Kenny Dorham - Whistle Stop
Released - June 1961
Recording and Session Information
Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, January 15, 1961
Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Kenny Drew, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums.
tk.2 "Philly" Twist
tk.11 Whistle Stop
tk.19 Windmill
tk.20 Sunset
tk.25 Sunrise In Mexico
tk.31 Dorham's Epitaph
tk.34 Buffalo
Session Photos
Photos: Francis Wolff
Track Listing
Liner Notes |
IT seems that every time you read about Kenny Dorham, someone is referring to him as "a greatly underrated trumpeter." I’ve probably been guilty of it myself. I say guilty because if all the energy expended by the jazz writers and commentators in lamenting Kenny’s lack of proper recognition was turned toward a more positive extolling of his many virtues perhaps he would be that much further ahead in his career. Certainly, he is one of the very best trumpeters in jazz.
Dorham is also one of our most captivating writers of original material. He is also o talented arranger. What beg an “through an interest in how two horns would sound together,” has widened in scope to the point where we may eventually hear a Dorham work performed by the New York Philharmonic.
Self-taught on piano and trumpet before he took a lesson, Kenny also experimented on his own with arranging before he ever studied formally. He worked without o piano ("space writing") when he wrote on arrangement on "Stardust" while attending Wiley College in his native Texas. A man for whom Kenny has great respect, Bertram Adams (now teaching at Tillotson College in Austin), headed the orchestra Wild Bill Davis was in the band — the next year he took over as leader and encouraged my writing," explains Kenny.
At Wiley, Dorham was a chemistry major and physics minor. "Whatever music I picked up was through being inquisitive,” he says.
His quest For musical knowledge obviously was very strong. He continued writing on his own after college; arrangements on “Okay For Baby” for Lucky Millinder and Benny Carter, "Malibu” for Cootie Williams. While he was with Billy Eckstine’s band in 1946, Kenny wrote a catchy, bop theme entitled “Dead End.” Later, when he was with Charlie Parker, Bird featured it regularly. His first original to be recorded was "The Thin Man” which Art Blakey did for Blue Note in 1947. Later. Kenny and Max Roach lined out "Prince Albert," a melody based on the changes of "All The Things You Are."
The following year, Dorham studied composition and arranging at the Gotham School of Music under the G.I. Bill, His most important harmonic-melodic sources, however, were still Parker, Monk and Bud Powell. Most of his writing, especially that which reached records, was for small groups. “The Villa" and "Lotus Blossom" (also recorded under the tide “Asiatic Raes”) are two examples of his extremely melodic work. Both were conceived in the fifties.
In 1959-60, Kenny had a rehearsal band which met at places like Brooklyn’s Putnam Central and Manhattan’s Ames Studio on Sunday afternoons. Many musicians used to participate even though they knew it would not necessarily lead to any paying jobs. Baritone saxophonist Jay Cameron, tenor saxophonist Roland Alexander, cornetist Nat Adderley and trumpeter Lee Morgan were among the various players. The band gave Kenny a chance to experiment and develop his writing for a larger ensemble. In December 1960, he contributed some charts to Quincy Jones’s orchestra but as far as he knows, "They haven’t played them yet,"
The linear construction of the Parker-Powell school still intrigues him but he has absorbed from many sources including classical composers. Like many other of his contemporaries, he hos a great appreciation for Gil Evans. “Gil has set a tradition — a lot with a little bit,’ says Kenny. “It’s a modal type of writing. Everything is derived from the pedal point for the most part."
Lately, Kenny has been represented on Blue Note by a number of his own compositions. Arthur Taylor’s A.T.’S Delight (BLP4047) contains “High Seas" and "Blue Interlude”; Freddie Hubbard's Goin’ Up (BLP4056) includes "Asiatic Roes" and "Karioka." In Whistle Slop, all seven tracks are from his pen.
Whistle Stop, the album, is not a suite, but there is a connecting link among six of the selections. Dorham is from the southwest and his background is reflected in the titles. Not all the songs attempt to graphically depict their names, as say a tone poem would. In several, the references are pointed but brief. The end result, however, is intriguing lines played with skill and fire by five pros of the modern era.
Kenny Dorham was one half of the Jazz Messengers’ front line in 1955-56. The other half was tenorman Hank Mobley. Later they played together in Max Roach's group for a short time. The point is that they are far from musical strangers, even if they are not working together now. Their blend is the result of an acute rapport.
Hanks career can be traced far back on Blue Note. In the post year, he has really come into his own. Totalling up his appearances as leader and sideman on this label, you suddenly realize the consistency with which he wails, album to album, track to track. This is another in a series of vibrant, soaring performances.
Kenny Drew is another who started out on Blue Note and recently returned to record impressively on his own and with others. Kenny is a thoroughly mature artist with a firm pianistic approach and an ability to dig hard and deep into a solo.
Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones worked together, at length, in Miles Dovis's quintet. If individually, they are not the best in jazz today they are very close to it. As a team, they exude sensitive strength in abundant amounts and are unsurpassed in small-group ensemble playing.
The set opens with a swinging blues, "Philly’ Twist," spiritually reminiscent of Charlie Parker’s "Big Foot." It is of course, dedicated to Philly Joe but Kenny says, "There is also the play on words with filly, a young horse." Jones solos at the end but also pay attention to the sensitive cymbal backing he gives Chambers’s solo.
The horns, voiced in fourths, give an Indian motif to "Buffalo." "The buffalo is a pretty earthy animal,” says Kenny, in explaining the title for this blues piece. With its loping stride, this is southwestern funk as opposed to the usual southern funk we hear.
"Sunset" is an example of Dorham’s modal writing. Here, the mode is "moving around a bit more" than Evans’s work. This is an expressive piece. You can almost feel the chill of evening descending after a hot, dry southwestern day. Kenny’s muted trumpet sensitively heralds the night and Mobley’s tenor suggests the lengthening shadows. Drew’s well-wrought solo precedes a short bit by Chambers before night finally falls.
The title tune, Whistle Stop, opens side two. This is a swift, set of "Rhythm" changes in which strolling is used effectively during Mobley’s and Dorham’s solos. In his solo, Philly Joe sounds like o big locomotive all by himself. To establish the effect of the train at the beginning and at the end of the piece, Dorham used "compound quarter-note or half-note triplets — this can also be done with eighth note triplets.
The boss is the sun in "Sunrise In Mexico.” As the bottom line, it moves upwards. Trumpet and tenor, in contrast, move down. "The skies down there are low", says Kenny, and everything looks different.” The sections that occur at start and finish might be termed "The Chant."
Dorham and Mobley step right up and talk about an old girlfriend of all of us. Maybe she lives by the "Windmill." Drew ploys his adroit single-lines and Chambers bows one. Then Jones gives his own windmill impression with a fine display of circular motion. Kenny says that the windmill, a weathered, gray-wood affair, is represented in the last four bars of the track.
"Dorham’s Epitaph",— approximately a minute in length, — which closes the side, is a sad and poetic theme. He explains: "Other trumpeters have had identifying songs and memorials like "I Remember Clifford." So Kenny, like some in literature before him, wrote his own epitaph. Now he has expanded the work for 60 or 70 pieces (40 to be strings) and, at his wife’s suggestion, has named the larger work "Fairy Tale." Gunther Schuller is looking at the score with the following step, Dorham hopes, Leonord Bernstein. Kenny’s next album may be “8us Stop" — the Seventh Avenue bus stop outside Carnegie Hall.
— IRA GITLER
Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER
Paul Chambers plays by courtesy of Vee-Jay Records. Philly Joe Jones by courtesy of Atlantic Recording Corp.
RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes
A NEW LOOK AT WHISTLE STOP
In 1975, five British critics picked Whistle Stop as one of 200 albums that belonged in a basic library of jazz recorded after World War II (see Modern Jazz 1945-70: The Essential Recordings, Argus Books). In his essay on this LP, Michael James noted the difficulty in selecting from among Kenny Dorham’s many fine efforts, and mentioned his great 1959 New Jazz date Quiet Kenny as another session worthy of consideration. Whistle Stop got the nod, however, for capturing Dorham’s mature trumpet style, showcasing his talents as a composer, and surrounding him with such a sympathetic cast.
Dorham’s command of the horn, as well as his fertile imagination, is indeed on brilliant display throughout the recording. His sound is tart and incisive, with effective use of slurs and grace notes, and his more intimate work on “Sunset” and “Sunrise In Mexico” is truly haunting. The harmonic sophistication that made Dorham one of the kings of the turnback (those passages of modulating harmony that link main structural sections in a composition) is on brilliant display; but equally obvious is the trumpeter’s ability to stay with a melodic phrase and discover all of the beauty it contains.
The true distinction of this session, however, is its exclusive program of Dorham compositions. As Ira Gitler’s original liner notes indicate, Dorham was serious about writing, in terms of both his mechanics and an uncommon ability to evoke visual images and emotional states. He also had a gift for extending the feeling in his thematic choruses with introductions, interludes and codas. While examples abound throughout the album, pay particular attention to his expansive take on the hard bop blues, ‘“Philly’ Twist”; his complex rendering of “Rhythm” changes in the title track; and, in one of the greatest contrafacts of all time, his “Sweet Georgia Brown” variant “Windmill,” which sounds more like a roller coaster with its heraldic intro/coda and ingenious melodic line.
All of this music is brilliantly realized by the quintet Dorham leads. Hank Mobley and the trumpeter first made history in the Jazz Messengers, where, in Horace Silver’s words, their work together “was so hip, you know, they were super hip. The way they phrased, and the lines they played, their harmonic knowledge was so beautiful.” Mobley was in the midst of his greatest recording period for Blue Note here, and had joined the Miles Davis Quintet shortly before Whistle Stop was cut. He worked regularly with Paul Chambers and occasionally with Philly Joe Jones in Davis’s band, and had already established his own important studio relationship with both musicians on his Blue Note recordings. Two months after this album, Mobley would use both Chambers and Jones on his classic Workout.
Pianist Kenny Drew was also an old if less frequent Blue Note hand. He made his recording debut as both pianist and composer on Howard McGhee’s 1950 session for the label, and cut his own first album as part of Blue Note’s “New Faces, New Sounds” series in 1953. Drew popped up again on one of the all-time Blue Note dates, John Coltrane’s Blue Train in 1957, and then had a final burst of activity under Alfred Lion’s supervision around the time of this session, including appearances with Jackie McLean, Tina Brooks, Dexter Gordon and Grant Green as well as his own Undercurrent LP. Then, at the end of 1961, Drew had left the U.S. for Europe, where he found social and working conditions more accommodating until his passing in 1993.
The other musicians on this album did not last as long, and fell victim in one way or another to the environment that Drew fled. It is particularly painful to read Gitler’s comments regarding Dorham’s hope for writing symphonic music, which appear to have gotten nowhere. But that was the story of Dorham’s life. He was too nice a guy, as Andrew Hill remarked, for the cutthroat atmosphere in which he was forced to operate, yet his music always managed to reflect both his pain and his basic positivism. As the British critics noted, this album offers an outstanding accounting of his gifts. I’m not sure I would have chosen it as my favorite Dorham — I’d probably go with another title in the RVG Edition series, Una Mas, for its fiery extended blowing and the thrill of the newly discovered Joe Henderson and the Herbie Hancock/Tony Williams team. Compare the tracks “Whistle Stop” and “Straight Ahead,” the “I Got Rhythm” variants from the respective albums, for an indication of the difference. That in no way diminishes this album’s status as one of jazz’s greatest trumpeter’s greatest masterpieces.
—Bob Blumenthal
Blue Note Spotlight - January 2013
http://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/doing-the-philly-twist-kenny-dorhams-whistle/
Trumpeter Kenny Dorham has been described by jazz critic Gary Giddins as “virtually synonymous with underrated.” While his albums for Blue Note and other labels contain some of the most virtuosic and lyrical playing of the 1950s and 1960s, he never gained the attention of the public in the way players like Donald Byrd, Freddie Hubbard or Lee Morgan did. Still, he made numerous sideman appearances on classic albums by Art Blakey, Andrew Hill, and frequent partner Joe Henderson, among others, and his releases as a leader hold their own with anything else in the Blue Note catalog. He made his debut as a leader for the label with 1955’s Afro-Cuban and 1956’s ’Round About Midnight at the Café Bohemia, but didn’t make another Blue Note album under his own name until Whistle Stop, in 1961.
Whistle Stop, recorded January 15, 1961, is a bluesy, swinging hard bop session featuring top-flight players: In addition to Dorham, Hank Mobley fills the tenor saxophone chair, Kenny Drew is behind the piano, Paul Chambers mans the upright bass, and Philly Joe Jones is on drums. All seven of the album’s compositions are by the trumpeter, and they allow the band to explore a variety of moods and rhythmic approaches, without ever failing to provide the toe-tapping grooves listeners were after.
Things get off to a rocking start with “Philly Twist,” which despite being recorded in 1961, only a year after Chubby Checker’s version of the Hank Ballard song was a massive pop hit, had nothing to do with the dance craze. Instead, it was a salute to Philly Joe Jones, and with its relentless, driving rhythm provided a chance for him to rock the kit like only he could. Jones hammers at the snare drum as the horns take fierce solos, Dorham blowing hard and fast and Mobley honking like he’s walking a bar.
The second track, “Buffalo,” is named for the animal, not the city, and it’s a slow burner, the band strutting a deep blues groove. Mobley solos first, followed by Dorham, as the rhythm section rolls along in a way that seems intended to make listeners want to do the Stroll. (Look it up.) Pianist Drew’s solo, too, is a marvel of economical expression, spinning out extrapolations on the chords that are somehow familiar and unique at once.
The third piece, “Sunset,” is a Latin number, featuring an uptempo, rippling piano line and intricate hi-hat work from Jones. Dorham plays with a mute, though it doesn’t dim his energy level a bit—he cuts loose with high-speed, staccato runs. Mobley takes a typically muscular solo as the rhythm section churns behind him, and when it’s Drew’s turn in the spotlight, he erupts in rippling flurries of notes. Chambers maintains the groove during his solo, and then the horns return for a subtle restatement of the melody.
The title track is the fastest piece on the record; “Whistle Stop” is a reference to train travel, and the band absolutely tears down the track, with Jones driving them as hard as any engineer. Again, Hank Mobley is the first man out of the station, galloping along as the drums crash and clatter behind him. Dorham is in a slightly mellower mood, but still allows himself to be carried along by the momentum being established all around him.
“Sunrise in Mexico” takes the album in a surprising and abstract direction. It’s a Latin number, but a far more adventurous one than its mirror image, “Sunset.” Chambers is strumming the strings of his bass like a giant guitar early on, and the drums are a martial battery rather than a danceable rhythm. The solos all have a bluesy swing, but they end more suddenly than one might expect—Drew’s in particular—notes falling away suddenly like Wile E. Coyote sprinting off a cliff, noticing there’s nothing beneath him, and hurtling toward the earth. And the piece doesn’t come to a natural end, either; it fades out, something unexpected on a jazz album, especially in this era.
“Windmill,” the second-to-last track on Whistle Stop, is another sprint, not as fast as the title cut but close. The titular edifice must have been spinning in a hurricane, in Dorham’s mind. For the only time on the record, Paul Chambers takes a solo with a bow, and that’s followed by Philly Joe Jones’ solo, which is an eruption that would make Art Blakey shake his head in admiration.
The album concludes with a surprise: a one-minute, gently swaying showcase for the leader’s upper-register playing. “Dorham’s Epitaph” brings Kenny Dorham’s return to the Blue Note roster to a quick, but nevertheless rousing close. Whistle Stop is an album deserving of all the attention it’s gotten over the years, and more—it’s one of the best hard bop records of the early 1960s, a small but glittering jewel in the Blue Note discography.
