Alan Barnes' Tribute to Horace Silver.
A bit of a strange one this: A tribute to Horace Silver, the great exponent of hard-bop piano and funky / latin jazz pioneer…from a reeds man. Clark Tracey paying homage to Art Blakey (in which Mr. Barnes featured) – now that makes sense. And Barnes playing alto on his tribute to Cannonball Adderley, that makes sense. But the alto rarely featured in Silvers seminal bands of the fifties and sixties. Barnes is a multi-talented multi-instrumentalist, fluent in almost every jazz idiom, so it is clearly a matter of choice. He has played with everyone from Humphrey Littleton to Brian Ferry, and famously provided the honking Mingus baritone for a certain bitter commercial (which seems kind of appropriate in the light of tea-total Peter Kay working for a rival brewery) The quality of the material Barnes had before him is undeniable. The heads were played as facsimiles of the originals, with satisfying tight unision playing, and bass riffs lifted straight from the Blue-note recordings. Silver’s compositions are all packed full of nice compositional touches, breaks and stop-time passages, that constantly feed energy into the tunes. Alan’s work was as virtuosic as ever, and he played with effortless ease all night. Fantastic technical ability brought out string after string of machine-gun quaver runs at blitzkrieg tempo, complemented by faster flurries, assured double-time passages, repeated hypnotic free-jazz style patterns, bluesy wails…in fact it was all perhaps a bit too easy. His effortless virtuosity at times bordered on the formulaic, and, even though many jazz solos have a similar underlying architecture – a sure-fire method of building the solo chorus upon chorus to its climax - this was at times a little too apparent. Horace Silver and the hard-bop generation are generally associated with a slowing down of soloing speed, a return to simpler, bluesier patterns, whereas Barnes played with a Parkeresque break-neck facility, and very little of the grit of the post-boppers.
This seemed to be confirmed when the band played the ballad Lonely Woman. At last Barnes demonstrated the depth of his musicality by constructing one of the solos of the night. Ideas flowed lyrically and made almost narrative sense, there was a muscularity to the rhythms of his phrases, and a tight pretty controlled vibrato that more than once brought Paul Desmond to mind, and left me wishing Silver had written more ballads. Steve Waterman on trumpet, like Barnes, produced his most meaningful passages on slower or mid-tempo tunes, on which he tended to come down the register a little, his tone fattening-up, whilst producing well-conceived phrases, sometimes with a hint of Blue Mitchell, sometimes a touch Lee Morgan. On piano, John Pearce certainly didn’t sound anything like Horace Silver, and I was constantly half-expecting some percussive left and stabs, diminished sounding patterns, or other Silver trademarks to get that ‘ah, we got that reference’ kind of appreciation from the audience. It was however another pianist John Donaldson (who was in band for the recording on which this set was based) who’d transcribed the pieces. Another great Barnes solo followed on Cape Verdean Blues, this time wonderfully organic, where ideas fed into each other, rather than giving way to technically dazzling flurries. With infectious rhythmic vitality his melody bounced over the changes and even contained a touch of exuberant slap-tonguing for good measure, drawing a great response from the audience. On Senor Blues, Alan made reference to the luminaries on the Dave Green’s (bass) impressive CV, but of course he was stuck again playing someone else’s ostinato patterns. The tune did bring out Alan Barnes blues edge with some gritty wailing, and a simple staccato quaver passage to round off. The solos were getting better and better, and despite my great love for Silver’s ‘latin tinge’, it was welcome contrast when the band went into the up-tempo rhythm-changes variant that is Finger-Poppin’. Propelled by a driving 4/4 bass line that lifted the band, Barnes constructed his best solo, revisiting and reworking a simple ascending pattern throughout to give unity and strong sense of structure. Georgie Fame with Guy Barker
Now, I’m not sure how appropriate it is to compare Barnes with Georgie Fame. The one thing in common is that, by virtue of tonight’s performance at least, they are great show-men. But whereas Barnes is a multi-talented multi-instrumentalist, an alumni from the Leeds College of music, who’s showmanship consists mainly of audience repartee between pieces (which made him the consummate festival host), Georgie Fame is simply Georgie Fame, and this suffuses every thing he musically touches. And that was evident from the off. In the best tradition, the band (the Guy Barker quartet in effect) came on first and showed effortlessly their jazz credentials. Both Guy Barker and James Watson on piano (another Leeds College of Music old-boy) demonstrated a great range of phrasing and ideas, full of little rhythmic whirlpools that repeat and develop and engage the listener. In the bass spot, Phil Donkin had a light and dexterous touch, and showed a penchant for effervescent yet almost unsounded grace notes which pushed the solo along. Clark Tracey allowed the band to highlight its natural facility with the excitement of the drum exchanges that followed as one soloist’s ideas spilled into the next. The musicianship of the entire band shone through, and by comparison, the Barnes set seemed like a string of solos played over carbon copies of someone else’s material. Georgie Fame entered, elegant and dapper in a white suit, and there’s no doubt about it, from the moment he walked on to the moment he left, he owned the stage, to the degree that I wouldn’t be surprised if he packed it up and took it away with him after the gig. The first tune, a great swing / early bop favourite was Lester Young’s Jumping with Symphony Sid, played at an earthy strolling tempo, trumpet and piano joining Fame to offer nice harmonies behind the second time through the head, before Fame left to run through the exhilarating vocalese provided by King Pleasure, that seminal genius of jazz who recorded little more than a CDs worth of material in his entire career This style was an unforeseen yet perfectly natural departure within jazz - a consequence of the popularity of the record and the new possibility of being able to closely study improvised lines. Soloist’s spontaneously constructed melodies were painstaking transcribed from the recording, had lyrics set to them, and voila, vocalese. I must admit that Symphony Sid is a great favourite of mine, and I couldn’t help but admire Fame’s exemplary taste when he introduced another great favourite, a tune overlooked to the point of obscurity, the great Be-bop composer Tadd Dameron’s minor masterpiece On a Misty Night. Again Georgie gave a masterclass of vocalese, this time to the Chet Baker recording of this beautiful, wistful, mid-tempo ballad. As Fame introduced the piece, I did briefly wonder if we were about to experience vocalese sheets of sound (John Coltrane recorded a beautiful version of the tune in 1956 with Dameron), but Chet’s cool succinct cool improvisation lends itself much more readily to such treatment, and Fame’s mellow tone was appropriately Chet-like at times. Guy Barker’s ability to adapt to the setting proved why he is such a great asset to the band, and James Watson’s stunning versatility and supreme musicianship was keenly displayed with a solo full locked-hands passages and other nods to the ‘arrangers’ piano style of Dameron. The band took vocalese to its logical conclusion by referencing in an extremely credible fashion ‘round Midnight’ at the end, in other words, ‘come see me on a misty night ‘round midnight’. And on the ballad, A Declaration of Love, Barker played in unison with Fame, with Fame then holding the mike with his left hand, and playing the keys of the imaginary trumpet which played the original line with his right.
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Watson, who Fame described as a ‘real piano player’ left the stage for Georgie to take his seat for the inevitable rendition of Yeh Yeh, John Hendricks lyrics to Mongo Santamaria’s classic recording. It’s not often you hear an authentic number one hit at a jazz gig, but rather than going through the motions, the band clearly relished the rock’n’roll exuberance of this early latin / funky-jazz cross-over that made a little piece of jazz history back in the mid sixties. It was never going to be the subtlest of jazz performances, but it rocked the house, with an exhilarating call and response passage between Fame and Barker, and a high energy ending. Louis Jordan’s Don’t Send me Flowers had a real Gee Baby Ain’t I Good to You feel, as bluesy as you can get without actually being a blues, and both Fame and Barker kept it simple, Fame’s playing full of soul, and Barker’s full of simple bold and well-shaped phrases, bluesy slurs and smears, growls, and old-time phrases and tones that looked back to Armstrong and before. Fame went back to his Chet Baker collection for his version of Gershwin’s How Long has this been Going On, putting lyrics to Chet’s solo, and continuing straight through to put lyrics over Kenny Drew’s piano solo (which followed Chet’s on the record) whilst accompanying himself in melodic unison on the piano, again a simple but extremely effective touch. The encore was as just about as good as it gets. Just Fame and Barker back out on the stage for Buddy Johnson’s Since I Fell for You. For all the superlatives one can attach to Watson’s playing, Georgie Fame’s simple opening piano bars were spellbinding and dripped with hip sixties soul. The musicians came completely together, when Barker let notes fall away, Fame followed suit, and when the opportunities of the increased dynamic range of the duo were exploited to the full, both when Fame delivered the line ‘I’m still in love with you’, and when Barker’s solo went from breathy, to fluttery, then a shout, then a slur, with exquisite half-stopping, and tasteful flutter-tonguing, it was a superb melodic and technical achievement and a real highlight among of set full of highlights. To end, Barker and Fame found the same note, held it, Fame walked across the stage to Barker, put his arm round him, and still holding the note, they both left the stage. A consummate performance and fitting end to a great festival. I felt like popping back half-an-hour later just to check that Georgie Fame wasn’t back there, dismantling the stage. Steven Blockley |
