Johnny Griffin/John Coltrane/Hank Mobley - Blowin' Sessions
Released - 1975
Recording and Session Information
Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, March 3, 1957
John Gilmore, Clifford Jordan, tenor sax; Horace Silver, piano; Curly Russell, bass; Art Blakey, drums.
tk.2 Evil Eye
tk.3 Status Quo
tk.7 Bo-Till
tk.9 Everywhere
tk.12 Blue Lights
tk.13 Billie's Bounce
Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, April 6, 1957
Lee Morgan, trumpet; John Coltrane, Johnny Griffin, Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Wynton Kelly, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Blakey, drums.
tk.2 Smokestack
tk.3 The Way You Look Tonight
tk.4 Ball Bearing
tk.5 All The Things You Are
Track Listing
| Side One | ||
| Title | Author | Recording Date |
| The Way you Look Tonight | Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields | 06 April 2957 |
| Ball Bearing | Johnny Griffin | 06 April 1957 |
| Side Two | ||
| All the Things You Are | Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein | 06 April 1957 |
| Smoke Stack | Johnny Griffin | 06 April 1957 |
| Side Three | ||
| Status Quo | John Neeley | 03 March 1957 |
| Bo-Till | Clifford Jordan | 03 March 1957 |
| Blue Lights | Gigi Gryce | 03 March 1957 |
| Side Four | ||
| Billie's Bounce | Charlie Parker | 03 March 1957 |
| Evil Eye | Clifford Jordan | 03 March 1957 |
| Everywhere | Horace Silver | 03 March 1957 |
Liner Notes
BLOWIN' SESSIONS
Hindsight is the art that enables foolish men to seem wise. Looking back at the particular stage in the evolution of jazz that is represented by the two sessions in this album, one can observe very clearly certain straws in the wind that were blowing forcefully and influentially, though few of us at the time could detect the apocalpytic developments they augured.
Of course, the condition in which jazz found itself at this point could be judged from various viewpoints. If West Coast jazz was your thing, this was a time when the quasi-chamber music of the Chico Hamilton quintet was making its impact, when Dave Brubeck was pounding his quartet sound through the campus concert circuit in which he pioneered. It was a time when the understated motions of Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker had a great hold on the American public. Yet for all the attention drawn to such groups, it was obvious to anyone — particularly those of us who lived in New York, and many for whom Chicago was home base — that there were other forces at work, forces that were highly significant in the extent to which they drew together certain elements of bebop, hard bop and even a touch of rhythm and blues.
The music these men made clung to certain values of the past: 12 bar blues with 32 bar chorus based on generally conventional chord changes. The combos frequently included a potent trumpeter, one or two saxophones, occasionally a trombone, never a clarinet and rarely a flute; plus the traditional piano-bass-drums rhythm section.
Just as surely as piano was the dominant instrument of the ragtime generation and clarinet that of the swing and big band era, the tenor saxophone was the bellwether in the advance guard of this new battalion of jazzmen. It is not surprising that no less than five tenor saxophonists, all of whom were to make significant contributions, are represented on these two blowing dates. One of them, though none of us could foresee it, would grow in stature to become the most influential and idolized jazz figure in the past 20 years, regardless of instrument. John Coltrane at the stage of his development illustrated here was a vigorous 30-year-old performer who impressed us simply as a somewhat more adventurous and harder-swinging harbinger of the same school of saxophonic thought to which so many other distinguished musicians subscribed: John Gilmore, Clifford Jordan, Johnny Griffin, Hank Mobley.
As I observed in The Book of Jazz (Horizon Press), "Symbolizing a partial reaction against the ultra-cool sounds of the late 1940s was the work of another school of tenormen whose style was labeled, perhaps a little arbitrarily, 'hard bop' but might better be described as 'extrovert modern.' These men, often showing the influence both of Lester Young's tenor and Charlie Parker's alto, expressed themselves forcibly with a bolder tone and more volatile ideas than the Getzians. There is considerable variation within this school, Some of the soloists border at times on a rhythm and blues approach."
In a footnote to this evaluation I gave a list of extrovert modernists that included Johnny Griffin, Hank Mobley and Coltrane.
The two blowing sessions in the present album were recorded within about a month of each other early in 1957, Though there is a strong suggestion of a Chicago influence both were cut under the supervision of Blue Note's founder, Alfred Lion, at the Rudy Van Gelder studios in New Jersey, where he produced all of his dates. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that while on a visit to Chicago in 1957, Coltrane commented to Joe Segal, the local columnist and impresario, "I haven't heard so many good young tenormen anywhere else in the country."
John Arnold Griffin Ill was billed as "Little Johnny Griffin" when he made his debut as a recording combo leader, on a 1953 Chicago session. Born in 1928 in Chicago, the son of an ex-cornetist and a singer, he studied clarinet at Du Sable High School from the age of 13, and was only 17 when he emerged as a prodigy in that astonishing nursery of talent, the Lionel Hampton orchestra, with which he played from 1945-7. The Hampton incumbency was tantamount to membership in a jazz workshop, one that had already produced Arnett Cobb, Illinois Jacquet, Dexter Gordon and a host of other tenor giants.
After leaving Hamp, Griffin spent three years with a combo led by the late Joe Morris, a trumpeter alumnus of Lionel's ranks. Then came stints with drummer Jo Jones and the above-mentioned Arnett Cobb in 1951, Griffin then freelanced with a variety of groups, mostly in Chicago, until March 1957, when he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, thereby enlarging that group from quintet to sextet dimensions..
At the time of Griffin's arrival in New York with the Messengers, a number of other prominent leaders and sidemen happened to be in the Apple. It was logical and perhaps inevitable that a few of them would get together for a congenial and informal session such as the three-tenor date on Sides One and Two.
The jazz life was a hard and demanding one in those days, entailing endless, gruesome road tours, intolerable conditions of racial segregation, and very few chances to present the music in the kind of concert or festival setting it deserved, It is no coincidence, but a sad reflection of that situation, that of the seven men who played on these sides, only one, Art Blakey, is still active and prominent around the U.S. at this writing (late 1975). Of the others, Griffin and Mobley have spent much of the last decade overseas, where they found better opportunities for dignity and meaningful employment; the other four have all been taken from us. John Coltrane died in New York, July 1967; Paul Chambers passed away in New York, January 1969, Wynton Kelly died in Toronto in April 1971; Lee Morgan's career came to a violent end when he was shot to death after an altercation with a woman friend at Slug's where he was working in February 1972.
At the time of this recording, Morgan was only 18 and had a regular job with Dizzy Gillespie's big orchestra. Dizzy was so impressed with him that occasionally he would step aside to let Lee take over a solo number that would normally be assigned to the leader. Morgan stayed with the band until it broke up in January 1958, then began a long off and on association with Blakey, who seemed to be the centrifugal figure around whom so many of the "blowing session" movement gravitated.
It is no more than coincidental that of the four compositions on which the tenormen and their colleagues stretch out for their combative engagements here, two were standards by Jerome Kern. The Way You Look Tonight is taken at a breakneck tempo, whereas All The Things You Are is tackled at a relatively moderate pace. The solo order finds Lee Morgan following the exposition of the theme on The Way You Look. His incisive style already was all but fully formed, his phrasing and continuity extraordinary. In terms of his youth and the promise he showed, he was the Jon Faddis of his day.
Hank Mobley follows him for one chorus, after which Coltrane plays two. This date, by the way, was made during the interim between Trane's two stints with Miles Davis. He had joined the trumpeter in 1955, left in 1956, worked for some time with Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot, then received a call from Miles asking for his return, to which he promptly acquiesced late in 1957.
J C. Thomas, Coltrane's biographer (Chasin' The Trane, Doubleday & Co. Inc., 1975) has an interesting quote from Zita Carno, a young music student who was introduced to Coltrane's music through her schoolmate Donald Byrd. In a perceptive analysis, published in the Jazz Review she wrote: "His range is something to marvel at; a full three octaves upward from the lowest note obtainable on the horn..., what sets Coltrane apart from other tenor players is the equality of strength in all registers which he has obtained through long, hard practice. His sound is just as clear, full and unforced in the topmost notes as it is down at the bottom. That tone is a result of the particular combination of mouthpiece and reed he uses, plus an extremely tight embouchure; it is powerful, resonant and sharply penetrating...his powerful sound consists of very long phrases played at such an extremely rapid tempo that the notes he plays cease to be mere notes and fuse into a continuous flow of pure sound."
Some of these characteristics were already in evidence and are particularly notable on The Way You Look Tonight, Trane's solo is followed by an exchange between Griffin and Blakey, after which Griffin takes the theme out.
The shape of things to come is again hinted at by Trane as he plays the first solo on Griffin's composition Ball Bearing. The superb rhythm section lays down an inspiring beat as Morgan, Griffin, Mobley and Kelly follow in that order. Like so many such performances, Ball Bearing indicates that the so-called "tenor battles" were not so much competitive as examples of mutual stimulation.
Griffin has the melodychorus in All The Things You Are, followed by three sedulously built choruses of adlibbing. Coltrane is next, then Morgan takes over before Mobley adds his statement. It is interesting to note that after a short interim period when Miles had Sonny Stitt in the group, Hank took over John Coltrane's spot in the Davis combo, remaining there from the fall of 1960 until late 1962.
Wynton Kelly's chorus is typical of his rhythmic and melodic ebullience. After Chambers takes his only solo of the date, there is a brief Griffin-Blakey exchange; then Griffin assumes the lead again to top off the track.
Smoke Stack, a brightish blues written by Griffin, offers two pace-setting choruses by Wynton before the horns interpret the riff theme. Griffin is in fine, extrovert form here, followed by a cooking Lee Morgan. The next several minutes offer a fascinating study, both in contrast and in similarities, as Mobley's eight choruses lead to seven by Trane. To complete the ten minute outing, Kelly, Chambers, Griffin and Blakey are heard from in that order before the theme returns.
The group assembled for Sides Three and Four, though more compact than the Griffin combo, (there is no trumpet, and the tenor players are two rather than three), still is representative of the era in its symmetrical pattern of theme, blowing and return to theme.
The rhythm section is a characteristically East Coast threesome: Dillon (Curly) Russell, a native New Yorker, was a member of the epochal Gillespie-Parker quintet and had worked with Miles, Getz and Hawkins; Silver, from Norwalk, Conn., was also a Getz and Hawkins alumnus and had played with Art Blakey, Bill Harris and Lester Young, in addition to recording regularly as a leader for Blue Note since 1952. Blakey, though born in Pittsburgh, had been a New Yorker since the mid-1940s.
Nevertheless, the original LP that introduced Sides Three and Four was entitled "Blowing in From Chicago," since it served in large measure to showcase the talents of the front line. Both tenor men were Chicagoans: Clifford Laconia Jordan was born there, John Gilmore was born in Summit, Miss. but his family moved to the Windy City when he was an infant. Born in the same year, 1931, Gilmore and Jordan studied music under Captain Walter Dyott at Du Sable High School on the South Side. (Among their classmates were Johnny Griffin; a future bassist of distinction, Richard Davis, and the noted alto saxophonist John Jenkins, who would be heard on Blue Note in a Hank Mobley date.)
Jordan gigged around Chicago with Max Roach, Sonny Stitt and a variety of rhythm and blues bands, then left town to go on the road with Max Roach. Shortly after this session was made, he joined the Horace Silver Quintet, remaining with Horace almost a year.
Much of Gilmore's early experience was gained in the Air Force, playing in a service band from 1948-52. He later was with Earl Hines as part of a show for a nationwide tour with the Harlem Globetrotters. Gilmore, who apparently drew his original inspiration from both Rollins and Coltrane, ultimately proved himself capable of working in either avant garde or modern mainstream contexts to equally powerful effect; in fact, aside from his work with Blakey in the mid-1960s his best known association has been a long one with Sun Ra, beginning not long after the "Blowing in From Chicago" date.
Distinguishing between the sounds of the two hornmen who take up much of the mileage on these sides is no problem, since Gilmore's sound is softer and his style less bold than that of the heavy, headstrong Jordan. (It is typical of the misconceptions so common to modern jazz analysis that one writer in San Francisco claimed that Gilmore was John Coltrane's source of inspiration during Trane's later period, As Ira Gitler has observed, "actually, it was the other way around, and had been ever since Gilmore came 'Blowing in From Chicago' on the Blue Note LP of that name."
Status Quo is an original composition written by yet another statement of the tune, Gilmore moves in for two driving choruses, followed by the dynamic and perpetually energetic Jordan for two. After a couple by Horace Silver, Jordan and Gilmore exchange fours with Art Blakey, who has a brief solo before the return to the top.
Jordan's Bo-Till, with its Latin flavor, illustrates vividly how rich a texture can be derived from the simple juxtaposition of two saxophones in harmony The solo order here is Jordan, Silver, Gilmore, Blakey.
Blue Lights is a minor blues by Gigi Gryce, who was a promisjng alto player and leader in the late 1950s but has long been away from the jazz spotlight. Gilmore, dealing with changes that are conventional and comfortable, shows a typical sense of structure and development in the course of his outing. The Horace Silver solo that follows is notable for the tension supplied during his second chorus by Blakey, who implicitly doubles the meter, then lapses (and relaxes) back in the regular time for Horace's third and fourth. Jordan is up next, then Curly Russell (another fine musician who seems to have wandered off the scene) walks one and ad libs one before yielding to Art, who has the final pre-theme statement.
Billie's Bounce, taken at a tempo that demolishes a 12-bar chorus in about eleven seconds, is the Charlie Parker line committed to record in a 1945 Parker date that also gave the world Now's The Time. At this pace, Gilmore, Jordan and Silver have room for about a dozen choruses apiece, after which Gilmore and Jordan, in that order, engage in four bar exchanges with Art. Jordan's best work of the date can be heard here, as he shows his infallible ability to swing without becoming caught up in the string-of-eighth-notes syndrome. The last two or three choruses before Horace takes over are particularly insightful.
Evil Eye, a Jordan line, is another minor blues, with Clifford soloing first. Note that after the piano solo, Jordan and Gilmore alternate in 12-bar statements for the next four choruses, until Blakey's entry.
Everywhere is a since-forgotten Horace Silver work. The meter in the opening motif is deceptive: is this a 36-bar up-tempo tune or two 18-bar choruses? As Gilmore takes over the answer is evident; the tempo is halved and it becomes, in effect, a 36-bar moderato blowing vehicle, Jordan. Silver and Blakey precede the restatement of the song, the two tenors' unison coming to an abrupt halt in early-bebop style.
If one overriding impression emerges from a rehearing of these four sides, it is that the days of blowing sessions were of lasting value to our musical heritage. Not a note. not a chorus, not a composition has suffered from the passage of almost two decades. On the contrary, one is left with the desire to go out and seek the kind of natural, colloquial conversations that took place on such record date under contemporary conditions. Most of these sessions were completed within the standard three hour time limit. Today it would take the average combo that long just to set up amplifiers, synthesizers and other electronic sound modifiers. Aside from which, who could really blow on the changes to All The Things You Are?
LEONARD FEATHER
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