Tag: ctirecords

Joe Farrell, Outback

Album of the Week, May 20, 2023

Spoiler alert: As we’ll go deeper into the CTI Records discography, we’ll get to a point where a lot of the music will start to meld into a sort of jazz-funk-crossover soup, thickened by a hefty dose of Don Sebesky strings and crossing more and more into pop music. Inevitably it will happen to most of the artists that we will review on this label, buoyed along by the striking success of the CTI sound. But right now, we’re in 1972, releasing a record that was recorded in November 1971, and the transformation hasn’t happened yet. Instead, we still get thunderbolts of genius, like Joe Farrell’s second album for the label, Outback.

Again, as with Joe Farrell Quartet, part of the credit is due to the superb players that make up Farrell’s group. As we discussed last time, Farrell spent time playing with both Elvin Jones and Chick Corea, and both return the favor here, alongside bassist Buster Williams and the indispensable Airto on percussion. The quartet is tight and the music they make is simultaneously tuneful and eye-poppingly adventurous.

We get more of the latter on the first side of the album, which opens with the title track, the John Scott-penned theme to the dark Australian movie Outback. Here the morally ambivalent atmosphere of the film is evoked in the swirling flutes over Williams’ freely walking bass, before Jones’ drums bring us into a more normal time accompanied by a wide-ranging bass line and Corea’s accompaniment on the Fender Rhodes. The chords swirl in a minor mode, with the flute rising to a feverishly high solo, accompanied by the full band who lock in telepathically behind Farrell. Corea moves us forward with statements between the verses, but the focus remains on Farrell as he improvises wilder flights, with Jones staying uncharacteristically subtle in the background on toms and brushed cymbals. It’s a moving, meditative and genuinely exciting journey.

The adventure continues with “Sound Down,” one of two originals on the record. Here Farrell and his wife Geri craft a tune that tilts between a modal statement in 4/4 and a waltz in a more conventional major key. But the modal wins and Farrell is off to the races on soprano saxophone, sounding a bit Wayne Shorteresque on some of the flights. When he shifts rhythmic patterns, Chick Corea is right there with him, zig-zagging across small explosions from Elvin Jones and over the steady heartbeat of Williams’ bass. Chick’s solo, starting just before the four-minute mark, is a right-hand improvisation that picks up some of the modal energy of Farrell’s solo but grounds it in a more persistently major tonality, returning to the mode only at the end with a series of ascending chords that fade out, letting Williams take a breath and explore some differing rhythmic patterns in dialog with Jones. Farrell returns at the end to restate the tune and turn the solo back to a major key.

“Bleeding Orchid,” a Chick Corea composition, opens the second side in a moderately Spanish groove, with a melody that grows from a melancholy minor into a more optimistic major key. Farrell’s solo, again on soprano sax, trades thoughts phrase by phrase with Corea, who seems completely intertwined with the saxophonist’s thoughts. Jones provides a huge voice on the drums on the solos, falling back at the restatements of the theme, and Williams’ constant explorations around the tonality make him the quiet hero of the track.

“November 68th” concludes the album, with a modal workout in 6/8 that somehow manages to evoke “Ju Ju” era Shorter and Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” in equal measure. Farrell’s other original composition on the album, the track provides him with a prominent soapbox on tenor sax. Here, again, Jones and Williams anchor the soloist, augmented by Airto, as Corea chases Farrell throughout the track. Chick’s solo swings harder than Farrell’s free flights but still has its own moments of brilliance, including a polyrhythmic moment that seems to stop time partway through the solo. As Corea, then Williams fall back, Jones takes a solo that seems to rise and fall like the saxophonist, double-timing the underlying pulse of the track and then dropping back into a one man polyrhythm. When Williams’ searching yet perfectly metrical bass returns, the rest of the band follows for a final statement of the melody followed by a fierce blowout at the end.

The whole album is stunning, a lesser-known but high quality gem. Farrell was to continue in this vein of tightrope-walking free jazz for one further album on CTI before shifting gears; we’ll get to that album in a few weeks. But we’ll check in on a couple of his labelmates first.

You can listen to the album here:

Freddie Hubbard, First Light

Album of the Week, May 13, 2023

In the first two Freddie Hubbard albums that we’ve heard in our exploration of the CTI Records discography, we’ve heard straight-ahead small group jazz, though colored with fusion and jazz-funk. On First Light, his third outing as leader for CTI, his works take on a little more of the colors of Creed Taylor’s universe, with strings, pop music covers, classical arrangements, and casts of thousands, including Ron Carter, Hubert Laws, Jack DeJohnette, Herbie Hancock, Airto, George Benson, joined by Phil Kraus on vibes and a 20 piece orchestra. Throughout it all soars his serene trumpet and flugelhorn, marking this record as undeniably Freddie despite the new ingredients.

The title track is a classic Hubbard composition, with a floating minor-key melody played by the bandleader across a repeating funk accompaniment. Hubbard’s form is without par throughout his solo, beginning with the achingly beautiful opening solo that precedes the first statement of the theme. Unusually for Hubbard, there is an interlude for Hubert Laws and strings in the middle of the first statement before Hubbard returns with the theme once more, then ventures into the solo proper. Here the motifs are more subtle than in some of his solos, featuring some extended passages played on a single note, one stretching as far as 16 bars and punctuated by a sting from the orchestra, which otherwise supports the sound without calling attention to itself. George Benson and Hubert Laws also have solo moments, but for the most part this one is all Freddie, and it fades out the last closing vamp of the music.

What comes back in is unexpected. Unlike the rest of the CTI stable, Hubbard had not really played much contemporary pop music on record, which makes his introductory notes to “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” even more startling. The Paul and Linda McCartney single made its first chart appearance on August 2, 1971, a mere six weeks before Hubbard entered the studio to record First Light, so this may have felt to the trumpeter like striking while the iron was hot. The work, legendarily cobbled together from three different proto-songs, is here played in three different styles: a pure ballad for the opening “we’re so sorry, Uncle Albert,” a funk-jazz voice on “Admiral Halsey notified me,” and an ecstatically free take on “hands across the water.” Throughout it all Hubbard and his band are foregrounded, with the orchestra adding only spots of color throughout. There are so many quotable moments throughout the arrangement, including Ron Carter’s mic-dropping solo halfway through as the rest of the orchestra falls away (later sampled by the Beastie Boys for 1992’s “Professor Booty”!). It’s an exciting and thoughtful arrangement, as striking today as it must have been in 1971.

“Moment to Moment,” a quieter ballad by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, opens with a pensive dialog between Ron Carter’s bass and Hubert Laws’ flute, underscored by the string section. Hubbard plays the melody straight, but here the real star is Sebesky’s sensitive orchestration. He may have been notorious for working so fast that his scores were sometimes as unreadable as a physician’s handwriting, but at his peak there was no one better, as this track shows.

“Yesterday’s Dreams” continues with the orchestra taking a more prominent role, as Hubbard, here playing a muted trumpet, states the melody of one of the few tracks credited to Sebesky as co-composer. Ron Carter’s bass is a prominent heartbeat throughout, with Herbie Hancock’s Fender Rhodes adding a plaintive note. Hubert Laws and the woodwinds in the orchestra call to each other under the last bit of Hubbard’s solo, with Carter adding portamento to his bass obbligato as the track fades.

“Lonely Town” is an unexpected conclusion to the album, with the woodwinds and strings stating the melody of the Leonard Bernstein show tune, then suddenly giving way to Herbie and Ron Carter laying down a groove under Hubbard’s flugelhorn, accompanied only by the lightest of cymbal work from DeJohnette. The second verse picks up steam and features a magnificent bit of improvisation from Hubbard with imaginative underpinnings by Herbie and Carter. At the end the orchestra has the final word, closing out the track with notes of pensiveness and hope.

Hubbard’s work on First Light shows the trumpeter evolving and growing, and gaining a new audience in the process. The trilogy of albums we’ve listened to so far, beginning with Red Clay and continuing with Straight Life, is brought to a natural conclusion here, with all facets of the trumpeter represented. While Hubbard would continue to record for CTI, this three-album stretch is arguably unequalled in his discography for excellence and range. We’ll listen to some of those later performances soon, but next week we’ll check in with another CTI veteran as he journeys into less-traveled realms.

You can listen to the album here:

Freddie Hubbard, Straight Life

Album of the Week, May 6, 2023

Hubert Laws’ Afro-Classic may have been the last album recorded for CTI Records in Rudy Van Gelder’s studios in 1970, but it was not the last album recorded in 1970 to be released. A month before Laws’ session, Freddie Hubbard returned to the studio where he had previously cut the instant classic Red Clay for a follow-up session. Again featuring Joe Henderson, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and “Pablo” Landrum, the session also saw the addition of Jack DeJohnette on drums, Weldon Irvine on tambourine, and George Benson on guitar. Together the band recorded a session that was more spontaneous, took more risks, and ultimately may have been more successful than its predecessor.

The album opens with the title track, and it’s immediately arresting, with Hubbard’s fierce articulation of a rapidly tongued fanfare alternating with eruptions from DeJohnette. The tune then abruptly swings into a Latin-tinged funk groove, anchored by Herbie’s Fender and Ron Carter’s bass line, which alternates arpeggiated fifths, octaves and diminished sevenths. Joe Henderson takes the first solo, playing bold runs and then repeating the theme in ascending keys. This session was recorded a few months after his 1970 legendary live session for Milestone, which was released as “If You’re Not Part of the Solution, You’re Part of the Problem,” and he is at the top of his improvisatory game here, transitioning seamlessly from ferocious runs into more serene reflections before handing over to Hubbard. Freddie’s trumpet tone was flawless at this point, pivoting from relaxed, precisely articulated runs to screaming blues shouts within a few bars. Along the way the music slips out of the funky groove into a more abstract utterance, then quietly returns to the groove with the burble of Herbie’s solo. He begins by taking a key from Freddie’s solo, but then takes off in a more abstract direction, playing against the rhythm and finally landing in time for George Benson to pick up the thread. You can hear players shouting encouragement behind Benson’s solo, as his soul-inflected licks shift into funk, then like Herbie shift out of time for sixteen bars or so before crashing back into the rhythm of the groove. The band then locks into the groove as DeJohnette and Landrum trade polyrhythms underneath. Hubbard returns with a high keening line that echoes his opening statement before bringing the volume down for a restatement of the theme. If certain performances of “Red Clay” leave one with the impression that Hubbard had given his all and could not possibly play more, “Straight Life”’s insistent groove and the fade-out insist that he could keep playing all day.

Weldon Irvine’s “Mr. Clean” follows. A grimier funk workout that sees the bass clinging to the tonic like a life raft, the horns call to mind a James Brown line before Freddie makes like Miles with a high lonesome call, as George Benson and Herbie Hancock trade licks beneath. Joe Henderson’s solo explores the tonality of the theme in an abstract workout as the band digs deeper into the groove. Van Gelder’s engineering here is amazing as the bass seems to deepen the further out Henderson goes, followed by Hancock, who innovates both in rhythm and in tonality. Hancock’s solo continues after Henderson drops back, continuing to echo into outer space yet still rooted in the groove. Benson’s solo is similarly deep, bridging over from soul to funk to abstraction in the same breath. Throughout the rhythm section of DeJohnette and Carter stay locked into the groove.

For the final track, a rendition of the Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke standard “Here’s That Rainy Day,” Freddie switches to the flugelhorn. In a 1973 interview, he noted that he had been playing the more mellow cousin of the trumpet for “about three or four years” (though his earliest recording credit on the instrument came on 1967’s Backlash). He claimed in the interview, “Now I can play it better than the trumpet, because it’s so much easier to play.” The creamy tone of his flugelhorn became one of Freddie’s signature sounds, and here it is put to superb use in a stripped down setting, recording the ballad with sensitive accompaniment from Benson on the guitar, for an effect that is reminiscent of “Why Was I Born?,” the duet that Coltrane recorded with Kenny Burrell on their 1962 collaboration. Hubbard closes the track with a long coda that seems to float effortlessly and eternally.

This second Hubbard album on CTI established his role as a leader among the label’s artists, and he would continue to record groundbreaking sets throughout the next few years. We’ll hear another, very different one next time.

You can listen to the album here:

Hubert Laws, Afro-Classic

Album of the Week, April 29, 2023

It’s hard to believe, but the four albums we’ve covered so far since the founding of Creed Taylor’s CTI label—Freddie Hubbard’s Red Clay, the Joe Farrell Quartet, and Stanley Turrentine’s Sugar, plus the earlier reviewed Bill Evans Montreux II— were all recorded in 1970. Taylor kept an incredibly busy recording and release schedule with engineer Rudy Van Gelder in the latter’s studies in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and the label’s recordings in the first year were something of a who’s who of the early label. The last recording made in 1970 at Englewood Cliffs introduces another important artist on the CTI roster to this column, though it was actually his second recording for the label, as well as introducing another musical genre to the new label’s tapestry.

Flautist Hubert Laws was, by 1970, one of the most significant proponents of the jazz flute, having appeared on sessions with James Moody, Mongo Santamaria, Kai Winding, Bobby Timmons, Ron Carter, Chick Corea, Paul Desmond, Milt Jackson, and Quincy Jones, as well as on Joe Zawinul’s self-titled masterpiece and Herbie Hancock’s Fat Albert Rotunda. He had recorded his debut as leader, The Laws of Jazz, in 1964 (which we’ll review another time), and his recording Crying Song was the first official release on the CTI label. But his approach to the instrument was still evolving, and Afro-Classic revealed a new facet of Laws’ work, with the introduction of classical music to the recording.

The combination of jazz and classical was not new; Gunther Schuller had introduced the concept in a 1957 lecture that named the combination third stream. True to the concept, Afro-Classic includes pop music treated like classical and jazz, and classical treated like jazz and blues, all wrapped in the now-trademark CTI gatefold cover with a brilliant Pete Turner photo.

The opening track, a cover of James Taylor’s then four-month-old “Fire and Rain,” presents the tune almost as a rondo, with an opening statement that in retrospect anticipates the synth-flute in Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” and echoes spiritual jazz practice, before Bob James’ electric piano presents the opening verse as a sonata. Ron Carter’s bass and Fred Waits’ drums (with an assist from Airto on percussion) then alter the template again, with a second statement of the melody as a blues groove. It all swirls together into a greasy, funky reverie, before returning to the more sonata-like form of the beginning and fading out on a revisitation of the groove. Don Sebesky is credited with arrangements on the album, but he keeps a light touch throughout.

From this opening, Laws pivots into a more pure classical approach with an arrangement of the Allegro from Bach’s Concerto No. 3 in D (BWV 1054). Except for the use of electric piano, and the addition of Gene Bertoncini’s acoustic guitar, the arrangement is taken straight, with a bassoon added to fill out the arrangement with some of the woodwind parts. The recording would not have been out of place on my childhood classical radio station—or as incidental music for one of the later Charlie Brown TV specials. In fact, I kept thinking about the score to “It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown,” which supplemented Vince Guaraldi’s iconic compositions with a Bach sonata for the characters in the department store scene.

The “Theme from Love Story” is likewise played “straight” for its opening, the theme—familiar to those who suffered through hours of easy-listening orchestral arrangements in the late 1970s—stated by Laws on the baritone flute. Sebesky’s arrangement is mercifully understated, allowing Laws’ gentle jazz inflections on the chorus to play out in counterpoint with the bassoon and acoustic guitar, before the entrance of Ron Carter’s bass pedal point signals a variation with a gentle Latin groove. The next verse digs deeper into this concept, with Laws and the percussionists creating a swirling minor-key soundscape over the grounding of Ron Carter’s bass and Bob James’ piano, before returning to a recapitulation of the melody. It’s a great example of Laws’ talent for beginning with familiar, unprepossessing melodies and taking them into highly interesting places.

Returning to Bach with “Passacaglia in C Minor” (BWV 582), the opening statement is sketched by Carter’s bass line, then elaborated by James with light accompaniment from the percussion. Laws and James trade the theme back and forth, effectively serving as the right and left hand of the keyboard part, before the ensemble chases the tune down to the tonic. Subsequent verses explore jazz improvisations on the theme, with increasingly strong jazz inflections, before a reverb-heavy flute solo and a grooved-out statement by James—in 6/8 time—take us over the edge into a modal workout. As the piece passes the ten-minute mark, Van Gelder and the musicians find some remarkable new tones, with arco cello, treated electric piano, and reverb-heavy flute noise swirling the melody into something like an exploration of inner space. The recapitulation of the theme is once more taken straight, re-grounding the work in the original composition. It’s a masterful unification of the differing approaches to music on the album into a single artistic statement.

The album concludes with Mozart’s “Flute Sonata in F” (K.13), which—like the Bach Allegro—could be mistaken for a classical recital but for the prominent bass and James’ electric piano. Coming after the phantasmagoria of “Passacaglia,” it’s a cheeky punctuation point on an album that quietly upsets any pre-conceived notions the listener might have regarding the lines of separation between jazz and classical music.

Laws brought a significant new stream of influence to CTI with this record, one that he and other performers on the label would revisit throughout the rest of its run. We’ll hear from Laws, and classical influences again. In the meantime, if you are intrigued by his approach to jazz flute, you might want to check out my Exfiltration Radio show “Flute’n the Blues.”

You can listen to the album here:

Stanley Turrentine, Sugar

Album of the Week, April 22, 2023

Creed Taylor, and CTI Records, had a way of changing the way that musicians approached the world. We’ve seen how Antônio Carlos Jobim and Wes Montgomery transitioned to something like instrumental pop, and how Freddie Hubbard went from a post-bop young lion to something like a John the Baptist of jazz-funk. Today we’ll meet another young player whose trajectory followed a very similar path to Hubbard’s. He left behind a conventional recording career with Blue Note to become something like a sex symbol.

When I first started listening to jazz, I was conscious of the “smooth jazz” phenomenon. While there was a whole lot of Kenny G about it, smooth jazz could also manifest as “quiet storm,” a name bestowed by a Washington, DC area DJ. This sub-genre blended jazz and easy listening into a broth that seemed to be designed for playing late at night, with the lights low and someone with a Barry White voice murmuring unspeakably sexy things. 

Anyway. The point is that, by that date, some 25 years after Stanley Turrentine released Sugar as the sixth release on the new CTI Records label, you probably knew him as a smooth jazz, or even quiet storm, artist. But if you listened to his output through the 1960s on Blue Note Records, there was none of that in his sound. Sugar, recorded as his first date as a leader after leaving Blue Note, is where it all began—not least of which in the album cover.

It must be said that neither of the individuals on the cover of Sugar is Stanley Turrentine. It must also, in fairness, be said that there is very little of the licentiousness suggested by the cover present in the music. But the association of Turrentine with something incredibly sexy was begun with this cover, and it stuck.

Let’s talk about the music now (for heaven’s sake), because it’s profoundly different from what the cover would suggest. Far from a smooth jazz sound, it is a heck of a combo that assembles at Englewood Cliffs in November 1970: Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Butch Cornell on organ, George Benson on guitar; the redoubtable Ron Carter on bass; and Billy Kaye on drums and “Pablo” Landrum on congas. The great Lonnie Liston Smith plays electric piano on the title track, replacing Cornell. 

There are just three tracks on the album. “Sugar” is a slow blues that’s delivered in an understated way by all but Kaye, who uses the lower end of the drum kit to great effect on the opening to set up a dramatic foil. Benson, who will appear again in this series, lays back behind Turrentine’s opening solo, commenting and providing counterpoint, slowly bringing his part up into a coequal voice. Van Gelder and Taylor get the stereo separation just right, situating him in the right channel so that you can close your eyes and see the interplay between the two musicians. Turrentine’s solo is heavily influenced by soul jazz here, with riffs that would not be out of place on one of Benson’s recordings with “Brother” Jack McDuff. Hubbard arrives after the saxophonist finishes, with a relaxed opening that slowly turns up the heat until he fairly boils over. Benson’s touch on the guitar brings some of the same soul-jazz experience to the track; he began his career at 21 recording with “Brother” Jack and Lonnie Liston Smith, and you can hear some of that sanctified groove in his approach, especially as the horns play in concert. Throughout, the rhythm section is in the pocket, delivering the asked-for groove.

“Sunshine Alley” is a Butch Cornell tune, and announces the organist’s approach through a modal Hammond riff that shifts through three chord transitions into the relative major, a nifty trick that sets up a lengthy workout for the band as Turrentine lays back. In fact, for the first four minutes, you could be forgiven for mistaking the track for an organ trio performance. Benson’s arrival does little to diminish the overall impression, as he plays with an easy virtuosity that showcases why Miles tapped him for Miles in the Sky. Hubbard follows with a blistering solo that demonstrates multiple timbres, new harmonic sequences that lurk unimagined in the deceptively complicated blues, and generally remind one that this was recorded in the same calendar year as Red Clay. Turrentine finally steps up for a solo, at seven minutes and 55 seconds into this ten-minute long track, and opens the track up harmonically and rhythmically while still playing into the groove. He plays not so much with greater virtuosity as with greater heat, bringing the bubbling congas up to the fore and generally reclaiming the track as his own before bringing it to a close. 

It might raise an eyebrow to note John Coltrane’s “Impressions” on this album and with these players. It’s no sloughed-off performance, either. Cornell gives it a fierce fanfare on the Hammond, and the band states the famous theme in a slightly swung time, putting their own stamp on the great Trane original. Turrentine takes the first solo and plays over six choruses, in what amounts to a virtuosic demonstration of the church-shouting power of his soul jazz formulation. His solo slips into different tempi and performance styles, in the transition between the second and third choruses echoing Trane’s “sheets of sound,” then sixteen bars later slipping in a quick quote from “It Ain’t Necessarily So” before bending the time as if about to take flight. But the most impressive thing about the solo is the deliberate groundedness of it all. Turrentine is not going to disappear into the overblown harmonics that Trane (or his disciple Pharoah Sanders) would bring to performances of this tune, but he’s also not going to let you think of him as merely a soul player. The next few choruses, led by Cornell, similarly play with expectations, going from a straight organ trio to a complex set of call-and-response shouts with the horns and back into the organ. When Hubbard takes the next solo, it’s to throw in some casually brilliant triple-tongued moments of excitement that seem to pick up the music and shift it into a different realm for a quick moment. Benson’s solo picks up some of the rhythmic shifts that Hubbard introduces and lands a few of his own, dropping in a polyrhythmic syncopated pattern that bends the time. The horns introduce a countermelody at the top of the next chorus that was clearly written out but in context feels slyly thrown in as though to say, there is more than one definitive reading of this tune. The overall effect, when considering Trane’s performance of his early magnum opus, is happily dislocating, as though one had showed up at a Ramones concert only to find them playing Bach fugues instead. Turrentine does us the favor of explicitly illustrating the deep connection between the elder saxophonist’s flights of spiritual ecstasy and the deceptively approachable soul and blues traditions from which they sprouted.

Turrentine’s first album as a leader for CTI was the beginning of two features of the rest of the label’s discography: a series of highly regarded sets as leader, and a working partnership with Freddie Hubbard that saw both of them appearing on each other’s recordings throughout the rest of the 1970s. We’ll hear from Turrentine again in this column. But first, we’ll return to the more crossover-focused side of the roster and hear from another significant player in the label’s evolution.

You can listen to the album here:

Joe Farrell, Joe Farrell Quartet

Album of the Week, April 15, 2023

While we’ve heard a few different musical styles on our tour of CTI Records’ catalog so far, most of the bandleaders have been established musical names. Today’s record shows that not only could Creed Taylor boost the careers of already-well-known musicians, but he could also give a start to lesser-known musicians.

Joe Farrell (born Joseph Carl Firrantello in 1937) got his start as a twenty-year-old saxophonist in the Ralph Materie band and went on to record with a number of bands and small groups during the 1960s, most notably with Charles Mingus and Andrew Hill. His breakthrough during the late 1960s came when Elvin Jones, following John Coltrane’s death, formed a trio with Farrell and Jimmy Garrison; the trio recorded Puttin’ It Together and The Ultimate for Blue Note Records.

But Farrell is perhaps best known for his work with Chick Corea and his Return to Forever band, most notably recording the flute solo on “Spain” on Corea’s 1973 album Light As A Feather. On this recording, only the fourth to be released on CTI, we catch the partnership close to its beginning, with Farrell and Corea joined by frequent Corea collaborator Dave Holland on bass and the redoubtable Jack DeJohnette on drums. That the band is joined by fellow electric-period Miles associate John McLaughlin on two tracks would tend to suggest a certain direction for the sound of the album, and you’d be partly right.

Indeed, the opening track, “Follow Your Heart,” is a tasty post-Bitches Brew fusion classic, written by McLaughlin and powered by his guitar and DeJohnette’s drums, with Holland’s bass line providing a consistent heartbeat. Farrell begins with a statement of the tune and then slowly deconstructs it, in a solo augmented in its final verse with some light but noticeable reverb. McLaughlin’s solo follows Farrell’s lead, playing around the tune in two- and three-note groupings, again with the reverb, which Taylor seems to add expressly for the purpose of thumbing his nose at acoustic music purists.

“Collage for Polly” is a much more experimental track that, for two minutes, layers echoing washes of flute and saxophone sound over sound effects from Corea, Holland and DeJohnette. It starts out in the same vein as some of the more experimental tracks on Weather Report but spins out into a more unstructured jam, leaving one slightly relieved when it’s over.

“Circle in the Square,” conversely, would have been at home on most of Miles’ Second Great Quintet albums. Beginning with a repeated descending theme in the bass by Holland, A McCoy Tyner-esque statement of theme is followed by a Farrell solo on soprano saxophone over a free workout by Corea and DeJohnette that increases in intensity and ferocity throughout. The track underscores Farrell’s affinity for Coltrane-like modal workouts and is a slow burn.

“Molten Glass” switches gears as it opens the second side to a piano-and-bass driven melody, over which Farrell’s flute travels fluidly. Though the work is a Farrell original, it bears some affinity to Corea’s “Windows,” as memorably recorded in a group with the great Hubert Laws on flute (about whom, more later). It’s a sunny little workout and genuinely fun to listen to.

This track also gives us the concept for the cover, and we really should talk about the cover. The quiet black Helvetica on white background of the early CTI records that we’ve seen is well and truly gone, in favor of evocative, highly saturated photography (in this case, red glass apparently fresh out of the furnace). We’ll see a lot more of this, in less abstract ways, in the next few weeks.

The next track, “Alter Ego,” brings us back to the same concept as “Collage for Polly” — lots of reverb-y flute over a Dave Holland bass line. Points for experimentation but I wouldn’t call this track essential. By contrast, “Song of the Wind” is another duo track, this time with Chick Corea. Here the song sounds like a Chick composition because it is a Chick composition, but Farrell’s opening soprano sax solo and mid-tune flute solo are gorgeously meditative.

“Motion” wraps up the album with another full group (plus McLaughlin) workout that takes us solidly into free jazz territory. Here McLaughlin’s guitar chirps and groans over a screaming soprano line from Farrell and absolute chaos in the rhythm section: lots of high octaves in the piano contrasted against screaming arco bass and the most explosive drumming from DeJohnette of the record. It all ends with a descending glissando scraping the strings of the guitar. As free jazz workouts go, it’s invigorating in execution, if a little lightweight in concept.

This first album from Joe Farrell sees him staking a distinct corner that explores aspects of fusion, free jazz, and experimental noise making. Some aspects of those elements will follow him into his next albums for CTI, but first we’ll dive straight back into soul-jazz and the surprising career evolution of another Blue Note Records alumnus.

You can listen to the album here:

Freddie Hubbard, Red Clay

Album of the Week, April 8, 2023

We’ve heard one side of Creed Taylor’s new CTI label in the past few weeks as we listened to how he brought impeccable personnel and lush orchestrations to bear on Antônio Carlos Jobim’s Wave and Wes Montgomery’s Road Song. What we will hear today is something else: a record with no strings, just five players in the studio stretching out into loose 7 to 12 minute long jams. And at the center is a player we’ve heard from before: Freddie Hubbard.

Before this point, we’ve mostly encountered Hubbard as a sideman, in some of the great early recordings of both Herbie Hancock (Takin’ Off, My Point of View, Maiden Voyage) and Wayne Shorter (Speak No Evil, The All Seeing Eye). But at the same time that these recordings were happening, he had a productive and prolific career as a leader, recording nine sessions for Blue Note, three for Atlantic, and two for Impulse! between 1960 and 1969. Most of these sessions are classic hard bop or post bop, with Hubbard’s fiercely precise tone at the center of them. But in January 1970, Hubbard entered Rudy Van Gelder’s studio at Englewood Cliffs to make a different sort of session, his first for CTI. He was joined by a formidable lineup of players: Herbie Hancock on electric piano and Hammond organ, Ron Carter on bass, Joe Henderson on tenor sax, and the young Lenny White on drums.

White was no novice, having already appeared on Miles’ fusion masterpiece Bitches Brew, but he was only 20 years old and still getting started. He has noted that it’s something of a miracle that he was on the session at all; apparently Hubbard had originally called Tony Williams to do the record, but Williams begged off, citing Miles’ growing irritation at the number of players who recorded with “his” rhythm section to make their albums sound good. So White got the call. He would continue to record with Miles following this record (as we’ve heard on Champions), so apparently the decision was a good one for all concerned.

It’s hard to imagine the finished product without White’s drums at the center. The title track, which opens the album, is a funky jam that’s kept tight by Ron Carter’s insanely earworm-y bass line and at the same time kept loose by White’s drumming, which seem equally informed by Tony Williams’ inventions and Clyde Stubblefield’s “funky drummer” approach on the records James Brown was making at the time. The tune, supposedly based on the changes to “Sunny,” circles around the same changes for the entirety of the 12+ minute song, trading chordal complexity for the pure joy of the jam. Especially notable here are the solos from the two horns, with Hubbard hitting effortless highs and Henderson bringing a level of darkness and complexity to his solo that is reminiscent of some of his own early 1970s masterpieces. At 9 minutes in, the rest of the players and Carter and White take us into the engine room to unveil the heart of the groove. It’s a complete lesson in the power of the bass in funk-jazz music, and one that features prominently on my mix highlighting jazz bassists, “the low end theory.”

“Delphia” starts out as a ballad with a sensitive introduction by Hubbard and Henderson (on flute), but soon morphs into a swinging blues. Unusually, Herbie Hancock plays Hammond organ on the entirety of the tune, which includes some wonderful syncopation on the chorus and some attentive accompaniment behind Hubbard’s solo. Henderson’s flute, only heard on the opening and closing verses, is brilliantly sensitive here, as is Carter’s bass.

“Suite Sioux” opens with a riff by Hancock on the Fender Rhodes, leading into the opening statement of the theme by Henderson and Hubbard. This arrangement is notable for both the use of space—the dialog between Fender and horns is set off by ample beats of silence each time—and Hubbard’s eloquent solo. Hancock’s solo floats over White’s cymbal work until the drummer steps up to his own solo spotlight, highlighting one of the oddities of the recording: the bass drum, which has very little resonance and sounds as though it’s stuffed full of socks. Apparently the young drummer had brought his own kit, which included a bass drum that had been cut down from an oil can; while he preferred the resonant sound, Van Gelder couldn’t or wouldn’t get it to record in the studio, so they had to use another drum that White couldn’t stand but at least didn’t overshadow the rest of the band.

“The Intrepid Fox” returns to the fiery material of the opening for another extended jazz-funk jam. Another cut that would, like “Red Clay,” be a highlight of Hubbard’s live sets for years to come, this one is less groove oriented and more incendiary, and features a wicked groove from the bass together with a complex interlocking melodic statement from the horns. In some ways reminiscent of Henderson’s recently recorded “Power to the People” and “Isotope,” the saxophonist’s solo on this tune threatens to steal the show as he plays with rhythmic and chordal structures throughout. Hancock’s solo takes us into slightly more meditative territory, until Hubbard returns with a reprise of the melody.

The record as a whole was a hit for Hubbard and for the young CTI label, and helped to shape some of the sound of the coming decade. We’ll hear a lot more from Freddie in the coming weeks. But first we’ll hear from some other Miles-adjacent musicians exploring a slightly different side of the electric jazz future.

You can listen to the album here:

Wes Montgomery, Road Song

Album of the Week, April 1, 2023

Though still technically under the banner of A&M Records, Creed Taylor’s CTI had already firmly established its visual identity by the late 1960s, as we saw with last week’s look at Wave. Today we explore some of the development of its sound by looking at the twelfth record in the catalog, a posthumous release from guitarist Wes Montgomery.

Montgomery had begun his career in the late 1940s with Lionel Hampton, having taught himself the guitar at night while working during the day for the milk company. When the big band gig didn’t pan out, he returned to working day jobs while forming a combo with his brothers and playing small clubs. He was discovered in 1958 by Cannonball Adderley, who recommended to Orrin Keepnews that he sign Montgomery to his Riverside Records label. Montgomery went on to record a well regarded string of albums on Riverside before leaving in 1963 for Verve to record with Creed Taylor.

Taylor saw the potential for Montgomery’s clean, melodic style to cross over into the instrumental pop market and recorded a series of albums that established him as a bankable star, beginning with Movin’ Wes and including the great Bumpin’, which featured the guitarist with one of the great over the top ‘60s pop string sections on the title track. The orchestra on this recording was arranged by Don Sebesky. We’ll hear a lot about Sebesky over the course of these reviews; for now I’ll just observe that this is the first name in this column that I first saw in a Boston Pops program.

So it was that, following a string of recordings for Verve that include some great small group sessions with Jimmy Smith and a lot of instrumental pop, Montgomery recorded several sessions for Taylor’s sub-label CTI, leading off the label’s discography with A Day in the Life and returning to Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio on May 7 and 8, 1968 to record this album. Just over a month later he was dead, having suffered a heart attack at home in Indianapolis at the age of 45. Was the final recording he made in his lifetime worthy of his legacy?

I think it kind of depends on how you look at it. A jazz session it’s not, and it’s not the best instrumental pop he ever recorded either. Sebesky’s arrangement on “Bumpin’” is so legendary that it led off a 1990s Verve compilation of “acid jazz.” The arrangements on Road Song, alas, are not quite so stunning. Montgomery’s guitar does not quite engage with the strings and horns and harpsichord(!) around him. But the band that Taylor assembled here is no group of slouches, with Herbie Hancock, drummer Grady Tate, pianist Hank Jones (that’s him on the harpsichord), and the great bassist Richard Davis joining the strings. The overall effect is pleasant enough, though it must be said that the main pleasures of the album are Montgomery’s legendary touch with the guitar and not the setting Taylor puts him in.

So far we’ve heard the more instrumental pop, almost easy listening side of the CTI label. We’ll hear a very different sound next time, one that would come to dominate the way the label was perceived—and change the course of jazz as it entered the 1970s.

You can listen to the album here:

Antônio Carlos Jobim: Wave

Album of the Week, March 25, 2023

We’re going to enter a new sonic space for the next stretch of this column. While it’s still jazz by most definitions of the word, some of the albums might be in a hyphenated genre. Some of them might even have strings and feel a little more like “smooth” than most of the recordings we’ve featured so far. That’s certainly true of the first recording from the CTI label that we will feature in this series.

Antônio Carlos Jobim was 31 when his music came to worldwide attention, through recordings made by the Brazilian singer/guitarist João Gilberto, but he didn’t become really famous until five years later, when Gilberto teamed up with saxophonist Stan Getz for one of the most famous albums of all time. I can’t overemphasize how pivotal 1963’s Getz/Gilberto was. Featuring a full slate of Jobim’s compositions, as well as the composer himself at the piano, two of the tracks,“Corcovado” and “The Girl from Ipanema,” became international hits. If earlier recordings like Vince Guaraldi’s Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus and Getz’s Jazz Samba had lit a small flame beneath the kindling of America’s appetite for Brazilian music, Getz/Gilberto blew on the fire until it became a roaring inferno. The trend was not lost on the producer of Getz/Gilberto, Creed Taylor.

We’ve met Taylor before, and have talked about the first label he founded, the seminal Impulse! Records, as well as the work he began at Verve where he recorded Bill Evans as well as Getz and Gilberto—and Jobim. By 1967 Taylor was beginning to take increasing creative control of the recordings he issued at Verve, going so far as to start a sub-label, CTI (for Creed Taylor Incorporated) at which he could exert a significant amount of influence over everything from the graphic identity (always a priority for Taylor from the earliest orange and black days of Impulse!) to the sound.

The CTI graphic identity changed slightly over the years of the label, but the foundations—strong typography (initially, Helvetica), use of white (or black) space on the cover to set off striking photographs, heavy gatefold jackets with more photos (usually black and white) inside—remained consistent throughout the label’s run. I’ve made a point to seek out CTI recordings in used record shops and they always have a substantial-ness to them that anticipates the solidity of modern reissues. Taylor was disinterested in cutting corners.

The same applies to the musicians that Taylor brought to the studio. There was often (but not always) a string section; in this recording the string arrangements and conducting is by Claus Ogerman, who had previously worked with Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra and who scored some 60-70 albums with Taylor. The rest of the orchestra with Jobim is unusual: no trumpets, no saxophones, but trombone, French horn, flute, drums and bass, the latter played by the great Ron Carter. And Jobim plays piano, but also guitar and harpsichord. Taylor was going for a definitive kind of sound. There is no edge to this sound, only the swelling and receding of the compositions. In lesser hands, this formula might easily disintegrate into “easy listening” pablum, but with Jobim at the keyboard and the intelligence of Ogerman in the arrangements, the sound sparkles and pulses with interest.

The record does not feature Jobim’s earlier bossa nova hits; there’s no “Desafinado,” no “Ipanema.” But what’s here is highly rewarding as well. The title track is a quietly soulful meditation, enlivened by flute and the harpsichord playing of Jobim. “The Red Blouse” is more in the classic samba mode, with its dancelike rhythms anchored by the redoubtable Ron Carter and the drummer, whose inventive snare work keeps everything hopping. (There are three percussionists credited, Bobby Rosengarden, Domum Romāo, and Claudio Slon; Slon is called out as a “mastermind” of the recording in the liner notes and is the one behind the drum kit.) Many of the tracks, including “Look to the Sky,” feature soulful trombone work by Urbie Green, with assistance from Jimmy Cleveland.

If one is to criticize any aspect of the recording, which was engineered by the great Rudy Van Gelder, it is the sound of Jobim’s piano, which sometimes lacks the punch and clarity that we hear in other RVG recordings; this may be due to the strings in the mix. By contrast, Jobim’s guitar, front and center on “Batidinha” and “Triste,” is recorded clearly and is a model of rhythmic and chordal precision, a cool center around which the rest of the tracks are built. “Captain Bacardi” closes out with a pulsing bossa nova rhythm on the drums, piano and guitar, a brisk trombone solo, percussive notes from the cuíca, and a seriously funky Ron Carter bass line. The track simmers along, threatening to bubble over at any moment and belying any thought that we’ve

We are likely to hear more Jobim as I continue my survey of jazz records, but our next stop on our tour through CTI will take us in a slightly different direction. We’ll check that out next time.

You can listen to the album here:

Bill Evans, Montreux II

Album of the Week, February 25, 2023

It’s a little unfair to say that Bill Evans’ best albums were recorded in the 1960s. He had a productive decade in the 1970s, recording for Columbia, Milestone and Fantasy. But his most enduring compositions were written in the 1960s. We’ve already heard many of them; they continued to feature on the many live albums he recorded during the decade. Picking up a Bill Evans recording from the 1970s, therefore, the odds were that it was live and covered familiar ground… mostly.

Much of Evans’ creativity during these years, ultimately, was in his interpretation and in his song choices. Both elements are broadly on display in Montreux II, Evans’ second live recording from the Montreux Jazz Festival and his final recording for producer Creed Taylor, this time on Taylor’s own CTI label.

We’re going to hear a lot more about CTI in coming weeks (spoiler alert!), but in this early stage of evolution the label was a bright cross-section of straight ahead jazz, proto-jazz-funk, and some reasonably out-there avant-garde stuff. Consider that the first recorded artists in the CTI 6000 series included flautist Hubert Laws, Freddie Hubbard in an early jazz-funk masterpiece, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joe Farrell, and this Evans date. There is, however, very little of the hallmarks of the classic CTI period here – no big string section orchestrated by Don Sebesky, no jazz-funk, very little in the way of nods to popular music. There’s just the Bill Evans Trio, doing what they did best.

This incarnation of the trio saw Jack Dejohnette (who had left to join Miles following At the Montreux Jazz Festival) with drummer Marty Morell, who would work with Evans and bassist Eddie Gómez from 1968 to 1974. Morell brought steady support and a solid presence behind the kit; while his level of creativity was not as high as Dejohnette, his fills and statements were more assertive than those that Paul Motian, for instance, had brought to some of the earlier trio recordings.

The tone, overall, is jubilant. Evans was playing in an extroverted manner here (relatively speaking). Tempos are brighter and even the ballads have the hint of a smile at the corner of their mouths, metaphorically speaking. The repertoire, as noted above, is a combination of familiar Evans compositions (“Very Early,” “34 Skidoo,” “Peri’s Scope”), covers of well loved favorites (“How My Heart Sings,” “I Hear a Rhapsody,” “Israel”), and a surprise. Starting in the 1970s Evans began to turn toward modern pop songs for repertoire, and this record features a surprisingly tender cover of the 1966 Bacharach/David hit “Alfie.” The first half of the ballad is entirely Evans and Gómez, but Morell joins them for a rhythmically jubilant verse before the trio returns to the more contemplative tone of the opening, with Gómez’s bass providing propulsive energy under the melody. It serves as a blueprint for the whole album.

One of the saddest questions we must ask about Evans’ career is where he would be without his crippling heroin addiction. Unlike past addicts we’ve seen like Philly Joe Jones, John Coltrane, and others, Evans was always careful not to let his habit interfere with his performances or his studio work (except for one memorable occasion when he accidentally hit a nerve with the needle and had to play largely one-handed for a week), but it clearly became an escape for him, and one that was only replaced by cocaine or alcohol on the brief occasions when he managed to get off the drug, from the time he got hooked in 1958 to his death in 1980. It has been described as the “slowest suicide in history,” and there’s no doubt that it interfered with his compositional creativity. But throughout that incredible ear remained as the hallmark of this most sensitive pianist. And his work remains as an influential milestone on jazz, one that a variety of unlikely musicians would pay tribute to after his death. We’ll hear one of those recordings next time.

You can listen to the album here: