BLP 4038

Jackie McLean - Capuchin Swing

Released - November 1960

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 17, 1960
Blue Mitchell, trumpet #1-4,6; Jackie McLean, alto sax #1-4,6; Walter Bishop Jr., piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

tk.2 Francisco
tk.7 Just For Now
tk.8 Condition Blue
tk.14 Capuchin Swing
tk.15 Don't Blame Me
tk.19 On The Lion

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Francisco	Jackie McLean	17/04/1960
Just for Now	Walter Bishop, Jr.	17/04/1960
Don't Blame Me	Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh	17/04/1960
Side Two
Condition Blue	Jackie McLean	17/04/1960
Capuchin Swing	Jackie McLean	17/04/1960
On the Lion	Walter Bishop, Jr.	17/04/1960

Liner Notes

ARTHUR TAYLOR, the drummer on this album, was at my house one day while I was in the midst of writing these notes. He grew up in the same neighborhood as Jackie and has been with him in many different groups since they first played weekends together in a teen-age band. If anyone is qualified to aptly comment on Jackie’s blowing, it is A.T. When I asked him to offer something, he replied, ”There’s nothing flighty about Jackie’s playing. He plays hard and to the point” and then added, as he pointed to the speaker from where McLean’s sounds were boiling. ”Talking about soul - that’s real soul, none of that imitation jive.”

Another person who admires Jackie’s playing is Michael James, the British critic who has written perceptively about him in Jazz Monthly. After quoting James in my notes to Swing, Swang, Swingin’ (Blue Note 4024), I thought it only proper that Blue Note send him a copy of that and The Connection (4027) on which Jackie also performs brilliantly. His reaction was highly favorable but the thing that stood out among the comments that he sent in a letter to me was, ”What amazes me is that the sense of conviction is as pronounced as ever. There aren’t more than a handful of jazzmen - Hawk, Coltrane, Rollins spring at once to mind - who sound as passionately involved in their music.”

Jackie McLean doesn’t fool around. The music from deep within him reaches out and grabs you. He expresses himself with such a vital, compelling sound that he has the power to lift your spirit as he soars aloft on a plane of genuine emotion. Jackie feels that right now Miles Davis and his concept of playing less notes, but notes that mean something, are affecting him more than other saxophone players. This is a reiteration of something he told Joe Goldberg on the liner for New Soil (Blue Note 4013).

Blue Mitchell is another direct, unfettered kind of player who, like Jackie, doesn’t neglect thinking as he swings. I first heard Blue one afternoon in the early ’505 at Thelonious Monk's house. Although he later made a record with Lou Donaldson for Blue Note (1537), he was buried, for the most part, in Earl Bostic’s band until his talent was really brought to light in Horace Silver’s group. He and Jackie played together one Monday night at Birdland in 1960, and, as a result, Jackie asked him to do this date.

Another playing associate who dates back to Jackie’s teen-age years is Walter Bishop Jr. Always one of the better players In the Bud Powell style, he has evolved into a more personal and polished pianist now. Many people are not familiar with his work because of his inactivity during a period in the mid-’50s but he is too good to be overlooked any longer.

Paul Chambers and Arthur Taylor are the bane of a liner writer. What can you say about them that hasn’t been said before? If I haven‘t said it, someone else surely has. They keep getting better and better and that’s for sure. Individually, each man does his job well; as a team they are in perfect balance. The countless times they have played together has bred a familiarity that borders on a permanent rapport.

McLean’s Francisco (for Blue Note’s Frank Wolff) opens the set. It is a swift, steaming blues that makes good use of interludes which the soloists use to launch themselves with renewed vigor. Jackie gets off some wonderfully effective growls. Chambers, in addition to plunging through in the accompaniment, takes a short but hot bowed solo. Taylor swings in many different degrees of volume. Listen to him behind Bishop after he has backed the horns.

Just For Now is a pensive, pretty melody by Bishop that is swung along in medium tempo. The horns under Walter in the bridge of the opening and closing choruses are a welcome touch. Jackie explores the harmonies with a probing mind that has melodies of its own to contribute. Blue and Bish are no less sensitive. The versatile Chambers closes the soloing with a plucked bit this time.

One of the few pianists with some degree of prominence and proficiency not to have received his own trio LP is Walter Bishop. Jackie wanted to remedy this in part. He suggested toward the end of the date that Bish choose any tune he wanted and do a trio track. The choice was Don’t Blame Me in an arrangement that he had played originally at the Cafe Bohemia in 1955. It’s a real trio outing in that every member of the rhythm section gets a chance in this well-integrated number which finds the ballad standard with its ”tempoture" slightly raised.

Condition Blue is a dark and ominous shade in McLean’s line. Things brighten a bit when Mitchell brings his own hue of Blue to commence the soloing with Bishop’s happy comping. Jackie turns the mood to midnight again with an exceptionally well-structured solo that builds by astute use of rhythmic variation. He also has a short bit leading back into the theme after Bishop’s solo.

Capuchin Swing is Jackie’s dedication to Mr. Jones, the McLean family’s pet monkey, pictured on the cover. After a mention like this, Mr. Jones is bound to get ”star eyes”. The versatile Taylor backs the Latinized sections well and adds some spicy comments. Jackie’s big, open sound commands attention; his pretty thoughts hold it. Blue flows freely along with the ease and grace that never desert him during the entire set. Bish digs in for two choruses where he puts the alternation of the background rhythms to good use.

The last track takes us from monkey to Lion. On the Lion is for Alfred of Blue Note and composed by Walter Bishop. It lilts along at a buoyant tempo with its writer taking the first solo, followed by Jackie and Blue in a happy closer.

This has been Jackie McLean’s year. He has done a remarkable job, both acting and playing, in The Connection and he also made a sparkling series of recordings for Blue Note as leader and sideman. If you have any of his other albums, you know what I mean. If you don’t, start with Capuchin Swing and work back. It will be one time you’ll step backward and go forward or I’m a monkey’s uncle!

- IRA GITLER

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

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT CAPUCHIN SWING

The recordings made by Jackie McLean during his tenure as a Blue Note artist (1959-1967) chart one of the most important conceptual odysseys undertaken by any jazz musician during that period. McLean, the committed bebopper who worshipped Charlie Parker and was close enough to Bird to be considered a protege, heard new sounds in his head and explored ways to translate them into a a coherent conception on his horn throughout the period. Yet where the extensively documented odysseys of Miles Davis and John Coltrane found these giants constantly setting older notions aside as they moved into new conceptual territory, McLean was not so quick to jettison his earlier approach. Even after the clear breakthroughs of the albums Let Freedom Ring (1962) and One Step Beyond (1963), he would frequently return to the chord patterns and rhythmic grooves of his earlier work.

Capuchin Swing finds McLean at an early stage of his search, mixing the familiar with the new. The title track, based the changes of "Star Eyes," would have fit comfortably into his previous recital, Swing Swang Swingin', which was devoted primarily to standards. "Francisco," on the other hand, visits edgier, more exploratory terrain by alternating harmonically static interludes with straight blues choruses. McLean had employed this approach a year earlier on "Hip Strut," from his first Blue Note release New Soil. It might be considered a transitional form that brought him into the modal zone that would characterize much of his later work, or a clever means of having it both ways in terms of harmonic motion. In any event, in the context of "Francisco" this structural balancing act inspired of his most intense alto solos of the period.

Another distinguishing feature of this album is the focus it places on compositions and piano of Walter Bishop, Jr. (1927-1998), one of McLean's oldest musical associates. Bishop had been the pianist on the Miles Davis session that marked McLean's debut in 1951, and was also frequently heard with Charlie Parker at the end of Bird's career. A year after this album was recorded, Bishop got the opportunity to record his first trio album for the short-lived Jazztime label, though it and a subsequent session for Cotillion drew little attention. His playing took on a more harmonically complex approach after studies with Hall Overton in New York and Lyle "Spud" Murphy in Los Angeles, but, like McLean, Bishop never completely abandoned the bebop roots of his conception. The pianist was also heard with McLean on Swing Swang Swingin', and subsequently traveled to California with the McLean/Kenny Dorham quintet that recorded the live album Inta Somethin' in 1961. Years later, Bishop served as a guest lecturer in the Jazz Studies program that McLean founded at Hartt College. While he ultimately recorded several albums under his own name for companies such as BIack Jazz and Muse, Bishop is primarily remembered for his sideman stints with Parker, Davis, McLean, and the Bill Hardman-Junior Cook quintet.

The title and cover photo of this reveal a sense of humor on McLean's part worthy of Lenny Bruce, as anyone who has read A. B. Spellman's brilliant book Four Lives in the Bebop Business should recognize. Like many musicians of the period, McLean was a victim of the "jones," less colloquially known as heroin addiction, and Spellman chronicles how McLean's habit led to arrests, incarcerations, and loss of the New York City cabaret card then required to perform in establishments that served alcoholic beverages. At the time of this session. McLean was fortunate to have found steady work in the play The Connection, where he both played onstage in Freddie Redd's quartet and acted with the other quartet members in the roles of musician/junkies. While there had been earlier allusions to McLean's problems, like the title change of his early composition "Minor March" to "Minor Apprehension" when it appeared on New Soil, bringing a simian pet the cover-photo shoot was something else again. At least the monkey is not pictured on McLear's back.

Writing in 1966. Spellman could state that McLean, then 34 years of age, had been "a drug addict for much of his life." That statement long ago became history. McLean stopped using drugs, moved to and Hartford, and became involved in jazz education. After several years of limited work outside the university context, he ultimately returned to active performing and displayed the same visceral approach heard on his classic Blue Note albums. I was to fortunate hear McLean in person as these notes were being written, and can report that, 42 years after recording Capuchin Swing, he still blows the stuffing out of "Minor March" and the other ballads, blues and original lines in his repertoire. 

— Bob Blumenthal, 2002