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- Date Released: January 27, 2009
- Genre: Jazz
- Style: Avant-garde, Classic Jazz
- Label: Tompkins Square
Blake turns standards inside-out and finds the stuff that makes them tick
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We Say...
Though he has often worked in duets, with small groups, and (less often) as an accompanist, Ran Blake is best known (to the extent that he is known at all) for his highly idiosyncratic, deeply serious work as a solo pianist — work well represented by this set of 14 short-yet-expansive readings of familiar and obscure tunes drawn from jazz, pop, country, gospel, and Brazilian.
An academic (at the New England Conservatory) who has apparently memorized and burned the textbook, Blake's way with a cover is frequently an inversion of the usual nightclub procedure. Instead of running through the melody and then improvising over the changes, Blake will often play a sort of shadow version of the original tune over acutely and surprisingly reimagined chords. He's by no means alone in pursuing such an approach (nor does he apply it like a formula), but he has a particular gift for reharmonizing and getting at the essence of a tune by truly looking at it as a point of departure, always avoiding the sort of reverence that kills or the sort of mere playfulness that belittles.
Hank Williams, even sober, might have taken a while to recognize Driftwood's brief, beautiful rendition of "Lost Highway," but Blake gets to the very stuff of the song and singer's sadness and spirit. Similarly arresting are two noirish versions of "Dancing in the Dark," a piercing "No More," and the title cut, a tune associated with the singer Chris Connor, a longtime Blake favorite (check out their pairing on Blake's late Seventies release Rapport). The whiff of the conservatory and some of Blake's glass-sharp chords might on first listen seem cool or overintellectual, but that sense should fade after a few close listens, for there is also almost Sturm und Drang-level Romanticism here, as well as sparingly revealed but thoroughgoing blues and gospel feeling. -
They Say...
Pianist, educator, improviser, and composer Ran Blake has made 39 albums since 1961. He has recorded in many settings from solo to big band, and like any true jazz musician worth his salt, he has embraced the entire historical lineage of the music from New Orleans through bebop to the avant-garde and beyond, creating a very personal signature in his playing and in his recordings. Blake has recorded for over a dozen labels in his long career, and his most recent tenure with New York's tiny Tompkins Square imprint -- better known for its recordings of acoustic guitarists and obscure folk and country musicians -- has yielded astonishing results, as evidenced by 2006's All That Is Tied. Driftwoods is his second offering for the label, and stands both in sharp contrast to the previous offering and as a logical extension of it. Like its predecessor -- and indeed most of Blake's recorded work -- this is a solo offering. He returns to one of his favorite themes, the influence of great singers on his improvisational voice, though it can easily be argued that his other obsession -- the importance of the cinematic noir image from Hollywood's golden era -- is relied on here just as heavily. The set opens with the first elliptical notes of the title track, a ballad written by Peter Udell and Tommy Goodman and recorded by vocalist Chris Connor. Blake sticks remarkably close to the text of the tune, but finds in its cracks and spaces a much more subtle world of dynamic and tension that serves to illuminate the tune from the inside out. There are two versions of the Arthur Schwartz-Howard Dietz tune "Dancing in the Dark," as immortalized by Sarah Vaughan with the Hal Mooney Orchestra. Blake showcases the tune in different registers and accents as it shifts its minor shadings and its lyricism, improvising on the harmony more in the first take and on the melody itself more in the second. The reading of Leon Payne's "Lost Highway" here will be unrecognizable to some at first, but Blake's move on the melody is so full of elliptical mystery and space that it is as if he is illuminating the image Hank Williams sang about quite literally, decorating some of the minor funereal phrases with elements of rag and blues. Blake's sense of restraint, even in the most deliberate of his improvised readings such as on Lewis Allan's "Strange Fruit," Quincy Jones' theme from The Pawnbroker, Milton Nascimento's "Cançao do Sol," and even Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy," offers such distinctive readings of these tunes rhythmically, harmonically, and lyrically that it's difficult after a while to see where the body of the original composition ends and Blake begins. This is not to say they are definitive instrumental readings of these tunes, because as standards, the last chapter can never be written. Blake's achievement is that he simply re-inscribes their images in a new way, placing his lovingly individualistic stamp of musical recognition on them as sophisticated, singular moments in the history of song.
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| 01. |  |
Driftwood |
4:26 |
|
| 02. | |
Dancing in the Dark 2 |
4:21 |
|
| 03. | |
Dancing in the Dark 1 |
2:26 |
|
| 04. | |
Lost Highway |
2:05 |
|
| 05. | |
Unforgettable |
2:59 |
|
| 06. | |
Cancao do Sol |
3:40 |
|
| 07. | |
No More |
3:10 |
|
| 08. | |
I Loves You, Porgy |
3:54 |
|
| 09. | |
Strange Fruit |
2:19 |
|
| 10. | |
Pawnbroker |
2:53 |
|
| 11. | |
There's Been A Change |
2:25 |
|
| 12. | |
Portrait |
3:03 |
|
| 13. | |
I'm Going to Tell God |
3:04 |
|
| 14. | |
You Are My Sunshine |
1:23 |
|
14 Total Tracks, 42:08 Total Length
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Credits
- Ran Blake - Liner Notes // Brian Morton - Liner Notes // Joel T. Jordan - Package Design // Harris Newman - Mastering // Aaron Hartley - Notes Editing // Jonah Kraut - Producer // Jonah Kraut - Engineer // Jonah Kraut - Photography
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