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(From Jazz Monthly April, 1966.) - UK NEW WAVE IN JAZZ John Coltrane (ten); McCoy Tyner (p); Jimmy Garrison (bs); Elvin Jones (d)
“Village Gate”, New York City—March 28, 1965
Nature boy
Donald Ayler (tpt); Albert Ayler (ten); Joel Freedman (’cello); Lewis Worrell (bs); James “Sonny” Murray (d)
same date
Holy ghost
Grachan Moncur III (tbn); Bobby Hutcherson (vib); Cecil McBee (bs); Bill Harris (d)
same date
Blue free
Ashley Fennell (tpt); Virgil Jones (tbn); Marion Brown (alt); Archie Shepp (ten); Fred Pirtle (bar); Reggie Johnson (bs); Roger Blank (d)
same date
Hambone
Charles Tolliver (tpt); James Spaulding (alt); Bobby Hutcherson (vib); Cecil McBee (bs); Billy Higgins (d)
same date
Brilliant corners
HMV CLP1932 (32/-) Sound but unremarkable, Nature boy falls into the pattern of recent Coltrane performances, showing once again his formidable rhythmic ease, highly evocative tone, and limited melodic invention. Holy ghost offers a grotesque surface intensity and some challenging percussion work by Murray; along with frantic ensemble passages thickened out by Freedman’s ’cello, the chief impression one takes away is of an almost total lack of melodic resourcefulness. Both horns mix screeching runs with shrill, jabbing single notes at the top of the range without bothering substantially to vary the content of their phrases. This drawback is the more apparent in that there is no regular ground beat and only a perfunctory formal structure. In comparison, Blue free is a far more traditional piece, being similar to the performances included in Moncur’s first Blue Note LP, Evolution. Whereas the trombonist begins well only to run out of inspiration in the later stages of his solo, Hutcherson turns in a delicately introspective solo that grows logically from start to finish. Perhaps the outstanding feature of this track is the entertaining interplay between vibraharp, bass and drums. Bill Harris evinces a combination of verve and self-discipline rare in a newcomer. Could this perhaps be a pseudonym?
After this brief respite from the harrowing world of the ‘new black music’, as the unpleasant sleeve-note describes it, we are brought back to harsh normality by Archie Shepp’s Hambone. His jagged, coarse-toned tenor invests this track with something approaching the intensity Ayler’s band achieves, with the welcome distinction that there is far more melodic interest in both theme and improvisation. Shepp’s aggressive style figures as an extension of the approach favoured by Rollins on his Our man in jazz album. The group is used sparingly but effectively, the general climate of feeling being reminiscent of such 1951 Mulligan sides as Funhouse or Mullenium. The Tolliver group’s rendition of Brilliant corners relates more closely than any other selection here to the post-bop medium, though all the men featured take liberties with Monk’s sequence. Displaying his customary verve, Spaulding is agreeably thoughtful into the bargain and Tolliver indicates he has the musical potential to build on the basis he appears largely to have acquired from Freddie Hubbard. As in Blue free, Hutcherson steals the honours with a lithe, dancing solo over the bass and drum patterns. Higgins, incidentally, plays very well here and seems now to be quite at home in the newer rhythmic/percussive context.
The general artistic level of this release, though more than creditable, not surprisingly falls short of the excellence of Ornette Coleman’s new Blue Note release. A whole phalanx of players is now fanning out behind the innovators, working to establish their own identities much as Dexter Gordon, say, or Stan Getz did in the ‘forties. One hopes that the young men involved will outgrow the deplorable fascist views certain have expressed in print, for it is unthinkable that any worthwhile art can flourish in an atmosphere of racial hatred. In the long run such dogmatism could be more harmful to the idiom than all the initial hostility with which it inevitably has to contend. So far as this latter obstacle is concerned, at least these 44 minutes, encompassing as they do selections by different groups with clearly differing aims, will show that, whether adverse or favourable, sweeping generalisations about the new idiom are worse than useless. MICHAEL JAMES Back to: Record Reviews Discography: In Greenwich Village |
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