Max Roach and Tony Williams

[JSngry]

And boy, was Haynes the wrong drummer for Trane's '63 Newport "My Favorite Things", which could have been THE Coltrane Quartet recording if Elvin had been together an on the gig.

Gotta disagree with you on that. Haynes w/Trane, although definitely not Trane With Elvin, was a still good thing in my book, and that's one of best of it.

[felser]

And boy, was Haynes the wrong drummer for Trane's '63 Newport "My Favorite Things", which could have been THE Coltrane Quartet recording if Elvin had been together an on the gig.

Gotta disagree with you on that. Haynes w/Trane, although definitely not Trane With Elvin, was a still good thing in my book, and that's one of best of it.

Interesting to hear your take on that. I'll have to go back and give it a fresh listen. Amazing Trane solo on that, sounds like a soprano/tenor duet at times from the overblowing. I don't play, so don't know technically what's going on there, but it SOUNDS incredible, and incredibly difficult.

[david weiss]

Have to agree with Clementine and jsngry regarding Max...

to me he's an innovator, trendsetter and daddy to many great drummers.

From many overheard conversations in many dressing rooms with many of those involved, the missing link you seek is Louis Hayes. Among other things, he was the first to play the hi-hat on all four beats at times, something Tony Williams made one of his signatures.

[marcello]

Good evidence of the above: Kenny Dorham Una Mas - title cut.

[felser]

Have to agree with Clementine and jsngry regarding Max...

to me he's an innovator, trendsetter and daddy to many great drummers.

From many overheard conversations in many dressing rooms with many of those involved, the missing link you seek is Louis Hayes. Among other things, he was the first to play the hi-hat on all four beats at times, something Tony Williams made one of his signatures.

Great point on Hayes. Lex Humphries reminds me of some of this style too.

[mikeweil]

His breaks on some Bird sides in the 1940's really opened it up. They were freer in style than anything played before.

Like his break on "KoKo"--which Metronome ripped as “a horrible, utterly beatless drum solo by Max Roach.”

Yes, that's the one I meant - that comment suggests he was playing like Sunny Murray!

Edited January 28, 2007 by mikeweil

[mikeweil]

From many overheard conversations in many dressing rooms with many of those involved, the missing link you seek is Louis Hayes. Among other things, he was the first to play the hi-hat on all four beats at times, something Tony Williams made one of his signatures.

Wallace Roney stated in an interview that he once played a Blue Mitchell phrase from a Horace Silver Blue Note session, and Tony immediately responded with Louis Hayes' drum fill from that track! Tony really studied the drummers before and around him.

[Larry Kart]

From many overheard conversations in many dressing rooms with many of those involved, the missing link you seek is Louis Hayes. Among other things, he was the first to play the hi-hat on all four beats at times, something Tony Williams made one of his signatures.

Good point about Hayes -- what he did there, in effect IMO, introduced a certain level of conceptual independence (or, if you will, abstraction) into the drummer's role. I remember at the time thinking somewhat inchoate thoughts along those lines about Hayes' glassily even (yet also rather behind the beat, no?) cymbal work with Horace Silver when he joined Horace and, an especially extreme example, on the Coltrane-Wilbur Harden album "Mainstream '58." Whatever, it sure struck us as interesting-weird at the time. (My best friend back then was, and still is, a very good drummer.) I'd add that the glassy evenness and the behind-the-beat aspect were a big part of what contributed to the feeling of abstraction (or, if you will, controlled disassociation of parts), in that behind-the-beat playing implies or is associated with relaxation, while Hayes' glassy evenness placed a high level of (I think) tension on top of that. In any case, it seems to me that Tony grasped what was at stake here conceptually and where it could be taken far more so than Hayes did and/or wanted to do. In fact, though I'm no Hayes scholar, I believe that he's pretty much dialed down that aspect of his playing over the course of his career.

[JSngry]

Intresting point about Hayes, one I'd not considered.

Re: the hi-hats on all 4 beats, didn't Donald Bailey drop something similiar on "Messy Bessie" from Back At The Chicken Shack"? Not sure how that fits chronologically w/when Hayes did it, and the net result was more of a proto-"Funky Drummer" kind of thing than what Tony would get into, but at least it shows that a few drummers were starting to think about doing something different...

Also interesting is the revival of the "steady four" in the drums, which bebop had rather adamantly discarded. But putting it on the hi-hat produces a decidedly different effect, in terms of both sonics and feel (if you want to make that differentiation, which I'm not sure that I do, at least in this case), than does having it on the bass drum.

I'd be interested in hearing from some drummers about Tony's kit tuning, pre-Lifetime. When I previously referenced the Dawson/Haynes connection, that was what I was thinking about, that really tight sound out of the kit. Of course, Tony's cymbal sounds were where he really innovated, imo. The sound(s) he got out of those Ks were heretofore unheard in jazz (or any music that I'm aware of), and it was that sonic combination of really "tight" drums w/really "swooshy" cymbal sounds that made him such an immediate ear-opener for me. First the sound, then what was being done with it.

[felser]

Re: the hi-hats on all 4 beats, didn't Donald Bailey drop something similiar on "Messy Bessie" from Back At The Chicken Shack"? Not sure how that fits chronologically w/when Hayes did it

Chicken Shack was recorded 4/25/60, a little after Hayes went off with Cannonball and Roy Brooks replaced Hayes with Silver.

[mikeweil]

Bailey's another of those highly individual underrated drummers - he did a lot of uncanny things, like playing the high hat on the third triplet of every beat.

Some things were simply in the air after the level of bop drumming with high hat on 2 and 4 and dropping bombs and snare accents had been fully developped, and opening up all limbs to other possibilities was mandatory to avoid repetition of old concepts. As far as breaking up the roles of ceratin parts of the set, like the high hat, is concerned, Alan Dawson was the most advanced. The snare/bass/high hat combinations he plays on some of Booker Ervin's Prestige sessions are very advanced - Tony's playing of the high hat on all 4 beats sounds conservative compared to this. Integrating the high hat in the game of fully developped independence is the hardest - Roy Haynes, Elvin, Tony,most others left the role of the high hat untouched.

[CJ Shearn]

Bailey was doing the high hat on all four back in 1958. For example listen to "Blues No. 4" off JOS' "Six Views of the Blues". As for Dawson doing the all 4 and Tony picking it up, in the i-view that accompanies Tony's Mosaic set, he says that Alan picked it up after he did it, perhaps that occured in drum lessons.

[clifford_thornton]

His breaks on some Bird sides in the 1940's really opened it up. They were freer in style than anything played before.

Like his break on "KoKo"--which Metronome ripped as “a horrible, utterly beatless drum solo by Max Roach.”

Yes, that's the one I meant - that comment suggests he was playing like Sunny Murray!

Roy Haynes' playing on Black Fire reminds me of Sunny's playing early on. Sunny has said he was pretty into Roy also.

[mikeweil]

Roy was very advanced for his generation. I have to admit I love him more with Trane than Elvin - someone (David Wild?) describes his playing with Trane as "spreading", which hits the nail pretty accurately, methinks.

Edited January 29, 2007 by mikeweil

[AllenLowe]

Max was incredible in the early days - what some people hear as mechanisitc I hear as the soul of the machine, to paraphrase someone else; a steely steadyness that was very modern in it lack of sentimentality and aversion to quainter notions of swing. And Larry is right on target, though I associate my problems with Max's later drumming as a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to stay with contemporary trends. It sounds, especially after the 1960s, as though he's trying too hard, working self-consciously to stay with the times. But that's just the way I hear it.

Interestingly enough, at the time of Roach's greatest playing he was not personally very stable (one well-known jazz educator who knew everybody will only say "Max had personal problems in those days.") Bill Triglia told me, if he was walking down the street in NYC in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and saw Max coming toward him, he crossed to the other side of the street, as he did not want to turn him down if he asked for money or some other favor. And his violence toward Abbey Lincoln is also known, showing that he was not quite the picture of mental health even in the 1960s. My impression of him, when I ran a jazz festival in the 1990s and hired his band, is that he was a nice guy, easy to work with.

As for Tony Williams, I always wonder why his drumming turned so ordinary in his last years - he lost that sound, that uncanny time sense and could be mistaken for just one of many -

Edited January 29, 2007 by AllenLowe

[Guest the mommy]

this will sound dumb but i have wondered if tony williams suffered from hearing loss at some point during the 70s and never addressed the issue or tried to hide it or something.

[ghost of miles]

As for Tony Williams, I always wonder why his drumming turned so ordinary in his last years - he lost that sound, that uncanny time sense and could be mistaken for just one of many -

Maybe because he was so much more focused on writing in the last 10-15 years of his life? At least, that's possibly one part of the story... many of the interviews & articles I recently read from the 1985-95 period find him talking about how unhappy he'd been with his identity as "Tony Williams the drummer" and his sense that people valued him for only that aspect of his personality. Even though he said playing the drums was still fun, he seemed much more interested in pursuing composition. (I still enjoy his drumming on the Mosaic set; the rap against him during the period that set covers is that he was playing too LOUD.)

Or maybe it's just that brilliance of the kind TW exhibited throughout the 1960s and much of the 1970s is difficult to sustain for decade after decade.

[Hot Ptah]

For what it is worth, perhaps little, I saw Max Roach live some time in the winter months of 1994-95, playing in a trio with Jackie Mc Lean and Richard Davis. It was a function to promote the planned jazz museum at 18th and Vine in Kansas City. At that time there was doubt as to whether it would ever be built, and this was a rally of sorts for the museum's supporters.

It was a short set, planned only a few moments before they hit the stage. In any event, throughout this performance, Max Roach played as exuberantly as anyone I have ever heard live. He laid down a furious, intense wall of sound, dominating the music. There was none of the "dour tuning" or other less than totally engaging features of his 1970s and 1980s group, which I also witnessed.

Some performances by Elvin Jones in the 1970s are the only drumming performances I have witnessed with the same kind of energy.

So what does one make of an artist who often doesn't play the way he CAN play?

As an aside, at that function, the City of Kansas City had just spent taxpayer funds, without the approval of the City Council, to buy Charlie Parker's white plastic alto sax at auction, to place in the planned museum. The Mayor at the time, Emmanel Cleaver (now in the U. S. House of Representatives), was attacked for that "waste" of public funds. At this function, Jackie McLean was asked, or nearly forced, to play the plastic white alto sax. He introduced his playing by stating that the sax was in terrible condition and was basically unplayable. He then played tremendously on it--only a slight difference in tone from the previous song, played on his own instrument, provided any indication that a different instrument was used.

[clifford_thornton]

Even though he said playing the drums was still fun, he seemed much more interested in pursuing composition.

I just saw a clip from an interview with him where he states that he had been writing chamber music in the style of Haydn... so, that seems like reason enough. Remember that on his first Blue Note there was a through-composed piece for piano and bass, so he was even at that early stage also interested in writing music.

[ghost of miles]

Allen, maybe this sheds some more light (I'm pulling out all the articles I Xeroxed for the recent Night Lights show)... Wallace Roney on his and Williams' gig in the Miles tribute band circa '95 (with Carter, Shorter, and Hancock):

"As amazing as Tony was in our band--and I definitely saw some amazing stuff--when he was with his brothers, Herbie and Ron and Wayne, I saw a different Tony. Then he was playing with his equals. Everybody could, and did, go to the next level."

Roney says that Tony was particularly inspired by Carter's suggestion that they alter tempos and vary the program from night to night. "After that," recalls Roney, "Tony played differently, man. He played like he had played with Miles. He played just as strong but he put more emphasis on playing each cymbal beat clearer. And he would play all the stuff in between the bass drum and the snare drum with the cymbal beat keeping time."

Roney describes an invigorated rehearsal routine with that band, saying that "at rehearsals Tony would imitate different drummers, just for fun. He'd take a Philly Jo phrase and speed it up, then play it on different parts of the drums, break it up between the different floor toms in different parts of the beat."

That all comes from a Feb. 1999 Modern Drummer article.

[ghost of miles]

Here's some more from that Roney article:

"Tony used to tell me I come from a city where they play the drums. He loved drum technique, drums, and every aspect of drumming. His first idol was Art Blakey, though I didn't hear much of it in his playing. Max Roach was his greatest idol, and later Buddy Rich. He used to listen to that record Rich vs. Roach and he could sing the solos off it! Tony set his whole concept with that record. Tony took that and ran with it. He took Max Roach to the max, Roy Haynes' broken and implied time, Buddy Rich's technique, Philly Joe's charisma, and Pete LaRoca, too--that became half of what he was. The other half was that he was a little genius. He started finding out ways of mix-matching things that Philly and Max used to play--they played very rudimental--and the coming up with rudiments they didn't use, mixed in a freer style. Tony was very meticulous. I'd read articles where he'd say he didn't practice--but he did. He'd play on pillows. He had drums set up in his living room. He loved looking at TV and the drums were right there.

"People were more floored by the sounds he was making than how he played them," reflects Wallace. "Tony had a unique way of tuning. He would tell people that he didn't tune to notes, but he did tune to notes. He would ask Mulgrew (Miller) to give him a couple of notes and he would tune. He loved the snares tight. He liked everything about Max, and he said that during the period of Four and More he was trying to tune his drums like Max. The sticks he was playing at the time were the Gretsch Max Roach model--all through the Miles period."

Four and More was a turning point, continues Wallace. "When Tony first heard it played back, he decided to change his tuning. He thought it sounded like he was playing with knitting needles. I think he meant that it was so clear--the ride cymbal was clean, the snare was tight. He started tuning a little more resonant, a little lower. He retired his Four and More cymbals--although partly because there was a crack in the ride. But he never really stopped loving having articulate cymbals; he changed the cymbals, but the sound wasn't that much different.

Time for another revelation: Desperately seeking Tony's ride sound? Abandon all preconceptions about thin and thinner. Wallace is emphatic: "Tony's ride cymbals were not thin; they were all medium-heavy. I would venture to say that the one he played on Four and More was heavier than medium heavy. I mean, you always have to worry about articulating anyway, but you could definitely hear the stick--not just stick, but beautiful warm overtones underneath. Lenny thinks the one I loaned him is the one on Nefertiti--it looks like that one on a video, with rivet holes--and it's medium-heavy too."

In 1992, Tony gave Wallace his canary yellow drumset. What happened next is a drummer's dream: "He opens up this huge crate about six feet long and three feet wide. It's full of brand-new, never used old Ks from the '40s and '50s. My heart stopped. He's laughing, saying, 'Go ahead, pick a set.' I started feeling guilty; I didn't want to take his cymbals. Right at the end of the crate were the older old Ks. I felt better about taking them because they were retired, and he wouldn't miss these as much as the ones he hadn't gotten to yet. I picked up three ride cymbals, two sock cymbals--a very thin 15" pair and a 14" pair--and a 20" and an 18". The ones I liked best were the three 22" rides, and he let me take them. As I was going, he asked me, 'Do you want to see the Four and More cymbal?' He was very proud of that cymbal; Max had picked it for him at the Gretsch factory. I hit it, looked at it, studied it--I did all the things a fan would do. It was tarnished, almost black, and had a crack in it--but it had the same sound. It had a smaller bell than most of the Ks have now. Matter of fact, all his cymbals had small bells, almost like a Mini cup. The crashes were mediums and medium-thins. The sock cymbals were heavy--I took a thin 15", but the others were heavy. The ride had a pretty sound--pretty and dark, with a crystal character to the stick sound. When Zildjian describes Ks, they describe them as dark and trashy, but you also had some with a pretty sound. Tony had both the pretty sound and the dark sound."

[CJ Shearn]

awesome interview bits

[mikeweil]

Indeed!

[mikeweil]

(I still enjoy his drumming on the Mosaic set; the rap against him during the period that set covers is that he was playing too LOUD.)

I remember he said he took special care that the drums were loud enough in the mix - I agree with Tony that on most jazz records the drums are not loud enough, not on the same level as the other instruments and as lod as they really are - compare it with the balance on a live gig.

He also said that most people are afraid of the power of a drum set - another thing I agree upon.

I think he wanted that power to come through much clearer and in a more direct way, so he changed the sound. It was during his own Lifetime band period that he made the change - it's there for the first time on that undervalued LP The Old Bum's Rush and in full blossom on Stanley Clarke's first Nemperor LP - there was a hiatus between them. I have the impression he did a lot of thinking during that hiatus .... and his compositional lessons may have started around that time. When did he move to California? He started taking lessons there, IIRC.

[JSngry]

n 1992, Tony gave Wallace his canary yellow drumset. What happened next is a drummer's dream: "He opens up this huge crate about six feet long and three feet wide. It's full of brand-new, never used old Ks from the '40s and '50s.

Holy shit.