BST 84427

Jackie McLean - Tippin' The Scales

Released - 1984

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 28, 1962
Jackie McLean, alto sax; Sonny Clark, piano; Butch Warren, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

tk.5 Nursery Blues
tk.11 Rainy Blues
tk.16 Tippin' The Scales
tk.17 Nicely
tk.20 Cabin In The Sky
tk.21 Two For One

See Also: GXF-3062

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Tippin' the Scales	Jackie McLean	September 28 1962
Rainy Blues	Jackie McLean	September 28 1962
Nursery Blues	Sonny Clark	September 28 1962
Side Two
Nicely	Sonny Clark	September 28 1962
Two for One	Sonny Clark	September 28 1962
Cabin in the Sky	Vernon Duke	September 28 1962

Liner Notes

In 1962 Jackie McLean's art was in flux. The hard-won individuality of his massive post-bop style was reflecting the impact of John Coltrane's obsessive modal quests into himself in search of spiritual incantations, and of Ornette's more earthy desire for direct emotional speech by way of pantonality. Jackie's splendid series of recordings for Blue Note vividly documents the new influences, although there seems now to have been some uncertainty to their adoption not apparent from the original releases. Instead the issue of ONE STEP BEYOND (Blue Note 4137) of April 1963 immediately followed LET FREEDOM RING (4106) recorded in March 1962. These remarkable albums are sequential steps consistent with McLean's statement written at the time: "The new breed has inspired me all over again. The search is on. Let freedom ring." However, hidden in the lacuna between these milestone albums were at least two more conservative sessions unissued for almost 20 years. Was it Blue Note or the artist who instigated these fail-safe recordings? Who, then, decided that the fine quintet date with KENNY DORHAM in superb form (now available on 483-J2) and the present quartet recording, did not represent the artist's direction at the time? In any case, specialist and general listeners alike can now enjoy the doubly late arrival of the indian summer of the altoist's mature 1950's style accompanied by some of the finest players of the genre.

To his more avaricious followers Jackie has appeared to be rather stingy with quartet recordings, since it is this setting which provides a saxophonist with the greatest opportunity to display his timbre (and what a sound it is, in this case) and to shape entire performances in his own image. It is the most exposed format prior to the recent development of truly solo playing. The quartet albums for Blue Note are an impressive collection, from the 1959 SWING SWANG SWINGIN' (4024) to HIGH FREQUENCY/ MOONSCAPE (457-H2) of 1966, and in that they cover at least as broad an expressive range as the recordings with other horns they have received less than their due recognition. Certainly a "newly discovered" quartet session with Sonny Clark, Butch Warren and Art Taylor makes a welcome addition to this select group. This is particularly valuable since, along with Stanley Turrentine's JUBILEE SHOUT (4122), these are most likely the last examples of Sonny Clark's modest but perfectly idiomatic art that we will receive.

Sonny Clark was an archetypal post-bop pianist of far above typical quality. An exceptional accompanist and group player, his non-belligerent but effective propulsion makes the listener as comfortable as the soloist, without allowing either the opportunity for complacency. The piano style is a marvellous balance of the vigor of Powell and Silver, with the more, relaxed melodic aspects of such musicians as Duke Jordan for example. Clark's single-note solo lines manage to be simultaneously fragile and tensile, the individual tones set apart and projected in melodic arcs which only briefly coalesce in chordal or parallel clusters. This means of phrasing has been compared with the styles of modern trumpeters, and it is possible to detect resemblances to the patterns of a Kenny Dorham, but Sonny's percussive swing is natural to his instrument and the particular blend of earthiness, humor and lyricism is his own. He is missed.

Butch Warren and Art Taylor are also group players of real craftsmanship, and together with the pianist provide an ideal environment for Jackie's late '50s approach to the music here. Warren has an extremely warm tone and broad embracing beat, that, dancing as it may be, is pleasantly unaffiicted by st. Vitus syndrome. Taylor is alert and swinging with a crackling sense of cross-rhythm which can be particularly bracing at critical moments in the movement of a piece.

And Jackie's own playing , while not as explorative as it could be at the time, is on the other hand also free of the arbitrary aspects occasionally found in this period of his stylistic evolution. Instead we find a relaxed and individual mastery of the post-bop idiom, the expected granite timbre, and immediate impact of nerve and muscle that exposes his basically romantic soul. Immediacy has always been ascendant over structure in McLean's art. Taking a clue from Dexter Gordon's tenor playing in the late 1940s he has found a mode which blends Hawkins' controlled braggadocio with Lester Young's rhythmic tricks in an unusually abrasive lyricism, one surprisingly lacking in melodic flight but possessed with the spirits of sound and time. No other alto saxophone timbre is so definitive of jazz; its voice most probably results from the particular intensity of Jackie's youthful discovery of the jazz language and his voracious compulsion to digest its syntax and speak in a tongue as distinctive as those of his idols. Always willing to acknowledge his influences, he can well be confident of his individual sound. Identification with the jazz heritage, as he feels it, has created a unique style, and a moment-to-moment interaction of his own emotional life with that well-spring, generates the live-wire tension of his playing.

While this quartet recording, with the predominance of variously nuanced middle tempos, has a generally relaxed mood, the electricity flickers brightly even in a mellow atmosphere. Art Taylor's stark counter-patterns on the head of Tippin The Scales sets the tone of banked fires, and Jackie returns an ardent lover to some familiar, slightly uptempo, changes. Clark reveals the elegant but resilient scaffolding of his pianism in a fine melodic solo. Warren's interlude is modest, warm and disarmingly attractive, as are all of his contributions to the album.

McLean's Rainy Blues has something of a hoe-down groove and the altoist's sound cries, dips and wheels in splendid fashion; phrases typically reach down when expected to rise, evoking that peculiar ambiguous quality of his otherwise aggressive self-confidence. Sonny picks up on the final alto phrase but develops a rather routine statement by his own high standards. In contrast, the pianist constructs an admirable single-note melody line, cantilevered with acutely placed double-time, on his Nursery Blues, a repetitive rhyme on suspensions that the soloists acknowledge in their opening choruses. Jackie is clipped and faintly ornithological as he builds to a climax of repetitions resolving into sliding cadences that lead to the piano solo.

The second side of the album contains mellow but masculine performances of Cabin In The Sky and Clark's Nicely; Sonny's well-judged attention to suspense and release perhaps upstages the leader on the former, and the piano on nicely sparkles good-humoredly across its spare musing bass line, investing a wealth of detail in a superficially modest solo.

Two For One (not the Green original on Grant's Gooden's Corner album), however, catches Jackie looking ahead. The modal potentials of the piece allow him the chance to assay more recent expressions of the jazz vocabulary and the burning trails of tied notes and cutting tones accumulate in the most intense moments of the session.

Artist may wonder why earlier efforts not made available at the time of creation, belatedly are brought forth to the public view. Whatever past reasons, the world contains a dedicated band of listeners as ready as ever to embrace music like this, and Jackie McLean's trenchantly honest art, from any period, makes that an easy and satisfying thing to do.

—Terry Martin