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He always compelled attention. Not by blasting with his horn or through extrovertish antics on stand. Quite the opposite. The sinuous power of Bob Brookmeyer was in his subtlety – of melodic line, time, and wit. And in the perennial freshness of his imagination. I heard him more than scores of times with Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, and the combo he co-led with Clark terry. Always, there were suprises. It was as impossible for Brookmeyer to be dull as to not swing.
Then, some ten years ago, Brookmeyer all but disappeared. Not off the face of the earth, but from the big-league jazz scene. He’d gone to California, and became part of the musical background for carious television series. I missed him. I missed him a lot because while there is indeed a marvelously active spectrum of trombonists – from Vic Dickenson to you George Lewis – there is no one with Brookmeyer’s special kind of mordant lyricism.
At last, however, the exile has returned. Back in New York, - “the energy is here,” says Brookmeyer – Bob is wholly involved in jazz again. Leading the extraordinary unit in this album, and writing more extensively and ambitiously than ever before.
The group here – Jack Wilkins, Michael Moore, and Joe LaBarbera – is “the first group I’ve had as a leader that I’m serious about,” Bob says. “In the past, I’d think of a group in terms of a week or a month. My whole life then was sort of disposable. Night clubs were disposable, bands were disposable. But now, I’ve taken over my life and I have a group that I can stand up and be proud of. It’s not something I feel I’ll be through with after a gig and then go on to something else. This band has an intent to live.”
Already, as you can hear, it is a band that sounds as if it’s been together for months, even years, so quickly attentive as well as inventive are all its parts Jack Wilkins, in my view, is the most imaginative guitarist to have emerged since Jim Hall. He’s been with Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie, among others, but I first heard him with Buddy Rich. In a welcome solo spot after the magnified machine-gun sound of that big band, Wilkins practically hypnotized the whole room with a ballad that kept changing shapes and colors as if it were enchanted. Then later in the same set, he swung hard enough to carry the whole band.
“Jack is a musician,” says Brookmeyer, “who has all the tols to do anything he wants. And he can sound any number of different ways.”
Mike Moore has the same high and continually climbing reputation among musicians as does Wilkins. His credits include stretches with Woody Herman, Marian McPartland, Freddie Hubbard, the Ruby Braff-George Barnes quartet, Maria Muldaur, and Benny Goodman. Soundly grounded in classical as well as jazz bass, Moore is so distinctive a player that the usually low-key Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker has written this hosanna:
“Moore has breathtaking technique, more than enough taste to keep it in check, and a melodic imagination that converts each solo into a succession of new and beautiful song, may then be four or 14 bars in length…He is one of the best new jazz musicians to emerge in the past decade.”
To which Bob Brookmeyer – returned, like Lazarus, to the country of jazz – adds: “Mike amazed me. His knack, for instance, for improvising melodically without the restraints that usually come of being a bass player.”
Drummer Joe LaBabera has been with Woody Herman and Chuck Mangione; and Brookmeyer is particularly impressed with his spirit. “He’ll do whatever you want,” says Bob.
You’d Be So Mice To Come Home To makes clear at once that not only has Brookmeyer resisted rusting in the California sun but actually, he plays now with more force of emotion and invention. It’s as if there’s a new dimension in his work, throughout this set.
Bad Agnes is by Brookmeyer – variations on the chord structure of Willow Weep for Me. It underscores both his unerring sense of time and also a kind of wry playfulness that has always been integral to Brookmeyer’s personal as well as performing style. “Agnes,” he explains, “was my cat. She taught me about cats and was a potent force in my life. He daughter still is.” Brookmeyer, by the way, now runs his own publishing company, and its name is The Agnes Music Co.
Someday My Prince Will Come with its opening, unaccompanied fanfare of Brookmeyer inventions (a sort of joyous fantasy) is going to make this album, as they say, a classic. So will Jack Wilkins’ solo, a statement with such depth of sound, beat, imagination, and feeling that the continually building climaxes practically herald the arrival of a world-class player.
On Sweet and Lovely, as on the other tracks, Mike moor has said in a Down Beat interview: “there are only 12 notes to work with in our scale. The secret is working with less. You don’t need bigger amplifiers and more noise; you need a good sound and some nice melodies. It’s that simple.”
Madam X, a Brookmeyer piece, does not, the trombonist assures us, conceal a storied romance in the properly dim past. “It’s just a title. The tune sounds kind of snaky, and that title seemed to fit.” And again, pay heed to the protean Jack Wilkins.
Brookmeyer on Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, as in his other transformations of standards here, reveals the difference between true inventions on a theme and facile paraphrases. Says theis master of that highly challenging art, “It seems silly to just resatae the melody and then just play some variations. What I try to do is really make a new piece.” And this quite stunning transformation of familiar themes happens again in Yesterdays and Body and Soul... (liner notes continue)
By Nat Hentoff, 1978 |
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| | You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To | | | Bad Agnes |  | | Someday My Prince Will Come | | | Sweet and Lovely | | | Madam X | | | Smoke Gets In Your Eyes | | | Yesterdays | | | Body and Soul | |
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Personnel:
Bob Brookmeyer, valve trombone
Jack Wilkins, guitar
Michael Moore, bass
Joe LaBarbera, drums
Recorded "Live" at Sandy's Jazz Revival, July 28-29, 1978 |
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