Five-Star Collection... Art Pepper

Art Pepper

Art Pepper + Eleven

A Treasury Of Modern Jazz Classics

In a period when the qualifications for having one's own jazz album remains nebulous, it's been all the more astonishing that Art Pepper has been in charge of so few. Pepper has grown remarkably in imagination and emotional depth in the past few years as was hotly clear in Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section (Contemporary 3532, Stereo 7018). In this new, uniquely integrated set, Pepper receives a differently challenging framework from Marty Paich than he — or most other soloists — has yet received on records. And Art responds with consistent brilliance.

What Paich has done has been to provide more than just accompaniment for Art. He has integrated the resilient band backgrounds with Art's playing in a way that stimulates Pepper but doesn't obstruct the improvisatory flow of his ideas. Paich was able to accomplish this fusion because he knows Pepper's style well through several years of association, including dates on which Marty was pianist for Art. (...)

The programmatic concept of the album is also challenging to both Pepper and Paich. These are twelve established modern jazz standards — music directly out of the jazz experience, written by jazzmen. They're part of that growing body of thoroughly indigenous jazz material to which player-writers like Jelly Roll Morton, Kid Ory, Duke Ellington, and in more recent years, Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, John Lewis and others have contributed.

Pepper and Paich collaborated on selecting these twelve songs. "We treated them with a great deal of respect", Paich emphasizes. "The tune itself is there all the time. Unlike, for example, doing jazz versions of Broadway shows, with these jazz standards you don't have to alter and extend the chords and make other changes for jazz purposes". (...)

In essence, Art Pepper + Eleven demonstrates, first of all, how mature a soloist Art Pepper has become. It also reemphasizes how much of their own material jazzmen have to work with, and helps considerably in making known Marty Paich's qualifications as a particularly knowledgeable and sensitive jazz arranger. *Nat Hentoff (from the liner notes)*

This is a highly satisfactory album for which Marty Paich, who conducts and did the arranging, deserves a full measure of credit.

The tunes read like a jazz hit parade of the '40s and '50s, and Paich has treated them with the reverence and seriousness they deserve while still retaining wit and a freshness of view. Pepper, in the context of this group, turns out one of his best performances on record. As an altoist, he immediately assumes his place again in the front rank with the added virtue of successfully escaping the tyranny of Charlie Parker’s spirit and still keeping that full-blown swing. He is surprisingly sensitive and moving on clarinet (Anthropology of all things!), and if he ever gets seriously down to work on that instrument as his major, there's room to believe he might be the one to bring it up to the point of development of the other solo horns.

On tenor he is a solidly swinging, tough-minded soloist, but it is on alto, still, that he shines. The whole album is in excellent taste, the solos by Freeman here and there are a gas, too, and Lewis provides a fine, swinging foundation. 

*Ralph J. Gleason (Down Beat, February 18, 1960 [5 stars])*

1 - Move

(Denzil Best)

2 - Groovin' High

(Dizzy Gillespie)

3 - Opus de Funk

(Horace Silver)

4 - 'Round Midnight

(Monk, Williams)

5 - Four Brothers

(Jimmy Giuffre)

6 - Shaw Nuff

(Gillespie, Parker)

7 - Bernie's Tune

(Leiber, Stoller, Miller)

8 - Walkin' Shoes

(Gerry Mulligan)

9 - Anthropology

(Gillespie, Parker)

10 - Airegin

(Sonny Rollins)

11 - Walkin' (original take)

(Richard Carpenter)

12 - Walkin' (alternate take 1)

(Richard Carpenter)

13 - Walkin' (alternate take 2)

 (Richard Carpenter)

14 - Donna Lee (original take)

(Charlie Parker)

15 - Donna Lee (alternate take)

(Charlie Parker)

Art Pepper (alto sax, tenor sax [#1, #5, #11], clarinet [#9, #12, #13]) with:

Pete Candoli [#3, #4, #8, #10], Jack Sheldon, Al Porcino [#1, #2, #5 to #7, #9, #11 to #15] (trumpets);

Herb Geller [#3, #4, #8, #10], Bud Shank [#2, #6, #9, #14, #15], Charlie Kennedy [#1, #5, #7, #11 to #13] (alto saxes);

Dick Nash (trombone); Bob Enevoldsen (tenor sax, valve trombone); Vincent DeRosa (French horn);

Bill Perkins [#2, #3, #4, #6, #8 to #10, #14, #15], Richie Kamuca [#1, #5, #7, #11 to #13] (tenor saxes);

Med Flory (baritone sax); Russ Freeman (piano); Joe Mondragon (bass); Mel Lewis (drums).

Recorded at Contemporary's Studio, Los Angeles, California, March 14 (#3, #4, #8, #10),

March 28 (#2, #6, #9, #14, #15) and May 12 (#1, #5, #7, #11, #12, #13), 1959.