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Walter Davis, Jr.


Larry Kart

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Am making my way through three Walter Davis, Jr. CDs from the late 1980s (Davis passed in 1990 at age 57) that I ran across today -- "In Walked Thelonious" (Mapleshade) from 1987, all Monk pieces, all solo; "Illumination" (Pony Canyon) from 1988 with Bob Mover, Ron Carter, and Kenny Washington; and "Scorpio Rising" (Steeplechase), also from 1988, with Santi Debriano and Ralph Peterson. All terrific, all  a welcome but also sad reminder of what an individual, soulful, and growing player Davis was up until his terribly untimely end (of untreated diabetes and high blood pressure).

The Monk album is a masterpiece. A close-up, vivid recording in the Mapleshade manner (the sense of fingers on keys is so intense that it feels as though Davis' hands are right there in front of you), fifteen tracks, about 44 minutes in all, range in length from two to five-and-a-half minutes, essentially just statements/re-statements of the pieces, but what deep statements they are! Producer Pierre Sprey writes in the notes that later on he played several tracks for Dwike Mitchell, who said, "I've been listening to Walter all my life, and I know exactly how he plays. What on this tape is not Walter; it's Monk playing through Walter hands." I know, I know -- but that is how it sounds and feels.

Again, what I've heard of of the other two albums is excellent, too, but the impact of "In Walked Thelonious" is such that I feel like I need to take a break for a while.

 

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I know that Monk album and agree that it's excellent, but I still don't get the "channeling" Monk, thing. Or maybe that means something different than what I understand it to mean. There's not any place on that record where I think "damn, that's actually Monk".

I do agree that it shows a very deep and thorough understanding of Monk's...impulse, but to me that's significantly more impressive than the "not Walter" thing. It's profound, it is perhaps even intuitive on a supra-conscious plane, but it's not "magic". "Magic" is, like, when you eat spinach and shit lettuce, it's something that neither could nor should happen, and in reality probably didn't, but, hey, let's move on to the next one.

This is not that, this is one man living a live absorbing and processing all this knowledge.and then being captured in a very lucid, perhaps rarely this lucid, moment of transmitting it back out. Such a level of lucidity is indeed rare, and special, but it's not in any way "magical". Uber-lucidity is indeed worthy of awe, but it's not going to happen to just anybody about just anything at just any time. You gotta be alligned for it, gotta be ready to not fuck it up if and when it starts to happen.

"Not Walter"? What an insult to the man. Like all anybody needs to do is to know how to play and then wait for the magic to happen.Pshaw.

Ok, call it "magic", that's a good shorthand, if used with advisement, just don't believe that it really is, that's all I'm saying. Ain't nobody gonna eat spinach and shit lettuce, ever, not in a linear manner, anyway. Gotta be some lettuce in there to begin with, somewhere.

On an unrelated note, I know that some people swear by Mapleshade's sonics, and I know that Sprey has all this audio voodoo that he uses, but the piano on this thing just sounds poundy and plingly, and not in a Monk way, either. Monk never got a piano to sound like that, and I'm not sure that Davis did either.

In spite of all this rantiness, I second your recommendation.

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larry, you are going to make me go back and listen to him again; I heard Davis a few times in NYC in the '70s; hardest touch, used to put pianos out of tune; he was strangely unsatisfying to me at times, had an off-hand manner combined with brilliant flashes, but maybe I was not quite ready.  Time to take another listen. Do you  know the recordings he  made  with Dr. John? Some real  junko masterpieces.

Edited by AllenLowe
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I know that Monk album and agree that it's excellent, but I still don't get the "channeling" Monk, thing. Or maybe that means something different than what I understand it to mean. There's not any place on that record where I think "damn, that's actually Monk".

I do agree that it shows a very deep and thorough understanding of Monk's...impulse, but to me that's significantly more impressive than the "not Walter" thing. It's profound, it is perhaps even intuitive on a supra-conscious plane, but it's not "magic". "Magic" is, like, when you eat spinach and shit lettuce, it's something that neither could nor should happen, and in reality probably didn't, but, hey, let's move on to the next one.

This is not that, this is one man living a live absorbing and processing all this knowledge.and then being captured in a very lucid, perhaps rarely this lucid, moment of transmitting it back out. Such a level of lucidity is indeed rare, and special, but it's not in any way "magical". Uber-lucidity is indeed worthy of awe, but it's not going to happen to just anybody about just anything at just any time. You gotta be alligned for it, gotta be ready to not fuck it up if and when it starts to happen.

"Not Walter"? What an insult to the man. Like all anybody needs to do is to know how to play and then wait for the magic to happen.Pshaw.

Ok, call it "magic", that's a good shorthand, if used with advisement, just don't believe that it really is, that's all I'm saying. Ain't nobody gonna eat spinach and shit lettuce, ever, not in a linear manner, anyway. Gotta be some lettuce in there to begin with, somewhere.

On an unrelated note, I know that some people swear by Mapleshade's sonics, and I know that Sprey has all this audio voodoo that he uses, but the piano on this thing just sounds poundy and plingly, and not in a Monk way, either. Monk never got a piano to sound like that, and I'm not sure that Davis did either.

In spite of all this rantiness, I second your recommendation.

Pierre Sprey's liner notes (I didn't want to mention Davis' account of Monk's visitation to him the week before the recording, but there it is FWIW): "

“Walter Davis, Jr. had been thinking about a solo recording project ever since he left Dizzy Gillespie's group in 1986. There was no question in Walter's mind as to what the album would be. It would be dedicated entirely to the music of his mentor and close friend, Thelonious Monk—a thank-you to the New York bebop giant who had taken Walter, a gifted East Orange, New Jersey teenager, under his wing in 1949.

 

 
Until the day he died in June, 1990, Walter did things the hard way. The Monk project was no exception. Rather than picking eight or ten comfortable Monk stan­dards and rehearsing them for a few days, he immersed himself in fifty of Monk's toughest compositions for two months, deliberately leaving the choice of which to record until the moment he sat down at the studio Steinway. As though things weren't difficult enough, he limited himself to three minutes pertune, saying, "I just want to get in, say what I have to say, and get out—no endless b.s. solos."

 

 
A week before the long-planned first recording session, Walter, a deeply mystical man, called me early one morning. Without saying hello, he said with a quiet intensity, "Man, you won't believe what happened to me last night. I sat down to my electric piano and Thelonious came into the room. I played for three hours and never even turned on the piano" For Walter, this was no vision or metaphor. Thelonious Monk really was in his basement practicing room, giving him specific technical lessons on how to play Monk, correcting Walter's tempo on one tune, revamping his chord voicings on another, showing him how to put more "stride" feeling into a third.

 

 
Still, I didn't fully understand how deeply Walter felt that this recording was to be a dialogue between himself and Monk until we got started. Most of the five days we worked in the studio, it was just Walter at the beautiful old Steinway and me at the tape recorder. But Walter was clearly playing for someone else. Every time he'd pull off a tricky time change or voice a chord in some startling way, he'd shoot a sly look of triumph sideways at the air—the kind of look you see when jazz musicians play to impress each other.

 

 
At one point, Walter was falling short of the strict standards he had set for himself. The tune was "Gallop's Gallop," intricate and laden with pitfalls. Walter had already tried eight takes, breaking off, deeply dissatisfied and frustrated, in the middle of each one. When I couldn't bear it anymore, I suggested he proceed to another tune, maybe return to this one later.

 

 
Walter replied instantly, "You don't understand, Pierre. If I don't do the hard ones, Thelonious will be laughing at my ass for the rest of my life." And indeed, on the ninth take, he whipped off a witty and jewel-like rendition—one that, no doubt, earned an approving chuckle from Monk.

 

 
In those five days of listening to Walter play Monk, I learned more about the inner workings of Monk's music than in my previous thirty years of listening to the original. Yetthis album presents neither a mere skillful imitation nor a Davis-style reinterpretation of Monk (even though Walter could have performed either task had he wanted). Instead, this album is a brilliant illumination of the elements that made Monk unique and unforgettable: the little boy playfulness, the devilish delight in startling harmonic or rhythmic twists, the teasing with slightly changed quotations from familiar standards, the old-time "stride" piano sound in the midst of modern harmonies, and the stark emotion of those angular, unadorned ballad lines. Walter has somehow managed to intensify each of these facets—in a way that sounds just like what Monk would have played had he chosen to let us in on his secrets. Yet he has also fused these elements into concise, polished gems quite different from Monk's own constructions.

 

 
For sheer playfulness, check out Walter's "Green Chimneys." For ballad lines of austere beauty, listen to what he does with "Ruby, My Dear." In "Criss Cross," Walter dissects Monk's devilish trickiness. "Gallop's Gallop" becomes a swinging vehicle for clarifying the stride roots in Monk's composition.

 

 
If you want to come to grips with what has been achieved here, compare some of Walter's versions side by side with Monk's. Pick something as overplayed as "'Round Midnight." If you listen first to Monk's solo version (on Blue Note's Genius of Modem Music, Vol. 1), then listen to either of Walter's versions, your immediate reaction will be surprise at how much Walter's improvisation differs without violating any aspect of Monk's spirit. Your second reaction will probably be to put the Monk solo back on the turntable because Walter's clear exposition has suddenly made you aware of the subtleties you missed the first time around.

 

 
Perhaps the most spontaneous tribute to Walter's otherworldly achievement in these sessions comes from Dwike Mitchell, the pianist in the Mitchell-Ruff duo. Several months after these sessions, I happened to be playing the tapes for Dwike. I had told him nothing about Walter's immersion in the Monk project or about Monk's "visit" to Walter's basement. After two cuts, Dwike stopped the tape and said, "I've been listening to Walter all my life and I know exactly how he plays. What's on this tape is not Walter; it's Monk playing through Walter's hands."
 
Me again:
In any case, Dwike Mitchell's "not Walter" did not seem to be to be an insult at all but rather an acknowledgement of something like what I felt when I listened to the album -- that at the least Davis himself found the experience to be profoundly transformative.
Edited by Larry Kart
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I'm just bugged be the inevitable (but why does it have to be inevitable?) reduction of an obviously transformative experience that involves lucidity, experience, openess to memory as simultaneous past, present, and future. and an obviously personal willingness and ability to FLOW down to a basic ghost story.

And I still think the piano was not recorded well.

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I'm just bugged be the inevitable (but why does it have to be inevitable?) reduction of an obviously transformative experience that involves lucidity, experience, openess to memory as simultaneous past, present, and future. and an obviously personal willingness and ability to FLOW down to a basic ghost story.

And I still think the piano was not recorded well.

Well, if Mr. Sprey is telling the truth about what Davis Jr. said to him, it was something of a ghost story (or whatever) to Davis Jr. Or at least that's how Davis Jr. processed what he experienced. And if Davis Jr. was in fact (in Sprey's words) "a deeply mystical man," who are we to disparage his mystical bent and characterize whatever the heck happened to him there as nothing more than "a basic ghost story." Also, if there was a mystical aspect to whatever happened or what Davis thought happened, why would that rule out the presence of "lucidity, experience, openess to memory as simultaneous past, present, and future."

Geez, the question of sound quality aside, it seems like on this one we've switched our normal positions (mine often being that of the "don't give me any of that touchy-feely crap" rationalist).

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see my prior post; that Mapleshade clip is exactly the way Davis sounded when I saw him, in the flesh, in the '70s.

by the way, find the video clip of Davis playing Rhyhmning (how do you spell that?) with Rouse; the opening phrase of Davis' solo is astounding, and tells me that, just maybe, he had some things going on on his head that he never quite got to in any consistent way but which would have been revelatory to hear assembled in one solo.

just looked it up; it's on youtube but I cant get the link to copy; if you can stay awake through Rouse's solo, check out Davis at about 1:18 -

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I'm just bugged be the inevitable (but why does it have to be inevitable?) reduction of an obviously transformative experience that involves lucidity, experience, openess to memory as simultaneous past, present, and future. and an obviously personal willingness and ability to FLOW down to a basic ghost story.

And I still think the piano was not recorded well.

Well, if Mr. Sprey is telling the truth about what Davis Jr. said to him, it was something of a ghost story (or whatever) to Davis Jr. Or at least that's how Davis Jr. processed what he experienced. And if Davis Jr. was in fact (in Sprey's words) "a deeply mystical man," who are we to disparage his mystical bent and characterize whatever the heck happened to him there as nothing more than "a basic ghost story." Also, if there was a mystical aspect to whatever happened or what Davis thought happened, why would that rule out the presence of "lucidity, experience, openess to memory as simultaneous past, present, and future."

Geez, the question of sound quality aside, it seems like on this one we've switched our normal positions (mine often being that of the "don't give me any of that touchy-feely crap" rationalist).

It's not Davis I don't trust, it's Sprey's presentation of what I guess is how he perceived it.

Sprey's one of these uber-high-end audio gadget guys and his background as as a military physicist (I guess that's an accurate description?) is not a secret. None of which disqualifies him as either recordist or producer, I mean, Mapleshade's done some GREAT records, and many of them sound really fine. I just don't know that his interpretation of "mystic" and mine are gonna line up, if you know what I mean. This guy's into fighter planes and speaker spikes and shit like that. I'm not.

I'll humbly suggest that a deeply mystical person is probably not gonna be thinking in terms of ghosts and spooky shit. Spirits, vibrational planes, and that, yes. But LORDY LORDY I DONE SEEN A GHOST! No, not that.

I got a buddy who was living in DC around the time Sprey was beginning to get rolling (no pun intended) with his label, and I get the impression that he's one of these guys for whom physics and mysticism are equal means to the same end, namely, superior mechanics. That's a ride I ain't gettin' on.

And the piano still sounds funny to me. Maybe it was the ghost plasma clogging he mike, you know how that can be.

Still, it is indeed a special record.

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see my prior post; that Mapleshade clip is exactly the way Davis sounded when I saw him, in the flesh, in the '70s.

by the way, find the video clip of Davis playing Rhyhmning (how do you spell that?) with Rouse; the opening phrase of Davis' solo is astounding, and tells me that, just maybe, he had some things going on on his head that he never quite got to in any consistent way but which would have been revelatory to hear assembled in one solo.

just looked it up; it's on youtube but I cant get the link to copy; if you can stay awake through Rouse's solo, check out Davis at about 1:18 -

Here's that "Rhythm-a-ning":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phOe763QsU0

 

The opening phrase or so of Davis' solo is indeed between-the-cracks par excellence. And his comping behind Rouse is something else too. Think I can see Larry Gales digging what Davis is doing.

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see my prior post; that Mapleshade clip is exactly the way Davis sounded when I saw him, in the flesh, in the '70s.

by the way, find the video clip of Davis playing Rhyhmning (how do you spell that?) with Rouse; the opening phrase of Davis' solo is astounding, and tells me that, just maybe, he had some things going on on his head that he never quite got to in any consistent way but which would have been revelatory to hear assembled in one solo.

just looked it up; it's on youtube but I cant get the link to copy; if you can stay awake through Rouse's solo, check out Davis at about 1:18 -

Here's that "Rhythm-a-ning":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phOe763QsU0

 

The opening phrase or so of Davis' solo is indeed between-the-cracks par excellence. And his comping behind Rouse is something else too. Think I can see Larry Gales digging what Davis is doing.

Davis sure does sound great here. I also thought Rouse was in very good form. The rhythm section of Gales and Riley did their respective things well too.

Not sure why, but I often find Rouse more interesting when he is not playing with Monk?

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Larry  - off topic, but, and I swear this true, on his good days, and usually while playing solo, Joe Albany had that exact thing, the 'between the cracks' sound; not sure if it's anywhere on record, though I seem to recall the closest to this kind of Joe is his solo on I Love You with Warne Marsh on that 'live in the living room' cd.

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Larry  - off topic, but, and I swear this true, on his good days, and usually while playing solo, Joe Albany had that exact thing, the 'between the cracks' sound; not sure if it's anywhere on record, though I seem to recall the closest to this kind of Joe is his solo on I Love You with Warne Marsh on that 'live in the living room' cd.

Got that Albany-Marsh album and will check that out, but I have no doubt, based on memories of  the Albany recordings I know, that he could play "between the cracks" as much as anyone this side of Bud. Another guy who could at times was Lou Levy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcoVrDUQLxY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngWuBThP_3A

 

 

Edited by Larry Kart
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see my prior post; that Mapleshade clip is exactly the way Davis sounded when I saw him, in the flesh, in the '70s.

by the way, find the video clip of Davis playing Rhyhmning (how do you spell that?) with Rouse; the opening phrase of Davis' solo is astounding, and tells me that, just maybe, he had some things going on on his head that he never quite got to in any consistent way but which would have been revelatory to hear assembled in one solo.

just looked it up; it's on youtube but I cant get the link to copy; if you can stay awake through Rouse's solo, check out Davis at about 1:18 -

 

I'm just bugged be the inevitable (but why does it have to be inevitable?) reduction of an obviously transformative experience that involves lucidity, experience, openess to memory as simultaneous past, present, and future. and an obviously personal willingness and ability to FLOW down to a basic ghost story.

And I still think the piano was not recorded well.

Well, if Mr. Sprey is telling the truth about what Davis Jr. said to him, it was something of a ghost story (or whatever) to Davis Jr. Or at least that's how Davis Jr. processed what he experienced. And if Davis Jr. was in fact (in Sprey's words) "a deeply mystical man," who are we to disparage his mystical bent and characterize whatever the heck happened to him there as nothing more than "a basic ghost story." Also, if there was a mystical aspect to whatever happened or what Davis thought happened, why would that rule out the presence of "lucidity, experience, openess to memory as simultaneous past, present, and future."

Geez, the question of sound quality aside, it seems like on this one we've switched our normal positions (mine often being that of the "don't give me any of that touchy-feely crap" rationalist).

It's not Davis I don't trust, it's Sprey's presentation of what I guess is how he perceived it.

Sprey's one of these uber-high-end audio gadget guys and his background as as a military physicist (I guess that's an accurate description?) is not a secret. None of which disqualifies him as either recordist or producer, I mean, Mapleshade's done some GREAT records, and many of them sound really fine. I just don't know that his interpretation of "mystic" and mine are gonna line up, if you know what I mean. This guy's into fighter planes and speaker spikes and shit like that. I'm not.

I'll humbly suggest that a deeply mystical person is probably not gonna be thinking in terms of ghosts and spooky shit. Spirits, vibrational planes, and that, yes. But LORDY LORDY I DONE SEEN A GHOST! No, not that.

I got a buddy who was living in DC around the time Sprey was beginning to get rolling (no pun intended) with his label, and I get the impression that he's one of these guys for whom physics and mysticism are equal means to the same end, namely, superior mechanics. That's a ride I ain't gettin' on.

And the piano still sounds funny to me. Maybe it was the ghost plasma clogging he mike, you know how that can be.

Still, it is indeed a special record.

If you can, check out the solo track of two Monk pieces, "Reflections" and "Crepuscule with Nellie," on the excellent 1988 Davis Jr. album "Illumination" (Pony Canyon). Recorded by the estimable David Baker, who AFAIK had no particular quirks as an engineer, the pianist there exhibits just about the same in-your-face touch as he does on the Mapleshade album. Further, he doesn't sound as much that way on the tracks from "Illumination" with Ron Carter and Kenny Washington and altoist Bob Mover. Apparently, when playing solo, Davis Jr. could and did alter his approach to the instrument.

Not as much that way, this in-person Monk medley from Davis Jr. does I think literally show how percussive/forceful he could be when he felt like it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg3lLR3BDZU&list=PLUHjuSN3jKafJwyhd4sNZ-Vex7o5N218H

 

Edited by Larry Kart
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see my prior post; that Mapleshade clip is exactly the way Davis sounded when I saw him, in the flesh, in the '70s.

by the way, find the video clip of Davis playing Rhyhmning (how do you spell that?) with Rouse; the opening phrase of Davis' solo is astounding, and tells me that, just maybe, he had some things going on on his head that he never quite got to in any consistent way but which would have been revelatory to hear assembled in one solo.

just looked it up; it's on youtube but I cant get the link to copy; if you can stay awake through Rouse's solo, check out Davis at about 1:18 -

Here's that "Rhythm-a-ning":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phOe763QsU0

 

The opening phrase or so of Davis' solo is indeed between-the-cracks par excellence. And his comping behind Rouse is something else too. Think I can see Larry Gales digging what Davis is doing.

Yeah, that comp is amazing...and the left hand of his own solo...that's why I don't believe in "magic" nearly as much as I do knowing. To the extent that real magic happens, it's a result of being ready for it when it's there to be had. This cat was ready, hell, probably dedicated his life to staying ready, if you know what I mean. But that's got nothing to do with ghosts and shit, Casper the Friendly Piano Player, no, not that at all.

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Larry, the piano on the Mapleshade sounds to me like there's an emphasis added to the high/percussive end, either through miking or EQ-ing (you know, setting the "tone controls"). Either that or else it's just not a good piano. I hear a similarity in touch between this recording and all the others, yes, he was a very personal player, of course you would, but that piano sounds more like a Monk Prestige piano than it does Walter Davis anywhere else I've heard him, and it sounds different than the piano on the other Mapleshade recordings I have. I don't think that's accidental and/or supernatural, I think it's a matter of making the piano sound like that on the other end of the microphone.

Using the admittedly limited spectrum of YouTube audio for comparison, and assuming that these are the same pianos - even allowing for the wide damn near infinite spectrum of timbral difference possible though touch and pedal technique, does this sound like the same piano that Bishop used recorded the same way, at all?

I'm not accusing Sprey of anything dishonest, but I'm not viewing his recording choices as completely objective either.

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Larry, the piano on the Mapleshade sounds to me like there's an emphasis added to the high/percussive end, either through miking or EQ-ing (you know, setting the "tone controls"). Either that or else it's just not a good piano. I hear a similarity in touch between this recording and all the others, yes, he was a very personal player, of course you would, but that piano sounds more like a Monk Prestige piano than it does Walter Davis anywhere else I've heard him, and it sounds different than the piano on the other Mapleshade recordings I have. I don't think that's accidental and/or supernatural, I think it's a matter of making the piano sound like that on the other end of the microphone.

Using the admittedly limited spectrum of YouTube audio for comparison, and assuming that these are the same pianos - even allowing for the wide damn near infinite spectrum of timbral difference possible though touch and pedal technique, does this sound like the same piano that Bishop used recorded the same way, at all?

I'm not accusing Sprey of anything dishonest, but I'm not viewing his recording choices as completely objective either.

I believe that Sprey's "studio Steinway" (his term) was a vintage instrument of some sort, which may account for a certain twang it has. As for EQ-ing, I thought Sprey's recording philosophy, a la that of the Rusch crew at CIMP, precluded anything like that.

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