BLP 4009

The Amazing Bud Powell - Volume 5 - The Scene Changes

Released - July 1959

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, December 29, 1958
Bud Powell, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

tk.1 The Scene Changes
tk.3 Down With It
tk.6 Comin' Up
tk.9 Duid Deed
tk.10 Cleopatra's Dream
tk.12 Gettin' There
tk.14 Crossin' The Channel
tk.16 Danceland
tk.17 Borderick

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images 
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Cleopatra's Dream	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Duid Deed	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Down with It	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Danceland	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Borderick	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Side Two
Crossin' the Channel	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Comin' Up	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Gettin' There	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
The Scene Changes	Bud Powell	29/12/1958

Liner Notes

IT IS one of the ironies of Bud Powell’s career that while his contemporaries have constantly looked to him for inspiration and guidance, his treatment in the musical press has been only intermittently observant and all too often concerned with his psychological and professional problems. A glance through the large body of jazz literature dumped on the market in recent years reveals that alone among the navigators of modern jazz he has been bypassed, while others who could not have existed musically without him hove earned fuller consideration.

Bud was a figure of powerful impact among musicians as early as 1945, when he began to be heard often in the combos along 52nd Street. He has never ceded his position as the most vital of the original bop pianists; yet there is not a single sentence about him, for instance, in Hear Me Talkin’ to Yo, while in the André Hodeir book there is a brief dismissal with these words: “Circumstances that we won’t dwell on here have prevented Bud Powell from achieving a full realization of his immense possibilities. It is in some of his quick-tempo solos, and perhaps only there, that we must look for an echo of that world of musical madness into which Charlie Parker tried to lead us.”

It is my belief that M. Hodeir underestimates the extent of Bud’s achievements; that he may be confusing cause and effect in relating the “circumstances” of Bud’s life and the attainment of his goals. Moreover, his successes manifestly are not merely a matter of dazzling the listener with up tempos, as the present album demonstrates.

Even Barry Ulanov, the first and most perceptive critic to study Bud seriously, was inclined in his History of Jazz in America to accentuate the negative: “He will set up an intriguing pattern of ideas, aptly constructed, brightly developed, and then suddenly will break the structure and the development to repeat one or two of his phrases in a seemingly endless and senseless reiteration. His solos sometimes hove a nagging, fragmentary quality, like a series of boxes piled precariously on top of one another, without point or purpose.” But, he is careful to add, there are other solos that “swing furiously from the first to the last bar, that add lines in o constant enrichment of ideas, that gave bop its only real piano voice.” It seems to me that the fragmentary qualities imputed by Ulanov (this book was published in 1952) may have been observed in person a decode ago but are rarely found on his more typical recordings. Listen to the third and fourth choruses in Crossin’ the Channel. The boxes are piled in a careful, orderly heap; there is nothing precarious about their placement. This is true of most of Bud’s best work, a substantial proportion of which can be found in his Blue Note LPs.

A curious aspect of this latest set is its emphasis on minor keys. On the first side all but the closing track are minor compositions; a fifth minor theme is heard on the second side In Gettin’ There. More important than the matter of mode is the happy circumstance that Bud felt very much like blowing on the day of this session, pausing less often than usual for bass or drum interludes and maintaining a consistently inventive and technically impeccable level throughout.

Cleopatra’s Dream, the opening track, typifies the prevailing temper; a medium-bright minor theme, it is uninterrupted Powell throughout, its melody a simple attractive structure on a tonic-and-dominant base, His improvisations fluctuating between long single-note lines, a couple of excursions into octave unison lines and one brief passage using chords horizontally.

Duid Deed, slower and still minor, reveals itself immediately as a typical bop line of the kind that prevailed in the mid-40s. The familiar construction — one beat rest followed by a four-note phrase and a three-note phrase, the two final notes being a “bebop” on the first beat of the second bar — has persisted for close to fifteen years for a logical reason: it swings.

Down With It, too, is unremittingly bop, its extensive single-note lines recalling the halcyon days of the revolution; one can almost feel at times that on the next chorus Fats Navarro may take over. But then Paul Chambers walks up to the microphone, bow in hand, and we are reminded of a newer generation, and of the younger talents that are constantly added as the scene changes.

Danceland presumably was so titled because its moderato pace and basically stated main phrase — starting with eight quarter notes, each right on the beat — combine to lend it a simple and danceoble quality.

Borderick is, by Powell standards, a maverick. Dedicated to his three-year-old son Earl Douglas John Powell, for whom he improvised it one night, it is virtually a melodic nursery rhyme, a tuneful eight-bar fragment that is repeated, with syncopations and other minor alterations, throughout the entire brief performance here. The second chorus includes a passage in which Bud sounds as if he has been listening to Fats Waller. Aside from being an ideal weapon with which to confuse one’s friends on a blindfold-test basis, this track is valuable in the reflection of a seldom-considered aspect of Bud’s personality, his life as a family man.

Crossin’ The Channel is not related to the early bop blues recorded some years back by Winding, Mulligan and Wallington. An up tempo theme that sounds like a reworked scale or exercise, it is notable not only for the continuity of the improvised passages, as discussed above, but also for the firmness and strength with which Bud makes his statements. This assurance, a quality associated with his best performances and missing on some of his less felicitous recording dotes, is a quintessential component of the true Powell character. Locking the unique dynamism, the peculiar articulation that can only be produced exactly in this manner by the originator himself, Bud’s imitators tend to sound like victims of pernicious musical anemia when they parade the identical phrases.

Comin' Up, which runs almost eight minutes, is one of Bud’s longest recorded piano solos and certainly one of the most strikingly different. There are moments when this could be the work of a pianist in a mambo band, yet every once in a while a seemingly trivial dynamic or harmonic touch will emphasize the important difference that lifts it out of that mundane zone. Starting with a six-note statement by Art Taylor, then taken up by Chambers and finally by Powell, it is built around a phrase that acquired its character from the opening and closing F (in the key of E Flat). There is a benevolent, cheerful note in the Latin passages here that may seem atypical to most Powell students; personally I am past the stage where it surprises me to be surprised by Bud. Comin' Up might have been the product of an evening spent listening to Machito or Joe Loco, yet there is in it something that Powell alone could create. Art Taylor’s conservative supplementary rhythmic impetus, a notable asset to the entire album, is particularly valuable here.

Gettin’ There reverts to the minor mode, of medium-bright tempo. During this track I was particularly impressed by the horn-like nature of much of Powell’s ad libbing; try listening to this while imagining the some lines performed by, say, Clifford Brown. If Earl Hines was the original trumpet style pianist, the concept is by no means incompatible with the even more essentially horizontal ideations of Bud.

The Scene Changes is another boppish theme, one that could have been written by Bird, with a basically upward trend to the melody. This time there is a pause for solo by Chambers and Taylor and Bud goes out with one of those sudden bop endings, the kind that become boring while they were being overdone during the 1940s but now have some validity again when not used immoderately.

When Bud sow the cover photo for this album, showing him with Earl Douglas John Powell, he immediately reacted by suggesting: “Call the album The Scene Changes.” In terms of generations and hierarchies he was right; yet in some respects the scene is less changed than it might seem to be. It changed when Bird and Pres departed, yet the central scene, of which they were an unvarying focal point, remained unfadingly printed in our minds, a photograph still immutable in a setting where everything else seemed restless and questing. Bud Powell is part of the changing scene, true; but as long as he remains true to himself, to the fundamental qualities he brought to music, a certain part of the scene will remain unchanged, and I for one will be among the grateful.

—LEONARD FEATHER (Author of The Book of Jazz: Meridian Books)

Alfred Lion of Blue Note extends special thanks to Oscar Goodstein, the genial manager of “Birdland”, for his cooperation in making this recording possible.

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT THE SCENE CHANGES

I've always considered cover photo on this album to be one of the most evocative in the annals of jazz. Bud Powell sits at the keyboard, lost in concentration, while his young son peeks out from the bass-clef end of the piano bench. It's as if the childlike innocence of a performance such as "Borderick" is emerging from the stem demeanor of the adult professional. Given that the professionaI in question is Bud Powell, Francis Wolff's moving dual portrait also suggests that Bud's younger and more consistently brilliant self is forever looking over the shoulder of the older and often tragically erratic musician Powell became for the majority of his working life.

Such is the price of early genius, even for those who did not suffer the emotional problems and ill treatment Powell faced. When you start at the Olympian level represented by the music on The Amazing Bud Powell Volume (also available in the RVG series, as are all of Powell's other Blue Note sessions) you will forevermore be held to that incredible standard. Yet when The Scene Changes was recorded in 1958, Powell could no longer channel what Max Harrison once described as his "admittedly delirious emotions" with the relentless eloquence that suffuses his playing on the 1949 Modernists recordings that feature Fats Navarro and Sonny Rollins, or the 1951 trio date with Curly Russell and Max Roach that produced three different. dazzling takes of "Un Poco Loco. " The obvious point of comparison here is "Comin' Up," which recalls "Un Poco Loco" through its use of Latin rhythms and a harmonically static montuno structure during the improvisation. Given the deliberation of Powell's improvising on "Comin' Up," how could it help but sound second-best?

If we didn't know "Un Poco Loco," however — or, better yet, if this was presented as the performance of a previously unknown pianist — we would have an easier time appreciating how wonderful "Comin' Up" and the other performances on this album really are. Leonard Feather's original liner notes would not have had to go through so much of the special pleading that Powell's supporters felt compelled to include in discussions of his best late-fifties work; but of course there was the younger Bud, lurking in the background, leading us to overlook such strengths as the inspired pacing of "Cleopatra's Dream," the whimsy of "Borderick," the relaxed aura of "Duid Deed" and the fluency of "Down With It" and "Gettin' There." "Crossin' The Channel" may get closest to early Powell in its brisk mood, but it also delights in its use of octaves and chords, and in the more pronounced impact of Powell's oft-unjustly-maligned left hand.

Another point that gets lost in the shadow cast by Powell's early genius is the ongoing quality of his compositions. Even when revisiting familiar territory, he finds strong thematic ideas to frame his improvisations. Hence "The Scene Changes" goes over the terrain of his great "John's Abbey" with similar success, and "Duid Deed" gives a more lyrical spin to the idea Powell used on his earlier Monk-like tune "Mediocre." "Cleopatra's Dream" also stands out as a refreshing entry point into a chord sequence that bears resemblance to "Autumn Leaves." And as usual, Powell writes melodies on his bridges, rather than leaving them open for blowing as was the frequent bebop practice.

Producer Alfred Lion is always credited with an ability to make Powell feel comfortable in the recording studio, and part of that ability had to do with assembling the right supporting cast. Art Taylor was Powell's drummer of choice between 1953 and '58, and Taylor's masterful use of brushes is on display throughout this collection. He and bassist Paul Chambers had already jointly supported Powell on his 1957 Blue Note album Bud!, and were also a rhythm team of long standing in Miles Davis's working groups, on the trio recordings of Davis pianist Red Garland, and in numerous other studio sessions. They knew how to swing together and how to support a pianist together, and their contribution to the success of this session should not go unnoted.

Powell tended to be a one-take artist in the recording studio, but he did produce an alternate of "Comin' Up" that benefits from greater focus and concision than the master take. The album title was a prophetic stroke, for Powell and family left the U.S. in 1959 to settle in Paris. Powell's time on the Left Bank provided more material for his legend and inspired the Bertrand Tavernier film 'Round Midnight. It also offered additional opportunities to play with the inspiration heard on this underrated session.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2003