"Those of us who began listening to jazz after 1960 (and we are now a majority) owe our knowledge of the likes of Bix Beiderbecke, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and Clifford Brown to the phonograph and its linear descendants. Even now, for many listeners outside New York City, records, tapes, and compact discs are the only means of keeping up with current developments. Yet since the thrill of jazz is existential as well as aesthetic, we are justifiably suspicious of a medium that deliver the music so long after the fact. Records put us at a physical as well as a temporal distance from a music that was meant to be experienced up close. But who can honestly say that he relishes going to clubs and concerts any more, now that poorly rehearsed pick-up bands are the rules and amplification is in the hands of technicians insensitive to the natural dynamics of acoustic instruments?
"It's unfortunate that few listeners will ever have the opportunity to attend a recording session, for despite the unavoidable breakdowns and false starts that vex even those dates later remembered as having been absolutely carefree, the studio control room might now be the only setting in which it is possible to forget that the music is reaching your ears through microphones. The studio is where musicians play for prosterity, but it can also be where they delight in one another's artistry, without temptation to pander applause.
"At least that's the impression I took away from the final session for Frank Morgan's album with McCoy Tyner's trio, featuring bassist Avery Sharpe and drummer Louis Hayes. (Granted, few sessions are as pure in intention or yield such memorable results.) I arrived at Clinton Studios just in time for the final number. Although the tempo was relatively up, the cadence sanctified, and the beat modified bossa nova (with Hayes deftly imitating hand-drum patterns on his snares), Morgan's melody statement was ballad-like in its rueful elegance and haunted resemblance to 'Here's That Rainy Day'. Following Tyner's leading choruses, Morgan took a solo rife with piercing declamations that ended on notes that sounded like checked sobs - a solo so nakedly personal that I assumed this must be his own composition, although it sounded vaguely familiar. It wasn't until the outro that I realised, with some chagrin, that this was 'Theme from Love Story' a maudlin, turn-that-dial hit for Andy Williams, Henry Mancini, and composer Francis Lai in 1971.
"This performance (like the earlier one on 'Double Image' [Contemporary C-14035], Morgan's album of duets with pianist George Cables) is a remarkable demonstration of the power of ardor to rehabilitate treacle - testimony to an impassioned improviser's ability to change your mind about a song, if only for the duration of one performance. Morgan doesn't share my estimate of 'Theme from Love Story' (which he first heard during a screening of the film at San Quentin in the 1970s) as a lowly vehicle. 'It's a beautiful song,' he says, 'and I always wanted to play it for my [paternal] grandmother, who raised me from the time I was six years old until I was sixteen, when she put me on a train for California to be with my father [guitarist Stanley Morgan, once a member of Harlan Leonard's Rockets, no with the Ink Spots] because she felt I was beginning to need a man's guidance. It's the song I played at her grave during a family reunion in Milwaukee last year.' But Morgan invests as much of himself in 'Emily' and 'How Deep Is the Ocean', the set's other near-ballads, and in Tyner's 'Changes' and 'Frank's Back' two brand-new pieces without possible sentimental attachment. He seems incapable of playing a note he doesn't feel deep in his being.
"Beyond noting that Morgan conveys the urgency of a man making up for lost time, it's unnecessary to bring up the three decades he squandered to heroin - that story has been told and retold in the liner notes to his previous Contemporary releases, articles in 'People', 'Newsweek', and 'The Atlantic'; and on stange in 'Prison-Made Tuxedos', a collaborative effort between Morgan and playwright George W.S. Trow. Morgan is understandably anxious to be perceived as more than a redeemed junkie, and this album should also help in winning him recognition as more than Charlie Parker's ghost. At this point, there is no better saxophonist in the bebop idiom (the proof is on 'All the Things You Are'), but the modes and scales that underpin Tyner's 'Search for Peace' edge Morgan out of his comfort zone, to startling effect. Morgan says her was 'intimidated' to find himself playing with the most influential pianist since Bud Powell, but he certainly doesn't sound intimidated. Confronted with a saxophonist he can't overwhelm for the first time since his Milestone Jazzstars tour with Sonny Rollins, Tyner reaps benefits from this association as well. His solo here, while as tempestuous as always, are admirably lean and pungent, with just a trace of Red Garland.
"'Trane introduced me to McCoy in the 1960s, when he was just a kid,' Morgan remembers, 'and recording with him was the fulfillment of a dream.' Maybe you had to be there, as I was lucky enough to be, to gauge the full impact of Morgan and Tyner's second collaboration (they also played together on a 1985 video), but unless they've joined forces in concert by the time you read this, be grateful that the tapes were rolling the last time they met. Be grateful even if they have. (Francis Davis, January 1988. From the liner notes.)
Performers: Frank Morgan (a-sx), McCoy Tyner (pi), Avery Sharpe (bs), Louis Hayes (dr)
1. Changes
2. How Deep Is The Ocean
3. Emily
4. Search For Peace
5. Frank's Back
6. All The Things You Are
7. Theme From Love Story
8. So What
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