Bud Powell - The Amazing Bud Powell Volume 1
Released - December 1955
WOR Studios, NYC, August 9, 1949
Fats Navarro, trumpet #1-4; Sonny Rollins, tenor sax #1-4; Bud Powell, piano; Tommy Potter, bass; Roy Haynes, drums.
BN360-2 Bouncing With Bud
BN361-3 Wail
BN362-1 Dance Of The Infidels
BN363-1 52nd St. Theme
BN365-0 Ornithology
WOR Studios, NYC, May 1, 1951
Bud Powell, piano; Curly Russell, bass #1-5,7; Max Roach, drums #1-5,7.
BN382-1 Un Poco Loco (1st take)
BN382-2 Un Poco Loco (2nd take)
BN382-4 Un Poco Loco
BN384-0 A Night In Tunisia
BN384-1 A Night In Tunisia (alternate master)
BN385-0 It Could Happen To You (alternate master)
Parisian Thoroughfare
See Also: BLP 5003
Session Photos
Bud Powell
Roy Haynes
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| Bud Powell |
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| Roy Haynes |
Photos: © Francis Wolff/ Blue Note Records
Track Listing
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Credits
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Liner Notes
Between these covers lies the harvest of a journey through the mind of Bud Powell. It is a journey in which beauty and darkness, pleasure and sorrow are to be gleaned along the way; for this mind is a strange land, endowed with a glow of genius yet beset by illness and deprivation.
Bud Powell's career has been an erratic one, gregarious months along 52nd Street alternating with lonely months in the hospital. For all the inconsistency of his march to fame, he has managed to earn the unanimous admiration of his contemporaries and to forge an ineradicable place for himself in the international hall of jazz fame.
Born Earl Powell in New York City on Sept. 27, 1924, he is one of three brothers; Richie Powell, who is a few years older, plays piano with the Max Roach-Clifford Brown combo. Bud gained his early experience playing teen-aged gigs around Manhattan and Brooklyn; some of his earliest jobs were with Valaida Snow and the Sunset Royal Orchestra, and at the late Canada Lee's Chicken Coop.
A frequent denizen of the Play House (better known as Minton's) during its years as an incubator of new jazz talent, Bud first showed signs of an incipient bop style before the word bop itself was coined, as can be confirmed by some early recordings with Cootie Williams' band in 1943-4. During the rest of the 1940s he was a part of that loosely-knit clique of restless souls with something new and exciting to tell the world and few places in which to tell it but the smaller and smokier night clubs and the growing world of combo recording. It was during this period that Bud's rocket-swift, indomitable single-note lines and moody, mordant harmonic inventions made so deep an impression on Alfred Lion of Blue Note that starting in 1949 a series of wonderful recording sessions took place. All of these, in addition to some takes never before issued, have now been made available in Blue Note's first 12-inch Bud Powell LP releases.
BLP 1503
"The Birth Of A Masterpiece" is the title Hollywood would probably give to the fascinating story told by the three takes of Un Poco Loco heard here. The first cut shows the composition at a stage somewhat before Bud has quite settled down to a definitive interpretation; it bogs down. Bud senses it and stops short, just as the driver of a smooth-running limousine might pull up on hearing air escape from a tire. The second take, though more or less complete, still lacks something of the conviction of the third, which is the one originally released on a 78 r.p.m. disc. Un Poco Loco has always been, for me, an indescribably exciting experience and certainly one of Bud's greatest compositions. To hear it as it is presented here is pleasure thrice compounded.
Dance Of The lnfidels opens with a staccato intro by the trumpet of the late Fats Navarro and the tenor sax of Sonny Rollins, mostly in thirds, leading into a theme that makes use of a favorite rhythmic device of bop: the two-bar phrase with a "hesitation" accent before the third beat of the second bar. Bud, Fats and Sonny have solos before the theme, mostly in unison, returns. This piece, incidentally, has not been issued on LP previously.
This is the first at four numbers on BLP 1503 on which Bud has a quintet instead of a trio. The presence of the Immortal Fats Navarro, whose elegance of execution and brilliance of tone and conception made him the nulli secundus trumpet star of his day, lent additional luster to the date. A typical bop combo performance that shows Fats, Sonny and Bud to advantage is 52nd Street Theme. This Monk tune, to which I gave its title when the little groups along that thoroughfare were using it to open and close each set, is mainly a simple two-bar riff, which the participants throw around polytonally, as if for laughs, in the opening chorus.
It Could Happen To You is an alternate master of one of Bud's best ballad interpretations, differing in content though not in mood from the previously released take, and originally rejected only because of a slightly marred ending. The same may be said of the alternate take on A Night in Tunisia, in which Bud's weirdly delayed ending resulted in the decision to make another take (heard on the next track). Wail and Bouncing With Bud, both Powell originals, are both happy tunes with an exultant rhythmic feel throughout.
Ornithology is Bud's version of Charlie Parker's version of How High The Moon, so to speak. The tempo is moderate, the style a melodic single-line groove that might be called a contemporary parallel for Earl Hines' “trumpet style piano." (Just listen and imagine Diz and/or Bird playing those some notes.)
Parisian Thoroughfare is a surprise. Never previously released, it is an earlier incarnation of a number Bud recorded for Norman Granz's Clef label some years later. Its delicate, lacy lines have a pristine charm that differs greatly from the more conventional patterns of the typical wailing Powell originals.
Reets and l is built on a theme by “Little Bennie“ Harris; it is named for Bennie and his wife. Its foundation is the All God's Children chord pattern. Autumn In New York is a remarkable demonstration of Bud's ability to retain the essence of a popular melody while investing it with his own personality. An interesting departure is Bud's overlapping of the 24th and 25th measures, which has the effect of telescoping the melody into a 31-bar chorus.
In I Want To Be Happy Bud changes the melody slightly on the third and fourth measure to make them fit a diminished chord. George Duvivier, who worked closely with Bud in preparing this date, has a remarkable chorus on his own.
It Could Happen To You shows Bud adopting what might be called the Tatum approach to a ballad, playing it first ad lib, then in tempo, without accompaniment. Bop is a secondary ingredient, chords spell the single-note passages, and Bud is on interestingly neutral ground.
Sure Thing, a 1943 Jerome Kern song, shows remarkable cooperation between Bud and Duvivier; especially on the passages for which Bud's left hand and George's bass line are locked in unison. On Polka Dots And Moonbeams Bud hugs the melody as closely as if he were Garner, while sparking it with that unique incisiveness of touch and perfect timing and placement of right-hand chords that make an unmistakable Powell sound.
Glass Enclosure ranks with Un Poco Loco among Bud's greatest. It was built up from an odd theme that Alfred Lion heard him play one night when visiting his apartment. Greatly impressed, Lion asked what it was. Bud said he had something in mind that he was trying to express; lion repeatedly asked him about it and encouraged him to continue. A few days later he heard the idea further advanced; by the next time, Powell had worked out the pattern and Duvivier put the parts down in writing. Glass Enclosure is more or less in four movements: the first somewhat maestoso, the next a swinging fragment on two 10-bar phrases; then a pensive yet flowing movement with a stirring bowed-bass underline, followed by a reminder of the first movement.
Oscar Pettiford's Collard Greens and Black-Eye Peas (also known as Blues In The Closet) is some swinging ad-lib blues with Bud, Duvivier and drummer Art Taylor all featured. Over The Rainbow and You Go To My Head are patterned along similar lines to the other ballads; Audrey is a trickily constructed 12-bar original. Finally Ornithology offers a longer, slower take that provides a most intriguing contrast with the largely different improvisation around these chords on BLP 1503.
-LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Encyclopedia of Jazz)
Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by JOHN HERMANSADER
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER
RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes
This collection, which brings all of the master and alternate takes from Bud Powell’s first two Blue Note sessions together on a single disc, allows us to hear the immortal pianist/composer at his most brilliant. The instability that marked Powell’s career peek through on the 1951 trio date, though in that instance it did not inhibit the production of spectacular music. Master takes from both sessions were originally released on 78rpm singles, with alternates appearing later on various LP and CD reissues. Here, the masters from each session are presented in the order of recording, followed by the alternates — a sequence more conducive to general listening, although use of the program function on CD players will provide for more direct comparative listening in the cases of alternate takes.
The August 9, 1949 session produced four titles by a quintet called Bud Powell’s Modernists and two more by just the rhythm section. It marked only the third record date as a leader for the already highly influential 24-year-old pianist, and would prove to include Powell’s only recordings at the head of a quintet. Powell had already spent an extended stay in the Creedmore Sanitarium, where he was given shock treatments; yet as Roy Haynes, the session’s drummer, recalled in a 1996 interview, this was one of the pianist’s most productive periods.
“I lived close to Bud ¡n 1949,” Haynes said. “He was on St. Nicholas Avenue near 141st Street in Harlem, and I lived closer to the river at 149th. He had his ups and downs, but he was beautiful then. When I’d come to his home, he’d say, ‘We don’t want no geniuses here,’ slam the door, laugh, then say ‘Come on in!’ Kenny Dorham and I were two of the older guys who would visit. Mostly, younger guys hung out there, Sonny Rollins and Jackie McLean and their friends. I don’t think we ever rehearsed, even when we had a job or when the record date came up. Bud would be in his bathrobe writing songs when we arrived; then he would play for us, like a private concert.” .
Haynes, Rollins, trumpeter Fats Navarro and bassist Tommy Potter joined Powell for the Modernists recordings. “I remember what a hot August day it was in the studio," Haynes recalled. “And I remember, at the end at the session, Bud saying, ‘Ten years from now, people will be playing what I played today.” Powell’s appraisal was both accurate and too modest. The ensemble’s trumpet/tenor front line, and its prominent interaction between strong horn soloists and interactive rhythm section, anticipated the hard-bop style that would dominate jazz n the late ‘50s. Of course, musicians are still playing Powell’s compositions, and emulating his solo style and that of the brilliant Navarro (near the end of his tragically brief career on this date) and Rollins (at the start of what 50 years later is his ongoing reign).
The jovial “Bouncing With Bud” immediately calls our attention to Powell’s oft-overlooked strengths as a composer. Not only is the main melody intriguing, but there is an arresting introduction, a written bridge (Charlie Parker and many other modernists left open blowing space on the “channel”) and a terse interlude to launch the soloists. The master, recorded after the two alternates and taken at a more confident tempo, finds Haynes playing the breaks in the interlude rather than Powell and Potter; otherwise the solo order is the same, with 16 bars each by Rollins and Navarro and a full chorus from Powell. The heraldic entrance of the young Rollins on the master particularly effective. Navarro begins with the same “Lover Come Back To Me” quote on each take, then spins it in different directions.
“Wail” is a more idiomatically boppish line, albeit still containing a written bridge. The alternate take, recorded first, is faster, and was probably rejected because Navarro is two bars late on the final chorus. The less frantic master finds both hornmen beginning their choruses as they did on the alternate, then adding fresh ideas. Powell takes two lucid choruses on both takes, and Haynes gets the bridge on the out chorus to himself.
“Dance Of The Infidels,” convoluted yet lyrical, ¡s a blues on altered chord changes. The stop-and-start melody, which sounds like both ends of a conversation, is 14-bars long, although the soloìsts play on the conventional 12-bar form. Powell gets four choruses on each take, with outstanding articulation and melodic invention, followed by Navarro and then Rollins for one each. The master, taped after the alternate, is played at a brighter tempo.
“52nd Street Theme” ¡s by Powell’s fellow composer/pianist and good friend Thelonious Monk. Critic Leonard Feather named the piece (according to his liner notes to an earlier reissue) “when the little groups along that thoroughfare were using it to open and close each set.” This version features a playful theme chorus, a chorus each by Rollins and Navarro, two by Powell, and the familiar 16-bar shout chorus leading to a Haynes bridge before the melody returns. The drummer’s powerful beat is at its most inspirational.
“You Go To My Head,” the first of two trio perforrmances is one of Powell’s most magisterial ballads. Only one chorus long, it is rich in melodic invention, broken by moments of judicious repetition and a brace of block chords near the end.
“Ornithology,” the Charlie Parker/Benny Harris line on “How High The Moon” chord changes, provides the clearest example of Tommy Potter’s important contribution to this immortal session. It features Powell all the way, and in this instance the three-chorus master was cut before the four-chorus alternate. Both takes find the pianist launching into double-time and beyond. “Bud loved to play fast,” Haynes noted. “Of course, that session was done before he went back into the hospital for 18 months. I picked him up when he was discharged, and that’s when you started thinking of Bud as having two periods, before and after. Before, he was much sharper.”
The May 1951 trio date that completes this collection is one of Powell’s better “after” performances, even if his precarious emotional state is often audible. Alfred Lion has related to Michael Cuscuna how the pianist disappeared at the beginning of the session, only to rush back in two hours later, insist, “Okay, okay, we’re ready, let’s go!” and launch into the first take of “Un Poco Loco.” Yet somehow Powell produced three trio and two solo titles of startling musicality. It no doubt helped to have the assistance of bassist Curley Russell and drummer Max Roach, who first recorded with Powell on a 1946 Dexter Gordon date for Savoy, were the rhythm section on the pianist’s first trio session for Roost n 1947, and participated in the more recent Powell recordings for Verve and Prestige, the latter also featuring Sonny Stitt.
All three versions of “Un Poco Loco” appeared on the first 12’ volume of The Amazing Bud Powell, where they provided one of the earliest examples of alternate takes illuminating a classic performance. Each take was progressively longer and more complete, with the master including both a drum solo (also heard on the second alternate) and a complete recapitulation of the theme. The composition is one of Powell’s best, a rhythmic minefield over a Latin base complete with I introduction, a gorgeous bridge and an interlude; then Powell solos over a vamp. Roach’s evolving Afro-Latin drum part is a study in instant responsiveness, while Powell’s improvisations are overwhelming and near demonic. The imposing, almost melodic energy of his waves of notes delivered with often frightening intensity, suggests where John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor were headed as they broke the boundaries of popular song form nearly a decade later.
“Over The Rainbow,” the first of two solo performances from the session, is bruised and impulsive yet no less virtuosic or deeply moving. Powell relaxes a bit at the start of the second chorus, then reverts to the rushes and hesitations of the opening when the theme returns. The tensions of the previous performances are channeled over a comfortable medium-tempo groove on two excellent takes of “A Night In Tunisia,” with the master take featuring an especially brilliant break and final bridge. Leonard Feather reported that “Bud’s weirdly delayed ending [on the alternate] resulted in the decision to make another take,” although the master was actually recorded first. Perhaps the alternate resulted from Powell’s dropping the second eight bars of the second solo chorus on the master. Both takes find him humming audibly in the background.
Two unaccompanied takes of “lt Could Happen To You” reveal Powell’s love of Art Tatum. The alternate was recorded first, and may have been initially rejected, as Feather reported for its odd ending. The master take includes an additional half chorus, and provides nearly an extra minute of Powell piano.
A solo version of the delightful “Parisian Thoroughfare” had been recorded for Clef three months earlier, making this incomplete trio performance the sequel. (There was confusion on this point when this track was incorrectly identified on its initial appearance as 1949 session.) The sparkling melody conjures the City of Lights years before Powell arrived there as an expatriate.
-Bob BIumenthal 2001
Blue Note Spotlight Review
To go along with the “amazing” word of wonder, add dazzling, innovative, veloce, infectious, and almost literally miraculous to the descriptors of Bud Powell and his pioneering music. He changed the lingo of pianism in his short-lived career, ushering in the double-hand virtuosity exercised by today’s players. He died in 1966 at the age of 41, after debilitating bouts with psychiatric institutionalism, electroshock therapy and alcoholism. Yet Bud is forever emblazoned in jazz history as one of the founders of bebop, having translated the flame and verve of Charlie Parker’s saxophone majesty to the piano.
Most historians agree that Bud’s best work took place between 1949 and 1953 when despite his physical and mental breakdowns, he created music that still stands today as viably brilliant. The music on Blue Note Records’ seminal The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume One, comprising two daylong sessions on August 8, 1949 and May 1, 1951 at WOR Studios in New York, was originally issued as four 78 rpm singles. Subsequently, the eight tracks (four from each session) were reissued in the new LP format (the smaller-sized 10-inch vinyl) in 1951. Four years later, the Powell dates were reissued again, this time as a 12-inch LP with additional tracks, including alternate takes which, for those cerebrally inclined, trace the evolution of seven tunes in the collection.
The six-song 1949 session spotlights Bud leading a quintet comprising trumpeter Fats Navarro, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, bassist Tommy Potter and drummer Roy Haynes. Tracks include three covers: his close friend Thelonious Monk’s whimsical “52nd Street Theme,” Bird’s bop standard “Ornithology” (with one alternative take) and the lyrical, popular-music ballad “You Go to My Head,” (performed as a trio with Haynes’ brushes inspiring Bud to dig deeply into the melody for a series of his improvisational explorations).
Bud’s three originals include the festive “Bouncing With Bud” (with two alts), the full-velocity bopper “Wail” (one alt) and the mirthfully swinging “Dance of the Infidels” (one alt). Focusing on Bud’s performance, he commands the proceedings with his lighthearted runs on “Bouncing,” his rapid skipping across the keys on “Wail” and his buoyant tumble through “Dance of the Infidels.” All three of these original compositions have become vitals of the bop legacy.
The 1951 session, with Curly Russell on bass and Max Roach on drums, features three covers and two originals (plus, in total, four alternative takes). Bud features himself in a solo setting on both “Over the Rainbow” (a rumbling, intensely yearning open and close with a slow, emotive read of the melody in the middle) and “It Could Happen to You” (a beauty that could well be the sleeper tune of the album). Bud happily dances through Dizzy Gillespie’s “ A Night in Tunisia” and sits in the piano driver’s seat for a gently swinging ride on his own “Parisian Thoroughfare,” which comes to a slamming stop at the end when Bud runs out of ideas or directions or gas and he barks at the engineer, “Hey, cut it, man.”
The key tune on the 1951 session is the high-speed “Un Poco Loco,” with Max playing clave on the cymbals and Bud flying free form with fleet passages. He sprints and surges, scurries and pushes on the keys.
One of Bud’s most celebrated tunes, “Un Poco Loco” has an intriguing backstory as related in Peter Pullman’s 2012 biography, Wail: The Life of Bud Powell (Bop Changes). Referencing Alfred Lion’s recollections, Pullman points out that Bud’s behavior was odd. He arrived at the studio, went to the bathroom and slipped out of the building.
Pullman continues: “Russell and Roach, while accustomed to Powell’s disappearances, started to manifest real discomfort though in different ways…They waited ninety minutes and had just about given up when [according to Alfred] ‘a door to the studio opened and in rushed Bud. Before you knew it, he was sitting at the piano, saying, Okay, okay, we’re ready, let’s go. Nobody was prepared. Max got on the drums. Curly picked up the bass. I’m telling [engineer Doug] Hawkins to get going and catch it when they start…’”
Without any preparation—and according to some reports without any idea about the tune—Bud led the way and conjured up a classic, in a pure jazz essence of spontaneity. Where he went, what he did is open to speculation, but whatever happened, Bud brought to life one of the greatest pieces of music in the jazz songbook—on what is arguably his greatest, most amazing recording.
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