The idea of this album came from a pro-
jected college concert tour by the Jazz Lab
and Jackie Paris. It had been planned to
devote the first half of each concert to a
swift outline of some of the root channels
of jazz with the blues as a primary linking
element. The second half of the concert was
to represent several of the “modern jazz
peepee being worked out in the Don
yrd-Gigi Gryce Jazz Lab. (A previous
visit to that functional, not at all hermetic
laboratory was made in Jazz Lab: Don Byrd-
Gigi Gryce, CL 998.)
In adapting this aac to a program
for a record album, the facts of time made
it necessary to sketch the opening outline
in broad chronological and stylistic skips.
Gryce, therefore, is eager to underline his
realization of the importance of the New
Orleans-Dixieland ethos as well as the im-
mense Duke Ellington contribution and
other aspects of the story of jazz that are
not included in the present tour. Because
of the time factor and the nature of the in-
strumentation, a detailed, inclusive history
of jazz up to the modern period was not
intended. What is aimed for on the first
side is the projection of several of the basic
changes in jazz perspectives during the first
four decades of this century.
The wordless, instrumentalized singing on
the first three tracks is by Jackie Paris, 31,
regarded by most musicians as the most
convincing, if not the only young male
modern jazz singer. Paris possesses what
Leonard Feather has described in his En-
cyclopedia of Jazz as ‘‘a true jazz sound” of
unusually arresting warmth and a superior
feeling for time, for pulsating rhythm. A for-
mer professional guitarist, Paris is an ex-
cellent musician with, as Gryce notes, “a
fine ear for chord structures.” Gryce wrote
out the melody for the numbers on which
Paris is heard, and Jackie based his “‘blow-
ing” on those written lines. As a brilliant
singer who has scuffled for years, Paris is
no stranger to the blues.
The first track, Early Morning Blues, 1s
actually in two parts. The second part is
Lee Sears’ Now Don’t You Know. The easy-
rocking beginning is meant to connote one
of the early forms of the blues, the blues
that came in part from and mingled with
church music. There is a gospellike flavor
and beat to this section, and Gryce further
feels there is a rural set to the music, a
quality that recalls dimly the field calls that
came into the church very close to the be-
ginning of the Negro’s experience in America.
When the tempo quickens with a drum in-
troduction, Now Don’t You Know begins.
This latter statement is meant to jump the
decades (actually, centuries) to a blues char-
acteristic of the early Basie band. “It’s of
the time,’ Gryce makes the almanac more
specific, ‘‘when Pres was even playing clari-
net with the band.” Paris sings a simple,
developing blues figure; at one time, Byrd
plays a brief muted solo behind the vocal,
the mute also bringing this period alive for
Gigi. And Paris’ shout chorus at the end
was felt by Gigi to have the feel of the
typical Basie shout chorus, the climax ride.
The new world acomin’ is signaled by a
a taste of Salt Peanuts, added by Wynton
elly.
Don Byrd’s Early Bird, Gigi explains,
‘is the kind of blues that could be termed
early Parker. The horns would play a figure
together for two or four bars, and then the
soloists would finish it out, improvising for
themselves. In contrast with some of the
other things Byrd did, these were more melod-
ic, more subtle in a way and more simple.
This particular one is a 24-bar type blues
with the basie blues changes without too
many alterations. Charlie had a basic blues
feeling, incidentally, for everything he
played. He lived the blues.” Or the other way
around. In this and the following track,
Paris’ hornlike singing recalls the time
when Jackie played 52nd Street during the
dawning of early modern jazz.
Don Byrd’s Elgy (named for his wite’s
initials— Lorraine Glover) represents another
familiar aspect of Parker’s routes. ‘‘It’s in
the vein,” Gigi points out, ‘“‘of Scrapple from
the Apple. Byrd would sometimes base things
of his on chords similar to J Got Rhythm or
Honeysuckle Rose; and in this tune, the
changes are basically Honeysuckle Rose with
a few alterations. This, then, is a 32-bar
theme in which the harmonic structure is
somewhat more complex than in Karly Bird.
It’s a further indication of the continuing
blues influence in modern jazz by which I
mean the blues ‘feeling’ since this is not a
classically constructed blues.’
Benny Golson’s Stablemates (arranged by
Gigi Gryce) was written by Benny originally
for Herb Pomeroy’s unit at the Stables, a
night club in Boston. Miles Davis, however,
was the first to record the song which is
now becoming a kind of modern jazz stand-
ard. ‘“‘We chose it for this album,” Gigi ex-
plains, ‘because it represents in a way the
early Miles Davis of the forties both in the
instrumentation (French horn, baritone,
etc.) and in the fact that it’s a Miles-type
melody. I remember Miles took to it right
away and recorded it from the only lead
sheet there was of it at that time a couple
of years ago. I say it’s a Miles-type melody
because it isn’t the usual run-of-the-mill
tune, and it also gratifies Miles’ taste for
the unusual in structure and tasty changes.
It’s a 36 rather than a 32-bar tune. It breaks
down into the first 14, an eight-bar bridge
and the final 14. The harmonic patterns are
not unusual in themselves but the chords
do fall differently. It’s a beautiful, fresh-
sounding work, and it also continues the
blues influence to a degree. There’s blues in
nearly everything Miles does these days,
and I think he learned the blues in large
part from Byrd.”
Gigi feels, in general, that “it’s essential
to a jazzman to be able to feel the blues.
But it’s not hard to get familiar with the
blues,” he adds, “if you have to make your
living as a jazz musician.”’
Gigi’s Steppin’ Out (arranged by Benny
Golson) ‘is meant to represent to some ex-
tent,’ Gigi says, ‘‘some of the free type of
vamp-style introductions and_ interludes
Max Roach and the late Clifford Brown
were evolving. By ‘vamp-style,’ I mean that
the introduction and sometimes the inter-
ludes might be based on one or two chords
that would be carried by the bass and piano.
The other instruments would be playing
simple melodie figures freely around this
base, sometimes contrapuntally and some-
times independently. I guess you could call
them improvised flashes of riffs that did not
have, however, the continuity of solos. Be-
cause we had nine pieces in this number, it
would have been difficult to set up a com-
pletely free situation with each man going
his own way, so Benny wrote a sort of con-
trapuntal introduction to substitute for the
Roach-Brown vamp-style as it was, for
example, on their arrangement of J Remem-
ber April.”
The last three tracks are examples of
several of the ways the Jazz Lab is currently
trying to develop. ‘‘We’re working,” says
Gryce, ‘‘in different forms; in attempts at
fresher chord structures; in experiments
with effects by way of more subtle dynamics
and at other times with more specifically
descriptive means.’’ Social Call, a title sug-
gested to Gigi by his wife as he hummed the
tune to her while they were on the way to
a social call, has been recorded before, in-
cluding one version with lyrics by Jon
Hendricks. (If your imagination allows, the
final statement of the melody, even without
lyrics, says the words, “social call.”) The
song is among the simpler numbers in the
Jazz Lab’s book and represents, according
to Gryce, ‘the earlier things we started out
doing. It’s strong melodically. Structurally,
it’s 34 bars with ten instead of the usual
final eight, the extra two bars being a tag
on which we also improvise.”
While with Lionel Hampton’s band a few
years ago, Gigi played North Africa, in-
cluding Casablanea, and while still there,
excerpts from what later turned out to be
An Evening in Casablanca began forming
into a song. “‘I guess,” he adds, ‘‘you could
eall the introduction Arabianlike. It’s also
an attempt to describe musically what I’d
seen and felt. It had been the warm part of
the year; it was dusty; the winds were
blowing; and yet it was relaxed. It’s based
on a minor key and ends in major and some
of the inner harmonic workings are a little
unorthodox. The first statement is 24 bars;
there’s an 8-bar bridge; and then a final 14.
We do another thing differently here in that
we switch parts. After the introduction, the
trumpet takes the melody while the alto
plays the moving harmony part in the back-
ground. At the bridge, the alto takes melody
and the trumpet plays the background. The
alto keeps the melody from the bridge
throughout the latter part of the return of
the theme. Then there’s an interlude remi-
niscent of the introduction followed by a
piano solo. The trumpet takes the bridge
of the piano solo ad lib and the alto freely
improvises the last statement of the theme
toward the end of which the horns come to-
gether for a retard ending.”
Satellite was written during the first pub-
lic speculation concerning what later ma-
terialized as Sputnik. “It’s rhythmic in
structure,’ Gryce begins, “in that the mel-
ody is syncopated; there are triplets and
while there’s a long melodic line, it’s not
characterized by long duration of whole
notes and half notes. It’s a 82-bar piece
with a four-bar tag. Another element of the
song is that the improvised blowing is on a
different set of changes than those of the
theme. I feel this sort of thing should be
done more often because a new set of chords
provides fresher materials for blowing and
allows for a change of tone color. You know,
although you can change your dynamics by
playing louder or softer, you can also change
them by altering the tone color, as we do
here. In this case, the tune is written in D
flat and then there’s a modulation going to
C, and it’s in C that the two horns blow
their improvised choruses. It works this
way: the statement of 32 bars is followed
by a four-bar modulation and then there
are 64 bars of blowing on the new set of
chords. The new set of changes is related to
the basic feeling of the tune although is not
related to the chords of the theme. Another
modulation leads to a piano solo in the
original key. After a four-bar drum inter-
lude following the piano solo, the two horns
play a variation of the theme in 3/4 against
the 4/4 of the rhythm section and then
finally the horns merge with the rhythm
and swing out.’’
The perspectives in modern Jazz labora-
tories will continue to change and develop,
and one of the most active, inventive—and
empirical—chemists in the field will con-
tinue to be Gigi Gryce as this excursion
further indicates.
—Nat Hentoff
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