Walter Norris: Never Should It End

Many years ago, my local Barnes and Noble got in a raft of remaindered Concord Records CDs (back then, Concord was a first-rate indie jazz label, not today’s corporate conglomerate).  I scooped up a bunch based on the Concord brand and artist name recognition―and then let them submerge into the Great Unplayed Pile. I was rooting around in that ever-growing mass recently and ran across Sunburst, a date led by Walter Norris. In my recollection, Norris was an esteemed pianist of a rather austere bent, considered willing to move out of the mainstream in his playing. The album featured Joe Henderson on tenor―a good sign, and I hadn’t remembered that. Time to look into Norris a bit more.

He had an interesting career. Originally from Arkansas, he eventually moved to the West Coast and played on Something Else!, Ornette Coleman’s first album, so “willing to move out of the mainstream” was right, at least for 1958. He then spent several years in New York as musical director of the Playboy Club. In 1974, he joined the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis big band. According to his Wikipedia entry, he had a brief and frightening experience with Charles Mingus in 1976 and then moved to Germany, where he taught and gigged until his death in 2011. (Note: I saw Mingus and his Jazz Workshop on several occasions and can attest that he was indeed a formidable presence. The trumpeter Clarence [Gene] Shaw had an experience similar to Norris’s, as I recall.) In the 1990s, Norris signed with Concord, one of the products of which was Sunburst.

Now to the music. It’s really excellent. Most of the tunes are standards of one sort or another (Stella By Starlight, What’s New, Naima) or Norris originals (the title track, Never Should It End, Rose Petals). Especially in their introductions, Norris and Henderson both like to take the Lee Konitz approach of not going straight into the melody line, which freshens up the standards.  The high point of the album for me is Naima, a gorgeous, soaring rendition that evokes the spirit of Trane without imitation. Bird is an off-kilter tribute to another jazz genius, with fresh ideas aplenty. (Note to readers: the composition is listed as by Charlie Parker but I can’t decide whether it’s one composition or a compilation of Bird phrases. It’s not on YouTube, but can any ornithologist who owns or can find Sunburst clue me in?) Larry Grenadier supplies solid backing and some fine solos on bass, and Mike Hyman keeps things going nicely on drums.

All in all, Sunburst is a fine recording that pays back even more with repeated listening. I could find only a couple of tracks on YouTube, but I’d really advise hunting down the whole thing, or any other Walter Norris recoding you run across.

Here's Sunburst:

And What's New.

Monty Waters: The Black Cat

I first heard alto saxist Monty Waters on the Joe lee Wilson and Bond Street album, What Would It be Without You. I love Joe Lee Wilson (and have blogged about his music) and liked what I heard of Waters, but I could never find much music by him. It turns out that he spent  a good many years of his later career in Munich, where he did record, but he never got much of a shot in the U.S. Like many practitioners of America’s greatest gift to world culture, he’s been neglected in his own country. Fortunately, he was recorded in 1975 by the Japanese WhyNot label, now re-released on CD by Candid Records.

The Black Cat is an excellent date, featuring Waters, guitarist Yoshihaki Masuo, bassist Ronnie Boykins, and drummer George Avaloz. Waters also composed all of the tunes. They’re really equal partners here, notably on J. Love March, a slightly eccentric jazz march with a good deal of collective improvisation. Waters has a lot of Ornette Coleman in his playing, particularly notable on the two blues tracks—Bog’s Blues and Modesto—but tempered with a more disciplined Steve Lacy-like tone.  It’s a strong combination. Apt. #2H, a reworking of Giant Steps, the title track, and R.P.M. all serve as vehicles for Waters, an impressively melodic Masuo, and standout solo work by Boykins (I have his ESP date somewhere and need to dig it out).

The Black Cat is available here as well as from Candid (I’m not getting any money from these plugs, folks, just encouraging you to support this music with some of your cash). I couldn’t find anything from the album on YouTube, but here’s something from Monty’s later years that should give you a taste, although a bit less “out” than this recording. He was a beautiful player.

New Ideas from Don Ellis

I mainly missed Don Ellis. I never heard his early avant-garde music (and it probably never got much airplay, anyway), I wasn’t into big band music enough to seek out his odd time signature stuff, and too snobbish to listen to his electrified records. His sadly premature death from chronic heart problems ended what was a very interesting and diverse musical career. When I had the opportunity to pick up one of his early recordings, I decided to educate myself.

New Ideas, recorded in 1961, is an good example of how the revolution kicked off by Ornette Coleman was affecting younger musicians with a bent for shunning bop clichés. Ellis used some of the best people around: his friend Jaki Byard, Ron Carter, Charlie Persip (before he lost the “e” in Charlie), and the unfairly obscure Al Francis on vibes. Overall, I enjoyed this music, although I think the totally improvised and collectively improvised pieces (Despair to Hope and Imitation, respectively) were a bit too studied and cold for my taste. Of course, very few musicians then or now can execute these challenging techniques very well, and the experiments  were worthwhile.

The compositions that used tonal clusters (Tragedy), unusual time signatures (Four and Three), and patterns (Uh-Huh) worked better for me. Al Francis, who apparently is still active in music, displays a really fresh approach to the vibraphone, Carter and Persip seem comfortable in any setting, and Jaki Byard is always a joy to hear.

New Ideas is a good example of the post-Ornette ferment in jazz. Not everything worked, but neither did playing 99 more versions of On Green Dolphin Street, and much of the album holds up very well, indeed. Here's one of the more conventional pieces (sorry for the wacky video accompaniment) that still provides a sense of what the musicians were trying to accomplish.