André Previn - Previn At Sunset (Black Lion)

André Previn is a brilliant nuisance. A bona fide prodigy, a superb orchestra leader, and an arranger / composer of distinction, he is also one of the least convincing "jazzmen" I've ever heard. Try as hard he might – and such effortfulness is part of the problem -- he never quite swings, and his solos often burst with as much filler as with effervescence.

However, Previn has never been slavishly imitative; he is simply too prodigious a musical thinker to slip into others' routines, even in the most heated moments. What is surprising about the 1945 / 1946 recordings (originally made for the Sunset and Monarch labels) is not that they were made when Previn was all of 16 years old. Rather, these trios startle to the extent that they reveal a piano stylist who has already made something personal out of powerful influence Art Tatum's music had on him. So, at least for a few moments "back then" the mid-1940's, Previn stands alongside Bud Powell as one of the few pianists of the era to work both through and out of the older virtuoso. This is apparent on the trio performances, which borrow the Nat Cole Trio instrumentation (Dave Barbour, the once Mr. Peggy Lee, or Irving Ashby on guitar; John Simmons or Red Callendar on bass) but not that ensemble's relatively even temperament. This version of "Take The 'A' Train" does not steam ahead, or glide ahead on rails of luxury, but accelerates and decelerates as slope necessitates, rattles around, spins it wheels. As an interpretation, it is speed as Impressionism. How the performance avoids preciosity is something of a mystery to me, but it does. Previn's solo performances are similar if more startling exercises in almost going overboard: a torrid "Body And Soul"; a rather convincing blues "That Old Blue Magic" that tantalizes with echoes of both Jess Stacy and Chopin; and, more to the point, "Variations On A Theme", which seems to deliver on the promise of so-called "Third Stream Music" a full decade before that genre was ever defined, and thus calls to mind some of Charles Mingus' earliest West Coast-based experiments in "legitimate" composition. Consider the jam tracks with Willie Smith, Howard McGhee, Vido Musso, Buddy Childers and Eddie Safranski mere bonuses.

Could it be that this brat Previn was crafting his own form of modern jazz, one contemporary with bop but that had little or nothing to do with the innovations offered by the Parker, Gillespie, Powell and all those other great African-Americans working at the opposite end of the continent? I don’t know, but Previn At Sunset is an excellent place from which to begin to try and understand a very misunderstood musician.

~ Joe Milazzo