Memory for Art and Sonny
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
William Wordsworth
A few years ago I was excited because we bought advanced tickets for the New York Jazz Festival. The concert was being billed as the "Alto Summit", which was to feature Art Pepper and Phil Woods with separate groups and, no doubt, playing together. At that point in time Art was solidly back into music and doing a lot of work in the New York area. Particularly of note was the series of albums recorded live at the Village Vanguard with the incredible pianist, George Cables. Well, the concert was never to be, as Art Pepper, whose health was all too fragile passed away about a month or so before the scheduled event. This was a hard blow to me since I hadn't seen Pepper perform live in over thirty years from when he played with Stan Kenton's band. Having always admired and respected his original approach to the Alto and being a fan of his through his troubled life, it was sad not to have been able to witness the renaissance of this truly innovative player. Art Pepper was one of the handful of alto players that sought new passages and never imitated the structures that were built up by Charlie Parker. Pepper was much more than a "Cool West Coaster". This was evidenced in the years after his release from prison for his drug addiction.
"Intense and competitive, Art Pepper was not going to be cast simply as a cool player. His 1960 recording, Gettin' Together, was made with the Miles Davis rhythm section, a powerfully swinging trio. His goal was to become the world's greatest alto saxophonist. (In an interview he stated his disappointment when a friend described him only as one of the greatest alto saxophonists.) His heroin addiction interfered. Pepper spent much of the sixties and early seventies either in prison, ill or in the San Francisco rehabilitation center Synanon. Unexpectedly, he returned to prominence in 1977. On methadone, he made a new series of recordings with an expanded set of stylistic devices. These included some squeals and squeaks he learned from John Coltrane. Art Pepper and Lee Konitz defined themselves stylistically by veering off from the Parker mold. Other alto players couldn't find a way to do that: Parker is responsible for making tenor saxophonists out of a lot of would-be altos. Even the skillful Sonny Stitt took up tenor as a way of establishing his own voice. Pepper and Konitz also looked backwards beyond the figure of Charlie Parker for models--Pepper to Benny Carter and Lester Young, Konitz to Young and, of course, to Lennie Tristano".
As a last minute substitution for the late Art Pepper, George Wein was able to get Sonny Stitt to take his place beside Phil Woods. The sad part of that was to see Sonny, unable to stand up and take some of those eloquent and fluid runs he was always associated with because he was in such pain from the cancer that was eating away at his life. Still, reminiscent of Billie Holiday in the final periods of her life, the essence of the man was still in place and his playing proved marvelous even if not technically up to the standards we had become used tohearing.
Too many times in Stitt's career he was always unfairly touted as Charlie Parker's chief follower. This was one of the reasons why Sonny had switched to Tenor, where his voice was more in the Lester Young vein than Parkers. Not many people realize that Sonny Stitt had more than a casual influence on the legendary John Coltrane: "He sounded like something between Dexter and Wardell, an outgrowth of both of them. All the time, I thought I had been looking for something and then I heard Sonny and said, 'Damn! There it is! That's it!."
When Sonny had paired up with Gene Ammons, it was a communion of styles that was able to dig down deep and cook up some of the most swinging two tenor duets ever. Gene, with that big Texas tenor style and Sonny, with a finished and fluid Urban demeanor, were a great contrast to witness and their recordings have become memorable reflections of of the greatest two tenor duels in all of jazz.
Aside from being one of the more facile swingers we can never lose sight of the significance of Sonny's tenderness on ballads. His lucidity and control linked with his restraint on wailing through the scales in such intimate moments, mark the fact that his sensitivity to the value of a beautiful lyrical line was never faltered. Sonny exhibited this amply with an earlier recording done together with Miles Davis where Sonny's solo on "Stellar by Starlight" literally sings the beautiful punctuations on this wonderfully complex composition.
It's going to be hard to live in a world without the interpretive beauty of two stellar alto saxophonists that have contributed so much to the advancement and enjoyment of this music we call jazz. Jackie McLean and Phil Woods are still with us and have reached that point in their lives where they carry the mantle of the Master Musician . We should lean unto their every contribution and be ever so grateful to all of the masters that somehow always seem to be close at hand when we feel that we lost it all.
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Note: Italicized test taken from the CD rom: "Jazz, A Multimedia History."
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