Return to Dr.Progresso Reviews

GEORGE RUSSELL: THE EARLY YEARS

THE RCA VICTOR JAZZ WORKSHOP - THE ARRANGERS (Bluebird 6471-2-RB) [1956]

THE GEORGE RUSSELL SMALLTET - JAZZ WORKSHOP (Bluebird 6467-2-RB) [1956]

NEW YORK, N.Y. (Decca MCAD-31371/Impulse IMPD-278) [1959]

JAZZ IN THE SPACE AGE (Decca/ChessMates GRD-826) [1960]

George Russell is one of the key players in jazz's coming of age in the fifties. Although most of the glory has gone to his compatriot, Gil Evans (whose association with Miles Davis had much to do with that), Evans was at heart more an arranger of others' music (his own compositions are few and far between; he is best remembered for his startlingly fresh arrangements of others' compositions), while Russell's true strength was in his own compositions. Russell's music sounded like no one else's.

RCA A&R man Jack Lewis encouraged McKusick to make an album which was released as HAL McKUSICK - JAZZ WORKSHOP. Its eleven tracks were composed by George Russell, Jimmy Giuffre, Gil Evans, Johnny Mandel, Manny Albam and Al Cohn. By far the most important of these composers were the first three. But only five tracks -- those by Russell and Evans -- made it onto the compilation CD released by Bluebird (a revival of a very old RCA subsidiary label) as THE RCA VICTOR JAZZ WORKSHOP - THE ARRANGERS in 1988. (The remaining 12 tracks on the CD are from a never-released JAZZ WORKSHOP album by John Carisi -- another contributor to THE BIRTH OF THE COOL -- also recorded in 1956, and from the mid-sixties albums of trombonist Rod Levitt. The Carisi tracks are surprisingly mainstream -- perhaps the reason they were never previously released -- and quite unlike the more impressive side he contributed to Gil Evans' Impulse album, INTO THE HOT. That album was actually, as originally released, the work of Carisi, who composed and arranged all of its first side, and of Cecil Taylor, who composed and arranged side two, Evans' role being that of producer and front man. The CD of INTO THE HOT alternates the Carisi and Taylor tracks, unfortunately. The Rod Levitt Orchestra tracks come from a decade later, and are culled from two different albums. They have some appeal, but as a whole this compilation CD is weak and ill-conceived.)

The CD opens with Gil Evans' two contributions (both his own compositions) and those are followed by George Russell's "Miss Clara," "The Day John Brown Was Hanged," and "Lydian Lullaby." The name of the latter piece is based on Russell's unique theory of composition, which he called his Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization. This Concept involved modal tone-rows and what amounted to a fresh new musical vocabulary, uniquely well suited to jazz of a challenging nature. McKusick is quoted as saying, "Then there was a guy that nobody would touch for some crazy reason, and that was George Russell. I was really excited by his concepts and thought the world ought to hear what he was up to." (Another who shared that belief was Teddy Charles, who would tap Russell for contributions to his TENTET album, reviewed elsewhere here.)

All of Russell's contributions are strong, but "John Brown" was the most ambitious, a seven-minute suite in three sections. It uses folk themes but, to quote John Wilson's original liner notes, "It is a product of Russell's conviction that a serious jazz work of contrasting emotional levels, ranging from the deeply spiritual to the satirical, could be successfully composed for and performed by a four-piece group with no loss of emotional impact." That four piece group was made up of McKusick on alto sax, Barry Galbraith on guitar, Milt Hinton on bass, and Osie Johnson on drums, with George Russell sitting in also on drums. The basic quartet performed "Lydian Lullaby," while trumpet, trombone, tuba and baritone sax were added for "Miss Clara." The effect was to create an angular, semi-contrapuntal chamber jazz.

In 1959 Decca president Milt Gabler, long involved in jazz, signed Russell to his label. Decca subsequently released four albums by Russell, only the first two of which have made it to CD. The four albums were NEW YORK, N.Y., JAZZ IN THE SPACE AGE, GEORGE RUSSELL SEXTET AT THE FIVE SPOT and GEORGE RUSSELL SEXTET IN K.C. The latter two albums, recorded in the early sixties, apparently overlap the series of albums Russell recorded in the same period (1960-62) for Riverside, using a group which performed regularly in New York's clubs. The Riverside albums are available on CD, and like the Decca Sextet albums completely lack the close-focused chamber-jazz qualities of Russell's earlier work, coming much closer to straight-ahead, blowing jazz.

The first sign of Russell's assimilation into the jazz mainstream was NEW YORK, N.Y., released in 1959. This was an album designed to appeal to most jazz listeners, totally lacking the esotericism of Russell's earlier work. A "concept album" of sorts, and a celebration of the Big Apple (where jazz coalesced in the forties), the album features big band arrangements and contributions by people like John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Art Farmer, Benny Golson, Phil Woods, Max Roach and others -- although earlier Russell stalwarts McKusick, Galbraith and Hinton are also present. What both ties the album together and trivializes it is "narration by Jon Hendricks." Hendricks had gained fame in the early fifties for following King Pleasure in setting lyrics to jazz solos and singing them. In the mid-fifties he joined Dave Lambert and Annie Ross, who had also tried this route independently, as Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, whose multitracked vocalization of Count Basie's music had made them a hit act with close to a dozen subsequent albums (none of which measured up to the first, unfortunately). By 1959 Hendricks was starting to go solo again, but what had at first been clever and unique was starting to turn into a novelty lounge act. Hendricks does not sing on Russell's album -- he "raps." Yes, decades before hip-hop, Hendricks was spinning out rhymed "narration" which simultaneously explicitly mocks jazz-&-poetry (a fad in the fifties) and draws upon it (or, more specifically, the narration of Charles Mingus's "Scenes in the City") for inspiration. Unfortunately, the spoken word does not lend itself to repeated listenings the way music does, and Hendricks grows tedious and irritating all too soon for this listener -- and his presence throughout the album, introducing many of the individual tracks, makes this an album which I've never been too fond of.

Yet, NEW YORK, N.Y. (named after "the city that's so nice they named it twice") has apparently the virtue of greater accessibility for many listeners and has been issued domestically on CD twice in this decade. The first release, on Decca/MCA, was in 1990, and makes use of the original LP cover and notes. In 1998, GRP -- who now own both Decca and Impulse -- reissued the album on the Impulse label with striking new packaging and additional notes from Russell himself and reissue producer Stewart Levine. Russell's memories -- especially of Coltrane's work on the album -- are a valuable addition. But it remains an album I don't much warm to.

However JAZZ IN THE SPACE AGE -- despite its title and cheesy packaging (taken straight from the original LP) -- is a masterpiece, and a triumph for not only George Russell but its two principal players, pianists Bill Evans and Paul Bley. Released in 1960, this was the Lydian Concept's last hurrah -- after which Russell appeared to give up on serious composition and turn to loose blowing performances more in step with contemporary jazz. (Not that he hasn't released a great many more albums in consequence, all of which have their own virtues.) Significantly, Russell became a pianist in those groups, but his approach to the piano was sort of like a wimpy version of Cecil Taylor, noodling around the edges and in the background of the music, and supplying little harmonic or rhythmic support for the band or soloists and rarely soloing himself.

Russell's strength was always conceptual and compositional, and this comes to full fruition with JAZZ IN THE SPACE AGE. Although a large orchestra (in jazz terms) is used in places on the album, the center stage is reserved for two pianos on which Bill Evans and Paul Bley play in simultaneous improvisations, in multiple (and evolving) unusual time signatures, and unusual (unique to the Lydian Concept) modalities. The effect is thrilling. "Chromatic Universe" -- the main vehicle for these two-piano tour de forces -- is split into three parts, opening and closing the album and occupying the final track of side one of the LP. Three other compositions, "Dimensions," "The Lydiot," and "Waltz From Outer Space," are interposed, but the overall effect is of one album-length work, a unified suite, which runs just over 42 minutes. Because much of the two-piano work is "freely" improvised, the strength of the finished work rests largely on Evans and Bley. Evans was by then a tested and known talent, whose solo on Russell's "All About Rosie," on the Columbia MODERN JAZZ CONCERT album (reviewed elsewhere as part of THE BIRTH OF THE THIRD STREAM) had, along with his own Riverside albums, solidly established him as a jazz artist. Bley, who made his debut in the early fifties on Charles Mingus's Debut label, and was then less well known, proved himself Evans' equal. Their poly- (or pan-) tonal improvisations are at once intellectually challenging and viscerally satisfying -- a rare feat indeed. And the unusual time signatures (5/2 was used a lot) prefigured those of the Don Ellis Big Band in the late sixties (Ellis played trumpet with Russell's sextet in 1961).

JAZZ IN THE SPACE AGE was first issued on CD in Japan in 1994 by MCA Victor (that's not a typo) in a format increasingly popular there, the "mini-LP." This is a miniaturized replica of the original LP, shrunk to CD size, with the back cover liner notes in microscopic type, and the original Decca label reproduced on the disc itself. The same "20 bit" master was used by GRP for the domestic release on, for some reason, the ChessMates label (rather than Impulse), in 1998. This comes in a standard jewel box and has the original liner notes reset in readable type for the booklet (there is no new annotation, however). (Oddly enough, there is no copyright information anywhere on the CD or its package, no actual indication of the dates of its original release or its current release on CD.)

Both Decca albums are now easily available on CD, but the Bluebird CDs may not be, although I believe they are still in the catalog, since they were released more than ten years ago. THE ARRANGERS is germane here only for its third, fourth and fifth tracks, and is an uneven album, overall. But the SMALLTET album is highly recommended, as is JAZZ IN THE SPACE AGE.

Return to Dr.Progresso                    Back to Top