BLP 1583

Curtis Fuller - Volume 3

Released - December 1960

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, December 1, 1957
Art Farmer, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; Sonny Clark, piano; George Tucker, bass; Louis Hayes, drums.

tk.3 Quantrale
tk.4 Two Quarters Of A Mile
tk.6 Little Messenger
tk.8 Too Late Now
tk.9 Jeanie
tk.12 Carvon

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Little Messenger	Curtis Fuller	01/12/1957
Quantrale	Curtis Fuller	01/12/1957
Jeanie	Curtis Fuller	01/12/1957
Side Two
Carvon	Curtis Fuller	01/12/1957
Two Quarters of a Mile	Curtis Fuller	01/12/1957
It's Too Late Now	Burton Lane, Alan Jay Lerner	01/12/1957

Credits

Cover Photo:	FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design:
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	NAT HENTOFF

Liner Notes

CURTIS FULLER, 23, has won a number of musician-admirers, if not much work, since he came to New York in April, 1957. The consensus is expressed by Gigi Gryce; "Curtis has buckets and buckets and tons of soul. He has wonderful natural qualities and is bound to mature into a very important voice." Psychic income aside, however, musicians' encomiums are not enough to live on. Despite the often mirage-like "jazz boom" of the past couple of years, it is still difficult for a young jazzman to assure himself regular supplies of bread. Curtis is scuffling, is paying those dues that have quite a to do with increasing the emotional intensity of those buckets of soul Gigi speaks about.

Yet Curtis has no choice. Like his counterparts in the classical field, young instrumentalists who go in debt to pay for Town Hall or Carnegie Hall debuts, and then wait and wait for one of the big management offices to put them on their list, Curtis is in music for life. As tough as it gets, tough enough for him to be looking for a day job, he never considers not being a jazz trombonist.

So far, Curtis' main forum has been supplied by Blue Note. He can be heard on his own LPs, The Opener (BLP 1567), Bone & Bari (BLP 1572) and also on Cliff Jordan (BLP 1565), Blue Train: John Coltrane (BLP 1577), on part of The Amazing Bud Powell (BLP 1571), and on Sonny Clark (BLP 1570).

Curtis writes as well as plays. His first original was Blue Shoes for the Clifford Jordan session, and he's been writing since. He did all the scoring for Bone & Bari and all the writing for this set. Curtis is a persistent learner. He would like to go back to school, preferably Juilliard, and will as soon as he saves the tuition. But meanwhile, he learns by himself and by listening to others. Gigi Gryce tells of how Curtis came into Dizzy Gillespie's now defunct big band, and naturally couldn't at first read the parts as quickly as the musicians who'd been there for some time. "So he went into the woodshed," notes Gigi, "and now he can read almost anything right away."

The biographical facts concerning Curtis can be found in the liner on Blue Note BLP 1567 and BLP 1572. The sidemen are, with one exception, familiar to Blue Note constituents. Young Detroit drummer Louis Hayes is a member of Horace Silver's quintet. He and Fuller played in the same groups in Detroit, and as Curtis says, "We can swing together." Pianist Sonny Clark, who is back in the east after a time with Buddy DeFranco and west coast free-lancing, is responsible for one of the most invigorating albums of recent months (Dial S for Sonny, Blue Note BLP 1570). "Sonny," Curtis explains, "is one of my favorites. Like Tommy Flanagan, he plays somewhat in the same vein as Hank Jones. You know, the way a pianist plays on introduction means a lot. He can set the groove; he can throw you right in."

Art Farmer, another member of the Silver quintet, has become one of the few thoroughly personal trumpet stylists among the younger modernists. He can sing and he can shout on his horn. He's consistent in terms of taste and imaginative conception. He can read as quickly as he can hear, and his ears are multi-directional.

Bassist George Tucker is unjustly overlooked, feels Fuller, who adds: "He can really swing." Tucker was born in Florida in 1927, and didn't become interested in the bass until he was in the army. In 1547, he began attending the New York Conservatory of Modern Music, and had his first professional date in 1950. For two years, 1954-55, he worked with Earl Bostic during the time Benny Golson was in the band; and he's been free-lancing since with John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, Kenny Burrell and others. He has been particularly influenced by Oscar Pettiford, and also enjoys Red Mitchell, Ray Brown, Al McKibbon (for his walking) and Paul Chambers (among the younger bassists).

Concerning the tunes, Fuller says of Little Messenger that he intended it "to refer to the type of feeling the Blakey Messengers had at one time. Forceful, emotional, a lot of drums and that particular beat."

Fuller sat in a couple of nights at a club where he heard and liked an altoist named Quantrale. Quantrale, then, is written with the altoist in mind as the kind of material he'd be suited to. It has an Afro-Cuban tinge.

Jeanie is about "a person I was fond of; it's of sentimental value." Carvon evolved from a film Fuller had seen for which the Victor Young had written the music. Young's theme led Fuller to think of one of his own, and this is it. Since it wasn't a carbon copy of Young's song, Fuller, in a play of words as well as theme, calls it Carvon. The introduction is effectively reflective (once given the western motif, you might almost see the prairies stretching out with maybe Sonny Rollins riding the range as he did in that famed album cover.) Note the sturdy bowed bass of Tucker. Once the lyrical point is made, the rest of the track breaks into a moderate, robust gallop until the final return to contemplative opening theme which to me has a kind of Aaron Copland cast. In the bowed section, by the way, Fuller noted that ideally he would have liked three basses bowing in the background with another in the lead carrying the melody. It is Fuller's conviction that the bass and trombone are the two instruments closest to the human voice, the male voice anyway. This closeness of the trombone to the normal voice range is allied in Fuller's mind with the fact that when he plays, he often feels it's as if he were speaking.

"I try to project how I feel," he underlines. "I'm not interested in doing tricks with the instrument, in showing how high and fast I can play. It's as if I were talking about how I felt, I wouldn't use ten-syllable words just to show I knew the words. I play what I feel and what the tune calls for, and try to avoid showboating."

Two Quarters of a Mile is a tribute to Miles Davis whose work has greatly impressed Fuller. "The title means this is as much as I can get in conception from Miles. The rest has to be myself. On his instrument, Miles does all the things I would like from a soloist. And he doesn't showboat; he only plays what he feels. Now in terms of running all over his instrument, you couldn't compare Miles with Rafael Mendez. Miles doesn't play a lot of notes and doesn't impress you primarily by the extent of his technique. He impresses you with the feeling he plays with."

Fuller chose the Lane-Lerner ballad because it's a song he's fond of and one he hasn't heard too many other jazz musicians use. "Playing a ballad is difficult," admits Fuller, "especially because whatever a musician has of his own will come through clearly on a ballad."

Since most critics bracket Curtis as J.J. Johnson-influenced, Curtis was asked how he reacted to that kind of compartmentalizing. He was eager to confirm the musical and personal inspiration he has received from J.J. and to express his gratitude for the encouragement J.J. has consistently given him. "Obviously, I and any other young modern trombonist couldn't avoid being influenced by J.J. He set an example for all of us just as Lester Young did for soloists like Stan Getz who came after him. But I've always been trying to develop my own voice. I remember Clifford Brown telling me in 1955 not to worry as much as I was about developing my own style. He said it would come in time and that you couldn't push it. Just as you can't push soul. You get soul from the environment you grow up and live in, and from the hardships you know. With a jazzman, you know, if he has soul, whatever has happened to him during the day will come out in his playing at night. You can tell the kind of day he's had without asking him."

"The thing about Curtis," says Donald Byrd, who has known him since both were in their teens in Detroit, "is that ever since he started playing, he had that fire and that sound and those thoughts. He's always been very serious about his music and so he's always tried to know exactly what he's doing instead of faking anything. Of ail the young trombonists I've heard, he has the greatest potential as a soloist with something to say. Most young players can play good, competent solos, but wouldn't call them soloists. Curtis is."

— Nat Hentoff, co-editor
Hear Me Talkin' To Ya and The Jazz Makers (Rinehart)

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER