Records

Perhaps you're familiar with the yarn about the frustrated soda jerk who wanted to soar to fame as the inventor of the richest, gooiest, most complex sundae in the world -- but was always defeated because his confections looked so good he couldn't resist eating them himself. No? Well, we'll tell it to you someday. We mention it now because we're sitting here wishing the same fate would befall the guys who write much of the rich, gooey, complex prose that adorns the liner notes for so many modern jazz recordings (in marked contrast to the trend toward more interesting cover art). In other words, we wish they'd read it themselves.

What one gleans from a lot of this logorrheaic hoopla is that there are jazz performers and arrangers around today who have had formal training in music, who dig Bach, and who can read and write. (They like Schoenberg and Bartok, too, some of them -- but somehow it's Johann Sebastian who really sends them.) This is supposed to be news and a big deal to boot. If you are half as impressed as the blurb writers, you're in a state of semi-euphoric collapse at the thought. With flat-footed fifths dancing before your crossed eyes, you are devoutly kneeling (facing East -- toward Birdland, or West -- toward The Hague) while muttering the dogma "I believe in the quadrumvirate: polyphony, atonality, harmonic interludes and note readin'." Great Big Deal.

But the odd thing we've noticed is that there seems to be a one-to-one correlation between the phony pretentiousness of the liner copy and the records within. Trend spotters from way back, we like to think we've spotted one here -- and hope these words will have some bud-nipping effectiveness.

None of the foregoing applies to all of what follows. Sadly, some of it does apply to portions of these releases.

Max Bennett (Bethlehem BCP 48) proves that a well played bass, thanks to modern recording and reproducing techniques, can be heard as a solo instrument. The proof comes through on some standards and some newies, all solidly enough rendered to be pleasing to the modern ear; but whether this proves something about tape and vinyl or that Max is "emerging as an important new voice" is open to question.

The Chico Hamilton Quintet in Hi-Fi (Pacific Jazz 1216) turns out one nervous, intellectual exercise after another, originals and standards being given the treatment. A lot of it sounds fine and modern; we believe that Chico's handling of the drums "shows a desire to be part of the melodic ensemble, rather than just a beat in the background," like it says. But we also hear obtrusive fugal passages which haven't much to do with jazz, and contrived, abrupt transitions which are more novel than musical. As for the jacket prose, one number is described as "a Mozart-like thing depicting a flighty little girl." Another is said to feature "one of the quintet's staggering 'Free Forms' intros and has a 'Daphnis and Chloë' flavor." Gone Lover, we learn, shows "intricate, serious and formal cohesiveness." This is jazz? (N. B.: in spite of it all, a lot of it is.)

Take Duane Tatro's Jazz for Moderns (Contemporary 3514). Tatro is serious about his musicianship and works with such accomplished aides as Shelly Manne and Jimmy Giuffre. Yet for every happy moment there are pretentious-sounding and irritating uses of the standard techniques of classical composition, whose employment in modern jazz is, by now, somewhat so-what. And here are two excerpts from Duane's own liner prose about his work. "The melody is set in a Phrygian mode. The bass begins with a half-note ostinato." And, "This starts with a theme built on a 12-tone row . . . There is no tonality but there are tone-centers." We guess Duane had fun -- maybe more than we did.

A delicious contrast is presented by The Modern Jazz Sextet (Norgran 1076), which presents Diz, Percy Heath, Sonny Stitt, Skeeter Best, John Lewis and Charlie Persip. This is Class A, postgraduate modern jazz, with performers who could be prima donnas if they wished, happily suppressing their natural ebullience to the good of the cause -- and no phony phrasing or deep-bows to Bach. Here we have only two undistinguished tunes, Dizzy Meets Sonny, which is fast and tricky but empty; and Old Folks. By contrast, there are such happy events as Mean to Me, Blues for Bird and How Deep is the Ocean. The last two are classic examples of Diz in his ensemble mood, feet firmly on the ground but head way up in the clouds.

Finally, there's Jazz West Coast, Vol. 2 (Pacific Jazz 501), an anthology which includes virtually every luminary of the genre. Everyone seemed to be having a good time in all the numbers -- but we doubt they enjoyed it any more than we did. And the liner copy? Great; easy-reading, informative, relaxed.

They called Antonio Vivaldi "the red priest" -- not because of leftist sympathies but simply because this 17th Century ecclesiast had a pateful of coppery hair and a rugged, ruddy face that glowed like the setting sun whenever he sawed out a particularly athletic violin passage from one of his own compositions. Despite this colorful gift, the carrot-topped cleric went unappreciated for roughly 300 years, rising to real popularity only in our own microgroovy decade. His bustling, busy talent is at the top of its form in Vivaldi Concerti (London OL 50073) -- five concerti for oboe and orchestra, violin and orchestra and just plain orchestra, conducted by Louis de Froment; and The Seasons (Epic LC 3216), a year-round weather forecast predicted by the I Musici group, with Felix Ayo taking the fiddle riffs originally bowed by the scarlet sacerdote himself: two worth-owning platters packed with vital, vivacious Vivaldi.

Vocal discs this month were both lush and lusty, headed by Mel Tormé (Bethlehem BCP 52) singing solidly in front of the Marty Paich Dek-tette (that's ten assorted cats, man). Mel can do no wrong with his jazz-oriented pipes, and we especially went for his Lady is a Tramp (the one who "can't make Lombardo, digs Basie and Hamp"), Lulu's Back in Town, and a seldom heard, smoldering ballad, When the Sun Comes Out. But why call favorites? Every cutting on the disc is great ... A miss we liked a lot can be heard on Meet Marlene (Savoy 12058) but for some fuzzy reason her last name isn't mentioned on the jacket. We did, however, find out that she's "young, vibrant, and refreshingly unsophisticated," warbles in a clear, undiluted voice that's pleasant as poetry. Some fine oldies are included: Deep in a Dream, I Think of You With Every Breath I Take and We Could Make Such Beautiful Music . . . Not quite so quite is Dinah (EmArcy 36065), a cluster of Dinah Washington's slambam renderings backed by a small jazz group. Miss Washington, of the tremulous vibrato, is grand throughout, but particularly clever at ad libbing the slow-tempo All of Me: "I'd suggest, baby, that you come and get the rest of me." Dinah is simply delicious.

Few things are as disarming as the phenomenon of a complex, sophisticated artist doing (and doing well) a simple, direct, unilinear piece of work, with complete sincerity and without condescension. Oscar Wilde provided a couple of good examples when he wrote The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant; in our own time, composer Serge Prokofiev provided a few others. Of them, his score for the film Lieutenant Kijé (latest pressing: London LL 1294) is a favorite of ours. Melodic, rhythmic, pungent, this music demands little of the listener, gives much. The familiar Prokofiev trademarks are present -- funny, angular tunes that stagger crazily into foreign tonalities and return, by hook or by crook, just in the nick of time; bursts of dissonance so appalling they sound like turntable wobble, melting suddenly into saccharine harmony -- but the keynote of this composition is a straightforward näiveté we find engaging. The flip side of the biscuit sports orchestral hunks from Prokofiev's opera, The Love of Three Oranges. Both works are superbly recorded, conducted with relish (and a spot of mustard) by Sir Adrian Boult, who uses two orchestras: The London Phil for Oranges, and L'Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire de Paris (whew!) for Kijé.