BLP 4179

Jackie McLean - It's Time! 

Released - June 1965

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, August 5, 1964
Charles Tolliver, trumpet; Jackie McLean, alto sax; Herbie Hancock, piano; Cecil McBee, bass; Roy Haynes, drums.

1402 tk.5 Truth
1403 tk.17 'Snuff
1404 tk.18 Das Dat
1405 tk.24 Revillot
1406 tk.31 Cancellation
1407 tk.33 It's Time

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Cancellation	Charles Tolliver	August 5 1964
Das' Dat	Jackie McLean	August 5 1964
It's Time	Jackie McLean	August 5 1964
Side Two
Revillot	Charles Tolliver	August 5 1964
Snuff	Jackie McLean	August 5 1964
Truth	Charles Tolliver	August 5 1964

Liner Notes

“THE new breed has inspired me all over again” Jackie McLean concluded his notes for Let Freedom Ring (Blue Note 4106). “The search is on.” And in that album followed by One Step Beyond (Blue Note 4137) and Destination Out (Blue Note 4165), Jackie has pursued that search into the expanding possibilities of the jazz language with characteristic fire and clarity. Now, in this album, Jackie continues what could be termed his second jazz life.

Long since qualified as a seasoned veteran of established modern jazz, Jackie’s absorption in the current ferment in the jazz vanguard had nothing artificial about it. There certainly was no financial incentive for him to explore relatively uncharted terrain because today’s new wave is encountering even bleaker economic weather than their predecessors did twenty years ago. Nor was Jackie insecure as a musician. What he played, he played well and with deepening individuality. He did, however, feel in need of greater musical challenge, and that’s why he has proceeded in his early thirties to revitalize his work and to create a series of, I’m convinced, durably stimulating albums.

No matter what changes of jazz winds are to come, these Jackie McLean performances, as in this album, are substantial in themselves because although Jackie has plunged into the future, he has not cut off his roots in the past. The searing “cry” of the blues, as he has internalized the blues, still pervades his playing. Also fiercely present is Jackie’s powerful sense of swing, of feeling time, of shaping time as a breathing, resilient force. And, in the sense of the word that goes back to the first jazz, Jackie’s playing remains “hot.” There has never been in his work the quasi-detachment of the man who is mainly interested in solving technical problems. What Jackie plays is an extension of what he feels and wants at the moment of improvising; and so his music is viscerally personal whether he’s playing basic blues or personalizing new forms.

For this set, Jackie is accompanied by Herbie Hancock, another musician with a strong base in jazz tradition and also with on insatiable curiosity about what is to come. Roy Haynes like Jackie, is also a postgraduate modernist. Roy has a remarkable capacity to fit into all kinds of musical contexts as if each were his natural home. Bassist Cecil McBee, originally from Detroit, is a member of Paul Winters’ group and has also recorded with Denny Zeitlin. He is a musician of breadth as well as rhythmic depth and is, as the newspapers say, a man to watch.

The newest name here is trumpeter Charles Tolliver, for this is his first recording. Attentive followers of the New York jazz scene have seen Tolliver’s name as, for example, a participant in the Jazz Composers Guild’s avant-garde concerts at Judson Hall in December, 1964, and also as part of the experimental scene at Slug’s Saloon, deep on the lower East Side.

Born in Jacksonville, Florida, on March 6, 1942, Tolliver was raised in Harlem. He picked up trumpet on his own, starting at eight. Except for a stay at the Hartnett Studio while still quite young, Tolliver is entirely self-taught. Clifford Brown was a strong influence while Tolliver was in his early ‘teens, but jazz for a time become secondary to him as he spent three years studying pharmacy at Howard University. By the end of the third year, Tolliver could no longer subdue his need to be a full-time musician and, returning to New York, he was encouraged by a friend, Freddie Hubbard, to stay with jazz. In the fall of 1964, Tolliver played his first regular professional engagement with Jackie McLean at the Coronet in Brooklyn. (There hod been one-night stands at Birdland before with Joe Henderson and Edgar Bateman.)

By now, with Clifford Brown, Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Dorham as his foundation influences, Tolliver has also been shaped in part by Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. His credo is such that he fuses well with Jackie McLean: “A man,” says Tolliver, ‘has to have a solid base in jazz before he attempts to go beyond what came before. And you can't make sense in the new ways of playing unless you really feel them. If you’re trying to be part of the avant-garde just to be there, it wont work. There has to be a need to keep exploring yourself in music, and you have to know your horn.”

The opener, Cancellation, is by Tolliver and its title signifies a cancellation of past jazz conventions. But it is a cancellation preceded by a thorough absorption of those conventions. “Essentially,” Tolliver says, “the piece is modal, based on G flat minor. We don’t go through the chord changes in the old way, and thereby the challenge is to find out how melodically inventive and free you can be.” in addition to the persistently challenging melodic and rhythmic permutations of Jackie, along with the evocative use of space in Tolliver’s solo, the rhythm section here — as throughout the album — is fascinating. It’s worth separate listenings to focus on Hancock, McBee and Haynes alone in turn. And then more listening to hear how they intersect. In particular, Herbie Hancock’s comping and solo show a growing force and freedom in his work.

Das’ Dat by Jackie Mclean is a straight blues in B flat, and its presence here indicates that these explorers still know how to take care of business back home. “We went back inside,” Tolliver describes the experience, “and it felt good.” These musicians feel that the pleasure of going back directly to such roots as are distilled here is heightened by the experiences they have in their more exploratory work. Thereby, home never gets to be a jaded resting place.

Jackie McLean’s declaratory It’s Time is modal (based on D minor), allowing the soloists to find new roadways instead of the previously traveled chordal routes. Again, Hancock is brilliant in accompaniment. “He’s on you everywhere,” says Tolliver, “like white on rice. Wherever you go, however you go, he follows you. I think the constant vitality of the date had a lot to do with Herbie’s comping.” Also meriting additional emphasis is the resourcefulness of Roy Haynes who, with customary crispness, is a skilful conjugotor of cross-accents and shifting textural shadings. The kaleidoscopic solo by Cecil McBee, incidentally, indicates his evolving singularity as well.

Spell Tolliver backwards and you have Revillot, the piece by him which opens the second side. Based on a figure in D minor it too opens up modal avenues for the soloists. The results, it strikes this listener, have cohesion as well as unpredictability. The organic unity is fluid, but hardly formless. The same is true of the brisk ‘Snuff by Jackie McLean. Here the structural framework is straightforward, but once the opening theme with bridge is announced, the soloists are self-challenged to be as little constricted as possible by that structure. To cite McBee again, listen to how opposite Tolliver’s description of his work is: “Cecil never lets you move away from the beat.’ And at the same time, McBee’s bass lines are neither pat nor leaden. The basic modality here is B flat minor. The gentle Truth by Tolliver is explained as to title by the trumpeter in this way: “The ballad speaks for itself. Whatever anyone brings to it of what he feels to be the emotional truth for him as he plays it, is what the tune is there for.” In the performance, Tolliver reveals his considerable capacity for lyricism. And Jackie, who has often disclosed his ability to combine romanticism with unfeigned virility. does so again here. Hancock is lucidly, flowingly introspective; and Tolliver recapitulates the softly unfolding theme in E flat minor with incisive grace.

It’s Time, in sum, is an album which documents the continuing regeneration of Jackie McLean; the imaginative scope of Herbie Hancock and Roy Hoynes; the growing impact of Cecil McBee; and the presence of a new trumpeter of solidity as well asadaring, Charles Tolliver.

— NAT HENTOFF