BST 84345

Jackie McLean - Demon's Dance

Mati Klarwein image

Released - October 1970

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 22, 1967
Woody Shaw, trumpet, flugelhorn; Jackie McLean, alto sax; Lamont Johnson, piano; Scott Holt, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums.

2009 tk.5 Floogeh
2010 tk.11 Sweet Love Of Mine
2011 tk.13? Demon's Dance
2012 tk.14? Toy Land
2013 tk.21? Message From Trane
2014 tk.22 Boo Ann's Grand

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Demon's Dance	Jackie McLean	December 22 1967
Toyland	Cal Massey	December 22 1967
Boo Ann's Grand	Woody Shaw	December 22 1967
Side Two
Sweet Love of Mine	Woody Shaw	December 22 1967
Floogeh	Jackie McLean	December 22 1967
Message From Trane	Cal Massey	December 22 1967

Liner Notes

Jackie McLean has been recording as a combo leader since the late 1950s. A second generation jazzman (his father, John McLean, Sr., played guitar in the late Tiny Bradshaws orchestra), he has paid dues long enough to have earned a firm individual identity.

During his early years some observers underestimated him as essentially another disciple of Charlie Parker. Gradually, as McLean himself evolved and his listeners paid closer attention, it became clear that the apocalyptic jazz developments of the early 1960s had made a lasting impact on him. Throughout most of the past decade, and there is a distinguished series of Blue Note albums to attest to the fact, Jackie has continued to mature, both as instrumentalist and composer, and has brought to his sessions a remarkable series of distinguished sidemen, many of whom were and are leaders in their own right: Herbie Hancock, Bobby Hutcherson, Tony Williams, Grachan Moncur and Ornette Coleman, to name just a few at random.

Demon’s Dance is cast in the familiar and comfortable alto-trumpet-rhythm mold, with Woody Shaw in the responsible role of front line partner. Shaw, who worked with Eric Dolphy in Europe shortly before the latter’s untimely death, is best known as an alumnus of the Horace Silver Quintet.

In the rhythm section are two frequent McLean associates, LaMont Johnson and Scott Holt, whose interweaving explorations were important elements in the memorable New and Old Gospel session a couple of years back, on which Ornette Coleman’s trumpet was paired off with Jackie’s horn (Blue Note 4262).

The presence of Jack DeJohnette has an odd significance, since it was Jack who replaced Tony Williams in the Miles Davis combo, and Williams, back in 1962 (he was only 17 at the time) played an important role in McLean’s career, backboning a rhythm section during a gig in Boston and later working with him in The Connection in New York. Both drummers clearly have proved as inspiring to Jackie as they have been to Miles.

The composer credits should offer all the needed indications of the music written for this date, in terms of its quality level and suitability for the group. Jackie’s opening title tune is a beguilingly assertive work with its two-note jabs and short phrases. A bass-walk break leads into the opening alto solo, magnificently underpinned by DeJohnette. Shaw deploys a powerful, sometimes jagged style that makes intelligent use of space.

I have heard Jackie’s saxophone called “harsh and abrasive.” Though the terms were not intended derogatorily, it should be evident by now that he can also be smooth and persuasive, as ¡n the emotional and delicate Toyland, one of his most lyrical performances.

Boo Ann’s Grand ¡s a brightly paced theme that achieves a suspenseful quality through the use of augmented chords. Jackie’s undiminished capacity for swinging is soaringly demonstrated here, as is the strong sound and linear creativity of Scott Holt in a solo workout.

Sweet Love Of Mine, a structurally simple work (A-A-B-A), typifies the overall mood of the album, in that there’s a whole lot of cooking going on, with a tendency toward cohesion and pulsation rather than “outside” experimentation. The same qualities are discernible on Floogeh, a fast theme stated by the two horns in unison, with a somewhat dramatic rhythmic stop atter each eight-measure passage. Jackie takes care of business here with the superlative sense of phrasing and general instrumental control that have been hallmarks of his work since the earliest days. Woody Shaw, too, should be studied repeatedly until his solo on Floogeh has imbedded itself in your subconscious. Toward the end of his foray he descends gradually into the lower register of the instrument in a manner that seems to pave the way very logically for the advent of LaMont Johnson’s solo. The latter is in peak form with his crystalline strands of single-note lines, followed by chordal concepts. Scott Holt, too, is heard from to maximum effect on this track; note particularly his use of double-stops.

Message From Trane is neither an imitative Coltrane type number nor a series of solos in the manner of the giant for whom it was named. Clearly the title denotes homage and respect for him, but the performance allowed the participants to develop their personal lines of communication. The finale is a spectacular, brilliantly disciplined tour de force by Jack DeJohnette.

Several years ago, reflecting on the state of the music to which he has made such a vital contribution, Jackie McLean said: “I think it’s a shame that there are so many talented musicians around and so few places for them to perform. It’s time for this country to wake up and support an art form that belongs to America. On the other hand, the jazz audience in America is growing more and more with each year that passes, and I pray that things will soon change.”

These sides offer eloquent testimony of Jackie’s ever-growing capacity for practicing the art form in which he believes so passionately. In the years since he offered that evaluation of the condition of jazz, despite the inroads of rock and the dire predictions of the Cassandras, jazz has indeed held on firmly and McLean’s name is known wherever in the world this ineradicable music is played.

— LEONARD FEATHER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT DEMON'S DANCE

This first posthumous Jackie McLean reissue is, fittingly, a final chapter, both of McLean's careers as a Blue Note recording artist and as a presence on the New York jazz scene. It was not his last visit to Rudy Van Gelder's studio under the label's auspices (a July 1968 sextet date remains unissued); but unless and until that session emerges, Demon's Dance stands as the final document of McLean's early career. Nearly five years would pass before the alto saxophonist was heard on record again.

McLean's withdrawal was a considered response to both the diminishing work opportunities that are alluded to in Leonard Feather's original notes and the drug problems that McLean discussed so candidly in A. B. Spellman's Four Lives in the Bebop Business. By the time the present music was recorded, McLean had begun giving music instruction and counseling in correctional facilities. By the following year, when he took a part-time teaching position at the University of Hartford that ultimately led to his creation of a Department Of Afro-American Studies, he had stopped performing in nightclubs. McLean was 35 when he made this transition, an age that his idol Charlie Parker never reached, and McLean's subsequent history suggests an alternative road not taken by too many who are gripped by addiction. He would return to performing and recording sporadically over the next four decades, but until his death on March 31, 2006, the balance of McLean's life was spent in Hartford as a revered professor and, with his wife Dollie, as community leaders through the Artists Collective that they founded and turned into a center of the city's cultural life.

The recording at hand argues that McLean's decision to take a step back was purely extramusical. The unbridled passion, thirst for a balance between new ideas and established verities, and knack for nurturing talented younger artists that had marked so much of his Blue Note output is undimmed. That last skill stands out here in particular relief, thanks to the exceptional contributions of Jack DeJohnette and Woody Shaw.

Many listeners first heard DeJohnette in the band of Charles Lloyd, but the drummer had actually done his first important work after leaving his native Chicago for New York with McLean, and in time he would follow another McLean drum discovery, Tony Williams, into Miles Davis's band. McLean's Jacknife had been DeJohnette's first recording session, but that album remained unissued for nearly a decade, and for years, Demon's Dance was the only document of this important saxophone/drum partnership. Blending the innovations of Williams and Elvin Jones, DeJohnette is brilliant throughout, particularly (as Feather notes) on "Message from Trane."

This album is also an important chapter in the frustrating early career of trumpet great Woody Shaw (1944-89). At this point, Shaw had been a recording artist for well over four years and a featured member of Horace Silver's quintet for two years. He had appeared on record with Silver, Eric Dolphy, Larry Young, and Chick Corea, and worked extensively with McLean and other notable leaders, yet had not released an album under his own name (a 1965 date remained unheard for over two decades). Had Shaw emerged just a couple of years earlier, there is no doubt that he would have been documented more extensively, but the decline in the jazz business (and, one suspects, the 1966 sale of Blue Note to Liberty) impeded his early career. Fortunately, Shaw, like the decade's other young trumpet stars (Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Charles Tolliver) enjoyed the luxury of working alongside McLean, which spurred his growth as a soloist while also allowing him to display his writing skills.

The two Shaw compositions included here, debut performances of what proved to be among his most popular pieces, reflect different sides of his personality. "Boo Ann's Grind," a tribute to his wife Betty Ann, is better known as "Boo Ann's Grand." In subsequent recordings that Shaw made with Stanley Cowell (1969) and on his own Blackstone Legacy (1970), the bridge became freer and the melody took on added edge. The bossa-inflected "Sweet Love of Mine" was inspired by Clare Fischer's "Pensativa" and sounds more like a romantic homage than "Boo Ann." There is a fine 1982 version by Shaw's quintet of the time plus guest Bobby Hutcherson on the trumpeter's Master of the Art, as well as more than one recorded version by the Paris Reunion Band in which Shaw was heard during the final years of his too-brief life.

Another trumpeter whose writing McLean favored was Cal Massey, whose work had been covered by several musicians beginning with Charlie Parker. After recording some of his tunes on two Lee Morgan dates, McLean included Massey's "Message from Trane" here, which applies the harmonic ideas of "Giant Steps" in a fresh and lyrical manner, as well as his ballad "Toyland." The former piece would be revisited by Archie Shepp in the '70s, and by Massey's saxophone-playing son, Zane, in the '90s.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2006