The Jazztet and John Lewis
Released 1961
Recording and Session Information
Art Farmer/Benny Golson Jazztet & John Lewis
Art Farmer, trumpet; Tom McIntosh, trombone; Benny Golson, tenor saxophone; Cedar Walton, piano; Tommy Williams, bass; Albert "Tootie" Heath, drums
New York, December 20-21, 1960 & January 9, 1961
10626 Django
10627 Milano
10628 Bel
10629 Two degrees east, three degrees west
10630 New York 19
10631 Odds against tomorrow
Track Listing
| Bel | John Lewis | December 20/21 1960, January 9 1961 |
| Milano | John Lewis | December 20/21 1960, January 9 1961 |
| Django | John Lewis | December 20/21 1960, January 9 1961 |
| New York 19 | John Lewis | December 20/21 1960, January 9 1961 |
| 2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West | John Lewis | December 20/21 1960, January 9 1961 |
| Odds Against Tomorrow | John Lewis | December 20/21 1960, January 9 1961 |
Liner Notes
The idea of John Lewis writing for the Jazztet seems, at first blush, an improbable one.Lewis' jazz writing in recent years has been confined largely to the Modern Jazz Quartet, of which group he is pianist and musical director. His other work — movie scores and similar large-orchestra music — has required a different palette than that available in small jazz groups.
The Jazztet, furthermore, is utterly unlike the MJQ in instrumentation, conception, and flavor. The MJQ is based on two percussion-melody instruments, vibraharp and piano, which dictates one kind of sound. The Jazztet is based on three horns — trumpet, tenor saxophone, and trombone — which dictates a vastly different one.
The one area of similarity between the two groups would appear to present a danger, rather than an advantage: both are integrated, controlled units whose music has sometimes tended to the conservative. They stand at the other end of the pole from all the tiresome freeblowing groups of today.
But what would happen when you put the conservative John Lewis together with the Jazztet? I must confess that when Art Farmer mentioned that John Lewis was writing album for the group, I had reservations. I feared the collaboration would produce some sort of apotheosis of gentlemanly reserve. Control there would surely be. But spontaneity and fire?
It gives me considerable pleasure to discover that my fears were groundless. For the John Lewis Album is, I feel, far and away the best, the freest, and the gutsiest album the Jazztet has yet made.
It came about in this way:
One evening early in 1961, Lewis went to the Village Gate in New York, where the Jazztet was working. He was asked to write an arrangement for the group. He pondered it during the course of the evening, no doubt in that quietly preoccupied way of his, and then told Benny Golson and Art Farmer that he'd rather write a whole album.
The scores were not long arriving. Lewis delivered the first of them while the group was still at the Village Gate, and had completed the remainder within a month. And yet you will find no hint of haste in them, They are beautifully-wrought pieces of jazz writing, with everything in its place — and they are full of fire.
"Benny and I have always had a great deal of respect for John's writing," Art said. "But I was surprised and delighted when wc got the scores."
"I'm intrigued by the way John reworks his material over the years, as Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk do. John will take something he wrote some time ago and do something completely different with it. Django is an example."
It is a particularly interesting example. If you know the MJQ's original version of it, you'll probably be shocked by this one, at first. The original is slow and delicate and poignantly lyrical; from the first measures of this version, you know it's a cooker. "In fact," Benny said. "the first time we played it, we thought we had it wrong. We asked John 'Is this really the tempo you want? He said, 'That's right.'"
2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West, on the other hand, is fairly similar to the original except for the instrumentation. The other works in this set will be found to resemble the originals in varying degrees — though always the basic color is different. Bel is a new work: Lewis wrote it especially for this album.
If I may venture a personal comment (and I'd rather make it clear that it's personal, since have a growing distaste for those who try to pass off their personal observations as esthetic absolutes that they could prove to be objective realities, if only they could the right logarithmic tables), I think this album is the most moving and satisfying - in fact, exciting — piece of jazz writing that John Lewis has done in years.
Note how skillfully he will use horns behind soloists; note how nicely the lines of ensemble passages fit together; note particularly how he gets a sound much larger than the instrumentation, which is always the mark of the gifted and developed writer. While we're at it, note also the humor of which Lewis is capable, particularly in the opening track.
This album ends up being a sort of mutual showcase: the Jazztet sets a facet of Lewis' ability (after all, he was once arranger for Dizzy Gillespie's bis band) that some of us had tended to forget; and Lewis' writing in turn sets off facets ot the Jazztet's ability that many persons may previiously have been unaware of.
Certainly the group is in prime form.
In Tom Williams and Albert Heath, it has a rhythm team that works in powerful, comfortable tandem. In Cedar Walton, it has a pianist of feeling coupled with technical resourcefulness. There is no need to say to him, "Yeah, but what he was thinking is what matters." What Walton thinks, he executes and you hear.
Trombonist McIntosh is the third member of the horn team that constitutes the Jazztet's front line. A talented arranger himself he is revealed in this album to have the ability, both as soloist and ensemble player, that Art and Benny thought he had when they asked him to join the group.
As for Art and Benny themselves, it seems to me that they have found the freedom and individual expression they were looking for when they formed the Jazztet.
Reviewing a Golson album (Take a Number from 1 to 10; Argo 681) in a recent issue of Down Beat, critic John S. Wilson said of Benny, "His warm, gentle, lyrical playing...has been fairly well established for some time. What is relatively new is what appears to be some resolution of the grappling Golson has been going through to find a proper expression of himself at fast tempos. He appears to have cleared away the streaming runs that he contended with for quite a while, and now has a lean attack at up tempos that is attractively propulsive and is much more to the point than his earlier work was."
You'Il note this greater economy in Benny's playing, and the consequent increased clarity of his lines, in his fiery solo on Django.
Reviewing an Art Farmer record (Art; Argo 678) recently, Ira Gitler wrote, "Farmer is a mature, personal, sensitive lyrical trumpet artist. His sound, delicate and strong simultaneously, is integrated perfectly with the beautifully phrased content of his playing."
I would add to that the observation that Art has become increasingly individual in recent years. Whatever the tempo, there is a sort of smoked quality to his tone that reminds me, curiously enough, of Lawrence Brown's trombone. Thoughtful without being a navel-gazer, Art manages to bring the sensitive inner man out to the light of day.
The idea behind the Jazztet was to achieve organization and spontaneity at the same time.
I feel that this is urgently necessary if jazz is to retain its appeal to the public — and jazz must retain appeal if it is to survive and flourish, since jazz, unlike classical music, is not a subsidized art; it has to pay its own way or starve to death.
It seems to me that the time is fast approaching when the public will weary of 190 choruses of tenor solo followed by an equally interminable trumpet solo, all of it framed between ensemble passages that are nothing more than fore-and-aft unison statements of the melody. That is why there must be thought-out shiftings of voicing and coloration within a given piece. And that means writing.
At the same time, writing that stifled the extemporaneous spark that is the essence of jazz, would be disastrous. The Jazztet, I believe, is finding the necessary delicate balance between the two. The group's growing pains are over and, because of the balance it is achieving, it has genuine significance. It is to be hoped that other groups will get the message.
Never has the group seemed more appealing than in this set of compositions and arrangements by John Lewis. I have no hesitancy in commending it to you. It knocked me out.
Gene Lees
