LISTEN TO ONE: Afro-American Sketches
Jerry Kail was a section man, and there's always room for a good section man. Among those who found room for him were Quincy Jones, Johnny Richards, Pete Rugolo, Herbie Mann, Shirley Scott, King Curtis, Bill Evans, Jack McDuff, Woody Herman, and Tito Puente. Just because you haven't heard of a guy, doesn't mean you haven't heard him.
Ernie Royal was the younger brother of Basie regular Marshall Royal, and he played a stint with Bssie too, and with a number of other big bands. Most of his work was in horn section, including the three Miles Davis/Gil Evans big band LPs, but he also worked with Charles Mingus in his octet. He was active up through the late 1970s;
Joe Wilder was a classically trained musician who turned to jazz when he realized that there would be little chance for an African American to advance in the classical world. Th concert hall's loss became jazz's gain, as Wilder's time with Hank Jones, Gil Evans, Benny Goodman and many others, his work with singers from Billie Holiday to Eileen Farrell, Tony Bennett to Harry Belafonte, led him to an NEA Jazz Masters award in 2008.
Paul Faulise is best known for his work with Kai Winding's trombone septet, but like the others on this album, he found work any time anyone needed a bass trombone. On how he broke into the recording studio, he tells a story (per interview with Jack Schatz at the Trombone Page of the World) which introduces me to a job I didn't know existed:
There were many rehearsal bands in New York, and one of them was Dan Terry's band. Dan was a music copyist and contractor for Ernie Wilkins, an arranger who had written for the bands of Count Basie, Harry James, and Tommy Dorsey and was currently the hottest arranger for jazz artists. After playing a few times in Dan's rehearsal band, he put me on one of Ernie's sessions. Ernie liked my playing, and from that time on I was Ernie's first call.
A contractor for a bandleader, contracted to supply him with musicians. Makes sense, when you think of it.
And Faulise had another story for Schatz, one that could only happen to a trombone player. This came when he was in the Tonight show orchestra:
I remember one New Year's Eve we were playing a live TV special, and all of these balloons were supposed to let go above the band at midnight. Needless to say, they didn't come down; and people started to laugh. Something got stuck in the net right over me; so Doc said to me, "Paul, get it with your slide." So I reached up with the slide to pull the net, and the slide got stuck in the net. I tried to get the darned thing loose, of course, the whole time on live TV. Johnny Carson finally shouted over, "Leave it there"; and the band pretty much lost it for the rest of the show.
Urbie Green is better known to the average jazz fan, having been voted the New Star of 1954 on trombone in that year's DownBeat critics' poll, and regularly placing high in the trombone category of their annual readers' poll (6th in 1960). Over a long and distinguished career he recorded 28 albums as leader, several for such labels as Blue Note, Vanguard and RCA. Bill Watrous, no slouch himself on the instrument, once said, "Urbie Green is the greatest trombone player I have ever heard." And Paul Faulise, who played with him often, said, "Every time I worked with Urbie, it was like taking a lesson."
Jim Buffington, as James L. Buffington, had an outstanding career in the classical music field. He played with the Budapest String Quartet, the Juilliard String Quartet and the Lincoln Center Chamber Society. He was a soloist with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and the Symphony of the Air.
As Jim Buffington, he was part of the Gil Evans/Miles Davis orchestras on their collaborations, and was one of the first called when a jazz ensemble needed a French horn. Among many others, he recorded with Oscar Pettiford, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, James Brown, John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, Paul Desmond, Gato Barbieri and George Benson.
In the area of unclassifiable music, he recorded with Moondog.
In 1979 and 1980, he received the Most Valuable Player Award for consistently outstanding performance from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Jerry Dodgion is hailed both for his versatility ("a multi-woodwind master"--the National Jazz Museum in Harlem) and his virtuosity can always be counted on to take an inventive solo that perfectly fits the circumstances"--Scott Yanow for Blue Note Artists). Like these other in-demand session men, he's played with a plethora of artists, from Louis Armstrong to Charles Mingus. Dodgion is still with us as of this writing.
In an interview for jazzleadsheets.com, Dodgion recalls working with Oliver Nelson on this recording. He had first met Nelson in Las Vegas, when they were both playing with Red Norvo. Then later, after playing a gig in Atlantic City backing up Frank Sinatra, he and the drummer, John Markham, went out on the town looking for some music, and found themselves in a small club run by Sammy Davis Jr.'s mother, where a trio was playing: Wild Bill Davis, Grady Tate, and Oliver Nelson. They talked with Nelson during a break and he said, modestly, that he was doing some composing as well as playing, and some arranging for Quincy Jones and a few other guys:
I said to John, "We've heard him play, and he plays great. He doesn't sound like anybody else, and to hear him talking about what else he does--it's possible that's true." Then he asked me to bring my horn with me tomorrow night, so I did, and I sat in with them,and he said, "When you move to New York, call me." I ran into him one other time over the next few years--he was wearing a Count Basie band uniform. He was doing a couple of weeks with Basie.Then a year or two later he called me to do his first big band date. And that was at Rudy Van Gelder's--my very first time at Rudy's. It was great. High ceilings, all wood, and the floor was cement with throw rugs in different places. And the drums were right in the middle of the room! No group around the drums...I mean, big band, loud music, soft music -- I didn't understand it. I said, "How is this possible?" But it turned out to be OK. You go anywhere else, the drums are off separate, so they don't bleed into the other microphones, but at Rudy's they were always right in the middle of the room, and no one else could make that work."
(Edited some for continuity.)
Dodgion takes a flute solo on "Message" and "There's a Yearnin'."
Bob Ashton was called upon again by Nelson, who did seem to like those multi-instrumentalists, and who also counted on guys he'd worked with. Many of these names -- Dodgion, Royal, etc. -- turn up again and again. Nelson and Ashton first worked together on a big band session for Prestige led by Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and arranged by Nelson in 1960, released as Trane Whistle in 1961. A 1961 Prestige session led by Gene Ammons and arranged by Nelson was parceled out to various albums over the next few years. He can also be heard on Fantabulous (1964, Argo); a trio of Impulse! sessions: Happenings (1966), The Spirit of '67 (1967) and Soulful Brass (1968); Goin' Out of My Head (Verve, 1966), arranged and conducted by Nelson, and a Grammy winner for best jazz album; and Every Day I Have the Blues, with Nelson arranging music and conducting a band for blues singer Jimmy Rushing.
Ashton played a number of sessions with Gene Ammons for Prestige. He is also the author of an instruction book, You Can Teach Yourself to Compose Music.
The cello isn't called upon all that often as a jazz instrument, and when it is, it's generally played by someone like Ron Carter or Oscar Pettiford, or Ray Brown, who once made an album called Jazz Cello. The only real full time jazz cellist I can name is Fred Katz. But Nelson called on two cellists for this ensemble: Peter Makas, who would also play on albums by Johnny Griffin and Kai Winding, and Charles McCracken, who garnered very little ink as a personality (no American Wikipedia page; what biographical and discographical information I could find came from German Wikipedia), but a great deal of respect as a musician. He was used as a soloist on recordings by third stream composer Bill Russo and Charles Mingus (on Let My Children Hear Music, the album that Mingus has called "the best album I ever made"). He recorded with Louis Armstrong, Stan Getz and Jackie Paris, was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at 24, and appeared, altogether, on over 200 recordings--classical, jazz, avant-garde, unclassifiable, even mainstream pop. His son, Charles McCracken Jr., is a bassoonist with a resume almost as full and as varied as his father's. McCracken solos on "Disillusioned."
Clyde Reasinger had an interesting day job. He was the piano tuner for Johnny Carson's Tonight show orchestra. Not that he needed a day job. He was another in-demand musician for big-band work and studio recording. His first major gig was replacing Maynard Ferguson in Shorty Rogers' band, and over the years he also worked with Ferguson many times. He was in the Miles Davis/Gil Evans big band.
I was aware of Melba Liston's reputation as an arranger in the 1960s, and knew that she'd made a reputation on trombone beginning in the late 1950s, but I had no idea how much work she'd done, or how far back her career stretched. She began with Gerald Wilson's big band in 1944, when she was 18, and first recorded with high school classmate Dexter Gordon in 1947. A couple of years touring with Count Basie and Billie Holiday were enough to convince her life for a woman on the road was no life for her, and she left the music profession altogether for most of the 1950s, returning near the end of the decade to record with Art Blakey, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones and a host of others (including one Prestige session, the Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis big band album arranged by Nelson). The 1960s saw the beginning of her association with Randy Weston, and her career as an arranger that would win her the most recognition, including an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship in 1987.
“I (Nelson) didn’t know a lot about Africa, African people and culture and most important, nothing about African music and rhythm.” Embarking on intense study of those subjects, Nelson spanned his musical portrayals from conflicts between African natives and slave traders to the contemporary civil-rights Freedom Riders of 1961. “I have at last realized the importance of my African and Negro heritage,” Nelson concluded in the liner notes, “and through this enlightenment I was able to compose 40 minutes of original music which is a true extension of my musical soul.”
Afro-American Sketches is an ambitious suite, tracing the Black experience from being snatched out of Africa and sold into slavery in America, through freedom and its attendant trials. Nelson seems to have begub with ambivalent feelings about Africa. In his liner notes to the album, he says “I didn’t know a lot about Africa, African people and culture and most important, nothing about African music and rhythm." And his initial study of recorded music of Africa given to him by Esmond Edwards was disappointing: "European influences--social, political and cultural--had somehow gotten into African music and refined it on the surface so much that I was unable to learn very much."
But he stayed with it, and began to hear that "the rhythm of the African People had remained intact...I could absorb some inspiration from that source alone."
Interestingly, as carefully as the suite was conceived and written, it was not recorded in sequence. This was because different movements of it were written for different combinations of instruments and instrumentalists, not all of whom were present on the first day of recording.
Nelson has quite a lot to say about how the suite develops. Although admitting that he generally "dislike[s] to paint word pictures about music," in this case he wants the listener "to envision what the music from a completely subjective viewpoint means to me."
This strikes me as a valuable series of insights, and I'm excerpting liberally from the album notes.
"Message"...is essentially a conversation between drummers Ed Shaughnessy and Ray Barretto. The "Message" relates that men and boats are coming up-river in great numbers."Jungleaire" is an account of a contest for freedom between the African Warriors and the slave traders. There is a contest in which the African loses, having been betrayed by some of his own people. He begins a new and more cruel existence in a world full of hatred and bigotry."Jungleaire" powerfully plays massed horns against valiant solo instruments, primarily Nelson himself."Emancipation Blues"...is...an attempt to depict what freedom must have meant to the American Negro when he was told, "You Are Free!" First he gives thanks, then celebratesthe acquisition of his new liberties, and then wonders, "Free to go where, to do what?""There's a Yearnin'," which in its entirety should be read "There's a Yearnin' Deep Inside Me," is a lament."Goin' Up North" is a journey by the American Negro to make a better life, to live as a human being with rights, protection under the law, and education for his children, he thinks."Disillusioned"...tells us that the trip North for the Negro pioneer has proved little, that the Negro's position in society, politics, culture has not really changed. He realizes, however, if an individual has courage, patience, and guts, coupled with the will to overcome...hard knocks...social justice and the right to become somebody is at least within the realm of possibility.The themes from "There's a Yearnin'," "Disillusioned," and "Freedom Dance" are all the same...they are different only in mood and musical notation..."Freedom Dance" is dedicated to the thousands of militant youths, Freedom Riders (of all races) and all people with desire and maturity to be free...In order to be really free, though, man must first learn to respect the rights of other peoples, other cultures.I have at last realized the importance of my African and Negro Heritage and, through this enlightenment, I was able to compose 40 minutes of original music which is a true extension of my musical soul.
Nelson's liner notes go into a lot more detail about the musical structures of each piece, and they're worth reading. Buy the album. Or you can find a facsimile of the back cover at the excellent London Jazz Collector website.
Nelson says that "in order to be really free, though, man must first learn to respect the rights of other peoples, other cultures." American culture is getting more and more insular, as people in power seem to countenance, even encourage, white supremacy, while at the same time, people of all races are being galvanized in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Back in the 1960s, the civil rights movement was also galvanizing support across racial lines, and also creating a backlash, to which not even the jazz world was immune. Nelson, in an interview with John Cobley, described a conversation with someone he chose not to identify:
if I would say Charlie Parker, he would say Lee Konitz. If I would say Duke Ellington, he would say Stan Kenton. If I would say John Coltrane, he would say Stan Getz. He didn’t realize that he was trying to have a complete division, saying this was white jazz, cool jazz. Of course, what Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were doing, that was black jazz. And I hate to think of jazz being that kind of music. As long as politics can stay out of it, I think music in this country will be very, very healthy.
In Afro-American Sketches, the key solos are by musicians covering a mixture of races. "Message" is built around a conversation between a white drummer, Ed Shaughnessy, and a Latino drummer, Ray Barretto, New York born, Puerto Rican by ancestry; it then moves into solos by white flute player Jerry Dodgion and Black bassist Art Davis.
Nelson handles the solo on "Jungleaire." Nelson, Joe Newman and Patti Bown, all African American, solo on "Emancipation Blues"; Dodgion is the soloist on "There's a Yearnin'," and Newman on "Goin' Up North." In his liner notes, Nelson calls particular attention to the "beautiful 'cello solo interpreted by Charles McCracken," another white player. Nelson also gives particular thanks to Bob Ashton for conversations before and during the composition of Afro-American Sketches, and I can find nothing on the Internet to tell me whether Ashton was Black or white. In the words of the great rhythm and blues disc jockey John R., "Why do you care?"
Nelson recognized that the greatness of the American Century in music came from Black roots, and that it flowered in its multicultural heritage, but race and music were still a source of frustration to him. He told Cobley in 1972:
Do you know what they call me, my black brothers? They call me a white musician. They call me a white composer. It’s because I’m always trying to do something. I couldn’t stay with Shaft just to prove how black I am. So I write all kinds of twelve-tone music. I write from my experiences through my education, and now I’m putting together my own thing. And if it goes outside their spectrum, they say, “You’re thinking white.”
Much of this era--the late 1960s and 1970s--was a period of Black militancy, and it was reflected in the political stances of many younger musicians. The relationship between jazz composition and socio-political statement was explored in a conversation between National Public Radio host David Brent Johnson and historian Michael McGerr of Indiana University:
MM: Ellington made it much, much easier to write political music. Not right away... the civil-rights movement wasn‘t quite there yet. There are very few recordings in the 1940s and early 1950s by jazz musicians that are willing to go out on the racial limb that Ellington had already gone out on repeatedly. But when the civil-rights movement really takes hold, progressively from the late 1940s down into the late 1950s, then you begin to see this influence. I often think of that Clark Terry piece, "Serenade to a Bus Seat," about the Montgomery struggle and Rosa Parks. It‘s one of the first moments where you see a jazz musician saying, "You know, I can play to this." And then certainly you have people like Oliver Nelson and Afro-American Sketches who are inspired by that. But it‘s interesting to me, the lag time… Ellington was way out in front, and you get the feeling that African-American musicians writing about civil rights by the early 1960s are reacting more than leading. Which is not a putdown of them…DBJ: That‘s really interesting, because speaking of Oliver Nelson‘s Afro-American Sketches, that was composed and recorded in 1961, and according to his own liner notes, he entered the project reluctantly, and somewhat at the behest of Prestige‘s A and R man--because, he said, he was "put off by the lack of honesty in a lot of Afro-jazz LPs on the market" at the time...MM: Oliver Nelson absolutely knew Black, Brown and Beige. In fact, one of his last albums, the title is a play on that--it‘s Black, Brown and Beautiful... Nelson, interestingly, was an especially politically engaged man...was known for it, was closer to politics than musicians tended to be. He did that later album in 1967, The Kennedy Dream, which is an almost surprising choice in ‘67, to be producing a tribute to a white politician. This is just, what, a year and a half away from James Brown doing "Say It Loud, I‘m Black and I‘m Proud." If I‘m remembering correctly, Oliver Nelson did orchestrations for James Brown--[Soul on Top] ...And again, it‘s too simple--we‘re talking in big building blocks here, but it‘s more musically radical musicians, innovators such as Archie Shepp, free-jazz players who seem to be the ones who tap into Black Power more readily. Think of the Attica piece that Shepp did...and there are critics who argue that there‘s a very close relationship between the radicalism of the black nationalist, black power movement on the one hand and what they saw as the revolution in jazz music, the free-jazz movement inspired by Coltrane and Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp…DBJ: ...I can‘t think off the top of my head of any of the free-jazz musicians attempting something similar to what Nelson... had done with Afro-American Sketches and-certainly they‘re concerned with the same themes, but they don‘t seem to be prepared to address it in that kind of a scope.MM: I think that that‘s true. Ellington and Nelson had a couple of advantages; one is musical, that they worked in forms--big-band, what would later be called mainstream music, more or less--that lent itself to longer themes, more ordered statements, to a kind of readily-heard coherence for an audience, that could make it possible to take a set of themes about black history or black activism and put them to music. Coltrane and his followers struggled with what form would be like in free jazz. When you think of that famous Coltrane record Ascension, which to some people is just two sides of cacophony on one LP record….so I think there are formal problems that the free-jazz movement had, but also I think there‘s a matter of political temperament. Ellington and the civil-rights movement were trying to locate African-American civil rights in a long sweep of black history, whereas the black power movement , for all of its emphasis on an African past, emphasized the moment and confrontation in the here and now, in a way that was different--and I don‘t think somehow lent itself to the same kind of long-term reflection that Ellington had sustained.
I'm listing the whole suite as my "Listen to One" because it should be listened to in its entirety. And if you keep Nelson's words in mind as you listen to the music, you'll hear, vividly, what he's saying.
Afro-American Sketches was released on the Prestige label. Nelson credits Esmond Edwards with giving him the idea of writing a long form piece drawing on African and American traditions, but no producer credit is given on the album. And although this seems very much to be album-geared material, two 45 RPM singles were drawn from it: first "Emancipation Blues," split up over two sides, and then "Goin' up North" as the B side to "Azure Te," from an earlier Nelson collaboration with Lem Winchester.
No comments:
Post a Comment