Philly Joe Jones

There is something immediately striking about the personnel Philly Joe assembled for this date: Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Julian Priester on trombone, Bill Barron on tenor, Pepper Adams adding baritone heft on select tracks, and two pianists splitting the date between Dolo Coker and Sonny Clark. These were not safe choices. This is not a session built around proven names designed to guarantee a commercial outcome. It is the record of a bandleader with genuine curiosity about where the music could go.

Philly Joe had spent 1955 to 1958 as the engine of the Miles Davis Quintet before he walked into the Riverside studios for this date. He had learned from that experience exactly what a drummer needs to do: not just keep time but shape the temperature of a performance, push and pull against the soloists, create the feeling of forward momentum without ever hurrying. On Showcase he takes all of that and applies it to a more varied ensemble setting, and the result is a record that has genuine range.

The two pianists, Dolo Coker on six tracks and Sonny Clark on two from the November 18 date, bring very different sensibilities to their respective tracks. Coker is the more orthodox bop comper, supple and supportive. Clark is darker and more harmonically restless, and the contrast across the album gives Showcase more textural range than a single-pianist date would have provided. Jimmy Garrison anchors every track at the bass and plays with the same authority he would soon bring to Coltrane's classic quartet. This is a considered record, more carefully arranged than a typical hard bop blowing session, and it rewards repeated listening.

The subtitle "Philly Joe Jones Big Band Sounds" tells you exactly what this is, and the personnel list fills in the rest of the argument. Lee Morgan and Blue Mitchell on trumpets, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Cannonball Adderley on alto, Benny Golson on tenor, Sahib Shihab on baritone, Herbie Mann threading flute and piccolo through the orchestration, Wynton Kelly at the piano. This is an embarrassment of riches by anyone's measure, and Philly Joe coordinates the whole thing with a looseness that belies the logistical ambition of the project.

The tracks range across a set of originals and standards that give the full ensemble room to stretch. "Stablemates" follows the opener "Blue Gwynn" on Side A and immediately demonstrates that Philly Joe understood how to adapt his quintet instincts to a larger palette without losing any of the directness that made him so valuable in small-group settings. He does not play differently with ten musicians than he does with four, and that consistency is exactly what the band needs.

Wynton Kelly is the ideal pianist for this kind of session: always supportive, never obtrusive, capable of swinging at any tempo with equal conviction. The rhythm section as a whole has the kind of locked-in quality that comes from musicians who know each other's instincts. This is the most ambitious thing Philly Joe put his name on as a leader, and the ambition pays off.

The move from Riverside to Atlantic shifted the commercial context without doing anything to change the music. This is still a hard bop session played by serious musicians, but the quintet format gives it a different feel from the larger Riverside ensembles that preceded it. Five people in a room, playing with complete commitment, recorded with a directness that suits the material.

Mike Downs on cornet is a less-known figure than the names Philly Joe had been working with on his Riverside dates, but he plays with a warmth and authority that fits the session well. Bill Barron on tenor brings a slightly harder edge and the blend between the two horns has an interestingly asymmetrical quality. They are not quite pointing in the same direction harmonically, and that slight creative tension gives the improvisations more interest than a more conventionally matched front line might have produced.

Walter Davis Jr. at the piano is an undervalued figure from this period who plays with a good deal of sophistication without ever drawing attention to his own sophistication. His accompaniment is always purposeful and his solos cover a lot of harmonic ground with a minimum of fuss. The date runs a tight thirty-seven minutes and earns every one of them. This is Philly Joe in a straightforwardly excellent hard bop context, doing exactly what he was put on earth to do.

Four of the greatest jazz drummers in New York in the same room at Birdland on one April night in 1960, with Tommy Flanagan holding the whole thing together at the piano and a twenty-two-year-old Ron Carter on bass. This is exactly the kind of event that makes you wish you had been standing somewhere on 52nd Street six decades ago. The first volume from this concert series had already demonstrated the concept worked. Volume Two confirms it.

What makes this record more than a novelty is that the three drummers heard on it are genuinely different musicians with genuinely different approaches. Art Blakey played that night too, but his features went on Volume One. Elvin Jones at this point had already developed the polyrhythmic quality that would define his work with Coltrane. Charlie Persip is the least celebrated of the four and the most underrated. And Philly Joe brings the singing quality, the melodic intelligence, the ability to make the kit tell a story, that made him Miles Davis's drummer of choice from 1955 to 1958.

Flanagan is the unsung hero of this record. To comp for three different drummers with three different approaches, maintaining the harmonic clarity and the rhythmic groove that gives each of them a platform, is a formidable task. He does it with the same quiet grace he brought to every session he ever played on. Ron Carter, still three years away from joining Miles Davis in 1963, plays with a poise and fullness of tone that announces exactly the kind of musician he is about to become.

Philly Joe Jones spent a significant stretch of the late 1960s in Europe, and this London session from October 1968 documents a period in his career that does not receive anything like the attention it deserves. The British musicians around him are not the names from the Blue Note rosters or the Prestige sessions, but they are serious players with their own developed voices, and the date has a freshness and a looseness that comes from musicians who are not trying to replicate what has already been done.

Kenny Wheeler on trumpet was already developing the distinctive quality that would mark his later ECM recordings: a slightly airy, searching tone that does not press the sound but floats it, giving the harmonies room to resonate. Harold McNair brings a different energy on tenor and doubles on flute with a facility that gives the septet additional textural range. Peter King on alto is the most conventionally bop-oriented voice in the group and provides an anchoring directness that keeps the more exploratory moments from losing their footing.

The title track has a particular charm, a swaggering Joe Henderson line that suits the rhythm section as if it had been written for these musicians. The album was recorded in October but sat in the vaults until Black Lion released it in 1971 as Trailways Express; Mo' Joe is a later reissue title. Whatever name it goes by, it is a record worth finding.

Milestone assembled this double album in 1974 from existing label material featuring four of the greatest drummers in the hard bop tradition, and the concept is even better in practice than it sounds on paper. Art Blakey, Max Roach, Elvin Jones, and Philly Joe Jones: the four names represent essentially the entire range of what hard bop drumming could be. Hearing them back to back, in a single listening session, makes you hear things about each of them that you might miss in isolation.

What becomes clear almost immediately is how different these four drummers actually are, even though they are all working within the same tradition and the same basic rhythmic language. Blakey is the most physical, the most direct, the one who seems to be creating momentum through sheer force of will. Roach is the most compositional, the most interested in silence and structure. Jones works with polyrhythmic density in a way that creates a kind of forward pressure from multiple directions simultaneously. And Philly Joe plays with a singing, melodic quality that none of the others quite replicates.

For Philly Joe specifically, the tracks here capture him operating at the height of his powers in studio settings that suited him. The comparison with his peers only confirms the argument: he was one of the central figures of this music, with an individual voice that was completely his own. As a document of what hard bop drumming actually was and what made it extraordinary, this compilation has no rival.

The title is pure Philly Joe: a wordplay that announces its own confidence and humor in the same breath. The music inside the title earns it completely. This is a late-career session recorded for Galaxy at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley over three days at the end of November and the start of December 1977, and it assembles one of the strongest lineups Philly Joe ever led. Dexter Gordon had just returned from his long European exile and was in the full bloom of his comeback. Nat Adderley on cornet was playing as well as he ever had. George Cables and Ron Carter in the rhythm section constitute something close to an ideal pairing.

What this record captures above all is Philly Joe at fifty-four playing with the full command and authority of a musician at the peak of his powers, not despite the years but because of them. The technical facility is undiminished. The musical intelligence has, if anything, deepened. He listens to the front line with a specificity and generosity that makes everyone around him play better, and you can hear that generosity operating throughout the date.

Ira Sullivan contributes an additional voice that adds range to the front line without overcrowding it. His soprano work in particular has a keening, searching quality that contrasts productively with Gordon's massive tenor sound. This is one of the genuinely great Philly Joe Jones records, a late statement from a master that deserves far more attention than it typically gets.

The significance of this particular trio gets obscured by how naturally the music flows. Red Garland, Ron Carter, and Philly Joe Jones as a trio: these three musicians had all been central figures in the Miles Davis universe, Garland and Philly Joe as members of the First Great Quintet of the mid-1950s, Carter as the anchor of the Second Great Quintet a decade later.

The standards they chose for this session "Solar," "Oleo," "But Not for Me," "Love for Sale," are not adventurous choices, and they are not meant to be. This is a record that draws its meaning from the quality of the interaction rather than the novelty of the material. Red Garland plays with the block-chord sophistication and the rolling swing that defined his approach through the Miles years and beyond, and hearing it in the context of this rhythm section is to understand exactly why Miles wanted him there.

Ron Carter serves as the ideal bridge between two musicians whose musical dialogue predates his time with Miles by a decade. He does not impose his own personality on a relationship that already has its own history; he reads the situation and fits himself into it with his characteristic precision. The result is a trio record of rare warmth, the sound of three exceptional musicians who respect each other completely. Orrin Keepnews produced it and Fantasy got the recording right, the piano sitting naturally in the room without being pushed forward. A masterpiece of economy.