|
GET
HAPPY
It is easy enough for a record company to announce that it has discovered
a great new talent. Easy, and frequent - it's done all the time. But it is
something else again to find that quite a few people with no axes at all
to grind in the matter agree most enthusiastically with your claims. It's
particularly gratifying when those enthusiasts include a substantial
proportion of the men whose business it is to pass judgment on jazz
artists. There's a long-standing gag line about an authority being someone
who knows enough to agree with you. By that definition, there are quite a
few jazz authorities (some of whose comments are reprinted elsewhere on
this album sleeve) on the subject of Randy Weston.
It was with special pride that we noted the naming of Weston, in Down Beat
magazine's annual poll of jazz critics, as the "New Star" on piano for
1955. That alone might be considered sufficient cause for titling this new
album "Get Happy." There is, however, much more reason than that for
naming this LP by the Weston trio after the fine Harold Arlen standard.
It's that Randy's swinging, leaping treatment of Get Happy strikes us as
one of the happiest and most compelling musical experiences in recent jazz
history. We are, admittedly, prejudiced. But after listening to this
lead-off tune - and to all that follows it - there's a good chance that you,
too, will end up prejudiced in favor of Weston.
This six-foot seven-inch musician, still in his twenties, has been playing
piano for nearly half his life. His first thorough exposure to jazz came
in the early 1940s, when he began drifting over from Brooklyn to
Manhattan's 52nd Street, then in transition from "Swing Street" to "Bop
Street". A young pianist could hardly have chosen any more stimulating
time and place: the area was alive with what were to be major names of
modern jazz, and there was certainly a goodly number of strong piano
stylists on hand. Randy absorbed from several of these, probably most
notably from Art Tatum and Thelonious Monk.
Different critics have noted in him resemblances to Tatum, to Monk, to
Errol Garner, even to Count Basie (jazz writers seem to have an almost
compulsive tendency to compare). But such comparisons "are at best only
very partially accurate, and undue emphasis on who or what has
"influenced" Randy can be highly misleading. For ever since he first began
the process of listening-learning-playing-developing, the most important
thing happening musically to Weston was that he was becoming himself. By
now he has just about arrived.
In general, the top-flight performer masters technique early, and quickly
establishes at least the outlines of his approach, of the kind of ideas he
wants to work with. From there on it is a matter of gleaning what he finds
personally valuable in the work of others, of gathering self-assurance, of
broadening and deepening, of exploring his own potentials - in short, of
fully "becoming himself." This lime of growing maturity and self-discovery
is perhaps the roost fascinating period in the creative life of any
artist. As this writer sees it, that is. the stage Weston is at now. It
becomes increasingly clear (presumably to Randy himself, as well as to his
listeners) that this is a lyrical pianist, who builds with clean, strong,
uncluttered lines towards what are often rather complex structures. As
this album demonstrates, he has a keen ear for the humor in a piece of
music and, even more often, for the beauty.
His playing insists, too, that jazz is a music with a firm beat - Weston
never fails to swing, never forgets that the piano is played with two
hands. Above all (and this may be the rarest quality of all), this is a
relaxed musician, who projects his feeling of ease: his up-tempo numbers
never sounding driven or pushed, his slow tunes not mere aimless
wanderings.
He benefits also from the firm and cohesive support of his co-workers
here. Sam Gill has played with Randy long enough for them develop what
John S. Wilson, in High Fidelity Magazine has termed "exceptional
rapport." Drummer Wilbert Hogan, recently added to the trio, fits neatly
into the close-knit pattern.
The repertoire indicates something of Weston's taste and variety, and his
tendency to go as far a field as need be to find suitable and unhackneyed
material. There's a rich standard like Summertime; a pair of rocking
originals; a couple of highly individualized reworkings of elderly items
from different ends of the world: Twelfth Street Rag, and the Russian
folk-melody. Dark Eyes. Fire Down There is a lightly Afro-Cubanized
treatment of a calypso song. There are a pair of soulful ballads: Where
Are You? and the haunting original by Sam Gill; and there's romp through a
Duke Ellington riff tune. And of course there is the infectious Get Happy,
which can serve as a reminder that, no matter how you look at it, it's a
good deal of fun to listen to Randy Weston.
1956 Orrin Keepnews
|
|
|
|
