Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 33

Record label: Impulse!

Produced: Creed Taylor

Recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood, New Jersey; February 23, 1961

Released: May 1961

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Oliver Nelson (as, ts); Eric Dolphy (as, flute); Freddie Hubbard (t); George Barrow (bs); Bill Evans (p); Paul Chambers (b); Roy Haynes (d); Rudy Van Gelder (e)

Track listing: Stolen Moments; Hoe-Down; Cascades; Yearnin’; Butch and Bitch; Teenies Blues

Running time: 36.43

Current CD: Impulse! 1704656

Further listening: Soul Battle (1960) – wonderful blowing session with Jimmy Forrest and King Curtis; More Blues And The Abstract Truth (1964)

Further reading: www.vervemusicgroup.com/artist.aspx?ob=per&src=prd&aid=2789

Download: Not currently legally available

Talking to Melody Maker in 1993, Donald Fagen explained why this record had exerted an influential fascination upon him. ‘[It’s] a very popular jazz record, kind of mainstream big band. Nelson had a West Coast sound, and the contrast between Eric Dolphy’s solos and that slick, swinging rhythm section was very interesting to me.’

It often seemed that the music of master arranger Oliver Nelson was in search of a seamless blend of Ellington’s thought and Coltrane’s emotion. Blues And The Abstract Truth, rightly regarded by Nelson as his high water-mark, was where he made that blend sound like nobody but himself.

He loved to mix’n’match styles – as one of the great jazz synthesisers, there was little he couldn’t envelop in his warm embrace. ‘Classical music of the 19th century, and contemporary music of our own 20th century,’ Nelson wrote in the album notes, ‘brought about the need for adopting a different perspective in order to create music that was meaningful and vital. One device which has always been successful and vital in both classical music and in present-day jazz is to let the musical ideas determine the form and shape of a musical composition. In effect, that is what I have tried to do here.’

The musical ideas encompassed jazz (traditional and modern), blues, spirituals, Broadway scoring and even country music and classical flourishes. The all-star band included stellar soloists Freddie Hubbard, Bill Evans, Eric Dolphy and Nelson himself. You’ll find the more fiery Dolphy elsewhere; here his playing is relatively restrained. But Nelson, whose renown was mostly for his arranging chops, shows himself to be a gifted, deceptively relaxed soloist.

He’d been prepared for this eclectic work by early stints with Louis Jordan, Erskine Hawkins and Wild Bill Davis, a college education in music theory and composition, and a trial-by-fire as the house arranger at the Apollo Theatre. Following the success of this album, he eventually settled in LA, working primarily in film and TV scoring until a heart attack claimed him prematurely in 1975. Though his Hollywood work was of extremely high calibre, it tended to diminish the jazz profile he’d established in New York. But as long as we have Blues And The Abstract Truth, his stature as a jazz giant will be indisputable.