GXF-3057

Kenny Burrell - Freedom

Released - 1979

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 27, 1963
Seldon Powell, baritone sax, flute; Hank Jones, piano, organ; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Milt Hinton, bass; Osie Johnson, drums.

tk.13 The Good Life
tk.21 Stairway To The Stars
tk.27 Loie

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 2, 1963
Seldon Powell, tenor sax; Hank Jones, piano; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Milt Hinton, bass; Osie Johnson, drums.

tk.35 I Hadn't Anyone 'Til You

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, October 22, 1964
Stanley Turrentine, tenor sax; Herbie Hancock, piano; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Ben Tucker, bass; Bill English, drums; Ray Barretto, congas.

1449 tk.2 Love, Your Spell Is Everywhere
1450 tk.20 Freedom
1451 tk.25 Lonesome Road
1452 tk.31 G Minor Bash
1453 tk.42 K Twist

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
G Minor Bash	Kenny Burrell	October 22 1964
Freedom	Ben Tucker	October 22 1964
Lonesome Road	Gene Austin-Nathaniel Shilkret	October 22 1964
K Twist	Kenny Burrell	October 22 1964
Side Two
Love, Your Spell Is Everywhere	Edmund Goulding	October 22 1964
The Good Life	Jean Broussolle-Sacha Distel	March 27 1963
Stairway To The Stars	Signorelli-Malneck-Parish	March 27 1963
Loie	Kenny Burrell	March 27 1963
I Hadn't Anyone 'Til You	Ray Noble	April 2 1963

Liner Notes

Freedom means many things to many people. Depending on exactly where you live on earth, political realities determine just what constitutes freedom and precisely how much freedom an individual is entitled to.

Musical freedom is equally difficult to pin down. To many, it means the music of the post-Ornette Coleman generation, best exemplified by The Art Ensemble of Chicago and other members of the AACM. Yet a musician who is also a band- leader has always the freedom to hear his music played his own way. What freedom means to Kenny Burrell or Ben Tucker (who wrote the title track of this album) is something only those individuals could answer. But the long and successful career of Kenny Burrell may give us some clues.

Burrell is from Detroit and recently turned forty-eight years old. He has been playing professionally for more than thirty years. Yet even when still a teenager, he had a reputation as the finest guitar player in his home town. Illinois Jacquet tried to persuade him to join his band in 1948 (when it was the hottest band in the country), but Burrell was considered too young to travel by his parents.

Early recordings with Bubu Turner (on Fortune) and with his own band on JVB have never been reissued so the first glimpse of his work that is available to the general public is his solo from March 1, 1951, on Dizzy Gillespie's Birk's Works (DeeGee, reissued on Savoy). The youngster was in very good company what with Milt Jackson, John Coltrane, and Percy Heath also on the date. The solo itself is brief yet it reveals facets of his style still present today: a natural sound without any trace of gimmicks and a clean, improvised line of single notes.

Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit occupied Burrell's time until his graduation in 1955. Later in that year after a short stay with the Oscar Peterson trio, Burrell moved to New York and quickly emerged at the latest guitar sensation.

Burrell's recording career from the time of his New York arrival until the time of the final session here demonstrated his versatility. Not only was he the leader of LPs on Blue Note, Prestige, Argo, Savoy, Kapp, and Columbia, but he was almost ubiquitous as a sideman on jazz dates for those and other labels. In Burrell was more than merely "active" as a studio session player; he made dozens of recording sessions during the 1950s as a guitarist on rhythm & blues and pop records. Indeed, the demands of his studio schedule made it it difficult for him to work that often as the of a working band.

By the end of the decade, Burrell had cut back his studio work to concentrate on his own trios and quartets. Those groups always tended to reflect a high degree of discipline and professionalism. When it come to his own work, he is a demanding perfectionist. On more than one occasion, Kenny Burrell has scrapped live recordings and redone them at his own expense!

In Blue Note's Alfred Lion Burrell a producer with standards at least as high as his own. This is the second album of previously Burrell that has surfaced in the last year, like so many of these newly discovered Blue Note LPs, contains delights that tax the imagination.

The 1963 recordings issued here were obviously originally for release on 45 rpm singles. It was not common for jazz labels at this time to think in terms of singles for their own sake. Jazz singles then and now were generally culled from an issued LP on the basis of strong radio acceptance. Yet Blue Note recorded several other artists with singles as the primary motivation: Ike Quebec, Benny Green and Sonny Clark among them.

Kenny's associates on this session were all studio-wise veterans probably chosen for their versatility. Hank Jones doubles on organ and Seldon Powell utilizes tenor, flute, and his seldom-heard baritone. The rhythm section, as a unit, probably made more recordings together than any other on the New York studio scene.

Of all the music on this LP only Loie and The Good Life have been issued previously. My copy of the 45 came from a juke box stock reminding that the juke box trade was probably the inspiration for the session in the first place.

The performances here are gently swinging with the emphasis on melody. Hank (on piano) and Seldon (on tenor) split a chorus on I Hadn't Anyone Till You and there is some flute on Loie, but the rest is Kenny at his melodic best.

The other selections here are a reunion of the principal soloists from Kenny's hit album "Midnight Blue" recorded a year and a half earlier. Stanley Turrentine and Kenny were often on Jimmy Smith Blue Note LPs during the early 1960s and Kenny appeared on a couple of Stanley's dates. They are an especially compatible front line.

Herbie Hancock was a rhythm section partner of Kenny's a bit later on Creed Taylor sessions for Verve. At the time of this session, Hancock been a member of Miles Davis' group for a bit more than a year. There are obvious traces of Wynton Kelly in Hancock's playing here (especially on the title track), an influence which is rarely acknowledged.

Ben Tucker was Kenny's "Five Spot" album for Blue Note and was an active player until 1970 when he gave up playing to become a radio station executive in Georgia. Tucker was an excellent composer who should be remembered for much more than his big hit, Comin' Home Baby, and, as a bassist, he had excellent intonation and great walking lines. His decision to give up playing is a loss for jazz.

Bill English and Ray Barretto were holdovers from the "Midnight Blue" session. English was a member of Kenny's group at the time and made several LPs with him. Barretto has been an all-purpose percussionist for many years.

The music here is a pretty fair example of what Blue Note was all about during Alfred Lion's involvement. Excellent modern musicians applying themselves to the basics of blues-rooted material. Lonesore Road has been recorded by many jazzmen but seldom has it received the groovy treatment it gets here.

This session was Kenny's last visit to Blue Note as a leader. Yet his uncompromising quest for excellence has not ended. Today he lives in California and in to his own group and making excellent records, he is involved with university teaching. He first expressed a desire to teach in his biography for the Encyclopedia of Jazz which was published just after he had made his first LP (for Blue Note) in 1958. It would seem that his life is right on schedule.

Ultimately, it may be that freedom is not the proper word to describe Kenny Burrell's music. A better term might be a word that is echoed in every note Kenny Burrell plays, in all his LPs, in all his personal appearances or in the way he has conducted himself as a musician: quality.

—BOB PORTER
Jazz Columnist
Cash Box