“‘This Is New’ happens to be more than just one of the song titles here, more even than a visually evocative phrase that suggested a photographic cover idea too good to be passed by. It also happens to be a quite apt description of what is taking place musically in this album:
“This is current jazz played by musicians who are young, but have considerable playing experience. All of them also have much the same sets of jazz roots and attitudes. They are men to whom the jazz revolution preached by Bird and Dizzy and Monk at the start of the 1940s is the important starting point. But in referring to the music that developed primarily out of the early-‘40s experimentation, it must be noted that roughly a decade and a half has gone by since Minton’s. And that is actually more calendar time, for example, than elapsed between the issuance of King Oliver’s earliest records and Benny Goodman’s!
“The fact is that at least a full jazz generation has grown up in that time, and that jazz has changed considerably. But, perhaps because it takes a good deal of time to get perspective on such things, or perhaps because there has been no violent upheaval of -form- (certainly nothing comparable to the differences between Swing or Dixieland and Bop), there is a strong tendency to lump everything recent together as ‘modern’. Well, not quite everything: there is a wide variety of experimentation, and there is the music of the West Coast jazzmen, and most of this gets called ‘cool’, as distinguished from the sort of music you hear in this album, which is usually tagged as ‘post-bop’ or ‘hard bop. Sometimes of course the lines get blurred, as will happen with any over-simplification: Miles Davis’ man-walking-on-eggshells trumpet tone is often singled out as the starting point of cool jazz, yet by background and continuing jazz context he belongs to the boppers, and his influence is surely importantly felt in the work of younger horn men like Donald Byrd.
“But the major point to be made is that by now the music of the disciples of bop has emerged as an entity, as a self-contained style. Giving it names like ‘post-bop’ may obscure this point, making it seem as if this is more-of-the-same, but it’s not all like that. This is jazz with basic distinctive qualities of its own, and these qualities seem to be very effectively and excitingly in evidence here.
“Above all, this is ‘funky’ jazz, taking that word in its current meaning of earthy, almost gutbucket, with a decided overall feeling of the blues. It is a far less frenetic and self-conscious music than much of early bop (which often failed to conceal its dogged determination to be ‘different’). Some critics complain that there is excessive attention to top-speed tempos, but I find a high and effective proportion of swinging middle-tempo material. Wholehearted, unembarrassed ballads are rather rare; but there are occasions, as with ‘You’re My Thrill’ here, when everything jells beautifully and soulfully. It is a rhythmically sound jazz (whereas early bop, busily working out new concepts of the functions of rhythm instruments, was not always so), and one reason for this may well be the emergence of a large crop of outstanding bassists, of whom Wilbur Ware is one of the most impressive. This is a music aware of newer harmonic ideas without being pretentious about it, and capable of re-exploring the basic and ‘old-fashioned’ jazz art of ensemble playing: listen particularly to the big sound of Byrd and Hank Mobley together on ‘This Is New’; and also on ‘It’s Your or No One’, which they had recorded, but quite differently, when both were member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. (The Blakey group, incidentally, has been something of a post-bop training school: its frequently shifting personnel has also included Drew and Ware.)
“Kenny Drew is rapidly maturing into one of the significant younger pianists. Born in New York City in 1928, he has worked with a wide variety of major jazz performers [...]. Although his approach indicates the influence of Bud Powell and, to an extent, Thelonious Monk, he is almost unique among modernists in also appreciating and making use of the heritage of such pre-moderns as Teddy Wilson and Fats Waller. Donald Byrd, still in his very early twenties, is quite clearly the coming young man on trumpet; Hank Mobley is among the most highly regarded of current tenor men. Wilbur Ware, since coming to New York from Chicago about a year ago, has quickly established himself as among the more formidable bass players, both in solo work and as a rhythm man. G.T. Hogan, who has worked with Illinois Jacquet and Stan Getz, considers this his jazz record debut, and it is a promising one.” (Orrin Keepnews. From the liner notes.)
Performers: Kenny Drew (pi), Donald Byrd (tp), Wilbur Ware (bs), G.T. Hogan (dr)
A1. This Is New
A2. Carol
A3. It's You Or No One
B1. You're My Thrill
B2. Little T
B3. Paul's Pal
B4. Why Do I Love You
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