United Notions by Toshiko And Her International Jazz Sextet MetroJazz (E 1001) Publication date 1958

 PERSONNELS

Nat Adderley, cornet on Jane, Strike Up the Band, United

Notions; Doc Severinsen, trumpet on other titles; Rolf Kuhn,

clarinet and alto sax; Bobby Jaspar (courtesy of Riverside

Records), flute, tenor and baritone saxes; Toshiko, piano;

René Thomas, guitar; John Drew, bass; Bert Dahlander, drums.

Recorded in New York City June 13, 1958 at Beltone Studios.

Supervision: LEONARD FEATHER.

Much has been written in recent years about the tremendous

interest overseas in American jazz, and of the consequent trips

abroad, (some of them officially sponsored by the State De-

partment) of many of our leading musicians. The cause of

these trips was clear enough—simply a matter of insistent de-

mand followed by constant supply—but the effect has been

less thoroughly studied. It has become gradually more evident

throughout the 1950s: musicians abroad, deprived of the chance

to hear live American jazz during the war years and often

unable to obtain more than a handful of American records,

have at last begun to catch up with us in their feeling for the

jazz language.

No more striking illustration has been offered of the spread

of this musical influence than the Newport International Band,

assembled in the summer of 1958 by Marshall Brown, using

talent sought out in 18 countries, and presented at the New-

port Jazz Festival. The soloists in that band were, at least, on

a level with the average front-rank U. S. jazzman, and at best

(notably the baritone man from England Ronnie Ross and

the French trumpeter Roger Guerin) were much more, offer-

ing examples of improvisation that might well be envied and

studied by most run-of-the-mill executants on this side of the

Atlantic.

The fact is that if he has a feeling for the rhythmic and

harmonic essence of jazz and spends enough time studying it,

certainly it will be easier for the foreigner to speak jazz with-

out an accent than to converse in perfect English. This is quite

clearly true of the group heard on the present LP.

All the foreign-born musicians in the International Jazz

Sextet, as well as their leader, speak English with enough of

an accent to make their overseas origin immediately obvious

to the most casual listener; yet when they take a solo chorus

the language of jazz becomes a complete leveler and it is im-

possible to determine who came from where.

Toshiko, who heads this multilingual group, was born

Toshiko Akiyoshi in 1929 in Dairen, Manchuria, the youngest

of four daughters of a Japanese textile merchant. She studied

piano for nine years. After the occupation of her native coun-

try by the Chinese, the Akiyoshi family became part of a

shipload of refugees, carrying only the bare essentials of their

valuables and allowed to take out of the country a sum equal

to about $3 per person. Regaining Japan, the family settled

in a country home owned by Toshiko’s father. At this point,

supposed to enter medical school, she went without telling her

family to the Yamada Officers’ Club and took a job as pianist

in the club's orchestra.

After working with various Japanese jazz units she headed

several small combos from 1951, playing at leading coffee

houses. During those years in Japan she played regularly with

the 289th U.S. Army Band, and was twice heard as guest ar-

tist with the Tokyo Symphony. Then in November 1953 she

was heard by Oscar Peterson, who was in Japan with the

Jazz at the Philharmonic troupe. The result of Peterson's dis-

covery of this improbably located talent was Toshiko’s re-

cording debut in a Tokyo session for Norman Granz.

In January 1956 Toshiko arrived in Boston to study on a

scholarship at the Berklee School of Music. She has been

there ever since, but during vacations from school has worked

in several American night clubs, usually leading her own trio

at Storyville in Boston or the Hickory House in New York.

My statement in The Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz (1956),

that since her arrival here she has shown “a superb technique

and an ever-greater mastery of the Bud Powell style, of which

she has become one of the outstanding disciples”, still holds

good. In fact, I believe today she has outstripped the idol she

once tried to emulate and is one of the half-dozen most dy-

namically expressive pianists in all of jazz.

Each of the instruments surrounding Toshiko in her Inter-

national Jazz Sextet is played by an artist who reached the

United States from a different foreign country, with the sole

exception of the trumpet, which remained in American hands

throughout.

Bobby Jaspar was born in 1926 in Liége, Belgium. After

working with various combos, mostly in Paris, throughout the

early 1950s, he won first place in the Jazz Hot poll both as

tenor saxophonist and combo leader, and emigrated to the

U. S. in April 1956. He worked with the combos of J.

J. Johnson and Miles Davis; recently he returned temporarily

to Paris, taking with him his own all-star American quintet.

He is married to the American singer Blossom Dearie.

Rolf Kuhn, born in Cologne, Germany, in 1929, took up

clarinet at 12, escaped from East Germany in 1952 to join a

jazz group, and was strongly influenced by the clarinet of

Buddy De Franco. After broadcasting with his own quartet

over an American station in Berlin and winning several Euro-

pean jazz polls, he came to the U. S. in May 1956, and spent

several months with the Benny Goodman band and with the

posthumous Tommy Dorsey orchestra.

Nat Adderley, born in Tampa, Fla. in 1931, is the younger

brother of the alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderiey,

with whose quintet he was heard until 1957; since then he has

worked chiefly with the J. J. Johnson Quintet. Carl “Doc”

Severinsen, who replaces him on some tracks, is a greatly un-

derrated musician whose talent has been hidden for several

years by the obscurity of an NBC house job, though he

emerged in the spring of 1958 as a regular member of the

band on the NBC-TV educational series, The Subject Is Jazz.

This is his first jazz combo recording date.

René Thomas, though he participates in this album as an

emissary from Canada (he has lived in Montreal in recent

years) actually is an old friend and colleague of Bobby Jaspar,

whose home town is also René’s. Born in 1927, he studied

guitar at the age of 11 and is entirely self-taught. Though still

a resident of Canada, where he has done TV and club work,

he came to the U.S. in 1957 and worked briefly with Sonny

Rollins, who (along with Zoot Sims, Chet Baker and countless

other American musicians who have played with him) con-

siders him the greatest “undiscovered” guitarist on the scene.

John Derek Drew, born in 1927 in Sheffield and raised in

Liverpool, England, worked with many British name bands

before emigrating to the U. S. in 1954. He has been seen here

with the Neal Hefti band, the Gene Krupa quartet, the Bar-

bara Carroll trio, as well as with a symphony orchestra in

Miami; currently he is free-lancing busily around New York.

Bert Dahlander (his full name is Nils-Bertil Dahlander)

was born in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1928. After working lo-

cally with a Swedish radio band and with his own quartet, he

soon rose to acceptance as Sweden’s number one drummer.

First coming to the U.S. in 1954, he worked with a house

group at the Bee Hive in Chicago, backing Wardell Gray,

Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt, then spent a year on the road

with Terry Gibbs. After touring in Europe with Chet Baker

he returned to the U.S. in 1957, rejoined Gibbs for a few

months, and for the past year has been a member of the Teddy

Wilson trio.

A cosmopolitan atmosphere is established at the opening

of this LP when Toshiko, speaking Japanese, introduces her-

self and says that she would like to present the members of

her International Jazz Sextet. The sidemen announce their

names and home towns, each speaking his native tongue.

The group then sails into Broadway, a head arrangement

of the jazz standard first introduced by Count Basie’s band in

1940. Tenor and guitar in unison play the release of the open-

ing chorus. Bobby's tenor then occupies the spotlight for three

choruses in one of his most noteworthy solos on records, its

aggressively swinging quality impelled in large measure by the

support of an exceptional rhythm section. René Thomas fol-

lows with three choruses that will mark his introduction to

most American listeners; then Toshiko has three, the last of

which she leaves largely open to Drew’s walking bass. Bert

Dahlander takes the bridge in the “out” chorus.

Sukiyaki, written by Jaspar for this session, has a 24-bar

minor chorus. Toshiko, Doc Severinsen, René Thomas, Bobby

Jaspar (on flute) and Rolf Kuhn have a chorus each, followed

by three choruses of fours in which Toshiko alternates guitar,

trumpet, baritone (Jaspar) and clarinet.

Swingin’ Till the Girls Come Home is a 12-bar blues com-

posed in 1951 by Oscar Pettiford. In this head arrangement

attractive use is made of flute and clarinet to achieve a light

and graceful ensemble color. René Thomas establishes a cli-

mactically constructed pattern for the soloists—two choruses

accompanied by walking bass only, one chorus with drums

added, and a fourth with the additional impulse of the piano.

After the solos of Doc, Rolf and Jaspar there are a couple of

choruses of flute and clarinet fours that were spontaneously

developed during the recording of this take. Toshiko’s four

choruses follow, showing her in a mood of slowly increasing

funkiness, before the airy ensemble takes over for the final 24.

United Notions, the Toshiko original that provided a name

for the album, owes its title to a suggestion by John Drew.

Harmonically simple (except for the intriguing use of fourths

in the voicing of the release), the melody provides a frame-

work for solo choruses by René Thomas, Bobby Jaspar (his

first recorded solo on baritone saxophone), Rolf Kuhn, Nat

Adderley, John Drew and Toshiko.

Civilized Folk is one of two originals contributed to the

session by Bob Freedman, a talented young writer, formerly a

teacher at the Berklee School, who has been heard around

Boston as an alto saxophonist (with the Herb Pomeroy band)

and as intermission pianist in local clubs. With Kuhn’s clarinet

leading the light-textured three-horn lines, the ensemble recalls

the quality of the old John Kirby sextet. Clarinet, guitar, tenor

and muted trumpet have a chorus each and Tosh takes two.

Strike Up the Band is a fast, boppish arrangement by

Toshiko of the Gershwin standard. Rolf Kuhn plays alto sax

on the opening chorus. The doubling by Bobby Jaspar enables

the combo to split up the last two blowing choruses into eight

four-bar segments, each on a different instrument—cornet, flute,

guitar, clarinet, bass, drums, tenor, piano. The solo chorus after

the opening ensemble is Nat on cornet; the bridge of the clos

ing ensemble chorus is Doc on trumpet.

The session ends with the second Bob Freedman original,

Jane. (Actually this is a typical liner—note inaccuracy, for the

fact is that we recorded Jane at the beginning of the session;

the tracks on a jazz LP very rarely represent the original order

in which the tunes were recorded.) Bobby sticks to the tenor

here and, like all the soloists, is clearly at ease improvising on

the changes of this unpretentious piece of material.

A concluding suggestion: if you're in the mood for blind-

fold-testing a friend who believes he can distinguish East and

West coast, male and female, American and foreign musicians,

this session provides the ideal testing ground. With its scope

of origins extending from Portland, Oregon to Tampa, Florida

and from Gothenburg, Sweden to Dairen, Manchuria, it is a

cinch to baffle your friend and to prove only one very simple,

basic truism: that good jazz knows no boundaries.