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Reviewers: Tony Augarde [Editor], Don Mather, Sam Webster, Jonathan Woolf, Glyn Pursglove



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PAUL GONSALVES/CLARK TERRY QUINTET

Complete Recordings

Lone Hill Jazz LHJ 10339
 

 

 

 


CD1

1. Festival
2. Clark Bars
3. Daddy-0's Patio
4. Blues
5. Impeccable
6. Paul's Idea
7. Phat Bach
8. Milli-Terry
9. Funky
10. The Girl I Call Baby
11. Diminuendo and Crescendo In Blue
12. I Cover The Waterfront
13. C- Jam Blues
14. Evad
15. It Don't Mean A Thing
16. Autobahn
17. Willow Weep For Me
18. Hildegard
19. Ocean Motion
20. Jivin' With Fritz
CD2

1. Serenade To A Bus Seat
2. Pannonica No.1
3. Pea-Eyes
4. Satin Doll
5. Daniel's Blues
6. Mean To Me
7. Blues For The Champ Of Champs
8. Circeo
9. Clark Bars
10. Pannonica No.2
11. Lonely One
12. Don't Blame Me
13. It Don't Mean A Thing
14. Take Nine
15. Everything Happens To Me
Paul Gonsalves - Tenor sax
Clark Terry - Trumpet, flugelhorn
Jimmy Woode - Bass
Sam Woodyard - Drums
Willie Jones - Piano (CD1, tracks 1-10)
Carlos Diernhammer - Piano (CD1, tracks 11-20)
Raymond Fol - Piano (CD2, tracks 1-11)
Porter Kilbert - Baritone sax (CD2, tracks 12-15)
Junior Mance - Piano (CD2, tracks 12-15)
Chubby Jackson - Bass (CD2, tracks 12-15)
Gene Miller - Drums (CD2, tracks 12-15)

 

Most musicians ever employed by Duke Ellington have distinctive sounds, as Ellington chose people who could bring their own individuality to his band. This is certainly true of Paul Gonsalves and Clark Terry - the two players featured on this double album. Both have immediately recognisable sounds which are unmistakable - and very different from one another. Gonslaves' tone was slippery but Terry's was (and still is) precise and clipped. While Paul sounded as if he could go on playing forever (as, indeed, he seemed to in his famously extended solo at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival), Clark's solos are concise and well-rounded. You might summarise Clark Terry as a predominantly staccato musician, while Paul Gonsalves was a legato player, running notes into one another without seemingly needing to take a breath.

It is this very contrast between the two men's styles that makes their collaborations so fascinating. In a way, these recordings might be compared with the Ellington small-group recordings of the thirties and forties, when some of the Duke's men got together (often with Ellington himself at the piano) for some relaxed sessions. As with those recordings, these sessions from the late 1950s allow the musicians to stretch out in familiar company. The familiarity is strengthened by the presence on all the quintet tracks of two other Ellingtonians: bassist Jimmy Woode and drummer Sam Woodyard, although the pianists vary from one session to another.

This album squeezes onto two CDs all the recordings that Gonsalves and Terry made with a quintet, comprising the contents of three LPs: Cookin (1957), Diminuendo, Crescendo and Blues (1958) and Clark Terry featuring Paul Gonsalves (1959). As a bonus, there are also four tracks from a sextet session recorded in 1956. The recordings were made respectively in Chicago, Munich, Paris and New York.

Both CDs are full of cherishable playing. Paul and Clark work seamlessly together. Their togetherness is not surprising, as they knew each other not only for many years in the Duke Ellington orchestra but they played together for Count Basie in the late forties. Just hear the way they blend in the theme statement of the very first tune: Festival, leading into a blues solo from Paul which contains reminders of that Newport Jazz Festival solo the year before.

The tracks are too numerous to describe in detail but some highspots include the gloriously laid-back Evad; Sam Woodyard's drum intro to Autobahn; Gonsalves' smoky tenor sax on Thelonious Monk's Pannonica No. 1; Clark Terry's beautifully mellow performance on Blues for the Champ of Champs; and the new slant given to It Don't Mean a Thing.

If you like swinging jazz with plenty of bluesy tunes, this is for you.

Tony Augarde


 

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