BEST RECORDINGS OF THE HARD BOP ERA

Calvin H. Neal, Jr.

October 12, 2015

     I've always been of the mind that "best of all time jazz recordings" lists were all well and good as long as no ranking was assigned. Who's to say that if one person thinks John Coltrane's, "A Love Supreme" is the best and another thinks that "Kind of Blue", by Miles Davis is number one. Who's right or wrong? Neither.  Both are seminal jazz recordings and relevant to my list. I will limit my listing to my wheelhouse, hard bop. Comments and recommendations are welcome.

BOBBY HUTCHERSON - THE KICKER

Blue Note Records

Recorded December 29, 1963 at the Van Gelder Studios

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Bobby Hutcherson-vibes

Joe Henderson-tenor sax

Grant Green-guitar

Duke Pearson-piano

Bob Cranshaw-bass

Al Harewood-drums

Bobby Hutcherson recorded frequently for Blue Note in the 1960s, though this session remained unissued until 1999. The first half features the vibraphonist in a cooking hard bop session with Joe Henderson and Duke Pearson, starting with an energetic take on the normally slow ballad "If Ever I Would Leave You" and a sizzling Hutcherson original, "For Duke P." Guitarist Grant Green is added for the second half, beginning with the first recording of Henderson's "The Kicker," which became well known from it's later rendition on Horace Silver's highly successful release Song for My Father. Because this is part of Blue Note's limited-edition Jazz Connoisseur series, don't delay in picking it up.   Ken Dryden

BOOKER LITTLE QUARTET

Time Records

Recorded April 13, 15, 1960

Booker Little-trumpet

Wynton Kelly-piano

Tommy Flanagan-piano

Scott LaFaro-bass

Roy Haynes-drums

AllMusic Review by Scott Yanow

Trumpeter Booker Little's second session as a leader (there would only be four) is a quartet outing (with either Wynton Kelly or Tommy Flanagan on piano, bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Roy Haynes) that puts the emphasis on relaxed tempoes. Little's immediately recognizable melancholy sound and lyrical style are heard in top form on "Who Can I Turn To" and five of his originals, some of which deserve to be revived. His jazz waltz "The Grand Valse" (inspired by Sonny Rollins' "Valse Hot") is a highpoint of this set which has been reissued by Bainbridge/Time on CD.

KENNY DORHAM and THE JAZZ PROPHETS

Kenny Dorham and the Jazz Prophets

ABC/Paramount Records

Recorded April 4, 1956, New York, NY

Kenny Dorham – trumpet

J.R. Monterose – tenor sax

Dick Katz – piano

Sam Jones – bass

Arthur Edgehill – drums

Recorded a month before the legendary “”Round About Midnight At The Café Bohemia”, Kenny Dorham led his first recording of his Jazz Prophets. Dorham,, a bebop veteran and now as then still grossly underrated, is superbly assisted by tenor saxophonist J.R. Monterose, Dick Katz on piano, Sam Jones, bass and Arthur Edgehill on drums. Tenor man Monterose is one of the “unknown heroes of hard bop”. He recorded his own self-titled set, J.R. Montrose, for Blue Note in October of 1956. Whether up-tempo or blues, Montrose’s sound is full and well articulated.

All the tracks save for the Holiday/Herzog classic “Don’t Explain” are Dorham compositions. A muted Dorham and Katz sparkle on, “Blues Elegante”. Dorham and the whole group swing on “DX”. Dorham is elegantly sorrowful on “Don’t Explain” as Katz’s touch is light and airy touch. The exotic “Tahitian Suite” finds the whole quintet in a nice groove. This recording is well worth the search and easily recommended.
CHN

RED MITCHELL / HAROLD LAND

HEAR YE!

Atlantic Records,

Recorded October 14 & December 13, 1956, Los Angeles

Harold Land - tenor sax
Red Mitchell - bass
Carmell Jones - trumpet
Frank Strazzeri - piano
Leon Petties - drums

In the early '60s, bassist Red Mitchell and tenor saxophonist Harold Land co-led a quintet in Los Angeles. The group did not catch on but they did record one Atlantic set that has been reissued on CD. In addition to the co-leaders, the quintet included trumpeter Carmell Jones, pianist Frank Strazzeri, and drummer Leon Pettis, and, although their original program of six songs was comprised entirely of group originals, the music falls easily into the hard bop area with plenty of fine solos and swinging ensembles. The CD reissue adds two previously unreleased tracks including a lone standard, "I'm Old Fashioned." This is a fine effort from a group that deserved greater recognition at the time.
Scott Yanow - AllMusic

LEE MORGAN - SEARCH FOR THE NEW LAND

Blue Note Records

Recorded February 15, 1964 at the Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Lee Morgan-trumpet

Wayne Shorter-tenor sax

Grant Green-guitar

Herbie Hancock-piano

Reggie Workman-bass

Billy Higgins-drums

Lee Morgan: Search for the New Land

By MATT MARSHALL
February 12, 2010

Lee Morgan
Search for the New Land
Blue Note / Music Matters
2009 (1964)

Backed by what may have been his most emphatically modern group, trumpeter Lee Morgan did indeed set out on an exploratory quest in this follow-up to his smash, hard bop gem, The Sidewinder (Blue Note, 1964). The title track, which kicks off the album, is more in-line with the music saxophonist John Coltrane was making at the time—a spiritual, meditative piece partitioned into classical-like movements, rather than one of the hard bop soloing vehicles for which Morgan was known. And while those up-tempo grooves are present as well on Search—namely in the invigorating second track, "The Joker," and the somewhat less successful closer, "Morgan the Pirate"—the feel of the album as a whole is one of drift and discovery, celebrating from a perspective of self-realization (or the attempt at such) rather than as part of some nightclub revelry.

"Search for the New Land" opens with an outer-dimensional trill from Grant Green's guitar and drummer Billy Higgins' cymbals, a duet that resurfaces throughout the piece. The tragic, anthemic, yet exhilarating, horn theme blown by Morgan and saxophonist Wayne Shorter adds purpose to Green's and Higgins' echoing waves, setting the intelligence, longing and desire of humanity's drive atop the waves to reach toward unknown, distant possibilities. The music pauses to be reawakened after a space by Reggie Workman's bass. This artifice will be repeated four more times throughout the piece, sectioning it off for the soloists—Shorter, Morgan, Green and pianist Herbie Hancock, in that order—again, giving the music the quality and gravitas of movements as opposed to a continual line of solo jazz choruses.

The disparity in the approaches of Shorter and Morgan is immediately apparent, with Shorter at the forefront of a style that shrugged off the linear path in favor of one that allows for lateral exploration—of communicating and fleshing out a feel, an idea, without concern for telling a recognizable tale. In this, Shorter can be said to be very much of his time and, indeed, a leader and shaper of the sounds that were to emerge as distinctly of the 1960s. Morgan, conversely, is bright and crisp, blowing from the forceful, hard bop school, his aggressive, out-front nature continually on display. He, the leader, and king of his realm, is the one searching here, with Shorter and Hancock as guides leading him into the new, open country where he might further his art. This contrast in styles keeps the record intriguing from beginning to end—the clash, the twining, fashioning a new land perhaps not even sought, but, as with many inventions, stumbled upon while seeking something else.

Green's playing is likewise a revelation, not so much in its inventiveness or departure from his playing elsewhere, but precisely because the tones are instantly recognizable as Green's and yet gleam with an added brightness while in league with these particular musicians and this brand of music. His trademark repeated blues figures cut somewhere between the definitive brass shots of Morgan and the slithering gasps of Shorter. Hancock is the adapter, constantly shifting, constantly inventive in support of the disparate solo voices. When he himself solos, he sounds echoes of the other three, reworking them into a single voice that can be bopped about at his folly and incorporated as an extended dimension of his own distinctive lyricism.

While all the compositions on the album are Morgan's, "Mr. Kenyatta," which kicks off side three of Music Matters' 45-rpm, two-record reissue, might be said to be the trumpeter's way forward as a musical leader, its drive and structure less dependent on the light, pensive modernism than stretched from Morgan's own home turf of aggressive throttling into a still powerful, but more polished, calibrated and slippery statement. "Melancholee," its requisite, forced pun on Morgan's name aside (how and why did puns on leaders' names go so viral in jazz?), is another stab at the new, searching music. Less grand than the title track, it is, nevertheless, a soulful, affecting ballad, the likes of which one might not expect to find on a Morgan record, let alone find more than once.

"Morgan the Pirate" is most notable for its game—intentional or not—of role reversal, with Morgan stretching many of the notes on his solo, allowing his statement to slide and droop rather than be crisply articulated throughout. Shorter, instead, fires off quickly strung lines of well-delineated notes, casting aside his more typical ruminative character. Green, as always, is himself, though his triplets mid-solo are irresistibly cast, snapping loose electrically frayed forms hardly contained by the speakers.

It's a shame Morgan didn't follow the path of this music farther. The subsequent commercial success of The Sidewinder may have made such exploration less desirable in the short run. And his murder at the hands of his common-law wife, Helen More, in February 1972, made the short run and the long run one and the same, even as he once again seemed to be pushing outward (as evidenced by the 1971 Blue Note album that came to be called The Last Session). Still, we have in Search a shining example of the great trumpeter stretching into modernist fields. It is perhaps fitting, given the exploratory tone of the record, and its title track, in particular, that we must imagine what might have come next.

 

All reviews by JFOP unless otherwise indicated.