LF: Freddie Redd - Complete Blue Note Recordings, Mosaic 2CD-set

[David Ayers]

"all the time and for no particular reason"...are you serious?

And on that, yes, he plays the same regardless of context. It's a 'signature sound' I find not that purposeful. And it doesn't seem to have that many imitators, for some reason, so I might not be the only one to see it this way.

[JSngry]

I've just got bored by it. If you want to say he's up there with Coltrane, Coleman, Rollins, Mingus - but you don't and no-one does.

Well, that's got fully nothing to do with his tone being a gimmick, does it now. Whole 'nother issue, that one.

I will say this, though - I don't know where "up there" is (or who puts people there), but there's very few players whose...purposefulness I've admired over the years more than Jackie McLean's.

[David Ayers]

Sounds like you need an extra copy of those Freddie Redd sessions!

[JSngry]

I've had the LP set since back in the day, thanks. I'm old, remember?

[David Ayers]

They must be worn out!

[JSngry]

Nah, I take care of my stuff.

Besides, I like mid-60s McLean best, that's when the voice really matured and blossomed, imo, once he got over the overt Birdiness. But that was how folks did things then, New York, 50s, altos, it was Bird all the way. That's why the tone mattered so much, it was a real difference, a signal that Jackie McLean had more in mind than being just another Bird-Guy, if he could just get there. And,as it turned out, he did. Took him a while to get there, but it's not like he was some button-down type working an office gig, ya' know. Life was...happening, not just music.

Hell, there's times in some of the earlier year where he was barely making the changes & had to rely on some pretty basic tools. But that's part of growing up. There's beaucoup slickass mofos who navigate changes effortlessly their whole life and never move into a sound of their own. To have one straight through from the beginning to the end, that's not a gimmick, that's a treasure, a blessing!

[jazzbo]

Very nice Jim, sums up what I wasn't sure I felt about Jack Mac til you said so.

And I dig Freddie. He had his own way and he felt it all the way through.

[David Ayers]

Did he get his degree in the university of life?

[Mark Stryker]

"The Connection" and "Shades of Redd" have such an extraorindary sound about them. It's a unique, deliriously lyrical quality that comes from a combination of McLean's bittersweet tone and similar qualities in Redd's melodies and harmonies. The tunes are singable with lots of descending sequences mirrored in the harmonic patterns (lots of sequential half diminished 7/dominant 7 flat 9 progressions.) It comes out of Damerson and Bud in many ways. The only other records that sound like these to me are the Tina Brooks Blue Notes and some of the stuff on "A Fickle Sonance." At the risk of invoking a cliche, I sometimes think of this as junkie music -- the push-pull of intensity and relaxation, of bitter and sweet, of heart on the sleeve emotionalism and offhanded hipness. Personally I think these are incredibly soulful records.

Jackie remains one of my greatest heroes. I wrote this when he died in 2006. Reprinting whole since the link is long dead.

By Mark Stryker

Detroit Free Press

There was nothing in jazz like the sugar-free sound of alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, who died last week at his home in Hartford, Conn., at age 74. McLean produced a searing, anguished wail that rode the sharp side of the pitch like a cowboy trying to tame a wild steer. Even those of us who worship McLean recognize that his acidic tone and slippery tuning are not to everyone's taste. But for true believers, McLean's bittersweet sound remains one of the most soulful cries in American music, and the hot-blooded intensity of his style manifests the same urgent quest for self-expression that made us fall in love with jazz in the first place.

McLean's music was rarely pretty by conventional standards, but it was profoundly honest. In a society that rewards prepackaged stars and false emotion, McLean was the real deal: a beacon for truth, justice, individuality and the blues. He was also a cultural warrior who inspired cult devotion. Acolytes packed his performances, their mouths agape at the gale force of his attack. I once drove hundreds of miles to hear him in Chicago, where I happened to meet Detroit pianist Kenn Cox outside the club. I was first in line; Cox was second.

Part of McLean's allure was his pedigree. He was one of the last direct links to the mid-20th century bebop innovators, his mentors defining geniuses of the age: alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and trumpeter Miles Davis. Harlem-born, McLean was given an alto for his 15th birthday. Soon he was studying with Powell, working small jobs with Monk and sharing the bandstand with Parker. At age 20 he was working and recording with Davis. In the mid '50s there were stints with bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Art Blakey, though McLean was still so enthralled with Parker's style that Mingus often challenged him: "Jackie, you have your own sound. Now why don't you look for your own ideas."

McLean soon found them, absorbing Parker's rhythmic phrasing and fervor into his own angular phrasing and tart melodic vocabulary. A string of Blue Note LPs starting in 1959 document his early maturity: "Jackie's Bag," "Swing, Swang, Swingin'," "A Fickle Sonance" and "Bluesnik." Then the story takes a surprising twist. While many of his contemporaries turned a cold shoulder to the avant-garde in the '60s, McLean, in a firm act of artistic bravery, embraced it. He reinvented himself, grafting expressionistic, modal forms onto his bop roots, expanding his compositional palette and forming bands around young vanguard musicians.

"The new breed has inspired me all over again," McLean wrote in 1962. The titles of his LPs reflect the exploratory spirit of the space age and the heat of the civil rights era: "Let Freedom Ring," "One Step Beyond," "Destination Out," "It's Time," “Action,” "Right Now." That McLean was able to reshape his destiny is remarkable given that he was still struggling with heroin addiction, which he had picked up as a teenager. McLean eventually kicked his habit and in 1970 began a long teaching career at the University of Hartford. He and his wife, Dollie, became community leaders, founding the Artists Collective, a Hartford cultural center for city youth.

When McLean resumed performing in earnest around 1990, his playing had progressed again; his technique was suppler, his sound richer and the sweep of his conception registered a newfound majesty. You can hear it on the brilliant "Dynasty" (Triloka), which includes an impassioned reading of "A House is Not a Home," a saccharine Burt Bacharach ballad McLean transforms into a transcendent anthem. If there is a lot of hurt still in McLean's sound, there is an equal amount of triumph. His solo is about overcoming adversity. The struggle is audible. Stuttering phrases explode in delirious bursts of lyricism. McLean was never sentimental, but he was a romantic.

McLean's sound hit me like a bolt of lightning when I was a kid studying the alto. Just as he once wanted to be Charlie Parker, I wanted to be Jackie McLean, and like most McLean freaks, I have a hard time relating to those who don't get him. Years ago someone told a friend of mine who also played alto that his sound resembled McLean’s. Since my friend didn't know McLean's music, he borrowed a record from the library. Turned out he didn't dig it. All I could say was, "I'm sorry."

(End)

Edited April 30, 2012 by Mark Stryker

[JSngry]

Did he get his degree in the university of life?

Are you looking for a letter of recommendation?

[David Ayers]

Did he get his degree in the university of life?

Are you looking for a letter of recommendation?

Well, FWIW, I've got a feeling that if we each listed alto players in order of preference we'd have pretty similar lists and Mclean would come in pretty much the same place in the ranking order. You aren't really making a strong defence of him and I am not really making much of an attack - if this conversation was about Parker or Ornette, or Desmond, Pepper or Braxton, it would seem like there was more at stake, as indeed there would be. We can talk about James Spaulding if you like.

[JSngry]

Must be a language barrier...to call somebody's sound, their voice, a "gimmick" ...that seems like a profound disrespect and dismissal to me.

Or maybe where you come from, gimmicks are the order of the day and are no big thing to get defensive about. I know they are here, if you watch TV.

But I don't evaluate Jackie McLean the same way I do Maury Povich.

[Clunky]

I recall struggling with McLean's sound when I was new to jazz. I feel very luck to have seen him live with Art Blakey when I was feeling my way into jazz. Yes, his sound is difficult to take at first like your first ever taste of beer , coffee or tea. For me once I got his sound in my head I quickly reversed from dislike to loving. Same goes for Von Freeman or Man Ray.

art or gimmick ?

[David Ayers]

So Jackie McLean is artistically equivalent to Man Ray? You learn something every day.

[Clunky]

I used Man Ray because I was at a lecture on Abstract art the other day. A participant who clearly loved art described this collage by Man Ray as a gimmick in the same way you as I understand it, label McLean's output. He and you are of course entitled to your views but they are not ones that I share.

[paul secor]

I've never had a problem listening to and hearing Jackie McLean. To me, he has his own voice and he just sounds in tune with himself.

I'm curious - how do people who have a problem with listening to Jackie McLean listen to Ornette, Don Cherry, Ayler, Monk, Von Freeman, Frank Teschemacher, to name a few?

[robertoart]

I had been listening to my Jemeel Moondoc record for a number of years before I finally got to Jackie McLean.

[David Ayers]

I had been listening to my Jemeel Moondoc record for a number of years before I finally got to Jackie McLean.

[clifford_thornton]

"all the time and for no particular reason"...are you serious?

And on that, yes, he plays the same regardless of context. It's a 'signature sound' I find not that purposeful. And it doesn't seem to have that many imitators, for some reason, so I might not be the only one to see it this way.

Whose purpose should he have been serving? Yours or his?

[David Ayers]

"all the time and for no particular reason"...are you serious?

And on that, yes, he plays the same regardless of context. It's a 'signature sound' I find not that purposeful. And it doesn't seem to have that many imitators, for some reason, so I might not be the only one to see it this way.

Whose purpose should he have been serving? Yours or his?

If you have a claim to make, make it.

[JETman]

Currently re-listening to the McLean Mosaic. I have to say that I find this to be amongst the most vital music put out by Blue Note.

[JSngry]

If you have a claim to make, make it.

EXACTLY! #McLean's tone

[David Ayers]

He plays - everything - sharp. If people think that puts him up there with Armstrong and Ellington, so be it.

[JSngry]

He plays - everything - sharp. If people think that puts him up there with Armstrong and Ellington, so be it.

wow

[Late]

Well, since this thread has turned into a discussion of McLean's sound/intonation, I'll throw my 2¢ in. My reaction is about the same as Clunky's. At first, I couldn't handle McLean's intonation — I even felt like his bandmates were doing him a disservice by not telling him that he was going sharp! (I think of Bluesnik as a reference here, where McLean doesn't seem to mesh with Hubbard for a lot of unison lines.) Then, somewhere along the line, it clicked in ... with a fury! Now McLean is one of my very favorite alto players. But, he actually can, and does, play in tune — check out the heads, for example, on Hank Mobley's Hi Voltage. McLean's totally in sync here — not impressing his sound/intonation on the band at all.

I read an article (of course I can't remember what magazine) a number of years ago where McLean was attempting to explain Billie Holiday's sense of intonation, and how her singing deeply affected him. I think this was part of the "clicking in" for me re. McLean. I actually now hear their music (McLean/Holiday) very similarly. But I can appreciate how a listener would struggle liking McLean's sound (or, simply, not like it). Personally, I still struggle with Don Cherry's playing. I love his compositions, I love his improvisational ideas, but sometimes I just can't get with his execution. I think the contention over the idea of gimmickry is that it tends to preclude any sense of authenticity. To me, Jackie McLean is one of the most authentic voices in jazz.