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Verve Reissues Stan Getz & Bill Evans Gil Evans Orchestra Jimmy Witherspoon With Ben Webster

Verve Reissues Stan Getz & Bill Evans Gil Evans Orchestra Jimmy Witherspoon With Ben Webster image Verve Reissues Stan Getz & Bill Evans Gil Evans Orchestra Jimmy Witherspoon With Ben Webster image
Parent Issue
Day
19
Month
April
Year
1974
Copyright
Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
OCR Text

Stan Getz Bill Evans: Gil Evans: V68838 V68833 Jimmy Witherspoon Ben Webster: V68835 Only a few jazz record companies have consistently issued good music by high-quality musicians -- Blue Note is one, Prestige is another, and Riverside is probably a third. Most of the large companies that offer jazz records release, in addition to many fine discs, what they hope will be commercially popular material, as well as mediocre work by established artists, or just plain poor work by inadequate performers. Verve belongs to the latter category. However, in the last month Verve has entered the reissue field with six records of previously unreleased work by established artists, and I shall here focus on three of them. The first, Stan Getz and Bill Evans from 1963, is a happy teaming of two of the most lyrical of all jazz musicians. At the time 01 this recording Getz had recorded the astounding FOCUS, he was about to move on from the boss nova that he had played almost consistently since he introduced that musical form to this country in 1962. Evans, too, had, in 1963, just changed his musical direction. From 1959 to 61 he had a trio with the innovative bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, and their recorded work is perhaps the best ever by a Bill Evans group. LaFaro died in an automobile accident in 1961 and Chuck Israels succeeded him competently. In 1963 Evans recorded his first solo album, which was an artistic success, but he also released a terrible album of theme songs from various movies. With both Getz and Evans having just gone through styles, sounds, and groups with which they were once comfortable, one might expect the two to produce chaotic or uncertain music, but such is not the case on this new album; rather, both men perform exceptionally well throughout. "Night and Day" is the highlight of the record. On that piece Getz and Evans both solo with'out accompaniement. Drummer Elvin Jones is sensitive throughout, as are the bassists Ron Carter and Richard Davis. This is not groundbreaking music, but it is creative and is not at all dated. While the group sound on that record is engagingly brittle, that on the next is solid, deep, and weighty. Here the Gil Evans orchestra of 1963-64 performs three compositions by the leader, one by Willie Dixon, and one by John Lewis, and the traditionally odd instrumentation of an Evans group is present -- tuba, French horn, basses galore, trombones and bass trombones -- with the effect of having the music rooted in the listener's sinews. But out of that deep rumbling juts the cutting slashes of Phil Wood's alto sax, the quiet, almost innocuous chirping of Harry Look of sky's violin, and the sinuous lines of Kenny Burrell's guitar that provide a texture that is one of the hallmarks of Evans' sound. This album is not as good as the recordings Evans made with Miles Davis, but it is a welcome addition to the continued on page 23 -Records continued from page 20 slim recorded output of one of jazz's best arrangers. Arrangements are not at all in evidence in the third of these albums. It was recor_ded in a club in 1967 with the vocalist Jimmy Witherspoon being backed more than adequately by the exquisite Ben Webster on tenor saxophone. Witherspoon is a good singer whose medium is the blues, and while at times he is a trine slick and at others too squeaky a la Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, he is nonetheless a convincing teller of blues happy and sad. His choice of material on this record is bold since most of the tunes are ones closely associated with other blues artists from Bessie Smith to Joe Williams, but Witherspoon does not ape his predecessors and he gives a reading of "Everyday I Have the Blues" that is clearly superior to the one that made Williams famous. Despite Witherspoon's performance, the best artist here or on any of these three records is the timeless Webster who is surely one of the greatest tenor saxophonists in the history of jazz music. Webster is probably the only musician who can be identified by listening to the breath he takes before he blows his first note, and it is that breathy, raspy sound that permeates his playing and adds such feeling to the elegant conceptions that are his, and especially on ballads. He has of course played more convincingly than he does here, but if you do not yet know the late Ben Webster, this record might be the introduction that you need. These three records, then, are a pleasant surprise and do credit to Verve (now a subsidiary of MGM) and to the artists who perform on them. It is difficult to understand why they were not released when they were recorded.