There’s a strange contradiction in the weight of these vinyl albums, and the lightness of their conception. Lovingly pressed in 180 gram vinyl with the original liner notes, these are shrink-wrapped time capsules. And yet each of these recordings was simply “thrown together”, the informality being part of the appeal. Those of us who balk at the self-importance that Instagram seems to demand of us all as artists these days will surely get a warm feeling in our guts, heart, liver and spleen at the shoulder-shrugging mastery of these musicians. How refreshing to simply do your job well, that job being turning well worn structures into spontaneous works of joyful creation.
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Paul Chambers’ blues, “The Whims Of Chambers”, for example, opens Art Pepper’s “Gettin’ Together”. Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb would certainly have approached this session as “business as usual”, but that is what makes it great. Another day, another masterpiece. The way the bass line suddenly descends in the head, the change of feel for the solo, Pepper’s alternations between blues soaked calm and frenetic, almost half finished, double time outbursts. These are all sounds and moves we know“Bijou The Poodle” is a quirkier theme, but again, once the solos begin, we are back in an eternal present, not falling back on the particulars of atmosphere but how each player deals with time passing quaver by quaver, gesture by gesture. Martin Williams, in his original liner notes from 1960, notes that Pepper furnishes “Softly As In A Morning Sunrise” with melodic lines “superior to those he began with”. Perhaps that’s a stretch, and the tune should surely be credited as the impetus for such lines, but certainly it gives an impression of what musicians were striving for. Melody was everything, with rhythm the unspoken and ubiquitous guiding light. On “Getting’ Together”, he plays tenor, and whilst we hear the occasional ghost of Lester Young here and there, he is completely himself. Nothing clarifies the paradox of an innovator in the tradition more than this track. To hear these processes at work again is better than to simply know them from past recordings, and the now much discussed ritual of putting a record on the turntable and lowering the needle seems to clear the air around us in preparation to receive and absorb. If that sounds a bit religious, well, it’s certainly the closest I’ve come to it.
Of course, the listener needs to bury their head in this stuff to fully extract the sparkle from the noise. We are often sold the surface of things, as if music came packed with the low level background chatter of an artisan coffee house clientele. AI generated playlists of AI generated music have proven that most humans are happy with a robot’s memories of the internet arranged and rearranged into collages bereft of structural integrity or any kind of heart, something perhaps to cover up those awkward silences of sixty milliseconds or more over a hotel breakfast. Spare us.
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For Pepper, it seems that improvising was simply the best way to be alive, to breathe through the horn rather than straight out into the air. On “Intensity”, he plays standards, some moderately “lesser-heard”. “Too Close For Comfort” (a tune he would have known from playing in Mel Tormé’s band) seems paradoxically to be continually extending itself further out, finally coming to a stop after forty bars and leaving the improviser with a particularly unwieldly structure. He makes it sound easy of course, because for Pepper it was easier than not doing it. This recent crop of Contemporary Records reissues have exposed me to a lot of Frank Butler’s drumming, and here he splits the difference between a comfy bed of swing and crackling snare dialogues with the soloists. Dolo Coker was someone I’d never heard, and he plays in an almost old fashioned bebop style here, perfectly complemented by bassist Jimmy Bond, and everything sits perfectly. There’s a reason this format has become so ingrained in jazz education: musically, it has open arms, welcoming all periods and styles. There’s a roomier sound on this record, which somehow adds to the feeling of loneliness that seems to accompany Pepper’s horn wherever he goes. “Come Rain Or Shine” sounds like they’re all feeling their way through its twists and turns, the altoist one minute locking in, the next floating free. As if to remind us he does that out of choice, not necessity, “Long Ago and Far Away” sees Pepper swinging hard with a soft edge. The casual delivery of such marvels makes this music transcendent yet perhaps consigns it to some kind of category designed by non-musicians marked “mainstream”.
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Sonny Rollins’s “Way Out West”, however, seems to usher in something different. Rollins has some of the spirituality of his contemporary John Coltrane and, while this is another example of a casual recording session, there’s a new intention, a determination to share the process of improvisation with an audience. Again, although the liner notes concentrate on historical background mixed with commentary on the leader’s style, Rollins himself is happier to talk about himself. “…I’m trying for new things all the time. I’m changing, even from night to night on the job…” he says, giving us a taste of what was going on behind the scenes. Anyone who’s read “The Notebooks Of Sonny Rollins” will know how closely he observed everything about his own playing, both in practice and performance. For Sonny Rollins it’s a kind of ritual, a meditation.
I remember listening to ”Way Out West” at my friend’s house when I was about 12. His dad said Rollins was the greatest living improviser. I don’t know what qualified him to say that, but this record has a strange resonance for me, a singular sound that pulls me back in the way that ABBA or music from my primary school maypole dancing class might. Where Pepper’s albums feel like constant subtle variations on a theme, Rollins feels like he’s making milestones, planting flags. A Rollins album always feels like a statement.
The famous opening drum lope of “I’m An Old Cowhand” was interrupted, in my friend’s lounge around 1980, by a sound that I would never hear from anyone else. Not a tenor player, not even a saxophone: it was a fully formed creature somehow, an entity. It was Sonny Rollins, playing a melody that was once a light and frivolous tune, and now, in his hands, became something granite, imposing, yet playful. Rollins juggled with rocks and made it look easy. He sounds arrogant almost, assured, humorous…human. On the strength of his sound here, I would love to have had a pint with him. Ray Brown and Shelly Manne are heroic, playing through the night to bring this immovable classic of jazz’s “golden age” to fruition. The hole where the piano player might have been makes this one of my favourite trio records of all time, the more to hear Ray Brown’s audacious lines and Shelley Manne’s obstinate cymbal beat. I’m not sure what I can say about this record except it seems like the kind of album that someone might like who doesn’t like any other jazz record. It’s a thing of itself, standing alone even amongst Rollins’s own discography, and yet the making of it was no different to Pepper’s albums. A chance encounter, people in the same place at the same time, even, if in the case of “Way Out West” the meeting had to take place through the night.
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It’s nice to have these recordings on vinyl. I can read the notes without a microscope. There are no alternate takes, enabling us to experience the music as it was intended. And we can pick them up in our fingers, each album containing 180 grammes of tangible, analogue real-ness, and feel something of the weight, now lovingly restored, of their history.
Release dates for the vinyl were 6 December 2024 (Rollins) ad 13 Dec 2024 (Pepper)
One Response
I’m glad Liam chose Getting’ Together, which tends to be overlooked in favour of the earlier Meets the Rhythm Section. Getting’ Together was a favourite of the late journalist Charles Fox. In a BBC interview around 1980, Pepper told Fox he thought it was his best playing on record “up to that point”. He also singled out the trumpet contributions of Conte Condoli.
I still have my vinyl copy. Bit of a rough pressing, perhaps, but the cover is great.