BLP 4257

Blue Mitchell - Boss Horn

Released - November 1967

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, November 17, 1966
Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Julian Priester, trombone; Jerry Dodgion, alto sax, flute; Junior Cook, tenor sax; Pepper Adams, baritone sax; Cedar Walton, piano #1-4; Chick Corea, piano #5,6; Gene Taylor, bass; Mickey Roker, drums; Duke Pearson, arranger.

1788 tk.7 O Mama Enit
1789 tk.15 Rigor Mortez
1790 tk.17 I Should Care
1791 tk.22 Millie
1792 tk.31 Straight Up And Down
1793 tk.42 Tones For Joan's Bones

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Millie	Duke Pearson	November 17 1966
O Mama Enit	Blue Mitchell	November 17 1966
I Should Care	Sammy Cahn, Axel Stordahl, Paul Weston	November 17 1966
Side Two
Rigor Mortez	Dave Burns	November 17 1966
Tones for Joan's Bones	Chick Corea	November 17 1966
Straight Up and Down	Chick Corea	November 17 1966

Liner Notes

"The first time I heard Blue Mitchell," Duke Pearson was reminiscing after this date, "was on his first Blue Note record with Lou Donaldson around 1957. I was playing trumpet at the time myself, so I was paying particular attention to the new horns. And here was this young man with such a beautiful sound and such an easy flow. Since then, of course, through his years with Horace Silver, and on his own, Blue has continued to develop in terms of conception and the authority with which he plays."

Duke was in charge of the arranging for this album, and his intent was to help reveal the breadth of Blue's skills. "You know," Duke says, "most trumpet players are very good in one or two areas, but Blue is unusually flexible. He fits into a wide variety of settings and moods." And so, a variegated repertory was selected; and within each framework, Duke tried to provide ample improvisatory freedom for Blue.

Duke's celebratory "Millie" is a blues with a vamp between each chorus in the ensemble. Blue darts out Of the ensemble With a crisp, economically structured solo which has that talking feeling integral to basic blues. Junior Cook takes up the conversational cadences with his customary big, firm sound and powerful beat. Junior is one of those players who can be described as an instant swinger. Cedar Walton tells a skimming tale until the virtues of "Millie" are again chorused by all the participants with an envoi by Blue.

"O Mama Enit," by Blue, is ebullient in mood, conveying a carnival atmosphere. Note not only the easeful flow in Blue's playing but also its precision. The man has that measure of control over his horn which results in no superfluity of notes. A similar disciplined clarity marks the playing of Junior Cook. Cedar Walton's coolly textured but strongly pulsing solo complements Junior's. Throughout, Duke's scoring is a model of uncluttered, lithe writing that stimulates but never constrains the soloists.

"I've never heard another trumpeter play a ballad quite the way Blue does," Duke has noted, and "I Should Care" is an illustration of Blue's particular skill in this vein. For one thing, there is neither lushness nor sentimentality. Blue's is a lean lyricism with a distilled sensitivity that reminds me at times of the late Freddie Webster. It's the kind of ballad playing which wears very well because it doesn't plead or otherwise make its emotional points heavily. Also impressively spare and flowing is Jerry Dodgion on alto. In tone, Dodgion's solo here sounds somewhat like that of a modern Hilton Jefferson.

"Rigor Mortez," by trumpeter Dave Burns, is a brisk "soul" strutter, but again, Blue does not indulge himself in exclamatory rhetoric. As on the other tracks, his solo, while passionate, is honed and lucidly structured. What I find especially satisfying in Junior Cook's solo on this number is the way he gets into the depth of the horn. He's a player who fills the tenor, but not to overflowing because, like Blue, he likes his edges sharp and straight.

Jerry Dodgion's flute gently introduces Chick Corea's "Tones for Joan's Bones." Joan is Chick's wife. "I didn't want to sound romantic," says Chick, "but I did want to be kind of humorously affectionate. Like 'here are some tones to soothe her tired bones.' Blue played the melody so effectively — almost as if it were a ballad." For this listener, the song is unusually engaging and seems to me to reflect the relaxed warmth of a marriage that works. Call it, if you will, a fulfilled love song. Chick is the deft, provocative pianist on this and his other tune, "Straight Up and Down."

In talking about that final number, Duke Pearson was saying. "It's an intriguing song because it can lead in so many directions. It has a lot of open voicings; and its movement — of line and texture — is unpredictable." I remembered that comment when Chick mentioned what the tune had signified to him when he had first written it two years before this date. "I was thinking about Manhattan," he said, "about how, when you're driving along the East Side or the West Side Highway, the city looks as if it's straight up and down.

"But since then," Chick continued, "the song has taken on different meanings, almost philosophical meanings at times. Like it signifies a kind of clarity of goal. And I've noticed that it changes in mood and direction as I play it with different people and in different musical contexts." In the performance, following Chick's organically energetic solo, there is incisive commentary by Blue, Junior Cook, and Pepper Adams on baritone saxophone. These two compositions by Chick, incidentally, lead me to echo Duke Pearson's hope that Chick will concentrate more on writing original material. "He has it," Duke summarizes Chick's compositional capacities.

Talking about the date, Chick was trying to describe the distinctive elements in Blue Mitchell's playing; and insofar as words can approximate what happens in music, his observations were quite clarifying. "'His tone, first of all, has a lot to do with establishing his particular musical personality. It's a lovely, lovely sound he gets. And another thing about him is that he takes his time. That's why he doesn't waste notes. He's not trying to impress: and the result is that what he plays, he plays so naturally. Thereby there's a basic honesty in his playing. Also while, like all of us, he keeps trying to say more, he doesn't let the trying get in the way of the music. In other words, what comes out is music, not the effort to produce music."

And that does, I feel, get to the core of Blue Mitchell as a jazzman. He has found out who he is; he doesn't have to prove anything. He simply tells what he feels and has exactly the technique he needs to keep his ideas flowing, without break or strain, from his head to his fingers. He is his own man on that horn.

— Nat Hentoff

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT BOSS HORN

The first three Blue Mitchell albums released on Blue Note featured the working quintet the trumpeter co-led with fellow Horace Silver alumnus Junior Cook. The present date introduced an expanded ensemble format, one that Mitchell had sampled earlier in 1966 through his participation on the Stanley Turrentine albums Rough and Tumble and The Spoiler. While a band this size was impractical for regular working engagements, it allowed for a broader yet still intimate canvas that complemented Mitchell's sound and his melodic strengths exceptionally well. Arranger Duke Pearson had already demonstrated his ability to extract personality from units of these dimensions on his own albums and the Turrentine dates, and was in the process of assembling a core group of sidemen for such projects. Four of the musicians heard here — Julian Priester, Jerry Dodgion, Pepper Adams, and Mickey Roker — would staff the orchestra that Pearson formed three months after this session was recorded.

The program is divided equally between tracks with commercial leanings and those of a more straight-ahead nature. Pearson's " Millie" can even be considered the post-"Sidewinder" obligatory soulful blues that appeared on most Blue Note albums of the time, although the tag extension on the theme choruses and arranging details are new touches. The subtle shifts of color under Mitchell at the fade are indicative of Pearson's unassuming gifts as a writer. The Caribbean tinge on "O Mama Enit" recreates the celebratory calypso groove of "Fungii Mama," the popular track from Mitchell's 1964 Blue Note debut The Thing to Do. Roker is an ace in this atmosphere, as he had demonstrated a year earlier when he recorded "Hold 'Em Joe" with Sonny Rollins. In Pearson's arrangement, "Rigor Mortez" becomes a hybrid of soul-jazz and more secular big band fare. The piece had originally been recorded by composer Dave Burns in 1963 for his Vanguard album Warming Up, which is essentially an Al Grey—Billy Mitchell Sextet recording under Burns's name.

"I Should Care" captures Mitchell, Pearson, and the band at their best. It is taken at a perfect medium tempo and features an arrangement that envelopes Mitchell in both his theme and improvised choruses. Mitchell plays with such disarming sincerity and gorgeous phrasing that even his quotes of "Wee" and "Carmen" carry the emotional weight of freshly minted melody. His time is magnificent as well, with the rhythm section establishing an unimpeachable comfort zone. Pearson's background as a trumpeter no doubt contributed to his feeling for how to display Mitchell at his best here. (Pearson errs in the original liner notes, citing 1957 as the year in which Mitchell first teamed with Lou Donaldson on Blue Note. The correct date is 1952, and the results can be heard on the Donaldson album Quartet/Quintet/Sextet.)

Chick Corea, the pianist and composer on the final two. tracks, had received his first significant exposure in the jazz world on Mitchell's The Thing to Do and Down with It! The present album served similar notice regarding his talents as a composer, and heralded Corea's arrival as a major voice in the music. "Tones for Joan's Bones," written for Corea's first wife, is a masterpiece, an asymmetrical yet completely logical 44-bar structure (I would diagram it A—B—C—A—D—E, with the D section only four bars long) that inspires both Mitchell and Pearson to some of their best work. The performance brings to mind another writer who favored beautiful melodies and trumpet players, Tadd Dameron. "Straight Up and Down, " a fire-breathing modal workout not to be confused with similarly-titled works by Gerald Wilson, Eric Dolphy, and others, includes a 28-bar bridge with conversation between piano and the full ensemble on the theme choruses, yet reverts to more typical 32-bar form for the solos. Pearson gives the band written material that eggs each of the soloists on, with the sigh uttered by the horns at Corea's second bridge among the more inspired notions.

Both Corea compositions have become jazz standards. They were recorded by the composer two weeks later on his debut as a leader, the Vortex LP Tones for Joan's Bones. Pearson also reprised them in big band arrangements, recording "Straight Up and Down" in 1967 on Introducing Duke Pearson's Big Band and "Tones" a year later on Now Hear This! (Both tracks are included on the Blue Note CD reissue of Pearson's orchestral music.) The quality of those subsequent recordings notwithstanding, the versions heard here are the ones for the time capsule.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2005