Introducing Kenny Burrell – Blue Note 1525

Stymied again!

I really like Kenny Burrell, and I really want this CD. It’s a great record. You just can’t buy it easily or cheaply, at least not on Blue Note.

First, consider the record and the artist. Kenny Burrell is the quintessential cool jazz guitarist, whether leading his own group or playing with an organ trio. And here we have Burrell’s very first album as a leader, Introducing Kenny Burrell, recorded in 1956 with a terrific bop lineup: Tommy Flanagan on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Kenny Clarke on drums, and Candido Camera on congas.

Yep, bebop congas.

The album starts with a real barn-burner, “This Time the Dream’s On Me,” a fast and fun romp with Burrell wailing on the 6-string and Candido setting a hot pace on congas. Next is a change of pace, a mash-up of classical and jazz called, appropriately, “Fugue ‘n Blues,” sounding very much like something written for the Modern Jazz Quartet.

“Takeela” starts with a fast Latin beat on congas, giving Burrell a nice opportunity for fast, fluid solos. “Weaver of Dreams” is sweet, gentle and melodic, then comes “Delilah” – yes, the same hard bop piece that opened the classic Clifford Brown-Max Roach album a year earlier.

Finally, three very different songs to end the CD. “Blues for Skeeter,” as the name implies, is a slow blues. “Get Happy” is, yes, the same song that Judy Garland made famous just a few years earlier in the movie Summer Stock, but this time taken at a blistering pace – and with a conga solo! Burrell ends the affair with something soft and sentimental, an unaccompanied solo guitar on the Gershwin classic “But Not For Me.”

So, a great album. Now, try buying it.

If you want the original Blue Note CD, you’ll pay dearly for it – or take your chances on an order overseas. Amazon has a 2-CD set called Introducing Kenny Burrell: The First Blue Note Sessions. But it’s $100 new and $26 used. You can download an MP3 version for just $11.49, but I’d rather have a hard copy.

There’s an import version of Introducing at $20 used or $34 new. Can it get cheaper? Well, a bunch of foreign copies sell for $12 used, plus $4 for shipping, but they ship from Japan and German. Not sure I want to chance that.

I settled for an inexpensive foreign two-fer that contains Introducing Kenny Burrell and 1961’s Weaver of Dreams, both featuring Burrell and Flanagan. Weaver has the added bonus of Burrell singing every track, swinging hard, with a surprisingly good voice, sounding not far from Nat King Cole in his trio days. You can get it for under $10.

All in all, a terrific CD – albeit not on the Blue Note label.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Availability: Hard to get as a stand-alone Blue Note CD

Cost: Under $10 used for an import two-fer package with Weaver of Dreams

1950s and ‘60s Blue Note – Is It All the Same?

A few years ago, a reader from California named Charlie F. started a provocative discussion on the All About Jazz boards with the title: “I’ve decided not to buy any more Blue Note albums.” Oh boy.

He began, “Recently, I came to notice something about Blue Note albums of the 50s-60s, which was that they tended to sound pretty much the same.” He acknowledged that “this is a good example of a label finding a particular formula and sticking to it” but concluded “it kinda gets old after a while.”

Well.

You can guess where the discussion went from there, and it went on a long time. (Check it out: http://bit.ly/1DoRAFX) But it got me thinking, and I’m still thinking about it years later. Why? Because, as a Blue Note fan, I’m embarrassed to say I sometimes think Charlie is right. But lately, as I’ve begun seriously collecting Blue Notes from the ‘50s and ‘60s, I can see where he is also terribly wrong.

So let’s start at the beginning. Literally, the very beginning.

Blue Note’s classic period starts with the 1500 series of albums in the mid-1950s. And the very first album in that series is Miles Davis Volume 1. Anyone who knows Miles is tempted to say, “Well, no one sounds like Miles Davis. He was unique.” Yeah, maybe later. But not this early in his career. At this stage, Miles sounded a lot like every other bop trumpeter. So sure, there’s a sameness to this record compared with other Blue Note hard bop records of the era.

And it gets worse. On Blue Note – hell, on any jazz label in the 1950s and ‘60s – there was a serious case of inbreeding. Everybody knew everybody, and they all played on each other’s records. Want proof?

On Miles Davis Volume 1, Miles played with pianist Horace Silver, who co-founded the Jazz Messengers with Art Blakey and appeared on a lot of Blue Note hard bop records. Trumpeter Kenny Dorham played on those records with Blakey and Silver, then led his own hard bop band, which included guitarist Kenny Burrell, who later played with organist Jimmy Smith, who later played with saxman Stanley Turrentine, who is practically synonymous with soul-jazz, just like fellow Blue Note label-mate and saxman Lou Donaldson.

Whew! Quite a family tree. And no wonder the Blue Note sound was more than a little homogenous. Talk about six degrees of separation. Many folks on the early Blue Note records were practically kissing cousins.

So yeah – I hear a lot of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in a ton of Blue Note recordings. Yep, they all share the same genes and they all sound kinda sorta alike. You really could get bored with them.

But…

One thing I’ve learned from six months of consciously hoarding – OK, you say “collecting,” same thing – and listening to 1950s Blue Note CDs is the subtle differences among them. And sometimes the differences are not so subtle.

For example, take Gil Melle. Not a familiar name – and definitely not part of the usual-suspects in the hard bop tradition. And yet there he is, in the bosom of Blue Note. In 1956 – same year as Kenny Dorham at the Café Bohemia, a year after the Jazz Messengers at the same venue – Melle recorded Patterns in Jazz. This is not your grandpa’s Blue Note. It’s a cerebral cool-jazz record that could be a movie soundtrack, which is not surprising since Melle went on to compose for films and TV.

Or consider Herbie Nichols. Here’s a pianist who sounded a lot like Thelonious Monk, but less quirky, though equally interesting. And in a trio setting – piano, bass, drums – which was definitely not the usual Blue Note thing. When did he record his first Blue Note album? In 1955-56, same time as Gil Melle and the Jazz Messengers and Kenny Dorham.

And then there are differences among the classic Blue Note hard bop players. Did Kenny Dorham sound like Clifford Brown or Miles Davis? Yeah, maybe a little. Maybe more than a little. But it’s like the difference between Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Sure, both guitarists played British blues-rock and came from the Yardbirds. But you’d never say Cream was Led Zeppelin. Close cousins, sure. And for certain I’ve never heard anyone say, “Nah, I’ve had enough blues-rock. Cream was nice, but no Led Zep for me, thanks.”

Same with Blue Note.

Yeah, the similarities are there. If you played six 1950s Blue Note records in a row, you might get bored. Hell, I’d get bored, and I love Blue Note. So listen to something else – Fats Waller, Benny Goodman, the Clash, Vivaldi, Hank Williams. Or go read a book. Watch TV. Unless you really are on a desert island, you don’t have to listen to the same music over and over.

So… if you’re tired of Blue Note, go fly a kite. I mean literally. Get out of the house. Do something different. And if you can’t (or don’t want to) hear the difference between, say, Horace Silver and Tommy Flanagan, then just stop listening.

But it’s there, and the more you listen, the more you hear. That’s the pleasure of collecting. I don’t care if it’s jazz or rock or opera. The more you hear, the more you understand and appreciate, and the more you enjoy.

J.R. Monterose – Blue Note 1536

J.R. Monterose is that rare bird at Blue Note Records – the guy who got one shot at leading a band, then practically vanished from the face of the earth.

It’s odd because the history of Blue Note is filled with famous guys (almost never gals) who took up residence and stayed just about forever. Think of Blue Note, and I think of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Lou Donaldson, Jimmy Smith, Horace Silver and Lee Morgan.  Big names who made hard bop and soul jazz the big thing in the 1950s and ‘60s.

And then there’s J.R. Monterose – truly a one-hit wonder. And based on this album, it’s hard to understand why.

Now, Monterose wasn’t completely unknown in 1956, when he recorded this self-titled album with a fantastic band (Horace Silver on piano, Ira Sullivan on trumpet, Wilbur Ware on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums). He had nice turns on Charles Mingus’ Pithecanthropus Erectus and on Kenny Dorham’s ‘Round About Midnight at the Café Bohemia – both recorded earlier the same year.

Most folks seem to like this Monterose album. The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide gives it 4 stars. Allmusic gives it 4.5 stars. On Amazon, 7 of 8 listeners give it a full 5 stars. Yet I don’t really enjoy it. I just don’t like Monterose’s harsh tone.

The rest of the band is great. Silver and Sullivan, in particular, swing like crazy. (Has Silver ever made a bad record?) This really could be a Jazz Messengers record if you substituted Art Blakey for Philly Joe Jones. The themes are all terrific hard bop tunes, including the three written by Monterose himself.

But for me, Monterose ruins the mood. The very first song, “Wee-Jay” by Monterose, has the tenor spitting out staccato honks and squawks to start his solo. It was a huge turnoff. (All the more strange because there’s an alternate take that ends the CD that I like much better.) On other songs, Monterose shows his bop chops, but again, the tone is high-pitched and squealy to my ears. It’s a personal preference, I know, but I can’t turn it off.

Otherwise, this is a pretty good record, and where others take the lead, it’s downright terrific. I might even want to hear more Monterose in different settings. I see a duet album with Tommy Flanagan in 1990. I’ll try it. Even one-hit wonders deserve a second chance.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Availability: Readily available

Cost: $10 new

Jutta Hipp With Zoot Sims – Blue Note 1530

The title is Jutta Hipp With Zoot Sims, but it should be the other way around.

No knock on Jutta Hipp. She’s great – a lively, fluid pianist who really could have been a big player in the 1950s bop scene if she hadn’t suddenly disappeared and dropped out, forever. This is her date – a 1956 recording with a wonderful hard bop quintet. And if she weren’t totally overshadowed by Zoot Sims, listeners might say, “Wow, that’s the album where she really broke out.”

Except she really is overshadowed by Zoot Sims, who is a non-stop dynamo on every single track. He’s one of those rare tenors who play equally well on speedy bop numbers and smoky ballads. It’s not that Hipp isn’t interesting; it’s that Sims is more so. He dominates the album, partly because he takes the lead solo every time, and therefore sets the pace, and partly because he’s a whirlwind of interesting sounds.

Hipp was a virtual unknown at the time, and a rarity – a German and a woman who could play bluesy piano like Horace Silver. Sims, by contrast, was famous from various big bands and as one of Woody Herman’s “Four Brothers.” They make an unlikely pair, but they play well together.

The album starts with a generic blues jam called, appropriately, “Just Blues.” The credits say Sims wrote this, but it sounds entirely improvised to me – like one of those Jazz at Philharmonic things, where everyone riffs on the same blues chords for 10 minutes. It’s fun.

The CD continues with Sims on a smoldering version of the ballad “Violets for Your Furs.” It says something that he’s equally captivating on the blues and ballads. An upbeat bop number called “Down Home” follows, and then, two cuts later, a wonderful take on “Wee Dot,” the ultimate hard bop tune recorded definitively by the Jazz Messengers only two years earlier. The Hipp-Sims version won’t make you forget Art Blakey and Clifford Brown, but it’s marvelous in its own way.

The only down side? The weak performance of trumpeter Jerry Lloyd. He tries so hard to keep up and doesn’t even come close. On the solos, he spits out short phrases, stops, tries again, stops, and never quite gets it.  And he’s so low in the mix that you wonder if he was playing in the back of the room or if Rudy Van Gelder forgot to give him a mic.

The CD ends with a fast romp on the George Gershwin classic “’S Wonderful.” It’s a joyous rendition, so I feel guilty complaining that I can’t hear the original melody anywhere. I guess they’re playing on the Gershwin chords, but I wouldn’t want to vouch for it. Still, much fun.

Anyway, get this CD. I don’t know if it’s Zoot Sims best ever, but I can’t imagine there are many better than this.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Availability: Once rare, now with oodles of copies, new and used

Cost: $6 used