I Swing For You - Lennie Hiehaus

 

Four Eleven West

I Swing For You

Featuring Lennie Niehaus

EmArcy MG 36118

1957

From the back cover: The jazz spotlight has gleamed brightly at one time or another on gib bands, small groups and soloists of varied creative score and authenticity. But, rather unaccountably, very little attention has been paid to what should be one of the most flexible and reward types of jazz ensemble – the middling-size group which can work with the easy intimacy of a small combo when it wants to juice itself up to big band proportions when that seems desirable. John Kirby's sextet had some suggestions of this quality in the 1930s although with only six men (and just one brass instrument in the lot) a valid big band sound was out of its reach. Count Basie came closer with the brilliant octet he led in the early Fifties, a group that could trip along as lightly as a greased marble or come charging in like an overstimulated troop of marines.

The neglect that this area has suffered can only be attributed to blindness, to a rather appalling lack of aware imagination for, as Lennie Niehaus clearly shows in this album, there are an abundance of fascinating possibility open to a flexibly two-faced middle-sized band.

The nine men brought together by Lennie for this session were all playin in Stan Kenton's band at this time. Some of then were old, established hands in the world of jazz – Bill Perkins, who is heard on both flute and tenor saxophone, pianist Lou Levy, bassist Red Kelly and, of course, Lennie himself. The name of trouper Ed Leddy is beginning to mean something to jazz followers but baritone saxophonist Steve Perlow, bass trumpet Ken Shroyer and drummer Jerry McKenzie are just standing on the threshold of their jazz careers.

In this mixture there is a possible clue to success for a groups which would like to have the merits of both the combo and the big band. The protocol that requires the allotment of equal solo space to a spot of stars dose not come up a situation such as this. The major solo space is assigned to leader Niehaus and to featured performer Perkins. There are grief solo spots for the others but there is no showboating. Their solos are all a logical part of a larger shoe, accents in an overall pattern which flows compellingly from easy, relaxed intimacy to the potent force of a cleverly mass ensemble.

Writing for this nonet, Niehaus, who prepared the charts on six selections, and Perkins, who did the remaining two (Soon and his own Little Girl Blues), have shown a striking talent for blending combo fluidity with the shifting color patterns open to a large ensemble. Even the opening selection, Niehaus' bright P & L (Perk and Lennie, of course), which rides furiously along on their two saxophones in swinging small group fashion mist of the way, gains added impetus in the last chorus when they are able to unleash the hard-charging big band sound of the full group to lift an already high-flying piece to a dazzling climax.

Essentially, this kind of writing has Ellingtonian roots for the Duke's subtle sense of color balance has always b=give his band a flexibility denied to the big bands, bands which were simply "big", period. The Ellinton tie is especially apparent in Lennie's arrangement of Benny Golson' blue-tinged Four Eleven West. This arrangement is the very casual by-product of a couple of night when Lennie played with Dizzy Gillespie's band in 1956, filling in for the regular alto man. Golson, who has been on of the solid rocks of the Gillepsio reed section, gave Lennie a package of his tunes then, Lennie stashed them away and didn't have occasion to bring them out again until long after when, impressed by the Gillepsoiie band's playing of other Golson compositions – I Remember Clifford and Stablemates in particular – he dug out the Golson portfolio, leafed through it and came upon Four Eleven West. Like Golson's recollection o Clifford Brown, this piece has a haunting, melodic quality that is underlined by Niehaus' exchanges between brass and reeds in the ensembles and by the prodding passaged behind the solos.

The third original in this set, Perkins' Little Girl Blues, is a relaxed and informal swinging assault which starts out as though it might skip the formality of an ensemble chorus only to draw the ensemble out from behind Perkins' solo saxophone. Lou Levy has some moments of his own on this one.

The standard tunes that Niehaus has chosen select the range of his interests. His Me And Kill Me, for example, is, like his unearthing of the Golson piece, the result of his fondness for digging out things that other people have overlooked. The sis an old pop tune that Lennie found when he was going through a song book. It proved to be so obscure that when he brought it in to the recording session, he found that no one in the studio our in the control booth had ever heard of it. Chances are, you haven't either. 

Similar, He Ain't Got Rhythm is a tune Irving Berlin wrote for a 1937 film, On The Avenue. It suffered the consequences of being in the same core with I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm and, to a lesser degree, You're Laughing At Me and This Year's Kisses. In less competitive circumstances this bouncing melody might have guilt more of a reputation.

The remains selections are not exactly offbeat – Duke Ellington's Don't You Known I Care is just emerging from that category after a decade of neglect – but this and the Gershwins' Soon and the Schwartz-Dietz I See Your Face Before Me do credit to Lennie's avoidance of the obvious.

The Neihaus alto that is heard in this album may come as a surprise to those who recall the strongly Parker-touched tone of his playing on earlier disks. That has all been assimilated now and hie is stretching out in more direct, less involved lines that bristle with basic jazz quality. It is a significant step in his development as a strongly individual jazz voice. There is significance, too, in the kind of arranging he offer here for this, say Lennie, is the side of his talent on which he intends to concentrate in the immediate future. If he has his way, he'll stay put in Hollywood, spending most of his time writing, possible playing weekends as he does now with Kenton, but not getting  involved in taking out a group of his own. For the time being at least, why you hear on this record is the closest thing there will be to a Niehaus band.

P & L 

I See Your Face Before Me

Four Eleven West

Soon

He Ain't Got Rhythm 

Kiss Me And Kill Me

Little Girl Blues

Don't You Known I Care