3-58296-2

Andrew Hill - Pax

Released - 2006

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 10, 1965
Freddie Hubbard, cornet #1-5; Joe Henderson, tenor sax #1-5; Andrew Hill, piano; Richard Davis, bass; Joe Chambers, drums.

1518 tk.2 Euterpe (Intuition)
tk.4 Euterpe (Intuition) (alternate take)
1519 tk.6 Calliope (Deception)
1520 tk.7 Pax (Image Of Time)
1521 tk.8 Eris (Heritage)
1522 tk.10 Erato (Moon Chile)
1523 tk.11 Roots 'N' Herbs

See Also: BN-LA-459-H2

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Title	Author	Recording Date
Eris	Andrew Hill	February 10 1965
Pax	Andrew Hill	February 10 1965
Calliope	Andrew Hill	February 10 1965
Euterpe	Andrew Hill	February 10 1965
Erato	Andrew Hill	February 10 1965
Roots 'N' Herbs	Andrew Hill	February 10 1965
Euterpe (Alternate Take)	Andrew Hill	February 10 1965

Liner Notes

It is obvious by looking at the personnel on this record that this is one hell of a band.

But the music from this session, inexplicably, sat in the vaults for 10 years until the first five selections came out as part of a double album of unissued Hill material under the title One for One. Of all the Andrew Hill music sat on the at Blue Note, I'm most surprised that this one never came out at the time. It's rough in spots, but certainly stronger than other Hill albums that were issued in the late-sixties.

The telepathy and interplay among Hill, Richard Davis, and Joe Chambers throughout this date is quite amazing. Davis, a fellow Chicagoan, had been on all of Andrew's previous dates and their chemistry is a thing to behold. At the time, Andrew told Nat Hentoff, "He's the greatest bass player in existence. Most good bass players have one good thing going for them. A man may walk With a good line, but his intonation may leave something to be desired. A very good bass player may have things going. He may have good intonation and walk well, if you ask him for octaves and double stops, technical limitations show up. Another bassist may read real good, but have no imagination. But Richard can do anything you demand of him. He has a lot of technique, but his technique does not overpower his imagination. So what I often do With him is write out what amounts to a piano part and let him pick out the notes he wants to use."

Joe Chambers, Blue Note's house drummer for so many of the cutting edge dates of the mid-sixties and a superb composer, made his first appearance with Andrew on Andrew!!! seven months earlier. He brings a composer's instincts to his drumming, which is melodic and dynamic. He can lay down the most hypnotic grooves, juggle complex meters and polyrhythms, and color the music with an extensive percussive palette.

Joe Henderson had an uncanny ability to realize Andrew's music (witness his on Black Fire and Point Of Departure). In fact it was Henderson's use of Andrew on his Our Thing session that brought the pianist/composer to the attention of Blue Note. Hill said in 1964, "We really enjoy playing together. Joe understands me and understand I Joe in the best possible way; that is, we know how to surprise and inspire each other."

This session was Freddie Hubbard's first encounter with Andrew and, as a creative virtuoso with a love for challenging music, he fits right in. Throughout, his solos are rich in ideas and exuberant in spirit. He is playing cornet, as he did a year earlier on Herbie Hancock's Empyrean Isles. Freddie would also contribute mightily to Andrew's Compulsion, recorded later in 1965.

"Eris" is a burning, contemporary 24-bar blues. Here everyone stretches out, but in the pocket. Check out Freddie's last chorus when Joe Chambers picks up on a down home gospel phrase that Hubbard plays and launches into a funk backbeat rhythm, joined immediately by that old rumproller Andrew Hill. These men are having fun.

"Pax" sounds more plaintive than peaceful. The tune has 21 bars: ten of A, eight of B, and three of C. Henderson, Hubbard, and Hill take one chorus apiece.

"Calliope," a swinger in four, has a conventional melody, but unorthodox harmonies. The tune is eight bars of A, played twice, and eight bars of B. Everyone stretches out on this one; they stretch the time, too.

"Euterpe" is a great vehicle, with a 14-bar A section in fast 4/4, a 10-bar bridge in a Latin 12/8, and a repeat of the first seven bars of A. The master take is take two, which I selected at the time of release. I later found Alfred Lion's notes on the session; he had selected take four which we now call the alternate take. I still think the earlier take is better, especially for Freddie and Joe. Take four has a wonderful piano solo, a chorus shorter than the first, but Freddie's solo never catches fire like his earlier one and Joe seems unsure in his second chorus. The Latin bridges in both takes prove irresistible for Joe to insert of his favorite licks.

The last two tunes of the session are just trio. "Erato" is a ballad with the meter shifting between 7/4 and 3/4. Andrew is the only soloist. "Roots 'n' Herbs," which for some forgotten reason was not released with the rest of this material in 1975, is not to be confused with Wayne Shorter's "Roots and Herbs," recorded by Art Blakey in 1961. This odd piece starts out with the drums and bass in a kind of 8/8 pulse over which Andrew floats, working his way up to the theme. The rhythm shifts to 2/4, then free time, and finally a rock 'n' roll backbeat pattern with Andrew free-associating over it all. Fascinating, but quizzical.

This quintet with Sam Rivers in place of Henderson would reconvene two months later for Bobby Hutcherson's amazing Dialogue, which features the compositions of Hill and Chambers. And, of course, over the next few years, the creative lives of these men would crisscross and intersect at Rudy Van Gelder's studio and at various New York clubs (mostly Slug's Saloon) during one of the most exciting and fertile eras in jazz.

Michael Cuscuna, 2006

ST-90417

 Andrew Hill - Passing Ships

Released - 2003/2021

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, November 7, 1969
Dizzy Reece, Woody Shaw, trumpet; Julian Priester, trombone; Bob Northern, French horn; Howard Johnson, tuba, bass clarinet; Joe Farrell, soprano, tenor sax, alto flute, bass clarinet, English horn; Andrew Hill, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Lenny White, drums.

5515 tk.7 Laverne (The Brown Queen)
tk.17 Untitled No. 1 (Sideways)
5516 tk.21/22 Passing Ships

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, November 14, 1969
Dizzy Reece, Woody Shaw, trumpet; Julian Priester, trombone; Bob Northern, French horn; Howard Johnson, tuba, bass clarinet; Joe Farrell, soprano, tenor sax, alto flute, bass clarinet, English horn; Andrew Hill, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Lenny White, drums.

tk.27 Untitled No. 2 (Cascade)
5517 tk.35 Noon Tide
5519 tk.36/37 Plantation Bag
5518 tk.44 Tomorrow (Yesterday's Tomorrow)

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images / 
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Sideways	Andrew Hill	November 7 1969
Passing Ships	Andrew Hill	November 7 1969
Plantation Bag	Andrew Hill	November 14 1969
Side Two
Noon Tide	Andrew Hill	November 14 1969
The Brown Queen	Andrew Hill	November 7 1969
Side Three
Cascade	Andrew Hill	November 14 1969
Yesterday's Tomorrow	Andrew Hill	November 14 1969

Liner Notes

IN THE FALL OF 1974, Andrew Hill and I sat in my apartment planning an album that would become Spiral (Freedom Records). At the time, I was also collecting data on unissued Blue Note sessions with the hope that I might someday get into those vaults. I remembered sitting in Andrew's living room some six years earlier listening to some Blue Note dates of his that were never released. So I asked him what he remembered of his unissued sessions for the label. He proceeded to recite the personnel for eleven sessions off the top of his head, but he warned me that he was having a hard time in those years (1967-70) getting musicians to play the music the way he heard it and that not all of the sessions were successful.

The nonet session on the/this CD was the one that most fascinated me. And when I finally got into the Blue Note vaults, it was one of the first things I looked for. I listened with Andrew's caveat in mind and, sure enough, the stereo tape sounded like a train wreck. After a couple of tunes, I put it on a shelf and moved on. Lenny White used to ask me about it because he said it was his first recording session (actually Miles Davis's Bitches Brew was three months earlier). Years later, Howard Johnson inquired about the session, recalling it vividly and remembering the writing as excellent.

Finally, in 2001 , Andrew called me and thought we should revisit the music. It turns out that stereo tape was only a rough mix; I noticed several instruments were missing, audible only in the echo. So I dug out the multi-track tape, and there it all was! With all the components in place, this magnificent music took shape. There are rough edges, to be sure, but they are minor.

Perhaps it is fitting that this session comes out now. Nothing else in Andrew's discography so clearly foreshadows the kind of writing that he would introduce in 2002 with his big band on A Beautiful Day (Palmetto). What he achieves here with only one reed, two trumpets and three low brass is remarkable. The written horn backgrounds behind the soloists are as inventive as the compositions themselves and the power he extracts with just the right voicings make these six horns sound like twice that.

Besides Andrew, the four principal soloists are Joe Farrell, Woody Shaw, Dizzy Reece and Julian Priester. Joe Farrell was an ideal choice for this project because he was both an adventurous jazz musician and a consummate reader and doubler, who is heard on five different instruments over the course of this music. There were also musical ties; he'd recorded with Andrew a year earlier (Dance With Death), appeared on Dizzy Reece's 1962 Prestige album and worked with Woody Shaw in various Chick Corea-led settings. He was at the time a valuable member of Elvin Jones's trio/quintet and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. After tenures with Willie Bobo, Eric Dolphy and Horace Silver, Woody Shaw, a veteran at age 22, began a freelance period in 1967, working frequently with Andrew Hill, Jackie McLean, Joe Henderson and McCoy Tyner. A lifelong champion of Andrew's music, he later recorded versions of "Catta" and "Symmetry." Jamaican-born Dizzy Reece began his career in London, eventually coming to the U.S. in 1958, making four albums for Blue Note. Just five months before this session, he reappeared on the label for the first time in nine years on Hank Mobley's The Flip, recorded in Paris. Julian Priester is an extremely versatile trombonist who began professionally in his native Chicago playing on R & B sessions for Chess and working with one of Sun Rds early bands. He came to national prominence with Max Roach and appeared on more than a dozen Blue Note sessions throughout the sixties. His most visible stints were with the sextets of Herbie Hancock (early 70s) and Dave Holland (mid-/80s). He and Hill would reunite in1 993 for Reggie Workman's Summit Conference on the Postcards label.

Reece's trumpet and the tenor sax carry the main melody line of "Sideways," a 12-bar melody repeated twice, with moving tones under them by the other horns. Farrell comes out cookin'. A call-and-response between high and low brass announce the piano solo, which is supported by some nice horn backgrounds. The trumpet solo is by Dizzy who is distinguishable by a big, brassy sound.

"Passing Ships" has a beautiful, exotic melody played by Joe on English horn, punctuated by muted trumpets and with a counterline by the bass clarinet and low brass. Priester, Shaw, Farrell (on tenor) and Hill get two choruses apiece — all very melodic and meditative but delivered with a staccato execution in true Andrew Hill style. Ron Carter's sturdy time and strong choice of notes anchor the whole affair. Lenny adds his own flavor, becoming almost Tony Williams-ish at times, especially toward the end of the piano solo.

Built on a funk rhythm and a repetitive bass clarinet figure played by Howard Johnson, "Plantation Bag" has one of the most ingenious melodies ever devised for a 12-bar framework, played by the trumpets and Joe's soprano. He switches to tenor and digs in, taking the funky route and wailing over beautiful horn backgrounds written by Andrew. Dizzy takes a headier approach, working off the bop vocabulary and the unique melodic elements of the composition, acknowledging the funk with a low growl toward the end of his solo. Andrew's solo begins chordally over the initial bass clarinet line and builds into a dialogue with his great horn backgrounds.

Andrew used the 8/8 Latin rhythm in "Noon Tide" four years earlier for his composition "Catta" which appears on Bobby Hutcherson's Dialogue. Here he scores the whole band in that rhythm pattern over which Farrell's alto flute hovers, playing a distinctive, contemplative melody. Great juxtapositioning. Priester's solo seems like an interior dialogue, raising questions with optimism and answering them with finality. Listen to great trumpet lines that Hill created under him. Farrell's tenor has a robust, blistering attitude. Dizzy is declarative, maintaining a sunny attitude rasping over the horns. Andrew is in the pocket — almost nodding to Horace Silver — then breaks into his own after the horn backgrounds. It's probably Woody, who takes the final solo muted.

The lovely melody of "The Brown Queen" is played by Shaw and Farrell (on soprano sax). Andrew's percussive, but fluid solo is great, delicate and concise at first and building in ideas and density. Some of the ever-varying horn backgrounds are so distinctive and different that they could be the beginnings of other compositions; Hill dances around them like a ballet dancer. Woody always loved to play on graceful music and it shows here. Farrell is muscular and Lenny White feeds him well.

Andrew uses the French horn to good effect on "Cascade" and writes some creative horn backgrounds. Ron Carter and Lenny White keep this piece swinging and clearly inspire sparkling solos from Farrell (on tenor), Andrew and Woody.

The melody of "Yesterday's Tomorrow" has a waltz-like quality although the piece is in four. It's a showcase for Hill with some marvelous horn interludes, the first of which is a clever line by Farrell's bass clarinet and Ron Carter and the second of which features a lovely little melody played by the trumpets and Farrell on soprano. Andrew works with the elements of his composition in a measured, well-constructed improvisation.

Thirty-four years after the fact, here is what has recently become some of my favorite Andrew Hill music.

— MICHAEL CUSCUNA 2003

LT-1030

Andrew Hill - Dance With Death

Released - 1980

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, October 11, 1968
Charles Tolliver, trumpet; Joe Farrell, tenor, soprano sax; Andrew Hill, piano; Victor Sproles, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

4029 tk.4 Yellow Violet
4030 tk.8 Partitions
4031 tk.14 Dance With Death
4032 tk.22 Fish 'N Rice
4033 tk.27 Love Nocturne
4034 tk.29 Black Sabbath

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Yellow Violet	Andrew Hill	October 11 1968
Partitions	Andrew Hill	October 11 1968
Fish 'N Rice	Andrew Hill	October 11 1968
Side Two
Dance With Death	Andrew Hill	October 11 1968
Love Nocturne	Andrew Hill	October 11 1968
Black Sabbath	Andrew Hill	October 11 1968

Liner Notes

ANDREW HILL

What we have here is an unexpected musical dividend — a previously unreleased session by one of the most authoritative individualists in jazz. Deeply rooted in the whole history of the music, Andrew Hill, through the years, has created his own uncategorizable body of work. He has done this with only glancing publicity, and always at his own pace to meet his own highly demanding criteria He does not so much defy as ignore fads. Like Thoreau, Hill reverberates to his own imperatives. He thinks and writes and plays in terms of a life-span rather than this year's popularity polls. And so, like Thelonious Monk, or Cecil Taylor, or Bill Evans, each of Hill's recordings is of unusual value — both in and for itself and also as part of a compelling personal continuum.

When I first became aware of Andrew Hill, in the early 1960's, what initially struck me was that, from note one, he had presence. The presence of a true original. Also, there was this extraordinary clarity — his lines, his rhythms, the way he could make a combo cohere, no matter how complex the music, into a kind of incandescent lucidity.

And there was the clarity Inside Andrew Hill's head. He would analyze what was happening in jazz with a depth of musical as well as historical perspective that Kept reminding me how much woodshedding I had to do. As when he pointed out, in the mid-60's how far back the avant-garde players of the time had started from. "Listen," Andrew Hill said, "to what is called the 'avant-garde' and you can hear African kinds of rhythms. You can hear field cries. You can hear the basic roots of jazz."

He himself had been playing, as well as hearing, the basic history for a long time. In a recent Cadence interview, Hill noted: "When I was six years old, I used to be able to play stride piano and Boogie Woogie extremely well."

But Hill came Into the consciousness of jazz listeners as a post-modern player. And so he also was, and is. Yet, unlike some of the dauntless explorers then, Hill was always accessible, even to listeners quite new to the music, Part of this was due to his clarity; part to his delight in contrasts (he never imprisoned himself in any one bag for too long); and part was due to a lyricism that, however intense, always sang.

I also remember, at the beginning, being impressed and instructed by the scope of Hill's interests. He read widely and critically, not only such craft-tools as manuals of orchestration, but also books on economics and politics. He was like Booker Little and Donald Byrd in that way. They wanted to know as much as they could about the society in which they were trying to keep themselves intact.

I also remember from that period how Hill, though he needed the gigs, would turn down jobs as a sideman with certain renowned leaders so that he could have what he felt was essential time to figure out where he wanted to go. It was time for reading, and for playing into a tape recorder, at home, and then analyzing what he heard. "You see," he told me, "when you become a piano player in someone else's band, you have to adopt that band's style, and I feel that I'm in a period during which I have to grow by myself."

This self-grower was born in Port Au Prince, Haiti, on June 30, 1937. When he was four, the family came to Chicago. "I started out in music as a boy soprano." Hill said in an interview with Leonard Feather. "Singing, playing the organ, and tap dancing. I had a little act and made quite a few of the talent shows around town." This career lasted from the time he was six to the age of ten.

By 1953, Hill, playing baritone saxophone as well as piano, had a professional gig with Paul Williams' rhythm-and-blues band. It is usually cited as his first gig. But in that Cadence interview, Hill says that his very first job was at 14 — with Charlie Parker who, as a friend of his father, was visiting the house, heard him practicing, and brought him along to the job.

Says Hill: "Bird was a hell of a man. I respected the way he carried himself. What he was trying to show me was not the way he was, but how he wanted to be and the way he wanted me to be."

As a teenager, Hill's influences on piano included Bud Powell, Art Tatum, and Thelonious Monk ("no matter what the technical contributions of Monk's music are, it is the personality of the music which makes it, finally.") Also helpful then was the perennial teacher, Barry Harris. And Miles Davis, who came through Chicago on occasion, left his mark.

Hill's seasoning as a pianist came through dates with Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, Roy Elridge, Ira Sullivan, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, and road trips with Dinah Washington, Al Hibbler, and Johnny Hartman. He had come to New York in 1961, moved to Los Angeles the following year (gigging at the Lighthouse and with Roland Kirk), and was back in the Apple in 1963.

The following year, Andrew Hill began a series of Blue Note albums that were to establish him internationally — among musicians and a steadily growing number of lay listeners — as an authentic and durable contributor to the lengthening and deepening of the jazz language.

This music from October 11, 1968 was a well-seeded session, as might be said in tennis. For one thing, there is a crackling conjunction of energies. Farrell's spare, gritty, often steaming work here is just about the most satisfying I've heard by him on record. Tolliver, with his ringing, singing, brass-proud sound and lively imagination, incisively complements Farrell and the leader. Billy Higgins, with his care for texture as well as time and his swiftness in anticipating the horns, is a paradigm of pivotal percussion. And Victor Sproles contributes utter dependability and forceful inventiveness.

As pianist, Andrew Hill is customarily clear and inexorably logical in his improvisations. And he persistently creates and sustains momentum—of ideas, colors, rhythms, Hill's compositions, moreover, are also easily assimilated though variegatedly complex, His pieces are characterized by structures that are both firmly original and also more than sufficiently resilient so that each soloist can assert and connect his own ideas.

Hill, as leader, has been well described in Don Heckman's notes for a previous Hill album — and the analysis holds here as well: "Interaction of such complexity takes place only if there is a strong hand at the controls, sometimes gently pointing out directions, other times urging and even forcing the creative momentum of the piece. This is one of Hill's strongest talents, and it is one that seems to have been present in the work of all great players."

Since this session, Hill has continued to go his own determined, uncategorizable way. He has played a lot of colleges, and was composer-in-residence at Colgate in 1970-71. (He also received his doctorate there). Continually searching out new places to be heard and to hear, Hill has performed at rural art centers in the midwest, played in prisons for the New York State Council for the Arts, toured much of the rest of the country for the Smithsonian Heritage Program, and became a Smithsonian Fellow in 1975. He has also established a fund — from the sale of his music — to help impoverished musicians.

Some years ago, Leonard Feather said of a 1969 session by Andrew Hill: "He is at once one of the most articulate and adventurous, most communicatve and reachable musicians of our time. As composer and pianist, he displays a sensitivity, a feeling for contrast that I find all too rarely among his contemporaries. What will he be doing in 1980 if he continues to evolve at his present pace? There is, of course, no answer but the prospect is fascinating to contemplate."

The only safe prediction, I suppose, about what Andrew Hill will be doing in 1980 is that it will be what he wants to do. It is that insistence on allowing no one to tell him who he is, or where he ought to be, that binds the man and his music.

Or, as he put it in a conversation we had a long time ago — discussing a piece of his called Refuge - "There is no refuge. There is no place to hide, No matter where you look, you're still the one who's looking."

It is not, however, that Hill is — in what used to be a modish word — "alienated." As noted, his roots in his music (and in his own odyssey through that music) are lifelong-strong. But because he does not want those roots attenuated and his own potential smothered, Hill will not become part of any "movement" or "school." And that is why, to his great credit, he cannot easily be labeled to this day.

Nor will Hill allow himself to be assimilated. Before "black" supplanted "Negro" in usage, Hill used to talk about "the legacy of the Negro tradition." And he once wrote a composition that he called "Premonition" — which he explained as "indicating not alone a look ahead but also a revealing look backward so that you can really begin to know what may come. I hope this kind of awareness spreads among Negroes because otherwise, as the American Negro advances, he will lose sight of his own traditions and blend into the middle-class, forgetting the distinct values of his own culture."

In that respect too—along with the model he sets as a kind of modern Thoreau — Andrew Hill has already accomplished much, in and through his music. It is his own, fresh part of a long heritage.

In a book I wrote, The Jazz Life, I tried to explain how much I owe — for themselves as well as for their music — to jazz musicians. "I have covered," I said, "many beats through the years — civil liberties, education, classical and folk music, rock, the courts, films and theater, politics — and still, by and large, I most enjoy being with jazz musicians.

"For one thing, they have little patience with euphemism, since they spend much of their working time being direct, Also, being accustomed to change as "the only constant in their music, they tend to be more resilient and curious than most — and less likely to be conned by the manipulative conventional wisdom of institutions and institutional figures. And, as you might expect, most jazz people are lively, irreverent, sharp-witted. They see as well as hear a lot."

I could have been speaking of Andrew Hill. As also in this passage about the improvising players: "They are a brilliant motley, each having lived — or still living — a life obsessed with this spirit — music, its mysteries and infinite seductiveness. And the magnetism works both ways, of course, Once you're inside the music you'll want to keep going deeper and deeper, because it is impossible to get enough of it."

I expect that once you have heard what is here, you'll find yourself searching for more of Andrew Hill.

—Nat Hentoff

Notes for the 2012 CD Edition

Alfred Lion considered Andrew Hill as his last great discovery. And he is in the same lineage as Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols. Andrew recorded so frequently for Blue Note that it took me 30 years finally get all of his music left in the vaults released with "Mosaic Select: Andrew Hill" (MS-016) in 2005 being the final release to make all of this music available.  

I picked the session now known as "Dance With Death" for the LT series because it was uncompromising original Hill music but it has a foot in the Blue Note tradition with the classic hard bop quintet instrumentation and the masterful Billy Higgins on drums. Joe Farrell and Charles Tolliver prove to  
be fresh interpreters of Andrew's unique music.  

An alternate take of the title tune was added to the session in the CD era.  
 
- Michael Cuscuna