Tadd Dameron’s musical reputation rests largely on his superlative abilities as an arranger and composer. His late Forties sextets with Fats Navarro still stand as some of the finest examples of larger scale bop in existence. Thanks to the breadth of these tandem talents, Dameron’s skills as an instrumentalist were often overshadowed. His own self-deprecating take on his playing didn’t help matters and it’s interesting to consult the contemporaneous opinions of jazz critics Ira Gitler and Nat Hentoff on the subject in the context of this album. Both decree the session a bit of a missed opportunity due to the absence of multiple horns. With the benefit of hindsight, I would argue otherwise as it gives listeners the finite opportunity to hear Dameron’s piano in a relatively unfettered small scale setting completely of his own design. There are no compositions on commensurate level with “Hot House” or “Good Bait” here, but that’s beside the point.
At the time of this particular Prestige-financed conclave, Coltrane was still in the thrall of heroin. His playing here gives little, if any, indication of the addiction, tensile lines spooling from his tenor in the sorts of note-pregnant patterns Miles found so quixotically loquacious. He rides the changes of the all-Dameron program with an insistence that only leavens drastically on the lush ballads “Soultrane” and “On a Misty Night” and sustains a virile energy throughout. Dameron’s keyboard style, a sometimes workbook-like blend of Tommy Flanagan-modeled elegance and Monkian angularity, contrasts cannily with Coltrane’s incandescence. Journeyman bassist John Simmons earns his paycheck, but little more, while Philly Joe Jones crackles behind his kit, playfully baiting both Coltrane and Dameron on a couple of occasions and keeping the music’s rhythmic undercarriage in robust condition. Given the brevity of the disc (just beyond that of an EP), patient consumers may want to wait for the second entry in the trilogy of Coltrane Prestige boxes scheduled for release by Concord sometime later this year. Others visited by a more immediate jones will find their ducats well spent on this single.
~ Derek Taylor
Posted by derek on August 7, 2007 4:09 AMJohn Coltrane Prestige recordings are a world in itself. There were sixties sax players who played only this side of the Trane. We get very often the feeling of true improvisation listening to him. Ever loved John Coltrane's sounds since my first listening in my mid teens on my first little turntable case with speaker........
Workin' Steamin' Cookin' In the seventies I was gifted the by the "Brussels wizard new-vinyl seller number one" of the EP "MATING CALL" (Swedish Version) with Dameron with its sea birds on the yellow colored sand beaches with the tunes Mating Call, On a Misty Night and Roams on it with notes of Ira Gitler. It reads MEP 299 "Made in Sweden for Metronome Records". Nice listening but the cover in bad shape, I don't say the grooves ! . I would have wished to swap this sentimentally only against a Rutherford recordings that I don't have as the CDr duo with Sabu Toyozumi or the vinyl version of Neuph etc... Oh yes Paul is on the first Westbrook Brass Ensemble on Original Records and I have idiotly sold this one twenty years ago !
Philly Joe is on this Mating Call and Paul Rutherford favourite drummers , both Paul Lytton and Lovens, love Philly Joe a lot. The late Philly Joe Jones was one of the most surprising drummer of the whole bop scene, musically speaking. He was the model of the young Paul Lovens before he was involved with Alex and Manfred Schoof, who , I think, discovered him.
When I Say Slowly I Mean As Soon As Possible !!
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