Balancing on the Edge: Jackie McLean in 1963
Celebrating the altoist's visionary sessions One Step Beyond and Destination... Out!
Welcome music lovers to a new edition of ‘Listening Sessions’!
This time around, my essay focuses on two key recordings by alto saxophonist Jackie McLean on Blue Note. One Step Beyond and Destination… Out! were both recorded in 1963 and exemplify how McLean was a relentless innovator, making records that walked a tightrope between the avant-garde and straight-ahead jazz. They remain profound and daring albums. I hope you enjoy the essay and will share your thoughts as well.
Just a reminder that ‘Listening Sessions’ is on a modified schedule until the end of April with essays coming out every two weeks instead of the usual 10 days. Expect to hear from me again on April 2 with a look at the music the Everly Brothers made in 1967 and 1968. The hits had stopped but Don and Phil were still making music worth hearing.
Until then, may good listening be with you all!
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Jazz is perhaps the best argument one has for the versatility of the instrument. Of course, that a mechanical music-making implement can be manipulated to a personal end is due to the individual doing the manipulating and the alto saxophone seems, even more than the tenor, to elicit a highly personal sound based on who is playing it.
Johnny Hodges turned it into a swooning, scooping messenger of elegance. Marshall Royal would make it ride on top of a Basie riff, imparting the striving sophistication of post-Second World War America. Paul Desmond merged detached irony with a romantic, urban ardour. Sonny Stitt tested the limits of the instrument—his alto in constant battle with his fingers and mind to articulate the velocity of ideas pouring forth. Cannonball Adderley made it a testifying, faithful member of the amen corner. Jackie McLean, on the other hand, wielded the instrument like a razor, cutting through the notes, betraying no sentimentality as his alto cried with fervour.
There was a time when McLean was the most forward-looking member of the Blue Note roster. He was the first to reckon what was happening with the avant-garde and found an opening for it within the tight structure of the label. He also served as the tartest of counterpoints on a front line, bringing an insouciance that never clashed with a more conventionally elegant stylist. Maybe the most iconic example of that was the dynamic duo of Art Farmer and McLean on Sonny Clark’s hard-bop landmark Cool Struttin’. But, for me, the most delicious example may be the closing track of Donald Byrd’s 1959 session Fuego, ‘Amen.’
The first of several Byrd compositions investigating the Baptist beat, ‘Amen’ has the trumpeter soloing using compact phrasing—like Miles Davis and Johnny Coles, Byrd was often as much about what he didn’t play as what he did play—organized along the cadence of the tune’s main melodic line. After Byrd’s chorus, McLean comes in. He beings with a sharp, blues phrase that is part shout, part cry and all soul. He builds on it, going a little further each time, focusing on accentuating the bluesy cry while telling of the good news. It’s a fairly conventional solo, but startles because of its extroversion.
A McLean solo was always a statement of independence. Favouring lines that emphasized the quality, as opposed to the quantity, of notes—he was, in this, the equivalent of Dexter Gordon on the tenor—McLean emphasized how an improvisation is a dialogue not only with the material upon which the soloist commentates or with the musicians with which one is playing or with the listener but also, crucially, with himself or herself.
There are telltale moments when McLean momentarily removes the mouthpiece from his instrument and lets out a moan of affirmation (it’s something one of his most ardent contemporary disciples, the astonishing Sarah Hanahan, does as well). It’s as if McLean’s entire being is caught up in musicmaking like on ‘Condition Blue’ from the 1960 classic Capuchin Swing with Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Walter Bishop Jr. on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Art Taylor on drums. Listen closely during his solo and you’ll hear him over and over again exhale in exaltation. The improvisation itself is a monster—full of riffs and rhythmic deconstructions of the blues form. At around the 3:30 mark, McLean gets lost on a short phrase and momentarily detours way outside the harmonic boundary of the lithe blues line he wrote.
In his early years on Blue Note, there was an apparent glee as McLean probed the idiosyncrasies of fairly straightforward forms. Take ‘Hip Strut’ from his label debut, New Soil. On the surface, it’s one of those arresting, declarative lines that stamped the late fifties as the age of the disaffected hipster. And that’s how it starts. McLean and Donald Byrd locked tight in unison. On the repeat of the theme, over a rhythmic suspension by the rhythm section: Walter Davis Jr. on piano, Chambers and Pete La Roca on drums, McLean trails Byrd on the theme, laying way behind the beat, daring to see how long he can delay mirroring Byrd. And it’s on ‘Minor Apprehension’ where La Roca plays his famous free solo, something now long commonplace but in 1959, positively revolutionary.
It was three years after New Soil that McLean recorded and released Let Freedom Ring. It began a series of album-length statements by McLean that explicitly grappled or, perhaps more accurately, engaged with the avant-garde and in doing so, energized his music.
On Let Freedom Ring, McLean is joined by Davis Jr., Herbie Lewis on bass and Billy Higgins on drums. Each of the four performances on the recording is bracing. McLean augments his authoritative phrasing with occasional squeaks and hollers. On the opening ‘Melody for Melonae,’ named for McLean’s daughter, the theme is played free before long improvisations—first in tempo, then in rubato—by McLean and Davis Jr. ‘Rene,’ named after his son, plays as a homage to Ornette Coleman, especially in the stops-and-starts of the theme; a natural musical habitat for Higgins who was part of Coleman’s legendary quartet of 1959, and solo sections using a static pulse. A rendition of Bud Powell’s ballad ‘I’ll Keep Loving You’ is done free. McLean, Davis Jr., Lewis and Higgins roll through the emotional highs and lows as how one might imagine Mahalia Jackson would have sung it had lyrics been added at some point. The closing ‘Omega,’ with a tension-and-release obstacle course highlighted by Lewis’ insistent, rallying cry of a pattern, is elemental, the cry of “let freedom ring” set to music.
It ties into one of the themes McLean illustrates in the liner notes he penned for the LP. “I feel that emotion has taken an important step in expression on the horn,” wrote McLean. “Emotion has always been present, but today it has a new importance.” Another is his quest to move away from the ordinary in his compositions—of those on Let Freedom Ring, ‘Omega’ may be the most steeped in tradition but the passion underpinning it is far too raw and primal to be called “traditional” or anything remotely that.
McLean had the pulse of the formative moment that jazz was enjoying. “Jazz is going through a big change, and the listener or fan, or what have you, should listen with an open mind,” he stated. “They should use a mental telescope to bring into view the explorers who have taken one step beyond, explorers such as Monk, Coltrane, Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Kenny Dorham, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Ornette and, of course, Duke Ellington. I don’t have enough space to name them all.”
“One step beyond.” That turn of phrase would soon be used for the title of the first of two sessions that McLean would record in 1963—both would be released the following year—that walk the tightrope of a form of jazz that retained a grounding in the recognizable customs of the music while not being bound by them.
On both recordings, McLean would be joined by two key collaborators. Trombonist Grachan Moncur III had cut his teeth with Ray Charles and the Art Farmer-Benny Golson Jazztet. Vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson was with the group that trombonist Al Grey and tenor saxophonist Billy Mitchell co-lead. After Hutcherson moved to New York in 1963, Moncur III, who was playing in McLean’s working band at the time, heard him at a jam session at Herbie Lewis’ apartment and thought he would fit right in with the altoist’s group.
In addition to Moncur III and Hutcherson, McLean was joined on One Step Beyond by bassist Eddie Khan and the 17-year-old drummer wunderkind Tony Williams. As with Let Freedom Ring, McLean supplied the liners. In them, he describes how he met Williams at the end of 1962 at the beginning of a week’s stint at a club called Connelly’s in Boston. “When I hit the door [of Connelly’s], a young man gave me a hand with my bags,” McLean wrote. “I thanked him and sat down to catch my breath. After a few minutes, the young man returned and informed me that the musicians were up by the bandstand and waiting. Looking at this youngster again and thanking him once more, I assumed he was a young jazz enthusiast waiting to listen to a band rehearsal before going home to his studies.” After learning the pianist and bassist he would be playing with during the week: pianist Ray Santizi and bassist John Neves, McLean then asked the teen who helped him with his bags who the drummer was going to be. He replied, “ME! - Tony Williams - and I am very happy to meet you, Jackie.” McLean was incredulous, writing that his reply to Williams was, “Damn - you’ll have to excuse me, Tony, but you look so young?” The week playing with Williams was transformational and Williams was in New York by the year’s end.
One Step Beyond was part of a handful of dates that Williams appeared on prior to him joining Miles Davis’ group. They are all elevated by his presence. Of them—Kenny Dorham’s Una Mas, Herbie Hancock’s My Point of View and a McLean session to be released as Vertigo in 1980 are the others—One Step Beyond best exemplifies how Williams would be the most innovative and important jazz drummer since Max Roach.
Even on the album’s most straight-ahead track, ‘Blue Rondo,’ a blues by McLean, Williams is operating at a level far beyond mere timekeeping. On the brisk theme statement, his accents on the snare and toms are loose with improvisational élan. On the solos by Hutcherson, Moncur III and McLean, he keeps up a spritely—I would describe it as lickety-split—rhythm that inspires everyone to treat the blues as a springboard and not a straitjacket.
The remaining compositions—one by McLean and the remaining two by Moncur III—are adventurous. The opening ‘Saturday and Sunday’ contrasts a brash fanfare with a bridge that is uncertain. The solos are in tempo with a modal framework. McLean displays a lighter tone than he employs on Let Freedom Ring. Occasionally, he dips into the kind of furious runs that were one of Eric Dolphy’s signatures. Moncur III offers contrast. His solo is languid, often sounding like he is playing the trombone like a French horn, favouring short lines and long tones. Hutcherson fills the space with dense, legato phrasing—at one point, he drops in a quote of Davis’ ‘So What.’ A dialogue with him, Kahn and Williams illustrates the album’s edge, partly the result of McLean’s drive to express something new and partly the result of having Williams who, at the end of April 1963 when One Step Beyond was recorded, was doing things than no one else was doing.
The first of Moncur III’s compositions, ‘Frankenstein,’ is similar to ‘Saturday and Sunday’ in its contrasts of moods on the theme. Unlike the latter, ‘Frankenstein’ keeps its fractured sense of time intact for the solos, inspiring McLean to move further out. His tone here is a little more astringent as he plays on the outer edge of the notes and unleashes his bag of honks and squeaks—the only time on One Step Beyond that he does so. It’s a heady statement. Moncur III is the absolute reverse of McLean and Hutcherson is mysterious and eerie.
Eerie would be a good word to describe the closer, ‘Ghost Town.’ The theme is unfurled slowly—one can almost see the tumbleweeds and desolation. The improvisations emphasize a similar openness of pulse. Hutcherson’s statement is particularly arresting. At the nine- and ten-minute marks, he slips in straight-ahead phrasing but ends his solo with a cascading, edgy run.
About five months after One Step Beyond, McLean, Moncur III and Hutcherson returned to the Van Gelder Studio. With them this time were Larry Ridley on bass and Roy Haynes, who just turned 99, on the drums. The result would be titled Destination… Out!
Yet again, McLean provided the liner notes. With Let Freedom Ring and One Step Beyond, his writings form a kind of diary of the altoist’s ongoing quest to write and play as authentically as possible. He begins here by allowing a glimpse of his vulnerability. “During the middle 1950’s, I was very uninspired as far as playing was concerned,” he wrote. “My search for inspiration was clouded by a depression which was not evident to me at this time,” (an allusion to his drug habit at the time which led him to lose his New York cabaret card). He discusses how he found the jazz of the mid-fifties often static and repetitive (perhaps here is a jibe at labels like Prestige which McLean recorded for before signing with Blue Note) but that a decade later, things were different.
“Today, we live in an age of space and variety; we live in an age of men seeking to explore worlds beyond; and since music is but an expression of the happenings around us, it is quite natural for the young musician to express or attempt to express the mood and tempo of our time; just as ragtime music painted a portrait of the era of prohibition so too des today’s jazz paint a portrait of the space age,” he noted.
Again, the music on Destination… Out! is a step ahead of an adventurous ethos that would begin to be an important component of the Blue Note sound. The presence of Haynes as opposed to Williams keeps things tamped down—to only a small extent, honestly. Haynes, a player of almost super-human precision, keeps things in the pocket and by doing so, provides an opening for McLean, Moncur III and Hutcherson. So, yes, the jazz of Destination… Out! is a little less experimental but the final product would be something I would either include in my list of the top 10 Blue Note’s of the golden era or be severely distressed by having to leave it off.
Each of the album’s four performances convey a unique mood—all but ‘Kahlil the Prophet’ were written by Moncur III. The starter, ‘Love and Hate,’ unfolds like an incantation. In a way, it presages the spiritual-jazz movement. The solos are profoundly meditative. Haynes alternates between mallets and brushes to further the feeling of a prayer being offered. He is also key to ‘Esoteric,’ a glorious Monkian roller coaster with continually shifting dynamics. Haynes keeps it all tight. McLean’s nine-chorus improvisation is one of his best, full of humour. Hear how he honks out a single note, impishly off the beat like he’s blowing a musical raspberry. One gets the feeling he could have kept going forever. Moncur III and Hutcherson offer understated components.
McLean’s ‘Kahlil the Prophet’ is persuasive proof of how modal frameworks freed musicians from the musical mathematics of having to continually navigate chord changes to focus instead on lyricism. The altoist seems especially energized as does Moncur III who plays more than a few earworm-worthy phrases. Hutcherson opts for speed and heat. The closing ‘Riff Raff’ is a vehicle for blowing, a kind of coming-home piece. Haynes digs into the groove and during Moncur III’s solo, he latches onto a dialogue with the trombonist.
After Destination… Out!, McLean continued exploring and the sessions that followed on Blue Note (at least, the ones I have listened to, which is almost all of them) confirm that the fire inside remained firmly stoked. But One Step Beyond and Destination… Out! (Let Freedom Ring too!) radiate with the bedazzlement of new territory being discovered, a new way being forged for McLean to take his rightful place as one of jazz’s dauntless innovators.
If you’re not yet a subscriber of ‘Listening Sessions,’ I hope you'll click the button below to subscribe and get each edition delivered straight to your inbox. I publish a long-form essay on music three times a month, every 10 days or so.
Thanks for reminding me of this genius.
Cued all 3 on Apple Music. What a treat!