BLP 4252

Duke Pearson - Sweet Honey Bee

Released - 1967

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 7, 1966
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet #1-3,5-7; James Spaulding, alto sax, flute; Joe Henderson, tenor sax #1-3,5-7; Duke Pearson, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Mickey Roker, drums.

1803 tk.1 Gaslight
1804 tk.10 Ready Rudy?
1805 tk.12 Big Bertha
1806 tk.17 After The Rain
1807 tk.27 Sweet Honey Bee
1808 tk.28 Empathy
1809 tk.32 Sudel

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Sweet Honey Bee	Duke Pearson	December 7 1966
Sudel	Duke Pearson	December 7 1966
After the Rain	Duke Pearson	December 7 1966
Gaslight	Duke Pearson	December 7 1966
Side Two
Big Bertha	Peter Chatman, Pearson	December 7 1966
Empathy	Duke Pearson	December 7 1966
Ready Rudy?	Duke Pearson	December 7 1966

Liner Notes

Fortunately for music, as for all other manifestations of life, it has so far been impossible to homogenize temperament. Even, for example, in a time of unusual tension, such as the present, there are those who somehow sustain an open, lyrical, non-competitive approach to being alive. Duke Pearson, for one. "I'm not mad at anybody," he said after we had finished talking about his album; and it is that quality of mellow, though not complacent, satisfaction which pervades the music here.

Although Duke's music has always been airy and spring-like, perhaps a particular reason for the sense of wellbeing in this album is the attractive young lady on the cover who, by the time you hear the music, will have become Mrs. Betty Pearson. There was something of her in Duke's thoughts when he wrote Sweet Honey Bee. Its sunny melody and resiliently infectious beat do communicate, as Duke puts it, "a bit of happiness. Considerably more than a bit. There is a dance-like buoyancy in Duke's own piano solo, and James Spaulding's flute also emphasizes the light-hearted mood of expectancy that makes Sweet Honey Bee a spirit-energizer.

"Sudel," which also illustrates Duke's easeful skill as a melodist, presented a challenge to the "It's structured," he notes, soloists. "in a bar sequence of 8, 10, 8, 10. The first measures of each of the 10-bar sections are based on inversions, it was an invitation to the soloists's resourcefulness. I do think, you see, that there are still values and surprises to be gotten from chordal improvisation." Apparently judging by the performance, Freddie Hubbard and Joe Henderson agree.

"After the Rain" is described as a "tune for lovers." It is, he went on "a very personal piece in which I wanted to get a particular kind of mood. In it I can hear the wind, the feel of the rain that is still in the air." The song is one of the loveliest of Duke Pearson's ballads, and his choice of James Spaulding for this date turns out to be particularly apt for this track. The performance as a whole is ruminative without being sentimental. As in all his work, Duke writes and plays here with clarity of line and ideas and with what is perhaps most difficult to achieve — clarity of feeling. Accordingly, he doesn't need excess ornamentation or overdramatization to get his story told.

The immediate source of satisfaction in "Gaslight" is its lithe, loping melody. But there's another distinctive characteristic. 'Something about the way this tune moves," says Duke, "gives you the feeling that it's always going up. And once you start moving up with it, you somehow no longer hear the point from which you started. It's like a flame that continues to grow until finally it does settle down back to its beginning. But while it's growing, the match has been forgotten."

"Big Bertha" as the title might indicate to you, is "a soulful thing," in Duke's term. Though its textures are those of the blues, it is not a strict blues form. Here, as in other tracks, the players are at one with the core of Duke Pearson's concept of music — directness, economy, unforced swing and feeling that is so integral to the experience that it doesn't have to be overstated, I would also say of this track, as of the record as a whole, that the basic honesty and uncluttered melodiousness in the music will keep this album alive no matter what new turns take place in the jazz language. Once in a while, an album does work out to be a definitive statement of a man's musical essence, and this is such an occasion.

Of "Empathy," Duke says, "the song should be able to speak for itself. It doesn't need verbal explication." I would only add that an underlining of the silvery grace and strength of James Spaulding's flute, the disciplined intensity of Freddie Hubbard's horn, and the big-toned yet supple force of Joe Henderson's tenor. And also, of course, that lucidity of structure and tone which is so characteristic of Duke's piano.

"Ready Rudy?" is Duke's tribute to recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder. "The phrase itself is one that's always heard out there in his studio at Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey," says Duke. "And the song is my appreciation for the care and concern with which he listens as he gets all our sounds exactly right."

For Duke, this album is his best so far. "Part of the reason, I think, is that I needed this much time to get to the point at which I know exactly what it is I want to say and how to say it," Duke said. "Another reason is that I've been learning a great deal working with Alfred Lion at Blue Note for the past four years. I assist him and I write for a number of different sessions, and this experience has been very instructive. From Alfred I've found out a lot about the process of recording and about the ways you can best communicate through recordings.

"As for this album," Duke continued, "everyone played exactly what I wanted. Everyone played my music as I'd heard it in my mind, and everybody really swung." I can't imagine a more compatible group of musicians for this occasion. James Spaulding with his fusion of skill and passion. Freddie Hubbard with his extraordinary technique and tone. Of the later, Duke adds, "It's unusual for such a young man to have such a brilliant sound. Most trumpet players need years to get to that level." Of Joe Henderson, Duke observes, "He likes to play my music; it falls right for him and whatever he plays, Joe is a complete musician."

And the rhythm section is a model of emphatic unity. "Ron Carter's sound," Duke emphasizes, "went so well with everything I wrote. It's not only a big sound, it's a true sound. Mickey Roker, who has become a regular on Duke's albums, is lauded by Pearson as "a drummer of need a drummer who is sensitive to diverse moods and to the particular strengths of each soloist."

As an index of how right these men were for the music and for each other, no track, Duke says, took more than three takes. After it was all over, Duke summed up his feelings about the album and about his own place in jazz. "It wouldn't make sense," he said, "for me to go into the 'new thing' when my own roots are in the kind of music that is based on the importance of melody and on the challenge of keeping fresh the way the chords fall. The kind of listener I write and play for is the one who is attracted by melody and likes to have the melodies that really reach him at home, on a record. Melody is what I believe in so what should I change?"

A man who can create the consistency of melodic attractiveness that is the mark of this album has no reason to change. Duke knows his own voice, and that's the name of the game.

—NAT HENTOFF

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT SWEET HONEY BEE

The sense of teamwork shared by the artists who recorded for Blue Note Records is a major part of the label's legend. Players and writers who frequently represented distinct approaches on their own worked together constantly, sometimes as leaders, sometimes in support, always lending their disparate talents to the common purpose of the particular music at hand. No single artist represents this sense of the Blue Note roster as repertory company better than Duke Pearson.

As Pearson remarks in the original liner notes, he was far more than just one of the label's players. He inherited Ike Quebec's role as a liaison between producer Alfred Lion and the musicians, and served in this capacity from Quebec's death early in 1963 through the remainder of the decade. In addition, Pearson's talents for composing, arranging and orchestrating made him even more valuable as the label took on projects with larger ensembles and greater ambition. Donald Byrd's albums, combining jazz combos with vocal choruses, and several of Stanley Turrentine's, with octets and larger groups, owe their success in no small measure to Pearson's talented scoring.

Given the breadth of his skills, and his lucid yet decidedly undemonstrative approach to the piano, it is not surprising that Pearson employed a variety of settings on his own sessions. After two albums in a trio format, he moved on to various octet and nonet projects, and a pair of big-band dates. The sextet setting that is featured here, as well as on his previous Blue Note album Wahoo, might be considered the best of Pearson's various worlds, with a configuration intimate enough to allow substantial space for each soloist while also possessing sufficient resources to highlight the nuances of each composition.

The greatest strength of this and other Pearson albums, though, is his rare gifts as a creator of memorable melody. His knack for the catchy tune and infectious rhythmic pattern (as on the title track, which was also covered by Lee Morgan on his Charisma session) was only the beginning of the story in this regard, for Pearson was even better in the realm of pieces like "Sudel" and "Gaslight," where the beauty of his themes make the structural wrinkles virtually invisible. The 18-bar anomaly of "Sudel" that Pearson describes to Nat Hentoff, and the similarly singular 22-bar form of "Gaslight," are just the logical outcome of a rare melodic sensibility.

That Blue Note team spirit mentioned earlier served Pearson well on this and many other occasions. This sextet, identical in instrumentation and close in personnel to the one employed on Wahoo (where Donald Byrd was the trumpeter and Bob Cranshaw the bassist) is in full accord with the pianist, and provides an instrumental palette that brings the most out of the music. A comparison of this "Sudel" with the version Pearson recorded for Jazzline in 1961 with a two-trumpet quintet featuring Byrd and Johnny Coles will confirm the effectiveness of this three-horn ensemble. Special credit should go to drummer Mickey Roker, who nonchalantly masters every rhythmic pattern, and who remained Pearson's drummer of choice throughout the decade, and to James Spaulding, whose flute adds so much to "Sweet Honey Bee," "After the Rain" and "Empathy," and whose alto sax is pungently provocative elsewhere. While Spaulding never had a Blue Note contract of his own, his work with Pearson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter and others on the label made him a critical component of the team in The solo work of featured horns Freddie Hubbard and Joe Henderson is all one would expect and more. This pair could and usually did breathe fire on their own projects, and on most of the sideman appearances they made during the period, yet they also had sensitive sides that Pearson's music brought to the surface with uncommon clarity. Without sacrificing the more muscular characteristics that defined their core personalities, Hubbard and Henderson were willing to show the requisite gentleness when they played with the pianist. Each is therefore at his most complete on this album.

Pearson himself tended to remain on the subtler end of the jazz spectrum, and Hentoff's choice of the word "noncompetitive" to describe him is most apt. It is difficult to imagine Pearson playing "Breaking Point" with Hubbard, or "Inner Urge" with Henderson, and in fact neither the trumpeter nor the tenor saxophonist ever employed Pearson in the rhythm sections of their own Blue Note dates. (Henderson did, however, include Pearson's beautiful ballad "You Know I Care" on his Inner Urge album.) Within Pearson's own musical world, however, these artists were ideally matched, because it was all about teamwork, and the makeup of this team is totally all-star.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2003