Duke Jordan Trio & Quintet
| Duke Jordan Trio & Quintet | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Duke Jordan | ||||
|
Publication |
||||
| Label (s) | Signal , Savoy Records / Denon | |||
|
Format (s) |
LP, CD |
|||
|
running time |
(CD) |
|||
| occupation |
|
|||
|
Studio (s) |
Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack , New Jersey |
|||
|
||||
Duke Jordan Trio & Quintet is a jazz album by Duke Jordan , recorded in the studio of Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack on October 10 and November 20, 1955 and released on Savoy Records .
The album
Duke Jordan's Savoy album Trio & Quintet is considered an important work by the hardbop pianist from the 1950s, who otherwise only worked as an accompanist for recordings of Gene Ammons , Stan Getz , Kenny Clarke , Percy Heath , Cecil Payne and Art Blakey in Appearance occurred. Heath, Payne and Blakey then also worked on his album for Savoy, which was made in the fall of 1955 .
The album is divided into a trio session from October and a quintet session from November 1955; the A side of the LP contained five tracks with Duke Jordan accompanied by Percy Heath and Art Blakey. They played a program of three well-known jazz standards such as George Gershwin's " Summertime ", " They Can't Take That Away from Me " and Dizzy Gillespie's " A Night in Tunisia " as well as two of Jordan's own compositions, "Forecast" and "Sultry Eye" . Ira Gitler compared the personal style of Jordan with the then leading jazz pianists Bud Powell , Ellington , Monk , John Lewis and Tadd Dameron ; In contrast, Jordan plays a melodic, economical style. “Forecast” contains a cheerful solo by Jordan, supplemented by Percy Heath's improvisations and an interplay between Blakey and Jordan. The pianist plays “Summertime” without accompaniment.
The recordings made in November 1955 with a quintet, on the B side of the LP, brought the pianist together with the trombonist Eddie Bert , in whose band Jordan played in 1954, and his long-time musical partner Cecil Payne; the baritone saxophonist, also from Brooklyn , also contributed a composition, "Cu-Ba". Except for Jerome Kern's standard “ Yesterdays ”, the quintet played three of Jordan's own compositions, “Flight to Jordan”, “Two Loves” and “Scotch Blues”. The quintet pieces are strongly dominated by the front line of the wind instruments; Jordan withdrew here as a soloist and acted more as an accompanist. The B-side begins with Jordan's medium-tempo composition, “Flight to Jordan”, with solo contributions from Jordan, Payne, Bert and Art Blakey. "Two Loves" combines two compositions by the pianist, "Tracey" and "Sheila"; the singer Sheila Jordan was Duke's wife; Tracey their daughter. "Cu-Ba" is a composition by Cecil Payne , preceded by versions by Charlie Barnet and James Moody . Cecil Payne and Art Blakey shone here with solos. Saxophonist Payne dominates the interpretation of the standard “Yesterdays”; Duke Jordan's solo forms the bridge between the two solos of the baritone saxophonist. The album ends with Duke's “Scotch Blues”, a model of the Scottish bagpipe blowers , while the solos of Jordan, Payne, Bert and Percy Heath stay in the conventional blues groove.
Pianist Jordan and baritone saxophonist Payne continued their collaboration on Payne's 1956 Savoy album Patterns of Jazz .
Rating of the album
Richard Cook and Brian Morton rated the album in the Penguin Guide to Jazz (2nd edition) with the highest rating of four stars and particularly highlight the quintet recordings of "Flight to Jordan" and "Two Lovers". The "Yesterdays" interpretation by Jordan's band included " rhapsodic swirls of chords and melodic fragments."
In the All Music Guide , which only rates the album with three stars, Jim Todd emphasizes Duke Jordan's achievements in the trio recordings, saying that they are "elegant, swinging bop style" with Blakey and Heath providing cautious support. "They Can't Take That Away From Me" and "Night in Tunisia" are fresh new creations. Jordan's upbeat number "Forecast" and his meditative ballad "Sultry Eve" are impressive originals. The only failure was the interpretation of George Gershwin's "Summertime". In the quintet pieces, Jordan is downgraded to conventional background musician. The problem is the ineffective, bottom-heavy combination of baritone saxophone and trombone. Payne's and Bert's parts offer little harmonic interest; the results of the two horns would do little more than the work of a player. "Flight to Jordan" and Payne's "Cu-ba" showed respectable solos, while the "Scotch Blues" had interesting blues passages, but a mixture with Scottish motifs could not be achieved.
Editorial notes
The album Duke Jordan Trio And Quintet was initially released on the Signal sub-label (Signal S 1202); later under other titles with Savoy ( Duke Jordan - The Street Swingers , Savoy MG 12149) and Duke Jordan - Flight To Jordan (Savoy SJL 1169). The Denon edition, which appeared in the early 1990s, re-released the album under the original title.
The titles
- Duke Jordan - Trio & Quintet (Savoy SV-0149)
- Forecast (Jordan) 4:46
- Sultry Eye (Jordan) 3:56
- They Can't Take that Away from Me (Gershwin) 4:36
- Night in Tunisia (Gillespie) 5:09
- Summertime (Gershwin) 4:25
- Flight to Jordan (Jordan) 4:43
- Two Loves (Jordan) 3:07
- Cu-Ba (Payne) 3:32
- Yesterdays (Harbach - Kern) 5:45
- Scotch Blues (Jordan) 4:37
literature
- Ian Carr , Digby Fairweather , Brian Priestley : Rough Guide Jazz. The ultimate guide to jazz. 1800 bands and artists from the beginning until today. 2nd, expanded and updated edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-01892-X .
- Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD . 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 .
- Alan H. Stein: liner notes.