To our great benefit, Zev Feldman is a tireless excavator of jazz brilliance, often from the bandstand, and the fruits of his labor have become a Record Store Day staple. For Black Friday 2023, he has four releases available: Maximum Swing: The Unissued 1965 Half Note Recordings by Wes Montgomery and the Wynton Kelly Trio (3LP, Resonance Records), Tales – Live in Copenhagen (1964) by Bill Evans (single LP, Elemental Records), Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse 1966-1968 by Ahmad Jamal (2LP, Jazz Detective / Elemental), and Catch the Groove: Live at the Penthouse 1963-1967 by Cal Tjader (3LP, Jazz Detective / Elemental). All are limited editions, so prepare accordingly. CDs follow for all December 1.
Tales – Live in Copenhagen (1964) is the eleventh release of archival music by Bill Evans that Zev Feldman has been a part of in connection with the pianist’s son Evan Evans, and the second this year, as Treasures: Solo, Trio & Orchestra Recordings From Denmark (1965-1969) was released by Elemental for Record Store Day as a 3LP set in April. Eleven releases is a high number that gets to the core nature of jazz and the depth of Evans’ artistry.
The largeness and breadth of Treasures might steal a little thunder from the trim focus of Tales, particularly as the latter features bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Larry Bunker in a trio that’s fairly well-documented, first on Bill Evans Trio at Shelly’s Manne-Hole, Hollywood, California prior to the Copenhagen trip and on Trio ’65 after.
But the reality is that if a trio brought together by Evans made it to the point of performance or recording, they were worth hearing every time they played, for every time would be unique, if also familiar. Succinctly, the music transcends a leader-backing scenario as the three players are in constant expressive communication, navigating and elevating the structure of each song. But they’re not striving to be different, instead just collectively attempting to give the song the best performance possible.
It’s an understatement to say there are multiple versions of tunes in Evans’ catalog. Side one of Tales, recorded for Danish Radio on August 10 of 1964, features two inexhaustible texts for Evans, opening with his own composition “Waltz for Debby” and following with the standard “My Foolish Heart” (reversing the order in which they appear on Waltz for Debby, Evans’ 1962 live album from the Village Vanguard by his groundbreaking and most celebrated trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motion).
The Tales trio handles these songs distinctively but also with striking confidence, making it a superb entry point for newbies to this particular lineup. And as side two, recorded at TV-City in Copenhagen with an audience on August 25, offers four versions of songs heard on side one (including set closing theme “Five”) it really becomes apparent just how passionately determined the group was to better these tunes every time they played them.
But according to the notes, “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” appears nowhere else in Evans’ discography and the bonus track version of Monk’s “’Round Midnight” cut in ’69 on a return trip to Denmark with Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums is an absolute doozy that justifies purchase by its lonesome, making Tales another essential acquisition for fans of Bill Evans.
Like Evans, Ahmad Jamal was once sometimes denigrated as a “cocktail pianist.” Today, that might read as the conclusions of a bunch of clueless knuckleheads, but please do understand that the dominant mode of Evans and Jamal is accessible beauty, which casual listeners could sometimes confuse with insubstantiality, especially if they were looking for a big kick.
But what’s heard on this third volume of live Jamal trio recordings from The Penthouse in Seattle (all titled Emerald City Nights, the first installment covering ’63-’64 and the second ’65-’66) would be difficult to confuse with a mere tinkling-as-backdrop aesthetic. If the air of the accessible is still a constant (as it would be throughout Jamal’s long career), the energy level here is often way up there; at a few brief points it even recalls Ramsey Lewis.
Of course, there’s no mistaking the two (or for that matter confusing Jamal with Evans). The stately chords and the controlled fleetness that contribute to Jamal’s signature sound are in evidence here (investigate “Quiet Night of Quiet Stars” for the latter), but that energy level really cannot be denied, established early in “Fantastic Vehicle” and extending into a startling, nearly 13-minute version of Errol Garner’s “Misty” where the interactions of Jamal and drummer Frank Gant grow quite intense.
This volume of Emerald City Nights also benefits from the stability of what some have called Jamal’s second great trio, which features Gant and bassist Jamil Nasser. They are heard throughout, routinely hitting the same sort of highs familiar to the earlier trio featuring bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernel Fournier, with which Jamal initially made his mark.
And while Jamal cut plenty of worthy studio albums during his peak years, never did he better the live recordings through which his reputation was made (At the Pershing: But Not for Me, released in ’58 with Crosby and Fournier, was a legit smash). The three volumes of Emerald City Nights only reinforce the pianist’s brilliance on the bandstand. Leading a trio with no weak link, Jamal is in complete command of his art on this third volume.
Of the players included in this roundup, vibraphonist Cal Tjader has the most modestly scaled contemporary reputation, a reality Feldman remarks upon in his intro for Catch the Groove’s booklet. This stature derives from a handful of factors, foremost amongst them Tjader’s prominence as a Latin Jazz pioneer, where he sold a lot of records but wasn’t exactly ranked amongst the cutting edge in the field. Neither was the vibraphone a cutting edge instrument (with a few exceptions). We’ll get to another reason below.
Catch the Groove clarifies that Tjader’s ’60s bands could play straight ahead jazz in exemplary fashion (the opening “Take the ‘A’ Train” is superb and “Bag’s Groove” on LP two a standout) while pivoting seamlessly into wholly legitimate Latin modes, which are heard more frequently as the set progresses to ’67. And while there are frequent personnel changes there’s also a fair amount of overlap in each band Tjader brought to The Penthouse.
The players are pianist Clare Fischer (’63), bassist Fred Schrieber (’63), conga player and percussionist Bill Fitch (’63), drummer and timbales player Johnny Rae (’63-’65), pianist Lonnie Hewitt (’65), bassist Terry Hilliard (’65), conga and bongo player Armando Peraza (’65-’67), pianist Al Zulaica (’66-’67), bassist Monk Montgomery (’66), drummer and timbales player Carl Burnett (’66-’67), and bassist Stan Gilbert (’67). I prefer the ’63 and ’65 groups, but that’s mainly because there’s more of an emphasis on straight-ahead jazz.
The playing remains strong throughout (most impressively Tjader, who avoids getting too busy with the mallets), even as the tide turns toward soul jazz/Latin heat; understand that three consecutive Tjader studio albums from this period are Soul Sauce, Soul Bird: Whiffenpoof, and Soul Burst. Also note that the ’67 set concludes with a version of The Association’s “Along Comes Mary,” directly following “Lush Life.” This eagerness to engage with pop no doubt rubbed many the wrong way and played a role in Tjader’s decline in rep. Catch the Groove will hopefully align Tjader with a fresh, receptive audience.
Guitarist Wes Mongomery had his own highly mersh period, but he was such a powerhouse on his instrument that a diminishment of stature was basically impossible. Indeed, Mongomery is many listener’s pick as the greatest jazz guitarist of all time, and it’s a cinch that many came to that conclusion after listening to Smokin’ at the Half Note, and pointedly that album’s live side one, where he joined the Wynton Kelly Trio (Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums), for an extended engagement in ’65.
Additional selections from that run came out in ’69 on the posthumous album Willow Weep for Me but with string arrangements by Claus Ogerman grafted on; they were eventually released on the Impressions: The Verve Jazz Sides without the string arrangements. These seven tracks are from the same set that produced Smokin’ at the Half Note’s side one (“No Blues” followed by “If You Could See Me Now”). Maximum Swing captures the quartet at later points during the same engagement, and it is a ceaselessly enjoyable and often thrilling expansion of an already celebrated high-point in jazz history.
In some ways this is the most rugged of all the set’s reviewed here. The sound quality is acceptable, even on what is pretty clearly audience recordings, but even after being cleaned up for release and admirably rescued from bootleg status, the audio just isn’t as crisp and vivid as what’s captured in Copenhagen and Seattle.
But the superb playing evaporates any concerns over audio quality like water droplets on a hot griddle. Also, a large portion of these recordings were air checks for WABC’s Portraits in Jazz program as host Alan Grant banters good naturedly with Montgomery. Grant comes off like a decent cat who jazz musicians legitimately liked (rather than tolerated, like Symphony Sid), so his presence adds to the historical allure.
It’s worth mentioning that Paul Chambers is only heard on side one of Maximum Swing, as Ron Carter, Larry Ridley, and Herman Wright take turns subbing for him after that. But most importantly, these recordings date from September ’65 to late in the year, three months after the Smokin’ at the Half Note performance, and the difference is palpable.
The group, even with the different bassists, is supremely confident, and on the non-air check recordings Montgomery is seriously stretching out; “Cherokee” and “Four on Six” break ten minutes, “Star Eyes” 15 minutes, and “The Song Is You” 16 minutes. And none of these tracks register as sprawling, instead being so alive with ideas and interaction that they essentially all fly by. Maximum Swing heightens the reputations of everyone involved, and that’s a considerable achievement.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
Bill Evans, Tales – Live in Copenhagen (1964)
A
Ahmad Jamal, Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse 1966-1968
A
Cal Tjader, Catch the Groove: Live at the Penthouse 1963-1967
A-
Wes Montgomery/Wynton Kelly Trio, Maximum Swing: The Unissued 1965 Half Note Recordings
A
