October 29, 2012
Blue Note founder Alfred Lion loved pianists, and three in particular drew his attention during the decades at midcentury when the label was starting, growing and peaking. In the 1940s, there was Thelonious Monk, who Lion recorded extensively—three separate sessions, yielding 14 compositions, many of which have since become standards. In the 1950s, he became fascinated by Herbie Nichols, and brought the pianist into the studio five times, persevering and ultimately recording 32 pieces despite the fact that Nichols’ first record didn’t sell. And in the 1960s, Lion put the finger on Andrew Hill, recording him four times in 1963 (twice as a leader and once each behind tenor saxophonists Joe Henderson and Hank Mobley), releasing all that material on Hill’s albums Black Fire and Smoke Stack, Henderson’s Our Thing, and Mobley’s No Room for Squares—classics all.
Hill’s productivity continued in 1964 and 1965, producing the albums Judgment!, Point of Departure, Andrew!!! and Compulsion!!!!, but by 1966, he was starting to have a tough time getting his work released. Only one session, from March of that year, was released in his lifetime, and that was put out under saxophonist Sam Rivers’ name, on the 1976 double LP Involution. (It’s since been issued on CD as Change.) Nothing Hill recorded in 1967 was deemed suitable for release at the time, despite his entering the studio three times—once in February, once in May, and once more on Halloween. It’s that final session that’s our subject.
On October 31, 1967, Hill entered Rudy Van Gelder’s Engelwood Cliffs, NJ studio with a seven-piece band: Woody Shaw on trumpet, Robin Kenyatta on alto sax, Sam Rivers on soprano and tenor sax, Howard Johnson on baritone sax and tuba, Herbie Lewis on bass and Teddy Robinson on drums. (Kenyatta, Rivers and Robinson had also been present for the February session; this was Rivers’ fourth time working with Hill. Their creative relationship began with the recording of vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson’s Dialogue in 1964, for which the pianist composed four of the six pieces.)
The first track of the Halloween session, “Oriba,” features a melody based on interactions between the various horn players. At times they play in unison, but just as often Sam Rivers will offer a counterpoint to what the others are doing, as though he’s murmuring from the corner. Woody Shaw takes the first solo, and it’s fiercely beautiful, occasional saxophone interjections doing nothing to keep him from making his statement. Hill solos briefly, and then it’s all about the saxophones, as all three—Kenyatta, Rivers and Johnson—engage in a fierce debate for nearly three minutes, no one player seizing much ground from the others. But finally, peace is restored, and they come together to restate the melody in a more unified fashion than they did at the beginning of the piece.
The next composition recorded, “For Blue People Only,” comes flying out of the gate with all the horns romping through a polyphonic, gyrating melody line, save Johnson, whose baritone sax rumbles beneath. Robin Kenyatta takes the first solo, a squealing, grating explosion putting him firmly in the territory of tenor terrors of the time like Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, if not Peter Brötzmann. Woody Shaw, by contrast, offers a tightly disciplined though speed-crazed solo much more indebted to bebop than free jazz. The piece is barely three minutes into its nearly 10-minute running time, and it’s already an exercise in sharp contrasts and juxtapositions. Herbie Lewis’s bass work is manic, but sounds positively placid alongside Teddy Robinson’s frantic, relentless hi-hat and skittering cymbals. Hill’s own solo is a gentle, fluttering/dancing interlude that gradually builds in intensity, setting the stage for Sam Rivers, who journeys nearly as far out as Kenyatta, but with the sharp and introspective feeling that was his trademark throughout his life.
The third piece, “Enamorado,” is a ballad, led off by a short trio-plus-tuba intro before the horns step in. The melody is a sort of rubato swelling and receding, not unlike Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.” The first solo belongs to Woody Shaw, who again goes in a boppish direction, offering a mix of romance and fervid improvisation; Kenyatta is next, tempering the screaming fury of his work on “For Blue People Only” and allowing his notes to stretch out as Hill comps behind him and Robinson attacks the drums in an almost Roy Haynes-ish manner. During his own solo, Hill seems to be practically ignoring everything around him. Rivers is last to step forward, offering a few brief phrases on the soprano saxophone before the other horns surround him, and Hill takes everything out with a short, but quite beautiful solo passage.
“Mother’s Tale,” another nearly 10-minute exploration, begins as a bluesy strut, but the horns quickly recede, and Hill takes an extended and surprisingly Monkish solo. Kenyatta’s alto saxophone is the next voice heard, followed by Rivers, again on soprano. Both men are repeatedly challenged from the piano, Hill’s interjections inspiring greater fervor from them, if not changes of course. When Woody Shaw steps to the microphone, though, Hill allows him to spin long boppish lines almost as a duel with Teddy Robinson. Finally, in the piece’s last two minutes, bassist Lewis gets an emotive solo, and Howard Johnson’s tuba is prominently heard as all the horns return for a bluesy, hip-swaying exit.
The second version of “Oriba,” which concludes the Halloween session, is (initially at least) slower and more deliberative than the first. The horns sway back and forth like trees in an almost imperceptibly rising wind. From behind the kit, Robinson tries to agitate them, but they’re not having it. As on the first version, Woody Shaw solos first, and the drummer repeatedly attacks the snare, but the trumpeter’s lines are swift, decisive and undisturbed by externalities. Similarly, Hill does what he’s going to do, which is pave the way for a passage of wild interaction between Kenyatta and Rivers, the two saxophonists going at each other like dogs gnawing on the same thigh-bone. This eruption lasts until the final minute, at which point the horns, still less “together” than they’d been on the first take of this piece, nevertheless begin their swaying interaction again, drawing the melody—and the day’s work—to a close.
This session has never been released as its own album, likely because even if you use both versions of “Oriba” (which should be done, as the differences between them are substantial) you still only wind up with about 37 minutes of music. It is available on the three-CD Mosaic Select box that gathered material from a total of seven trips to the studio between 1965 and 1970, though, and is well worth seeking out.
Listen to it now on Spotify.
Photos courtesy of Mosaic Images
