Variable standards

 

Anthony Braxton & the Fred Simmons Trio
9 Standards (Quartet) 1993 (Leo, 1996)

So, having laid out all my current plans for posts, it need come as no surprise to anybody that the very next thing I put up here is not on that list at all... I mean, why would it be? Still, I did say that things will always just come along and demand - or in this case politely request - to be covered at once. Here, we're dealing with a fairly scarce release (I shan't say rare) which I hadn't even really looked at properly until I came to (re-)examine the Parker Project last April; it being a standards date, and featuring musicians who weren't on my radar at all, I had doubtless skated over it many times in the discography before I finally stopped and paid a bit of attention - and that was really only because of the timing of it, in terms of its recording date* rather than its eventual release.

What I discovered fourteen months ago, then, was that Fred Simmons - a journeyman jazz pianist with a relatively slight CV - taught at Wesleyan during the '80s and '90s**; pretty obviously, this will have been where he and B. encountered each other. (Where I was probably wrong was in assuming that this putative professional connection "certainly occasioned the chance for this recording" - but we'll get to that.) I had never heard the album, had never come across anybody recommending it or even mentioning it, and it never turned up on Leo's seasonal sale lists back in the day - as indeed it wouldn't have done, since it was one of a few of their releases to have sold out its print run. I mentally bookmarked it - but without any serious intent, and more or less forgot about it again, until earlier this year when it turned up on the "items for sale" list of a new Discogs seller; he, however, wanted a rather unrealistic price for it, perhaps overestimating the extent to which its out-of-print status translates to rarity and desirability among B's fans and collectors. I noted it with interest - it's not an album which comes up for sale very often at all - but there was no way I was going to buy it at that price***.

Then a couple of copies turned up randomly on eBay - one of which was selling from the UK, for less than half the price of that other one - and suddenly I found that I "had to have it". Maybe it was just the fact that another copy had suddenly made itself available, and certainly I had no reason to expect this to be an unheralded gem in B's huge discography, but it quickly became clear that I wasn't going to give myself any peace until I had found out, one way or the other. I bought it, it arrived quickly and - here we are.

***

Restructures listed the venue as being Wesleyan, on 23rd February 1993. That information, in turn, will simply have come from the CD release, as it emerges: the CD's rear cover states that the concert was recorded live at Wesleyan University (albeit the date is given here as February 25th, not 23rd), and we know that Jason G. did not have the time or resources to fact-check every single detail: if someone contacted him to say that something was wrong, he printed a correction as soon as he'd verified it, but otherwise a session's details would go up (nearly) as they were given on the official release, as far as possible. But Art Lange's liner notes make much of the idea of this being a club date, and even a cursory listen reveals that this is hugely likely to be accurate. The recording quality is serviceable but decidedly amateurish, the atmosphere definitely clubbish - on the quieter numbers we can hear patrons coughing, even talking over the music on the opener (a sure sign that some audience members were there to eat, drink, socialise and/or be seen, not to listen). Even the piano itself has that depressingly-familiar "club sound": not tuned often enough, with at least half an octave in the upper register sounding between an eighth-tone and a quarter-tone sharp. I have no idea whence the suggestion came that this was recorded at Wesleyan, but it will have seemed a probable enough venue - being the place of employment of both B. and Simmons at that time - that nobody would have seen fit to question it... unless they actually listened to the recording (!).

Almost certainly a club date indeed, then. Simmons' aforementioned bio says that during this period he could be found gigging in Pennsylvania at the weekends - not that this helps to clarify anything, since a glance at the calendar for February 1993 shows that both the 23rd and 25th were weekdays - and it seems more than likely that B. sat in with Simmons' working trio, somewhere or other in the US Northeast, and that both the venue and date are incorrect. Lange himself cites no source for his assertion that this is a club date, and it's quite clear from his wording that he was not present at the concert; very probably he was simply going by his own ears and extensive experience. 

Now, as to the title of the album... a little poetic licence is employed here, because with the best will in the world, Simmons' tune "In Motion" which kicks off proceedings has probably never been played by anybody else, anywhere, ever -  nor is there any good reason why it would be. After a quite promising opening - a floating, mysterious cycling of unresolved chords - the piece coalesces into something quite different: a slowish, completely bog-standard twelve-bar blues, with absolutely nothing to distinguish it. OK, so we know that the term "standards", as it applies to jazz repertoire, is extended by common use to take in any composition by another jazz musician, whether that be Benny Golson's "Killer Joe", Coltrane's "Naima", Ornette's "Lonely Woman"... or something decidedly more obscure such as, for example, "In Motion" by Fred Simmons. But it's an eyebrow-raising way to open the set, and although in theory it would be a good way for the trio to get warmed up - they must surely have been familiar with the piece, even if nobody else was - in practice it comes across as very odd indeed, as the band sounds most uncomfortable playing it. Drummer Leroy Williams, in particular, sounds borderline amateurish on this opening number: leaden, heavy-handed, utterly devoid of swing or any sense of rhythm, or subtlety; in fact he bangs away at his kit in a manner which made me think of nothing so much as a local rock drummer, pressed into service on an emergency basis, with no prior familiarity at all (but reassured beforehand that the band would keep things simple for him). I really found this opening number quite painful to sit through, especially the first time, at least for the first six minutes - during which B. (wisely) lays out completely. At just after 5:55, he makes his first entries in a solo, in which he does his best to sing the blues - and, mercifully, he is very largely successful in this, so that from this point on it starts to become clearer why anyone thought this meeting was worth preserving for posterity.

Don't get me wrong, the maestro sounds perfectly himself here, but he does also endeavour to play inside to a far greater extent than he normally would, and although that might sound dull - especially to the likes of me - it isn't, in the telling. He can play the blues, though (naturally) he plays them his way. Obviously enough, he takes a long solo - either the audience have shut up by this point# or he is playing intensely enough to drown them out - and this brings suitably enthusiastic applause; Simmons has already done his bit##, so all that remains is for the bass and drums to get some - and we can safely gloss over that, and move on. Luckily, at this point, things finally do catch fire; although in principle "Cherokee" represents a far greater musical challenge, it transpires that the band sounds way more confident negotiating this sort of high-octane, high-tempo stuff than they did on the soporific opener. It needn't come as a surprise to anybody that B. blows his head off on this - high-speed music is barely even a challenge to him, after all - but Simmons, following on from that, also manages to play for minutes on end here without flagging, or running out of ideas: he never sounds rushed by the frantic pace, and although the end of each chorus had this listener thinking that it must surely be the last, the pianist succeeds in matching B. for stamina and invention to a surprising extent. Bassist Paul Brown and even drummer Williams sound far more engaged from this point on, too, as if possibly even the trio felt a bit guilty about opening with one of the pianist's "originals" (for want of a better word) and are now free to cut loose on more traditional, familiar material.

"Cherokee" is one of three fast numbers on here, and I will cut to the chase now by admitting that they are the only ones to which I have been able to pay much attention; the other two - Coltrane's "Mr P.C." and "Impressions" - bookend the second disc, and besides the opener, this leaves five hoary old chestnuts which, I'm sorry, just lull me to sleep every time. I can't help it, OK? Mainstream, straight-ahead jazz is not my bag... I really have strictly limited interest in this stuff and would generally never seek it out###. I can tell you that B. plays flute on two numbers, one of which is "On Green Dolphin Street", a standard which I actually rather like - but for me that is all about Dolphy's version... otherwise, I have played the album three times now and most of this material is just wallpaper to me, even with the maestro playing on it. I am not even going to apologise for that, because this stuff is not what I am about - and there are plenty of places readers can go, if straight jazz criticism is what they are looking for! The nine pieces across the two discs total just under two hours of music, but may not have been all that was played: "All the Things You Are" fades out, at the end of disc one, and whilst it's done very subtly, there is an edit following the end of "Mr P.C." and its attendant applause: either an announcement of some sort was cut out, or we are actually missing another number or two.

I do have to admit that the band sounds great on the faster numbers, at least - I don't feel at all qualified to pass judgement on most of the others, since they just slide past my ears without my registering anything much - and if you are looking for precisely this sort of affair, i.e. B. genuinely sitting in with a straight-ahead jazz trio playing modern rep^, this probably is a rather good example of it. Whether it represents what the critics made it out to be is another matter again: Lange makes it sound as if the existence of this album somehow implies a whole extra thread to B's career that we didn't know about, in which he played the "travelling gunslinger" role, sitting in with local bands all over the place (... but we know he didn't); Chris Kelsey, himself a saxophonist, wrote for Allmusic that B. "plays this entire live set as if he's got something to prove, and the result is very possibly the most inspired mainstream playing he's ever put on record". In reality, Lange is just doing what one has to^^ in this situation, finding something nice to say (and probably counting the words at the end of every paragraph); actually, he does admirably, managing to avoid platitudes and cliches almost entirely, but he is still ultimately overselling this. Kelsey, meanwhile, is guilty of the same sin plenty of other critics have committed before and since^^^: that of making out that there is something unusual in the intensity of B's playing on this date - as if he didn't bring exactly the same degree of intensity and focus to bear, every damn time he puts the horn to his mouth. 

So there we are: I did briefly get carried away with the idea of this, but I'm over it now. It will (of course) remain in the collection, but it might be quite some time before it gets another outing... as I say, it is doubtless a good example of its type, it's just not what I myself am looking for. Can I get back to GTM now, please..?

* 1993 was a fairly action-packed year for B., albeit with a conspicuous gap (at least in terms of recording sessions, or live dates which saw official release) between July and October; since I had been looking closely at the activity which had immediately preceded the Parker Project - and even more closely at the beginnings of Joe Fonda's tenure - I suddenly could not ignore this "other standards date"...

** Well, he did if his Discogs bio is to be believed. Given the nature of this very post here, perhaps I had better not take any of this stuff quite for granted...

*** It's still for sale, at £25 plus postage; I don't anticipate its being bought any time soon, but the same seller wants £20 for his copy of Quartet (Dortmund) 1976 - a reissue which is probably rather more actively sought after, to be fair - and will very probably hold out for the listed price (as he is of course perfectly entitled to do)...

# During the opening minutes, when only the core trio is playing, a female voice can be heard so clearly at times that one can almost hear what she is saying: really, there's no way this could have been recorded at the university.

## He does his best here to make this sound Monkish, I suppose - and in fairness, it must be admitted that most if not all of Monk's own blues compositions were, themselves, extremely basic in a formal sense. (His many harder pieces are invariably in 32-bar "song form".) But just because a genius like Monk could get away with that, doesn't mean anyone else can simply come along and copy him... Monk had ways of finding and unlocking hidden dimensions in simple materials; most musicians... well, don't. It's just the way it is.

### I do of course still have some stuff like this in my collection; I even listen to it, from time to time. But those are all top-flight dates featuring legendary players: I have no stomach at all for hearing lesser musicians grapple with this stuff, and that's that.

^ As I've said before, In the Tradition doesn't really count, because B. was filling in for Dexter Gordon (and the other guys were not into it). However, if you're looking for an example of B. sitting in with a straight-ahead trio, I still reckon there is a better one - not least because of the material - but again it's a studio date, and that's a different animal from what we're considering here.

^^ I can't technically say I'm talking from experience, because nobody has ever asked me to write liner notes (thankfully... can you imagine how long I would take?!) - but in my long-ago days as a published reviewer, I did have to carve out acceptable paragraphs on recordings by people I had no wish to offend, without having any real inspiration to work with... so I do pretty much know what this feels like. (I do not miss it.)

^^^ I've said repeatedly - in the past - that critics love this kind of shit: "so-and-so plays better than he has in years"... and it never seems to occur to them how inherently offensive and demeaning it is to come out with this garbage. If this new album / book / picture etc is the best thing in ages, that means that all the other recent stuff was mediocre, doesn't it? I'm pretty sure most artists detest this stuff and have real difficulty accepting it as a "compliment" at all - I know for a fact that the maestro felt that way about it.