The Blues and the Abstract Truth

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The Blues and the Abstract Truth
Studio album by Oliver Nelson

Publication
(s)

1961

Label (s) Impulses! Records

Format (s)

CD, LP

Genre (s)

Post Bop
Hard Bop

Title (number)

6th

running time

36:35

occupation

production

Creed Taylor

chronology
Afro / American Sketches
(1961) 		The Blues and the Abstract Truth More Blues and the Abstract Truth
(1964)

The Blues and the Abstract Truth is a jazz album by Oliver Nelson . It was recorded on February 23, 1961 in Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey , and published by Impulse in August 1961 ! Records released.

The album

Creed Taylor was familiar with Oliver Nelson's albums, which he had recorded for Prestige around 1960, and was able to win him over to produce an album for the still young Impulse label. It is considered Nelson's best album and helped him achieve a breakthrough with his jazz standard “Stolen Moments”. A number of good musicians came together for this album: Freddie Hubbard , Eric Dolphy , Bill Evans (for whom this album was the only collaboration with Nelson), Paul Chambers and Roy Haynes . Baritone saxophonist George Barrow did not have a solo, but is an important part of the refined vocal lead in Nelson's arrangements.

Oliver Nelson wrote in the liner notes for The Blues and the Abstract Truth :
“When I arrived in New York in March 1959, I thought I already had my musical identity, but it wasn't long before everything had changed. A phase of self-exploration began for me. "

The album is not only a self-exploration of Nelson, but also an exploration of the mood and structure of the blues , whereby not all tracks are in the classic 12-bar form of the blues. In the early 1960s, Nelson studied the Afro-American roots of jazz music. "This is how the idea came about to record an album only with different blues progressions and rhythm changes, a kind of basic work that offered innovative soloists the space to develop on the formal foundations of jazz." Although the music on this one This album is not about modal jazz , it can be seen as a continuation of the tendency towards harmonic simplicity and subtlety through modified versions of the blues from Miles Davis ' 1959 album Kind of Blue (Evans and Chambers both also played on this album ) goes out.

The titles

Freddie Hubbard in 1976
  • Oliver Nelson: The Blues and the Abstract Truth (Impulse A (S) 5)
  1. Stolen Moments 8:45
  2. Hoe-Down 4:42
  3. Cascades 5:31
  4. Yearnin '6:23
  5. Butch and Butch 4:35
  6. Teenie's Blues 6:34

(All tracks were composed by Nelson.)

Rating of the album

The album, released in the summer of 1961, was the first big success of the young Impulse label and, according to Ashley Kahn, one of Creed Taylor's most important productions , which was created together with the sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder .
The critic Michael Nastos described the album as Oliver Nelson's triumph at Allmusic . Nelson, who was better known as an arranger and leader of larger ensembles than as a saxophonist and leader of a smaller formation, created a definition of the sound of the era, especially with the all-time classic "Stolen Moments" by playing one of the most potent sextets in modern jazz have put together. At the 1961 session, Nastos saw the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard at the height of his ability, while the saxophonists Nelson and Dolphy, doubled as tenor players, formed a unit that bordered on perfection. Bill Evans, Paul Chambers and Roy Haynes formed an ideal rhythm section .

“Stolen Moments”, which later became Nelson's signature melody, is “perhaps the best blues ever written, even if it is not immediately recognizable as such” (according to jazz critic Ralf Dombrowski ). For Michael Nastos, too, the composition is undoubtedly of a quality, the beauty of which shines through the three-part horn section, which is laid over Hubbard's melody. This is followed by a flute solo by Dolphy and a hymn saxophone solo by Nelson, before Evans took the mood back in his solo.
According to Nastos, the “blues” aspect is best heard in “Yearnin '”; Bill Evans shows a swinging, bluesy style of playing that you shouldn't hear from him later. Both Blues and Abstract Truth (ger .:, abstract truth ') are united by Nastos in the dark "Teenie's Blues," a feature for Nelson and Dolphy on the alto saxophones. It shows Eric Dolphy on the way to the style of play that he created with his distinctive, edgy, dramatically broken and brittle voice and that made him an unmistakable nonconformist.

The title “Hoedown” with its country feeling and the call and response playing of the saxophones was considered the “black sheep” of the album. "Cascades" and "Butch & Butch" are classic hard bop .

For Ralf Dombrowski the album is a “stroke of genius”; the critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton consider it a classic of the period; the lovable “Stolen Moments” is “a Nelson piece for the lonely island” with a soulful Hubbard and a great Eric Dolphy as a flautist. In 2009 Bill Cunliffe released a tribute album with new arrangements of the compositions on the album.

The music magazine Jazzwise added the album to The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook the World list ; Keith Shadwick wrote:

“ Nelson provided a set of profound meditations on the blues [...] and supported it with his tenor saxophone with such strength and ingenuity that he is on a par with [the heavyweights who play with him]. In accomplishing this, he finally delivered the milestone of a classic album of modern jazz , blues and its roots, free of all hard bop . "

Rolling Stone magazine voted the album at number 40 in its 2013 list of The 100 Best Jazz Albums .

Cover of the album

The photography for the front cover was by Pete Turner . The American photographer, who died in 2017 at the age of 83, was also responsible for the cover art of the jazz albums by Quincy Jones ( The Quintessence , 1962), Oscar Peterson ( Night Train , Verve, 1963) and Freddie Hubbard ( Straight Life , CTI , 1970). His jazz photographs were published in the book The Color of Jazz: Album Cover Photographs (Rizzoli 2006).

More Blues and Abstract Truth

With the recording of the Impulse album More Blues and Abstract Truth in September 1964, Oliver Nelson tried to build on the success of the first album from 1961; According to critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton , this album (AS-75) lacks the effect and fire of the previous session. The music with soloists Thad Jones , Phil Woods and Ben Webster unfortunately slipped into the formulaic funk of television music that Nelson produced in later years. Other musicians in this session included a Pepper Adams , Phil Bodner , Danny Moore , Roger Kellaway , Richard Davis and Grady Tate . The pianist Bill Cunliffe presented another tribute album .

literature

Web links

Notes / individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ashley Kahn also mentions that Taylor and Nelson had the same hobby, namely building model railways with H0 trains. See Kahn, p. 44f.
  2. ↑ a b c Dombrowski: Basis-Diskothek Jazz , p. 167ff.
  3. ↑ The album was the label's second release at the time, as the first four LPs by Kai Winding / JJ Johnson , Ray Charles and Gil Evans had previously been released at the same time; see. Kahn, p. 42 f.
  4. ↑ a b c Michael Nastos in Allmusic
  5. ^ Cook & Morton, p. 974
  6. ↑ In the original: “ Nelson delivered a set of profound meditations on the blues (including 'Stolen Moments') and then backed that up by playing the tenor saxophone with such force and inventiveness that he stood as an equal with the heavyweights listed above. In managing it even once he at least gave us a stone classic modern jazz blues and roots album that is free of all hard bop ".
  7. ^ The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World
  8. ↑ Rolling Stone: The 100 Best Jazz Albums . Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  9. ↑ Obituary for Pete Turner (2017)
  10. ↑ See Cook / Morton, p. 974
  11. ↑ Review of the album Blues and the Abstract Truth Take 2 at Allmusic (English). Retrieved June 28, 2012.