GRAMMYs

Hank Mobley

Photo by PoPsie Randolph/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

News

Hank Mobley's 'Soul Station' At 60: How The Tenor Saxophonist's Mellow Masterpiece Inspires Jazz Musicians In 2020

Facebook Twitter Email
This laid-back date with pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Art Blakey is a pillar of hard bop — and it taught these top-shelf musicians a thing or two
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Oct 5, 2020 - 1:05 pm

Jazz is about more than just the innovators. As far as tenor saxophone goes, most in the know will rightly tell you to begin with Coleman "Hawk" Hawkins and Lester "Prez" Young. Separately or together, those two lit a match under John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Stan Getz and countless others — all who inspired legions in their own right. But with all genuflection to the trailblazers, those who simply play this music exceptionally well deserve reverence too. Need an example of this? Your next stop is tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley’s 1960 album Soul Station.

Mobley was an alumnus of the Prez school. That means he had a relaxed, melodic sound as opposed to Hawk’s, which was often extroverted and teeming with information. And Soul Station, which features pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Art Blakey, is Mobley’s most rewarding listen despite not breaking the mold. This unassuming program consists of Mobley originals (“This I Dig of You,” “Dig Dis,” “Split Feelin’s,” and the title track) bookended by two standards (Irving Berlin’s “Remember” and Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin’s “If I Should Lose You”).

Because Mobley fully tilled the land he occupied rather than searching for new terrain, Soul Station, which turns 60 this month, is a post-bop building block and a terrific entry point for the jazz-curious. From a creator’s standpoint as much as a listener’s, the album has aged magnificently. These nine musicians of various ages and persuasions still regularly check out Soul Station — for its full-bodied sound, its hip melodic structures and the in-the-moment interplay between the quartet.

“It’s one of those records that’s just nice to hear,” saxophonist Chris Potter tells GRAMMY.com. "There’s nothing about it that doesn’t sound good. That’s one of the great things jazz can express — a relaxed feeling of camaraderie. That’s how the band sounds. No one’s trying to outshine anyone. No one’s trying to do anything except play music and swing. And it swings from the beginning to the end."

Like a perfectly crafted cappuccino, Mobley’s sound is creamy with just the right amount of bite. "That sound is pure heaven for someone like me," tenor saxophonist Dayna Stephens tells GRAMMY.com. "I would put Hank’s tone up there with my favorites on tenor saxophone. That warm, fluffy sound is something I model my sound after. A lot of the cats from that era had a brighter sound. Not a lot of them had that velvety sound at that period."

One can understand that sound on both an emotional and a physical level. The Chilean-born tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana zeroes in on his time and phrasing: "The way he played is very personal,” she tells GRAMMY.com. "You can hear one note and know it’s Hank Mobley. That’s the most meaningful thing to me." Potter cites his gear as a factor: "Often, when you hear Mobley, there’s a few little chirps in the reed, which I don’t mind,” he says. “Every saxophonist’s reed tends to do that. They’re finicky. On this, there’s not. He just had a really good reed."

Soul Station has added luminousness from its production and the dimensions of the room in which the band recorded it. Mobley, Kelly, Chambers, and Blakey recorded it in one go on February 7, 1960, at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, less than a year after Rudy Van Gelder moved his operation there from his parents’ house in Hackensack, New Jersey. His new studio, which is still operational today, featured cement floors, cinder-block walls, a cathedral ceiling, and a wooden steeple.

Plus, Van Gelder’s recording equipment and engineering style were exquisite. “The way he miked the piano fits how Wynton Kelly was playing,” Potter says. “It’s so clear, the way he plays. Especially when he’s kind of in the upper register — he kind of leaves a lot of space between the upper register and he’s comping a little lower. His playing is just so swinging, but also so accurate. He doesn’t sound sloppy. Ever. It’s one of his greatest performances.”

“Rudy was at the top of his game,” alto saxophonist Jim Snidero tells GRAMMY.com. "All of Rudy’s records sound great, but that one, in particular, captures the essence of his sound. The way it blends is incredible. It’s just one of those dates, man — where everybody comes together, and it’s magic from top to bottom."

Then, there’s the nuts and bolts of Mobley’s playing. "Hank introduced a concise, streamlined concept to hard bop," Snidero notes. "It was an extremely sophisticated [yet] linear approach that was nuanced, relaxed and swinging.”

As the seven-times-nominated tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman puts it to GRAMMY.com, "He’s a great resource for me in trying to learn this language and keep myself melodically honest. Every note counts; nothing is overstated; nothing is oversold. He always takes care of the changes. He never skirts around them; he always addresses them. He always outlines them in the melodies that he plays, and he always plays beautiful, compelling ideas."

Out of all the songs, “This I Dig of You” has been studied the most by jazz students. “That’s a solo all of us transcribed when we were at Berklee,” Aldana remembers of her collegiate years, calling the song a “masterclass” in sound and time feel.

“‘This I Dig of You’ is one of the most analyzed solos of the era for sure,” Snidero says. “Both Mobley and his bandmate in the Jazz Messengers, K.D. — [trumpeter] Kenny Dorham — came up with a different way of thinking about Charlie Parker’s language. Hank was more about the line and the harmony than the rhythm. He was very keen on creating hip lines. You can tell that in the way he deals with dominant chords and resolutions.”

Tenor saxophonist James Carter says this is due to Young’s influence. “His solos build along the lines of what Prez would do,” he explains to GRAMMY.com. “It starts with a simple statement, then Mobley builds the structure vertically from there, and it grows in intensity. It’s hip how calm he is through all of this. It doesn’t seem like he goes above high F or G regularly, whereas Rollins and Trane would. It’s a paradox that he could stay so even-keeled in his playing but stay building at the same time.”

Could any amount of transcribing capture that feeling? “The thing that’s great about it is maybe the thing you can’t put in a formula,” Potter says. “He’s just playing one melody after another.” As opposed to the unrestrained blowing sessions of the bebop era, Soul Station is highly listenable because of its subtle organization. Take, for example, the tag at the end of “Remember.” “There’s some thought put into the arrangements, but it’s not worked out overly,” Potter says. “It’s right in that sweet spot where it’s people playing music that they’re comfortable playing.”

Mobley’s old boss is a crucial player on Soul Station. Mobley was an original member of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, which had a 35-year run with a rotating membership of dozens. So Mobley has numerous successors; one is tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson, who was in the collective for its home stretch. “I’m a Jazz Messenger, and he was an original Jazz Messenger, so I’ve put him under the microscope,” Jackson tells GRAMMY.com. “We call [what we do] spelling the chords, and he spells so well. The way he presents his lines and his soloing style is impeccable.”

Many jazz fans associate Blakey with his hands-of-Zeus playing on tunes like “A Night in Tunisia”; Soul Station captures him at his most restrained. But to call this an aberration would be to misunderstand — or condescend to — Blakey’s art. “A lot of people speak of Art Blakey’s approach as primal and instinctive, but he was a highly intelligent musician,” Ralph Peterson, Jr., who joined the Jazz Messengers as their second drummer in 1983, tells GRAMMY.com. “He dealt on the highest levels of form, structure, and nuance, and it’s on fantastic display on [Soul Station]. It’s one of the records that drew me to his playing.”

“He’s such a custodian of the pocket,” Redman marvels about Blakey on Soul Station. “He takes care of that beat. He just keeps everything rock-solid and moving forward and grooving. Even when they’re just playing 4/4 swing, it feels like it’s on the verge of a shuffle. You feel that two-and-four a little more strongly, and there’s a little more of that rockin’, dancin’ implication to the rhythm.

Peterson contrasts Blakey’s Soul Station performance with what he lays down on tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin’s 1957 version of “The Way You Look Tonight.” “Art Blakey’s role there is a little more white-hot, a little more red-hot,” he explains. “But on [Soul Station], he’s in the blue part of the flame. The thing is: if you know anything about fire, the blue part of the flame might be the lowest part of the flame, but it’s also the hottest part of the flame. Art was a master of those kinds of subtleties."

That said, “Some of the fire came back during his solos,” Stephens says of Blakey. That’s true of his unforgettable drum break on “This I Dig of You,” in which he throws down bone-rattling rolls without disrupting the tune one iota. “He just explodes in his solo, and as soon as he’s done, they go right back into this restrained, beautiful, almost classical zone,” tenor saxophonist Jeff Lederer tells GRAMMY.com. “I don’t use the term ‘classical’ in terms of genre, but of the overall aesthetic of the record. The way Mobley shapes his solos goes to the classic aesthetic of art more than the ecstatic.”

The combination of Blakey with Chambers and Kelly was unusual for the time. (One can also hear a rare Chambers-Blakey pairing on two tracks from Drums Around the Corner, which was recorded in 1958 and 1959 and shelved until 1999.) “Because it’s a hodgepodge group, I think there’s a fragmented cohesion,” Carter says. “He’s dealing with two of Miles [Davis]’s cats and, of course, his former employer, but it all comes together sweetly.” (In 1961, Mobley briefly became one of Miles’s cats, replacing John Coltrane in his quintet.)

All four of these musicians were pros, so they knew not to play over each other. As a result, Soul Station flows from beginning to end with no loose nails. “You can hear a conversation. There’s no ego,” Aldana says. “It’s not like ‘Who can solo [the fastest]?” Instead, it’s like, ‘How can we all tell a story together and communicate?'"

After Soul Station, Mobley released about half a dozen other stellar albums, like 1963’s No Room for Squares, 1966’s Dippin’, and the same year’s A Caddy for Daddy, all three of which feature the incendiary Lee Morgan on trumpet. “They’re great!” Snidero says of Mobley’s later works. “But they’re not as focused as Soul Station. Soul Station has a center and a power to it. It’s the apex of hard bop.”

Most of Mobley’s peers held him in the highest regard, but he didn’t ride the wave as jazz underwent seismic changes — including fusion — in the late 1960s. Suffering from respiratory and addiction issues, he largely faded from the music scene in the late 1960s and. In 1986, he died at only 55.

Today, one can scarcely read about Mobley without encountering “the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone,” a boxing metaphor that jazz critic and producer Leonard Feather coined to describe Mobley’s place in the pantheon. To Feather, Mobley wasn’t a “heavyweight” like John Coltrane, nor a “lightweight” like Stan Getz — he was in-between. While Feather was arguably referring to the intensity of Mobley's sound rather than the extent of his abilities, Snidero says this isn't accurate — and, in 2020, mostly serves to trivialize him. (He evokes 1956’s “Tenor Conclave,” in which he eats Cohn’s, Sims’s, and a still-developing Coltrane’s lunch, as proof positive of this.)

“‘Middleweight champion’ is a cute tag, but it means he’s in a different class, that he’s somehow not a heavyweight saxophonist and artist,” Snidero says. “In my opinion, Hank’s depth and refinement on Soul Station, among other recordings, proves otherwise. Was he as great as Trane or Sonny? Maybe not, but he was certainly a heavyweight."

“I don’t think he felt the weight of innovation on his shoulders, and I think that’s a wonderful thing,” Lederer says. “Because jazz is folk music. It’s not science; it’s music that has come out of a culture. While there are artists that will want to innovate all the time, there’s also a special place for artists who speak and transmit the language and don’t feel the need to completely change up the fundamentals of the music that they love.”

“You might be hard-pressed to take any specific element of Soul Station and say ‘That’s innovative. That’s something different with harmony or rhythm or melody that had never been done before,’” Redman says. “But it sure is an influential record. That record has inspired generations of jazz musicians and taught them about a deep pocket, a deep groove, and beautiful melodic lines flowing with forward motion through the changes.”

Indeed, Soul Station’s accessibility and listenability is a feature, not a bug. “The music of Hank Mobley was important for me because I could access it,” Peterson says of his early days as a “frustrated trumpet player.” “It served as a stepping stone to get to other soloists on the way to John Coltrane’s Giant Steps and beyond. You’ve got to start somewhere, but it’s not just a starting point. It’s valid in and of itself.”

Indeed, one can stay on Soul Station for life or hitch a ride to another platform. Either way, this hard bop classic endures for simple reasons: it’s all about playing the blues, weaving hip melodies, and, most important, swinging hard. Anyone with ears to hear can dig dis.

Unearthing A Lost Ella Fitzgerald Recording, 60 Years Later

Grammys Newsletter

Gerry Gibbs

Gerry Gibbs

Photo: Joan Carroll

News

Gerry Gibbs Assembled Jazz Legends To Honor His Father's Music. The Result Contained Chick Corea's Final Recordings.

Facebook Twitter Email
Jazz drummer Gerry Gibbs drove 15,000 miles around America to make 'Songs From My Father,' a homage to his dad Terry Gibbs’ music. One of the greats who contributed was Chick Corea—and unbeknownst to everyone, these were the last recordings he’d ever make
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Aug 13, 2021 - 10:58 am

North, south, east and west on the interstates of a pandemic-gripped America, Gerry Gibbs drove 15,000 miles to make some music. In the evenings, he and his wife, Kyeshie, camped out in the car and dozed off to DVDs of Kojak, Starsky and Hutch and The Mod Squad. They were too apprehensive about COVID-19 to board a flight or sleep in a hotel. So, with his record label's financial assistance, they drove and drove and drove.

"I'm not touring. I'm not working. I just sit at home every day wondering what's going to happen," Gibbs told GRAMMY.com back in 2020 while driving through the middle of the desert. "Everything I ever had doesn't exist anymore." So he hurtled between New York, California, Texas and Florida throughout the first wave. "All to make this stupid record," Gibbs says in 2021, cheekily and modestly. Because what he and his associates made is a doozy.

He was driving all over creation to make Songs From My Father (released August 6), a homage to the songbook of his dad, the pioneering vibraphonist and bebop luminary Terry Gibbs. It features four permutations of his Thrasher Dream Trio, drawing from a Rolodex of cream-of-the-crop musicians: bassists Ron Carter, Christian McBride and Buster Williams, and pianists Chick Corea, Kenny Barron, Patrice Rushen, Geoff Keezer and Larry Goldings.

By now, in music, the anecdotes about recording in lockdown are starting to bleed together. Plus, jazz is a Möbius strip of lineages, so a son paying tribute to his father is as natural as can be. That said, Songs From My Father stands out for multiple reasons. 

First, it sheds light on Terry, an underappreciated architect of America's music. Second, it’s a testament to Gerry's indefatigable creativity. And—perhaps most enticingly—it contains the final recordings of the late pianistic legend and 25-time GRAMMY winner Chick Corea.

Terry Gibbs

Terry Gibbs with bassist Eddie Safranski and the 1953 Metronome All-Stars. Photo: PoPsie Randolph/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images​.

The Swinging Mastery Of Terry Gibbs

At almost 97, Terry is a hilarious fount of stories, and his 2003 memoir, Good Vibes: A Life in Jazz, is a treasure trove of Brooklynite musings. The man born Julius Gubenko in 1924 had a front-row seat to bebop and big band at their peaks, playing with Benny Goodman, Buddy Rich, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie and scores of other household names.

Gerry was born in 1964, and his father didn’t steer him toward becoming a musician at all. "He's had his own mind since he was a kid," Terry tells GRAMMY.com. "I never told him what to like. He went from liking Buddy Rich to liking Elvin Jones, and that's a big jump going from straight-ahead to a guy who was playing pretty far out. But he liked it. That's where his head was."

Gerry Gibbs & Terry Gibbs

Terry and Gerry Gibbs. Photo courtesy of Gerry Gibbs.

Read More: 10 Essential Cuts From Jazz Piano Great McCoy Tyner

Gerry became a music obsessive by his own volition. "You remember those blue-jean-colored folders you put all your manilla folders in when you were in class?" Gerry asks GRAMMY.com. "On the front, I would just put 'Chick Corea. Ron Carter. Freddie Hubbard. Miles Davis. John Coltrane. Kenny Barron.' And I would just stare at the names on the books and say, 'These are my heroes. These are the people I want to play with one day.'"

Terry didn't just play with the titans of bebop; he provided a platform for brilliant Black female pianists. One, Alice Coltrane (née McLeod), is experiencing an overdue reappraisal. Another, Terry Pollard—an equal talent on vibraphone who performed alongside him in swinging mallet contests—remains bizarrely obscure given her considerable skills.

About Alice Coltrane, "Before everything she had done with John, she was a swinging bebopper, playing in all these Detroit bands and in Terry Gibbs' band," saxophonist Jeff Lederer told GRAMMY.com in 2020. "She was a great, great bebopper." As for Pollard, "I feel like it's really important to acknowledge her when talking about this music," Geoff Keezer tells GRAMMY.com.

Terry Gibbs & Terry Pollard

Terry Gibbs and Terry Pollard. Photo courtesy of Gerry Gibbs.

Read More: 'Ptah, The El Daoud' At 50: How Alice Coltrane Straddled Heaven And Earth

Terry played from age 12 until his retirement at 92. In that time, he made more than 90 solo recordings and was the musical director on "The Steve Allen Show" for more than 20 years. However, he's mysteriously still not an NEA Jazz Master, despite many musicians far younger than him—and with fewer bona fides—receiving the honor.

Plus, his infectious compositions, like "Kick Those Feet," "Bopstacle Course" and "Pretty Blue Eyes," aren't as widely known as they should be in the 21st century. That is, unless Gerry has something to say about it.

The Creative Whirlwind Of Gerry Gibbs

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree: Gerry Gibbs is as loquacious and driven as his father. Moreover, time is elastic on Planet Gibbs: What would typically be a half-hour conversation might stretch to more than three times that length.

"When he's explaining stuff, his mind is going 20,000 miles an hour," Patrice Rushen tells GRAMMY.com. "He might skip a lot of information that it would be of value for you to try to keep up with where he's going." For example: "'There's no bass player in this session.' [Pauses.] OK. 'Well, you'll be playing with [pianist] Larry Goldings.' [Pauses even longer.] OK? 'Larry's going to play the organ.' OK, got it. Now I'm piecing it together."

Put a man like this in pandemic house arrest, and he'll do something like write and record an entire song every day in an 18-day spree while playing all the instruments. And that's what Gerry did. He sent the resulting album, Emotional Pandemic, to 500 people on his email list. One of them happened to be Corea, who he'd been friendly with before but never worked with.

Corea took to Gerry immediately and emailed him, eager to learn about his creative process. "I was pretty freaked out," Gerry admits. "Friends of mine hadn't had time to listen to it, and here's Chick, who's so busy, and he listened to it numerous times." Gerry sent Corea his phone number; they talked for two hours and became fast friends.

"One time, at almost 3:00 in the morning, the phone rang, and it was Chick," Gerry says. "My wife sees the phone and I say, 'He must have butt-dialed me.' I answer the phone, and he says [loudly] 'Guess whooo!' I don't care. Chick could have woken me up every night, and it would be fine. It's Chick."

After Corea listened to Journey to Parts Unknown, another album Gerry made during lockdown—this one comprised of solo piano compositions—he inquired about adapting the tunes to include bass and drums.

"Then I realized, 'My label can't afford him,'" Gerry says. He offered to put his people in touch with Corea's people; Corea waved it away. "He was just like, 'No, no, no. Don't worry about that. I don't care about that. Let's just do it.'"

There was another potential wrinkle: Gerry's compositions are incredibly elaborate, so much so that Corea requested advance time with the charts. Plus, with COVID as a factor, lengthy rehearsals weren't possible. So rather than composing streamlined, improv-friendly music, Gerry decided to play his father's music instead.

"It's a tribute to my dad, but it's not a tribute because he's my dad," he says. "His music was some of the most important music for me growing up. It was my way to put my take on something that I grew up with that had a huge influence on me." While on a stroll through his neighborhood, he called everyone who ultimately would be involved with the record. They were in.

Gibbs told Corea he was going to change direction and play his father's music instead. Corea took to the idea enthusiastically, even asking to write an original song for the record: "Tango for Terry."

"All of us had so much faith in his judgment and his ability to work out the situations that were beyond everyone's expectations and experience."    —Ron Carter

When it came time to track the music in various locations, none of the musicians were rusty after being housebound for months. "I was a little apprehensive about going into the studio, but I needed to play," Keezer says. "I was very happy that he called me for the project, especially with Christian on bass." 

Gerry's curatorial and leaderly acumen struck all the musicians involved. "All of us had so much faith in his judgment and his ability to work out the situations that were beyond everyone's expectations and experience," Ron Carter tells GRAMMY.com. Barron adds, "Gerry is very creative in terms of coming up with different kinds of projects. It's not always the same thing, which I love about him."

For "Chick's Tune," a spin on Terry's "Hey Jim" with nine out of 10 of the musicians taking a solo, Gerry matched the tempo to a 1961 recording of his father and spliced his vibraphone solo to the music. "Gerry's very good at [working with] pre-recorded elements to play to, as far as the production side," Larry Goldings tells GRAMMY.com. "Gerry's very clever at editing."

Notably absent from his namesake song, however, was Corea.

The Final Musical Fires Of Chick Corea

By all accounts, Corea was strong and upbeat during the sessions. However, when it came time to tackle "Hey Jim," "Chick called me and said, 'I can't play on it because I'm not feeling good. I've got a pain in my ribs. Can we postpone this for three or four weeks?'" Gerry recalls. "I said, 'Of course, Chick.'"

"And then I spoke to his management," he says. "Chick was gone."

In a massive shock to the global jazz community, Corea passed away on February 9, 2021, from a rare form of cancer. He embodied energetic creativity for a musician in his autumn years; the internet was full of his recent videos and masterclasses. With about a month left, Corea got his affairs in order and wrote a statement to the world.

"I want to thank all of those along my journey who have helped keep the music fires burning bright," he said. "It is my hope that those who have an inkling to play, write, perform or otherwise, do so. If not for yourself then for the rest of us. It's not only that the world needs more artists, it's also just a lot of fun."

"My dad always said, 'People remember the very beginning, and they always remember the end. They don't always remember everything in the middle'... That's what I try to remember: What are the bookends? Are they really memorable?" —Gerry Gibbs

"I was so hurt and disappointed that, finally, I got to hook up with Chick and that we were going to get together and play after COVID," Gerry says. "It's a little eerie. When you're a little kid, you don't think, 'One day I'll play with Chick and when it happens, it'll be the last thing he'll ever do.'" 

Gerry suggested they repurpose the track to be a tribute to their fallen friend. Terry agreed and proposed a new title—"Hey Chick." The music sounds as radiant, eager and playful as its namesake.

"My dad always said, 'People remember the very beginning, and they always remember the end. They don't always remember everything in the middle,'" Gerry says. "That always struck me as very important with a lot of music that I love. That's what I try to remember: What are the bookends? Are they really memorable?"

Terry Gibbs & Gerry Gibbs

Terry and Gerry Gibbs. Photo courtesy of Gerry Gibbs.

A Father's Verdict

One critical question remains: What did Terry think of the final product?

"There's nothing greater than to hear someone play a song you wrote and interpret it their own way," he marvels. "You're talking about the heavyweights of heavyweights. Everyone is a bandleader."

"When he told me about all these guys he tried to get, I thought the COVID got to him or he was completely out of his bird!" he exclaims. "How did he get those guys, especially with this disease going around?"

Buster Williams has an answer: Despite the extraordinary circumstances, there was a "business as usual" vibe among the musicians. "We do record dates all the time, you know? You never know what's going to be the result of a record date," he tells GRAMMY.com. "You're sort of like, 'This is what I do.' But I was very pleased when I heard the complete record that they put together."

"When he told me about all these guys he tried to get, I thought the COVID got to him or he was completely out of his bird!" —Terry Gibbs

In a period of frustration over the perceived NEA Jazz Master snub, Songs From My Father proved to be a balm for the family. "[My father] said 'This is better than getting an award,'" Gerry says proudly. "He was really excited." 

And while this ultimate act of paternal respect touches Terry deeply as he approaches a century on this planet, he's not going to let his son off that easily.

"I used to be a boxer," he clarifies. "I can still beat the heck out of him if I want to."

In Remembrance: Chick Corea Played In More Ways Than One

Grammys Newsletter

Alice Coltrane

Alice Coltrane in 1987

Photo: Frans Schellekens

News

Alice Coltrane's 'Kirtan: Turiya Sings': Inside The Unearthly Beauty Of Her Long-Lost Devotional Album

Facebook Twitter Email
Alice Coltrane only made a few hundred copies of 1982’s 'Turiya Sings,' but it has the ability to change your life. 'Kirtan: Turiya Sings," an unadorned variation of the record, draws you even deeper into its transformative power
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Jul 14, 2021 - 10:05 am

Even if you don't know Alice Coltrane's music or feel compelled to check out a "jazz" artist, there's an ambient tape floating around YouTube that will break your heart. 

Turiya Sings, a droning 1982 cassette of chanted Sanskrit vocals, organ, synthesizer and orchestra, is not only a sad, haunted jewel but one of the most convincing available arguments for a higher power. But for Coltrane's son, Ravi, what sounds like a transmission from beyond was just a fact of life around the house.

"That's the sound I grew up hearing. That is the sound," the now-55-year-old saxophonist tells GRAMMY.com over Zoom. "I'd come home from school and she'd be at the organ, playing these songs, singing quietly to herself." This also extended to when he went to church—a.k.a. services at her Agoura Hills ashram—every Sunday, and Coltrane led the congregation in original devotionals like "Jagadishwar," "Krishna Krishna" and "Govinda Hari."

In both scenarios, Coltrane didn't have a rack of synthesizers nor an orchestra at her disposal, but a simple Wurlitzer. And that's the version of Turiya Sings that is finally getting a wide release, offering an alternative to the spectral tape rip hanging out on the internet. Kirtan: Turiya Sings, a fresh "reduction"—Ravi's word—of the original album, arrives July 16 on Impulse Records/UMe. Now, listeners worldwide—Hindu, Christian, agnostic, or atheist—can access the album's boundless spiritual riches.

Alice Coltrane is often discussed in the shadow of her towering husband, John. But the truth is, her marriage to the groundbreaking saxophonist only spanned a few years; her life and career stretched for years before and after him. When she and John met, the pianist was already a known quantity as a Detroit bebopper in vibraphonist Terry Gibbs' band. And by the time she replaced McCoy Tyner in his group in the final year of his life, she was a downright veteran.

Read More: 10 Essential Cuts From Jazz Piano Great McCoy Tyner

After John's 1967 death from liver cancer, she recorded a succession of albums for Impulse!, then Warner Bros. In the '70s, she moved out of the Long Island home she shared with John and headed out to California, establishing the Vedantic Center northwest of Los Angeles and adopting the name Turiyasangitananda. By the dawn of the '80s, she was through with the rat race of commercial music.

"By '81, she was just done with record contracts," Ravi says. "She felt that she had done everything she wanted to do in music and wanted to shift directions to a more spiritual life, so that's what she did."

Turiya Sings was her first functional rather than commercial work, serving as an offering for congregants rather than something meant for a wide release. Every Sunday, the group would sit on the floor, clad in white, for a kirtan service, shaking tambourines and bells as Coltrane sang and played. ("Kirtan" means "narrating, reciting, telling" in Sanskrit.)

"My mother, who we would call 'swami'—I still called her 'mom'—would sit behind the Wurlitzer," Ravi recalls. "The very same Wurlitzer you hear on the recording."

Coltrane recorded the album in 1981—mostly in first takes—at a studio near the ashram. Then, she overdubbed synthesizers and a self-conducted orchestra, pressed a few hundred copies under the Avatar Book Institute imprint, and sold it in the ashram's bookstore. "This is celebratory music of the highest order," the rear sleeve attested, calling it the product of "a soul that has already traversed far."

Of this sumptuous sound-world, only various secondhand versions were available for years—at press time, even eBay doesn't turn up an original cassette copy. But when Ravi finally heard a stripped-down, Wurlitzer-and-voice mix in 2004, he felt the embellishment-free version was the most gripping and immediate. The only problem was that he couldn't find a 24-track master—until recently when he found it sitting in a closet for decades.

Kirtan: Turiya Sings

Photo: Courtesy of Impulse Records/UMe.

While the original subsumed listeners into its undertow, this bare-bones version bends the ear to its lyrics and melodies. And without the overdubbed atmosphere, you can hear more clearly the gospel-ish angles in the chords and click and clack of the Wurlitzer's pedals.

"As dynamic and bold as the original version is, hearing my mother sing and play in this stripped-down, intimate setting revealed the true heart and soul of these songs," Ravi wrote in a producer’s note. "In this form, I could hear every nuance and inflection in her vocal performance and feel the weight of her rock-solid pulse and timing and (dare I say it) groove on the Wurlitzer. And, most importantly, in this setting, I felt the greatest sense of her passion, devotion, and exaltation in singing these songs in praise of the Supreme."

"It's powerful in a different way," Ken Druker, the Vice President of Jazz Development at Verve Label Group, tells GRAMMY.com. "You can hear what she's doing on the organ. You can hear the gospel influence. As Ravi said, you can hear the Motown in her voice—things that weren't as apparent on the cassette where there were all these other layers going on."

Druker is quick to call Kirtan: Turiya Sings a "variation" of the album, not meant to supplant it. To that end, Ravi says the decision to release this unadorned music wasn't to insert his own agenda but to get at the essence of the work. "That's the primary motivation," he says. "It wasn't me trying to tinker with Alice's creative works. I'm a custodian of my mother's music, my father's music, and a guardian of this music."

As for the lyrics, you don't have to learn a foreign language to feel them—even as a Sanskrit-to-English translation in the booklet helps bridge that gap. "They're just praising the Supreme—the Highest," Ravi says. "They're songs to elevate the spirit, and I don't see this as religious music. I see this as devotional music. Music that is for everyone, from any religious background—or no religious background."

Indeed, Vedic Hinduism wasn't the end for Coltrane, but the means. Even as Kirtan: Turiya Sings is firmly hooked to that tradition, it's meant as a vehicle for universal God-consciousness. 

"People have heard this music and not heard the translations nor the Sanskrit, but they can feel it," Ravi continues. "There's something compelling about these chants and these songs in a way that's not pushing one specific religion's doctrine, but promotes the universal in all divine music."

Despite being just one stop on the long continuum of Coltrane's music, nothing else in her discography quite sounds like it—and now that it's out for real, its influence and impact have the potential to be as borderless as its spirituality. Will Sheff, the GRAMMY-nominated leader of the long-running rock band Okkervil River, found himself bewitched by the original version of Turiya Sings years ago.

"I feel like she's going down to this depth, and the depth is heavy. You're sinking down and down and down and down into the darkness, but I don't think of that necessarily as bad," he tells GRAMMY.com. "That's where everything comes from and where everything goes, or something like that."

For Sheff, the quality of the music—coupled with the fact Coltrane didn't make it as a capitalist object—makes Turiya Sings an incredibly rare bird. "I don't want to get into some kind of weird, purist state of mind, but I guess I just feel like there's something so beautiful about hearing a musician do something where their soul is reaching out to God and they put it out to people who share the same faith as they do as a prayer aid," he says. 

"At no point in that process does 'I want to be rich' or 'I want to be famous' or 'I want to be well-thought-of' come into that," Sheff adds. "That's very refreshing because those are the biggest prizes of our culture right now." This might hold true for the foreseeable future, as far as music is concerned. 

But we'll always have Turiyasangitananda, praising the Most High softly, solemnly, as if singing to herself.

'Ptah, The El Daoud' At 50: How Alice Coltrane Straddled Heaven And Earth

Grammys Newsletter

Photo of Elaine Martone at the 62nd GRAMMY Awards in 2020

Elaine Martone at the 62nd GRAMMY Awards in 2020

 

Photo: Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

News

How Elaine Martone Overcame Self-Doubt And Became A Legendary Classical & Jazz Producer

Facebook Twitter Email
Women may be underrepresented in the production world, but one of its very best in classical and jazz is Elaine Martone—she opens up to GRAMMY.com about her life and career
Lior Phillips
Membership
May 14, 2021 - 10:56 am

Elaine Martone had her sights set on a life in the orchestra early on, but her quest to become a musician was missing one thing. With a degree in performance in hand from Ithaca College, while working her way into shape to audition for orchestras as an oboist, she took on a job at the classical music label Telarc as a way to earn a living while auditioning. She settled in Cleveland, Ohio, because the Cleveland Orchestra was there, and oboists with whom she studied.

But although her musical talents ran deep, "I lacked self-confidence," Martone tells GRAMMY.com. "And if a musician doesn't have confidence in themself, nobody's going to give that to them."

Rather than let that hurdle be her downfall, she dug deeper into her work at Telarc to figure out how she could create and bolster that confidence in other musicians. Martone built a GRAMMY-winning career as a recording producer specializing in classical and jazz. "Funnily enough, I'm actually producing the Cleveland Orchestra's online season now," she chuckles. "My life has made a nice full circle."

At the time she joined Telarc, the label had been in business less than three years. Founded by Jack Renner and Robert Woods (who Martone later married), the label was built for audiophiles and passionately focused on its music niche. "This was before the advent of CDs, but we were already recording with digital technology. By the time CDs came out, we were poised with high-quality recordings. And it was in Cleveland, an unusual place for a record label," Martone says with a laugh. "I knew I was on the ground floor of something cool."

Martone quickly grasped the intricacies of the recording process and learning to edit and produce recording sessions—an unusual role for a woman in the industry, both then and now. But Telarc was a new enough venture with plenty of opportunities, and its founders nurtured and encouraged her growth. Over time, the staff grew to about 50 and Martone ran the production department of 12.

"I never felt held back as a woman. I felt very lucky to grow a department and hire the right people," she says. "A key skill for my work as a producer is that I'm nurturing. I like being of service, including mentoring young women. Women represented about half of my staff."

Throughout her decades-long career, Martone indulged in her passion for orchestral music and produced essential records for legends in that genre and others. Due to her nurturing style, she made close friends along the way, producing the last 18 albums by jazz bassist Ray Brown. Since 2000, she also collaborated to great acclaim with Atlanta Symphony Orchestra music director Robert Spano and has worked with the GRAMMY-winning composer Jennifer Higdon, among many others.

Early on, Martone set her sights on winning a GRAMMY before she turned 50. "My husband has 13 GRAMMYs, and he started winning them when he was 30," she says. "So, I had a long way to go to 'catch up'.  In 2006, I won Classical Producer of the Year, which is the most coveted award in my field. I also have a Latin GRAMMY, and I won a jazz GRAMMY for McCoy Tyner's Illuminations. Especially as women, we denigrate ourselves thinking that if we hide a little bit, people won't take shots at us. But I decided I wasn't going to do that back then, that I was going to play full out, and that I was going to win. Five GRAMMYs later, it's a big honor and a privilege."

Martone's ability to build relationships has been particularly key to connecting through the pandemic. "The sense of community that I've felt through the GRAMMY organization and MusiCares has been incredible and has helped out a few friends that were really in need," Martone says.

Connection-building was necessary for her production career as well. Having produced the Cleveland Orchestra in the past, the organization reached out to Martone directly to produce their virtual season. "They're arguably the greatest orchestra in the world, and they're right here," she says. "They had the bonus of my 41 years of experience.  I've needed to use all of that. I have been so proud of all of us in this creative community because we kept hope and inspiration alive."

Taking that inspiration, Martone approached the Orchestra's virtual season seeing opportunities to create a new experience rather than seeing limitations. "Cleveland Clinic was advising the Orchestra, and that included not using winds or brass," she says. "So we started with 42 string musicians distanced nine feet apart. That's no way to make a very good ensemble, but the thing that's beautiful about the Cleveland Orchestra is their sense of blend and ensemble and being able to respond very nimbly. Producing what amounted to two records a week in this virtual season has been a production schedule on steroids."

Another of Martone's pandemic highlights has been producing new records from the GRAMMY-winning percussion ensemble Third Coast Percussion and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra harpist Elisabeth Remy Johnson. "Elisabeth messaged me and said she was interested in a record with all women composers, composers who were neglected like Amy Beach and Fanny Mendelssohn," Martone explains. "We worked remotely during the Pandemic. The Oregon Music Festival is also considering a recording at Abbey Road in November, also with all women composers and has asked me to produce. I feel inspired and energized by these projects."

Whether in her earliest recording sessions or the heart of the pandemic, the factor uniting Martone's experiences has always been her love of the creative process—and of being in the same space as people reaching their peak. "When I'm producing, I can't be thinking of anything else at the moment," she says. "I'm in the state of flow, almost an active meditative state. That's helped me work on over 200 records. Making a difference for others and having fun makes for a life well-lived."

For the past 60 years, the Recording Academy's Chicago Chapter has recognized and celebrated the creative accomplishments of our members across the Midwest, fought for their collective rights, and supported them in times of need. We are proud of our legacies and excited to continue looking ahead. Here's to the next 60.

How Female Classical Composers Are Encouraging Gender Equality

Delbert Anderson

Delbert Anderson

Maurice Johnson

News

Meet Delbert Anderson, A Native American Trumpet Master Interweaving Navajo Melodies With Jazz

Facebook Twitter Email
Native American trumpeter Delbert Anderson started playing straight-ahead jazz, but admits it was difficult to stand out. Once when he began exploring his Navajo heritage for material, things became truly interesting
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
May 13, 2021 - 3:39 pm

The universe of Native American heritage contains a fount of traditional melodies. There's just one problem: Hardly anyone remembers them.

When New Mexico trumpeter Delbert Anderson needed new inspiration for his jazz trio, he rolled out to an Aztec library and looked for Indigenous music. As a man of Navajo descent himself, he wanted to dig deeper into his ancestry. What Anderson found was a tape of “spinning songs”—essentially, songs dictating social interaction—chanted by Navajo chiefs. "It was really hard to pick out a melody," Anderson admits to GRAMMY.com. "The melodies that caught my ear were what I focused on."

Needing to know more, Anderson, a faculty member at San Juan College in Farmington, New Mexico, consulted traditional Native families, but their memories were hazy. What they could hum from memory, despite not knowing the origin, he connected to the Navajo spinning songs and learned two things. One: They were mostly in pentatonic, or specifically, minor pentatonic. Two: They were sticky and memorable enough to create stellar jazz tunes—ones that respectfully approach Native American musical tradition while also fostering an accessible experience for listeners.

Thus, Anderson has staked his claim on an almost-untouched corner of music: Native American jazz. Along with bassist Mike McCluhan and drummer Nick Lucero, joined by a succession of hip-hop MCs, he skillfully braids Indigenous melodies and syncopated grooves in a way that can appeal to purists in either camp. This is evident on his albums like Manitou (2014) as well as his 2021 virtual concert series throughout New Mexico and Colorado, which earned a $30,000 grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

GRAMMY.com gave Delbert Anderson a ring about his straight-ahead jazz beginnings, how he began communing more closely with his Navajo roots and how he mourns the melodies lost to time that double as a fertile source of mystery.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I'm amazed by the melodic strength and integrity of some of these Native American tunes you transmuted into jazz. Where did they come from?

We started out playing jazz standards, and we weren't getting anywhere. We sounded like every jazz combo in the world! [Laughs.] So, we decided to dig a little deeper into everyone's culture. Mike [McCluhan], the bass player, obviously, is white. [Drummer] Nick [Lucero] is Hispanic, and actually comes from Peruvian culture. At the same time, both of them were urging me, "We need to do something Native American, with that kind of influence."

So, I went to this Aztec library that's 12 miles from where I live right now. I found this tape of Navajo spinning songs. At that time, I didn't really know what spinning songs were. I knew of them. But after doing a lot more research and speaking with some of the elders that are still on the reservation today, [I learned] they were basically social songs that taught their children or outsiders manners or how to operate. It's really neat that they used music to teach those things.

Just an example: When the song starts, it's the male who would have to ask politely for the lady to dance. There was a certain gesture they would make. They would dance, and that was a time they would get in a conversation. They had a very specific dance. It seemed pretty intense. It wasn't like today, [where you're] both dancing however you feel like. There were certain structures to it. It was really well-disciplined.

They had songs for everything. They had songs for love, songs for war, ceremonial healing-type songs, but there were also just spinning songs. The Navajo spinning songs that I started to be influenced by were those social ones. The reason why I chose those songs was that I didn't want to be playing ceremonial, sacred music and then get in trouble by someone who says that it's too sacred to share. [Laughs.] We ran into a lot of that stuff all the way through.

The melodies that caught my ear were what I focused on. We paid attention to how we mixed those together with the Latin [melodies] that Nick brings and the jam-band that Mike brings. We found out the hard way that when we create really heavy Navajo melodies, we lose the audience a bit. We lose certain people because it becomes a little too native; we fall into a hard, general category of being just Native American music.

We paid close attention to fusing those songs together to where it blends better or has a more palatable sound to everyone versus a particular demographic.

I feel like the average American may be aware of Native American history, but not be able to subdivide it. I'd like to place these melodies at a specific point in history. In the context of Navajo people, at which point did these tunes spring up?

This is something that's always been a little weird for me. Because, to tell you the truth, I didn't really grow up 100% traditional.

The only traditional music I know probably comes from my grandparents when they were traditional. Actually, both sides of my grandparents [converted] to Christianity at a later time in their lives. However, they used to be traditional, and they made this decision to follow a Christian faith instead of their traditional spiritual faith that most Native Americans follow right now.

I was still a baby when they were traditional. I would say when I was 14 or 15, that's when they decided to [convert] to Christianity. They never allowed me to go to ceremonies or put that on me to go and learn them. However, when I started, in 2013, I started to do research. I went to some of the more traditional families and asked, "What is the earliest melody you guys can remember?" A lot of them couldn't recall, but they did some humming for me and I recorded it on my phone.

My paternal grandfather was really heavy [into] tradition and still remembered his great-grandfather's melodies. One of those—we haven't released it yet or anything—but he did the same thing. He hummed it out and said he had no idea where it came from. It's just something that his great-grandfather would sing around.

However, when I paired that melody with the research I found on the tapes from the 1920s [era], it was a bunch of chiefs singing chants. There were no words. It was just pure chants. I found some similarities. One was that everything was pentatonic. Most of the time, they were in minor pentatonic. In that tape from the 1920s—who knows when it came from—it was really hard to pick out a melody.

I honestly don't know how long these songs have gone back. There are a lot of musicologists, and even Native American musicologists, that say they've been way, way early. Like, as back to as far as we can trace. The thing that I found out is that everyone has a different story. Everyone believes it came about differently. It's hard to say when or where.

There are historians that have really hard dates. But even then, to figure out the music portion is very complicated. Nothing was written down. Nothing was preserved.

Delbert Anderson

Delbert Anderson. Photo: Maurice Johnson

When you think of the knowledge that might be lost forever, do you process that in a grieving way or as a mystery to explore?

It's a little bit of both. I wish I could know straight out what a certain era sounded like. But the thing that keeps me going is that whole mystery aspect, too. I don't even know if I'm going to find anything else, more, but I'm starting to listen to these earlier tapes I found a little more closely. I'm trying to figure out, "Is there anything I'm missing?" That stuff is really encouraging; it keeps me going.

I am somewhat sad that there isn't a recording or a piece of paper that says what happened back then. I tend to stay more on the mystery side of things—figuring it out maybe later down the road.

I've also been looking into number sequences. The number four is really important to Diné culture as well as a lot of other cultures. I was trying to listen to the music and find a significance for [the number] four in their piece.

More in-depth research like that is what I've been clinging to. I'm still writing my own tunes, but [they’re] inspired by what I'm finding in the earliest recording I can find. That's as deep as I'm going. I don't know if it would make sense to visit some more places or talk to more elders. I've only been able to get, maybe, two generations back.

Anything like three or four [generations back], it's really hard. Everyone at that point is like, "I don't remember," or "I have no idea. I was too small." We never had historians. We kind of go on a telephone system.

I don't want people to walk away from this article—and this subject—simply saying, "Oh, that's cool." How can people interface with Native American jazz and support it?

I honestly never thought of it. One thing I try to do, especially when filling out grants or anything like that, is that I want to get to the core of the healing process of music. I think Native Americans share a lot of similar history with African Americans.

I think one thing is that our African American ancestors were able to get through the worst time ever in U.S. history. Not "get through it"; I know some were lost. But for the majority, a lot of African American ancestors got through that period of time, and they did it with music; they did it with self-expression. In fact, a lot of people now aren't calling it jazz. They're calling it "Black liberation music."

Liberation music itself is what I really wanted to focus on because I think there are similarities. The Native American tribes, we have the history of genocide and all that stuff. But there are people that got through it, and I'm wondering if any of those used these songs. Obviously, there are healing songs in our ceremonies and stuff like that, but I wanted to find the core reason for it.

It's a very tough question. We're kind of the only ones doing it, you know? There's not a lot of people that are trying to preserve this music. That's what I would say: We really want to highlight the healing components of this Indigenous music to everyone. I think the support would be to these areas of research of how liberation works, or how music really heals people.

People say it's good for the soul and it makes you happy, but there has to be more than that. If somebody wanted to support it, I would go with historian research, and almost like medical research, on this type of Indigenous music.

Jen Shyu On New Album 'Zero Grasses: Ritual For The Losses,' Overcoming Grief & Discrimination In Enlightened Spaces

Grammys Newsletter