Phil Schaap- The Early Andrew Hill!

[sgcim]

On WKCR this afternoon, Phil Schaap did a really odd show; he played some early things that Andrew Hill recorded before his Blue Note LPs.

He made it pretty clear, as only PS can do, that these records were very rare and hard to find, and that you should perhaps genuflect to him for playing them for you.

I wish I could say that the recordings showed some of the talent that AH showed in Point of Departure, and everything after that, but even Phil let on that early AH is nothing to get excited by.

He started off playing a Dave Shipp date from 1954 which featured mainly lame, square  blues tunes, with one Rhythm changes thing at the end.

Shipp was, on the basis of these recordings, a lousy bass player who couldn't swing, couldn't write tunes, and rushed like crazy. AH's solos were pretty sad also, just stiff minor pentatonic

blues riffs that didn't swing at all. His comping was also very on the beat corn.

Then he played another date that PS went out of the way to say that AH said in an interview that he didn't remember doing, BUT then said that he didn't know it had been recorded.

PS called that the 'smoking gun'- how could he not remember doing the date if he also said he didn't think the sides had been released? Don't mess with Herr Schaap!

Again it was a horrible rhythm section with a young Malachi Favors on bass, and some awful drummer. AH played about the same as he did on the aforementioned date.

The only one who sounded like he could play was the leader, tenor player Clifford Scott. I believe that one or both of these dates were on King Records.

Then he played a trio date that Hill did with Favors on Ping records, in 1955, which was pretty much the same thing.

From here, he went to another trio thing Hill recorded on Warwick in 1959, with Favors again and James Slaughter on drums.

Schaap opined that since it was done around the time of Ahmad Jamal's Poniciana, that Hill was trying to cash in on that type of sound.

There were a lot of bass pedals, and soft mallets on the floor tom, so he could be right about that, but this showed a much improved Hill, playing with a much more relaxed, swinging feel, although I didn't like his harmonization or rendition of the title tune, 'So In Love'.

The rest of the album was much better, with Hill playing standards like Spring is Here, That's All (with lame changes), and Ole Devil Moon (he blew mainly on one chord rather than the I bVII of the tune) and one bluesy original.

Schaap read the liner notes of the album that revealed Hill had an NBD in the time between the first albums in the mid 50s and this one, from the stress of trying to make a living as a jazz musician.

He also said that Hill had come under the tutelage of Barry Harris, which might have been responsible for the marked improvement in his playing.

Schaap then played another Hill original, which was left off of the Warwick LP, but included in the TCB re-issue that featured a string section(!) dubbed in over the trio.

It was a kind of lame groove tune featuring Hill's apparent favorite progression back then, IV-iii-ii-I all over the place. The overdubbed strings didn't help.

Then Schaap went into an apologetic sermon about how he felt bad playing this material, and talked about Hill studying with Hindemith and going on to much better things, after which he played Hill's Blue Note recordings.

[paul secor]

I get it. You don't like Phil Schaap.

[Michael Weiss]

There's a 1956 Ping date under Andrew Hill's name with Von Freeman, Pat Patrick, Malachi Favors and Wilbur Campbell personifies Chicago Southside jazz of the mid 1950s as well as any recording I've heard. There may not be much if any of Hill playing, but damn if these tunes don't hit a serious groove. Von's inimitable sound is worth the price of admission alone.

 

 

[Larry Kart]

13 hours ago, paul secor said:

I get it. You don't like Phil Schaap.

If I may speak for sgcim, when Schaap comes on like a self-important jerk... 

[JSngry]

I like the Warwick record good enough, actually.

The TCB overdubs are indeed curious, but I might have found their source. It's a longshot, but nobody else has any answers. Can't find the post, it's recent-ish, but it basically involves some bootlegger whose trademark was adding string/string-synth overdubs (as well as other remixing trickery) and then releasing the results as "new recordings". The odds of him getting to the Warwick catalog, I don't know, but it's the first documentation of such a practice I've come across. Anybody with any better a trail, please come forth!

[clifford_thornton]

well, the Andrew Hill isn't the only Warwick record that TCB booted. They also did the Donald Byrd/Pepper Adams and the Teddy Charles. Those TCBs sound gawd-awful!

I like the Ping 45s but agree that South Side hard bop and soul jazz is a long way from what Hill was doing on Blue Note ten years later. That said, Hill could also pen some in-the-club groovers, as he did for Morgan and Mobley.

[Rooster_Ties]

2 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

Hill could also pen some in-the-club groovers, as he did for Morgan and Mobley.

"The Rumproller" for Lee, definitely.  But I'm not sure Hill ever wrote anything for Mobley (their only encounter was on No Room For Squares, iirc).  If the on-line resource I found this on is right (don't have my McMaster with me at the moment), the full session was as shown down below (and all titles by Hank, or Lee)...

QUESTION:  SO, then was "Rumproller" the ONLY Hill-penned tune for anyone else? -- other than the four (4) Hill tunes on Bobby Hutcherson's Dialogue, of course.

Hank Mobley
No Room For Squares - Blue Note BST 84149
Rec. Oct 2, 1963 at Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Hank Mobley (ts), Lee Morgan (tp), Andrew Hill (p), John Ore (b), Philly Joe Jones (d)

No Room For Squares (Hank Mobley)
Three Way Split (Hank Mobley)
Me 'N' You (Lee Morgan)
Carolyn (Lee Morgan)
Comin' Back* (Hank Mobley)
Syrup and Biscuits* (Hank Mobley)
No Room For Squares (alt tk)*
Carolyn (alt tk)*

Notes: *songs from the session which first appeared on the CD re-issue

[Quasimado]

On 12/19/2017 at 9:58 AM, sgcim said:

Schaap read the liner notes of the album that revealed Hill had an NBD in the time between the first albums in the mid 50s and this one, from the stress of trying to make a living as a jazz musician.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBD:

NBD can refer to: Contents. [hide]. 1 Banking; 2 Logistics; 3 Computing; 4 Science; 5 Other uses. Banking[edit]. National Bank of Dubai · National Bank of Detroit · National Bank of Dominica. Logistics[edit]. Next Business Day. Computing[edit]. The network block device of Linux. Science[edit]. Neurobiological brain disorder ...

I suspect National Bank of Dubai ... Q

 

[sgcim]

Nervous Breakdown.

[JSngry]

so what is the "B" stand for?

[sgcim]

Alright, I'll admit it, I got it from some terrible Wayne Dwyer book I read as a kid...