LP-664

Art Farmer and Benny Golson - Meet The Jazztet

Released 1960

Recording and Session Information

The Jazztet
Art Farmer, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; Benny Golson tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Addison Farmer, bass; Lex Humphries, drums
New York, February 6, 9 & 10, 1960

10017 Mox nix
10018 Blues march
10019 Killer Joe (Benny Golson narration)
10020 I remember Clifford
10021 Park Avenue petite
10022 Avalon
10023 Easy living
10024 It's all right with me
10025 Serenata
10026 It ain't necessarily so

Track Listing

Serenata	Anderson, Parrish	February 6, 7 & 10 1960
It Ain't Necessarily So	George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin	February 6, 7 & 10 1960
Avalon	Jolson, DeSylva, Rose	February 6, 7 & 10 1960
I Remember Clifford	Benny Golson	February 6, 7 & 10 1960
Blues March	Benny Golson	February 6, 7 & 10 1960
It's All Right With Me	Cole Porter	February 6, 7 & 10 1960
Park Avenue Petite	Benny Golson	February 6, 7 & 10 1960
Mox Nix	Art Farmer	February 6, 7 & 10 1960
Easy Living	Robin, Ranger	February 6, 7 & 10 1960
Killer Joe	Benny Golson	February 6, 7 & 10 1960

Liner Notes

"THIS is a musical organization and we want it to sound like that, not like the usual jam session that goes under that name. The jam session can be a wonderful thing, but it's a hell of a thing to try to pull off every night!" That's the way Art Farmer thinks of the aims and ideas of The Jazztet.

"What we're actually trying to do is to get a loose sound that allows each man a chance to say what he has to say musically on his instrument, but still have uniformity and togetherness." That's the way it is for Benny Golson.

The Jazztet, in case you are meeting it for the first time is a musical organization that does not sound like the usual jam session, and in which each man has a chance to say what he has to say, but in which there is still uniformity and togetherness.

It consists of trumpeter Art Farmer, tenor saxophonist Benny Golson, trombonist Curtis Fuller, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Addison Farmer, and drummer Lex Humphries. It was in existence only a few months when this LP was made, but it looks like it will be in business for a long, long time to come.

Farmer, born in Iowa in 1928, was raised in Arizona, went to L.A. in 1945, worked with Horace Henderson and others and joined Lionel Hampton in '52 and toured Europe with him. A Down Beat New Star trumpeter, he has recorded extensively under his own name and with Gerry Mulligan, with whom he played last year.

Benny Golson was born in Philadelphia in 1929, attended Howard university, worked with Tadd Dameron, Lionel Hampton, Johnny Hodges, and Earl Bostic. In 1956 he joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band. He's one of the best known young composers in jazz with several jazz standards (Stablemates is one) already to his credit.

The genesis of The Jazztet goes back to the summer of 1959. "Art had in mind to organize a group and approached me," Golson says, "and I had in mind to get a group and approached him!"

Farmer and Golson are both careful planners and this is reflected in the group. Arrangements are mutually discussed and plotted, and all the rest of the minutae of organizing and routining a band is a community enterprise. In a night club each member of the front line is given a feature number, and it is interesting, in view of their concept of the group as a unit, that even on such tunes the other two men are busy now and agam with little backgrounds and fills.

They have deliberately chosen a name that does not include the name of any of the men and they are willing to fight club owners and anyone else for the length of time necessary to put this name across. "Naturally I think the music itself is the important thing," Golson says. "If you're really producing the music, you can call the group anything!" But The Jazztet is what they have elected to call it and it will stick. You can mark it down in your book as one of the groups in jazz that will make it.

The Music

Serenata was a problem. "I had never heard it done in 6/8 and I decided I would try it," Golson says. "At first he couldn't get anything out of the tune," Art says, "until he thought of 6/8." It Ain't Necessarily So "is a song I've always liked," Benny says. "And I tried to make it as loose as possible. The bridge is the only time we're playing complete ensemble."

Avalon, the old standard, is a tune the band picked by mutual consent. Again it's a Golson arrangement. They picked the tune because of the melody and then took the melody out! "We just started with the solos," Benny says.

I Remember Clifford is a Golson original. Already a classic of jazz, it is dedicated to the late Clifford Brown. "When I play it," Art says, "I just try to think of what Clifford was to me. I wouldn't want to play like him on the tune because that wouldn't be my idea of him. I just try to say, 'Yes, I do remember Clifford and he was like this.' That's about all there is to it."

Blues 'March is another Golson original. "It speaks for itself," Benny says. "It's just reminiscent of the marching bands, the old New Orleans marching bands.

It's All Right With Me originated "when Curtis and I were working together," Golson says. "He used to play it all the time and I always thought he played it very well." Art Farmer adds "I think that's one of the classic trombone solos on record. We did two takes and Curtis just went through the thing and never let up. On the first take he was playing so fast the rhythm section couldn't keep up with him. He's one of the most important men around on the horn."

Easy Living was the suggestion of the group's manager, Kay Norton. "I had always thought of it as a vocal," Benny says. "But once I started playing it I began to like it." Art adds another point regarding this tune: "We want to show Benny's ballad ways."

Mox Nix is Art's tune. "I picked the expression up — it's a German expression, you know — from a girl in Brooklyn," says Farmer. "It means 'never mind, that's all right'."

Park Avenue Petite is another Golson original, one that Benny wrote back in 1934 and had forgotten about until Blue Mitchell asked for some material and Benny brought it out.

Killer Joe started this way. I just sat down at the piano one day," says Benny, "and started messing away on the two chord progressions — I had about three or four different melodies — and I eliminated the others and decided to use the one I have now. As I was doing it, it made me think of one of these hip cats — standing on the corner."

Ralph J, Gleason

Down Beat 26 May 1960 Volume 27 Issue 11

"We're going to go as far as we can. It's been pretty good so far."

That's Benny Golson speaking. The gifted composer-arranger-tenor-saxophonist who is coleader With Art Farmer of the new group known as the Jazztet is, quietly and modestly, optimistic about the future.

Only a few months old, the Jazztet has left profound impressions on audiences in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. In Chicago, at a press reception staged at the Blue Note by Argo Records, to which the group is under contract, it sent reporters scurrying after adjectives. And an appearance on the Steve Allen Show introduced the six men in the group to audiences that might never have seen them — or any jazz group, for that matter.

But let Golson tell the story of the group and how it came into being:

"It was very sudden. I Was planning to start a sextet last fall. And I heard Art was leaving Gerry Mulligan. I planned to ask him to join the sextet.

"In the meantime, unknown to me, he was planning a quintet, and he was thinking of asking me to join him. When I called him, he started laughing. So we got together and consolidated our plans.

"What we're really aiming for is the ultimate in unity and written arrangements loose enough so that the soloist can have a free hand to exploit his instrument. Those are the main factors.

"Heretofore, most sextets that I've heard — with the exception of Miles' — have been very tight-knit and more or less straight up and down, with llttle room for the soloist to really stand out.

"I feel that with three horns, we can get any effect we want. How do we get such a big sound? It's really no trick. It's there and obvious. You just have to pick the right notes. They're there. You have to emulate the things you have in your mind.

"Another thing: Art and I both lean toward melody...I feel that if you establish a strong melody, it will be longer lasting in the mind of the listener and, linked With good, interesting harmonic structure, will prove an interesting vehicle for the soloist.

"Right now, we have 30-odd charts in the book, after five months of working. Gigi Gryce contributed some of them. I'm not rushing any of the music just to try to build the book. I want each arrangement to really have something to say. In the short while we have been together, I've already rejected some of my own arrangements because I felt that they did not possess the intrinsic value that we want for the Jazztet."

Nou about the men in the group:

"Curtis Fuller is, I think, one of the best instrumentalists of this era, and he is still climbing upward. He's 25. He is very sympathetic with Art and me, and I feel that this makes my job of organization much simpler.

"McCoy Tyner is only 21. He is one of the great discoveries of recent years. Although he is from Philadelphia, which is my home town, I didn't meet him until last year, when I was playing a couple of concerts there. I was impressed immediately and as a consequence took him to San Francisco in August of 1959 with Curtis and me. When we were planning the group. Art asked me whom I had in mind for piano. I immediately said, 'McCoy Tyner.' Since that time, he has proved to be a most important member of the Jazztet.

"Lex Humphries is someone I feel we're fortunate to have With us. Lex was with Dizzy's small group. We had a great deal of trouble getting a drummer who could read well and still swing like the dickens. Lex is one of the few drummers who listens to the soloist and complements him.

"Addison Farmer is a graduate of the Juilliard School Of Music, and as a consequence can play anything you put in front of him. Addison has been growing musically in the past few years. And aside from that, he is one of the most perfect gentlemen I've met in my life. That makes him wonderful to have with you.

"I think of Art as 'Mr. Melody'. He has an uncanny gift for melody, and for the ways of weaving it in and out of harmonic progressions effectively, as though he were creating another composition himself. Art has a big, round, warm trumpet sound all his own, which makes his ballads seem to sing. Art doesn't compose very many tunes, but When he does, they are so meaningful. Mox Nix is a very good example. He has a vast knowledge of scales and modes, which is evidenced in his playing predict that before long, Art will be one of the biggest jazz trumpeters we have ever known."

That is Golson's view. How does Art Farmer feel about the group? Very much the same. He and Golson are very close, forming in effect, a full-time mutual admiration society.

 

Will the group stay together and in this area of music? "It's got to make it," Art said with a slow grin. "I had the foresight not to prepare myself for anything else."