BLP 4171

George Braith - Extension

Released - January 1967

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 27, 1964
George Braith, tenor, soprano, alto sax; Billy Gardner, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Clarence Johnston, drums.

1325 tk.5 Nut City
1326 tk.10 Sweetville
1327 tk.14 Ethlyn's Love
1328 tk.15 Out Here
1329 tk.31 Extension
1330 tk.33 Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye

Session Photos

Grant Green and George Braith

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Nut City	George Braith	27 March 1964
Ethlyn's Love	George Braith	27 March 1964
Out Here	George Braith	27 March 1964
Side Two
Extension	George Braith	27 March 1964
Sweetville	George Braith	27 March 1964
Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye	Cole Porter	27 March 1964

Liner Notes

ORDINARILY, little anecdotes about what went on at a record session can get a little too cute for comfort (Charlie Parker was sitting in the control room because he once worked a weekend in Indianapolis with the bass player, and that sort of thing), but the quality of the mus!c on this album, combined with the circumstances in which it was made, makes it an exception.

To begin with, this is George Braith’s third LP as a leader for Blue Note. The first is called Two Souls In One (4148), the second Soul Stream (4161). On both of them, he plays more than one reed instrument at the same time, which tends to put one in mind of the volatile Roland Kirk, except that Leonard Feather, in his notes to Soul Stream, points out that Wilbur Sweatman used to play three clarinets at once. The idea is that it has to be more than a trick, it has to be musical. In essence, the practice of playing more than one instrument at the same time is an old music hall trick, and those who saw Carol Reed’s film about postwar Berlin, The Man Between, may remember the night club scene which featured a clown who played a number on two clarinets. So, the ability simply to do it is not the point.

Braith usually plays the stritch, or as he is more apt to call it, straight alto, which again puts one in mind of Kirk, but on this session he plays what he calls curved alto. The alto is not his, nor is the tenor he uses here, nor the soprano. His horns had been taken from his car the week before the session, and they’re not bock yet. The ones you hear are borrowed. I don’t want to go too deeply into that, and would, in fact, be willing to offer some kind of a prize to anyone who could come up with a complete list of record dates executed on borrowed horns, beginning with Charlie Parker’s famous King tenor, but it is difficult to play somebody else’s sax on short notice. And that is not all, ladies and gentlemen. Clarence Johnston, who sounds as though he had been playing with this group for years, appears here as drummer because Braith’s regular drummer had been taken ill.

So much for that. Those are the circumstances under which this LP was recorded, and they are highly unusual, but the music needs no apology, and I intend to make none for it. There is another aspect to this, though, which I find most fascinating. By any standards, Braith would be considered a contemporary musician. His style is his own, although one con hear, as can be heard in most saxophonists of his age, debts to Rollins and Coltrane —the most obvious remnants left are those Coltrane tenor flutters he employs now and again. And any reference to Kirk, of course, implies modernity. As a sort of general proposition, I would place Braith in the conservative wing of the avant-garde. But he has not chosen the sort of backing one would expect of such a musician. Organ, guitar and drums — that, with saxophone, is the standard lounge quartet. To followers of Blue Note LPs, the instrumentation will bring thoughts of Jimmy Smith, Stanley Turrentine, Lou Donaldson — another bag entirely. We all know the immense popularity that groups of this instrumentation have had over the past several years, and ¡t is almost as though Braith seeks to anchor his experiments in the broadest possible base.

I think the idea works. I am not sure that it was a conscious plan on Braith’s part, for he is at present working at a resort in upstate New York, and that is the kind of instrumentation most likely to be well received in such a place. But the effect is there, just the same, and deserves comment.

It is also worth noting, incidentally, that two of Braith’s three associates have appeared on his previous albums. The first of these is Grant Green, who has by now appeared on so many Blue Note LPs that it is pointless to reintroduce him. But I wonder if a certain tendency in jazz at the moment may not be attributable to Green and a few others like him. Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz and others, partly as a result of the popularity of the bossa nova, have added guitars to their groups. But as the tendency becomes more widely practiced, we see that it is the flat reverse of the way such things are usually done. Whereas a musical idea ordinarily starts out in a rarified atmosphere and only later becomes popular (Parker and Gillespie licks now show up on Frank Sinatra arrangements), the idea of sax and guitar started in the local clubs and only now has spread to units with wider critical acclaim. As I said, Green may be partly responsible.

Billy Gardner, a pianist whom Braith convinced to become an organist, has also appeared on the two previous LPs, and the lack of solemnity with which he takes his instrument is the cause of a refreshingly different sound this group gets. Gardner successfully avoids almost every practice and cliche that irritates the anti-organ faction. And I have explained earlier the circumstances under which drummer Clarence Johnston came to be present.

About the material: All except Cole Porter’s Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye, which is played at on unusually fast tempo by tenor and alto, is the work of Braith, who seems, on this evidence, to be a composer with more than average promise. Nut City, played on tenor, was originally to be entitled Atlantic City, because that is where Braith had been working prior to this recording, and is where he wrote the piece. But certain of the more amusing aspects of that town induced him to change the name of the piece. Ethlyn’s Love, a gentle ballad played on soprano with a unique tone, is dedicated to Braith’s mother. Out Here is another way of saying “the scene,” and some of the harshness is a result of the loss of those instruments, the circumstance that inspired the piece. Extension, the title track, has a line played on soprano and tenor, and then tenor solos alone. Sweetville, in a more Coltranish mood, is also on soprano — it would seem that is the instrument Braith favors for ballads.

There is an unusual amount of variety on this LP, and no trickery at all. Basically, it doesn’t matter whether a man has one or eight horns in his mouth, it is all a matter of what kind of music he produces. The music of George Braith is of a very high order, and contains a good deal of happy excitement. When you hear what he has done, I think you will be eager to find out what he comes up with the next time out.

—JOE GOLDBERG

BLP 4161

George Braith - Soul Stream

Released - April 1964

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 16, 1963
George Braith, tenor, soprano sax, stritch; Billy Gardner, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Hugh Walker, drums.

tk.10 The Man I Love
tk.15 Boop Bop Bing Bash
tk.19 Billy Told
tk.23 Outside Around The Corner
tk.26 Soul Stream

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
The Man I Love	George Gershwin	16 December 1963
Outside Around the Corner	George Braith	16 December 1963
Soul Stream	George Braith	16 December 1963
Side Two
Boop Bop Bing Bash	Billy Gardner	16 December 1963
Billy Told		16 December 1963
Jo Anne	George Braith	16 December 1963

Liner Notes

THIS album, George Braith's second, is of more than usual interest both in terms of its intrinsic musical merits and on the basis of its impressive evidence of the progress this young and resourceful artist has made since his record debut. (The first set was Two Souls In One on Blue Note 4148.)

Braith's career to date has been unusual in more than one respect. Unlike most musicians, he has not come up through the ranks as a sideman before progressing to leadership. A native New Yorker, he has always fronted groups of his own (originally under his full name of Braithwaite). As Nat Hentoff pointed out in his notes to the previous LP, as early as 1949, when Braith was only ten, he was leading his own combo on amateur-talent television programs and in neighborhood theatres.

Secondly, it is significant that Braith is unusually well traveled for a man of his comparatively tender years and short professional experience. Certainly such episodes as his three-month tour of duty in Europe in 1957, and subsequently his work on jobs that took him as far afield as Bermuda, helped to broaden his outlook on life in general and music in particular.

Thirdly, of course, there is the matter of Braith's simultaneous playing of two horns. This should not really be a subject for discussion, since the only factor that ought to be considered significant is the end result—namely, the quality and validity of the sounds created, regardless of how many horns, hands or individuals it took to produce them. Nevertheless, because of the curiosity value, this facet of his work must be taken into consideration.

The idea itself goes back about four decades; senior citizens recall a performer named Wilbur Sweatman who astonished audiences in the early 1920s by playing three clarinets at once. But this was strictly a novelty for novelty's sake; it accomplished nothing musically. The advent of Roland Kirk in 1959 put the concept on a more musical level, and with the designing by Braith of a special stritch that enables him to achieve maximum fingering facility with one hand, the process was refined still further.

This new album, however, places less stress on the multiple horn gambit and introduces the saxophonist in an important new role—as a tenor soloist.

Once again, it is less important to consider the versatility angle than to listen closely to the music and determine what Braith has accomplished via the new medium. My personal reaction on first hearing these sides was a highly favorable impression of Braith's tenor work. Though you may find touches of Rollins here and there (the earlier, more straight-ahead Rollins rather than the recent, special-effects Rollins), I don't believe there is any passage in which he could be mistaken for Sonny, nor for Trane or any of the others who have impressed him. It is too early to state categorically that he has a completely distinctive sound of his own; too early, not necessarily because it is untrue, but because it takes a long period of intensive listening before most of us (and this includes critics, musicians and fans alike) can reach a point where we can immediately identify o soloist after hearing only a few measures. It would appear, nevertheless, on the basis of his initial tenor exposure on these sides, that Braith may earn his major identification on this instrument. Certainly the groove is warm and mellow throughout and the solos have an air of authority as well as the essential soulful quality he has already displayed on the other horns.

Two of Braith's three associates on these performances were heard on the previous album. Grant Green, through his own contributions as leader as well as many appearances as a sideman, is accepted among the experts (and by this I mean fellow-musicians, for they are the experts whose judgment is most meaningful) as one of the most consistent mood-makers and blues-rooted guitarists to have emerged on the scene in the past five years. Billy Gardner, an ex-pianist like almost all other organists, has been a regular associate of Braith's for the past three years and seems to be one of the comparatively few organists capable Of finding interesting variations in the tone colors obtainable from this sometimes monochromatic instrument.

Hugh Walker, who completes the foursome, is a 20-year-old drummer from Oklahoma. He has been playing professionally for five years and came to New York City recently. "He is a remarkable and promising musician who is improving daily," comments George.

Though the group concentrated mainly on original material for this congenial session, the first side starts out with the only standard of the set, a remarkable transformation of Gershwin's The Man I Love. There must have been a hundred versions of this tune recorded by jazz groups in the past 30 years, yet nope has had an approach comparable with Braith's. The chorus length is doubled by the long-meter process to 64 bars, but the tempo is comparatively slow; as a result each chorus takes almost two and a half minutes and there is time to build and sustain a remarkable mood.

"The motivation behind the recording of this track," says Braith, "was inspired by the death of John F. Kennedy. Coincidentally, we had been in the area of Kennedy's home in Massachusetts around the time of the assassination, which added to the general feeling of sorrow and the solemnity in the air."

"The arrangement starts with an eight-bar vamp by Bill, Hugh and Grant. Then I play the melody on the stritch and the soprano saxophone. Toward the end of the first two 16-bar phrases, the alto (stritch) is used alone, then the soprano alone, both for only two bars. The organ plays the channel. In the second chorus the stritch plays a figure with the organ playing the harmony. Grant plays the second channel and we go out with soprano and stritch."

Note particularly the rhythmic variations established under this performance both by Gardner and Walker. Never is the treatment allowed to bog down into rhythmic monotony.

Outside Around The Corner is one of the more remarkable examples of Braith's burgeoning gifts as a composer. As he explains, "it is a 32-bår tune in the regular A-A-B-A format, but with pauses after four bars of each A segment. At the end of B, the introduction used in the beginning is injected once more." The horn used for the chart and the blowing solo is the tenor. The use of augmented chords gives the whole work a misterioso whole-tone-scale feeling. Later on, Braith comes in playing both tenor and soprano; Hugh is featured in the channel of this chorus. After the unison two-horn shouting, the tune is taken out by tenor and organ• Mention should also be made of the subtlety (both melodic and rhythmic) of Grant Green's solo.

Like The Man I Love, Soul Stream was inspired by, and the arrangement was written immediately following the tragedy in Dallas. "This is a mode," says Braith, "written with sadness, hollowness and lost feelings — with no bars, the whole interpretation being ad lib. The strength that I tried to capture and project in this piece was designed to correspond with the strength of character radiated by our deceased President." Braith plays tenor on this extraordinary performance. From Gardner's cascading intro through the rubato, wailing tenor evocations, with drumroll undercurrents, this is music without set beat or tempo, yet nonetheless unmistakably jazz in essence and in mood.

Billy Gardner's Boop Bop Bing Bash is a D minor romp and, by the way, an example of a minor-key tune that can sound more happy than sad. The form is A-A-B-A; Braith plays tenor throughout, except for some shouts on stritch and soprano behind Gardner's first blowing chorus.

Billy Told is a bow to Rossini, or possibly to The Lone Ranger. (If Billy told, what did William Tell?) The complete renovation of this venerable theme, from castanet-type intro to cooking solos by Gardner and Braith, is a highlight of the album, with some commendable touches of welcome humor.

Braith's Jo Anne concludes the side: "I play the introduction on soprano. The chart and shout that come after Billy's solo are played on stritch and soprano. The solo, surprising as it may seem, is played on soprano sax." (On first hearing it may sound like the stritch.) ' 'The chordal extension at the end is led by stritch and soprano."

The provocative nature of his compositions and arrangements, the intriguing character of his tenor work, and the general advance in his musicianship make this LP an important step in the career of George Braith. Still a few months short of his 25th birthday as these words are written, he has already fulfilled in substantial measure the promise indicated by his earlier effort, and has made it clear that we can continue to turn to him for music that is at once intense, inventive and different.

- LEONARD FEATHER

Cover Photo and Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

BLP 4148

George Braith -  Two Souls in One

Released - November 1963

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 4, 1963
George Braith, soprano sax, stritch; Billy Gardner, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Donald Bailey, drums.

tk.8 Mary Had A Little Lamb
tk.17 Poinciana
tk.26 Mary Ann
tk.27 Home Street
tk.33 Braith-A-Way

Session Photos

Donald Bailey

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Mary Ann		04 September 1963
Home Street	George Braithwaite	04 September 1963
Poinciana	Bernier, Simon	04 September 1963
Side Two
Mary Had A Little Lamb		04 September 1963
Braith-A-Way	George Braithwaite	04 September 1963

Liner Notes

ABOUT seven years ago, I was asked to be one of the judges in a jazz tourney at a now defunct Greenwich Village club called The Pad. The room was singularly depressing, shaped like a box, painted in black, as I recall, and resembling as a whole the kind of place in which claustrophobics might be assigned in Hell. Some of the music fitted the sure surroundings all too well, but there was one band which communicated such fire that it even succeeded in lighting up The Pad. Pete LaRoca was on drums; a young, mocking elf named John Maher was on piano; and the leader was George Braith. The leader couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen, but he already wore the air of command as if he had been to the manner born. He was playing baritone and alto, and he swung with both skill and passion.

Since then, George Braith has continued to lead a variety of units, and to broaden his musical knowledge (both academically and through long nights in clubs), and he has also explored several other instruments. As of now, moreover, he has found that there are occasions when one instrument at a time cannot contain his emotions. Therefore, on this, his first aibum under his own name, Mr. Braith can be heard simultaneously on the soprano saxophone and the stritch (a straight alto). Hence the title — Two Souls In One.

Music as the direct expression of emotion is endemic to George Braith's background. He was born in New York on June 27, 1939, the youngest of nine children. His late father was the minister of a Pentecostal church on Madison Avenue and 127th Street. Himself a pianist and organist, Braith's father taught his children the basics of piano playing. Their mother sang in church; and adding to the musical environment of the home was the fact that the father always had a trumpet, trombone and violin around the house for any of the children to experiment with. (George Braith is the only one of the children to have concentrated on reeds).

In the Pentecostal churches, music is a vital and pervasive part of the services. And in the church of George's father, instrumental as well as vocal music was used. Members of the congregation played; George himself improvised on baritone in church; and there were brothers with trumpet and trombone. George's own capacity for leadership began to be evident when he was no more than ten or eleven. At the time, he played a pocket flute and he organized a calypso band. (That musical heritage was also part of the family's history since his parents came from the West Indies). The calypso band played in neighborhood theatres and on a children's television show. While in junior high school, Braith started studying clarinet and then added baritone and alto saxophones. Throughout his school years, incidentally, Braith always had an extracurricular combo of his own going; and when he was fifteen, he brought a quintet of his to a summer job in the Catskills. It was in the fall of that year that I heard him at The Pad. His band, by the way, won the contest.

Braith went on to Music and Art High School. There he studied bassoon and flute and also took courses in theory. He still played clubs at night despite his age ("I had a beard," he explains, "and so I was able to get away with it.") By this point, among the influences on Braith's music were Gerry Mulligan, Ernie Henry, and particularly Charlie Parker and Art Tatum. (Later, he was also especially impressed by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Gil Evans).

Soon after graduation in 1957, Braith took another unit of his, the American Jazz Quintet, to Europe for three months. They scored a particular success in an Amsterdam concert headed by J. J. Johnson, and as a result of their quick acceptance, the band didn't have a day off while in Europe. During the trip, George Braith met Lucky Thompson and that experience spurred him to start on tenor. In September, 1957, Braith entered the Manhattan School of Music where he studied during the day and played tenor at night. He was at Manhattan, where he concentrated on theory and arranging, for a year and a half. He left because his night-time activity was leading to more and more traveling and also because he had gotten married. In the years since, Braith has worked extensively in the East, as well as in Bermuda. Always, he has been the leader.

Braith's absorption in multiple horn playing started about 1961. He came across a straight alto (the stritch) It is different, incidentally, from the stritch which Roland Kirk uses in that the bell of Kirk's horn is considerably larger and also, Braith's stritch is custom-made. "I brought a few notes up from the bottom of the stritch," Braith explains, "and added them to the top. In that way, I can finger almost the whole range of the instrument with one hand. I did the same thing with the soprano saxophone, and now I can cover practically the whole range of any two-part harmony system when I play them together. I play the stritch with my left hand and the soprano with my right. Putting it another way, I can harmonize any song in any series of intervals I desire."

As Braith perfected his '"Two Souls in One," he also worked on developing the organ trio he started two years ago. He couldn't afford a guitar and so he tried to utilize the two horns simultaneously to fill in for the guitar. "It got so," Braith observes, "that I was able to both comp effectively with the two horns as well as use them in solos. There's a lot more, however, I want to do with simultaneous playing, and eventually, I intend to use the tenor along with the stritch and soprano."

George's first album as a leader came as a result of his work as a sideman on a John Patton album, Blue John (4143) for Blue Note. Alfred Lion was sufficiently impressed to sign Braith. For this album, Grant Green was added on guitar. Green requires no introduction to Blue Note listeners. He is a musician of uncommonly consistent clarity, swing, and a blues orientation which heightens the expressivity of his playing. Billy Gardner went to high school with Braith. He started as a pianist, but Braith convinced him to try the organ in 1961, and they have worked together ever since. Braith is impressed with Gardner's inventiveness and also with his sense of color and his attentiveness to everything happening around in any given musical situation. Donald Bailey, long the drummer with organist Jimmy Smith, is now a member of George Braith's regular trio. "Donald," Braith notes, "is especially skilful at knowing how to play with an organ. He knows which spaces to fill and when not to play too much. Also he continually stimulates the soloists."

Mary Ann is a vintage calypso, arranged — as are all the numbers in the album — by Braith. The contrast in textures is immediately intriguing — the acridly steaming organ, the pungent fusion of stritch and soprano, and the strong, clear guitar of Grant Green. Annealing all these colors, moreover, is a swirling beat. Although generally no admirer of the electronic organ, I find Gardner appealing, partly because of the calliope-sound he gets from the instrument and also because of his ebullient musical temperament. Most organists either chug remorselessly ahead or become mired in sentimental syrup. Mr. Gardner, however, has made that usually refractory instrument into a playful adjunct to a rhythm Section as Well as a high-spirited solo medium. Mr. Braith, as is evident throughout the album, does not hold back his emotions. He is of the full-feeling school of jazz.

Home Street is indeed a street by that name. It's in the Bronx, and Braith lived there for some eighteen Years. Braith also based his piece on the "down home" connotations of the title so that the street is paved in blues. The number is described by Braith as "basically a twelve-bar 'church' type of blues — with a channel." Again, the penetrating sound of the combined stritch and soprano makes for increased intensity. Also, the act of playing both instruments simultaneously somehow accentuates the speech-like nature Of Braith's phrasing so that he almost literally "tells a story." Interestingly, Gardner can also make his organ "talk" so that the occasional exchanges between him and Braith are very much in the nature of an idiomatic dialogue. Poinciana has proved one of the most popular arrangements in Braith's repertory on night club dates. His interpretation retains the exotic aura usually associated with the tune, but he also infuses a strong admixture of blues colorations and is considerably aided in that area by the forceful presence of Grant Green. Further individualizing this version of Poinciana is the flavorful solo by Billy Gardner.

The concept of transmuting a nursery rhyme into jazz is not unprecedented. Art Blakey, for one, used to feature a fierce version of Three Blind Mice. George Braith's reanimation of Mary Had A Little Lamb also is unalloyed jazz. There is nothing coy in the approach which is hard-swinging and, in fact, rises through a series Of explosive climaxes. Once more, the contrast between Grant Green's sinewy sound and the blistering colors of Braith's solo on combined stritch and soprano is unusually beguiling. Following the intense solos by Braith and Green, Gardner demonstrates brilliantly that excitement can be created on the organ without building up a sheer storm of sound. In Gardner's work, the voicings and lines are cuttingly clear.

Braith-A-Way was written during a road trip (while Braith was away). "I was a little homesick," Braith explains, "and that explains the mood of the song." The piece is a twelve-bar structure with a vamp at the beginning, a vamp at the end, and no channel. "The chords," Braith explains, "are misleading because they seem to be going round and round. They should settle some place but actually they don't, and that gives the number a coloring which musicians seem to find challenging." Braith's own solo is both expansively lyrical and yet simultaneously virile. Grant Green is heard in a rather wistful solo, but Green too always buttresses the most gentle of his reflections with a spine of blues. Billy Gardner's solo is a demonstration of Braith's answer when I told him that I find Gardner's playing refreshing by comparison with those other organists who seem only able to swing but have little musical imagination. "Well," said Braith, "I'm all for swinging, but I'm not for a lot of pulsation and no music. They can be combined, and that's what Billy does."

This first album by George Braith is stimulating in many ways — the leader's own resourceful and musical approach to soloing on two horns in one; the leader's strongly propulsive arrangements for his group; and the particularized stylistic contributions of his colleagues. Considering his youth and the scope of imagination and disciplined passion he has already displayed, George Braith is clearly going to be an increasingly audible factor on the modern jazz scene.

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