The Chico Hamilton Quintet With Strings Attached

Modes

The Chico Hamilton Quintet With Strings Attached
Orchestra under the direction of Fred Katz
Produced by George Avakian
Cover Photo by Gene Kornmann
Warner Bros. Records B 1245
1959

From the back cover: The members of the Chico Hamilton Quintet are a mixture of highly-respected veteran musicians and talented youngsters. Leader Hamilton is one of the best-known percussionists in both the jazz and show-business fields. At 18, he played with the Duke Ellington orchestra. A stint with Count Basie followed, but Chico was not content to be only a jazz drummer; he also went into theatre work in Los Angeles, and then combined the two backgrounds in the first long-term engagement of his career – eight years with the greatest night club performer of them all, Lena Horne. In 1955, he applied everything he had learned to form the Quintet – a masterful combination of jazz, showmanship, and just plain good music to play and to listen to.

Bassist Wyatt Ruther is best known for his tours, with the Dave Brubeck Quartet, the Erroll Garner Trio, and with Lean Horn. Cellist Nat Gershman is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia and an alumnus of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. Newcomers Eric Dolphy and Dennis Budimir are native Los Angelenos; Eric is a discovery of Chico's and Dennis broke in recently with the Harry James band.

Also from the back cover: There is a TV commercial in which a slightly self-satisfied voice proclaims, "They said it couldn't be done." When Chico Hamilton, three short busy years ago, formed a quintet that consisted of drums, bass, guitar, one man doubling a lot of reed instruments, and – this is where nightclub owners and friends furrowed their brows – a cello, the voices echoed "Couldn't be done, couldn't be done."

Chico Hamilton did it with success on every front, including the necessary one of paying off the mortgage. His is a musical organization of unusual quality, skill, and variety. Each member is a technician of extraordinary quality who can improvise with rare ingenuity; collectively, they blend tastefully in a seemingly endless number of combinations of sound.

The Chico Hamilton Quintet represents both a challenge and an opportunity to arrangers. An unusual number of musicians have paid Chico the ultimate compliment by asking if they may write for the group. This has served as an inspiration to the Quintet, and has helped keep alive the freshness which has always characterized its music.

In this collection, the Quintet appears both in its original form and with a string section which augments its normal sound, often as a supplement to the role of the cello in the ensemble. Appropriately enough, the arranger who wrote the scores in these particular pieces is Fred Katz, the original cellist of the group, who left the group to concentrate on composition and scoring in Hollywood. He not only wrote many of the Quintet's arrangements, but is was his instrument which gave it its unusual color. Fred's writing, which has been heard in motion picture sound tracks as well as on records, is well ahead of the crowd, though not so far out as to lose his audience. Imagination and sensitivity characterize his work in the slower tempos; imagination and happy playfulness mark his up-tempo writing.

Fred also wrote the arrangements for the Quintet alone in his composition, Modes. In the other Quintet selections heard in this set, the composers also wrote the arrangements, except in the case of Pottsville, U.S.A., which was written by Carson Smith, the bassist of the original Quintet. Much of the variety of the Quintet comes from the doubling of reed instruments by young Eric Dolphin. In Fred Katz's string arrangements, Eric's warm flute is the principal color of the Quintet in Billy Strayhorn's Something To Live For; his bass clarinet dominates Kurt Weill's Speak Low; his warm alto is the main feature of Close To You. Chico's drums dominate the exciting Strange, and in the Rodgers and Hart novelty, Ev'rything I've Got, everyone gets into it.

Andante, which features Nat Gershman's cello, is written and arranged by Luther Henderson, who is another musician long associated with Lean Horne. Its serene beauty makes it one of the most effective mood pieces in the Quintet repertoire. Fred Katz's Modes (and he, too, is still another ex-member of Lena Horne's entourage) is a real sound piece which evokes all kinds of images. Pottsville, by Bill Potts, are bouncy, melodic and, like all the other originals in the set, written perfectly for the Quintet. Benny Golson's Fair Weather and Howard McGhee's Don Delight are the brightest and sprightliest of this group. The latter show of Don Hamilton, Chico's brother.

From Billboard - January 26, 1959: Here's a jazz set that could easily turn into one of 1959's top-sellers. It features the fine Chico Hamilton group, augmented with a string section as well as in quintet form. The arrangements with strings are by Fred Katz; the other arranged by member of the group. The tunes include originals, like "Modes," and "Andante," standards such as "Speak Low" and "Ev'rything I've Got," and jazz items like "Pottsville, U.S.A." and "Don's Delight." They are played superbly by the group and the stereo recording is first rate. An outstanding jazz set featuring fine performances and exciting ideas.

Something To Live For
Andante
Speak Low
Pottsville, U.S.A.
Don's Delight
Strange
Modes
Fair Weather
Close Your Eyes
Ev'rything I've Got