Sadik Hakim

[Teasing the Korean]

For several decades, I have had the Charlie Parker Records East and West of Jazz, with Sadik Hakim on one side and Duke Jordan on the other.  

I really like this album.  Is there any more Sadik Hakim worth getting?  I read someplace that his later playing became "more conventional."   If that is so, I guess I am looking for the earlier playing.  

It looks like he played on some of Charlie Parker's Savoy tracks, but I can't remember these offhand.

The first track here reminds me of Randy Weston in parts.

 

[mhatta]

Sadik Hakim made lots of albums after his "comeback" in 70s, but I think most of them had sidemen not up to his caliber.  I guess the best of the bunch is Witches, Goblins, Etc. (SteepleChase).  It had Al Foster on drums and also "Witches" might be his best composition.

 

[Peter Friedman]

[bertrand]

How is the set with Stitt? I have been eyeing that one.

[Brad]

He played with Bird on the Ko Ko sessions from November 26, 1945. 

[Joe]

I too like the Steeplechase date.

There appears to be a solo recital on Progressive (MEMORIES), but I've never heard it. Progressive have reissued a couple of LPs (A PEARL FOR ERROL and A PRAYER FOR LILIANE) on a single CD.

Edit: MEMORIES can be auditioned via Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/album/1OdFnWqBzjISimE3JyUJXs

Edited September 21, 2021 by Joe

[Teasing the Korean]

Thanks all.  Is anyone familiar with that East and West of Jazz album that I posted, and is any of his other stuff in a similar bag?

[bertrand]

All the later dates are available to download for free (legally, I assume) from my Public Library. I have not listened to them yet.

I plan to get the date with Stitt unless someone says it is lackluster. Library does not have that one.

Edited September 21, 2021 by bertrand

[Al in NYC]

Sadik Hakim spent some time in Montreal in the late '60s and early '70s. He wrote and recorded music for CBC radio in 1973 that was released on a couple of records, which were, as far as I know, the first recordings to come out under his own name after East Meets West.  The most interesting of these is his long-form 4 part London Suite, which has been put out on a number of issues under different names (Transcriptions, Canada, London Suite, Grey Cup Caper, Hakim's own name, etc.) with an array of covers and a varying number of his other small-group compositions included.  These performances also feature the rather mysterious US/Canadian multi-reedist Sayyd Abdul Al-Khabyyr, the great tenorist Billy Robinson, and guitarist Peter Leitch.

 

 

Edited September 21, 2021 by Al in NYC

[Teasing the Korean]

The book that comes with the Charlie Parker Savoy box set talks disparagingly about Hakim's playing on "Thriving on a Riff," calling it "primitive" and consisting almost entirely of descending chromatic scales.  I will have to re-listen.  

Hakim also plays on part of "Koko" from the same session, and which the spellcheck keeps turning into "Yoko" despite my repeated revisions.

Edited September 21, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[medjuck]

1 hour ago, Al in NYC said:

Sadik Hakim spent some time in Montreal in the late '60s and early '70s. He wrote and recorded music for CBC radio in 1973 that was released on a couple of records, which were, as far as I know, the first recordings to come out under his own name after East Meets West.  The most interesting of these is his long-form 4 part London Suite, which has been put out on a number of issues under different names (Transcriptions, Canada, London Suite, Grey Cup Caper, Hakim's own name, etc.) with an array of covers and a varying number of his other small-group compositions included.  These performances also feature the rather mysterious US/Canadian multi-reedist Sayyd Abdul Al-Khabyyr, the great tenorist Billy Robinson, and guitarist Peter Leitch.

 

 

I think it was around that time he did an interview for Coda and gave his version of the Koko session. 

[Gheorghe]

Sadik Hakim is also on Dexter´s first recordings for Savoy in 1945. His playing there is very similar to the sides for Bird from the same year. 

About his playing:  Since the Bird sides were about the first bop I heard when I was around 15, I heard the Sadik Hakim piano solos also. 

But my impression is, that Hakim maybe at that early stage of his career didn´t know how to play bop properly. It sounds like someone, who until that point played other music, maybe classical music and tried to keep up with the "new sounds of bop" without really understanding what´s bop about. 

People then thought bop is weird and so on, but hear Bird or Diz or Fats or Bud, and it flows, it has that beauty in it and tells us a story. 

When I myself started to try to play that music, it sounded very similar to what Hakim did, without wanting to sound that way. When I listened back on tape recorder, what I had played before on piano, I was shocked. It sounded like chromatic exercises in a stiff collard way to play syncopes. Like if a classical pupil has to play cromatic scales under severe looks of those oldish ladies who used to give piano lessons (I quit after a few times, when I was a kid, cause that was not "music" for me). 

It was frustrating: I heard "Bouncing with Bud", would memorize to line and the chords, but it sounded like a copy of Sadik Hakim when I played it. Ugly, with eccessiv use of descenting cromatic lines and stiff. 
Until someone (I think it was Allan Praskin) told me: "Read the title: BOUNCING with Bud. Do you know what a bounce is ?". That helped me very much. 

If I listen to a tape of what I played when I was a teenager, I have to laugh a lot now.....