Notable Jazz Recordings, 1980-1989: Re-Evaluating A Decade (Part 4/6)
1. Billy Bang Quartet, Valve No. 10 (1988) (Soul Note)
With his passing from lung cancer earlier this year, a silence fell over the small world of jazz violin, even if Billy Bang himself was as much fiddle player as violinist. Perhaps his woodsy tone sprang from his Alabama roots, although he left Mobile for Harlem at a young age. There’s also more than a hint of the exotic scales making up the classical music of Vietnam and environs, a country he toured not as a musician but an infantryman. Legend has it the radicalized Bang first spotted his instrument of choice hanging in a stateside pawnshop while scoping firearms for revolutionaries, and whatever the real circumstances (it’s also known he studied violin back in junior-high), it’s fair to say any future political dissidence would have paled compared to the very real changes he worked within an evolving black musical culture. On a quartet date that’s a quasi-tribute to John Coltrane, Bang creates a unique voicing between violin and tenor sax, with Bang delivering sharp, sawing attacks while Frank Lowe supplies a gentle, sweet-voiced nod to pre-modern players. They mesh wonderfully and unexpectedly, and while the skills on display here of the highest order (bassist Sirone and drummer Dennis Charles included), there’s a hint of shambolic Mississippi Hill Country string band from time to time, especially during opening melodies – not shambolic as in slop, but in risky fun and imperfect ensemble voices. Even the Ode to Coltrane Bang reads aloud over “September 23rd” works, corny as it may ultimately be. When the quartet closes things with a wrenching 12-minute take on “Lonnie’s Lament,” one knows Bang’s heart was in the right place.
2. Charlie Haden / Paul Motian / Geri Allen, Etudes (1987) (Soul Note)
Almost silly assigning a leader to this kind of outfit, as pianist Allen could just as easily be said to head proceedings as bassist Haden, or, for that matter, drummer Motian, who composed three of nine songs here. So let’s focus on Allen first, expressing herself with nary a trace of M-Base, and ultimately as gently confounding as she’d prove throughout her long, varied career – is she mainstream? Traditional, if not reactionary about it? Experimental? A “mere” virtuoso, beholden to the Herbie’s (Hancock and Nichols)? Or all of these and more? One quick listen to her efforts on 1984’s challenging The Printmaker should convince skeptics of her New Thing bona fides, with frequent returns to Eric Dolphy (“Dolphy’s Dance” here, “Eric” there) one of many overt references to worthy elders. Etudes may tread calmer ground than such earlier work, but in a way suggestive of maturity rather than loss of nerve. On the fantastic opening rendition of Ornette’s “Lonely Woman,” she introduces a chordal loneliness missing even from the original, while the bass drones on over Motian, unflaggingly cooking throughout. On this and others, Allen leaves no doubt of knowing the tune inside out. But even with her encyclopedic knowledge, she gracefully bows to her accompanists, letting Haden dominate the melody for most of his ballad “Silence,” comping behind him until mid-song, at which point her entry startles with its angularity. Leave it to Haden to out-sing the piano player.
3. Andrew Hill Trio & Quartet, Shades (1986) (Soul Note)
A mid-60s tenure at Blue Note with the enthusiastic support of Alfred Lion remains Hill’s finest run – indeed, one of the finest runs of that decade, and the clearest example of Blue Note throwing its weight behind an emerging New Thing figure. Point Of Departure is merely the most celebrated of nearly a dozen albums recorded between 1963-1969, all of which belie his forbidding reputation as the most difficult intellectual of the experimental scene. Not that his intelligence is in any doubt. But this is playful music with generous respect for tradition and a complexity in structure that never degenerates into showboating. In fact, one listens in vain across his career for unnecessary flourishes. The 1980s saw a drop in output, although not quality, and on Shades, he lightheartedly dares the audience to nail down his influences. Monk, as always, seems a likely suspect, especially since Hill utilizes Monk’s mid-60s drummer, Ben Riley, and opens with “Monk’s Glimpse”. But the second track switches tactics for a semi-exotic rhythm supporting gentle chords both moody and grand. And while this trio number may be the album’s high point, the tracks incorporating saxophonist Clifford Jordan help vary stylistic flow, with Jordan’s bright tenor resting comfortably alongside Hill’s more classic (not classical) leanings. Indeed, it’s just like Hill to tap an overlooked figure like Jordan, who once blew alongside Dolphy in the Mingus Band but never joined the free jazz scene. So wrack your brain for comparisons – Monk, Herbie Nichols, Bud Powell all fit the bill. But while some might cry foul, I can’t help but be reminded at times of the telekinetic interplay of Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Which is another way of saying that Hill was very much his own man.
4. The Ganelin Trio, Ancora da Capo (1980) (Leo Records)
With the specter of international communism nearly departed, fans and critics alike talk much less of this seminal Soviet outfit, suggesting their reputation for subversion (musical and otherwise) had as much to do with the political scorekeeping marring many a Nobel Prize committee as it did the mirthful jazz created by Lithuanian Jew Vyacheslav Ganelin and his compatriots, saxophonist Vladimir Chekasin and drummer Vladimir Tarasov. Only sometimes the Nobel committee gets it right, and thirty years on, the curious can move past whispered tales of smuggled tapes and focus on the music itself, which is far from a quasi-bootleg level document. In fact, this two-part, eighty-minute compendium of a pair of European concerts often brings to mind the Art Ensemble Of Chicago – not just their “little instruments” and sprightly percussion, but their high/low dichotomy, their shtick, their duck calls, their insatiable appetite for music both central and peripheral to jazz, and a willingness to drop completely the state-the-theme, then-improvise mode of expression that defined even the most out out-there jazz artists well through the 1970s. And just like the AAC (and unlike the Cecil Taylor Trio with Sunny Murray and Jimmy Lyons, which this band also resembles), all duties are shared equally – without insider knowledge, one might never guess the pianist was the ostensible leader. Not an easy listen, the two forty-minute chunks of music presented here will no doubt confound some, try the patience of others. But this is far from austere or forbidding. Call it Russian Soul.
5. Jack DeJohnette, Special Edition (1980) (ECM)
It takes a special kind of drummer to bring forth albums consistently tumbling over with melody rather than percussion extravaganzas, and DeJohnette’s early familiarity with the piano no doubt partially explains why he remains one of the most musically expressive drummers of the past forty years. He sustains a pulse like few others, too – just check out his funk turn with Miles, or his peerless time-keeping duties with Keith Jarrett. What he brings to this first of several Special Edition groups (technically recorded in ’79 but released early the following year) is a willingness to guide proceedings while allowing his sidemen plenty of room to roam, and roam they do – teaming emerging sax provocateurs Arthur Blythe and David Murray was an inspired move, and hearing them duel over the multi-part “Zoot Suite” or playing Ornette Coleman-inspired twin leads on “One For Eric” offers a glimpse of the way new jazz would continue to move away from unstructured radicalism towards an “inside/out” worldview, at least stateside. Pair this record with another end-of-previous-decade ensemble piece, Blythe’s own Lenox Avenue Breakdown, featuring DeJohnette and better tunes. But that album lacks the two lovely back-to-back Coltrane tributes found here – a gentle take on “Central Park West” (with more than a hint of “Naima”) and the droning “India,” with DeJohnette opening on piano.
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