Lest We Forget:

Ray Bryant (1931-2011)
By Ken Waxman

Everything played by pianist Ray Bryant, who died at 79 in early June, was suffused with the blues. In fact his best-known composition, “Little Susie” is a blues, while the LP which first brought him to national attention was 1958’s Alone With The Blues (New Jazz). Nonetheless Bryant was a lot more than a contemporary Jimmy Yancy. He was as comfortable playing with modernists as swing masters and even had a charted R&B hit with “Madison Time” in 1960.

Born Raphael Homer Bryant in Philadelphia in 1931, he was initially taught piano by his mother, an ordained minister, which explains his affinity for gospel styling as well as blues. Following classical piano studies, he was playing jazz in his teens. He jammed with locals such as drummer Philly Joe Jones and tenor saxophonist Benny Golson, and was later part of the house band at Philly clubs, backing visiting stars, including such older musicians as trumpeter Charlie Shavers and saxophonist Coleman Hawkins (both of whom he would record with in early 1960s) plus younger ones like trumpeter Miles Davis and saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Davis and Rollins each brought Bryant to New York to record, and he’s featured on the tenor saxophonist’s Worktime (Prestige) and the trumpeter’s Miles Davis and Milt Jackson Quintet/Sextet (Prestige) LPs. During that time he played on other all-star sessions, such as Dizzy Gillespie’s Sonny Side Up (Verve) and Max Roach’s Jazz In 3/4 Time (EmArcy)

Similarly in demand as an accompanist for singers such as Betty Carter, Aretha Franklin and Carmen McRae, Bryant further proved his versatility, when Jo Jones, the legendary drummer from the original Count Basie band, hired the pianist and his bass-playing older brother Tommy (1930-1982), to fill out his trio. Bryant’s late 1950s stint with Jones not only taught him pacing, but a then unnamed theme he wrote became “Little Susie”, which established his solo career. Another Bryant line which has become a jazz standard is “Cubano Chant”, subsequently recorded by groups as different as Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Cal Tajder’s Afro-Cuban combo. “Madison Time”, was composed after Columbia record producer John Hammond asked the pianist for a tune based on the Madison, a popular Baltimore dance. The 1988 film Hairspray included his version of the song. Oddly enough, Bryant’s only other chart success was an instrumental version of “Ode to Billie Joe” in 1967.

Despite these pop successes, Bryant will best be remembered as a rooted jazzman and versatile pianist who could play with everyone from traditionalists to modernists without altering his individual style. Besides Alone With The Blues, his artistry is captured in other albums such 1966`s Slow Freight (Cadet) plus 1972`s Alone At Montreux (Atlantic) and 1978`s All Blues (Pablo).

--For New York City Jazz Record August 2011

August 6, 2011

Jeremy Yudkin

Miles Davis, Miles Smiles, and the Invention of Post-Bop
Indiana University Press

Justly celebrated for his decades of musical innovations that encompassed the 1950s Birth of the Cool sessions, 1960’s modal jazz with Kind of Blue and the electric fusion of 1970’s Bitches Brew, additional praise for trumpeter Miles Davis’ contributions would seem to edge from appreciation into hagiography.

Jeremy Yukin, a professor of music at Boston University, has neatly sidestepped this trap by making a case to add to the cannon music created by Davis’ quintet of 1965-1968 – tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams – especially on what he sees as the band’s seminal LP: Miles Smiles.

Devoting more than half his book to an infinitesimally detailed analysis of the quintet’s work, which is mostly a track-by-track technical dissection of the LP’s six tunes, Yukin succeeds in his narrow goal. However his insistence on preceding the musicological analysis with a potted rehash of Davis’ earlier achievements – in the main from secondary sources – makes what could have been an interesting and well-reasoned monograph into a book that, despite its brevity, feels padded.

Valuably measuring most of the compositions on Miles Smiles against previously recorded versions, Yukin demonstrates in all cases, how conventional bop was transformed by Davis’ editing and re-imagining skills into post-bop. As he notes about Shorter’s tune “Footprints”: “Davis has reworked an already interesting composition into something more intense, freer and more sophisticated”. This is achieved by using a more urgent tempo and continuation of the bass vamp, plus metric shifts, unusual harmonies, disjunctive phrases and a profound use of silences.

Yukin makes a similar case for the other tracks on Miles Smiles and by extension that band’s entire tenure. Those interested will likely be impressed by his second-by-second play-book-like track run-down and his song transcriptions – 23 in all. Sometimes though, it appears as if analysis has turned to obsession, as when notation of Hancock’s “Circle” solo alone takes 4½ pages or when a schematic diagram breaks down the ABCBA structure of “Dolores” by exact solo and accompanying instruments.

Furthermore, when not using notated examples or describing the sounds in precise technical terms, Yukin almost invariably falls back upon standard clichés. Musicians are described as playing “beautifully” or “brilliantly”, with music “fiery” or a “wash of colors” leading to tracks “emblematic of the magical interplay among these five gifted musicians”.

While he alludes to truncated tracks plus studio fades, and notes when dealing with Kind of Blue that programming of the tunes was “clearly an artistic decision rather than a purely practical one”, because he’s a traditional music professor, Yukin unfortunately underplays the contributions of the one person he appears to have interviewed first-hand: Teo Macero, Davis’ producer for almost three decades. Macero, who was also a saxophonist and a Julliard-trained composer who produced about 3,000 albums, states that the trumpeter left all editing decisions to him.

Considering that many of the subsequent Davis-Macero session were edited and pieced together from raw tapes recorded by the trumpeter’s various bands, Yukin missed an opportunity to discuss the germination of this influential organizational method. After all, its birth coincided with Miles Smiles and other Davis quintet and sextet LPs.

-- Ken Waxman

-- In MusicWorks Issue #102

November 20, 2008