BN-LA-483-J2

Jackie McLean - Hipnosis

Released - 1978

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 14, 1962
Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Jackie McLean, alto sax; Sonny Clark, piano; Butch Warren, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

tk.1 The Three Minors
tk.6 Iddy Bitty
tk.10 The Way I Feel
tk.13 Marilyn's Dilemma
tk.14 Blues In A Jiff
tk.15 Blues For Jackie

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 3, 1967
Grachan Moncur III, trombone; Jackie McLean, alto sax; Lamont Johnson, piano; Scott Holt, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

1829 tk.7 Hipnosis
1830 tk.11 Slow Poke
1831 tk.21 The Breakout
1832 tk.30 Back Home
1833 tk.40 The Reason Why

Session Photos

February 3 1967

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
The Three Minors	Jackie McLean	June 14 1962
Blues In A Jiff	Sonny Clark	June 14 1962
Blues For Jackie	Kenny Dorham	June 14 1962
Side Two
Marilyn's Dilemma	Billy Higgins	June 14 1962
Iddy Bitty	Jackie McLean	June 14 1962
The Way I Feel	John Patton	June 14 1962
Side Three
Hipnosis	Grachan Moncur III	February 3 1967
Slow Poke	Jackie McLean	February 3 1967
Side Four
The Breakout	Jackie McLean	February 3 1967
Back Home	Grachan Moncur III	February 3 1967
The Reason Why	LaMont Johnson	February 3 1967

Liner Notes

Jackie McLean

One day they are going to write about the legendary Jackie McLean, because his story is the stuff legends are made of. He started playing the alto at fifteen, studied ear training with Bud Powell at sixteen, did local gigs with Thelonious Monk at seventeen, traded fours with Charlie Parker at eighteen, worked Birdland with Miles Davis at nineteen, and by his twentieth birthday, he was nationally known as a mainstay in the bebop explosion of New York. From this prodigious start, he went on to record, first with Miles, then with Charles Mingus' Jazz Workshop, then Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and, in short order, on over one hundred records, so that his became one of the more prominant and recognizable voices in recorded jazz. At this point (at which many musicians have retired, either literally or spiritually), he went on to pioneer in the musical avant garde and established himself as a leader within a whole new culture.

It is difficult not to romanticize (or, at least, historicize) about Jackie's music; first, because he is a romantic player, whose sound has been described, at various times, as "burning", "searing", "anguished", even "mocking" and "ironic". And second, as Jackie himself has written, "since music is but an expression of the happenings around us, it is quite natural for our young musicians to express the mood and tempo of our time." Jackie's music has always expressed an attitude which can best be described in terms of the "mood and tempo" of his time.

Initially, this attitude was that of one of the "last original hip musicians", as biographer A. B. Spellman has referred to Jackie. "Hipness," the late Cannonball Adderly used to remind his audience, "is not a state of mind, it's a fact of life." More precisely, it was the culmination of a lot of facts of life, most of which had to do with New York City, such as culture, class, language, dress and drugs. Not just drugs, but heroin as it affected the lives and music of so many of the "original hip musicians", particularly the younger ones. Like all opiates, heroin relaxes the individual. The combination of this enforced cool and the intense desire of young artists to prove themselves, created a tension in the music that was almost a signature of life in New York; energy burst through the music, but in a different, off-handed manner. In a sense, the attitude expressed was furious, passionate indifference. This tension was at the heart of the hip experience, and you can still hear it echo through Jackie's sound.

Yet nobody else ever sounded like Jackie McLean. His sound has a size and dimension that comes from some very personal alchemy. "The first thing I was involved with when I got my alto saxophone," he recounts, "was the sound, trying to make the alto not sound like an alto. I was trying to make it sound like a tenor because I really wanted a tenor before I heard Bird But trying to imitate Lester Young and Dexter Gordon on an alto saxophone is what got my sound to be the way it is."

The music which emerged from New York in the forties and fifties — the scene that Jackie ran on — was remarkable partly because of the grooves established. Regardless of tempo, players seemed to float, pushing and dragging at once. Inasmuch as this music was the precursor to the music of the middle and late sixties, when players let go and the individual was free, jazz then was about the rhythm section, the group feel, the common conception. Jackie worked with all the best rhythm sections, and was known as a rhythm player who often took to standing next to the drummer in order to pick up and deliver the rhythm for the band. Jackie's influence went beyond the lines he played on his horn; he contributed to everyone's conception, his feel was heard in every corner.

And his feel was not hard to pin down. "Jazz is party music," Jackie has said, "When I play jazz, I'm always partying." The music indicated, however, that he was in deadly earnest about his partying, and his mastery of the bebop idiom stands out as a rare example of balance between high art and street culture. "You want me to act like a doctor," Charles Parker once said, "then I'll play like a doctor." Parker was a playful person; he would sit in with polka bands — any kind of band as long as it was saying something — as well as talk theory with Stravinsky. This open-ended attitude was instilled in the best of his disciples, and Jackie, who was numbered among the devout, also had his own way of turning party music into a religious experience.

The earlier of the two sessions enclosed in this album is a good example of Jackie at his blues playing, bebop best. This date generated some interest several years ago when it was listed in the catalogue (as The Jackie McLean Quintet, Blue Note 4116) but then was never issued. The band is similar to that on A Fickle Sonnance (Blue Note 4089), which in turn derived its line-up from an earlier Sonny Clark-led session, released as Leapin' and Lopin' (Blue Note 4091). To those who have followed Jackie's recordings on Blue Note, this period is of particular interest as that time when he was stretching between the old and the new. The musicians, too, express this intermingling of elements. There was drummer Billy Higgins, fresh from the Ornette Coleman band, to keep the fire going, and there was the ever cool Sonny Clark on piano, whose sparkling, liquid lines set off the urgency of the rest of the band. On the enclosed date, trumpet player Kenny Dorham, one of the papas of the splatter school of trumpet playing — Lee Morgan, Joe Gordon, Blue Mitchell are indirect connections — replaces Tommy Turrentine. This record was the last bebop date Jackie did before taking his now famous One Step Beyond.

The compositions, particularly those by Jackie, reflect a maturity in construction and also foreshadow things to come. "The Three Minors", for example, is built on three scales, each played for four bars, and the cycle turns over continuously, giving the soloists a down-hill momentum not present in standard song forms. Jackie takes the first shot at the course, gracefully like an Olympic Slalom contender. Next, it's Kenny Dorham who slashes his way with single minded purpose. And finally, Sonny Clark, as always, makes the simple seem elegant.

"Blues In A Jiff", an angular blues written by Sonny Clark, recalls the material used on Leapin' and Lopin'. The middle eight is classic bop writing, and the tune is taken at a wonderfully unhurried pace. There would be no way to recreate this kind of groove today; it seems to have disappeared after the middle 1960's. All the soloing is laid way back in the pocket, and, once again, Sonny Clark gives us his patented quote from Carmen.

"Blues For Jackie" is reminiscent of a lot of Horace Silver heads, with the ensemble work being tightly interwoven into rhythm breaks and half-time pedal points. Jackie's playing is fluid and rational. This take catches him at a point of maturity, a still young man (he was thirty-one years old) who sounds much older, wise beyond his years. Kenny Dorham comes out dancing on his toes but the rhythm section gets him settled by the third chorus and walks him home. Sonny Clark, as usual, spices his solo with quotes from jazz masters, this time Monk and Silver.

Side Two opens with a Billy Higgins original, "Marilyn's Dilemma," noteworthy in its lyricism. Not unlike Philly Joe Jones, another drummer known for his melodic writing (and piano playing!), Higgins reaches way back to construct an interesting platform for soloists to run on. In this case, one is reminded of the compositions on Ornette Coleman's date Something Else, recorded in 1958 and also featuring the young Billy Higgins; that date, too, employed some deceptively familiar-sounding heads.

"1ddy Bitty", yet another blues by Jackie, but with a "Well You Needn't" kind of release, reinforces the overall strength of the date: a very strong groove at any price and every tempo. "The Way I Feel", the last song of the 1962 session, is a kind of going home song, the last thing before the band takes a break for drinks — and never comes back.

Sonny Clark is dead, he died very young and relatively obscure. (Perhaps one day Blue Note will issue more of his dates as a leader.) Gone, too, is this period in the evolution of Jackie McLean's music, one which really emerged during his stay as the featured horn player in Jack Gelber's The Connection, a play which teamed him up with pianist Freddy Redd. Freddy Redd's two-fisted, highly pianistic approach to writing seems, in retrospect, to have influenced Jackie's playing. Prior to joining the cast of The Connection, Jackie had worked with Mingus, a stint which exposed him to not only the bassist's Ellingtonian approach to composition, but also provided a chance to wander through lush chord progressions virtually unencumbered by formal harmonic doctrine. When he met up with Freddy, the result was an approach to ballads and the blues which was highly traditional (one could hear Duke Ellington through Charles Parker through Bud Powell through Charles Mingus) yet was unmistakably stamped with Jackie's own sound, feel, and harmonic conception.

It was this rich personal tradition that Jackie brought to bear when, in 1963, he decidedly abandoned the classic bebop formulas and set out, almost as an elder statesman, to join what was then being referred to by critics as the "New Thing" or "New Wave" in jazz. In truth, Jackie's alliance with the younger players was a significant factor in their gaining exposure and credibility, Their music was, to most listeners, relatively unintelligible, and the familiar sound of Jackie's horn in the midst of the new compositions was a bridge which carried many critics and fans alike into the future of jazz.

On subsequent Jackie McLean recording dates for Blue Note, the other end of that bridge was held up by a group of young players which included, among others, Bobby Hutcherson, Tony Williams, and, of course, a young trombone player from New Jersey by way of North Carolina, Grachan Moncur III. At the time of his initial experiments with these players, Jackie had said, "Kids come up today knowing a lot more (they) don't have to go around being hip." Of his own state of mind, he said, "I don't need to be relaxed any more. Now, the opposite is what I need to play, I need to be stimulated from within." To this end, many of the recordings which ensued featured the writing of Moncur, and the enclosed date is no exception.

Moncur places great emphasis on the "meaning" of his compositions, having told Don Heckman, "Every tune that I've written so far has a meaning and a story within it that I want the whole group to capture. A lot of guys, when they play, are not thinking about what they're actually playing; they're just thinking about maybe the chords, or how the rhythm changes or something like that, but I really try to tell a story and I want the group that plays my tunes to try to see what I saw when I wrote them." His original, the title track Hipnosis, is a snake-charmer kind of vamp that is an excellent showcase for both the rhythm section and the soloists. Of particular note is the way drummer Higgins and pianist Lamont Johnson (who was with the Roland Kirk band at the time of this recording) interweave the basket out of which emerge the serpentine horn lines of Jackie and Grachan. Some might call this tune a super sophisticated "Sidewinder."

"Slow Poke", written by Jackie, is a soulful, off-the-wall composition that recalls the best elements of early Ornette Coleman but remains all Jackie just the same. The rhythm section, unlike that on the 1962 date, comes and goes as it pleases, with pianist Johnson leaving large holes for Scotty Holt and Higgins to move about, and much of the harmonic structure, like the time, is taken for granted or approached from relatively arbitrary angles by the horns. The common conception is no longer simply one of grooves, but is expanded to include dramatic movement. Bassist Holt, who was a protege of Jackie's, solos with excellent facility and covers all the bases.

"The Breakout", again by Jackie, does just that after a brief skirmish with a cross-time opening theme. The soloing employs tone rows (scales) rather than chord changes. Despite the avant garde format, the soloing is somewhat traditional in character, and after a short series of chord resolutions, the piece abruptly ends.

"Back Home", the second composition by Moncur, reminds the listener that Grachan put in several long seasons on the road with the Ray Charles band. It opens with a dramatic lament, with Higgins kicking loosely in the background, and one can almost visualize a country road, down which comes a cow-cow boogie of the purebred variety. The groove of this tune is authentic funk, more like Archie Shepp's tributes to his roots than the artificial "twist" jazz that was fashionable in the sixties. Jackie treats the listener to a full tour of his back home licks, and Johnson's piano conception is not unlike that of a latter-day Bobby Timmons.

The date ends with Johnson's "The Reason Why", a very "rational", or well reasoned, chord progression followed by a string of logical rhythm kicks, out of which comes Jackie, flying upside down and sideways, wonderfully free and being buoyed up by the currents generated behind him. His offhand, outside-inside approach is a good closer to this package, as it demonstrates the fifties, sixties and even seventies elements in his playing.

With the release of Hipnosis, Blue Note records has given us the final chapter in its collection of Jackie McLean recordings. The 1967 date is the last recording Jackie did for Blue Note — or in America, for that matter — and although he is still very active, both as a player and an educator in the Connecticut school system, Jackie has chosen to record only while on his frequent trips to Europe. This package, then, is a comprehensive look at the Blue Note years, including as it does Jackie's best bebop band and the last recording of his long and fruitful association with Grachan Moncur. For those who have not had the good fortune to collect his many Blue Note albums along the way, this is perhaps the one package to own, the best nonverbal documentation of the legendary Jackie McLean.

BEN SIDRAN

Issue Variants

GXF-3022 - Japan 1978