The Book Cooks Talking the Groove: Jazz Words from The Morning Star
[Notes: Talking the Groove: Jazz Words from The Morning Star has two accompanying CDs of rare music.]
Lift the bandstand The tenor saxophonist and trumpeter Joe McPhee was born in Miami in 1939 and grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York State. His lifetime in free music has made him an especially popular performer in Europe, and he plays to packed houses all over the continent. He has a particularly endearing relationship with London jazz audiences, who, in the words of a great predecessor, Duke Ellington, “love him madly.” As he declared to his listeners at his first post-pandemic gig at Cafe Oto: “Thank you everyone here for extending my childhood!” When I asked him about who influenced his music when he was young, he told me: “Actually, I was never a young saxophonist. Thanks to my Dad who was a trumpet player, I began on trumpet aged eight and only took up sax when I was 28.” That was after playing in high school and military bands and hearing and internalising the saxophone genius of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. “Coltrane’s music is a constant inspiration to me,” he affirmed, “all through these 56 years since his passing. I experienced the classic quartet live at the Village Gate in New York in 1962. The excessive exuberance almost killed me. Four years later I was in the front row at the Vanguard when Live at the Vanguard Again was recorded. And I was there at John Coltrane’s funeral in July 1967 and heard Ornette Coleman’s Quartet and the Albert Ayler Quartet at the church. So it goes.” His new record with the Hounslow-born bassist John Edwards is called Tell Me How Long Has ’Trane Been Gone (Klang Galerie Artacts Records) and is dedicated to Coltrane and James Baldwin. In his spoken prologue, with Edwards’ bass pounding, he conjoins allusions to the titles of Coltrane’s compositions with Baldwin’s novels in a moving oratory, followed by a howling volley of defiant saxophone notes. The recording was live in 2019, made in the very heart of Europe, in the Austrian Tyrol. Edwards is a superb partner, his percussive bass throbbing with love and fury. I asked McPhee how he felt while blowing his tribute. “Actually, I wasn’t feeling well at all and I almost didn’t do it. It was only by focusing on how Coltrane’s music made me feel that I was able to forget about myself and let that energy out. As my fellow saxophonist Steve Lacy used to say: ‘Lift the bandstand’!” The album continues with a salutation to the black emancipation hero, Sojourner Truth. McPhee’s long canon is full of such tributes to black US liberators from Denmark Vesey, Harriet Tubman and Fannie Lou Hamer to Martin Luther King, and the unstoppable voice of Paul Robeson on his album Let Paul Robeson Sing. On the Sojourner Truth track, Edwards’ bass rings while McPhee’s choruses resound with allusions to the spiritual Wade in the Water. Coltrane’s melodism is directly evoked on the next track, Whispers of Naima. McPhee plays some succulently lyrical saxophone phrases over Edwards’ pulsating notes. How does the partnership with Edwards work? “Firstly, I have to say that I absolutely and unabashedly love John. He is a dream given form.” Is playing with the powerfully percussive Edwards like playing with a drummer? “Absolutely. In fact playing with John Edwards is like playing with a dream orchestra!” The final track revisits another great jazz giant. Called The Onliest Monk, it begins with an astonishing sequence by Edwards, full of Monkish humour and surprise, before McPhee joins him for free allusions to Blue Monk, showing how much this duo’s music is as full of wit as it is of soul. How much does he enjoy playing in London, and especially in Dalston where the black vibe is constant on its streets? Does it remind him of any US venues? “The Hungry Brain in Chicago comes closest in my mind,” he replies. “And we’re looking forward to our four-day Cafe Oto residency in June. That’s the Decoy Quartet with John, pianist Alexander Hawkins and drummer Steve Noble. They are my heart!” [Any message for potential listeners? “The message comes from the man who inspired me to attempt to play saxophone – Albert Ayler. Remember what he said: ‘Music is the healing force of the universe.’ Remember that!”
Revere the potential in every moment The Flame are an outstanding trio of Caribbean-rooted stalwarts, whose London improvising sounds have the breath and ancestry of the Antilles bursting from their every note. Bassist Neil Charles is from Carriacou, where the West African provenances of Big Drum still pound at many a wedding or wake. Classically trained, he plays his bass like a drum, his bow striking his strings close to the bridge in a percussive and dramatic thunder. Pianist Robert Mitchell, of Barbadian and Grenadian parents, combines beautifully melodic phrases with rampant runs up and down his keys, expressive poetry and frequent strikes and strums of the very innards of his instrument. As for drummer Mark Sanders, of Belizean antecedents, to every surface that surrounds him – drums, cymbals, wooden blocks, gongs, metal plates – he gives the life to exquisite sound. With his quiver of drumsticks, brushes, mallets, a bow for sawing the edges of cymbals, he is the nonpareil of ever-listening drummers, taking every cue from his confreres while creating hemispheres of new directions. Are there not three drummers drumming? “Within the rhythmic concerns of The Flame’s music we are all percussionists,” says Mitchell. “The piano, being part of the percussive family (and my bringing other percussion sticks); Neil’s large range of rhythmic expression on the acoustic bass (with hands, fingers and bow) and Mark already represents an open portal to infinite possibilities and without fail is an inspiration to dive into deep percussive waters!” How much of an impact does his Caribbean heritage have on his music? “It’s forged a strong connection from Day One in a very wide way: stories, food, language, dance, politics, relatives laughing and arguing, worship, history, education, nursing, poetry and much more. Every day I see and hear evidence of how much Caribbean cultures have influenced UK music, dance, the ever-morphing English language and creativity in general. Its part in jazz history is underacknowledged – and its potential to play a powerful part in future musical innovation continues to be very strong.” Mitchell was born in 1971 in Newbury Park, Ilford. His mother worked in the NHS for 43 years as a maternity sister, and his father was a pharmaceutical process worker. His father organised many Caribbean variety shows for decades, involving dance, food, DJs in theatres and other venues. “Pianists came to our house to rehearse with him on the very same piano on which I learned and practised,” says Mitchell. A graduate of City University and Guildhall School of Music he was taught by the brilliant Norman Beddie, and started to get work with groups like Tomorrow’s Warriors and Quite Sane, and toured with US saxophonist Greg Osby. “I’ve been encouraged by many people over many years, but it all started at home.” To me, The Flame’s co-operative spirit manifests Morris’s great adage: “Fellowship is life.” Mitchell takes up the theme: “Our listening spirit is central to our music. We listen to each other individually and together. We’re always aware that an opportunity to take flight may come and go quickly, so this listening happens from before we play until after we recognise that the last sound has ceased. Our varied experiences feed into this and our willingness to revere the potential in every moment.” They represent three equidistant generations – each a decade apart. It lays a foundation for powerful potential alignments and respect for commonalities and difference to be interrogated in each collective breath. “Each of us has a lot of stories,” says Mitchell, “and determination that all can express them equally as the inspirational moment allows. I think our respective vantage points form an ever-shifting, powerful pyramid of fellowship.” This first album of The Flame – Towards The Flame, Vol 1 is released on the prestigious New York-based 577 label – is a long-awaited and powerfully conceived project. It is the throbbing life of Caribbean/English beauty now available in your own front room.
A life in jazz is a never ending journey, you never stop learning Dave Green is the grandfather of British jazz. He represents a whole generation of jazz musical excellence. Green is the only survivor of 1960’s British musicians who played with the great black pioneers of the music – Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Roland Kirk, Sonny Rollins – and at 81 he’s still playing with all the energy and fire of a teenager. “I was a very lucky young guy, who happened to be in the right place at the right time,” says Green. His father, Cyril, was a motor mechanic, and as a former Royal Engineer a D-Day veteran, and his mother Evelyn was a housewife and local authority home help. A working-class boy, he grew up in a prefab in Wembley Park with future Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts as his next door neighbour. “We grew up together and went to the same schools,” says Green. “We loved Little Richard, Fats Domino and Bill Haley’s Comets. I liked early Elvis, especially Heartbreak Hotel, because of the double bass in it. And we had a wonderful music teacher called Mr Perkins who encouraged my early leanings towards jazz. The first record I ever bought was Barrelhouse, a Parlophone 78, by the Jess Stacy Trio. Charlie's first was Walkin’ Shoes by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.” His first introduction to bass was a tea chest bass in a local skiffle group, The Zodiacs, and by 1958 he and Charlie had joined their first band, The Joe Jones Seven, gigging on a Thursday night at the Mason Arms pub in Edgware. “I had a day job as a cashier’s assistant,” says Green, but “I resolved to turn pro and the first chance that came along was a gig in the south of France.” On his return he was suddenly in demand at The Establishment club and Ronnie Scott’s, joining Don Rendell’s Quintet before joining the Lyttelton band in 1965 where he stayed for 18 years. “In 1966 a wonderful period began for me. I played at Ronnie’s and toured with some of the greatest American jazz musicians on their visits to Britain.” Green singles out Roland Kirk, and his three simultaneous horns: “He was a powerhouse: his energy was incredible with Johnny Birch on piano and the great Phil Seamen on drums. Wonderful, never to be forgotten times.” But the highlight was to play “Body and Soul” with the veteran tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins who, says Green, “was wonderful to work with but not in the best of health. He drank virtually a bottle of Remy Martin every night with just a few spoonfuls of soup. But he played great!” Among British jazz musicians, he picks out Bruce Turner, who contributed a regular jazz column to the Daily Worker, as “one of the most inspirational musicians I ever worked with.” He joined Turner’s Jump band in 1964, and 15 years later invited Turner, along with fellow saxophonist Lol Coxhill, pianist Michael Garrick and drummer Alan Jackson to play in Fingers, Green’s own band. “It was a joy to hear Bruce and Lol, two of Jazz’s great eccentrics, playing together.” And like Turner, the thread of working-class solidarity runs through his career and it was with Fingers that he made a free concert in 1979 at The Garage, near Sloane Square, for “Jazz Against Racism and Fascism.” If there is a musical philosophy to be drawn from his long career it is his desire to transgress categories and barriers in music. A great believer in freedom of movement in music, he defines a life in jazz as “never ending” where “you never stop learning.” “It’s a wonderful feeling to play without preconceived limitations, so the music grows organically in the moment.” A powerful proof of these words is an album Raise Four (Trio Records), just released of the Dave Green Trio with saxophonist Iain Dixon and drummer Gene Calderazzo, plus guest Evan Parker playing tenor and soprano saxophones. Recorded at a Jazz on 3 broadcast in 2004, it is a compelling manifestation of Green’s message that the best of music is indivisible, breaking free of categories. Mainstream, Post-bop, avant-garde and other pigeon-holes are washed away in the brilliance of the sounds as the foursome play unique versions of Monk and Billy Strayhorn with an intense love, musicianship and unity. These are true troubadours of freedom. To catch Green himself playing live look out for Still Waters, the Henry Lowther band, whose album Can’t Believe, Won’t Believe (Village Life Records), came out to extraordinary reviews in 2018, and who still tour.
Saxophonist and flautist Tori Freestone on the release of her duo album with pianist Alcyona Mick The south London saxophonist and flautist, Tori Freestone, comes from a long line of Thames watermen going back to the 18th Century. Her father is an ex-merchant seamen and lover of marine folk songs and shanties. She speaks proudly of her great uncle on her mother's side, the Welsh-born miner, trade unionist and communist, Idris Williams – Somme veteran and one-time member of the Mountain Ash male voice choir, who emigrated to Wonthaggi, Australia in 1920, and led the historic five month miners' strike in 1934, whilst also being an active choral singer, brass band conductor and Chair of the Miners Union theatre: an astonishing all-rounder. “'He travelled around Australia with my grandfather Thomas, performing in community centres,” said Tori. As a girl she grew up singing and playing flute and violin alongside her sister and guitar and harmonica-playing father in a succession of folk song parties with visiting seamen's families and performances in folk clubs, working men's clubs and care homes. “It was a full-on musical childhood,” she told me: 'music was everywhere.' She remembers meeting and being given a signed photo of the great French violinist Stephane Grappelli when she was seven, and buying her first jazz album by Weather Report, which together with her Dad's Joni Mitchell records featuring him, started a lifelong love for the great saxophonist, Wayne Shorter. She also credits the summer schools organised by Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Laine at their Wavendon home, for provoking her jazz enthusiasm. Leaving school, she went to Leeds College of Music and later to the Guildhall, where she was tutored by the great tenor saxophonist, Stan Sulzmann. Her new, fifth album is Make One Little Room an Everywhere, inspired by the line in John Donne's 1634 poem, The Good Morrow. Her album partner is the Dorset-born pianist, Alcyona Mick, whose ancestors were also Thames watermen. This is their second duo album – the first, Criss Cross, was created out of their mutual love for Thelonious Monk. “I love Alcyona's sense of time, her great ears and the power of her rhythmic language. We can be musically playful together, and her quirky, witty, angular style soaks up many different aspects, particularly Monk.” To me Tori's shamanic, folk-nurtured sound reminds me of the tenor saxophone timbre of Charles Lloyd, and her floating, strongly buoyant tone is unlike that of any other British saxophonist: “But I play with a British accent,” she declares, “inspired by other British saxophonists like Stan Sulzmann, Iain Ballamy, Julian Arguelles and the great Scot, Bobby Wellins.” She believes that playing flute first meant that she “took from the flute and incorporated it into the tenor sax, which is a very oral instrument. I think of the saxophone in a very vocal way.” Which is one reason that compels her to add voices to her recordings. On previous albums she has sung folk ballads herself like Press Gang and Shenandoah. On this new album Brigitte Beraha sings a beautifully tender version of Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now, and the Belgian/Egyptian vocalist Natacha Atlas forges a wordless vocal on Tori's tune Who We Are Now, which she says reflects the isolation and “lack of connection” she felt during lockdown. “I wanted to create a unity with the world,” remembering with Donne that no human is an island, but we are all 'part of the main'. I told her that although it was composed during lockdown, I heard it as a lamentation for the people of Gaza. “I'm not surprised,” said Tori, “Its long notes – inspired by chanting 'om' in yoga – create a sense of suppression, and Natacha is a long-time active supporter of the Palestinian cause. I heard her voice in my head as I was writing it.” Saxophone, piano and voice all seem to coalesce, as if it were – as of course, it is – the same humanity creating music as one. “Let sea discoverers to new worlds have gone”, wrote Donne, and like her ancestors, Tori is a seafarer, but a seafarer of the saxophone. One of her future projects is to bring into jazz the sea songs and shanties of those who came before. I for one, am eager to hear that, but in the meantime make your own front room an everywhere by getting hold of Tori and Alcyona's new album, and playing it time and time again.
© 2024 Chris Searle
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