For about five seconds I was thinking I might not like this record. There’s a moment, as the first track lurches into gear, where no one seems to be together. Then Frank Butler cracks the snare, and everyone’s suddenly brought into line. As a player I no longer feel bad about these moments, and as a listener I positively rejoice in them. They are the music, the process of doing it.
There’s so much good stuff from this period, why buy another album from 1958? Well, with this particular recording, as with all of them, it’s all in the delving deeper where details suddenly become clear, floating to the surface like little fairies in a children’s book.
Take “Hip”, the opener…an 11 bar blues that feels entirely natural, as a blues used to do, finishing where the melody ends. Everyone wants a good time so they blow over twelve, Harold Land making a succession of elegant lines breathe in bop and breathe out blues. His double time makes me wonder how anyone could find it hard. Hawes comes in and now you really notice the bounce of Scott LaFaro and Butler, and how they both enjoy stretching it once in a while. Hawes always reminded me of Oscar Peterson in his immaculate touch and the sheer force of the striking of the notes, the skippy quavers, but he undulates the way his (and everybody’s) hero Charlie Parker did, like someone half talking, half mumbling, the lines rising from, and sinking back into, the silence. LaFaro solos as if it’s his date, like a horn, and his walking coming out of it has an incredible swagger, swooping and twanging. Frank Butler here is supremely supportive, making life comfortable for everyone, but on Bird’s “Crazeology” he has an answer for every phrase Land puts out, occasional aggro from below. Here Hawes is crisp and to the point, LaFaro leisurely in his precision. But the fours with Butler show how original the drummer was in the tuning of his kit, all warm and soft and swinging.
These are the details that start to emerge when so much about this music’s way of working has already been set in stone, and why its dissenters object to its lack of freedom and surprise. This music commits the cardinal sin of sounding good in the background, thereby convincing people they’ve heard it, they’ve taken everything in there is to take. You could say the same about The Colosseum in Rome if you’ve never been inside it.
Listen, for instance, to Frank Butler’s solo on “Numbers Game”, to LaFaro’s walking in the opening chorus of “For Real”, Land’s leisurely burn, cut through with the blues, on almost every track. And then there’s Hampton Hawes, a sound that’s scalpel-sharp, springing through lines like the keys are red hot. He’s not like Red Garland. He’s not like Ahmad Jamal or Horace Silver. He’s not like Bud Powell. But it’s all in there…at one point, he even plays something that Monk might have played. But it’s internalised, folk lore movements and feelings. You might as well accuse someone of plagiarism for lifting a cup of coffee with the same hand as their neighbour. But when you see her lift that cup, you know. In a world of people drinking coffee, she’s different…or different enough. A human might be defined by the mechanism of the lifting, a person by the manner of it. Harold Land’s frequent recourse to the blues makes me laugh throughout. To me, that’s him picking up his coffee cup and everyone thinking he’s going to spill it any minute. There are many such moments on this album, and that’s what makes me want to go back and hear it again.
It’s a sobering thought that, having been recorded in 1958, this record wasn’t released until 1961. Must have been too much good stuff around.
Hampton Hawes (piano), Harold Land (tenor sax), Scott LaFaro (bass), Frank Butler (drums)
Side A
Hip
Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams
Crazeology
Side B
Numbers Game
For Real
I Love You
Issue date 17 May 2024
