Coiling the spring: Ornette & Co.'s fast-forward mirth/mania

I've spent the past few days glued to WKCR, which is spinning Ornette around the clock through Wednesday, June 17, at 9:30am EST, and to my own rapidly growing Ornette Coleman collection. The concentrated listening is wonderful; the occasion is sad. Every time a major artist dies, I wonder about the cycle of tragedy and tribute—why was I not immersing myself in Ornette's music, say, a week ago, filling in the gaps in my knowledge? (The 1987 reunion of the classic quartet, both studio and live, and the pair of Sound Museum albums from 1996 are two spots in the discography that I'm now seriously investigating for the first time.) That said, I've returned to Ornette regularly since I first began loving his work roughly 20 years ago—WKCR's March 9 birthday broadcasts were always drop-everything propositions for me—but there's just so much music out there. At least we know the man felt the love while he was still alive. This is a good opportunity to mention that Ornette's friends and contemporaries Sonny Rollins and Cecil Taylor, born approximately six months after and one year before OC, respectively, are still with us. Remember it well, every day.

I think that when you love an artist's work, you carry their sound in your head, the same way you carry a friend's voice. That's why I don't place much stock in canonical thinking regarding music or the arts in general. An artist may be great, but if what they do doesn't speak to you on that private level, all the talk of their greatness, as though it were a foregone conclusion, can grow oppressive. And that can be the case even if, maybe especially if, the given artist's work does speak to you. Sometimes, for me, it can be hard to square the writer-about-music's job of having to dutifully recite the reasons for an artist's "importance" with the private sensation of why I love their work. I get why the "important" part is important. It's because, in some larger sense, the very act of speaking about a key figure's life in shorthand is important. When a major artist dies, we summarize their achievements for the benefit of those who might not be familiar with their work. But as I hinted at in this quick, by no means definitive (not being modest; just saying that definitiveness wasn't even my intention) Ornette piece for Time Out New York, the tagline version of a given artist's greatness can often feel very remote from the private truth of that same greatness, as it plays out within the heart and mind of a specific listener.

I love Ornette Coleman not because he Revolutionized Jazz, but, in part, because he was able to cultivate a circumstance in which something like this might occur:


It's no coincidence that I also cited a track from Science Fiction when we lost Charlie Haden just 11 months ago. With very few exceptions, when I think about what a given jazz hero means to me, I think about that figure in an ideal group context. For me, there were two ideal Ornette Coleman group contexts (all respects to the best of the electric years, esp. this 1978 ensemble): Coleman/Cherry/Haden/Higgins (CCHH), heard on "Civilization Day" above, and Coleman/Redman/Haden/Blackwell (CRHB). I feel that both reached their apex during the early ’70s, and specifically on this album, which features performances by each of these two configurations, as well as by a hybrid ensemble; the 1971 Belgrade concert by CRHB is equally godly. (Though I should say that judging by the 1987 recordings I'm currently savoring, CCHH kept right on evolving upon their reunion, and, though technically Ornette-less, Old and New Dreams, the Redman/Cherry/Haden/Blackwell band which fused the two groups cited above, illustrated the Coleman Concept just about as well as the master's own greatest groups.)


"Civilization Day" illustrates one key facet of that Coleman Concept, which is speed. The threshold thereof in jazz. How far can you push it? Charlie Parker had already pushed it pretty damn far. But Ornette, it seems to me, did as much as anyone to explore the border of chaos and control. Certainly there was plenty of that happening in the work of both Davis/Shorter/Hancock/Carter/Williams and Coltrane/Tyner/Garrison/Jones, but neither group ever concerned itself with the kind of gleeful mania heard on Science Fiction.

When I take a personal inventory of what I love about Ornette, I arrive at the idea that he drilled these bands so extensively, coiled their collective springs so tightly, that all four players, whether in the CCHH or CRHB configurations, could just blast off into this white-hot yet almost mirthful kind of fast-forward mode. "Free jazz" was many things to many people: explosion, expulsion, dirge, catharsis, meditation. To Ornette it was the license to dance on a molecular level, at tempos so extreme they seem almost cartoonish.

The deployment of the drums in "Civilization Day" is masterful. The way Higgins drops out after the head (:14), leaving Coleman and Cherry to twist and writhe and wriggle, coiling that spring tighter and tighter before blasting back in with a swing at once steely and buoyant. The brashness, the drive of the band at full-tilt during Cherry's solo. This is the banishment of all that has ever been boring about jazz. Haden doing his part to further coil the spring around 2:25, embarking on one of his epic, brain-bending, upward-moving Haden Slides, till you think your skull's going to burst at the simultaneous tension and drive and motion of it all. And then Higgins out again around 2:50, leaving Coleman and Haden to rev in the starting gate for a few precious seconds before the drums come back in. And once they do, Haden sounds even more hellbent, perversely shifting registers/gears (3:14–3:25) as Higgins steps on the gas. The zipping, darting Coleman wail, the expression of a man on a sonic trampoline, soaring ever higher. Wiggling and shimmying. Singing and dancing. Higgins coiling the spring for 15 almost unbearably tense seconds (4:35–4:50), bashing out snare-cymbal accents at three-beat intervals as Coleman whoops and screams. And as before, when the full-tilt swing resumes, it sounds even more maniacal, more driven, more fun. The drum solo ironically a quick breather, a respite from the CCHH mania, which returns in classically hyperbolic form during the final head.

Is this "free" jazz? Or is it the most controlled, the most together that jazz has ever sounded? It's a circumstance of group sympathy so profound that these concepts become synonymous. So that the band, collectively, is unfazed by an objectively absurd tempo. So that they sacrifice no control or precision of expression even in these circumstances of pure, adrenaline-fueled daredevilry. (There is this speed-demon aspect to the later Coleman bands with Denardo on drums, bands that, as you can hear on the Sound Museum sessions and Sound Grammar, summoned their own special kind of fast-forward mania, but with all due respect, no drummer could rival Higgins and Blackwell when it came to the challenge of maintaining a flawless sense of pocket/groove at breakneck tempos.)

As a listener, you feel like a kid on a carnival ride: "Faster! Faster!" This to me is the core OC sensation, the one to which my listening brain flashes when I think about the Ornette I know and love. It's him, yes, but it's also the hive-mind circumstance he was able to foster among his bandmates. Like Coltrane or Davis or Lacy or Braxton or Ellington or Giuffre or Shorter or Rivers or Evans or Mingus or Lehman or Threadgill or any other major figure in composed/improvised music who at one time or another has managed to align their concept perfectly with one or more fixed groups of collaborators, Coleman found that group ecstasy with CCHH and CRHB. It's there on record, and it is immortal.

"…as long as there's an Earth": Celebrating Charlie Haden at the Town Hall

At some point during last night's Charlie Haden tribute at the Town Hall, I realized that the expectations and considerations I'd walked in with were meaningless. As I attempted to convey last year, upon Haden's passing, I adore this man's music and felt compelled to show up to this public event to pay respects. I also, I'll admit, felt a bit of what they call FOMO—fear of missing out. Denardo Coleman was listed among the participants, and as I had learned over the summer, that meant that Ornette himself might show up. And who could say for sure, I thought, that Keith Jarrett, whose Haden collaborations have been a recent obsession of mine, wouldn't surprise us all and make an appearance?

So when was it that I chucked this admittedly narrow-minded checklist mentality? It could've been when, during a duet by Lee Konitz and Brad Mehldau, I realized that I was witnessing one of the most relaxed and conversational musical events I've ever seen take place on a stage. "Performance" seems almost too pretentious a word for such a casually majestic and—to use a word that Joshua Redman, after his own too-brief turn with Kenny Barron, Scott Colley and Jack DeJohnette, attributed to Haden's own musicality and humanity—empathic duet, which found Mehldau gently buoying that exquisitely sweet, breathy Konitz alto sound, as well as the saxophonist's impromptu scat-style vocalizing. Or during a piece commemorating Haden's love for and collaboration with Alice Coltrane, which featured staggeringly gorgeous harp ripples from Brandee Younger, saxophone work of stunning poise from Ravi Coltrane and Geri Allen's warm, subtle piano magic. (Yes, I'm running out of terms of breathless praise here, a feeling that anyone who was in the audience last night can probably relate to.) Or maybe it was when Dr. Maurice Jackson, an author, Georgetown professor and Civil Rights Movement veteran, spoke movingly about his longtime friendship with Haden, singling out the bassist as one of "too few good white men" and aligning him with Anthony Benezet, an 18th-century French Quaker whom Jackson, in a 2010 biography, labeled the "Father of Atlantic Abolitionism."

What I'm trying to get across is that during last night's proceedings, a certain kind of alchemy occurred, through music and through speech and through the projection of emotion, that made the late subject feel palpably present, as though, at the event's conclusion, Haden's name would be called and the audience would all turn to face him, standing in the crowd or onstage, and honor him with an ovation. Having not attended many political rallies in my lifetime, I can't remember being present at any other gathering where I felt such a strong sense of consensus, shared by audience members and those onstage alike. And the collective conviction was, simply, that Charlie Haden was an extraordinary man and an extraordinary musician, and that these two qualities were inseparable.

Haden's wife, Ruth Cameron, a wonderfully dignified, gracious host throughout the three-hour event, spoke candidly about her husband's struggles with addiction, about how he had always told her that he was "in trouble" as soon as he put down his bass and had to navigate life as it existed apart from music. True as that may have been, Haden must have sorted out his issues to some degree, because nearly every associate who stepped on the Town Hall stage last night spoke about how knowing Charlie Haden and playing with him had enriched their lives. From Cameron herself, who spoke of Haden's sense that it was his mission to bring beauty into the world. To Mehldau, who, speaking after his performance with Konitz, alluded to his own history with substance abuse and how Haden's example had helped him cope. To Pat Metheny, who played a beautiful acoustic medley of Haden pieces and then reflected on his countless collaborations with the bassist, and on how he had shared things in conversations with Haden that he had never shared with anyone else. To Denardo Coleman, who spoke, self-deprecatingly but with great dignity, on his father's behalf, and discussed how Haden had always—from their first session together, when Denardo was only 10—helped him feel happy and at ease, as well as personally and musically validated. To Joshua Redman, who, remarkably, spoke of listening to Haden's many collaborations with his father—Dewey Redman, who had been mostly absent during his upbringing—and how the intimacy he felt radiating from that music actually helped him learn to love a dad he hadn't really even known.

Everyone spoke of Haden's zeal for beauty and positivity, each in their own way: Putter Smith, a fellow bassist (in the extraordinary Mintz Quartet, for one) who had known Haden in L.A. in the ’50s, asserting that Haden's contribution to the language of the bass was a certain kind of profound intimacy, the handling of the instrument as though it were a baby to be cradled. Ernie Watts, saxophonist in Quartet West, which played a marvelous two-song mini set near the end of the show, with Colley on bass, talking matter-of-factly about how Haden's musical language was nothing less than the manifestation of God speaking through him. Haden's friend and lawyer Fred Ansis and friend and record-industry associate (seemingly there was no figure in Haden's life that did not also earn the distinction of friend, along with whatever other role they might play) Jean Philippe Allard recalling with good-natured exasperation their years of fielding Haden's ever-urgent phone calls about session budgets or packaging design, all of which would begin with, "Hey man…" (Haden's religious use of that phrase became an in-jokey refrain throughout the evening), and how despite the day-to-day difficulties, they were always happy to help Haden realize his unwavering commitment to excellence. And the comedian Richard Lewis, who in a video statement spoke of how much he valued Haden's friendship and inspiration and, like Ravi Coltrane, Maurice Jackson and several others, alluded to the bassist's deeply corny sense of humor. ("Charlie—in heaven, if there is a heaven, play bass; do not tell jokes.")

And those who didn't honor Haden's quest for beauty verbally did so through music. As epitomized in the Konitz/Mehldau performance, there was a deep humanity and soul coursing through all of last night's musical events, one that like Haden himself, transcended genre, transcended the notion of a "tribute concert" and felt like nothing less than a collective embrace, an affirmation, with each player summoning an almost superhuman, and quintessentially Haden-esque generosity. Trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, saxophonist Tony Malaby, trumpeter Seneca Black and others taking, in turn, stupendously emotive solos during the Liberation Music Orchestra's rendition of "Amazing Grace" during their show-concluding mini set, presided over by the magisterial, impossibly cool Carla Bley; Ernie Watts displaying, in his tenor work with Quartet West, otherworldly degrees of virtuosity and passion; Henry Butler and Gonzalo Rubalcaba offering solo piano performances (the former also singing) that blended staggering command with wrenching tenderness; Petra, Tanya and Rachel Haden (a.k.a., the Haden Triplets) and their brother, Josh Haden, accompanied by Bill Frisell and bassist Mark Fain, displaying their magical vocal harmony on the gospel song "Voice From On High," an echo of the honoree's own upbringing singing country and folk with his family's band. (We got a taste of that via one of several clips from Reto Caduff's wondrous Haden documentary, Rambling Boy, still sadly unavailable as a DVD or download due to music-rights issues. Can anyone help remedy this?)

There was no intermission, no lull. The unfamiliar faces were as riveting as the stars, the speeches as profound as the music. The event, and here I have to credit Ruth Cameron again, had a real narrative arc; it told a story of a musical life, and gave you a sense of the life in and around that music. There was so much giving, verbally and sonically. What wasn't there—Ornette, Keith or, and this last part was strangely welcome, any sort of imitation, invocation or even recorded representation of Haden's own bass sound; nor did the program feature what to me is the bassist's signature composition, "Song for Che," which had to be a calculated decision—was ultimately irrelevant, because of the bountiful richness of what was.

Any Charlie Haden fan feels, through the countless recordings, through the immense humanity and courage of his sound on the bass, a certain kind of, to borrow the title of one of my favorite Haden albums, closeness with this folk hero of modern music. Last night's event affirmed that feeling, the sense that anyone who knew this man in life, worked with him in music, felt his presence in any way, came away uplifted. As I suggested above, I have a sense that a lot of what I've written here might, to those who weren't in attendance at the Town Hall, read like hyperbole. But just as Haden's various friends and associates related, I felt nothing but beauty, joy and profundity from this event; in short, it was like a megadose of what I feel every time I listen to Charlie Haden—with Ornette, with Keith, with Old and New Dreams, with the Liberation Music Orchestra, on his many treasured duet albums. I thank Ruth Cameron and all the other participants for affirming everything I already knew I felt for this giant of music, for encouraging me to explore all the Haden I don't know (I need to get familiar with the Quartet West catalog, pronto) and for generally illustrating in such a poetic, human way how music and emotion are the same thing, how true artistic generosity, the kind that Charlie Haden achieved, can only be achieved by living a truly empathic life. The story we heard last night is a story that bears infinite retelling. Fortunately, as Richard Lewis put it, with funny yet sincere hyperbole, it's a story—the Charlie Haden story—we'll be telling as long as there's an Earth.

Four free spirits: Jarrett/Redman/Haden/Motian, together and apart

Happy New Year to anyone who might be reading this!

Since I last checked in on DFSBP, I completed my listening survey of the entire output of Keith Jarrett's American Quartet and the Jarrett/Haden/Motian trio that preceded it, a body of work that spans just under 10 years, from the May, 1967 session that produced Life Between the Exit Signs to the October, 1976 ones that yielded both Byablue and Bop-Be. I skipped over most of the Jarrett releases from this period that don't feature this band, though I did make time to revisit the pianist's excellent 1971 solo debut, Facing You, and to check out Jarrett's sketchy but intriguing 1971 duo album with Jack DeJohnette, Ruta and Daitya, and his stunted yet weirdly charming 1968 singer-songwriter effort, Restoration Ruin. (Fascinating, and in a way, completely logical, that Restoration was recorded while Jarrett was working with Charles Lloyd and already leading the Haden/Motian trio.) I did take a stab at Köln but it didn't really stick—I enjoyed what I heard but wanted to stay focused on the group recordings.

Conclusions, beyond what I wrote about the earlier records? Listen to these albums! Every one of them is worthwhile. In terms of the Impulse! period and beyond, which starts with 1973's Fort Yawuh, the ones that really struck me this time around were 1974's Treasure Island (which plays like a tidier sequel to the mighty Expectations, discussed in the prior post), The Survivors' Suite, Eyes of the Heart and Byablue. The latter is basically a Paul Motian album as played by the American Quartet, and it's everything you'd hope for from a session of that description. The two ECMs, Survivors' and Eyes, recorded in April and May of 1976, respectively, are mandatory for any fan of these players working together during these years. The former, in particular, is simply overwhelming, that rare jazz album that has a real narrative arc and isn't simply a series of performances. As the years went on, the American Quartet seemed to settle into a sort of comfy way of working, with the wild idiosyncrasy of the early-’70s Jarrett output crystallizing into a more or less predictable aesthetic; that is to say, you know you're going to get roughly one raucous burner, one gorgeous ballad and one world-music-y texture piece per record. There's not a dud among the mid-to-late period Impulse! releases by this band, but I admit that some of them—Back Hand, Death and the Flower, Mysteries, Shades, Bop-Be—do blur together a bit for me.

Survivors' bucks that trend in a big way. It does play with many of the same elements, but it feels entirely other to me, 1) because it's split into two big uninterrupted chunks, 2) because it's so packed with great writing and urgent ensemble performance and 3) because of the marvelous production values, which make the Impulse! American Quartet albums sound rickety by comparison. I only played it through once, but I felt absolutely spent afterward, wrung out. I feel comfortable calling it a classic, and the apex of these musicians' long, fruitful collaboration. I really wish someone had steered me toward this record sooner; seems to me like desert-island material.

Eyes is less monumental, but summons a similar kind of grandeur. An intriguing aspect of this album is the fact that, aside from Hamburg ’72, it seems to be the only album-length document we have of Jarrett, Haden and Motian working as a trio from after the point when Dewey Redman began playing with the group. Yes, Redman is on Eyes of the Heart, but—for reasons I haven't been able to fully verify—half of the album's roughly 50-minute running time goes by before he enters. As several Amazon commenters suggest, the intensity of the final section of "Eyes of the Heart (Part Two)," once Redman does begin playing, is extraordinary, so much so that it almost seems like a strange blessing that he's absent from what came before. Eyes is a mellower album than Survivors', but as with Survivors', the loud sections really go for the throat. ("Encore A" features some of the most ecstatically bashing Paul Motian drumming I've heard.) Chronologically, these albums sit within the greater American Quartet discography, but in terms of the listening experience, they almost seem like a little two-volume side project, during which these four musicians entered into some sort of collective trance and propelled themselves beyond where they went on any of the Impulse! discs, entering a truly elite realm. To me, if you're going to argue, as Ethan Iverson has and I'd second, that Keith Jarrett's American Quartet belongs in the jazz-working-band-hall-of-fame, along with, say, Davis/Shorter/Hancock/Carter/Williams and Coltrane/Tyner/Garrison/Jones, these are the albums you point to, particularly Survivors'. Both of these are records I need—and, more importantly, want—to spend way more time with.

I'm exaggerating, of course, but in a way, the American Quartet is a prism through which all jazz of this era (late-’60s through late ’70s, a period that's often been unfairly labeled as a low point for the music) can be understood. You have all these strains colliding in one band, currents crossing: alumni from bands led by giants such as Ornette and Miles, collaborators of major figures like Bill Evans, Charles Lloyd and Paul Bley. And just as importantly, you have three other budding bandleaders aside from Jarrett, who were working out their own respective personal aesthetics while helping to shape the group one. Just as Jarrett had when he was a member of Lloyd's and Miles's bands, all of these players made masterpieces under their own names during the time they were in Jarrett's band: Haden's classic duet sessions Closeness and The Golden Number, both recorded in 1976, not to mention the Liberation Music Orchestra's debut, from ’69; Redman's The Ear of the Behearer and Coincide, from 1973–74, albums which I've loved in the past but really need to revisit; and two remarkable Motian records, Conception Vessel (a nearly fully improvised album, featuring Haden and Sam Brown, a frequent American Quartet collaborator, on guitar, that to me feels beautifully empty of compositional, directional content in the same way that Survivors' Suite feels so beautifully full) and Tribute, from ’72 and ’74, respectively. (Also, it's crazy to think that just two months after participating in the July, 1971 sessions that yielded Jarrett's Birth, El Juicio and The Mourning of a Star, Redman and Haden were recording the immortal Science Fiction with Ornette, and that two months after that, they were doing this onstage with Ornette and Ed Blackwell. Still think the early ’70s was a fallow period? That's a rhetorical question; chances are, if you're reading this in the first place, you don't subscribe to that outdated shorthand.)

All of this music above rewards attention. All of it is worthwhile. And the tangled who-played-with-whom account above speaks to something I hinted at in the Jarrett post that precedes this one. There, I quoted an essential 2008 Ted Panken interview with Jarrett, in which the pianist characterizes his trio with Haden and Motian (the one that fed directly into the American Quartet), in contrast with his later group with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, like this: "The early trio represented three free spirits, and I chose them because of that." This "free spirits" concept isn't necessarily novel; it's a driving force behind just about any great jazz. But the way it played out in and around the American Quartet during the ’70s is really remarkable. The same way Miles or Charles Lloyd did, Jarrett wasn't just recruiting top players to staff his groups, he was also growing great bandleaders. The same way everyone seemed to leave Miles a great leader (Tony Williams, to name just one shining example!), or Jarrett and DeJohnette did in the case of Lloyd, so did Jarrett's "sidemen" do the same.

The more leeway you give, the freer you allow "your" spirits to be, the more cross-pollination you foster, the more leadership you inspire, the better your jazz is, the better their jazz is and the better jazz is as a whole. Yes, the American Quartet broke up, but its members took bits and pieces of that aesthetic and spread it ever outward, Jarrett himself into his European Quartet, Motian into a series of compelling groups that culminated in his landmark trio with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano, Haden and Redman into Old and New Dreams (which, though of course primarily Ornette-inspired, could also be looked at as a continuation of the Haden/Redman partnership that started in Ornette's bands and only strengthened in Jarrett's) and beyond.

As with Miles's bands, and many other era-defining partnerships in and outside of jazz, Jarrett/Redman/Haden/Motian was impermanent, non-exclusive. "Fleeting" would be wrong because, after all, these four musicians did play together for the better part of a decade. But what I mean to say is that each artist had somewhere else to go, a personal destiny to fulfill, a freedom of spirit to realize. And these sorts of alliances, groups composed of equally masterful, equally distinctive, equally free spirits, each a born leader and an aesthetic dynamo in his or her own right, are where maybe the greatest pleasures in jazz lie. What a gift that this particular alliance, as well as its countless offshoots, was so well-documented.

"…that revolution period": Keith Jarrett's anti-purism, 1967–’72

"We were in the midst of that revolution period, and I felt that we were defying the norms of the time. That means in all ways… If we wanted to swing, we could. If we didn’t, we didn’t. If the overall context demanded both, we could do that."—Keith Jarrett on his late-’60s/early-’70s trio with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian, from a 2008 interview with Ted Panken

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 "It seemed to me with Keith it was more fun in a way. It was so open and so free that you could almost do whatever you wanted. It was almost like you didn't even care whether the audience was there or not, or whether they liked it or whether they didn't. It was quite different with Bill [Evans]… I think that was the influence of the times too, you know? I mean, playing with Bill there wasn't much rock and roll around, really. But playing with Keith, that was a whole different thing."—Paul Motian, from a 1996 interview with Chuck Braman

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I briefly mentioned the recent ECM archival release Hamburg ’72, a live recording of Keith Jarrett's trio with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian, in my 2014 jazz round-up. Since compiling that list, I've fallen down the rabbit hole with this album, and with the Jarrett/Haden/Motian records that led up to it: a series of LPs under Jarrett's name starting with 1967's Life Between the Exit Signs and including 1968's Somewhere Before, a trio of albums culled from various 1971 sessions—El Juicio (The Judgement), Birth and The Mourning of a Star, the first two of which feature Dewey Redman—and 1972's Expectations, a double album recorded before Hamburg ’72, but released after. The pre- and early history of Jarrett's great American Quartet, in other words.

This body of work fascinates me for a couple reasons.

1) You don't hear about it a lot. During the past few years, the American Quartet itself seems to have really gotten its due from Ethan Iverson and others—Iverson's interview with Jarrett, where the latter calls the Redman/Haden/Motian quartet "this absolutely raw commodity," is required reading for anyone interested in this band—but most of that praise tends to center on the group's later recordings, from 1973's Fort Yawuh on. For one thing, until recently, I didn't realize that the Jarrett/Haden/Motian trio had laid such extensive groundwork for the better-known quartet. (Just to make it clear, the Redman-less Hamburg ’72 dates from after Redman was already working with the band, at least on record; I'm not sure whether Dewey had played live with Jarrett by the summer of ’72 and just couldn't make that particular gig, or whether he had yet to make his onstage debut with the group.)

2) And here's where the above quotes come in, specifically Jarrett's "If we wanted to swing, we could / If we didn’t, we didn’t" credo, and Motian's "fun," "open" and "free" characterizations: There's something about the broadness of this band's aesthetic that, at this exact point in my listening life, appeals to me immensely.

More on that second point:

When I was first really getting my head around jazz, my primary reference point was Blue Note. I still consider the label's early-to-mid-’60s output to be my personal gold standard for what jazz can achieve. To me, the Blue Note aesthetic is inseparable from a certain kind of purity. Rudy Van Gelder's impeccably clean, vibrant recordings; the stark personnel listings on the back of each record, with each musician typically listed as playing a single instrument, the one he had mastered. Yes, you had your brilliant multi-instrumentalists such as Eric Dolphy and Sam Rivers in the mix, but mostly you had your one-ax champs, your Joe Hendersons and Lee Morgans and Jackie McLeans and Elvin Joneses and Larry Youngs and Bobby Hutchersons and Tony Williamses. No fucking around; no dabbling; these guys just played what they played. And even when the context is freer and more exploratory, such as on Williams's Life Time album, there's a certain kind of focus to these sessions that I found and still find immensely attractive.

It's hard to overstate just how greatly Jarrett's American Quartet, and the trio that preceded it, diverges from the purist Blue Note aesthetic. This is a band that throws that kind of focus out the window in favor of something more mongrel, more open-ended, more porous. You could invoke Motian's descriptor, "fun," here, but that seems to indicate some sort of value judgment. Better to just point out the American Quartet's wild stylistic swings, Jarrett's staunch commitment to multi-instrumentalism during these years, the random percussionists thrown into the mix, the hippie-ish insanity of it all, the overall, yes, raw-commodity-dom of the enterprise. It's such a blender of an aesthetic, and if you're going into the work of the American Quartet or the Jarrett/Haden/Motian trio expecting simple Blue Note–ism—three or four dudes playing one role apiece and just getting down to business—you're going to be extremely frustrated by this band.

To get into this music, you have to throw all those expectations out the window. No two pieces on Hamburg ’72, for instance, really sound anything like one another; as with the Quartet, there is no definitive performance by this trio—or rather the most un–"jazz combo"–ish performances could be considered just as definitive as the more straightforward ones where everyone plays their "proper" role. There's the polite, Bill Evans Trio–y "Rainbow"; "Everything That Lives Laments," a two-minute interlude from The Mourning of a Star that's expanded here into a near-ten-minute patchouli texture-quest with Jarrett spending a good deal of the running time on flute; the frantic, scampering, and, yes, suitably Ornette-ish "Piece for Ornette," a chance for all three musicians to really unleash, with Jarrett playing exclusively soprano sax; the super bluesy "Take Me Back," a gloriously infectious piece with a poppy turnaround that, like many of the great early-’70s Jarrett themes, reminds me a whole lot of the contemporary Steely Dan output (I highly recommend watching the video of this performance); and so forth.

That kind of variety was in evidence from the get-go. Life Between the Exit Signs, the recorded debut of the Jarrett/Haden/Motian team-up, is a fascinatingly eclectic piano-trio album that convincingly reconciles Bill Evans with Cecil Taylor and Paul Bley, and also advances its own unique concepts. (For example, I've never heard any other piano-trio piece that sounds anything like "Church Dreams.") It's also obvious, here and on the later Somewhere Before and The Mourning of a Star—both of which run the gamut from thorny free jazz to covers of songs by the likes of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell—that Jarrett was soaking up bandleading influences from his successive employers Charles Lloyd (note Keith's already-rampant multi-instrumentalism in this great extended performance—he's reaching inside the piano one minute, picking up the soprano sax the next; in this sense the American Quartet and the Jarrett/Haden/Motian trio are direct extensions of this Lloyd quartet) and Miles Davis, both of whom built their careers on the idea that populist and experimental impulses shouldn't have to be mutually exclusive, that a set of jazz can veer wildly between crowd-pleasing and self-indulgent modes. (For context, consider that Jarrett was a member of Lloyd's band when he recorded Life Between the Exit Signs and Somewhere Before, and a member of Davis's when he made Mourning, Birth—home of the outrageously funky "Mortgage on My Soul"—and El Juicio.) So you put all these influences together, the Lloyd and the Miles and the Evans and the Bley and the Dylan and the aforementioned Ornette, and it's only natural that you'd end up with an aesthetic as fun and free and borderless and anti-purist as the one documented on these releases.



If Hamburg ’72—and if you enjoy that release, you really want to hunt down the uncut bootleg version (see here, for example) of the same show, which contains about twice as much material—represents the live peak of the 1972 Keith Jarrett Experience, so to speak, Expectations, recorded two months before, represents the studio peak. In some ways, Expectations might be my single favorite Keith Jarrett album, at least of the ones I've explored so far. What this album does is take the eclecticism described above and turbocharges it, studio-izes it, adding extra strings, brass and guitar (on this album, the American Quartet is really a quintet, since guitarist Sam Brown is a full-on featured member of the core band). Expectations is the ultimate anti–Blue Note jazz album, a sprawling beast of a thing that explodes with poppy melody, gritty expressionism and just a general overflow of ideas. Nearly every track presents a different approach to the Jarrett aesthetic. You have your Steely Dan–meets-opening-credits-theme soul-pop groovers, such as "The Magician in You" and the aforementioned "Take Me Back." You have your shaggy, celebratory Ornette homages like "The Circular Letter (For J.K.)" and "Roussilion," the latter of which shows off just how deadly the American Quartet could sound when it stripped down to its "central" elements and simply burned. You have your 17-minute odyssey, "Nomads," which elongates and expands the "Take Me Back" aesthetic into a borderline psych-prog zone. And you have your orchestral, melody-drunk bliss-outs such as "Expectations" and closing track "There Is a Road (God's River)," the latter of which breaks out into a drummerless, down-home Jarrett/Haden/Brown jam that's one of the most outrageously joyful musical episodes I've ever heard, on a jazz record or otherwise.

Again, in setting Expectations and these other Jarrett records against the ’60s Blue Notes I learned to love as a younger listener, I'm not indicating some sort of hierarchy or value judgment. What I'm mainly trying to convey is how expansive jazz is, that it can contain all these different flavors of greatness. During my hard-core Blue Note years, I'm pretty sure I would've dismissed Hamburg ’72, Expectations and other Jarrett releases from this period as unfocused ("Put down that soprano sax, dammit!" "Why are you all playing steel drums?" "Give me some jazz, not vampy pop!"), maybe even pandering. Now, though, I'm in more of a tear-down-the-walls phase. I still want my music undiluted, but that's not the same as wanting it segregated, with the "straight-ahead" over here, the "free" over here, the soul off in one corner, the rock and pop in another. If it's all flooding over you in a single experience, if an artist wants to serve you sushi and rice and beans on the same plate, there's profundity in that, too.

Obviously, and especially in light of Jarrett's career trajectory, leading up to the seemingly more conservative Standards Trio (I say "seemingly" because I haven't yet delved deeply enough into this body of work to feel comfortable categorizing it, and I know that this group has ventured into plenty of experimental areas over the years), the eclecticism displayed on these ’67–’72 recordings was about capturing a moment in time, about, as Jarrett suggests in his invocation of "that revolution period" or Motian in his mention of "the influence of the times," taking the temperature both of the jazz scene and the music scene as a whole. Just like Miles, Jarrett was at this point both an insular and confident bandleader and one obsessed with currency. The result was a true Woodstockian jazz, born of and tied to its age. It wasn't better or worse than the classic Blue Note stuff; it was simply other. And right now I'm loving it both for what it is (wide-eyed, unfettered) and isn't (severe, walled-off from pop). Can't wait to really put the later American Quartet recordings under the magnifying glass and see how they fit into this whole, neverending discussion.

Folk hero: Goodbye, Charlie Haden

Charlie Haden, 1937–2014

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I'm listening to Ornette Coleman's "Street Woman" (fall, 1971), probably my favorite Charlie Haden performance.



There is a joyous, maniacal folk energy coursing through this recording, and Haden is its nerve center. I don't know the technical term for what it is that Haden is doing during the opening head, but it's a sound I know, and cherish, as the Haden Slide—this sort of sticky, slippery journey down the neck of the bass, creating a descending drone that underpins the horn flurries like a subterranean river of molasses. (There's another beautiful Haden Slide, this one running low-to-high, from about 1:03 to 1:07.) And then the zoned-out ecstasy of the bass break at 2:07, as though Haden were weaving his ideas on a foot-controlled loom, heaping momentum on momentum. Then slamming on these completely punk, throbbing offbeat notes underneath Don Cherry's solo at 3:59. And then back to the Haden Slide for the concluding head—aspirating, invoking, drawing in and out, and up and down. Charlie Haden is the dark, pulsating heart of this piece, and, I'd argue, of the Ornette Coleman aesthetic in general. (He is also, of course, the keeper of the trance on the original "Lonely Woman.")

He served the same function in Keith Jarrett's American Quartet and Old and New Dreams—this collective body of work, the output of these two groups as well as the various Coleman recordings over the years, is highest-echelon art, the most human that jazz, or music in general, can get. Charlie Haden was the steward of what I think of as the earth element in jazz. He was the soft, dark, rich, fertile soil of any performance he participated in. Last night, a friend referred to Haden's principal contribution simply as love, and yes, that is really the most direct way to say it. He dug in and spurred himself to emotive ecstasy so that the music could take off. As jazz attained lift-off in the late ’50s, and in new ways on through the ’70s, Charlie Haden was right in the middle of that. What he represents is "free jazz" not as obscurantism but as a quest for utopia, for greater humanity. He was always just trying to get to the song, and, through it, to you.

The aforementioned collaborations are my favorite Charlie Haden contexts, the ones I know best. The Liberation Music Orchestra and Quartet West, to name just two other major Haden endeavors, are more or less blind spots for me, and I need to fix that asap. In a somewhat more obscure vein, the two 1976 Horizon duo albums, The Golden Number and Closeness, are treasured items in my LP collection: A) because they're every bit as special as the personnel (Jarrett, Coleman—who plays alto on Closeness and trumpet on TGN, and would reprise this team-up on ’77's Soapsuds, Soapsuds—Cherry, Paul Motian, Alice Coltrane, Hampton Hawes, Archie Shepp) would lead you to believe, and B) because they sum up so poetically the Charlie Haden ethos of music-making:



This is—forget "jazz"—music as communion, with a collaborator and with something higher. It's only listening—yes, closeness. This is music that smothers the rarefied, chops-and-theory-forward impulse in jazz beneath its pillowy bootheel. It's about spending time, getting into it, sublimating, chasing collective beauty. But not some New Age–y ideal. This music is frequently meditative and gorgeous ("Ellen David"), sure, but also hard and gritty when it needs to be (see "O.C.," with its wiry physicality). Mostly it's about meeting his collaborators where they live—plunging into Alice Coltrane's blissed-out universe during "For Turiya," for instance, or reveling in Hampton Hawes's deep blues bag on "Turnaround." Or forging pan-ethnic sound spaces with Paul Motian and Don Cherry on "For a Free Portugal" (demonstrating Haden's trademark way of making political music feel noble and artful, not pretentious and heavy-handed) and "Out of Focus," respectively.

The liner notes to these records are masterpieces unto themselves, with so much love, wisdom and goodwill being tossed around among Haden, his collaborators and the listener. You read all this, and it drives home what you already knew: Charlie Haden was a true American folk hero.

A few selections:

"Charlie Haden plays for the existence of the listener. This reason alone makes him a musical guru."

"Charlie's music has its roots in Viva la humans. It is not Capitalistic, Communistic or Socialistic. His music does not dictate."

—Ornette Coleman

"As inner-directed musicians continue to become rarer…, Charlie Haden becomes more of a phenomenon each year… His stature is very often not even admitted among musicians themselves, as they, in general, are externally directed by mere circumstantial forces. He is one of the very few consistently musical players I know… and my participation on this album is a small tribute to his commitment."—Keith Jarrett

"He has contributed much to JAZZ and ranks as one of the greatest players of all time. To say that he is a sensitive, sympathetic musician would be an understatement. He is a natural, original and beautiful player and on this album has created music from the heart."—Paul Motian

"One of the rewards in playing music is the opportunity of meeting and playing with special human beings that come along, not very often, but when they do, bring a message so strong and beautiful that you feel and you know a giant has come to play. This is the feeling I experience whenever I hear Charlie."—Hampton Hawes

"Closeness: one part of the creative process; feeling a closeness to Life; having a need inside to express your feelings in a creative language; dedicating your life to the language we call Jazz (creative music born in the United States); being close to others who have also dedicated their lives to creative music; wanting and hoping to communicate this closeness to as many people as possible through music. These are some of the things this album is about."—Charlie Haden

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Some of the great tributes that have turned up so far:

*Fred Kaplan // Slate
*Peter Hum & Co. // The Ottawa Citizen
*Patrick Jarenwattananon // NPR (plus this awesome archived Haden/Jarrett encounter)
*Nate Chinen // NY Times

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And finally, a gem you may not have seen. Three fourths of the Jarrett quartet, playing with Baikida Carroll under Haden's leadership:

Charlie Haden

Motian/Haden/Redman/Carroll

This is an extraordinary performance; I recommend blowing it up to full screen, and watching it front-to-back, followed by part two. Howard Mandel's archival Motian interview tipped me off re: this project—three fourths of Keith Jarrett's American Quartet, but with trumpeter Baikida Carroll subbing for Jarrett, and with Charlie Haden at the helm—and lo and behold, there's a full, pro-quality concert on YouTube. You'll hear a lot of Ornette-ism in this music, but especially in the second piece (which starts at 16:40), this band goes to a freer, more uncharted place. I really wish these four had made a proper record.

(Incidentally, Baikida Carroll plays the Stone in NYC next Wednesday, December 7. He'll co-lead a "Wuartet" with Tim Berne. You might have heard Mr. Carroll on the wonderful new Dogon A.D. reissue.)

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P.S. Here is my review of Sunday night's Frank Ocean show at Bowery Ballroom.

P.P.S. Here is my joint preview of two monster metal shows going down in NYC this weekend: Inquisition with Disma (whose Towards the Megalith is one of my favorite metal records of the year) on Friday; and Hull with the mighty Eyehategod on Sunday.

Thanks: NYC

Appropriately, given the date, I'm feeling thankful for a number of things. For example, how amazing it is to live in a city like New York and to be able to immerse myself in music for a living. Fact: From last Tuesday, November 16, through this past Monday, November 22, I witnessed the following four performances:

1) The Paul Motian Septet at the Village Vanguard [Tweet 1, 2]

2) Cannibal Corpse at Santos Party House [Review and pics via The Volume]

3) Paul Bley and Charlie Haden at the Blue Note [Tweet 1]

4) Bob Dylan and His Band at Terminal 5 [Review via The Volume]

There's really nothing to say but "Wow." Hope everyone has a great holiday, and I'll meet you back here soon. Still tripping out over Jeff Wagner's prog-metal tome, Mean Deviation, discussed in detail in the previous post.

Listening jag: Motian, Malaby and related

For a while now, I've really enjoyed how Scott Tennent (author of the forthcoming 33 1/3 book on Spiderland and a fellow craw and Dazzling Killmen fanatic) documents and analyzes his listening habits. I thought I'd try something similar.

The guiding principle here is that I'm constantly on what I call listening jags (I've used "listening ruts" before too, but I think this works better), prolonged periods of immersing myself in the work of one artist or several related ones. Anything can trigger this: a new album release, a live show, a blog post. And once I'm off, I'm really off: For however long the listening jag lasts, I can hardly bear to hear anything other than the artist or artists in question (when listening is recreational and not work-related, that is). It's sort of like that "Once you get that taste" concept—I have a sound in my head and that's the only sound I want. Sometimes, the jags last a day, sometimes weeks; sometimes they're cyclical, e.g., I seem to find myself on an Andrew Hill jag every six months or so, and on a Cecil Taylor jag about once a year.

Anyway, I thought I'd give a little window into my current listening jag (the axis of which is the drummer Paul Motian) and how it developed.

1) I was reading this Destination: Out post on Joe Giardullo, which led me to this Giardullo interview on Paris Transatlantic by Clifford Allen. In the Q&A, Giardullo, who has often covered Paul Motian tunes, states: "That trio [Motian] had with Charles Brackeen and David Izenzon is the trio." I'm a huge fan of Motian, Brackeen and Izenzon, and while I'd heard this trio's output (one ECM record and some killer live stuff), I decided I needed to get deeper into it. So for a while I was deep into said ECM record by Motian, Dance, the live stuff linked above and another Motian ECM album, Le Voyage, which features Brackeen along with J.F. Jenny-Clark on bass.

2) I decided to go further with Motian, so I began spinning Keith Jarrett's American Quartet stuff and got especially into the album Byablue, on which most of the material is composed by Motian. I also became obsessed with the Jarrett/Haden/Motian YouTube clip discussed in my last post.

3) I delved further into the Motian discography, which led me to the ’80s albums on Soul Note, of which Steve Smith was kind enough to lend me two, Misterioso (still digesting) and the absolutely phenomenal The Story of Maryam. Both sessions feature Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell—who would of course stay on with Motian and fill out his signature trio—as well as the late saxophonist Jim Pepper and bassist Ed Schuller.

4) At this point, after I had spoken to him of my Motian jag, a generous brother-in-jazz (who shall remain anonymous) passed me a bootleg of a very recent (as in weeks ago) Motian gig at the Vanguard, which featured Frisell, and the saxophonists Mark Turner and Tony Malaby. I haven't written much about Malaby on this blog, but I truly love his playing, and I'm also a big Turner fan (as evidenced by posts on Fly and Billy Hart's quartet). This boot is a holy thing and I wish everyone could hear it.

5) At this point, a taste for Malaby sprouted as an offshoot of my taste for Motian. I recalled that the two of them appeared together on Malaby's Adobe, from 2004, so I got that and was instantly fascinated. Again, still digesting, but this record is definitely an obsession in the making.

6) I left Motian for a bit and moved further into the Malaby universe, checking out two fantastic records: last year's Voladores and Tamarindo, a Clean Feed trio date from a couple years back w/ William Parker and Nasheet Waits.

7) Then I looped back around to Motian (and Ed Schuller as well), spending a bit of time with Tim Berne's Mutant Variations.

What does all this mean? Nothing, other than that it demonstrates how my listening brain works. I have a certain sonic area in mind and I want to explore it fully. With Motian and Malaby there's something hard to pin down that binds them: this sort of ghostly, free-floating-ness. The Malaby band on Voladores is called Apparitions, and I think this fits really well re: what I'm looking for in jazz right now. I'm showing no signs of moving on from this jag: As I type, I'm already planning to load Adobe onto the iPod for the morning commute.

Public service announcement, etc.

Greetings, good people. Just a quick note about a show that STATS is playing this coming Sunday, 8/2. It's part of the Show No Mercy metal series at Public Assembly in Williamsburg, and the bill is amazing. Headlining is Cleveland's Keelhaul, who make complex and brutally elegant music. This will be a release party for their brand-new Hydra Head record, Keelhaul's Triumphant Return to Obscurity. The show will be rounded out by three other great, loud bands, and the whole night was co-curated by Pitchfork/Stereogum scribe Brandon Stosuy and Brooklyn Vegan blogger Black Bubblegum. All pertinent info is on the flyer above (click to enlarge). I don't know for sure yet, but my guess is that we'll be playing first, right around 8pm. [Update: Just confirmed this, and we are in fact playing first.] The new STATS EP, Marooned, is still available in a digital format free of charge. Drop a line to statsbrooklyn[at]gmail[dot]com if you'd like to hear it.

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Recent delights:

Old and New Dreams s/t [ECM, 1979], Playing
Such comfort and delight in teamwork. Just makes you want to live and listen. Love these guys.

Charlie Haden The Golden Number
Fascinating session, justly adored by Ethan Iverson, to name one prominent fan. To me, the Archie Shepp duet is the real gem, but everything here is special. Anyone catch Haden with Paul Bley this past weekend? I really wanted to see that.

Cecil Taylor 3 Phasis
Masterful, celebratory turbulence. A lot of bawdy soul in Cecil's playing. Raphé Malik is so bold and LOUD—a severely underrated player. Love those fly-on-the-wall Gary Giddins liner notes too.

Muhal Richard Abrams with Malachi Favors Sightsong
Excellent, concise and very diverse duo jams from these two AACM geniuses. Some pieces free-flowing; others tight and swinging.

George Harrison All Things Must Pass
Still digesting this deep-feeling classic. When I'm done it may be one of my favorite albums, period. Ringo is killing throughout. "Wah Wah" is a phenomenal song.

Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca
Finally giving the rest of the album its due after months of exclusive obsession with "Stillness Is the Move." The guitar solo on "Temecula Sunrise" is an insta-classic: total brain-frying skronk.

Paul Auster Leviathan
I like this book a lot better than the Mastodon album of the same name. Masterful storytelling. Psyched for Auster's new one, Invisible, due in the fall.

Terror's Advocate
Stone-faced yet utterly bonkers documentary about a lawyer with a soft spot for violent revolutionaries and other questionable characters (e.g., Pol Pot). Really hard to understand (well, for my historically challenged brain, at least) but worth the slog.

28 Days Later [the movie]
Interesting mix of completely fucked-up and sweetly sentimental. Excited to compare The Road with this. Which will be the gold standard for postapocalyptic melodrama?

Ween "I Smoke Some Grass (Really Really High)"
A brilliantly infuriating song. Eight minutes of unrelenting hell.

The Evens Get Evens
What a strange and cool band. Wry polemics: the good kind of preachy. Love the wiry sound of MacKaye's baritone guitar and Farina's limber, funky drumming. First song, "Cut from the Cloth," is an elegiac masterpiece. Considering these two have a son now—see this fine recent interview for a bit more info on that—I hope they can find time to keep the band going.

And, of course, that marvelous William Vollmann Times piece that everyone is talking about. Can't get enough of this guy. He can rest assured that no matter how much people are daunted by his doorstop literary dispatches, said folks will always go nuts over the stats of his insane life. "'Crack,' [Vollmann] said recently, 'is a really great drug — it’s like having three cups of coffee at once.'"