Booker Ervin: The Good Book

[Brad]

The following is a very interesting article by Simon Spillett about Booker Ervin that has been essentially reproduced in Jazz Profiles. According to Steven Cerra, the essay appeared in the box set on Acrobat, Booker Ervin: The Good Book. 

This is part 1. I will post part 2 when it appears in Jazz Profiles. 

Booker Ervin

Edited May 29, 2018 by Brad

[soulpope]

5 hours ago, Brad said:

The following is a very interesting article by Simon Spillett about Booker Ervin that has been essentially reproduced in Jazz Profiles. According to Steven Cerra, the essay appeared in the box set on Acrobat, Booker Ervin: The Good Book. 

This is part 1. I will post part 2 when it appears in Jazz Profiles. 

Booker Ervin

Thnx for sharing ....

[sidewinder]

Yes,many thanks.

[Brad]

9 hours ago, soulpope said:

Thnx for sharing ....

 

9 hours ago, sidewinder said:

Yes,many thanks.

Pleasure. 

Here is Part 2:

Booker Ervin, part 2

I will post Part 3 when it's published. 

[Brad]

Here is Booker Ervin, Part 3

There will be one more part.  

[Brad]

Here is the last part, Booker Ervin, Part 4.

[kh1958]

 

[mikeweil]

On 29.5.2018 at 2:22 AM, Brad said:

According to Steven Cerra, the essay appeared in the box set on Acrobat, Booker Ervin: The Good Book. 

http://acrobatmusic.net/?cid=5&AlbumId=1154

This 4 CD box compiles The Book Cooks (Bethlehem), Cookin' (Savoy), That's It! (Candid), Horace Parlan's Up And Down (Blue Note, without the one alternate take), Mal Waldron's The Quest (New Jazz), and Bill Barron's Hot Line (Savoy), plus the three Ervin tracks from Teddy Charles' Jazz In The Garden.

Edited June 3, 2018 by mikeweil

[Steve Reynolds]

4 hours ago, kh1958 said:

 

Simply amazing sound from Booker here

[Brad]

2 hours ago, mikeweil said:

http://acrobatmusic.net/?cid=5&AlbumId=1154

This 4 CD box compiles The Book Cooks (Bethlehem), Cookin' (Savoy), That's It! (Candid), Horace Parlan's Up And Down (Blue Note, without the one alternate take), Mal Waldron's The Quest (New Jazz), and Bill Barron's Hot Line (Savoy), plus the three Ervin tracks from Teddy Charles' Jazz In The Garden.

But for the fact that I have The Book Cooks, Cookin’ and the Parlan Mosaic, I would purchase this box. 

[bertrand]

Who are the others in the video other than Booker and Ted Curson?

[brownie]

Nathan Davis, Pony Poindexter, Kenny Drew, Edgar Bateman...

[Brad]

While reading Part 3 just now, I came across this paragraph:

“Online music forums are rarely the place to get a balanced, authoritative take on a jazzman's work but a few years ago one such board – Organissimo – contained a heated thread in which Ervin fans defended him against some extremely pointed criticism. Inevitably his ‘moaning’ tone was a talking point, coming in for a thorough hammering from one especially virulent individual, while another contributor described how he thought Ervin had two solos - ‘one fast and one slow.’ ”

[Rooster_Ties]

And I remember that "two solos, one fast and one slow" comment from here, quite clearly,

I really like Ervin (I have 8-10 of his albums on CD), but I think I agree (and did at the time), that he did tend to have two speeds, fast and slow.

[JSngry]

I also remember Chuck saying that Booker mattered more for how he played than what he played, or words to that effect. I defy even the most ardent Booker fan, myself included, to take issue with that!

[Chuck Nessa]

I admit to both comments and have around 20 Ervin cds. 

[Brad]

This was at the end of part 3 and I hope it’s ok to reproduce it in full:

______

 

Whether they liked Ervin's “angry charm” or hated his “bag-pipish tone” all of these writers had agreed on one thing; that these albums had successfully captured a sound unlike that of any other jazz saxophonist. To their respective producers, The Book Cooks, Cookin' and That's It! had also revealed much about Ervin's working modus operandi while in the studio, one refreshingly free from egocentric concerns and creativity-sapping multiplicity of retakes. Another musician who recorded frequently with the tenorist – drummer Alan Dawson – remembered how liberating this attitude could be. “Ervin in the recording studio, playing with him was as close to a pure emotional experience as you could get,” he told Bob Blumenthal in 1977. In a memorial for the saxophonist penned shortly after his death in 1970, he went into more detail; “the way he went about his recording sessions was always the way that I felt I would want to do jazz records...we would only do one, two or three takes maybe and that was it. And he was willing to stand up and be counted and say, 'Well, that's the way I play and that's the way we play. Go ahead and take it.'”

 

Dawson's recollections provide yet another example of the quality Ervin appeared to have by the bucket-load, both on and off the stand – honesty. And it is this frequent and consistent display of confidence in his own identity that makes all the Coltrane and Rollins comparisons both redundant and insulting. If Ervin ultimately lacked Coltrane's harmonic savvy – so what? If he didn't quite have the high-level rhythmic nous of a Sonny Rollins – who cares? His recordings – right from the off - proved that he had the most valuable assets a jazzman can ever possess – his own voice, and that must remain something worth applauding in its own right."

[Tom in RI]

Thanks for posting, I enjoyed the read.