BLP 4021

Kenny Burrell - On View At The Five Spot Cafe

Released - February 1960

Recording and Session Information

"Five Spot Cafe", NYC, 2nd set, August 25, 1959
Tina Brooks, tenor sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Ben Tucker, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.10 Birks' Works
tk.11 Oh, Lady Be Good

"Five Spot Cafe", NYC, 3rd set, August 25, 1959

tk.15 Hallelujah

"Five Spot Cafe", NYC, 4th set, August 25, 1959
Roland Hanna, piano; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Ben Tucker, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.19 36-26-36

"Five Spot Cafe", NYC, 5th set, August 25, 1959
Bobby Timmons, piano; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Ben Tucker, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.22 Lover Man

Session Photos

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

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Birks' Works	Dizzy Gillespie	25/08/1959
Hallelujah	Clifford Grey, Leo Robin, Vincent Youmans	25/08/1959
Side Two
Lady Be Good	George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin	25/08/1959
Lover Man	Jimmy Davis, Ram Ramirez, James Sherman	25/08/1959
36-23-36	Kenny Burrell	25/08/1959

Liner Notes

THE FIVE SPOT, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side is, I should imagine, one of the most enjoyable rooms in the country for a musician to work. It is, I am quite sure, one of the most enjoyable rooms in which to listen to music. Unlike many jazz clubs, which ore either too barnlike or too chic, the Five Spot retains its original atmosphere of o friendly neighborhood bar. To be sure, since word of the club started to get around, it hos gotten more difficult to keep that atmosphere, particularly since Esquire magazine publicized it as the type of place in which you could hear fine music and see authentic “beat” characters, but owner Joe Termini has tried to keep his place the kind of room it was to begin with, and, barring on occasional overcrowded college vocation weekend, he has succeeded admirably.

Considering its fairly short span as a jazz club, the Five Spot has been responsible for some important jazz history. Cecil Taylor played his first extended New York engagement there, and, after years of semi-retirement, it was a lengthy Five Spot run that helped considerably in bringing Thelonious Monk back to the public eye, in the exalted position he holds today.

The music on this LP, recorded on location at the Five Spot, has the same casual, relaxed atmosphere as the club itself. Burrell on guitar, Ben Tucker on bass, Art Blakey on drums, and Roland Hanna on piano form the quartet for Hallelujah and 36-23-36. Later on in the evening, for Birks' Works, Lady Be Good, and Lover Mon, Bobby Timmons replaces Hanna, and Tina Brooks on tenor sax expands the group to quintet size. Both groups achieve something rare for records — on after-hours, playing-for-themselves feeling that musicians are seldom able to duplicate in a studio.

One good reason for this is Kenny Burrell’s guitar. The instrument is growing increasingly less heard in jazz, and is probably rarer in East Coast groups of the nature of these than anywhere else. Often, the instrument is thought of as the fourth wheel in a rhythm section, or an instrument to be added only for specific colors, but it is seldom used as an integral part of a group, and the guitarist is almost never the leader. Kenny has proved long before this that it is mere oversight to exclude the guitar, and the night-time quality of the strings in his hands here give the album its distinctive sound. He is not only in touch with the most contemporary developments, but goes all the way back to the jazz origins of his instrument. On his own composition, the blues 36-23-36 (a title and performance that makes one anxious to see who inspired it), he employs the true funky sound that can come from nothing but a back-country guitar. Art Blakey, of course, is a past-master at that kind of mood of this blues, and Roland Hanna’s piano enters beautifully into the spirit.

Anyone in the Five Spot with his best girl the night that Kenny Burrell played Lover Mon might well hove benefited greatly from the aura of the music. A performance like this, unashamedly romantic in a way that not enough jazz is any more, is surely a greater help to lovers than all the saccharine-stringed mood music albums ever released.

Perhaps in tribute to Thelonious Monk, who by now could consider the Five Spot an extension of his home, the group uses his paraphrase of Lady Be Good as part of their arrangement of the number. Both this and Dizzy Gillespie’s Birks’ Works feature Tina Brooks, a young tenor man whose work fits less easily into categories than most. In a field loaded with carbon copies of Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, Tina Brooks, while using certain elements of both of those men (it is almost impossible to avoid doing so), is going his own way. His style of lazy swing on Works and his tone on Lady are, while distinctly his own, reminiscent of Lester Young, which is by no means a bad place to begin.

Bobby Timmons and Roland Hanna, although they have very different styles (Bobby is the one using block chords, and Roland’s is the leaping Bud Powell approach) fit into the group with equal ease, and Ben Tucker provides firm support.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the group, at first glance, is the presence of Art Blakey, who works so constantly with his own Jazz Messengers and in numerous recording sessions that one might be surprised to see him turning up at the Five Spot with a group not his own. The answer to that, of course, is that Blakey loves to play — any place, any time, anywhere. And particularly, he loves to play with young musicians. He accepts his position as the world’s most active elder statesman with considerable practicality, and feels it both rejuvenates him and helps the “kids” when he plays with them. I see now, as soon as this is written, that it might tend to make Art Blakey sound like an old man, but I refer only to the importance of his stature. For evidence of his youth, vigor, and creative power, you need look no farther than this album. There are standout examples throughout—36-23-36, as I mentioned, and his force behind the group on Lady—but the best instance, and the single most electrifying moment on the record, is his extended solo on Hallelujah. Using mallets throughout to great effect, and with the enormous authority that Blakey possesses more than any o her drummer in the world, he tells, as he believes the drummer’s role should be, a complete story. Never descending to mere flashiness or noisemaking, he still displays, in the course of his solo, more virtuosity than most men do when they are trying.

So, this is what it is like at the Five Spot. Proof such as this album contains, that this kind of music is there to be preserved any night on astute recording company chooses to set up microphones, is one of the best recommendations a club could have.

—JOE GOLDBERG

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

Blue Note Spotlight - October 2012

http://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/kenny-burrell-at-the-five-spot/

In the jazz world, 1959 was a year where titans reigned, where nearly every name you could think of put out recordings that would define their eras, their careers, or in a few lucky cases, their entire field. Along with the likes of alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, pianist Horace Silver and trumpeter Donald Byrd, guitarist Kenny Burrell was one of a host of artists who had emerged in the mid ’50s and would personify the Blue Note roster by the end of the decade. But while the rich succession of albums that took shape in Rudy Van Gelder’s studio played a major part in the steady establishment of the label’s credentials and the ensuing renown of the artists who recorded there, one of the finest sessions of Blue Note’s 1959 season came from outside the studio’s confines—in a club gig recorded some 53 years ago.

On View at the Five Spot is a striking record, a peculiar blend of laid-back atmosphere and breakneck virtuosity that rewards casual and close listening equally well. Sit back, and you can soak in an ambiance that rides off tastefully played jam-session vibes. Lean forward, and you can take stock of how Burrell, who turned 81 on July 31, offers a dexterous style that rolls out clean-toned, feverishly dense yet limber single-note solos—a sound that fusion-era up-and-comers were still copping moves off fifteen years later. With his blues-to-bop-and-all-points-between versatility, Burrell works his way over, under around and through a murderer’s row of stylistically varied standards to acrobatic effect. His solo on the Dizzy Gillespie number “Birk’s Works”” is slick and supple, fluidly shifting between smooth burbles and sharp jabs. The Gershwins’ “Lady Be Good” gets one of its most superlative run-throughs since frequent Burrell collaborator Jimmy Smith’s A New Sound… A New Star rendition three years earlier, teasing a simple but brisk blues riff that quickly catches fire into something further towards the outer edges of hard bop. And “Lover Man,” still indelibly associated with Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker at the time, is explored with a suitably melancholic and gentle touch that still manages to pack in some impressive flurries of cascading notes. Indeed, in his autobiography One Train Later, guitarist Andy Summers of the Police claimed this version of “Lover Man” contains “one of the best jazz guitar solos ever recorded.”

The backing band for this session was a bit impromptu, but they click nonetheless. There’s a reason Art Blakey’s name is the same font size as Burrell’s on the cover, beyond name recognition and the promise of two greats in a rare collaboration. His drumming provides the chassis, the swing, and (particularly in the mallet-wielding “Hallelujah”) some of the solo fireworks. Jazz Messengers sideman Bobby Timmons and an early-career Roland Hanna take turns on piano, with the former’s sprightly touch, best heard in “Lover Man,” offset by the latter performer’s sharp edge on tunes like “Hallelujah” and “36-23-36.” And saxophonist Tina Brooks puts in a memorable appearance, less than two years before his final session, offering one of the better performances of his too-short career with some tenor work that complements Burrell’s melodic fusillades nicely. Burrell’s most definitive recordings may have been studio sessions, and On View at the Five Spot is more of a contrast to later, more blues-inflected career highlights like 1963’s Midnight Blue than a complement. But bottling lightning clearly wasn’t a bad way for producer Alfred Lion to spend a late August night in one of jazz’s most pivotal years.