BST 84293

Duke Pearson - The Phantom

Released - 1968

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 24, 1968
Jerry Dodgion, flute, alto flute; Bobby Hutcherson, vibes; Duke Pearson, piano, arranger; Sam Brown, acoustic guitar; Al Gafa, electric guitar; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Mickey Roker, drums; Victor Partajo, congas.

3049 tk.22 Bunda Amerela (Little Yellow Streetcar)

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 11, 1968
Jerry Dodgion, flute, alto flute #1-4; Bobby Hutcherson, vibes #1,3,4; Duke Pearson, piano, arranger; Sam Brown, acoustic guitar #1,3,4; Al Gafa, electric guitar #1-4; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Mickey Roker, drums; Carlos "Patato" Valdes, congas, guiro #1-4.

4013 tk.7 Los Ojos Alegres (The Happy Eyes)
4014 tk.8 Blues For Alvena
4015 tk.11 The Phantom
4017 tk.22 The Moana Surf
4018 tk.24 Say You're Mine

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
The Phantom	Duke Pearson	September 11 1968
Blues for Alvina	Willie Wilson	September 11 1968
Bunda Amerela	Duke Pearson	June 24 1968
Side Two
Los Ojos Alegres	Duke Pearson	September 11 1968
Say You're Mine	Duke Pearson	September 11 1968
The Moana Surf	Jerry Dodgion	September 11 1968

Liner Notes

Duke Pearson is remarkably consistent in the quality, freshness and clarity of his writing and playing. In this album, he adds another dimension to his substantial body of work by exploring the possibilities of an instrumentation in which a flute (Jerry Dodgion) becomes a continually intersecting element in a constant flow of rhythmic patterns and colors. “I was interested,” Duke told me, “in trying to be somewhat more exotic than previously and in illuminating diverse moods within that exoticism. The flute, particularly as played by Jerry, seemed to me especially apt for this approach because it has an evocative scope of colors—it can be light, clear, dark, soaring, brooding. And in conceiving the scores. I let the flute blend into the rhythm section which itself is so variegated with Bobby Hutcherson, two rhythm guitars. Victor Pantojo, Potato Valdes, and at its pulsating base, Bob Cranshaw and Mickey Roker.”

The initial stimulus for this set came as a result of a score Duke wrote with Sticks Evans for Still A Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class, a program shown on NET, the national educational television network. For one part of that score, not used in the program, Duke wrote The Phantom with the kind of instrumentation used throughout here. “The melody,” Duke recalls, “complemented a scene in which a black girl in a natural hairdo was walking down the street.”

The sound spectrum from that sequence stayed in Duke’s mind and he expanded it for this unique session. I asked him to describe The Phantom in this setting. “He’s dark,” Duke began, “he’s mysterious, and suddenly he comes out at you!” Dodgion’s and Hutcherson’s solos have, as Duke notes, an Eastern flavor. And throughout, the multi-colored rhythm section sets up a trance-like aura, a floating momentum, a kaleidoscope of sounds and feelings which shift as the emphasis moves from aito flute, to Duke’s calmly incisive piano and to Bobby Hutcherson’s darting vibes. Gradually the intensity mounts but remains controlled within this singular microcosm of textures that flow into rhythms and rhythms which take on their own colors.

The Alvina in Blues for Alvina is the widow of Willie Wilson. “Willie,” Duke says, “was a very dear friend of mine. He died in 1961. I was six months older than he, and we grew up in Atlanta through kindergarten and school and into the army. He was a tine trombonist and a very soulful person. This blues tells something of the kind of man he was. You know, at one point he had a very delicate operation in which one of his lungs was removed. But he still kept playing. That’s how strong a person Willie was.” And Duke’s clear affection tor Willie Wilson is an additional affecting element in his playing on this track.

Bunda Amerela, Portugese for a little yellow street car, comes from Duke’s time in Latin America in 1961. “In Brazil,” he says, “the buses come to the corner and slow down but don’t stop. People simply jump on. And some of that stop-and-go feeling—without coming to a complete stop—is in the song. it’s a very natural bossa nova, I think. I was there when the bossa nova form was emerging and I’ve always been fond of it. As I am fond of South America. I went to Venezuela last year on my honeymoon. Most people seem to want to run to Europe, but they’re missing a lot in South America. it’s so beautiful, and the people are so warm.” Duke’s own warmth and predilection for the lyrically beautiful are at the core of the song and of his performance.

Los Ojos Alegres (the happy eyes) are also a reflection of Duke’s experience south of the border. “Most of the girls in Brazil,” he remembers with undimmed pleasure, “have extraordinarily happy eyes. Dark, bright, shining.” The compo sition, as is characteristic of Duke’s works, has a natural grace, a resiliency of line and feeling, and a lucidity of structure. It’s music that acts as a balm, soothing but not in the least soporific. The kind of music that makes me want to see those ojos alegres myself.

Say You’re Mine was recorded on Donald Byrd’s Cat Walk album for Blue Note. “This time,” Duke emphasizes, “I slowed it down to get exactly the effect I wanted. I remembered the spell it casts when I play it in clubs. Always, whenever i go into it, I get complete silence from an audience. And in this version, i’d like to call particular attention to the superb accompaniment by Bob Cranshaw and Mickey Roker, but then they were superb throughout the album.” For this listener it’s one of Duke’s most attractive compositions— the quintessence of that clean-edged, softly glowing romanticism which makes him so unusually relaxing a writer-performer. And always, there is that easeful rhythmic stream. Duke is the kind of musician who swings from the touch of the first note.

The Moana Surf is by Jerry Dodgion. “Jerry’s a wonderful writer,” Duke points out. “He writes as he plays, with a deep lyricism. I’ve always felt an affinity with the way he writes. And it was Jerry I had in mind when planning this album. He’d played on the TV show with me, and I knew he was the man I had to have to implement what I’d imagined.” The song fits effortlessly into the ambience of the set as a whole, rounding out an essay in collective creation of an order of moving peacefulness that’s rarely heard on records in these tumultuous years.

Also central to the luminous success of this session is Bobby Hutcherson. “We flew him in from California just to do the date,” Duke underlines. “He was that important because he’s so versatile and because he’s the very best. Bobby is the only vibist I would do this kind of album with.” As for Bob Cranshaw, Duke refers to him as “my left hand.” Expanding on that approbation, Duke adds, “I’ve never done something instantaneously without Cranshaw being right there with me. I didn’t have to telegraph what I was going to do; he somehow just knew it. in Bunda Amerela, for instance, I go into a quote from The Saber Dance. I didn’t know i was about to play it, but there he was, right with me. Mickey Roker is like that too. We have a built-in telegraph key with which we communicate. I never know when we’re going to have to use it, but it always works.”

I expect that one reason Duke finds so many players instantly empathic with his music and himself is his own openness and attentiveness to everything going on around him. There’s nothing of strain in Duke. He keeps loose and aware. His music sings as well as swings, the creation of a man very much in tune with himself and therefore with wherever and whomever he chooses to be.

—Nat Hentoff

75th Anniversary Reissue Notes

From the moment Duke Pearson arrived in New York in 1959, his compositions had immediate currency and impact. Duke was able to make a composition harmonically interesting, melodically memorable and rhythmically in the groove. Compositions like "Jeannine" and "Chant" were turning heads. Those same qualities informed his lyrical piano style and stunning arranging abilities. But his final Blue Note sessions (1968-70) showed his palate expanding even further to embrace Brazilian rhythms and melodies and impressionistic harmonies.

The first album to mark a change in Pearson's direction was "The Phantom" which added two rhythm guitars (Al Gafa and Sam Brown) and two percussionists (Victor Pantojo and Patato Valdes) to the rhythm section and featured Bobby Hutcherson's vibes and Jerry Dodgion's flute and alto flute. Duke was aiming for more exotic and atmospheric moods in the music. But he also kept it swinging.

Most of the material comes from Pearson's pen, but "Blues For Alvina" was written by his friend the late trombonist Willie Wilson and Jerry Dodgion contributed "The Moana Surf." "The Theme From Rosemary's Baby" was a bonus track from the session first issued on the 2003 release of "Duke Pearson — Mosaic Select MS-008."

Duke's subsequent albums "How Insensitive" and "It Could Only Happen With You" continued in this vein, moving further into the Brazilian realm with the presence of Hermeto Pascoal, Flora Purim and Airto Morreira

Michael Cuscuna