Wes Montgomery and Bill Evans Revisited

On two archival releases from the Riverside catalogue

Recently, I picked up two archival releases. One offered the complete live recordings that Wes Montgomery and a one-time-only all-star quintet made at a Berkeley coffee house called Tsubo in 1962 for the guitarist’s Full House. The other included every complete studio take Bill Evans made with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motion as his trio bandmates.

There’s a bit of a gimmick at play here with these releases, forcing fans as they do to buy the same music again in order to get some previously unreleased goodies. But it’s also a chance to revisit music long canonized in a new context, and that’s the focus on the below essay which I hope you will enjoy.

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

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Wes Montgomery and Bill Evans Revisited
By: Robert C. Gilbert

To be a record collector these days can be at times pretty grand. I’m thinking here about the continued growth and girth of releases that exhume and exhaust the archives, if not occasionally the listener, and give the most comprehensive overview of an album or albums.

What this can result in is the collector purchasing a record over and over again in order to hear whatever previously unreleased material has been added to a collection that may have already been claimed to be complete. Some may call it a racket, others may call it a joy. Whatever appellation is chosen likely depends on whatever boxsets or expanded reissues are calling out for one’s wallet.

By my count, the two studio recordings of Bill Evans’ trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motion: Portrait in Jazz and Explorations, have been reissued at least twice in progressively expanded editions prior to Haunted Heart: The Legendary Riverside Recordings that arrived last fall. Here is the true motherlode: 17 newly issued alternate takes and outtakes in addition to nine already issued during the rise and the fall of the CD era plus, and let’s not forget this, the original albums newly remastered.

They are bedrock recordings of fifties and sixties jazz, quietly revolutionary, with Portrait in Jazz easier to be enraptured with and Explorations taking a bit longer to get under one’s skin but worth the wait (I chalk this up primarily to repertoire with Portrait in Jazz’s more immediately recognizable than Explorations’).

No surprise then that I splurged for the LP version of the set, eager to re-immerse myself in music that was a big part of my early jazz education and to hear variations on performances I know so well. And certainly, placing the needle on the first side of Portrait in Jazz to hear that abrupt beginning of ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’ as if play was pressed on the session tape mid-performance, was to fondly recall how it felt to hear it for the first time.

It’s of course the chance to finally delve into all of the session material that makes Haunted Heart essential. To hear Evans attempt different staccato attacks on the theme of ‘Witchcraft’ and to savour a second trio version of ‘Nardis,’ a little more formal than the telepathic flow of the master from Explorations (my favourite recording by the group).

The greatest revelation for me from Haunted Heart had been to dig into multiple takes of Harry Warren and Mack Gordon’s ‘I Wish I Knew’ and to fixate on a recurring figure that appears in each take. It’s a chordal pattern played by Evans with a romantic ascent that sounds very familiar in retrospect. I never noticed it from the times I’ve played Explorations prior to getting Haunted Heart. I say it’s familiar in retrospect for it sounds like a key melodic phrase in Thom Bell and Linda Creed’s ‘Betcha By Golly Wow’ that was written and first recorded in 1970. It’s a startling thing, regardless if there is any connection or not, the kind of discovery that occurs when one re-engages with a musical artefact that one has engaged with before in a different configuration.

While there has been some hype that has accompanied the release of Haunted Heart, it’s been muted compared to the ongoing series of John Coltrane archival releases, for example (speaking of Coltrane, something big is coming our way come September). Slipping fairly unnoticed in 2023 was the full release of the recordings Wes Montgomery made at Tsubo, a coffee house/club in Berkeley. Six recordings were released as Full House. An additional six had previously been made available although save for a 12-CD boxset of Montgomery’s recordings for Riverside, they hadn’t been collected together (the [Orrin] Keepnews Collection version of Full House released in 2007 had them all excluding an alternate version of ‘Blue ‘n’ Boogie’).

So, that Craft Recordings, which now houses the Riverside catalogue, issued the remaining two recordings in a three-LP or two-CD set in 2023 is, of course, not the revelation that Haunted Heart is. That being said, The Complete Full House Recordings is still indisputably interesting.

Orrin Keepnews of Riverside had a knack for capturing jazz live and for doing so in a way that added dimension to a musician of which the studio could only capture so much. Think of Cannonball Adderley with whom Keepnews made six albums from the stage and how his preacher-like pronouncements abutted increasingly lengthy, adventurous pieces, abetted undoubtedly by the presence of Yusef Lateef in Adderley’s band in 1962 and 1963. Think also of the Evans trio’s Village Vanguard recordings from June 25, 1961, an unbeknownst epitaph to his partnership with LaFaro, who would die tragically twelve days later, and how the longer, more involved performances heightened the group’s impressionistic lyricism so that it cascades like ripples after skipping a rope on the water.

What of Wes Montgomery then? If Keepnews’ original notes for Full House are to be trusted, it was his idea to record the guitarist live and it was up to Montgomery to come up with the band he wanted to record with. In 1962, he was a thoroughly small-group player whether with his brothers or fronting astutely-picked, studio-only groups.

For the latter, the results were always masterful. Occasionally, they were transcendent, such as The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery with its perfectly sequenced program and the simpatico of Tommy Flanagan with Percy and Albert “Tootie” Heath as well as Bags Meets Wes!, a summit meeting with Milt Jackson and the spritely groove of Wynton Kelly, Sam Jones and Philly Joe Jones, especially on the motoring, modal ‘Jingles.’

Kelly was the anchor of the group Montgomery picked for Full House. According to Keepnews, it was the result of serendipity. The pianist was in San Francisco playing with Miles Davis and with Kelly came long-standing musical partners Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. Also in town was Johnny Griffin. All four were off on a Monday (June 25, 1962) and so on that day, Keepnews with engineer Wally Heider set up shop to catch the one-time-only quintet on tape. The repertoire was kept to seven pieces. Consider the night at Tsubo a live session with the coffee house acting as the recording studio.

Montgomery pairing with Griffin on the front line was inspired. Both were extremely fluid players but contrasted in their attack. The guitarist famously used his thumb instead of a pick to play and that gave a grounded feel to his sound even as he fired off a flurry of notes or octaves or chords. The beat was always felt.

Griffin, whose tenor tone was slightly thinner than his peers, played lines that floated, skirting quickly up the musical staff and resolving with a choked cry. His second chorus on the master of the title track with a Montgomery solo spliced in is a good example of Griffin’s in-the-pocket pyrotechnics.

‘Full House’ was a waltz composed by Montgomery. The rhythm section lock in on it not unlike how they do on Davis’ ‘Teo’ from his Someday My Prince Will Come album. The harmonic progression is the kind, with its shift to the B and the momentum into the final A, that is made for a soloist to explore at length and to enjoy the pleasure of improvising on such a fertile form.

That’s what it sounds like, for sure, as Montgomery, Griffin and Kelly take turns soloing. At just over nine minutes, the spliced master of ‘Full House’ still feels relatively brief with the constraint of building a twelve-inch album the only barrier preventing them from spinning out more choruses, finding more to play on and to extol even more on the riches of the guitarist’s composition.

The album Keepnews built from the group’s one night at Tsubo balances this stretching out, within reason, with more compact performances. Full House is powered by the former; in addition to the title track, there’s ‘Cariba,’ another Montgomery original plus the aforementioned ‘Blue ‘n’ Boogie.’

The latter is the night’s most fiery performance. Montgomery and Kelly’s solos build in intensity while Griffin’s starts red hot and remains at peak ignition. As he piles on blues chorus upon blues chorus, hear how the crowd begins to respond in kind. ‘Cariba’ has little harmonic motion and is fueled by Cobb’s cross-stick beat which sits somewhere between a bossa nova and Afro-Cuban. Griffin is particularly energized here, alternatively teasing off riffs and playing rapid, darting lines. Montgomery cuts deep into the beat, especially when he switches to octaves and Cobb increases the intensity of his attack on the drum kit.

The three shorter performances hit the mark too. An up-tempo ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’ has Griffin, Montgomery and Kelly gliding through the changes. The guitarist’s theme statement is interesting in that its thrust and in the choice to paraphrase, both melodically and rhythmically, Harold Arlen’s music both mirror Bill Evans’ approach on Portrait in Jazz.

The closing ‘S.O.S.,’ the third and final Montgomery original for Full House, is a sprint with a motif that recurs throughout the solos. The one ballad, ‘I’m Getting Accustomed to Her Face,’ is a feature for the guitarist with Chambers and Cobb, and has Montgomery playing dense chords throughout; in its way, it’s a foreshadowing of the commercial turn his music would take in just over two-years time.

The bonus material totals an extra hour of music. As mentioned, almost all of it has been previously released. There are more leisurely takes of ‘Blue ‘n’ Boogie’ and ‘Come Rain or Come Shine.’ Montgomery really digs into the octaves on the alternate ‘Cariba’ which starts out loosely and then gets real tight.

One of the two previously unissued performances is the take of ‘Full House’ where most of the master comes from and with Montgomery’s original solo. It’s a brief statement and far less assured than the solo that was patched in. Whether that came from a separate complete take or an insert take is a question that isn’t answered or even addressed in the supplemental liner notes. A curious thing to leave hanging. The other new track is the first take of ‘S.O.S.,’ which is a tad faster than the master.

Two takes of Mel Tormé and Robert Wells’ ‘Born to Be Blue’—a rapturous composition with a breathtaking modulation on the B—rounds out the extras and is a nice chance to hear Montgomery’s ballad playing at length.

While there isn’t a whole lot new in the re-packaging of Montgomery’s one night at Tsubo, it does provide an opportunity to re-immerse in one of the guitarist’s high points on record. That’s a good enough reason for me to buy Full House for the third time.