BLP 1571

Bud Powell - The Amazing Bud Powell - Volume 3

Released - September 1957

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, August 3, 1957
Curtis Fuller, trombone #6-8; Bud Powell, piano; Paul Chambers, bass #1-4,6-8; Art Taylor, drums #1-4,6-8.

tk.1 Blue Pearl
tk.4 Keepin' In The Groove
tk.5 Some Soul
tk.6 Frantic Fancies
tk.7 Bud On Bach
tk.9 Idaho
tk.11 Don't Blame Me
tk.18 Moose The Mooche

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images / 
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Some Soul	Bud Powell	03/08/1957
Blue Pearl	Bud Powell	03/08/1957
Frantic Frances	Bud Powell	03/08/1957
Bud On Bach	Bud Powell	03/08/1957
Keepin' In The Ground	Bud Powell	03/08/1957
Side Two
Idaho	Jesse Stone	03/08/1957
Don't Blame Me	Jimmy McHugh, Dorothy Fields	03/08/1957
Moose The Mooche	Charlie Parker	03/08/1957

Credits

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

Liner Notes

The return of Bud Powell to the sympathetically comfortable covers of a Blue Note LP has some of the elements that suggest a reversion to normalcy, the arrival back home of a wanderer who remembers and cherishes the scenery and setting of his first full maturity. For it was at Blue Note that the young Bud Powell became the Amazing Bud Powell; at Blue Note that he recorded his greatest solo sides, his first memorable combo session. The historically important fruits of those and other dates have been preserved, alternate masters and all, on BLP 1503 and BLP 1504.

There were those of us who feared that the Bud Powell of those days might never again raise his full voice, that the impediments of time and illness had wrought irreparable damage to a piano style that had started a new keyboard generation in the late 194Os. That we were wrong, and glad to be wrong, became evident in recent months with Bud's appearances at Birdland and other old stomping grounds. The conclusive proof that he is playing like Bud Powell again, after a period during which he was struggling to retrieve and reestablish his own personality, came with his visit to the Rudy van Gelder sound cradle, and the taping of these, his most important and imposing sides in recent years.

The story of Bud Powell, touched on by this writer in the notes to the earlier Blue Note LPs, is familiar by now to most of his followers, but because this album may enlarge the legions of the faithful, and because so much of his work mirrors the mind and personality of its creator, a brief recapitulation may be in order.

Bud was described in a perceptive essay some years ago by Allan Morrison in Ebony, as "a troubled man, an artist seemingly unable to adjust to life, to make his peace in a strife-torn world..." Morrison then cited the details of Bud's case-history, ending with his release from the hospital and his convalescence in 1953.

Bud's mother was my own main contact with him during those years in and out of the shadows. Every once in a while, after I had failed to observe him on the scene for a few months and fell to wondering what had become of him this time, I would receive a kindly note from her at the farm in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, where she would report that she had taken Bud home and he was coming along just fine. Then a few weeks later I would run into Bud at one of the clubs, and he would have the old gang around him and I would worry about what might happen next.

But in the past year or two Bud has shown himself able to overcome physical and mental problems that may well have seemed insurmountable to many who observed him. Possibly he has found satisfaction in meeting each challenge. I remember one night when I saw him working with his left hand bandaged after some unexplained accident. Between sets he showed friends a gash so deep that it was incredible he could play at all. Then there was the incident Morrison recalled involving Art Tatum, who on meeting Bud accused him of being no more than a "one-handed piano player." The next night, at Birdland, Bud played "Sometimes I'm Happy" at a terrific tempo entirely with his left hand, while Tatum listened. Art later admitted he had been wrong and Bud went home ecstatic: he had won the respect of the man he himself idolized.

For his reunion with Blue Note, Bud had the assistance of Art Taylor, the same drummer who had played on his superb 1953 session for this label, and of Paul Chambers, who, though not on records as a previous associate of Bud, has made himself known through innumerable Blue Note dates, including a most impressive set under his own leadership on BLP 1534. On three tracks there is an extra added attraction in Curtis Fuller — more on him in a moment.

As his fellow-participants observed, Bud was in impressively good spirits and the prevailing mood was congenial enough to insure pilot Alfred Lion of a smooth flight without a sign of turbulence. As Paul Chambers has recalled, "This was one of those lucky, one-take dates — maybe on some numbers two at the most, but we were all generally happy with the first take on most of the numbers."

Bud spent a little time working out routines on the originals, but here too there were few problems, as two of them were just blues and the others had chord progressions that were no problem for Chambers's fast ears.

"Some Soul," the opener, is held together by the harmonic network that tends to bring out the soul in everyone who has ever played jazz: the blues. A funky mood is established as Bud imbues the opening chorus with a "down-home" atmosphere and proceeds to encapsulate himself in the blues framework for a half-dozen choruses. A curious reflection of Bud's disregard for the conventions, or possibly of his ability to subjugate formalization to mood, is the fifth chorus, which is only nine or ten measures long (the point at which it is telescoped into the next chorus is indeterminate, yet Chambers follows him without difficulty). It is characteristic of Taylor's sympathetic backing that one feels rather than hears his gradual easing into a double-time beat with the brushes. Bud maintains some intriguing two-hand octave unison lines during part of Chambers's solo, then moves to a finale that goes out with the same basic blues spirit that informed the opening.

"Blue Pearl" is an original, the mood and changes of which, For a few measures, evoke an old pop song. "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To," though it soon becomes clear that there is no relationship. Chambers again has a solo that demonstrates how well he qualified as one of the Few young bassists entitled to keep (and keep up with) such distinguished company.

'"Frantic Fancies" is taken at the fast tempo that brings out the fleetest in Bud's linear conception. One is reminded again of the extraordinary degree of Finesse to which he has coaxed the single-note melodic line, and of the complaints of some contemporaries that he does not make full use of the piano. The argument is a specious one; whether Bud is playing one note at a time or ten, whether his left hand plays one, two or four chords to the measure, or nothing but punctuations, must be considered no more relevant than, say, whether or not a guitarist uses a plectrum or a trumpeter blows out his cheeks while playing. All that counts, all that should count, is the emotional impact, the musical value of the result. Invariably the end must justify the means in all music, and Bud's means, whether they hew to traditions or flout them, lead to impeccable ends. Paul has a fine bowed sole on this track; Bud trades some fours with Art's eloquent brushes.

"Bud On Bach" will certainly be the most discussed item in this album, just as "Glass Enclosure" was the briefest but most shattering experience in an earlier set. (Bud says, "This was a piece called 'Solfeggietto' which I played when I was a child. If ever proof were needed of Bud's ambidexterity it can be found in the First 58 seconds of unaccompanied piano, before he sails serenely and with seemingly irrefutable logic into rhythm. Or, rather, into syncopation; for a natural, inherent pulsation was as much a part of Bach as it is of Bud, with the result that the opening passage seems rhythmically natural and differs From the later developments only in its lack of syncopation. Bud's technique and articulation will have many a Powell student wearing out the grooves on this track.

"Keepin' In The Groove" closes the side as it began — with a blues. But this time the tempo is brighter, and there's more definite theme, an old-timey repeated riff that gets things swinging immediately. After the two choruses theme, Bud ad libs for four — notice, by the way, the Tatumesque run that leads into the second of these ad lib choruses. Paul brings out the bow again for a solo that blends inspiration with a touch of humor.

The second side unites Bud with Curtis Fuller, the brilliant trombonist from Detroit, not quite 23 years old, who has his own album on BLP 1567. Jay Jay Johnson steered Fuller to Alfred Lion, and Lion in turn pointed him at Bud for a guests shot on this session. Fuller, whose Army service in 1952-4 was followed by studies at Detroit and Wayne Universities and by a period of gigging around Detroit, came to new York in the spring of 1957 and has been a source of wonderment to such skeptical professionals as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Rollins, for all of whom he has worked during the past year.

"Idaho" insures a quick opportunity for scrutiny of Fuller's talents, for he has the first three choruses — one around the melody and two ad lib. His performance here is amazingly mature for one who has had so short a career as a big-time professional. The influence of Jay Jay is unmistakable, though there is evidence that an original style is evolving here and that every chorus is completely confident and emotionally personal. Bud follows with a solo that has one remarkable aspect: at times he uses a swing-era left hand technique that sounds almost like the Fats Wailer stride. Paul bows his solo; Fuller and Taylor have some exciting fours before the melody returns.

"Don't Blame Me," three slow and compelling choruses in duration, is a showcase For Fuller, who has the first and third, and Bud, who is at his masterful peak on the second.

"Moose The Mooche," rhythmically kicking Charlie Parker tune of the mid-1940s, is played by Bud and Curtis in unison. Then Curtis takes over for a masterful chorus — notice particularly the ease and grace with which he plays the triplets in the second four measures, and the pond-smooth phrasing of the last eighth. Bud, too, is in rare form: you may observe, on his solo here, his characteristic and enticing habit of toppling downward from the highest note of a phrase almost in the manner of a trumpet player who has just reached for, and made, a tough one. Chambers's solo this time is pizzicato; Art takes over for a chorus before the closing reprise.

Obviously the musicians on the session weren't just being polite when they told me later how well it had gone. Bud is back in every sense — back in the public eye, back in his pristine form, back on Blue Note. It would be superfluous to elaborate on how welcome he is at each of these levels.

—LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Book of Jazz)

On the cover: Bud Powell at "Birdland"
Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

Hyperbole is the handmaiden of the liner note writer, even one as astute as the late Leonard Feather. His comments here state that assumptions regarding Bud Powell undergoing "irreparable damage" were wrong, therefore implying that the brilliant and troubled pianist had achieved peaks on this occasion equal to those Of his immortal early work. There is no denying that many pianists would give anything to equal what Powell creates on this very good session; yet it should be stressed, especially for those who may be unfamiliar with Powell's work of the late '40s and early '50s, that his physical and psychological problems had indeed altered and clearly diminished his genius. There is a newly brittle quality in his voicings, and in the octave figures that became more prominent in his work around this time; a loss of energy that can most clearly at faster tempos; a simplifying of his often miraculous compositions (the riff tune "Keepin' In The Groove" is far removed from the complex gems Powell for his earlier Blue Note sessions); and an erratic execution that might be elevated to "disregard for the conventions," as Feather puts it when describing the foreshortened solo chorus on "Some Soul," but is more likely a sign of disorientation. To hear these differences, compare this collection's "Frantic Fancies" with the 1950 version of Strike Up the Band" (the tune on which "Fancies" is based) that Powell and Sonny Stitt cut for Prestige.

Feather may also overstate the clear-cut superiority of Powell's early Blue Note sessions to his work on other labels. Surely his "first full maturity" could be heard on the 1947 trio sides he cut for Roost, and in two early 1949 dates produced by Norman Granz that preceded Powell's first studio appearance under the supervision of Alfred Lion. Yet the affinity of Lion and Powell was real, and its benefits are clearly audible in the 1953-8 period, during which the pianist was also heard on Roost, Verve and RCA Victor.

On this occasion, Lion's sensitivity is revealed most clearly in the musicians he assembled for the session. Drummer Art Taylor was the only familiar face, having been part of a rhythm section with bassist George Duvivier that frequently worked and recorded with Powell Since 1953, when Taylor and Duvivier participated in The Amazing Bud Powell Volume 2 (also available in the RVG Series). Bassist Paul Chambers and Taylor had also been a frequent team for at least two years at the time of the recording with the working bands of first George Wallington and then Miles Davis (where Taylor was the first-call replacement for the frequently indisposed Philly Joe Jones), and on the series of albums cut by Davis pianist Red Garland. Chambers's skill With the bow contributed to his role as a prominent, highly effective second solo voice on the trio titles.

Trombonist Curtis Fuller, also added at Lion's suggestion, was a high school buddy of Chambers's who was in the midst of introducing himself to the jazz world through numerous visits to the Van Gelder Studios (for Prestige and Blue Note) as both leader and sideman. The endorsement of older giants that Feather cites was reinforced when Lion arranged within the space of two months for Fuller to participate in this date, Jimmy Smith's first session for his Houseparty/The Sermon albums, and John Coltrane's Blue Train. This was a singular honor, given that neither Powell, Smith nor Coltrane had previously included a trombone on one of their own sessions; and Fuller acquitted himself admirably. His sound and ideas indicate that he was already carving out a personal identity from that of his obvious model, former Powell associate J.J. Johnson.

These sympathetic partners helped Powell create an album that, as Feather notes, was far superior to most of the music he had documented in the previous four years. Two titles that deserve singling out are "Blue Pearl" and "Bud On Bach." The former is a haunting melody at a relaxed tempo, less superhuman than the Powell of old yet still a complete and persuasive conception. The alternate take also features lucid piano, and the master may have been given initial preference to reduce the playing time (however slightly) of the uncommonly long trio side of the original LP. "Bud On Bach" reminds us that Powell was a child prodigy who studied the European masters in his youth. The furious reading of "Solfeggietto" that precedes his eight-bar boppish variation may not be the cleanest Bach you will hear, but it carries the explosive charge of Powell's most driven early work.

Cliche, another arrow in the annotater's quiver, would have us conclude with the claim that anything by Bud Powell is worth hearing. While such knee-jerk glorification can diminish the true pinnacles of an artist's career, and while some of Powell's late efforts can sound particularly painful in light of his best work, this collection still speaks With eloquence, At its best, it hints at a return to peak form that, sadly, Powell was never able to sustain,

—Bob Blumenthal, 2002