Max Roach & Donald Byrd Go to the Choir Loft

Also: another check-in on what I've been reading and listening to, and on how my newsletter is doing

Welcome again music lovers!

Today is another of my ongoing series of paid posts. Before the paywall is an essay on two of my favourite early-sixties jazz albums: Max Roach’s It’s Time and Donald Byrd’s A New Perspective, both of which memorably employ a choir, as well as links to some of the best pieces I have read on Substack in May and a teaser of what I have been listening to recently in my record room. After the paywall is a check-in on how my Substack is doing.

Paid subscriptions to my Substack are available in both monthly ($6) and yearly ($50) plans, and help support the work I do here to spread the joy of listening to music. If you feel what I do has merit, I hope you may consider taking out a paid subscription. It’s the best way to support me and I won’t let you down.

Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

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Max Roach & Donald Byrd Go to the Choir Loft
By: Robert C. Gilbert

There’s nothing really all that small about the small group in jazz. Yes, the number of musicians in such a group may not add up to much but the sheer impact of expression that has come from the one-off or ongoing teaming up of musicians forms the breadth of jazz expression throughout its 100-plus years of existence.

And yet, and perhaps paradoxically, what the small group can do is never more clear to me then when its members are augmented. Here, I don’t simply mean when a guest soloist is added or a combo fronts a singer. It’s something bigger than that. I’m thinking instead of when a small group abuts another common aggregation of musicians.

For one example, the symphony orchestra. Here, I think of when the Dave Brubeck Quartet recorded with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in 1959. On Dialogues for Jazz Combo and Orchestra, composed by Howard Brubeck (one of Dave’s brothers), from Bernstein Plays Brubeck Plays Bernstein, his score, when played by the Philharmonic, often accentuates the qualities long associated with the Brubeck Quartet: staccato, rhythmic bursts, the interplay between the members of the group and on the ‘Adagio,’ the dreamy romanticism of Paul Desmond’s alto against Brubeck’s piano.

How about the big band? Look no further than Africa/Brass, John Coltrane’s first recording for Impulse! Records. Here, the interjections by the brass and reeds in bold blasts are like the hypnotic sway of the Coltrane Quartet, then composed of Coltrane with McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman and Elvin Jones. They often double Tyner’s comping as well as underline how the group’s sound grew in momentum and intensity during an individual performance.

What of the choir? Here, a contemporary example is apt: Kamasi Washington’s The Epic, especially as it's been ten years this month since its release. Washington’s use of a choir gives the music further scope, a skyward momentum that tries to pull heaven down in order to touch the earth.

Casting backwards, I think of two recordings from the early sixties that also feature a choir but in very different ways. Both are classics and somewhat overlooked. On both, the choir is conducted by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.

Primarily a choral and chamber composer in addition to being a conductor, Perkinson (he was named after Samuel Coleridge-Perkinson) was also a pianist. In 1964, he toured with Max Roach. Two years earlier, while he was serving on the faculty of the Brooklyn College of Music, he was enlisted by Roach to conduct the charts for a choir that he wrote for his second and final recording for Impulse!.

It’s Time is one of the many politically charged recordings the drummer made and save for We Insist! (aka the Freedom Now Suite), the boldest. Part of that is due to the use of a choir as an auxiliary horn section and another part was the decision to favour lengthly improvisations while keeping each of the six compositions on the album within six to eight minutes. Yet another is the sound of the album—cavernous and reverb-heavy. It was recorded at Manhattan’s Fine Recording Studios in what was once the ballroom of the Great Northern Hotel.

The album opens with a declaration by the choir: “it’s time!!!!!!!” followed by a passage of what could be described as vocalese. The female voices are in the lead and the male voices are in support. On the bridge, the choir lets out a slightly atonal cry against the cry of the front-line Roach used on the album: trumpeter Richard Williams, trombonist Julian Priester and tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan. After a repeat of the A section, Jordan is off on his solo.

Roach plays at a furious clip as Jordan unfurls phrases of controlled intensity. He is the calm within the storm even as the choir interjects with steadily increasing furor and Roach plays rolls of superhuman velocity and fills that roil with anger. This tug of war between choir and drummer continues after Jordan concludes his solo and Roach takes his.

Of all jazz drummers, Max Roach remains, at least to me, the instrument’s supreme melodic soloist. When it was his turn to improvise, he would tease out variations on the structure on whatever composition was being played as he moved around the drumkit, the shift from section to section, chorus to chorus, often explicitly marked. Indeed, Roach is the strongest argument against the position, somewhat justified, that drum solos are the ultimate expression of musical excess.

Consider, for example, his remarkable statement on the equally remarkable rendition Sonny Rollins recorded of ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’ in 1955, and how a pattern for snare and ride cymbal he plays over and over again weaves through the solo and indeliaby mirrors the rhythm of the somewhat hoary showtune.

The greatest Roach solo I have ever heard is what follows the title track on It’s Time. ‘Another Valley’ is a feature for Priester and the theme is structured as another cry for change, primarily in the gradual upswing of the choir underlining the trombonist. Priester was an interesting player, heralding an an abstract, interior approach to the trombone, favouring short phrases that picked away at the harmony rather than broadly caressing it like J.J. Johnson or Curtis Fuller, paving the way for a player like Grachan Moncur III. His lengthy statement on ‘Another Valley’ is enigmatic, seemingly disaffected by the march of Roach with pianist Mal Waldron and bassist Art Davis, and the choir’s punctuations on the second chorus of his solo. It ends in a climax of crashing chords by Waldron and a vigorous outlining of the cadence of ‘Another Valley’’s primary rhythmic motif by Roach.

He returns to that pattern over and over again in his improvisation, serving as a conclusion to each set of elaborations on the theme. Sometimes Roach plays it on the toms and snare or the cymbals or both. The solo lasts just over three minutes. There is a sense of perfection to it. Everything that Roach does follows naturally from what proceeds it. There appears to be no deliberation, no moments of simply filling space. It has the sense of propulsive perfection as some of Miles Davis’ solos do—a stream of consciousness so dialed into the creative music that what was played may as well have been through composed.

On It’s Time, the choir adds scope to the music. They accentuate the twists of the harmony on ‘Living Room’—Priester and Waldron take the solos here—and the languid, reflective thrust of ‘Sunday Afternoon.’ Waldron has his second spotlight on it while Richard Williams takes the theme and the first improvisation. Of the bevy of fifties and sixties trumpet players, Williams may be the most overlooked. His often extravagant phrasing and meteoric lines, combined with an almost Mariachi vibrato paved the way for Woody Shaw and Charles Tolliver, and also marked him as an exciting player.

On ‘Sunday Afternoon,’ Williams plays with profound warmth and sense of sweep. On ‘The Profit,’ with its slashing theme played by the trumpeter, Priester and Jordan, and doubled by the choir, he plays blues chorus after blues chorus of unflagging invention. Art Davis follows and plays abstract lines out of tempo. The choir occasionally answer emphatically. He takes the same approach on his improvisation on ‘Lonesome Lover,’ which closes the album.

Here, the choir assumes its traditional role. They engage in a call and response with vocalist Abbey Lincoln, a frequent collaborator with Roach and his one-time wife. Jordan takes a two-chorus solo and the choir wordlessly backs him on the second of them, adding heft to an already hefty statement. They also take the bridge during Davis’ one-chorus statement. ‘Lonesome Lover’ ends with a brief cadenza by Lincoln and then the assembled forces: the front line, the rhythm section, Lincoln and choir, give an extended amen.

Donald Byrd’s A New Perspective may best be described as a 40-minute amen, rooted as it is in the earthy, spiritual side of jazz. Recorded almost exactly 11 months after It’s Time and also employing Perkinson to conduct a choir, the album doesn’t use voices as a provocation or to underline a political message but to supercharge the all-start group Byrd assembled for the album.

The opening composition, ‘Elijah,’ a tribute to the trumpeter’s father, a Methodist minister, primes A New Perspective for classic status. On the A section, the choir takes the theme with Byrd and tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley providing counterpoint. On the bridge, the choir and horns are in unison. Five invigorating solos follow, all fueled by ‘Elijah’’s tension and release. Guitarist Kenny Burrell roams soulfully through the changes as does the vibraphonist Donald Best (a true mystery man of jazz—this is his sole recording date). Mobley is typically lyrical, never playing the obvious.

‘Elijah’ climaxes on the two solos that follow. Byrd’s is sparse. By 1963, the ebullience with which he played in the fifties had been tempered by a coolness where each note counted for about ten more. Drummer Lux Humphries switches to a marching beat which the choir locks into. On the second chorus, Byrd digs in, exploring a single note over and over with pianist Herbie Hancock feeding him gospel riff after gospel riff. Hancock explodes for his improvisation, at the peak of his rhythmic, soulful approach. The repeat of the theme is propelled by this momentum and then crashes down for the rubato finale.

The rest of A New Perspective feeds off of ‘Elijah’’s energy, never letting up. There is a feeling of elevated, sustained inspiration in the air in Rudy Van Gelder’s studio, where the album was recorded, which gives it a dry, compact sound. Band and choir meld into one force.

‘Beast of Burden’ is hazy and bluesy. The choir’s punctuations during the solos are especially welcome. ‘Black Disciple’ is where A New Perspective mirrors the fervor of It’s Time—dig especially Burrell’s blistering start to his solo. ‘Cristo Redentor,’ one of two contributions by Duke Pearson for the album beyond writing the choral arrangements, reveals deep meaning through six repetitions of the theme: the first two by the choir and the final four by Byrd.

A New Perspective ends with Pearson’s ‘Chant.’ The theme is a masterful dialogue between the choir, and Byrd and Mobley, and catchy as heck. After Byrd, Mobley, Burrell and Hancock solo, the repeat of the theme is followed by a moment of transcendence. Here, the front line, the rhythm section and the choir all unite on a musical ascent to heaven. It is the perfect finish to a tremendous album.

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Report from My Substack Notes Feed

Substack Notes is where I do most of my social-media posting. Here are some of the best pieces I’ve read on Substack over the past month and shared on Notes.

Liz Callaway of Between Flights writes about being at Johnny Mathis’ final concert, which took place on May 18.

David Cantwell of No Fences Reviews pays tribute to David Briggs, one of the players that made Nashville a hub of record making in the sixties and beyond.

Abby Schleifer on the magic, wonder and exasperation of living in New York.

John Nogowski of John’s Substack marks 50 years of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, an album I only listened to for the first time.

Dan Pal of Pal Cinema, Television & Music on why Billboard’s Hot 100 ain’t what it used to be.

Phil Freeman of Burning Ambulance on Mack Avenue’s just launched reissue campaign of the Strata-East catalogue, focusing here on Stanley Cowell.

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Report from the Record Room

For years, I used social media to track whatever albums or CDs I was listening to. My Twitter account soon became a fun, searchable archive of everything I spinned or played. As I have gradually stepped away from Twitter, the cataloguing has ceased. While abstaining from constant social media has been something I can’t say I regret, it has had the odd drawback. For instance, I completely missed this year’s 33 1/3 Books’ open call for book submissions. Oops! Another is that it means I have to try to remember the albums I’ve enjoyed listening to recently.

Here are a few I warmly recall: Sonny Rollins’ Worktime and Tenor Madness, Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers’ Mosaic, Cream’s Disraeli Gears, various recordings by Jacqueline du Pré, including her 1968 rehearsal of Richard Strauss’ Don Quixote with the New Philharmonia Orchestra with Sir Adrian Boult conducting and Artur Rubinstein’s sixties cycle of Chopin’s Nocturnes.

Here are a few more. As a passionate and devoted fan of Laura Nyro, one of my big thrills is discovering singers and albums that capture her daring and eclectic spirit. It can be in the sound of the singer: an expansive range or a fearlessness to go high in the registry or in volume, or in a liberal cross-pollination of genres or in the evocation of the specialness of living and loving in New York. There’s an a-ha moment when a new discovery has been made. Here are three.