BST 84267

Duke Pearson - The Right Touch

Released - 1968

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 13, 1967
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Garnett Brown, trombone; James Spaulding, alto sax; Jerry Dodgion, alto sax, flute; Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Duke Pearson, piano, arranger; Gene Taylor, bass; Grady Tate, drums.

1941 tk.23 Make It Good
1942 tk.25 Los Malos Hombres
1943 tk.33 Scrap Iron
1944 tk.35 Rotary
1939 tk.37 My Love Waits (O Meu Amor Espera)
1940 tk.38 Chili Pepper

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Chili Peppers	Duke Pearson	September 13 1967
Make It Good	Duke Pearson	September 13 1967
My Love Waits (O Meu Amor Espera)	Duke Pearson	September 13 1967
Side Two
Los Malos Hombres	Duke Pearson	September 13 1967
Scrap Iron	Duke Pearson	September 13 1967
Rotary	Duke Pearson	September 13 1967

Liner Notes

THE right touch, as it applies to Duke Pearson both as pianist and composer-arranger, is that touch which connotes clarity, economy, melodic ease, and resilient lyricism. In a time of musical turbulence, Duke is concerned with form as graceful order. He is true to his temperament in that he does not see the world as essentially a place of combat. His music, accordingly, is a refuge from the pressures endemic to "advanced" civilization. This album, like Sweet Honey Bee before it, provides relaxation of a rare consistency.

Chili Peppers received its title, Duke explains, because “it sounded hot.” A twelve-bar tune with an eight-bar vamp at the end of each ensemble chorus, it begins with a characteristically airy Pearson theme, played with precision but not rigidity by the ensemble. Stanley Turrentine’s big-toned, unabashedly assertive tenor is particularly impressive for its incisive, speech-like directness of expression. Duke’s own solo, light-hearted and flowing, leads back into the beguiling theme. The flute on this track, incidentally, is played by Jerry Dodgion.

The title of Make It Good emerged, according to Duke, because “that’s what the melody line seemed to be saying.” The first half is 16 bars, and the second half 14 bars. At the start, Duke reveals his capacity for a Basie-like use of space in what is a quintessential example of swinging time. Note too the collective control and inner dynamics of the ensemble passages. Complementing Duke is Freddie Hubbard’s ringingly clear horn with its emphasis on a similar quality of improvisatory logic that is as clear as a cloudless sky.

My Love Waits (O Meu Amor Espera) is a bossa nova love ballad, distilling the years of absence between Duke and the young lady who became his wife in April, 1967. For three years, she was in Atlanta while Duke was in New York, and the composition — with extraordinary song-like, disciplined ardor in Freddie Hubbard’s solo and Duke’s reflective statement — is one of the most affecting declarations of love in or out of jazz in recent recorded annals. It’s as close to a flawless performance as one can find — one of those occasions when everything came together in exactly the right balanace and everyone involved was powered by parallel memories of just this feeling of expectation.

The leaping Los Molos Hombres, the bad men, was written by Duke about seven years before this recording. “It’s not easy to play,” Duke points out, “because it’s in b flat minor and the kind of fingering required for the melody line presents difficulties to hornmen. That’s where the title came from. Anybody who can play this is ‘bad’ in the sense that ‘bad’ in jazz means very good indeed. It’s a 16-bar melody line, repeated, but the solo choruses are on the minor blues.” There are hot, spare solos by Stanley Turrentine, Freddie Hubbard and James Spaulding who, I remain convinced, merits much wider recognition than he’s yet achieved. Duke’s solo — with its firmly controlled soaring quality—brings to mind a virtuoso ice skater.

Scrap Iron, says Duke, is “an old, slow, funky, down-home blues. Back where I come from, ‘scrap iron’ is another name for moonshine or white lightning. And after you’ve had some of it, as this song says, you just sit around lazily because you can hardly walk. In fact, that stuff is so powerful you can get high just off the smell.” Stanley Turrentine gets immediately to the root of the song and of jazz, telling as basic a story as you can find. Then, playing a light wind over the waves set up by the horns, Duke too speaks his emotional truth.

The final Rotary — all the songs are by Pearson—is a 3-bar tune in 6/4. The first 3-bar phrase is repeated, a second 3-bar phrase is repeated, and then there’s a return to the original 3-bar phrase which is repeated. Hence the title. Rather Monkish in quality, the song finds emphatic interpreters in Hubbard, Spaulding, Garnett Brown on trombone, Stanley Turrentine, and the crystalline leader.

Looking back on the date, Duke noted how good the rhythm section felt. “Grady Tate,” he said, “has the ability, because of his experience with big groups, to make any unit sound larger, and that’s what he did here. As for Gene Taylor, he is strong. Jerry Dodgion is an excellent lead, and really rounded out the reed section. As for Stanley Turrentine, we really needed him for his fire and emotion. And Spaulding, as I’ve said before, also communicates that emotional force which makes a basic difference in what’s happening. What more can you say about Freddie Hubbard? He’s a trumpet player who always fits. And Garnett Brown, in his solo and in his ensemble work, gave us a lot of punch. He’s sharp, crisp, a very articulate cat at all times.”

In sum, Duke chose for this session musicians with characteristics specifically relevant to his own criteria for music—crisp articulation; fire that’s channeled, not wasted; and a virile, unostentatious lyricism. This is music which is so basic in terms of its clarity, warmth, and melodic directness that it doesn’t date. No matter what trends succeed each other, this remains an island of sunny order.

—NAT HENTOFF

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT THE RIGHT TOUCH

When Blue Note was sold to Liberty Records in 1966, many of the changes appeared cosmetic — more full-color album covers, for example — without a major shift in the composition of the artistic roster. One significant difference, however, was the more frequent appearance of ensembles larger than the usual three-to-six-piece units that had been the label's staples. Liberty simply had more financial resources at its disposal, plus the inclination of a mid-sized pop label to afford at least those of Blue Note's artists with a chance at commercial success the opportunity to appeal to a wider audience.

This was great news for Duke Pearson. In his first phase with the label, Pearson had established himself as a pianist and composer, primarily through two trio albums and more extensive work in support of Donald Byrd. His arranging talents had first manifest themselves on Byrd's classic 1963 septet-and-voices album A New Perspective; yet budgetary constraints and the label's aesthetic preference for small-group performance primarily confined Pearson to sextet writing, even on his own first album with horns, Wahoo, in 1964. Pearson had to leave the reservation, as it were, to feature more than six pieces on an album of his own, as he did on his Atlantic collections, Honeybuns (1965) and Prairie Dog(1966).

Things began to change at Blue Note after the big-band gamble of Stanley Turrentine's Joyride (with Oliver Nelson arrangements) paid off in the hit single "River's Invitation," and especially once Liberty's deeper pockets became available, Beginning in 1966, Pearson took on writing assignments for Hank Mobley, Turrentine, Blue Mitchell, Lee Morgan, and Lou Donaldson that involved at least seven pieces; yet his own first post-Atlantic session, Sweet Honey Bee, remained in the sextet format, The Right Touch was Pearson's first opportunity on Blue Note to write something for himself that employed an octet. As such, it has more claim than his 1959 debut to the title Profile.

Even in his early work, Pearson had displayed a gift for finding fresh instrumental combinations, Once allowed to expand his pallet, he employed a variety of new combinations without settling upon a single preferred instrumentation. The front line here, for example, with its second alto sax where a baritone might be expected, directs the ensemble voicing in a higher direction, especially in the backgrounds that support Turrentine's tenor solos; but the resulting writing never feels insubstantial, a tribute to both the skill of the players and Pearson's supremely balanced concept.

The arranging is made more impressive by the quality of the compositions, which affirm Nat Hentoff's view of Pearson as primarily a lyrical and "relaxed" artist. The Basie connection is indeed evident on "Make It Good," not to mention the more soulful "Scrap Iron"; "My Love Waits" is a beautiful performance that displays an affinity for Brazilian music that would gain prominence in Pearson's subsequent work; and "Chili Peppers" is an uncommonly airy take on the de rigueur dance-beat number that had become mandatory on so many Blue Note dates. Yet there were knottier touches as well, including the structural wrinkles of "Make It Good" and "Rotary." On the whole, the band handled these challenges well, although the shift to blues form for the solos on "Los Malos Hombres" left James Spaulding at a loss, particularly on the alternate take. Even so, the alternate is valuable for its strong Turrentine solo, and for the view it provides of Freddie Hubbard working through similar ideas, albeit to better effect on the earlier master.

Turrentine and Hubbard, the primary soloists after the leader, are both in excellent form throughout. The saxophonist worked frequently with Pearson in the late-'60s, and his muscular directness always stood out amidst the grace of Pearson's writing, while Hubbard's more contemporary harmonic notions were equally effective. And while it is easy to overlook the piano solos with such strong personalities aboard, Pearson's taste and lucidity never falter. While the supporting work of bassist Gene Taylor and drummer Grady Tate is also consistently excellent, special attention should be paid to the creativity that informs the drum solo on "Hombres." Tate's reliability in studio contexts tends to define him as a drummer, but his work here and on other albums of the time (Stan Getz's Sweet Rain being a primary example) confirm that he can also let loose when the occasion demands.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2006