Tony Williams - Life Time

By 1965 and this--drummer Tony Williams' first set as a leader--the then-17-year-old had already been working with a slew of talented and innovative jazz artists, including Herbie Hancock, Eric Dolphy, Andrew Hill, Sam Rivers, Jackie McLean and Grachan Moncur III (not to mention his recent incorporation into Miles Davis' Second Great Quintet).  Listening to Life Time, it's clear that Williams was listening closely to what the latter two were doing, especially on the sessions for McLean's One Step Beyond and Moncur III's Evolution.  For me, this album represents one of several high points from the period when it comes to a distinctive brand of avant-garde jazz that seems to favor space over wild soloing.

You know from the eerie, quietly intense opening melody of "Two Pieces of One: Red" that this isn't going to be a typical bop album, but as Sam Rivers' tenor fades out and dual bowed basses from Richard Davis and Gary Peacock gently arpeggiate it's apparent that this subtle opening isn't going for the explosion your ears might expect.  One of the bassists takes the first solo, and from then on you can rest assured that we're not returning to the usual structures or sounds for the rest of the album.  "Two Pieces of One: Red" and the rest of Life Time are typified by a restrained, spacious atmosphere wherein solos take place with very little backing instrumentation (aided considerably by the fact that there's no piano on three of five tracks) and rarely take off into the rapid-fire solo excursions popular even with some of the players on this disc--Sam Rivers is surprisingly subdued here, but he manages to ride the transition with little difficulty, relying more on dynamics and the presence/non-presence duality that's much more of an option when you're playing in a musical landscape as open as this one.  Indeed, the overall sound of this album owes as much to the theoretical advancements of John Cage as it does to free jazz pioneers, setting up blocks of silence as both an effective compositional tool (making it easier to tell when the sometimes skeletal compositions are moving to another section) and as an invisible member of the combo, giving the players another (absence of) sound to play off and somehow adding depth and intensity to the sounds that are actually present.  Williams' drums in particular seem to particularly smolder in the open, reverb-heavy environment, with his brushwork lifelike in its texture and his cymbal work especially benefiting from miles of reverb and a lack of competition with other instruments (and himself, for that matter--this music wouldn't be so great if the players didn't match the mood by leaving a little space in their own playing).

"Two Pieces of One: Green" is the album's longest track, with Rivers contributing some more of his characteristic fire and blasting some really juicy overtones, while Williams explores the toms and un-snared snare.  While the subtle melody of some of the album's other tracks gradually reveals itself, this track is one of the freest of the bunch, demonstrating amply that free jazz doesn't have to always consist of several instruments blaring at the same time.  "Tomorrow Afternoon" comes closest to hard bop in melody and swing, but gradually breaks up into greater and greater caverns of space, like the floor is dropping away from the comfortable atmosphere that was so briefly established.  "Memory" drops Rivers and brings vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson and Herbie Hancock in for a bassless free improvisation that sees Hutcherson and Williams riffing off one another quite effectively, with the vibes providing just enough of a tonal anchor; with Williams' wood block and other hand percussion providing yet another noticeable textural contribution.  The arrangement is so sparse that when Hancock finally asserts himself around 5:30 with a brief chord, it sounds like the loudest, most melodic thing you've ever heard.  The album ends with "Barb's Song to the Wizard," a piano and bass duet with no drums--the tense melody nods to Williams' aforementioned work with Moncur III and McLean.  Unlike those great albums, though, Williams always seems to take things one step further, providing no real traditional bop tunes to appease nervous listeners and committing fully to the album's mission statement.

The fact that this album works so well with such a piecemeal, rotating assortment of players exclusively playing the compositions of a 17-year-old drummer is a testament both to Williams' skill and unheard-of musical maturity at the time, but also to whatever it was in the air at the time that made all of these players so assured in their judgment, synchronicity and adventurousness.  Life Time is a grower in the best sense of the word--sounding like nothing much on first listen but gradually unfolding into a paradoxically dense work, considering its relative quietness--and every time I listen to it I find myself asking "Why isn't there more free jazz like this?!"  Luckily a little research into the discographies of the artists involved here yield further pairings in the same time period and several great albums in the same vein.  While Williams would go on in the next few years to collaborate with some of avant-garde jazz's most acclaimed albums (as well as Miles Davis' less challenging but equally iconic work [I bet he hated this album]) before heading into fusion territory, he did reconvene with some of these players for the nearly-as-excellent Spring, but no album I've found has done such a good job of fusing an AMM-like free improv space aesthetic with "traditional" free jazz harmony and melody--recommendations welcome!

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Lee Morgan - Search for the New Land

Though I'm gaining more and more of an appreciation for it, I still find jazz to be one of the most difficult genres to critically evaluate.  Since I'm not a jazz musician I have very little knowledge of jazz-specific theory, and though it's easy to tell when a soloist has particularly good chops from the speed, fluidity or emotion of his or her playing, if jazz albums were to be rated on the soloists' skills alone, there would be a lot of 5-star jazz albums out there (though learned jazz musicians may contend that there's a whole lot of space between "good" and "bad" in terms of soloist quality).  So, in evaluating jazz albums with a critical ear I tend to do so both from the perspective of my experience with other types of music and theory, but also more in the way that non-musicians evaluate most music--based on intuitive reactions and emotional response.  Though today's crop of conservative jazz élite probably feel differently, what I'm looking for isn't a theoretically-sound rehash of the same museum-piece territory that was first explored 50 years ago.  Like with most genres, if I'm interested in established ideas, I'd rather go straight to the source and experience them in their original form and hope that any new music I check out has something new to say to make it more worth listening to than the ideas' palpably exciting genesis in the aforementioned classics.  Right now I'm mostly fascinated with the birth and heyday of avant-garde jazz and free jazz in the 60's, and Lee Morgan's 1966 album Search for the New Land is probably a pretty good one to illustrate an album that features fine playing from a number of jazz greats but leaves my emotional and intellectual responses feeling a little cold. 

It's hard to pick holes in this album's lineup, which includes trumpeter Lee Morgan (close off the heels of his commercially successful The Sidewinder), Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Billy Higgins on drums, Herbie Hancock on piano, Reginald Workman on bass, and Grant Green on guitar.  Based on the intensely arty portrait on the cover and the title's provocative title, this should ostensibly be Morgan's foray into the "out" beyond.  Unfortunately, aside from the title track's majesty and moody atmosphere, there's little on here musically to indicate Morgan is interested in abandoning the comforts of hard bop.  For anyone who owns several mid-60's bop albums, the only real draw for this album is "Search for the New Land," which presents a mysterious melody with stately flourishes only to re-state the same melody with a speedier, boppier energy.  I dig this idea, especially since the melody's a good one.  What I don't dig, though, is that Morgan proceeds to show us that his idea of an epic track is just to repeat the same slow melody over and over, interspersed with solo sections for four of the players.  While the music is well-played, there really isn't a whole lot that happens in the track's 15 minutes, especially not in terms of development.  Guitarist Grant Green's solo is pretty simplistic--dare I say boring--and he's so poorly integrated into the arrangement (the only other thing he does is textural octave tapping in the melodic section) that it almost seems like Morgan just included him because "having a guitar seems out."  Hancock and Shorter both deliver enjoyable solos that fit the song's mood well, but I can't help but be reminded of Hancock's own "Maiden Voyage," which delivers a similar feeling with more of a natural feeling and compositional flair.

Aside from the opener, the rest of the album is a pretty straightforward bop affair--"The Joker" is finely-played but unmemorable (at least Green is better integrated into the ensemble and contributes more to the accompaniment and turns in a more interesting solo), while "Melancholee" is the stereotypical obligatory ballad that's easy to pass over unnoticed.  "Mr. Kenyatta" is one of the best tracks to my ears, subtly tense and edgy while at the same time laid back and swinging--exactly the type of composition I think the phrase "post-bop" applies to; not quite in and not quite out.  The closer, "Morgan the Pirate" is similarly satisfying, contrasting some Andrew Hill-like piano riffing from Hancock with a nice, bouncy bop melody. 

While there's far from anything objectionable about this music, it's neither a great hard bop album nor does it deliver on its implied promise to plumb some uncharted depths.  In my nascent attempts to try and articulate what separates a workmanlike, well-played jazz album from a really great one, this album is a god example and reference point to show that sometimes a great lineup doesn't quite click with the magic that elevates the best albums to those rarely-reached heights.  The great thing about jazz, though, is that even with a relative disappointment like this album, it's still a pleasure to listen to and achieves a pretty sizable amount of the pleasure that comes from all well-played jazz.

Get it here.