ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Records: Rescued Talent

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30559, 30 September 1964, Page 9

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Records: Rescued Talent

Catch Mel Joe Pass. Pass (gtr.), Clare Fischer ipno. and organ), Albert Stinson or Ralph Pena (bass), Colin Bailey or Larry Bunker idrs.). Catch Mel, Mood Indigo, No Cover No Minimum, Summertime, five other tracks. Fontana mono TL.688137.

Joe Pass is one of the many creative people rescued from the grinding sub-world of drug addiction by Synanon House, the rehabilitation centre founded and staffed by former addicts in Santa Monica. California. He was an addict for 12 years to a habit that cost him 20 dollars a day: and (group therapy being a standard treatment at Synanon ) he makes no secret of it Pass caused a minor flurry in jazz circles here when he appeared on the “Sounds of Synanon” programme in the “Jazz Scene U.S.A.” television series. He was then completely unknown in this country and he impressed immediately as the finest new jazz guitarist for years. That impression is confirmed bv this recording. Stylistically Pass is no innovator; he works in the same general direction as most other contemporary jazz guitarists—long, tumbling lines, fury textures, knarled rhythms. What do set him apart from most of his contemporaries are the strength of his lines and his unusually clean articulation. His solos are clear and structurally balanced, and his technical ability allows him to give them striking textural depth. Particularly memorable in this set are “But Beautiful,” the title piece (which contains some especially succulent phrasing) and “No Cover No Minimum,” on which Pass treads between the opposing forces of toughness and lyricism in a performance as taut as it is pregnant with ambiguity. The tensile frame within which Pass moves is the work mainly of Clare Fischer, a pianist whose experience goes back many years but who is only now beginning to be

known outside an inner circle of musicians, and the bass player, Albert Stinson. Just 20 years old at the time of recording, Stinson is the latest of the new-wave bass players—young performers who have replaced the traditional four-to-the-bar style of jazz bass-, playing with a loosely contrapuntal style and play around the beat rather that at it, The more experienced Ralph Pena also plays insistently on the three tracks on which he replaces Stinson.

The recording quality is quite good, except on “Falling in Love with Love,” on which there are some alarming changes of level. Tommy Dorsey's Greatest Band. -22 tracks, incl. Marie, Song of India, Opus No. 1, On. the Sunny Side of the Street, The • Minor Goes Muggin’, 26th Century-Fox Records TL-31131/2 (two 12in L.P.'s, mono only). The “Swing Era” lasted from 1936, when Benny Goodman had his first big success on the West Coast, to the middle forties. It was a unique period in American popular music, when bands such as Goodman’s received the kind of adulation teenagers reserve now for. the Liverpool sound. Of the ruling triumvirate of swing-band leaders, one (Goodman) has been making a comeback another (Artie Shaw) has forsaken music in favour of a literary career, and the third (Dorsey) is dead. Though none cd the three was an outstanding jazz soloist (Goodman and Shaw were fair-to-middling jazzmen: Dorsey never was one), their value to jazz was considerable. They attracted to jazz many listeners who have stayed over the years; and their bands were workshops for such jazz notables as Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Shavers, Sy Oliver, the late Dave Tough, Charlie Christian and Oran Page. Goodman and Shaw have been nicely done by in the reissue catalogues, but Dorsey’s recordings have been harder

to find and this set will be welcomed by many veterans of the forties. For the conteihporary jazz listener, however, it promises rather more than it delivers. A few swinging, but rather dated, instrumentals (“Swing

High,” “Opus No. 1,” and “Well, Git It”) and occasional solos by Buddy de Franco, Charlie Shavers and Dodo Marmarosa (a prime mover of the “bop” movement who has drifted out of sight in recent years) provide the jazz attraction. The rest is strictly for the nostalgiaridden and collectors of ephemera. The dubbing, from “airshots” taken in 1944 or 1945, is quite good.