So as a follow-up to our previous Jim McNeely listening session, Ethan Iverson and I got together again last week to listen to Jim's epic recording, East Coast Blow Out, in its entirety.
To begin, let me lay my cards on the table: this is one of the most mindblowingly great bigband albums ever recorded. Jim is very prolific, and has written a ton of outstanding music before and since -- some of which we talked about last time -- but East Coast Blow Out will always have a special place in my personal pantheon. As an album-length cohesive artistic statement for large jazz ensemble, I think it's up there with Ellington+Strayhorn’s Such Sweet Thunder, George Russell's New York New York, Bob Brookmeyer’s Make Me Smile, Kenny Wheeler’s Sweet Time Suite from Music for Large and Small Ensembles, and Maria Schneider’s Concert in the Garden. But unless you are an obsessive bigband junkie (and bless you if you are), you probably haven’t heard (or even heard of) East Coast Blow Out. Even John Scofield completists aren’t necessarily hip to this record, which features some of Sco’s most tantalizing work on disc.
It doesn’t help that the album is long out of print, has never been issued on iTunes or similar, and used copies of the CD tend to be rather pricey. But listen, people: Jim McNeely is badass and this is his masterpiece. You need to seek it out. (I’ve taken the liberty of uploading a few brief clips in this post so you can have a taste of what Ethan and I are talking about.)
Our conversation begins below the fold...
DJA: So we should probably talk a bit about the personnel on this record. There are four featured soloists, who also make up the rhythm section: John Scofield on guitar, Marc Johnson on bass, Adam Nussbaum on drums, and McNeely himself on piano.
That core quartet is joined by almost the entire WDR Big Band -- 14 horns, plus guitar and keyboards. (Only WDR’s regular bassist and drummer were not involved, though Jim says he originally wanted them in as well!) The WDR Big Band is a resident ensemble of Westdeutscher Rundfunk, the massive West German radio and television broadcaster. Many European nations have publicly funded full-time big bands (and Germany actually has several) but the WDR Big Band is probably the best-known of these European groups, and is also one of the oldest -- it was founded in 1946!
Securing a spot in the WDR band is extremely competitive -- jazz musicians from all around the world audition for the group whenever there is an opening -- but once you’re in, the gig offers benefits and stability similar to a full-time symphony orchestra. (To give you some idea: of the WDR musicians who performed on this album, which was recorded in September 1989, six of them were still in the band as of last fall, when I went over to work with the ensemble.)
EI: Interesting to think about the stars’ previous history:
First McNeely album, The Plot Thickens, has Scofield.
Both McNeely and Johnson were in the same Stan Getz band.
Scofield and Nussbaum were in an important trio w/Steve Swallow.
From the Heart was Jim McNeely trio w/Johnson and Nussbaum.
Johnson’s Bass Desires had Sco. (Classic band, I know Second Sight particularly well.)
Sco’s working quartet at time of this recording had Johnson -- I loved seeing them at Sweet Basil several times after moving to NYC
I saw all four musicians plus Joe Lovano onstage at Stanford Jazz Workshop in 1989. Jim encouraged me to go to NYU, where he played the entire tape of East Coast Blow-Out in comp class before the album was released.
DJA: That ’s all from memory... ? You are a maniac.
[EI postscript: Subsequent research turned up the following video -- while Stan Getz’s band with McNeely and Johnson normally included either Victor Lewis or Billy Hart on drums, here’s a clip with Nussbaum subbing in:
Also, I was at this gig:
From about 1992, when Visiones was still around.
And McNeely and Johnson are on some Mel Lewis and Brookmeyer dates together: Mellifulous and Through A Looking Glass.”
DJA postcript: I have Through A Looking Glass on vinyl -- it is insane.]
Here is what McNeely has to say about his history with Scofield, Johnson, and Nussbaum:
I’d played with both Sco and Adam a lot around NYC since around 1976. Various gigs and jam sessions.When I was planning The Plot Thickens it was originally to be a trio album. I told the producer "Let's get John on a couple of tunes while we can still afford him; he's gonna be big one day." In fact I was scheduled to go on tour with John's quartet in Europe in 1978; he was with Enja, and this was to be his first tour on the "schnitzel circuit" as we called it. But Mel Lewis invited me to join Thad & Mel for a 12-week tour of Europe, so I bowed out of John's tour. He was cool about it. I sometimes wonder how things might have turned out had I stayed with John. I probably wouldn't have you and Ethan blogging about me!
I first met Marc when he was with Woody Herman. But got to know him a little when he was with Bill [Evans]. I'd played some with Joe LaBarbera, and would come to hear Bill's trio. In fact Marc invited me to Bill's 50th birthday party. That was something! About a year later Bill died and Marc joined Stan Getz's quartet. Stan had decided to go back to playing more straight-ahead and had a rhythm section with Marc, Victor Lewis, and Lou Levy on piano. Lou didn't want to travel; Marc and a few others recommended me for the gig. That’s where I got to know him well. Adam also subbed on that band. And I did a trio album (From the Heart) with them. We had a lot of fun with that group.
So I was thinking of that trio, and my experiences with Sco, and how I could wrap a big band around all of us, when I proposed the “Blow-Out.” I originally called it the “New York Blow Out,” but then Marc moved to Virginia. Hence “East Coast.”
DJA: Also, one last word from McNeely -- before we (finally!) get to listening, we should let the composer set it up for us:
Each movement was conceived as a different solo situation: 1) Sco 2) the trio, then the quartet, alternating with the band 3) Marc 4) Sco gets consumed by the band yet emerges unscathed 5) Blues with a bridge; Sco and Adam. And each movement would have a solo statement from one of us to lead into the next movement.
Okay, ready? Let’s do this!
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Part 1: Do You Really Think... ? (excerpt)
(click to play)
EI: The fanfare opening sounds like it was fun to play. I’m sure Jim wants to get the band on his side from the beginning.
Adam Nussbaum can really play serious jazz. On this record he has to appropriate styles that can seem fusiony in the hands of lesser talents.
DJA: This is true. But also on the other hand, I kind of see this record as a meditation on the music of McNeely’s formative years, which most definitely includes some late 1970’s and early 1980’s fusion. For instance, I hear a lot of Joe Zawinul in this music, albeit filtered through Jim’s own compositional voice, and also considered retrospectively. I mean, this album was recorded at a time when fusion had become incredibly uncool, and pure acoustic jazz was ascendant.
EI: Someday I need to study Zawinul properly. The two keyboardists I admire the most, Craig Taborn and Django Bates, really know that language.
The slow swing after the intro is authentic, and off-center: the 4/4 is clearly two bars of three plus a bar of two.
DJA: And during the out head, it actually shifts into 7.
EI: I think something you learned from Jim was writing a melody that works “against” the beat (in a vocalized way) as well as on the beat.
DJA: Indeed. Also check out the orchestration of the melody: piano 8va above guitar... a great sound which I have found many occasions to deploy in my own music.
EI: The tune is extended! A complete story before any blowing for sure.
I remember once in a master class Marc Johnson talking about “wanting to phrase like John Scofield.” Sco’s chainsaw-meets-nonchalance is remarkable given those scarily difficult McNeely chord changes.
DJA: He is on fire here. It’s proof of how making a soloist fight through a large ensemble can bring out aspects of someone’s playing that aren’t always evident in more “normal” small group situations.
EI: McNeely loves codas. In class he mentioned how in a Shakespearian tragedy, after everyone is dead, “A mouse comes on stage and gives the final word.”
DJA: I think Jim must have a different edition of the complete Shakespeare than I do... Anyway, the muted brass (“mice”) here melt into the first of the improvised solo cadenzas that bridge each movement. This one is McNeely on piano -- it’s actually his first solo statement in the piece.
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Part 2: Skittish (excerpt)
(click to play)
EI: One of my oft-stated theories on DTM is the under-rated influence of the Keith Jarrett American quartet. The music on this record has moments of chaotic freedom within otherwise tight parameters. While that could have come from diverse sources, the charismatic melody to “Skittish” is unquestionably in the tradition of how Keith put Ornette on the piano and in the band sound.
DJA: Huh -- never considered that angle before but I think you’re right. The twisty, sequential, singsong-y melody does kind of have that vibe.
I just adore those piano+synth pulses that set up the horns’ statement of the head. This 4+4+4+6 vamp in the piano solo is a nice bit of foreshadowing. I know Jim likes to think of musical themes as characters in a play, and this is a great example.
Notice that there are no horn backgrounds underneath the piano solo -- it’s all trading with the band. This chart is clearly written by a pianist who’s had his solos stepped on by over-busy horn backgrounds one too many times!
EI: The fragmentation of the tune before the bass solo is thrilling.
DJA: And there’s those pulses again! Always heralding a major new event.
EI: Nice “pads” in bands for the bass solo. (All bassists love quiet, even, on-the-beat comping.)
DJA: Those pads are also contributing yet more foreshadowing...
So now Marc is out for a bit after that totally burning bass solo, as the horns get to work backed by Nussbaum alone. When the rest of the rhythm section finally comes back in, we finally get the half-time backbeat version of that 4+4+4+6 groove Jim’s spent pretty much the whole tune setting us up for.
EI: I think every track has a killing extended technique or avant-garde moment. Here it is in the breaks during the funk guitar solo.
All the principals solo, but they all solo on different forms. “Skittish,” indeed.
DJA: Scofield’s linking cadenza here is a a gem, a beautiful miniature that could stand alone as its own thing.
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Part 3: More Questions (excerpt)
(click to play)
EI: So, clearly McNeely wants to change the mood now. Is that “offstage” horns?
DJA: Oh, you mean like in Mahler? Those are actually synth pads. But yeah, the mood is certainly shifting to a more contemplative, “in der Ferne” kind of vibe.
EI: Jesus, I thought they were horns. Now it’s obvious, of course. Actually I don’t usually approve of mixing in synthesizers with acoustic jazz very much, nice to find out I’m wrong.
DJA: Really digging the way Sco and Marc Johnson phrase the melody together here. This is really one of Jim’s most tuneful themes.
EI: Hmm, the endless magic of the diatonic scale! First part is just in Eb, but sounds very sophisticated. I could use the drums being mixed a tad hotter, myself. (I always want more drums in everything.)
That melody was really just an intro to a very sophisticated jazz ballad -- classic ’70s complexity. I heard Richie Beirach play his canonical “Elm” recently, he’s just a bit older than Jim.
Bass solo! Marc Johnson is fabulous -- very singing.
DJA: Marc’s playing is gorgeous. I wish we could hear more of the natural sound though -- the WDR engineers are getting a very nice pickup sound from him, but it’s still a pickup sound. Still, it’s hard to imagine how a real woody acoustic bass would mesh with those 80’s FM synth pads.
Those gradually accelerating horn responses at the end of Marc Johnson’s solo is a clear highlight of the entire work. Such a simple but brilliant idea, perfectly executed.
EI: I never heard that before!
DJA: I have stolen this bit multiple times.
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Part 4: Cantus Infirmus (excerpt)
(click to listen)
DJA: This one is almost Oliver Nelson-esque, in the way it works a sequence to the bone.
EI: Could be all twelve chromatic notes in the bass line? Herbie Nichols and Kurt Rosenwinkel do that too.
DJA: I think you’re almost certainly right. Let me check. [DJA checks.] Yep -- root motion is: C-Ab-E-A-F-Db-Gb-D-Bb-Eb-B-G and then back to C. So the pattern is a descending augmented triad (à la “Giant Steps”) followed by an ascending fourth. Truth be told, I don’t normally go for that sort of thing. (Confession time: none of Coltrane’s “Giant Steps”-derived tunes, up to and including “Giant Steps” itself, do a whole lot for me.) But here, Jim’s harmonic and melodic inventiveness helps disguise the deterministic bass sequence.
EI: I’d love hearing the layers adding up to massive live -- the record surely doesn’t do it justice.
DJA: Jim tells me that after the recording sessions, they actually did play Blow Out live two nights in a row at Stadgarten (a club in Cologne, capacity about 250 I think if you pack everyone in tight). Hearing that would have been an unbelievable experience!
EI: Oh, god, another great Sco solo. This is really a superb document of his playing. He’s so famous, but in a weird way I think he may be under-appreciated by the cognoscenti.
DJA: Each solo setting seems designed to extract a different aspect of the Scofield alchemy.
These chromatic clouds in the horn backgrounds here always kind of blew by me before -- they are great, though! Nice to always be hearing new things in this piece, even after all these years of checking it out.
EI: With a moving bassline like this, it’s very hard to feel the top of the cycle. I believe Jim’s generation credits Steve Swallow’s “Falling Grace” with creating this “endless form in miniature.”
DJA: Very interesting -- that connection had not occurred to me! But now that you point it out...
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DJA: “Finally” the blues (albeit heavily abstracted) -- plus, this movement also features some subtle and very hip recapitulation of themes from the entire work.
EI: Massive big band! It’s great. But I also appreciate that when everyone drops out but Sco and Nussbaum, we finally get the most exciting drumming on the record -- not just in terms of content, but in terms of feel.
Drumming for a big band must be a particularly taxing endeavor, trying to put everybody on the same page at all times. As far as I know, Nussbaum is not known as a big-band drummer, but he sounds great throughout. I need to see him live again soon.
DJA: Especially hard to stroll into a situation like this, where the four soloists are thick as thieves, but meanwhile the horn players are used to a completely different rhythmic section, which they have worked with almost every single day, for years on end!
EI: The free-from horn cues kick the drum solo into a far cooler place than most “obligatory drum solos.”
DJA: I thought you might appreciate that!
Also, this quasi-chorale thing over the swing at the end really comes as a surprise...
EI: Of all things, I think of Pat Metheny -- loose diatonicism and overt lyricism.
The final elongated chord -- A major triad over Bb -- is the sort of chord I accept from a master like Jim McNeely but would never use extensively myself.
DJA: Um, didn’t you just come off of a performance of The Rite of Spring? Context is everything. (And, yeah, the famous "Augurs of Spring" chord is a full-on polychord, not just a major triad over a b9 in the bass -- but there is a family resemblance, no?)
Anyway, I think I’ve made it fairly clear I consider East Coast Blow Out to be a consummate masterpiece. However, if you held a gun to my head and forced me to offer one small criticism, it would be that the piece ends too abruptly. The band plays the head out, there’s a brief tag, then we close with three groups of three tutti punches, with a fermatta on the last one from the rhythm section... I mean, it gets the job done, but the beginning of Part 1 is so intense and all-encompassing that I can’t help find myself longing for a similar kind of sustained meltdown at the very end here.
On the other hand, there is definitely something to be said for “always leave them wanting more...”
EI: How cool to listen to a classic record carefully a few times and then sit down with someone who really knows it.
DJA: The pleasure is all mine, sir. Thanks for coming over to check it out! It’s been a long time since I’ve done a proper album listening hang. I’d forgotten how much fun they can be! We should do this again sometime...
Great post and thanks for hipping me to McNeely's music. I really enjoy these album hang reports!
Posted by: Will Yager | 08 April 2011 at 11:02 AM
Really enjoyed the post and hope the series of 'Listening with Friends' continues!
Posted by: Rich | 11 April 2011 at 05:00 PM
Yep. Skittish made me want to write large ensemble jazz music. One of the coolest things ever written.
Posted by: Dave Lisik | 19 April 2011 at 07:33 AM
This is great! This album is definitely responsible (almost single-handedly) for me becoming a large ensemble composer/arranger/bandleader. I have since studied with Jim and discovered the plethora of incredible music he has penned over the years, but "East Coast Blow Out" has long been my personal favorite. I didn't even know it was a big band album when I first listened. I just threw it in the CD player at a friends house and from the very first sound I was mesmerized. Thanks for posting this!
Posted by: Tom Erickson | 18 May 2011 at 12:07 AM