Post by dg on Oct 17, 2020 20:07:13 GMT
Part 5:
The trio that Bill Evans formed with Paul Motian and Scott LaFaro came to be heralded by many as a revolutionary development in the piano trio. However, coming after KIND OF BLUE and recorded at the very end of 1959, Evans’ PORTRAIT IN JAZZ seems a surprisingly conventional piano trio album, with nary a mode in sight, but the last track is a very fine version of Evans’ (or is it Davis’) “Blue in Green,” one of the tunes from KIND OF BLUE. There is a lot of good piano playing on the album, but several factors keep it from being a great one in my estimation. The program is again too dependent on the American songbook type of tune, beloved by the cocktail lounge player, such as “Come Rain or Come Shine” and “What is This Thing Called Love.” At this early stage of the group’s development, the success of the Trio rides first on the exposition of the tune at the beginning of each track. It is in the arrangement of the song and the beginning of Bill’s solos where most of the notable bass/piano interactions occur. Since LaFaro will then use the phrases and patterns established in the exposition in his “improvisations,” and since Evans is a highly melodic player, it would be wise to start off with a set of exceptional and interesting tunes to work with. The tracks where this occurs – “Witchcraft,” “Spring Is Here,” or “Blue In Green” - are among the best tracks on the album. A perky “Peri’s Scope,” an Evans original, is also notable, with a sound reminiscent of Ahmad Jamal’s trio of the time. Evans’ creativity occasionally wanes on up-tempo solos and he reverts to some trite runs, such as on “What Is This Thing Called Love.” On “Autumn Leaves” there are some sections where LaFaro’s bass comes to the fore and Evans aggressively steps in with complementary phrases. This may be the closest they come to three-way group improvisation, or what bassist and musicologist Rowan Clark calls “conversational counterpoint.” The album ends on a high note with the last three tracks, the first a very pretty version of “Spring Is Here,” where Bill and Scotty demonstrate their growing ability to interact at slow tempos. The last two tunes are associated with Miles – “Someday My Prince Will Come” and “Blue In Green,” and Bill is at his sensitive best on the latter Davis/Evans composition. Another notable but obvious aspect of this first album with LaFaro is that on the up-tempo numbers, Scott generally reverts to the walking bass mode of playing when Bill solos. On later albums, he will more often attempt – with varying degrees of success - to develop more complex patterns during Bill’s solos. In summary, this is a very fine album, with some great playing by Evans, and interesting support and participation by the other two, especially LaFaro.
There are, however, some obvious flaws that are inherent to Evans’ sidemen on PORTRAIT IN JAZZ. First, Motian is far too unobtrusive. He is rarely playing at a level or with the vigor that I would prefer, even for a piano trio. Since this occurs on all the Trio albums I can only surmise that this is the sound Evans wanted. In a late career interview, Motian once spoke about a letter he had received from a great fan. She said that she loved his playing because it was so non-violent, so “unaggressive.” He said that he often wondered if that was in fact a complement, or a flaw in his playing and style. I would say the latter, when carried to extremes. I don’t want the drums to be sending only a subliminal message, rather I want them to “Be Here Now!”(with apologies to Ram Das). As mentioned, the pundits, and a large part of the public, embraced the notion that this trio was breaking new ground in the area of group interaction, with each member free to contribute, to “do their own thing” in the jargon of the day. Joe La Barbera, the last drummer to play with Evans thought somewhat differently, “Paul Motian was playing the time, and I think that was exactly what Bill needed. The real interaction was happening between Bill and Scott.” Furthermore, “Everyone tends to label the trio’s concept as ‘group improvisation," bassist Stanley Clarke once opined, “The word I find to describe it is ‘interplay.’ There are a few passages where they certainly do improvise as a group, but Paul is mostly playing time as if Scott is walking a four-to- the- bar bass line.” Evans himself agreed in a 1975 chat, that the main interactions within the famous Trio were between the piano and bass.
However, to my ear, there were a few problems with this bass player. First, he is not a great improviser, not in a league with Evans. He can play a lot of notes really fast but there is often more heat than light, with his phrases sometimes bearing little relationship to what’s being played around him (save for following the chord progression) and his solos are often poorly constructed. As Clark has also noticed, LaFaro’s interactions with Evans often consist simply of “imitating the melodic contour of Evans’s phrases and mimicking phrases immediately after Evans performs them.” Secondly, he doesn’t have a very good bass sound, with his upper register being especially annoying. Scott played with a lowered bridge on his instrument, which facilitated rapid playing, since the strings needn’t be plucked so hard. The bassist Bill Crow said, with reference to LaFaro: “That opened up a new technique that now has bass players playing with a velocity that was impossible in Blanton’s day. You win some and you lose some. Not pulling the string hard changes the tone of the instrument, and amplification won’t completely replace the tone quality of a richly vibrating instrument.”
In addition Scott generally used a smaller, three-quarter sized instrument, another factor which may have compromised his sound and made it inferior to that of the great jazz bassists – Vinnegar, Pettiford, Mingus, Chambers, Heath, Brown, Carter et al. The vintage 1825 Prescott bass Scott played was recommended to LaFaro by Red Mitchell and it seems he used it throughout the period he worked with Evans (except, most likely, for the EXPLORATIONS album). Bassist Phil Palombi, who had the opportunity to play Scott’s Prescott bass after it was “restored” after damage sustained in the car crash (that killed LaFaro), noted that the instrument was exceptional in that scales played across the neck could hardly be distinguished from those up and down a single string, a factor that could greatly increase speed. Added to Scott’s technical toolbox was the use of a multi-fingered technique of plucking. These techniques had the primary goal of playing lots of notes really fast. Some of his technique can be seen on the rare (perhaps only) video of Scotty, playing on “Cherry” and “Chart of My Heart” with the Richie Kamuca/Victor Feldman band. He maintains a nice walking bass and exhibits a lot of energy during his two very short solos.
This method of plucking was of course not new with LaFaro. Gene Lees, Evans friend and champion, jazz critic, editor of Down Beat Magazine (1959-1962) and songwriter, in his long appreciation of his friend Scott, wrote: “LaFaro’s use of a two-fingered right-hand technique to pluck the strings came not from Charles Mingus but from Red Mitchell. Earlier bass players plucked the strings with just the forefinger or, sometimes, the forefinger and middle finger held together for strength, and often just a four-fingered grip in the left hand….but Red Mitchell was the primary influence in establishing the use of two fingers in the right hand, which tremendously increases facility” and further “Scott, according to his sister, always gave Red Mitchell credit for this development in his playing. Red told me a few years ago: “Gary Peacock and Scott LaFaro were both protégés of mine. I remember one session in east L.A. when I showed them both this two-finger technique, which I had worked out in 1948 in Milwaukee, on a job there with Jackie Paris.”” (Also of interest, Red Mitchell was the bassist in the first band Evans was in, with guitarist Mundell Lowe, after Bill graduated from music school and went to New York City.) Jack DeJohnette, who played drums in the Evans’ Trio for a time, said, “I guess the concept of the bass the way Scott played it was not so much unusual – people like Mingus were playing with the fingers before Scotty.” More analysis of LaFaro’s and Motian’s roles in the Trio and their interactions with Evans will be presented after reviews of the recordings made during the sessions at Birdland and the Village Vanguard.
(Incidentally, the Artist’s House recording JIM HALL/RED MITCHELL, recorded live at Sweet Basils in NYC in 1978, is a great place to study Mitchell’s technique. This album, one of my most often played, is a veritable compendium of bass and guitar techniques in the service of good jazz. Mitchell’s melodic solos, with altered tone qualities, fast runs across the whole range of the instrument, slides, glissandos, the whole gamut of techniques, show what can be done with the instrument. Hall is also in top form here.)
As we have seen, much of the innovation in the new trio’s work resulted from the fact that Evans, with his compositional expertise, was an excellent arranger for the small group, working to integrate the drums, and especially the bass, more actively into the tune, beyond the time-keeping and harmonic base roles. This was not new, but it could be claimed that Evans took it to a new level. One of the greatest precedents among the “piano trios” (or earlier piano/guitar/bass trios) was the Ahmad Jamal Trio with bassist Israel Crosby and Vernal Fournier. Jamal was dismissed by many of his early critics as being little more than a “cocktail lounge pianist.” Discriminating listeners, including Miles Davis, recognized Jamal’s sophisticated but often understated techniques – his use of space, choice of notes, advanced harmonies, classical music influences. He also had a knack for identifying excellent tunes, regardless of origin, and significant compositional strengths – many songs written by or chosen by Jamal became parts of Davis’ own repertoire. Perhaps most importantly Jamal was, as Evans was aware, a highly original arranger of tunes for the piano trio, skillfully integrating bass and drum parts into the song. (The classic BUT NOT FOR ME – THE AHMAD JAMAL TRIO LIVE AT THE PERSHING, Argo LP-628, illustrates all of these strengths.) Miles said that one reason he chose Bill Evans for his band was because Evans reminded him of Jamal in his touch, sound and approach and Evans appreciated Jamal’s music. It is known that LaFaro was also well aware of the Jamal trio with Israel Crosby on bass and Vernal Fournier on drums. Bassist Bill Crow, in the Gene Lees’ article cited above said “Israel Crosby knocked me out when I heard his first records, and later with Ahmad Jamal he was impressive” and altoist Herb Geller, a friend of LaFaro’s said “The next day we (i.e., Herb and Scott) went on tour with Benny. It was Benny Goodman’s band, the Ahmad Jamal Trio with Israel Crosby on bass and Vernel Fournier on drums, and Dakota Staton.” So LaFaro had an opportunity, night after night, to hear and study the work of the Jamal Trio.
As indicated earlier, In Bill’s work with Miles’ rhythm section, with Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones or especially Jimmy Cobb, we have the forerunner of his trio with LaFaro and Motian. The tracks released on 1958 MILES are beautifully arranged with drums and especially bass integrated into the tunes’ arrangements and interacting with the piano in ways that Evans would utilize in his own trio. This integration that was so touted in Evans’ Trio by the critics was yet another development pioneered in Miles’ bands, but also by Jamal and several others. The “busy bee” style of LaFaro was further developed by many other bassists - Charlie Haden, Gary Peacock, Steve Swallow and Eddie Gomez among them - who used it more judiciously and with more attention to (and more talent for) integrating their lines into the whole.
In the following year, 1960, Bill Evans reunited with his KIND OF BLUE chums, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, to record two tunes from that album – “So What” and “Flamenco Sketches (All Blues)- and Monk’s “Round Midnight” with the now little-remembered vocalist Frank Minion singing lyrics on all three. Bill also contributed to several other sessions, including those for two interesting albums: the very first album on the IMPULSE! label - THE GREAT KAI & J.J. – and George Russell’s JAZZ IN THE SPACE AGE. A 1960 gig at Birdland with LaFaro and Motian was also recorded but not released until several years later. It is interesting to compare these Birdland recordings to those from about a year later at the Village Vanguard that resulted in the now-classic SUNDAY AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD and WALTZ FOR DEBBY….
The trio that Bill Evans formed with Paul Motian and Scott LaFaro came to be heralded by many as a revolutionary development in the piano trio. However, coming after KIND OF BLUE and recorded at the very end of 1959, Evans’ PORTRAIT IN JAZZ seems a surprisingly conventional piano trio album, with nary a mode in sight, but the last track is a very fine version of Evans’ (or is it Davis’) “Blue in Green,” one of the tunes from KIND OF BLUE. There is a lot of good piano playing on the album, but several factors keep it from being a great one in my estimation. The program is again too dependent on the American songbook type of tune, beloved by the cocktail lounge player, such as “Come Rain or Come Shine” and “What is This Thing Called Love.” At this early stage of the group’s development, the success of the Trio rides first on the exposition of the tune at the beginning of each track. It is in the arrangement of the song and the beginning of Bill’s solos where most of the notable bass/piano interactions occur. Since LaFaro will then use the phrases and patterns established in the exposition in his “improvisations,” and since Evans is a highly melodic player, it would be wise to start off with a set of exceptional and interesting tunes to work with. The tracks where this occurs – “Witchcraft,” “Spring Is Here,” or “Blue In Green” - are among the best tracks on the album. A perky “Peri’s Scope,” an Evans original, is also notable, with a sound reminiscent of Ahmad Jamal’s trio of the time. Evans’ creativity occasionally wanes on up-tempo solos and he reverts to some trite runs, such as on “What Is This Thing Called Love.” On “Autumn Leaves” there are some sections where LaFaro’s bass comes to the fore and Evans aggressively steps in with complementary phrases. This may be the closest they come to three-way group improvisation, or what bassist and musicologist Rowan Clark calls “conversational counterpoint.” The album ends on a high note with the last three tracks, the first a very pretty version of “Spring Is Here,” where Bill and Scotty demonstrate their growing ability to interact at slow tempos. The last two tunes are associated with Miles – “Someday My Prince Will Come” and “Blue In Green,” and Bill is at his sensitive best on the latter Davis/Evans composition. Another notable but obvious aspect of this first album with LaFaro is that on the up-tempo numbers, Scott generally reverts to the walking bass mode of playing when Bill solos. On later albums, he will more often attempt – with varying degrees of success - to develop more complex patterns during Bill’s solos. In summary, this is a very fine album, with some great playing by Evans, and interesting support and participation by the other two, especially LaFaro.
There are, however, some obvious flaws that are inherent to Evans’ sidemen on PORTRAIT IN JAZZ. First, Motian is far too unobtrusive. He is rarely playing at a level or with the vigor that I would prefer, even for a piano trio. Since this occurs on all the Trio albums I can only surmise that this is the sound Evans wanted. In a late career interview, Motian once spoke about a letter he had received from a great fan. She said that she loved his playing because it was so non-violent, so “unaggressive.” He said that he often wondered if that was in fact a complement, or a flaw in his playing and style. I would say the latter, when carried to extremes. I don’t want the drums to be sending only a subliminal message, rather I want them to “Be Here Now!”(with apologies to Ram Das). As mentioned, the pundits, and a large part of the public, embraced the notion that this trio was breaking new ground in the area of group interaction, with each member free to contribute, to “do their own thing” in the jargon of the day. Joe La Barbera, the last drummer to play with Evans thought somewhat differently, “Paul Motian was playing the time, and I think that was exactly what Bill needed. The real interaction was happening between Bill and Scott.” Furthermore, “Everyone tends to label the trio’s concept as ‘group improvisation," bassist Stanley Clarke once opined, “The word I find to describe it is ‘interplay.’ There are a few passages where they certainly do improvise as a group, but Paul is mostly playing time as if Scott is walking a four-to- the- bar bass line.” Evans himself agreed in a 1975 chat, that the main interactions within the famous Trio were between the piano and bass.
However, to my ear, there were a few problems with this bass player. First, he is not a great improviser, not in a league with Evans. He can play a lot of notes really fast but there is often more heat than light, with his phrases sometimes bearing little relationship to what’s being played around him (save for following the chord progression) and his solos are often poorly constructed. As Clark has also noticed, LaFaro’s interactions with Evans often consist simply of “imitating the melodic contour of Evans’s phrases and mimicking phrases immediately after Evans performs them.” Secondly, he doesn’t have a very good bass sound, with his upper register being especially annoying. Scott played with a lowered bridge on his instrument, which facilitated rapid playing, since the strings needn’t be plucked so hard. The bassist Bill Crow said, with reference to LaFaro: “That opened up a new technique that now has bass players playing with a velocity that was impossible in Blanton’s day. You win some and you lose some. Not pulling the string hard changes the tone of the instrument, and amplification won’t completely replace the tone quality of a richly vibrating instrument.”
In addition Scott generally used a smaller, three-quarter sized instrument, another factor which may have compromised his sound and made it inferior to that of the great jazz bassists – Vinnegar, Pettiford, Mingus, Chambers, Heath, Brown, Carter et al. The vintage 1825 Prescott bass Scott played was recommended to LaFaro by Red Mitchell and it seems he used it throughout the period he worked with Evans (except, most likely, for the EXPLORATIONS album). Bassist Phil Palombi, who had the opportunity to play Scott’s Prescott bass after it was “restored” after damage sustained in the car crash (that killed LaFaro), noted that the instrument was exceptional in that scales played across the neck could hardly be distinguished from those up and down a single string, a factor that could greatly increase speed. Added to Scott’s technical toolbox was the use of a multi-fingered technique of plucking. These techniques had the primary goal of playing lots of notes really fast. Some of his technique can be seen on the rare (perhaps only) video of Scotty, playing on “Cherry” and “Chart of My Heart” with the Richie Kamuca/Victor Feldman band. He maintains a nice walking bass and exhibits a lot of energy during his two very short solos.
This method of plucking was of course not new with LaFaro. Gene Lees, Evans friend and champion, jazz critic, editor of Down Beat Magazine (1959-1962) and songwriter, in his long appreciation of his friend Scott, wrote: “LaFaro’s use of a two-fingered right-hand technique to pluck the strings came not from Charles Mingus but from Red Mitchell. Earlier bass players plucked the strings with just the forefinger or, sometimes, the forefinger and middle finger held together for strength, and often just a four-fingered grip in the left hand….but Red Mitchell was the primary influence in establishing the use of two fingers in the right hand, which tremendously increases facility” and further “Scott, according to his sister, always gave Red Mitchell credit for this development in his playing. Red told me a few years ago: “Gary Peacock and Scott LaFaro were both protégés of mine. I remember one session in east L.A. when I showed them both this two-finger technique, which I had worked out in 1948 in Milwaukee, on a job there with Jackie Paris.”” (Also of interest, Red Mitchell was the bassist in the first band Evans was in, with guitarist Mundell Lowe, after Bill graduated from music school and went to New York City.) Jack DeJohnette, who played drums in the Evans’ Trio for a time, said, “I guess the concept of the bass the way Scott played it was not so much unusual – people like Mingus were playing with the fingers before Scotty.” More analysis of LaFaro’s and Motian’s roles in the Trio and their interactions with Evans will be presented after reviews of the recordings made during the sessions at Birdland and the Village Vanguard.
(Incidentally, the Artist’s House recording JIM HALL/RED MITCHELL, recorded live at Sweet Basils in NYC in 1978, is a great place to study Mitchell’s technique. This album, one of my most often played, is a veritable compendium of bass and guitar techniques in the service of good jazz. Mitchell’s melodic solos, with altered tone qualities, fast runs across the whole range of the instrument, slides, glissandos, the whole gamut of techniques, show what can be done with the instrument. Hall is also in top form here.)
As we have seen, much of the innovation in the new trio’s work resulted from the fact that Evans, with his compositional expertise, was an excellent arranger for the small group, working to integrate the drums, and especially the bass, more actively into the tune, beyond the time-keeping and harmonic base roles. This was not new, but it could be claimed that Evans took it to a new level. One of the greatest precedents among the “piano trios” (or earlier piano/guitar/bass trios) was the Ahmad Jamal Trio with bassist Israel Crosby and Vernal Fournier. Jamal was dismissed by many of his early critics as being little more than a “cocktail lounge pianist.” Discriminating listeners, including Miles Davis, recognized Jamal’s sophisticated but often understated techniques – his use of space, choice of notes, advanced harmonies, classical music influences. He also had a knack for identifying excellent tunes, regardless of origin, and significant compositional strengths – many songs written by or chosen by Jamal became parts of Davis’ own repertoire. Perhaps most importantly Jamal was, as Evans was aware, a highly original arranger of tunes for the piano trio, skillfully integrating bass and drum parts into the song. (The classic BUT NOT FOR ME – THE AHMAD JAMAL TRIO LIVE AT THE PERSHING, Argo LP-628, illustrates all of these strengths.) Miles said that one reason he chose Bill Evans for his band was because Evans reminded him of Jamal in his touch, sound and approach and Evans appreciated Jamal’s music. It is known that LaFaro was also well aware of the Jamal trio with Israel Crosby on bass and Vernal Fournier on drums. Bassist Bill Crow, in the Gene Lees’ article cited above said “Israel Crosby knocked me out when I heard his first records, and later with Ahmad Jamal he was impressive” and altoist Herb Geller, a friend of LaFaro’s said “The next day we (i.e., Herb and Scott) went on tour with Benny. It was Benny Goodman’s band, the Ahmad Jamal Trio with Israel Crosby on bass and Vernel Fournier on drums, and Dakota Staton.” So LaFaro had an opportunity, night after night, to hear and study the work of the Jamal Trio.
As indicated earlier, In Bill’s work with Miles’ rhythm section, with Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones or especially Jimmy Cobb, we have the forerunner of his trio with LaFaro and Motian. The tracks released on 1958 MILES are beautifully arranged with drums and especially bass integrated into the tunes’ arrangements and interacting with the piano in ways that Evans would utilize in his own trio. This integration that was so touted in Evans’ Trio by the critics was yet another development pioneered in Miles’ bands, but also by Jamal and several others. The “busy bee” style of LaFaro was further developed by many other bassists - Charlie Haden, Gary Peacock, Steve Swallow and Eddie Gomez among them - who used it more judiciously and with more attention to (and more talent for) integrating their lines into the whole.
In the following year, 1960, Bill Evans reunited with his KIND OF BLUE chums, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, to record two tunes from that album – “So What” and “Flamenco Sketches (All Blues)- and Monk’s “Round Midnight” with the now little-remembered vocalist Frank Minion singing lyrics on all three. Bill also contributed to several other sessions, including those for two interesting albums: the very first album on the IMPULSE! label - THE GREAT KAI & J.J. – and George Russell’s JAZZ IN THE SPACE AGE. A 1960 gig at Birdland with LaFaro and Motian was also recorded but not released until several years later. It is interesting to compare these Birdland recordings to those from about a year later at the Village Vanguard that resulted in the now-classic SUNDAY AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD and WALTZ FOR DEBBY….
Great bass and drum support from Milt Hinton and Don Lamond
