Saturday 8th April 2023, 5:00 PM – Three of A Kind.
The brothers George and Ira Gershwin – respectively composer and copywriter – write the Musical of Tea I Sing in 1931. It will be the first musical to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama . Who cares? is one of the more than twenty songs in the theatre piece. Content: the most terrible things can happen, but that doesn’t matter, “So Long As I Care For You, And You Care For Me!” So such a song – with a cheerful up -tempo and a symmetrical form of 4 x 8 = 32 sizes. And jazz musicians can handle this Gershwin composition well.
Trumpet player Art Farmer was co-leader of the successful formation The Jazztet in 1960, alongside tenor Benny Golson. In the same year, he records an album for the Argo label under his own name, entitled Art, with Tommy Flanagan on piano. Bass Tommy Williams and drummer Albert Heath also played in The Jazztet. In 1995 Farmer Art called this his favourite album.
Alto Julian “Cannonball” Adderley usually has a second wind player next to him, but on Know What I mean? (1961) he’s the only one. Bill Evans is on the piano. Bass is Percy Heath, Connie Kay is the drummer, (it’s also the rhythm section of the Modern Jazz Quartet). The pace here is a bit more relaxed. Another difference with the previous version is the drummer – there it was Art who dominated, with his accents on the snare drum. Here the accents mainly come from pianist Evans, who is also a bit more forward in the sound image. Adderley and Evans know each other from their cooperation in the Miles Davis Quintet, from which the cult album Kind of Blue came . The pianist gets the space for a longer solo, and Adderley solos in his characteristic, immediately recognizable, “jubilant” style. The final bars of the piece are typical Bill Evans.
In 1955, trumpet player Kenny Dorham is one of The Jazz Messengers, the “Hard Bop Academy” of drummer Art Blakey. In November of that year, the formation play in the New York Cafe Bohemia. It is one of the legendary performances by the messengers, with tenor Hank Mobley and pianist Horace Silver. Blue Note Records is present with recording equipment. The result is the highly regarded At The Cafe Bohemia, Vol.1 and 2.
Six months later, Kenny Dorham is there again, now as a leader of a sextet with Bobby Timmons on piano and Sam Jones on bass, among others. This time the club apparently did not think it was necessary to have the piano tuned. Blue Note records: Round About Midnight at the Cafe Bohemia. It will be one of the High Quality Live Records in this productive decade for the record company. The programme opens with three versions of Strike Up The Band, and ends with three times (our) Love is here to stay.
Details in the guide.
Photo: The Gershwin Brothers, George left.
Three of A Kind – Bert Broere
