Fontainebleau - Tadd Dameron

 

Fontainebleau

Fontainebleau

Tadd Dameron and His Orchestra

Supervision by Bob Weinstock

Recording Engineer: Van Gelder

Prestige LP P-7037

1956

Kenny Dorham - Trumpet

Sahib Shihab - Alto

Joe Alexander - Tenor

Cecil Payne - Bariton

Henry Coker - Trombone

Tadd Dameron - Piano

John Simmons - Bass

Shadow Wilson - Drums

From the back cover: Dameron is Tadd, Tadley Ewing to be formal, one of Cleveland's few gifts to the jazz world. His brother Caesar, an alto saxophonist, introduced him to jazz and his first professional job was with Freddie Webster who later in Tadd's career graced Sarah Vaughan's recording of Tadd's If You Could See Me Now with some of the most soulful trumpet ever recorded.

After stints with Zack White and Blanche Calloway (Cab's sister) Tadd arrived in Chicago and by 1940 at the age of 23, he had started to arrange. Before the war and defense work, he managed to get to New York with Vido Musso and to Kansas City where he wrote and arranged for Harlan Leonard.

When the war ended, Tadd really came into prominence through hi arrangements for Jimmy Lunceford, Billy Eckstine, Count Basie, Georgie Auld and Sarah Vaughan. He also organized and played piano in Bab's Three Bips And A Bop and wrote most importantly for the big band of Dizzy Gillespie. Patrons of the Royal Roost in 1948 will attest to the remarkable small group Tadd headed with Allen Eager and Fats Navarro as the leading horns.

In 1949, Tadd went to the Paris Jazz Festival with Miles Davis and remained on the other side of the Atlantic to write for England's Ted Heath. On returning to the U. S. in 1951, he spent two years with Bull Moose Jackson and then formed his own nine piece band which played at the Paradise Club in Atlantic City, N. J.  Now after hibernating in Cleveland since the demise of that band, Tadd Dameron, one of the brightest of the modern arranger-composers is back to realize all those promises he made with his lyrical, rich-textured, soul-moving compositions of the past.

Fontainebleau is the site of famous palace and vast forest in northern France, southwest of Paris, where the Bourbons used to cavort. When Tadd saw Fontainebleau he was moved to the extent of writing the impression of what he felt in a piece of program music, depicting the various aspects of the place, both physical and historical.

Fontainebleau is divided into three parts with melt into each other without sharp lines of demarcation. First is Le Foret and the verdure stretching out in its grandeur; next Les Cygnes (the swans) as they swim on the lake; and then the palace itself and L'Adieu, Napoleon's farewell before leaving for Elba in March of 1814.

Knowing these facts and the idea behind the composition are extremely interesting, but the music is excellent music for its own merit with or without any verbal qualifications. On hearing it, I immediately thought of a larger band (possibly Dizzy's) and the many extra colors that Fontainebleau would readily lend itself to but it seems as if other people had thought along these lines on an ever larger scale for Tadd tells us that Sir Thoman Beecham recorded it (as yet unreleased) in England with a 78 piece orchestra.

Delirium is a swift, rocking vehicle for Tadd's fellow Clevelander, Joe Alexander, who blows hi vigorous horn in two separate solos divided by a crackling, sparkling solo by Kenny Dorham.

The typically Dameronian The Scene Is Clean is expounded by Tadd both chorally and single line.

Henry Coker has Flossie Lou all to himself. Henry was one of the members of Eddie Heywood's sextet in the later Forties but is best known for his work with Count Basie since 1952.

The blues make their appearance on Bula-Beige with extended solos by the mood setting Tadd, Joe Alexander, not untouched by Sonny Rollins and Wardell Gray, a mellow Coker, plaintive Shihab, fecund Cecil Payne, walking John Simmon and Tadd again, chording and occasionally pulling Avery Parish before the band introduces a new them into a swelling climax - Ira Gitler

Fontainebleau

Delirium 

The Scene Is Clean 

Flossie Lou

Blua-Beige