The Shelly Manne Quartet with Hampton Hawes, Ray Brown and Bob Cooper at Shelly's Mann Hole in 1970. Hampton Hawes is rapidly becoming one of my favorite jazz artists.
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Anonymous
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Critics have lumped a whole bunch of music into the category of "West Coast Jazz," which is unfairly maligned as bloodless and simpering.
The Shelly Manne groups from the 1950s on had a bunch of straight-ahead, hard-blowing players who are in danger of being forgotten because they had the wrong working address. A lot of them were Stan Kenton alumni, so they have that stigma going against them as well -- as if the Kenton excesses were their idea.
They include Conte Candoli and Joe Gordon on trumpet, Frank Rosolino on trombone, Richie Kamuca on tenor sax. I'm not as big a fan of Bob Cooper, who doubles on oboe and can drift into the "limp Lester wannabe" category. He's burning here, though.
The series of Manne CDs from the 1950s recorded at the Blackhawk and from Shelly's Manne-Hole are well worth getting, and feature extended solos that are basically in the bop/hard bop groove.
Hampton Hawes is probably the second-best bop pianist after Bud Powell. He had a tendency for a while to start figures at fast tempi with an ascending pickup phrase of an eighth-note followed by a triplet, but he soon lost that crutch. I always hated to find Hawes playing electric piano instead of acoustic in the 1970s. I don't know how many CDs from that era I passed up due to electric bass and piano by great acoustic players, or awful song choices -- it is amazing how many great jazz pianists covered "People."
My favorite Hawes recordings are the "All Night Long" series with guitarist Jim Hall, along with Red Mitchell on bass.
Ray Brown, who was not associated with the West Coast scene in general, is my favorite bass player ever. His sound is so spectacular that he is, to me, one of the easiest bass players to identify. I heard a bass play the first phrase of "Things Ain't What They Used To Be" on the radio a few days ago, and new immediately it was Ray Brown. A very nice guy in person, too.
If you like the Hawes-Brown-Manne rhythm section, you can find them from about this same era on Art Farmer's "On The Road -- where you can get Farmer, who to me should have the reputation enjoyed by Chet Baker (yeah, I know why he doesn't).
You might also want to check out the Poll Winners series, which exchanges Hawes' piano for the distinctive bop-with-a-country twang of Barney Kessel.
And Hawes' "Four!" has the same rhythm section, including Kessel, with West Coast bass monster Red Mitchell, who presages Scott LoFaro,
Actually been listening to Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars in the Solo Spotlight, lot of the guys you mentioned from the Manne groups as well as Bud Shank.
3 comments:
Critics have lumped a whole bunch of music into the category of "West Coast Jazz," which is unfairly maligned as bloodless and simpering.
The Shelly Manne groups from the 1950s on had a bunch of straight-ahead, hard-blowing players who are in danger of being forgotten because they had the wrong working address. A lot of them were Stan Kenton alumni, so they have that stigma going against them as well -- as if the Kenton excesses were their idea.
They include Conte Candoli and Joe Gordon on trumpet, Frank Rosolino on trombone, Richie Kamuca on tenor sax. I'm not as big a fan of Bob Cooper, who doubles on oboe and can drift into the "limp Lester wannabe" category. He's burning here, though.
The series of Manne CDs from the 1950s recorded at the Blackhawk and from Shelly's Manne-Hole are well worth getting, and feature extended solos that are basically in the bop/hard bop groove.
Hampton Hawes is probably the second-best bop pianist after Bud Powell. He had a tendency for a while to start figures at fast tempi with an ascending pickup phrase of an eighth-note followed by a triplet, but he soon lost that crutch. I always hated to find Hawes playing electric piano instead of acoustic in the 1970s. I don't know how many CDs from that era I passed up due to electric bass and piano by great acoustic players, or awful song choices -- it is amazing how many great jazz pianists covered "People."
My favorite Hawes recordings are the "All Night Long" series with guitarist Jim Hall, along with Red Mitchell on bass.
Ray Brown, who was not associated with the West Coast scene in general, is my favorite bass player ever. His sound is so spectacular that he is, to me, one of the easiest bass players to identify. I heard a bass play the first phrase of "Things Ain't What They Used To Be" on the radio a few days ago, and new immediately it was Ray Brown. A very nice guy in person, too.
If you like the Hawes-Brown-Manne rhythm section, you can find them from about this same era on Art Farmer's "On The Road -- where you can get Farmer, who to me should have the reputation enjoyed by Chet Baker (yeah, I know why he doesn't).
You might also want to check out the Poll Winners series, which exchanges Hawes' piano for the distinctive bop-with-a-country twang of Barney Kessel.
And Hawes' "Four!" has the same rhythm section, including Kessel, with West Coast bass monster Red Mitchell, who presages Scott LoFaro,
Actually been listening to Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars in the Solo Spotlight, lot of the guys you mentioned from the Manne groups as well as Bud Shank.
...and On The Road is very good, with that other Art to boot.
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