
upstate New York, has always paid tribute to Evans as both a formative
influence and a distinguished role model. “He was immaculate, looked as
though he had stepped out of a bandbox. When Herschel died, Basie wanted
someone who would fit with the band. Herschel and I always did sound

33 CHAPTER FOUR
 CHAPTER FOUR

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Buddy Tate, doyen of “Texas Tenors”, at

a London concert (above) in 1969. With
him are Charlie Shavers and Bill Coleman
(trumpets). Tate is also pictured (right)
outside Harlem’s Celebrity Club, where he
led the band for many years, successfully
defying passing fashions by sticking to
solid, danceable swing music.

alike,” he said. There were other similarities, too: Buddy Tate played for Troy
Floyd, with whom Evans had made his debut on wax, and moved from band
to band in the South-West in much the same way as Evans had done. Tate
was working with the Omaha-based Nat Towles orchestra when Count Basie’s
call came along in the spring of 1939. On Tate’s first night with his new
employer, the crowd kept calling for him to play ‘Blue And Sentimental’ as a
tribute to Evans. Basie balked at this but Tate coped, his muscular sound and
blues-feeling firmly in the Texan tradition.
Tate stayed with Basie for ten years and then went on to build a
successful career as a club bandleader and touring.soloist. He recorded often
with Basie but came into his own once the mainstream movement of the 1960s
took off, making many albums in Europe. When I’m Blue (1967) with organist
Milt Buckner won the French Prix du Jazz. Tate’s final round-up included a
lively collaboration with ex-Basie trombonist Al Grey which proved popular
throughout Europe. Tate was also part of a loosely organised 1980s festival
act known as The Texas Tenors, with Arnett Cobb, Budd Johnson and Illinois
Jacquet. Hach of these outstanding instrumentalists employed the rousing,
blues-based tenor style first made explicit by Evans. Jacquet stated
unequivocally, “|Evans] was the Texas Tenor. [He] had such a big tone, you
couldn't get near him.”
Budd Johnson (1910-84), equally proficient as an arranger and
instrumentalist, favoured a lighter touch than his confreres, but there was still
no doubting his Texan origins. Born in Denton, he debuted with local groups
and by 1932 was good enough to join Louis Armstrong’s band in Chicago. He
then became a fixture with the superb Earl Hines orchestra at the Grand
Terrace, contributing arrangements and running things musically for Earl.

CHAPTER FOUR 34
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAP TER, FOUR

By the mid 1940s, Johnson was aligned with the younger modernists in Billy
Eckstine’s big-band, and was writing for everyone. His fluency and swing-to-
bebop tenor aptitude commended him to many leaders. He also produced a
number of excellent “name” albums, and his successful European tours helped
to correct earlier critical neglect.
Illinois Jacquet (b. 1922) was born in Louisiana but was brought up in
Houstoi, Texas. A kid dancer with his father’s Legion Steppers, Illinois
graduated to the alto and played as a teenager in The California Playboys
with his brothers. He eventually made it to California proper after kicking off
his career in Houston with the splendid Milt Larkin orchestra, billed as the

BUDDY TATE on the west coast! JUMP GEORGIE, JUMP

GEORGIE AULD ccd LezOrchestra

“Greatest Band Of All Time”. His father’s railroad job allowed the youngster Sleeves of three top tenors who kept the
a travel pass and he opted for Los Angeles, arriving there in 1939. flame of swing alive for more than half a
Befriended by bassist Charlie Mingus, Jacquet made some waves locally, century: Buddy Tate, Illinois Jacquet and
but it was his selection for the new Lionel Hampton band which brought him Georgie Auld.
the fame which has attended him ever since. Hampton converted Jacquet to
tenor in 1942 and allotted him a feature on ‘Flying Home’, a recording which
took off nationwide, powered by Jacquet’s extraordinary solo (complete with
its Evans quotation). Its success brought Jacquet all sorts of opportunities:
high-profile engagements with Count Basie and Cab Calloway; participation in
films; a key role in the initial Jazz At The Philharmonic concerts in Los
Angeles; and the chance to run his own combos.
Jacquet combined exceptional mobility with a bluesy, full-toned Texan
sound, but it was his predilection for upper-register harmonics which seemed
to register with the fans. It was their enthusiasm which made Jacquet a club
and concert smash in the later 1940s. His pianist John Lewis recalled,
“Jacquet was making suitcases of money. I never saw so much.” Since those
days Jacquet has continued to lead his own groups. Recording regularly, he
has a substantial array of albums to his credit. Hugely popular in Europe, he
is effectively the last of the great swing tenor stars, as impressive in his
maturity as he was in his 1940s heyday. With the formation of his big-band in
1984, re-energised and triumphant, Jacquet found new success with festival
dates and international tours. And yes, he does still play ‘Flying Home’.
With so many swing bands to choose from, each with its roster of soloists,
the student of jazz history might well conclude that the swing years were
truly “the tenor sax era”, as Duke Ellington put it. There was Julian Dash
and Paul Bascomb with Erskine Hawkins, Henry Bridges with Harlan

35 CHAPTER FOUR
 CHAPTER FOUR MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

Leonard, Baker Millian with Boots & His Buddies, Joe Thomas with Jimmie
Lunceford, the Berry disciple Herbie Haymer, and Californians Hubert
“Bumps” Myers and Ulysses “Buddy” Banks. Each left evidence of laudable
creativity on wax and deserves closer attention.
Benny Goodman’s principal tenor soloist Georgie Auld (1919-90) was
another robust, hard-swinging instrumentalist who fell under the spell of
Coleman Hawkins. His tracks with the Goodman Sextet alongside trumpeter
Cootie Williams and guitarist Charlie Christian amply demonstrate what critic
Gunther Schuller called his “native vitality”. Auld’s later big-band bristled
with young beboppers and emphasised his openness to new ideas. His on-
screen role in the film New York, New York, for which he coached Robert De
Niro and handled the soundtrack, made him enough money to ensure a
comfortable retirement. Another fine tenorist, Jerry Jerome, also enjoyed the
solo spotlight with Goodman, although his mentor was Lester Young rather
than Hawkins. Jerome has continued to perform and record well into his 80s.
One-time postman Andy Kirk founded an excellent big-band in the mid
1930s and based it in Kansas City, taking it to national prominence. Its
principal distinction arose from the sparkling arrangements by band pianist
Mary Lou Williams and the solos of Dick Wilson (1911-41), another tenor
saxophonist whose career was cut short by chronic illness. In the beginning he
was a pupil of reedman Joe Darensbourg in Seattle, but Wilson left town with
Gene Coy’s Happy Black Aces and moved through the ranks of several bands
before settling with Kirk. Kirk’s ‘In The Groove’ (1937) and some neat combo
sessions with Williams highlight a talent comparable to Lester Young. Fluent,
silky-smooth yet vigorous, the quality of Wilson’s solo performances made his
early demise in 1941 at the age of 30 a tragedy comparable to those which
beset Berry and Evans.
Up in Harlem other less-publicised tenor heroes earned a crust on record
and in small-group work. Players like Lem Johnson, Bob Carroll, Big Nick
Nicholas, Benny Waters with Hot Lips Page, Kenny Hollon (on record with
Georgie Auld playing tenor saxophone in Billie Holiday and Slim Gaillard) and Hal Singer went on to benefit from the
trumpeter Bunny Berigan’s orchestra in expansive 52nd Street club scene, often mixing with if not aping the younger
1938. Auld would later work with Artie modernists before settling for Dixieland or R&B. Gene “Honeybear” Sedric
Shaw, Benny Goodman and other leading (1907-63) had his heyday with Fats Waller’s small band in the late 1930s on
figures of the swing era. | many record sessions, alternately tender or tough. After Waller’s death, Sedric
dabbled with Dixieland and toured Europe with Mezz Mezzrow.
Although the tenor saxophone became the principal voice of choice for
reed soloists in the swing era, it would be wrong to assume that alto and
baritone soloists were necessarily in short supply. However, the protean
achievements of Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter on alto and Ellington’s
stalwart Harry Carney on baritone have tended to mask the accomplishments
of other lesser figures. Even so, among the altoists James “Pete” Brown
(1906-63) cut quite a dash in Harlem, developing an abrupt, syncopated
approach and kick-starting the jump style that was later taken to new heights
by Louis Jordan. Principally associated with bassist John Kirby and
trumpeter Frankie Newton, Brown wrestled abortively with the complexities
of bebop, and died just as the mainstream revival was gathering momentum.
Brown’s successor with Kirby was Russell Procope (1908-81), a New
Yorker whose tailored exuberance was just right for Kirby’s skilful combo.
Procope, who recorded with Jelly Roll Morton in 1928, spent almost three
decades in the Duke Ellington orchestra, sitting next to Hodges. Another

CHAPTER FOUR 36
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER FOUR

altoist who made a mark on 52nd Street was St Louis native Don Stovall
(1913-70), who started out in riverboat bands but whose main claim to fame
arose from his seven-years with trumpeter Red Allen’s hot New York band.
Down in the South-West there was Buster Smith (1904-90), known as
“Prof”. He was an altoist of great distinction, but chose to retreat into
obscurity, leading blues bands in Dallas rather than challenging for supremacy
in Harlém. Now best remembered for his tutelage of the teenage Charlie
Parker, who joined Smith’s combo in 1937, he was a visionary arranger and
bandmaster. He helped Basie in Kansas City, soldiered with Jay McShann,
and worked with various leaders in New York. His few recorded solos from
the 1940s demonstrate his warm sound and attractive fluency — echoed,
inevitably, in Parker’s early work.

The tightly-knit John Kirby Sextet, with

Russell Procope on alto saxophone,
broadcasting from New York’s Onyx Club
in 1938. Vocalist is Maxine Sullivan.

Over in Kansas City, Tommy Douglas also influenced Parker, and his
original ideas and full tone are represented on a handful of records. Cab
Calloway’s Eddie Barefield (1909-91) was another who cut his teeth in Kansas
City (Barefield composed “Toby’, recorded by Bennie Moten in 1932) before
moving to New York to work with the best bands around. Proficient on all
the reeds, Barefield was hot on alto and equally effective on the tenor to
which he switched later in his career.
Swing-era bandleaders largely used the baritone saxophone to add colour
in section voicings. Only rarely were baritone players offered extended solo
space, although Basie gave Jack Washington some moments to savour on
‘Topsy’ (1937) and “Doggin’ Around’ (1938), while Jimmie Lunceford afforded
Jock Carruthers occasional opportunities, notably on ‘Harlem Shout’ (1936).
Haywood Henry (b. 1913) bucked the trend to some degree in his 20-year
association with the Erskine Hawkins orchestra, later moving into lucrative
rock’n roll studio work and touring as a mainstream soloist. Of course, any
neglect of the baritone was corrected once Gerry Mulligan made _ his
breakthrough in the 1950s. But that, as they say, is another story.

*
vt CHAPTER FOUR
DAVE GREY LESTER YOUNG
LESTER YOUNG - “PRES” - BROUGHT A NEW APPROACH TO THE
TENOR SAXOPHONE AND, IMPORTANTLY, A NEW SENSIBILITY
TO JAZZ, VASTLY EXPANDING ITS EXPRESSIVE RANGE.

In 1937 recorded jazz was 20 years old. In those two decades it had changed
almost beyond recognition, to the extent that the word jazz itself was now
hopelessly old-fashioned and used only patronisingly, as though referring to
some aged relative of coarse and embarrassing habits.
The modern term was swing, and swing was rapidly developing into a
diverse and flexible musical language. It was the popular music of the day,
the music of social dancing, but it also attracted a growing audience of
knowledgeable listeners, and an attendant corps of expert commentators and
critics. In these circles, it was accepted that the sound of the tenor saxophone
was broad and rugged, with a beefy vibrato and a bustling, assertive approach
to phrasing. Since every tenor saxophonist laboured under the giant shadow of
Coleman Hawkins, and these were the hallmarks of his style, this assumption
is quite understandable. Equally understandable is the baffled silence which,
early in 1937, greeted the first appearance on record of Lester Young.
The record in question bore the title ‘Shoe Shine Boy’, a cheery old ditty
from the 1930 show Hot Chocolates. It had been recorded in Chicago on
October 9th 1936 by a five-piece band calling itself Jones-Smith Incorporated.
This was, in fact, a small group drawn from Count Basie’s orchestra, but Basie
himself was still virtually unknown at the time. So ‘Shoe Shine Boy’ arrived,
unannounced, as an enigma from nowhere. More than 60 years have passed
since then, but it takes only a small effort of imagination to experience some
of the frisson those early listeners must have felt on first hearing it. Basie
plays a good but unremarkable introduction and opening chorus, supported by
superlatively buoyant bass and drums. Then, 45 seconds into the piece, Lester
Young bursts upon the world.
The first impression is one of blazing energy and complete self-assurance as
his solo drives unhesitatingly forward. It has all the patrician confidence of
the young Louis Armstrong, and the passing years have not dimmed this in
the slightest. But the solo was also deeply disconcerting at the time. To
appreciate why, it is necessary to listen to the universal hero, Hawkins, and
then hear ‘Shoe Shine Boy’ again, because Lester Young is the antithesis of
Hawkins in all respects. Young’s tone is light and airy, his vibrato delicately
shaded, his phrases glancing and mercurial. Where Hawkins digs deeply into
the harmonies of a tune, extracting every drop of harmonic juice, Young
seems intent on avoiding harmonic embroilment altogether. At several points
in ‘Shoe Shine Boy’ he toys with just two notes for several bars on end — and
very basic notes, too.
To many people in 1937 it just didn’t make sense. And yet those two
choruses of ‘Shoe Shine Boy’ form a completely convincing, unified musical

CHAPTER FIVE 38
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER FIVE

statement, involving tone, articulation, notes, rhythms, and all the other
inseparable elements of a jazz musician’s style. In introducing Lester Young
to the world, ‘Shoe Shine Boy’ also made an important aesthetic point: that
to be original you don’t have to be complicated. At the time of this recording
Lester Young was 27 years old, quite an advanced age for a debut. Behind
him lay an eventful childhood and youth, passed in the now-vanished world of
the itinerant entertainer. His father, Willis (Billy) Young, was the leader of a
travelling carnival band. A talented and self-educated man, Billy Young
recruited his entire family to form the nucleus of the band.
Lester, born on August 27th 1909, was the eldest of six and began his
showbusiness career at the age of five, handing out flyers when the carnival

Lester Young with pianist Joe Sullivan,

pictured together at New York’s Vanguard
Club in December 1940.

Ai
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)
z

arrived in town. A few years later he graduated to playing the drums,

switching to saxophone in his early teens because, so he later claimed, the
drums were hampering his social life. By the time he had packed them away
after the show, all the prettiest girls had gone.
His children all inherited Billy Young’s acute musical ear, but Lester’s was
quite phenomenal. He had only to hear a piece once and he could reproduce it
note-for-note. As a result he did not bother to learn to read music. He simply
got his sister, Irma, to play his part through, and he memorised it.
Eventually, Billy Young suspected what was going on and confronted Lester
with a fresh sheet of music, which might as well have been Greek verse for all
the sense he could make of it. Humiliated, he was banished from the band
until his reading was up to standard.
This seemingly trivial incident touched on a key aspect of his personality,
one which was to determine the course of his life and the nature of his art.
Young was exceptionally sensitive to other people and their attitude toward
him. He craved approval and acceptance, suffered anguish at the slightest hint
of rejection, and strenuously avoided confrontation of any kind. He never vot eS

39 CHAPTER FIVE
 CHAPTER FIVE

Lester Young’s extraordinary sidelong

stance with the tenor saxophone looked
awkward but obviously suited him. Later
he held the instrument lower, but retained
the twist in the mouthpiece, so that he was
playing with his head tilted to one side.
over that first humiliating rejection, and would bring it up in conversation for
the rest of his life. But in congenial company, safe among friends, Young was
a different person — exuberant, quirkish, comical, the life and soul of the
party. He often exasperated his friends by his improvidence, his vagueness
and his semi-detached attitude to everyday life. But there is no record of his
ever having made a single enemy.
At 18, unable to face a proposed tour through the Deep South with its
insults and privations, he left the family band and started a wandering career
around the Mid-West and South-West. In Salina, Kansas, he joined Art
Bronson’s Bostonians, and switched from alto to tenor saxophone. “As soon as
I got my mouth round it I knew it was for me,” he recalled.
As he drifted from band to band, his name was increasingly passed around
as being a young man to listen out for. He worked with the legendary Blue
Devils orchestra, and briefly with the great New Orleans pioneer King Oliver
who was then in his declining years. Young’s love of playing was insatiable.
He turned up at jam sessions in bars and hotel lobbies, even in a shoe-shine
parlour on one celebrated occasion. Those who heard him were regularly
struck dumb by the force and eloquence of his playing. It was during this

CHAPTER FIVE 40
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER FIVE

wandering period that the style which was to be unveiled in the recording
studio in 1936 came together. We have no way of telling exactly when that
happened, or through what stages it passed, but we do know which players
Young admired at the time. His two favourite saxophonists were Jimmy
Dorsey and Frankie Trumbauer. “They were the only ones telling a story I
liked to hear,” said Young. “Trumbauer always told a little story. And I liked
the way, he slurred the notes. Did you ever hear him play ‘Singing The Blues’?
That irNiked me right then, and that’s where I went.” Trumbauer played
charming, slightly whimsical solos on c-melody saxophone, quite the reverse of
the earthy, blues-inflected style of the South-West. It was probably his
unassertive grace as much as his flawless technique that caught Young’s ear.
Early 1933 found Young established in Kansas City, a town prospering

Bombe
> Koam Chiuin

te OIC
ESTER Lester Young, Roy Eldridge and Harry Edisor

mightily under the corrupt regime of gangster-politician Tom Pendergast, Three studies of Lester Young in later life.
booming amid the surrounding Depression. Entertainment blazed for 24 hours Left to right: on a European tour in 1952;
a day and it was said that there was no such creature as an unemployed wearing his trademark pork-pie hat; and
musician in the whole of KC. Reputations were won and lost at the marathon laughing with Roy Eldridge during a 1958
jam sessions which took place almost every morning as musicians drifted in recording session.
after work. Young was in his element.
Pianist Mary Lou Williams recalled the epic night when Coleman Hawkins,
on tour with Fletcher-Henderson’s orchestra, challenged all-comers. “The word
went round that Hawkins was in The Cherry Blossom, and within half an hour
there were Lester Young, Ben Webster, Herschel Evans, Herman Walder and
one or two unknown tenors piling into the club to blow.” According to her
account, Hawkins’s royal progress had an unexpected setback, particularly at
the hands of Lester Young. “It took him maybe five choruses to warm up, but
then he’d really blow. Then you couldn’t handle him on a cutting session...
Yes, Hawkins was king until he met those crazy Kansas City tenor men.”
Exploits such as this spread Young’s fame among touring musicians right
across America. Many would not actually have heard him play, but they knew
of him by reputation. Early in 1934 he joined the small band led by pianist
Bill Basie (not yet elevated to the aristocracy as a Count). He had scarcely
settled in when a telegram arrived from Fletcher Henderson. Hawkins had left
to try his luck in Europe and Henderson was offering Young the vacant job.
This promised to be his big break, and Basie urged him to accept. On March
3lst he joined Henderson in Detroit. Very soon it became clear that
something was seriously wrong. Henderson’s saxophone section consisted of

41 CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

CHAPTER FIVE 42
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER FIVE

two altos and a tenor, plus clarinet. It had worked very well anchored by
Hawkins’s weighty sound, but once that ballast was removed the ensemble fell
apart. The band members complained bitterly about the newcomer’s “thin
tone”. Henderson’s wife, Leora, took it upon herself to administer a crash
course in Hawkins Studies. She played Young various Hawkins records and
chased him around music stores in search of magic mouthpieces and reeds, but
all to Ro avail. Young could not turn himself into Coleman Hawkins, even if
he had wanted to. Criticised, singled out for blame, excluded — it was all too
painfully reminiscent of the traumatic episode with the family band. Before
leaving, he asked Henderson for a letter certifying he had not been sacked.
He worked his way back to Kansas City and eventually back into Basie’s
band, now resident at the Reno Club. A live broadeast from the club was
picked up by producer and talent scout John Hammond, and in 1936 Basie
signed agency and recording contracts. He expanded his band from nine to 14
members and left Kansas City for New York and the big time. En route, the
small Jones-Smith contingent recorded four numbers, including ‘Shoe Shine
Boy’ and its equally fine companion piece ‘Lady Be Good’.
Without doubt, the years with Basie, between 1936 and 1941, were the
happiest of Lester Young’s life. They also produced some of his finest recorded
work, both with the band itself and with various ad hoc small groups such as
The Kansas City Six. The quality of his playing is so astonishingly consistent
that it is impossible to pick out any obvious “best” moments. Young claimed
that his favourite solo with Basie was the opening chorus of ‘Taxi War Dance’
(1939). It certainly is a marvellous creation. One is struck once again by his _ A gentle and essentially shy man, Young
poise and absolute sure-footedness as he flips deftly through the harmonies, — appeared withdrawn with strangers but
drawing an elegant, unbroken line of melody. Even at the fastest tempo, as in — expanded among friends. This shot from a
‘Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie’ (1939), he never sounds hurried. 1957 session (opposite) catches his
Rudolf Nureyev once remarked that a dancer of genius is not one who character perfectly.
makes a difficult step look easy, but one who makes an easy step look
interesting. In these brief solos with the Basie band, Lester Young contrives
to do both. The apparent simplicity is deceptive, with tricky intervals and
teasing rhythm patterns negotiated with ease. As for making easy steps
interesting, look no further than the first two bars of the ‘Clap Hands’ solo: a
single note, repeated exactly on the beat eight times, but played with such
dynamism and tonal variety that they send the whole solo flying forward.
Young's originality of mind revealed itself in a kind of lateral thinking,
both musical and otherwise. For instance, noticing that some notes on the
saxophone could be produced using more than one fingering, and that
different fingerings produced different densities of tone, he developed the
practice of alternating “thick” and “thin” versions of the same note — “ooh,
ah” — not as an applied effect but as an integral part of his style.
Then there was his highly personal use of language. He was the first to use
the term “bread” to mean money. “Eyes” meant enthusiasm, “bells” meant
enjoyment, white musicians were “grey boys”. As he grew older this linguistic
inventiveness evolved into virtually a private language, impenetrable to
outsiders. “I feel a draft,” he would say, meaning that he sensed hostility.
Later this was replaced by “Von Hangman is here.”
He was also adept at bestowing nicknames, the most celebrated being
“Lady Day” for Billie Holiday, with whom he had an extraordinary closeness,
at once platonic and passionate. She, in return, named him “Pres”, short for
“The President”, and these names have stuck to both of them beyond the

43 CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

grave. The records they made together in the late 1930s act out their
relationship in music and are among the most beautiful jazz performances ever
recorded. Holiday’s small, knowing, unsentimental voice and Young’s
smoothly laconic saxophone conduct little conversations, so exquisite in their
subtlety that they never lose their capacity to surprise and delight. On pieces
such as ‘Me, Myself And I’ and ‘A Sailboat In The Moonlight’ (both recorded
on June 15th 1937) the two voices move together in such perfect unity that
they seem to be thinking each other’s thoughts.
The Billie Holiday sessions and other small-band recordings of the time
reveal a truly revolutionary aspect of Young’s art. He opened up a whole new
range of emotional territory to jazz. Until he came along, jazz dealt largely in
simple, strong modes of expression — the sweeping majesty of Armstrong or
Hawkins, the lithe grace of Bix Beiderbecke, the headlong delight of Fats
Waller. With Young, we encounter ambiguity for the first time — passion
combined with wit, energy combined with reticence and, increasingly in his
later years, weariness, resignation and self-doubt. He was a uniquely sensitive
individual; his playing faithfully reflected his complicated emotional make-up.
Young left Basie’s band in December 1940, for undisclosed reasons. It was
reported at the time that he had been sacked for refusing to record on Friday
13th. This ridiculous story caused him great anguish, and his wife, Mary,
wrote a furious denial to the editor of Down Beat magazine. He now formed a
small band of his own and secured a job at a New York club, Kelly’s Stables.
But it would be difficult to imagine a more unsuitable person as a bandleader,
and the venture fell apart after a few months. In May, Young left New York
for Los Angeles to join the band led by his brother, the drummer Lee Young.
Lee Young’s band made no records, but in July 1942. Lester recorded four
numbers in LA with Nat King Cole on piano and Red Callender on bass. They
are startlingly different from anything he had done before: softer and more
reflective, with far less spring in the step. His tone is thicker, too. Whatever
caused this change — and several theories have been put forward — it proved to
be permanent. A recording strike by the union kept him out of the studios
until December 1943. Then came a run of superb small-band sessions, mostly
with former Basie colleagues. Young always insisted that a jazz solo should
“tell a story”, and on these recordings he seems to be speaking directly from
experience. The youthful exuberance may have evaporated, but the simplicity
and candour of his improvisations make them irresistible. Compared with
‘Shoe Shine Boy’, ‘Just You, Just Me’ (1943) is sparse and severe, a gravely
elegant exploration of a simple melody. This was also the period when he
began to work with slow ballads. ‘Ghost Of A Chance’ (1944), the first of
many, is a wonderfully dark, brooding performance which, even a few years
earlier, would have been quite unthinkable as a Lester Young creation.
Shortly before recording ‘Ghost Of A Chance’ Young had rejoined Basie,
the only band in which he’d ever felt truly at home. In September 1944, while
they were playing at a club in Watts, LA, Young was caught by the wartime
draft and sent to an army induction camp in Alabama. Various dubious
substances were discovered among his possessions, there was a court martial,
and he was sentenced to a year’s detention. With remission, he served eight
dreadful months in the detention barracks at Fort Gordon, Georgia.
His post-army career has been the subject of endless debate over the
years. It used to be said that his experience at Fort Gordon was so traumatic
that he never recovered, ending up “a broken man”, drunken and incoherent.

CHAPTER FIVE 44
 CHAPTER FIVE

Toward the end of his life, declining health

and uncontrolled drinking badly affected
Young’s playing, although he could still
play beautifully on occasion.

His sustained, seamless, three-minute improvisation on “These Foolish Things’

(1945), recorded soon after his release, gives the lie to that. But he certainly
became increasingly wary and withdrawn, and drank more and more.
His playing reflected his changing moods and fluctuating state of health,
but at least until 1956 he was capable of beautifully subtle and touching
performances — for example ‘Polka Dots And Moonbeams’ (1949), ‘Undercover
Girl Blues’ (1951) and ‘Pres Returns’ (1956). Two nervous breakdowns, drink,
increasing shortness of breath; these and other afflictions all took their toll,
yet he could rise magnificently to the occasion when the circumstances were
right. A week-long engagement at a Washington DC club:in 1955 was
privately recorded and the results, released many years later, could almost
have come from ‘the pre-army days. Significantly, Young enjoyed the
company of his young Washington accompanists and spent hours regaling
them with tales of his early career.
His final years were marked by both physical decline and a sense of failure
which no one else could quite understand. Throughout the 1950s he was in
roughly the same position as Hawkins in the 1930s: hugely influential and
widely revered. But this brought no pleasure; he did not find imitation
flattering. “They're picking the bones while the body’s still warm,” he said.
He was taken ill during a solo engagement in Paris, flew home and died
the following day, March 15th 1959. He was 49. He had predicted that he
would not live to see his 50th birthday.

~~ or CHAPTER FIVE
BRAN @ Paks lea CHARLIE PARKER
THE LANGUAGE OF JAZZ CHANGED IN THE FORTIES. TO SOME IT
WAS GRADUAL, BUT TO MANY IT WAS UNPREDICTABLE, SUDDEN
AND VIOLENT - AND THE MOST DECISIVE FACTOR IN THE
BEBOP REVOLUTION WAS THE PLAYING OF CHARLIE PARKER.

The acceptance of the new bebop style by the average jazz listener was
AT ATATATATATATAS
destined to be gradual. In the early 1940s the most popular saxophonists were
Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Don Byas (who initially replaced Young
in the Basie band), along with their followers such as Illinois Jacquet and Flip
Phillips. There was also Ellington’s first featured tenor star Ben Webster, and
his section-mate Johnny Hodges, then rising to his greatest personal
popularity, along with fellow altoists Willie Smith of the Jimmie Lunceford
band and Benny Carter.
It seemed unlikely that another altoist, with a radically different
approach, could rival these men either in their general appeal or their
influence on other players. Yet listeners who experienced the sound of Parker,
either in the flesh or on record, all had an extreme reaction. Some welcomed
him as a new messiah; others dismissed him as crazy. There were, as we shall
see, aspects of his life that might support the latter theory. But the net effect
of his music was positive. Far from being destructive, his work consolidated
the earlier achievements of others while adding something new and personal.
Every surviving note played by Charlie The musician who did all this was not the most likely candidate. Born in
Parker has been rescued and at one time or 1920, Charlie Parker was the son of a travelling man. Charlie’s father
another issued on record. apparently had some talent as a singer and pianist, but perhaps was most
creative working as a cook on the Pullman trains. Charlie’s mother had to
earn her living as a night cleaner after being abandoned by her husband. One
of Charlie's few advantages in life was his realisation, at least by his very
early teens, that he could exploit his mother’s unquestioning support. She
would let him spend all his time on the streets without criticism, she would
buy him a secondhand instrument, and when he married at 16 she would
house and support the happy couple plus his mother-in-law.
Another undoubted advantage came from being brought up in Kansas
City (“KC”), with its wall-to-wall jam sessions and lively nightlife (as
depicted, along with the municipal corruption that created them, in Robert
Altman’s film Kansas City). So it was that Parker — unimpressed by the high-
school band in which he played the euphonium-family “baritone horn” —
found that there was absorbing music all around him. A school-friend |
encouraged him, and Parker soon made up for lost time, acquiring his first
alto at 13, gigging with friends by the following year, and soon attending
major-league jam sessions. Here he heard leading local saxophonists Tommy
Douglas and Buster Smith (who became his mentors) as well as the notably
avant-garde Lester Young, before any of them were widely known beyond the
city or appeared on records. Soon, he got the nerve to sit in himself and, while
his rather basic musical competence initially met with hostility, he persevered

CHAPTER SIX 46
 GUT ACP TORE WS IX

Parker plays in Sweden during his second,

and last, European visit, in 1950.

and redoubled his practice routine. During the summer that he turned 17,
Parker was employed for the season by top Kansas City bandleader George E
Lee in a lake resort some 100 miles away. Parker had quickly discovered the
seamier side of music-making in KC, and was already into hard drugs. An
abnormally strong constitution enabled him to tolerate regular intakes of
heroin and alcohol, often simultaneously. It was only later in his short life
that they would catch up with him.
When Charlie moved in 1938, first to Chicago and then to: New York, a
small circle of hip musicians was astounded by his newly acquired technical
ability. But he didn’t find many paying gigs. Indeed, he took the only non-
musical job of his life, washing dishes at a Harlem night-spot in order to hear
its resident pianist, Art Tatum. Tatum’s great harmonic knowledge and
versatility even influenced the doyen of jazz saxophonists, Coleman Hawkins,
and was probably a factor in Parker’s major musical discovery of this period.
Ten years later, Parker described how in a jam session he found that “by
using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with
appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I’d been hearing”.
Dexter Gordon, who played with Parker in 1945, noted more specifically that
where Lester Young had already used accented 6ths and 9ths, Parker
“extended that to 1lths and 13ths, like [Dizzy Gillespie], and to altered notes

47 CHAPTER SIX
 CHAPTER SIX

Backstage at the 1949 Paris Jazz Fair,

Parker plays for a group of visiting
British fans and musicians.

like the flatted 5th and the flatted 9th”. Gillespie, with Cab Calloway’s band,
was already working on some of the new harmonic and rhythmic ideas that
went toward the formation of bebop. Gillespie was full of admiration and
amazement when, on tour with Calloway in 1940, he heard the self-taught
Parker incorporating similar ideas, while still retaining a natural feel for
saxophone phrasing.
In 1980, with hindsight, Gillespie declared: “Charlie Parker, as we all
know, was the catalyst. He was the establisher of the style... After we started
playing together, I began to play rhythmically more like him. In that sense he
influenced me, and all of us. Because what makes the style is not what you
play but how you play it.”
Parker had returned to Kansas City and joined a former colleague, pianist
Jay McShann, who in 1940 formed a Basie-style big-band to which Parker
contributed both ensemble ideas and his rapidly coalescing solo style. The
band gave him the nickname Yardbird, soon shortened to Bird. It also
provided him with a chance to make records and, when they played the
famous Savoy Ballroom in 1942, a second chance to visit New York.
Pioneer bebop drummer Kenny Clarke, resident at the famous Minton’s
Club, said: “They began to talk about Bird because he was playing like
[Lester Young] on alto... until we found out that he had something of his own
to offer.” What he had to offer was both harmonic and rhythmic. In addition

CHAPTER SIX 48
 CHAPTER SIX

Dizzy Gillespie toward the end of his life,

almost half a century after his
revolutionary partnership with Parker.

to adopting Young’s relaxed approach to the beat, Parker brought the ability
to play phrases of widely varying lengths, starting at any part of the bar, and
to impart a great variety of timing within individual phrases.
It was natural that he and Gillespie should form an informal partnership,
which for a few years spearheaded the development of the bebop style. Partly
this took place within a big-band format during their joint membership of the
orchestras of Earl Hines (for some eight months in 1943) and Billy Eckstine
(an even shorter period in 1944). As well as constantly practising together and
seeking out jam sessions while on the road, they regularly inspired each other
in their contributions to the band shows. Dizzy included his written
arrangements such as the classic ‘Night In Tunisia’ while Bird played dynamic
solos in the limited space allotted to him.
However, bebop was to be fundamentally a small-group music for quintet
or quartet. Its huge potential was obscured while the big-bands retained their
popularity during World War II, although it was ready to surge forward in
the succeeding Cold War period. The equally new consolidation of what
became R&B took over many of the more basic and immediately entertaining
aspects of big-band swing, such as the novelty vocals and the obvious
emphatic rhythm-section work. But bebop was conceived as a more artistic
endeavour, essentially- concerned with breaking up the regularity of much
earlier jazz, not only in the melody lines themselves but in the interplay of the
hornmen with the rhythm players. As a result, the role of pianists and
drummers in particular became that of accenting (often in a different way
from each other) the lines of the melody instruments. It was not a surprise,
then, that the textural variety of the best big-band music gave way to a
streamlined unison sound, or that Gillespie and Parker were both interested in
the explicit cross-rhythms of Afro-Latin bands.
Gillespie’s penchant for bandleading, both in terms of musical organisation
and showmanship, meant that he usually obtained the gigs. At first these were
on New York’s 52nd Street, in the winter of 1943-44 and again in winter 1944-
45, and then in California during the winter of 1945-46. Parker’s talents were
not directed toward fronting a group or finding work. Indeed, he missed that
first quintet season, being on his last extended stay in Kansas City. But in
these small-group settings he created superb improvisations with their own
spontaneous organisation. And, with Gillespie’s help, he created some of the
first composed material in the bebop style: ‘Dizzy Atmosphere’, ‘Shaw Nuff’,

49 CHAPTER SIX
 CHAPTER SIX

Max Roach (right), drummer with

Pe
Parker’s great quintet of the late 1940s,
pictured in concert during 1989. =

a
®»

‘Thriving On A Riff’ (‘Anthropology’) and the harmonically and rhythmically

ambiguous ‘Koko’. All these were recorded during 1945, along with Dizzy’s
‘Groovin’ High’ and ‘Salt Peanuts’ and Tadd Dameron’s ‘Hot House’. For
those who hadn’t previously picked up on Parker’s brief solos with Jay
McShann, these records became the new bible.
Trumpeter Art Farmer, who first met Parker at this period, observed: “He
Charlie Parker in concert in the late 1940s. could play [Lester Young]’s solos, note for note, and probably Coleman
Hawkins’s, too. But he did that to find out what was in them, not to copy
them.” Parker’s combination of Young with the harmonic expertise of
Hawkins and Don Byas was executed with a masterly precision, enhanced by
his unique tone that was at first derided by some for its apparent harsh edge.
But it reflected his great love of the blues. Indeed the first record session
under his name included two 12-bar numbers, each destined to be famous in
its own right: ‘Billie’s Bounce’ and the more riff-based ‘Now’s The Time’.
Musicians already converted by seeing Bird live cherished these sacred
texts, while those confused by what they’d heard were now able to study the
discs at length. Among those who did so were James Moody, Sonny Criss and
Art Pepper. (There has always been a question-mark over Sonny Stitt, since
both he and Bird agreed he was working along similar lines before they met,
but his achievements were only those of a less inventive imitator.)
Even musicians of earlier styles were not hostile and, as well as being
heard on several records with swing players, Parker eventually exerted an
influence on elders such as Hawkins and Benny Carter. While in California in
early 1946, he made his first guest appearances with the swing-oriented Jazz

CHAPTER SIX nr —)
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER SIX

At The Philharmonic concert-group organised by producer Norman Granz. At

the same time, in a seemingly unplanned move, he made the break from
Gillespie. Dizzy went on to achieve considerable popularity as the public face
of bebop. Bird, however, was about to reach a low point. He became the The Charlie
eer
Parker
frontman of a shortlived quintet with the young Miles Davis and then of - Quintet Livele
leatuning © i hem
Bud Powell”.
another group put together by trumpeter Howard McGhee. But he ended up & Fats Navarro
living rough, and short of the regular supply of heroin which he now needed.
/,
He made two recording sessions in 1946, one with each group. With Miles
Davis there was his stunning solo on ‘Night In Tunisia’ as well as further
original material: the new ‘Moose The Mooche’, the several-years-old
‘Yardbird Suite’, first created for Jay McShann, and ‘Ornithology’, a theme
created by Benny Harris from Bird’s solo on the McShann record ‘Jumpin’
Blues’. The date with McGhee, however, saw Parker in many ways close to
the edge. His playing was mostly incoherent, while the painfully assembled
solo on the famous ballad ‘Lover Man’ was executed with an untypically
flabby tone and barely controlled fingering. After failing to complete the
session, he created a scene at the hotel where he had been installed and as a
result was forcibly subdued and arrested.
Parker ended up in the Camarillo mental hospital for six months.
Although he apparently submitted with equanimity to the restorative aspects
of the regime there and emerged fit and well, he could by no means be said to
have learned a lesson. He continued to indulge in many and varied forms of
dissipation, and was often difficult to work with.
Returning to New York in spring 1947, he formed a new quintet that, for
a while, earned its enduring reputation as the best group he was ever
associated with. Miles Davis was the trumpeter, Max Roach the drummer,
' with bassist Tommy Potter and pianist Duke Jordan.
As well as regular, well-received live dates, the group produced a quantity This live recording of Parker with Bud
of excellent recordings (1947-48) for the Dial and Savoy labels. For the records Powell and Dizzy Gillespie was recorded at
there were slight fluctuations of personnel. The first session had Bud Powell, Birdland in 1949.
the last two John Lewis on piano; trombonist J J Johnson was added on one
occasion; and on another, set up to feature the playing and composing of
Miles, Bird was on tenor rather than alto. The overall quality of the
performances, and their suitability as a setting for Parker himself, created one
of the most revered bodies of work in the whole history of jazz. Bird’s own
improvisation is flawless and ceaselessly inventive, as the later release of
alternate takes of the tunes amply demonstrated. The contrast between him
and the moody Davis, who is technically less than magnificent, adds a
piquant balance not found in Parker’s work with Gillespie. A similar contrast
existed in the rhythm section between the hot playing of Roach and the
relatively cool piano work. The new material included items soon to become
bebop standards, including ‘Scrapple From The Apple’. More striking still was
the first appearance on records of Bird the slow-tempo stylist, on tunes like
‘My Old Flame’, ‘Out Of Nowhere’, ‘How Deep Is The Ocean’, ‘Embraceable
You’ and, especially, the slow blues ‘Parker’s Mood’.
Yet it was not a happy band. Jordan noted that the drug-pushers followed
Bird everywhere, distracting him from music, while Miles and Max Roach
suffered from his indifference both to their performance and to paying them
regularly. Davis, the youngest member, commented that he was the only one
to rehearse the group. He composed the tune ‘Donna Lee’ for their first record
date and probably created the introduction to “Don’t Blame Me’. When Davis

51 CHAPTER SIX
 CHAPTER SIX MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

tried to get Duke Jordan replaced in the working group by John Lewis, he
was slapped down by Parker, who told him “that he [Bird] chose the guys and
Miles could form his own outfit if anything displeased him”. Davis proceeded
to do just that, with Roach on drums, and while they both would return to
Parker, the musical link was broken. By late 1949 Miles had been replaced by
Kenny Dorham, then Red Rodney, and Roach gave way to Roy Haynes.
During that same year Parker also started to appear on record away from
his own group. He made notable if brief contributions to a Metronome All
Stars session, hooked up again with Jazz At The Philharmonic, and signed a
recording contract with Norman Granz who paired him with Machito’s Afro-
Cuban band and, more controversially, with a string ensemble. The fact that
the first album with strings included a relatively popular single, the standard
A SAVOY acconoine JWS
JAZZ WORKSHOP
500

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THE IMMORTAL

Typical compilation albums of Parker’s ‘Just Friends’, was perhaps less significant for Bird than his week with the
work (above) first issued during the 1960s. quintet in Paris, as one of the stars of the second Paris Jazz Fair. The
adulation of European fans led to a further trip on his own to Sweden the
following year — but it also helped to underline the fact that, as the middle of
the century approached, neither bebop nor its black innovators (not even
Gillespie) were receiving that kind of acclaim in the United States.
His management's temporary solution was to feature Parker with a big-
band at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre and then to tour him with a string quintet.
But both ended up increasing his musical frustrations, particularly the latter
which necessarily included several non-jazz players. The fact that he could no
longer call on a regular group of sidemen capable of providing interest and
contrast, as with Miles and Max Roach, led to a downward spiral in his well-
being. Increasingly dependent on stimulants, he was also more and more
unreliable in public appearances, and when he was in a position still to choose
the guys, he often turned up with a hastily-thrown-together band of wholly
unworthy fourth-rank players.
What many regard as the last time Bird did himself justice musically was
an all-star “Quintet Of The Year”, assembled in 1953 at Massey Hall,
Toronto. Parker, Gillespie, Bud Powell, Max Roach and Charles Mingus
romped through some old bebop favourites, and the uplifting results were
recorded and issued on the small label jointly started by Mingus and Roach.
Less than two years later, however, in March 1955, a similar quintet (with
Gillespie and Roach replaced by Kenny Dorham and Art Blakey) played two
nights at New York’s Birdland — the club named in honour of Parker yet

CHAPTER oul & 52

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER. SIX

which had often banned him from appearing. By all accounts, the second
night was an embarrassing fiasco during which Parker argued with Powell on
the stand and refused to play. Mingus said to the audience, “This is not jazz.
These are sick people.” Sadly, he was right. A week later Bird was dead from
a heart-attack at the age of 34.
But his music lives on. The classic records have been constantly reissued,
and a trewsure-trove of live sessions has been discovered and released publicly.
The Parker sound and the style are a constant touchstone for musicians and
listeners around the world, bebop is widely recognised as a classic form of jazz,
and Parker is revered as the player who brought it to the peak of its
achievement. In addition, except for the occasions when he was manifestly not
in control, his command of the saxophone was second to none. Whether

playing on a brand new instrument or one borrowed from a hapless bystander, Parker jamming with the young Chet
he sounded immediately like himself and no one else. Baker in Los Angeles in 1952.
At the start of jazz’s second century, Parker is only the second jazzman
(after Duke Ellington) to have a plaque on the wall of his New York home
at 151 Avenue B on the Lower East Side. In fact, there are two plaques and,
although one draws attention to the architecture of the building, both duly
mention Parker’s importance as a player and as co-founder of bebop.
Meanwhile, the plastic saxophone he used at Massey Hall is in the museum of
his hometown, Kansas City. Yet more significant is the fact that people are
still listening to him and trying to play like him.

or 0.0 CHAPTER SIX

 RICHARD PALMER BEBOP SAXOPHONES
THE INFLUENCE OF CHARLIE PARKER PROVED IRRESISTIBLE,
ESPECIALLY TO ALTOISTS, ALTHOUGH SOME MANAGED TO
DEVELOP A PERSONAL APPROACH. THERE WAS A GREATER
VARIETY OF STYLES AMONG TENOR PLAYERS, INCLUDING SUCH
GREATS AS DON BYAS, WARDELL GRAY AND DEXTER GORDON.

Not the least measure of bebop’s impact was its almost instant attraction to
up-and-coming musicians. Over half the musicians discussed here were born
during the early 1920s and were therefore in their late teens when the new
music burgeoned so rapidly. No doubt other youngsters were drawn to more
traditional forms of jazz, but few made any sort of a name for themselves.
Even those musicians who may be said to have begun their careers as
swing-oriented players rapidly assimilated both the harmonic and rhythmic
innovations of bop. Two prime examples discussed elsewhere are Paul
Gonsalves and Stan Getz. But we begin with a tenor saxophonist who had
effected a mature style before the advent of bop.
Don Byas (1912-72) had started out with Bennie Moten and Walter Page,
and by the time he replaced Lester Young in the Basie band in 1941 he had
worked with Lionel Hampton, Buck Clayton, Lucky Millender and Benny
Carter. A wide-ranging and highly intelligent musician, Byas was attracted to
bop from the outset, becoming centrally involved in its advance. It is no
Essentially a swing player, saxophonist accident that Dizzy Gillespie chose him for his seminal sextet recordings of
Charlie Ventura popularised bebop through 1946. Indeed, during this time Byas was regarded as “Boss Tenor”, his output
his Bop For The People band. judged as superior to both Hawkins and Young.
Byas’s tone was an artful variant of the Hawkins swagger, but his
harmonic grasp was deceptively subtle, recalling Lester Young; conversely,
while he swung prodigiously, he did not share the boppers’ interest in
serpentine patterns and oblique accents, but favoured an on-the-beat attack.
In short, Byas was a real original, and it is not easy to explain why his
reputation is not larger. One reason may be his emigration to Europe in the
late 1940s. Although he prospered there, he cut himself off from the recording
opportunities that were beginning to proliferate in America, especially once
the LP had come of age. Consequently the Byas catalogue is more modest
than it should be, and his story is a poignant one, set in a minor key.
He had something of a revival shortly before his death, winning great
acclaim at the Newport Festival of 1970 and touring Japan with Art Blakey
in 1971. As an exemplar of both his gifts and his importance, try “All The
Things You Are’ on Jazz At The Philharmonic In Europe Vol I (1960). Byas
takes the second solo, following Hawkins and preceding Getz. All three are
majestic; together they encapsulate a rich slice of the history of jazz tenor.
Charlie Ventura (1916-92) was essentially a swing musician whose style
approximated a somewhat vulgarised version of Chu Berry’s approach. He is
chiefly known for his work with Gene Krupa, whose band he joined in 1942
and with whom he was reunited on several subsequent occasions. Nevertheless
he championed bop, and while his own playing displays a limited assimilation

CHAPTER SEVEN 54
 CHAPTER SEVEN

DON EYAS |

One of the first bop tenor saxophonists,

Don Byas moved to France in the 1950s
and had great success with a series of
of the new language, he often played with bop musicians (Kai Winding, albums featuring slow, sensuous ballads.
Bennie Green and Illinois Jacquet) and in the late 1940s led a band billed as
Bop For The People. The arrangements were clever, especially those in which
bop themes were performed by voices and instruments in unison, and the
outfit was quite successful for a while.
Although only a minor figure, Ventura is interesting in that his career
epitomises the meteoric rise of bop and its hardly less rapid demise as a
commercial proposition. He was a forward-looking musician who was clearly
charmed by bop’s harmonic innovation and melodic adventurousness;
rhythmically, though, he was a good deal more traditional, and by the early
1950s his playing had reverted to its conservative roots.
Byas was already a leading light when bop happened and Ventura was
also an experienced sideman who absorbed some of the bop idiom. Younger
musicians had different stories to tell. The separate but decisive influences of
Young and Parker proved simultaneously liberating and tyrannical. Their
radicalism opened up vast new territories for aspiring musicians; the problem,
however, lay in discovering a truly distinctive way of exploring them. To
master one’s craft and gradually to become established is always difficult
enough. To attempt the task under the giant shadows cast by Young and
Parker was something else again. One stratagem was to go back a little as well
as forward, as Byas had instinctively done. More deliberate was the way

or CHAPTER SEVEN
or
f
 CHAPTER SEVEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

several bop novices gravitated to Ben Webster’s work in Ellington’s early-

1940s orchestra. That was the governing inspiration for Lucky Thompson,
Gene Ammons and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, who attempted to combine the
new and more traditional styles of playing.
Lucky Thompson (b. 1924) was christened Eli; the sobriquet Lucky has a
grim irony to it. Originally a Byas disciple, by the mid 1940s he had
developed a much lighter tone and a style which caressed rather than
hammered. He also had a sense of time that owed something to Young but
which he made all his own: his swing\was as deceptive as it was hard. He
worked with Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker
during the 1940s, Milt Jackson, Oscar Pettiford and Quincy Jones in the
1950s, and later recorded with Art Blakey. Consistently creative and much
admired by musicians of all persuasions, his exposure was nevertheless patchy,
and from the mid 1970s he was inactive as a musician.
All this adds up to a considerable shame. Thompson could be as rhapsodic
as Webster on ballads, albeit with a silkier touch, and on up-tempo numbers
his stealthy power and beautifully-judged phrasing never fail to satisfy. He
brought the same originality and flair to his occastonal work on soprano sax:
‘Spot Session’ with Art Blakey on Soul Finger (1965) is a definitive example.
Gene “Jug” Ammons (1925-74), son of the renowned boogie-woogie pianist
Albert, drew on Young as well as Webster, and for all his harmonic
sophistication his work has a simple directness associated with the pre-bop
era. In the 1940s he worked with his father, with Billy Eckstine and Woody
Herman, and went on to lead a two-tenor band with Sonny Stitt in 1952;
nearly a decade later they were reunited on the thoroughly satisfying Boss
Tenors (1961). He also made a number of fine records for Prestige and became
a notable influence on Johnny Griffin and Clifford Jordan. Exhilarating
swinger though he was, Ammons was arguably at his best on ballads and
medium-tempo tunes where the plangency of his tone and his delightful
nuances of phrasing are heard to maximum advantage. His soulful approach
guaranteed him continued popularity up to his premature death from cancer.
The self-taught Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis (1921-85) owed his sobriquet to an
early recording session whose titles — ‘Surgery’, ‘Fracture’, ‘Maternity’ and so
forth — had a medical theme. ‘Lockjaw’ was one such piece and, needing
something to distinguish him from another Eddie Davis, the tenorist borrowed
the term and it stuck. He first caught the jazz world’s attention with his 1946
Savoy date with Fats Navarro, and was soon working regularly with his own
groups. With roots in R&B, from the outset he evinced a highly sophisticated
Sonny Stitt (pictured in 1964) was a harmonic grasp and an idiosyncratic variant of Webster’s approach.
virtuoso of both alto and tenor saxophones. Davis is probably best known for his various tenures with Count Basie. He
His alto was reminiscent of Parker — had something of a hit with ‘Paradise Squat’ in 1952 during his first period
although he claimed to have developed his with the band, was the undoubted star of The Complete Atomic (1957), Basie’s
style independently — and many found his greatest post-war album, and was no less outstanding during his final stint in
tenor playing the more distinctive. the late 1960s: ‘Corner Pocket’ on Standing Ovation (1969) contains perhaps
his single best solo anywhere. In between his spells with Basie, Davis recorded
extensively with organist Shirley Scott and formed an exhilarating quintet
with fellow tenorist Johnny Griffin. He also made albums with Coleman
Hawkins and in harness with arranger Oliver Nelson. In the latter years of his
life he was widely featured on Norman Granz’s Pablo label. Davis remains an
undersung tenorist of considerable originality. No one else sounds remotely
like him, and that tonal uniqueness is strengthened by what Humphrey

CHAPTER SEVEN 56
 ¢ ver “
ey

Lyttelton memorably termed the “dirty slurred insolence” of his phrasing. Tall, imposing and stylish, Dexter Gordon
Davis could be as tender as his formative master Webster, as ferocious as the — had natural star quality. Toward the end of
Basie band he graced so many times. Sheer excitement may not be a __ his life he received an Oscar nomination
definitive criterion in jazz, but it is important, and for eviscerating power few _ for his acting-and-playing role in the
have matched Lockjaw at his best. movie Round Midnight.
The name of Lester Young has already appeared several times, but his
influence was fundamental to the next four saxophonists under scrutiny:
Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt and James Moody. Gray (1921-55)
was arguably the most talented; he was certainly the least fortunate, his life
ending in mysterious circumstances (probably murder) at the age of 34. In the
1940s he worked with Earl Hines, Benny Carter and Billy Eckstine; in 1949 he
joined Benny Goodman, who may have been ambivalent about bop but was
not in the least so about the tenorist. “If Wardell Gray plays bop, it’s great,”

57 CHAPTER SEVEN
 CHAPTER SEVEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

Goodman said, “because he’s wonderful.” Gray had always been an assiduous
student, and he was more than proficient on alto and clarinet; that may
partly account for the purity and innate lyricism of his tenor work. His tone
was light yet full, the phrasing languorous but supple, the overall approach
relaxed, almost insouciant. However, there is nothing flabby about his ©
rhythmic grasp. Gray could really stomp, and he swings infallibly at all times,
most famously evident on “The Chase’, “The Hunt’ and ‘The Steeplechase’, all
made (1947) with Dexter Gordon. In some ways it is a pity that these are
Gray’s best-known performances, for exhilarating though such “tenor battles”
are, they offer limited insight into both players. That said, the contrast is
fascinating. There is no mistaking Gray’s subtler approach for the harder,
more aggressive Gordon lines. Evidence of Gray’s more varied cogency can be
found in abundance on the two Memorial albums (1949-53) and also on the

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Like many of his contemporaries, Dexter long-unavailable jam session he cut for Norman Granz in 1953 alongside
Gordon found great success in Europe among others Buddy de Franco, Benny Carter, Harry Edison and Stan Getz,
during the 1960s. He came to play a two- with a rhythm section led by Count Basie. Gray’s masterly range of idiom
week engagement and stayed for 14 years. suggests that, had he been less ill-fated, the chances are he would have gone
Wardell Gray (opposite), often hailed as on to become one of the leading tenors of his generation.
the finest of all the bop tenors, died at 34 Dexter Gordon (1923-90) had a somewhat chequered career, though he
before fulfilling his great potential. enjoyed a spiriting renascence in his later years. His first jobs — with Lionel
Hampton, Fletcher Henderson, Louis Armstrong and Billy Eckstine — suggest
a musician whose roots were in swing, and that indeed characterised his time-
sense throughout. But he quickly displayed an aptitude for bop harmonics
and lines, and the resultant tension led to a style that Brian Priestley has
called “excruciatingly enjoyable”.
Young’s rhythmic influence was enormous; tonally, though, Gordon was
much hotter, especially on ballads, where his sound can seem almost
intimidatingly authoritative. It was that power which made him an important
mid-1940s influence, notably on Sonny Stitt and the young Stan Getz and’
John Coltrane, yet it would not be long before the latter two, and Sonny
Rollins, eclipsed him. While Philip Larkin’s description of Gordon as “a good
punching player of no great originality without whom jazz would be
immeasurably poorer” might appear harsh, it is nearer the truth than
accounts which lionise him unduly.
After his numerous though informal partnerships with Gray, Gordon was
absent for much of the 1950s due to two separate prison sentences for drug

CHAPTER SEVEN 58
MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER

59 CHAPTER SEVEN
 CHAPTER SEVEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

JAMES MOODY

The melodic and swinging James Moody _ offences, but he returned with a vengeance in the early 1960s, recording a
played saxophone with Dizzy Gillespie for string of albums for Blue Note. He moved to Copenhagen in 1962, where he
years. He was also a pioneer of jazz flute. stayed for 14 years, and despite regular work his overall reputation faded.
However, he had a hugely successful return to America in 1976, enshrined by
the aptly titled album The Homecoming. He worked regularly with trumpeter
Woody Shaw and in 1986 achieved unexpected fame when he starred in
Bertrand Tavernier’s film Round Midnight, a superior performance given added
depth by the character’s resemblance to Lester Young.
Evaluating Sonny Stitt (1924-82) is invariably problematic as he seems to
be two quite different players, according to whether he’s on tenor or alto. His
tenor playing is steeped in Young's influence, especially in his conception of
time: on alto, however, the influence of Parker appears to be total and
exclusive. In fact, there’s a much closer relationship between the “two Stitts”
than casual listening reveals.
Several reliable sources suggest that Stitt had carved out his style before
he ever heard Parker, and for all their undoubted similarity in tone, the two
altoists differ considerably in their phrasing and rhythmic attack. It would be
wrong to call Stitt’s rhythmic conception “old-fashioned”, but the album Only
The Blues (1957) offers definitive evidence of the saxophonist’s swing roots. It
is significant anyway that his frontline confrére is Roy Eldridge. More
specifically “Blues For Bags’ — a Stitt composition that is a thinly disguised
paraphrase of Sonny Rollins’s “Tenor Madness’ made with John Coltrane the
previous year — reveals Stitt’s approach as altogether more mainstream than
Rollins’s or anything one could imagine Parker doing with the tune. That is
not to belittle what is a marvellous performance, but to place it — and Stitt —
in proper context. Similar commendation and stylistic observations apply to
his work with Dizzy and Rollins, where it is the latter who adjusts, not Stitt.
Stitt’s reputation has declined since his death. The number of people who
remember his blistering performances in clubs and concerts gets fewer every
year, and his recorded work does not consistently reflect what a magnificent
improviser he could be. Sessions with frontline partners are invariably
splendid, but for his quartet dates he was too often landed with (or chose)

CHAPTER SEVEN 60
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER SEVEN

inferior rhythm sections and an uninspired repertoire. It was Stitt’s fate to be

thought of as the man who was Parker yet wasn’t; a lot of people who ought
to have known (and listened) better dismissed him as a pale imitation of the
“real thing”, even a copy-cat. Who better to counter that canard than Oscar
Peterson, with whom in 1959 Stitt made arguably his finest album, and who
cited the saxophonist as one of his two favourite players to accompany. (The
other was Gillespie.) The story is Maynard Ferguson’s: “I remember Oscar
Peterson listening to Sonny Stitt, and someone was being kind of critical. He
heard a lot of Bird clichés just then, he said. And Oscar said, ‘Listen to that —
he’s taken a lot of Bird clichés, and a lot of Lester Young clichés, and a
couple of things of Diz’s, and I thought I heard something of mine in there,
I’m not sure, and he’s just smashed them all together, and god, isn’t it
gorgeous?’ And I really drank to that one.”
James Moody (b. 1925) is probably the least significant of the four
saxophonists under review, though an engaging and satisfying performer,
reminiscent of a softer-toned Dexter Gordon. Although he had a surprise hit
on alto with ‘I’m In The Mood For Love’ (1949) he is renowned for his work
in Gillespie’s 1940s and ’60s bands. Moody is another who comfortably
assimilated bop while remaining faithful to pre-bop origins. Recent albums are
essentially mainstream yet imaginative, but determinedly accessible.
Several high-quality bop saxophonists were closely associated with the
Basie orchestra. Lockjaw Davis was perhaps the most distinctive saxophonist
of the band’s post-war years, but there is much to enjoy and admire in the
work of Frank Wess (b. 1922), Frank Foster (b. 1928), Billy Mitchell (b. 1926)
and Eric Dixon (1930-89). Frank Wess is an attractive soloist on tenor and
alto; curiously, his flute work — for which he is probably best known — is less
bop-influenced than his style on the other horns. Frank Foster, who now leads
the Basie orchestra, is a fine writer as well as a vigorous and literate tenorist.
The 1960 LP Easin’ [t impressively showcases both talents.
Billy Mitchell played in Dizzy Gillespie’s State Department band, but it
was his five-year tenure with Basie until 1961 that established him. His style
is straightforward bop, lithe and linear, and his tone incisive. He went on to
become Stevie Wonder’s musical director and a jazz educator of some
distinction. Finally, Eric Dixon’s work has proved highly durable, albeit a
little constricted. He responds especially well to the writing of Quincy Jones:
his solo on ‘Nasty Magnus’ from Lil Ol’ Groovemaker (1963) is probably his
best, though he plays nearly as well on Jones’s own ‘Quintessence’.
Charlie Rouse (1924-88) had a CV both broad and long, but he is Alto saxophonist Sonny Criss,
ineluctably associated with the music of Thelonious Monk with whom he _ photographed in Paris during 1962.
worked for 12 years. Fans of Rouse tend therefore to be fans of Monk; those
less enamoured of the pianist’s approach often find the tenorist similarly
unlovable, not least because of his nasal, thinnish tone. Nevertheless, he had
considerable imagination and proved a durable, highly effective foil. He was
not the hardest or most natural of swingers, but then neither was Monk, and
Rouse’s angular, witty paraphrases of Monk’s lines can be absorbing. Away
from Monk he assisted on those Basie Hasin’ Jt and Groovemaker albums, two
memorable sessions that illuminate Rouse’s quirkily independent style.
The sense of muted achievement that attends many of the musicians
discussed thus far particularly characterises the work of altoist Sonny Criss
(1927-77). Rather like pianist Phineas Newborn, he had everything but luck.
Based on the West Coast, he was labelled a Parker clone, a judgement as

61 CHAPTER SEVEN
 CHAPTER SEVEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

damaging as erroneous; despite some superficial resemblances his style is

entirely discrete, and his tone is much further from Parker’s than is Stitt’s —
warmer, richer and with a more prominent vibrato.
Those properties, together with Criss’s plangent emotionalism, are well
captured on his Portrait (1967), while ll Catch The Sun, made two years later
with Hampton Hawes, is an impressive testament to his ability to transcend
vacuous material. The sad fact remains that Criss was largely unappreciated
(he often found it difficult to get work), and it is all too telling that he took
his own life just as his career showed signs of burgeoning anew.
While most bop saxophonists favoured tenor or alto, three significant
musicians majored on baritone. Cecil Payne (b. 1922) came to prominence
with the Gillespie big-band; later he was a stalwart member of one of Woody
Herman’s most exhilarating outfits, recording Concerto For Herd (1967). Payne
was technically fluent, always melodious. His work offered pioneering evidence
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that the instrument could be adapted to the new demands of bop, opening the
way for better-known figures such as Serge Chaloff and Gerry Mulligan.
Like Lockjaw Davis and John Coltrane, Leo Parker (1925-62) was
originally versed in R&B but quickly made the transition to bop. It seems
likely that he switched to baritone from alto (on which he was a more than
passable performer) to avoid inevitable comparison with his namesake. On the
larger horn he produced a lithely robust sound and swung effortlessly. In the
1950s he faded somewhat, partly because of drug problems. Blue Note signed
him in 1961 with auspicious results, especially Let Me Tell You ‘Bout It (1961),
and it was a sad loss when he died suddenly from a heart attack.
Sahib Shihab (1925-89) enjoyed a wide-ranging career that mirrors his
multi-instrumental virtuosity. He changed his name from Edmund Gregory on
converting to the Muslim faith in 1947. A musician of considerable stamina
and imagination, he is best known in Europe for his long tenure with the
Clarke-Boland band, though his 1950s work with Monk and as a leader is also’
noteworthy. Shihab was at his most distinctive on baritone, though his work
on flute, as mellifluous as it is lissom, is hardly less edifying.
Finally, Ronnie Scott (1927-97). He will long be remembered as a club
proprietor extraordinaire, distinguished for his entrepreneurial courage and
artistic vision, and as a stand-up comedian who could rival anyone on his best
nights (and those were many). But over, above and beneath all that he was a
world-class tenorist: indeed, it was that which made all the other things

CHAPTER SEVEN 62
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER SEVEN

possible. His tone and natural affinity for the blues recall another superb
white player, Zoot Sims, but his phrasing and attack are closer to Sonny
Rollins, with whom he played on many occasions. Scott was at home in any
context and any company. The recently reissued All Stars At Montreux (1977)
showcases his imagination and range as both leader and improviser.
In a compressed survey of this kind it is not only difficult to do full justice
to those cited, it is impossible to include every musician who merits attention.
Though they appear in the list of recommended records at the rear of the
book, no room could be found here to discuss those fine tenorists Teddy
Edwards (b. 1922), Jimmy Heath (b. 1926) or Don Lanphere (b. 1928) and the
altoist Ernie Henry (1926-57), and no doubt there are several more who will
come to others’ minds. But in the end that is cheering. Whether writing or
listening, it is better to have to choose from an embarrassment of riches than
to wonder where the next sentence or pleasing note is coming from.

ana

special

Ronnie Scott (left) playing at his original

London club in 1962. One of the finest jazz
saxophonists of his generation, he became
better known as a clubowner and wit.

63 CHAPTER SEVEN
ALUN Morcgan THE COOL SOUND
IN CONTRAST TO THE VEHEMENCE AND PASSION OF PARKER,
PLAYERS OF THE “COOL SCHOOL” EMPHASISED DELICACY,
RESTRAINT AND A SOMEWHAT DETACHED APPROACH.
INITIALLY A NEW YORK DEVELOPMENT, IT LATER FLOURISHED
AMONG THE STUDIO MUSICIANS OF THE WEST COAST.

In jazz, “cool” is one of the most misunderstood and misused terms.

Generally, it has once again become a common form of approbation, signifying
the essential rightness of something. But in jazz it has a specific meaning for
those whose knowledge of the music goes back to the 1940s, perhaps earlier.
In his seminal work Inside Bebop, published in 1949, Leonard Feather
wrote that “Lester [Young] was a radical in that ‘he symbolised the gradual
evolution from hot jazz to ‘cool’ jazz... . Lester was rejecting the harshness
and blatancy of the earlier jazz in favour of a new relaxation and restraint.”
Although Young did not play as significant a part in the evolution of
bebop as did Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie, his
sound nevertheless became the focus for many younger musicians. Lee Konitz
described the sound of Lester Young on the old Basie records as “real
beautiful tenor saxophone sound, pure sound”. That smooth tone and lack of
vibrato appealed strongly to an entire generation of jazz soloists. Konitz
wondered just how many people Young had influenced, and claimed: “He is
definitely the basis of everything that’s happened since. And his rhythmic
approach [is] complex in its simplicity. How can you analyse it? Shall we tag
some words on it? Call it polyrhythmic?”
It is a truism that the musical influence of Lester Young was more marked
among white musicians than black players, and in particular affected the
school which grew up around the blind pianist Lennie Tristano. Konitz (b.
1927) was probably the best-known of all Tristano’s students, and he set
himself the task of finding an individual voice on alto at a time when the
blanket influence of Charlie Parker was very strong. He achieved this by
applying the tenets of Young’s teachings to the smaller horn, producing a
consistent tone throughout its range and building his extemporisations largely
on melody, eschewing the use of harsh rhythmic phrases.
The same disciplines formed the basis of the style of Warne Marsh, the
tenor saxophonist who studied with Tristano alongside Konitz. Marsh (1927-
87) developed to the point where he was one of the greatest pure improvisers
jazz has ever known. Nothing seemed beyond his capabilities, and he made
extensive use of high harmonics, extending the range of the tenor seemingly
with ease. Like Konitz he accepted Tristano’s firm teaching methods. “A
student who has any listening experience first gets an education in Louis, Pres
and Bird,” said Marsh, “before any theory. From there [Tristano] applies the
basic ingredients: harmony, ear training, rhythm — the understanding of what
goes into improvising without actually telling the student what to play.”
Tristano’s strict methods did not appeal to all his students, some of whom
abruptly terminated their lessons. But he had particular success with the

CHAPTER EIGHT 64
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER EIGHT

saxophonists. Apart from Konitz and Marsh, the tenor saxophonist Ted
Brown (b. 1927) studied with Tristano from 1948 to 1955 and produced a style
of playing almost indistinguishable from that of his two colleagues. The
handful of recordings he made are important, particularly his 1999
collaboration with Konitz on Sound Of Surprise. Regrettably, Brown found it
necessary to work outside music (in computers) in order to earn a living.
Tristano’s students — including those three saxophonists, the trumpeter
Don Ferrara, guitarist Billy Bauer, bass player Peter Ind and pianist Sal Mosa
— tended to work together as a compact, inward-looking school during the
1950s. It was Konitz who first achieved acclaim. In September 1948 Miles
Davis formed a nine-piece band for a two-week engagement at New York’s
Royal Roost. He initially chose Sonny Stitt to play alto. But it was Gerry

Peid

Mulligan, a key figure in the formation of the Davis group, who suggested Lee Konitz, one of the few alto
Konitz, “because he had a light sound rather than a hard, bebop sound,” as — saxophonists of the bop era to develop a
Miles recalled later. style independent of Parker.
The importance of the dozen recordings made in the studio in 1949 and
1950 by the Davis nonet is well established. Gerry Mulligan (1927-96) was
central to the music as composer, arranger and baritone-saxophone soloist.
Despite his comparative youth he had already worked as writer and player
with the bands of Elliott Lawrence, Claude Thornhill and Gene Krupa.
Initially Mulligan’s baritone playing was simply adequate, but his interest in
arranging gave his solos an identity of their own, and when he moved to the

65 CHAPTER EIGHT
 CHAPTER EIGHT MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

West Coast in 1952 he was fortunate to find an intuitive, talented soloist in

trumpeter Chet Baker. With Baker, Mulligan was able to bring to fruition his
ideas to form a compact small band in which the piano played no part. “The
piano’s accepted function of constantly stating the chords of the progression
makes the solo horn a slave to the whims of the piano player,” was Mulligan’s
justification for the pianoless quartet.
Throughout his working life Mulligan’s parallel careers as arranger and
soloist were successfully combined; he had the ability always to think in terms
of the group sound and ensured that each individual voice played its part. His
own baritone playing improved to the point where he was pre-eminent on his
instrument and could challenge any soloist when it came to facility of
expression, irrespective of tempo. In later years he added the soprano and
produced a warm tone on this notoriously difficult instrument.
It was probably more by design than accident that bandleader Stan
Kenton employed a number of cool saxophonists over the years. Maybe he
wanted to display the contrast between his powerful brass team and the
smoothness of the reed players? An example occurs on the Shorty Rogers
work ‘Viva Prado’ (1950) where the excitement of the brass ‘wall of sound”
‘

gives way to the comparatively restrained solo playing of Art Pepper and Bob
Cooper. Previous Kenton bands had contained Vido Musso, a big-toned
bustling tenor player capable of taking on the might of the Kenton
trombones. But from the late 1940s onward the band featured such
saxophonists as Pepper and Cooper, Bud Shank, Bill Holman, Charlie
Mariano, Bill Perkins and Lennie Niehaus.
These men went on to carve out individual careers, but most acknowledge
the help and experience they had gained while working with Kenton. Lee
Konitz was a member of the Kenton band in 1952 and 1953, sitting in the
saxophone section immediately in front of a brass team that included
Maynard Ferguson, Conte Candoli, Frank Rosolino and Bill Russo.
Understandably, Konitz learned to project his sound more forcefully and left
Warne Marsh was a frequent partner of _ the band as an increasingly impressive soloist.
Lee Konitz on the avant-garde sessions Art Pepper (1925-82) was arguably the most important saxophonist ever
led by Lennie Tristano. to play with Kenton, and his career as a soloist from 1952 until his death 30
years later featured many outstanding recordings. He had the ability to
perform at the peak level with groups of all sizes and types, including Miles
Davis’s rhythm section, handcrafted units devised by arranger Marty Paich,
and big-bands assembled for the studio. Toward the end of his life he
broadened the scope of his playing, reflecting his interest in the work of John
Coltrane, but his ability to produce warm-toned ballads of great emotional
intensity remained undiminished.
In Pepper’s shadow for a time was Bud Shank (b. 1926), but he came to
make a name for himself as one of the finest jazz flautists — as well as being a
capable tenor player and a surprisingly virile baritone soloist. Eventually
Shank elected to concentrate on the alto saxophone and has produced many
fine albums, including two outstanding releases for the Spanish Fresh Sound
label devoted to the music of Bill Evans and Gerry Mulligan.
Bob Cooper sometimes played oboe in duets with Shank on flute, but was
a truly underrated tenor player, in the same league as Zoot Sims. Cooper
(1925-93) had a warm, full tone throughout the range of his instrument and
the ability to swing with the ease of such masters as Sims and Richie
Kamuca. Bill Holman (b. 1927) was occasionally featured as a soloist on tenor

CHAPTER EIGHT 66
 CHAPTER EIGHT

Gerry Mulligan brought a lightness and

fluidity to the baritone saxophone, and
introduced a new group sound with his
piano-less quartet.

by Kenton, but his main contribution to the band was as a composer and
arranger. However his small-group work on record with such men as Conte
Candoli and Lee Katzman mark him as a soloist of importance.
Bill Perkins (b. 1924) came to prominence with the Woody Herman band
in the early 1950s, having taken his first featured solo on record with a Shorty
Rogers big-band (on ‘Blues For Brando’ in 1953). With Herman he was heard
on the Ralph Burns ballad ‘Misty Morning’ and the swinging ‘Autobahn
Blues’ (both 1954). After leaving Herman at the end of 1954 he joined Stan
Kenton and remained with the band for four years, commencing his featured
recording stint on Bill Holman’s fine arrangement of ‘Yesterdays’ (1955).
During his stay with Kenton, Perkins also made a number of outstanding
records with small groups for the Pacific Jazz label, the best of which is
certainly Grand Encounter (1956) where he was joined by John Lewis, Jim
Hall, Percy Heath and Chico Hamilton. Perkins’s pellucid tone and
fractionally-behind-the-beat phrasing are features of the album’s ‘Easy Living’
and ‘Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West’, a blues by Lewis.
With the passage of time Perkins’s sound has changed, the light, floating
Lester Young-like quality replaced by a deeper tone not unlike that of tenorist
Benny Golson. However, Perkins was coaxed into recreating his earlier and
distinctive style by producer Dick Bank for an outstanding album made in
1995 and dedicated to Lester Young, Perk Plays Prez.

>) I CHAPTER EIGHT

 CHAPTER HEIGHT MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

Charlie Mariano (b. 1923) was an important figure on the Boston jazz scene in
the late 1940s before he left to work with Chubby Jackson and Bill Harris in
New York. His alto playing has always been marked by a rare degree of
passion and his stay with Stan Kenton resulted in several outstanding
recorded solos including an intense version of ‘Stella By Starlight’ (1955). He
also worked very successfully with drummer Shelly Manne’s quintet and
various Charlie Mingus units. During the 1960s he had a series of residencies in
various countries including Japan and Belgium. He also studied Indian music
and worked with jazz-rock bands, but, whenever he has appeared with Stan
Kenton tribute bands he has shown that his ability to create authentic jazz
solos remains safely intact.
Like Mariano, Lennie Niehaus (b. 1929) gained his early big-band
experience with Stan Kenton. He joined in 1952 and remained until he was
called for military service. He rejoined Kenton in 1954 and remained with the
OPULAN whizzSENEO-POPULAR JAZZ BEREE * MORAN ALE GOMES « POPULAR JZE SERIES” POPULAR JATZ BERIER- POPULAR JAZZCERIO: POPS

GERRY MULLIGAN

West Coast jazz (three example sleeves band for five years, concurrently leading his own quintet with Bill Perkins.
here) had a clear, open sound that blended His major contribution to Kenton was a considerable library of arrangements,
well with older styles and had a broad but his recorded solo playing, particularly on such pieces as ‘Cherokee’ (1955)
general appeal. and “The End Of A Love Affair’ (1959), is excellent.
In 1954 Niehaus started to record a series of albums for the Hollywood-
based Contemporary label, and the initial quintet release had a considerable
impact on the jazz scene. The fluency and creativity of Niehaus’s work comes
across on such numbers as ‘I Remember You’ and ‘Whose Blues’ (both 1954).
In more recent years he has produced film scores for his old army colleague
Clint Eastwood, notably for Bird (1988), based on the life of Charlie Parker.
For 16 years Paul Desmond’s name was inextricably linked to that of
Dave Brubeck, with Desmond’s composition ‘Take Five’ (1961) becoming a
considerable success for Brubeck’s quartet. Many felt that Desmond (1924-77)
would achieve more personal recognition if he left Brubeck to appear as a
soloist or group leader in his own right, especially after the long line of albums
he made for the RCA and A&M labels in the 1960s under his own name. Even
after he and Brubeck parted company in December 1967, Desmond kept
returning to work with Brubeck on special projects or tours.
Desmond’s attraction was his very melodic approach to improvisation and
his smooth, clear tone. He also made wide use of the extended upper range of
the alto, maintaining perfect control over the high harmonics. A very amusing
and witty man, he claimed that he tried to make his solos “sound like a dry

CHAPTER EIGHT 68
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER EIGHT

martini”, while another jazz humorist, guitarist Eddie Condon, said

Desmond's playing “sounded like a girl saying yes”.
With Brubeck’s quartet, Desmond always took the first solo — he said he
didn’t want to play after Brubeck. The best albums by the group were those
recorded live, notably Jazz At Oberlin and Jazz At The College Of The Pacific
(both 1953). The former has spectacular and spontaneous interplay between
alto and piano on ‘Perdido’ while the latter has memorable versions of ‘All
The Things You Are’ and ‘Laura’.
Away from Brubeck, Desmond’s preferred group setting seemed to be that
of the pianoless rhythm section, with a guitar to provide the necessary
harmonies. His RCA albums use this format for the most part, with Jim Hall
supplying that interplay. His final recordings, made for A&M, have the
Canadian guitarist Ed Bickert, who proves to be an ideal partner. Meanwhile,
during the 1950s California was the focus for a jazz phenomenon that became

Gey
GETTIN (oer are
TOGETHER! Fe

&J
pins COW

Art Pepper’s sparkling tone and limpid

phrasing survived a turbulent life,
including several prison sentences.

69 CHAPTER EIGHT
 CHAPTER EIGHT MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

known as West Coast Jazz. With many large orchestras disbanding or

reforming there and with plenty of work to be found in the Hollywood
studios, the area soon became a haven for many noted jazz soloists. Herb
Geller (b. 1928) was actually born in Los Angeles, which gave him more of a
proprietorial right to be there than most. Best known for his alto work, Geller
has always possessed a full, warm tone on the instrument and his elegant
phrasing often brings Benny Carter to mind. During his California days he
recorded with Clifford Brown and such leaders as Maynard Ferguson, Shorty
Rogers and Billy May. In 1962 he left ‘for Europe where he spent many years
working with German radio orchestras. Since retiring from studio work he has
made a number of albums with small groups, all of which indicate that he has
lost none of his expertise as a superior soloist. One of his best was Plays The
Al Cohn Song Book (1996), a tribute to the arranger. Geller is a connoisseur of
songs, many of which might otherwise have been forgotten. His albums
usually contain rare tunes lovingly restored by his musical brilliance.

GERRY MULLIGAN

Sweden’s Lars Gullin was among the One of America’s leading dance orchestras made intelligent use of cool
leading baritone saxophonists of the cool tenor players during the 1940s and 1950s. Les Brown has always led a most
school during the 1950s. Although not a musicianly band with good jazz soloists and arrangers. In 1944 Ted Nash (b.
West Coast musician, Paul Desmond (seen 1922) joined the band as the featured tenor player and was soon
here with Gerry Mulligan and solo) is demonstrating his command of high harmonics_on the instrument. (Nash
normally numbered among the cool school. wrote a primer for students on the subject.) He also cultivated a smooth tone,
and both aspects of his work were to be heard during his solo on Brown's hit
recording of ‘I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm’ (1946).
Nash left the band in 1946, and two years later Dave Pell (b. 1925)
became Brown’s tenor soloist. Like Nash he made use of a smooth, cool sound
not unlike that of a 1950-vintage Stan Getz. Pell was heavily featured with
the band from 1948 to 1955, when he left to form his own octet, making neat,
tuneful music primarily designed for dancing. In the late 1970s Pell formed
Prez Conference, dedicated to transcribing from record and playing classic
Lester Young solos, in the way that Supersax did with Charlie Parker’s solos.
Among musicians the importance of Lester Young has never been
forgotten, and one tenor saxophonist in particular played in a style so close to
Young’s that he was dubbed the Vice-Prez. Paul Quinichette (1916-83) got to
know Young in Denver during the 1930s when he was starting out; the two
would often practice together, and that initial contact remained with
Quinichette throughout his career. Inevitably, record producers made use of

CHAPTER HEIGHT 70
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER EIGHT

him in neo-Basie settings when he would be teamed with such men as Buck Dawe Brubeck and Paul Desmond, one of
Clayton and Jo Jones. But Quinichette was more original than that, as he the most commercially successful
proved with the many discs he made for Decca and Mercury during the 1950s. partnerships in jazz. Desmond’s
Inevitably, it seems, the cool approach found favour among European jazz composition “Take Five’ is the best-selling
musicians, notably in Sweden and Britain. Baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin jazz instrumental record ever.
(1928-76) was a most important soloist, irrespective of geographical
boundaries. He developed a distinctive sound on his instrument and was a
composer of considerable merit. Like a number of Scandinavians he showed an
early interest in the music of Lee Konitz and Lennie Tristano. In November
1950 Konitz went to Sweden to play a number of concerts featuring his own
music, accompanied by compatible players including pianist Bengt Hallberg
and tenor saxophonist Hacke Bjorksten as well as Gullin.
In Britain one of the earliest cool players was the Getz-influenced tenor
saxophonist Keith Bird, while Tristano’s music was the inspiration for both
Gray Allard and Chas Burchell. In Germany Hans Koller indicated an
admiration for Warne Marsh in his own tenor playing, and in 1956 he
recorded an album in Cologne with Lee Konitz and Lars Gullin.
In terms of its popularity among musicians and audiences alike, cool
reached its zenith in the 1950s. It lost ground under the assault of the more
aggressive hard bop style, but its most dedicated surviving disciples continue
to produce fascinating music.

I — CHAPTER EIGHT
 JIM TOMLINSON STAN GETZ AND THE BROTHERS
“THE BROTHERS” WERE THE SPIRITUAL CHILDREN OF LESTER
YOUNG, ADOPTING HIS LIGHT TONE AND MERCURIAL PHRASING
AS THE BASIS OF THEIR OWN PLAYING, AND EVOLVING A NEW
APPROACH TO JAZZ TENOR. STAN GETZ WAS THE MOST
PROMINENT MEMBER OF THIS GROUP, CLOSELY FOLLOWED BY
ZOOT SIMS AND AL COHN.

Stan Getz pictured performing at the

Metropol Club in Oslo during 1960.

The big bands of the 1930s and ’40s provided the training grounds for many
of the greatest instrumentalists and composer-arrangers in jazz. Some were
particularly rich in talent. One has only to think, for example, of the
personnel of the Count Basie band of the late 1930s for names such as Harry
Edison, Buck Clayton, Jo Jones and Lester Young to spring to mind.
Woody Herman’s Second Herd, formed in 1947 and brimming with
youthful exuberance, was another such organisation. Its principal soloists and
arrangers were inspired largely by the emerging music of the East Coast,
bebop. But the defining sound of the band came from its unique saxophone
section. Instead of the usual two altos, two tenors and baritone, Herman
employed a section of one alto, three tenors and baritone. For the standard
ensemble passages, the alto would take the lead. But on occasion the section
would drop the lead alto, with the first tenor taking the lead and the
remaining two tenors and baritone playing close-position harmony.
The effect was to produce a light, perfectly-blended and mobile sound,
capable of executing melodically intricate passages in harmony. This was

CHAPTER NINE 72
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER NINE

ideally suited to the bop-oriented style of the band and came to be one of the
most recognisable sounds in jazz. The signature tune that brought this new
sound to the listening public was ‘Four Brothers’ (1947).
‘Four Brothers’ came not only to define a particular style of saxophone-
section writing, but also to identify a group of saxophonists. The original
Brothers were Herbie Steward, Zoot Sims, Stan Getz and baritone saxophonist
Serge Chaloff. Other names can be added to this list, either because they came
through Herman’s sax section at the time or were associated stylistically: Al
Cohn, who replaced Steward in the original section; Jimmy Giuffre, composer
of ‘Four Brothers’; Brew Moore; Richie Kamuca; and Bill Perkins.
What did the Brothers have in common? They all played, at least at the
outset of their careers, in a style that was very much downwind of Lester

STAN GETZ
{Dirty RewsTeneo Dinecryy FaoM THe ORIGWAL ANALOG TarEs

IN PARIS

MANITA
LIVE
DF CARNAVAL, WHEN TIO; WORLD WAS YOUNG
SINGING SUNG - ON GREEN DOLPHIN STREET STAN'S BLUES.
EDELWEISS THE KNIGHT RIDES AGAIN

GETZ
Quartet

Young. Young's playing was at variance with the prevailing tenor saxophone A selection of Stan Getz album sleeves from
influence of Coleman Hawkins. Young eschewed the chesty, wide vibrato that records issued in the 1950s and 1960s.
dominated the tenor saxophone of the late 1930s in favour of a lighter, more
lucid sound, not entirely unlike the c-melody saxophone sound of Frankie
Trumbauer. It is not only the sound, however, that identifies Lester Young’s
disciples. Young also played with a more “horizontal” melodic approach.
Where Hawkins would tend to craft his improvisations by ranging vertically
through the notes of the chord sequence of the tune, Young would take a
more linear route.
Listening to that classic recording of ‘Four Brothers’, recorded on
December 27th 1947, it is hard to distinguish between the tenor players as
their solos follow on seamlessly from one another. Sims is the first out of the
blocks, followed by Chaloff. Steward, whose motific solo is perhaps the most
convincing of the statements, is followed by the fluid Getz.
It was in his ballad playing, however, that Getz distinguished himself in
the Herman band. Ralph Burns, pianist and composer, created the ‘Summer
Sequence’ suite for the Herman band, the fourth part of which came to be
known as ‘Early Autumn’ (1948). It is a slow ballad that features the three
tenors and baritone, with Getz on lead and performing the solo duties. Getz’s
solo is exotically dreamy and is of such crafted perfection and maturity that it
is hard to believe it came from a man of 21 years.
However, these sessions with the Second Herd were anything but a
recording debut for Getz (1927-91). He had been a precocious musical talent at
school, playing bassoon in the school’s symphony orchestra as well as the

73 CHAPTER NINE
 CHAPTER NINE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

other reeds. This enabled him to take casual gigs to supplement his family’s
modest income. The gap between a working wage and the earning potential of
a successful musician was such that when the 15-year-old Getz was offered a
regular job with Dick Rodgers’ band at $35 per week (about £23) his parents
allowed him to drop out of school. This was soon followed by a $70 offer from
Jack Teagarden, and it was with Teagarden that Getz first recorded, on
August 18th 1943. Stints with Stan Kenton, Jimmy Dorsey and Benny
Goodman followed, so when Getz joined Herman in the autumn of 1947 he
was no freshman. As well as picking up musical skills along the way, he also
acquired an addiction to heroin and alcohol that was to dog him for years.
The saxophone section of the Second Herd originally came together in a
rehearsal band organised in New York by arranger Gene Roland. It consisted
of four tenor saxophones. This was re-formed out on the West Coast as part of
Tommy di Carlo’s band — and it was this band, containing Getz, Steward,
Sims and Giuffre, that Woody Herman heard and liked. Herman hired the
section, with Giuffre replaced by Serge Chaloff on baritone. The Second Herd,
and the Four Brothers sound, had been born.
Getz did not stay with the Herman band for long. With the responsibilities
of a wife and young child, he left the band and the rigours of the road to
settle near his family in New York early in 1949. ‘Early Autumn’ had not yet
been released and Getz found himself taking odd gigs to make ends meet.
When it did appear later that year the record was such a hit that it instantly
The easy-swinging Zoot Sims in his prime. launched him on a solo career that would last over four decades.
His effortless delivery and seemingly It is his sound that first strikes one about Getz’s playing. Certainly it
endless flow of ideas made him a hero to evolved throughout his career, but it remained at all times a thing of
several generations of jazz lovers. agonising beauty. In his earliest quartet recordings he has a thicker, more
metallic sound, rather like that of Dexter Gordon’s at the time. In ‘And The
Angels Swing’ (1946) we hear an already dazzling technique with perfectly
executed double-time runs, but it is not until the 1949 ‘Indian Summer’
session that we hear the lightness of touch and lyricism that distinguished
Getz’s playing of this period.
The success of ‘Early Autumn’ enabled Getz to form a working quartet,
with Al Haig, Horace Silver and Duke Jordan consecutively in the piano
chair. With these groups he made a series of recordings for the Roost label
which define his playing in the early 1950s. By this.time there is a consistency
of tone: light, with a warm glow. This was achieved by the use of a
mouthpiece that did not allow the reed to vibrate widely, so that the sound
we hear is dominated by the resonating sound of the brass rather than the
sound of the reed. It was a hard reed, to give evenness of tone, especially in
the middle and upper registers. And the embouchure — the shape that the
mouth forms around the mouthpiece and reed — dampened the higher partials
of the notes. Together, these factors combined to give the unmistakable Getz
tone: airy, warm and pure, with a brassy glow that is sometimes almost
trombone-like. This formula remained more or less consistent throughout his
career, although Getz’s tone did evolve a richness and range of expression that
was absent for much of the 1950s.
Among Getz’s first recordings on leaving the Herman band was a series of
Brothers sessions in April 1949 with Sims, Cohn, Allen Eager and Brew Moore
on tenors. “Four And One Moore’ from this session is a Gerry Mulligan
composition based on the chord sequence of ‘Indiana’. It reveals the opening
soloist Brew Moore to have absorbed the Parker style, and he even refers to

CHAPTER NINE 74
the Parker tune ‘Donna Lee’ (itself based on ‘Indiana’). Moore (1924-73) also Three brothers: Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and
draws on a number of Lester-type devices, for example in the 13th and 14th Jimmy Giuffre at a Woody Herman
bars of his solo where he plays a phrase highly reminiscent of Young’s solo on reunion gig in New York, 1976.
‘Jive At Five’. Later Moore plays an elongated phrase in which three-beat
groups of notes are repeated over the four-to-the-bar structure of the tune to
create an exciting rhythmic tension: barring the bop inflections, this could be
said to be pure Pres.
Zoot Sims, who plays next, has more of Young’s relaxed rhythmic feel but
fewer of his mannerisms. It was this relaxed style of playing, as well as a
warm, gravy-like tone, that distinguished Sims throughout his long career.
Sims (1925-85) began his professional career at the age of 15. In the ensuing
45 years he worked off and on with many of the big-band leaders, especially
Herman and Goodman. He was also a successful solo artist whose forthright
and appealing style seemed to fit all occasions without need for adjustment.
Whatever the musical context, whether playing harmonically-adventurous Bill
Evans compositions or simply blowing a blues, Sims always made it sound
effortless, with phrases that were both logical and unhurried. He never sounds
rattled or trapped into playing unnecessarily by a demanding musical
situation — rather like a good batsman doggedly refusing to venture outside
the off stump. His greatest musical collaboration was with fellow Brother, Al
Cohn. The quintet they co-led was formed in 1957 and lasted until the 1980s.
Al Cohn is next at the microphone on ‘Four And One Moore’. He sounds
more obviously Young-inspired than Sims. His lines are fluid and flow across
the beat rather then locking into it. Cohn (1925-88) was a tenor player more
revered by other musicians than the public, and it was perhaps this lack of
recognition that encouraged him to devote himself for a large part of the
1950s to the studios and to writing. But he did bring his arranging and
writing skills to his work with Zoot Sims. This and an enviable flair for
imaginative improvisation made for a sublime pairing. Although his tone

75 CHAPTER NINE
 CHAPTER NINE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

hardened a little in later years and his rhythmic feel became more taut, the
melodic flow of the Young tradition remained intact.
Stan Getz is next. He plays consistently in the upper register and sounds a
little thin in comparison to the others, though he is by far the most
distinctive. Last up is Allen Eager (b. 1927) whose solo has more bop than
Pres. This is hardly surprising: he spent most of 1948 playing with Tadd
Dameron, the pianist, arranger and bop guru. After freelancing throughout
the 1950s, Eager gave up music in the 1960s and ’70s to pursue other interests
(including sports-car racing, at which he was very accomplished). He resumed
playing in the 1980s, occasionally partnering Chet Baker.
Getz’s most important musical partnerships of this period were not with
other tenor players but with guitarists Johnny Smith and Jimmy Raney. Like

“Mr. Music” /Al Cohn

Al Cohn was the simplest and most funky

of the Brothers-style tenors, but at the same
time probably the most sophisticated all-
round musician. He was also a highly
successful arranger and musical director. ‘Early Autumn’, Getz’s next significant hit was a ballad. Recorded with
Smith, “Moonlight In Vermont’ (1952) is a romantic and impressionistic
melody with an odd structure, due to its lyric being in the form of a haiku
poem. The tune is played and harmonised in Smith’s distinctive, almost
Hawailian-sounding guitar style, with Getz playing an improvised counter-
melody. Getz’s solo contribution is a meagre six bars, but his is the dominant
voice that turns what would otherwise have been a sugary novelty into
something with emotional depth. The record was such a hit that on the basis
of its success Getz was earning upwards of $1,000 per week (about £650), a
staggering sum in the early 1950s.
The best Getz band of this period was the one formed with guitarist
Jimmy Raney, an associate from the Herman band. They played with an
empathy that bordered on the telepathic. The way in which they executed
unison and counterpoint is best demonstrated on their Roost sessions recorded
live at Storyville. In the early 1950s, on the back of Miles Davis’s Birth Of The
Cool and the pianoless Mulligan/Baker Quartet, the term “cool jazz” became
current and Getz, with his lyrical style and light sound, seemed to fit the bill.
However, on ‘Parker 51’ (1951), an up-tempo, contrapuntal composition of
Raney’s based on the chord sequence of ‘Cherokee’, Getz reels off chorus after
chorus of perfectly executed improvisation while sounding anything but cool.

CHAPTER NINE 76
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER NINE

Recordings a few years later with Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Stitt gave Getz
the opportunity to demonstrate a technical facility and imagination
comparable with the very best of the bebop masters. And yet whatever the
tempo and harmonic demands, there is always a lyricism at the heart of his
playing — and, of course, that sound.
For Getz the 1950s are, characterised by remarkable professional and
artistic achievement, but against a backdrop of drug abuse that periodically
disrupted his career, most notably earning him a spell in jail in 1954.
However, the six months he spent inside appeared to revitalise Getz. In the
October following his release he took part in his first tour for jazz impresario
Norman Granz. The quintet’s frontline included valve trombonist Bob
Brookmeyer, with whom Getz would make a number of fine recordings. (They

ey Moore/ Brews Stockholm Dew

HIGH FIDELITY

would pair up again for two of Getz’s best recordings, their joint 1961 album Serge Chaloff was the baritone-playing
Fall 61, and Brookmeyer’s 1964 LP And Friends.) Brother. Brew Moore, a dedicated Lester
On the album Stan Getz At The Shrine (1954) the audience receive Getz Young disciple, lived a wandering life
warmly, perhaps put at ease by Duke Ellington’s faintly ironic and _ ice- which kept him out of the limelight.
breaking introduction. Listening to Getz’s own introductions, it is easy but
perhaps fanciful to imagine a contrite tone. But there is nothing contrite in his
playing: if anything, Getz’s sound becomes darker and heavier from here on.
By the time we hear Stan Getz With The Oscar Peterson Trio, recorded on
October 10th 1957, and the Herb Ellis session Nothing But The Blues, recorded
the following day, the long, lucid lines are now interspersed with bluesy
interjections and possess an emotional range lacking earlier in the decade.
At the end of 1958, with the birth of daughter Pamela to his new wife
Monica Silfverskiold, and on the basis of rapturous receptions from European
audiences, Getz decided to move to Copenhagen. This marks a period of
personal stability that is reflected in his playing. Recordings made in 1960
with pianist Jan Johansson’s trio and issued as two volumes of Stan Getz At
Large show Getz’s playing to be relaxed and fluent. Meanwhile, a ballad album
Cool Velvet made the same year with Russ Garcia’s string arrangements marks
the arrival of the mature Getz sound of the 1960s: warm and sensuous in the
lower and middle register, with a capacity for an edgy intensity in the upper.
But when considered in the light of Miles Davis’s Kind Of Blue and John
Coltrane's Giant Steps, recorded a year earlier, these albums start to sound
little more than accomplished. Whether prompted by a feeling of artistic
isolation, as suggested by Donald Maggin in his excellent biography of Getz,

tha CHAPTER NINE

Dexter Gordon (left) and Stan Getz meet or simply by homesickness, Getz moved back to New York in January of
~ up at the Nice Festival in 1981. 1961. Thus began a period that would produce Getz’s greatest work. If one
had to pick a single Getz album that demonstrates his musical prowess more
completely and emphatically than any other, it would be Focus (1961), the LP
he made with writer and arranger Eddie Sauter. Getz had not found his return
to America as easy as he might have hoped. His drawing power in the clubs
was diminished, perhaps on account of his two-year absence, but also because
of the fashions for hard bop and avant-garde modal music, neither of which
Getz represented. Jazz tastes had moved on while he had not.
But in the fall of 1961 Getz went into the studio to record the album that
would restart his career in the States and remains to this day one of the most
remarkable achievements of improvisation. Getz commissioned Sauter to write
original string music over which he would improvise his part. The result is one
of stunning originality and perfection, and is the truest realisation of the
fusion of the classical and jazz traditions.
Focus is an improvised concerto consisting of seven movements ranging
from the angular ‘I’m Late, I’m Late’, based on Bartok’s Music For Strings,
Percussion And Celeste, to the lush and romantic ‘A Summer Afternoon’.
Throughout, Getz’s playing meshes so perfectly with the string parts that it is
hard to believe that his own part is not written. The album was given a full
five stars in Down Beat (as was his reunion album with Brookmeyer, Fall 61),
restoring Getz to his rightful place among the great creative geniuses of jazz.
The 1960s mark a period of continued musical excellence for Getz. His
regular quartet often included Roy Haynes on drums, an associate from the
Xoost recordings with whom he can be heard sparring with an intensity
reminiscent of that generated by John Coltrane and Elvin Jones. Listening to
the exchanges on ‘Green Dolphin Street’ from the recorded concert Stan Getz
Quartet In Paris (1966) we hear a rhythmic playfulness more like that of
Sonny Rollins. And the edginess that first appeared in the upper register is
now freely employed throughout the entire range of the instrument. This was

CHAPTER NINE 78
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER NINE

not a result of a change of technique or equipment so much as a new

willingness to explore the full tonal possibilities of the instrument. It is
perhaps Getz’s best small-group playing. He is the consummate improviser,
capable of playing with a musical, tonal and emotional range to which only a
handful of other musicians have come close.
And yet this most powerful of Getz’s playing is overshadowed by the work
for which\he remains best known, the bossa nova albums. Persuaded by
RICHIE KAMUCA'S
guitarist Charlie Byrd, in 1962 Getz made an album of Brazilian tunes titled
Jazz Samba. To everyone’s surprise it scored an enormous success, especially
the single “Desafinado’. This was followed by a pairing with Brazilian
musicians Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim. On the resulting album
Getz/Gilberto (1963) Getz’s serenely melodic improvising has a beauty that
transcends genre. The LP, which contained the hit song ‘The Girl From
Ipanema’, remained on the pop charts for an amazing 96 weeks, rising to
number two — the kind of achievement rivalled only by The Beatles. The
commercial success of the albums was entirely deserved but set an unrealistic
standard for Getz’s record sales. While his working band remained a vibrant
jazz unit with such young talents as Gary Burton and Chick Corea, much of
his recorded output became more commercial, with orchestral albums covering
current pop material. But Getz was not happy to rest on his musical laurels.
The next musical shock wave to hit the jazz world came from the jazz-
rock explosion. From the 1920s to the 1950s jazz had remained in close touch = Richie Kamuca played with Stan Kenton
with the popular music of the time, drawing on it for repertoire and forms. and Woody Herman before becoming one of
The 1960s were something of a departure. While popular music was dominated __ the leading West Coast tenor soloists.
by rock’n’roll, jazz moved into areas of modal, free and protest music that
had less to do with what was happening on the pop scene than before.
. But the jazz fusion of the 1970s represented a fresh convergence of jazz
and popular music and provided a challenge that Getz did not ignore. He was
able to play the rock grooves with conviction and never sounded as though he
had simply sold out, although his bands of this period have an electric sound
that is strangely at odds with Getz’s dark tone. On his 1977 album Another
World we hear him sounding not entirely at ease as he experiments with
digital delay and Echoplex; however, recorded in the more acoustic context of
Woody Herman’s 40th Anniversary concert around the same time (1976) he
sounds more comfortable and convincing, swinging out on ‘Blue Getz Blues’.
Throughout his career, the distinguishing feature of Getz’s playing was his
sound, which had become more and more distinctive through the years. So his
experimentation with electronics seems like an act of sacrilegious interruption
to that process of refinement. Perhaps it was a response to this when in 1982
his playing took an abrupt turn with the acoustic-quartet format of the
pointedly titled album Pure Getz. He would keep to this format until the end
of his life. Getz died of cancer on July 6th 1991. He was battling the illness
throughout this period, and his playing never reached the audacious heights
that it had in the 1960s. But there is a mature gathering of resources that
gives his playing a depth and an impact that make many of the recordings
from this time among his best. The Grammy-winning album Serenity, recorded
in 1987 in Copenhagen, deserves to be in any serious jazz collection.
Described by his hero Lester Young as “the best of the grey boys,” Stan
Getz contributed not only to the history of the jazz saxophone but also to jazz
history itself. He set standards of technical mastery and artistic beauty that
some might aspire to match but none could hope to surpass.

79 CHAPTER NINE
 TONS UPS eS bile HONKERS AND SCREAMERS
SUBTLE THEY WEREN’T, BUT THE PLAYERS WHO WORKED ON
THE BORDER BETWEEN JAZZ AND R&B PROVED UNBEATABLE
WHEN IT CAME TO EXCITEMENT. THEIR VERY NAMES - BIG JAY
McNEELY, HAL “CORNBREAD” SINGER, WILLIS “GATOR TAIL”
JACKSON - EVOKE THE FIFTIES AND THEIR HEYDAY.

“If one should ever have cause to erect a memorial to the whole school of
rhythm and blues,” the English critic Albert McCarthy mused in an essay in
Jazzbook 1955, “I can think of no more fitting one than crossed tenor
saxophones with the simple epitaph “we honked’.”
Since then the term “rhythm and blues” and its abbreviation “R&B” have
been appropriated by the music industry for music only distantly related to
McCarthy’s examples of Tiny Bradshaw, Wynonie Harris or The Ravens.
Even 45 years ago, as that trio of names suggests, there were varied
interpretations of it. But McCarthy’s instinct was surely right: when it comes
to R&B, the tenor saxophone is the jam in the doughnut; the spirit, if you
like, in the machine.
In common with most jazz pundits of his era, McCarthy had little good to
say about R&B purely as music. He quoted, but regrettably did not name, a
“well-known jazz tenor player who commented that if one could teach the
apes in the zoo the way to play tenor, they would sound like rhythm and
blues men. Rhythm and blues,” he went on, “is the music of gimmicks and
cheap excitement.... It expresses perfectly the basic emptiness of modern
America,” and more in that vein.
On the other hand, he wrote, it had impeccable sociological credentials. “It
Arnett Cobb (above) still enlivening Lionel is inevitable that [the Negro’s] music will become more cosmopolitan. Rhythm
Hampton’s band with his forceful, rocking and blues are the welding of the Negro blues with the material of Tin Pan
tenor at the age of 61, in London, 1979. Alley and represents, in the truest sense of the word, the commercialisation of
From R&B to Count Base’s band, Jimmy the blues.... Behind the honking tenors, the fabulous altos and the electric
Forrest (opposite) had a blues-filled style guitars whining interminably, there is a core of the-blues that serves to remind
that suited both to perfection. one of greater things.”
McCarthy recognised that saxophone-fronted R&B grew naturally from
performance practices in certain black orchestras of the early 1940s,
particularly the Lucky Millinder band with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and the
Lionel Hampton band with Illinois Jacquet and later Arnett Cobb. Jacquet
(b.1922) played a solo on Hampton’s 1942 recording of ‘Flying Home’ that is
often regarded as an R&B landmark, and with its slightly unshaven tone and
the repeated notes in the second chorus it does indeed contain some of the
material that would make up a blueprint for R&B tenor. But it was in concert
that details were accentuated or added, as may be heard in airshots, so that
the tune grew by accretion into a sort of compendium of R&B devices:
squeals, rasps, teetering stacks of riffs.
Within a few years Jacquet was deploying those devices with the
economical repetitiveness of the born honker’n’screamer: witness the note
repeated 43 times in succession in his 1947 recording ‘Jet Propulsion’. He also
had a high billing on Norman Granz’s Jazz At The Philharmonic package

CHAPTER TEN 80
 eo)

|
,

eT!

81 CHAPTER TEN
 CHAPTER TEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

tours, which for several years provided a public arena for duelling tenors and
other high-adrenaline saxophone encounters.
Arnett Cobb, who succeeded to Jacquet’s place in the Hampton court,
marked his arrival with a vigorously revised ‘Flying Home’ (1944) that would
be as influential as its predecessor. Like Jacquet, Cobb (1918-89) grew up in
Houston. Later, together with his contemporary Buddy Tate, he would be
enrolled by historians into the Texas Tenor school of burly, bluesy blowing.
“He blew the kind of fast extrovert tenor, complete with gag quotes, for
which Jacquet and JATP created a vogue,” noted Stanley Dance. “With his
small group, he indulged in the kind of showmanship practised by Hampton,
marching off stage, up and down theatre aisles, while still playing his horn.”
The braying call-and-response figures of his ‘Go, Red, Go’ (a title taken,

it's Party Time with

ING CURTIS

King Curtis, master of the short, groovy most appropriately, from a pep-squad cheer heard at Cornell football games)
solo on numerous R&B classics, and Earl were popular with tenor-players; Red Prysock re-recorded the tune with the
Bostic, the king of alto melodrama. ‘Tiny Bradshaw band, retitled ‘Free For All’, as much as six years later. The
1947 original was made for Apollo, a label whose office was down the street
from the famous Harlem theatre of the same name, where Cobb and his
confréres regularly blew the dust off the rafters. Apollo made rather a thing of
R&B tenor players, including on its roster Willis “Gator Tail” Jackson and —
another Hampton alumnus — the young King Curtis (1934-71).
As Bob Porter has observed, Jacquet and Curtis neatly bracket the golden
age of R&B tenor. “It can be argued,” he says, “that Jacquet was the first to
demonstrate the potential and that King Curtis was the last of the great tenor
stylists of that era.” In fact the true heyday of the honk was the decade or so
from 1945 to the arrival of rock’n’roll.
The tenor was not immediately eclipsed by the young men from Sun
Records; if there was little evidence of it on the records of Elvis Presley or
Jerry Lee Lewis, it was intrinsic to the northern rock’n’roll of Bill Haley, and
Curtis’s own voluminous contributions to what are now regarded as classic
rock’n’roll and soul records continued well into the 1960s. But it was inevitable
that the more immediate, and whiter, sexual lure of rock’n’roll guitar and its
players would drive the front-of-stage honker back to his place in the band.
But for those ten years (or so) there was a splendid parade of blowers
whose names and hit records evoke an entertainment scene with a pronounced
if today almost alien character: Hal “Cornbread” Singer, Big Jay McNeely with
‘The Deacon’s Hop’, Eddie Chamblee and his ‘Lima Beans’, Jimmy Forrest’s

CHAPTER TEN 82
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TEN

‘Night Train’, Al Sears with ‘Castle Rock’, Sam “The Man” Taylor, Wild Bill
Moore (another Houstonian), Jack McVea, Paul Bascomb, Red Prysock, Joe
Morris, Sil Austin, Lee Allen, Joe Houston and a hundred others.
Almost to a man (they seem nearly always to have been men) they had
put in some time with “name” bandleaders. Forrest (1920-80) had been with
Jay McShann, where he sat alongside Charlie Parker, and with Andy Kirk;
Sears with\Ellington; Taylor with Millinder and Cab Calloway; McVea and
Morris with Hampton (McVea between Jacquet and Cobb); Bascomb with
Erskine Hawkins and Basie; Prysock and Austin with Tiny Bradshaw; Singer
(like Buddy Tate) with the unrecorded but influential Nat Towles.
Most of them, too, were young men, passing through their 20s in the
1940s, but otherwise they were a mixed bunch whose abilities might range, as
Porter put it, “from reed-biting squealers to honkers just slightly less creative
than, say, Lester Young”. Many were good second-class jazz musicians who
didn’t disdain playing more simply: “robust, a big tone, always a swinger,” as
Clark Terry said of Forrest. Others had more limited technique and were
lucky to be around at a time when, thanks to that great leveller the jukebox,
you could parlay a rasping up-tempo blues into a hit.
Or a furry slow one, or a hypnotic medium-paced shuffle. R&B was not all
supercharged. Annotating a Jimmy Forrest CD, the historian Frank Driggs
was moved to remember the jukebox favourites in late-night bars of the
1950s: “Tough finger-popping items like ‘Soft’ by Tiny Bradshaw [with Red
Prysock on tenor], ‘Honky Tonk’ by Bill Doggett, ‘Steamwhistle Jump’ by
Earl Bostic, ‘Smooth Sailing’ by Arnett Cobb and ‘Night Train’ by Jimmy
Forrest.” Scarcely any of them are rave-ups in the mould of Jacquet’s ‘Jet
Propulsion’, and probably the biggest seller of them all, Forrest’s ‘Night
Train’ (1951), was a zonked-out slow blues so suggestive in its execution that
it could have been subtitled ‘(For Strippers Only)
)

A huge proportion of the R&B sax repertoire was blues. This is easy to
say, so let us inspect a couple of modern CD anthologies that were compiled
with documentary purpose rather than to throw together a mess of blues.
Delmark’s Honkers & Bar Walkers Volume I is drawn from the Chicago labels
United and States and features, among others, Forrest, Bascomb, Fats Noel
and the altoist Tab Smith; Westside’s Groove Station is taken from the King
label-group and offers Sears, Wild Bill Moore, the altoist Preston Love, Jesse
Powell and Noel again. The former’s 22 tracks include 11 blues, and the
latter's 23 ten, quotas that are likely to be typical. Given that kind of
weighting, it is only to be expected that some of the blues will be slow ones
and, given the genre’s love of bold contrasts, some very slow; and so it proves.
Typically, an R&B single — and at the time we are dealing with, singles
were virtually the only game in town — would couple a fast blues with a slow
ballad, or an uppish shuffle with a slow blues. Constrained to mask this
reliance on one form, musicians — or, more probably, their record companies —
became fluent in the invention of unrevealing but evocative titles like
‘Applejack’, ‘Hot Box’, ‘Rear Bumper’, ‘Rocket Flight’ or ‘High Tide’. Often
a blues would be named for a dise jockey in the hope that he would use it as
his signature tune, such as Teddy Brannon’s ‘Mixin’ With Dixon’ (Ray
Abrams, tenor) for the Philadelphia DJ Randy Dixon, or Big Jay McNeely’s
‘Willie The Cool Cat’ for the bandleader-turned-jock Willie Bryant. Numerous
tunes, not only blues, were dedicated by Jacquet, Cobb and others to New
York’s most famous jazz DJ, “Symphony Sid” Torin.

CHAPTER TEN
 CHAPTER TEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

Big Jay McNeely (b.1927) was about a decade younger than most of the roster
assembled above, and was an exponent of musical athletics which distant
critics like McCarthy would certainly have found challenging if they had
witnessed them. He would fall on his knees, lie on his back, go on a walkabout
through an audience, march out the club into the street, playing all the while.
“We used to have Battles Of The Saxes,” McNeely recalls. “Myself, [Vido]
Musso, Chuck Higgins, Joe Houston... all those guys. That was like a constant
happening when the sax was the thing before the guitar took over. They'd be
advertised like a boxing show. I’d created a lot of excitement by lying on the
floor and stuff and other saxophonists began to copy my act. There were
dozens of ’em doing it. I thought, ‘I’m gonna have to come up with something
a little different.’ I was in an after-hours club, The Nitecap; they had a
striptease show and one girl came out. They turned off all the lights. She just
had panties on and they were fluorescent. I thought, “That’s what Ill do.’ ibe
stripped the horn, painted it with gold leaf, and put on the vivid transparent

Big Jay McNeely: luminous paint and

“the joy of meaningless sax”.

CHAPTER TEN 84
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TEN

paint. When the lights go out, it just glows, all you see is the horn moving.”
McNeely’s horn moved pretty energetically on records, too, communicating
the joy of meaningless sax in tunes like “Jaysfrantic’ and ‘Real Crazy Cool’:
“honking,” as Bill Millar describes it, “at its most mantra-like... midway
between a desperate, chaotic mess and a marvellously invigorating noise.”
‘Let’s Split’ was recorded, like those two, in 1950, and gave rise to one of the
most bizarre claims of melodic genealogy ever asserted when McNeely
maintained that it was based on the English music-hall song ‘One Of The
Ruins That Cromwell Knocked About A Bit’. One can confidently say that
without this revelation, his secret would have been safe. (Actually, and hardly
less surprisingly, the latter part of ‘Let’s Split’ is the even older hoe-down
tune ‘Turkey In The Straw’.)
But while the honkers surely owed little to Marie Lloyd, some of them
when they wrapped themselves around a ballad displayed a sentimentality
that would not have been wholly out of place in the Victorian halls. As
Robert B Parker’s private investigator Spenser likes to say, “It takes a tough
man to cook a tender chicken,” and when Fats Noel turns from the riot-act-
>

reading of ‘Duck Soup’ to caress the melody of “You Belong To Me’, or Tab
Smith plays ‘Because Of You’, they seem to be yearning for the ineffable with
the same naked emotion as the black balladeers of the day like Al Hibbler and
Pha Terrell or the doowop groups like The Platters and Sonny Til’s Orioles.
“Mantra-like”, Millar’s well-chosen phrase for Jay McNeely’s music,
incidentally suggests something important about R&B that many critics at
the time might not have recognised. The honkers were given to repetition not
(or not necessarily) because they were inept or unimaginative but because
emphatic reiteration is an emotive device intrinsic to African-American
musical expression — from ring shout to sermon, from boogie woogie to Bo
Diddley. The point is not to expand the senses by melodic narrative or
developing improvisation but to focus them by repetition into a state of
trance. McCarthy hinted at that, perhaps unwittingly, when he referred to
“sledgehammer blows driving [the listener] into a sort of hypnotic fascination”
(“or,” he added, “a splitting headache”).
The comment appeared in a long discourse about a musician who seemed
to the critic to exemplify the new trend especially vividly, the altoist Earl
Bostie (1913-65). Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Bostic worked for several
Midwestern bands before moving to New York and joiing Lionel Hampton.
By 1944 he was well enough placed to form his own small group, though he
also played on sessions under other leaders.
Recordings with Hot Lips Page such as ‘Good For Stompin’ and ‘Fish For
Supper’ (both 1944) reveal Bostic’s speed and technique while suggesting a
predilection for slightly freakish effects — a tiny earnest of the surprise he
would unveil a few years later when he did a thorough makeover on his style.
Moving largely in the lower register, so that he sounded more like the tenor
men of the day, he applied a sandpaper-coated rasp and wide vibrato — both
emphasised by King Records’ studio engineers — to a series of standards like
‘Temptation’, ‘Roses Of Picardy’, and ‘Flamingo’ (a gigantic hit in 1951).
It was a path that narrowly skirted the marshlands of melodrama and
vulgarity, and sometimes Bostic did not escape with his boots dry. The
combination of mannered but essentially melodic playing and stark echo — “so
full of sand and sex,” said Arnold Shaw — seemed to jazz critics of the time
rather unsubtle. Victor Schonfield, writing in Jazz Journal International more

85 CHAPTER TEN
 CHAPTER TEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

Sharp and witty Louis Jordan — good

times at the Saturday Night Fish Fry.

than 30 years later, was still striking out against the current of mainstream
opinion when he commended the altoist’s “real taste and artistry” and
roundly described him as “surely the most swinging and exciting altoist jazz
has ever known”. Concluding his remarkable reassessment, Schonfield said:
“Bostic not only did all the things ‘pure’ jazz musicians try and do, but by
and large he did them better... the bottom line when it comes to music must
be its power to move people, and this Earl Bostic had to the highest degree.”
At this point it seems appropriate to double back chronologically and
consider another altoist who, though he had little in common with most of the
players mentioned above, contributed prodigally to the general R&B scene in
which they operated. A near contemporary of Bostic, Louis Jordan (1908-75)
made his name in the late 1930s with Chick Webb before forming The
Tympany Five, or rather the first of many line-ups (not always quintets) with
that billing.
Bebop aside, Jordan’s Tympany Five was the most influential small band
of its era. What made it so was primarily Jordan’s sharp, witty material,
songs like ‘Saturday Night Fish Fry’ and ‘Ain’t Nobody Here But Us
Chickens’, delivered with knowing bonhomie, that drew their listeners into a
communal celebration of the brighter corners of African-American life.
Consequently Jordan’s upbeat but even-tempered blowing, generally on alto
but not infrequently on tenor and occasionally on baritone, has tended to be
undervalued, though not always by other musicians: Sonny Rollins stands in
the forefront of his admirers. Louis Jordan’s idiom marked one of the two
chief directions in which R&B saxophone would move. In his wake came the
“jump jazz” of Roy Milton, Joe Liggins, Jack MceVea and _ their
contemporaries. They filled the space recently vacated by the big-bands,
which had been priced out of existence, by artfully arranging for six- to eight-
piece groups so that they sounded like big-bands in miniature. That so few of
them have any reputation today beyond the circles of R&B enthusiasts is an
oblique testimonial to the vastly superior quality of Jordan’s material: thanks
to stage shows and periodic revivals of his kind of music, pieces like “Let The
Good Times Roll’ have acquired the patina of popular standards.
Many of the more exuberant tenor-men, however, opted for the minimalist
setting of the trio with tenor and Hammond organ. For a decade or more this
was a sound — indeed, it might almost be called a genre — which, though rarely
acknowledged by jazz critics, filled countless neighbourhood bars in cities
throughout the United States (see also chapter 13). In this setting the primacy

CHAPTER TEN 86
 CHAPTER TEN

Jordan was a big star from the war years

to the early 1950s. He did not live to see
the huge international success of Five Guys
Named Mo, the show based on his music.

of the blues was expanded to virtual dominion, and the no-frills honking that
took flight with ‘Flying Home’ was left to spiral down to almost comically
rudimentary manifestations like The Champs’s ‘Tequila’ or Boots Randolph's
‘Yakety Sax’. Fortunately for admirers of the protean form, a good many of
its pioneers survived to re-enact its excitement for new generations.
What is impossible to recreate is the social and cultural milieu from which
the honking tenor drew part of its meaning. When McCarthy approvingly
contrasts the “almost indecent vitality” of R&B with the “lifelessness” of
1950s society and “the zombie-like music of the cool musicians” (“better the
fiftieth repetitive honk than the hypodermic!”) he evokes a time long past and
attitudes long changed; his schoolmasterly tone is likely to seem quaintly
inappropriate today. Yet his address would be echoed in an unexpected
quarter. “The point [of repetitive riffs] was to spend oneself with as much
attention as possible, and also to make the instrument sound as unmusical, or
as non-Western, as possible,” wrote the black jazz critic and polemicist LeRoi
Jones. “It was almost as if the blues people were reacting against the softness
and ‘legitimacy’ that had crept into black instrumental music with swing.”
In the long view, then, the acrobatic screamer was responding to the post-
war frustration of black America, to the segregated audiences, the ever-closed
doors in radio and recording studios, the whole blackout curtain of racism,
with a revolutionary act, making music that disobeyed the rules and dissed
the rituals of white popular song.

CHAPTER TEN
BALCH
AR D. @PoALa
her SONNY ROLLINS
FEW WOULD QUARREL WITH THE PROPOSITION THAT THEODORE
“SONNY” ROLLINS IS THE GREATEST TENORIST LEFT ALIVE,
AND NOT MANY MORE WOULD RAISE AN EYEBROW AT THE
CONTENTION THAT HE IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT
SAXOPHONISTS IN JAZZ HISTORY.

Before one listens to even a single note blown during a career that now spans
over half a century, there are two things about Sonny Rollins (b. 1929) that
make him a singular figure. First, he was never completely sure he wanted to
be a musician. He had considerable talent as a painter, and right up to his
recording debut in 1948 he does not appear to have had a vocational
determination to carve out a career in jazz. By ‘his own account, Rollins’s
decision to pursue such a course had little to do with a belief in his own
artistry, and more with the realisation that his first bosses, Bud Powell and J
J Johnson, had a liking for him personally. This implies an engaging but not
always felicitous diffidence.
Second, Rollins is the only significant hornman of his era who did not
attend any of the leading schools for jazz musicians: the big-bands. To this
day his only recorded performances with a large jazz outfit are four tunes that
appear on T'rio/Brass (1958). In this he was unfortunate rather than perverse:
by the time he decided that his future lay in music, almost all the big-bands
had folded, and opportunities for such an education were scarce.
It would be wrong to suggest that this proved a problem or points to any
shortcoming. On the contrary, Rollins’s craft and technical mastery have
always been bywords; saxophonist Steve Lacy once remarked that he has
“never seen anyone in love with the tenor saxophone the way Sonny is”. But
it did mean that Rollins learnt through solitude, which may partly explain his
subsequent periods of woodshedding.
Rollins’s initial inspiration was Coleman Hawkins, who lived in the same
neighbourhood in New York. What began as hero-worship (the youngster
would hang around just to get a glimpse of the great man) developed into an
abiding musical influence. But there were other energising sources, subtler but
just as important. One of Rollins’s earliest enthusiasms was for Louis Jordan,
whose jump band of the 1930s and °40s was highly successful. Jordan’s outfit
epitomised impeccably precise, good-time music — virtues always central to
Rollins, no matter how demanding his work may also be. Furthermore, his
fondness for Jordan’s lissom swing touches on an aspect of Rollins’s playing
that has not been sufficiently addressed: his kinship with Lester Young. .
Much has, rightly, been written about Young’s tone; yet his rhythmic
conception was even more significant, for it influenced jazz musicians of all
kinds, not just saxophonists. The ferocity which his tone precluded was
replaced by a gymnastic suppleness. Young was as natural a swinger as jazz
will see, but he seemed to dance rather than stomp: he caressed the beat
rather than drove it. His lithely fluent lines opened up a new territory,
ushering in the seminal achievements of Parker and Gillespie. And from the

CHAPTER ELEVEN 88
 CHAPTER ELEVEN

Saxophone Colossus: Sonny Rollins’s tenor

has been one of the great individual voices
of jazz for almost half a century.

outset it was evident that Rollins had embraced Young’s initiatives. On

‘Bouncing With Bud’ (1949) in a group led by pianist Bud Powell, Rollins
plays “against” Roy Haynes’s drums as well as feeding off them, creating a
complexity absent even in Powell’s brilliant outing. To hear such Young-
inspired virtuosity in a player whose attacking sound is so clearly founded on
Hawkins is to be aware of an excitingly fertile synthesis.
‘Bouncing With Bud’ also illustrates Rollins’s precocious sense of form.
His solo, delivered with satisfying raspingness, is a series of long, primarily
legato lines (another link with Young) in which he dismantles normal
rhythmic conventions, creating an organic, extended structure rather than a
mere succession of blowing choruses. Several critics highlighted such properties
in their ecstatic response to Rollins’s Saxophone Colossus album seven years
later — but they were there from the beginning, fundamental to his art.
Rollins capitalised on this auspicious start, working and recording with
Art Blakey, Tadd Dameron, The Modern Jazz Quartet and Miles Davis. In
this writer's view he is the star of Collector’s Item (1953) no mean

89 CHAPTER ELEVEN
 CHAPTER ELEVEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

Each step in Rollins’s career has been

STEREO
marked by key albums like these. Others PR 7246

include Newk’s Time, The Sound Of SONNY ROLLINS

Sonny, and The Cutting Edge. worktime ©

achievement given that the other horns were Davis and Parker — and he is no
less splendid on Davis’s Bags’ Groove made a year later, a date additionally
notable for premiering three Rollins compositions that have become jazz
standards: ‘Oleo’, ‘Doxy’ and ‘Airegin’. The same year also saw his first
collaboration with Thelonious Monk on Work; Monk’s oblique, harmonically
quirky approach suited him perfectly.
Yet despite such successes there were signs that Rollins was far from
serene. By now he was in the grip of drug abuse; enervating enough in itself,
that seems also to have created frustration and doubt. His first collaborations
with Davis convinced him of the need to study more, and although he was not
entirely absent from the music scene, he recorded nothing in 1952. Three years
later he went further, taking most of 1955 off. These woodshedding periods
certainly bore fruit, but they also connote a diffidence remarkable in one who
had achieved so much so fast. That syndrome would recur (even more
mystifyingly) at the end of the decade; however, 1955 had a happy ending for
the tenorist. Harold Land left the prestigious Clifford Brown-Max Roach
quintet and Rollins was asked to replace him, setting up the most important
influence of his musical and personal life.
It is clear that Clifford Brown was not just a creative artist of the first
order, but that he was a wholly admirable man. In Rollins’s words: “Clifford
was so together as a person you wouldn't have believed it. For a guy that
plays that much to be so humble and beautiful, it was just amazing. So I tried
to be nice after that.” Brown was decisive in helping Rollins to kick his drug
habit. His bubbling humour was also edifying. And it is hard to over-estimate
the musical benefits that the trumpeter afforded him. It was the only time in
Rollins’s career when he worked regularly with a frontline partner who was
not only his equal but perhaps his superior.
Tragically, this on-the-road symbiosis lasted for only eight months. Brown
was killed in a car smash on June 26th 1956. We are fortunate that a large
number of recordings preserve the group’s work, the best probably being
Brown’s last recording date, Sonny Rollins Plus Four (1956). This is hard bop
of the highest quality, characterised by a sublime sense of untapped resources
even when the heat is at its fiercest. Both ‘Valse Hot’ and ‘Pent-Up House’
offer further evidence of Rollins’s compositional gifts, and his playing
throughout is as assured as Brown’s. That renewed confidence illuminated his
work away from the quintet, culminating in the album recorded just four days

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In early 1962, The Bridge (above) was the

album that marked Rollins’s return from
retirement. The later 1960s found him
touring widely: this shot (left) was taken
in Berlin in 1966.

before Brown’s death which put all the tenorist’s previous work in the shade —
and, arguably, most of his subsequent work too.
Commentary on Saxophone Colossus (1956), especially its final piece “Blue
Seven’, has been definitive and exhaustive, but perhaps too much can be
made of that one number, for the other performances are just as fine. Indeed,
some would say that ‘St Thomas’ is the masterpiece. Not many things in jazz
are perfect, but Rollins’s definitive calypso is one of them. Hardly less
impressive are ‘Strode Rode’ with its dazzling array of stop-choruses, the
wittily trenchant ‘Moritat’, and the impassioned ‘You Don’t Know What
Love Is’, among the tenorist’s greatest ballad readings. One should also stress
that the musicians’ rapport is staggering for a pick-up group. Drummer Max
Roach was a regular confrere, but bassist Doug Watkins and the estimable
pianist Tommy Flanagan were drafted in on a one-off basis.
During the next two years Rollins put together a corpus of work that
would be remarkable in any circumstances, but is the more so when one
reflects how hard he was hit by Brown’s death. Perhaps it was a sense of his
own good fortune (he had been travelling in the car behind) that impelled him
to make the most of the gifts which the trumpeter had done so much to

91 CHAPTER ELEVEN
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Rollins relaxes in Oslo, 1971.

nourish. Maybe it was the instinct to lose himself in work, a familiar recourse
in the event of bereavement.
Whatever the motivation, 1956-58 was the apex of Rollins’s career.
Virtually everything he touched turned to gold, and his range of idiom was
just as remarkable. In Blue Note’s studios he cut another classic quartet date,
Newk’s Time (1957), with Wynton Kelly, Doug Watkins and Philly Joe Jones.
He partnered Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Stitt in an exuberant mainstream
session that includes one of the greatest tenor solos extant, his opening
choruses on ‘I Know That You Know’ from Gillespie's Sonny Side Up (1957).
At the same time he was experimenting with pianoless groups: two of the
finest results are Way Out West (1957) with Ray Brown and Shelly Manne and
The Freedom Suite (1958) with Max Roach and Osear Pettiford. And then
there’s the aforementioned Trio/Brass (1958) where he fronts a big-band,
playing as if born to do so.
These records are essentially a personal selection from the cornucopia that
was Rollins on record during this period; another. commentator might quite
justifiably cite five alternative nominations. Such divergences of taste signify
little. The real point is that in 1959, at the absolute height of his powers,
Rollins suddenly embarked on a sabbatical that lasted over two years. Why?
Any number of answers have been advanced over the years. Some are
more plausible than others, but it is beyond dispute that by now Rollins was
seriously bothered by the advent of the “new music” of Ornette Coleman,
Cecil Taylor and, especially, John Coltrane. Forgetting what he himself could
do so superlatively, Rollins was looking ever more anxiously over his shoulder.
No matter that he had been Miles Davis’s first choice for the trumpeter’s
seminal mid-1950s quintet — Rollins had not thought himself “ready”, so
Coltrane got the tenor chair instead. No matter, either, that in their famous
Tenor Madness “battle” in 1956 Rollins exuded assurance and warmth,
improvising with a controlled swagger that made his partner’s lines frenetic
and awkward by comparison. “You were just playing with me,” Coltrane is
reputed to have said afterwards. The salient point is that, despite
overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Rollins himself no longer felt

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Rollins puts phenomenal energy into his

performances, so much so that he now will
not play concerts on consecutive nights.

confident of producing the goods. This time his woodshedding was born of
depression and angst.
And this time it didn’t work, for two main reasons. First, his withdrawal
had been unwise, or else he was just unlucky. Events had conspired to leave
him behind. As he had foreseen, Coltrane and Ornette Coleman were about to
occupy the centre stage — and so was fellow tenorist Stan Getz, in a way that
nobody could have predicted. The colossal success of Getz’s samba records was
disparaged by some purists, but it established him in the jazz public’s mind as
the only serious rival to Coltrane. Moreover, just around the corner were
Archie Shepp and his acolytes, ready to launch “Black Power Jazz”,
somewhat analogous to Coltrane’s work but with an aggressive political
agenda all their own. If critic James Lincoln Collier’s judgement that Rollins
“had come back too late” is over-simplified, the sad fact is that in these
turbulent times his return was far less notable than might have been expected.
The second problem was the music itself. Rollins had landed a six-album
contract with RCA worth $80,000 (about £53,000), a prodigious sum in those
days, especially for a jazz musician. The results had — and still do have — a
mixed press. Some welcomed this “new” Rollins unreservedly, applauding his
synthesis of the avant-garde and more traditional virtues, but others found it
muted and strangely indeterminate.
He had altered his tone, eschewing that voluptuous jauntiness of the 1950s
in favour of a more insistent reediness. While its buzziness was undoubtedly
arresting, many of his admirers did not consider it an advance. Moreover, far
from curing his uncertainty, Rollins’s sabbatical seemed to have increased it.
He appears to have had no truly coherent idea of what he wanted to play or
with whom he wanted to play it.
The RCA albums (1962-64) document all these properties, and are indeed a
weirdly disparate lot. They are replete with interest — Rollins has never been
other than a great player — but the unity and assurance that characterise the
records made between 1956 and 1958 have gone. In their place is a near-
obsessive desire to explore as many directions as possible: samba, avant-garde,
the Hawkins legacy, and so on. Such a catholic approach might be considered

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admirable, but so many and so frequent are the changes of personnel and
conceptual focus that it smacks of restlessness, even dilettantism.
In 1965 Rollins switched to the Impulse label, cutting four albums which
by common consent are more satisfying than the RCA records. Some hold the
view that On Impulse! (1965), which restored him to the classic quartet
context, was his last great record. Yet by 1967 Rollins had become
disenchanted once more, and while he continued gigging, he recorded nothing
for five years. This latest withdrawal was partly motivated by frustration at
the current state of jazz, which by now was in a very bad way. But it is hard
not to see it also as tacit acknowledgement that all was not well with his own
art. He had met with neither triumph nor disaster; his return had instead
been largely inconsequential, and it was time for another re-think.
When in 1972 producer Orrin Keepnews persuaded him to record for
Milestone (with whom Rollins has been ever since) the early results were
auspicious. Not all would share the author’s view of The Cutting Edge (1974)
as the finest latter-day Rollins available on record, but that and
contemporaneous sessions such as Neat Album (1972) and Horn Oulture (1973)
displayed a vigour and focus reminiscent of his 1950s grandeur. Alas, it was
not sustained. It is difficult to cite a Rollins record since the mid 1970s that
one could term essential, and most of his studio work since then has been
perilously close to routine.
There is a very good reason for that: Rollins’s increasing aversion to the
ambience of the studio and the whole business of recording. No one, including
the tenorist himself, seems to be sure quite when it started, but by the mid
1960s such commentators as Ira Gitler and Martin Williams had begun to
notice a significant disparity between Rollins in concert and Rollins on record,
and many other observers came to endorse that perception. For a while the
picture was somewhat blurred in that he allowed himself to be recorded live —
The Cutting Edge was taped at the Montreux Jazz festival — with suitably
thrilling results. But the phobia grew, and despite the efforts of Keepnews and
other would-be persuaders, it has been a long time since a Rollins concert was
preserved for posterity.
That is a shame of near-tragic proportions. A Rollins concert is invariably
a momentous occasion: in Britain, people still talk about the tenorist’s 1993
concert at London’s Drury Lane Theatre, and his 1998 visit to The Barbican
was comparably sublime. The wonderful music made on those occasions and
others will, however, exist only in the inevitably fading memories of those who
were there. Conversely, when Rollins is assessed as an artist by future
generations, the last 20 years or so of his career are likely to be judged a
period of sad decline — for those appraisers will have only lacklustre albums
like No Problem (1982) and Here’s To The People (1991) to go on. The majesty
of Rollins deconstructing and reassembling a tune for 20 minutes-plus will be
known to them only through yellowed press cuttings.
It would be wrong, however, to conclude on such a note of regret. Instead,
this account ends with a celebration of Rollins’s most enduring strengths: his’
innovative repertoire and his all-informing Romanticism.
Rollins has always been a marvellous blues player; his investigations of
Kern, Rodgers and other doyens of the American popular song never fail to
edify. He responds to hard-bop originals with no less relish, and few if any
have surpassed his interpretations of Monk’s music. But his definitive
repertory characteristics are a love of the calypso and a predilection for

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oddball tunes. The former both reflects his West Indian heritage and embodies
a paradox inherent in his musical nature. Ostensibly spontaneous and light-
hearted, the calypso is the result of evolutionary refinement and epitomises an
entire culture. As such, it is both highly organised and supremely elastic. Its
natural bounce speaks deeply to Rollins’s taste for dance rhythms (the Louis
Jordan influence), his instinctive swing and his fondness for accessible
melodies. On the other hand, its formal properties facilitate some of his most
penetrating improvisations. If ‘St Thomas’ on Colossus comes most
immediately to mind, ‘Hold “Em Joe’ from On Impulse! and his perennial
concert favourite ‘Don’t Stop The Carnival’ follow close behind.
Rollins’s liking for unusual material emerged early on. His work contains a
string of titles which no other jazzman has recorded or, probably, ever
thought of playing: ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’ (1956), ‘If You
Were The Only Girl In The World’ (1958), or ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’
(1974). It has sometimes been supposed that such choices indicate a desire to
sneer at tin-pan-alley and its devotees, but that is at odds with the tenorist’s
gentle nature and cultivated aesthetic grasp. More important, it does not
explain why his treatment of these tunes is so joyous. There is a degree of
lampoon, yes, but it is underscored by a respect for the songs’ ethos.
That is especially evident on ‘Toot Toot Tootsie’ on The Sound Of Sonny
(1957). The song was made famous by Al Jolson, and one might assume that
the singer’s blacked-up antics would offend Rollins at a fundamental level.
Yet it should be remembered that Jolson was a Jew, and one can infer from
his knowing humour a sardonic awareness of the prejudice all minorities
attract. That would have appealed to Rollins’s political ideas as well as his
angular wit, and his reading of the song abounds in virile good spirits —
typically so, too. It is no accident that on all these tunes Rollins swings with a
force unusual even for him. Humour and the pleasure principle have always
brought out the very best in him.
The Romanticism which distinguishes Rollins’s art has both an aesthetic
and a spiritual dimension. The synthesis in his work of the old and the new,
the traditional and the radical, is one fundamental to the original Romantic
movement which also characterised the approach of two of his chief mentors,
Parker and Young. And the political idealism that is most obviously present
in The Freedom Suite has been a lifelong commitment. If its latest incarnation No other tenor saxophonist sounds remotely
has a green hue, indicated by his most recent album title, Global Warming like Sonny Rollins, and his concentration
(1998), then that is of a piece with remarks he made long ago. “Jazz was not on standard American songs for the bulk of
just a music,” Rollins told Ira Gitler, “it was a social force in this country, his material now sets him apart from the
and it was talking about freedom and people enjoying things for what they contemporary mainstream.
are and not having to worry about whether they were supposed to be black,
white and all that stuff. Jazz has always been a music that had that kind of
spirit. A lot of times, jazz means no barriers.”
There is, finally, a third aspect to his Romanticism, albeit a poignant one.
It is that, like so many associated with that movement, Rollins can be seen as
an artist who did nearly all his best work early on. His many avid
concertgoers of the last two decades may not agree; neither will those who
think his 1960s work a genuine advance rather than a disappointment. And in
view of his talent, which has not waned at all in half a century, and his still-
awesome stamina, that judgement could appear inaccurate and quite unjust.
But the fact that ten of his 13 records recommended at the back of this book
were made before 1960 may yet prove eloquent.

oe 5 CHAPTER ELEVEN
—
RONALD ATKINS THE HARDBOPPERS
AS SAXOPHONISTS EMERGED FROM CHARLIE PARKER’S SHADOW
THEY PLAYED HARD BOP - DERIVED FROM BOP, BUT AT SOME
REMOVE - BEFORE THEY FOUND AN ALTERNATIVE FIGUREHEAD
TO PUSH THEM ALL IN THE SAME DIRECTION.

Hank Mobley, the “Middleweight

Champion” of hard-bop tenor.

BILLY HIGGINS

The Bud Powell quintet was perhaps the official precursor of hard bop.
Between the outfit’s recording for Blue Note in August 1949 and Parker’s
death in March 1955, jazz changed. Aspiring saxophonists in the 1940s played
Parker’s tunes and tried to ape his style. Ten years after the revolution, their
successors of the early 1950s were choosing models from a wider sample.
As a result, where bebop referred originally to a particular two-note
phrase, and cool stands for an attitude to music, what followed cannot be
categorised so precisely. Whoever coined “hard bop” intended the term to
illustrate a contrast with cool jazz: a move toward more outgoing, emotional
sounds as part of an attempt to promote a consciously racial perspective.
“White” jazz was represented as being rather bloodless, while “black” jazz
overdosed on passion — a distinction that hasn’t stood the test of time.
The increasingly common formula of trumpet and tenor plus rhythm
section underlined the tenor saxophone’s tendency to dominate over the alto —
a change from Parker’s rule in the 1940s. But even that is relative: When Art
Blakey, whose Jazz Messengers were the template hard bop group, needed to
replace Hank Mobley, he looked no further than altoist Jackie McLean.
Sonny Rollins, covered in the previous chapter, had played on the Powell
tracks and, if you discount the cool tenors, became the first significant post-
bop saxophonist. As an influence, he was soon overtaken by John Coltrane, so
fans today may not realise how much Rollins stood out. In terms of his style
being picked up by others, it was the early, comparatively immature work, up
to 1954 and the first of his many sabbaticals, that initially made an impact.
Whether Rollins ever directly influenced Hank Mobley (1930-86), who was

CHAPTER TWELVE 96
 CHAPTER TWELVE

Hank Mobley was essentially a Lester

Young follower, a cool, balanced, melodic
soloist with a light, warm tone.

three months older, is debatable, but Mobley’s style had similar

characteristics. Owing little to the breathy Hawkins tradition, his cloudy,
somewhat plaintive tone was closer to Lester Young’s, with a clean edge in
the high registers as favoured by the likes of Stan Getz and Zoot Sims. While
the phrasing reflects the wider harmonic vocabulary and the more flexible
rhythmic underpinning introduced by bebop, there’s none of the concentrated
intensity associated in particular with Parker.
As a saxophonist regularly backed by Art Blakey during the period when
the drummer was at his most volatile — prodding the soloists through a series
of accents that fell like thunderclaps, and suspending the time through
belligerent drum rolls that might cut off the unwary in their tracks — Mobley
learned to turn such accompaniment to his advantage. Compared to the
imperious mid-1950s Rollins, there may be a hint of diffidence in his phrasing,
but whereas Blakey flailing in the background would give many cool
saxophonists nightmares, Mobley thrives.
His solo on the old Benny Goodman tune ‘Soft Winds’ with The Jazz
Messengers, recorded at the Cafe Bohemia in 1955 and one of the finest live
jazz performances, begins by riding over a barrage of counter-melodies from
Horace Silver’s piano which riffs away in the manner of a big-band. Further
in, Mobley effortlessly slips back into the original tempo while Blakey is
doubling-up behind him. The same knack of exploiting musical ambiguities
crops up on ‘Camouflage’, a piece with breaks built into the structure,
recorded the following year by the Horace Silver quintet that grew out of the
Messengers. The quartet on Mobley’s most acclaimed album, Soul Station

v=) -I CHAPTER TWELVE

 CHAPTER TWELVE

An intense and passionate player, Jackie

McLean (right) investigated free jazz
during the 1960s, but returned to his basic
hard-bop roots thereafter.

(1960), included Blakey. By now the drummer’s aggression had become more
obviously controlled in line with current orthodoxy, exemplified by the Miles
Davis rhythm section that included Paul Chambers on bass and Wynton
Kelly on piano, both alongside Blakey here. Mobley, who would himself join
Davis not long afterwards, plays with effortless invention. Compared to earlier
performances his tone has hardened, but not by much. After Soul Station and
the stint with Davis, who said later that Mobley’s playing failed to ignite him,
Mobley made several excellent albums before his career petered out in the
1970s. Among his few ventures abroad was a gig at Ronnie Scott’s London
club in 1968 where, introduced to his British accompanists immediately before
the opening set, he ended up sounding as good as ever.
Judged purely by affiliations, Mobley deserves his status as the original
hard bop tenorist, but there were links both stylistic and emotional with the
cool school. One is reminded of the analogy, attributed to Dexter Gordon,
that if saxophonists were ranked as in boxing, Hank Mobley would be
middleweight champion. The same hardly applies to Johnny Griffin, especially
to his form on the records that made his name. Touring with Lionel

CHAPTER TWELVE
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWELVE

with Donald Byrd /Walter Davis Jr. /Paul Chambers / Pete La Roca @igoumeaponany

HAROLD
LANDTHE
Suter FOX

NEW SOIL JACKIE McLEAN

Hampton’s band as a teenager, Griffin (b. 1928) experienced musical Harold Land’s tenor style has evolved over
extroversion at first hand. After re-emerging from his native Chicago during the years, from something rather like Hank
the 1950s he hit the spotlight through gigs with the Jazz Messengers and Mobley’s to a harder and more aggressive
Thelonious Monk, and through a series of albums for Blue Note and Riverside. approach. Like Dexter Gordon, Johnny
The solos identified most closely with Griffin are fast-fingered affairs taken Griffin enjoyed a second career in Europe.
at ferocious tempos. Even with the notes raining down, his tone had body,
and every so often he did something winningly eccentric — maybe some
excessive high-register vibrato, or sequences cut off with a squawk. There was
the same kind of invention at speed that you get from Charlie Parker and,
though the phrasing was more predictable, the same kind of rhythmic drive.
For an example, “The Way You Look Tonight’ from his Blue Note album
A Blowing Session (1957) sees him, in terms of confrontation, wipe the floor
with both Mobley and John Coltrane. Admittedly, Griffin is on home
territory, having selected tune and tempo and being backed by Art Blakey
again, whose style would not really suit Coltrane. After the others have
struggled, he roars back as if to imply, “Can’t you do better than that!” while
there’s a moment during the exchanges when he cheekily halves the tempo.
Griffin had a stimulating on-off partnership with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis
that kept up the tradition of contrasting tenors in tandem, where a beefy
sound is pitted against a bit of flash. Since the early 1960s he has been based
largely in Europe, which may have contributed to a mellowing of style, the
tone now warmer, and greater emphasis placed on a genuine skill at unfolding
slow ballads. While establishing a reputation through his early vigour, he has
spread his wings and, as an all-round saxophonist, is seriously underrated.
After Griffin, the next tenor to spend time with The Jazz Messengers came
from a very different musical lineage. Benny Golson (b. 1929) had already
built a reputation as a composer of tunes likely to become jazz standards, and
the Messengers benefited by ‘Along Came Betty’, ‘Blues March’, one of their
biggest hits, and ‘Are You Real?’ (all 1958). His writing rather overshadowed
his saxophone playing, an unusual mix of Don Byas and John Coltrane that
seems smoother and better integrated in his more recent work.
Golson’s successor Wayne Shorter (b. 1933) is today linked with both
Miles
Davis and Weather Report, and with a number of tunes other people queue
up to play. When part of the Messengers, his solos might be said to have
uniquely realised the ideal of hard bop: in texture, the tone was harder
than
most, and he blended the vertical, many-noted approach of Coltrane with the
compositional touch of the mature Sonny Rollins, latching on to phrases he

99 CHAPTER TWELVE
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then elaborated (rather than, as Rollins did, improvising around a given

theme). Examples are strewn over albums by the Messengers on Blue Note
and Riverside, but one of the more remarkable appears on almost his first
recording with the group. The version of his classic ‘Lester Left Town’,
performed at a 1959 Paris concert and released originally on French RCA,
unwinds rather like the game of a chess master who plans many moves ahead:
The simulated rivalry in the 1950s between jazz styles from the East Coast
and West Coast of the US, identified by the cities of New York and Los
Angeles, tended to place hard bop as an exclusively Eastern phenomenon. In
fact, trumpet-tenor quintets in that idiom were common in California, those
led by drummer Shelly Manne and ‘bassist Curtis Counce among them.
Manne’s saxophonist, Richie Kamuca, is normally classed under cool though

Equipped with a phenomenally fast

technique and mental processes to match,
Johnny Griffin is a musical whirlwind.
His duet partnership with Eddie ‘Lockjaw’
Davis (album above) was a classic
pairing. Griffin moved to Europe in the
mid 1960s; this shot (right) catches him in
Oslo with drummer Art Taylor, bassist
Bjorn Pedersen and pianist Kenny Drew.

he fits the hard bop ethos well enough, which shows how elastic the business
of labels can be. More obviously suited to the style, Harold Land (b. 1928)
came up with a distinctively gruff tone and a faint jerkiness of phrase. :
After touring with the Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet — impeceably
hard bop but different, in that Max Roach differs from Art Blakey — Land
became part of Counce’s quintet and of other Los Angeles bands, often as
leader. A regular partnership that has continued on and off was with
vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. At one point, Land’s playing lost some
character following the impact of John Coltrane, though over the years he has

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 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWELVE

successfully synthesised new and old elements to revert to his very

recognisable self.
One of his successors with Max Roach was Stanley Turrentine (1934-2000)
whose early R&B experience helped develop a contemporary style that
retained elements of his original influences — Illinois Jacquet, Don Byas and
Ben Webster. His breathy vibrato set him apart from many in this chapter,
while the stop-start timing faintly resembled that of Lockjaw Davis. He could
heighten the tension through excellent control in the high register and he
loved to whoop it up when the beat got heavy, as in the 1965 version of
‘Stan’s Shuffle’. Married for a spell to organist Shirley Scott, Turrentine also
slotted naturally into the tenor-organ ethos, appearing on such Jimmy Smith
staples as ‘Back At The Chicken Shack’ (1960).
Even at the start, many albums under Turrentine’s name were slanted
more toward the soul-funk end of the market. His first company, Blue Note,
gradually spotlighted his playing at the head of larger groups, and never
involved him with their more avant-garde artists. Such a policy was tailor-
made for his next label, CTI, and several albums beginning with Sugar (1970)
became bestsellers. If anything, Turrentine’s sound grew softer and perhaps
closer to Ben Webster’s, though the approach was otherwise little changed
and lost none of its appeal.
Apart from The Jazz Messengers, the working outfit most readily
identified as a hard bop quintet was led by Horace Silver, whose first group
arose out of the then-current Messengers minus Art Blakey. Hank Mobley’s
replacement with Silver, Clifford Jordan (1931-93), might have modelled his
hard, rounded tone on Coltrane’s, though his playing was more austere and
economical, something of a cross between Rollins and Dexter Gordon.
Rollins seems the main influence on Junior Cook, who partnered trumpeter
Blue Mitchell in the longest-running Silver quintet that produced such albums
as Finger Poppin’ and Blowin’ The Blues Away (both 1959). Cook (1934-92)
had the priceless knack of grabbing attention on the faster or more extrovert
numbers — among them ‘Mellow D’, ‘Sister Sadie’ and ‘Strollin’ — through a
strong though far from overpowering tone, and by timing his climaxes
cleverly. His replacement, Joe Henderson, arrived in time to deliver a
perfectly judged solo on ‘Song For My Father’ (1964), typifying the all-round
mastery of Latin tempos common to all phases of his illustrious career. Benny Golson was responsible for
Never in the limelight for long, Tina Brooks (1932-74) found a style assembling Art Blakey’s first Jazz
recognisably his own that bypassed the increasingly predominating influence Messengers, as well as playing with the
of Coltrane. His light tone, use of the higher registers and slightly off-centre band. Later, he co-led the Jazztet with
timing may have been inspired by Mobley, and had a similar emotional appeal trumpeter Art Farmer.
—a kind of keening melancholia that might seem at odds with any conceivable
definition of hard bop. More in that groove, the murky tone and staccato
phrasing of the equally undervalued J R Monterose (b. 1927) made him the
East Coast counterpart of Harold Land.
John Gilmore (1931-95) spent a year with The Jazz Messengers, but he was
indelibly associated with Sun Ra’s Arkestra and appeared on albums by
Andrew Hill and Paul Bley. Much of the material featured therein falls well
outside the scope of this chapter. When in a more orthodox context, the
Rollins and Mobley similarities — probably coincidental — were later
complemented by echoes of Coltrane.
Tenors from outside the US mostly avoided the brasher side. In Britain,
Tubby Hayes (1935-73) grafted an exceptionally fluent technique and a

101 CHAPTER TWELVE

 ‘yenuiais

Sis

( ) HAP.
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWELVE

Griffin-like momentum onto a lightish tone not far removed from Mobley’s.
France's Barney Wilen (1937-96) and Belgium’s Bobby Jaspar (1926-63)
developed from coolish beginnings to more extroverted styles, while Britain’s
Dick Morrissey (b. 1940) uses a softer version of Stanley Turrentine’s vibrato
that goes well with his jazz-rock and tenor-organ affiliations.
As jazz moved into the 1950s, Parker’s influence on alto saxophonists
seemed overwhelming. Absorbing surface characteristics, they failed
understandably to get near the sum of the qualities that made Parker a
musical genius. What happened subsequently was a kind of specialisation,
with saxophonists homing in on certain aspects of his playing.
The passionate, blues-inflected side of Parker has been developed most
memorably by Jackie McLean, who grafted on to Parker’s clean and vibrato-

John Gilmore solos with the Sun Ra

Arkestra (opposite); the other two
saxophonists are Marshall Allen (left) and
Danny Thompson (right). Junior Cook
(this page) played with Horace Silver,
Blue Mitchell and Freddie Hubbard in the
1950s and ’60s, and also taught at
Boston’s Berklee School Of Music.

less sound a searing edge much in the way that Dexter Gordon aired out his
tone on tenor. Exposure with Miles, Mingus and Blakey helped spread the
word: when the 1960s arrived, an increasingly mature McLean (b. 1932) had
evolved into something of a leader himself, notably on several Blue Note LPs.
Always retaining the essentials of his style, McLean kept up with
happenings elsewhere. Modal improvising — as practised by Miles Davis or by
John Coltrane — became commonplace. He was also sympathetic to the so-
called new wave as ushered in by Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, though
the most audible reflection of this was a strange whistling effect of which he
soon grew tired. From the 1970s onwards, he has generally taken a
mainstream stance — exemplified by The Meeting/The Source (1973) made
alongside his first influence, Dexter Gordon — while avoiding obvious bop or
hard bop revivals. McLean’s phrasing and declamatory tone, the impact of
which is often heightened by being presented slightly off-pitch, have inspired
countless disciples, from Gary Bartz to Vincent Herring, to the extent that his
direct influence over the years probably exceeds that of other altoists.
Charlie Parker’s withering up-tempo solos — sweeping ahead irresistibly,
accents dropped in unexpected places and phrases beginning or ending
between beats — are best seen as expressions of his unique personality. When

10 * CHAPTER TWELVE
 CHAPTER TWELVE

and the All Stars

- RETURN VISIT!
* forlans

Featuring
“Jimmy Gloomy
Roland Kirk
Walter Bishop, Jr.

Sam Jones
Louis Hayes
(Recorded in New York)

Tubby Hayes (sleeve, above), whose musicians with comparable techniques adapted his attack, the rhythmic
growing career as an international soloist accents fell more evenly, which in practice made their solos less nailbitingly
was cut short by his early death in 1973, intense. Gigi Gryce (1927-83), half-forgotten today but whose engaging tunes
was a player of immense talent and energy. did the rounds of hard bop sessions, offered Parker-ish phrases filtered
The live picture with Hayes in action was through the intonation of Lee Konitz. From different directions, Phil Woods
taken at London’s Flamingo club in 1960. and “Cannonball” Adderley exemplified the flowing, post-Parker approach.
In the 1950s, Woods (b. 1931) formed a two-alto quintet with Gene Quill
(1927-88), a similar stylist but slightly more in thrall to Parker. His tone full
and rounded, Woods sweeps along in a jaunty, affable manner closer to a
swing-style alto — and when he recorded with Benny Carter on Carter’s
Further Definitions album (1961) the similarities in phrasing stood out. At the
head of many invigorating groups in recent years, Woods has expanded along
these lines, the basic Parker influence progressively modified.
“Cannonball” Adderley’s tone exuded even more in the way of sweetness
and bonhomie and, though something of a blues specialist, he seemed further
removed from Parker. Consciously or not, the impact of Adderley (1928-75)
can be heard today in the playing of Jesse Davis and Wessell Anderson.
Another to exhibit a formidably flowing technique, Britain’s Peter King
(b. 1940) appeared in bop-revival contexts, even though the work produced
under his own name increasingly reflects much more recent developments.
Also linked to Parker tributes, Charles McPherson (b. 1939) learnt throughout
a long association with Mingus to cope successfully with a spread of styles.
There were similar contrasts on America’s West Coast. Herb Geller (b. 1928)
had a tone somewhat along the lines of Adderley’s and, based in Europe for
many years, his inherent lyricism has further blossomed.
In sound and style, Joe Maini (1930-64) was more rugged and possibly
closest on the Coast to Parker. Somewhere in between, Lennie Niehaus (b.
1929) was a fluent technician who gave up a life of chasing gigs and became
better known for film scores, the most notable in a jazz context being Bird,
Clint Eastwood’s 1988 film about Parker.
The prodigious leap in popularity of the soprano saxophone, previously
confined to Dixieland ensembles, emanates from a John Coltrane

CHAPTER TWELVE 104

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWELVE

Phil Woods has been one of the world’s

leading alto saxophonists since the mid
1950s. He is pictured here with his long-
time associate, pianist Gordon Beck.

interpretation of ‘My Favorite Things’, first recorded by him in 1960, that fits
no hard bop definition. Before him, Steve Lacy was already improvising
around recognisable tunes and, to that extent, must among his other
achievements be regarded as the pioneer post-bop soprano player. Underrated
in the 1960s as a tenor saxophonist influenced by Sonny Stitt and Dexter
Gordon prior to hearing Coltrane, Nathan Davis (b. 1937) used the soprano to
good effect on ballads and blues, his tone rougher than Lacy’s and_his
approach more traditional than Coltrane’s.
Another instrument saxophonists tended to double on was the baritone.
Its lineage from the mid 1950s up to the growth of free improvising switched
between the rugged power of Serge Chaloff and the lighter touch of Gerry
Mulligan. Because of their indispensable role as anchor of the big-band
saxophone section, with the resultant bonus of regular gigs, many baritone
players were given time and opportunity to build solid solo styles. Nick
Brignola (b. 1936) emerged as one of the most talented. Before joining Sun Ra
in the 1960s, Charles Davis (b. 1933) plied his trade in small groups, most
notably with Kenny Dorham, and combined the necessary post-bop mobility
with a deep, rounded tone.
Mobility lay behind the success of Pepper Adams (1930-86). His gravelly
sound derived from Chaloff rather than Mulligan and, knowing his way round
bop harmonies and spitting out notes at speed, he set the pace for mainstream
baritones over the coming decades. Co-leader with trumpeter Donald Byrd of
an exceptional hard-bop quintet that proved the trumpet-tenor formula was
not sacrosanct, Adams later became a cornerstone of the Thad Jones-Mel
Lewis Orchestra. An adaptation of his introduction and solo on ‘Moanin’ by
Charles Mingus, among the few classic baritone set-pieces outside Duke
Ellington, is heard whenever Ronnie Cuber or Gary Smulyan, latter-day
disciples who have extended Adams’s approach, tackle ‘Moanin’ with the
Mingus Big Band. Forty years on, the gap between “hard” and “cool” is
narrower than pundits made it seem at the time. The music played in both
cases conformed to similar rules: the very rules that many who came along in
the 1960s would break or ignore.

CHAPTER TWELVE
KEITH SHADWICK SOUL SAXOPHONES
BEFORE ITS USE IN THE EARLY SIXTIES AS THE NAME FOR A
FRESH BLACK-MUSIC HYBRID, “SOUL” HAD BEEN WORKED TO
DEATH IN JAZZ. ADS PROCLAIMED “WE’VE GOT SOUL!” TO SELL
NEW RECORDS BY LOCKJAW DAVIS OR CANNONBALL ADDERLEY, |
HARDLY ENDEARING LABEL OR PLAYER TO JAZZ PURISTS.

The type of saxophone playing associated with tenor-and-organ outings has

long been considered something of a peripheral jazz pursuit, given the often
formulaic and unadventurous approach to music-making and improvisation,
especially at the bargain-basement end of the genre. Yet the best of the
players — and the great altoists who also profited by the style — brought a
unique personality and viewpoint to the music. Their inventiveness within a
narrow ambit was every bit as fresh and commanding as that delivered by the
hard boppers of the late 1950s and early 1960s:
Perhaps the opprobrium often directed toward these players is because
many — including the very best of the breed — kept one foot in R&B while the
other was in jazz. The great tenorists who presaged the movement — Illinois
Jacquet, Arnett Cobb, Al Sears, Sam “The Man” Taylor, Eddie “Lockjaw”
Davis and Gene Ammons ~ all spent time in bands that had impeccable swing,
jump and R&B credentials, especially Jacquet and Cobb, who helped launch
Lionel Hampton’s fame as an entertainer who fronted a band with a solid
R&B-based backbeat. Many of them had close links with the blues-and-riff-
drenched Count Basie band, a catalyst for so much of what was to come.
Davis and Jacquet in particular were great Basie stars.
Gene Ammons (1925-74), son of boogie pianist Albert, came out of the bop
cradle of the Billy Eckstine band, but from the beginning had deep roots in
the swing styles of Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Chu Berry. Ammons
was only 20 when in 1945 he first made an impression, and became the single
most important agent in fermenting the saxophone soul-jazz hybrid that by
the end of the 1950s was a staple. Ammons himself was not around much of
the time to capitalise on this huge explosion in popularity, for after his
seminal ballads and driving blues-based recordings of the 1940s and early *50s
he was constantly removed from the scene by a string of narcotics convictions
that resulted in lengthy jail terms.
It was no real contradiction that Ammons and the colleagues of his
generation — including sometime partner Sonny Stitt — had a good grasp of
bop as well as swing. Bop players shared the common heritage of the blues
with swing-era musicians. So it’s not surprising to find Eddie Lockjaw Davis,
standout soloist for ‘the 1950s Basie band, productively paired with Bill
Doggett in the late 1940s, or Illinois Jacquet making bestselling small-group
records for Norman Granz with Count Basie on organ and enjoying a long
association with influential organist Milt Buckner. Jacquet (b. 1922) also made
a towering prototypical album in December 1954 with Ben Webster, The Kid
& The Brute, where both men snarled and hooted good-naturedly at each
other across the common ground of the blues.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN 10
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Chase!
Gene Ammons & DexterGordon

Ss)
(RECORDED LIVE!, NORTH PARK HOTEL, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS)

But it was Ammons who gave the genre its initial shape and substance by Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis (left) had his
simplifying a bop-based style with roots in Berry and Young, adding an roots equally in bop and R&B. His
impassioned, caressing approach to ballads which won him a large following partnership with fellow-tenorist Gene
almost from the start. This and his penchant for the two-tenor duel so beloved Ammons made the ideal ‘tough tenors’ duo.
by Lionel Hampton and the Jazz At The Philharmonic aggregations (as well Ammons also worked in a duo with Dexter
as bop duellists such as Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray) added up to some Gordon (sleeve, above).
very important ground-rules. It even led to his co-fronting a two-tenor band
with Sonny Stitt in the early 1950s. Ammons bypassed the hysteria and
crudity of the R&B instrumentals where a remorseless shuffle-backbeat drove
honking and screaming saxophones to ever more outlandish exhibitionism, and
brought style, taste and sophistication to basic musical elements.
However, the impetus toward a definitive genre was provided by organist
tay Charles (b. 1930). His early forays into music lounges and recording
studios revealed worthy but hardly inspired imitations of Nat King Cole and
his great rival Billy Eckstine. Charles was a pianist of note and a capable alto
saxophonist, but it was only when he brought together the previously
disparate strands of blues, R&B and gospel, with a sprinkling of jazz’s
sophistication, that his startling talent emerged and his huge popular influence
was felt. Ray Charles habitually ran a big-band which took as its starting
point the Count Basie outfit, emulating its riff-based jazz charts and the way
it showcased singers such as Joe Williams. He then added his own patent mix
of call-and-response gospel hooks, shuffle rhythms and other R&B staples.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

Charles’s saxophonists, all with jazz roots, soon developed a winning and
adaptable shouting style to complement the star’s own vocal delivery. Altoist
Hank Crawford (b. 1934) and tenorist David “Fathead” Newman (b. 1933) in
particular rose to public attention, aided by Charles’s own promptings. He
also landed them deals with his recording company of the day, Atlantic.
Both men stuck closely to a fairly basic stock of blues-based lines within
simple material and concentrated on the depth and expression of their sound
(as would King Curtis and Junior Walker in the next decade). They largely
shunned developed improvisation in their solos. This disciplined and restricted
approach, popular in its own right and giving them successful careers beyond
Charles’s band, would provide a blueprint for hundreds of later saxophonists,
with Stanley Turrentine and Eddie Harris prominent among them.
WITH GRANT GREEN / PAUL CHAMBERS / PHILLY JOE JONES
In the 1950s Charles made a string of purely instrumental albums for
Atlantic covering a fair stylistic range, of which Soul Brothers and Soul Meeting
from 1957 and 1958 found him often on alto saxophone and accompanied by
Milt Jackson on piano. Charles’s stark and impassioned playing reaches back
to musicians who influenced Charlie Parker, such as Buster Smith and Lester
KEG Young, as well as to jump jazz players like Pete Brown and Louis Jordan.
QUEBEC Before Jimmy Smith’s emergence in 1956, jazz organ had not progressed
stylistically beyond the phraseology, attack and harmony of the swing era.
Smith combined the previously disparate threads of bebop, soul and blues
inflections alongside the exploration of the massive sonic and timbral potential
of the electric Hammond organ. Working within an organ-guitar-drums trio,
he quickly built a solid base of jazz fans, in part due to his brilliant
adaptation of Ray Charles’s crucial merger of gospel, blues and R&B.
Early on, Smith expanded his working group to include a_ tenor
saxophonist to give him a soul-filled melodic lead in the Charles style. His first
With his big, breathy tone in the Ben choice was John Coltrane. The tenorist had worked with the Johnny Hodges
Webster manner, Ike Quebec made several band, which had scored an R&B hit with ‘Castle Rock’ (1951), and had yet to
superb albums for Blue Note in the 1960s. link up with Miles Davis. But Coltrane stayed only very briefly with Smith,
He also acted as the label’s talent scout, complaining of the organist’s volume. Others were less fussy: later partners
bringing a number of future stars into the included first-choice altoist Lou Donaldson and a string of hard-bop tenorists
studio for the first time. such as Hank Mobley, George Coleman and Tina Brooks.
By 1960 Jackie McLean, Percy France and Ike Quebec were added to this
list, although the dream-team pairing of Jimmy Smith with labelmate Stanley
Turrentine didn’t happen until Smith’s very last date for Blue Note, in
January 1963 — well into the peak years of soul jazz.
Interestingly enough, of all the saxophonists to have recorded with Smith
at Blue Note, only Ike Quebec (1918-63) did not come from a bebop
background. (Even Turrentine came direct from the Max Roach quintet where
he and his brother Tommy had replaced Booker Little and George Coleman.)
Quebec, an older contemporary of Ammons, went on to make a series of
highly-rated tenor-and-organ records for Blue Note in the early 1960s before
his untimely death from cancer.
Smith’s rapid success brought a barrowload of imitators. There was also a
rush to apply the same principles of music-making to combinations
underpinned by the traditional piano-bass-drums, often with electric guitar as
a soulful addition. Many of the musicians caught up in this came from swing,
jump and R&B backgrounds, whether they were saxophonists, pianists or
guitarists. Prestige Records, then associated mainly with bop, quickly became
Blue Note’s early rival in the field. Diversifying their range, they began

CHAPTER THIRTEEN 108

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER THIRTEEN

making records with the generation of players who had presaged Parker and
his acolytes. By early 1959 Prestige had lost Coltrane and Jackie McLean to
other labels and were recording virtually nothing but soul saxophone or organ
trio dates.
In 1954 the company had brought Gene Ammons back into the recording
studio, and by 1956 had updated his approach to accommodate the emerging
style. Two years later Coleman Hawkins made a series of records for Prestige
with “Soul” in the album title or song titles. In contrast to the discs he’d
made for Verve just the previous year, these emphasised Hawkins’s affinity
for the blues as well as his giant, roughly affectionate way with a ballad — and
there were no organs in sight or within hearing, as Hawk preferred a piano on
every session. Soon after this, Eddie Lockjaw Davis (1922-86), a long-time
advocate of tenor-and-organ trios, started his fine series of Cookbook albums
(1958) for Prestige, featuring Shirley Scott on Hammond organ. He also
appeared on a classic of the genre, Arnett Cobb’s first date for Prestige, Blow,
Arnett, Blow! (1959).
Under the guidance of producer Esmond Edwards, Prestige even gathered
together a whole roomful of talent for Very Saxy (1959) featuring Hawkins,
Davis, Cobb and Buddy Tate, with Scott pulling it all together at the organ.
Even Ben Webster was finally caught up in this late-flowering coupling of
swing-era saxophonists with the latest soul-organ craze: he appeared on an
early Richard “Groove” Holmes date for Pacific Jazz recorded in spring 1961,
sounding perfectly at home at any tempo. Later that year Holmes made a co-
led date for Pacific with Gene Ammons, Groovin’ With Jug, reinforcing the
impression of a large stylistic pool of talent which could operate together
under the soul-jazz banner. Webster, of course, had already established his
down-home credentials many times, especially during the early 1950s when he
recorded some truly funky sessions for Mercury with Jay McShann’s small
group (and the bruising Kid & The Brute session mentioned earlier).
Other less prominent saxophonists who signed to Prestige at or around
this time included Jimmy Forrest, Hal Singer, King Curtis and Al Sears. Of
these, the youngster Curtis (1934-71) was to have the most lasting effect on The organ-and-saxophone combo was one
the development of the saxophone, but his jazz career was truncated and part- of the most popular forms during the late
time. His records for Prestige (as opposed to those made for 1950s R&B 1950s and early 60s. Top organist Jimmy
labels) luxuriated in blues made palatable to jazz fans by the presence of an Smith (above) included in his combo at
orthodox piano-bass-drums jazz rhythm section, often of considerable various times Lou Donaldson, Stanley
sophistication, rather than by his own rather basic improvised patterns. Turrentine, Hank Mobley and Ike Quebec.
By October 1959 the versatile young Oliver Nelson (1932-75) had signed to
Prestige and would make an important series of albums for them, often with a
distinct soul slant, prior to his 1961 classic for Impulse, The Blues & The
Abstract Truth. Like Curtis, but coming from the opposite extreme, Nelson
incorporated soul saxophone elements into his overall musical palette, rather
than making them his central point of reference. His later successes as a
composer/arranger for a plethora of jazz and non-jazz dates bore out his early
Benny Carter-like tendency to cover as many options as possible.
Most importantly for Prestige and for soul saxophone, Willis “Gator”
Jackson (1932-87) began a new series of key tenor-and-organ recordings.
Jackson had come to prominence with his screaming R& B-style tenor solos on
Cootie Williams’s ‘Gator Tail Pts 1 & 2° (1949) and his own ‘Call Of The
Gators’ (1950), but by 1959 had matured into a complete saxophonist with a
natural proclivity for soulful tenor. His working band had on board the young

109 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 CHAPTER THIRTEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

organist Jack McDuff, who appeared on Jackson’s first Prestige date. This
session supplied music for a number of Jackson releases, including Please, Mr
Jackson (1959). The repertoire was the familiar combination of evergreens like
‘Angel Eyes’, ‘Three Little Words’, “The Man I Love’, and “originals” (which
usually turned out to be head arrangements of the blues).
Jackson stayed a decade with Prestige, sticking to his familiar soul-jazz
groove and making a series of sizzling albums for the label. Although he and
McDuff parted ways (McDuff was having his own hits and went out with his
own combo featuring Harold Vick on tenor), Jackson usually stuck with a
Hammond player on his dates, live and in the studio. His accompanists
included Freddie Roach, Carl Wilson and Trudy Pitts.
Considering the amount of tenor-and-organ activity in the small clubs and

15) THE IN SOUND

AS

Eddie Harris scored an early hit with his

R&B version of the theme from Exodus. A
keen experimenter, Harris invented a
number of curious instruments, including
what he called a ‘ “reed trumpet”.

rooms of the urban United States, it was only a matter of time before
someone crossed over in a big way. The two most likely contenders to emerge
in the early 1960s were Stanley Turrentine, then making headway at Blue
Note with his own group after leaving Max Roach, and young Eddie Harris, a
player of enormous talent and quixotic musical tendencies.
Turrentine (1934-2000) had in fact played as a teenager alongside Ray
Charles in bluesman Lowell Fulson’s 1951 band, so he was well aware of the
singer’s ability to project emotion through music. From the opening notes of
Look Out!, Turrentine’s 1960 debut as a leader, the listener is under no illusion
as to what underpins the music: blues, blues and more blues, even with a
rhythm section wholly comprising the “modernist” Horace Parlan Trio.
Turrentine’s own ‘playing concentrates on a pattern of short phrases and
held notes — the musical equivalent of shouts or exclamations — that could
have come straight from the saxophonists in the Ray Charles band of the
time. Turrentine focusses on his huge, preaching tone and his polished ability
to phrase the smallest musical unit in a way that gave it emotional
significance. It was on the nurturing of these two gifts that he spent his entire
subsequent career — just as Ben Webster and other great swing players honed

CHAPTER THIRTEEN 110

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER THIRTEEN

their own gifts to perfection. By the early part of the 1960s Turrentine was
running a tenor-and-organ group with his wife, Shirley Scott, at the keyboard.
She had quit Lockjaw Davis in 1960 to go out on her own (and was replaced
by Johnny “Hammond” Smith). With Scott signed to Prestige and Turrentine
to Blue Note, there are fewer records of them together at this early stage than
one would expect from a working group, but Never Let Me Go (1963) is an
early indication of their fruitful combination.
Turrentine continued to record with the best soul and funk jazz talents
signed to Blue Note, and was free to play sessions, including recordings with
Les McCann, Grant Green, and The Three Sounds (with Gene Harris on
piano). But his early peak was perhaps reached on his wife’s 1964 live date for
Impulse, Queen Of The Organ, recorded at The Front Room, a tiny New
Jersey club with a decidedly down-home atmosphere. On this date every
element of the developed tenor-and-organ genre is in place and the whole
group works seamlessly toward their soulful ends, whether the repertoire
comes from Ellington, Lennon-McCartney, Richard Rodgers or the blues.
Turrentine would later vary his settings and formats considerably, including a
period where he was equally at home with strings as with small combos,
sometimes largely abandoning any jazz framework, but his own playing rarely
rose above this highpoint. Yet his ability to function as a soul-based player —
whatever the musicians and arrangements around him were doing — provided
an important example for each new generation of saxophonists who tried to
marry art and economics in a satisfactory manner.
Eddie Harris (1934-96) was equally intent on such a marriage, but he
rarely touched upon the tenor-and-organ routine. An accomplished musician
across a range of instruments, Chicagoan Harris saw it as his business to make
music which was popular and tuneful rather than ape any one jazz genre.
After a varied apprenticeship, success came suddenly with his very first
session as a leader, a jazzed-up version of the theme from ‘Exodus’, the 1960
movie. Harris’s 1961 record for the tiny Vee Jay label sold over a million
copies, featuring his featherlight tenor tone amid a medium-tempo beat
(reminiscent of Cannonball Adderley’s soul successes of the 1960s such as
‘Work Song’). Harris’s hit contained just one chorus of improvising (where
Lester Young and Stan Getz are ever-present) and a tight arrangement of the
minor-key theme.
Taking his cue from flautist Herbie Mann, Harris followed up this hit with
many tunes based on vamps and strong rhythmic patterns. But his next
million-seller, ‘Listen Here’, didn’t hit the stores until early 1968, by which
time the soul and blues phrases which were stock-in-trade to many 1960s
saxophonists were filling his repertoire. This and a love of bluesy and soulful
vamps of the type favoured by his friend Les McCann meant that Harris
finished the decade heading away from jazz and toward pure instrumental
soul. This was confirmed by the next milestone in his career. Harris's
appearance with McCann at Montreux in 1969 was released by Atlantic and
spawned another million-seller, ‘Compared To What?’, as well as a best-selling
album Swiss Movement and follow-up singles such as ‘Cold Duck Time’.
These tunes showed how much could be derived from the soul route being
taken concurrently by Cannonball Adderley’s band: ‘Mercy Mercy Mercy’ and
other Adderley hits were then important indicators of where jazz had to go for
commercial survival. Harris was as comprehensively gifted a player, leader
and arranger as Adderley, and wrote good tunes — as the continuing

pele CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A founder-member of The Crusaders,

Houston-born Wilton Felder is a latter-day
representative of the “Texas Tenor” school.
His strong, blues-inflected sound has had
considerable influence on younger players.

popularity of his ‘Freedom Jazz Dance’ attests. Yet he was often derided, as
Adderley rarely was, for dumbing-down (or “selling out” as it was then
called), for playing simplistic clichés when he had so much more to offer.
Harris didn’t see his music that way, always protesting that, like
Adderley, he played music that interested and stimulated him, and that he
had no interest in supplying simply what the critics felt he should. That his
talents and interests often led him outside jazz is certain; that he always
stretched his talents to the artistic limit is a moot point, especially when his
least inspired and most formulaic records are taken into consideration. But
Harris remained a fiercely independent and committed player, as well as a
tremendously influential one, right up until his death.
The West Coast was not, as we've seen, a particularly fertile breeding
ground for soul saxophones, but there were notable exceptions. And none
more so than Wilton Felder (b. 1940). Felder had come to LA from Texas
with his Houston high-school buddies Stix Hooper, Joe Sample and Wayne
Henderson. Their group was titled the Modern Jazz Sextet before becoming
The Nitehawks and finally The Jazz Crusaders, just prior to their 1961
recording debut. Felder was, like his Crusaders colleagues, a well-schooled
musician equally adept at a range of musical styles. His versatility is well
documented on the long sequence of records the band made for Pacific Jazz

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Ih3b

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER THIRTEEN

during the 1960s, but at the core of his playing is a rock-hard tone and a
Texas cry as strong and direct as anything from Arnett Cobb, Booker Ervin
or his fellow Texas-to-LA tenorist Curtis Amy.
Felder was the star soloist in a band gifted with more than one good
composer/arranger. His gritty, blues-drenched phrases were often embellished
by snatches of the sort of harmonic questing that John Coltrane was currently
popularising among young saxophonists. This is as noticeable on Freedom
Sound and Looking Ahead (both 1961) as on later albums such as At Newport
(1966). Felder continued to deepen his saxophone message and concentrate
increasingly on the bass guitar as The Jazz Crusaders metamorphosed into
The Crusaders, moving labels (to Motown), becoming more solidly aligned with
the rock side of funk and soul, and even touring widely in the early 1970s as
support group for The Rolling Stones. Felder’s powerful tenor voice had a less
central role to play, but his important jazz work was done, influencing
hundreds if not thousands of young players coming up after him who
inhabited the fertile worlds of creativity between the jazz and rock forms of
soul and funk.
Cannonball Adderley’s contribution to jazz lies in more than one area, but
his largest audience was the one that responded to his funk and soul-jazz hits.
His funk repertoire, often supplied by brother Nat or pianists Bobby
Timmons and Joe Zawinul, was adroitly mixed with more imaginative jazz
from band members such as Yusef Lateef and Charles Lloyd, enough to keep
both his popular and artistic credentials in good order right up to his untimely
death in 1975.
By that time the larger part of the soul saxophone movement had
withered on the vine, although some late arrivals were still scoring hits in an
increasingly disco-oriented genre. Of these, tenor player Houston Person (b.
1934) was perhaps the most talented and charismatic. Debuting on Prestige in
the late 1960s when that label began to contract its activities, Person had the
big sound and ballad sensibilities of Ammons, Davis, Jackson, Quebec and
other forebears. But he was also eager to delve into the crossover between
older soul-jazz forms and the various disco rhythms that became such a
hypnotic attraction for the commercial end of the jazz market as rock
triumphed worldwide. This interest peaked in the first half of the 1970s, but a
general move back to more traditional jazz structures and ambiences at the
end of the decade led Person — as well as others such as Willis Jackson who in
1977 made the superb Bar Wars — back to a more loosely defined soul and
organ jazz format. Person made a string of magnificent recordings for Muse
during the 1980s and 90s.
The careers of Houston Person and Willis Jackson during these decades
reflect the larger changes suffered by many saxophonists who skirted the
fringes of popular music while attempting to uphold something of a jazz
tradition in their playing. As with any business connected to media and the
arts, fashion is ever-changing, style is all. The rapid turnover of popular
genres and dance crazes determines a short stay in front of the spotlight and
an inevitable return to cult status for all but the most determined and
outstanding figures. That players like Person and his peers stuck to their
styles in the face of disco and fusion — and every other succeeding musical
wave — speaks a great deal for the force and longevity of their original visions,
and says much of the inexhaustible roots that the music found in the various
blues forms of the mid-century.

11 CHAPTER THIRTEEN
 BRIAN Pee ee JOHN COLTRANE
A TRUE ORIGINAL GENIUS, COLTRANE RECAST THE
VOCABULARY OF JAZZ IN THE EARLY SIXTIES AS RADICALLY
AND COMPLETELY AS ARMSTRONG AND PARKER IN THEIR TIME.
COLTRANE’S INFLUENCE IS STILL CLEARLY IDENTIFIABLE IN
THE PLAYING OF VIRTUALLY EVERY MAJOR SAXOPHONIST
BELOW THE AGE OF FIFTY.

Miles Davis (right). It was as a member

of Davis’s quintet that John Coltrane made
his first big impact on the world of jazz.

The importance of John Coltrane to the history of jazz saxophone can hardly
be overestimated. Like one of his most famous employers, Miles Davis, he
created not only a widely imitated style on his instrument, but several
different and separately imitable versions of it. More than that, and again like
Miles, he was equally significant as a bandleader, and the sound of his 1960s
groups has had a lasting, worldwide influence. Yet until at least his 30th
birthday not even a close observer of the jazz scene would have predicted
Coltrane’s rapidly rising position in the ensuing decade, nor his even greater
eminence in the period since his premature death at the age of 40.
The concept of the late-starter is relatively common in jazz. But it often
has more to do with perception and the particular player's lack of access to a
wide audience through recording than with their ability. For instance, Lester
Young was clearly a fully formed soloist by the time he finally appeared on
disc at the age of 27. The same was true of Eric Dolphy, despite the fact that
he had seldom left the West Coast until he was nearly 30. Coltrane at the
same age had already played with the best but had failed to impress, partly
because the elements of his style were still diffuse and insufficiently organised.
Born in 1926, it took until 1957 before he began to sound like John Coltrane.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN 114

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER FOURTEEN

He was raised in North Carolina. His father, a tailor, played violin and
clarinet by ear. John grew up with his father and mother in the home of his
maternal grandfather, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal church.
His other grandfather was a minister of the same denomination. John was
brought up to take an interest in black history and black artists such as poet
Langston Hughes and soprano Marian Anderson. But a warm and close family
relationship was suddenly jeopardised when John was 12, as his father and
both his maternal grandparents died within a few weeks of one another.
The damage to the family’s financial stability was considerable and John’s
mother now had to work outside the home. So perhaps it was fortunate that,
just at this time, he started to become involved in playing music. In the local
community wind-band he was first given an alto-horn but later asked to try

BLUE TRAIN
JOHN COLTRANERSY GIANTSTEPS
SIEREL
‘i ‘5

the clarinet. He stayed on that instrument when, a while later, his high-school Three early Coltrane classics: Blue Train
also started its own band. (1957), Miles Davis’s epoch-making Kind
He immediately fell in love with the clarinet and began to practise Of Blue (1959), and Giant Steps (1959),
diligently. But as he listened to dance-bands on the radio — and sometimes _ still one of his most admired albums.
went to see touring bands live, in the company of his cousin — he was drawn
to the sound of the saxophone. When he succeeded in borrowing an underused
alto from a local restaurant-owner, he was on his way.
Pretty soon, his mother moved to Philadelphia and later to Atlantic City,
in search of better-paid work. After graduating from high school in 1943, John
joined his mother up north. He found himself in a large metropolis whose
black ghetto area was a hotbed of music. When his mother bought him a
secondhand alto of his own, he took lessons in saxophone and theory at a local
music school and made connections with a very fertile jazz scene. Soon he
began attending jam sessions and playing in small groups, and he was both
impressed and thrilled by the new bebop style when he witnessed the 1945
Philadelphia appearance of Dizzy Gillespie’s quintet featuring the then little-
known Charlie Parker.
Coltrane immediately set to work emulating Parker, but his musical
odyssey proceeded in fits and starts for a whole decade. He was drafted into
the Navy for a year, playing in both military bands and small groups, getting
a taste for life as a professional musician. Back home from summer 1946 and
already known as Trane (or Train), he became acquainted with Philadelphia-
based jazzmen such as Benny Golson, “Philly Joe” Jones and Jimmy and
Perey Heath. He also briefly joined various touring R&B bands, the most

— i or CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER FOURTEEN

famous of which were those of fellow saxophonists Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson

(during 1948-49) and Earl Bostic (in 1952). A happy consequence was that
Vinson, having no space for another altoist, bought Coltrane his first tenor
saxophone. In between these two affiliations, he spent 18 months with Dizzy
Gillespie, in the big-band and then a sextet, enabling him to record a handful
of brief solos and to play on several broadcasts.
The surviving evidence shows his playing to be a somewhat ungainly mix
of Parker, Lester Young, Don Byas, Dexter Gordon and possibly Paul
Gonsalves (a colleague in the Gillespie big-band). One of the facts of life in the
bebop world was the availability of hard drugs and, like so many of his peers,
Trane became hooked for several years. This hardly helped his career. (Even
Parker, the Pied Piper of Heroin, said, “I may have thought I was playing
better but, listening to some of the records, I know I wasn’t.”) The drugs led
directly to Coltrane’s dismissal by Dizzy.
During the first half of the 1950s bebop had lost most of its audience to
R&B, and some of Coltrane’s run-of-the-mill jobs back in Philadelphia
required the tenorist to “walk the bar” while playing rabble-rousing solos. So
it was a distinct step up in the world when in 1954 he joined Johnny Hodges,
whose band’s small-group swing was one of the sources of R&B. Coltrane later
described Hodges as “the world’s greatest saxophone player”.
Unfortunately Hodges too fired Trane for his drug use, so he once again
spent a year gigging with locals, including organists Shirley Scott and Jimmy
Smith. It was while working with Smith that Coltrane was plucked from
obscurity by none other than Miles Davis. In autumn 1955 Davis, on a
comeback after kicking his own drug addiction, was putting together his first
regular quintet. Initially he had hoped to get Sonny Rollins, with whom he
had performed in public and on record, but was thwarted by Rollins taking a Coltrane (opposite) added the soprano
drug-rehabilitation sabbatical. Miles was alerted to Trane by two musicians saxophone to his customary tenor in the
he’d already hired, pianist Red Garland and drummer Philly Joe Jones. early 1960s. Its sound was well suited to
Davis’s use of Coltrane was not only unexpected, but unwelcome to some the Eastern-influenced modal music he was
of the trumpeter’s fans. In an uncanny repetition of the contrast ten years exploring. Later he complained that
earlier between Parker and the more tentative Miles, the now masterful Davis switching from tenor to soprano and back
had as his foil a tenor whose music was interesting and exploratory, yet not again during a single concert posed severe
totally together. Trane even said subsequently, “I had all kinds of technical ' technical problems.
problems — for example, I didn’t have the right mouthpiece — and I hadn’t the
necessary harmonic understanding. I am quite ashamed of those early records
I made with Miles. Why he picked me, I don’t know. Maybe he saw something
in my playing that he hoped would grow.” If so, Davis was eminently clear-
sighted. Later, Miles’s own more succinct verdict about the quintet was that:
“The group I had with Coltrane made me and him a legend.”
Certainly the six albums made by the quintet during 1955 and 1956 are
still impressive, especially for Miles and the dynamic rhythm section. Trane’s
frequently exciting performance is more variable. Among his highspots are the
contributions to Round About Midnight, including the solos on the title track
and ‘Dear Old Stockholm’. Both are highly atmospheric pieces in a minor key,
and they point forward to some of the tenor player’s 1960s work.
Coltrane’s sudden visibility as a member of the leading small group of the
day coincided with the boom in releases of the then-new 12-inch LP. It led to
a considerable amount of freelance recording for Coltrane and, starting in
1957, to albums made under his own name, including the excellent Blue Train
(1957). Before that, however, there had been another hiatus as Davis fired, re-

1 CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

hired and then re-fired Coltrane, once again because of his drug habit. This
time, Trane’s return to Philadelphia was different, for he decided to end his
addiction once and for all.
At the same time as joining Miles 18 months earlier, he had married a
serious and sober young woman, Juanita Austin, whose religious leanings were
toward Islam. (Indeed her Muslim name, Naima, became the title of a
particularly lovely Coltrane ballad, first recorded in 1959 on Giant Steps.) In
early 1957 he elicited her moral support as he cured himself by total drug
abstinence — the “cold turkey” method used by Miles a few years before. As
Coltrane described it, “I experienced by the grace of god a spiritual awakening
which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in
gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others

_ MILESDAVIS& _
JOHNCOLTRANE
AND THE MUSE ALLSTARS
LIVE AT SANDY'S

__Live

Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, blues singer happy through music.” The immediate consequence was a six-month playing
and alto saxophonist, was one of Coltrane’s engagement with Thelonious Monk, who was undergoing a renewal of public
early empolyers. Eric Dolphy joined John interest. Now pushing 31, Trane was finally able to bring together the various
Coltrane’s quintet for a European tour in elements of his stylistic amalgam. This included not only the influence of
1961. Coltrane’s European tours of the contrasting major figures of the past, but also his attraction to complex
early 1960s, first with Miles Davis and harmonic substitutions (which later bore fruit in Giant Steps).
then as leader, were widely recorded by Rather than being tentative and therefore sometimes unrhythmic,
radio stations. These recordings were later Coltrane’s music was now markedly rhythmic — but didn’t swing in the
issued on disc. traditional sense. Instead, it surged forward like waves on a shore, with all
manner of contradictory currents and eddies. This immediately caught the
attention of fellow musicians, including some previous doubters. It then
reached the ears of a wider audience as he rejoined Miles, in a new sextet
featuring “Cannonball” Adderley and with Red Garland soon to be replaced
by pianist Bill Evans.
If the previous quintet had been excellent, Davis’s 1958-59 sextet was
remarkable in harnessing disparate elements such as the bluesy undertow of
Adderley’s alto and the probing quality of Trane’s urgent tenor. There were
classic albums: Milestones (1958; still with Red Garland), Jazz Track (1958)
and Kind Of Blue (1959; with Bill Evans helping Miles to assemble some of the
material). These records were hugely influential in turning other players away
from post-bop chord sequences toward the looser frameworks of modal and
free jazz. Coltrane had already been moving in this direction, and soon began
working on vastly extended improvisation on a single scale, typical of Indian
classical music. This caused some bemusement for Davis, and possibly self-

CHAPTER FOURTEEN 118

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER FOURTEEN

consciousness on the part of Trane. Once, when a stick accidentally flew out of
drummer Jimmy Cobb’s hand and narrowly missed the saxophonist, he said,
“T thought you finally threw something at me for playing so long.”
When Coltrane left Davis of his own accord in spring 1960 to form a new
group, he relished the freedom to solo at greater length (and with less
harmonic variety in the backing) than any of his predecessors. This required
great stamina, not only from himself but his sidemen. The young pianist
McCoy Tyner had to create textural variety from essentially static chords,
while the driving drummer Elvin Jones played a wealth of cross-rhythms to
sustain Coltrane floating aloft. Finding a bassist who could keep the whole
enterprise spiritually grounded proved more difficult. But after stints by Steve
Davis and Reggie Workman, Jimmy Garrison — raised like his predecessors in
Philadelphia — fitted the bill. Untypically for most jazz groups of the 1960s,
work was plentiful enough to enable each of these key quartet members to
stay with Trane for more than five years.
During the autumn and winter of 1960-61 the group was augmented by
the adventurous playing of multi-reedman Eric Dolphy and, much more
briefly, by the straightahead guitarist Wes Montgomery. Ultimately, however,
Trane was already providing his own contrasts, since he had been interested
for a while in the sound of the soprano sax and now began to feature it in
public. Partly this was in order to extend his upper register in a more natural
way than the strained high notes he used on the tenor, and partly it reflected
his growing interest in the wind instruments of Indian and North African
music. Coltrane created a classic definition of how this music could influence
jazz, achieving a considerable jukebox hit in inner-city black bars with ‘My
Favorite Things’ (1960). Follow-up versions of the pop tunes ‘Inchworm’ and
‘Chim Chim Cheree’ plus ancient modal folk-songs like ‘Greensleeves’ and ‘El
Vito’ (which he renamed ‘Olé’) exploited the same catchy waltz-time feeling. Elvin Jones, powerhouse of the classic
However, at the same time as he was espousing this second major style, John Coltrane Quartet of the early 1960s.
Coltrane was happy to revert to the harmonically-based approach associated
with his first stay in Miles’s band and his Monk period. Especially in albums
he made for the Impulse label such as Ballads (1961) and Duke Ellington And
John Coltrane (1962) — and even, for the sake of contrast, during live gigs too
— his readings of standards were, perhaps revealingly, usually done on tenor
rather than soprano. As a spin-off, he also introduced a new twist to such
slow, lyrical and meditative playing by creating original material that, while
clearly related to the jazz-ballad tradition, was done entirely out-of-tempo.
Examples are the gentle ‘After The Rain’ (1963) and the less-celebrated but
beautiful opening and closing sections of ‘Wise One’ (1964), another
composition which was reportedly dedicated to Naima.
A contrast certainly existed between the stately and poignant sounds
Trane produced in such contexts and the demanding nature of his up-tempo
work, which often burst the barriers of conventional saxophone pitch and of
formerly acceptable tone-quality. His R&B experience helped here but, in
contrast to the pleasure principle of that music, what he was now producing
was thought-provoking and inspirational.
The spiritual aspect of his searching melodies and his questing multi-noted
improvisation was brought to fruition in late 1964 on A Love Supreme, which
was played entirely on tenor. An avowedly religious work, it includes a
passage of chanting by two voices (which I believe to be Coltrane himself,
overdubbed) and, in the last section, an out-of-tempo ballad that is, in fact,

11 CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN

John Coltrane backstage (right) ata Paris the saxophone “reading” of a poem published on the album’s sleeve. Through
concert in 1965. Pianist Alice Coltrane its unique style and the strength of the group’s playing it became one of the
(née McLeod), Coltrane’s second wife and __ best-selling jazz records ever.
collaborator in his later projects, is It was typical of Trane that, having achieved what he must have known
pictured in London in 1987 (below). was a highpoint of his music, he then headed off toward new pastures. The
first half of the 1960s had been marked on the one hand by the breakthroughs
of Ornette Coleman and pianist Cecil Taylor in revitalising the energy of jazz
without using chorus structures and harmonic sequences, and on the other by
the growth of the black civil rights movement (soon to be imitated by a white
counter-culture opposed to America’s war in Vietnam).
Coltrane was not the person to make any public comment on polities, but
he was well aware of what was going on in music. Younger and more extreme
tenor players emerged, such as Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp who both made
their US debut albums in 1964. Shepp’s record was in fact facilitated by
Trane, and he was now alerted to his position as the figurehead of a new
generation of musicians.
As a result, he ‘began inviting some of them to join in his publi¢
appearances, helping them to gain recognition from listeners and critics. In
June 1965 he went into the studio with an 1l-piece ensemble featuring his
quartet plus a second bassist, two altoists, two trumpeters and two extra
tenormen (Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, who was soon to join Coltrane’s
touring group). The resulting album, Ascension, was a single performance
lasting nearly 40 minutes and consisting of a series of turbulent solos backed

CHAPTER FOURTEEN 12
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER FOURTEEN

by the rhythm section, introduced and separated by lengthy tracts of

collective improvisation by all the musicians simultaneously. Compared to the
fierce glow of A Love Supreme, done only six months earlier, this was an
unstoppable flow of molten lava.
Though it lost him much of his previously wide audience, the new
direction of Trane’s music was something he felt compelled to pursue. Many of
his subsequent live performances were with quintet, sextet or septet line-ups,
plus added saxophone, added bass or, for a period in late 1965, a second
drummer. Inevitably this led to the break-up of the fixed quartet personnel:
McCoy Tyner found it harder to focus on his role (and harder to hear his
acoustic piano) while Elvin Jones complained that the freely rhythmic style of
the new percussionist, Rashied Ali, wouldn’t work alongside his own
drumming. As a result, Ali wound up as the sole drummer. The new pianist in

oe avove supreme Jonn coltrane Ascension

John Coltrane

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the group was equally different: Alice Coltrane was the woman for whom Three albums are pictured here from
Trane had left Naima in 1963 (and who in the following three years bore him Coltrane’s great early-1960s period.
three children). Coltrane’s new group recorded prolifically, especially so as his Africa/Brass features the Quartet backed by
contract allowed him to organise his own sessions — only some of which came a large orchestra; A Love Supreme is
out, and those that did were issued on Impulse alongside material done with widely regarded as his masterpiece; and
the label's in-house producer Bob Thiele. Much of it, however, remained to be Ascension marked the saxophonist’s move
released posthumously. To the consternation of everyone involved in jazz, into free-jazz territory.
Coltrane succumbed-to liver cancer and died in July 1967. Performers,
listeners and commentators realised that they were mourning a major
innovator, while the avant-garde movement of younger players proceeded to
recast elements of his work into various movements such as fusion, soul jazz
and European “improvised music”.
According to that most perceptive biographer, Lewis Porter, “There is
absolute consensus about three things. First, Coltrane was a sweet, quiet man,
a man of few words... Second, he had a dry sense of humour if you caught him
in the right mood. Third, he practised constantly and obsessively.” Whether
or not he burned himself out trying to perfect his instrumental control, and
trying to fulfil what he saw as his destiny, is pure speculation. Trane said in
1962, “It’s [the] universal aspect of music that interests me and attracts me;
that’s what I’m aiming for.”
Measured in terms of his influence on thousands of saxophonists from
Pharoah Sanders to Michael Brecker, and of his ability to touch millions of
listeners worldwide, Coltrane’s success is greater than he could have imagined.

— no — CHAPTER FOURTEEN
KEITH SHADWICK THE MODALISTS
UNTIL THE LATE FIFTIES IMPROVISATION WAS BASED ON
RESOLVING HARMONIES, OR CHORD CHANGES - WHICH HAD
GROWN MORE COMPLEX AND FAST-MOVING, POSING GREATER
CHALLENGES TO PLAYERS. MODAL JAZZ REPLACED THIS WITH |
HARMONIES THAT WERE STATIC OR MOVED VERY RARELY.

The first classic example of modal jazz is generally acknowledged to be Miles

Davis’s Kind Of Blue (1959), which also featured the saxophones of John
Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. Davis brought his formidable synthesising
powers and single-mindedness to bear on modal theory and how best to
incorporate it into modern mainstream jazz. But he wasn’t the first.
The man who spent many years studying modes and their application to
contemporary music-making was George Russell. His theories, expressed in his
book The Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Tonal Organization In Improvisation
(1959), were not widely dispersed or understood until the late 1960s and early
1970s. But Gil Evans, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis and other progressive
musicians of the 1950s were aware of his ideas and of his compositions written
in their wake. Coltrane played on one of Russell’s records in the late 1950s,
but it was Davis who found a way of presenting modal improvisation in the
most favourable light.
For Davis, a supreme master of melody and economy, modality was a
phase in his development. For Coltrane, it was the starting point for a
consuming passion which would occupy his musical quests until his death in
1967. The other saxophonist in Miles’s band, Julian “Cannonball” Adderley
(1928-75), quickly absorbed modality’s implications and, like Davis, found a
way of assimilating its principal traits into an already mature hybrid style.
Florida-born Adderley was possessed of a beautifully rich alto tone with
more than a hint of Benny Carter about it. In addition he had the harmonic
and rhythmic sophistication brought to jazz by Charlie Parker, as well as a
good helping of southern soul. This was also present in the playing and
compositions of his cornettist brother Nat, some of whose pieces — ‘Work
Song’ included — helped make the Adderley brothers’ band one of the top-
billing groups in jazz for over a decade.
This fame and success led to accusations of a sell-out and of pandering to
the funk market, but a set from the Adderley band was never stylistically
monochrome. What’s more, the very catholic tastes of the leader allowed him
to hire intelligent and experimental sidemen such as Yusef Lateef and, later,
Charles Lloyd, while his own recording career included albums made with Bill
Evans, Milt Jackson, Miles Davis, Wes Montgomery (whom he discovered),
Victor Feldman and vocalist Nancy Wilson. Later sidemen included
keyboardists Joe Zawinul and George Cables, both of whom proved to be
innovators in the 1970s.
Like Duke Ellington, Adderley was adept at keeping up a supply of
successful singles — whether from brother Nat’s pen or from pianists Bobby
Timmons and Joe Zawinul — while still giving 100 per cent of his improvising

CHAPTER FIFTEEN 122

skills in live performance. On a string of mid- and late-1960s Capitol albums The Adderley brothers, Nat (cornet) and
there would be hits such as ‘Merey Mercy Mercy’ and ‘Little Boy With The Julian “Cannonball” (alto saxophone).
Sad Eyes’, but also serious workouts. ‘Rumplestiltskin’ was one, a modal piece Their quintet was one of the most popular
with Cannonball using the Varitone octave divider on his alto to deliver one of jazz outfits of the early 1960s.
his fieriest solos; another was ‘Sweet Georgia Bright’, where the altoist fully
utilises the lessons learned from Evans, Coltrane and Davis while employing a
plethora of substitutions and more exotic, vocalised devices to create a highly
charged atmosphere.
A contemporary of Adderley with strong connections to other schools of
jazz is altoist Jackie McLean (b. 1932). Often thought of as an acolyte of
Charlie Parker, McLean by the late 1950s was a regular with the Charles
Mingus workshop and a willing participant in that leader’s experiments with
longer form, improvisations over ostinato patterns or held chords and scales,
and collective interplay.
By the early 1960s McLean, a gifted composer as well as instrumentalist,
was sufficiently enthused by the probings of Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and
others to make a series of records using the newer musical ideas of the day,
including intensive use of modes. This is especially apparent on One Step
Beyond (1963) and subsequent albums for Blue Note where McLean deploys
scales very much in the manner of Coltrane, whether on a ballad or an up-
tempo piece. This part of McLean’s long and successful career was relatively
brief, lasting some half a decade or so, but it was influential in its own right
and contributed a number of jazz classics to the music’s recorded legacy.
McLean’s intensely human “cry”, his sheer intensity and his questing nature
served as a model for younger altoists looking for ways of marrying the
legacies of Coltrane and Parker in particular. Some of the more prominent
altoists to benefit to a greater or lesser extent from his example were Gary
Bartz, James Spaulding, Eric Kloss, Marion Brown, Sonny Fortune and Robin
Kenyatta. But despite this, and reflecting the overwhelming influence of John

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

Coltrane on every generation of saxophonists to arise since the late 1950s, the
impact of modal schemes is most extensively found among tenor and soprano
players. Wayne Shorter’s hours of practice and study alongside Coltrane in the
latter’s Manhattan apartment, going through huge lexicons of scales, is a story
often recounted in interviews, articles and books.
Shorter (b. 1933) showed little sign of this during his first years on the
New York scene, but by the end of his tenure with Art Blakey’s Jazz
Messengers both his playing and writing showed a musical intelligence
straining at the leash of Blakey’s hard bop formulas.
Shorter’s personal release was found in the ranks of Miles Davis’s quintet
between 1965 and the end of that decade, as well as on a raft of albums made
for Blue Note both as leader and as sideman. The way in which Tony
RIVERSIDE|

12-286 THEM DIRTY. BLUES

THE CANNONBALL
ADDERLEY QUINTET

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UTAL
Cannonball Adderley’s popular success did Williams used him alongside fellow tenor player Sam Rivers on the drummer's
wonders for the fortunes of the independent Spring (1965), for example, demonstrates Shorter’s formidable command and
Riverside label. Booker Ervin first came to oblique use of harmony.
prominence with Charles Mingus. His With Davis’s band Shorter offered intense, closely-argued solos, mostly of
early death, at age 39, cut short a hugely a brevity astonishing by the long-winded saxophone standards of the day, and
promising career. also displayed a burgeoning talent for composition. Only in the Davis
quintet’s live recordings does Shorter respond to the challenge of the Williams-
driven rhythm section and cut loose at length. Even then, his solos are not
gargantuan, either in length or conception. Here and on other appearances as
a sideman — Grachan Moncur Ill’s Some Other Stuff (1964) is a notable occasion
— Shorter shows a marked reluctance to adopt the heroic soloist role brought
into vogue by the genius of Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, both of whom could
(and did) regularly improvise for between 30 and 50 minutes on a single
theme. Shorter preferred even then to look for colour and mood, drama and
contrast, often displaying his knowledge of uncommon scales in the most
tangential, unobvious ways.
By the end of the 1960s Shorter, like Davis, Williams and others of the
Miles circle, was experimenting with electric (and, later, electronic)
instruments and with rock and Latin-based rhythms. His last albums for Blue
Note, including classics like Super Nova (1969) and Moto Grosso Feio (1970),
amply display this new fascination as well as his continuing use of drones,
slow-moving harmonic patterns and other open-ended improvising and
composing vehicles. They show why Shorter moved from Davis to Weather
Report and, perhaps, why he latterly neglected the tenor saxophone in favour

CHAPTER FIFTEEN 12
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER FIFTEEN

of the soprano. He preferred its relative lack of jazz pedigree, and its ability
to lead an ensemble line or play at the top of a series of chord patterns, rather
than the middle intervals and less brilliant range of the tenor.
The music — progressively more heavily arranged and orchestrated, albeit
for small ensembles — now demanded the full flowering of Shorter’s own
improvisatory inclinations toward brevity and dramatic effect. In the 1970s he
embraced Latin influences, confirming this love of colour and pastiche. His
excursions with VSOP and later acoustic all-star groups only emphasise the
ground he abandoned when Miles Davis and all the members of his great
1960s quintet dropped acoustic abstraction and adopted the mixed blessings of
electrification. Tenorist Joe Henderson (b. 1937) spent just two weeks in the
Miles Davis quintet, but he trod a similar path to Shorter’s through the 1960s.

Charles Lloyd is pictured recording a TV

show in London during 1965. Lloyd’s band
had great success during this period, and
also introduced pianist Keith Jarrett to a
worldwide audience.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The hugely influential Wayne Shorter was

an important member of the bands of Art
Blakey and Miles Davis, as well as being
a founder-member of Weather Report.
Shorter is also a leading jazz composer.

Henderson began his New York career with a long series of solid hard-bop
sessions for Blue Note, notable among them being Grant Green’s 1963 album
Idle Moments. He also made spirited contributions to Horace Silver’s quintet,
in which he replaced the long-serving Junior Cook, but soon shifted toward
the siren call of Coltrane’s methodology on his own dates.
Henderson was a key sideman on records that by Blue Note standards
were experimental: Andrew Hill’s Black Fire (1963) and Point Of Departure
(1964), Pete La Roca’s Basra (1965), Larry Young’s Unity (1965) and McCoy
Tyner’s The Real McCoy (1967).
Henderson had a thorough and sophisticated grounding in the art of
negotiating chord changes at speed. He combined the gruffness of Rollins’s
middle and bottom register with Coltrane’s upper-register cry, and had the
musical inquisitiveness and passion to match fire with fire — even when soloing
over Elvin Jones at his most possessed. This made him more than simply a
modal player (quite frankly, anybody any good at jazz is “more than just a
modal player”) at a time when many more limited musicians were carving a
career out of such severe restrictions. He was also one who could successfully
combat the economic slump that jazz suffered in the late 1960s. Like Shorter,
Henderson experimented with electric instruments at the close of the 1960s

CHAPTER FIFTEEN oa i] 7]
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER FIFTEEN

and the start of the 1970s, and also dabbled in Brazilian ideas and personnel.
Unlike Shorter, Henderson stuck just to the tenor, and delighted in taking
extended solos, both live and on record. This in itself led him eventually back
to orthodox acoustic jazz performances as his preferred setting. His rhythmic
thrust, dark tone and ability to shape even the longer flights into satisfying
musical shapes meant he rarely fell below very high standards of musicianship
and interest, even when the setting may have been less than ideal.
When the setting is spot-on the playing has overwhelming impact and
imagination, as with the early Blue Note album /nner Urge (1964) which is the
Coltrane quartet with Henderson subbing for the great man. Henderson has
not substantially changed his style since the early 1960s, preferring to refine
and simplify rather than abandon his methods. This led to a renascence in his
popular fortunes in the 1980s (as heard on The State Of The Tenor for Blue
Note, 1985) and in the early 1990s (epitomised by the great popular and
critical reception accorded his restrained, tautly eloquent tribute albums for
Miles Davis and Billy Strayhorn).
The man who was slated to appear instead of Henderson on Andrew Hill’s
Point Of Departure in 1964 was Charles Lloyd (b. 1938), but label boss Alfred
Lion insisted on the switch to his own Blue Note artist. Lloyd is the
quintessential 1960s modalist. He displays an eager adaptation of the Evans-
Davis-Coltrane brand of modal theory, but developed into a personal and
readily identifiable sound and approach.
Memphis-born Lloyd was a contemporary of Booker Little and George
Coleman. He spent his university days in LA where he met Eric Dolphy and
Ornette Coleman, among others, and the LA connection led eventually to
Lloyd joining the Chico Hamilton Quintet in 1961. Soon composing and
arranging for the group, Lloyd (doubling liberally on flute) applied his own
ideas within its unique “chamber jazz” sound. Finding a natural foil in
Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo, Lloyd wrote a number of open-ended modal
pieces which moved through a succession of moods and rhythmic patterns.
These were the prototype for his phenomenal success just four years later.
After a stint with Cannonball Adderley (replacing Yusef Lateef) where
Lloyd once again arranged for the band and had a significant number of his
pieces played, he started his own quartet, with Keith Jarrett, Jack
DeJohnette and, initially, Cecil McBee (soon replaced by Ron McClure). This
young and gifted quartet came up with a remarkable mix of contemporary
jazz elements which found instant success, at first with jazz-festival audiences,
and later among the burgeoning acid and psychedelic rock scene.
Lloyd was using simple harmonic underpinning for clever compositional
constructs which told lucid musical stories. He also allowed his group to
develop a taste for rhythms which were, at the time, exotic for instrumental
jazz, and even occasionally crossed over into blues and rock beats. But
knitting it all together was Lloyd's gift for melody, colour and drama.
These attributes came together successfully at the 1966 Monterey Jazz
Festival. A new performance of ‘Forest Flower’ (which Lloyd had recorded in
1963 with Hamilton) floored the crowd and, when released on an Atlantic
album of the same name, sold over a million copies worldwide. Also in 1966
the Lloyd quartet began a season of appearances at Bill Graham’s Fillmore
West venue in San Francisco (later documented on two separate Atlantic
albums) and consolidated their appeal among the young hippies who were as
happy to lie around listening to Lloyd’s group as they were to the Grateful

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 CHAPTER FIFTEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

Dead, Frank Zappa or other local favourites. Lloyd’s success was not limited
to the US, but was international in its scope. Like Dave Brubeck — and unlike
many other top jazzmen — he was invited to tour in a huge range of countries,
including the Soviet Union, the Near East and Japan. Remarkably, Lloyd’s
phenomenal success was generated by his exciting, hard-driving, modal jazz.
His supercharged, melodic style appealed to an untutored, un-ghettoised
audience in much the same way as Coltrane’s A Love Supreme or ‘My Favorite
Things’. Lloyd may often have had intonation problems, and his flute playing
may have lacked technical surety. But his ebullience and desire to
communicate, along with the brilliance of the rest of the band (Jarrett in
particular was a perfect foil), kept Lloyd at the forefront of jazz until the
group's demise in late 1968.
At this point the saxophonist toyed with a variety of ensembles and ideas,
and lost much of his impetus. The 1970s found him exploring areas outside
jazz, some of which in the 1980s would be developed by others and re-branded
as new age. By then Lloyd himself had come full circle, forming another
power-packed quartet featuring the brilliant pianist Michel Petrucciani but,
wisely, not re-treading the old musical territory of his 1960s triumphs. His
recent career has been every bit as successful musically as that of his youth,
but the musical canvas has been mostly outside strict modality.
Altoist John Handy (b. 1933) had a similar impact to Lloyd at the
Monterey festival, but a year earlier. Handy was a Texan with West Coast
musical roots, and had made a considerable name for himself at the turn of
the 1960s during a short New York tenure with Charles Mingus. But it was
not until 1965 that he formed a group that accurately reflected his musical
intentions. Handy’s group dispensed with piano, instead using guitarist Jerry
Hahn and violinist Michael White as frontline partners.
Joe Henderson (above) qualified as a At Monterey °65, with Handy resplendent in a quasi-maharajah outfit,
teacher before turning professional as a their set was built on ostinato rhythmic and riff patterns, on recurrent chord
jazz musician. He continues to teach and cycles and long musical vehicles moving through a number of moods and
advise young players. sections. This abandonment of the bop and hard-bop routine of theme-solos-
theme allowed the musicians space to create elaborate musical narratives over
simple modalities. There was also room to exploit the considerable exoticism
inherent to the group’s line-up. Handy’s beautiful, ringing alto sound and
well-developed cry, as well as his considerable lyricism, served as an ideal focal
point for the music.
The group’s string of hit albums for Columbia which followed on from that
initial Monterey triumph have remained enormously influential among other
musicians, even if their popularity has not been so well sustained among the
general public. Handy remained vigorously active during the 1960s, forming a
new group with Bobby Hutcherson on vibes after White and Hahn left in
1967. But the economic difficulties afflicting jazz caught up with him, and by
the early 1970s Handy was playing a type of music closer to that of Donald
Byrd, Grover Washington and the funk instrumentalists than to jazz, whether
it be modal or non+modal. To be fair, few escaped this fate — even Jackie
McLean made an ill-judged funk/disco album for RCA in 1979 — but Handy
has rarely been glimpsed since in a jazz setting.
Another altoist treading a not dissimilar path for at least part of this time
was Marion Brown (b. 1935). He was a well-respected member of the New
York avant-garde, having appeared on Coltrane’s Ascension, and possessed a
full and attractive alto tone as well as a penchant for melodic arabesques over

CHAPTER FIFTEEN 12
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER FIFTEEN

a static chord pattern — as his two ESP-Disk records of the 1960s show. An
interest in non-jazz improvisatory methods and other musical disciplines led
Brown into some fascinating if obscure musical waters as the 1970s opened,
but by 1974 he was sufficiently sated with this to produce a minor (and
generally overlooked) masterpiece for the Impulse label, Vista. Featuring
Stanley Cowell and Anthony Davis on electric piano, the record revisits many
of the themes of his ESP-Disk dates, but in a much more spare and focused
manner. It even includes a moving version of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Visions’ sung
by Allen Murphy, while the presence of minimalist composer Harold Budd on
his own composition “Bismillahi Rrahmani Rrahim’ perfectly marries modal
jazz with the harmonically static landscape of minimalism. Unfortunately,
Brown has not followed this line of endeavour since.

ecoe STEREO ae Milestone

Milestone

Joe Henderson Sextet

Booker Ervin (1930-70) was a “Texas Tenor”, and shared not only his Three of the best albums of Joe
home state with Handy; he, too, spent time with Mingus in New York before Henderson’s long career: The Kicker
going out on his own. But he had none of the breaks of Handy’s career, and (1967), Power To The People (1969) and
died during jazz’s deepest economic doldrums as the 1960s came to a close. his reworking of the themes from Porgy &
Ervin would perhaps have been bemused by his inclusion in this chapter, but Bess (1997).
his forward-looking style, full of Texas keening and advanced harmony
applied to a raft of original and standard material, is even less at home with
hard bop and other less adventurous post-war offshoots. Ervin made many
fine albums for Prestige, especially between 1963 and 1965, but none is better
than The Freedom Book (1964) with the magical rhythm section of Jaki Byard,
Richard Davis and Alan Dawson.
There are many other saxophonists who felt the winds of modality blow in
their direction during this period. Harold Land, a solid hard-bopper from LA
who, by the end of the 1960s, had absorbed much of Coltrane’s later legacy, is
an example. There are also literally thousands of players who emerged within
ten years of Coltrane’s death in 1967 and began to apply textbook principles
to copying his work. The best of these, like David Liebman, Azar Lawrence,
Sonny Fortune, Bill Evans and Michael Brecker, went on to establish an
identity of their own, but the majority stayed put in modal mysticism and
mere copying, eventually giving modal playing a bad name, just as bop
suffered in the immediate aftermath of Charlie Parker’s death. With
increasingly vapid and repetitive, quasi-ritualistic 1970s performances and
recordings from many previously cutting-edge players, running the modes had
become a tedious pastime long before new age inhabited the area in the 1980s.

129 CHAPTER FIFTEEN

BONA ED VAVICR
TI KS POST-BOP INDIVIDUALISTS
FREE FORMS AND OPEN INSTRUMENTAL EXPRESSIVENESS
AFFECTED MUSICIANS OF VARIOUS STYLES AND BACKGROUNDS.
MANY FOUND THEIR OWN METHODS FOR FITTING THE NEW
SOUNDS WITHIN RULES THAT IMPOSED STRUCTURE - EVEN
WHEN HARMONIC IMPROVISING WAS JETTISONED.

Around 1960, two years after Ornette Coleman recorded Something Else!/, the
floodgates of free improvisation opened. Critics, whether they loved it or
loathed it, judged everything in terms of freedom. Supporters recoiled from
the merest hint of advance preparation, just as opponents welcomed the
slightest chance to connect tunes and routines with the past. The decade that
followed ushered in the accoutrements of electric funk and rock, dividing
pundits still further, while making jazz-type improvisation accessible to a
wider audience.
Musicians covered in this chapter cannot be pigeonholed, whether
stylistically or-in terms of the people they make music with. In their different
ways, Arthur Blythe, Chico Freeman and Sam Rivers branched out from what
might be called the freedom camp. During his brief period in the spotlight,
Eric Dolphy switched between freedom and familiar tunes. And nobody can
contain Roland Kirk within one or two categories. Problems of categorisation
extend to the instruments themselves. Saxophonists had already taken to
doubling on the likes of the flute, and spreading their wings in this manner
became increasingly prevalent during the 1960s and 1970s. So where critiques
of each musician covered in earlier chapters can reasonably be limited to a
saxophone or two, such restrictions make less sense here.
Many outsiders have a visual image of Eric Dolphy as the intense young
flautist captured with Chico Hamilton’s quintet in Jazz On A Summer's Day,
filmed at the 1958 Newport Festival. Growing up in Los Angeles, Dolphy
(1928-64) was destined for a career in European music before he discovered
jazz. From the start, he practised and studied obsessively to the extent that,
at the age of just 20, he was put in charge of the saxophone section in
bandleader-drummer Roy Porter’s band, the kind of straw-boss job reserved
as a rule for experienced disciplinarians.
Instead of hustling hard for gigs, Dolphy carried on practising and then
spent a couple of years with Hamilton without making much national impact,
perhaps because the group’s tight approach, at least on record, allowed little
space for individualism. But by the time he left them and settled in New York
City his reputation, at least among the cognoscenti, had rocketed.
The first of a series of albums for Prestige under his name, Outward Bound,
was recorded in April 1960 and presented as a contribution to progress. “This
is right out of the Coleman dynasty, this is the sound of tomorrow,” enthuses
the sleevenote writer, pointing out that Dolphy had met Ornette Coleman in
Los Angeles six years earlier. Later in 1960, Coleman recorded his trailblazing
Free Jazz album with the so-called “double quartet” (see the next chapter) in
which the additional frontline roles were filled by Dolphy and Freddie

CHAPTER SIXTEEN 13
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Arthur Blythe playing at The Tin Palace

in New York, 1979, with Bob Stewart
(tuba) and James Blood Ulmer (quitar).

Hubbard, Dolphy’s trumpet partner on Outward Bound. Charles Mingus, at his

highest point of both critical acclaim and public acceptance, knew Dolphy
from Los Angeles and brought him into the fold. Mingus toured Europe in the
summer of 1960 and his quintet was recorded in July at the Antibes festival.
Later that year, Dolphy recorded some classic tracks with Mingus,
including a Johnny-Hodges-on-acid ballad version of ‘Stormy Weather’.
During 1961 he often worked with John Coltrane, touring Europe and
appearing on several albums.
Saxophonists doubling instruments is nothing new, but Dolphy uniquely
achieved major status on three: alto saxophone, bass clarinet and flute. On
alto he captured more of Charlie Parker’s headlong drive and cumulative
rhythmic intensity than anyone else had, though his sound was more pliable
and closer to Ornette Coleman’s. At times, Dolphy would break the flow by
playing passages across the beat, but the crux of his inventive armoury was
the ability to zigzag the widest intervals at speed, bolstered by a belief that
any note could fit any underlying chord.
The technical backup, the fruit of all those years in the practice room, was
massive: another innovator, Evan Parker, has described Dolphy’s music as
“very much about the whole saxophone all at once, about access to any part
of an extended range at any moment”. Dolphy got the flute to talk in the
same way, if less abrasively, the wide intervals in particular effective on an
instrument that does not share the saxophone’s capacity for tonal variation.
He was once quoted as being fond of twittering on the flute to the songs of

— ow ne CHAPTER SIXTEEN
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

birds, and while he probably did not take the bass clarinet on similar field
trips, an aural link exists between some of his sounds and what one imagines
deranged flocks of geese, emus and the like might produce. The bass clarinet
had rarely been played in jazz except to add mellow orchestral colour, but
under Dolphy’s fingers often spouted a torrent of grunts and squawks in all
registers, dashed off with his usual commanding brilliance. Though he was
responsible for its surge in popularity, his many successors have concentrated

uring Chico Freeman

Chico Freeman, son of saxophonist Von largely on expanding the bass clarinet’s more house-trained sounds. Dolphy’s
Freeman, has a wide-ranging style, taking four years in the spotlight included a brief but rewarding partnership with
in the electric band Brainstorm and Booker Little that ended when the young trumpeter died in 1961. They
straightahead contemporary acoustic jazz. appeared on each other’s albums and much of their appeal was down to the
fact that, filtered through comparable technical and all-round musical skills,
the emotional buttons they pushed were complementary. Where Dolphy
wildly galumphed, Little had a plangent, yearning tone and a hesitant way of
phrasing that could seemingly transform the most elementary rhythmic pulse
into multiples of 5/4.
Max Roach’s ‘Tender Warriors’ from 1960 exploits this contrast superbly.
Among many pieces around that time inspired by racial upheavals in the US,
Roach programmed it to confront the rightness of the cause, the “tenderness”,
with the need for militant reactions. For the melancholy theme, the drummer
chose Dolphy to present it on flute. Little’s beautifully poised flights elaborate
the mood of the theme before, in one of the great opening statements,
Dolphy’s bass clarinet thrashes about like a rampaging elephant.
Dolphy’s biggest success with critics, Out To Lunch (1964), harnessed his
energy within a fairly tight yet semi-abstract format to produce his most
disciplined work, notably on bass clarinet. How far this represented the way
he might have gone is unknown: in the weeks before his death, he performed
in Europe with various expatriates and local musicians, roaring ahead on a
mixture of jazz standards and his own tunes. His influence is heard today in
the work of saxophonists as different as Arthur Blythe and Michael Hashim.
More than 30 years on, the mix of extraordinary musicianship and sheer

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‘OUT TO LUNCH!"
FREDDIE HUBBARD! BOBBY HUTCHERSON |RICHARD DAVIS| ANTHONY WILLIAMS

Eee
e

vitality makes Dolphy’s finest recordings as potent as ever. The same qualities Erie Dolphy, a genuine multi-
apply to Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1936-77); indeed, such words as _ instrumentalist, evolved distinctive
“extraordinary” and “vitality” barely do him justice. Blind from an early age, — approaches to the flute and bass clarinet,
he showed the same dedication over mastering instruments. A tenor — as well as alto saxophone. Out To Lunch is
saxophonist and flautist, he had a vision of playing three saxophones at the his finest studio-recorded album.
same time. This led him, with the help of a friendly shopkeeper, to a couple of
hybrid instruments, possibly of Spanish origin and apparently known as the
stritch and the manzello. Straight and very long, the stritch sounds more like
an alto than does the shorter and curved-bell manzello, whose sound comes
close to the soprano’s.
Having made them a physical fit with the tenor saxophone and devised all
manner of false fingerings to produce three-part harmony, Kirk could sound
like a one-man saxophone section. He continued to play the flute, adding a
nose-flute at some point, and he loved to interject the whistling sound of a
siren: later, he hung a toy xylophone from his neck and kept an enormous
gong within arm’s reach.
His solos on tenor saxophone, manzello and stritch tended to occur in that
order of frequency, the stritch being the most difficult to project because the
sound aimed straight at the floor. They were backed by an occasional riff from
the other instruments, all three of which could be used for theme-statements
and for riffing behind other musicians. He could drone on one saxophone while
improvising at speed on another. During the ‘Pedal Up’ routine on his Bright
Moments album (1973) he plays a tune and simultaneously fills in behind. If he
suddenly felt the urge to interrupt a solo by riffing for a few bars or by

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blowing the whistle, nobody could stop him. A flute passage might, or might
not, be backed by vocal noises — the result could evoke anything from the
splutter of a Hammond organ to the grinding of an amplified violin. Kirk
might associate a particular instrument with a particular tune, but he was
perfectly free to change his mind on the spot. Add the occasional songs and
outbursts of verse, and you had performances that were wholly unpredictable.
When one ignores the impact overall and concentrates on what he did on
each instrument, a virtuoso musician emerges. As a tenor saxophonist, Kirk
did not invent a style that inspired a flood of disciples, but a combination of
technique, including circular breathing, and good ears enabled him to
reproduce in his own manner anything he heard, from swing-style rhapsodies
to the rasps and high harmonics of the avant-garde. His sound was difficult to

SAM
RIVERS
LIVE

CANDID

During his short life Eric Dolphy managed classify, perhaps somewhere between Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt but
to play and record with an astonishing eminently pliable.
variety of leading jazz artists. Sam Rivers John Coltrane's music undoubtedly affected him: on the We Free Kings
has been a jazz innovator since the 1950s. album of August 1961 the title track recalls Coltrane’s treatments of ‘My
Favorite Things’ and ‘Greensleeves’, though the former had been recorded
within the year, the latter just four months previously and possibly was not
even released yet. Direct references of this kind tended to be a fleeting part of
an infinitely varied programme. A vibrant and compelling performer before
audiences, Kirk kept them in the palm of his hand whether playing, singing,
talking, haranguing or asking them to participate. Rarely heard other than as
leader, he contributed crucially to the original version of Charles Mingus’s
‘Ecclusiastics’ (1961), most noble of jazz-gospel pieces, building to the moment
when all his saxophones suddenly erupt.
His amazing musicianship was underlined when he suffered a stroke that
almost paralysed his right arm and restricted him to the use of five fingers.
Far from being put out of action, Kirk merely cut down to two saxophones,
twisted the body of the flute so that all keys were vertical, added a couple of
background musicians, and carried on as usual.
Just as some alto saxophonists focused on Charlie Parker’s approach to
the blues, so did the Texas-born tenor Booker Ervin (1930-70) take the
declamatory tonal projection of Coltrane’s late-1950s playing for a model. The
outcome was a blistering but concentrated attack that Mingus, with whom he
worked on and off for several years from 1958, exploited readily, often toward
the end of a piece to create a suitable climax, as on ‘Wednesday Night Prayer

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Meeting’ (first recorded 1959). Another saxophonist with Mingus associations,

George Adams was part of the bassist’s quintet in the mid 1970s and later co-
led a group with Mingus’s pianist Don Pullen. He also played in the Gil Evans
orchestra that included Arthur Blythe. Born in Georgia, Adams (1940-92)
doubled on flute and tenor. His essentially vertical style on tenor was tinged
with post-Coltrane sophistication and post-Ayler cries. Excellent examples of
his playing can be found on record with Evans, Mingus and Pullen.
Born in Oklahoma into a very musical family, Sam Rivers studied at the
Boston Conservatory and became part of the 1950s Boston scene. One of his
groups included drummer Tony Williams, then a teenager, who subsequently
recommended Rivers to Miles Davis for a Japanese tour and probably helped
persuade Blue Note to record him. Rivers (b. 1923) had already latched on to

freer developments; most of his albums in the 1960s — those under his own Waves (1978, above) finds Sam Rivers
name and those led by Williams, pianist Andrew Hill and vibraphonist Bobby (also pictured left) teamed with bassist
Hutcherson — fall under that category. During the 1970s he collaborated Dave Holland.
fruitfully on several occasions with bassist Dave Holland.
In much the same way as George Adams, Rivers harnesses florid
improvising and a somewhat bruising tone on tenor saxophone, qualities first
identified with Coleman Hawkins, to the cries, overtones and other expressive
devices introduced in the 1960s. A multi-instrumentalist who plays most of
the reeds, he gets a grittier sound from the soprano than do those who follow
Wayne Shorter, while his flute takes off in the manner of Dolphy.
A leader for at least 30 years — though he was happy to join one of Dizzy
Gillespie’s last touring orchestras and has played with the saxophone tribute-
band Roots — Rivers ranks high among those creating music at the junction
where freedom meets preset structures. For example, in a rehearsal orchestra
he runs that plays his compositions, solos are surrounded by all manner of
riffs and counter-melodies — even if you could never confuse the results with
the average Count Basie score. Many of the younger forward-looking
musicians who revere him play in this orchestra, which is named after the
Studio Rivbea that Rivers, long a byword for self-help, set up with his wife as
a venue where musicians could perform and study.
The careers of Chico Freeman and Arthur Blythe often cross, not least in
all-star groups such as The Leaders and Roots. Some would say they both
inched toward the centre from a revolutionary start, though that is borne out
as much by association as by what they actually play. Freeman’s father Von

135 CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MERCURY STERE

roland igri|

The unique and utterly overwhelming

Rahsaan Roland Kirk could play three
saxophones at once. He also invented a
totally new way of playing the flute. Only Freeman, relatively unsung because he doesn’t join name bands and rarely
those who personally saw him in action leaves the Windy City, represents the cream of the tenor saxophonists linked
ever fully experienced the impact of this to Chicago, along with Gene Ammons and Johnny Griffin.
extraordinary artist. The musical background of Chico Freeman (b. 1949) includes a period
studying under Muhal Richard Abrams, as well as gigging with other members
of the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians
(AACM) and with Sun Ra. That suggests at least a toehold in the avant-garde,
but he has always used recognisable structures. On tenor Freeman’s tone,
rounded and flecked with fur, has a lightness of touch that hardly fits the
progressive stereotype. A liking for the higher registers probably derives from
a youthful admiration for John Coltrane, but the actual sound produced veers
more toward that of mid-period Stan Getz. One can describe his approach
very loosely as combining the Getz tone with Dexter Gordon’s phrasing.
Whether or not The Leaders began in the mid 1980s as a concept band to
please some promoter, it lasted for several years, long enough to develop a
repertory of its own. Freeman, who usually shared frontline duties with
Blythe and trumpeter Lester Bowie, decided to cut down the multi-
instruments that had been a feature of his earlier groups, putting the tenor
out front followed by the soprano, from which he gets a pure, pellucid sound.
Other instruments, including alto saxophone, bass clarinet and flute, turn
up more often in Brainstorm, the fusion group in which Freeman experiments

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with the latest electronic gear, sometimes modulating the performance from a
central control. Saxmen often whoop it up in such a context, but Freeman’s
tone retains its roundness and there’s scarcely a rasp heard. He is also a
member of Sam Rivers’ Rivbea All-Star Orchestra, and is on their two albums.
Arthur Blythe (b. 1940) is from the West Coast, a native of Los Angeles.
Before moving East he worked with pianist Horace Tapscott, the leading
exponent around LA of the newer jazz forms. On Tapscott’s “The Giant Is
Awakened’, recorded in 1969, the high-register cries from Blythe’s alto
saxophone are definitely post-Albert Ayler, though his tone already had a
distinctively keening edge that would become pronounced under more
orthodox conditions, simply because one expects it less. By the time he
recorded under his own name in 1977 he was already a member of a Gil Evans
orchestra that, with David Sanborn also on hand, offered two of the most
striking alto sounds in the business.
Some of Blythe’s finest albums, currently unobtainable, were recorded for
the Columbia label, beginning with Lenox Avenue Breakdown (1979). It may
have been under pressure from Columbia that for a time he gradually moved
toward a more commercial approach, perhaps with a view to becoming that
label’s Sanborn. His sound is creamy, more Johnny Hodges than Charlie
Parker, but with the occasional gritty edge and with a piercing cry at the top
end. The way it sings and sweeps has attracted violinist Regina Carter, who
regards Blythe as a modern counterpart to Ben Webster and Paul Gonsalves,
the saxophone players whose soulfulness, she says, particularly influenced her
approach. Blythe can negotiate the kind of intervals Eric Dolphy introduced
on the alto, though the tone is shriller. A reason why he and Chico Freeman
make so compelling a team may, in fact, be the sense of contrast, with
Freeman more relaxed and always prepared to underplay.
Few have developed so consistently with the times as Charlie Mariano (b. — In addition to saxophones and flute, Kirk
1923). He began in the 1950s as a Parker-inspired altoist, putting over carried on stage a selection of whistles,
Parker’s more passionate phrases with a slightly sweeter tone. By the time he sirens and the like. Sometimes he would
starred on Mingus’s Black Saint And The Sinner Lady (1963) the Parker pass these out among the audience and
influence had been thoroughly assimilated and bebop left well behind. Since — invite people to join in.
then, Mariano has added the soprano and worked with musicians in Europe
and Asia, being one of the first to bring different musical traditions together.
Whatever the context, his passionate commitment always shines through.
James Spaulding (b. 1937) has stayed in demand as a sideman through his
versatile professionalism as an alto saxophonist doubling on flute. He
appeared on several Blue Note albums in the 1960s and has been part of
David Murray’s various projects, including the big-band. Spaulding is of the
post-Parker generation and plays long lines with a slightly rough-edged sound
in a manner that sometimes recalls Dolphy.
Greatly admired by his peers, Joe Henderson (b. 1937) finally got to a
wider public when his album of Billy Strayhorn tunes Lush Life (1992) topped
Billboard’s jazz chart and the unaccompanied title tune won a Grammy. It is
a rare example of a concept album that draws the best out of the performer.
Henderson’s lyrical side has rarely been so well presented; when his tenor
eases into “Blood Count’ at the top of the range, it could almost be a soprano.
While Henderson, Eric Dolphy and, in his own way, Roland Kirk stand
out among the saxophonists in this chapter as stylists leaving identifiable
imprints on those who came after, most of the others have contributed
significantly as leaders of groups ranging from free to fusion.

137 CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 ALYN SHIPTON ORNETTE COLEMAN
ORNETTE COLEMAN BROUGHT ABOUT A REVOLUTIONARY
CHANGE IN JAZZ BY ABANDONING THE FIXED ELEMENTS OF
HARMONY, PITCH AND FORM WHICH EVEN HIS MOST RADICAL
PREDECESSORS HAD ACCEPTED AS VITAL. HIS EXAMPLE
HELPED LAUNCH THE ENTIRE FREE-JAZZ MOVEMENT.

Dewey Redman (left, on tenor) and From the time he founded his revolutionary quartet in the late 1950s, Ornette
Ornette Coleman (alto) on stage at the © Coleman had an irreversible effect on jazz and on saxophone playing. He was
Newport Jazz festival, 1971. | not only a prolific composer. He also introduced improvisation without chord
changes, and solos in which the length of his melodic material, and the pitch
at which it was played, could be changed on the spur of the moment.
Although much of his music was erroneously dubbed free jazz after the
title of his controversial 1960 double-quartet album, Ornette Coleman’s work
of that time was far less “free” than the “new thing” movement of the mid
1960s that followed it. Both in his early quartet that tncluded bassist Charlie
Haden and drummer Billy Higgins and his later recordings with his fusion
group, known as Prime Time, Coleman never abandoned the related ideas of

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 138

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

metre and of playing in time. Nor did he abandon clear, hummable melodies,
which he is capable of producing in profusion. Despite the apparent chaos of
the simultaneous playing of the eight musicians on Free Jazz, there is still a
discernible theme, solos that emerge from the ensemble, walking basslines, and
a clear sense of beat in the drumming.
From the time of that album and in almost all his work since, Coleman’s
changes to jazz, both practical and theoretical, revolve around the idea of
setting aside a conventional harmonic framework, and replacing it with
something else. Because of this, many of his early colleagues, such as pianist
Paul Bley with whom he played in 1959, have identified Coleman as the
missing link between bebop and the totally free improvisation of new-thing
players like Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler. In the list of jazz innovators, he
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belongs somewhere alongside Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis Ornette Coleman’s early records kick-
and John Coltrane. The world has been both slow and reluctant to recognise started the free-jazz movement and, in the
this, as it was not until the 1990s that he received most of his crop of words of the 1959 album title, set the shape
honorary degrees and the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award. Yet since of jazz to come.
the mid 1950s Coleman has been changing the way we listen to jazz and
redefining collective improvisation. Nevertheless, because of his radicalism he
divides listeners into staunch enthusiasts and equally trenchant opponents.
John McDonough summed up 30-odd years of hostile criticism in Down
Beat in 1992 by describing Coleman’s music (and that of those who followed
him) as “a counterculture, separate and apart from the main body of jazz
activity.... Free jazz, with its ideological subtexts of black liberation, third-
world primitivism, and spiritualism, continues to exist in the outer world of
20th century eccentrics.”
Turn that apparently negative criticism on its head, and it neatly
encapsulates several things that are key to Coleman’s art.
First, his music grew out of his experiences in his hometown of Fort
Worth, a cattle-producing centre amid the deeply segregated society of 1940s
Texas, where he had been born on March 9th 1930. In high school he played
with several musicians who-later became long-term associates, including
saxophonist Dewey Redman and drummer Charles Moffett. With them he
discovered jazz — from the swing era to the first bebop discs by Charlie
Parker, whose work Coleman admired.
But his earliest professional jobs were performing the dominant popular
music of the day in his part of the South: R&B. He played this earthy dance

139 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 CHAPTER SHVENTEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

music over a solid backbeat in bands such as those of Pee Wee Crayton, Silas
Green and Clarence Samuels; it provided one of the few escape routes open to
African-Americans who aspired beyond Southern poverty and manual labour.
Such music became a potent symbol of the black liberation movement so
derided by McDonough. Coleman’s playing has always remained charged with
the intensity of the blues he played in his formative years, overcoming the
deep-rooted racial divide of his home state.
Second, Coleman’s preoccupation with aspects of African music and
spiritual qualities drew him in 1973 to Morocco, where he recorded with The
Master Musicians Of Joujouka, a Sufi-influenced community of former court
musicians whose trance-like sounds of drums and shawms directly influenced
Coleman’s fusion band Prime Time.

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Third, despite outward appearances of eccentricity, Coleman has from his

early bearded appearance to his later self-designed clothes and _ hats
rationalised his music into an impressive — if daunting — intellectual
framework which he calls “harmolodics”. He chooses to express some of these
ideas in an elliptical, often allegorical, manner, but it would be a mistake to
see his metaphorical descriptions of his art as mere eccentricity, as they often
contain profound insights.
Starting with the writings of Gunther Schuller, who began analysing
Coleman’s work shortly after meeting him at the 1959 Lenox Summer School
of Music in Massachusetts, he has always attracted champions every bit as
defensive as McDonough is critical. Yet, even for his apologists, Coleman’s
music presents problems. It is not easy to analyse it in the normal way.
Melodic phrases change length within performances and underlying harmonies
shift erratically. With typical candour, Coleman himself once said: “I would
prefer it if musicians would play my tunes with different changes as they take
a new chorus, so there'd be all the more variety in the performance.”
This readiness to accept almost instant change, and a commitment to
improvisation over Gomposition, has been a consistent part of Coleman’s
musical philosophy since he worked out his own approach to music in 1950s
Los Angeles.
The legend — enhanced by the fact that, like Bob Dylan, Coleman has told
his story in various slightly different versions as the years have gone by — is
that he taught himself to read music and to finger the saxophone, and in
doing so incorporated some basic errors into his understanding of musical

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 14
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ornette Coleman’s long-term musical

partner Don Cherry, seen here playing the
strange “pocket trumpet” which he
preferred. The sound is the same as that of
a conventional trumpet.

theory. He believed that A, rather than C, was the home note of the basic
scale, relying for guidance on the alphabet rather than the piano keyboard,
and the habits he learned then stayed with him.
Playing in those R&B bands on the road from the late 1940s onward did
not make great demands on his theoretical knowledge, although as he was
interested in bebop, and heard things in his head in terms of his own ideas of
scales and harmony, his occasional opportunities to improvise a chorus or two
produced some strange results. He was more than once restrained from
playing his wild variety of solos. His long-haired, bearded appearance — a
hippie before his time — did not win him friends in the segregated South
either, and at one point he was badly beaten up in Louisiana while on tour. In
due course he settled in Los Angeles, working as a lift operator among other
things, and developed his own approach to music.
“After three years or so in Los Angeles, learning how to play bebop,” he
told me, “I realised I didn’t have to transpose to be with the piano. I found I
could use notes in a way that was equal to using chords, but if | used notes as
chords without them being chords, I was no longer restricted to doing
sequences.... | write music that sounds like inspirational ideas. A melody may
have structures that express themselves at other levels, not just a single line
of music — but I also express a musical philosophy that if I’m playing with
someone else and they can do better, they have the right to change it.” The
underlying point is central to Coleman’s importance to jazz improvisation. If
you abandon chord sequences as the basis for improvising and use melodic
fragments instead, and if you play those fragments at whatever length and

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 CHAPTER SHVENTEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

speed feel right, even if the underlying pulse never changes, you have the
essence of what Coleman began to explore in earnest in the mid 1950s in Los
Angeles with trumpeter Don Cherry, drummer Billy Higgins, pianist Walter
Norris and bassist Don Payne.
When The Modern Jazz Quartet’s pianist John Lewis heard them, he knew
that their 1958 debut recording Something Else! was taking jazz in a new
direction. He encouraged Coleman and Cherry to come to the Lenox school,
and soon afterwards along with Higgins and their new bassist Charlie Haden
they moved East and played for some time at a club on the edge of the seedy
Bowery area in New York, The Five Spot. Their legendary residency there,
plus the albums they recorded for Atlantic like The Shape Of Jazz To Come
(1959/60), suddenly propelled Coleman into the limelight at the age of 29.
Between 1959 and 1962 Coleman’s quartet recorded numerous albums,
appeared frequently in New York, and created definitive versions of several of
his compositions including the plaintive ‘Lonely Woman’, the bluesy
‘Ramblin’, the Latin dance ‘Una Muy Bonita’ and the lyrical ‘Peace’. Integral
to the group’s discs was the telepathic interplay between Coleman's alto and
Don Cherry’s pocket cornet, and the equally close-knit partnership between
Haden and Higgins (and then, after Higgins had his cabaret card revoked for
drug offences, between Haden and Ed Blackwell). Toward the end of the
Atlantic sequence, Coleman also recorded on tenor saxophone, the instrument
that had been the mainstay of his shortlived R&B career.
Whether he was using alto or tenor, his 1959-62 work with his quartet is
unlike that of any previous saxophonist in jazz. Most noticeable about
Coleman’s own playing from this period is that although he clearly adopted
some aspects of Charlie Parker’s playing — impressive speed, complex linear
phrasing and a trenchant, bluesy tone — he added ingredients of his own.
These included the introduction of microtonality (playing on pitches that lie
between the conventional notes of the scale or keys of a piano) and long,
Composer-conductor-critic Gunther wailing, vocalised phrases that seem to come direct from the plantation ring-
Schuller (above) composed ‘Abstractions’ shouts of the earliest African-Americans. Sometimes the debt to Parker was
for Ornette Coleman and string quartet. explicit, as in the piece called “Bird Food’ from Change Of The Century (1959),
about which Coleman wrote at the time: “Bird would have understood us. He
would have approved our aspiring beyond what we inherited.”
Not everyone who heard the quartet understood it. Pianist Paul Bley told
me that the group’s unorthodoxy, underlined by the fact that it opened at the
Five Spot opposite the very conventional Jazztetof Benny Golson and Art
Farmer, “struck fear into the heart of the average world-famous jazz musician
walking the streets of New York”. Confronted by this quartet that had failed
to pay its dues on the New York scene, and which had turned up from the
West bristling with new ideas, musicians from Miles Davis to Charles Mingus
decried the music, while the older generation like Roy Eldridge came to listen
and went away shaking their heads.
Nevertheless, the band, however revolutionary, did not, as one might have
expected, appeal to the young black audiences of Harlem so much as to a
white intellectual elite. Figures like the conductor and composer Leonard
Bernstein were regulars in Coleman’s audiences. As they went on to appear at
other Manhattan venues like The Village Vanguard and The Village Gate,
Coleman’s quartet drew further admirers from the classical world, including
Virgil Thomson and Marc Blitzstein. The critical controversy stirred up by the
band ultimately became a dialogue between warring critical factions, with

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 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

opponents like Down Beat’s John McDonough ranged against supporters such
as Nat Hentoff and Martin Williams.
Those who did understand what Coleman was getting at found his music
challenging. Gunther Schuller, for example, wrote one of his classical-meets-
jazz “third stream” compositions, ‘Abstractions’, for Coleman and a string
quartet. In it, Coleman’s unusual pitching and off-centre phrasing was backed
by a harshly atonal score, Just as Bley and his colleagues had seen Coleman as
the missing link between bebop and free jazz, Schuller saw him as a means of
combining classical avant-garde techniques with imaginative improvisation.
Coleman himself recognised the possibilities for developing such ideas, and
after briefly taking lessons from Schuller has consistently produced symphonic
and chamber-music compositions.
A combination of drug problems and lack of consistent well-paid work led
Coleman’s quartet to go through some personnel changes in 1962, and the
group ended up as a trio with drummer Charles Moffett and bassist David
Izenzon toward the end of the year. Despite an enforced lay-off from late 1962
until the spring of 1965, when Coleman’s insistence only to play for a much
higher fee backfired and left him without work, this trio was equally as
creative as the quartet with Cherry, Haden and Higgins.
During his lay-off, Coleman taught himself to play violin and trumpet, and
his mixture of intuition and autodidactism led to a highly original and
innovative approach to both instruments. Nevertheless, he continued to
specialise mainly on alto saxophone, and on writing. With Izenzon’s virtuoso
bass, played both arco and pizzicato, and Moffett’s abstract, colouristic
drumming, the trio achieved some extraordinary textures in its work,
beautifully exemplified by its extended series of sets that were recorded for
Blue Note at Stockholm’s Golden Circle club in late 1965. These typified
Coleman’s mixture of ballads, memorable original themes and aggressive,
energetic soloing on his new instruments.
In the mid 1960s Coleman based himself in a building on Prince Street in
lower Manhattan called the Artists’ House where he could combine rehearsal,
recording and performance with a creative workshop atmosphere, within the
tradition of “loft jazz” that was being established at the time. Problems with
the neighbourhood, the authorities and finances led him to give up the
attempt in due course, but he later re-established his studio and headquarters
in a similar community setting in the centre of Harlem, near 125th Street
Station, where it has continued into the 21st century.
However, during the first Artists’ House period his band mutated again —
first when he brought his nine-year-old son Denardo into the studio to record
with himself and Charlie Haden, and then in 1968 when he briefly drew into
the line-up drummer Elvin Jones and bassist Jimmy Garrison (who had
briefly worked with Coleman before). These two musicians had worked with
John Coltrane until a year or so before Coltrane’s death in 1967, and together
with saxophonist Dewey Redman they made up one of Coleman’s more
impressive recording bands, producing such classics as ‘Broadway Blues’ and
‘Round Trip’ (both on New York Is Now, 1968).
The 1960s also saw Coleman trying his hand at different types of
composition, including a piece for wind quintet first performed in Britain, and
subsequently his full orchestral suite Skies Of America which he recorded in
1972 with the London Symphony Orchestra. This last piece brought together
his melodic talent with a compositional style that created textures by

14 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

juxtaposing blocks of thematic material for each section of the orchestra in

different keys or pitches, mixed with his own passionate improvisation.
Similar thinking lay behind the creation of his rock fusion band Prime Time in
the 1970s, where the trance-like repetitive rhythms of Joujouka underpinned
some of the pieces by this unconventional group with two guitars and two
drummers. Dancing In Your Head (recorded 1973-76), one of the first
Ornette Coleman (opposite) continues to be recordings by Prime Time, takes a movement called ‘The Good Life’ from
an active and progressive force in jazz after Skies Of America and re-works it into the new instrumentation and setting as
four decades of innovation. ‘Theme From A Symphony’. Coleman did much the same kind of thing on his
1987 recording In All Languages on which the title track is interpreted both
by Prime Time and by his original quartet with Haden, Cherry and Higgins.
From the time of his late-1950s work with Paul Bley, Coleman had seldom
played with a pianist. The initial response of many critics was to point out
that having no chordal instrument made Coleman’s rejection of conventional
harmonic sequences much easier, but these critics were confounded: first, by
the way he used other instruments — from the bass of David Izenzon to full
string sections, and from the guitars of Charles Ellerbee and Bern Nix to the
Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia — to substitute for the piano’s harmonic
function; and second, when he introduced pianist, Dave Bryant into the line-
up of his electric band Prime Time.
Coleman’s collaboration with Pat Metheny on the 1985 album Song X
mixed some anarchic tracks with others in which Metheny’s guitar lines are
strongly harmonic. In the 1990s, pianist Geri Allen joined the acoustic quartet
he put together with bassist Charnette Moffett (son of Charles) and his son
Denardo on drums; Allen has produced the most testing exploration so far of
how to integrate the chordal and harmonic functions of the piano with linear
improvisations that pick up Coleman’s own melodic lines. His most vital work
of the very late 1990s was a duo with yet another pianist, Joachim Kuhn, who
has subsequently continued to develop Allen’s pioneering work of creating a
role for the piano in Coleman’s regular quartet.
Coleman’s own reasons for using the piano sparingly over the years are
very simple. “Most jazz pianists play in a ‘pop’ style,” he says. “That’s to say
they play chords as you would do for a singer. And, without sounding
degrading, they’re always put in the situation to be support. None of the
pianists I use play like that. Dave Bryant plays the way he conceives
harmolodic music, fitting in with two guitars, two basses and two drummers.
And Joachim Kuhn plays in a style that’s almost orchestral in the way he
improvises. With him the chordal structure is there, but much freer than in a
set sequence — it’s almost a new format.”
On their duo album Colors, recorded in Leipzig, Coleman and Kuhn meet
as equals. Kuhn is representative of a European tradition of radical
improvisation, while Coleman takes on something of a symbolic role as the
man to whom many East German musicians like Kuhn looked to typify
concepts of freedom during the Cold War. Kuhn once said to me that he
thought that life itself was an improvisation — and this is a sentiment with
which Coleman heartily agrees.
“The word improvise is supposed to mean something that’s not there that
you bring there,” he says. “In jazz, it’s when a person can change his will and
thought at the moment he wants to do it. The same 12 notes support all kinds
of different performances. There must be something in those 12 notes that lets
each individual be free.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
~ aam mM w | x SE VENTEEN
 STEVE DAY FREE JAZZ
FREE JAZZ IS AN INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON, WITH MANY
LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS. IT IS ALSO A COMMUNAL MUSIC,
DEPENDING AS IT DOES ON SHARED SENSIBILITY AND THE
CLOSE INTERPLAY OF SEVERAL INDIVIDUALS. FREE JAZZ HAS
ITS GREAT NAMES AND INFLUENTIAL FIGURES, BUT IT IS
CONSTANTLY CHANGING.

FREE JAZZ
They fished him out from the New York Hudson River on November 25th
1970, dead and waterlogged. As far as anybody can really ascertain, he could
have been in the cold, dank, muddy water for almost a month. Did he jump
or was he pushed? No one is quite certain how Albert Ayler came to end up in
the river at the age of 33. He had his problems like anybody else — or maybe

S He SSS
not like anybody else.
Many people have tried to predict the death of jazz. Albert Ayler, the man
who personified a new-found freedom for the tenor saxophone, died a short
ORNETTE time prior to November 25th, but the music did not. Both the manner of

COLEMAN~ Ayler’s death and the surrounding circumstances speak volumes about how far
jazz had come in the 50 years since someone, somewhere decided to put a
label on this “race” music. Here’s the obituary: “Albert Ayler, an early
exponent of ‘free’ jazz.”
ATLANTIC 1364
TULL doen rvareny SPECTRUM
Freedom has a cost. These facts still remain hazy, like the dawn over
Brooklyn. One way or another, Ayler paid the ultimate price.
Free Jazz (1960) threw down a challenge The meaning of the phrase “free jazz” has often been defined on the basis
to established ideas of form in jazz. of conjecture and disinformation, mixed within the socio-political struggle of
African-Americans. How to catch a promise of equality from a country that
spoke of fulfilling dreams yet dished up nightmares in the shape of the pointed
hats of the Ku-Klux Klan? Even worse, in the 1960s came the outright
censorship of black America. Think about it. Malcolm X. Know the name?
But what did he say? In the so-called land of the free, free jazz was as much
about connecting jazz to a people’s demand for civil rights as any accurate
translation of the music. Just as the words of the old spiritual declare “let my
people go”, so the musicians of the barely defined “free jazz scene” in the
post-Kennedy US were also blowing out a sound that said “let our music go”.
Ornette Coleman, composer and alto saxophone player extraordinaire,
recorded his double-quartet session entitled Free Jazz for Atlantic Records just
before Christmas 1960. Whether Coleman actually wanted to hang his music
on the title “free jazz” is a moot point. Whichever way it was, those two
words struck a chord with the times. After Coleman came Albert Ayler,
Jimmy Lyons, Dewey Redman, Frank Lowe, David S Ware, Charles Gayle:
the tip of the lip ofa long, glorious list of American saxophone players who
were to redefine the art of jazz improvisation by getting “outside” the rules of
music. Currently in Europe, in different ways, the saxophones of Paul
Dunmall and John Butcher are doing much the same thing.
Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler: it’s like the splitting of an atom.
Coleman came from Fort Worth, Texas, born in 1930. There was little cash
but his mother still bought him a saxophone at a time when the sensible thing

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 14
 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

\\)

SPIRITUAL CNIT
to do would have been to buy something sensible. There was no one in The music of Albert Ayler (left) drew on
Coleman’s immediate family who knew much about saxophones except his many non-jazz influences, including folk
cousin James Jordan, and he was not immediately available. So Ornette learnt and brass bands. His album Spiritual
things his own way, the hard way. Unity (1964) contains a particularly
The jazz came literally free of theory. Initially the young experimenter did attractive melody, entitled ‘Ghosts’.
not transpose keys, but instead followed a melodic line “dancing in his head”
and took it to wherever it felt right (or left) to take it. Replace conventional
harmony with a clash of colours and that comes close to the spot where
Coleman went, to the very point where “clash” becomes its own harmony. He
was later to refer to this process as “harmolodics”. Part of the genius was in
preserving initial playing methods and not simply throwing them out as soon
as right and wrong were pointed out as roadsigns.
Ayler was six years younger than his kindred spirit in Texas. His father,
Edward Ayler of Cleveland, Ohio, was a man with a musical bent, his
principal instruments sax and violin. He encouraged both his sons to play
saxophone. Don Ayler later switched to trumpet at his brother’s request.
The transfigurations of Ornette and Albert have a lot in common. As
young men, both were involved in the early shakedown on R&B. Although
they each abandoned the confines of conventional musical theory, they
nonetheless quite individually bit on melody. Listen to Coleman’s ‘Lonely
Woman’ (1959) and ‘Long Time No See’ (1970): here is a musician grafting
alto sax improvisations from out of the line of the melody as if touching the
tip of a tail that can simply flick between all possibilities. As the music
modulates, so too does the mind. The same can be said for Albert Ayler. Try

147 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 CHAPTER HIGHTEEN

TOO-MUCH

fn Lowe

Frank Lowe (right), although less well- — Ayler’s best-known composition, the declamatory ‘Ghosts’, based on a hint of
known than many other free improvisers, nursery rhyme. It does not stay still, nor does it remain fixed in key. There is
has stuck to his own highly personal style. a switch from innocent simplicity to a blistering spontaneous study that is
His 1978 album Doctor Too Much also only possible from one who has lived and breathed beyond adolescence. In
features Don Cherry and trombonist 1881 the Norwegian dramatist Henrich Ibsen wrote a play also entitled Ghosts,
Grachan Moncur III. — exploring similar ideas of knowledge over innocence.
Ayler’s ‘Ghosts’ is stripped-down danger. He recorded the theme a number
of times, but the key version is the one from 1964 on Spiritual Unity. At this
time both Ayler and Coleman were working in trio settings, the saxophone
perched on the top of a triangle, underpinned by double bass and drums. In
each case the triangle can suddenly turn, to leave one of the other musicians
at the top of things. ‘Ghosts’ is like the sound of a sob, so far down it is like
listening to a man climbing back inside himself. I.do not understand why
John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ has taken on classic status while ‘Ghosts’ is
left in the margins of this music. Gary Peacock’s double bass is free of any
central tonality, constantly circling the horn and catching the movement
rather than the note. Strange how things work out. Since the early 1980s
Peacock has been bassist with pianist Keith Jarrett’s “Standards Trio”. In
jazz terms, Jarrett’s outfit is about as far away from the A For Ayler band as
it is possible to get, yet inasmuch as they are both trios it is possible to draw
some comparisons. Not right here; there is more in this than meets the ear.
American names: Sam Rivers (b. 1930) was, and is, one of the most
adventurous pioneers of free-jazz saxophone and flute. He was also important
because in 1970 he became one of the first musicians to open a New York loft,
Studio Rivbea. A loft was a space, used for concerts, rehearsals, recording and
domestic life. Here were musicians taking charge of their own destiny.
It is easy for individual stories to get hidden in their own headlines. Archie
Shepp’s tenor saxophone is often pegged to the legend of John Coltrane,
particularly the Ascension session (1965). Shepp’s story, though, goes way
beyond even that intoxicating heart-of-darkness date. Shepp (b. 1937) also
plunged his depth-charge tenor into Cecil Taylor’s 1960/61 recordings. There is
a fragile kind of thunder on the various versions of the track ‘Air’, a
performance that even now sounds like a very deep breath. He also formed
the New York Contemporary Five with Ornette Coleman’s trumpet partner
Don Cherry and alto and tenor ace John Tchicai.
David Murray (b. 1955) is the man most commentators would identify as
the saxophonist who picked up a tenor and blew a legacy for Albert Ayler.

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 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER HIGHTEEN

Dewey Redman Ed Blackwell

His music at this point inhabits a broad church — a long way from the river Three contemporary saxophone leaders:
and the ghosts of Spiritual Unity. Murray’s saxophone has been through a Dewey Redman, Roscoe Mitchell and
number of styles over the years, from funk to Duke Ellington to freedom. This —_Britain’s Paul Dunmall.
is music that needs to travel a distance.
One name from somewhere else: Joe Harriott (1928-73) was born in
Kingston, Jamaica. He arrived in London, England, in the late 1950s with
alto saxophone ready for some action. He is often referred to as a “free”
player. As the 1960s started swinging Harriott did something different: he
produced two recordings, Free Form (1960) and Abstract (1961) which, despite
the titles, contained very technically tight music. Harriott was an
experimenter with structure as well as being an agile soloist. Listening to his
music now is like hearing seeds being sown. The tragedy is that he rarely got
the chance to develop his ideas. He shared little in common with Albert Ayler
except for the fact that his death in 1973 came way too early. As with Ayler,
there were not enough people listening.
Take from the shelf any book about the history of jazz and there is a
myriad of names: individuals who, at different stages in the jazz continuum,
have seemingly moved the music on. This chapter is no different. Free jazz
too has famous names. But there is something else taking place.
Free jazz is also communal. Perhaps unlike any other strand of the music,
the response from the free scene has been to divide up into collectives. There
is a clear parallel here with early jazz groups led by people like King Oliver
and Kid Ory where improvisation emerged out of the ensemble rather than
from the playing of a soloist. The music becomes a family affair, interactive
with a measure of equality and, like any family, argument.
As free jazz became a loose concept for creative musicians in America in
the 1960s, important group projects were formed: the Association for the
Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Chicago; Black Artists Group
(BAG) in St Louis; Jazz Composers Orchestra Association in New York.
During the same period, across the Atlantic, a number of flexible
groupings emerged in Europe. In England the Spontaneous Music Ensemble
was based at the Little Theatre Club, London. It was not so much a band as a
co-operative, albeit at first centred on drummer John Stevens, alto saxophone
maestro Trevor Watts and trombonist Paul Rutherford. In Holland the
Instant Composers Pool came together, involving a wide-ranging set of
individuals including Han Bennink (drums), Misha Mengelberg (piano) and
Willem Breuker (tenor saxophone). A German scene also developed, fuelled in

149 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Fire Music was an apt description of the

youthful work of Archie Shepp (right).
He went on to explore other areas of the
jazz tradition, including the blues. part by the formation in 1966 of the Globe Unity Orchestra to play the Berlin
Jazztage, then nurtured by Jost Gebers’ FMP Records and the Total Music
Meeting concert series.
From out of these events tenor saxophonist Peter Brotzmann (b. 1941)
came to prominence. In 1968 he recorded his seminal small-group blow-out,
Machine Gun. Twelve months later rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix was to lacerate
a live recording at the Fillmore East, New York, with the same title. Though
the two pieces have nothing to do with each other, they share a need to break
from performance expectations. Where Hendrix had his sights still fixed on a
form of space-age blues, Brétzmann’s line of enquiry had already shaken off
every vestige of Americana. (Albert Ayler would have recognised a connection,
but now there was nothing left of his spiritual concerns, nor anything of the
old street fighting blues. Peter Brétzmann would later record a tribute to
Ayler titled Die Like A Dog in 1993. Sad but true.) I have never felt
comfortable with the Brétzmann Machine Gun. We were never supposed tov.
The fact remains that Brétzmann took the saxophone to a new place with
that recording, and there is never any going back.
Around the same time as things in Europe were hotting up, a number of
the new breed of free players in sweet home Chicago were itching to travel.
Roscoe Mitchell had already met another reeds player, Joseph Jarman, who
shared his passion for multiple horns. The free scene in Chicago had been

CHEAP AT Eh, HIGHTEEN 15

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

invigorated by the formation of the AACM under the direction of Muhal

Richard Abrams. Mitchell and Jarman made a couple of classic individual
recordings under their own names (try Sound and Song For respectively — both
1966) before coming together as The Art Ensemble with trumpeter
extraordinaire Lester Bowie, bassist Malachi Favors and original drummer
Phillip Wilson. By the time they made their sojourn to Paris in 1969 Wilson
had left, to be replaced the following year by Famoudou Don Moye, who was
also over in France sampling what the old world knew about new things. They
added “Of Chicago” to their collective name, and the rest is history.
Roscoe Mitchell (b. 1940) is a consummate player of saxophones of all
types and sizes. In 1997 he produced a double-CD solo session, Sound Songs,
which brought together every shape, colour and contrast that had been found
in his playing in the preceding 30 years. It uses overdubbing on about half the
tracks, with ‘Let’s Get Ready To Rumble’ opening the event like a grand
excursion into pure sound becoming song. It is a different kind of beauty and,
as Ornette Coleman once said, “Beauty is a rare thing.”
Joseph Jarman (b. 1937) also continues to crease up the detail of music. In
1999 he recorded with violinist Leroy Jenkins, another former AACM
compatriot, and the New York-based pianist Myra Melford. The result, Equal
Interest, has an extremely wide range of musical influences. Jarman gets to
play flute and double-reed oboe as well as alto. On the track ‘B’Pale Night’
his alto seemingly moves across the scored motif as if proposing a new
composition, floating off on a line that circles the violin like a bird in flight.
Two other exceptional saxophone players who left the United States for
foreign shores around the same time as the Art Ensemble were Anthony
Braxton and Steve Lacy. Braxton (b. 1945) had been a member of the AACM
in Chicago. He had already recorded the session For Alto (1968), a
magnificent, hungry solo discourse drawing on ideas initially laid down by Joe Harriott, the great Jamaican
Eric Dolphy, who five years previously had produced smaller-scale, solo alto innovator, with drummer Bobby Orr at the
improvisations built on standard song forms such as ‘God Bless The Child’. Richmond jazz festival in 1963.
Braxton, however, was a marathon man. For Alto went the full distance
and beyond. Unlike the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Braxton’s initial stay in
Europe was not long, but it set the stage for repeat visits. In 1974 he recorded
a stark live session with British guitarist Derek Bailey, First Duo Concert. By
some mere oversight on the part of the general worldwide music press,
absolute classic status has not been accorded this meeting of very different
minds. I assume it is only a matter of time. Over the years Braxton has gone
on to structure his playing way beyond the confines of freedom. Yet here is a
radical dialogue between him and an Englishman who has completely detuned
his guitar and himself into a left-field position that no longer recognises jazz,
free or otherwise. Here can be heard a master musician still trailing all the
colours of the jazz continuum. In the end it is not something that can be
described. Hear it! Anthony Braxton is beyond my pocket. He has an output
faster than fireworks. I keep trying to catch up with him. It does not matter.
All I know is that his recent Braxton House recordings remain provocative
territory; music that is free not because it comes un-preconceived but because
it is played by a musician who has invented a personal vocabulary of his own.
Steve Lacy (b. 1934) was different. Born in New York, he went to Rome
and then Paris at the same time as the others. He stayed. His sole saxophone
was the straight horn, the soprano. Sidney Bechet had been the original
exponent of the instrument and Lacy’s own first jazz gigs had been with

151 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 CHAPTER HKIGHTEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

EVAN PARKER
saxophone solos

Two giants of the west-European free

music scene: Britain’s Evan Parker
(sleeve, above) and Germany’s Peter
Brétzmann (right).

Dixieland-style bands. Lacy then flipped. In 1957 he started playing with

Cecil Taylor, the pianist who literally tore up tradition and fed it back
through a new vision that few others could see at the time.
Lacy went on to blow with Thelonious Monk, and also played a short gig
with Ornette Coleman in a double quartet that was never recorded. Lacy and
Braxton share a lot in common. Both have discographies longer than this
chapter. Both are meticulous in detail, having reputations for writing complex
formal scores. And, of course, both can apply an individual, phenomenal
technical conception to the art of working a saxophone without preconceived
structures. Quite independently of one another, they have experienced the
need to play totally spontaneous free saxophone improvisations with Evan
Parker (b. 1944), arguably the greatest living exponent of the form.
Lacy and Parker recorded as a duo on a session entitled Chirps in 1985.
They followed this up with a trio recording for the same label in 1994 on
which they were joined by a genuine English eccentric, Lol Coxhill (b. 1932), a
soprano player of enormous resources whose generous, positive sound is so
often under-reported. So I report: the trio date is called Three Blokes, a
terrible title for a beautifully-recorded, unadorned three-soprano encounter

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 15 no
 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

'
t
:

i4
\{
te |
1} |
\
E |

Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy (left) in

London, 1973, and the eclectic John Zorn
(above) in concert, 1990.

that has vision and virtuosity in abundance. Perhaps the deliberate down-play
of the title leaves the music to gain its own equilibrium. Parker defines the
territory; Lacy adjusts the angles; Coxhill is, for once, the straightman, asking
the questions and then often going on to provide his own bitter-sweet answers.
Parker gained his reputation as a master of both tenor and soprano largely
on the basis of his solo recitals, awesome displays where he advanced on a
muse and expanded all the possibilities. His two ongoing trio. projects, the
Schlippenbach Trio and Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton, oscillate
between personal expression and sound sculpture. This is free jazz. This is
what I now understand by those two four-letter words.
In 1999 I stood beside the New York swirling river and remembered
Albert Ayler. In the evening, down on the Lower Eastside, I heard Ayler’s old
compatriot, the master drummer Milford Graves, placing the heat under John
Zorn’s alto saxophone in an hour-long extemporised performance of creative
music. It was the last year of the 20th century; nine months later Zorn
arrived in London with his band Masada. Whether they played “free” or
“jazz” does not matter. In my view they are not so far from the river bank,
whichever way you want to hear it.

153 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 MARK GIEDBERSE MICHAEL BRECKER
TO SOME, BRECKER’S APPEARANCE ON HUNDREDS OF POP
ALBUMS IS INSTANT SELF-INCRIMINATION. YET WHAT
QUALITATIVE EFFECT - BEYOND ENHANCING HIS TECHNIQUE -
CAN THIS HAVE HAD ON HIS INNOVATIVE FUSION IN THE
BRECKER BROTHERS OR HIS STRAIGHTAHEAD WORK WITH
HORACE SILVER AND CHICK COREA?

4
10 ie ]
v

Three top albums by the Brecker Brothers: In the 1970s, few listeners were imagining much for the tenor saxophone (or
their debut album (1975); a live set, even for jazz) beyond that achieved by Coltrane and his apostles. But by the
Heavy Metal Be-Bop (1978); and their mid 1980s many young listeners and players were talking of a successor to
1992 reunion album, revealing the Coltrane, of a player with such a surgically precise technique, such stamina
influence of African music. and such mastery of solo geometry that tenor saxophone playing seemed to be
entering a new era. At the other pole were critics, perhaps with a longer view
of saxophone history, perhaps too with a slender grasp of the contemporary
scene, who dismissed the same figure as a session cipher.
Michael Brecker’s influence was as prodigious as his studio career.
Discounting the non-tonal avant-garde, with which he barely shares a
common yardstick, and the tweedy new mainstream contingent, in the mid
1980s it was unusual to hear three new young saxophonists in a row without
hearing something of Brecker’s sound or phrasing. By the late 1990s that had
changed, perhaps through Brecker-fatigue, as fashion continued to prefer the
“authenticity” of the acoustic environment, and new tenor styles emerged
from Chris Potter and others. Furthermore, by this time ever more
sophisticated jazz education meant that Brecker-like technique was becoming
a commonplace, and Brecker’s own return to straightahead playing in the mid
1990s led, surprisingly, to his becoming absorbed into the generality. By the
late 1990s, after three straightahead albums, he’d gone full circle, back to a
style that would have fitted perfectly with Horace Silver in 1972.
Nevertheless, there remain those who maintain that Brecker has pushed
the envelope that bit further. Perhaps nobody has a better insight into this
than the man who has put in the hours behind the horn. Brecker, as mild and

CHAPTER NINETEEN 154

unassuming a character as his mentor Coltrane is said to have been, is Michael and Randy Brecker play London,
convinced of his unworthiness in the face of Coltrane’s achievements. “I’m 1992. Michael had recently returned from
definitely Coltrane-influenced, but he was light years ahead. Trust me. I’m not working with Paul Simon in Africa.
even comfortable, to be honest, with mentioning me and him in the same
sentence. I think he reached a level that was extraordinary — intellectually,
rhythmically, harmonically, spiritually and emotionally.”
The maximum satisfaction he will allow himself is that he stumbled on a
serendipitous crossroad in the mid 1970s. “I came to New York at a time
when the boundaries between jazz, R&B and rock were starting to mix,” he
told me, “and it was a very exciting and creative period. There was a lot of
freedom, particularly in saxophone playing, because all of a sudden I could
take what I knew, what I had learned harmonically from the great players I'd
studied, and apply it in an R&B format, and it was something that hadn't
been done so much. It was a way of taking modal playing and applying it
over a different rhythm, and I found I could come up with some things that
were somewhat original — although they came from other sources. In that
context, the stuff took a different twist.”
Michael Brecker was born into the right environment in Philadelphia on
March 29th 1949. His father, Bobby Brecker — immortalised in an appearance
on Randy Brecker’s delightfully embittered “Hottest Man In Town’ on his
1996 album Jnto The Sun — was an attorney, a pianist and a passionate jazz
fan who gave his children every musical encouragement. Michael said: “I grew
up thinking that everybody was a musician because there were always
musicians at the house, every weekend. My brother Randy began playing

1
eas CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER NINETEEN

trumpet at about six and my sister played piano at five. My earliest memories
are of Miles Davis and Clifford Brown, Dave Brubeck and Charlie Parker.
“I played clarinet first, and then drums, and eventually around junior high
I switched to saxophone. We weren’t pushed into music, but all of us were
bitten by it. By the time I had to decide what to do with my life, I was
already playing professionally. I made a brief attempt to go into pre-med, but
by the time I had hit college I was already pretty much too taken with music
to consider anything else.” Randy moved to New York in 1966 and two years
later Michael followed, having stopped off, like Randy, at Indiana University.
Michael made his professional debut at 19 with Edwin Birdsong, but his
first major gig in New York was more propitious. In 1968 he teamed up
Randy, drummer Billy Cobham, guitarist Jeff Kent and bassist Doug Lubahn
EDIGITAL

Michael Brecker (opposite) at The

Barbican, London, 1995. Two acclaimed
solo albums (above): Don’t Try This At
Home (1988); and Two Blocks From The
Edge (1997).

to form Dreams. The band also featured at various times Bob Mann, John
Abercrombie, Barry Rogers, Don Grolnick and Will Lee, and made two
Columbia albums. The jazz-fusion gospel according to Miles Davis was on the
way, two years ahead, but Dreams caught advance notice of the possibilities.
The distinguishing characteristic of Dreams was its use of horns — the same
characteristic which would later set The Brecker Brothers apart from guitar-
and keyboard-focused jazz-rock bands, and keep the Breckers closer to jazz.
Their prowess in Dreams was also their passport to the studio life. 6c “We were
one of the first jazz-rock horn bands,” Michael said. “We borrowed a lot from
R&B and from jazz and mixed it together before there was that
commercialised term ‘fusion’. We did two records for Columbia: after that we
got known as a horn section around town, and got hired for other people's
dates. It set off a chain reaction, and it was a good way to make.ends meet.”
Ironically, despite being branded as a studio player, Brecker notes that he
never really qualified. “I was always a sort of renegade. I never really doubled.
I played tenor saxophone and could add a little bit of flute, but to really be a
studio musician you had to play all the woodwinds, including bass clarinet,
bassoon, ocarina and piccolo. It was always kind of funny to me, because the
actual studio musicians never considered me to be one of them.”
After Dreams dissolved around 1972 he spent some time with Horace
Silver. Randy had been in Silver’s band as early as 1967, but the two
appeared together on the pianist’s 1972 Blue Note album Jn Pursuit Of The
27th Man. As his negotiation of Silver’s ‘Gregory Is Here’ shows, Michael had
no shortage of the supreme chops one would expect of the studio player. He is

— or «J CHAPTER NINETEEN
 CHAPTER NINETEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

far from being the harmonic monochrome associated with much early jazz-
rock, proving perfectly fluent on the changes. He noted in the early 1990s that
Silver had calmed him down a bit, but that must have come later: his playing
here is very excitable but with some crafty rhythmic intelligence.
“Horace Silver was a good guide,” Brecker said. “He kind of showed me
how to build a solo, how to say more in a short time — probably something I
need to incorporate now!” In fact, his magisterial control of pace and drama
was well established by the early 1980s. when he produced numerous solos
that began in reflection before building with tantalising circumlocution to
roaring climaxes — as for example on ‘Pools’ from the Steps Ahead band’s
eponymous 1983 album. In the end, that formula became a cliché, but in its
day it invariably did the trick.

AHEAD HE ELECTRIFYING EDDIE HARRI

STEPS
AEL BRECKER PETER ERSKINE EDDIC GOMCZ MIKE NAINIERI ind lecroducing ELIANE ELIAS

Steps Ahead’s 1983 album and Eddie

Dinusicions
Harris, a pioneer of the electronic treatment
of saxophone sound.

In the late 1960s, before jazz-rock and The Brecker Brothers came to the
fore, Michael and Randy revealed a dimension in their music not well known
to those who denigrate them as shallow fusioneers. In what is sometimes
loosely described as the white Jewish New York school of saxophone,
alongside Bob Berg, Bob Mintzer, Steve Grossman, David Liebman and Jerry
Bergonzi, Brecker had his time as a free player. David Liebman recalls that in
the late 1960s this circle of musicians played what they called “Coltrane’s
little toe”. They accepted that playing more of any part of Coltrane’s musical
anatomy than that would always be difficult, but the particular toe in
question was Trane’s very freely improvised Ascension style. Liebman says: “I
have tapes of me and Michael Brecker, Steve Grossman, Randy Brecker and
Bob Berg where you can’t tell who’s playing what. Speed, volume and
intensity were a big part of it, with no semblance of a theme.”
This approach stood in direct contrast to the highly organised, carefully-
crafted charts that Randy Brecker began to devise for The Brecker Brothers
band in 1974. Somehow, Randy managed to retain the amiable funk and R&B
grooves he drew from Herbie Hancock and others while laying across them
wonderfully juicy polytonal harmonies. The result was a new sub-genre, a
musical signature often imitated but immediately recognisable as Randy’s.
Randy said, “The original concept was like a bebop-funk band. I
remember thinking of Herbie’s band at the time, and Sly & The Family Stone,
but I also enjoyed groups like Cream, so there was a hint of that in some of
the tunes. A lot of that stuff was written by just fooling around on the piano
till I found something I liked. There’s a lot of obvious polytonality — a triad

CHAPTER NINETEEN 15
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER NINETEEN

over a root that’s a half step above or below the triad. Hornwise there were
quite a lot of fourths, something that I think started in Dreams, where we had
three horns, with Barry Rogers. Also there was the minor-second to major-
third voicing, which Horace Silver used a lot.” Of course, as many critics have
fairly noted, there was a good deal of less substantial material. Like Chet
Baker whose singing he admires, Randy was given to some curious, slightly
hip vocals, but the irremovable stain on the Breckers’ character comes in such
froth as “Sneakin’ Up Behind Yow’ (1975) and ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’ (1977).
Michael said: “We try to forget that stuff. There was some pressure from
the record company to make something that would sell, which we really didn’t
know how to do.” Happily, taking the group’s albums as a whole, the good
easily outweighs the bad. Aside from some extraordinary writing and superb

CHET BAKER: YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN

Brecker admired Chet Baker’s singing style

and played on this 1971 album (far left).
Chick Corea’s Three Quartets (1981, near
left) includes a tribute to Coltrane,
featuring Brecker.

ensemble playing, the soloing of both brothers is well exposed. Michael's early
solo work with the Brothers, rather like that with Horace Silver, is a trifle
shrill and histrionic at times, but by 1978 and the recording of the live tour-
de-force Heavy Metal Bebop he had developed the greater range and more
relaxed authority of tone and conception that were the hallmarks of his peak
years in the 1980s. Perhaps his most successful appearance here is in his
extended a cappella coda on his own ‘Funky Sea, Funky Dew’. Aided by
pitch-shifter and wah-wah, he wrings out the last drop of cod gospel emotion.
A decade later, following on from the effects of the 1970s, Michael used the
EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) which gave him access to sound worlds
only dreamed of by earlier electrically-assisted saxophonists. The EWI, heard
on Michael's first solo albums in the late 1980s and in the revived Brecker
Brothers of the early 1990s, gave him access to eight octaves rather than the
tenors three, and a chance to give expression to his hobby of synthesiser
programming. By driving the synth from the electric horn, Michael was able
to combine great musicianship with a certain levity, as he emulated the muted
trumpet of Miles Davis or the rock guitar sound of his sideman Mike Stern.
It may be a testimony to his musicianship that, unlike some users of synth
drivers, including many guitarists, Brecker was able to avoid anonymity and
retain an individual character when playing through the device. However,
even at the height of the EWI craze around 1991, he knew the instrument’s
limitations. “It’s a kind of half toy, half real instrument,” he explained. “It’s
not an acoustic instrument and does not and will not replace the saxophone.
At the same time it’s made the sax feel much fresher.” For listeners the EWI

— or Ra) CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

provided a fine diversion, but it was always a relief that the superior personal
expression of the saxophone was not abandoned.
Like most 1970s fusion bands The Brecker Brothers smouldered to a close
in the early 1980s — ironically just as Miles Davis was about to come back for
a second round. But by the early 1990s the Breckers were ready for a reunion,
this time with the new technology of hip-hop on board in the persons of Maz
Kessler and Robbie Kilgore. The material well reflected the post-modern mood
of the period. This curious mixture of new and old was typified by the
electronic scratch samples and acoustic bass on the bluesy Horace Silver-
inspired groove ‘On The Backside’, on Return Of The Brecker Brothers (1992).
By now the relaxed, insouciant timing which Michael Brecker had
perfected in the 1980s was second nature. Perhaps the first examples of this
mature style were to be found on the classy but overlooked 1981 Chick Corea
date Three Quartets, especially in ‘Quartet No.2, Part 2’, dedicated to Coltrane
and with Corea sounding like McCoy Tyner and Brecker like the dedicatee
(but not the same as). That album and Pat Metheny’s 80/87 (1980), with
Brecker guesting, jointly marked a turning point in his career. For the first
time since Horace Silver, Brecker was lined up with top-level acoustic combos,
revealing a more circumspect side after the freneticism of the 1970s, and — as
with the Steps Ahead band — expressing the appetite of former fusion players
for working in a largely unamplified context. But as sideman, leader and co-
leader, Brecker continued through the 1980s to appear in highly electrified
settings. In fact Steps Ahead was fully plugged in again by 1986 for the
disappointingly mechanical Magnetic.
Steps Ahead had been started by vibist Mike Mainieri as a jamming band
at Seventh Avenue South, a Manhattan club owned and run by The Brecker
Brothers from 1977 to 1985. It was effectively led by Mainieri and in its
classic format also featured Brecker, Eliane Elias, Eddie Gomez and Peter
Erskine. Before it was swept by commercial pressure toward the glassy electro
dance sounds of the mid 1980s, the band accidentally created a minor idiom —
a kind of jazz-fusion-unplugged — epitomised by the reading of Don Grolnick’s
‘Pools’ on Steps Ahead (1983). This might well be an example of the perfect
Brecker solo. It’s hard to imagine that it — or indeed the solos by Gomez and
Mainieri — could have been improved had they been written out and
painstakingly edited by a professor of composition. Brecker’s immaculately
paced solo describes a compelling drama of tentative explorations, small
setbacks, increasing confidences and minor subplots, all the while stepping to
higher levels of tension and a long-anticipated resolution.
The excellence of Brecker’s performance in this co-operative situation is
illuminated by the explanation he gave in 1991 for his late debut as leader. “I
had a lot of offers, but I really never felt ready to do it,” he said. “Partially I
was scared and partially I never had any real strong motivation to do it. That
part of me was fulfilled by The Brecker Brothers, and I always felt better
working in collaborative situations.”
Indeed, Brecker ‘has been more convincing as sideman or co-leader than
leader. Aside from the Corea and Metheny sets mentioned above, and among
scores of other pick-up dates, he made powerful showings on Chet Baker’s 1977
electric set You Can't Go Home Again and a little known 1986 session with the
Canadian violinist Hugh Marsh, The Bear Walks. Furthermore, while writing is
a function often associated with bandleading, Michael has done relatively little.
His brother Randy, in Gil Goldstein’s Jazz Composer’s Companion, refers to

CHAPTER NINETEEN 16
 CHAPTER NINETEEN

Michael Brecker was the most influential

contemporary saxophonist of the 1980s and
the 1990s.

“big arguments” with Michael about the writing process, and seems to imply
that his brother has a certain impatience with writing, where Randy sees it as
graft — the old formula of one per cent inspiration, 99 per cent perspiration.
Michael has produced some effective compositions, but seems to view the solo
as the first order of business in jazz.
Perhaps because of such traditional elements as swing, and the presence of
Charlie Haden and Jack DeJohnette, Brecker’s first albums as leader —
Michael Brecker (1987) and Don’t Try This At Home (1989) — were critically
well-received, notably by writers who'd hitherto consigned Brecker to the
serap heap of fusion. However, despite their interesting attempts at mixing a
wide range of idioms, they were musically less cohesive than two of his 1990s
Impulse dates, Tales From The Hudson (1996) and Two Blocks From The Edge
(1998). These were models both of programming and soloing. In the same
decade Brecker also recorded with McCoy Tyner, as guest and leader, and
with Elvin Jones, who was on his 1999 organ record, Time Is Of The Essence.
By the turn of the century, fusion was nowhere in sight on his musical
palette: stylistically, he said, his career had evolved from back to front. That’s
not strictly true, of course. It was more like a movement around a circle, from
the influence of Coltrane and his peers — Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins,
Wayne Shorter and others are also in there — through fusion and on to his
playing with half of Coltrane’s great quartet. These latter appearances, well
understood by critics because of their historical resonances, were celebrated
and symbolic events for Brecker. But his freshest, most creative and
“somewhat original” work had occurred around the middle years — where it
was least expected, and least noticed.

— _ CHAPTER NINETEEN
 MARK GILBERT FUSION: SWITCHED-ON SAXOPHONES
INITIALLY DUBBED JAZZ-ROCK, FUSION CRYSTALLISED INTO
AN INDENTIFIABLE STYLE AT THE END OF THE SIXTIES WITH
MILES DAVIS’S ALBUM BITCHES’ BREW. AMONG ITS LEADING
EXPONENTS HAVE BEEN SUCH GREAT SAXOPHONISTS AS WAYNE
SHORTER, BILL EVANS AND DAVID SANBORN.

Although the synthesiser and guitar seemed emblematic of the hybrid music
known as fusion, there were many saxophone players who didn’t want to be
left out of the party — and, in some cases, who didn’t want to miss out on the
profits. At its simplest, fusion saxophone meant playing jazz-flavoured lines
over rock or funk rhythms and chord sequences. At the extreme, it involved
“modernising” the instrument by physically modifying it or by playing it
through electronic processing to make it sound more like a guitar, keyboard...
or anything but the crusty old saxophone.
At the more moderate end of the spectrum, it sometimes just involved
playing supercharged R&B, as David Sanborn did through the 1970s and
1980s. At the fringe, some jazz players — such as Steve Grossman and David
Liebman — were classed inaccurately as fusion players simply because they
worked briefly in Miles Davis’s jazz-rock bands. Wayne Shorter, Bob Berg,
Gary Thomas and others meanwhile moved between idioms, sometimes
playing fusion, sometimes straightahead. A number of older-styled players —
Lou Donaldson, Stanley Turrentine and the like — looked for their place too in
a financially promising market.
For the classical establishment, early jazz saxophonists sullied the pure
sound of the instrument with their grunts, pitchbends and other distortions.
But in jazz such techniques have long been regarded as important expressive
tools. The modifications and alterations practised by fusion players could be
Saxophonist David Sanborn has worked in seen as extensions of this quest for new expression. Ironically, though, many
many contexts, with everyone from Gil champions of earlier jazz styles were as sniffy about fusion as classical purists
Evans to David Bowie. had been about early jazz saxophone. Doubtless some fusion saxophonists
made cynical bids for the pop charts, but as many if not more developed the
fusion style without such premeditation, in the good name of creativity.
Looking for a starting point for fusion saxophone, we might think of the
blues playing of Louis Jordan, Earl Bostic or King Curtis. But the kind of
R&B embraced by such players didn’t become fusion until it met with the
new technology and broad artistic horizons of the 1960s. These all came
together in the pioneering work of Eddie Harris (1934-96). He combined the
essential ingredients of “fusion” in the late 1960s, predating the actual term
which was coined during the following decade.
Pianist Cedar Walton recalls that in the early 1960s Harris indefatigably
sought the big break, touring major record company offices in search of a
deal. He might thus be accused of calculated commercialism, but along the
way Harris devised all manner of novel sounds for the saxophone. Perhaps to
sell his music, perhaps through sheer inquisitiveness, Harris took to making
hybrid instruments and using electronic processing. Among his inventions

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 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY

were a trumpet and flugelhorn each fitted with saxophone mouthpieces. He

was also a keen user of the Varitone device, which duplicated the played pitch
at another interval, most often an octave below. Walton also suggests that
Harris's distinctive, pinched tone and his interest in electronic support derived
from the loss of his teeth through gum disease, and says that as a result
Harris was known as “the black Stan Getz”. The power of Harris’s
combination of earthy funk and the Varitone can be well understood from
‘Listen Here’ on the appropriately titled 1967 album The Electrifying Eddie
Harris, even if much of the rest is forgettable.
Harris encapsulated the key aspects of fusion saxophone: blues, funk, the
use of technology and, in his tune ‘Freedom Jazz Dance’, harmonic
complexity. He had a few parallels among later players: Michael Brecker is

3acy1768
12017 DIGITAL | EX

[DENON]

discussed in the preceding chapter, but Gary Thomas, a much later player, As We Speak ((1981) and Close Up
also combined these elements to notable effect. It may not be coincidental (1988), two albums on which David
that, although Thomas (b. 1961) appeared some 20 years after Harris’s Sanborn collaborated with bassist-producer
Electrifying, he cited Harris as an influence. Despite an apparent similarity to Marcus Miller. Bob Berg’s 1987 album
Coltrane, in 1991 Thomas said: “I never really listened to Trane or Wayne Short Stories featured Sanborn as a
[Shorter] much for solo influence. I listened to Billy Harper, Woody Shaw, guest artist.
Eddie Harris — I listened to a lot of Eddie Harris.”
While he was operating in a harmonic environment far more forbidding
than Harris’s ‘Listen Here’, the heavily polytonal style that Thomas
demonstrated on his By Any Means Necessary (1989) was not that far from
‘Freedom Jazz Dance’. Despite his impatience with the blues — he said he left
Miles Davis’s 1980s band because he was tired of playing pentatonic licks all
night — his playing is not short of that quality. Note-choice apart, he connects
strongly with Harris in his use of the Pitchrider MIDI interface. This was like
a distant progeny of the Varitone, enabling him to trigger synthesisers from
his horn, thicken his sound and add sinister parallel harmonies. On the other
hand, responding perhaps to the jazz-friendly climate of the late 1980s,
Thomas appeared on several straightahead records minus Pitchrider, including
his own While The Gate Is Open (1990).
Thomas was associated with the M-BASE collective of New York, a loose
affiliation of players interested in finding a new sound for jazz. Two of M-
BASE’s players, Steve Coleman and Greg Osby, followed courses similar to
Thomas’s. Although Osby (b. 1960) subsequently turned to straightahead
playing, in the late 1980s he too was a fan of the Pitchrider, using it on his

6 ~ CHAPTER TWENTY
 CHAPTER TWENTY

MANLEY
IUAKEMTIM

Stanley Turrentine (right) had numerous 1991 album Man-Talk For Moderns Vol X. Once again the old Harris verities of
hit albums while retaining his expressive the blues, electric hardware and harmonic convolution convene in Osby’s
power as a creative jazz musician. playing from this period.
After playing a row of harmonically tense funk pieces in a set at the Jazz
Café in London in the early 1990s, Osby introduced an unadulterated
rendition of an old soul number, declaring (probably in veiled reference to
Wynton Marsalis’s claims for jazz as the only true Afro-American music) that
his band saw no shame in popular black American music.
That sort of soul was always obvious in Osby’s playing, but his colleague
Steve Coleman (b. 1956) consciously took a more radical stance, trying to
reconcile electric funk rhythms with an extremely chromatic, unresolved
harmonic universe. Such was the level of tension and absence of resolution in
Coleman’s music that, while superficially dramatic, it was often one-
dimensional. Like his namesake Ornette’s Dancing In Your Head album of
1975, Steve Coleman perhaps stretched the idea of funk-plus-jazz beyond its
limits, to the point where the funk was metamorphosed into something
abstract, and the groove lost.
In between Harris and M-BASE there had been an _ intermediate
generation of technology, given form in the Lyricon, an early form of wind
synthesiser driver. Two unlikely Lyricon dabblers were Wayne Shorter (for
example on Weather Report’s ‘Black Market’, 1976) and Sonny Rollins (on
‘Tai-chi’, 1979). But the player most often associated with it is the West-
Coaster Tom Scott (b. 1948). He used it frequently (and also, later, the
Yamaha WX-7 wind controller), but his most expressive work was on the

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 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY

tenor saxophone, and most of it in The LA Express, formed in 1973 and at

various times including Joe Sample and Max Bennett.
The band came about after Sample and Bennett introduced Scott,
previously a bebopper, to the soulful funk sound that The Crusaders had
developed in the early 1970s. Most of Scott’s work on the GRP label in the
1980s and 90s was glossy and formulaic, but his earlier playing in The LA
Express and as a sideman with Steely Dan had an authentically gritty blues
flavour. One couldn’t expect the kind of harmonic surprises that Michael
Brecker was springing on the East Coast, but Scott nevertheless played with
heart and commitment. A late GRP date, the 1996 Bluestreak, reunited him
with The LA Express, and brought him closer to his origins. But as with so
many GRP albums, even the blues here had a synthetic, cultivated quality.

RY TH@MAS WHITE TH

Scott’s rasping, soulful tenor playing provides a link to the R&B-oriented Steve Coleman and the free-funk M-BASE
saxophonists whose fusion consisted largely of bluesy licks over funk rhythms. concept were early influences on the work
Notable among these, and somewhat influential on Scott, was Wilton Felder of Gary Thomas. Lou Donaldson’s live set
(b. 1940) who cultivated a funky yet cool tenor style on the West Coast in the The Scorpion was recorded in 1970 but not
1960s. Felder is hardly known outside The Crusaders, and it was within this released until the 1990s.
group that he developed an approach which, while apparently unambitious,
concealed considerable craft and skill. Often he would play little more than
themes, licks and decorations, but their placement, and the use of space
around them, was very effective within the constraints of The Crusaders’
harmonically uninvolved music. His infrequently exposed voice as a soloist
can be heard on ‘Hot’s It’ and ‘Soul Caravan’ from Chain Reaction (1975),
although he is typically distant in the mix, underlining his ornamental role.
He’s more prominent in ‘My Mama Told Me So’ from Those Southern Knights
(1975), though without the volubility that had characterised his playing in
The Jazz Crusaders, the jazz group from which The Crusaders had evolved.
By contrast, David Sanborn, the best known exponent of saxophone-led
electric funk, was centre-stage in the groups he led. His penetrating tone and
the barely controlled hysteria of his playing made him popular with audiences
and garnered the respect of a wide range of musicians, Gil Evans, Michael
Brecker, John Scofield and David Bowie among them. (He is the soloist on
Bowie’s 1975 hit “Young Americans’.) By the late 1980s the biting yet tender
sound of Sanborn (b. 1945) was probably the most copied alto-saxophone
sound in jazz-funk, influencing Nelson Rangell, Art Porter and any number of
more ephemeral artists. Creative variations on the blues are at the core of his

165 CHAPTER TWENTY

 CHAP?ER 2) WEEN GES MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

playing, and he’s always avoided calling himself a jazz player. But his
commitment and passion seem often to have equipped him well for dealing
with more demanding musical environments.
When he worked as an essential third of The Brecker Brothers’ horn
section on ‘Rocks’ from The Brecker Brothers (1975), exchanging licks with
Michael Brecker, Sanborn seems driven to pull out harmonic ideas which have
a sophistication not heard on his solo albums. In fact, after years of producing
unequivocally modern, brassy jazz-funk, in the early 1990s he sensed the need
for a change and turned towards more abstract material in the company of
such leftfield musicians as Charlie Haden and Bill Frisell.
This may also have been his response to the generally retrospective mood
of the time, but whatever the cause, his playing lacked the attack which

Tom Scott (above) and his 1996 album _ distinguished his earlier, less self-conscious recordings — such as ‘Rush Hour’
Bluestreak. Greg Osby (album sleeve, on the 1982 album As We Speak where, unusually, he plays soprano
right) is a leading M-BASE artist. | saxophone. Perhaps his best work was in the 1980s, when his band featured
Marcus Miller playing bass, writing, arranging and producing — just as he had
done successfully for Miles Davis in the same period. Pieces such as ‘Pyramid’
and ‘Tough’ from Close-Up (1988), although now dated by their exaggerated
electric drum sounds, show Sanborn in his most incendiary form. The key to
the tones he produces in the theme of ‘Pyramid’ lies partly in the influence of
Hank Crawford. But Sanborn added his own particular intensity, which no
imitator has managed to reproduce. There may be something in the theory
that Sanborn’s childhood bout with polio, for which the saxophone was
recommended as therapy, fed the passion in his playing.
Another player who brought R&B saxophone into conjunction with the
electric rhythm section, this time on tenor, was Ronnie Laws. His Pressure
Sensitive (1975) was the biggest-selling album on the Blue Note label, and
‘Always There’ became a jazz-funk anthem, even if little else on that or his
later records had much substance. Laws (b. 1950) came from Texas, and his
throaty, incisive saxophone voice had its roots in the combative “Texas
Tenor” style of Arnett Cobb and Illinois Jacquet. But most of his
commercially-targeted work suffered from insipid content and production and
featured little saxophone playing beyond themes and simple riffs.
Stanley Turrentine’s career might have followed a similar path, but even
though he frequently operated in commercially-conscious environments with
an R&B flavour, including a spell with the infamous CTI label, Turrentine

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 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY

was able to retain the jazz content and integrity of his saxophone playing in
almost all contexts. In his earlier years he played R&B, including a year with
Earl Bostic, before moving toward variants of soul jazz in the 1960s. By the
1980s Turrentine (1934-2000) was taking advantage of the technology of the
day and had begun playing in more electrified settings, producing for example
Wonderland (1986), an album of Stevie Wonder covers, and La Place (1989),
produced and largely written by Bobby Lyle. Whatever the situation,
Turrentine produced creative blues playing, adding bebop accents as they
seem appropriate.
The story of fusion is, of course, inextricably bound up with Miles Davis,
whose bands featured numerous players who later made their own names
leading fusion bands. However, this doesn’t mean we can automatically dub

The Crusaders’ 1975 album Those

RONNIE LAWS
PORTRAIT OF THE ISLEY BROTHERS
Southern Knights (left), featuring Wilton
Felder. Before becoming a solo artist,
Ronnie Laws worked with Quincy Jones
and Earth Wind & Fire.

any saxophonist who passed through his 1970s or 1980s bands as a fusion
player. His fusion groups, especially those from 1969 to 1975, were so eclectic
that electrified funk was only part of the equation. These bands focussed on
one-key vamps, and from the improviser’s standpoint provided a funky,
electrified version of the Coltrane groups of the 1960s. Many of Miles’s
saxophonists played modal jazz rather than anything clearly distinguishable
as fusion, despite the occasional use of electronic processing. The players
included David Liebman, Carlos Garnett, Steve Grossman, Gary Bartz, Bill
Evans, Bob Berg, Gary Thomas and Kenny Garrett.
The most prominent of Miles’s fusion-period saxophonists is Wayne
Shorter (b. 1933), and he is a special case. His individual development is so
strong and so wide-ranging it seems beyond “fusion”. He contributed to it
from the outside, but hardly drew from it. For one thing, Shorter played and
shaped straightahead jazz for the first quarter of his career, and when he was
part of a fusion band — Weather Report — he invariably played and wrote in a
jazz style rather than using funky vamps or soul-saxophone clichés. Shorter’s
extremely individual writing for Blue Note in the early 1960s might have
contributed to the decline in functional harmony that characterised fusion,
and yet it doesn’t sound like fusion. Perhaps the closest Shorter came to
playing out-and-out fusion, fully electrified and hi-tech, was in his late-1980s
solo albums after the dissolution of Weather Report. The most successful of
these is Atlantis (1985). Two other saxophonists from Miles’s 1980s bands, Bill
Evans and Bob Berg, spent substantial amounts of time ploughing and indeed
lengthening fusion’s furrow. Berg’s case is rather like Shorter’s in that he

167 CHAPTER TWENTY

 CHAPTER TWENTY MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

played straightahead jazz (with Horace Silver, Cedar Walton. Sam Jones and
others) for a long while before he was invited to join Miles Davis in 1984. In
Miles’s bands, Berg (b. 1951) found himself blowing over high-energy funk
vamps, and when he left he carried that mood into his own records and into a
group he co-led with guitarist Mike Stern.
Berg hardly, if ever, used electronic variants of the saxophone, focusing
instead on using his tenor to play an amalgam of Coltrane, R&B and bebop
over the vamps and changes of his and Stern’s compositions. Sometimes, m
keeping with the mood of the day, the group would play a standard such as
‘Autumn Leaves’ or “All The Things You Are’. The Stern-Berg band was
clearly a fusion group, and Berg felt it developed a small new direction in the
music, but its leaders, most of its rhythm section and its sensibility were jazz-

Bit |

oriented. This can be heard clearly in Berg’s rocking but chord-rich ‘Friday At
The Cadillac Club’ from Short Stories (1987).
In the early 1990s Berg returned with some relief to the straightahead
environment. But his predecessor in the Miles Davis band, Bill Evans (no
relation to pianist Bill Evans in Davis's late-1950s group), is distinet from
other Davis saxophonists both for working almost exclusively in fusion
contexts and for proving an able bebop practitioner.
With NTU Troop, Gary Bartz (above) Evans (b. 1958) took lessons with David Liebman, and on Liebman’s
combined bop and soul influences with recommendation was invited to join Miles, returning to public performances in
elements of African music. The 1993 1980. Evans remained for four years before playing with John McLaughlin's
album Push! (right) by Bill Evans, no reformed Mahavishnu Orchestra, and began to lead his own groups and record
relation to the pianist of the same name. dates — all exclusively electric. His bebop prowess is evident in rare dates as a
sideman, and over the changes of “My Man’s Gone Now’ from We Want Miles
(1981). But in 1993 Evans made his most unambivalent fusion statement on
Push, mixing jazz, funk, hip-hop and rap. Most of his fusion has been good,
despite over-indulgences; he may be remembered as the rare jazz-equipped
saxophonist who didn’t make a straightahead album in the retro 1990s.
Many other saxophonists were involved with fusion to varying degrees,
some just by virtue of keeping certain company. Among the latter were
Bennie Maupin (with Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock), Bob Mintzer (with
The Yellowjackets in the 1990s), Joe Farrell (with Chick Corea), Ernie Watts
(with Lee Ritenour), Bob Malach (playing Coltrane-ish tenor on his own R&B
records and with Mike Stern) and Steve Tavaglione (with John Patitueci and
Frank Gambale). Others played fusion with intent: John Klemmer (whose

CHAPTER TWENTY
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY

Ernie Watts, among the most powerful of

contemporary tenor soloists.

1975 album Touch followed work at the other extreme with Don Ellis), Jay
Beckenstein (Spyro Gyra), Pee Wee Ellis and Maceo Parker (formerly part of
James Brown’s horn section) and Mare Russo (earlier with The Yellowjackets).
In Europe, Elton Dean in Soft Machine, Barbara Thompson in Paraphernalia,
Chris Hunter, Bendik Hofseth, Klaus Doldinger and inveterate bebopper Peter
King (try Crusade, 1989) were among those who widened the web of fusion.
Even the free player Peter Brétzmann was heard charging about over funk
rhythms on the 1993 German rap album EHxpo's Jazz & Joy.
Fusion became more sophisticated in the 1990s, reincorporating elements
of straightahead styles — acoustic instruments playing funk, for example, or
double bass used alongside synthesiser. And as a consequence it became
increasingly difficult to isolate and, indeed, stigmatise its exponents.

169 CHAPTER TWENTY

KEVIN: AGRE AN DER CROSSOVER AND SMOOTH JAZZ
CLEAR JAZZ-INFLECTED MELODIES PLAYED OVER SUBDUED
FUNK OR R&B GROOVES BECAME PART OF THE SOUNDTRACK TO
URBAN LIVING DURING THE NINETIES. THE GENRE WAS
EVENTUALLY DUBBED “SMOOTH JAZZ”. IT FILLS THE SAME
POPULAR NICHE AS SWING-INFLECTED POPULAR MUSIC
OCCUPIED IN THE FIFTIES.

In the early 1970s, under pressure from record companies to improve sales and
increase financial returns, many jazz musicians began to adapt their musical

nae
output so it would appeal to a wider audience. Some produced jazz versions of
popular hits, while others tried to incorporate the stylistic features of rock and
DUOTONES

pop into their own music.

Whatever the approach, it was seen as essential for economic success to be
able to fuse jazz with more commercial musical genres. The term “crossover”
began to be used to refer to the most commercial part of fusion. Also called
“smooth jazz” for its easy-listening style, the music combines jazz melody and
improvisation with soul, funk and R&B grooves.
One musician often credited as an originator of crossover was saxophonist
Grover Washington Jr (1943-99). His Inner City Blues (1971) was an electrified
version of the soul-jazz that had given artists such as Ramsey Lewis and
“Cannonball” Adderley chart hits in the 1960s. The success of the album came
as a complete surprise to Washington, who was working at a distribution
Kenny G — king of the smooth-jazz company at the time packing boxes and had only been called in for the
airwaves — on a 1986 album sleeve. recording at the last minute as a replacement for Hank Crawford. He made
more commercially successful albums throughout the 1970s that repeated the
soul-jazz formula, notably Mister Magic (1974), Feels So Good (1975) and A
Secret Place (1976). In 1980, Winelight received two Grammys, one for Best
Fusion Recording and the other for Best R&B Song, ‘Just The Two Of Us’,
featuring Bill Withers on vocals.
Despite his smooth-jazz credentials, Washington always had the respect of
jazz players. He credited as his influences players like Cannonball Adderley,
Stanley Turrentine, Sonny Rollins and Roland Kirk, all of whom had also
experimented with merging jazz, soul and R&B. Like them, his saxophone
style was unique and instantly recognisable, combining rich tone with melodie
soulful improvisation. Like them also, there was a personal intensity that
came across in his music, a sense that he was blowing from the heart.
Washington said of his playing, “I’ve really worked on my sound. I’ve
tried to make it a personal sound. I want it to feel like there’s a vocalist in
there singing lyrics... . What I strive for in my music is always to tell a story,
to portray my inner feelings.”
Washington’s successful combination of lyrical sax playing and super-
funky grooves continued into the 1980s with Come Morning (1980) which
featured frequent collaborators Richard Tee, Steve Gadd, Eric Gale, Ralph
MacDonald and Marcus Miller. Others followed such as Inside Moves (1984),
Strawberry Moon (1987) and the 1988 jazz set Then And Now. In the 1990s he
remained ubiquitous, recording his own tracks in a variety of styles

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE i
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

encompassing jazz, rap, soul and R&B, as well as guesting on sessions for a
whole host of artists. In 1999, before his death in December, Washington
recorded his last album, a classical set of 12 operatic arias that reflected his
ability to adapt to diverse musical settings.
By the late 1970s, inspired by the success of artists like Washington, many
other young musicians had begun to find a place for themselves in the
crossover market. The saxophone was well represented by players like David
Sanborn, Tom Scott, Ronnie Laws, Ernie Watts, Michael Brecker and Eddie
Daniels; the instrument’s expressive qualities lent it a strong appeal for an
audience more used to vocal leads.
The most commercially successful of the new younger generation of
saxophone players to emerge in the early 1980s was Kenny G (b. 1959),

Playing tenor, alto and soprano with equal

facility, Grover Washington Jr was a
primary influence on musicians of many
styles, especially R&B and crossover.

originally Kenny Gorelick. Since his first solo album in 1982 he has won a host
of awards including a Grammy, and is currently the biggest-selling
instrumental artist ever, with over 30 million units to his credit. Despite this
commercial success, however, his recordings have received much critical
derision over the years, with the attacks mainly aimed at the bland and
unchallenging nature of the music.
Originating from Seattle, Kenny G joined the Jeff Lorber Fusion band
after leaving college, where he was spotted by Clive Davis, head of Arista
Records, and offered a recording deal. His first album Kenny G (1982)
sheweased his talents on all four saxophones, plus flutes, but it was the second
album G Force (1983) that really launched his career. It sold over 200,000
copies, its success undoubtedly boosted by an up-to-the-minute sound courtesy
of top pop and R&B producers.
His playing style is heavily influenced by Washington: he has the earlier
player’s smooth, mellow tone and uses slick, soulful, fluid melodic lines which
he embellishes with flurries of notes and extended pentatonic runs. Although
proficient on alto and tenor, perhaps his most individual sound is on soprano,
where he often uses circular breathing. He employed this to good effect on the

i a! CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

chart hit ‘Songbird’, from his best-selling album Duotones (1986). This chart
success continued with Silhouette (1988) and Breathless (1992), the latter going
15 times platinum and becoming the biggest-selling instrumental album ever.
Some of Kenny G’s recent output such as the Christmas-songs album
Miracles (1994) and Classics In The Key Of G (1999), containing a “virtual
duet” with Louis Armstrong on ‘What A Wonderful World’, seem to confirm
criticisms of selling-out to major label corporatism. However, there may also
be a hint of jealousy in some of the attacks on his playing from those who
envy his popularity and financial prosperity.
Whatever the debate over his music, it is true to say that Kenny G’s
success paved the way for a whole new generation of young saxophonists to
emerge and enter the crossover market. By the mid 1980s the demand for

kiRK \WHALUM

Three smooth images: George Howard’s contemporary soul and pop-influenced jazz was on the increase. Catering for a
Nice Place To Be, from 1987, Kirk — wide variety of tastes, it was the perfect sound for the growing number of
Whalum’s The Promise (1988), and _adult-orientated US radio stations, eager to play music that would appeal to a
Gerald Albright’s Smooth, released in 1994. wide audience and fill up schedules.
One of the labels at the forefront of instrumental jazz-fusion in the 1980s
and early 1990s was GRP, founded by pianist/ecomposer Dave Grusin and his
business partner Larry Rosen. The company built up a huge roster of artists
at its peak in the late 1980s, aiming its output at the “adult contemporary”
market. As well as established artists, young musicians were given
opportunities, including saxophonists Eric Marienthal, Nelson Rangell and
George Howard.
Marienthal (b. 1957) first became known as a member of Chick Corea’s
Elektric Band which he joined in time for their second album Light Years in
1986. Concentrating mainly on alto and soprano, Marienthal is a phenomenal
technician with an amazing command of the instrument. His sound is centred
and his playing style exciting, direct and rhetorical. He alternates rapidly
between explosive funky licks, soaring harmonics and complex rhythmic
patterns, all executed with perfect timing.
His first solo releases featured him in a variety of funk and fusion settings,
but it wasn’t until his Crossroads album (1990), recorded “live” in the studio,
that he was able to blow rather more freely and fully showcase his talents.
The follow-up, Oasis (1991), is a classic example of Marienthal’s style: he
alternates between tight funk produced by Jeff Lorber and lyrical, earthy
jazz-fusion courtesy of Yellowjackets keyboardist Russell Ferrante. The last

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE i re
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

se sy
a Sy Ec te
pte ip
AOLS cs

Eric Marienthal in action (left) during

1994, and his 1991 album Oasis.

track, “Another Shore’, is an up-tempo gospel number that features

Marienthal’s funky in-your-face alto soaring into the harmonics.
Marienthal continued to release solo albums throughout the 1990s while
still recording and touring with Chick Corea and the Elektric Band II — this
was a second version of the popular fusion outfit with the addition of a new
rhythm section. On his 1998 tribute to Cannonball Adderley, Walk Tall,
Marienthal returned to his jazz roots and included some straightahead tracks
among the funk and fusion pieces.
Another young wind player who made his name through releases on GRP
was Nelson Rangell (b. 1961). A native of Denver, Colorado, Rangell is a
multi-instrumentalist fluent on tenor, alto and soprano saxophones as well as
flute and piccolo. His musical success began in school when in 1979 he won
Down Beat magazine’s Best High School Jazz Soloist competition. In 1984 he
moved to New York and soon found himself in demand on pop and jingle
sessions. He began recording for GRP in 1989 with Playing For Keeps and
subsequently released four more successful albums on the label.
Like Kenny G, Rangell has been criticised for being too safe and easy-
listening, but this seems a little unfair as his music is much more diverse in
style and places more emphasis on improvisation in its content. A good

173 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 174
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

example of Rangell’s versatility can be heard on T’ruest Heart (1993). Starting

with the emotive fusion of ‘World Traveller’ he plays flowing and melodic alto
lines with a crying, passionate, Sanborn-influenced sound. He changes to tenor
on ‘Sierra La Esperanza’, blowing with a full and gutsy tone, and then on
‘Flight’ and the up-samba of ‘Regatta De Rio’ he demonstrates his superb
technique on flute and piccolo.
George Howard (1957-98) also recorded for GRP, and during a 15-year
career that produced 14 albums he gathered a huge following and became a
firm favourite among contemporary-jazz radio stations. Unusually, Howard’s
main instrument was the soprano saxophone, on which he recorded almost
exclusively for virtually all of his career. Originally hailing from Philadelphia,
Howard relocated to California during 1983 and released Steppin’ Out, an
album with a combination of instrumental pop covers, smooth jazz and R&B
work-outs. Howard continued with this formula, attaining Billboard jazz-chart
success with recordings such as Dancing In The Sun (1985) and A Nice Place
To Be (1987), and Grammy nominations for Reflections (1988) and Do I Ever
Cross Your Mind? (1992).
One of the features of the new generation of crossover saxophonists in the
1980s was that many of them did not begin their recording careers playing
jazz. Most had studied jazz, but unlike slightly older players such as
Washington, Laws, Brecker, Watts and Scott, they had not become
established as jazz players first before recording crossover albums, nor did
they make straightahead jazz part of their repertoire at all.
Tenor saxophonist Kirk Whalum comes into this category. Although he
studied jazz at school and college, Whalum has made recordings firmly
centred on crossover, though gravitating toward soul and R&B. His career
began in Houston, Texas, where pianist Bob James spotted him after he
opened a gig for James’s band. Whalum subsequently played on James’s Nelson Rangell’s association with the GRP
album /2 (1984) and then began recording his own series of albums for label established his image as a popular
Columbia, including Floppy Disk (1985), And You Know That (1988), The crossover artist. Rangell is pictured
Promise (1988) and Cache (1992). (opposite) in 1997.
Whalum is not a brilliant technician; his strength lies in a deep crying tone
and a soulful playing style that goes straight for the heart-strings of the
listener. On The Promise, for example, there are no fast, burning runs or
virtuosic crescendos into the harmonics — but everything he plays creates
maximum emotional effect. The key to music for Whalum is soul, and not
what type of music you play or how fast you can play it. For example, he said
of his country-influenced 1995 album In This Life, “Soul in my book is what
emerges when you're singing or playing with passion. Soul,” said Whalum,
“has more to do with integrity and colour and depth of feeling than any
particular musical idiom.”
Whalum’s ability to touch an emotional nerve in his audience meant that
he was widely sought after as a session musician. His saxophone has been
featured on many pop and R&B hits, including albums by other jazz-crossover
artists like Larry Carlton, George Benson, and The Rippingtons. However,
most people will have heard Whalum as a result of his work on Whitney
Houston’s smash number-one ‘I Will Always Love You’ (1992).
One saxophonist who has succeeded in achieving both crossover success
and acclaim from jazz critics is Gerald Albright (b. 1957). Albright has
recorded a number of crossover soul- and R&B-influenced records as well as
several straightahead jazz albums. He originally studied accountancy at

— «I or CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

college, but on graduating began to pursue a career as a musician, working as

a sideman for artists like The Temptations, Olivia Newton-John and Anita
Baker. In 1987 Albright released his first solo album, Just Between Us, which
featured him on tenor and alto, playing a selection of soul and R&B numbers.
Several other crossover albums followed until in 1991 he recorded Live At
Birdland West, a concert set featuring mainly jazz standards, and with guests
Kirk Whalum and Eddie Harris on various tracks.
While the early albums show off Albright’s clean sound and soulful
improvisations, on Birdland he really lets the audience know he can play, with
some extended and fiery improvisations. On ‘Impressions’ Albright’s Coltrane
influence is clear. However, his main inspiration is Cannonball Adderley, to
whom the album is dedicated. On ‘C Jamm Blues’ and ‘Limehouse Blues’
Albright plays with the attack and rhythmic confidence of Adderley,
combining sweet, soulful riffs and rapid-fire bebop runs. On ‘Georgia On My
Mind’ his sound is personal, clear, clean and driving as he demonstrates his
fantastic command of the harmonic register.
As well as the solo successes, Albright has been in demand as a session
player on a number of pop and R&B sessions, including work for Quincy
Jones, Patrice Rushen, Take 6, The Winans, Phil Collins and Whitney
Houston (on ‘I’m Your Baby Tonight’, 1990). On Albright’s 1994 release
Smooth one can hear why, as his slick funky licks and sweet sound fit
effortlessly around the vocals.
Perhaps his best release to date has been Giving Myself To You (1995)
featuring some great playing on soprano and flute as well as tenor and alto.
Although this is an acoustic straightahead jazz set, it is highly soulful, given a
contemporary edge by Albright’s sparkling arrangements and the talents of
players such as George Duke, Stanley Clarke and Harvey Mason. Albright
Art Porter’s debut album Pocket City was said, “I wanted to satisfy the purists with an acoustic, unplugged feel and at
released in 1992 and included Jeff Lorber the same time put a 1990s spin on the project, with a variety of rhythmic
(keyboards), Buzzy Feiten (bass) and twists and layering of certain instruments.”
Paulinho da Costa (percussion) . In the 1990s other new, even younger saxophonists emerged on to the
scene, such as Brandon Fields, Najee, Dave Koz and Everette Harp. All
achieved solo success and built their careers playing within the smooth-jazz
crossover genre. One player of note among the many was Art Porter (1961-
96), a young musician from Little Rock, Arkansas. Tragically, Porter was
killed in a boating accident while on tour in Thailand in November 1996,
leaving his full musical potential unfulfilled.
During his short career Porter inspired many with his recordings and
dynamic performance skills. He had been raised in a jazz household and grew
up to the sounds of John Coltrane and Charlie Parker. While still at school he
joined his father’s jazz trio, a gig that continued until he was barred from
playing because he was too young to be in the venues. However, the State's
attorney general at the time was sympathetic toward Porter’s predicament
and pressed for the law to be changed. The attorney was also a famous
saxophonist — a certain Bill Clinton — with whom Porter remained in contact
throughout his career.
He began playing professionally as a sideman for artists like Pharaoh
Sanders and Jack McDuff before signing with Verve and releasing his first solo
album, Pocket City, in 1992. An energetic funk workout produced by Jeff
Lorber, it featured Porter on alto and soprano, showing off his lyrical and
energetic playing as well as his songwriting abilities. Other releases followed

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE he
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Art Porter’s fame was growing fast at the

time of his death at the age of 35 in 1996.

such as Straight To The Point (1993), Undercover (1994) and Lay Your Hands
On Me (1996), as well as guest spots on keyboardist Jeff Lorber’s own projects.
All showcase Porter’s playing and songwriting, but his all-round enthusiasm
and showmanship was most strongly evident at live performances, where he
would move through the audience, play two saxes at once, and _ stride
energetically around the stage.
This on-stage energy is captured well on the retrospective tribute album,
For Art’s Sake (1998). In his sleevenote, Verve producer Guy Eckstine recalls
Porter as being like a “tightly wrapped package”, and combining “great
songwriting, mellifluous tone, superior soloing skills, and dynamic live
performance”. All this is evident on the album. Porter’s style mixes the
melodic energy of his jazz background with the funky, rhythmically tight licks
of the smooth-jazz artist. Eckstine notes that this funk-jazz amalgam once led
to Porter being dubbed “Maceo Coltrane” — James Brown’s alto player Maceo
Parker plus jazz giant John Coltrane.
Despite charges of blandness from critics, crossover has introduced many
new listeners to jazz. The players mentioned here have all helped to bring
improvised music to a wider audience, as well as to establish and develop the
role of the saxophone in popular music as a whole. For this work they more
than deserve their places in this collection of jazz saxophone greats.

rae CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

 MICHAEL TUCKER EUROPEAN VOICES
JAZZ CEASED TO BE A PURELY AMERICAN MUSIC LONG AGO,
BUT ALMOST EVERYONE CONTINUED TO PLAY IT WITH AN
AMERICAN ACCENT. IT WAS NOT UNTIL THE LATE SIXTIES
THAT A RANGE OF DISTINCTIVELY EUROPEAN JAZZ - OR JAZZ-
TINGED - STYLES BEGAN TO EMERGE.

GIANLUIGI TROVESI

_ yl
‘ P| mU icule
VOLs. 1 y 2

Three albums from the burgeoning It is within French jazz that one finds some of the earliest evidence of
European jazz scene: Bobby Jaspar European voices establishing themselves on the saxophone. The contributions
(Belgium), Gianluigi Trovesi (Italy) and which André Ekyan (1907-72) and Alix Combelle (1912-78) made to the
Pedro Iturralde (Spain). musical genius of Django Reinhardt in the late 1930s are clearly informed by
their literate enthusiasm for such American masters as Johnny Hodges, Benny
Carter and — above all — Coleman Hawkins. One of the indispensable swing
recordings — ‘Crazy Rhythm’ cut by Reinhardt, Carter and Hawkins in Paris
in April 1937 — finds altoist Ekyan and tenorist Combelle preparing cultured
pathways for the elegance and bite of their American confréres.
A more expansive relation to the American tradition distinguishes the
work of the Frenchman Barney Wilen and the Belgian, Bobby Jaspar (1926-
63). A key figure in the evolution of European jazz in the 1950s — and one of
the finest flautists in jazz — Jaspar dreamed initially of marrying aspects of
Warne Marsh and Stan Getz in his work. Following emigration to the US he
fell under the spell of Sonny Rollins. As shown on At Ronnie Scott’s (1962)
which he shared with fellow Belgian, guitarist René Thomas, Jaspar’s eventual
maturity on tenor was such that he could sublimate the rhythmic clout and
harmonic acuity of Rollins into lengthy, supple and melodic lines of his own.
Barney Wilen (1937-96) first came to international attention through his
playing with Miles Davis on the 1957 Lift To The Scaffold film soundtrack
recording. A year later he made Jazz Sur Seine, a lovely blend of Reinhardt-
like swing, blues and New York bop, with Milt Jackson on piano, drummer
Kenny Clarke and the Senegalese percussionist Gana M’Bow. After
accompanying Davis on an extensive European tour, Wilen appeared at the

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 17
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Newport festival in 1959. As with Jaspar, the importance of Young and

Rollins for Wilen’s work of this time is clearly evident. However, Wilen was
always a saxophonist in quest of his own voice.
In the late 1960s that quest led Wilen to free jazz and jazz-rock,
encounters with Indian music and the making of a cult album dedicated to
Timothy Leary. Later, the hard bop revival of the mid 1980s saw the
measured intelligence and drive of Wilen’s early achievements back in fashion.
However, in retrospect the larger part of Wilen’s creative legacy in France is
to be found in the openness of attitude which he displayed in the 1960s.
It is this openness of attitude which characterises representative albums of
the 1970s and 1980s by Frangois Jeanneau and Michel Portal (both b. 1935),
two of the leading French saxophonists of Wilen’s generation. Recorded in
1977 by the Coltrane-influenced Jeanneau, Ephemere is an atmospheric album
of diverse originals, including creative use of electronics, while JT'urbulence
(1987) is a typically wide-ranging affair from the genre-crossing Portal. A
further point to make about the creative legacy of Wilen is that the extensive
research trip which he made in Africa at the end of the 1960s could be seen to
presage much of what was later to be experienced there by one of France’s
most exploratory contemporary players, Louis Sclavis (b. 1953). Louis Sclavis, one of the most important
In the mid-to-late 1990s Sclavis recorded a brace of melodically and — bass-clarinet innovators since Eric Dolphy,
rhythmically arresting albums for Label Bleu — Carnet De Routes (1995) and _ is also a gifted saxophonist.
Suite Africaine (1999) — which documented the African tours he had
undertaken with bassist Henri Texier, drummer Aldo Romano and
photographer Guy Le Querrec. Like Jeanneau and Portal, Sclavis is a multi-
instrumentalist, with a distinctive voice on soprano and bass clarinet, often
expressed in ostinato figures. The more abstracted European aspects of his
approach are documented on such ECM albums as Rouge (1991) and Les
Violences De Rameau (1995-96).
Embracing distinctive aspects of local atmosphere and culture, the work of
Jeanneau, Portal and Sclavis offers a stimulating variety of perspectives on
the question of how a European saxophonist might develop a voice redolent of
something more than familiarity with the American tradition. Sclavis has
spoken, for example, of wanting to create an imaginary folklore, integrating
the sophistication of contemporary jazz and archaic Mediterranean melodies,
the moods of music hall and concert stage. In Portal, the melodies of
European folk music can merge with the ultra-disciplined dynamics of
contemporary classical composition, within rhythms and textures which at
times conjure images of North Africa.
Equally representative here are the Italian multi-instrumentalist Gianluigi
Trovesi, Frenchman André Jaume and the Spanish tenorist and sopranist
Pedro Iturralde. Trovesi (b. 1944) brings the folk melodies of his country into
creative relation with the sort of jazz that can take its emotional temper from
both early Ornette Coleman and late Coltrane, as well as the sort of pensive
mood one might associate with singer Paolo Conte or film director Federico
Fellini. The poetry of his clarinet playing, especially, is evident in his wide-
ranging duos with accordionist Gianni Coscia on the ECM recording In Cerca
Di Cibo (1999). Like Trovesi, the Marseilles-born multi-instrumentalist André
Jaume (b. 1940) has worked in many contexts. His medium-weight tenor
fluency is well captured on the aptly named ‘Mediterranean Blues’, from /liade
(1996), where his measured obbligatos serve some impassioned, at times Arab-
inflected vocal invocations to the spirit of “la grande bleue”.

ie CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

Born in the northern Spanish town of Falcas, Pedro Iturralde (b. 1929) is in
part a harmonically sophisticated hard bopper. He once held his own with
such a master of this genre as pianist Hampton Hawes, as documented by
Pedro Iturralde Quartet Featuring Hampton Hawes (1968, Spanish Blue Note).
However, Iturralde’s lasting claim to fame lies in his response to the seminal
inspiration of Miles Davis’s and Gil Evans’s Sketches Of Spain and Coltrane’s
Olé albums. The modally-oriented, jazz-meets-flamenco albums which he made
with guitarist Paco de Lucia in 1966-67 are striking examples of Iturralde’s
dramatic mixing of the spirit of jazz and blues with the Andalusian flavour of
what Federico Garcia Lorea called cante jondo (deep song) and the duende.
Peter Brétzmann (b. 1941), from Germany, was an early member of
pianist Alex von Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity Orchestra; his contributions to

| STEREO | o& Ft

PEDRO ITURRALDE QUARTET GAME,

CHEKASIN
CON FUOCO
featuring HAMPTON HAWES
AN HISTORIC MEETING, RECORDED IN THE EARLY HOURS OF THE MORNING
LIVE
IN MOSCOW
AND
WEST BERLIN

LEO RECORDS

Pedro Iturralde made a fruitful connection his own Machine Gun (1968) and trumpeter Manfred Schoof’s European Echoes
between modal jazz and Spanish flamenco. (1969) gave rampaging notice of the huge saxophone sound and relentless,
The Ganelin Trio began as a barely- blatting “power play” that would mark much of his subsequent work. The
tolerated underground band in Soviet 1971 live album The Message revealed the more variegated inclinations of
Russia, while the Swede Mats Gustafsson Dutchman Willem Breuker (b. 1944). A more than capable saxophonist and
developed solo free improvisation. multi-instrumentalist, Breuker’s free-jazz energy is often leavened by a
knowing admixture of diverse European popular melody and theatrically
realised structure, the whole rinsed in the sort of humour that can recall the
irony of Kurt Weill — to whom the Dada-esque Breuker is often compared.
Undoubtedly, free jazz of the 1960s and beyond did much to stimulate
European saxophonists to discover and develop a voice of their own.
Connoisseurs of freely improvised music in its most radical or extreme forms
have no difficulty in distinguishing the layered lucidity of the tenor and
soprano multiphonics of Britain’s pioneering Evan Parker (b. 1944) from the
Slavic keening of Russia’s Vladimir Rezitsky (b. 1944) and Vladimir Chekasin
(b. 1947) or the fragmented, volatile yet poetic eruptions of Swedish multi-
instrumentalist Mats Gustafsson (b. 1964). Gustafsson’s Impropositions (1996),
released as a beautifully designed and illustrated 80-page CD/book, exemplifies
the solo ambitions and achievements of a form of music-making which has
also engendered much organically conceived collectivism — as on the legendary
Karyobin recording of 1968 by the Spontaneous Music Ensemble of Kenny
Wheeler, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Dave Holland and John Stevens.
Whatever the nature of free jazz, the question of its origin and impact is a
complex matter. For example, did free jazz begin with Ornette Coleman, or

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 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

the West Indian, British-domiciled Joe Harriott (1928-73)? Harriott was an

urgent, spiky yet lyrical altoist whose Free Form (1960) and Abstract (1962)
reveal an almost painterly treatment of free-flowing dynamics, tonalities and
tempi. Or should the origins of free jazz be traced further back, past Cecil
Taylor, Steve Lacy and Paul Bley to the more even-tempered music (in
several senses of the term) which pianist Lennie Tristano improvised with
saxophonists Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz at the end of the 1940s?
For German trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, writing in 1963 in the album
sleevenote of the appropriately titled Tension, freedom in jazz meant the
possibility of going forward while reserving the right to reference all periods of
the music. The contributions which his post-bop compatriots Ginter Kronberg
(alto), Heinz Sauer and Gerd Dudek (tenor) made to Mangelsdorff’s wide-

BARBARA
THOMPSON ¢
DON
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QUINTET
PLAYING 2 OF BARBARA" SCOMPOSITIONS:

Roundabouts
and Swinss
Blues for
Adolphe Sax
12” 45rpm MAXI-SINGLE
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ranging music on albums like Tension and birds of Underground (1972) reveal Barbara Thompson and Don Rendell (far
a congruent sensitivity to the many expressive possibilities available both on left), top British saxophonists of different
and around the Coltrane/Coleman/ Dolphy axis of jazz saxophone. generations. Veteran Austrian saxophonist
Much the same point applies to the Polish altoist and multi- Hans Koller (sleeves, centre and right)
instrumentalist Zbigniew Namyslowski (b. 1939). Namyslowski first came to survived the Nazi period and emerged as a
international attention through Lola (1964) and Astigmatic (1965), key records post-war leader. Hungarian guitarist Attila
of Polish modern jazz. The latter was made with two other outstanding Polish Zoller and Algerian-born pianist Martial
musicians: pianist and composer — and leader — Krzysztof Komeda (1931-69) Solal (above) are two further important
and trumpeter Tomasz Stanko (b. 1942). Aware of the jazz potential within figures in European jazz.
the folk melodies of his native land, Namyslowski has always maintained that
jazz must nevertheless retain a strong core of American rhythm, and spent
some time in the US in the late 1970s. In his finely crafted and characterful
music a poetic feeling for the lilting melodies and staggered rhythms of the
Polish folk tradition can sit happily next to a (respectfully) humorous reading
of a piece of Americana like ‘Ol’ Man River’, as heard on Lola, or an up-tempo
jazz-rock workout.
Other European saxophonists who have distinguished themselves in jazz-
rock include the German Klaus Doldinger (b. 1936) whose group Passport
made one of the best albums in that genre of the 1970s, Cross Collateral
(1974), and the British multi-instrumentalist Barbara Thompson (b. 1944).
Thompson’s work with her jazz-rock group Paraphernalia has reached a wide
audience, although not as wide as her writing and playing for the 1990s
British TV drama series A Touch Of Frost. Less well known, unfortunately, are
such rolling, relaxed pieces of hers as ‘Blues For Adolphe Sax’ (1978) which

181 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

she recorded as a single for a small label with the much-respected British
tenorist and multi-instrumentalist Don Rendell (b. 1926).
The sort of consciously conceived diversity that one finds in Namyslowski
is also to be heard in the work of such accomplished Central European
saxophonists as Wolfgang Puschnig, Florian Brambock, Andy Sherrer and
Harry Sockal — plus a healthy dose of high-energy, free-jazz anarchy and
humour. Over the past two decades these players — “with Dolphy and
Ellington marching alongside” — have contributed much to the eclectic, genre-
spanning music of Mathias Riiegg’s Vienna Art Orchestra. Such material that
distinguishes the VAO’s three-volume 20th Anniversary 1977-1997 (1997) is
rich testimony to the maturity of contemporary European jazz.
If the music of Ritegg’s mainly Austrian orchestra might be seen as “post-

Altoist Mike Osborne (above) and baritone

saxophonist John Surman (right) made
up two-thirds of the innovative electro-
acoustic trio SOS.

modern” in its often quicksilver eclecticism, the work of Austrian multi-

instrumentalist Hans Koller (b. 1921) exemplifies the structured, tradition-
conscious yet innovative freedom of expression which European saxophonists
have been able to achieve within the gradual and diverse evolution of post-
bop modernism. Koller was one of the leaders of post-war jazz in Austria and
Germany, and his early, Tristano-school tenor work could evince a beautifully
weighted sense of tone, time and line, as on the title track of Some Winds
(1955). A decade later Koller made Zo-Ko-So with Hungarian guitarist Attila
Zoller and French-Algerian pianist Martial Solal. The album is one of the
classic recordings of modern chamber jazz, and its many qualities led producer
Joachim Ernst Berendt to speak in his sleevenote of the courage these
musicians had to be in jazz what they were born to be in life: Europeans.
Recorded in 1962, Multiple Koller is another classic, this time a tenor and
piano quartet, with Koller’s tenor sound much fuller than in the 1950s. The
music features a range of both poised reflections and swinging, blues-charged
Koller compositions, reflecting his interests in painting and poetry as well as
an appreciation of such modern jazz masters as Charles Mingus and Eric
Dolphy, Oscar Pettiford (an old playing partner) and Zoot Sims. With some
overdubbing of Koller’s tenor, parts of the record presage the rhythm-section-

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 182

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

less approach of Out On The Rim (1991), a representative example of Koller’s

more abstract latter-day work, often on soprano. The record closes with the
bonus of a lengthy live tenor duet with Warne Marsh from 1984.
Few if any saxophonists have made more creative use of multitracking
than the English multi-instrumentalist John Surman (b. 1944), in both
recording and live situations, and including extensive use of loops. Surman
first came to international attention with the Mike Westbrook Concert Band
with which he won the Best Soloist award at the 1968 Montreux Jazz festival.
Americans as diverse as Charlie Parker and Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane and
Harry Carney have meant much to him. However, as shown on his own How
Many Clouds Can You See? and British guitarist John McLaughlin’s
Extrapolation (both 1969), Surman’s playing was distinguished early on by the

featuring
JOHN SURMAN
JOHN MARSHALL
TERJE RYPDAL
CHRIS LAURENCE
JOHN TAYLOR
MALCOLM GRIFFITHS

sort of combination of (structured) free-jazz energy and limpid lyricism which

speaks in large part of a European sensibility. Three items from British saxophonist John
One of Surman’s many achievements, from the late 1960s onwards, has Surman’s early career: with Mike
been his expansion of the baritone’s expressive register. The variety of tone Westbrook’s Concert Band; as leader of a
colour, dynamics and rhythmic interplay in the rhythm-section-less ‘Bouquet group largely composed of Westbrook
Garni’ (from Jazz in Britain 1968-1969) documents the fine understanding players; and in a collaboration with
Surman shared at this time with two other distinctive British saxophonists, composer-arranger John Warren.
altoist Mike Osborne (b. 1941) and tenorist Alan Skidmore (b. 1942). Their
understanding would soon be developed in the all-saxophone SOS trio where
Surman’s interest in church chorales and organ fugues is at times clear.
The richness of saxophone talent which emerged in Britain at this time
included multi-instrumentalists Stan Sulzmann (b. 1948), whose mature, fully-
rounded qualities as both saxophonist and flautist are to the fore on British
pianist Dave Saul’s Reverence (1999), and Trevor Watts (b. 1939). Watts
moved from an early and intense involvement with free jazz to make eventual
hypnotic use of extended riffs in the richly textured and strongly rhythmic
work of his Moiré Music ensemble, as on A Wider Embrace (1993) on ECM.
Established by Manfred Eicher in 1969, the Munich-based ECM label has
done a considerable amount both to document and to help develop European
sensibilities in jazz. On Reflection (1979) was John Surman’s first — and all-solo
— recording for the label. Since then he has appeared on several diverse
quartet albums with, among others, Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous and
Norwegian vocalist Karin Krog, led the fine quartet of his own — with pianist
John Taylor, bassist Chris Laurence and drummer John Marshall — which can

18 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

A young Jan Garbarek (above), and be heard on Stranger Than Fiction (1993), and recorded the songs of John
Willem Breuker’s Kollektief (right) Dowland with English early-music vocalist John Potter.
performing the free-jazz can-can. Surman’s mastery of baritone and soprano saxophone, bass clarinet,
recorder and looped synthesised patterns has distinguished a variety of
albums, such as the solo Withholding Pattern (1985). So has the tonally rooted,
sometimes Vaughan Williams/Frank Bridge-like aura of his compositions, as
on Proverbs And Songs (1998), featuring organ and choir, and Coruscating
(1999), which premiered Surman’s writing for string quintet.
At the same time, he has continued to participate in projects of a more
spontaneously improvised nature: a 1991 session with pianist Paul Bley, bassist
Gary Peacock, and drummer Tony Oxley yielded two albums, Adventure
Playground and In The Evenings Out There. Here can be discerned distant
echoes of the free-flowin fo)oO world of The Trio, the explosive group which Surman
co-led two decades earlier with Barre Phillips (bass) and Stu Martin (drums).
Surman’s role in the development and establishment of a fully European
jazz aesthetic on the saxophone has been matched by only one other musician
of his generation: his fellow ECM recording artist, the Norwegian Jan
Garbarek (b. 1947). Together with such partners as guitarist Terje Rypdal,
pianist Bobo Stenson, electric bassist Eberhard Weber and drummer Jon
Christensen, Garbarek has created an increasingly broad-based yet intensely
poetic music. Aspects of his work, such as the liquid soprano treatment of an
old Norwegian folk song on Folk Songs (1979) with American bassist Charlie
Haden and Brazilian guitarist Egberto Gismonti, can recall the folk-tinged
aura of much of the cool-school work of Swedish altoist Arne Domneérus (b.
1924) and his compatriot, the great baritonist Lars Gullin (1928-76).
However, other aspects of Garbarek’s work, as on the ground-breaking
Afric Pepperbird (1970) or Witchi Tai To (1973), feature the hotter, high-
energy voice which he developed early on from the stimulus he had received
as a teenager from John Coltrane and Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders and
Archie Shepp — as well as from the excellent Swedish multi-instrumentalist,
Bernt Rosengren. Rosengren (b. 1937) played high-quality Swedish hard bop

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 184

 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

TAUH

Pharoah Sanders, a strong US influence

on the European free-jazz scene.

in the latter half of the 1950s, and was a member of the 1958 Newport
International Youth Orchestra. He went on to contribute atmosphericI tenor
to Krzysztof Komeda’s 1962 soundtrack for Roman Polanski’s film Knife In
The Water (reissued in 1996 as part of Komeda’s Crazy Girl). In the 1970s
Rosengren recorded exploratory albums with Lars Gullin, Don Cherry and
Maffy NA Falay’s
Mi Turkish-Swedish band Sevda: Notes From Underground
g (1973) is
a fine example of his post-Coltrane, folk-tinged Nordic jazz.
Recently, Rosengren has won the attention of a new jazz audience through
his contributions to Tomasz Stanko’s Litania (1997), a sextet reworking of the
music of Komeda. Also deserving mention here is the Swede Borje Fredriksson
(1937-68). His album Progressive Movements (1962-65), with its blend of
Coltrane-like authority and folk elements, intimates much of what Garbarek
would later bring to more refined (and much less directly swinging) synthesis.
Keith Jarrett has said that he has never heard a better saxophonist than
Garbarek. The multi-instrumentalist contributed to such memorable Jarrett
albums as Belonging and Luminessence, both in 1974, with the latter setting
Garbarek’s tenor and soprano against a string orchestra. Certainly, few players
have evolved a more personal voice, whether on tenor or soprano. Only the
alto work of the Danish-Congolese John Tchicai (b. 1936) comes close to
Garbarek’s plangent power. Tchicai played a significant role in the New York
Contemporary Five and New York Art Quartet of the early-to-mid 1960s, but

185 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

his sculpted intensity is best captured on albums such as Real Tchicai (1977).
Allied to Garbarek’s scrupulous approach to factors of (highly vocalised)
tone and (reflective) time, space is a key element in the Norwegian’s mature
aesthetic. Some may prefer more notes than those to be heard in the slowly-
unfolding, questing melodies of the wind harp-assisted Dis (1976), the solo All
Those Born With Wings (1986) or Officiwm (1993), a million-selling
collaboration with The Hilliard Ensemble, Britain’s early music vocal
Bobby Wellins (above) has one of the most specialists. They could turn to Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature
beautiful and distinctive tenor sounds in (1969) or Triptykon (1972). The former is a vibrant document of Garbarek’s
jazz. Socttish saxophonist and composer apprentice years with George Russell, the latter a lyrical example of the fluid
Tommy Smith (right) is pictured at the free jazz which Garbarek created in the early 1970s with fellow Norwegian
Cheltenham jazz festival in 1999. | Arild Andersen on bass and the Finnish Edward Vesala on drums, and with
Norwegian poet Jan Erik Vold sometimes guesting in concerts.
Something of the spirit of Garbarek’s border-crossing work, such as that
heard on Song For Everyone (1984) with Indian violinist Shankar or Madar
(1992) with Tunisian ud virtuoso Anouar Brahem, can be discerned today in
Scandinavian saxophonists as diverse as Norway’s Tore Brunborg, Bendik
Hofseth and Karl Seglem, Finland’s Juhani Aaltonen and Kero Koivistoinea
and Sweden’s Jonas Knutsson and Joakim Milder — the last-named featuring
on Tomasz Stanko’s Litania (1997).
Garbarek’s example has been of particular importance for England’s Andy
Sheppard (b. 1957), as is apparent on IJnclassificable (1994) and Learning To
Wave (1998), and Scotland’s Tommy Smith (b. 1967). Smith’s recent output
ranges from the Ellington-Strayhorn tribute The Sound Of Love (1997) and

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 18
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Blue Smith (1999), which includes some driving contributions from guitarist
John Scofield, to the more European-sounding Azure (1995), an album
dedicated to the painter Joan Miro, and Gymnopédie (1997). This last features
saxophone and piano readings of a variety of pieces in the modern classical
vein, including work by Satie and Bartok, and two of Smith’s own concertos
for saxophone and piano.
While Gymnopédie may bring to mind the classically trained English
saxophonist John Harle (b. 1956) and such various excursions into jazz of his
as the Ellington tribute The Shadow Of The Duke (1992), the overall blend of
poetry and power in Smith’s work serves to recall the achievements of Smith’s
compatriot, Bobby Wellins. Today, British jazz saxophone has many things to
commend it: the spacious lyricism of ex-Loose Tubes member Ian Ballamy, as

Polish...
ta
DRAGON
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JOAKIM MILDER cs

QUARTET

BORJE
FREDRIKSSON

heard on Food (1998); the mature mix of material, including the poetry of
Langston Hughes and the energy of a streetwise DJ, which can be enjoyed on Zbigniew Namyslowski’s quartet was the
Modern Day Jazz Stories (1996) by the Coltrane-fired Courtney Pine (b. 1964); first Polish jazz group to tour western
or the passionate, jazz-meets-Africa quest of Alan Skidmore’s The Call (1999), Europe. Swedish tenor saxophonists Borje
for example. However, it is possible to argue that the main event in recent Fredriksson and Joakim Milder developed
British saxophone history has been the recording renaissance of Wellins. a distinctive European style, initially from
Bobby Wellins (b. 1936) has never doubled up his instruments, remaining the approach of John Coltrane.
firmly committed to the tenor. Over the years he has cultivated an enigmatic,
compressed yet open-sound. Combined with his song-like phrasing, this can
produce music as distinctive in emotional register as that of Surman or
Garbarek. Wellins’s work first revealed a simultaneously European and
American-inflected synthesis of rhythmic mastery, harmonic sophistication
and lyrical introspection in the Stan Tracey Quartet — around the time of
Courtney Pine’s birth. His latter-day mastery is evident on albums like birds
Of Brazil (1989), Nomad (1992), Don’t Worry “Bout Me: Live At The Vortex
(1996) and The Satin Album (1996), a wonderfully weighted quartet reading of
Billie Holiday’s 1958 valedictory “with strings” recording.
Wellins has never ceased to explore the manifold potential of the
saxophone, as evident on such rare and, unfortunately, deleted albums as
Jublilation! (1978) and Dreams Are Free (1979), or the 1997 first-time issue of
1983's Making Light Work. Without recourse to the window-dressing of some of
today’s so-called world music, the art of Bobby Wellins reminds us that,
whether it be European or American in flavour, the sound of the saxophone
can speak to (and of) the deepest currents of our common humanity.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
 D AVE (Gea THE
NEW SWING
THE VIGOROUS AND EXPRESSIVE SAXOPHONE STYLES OF THE
SWING ERA AND BEFORE DID NOT DIE WITH THEIR CREATORS,
THANKS TO A NEW GENERATION OF TALENTED PLAYERS. NOT
ONLY DID THEY ADOPT THE IDIOM, THEY REVITALISED IT
WITH THEIR OWN DISTINCTIVE IDEAS.

If there was ever such a thing as the golden age of jazz, it was the 1950s, the
last decade in which virtually all the great figures of the music were still
playing. The oldest had barely reached the age of 70 by the close of that
decade, and most were in the prime of life. This meant that every style of jazz
— from New Orleans street music to the new-born avant-garde — was alive and
kicking at the same time. It was quite possible, as late as 1963, for a
saxophone fancier to spend a few evenings club-hopping in New York and
take in performances by, say, Bud Freeman; Coleman Hawkins, Zoot Sims,
Hank Mobley and Eric Dolphy. The average jazz listener at the time would

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Scott Hamilton, born 1954, has released a Ala

steady stream of albums and CDs since his Broadbent
early 20s. His following is particularly Y)
strong in Europe.

feel quite comfortable with the assortment of styles and enjoy each on its own
terms. For some reason it was assumed that this happy state of affairs could
go on indefinitely. New musicians would regularly turn up, introducing new
ideas, while the established players would continue to mellow and ripen. Jazz
would luxuriate forever in its rich and fluid diversity. But human mortality
made this impossible. By the end of the century all the above were long dead,
together with the early masters, the great swing players and most of the
bebop generation. If every newcomer had been intent on being innovative and
up-to-date, that would have been the end of swing and so on as living musical
styles. Fortunately, this was not the case.
The story of tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton (b. 1954) can serve as an
introduction to the subject of what, for want of a better term, we can call
neo-classical jazz.
Hamilton announced his arrival on the jazz scene at the age of 23 with his
first album, Scott Hamilton Is A Good Wind Who Is Blowing Us No Ill, in 1977,

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 188

 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The ever-dapper Scott Hamilton in concert.

and caused an instant sensation. It was unusual then for young people of that
age to be playing jazz of any kind, but this was almost beyond belief.
Hamilton was playing pure swing tenor, and doing so with poise, assurance
and understanding far beyond his years. There were times, at this early stage,
when he could almost have been taken for a reincarnation of Ben Webster.
Webster himself had died in 1973, Don Byas in °72, Paul Gonsalves in ’74.
One by one, the great figures were leaving the stage, and here was this neat,
quiet, slightly dandyish young white man from Providence, Rhode Island,
stepping into the breach. Middle-aged jazz fans everywhere fell upon him with
cries of delight and hugged him almost to death.
The big question was, how had this phenomenon come about? The answer,
in Hamilton’s case and a number of similar ones that followed, features that
stock character, the jazz-loving parent. Scott Hamilton’s teenage years were
the years of Beatlemania and the high tide of pop and rock, during which
teenagers were subjected to unprecedented media and peer pressure to

18 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

conform to a pop-fan stereotype. Yet Hamilton seems hardly to have noticed.

His father, a painter, continually played jazz records of the classic era as he
worked and the child absorbed the cadences of the music in the same way
that he learned to speak. It became his natural idiom. After a brief period
spent blowing a harmonica with a local blues band, he acquired a tenor
saxophone at 16 and played his first gig on it a month later. He remains
entirely self-taught.
In his career so far, Hamilton has recorded something in the region of 60
albums, either as leader or featured soloist. They document his progress from
juvenile phenomenon to mature artist, and demonstrate that it is perfectly
possible to grow artistically while working in an established idiom. The Scott
Hamilton of today is instantly recognisable as himself, not just an amalgam of

BRUCE ADAMS: ALAN BARNES QUINTET

Let’s Face The Music...

Harry Allen’s playing has matured influences. His solos are fluent, direct, adventurous and immensely varied in
impressively in recent years. Shown here mood. He is probably the finest exponent alive of the slow-to-medium-tempo
are two particularly fine recorded ballad, as he amply demonstrates on Scott Hamilton Plays Ballads (1989).
examples. Alan Barnes leads an occasional As with all music, Scott Hamilton’s playing sounds best when experienced
quintet with trumpeter Bruce Adams. in person. He is also a phenomenally consistent player who rarely if ever
seems to have an off night. He keeps his recorded output fresh by choosing
different contexts in which to work. Radio City (1990) finds him in company
with veteran pianist Gerry Wiggins; for Hast Of The Sun (1993), recorded in
London, he has the rhythm section which regularly accompanies him when he
visits Britain; a duet album with guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, The Red Door
(1998), is dedicated to the memory of Zoot Sims. There is even a Christmas
album, Christmas Love Song (1997), with full string orchestra.
Hamilton, by virtue of his timely arrival and high profile, staked out the
ground for what is now a sizeable tract of contemporary jazz performance,
often referred to by the somewhat slippery term “mainstream”. This is more a
state of mind than a definable style. Mainstream jazz adheres to the repertoire
of classic American song, composed mainly between World War I and the end
of the 1950s, together with the blues and an occasional original piece
composed on the old swing-riff pattern. It is neither antiquarian nor
experimental, but in other respects it is inclusive, touching on the fringes of
Dixieland in one direction and bebop in the other. Although it is vastly
popular around the world, mainstream jazz tends to be un-newsworthy. It has
no connection with fashion and therefore receives little publicity. One of its
most articulate spokesmen and most eloquent practitioners is tenor

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 190

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

saxophonist Harry Allen (b. 1966). Like Hamilton, he grew up in a house full
of swing. His father had been a professional drummer and swing records
provided the regular background to daily life. “When I was a little boy, my
father would play jazz records for me each morning before I went to
kindergarten,” says Allen. “We’d listen to Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong,
Bunny Berigan, Ella Fitzgerald — ‘Elafitz Gerald’, as I thought then — and
Duke Ellington.” Although he was born the year before The Beatles released
Sergeant Pepper, swing, he says, “sounded like more fun” than the music his
contemporaries enjoyed.
His own playing reveals traces of the players he has listened to and
admired since childhood, notably Stan Getz, Ben Webster, Flip Phillips and
his father’s boyhood friend, Paul Gonsalves. At the same time, and this

ALAN BARNES and the DAVID NEWTON Trio

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applies equally to Hamilton and many others, there are elements in his Best known for his alto saxophone and
playing that would not have been there 50 years ago — little turns of phrase, clarinet playing, Alan Barnes has a
hints of bebop harmony, touches of bossa nova, and so on. Swing, in his special fondness for the baritone. Joe
hands, remains a dynamic, growing idiom. Particularly impressive are two Temperley’s tough-tender baritone is
albums with the John Pizzarelli Trio, Harry Allen Meets The John Pizzarelli unfailingly moving.
Trio and Tenors Anyone (both 1996). Pizzarelli’s mellow guitar acts as the
perfect foil for Allen’s tenor and the light texture of the drum-less trio
emphasises the fibrous warmth of his tone.
“There's always something fresh to do,” Allen insists. “People ask, “Why
do you play in an older style?’ But what’s new and what’s old? Most times
what they call ‘new’ is just another version of John Coltrane, and he died the
year after I was born. So if 30-plus years is ‘new’, how old is ‘old’? Fifty
years? Kighty years?” It is largely a question of delivery, he believes. A
rugged, abrasive approach is perceived by some as somehow modern and
“challenging” (a term of high approval among jazz publicists, although
virtually devoid of meaning), while softness, warmth and a smooth surface are
condemned as safe “easy listening”.
In contrast to Hamilton, Allen received a formal musical education,
specialising in jazz at Rutgers University. His predilection for swing was a
source of puzzlement to his teachers and pity to his fellow students. They
were convinced that, despite his obvious talent, he was bound for a life of
unemployment, because nobody wanted to hear that old stuff. As it turned
out, that old stuff was precisely what people did want to hear and, by his mid
20s, Allen was touring the world as a featured soloist. Many of his

191 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

Bob Wilber (above) pioneered the

scrupulous revival of earlier jazz styles. Joe
Temperley (right) is a founder-member of
the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, led by
Wynton Marsalis.

contemporaries, he recalls in carefully neutral tones, seemed to be occupied

mainly in playing for wedding parties in hotel ballrooms.
Scott Hamilton’s generation was not the first to produce jazz musicians
with a neo-classical bent. Bob Wilber (b. 1928) is of the generation which grew
up with bebop, yet his career has been almost exclusively involved with styles
of jazz which the bebop revolution seemed intent on sweeping away. A pupil
of Sidney Bechet while still a teenager, Wilber plays mainly soprano
saxophone, along with clarinet and occasionally alto. Few jazz musicians have
moved with such intelligence and authority through the panorama of jazz
history, creating music which is at the same time both contemporary and
traditional. Among his many projects was Soprano Summit (1973-75),
featuring himself and Kenny Davern on sopranos and clarinets. This band

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 192

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

performed with such zest and high good humour that it regularly stole the
show at festivals and concerts. The first task of music, as Wilber has often
remarked, is to make people enjoy it. A later band, Bechet Legacy (1981-86),
brought off the same trick.
Wilber has been pursuing his particular path for a long time, in the course
of which he has developed a viewpoint which directly challenges what the
American writer Gary Giddins calls “the tyranny of the new” in jazz.
“There’s all this music called ‘jazz’ that was made since the beginning of
the 20th century,” says Wilber. “Luckily for us, somebody invented the
phonograph at about the same time. So we have the music documented on
records in the same way that classical music is documented in scores. This
music is just as valid today as Mozart is, so why not play it, celebrate it?

KEN PEPLOWSKI QUINTET Ken Peplowski (two record jackets, left)

ue combines sparkling clarinet playing with
warm and breathy tenor saxophone.

WITH SPECIAL GUEST HarRY “SWEETS” EDISON

LIVE AT AMBASSADOR-AUDI£ORIUM

Why just have it on old records?” Re-creation, says Wilber, can be a creative
act in itself. He himself has a great gift for recreating the sounds and
ambience of early jazz through transcription and through expert direction. His
re-creation of Duke Ellington’s first band for the film The Cotton Club (1984)
was simply uncanny.
Playing baritone saxophone in that re-creation, taking the role of Harry
Carney, was Joe Temperley (b. 1929), a musician whose rich tone and poetic
turn of phrase have intensified with the passing years. Scottish-born,
Temperley worked fora long time in the London profession, spending seven
years (1958-65) with Humphrey Lyttelton’s band before emigrating to the US.
Subsequently he played in the bands of Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Mercer
Ellington and many others. He is a founder-member of Wynton Marsalis’s
Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, dedicated to performing jazz of all styles and
eras. Temperley is a magnificent soloist — grave, sonorous and moving — and
his playing has the timeless, universal quality that distinguishes jazz
musicians who have passed beyond the narrow categories of style and period.
It is still comparatively rare to find players who can move easily from one
jazz style to another, but their numbers are increasing. Among saxophonists, a
notable example is Ken Peplowski (b. 1959). Although he is best known as a
clarinet virtuoso, Peplowski also plays tenor saxophone, and occasionally alto.
In appreciating the work of such a wide-ranging player, it is impossible to
separate the roles of the instruments in any meaningful way.
Peplowski began playing the clarinet with polka bands in his native
Cleveland at the age of nine (for money!). At 19 he was leading the saxophone

1 w CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

section of the posthumous Tommy Dorsey orchestra, then under the direction
of trombonist Buddy Morrow. During his travels with this band he met and
became a pupil of Sonny Stitt. Settling in New York in 1981, he worked in
Dixieland bands and in Peggy Lee’s accompanying group, played with Bob
Wilber and cornettist Ruby Braff, and spent two years with that remarkable
singer, humorist and musical archaeologist Leon Redbone. It may have been a
haphazard process, but it is difficult to imagine a more comprehensive and
practical education in the jazz tradition, from ragtime to bebop — albeit in
reverse order.
Peplowski’s versatility is not achieved by adopting the mannerisms of
various different styles. It is more a question of having a personal style so
broad and comprehensive that it can embrace the most diverse material. A
mere glance through the contents list of a typical Peplowski CD can be a
bracing experience. Ancient ballads by Irving Berlin, Dixieland favourites,
Ellington tunes, jazz themes by John Coltrane, and even Ornette Coleman —
all emerge sounding as though they had been custom-made for the Peplowski
treatment. This eclecticism has been a particular feature of his long and
fruitful partnership with guitarist Howard Alden. Their two duet albums, Ken
Peplowski | Howard Alden (1993) and Encore! (1995), recorded live at concerts,
are both wonders of virtuosity and musical intelligence.
The teenaged Michael Hashim (b. 1956) was learning the alto saxophone at
school in Geneva, in upstate New York, when he heard Johnny Hodges for the
first time and was instantly smitten. He was lucky in his place of birth
because, for reasons that no one can satisfactorily explain, New England has
turned out to be the undisputed centre of latter-day swing. Hashim teamed up
with bassist Phil Flanagan and guitarist Chris Flory in nearby Rhode Island
and quickly developed his own distinctive and ebullient style. In 1977 he
joined The Widespread Depression Orchestra, a nine-piece band dedicated to
presenting swing music in an entertaining format. The band proved highly
successful, scoring particularly well on European tours, and Hashim
eventually took over the leadership. He later found that the outfit’s jokey
name was causing confusion among more literal-minded members of the
public, and so dropped “Depression” from the title.
On leaving the orchestra Hashim became a freelance, gaining as much
experience as possible by working with surviving members of the swing
generation, such as drummers Jo Jones and Sonny Greer and trumpeter Roy
Eldridge. By the beginning of the 1990s he had, like Hamilton and Allen,
embraced the life of the travelling soloist. His engaging personality and good-
humoured style of presentation have proved valuable assets in this career. He
has made a number of superb recordings, in particular Lotus Blossom (1990),
devoted to the compositions of Billy Strayhorn, Transatlantic Airs (1995),
recorded in Britain with vocalist Tina May, and Keep A Song In Your Soul
(1996), also featuring pianist Richard Wyands.
Plenty of young jazz players today begin by learning an instrument, play
in student bands of various kinds, and gradually take to jazz in the process.
Their jazz listening experience is often surprisingly patchy and sometimes
almost non-existent. By contrast, all the artists mentioned here became
musicians because they loved jazz. They were discerning listeners, sometimes
at a bizarrely young age, before they seriously took up playing, and many of
them continue to listen avidly to jazz of all periods. Thus, valuable contact is
maintained and the music of the past continues to resonate in the music of the

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 94
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Alan Barnes (left) duets with Charles

McPherson at London’s 100 Club, 1989.

present. Among saxophonists, no clearer example could be found than

Britain’s Alan Barnes (b. 1959), who firmly declares: “If I had not been a jazz
fan in the first place I would have had no interest at all in becoming a
musician.” His stylistic range is quite phenomenal, from Dixieland to post-
bop, and must be attributed in some measure to an insatiable and lifelong
appetite for listening to jazz records. “It’s a question of language, really,” he
says. “Bebop is a language; you can’t play a Charlie Parker tune and follow it
up with a swing-style solo, because it wouldn't work — like starting a sentence
in one language and finishing in another. Once you understand that, you can
play in any style you like and still be yourself.”
Barnes plays all the saxophones, plus clarinet and bass clarinet, although
most of his work is on alto, baritone and clarinet, and he has won numerous
awards for these three. He has a wonderful capacity for suggesting a given
style without actually imitating anyone. Johnny Hodges, for instance, is a
great favourite with Barnes, and he could, presumably, produce a near-perfect
facsimile if asked. But what he actually does is to drop in a series of feathery,
soft-tongued notes in the Hodges manner as a discreet reference and leave it
at that. The rest of the solo will be pure Alan Barnes. The ability to inhabit a
style in this way, to include it as an active ingredient in one’s own playing, is
a rare, valuable and largely unrecognised gift.
Jazz journalists and publicists (the terms are often interchangeable) have
made a fetish of innovation. This is quite understandable, given the constant
need to find something new to write about, but it gives rise to a curious
system of values in which novelty is confused with originality. Since the
number of original geniuses, in jazz or anywhere else, is strictly limited, it
follows that most of the revolutionary, mould-breaking, convention-defying
innovations with which we are regularly presented are more or less a waste of
everyone's time.
Most artists, even hugely talented ones, work best inside established forms.
Scott Hamilton, Harry Allen and the others mentioned in this chapter have
grown and matured while working in the idiom of latter-day swing. For them
it not a restriction but a liberation.

195 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 FRANK GRIFFITH CONTEMPORARY TRADITIONALISTS

A JAZZ REVIVAL IN THE EARLY EIGHTIES WAS LED BY THE

CLEAN-LIVING WYNTON AND BRANFORD MARSALIS. AS RECORD
COMPANIES PROMOTED THE "YOUNG LIONS", MANY NEW
PLAYERS ENJOYED OPPORTUNITIES UNAVAILABLE TO THEIR
PREDECESSORS ONLY A FEW YEARS EARLIER.

Many groundbreaking saxophonists of the last 20 years of the century

emerged from the jazz “revival” of the early 1980s. Those highlighted here
uphold stylistic, tonal and repertory traditions of the instrument and the jazz
legacy, at the same time borrowing from contemporary musical trends. Most
use largely acoustic ensembles, with the odd exception of an electric keyboard
for effect and a variety of guitars. It is not unusual for them to record songs
from the recent popular music repertoire. :
One attribute evident in many contemporary players is their ability to
extend beyond the normal highest note of the instrument, the standard high
F. During the 1950s and 1960s, high-note specialists such as Sam Donahue
and Eddie Harris rose above the crowd, often playing a full octave beyond the
normal range. Although they were respected by their fellow musicians, this
proclivity was often dismissed as a freakish stunt.
However, when the saxophone was assimilated into rock, funk and jazz-
fusion during the late 1960s and 1970s, use of the high altissimo register grew
Branford Marsalis (opposite, and above) steadily. The volume and intensity of electric instruments obliged
has a remarkable all-round talent, as a saxophonists to play in a high, screaming register in order to cut above the
jazz, classical and pop saxophonist, as a backing and emerge as the soloist. Stylists such as David Sanborn, Michael
composer, as a musical director and as a Brecker and Grover Washington Jr were blazing new pathways in the
record producer. development of altissimo artistry. This way of playing gradually became
conventional for many of the newer players. While it grew out of rock- and
R&B-influenced music, many contemporary jazz saxophonists have effectively
assimilated high-note playing into more mainstream and modern jazz settings,
even in the absence of electric instruments.
Joe Lovano (b. 1952) comes from a musical family, and was encouraged by
his father Tony “Big T” Lovano, also a tenor saxophonist. Joe’s warm, dark
but fiery sound reflects the influence of Coleman Hawkins and Joe Henderson,
along with a virtuosic command of the altissimo register and a fleet technique
to match. His ballad playing reveals a reflective side, demonstrated on his
unaccompanied treatment of ‘Prelude To A Kiss’ on Rush Hour (1995).
Lovano’s special quality comes from his versatility both as an
instrumentalist and as a purveyor of diverse musical styles and settings. The
tenor is his main horn, but the alto and soprano, together with flute and alto
clarinet, also figure in his work. Like several other saxophonists — Michael
Brecker, Steve Grossman, David Liebman — he is also a talented drummer,
and has often recorded on drums.
Lovano’s eight recordings so far on Blue Note are set in a variety of
musical contexts, with each CD taking a dynamic stylistic turn compared to
the previous one. His 1991 debut Landmarks was recorded at the seasoned age

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 19
TERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOU
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

of 39, in contrast to the plethora of still-teething “young lions” debuting in

their early 20s. It featured pianist Kenny Werner and guitarist John
Abercrombie. Following quickly after that came From The Soul (1992) with
the late New Orleans drummer Ed Blackwell. The Wind Ensemble (1993) was
introduced on Universal Language and featured other 1960s stalwarts such as
Charlie Haden, Steve Swallow and Jack DeJohnette. Soprano singer Judi
Silvano and the angularly melodic trumpeter Tim Hagans also make
important contributions to this group which continued to tour through the
turn of the century.
Larger ensemble settings figure importantly in Lovano’s output, which is
not surprising considering his lengthy stints in the jazz orchestras of Woody
Herman and Mel Lewis. Rush Hour, his album arranged and conducted by
Gunther Schuller, includes strings and woodwinds in colourful, innovative
settings for a variety of old ballads and new original compositions, while
Celebrating Sinatra (1997) shows off his robust tenor largely supported by
veteran orchestrator Manny Albam’s charts. While this may have begun as a
producer’s idea for combining Lovano’s Italian heritage with Sinatriana, the
resulting music amounts to a high-quality tribute to the 20th century's most
influential crooner.
Lovano also figures in jazz education, being a regular performer-clinician
at schools and universities around the world. His ability to interpret and
relate what he does to students is one that not all musicians share. He tells
developing players of all ages to build technique directly from the music.
Lovano also stresses that the melodies, rhythms and harmonies of specific
pieces should help shape technical mastery, and urges musicians to question
the practising of patterns for its own sake. All this is evident in his own
playing: Lovano has an original melodic and rhythmic vocabulary which
appears to have developed organically.
Another important saxophonist to emerge in the 1990s was Joshua
Redman, a Harvard-educated son of “Texas Tenor” Dewey Redman. Joshua
(b. 1969) toured briefly with his father in 1990-91 before winning in 1991 the
prestigious Thelonious Monk Competition for young musicians, which helped
jump-start his career as a leader.
Principally a tenorist, Redman also plays alto and soprano. He possesses a
phenomenal technique, although his regular forays into the altissimo register
are sometimes overdone, at the expense of the deeper, broader sound he
achieves in the normal range. Like his father, Redman produces a full, bright
sound reminiscent of Coleman Hawkins or Dexter Gordon. As an extremely
emotive player he often plays extended versions of pieces, bringing out the
dramatic side of the music and providing excitement for audiences.
tedman’s recorded output features a wide variety of material and musical
companions. Wish (1993) has him with Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden and Billy
Higgins (not the first Redman to record with these two) and features musie by
Metheny, Stevie Wonder and Eric Clapton. A tour featuring that group
followed the album’s release. Timeless Tales For Changing Times (1998) is
probably his most remarkable release to date. It’s a collection of popular
tunes, old and new, joined by connecting interludes. The supporting cast
consists of Brad Meldau (piano), Larry Grenadier (bass) and Jorge Rossy
(drums). Distinctive treatments of classics such as ‘Summertime’, ‘Yesterdays’
and ‘How Deep Is The Ocean’ are integrated with more recent songs like Bob
Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Visions’ in a

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 198

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Joe Lovano, described as “one of the most

mature talents” in contemporary jazz. As
this picture reveals, he also plays alto
clarinet and other reed instruments.

seamless production. Redman has played duets with other tenor saxophonists,
but without the traditional view of such meetings as battles or contests (as
were the Kansas City “cutting sessions” of the 1930s). ‘Leap Of Faith’ from
Beyond (1999) is a Redman composition that also features tenor saxophonist
Mark Turner. Redman said, “We transcend the classic tenor-battle mode when
we play together. It’s not about competition. It’s about communication.
Everything on this track happened organically. We had no preconceived ideas
and this was a first take.” Redman guested on Joe Lovano’s Tenor Legacy
(1994) with similarly cordial results.
Mark Turner (b. 1965) is a contemporary of Redman’s but a distinctively
different player — although he does have an equally blinding control of the
high register. Raised in California, Turner studied at the Berklee School Of
Music in Boston, Massachusetts, in the late 1980s, befriending Redman at that
time. Redman recalled, “We came up playing together. Over the years I’ve
probably learned more from him than from any of my other peers.”
Turner is one of the few — perhaps the only — modern saxophonist today to
incorporate the linear fluidity of the great Warne Marsh with the more robust
sounds of Joe Henderson and Joe Lovano. Marsh is an overlooked tenor

— L—) Y=) CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

Joshua Redman, whose sudden and saxophonist whose best-known work was with Lennie Tristano and Lee
devastating appearance on the jazz scene Konitz; he was an innovative stylist in his own right.
caused a sensation, is pictured (above) Marsh’s ease in seamlessly negotiating a four-octave range while
performing in London during 2000 with emphasising the smooth trajectory of the melodic line has clearly left a lasting
bassist Reuben Rogers. mark on Turner, whose blending of Marsh’s relentless linearity and the
slightly harder, robust tone with a distinctively more modern edge has
brought together old and new in a highly individual way. A good example of
this is Turner’s rendering of Victor Feldman’s ballad ‘Falling In Love’ on
Tana Reid’s Looking Forward (1994). While his tone maintains an open, airy
intensity, his nimble-fingered negotiation of the harmony sets up a tension in
this reflective piece that results in an eloquent interpretation.
Turner’s three CDs for Warner Brothers — Mark Turner (1997), In This
World (1998) and Ballad Session (1999) — are the best examples of his recorded
work. In This World is particularly interesting for its inclusion of ‘Lennie
Groove’, a melodically linear Turner composition that pays tribute to both
Tristano and Marsh. His treatment of Henry Mancini’s “The Days Of Wine
And Roses’ is compelling in its unusually spirited tempo and the key-change
in the second half of the tune. The album also features creative Fender-
Rhodes piano playing by Brad Meldau, leaning on that instrument’s
introduction to jazz in the early 1970s.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 200

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Turner's voice is still developing in some ways, but he provides an important

benchmark for the role of the saxophone in jazz. His clear acknowledgement
of the contributions of past innovators is combined with a special ability to
fuse that with today’s music, giving renewed hope for the future of the art.
The talented and much celebrated saxophonist Branford Marsalis (b. 1960)
has like Mark Turner blended together old and new influences both in his style
and in his general approach. Marsalis’s tributes to the 1950s sounds of Sonny
Rollins and Charles Mingus, coupled with his work with Sting as well as other
contemporary artists, show once again how versatile the saxophone can be in
capable hands.
The oldest of the four musical progeny of renowned pianist and teacher
Ellis Marsalis, Branford was born in Beaux Bridge, Louisiana, and as a

MARK TURNER_ IN THIS worRLD s Potter Quartet ie eos s) Two fresh and original saxophonists
, breaking through in the new century: Mark
' Kevin Hays
Turner and Chris Potter.
9 § Doug Weiss
‘ ‘ Al Foster
|4

teenager was active in sports and many different forms of music. His main
horns are soprano and tenor, although like many saxophonists he owns and
plays them all. Sporting a big, full tone, he counts among his influences Sonny
Rollins, John Coltrane and King Curtis. His own groups have borrowed
stylistically from many idioms, but with the exception of Buckshot LaFonque
—a funky ensemble he formed in the 1990s — he has mostly been featured in
acoustic trios and quartets.
Marsalis’s work as a sideman has been extremely varied. He started off
with short stints in the big-bands of Art Blakey (on baritone saxophone) and
Clark Terry (on alto) in 1980-81. He first came to prominence playing with his
brother Wynton’s quintet for three years from 1982. During this time he also
played with Miles Davis, and then in 1985 joined the new band of English
singer-songwriter Sting, which included keyboardist Kenny Kirkland, a long-
standing colleague until his untimely death in 1998. Marsalis’s association with
Sting lasted on and off until 1988, around which time he appeared on the
soundtracks of two Spike Lee films, School Daze (1988, which included a
credible acting role) and Mo’ Better Blues (1990), the latter scored by
trumpeter Terence Blanchard.
In addition to his work in films, Marsalis hosted a jazz programme for
National Public Radio during the late 1980s, and in 2000 presented a series
Jazz Legends for BBC radio. His national celebrity was heightened when he
joined The Tonight Show featuring Jay Leno on NBC TV in 1992 as musical
director. After two years as a sidekick to the juvenile antics of the show’s
host, Marsalis felt it was time to move on. He formed his Buckshot LaFonque

201 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

jazz group, incorporating the influences of 1960s R&B artists James Brown
and Aretha Franklin, and Cannonball Adderley (who originally invented the
name Buckshot Le Fonque as a recording pseudonym).
Some of Branford Marsalis’s key recordings as a sideman are Wynton
Marsalis (1981), Miles Davis’s Decoy (1984) and Sting’s Bring On The Night
(1986). His own groups feature in a variety of recordings, starting with Scenes
From The City (1983), his re-creation of a suite composed and recorded by
Charles Mingus many years earlier. Romances For Saxophone (1986) has him
exclusively on soprano performing a variety of late 19th century and early
20th century French classical pieces, effectively arranged by Michel Colombier
for chamber orchestra.
A completely different side of Marsalis is exemplified on Trio Jeepy (1988),
a blistering trio of tenor, bass and drums that takes up where the Sonny
Rollins trio recordings at the Village Vanguard in 1957 left off. Requiem (1999)
is a particularly moving tribute to the late Kenny Kirkland, the pianist who
contributed so much to Marsalis’s own recorded work.
Another remarkable technician, altissimo virtuoso and creative musician is
multi-saxophonist Chris Potter (b. 1971). Born in Chicago, he was raised in
South Carolina where as a precocious 15-year-old he was “discovered” by
trumpeter Red Rodney. He worked with the Red Rodney Quintet, starting in
1989 and lasting until the leader’s death in 1996, and at the same time earned
a degree from the Manhattan School Of Music.
Equally at home on tenor, alto and soprano sax, Potter occasionally adds
bass clarinet. While many players have mastered more than one horn, he
clearly “owns” each instrument so completely that it is difficult to describe
him as a tenor player or as an alto player. For instance, most tenorists give
themselves away when playing alto. They tend to lose the “centre” and
pitching of the sound in the top five notes of the normal register of the horn.
These notes are unique to the alto, and often suffer in the hands of someone
who is used to moving the air for a bigger, lower-pitch instrument. Not so
with Potter. His talent and abilities enable him to adapt to each horn’s
idiosyncrasies. Very few if any saxophonists today are able to move between
the three horns with such ease.
As well as his work with Rodney, Potter has long-term associations with
the Mingus Big Band, on alto saxophone and largely playing in a section, with
the occasional solo feature. With few big-bands around to provide a training
ground for developing players, this association is no doubt an important one
for Potter. The discipline of blending and interacting with other saxophonists
in a section is rewarding in ways similar to that of playing with a rhythm
section. The pursuit of a common musical goal in close proximity to one’s
fellow musicians is evident in both cases, and many of Potter's compositions
and recordings exemplify this ensemble-oriented focus and sensibility.
Potter has also toured and recorded with Steely Dan, taking the mantle
from key saxophone soloists Tom Scott, Michael Brecker and Pete Christlieb,
all of whom have recorded in the past with this innovative band. On Steely
Dan’s most recent studio album, Two Against Nature (2000), Potter’s
improvised tenor solos add a distinctive new-jazz flavour to the group’s
recorded output, and are much more extended as well as being looser in scope
than his predecessor’s efforts.
Other notable recorded work by Potter includes Red Rodney’s Then And
Now (1992) which features his impressive rendering of Ralph Burns’s ‘Early

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 202

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Discovered as a teenage prodigy, Chris

Potter has equal virtuosity on all the
saxophones and clarinets.

Autumn’ among the largely bebop-themed recording. His own Pwre (1992)
provides an excellent cross-section of the saxophonist’s talents. For example,
there are blistering tenor versions — with bass and drums — of Mingus’s ‘Boogie
Stop Shuffle’ and Cole Porter’s “Easy To Love’, but these are offset by his
tranquil, reflective bass clarinet on Lennon & McCartney’s ‘The Fool On The
Hill’. The recording has many sides and shapes, and features Larry Goldings
moving between the Hammond organ and piano effectively to complement
Potter’s solo voice.
These five contemporary jazz saxophonists — Lovano, Redman, Turner,
Marsalis and Potter — have borrowed from and upheld many aspects of the
tradition. Their compositions also form an important part of their identity,
creating a link with the great players who influenced and inspired them. Their
mastery of the altissimo range and their overall technical skill have set new
standards for future generations, and while technique in itself is not
everything, these players clearly have it balanced within their own original
forms of expression.
They have a wealth of experience as sidemen, but their contributions as
leaders are distinctive and fresh. Their ability to honour and celebrate the
traditional strongholds of the music, while redefining it with their own
contemporary treatments and interpretations, point to a bright future.

203 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 MARK GILBERT THE FUTURE OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

INTO A NEW CENTURY, AND DEBATE RAGES ON THE STATE OF

JAZZ: IS IT DEAD, OR JUST SIMPLY MOTIONLESS? MEANWHILE,
PLAYERS - WITH SOME TALENTED, INDIVIDUAL SAXOPHONISTS
AMONG THEM - GET ON WITH MAKING THE MUSIC.

The outstandingly gifted David Murray WING Shakill’s Warrior

don pullen
(opposite) covers a vast range of jazz stanley franks
andrew cyrille
genres, from big-band to free. In 1991 he
was awarded the prestigious Danish
Jazzpar Prize. Albums pictured here are
the Big Band live (1984) and Shakill’s
Warrior (1991).

Saxophonist David Liebman is a veteran of the New York loft scene of the
1960s, of Miles Davis’s 1970s fusion band, and of the jazz classroom. In a
blindfold test organised for Jazz Review magazine in the summer of 2000 he
was in a suitably millennial, end-of-an-epoch mood. In Liebman’s well-
travelled opinion, the work of jazz is largely done. “The history of jazz is
over,” he said during the test. “We had our 60 to 80 years of wonderful
innovations, at an incredible rate, from Armstrong to fusion. This is a time of
collection and gathering and of absorption, and also of spreading out to the
world. Jazz may be the main influence on a new music, but jazz as we know
it, that’s over with.”
The end of an age is invariably followed by a period of reflection, and if
Liebman is right, then jazz has been in just such a phase these past few years.
One only has to look to the wide array of jazz styles that now seem to co-exist
in relative peacefulness.
The jazz scene has traditionally been split by any number of factions at
any given time. But today, with no revolution or new thing in sight — and
thus no threat to the established conventions — there’s a sense of business-like
tolerance rather than factional, missionary zeal. It’s as if jazz has become a
big, friendly festival programme offering something for everyone. A survey of
the scene since the last major jazz development, the jazz fusion of the 1970s
and 1980s, certainly suggests that the engine of forward motion in jazz has
stalled or, at the very least, faltered.
With maturity comes self-awareness, and over the last 20 years jazz, along
with other popular idioms, has reached a point where it has become acutely

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 204

CHAPTER TWEN
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

conscious of its past, and in a way that was unthinkable in the progressive
1970s. In the early 1980s, as on a repentant, chastened morning after a
bibulous adolescent party, jazz seemed to be taking a look back on its excesses
— both of freedom and of flirtations with rock’n’roll juvenilia — and to be
pulling in its stylistic horns.
In the United States this new awareness of the past was chiefly focused on
the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, and in Britain on the saxophonist Courtney
Pine. In order to identify itself as a strong reaction against rock’n’roll in all
its diverse forms, the so-called jazz revival of the 1980s consisted therefore in
a substantial return to an earlier era ~ along with the dress and to a smaller
extent the culture and manner.
It was at first chiefly a return to the music and suits of the hard bop

ECM

Joe Manéri Quartet—

Joe Maneri (right) and his 1997

album (above) In Full Cry.

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PLL 1

period of the late 1950s and the early 1960s. Happily, sartorial taste has
moved along since then, but the musical effect of that outlook has turned out
to be been wide-ranging as well as long-lived. Although the initially fanatical
revivalism has subsided, it has left a distinct mark on the attitudes of many
players in and around the jazz scene. As older styles came to be re-absorbed
and given new validity by the Marsalis crowd, so that philosophy was in turn
absorbed by those musicians who otherwise would have had a progressive,
non-traditional approach.
The result was a curious series of “returns” of all kinds in the ensuing
years. Fusion players, for example, began to pay tribute to the blues and funk
of Eddie Harris and Maceo Parker. Greg Osby, one of the chief architects of
the funky, urban, electrified sound of M-BASE in the late 1980s, signed up
with Blue Note in the mid 1990s and began to make acoustic jazz records,
including old standards such as “Tenderly’ in his repertoire. Wynton Marsalis
dipped even further back into the repertory of jazz, until he arrived at Louis
Armstrong, and began to present jazz like a classical concert form. And

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 206

 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

revivalism threatened to catch its own tail when such a recent grouping as
The Brecker Brothers — only disbanded in 1982 — reconvened in 1991.
But fusion specialists like saxophonist Bill Evans and guitarist Scott
Henderson continued almost regardless of the revivalism around them,
pursuing the funky, megawatt muse set free by Joe Zawinul and Miles Davis
during the 1970s. Compared with earlier decades, when with small exceptions
jazz seemed to be in a perpetual state of forward motion with only very
infrequent glances back over its shoulder, the late 1980s and the 1990s
presented a fragmented landscape. This was not only the case in jazz, but also
in popular culture generally.
This state of peaceful co-existence between genres old and new is
frequently given a positive spin by calling it pluralism, yet one might just as

ernie watts quartet Ernie Watts’s 1988 album World Class

Music, plus Roots And Fruits (1996) by
Austrian saxophonist Wolfgang Puschnig.

easily refer to it as fragmentation or, more simply, a lack of direction. At the

time of writing, in the absence of a unifying figure or movement, it seems that
every kind of jazz is given what amounts to equal weight, resulting in a
certain bland aesthetic correctness.
When art forms reach self-awareness, a kind of codification or inventory-
taking of the constituent elements is likely to take place. Just such a process
has happened apace in jazz over the last two decades. Nobody knows whether
jazz retrospection or jazz education came first, but the two are linked and
mutually perpetuating. Although Berklee college in Boston has been teaching
jazz since at least the late 1950s, in the last 15 years there has been an
explosion around the world of college courses and materials which will teach
the receptive student to play in virtually any jazz style — as long as it’s
already been played.
There are two clear dangers here for creativity among musicians. The first
is that teaching music will at some level involve the suggestion that there is a
right way and a wrong way to play. The second danger is that in setting up a
course to teach an idiom called “jazz”, teachers must inevitably focus on the
jazz that has happened.
David Liebman the pedagogue has some salutary thoughts about this. He
points out that there is no case for ignorance, and that academia will never
stifle the creative individual. Although he remains sceptical about the
likelihood of a new and far-reaching revolution in jazz, Liebman does not rule
out the advent of new stylists within the familiar idioms of the music.
“There's always room for someone to have an individual voice,” he says, “as

207 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

there is always room for all the human beings on this planet to have different
fingerprints. If there is a spark, it will be found. You cannot stamp out
individuality; it will not be subsumed by an academic procedure.”
Clearly, as the rest of this book has shown, the present period of reflection
doesn’t signify the end of the road for the reed in jazz. On the contrary, and
as noted in the fusion chapter, the real saxophone is being played more now
than the synthesised version, and probably more in general by jazz-inclined
instrumentalists than in the 1970s, when the guitar and keyboard were in the
ascendancy. One of the most highly touted newcomers is the young American
James Carter. Like many avant-garde players before him, Carter is happy to
be seen in the company of any of the 14 originally-patented members of the

ox

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“Bennie Wallace has a unique style,

containing elements from several jazz eras.
His albums shown here are Twilight
Time, from 1985, and The Art Of The
Saxophone, released in 1987.

saxophone family. On his Chasin’ The Gypsy album (2000), alongside the
commonplace bass, tenor and soprano instruments, Carter also makes use of
the rare f-mezzo saxophone.
But while the instrument is evidently not going out of fashion, does the
saxophone have any more to add to the language of jazz? Or is the future for
jazz saxophone a long period of recycled and recombined swing, bop and free-
jazz clichés? Where, if anywhere, are the new pioneers? There are plenty of
record companies purporting to present ground-breaking players, but how well
do these musicians measure up?
The gauging of novelty is a subjective matter. Perceptions of surprise are
filtered through the ear of the beholder and governed by cultural context.
Followers of Scott Hamilton will, for example, tell you that the saxophonist
isn’t just a Ben Webster clone. Like his younger colleague Harry Allen,
Hamilton incorporates modern spices (though perhaps no more modern than
Stan Getz) which give his supporters a frisson of excitement at just the level
that their tastes will tolerate. However, those attuned to more challenging
sounds may hear no such nuance of modernism in the music, and instead find
Hamilton and Allen to be corny and conservative.
Many of the flavours of contemporary and recent saxophone playing have
been comprehensively detailed in preceding chapters: the free playing of Evan
Parker and Anthony Braxton; the funk and fusion of Eddie Harris, Michael
Brecker and David Sanborn; the smooth jazz of Eric Marienthal and Art
Porter; the young fogeyism of Scott Hamilton and Harry Allen; the
particularly European interest in pastoral lyricism found at various points in
Jan Garbarek, John Surman, Andy Sheppard and Tommy Smith; and the

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 20
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

modern traditionalism of Chris Potter and Mark Turner. But a few more
names have been floating around in recent times with tags such as “new” or
“pioneering” attached, together with some others who, while unattended by
claims of pioneering quality, do at the very least help to fill out a more
complete picture of the contemporary jazz saxophone scene.
Within the fully avant-garde spectrum, Tim Berne, John Zorn and Joe
Maneri received a good deal of attention in the 1990s. Free improvisation is
associated indelibly with the cultural and political upheavals of the 1960s and
1970s. Its philosophy of the emancipation of harmony, pitch and instrumental
roles stands like a musical analogue to the real business of politics. However,
it has flourished anew in recent years, manifested in particular by the

Tim Berne, an uncompromising member of

the avant-garde.

ne —) =) CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

James Carter |} *
Chasiw’ The Gyps)

Greg Osby (right) in concert, 1996, and the

remarkable, young, multi-talented James
Carter (above).

activities of The Knitting Factory, a venue on New York’s Lower East Side
which also spawned a prolific record label.
Altoist Tim Berne (b. 1954) is one of the newer breed of avant-garde
players who temper their free explorations with elements of composition —
albeit highly angular ones. Berne is also keen to retain in his music the sense
if not the substance of the raw, bluesy quality he enjoyed when listening to
Stax and Volt recordings as a child. The saxophonist discovered the same
mixture of earthy blues and free improvisation in his chief inspiration, Julius
Hemphill, and in 1993 recorded Diminutive Mysteries, an album that largely
consisted of Hemphill compositions — and also featured a bluesy if unlikely
guest in David Sanborn.
Berne was himself a guest on John Zorn’s Spy Vs Spy (1989), a tribute to
the music of Ornette Coleman. Its atmosphere was typical of the exhilarating,
punky, high-energy quality that Zorn (b. 1954) brings to avant-garde and free
improvised material. The same approach acquired a special focus in Zorn’s
extraordinary work in the group Naked City in the early 1990s, when on
albums such as Grand Guignol (1992) he produced thoroughly nasty, spiky
little packets of compressed rage. Here were gruesome 20- or 30-second
collisions of ranting alto saxophone, crashing speed-metal guitar, smooth
lounge jazz, and caterwauling, blood-curdling vocals. Tying in with David
Liebman’s notion that jazz is finished, these musical glimpses were often
described as post-modernist, mainly because they seemed to state that the

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 21
 MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

only avenue left once all had been played was to produce burlesques of what
had gone before. Liberal genre-crossing and a milder form of satire is also
heard in some of the playing and writing of the Austrian saxophonist
Wolfgang Puschnig, both in the Vienna Art Orchestra and in his set as leader,
Roots And Fruits (1996).
Joe Maneri (b. 1927) is hardly a young radical, but he has belatedly been
hailed for discovering a new angle on avant-garde saxophone playing. In
contrast to Zorn and Berne he has a relatively reserved approach, the sort
that usually attracts the description “chamber jazz”. On the face of it, his

The adventurous and hugely influential

Courtney Pine, who inspired a whole new
generation of young jazz musicians.

nervy, burbling saxophone playing on albums such as Jn Full Cry (1997) and
Tales Of Rohnlief (1999) appears little different from the pointillistic sounds
produced by many free improvisers.
However, one of the causes of the celebration of Maneri is his claim to be
playing microtonally — that is, playing notes in between the usual 12
semitones of the octave. Of course, a theory such as this might well earn
immediate credibility in the jazz world, where the bent, in-between notes of
the blues are considered a cornerstone of the music. In fact, Maneri’s austere,
icy sound couldn't be further from the intrinsic warmth of the blues, but it
has the stark if one-dimensional beauty that can be found in the work of
many similarly-styled players.
A notch inward from such uncompromising avant-gardists as Zorn, Berne
and Maneri lies a school of players who soften the hard edges of the avant-
garde by combining it with the mainstream. The style is typified by David
Murray, Bennie Wallace and James Carter. These three saxophonists are
essentially traditionalists in that they largely bypass fusion, undermining the
certainties of swing and bebop with such avant-garde effects as squeals,
screams, tonguing and random intervallic leaps.
David Murray (b. 1955) began as a disciple of Albert Ayler and his
idiosyncratic freedoms. But by the 1990s, signed to the DIW label, Murray’s
early waywardness had abated to the extent that he was applying his
unpredictable approach to standards, and even to the occasional electric funk

7a bel CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE

setting. With the World Saxophone Quartet he also pioneered the concept of
the modern unaccompanied saxophone group.
Bennie Wallace (b. 1946) emerged as a leader in the late 1970s on the Enja
label with his album The Fourteen Bar Blues (1978) and later received
considerable exposure through the Blue Note and Denon labels before
subsiding into film work on the West Coast of the United States. His
approach suggests again the influence of Ayler and also of Eric Dolphy, his
basic blues licks rubbing shoulders with curious and unexpected explosions of
apparently unrelated theatricality.
A very recent addition to the roster of traditionalists with a taste for
avant-garde decoration is James Carter (b. 1969) who has shown an awareness
of the continuing currency of post-modernism. On the three albums that he

DAVID LIEBMAN

tommysmith

THE ELEMENTS:

water
mistymorningandnotime
WITH BILLY HART, CECIL MCBEE & PAT METHENY

Tribute to Ornette Coleman by John Zorn recorded between 1998 and 2000, Carter moved apparently effortlessly from
and Tim Berne; David Liebman’s Dixieland, swing and free-jazz orthodoxies through a Django Reinhardt
collaboration with guitarist Pat Metheny; tribute to a set of funk grooves. His command of particular instrumental
and some atmospheric Celtic jazz by techniques is secure, and he has made a show of reorganising existing dialects
Scotland’s Tommy Smith. and applying a strong sense of theatre.
Beyond the theatrical, and related to such contemporary traditionalists as
Chris Potter and Mark Turner, is the large school of saxophonists which
continues to work in the long shadow of John Coltrane and associated players
such as Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson and Wayne Shorter. Michael Brecker is
prominent in this group, but others include Bob Berg (b. 1951), Jerry
Bergonzi (b. 1950), George Garzone (b. 1950), Bob Mintzer (b. 1953), Bob
Malach (b. 1954) and Bob Sheppard (b. 1957). All these players have done and
continue to do sterling work in advancing the language mapped out by
Coltrane. Prime examples include Jerry Bergonzi’s Lost In The Shuffle (1998),
George Garzone’s Fours And Twos (1996), Bob Mintzer’s One Music (1991) and
Bob Berg’s Another Standard (1996).
There are other, younger players who also show the enduring influence of
Coltrane. On Melaza (2000), David Sanchez (b. 1969) works hard to find a
novel intersection between Coltrane-type tenor saxophone and Latin rhythm.
Courtney Pine (b. 1964) on Back In The Day (2000) lays soprano and tenor
lines derived from Coltrane over retro funk beats, from Lee Morgan’s “The
Sidewinder’ onward. And Coltrane’s own son, Ravi Coltrane (b. 1965),
demonstrates a cooler, more oblique version of his father’s style on From The
Round Box (2000). Ernie Watts is another player whose yearning if sometimes

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 212

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Britain’s Andy Sheppard (left) covers

everything from straightahead jazz to reggae
in a highly personal style. Puerto Rican-
born David Sanchez (below) combines
high-energy bop with Latin rhythms.

overwrought tone has recalled Coltrane on several albums, including The Ernie
Watts Quartet on JVC in 1988. For David Liebman, Coltrane was the last jazz
musician to transform the music at every level, not just as a saxophone stylist
but as a composer and conceptualist, and the existence of players such as
these — a mere handful of the total number still under Coltrane’s spell — offers
sound confirmation of his diagnosis.
All the players discussed in this chapter have their dedicated audiences.
But many who have been touted at various points as Important New Players
could be seen more straightforwardly as musicians who recombine old material
in relatively novel contexts — James Carter’s avant-garde licks over funk
basslines, for example — rather than saxophonists who are breaking new
ground for their horn.
The saxophone’s defining role in jazz is as a solo voice. In that sense, it is
players such as Chris Potter and Mark Turner who are closest to developing a
new voice for the saxophone, by demonstrably expanding the vocabulary of
the instrument and widening its technical resources. Liebman may be right
about the end of jazz as we know it. But Potter, Turner and the like have
introduced a striking new dimension to playing over chord changes — a
business that might have been considered as “over with” many years ago.

213 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 RECOMMENDED LISTENING

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

“Master your horn, that’s all you ve

got to do. And it’s hard to do, you
better belreve that “ COLEMAN HAWKINS 1967
RECOMMENDED LISTENING Albert Ayler The Brecker Brothers (1975 Avista) John Coltrane
Live In Greenwich Village (1966-67 Heavy Metal Bebop (1978 Arista) Ascension (1965 Impulse)
Impulse) Out Of The Loop (1994 GRP) Ballads (1962 Impulse)
This is a list of recommended records, Spiritual Unity (1964 ESP) Return Of The Brecker Brothers (1992 Blue Train (1957 Blue Note)
compiled by the contributors to this GRP) Giant Steps (1959 Atlantic)
book. It is certainly not a complete with Billy Cobham: A Love Supreme (1964 Impulse)
discography; rather, it is designed to Alan Barnes A Funky Thide Of Sings (1975 My Favorite Things (1960 Atlantic)
help your quest for new listening A Dotty Blues (1997 Zephyr) Atlantic) with Duke Ellington:
pleasures and to supplement the with David Newton: with Chick Corea: Duke Ellington And John Coltrane
information to be found in the body of Summertime (2000 Concord) Three Quartets (1981 Warner Bros) (1962 Impulse)
Masters Of Jazz Saxophone. with Dreams: with Miles Davis:
Dreams (1968 Columbia) Round About Midnight (1955-56
The saxophonists are arranged in Sidney Bechet with Hal Galper: Columbia)
alphabetical order. Shown first under ‘Dans les Rues d’Antibes’ (1952 Vogue) Speak With A Single Voice (1978 Enja) Milestones (1958 Columbia)
each artist are any recommended on Salle Pleyel 31 January 52 CD with Hugh Marsh: Kind Of Blue (1959 Columbia)
recordings by them as leader, followed (Vogue). The Bear Walks (1986 veraBra) with Thelonious Monk:
by any relevant work with other with Mezzrow-Bechet Quintet: with Pat Metheny: With John Coltrane (1957 Original Jazz
artists and leaders (noted as “with...”). ‘Out Of The Gallion’ (1945 King Jazz) 80/81 (1980 ECM) Classics)
Everything is arranged alphabetically. on King Jazz Volume 1 CD (King with Claus Ogerman:
Jazz). Cityscape (1981 Warner Bros)
Each record listing shows album title with New Orleans Feetwarmers with Horace Silver: Ravi Coltrane
(in italics) or piece title (‘In Single ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ (1932 Victor) on Pursuit Of The 27th Man (1972 Blue From The Round Box (2000 BMG)
Quotes’). In brackets are given a date Complete Sidney Bechet Volumes 1 & 2 Note)
or dates, where available and/or 1932-41 CD (RCA). with Steps Ahead:
relevant, and the record label. The date with Red Onion Jazz Babies: Steps Ahead (1983 Elektra Musician) Alix Combelle
given is generally the date of the ‘Cake Walking Babies’ (1924 Gennett) with Django Reinhardt:
recording and/or original release. on Clarence Williams 1924-36 CD Swing de Paris (1995 Charly)
Occasionally (and, we hope, obviously) (Classics), Tina Brooks
the date is a reissue date. The label with Spanier-Bechet Big Four: True Blue (1960 Blue Note)
given is usually for the most recent ‘China Boy’ (1940 HRS) on Sidney Junior Cook
release, where available. Many records Bechet 1940 CD (Classics). with Horace Silver:
have been released on a number of Peter Brétzman Finger Poppin’ (1959 Blue Note)
different labels over the years, so be on Machine Gun (1968 FMP)
the lookout for the same artist or for Bob Berg
specific records on labels other than Another Standard (1996 Stretch) Bob Cooper
those noted, Now, open your ears. Short Stories (1987 Denon) Marion Brown with Stan Kenton:
Vista (1974 Impulse) The Innovations Orchestra (1950-51
Capitol)
Jerry Bergonzi Retrospective (1943-68 Capitol)
Lost In The Shuffle (1998 Double-Time) Don Byas
Walkin’ (1963 Black Lion)
Jazz At The Philharmonic In Europe Lol Coxhill
George Adams Tim Berne Vol 1 (1960 Verve) with Steve Lacy, Evan Parker
with Don Pullen: Diminutive Mysteries (1993 JMT) with Budd Powell: Three Blokes (1992 FMP)
Live At The Village Vanguard (1983 Tribute to Cannonball (1961 Columbia)
Soul Note) ,
with Gil Evans: Chu Berry Sonny Criss
Little Wing (1978 DIW) Chu Berry 1957-41 (Classics) Harry Carney Tl Catch The Sun (1969 Prestige)
Giants of The Tenor Sax (Commodore) with Duke Ellington: Portrait (1967 Prestige)
with Spike Hughes, Fletcher Duke Ellington 1928 (Classics)
Pepper Adams Henderson, Cab Calloway:
with Thad Jones: Blowing Up A Breeze (1933-41 Topaz) Ronnie Cuber
Mean What You Say (1966 Original with Lionel Hampton: Benny Carter Love For Sale (1998 Koch)
Jazz Classics) Hot Mallets/The Jumpin’ Jive (1937-39 All Of Me (1940-41 Bluebird) with Three Baritone Saxophone Band
Bluebird) Cosmopolite (1952-54 Verve) Plays Mulligan (1998 Dreyfus)
Further Definitions (1961-66 Impulse)
Julian “Cannonball” Adderley
Live! (1965 Cawpitol) Arthur Blythe Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis
In Concert (1977 India Navigation) James Carter The Cookbook Vol 1 (1958 Prestige)
with Chico Freeman: Chasin’ The Gypsy (2000 Atlantic) with Count Basie:
Gerald Albright Luminous (1989 Jazz House) In Carterian Fashion (1998 Atalantic) The Complete Atomic (1957 Roulette)
Givin’ Myself To You (1995 Atlantic) The Unspoken Word (1993 Jazz House) Layin’ In The Cut (2000 Atlantic) Standing Ovation (1969 Sequel)
Just Between Us (1987 Atlantic) with Oscar Peterson:
Live At Birdland West (1991 Atlantic) At Montreux 1977 (Original Jazz
Smooth (1994 Atlantic) Florian Brambéck Arnett Cobb Classics)
with Vienna Art Orchestra: Arnett Blows For 1300 (1947 Delmark)
20th Anniversary 1977-1997 Blow, Arnett, Blow! (1959 Prestige)
Harry Allen (Amadeo/Verve) Elton Dean
A Little Touch Of Harry (1997 Newsense (1997 Slam)
Mastermix) Ornette Coleman with Soft Machine:
Day Dream (1998 RCA) Anthony Braxton Beauty Is A Rare Thing (1959-61 Third (1970 Columbia)
Tenors Anyone (1996) with Derek Bailey: Rhino)
with John Pizzarelli Trio: First Duo Concert (1974 KEmanem) The Best Of The Blue Note Years (1965-
Harry Allen Meets The John Pizzarelli 68 Blue Note) Paul Desmond
Trio (1996) Body Meta (1975 Verve/Harmolodic) Easy Living (1964 Bluebird)
Michael Brecker Free Jazz (1960 Atlantic) Like Someone In Love (1975 Telare)
Dont Try This At Home (1988 Friends & Neighbors (1970 BMG/RCA) Paul Desmond And The Modern Jazz
Gene Ammons MCA/Impulse) In All Languages (1987 Quartet (1971 Columbia)
Boss Tenor (1960 Prestige) Michael Brecker (1987 MCA/Impulse) Verve/Harmolodic) with Dave Brubeck:
In Chicago (1961 Prestige) Now You See It... (Now You Don't) Something Else! (1958 Original Jazz Jazz At Oberlin (1953 Original Jazz
with Sonny Stitt: (1990 GRP) Classics) Classics)
Boss Tenors (1961 Verve) Tales From The Hudson (1996 Impulse) Sound Museum: Hidden Man (1996 Jazz At The College Of The Pacific
Two Blocks From The Edge (1998 Verve/Harmolodic) (1953 Original Jazz Classics)
Impulse) Tone Dialing (1995 Verve/Harmolodic) Time Out (1959 Columbia)
Georgie Auld with Chet Baker: with Joachim Kuhn: with Gerry Mulligan:
with Charlie Christian: You Can't Go Home Again (1977 Colors (1996 Verve/Harmolodic) Gerry Mulligan-Paul Desmond Quartet
The Genius Of The Electric Ghuitar A&M/Horizon) with Pat Metheny: (1957 Verve)
(1939-41 Columbia) with The Brecker Brothers: Song X (1985 Geffen)

21
Eric Dixon Kenny G Joe Harriott with Art Ensemble Of Chicago:
with Count Basie: Duotones (1986 Arista) Abstract (1961-62 Redial) Art Ensemble 1967-68 (Nessa)
Lil’ OV Groovemaker (1963 Verve) Breathless (1994 Arista) Free Form (1960 Redial)
G-Force (1993 Arista)
Bobby Jaspar
Eric Dolphy Eddie Harris At Ronnie Scott's —1962 (Mole Jazz)
Far Cry (1960 Original Jazz Classics) Jan Garbarek The Electrifying Eddie Harris (1967-68
Live At The Five Spot (1961 Original I Took Up The Runes (199) ECM) Atlantic)
Jazz Classics) with Keith Jarrett: Francois Jeanneau
Out To Lunch (1964 Blue Note) Luminessence (1975 CM) Eyphemere (1977/93 Owl)
Michael Hashim
Guys & Dolls (1992 Stash)
Jimmy Dorsey George Garzone Keep A Song In Your Soul (1996 Hep) Jerry Jerome
‘Dorsey Dervish’ (1936) on ASV Fours And Twos (1996 NYC) Lotus Blossom (1990 Stash) Something Old, Something New (1939-96
Pennies From Heaven CD. Transatlantic Airs (199533 Records) Arbors)

Herb Geller
Tommy Douglas Herb Geller Quartet (1993 VSOP) Coleman Hawkins Budd Johnson
with Julia Lee: Plays The Al Cohn Song Book (1996 Bean & The Boys (Fantasy/Prestige) Let's Swing (1960 Original Jazz
Kansas City Star (1923-57 Bear Hep) Coleman Hawkins 1943-44 (Jazz. Classics)
Family) That Geller Feller (1957 Fresh Sound) Chronological Classics)
You're Looking At Me (1997 Fresh Coleman Hawkins Retrospective 1929-65
Sound) (BMG/RCA) Louis Jordan
Gerd Dudek Coleman Hawkins, Verve Jazz Masters Best Of (1942-45 MCA)
with Albert Mangelsdorff: 1944-62 (Verve)
Birds of Underground (1973 MPS) Stan Getz Hawk In Europe 1934-37 (ASV Living
Another World (1977 Columbia) Era) Peter King
The Brothers (1949 Prestige) Today & Now (1962 Impulse) Brother Bernard (1988-92 Miles Music)
Paul Dunmall The Conyplete Roost Recordings (1950-54 Ultimate Coleman Hawkins (Verve)
Desire & Liberation (1996 Slam) Roost)
‘ocus (1961) Verve Roland Kirk
Getz/Gilberto (1963 Verve) Tubby Hayes The Inflated Tear (1967 Atlantic)
Teddy Edwards Pure Getz (1982 Concorde) Down In The Village (1962 Redial) We Free Kings (1961 Kmarcy)
with Milt Jackson: Serenity (1987 Emarcy)
At The Kosei Nenkin (1976 Pablo) Stan Gelz With The Oscar Peterson Trio
(1958 Verve) Jimmy Heath Hans Koller
The Steamer (1956 Verve) Really Big! (1960 Original Jazz Classics) Multiple Koller (1980 L+R)
André Ekyan
with Django Reinhardt:
Swing de Paris (1995 Charly) Benny Golson Joe Henderson Lee Konitz
Tenor Legacy (1996 Arkadia) Inner Urge (1964 Blue Note) Live At The Half Note (1959 Verve)
Lush Life (1991 Verve) Motion (1961 Verve)
Booker Ervin Sound OfSurprise (1999 BMG)
The Freedom Book (1963 Prestige) Dexter Gordon Subconscious-Lee (1949-50 Original Jazz
Go! (1962 Blue Note) Ernie Henry Classics)
The Homecoming (1976 Columbia) with Thelonious Monk: with Miles Davis:
Bill Evans Brilliant Corners (1956 Original Jazz Birth Of The Cool (1949-50 Capitol)
Push (1993 Lipstick) Classics) with Stan Kenton:
Wardell Gray Retrospective (1943-68 Capitol)
Memorial Volume 1/Volume 2 (1949-53
Herschel Evans Original Jazz Classics) Johnny Hodges
with Count Basie: with Duke Ellington: Steve Lacy
The Original American Decea Duke Ellington 1928-29 (Classics) Scratching The Seventies/Dreams (1969-
Recordings (1937-39 MCA GRP) Johnny Griffin Duke Ellington 1940-41 (Classics) 77 Saravah)
Basie Rhythm (1936-39 Hep) Way Out! (1958 Original Jazz Classics) Duke Ellington 1941 (Classics) with Lol Coxhill, Evan Parker
Duke Ellington 1946 (Classics) Three Blokes (1992 FMP)
New Orleans Suite (1970 Atlantic)
Stump Evans Lars Gullin
with Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot The EMI Years 1964-1976 (EM1) Harold Land
Peppers: Lars Cullin Vol. 2 (1953 Dragon) George Howard The Fox (1959 Original Jazz Classics)
‘Wild Man Blues’ (1927 Victor) on Portrait Of My Pals (1964 Swedish Do I Ever Cross Your Mind? (1994
Jelly Roll Morton 1924-26 CD (Classics). EMI) GRP)
A Nice Place To Be (1986 MCA) Don Lanphere
Steppin’ Out (1983 TBA) Slop (1983-86 Hep)
Wilton Felder Mats Gustafsson
with The Crusaders Impropositions (1997 Phono Suecia)
Those Southern Knights (1976 MCA) Pedro Iturralde Ronnie Laws
with The Jazz Crusaders: with various: Pressure Sensitive (1975 Blue Note)
Freedom Sound (1961 Pacifie Jazz) Scott Hamilton Jazz Mees Kurope (1968 MPS)
After Hours (1997 Concord)
At The Brecon Jazz Festival (1995 David Liebman
Jimmy Forrest Concord) Willis Jackson Miles Away (1994 Owl)
Night Train (1951-53 Delmark) Christmas Love Song (1997 Concord) Bar Wars (1977 Muse)
East Of The Sun (1993 Concord)
Gene Harris|Scoltt Hamilton Quintet At Charles Lloyd
Frank Foster Last (1990 Concord) Illinois Jacquet Forest Flower (1966 Atlantic)
with Count Basie: Plays Ballads (1989 Concord) The Complete Mlinois Jacque 1945-50
Easin’ It (1960 Roulette) Radio City (1990 Concord) (Mosaic)
Scott Hamilton Is A Good Wind Who Is Flying Home: The Best of the Verve Joe Lovano
Blowing Us No Ill (1977 Concord) Years (1951-58 Verve) Celebrating Sinatra (1997 Blue Note)
Chico Freeman with Bucky Pizzarelli: Jacquel’s Got It (1987 Atlantic) From The Soul (1992 Blue Note)
Destiny's Dance (1981 Original Jazz The Red Door (1998 Concord) with Lionel Hampton: Landmarks (1991 Blue Note)
Classics) Lionel Hampton 1929-1940 (Saaz Rush Hour (1995 Blue Note)
Luminous (1989 Jazz House) Classics) Universal Language (1993 Blue Note)
The Unspoken Word (1993 Jazz House) John Handy
At Monterey Jazz Festival (1965 Koch)
Joseph Jarman Bob Malach
qual Interest (1999 OmniTone) Mood Swing (1990 Go Jazz)
Joe Maneri James Moody Cecil Payne Ike Quebec
In Full Cry (1997 ECM) Something Special (1986 Novus) with Woody Herman: Heavy Soul (1961 Blue Note)
Tales Of Rohnlief (1999 CM) with Dizzy Gillespie: Concerto For Herd (1967 Verve)
Something Old, Something New (1964
Verve) Gene Quill
Charlie Mariano Dave Pell with Phil Woods:
Alto Sax For Young Moderns (1955 with Joe Williams: Phil & Quill (1957 Original Jazz
Bethlehem) Gerry Mulligan Prez & Joe (1979 GNP) Classics)
Mariano (1987 Intuition) The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings Of
The Gerry Mulligan Quartet With Chet
Baker (1952-57 Pacific Jazz) Ken Peplowski Paul Quinichette
Eric Marienthal Lonesome Boulevard (1989 A&M) It's A Lonesome Old Town (1995 The Kid From Denver (1956-59
Crossroads (1990 GRP) What Is There To Say? (1958-59 Concord) Biograph)
Oasis (1991 GRP) Columbia) The Natural Touch (1992 Concord) with John Coltrane:
Walk Tall (1998 ie Music) with Miles Davis: with Howard Alden Cattin’ With Coltrane & Quinichette
Birth Of The Cool (1949-50 Capitol) Ken Peplowski |Howard Alden (1993 (1952-57 DCC)
Concord)
Branford Marsalis Encore! (1995 Concord)
Music From Mo Better Blues (1990, David Murray Nelson Rangell
Sony) Fast Life (1991 DIW) Playing For Keeps (1989 GRP)
requiem (1999 Sony) The Hill (1986 Black Saint) Art Pepper Truest Heart (1993 GRP)
Romances For Saxophone (1986 Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section
Columbia) (1957 Original Jazz Classics)
Scenes In The City (1983 Columbia) Vido Musso Art Pepper Plus Eleven (1959 Original Dewey Redman
Trio Jeepy (1988 Columbia) with Benny Goodman: Jazz Classics) with Ed Blackwell:
Benny Goodman 1936 Vol 2 (Classics) The Artistry Of Pepper (1956-57 Pacific Red & Black In Willisau (1980 Black
with Stan Kenton: Jazz) Saint)
Warne Marsh Stan Kenton 1945 (Classics) Winter Moon (1980 Original Jazz
The Complete Atlantic Recordings Of Classics)
Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz & Warne with Stan Kenton: Joshua Redman
Marsh (1954-58 Mosaic) Zbigniew Namyslowski The Innovations Orchestra (1950-51 Beyond (1999 Warner Bros)
Live At The Montmartre Club Vol 2 Kujaviak Goes Funky (1976 Power Capitol) Timeless Tales (For Changing Times)
(1975 Storyville) Bros) Retrospective (1943-68 Capitol) (1998 Warner Bros)
Tenor Gladness (1976 Disco-Mate) Wish (1993 Warner Bros)

Oliver Nelson Bill Perkins

Jackie McLean The Blues And The Abstract Truth (1961 Just Friends (1956 Pacific Jazz) Sam Rivers
Bluesnik (1961 Blue Note) Impulse) Perk Plays Prez (1995 Fresh Sound) Fuschia Swing Song (1964 Blue Note)
One step Beyond (1963 Blue Note) Trio Live (1973 Impulse)
Right Now! (1965 Blue Note) Waves (1978 Tomato)
Lennie Niehaus Houston Person
The Octet No. 2, Volume 3 (1954 Basics (1987 Muse)
Big Jay McNeely Original Jazz Classics) Prince Robinson
Road House Boogie (1949-52 Patterns (1989 Fresh Sound) with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers:
Saxophonograph) Flip Phillips ‘Four Or Five Times’ (1928 Victor)
Flip Wails (1947-57 Verve)
Greg Osby
Charles McPherson Art Forum (1996 Blue Note) Adrian Rollini
First Flight Out (1994 Arabesque) The Invisible Hand (2000 Blue Note) Courtney Pine with Bix Beiderbecke & His Gang:
Man-Talk For Moderns, Volume X Back In The Day (2000 Blue Thumb) ‘At The Jazz Band Ball’ (1927 Okeh)
(1991 Blue Note) ‘Jazz Me Blues’ (1927 Okeh)
Joakim Milder
with Tomasz Stanko: Michel Portal
Titania (1997 ECM) Charlie Parker Turbulence (1987 Harmonia Mundi) Sonny Rollins
The Charlie Parker Story (1945 Savoy) The Complete Sonny Rollins On RCA
Diz ‘n’ Bird At Carnegre Hall (1947 (1962-64 RCA)
Eddie Miller Blue Note) Art Porter The Cutting Edge (1974 Milestone)
with Bob Crosby: Jazz At The Philharmonic 1946 (Verve) Pocket City (1992 Verve) The Freelance Years: The Complete
Bob Crosby 1957 To 1938 (Jazz Classics) On Dial: The Complete Sessions (1945- For Art’s Sake (1998 Verve) Riverside & Contemporary Recordings
Bob Crosby's Bob Cats Vol 2 (1939 47 Spotlite) (1956-58 Riverside)
Swaggie) The Quintet |Jazz At Massey Hall (1953 Newk's Time (1957 Blue Note)
Original Jazz Classics) Joe Poston On Impulse! (1965 Impulse)
South Of The Border (1948-52 Verve) with Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Saxophone Colossus (1956 Prestige)
Bob Mintzer With Strings (1947-52 Verve) Orchestra: Sonny Rollins Plus Four (1956
Latin From Manhattan (2000 DMP) with Dizzy Gillespie: ‘T Know That You Know’ (1928 Prestige)
One Music (1991 DMP) Groovin’ High (1945-46 Savoy) Vocalion) Trio[Brass (1958 Verve)
Quality Time (1998 TWT) The Complete RCA Victor Recordings ‘Monday Date’ (1928 Vocalion) both with Bud Powell:
(1937-49 Bluebird) on Apex Blues 1928-30 CD (Decca). The Amazing Bud Powell Volume 1
with Jay McShann: (1949-51 Blue Note)
Billy Mitchell Blues From Kansas City (1941-43 with Dizzy Gillespie:
with Count Basie: MCA) Chris Potter Sonny Side Usp (1957 Verve)
Chairman Of The Board (1959 Moving In (1995 Concord) with Miles Davis:
Roulette) Pure (1992 Concord) Bags’ Groove (1954 Prestige)
Evan Parker Vertigo (1998 Concord) with Miles Davis and others:
Saxophone Solos (1975 Chrononoscope) Collector's Item (1953 Esquire)
Roscoe Mitchell with Barry Guy, Paul Lytton: with Thelonious Monk:
Sound Songs (1994 Delmark) Imaginary Values — Nine Improvisations Red Prysock Work (1954 Prestige)
with Art Ensemble Of Chicago: (1993 Maya) with Tiny Bradshaw:
Art Ensemble 1967-68 (Nessa) with Lol Coxhill, Steve Lacy Walk That Mess!: The Best of the King
Three Blokes (1992 FMP) Years (c1950-54 Westside) Bernt Rosengren
with Spontaneous Music Ensemble: with Tomasz Stanko:
Hank Mobley Karyobin (1968 Chronoscope) Litania (1997 ECM)
Soul Station (1960 Blue Note) Wolfgang Puschnig
with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers: with Vienna Art Orchestra:
At The Café Bohemia (1955 Blue Note) Leo Parker 20th Anniversary 1977-1997 (1997 Charlie Rouse
Let Me Tell You ‘Bout It (1961 Blue Amadeo/Verve) with Art Blakey:
Note) Introducing Joe Gordon (1954 Verve)

bo —_
with Benny Carter: Hot Lips Page 1938-40 (Classics) Mark Turner Kirk Whalum
Further Definitions (1962 Impulse) Ballad Session (1999 Warner Bros) The Promise (1988 Columbia)
In This World (1998 Warner Bros)
Tommy Smith Mark Turner (1997 Warner Bros) Bob Wilber
David Sanborn Azure (1997 Linn) with Soprano Summit
As We Speak (1982 Warner Bros) Soprano Summit (1976- 77 Chiaroscuro)
Close-Up (1988 Reprise) Stanley Turrentine Live At Concord ‘77 (1977 Concord)
Willie Smith La Place (1989 Blue Note) with Dick Hyman:
The Complete Jazz At The Philharmonic That's Where It's At (1962 Blue Note) A Perfect Match (1997 Arbors)
David Sanchez On Verve 1944-1949 (Verve) Up At Minton’s (1961 Blue Note)
Melaza (2000 Columbia)
Barney Wilen
Gary Smulyan Various artists (free) Jazz Sur Seine (1958 Philips)
Pharoah Sanders Saxophone Mosaic (1994 Criss Cross) Document: The 80s; New Music In
Black Unity (1971 Impulse) With Strings (1997 Criss Cross) Russia (1989 Leo)
Crescent With Love (1992 Evidence) For Example: Workshop Freie Musik Dick Wilson
(1978 FMP) with Andy Kirk:
Harry Sockal Andy Kirk 1936-1940 (Classics)
Heinz Sauer with Vienna Art Orchestra: with Mary Lou Williams:
with Albert Mangelsdorff: 20th Anniversary 1977-1997 (1997 Various artists (R&B) Mary Lou Williams 1927-1940 (Classics)
Birds of Underground (1973 MPS) Amadeo/Verve) Groove Station: King-Federal-DeLuce
Saxblasters Vol 1 (1999 Westside)
Honkers & Bar Walkers Vols 1 & 2 Phil Woods
Louis Sclavis James Spaulding (1992 Delmark) Real Life (1990 Chesky)
Carnet de Routes (1995 Label Bleu) Brillant Corners (1988 Muse) 1942-45 The R&B Hits (Indigo) with Gene Quill:
with Sun Ra: 1946 The R&B Hits (Indigo) Phil & Quill (1957 Original Jazz
Jazz In Silhouette (1958 Evidence) 1947 The R&B Hits (Indigo) Classics)
Ronnie Scott 1948 The R&B Hits (Indigo)
All Stars At Montreux (1977 Pablo) 1949 The R&B Hits (Indigo)
The Night Is Scott (1966 Redial) Sonny Stitt Lester Young
with Clarke-Boland Big Band: Only The Blues (1957 Verve) Lester Young's recorded output has
Sax No End/All Blues (1967 MPS) with Gene Ammons: Charlie Ventura been issued and reissued innumerable
Boss Tenors (1961 Verve) In Concert (1949 MCA) times, in various formats, and this will
with Oscar Peterson: continue to be the case. Our selection is
Tom Scott Sits In With the Oscar Peterson Trio from three compilations.
with The LA Express: (1959 Verve) Bennie Wallace From The Lester Young Story (1936-49
Tom Cat (1974 Epic) The Fourteen Bar Blues (1978 Enja) Proper):
with Jones-Smith Ine:
John Surman ‘Shoe Shine Boy’/’Lady Be Good’
Gene Sedric Coruscating (2000 ECM) David S Ware (1936)
with Fats Waller: Withholding Pattern (1985 ECM) Surrended (2000 Columbia) with Count Basie:
The Joint Is Jumpin’ (1934-42 ‘Taxi War Dance’ (1939)
Bluebird) ‘Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie’
Buddy Tate Grover Washington Jr. (1939)
The Ballad Artistry Of Buddy Tate Inner City Blues (1972 Kudu) ‘Tickle Toe’ (1939)
Bud Shank (1981 Sackville) Mister Magic (1975 Kudu) “You Can Depend On Me’ (1939)
After You, Jeru (1998 Fresh Sounds) Count Basie 1939 (Classics) Strawberry Moon (1987 Columbia) with Billie Holiday:
The Pacific Jazz Bud Shank Studio Jumpin’ On The West Coast (1947-49 Winelight (1980 Elektra) ‘Me, Myself & I’ (1937)
Sessions (1956-61 Mosaic) Black Lion) ‘A Sailboat In The Moonlight’ (1937)
with Milt Buckner: j ‘When You're Smiling’ (1938)
When I’m Blue (1967 Black & Blue) Ernie Watts with Nat Cole:
Archie Shepp The Ernie Watts Quartet (1988 JVC) ‘Tea For Two’ (1942)
Fire Music (1965 Impulse) Lester Young Quartet:
Steve Tavaglione ‘Just You, Just Me’ (1943
with MVP: Trevor Watts ‘Sometimes I’m Happy’ (1943)
Andy Sheppard Centrifugal Funk (1991 Heading West) with Derek Bailey, John Stevens: ‘Ghost Of A Chance’ (1944)
Learning To Wave (1998 Provocateur) Dynamics Of The Inypromptu (1974/99 Lester Young & his Band:
Entropy) ‘These Foolish Things’ (1945)
John Tchicai with Spontaneous Music Ensemble: ‘DB Blues’ (1945)
Andy Sherrer Real Tchicai (1977 Steeplechase) Karyobin (1968 Chronoscope) with Jazz At The Philharmonic:
with Vienna Art Orchestra: ‘Lester Leaps In’ (1949)
20th Anniversary 1977-1997 (1997 From The Complete Lester Young Studio
Amadeo/Verve) Joe Temperley Ben Webster Sessions (1944-55 Verve):
Nightingale (1992 Hep) Musie for Loving (1954-55 Verve) Lester Young Quartet:
With Every Breath I Take (1998 Hep) The Soul Of (1957-58 Verve) ‘Polka Dots & Moonbeams’ (1949)
Sahib Shihab with Duke Ellington: ‘Undercover Girl Blues’ (1951)
with Clarke-Boland Big Band: Duke Ellington 1940 (Classics) From Lester Young In Washington DC,
Sax No End/All Blues (1967 MPS) Gary Thomas The Blanton-Webster Band (1940-42 Vol 3 (1956 Original Jazz Classics):
By Any Means Necessary (1989 JMT) Bluebird) Lester Young Quartet:
with Oscar Peterson: ‘Gs, If You Please’ (1955)
Wayne Shorter Meets Oscar Peterson (1959 Verve)
Atlantis (1985 Columbia) Lucky Thompson with Art Tatum:
JuJu (1964 Blue Note) Trictotism (1956 Impulse) Group Masterpieces Volume 8 (1956 John Zorn
with Art Blakey: with Art Blakey: Pablo) The Big Gundown (1984-85 Elektra
Buhaina’s Delight (1961 Blue Note) Soul Finger (1965 Limelight) Nonesuch)
with Weather Report: Filmworks 1986-1990 (Elektra
I Sing The Body Electric (1972 Bobby Wellins Nonesuch)
Columbia) Gianluigi Trovesi Dont Worry ‘Bout Me: Live At The Spy Vs Spy (1989 Elektra Musician)
Heavy Weather (1976 Columbia) —Les Bottes a Musique (1988 Splasch) Vortex (1997 Cadillac) with Naked City:
Grand Guignol (1992 Avant)

Zoot Sims Frankie Trumbauer Frank Wess

And The Gershwin Brothers (1975 with Bix Beiderbecke: with Count Basie:
Original Jazz Classics) ‘Singing The Blues’ (1927 Okeh) Chairman Of The Board (1959
‘Trumbology’ (1927 Okeh) both on Bix Roulette)
Beiderbecke Vol 1 Singin’ The Blues CD
Buster Smith (Columbia).
with Hot Lips Page:

bn C=)
 Berry, Leon “Chu’* 33 Champs, The 87
INDEX
Bickert, Ed 69 Charles, Ray 107-108
Binyon, Larry 9 Chekasin, Vladimir 180
Page numbers in bold refer to “Bird” see Charlie Parker Cherry, Don 141, 142
illustrations. Bird, Keith 71 Chocolate Dandies, The 32
Birdland club 52 Clarke, Kenny 48
An asterisk * indicates that an Bjorksten, Hacke 71 Clarke-Boland band 62
artist is included in the Black Artists Group see c-melody saxophone 11
Recommended Listening guide, BAG Cobb, Arnett* 34, 80, 82,
pages 216 to 219. Blakey, Art 97 83, 106, 109
Blue Devils orchestra 40 Cohn, Al 73, 75, 75, 76
Blythe, Arthur* 131, 132, Cole, Nat “King” 44, 107
137 Coleman, George 108
Bobcats, The 25 Coleman, Ornette* 130,
Boots & His Buddies 36 138-145, 138, 139, 140,
Bop For The People band 145, 146-147, 152
AACM project 149, 151 iayel YS) Coleman, Steve 164, 165
Adams, George* 135 Bostic, Earl 82, 83, 85-86, Coltrane, Alice 120, 121
Adams, Pepper* 105 117 Coltrane, John* 19, 23, 58, 92,
Adderley, Julian Bradshaw, Tiny 83 105, 108, 113, 114-121, 115,
“Cannonball”* 104, 111, Brainstorm band 136 116, 118, 120, 121, 122, 131,
113, 118, 122, 123, 124, Bramboéck, Florian* 182 134, 154, 155, 212-213
Waa, Wass, Wee Braxton, Anthony* 151 Coltrane, Ravi* 212
Albright, Gerald* 172, 175- Brecker Brothers, The 158- Combelle, Alix* 178
176 159, 160, 166, 207 Cook, Junior* 101, 103
Allard, Gray 71 Brecker, Michael* 121, 154- Cook, Will Marion 10
Allen, Harry* 190, 191 161, 154, 155, 156, 157, cool jazz 64-71, 76
Allen, Henry “Red” 19, 37 161, 196 Cooper, Bob* 66, 68
Allen, Marshall 102 Breuker, Willem 149, 180, Corea, Chick 159, 160, 172
Ammons, Gene* 56, 106- 184 Coxhifll, Lol* 152, 153
107, 107, 109 Bridges, Henry 35 Crawford, Hank 108
Amy, Curtis 113 Brignola, Nick 105 Criss, Sonny* 50, 61-62, 61,
Armstrong, Louis 14, 172 Brookmeyer, Bob 77 62
Art Ensemble (Of Chicago), Brooks, Tina* 101 Crosby, Bob 20, 25
The 151 “Brothers, The” 72-79 crossover see smooth jazz
Association for the Brétzman, Peter* 150, 152, Crusaders, The 113, 165
Advancement of Creative 169, 180 Cuber, Ronnie* 105
Musicians see AACM Brown, Clifford 90 Curtis, King 82, 82, 109
Auld, Georgie* 35, 36, 36 Brown, James “Pete” 27,
Austin, Sil 83 31, 36
Ayler, Albert* 146, 147-148, Brown, Les 70
147, 150, 153 Brown, Marion* 128-129
Brown, Ted 65
Brubeck, Dave 68
Buckshot LaFonque band Dash, Julian 35
201 Davis, Charles 105
Burchell, Chas 71 Davis, Eddie “Lockjaw”*
Butcher, John 146 56-57, 80, 99, 106, 107,
BAG project 149 Byas, Don* 46, 50, 54, 55 109
Baker, Chet 66, 159 Byrd, Charlie 79 Davis, Miles 51-52, 65, 89,
Ballamy, lan 187 98, 114, 117, 118, 122,
Banks, Ulysses “Buddy” 36 124, 167-168, 178, 201
Barefield, Eddie 37 Davis, Nathan 105
Barnes, Alan* 190, 195, 195 Dean, Elton* 169
Bartz, Gary 168 Desmond, Paul* 68-69, 70,
Bascomb, Paul 35, 83 71
Basie, Count 20, 26, 33, 34, 35, Cab Jivers, The 32 di Carlo, Tommy 74
37, 38, 41, 43, 44, 54, 56, 61 Calloway, Cab 32, 35, 37 Dixie Syncopators 6, 8
bebop 46, 49, 53, 54-63 Carney, Harry* 20, 21 Dixon, Eric* 61
Bechet Legacy band 193 Carruthers, Jock 37 Doggett, Bill 83, 105
Bechet, Sidney* 10, 10-11 Carter, Benny* 11, 16, 17, 17, Doldinger, Klaus 169, 181
Beckenstein, Jay 169 28-29, 29, 58, 104, 178 Dolphy, Eric* 119, 130-1382,
Beiderbecke, Bix 11 Carter, James* 208, 212, 213 133, 134, 151
Berg, Bob* 163, 167-168, Cellar Boys, The 7 Donahoe, Sam 196
PAs Challis, Bill 6 Donaldson, Lou 108, 165
Bergonzi, Jerry* 212 Chaloff, Serge 73, 77 Dorsey, Jimmy* 7, 8, 41
Berne, Tim* 209, 210 Chamblee, Eddie 82 Douglas, Tommy* 37, 46

22
Dreams band 157 Golson, Benny* 99, 100 “hot fountain pen” (instrument)
Dudek, Gerd* 181 Gonsalves, Paul “Mex” 23 11
Dunmall, Paul* 146, 149 Goodman, Benny 20, 25, 36 Howard, Darnell 20
“goofus” (instrument) 11 Howard, George* 172, 175
Gordon, Dexter* 47, 57, 58- Hughes, Spike 32
60, 58, 78, 107 Hunter, Chris 169
Granz, Norman 17, 52 Hylton, Jack 16
Gray, Wardell* 57-58, 58,
59
Eager, Allen 76 Griffin, Johnny* 56, 99, 99,
Kckstine, Billy 26, 49, 107 100
Edwards, Teddy* 30, 32, 63 Grofé, Ferde 6
Ekyan, André* 178 Grusin, Dave 172
Eldridge, Joe 8 Gryce, Gigi 104 Instant Composers Pool 149
Eldridge, Roy 8, 17, 18 Gullin, Lars* 71, 184 Iturralde, Pedro* 178, 180,
Ellington, Duke 20 Gustafsson, Mats* 180 180
Ellis, Herb 77
Ellis, Pee Wee 169
Ervin, Booker* 124, 129,
134
Evans, Bill* 168, 168, 207
Evans, Herschel* 20, 30,
33, 41 Haley, Bill 82 Jackson, Franz 8
Evans, Stump* 7 Hall, Jim 69 Jackson, Willis “Gator
Hamilton, Chico 127, 130 (Tail)”* 82, 109, 113
Hamilton, Scott* 188-190, Jacquet, Illinois* 34, 35, 35,
188, 189, 208 80, 106
Hammond, John 32, 43 James, Harry 27
Hampton, Lionel 32, 35, 80, Jarman, Joseph* 151
85, 106, 107 Jarrett, Keith 185
Farmer, Art 50 Handy, John* 128 Jaspar, Bobby* 103, 178,
Farrell, Joe 168 hard bop 96-105 178
Felder, Wilton* 112-113, Hardwick, Otto 20 JATP see Jazz At The
112, 165 Harle, John 187 Philharmonic
Fields, Brandon 176 Harriott, Joe* 149, 151, 181 Jaume, André 179
Flanagan, Tommy 19 Harris, Eddie* 108, 110, Jazz At The Philharmonic 17
Forrest, Jimmy* 81, 82, 83 111-112, 158, 162, 196, 27, 35, 51, 52, 80; 108
Foster, Frank* 61 206 Jazz Composers Orchestra
Fredriksson, Borje 185, 187 Hashim, Michael* 132, 194 Association 149
free jazz 138-139, 146-153, 180- Hawes, Hampton 62 Jazz Crusaders, The 112
181 Hawkins, Coleman* 12-19, Jazz Messengers, The 96,
Freeman, Bud 4, 5, 7, 33 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, Si, OF
Freeman, Chico* 132, 135- 30, 32, 38, 41, 50, 88, jazz-rock see fusion
136 109, 178 Jeanneau, Frangois* 179
fusion 79, 124, 144, 157, Hawkins, Erskine 35, 37 Jerome, Jerry* 36
162-169, 170, 181, 196 Hayes, Tubby* 101, 104 Johnson, Budd* 20, 26, 34-35
Haymer, Herbie 36 Jones, Elvin 119
Heath, Jimmy* 63 Jones-Smith Incorporated
Hemphill, Julius 210 38
Henderson, Fletcher 11, 12, 14, Jordan, Clifford 56, 101
oo, 443 Jordan, Louis* 86, 87, 88
Henderson, Joe* 101, 125- jump jazz 86
G, Kenny* 170, 171-172 127, 128, 129, 137
Garbarek, Jan* 184, 184, Henderson, Leora 43
185, 186, Hendrix, Jimi 150
Garzone, George* 212 Henry, Ernie* 63
Gayle, Charles 146 Henry, Haywood 37
Geller, Herb* 70, 104 Herman, Woody 62, 67, 72,
Getz, Stan* 58, 72-79, 72, 73, 74 Kamuca, Richie 73, 79, 100
73, 78, 93 Hill, Andrew 126, 127 Kansas City 30, 41, 46
Gilberto, Joao 79 Hines, Earl 20, 26, 34, 49 Kansas City Six 43
Gillespie, Dizzy 17, 26, 48-49, Hodges, Johnny* 20, 22-23, Kenton, Stan 26, 66-68
49, 51, 54, 62, 77, 92,117 22, 33, 68, 117 King, Peter* 104, 169
Gilmore, John 101, 102 Hofseth, Bendik 169, 186 Kirby, John 37
Giuffre, Jimmy 73, 75 Holiday, Billie 43-44 Kirk, Andy 36
Globe Unity Orchestra, The Hollon, Kenny 36 Kirk, Rahsaan Roland*
150, 180 Holman, Bill 66 133-134, 136, 137

nh hn =
Klemmer, John 168 MeVea, Jack 83
Koller, Hans* 71, 181, 182 Metheny, Pat 160
Konitz, Lee* 64-65, 65, 66, Mezzrow, Mezz 11
7) Milder, Joakim* 186
Kronberg, Ginter 181 Miller, Eddie* 20, 25
Krupa, Gene 54 Millian, Baker 36 Page, Hot Lips 85
Millinder, Lucky 80 Paraphernalia 181
Mingus, Charles 52, 68, 105, Parker, Charlie* 17, 27, 37,
2 Seales eels 46-53, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51,
Mintzer, Bob* 168, 212 52, 53, 60, 68, 70, 96,
Mitchell, Billy* 61 103, 104, 115, 142
Mitchell, Roscoe* 149, 151 Parker, Evan* 152, 152-
Lacy, Steve* 88, 105, 151- Mobley, Hank* 96, 97-98, 97 153, 180
1538, 153 modal jazz 103, 118, 122-129, Parker, Leo* 62
LA Express, The 165 167 Parker, Maceo 169, 206
Land, Harold* 99, 100, 129 Moiré Music band 183 Passport 181
Lanphere, Don* 63 Monk, Thelonious 17, 19, 61, 62, Payne, Cecil* 62
La Roea, Pete 126 90, 118 Pell, Dave* 70
Laws, Ronnie* 166, 167 Monterose, J R 101 Peplowski, Ken* 193-194,
Leaders, The 136 Moody, James* 50, 60, 61 193
Leonard, Harlan 35 Moore, Brew 73, 74-75, 77 Pepper, Art* 50, 66, 69
Liebman, David* 158, 168, Morgan, Lee 212 Perkins, Bill* 63, 73
DADE. SADT, Palle Morris, Joe 83 Person, Houston* 113
Lincoln Center Jazz Morrissey, Dick 103 Peterson, Oscar 29, 61, 77
Orchestra 193 Morton, Jelly Roll 7 Pettiford, Harry 30
Little, Booker 132 Mound City Blowers 14 Phillips, Flip* 26, 27
Lloyd, Charles* 125, 127- Mulligan, Gerry* 65-66, 67, Pine, Courtney* 187, 206,
128 68, 70 Pall, Ales
Lovano, Joe* 196-198, 199 Murray, David* 148-149, Portal, Michel* 179
Lowe, Frank 146, 148 204, 205, 211-212 Porter, Art* 176-177, 176,
Lunceford, Jimmy 27, 36, Musso, Vido* 20, 25-26, 66 177
37 Myers, Hubert “Bumps” 36 Poston, Joe* 8
Lyons, Jimmy 146 Potter, Chris* 154, 201,
Lyttelton, Humphrey 193 202-203, 202, 213
Powell, Bud 96
“Pres”, “Prez” see Lester Young
Prez Conference band 70
Prime Time band 140, 144
Najee 176 Procope, Russell 11, 12, 23, 3637
Naked City band 210 Prysock, Red* 82, 83
Machito 52 Namyslowski, Zbigniew* Puschnig, Wolfgang* 182,
Mahavishnu Orchestra, The 181, 187 2
168 Nash, Ted 70
Maini, Joe 104 Nelson, Oliver* 109
mainstream jazz 190 Nesbit, John 6
Malach, Bob* 168, 212 new age 129
Maneri, Joe 206, 211 New Orleans Feetwarmers 11
Manne, Shelly 68 New York Art Quartet 185
Mariano, Charlie* 68, 137 New York Contemporary Quebec, Ike* 108, 109
Marienthal, Eric* 172, 173 Five 185 Quill, Gene* 104
Marsalis, Branford* 196, Newman, David “Fathead” Quinichette, Paul* 70
197, 201-202 108
Marsalis, Wynton 206 Niehaus, Lennie* 68, 104
Marsh, Warne* 64, 66, 71 Noel, Fats 85
Masada band 153 Noone, Jimmie 8
Master Musicians Of Joujouka,
The 140
Matlock, Matty 20 Ra, Sun 101, 105
Maupin, Bernie 168 Randolph, Boots 87
M-BASE collective 163, 206 Raney, Jimmy 76
McGhee, Howard 51 Rangell, Nelson* 173-174,
McKinney’s Cotton Pickers 8 Oliver, King 6, 8 174, 175
McLean, Jackie* 98, 103, organ-saxophone jazz 86, R&B 49, 80-87, 106-109, 141,
123, 128 106, 108, 109 147, 162, 170
McNeely, Big Jay* 82, 84- Osborne, Mike 182, 183 Red Onion Jazz Babies 11
85, 84 Osby, Greg* 163-164, 166, Redman, Dewey* 138, 139,
McPherson, Charles* 104, 195 206, 210 146, 149

22
Redman, Don 6 Skidmore, Alan 183, 187
Redman, Joshua* 198-199, Smith, Buster “Prof’* 37, 46
200 Smith, Jimmy 108, 109, 117
Reinhardt, Django 16, 178 Smith, Johnny 76
Rendell, Don 181, 182 Smith, Mamie 12
Rezitsky, Vladimir 180 Smith, Tab 85 Ventura, Charlie* 54, 54
rhythm and blues see R&B Smith, Tommy* 186-187, Vienna Art Orchestra, The 182,
Rivers, Sam* 134, 135, 135, 186 211
148 Smith, Willie* 27, 28 Vinson, Eddie “Cleanhead” 117,
Roach, Max 17, 50, 52, smooth jazz 170-177 118
132 Smulyan, Gary* 105
Robinson, Prince* 8 Sockal, Harry* 182
Rodin, Gil 20 Soprano Summit 192
Roland, Gene 74 SOS trio 183
Rollini, Adrian* 11 soul jazz 106-113, 170
Rollini, Arthur 20, 26 Sousa, John Philip 5
Rollins, Sonny* 19, 60, 63, Spanier, Mugegsy 11 Walder, Herman 41
88-95, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, Spaulding, James* 137 Wallace, Bennie* 212
95, 96, 101, 117, 164 Spontaneous Music Waller, Fats 26, 36
Rosengren, Bernt* 184-185 Ensemble, The 149, 180 Ware, David S* 146
Rouse, Charlie* 61 Steely Dan 165, 202 Washington, Grover Jr*
Royal, Marshall 20 Steps Ahead band 158, 160 170-171, 171, 196
Russell, George 122, 186 Steward, Herbie 73 Washington, Jack 37
Russin, Babe 20 Stewart, Sammy 31 Waters, Benny 36
Russo, Mare 169 Sting 201 Watts, Ernie* 168, 169, 212
Stitt, Sonny* 50, 56, 56, 58, Watts, Trevor* 149, 183
60-61, 65, 77, 107, 194 Weather Report 167
Stovall, Don 37 Webster, Ben* 20, 23, 23,
Sulzman, Stan 183 24, 25, 30, 41, 106, 109,
Summa Cum Laude band 4 189
Supersax band 70 Wellins, Bobby* 186, 187
Sanborn, David* 137, 162, Surman, John* 182, 183-184, Wess, Frank* 61
163, 165-166, 196, 210 183 West Coast jazz 70
Sanchez, David* 212, 213 swing 20-37, 38, 188, 190, 191, Westbrook, Mike 183
Sanders, Pharoah* 120, 195 Whalum, Kirk* 172, 175
121, 176, 185 “Symphony Sid” DJ 83 Widespread (Depression)
Sauer, Heinz* 181 Orchestra 194
Sauter, Eddie 78 Wiedoeft, Rudy 6, 8
Savoy Sultans 26 Wilber, Bob* 11, 192, 192
Sax, Adolphe 4, 5 Wilen, Barney* 103, 178-
Schlippenbach Trio, The 179
153) Williams, Mary Lou 41
Schoof, Manfred 180 Tate, George “Buddy”* 26, Wilson, Dick* 26, 36
Schuller, Gunther 140, 142, 33-34, 34, 35, 109 Woods, Phil* 104, 105
143, 198 Tatum, Art 47 World Saxophone Quartet, The
Sclavis, Louis* 179, 179 Tavaglione, Steve* 168 212
Scott, Ronnie* 62-63, 63 Taylor, Sam “The Man” 83
Scott, Shirley 111 Tchicai, John* 148, 185
Scott, Tom* 164-165, 166 Teagarden, Jack 74
Sears, Al 83 Temperley, Joe* 192, 193
Sedric, Gene “Honeybear’ * Thomas, Gary* 163, 165
26, 36 Thomas, Joe 36
Shank, Bud* 66 Thompson, Barbara 169, “Vardbird” see Charlie Parker
Shepp, Archie* 120, 148, 181, 181 Young, Larry 126
150 Thompson, Danny 102 Young, Lester* 15, 17, 20, 26,
Sheppard, Andy* 186, 213 Thompson, Eli “Lucky”* 56 30, 33, 38-45, 39, 40, 41, 42,
Sheppard, Bob 212 Tracey, Stan 187 45, 46, 50, 57, 58, 60, 64, 70,
Sherrer, Andy* 182 Tristano, Lennie 64-65, ess dhe, Wis cokes
Shihab, Sahib* 62 71
Shorter, Wayne* 99-100, Trovesi, Gianluigi* 179
124-125, 126, 164,.167 Trumbauer, Frankie* 9, 11,
Silver, Horace 101, 157 4]
Simeon, Omer 20 Turner, Mark* 199-201,
Sims, Zoot* 17, 73, 74, 75, 75, 201, 213
190 Turrentine, Stanley* 101, Zorn, John* 153, 153, 210
Singer, Hal “Cornbread” 82, 108, 110-111, 164, 166-167
83 Tyner, McCoy 126

n bo ~
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Wilmer; Cohn (76) Peter Symes; (192) Dennis Austin;
Gordon|Getz (78) Randi Hultin; Barnes|/McPherson (195) Peter
Cobb (80) Mike Doyle/Symil Symes; Marsalis (197) Peter
Thanks to the following for the Library; Forrest (81) Val Symes; Lovano (199) Peter
loan of CD inserts and record Wilmer; McNeely (84) Ray Symes; Redman (200) Peter
sleeves for illustration in this Avery; Jordan (87) Val Wilmer: Symes; Potter (203) Peter Symes:
book: Kevin Alexander; Balafon Rollins (89) Val Wilmer; Rollins Murray (205) Dennis Austin;
Image Bank; Stan Britt; Steve (91) Val Wilmer; Rollins (92) Maneri (206) New Note; Berne
Day; Dave Gelly; Mark Gilbert; Randi Hultin; Rollins (93) Peter (209) Peter Symes; Osby (210)
Ray’s Jazz Shop; Peter Symes; Symes; Rollins (95) Peter Symes: David Sinclair; Pine (211) Peter
Mike Tucker; David Wood. Mobley (97) Institute of Jazz Symes; Sheppard (213) Peter
Studies; McLean (98) Val Symes; Sanchez (213) Sony
Wilmer; Griffin (100) Randi Music; closing shot (215) Val
PHOTOGRAPHS were supplied Hultin; Golson (101) Peter Wilmer; rear jacket: Ben Webster,
by the following (number Symes; Gilmore/Allen|/Thompson Randi Hultin; Tony Coe, Peter
indicates page): (102) Val Wilmer; Cook (103) Symes; Peter King, Peter Symes;
Sonny Rollins (front jacket) Peter Symes; Hayes (104) Val Gilmore/Allen|Thompson in Sun
Peter Symes; opening shot (2) Wilmer; Woods (105) Howard Ra Arkestra, Val Wilmer;
Val Wilmer; Freeman (4) Charles Denner; Eddie ‘Lock Jaw’ Davis Tommy Smith, Howard Denner
Peterson; Dorsey (7) Charles (107) Dennis Austin; Smith (109)
Peterson; Robinson (8) Charles Peter Symes; Harris (110) Ray
Peterson; Trumbauer (9) Charles Avery; Felder (112) Ray Avery; BIBLOIOGRAPHY
Peterson: Bechet (10) Charles Miles Davis (114) Mike Ian Carr et al Jazz, The Rough
Peterson; Carter/Procope (11) Doyle/Symil Library; Coltrane Guide (1995 Rough Guides)
Charles Peterson; Hawkins (13) (116) Val Wilmer; Jones (119) John Chilton The Song Of The
Charles Peterson; Hawkins (14) Mike Doyle/Symil Library; Alice Hawk (1990 Quartet)
Ray Avery; Hawkins (15) Coltrane (120) Peter Symes; John Richard Cook & Brian Morton
Charles Peterson; Coltrane (120) Randi Hultin; The Penguin Guide To Jazz On
Hawkins/Carter|/Sims (17) Mike Adderleys (123) Val Wilmer; CD (1998 Penguin)
Doyle/Symil Library; Hawkins Lloyd (125) Val Wilmer; Shorter Stanley Dance The World Of
(18) Val Wilmer; Carney (21) Val (126) Peter Symes; Henderson Swing (1974 Da Capo)
Wilmer; Hodges (22) Val Wilmer; (128) Peter Symes; Blythe (131) xeorge Duvivier Bassically
Webster (24) Randi Hultin; Val Wilmer; Freeman (132) Peter Speaking (1993 Scarecrow Press)
Webster (25) Charles Peterson: Symes; Dolphy (133) Val Michael Erlewine et al All Music
Phillips (27) Charles Peterson; Wilmer; Rivers (185) Peter Guide To Jazz (1998 Miller
Smith (28) Charles Peterson; Symes: Kirk (136) Val Wilmer; Freeman)
Carter (29) Charles Peterson; Kirk (187) Brian O’Connor: Leonard Feather Inside Bebop
Brown (81) Charles Peterson; Redman/Coleman (138) Val (1949 Robbins)
Edwards (32) Peter Symes; Wilmer; Cherry (141) Peter Hl Goldstein Jazz Composer's
Freeman|/Hodges|Berry (33) Symes; Schuller (142) Peter Companion (1993 Advance)
Charles Peterson; Symes; Coleman (145) Peter Barry Kernfield (ed) The New
Tate|/Shavers/Coleman (34) Mike Symes; Ayler (147) Val Wilmer; Grove Dictionary Of Jazz (1994
Doyle/Symil Library; Tate (84) Lowe (148) Val Wilmer; Shepp Macmillan)
Val Wilmer; Auld (36) Charles (150) Dennis Austin; Harriott Donald Maggin Stan Getz: A
Peterson; Procope (37) Charles (151) Val Wilmer; Brotzmann Life In Jazz (1997 Morrow)
Peterson; Young (39) Charles (152) Dennis Austin; Lacy (153) Lewis Porter John Coltrane, His
Peterson; Young (40) Charles Val Wilmer; Zorn (153) Peter Life And Music (1998 University
Peterson; Young (42) Institute of Symes; Breckers (155) Peter of Michigan Press)
Jazz Studies; Young (45) Ray Symes; Brecker (156) Peter George Russell The Lydian
Avery; Parker (47) E Symes; Brecker (161) Howard Chromatic Concept Of
Levinsohn/Val Wilmer; Parker Denner; Sanborn (162) Peter Tonal Organization In
(48) Steve Race/Val Wilmer; Symes; Turrentine (164) Ray Improvisation (1959)
Gillespie (49) Peter Symes; Avery; Scott (166) Ray Avery; Arnold Shaw Honkers And
Parker (50) Ray Avery; Roach Bartz (168) Ray Avery; Watts Shouters — The Golden Years of
(50) Peter Symes; Parker/Baker (169) Ray Avery; Washington Rhythm & Blues (1978 Collier)
(53) Ray Avery; Byas (55) Val (171) Ray Avery; Marienthal
Wilmer; Stitt (56) Val Wilmer; (173) David Sinclair; Rangell
Gordon (57) Randi Hultin; Gray (174) David Sinclair; Porter (177)
(59) Ray Avery; Moody (60) David Sinelair; Sclavis (179)
Peter Symes; Criss (61) Val Peter Symes; Osborne (182) Peter
Wilmer; Scott (63) Val Wilmer; Symes; Surman (182) Peter
Konitz (65) Val Wilmer; Marsh Symes; Garbarek (184) Peter
(66) Mike Doyle/Symil Library; Symes: Breuker/Kollektief (184)
Mulligan (67) Val Wilmer; Peter Symes; Sanders (185) “The best part of playing jazz is
Pepper (69) Dennis Austin; Peter Symes: Wellins (186) Peter letting the music really take over.
Desmond (71) Val Wilmer; Getz Symes; Smith (186) Howard And then it’s beyond me: I’m just
(72) Randi Hultin; Sims (74) Denner; Hamilton (189) Peter standing up there holding an
Mike Doyle/Symil Library; Symes; Wilber (192) Mike instrument and putting air into
Sims/Cohn/Giuffre (75) Val Doyle/Symil Library; Temperley it.” Sonny Rollins, 1996

224
sie

Ne ee
ny ee
continued from front flap

BRIAN PRIESTLEY is a jazz pianist ari¢!!

writer. He is co-author of Jazz: The fiyigh
Guide, and has written biographies (3!
Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and |\\\\\iles
Mingus, as well as a series of
transcriptions of the work of the great jazz
pianists.

TONY RUSSELL is a freelance writer,

broadcaster and consultant on jazz and
blues. He contributed to Jazz Monthly,
Jazz Journal and Jazz Review, and edited
Jazz Express and Jazz: The Magazine. The
author of Blacks, Whites And Blues and
The Blues: From Robert Johnson To Robert
Cray, he has contributed to numerous
other books.

LOREN SCHOENBERG worked with many

swing-era giants, formed a big-band in
1980, and has played/recorded with
Benny Goodman, Wynton Marsalis, and
Benny Carter. He contributes to New York
jazz radio, writes frequently (with a
Grammy for Best Album Notes 1994) and
teaches at Manhattan School of Music and
The New School.

KEITH SHADWICK trained as a saxophonist

and has been writing and broadcasting
about music for over 25 years. He has
written for the Financial Times and Daily
Mail to Jazz Journal and The Wire. Books
include The Illustrated Story of Jazz and
Jazz: Masters of Style. He programmed
jazz for Classic FM International and is a
consultant to Music Choice Europe.

ALYN SHIPTON presents jazz programmes

for BBC Radio, including The Shape of Jazz
To Come on Ornette Coleman, and is jazz
critic for The Times. Biographies include
Fats Waller and Bud Powell; his 1999 life
of Dizzy Gillespie, Groovin’ High, was
Book Of The Year in Jazz Times. He has
published several oral histories, including
lives of Danny Barker and Doc Cheatham.

JIM TOMLINSON is a musician, once

described by Humphrey Lyttelton as a
“saxophonist of rare originality”. His
debut album Only Trust Your Heart
appeared in 1999. Known mostly for his
work with vocalist Stacey Kent, his playing
according to The Sunday Tribune has
“gorgeous tone, stately elegance and true
melodic poise”.

MICHAEL TUCKER is Professor of Poetics at

the University of Brighton and a reviewer
for Jazz Journal |\\ternational. His
publications inclucle Jan Garbarek: Deep
Song (Hull 1998). te directed the month-
long 1999 University of Brighton festival
ECM: Selected Sigs, a celebration of the
label’s 30th anniversary.

PETER VACHER has been writing about jazz

since 1960. He cantrilsuted to The Grove
Dictionary Of Jazz, provides jazz
obituaries for The Guerdian, writes liner
notes for record companies in the UK and
Europe, and produwe.! a biography of
clarinettist Joe Darey:si:ourg, Telling t Like
It Is.

Also in this series:

MASTERS OF JAZZ Gi\\AR
MASTERS OF JAZZ SAXOPHONE DAVE GELLY
with contributions from
THE STORY OF THE PLAYERS AND THEIR MUSIC

It was Coleman Hawkins who first defined

the saxophone’s role in jazz, turning it from
a hooting, ineffective horn into the music’s
leading solo voice. All manner of distinctive
accents have since coloured that voice —
from the romantic Johnny Hodges to the
indelicate bop of Charlie Parker, the
commanding John Coltrane to the frenetic
free jazz of Ornette Coleman - so that
today no other instrument rivals the
saxophone at the expressive heart of jazz.

ISBN 0-87930-622-X

A BALAFON rooxkdd | | iii

AN IMPRINT OF THE OUTLINE PRESS 9 "780879°306229 | |
www.balafon.dircon.co.uk