Empyrean Vibes

Poll any jazz pundit about their particular addictions and you're certain to receive a passel of responses. Some have a rabid appetite for rare vinyl. Others fixate on certain artists or periods. For me, it's a more consumerist niche: Verve box sets. Norman Granz was incredibly prolific as a producer, tirelessly financing and shaping sessions to his own tastes. Between Verve itself, now under the umbrella ownership of Universal and blocks of the catalog leased to Mosaic there's an astonishing amount of material available. Many of these weighty slabs of jazz history carry the dangerous signifier "Complete" affixed to their titles, dangerous both in a sense of wallet integrity and in overall quality of content. Some, like the Complete Charlie Parker Verve set, sound great on paper, but are in reality casual listening debacles, as fragmentary alternates, false starts, studio chatter and other audio ephemera clog the spaces around complete takes. Others, like the Complete Norman Granz Jam Sessions are marvels from beginning to end.

Perusing my shelves recently, my eye halted on the curiously protruding spine of the Lionel Hampton & Oscar Peterson – Complete Quartets and Quintets set. This odd brick-shaped object is a product of the late 90s Verve box set boom where the company brass presumably approved a hashish-friendly office policy and the graphic designers went whole hog on bushels of the finest Amsterdam-imported stock. It's the sort of crackpot construction that would make the folks at Rhino Handmade, the undisputed industry leaders in nonsensical box set packaging, proud. The spine is swaddled in burlap sackcloth and two stainless steel pegs hold its thick cardboard covers together. A forty-page booklet and five burgundy cardboard disc sleeves lies sandwiched within. The whole thing slides into an ill-fitting and ultimately flimsy tan cardboard box. An ungainly fold-out poster is also included.

As unappealing as the set's appearance is, its musical contents offer a plentitude of pleasures. Prior to purchasing a used copy about five years ago, my opinion of Lionel Hampton could best be described as distanced respect coupled with mild disinterest. I knew the back-story about his seminal big bands. I had heard the epochal "Flying Home" with Illinois Jacquet's R&B pioneering freak-register solo and other sides featuring a teenage Mingus in pre-bloom. But compared to players like Bobby Hutcherson, Walt Dickerson and even Milt Jackson, his swing-rooted style seemed antiquated and even prosaic. Turns out my tin ears weren't really listening and the music on this set proves it.

Hamp hooked up with Granz in 1953 and the producer immediately set up a string of studio sessions that yielded a series of 10-inch LPs. Oscar Peterson and Ray Brown were natural picks for the rhythm section given Granz's religious use of their talents and their partnership in Peterson's working trio. Buddy Rich was tapped as well and the quartet cycled through a songbook of second-nature swing tunes by the likes of Irving Berlin, Ira Gershwin, Benny Goodman, Cole Porter and Fletcher Henderson among others. The pedestrian quality of the songbook is more than offset by the flexibility it allows the players in sounding off at length and with brio.

Essays by Brian Priestly and Francis included in the set's booklet do an excellent job providing a personal history of Hamp prior and after these sessions as well as placing the music in context. He and Peterson were an excellent match, each man often seized by the need for exuberant displays of virtuosity. There's plenty of that here starting with the first disc, which contains one dizzying vibes solo after another. The metaphor of a rollercoaster is frequently used to convey musical velocity and swiftly changing trajectories. It's an ideal encapsulation of Hamp's double-malleted drills, the precisely parceled notes dropping in blurred sequences that immediately recall Tatum's piano runs and by association, presage Hamp's Granz-funded small group conclave with the pianist, a session that not so coincidentally included Rich as third man and was eventually released on Pablo. Peterson's Tatum-isms come through too, but staying true to his sideman role, he holds the more bombastic side of his musical personality largely in check and the sessions are all the better for it. There's still room for successive duels and two spar breathtakingly on numerous occasions, but the overall musicality sustains intact.

In addition to Hamp's speed and implacable placement, there's his tone: A brightly ringing metallic sound that uses sustain only sparingly and centers instead on a clarion candor. Granz has him jacked up in the mix on the first session and it's an unnecessary tactic that places Peterson at a slight disadvantage, one that pianist shoulders with good humor. The upswing is that there's even more bite to Hamp's delirious runs, but Brown ends up suffering the most, his bass muddied and several excellent solos compromised by the faulty balance. Rich remains unperturbed, secure in the knowledge that his muscular chops will surmount any recording inequities. He revels in the lighting of rhythmic fires beneath the soloists, but also shows restraint on the occasional ballad numbers. Most drummers require sticks to strike with the force he musters on brushes and his solo in the closing minutes of "The Nearness of You", cited by Priestly in the notes as a "master class", is but one of many superlative showings. Subsequent discs improve in sound and attain a more equitable balance.

Granz stuck with the winning quartet formula as his constant, but Hamp was also receptive to the occasional guest. The set's third and fifth discs feature clarinetist Buddy DeFranco and guitarist Herb Ellis, respectively. DeFranco's bop-tempered reed fits right into the playfully competitive frontline while Ellis seems to prefer a more relaxed role slipping in between Rich and Brown as another frequent rhythmic voice. In both cases, it's exhilarating to hear the core quartet additionally sparked by the presence of such a distinguished guest.

Hamp repeatedly fielded heat throughout his career for the earthy exuberance that often informed his playing. Critics claimed that his enduring ties to popular dance music and the more plebian facets of jazz (ferocious rhythm, crowd-catering displays of dexterity, etc.) were evidence of an improvisatory mind not on par with later bop and postbop successors. This set proves such notions as utter hogwash. Hamp's rhythmic, harmonic and melodic aptitudes accepted the parameters of swing as their root, but as the dozens of solos on this set substantiate, they also included copious imagination and ingenuity in their execution. The nearly 18-minute rendering of Hamp's signature "Flying Home" that dominates disc three is displays this beyond the shadow of a doubt, starting light and airy with Rich on brushes and culminating with a the drummer, on sticks, engaged in a frenzied chase with the leader, the latter grunting with a volubility almost on par with instrument. A provocative, perspiration-drenched performance, it perfectly puts to lie the prejudice of swing as a fogeyish exercise.

Five discs sequenced to near capacity may seem like overkill and, to be honest, I'm not usually inclined to play more than one or two in a single sitting. But for me this set is a smaller example of the retort I use when queried about the exorbitant size of my collection. Sure, there's probably no way that I'll be able to listen to everything repeatedly in my lifetime, but as with any well-stocked library, it's nice to have the option hear any one of these immensely enjoyable sessions when the whim visits.