LT-1103

Joe Pass - Joy Spring

Released - 1981

Recording and Session Information

"Encore Theatre", Los Angeles, CA, February 6, 1964
Mike Wofford, piano; Joe Pass, guitar; Jim Hughart, bass; Colin Bailey, drums.

Joy Spring
Some Time Ago
The Night Has A Thousand Eyes
Relaxin' At Camarillo
There Is No Greater Love

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Joy Spring	Clifford Brown	February 6 1964
Some Time Ago	Sergio Mihanovich	February 6 1964
The Night Has A Thousand Eyes	B. Bernier-J. Brainin	February 6 1964
Side Two
Relaxin' At Camarillo	Charlie Parker	February 6 1964
There Is No Greater Love	I. Jones-M. Symes	February 6 1964

Liner Notes

JOE PASS

Following his discovery and first recording by Pacific Jazz' Dick Bock, Joe Pass recorded extensively over the next few years. That maiden effort, 1962's The Sounds of Synanon (Pacific Jazz 48), was succeeded by the guitarist's participation in a large number of Pacific Jazz recordings by its contracted artists as well as several well-received albums under Pass' name — Catch Me!, For Django, Simplicity and others — on all of which it was made abundantly clear that an impressive new, fully matured talent was on the scene and performing at peak creativity They revealed that Pass had not only assimilated his early influences, among whom were Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker and several important early '50s jazz guitarists, but had perfected a strong, identifiable voice of his own.

His approach was characterized by great melodic fertility, harmonic sophistication and a natural, easy command of swing, and the music he made was both invigoratingly inventive and thoroughly accessible. Like Parker and other great melodists in jazz, Pass had the singular gift of improvising lines of natural, singing clarity and firm inner logic. That he rose, with superb consistency, to the opportunities afforded him through his affiliation with Pacific Jazz can be heard in every one of his numerous recordings from this period, and it is tribute to his deep, committed creativity that his work as a sideman is fully as resourceful and imaginative as that recorded under his own leadership. Too, it is tribute to Dick Bock's acumen that he provided the guitarist such plentiful opportunity to commit that creativity to record. Certainly it paid off handsomely too, for Pass contributed tellingly to every session he made with Bud Shank, Les McCann, Clifford Scott, Groove Holmes, Gerald Wilson and even blues singer Bumble Bee Slim. And his own albums, Catch Me! and For Django in particular, have taken their place with the very finest jazz guitar recordings of the last two decades.

But the Pacific Jazz chapter of Pass' career doesn't end with these albums. They represent only a portion of the recordings he made for the label during the 1960s. It was Bock's custom at the time to record his artists on a regular basis as well as, on occasion, to organize sessions literally on moments' notice when fired by what he felt to be a good idea. Not all of this material found its way onto vinyl, however, for Bock occasionally found it necessary to postpone the release of admittedly excellent jazz performances in favor of material of, presumably, wider sales potentials. Sometimes these withheld recordings never were rescheduled for release; overlooked, in time forgotten, they've lain in the Pacific Jazz vaults since the day they were first recorded.

The present set, the first to tap this rich lode of unreleased material, was recorded "live" early in 1964, some months prior to the For Django sessions in which, incidentally, bassist Jim Hughart and drummer Colin Bailey also participated (for a more authentically Django-ish quality on the latter, rhythm guitarist John Pisano was chosen to replace pianist Mike Wofford). Midway through the previous year Pass, having successfully vanquished the specter of narcotics addiction, had left Synanon's mother house and, with his bride Alison, had taken an apartment in Santa Monica. Healthy, happy, fired with newfound optimism and a growing confidence in his abilities, the 34-year-old guitarist was eager to "get out and play," to test and prove himself in the jazz arena. "I've got to get into the music, into the active music picture," he asserted at the time. "I want to get my feet wet with some good jazz musicians. That I've never done. I've never been a jazz musician." Pass was obsessed with the desire to show what he could do.

Following a brief tour of Oregon with the Sounds of Synanon group, he set about establishing himself on the Los Angeles jazz scene. In the summer of 1963 he secured one night a week at Shelly's Manne Hole, for which he organized a quartet, and within a short time had joined forces with saxophonist Bud Shank in a group they co-led at the popular Hollywood jazz spot for most of the remaining year. Simultaneous with this the guitarist also was performing on weekends with Page Cavanaugh at the pianist's club, sitting in, picking up whatever casuals came his way, and recording with various of Pacific Jazz' contractees. When the present recordings were undertaken in February of 1964, Pass had been playing steadily for more than six months and, consequently, was at the top of his game.

The performances were recorded at the Encore Theater, one of several theaters — the Adams West, Princess, Metro and Store Theaters, and the Cameo Playhouse — at which afterhours concerts and sessions were held in Los Angeles at the time. Accompanied by pianist Wofford, bassist Hughart and drummer Bailey, players junior to him by a decade and hence likely to prod and stimulate him — not that he needed it! — Pass in these informal surroundings was able to stretch out and Improvise at much greater length than in his studio recordings of the period. And for this reason alone they are welcome additions to his discography. There's an added benefit in hearing him "live," however. Pass is exactly the kind of player to profit by the opportunity, for he is one of those improvisers capable of finding and extracting more from a theme the more deeply he penetrates beyond its surface. The longer he plays, the more he discovers.

The ballad There Is No Greater Love offers a perfect illustration of the guitarist's ability to find in a piece ever more fascinating levels of meaning, greater possibilities for the elaboration and development of its melodic-harmonic character the longer he plays it. During his five-chorus improvisation he goes deeper into the piece, recasting it to his own emerging ends, pulling further and further away from its theme, into progressively more daring and audacious invention. His fifth and final chorus bears only the most elliptical relationship to the melody line that had been stated so moodily at the outset of the performance, yet Pass has arrived at that development through a steady process of musical evolution. It grows with inexorable logic from his earlier choruses. And the impression is that these five choruses scarcely begin to exhaust all that he could find in the theme. It's as though Pass in his playing reveals to us the teeming life of possibility that for the master improviser exists beneath the surface of any given melody.

Playing, for him, is a matter of taking chances, of constantly trying to approach a tune as for the first time, no matter how many times he might have played it in the past. "How many chances I take," Pass has said of his approach, "depends on how I feel, because I have nothing prepared. I don't play the same tune the same way twice. My style is my style, but I never know when I'm gonna start, or where I'm gonna end." Whenever he plays, he explained, "I'm always influenced by the place, the people, and my own emotional-mental thing. I look out there...if I play ten fast runs in a row, I say to myself, 'That's enough of that!' But maybe that 11th run might be the one that will take me off the hook and into something."

He elaborated, "Everything has to roll and flow naturally, one thing after another, in a row. If you take one thing out, you break the sequence and then it doesn't come out right. But when everything is right in your head, and you're not influenced by anything artificial, then everything is right, and it comes out that way."

A perfect illustration is Joy Spring, the delightful Clifford Brown line Pass and cohorts treat so lovingly here, with a relaxed yet propulsive rhythmic brightness and plentiful invention. Following the statement of the melody, Pass treats us to another extended solo, a striking example of thematic elaboration. Throughout his improvisation the guitarist alludes to elements of the original melody line, developing each of these motives in turn and thus exposing for our examination different facets of .Brown's distinctive melody By the end of his solo we've come to an entirely new appreciation of the melodic implications of the piece. In their turns Wofford and Hughart tellingly investigate others of those implications.

The Night Has A Thousand Eyes, on the other hand, is interesting for what it shows about the singlemindedness of Pass' commitment to the act of playing. It becomes obvious in the statement of the ballad's melody that his guitar is not quite perfectly in tune, that one of the strings is off by just a hair's breadth. At that point Pass had two options: to stop the performance while he gave his instrument the fine-tuning it needed and, this done, resume playing, or to ignore it and continue playing. He not only chose the latter course but managed to rise above this minor intonation problem so successfully that he turned in one of his most gripping, powerful solos of the session. So too are pearls produced by irritants.

"I still play everything off of tunes," Pass has observed of his penchant for ballad standards and jazz classics such as Relaxin' At Camarillo and Joy Spring, "but a lot of times after I play the tune, it's no longer the same piece. I've developed something new out of it, something of my own...That's my goal: to use everything I've learned and have lived, and bring it out at that moment through this thing called an instrument, my guitar." He comes close to its realization in these five extended performances from a period of great excitement and achievement in his continuing development as one of jazz' master guitarists.

—Pete Welding

LT-1102

Jean-Luc Ponty - Live At Donte's

Released - 1981

Recording and Session Information

"Donte's", North Hollywood, CA, March 11 & 12, 1969
Jean-Luc Ponty, electric violin, baritone violectra; George Duke, electric piano; John Heard, electric bass; Al Cecchi, drums.

Hypomode Del Sol
People
California
Eighty-One

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Hypomode De Sol	Jean-Luc Ponty	March 11/12 1969
People	B. Merrill-J. Styne	March 11/12 1969
Side Two
California	Jean-Luc Ponty	March 11/12 1969
Eighty-One	Ron Carter	March 11/12 1969

Liner Notes

EAN-LUC PONTY

In 1966 a new name cropped up among the winners in Down Beat's annual poll of jazz critics. In the "Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition" division — that is, those musicians on the way up—first place in the "miscellaneous instrument" category was awarded to a young French violinist. Jean-Luc Ponty. Few American listeners had heard his music for, while he had been recording in Europe for several years, he had no albums in U.S. release and had yet to make his first American appearance. This event occurred the following year when, on the strength of his poll victory. he was invited to perform at the 1967 Monterey Jazz Festival where he mesmerized critics and listeners alike with the dazzling virtuosity and striking creativity of his playing. Too, it was indicative of the violin's status in jazz in those days that a separate category for the instrument did not then exist in Down Beat's poll; that one was in time established reflects both the increasing use of the instrument in contemporary jazz and Ponty's pivotal role in bringing the violin to the forefront and, through the example of his brilliantly original approach, stimulating others to take it up.

The originality and brilliance of his music have been evident from at least the middle 1960s when, following his decision of a few years earlier to pursue jazz to the exclusion of all else, Ponty had forged the daring, audaciously original approach to the instrument that has led to the respect of his peers, an international reputation and, more recently, sustained commercial success. Not only had he achieved Idiomatic mastery in the art of jazz playing but had gone beyond this, rising to a position of leadership on his chosen instrument, in turn influencing those who have followed where he has led.

The child of classical musicians and teachers, Ponty was born Sept. 29, 1942. in Avranches, France, where not unexpectedly he gravitated to music at an early age, undertaking classical violin studies at five. He pursued this discipline over the next dozen years, and at 17 was awarded first prize for violin at the Conservatoire Nationale Superieur in Paris. For the next several years he performed as a member of the Concerts Lamoureux orchestra, and a career in classical music seemed assured. His introduction to jazz, which he had not heard previously, having immersed himself in classical music, took place when, as he told Robert Palmer, "Some friends, including musicians from the Conservatoire, took me to hear people like Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, Johnny Griffin, and Dexter Gordon, and introduced me to albums." At about the same time another musician-friend, knowing Ponty to be proficient on clarinet asked him to substitute for a player in a Paris jazz group of which he was a member. While he was unfamiliar with both the idiom and its repertoire, Ponty found the experience absorbing and soon had achieved proficiency in the swing style in which the band performed. A chance encounter with New Orleans clarinetist Albert Nicholas whom he met when a classical broadcast assignment brought him to Limoges, where Nicholas was appearing in a local jazz club, led to a deeper appreciation of the music and a resolve on Ponty's part to explore it more fully.

"It was just fun for me, not something I took very seriously," he has said of his early playing experiences. "But once I realized I was much more excited by improvisation than by being in a symphony orchestra, I switched to the violin, because I had much more facility and could get quicker to the point. I could go and jam with Bud Powell and all those great jazz musicians much faster on the violin."

He was confirmed in this decision by his discovery and exploration of the work of the several violinists who had preceded him in jazz, and this proved a turning point. "Stephane Grappelli was my first inspiration," he told Palmer "I used the violin before I heard him, just because I felt more comfortable with it, but after I heard Grappelli I became more interested in experimenting for myself. I had in mind a sound and style that I thought had never been done, a more progressive style adapted to the violin. Then right after Grappelli I discovered Stuff Smith, and he was a very strong influence on me too. Then, of course, Mlles and Coltrane..."

Too, Grappelli had become Ponty's friend and advisor as well as musical mentor. "We met and became friends right away," the younger man recalled. "He was very kind to me and he encouraged me to go on playing jazz. In fact, I would even say that psychologically he was great. Because at one point I was...insecure about what to do, if I should stay in a symphony orchestra and stick to classical music or go on with a career as a jazz violinist. I didn't really know my worth as a jazz violinist and he was the only one to really encourage me to go on. He said that I had created an original style, and psychologically that was very important to me."

Thus encouraged, Ponty persevered, continuing to explore the jazz legacy through recordings and, whenever possible, contact with American players in the French capitol, sitting in as often as he could. By 1964 he felt he was ready, severed his ties with the classical world and joined the band of Jeff Gilson — "which was pretty avant-garde for the period," he noted — and soon was leading his own groups. A tumultuous appearance at the 1965 Antibes Jazz Festival brought him to the attention of continental jazz listeners which was further stimulated through recordings, and these led to his 1966 Down Beat poll win, the appearance at the 1967 Monterey Jazz Festival, the release of his first U.S. recording the following year (More Than Meets The Ear, World Pacific 20134), and a busy European performing schedule. This exciting period of musical growth, Ponty characterized simply: "I started playing bebop and went on to more experimental stuff and playing free jazz." He added in explanation, "At first I was influenced by horn players more, because horns were what the most creative musicians were playing and I wanted to identify my music with that style. Then I found my own identity. I guess everybody goes through this period of influences first."

Not only had Ponty found a personal, richly creative mode of expression but had amplified his violin as well. He had to do this, he explained, simply in order to be heard over the sound of drums and other instruments in his group. But what was adopted as a practical solution to an immediate problem soon evolved into an integral, highly exciting part of his approach, eventually leading to even fuller exploitation of the possibilities the use of electronics allowed.

In the Spring of 1969 Ponty came to the U.S. to undertake his first recordings for Pacific Jazz' Richard Bock who had been one of the violinist's staunchest boosters for several years. Bock had earlier arranged for the release of the European-recorded More Than Meets The Ear performances on his World Pacific label, and soon had conceived the plan of recording Ponty with Gerald Wilson's admirable jazz orchestra. All the formidable logistical problems solved, recording dates were scheduled for early March at Bock's Los Angeles studios. In addition, a pair of club dates was arranged to coincide with Ponty's presence on the West Coast, one at the Both/And Club in San Francisco and the second at Donte's in North Hollywood, where the present recordings were made.

Chosen to work with him on these dates was the trio of pianist George Duke, then beginning to make a name for himself from his base in San Francisco and, more to the point, an ardent fan of Ponty's music. Hearing that the violinist was coming to the U.S. to perform and convinced that he was the best of available players to join cause with him, Duke literally deluged Bock with requests that he and his group be the ones to accompany the violinist. "That was the first time I had gotten egotistical and aggressive," the pianist recalled later. "I just felt like I knew exactly what I wanted, like I had to make that move." After hearing tapes of the trio, Ponty concurred.

The musicians met for the first time in San Francisco immediately before the Both/And engagement. Al Cecchi, the trio's drummer at the time, remembers that only one brief rehearsal was necessary for the four men to familiarize themselves with the music to be performed. Ponty, he recalled, made suggestions about the routines to be followed on various pieces, demonstrating them to the trio, after which they would run them down, but by and large everything fell into place easily and quickly. It was Cecchi's impression that the violinist was quite pleased with the trio's ability to play his music the way he wanted it played, that because of this he had to make few if any accommodations in his playing, allowing him to be and play himself. Jean-Luc and George had a great deal of respect for one another and this, taken with the cohesiveness of the trio, Duke, bassist John Heard and Cecchi having worked together for more than a year at the time, made for a very enjoyable playing and easy, totally without hassles," the drummer said. "I think we all were lifted by it."

Following the Both/And gig Ponty left for Los Angeles to meet with Bock and Wilson. A few days later the trio followed him, driving down from San Francisco on the day of the Donte's opening, arriving with just enough time to set up for the first set. Ponty and the trio were totally unprepared for the excitement that greeted their appearance; word of mouth had preceded them and the turnout was phenomenal. "The club was packed both nights," Cecchi recalled. "It was absolutely mobbed. It seemed like every musician in town came by, guys who never went to clubs, like some of the top studio string players. I remember John Guerin, whom I had known from the East Coast, came up and said we should be pleased so many people, and influential ones, he added, had come out to hear us. Then he pointed to a table, and there were Lalo Schifrin, Stan Kenton, Herb Alpert, people like that. It was a real event, and one of the most exhilarating experiences I've ever had in playing music. We were thrilled—the excitement, the enthusiasm of the crowds — it was unbelievable."

It's all been caught here: the incandescent brilliance, technical virtuosity and urgency of Ponty's playing intertwined with the answering fire and cascading invention of Duke's, the collective, powerful creativity of the group, and the enthusiastic response of Donte's audiences, memorializing an event of pivotal importance to Ponty's career — his real arrival in American musical circles. The fire lit by Monterey had turned into a blaze. From this March, 1969, visit have proceeded the album with the Wilson orchestra (Electric Connection, World Pacific 20156), a second "live" set with the Duke Trio recorded at Thee Experience (WP 20168), the celebrated association with Frank Zappa, including the wonderful King Kong LP (along with the Thee Experience recordings contained in the 2-LP set Canteloupe Island, LWB-632), the violinist's later membership in John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, and the formation of his own American group and the great success he's enjoyed with the jazz-rock fusion approach he's since developed from all of these experiences, The seeds, or at least the deep jazz roots of those developments are stunningly displayed in these compelling, hugely rewarding performances, which now can be sampled and enjoyed for the first time.

—Pete Welding

LT-1101

Gerry Mulligan - Freeway

Released - 1981

Recording and Session Information

Phil Turetsky's House, Los Angeles, CA, June 10, 1952
Gerry Mulligan, baritone sax, piano; Red Mitchell, bass; Chico Hamilton, drums.

Get Happy

Phil Turetsky's House, Los Angeles, CA, July 9, 1952
Chet Baker, trumpet; Gerry Mulligan, baritone sax; Jimmy Rowles, piano; Joe Mondragon, bass.

She Didn't Say Yes

Phil Turetsky's House, Los Angeles, CA, August 16, 1952

PJ-206-3 Bernie's Tune
PJ-209-1 Lullaby Of The Leaves

Gold Star Studios, Los Angeles, CA, October 15 & 16, 1952
Chet Baker, trumpet; Gerry Mulligan, baritone sax; Bob Whitlock, bass; Chico Hamilton, drums.

PJ-223 Aren't You Glad You're You
PJ-219-8 Frenesi
PJ-218-1 Nights At The Turntable
PJ-220 Freeway
PJ-221 Soft Shoe
PJ-222 Walkin' Shoes

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Get Happy	H. Arlen-T. Koehler	June 10 1952
She Didn't Say Yes	J. Kern-O. Harbach	July 9 1952
Bernie's Tune	Miller-Stoller-Lieber	August 16 1952
Lullaby Of The Leaves	B. Pelkere-J. Young	August 16 1952
Nights At The Turntable	G. Mulligan	October15/16 1952
Side Two
Frenesi	A. Dominuguez	October15/16 1952
Aren't You Glad You're You	J. Van Heusen-J. Burke	October15/16 1952
Walkin' Shoes	G. Mulligan	October15/16 1952
Soft Shoe	G. Mulligan	October15/16 1952
Freeway	C. Baker	October15/16 1952

Liner Notes

GERRY MULLIGAN

This is the first of several albums that will present in chronological order all of the Pacific Jazz recordings, as well as a number of previously unreleased performances, by the original Gerry Mulligan Quartet. It was this group that among other accomplishments signaled the arrival of West Coast jazz as a movement of wide popular appeal, made Mulligan into something of a media celebrity, launched the career of Chet Baker, the quartet's original trumpet player, and was responsible for establishing the fledgling Pacific Jazz Records operation.

These factors aside, the group's place in jazz history is based on other considerations, chief of which was its restoration to the jazz vocabulary of a type of buoyant heterophonic interplay that largely had been absent from the music for well more than a decade, involving a use of front-line instruments that was much more typical of early jazz practice but which, as expressed by Mulligan and Baker, not only was totally in keeping with the melodic-harmonic character of post-bop but accessible to large numbers of listeners as well. This stemmed from the group's, for the time, unorthodox instrumentation of two horns, bass and drums. The absence of a chord-feeding instrument such as piano or guitar led to Mulligan's developing a number of ensemble practices that were somewhat at variance with those of conventional small group jazz of the day. The intelligence and imagination with which he addressed himself to this challenge resulted not only in the distinctive, immensely satisfying sound of his own quartet but introduced to jazz a number of techniques that have expanded its expressive potentials, being used to this day.

What he did, basically, was to exploit to the fullest all the resources of two- (and occasionally three-) voice linear writing, using Baker's trumpet and his baritone saxophone, and often the bass as well, in every combination he could think of—harmonized, in unison, contrapuntally and antiphonally, often within the space of a single performance — creating a mobile play of lithe movement and rich color that was all the more remarkable for having been developed spontaneously, in the very act of playing itself. Just how well he succeeded can be heard in every one of the selections in this collection.

The earliest Mulligan quartet recordings reflected its original use of piano, however, for it took some time for the group's final instrumentation and approach to take shape. Following a period of weekend performing at Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, the saxophonist had secured the regular Monday night job at The Haig, a small club located on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles. There he performed with a rotating group of musicians that included trumpeter Ernie Royal, pianists Jimmy Rowles and Fred Otis, bassists Joe Comfort, Red Mitchell and Joe Mondragon, and drummers Alvin Stoller and Chico Hamilton.

"The quartet's recording history had its beginnings on the afternoon of June 10th, 1952, in (recording engineer) Philip Turetsky's tiny Laurel Canyon bungalow in the Hollywood Hills," noted Pacific Jazz's Richard Bock, who was something of a midwife to the group's birth. "Gerry asked Jimmy Rowles, Red Mitchell and Chico Hamilton to meet up at Turetsky's house where I had access to his Ampex tape recorder and one RCA 44-B microphone. For some reason Rowles failed to arrive so we recorded anyway — without the piano. The opening selection on this album, Get Happy, by Arlen and Koehler, was the result of that meeting. (Note: The listener will hear piano during this performance, however During Mitchell's bass solo, which follows the baritonist's statement of and elaboration of the theme, Mulligan switches briefly to the keyboard before re-entering on saxophone for a round of exchanges with Hamilton.)

"A week later," Bock continued, "at the Monday night session at The Haig, Mulligan and Chet Baker met. Soon after that meeting Gerry decided to attempt to record with Jjrnrny Rowles. So, together with Chet and Joe Mondragon, we met at the Universal Recording Studio in Hollywood on the evening of July 9th, 1952. Out of this session came Kern and Harbach's She Didn't Say Yes, This is the only quartet recording without drums and with piano."

This performance IS also notable for the glimpses it affords one of what was then happening onstage at The Haig. The fabled rapport that existed between the saxophonist and trumpeter and which charged their music with such poignancy and excitement had yet to reveal itself, although the seeds are evident, Mulligan's arrangement makes interesting use of the quartet's instrumentation, particularly the harmonized cushion his baritone and Baker's trumpet furnished Rowles during the latter half of his solo. This leads directly to a warm and flowingly lyrical Mulligan chorus, followed by an exchange of fours between himself and Baker, and then out.

Bock takes up the tale: "In mid-July of 1952, The Haig booked the Red Norvo Trio for an engagement of indefinite length. The trio at that time consisted of Red Mitchell on bass and Tal Farlow on guitar. Inasmuch as the trio did not use a piano, and since Gerry had insisted that he would rather play the Monday night sessions without the piano, (Haig) owner John Bennett decided to put the piano in storage. It was this decision that brought Chet Baker, Chico Hamilton, and a young bass player from Long Beach by the name of Bob Whitlock to form the first Mulligan pianoless quartet.

"After five Monday nights, Gerry felt the quartet was ready to record. On the afternoon of August 16th, 1952, at the Turetsky bungalow again, we recorded the memorable Bernie's Tune and Lullaby of the Leaves. That record, released as a single in the Fall of 1952, put Pacific Jazz in business. The quartet rapidly became a West Coast sensation. Soon after the release of the single record, the quartet was booked into The Blackhawk in San Francisco. Bob Whitlock was unable to make the trip there, so Gerry replaced him with Carson Smith, a promising young bass player. The new quartet was caught in the act by Ralph J Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle and West Coast editor of Down Beat who said at that time, 'The Gerry Mulligan Quartet is certainly the freshest and most interesting sound to come out of jazz in a long time.'"

While in San Francisco the group recorded four selections for that city's Fantasy Records (and four months later four more titles), which are well worth seeking out, as they duplicate only one of the quartet's Pacific Jazz recordings of the time and offer additional samples of its working repertoire. Returning to Los Angeles the group was booked into The Haig for an engagement of four weeks which, as Bock recalled, "stretched into over six months and during that time the Mulligan Quartet received national attention through a Time magazine story."

Shortly after settling in for this extended stint the group undertook additional recording for Pacific Jazz. At a single session held on October 15, 1952, Whitlock back on bass in place of Smith, the quartet recorded six remarkable performances, beginning with Mulligan's Nights At The Turntable (along with his Walkin' Shoes the masterpieces among these small miracles) and concluding with the Baker original Freeway. In this group of recordings the original sound of the quartet, as signaled in the earlier Lullaby of the Leaves and Bernie's Tune, was delineated more fully and resourcefully, with much greater assurance and blossoming creativity on Baker's part. The several months of concerted performing had not only drawn ever deepening resources of thoughtful, poignant melodism from the young trumpeter, revealing an original, heartfelt syle in the making, but also had brought to the fore an ability for improvised counterpoint and other types of interplay that meshed well with Mulligan's mastery in this area.

The characteristic sound of the quartet, developed from the simple premise of utilizing to the fullest the potentials of the two horns — as Andre Hodeir described it, "to highlight a very small number of melodic parts by suppressing all harmonic commentary" — was never any one thing but, rather, the sum of many individual handlings of the basic premise, each dictated by the special character of the song being so treated. This was the result of the application of a fluid, generalized working methodology to a fairly wide range of performance vehicles, blues, ballad standards and original lines based on these two basic forms. The distinctiveness that marked the quartet's music from the start was due solely to the great originality and vitality of Mulligan's imagination in shaping the group's arrangements; the stimulating, mutually complementary interplay of the two horn players — the spare, warm, elegaic melodism of Baker and the blowsy, extroverted, booting inventiveness of Mulligan — each individually pleasing but in tandem much greater than the sum of those separate parts; and powering the engine the steady, unobtrusive, deftly propulsive rhythm team of Bob Whitlock and Chico Hamilton. All those things were the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, Together, as this collection so satisfyingly reveals, they wrote the first chapter in the saga of one of the most consistently absorbing, creative, original-sounding and popular of all modern jazz ensembles.

To be continued
—Pete Welding

LT-1100

Bob Brookmeyer / Bill Evans - As Time Goes By

Released - 1981

Recording and Session Information

Olmsted Sound Studios, NYC, March 12, 1959
Bob Brookmeyer, Bill Evans, piano; Percy Heath, bass; Connie Kay, drums.

Honeysuckle Rose
As Time Goes By
The Way You Look Tonight
It Could Happen To You
The Man I Love
I Got Rhythm

Reissue of United Artists UAL 3044 : "Bob Brookmeyer And Bill Evans - The Ivory Hunters".

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Honeysuckle Rose	A. Razaf-T. Waller	March 12 1959
As Time Goes By	H. Hupfeld	March 12 1959
The Way You Look Tonight	D. Fields-J. Kern	March 12 1959
Side Two
It Could Happen To You	J. Van Heusen-J. Burke	March 12 1959
The Man I Love	G. Gershwin-I. Gershwin	March 12 1959
I Got Rhythm	G. Gershwin-I. Gershwin	March 12 1959

Liner Notes

BOB BROOKMEYER-BILL EVANS

At the time this program of two-piano improvisations was recorded early in 1959, Bill Evans was posed on the threshold of a career of extraordinary promise and fellow explorer Bob Brookmeyer, no mean pianist himself, was much more widely known in jazz circles as a valve trombonist and composer-arranger. Evans had been on the national jazz scene for only a short time, his first job with Jerry Wald's sextet in 1956 followed by stints with a number of New York-based units, among them those of Tony Scott, Don Elliott, George Russell and others, culminating in his joining the Miles Davis group in 1958, a move that inevitably focused a great deal of attention on the young pianist. His first two albums for Riverside Records, critical successes that confirmed the brilliance and originality of his conception, had been in release for some time but the broad acceptance he was to receive as a result of his association with Davis was just around the corner.

Brookmeyer's professional experiences over the previous decade had been both more extensive and varied. Starting as a clarinetist, he later took up piano and trombone and, following studies at the Kansas City Conservatory and military service, he joined the Tex Beneke band in 1951, later performing with Claude Thornhill, Ray McKinley, Louis Prima, Terry Gibbs and Woody Herman. In 1953 he joined Stan Getz in one of the most enjoyable and thoroughly musical groups the saxophonist ever has headed, remaining for a year during which he established his reputation in jazz circles. He consolidated this even further when the following year he replaced trumpeter Chet Baker in the greatly popular Gerry Mulligan quartet and, a bit later, the sextet the baritone saxophonist formed. He remained with Mulligan for several years before coming East with the interesting trio of clarinetist-saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre (guitarist Jim Hall was the third member) and settling in New York City.

There he soon established himself as a busy member of the jazz community, performing with many ad-hoc groups for club and recording dates, leading units of his own for varying periods, and participating in studio sessions too numerous to catalog. It was during these years that his writing skills were most actively deployed, and many a session of the period was graced with Brookmeyer's witty, inventive and always swinging charts. His knowledge of the traditions of jazz was intelligent and comprehensive and for this reason he was able to write for, and perform comfortably with an extraordinarily wide range of ensembles. Of the two he was, at the time, the more widely known performer.

It was not a likely, let alone obvious pairing, this recorded meeting of the introspective, austerely lyrical Evans and the puckish extrovert Brookmeyer. Yet, as you'll hear, it worked beautifully, tribute to the acumen, or just plain intuition of United Artists producer Jack Lewis. It was his idea to have them attempt several two-piano numbers prior to undertaking what was to have been a conventional quartet date featuring Brookmeyer's trombone and Evans' piano. While the two were no strangers to one another's playing, and earlier had worked together in a quintet Brookmeyer organized for an engagement at the Half Note, they had never joined forces pianistically before this recording session. In fact, the first inkling they had of Lewis' intention was when they showed up at the studio at the appointed time and found not one, but two pianos positioned for recording.

Once started, however, the two responded so fully to the challenge of the situation that Brookmeyer never got around to unpacking his horn. The resultant performances comprise one of the most unusual, and unusually invigorating, recordings either has undertaken. Curiously enough, given the striking success of the venture, the album has been out of print almost since its original release as The Ivory Hunters (IJAS 6044), Its appearance now after more than two decades restores to print one of the rarest and most rewarding recordings of Evans' long, sustainedly creative career and reminds us anew of Brookmeyer's impressive skills as a pianist of uncommon intelligence, lucidity and resourceful, witty creativity.

The key word here is spontaneity. While this is claimed for virtually every jazz recital — instantaneous improvisation being one of the identifying characteristics of jazz performance — very few possess this cherished quality to the degree these performances do. Since neither player had been apprised of Lewis' intentions, had expected to play quite another type of session in fact, they were able to approach the performance with absolutely no preconceptions, no idea of what would be played and how it should proceed. Such ideas as either might have had about the proposed original session — good tunes for a trombone-piano-rhythm lineup, how they might be structured, and so on—had to be discarded as soon as the two-piano idea was suggested and tentatively agreed to. Whatever was worked out between the two pjanists and their two co-workers, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Connie Kay, the rhythmic engine of the Modern Jazz Quartet, was done on the spot, in response to a new, totally unexpected playing situation.

I Got Rhythm, the first tune to be recorded, was done without benefit of any preliminary discussion. The two pianists simply sat down and immediately began to communicate with one another, sculpting the shape of the performance as they played, through reponsive, engaged interplay. Their success in bringing off this demanding discipline is easily gauged: listen to how fresh-sounding, exciting and full of surprise they are able to make this overfamiliar vehicle. Having thus demonstrated to their satisfaction that the approach could work, Brookmeyer sketched out some routines for several of the numbers and showed Evans and Heath the chord changes to As Time Goes By but otherwise the group's music was wholly, spontaneously improvised.

Technically and temperamentally the pianists were ideally equipped to undertake music making of this challenging sort. Shortly after these recordings were made fellow pianist Warren Bernhardt observed of Evans: "Everything he plays seems to be the distillation of the music...Pianistically, he's beautiful. He never seems to be hung up in any way in doing anything he wants to do — either technically or harmonically. You can voice a given chord many different ways, but he always seems to find the correct way When he's confronted with a choice on the spur of the moment of improvisation, he doesn't have to wonder which voicing is best. He knows. And he is physically capable of executing it immediately. It's as if the line between his brain and his fingers were an unusually direct one."

"It's such an accumulated thing," Evans explained. "The art lies in developing enough facility to voice well any new thought. It's taken me 20 years of hard work and playing experience to do as well with it as I can. There's no short cut. It takes a lot of time and study." Technique alone, of course, is not enough; it's simply a means to an end. As Brookmeyer observed, "Jazz is a personal expression. A jazzman should be saying what he feels. He's one human being talking to others, telling his story — and that means humor and sadness, joy, all the things that humans have. You tell it freely and honestly, and sometimes you don't make it. It's a matter of percentages — like telling a joke no one laughs at." In Evans' estimation, "I find that when I'm feeling my best, spiritually and physically, I project. I want to communicate, I want to give."

There can be little doubt that on the afternoon of March 12, 1959, both pianists were united in this feeling of well-being, of joyous, stimulating communication, or that, in Brookmeyer's phrase, the percentages were with them. Every one of these performances bears witness to this. They succeeded as well as they did not only because of the undoubted talent and imagination of the participants but because they bent themselves totally to the task at hand. That there was a great deal of mutual respect between the principals can be heard constantly throughout their collaboration. Evans on Brookmeyer: "Since Bob was originally a piano player, he has a natural approach — he doesn't approach the piano with caution. This enabled him to carry out the interplay." Brookmeyer on Evans: "If he's not a genius, he's the next thing to it. I think he is one of the important pianists in jazz history and will continue to be. He has taken from the best of jazz piano that preceded him and retained the most swinging qualities."

Brookmeyer was right, of course. The passage of the next two decades, during which Evans' talent blossomed, bore witness to that. Evans in fact became one of the most influential pianists of modern times, emulated by virtually every keyboard player who followed in his wake. Sadly, that singular voice was stilled; the pianist died of heart failure at his home in New York City on September 15, 1980, at age 51, an incalculable loss to jazz. On a more optimistic note, Brookmeyer after a decade-long hiatus recenty has returned to jazz activity at the helm of a striking, hugely satisfying quartet and is playing better than ever. There's even greater cause for rejoicing: he's writing again, both for his small group and for large ensembles. Jazz will be richer for his return.

"The jazz musician's function is to feel," the great teacher and pianist Lennie Tristano once observed. "Jazz is improvising, It is the personal, emotional impact of a great improviser It provides the listener with an experience he can have no other way." Multiply this by two and you'll have an apt description of this remarkable one-time meeting between two of jazz' great improvisers, Bill Evans and Bob Brookmeyer

—Pete Welding

(NOTE: In this stereo recording, Bob Brookmeyer's piano is heard on the left, Bill Evans' on the right. To make sure your system is connected properly, after the two-piano interplay during the first two choruses of Honeysuckle Rose, it is Evans, right channel, who takes the first solo. — PW)