Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers - A Night in Tunisia
Released - February 1961
Recording and Session Information
Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, August 7, 1960
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; Art Blakey, drums.
tk.11 Sincerely Diana
tk.27 Yama
Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, August 14, 1960
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; Art Blakey, drums.
tk.31 Kozo's Waltz
tk.46 So Tired
tk.54 A Night In Tunisia
Session Photos
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| Jymie Merritt |
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| Bobby Timmons |
Track Listing
| Side One | ||
| Title | Author | Recording Date |
| A Night in Tunisia | Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Paparelli | 14/08/1960 |
| Sincerely Diana | Wayne Shorter | 07/08/1960 |
| Side Two | ||
| So Tired | Bobby Timmons | 14/08/1960 |
| Yama | Lee Morgan | 07/08/1960 |
| Kozo's Waltz | Lee Morgan | 14/08/1960 |
Liner Notes
THERE IS something infinitely mysterious about a title which refers to a particular night or special place. It pricks the imagination and arouses the curiosity in one. What was so special about the time and place? What happened to inspire a man to memorialize the event in music?
This question has sparked the fantasy of jazz listeners for over a decade whenever the swift, exotic A Night in Tunisia has been played.
The small North African French protectorate of Tunisia is located on the Mediterranean. The country is a paradox of climate and vegetation. Mountainous, majestic and terrifying in the north, two-fifths of the land extends into dry, flat tableland running to the great Sahara Desert.
Thousands of miles away in America, Dizzy Gillespie found inspiration to write a tune which is in the process of becoming a jazz standard. The actual beginning and moment of truth when Tunisia was spawned is still cloaked in fogginess and contradictions. Art Blakey remembers,
"Dizzy write this tune while we were all in Billy Eckstine’s big band. That was a terrific band. I guess Dizzy just thought of eastern things and the excitement of the Orient."
Gillespie himself remembers no specific instant when the tune occurred to him.
“It was long before the Eckstine band, I believe. I was on a record date with Maxine Sullivan, and I was in the studio fooling around with some chords when this theme kept popping up. It stuck in my mind and I played around with it until I got it together. When it was finished, it just reminded me of what a night in Tunisia would be like.” Gillespie denied that there is any further significance, then he smiled slyly and winked.
Whatever the circumstances, Tunisia has been emotionally, artistically and commercially profitable for Blakey. No matter how sophisticated the audience or how disorderly the crowd, this arrangement has continually been the show topper, the tune which commanded attention and respect and drew tumultuous response across the country.
“And the wonderful thing about it is that we never play it the exact way twice,” Blakey says, “it’s just that the tune is so appealing and we enjoy playing it and people enjoy hearing it. We may play it every night for five years but no two times will be alike. The guys in the band are wonderfully creative and they play the way they feel on a particular night.”
The musicians in the band use this repetition as well as each individual set to make actual conceptual alterations and corrections in their playing.
"Art always tells us that every time we go up on that stand, God is giving us another chance to clean up the mess we might have made the last time.” This was Wayne’s remark, but less than twenty-four hours later, it was Bobby Timmons who repeated the expression.
Blakey is one of the rare leaders who has been a musical as well as commercial success in spite of the fact that frequently there are personnel changes. Blakey accepts, even encourages the acceptance of his unit as a training ground for future jazz leaders. He believes that the men in his group must have room for expression and a chance to grow.
“I always try to develop band leaders in my group. I always have done this,” Blakey asserts. “Why should I try to keep the fellows with me. Let them grow and get out and form more good jazz groups. Besides; there are other young players waiting for their big chance to be heard."
This album is a prime example of Blakey’s expressed desire to showcase his young talent. Not only is there extended solo room for the musicians; further, all but the title tune were written and arranged by the talented junior jazz citizens in his group.
A Night in Tunisia as recorded here remains the spectacular fiery, poly-rhythmic stimulant that it is when performed live in night clubs and on concert stages. The mood is set as Shorter leaps in to render a brilliant rapid-fire solo. Morgan’s airy solo sparkles to the foreground. Note his climactic building and multinoted technique. Bobby Timmons feeds back drive and fire from the keyboard along with the Blakey sizzling cymbals and sputtering drums. Merritt here, as throughout the album, is the capable anchor man.
Sincerely Diana is a deceptively unadorned tune with hidden intricacies contributed by Wayne Shorter. The burning preoccupation for Shorter is chordal and chorus structure, he says. He wants to build tunes of uncommon or unusual metric qualities. He wants to go beyond the typical patterns. Sincerely Diana is, Shorter believes, a beginning. As for the title, Wayne says,
“It is dedicated to Art’s wife Diana There was another tune, D's Dilemma, written for her, so one day I told her I would write one for her also. She always seems to be such a sincere person, so I called the tune, Sincerely Diana."
The young “soul” giant who has composed several of the most popular and most recorded soul tunes has turned in another original chart. Bobby Timmons’ So Tired is a basic blues tune of the type most usually associated with the Timmons-Blakey alliance.
Aside from drawing encouraging reviews from leading critics for his technical prowess and incisive wit with his trumpet, Lee Morgan is beginning to draw attention to his writing skill. He contributes the final two tunes on this date. Unlike many musicians who pull their titles out of the air, usually a Morgan chart has been specifically designed around an existing idea.
Yama is the Japanese word for mountain. Further, it is the beginning of the maiden name of Lee’s pixie Japanese wife - Yamamato. Yama is a gently swaying blues tinged arrangement which features the piano and the two horns predominantly. There is some delightful Bobby Timmons; Morgan’s solo here is primarily vertical and always penetrating. There is an intriguing Shorter revealed here whose shading is at times almost hair raising.
Kozo’s Waltz again finds Lee playing tribute to his wife’s heritage. Loosely translated, kozo is a Japanese word roughly equivalent to our “kid”. It is the name which the Morgans have given to their pet poodle. The tune is an infectious up tempo arrangement. Blakey dips in and out of the foreground and displays his magnificent skill as soloist and rhythm pacer.
This is an interesting and appropriate album for this group. The Jazz Messengers have gathered inspiration and thoughts from distant corners of the world and are delivering the dispatch in America’s own method of artistic communication - Jazz.
“Oh, we have so much to do,” Blakey laments, “Africa is so far ahead of us in rhythms and we are so far ahead of them in harmony. If we can just hurry the wedding of African rhythms and our harmonies, we would really be able to startle the world.”
A worthy ambition to which this album is dedicated. Tucked snugly within this album cover, fragments of these two and other cultures come excitingly closer. Perhaps you will find your own personal musical fulfillment in this Night in Tunisia.
- BARBARA J. GOLDBERG
Lee Morgan and Wayne Shorter perform by courtesy of Vee-Jay Records. Bobby Timmons performs by courtesy of Riverside Records.
Cover Design by REID MILES
Photos by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER
RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes
A NEW LOOK AT A NIGHT IN TUNISIA
In the era of 40-minute LPs, this edition of The Jazz Messengers created something of a documentation dilemma. The band produced so much music, and mastered it all so adroitly through constant touring in the United States and abroad, that there was no way the release schedule of a major label, not to mention an independent like Blue Note, could keep pace. Sessions like the pair held in August 1960 must have posed a challenge to Alfred Lion when he had to select performances for immediate release.
One payoff for Blue Note was a vault loaded with unreleased performances that were drawn upon for a couple of decades. These particular sessions yielded enough music for the present album, which appeared in early 1961, and Like Someone in Love (also part of the RVG Series), which surfaced five years later.
The August 7th date began with one of this disc's bonus tracks, "When Your Lover Has Gone." It is among the few standards recorded by this edition of The Messengers, and it offers a fairly sanguine view of departed romance with its perky tempo and a Latin introduction that echoes Horace Silver's earlier partnership with Blakey. Shorter's genius for building drama in his opening solo sets up Morgan effectively; and the trumpeter, who always manages to begin like the voice of reason when he follows his front-llne partner, soon works into his own insistent climaxes. Note the strength of Merritt's bass lines, and how the gospel touches in Timmons's solo are secondary to his obvious love of Bud Powell. The pianist's comping touches (stop-time behind Shorter, straight quarter notes for Morgan) also add structure to the performance.
The same session produced two takes of "Sincerely Diana," with the master having been recorded before the alternate. No doubt the leader's exemplary solo on the first attempt led to the choice of takes for initial release. A comparison of the two drum improvisations reveals the difference between average Blakey (the alternate) and the drummer at his most commanding (the master). Then again, maybe Shorter's excellent solo with its "Autumn Nocturne" quote led to the decision. In any event, both takes find the band comfortable with Shorter's ingenious 30-bar structure in an A-B-C form of ten, eight, and twelve bars, respectively, each section beginning with the same melodic phrase. (The tune "D's Dilemma." cited in Barbara J. Gardner's original notes. is a Mal Waldron composition recorded by the Bill Hardman—Jackie McLean edition of The Messengers in 1956 on the Columbia album Drum Suite.)
Lee Morgan's "Yama" completed the first day's work and is best described as a blues ballad, with a melodic tag creating a 13-measure chorus that is retained for the improvised solos. The "intriguing" Shorter to whom Gardner alludes anticipates the approach more common to the saxophonist's post-Blakey period.
The remainder of this collection was recorded a week later. This session began with "Kozo's Waltz," named after a pet dog å la Sonny Clark's earlier "News for Lulu." "So Tired," a 32-bar form (not a blues, as Gardner claims) with a gospel vamp in the A-section and straight time on the bridge, is me of Timmons's best compositions. It was recorded for Riverside under the pianist's name during the same week, with Blakey making what was becoming an increasingly rare sideman appearance with Blue Mitchell featured on trumpet.
The session concluded with one of the greatest versions of "A Night in Tunisia" ever recorded. Blakey himself had already waxed several notable performances, including his 1954 A Night at Birdland effort with Clifford Brown, Lou Donaldson, and Silver, and the title track from a 1957 Messengers album on Vik that featured Hardman, McLean, and Johnny Griffin. This "Tunisia," however, is something else. The performance is in overdrive from the opening Afro-Latin percussion ensemble. but when Timmons and Blakey start slamming behind Shorter's second chorus, things truly explode. Morgan meets the outrageous comping with his own fire power, Merritt allows the percussion to percolate, and then Blakey cuts loose while all of the sidemen, save Merritt, play percussion in a groove reminiscent of the leader's Orgy in Rhythm dates. This is all merely a prelude to an ecstatic out-chorus, extravagant unaccompanied codas by Morgan and Shorter (with Blakey's vocal exhortations quite audible behind the former), and a finale worthy of an MGM spectacular. Performances like this show how much fun great jazz can be, and why Blakey was one of the music's supreme proselytizers.
— Bob Blumenthal, 2004
Blue Note Spotlight - October 2019
http://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/art-blakey-a-night-in-tunisia/
Art Blakey’s claim to fame with his Jazz Messengers throughout the group’s 30+ year history lay in finding the most creative young players and tunesmiths to inspire him and rev up the bandstand. The drummer plucked out of the ranks the most imaginative young players for his Jazz Messengers groups, mentored them in the college of hard bop, afforded them creative freedom, and once they were hewn into shape watched them fly from the nest into the jazz life as mature leaders in their own right.
“I always try to develop band leaders in my group,” Blakey said in the album’s original liner notes. “Let them grow and get out there and form more good jazz groups.”
That was certainly the case with the sublime 1960 vintage Jazz Messengers line-up featuring the dynamic frontline of trumpeter Lee Morgan and tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, along with pianist Bobby Timmons and bassist Jymie Merritt. The band had recorded in March of that year when they laid down The Big Beat, and they regrouped in Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey studio on two days in August that yielded two more hard bop masterpieces: A Night In Tunisia and Like Someone In Love.
A Night In Tunisia was the first of the two to be released coming out the following year. Though the Messengers were renown for introducing distinctly original material thanks to the drummer’s taste in enlisting rising-star composers, the centerpiece lead title track here is the well-worn bebop anthem “A Night in Tunisia.” Recorded often before it entered into Blakey’s repertoire, the piece was composed in 1942 by Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie recorded it in a sextet setting in 1946 for Victor, and it later became a signature piece of his bebop big band.
The fact that Blakey would choose to record the piece again is interesting, especially since he had recorded it at least twice before the 1960 Blue Note session, including on his seminal early hard bop manifesto A Night At Birdland in 1954. (In his song intro on that live recording Blakey’s states “I feel rather close to this tune because I was right there when he composed it in Texas on the bottom of a garbage can. Seriously.”)
But another version of “A Night in Tunisia”? Weren’t there already enough?
Blakey explained why in the liner notes: “The wonderful thing about it is that we never play it the exact way twice. We may play it every night for five years but no two times will be alike.”
Blakey knew what he wanted to do with the tune this time, turning the lyrical beauty into an 11-minute slamming, power-packed drum showcase. The drummer leads the muscular rendition with a volcanic opening—smoking, sparking, rumbling—before the band plays the head, after which Shorter roars, Morgan unleashes high peals, Timmons zips across the keys and Merritt solos while Blakey flicks beats and Timmons flashes notes in support. But Blakey’s not done. He continues with rambunctious conviction winding up with a series of exclamatory statements. As the tune finally begins to come in for a landing, Morgan and Shorter both take final cadenza solos—the former with a clarion call met by Blakey’s howling and shouting—before the loud and celebratory end.
It’s a remarkable opening to the album, but there’s still plenty more in store with the rest of the 5-song program consisting of newly-penned original compositions by the band members. The brightly swinging “Sincerely Diana” that Shorter wrote for Blakey’s wife breezes along while Timmons’ tune “So Tired” belies its title with playfully shifting rhythms that bubble underneath standout solos by Shorter and Morgan before Timmons brings it home.
The final two tunes on the album were both composed by Morgan and inpired by important figures in his life. First the gentle low-lights slow-dance “Yama,” a dedication to his wife at the time Kiko Yamamoto (“yama” is also the Japanese word for mountain), which is a breath of fresh air before the album concludes with another up-tempo bravado performance by Blakey & Co. on the playful “Kozo’s Waltz,” which was named in honor of the Morgan’s pet poodle Kozo.
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