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The Second Set: More Jazz on Video, Part 3
  Jumping ahead almost 30 years, Live from Bahia offers a glistening image of just how much the music identifiable as jazz has changed in texture. Larry Coryell, one of the earliest pioneers of the jazz-rock idiom, teams up with veteran drummer Billy Cobham (who also passed through the jazz-rock moment), young New Orleans saxophonist Donald Harrison, and a dozen Brazilian musicians, many of them from Bahia's famed percussion community, for an hour of sounds that stretch from the pre-jazz rhythms of Africa to the recent fusion of jazz, rock, and Brazilian music. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Bahia was the largest slave port in the Americas, a place where the musical and religious traditions of the Yoruba people of West Africa survived the depredations of the slave trade. The Brazilian idiom known as Tropicalia, made famous in the 1970s and '80s by the likes of Milton Nascimento and Caetano Veloso, relied on a blend of Afro-derived Bahian percussion and electric sounds borrowed from rock and roll. Coryell, who tends to be rather self-effacing for an electric guitarist, fits right in with the communal spirit as he leads the band through a beguiling set of compositions by himself, Nascimento, and guitarist-vocalist Dori Caymmi, son of the legendary Brazilian composer Dorival Caymmi and a gifted composer in his own right. Filmed on the Passeio Publico overlooking the harbor of Salvador da Bahia, with a handful of locals gyrating energetically in the background, this is about as basic as session videos get, but because the music meshes so well with the sun and the shimmering blue of the bay, it works just fine. Scenes of local fishermen, dancers on the Passeio, or the pastel streets of Bahia are often perfunctory, but the music is amiable enough that it's hard to object. Coryell has long been a splendid guitarist in search of a viable context. He can blend the subtle styles of jazz greats such as Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall with a whole spectrum of rock guitarists, and in the past he often crammed them all into a single solo. His only problem was an unwillingness to stick with one approach long enough to get comfortable. Here he ambles through different moods, styles, and textures, leaving the viewer wishing for more. Sometimes I'm not sure if Coryell's self-effacement is an asset or a liability. During a brief duet with Harrison on alto, you can barely hear Coryell's acoustic 12-string; at other times, he fades into the background completely, emerging to take a lovely solo on one of Caymmi's compositions. The overall impression he leaves you with is one of delightful ensemble playing without a defining instrumental leader, but that tradition actually reaches back to the very beginnings of jazz in New Orleans nearly a century ago. A*Vision, 1992, 57 minutes Color, Stereo VAI, the same company that brought out the fine Burrill Crohn compilations The Coltrane Legacy and Trumpet Kings, reviewed previously, also offers a six-volume set entitled Live at the Village Vanguard, featuring the likes of Freddie Hubbard, Mal Waldron, Lee Konitz, and John Abercrombie. But the most impressive video of the group belongs to David Murray, who can no longer be considered a Young Turk, as the liner notes assert, having begun his recording career over 15 years ago (on an album produced by this writer). Murray has played in a number of engaging formats over those years, including the World Saxophone Quartet and his own big band, but the plain old quartet gives him the room he needs to unleash his expansive sound supported by a top-notch rhythm section. Of all the players I've heard emerge in the past two decades, Murray is most effectively able to integrate the classic tenor sax tradition of the past with the revolutionary approach of the avant-garde and still retain a distinctive style. On ballads such as "Lovers" and "Ming" on this tape, he mixes the wine-dark richness of Ben Webster, Paul Gonsalves, Sonny Rollins, and late Lester Young with the edginess of Coltrane and Archie Shepp without losing his balance. The video itself, unfortunately, is marred by clichés: too many tight close-ups of Murray's face, along with those of pianist John Hicks, bassist Fred Hopkins, and drummer Ed Blackwell. Shooting in the claustrophobic confines of the Village Vanguard, surely one of the smallest jazz clubs on earth, doesn't leave a director many options, but over-the-shoulder and under-the-armpit shots don't appear to be the answer. The visual limitations of the live session video become all too apparent in the absence of a physically dynamic and captivating presence like Monk or an appealing environment like Bahia. The tape's box is also badly mislabeled: "Morning Song" and "Murray's Steps" are interchanged, several timings are clearly wrong, and although the cover says 60 minutes, the performance clocks in at 53 and change. Maybe they were thinking network TV, with room for commercials. Fortunately, this is one case in which the high quality of the music triumphs over the limitations of form and packaging. VAI, 1986, 53 minutes, Color, Stereo. There are no big surprises on Stephane Grappelli Live in San Francisco 1985, just a lot of sweet music beautifully played and filmed in colorful settings, outdoors at the Paul Masson Vineyards and indoors at the Great American Music Hall. The Music Hall is one of the most attractive venues in the country, but no setting could be more appropriate than a vineyard for the octogenarian violinist (he was a mere 74 at the time of this recording), who just seems to get smoother and richer with age, like a fine Bordeaux. The backing band of two guitars, bass, and drums approximates the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, with which Grappelli first came to fame in the 1930s along with the renowned Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. English acoustic guitarist Diz Disley sounds enough like Django to impart the proper flavor to the band while managing to sting and soar in his own voice. Aromas of New Orleans also waft occasionally through the air from Grappelli's violin; despite his classical technique, the old boy appears to be having as much fun as any Cajun fiddler. The string of standards from "I've Got Rhythm" and "Honeysuckle Rose" to "Them There Eyes" and "After You've Gone," along with the Reinhardt- Grappelli originals "Swing '42" and "Minor Swing," are precisely what we want to hear from this band. When Grappelli is joined on stage by young mandolin virtuoso David Grisman and his cohorts for a rousing "Sweet Georgia Brown," the timelessness of the music becomes as clear as sunlight on lichen. Everything about this video, from the superb camerawork, editing, and sound quality to the seamless flow of the music is a pure delight - with the possible exception, once again, of the packaging. The video itself proclaims that both performances took place in 1982, not 1985, as stated on the box. And maybe I'm old- fashioned, but I wish videos would list complete personnel and songs in the correct order on the jacket, the way records used to do.  As with the late Sun Ra and his Arkestra, all the face paint, costumes, and theatrics that the Art Ensemble of Chicago toss around with such vaudevillian flair wouldn't count for much if the music weren't strong enough to carry it all. The idea that the avant-garde could be fun - implicit in Surrealism and Dada and acknowledged in the Serious Fun music festivals of recent years - was brought to life in jazz largely through Sun Ra and the Art Ensemble by successfully undercutting the layers of solemnity that made avant-garde jazz so insufferable at times. Maybe for this reason, the AEC has generally been more enjoyable in person than on record, and the great value of The Art Ensemble of Chicago Live from the Jazz Showcase is that the camera lets you see where many of their strange sounds are coming from - like that odd bleat, which is traced to a foot stomping on a taxi horn. It's especially helpful to have the visual connections in front of you when the music becomes a mosaic of seemingly disconnected sounds; among other things, an attentive viewer can learn to distinguish the different saxophone styles of Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman. But for all their preliminary desert-wandering, when the Ensemble finds a groove during the last 15 minutes, on the descriptively titled "New Orleans" and "Funky AECO," they bite down on it like a gila monster and don't let go till sundown. Having created that kind of groove, they can make music as infectious and nearly as accessible as any mainstream band. The main virtue of Gil Evans and His Orchestra, apart from the music itself, is that it allows the timbrally challenged to differentiate, say, the French horn solos from trombone and trumpet without having to refer to liner notes. That's a bigger help than it may seem, since Gil's music is among the most texturally complex and multi-layered of any in jazz. Without question, his may be the most consistently satisfying and absorbing big band music made in the last couple of decades, and along with Sun Ra's the most underrated. (Heresy alert: I like Evans's arranging more than Ellington's, even if he doesn't have anything like the caliber of legendary soloists that Duke had in his service.) Gil didn't make many records of his own, so everything we have of his becomes that much more precious. Little else needs to be said about this live concert recorded in Switzerland, possibly in 1987 (don't expect the jacket to divulge such privileged information), with compositions by Gershwin, Monk, Mingus, Hendrix, and Evans himself. The camerawork here makes the average Great Performances broadcast on WNET look more exciting than Sam Peckinpah, but the music is indispensable. And when the visuals grow too tedious to watch, well, you can always close your eyes and pretend you're listening to a record. Most of the videos mentioned above can be found at retail outlets such as
Tower Video and through specialty stores; all except A*Vision and BMG Video
can be ordered directly from their respective producers.
lingo 5
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