BLP 4089

Jackie McLean - A Fickle Sonance

Released - October 1962

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, October 26, 1961
Tommy Turrentine, trumpet; Jackie McLean, alto sax; Sonny Clark, piano; Butch Warren, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

tk.1 Enitrnerrut
tk.8 Five Will Get You Ten
tk.9 Subdued
tk.11 A Fickle Sonance
tk.13 Lost
tk.18 Sundu

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Five Will Get You Ten	Thelonious Monk, Sonny Clark	26 October 1961
Subdued	Jackie McLean	26 October 1961
Sundu	Sonny Clark	26 October 1961
Side Two
A Fickle Sonance	Jackie McLean	26 October 1961
Enitnerrut	Tommy Turrentine	26 October 1961
Lost	Butch Warren	26 October 1961

Liner Notes

THOSE of you who are familiar with his playing, know that Jackie McLean is an extremely compelling soloist. An example of just how his vital blowing can inspire his followers is found in the reaction of two of his more devoted fans in the face of what they feel is an inequitable situation.

Jim Harrison and Dick Prendergast formed a non-profit organization and in late December 1961 staged An Evening With Jackie McLean at Judson Hall. They felt that, like themselves, there were McLean devotees who, because of the unjustly restrictive cabaret card situation in New York, were unable to hear Jackie except on record. His featured playing-acting role in The Connection had kept him before New York audiences (but not nightclub audiences) for almost two years until early 1961, when he went to England with the play.

Since his return to the United States in the summer of 1961, Californians have heard him more than New Yorkers by virtue of a trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles with Kenny Dorham, Walter Bishop and Art Taylor which kept them on the Coast through November and part of December.

At the aforementioned Judson Hall concert, there was a table on which were spread the covers of all the albums Jackie has recorded as a leader. They were a reminder that even if one has to depend on records for his McLean, he is not too badly off. The albums for Blue Note, made in the last few years, are especially strong documents of his devotion to his art.

While McLean has made no concessions to any of the recent fads in jazz, he has, as the oddly-named title number demonstrates, kept his ears open, and without radically altering his style, has added and integrated new elements. The spatial attitude of Miles Davis and John Coltrane seems to have affected him here. The capriciously acting theme reminds one of something George Russell could have been involved with: advanced but rooted in jazz tradition. The burning, crying, slashing attack that can pull at your viscera is still there. Emotion is something Jackie has never had trouble communicating. Sometimes, in a ballad, there is warm sentiment but often it is matched with irony. His horn can cut a hole in your heart and let the night pour through. Whatever he plays is always a moving, human experience.

The accompanying quartet is the same unit which Sonny Clark led in Leapin’ and Lopin’ — Blue Note 4091 (Charlie Rouse was the fifth man there).

Tommy Turrentine is a trumpeter who has been in jazz for a long time although he is only 33. All the dues he payed with Billy Eckstine, Earl Bostic, Charlie Mingus and Max Roach are returning interest. His talent was evident before, when it could be heard, but now it is really blooming. Like Jackie (but in his own way), Tommy is deeply involved in his music. His message is clear, passionate and liberally laced with lyricism.

In Leapin’ and Lopin’, Sonny Clark showed that he had gained a new maturity to go along with his keyboard accomplishment of long standing. His touch is gentle but never soft; his swing as natural as Willie Mays’.

A lot of musicians have been talking about the youthful bassist from Washington, D.C., Butch Warren. His brilliant work on this album will have a lot more people saying his name. He has the drive and accuracy of an ICBM but is only constructive never destructive.

Billy Higgins not only swings, but he knows how to get a “sound” from his drums. Listen to the way he blends with Warren and Clark in a rhythm section as tightly-knit as the sweater Lana Turner wore in Dancing Co-ed with Artie Shaw.

All members of the group but Higgins contributed to the written material which forms the basis for improvisation in this set.

Clark’s Five Will Get You Ten is an attractive chant (with strong rhythmic underlining) that flows along in a medium swing. McLean is very vocal, his slight hoarseness appealing. Turrentine is fluid and thoughtful. Clark displays great clarity and definition of idea.

McLean’s Subdued finds him embracing a tempo that fits the title but with emotions bared as usual. This is Jackie most of the way, breaking up the melody line in interesting fashion along the route. Tommy, his muted sound closer to Fats Navarro than Miles Davis, and Sonny, doubling up effectively, split a chorus. Jackie here captures the Charlie Parker spirit in many places without playing a carbon of Bird.

Sundu, a blues by Clark, finds the three main soloists offering lean, powerful statements. Warren has two choruses: the first has him alternating bowing and picking for four bars apiece; in the second he stays with his fingers.

A Fickle Sonance by McLean (a changing sound might be a simple definition) sometimes becomes a dissonance. This is certainly music for the time of the astronaut, fiercely propelled by Warren and Higgins. The theme has an excruciating beauty all its own and Jackie’s caterwauling. catapulting-through-space solo is something else.

If you’re the least bit backward, it won’t be hard for you to figure out who wrote Enitnerrut. It’s a minor-key line comprised of two separate l6-bar statements. There is forceful, individual playing by McLean; soaring Turrentine; subtle, insinuating Clark and a dynamic rhythm section.

Lost, by Warren, has a unique 40-bar construction in its opening chorus. There is an 8-bar phrase followed by an 8-bar repeat. Then there is a middle section of two new 8-bar phrases and a final 8 of the same material as the first 8 of the song. Lost refers to the fact that after McLean, the subsequent soloists (Turrentine, Clark and Warren) enter before their preceding player gets to that last 8 bars. Finally, in the out chorus, the last 8 never appears. It is “lost”, something the soloists and rhythm section never are. Warren’s clever composition, with its use of alternating rhythms further aiding the overall effect created by the irregular bar-pattern, marks him as worth watching on the writing as well as playing front.

Earlier in these notes, I spoke of McLean’s devotion to his art. Apropos of this, is a conversation I recently had with the hard-swinging tenor player, J. R. Monterose. “Jazz is becoming more and more of a craft and less of an art”, he said. “Sure it’s important to be able to play your horn well but there are a lot of cats who do only that. Jazz is supposed to be self-expression. You’ve got to have a need to say something on your instrument — to get it out.”

In this regard, it may be said that Jackie McLean has improved as a craftsman through the years, but first and foremost, he is an artist.

— IRA GITLER

Cover Design by REID MILES
Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF 

Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT A FICKLE SONANCE

A Fickle Sonance is one of the most welcome titles to appear in the RVG series. The album has never been reissued before in the United States, and therefore has been one of the most unjustly neglected titles in the discography of one of the music's greatest alto saxophonists. It sheds a clear light on the evolution of a player who, as clearly as anyone else at the time, defined the bop-and-beyond transition that jazz was undergoing in the early 1960s.

Jackie McLean had been surrounded by innovators throughout his early career. He grew up with Sonny Rollins, shared a horn with Charlie Parker, woodshedded with Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, received his introduction to the music's independent labels from Miles Davis, worked in an early edition of the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop and participated in blowing sessions with John Coltrane. As early as his composition "Little Melonae" (first recorded in 1955), it was clear that McLean had an ear for the music's exploratory side. At the same time, he was a committed disciple of the bebop language that his idol Parker and others had established in the previous decade, which created a tension between what McLean heard and what he played that begged for resolution,

"Getting away from the conventional and much overused chord changes was my personal dilemma, " he wrote in the liner notes to his classic 1962 album Let Freedom Ring, "Until recently this was the reason why many things I composed in 1955 left me helpless when it came to a basis for improvisation, for example, 'Quadrangle' and 'A Fickle Sonance,' Both of these tunes were just recently recorded. I used 'l Got Rhythm' for the solo section in 'Quadrangle.' These changes do not fit the personality of the tune at all."

"Quadrangle" was recorded in 1959, in McLean's first studio appearance as a leader for Blue Note, and can be heard on the album Jackie's Bag. Several events took place during the nearly three years that separate it from this recording that signalled new options for the saxophonist. "Ornette Coleman has made me stop and think," McLean acknowledged in those 1962 liner notes; yet in this performance of "A Fickle Sonance" it is also clear that the technique of improvising on modes that Miles Davis had popularized on Kind Of Blue provided a more immediate solution to the lingering compositional problems. The use of a mode allows the solo sections of the piece to swing and soar, while retaining the dissonant edge of the writing.

The bulk of the remaining material finds McLean still firmly in what by then was referred to as hard bop territory. With Sonny Clark's blues "Sundu" and the themeless ballad "Subdued" (based on the changes of "Embraceable You," in case you missed the hint dropped in Ira Gitler's notes) being the obvious examples. McLean remains extremely fluent in the idiom, yet his always impassioned sound had taken on new levels of authority that also relate to the ideas that players like Coleman, John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and McLean's former boss Charles Mingus were introducing into the jazz vocabulary. One of the most fascinating aspects of McLean's Blue Note recordings is the opportunity they present to chart this evolution. The alto solos on Freddie Redd's The Music from The Connection' (February 1960), McLean's own Bluesnik (January 1961) and the present album capture three excellent yet distinct points on his journey.

McLean is joined on A Fickle Sonance by one of the greatest bands he ever assembled in Rudy Van Gelder's studio. It includes the first appearance of the great Sonny Clark/Butch Warren/BiIIy Higgins rhythm section, not to mention pianist Clark's return to the label after an absence of two and a half years. (Higgins and Warren had recorded together, with Herbie Hancock, on Donald Byrd's Royal Flush a month earlier.) Trumpeter Tommy Turrentine, Stanley's older brother, was also in the midst of a stretch of outstanding sideman appearances on the label that found him featured with Horace Parlan, Clark and Lou Donaldson. They all play beautifully, with the presence of Warren's composition "Lost" and his witty bowed/plucked chorus on "Sundu" making this an especially valuable indication of the bassist's talents.

"Five Will Get You Ten," the angular opening track, is an amazing composition that was credited to Clark on the original album. When it appeared again on the 1997 T.S. Monk album Monk On Monk, it was called "'Two Timer" and credited to the drummer's father. It seems that Clark had been hanging out at the home of Thelonious Monk's good friend Nica, heard the piece there, and brought it to the session where it was miscredited. The T.S. Monk version, which has Hancock on piano, omits the melodic hiccup at bars five and six and introduces a descending cadence at the end of the first eight bars. That might make "Two Timer" a more accurate rendering of what Monk wrote, but this version gets the nod for groove, passion and three outstanding solos.

—Bob Blumenthal