In Paris: The ORTF Recordings

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In Paris: The ORTF Recordings
Larry Young's studio album

Publication
(s)

2016

Label (s) Resonance Records

Format (s)

CD

Genre (s)

jazz

occupation
  • Organ , Larry Young (1-1 → 1-5, 2-1 → 2-4)
  • Piano : Larry Young (2-5)
  • Congas: Jacky Bambou (1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 2-1)

production

George Klabin, Michael Cuscuna , Zev Feldman

Studio (s)

Studios of the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française

chronology
Booker Ervin , Pony Poindexter , Larry Young: Gumbo!
(1999) 		In Paris: The ORTF Recordings -

In Paris: The ORTF Recordings is a jazz album that was released under the name of Larry Young and recorded in the ORTF studios in Paris between December 1964 and February 1965 and published in 2016 by Resonance Records in cooperation with the French Institut national de l'audiovisuel ( INA) was published. The previously unreleased sessions with Larry Young, made during a brief stay in Paris from December 1964 to February 1965, came about just before he recorded his Blue Note albums Unity from March 1965 . These recordings catch the organist in a phase when he was about to break away from the hard bop beginnings and turn to the avant-garde. "In the 1960s there seemed to be only one way to play the jazz organ, but Larry Young changed everything," wrote the London Times . "It was a bold move to deviate from Jimmy Smith's soul-jazz sermons , but Young's less percussive style was in keeping with the changes in jazz." These recordings show Larry Young essentially in three different bands, including Young with the quartet of Nathan Davis , a trio with European musicians and an all star ensemble.

background

"As exciting as they were, it is well known that the 1960s were not the best years to live off jazz in America ," wrote Peter Jones. “Like many of his contemporaries, Larry Young, 23, was crossing the Atlantic and was living in Paris in 1964/65 when these never-before-published recordings were made, most of them in the studios of the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF). And after they were broadcast, they stayed hidden there and perfectly preserved until they were dug up in 2012 by Resonance Records producer Zev Feldman. "

Young Woody Shaw played an important role in these recording sessions in Paris, especially since he and Larry Young (only four years older than him) had grown up together in Newark. Shaw traveled to Paris in 1964 to work with the woodwind player Eric Dolphy in the house band of the jazz club Le Chat Que Pêche . The tragic, untimely death of Dolphys on June 29, 1964 in Berlin forced a change in his plans. Tenor saxophonist Nathan Davis, then living in Paris, was asked to form a new band for the club. He kept Shaw on the line-up, and the trumpeter campaigned successfully for Larry Young and drummer Billy Brooks , whom he knew from Newark, New Jersey, when he was brought in from the United States to complete the new group. This quartet played under Davis' leadership for a few months in Paris before Young and Shaw returned to the US and shortly after recorded the album Unity . It is this quartet that went to the studios of Radio-Television France and recorded most of the tracks on Disc 1.

After they were recorded, these recordings were broadcast once on French public radio and then archived for decades. Later, the producer Zev Feldman from Resonance Records, together with the executive producers Michael Cuscuna and George Klabin, discovered these recordings in the Institut National de audiovisual of France (INA), the archive of the broadcasters Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF) and ORTF, which are an important part Documenting Young's development as a player.

Resonance Records, which specializes in finding historical, often unheard recordings, worked with the ORTF archives to find these tapes. The two CDs (or limited-edition LPs) offer unadulterated sound from the ORTF studios in Paris and at a jazz award ceremony in La Locomotive , where Young appeared as a sideman with saxophonist Nathan Davis, the formation Jazz-A-Champs- Élysées and with his own piano trio.

The expanded all-star band Jazz aux Champs-Élysées , formed by pianist, producer and radio host Jack Diéval , included Diéval, trumpeter Sonny Gray , saxophonist Jean-Claude Fohrenbach , Italian drummer Franco Manzecchi and conga player Jacky Bamboo. She contributes three pieces.

For the text accompanying the edition, the interviewees were André Francis , Bill Laswell , John Medeski , Dr. Lonnie Smith , Nathan Davis. The liner notes were written by Jack Bruce , John Koenig, John McLaughlin , Larry Young III, Pascal Rozat and Woody Louis Armstrong Shaw III.

Track list

Woody Shaw
  • Larry Young: In Paris: The ORTF Recordings (Resonance Records HCD-2022)
CD 1
  1. Trane of Thought (Nathan Davis) 6:46
  2. Talkin 'About JC (Larry Young) 14:53
  3. Mean to Me (Fred Ahlert, Roy Turk) 4:12
  4. La Valse Grise (Jack Diéval) 16:09
  5. Discothèque (Jack Diéval) 10:43
CD 2
  1. Luny Tune (Larry Young) 4:36
  2. Beyond All Limits (Woody Shaw) 7:36
  3. Black Nile ( Wayne Shorter ) 13:59
  4. Zoltan (Woody Shaw) 20:31
  5. Larry's Blues (Larry Young) 6:13

The Paris Sessions 1964/65

  • December 8, 1964: Jazz Aux Champs-Elysees All-Stars - Woody Shaw, Sonny Gray, Nathan Davis, Jean-Claude Fohrenbach, Larry Young, Jack Dieva, Franco Manzecchi, Jacky Bamboo.
Talkin 'about JC, La Valse Grise, Discotheque
  • December 8, 1964: Larry Young Trio - Larry Young (org), Franco Manzecchi (dr), Jacky Bamboo (cga)
Mean to Me, Luny Tune
  • January 22, 1965: The Nathan Davis Quartet - Woody Shaw (tp) Nathan Davis (ts) Larry Young (org) Billy Brooks (dr)
Trane of Thought, Beyond All Limits
  • January 29, 1965: Larry Young Trio - Larry Young (p), Jacques B. Hess (kb) Franco Manzecchi (dr)
Larry's blues
  • February 9, 1965: The Nathan Davis Quartet - Woody Shaw (tp), Nathan Davis (ts), Larry Young (org), Billy Brooks (dr). Live radio recording of the Académie du Jazz competition , La Locomotive , Paris.
Buck Nile, Zoltan

reception

Marc Corroto wrote in All About Jazz : “The meaning of this music is determined by the maturation of Young's approach, as these sessions, recorded in 1964 and 1965, also preceded his masterpiece, the blue note session Unity (1965) Joe Henderson , Elvin Jones, and teenage trumpeter Woody Shaw performing here. The Nathan Davis Quartet will play a twenty-minute live version of Shaw's 'Zoltan', a piece that became famous from that Unity session. The piece allows the soloists to expand. Davis 'tenor ignites Shaw's solo before Young takes off on Billy Brooks' drums. While organists before Young delivered a chunky soul sound, Young's affection for John Coltrane's Quartet led to adapting its organ to McCoy Tyner's acoustic approach. ”The first disc also contained compositions by Young that were recorded for Blue Note , including“ Talkin 'About JC "," Luny Tune "and" Beyond All Limits ". The all-star band Jazz aux Champs-Élysées represented a break for the organist's solo excursions; "But it is proof that he could even set accents as an accompanist." The second CD ends with "Larry's Blues", a rarely played piano piece. The sound of Young can easily be compared to a mixture of Thelonious Monk and McCoy Tyner. The sound quality, especially that of the studio appointments, is excellent, which makes this material "a rare and oh-so-valuable find."

Elvin Jones (1977)

Fred Kaplan said in the magazine Stereophile that if this is not the archive find of the year in jazz, “I cannot wait for the treasure that surpasses it”. In Paris: The ORTF Recordings is "stunning and fascinating"; Young shows himself to be “a modern innovator on the Hammond B-3 organ.” The recordings document “the innovation that has already started. Young is more of a pioneer, his solos are more polished and bolder than those of the future Blue Note [recordings] that made his sidemen more important, ”which included Elvin Jones, Joe Henderson, Sam Rivers , Hank Mobley and Woody Shaw.

Kaplan pays special attention to Woody Shaw's play; this "hits with ecstatic drive and an unbelievable post-bop virtuosity, which is one of his finest hours - and he set dozen of very nice hours." Of the ten tracks of the ORTF recordings, the “14-minute excursion through Wayne Shorter's 'Black Nile', which I would point out as the highlight of the album ”, was only surpassed“ by the 20-minute firestorm on Shaw's 'Zoltan' ”, which according to John Fordham was better than the version of Larry Young's Unity , his most famous Blue Note album, which was recorded later that year. The sound quality of these discs was also cause for surprise; it is exceptionally good: “The horns are dynamic and lively, the drum kit crackles, the [Hammond] B3 blows with air. The LPs, mastered by Bernie Grundman from high-quality digital files and pressed onto 180-gram vinyl at RTI, give more space around the horns. The CDs capture a little more of the drums. ”The author sums up:“ This album shows what is possibly your greatest work. ”

John Fordham ( The Guardian ) gave the album four (out of five) stars, writing: “The hellfire preaching mannerisms that popularized stars like Jimmy Smith have often dominated the Hammond organ personality in jazz - but not with the Hammond organ player Larry Young of the 1960s / 70s. ”Fordham highlights Trumpeter Woody Shaw's playing and Nathan Davis“ intrepid tenor sax robustness ”, which mix“ with a series of breathtaking Young improvisations - confusing and quirky on 'Trane of Thought' , then lean on Wayne Shorter's 'Black Nile', maddeningly violent on the Monk-like 'Larry's Blues'. The prevailing style is earthy, early Coltran hard-bop , and there are long processions of solos - but Young's elegantly ruthless improvisations lift this music into another league. "

Tony Williams 1986

Stefan Hentz said in jazz thing : “In the 1950s and 60s of the last century, Paris was the promised city, a refuge for African-American jazz musicians who found recognition here, a flourishing club scene, a receptive audience. And with the ORTF, there was a broadcasting company with committed producers who set their ambition to play the latest jazz news to the French audience. Organist Larry Young, a musician who translated the modal jazz of John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner onto the Hammond organ and brought his instrument up to date, was such a piece of news in 1965. ”The recordings, now published for the first time, closed a gap, he said Author; “It is very nice to hear how a monolith among the musicians shakes the bars of his music, before a little later - after a few sessions with Miles Davis' band - he finds his freedom in Tony Williams Lifetime, with which he finds himself around the year Around 1970 wrote his own piece of jazz history . "

Britt Robson classified the Paris recordings historically in his contribution to JazzTimes : “In these European sessions of the 1960s, organist Larry Young was captured in a fertile middle of his tragically short career: In addition to the obvious influences of Jimmy Smith through his early material for Prestige , but not yet in the cosmic avant-garde jazz rock track with which he would later be used in Tony Williams' Lifetime, at jams with Jimi Hendrix or on criminally underrated records like his prog-fusion gem Lawrence of Newark . "

According to Robson, the compositions that Young later used on various Blue Note recordings in the 1960s showed Coltrane's strong influence on how Young absorbed his modal refinements, and in particular the way Trane's pianist McCoy Tyner used them used the pentatonic scale as a platform for advanced improvisation. As the Nathan Davis Quartet , the musicians delivered “dazzling versions of Davis' 'Trane of Thought' and Shaw's' Beyond All Limits' and 'Zoltan'. Overall, the album is not only recommended for Larry Young fans of the Blue Note era, the author sums up, but also for fans of Woody Shaw, who plays with the passion of a child prodigy . "

Peter Jones wrote for the London Jazz News : "There are some great musicians on this double CD including 19-year-old Woody Shaw on trumpet, Nathan Davis on tenor and Billy Brooks on drums." Although Larry Young is in the title of the collection was capitalized, it wasn't about his band - it was the Nathan Davis Quartet, and they can be found on Trane of Thought and Beyond All Limits, as well as extended live versions of Wayne Shorter's Black Nile and Shaw's happy composition "Zoltan".

The other tracks, which come from the Jazz Aux Champs Elysées All-Stars Octet, are “a fascinating transition” in terms of style from the straightforward hardbop to the groove- based sound that is associated with the sixties, according to the author. “The music rewards careful and repeated listening. Most of it is great, some are a little below average ”(one could have done without the long“ Discothèque ”, says Jones),“ but everything is fascinating and a credit to Feldman's tireless archaeological efforts. ”

Matt Collar awarded the album in Allmusic with 4½ (out of 5) stars and praised the ORTF recordings as something “like a lost treasure that has been rediscovered”. As a listening experience, the ORTF Recordings are "a revelation that presents the innovative Young" and his group of young and talented musicians alike, including 19-year-old Newark trumpeter Woody Shaw. With their New Jersey background and a shared love for John Coltrane and modern Hungarian composers such as Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály , "this was a group of insatiable, intellectual, and highly creative musicians who were on the verge of greatness."

McCoy Tyner (1973)

While these recordings were more ad hoc in character than Unity , "one can clearly hear the angular modalisms and groundbreaking harmonies that Young and Shaw borrowed from Coltrane, pianist McCoy Tyner, and others." This is particularly evident in the two Shaw originals -Compositions "Beyond All Limits" and "Zoltan", both of which were later re-recorded for Unity . The handful of the Young Trio numbers are also captivating, including his lively handling of " Mean to Me ", which show how skillful and inventive the keyboardist was. For Matt Collar this means that the other tracks like “Talkin 'About JC”, “La Valse Grise” and “Discotheque”, which were recorded here with a group of European musicians, are prime examples of soulful, harmoniously aggressive jazz. Ultimately, “The ORTF Recordings” offer an insightful snapshot of a new generation of jazz musicians, Young and Shaw, who would return to the States after their time in Paris and revolutionize the sound of modern jazz.

George W. Harris wrote in Jazz Weekly that "to say that their apotheosis is an enlightenment of modal jazz would be an understatement." The recording was “another great find by Archimedes of jazz recordings with the third Heureka product of the year. So far."

Ralph A. Miriello wrote in the Huffington Post about the music of the European ensemble, the Jazz aux Champs-Elysees All Stars : "Together they sit down with a happy devotion to Young's snappy 'Talkin' About JC '." The extended frontline is fluid and precise as they navigate the lines of the melody. “The solos flow through. Halfway through, the tenor Fohrenbach turns with a deeply melodic Getzian tone, which is accompanied by Diéval's piano compositions. Drummer Manzecchi is wonderfully relaxed and free running, he and conga player Bamboo drive the pace forward. Maestro Young holds the position while the two percussionists keep the groove silky smooth, with a brilliant, unobtrusive comping that resembles a carpet of sound very similar to McCoy Tiger's piano work. After about twelve minutes, Diếval and Young have a wonderful exchange of ideas, with Larry sometimes laying leading bass lines for Diếval's pianistic explorations. ”Young's solo on this subject is“ perhaps his most creative of the album, trying and exploring entirely within the framework of a deep groove ”.

Franco Manzecchi

The international group continues with “La valse grise”, a song believed to have been written by the leader of the All Star band, Jack Diếval. The cool blues groove “Diskotheque” is rather traditional. “Young creates his own groove with his pedal-driven walking bass line and oppressive, sultry organ comping . Diếval offers a piano solo inspired by Martial Solal . ”The most noticeable part of these international sessions, Miriello continues,“ is the strong contrast in the playing styles of the horn and woodwinds . American players are much more influenced by the Coltrane / Tyner legacy than their European counterparts, whose sound is much more rooted in legato , the deepest note of Webster , Hawkins and Ellington . ”Miriello also goes into the two titles that Young played in a trio with conga player Jacky Bamboo and drummer Franco Manzecchi, " Mean to Me " and his own composition "Luny Tune". There is “a direct, intuitive connection between Young and Manzecchi, with the drummer particularly attuned to Young's high-flying explorations”. Manzecchi reacts “playfully to Young pushing the harmonic limits of the song.” Larry Young is most creative on the cheeky “Luny Tunes”: “It's always light enough to adjust its sound accordingly while changing direction, and Manzecchi follows him step by step “as if the two musicians were playing in the same spirit.

Hearing Young on the piano is a rare pleasure, says the author, "and he plays brilliantly in the finale entitled 'Larry's Blues'." He is accompanied by French bassist Jacques B. Hess and intuitive drummer Franco Manzecchi, "the again up to the challenge of anticipating Young's excursions. Young is particularly Monkhaft in his dissonant approach but always keeps this groove. ”Miriello's conclusion is: For every student of music and the jazz organ, the ORTF Recordings would offer “ a rare insight into the development of a truly unique master of his instrument ”.

Awards

In the National Pubic Radio's Jazz Critics Poll at the end of 2016 , the album won first place in the Rara Avis category , ahead of All My Yesterdays: The Debut 1966 Recordings at the Village Vanguard by the Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Orchestra and Some Other Time: The Lost Session from the Black Forest by Bill Evans . In 2017 the album was nominated by the Jazz Journalists Association for the JJA Awards in the category Reissue of the Year ; was then inferior to the - also from Resonance Records - production Some Other Time: The Lost Session from the Black Forest by Bill Evans .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Fred Kaplan: Larry Young, In Paris: The ORTF Recordings. Stereopphile, April 8, 2016, accessed March 17, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Chris Pearson: Larry Young: In Paris: The ORTF Recordings. The Times, February 25, 2016, accessed March 17, 2018 .
  3. ^ A b George W. Harris: YOUNG AND RESTLESS ... Larry Young: In Paris-The ORTF Recordings. Jazz Weekly, March 14, 2006, accessed March 18, 2018 .
  4. ^ A b c Peter Jones: Larry Young: Larry Young In Paris: the ORTF Recordings. London Jazz Newa, August 1, 2016, accessed March 17, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Peter Hum: Larry Young two-CD set reviewed - New and striking music from the mid-1960s featuring the great, innovative jazz organist has been unearthed. Ottawa Citizen, March 14, 2016, accessed March 17, 2019 .
  6. ↑ a b c d Review of the album In Paris by Matt Collar at Allmusic (English). Retrieved March 17, 2019.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Ralph A. Miriello: Evolution of a Giant: Larry Young in Paris; The ORTF Recordings. Huffington Post, December 6, 2017, accessed March 17, 2018 .
  8. ↑ a b c Marc Corroto: Larry Young: In Paris: The ORTF Recordings. All About Jazz, March 2, 2016, accessed March 17, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Discographic information at Discogs
  10. ^ John Fordham: Larry Young: In Paris - The ORTF Recordings review - reckless beauty on unearthed live tapes. The Guafdian, January 21, 2016, accessed March 17, 2018 .
  11. ^ Stefan Hentz: Larry Young: In Paris. JazzThing, August 1, 2016, accessed March 17, 2018 .
  12. ^ A b Britt Robson: Larry Young: Larry Young In Paris: the ORTF Recordings. JazzTimes, May 1, 2016, accessed March 17, 2018 .
  13. ^ Francis Davis: The 2016 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll. NPR, December 21, 2016, accessed March 31, 2019 .
  14. ↑ JJA Nominees 2017
  15. ↑ 2017 JJA Jazz Awards for Musical Achievement