The P.C. Blues Red Garland trio
When Paul Chambers, a beautiful cat and a beautiful musician, died of accumulated troubles a year or so ago, jazz lost one of the best, ever. I think the first time I ever heard him was one afternoon in the early '50s when I ran into Dizzy Gillespie, crossing Sheridan Square in the rain, and Diz said, Hey, baby, corne downstairs with me and catch my rehearsal. Downstairs was the old Cafe Society Downtown at One Sheridan Square, I don't even remember now what its name had become in 1954 or 1955, but Diz said dig my bass player. I remember Diz and I played a game of chess at a side table while waiting for some of the cats to get their chops together, and then they started blowing, just soft and nice, to get themselves together, and I looked in unbelief at this handsome babyfaced bass player l'd never seen before to my knowledge, as he drew these unbelievably tender and swinging sounds out of his instrument ... oh, brother. Turned everyone on, with every tone. And every note, that's what it was—a tone, singing, and alive, and swinging. Diz saw me digging him and grinned . . .
Paul was born in Pittsburgh, early in 1935. Before he was 15 years old, he was blowing tuba and baritone horn; by that time he was in Detroit, a swinging city, playing with Kenny Burrell and others, from around 1949 on, and Detroit was mostly where he could be heard for the next five years. Sometime in 1954 he joined Paul Quinichette, who had his own combo, and worked his way East again. During the next year he blew with people of the caliber of Benny Green, George Wallington, and Kai Winding and Jay Jay Johnson — and wound up with the most exciting group he'd made yet, the Miles Davis Quintet that included John Coltrane, and (as on the present session) Red Garland and Philly Joe Jones. When you say that Paul became the favorite bass player of musicians like Miles, Barry Harris, Sonny Rollins, and Benny Golson, what is there to add? Just one word: soft. Paul drew a sound from a bass I had never heard before and, now, will never hear again: a kind of velvety purr, but with plenty of balls behind it, that was like no other instrument—whether he was bowing or plucking made no difference, three notes and you could nearly always say with your eyes shut, That's got to be P. C.!
P. C. was in happy company on this date, which was cut in the late late 50's, right in the middie of the Miles Davis days. Red Garland, the solid swinger from Dallas, Texas, who never let go his hold on the jazz roots no matter how high and freaky the music soared, is his solid self here, punching out those two-handed block-chord comps and winging his way up and down those solo cascades; and they've got the sizzling drummer Art Taylor to keep up a full head of steam on all tempos. On one track, the bouncy Tweedle Dee Dee (LaVern Baker got a hit single out of this a few years back), Philly Joe Jones, another drummer out of the top drawer, takes over.
Every man in this little combo has helped make jazz history, with names that are history: Red's odyssey began in the '40s, when the immortal Lips Page dug him while touring, and took him away from Dallas for a lot of years. Bird, Hawk, Roy EIdridge, Charlie Ventura, Sonny Stitt, Ben Webster, Miles, Coltrane, the Billy Eckstine big band, Benny Green, Lou Donaldson, Donald Byrd, are just some of the guys Red has "assisted."
Arthur S. Taylor, Jr., was born in New York City, and must have been destined to whack those cymbals from the day he was born—in 1929, the year of the—remember?—crash. Right from the beginning of his professional career, which started before he was 20 years old, he was in tough company—Howard McGhee, Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, Buddy DeFranco, Bud Powell, George Wallington, Jackie McLean, Art Farmer. But Art Taylor is pretty tough company himself, with a pair of hands that can scare an ordinary musician right off a music stand.
Philly Joe Jones, for a wonder, really is from Philadelphia. Philly, not to be confused with Jo Jones of the classical Basic band era, is always in demand among topflight jazz musicians for his crisp, explosive style and constant inventiveness and wit; his "fours" are invariably a gas, and as clear as a springboard launching an Olympic diving champ into a half gainer.
Ahmad's Blues (not a blues, by the way, but actually a set of neverending variations on two minor chords a chromatic interval apart, in four-bar phrases), perfectiy evokes Ahmad Jamal's highiy distinctive style; Red first blows the "vamp" intro a couple of times, then takes off on about ten variations of his own contrivançe. Now it's Paul's turn, arco, for an even dozen of those 4-bar statements, as oniy he could make them, and it's bewildering what he's able to extract from just those two basic chords. After that, Red and Art Taylor play "fours" —eight sets of them—that are a lesson in rapport and wit, and then Red leads the trio out of the wilderness in another half-dozen of Jamal's jammers.
Lost April features Red Garland in reflective, pretty balled style, flitting up and down the full gamut of the 88 keys as he searches for the lost leaf of melancholy time. Paul's singing bass stays with him to the final bar, which nostalgizes us with a reference to April in Paris —a great place to get lost, by the way, if you're April...
Why Was I Born?, the immortal Jerry Kern tune from one of his greatest shows (from the good old Helen Morgan days), is like a continuation of Lost April in both tempo and rnood. Most A&R men try to avoid staying in the same emotional vein for two songs in a row on most recording sessions—especially jazz dates—but the effect is a good one here, like somehow Red didn't feel like giving up the feeling just yet—keep those lights low for another six minutes, Jack—and the listener can oniy be grateful that he was able to sustain it so well.
Tweedie Dee Dee is a real tongue-in-cheek tune, that gives Red, Paul, and PhillyJoe an opportunity to bounce all over the scales. Listen to Paul up in the high register of his axe on this one, as he walks up and down the fingerboard, softly but insistently, in a kind of graceful dance step that is all P. C., punctuated by Philly Joe's amusing accents and discreet explosions. Paul has a typically soft and singing pizzicato solo toward the end of this twelve-and-a-half-minute serenade to swing that is a masterpiece of modesty and virtuosity, leading back into the grooviest Garland piano lead yet, with Red shifting constantly back and forth between straight- and double-time, intersprayed with sixteenth-note runs and fast triplets that "are unobtrusively echoed by Philly Joe in the tastiest rhythm "fills" you'Il ever want to dig. Then back to the dopey melody, and the block chords from Red again, and even this perpetual motion comes to an end in a bland tremolo...
The P. C. Blues begins in a series of Erroll-Garnerish block-chorded phrases, for one deeply deliberate stanza, then Red launches into a subdued, serious melodic blues line that goes on beautifully for chorus after chorus—dig his wailing fifth refrain, backed by that gorgeous Chambers tone, and the sixth, following, that's like a cry from the piney woods; his seventh blues chorus, all chords again; his eighth, where he gets into a triplet riff and out again; and now Paul himself takes over, switching from pizzicato to the bow for some of the most profoundly fett blues-talk on wax—just three choruses, but Wow! Red comes in again, and after one chorus of his own thing, gives up the theme again in chords, with P. C. and Art behind hirn on rhythm, three in all and out, leaving us in an appropriately mournful rnood for what we can never dig again in person: the incomparably beautiful bass of Paul Chambers.
They named him Paul Laurence Dunbar Charnbers, Jr., after the farnous Negro lyric poet, when he was born. Both of them were poets, black poets in an essentially heartless white world—and, by an odd coincidence, both of them lived exactly 34 years in that world.
Notes: Ralph
Berton (Jan. 1970)
Recording: Rudy Van Gelder
Supervision: Bob Weinstock