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"progressive" or "out"-leaning OJC's???


Rooster_Ties

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Yeah, I got the LP w/the Himmelstein notes. Classic, indeed! A freakin' novel, almost, on the back of an album.

I still say there's a very nice little book to be compiled from the liner notes to those Schlitten-produced Prestige dates and the ones written for the late-60s/early 70s "historical" reissues.

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Scott Yanow gives a surprisingly harsh :tdown to this one, but I find it to be one of the "missing links" in West Coast Out. (I'll let everyone decipher that term for themselves.) Very subtle at times, but consistently worthy of repeated listenings.

I've never even heard of this record (or Tatro for that matter). What else can you tell me about it?

A nice piece by Stuart Nicholson about that album and Duane Tatro (from Jazz Institute of Chicago website)

If, as Nabokov claims, human life is a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece, then perhaps Duane Tatro’s career in jazz might be described as a footnote to a footnote in the obscurest part of the masterpiece.

This is his only jazz recording, although Red Norvo and Art Pepper recorded compositions by him. As his name is only once mentioned in the standard reference works on jazz, the 1955 edition of The New Encyclopedia of Jazz, some biographical detail seems to be appropriate.(i)

Tatro was born in Van Nuys, California on 18 May 1927, but his family moved to Iowa when he was one. His father was something of an inventor in the electronics field and had a factory there. During a summer vacation job in a restaurant in the Waterloo district he was entranced by the sounds of the big bands, including Larry Clinton, Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller in a dance hall adjacent to the restaurant.

Resolving to become involved in music he supplemented his small income with gardening jobs to save up for a clarinet, which was eventually achieved with the help of his father. By the time he moved to tenor saxophone, the family had returned to Los Angeles. With America entering the war in late 1941, Tatro found himself sufficiently accomplished to play professionally in USO groups, joining the Musician’s Union at 15.

His first full-time job was in a band led by Mel Tormé that led to a call from Stan Kenton at 16. Despite family protests that he finish high school, Tatro played with Kenton around Los Angeles and recorded with the band on Armed Forces Radio Service transcriptions but not commercially. When Kenton took over Skinnay Ennis’s spot on the Bob Hope Show, Tatro went out on tour with the package for the duration of the mismatched pairing, 39 weeks. Then, when a disenchanted Kenton moved his operation to New York, the young saxophonist was finally prevailed upon to return to high school and complete his education.

During the remainder of his time at high school, he took occasional dance band jobs, usually taking the jazz solos. He was drafted in 1945 and completed a radar course in Chicago, but as the war ended he found himself transferred to a band at Great Lakes Naval Station where he came into contact with some of the top musicians who had been drafted into the Navy.

Indeed, Great Lakes was where Artie Shaw had been stationed prior to going overseas with his famous "Rangers" Navy band a couple of years earlier. It was here Tatro’s interest was stimulated in composing and arranging.

Out of the navy, he played with Joe Venuti and Dick Pierce while studying music at the University of Southern California and it was during this time he composed several of the numbers on this disc.

Subsequently he took advantage of the GI Bill to study music at the École Normale de Musique in Paris. There he studied composition with Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger, counterpoint with Honegger’s wife Andrée Vaurabourg—who had previously taught Boulez—and conducting with Jean Fournier.

During his two and one-half year stay in France he formed a jazz band that performed weekends and during holidays; occasionally they played with visiting Americans, including Rex Stewart in Paris and Roy Eldridge in Tunisia.

In 1951 Tatro returned home and returned to USC again, studying in the day and working in an electronics firm at night.

In 1953 an introduction to Contemporary Records and Lester Koenig resulted in a commission for four pieces, but because of the demands on his time these were not recorded until September 1954. Four more pieces were commissioned and completed more promptly, being recorded at the April 1955 sessions. These in turn led to another three commissions, recorded at the final November 1955 date.

After his period in USC he entered the electronics business full-time, but he had now begun writing for the Burbank Symphony in his spare time. This led to an introduction into the movie business where he began ghost writing soundtrack music. Soon he was back working in music full-time, and concentrating on television music, writing for any number of well known series including M.A.S.H., The Streets of San Francisco, Dynasty, Love Boat, Mission Impossible, Barnaby Jones, et al.

By the middle of the 1990s this work had fallen back, but in semi-retirement he continued to work as a composer of classical music.

Looking back on his career from the perspective of the 1990s, Tatro says he continues to be proud of Jazz for Moderns, pointing out that he had a completely free hand in what he wrote and that Lester Koenig imposed no commercial pressures on him whatsoever. The result was an album of singular character and high quality that sounds very much of its time and place—one cannot imagine many recording companies taking a chance on a project such as this in any other place or at any other time.

The album’s title, Jazz for Moderns is clearly a catch-all device; obviously Koenig did not quite know what to call this unique recording. Although there are several characteristics associated with the "West Coast sound" of the period—the light, subdued Lester Young-inspired sound of the saxes, the relaxed feel the musicians succeed in communicating, and the allusions to the Birth of the Cool nonet—an important influence in the development of the West Coast style—they do not determine the music’s character as they do on countless Contemporary or Pacific Jazz albums. Rather, the music is mediated by the strength of Tatro’s writing and these smoothly flowing performances, almost perversely, emphasize the music’s challenging ideas.

The concept governing Tatro’s writing was to apply classical music devices, and in particular 20th century classical music, to jazz. "Easy terms," for example, is an exercise in polyphonic writing where every voice has a destiny of its own that is in sharp contrast to the homophonic writing on "Dollar day," where the harmonic voicings are subservient to the dominant melody line.

Each composition is of a piece in that it is through-composed and it is this departure from conventional jazz writing that is the main interest of this album. Tatro’s elimination of piano and guitar—"the idea was in vogue then, I was particularly affected by the Gerry Mulligan quartet," he explained—is central to the way the music’s detail is focused, giving great clarity to the movement of inner voicings.

With the exception of "Dollar day" Tatro uses standard 32-bar choruses throughout, although this can be misleading since the whole point of the majority of the compositions was to remove the compositions from the province of a cyclical chord progression and let the developmental nature of the music dictate the movement of the underlying harmonies. Thus no key signature is used on the score, the destiny of the current key being shown by accidentals along the way.

For this reason, none of the soloists play off "changes" in the conventional sense, but are simply given a guide to the underlying harmony or a scale on which to base their solo or both, to guide their improvisation.

The bass-line is pre-written to ensure that the chord voicings are precisely congruent with the composer’s intentions and thus has great harmonic significance within the context of the orchestration as much as its rhythmic function.

Some pieces, such as "Low clearance," are entirely written yet the sympathetic reading the musicians give to these challenging charts makes them appear spontaneously conceived.

As Max Harrison points out, it is misleading to follow the jazz custom and speak of these pieces as being "composed and arranged" by Tatro. Every one is a genuine composition whose instrumentation seems to have come hand-in-hand with his thematic ideas; and with so many ideas being expressed in a short space of time—only "Easy terms" exceeds four minutes—it prompted Harrison to observe that the writing is analogous to the spirit of Webern in its sheer concentration of ideas, although of course there is not the slightest stylistic resemblance.[ii] When this was put this to Tatro he responded by saying he was very conscious of Webern at the time.

"Backlash" is a modal piece, which along with the Shorty Rogers/Teddy Charles album Collaboration: West (OJC 122) from the year before, places it among the first experiments using modes (rather than pedal-points and montunos ) in jazz.

Williamson and Enevoldsen in duet play an insistent, repeating motif that is the theme, with the valve-trombone moving in contrary motion to the trumpet. After eight-bars, Tatro introduces a counter-melody by the saxes; Niehaus offers a brief, flowing solo; and the ensemble returns to dwell on the thematic motif and counter melody in subtle variation to the tune’s conclusion.

"Multiplicity" presents a greater degree of developmental writing intended to move away from the tonic key to remoter harmonies and then return again to the tonic. This is achieved by presenting the theme and variations with careful counterpoint against a pre-written Enevoldsen solo, a further juxtaposition of the motifs with Holman’s brief solo appearing as a logical development of the whole.

"Minor incident" allows Holman greater scope of expression within a framework of gradually evolving part-writing as the roles of melody and counterpoint are tossed back and forth between often unison saxes to brass, a round robin that appears to be capable of evolving forever.

"Turbulence" was the first piece to be recorded and is the shortest. It opens with a theme built on a 12-note row, a sequence that Tatro says was difficult to arrive at so it would both swing and "lay on the instruments." The bridge reverses the row, the saxes stating it retrograde form, proceeding from the last note to the first. Overall, however, serial technique is not adhered to strictly and the underlying harmonies are based on a series of tonal centres.

"Low clearance" evokes memories of the Birth of the Cool band with its smooth contrapuntal writing and Williamson’s Miles-like solo that disguises a polychordal middle-eight. "Folly" actually takes polychordal writing a stage further, since the whole piece is written over a polychordal structure and includes flashes of Niehaus and Giuffre.

"Dollar day" is the only non-32 bar tune, although it is an AABA structure of 12+12+16+12. A homophonic piece, Tatro writes across the whole ensemble with wide sound blocks that enclose Niehaus’s discourse with the ensemble that contrast the specific polyphony of "Easy terms."

The album’s longest track, a fraction over four minutes, it opens with Pena’s relentlessly swinging bass that leads into a statement of the theme by unison saxes which is taken up by the brass then developed by the whole ensemble before Niehaus, for whom this is virtually a feature, takes up a dominant position in the ensemble, first with his solo and then as a leading voice.

"Outpost" appears as a duet between Williamson and Giuffre, but is another example of Tatro’s use of contrary motion; the trumpet plays the melody which is mirrored by the baritone, but although both start on the same note, when the trumpet goes up a certain interval the baritone goes down the same interval. Trumpet and baritone then take the leading lines in the deftly written variation of the theme; sometimes in unison, sometimes in counterpoint and in harmony.

"Maybe next year," an affecting ballad, later recorded by Art Pepper, is handed to Niehaus for the exposition against sustained "organ" chords from the ensemble. Surprisingly, the solo is handed to Giuffre’s gruff baritone in an unexpected contrast to the alto’s gliding lyricism before the ensemble develops the thematic material to a recapitulation of the theme by Niehaus.

"Conversation piece" makes extensive use of the interval of a fourth, then an unusual interval in jazz. Although it became fashionable in the 1960s, here its extended use, requiring Niehaus to incorporate into his solo, was daring for its time.

When Jazz for Moderns was first released critics and musicians were not quite sure what to make of it. Down beat was concerned whether it swung—it did—and when introduced in Leonard Feather’s "Blindfold Test" some musicians had difficulty relating to it.

However, in Britain, Melody Maker greeted the album with enthusiasm. Today it is difficult to see what the controversy was over; modes are now an everyday thing, as are tonal centres, while the contemporary pianist must now know how to voice "slash" chords, producing polytonality that scarcely excites comment.

While Tatro’s harmonies—criticized at the time in almost the same way Ein musikalischer Spass once raised eyebrows—sound less "modern" in current times, what he reminds us is how little developmental writing—effectively the "theme and variations" or sonata form—has been effectively employed in jazz.

This series of sonatinas, such as "Multiplicity" where the subject is developed, juxtaposed and re-stated in keys quite remote from the tonic, before returning once more to the home key, should be considered as individual entities in their own right, rather than a theme plus a series of choruses.

That this was achieved without pretension, with genuine jazz feeling and with improvisation integrated into their overall scheme represents a small but very secure achievement within the West Coast movement.

On the strength of this album, Leonard Feather described Tatro as "One of the best equipped and most stimulating writers among those who have tried to take jazz into atonal fields while retaining its basic rhythmic qualities."[iii]

When this album was originally released in 1956 it was designated as Volume 1 of a two volume set. That the pressures of business and family life prevented him following up and expanding on this very real achievement in jazz must be a source of regret.

i. I am grateful for the use of Max Harrison’s comprehensive notes on both biography and performance in the preparation of this piece and for a long discussion with Duane Tatro on 18 September 1996.

ii. Max Harrison’s performance notes.

iii. The New Encylopedia of Jazz, Leonard Feather (Horizon Press, New York 1955), pp 436.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stuart Nicholson is the author of five books on jazz and is the only European jazz writer to have received two Notable Book of the Year citations from The New York Times Review of Books. His latest book Reminsicing in Tempo: A Portrait of Duke Ellington is published by Northeastern University Press. He is also co-author of The Essential Jazz Records Vol. 2: Modernism to Postmodernism with Max Harrison and Eric Thacker.

Edited by Vincent, Paris
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Subdivision of music is always welcome. I usually respond to parentheses inside of parentheses. I'm deeply attracted to the guys about three tiers down from the real guys. I am willing to be challenged "to a point reached about 40 years ago". After that, feel free.

OTOH, there is a ton of stuff (never mind the stylistic subdivision) curently available from Fantasy. Have a great time, don't worry about eras.

:tup

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Tatro's "Jazz for Moderns" is IMO among the most (maybe THE most) successful "progressive" stuff from that era, with the possible exception of George Russell and Gil Melle (three very different cats, though). Every time I listen to Tatro's album, it gets me. While his music doesn't sound anything like Monk's, it shares some vital principles with it -- in particular, an almost incredible and magical economy of means and a corresponding refusal to present arguably off-the-wall material as thought it were odd or as though one should get credit for it being that way. Maini does play well, but it's Lennie Niehaus who really gets inside the music, I think. Also, I believe that Tatro wrote out Bob Enevoldsen's and Bill Holman's solos on some tracks. This works out very well in Enevoldsen's case.

I tracked down Tatro at some point in the mid-'80s and talked to him on the phone. He said he'd send me a tape of a serial Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra that he wrote for Howard Roberts, but it never arrived. He did send me a tape of some electronic stuff, but I couldn't make much of it -- seemed more like etudes for a rather primitive, cheesy-sounding computer than music, but if they were more or less etudes, that's what you might expect.

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Thanks for posting that article Vincent!

With the exception of "Dollar Day," Tatro uses standard 32-bar choruses throughout, although this can be misleading since the whole point of the majority of the compositions was to remove the compositions from the province of a cyclical chord progression and let the developmental nature of the music dictate the movement of the underlying harmonies. Thus no key signature is used on the score, the destiny of the current key being shown by accidentals along the way.

For this reason, none of the soloists play off "changes" in the conventional sense, but are simply given a guide to the underlying harmony or a scale on which to base their solo or both, to guide their improvisation.

Man, read that first paragraph. Does it make anyone else think ... Harmolodics?

"the whole point ... was to remove the compositions from the province of a cyclical chord progression, and let the developmental nature of the music dictate the movement of the underlying harmonies ..."

I wonder if Ornette soloing over Tatro's work would have (or could have) worked out ...

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"I wonder if Ornette soloing over Tatro's work would have (or could have) worked out ..."

Never in a million years. Tatro's guides to improvisation are based on HIS understanding of his music's developmental nature to such an extreme degree that it's a wonder than any of the soloists can improvise a solo at all. Only Lennie Niehaus, with his computer-like mind, is really equipped to cope, though Joe Maini does kind of fluently play through the music. (Also, several years later, Art Pepper, on his album "Smack Up," played the shit out of Tatro's "Maybe Next Year," though that's not among Tatro's more forbiddingly complex pieces.) If this makes it sound like this music might be dry and nasty, in fact it's marvelous because Tatro's own ideas are really good and unique.

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Never in a million years.

A million? I suppose I hear where you're coming from. I guess I was just thinking about the Atlantic recordings that Gunther Schuller set up, and in which Ornette soloed. I sensed at least some parallel ambitions there, but the more I think about it, the more Tatro's work seems less available (because of its through-composition, I guess) to an improvisor like Ornette.

Just a thought, because that paragraph made me think of Harmolodics. (But maybe my understanding of harmolodics isn't all that clear ... )

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Anything with Don Ellis from the early '60s is a motherfucker, and should be heard. That includes George Russell records, but y'all knew that anyway...

Sidewinder, I don't think Simmons' "Rumasuma" is on CD, and the LP is very, very hard to find.

Clifford - I wasn't sure. IMO this session is undeservedly obscure and deserves a reissue (although I think Chuck voiced some reservations about the music in a past thread). Personal view, I like it. Beautifully recorded/mastered by Contemporary and up to the standard of 'Firebirds' in that respect.

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