HIGH VAULTAGE

HIGH VAULTAGE

Richard C. Walls

VARIOUS ARTISTS Contemporary Masters Series (Columbia)

The series title is a little constricting, not to mention overblown (though one expects a certain amount of rah-rah in these matters). The cover art sucks—blurry handcolored photos and faded shades of pink and green and grey give the records the look of instant bargain bin which, perhaps, is realistic. The liner notes are excellent, with all the bigtime jazz critics eventually showing up—Gary Giddins, Ira Gitler, Bob' Blumenthal, grandmaster Leonard Feather, Peter Keepnews (who makes a goof in his spot by identifying a solo by George Coleman as being by Yusef Lateef but hey, we're all only human, so no big deal).

What we're looking at this month is Columbia's Contemporary Masters series which has been and continues to be an outlet mainly for previously unissued (in America) jazz material from the vast Columbia vaults. As is to be expected with a project like this, the music runs the gamut frorri marginal to darn, near essential and the current six-album release pretty much covers the spectrum. Dealing with them in a subjectively arrived at order of ascending importance we start with Struttin' And Shoutin' by ex-Basie trombonist A1 Grey and his small big band (nonet) recorded in August of '76. As the title indicates this is not introspective modernist stuff but rather your basic happy jazz—though it's not without the subtleties that master improvisers bring to their art, the main emphasis here is on good-natured swing. Highlights are Ernie Wilkins's arrangements, Ray Bryant'^ funky piano, and that relative rarity, a jazz march (the title cut). Another side of moderate interest is Bluesin' Around, culled from three unfinished record dates Columbia put together around guitarist Kenny Burrell in the early '60s (the one and only record by Burrell that Columbia did complete and issue was one where the gifted guitarist was palmed off as a vocalist. Nobody bought it.). This is solid bluesy boppish jazz and while some may favor the cuts featuring tenor legend Illinois Jacquet, my personal picks are those that spotlight the sublimely nasty organ sound of Jack McDuff, his equally unnuanced drummer Joe Dukes in tow. Alto saxist Leo Wright rounds out the quartet.. .now that woulda been a hot album...

Two of the releases are really random mixes: an album of vocal cuts called Singin' Till The Girls Come Home, and an album of instrumentals called Almost Forgotten. Aside from a standard cut from Mose Allison ('60) and the not-quite-acurio Babs by the Gordons ('54), the highlights from the vocal album are three cuts from a supersession with Tony Bennett backed by Stan Getz on tenor, Herbie Hancock, piano, Ron Carter, bass, and Elvin Jones, drums—hearing Jones delivering a somewhat restrained version of his usual polyrhythmic fervor behind Bennett's mellowtonbs is almost worth the price of the album; two cuts featuring Carmen McCrae, Louis Armstrong, and Dave Brubeck doing songs from Brubeck's aborted Broadway musical The Real Ambassadors—corny but fun, cute without being precious, no mean feat; and, amidst the customary Lambert, Hendricks and Ross raveup, Jon Hendricks' hysterically funny vocal impersonation of bassists Percy Heath, Paul Chambers, Ray Brown, and Charles Mingus. As for the instrumental album, space does not permit a complete listing of the eight groups and 40-odd musicians involved here on cuts covering '54-'62, though Eric Dolphy completists should be alerted about his squally alto sax solo on Pony Poindexter's Lanyon (featuring six saxes and rhythm section) while Wes Montgomery archivists might be interested in a '55 version of Love For Sale by the Montgomery Brothers Quintet recorded for an album that was.never completed—murky, rushed, historic. The other cuts here are good but unremarkable. .

The last two albums in the present survey, both doubles (the other four are singles), are the cream of the crop: Thelonious Monk's Tokyo Concerts, recorded May '63 and Miles Davis' Heard 'Round The World recorded at '64 concerts in Tokyo and Berlin. The Monk album offers fans the paradox of predictable originality, a phenomenon that annotator Bob Blumenthal discusses at some length. Perhaps less predictable is the crystal clear sound of the recording as well as the avoidance of the usual pacing problems that a live Monk album often has—there s only one extended walking bass solo here and only three drum solos. Also, all the members of this classic quartet—Monk, piano, Charlie Rouse, tenor sax, Butch Warren, bass, and the melodic and witty France Dunlop on drums—seem engaged by both the material and the moment. No coasting here or on the Miles album which features the famous rhythm section of H. Hancock, piano, R. Carter, bass, and Tony Williams, drums as well as Sam Rivers, tenor (in Tokyo) and Wayne Shorter, tenor (in Berlin). Previously available only as expensive import items, these two concerts, which fall chronologically between the '64 N.Y.C. Philharmonic Hall concert that produced the albums My Funny Valentine and 'Four' And More and the '65 studio date that produced E.S.P., present Miles and the rhythm section at the peak of their form, alternately hard and blistering, soft and impressionistic, interacting with a speech that can only be based on telepathy (or artistic ingenuity. or craft, or something). The side with Rivers, whose atonal bluster never quite meshes with the group's designs despite much empathy from Williams and game responses from Hancock, is interesting 'cause it shows how willing Miles was to enter into detente with the avant-garde despite the repeated and scurrilous put-downs he aimed their way—if he really thought they were wrongheaded jerks would he have gone out and hired a known space cadet like Rivers? Equally exciting are the Shorter sides with the saxist, fresh from Blakey's bombastic Messengers, not yet settled into his Mr. Cool Abstraction personna but anxious to whip it out with the big boys. You might say.

A very mixed bag, these six albums, but as long as they come up with gems like the Monk and Miles sets we'll forgive 'em the cheezy photos. For now.