Listening to Prestige 568: Walt Dickerson

LISTEN TO ONE: To My Queen

 This is Walt Dickerson's fourth and final album for Prestige. This is the work for which he remains best known. He would take a ten-year break from jazz starting in 1965, then return in 1975 to active playing and recording, a second act to his career that would last another decade. Most of these later recordings were for the Danish label Steeplechase.

Of his four Prestige sessions, this one is in many ways the iconic achievement of his career, partly because of its musical direction and partly because of its theme. Dickerson was always considered one of the most individual stylists on the vibes (his unique sound is discussed here), but in this album, abetted by long-time collaborator Andrew Cyrille, he strays farther from his bebop-oriented roots to create a freer and more distinctive personal style. 

The album, entitled To My Queen, is also a deeply personal statement. The title track, which takes up one full side of the LP, is dedicated to his wife Liz, and the emotional resonance continues to move listeners. Dickerson talked about it in a 2003 interview with Hank Shteamer:

Well, there is a way to talk about a person that you find ineffable through music, and my queen [Dickerson’s wife, Liz], being that ineffable person, music was the way that I could express those very beautiful, poignant, intellectual, brilliant, beautiful sides of her. So therefore it couldn’t fall in the realm of most songs or most compositions in the genre but had to escape those restrictions in order to exemplify her. And it doing so, it did open up a new vista of explorations, followed later by several not-to-be-mentioned musicians. It was a very, very happy experience, and I go back to that periodically. I return to that periodically, restating that which is ongoing in our relationship, which is forever.

The individuals that I chose for that outing knew my queen, and their artistic projections spoke of that. Andrew Hill: beautiful projections. George Tucker [sighs]: a rock, sensitive. And of course Andrew [Cyrille]: flourishings, nuances, bracketing the different motifs; he was awesome, and remains to this day, as does Andrew Hill. Two awesome, creative musicians. I don’t consider them musicians; I consider them artists in the highest sense. They’ve surpassed that category, “musicians.” Periodically those are the individuals I miss because now I do more, just about exclusively, solo performances.

This was Andrew Hill's only appearance on Prestige. He's best known for his work on Blue Note in the

1960s, although he continued to play and record until shortly before his death in 2007. He was equally highly regarded as a composer, which gave him the ear and the "artistic projections" that Dickerson valued. 

George Tucker was an interesting choice for this session. Much of his previous work on Prestige had been funky, with organists Shirley Scott and Johnny (Hammond) Smith, but he was also on call for avant-gardists like Eric Dolphy. 

To My Queen was a New Jazz release. Esmond Edwards, who was getting ready to move on after a stunning career as a producer for Prestige, produced.

Richard Brody, summing up Dickerson's career in an obituary in The New Yorker, wrote:

Dickerson is, simply, the most innovative vibes player after Lionel Hampton and Milt Jackson; his rapid-fire barrage of short, metallic notes, reminiscent of John Coltrane’s “sheets of sound” and Eric Dolphy’s frenetic flurries (Dickerson and Dolphy were close friends), extracted surprising harmonic riches from familiar tunes, and often did so with a puckish humor that belied the tenderness with which he could caress a melody.

Finally, here's something Dickerson was never quite able to achieve, more's the pity. From a 1995 interview with Mike Johnston:

I have asked a couple of the individuals that make the instruments to make a set of vibes in only one or two octaves, and to break it down it down into quarter tones. So you would augment the instrument so the instrument would be twice the size. But, it would only be one or two octaves. And of course they looked at me like I was a bit crazy and said we’ll get back to you. But of course they never got back to me.

Listening to Prestige 527: Walt Dickerson

LISTEN TO ONE: It Ain't Necessarily So

 It's been said that jazz is the only musical genre in which the vibraphone is used as a lead instrument, and that's probably not exactly true, especially if you extend the discussion to all mallet-played melodic-percussive instruments. French composer Camille Saint-Saëns was perhaps the first classical composer to write for the instrument (in his case a xylophone) for his 1874 Danse Macabre. Handel and Mozart (most famously The Magic Flute) wrote parts for the glockenspiel, which is similar to the vibraphone but tuned to a higher pitch. Modernist composer Darius Milhaud wrote a Concerto for Marimba and Vibraphone in 1947. The marimba, probably African in origin, further developed as an instrument in Latin America, has become a staple of Japanese music, particularly in the work of composer Keiko Abe.

But the instrument certainly has a special prominence in jazz, starting with Lionel Hampton. Hampton, the story goes, was playing a gig on drums in the NBC radio studios. NBC always had a vibraphone on hand to make the three-note NBC call signal; Hampton noticed it, started fooling around on it, and was hooked.

After Hampton, Milt Jackson created a new vibraphone model for the bebop era, and the instrument has stayed relevant in jazz, as Gary Burton brought it into the jazz fusion era, and Stefon Harris (also a renowned classical musician) into the 21st century. 

Burton, Dickerson and Bobby Hutcherson were probably the three most prominent vibraphonists of the 1960s. Dickerson, signed to Prestige as they lost their vibe star Lem Winchester in a handgun incident, was the first of the three to gain prominence, as he was named New Star of the Year by DownBeat. But Burton's and Hutcherson's careers extended longer, and Dickerson has faded into an undeserved obscurity, as he left the jazz scene in the mid-1960s, and never recovered that lost momentum. On his return, he focused a lot on solo playing and music as part of an ongoing spiritual quest, the latter following the example of John Coltrane, with whom he had played as a young man in Jimmy Heath's big band. Coltrane's and Philly Joe Jones's recommendations had gotten him his recording deal with Prestige.

Dickerson used a special kind of mallet that gave him what he described as a "plush" sound, softer than that of most vibraphone players. He described the sound in more detail in an interview with Mike Johnston:

My approach has always been to be physically close to the instrument, very close. This is different than the approach that is taught on the instrument. I was unable to play intricate things on the instrument with the commonly taught approach. The music that the creator sends me is not of a cosmetic nature; it seems to come as streams of intricate passages of flowing imagery. This means that I can’t use the common approach to the instrument in order to perform these passages. So I’ve modified a complete personal style or technique so I can play the music I receive. So, in adapting my personal approach to playing my instrument my sound has adapted as well. Both are a part of the projection.

That unique sound is heard to excellent advantage on this album, consisting of three standards (one by Gershwin, two by Vernon Duke) and four originals. Dickerson is the principal voice throughout, but the musicians playing with him are awfully good, and very attuned to him. Austin Crowe is sensitive throughout. His work with Dickerson is so good that one can only wonder why he didn't do more--Dickerson in a later interview suggested that the jazz life on the road may not have agreed with him. Ahmed Abdul-Malik has a wonderful solo on "It Ain't Necessarily So," and Andrew Cyrille is consistently arresting, but I'll single out his work on "Relativity," the title track.

Relativity was released on New Jazz. Esmond Edwards produced.

Listening to Prestige 462: Ahmed Abdul-Malik

Ahmed Abdul-Malik, like Yusef Lateef and Randy Weston, was one of the first jazz musicians to incorporate Middle Eastern and North African influences. Lateef found his way into Middle Eastern music in Detroit, through his conversion to Islam, and his friendship with Arab immigrant factory workers on the auto assembly lines. Weston and Abdul-Malik grew up in Brooklyn, where there was an Arabic population and its own musical scene, overlapping with Manhattan's (the offices of Max Roach and Charles Mingus's short-lived but influential Debut Records were in Brooklyn, over the Putnam Central jazz club), but separate.

Brooklyn in the 1950s was part of the city, but it still had a provincial feel. It wasn't the Big Apple. Old time residents recall the days when the Brooklyn Dodger stars lived in the neighborhood, would carpool to the games and go to neighborhood block parties. The big stars played clubs in Brooklyn--especially Thelonious Monk, who had been stripped of his cabaret card and couldn't play any of the well-known Manhattan clubs like the Five Spot. They couldn't advertise him when he played in Brooklyn, but no one was looking, and he could get away with it.  Jazz Historian Jimmy Morton, a fixture on that Brooklyn scene, once photographed Miles Davis, Monk, Mingus and Roach backing up Etta Jones at Tony's, one of Brooklyn's most popular jazz spots.

Brooklyn also has a long African-American tradition. Urban archaeologists have only recently rediscovered Weeksville, one of the first neighborhoods of black homeowners in America.

And it was the borough where young men like Ahmed Abdul-Malik and Bilal Abdurrahman met, discovered Islam, discovered jazz, and did their apprenticeship. Abdurrahman, in his memoir In the Key of Me, lists 24 jazz clubs active in Brooklyn at that time.

Abdul-Malik, as a young violin and viola prodigy at New York's High School of Music and Art, played in the All-City Orchestra. Switching to the bass, and taking up jazz in the 1940s, he played with Art Blakey, Coleman Hawkins and Don Byas.

He got his first recording gigs in 1956 with Weston, on Riverside and on the short-lived Dawn label; in the same year, he recorded with ultra-hip German pianist Jutta Hipp for Blue Note. The following year, he joined Thelonious Monk's quartet--perhaps they had met during Monk's sojourns in Brooklyn.

He also paid his dues in the Arabic music scene, with two Lebanese vocalists, Mohammed el Bakkar and Djamal Aslan, both of whom were also known for their virtuosity on the oud, a Middle Eastern instrument similar to the lute, one that Abdul-Malik would take up and master. El Bakkar, in particular, was a huge star throughout the Middle East, and had played a featured role (as an Oriental rug seller) in the hit Broadway musical Fanny. And to further his immersion in what would come to be called world music, a field in which he was certainly a pioneer, he worked in the 1940s with the popular calypso artist MacBeth the Great (his parents were immigrants from the British West Indies, although he claimed for a while that they were from Sudan).

In 1957, he began working regularly at the Five Spot in New York, most notably a five-month gig in a group led by Monk and featuring John Coltrane, during a period when Monk had regained his cabaret card (he would lose it again in 1958). Both Monk and Coltrane encouraged him to pursue his interest in Middle Eastern and North African music, and Coltrane particularly encouraged him to keep studying the oud. Later in the year, he formed his first group, using both mainstream jazz musicians and Arabic musicians.

This group, being predominantly Muslim, mostly eschewed the usual jazz  clubs--that is to say, places where liquor was served. That made gigs hard to come by, so in early 1958, they came back to Brooklyn, as Abdurrahman and his wife opened an African restaurant--Brooklyn's first--called the African Quarter.

By the time he made his first album as leader (for Riverside) later in the year, his apprenticeship on the oud had borne fruit, and it had become an essential part of his music. The titles of his Riverside album and one in 1959 for RCA Victor are evocative of the kind of music he was already making: Jazz Sahara and East Meets West.

With this album, Prestige would become his home for most of his career as leader. He had experimented with different groupings of musicians on his first two albums, and for this sessionhe pulled together a different and striking combination.

Bilal Abdurrahman had been with him from the beginning, playing the duf (tambourine) on Jazz Sahara, the darabeka (or darbouka, or goblet drum) on East Meets West, the clarinet and various percussion on this session. Abdurrahman would go on to teach and record several albums of Middle Eastern music for young people.

Tommy Turrentine, older brother of saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, had pretty much of a mainstream background, playing in the bands of Benny Carter, Earl Bostic, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie. He had not recorded a lot before this album, but Abdul-Malik was crafting his sound carefully, and liked what Turrentine could contribute. Eric Dixon, best known for a long career with Basie, had appeared on two Prestige albums in the mid-1950s, with Bennie Green and Mal Waldron.

Andrew Cyrille, a Brooklyn native, was new on the scene, but already establishing a reputation of one of the most inventive drummers of the jazz experimentalism, a reputation that would only grow through his work with Walt Dickerson, Cecil Taylor, Oliver Lake, David Murray and others.

Cuban-born Caio Scott's jazz career was limited by his choice of instrument--a cello doesn't fit into every jazz ensemble. But when he was used--by Gato Barbieri, Carla Bley, Archie Shepp, Mal Waldron and others--he delivered. We have heard him once before on Prestige, with Waldron in 1958. Perhaps inspired by his jazz cohorts, he frequently played the cello standing up (he used a saxophonist's neck strap to help steady the instrument). He was in demand for a wide range of avant garde venues in New York, particularly working with dance troupes.

It's hard to pick a Listen to One for this album, because Abdul-Malik does so many things, even dipping into his calypso background for "Hannibal's Carnivals," featuring some strong solo work from Dixon and Turrentine, and and "The Hustlers." Both of these are Abdul-Malik's blending of calypso with high-life, an jazz-influenced updating of a traditional West African folk form which had burst into popularity in Nigeria in 1960, and the latter features Aburrahman on clarinet. "Oud Blues" is interesting because it is just that -- a blues played on the oud, primarily a duet between Abdul-Malik and Scott's pizzicato cello. "Nights in Saturn" is a space age workout that gives the horn players an opportunity to flex their avant garde muscles, but also gives the lead to Abdurrahman on a Korean percussion instrument so obscure, according to the album's liner notes, that neither he nor Abdul-Malik knew exactly what it was. There's even a standard ballad on the set, "Don't Blame Me," by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields, recorded by many in the jazz and pop fields, including another Afrocentric performer, Randy Weston. This version has a beautiful bowed cello solo by Scott, and some intricate duet work between Abdul Malik and Scott playing pizzicato. But I think I'll leave you with the real Middle Eastern feel of  "La Ibkey," adapted from a traditional Arabic folk song, full of rhythmic ingenuity, broken down by University of Hawaii professor Njoroge Njoroge in his book Chocolate Surrealism: Music, Movement, Memory, and History in the Circum-Caribbean: "the drums play in 7/4 while the soloists alternate between 3/4 and 4/4 and multiples thereof."

Esmond Edwards produced for New Jazz, and the album was called The Music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik. "The Hustlers" and "La Ibkey" were released on 45. I don't know if they got much jukebox play, or if they were too far out. I like to think they commanded a few nickels in Brooklyn.

Listening to Prestige 440: Walt Dickerson

On February 24, Walt Dickerson brought a quartet into Rudy Van Gelder's studio, and recorded six songs. He had been recommended to Bob Weinstock by fellow Philadelphians John Coltrane and Philly Joe Jones.

The log for the entire session is simple. It's one word: rejected.

Why? That's lost to history. But it can't be because they didn't recognize his talent, because these were very savvy jazzmen, and no one with ears could have failed to appreciate the rare, striking gifts that this young man brought into the studio. And besides, as Bob Porter tells us, Weinstock was always a big fan of the vibes.

And it can't have been that they didn't like his musicians, or even that they didn't like the tunes he brought in with him, because a week and half later, he was back in Englewood Cliffs, with the same musicians, and the same six songs.

So it must have been some sort of rare glitch in Rudy's recording equipment.  Frustrating for a group of young musicians wondering if they'd lost their chance at the big time (Andrew Cyrille was asked to stick around, and recorded four days later with Coleman Hawkins), but redemption came quickly. I can imagine that Weinstock may have been more worried than they were, that Dickerson might slip through his fingers.

Whatever the first session may have been like, this one is a killer. Dom DeMichael, in a four-and-a-half-star review in Down Beat, described it as "experience-giving and provocative," and Dickerson's solos as "at times spiralling asymmetrically in tangled, biting swirls of notes flying like sparks from a pinwheel." Down Beat was, the following year, to anoint Dickerson as best new jazz artist, and to call him "the most important vibraphonist since Milt Jackson."

And yet Dickerson is largely forgotten today. He made four albums for Prestige and three for other labels during the first half of the 1960s decade, disappeared for ten years, came back to make a few more albums in 1975, then disappeared again, and stayed disappeared. He was in Europe for a good part, but not all of that time. Jazz writer Hank Shteamer, in 2003, got his phone number from Andrew Cyrille. He was back in his home town of Philadelphia. Shteamer called, got a long, cordial interview, with promises to talk more and to come and do a concert. He never answered the phone to Shteamer again.

Curiously, in an age where everyone on the internet feels compelled to make lists, there's really no list of greatest jazz vibraphonists. Last.fm has a sort of a list, but it's an odd one--odd in that includes Milt Jackson and the MJQ separately, even odder in that it includes Cal Tjader and the Cal Tjader Quintet separately, and full-out odd in that it includes non-vibist Marian McPartland. It does, however, include all the major vibists you can think of, with one striking exception: no Walt Dickerson.*

His quartet seems to have come with him from Philadelphia. Andrew Cyrille, who went on to have s substantial career, and is still active as of this writing, was a protege of Philly Joe Jones. Neither Bob Lewis nor Austin Crowe did any recording outside of their work with Dickerson.  Dickerson, many years later, talked about Crowe with Hank Shteamer, and in the process, gave an insight into another side of the jazz life:

Excellent pianist! Last I heard, Austin was in New York, playing classical music. Again, the scene, as it was then…Austin came from a very religious background also, so the scene did a lot to drive many great musicians away. He had a couple of things with Philly Joe Jones, and he came back and told me, "Never again, never again.” He was stranded in the Midwest, played two weeks of engagement and no way to get home. Some people can’t take those kinds of experiences, so I heard he was playing classical piano. I understood... Yes, Austin, a wonderful pianist, a wonderful person… Some of the youngsters got turned away by the scene. It happened to my son, he saw his pop go through things which he thought were totally uncalled for, and even though my son was a natural on many instruments, he didn’t want anything to do with it.

As for Dickerson himself, his on again, off again relationship with music remains a mystery which he

took with him to his grave, in 2008. In 1995 he told an interviewer, Mike Johnston, that he'd been playing a lot of solo gigs in Europe. Maybe "gigs" is the wrong word. He told Hank Shteamer that:

 I do have restrictions; yes, I have. I’ve been asked. No clubs, no smoke environment. Concert hall? Fine. Simple. I’ve seen too many suffer from it- various maladies due to those environments- smoke-filled. It’s quite a workout performing. You do take in what is around you in great amounts, and it does have an effect. I care not to expose my body or mind to those things that are going to be detrimental to my body and mind- my being.

But the music he's left behind is a treat for those who seek it out. He is unique, starting with his approach to the instrument itself. Jazz critic Francis Davis described in the liner notes to one of his Prestige albums:

Dickerson’s first step upon buying a new pair of mallets is to strip away their fur; he then soaks the exposed rubber tips in a mineral solution to get a sound he describes as “plush,” though paradoxically, it is also hard. His use of smaller mallets, gripped closer to the tip than is the custom for vibraphonists, allows Dickerson extraordinary speed on the bars.

Dickerson creates jagged clusters of sound that are reminiscent more of the piano style of Thelonious Monk than of any other vibes player. He is intense, cerebral and yet emotional; on his ballads, like "Evelyn" and "Elizabeth" (his wife, to whom he gave lifelong devotion) have a touching sweetness.

All the compositions on this album are Dickerson's. They have mostly vanished with him, perhaps because no one else could play them quite like him. I was going to say although that didn't stop Monk's compositions from being played, but for a while it did. Monk's genius as a composer was only recognized gradually. Dickerson may have set some kind of a record for length of time until a composition is discovered: "Infinite You" waited 40 years, until Mal Waldron recorded it and another Dickerson tune in 2000.

The album was titled This is Walt Dickerson! Esmond Edwards produced. It was released on New Jazz.



* Well, two exceptions. I don't see Teddy Charles either,

Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon. 

And Volume 4 in preparation!

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

Listening to Prestige 437: Coleman Hawkins

On February 24, Walt Dickerson brought a quartet into the Van Gelder studio for a session which was rejected. It's not clear why. Certainly Bob Weinstock and Esmond Edwards hadn't decided that Dickerson was a horrible mistake. He would go on to record several albums for Prestige. And they didn't tell him to go away and come back with better material, because they brought him back to Englewood Cliffs two weeks later with exactly the same set list, and that became his debut album. Perhaps there was a mechanical failure in the recording the first time around. 

Coleman Hawkins and Kenny Burrell had recorded together a couple of times before, both in 1958, once for Atlantic and once for Prestige, and Bob Weinstock wasn't through with them--they would be paired a few more times. It's easy to see why. they were beautiful together.

And there were some newcomers to Prestige on this session, too. Ronnell Bright had already started to make a name for himself as an accompanist to singers. He had worked with Carmen McRae and Sarah Vaughan, and he would go on to become one of the most in-demand accompanists in jazz and pop music. In addition to extensive tours of duty with Vaughan and Nancy Wilson, he worked with Lena Horne, Gloria Lynne, Anita O'Day, Doris Day and others. But his first experience working with a singer came in 1948, when he was a young naval recruit. Truman had just integrated the armed forces that year, and Bright, stationed on an aircraft carrier, was invited to join the ship's band, where he met and befriended another young sailor who was singing with the band: Julius LaRosa.

He was able to play with the band because they had sheet music, but he had been classically trained, with no experience with jazz or improvisation, or even the concept of chord changes. That education came in the navy, too. In 1950, he was in the naval reserves and was called up to active duty for the Korean War. Scheduled to be shipped out to Korea, he walked into the Navy School of Music, told them he was a musician, and asked to have his orders changed. They auditioned him, and liked his skill, but were taken aback when they asked him to play "How High the Moon" and he didn't know it. This may have been a first for them: a young African American musician who was a classical pianist and didn't know how to play jazz. They said they'd take him if he could learn the chord changes to 25 popular songs in six months.

He was able to learn, thanks to some navy buddies who taught him a few things. They did know a thing or two about jazz. Their names were Julian Adderley, Nat Adderley and Eric Dolphy.

Andrew Cyrille is thought of more as an avant-gardist, but he got his professional start working with blues singer Nellie Lutcher. He got this Coleman Hawkins gig perhaps because he was around--as Woody Allen has said, 90 percent of the secret to success in show business is showing up. Cyrille had shown up for the shelved Walt Dickerson gig four days earlier. He would be back for the second go-around with Dickerson, and stay with him for a few years and several albums, later hooking up with Cecil Taylor for an extended partnership.

Hawkins plays ballads here. You expect Hawkins to be a beautiful balladeer, but he still manages to exceed expectations. And he does it every time. One thinks of him as the titan of the 1930s, the man who made the tenor saxophone an important instrument, and as the guy who showed he wasn't quite finished yet in the early 1940s when he led a group with Dizzy Gillespie in what is considered the first bebop recording. But in the 1950s and 1960s. the era of Coltrane, folks still couldn't get enough of the Hawk. Between 1952 and his final session in 1967 (he died in 1969) there were 59 recordings. 14 of them for Prestige/Moodsville/Swingville.

He has a group that comes up to his standards for beauty, simplicity, intelligence, originality and swing. Kenny Burrell is a perfect complement, with ideas of his own that enhance and enrich. Ronell Bright is a surprise, and a pleasant one. I particularly love his lead-in to "Just a Gigolo," my favorite cut on the album. Andrew Cyrille does a fine job.

Ron Carter had already recorded with some of the best in the business, and if the Down Beat poll voters hadn't caught up with him yet, they soon would. After researching and writing the bios of Bright and Cyrille, I had sort of forgotten who the bass player on the session was, and as I settled in for some serious listening, I kept being struck by how good the bass was--rhythmic and inventive, giving the soloists a real springboard to create from.

The album was called The Hawk Relaxes, although Ron Carter's bass must have kept him from relaxing altogether. Esmond Edwards produced, and it was released on Moodsville.

Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon. 

And Volume 4 in preparation!

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs