Hubbard / Henderson / Corea / Clarke / White: Echoes of A Hard Bop Era

(this review will run on AllAboutJazz.com beginning June 2nd, 2009)

Wolf & Rissmiller's Country Club, April 7, 1982. Walking forward to the front of the stage, producer/drummer Lenny White held a microphone to his lips to announce the members of the band, beginning with "I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the world's greatest musicians..." A subjective statement, yes, but he had a point.

Four days earlier this same mutually evolved, once-in-a-lifetime band--trumpeter/ flugelhornist Freddie Hubbard, tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Chick Corea, bassist Stanley Clarke, and White himself--had brought down the house with their show at the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California, now reissued on the 2-disc Griffith Park Collection 2--In Concert (Wounded Bird, 2008). This after having recorded two studio albums with the same personnel in the eight preceding days.

A man with a mission, White had selected these veteran players from his own experiences playing alongside them. Not only had he performed with each in a multitude of settings, but each of them had also played with each of the others in various groupings over the years. All were itching to play again in a straight-ahead hard bop context. This was no hastily assembled all-star band. Instead, it was a gathering of five star-crossed collaborators capable of supporting each other so well that they anticipated producing some of the hottest work any of them had ever done. They did not disappoint.

Echoes Of An Era
Rhino Records
2003

First up was a studio album, Echoes Of An Era, a selection of well-chosen standards done the old-fashioned way with mics on everybody, no more than two takes of anything, no overdubs--but departing from the norm by featuring the vocals of R&B siren Chaka Khan. To many in the jazz world's amazement (and delight, for it earned the singer a Grammy nomination) Khan skillfully runs through the paces on a series of Corea's athletically demanding arrangements. First, the Pinkard/Tracy/Tauber standard "Them There Eyes," then the Ella Fitzgerald-esque swoop-and-scat "All Of Me," followed by a galloping romp through Thelonious Monk's "I Mean You" that is full of unison jumps and masterful comping and soloing from Corea, as he does some of the best interpreting of Monk since Monk. The titles are all familiar--George Gershwin's "I Loves You Porgy," Billy Strayhorn's "Take The 'A' Train," Frank Loesser's "I Hear Music"--but Khan's fresh approach is anything but familiar.

Griffith Park Collection
Wounded Bird Records
2008

Realizing the wealth of talent that had assembled, Bruce Lundvall at Elektra/Musician asked for an album featuring just the instrumentalists. The reissued Griffith Park Collection opens with White's "L's Bop," a 60's Blue Note paean showcasing some vintage Hubbard hornwork that evokes those sunny days when Blue Note producer Alfred Lion was repeatedly capturing the blinding brilliance of an era. Clarke's "Why Wait" is a blues that sneaks up barefooted as the bassist strums a slow amble of a walking rhythm, White riding a cymbal step-for-step, Hubbard and Henderson blowing sweet unison notes and somehow managing to create the additional harmonic of a trombone between them, when Corea's aggressive comping style finally gives the meter a push and Henderson punches a full-throated solo with his thick, unmistakable copper-and-zinc tone. A little over a minute into it when White bounces a snare roll that introduces the chorus' arrival like the low roar of an incoming tide, the boys are swinging so hard that you can feel it in your body.





Griffith Park Collection 2: In Concert
Wounded Bird Records
2008

This is a stunning live recording of these same tunes. Magically resurrected from a soundboard cassette of one of the shows during the group's five day California tour, Griffith Park Collection 2: In Concert starts with "Why Wait," this time at a slightly slower tempo that seems to open up the arrangement and allow the soloists room to swing even harder. Like wanderers returning to their home hearth, they play with a mounting sense of urgency and passion as the night wears on, pursuing the music like it was the source of life itself.

Stalwart rhythm aces White and Clarke could both have turned in longer and more frequent solos, but this particular night they were largely content to lay down strong-shouldered support for the incendiary energies of Hubbard, Henderson and Corea--three players bursting with energy and clearly in a mood to solo on some unrestrained bop. Especially Hubbard. (In January 2009, multi-reedist Bennie Maupin got a roar of laughter from a church full of mourners with the opening line of his eulogy for the departed legend. With his trademark Cheshire grin, Maupin said: "Every musician knew that if you were going to play with Freddie Hubbard, you had to be ready to be humbled.")

These guys were certainly ready for something. Without preamble Hubbard starts by blowing a series of runs that sound like cascades of sparks sprayed from an arc welder's torch (it's tempting to imagine the other players wearing protective goggles as they watch him intently.) No question, Hubbard's unbridled, over-the-ramparts approach might have had a daunting effect on another stage, but on this spring evening it leads the charge and sets a standard. Each player's solo invites the next until it is clear that each is ready to take full advantage of this rare opportunity. White's "Guernica" is an unforgettable, hair-raising blowing session that evokes the passionate emotional landscape of that war-torn Spanish city. Hubbard's flashy, headlong bopper "Happy Times" is followed by Corea's tone poem "October Ballade," and then it's back to the races with a hard-driving "I Mean You," and finally a gently swaying "Here's That Rainy Day" with a handful of lyrical flourishes from Hubbard to close things out.




Chick Corea - A Very Special Concert
Image Entertainment
2003

The laudatory band introduction from Lenny White, quoted earlier, was occasioned by their spectacular last performance. Good mobile recording equipment and several cameras recorded the evening's events, so although record company politics/economics have kept Echoes of An Era 2: the Concert (Elektra Musician, 1982) from being reissued on CD, rights acquired from Sony have resulted in two DVDs: Chick Corea--A Very Special Concert and Chick Corea Band with Nancy Wilson--A Very Special Concert (available only as a Japanese import). Re-packaged or hard-to-find imports, oddly titled by front-running labels in pursuit of sales though they may be, these are treasures worth digging for.

In place of Hubbard's horn, singer Nancy Wilson's elastic vocals are added to the mix on six of these tunes. A mature stylist who had sung with everyone from Cannonball Adderley's quintet to the Billy May Orchestra, Wilson's doing tunes so familiar to her that she is able deconstruct and improvise new renditions of them on the spot, achieving a level of slippery bop intensity only possible with musicians of this caliber behind her. Working with the same book of material as they had used with Chaka Khan, these journeymen deftly adapt the songs to Wilson's broader approach and pull them off as self-contained performances.

But as good as they are with Wilson, their fiery explosiveness engages on an entirely new level when these four, limber and lathered as cheetahs chasing a gazelle, tear after a tune at hard bop speed. Henderson comes out of the gate so fast and pours such ferocity into White's "L's Bop" that the pace pulls it out of the station at top speed. Shortly after Corea takes the solo duties from the saxophonist at the half-way point, a camera comes in for a shot over his right shoulder and catches Clarke nimbly flying along the neck while staring across at the pianist, doing a double-take as Corea furiously pummels the keys with an awe-inspiring musicality that is guiding the rhythm section until the moment he can let the drummer take his solo. And what a solo--if White's mentor, Tony Williams, had been in the crowd that evening, he might well have been on his feet. These are monster musicians who had been playing together every day for a month. On this last recorded-and-filmed gig they are pouring everything they have experienced together into a bravura performance that probably could never happen again. And if Flora Purim's 6-octave skydiving on Return to Forever (ECM, 1972) is the definitive vocal version of "500 Miles High," the trio version that Corea, Clarke and White do here could well be the definitive instrumental rendition.

The world's greatest musicians? Who knows... What is certain is that the kind of mastery and dynamic synergism on display in these performances comes from musicians who possess that exceedingly rare ability to listen as well as they blow. As Lenny White said when asked about his composition "Guernica": "When you write for musicians like this, all you need to do is give them a few notes and let them play."


Tracks and Personnel

Echoes Of An Era

Tracks: Them There Eyes; All Of Me; I Mean You; I Love You Porgy; Take The A Train; I Hear Music; High Wire/The Aerialist; All Of Me; Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most.

Personnel: Chaka Khan: vocals; Freddie Hubbard: flugelhorn, trumpet; Joe Henderson: tenor saxophone; Chick Corea: piano; Stanley Clarke: acoustic bass; Lenny White: drums.

Griffith Park Collection

Tracks: L's Bop; Why Wait; October Ballade; Happy Times; Remember; Guernica.

Personnel: Freddie Hubbard: flugelhorn, trumpet; Joe Henderson: tenor saxophone; Chick Corea: piano; Stanley Clarke: acoustic bass; Lenny White: drums.

Griffith Park Collection 2: In Concert

Tracks: Why Wait; Guernica; Happy Times; October Ballade; I Mean You; Here's That Rainy Day.

Personnel: Freddie Hubbard: flugelhorn, trumpet; Joe Henderson: tenor saxophone; Chick Corea: piano; Stanley Clarke: acoustic bass; Lenny White: drums.

Chick Corea - A Very Special Concert

Tracks: L's Bop; Why Wait; 500 Miles High; Guernica.

Personnel: Joe Henderson: tenor saxophone; Chick Corea: piano; Stanley Clarke: bass; Lenny White: drums.

Chick Corea Band with Nancy Wilson - A Very Special Concert

Tracks: I Want To Be Happy; I Get A Kick Out Of You; 'Round Midnight; But Not For Me; Yesterday; Them There Eyes; Take The "A" Train.

Personnel: Nancy Wilson: vocals; Joe Henderson: tenor saxophone; Chick Corea: piano; Stanley Clarke: bass; Lenny White: drums.

Visit Lenny White, Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Nancy Wilson and Chaka Khan on the web.

Duet

[NOTE: This and my other reviews are archived separately at http://jazzjazzersjazzingviewsandreviews.blogspot.com/ The first four paragraphs of this review of Duet will appear April 6, 2009 in AllAboutJazz.com]


Combined with his abilities as a soloist, Chick Corea's uncanny accompanist's instinct for supporting and focusing the spotlight on another player's efforts has produced celebrated duets with everyone from Gary Burton and Herbie Hancock to John McLaughlin and Bela Fleck. With Hiromi Uehara he has done it again.

Duet captures the two pianists in an engagement at Tokyo's Blue Note club in September of 2007, and finds them repeatedly achieving ecstatic heights of ingenuity and inventiveness. At first blush the opening tracks might feel too quiet as an introduction to the Sturm und Drang of this dynamic pairing, but if the anticipated energy, the bounding, rampaging, red-eyed thunder-and-lightning this partnership promises to deliver is not immediately evident as the first of two discs opens with Bill Evans' "Very Early" and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "How Insensitive," don't touch that dial...

Once these two get their hands warm on "Déjà Vu," the first of Hiromi's contributed compositions, they ignite things with a respectfully deconstructed version of "Fool on the Hill" that hews neatly to the lilting Lennon/McCartney melody line and harmonies right up until the closing three bars, when Corea unexpectedly plucks a few portentous notes inside the piano. The cubist conflagration long-time Corea fans perennially yearn for then flares dramatically on a joyful, abstracted version of his enduring "Humpty Dumpty," ending with his throwing down fistfuls of Cecil Taylor-esque tennis-ball chords, and his protégé enthusiastically throwing them right back. When he next engages Hiromi in some gravity-defying rhythmning on Thelonious Monk's "Bolivar Blues," the first disc's final track, it is plain she's in a mood to play.

A meandering "Windows" opens the second disc, but then it's off again on a stunning steeplechase of a composition, Hiromi's "Old Castle, by the River, in the Middle of a Forest," featuring some vintage unison dressage. By the time the last notes are sounded they are both energized and ready for a quirkily non-traditional distillation of "Summertime," using the Gershwin standard to continue widening the degree of abstraction as they travel through a sublimely ordered track sequence (a good argument in favor of albums, and against selective MP3 downloads). Musically, the end of "Summertime" dovetails into Hiromi's evanescent "Place to Be," which manages to slow the heart rate a few more beats per second before the disc concludes with a free-playing romp on Corea's "Children's Song #12," re-titled "Do Mo," and finally, an off-kilter rendition of "Concierto de Aranjuez/Spain" to provide an insouciantly perfect coda.

In the interests of honesty and total disclosure, I have a small quibble with this album (which may require a couple paragraphs to express): if I had produced it I would have trimmed it to a single CD and kept only the heart-pounding fireworks. There's more than one reason I'd have done it.

One, I think the markets for this U.S. release are the jazz-rockers who have been listening to Hiromi and her band Sonicbloom or have heard about them, plus a smaller secondary market consisting of Corea fans who have heard the buzz about how wild these gigs got. The first group are the same crowd who packed a couple dozen large venues for the Return To Forever Returns tour last summer, the ones who turned out to see Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller and Vic Wooten last Fall and who at this very moment are packing large venues for Chick Corea and John McLaughlin's Five Peace Band tour. The second group have been listening to Corea since his early recordings, and can be won only through word-of-mouth buzz generated by stellar performances. Neither are the same kind of adoring audiences who filled the Budokan in 2007 to see Chick and Hiromi perform this material - the major difference being that those people in Tokyo were devoted Hiromi (and Corea) fans who didn't need to be introduced. Chick's considerable drawing power notwithstanding, they throng to any performance she gives. American fans do need an introduction to her. You know the old saying, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression"? Why would a producer select Bill Evans' "Very Early" and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "How Insensitive" to open the first CD?

The second point is related to the first. The more I listen to the slower material like the Evans and Jobim tunes, and even Corea's "Windows" (which, once again, ill-advisedly opens the second disc) the more dispensible it sounds. These tunes have the feel of warm-up material, the kind of crowd-control music played to settle down the diners and get them involved with the music as the tables are cleared. Even the faithful who have packed the Blue Note can only manage a polite applause. Whether it is Chick's restraint or Hiromi's still-developing sense of swing that keeps these tunes from bursting into flame, really doesn't matter. They are pleasant enough and were probably exactly right for the occasion. But why include them on the CD? Trim one more track, say Hiromi's "Déjà Vu," and the remaining 8 tracks would fit nicely on a single CD that would tear along like Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

All that said, I cannot recommend this recording highly enough. My tastes have undergone several overhauls and re-orientations listening to Chick Corea's many musical phases and faces over the years. As he moved through Blue Note bopper, Miles Davis' Rhodes scholar, and Circular logician into the engineer who drove the Return To Forever locomotive, he never strayed too far from being the intellectually curious composer and improvisational pianist who can out-think any harmony and out-play any composition. Through the Elektric Band and Akoustic Band, Origin and the Remembering Bud Powell band, and right up through his current Five Peace Band collaboration with John McLaughlin, he's always kept me listening for those moments of predictability when he changes direction. Tweaking the time-space continuum, he switches directions harmonically and rhythmically from wherever he was apparently going to somewhere else entirely. He has remained faithful to a social contract that only a few jazzers are able to adhere to, the one that promises me that I'll always be surprized. I'll always hear something new and fresh.

This recording with Hiromi lands right in the middle of a 3-day binge of newness. When he invited Hiromi to join him at the Blue Note he knew he was setting up two of those screaming-ass high-speed Japanese trains on the same track, not really knowing what would come of it, whether they would collide head-on or launch each other into space. But he knew it would be new. No matter how may times you have heard Bitches Brew or Circle - Paris Concert or An Evening with Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, you are not prepared for what Chick does with Hiromi on this recording. You most emphatically have not heard it before. This is new.





Visit Chick Corea and Hiromi on the web.

Filles de Kilimanjaro

Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968, Columbia) - Although Bitches Brew (1969, Columbia), Miles Davis' masterpiece recorded a year later, is widely regarded as the proverbial "shot heard 'round the world" that signaled the beginning of the jazz revolution, his Filles de Kilimanjaro is the recording that really started it all. Suffice it to say, if you like Bitches Brew but you've never heard this 1968 masterpiece of exploration, you need to hear it. In one respect it is even more approachable than In A Silent Way (1969, Columbia) and the rest of the studio issues that followed in Miles' so-called jazz/rock fusion: these are traditionally recorded sessions which were edited in the accepted manner of snipping out clams, feedback or other noises and blemished areas of the recording, but which were left virtually intact and not created later through editing by Teo Macero, as would become the practice on later sessions. This album plus tracks later released on Water Babies (1969, Columbia) document the crucible of the grand experiment as the mixture of changing musicians actually sounded. The shift is on in the rhythm section. Tony Williams is on drums throughout, but is about to depart and be replaced by Jack DeJohnette. Ron Carter is handing over the reins to Dave Holland and Herbie Hancock has begun to make his exit and turn over the keyboard duties to Chick Corea. This is essential listening for jazz-rockers, prog rockers, fusioneers, and anyone else who has continued to listen closely to the developments that have come since.