Written by Jim Eigo:
jim@jazzpromoservices.com
Sir Roland Hanna
Colors From A Giants Kit
IPOCD 1020
Street Date August 9, 2011
The Hickory House was the last of the legendary jazz clubs
that lined 52nd Street in the two decades following World War II. In the mid-1960s
the bandstand, which rose above the large, horseshoe-shaped bar that dominated the
club, was occupied as often as not by a trio comprised of Billy Taylor,
Chris White and Grady Tate. The club was still patronized by some
of the musicians who immortalized the street in the previous decades, and for the
odd 15-year-old whose interests ran more to Dameron than trigonometry, it was a
place to hang out and an opportunity to meet (or at least interrupt the otherwise
tranquil dinners being enjoyed by) Ella Fitzgerald, Milt Jackson and
others who dropped by.
The trio typically closed its sets with a rollicking version of There Will Never
Be Another You or How High The Moon that included an expansive, unaccompanied,
two-fisted, polyphonic piano solo by Dr. Taylor. Carding was not a problem
at the Hickory House and, carried away by such a tour de force performance, it would
not be surprising had any of those odd 15 year olds who happened to be in the club
decided to become a jazz pianist. Fortunately, Chris White was there to commemorate
the event and to recommend his colleague in the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet,
Kenny Barron, as someone who could show me the way.
Kenny was doing some teaching out of a small studio on the West Side. Relying on
chops honed by a few years of obligatory grade school piano lessons and confident
in my innate musicianship and good taste, I shared with Kenny a pastiche of bebop,
funk and random atonality that had him transfixed for about ten minutes, and left
him nearly speechless. As much enthusiasm as he obviously had for taking on a new
protégé, he felt (upon recovering his power of speech) that his commitment to an
upcoming Gillespie tour (which curiously both he and Chris White had neglected to
mention before) would make it impossible to devote the time required to nurture
such an unusual talent. He gave me Roland Hanna's number.
"I always learn something new when I play with Roland," said Benny Carter,
quoted in the liner notes to his "In the Mood for Swing" album with Roland
and Dizzy Gillespie on the Musicmasters label. Coming from Carter, an
iconic figure for over seven decades who essentially created the art of jazz band
writing, this is not a trivial statement.
Teaching played a large part in Roland's life, and he held firm opinions on music
and many other subjects. When I first met him, he had a studio on West 73rd Street,
where Broadway runs into Amsterdam Avenue, adjacent to the tiny trapezoid of grass
that now appears on maps quaintly as "Verdi Square" but at the time was known more
colorfully as "Needle Park." I used to drop in whenever I was in town visiting from
college and grad school. Roland had an ancient Steinway that he tuned and maintained
on his own. I once commented that it seemed to me the bass was disproportionately
voiced. Roland, as always justifiably proud of his own work and quick to the defense
of others, responded: "by the time you get to be eighty years old, your bass will
be disproportionate too."
In the mid-late ‘60s Roland had two regular gigs that would be almost impossible
to top – he held down the piano chair in the Thad Jones – Mel Lewis Jazz
Orchestra and was a regular accompanist for Coleman Hawkins. The Band
was in its prime, with Thad producing fresh and innovative charts for a roster of
players that was and still is beyond comparison. This was during one of the recurrent
nosedives in the economics of the jazz world, of which there were nonetheless a
few benefits. Players such as Joe Henderson, Pepper Adams, Eddie Daniels, Jimmy
Owens, Bob Brookmeyer, Jimmy Knepper etc. were available to be part of a regularly
performing band. On the other hand, people didn't always get paid with regularity.
I once spent some time with Mel Lewis trying to mediate a disagreement with Roland,
at a time when the Band's future was cloudy. Mel told me that, no matter what, he
would always take great pride in having been part (along with Roland and Richard
Davis) of the "best rhythm section in history."
The Jones-Lewis studio recordings don't come close to capturing Roland's importance
in the Band. More often than not, arrangements were framed out with Roland's extended
introductions and solos, and there were always uncanny exchanges between Roland
and other featured soloists. Then, there were the moments when all the other players
would silently descend from the bandstand in the middle of a set, leaving Roland
alone at the piano for seven or eight minutes of an unaccompanied improvisation
(typically as an introduction to "A Child Is Born") that embraced just about
every musical style and technique imaginable. As Roland neared conclusion, the others
would file back to their chairs and settle in for the B-flat seventh chord that
marked the transition to Thad's arrangement. It was very cool.
Like Thad Jones, Coleman Hawkins had exemplary taste in pianists. His sessions featured
some of the earliest recorded performances of Art Tatum, Bud Powell and Thelonious
Monk. Starting with Hank Jones in the 1940s, playing for "Bean" became a rite of
passage for the members of the "Detroit Piano School," including those who eventually
followed Hank to New York: Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris and Roland Hanna. They would
often hang out at Bean's Upper West Side apartment; playing the piano for each other,
listening to records and talking. Roland let me tag along to a couple of these get-togethers,
where the subjects of conversation, as I recall, ranged from dining on pigs feet
to the defining qualities of fine classical ‘cello playing (I don't recall the segue
between those two subjects; perhaps the correct angle of the wrist). Then, in 1967,
a great aunt died and left me $5,000. I was in college, and the only thing I spent
money on was records, so I figured if this legacy were going to be converted to
vinyl in any event, I might as well bypass the middlemen and do it in style. Roland
had not at that time recorded his own compositions (which eventually grew to several
hundred works and included, in addition to jazz pieces, works for violin, ‘cello,
chamber ensemble and orchestra), so we organized a couple of sessions at the old
A&R Studios in the West ‘40s - one session with talent drawn from the Band: Thad,
Mel, Eddie Daniels and Richard Davis; another with Coleman Hawkins.
$5,000 obviously went a lot farther in those days, but not quite far enough, and
mistakes were made. In the interest of economy, I booked the cheapest studio time
available – with a 10:00AM start time – figuring that this wouldn't conflict with
the musicians' other engagements and would enable them to focus their full concentration
on the music, uncluttered by the intrusion of other concerns of the day. This must
have been a particular novelty for Hawkins, whom I later came to realize had probably
never before been awake at 10:00AM – or, if he had, it was most certainly at the
end rather than the beginning of his day, when his capillaries were transporting
more Hennessy than hemoglobin. I remember Roland and Eddie Locke carrying Bean into
the studio and positioning him in front of the music stand. This held a composition
that Roland had written for him called "After Paris," an evocative impressionist
piece formally notated with a maze of accidentals and double sharps. I still can't
imagine what the double sharps looked like to Hawkins under those circumstances,
and in truth we couldn't salvage much from the session, except an indelible memory
of the majestically beautiful tone he still produced.
Lacking further windfalls, it took another 35 years before the IPO label came into
existence, initially with a solo album of Roland called "Everything I Love" and
a set of Arlen tunes with Roland and Carrie Smith, "I've Got a Right to Sing the
Blues." In between, anticipating at one time or another the start of the label,
we recorded on a couple of occasions that produced the material included in this
release. It took longer than expected for IPO to be up and running, and then it
took a while to go through the old master tapes, and then Roland wasn't around to
approve the final selections and order of the pieces, and …well, the point is that,
notwithstanding the lateness of their release, these performances are masterful,
top-of-the-barrel, premier cru Roland Hanna, maybe even the best he ever recorded.
When Roland died in 2003, Stuart Isacoff, editor of Piano Today and an old
student of Roland's, wrote an article in his magazine reflecting on their long friendship.
"I wanted to make him proud, and still do," Stuart wrote. Learning from Roland
Hanna, being inspired by him, and having him as a close friend for all those years
was an experience for which I'm immensely grateful. And, I'm sure he would be proud
of this recording.
Bill Sorin
January 2011
Label Website:
www.iporecordings.com/
Distributor Website:
http://www.allegro-music.com/
National Publicity Campaign Media Contact:
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail:
jazzpromo@earthlink.net
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
National Radio Promotion Contact:
Mike Hurzon
The Tracking Station
476 NE 2nd Avenue
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
trackst@bellsouth.net
(954) 463.3518
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