The Penguin Jazz Guide (139 page)

J. J. JOHNSON
^&

Born James Louis Johnson, 22 January 1924, Indianapolis, Indiana; died 4 February 2001, Indianapolis, Indiana

Trombone

Quintergy: Live At The Village Vanguard

Emarcy 842814 / 510059

Johnson; Ralph Moore (ts); Stanley Cowell (p); Rufus Reid (b); Victor Lewis (d). July 1988.

J. J. Johnson said (1985):
‘People still talk as if I only cared about playing as fast as possible, “virtuosically” or as if I was playing a valve instrument. Others said the only thing I ever cared about was expressiveness. It’s not so! I only ever wanted to play with clarity, maximum clarity. If it turned out fast, that was OK. If there was a little expression there, that was good. But it was clarity and … logic that I wanted.’

Johnson was never an overwhelming performer. One rarely gasps at his technique and rarely feels that he has plumbed some inner agony to produce the sounds. He represents an unfashionable kind of musicianship, unconcerned with style or inscape, but instead with purely musical values. Dapper and shy, he was not an obvious contender for headlining tour artist, but the JATP/Pablo style of concert presentation perhaps suited him much better than the club circuit and Johnson thrived over this next period as a performer again, after a longish sojourn in the studios making blaxploitation soundtracks. A live recording from Yokohama with Nat Adderley co-leading broke his duck and, after that, Johnson was pretty much back on the circuit.

Even nearing retirement age, Johnson sounded as full of controlled energy as ever and the Village Vanguard dates find him in vintage form. There is a wonderful opening arrangement of ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’ and a brief but beautiful unaccompanied version of ‘It’s All Right With Me’. J.J.’s tone and phrasing are faultless on the faster numbers,
Kenny Dorham’s ‘Blue Bossa’, Wayne Shorter’s exacting ‘Nefertiti’ and his own title-track. Johnson’s tone and line are faultless, and if clarity was his bellwether he has followed it all the way home. There was a second, standards set from the same engagement, probably good economics for the label, but it makes for a duller listen and not even J.J.’s immaculate playing saves some tunes that really ought to be out in a field somewhere, grazing quietly.

& See also
The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson
(1953–1955; p. 144)

DANIEL HUMAIR

Born 23 May 1938, Geneva, Switzerland

Drums

9–11 p.m. Town Hall

Label Bleu LBLC 6517

Humair; Michel Portal (sax, bcl, bandoneon); Joachim Kühn, Martial Solal (p); Marc Ducret (g); Jean-François Jenny-Clark (b). June 1988.

Daniel Humair said (1989):
‘Jazz thrives in France, and France has produced some great musicians because everyone has good technique, or if they don’t, you don’t see them again. Jazz is about expressing yourself, but in order to do that, you have to know how to play, and I think the French system guarantees that.’

Humair moved to Paris at 20 and established himself as the most able percussionist on the French scene, forming an important association with Martial Solal, and becoming a respected accompanist for visiting Americans. He was also regular drummer with the George Gruntz band and sustains a parallel career as a painter.

It might be a cheat to include a collaborative record as an example of Humair’s leadership, but he was the straw boss on this one and it is his vibrant drumming that makes the music work. Inevitably, the writing is all credited to Kühn, Portal and Solal (with three such writers in the group, it would be hard to stake a rival claim), and it is Kühn’s harmonically loaded ‘From Time To Time, Free’ which starts the set and establishes it as an essential document in European jazz of the time. The pianist’s ‘Easy To Read’ is a more romantic conception and a nice contrast at this point. Solal plays one of his finger-busting medleys, putting in more swing and bop material than seems possible given the duration. Then Portal claims the stage with ‘Pastor’, a piece that conjures the best out of the rhythm section, Humair sticking close to the bass clarinet but commenting quirkily on the line whenever he can. The saxophonist’s ‘Alto Blues’ is more of a blowing piece, again powered from the back. There’s another piece of Kühn’s at the end, but it’s hardly necessary. Admirers of Humair’s work should also listen to his work with organist Eddy Louiss and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, and with his regular trio of François Jeanneau and Henri Texier, but for those who simply want a snapshot of jazz in Europe at this time, the Town Hall date is hard to beat.

BUDDY COLLETTE

Born William Marcel Collette, 6 August 1921, Los Angeles, California

Saxophones, clarinets, flutes

Flute Talk

Soul Note 121165

Collette; James Newton (f); Geri Allen (p); Jaribu Shahid (b); Giampiero Prina (d). July 1988.

Buddy Collette said (1987):
‘This is my home town and I’m committed to it, but it’s hard to be heard in Los Angeles. Eric [Dolphy], he went to New York and at once was calling back, saying: “
This
is the place.” But I stayed, and I teach and I work at making jazz understandable to young people. I don’t expect awards for it, or money.’

A revered figure on his local scene, but still too little recognized elsewhere, Buddy Collete was the man who brought on Charles Mingus – as recounted in the bassist’s memoir
Beneath the Underdog
– and played with Chico Hamilton ahead of another of his pupils, Eric Dolphy. A genuine multi-instrumentalist, Collette perhaps also suffers critically because of the diversity of his skills. He spent considerable time buried away in the studio and band sections or organizing big bands for Monterey. However, there are superb Collette records out there if only anyone went in search of them.

One or two, like the obviously titled
Man Of Many Parts
are gimcracked round Buddy’s multi-instrumentalism. To get the best of him, one perversely has to pick one of the discs where he pretty much narrows his focus, like
Nice Day
, where the main horn is woodsy clarinet, or the much later
Flute Talk
, which finds the 67-year-old in the studio with the leading flautist of the next generation, James Newton.

Pupil and master meet on respectful rather than combative terms, but Allen is her usual unpredictable self, alert in places, apparently asleep in others, but helped out by a terrific bass/drum alliance. It’s Buddy’s first record for two decades, possibly the best group he’s ever had in the studio, and probably his strongest instrument. The recording isn’t spot on for the flutes, but overall is pretty good. The title-tune is an improvised collaboration, but over the years Buddy had built up a book of pretty decent themes, and ‘Roshanda’, ‘Crystal’ and the mildly unusual ‘Blues In Torrance’ make for an interesting set and a nice reintroduction to an old master, who’s still to the fore.

DOUG RANEY

Born 29 August 1956, New York City

Guitar

The Doug Raney Quintet

Steeplechase SCCD 31249

Raney; Tomas Franck (as); Bernt Rosengren (ts); Jesper Lundgaard (b); Jukkis Uotila (d). August 1988.

Doug Raney said (1988):
‘Do I sound like my father? I think yes and no. My musical roots are different. I’ve come up in a different world to him and one that puts a different value on jazz, but it would be strange, wouldn’t it, if there were no resemblance at all? So I guess you could say there’s a kinship there.’

Jimmy Raney’s son was raised to the family craft, but quickly established his own identity and a more contemporary idiom that also seemed to draw on swing guitar (missing out, that is, much of the bebop influence his father has sustained). Less robust rhythmically than his father, Raney slots more conventionally into a horn-and-rhythm set-up. His technique is scratchier than Jimmy’s and lacks that creamy, Jim Hall-like legato, but perhaps there was a semi-conscious intent to distinguish himself from the parental style. Ironically, father and son were paired on some recordings of the period, which underlined the kinship even as it demonstrated the individuality of their respective approaches.

Taken out of family context, Doug is the more old-fashioned player. He doesn’t have Jimmy’s speed of thought, even if his articulation easily matches his father’s, but he brings a gamier sensibility to blues-based material in particular and avoids the residual folksiness that sometimes creeps into Jimmy’s ballads. The neutrally titled 1988 album, like the earlier
Guitar Guitar Guitar
, may be intended to give the signal that here is a working band, under the command of its leader, playing full on and undistractable. There’s a bold version of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Fee Fi Fo Fum’ (a very interesting read of that strange tune) and long clips through Franck’s ‘Fata’ and ‘The Parting Of The Ways’. The original Raney material
doesn’t jump out quite so prominently, but then neither of the originals is given quite such a thorough workout. The two horns/no piano format is quite challenging and Raney leans a little on Lundgaard to hold it all together, but there are few problems navigating such estimably organized music.

JOHN HICKS

Born 12 December 1941, Atlanta, Georgia; died 10 May 2006, New York City

Piano

Naima’s Love Song

DIW 823

Hicks; Bobby Watson (as); Curtis Lundy (b); Victor Lewis (d). August 1988.

John Hicks said (1991):
‘So many of the young musicians today learn much of their music from listening to records. I think that makes them very good at making records, but what they don’t have is that sense of person-to-person, instrument-to-instrument interaction that you only learn from playing with others.’

This most urbane of modern pianists grew up in California and was given piano lessons at home by his mother before studying formally at Lincoln University in Missouri and at Berklee. The son of a minister – Hicks performed at his father’s former charge in Harlem just three days before his own death – he brought not so much a holy, holy gospel roll to his playing as a quieter, hymnic quality. It comes out in his best-known composition, ‘Naima’s Love Song’ (which is dedicated to his daughter and has nothing to do with the Coltrane melody). The most responsive of musicians, he had a background in accompanying singers (Della Reese originally) and was always a selfless group player. Some would argue that this made his solo performances rather less than exciting, but Hicks was a more abrasive performer in these contexts than usually thought and while some of his later collaborations with flautist wife Elise Wood are gentle and unforceful, they are also deeply thoughtful and musicianly.

One of Hicks’s finest moments on record was his role in Bobby Watson’s luminous
Love Remains
. The saxophonist returned the favour two years later on
Naima’s Love Song.
Hicks defies any stereotype by turning in a set that swings, fiercely on Rollins’s ‘Pent-Up House’ and with an athlete’s ease on Lundy’s opening ‘Elementary, My Dear Watson’. Bobby contributes one of his own almost gospelly lines on ‘Someday Soon’, one of three extended pieces that stretch the band and allow everyone generous solo space. Waldron’s ‘Soul Eyes’ is arguably untypical of the composer, though his most recognized tune; Hicks takes it in a new direction, seeming to quote from a Methodist hymn in his solo and giving it a more … soulful aspect than usual. The peerless title-track is saved for the end, straight after the white-hot Rollins tune, and everyone stretches out on it.

Hicks made many records, including a particularly fine Maybeck Hall recital for Concord, one of the best of that inconsistent series, but this brings together all his qualities: lyricism, restrained power, harmonic sophistication and that indefinable ability to respond in real time to the men around him; it’s a polished studio record that has the urgency and immediacy of a live date.

CARLA BLEY
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Born Carla Borg, 11 May 1938, Oakland, California

Piano, keyboards

Fleur Carnivore

Watt/21 839 662

Bley; Lew Soloff, Jens Winther (t); Frank Lacy (frhn, flhn); Gary Valente (tb); Bob Stewart (tba); Daniel Beaussier (ob, f); Wolfgang Puschnig (as, f); Andy Sheppard (ts, cl); Christof Lauer (ts, ss); Roberto Ottini (bs, ss); Karen Mantler (hca, org, vib, chimes); Steve Swallow (b); Buddy Williams (d); Don Alias (perc). November 1988.

Carla Bley says:
‘I looked in my seed catalogues to find the name of a flower to title this piece. I decided on “Venus Fly Trap”, but discovered that Stevie Wonder had already used it. So I used the French translation, which is “Fleur Carnivore”. Aside from the American musicians I brought from New York, I tried to fill out the band with one musician from each European country: Italy, France, England, Germany, Austria, Denmark were represented. Have I forgotten a country?’

This is something like a masterpiece. In the ’80s, Bley returned wholeheartedly to large-scale scoring and arranging, touring with a Big Band and a Very Big Band. The title-track here is worthy of Gil Evans, a majestically decadent ballad with superb solos by Soloff and Puschnig. The three-part ‘Girl Who Cried Champagne’ is a cracked bossa line with the kind of solo from Sheppard that Gato Barbieri used to deliver; Karen Mantler does a Stevie Wonder thing on harmonica. ‘Song Of The Eternal Waiting Of Canute’ also pairs the soloists, with a strong feature from the leather-lunged Valente and a terrific statement from Lauer.