As a group, the three albums and sixteen selections comprising All Night Session! ["Blues of a Sort" wasn't at first issued as part of the original LPs] represent a most unusual achievement in the annals of jazz recording. The almost two hours of music were recorded at a single, continuous session, in the order in which you hear the numbers, and without editing of any kind. This seems like an impossible feat. Playing steadily for several hours is a taxing physical experience at best, but improvising continually for that length of time is an exhausting one, mentally and emotionally. Yet the later selections in All Night Session! reveal no flagging of vitality, spontaneity, or inventiveness. "The feeling wasn't like recording", Hampton Hawes has said in commenting on the session. "We felt like we went somewhere to play for our own pleasure. After we got started, I didn't even think I was making records. In fact, we didn't even listen to playbacks. We didn't tighten up as musicians often do in recording studios — we just played because we love to play". Considering the buoyant beat, skillful pacing, variety of material, spontaneous jazz feeling and the richness of invention, All Night Session! is a testimonial of the highest order to the musicianship of jazzman Hawes and his associates.
As a pianist, Hawes possesses a remarkably robust and vigorous style. The sixteen selections in All Night Session! teem with a pulsating energy and are marked by a seemingly inexhaustible stream of ideas. Although he can create chord patterns of great beauty as in I’ll Remember April and April in Paris, and he can command a singing, lyrical tone, he is more attracted at this stage of his career to expressions of a dynamic character. His touch is firm and authoritative and he possesses a split second sense of timing. His technical mastery is so great that there is not a single blurred run, tangled triplet or ragged arpeggio, no matter how fast the tempo.
Included among the sixteen selections are four original compositions by Hawes. They are of interest for two reasons. In the first instance, it is to be noted that they were composed at the record date itself and not written down beforehand. This gives them a spontaneous, ebullient quality, which is in a sense, their strongest characteristic. I was interested to learn that virtually all of Hawes' originals have been composed in this way. Instead of being written down, they are transcribed from his live performance, emphasizing the fact that his creative activity is the result of his role of an improviser. The second fact to be noted is that all four selections are blues — fast, vigorous blues, but blues nonetheless. Like Charlie Parker, whom Hampton credits with being the strongest influence on his playing, Hawes believes that blues are the basic foundation of jazz and that all jazzmen, modern as well as traditional, must begin by mastering the blues.
*Arnold Shaw (from the liner notes for the three albums [March 26, 1958])*
Here, at last, is the definitive Hamp Hawes. Spread out over three 12 inch LP's as is this collection, there is ample opportunity fully to assess the sometime disputed prowess of the 29-year-old west coast pianist.
As the album title indicates, these sides were recorded in one all night record date on November 12, 1956. The four musicians began recording and, as the groove wore smoother, just kept right on going.
All four were in optimum playing spirit. Hawes has never sounded so good on record and now emerges as one of the foremost jazz piano talents of our generation. His roots undeniably lie anchored in the blues and he seldom strays very far from that influence. As a modern blues pianist he remains superb. His ballad interpretations (I Should Care is a good example) tend still to show a little too much extraneous embellishment.
Hall's playing throughout is sheer, funky joy. Both as soloist and comper he fully rounds out the group, adding necessary variety of feeling and color to the trio context in which Hawes previously chose to express himself. As for Mitchell, he always is a paragon of jazz bass playing. Freeman's drums swing unrestrainedly all the way. *John A. Tynan (Down Beat, August 21, 1958 [5 satars])*
Hampton Hawes
All Night Session! • Volume 1
In the night of November 12 and into the morning of November 13, 1956, a quartet led by pianist Hampton Hawes recorded enough material to fill three long-playing phonograph record albums. This studio session contained many elements associated with a live gig: the work took place during regular nightclub performing hours, the improvisations were mostly extended, and there were no alternate takes. A remarkable freshness and spontaneity prevailed throughout the session. Although controversy continues regarding the original sequence of titles, Duke Jordan's "Jordu" and Dizzy Gillespie's "Groovin' High" are superb openers for this first of three volumes. In addition to an invigorating run down "Broadway," Hawes improvised two original themes: "Takin' Care" and a bluesy walk entitled "Hampton's Pulpit" that stretched out for more than 11 minutes, making it the longest track of the entire all-night session. Collaborating with the pianist on this historic date were guitarist Jim Hall, bassist Red Mitchell, and drummer Eldridge "Bruz" Freeman. The interplay between these four men is marvelous, particularly when heard with headphones or through a sound system allowing for a full appreciation of the stereophonic balance achieved by the recording engineers. *arwulf arwulf (www.allmusic.com)*
1 - Jordu
(Duke Jordan)
2 - Groovin' High
(Dizzy Gillespie)
3 - Takin' Care
(Hampton Hawes)
4 - Broadway
(Woode, McRae, Bird)
5 - Hampton's Pulpit
(Hampton Hawes)
Hampton Hawes (piano), Jim Hall (guitar), Red Mitchell (bass), Bruz Freeman (drums).
Recorded at Contemporary's Studio, Los Angeles, California,
the night of November 12, 1956
✳✳✳
Hampton Hawes
All Night Session! • Volume 2
This is the second of three albums that came about as the result of an all-night recording session that took place in Los Angeles on November 12 and 13, 1956. Although Hampton Hawes spontaneously created five original tunes at this extraordinarily inspired date, everything on Vol. 2 comes directly out of the standard bop musician's working repertoire. The quartet, with bassist Red Mitchell, guitarist Jim Hall, and drummer Eldridge "Bruz" Freeman, collectively improvise their way through four attractive standards ("I Should Care" turned out to be the only slow ballad of the entire session) and three of Dizzy Gillespie's most refreshing creations. In 1958 Hawes was quoted as saying "It's hard to put into words how good it feels to play jazz when it's really swinging...I've reached a point where the music fills you up so much emotionally that you feel like shouting hallelujah -- like people do in church when they're converted to God. That's the way I was feeling the night we recorded All Night Session!" *arwulf arwulf (www.allmusic.com)*
1 - I'll Remember April
(Raye, dePaul, Johnston)
2 - I Should Care
(Stordahl, Weston, Cahn)
3 - Woody'n You
(Dizzy Gillespie)
4 - Two Bass Hit
(Gillespie, Lewis)
5 - Will You Still Be Mine
(Dennis, Adair)
6 - April In Paris
(Duke, Harburg)
7 - Blue 'N' Boogie
(Gillespie, Paparelli)
Hampton Hawes (piano), Jim Hall (guitar), Red Mitchell (bass), Bruz Freeman (drums).
Recorded at Contemporary's Studio, Los Angeles, California,
the night of November 12 and morning of November 13, 1956
✳✳✳
Hampton Hawes
All Night Session! • Volume 3
Vol. 3 of the Hampton Hawes Quartet's All Night Session contains three spontaneously improvised variations on the blues, one very cool extended rendition of Duke Ellington's "Do Nothin' 'Till You Hear from Me" and a strikingly handsome treatment of Harold Arlen's "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea." The briskly paced "Blues #4" is especially progressive and exciting. Apparently "Blues of a Sort" was a warm-up performance, as voices are audible (discussing a football game!) in the background during the bass solo. For this one-take marathon late-night session of November 12 and 13, 1956, Hawes chose to share the studio with guitarist Jim Hall, bassist Red Mitchell and drummer Eldridge "Bruz" Freeman, who had replaced Chuck Thompson following that musician's sudden inability to continue touring with the group earlier that year. "We gave Chuck what money we could and left him sitting on a hospital cot in a white bathrobe." This grim image, like much of Hawes' autobiography Raise Up Off Me, paints a stark picture of the narcotics epidemic among jazz musicians during the '50s. Although this was the first peak of his career, Hawes later admitted that "during the fall of 1956 I was messing up consistently -- showing late on gigs or missing them altogether." He had lots of offers for work, including the possibility of providing music for a film soundtrack: "Wanted to do it, would have paid good, but at the time I didn't even have the bread to get high enough to get to the studio to see what they had in mind." One of the great incongruities of bop is the fact that Charlie Parker and the musicians who were most directly influenced by him were able to be so creative and prolific while grappling with addictions that confounded, immobilized, and eventually slew them. All of these insights quietly swarm beneath the surface of what added up to more than two hours of exceptionally fine quartet jazz. *arwulf arwulf (www.allmusic.com)*
1 - Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me
(Ellington, Russell)
2 - Blues #3
(Hampton Hawes)
3 - Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea
(Arlen, Koehler)
4 - Blues #4
(Hampton Hawes)
5 - Blues Of A Sort
(Hampton Hawes)
Hampton Hawes (piano), Jim Hall (guitar), Red Mitchell (bass), Bruz Freeman (drums).
Recorded at Contemporary's Studio, Los Angeles, California,
the morning of November 13, 1956
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