Miles Under Glass

Reflecting the life of a mercurial jazz musician in a static museum exhibit seems like an impossible feat, and it's true that some of We Want Miles: Miles Davis vs. Jazz, an exhibition that runs at Montreal's Museum of Fine Arts until August 29, can feel a little overly staged. If you've spent hours listening to Davis' music, though, the exhibit can also move you in strange ways.

Stare down the length of one of the several Davis trumpets encased in glass and try not to imagine what it takes to breathe life into the instrument and move several generations of listeners to tears. Examine John Coltrane's tenor saxophone in detail and remember what flowed through his lungs and fingers and out of that horn. Or watch Tony Williams suddenly slam his hi-hat in a totally unexpected gesture that, in that instant, makes perfect musical sense and defines his genius.

Music plays throughout the exhibit, and pieces that you've heard hundreds of times take on new hues as you stare at blowups of studio photographs or album artwork. A long segment of the 1960s quintet—with Williams, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter—shimmers magically on a large, transparent digital screen, and an excerpt from Davis' electrifying show at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival dominates a dark room.

For my taste, there is too little of Davis' humour (don't you just know that the long-rumoured biographical film will be filled with drug use and dark deeds) and not enough from his prime decade spanning Kind Of Blue and Bitches Brew, but there's no denying the reverence and attention paid.

I spent an enjoyable four hours lost inside the exhibit, and left wishing that more, less venerated, artists could have this kind of care taken with their memory.

Here's a video blog entry on the exhibit, including a few words from Davis' youngest son Erin and his nephew Vince Wilburn.

A Fort In The Village

After a busy spring, I’m finally back to my immersion in the music of Keith Jarrett’s so-called American Quartet. It’s proven to be a timely project, given Jarrett’s recent reunion with bassist Charlie Haden.

Fort Yawuh—a live album recorded at the Village Vanguard in February 1973—is where my journey with this band began. While I can’t remember the first time I heard it, I clearly recall listening over and over to the hypnotic “De Drums” on a snowy Saturday morning in early 1975 and hearing a new sonic world open up to be discovered. Until that time, at age 20, my explorations into contemporaneous jazz had consisted of jazz-rock fusion music, and Jarrett’s quartet offered a sublime alternative to the highly amplified spinoffs from Miles Davis’ groundbreaking band. The music was both more lulling and more engaging. Melodically and harmonically, it was much deeper than anything I had heard that had been produced since the mid-‘60s.

I knew Haden from his work with Ornette Coleman (working backward from Davis’ Jack Johnson—my entry point to the jazz of my own generation—I had checked out many of the signal recordings of the ‘50s and ‘60s) but hadn’t heard him in the ‘70s. The depth of his sound was a revelation, and groove was so deep on that 12-minute track that I wanted a piece of whatever mojo they were working.

Interesting that Jarrett would later comment that Haden was reluctant to play vamps in the quartet, because the bassist picks up the simple phrase that the pianist states at the outset of “De Drums,” carries it for several minutes and then, under Redman’s solo, plucks a driving ostinato that defines the piece to such an extent that it’s a surprise it isn’t titled “Da Bass.” Returning to the initial vamp, Haden carries the last minute of the performance. To my ears, this seemed as funky as Muddy Waters’ band in the early ‘50s, yet as musically sophisticated as anything I’d been exposed to.

Today, an examination of Fort Yawuh is not complete without also considering the seven unreleased or unedited pieces that were included on The Impulse Years: 1973-1974, a box that was issued by Universal on the Impulse! imprint in 1997. That set added a 7-plus-minute excerpt of another—more piano-centric—version of “De Drums,” “Angles (Without Edges),” which would appear in a studio version on Treasure Island, a second take of “(If The) Misfits (Wear It)” and three other compositions. At 133 minutes, spread over two discs, it feels like a full two sets of music from the Vanguard.

All of this band’s best characteristics are on display, particularly the ability to balance free playing and rhythm, and the sense of fun the members brought to music that demanded close listening and the ability to respond creatively to a variety of stimuli. Aside from “Melting The Ice,” where Jarrett maintains a firm hand on the tiller with a long, definitive solo, the pieces feel very organic, like anything could happen at any moment. The box set even includes one of Jarrett’s signature audience upbraidings, although it’s a pretty tame one compared to what he’s said more recently.

To Better Times

A year ago, Jazz Chronicles was bemoaning the growing list of music festivals that were being slammed by the global recession. It's so great this spring to see that the news is much better. Not only has the ageless George Wein bounced back in the New York City area, but new ventures are sprouting in other cities, too.

In San Francisco, SF JAZZ's Randall Kline has announced that his organization will build a new headquarters and performance space, a move that has already proven to be highly successful in Montreal.

Here in Ottawa, and outside the jazz world, musician Julian Armour just unveiled ambitious plans for a new classical music festival.

These are the kinds of risk-taking initiatives that are needed, and it's no surprise that they're coming from musical entrepreneurs who have already proven they have what it takes to build audiences with inclusive, forward-looking events.

Gene Lees, 1928-2010

Word came today via Doug Ramsey that Gene Lees – former DownBeat editor, prolific liner note writer and biographer, and talented lyricist – has died.

A fellow Canadian, Lees was a good role model for bringing an 'outsider' viewpoint to chronicling America's native music. Along with songwriter Robbie Robertson, Lees showed that the invisible line only a few miles to the south of us did make a difference about how we viewed issues of race, class and culture.

I never met Lees, but we did speak on the phone – pre-Web days – a few times, and he was always quite helpful about providing insights into musicians he knew well. In particular, he provided a very welcome introduction to his lifelong friend Kenny Wheeler, for an interview that turned out to be my first feature in DownBeat in the mid-1990s. I thought that was a nice 'hand off'.

A few years later, I got the opportunity to write Lees' formal biographical entry in The Encyclopedia of Music in Canada.

Two Ottawa Events

For local readers, a couple of May events to take note of:

On May 6, my friends at Ottawa JazzWorks will be staging a fundraiser at Arts Court. Performers include guitarist Kevin Barrett, saxophonist Rémi Bolduc and singer Julie Michels, as well as JazzWorks alumni Jenna Glatt, Shannon Eddy Smith, Renée Yoxon and Daniel Ko, and pianist/jazz journalist Peter Hum. Tickets are $100, and more information can be found here.

On May 15, Ottawa-based singer Kellylee Evans – who graduated from Carleton University in 1997 – will headline the Carleton's Alumni Dinner at the Chateau Laurier. Evans will be performing with just guitarist Joel Williams and bassist Chris Breitner, featuring music from her new CD, The Good Girl. Tickets are $70, which includes hors d'oeuvres, a three-course meal and wine. A cash bar will be open from 5:30 to 6. Tickets can be reserved here.

Welcome Back, Johnny Mac

John McLaughlin was the first jazz musician who I could relate to when I gingerly stepped across the great divide between rock and jazz in 1971. While Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter seemed to come from another realm, I could tell McLaughlin was cut from the same cloth as my heroes Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Duane Allman.

Born in 1942 in Yorkshire, McLaughlin exploded onto the North American jazz scene in 1969/70 with appearances on trumpeter Miles Davis’ seminal recording In A Silent Way, Emergency! by drummer Tony Williams’ band Lifetime, and two wildly dissimilar albums – Devotion and Where Fortune Smiles – under his own name.

As is often the case, what appeared to be an overnight sensation had been brewing for years. McLaughlin – who taught himself to play after growing interested in American country blues, flamenco and the gypsy music of Django Reinhardt – built a successful career as a session guitarist in London during the ‘60s, recording with artists ranging from Petula Clark to David Bowie. But, by 1967, he had tired of the session life and moved to Germany to play jazz with vibraphonist Gunter Hampel. He would return occasionally to Britain for gigs with musicians like bassist Dave Holland and drummer Tony Oxley, and one of these trips resulted in his first album, Extrapolation, which remains one of the most exciting debuts in contemporary jazz. Already in place were his remarkably fluid technical facility, diamond-hard tone, and vivid harmonic imagination.

His achievements led to an invitation from Williams to join organist Larry Young in New York City to form Lifetime, and within days of his arrival in the States, to join Davis in the studio for the first of several recordings. The iconoclastic trumpeter was several months into a two-year period of intensive studio activity, and in addition to In A Silent Way, McLaughlin became a key part of Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, Live-Evil (where I first encountered him) and Big Fun. His sound – ranging from harp-like arpeggios to funky rhythm parts to excoriating, hyper-amplified solos – immediately placed McLaughlin alongside Hendrix as one of the new voices on the instrument.

“What strikes you when you listen to those sessions is that he was such a complete player,” says Bob Belden, who has won several Grammy Awards for his work in producing box sets of Davis’ electric music. “He had a whole range of styles, but, like Hendrix, what really made him stand out was his respect for the blues – something that most American guitarists didn’t have. He just needed to be around players of his own calibre to shine.”

In 1971, when long hair, ragged denim and flannel ruled music fashion, McLaughlin sheared his hair, donned white clothing and adopted the name Mahavishnu to symbolize his devotion to religious leader Sri Chimnoy. But, despite these radical changes, it was his new band that drew attention. An electric quintet, the Mahavishnu Orchestra stunned listeners with rapid-fire unison melody lines, unusual time signatures and advanced dynamics. The band’s first recording, The Inner Mounting Flame, remains a landmark work of the era. It's one of those recordings that I remember exactly where I was – in the basement of the Le Chateau store on Ottawa's Rideau Street – when I first heard it.

“McLaughlin’s sound was so different for that time,” says Ottawa guitarist Wayne Eagles, who teaches through Carleton University’s music department. “He had just incredible facility in his picking hand, and a distinctively angular, jagged way of phrasing.”

Within three years, McLaughlin had disbanded the original group and, maintaining the band’s name, was exploring orchestral work and synthesizers. In 1976, he made the jaws of guitar lovers drop again when he formed Shakti, an acoustic group featuring four traditional Indian musicians; his acoustic playing was as fluid and distinctive as his electric style.

“He’s an amazing acoustic player,” says jazz guitarist Pete McCann, one of McLaughlin’s most-prominent disciples. “His work on both steel-string and nylon-string guitar rank him as one of the best acoustic players ever to play the instrument.”

After Shakti, fans could never again pin McLaughlin down to a predictable style. His subsequent works included renewed interest in the jazz-rock fusion he helped pioneer, collaborations with his then-partner, classical pianist Katia Labéque, and spirited – but overtly commercial – meetings with guitarists Paco de Lucia and Al DiMeola.

For the past 20 years, he has followed his own imagination, adapting the dreamy music of jazz pianist Bill Evans to guitar, touring in a trio with organist Joey DeFrancesco, and continuing his pursuit of Indian classical music in Shakti Remembered.

“He’s a remarkable musician for his ability to do so many different things,” says Los Angeles guitarist Skip Heller. “He’s a fountainhead of the guys who made the guitar a frontline instrument in jazz, and he has maintained a totally world view of the instrument.”

“He has been a resounding influence on guitarists in the past 35 years,” says Eagles. “His music always sounds up to date, and he’s still at the top of his game.”

Indeed he is, as he demonstrated on a tour that brought him through Ottawa in 2008 and on his new CD, To The One. Backed by Gary Husband on keyboards and drums, Etienne M'Bappe, bass, and primary drummer Mark Mondesir, McLaughlin is back to cranking up the volume and playing with the abandon and speed he blew us away with 40 years ago. Mondesir has the same flair for polyrhythms and rolls as Billy Cobham, and M'Bappe – the latest of a series of bassists McLaughlin has used who sound like they're channeling Jaco Pastorius – continually drives the band forward.

As the title implies, McLaughlin is delving into his spiritual side again (his brief liner notes pay homage to John Coltrane's A Love Supreme) but while on recordings like Love, Devotion, Surrender (with Carlos Santana) McLaughlin was so intense about his spiritual search that he seemed to be flogging himself with music the way a devotee might flagellate himself with sharp branches, he seems more at peace now. "Special Beings" lopes along at a leisurely pace, and despite the searing tone of his guitar on "The Fine Line," this is music that sounds like it's filled with joy rather than a desperate search for enlightenment.

June Jazz In Ottawa

Ottawa does not have a particularly lively jazz scene most of the year, but it does have an annual jazz festival that year after year has one of the most comprehensive talent lineups of any North American festival. This year—which marks the festival's 30th anniversary—is no different.

Where to start? Perhaps with the acts I'm looking forward to the most (or, in other words, the acts that will likely not find me chained to my desk as the festival's media advisor):

Tomasz Stanko – I've loved his last few ECM recordings, and he deserves to be recognized outside Europe as one of the most creative post-Miles trumpeters.

Globe Unity Project – Although this reunion project doesn't have musicians as internationally well known as some of the band's alumni (Anthony Braxton, Kenny Wheeler, Enrico Rava) it still contains the cream of the crop of Europe's improvisers of the past 40 years.

Bill Frisell – Along with Matt Wilson and Robert Glasper, Frisell is participating in a series that sees the artists working with collaborators of their choice. On his first night, Frisell will perform with Eyvind Kang and Rudy Royston, and on the second night he'll work with Kang, Hank Roberts and Jenny Scheinman (his 858 Quartet).

Gord Grdina – Another exceptional guitarist, who completely knocked me out when I saw him in Vancouver a few years ago. He doesn't come east often enough, and he's here for two shows.

Joe Lovano – Seeing Lovano always puts a smile on my face, and I've been itching to see his US5 band since he formed it.

Also onboard this year: Herbie Hancock, John Scofield, Medeski Martin & Wood, Roy Hargrove's Big Band, James Farm (with Josh Redman and Eric Harland), Christy Doran's New Bag (featuring Jamaaladeen Tacuma on bass) doing a tribute to Jimi Hendrix, Kenny Garrett, Fred Hersch, Tom Harrell and Christine Jensen's Jazz Orchestra with her sister Ingrid on trumpet.

The TD Ottawa International Jazz Festival runs June 24-July 4. You can check out the whole thing at: ottawajazzfestival.com

Meanwhile, on the other side of the street

Once again this year, I've been contracted to serve as the media specialist for the TD Ottawa International Jazz Festival. This year marks the festival's 30th anniversary, so there will be a number of special shows related to that celebration.

On Thursday, I'll be helping to introduce this year's lineup, and will be posting that information here sometime later that day.

Mike Zwerin, 1930-2010

I only knew music journalist Mike Zwerin for about 10 years, but he was an influence on my work for three times that long. Mike never fully recovered from a serious illness he had a few years ago, and he died in his adopted home of Paris early this morning.

A native of New York, he attended an arts high school and was studying at the University of Miami when Miles Davis encountered him at a jam session led by Art Blakey at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem. "In those days," wrote Mike, "I played my horn (trombone) like a kid skiing down a slalom, with more courage than sense.... A lot of young cats considered Minton's too steep a slope, but I never imagined that somebody might not like me because I was white."

As Mike told the story, Davis asked him, "(Do) you have eyes to make a rehearsal tomorrow?" He did, and thus walked in on one of the most memorable bands in history: Davis' so-called Birth of the Cool band, with Gerry Mulligan, Max Roach, John Lewis, Lee Konitz and others. Steep slopes, indeed.

Years later, after he was established as one of the deans of jazz journalism, Mike asked Miles why he had picked him. "I liked your sound," replied the trumpeter; a compliment that Mike considered the greatest of his life. Mike was the kind of guy who also got a kick out of quoting the alternative reason Miles used: "J.J. (Johnson) was busy, so I got this white cat."

That was Mike; one of the funniest and hippest people I ever met.

We only got to hang a couple of times – at International Association of Jazz Education conferences – but Mike began submitting his columns to the Jazz Journalists Association website while I was editor, and so we started corresponding regularly.

He had a fascinating and rich life, which included marriage to Charlotte Zwerin, the renowned filmmaker who is best known for her work with the Maysles brothers (Gimme Shelter, et.al.) and on the film Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser.

He was slowed at the end by a stroke, but the last time I heard from him he was still swinging. Always swinging.

Hendrix: Still Standing Near The Fire

Thirty-eight years ago, in the March 30, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone, critic Stephen Davis began a review of Jimi Hendrix's Hendrix In The West with these words: "Scrape, scrape. That sound you hear is Eddie Kramer, the proprietor of the late Jimi Hendrix's New York recording studio, Electric Ladyland (sic), scraping the bottom of the Hendrix barrel for the second and possibly second-to-last posthumous album of the deceased genius' music."

Mind, this was before albums like War Heroes, Loose Ends, Crash Landing, Midnight Lightning, et.al. were unleashed on a public hungry for more from the man who sanctioned just three studio albums during his career.

The state of Hendrix's estate and the various reissue programs licensed by it are well documented, and I had long since grown cynical about the state of the Hendrix catalog myself. As many interesting tidbits that the estate had released under the aegis of Jimi's adopted half-sister Janie, it had also done things like slap his name on golf balls and psuedo-psychedelic clothing. Long ago, I stopped paying much attention.

But the estate's deal with Sony Legacy brought new hope. After all, the company has done a fabulous job with re-packaging the Miles Davis catalog and reissuing essential music by artists like Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk. Maybe they'd do right by Hendrix, too.

But a new studio album? I immediately flashed back to that Rolling Stone review, but a couple of good advance notices piqued my interest.

I glanced at the sleeve of Valleys Of Neptune when it arrived this morning and thought, Hmmm, "Stone Free," "Hear My Train A Comin'," "Lover Man," "Fire." Ah, more of the same. I put the disc on and started into some work. The good mixes caught my ear, and the alternative versions were interesting. And then I came to "Red House." Wait a minute! Why was the original Experience re-doing that and "Fire" in early 1969?

The liner notes explain that the band re-cut them at a rehearsal for their appearance at Royal Albert Hall—a performance that was filmed (and rumour has it, will finally be released in some decent form)—and released posthumously on a couple of quasi-bootlegs.

Suffice to say that if Stephen Davis had known this was in Kramer's "barrel" he wouldn't have been so hasty. Hendrix's guitar solo and vocals are first rate—easily on par with the original release (on Are You Experienced in the UK and Smash Hits in North America)—and the quality is almost that good on several other tracks. This is more than barrel scraping or cashing in; this sounds like a dedicated Eddie Kramer listening to hours and hours of stuff and finding some real gems. If only for the sound of that guitar on "Red House" and a clean studio version of Hendrix's killer cover of "Sunshine Of Your Love," Valleys Of Neptune is a winner.

American Quartet: The Full List

Someone asked me the other day for the full list of the output of Keith Jarrett's American Quartet so they could follow along. Here it is, with the original labels and recording dates:

El Juicio – Atlantic Records 1971
Birth – Atlantic Records 1971
Expectations – Columbia Records 1971
Fort Yawuh – Impulse! 1973
Treasure Island – Impulse! 1974
Death And The Flower – Impulse! 1974
Backhand – Impulse! 1974
Mysteries – Impulse! 1975
Shades – Impulse! 1975
The Survivors' Suite – ECM 1976
Eyes Of The Heart – ECM 1976
Byablue – Impulse! 1976
Bop-Be – Impulse! 1977

Talk About Woodshedding!

Saxophonist Jane Bunnett and trumpeter Larry Cramer are taking their Art Of Jazz Festival on the road this summer, leaving the red-brick urban oasis of Toronto's Distillery District and heading north to Bancroft, Ontario.

Bunnett's family has owned land in the region south of Algonquin Park for almost a century, so the Bancroft area—and its vibrant arts community—is not new to the couple. Lately, they've been attracted to the log bandstand that the town constructed on the York River in 2001, which will be the primary site of the new Art Of Jazz presents the Algonquin Arts & Music Festival from July 30 to August 1.

Bunnett and Cramer are still putting together a lineup, so stay tuned for more details.

Recognition Issues

Bill King announced via Facebook this week that he is discontinuing the National Jazz Awards program that he began in 2002 (picking up from the earlier Jazz Report Awards that he ran with his then-business partner Greg Sutherland). King says that his team lacks the time to beat the corporate bushes to make up for the shortfall caused by the withdrawal of the awards program's funding through the Canadian government's FACTOR grants.

Although it struggled in its early years to expand its online voting base beyond Toronto—and a fairly conservative Toronto voting base at that—the National Jazz Awards caught on mid-decade and was well on its way to recognizing the achievements of jazz artists and industry workers across the country. (Full disclosure: I was the winner in the National Jazz Awards Journalist of the Year category for 2009, and served on the program's nomination committee in its early years.)

King was tireless in promoting and organizing the awards (last summer, he grimaced in pain from a back ailment as he scrambled around on the night of the ceremony) and while the process had its flaws he was never less than idealistic about his desire to recognize excellence in Canadian jazz.

Ironically, as the NJAs falter this week, the nominations for the Juno Awards (Canada's equivalent of the US Grammys) are being announced. The Junos have the advantage of focusing on popular music (I can't recall jazz ever being showcased on the national TV broadcast) but have neither the depth of the NJAs nor the ability to reflect the input of those who consume artists' work.

These awards programs are thankless (I've also been intimately involved in the Jazz Journalists Association's Jazz Awards over the years) but the recognition does mean a lot, and the ability for members of the industry to come together to celebrate their achievements is important, too. Whenever I think of the NJAs and the Jazz Report Awards I reflect on a speech that saxophonist Jane Bunnett made at one of the awards ceremonies. Looking out at the assembled artists and guests and still chuckling at some of the remarks that had been made by awards recipients, she said: "What a crazy bunch of people we are."

We need more opportunities to realize and express those thoughts.

Great Expectations

In some ways, Expectations—released on Columbia Records in 1972—is something of a ringer in the catalog of Keith Jarrett’s American Quartet. The full quartet—Jarrett, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian—is only featured on five of the 11 tracks, and only one piece is played by just the quartet. That stated, the album—originally a two-LP set—was produced by George Avakian, who also produced the band’s two Atlantic releases, and Jarrett’s writing is in the same mode as El Juicio and Birth. It fits into the lineage.

The original album is quite an artifact, with an Afro’ed and tie-dyed Jarrett gracing the back cover, just above 22 flags, representing “countries in which Keith Jarrett has won the praise and respect of musicians, critics and the public.” That would be 22 out of more than 190? Probably not something a “global” jazzman would want to flaunt today. Perhaps the record label had second thoughts, too; Expectations was Jarrett’s only release on Columbia.

The additional elements for these sessions include percussionist Airto Moreira, who had been in Miles Davis’ band with Jarrett, uncredited string and brass sections, and the brilliant guitarist Sam Brown. A Maryland native who first drew attention for his work on Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, Brown had a stinging attack and a tart tone that Jarrett called on again for Treasure Island in 1974. He committed suicide at the age of 38 in 1977.

Side 1 includes some of my favourite of Jarrett’s writing during this period, in particular “Common Mama,” whose fusion of gospel, blues, Latin and free music makes the case for calling this the American Quartet. Like long stretches of the Bremen and Lausanne solo concerts that ECM released in 1973, Jarrett grooves as he ruminates on a theme. That gives way to a squalling Redman solo, and either Jarrett or Moreira spices things up with a tambourine accompaniment that sounds like that spine-snapping rhythm riff from Miles Davis’ “Helen Butte.” Finally, an Ornette-like theme develops and is handed off to Jarrett for a particularly joyous closing solo.

The spirit of Ornette also infuses “Roussillon,” one of the tracks performed by the quartet alone. Jarrett’s soprano weaves around Redman’s tenor, and following a Haden interlude, Jarrett plays a particularly intense piano solo. To my ear, Redman’s growling tenor solo sounds like he’s emulating Jarrett’s signature vocalizations without mocking the boss.

“The Magician In You” has one of those Jarrett-composed melody lines that is both sprightly and majestic, and it’s attractively voiced by Brown, bookending a Jarrett solo that is filled with leaps and twists. Even with those charms, the performance is almost undone by tentative rhythmic accompaniment that makes this sound like it’s a rehearsal.

Of the other augmented quartet performances on Expectations, “Sundance” is another highlight of the band’s early years—with Brown and Redman taking raucous solos over a churning rhythm bed. “Bring Back The Time When (If)” adds Moreira and drops Brown, and captures the freewheeling side of the quartet between statements of a theme that hints at both calypso and the church.

The gospel connection is solidified in the closing “There Is A Road (God’s River),” which eschews Redman but provides Brown with an exceptional showcase. The string section adds little except some drama, but neither do they weigh down this strong closer.

Birth—The Quartet's Second Helping

Recorded by George Avakian at the same July 1971 sessions that produced El Juicio—the debut release by Keith Jarrett’s so-called American Quartet (featuring Charlie Haden, Dewey Redman and Paul Motian)—Birth leans much more strongly on the band’s experimental side.

Actually, “experimental” might be too mild a word for what Haden does with his bass by processing it through a wah-wah pedal on “Mortgage On My Soul (Wah-Wah).” Listening to it again after all these years—it has not drawn me back in the intervening three decades—I am reminded of producer Teo Macero’s story of adding wah-wah to Miles Davis’ trumpet for the first time. Seeking to emulate the sounds that guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Terry Kath and Freddie Stewart were making sound hip, Macero—in his own words—“wah-wah’ed the shit out of it.” Haden’s use of the pedal shows just as much restraint.

Rippling and spitting behind a dual sax line, with Jarrett on soprano, Haden’s bass is a powerful engine on this highly danceable piece, and all these years later the elastic growl doesn’t even grate much anymore.

While sonically manipulating a tone as sublime as Haden’s may be the nadir of taste circa 1971, the freedom exhibited on “Spirit” is what made the era so much fun to live through. Mixing Redman’s Chinese oboe, which he dubbed the musette, metallic percussion, flute, bass drums and Halloween-scary vocals, the song has charm despite sounding dated in an era when so much of the world’s music is as close as our earbuds.

“Forget Your Memories (And They’ll Remember You)” has a bit of everything, including a taut bassline—and tremendous solo—from Haden, a highly textured tenor lead, understated drumming and emotive piano playing.

A discursive 11 minutes long, “Remorse” is more of what we used to call “head music” in the early ‘70s, featuring steel drums, banjo (by Jarrett!) and a wailing clarinet solo by Redman. Haden and Motian keep the tension high, and Jarrett’s fractured piano accompaniment leads to one of those spiraling solo statements of his that is an ideal blend of quicksilver imagination and pianistic technique. It forms a nice birth/death bookend with the title composition, which is the album’s highlight. The opening duet between Jarrett and Redman is gorgeous, and makes me wish they had done more of this type of thing. Redman’s bluesy approach is a beautiful match for Jarrett’s romantic lyricism, much the same as the pairing of Archie Shepp and Horace Parlan.

At a little over 35 minutes there is little question that Birth was a helping of leftovers from the band’s first sessions, but it helps flesh out a map of where this quartet would venture during its six-year life.

Jarrett's El Juicio: The Quartet Begins

Keith Jarrett has become so identified with his so-called Standards Trio with Jack DeJohnette and Gary Peacock, and his on-again, off-again interest in solo improvisation that it is difficult to think of a time (1966-72) when he was a polymathic precursor of more recent artists like Dave Douglas and Bill Frisell.

As the pianist in the Charles Lloyd Quartet—that rare jazz band that crossed over to an audience more interested in rock music—he had a profile that few jazz musicians attain in their early 20s. He released his first solo album, Life Between The Exit Signs, in 1967, and formed a trio with bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Paul Motian the next year. In 1970, Manfred Eicher, owner of the nascent ECM record label, invited the young pianist to record for him (initiating a relationship that is now 40 years old). That year, Jarrett also briefly compromised his stance against electronic instruments for the opportunity to create music alongside Miles Davis. Playing with Davis before large crowds—the culmination of which was the 1970 Isle of Wight Pop Festival, where Jarrett created a fearsome frisson in his attack on his electric keyboard—broadened his exposure to an even greater degree than his tenure with Lloyd.

By 1971—the year he turned 26—Jarrett was in a position to call his own artistic shots. One of the results was a growing interest in performing solo piano concerts with no set musical agenda (an arc that begins with one of my favourite Jarrett recordings, Facing You, and peaks with The Köln Concert—still the largest-selling recording in ECM’s vast catalogue).

Along with Davis, one of older artists Jarrett revered was Ornette Coleman. While Coleman had eschewed piano in his bands since leaving the orbit of Paul Bley in the late 1950s, Jarrett decided to rejuvenate his trio with the addition of Dewey Redman, Coleman’s bandmate since 1968, and explore music that was dominated by muscular improvisation. As noted here, Jarrett recognized a challenge in using two musicians—Haden and Redman—who were indoctrinated in Coleman’s approach to melodic free playing. In July 1971, he convened his new quartet in the studio with veteran producer George Avakian. The results are captured on two albums: El Juicio (The Judgement) and Birth. I’ll deal with them in separate posts.

It begins with the bass. One of the dominant features of the American Quartet's music was the heft and percussive thrust of Haden's bass. On "Gypsy Moth," El Juicio's opening track, Haden is high in the mix (he even sounds powerful on an MP3 download) laying down a strong pulse that grooves and weaves throughout the piece. In the opening minutes, Jarrett uses this foundation to accentuate his gospel-influenced playing. The percussion is spare, even and metallic sounding, a foreshadowing of the frequent use of additional percussionists—either Airto Moreira, Guilherme Franco or Danny Johnson. Although the American Quartet is often remembered for its "outside" leanings, what many people disregard is how hard this band could cook. During Jarrett's piano introduction the band sounds like some kind of strange juke joint hybrid (even Jarrett's trademark vocalizations sound more celebratory than anguished in this context). In his liner notes for The Impulse Years: 1973-1974—a collection of the quartet's mid-period recordings—Chuck Berg writes that the band was sometimes criticized for sounding like Ramsey Lewis' popular trio, a comparison that never struck me. What does strike me, once Redman enters, is how Jarrett's melody line and the rigor the band brings to it might've influenced Pat Metheny (who would work with Redman and Haden on his '80-'81 recording). In its middle section, "Gypsy Moth" has that propulsive sailing element that so much of Metheny's early writing has. But there's more, too. After stating that airy melody, Redman begins to extend into a highly textured improvisation, with Haden louder than ever, and the percussion—sounding like Jarrett has picked up a tambourine—becomes more ragged and urgent. Finally, the piano re-enters for the tune's closing 45 seconds.

As an introductory statement, "Gypsy Moth" has almost every element that would make the American Quartet so influential. In little over eight minutes, the band points to a new direction in jazz—at once driving and fragmented, joyous and inward looking.

Coleman's influence is unmistakable on "Toll Road," with Jarrett combining his soprano sax with Redman's tenor in the kind of jostling unison head that Coleman and Don Cherry pioneered, a relationship that is made even more obvious on the two-part "Piece For Ornette."

"Pardon My Rags" introduces yet another fascination Jarrett expressed through the American Quartet: a love for exotic musical sources. Here, the opening percussion statement sounds like an extrapolation of Balinese music; later, he would explore Asian micro-tonality through Redman's use of the shrill, double-reed suona, which he called a musette.

In recent years, Jarrett's music has been perceived as so tightly controlled that it is difficult to remember that he used the American Quartet to explore so many diverse elements. When we get to Birth we'll explore Haden's use of wah-wah manipulation of his bass, but on El Juicio's "Pre-Judgement Atmosphere" the sonic palette expands to include more metallic percussion (a precursor of Henry Threadgill's hubkaphone?) and electronically processed vocals that are reminiscent of Hermeto Pascoal's work on Davis' Live-Evil. It remains a kind of quaint reminder of the sound of the early '70s.

The title track shows the quartet as many people seem to recall it—improvising freely and fervently in much the same style as Coleman's quartet, which means that Motian is a lot more aggressive than he has been for the past 35 years. In this early work, Jarrett cleaves closer to the types of thematic statements that Coleman writes than he would in later recordings, and it's only when he shifts back to piano from soprano on the second part of "Piece For Ornette" that the band sounds like it's taking Coleman's influence somewhere untried. Jarrett would later opine that this band never recorded anything as untethered as it was capable of, but they sound marvelously free on the second part of "Piece For Ornette," with Jarrett using many of his piano signatures and his bandmates flowing all around him.

As an introduction, El Juicio is not without its flaws, but it definitely sounds like a harbinger of great things.

Now Spinning: Digging Roots and Willie McBlind

As noted here, I spent my teens immersed in electric blues music as purveyed by The Allman Brothers Band, Johnny Winter, Paul Butterfield and the like. Through them, I cycled back through time to Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James, then further back to Son House, Bukka White and Robert Johnson. Without access to the Allmans or their peers in the flesh, my friends and I spent many a night soaking up electric blues—and soaking up quart bottles of Molson Export—via guys like Dutch Mason, Morgan Davis and David Wilcox (unwittingly, in the same barrooms as Dan Aykroyd, as it turns out).

What turned me on about guitarists like Wilcox, Winter and Duane Allman was how they took the blues form beyond what their predecessors had created, spinning out longer forms, using amplification for expanded dynamics and applying more advanced techniques than some of the early blues players possessed.

When I moved on to other forms of music—and, for the most part, gave up my wicked, beer-soaked ways—it seemed that electric blues guitar had been taken about as far as it could go. I began to realize this wasn't true when I heard Sonny Landreth wailing behind John Hiatt, and Derek Trucks began to outgrow the long shadow of Brother Duane. And, while they may be the highest profile players, Landreth and Trucks aren't the only guitarists who are taking the blues genre further out. Recently, two new releases have me as hopped up as I used to get after a couple of quarts of Ex.

The first recording—Digging Roots' We Are—reacquainted me with a guitarist I first met at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. Raven Kanatakta was—still is—a striking-looking young man who was studying at the Berklee College of Music. The last time I saw him, at the jazz festival in Ottawa, he was worried that a repetitive-strain injury would force him to quit guitar and focus on composition. He needn't have worried; he has developed into an exceptional, distinctive player. Sharing leadership of Digging Roots with his wife, singer ShoShona Kish, he's creating a compelling blend of blues, rock and urban dance music. I've been spinning We Are off and on for weeks.

The second guitarist who's caught my ear is Jon Catler, an inventive player who uses harmonically re-fretted and fretless guitars in his band Willie McBlind. Catler also collaborates with a creative singer, Meredith (Babe) Borden, who has a three-octave range. Both Catler and Borden have worked extensively in art music—he with La Monte Young, her with Meredith Monk and Philip Glass—and those influences flow into strains of Blind Willie Johnson and Mississippi Fred McDowell with a solubility that seems unlikely but sounds right. While I haven't warmed to Borden's voice as much as I have Kish's—purely a matter of taste, and mine is simply that—I'm sure many listeners will find Willie McBlind's Bad Thing indispensable. They certainly stir up an exciting racket that takes you way outside of where you might have imagined the blues going.

The State of my Business

Jason Gross at PopMatters has a long and thoughtful overview of the past year in music journalism, which includes some sharp insight on the transformation from print to digital.

There is also about a month's worth of interesting reading if you follow the links to his award winners for best pop music writing of the year.

Into The Quartet—Into The Bubble

Preparing for my immersion in Keith Jarrett's so-called American Quartet I realize that I am missing two pieces of their official catalogue: their first release, The Mourning Of A Star, which was recorded in July 1971, along with El Juicio and Birth; and The Survivors' Suite, the band's first of two recordings on ECM. I have to remedy that.

I've been pondering how to launch this study—thinking I might begin with Expectations, which, although it was recorded three months after the quartet first recorded, always feels like an introduction to me, because it features other musicians.

Tonight, though, flipping through a slim book of Jarrett quotes that ECM published in 2003, I found the ideal beginning in this quote, from an interview he gave to Michael Ullmann in 1994:

"When you have two guys from Ornette Coleman's band, which never had a piano, and their leader is now a pianist, it's a very touchy situation. Because when you hear music melodically the way most of the Ornette players—including Ornette—hear, they are not trapped; they will never allow themselves to be inside a zone if they feel like leaving that zone. So if you're writing something to make a unit out of this quartet, it's like writing a thing that's a bubble that can continue to expand in different directions and doesn't inhibit everybody. But still, you don't want one guy to play one way, and another guy to play on changes. You don't want the bubble that holds them together to burst. The challenge was immense, but it was a very interesting band."

Erratum: Pianist Frank Kimbrough kindly pointed out to me that The Mourning Of A Star is, in fact, a trio recording without Dewey Redman. My error resulted from my poor reading of the credits in Richard Cook and Brian Morton's Penguin Guide To Jazz. So, I'm only missing one, and I have a line on that now, too. Onwards!

Music Takes Manhattan

Where else but New York City can you feel so completely immersed in music talk and actual listening that you can imagine yourself in a world where music is the lingua franca and larger problems simply disappear? Uptown, where Paul Blair led an historical walking tour of Harlem; Midtown, where the Association of Performing Arts Presenters delegates took over two large hotels; and Downtown, where the Winter JazzFest filled five West Village clubs to capacity (and beyond, onto the frigid sidewalks)—Manhattan felt like it was buzzing, despite weather that was almost too much like home for me.

One of the more jaded of the compatriots I spent three afternoons discussing jazz business with thought that the APAP confab was like a scaled-down version of the late, lamented International Association of Jazz Education conference—which used to take place at the same two Midtown hotels—but the scale seemed just right to me. On a purely selfish level, it meant you could get a table at the Hilton's bar to chow down on amazing street food and chew the fat about the fortunes of jazz.

On another level, it meant that the discussion within the conference went beyond jazz to other branches of art, allowing dance presenters to trade notes and experiences with new music promoters. Within our own group, it meant—for one of the first times I can remember—young bucks like National Public Radio's Patrick Jarenwattananon and relative gray beards like Gary Giddins exchanged ideas. The most-productive of the Jazz Journalists Association's three session I participated in was the setting for energetic discussions between writers, Webcasters, publicists, label owners like Pi's Yulun Wang and musicians like bassist Melvin Gibbs. Invigorating stuff! As JJA president Howard Mandel and I pondered at the end of a small cocktail party: How do we keep this dialogue flowing?

If we can do that, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we may be on the verge of a rejuvenation of the jazz journalism business that might be on the level of what happened in the 1960s, when magazines like Rolling Stone changed the face of music journalism. No one has any doubt that there is no shortage of vital music to report on. Numerous artists who participated in the two-night Winter JazzFest marveled from the stage about the great music going on and the terrific vibe among the large audiences.

My full report on Winter JazzFest will be in a future issue of DownBeat.