BLP 1527

 Thad Jones - The Magnificent Thad Jones

Released - October 1956

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, July 14, 1956
Thad Jones, trumpet; Billy Mitchell, tenor sax #1-4; Barry Harris, piano; Percy Heath, bass; Max Roach, drums.

tk.2 Thedia
tk.6 April In Paris
tk.10 Billie-Doo
tk.11 If I Love Again
tk.12 If Someone Had Told Me

Session Photos

Percy Heath

Thad Jones

Thad Jones

Max Roach and Barry Harris

Photos by Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
April in Paris	Vernon Duke, E. Y. Harburg	14/07/1956
Billie-Doo	Thad Jones	14/07/1956
If I Love Again	Jack Murray, Ben Oakland	14/07/1956
Side Two
If Someone Had Told Me	Peter DeRose, Charles Tobias	14/07/1956
Thedia	Thad Jones	14/07/1956

Credits Cover Photo:	FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design:	REID K. MILES
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	LEONARD FEATHER

Liner Notes

"MAGNIFICENT" is an apparently exorbitant adjective to apply to any performer, especially one who has arrived only recently at the inner esthetic circle of his chosen art. Yet in the case of Thad Jones the dictionary offers ample justification for its use. Magnificent stems from the words magnus, great, and facere, to do or make; and you don't have to be a Latin, or even a semanticist, to know that Thad Jones has been doing some great things in recent months.

Generally speaking there are three stages of recognition for a musician: first the fellow-musicians start the bandwagon rolling, then the critics, and finally the fans. Thad passed the first barrier in May 1954, when a job with Count Basie landed him in the big time, and passed the second when in the summer of 1956 the Down Beat critics’ poll awarded him the palm as the year’s new star on trumpet. With the release and enthusiastic acceptance of such records as Detroit-New York Junction on Blue Note BLP1513, he has successfully stormed the third bastion.

As on this last-named record, Thad is again teamed here with Billy Mitchell’s tenor saxophone to give his combo a powerful two-man front line. Mitchell, who led the band in which Thad was a sideman at the Bluebird in Detroit a few years back, has now completed two tours, one in the middle east and one in Latin America, as part of Dizzy Gillespie’s big State Department-sponsored band.

The rhythm section has changed since the last LP. Barry Harris is a young pianist from Detroit who recently replaced the late Ritchie Powell in Max Roach's group. Percy Heath, no stranger to Blue Note customers, means as much to the bass in modern jazz as Max Roach to the drums, which means that any further elaboration would be redundant.

Thad was clearly in excellent spirits and in wonderful condition when this session was recorded. Though it is a painfully materialistic thought, it must be admitted that the greatest hornman alive will not operate at his optimum if his lip is chapped, if he just arrived on the bus from Ephrata, Pa. after a one-night stand, or if some member of the accompanying unit is bugging him. The fact that Thad was happy when he cut these sides shines through as clearly and brightly as the bell of his horn.

April In Paris reminds me of a remark I made in the notes for BLP 1513, as follows: "For those whose picture of Thad is conceived in the memory of that everlasting Pop Goes The Weasel quote on April in Paris, his First Blue Note LP may come as an ear-opener." Well, Thad has now made me swallow my words, by making a new version of the Vernon Duke standard, Weasel quote and all, and doing so much with it that the Basie treatment is soon forgotten.

Ingenious use is made of a low G on the piano that serves not only as a dominant note in the introduction (literally, it turns out, though at first hearing you can't be sure whether the piece will turn out to be in G, C, B Flat or what) but is used in the course of the routine, along with Max’s smooth brush rhythm, as a bridge between solos. Billy Mitchell has the release of the first chorus, but the performance is substantially Thad's, unfettered by any background figures, orchestral interweavings or any of the factors that tend to run interference for him in a more elaborate setting. This is not meant as any criticism of the Basic band, to which the adjective "magnificent" can be applied with equal vigor; it is just that there is in any top-ranking large jazz orchestra too much solo talent, and too much writing, for everything and everyone to get the kind of chance for personal expression that Thad deserves. I won’t go into intricate details about his three choruses on April In Paris here beyond pointing out that the qualities he has shown in earlier works - tonal zest, variety of phrasing, continuity and ideation - are enhanced by a superlative recording job that makes his presence immediate.

Billie-Doo is a wry, sneaky blues theme in which Thad, Billy and Barry Harris take solos in that order. Percy Heath follows, with Harris’ crisp chording offering substantial assistance. Thad returns, with the tenor rifting contrapuntally against him; at the end of this 12-bar stretch Max's break soars into a closing dozen that ends with a powerful smear.

If l Love Again is a ballad written almost 25 years ago by one J. P. Murray; however, in this incarnation it represents neither balladry nor, in effect, J. P. Murray. The melody is played fast, rephrased, with varying rhythms from Max to offer an overwhelming sense of light and shade; then Barry Harris takes over for three choruses. His lines are graceful single-note contours for the most part, with the ching-chinga-ching of Max's cymbal work underlining insistently. Billy Mitchell follows with a robust, extrovert solo; then comes Mr. Jones. You can almost hear him think on this one. It is like watching an abstract painter who senses exactly where to place which splashes of color, how to shade and gradate, and which areas of the canvas to leave uncluttered. Max takes over for a couple of choruses before the melody returns, and loath as I am to admit it, I must say that if anyone can convince me that a drum solo belongs on a record, it is Max.

If Someone Had Told Me, a Peter De Rose composition that appeared in the popular field some four years ago, shows what a man of much distinction can do to a song of very little. The first chorus is played ad lib in both senses of the term - that is, the time is not constant and Thad improvises around the melody - after which he edges his way into further ad Iibbing with the addition of a slow, steady beat from the rhythm section.

Thedia is a placidly happy unison theme, named for Thad’s little daughter. Billy Mitchell has three impressive choruses here in which savage torrents of notes are interspersed with more loosely swinging passages, all executed with a plenitude of tonal virility and a sense of confident mastery of the horn. A couple affine choruses from Barry Harris are followed by some Percy Heath bass solo work that has easily recognizable melodic value. Try to imagine this solo played on a trumpet, or any upper-register horn, and you will realize what people like Percy accomplish when they take a chorus. Thad has a long, brilliant solo and trades a lengthy series of fours with Max before the theme returns.

I am confident that a hearing of these performances will convince you that the adjective applied to Thad Jones for the name of this album was the most fitting one that could be used in the circumstances. I might even close by adding a further definition of the word: magnificent - characterized by sensuous splendor or sumptuous adornment; also, characterized by grandeur or majestic beauty.

You said it, Mr. Webster.

-LEONARD FEATHER

Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID K. MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT THE MAGNIFICENT THAD JONES

Thad Jones had already turned the heads of serious jazz folks through his recordings with Charles Mingus and under his own name on the Debut and Period labels before he became a Blue Note artist in 1956. In terms of the general public, however, the trumpeter's most important early recordings were made in July 1955, when he stepped forth from the Count Basie brass section to solo on "April in Paris" and "Corner Pocket." The inclusion of the former as the lead track on this, Jones's second Blue Note date, and the very different approach he takes to what had already become a Basie flag-waver, suggests how Jones valued artistry far beyond commercial considerations.

This version of "April in Paris" suggests that Jones was attending to use of chordal suspensions that Miles Davis had begun to employ in his first great quintet, an approach that Davis had found particularly captivating in the work of pianist Ahmad Jamal's trio, As such, the track sounds like Jones's greatest nod to Davis, and suggests that the performance could be subtitled "April in Paris in Dear Old Stockholm." Highlights of the three-chorus trumpet solo that dominates the performance are the opening of chorus two and the singing third-chorus bridge.

Oddly enough, only two of the remaining tracks are Jones originals. Its title notwithstanding, "Billie-Doo" is not based on the changes of "Love Letters," but rather on the blues. The second trumpet chorus, where the direct opening makes the dissonances uncovered at bar nine that much more powerful, shows Jones's ability to move from the basic to the abstract, and he once again quotes "Pop Goes the Weasel," while Billy Mitchell recalls "Zec" (from the previous Jones album Detroit-New York Junction) in the third tenor chorus. "Thedia" is more typical of Jones the composer, a 32-bar sequence that sounds as if it was based on the changes of "Indiana" in spots but is actually the trumpeter's original chord sequence. The second trumpet chorus is again notable, this time for suggesting how Jones applied the influence of Dizzy Gillespie to arrive at his own original voice.

As is the case on Jones's other two Blue Note albums, the personnel here draws heavily from his Detroit contemporaries. Tenor saxophonist Mitchell, the only returnee from the Junction date, was currently ensconced in the saxophone section of the Dizzy Gillespie big band, where he shared tenor sax duties for more than a year with Benny Golson, and also sat among such stellar reed section associates as Ernie Henry, Ernie Wilkins, and Phil Woods. By the beginning of 1958, Mitchell would join Jones in the Basie band. Two non-Detroiters, and two of the era's nonpareils, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Max Roach, were in the rhythm section, which in itself was enough to make this session special. Heath, who had been ubiquitous on recordings a few years earlier, had begun to limit his appearances after the Modern Jazz Quartet took off, and this was his first full session in several months where he was not heard in the presence of Milt Jackson, John Lewis, or the MJQ. Roach was making his first studio appearance since the tragic death of his co-leader, trumpeter Clifford Brown, in a highway accident three weeks earlier.

Brown/Roach pianist Richie Powell was also killed in that accident, which led Roach to recruit Barry Harris as a temporary replacement. This disc represents Harris's first released New York recording, and finds him already displaying the clarity and sensitivity that would become a hallmark of his style. His solos and support suggest that a Detroit school of modern piano was emerging, wherein the members displayed similar touches and taste, even though the behind the beat feeling that separated Harris from Tommy Flanagan and Thad's brother Hank Jones is also apparent. One can also detect Bud Powell and (especially on the intro to "If Someone Had Told Me") Duke Jordan in Harris's style, while his elegant comping on "Billie-Doo" cannot help but recall Flanagan on the Sonny Rollins classic "Blue Seven," recorded (with Roach on drums) three weeks earlier. Harris would remain in New York long enough to record again on three Prestige sessions, but by summer's end he was back in Detroit.

As for the two bonus tracks, "Something to Remember You By" comes from a July 9 sextet date that included Kenny Burrell. Five titles were attempted in all, including versions of "Billie-Doo" and "Thedia, " but only this trumpet/guitar duet has ever been released, having first appeared on a Japanese Blue Note anthology, while "I've Got a Crush on You," with Mitchell laying out, comes from the July 14 date and was held for inclusion in Jones's third and final Blue Note album.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2007