BLP 1600

Introducing The Three Sounds

Released - February 1959

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, September 16, 1958
Gene Harris, piano; Andrew Simpkins, bass; Bill Dowdy, drums.

tk.5 Willow Weep For Me
tk.6 Both Sides
tk.12 Tenderly
tk.17 It's Nice

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, September 28, 1958
Gene Harris, piano, celeste; Andrew Simpkins, bass; Bill Dowdy, drums.

tk.4 O Sole Mio
tk.7 Blue Bells
tk.12 Woody'n You
tk.18 Goin' Home

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Tenderly	Walter Gross, Jack Lawrence	16/09/1958
Willow Weep For Me	Ann Ronell	16/09/1958
Both Sides	Gene Harris	16/09/1958
Blue Bells	Gene Harris	28/09/1958
Side Two
It's Nice	Gene Harris	16/09/1958
Goin' Home	Traditional	28/09/1958
Woody 'N You	Dizzy Gillespie	28/09/1958
O Sole Mio	Giovanni Capurro, Eduardo di Capua	28/09/1958

Credits

Cover Photo:	FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design:	REID MILES
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	LEONARD FEATHER

Liner Notes

IT has been characteristic of the delirious decade drawing to a close that the search for new jazz sounds has tended to reach farther and farther in the direction of tonal and instrumental novelty. The Fifties will be remembered as the years in which flutes, cellos, oboes and almost every other instrument known to man, but previously strange to jazz, began to be involved in the endless quest for novelty.

Fortunately there have been a few steadying influences. Along with the oddly-shaped groups that have changed the tonal palette of our music there have been a few impressively successful diehards that have had the courage to leave things as they are instrumentally, while showing which way they may move, creatively.

Such a unit is the new-to-records trio now introduced by Blue Note as The 3 Sounds.

Their advent will come as a complete surprise to most, since as can be gleaned from the biographical details that follow, they had very little exposure in any medium until the opportunity make an LP was presented to only a couple months ago.

The present group might well have called itself the Four Sounds Minus One, since on its formation in South Bend in 1956 it featured a tenor saxophonist. There were several changes in personnel while they worked around Ohio, gigging with Al Hibbler, Lester Young, Sonny Stitt and others. Finally the last tenor man left and they because the Three Sounds. Their new home base was Washington, D.C., where they worked for many months at the Spotlight and Hollywood clubs. Dowdy doubles as the group's business manager.

In September of 1958 they came to New York and were installed at a slightly remote spot on upper Broadway known as the Offbeat. It was here that I first heard them, playing sets by Stuff Smith. The group was impressive collectively and individually.

It is difficult to know whom to deal with first in introducing the members, since the Sounds are in every sense of the phrase a cooperative group.

Gene Harris, the pianist, and de facto musical director of group, was born September 1, 1933. Self taught, he began playing at nine and never had any music lessons. Boogie-woogie seared his psyche at an early stage, but after going through the Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson period he graduated into an affection for the Oscar Peterson and Erroll Garner approaches.

Harris entered the service on graduating in 1951 and belatedly earned a knowledge of reading and musical fundamentals with the 82nd Airborne Division Army Band. "I was helped greatly," he recalls, "by Warrant Officer Charlesworth, who was in charge of the band and played trumpet in it, and by Captain Mobley, who's now in charge of the Washington Naval School of Music. After I left the service in 1951, I toured the South and Midwest with various bands — Benny Stevenson's in Florida, Curtis Johnson's in Indiana, Benny Poole's around Michigan — until 1956, when the Sounds were organized."

Andrew Simpkins, the bassist, was born April 29, 192 in Richmond, Ind. His original instruments were clarinets, which he studied from the of ten, and piano, which he took up four years later. He played both instruments through junior high and high school, continuing through two years of college at Wilberforce U. in Xenia, Ohio, before the finger pointed at him in 1953. It was only three months before entering the Army that he became interested in string bass and he began studying it seriously While in the service.

Coming out of the Army in 1955, he played with a number of small combos for the next year until the Sounds started. Simpkins names as his ideal bass men Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford, Milt Hinton, Charlie Mingus, Paul Chambers and Doug Watkins.

Bill Dowdy is also a Benton Harbor product and was born August 15, 1933, in Benton Harbor, Mich. and became interested in drums in 1949. With Gene Harris and a bassist named Oleyer Jones a combo was formed, known as the Club 49 Trio; this group played a local radio show every Saturday and week end gigs in clubs. On graduating from high school Dowdy traveled with a band led by Rupert Harris, then went into the Army until 1954. After his discharge he went to live in Chicago.

"That was Where I did some valuable studying," he says. "I took lessons with a very fine drum teacher named Oliver Coleman at Roosevelt University. At that time I gigged around Chicago with blues bands, but also occasionally had a chance to work with jazz men like Johnny Griffin, Jay Jay Johnson and others who passed through town."

I was not surprised to learn of his preferences: they include Roy Haynes, Max Roach, Philly Joe Jones and Art Blakey as well as such more recent stars at Charlie Persip, Louis Hayes and Donald Bailey.

The most striking aspect of the Three Sounds is the remarkable integration of the unit. From the opening bars of Tenderly it is apparent that each man is listening sympathetically to his teammates. The crisp, sharp of Harris' touch and of Dowdy's cymbal work make on immediate and startling impact. I had immediate images of Dowdy spending months searching the Zildjian factory for exactly the quality he wanted on the cymbal. Whatever the circumstances were that to its acquisition, the timbre is extraordinary and the presence of all three men under Rudy van Gelder's watchful eye and ear is enhanced to maximum hi-fi effect.

Tenderly, with its Latin touches and ad lib single note piano lines, in indicates immediately that the group is beholden to no one combo For its inspiration; in fact, despite touches of Garner influence here and there, I could think of no trio, as such, that might hove influenced the Sounds in their overall concept.

Willow Weep For Me is a standard lends itself naturally to a funky treatment, since its main passage is based entirely on the principal notes of the blues scale. Notice how subtly Gene transforms the melody, instilling funk usually by the use of chords and making effective use of syncopation, especially in bars 3-4 and 7-8 of the release.

Both Sides is a blues that's about as basic as you can get, a simple three-note repeated phrase of pre-ragtime vintage appropriately accompanied by street-parade-style urging from Dowdy's sticks. But there is an immediate transition to a contemporary (though no less blue-rooted) concept as the ad lib passages begin. The 12-12-8-12 construction is employed.

Blue Bells is also a blues, slower in tempo and more varied in treatment, with Harris doubling on celeste, Its special interest is the introduction of Simpkins as a soloist. Here are all the virtues of the first-class modern bassist: a melodic solo feel, a sense of continuity that leads to a linear development rather than a mere series of disconnected two-bar breaks; and a Full, rich tone with faultless intonation. Harris, between passages, extends himself in a cruising, rhythmically chorded piano solo.

It's Nice is a Marcheta-like, pop-style melody whose phrases are dynamically underlined by a succession of insistent, exciting cymbal triplets. Both Harris and Dowdy excel on this track in their beautiful control of mood, of tempo-feel and of interplay; Simpkins, too, is heard briefly in a solo.

Goin' Home goes straight to the original home of jazz, the blues again, introduced on celeste this time. Simpkins' walking presence is a strong factor here as Gene wends his way from celeste to piano and back to celeste.

The Gillespie standard of the early 1940s, Woody'n You (originally named for Woody Herman but, ironically, never recorded by him) takes on Latinesque qualities in the first chorus but proceeds immediately to straight four at a bright-but-not-wild pace. Notice Gene's economical left hand punctuations against a funky right, the exciting exchange of ideas is the piano-drums fours that follow Simpkins' walking chorus; and the ingenious build of tension in Dowdy's lengthy drum workout.

O Sole Mio shows a sense of humor with its tongue-in-cheek alternation of the two traditional melodies (each sixteen bars long) with passages of Latinized blues. Naples was never like this.

The abiding impression left by this group's first album is that to intents and purposes, and very befittingly, they belie their name More than in anything else their success lies in the achievement not of three sounds but of a unity, a One Sound, from which a great deal more will soon be heard. To a list of discoveries that includes Jimmy Smith, Horace Silver, Art Blakey and a score of others now accepted as indispensable elements in the modern jazz scene, Alfred Lion can add another ascendant new name.

-LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Book of Jazz, Horizon Press)

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

BLP 1599

Bennie Green - Soul Stirrin'

Released - July 1958

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, April 28, 1958
Bennie Green, trombone, vocals; Gene Ammons as "Jug", Billy Root, tenor sax; Sonny Clark, piano; Ike Isaacs, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; Babs Gonzales, vocals #2,4.

tk.2 Lullaby Of The Doomed
tk.5 We Wanna Cook
tk.9 That's All
tk.12/13 Soul Stirrin' (mono take)
tk.15 B.G. Mambo
tk.19 Black Pearl

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Soul Stirrin'	Babs Gonzales	28/04/1958
We Wanna Cook	Bennie Green	28/04/1958
That's All	Alan Brandt, Bob Haymes	28/04/1958
Side Two
Lullaby Of The Doomed	Babs Gonzales	28/04/1958
B.G. Mambo	Bennie Green	28/04/1958
Black Pearl	Bill Graham	28/04/1958

Credits

Cover Photo:	FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design:
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	JACK WALKER

Liner Notes

MODERN DAY usage — particularly in reference to modern day jazz — permits the happy use of the graphic and appropriate definition “Boss ‘Bone” to sum up the highly imaginative and exciting’y polished artistry of trombonist Bennie Green in this tremendous package of Jazz . . . and indeed, a more apropos title than Soul Stirrin’ is not to be found in all the dictionaries and thesauri in the English library. There is certainly a great deal here in this grouping that is stirring and soulful and, at the same lime, soul stirring as you will hear and feel immediately.

The aficionado of contemporary jazz insists — and rightly so — on inventiveness, daring, newness, message, and soul in his dish of sounds. A dished out here by Fluke (as many of his intimates call Bennie Green) and his group, Soul Stirrin’ provides generous servings of all these vital ingredients.

ABOUT BENNIE GREEN: Chicago-born and Trummy Young-inspired Bennie Green is by no stretch of the imagination a stranger to the jazz scene . . . he’s been an integral part of the kaleidoscopic picture of modern sounds since Budd Johnson discovered him for the Earl Hines aggregation back in 1942 in Chicago. In this fertile surrounding he worked with on impressive roster of first rate sidemen — was both influenced and tutored by such greats as Dizzy Gillespie. Bennie found his footing with the Hines band . . . and got his exposure via a three year stint under Charlie Ventura’s ‘baton”. He is perhaps best remembered for a whole discography of outstanding solo segments with Ventura’s group, exhibiting his now muchly developed ability to ad lib and invent with remarkably good taste. Fluke returned to the Earl “Fatha” Hines fold in 1951 for a two year stay and then flung himself full-force on the scene fronting his own combo. He was immediately recognized as “belonging”, creating what jazz critic Leonard Feather calls a "...swinging excitement sometimes associated with the Jazz At The Philharmonic school of jazz, though more clearly defined and organized . . .“ Whether he’s cooking with on extrovert way-out and swinging opus, or soul searching with a cool thing, or improvising on a standard, the Bennie ‘bone is boss! A more complete biography of Bennie Green con be found on the liner notes for Blue Note album No. BLP 1587, “Back On The Scene”, under the by-line of Leonard Feather . . . please look this up while we go on to talk about:

THE PERSONNEL: Bennie, of course, is featured throughout “Soul Stirrin” with his immense and delightfully “clean” trombone sound. He’s literally surrounded by five thoroughly empathic musicians: Billy Root and “Jug” on tenor saxes; Sonny Clark on piano; Ike Isaacs, bass; and Elvin Jones on drums. This sextet provides on extremely tasty frame in which either Bennie, “Jug”, Billy Root or Sonny Clark, as the case may be, ad libs the tone pictures. Impeccable taste, provocative exuberance, and or calculated restraint — Hall Mark of Bennie Green groups — are much in evidence here. Note too that the arrangements were created by Melba Liston, recently of the Dizzy Gillespie big band, who has already earned her niche as a trombone artist. The fact that Melba is both female and a lady does not interfere in the least with her insistence upon strong and virile voicing in these sextet arrangements.

ABOUT THE MUSIC: With the exception of the standard That’s All (side 1, track 3) the selections in this album are all original jazz compositions . . . a circumstance which some buffs feel is more conducive to ultimate real expression.

Soul Stirrin’ (after which the entire program is dubbed) was composed by Babs Gonzales. It’s a moody thing which very tastefully incorporates a “just enough” fragment of vocal introduction voiced by Babs and Bennie in the modern jazz idiom, then turns Bennie loose for solo sounds which nearly run the gamut in phrasing on this kind of thing. “Jug” follows with his tenor, then gives way to Sonny Clark’s pianistics. Billy Root follows Sonny with a solo chorus after which the ensemble picks up the figure and grooves it to a finish. It’s a tastefully funky work after which the entire album is patterned.

We Wanna Cook is on up-beat Bennie Green original highly reminiscent of the previously etched I Wanna Blow, and poignantly illustrative of Bennie’s favorite idiom. The choruses by “Jug” and Billy on tenors are both exciting and excitable. This band accurately illustrated what Feather calls the “JATP school of jazz” which Bennie so effectively organizes.

That’s All, the single standard item on the agenda, is a Hoymes-Brandt work and serves to showcase the lamentful, brooding, easy, cool style that too is a part of Bennie Green’s artistry. He literally floats through this Singing thing with the ease and mastery of, say, Sarah Vaughan — for his horn truly is singing. “Jug’s” ad lib which follows is also “something else”. Bennie improvises the finish.

Lullaby Of The Doomed is another Babs Gonzales original. It’s an extremely modern composition — aptly suited to chamber-music-jazz performance. It might well have been called “Soul Searching” for it provides the area in which the soloists seem to be doing just that . . . and in the doing they’re “saying something”. It’s a moody and beautiful bit of jazz and again Fluke and “Jug” take some groovy solos.

On B. G. Mambo the sextet gently lifts you from that nostalgic state of mind in which “Lullaby” leaves one with a latin-flavored Bennie Green original. Here again, the rhythm section works behind the soloists with that arduously restrained beat characteristic of Bennie’s taste.

The program is completed with Black Pearl penned by sax-man Billy Graham. This melodic work, highly listenable, and — if you like — danceable, is the perfect icing. Bennie, “Jug”, Billy Root and Sonny Clark again and finally cook the album to a close; leaving one — as all gourmet fare should — with just enough . . . but wanting more.

It’s a happy thing for modern jazz to again have the prolific and productive ‘bone of Bennie Green making the distinctive sounds of a particular and immensely talented jazzman.

—JACK WALKER
Radio Station WOV, New York

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

BLP 1598

 The Amazing Bud Powell - Volume 4: Time Waits

Released - November 1958

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, May 24, 1958
Bud Powell, piano; Sam Jones, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums.

tk.5 Sub City (alternate take)
tk.8 Sub City
tk.9 John's Abbey
tk.10 Buster Rides Again
tk.11 Dry Soul
tk.12 Marmalade
tk.14 Monopoly
tk.16 Time Waits

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Buster Rides Again	Bud Powell	24/05/1958
Sub City	Bud Powell	24/05/1958
Time Waits	Bud Powell	24/05/1958
Marmalade	Bud Powell	24/05/1958
Side Two
Monopoly	Bud Powell	24/05/1958
John's Abbey	Bud Powell	24/05/1958
Dry Soul	Bud Powell	24/05/1958
Sub City (Alternate Master)	Bud Powell	24/05/1958

Credits

Cover Photo:
Cover Design:	ANDY WARHOL and REID MILES
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	ROBERT LEVIN

Session Photos

Liner Notes

The line that separates the jazz instrumentalist from the jazz composer is thin, nebulous and easily negotiable. In the chapter of The Book of Jazz devoted to the composers and arrangers I opened with this quotation from Tony Scott: "It all starts with the soloist. What he plays today the arranger writes tomorrow." Just as the arranger imprints his own musical identity on any work he orchestrates and is thus in effect a composer, it is no less firm a rule that the composer in jazz, more often than not, is simply a soloist documenting his improvisations.

We have seen examples throughout the history of jazz. Early in Ellington's career, solos created spontaneously in his band evolved into full-scale compositions. Parker's unforgotten Anthropology started life as the final ad lib chorus on a Bird record of a different tune. By the same standard it is a matter of record rather than of theory that Bod Powell has been essentially composer as long as he has been a creative jazz pianist.

The role of the jazz pianist as composer has been recognized more completely in some performers than in others who may have spent less time composing in the formal sense of the term. Art Tatum, technically the best-equipped pianist in jazz, almost never recorded a composition bearing his own byline, not because melodic invention was outside his scope but because he preferred to improvise within the framework of a known standard theme on which his variations, all melodic entities themselves, thus had an easily discernible point of reference. In the so-called modern jazz era Thelonious Monk was the first to earn dual recognition and is today perhaps even better known as composer than as soloist. Horace Silver has worked his way into this twofold acceptance from the other direction: once thoroughly adopted as a pianistic force he was able to stress his writing ability and soon was exercising it with fast-increasing frequency and effectiveness.

Bud Powell, perhaps because of the extraordinary degree of his dominance as a solo influence in the first years of bebop, never was primarily thought of as a writer; yet those who have followed his career and development must know that in two of his most memorable recordings, "Un Poco Loco" and 'Glass Enclosure." both on this label, the roles of improviser and composer were invaluably intermingled; in the latter work improvisation was, in fact, only present in the sense that Bud's personal touch and phrasing lent the performance an extemporized quality; the work was one that he had been preparing and developing for some time.

The present album is the first for which Bud formally composed all the tunes; all the opening-closing themes were set on paper before he entered the studio, though in some cases the harmonic line was given to the bassist verbally. Of course everything in between the slices of prepared toast in these sandwiches is strictly improvised meat.

I have written, in annotating earlier Powell albums for Blue Note, of Bud's sensitivity, of his emotional problems and of the importance he attaches to every factor attending a recording session — the accompanying musicians, the freedom to choose his own material and take his own time, and perhaps most important of all, the need to feel wanted, understood and appreciated by those for whom he is working. Perhaps it is because the first great solo sessions he recorded almost a decade ago were made for Blue Note before the sympathetic ears of Alfred Lion (and the camera eyes of Francis Wolff) that Bud has remained curiously capable of reserving his best efforts for Blue Note.

Of the two musicians working with him on this occasion it need only be observed that this was, for both Philly Joe and Sam Jones, their first record date with Bud, an event for which they had waited as a young supporting actor might hope some day to be seen on Broadway with the Lunts. Because Philly Joe is a drummer long associated with a highly virile and extroverted style, it is essential to add that his discretion in underlining Powell's performances do him special credit on these sides.

"Buster Rides Again" is a Latin-tinged blues, with a melody that evokes the mood of the Afro-Cuban bands, making extensive use of tonic, dominant and flatted seventh. Sam Jones establishes a rhumba beat, Philly Joe makes intricate use of cross rhythms and in his solo instills something of the occult, mysterious aura of a tribal message. Bud's blowing on this track maintains a firm grip on two concurrent realities: the necessity to lend authenticity to the Latin flavor and the need to keep swinging.

"Sub City", a medium-bright 32-bar theme, uses a pedal point not (on the dominant) as an important accent in the exposition of the melody. On his solo work here Bud maintains a mood of fiery, dynamically subtle single-note lines in which the sense of a process of immediate creativity is constantly present; not only can one not predict where the next note will fall (as one can too often with so many of his imitators) but it is equally impossible to forecast the particular manner in which he will strike it - staccato or legato, syncopated or as part of a group of even eighth notes or of some other rhythmic conformation. Unpredictability may not be an essential of jazz genius, but it certainly helps. In one passage Bud plays locked-hands chords in a manner more associated with George Shearing (with whom, perhaps surprisingly to some, Bud has a mutual admiration society, each having respected and recorded compositions by the other). Actually, neither Powell nor Shearing originated the style, which began with Milt Bucker in the 1940s but Bud, one need scarcely add, molds it to his own completely personal use.

Sam Jones's solo is underlined by Philly Joe's brushes swinging evenly; Philly has a solo, including a striking six-against-four passage, before the theme is brought back.

"Time Waits," the title song of the set, is the only ballad of the set, a melodic vehicle played with firm yet somehow gentle emphasis in a manner that draws attention to its attractive chord changes perhaps even more than to the melodic line. This track presents an aspect of Powell as composer that has rarely been heard. It is the kind of theme that could bear the addition of lyrics and commercial exposure along the lines successfully tackled by "'Round Midnight," "Midnight Sun" and other jazz instrumentals.

"Marmalade" recalls the mood of some of Bud's earlier efforts as a composer. A boppish 32-bar line, it is a launching pad for medium-bright cooking on the part of Bud and Sam. Note the tremolo chord effect and the factious quote from Raymond Scott's "Toy Trumpet" in the chorus before the bass solo.

"Monopoly," with its repeated tonic against changing chords, is somehow reminiscent of Thelonious in its thematic conception, there is no evidence that Bud was not composing and/or improvising in this manner at least as early as Monk. Bud's work on this track is a model of rhythmic as well as melodic and harmonic ingenuity: for variety's sake he even incorporates a brief passage of stride left hand, a gambit to which he has resorted before, but more often when not accompanied a rhythm section. Sam Jones's solo, perhaps his most successful of the whole set displays smooth continuity of phrasing abetted by facile technique. Philly's brushes, both in solo and background roles, are an agile asset.

"John's Abbey is a fast-tempo original with lines that recall some of the Parker works of the 1940s. The blowing choruses by Bud typify the style of his earlier recordings, his bass line punching out accents, somewhat as one would use the space bar on a typewriter while the upper register spells out words in fast-moving clusters of single notes. The tempo is cut in half surprising!y at the end for an eighteenth-century coda complete with final tonic.

"Dry Soul," though at times unmistakably Powell, is at once something else again. The tempo is very slow, the theme a 12-bar blues, and the mood, particularly in the opening and closing theme choruses, may remind some listeners of the Avery Parrish "After Hours" cut many years ago with Erskine Hawkins's band, a blues that predated bop by a few years. Whatever the influence or intent, this one came out strictly funk, all the way to the final blue ninth.

The side closes with a second take of "Sub City," shorter than the track on the A side and without the bass and drum solos. Bud was in such exceptionally good shape on the day of this session that the inclusion of another take brings a welcome additional glimpse of his never-static invention and infinite capacity for taking choruses. As the last sustained chord trails off into space to bring the Time Waits album to an end, the listener, along with this writer, will be thankful that time waited to bring Bud, Philly Joe and Sam Jones together, and waited far Blue Note to produce the best Powell performances to be placed between covers in recent years.

-LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Book of Jazz, Horizon Press Inc.)

Alfred Lion of Blue Note extends special thanks to Oscar Goodstein, the genial manager of "Birdland", for his cooperation in making this recording possible.

Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

The special relationship that Alfred Lion enjoyed with Bud Powell created an atmosphere in which the brilliant, troubled pianist created some of his finest recorded music; yet every time I see this point made in print (and Leonard Feather's original notes to this album were neither the first nor the last instance), I feel compelled to insist that the situation is not that simple. Powell's genius simply burned too bright in his early years to limit his greatest recordings to those made for Blue Note, while the fragility of his temperament even at his peak left all of his producers with moments of inconsistency. My idea of a truly essential Bud Powell box would include all of the music issued under his name between 1947 and '53, which takes in performances released by Roost, Debut and the Norman Granz labels as well as Blue Note, and already reveals moments where the musical focus wanders to the point of disappearance. By 1954 the results tum far more spotty, and even the strongest music of his three 1957-8 Blue Note LPs is a cut below the supreme achievements of his earlier years.

That said, Time Waits is as successful as any of the sessions Powell cut in the final decade of his life. On this occasion, Lion successfully navigated the twilight world of the pianist's psyche and legal competence. (The acknowledgement of "genial" Oscar Goodstein at the end of the notes refers to the Birdland manager who, in Lion's words, kept Powell in an apartment "under house arrest" when the pianist had to fulfill bookings at the club.) Lion placed Powell among admirers and supremely talented accompanists when he hired Sam and Philly Joe Jones to complete the trio. This was clearly a piano player's rhythm section, to judge from the pair's work in the same period on Riverside with Bill Evans (on Cannonball Adderley's Portrait Of Cannonball and Everybody Digs Bill Evans) and Thelonious Monk (on Clark Terry's In Orbit). Bassist Sam Jones was just beginning to establish himself, and was working with Dizzy Gillespie's post-big band combo, while drummer Philly Joe Jones (a year older than Powell, lest Feather's "young supporting actor" allusion suggest otherwise) had recently completed his historic stay with Miles Davis. Both are totally supportive, and also contribute to the excellence of the album with their solo contributions.

Time Waits also stands apart for its exclusive program of Powell compositions. It reminds me of the claim by Bertrand Tavernier, the director and co-writer of the film 'Round Midnight, that "Bud is the most unjustly neglected composer in jazz history." Tavernier may have overstated the case (there are, after all, an awful lot of musicians who play Powell's tune), but he had a point when he noted that a key difference between Powell and Thelonious Monk was that "Monk would write great tunes, then play them again and again until eventually the audience caught up with him, while Bud wrote great tunes, recorded them once and that was it." This album contains one exception to Tavernier's rule — "John's Abbey," which became a signature piece during Powell's years in France and is heard here in its two earliest versions. The rest receive their only reading by the pianist here. Taken together, the seven originals confirm the quality and range in Powell's writing, with touches of his mentor Monk on "Monopoly" and the rich if deliberate title ballad, which might be an answer to Powell's earlier, more hellbent "Tempus Fugit. " The Latin drum patterns on "Buster Rides Again" recall Philly Joe's playing on "Stars Over Marrakesh" from the 1953 Blue Note debut of another member of the Powell/Monk piano circle, Elmo Hope. The pieces make room for a variety of devices (including stride interludes, tremolos, mambo vamps, unison octaves and ringing dissonances) that had grown more prominent in Powell's playing. Only "Dry Soul" (which, pace Feather, recalls "Walkin'" more than "After Hours") sounds tailored to current tastes in things funky.

One point that Powell's Blue Note sessions frequently make concerns the value of alternate takes from a true improviser. Brief versions of both "John's Abbey" and "Sub City" were cut at the start of this session, prior to the longer master takes that include a full round of solos. The alternate "Sub" was actually included on the original LP, while "Abbey" two (actual "Abbey" one in sequence of recording) first appeared in the '70s. They reveal just how much genius, even in its diminished state, remained in the mind and under the fingers of the man Blue Note so rightly dubbed The Amazing Bud Powell.

- Bob Blumenthal. 1999

BLP 1597

Kenny Burrell - Blue Lights - Volume 2

Released - October 1961

Recording and Session Information

Manhattan Towers, NYC, May 14, 1958
Louis Smith, trumpet; Junior Cook, tenor sax #2; Duke Jordan, piano; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Sam Jones, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.4 The Man I Love
tk.9 Phinupi

Louis Smith, trumpet; Tina Brooks, Junior Cook, tenor sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Sam Jones, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.10 Chuckin'
tk.12 Rock Salt

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Rock Salt	Kenny Burrell	14/05/1958
The Man I Love	George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin	14/05/1958
Side Two
Chuckin'	Sam Jones	14/05/1958
Phinupi	Kenny Burrell	14/05/1958

Credits

Cover Photo:
Cover Design:	ANDY WARHOL and REID MILES
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	ROBERT LEVIN

Liner Notes

The "blowing session" (or "jam session" as it used to be called) is currently quite a ubiquitous commodity in the contemporary jazz recording industry. Musicians have always gathered to "jam" or "blow" with a minimum of preparation and preconceived ideas. And it was certainly a good idea, with the advent of recording equipment (and particularly the LP), to assemble and capture such sessions-this spontaneity of expression-on records. I think one must acknowledge that in the "blowing session" lies much of the unique and romantic flavor of jazz. It has been argued, however, that the recorded "blowing session" has lately become, in many instances, even more formless, disorganized and undisciplined than its definition would imply. And it has been said that the primary reasons for this are in the bringing together of musicians who are not in themselves disciplined instrumentalists and/or who have not had sufficient playing experience with one another to have developed the sympathies and rapport required for their successful integration. A related point which has frequently been voiced and which has, perhaps, even greater significance is that the recorded "blowing session" has come to be regarded by many musicians as just "another gig"; that it demands only that one be there, have his say on a tired set of chords, and leave. Since jazz has advanced to the point where many believe it to warrant consideration as a serious and important medium of expression and creativity, the "blowing session", when these comments are applicable to it, may represent something of a regression.

But all of this does not always have to be the case and if the "blowing session" is assembled with thought, purpose and care-which I think these two volumes of "Blue Lights" were-its many inherent and otherwise only implicit values can be brought to the fore and can offer a strong definition of much of what jazz is.

I think, Burrell's Yes Baby is a fine illustration of the exceptional jazz this context can produce. It is a growling, funky (in the best sense of that overworked term) blues, and the key to its success is also what is at the center of any successful "blowing session"-unanimity and a collective energy of expression and direction. After the mood setting "head" a succession of solos begins which contain a strong unity of purpose and in which one finds a related-to-the-group as well as an individual cohesiveness.

The majority of the musicians presented here have recorded previously for Blue Note. Twenty-seven-year-old guitarist and leader, Kenny Burrell, has proven that his flexible style (his experiences include gigs with Benny Goodman and Buck Clayton on up to Tony Scott, Jimmy Smith, etc.) fits comfortably and effectively within any jazz idiom or context. Several facets of his approach are in evidence here; his relaxed forcefulness on the blues (particularly on Yes Baby and Rock Salt) and his lyrical working over a pretty popular song, Autumn in New York. On the latter tune, which offers a very good showcase for his talents, he builds an engaging melodic statement-embellishing on the first chorus in a Johnny Smith-like chordal style and then improvising thoughtful lines on the chords. He is currently leading his own group at the Brankers Melody Room in New York City.

Trumpeter Louis Smith, also twenty-seven, may force, at this time, a comparison with Clifford Brown. But though his approach is strikingly similar to that of Brown's, he does have his own things to say and the equipment to say them well. His statements on Rock Salt and Man I Love (which seem to me to be among his best on record) show, apart from the open-emotion heatedness one has come to expect from him, a good sense of continuity and an adjectival restraint that is, perhaps, an indication of his growing control of this style which could make him a significant figure on his instrument. He is, at this writing, with Horace Silver.

Both Duke Jordan (thirty-six) and Bobby Timmons (twenty-three) belong to the line of pianists that has its roots in Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson. I think Jordan's most gratifying virtue lies in his ability to weave spare, uncluttered lines which can be very beautiful in their directness and simplicity. His qualities of sensitivity and lyricism have frequently been praised by musicians and some critics, but, perhaps because he is not a particularly imposing piano player, he has never acquired the large audience his talents deserve. And yet, listening to him here (especially on Scotch Blues -where he briefly employs an effective chordal style-and Phinupi) one hears that it is exactly his economically-calm conviction which is quickly, and quietly (almost secretly), getting to the heart of the matter and getting some significant things said. Timmons' style contains elements of both Bud Powell and Horace Silver, but it would be unfair to pass him off as simply an imitator. He seems rather to have employed what he has learned from these men as a means of informing and enlarging his own conception and he delivers potent solos on Rock Salt, Caravan and Chuckin'.

I think having Art Blakey on a session guarantees that it will swing. Blakey can inflame the most apathetic of groups (which this one isn't) and propel it far beyond its normal capacities. His sympathies with the soloists are often uncanny and he himself solos with more consistent meaning, and with fewer extraneous displays of vocabulary, than do certain of his similarly dexterous contemporaries. Thirty-nine years old, Blakey has, in recent years, been leading groups of "Jazz Messengers.

Bassist Sam Jones and tenors Junior Cook and Tina Brooks mark their initial Blue Note appearances with these albums. Jones, born in Jacksonville, Florida on November 12, 1924, worked with several rhythm and blues groups and led his own combo at the Harlem Club in Miami for three years, before moving to New York in 1949. He has an exceptionally strong rhythmic sense and is also capable of doing imaginative things with a melody. His work on Man I Love spotlights these talents well.

Cook and Brooks are two saxophonists of whom I think you will be hearing a great deal more in the future. Both are unusually forceful and fluent soloists whose conceptual foundations are related, but who are otherwise quite different from each other. Cook possesses a round, full, rolling tone and approaches his lines in a manner that suggests the influences of Wardell Gray and Sonny Rollins. An assured and inventive structuring can be heard in most of his solos here, particularly on Yes Baby and Rock Salt. Though there are occasional traces of Sonny Stiff in Cook's playing, a resemblance to Stiff is more immediately discernible in Brooks whose extensive experience with rhythm and blues bands has developed in him a strength and vitality of expression that are among his most significant attributes and which his statements on Chuckin' and Yes Baby illustrate. Cook was born in Pensacola, Florida on July 22, 1934; Brooks in North Carolina on June 7, 1932.

I think you will agree that the quality of these sets is above that of the average "blowing session." Just as important, I think, as the unusual consistency of good solos these volumes contain, is the work of the group as a whole. This is a session that went well and the musicians concerned seemed to have known that.

-ROBERT LEVIN

For purposes of immediate identification, and particularly because the two tenors may not yet be familiar to the listener, there follows a solo-order chart below.

VOLUME ONE (BLP1596)
YES BABY: Burrell, Brooks, Smith, Cook, Jordan, Jones
SCOTCH BLUES: Burrell, Brooks, Smith, Cook, Jordan, Blakey
AUTUMN IN NEW YORK: Burrell only soloist
CARAVAN: Smith, Cook, Brooks, Burrell, Timmons, Blakey

VOLUME TWO (BLP1597)
ROCK SALT: Smith, Cook, Burrell, Brooks, Timmons, Jones
MAN I LOVE: Jones, Smith, Jordan, Jones
CHUCKIN': Timmons, Burrell, Brooks, Smith, Cook, Jones (fours: Burrell and three horns in same order as solos, with Blakey).
PHINUPI: Cook, Smith, Burrell, Jordan, Blakey

Cover Design by ANDY WARHOL and REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER