BN-LA-453-H2

Sam Rivers - Involution

Released - 1975

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 7, 1966
Sam Rivers, tenor sax #1-3,5; Andrew Hill, piano; Walter Booker, bass; J.C. Moses, drums.

1708 tk.1 Violence
1709 tk.5 Hope
1710 tk.7 Illusion
1711 tk.10 Pain
1712 tk.16 Desire
1713 tk.19 Lust

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 17, 1967
Donald Byrd, trumpet #1-4; Julian Priester, trombone #1-4; James Spaulding, alto sax, flute #1-5; Sam Rivers, tenor, soprano sax, flute; Cecil McBee, bass; Steve Ellington, drums.

1858 tk.10 Paean
1859 tk.20 Precis
1860 tk.25 Helix
1861 tk.32 Effusive Melange
1862 tk.33 Involution
1863 tk.34 Afflatus

See Also: BST 84261

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
The Sam Rivers Sextet - Precis	Sam Rivers	March 17 1967
The Sam Rivers Sextet - Paean	Sam Rivers	March 17 1967
The Sam Rivers Sextet - Effusive Melange	Sam Rivers	March 17 1967
Side Two
The Sam Rivers Sextet - Involutions	Sam Rivers	March 17 1967
The Sam Rivers Sextet - Afflatus	Sam Rivers	March 17 1967
The Sam Rivers Sextet - Helix	Sam Rivers	March 17 1967
Side Three
The Andrew Hill Quartet - Violence	Andrew Hill	March 7 1966
The Andrew Hill Quartet - Pain	Andrew Hill	March 7 1966
The Andrew Hill Quartet - Illusion	Andrew Hill	March 7 1966
Side Four
The Andrew Hill Quartet - Hope	Andrew Hill	March 7 1966
The Andrew Hill Quartet - Lust	Andrew Hill	March 7 1966
The Andrew Hill Quartet - Desire	Andrew Hill	March 7 1966

Liner Notes

SAM RIVERS

Recognition has taken its time catching up with Sam Rivers. The reedman/composer/arranger has played the blues with Jimmy Witherspoon and T-Bone Walker, toured Japan with Miles Davis, worked for extended periods with Cecil Taylor and Andrew Hill, led groups of his own which ranged in size from trios to big bands. He was playing professionally in Boston during the early fifties, and during the mid-sixties Blue Note released his Fuschia Swing Song and Contours. Finally, in 1975, his Impulse trio albums (Streams, Hues) and a stunning big band Ip (Crystals) attracted the notice of the jazz public, and attention began to be paid. And now Michael Cuscuna has unearthed these sixties sessions from the Blue Note vaults, sessions which show that recognition could and should have come at that time. Rivers was already a reed virtuoso and an original composer/arranger, he was ready.

There is often a certain austerity to Rivers' music It isn't cold or forbidding, but it's more or less "pure," uncontaminated by programmatic conceits and atmospheric or romantic allusions. It is music that follows its own rules and exists on its own strictly musical terms, independent of the kind of extramusical imagery so often associated with organized sound. There is also a certain austerity to Rivers' determination to be original. "I worked out my own chord substitutions, wrote my own exercises to practice," he says "I listened to everyone I could hear to make sure I didn't sound like them. I wasn't taking any chances; I wanted to be sure I didn't sound like anyone else. I've gone to great lengths not to, so I'm slightly offended when people compare me to this player or that one. That means they aren't listening to me. A person doesn't have to sound like Charlie Parker or John Coltrane. It takes more work, but it can be done."

Originality is equally evident in his writing. "After about 1956 or '57 just about all the harmonies had been done the way they're being done today in the average jazz band," he says. "Around 1958-59 I did some compositions which were based on each instrument having a different solo part, all of which were harmonically together." By 1967 he was applying this linear compositional style to big band scores, working "more or less from clusters of sounds I want to hear at the time, and all I need really is silence and some paper." The style was not documented on record until the release of Crystals in 1975, or so everyone thought. In fact, the performances which make up the first two Sides of this album were waiting to be discovered. The six compositions are scored for only four horns and two rhythm instruments but Rivers makes the group sound much larger than it is.

Rivers did not develop his extraordinary abilities overnight. He has followed a deliberately paced growth pattern throughout his career, never making a step without scouting the territory where he was about to put his foot. He was born September 25, 1930 in Reno City, Oklahoma, making him a contemporary of Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman. His father, a graduate of Fisk University, was a veteran of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the Silvertone Quartet. His mother had graduated from Howard. The two of them were "on the road," performing programs of spirituals around the country, when Sam came into the world. Some of the spirituals were from A Collection of Revival Hymns and Plantation Melodies by Sam's grandfather, Marshall W. Taylor, a book published in Cincinnati in 1882. "He was a minister and a musician, his two sisters were musicians, and both my parents were musicians and teachers. Everyone in the family plays, all my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Some are doctors and lawyers as well. It was something for everybody in a black family in the '30's to be college graduates; when I look back on it now, it was quite an achievement."

Sam's father was killed in an automobile accident in 1937 and his mother took a job at Shorter College in North Little Rock, Arkansas; Sam grew up around the campus. He'd already been exposed to the big bands of Cab Calloway and Count Basie and in Arkansas he heard Stravinsky and other advanced classical music around the house, in addition to black church music. Later, during the forties, he regularly stood outside night clubs and halls to listen to the musicians who were always passing through to play for Greater Little Rock's sizeable black community. He was rewarded with exposure to Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Buddy Tate, Don Byas, Earl Hines' big band, Andy Kirk, "One hard fact about the black community at that time" he says, "was that only a few people were recognized as being ethnically genuine. That would be the Baptist ministers and the jazz musicians. These were totally black originals: I could be a doctor, but a white doctor would probably be better because he had better training. The Baptist ministers and jazz musicians didn't really have white counterparts, and since I was already fascinated with the music, I gravitated to it." That meant taking up the trombone at age eleven and switching to tenor saxophone two years later.

Sam went to California as a Navy recruit and played his first professional job there with Jimmy Witherspoon. He also heard his first Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker records there. In 1947 he moved to Boston with his brother, bassist Martin Rivers. Sam started attending the Boston Conservatory and working with local bands; Boston was to be his home for almost twenty years, "because I was always working, seven nights a week, Boston was quite a good place for young musicians to go at that time. A lot of musicians had just come: Quincy Jones, Jaki Byard, Gigi Gryce, Dick Twardnk, Serge Chaloff, Joe Gordon. It was strange for me at times, going to school and gigging, the in-tune-ness of playing in a string quartet and the relaxation of playing in a jazz group. Bending notes and all that didn't happen in string quartets then. Anyway, I played in a band with Serge Chaloff (the legendary baritone saxophonist), Nat Pierce (later a pianist and arranger for Woody Herman), and several others. Then Jimmy Martin organized his big band. He wrote for us and so did Jaki Byard and Joe Gordon. I did an arrangement of 'All Too Soon' which really started my linear style of writing. It was a fifteen or sixteen piece band, and we played things like 'Billie's Bounce.' We'd play the head and then all the solos off the record in unison, and then go on to our own thing. Or we'd do twelve bars with everyone soloing collectively, or hit wrong notes at the end of the tunes. We were doing some of these things just because they were shocking to the older musicians. Actually, we were sort of the rage around Boston at that time."

Soon Sam had dropped out of school and was working in the intermission trio at a bar near "the theater where the shows and bands used to come in." Charlie Mariano and Quincy Jones would stop in during breaks. "I was playing a composite of Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and just about everyone else that I liked," he remembers, "and working on my own substitutions and exercises," During the mid-fifties he worked in Florida with another saxophonist, the R&B oriented Texan Don Wilkerson. There he played a short tour with Billie Holiday. Back in Boston in 1958, Rivers played with Herb Pomeroy's big band and led a quartet in a coffee shop near Harvard Square. One night in 1959 drummer Tony Williams, then thirteen years old, sat in and impressed everyone, During the early sixties there was work leading a pit band, backing up visiting shows featuring the likes of Wilson Pickett and Maxine Brown, In 1964, Rivers went on the road with blues guitarist T-Bone Walker. "T-Bone and all the other blues artists who hired me just wanted me to play the blues to the best of my ability," he says, "They weren't talking about stand up there and honk. They were talking about stand up there and play the horn."

In the middle of the tour with Walker, Rivers received a telegram from Tony Williams, who had moved to New York and worked briefly with Jackie McLean before being hired by Miles Davis. "Come to New York," the message began. "George (Coleman, Davis' tenor saxophonist) split. Miles wants you to join his group: Williams had played Davis tapes of the Rivers quartet from Harvard Square and the trumpeter had liked what he heard. Sam stayed with the Davis band, which also included Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter, for six months, touring Japan (where an extraordinary live album was recorded and released on Japanese CBS) and the U.S. "Miles was still doing things that were pretty straight," he recalls. "I was there, but I was somewhere else too. I guess it sounds funny, but was already ahead of that I kept stretching out and playing really long solos, and that's probably why I didn't last. We recorded an album in Japan and then when we got back to New York, Miles got Wayne Shorter."

At this point, Rivers' music begins to be documented. Williams' Blue Note lp Spring, recorded in August, 1965, features Rivers and Shorter playing side by side and is particularly revealing. Sam's playing is fluid and mutable, full of complicating phrases with quick little denouements, globular smoothnesses contrasted with gruff overtone effects, asymmetrical note groupings, unusual scalar ideas, unexpected uses of silence. It is also somewhat diffuse. Shorter's sound is more unvarying and his ideas, less multitudinous than Rivers', flow more smoothly. Nevertheless, it is Rivers' challenging, encyclopedic solo on "Love Song" which lingers in the mind as the album's high point.

The saxophonist's own Blue Note albums followed. Fuschia Swing Song, with familiar associates Byard, Williams, and Ron Carter, stands as the definitive statement of the mid-sixties Boston progressives. The chord progressions and voicings studiously avoid cliche, improvisational structures segue from chord cycles to free form and back in the course of single compositions, and the leader's playing refers to a lengthy history which encompasses blues, the classic tenors and bebop. The modal structures then being popularized by John Coltrane are notably absent from the date. "I was never particularly into that," Rivers explains. "In most cases so-called modal jazz wasn't really modal at all. People were playing free over the top of modes or, more often. just staying in one key. Now really playing in a mode would be limiting yourself to the eight or so notes in that mode, period. That's the way I teach modes, I guess I'm a kind of purist in that I don't believe you should say you're doing one thing when you're doing something else."

After the Miles Davis experience Rivers worked with pianist Andrew Hill, and it is from this period that the third and fourth sides of this album derive. They were recorded under Hill's leadership in March, 1966, and never released. Perhaps the titles offer a clue to the company's decision not to issue them: "Violence." "Pain," and "Illusion" are hardly typical ideas for compositions, and the music itself is intriguing but almost unremittingly sombre. Even the rhythmic Latin montuno figure Hill uses in "Illusion" conveys an almost desperate sadness. The pieces on the second side are more cheerful, especially the lovely "Hope." In all, this was a uniquely involving album, one about which Hill must have cared a great deal. The pianist was experiencing an extremely frustrating struggle for economic self-sufficiency at the time and his turbulent music reflected it. But echoes of his childhood in Haiti and the use of extremely dense harmonic textures were also prominent.

Rivers' solo work on "Violence" is a spitting, roaring evocation of the title. There's a captivating, tension-filled piano-tenor duet on "Illusion," another strong tenor solo, and the best J. C. Moses drum solo on record. On "Hope" the saxophonist is breathy and delicate; he again demonstrates how attuned he was to Hill's compositional goals on "Desire" with a solo which seems to strive for, but never achieve, rest or satiation. "Pain" and "Lust" are superb trio performances, the first swinging and rather Monk-like, the second light and shimmering. Walter Booker is an unusually strong supporter and soloist throughout. There are few moments of lyricism as it's commonly understood but, like many of the jazzmen who matured during the sixties, Hill was after a redefiniton of feelings like "pretty," a new and more inclusive standard of beauty. There is a nobility to much of the music here, a determination to transmute life's roughest blows into affirmative artistic statements that's aided immeasurably by Rivers' imagination and strength.

The sextet heard on sides one and two recorded in March, 1967 under Rivers' direction. It's a kind of all-star group, though the rhythm section was intimately familiar with Rivers' music. Drummer Steve Ellington had been particularly close to the saxophonist for some time, and in fact the two of them had recorded tapes earlier in the decade which Rivers remembers as some of the most advanced playing he ever did. The prodigiously swift and solid bassist Cecil McBee was only beginning to build his reputation: his landmark bass solos with Pharoah Sanders were several years in the future. Donald Byrd and Julian Priester must have seemed strange choices for a date as conceptually "free" as this one, since they were associated with more "inside" playing, but Priester had worked in Sun Ra's earliest bands and Byrd frequently played with some of the younger musicians who were revamping jazz time and techniques, though not on records. Alto saxophonist James Spaulding was a kind of Blue Note regular at the time. He had been associated with Charles Tolliver and Bobby Hutcherson and his direction was basically neo-bop, with free form leanings.

Rivers probably chose each player for this combination of adventurousness and grounding in tradition; he was never one to advocate total freedom at the expense of musicality and roots. "The sixties was a heck of a period," he says. "A lot of traditional musicians went right through the period and didn't get anything out of it. And a lot of avant-garde musicians were wasting their time just playing the music of the sixties and ignoring the music of the fifties and forties." The six compositions heard on sides one and two aren't easily categorized in terms of stylistic decades. The loosely splashing swing of the piano-less rhythm section is more conservative than the work of, say, Sunny Murray and Alan Silva, but it's considerably freer than bebop. Rivers' scoring for the horns is almost uniformly dense but his remarkable ear for color and the personal sounds of the players result in a parade of marvellously sensual and ever-changing colors. Rarely has atonality in jazz writing sounded this warm. The solos are as varied as the diverse styles of the musicians and Byrd and Priester in particular reach for continuites and effects not even hinted at on their other recordings from the same period.

Spaulding has the bright opening solo on "Precis." Byrd then permutates a series of intervals from the theme, demonstrating his grasp of the new music's improvisational procedures and producing, with his broken tones and various speech-like attacks, a kind of polytonal funk. Rivers follows on tenor. "Paean" has a smooth, almost slippery Priester statement, a great flying pizzicato workout by McBee, and then Rivers on soprano. The saxophonist swings hard and then begins loosening and tightening the time, producing an elastic resilience. Back on tenor in "Effusive Melange" he sputters and tears into long held chords in an exemplary display of his control of harmonics. Priester joins in before the fade out.

"Involution" is scored for two flutes, played by Rivers and Spaulding, and rhythm. The first fluke solo sounds like Sam. who's identifiable in the improvised ensembles by his more mercurial, wider-ranging playing: Steve Ellington's drum solo produces a wide open sound, with high cymbals ringing and low tom toms underneath. "Afflatus" is a slow, reflective number, a kind of tenor incantation which Rivers elaborates into some forceful overtone playing and, after McBee switches from bowing to plucking for his solo, a faster but still deliberate rethinking of the theme. This trio performance, with its free-flowing time and broad tenor sound, is more reminiscent of Albert Ayler's work than anything in Rivers' later recordings. There's a Moorish-flavored ending. "Helix" closes the album in an optimistic mood. Byrd has a bright, strutting solo and Spaulding sails in with a tone reminiscent of Eric Dolphy's and a sense of line not unlike the late Booker Ervin's. Rivers soars on tenor over jabbing punctuations from the other horns.

In the years following the recording of this material the saxophonist worked with pianist Cecil Taylor — he appears on Taylor's Nuits de la Foundation Maeght series on Shandar — and on his own projects, aside from a brief but very memorable stint with a McCoy Tyner quintet that also featured trumpeter Woody Shaw. In 1970 he opened Studio Rivbea, on Bond Street in lower Manhattan, in partnership with his wife Bea. They've been married, he notes proudly, for 27 years. The studio, a basement loft with comfortably informal seating, has become a place where exciting new music is heard consistently. Dewey Redman, Frank Lowe, Charles Tyler and other avant-gardists appear there with their groups, but so do more traditionally oriented players like Clifford Jordan and Sonny Fortune. Sam rehearses his trios, medium-sized groups and big bands in the space. He's also found time during the past few years to work as composer-in-residence with the Harlem Opera Society and perform and teach as an artist-in-residence at Wesleyan University.

The tall, lean saxophonist with the high forehead, creased brow, and penetrating eyes continues to make singular music. "The way I see it," he says, "the music of the Seventies should be a fusion of the Forties, Fifties and Sixties." That's as good a description as any of the sounds in this package, though the listener will be tempted to add that the warmth, wit and intelligence of those decades, as well as their styles, are evident throughout.

ROBERT PALMER

BLP 4261 (NR)

Sam Rivers - Dimensions and Extensions

Released - 1986

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 17, 1967
Donald Byrd, trumpet #1-4; Julian Priester, trombone #1-4; James Spaulding, alto sax, flute #1-5; Sam Rivers, tenor, soprano sax, flute; Cecil McBee, bass; Steve Ellington, drums.

1858 tk.10 Paean
1859 tk.20 Precis
1860 tk.25 Helix
1861 tk.32 Effusive Melange
1862 tk.33 Involution
1863 tk.34 Afflatus

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Precis	Sam Rivers	March 17 1967
Paean	Sam Rivers	March 17 1967
Effusive Melange	Sam Rivers	March 17 1967
Side Two
Involution	Sam Rivers	March 17 1967
Afflatus	Sam Rivers	March 17 1967
Helix	Sam Rivers	March 17 1967

Liner Notes

Recognition has taken its time catching up with Sam Rivers. The reedman/composer/arranger has played the blues with Jimmy Witherspoon and T-bone Walker; toured with Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, and Andrew -Hill; led groups of his own, which ranged in size from trios to big bands. He was playing professionally in Boston during the early-Fifties, and during the mid-Sixties, Blue Note released his Fuschia Swing Song and Contours. Finally, in 1975, his Impulse! albums attracted the notice of the jazz public, and attention began to be paid.

There is often a certain austeriry to Rivers's music. It isn't cold or forbidding, but it's more or less 'pure," uncontaminated by programmatic conceits and atmospheric or romantic allusions. It is music that follows its own rules and exists on its own strictly musical terms, independent of the kind of extra musical imagery so often associated with organized sound. There is also a certain austerity to Rivers's determination to be original. "I worked out my own chord substitutions, wrote my own exercises to practice," he says. "I listened to everyone I could hear to make sure I didn't sound like them. I wasn't taking any chances; I wanted to be sure I didn't sound like anyone else. A person doesn't have to sound like Charlie Parker or John Coltrane. It takes more work, but it can be done."

Born into a musical family on September 25, 1930, Sam was already accomplished on the trombone, viola, piano, and saxophone by the time he moved to Boston in 1947 to attend the Boston Conservatory. He immediately began working in a string quartet and in various jazz bands that included Quincy Jones, Jaki Byard, Gigi Gryce, Dick Twardzik, and Serge Chaloff, among others.

Except for occasional road tours with Don Wilkerson, Billie Holiday, and others, Sam made Boston his home for the next twenty years. In the late-Fifries, he led a quartet regularly in a coffee house near Harvard Square. One night in 1959, drummer Tony Williams, then thirteen years old, sat in and impressed everyone. A bond between these two artists grew quickly.

In 1964, Rivers was on the road with T-Bone Walker when he received a telegram from Tony Williams, who had moved to New York to work with Jackie McLean and later joined Miles Davis, telling him that Miles wanted him to join the quintet. Sam stayed for six months, touring the U.S. and Japan (where a live album was taped, but not issued in the U.S. for about a decade).

At this point, Rivers's music begins to be documented: a Tadd Dameron Septet date with Sam was started for Blue Note, but never satisfactorily completed (three Dameron originals and were recorded); Larry Young's Into Somethin' 4187); Tony Williams's Life Time (4180) and Spring (4216); Bobby Hutcherson's Dialogue (4198); followed by several Andrew Hill sessions (again for Blue Note). Meanwhile, Sam made an album a year, under his own leadership (for the same label): Fuschia Swing Song (4184); Contours (4206), A New Conception (4249), and finally this album, which remained unissued for years.

Fuschia Swing Song, with familiar associates Byard, Williams, and Ron Carter, stands as the definitive statement of the mid-Sixties Boston progressives. The chord progressions and voicings studiously avoid cliché, improvisational structures segue from chord cycles to free form and back in the course of single compositions, and the leader's playing refers to a lengthy history which encompasses blues, the classic tenors, and bebop. The modal structures then being popularized by John Coltrane are notably absent from the date. "I was never particularly into that." Rivers explains. "In most cases so-called modal jazz wasn't really modal at all. People were playing free over the top of modes or, more often, just staying in one key. Now, really playing in a mode would be limiting yourself to the eight or so notes in that mode, period. That's the way I teach modes. I guess I'm a kind of purist in that I don't believe you should say you're doing one thing when you're doing something else."

The sextet heard here is a kind of all-star group, though the rhythm section was intimately familiar with Rivers's music. Drummer Steve Ellington had been particularly close to the saxophonist for some had recorded tapes earlier in the decade which Rivers remembers as some of the most advanced playing he ever did. The prodigiously swift and solid bassist Cecil McBee was only beginning to build his reputation; his land mark bass solos with Pharoah Sanders were several years in the future. Donald Byrd and Julian Priester must have seemed strange choices for a date as "conceptually free" as this one, since they were associated with more "inside" playing, but Priester had worked in Sun Rats earliest bands and Byrd frequently played with some of the younger musicians who were revamping jazz time and techniques, though not on records. Alto saxophonist James Spaulding was a kind of Blue Note regular at the time. He had been associated with Freddie Hubbard and Bobby Hutcherson, and his direction was basically neobop, with free form leanings.

Rivers probably chose each player for this combination of adventurousness and grounding in tradition; he was never one to advocate total freedom at the expense of musicality and roots. Rivers's scoring for the horns is almost uniformly dense, but his remarkable ear for color and the personal sounds of the players result in a parade of marvelously sensual and ever-changing colors. Rarely has atonality in jazz writing sounded this warm. The solos are as varied as the diverse styles of the musicians, and Byrd and Priester in particular reach for continuities and effects not even hinted at on their other recordings from the same period.

Spaulding has the bright opening solo on "Precis." Byrd then permutates a series of intervals from the theme, demonstrating his grasp of the new music's improvisational procedures and producing, with his broken tones and various speech-like attacks, a kind of polytonal funk. Rivers follows on tenor. "Paean" has a smooth, almost slippery Priester statement, a great flying pizzicato workout by McBee, and then Rivers on soprano. The saxophonist swings hard and then begins loosening and tightening the time, producing an elastic resilience. Back on tenor in "Effusive Melange," he sputters and tears into long, held chords in an exemplary display of his control of harmonics. Priester joins in before the fade out.

"Involution" is scored for two flutes, played by Rivers and Spaulding, and rhythm. The first flute solo is by Sam, who's identifiable in the improvised ensembles by his more mercurial, wider-ranging playing. Steve Ellington's drum solo produces a wide, open sound/ with high cymbals ringing and low tom toms underneath. "Afflatus" is a slow, reflective number, a kind of tenor incantation during which Rivers elaborates into some forceful overtone playing, and, after McBee switches from bowing to plucking for his solo, a faster but still deliberate rethinking of the theme. This trio performance, with its free-flowing time and broad tenor sound, is more reminiscent of Albert Ayler's work than anything in Rivers's later recordings. There's a Moorish flavored ending. "Helix" closes the album in an optimistic mood. Byrd has a bright, strutting solo, and Spaulding sails in with a tone reminiscent of Eric Dolphy's and a sense of line not unlike the late Booker Ervin's. Rivers soars on tenor over jabbing punctuations from the other horns.

In the years following the recording of this material, aside from a brief but very memorable stint with a McCoy Tyner Quintet that also featured trumpeter Woody Shaw, Sam worked mostly with pianist Cecil Taylor, or on his own projects. In 1970, he opened Studio Rivbea, on Bond Street in lower Manhattan, in partnership with his wife, Bea. He's also found time during the past few years to work as composer-in-residence with the Harlem Opera Society and perform and teach as an artist-in-residence at Wesleyan University.

The tall, lean saxophonist with the high forehead, creased brow, and penetrating eyes continues to make singular music. "The way I see it," he says, "the music of the Seventies should be a fusion of the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties." That's as good a description as any of the sounds in this package, though the listener will be tempted to add that the warmth, wit, and intelligence of those decades, as well as their styles, are evident throughout.

— Robert Palmer

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT DIMENSIONS AND EXTENSIONS

Sam Rivers was one of the last new voices of the classic Blue Note era, and (as Robert Palmer emphasizes in his original liner notes) shared the fate of many earlier Alfred Lion discoveries in receiving greater acclaim years after having left the label. Then again, Rivers's career has never progressed according to familiar timetables. His birth date, established only relatively recently as 1923 rather than 1930, makes him one of jazz's true late starters (his frequent Boston companion Jaki Byard was another), a venerable 41 when he recorded his debut Fuschia Swing Song. His rare command of both the repertory and stylistic conventions of modernism, best heard on his great standards album A New Conception, and the more adventurous notions of harmony, rhythm sonority, and structure made him an ideal representative of Blue Note's progressive mid-Sixties profile. Unfortunately, whatever career momentum was generated by his contract effectively stalled when the label was sold to Liberty in 1966. Lion was still in the production booth when this final Rivers Blue Note session was taped in March 1967; but despite gaining a title, a catalog number (BST 84261), and cover art, the music remained unissued until it was paired with an Andrew Hill quartet date featuring Rivers on tenor and issued as the two-record set Involution in 1976. Palmer's notes, originally written for that twofer, were edited into their present form 11 years later, when Dimensions and Extensions finally appeared with title and cover as originally intended.

There were other twists and turns to come in what remains the ongoing Rivers saga. For most of the 1970s he led a trio featuring bassist Dave Holland and drummer Barry Altschul, a rhythm section also featured in Anthony Braxton's ensembles during part of the same period. This Rivers unit developed the open, stream-of-consciousness approach in which the leader would shift among flute, soprano sax, tenor sax, and piano as the band worked through various moods. Rivers's approach became emblematic of the tradition-informed freedom that characterized some of the best music of the '70s. He adopted a lower profile when the 1980s began, only to emerge at decade's end on Latin jazz recordings by Hilton Ruiz and in the quintet and United Nation Orchestra of Dizzy Gillespie. These surprisingly inside affiliations were followed in the early-1990s by a move to Orlando, Florida, inspired in part by a large talent pool that allowed Rivers to compose and rehearse the music for larger ensembles that had first been heard on such fascinating discs as Crystals (Impulse! 1974) by his big band and Colours (Black Saint, 1982) by his woodwind ensemble, Winds of Manhattan. He also assembled a new trio in which the other members (Doug Matthews and Anthony Cole) shared their leader's multi-instrumental proclivities. Both the large and the small ensembles continue to perform regularly as these notes are written in Rivers's 85th year.

For a variety of reasons, the present album is more indicative of Rivers's future efforts than its three predecessors. The absence of piano provides a more open canvas for the harmonic exploration that had defined his music from the outset, while the use of four horns anticipates the mutating colors and densities, and the preference for thematic repetition and collage in support of solos, that would characterize his later and larger efforts. The writing on the four sextet tracks is of a piece with that on Fuschia and Contours, with suggestions of blues ("Paean"), atonality amidst AABA structure ("Helix"), and the heat-seeking swing that later came to be known as free-bop ("Effusive Melange"), while the expressive tones of Donald Byrd and Julian Priester (each with and without mutes) and the tart alto saxophone of James Spaulding produce ensembles of uncommon delicacy and range.

"Involution" and "Afflatus" anticipate another road taken, that of the innovative Rivers trios, The former, a quartet track with both Rivers and Spaulding on flute, retains a swing beat, while the trio piece has Rivers on tenor and a rubato approach featuring bowed bass and cymbal flourishes that suggest a movement from a typical performance of the '70s, Both tracks, and the sextets as well, gain immeasurably from the contributions of Cecil McBee, an occasional Rivers associate in the '70s, and drummer Steve Ellington, who (possibly through his connection with Rivers) would later play with Dave Holland, ultimately becoming the original drummer in the bassist's first working band.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2008

BLP 4249

Sam Rivers - A New Conception

Released - November 1967

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, October 11, 1966
Sam Rivers, tenor, soprano sax, flute; Hal Galper, piano; Herbie Lewis, bass; Steve Ellington, drums.

1783 tk.5 I'll Never Smile Again
1784 tk.17 That's All
1785 tk.18 When I Fall In Love
1786 tk.21 What A Difference A Day Makes
1787 tk.23 Detour Ahead
1788 tk.24 Temptation
1789 tk.25 Secret Love

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
When I Fall In Love	Heyman-Young	October 11 1966
I’ll Never Smile Again	Ruth Lowe	October 11 1966
Detour Ahead	Ellis-Carter-Frigo	October 11 1966
That's All Time	Haymes-Brandt	October 11 1966
Side Two
What A Difference A Day Makes	Grever-Adams	October 11 1966
Temptation	Brown-Freed	October 11 1966
Secret Love	Fain-Webster	October 11 1966

Liner Notes

THERE are two dimensions of freshness of conception in this album of standards by Sam Rivers. One is the individuality of his approach to the songs themselves. The other is the fact that Rivers. who was a member of the avant-garde long before there were terms like “new jazz” and “the new thing,’ enjoys the challenge of standards notwithstanding his involvement in experimentation. “If I were to stay only within free form,” Rivers insists, “that would be as constricting as if I were to play only in traditional ways. Furthermore, when I do play standards, I respect the songs as they are. In this album, for example, I stayed with the regular changes on every tune. It’s very easy to come up with substitute chords, but it seems to me that it’s difficult for most musicians to play the regular changes and still sound fresh. But if they can’t do that, why don’t they write another tune of their own?”

Preferring, therefore, to retain the essence of each tune, Rivers’ way of introducing new conceptions is by melodic resourcefulness, diversely personal rhythmic patterns and command of variegated textures. When I Fall in Love, with Rivers on tenor, is played with passion but also with an assertive virility that provides a new perspective of the tune. I’ll Never Smile Again is one of Rivers’ older favorites. He can remember the once popularly pervasive version by Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey, but Rivers chooses to be sanguine rather than wistful and his performance is an ebullient illustration—on tenor and soprano—of melodic Inventiveness and a sweeping sense of swing.

Detour Ahead is described by Rivers as “a sort of salute to Billie Holiday. I was in Miami around 1954, and Billie Holiday was working there in a club called the Sir John. I borrowed a horn to jam with the group accompanying her and my spirits, which were low at the time, were brought up by the fact that she was digging what I was playing very much. At one point I had to leave for a while, and she said, ‘Go ahead, I’ll watch it for you. I used to watch Pres’s horn.’ That made me feel good. She sang Detour Ahead that night, and it stuck with me.” On flute, soprano and tenor, Rivers reveals that his basic lyricism can also be contemplative. Note here and on the other tracks the consistently apposite, lucid accompaniment Rivers rivers from Galper, Lewis and Ellington.

“One of the pleasures of playing standards like That’s All and the others in this set,” says Rivers, “is that they can be played in so many different ways, in many different tempos. There’s no tempo of which you can say, ‘That’s the only right one for this tune.’ And so I never play any of these the same way. It depends on how I feel.” On this occasion, he felt buoyant, and the result is an airy, swift and subtle interpretation that is unlike any other I’ve heard of this standard.

While Rivers and his colleagues stayed with the regular changes on Temptation, Rivers allowed himself and the others considerable improvisatory freedom. “The soloist, when he does improvise on the changes,” says Rivers, “usually remains rhythmically, however, in a basic 4/4. I didn’t see why the soloist shouldn’t improvise rhythmically too and change the meter in each bar if he wants to. And so everyone had to listen carefully to each other and those providing accompaniment had to be ready to go in whatever direction the soloist decided to take — rhythmically, harmonically and melodically. Fortunately all these players are very flexible.” Rivers’ tone on tenor, incidentally, is one of the biggest and hottest in current jazz. And there is also unusual tonal strength and scope in his flute and soprano playing.

The final Secret Love further illustrates Rivers’ intention in this album: “I wanted to create music for comfortable listening, an album to go back to whenever you wanted that kind of warmth. The album was important to me because I do have more than one side as a musician. Sure, I like to play experimental jazz, but I also find fulfillment in this kind of approach. And eventually I want to do some rhythm and blues things. For me, it’s essential to keep flexible. And in a club, I alternate all kinds of music. That way I’m never hung up for ideas and I don’t get narrowed in conception.”

Rivers selected pianist Hal Galper for this session because “he really feels this kind of pleasant mood.” Galper, originally from Salem, Massachusetts, had been based in Boston until he decided to move to New York. He has worked often with Rivers and, among others, with Chet Baker and with the big band and small combos of Herb Pomeroy. Bassist Herb Lewis, who’s been with Cannonball Adderley and the Jazz Crusaders, is now a part of Rivers’ regular group. “I like the strength of Herb’s playing,” Rivers emphasizes. “The way jazz is today, everything centers around the bass player—because the drums aren’t playing 4/4. And without a strong bass player, the music either sounds wishy-washy or falls apart. In addition, Herb is an all-around bass player. From the most advanced jazz down to the nitty-gritty, he knows what’s going on at all levels.”

Rivers calls Steve Ellington “my favorite drummer. Rhythmically, he’s extraordinarily imaginative. And he listens. Most drummers have a bad habit of wanting to lead the group, to push things their way. Steve doesn’t. He tries to blend with the group and with each soloist.” Along with Rivers, Ellington has been heard with Chet Baker.

Rivers himself, now thirty-six, first made a substantial reputation in Boston and was also with Miles Davis for two months in 1964. Now a New Yorker, he has his own trio, takes a few students, and is doing a considerable quantity of composing and arranging. “In the writing as in the playing,” Rivers points out, “there’s a wide range oi approaches. Since I am able to produce variety, I might as well be true to myself—all parts of myself. This time I wanted to be true to that section of myself that likes relaxed music. I can play on-the-edge-of-the-chair music too, but there is a time when the player, just as the listener, simply wants to settle into a more mellow groove.”

For this listener, the strength of this album is that Sam Rivers was able to indeed retain the essence of each song and yet came through so strongly as himself that he has marked each of these standards with his own unmistakable conception — a conception that is both new and persistently stimulating.

—NAT HENTOFF

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

BLP 4206

Sam Rivers - Contours

Released - January 1967

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, May 21, 1965
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Sam Rivers, tenor, soprano sax, flute; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Joe Chambers, drums.

1582 tk.6 Point Of Many Returns
1583 tk.10 Dance Of The Tripedal
1584 tk.12 Mellifluous Cacophony (mistitled as Mellifluous Cacaphony)
1585 tk.18 Euterpe

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Point of Many Returns	Sam Rivers	May 21 1965
Dance of the Tripedal	Sam Rivers	May 21 1965
Side Two
Euterpe	Sam Rivers	May 21 1965
Mellifluous Cacophony	Sam Rivers	May 21 1965

Liner Notes

IN THIS DECADE OF REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE, too little notice has been given to the new generation of musicians which has quietly but effectively been mastering the bop and post-bop idioms. It is a generation which, if it cannot quite accurately be described as avant garde, is reaching toward goals not too far removed from those sought by the revolutionaries. These goals, whether approached by traditionalists or iconoclasts, center around (1) the development of a vocabulary of sound devices ranging from a nearly human, vocalized expression (a contemporary manifestation of the jazz 'cry') to noise effects not unlike those produced by oscillators, filters, and other electronic instruments; (2) the discovery of form-producing procedures and structures that offer provocative musical alternatives to recurrent chord patterns; (3) rhythmic freedom, either through liberated, near-anarchistic rhythms or, conversely, from a highly sophisticated use of traditional, pulsating jazz swing.

Sam Rivers approaches these problems, for the most part, from the viewpoint of jazz tradition. His playing can be warm and lyrically melodic, but it can also shout with rare and unusual sounds. In addition to his excellent playing, Rivers is a provocative composer. As with most good player/composers, his improvisations and compositions seem to grow organically out of each other — a wedding of intellect and emotion. Rivers's music can be as violently explosive as that of any "new" musician, but there is always an awareness of where the music comes from and where it is going, of musical elements that change and evolve through time, rather than remain motionless and undeveloped.

Rivers could hardly have asked for better playing companions. It is no secret that Ron Carter and Herbie Hancock are a superbly inventive rhythm team; Joe Chambers, although a new name to some listeners, is an able and respected young drummer. Most importantly, the rhythm section, as an integral unit, plays with astonishingly creative vitality. Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, an intensely dramatic, fiery performer, whips off melodic streams that often are brilliantly constructed, especially considering the momentum with which they are played. Hubbard's forte is harmonic playing, but he can also reach past chord patterns to the limits of the harmony.

"Point of Many Returns" provides two recurring eight-bar patterns for the soloists. The first is accompanied by a rising chord pattern emphasized by Carter and Hancock with differing pedal figures; in the second pattern, the rhythm section moves into a walking 4/4. Carter's supple accompaniment is deceptively simple; notice the accuracy of his pitch in the passages which blithely leap from extremely high to extremely low notes. Rivers's soprano sound, with its hollow, oboe-like quality, is unlike John Coltrane's or Steve Lacy's. Its Eastern character is heightened by Rivers's use of rhythmically potent figures that rise, often in triplets, above and out of a fundamental note that is repeated in quasi-drone fashion. Carter's fine solo uses time divisions to open up indeterminate spaces in the music while still retaining the basic pulse. Here, as elsewhere, Carter sometimes produces a buzzing up-beat accent in his fast walking time that creates an unusually gutsy swing feeling.

"Tripedal Dance" is a rocking, playful, and appropriately-titled line in triple time. Rivers's tenor solo makes stunning use of noise effects; it has an episodic framework in which melodic fragments alternate with contrasting whirlwinds of notes, double stops, and harmonics. The transitions are also interesting, especially in the interplay between bass and trumpet, which gradually becomes embroiled in a thickening ensemble density. Hubbard then soars above everything in true Armstrong fashion. In the intriguing passage that introduces the piano solo, three distinct levels of rhythm in bass, piano, and drums are connected by Hancock's long trill.

"Euterpe" has an Indian quality, enhanced in the melody statement by the nasal sound of the octaves between trumpet and flute. Hubbard's muted solo has a rhythmic quality unlike his usual style; his choice of intervals throughout is also atypical, but remarkably successful. Carter's solo is excellent, accenting the beat with repeated low A's and E's while slowly spinning a contrasting melody line on the high strings.

"Mellifluous Cacophony," played at a fast middle tempo, is just about the speed most players prefer for easy stretching out. Characteristically, Rivers welds bits and fragments into a unified whole. Considering the distinct quality of these fragments, the solo holds together surprisingly well. Hancock plays a boppish single-note line that refreshingly updates this well-worn technique.

It has been said that those who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it. The same, obviously, is true of the artist who is unaware of his predecessors. There can be little doubt that the direction of jazz for the rest of this decade will depend strongly upon players who have a deep knowledge of jazz tradition, as well as a powerful responsiveness to the challenges of contemporary techniques. On the basis of the substantial evidence offered in this and in his past Blue Note recordings, Sam Rivers appears to be one of the best of the players who will never be doomed to repeat what others have done.

— DON HECKMAN