THU., AUGUST 30, 2007
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Our Men in Europe: Three Tenors
by Kevin Whitehead
"Black musicians all over Europe, running away from America." — Johnny Griffin (to Art Taylor), 1969
There were things to run toward, too. When reasons are tallied why American jazz musicians expatriate(d) to Europe — refined Old World atmosphere, less overt racism, musicians treated as artists, substance-abuse treated as a public-health problem, women jazz fans — one reason gets overlooked: there were good musicians to work with. By the 1950s and ’60s, there was a growing number of rhythm players in Scandinavia and Western Europe who knew lots of standard tunes, could keep up the pace, and improvise in the idiom. They could swing, in sum — some of them anyway, enough so you could tour as a soloist fronting Swedish, Swiss, Danish or Dutch house bands. Those Eurojazzers were as eager to test themselves against the Americans as they were to drink with them afterwards. If those cats liked you.... Plus, you could have fun.
What made me think of it was hearing Our Man in Amsterdam: Dexter Gordon live at hippie church Paradiso in February 1969. The original bebop tenor saxophonist and most famous postwar expat jazzman fronts a trio of seasoned Dutch musicians who’d backed plenty of visiting dignitaries: pianist Cees (pronounced "Case") Slinger, bassist Rob Langereis — and drummer Han Bennink, already notorious as a free-jazz nutter, but valued by boppers for his authoritative ride cymbal beat and ability to hold fast tempos (as on “Scrapple from the Apple”). With a pulsing background Dex could go all day, and sound ready for more. His slippery timing owed a lot to Lester Young, but he had his own harder, harsher tone. Just like when he lived in the States.
As it’s sometimes told, Gordon had fled America when the Beatles came in, and was forgotten until a triumphant homecoming at the Village Vanguard in 1976. That's the running-away-from version. In reality he went to Europe at the end of 1962, before the British invasion, and recorded dozens of albums for US and European labels in the intervening years, many on return trips to the States. Hear for example L.T.D. and XXL recorded in Baltimore three months after that A’dam gig, in front of just the sort of enthusiastic audience that was supposed to have abandoned mainstream jazz.
Byas would warm up for a set with “three big reefers” and a couple of shots.
Earlier he’d made a Blue Note LP called Our Man in Paris, but Gordon lived mostly in Copenhagen. Still, Amsterdam had two other distinguished expat tenors by the time Dex played Paradiso, Don Byas and Ben Webster. When I lived there in the ’90s, Byas was two decades gone, but musicians still talked of him fondly and often, and played his tunes. He was a body builder, proudly fit. One sign of stamina, via Bennink: Don would warm up for a set with “three big reefers” and a couple of shots. Hard to judge the results: he barely recorded in Canal Town.
Byas had first settled in Paris when he came over in 1946, and he recorded there a lot. He’d always been a disciple of big-toned, chord-parsing tenor Coleman Hawkins. But Byas had replaced the lighter-toned, more streamlined Lester Young (aka Pres) in Count Basie’s band, and you can hear what he learned about limber swing from Pres on “Royal Garden Blues,” “Bugle Blues” and “Sugar Blues” by a 1942 Basie sextet with Buck Clayton on trumpet. In the early ’40s Byas was also jamming in Harlem with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian and Thelonious Monk as they inched toward the new music of bebop. (Some souvenirs of those days are on Midnight at Minton’s; start with “Uptown.”) He played on Dizzy’s first record date in 1945; Dexter Gordon replaced him on the second.
Byas’s early Euro sessions combining American and French players — as heard on Definitive’s 1946-’51 set — show off his shapely lines and beautifully roaring tone on bop, blues and Basie-esque swingers. But by the 1950s he’d developed a new specialty: rapturous slow ballads for tenor and rhythm, “Yesterdays” and “Over the Rainbow” to name two.
This Byas peaks on his essential two and a half volumes in the “Jazz in Paris” series. He lingers so much over those melodies, he makes a joke out of it: on spring 1952’s “Laura,” “Old Folks” (Willard Robison’s lovely 1938 ballad, not “Old Folks at Home” as some issues have it), “Don’t Blame Me” and “I Cover the Waterfront,” his swooping first note is so elongated, you could walk around the block before he reveals what the tune is.
Webster could blow air through the tenor’s mouthpiece without sounding a note and make it sound sexy.
Now, jazz already had a prominent son-of-Hawkins rapturous balladeer: ex-Ellington star Ben Webster, the master of the breathy, intimate gesture. He could blow air through the tenor’s mouthpiece without sounding a note and make it sound sexy. His command of saxophone attacks and shadings of tone make him a grand master always worth hearing.
He’d trademarked that style long before he crossed the ocean at the end of ’64. As mentioned, Webster found his way to Holland, where he died in 1973, 13 months after Byas. On 1970’s fine Wayfaring Webster, live with Cees Slinger, Rob Langereis and top Dutch bop drummer Johnny Engels, his mannerisms sound more exaggerated than ever, perhaps to mask diminished lungpower. Slinger’s gentle way of caressing a melody and the keys suggests why they hit it off. But even the aggressively virtuosic Spanish pianist Tete Montoliu fails to knock Ben off his accustomed course on a November 1972 Barcelona casino gig.
Webster crossed paths with fellow expats here and there. Two weeks before that Barcelona engagement, he and Dexter Gordon teamed up for a Swiss radio concert. They batted around Duke’s “Perdido” and “In a Mellow Tone” and each played a pair of solo features (Ben’s: “Blues in F” and “Sunday”; Dex plays “Didn’t We” and a “Some Other Blues” that shows how even veteran tenors caught the Coltrane bug in the '60s). Many sax duels are problematic because the combatants sound too much alike. These two are easy to distinguish: Gordon with his pitiless, almost vibrato-less tone and confident swagger; Ben with a pulsing vibrato and rich furry sound with a tender, plaintive quality. Like so many Ellingtonians, Webster was a cunning, authentic blues player.
The rhythm section was two Americans based in Denmark, pianist Kenny Drew and fab drummer Ed Thigpen, and Danish bassist Bo Stief. In truth Gordon grumbled about many Euro rhythm sections, but this one was a favorite, good enough to leave home for. Or with.
There were things to run toward, too. When reasons are tallied why American jazz musicians expatriate(d) to Europe — refined Old World atmosphere, less overt racism, musicians treated as artists, substance-abuse treated as a public-health problem, women jazz fans — one reason gets overlooked: there were good musicians to work with. By the 1950s and ’60s, there was a growing number of rhythm players in Scandinavia and Western Europe who knew lots of standard tunes, could keep up the pace, and improvise in the idiom. They could swing, in sum — some of them anyway, enough so you could tour as a soloist fronting Swedish, Swiss, Danish or Dutch house bands. Those Eurojazzers were as eager to test themselves against the Americans as they were to drink with them afterwards. If those cats liked you.... Plus, you could have fun.
What made me think of it was hearing Our Man in Amsterdam: Dexter Gordon live at hippie church Paradiso in February 1969. The original bebop tenor saxophonist and most famous postwar expat jazzman fronts a trio of seasoned Dutch musicians who’d backed plenty of visiting dignitaries: pianist Cees (pronounced "Case") Slinger, bassist Rob Langereis — and drummer Han Bennink, already notorious as a free-jazz nutter, but valued by boppers for his authoritative ride cymbal beat and ability to hold fast tempos (as on “Scrapple from the Apple”). With a pulsing background Dex could go all day, and sound ready for more. His slippery timing owed a lot to Lester Young, but he had his own harder, harsher tone. Just like when he lived in the States.
As it’s sometimes told, Gordon had fled America when the Beatles came in, and was forgotten until a triumphant homecoming at the Village Vanguard in 1976. That's the running-away-from version. In reality he went to Europe at the end of 1962, before the British invasion, and recorded dozens of albums for US and European labels in the intervening years, many on return trips to the States. Hear for example L.T.D. and XXL recorded in Baltimore three months after that A’dam gig, in front of just the sort of enthusiastic audience that was supposed to have abandoned mainstream jazz.
Earlier he’d made a Blue Note LP called Our Man in Paris, but Gordon lived mostly in Copenhagen. Still, Amsterdam had two other distinguished expat tenors by the time Dex played Paradiso, Don Byas and Ben Webster. When I lived there in the ’90s, Byas was two decades gone, but musicians still talked of him fondly and often, and played his tunes. He was a body builder, proudly fit. One sign of stamina, via Bennink: Don would warm up for a set with “three big reefers” and a couple of shots. Hard to judge the results: he barely recorded in Canal Town.
Byas had first settled in Paris when he came over in 1946, and he recorded there a lot. He’d always been a disciple of big-toned, chord-parsing tenor Coleman Hawkins. But Byas had replaced the lighter-toned, more streamlined Lester Young (aka Pres) in Count Basie’s band, and you can hear what he learned about limber swing from Pres on “Royal Garden Blues,” “Bugle Blues” and “Sugar Blues” by a 1942 Basie sextet with Buck Clayton on trumpet. In the early ’40s Byas was also jamming in Harlem with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian and Thelonious Monk as they inched toward the new music of bebop. (Some souvenirs of those days are on Midnight at Minton’s; start with “Uptown.”) He played on Dizzy’s first record date in 1945; Dexter Gordon replaced him on the second.
Byas’s early Euro sessions combining American and French players — as heard on Definitive’s 1946-’51 set — show off his shapely lines and beautifully roaring tone on bop, blues and Basie-esque swingers. But by the 1950s he’d developed a new specialty: rapturous slow ballads for tenor and rhythm, “Yesterdays” and “Over the Rainbow” to name two.
This Byas peaks on his essential two and a half volumes in the “Jazz in Paris” series. He lingers so much over those melodies, he makes a joke out of it: on spring 1952’s “Laura,” “Old Folks” (Willard Robison’s lovely 1938 ballad, not “Old Folks at Home” as some issues have it), “Don’t Blame Me” and “I Cover the Waterfront,” his swooping first note is so elongated, you could walk around the block before he reveals what the tune is.
Now, jazz already had a prominent son-of-Hawkins rapturous balladeer: ex-Ellington star Ben Webster, the master of the breathy, intimate gesture. He could blow air through the tenor’s mouthpiece without sounding a note and make it sound sexy. His command of saxophone attacks and shadings of tone make him a grand master always worth hearing.
He’d trademarked that style long before he crossed the ocean at the end of ’64. As mentioned, Webster found his way to Holland, where he died in 1973, 13 months after Byas. On 1970’s fine Wayfaring Webster, live with Cees Slinger, Rob Langereis and top Dutch bop drummer Johnny Engels, his mannerisms sound more exaggerated than ever, perhaps to mask diminished lungpower. Slinger’s gentle way of caressing a melody and the keys suggests why they hit it off. But even the aggressively virtuosic Spanish pianist Tete Montoliu fails to knock Ben off his accustomed course on a November 1972 Barcelona casino gig.
Webster crossed paths with fellow expats here and there. Two weeks before that Barcelona engagement, he and Dexter Gordon teamed up for a Swiss radio concert. They batted around Duke’s “Perdido” and “In a Mellow Tone” and each played a pair of solo features (Ben’s: “Blues in F” and “Sunday”; Dex plays “Didn’t We” and a “Some Other Blues” that shows how even veteran tenors caught the Coltrane bug in the '60s). Many sax duels are problematic because the combatants sound too much alike. These two are easy to distinguish: Gordon with his pitiless, almost vibrato-less tone and confident swagger; Ben with a pulsing vibrato and rich furry sound with a tender, plaintive quality. Like so many Ellingtonians, Webster was a cunning, authentic blues player.
The rhythm section was two Americans based in Denmark, pianist Kenny Drew and fab drummer Ed Thigpen, and Danish bassist Bo Stief. In truth Gordon grumbled about many Euro rhythm sections, but this one was a favorite, good enough to leave home for. Or with.
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