Arranger/composer special pt.2: George Russel and Oliver Nelson

A second installment of the (jazz) arranger/composer special. The first one was about arrangers working to the strengths of a specific performer. These two are more about the composition; it's the performers that come to play with the mastermind.

George Russell is the mastermind behind the first album. He passed away in mid-2009; here's a well-written obituary detailing his accomplishments. While not a household name, Russell was very influential among his contemporaries. Many (including Miles Davis) point to his theoretical work as a cornerstone of the modal jazz. His book, Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, is legendary among the jazz musicians - among other things, for being so densely written as to be nearly unreadable. The excellent Casa Valdez Studios has a discussion of his theories - see if you can make more sense of it than I did.
Russell had no trouble assembling an all-star cast for his albums; this one is the first he recorded under his own name and it has Art Farmer on trumpet (again!) and Bill Evans on piano. Don Ellis and Eric Dolphy play on his next, Ezz-thetics, possibly even more fascinating, although somewhat less accessible album.


George Russell - The Jazz Workshop [1956]
With Art Farmer, Bill Evans, Paul Motian, and others.
256kbps, 103mb on depositfiles
1. Ye Hypocrite, Ye Beelzebub
2. Jack's Blues
3. Livingstone I Presume
4. Ezz-thetic
5. Night Sound
6. Round Johnny Rondo
7. Fellow Delegates
8. Witch Hunt
9. The Sad Sergeant
10. Knights Of The Steamtable
11. Ballad Of Hix Blewitt
12. Concerto For Billy The Kid
13. Ballad Of Hix Blewitt (Alternate Take)
14. Concerto For Billy The Kid (Alternate Take)

Another album that fits the arranger/composer theme is Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth. It is probably the best-known of all of the above, and also well-represented in the share-o-sphere, so I will leech the links instead of uploading it.
Read a review: a landmark of jazz orchestration, one of the most potent modern jazz sextets ever (Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Bill Evans)

Oliver Nelson - The Blues and the Abstract Truth ()
Three links here or get it on rapidshare or mediafire; also available in FLAC
01. Stolen Moments
02. Hoe-Down
03. Cascades
04. Yeanin’
05. Butch and Butch
06. Teenie’s Blues
Alternative artwork:

Arranger/composer special pt.1: Johnny Richards, Gigi Gryce, Quincy Jones

In the heyday of swing a lot of the bands had similar repertoire - the tunes the public wanted to hear. What made a band stand out was how they played it. It was not the star soloist that made the band, but the person who put the spotlight on the soloist: the composer and the arranger. Really? - you say, - the arranger? who cares about the arranger? Look at Ellington's orchestra. After going solo, none of his former stars - Johnny Hodges, Bubber Miley, Cootie Williams, - ever achieved artistic heights comparable to their work in the Duke's orchestra. Duke's (and Strayhorn's) writing highlighted their special talents and hid their shortcomings.
In the search for the ever-smoother, most commercial sound, a lot of swing music became completely scripted. That prompted the backlash of bop and the following styles that focused more on the improvised, spontaneous communal music creation. The pendulum swung back, and some say it went too far: the music industry found it easy to package and sell the myth of the dissipated genius (Bird), the lonely visionary (Trane), the jazz version of a rock star (Miles) - each image quite fascinating, but still incidental to the music itself. Of course, our celebrity-centered culture swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. The idea of superiority of improvisation over anything and everything else gradually spread from the recording company promos to the listening public to the musicians and jazz educators, and lead to the stagnation of the style. A million young musicians in a hundred thousand jazz classes play the same Real Book tunes in the same head-solo-solo-solo-trade fours-head format as they played forty years ago.

However, there was a time before jazz got run over by the thousand little Coltranes, a time when the pendulum stood just right, a time of bold experiments that fell through the cracks. Fifties were the time when that perfect balance between writing and improvisation was briefly found again. I would like to present today two artifacts from that era, two albums that put the improvising virtuoso's wild flights of fancy within a framework of carefully thought-out, painstakingly constructed arrangements, two collaborations between a writer and an interpreter, each greater than the sum of the parts.

The star soloist on the first one is Art Farmer, one of my favorite trumpet players. While writing this post, I realized that a lot of his best work were collaborations with master writers/arrangers - see his Jazztet LPs with Benny Golson or his Baroque Sketches album (+ +). As the name suggests, here he "Plays the Arrangements and Compositions of Gigi Gryce and Quincy Jones." From liners:
Quincy went on to fame and fortune in Hollywood while Gigi dropped out to anonymity of the Long Island education system before he died in his native Florida in 1983.


Art Farmer Plays the Arrangements and Compositions of Gigi Gryce and Quincy Jones [1954]
With Charlie Rouse, Quincy Jones, Horace Silver, Percy Heath, Art Taylor, and others.
320kbps, 84mb on depositfiles
1. Mau Mau
2. Work of Art
3. The Little Bandmaster
4. Up in Quincy's Room
5. Wildwood
6. Evening in Paris
7. Elephant Walk
8. Tiajuana
9. When Your Lover Has Gone

Another pairing of a brilliant soloist with a great writer is an album of Sonny Stitt playing Johnny Richards, profiled here before. The sound is a bit muddy, but the music is fascinating.


Sonny Stitt Playing Arrangements From The Pen Of Johnny Richards [1953]
With Kai Winding, Horace Silver, Charles Mingus, Jo Jones, Don Elliott, and others.
320kbps, 52mb on depositfiles
1. Sancho Panza
2. Sweet And Lovely
3. If I Could Be With You
4. Hooke's Tours
5. Loose Walk
6. Pink Satin
7. Shine On Harvest Moon
8. Opus 202

PS I am introducing two new tags.
composer+arranger is for albums that either are an original work of a single composer (Mary Lou Williams, Lalo Schifrin, Moacir Santos, Bob Graettinger) or bands focusing on the work of a certain composer (Pixinguinha, AR Rahman, Mancini, Carl Stalling).
I also realized I have Art Farmer on a few of the albums posted here, and a few more are coming up, so there's a label just for him.

Gerry Mulligan - Re-Birth Of The Cool [1992]

Lee Konitz on the Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool":
Miles was the titular leader because he had more of a name, and I suppose he could get the gigs; big deal, so he got one week at the Royal Roost. [...] The (Birth of the Cool) nonet was an arranger's band, because they rehearsed the music. Miles made some suggestions, but very few that I recall; I thought of it as Gerry's [Mulligan] band really. The nonet was a chamber ensemble where the solos were incidental to the writing, which was the most important aspect. - Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective, by Gordon Jack

In the early 1990s Mulligan decided to revisit his work with the Birth of the Cool band; he felt that a lot of the arrangements were done in a haste and wanted to do them justice.
In 1992, Mr. Mulligan revisited the "cool school" that began with the Birth of the Cool recording and assembled the Gerry Mulligan Tentet. The project, entitled "Re-Birth of the Cool" began with a recording for the GRP label with Mulligan, and Wallace Roney in Miles Davis's trumpet chair.
In the summer of 1991, in Rotterdam, Gerry told Miles he was planning to play the music again. Miles was very enthusiastic and said to let him know when it was going to be. Sadly, it was not to be, as Miles passed away.
The Gerry Mulligan Tentet, the Re-Birth of the Cool touring band, featuring Art Farmer on flugelhorn/trumpet and Lee Konitz on alto sax, embarked on a highly successful concert tour. - Bio

Click to read a good review by Eric Thacker from The Essential Jazz Records: Modernism to postmodernism.


Gerry Mulligan - Re-Birth Of The Cool [1992]
VBR~230, 90mb on rapidshare or megaupload
1. Israel
2. Deception
3. Move
4. Rouge
5. Rocker
6. Godchild
7. Moon Dreams
8. Venus De Milo
9. Budo
10. Boplicity
11. Darn That Dream
12. Jeru

Art Farmer and Benny Golson (The Jazztet) - Meet the Jazztet

Farmer and Golson's Jazztet - one of the greatest hard bop groups of the 60s. They were easily the equals of the Jazz Messengers. If they ran for half as long as Art Blakey's group, they'd be a household name by now; unfortunately, the Jazztet disbanded only three years and six albums later.
An excellent short overview of the Jazztet and this album. Of the four Golson originals on this disc, three went on to become jazz standards - Killer Joe (learned by every aspiring jazzman), Blues March (covered by Blakey on Moanin LP), and I Remember Clifford (a Clifford Brown memorial).


Art Farmer and Benny Golson (The Jazztet) - Meet the Jazztet [1960]
High VBR, 72mb on 4shared
1. Serenata (Anderson-Parish) 3:30
2. It Ain't Necessarily So (Gershwin) 4:26
3. Avalon (Rose-DeSylva) 3:29
4. I Remember Clifford (Benny Golson) 3:10
5. Blues March (Benny Golson) 5:16
6. That's All Right With Me (Cole Porter) 3:53
7. Park Avenue Petite (Benny Golson) 3:41
8. Mox Nix (Art Farmer) 4:01
9. Easy Living (Rubin-Ranger) 3:33
10. Killer Joe (Benny Golson) 4:57

Art Farmer, trumpet
Benny Golson, tenor sax
Curtis Fuller, trombone
McCoy Tyner, piano
Addison Farmer, bass
Lex Humphries, drums

PS More Jazztet: Big City Sounds (1960) and Another Git Together (1962)
More Benny Golson - see below.

Gerry Mulligan Quartets with Chet Baker and Art Farmer

I am listening to a lot of jazz lately.

Gerry Mulligan - baritone saxophonist, arranger and composer, the mastermind behind a good chunk of Miles' Birth of the Cool album. His most well known venture (or second-most, after the Birth of the Cool sessions) was probably his pianoless quartet - a trumpet-sax-bass-and-drums group that he led with changing members throughout the 50s. This highly unusual, minimalistic set-up initially was an accident: a gig opportunity arose to play in a space that did not have a piano. Mulligan decided to take a chance and see how this stripped-down sound would work. [See Mulligan's interview for more info]
It worked beautifully, due to a lucky choice of Chet Baker on trumpet for a second lead voice. Mulligan's cerebral, architectonic approach was yin to Baker's melodic, intuitive yang, and their proverbial telepathic rapport allowed each to anticipate and play off the other's moves. The laconic compositions group recorded were the epitome of cool, with two lead voices weaving countrapunctal lines around the Carson Smith's melodic bass lines and delicately supported by the Chico Hamilton's brush work.


The Best of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Chet Baker (1952-1953)
REUP: 320kbps, 115mb on 4shared
1. Bernie's Tune
2. Nights At The Turntable
3. Freeway
4. Soft Shoe
5. Walkin' Shoes
6. Makin' Whoopee
7. Carson City Stage
8. My Old Flame
9. Love Me Or Leave Me
10. Swinghouse
11. Jeru
12. Darn That Dream
13. I'm Beginning To See The Light
14. My Funny Valentine
15. Festive Minor

Unfortunately, this lucky alliance did not last long: in 1953 Mulligan went to the slammer on a narcotic conviction. When he emerged six months later, Baker already moved on to become a crossover solo star, combining his trumpet, good looks, and newly discovered singing talents into an unbeatably commercial combination. Mulligan found a replacement in Art Farmer, a relatively obscure (at the time) trumpet player with a cool, melodic sound. During his time with Mulligan, Farmer also started playing flugelhorn, a trumpet-like instrument with a softer, more mellow sound; he went on to become one of the best-known jazz flugelhorn players. This album is the last Mulligan Quartet LP with Farmer playing flugelhorn exclusively.


The Gerry Mulligan Quartet - What Is There To Say? (1959)
98mb on depositfiles
1. What Is There To Say
2. Just In Time
3. News From Blueport
4. Festive Minor
5. As Catch Can
6. My Funny Valentine
7. Blueport
8. Utter Chaos

PS Also, a great 1959 live set from "The New" Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Art Farmer, titled Americans In Sweden, over at taringa.net.

Benny Golson - Tune In, Turn On to the Hippest Commercials of the Sixties

Not only the commercials, but also movie themes (Magnificent Seven), and contemporary pop music (No Matter What Shape) are given a chamber jazz arrangement by the jazz legend Benny Golson. Good music, I like it.


Benny Golson - Tune In, Turn On to the Hippest Commercials of the Sixties [1967]
192kbps, 46mb on sharebee
1. Music To Watch Girls By
2. Wink
3. The Disadvantages Of You
4. No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In)
5. Right Any Time Of The Day
6. Music To Think By
7. The Swinger
8. The Magnificent Seven
9. Cool Whip
10. The Golden Glow
11. Fried Bananas
12. Happiness Is

PS. "No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In)", an instrumental piece that Sareceno had lifted from a then-popular Alka-Seltzer TV commercial.
From 1963 the [Magnificent Seven] theme was used in commercials in the USA for Marlboro cigarettes
So I guess all of this music really is from commercials.