Donald Byrd: A New Perspective — 1963

A New Perspective is unlike any jazz album you’ve heard before – and the change is refreshing.

The biggest difference? Voices – singers, but not jazz singers. A New Perspective includes a seven-voice gospel choir, singing wordless syllables. Not scat, but pure notes.

At first, the choir feels wrong. The very first notes of this 1963 album are voices. They start with a powerful gospel feel, but then quickly change to a more pop-ish, happy-happy 1960s mode.  It’s jarring and not very jazzy. It feels, at first, like the album might be one of those frozen-in-time creatures that sound old fashioned and saccharine.

But then the band kicks in, and what a band! This is a seven-piece bop combo featuring five very different, very strong soloists: trumpeter and leader Donald Byrd, Hank Mobley on tenor sax, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Herbie Hancock on piano and Donald Best on vibes. Backing them is drummer Lex Humphries and bassist Burch Warren.

A New Perspective has only five songs, but each is 5 to 10 minutes long, and each is soaked in gospel and blues. The titles alone tell you the quasi-religious concept behind the album: “Elijah,” “Beast of Burden,” “Cristo Redentor,” “The Black Disciple” and “Chant.”

Yes, this is a concept album, but it doesn’t hit you over the head with religiosity. This isn’t Christian jazz. Instead, it feels like a precursor to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme – an overwhelmingly spiritual event.

The opener, “Elijah,” is unapologetically joyous. “Beast of Burden” is a slow, soulful blues. “Cristo Redentor” feels like a sad, soft hymn – the high point of the CD. “The Black Disciple” has a strong beat and is the most boppish song of the bunch. Finally, the album ends with “Chant,” an upbeat tune that feels like the start of a new day, a song that seems to say, “Wake up and be glad you’re alive.”

The beauty of A New Perspective – aside from the choir and the religious subtext – is in the variety of musical voices in the band. Each soloist feels very different from the other, so the instrumentation never feels old or overused: happy vibes, soulful tenor, bluesy piano, jazzy guitar, emotional trumpet.

Sometimes, Blue Note albums from the 1950s and ‘60s can feel like the same old bop, with interchangeable lineups and tunes. A New Perspective is truly a new perspective – fresh and original. It’s something to hear and to own.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Availability: Plentiful

Cost: Just $2 used – how can you beat that?

Stanley Turrentine and The 3 Sounds: Blue Hour – 1960

Every good record collection has music for many moods. Feeling frantic? Try Dizzy Gillespie or the Ramones. Feel like dancing? Definitely the big bands. Feeling wistful? Maybe Ben Webster or Frank Sinatra.

But if you’re feeling blue, you need Stanley Turrentine, and Blue Hour is exactly the right prescription.

Stanley Turrentine is the very definition of jazzy blues, in almost any setting, with almost any backing band. His soulful sax features heavily on two of my all-time favorite jazz-blues albums:  1960’s Midnight Special with organist Jimmy Smith and guitarist Kenny Burrell, and 1963’s Midnight Blue with, again, Burrell.

Blue Hour, a 1960 session with The 3 Sounds piano trio, is cut from the same cloth. This is straight-up blues, more blues and nothing but the blues – sad and slow and absolutely searing.

As the title implies, Blue Hour is one of those perfect late-night records, whether contemplating your deepest sadness or settling in for the night with a lover. It’s the kind of record that most non-jazz fans think of when they think of a smoky, soul-drenched saxophone.

The original record has just five cuts, though each runs between 5 and 10 minutes. Four of the five tunes are slow, relaxed and sensual. Turrentine, of course, is the star, but pianist Gene Harris is also spot-on, turning in great, emotional, original solos. It’s hard to single out any one cut, though the opening ballad, “I Want a Little Girl,” and the blues classic “Willow Weep for Me” are highlights.

The only non-ballad tune is a Gene Harris original, “Blue Riff” – a bouncy blues that effectively cuts the mood and sets your toes tapping, before the record returns to slow and dreamy.

The original album is a perfect little nugget, but there is also an expanded edition. Blue Hour: The Complete Sessions is a 2-CD set that adds eight new tracks.  They’re fine songs, but they actually detract from the mood, which is probably why the new cuts are on a CD of their own.

Stick with the original.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Availability: Lots of used and new copies available

Cost: About $5 for The Complete Sessions used… or just $1 or $2 for the original 5-track CD

Joe Henderson: Page One – 1963

Joe Henderson is one of those jazz guys who made such a spectacular comeback late in life that you tend to forget how good he was in the beginning. Page One is all the evidence you need of Henderson’s early heroics.

Let’s start at the end.

The last four albums of Henderson’s long, outstanding career were arguably his very best. Each was a tribute to music’s past and each was amazing. In 1992, there was So Near, So Far (Musings for Miles). Later the same year, there was Lush Life: The Music of Billy Strayhorn. Two years later, in 1994, there was Double Rainbow: The Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim. And finally, his last album, in 1997, was Porgy and Bess. He died in 2001.

For any artist, these four records would be the highlight of a career. Each one is worth owning. But if you go back to the beginning of Henderson’s career, you’ll find another set of great albums.

Page One, from 1963, is Henderson’s first as a leader, and quite possibly the best of his early recordings. The band is first-rate. In addition to Henderson on tenor, there’s Kenny Dorham on trumpet, McCoy Tyner on piano, Butch Warren on bass and Pete LaRoca on drums. (Funny note: Tyner is actually uncredited on the album cover, which lists the other four musicians plus “ETC.” Blue Note was afraid to openly acknowledge Tyner because he had just signed with another label. But that’s him on the record.)

Page One boasts six diverse cuts with no alternate takes: Two bossa novas, two ballads and two hard bop numbers.

The Latin-style pieces (“Blue Bossa” and “Recorda Me”) are delicious precisely because they’re not your typical Stan Getz-Jobim bossa novas. Think, instead, of a cross between bop and bossa – mid-tempo Latin grooves that gently swing. Dorham puts a weird vibrato on his horn, Henderson sounds bold and very Sonny Rollins-ish, and Tyner has an unusually (for Tyner) flowery touch.

The two bop numbers are fantastic toe-tappers. “Homestretch” features some really nice unison playing by the horns. And “Jinrikisha” has the well-known Tyner block chords backing a Henderson solo that sounds a lot like John Coltrane. (Not a huge surprise because one year later Tyner would back Trane on the all-time classic A Love Supreme.)

Finally, the ballads. “La Mesha” features Henderson sounding sad and soulful, and Dorham sounding sweet and simple. But my favorite is the aptly named closer, “Out of the Night,” a smoky blues that does, indeed, sound like it was recorded at midnight. Down, dirty and, well, bluesy.

Page One isn’t my favorite Joe Henderson record (I prefer the later masterpieces) but it is an outstanding record indeed – the first of many great records in a very long, distinguished career.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Availability:  Many used copies for $2 to $3 on Amazon

Cost: I sprang for a new copy for $8