BST 84305

Elvin Jones - The Ultimate

Released - August 1969

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 6, 1968
Joe Farrell, tenor, soprano sax, flute; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums.

4001 tk.3 What Is This
4002 tk.6 In The Truth
4003 tk.9 Ascendant
4004 tk.23 Sometimes Joie
4005 tk.25 Yesterdays
4006 tk.26 We'll Be Together Again

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
In the Truth	Joe Farrell	September 6 1968
What Is This?	Jimmy Garrison	September 6 1968
Ascendant	Jimmy Garrison	September 6 1968
Side Two
Yesterdays	Otto Harbach, Jerome Kern	September 6 1968
Sometimes Joie	Jimmy Garrison	September 6 1968
We'll Be Together Again	Carl Fischer, Frankie Laine	September 6 1968

Liner Notes

The Elvin Jones Trio's first Blue Note LP, "Puttin' It Together," 4282, did just that. The range of the group's repertoire, from ballads to heavy swingers, with consideraNe variety between these slow-to-fast poles was displayed, and we heard a small band with style and heat and something to say. In this album, their second for Blue Note, the message is reinforced and enriched. Again, they play a program of medium and fast swingers, two ballads (one pretty and one swung), one or two things that move into the "free jazz" area — and they're at home with it all. Everything has conviction, personality and, whatever the degree, swing.

When you've listened to — and rejected — as much pop-jazz, rock-jazz, let's-make-a-buck-cause-that's-where-it's goin'-jazz as I have, this trio sounds not only like a big hunk of jazz truth ('truth"? yeh, artistic truth: integrity, talent, skill, cohesion and an immediately recognizable group sound, produced by the sympathetic blend of strong musical personalities with a common goal, to make a statement that communicates) but like one of the few organized groups playing modern jazz today untroubled by problems of direction. It knows what it has to say, and goes about saying it, straight ahead, like professionals, hard and direct.

Hard, ruthlessly hard, swing characterizes the album's opener, In the Truth by Joe Farrell. A riffish line with rhythm in a varied 2/4 ... 16 bars, somewhat like a blues with an extension, and a contrasting 16-bar section to follow. Notice how the 2/4 feel is handled in the "B" section by Garrison and Jones: bass pedal point and big, sustaining snare rolls in waves from Jones. Then, it's off to swingland. Joe's tenor in Trane's track and the rhythm pushing with enough drive and energy to make the New York Philharmonic swing. There are free-flying 8-bar exchanges between tenor and drums ard a solo from Elvin, short, pointed and with a percussive sound and rhythmic conception unmistakable as any but his. The "A" riff line returns for 16 and the run-down semi-coda hints at a re-statement of the line. Lay down the swing, brother. Jimmy Garrison's What Is This is an easy-go sort of thing. Bass and soprano saxophone duo cadenza opens — very fluid Farrell here on what amounts to a loose variant on the theme — then a brief section with drums added, still in free tempo. A lazy medium beat sets it up for the soprano lead with much embellishment, eight bars and another cadenza, then to straight time with soprano around the changes, for the basic 32. Garrison's turn, very relaxed and resonant, with Elvin's tasty backing. To that cadenza duet again, as on the opening. This time brushes join after the first approximate 8, in free time. Then to tempo again on release and a pushy suspended rhythm for the last 8 bars.

Ascendant, the second Garrison original in the set is an offbeat 24-25 bar theme. Elvin's neat brushes on the introduction for 8, then it's soprano and bass mostly in unison, on the line. It's an attractive swing tune that manages to go somewhere and develop. Straight ahead swing with soprano skirling over a powerfully pulsating beat, Elvin wielding sticks. It's virtually a cliche among drummers to say that the greatest jazz drummers have all gotten a "good" and personal sound on the instrument. There's nothing loud or flashily "hot drummer" here. It's just there, at the service of the band and the beat. Complex, yes, but always swinging powerfully, intense and infinitely varied. Notice Elvin's quick switch to brushes for the "out" line immediately after his stick solo.

Yesterday opens Side Il and is the first of the two standards in the set. Jerome Kern's beautiful song in this version is set up with a bolero-like rhythm pattern. Note Jimmy's strong underpinning here and Elvin's very quiet, but incisively rhythmic brush work. Farrell's tenor takes the lead and improvises for two choruses. Then it's Garrison's bass with variations on a walk with the song's beautiful harmonies set out so that your ear tends to fill in the rest of the notes in each cord. Elvin is quite subdued here. After the bass solo Farrell's tenor re-enters working around the lead, for a chorus and a vamp and one of those leave-it-gently-lovingly-languorously tensions, Garrison's bass carrying it on out, way down and moodily.

Garrison's third original in this set — and his big solo feature — Sometimes Joie opens with Joe's tenor barking out the line over suspended rhythm. Two 10-bar sections and it's right to the swing business, at which this trio excells. Tenor improvisation over a pulsating beat, constantly shifting in its emphasis, its dynamics. Elvin is as imaginative here, as a rhythm player, as if he were playing a solo — but still feeding, stimulating the soloist, Farrell. Notice that Elvin's intensity and rhythmic complexity grows steadily throughout Farrell's improvisation. Some brief rhythm interplay between Jimmy and Elvin and the train stops to pick up another passenger, a bowing fiddler. Garrison takes an extended solo here, arco and some percussive things with bow on strings and an occasional foray into pizzicato. Highly individualistic and quite unlike what any of the gifted young bassists are doing these days. Elvin moves to the fore briefly, then it's back to the original line, Joe's tenor for 20 and right out.

The album closes with the pretty We'll Be Together Again, a solid standard by Carl Fischer (Frankie Laine's accompanist for some years; Laine wrote the lyrics). It's Farrell's flute feature, this set's counterpart to For Heaven's Sake on their first LP. Flute cadenza with bass under in free tempo, then to slow dance pace. Farrell's lead with flourishes, a 32-bar chorus and there an end.

ED BEACH "Just Jazz"
WRVR New York

Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER
Recorded September 6, 1960
Cover photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover design by TONY DE STEFANO

75th Anniversary Reissue Notes

When Elvin Jones formed his trio with Joe Farrell and Jimmy Garrison in the beginning of 1968, he'd been gone from Coltrane's group for two years and Garrison, who stayed till the end had been free for only six months. Naturally they found a creative saxophonist with great technique, proficiency and creativity Joe Farrell to take the front spot in the group.

"Puttin' It Together" was the group's debut recording and by the time they recorded "The Ultimate" six months later, they had already grown as a group from weeks together on the bandstand. Their interaction and maturity were measurable and the degree of variety and range that they extracted from the stark trio instrumentation was amazing.

Soon Jones would leave the trio format and expand the front line to three saxophonists with added percussion on occasion. The amount of musicians would change but the essence of what Elvin heard remained: sax, bass and percussion. From his perspective having supported John Coltrane for four years, the sky's the limit with these elements.

- MICHAEL CUSCUNA