Dorham, Mingus & Hubbard: Once More Into the Archives
Zev Feldman strikes again
Welcome music lovers once again!
For this edition’s essay, I look at three releases coming out on Resonance Records for Record Store Day on April 12 (CD and digital versions arrive on April 18) featuring previously unreleased live recordings by Kenny Dorham, Charles Mingus and Freddie Hubbard. All three continue the dedication to excellence that Resonance and co-president Zev Feldman have brought to archival recordings for over a decade now, and are all highly recommended.
Later this month at Listening Sessions will be two essays I have long wanted to write. One is on Eugene McDaniels’ one-of-a-kind Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse and the other is on the dichotomy of Porter Wagoner’s recordings from the late sixties. Looking forward to writing these!
Until next time, may good listening be with you all.
Last time I was in touch, it was to write about eight new releases that caught my ears and that I thought you would probably like too. Getting the list down to eight was tough but fun. To actively seek out new music, and to also have musicians and publicists bringing it to my attention is to keep the itch of discovery—that (thankfully) never-sending quest to hear something that will knock your socks off—alive. It’s a continued reminder why one became a music lover in the first place.
Along with that is the mining of days gone by to unearth material by artists from whom no new music will be forthcoming again. There is a buzz that the most alluring of these releases generate that can detract from what the contemporary artist is releasing. I offer this observation as a fact and not as the prelude to a treatise on the danger of such releases. But think of the anticipation that attended the discovery of a full performance of the A Love Supreme suite by John Coltrane in Seattle from the fall of 1965 or, just last year, when Alice Coltrane’s 1971 concert at Carnegie Hall came out or when Forces of Nature, live McCoy Tyner from 1966, saw the light of day.
It has become an unofficial tradition that a bevy of these type of releases will be peppered throughout the lengthy list of releases for Record Store Day, that twice annual celebration of the noble indie vinyl shop. As it relates to jazz, last year’s treats included previously unissued Shelly Manne from 1958 and 1966, Yusef Lateef from 1972, Charles Tolliver from 1973 and almost three hours of Emily Remler from the mid eighties. All were shepherded to jazz buffs in part by Zev Feldman, the “Jazz Detective,” as indeed he also did with the ’65 A Love Supreme and Forces of Nature as well as countless other recordings.
This year’s feast for the first Record Store Day includes three releases on Resonance Records, the label Feldman is co-president of with George Klobin, in limited-edition vinyl sets coming on April 12, and CD and digital versions coming out on April 18.
All three have undeniable historical importance and receive the exacting (sometimes admittedly bordering on the exhausting) standards upon which Resonance has built a well-deserved reputation with ample context and reflections from musicians featured on the recordings as well as their contemporaries and others with particularly salient insights. Resonance (and by extension, Feldman) burnish recordings that are often at least a half-century old with vitality as well as the sense that this work is motivated by a desire to provide a thorough and visceral oral history of a particular time in jazz.
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It’s easy to get excited about the products of this painstaking work, especially when Charles Mingus, Freddie Hubbard and Kenny Dorham headline the releases. In Argentina: The Buenos Aires Concerts documents Mingus’ last working group through two shows in June 1977. The Hubbard (On Fire) and Dorham (Blue Bossa in the Bronx) recordings document them with their respective working groups in 1967 at the Blue Morocco, a club in the Bronx co-owned by Sylvia Robinson of Mickey and Sylvia fame who would play an important in the birth of hip hop through her Sugar Hill Records label.
Of the three, the Dorham is the most tantalizing. Not only is it the first so-called “new” Dorham record in a long time, it is also one of a precious few recordings of the trumpeter after his final session as a leader, the astonishing and dynamic Trompeta Tocatta (a Blue Note album that should be way more celebrated than it is) from the fall of 1964. He appears on Blue Bossa in the Bronx with a top-notch band: Sonny Red on alto saxophone, Cedar Walton on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Denis Charles on drums. The recording—taped at the Blue Morocco by ad man Bernard Drayton (as was the Hubbard) for WLIB—furthers the argument of why Dorham was such an interesting player.
For me, it’s about the sound he was able to coax out of his horn (in the notes for the recording, trumpeter Steve Bernstein reminds that it takes all but one note to hear to know that it’s Dorham playing it). The closest corollary I can offer is that his playing had the texture of felt. It was a little fuzzy and pleasingly warm. His solo while a member of Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers on ‘Like Someone in Love’ from the group’s recordings at the Cafe Bohemia in 1955 is a pocket essay on the luminousness of his playing. As he navigates the harmonic suspension that underpins each A section, he picks his notes carefully, almost gingerly. This kind of unconcealed deliberation adds a vulnerability that is deeply poignant.
Dorham was a master ballad player. He caressed a melody like an attentive lover—think of his gorgeous statement on ‘My Ideal’ from Quiet Kenny—and it’s wonderful to hear him play ‘My One and Only Love,’ a standard with a very pretty melody, on Blue Bossa in the Bronx.
The recording opens with—no surprise here—’Blue Bossa,’ the famous line he wrote that lead off Joe Henderson’s debut as a leader, Page One. Dorham’s solo is magnificent and authoritative as he picks away at the graceful flow of its harmonic progression. Red provides fine contrast. His tone could sometimes be a little sharp and harsh but here, he is the right kind of foil. Walton, Chambers and Charles mesh well together. They’re steady and propulsive.
The program includes one other Dorham original, ‘Blue Friday,’ a hip, spare blues line and is filled out with the kind of material that formed the backbone of the post-Second World War repertoire: Charlie Parker’s ‘Conception,’ Milt Jackson’s ‘Bags’ Groove,’ Eubie Blake’s ‘Memories of You’ (a nice feature for Red) and Miles Davis’ ‘The Theme.’ Ultimately, Blue Bossa in the Bronx is textbook mainstream jazz in the late sixties, unconcerned with the upheavals in the music at the time. It’s an important addition to Kenny Dorham’s legacy on record.
The Mingus recording is also somewhat old fashioned. In the mini-documentary that Resonance put together for In Argentina: The Buenos Aires Concerts (as charmingly low-fi as pristine and earnestly high quality everything else the label does), Jack Walrath, who played trumpet in Mingus’ band from 1974 until this bassist’s passing, making an interesting observation of the band featured on the release—in addition to Walrath, there’s Ricky Ford on tenor saxophone, Robert Neloms on piano and stalwart Dannie Richmond on drums. “At the time, it was probably the best [band] of the seventies because everyone else was going into that so-called jazz fusion,” Walrath says. “The other band I remember exactly playing hard core was McCoy Tyner but even then, they didn’t really play changes whereas I think true freedom is like what Sonny Rollins does, like when you’re free over the changes.”
It’s interesting to think of Mingus as being out of the times rather than being ahead of them or completely outside of them or simply beyond them. Who else could have created something so volcanic yet rooted in the tradition of Ellington as, for one example, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady? There was also a rareified vitality when the bassist was fronting a small group, especially when captured live.
This feeling particularly comes through one of the first jazz performances I heard that seemed to confirm the hope I had of what this music could mean: cool, hip and according some sort of anointed status to who could know and feel it deeply (admittedly, a bit snobbish here). It was ‘Nostalgia in Times Square’ with Booker Ervin, John Handy, Richard Wyands and Richmond from 1959. The cadence of the line is very much like other declaratory lines of the time: ‘Moanin’,’ ‘Blue Train’ and ‘Cool Struttin’,’ especially the stop-start section before the improvisations being. Foundational stuff.
Then there are the recordings from the band Mingus assembled for a series of concerts in the spring of 1964: Eric Dolphy, Clifford Jordan, Jaki Byard, Richmond and (temporarily) Johnny Coles. The music here was often episodic with the solos on ‘Fables of Faubus’ and ‘Meditations on Integration’ treated like symphonic movements and lengthy with some performances stretching to half an hour. Quite possibly the peak of Mingus.
The music taped in Buenos Aires from June 1977 captures these two sides to the bassist’s music, performed months before he was diagnosed with ALS. While In Argentina: The Buenos Aires Concerts opens and closes with Mingus standards: ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ and ‘Fables of Faubus’ (the lyrics updated for the post-Watergate era), the rest of the material is far more recent. I’ll admit that seventies Mingus is a blind spot for me except for a set of live recordings from Detroit in 1973 and the expanded reissue of his Carnegie Hall concert from a year later. Hearing the versions here of pieces like ‘Three or Four Shades of Blue,’ ‘Sue’s Changes’ and ‘Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love’ (weaving in elements of ‘Lush Life’) is the swift kick in the pants I need to get to know this period of Mingus a whole lot better.
To me, the highlight of this set is hearing a small-group version of ‘Cumbia & Jazz Fusion’ (the studio version is sprawling even by Mingus’ standards—I listened to it after hearing the slimmed-down version here) that retains its suite-like structure, including the musical joke involving ‘Short'nin' Bread.’
While the music may not be as explosive as one typically expects from Mingus—for sure, Neloms here plays way more in the lines than Don Pullen, for one example, did—there is still fire within even the most placid of performances.
That would certainly not be the word I would use to describe the new Hubbard set. If the title (On Fire) is not a dead giveaway, a listen to it will seal the deal. This is not the first time music from this version of Hubbard’s working band: Bennie Maupin on tenor saxophone, Kenny Barron on piano, Herbie Lewis on bass and Freddie Waits on drums, has been released from the stage. Back in 2001, a set by the group from Baltimore, Fastball - Live At the Left Bank, was put out on Joel Dorn’s short-lived Label M and is now long out of print. On Fire doubles the amount of material on Fastball and generally has the band stretching out even more.
It’s very much what one expects of an archive jazz collection from 1967. The solos are intense. The performances are long. It makes a good companion to Forces of Nature even as Hubbard and company don’t generate quite as much drama walking the tightrope as Tyner and company do.
In fact, the most satisfying performance on On Air: Live From the Blue Morocco is ‘Up Jumped Spring.’ Hearing Hubbard, Maupin and Barron cycle through the harmonic changes of one of the trumpeter’s most memorable compositions is its own kind of bliss. The tempo is relaxed and the invention is unflagging. ‘Echoes of Blue’ also takes its time and provides a nice feature for Lewis.
As the music gets hotter, there remains a dedication to go through the changes, whether it be ‘Summertime’ or Hubbard’s ‘Crisis,’ over and over again. It’s a celebration of the inventiveness of the jazz musician as are the Dorham and Mingus sets. My recommendation is to get all three but if you can only get one, make it the Dorham.
I am actually writing a column about this for publication on Substack this week - but how is everyone - and I mean everyone - missing the fact that the most interesting player on any of these releases that almost no one knows about is Sonny Red, a great alto player who was in the same league as Jacki McLean? It bewilders me. I love Dorham, Mingus, et al, but Red is the one we should be talking about.
"including the musical joke involving ‘Short'nin' Bread." "Who said mama's little baby likes short'nin bread?/That's some lie some white man up and said." He called it like it was.