Bin grad bei Stitt hängengeblieben – macht schon enormen Spass, ihm zu lauschen, wenn er „on“ ist!
Eine der allerschönsten Scheiben ist meiner Meinung nach New York Jazz, aufgenommen am 14. September 1956 mit Jimmy Jones (p), Ray Brown (b) und Jo Jones (d). Stitt ist am Tenor und am Alt zu hören, öffnet mit einem grossartigen Blues-Solo in „Norman’s Blues“ und sofort wird klar, dass das ein Tag ist, an dem er alles erreichen kann. Das Programm besteht aus Standards (im rasanten Tempo wie auch als Balladen dargeboten) und zwei weiteren Blues von Stitt, besonders toll der langsame „Down Home Blues“. Über die Musik muss man wirklich nichts detailliertes schreiben, aber man sollte diese Scheibe definitiv hören! Die Band ist unaufgeregt und zurückhaltend, legt aber einen fetten, erdigen Teppich aus für Stitt.
Auf CD erschien sie 2003 in der damaligen „Verve LPR Series“ und sollte gemäss den Infos auf dem OBI seit Juni 2006 vergriffen sein. Manche Titel aus der Reihe (die über mehrere Etappen in die derzeitigen „Originals“ mutiert ist) sind aber später in Digipacks erneut erschienen und ich glaube, diese war auch darunter. Sollte jedenfalls noch auffindbar sein.
Nat Hentoff schreibt in seinen Liner Notes ein paar entwaffnend ehrliche Dinge über Stitt – ich zitiere auszugsweise:
(…)
For most of his adult life, Sonny has been one of the wholly involved players, well known and admired for his soul and the earthiness of his message only by musicians who feel and play like he does and by that part of the jazz audience that is most moved by naked, open emotion. He has made his mark with them as an honest yeasayer who can’t help but play what he knows and feels.
(…)
Sonny does not possess Bird’s volcanic originality of conception, and in the other aspects of that approach to the horn, Bird was there first. In jazz, the tempting Everests are for those who lead, not follow, no matter how well they follow.
It is not, therefore, a boon to Sonny to continually compare him with Bird. It is enough to say that, like so many others, he will feel in his spirit and in his fingers for the rest of his life the driving presence of Bird. It is to Sonny’s credit to say further that at his best, he can play with a ferocity of passion and an into-the-eye-of-the-hurricane conception that can, as it once did at Basin Street in New York, freeze a table of musicians into a still life of open mouths and re-awakened eyes. There are other times when he yields to the most irritating musical mannersim of his generation, the hard-driving running of changes on his horn that underlines quickness of ear and firmness of chops, but is little less edifying to the spirit than RCA’s electronic synthesizer. Both ways of Stitt are in evidence on this set. Increasingly, however, in the past two year, there has been less and less of the electronic synthesizer and more of the turning of a song into a fragment of autobiography in Sonny’s playing.
Like all those players who believe in the hot, hard, free-blowing route of modern jazz (…), Sonny at base tells the blues. He is a preacher, completely at home in communicating the nourishment of the blues, as is particularly heard here in the blues that opens the second side.
(…)
~ Nat Hentoff, Liner Notes zu „New York Jazz – The Sonny Stitt Quartet“, Verve MG V-8219
Der Blues, von dem am Ende des zitierten (langen) Ausschnitts die Rede ist, ist eben der langsame, erdige „Down Home Blues“, den ich oben auch schon herausgehoben habe.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #151: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv – 09.04., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba