Hank Jones - Compassion

I've always been a fan of 1970's recordings of older bebop players because most players are at least in their middle age and after decades playing the music, the language has really seeped into their playing and improvising sounds as natural as breathing.  Pianist Hank Jones's late 1970s output for various labels are great examples of this including the subject of this post, Compassion with George Duvivier on bass and Alan Dawson on drums.  

The album was recorded in the South of France on July 17, 1978 for the Black and Blue label.  While the playing is fabulous, the downside of 1970's recordings is the poor recording and audio technology.  The piano sounds fine, but these were the baby years for acoustic bass pickups.  With fusion, electricity and amplification took over the sound of jazz, but even on an album crafted towards fans of acoustic-style jazz (for lack of a better term), the bass was recorded amplified.  Overall, Duvivier's sound isn't that bad, but his high notes are particularly piercing sometimes especially with a harder attack.  Also, the sound is so uneven in a way that distracts from his articulations when he solos.  It would not be until the late 1990s that a pickup with a more natural sound for acoustic bass would be developed.  On the vinyl version, the drums are really low in the mix (to the point that it sounds like a duo on the ballads), but the 1997 remastered version sounds far superior.  Dead-sounding drums (again for lack of a better term) were popular in the 1970s so that is also prevalent here.  But, past these audio issues is a hidden treasure of jazz.

Hank Jones (1918-2010) has always been for me a consummate Swing to Bop player.  He has a deep vocabulary shaped by bebop, but he had already listened and digest Earl Hines, Art Tatum, Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson.  I mean he would have been in his mid-twenties when bebop was coming around!  While he had integrated the modern jazz language, his sound remain shaped by the Swing Era.  He could easily fall into stride and it would completely sound natural.  Barry Harris, as an example, has a strong bebop identity while Mary Lou Williams parsed it out so that she played different styles on different songs, but Jones managed to carve out a style that was flexible enough to include other styles of jazz and contributed towards a "mainstream" sound in jazz.  Players like him are important for the history of jazz, as many, many players develop their own style in this way.

George Duvivier (1920-1985) was a high school violinist and concertmaster at the Conservatory of Musical Art in New York before switching to double bass and jazz.  In the 1940's he played with Coleman Hawkins, Lucky Millinder, Jimmie Lunceford, and Sy Oliver before largely making his living in the studios.  Like Jones, he was flexible enough to play with a diverse range of jazz musicians including Benny Goodman, Shelly Manne, Stan Getz, Eric Dolphy, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Gunther Schuller, and John Lewis.  

Alan Dawson (1929-1996) was the "baby" of the group and is probably best known as an educator with his most famous student being Tony Williams.  But his playing is terrific and he plays in the style of a Swing drummer with not a lot of emphasis on interacting with the soloist.  I'm sure he had the ability to do so if he wanted but I'm making this statement based on this record, Sonny Stitt's Tune Up, and his work with Dave Brubeck in the 1970s, where he maintains a clean slate for the soloists.  

First off, the program has an interesting selection of tunes.  "A Foggy Day" is the lone familiar standard with two originals each by Hank Jones and vibraphonist Milt Jackson, one by Alan Dawson, and "Yours is my Heart Alone" by Franz Lehar.  Lehar was an Austrian-Hungarian composer of operettas and the tune is from The Land of Smiles from 1929 and while it doesn't appear like it would be jazz material, it's a lovely tune and was actually covered by a number of bands during the Swing Era including Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra, Frank Sinatra with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, and Bing Crosby, all in 1940!  Oscar Peterson had the song in his repertoire but otherwise there are not many other jazz versions that I know of.   

Jones's version is taken at an easy, medium pace and his solo is excellent.  He seems to have endless stream of ideas and what's nice is that he always keeps it fresh by switching his ideas often.  Sometimes it would be nice to hear and idea develop for a long period of time, but Jones instead chooses just about every time to add all kinds of plot twists to his ideas, creating nice drama.  Jones has strong technique but he never exploits it, choosing to go for good taste.  Duvivier gets a solo here and on this album, I feel that his solos are always cut off too soon, as if he's used to taking his time in getting his ideas out there.  As a result, when he's allotted one chorus, it sometimes feels as if he was just getting warmed up.  I would say his solo style prioritizes rhythm and makes use of a wide range of the bass.  

"Angel Face" is the first Hank Jones original and it's a wonderful ballad with some nice harmonic surprises.  Jones's solo is exciting and an excellent example of swing ballad playing.  He implies the double-time, but never makes the change and instead prefers to maintain the tension.  The remastered version really brings out Dawson's brushes (the vinyl version sounds like a piano/bass duo!), and his very sensitive accompaniment shines through.  A close listen to his playing reveals how present he is here and throughout the recording.  The other, "Hank's Blues", is exactly that but rhythmic phrasing combined with the passing chords ensures that this is not a jam session-type blues.  On this solo, and in general, he often bounces back and forth between double time, triplet, and eighth-note lines.  He's actually quite hard to pin down, but add some harmonic variation (substitute chords, diminished, chromatic) and it's a wonderful recipe for a jazz solo.  He's not known for his compositions so this came as a surprise.  

"Alan's Allies" is the lone song by Dawson and he is featured throughout setting the tone with a solo introduction and taking two unaccompanied choruses.  It is also the lone song he plays cymbals on.  On Brubeck's Compadres, his cymbal sound is postively shimmering, but unfortunately the cymbals are not that well recorded and even on the remastered version don't sound that bright.  Still, his swing feel comes through and with Duvivier there is a nice hook up going on.  Claude Carrière's liner notes indicate that the tune was written on the day of the session and it's that rare jazz song where the drums accompaniment part is melodic enough to be the melody.  Dawson's solo focuses on the toms throughout with more snare in the second chorus.  He seems quite flexible rhythmically as he can effectively hide that quarter note if he wanted to.  Here he's fairly transparent, but sometimes in his fours, like on "A Foggy Day", he can be Elvin-like in his phrasing.  

The album ends with two compositions by Milt Jackson which I thought was kind of interesting, as he too is not known as a composer.  Both of them were recorded by Jackson for Pablo in the mid- to late-1970s.  The first, "Compassion", is a wonderful ballad.  Jones again evokes a lot of individual piano styles, almost quoting various players as he goes along.  His solos are a rich tapestry of jazz piano and vocabulary.   Duvivier's solo is excellent and even on a ballad he too likes to varies his rhythms and feel. ""Come to me" is a Bossa and on this Dawson takes an unaccompanied melodic drum solo: maintaining his part while adding some snare or tom punctuations/accents or varying the other parts of his kit.  

Hank Jones's previous album for Black and Blue, I Remember You, also had drummer Oliver Jackson on brushes most of the time so I guess that was the piano trio sound they're going for.  Being quiet and refined, it's very easy to overlook the dynamic playing and even interplay between the musicians.  But Jones is really about subtlety and I would say that defines him, this album, and this style of piano trio jazz.   All the fine details are there for anyone willing to listen.