BLP 4024

Jackie McLean - Swing, Swang, Swingin'

Released - February 1960

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, October 20, 1959
Jackie McLean, alto sax; Walter Bishop Jr., piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

tk.5 Let's Face The Music And Dance
tk.10 I Remember You
tk.12 Stablemates
tk.17 I Love You
tk.20 What's New
tk.23 I'll Take Romance
tk.24 116th And Lenox

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
What's New?	Johnny Burke, Bob Haggart	20/10/1959
Let's Face the Music and Dance	Irving Berlin	20/10/1959
Stablemates	Benny Golson	20/10/1959
Side Two
I Remember You	Johnny Mercer, Victor Schertzinger	20/10/1959
I Love You	Cole Porter	20/10/1959
I'll Take Romance	Oscar Hammerstein, Ben Oakland	20/10/1959
116th and Lenox	Jackie McLean	20/10/1959

Liner Notes 

SWING with a capital S is a noun and besides representing an era, is still used to describe o segment of jazz which has been redubbed mainstream. It has been advanced that swing when applied to jazz is more importantly a verb that should be unlimited in its application even when used as a noun (small s). I agree that no one jazz group or jazz man should hove a priority, even a verbal one, on this essential characteristic. One musician who grew up musically long after the Swing era (actually right in the middle of the flowering of bop) but who displayed a natural swing from his first professional engagement is Jackie McLean.

It doesn’t seem like yesterday but I can remember the first night I heard Jackie. Bud Powell was playing at a new club called Birdland. In the middle of his set, he called two young musicians up to the stand for what amounted to their debut in the big time. The trumpeter, Lowell Lewis, never mode it after that but the pudgy, 17-year old alto man who aped his idol, Charlie Parker, through a swift version of Night In Tunisia, grew up to be a powerful jazz-sayer in his own right. Although still playing in a style influenced by Parker, Jackie, age 27 as 1960 opened, has matured to a strong individual within his idiom, who not only still Swings in a forthright, unaffected manner but who has deepened his lyric sense.

Whether or not the American writers are aware of Jackie’s coming of age, there is one British critic who has recognized it. In the December 1959 issue of Jazz Monthly. Michael James has written a penetrating piece on McLean, the first article to appear on Jackie in any jazz magazine.

Among the insights James reveals are the ways in which McLean differs from Parker. “It is noticeable to even the most casual listener that his rhythmic approach is tied for more closely than Bird’s to the mechanics of the beat. The rhythmic variety that runs through Parker’s whole career as we know it from records finds but o distant echo in the younger man’s work. All the same, McLean’s lines are just as irregular, and his phrases often hove a personal lilt that runs counter to the basic movement only to enhance its strength”. he states, and goes on to say, regarding Jackie’s originality, “...this growing originality has been characterized by its gradualness rather than its speed - contrasted, for instance, with Rollins’ rapid evolution from 1954 onwards — there seems to be every reason to believe that although he has already mode several good records his potential is by no means completely fulfiled. McLean, I should soy, is still very much o man to watch.”

Of course, when this was written James had no way of hearing Jackie’s recent work. When he does, he can consider himself a prophet with honor. I know he would enjoy hearing the assurance and control that was so evident in Jackie’s playing on stage in The Connection, an off-Broadway play in which McLean doesn't come off too badly as on actor either. And when Micheal hears this album, the some completeness of expression will present itself. In his new, mature voice, Jackie still speaks with candor but there is more bittersweet than bitterness and a beautiful cry that says, in essence. “You’ve got to pay a lot of dues in life but it’s o groove to be alive.”

This album is a testimony to Jackie’s new strength. As the main soloist, he plays with unflagging zest through six, well-chosen selections. If listening interest remains at o consistently high level), it is only because McLean’s own, interest in what he is playing is obvious.

The rhythm section contains some of Jackie’s early associates. Walter Bishop Jr. was one of Bud Powell’s first disciples. He recorded for Blue Note with Art Blakey in 1947 and was on Jackie’s first recording with Miles Davis in 1951. Inactive for several years. Bish returned to the scene in 1959 with appearances at Birdland’s Monday night sessions and later in the year with Allen Eager and Philly Joe Jones. The hot undulation of his single line is unmarred by straining to get “funky” that has shown up in some modernist’s since the advent of the naturally funky Horace Silver. Bishop’s solos balance well with McLean’s here and, as always, he comps sympathetically. It’s good to have him back.

Arthur Taylor has gotten better and better in the same gradual manner that James ascribes to McLean. Now he is as accomplished as he is ubiquitous. A.T. and Jackie played together in a neighborhood band with Sonny Rollins in the late ‘40s. As pros. they show the results of over ten years of dedicated jazz playing.

Jimmy Garrison is a relative newcomer who was readily acceptable to the New York players when he came here from Philadelphia in 1958. He has since played with Lonnie Tristano, Benny Golson and Philly Joe Jones among others.

The standards here are all very interesting harmonically as well as melodically. If you are not familiar with them (Berlin’s Let’s Face The Music And Dance has not been recorded much, if ever, by contemporary jazz men) Jackie’s versions will serve as admirable introductions. Benny Golson’s Stablemates, a jazz standard at a very young age, is another highly lyric number in which McLean explores the changes with his heart and his mind rather than merely running them. And as if we needed any convincing as to his ability to play the blues, we are delivered to 116th and Lenox in a 12-bar train of blue steel.

The music needs no further explanation. As Alfred Lion said, “They come, swung and they split, so we called the album, Swing, Swang, Swingin’.”

They came and swung all right but before they split, Jackie and his associates did more than just swing — they mode some real “love” music.

—IRA GITLER

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