Carnival
The Sheriff
The Modern Jazz Quartet
Recording Engineers: Tom Dowd & Phil Iehle
Cover: Stanislaw Zagorski
Supervision: Nesuhi Ertegun
Atlantic Records SD 1414
1964
John Lewis - Piano
Milt Jackson - Vibraharp
Percy Heath - Bass
Connie Kay - Drums
From the back cover: John Lewis is many men. I am not speaking of the various individuals who happen to share with hime these two somewhat common names, but rather of the different aspects of the musician who runs the Modern Jazz Quartet.
To the public that sees him only a concerts or festivals and occasionally in a night club, Lewis is an urbane gentle man who looks at the piano as if wondering why he is making it swing, and who approaches the microphone as if he were sure it was about to hit him.
To his personal friends Lewis is a sensitive and talkative fellow of endless interests, a connoisseur of food and wines, a much-traveled and genuinely cosmopolitan observer of the world scene.
To musicians who have played in his group or observed him at work through the years, John is tough taskmaster, a man committed, irrevocably dedicated to the job at hand, irritated easily by irresponsibility or lack of understanding, yet rarely willing to show a loss of patience.
The success of The Modern Jazz Quartet can be attributed in large measure to Lewis' maturity and to his unique faculty of adjustment.
His musicianship, of course, is a factor of equal importance. "When the MJQ was formed," he once said, "I found that because of my schooling and training the other members leaned on me for certain things. This was good, of course. It meant that I was an instrument to be used, and that's why I have certain responsibilities with the group. But it has also proven the value of training for the musician."
It was the Ellington of the Ko-Ko and Congo Brava period that made the deepest impression on Lewis in his formative years; not only because of the inherent qualities of the music, but because Ellington in the late 1930s and early '40s was a unique symbol of jazz accepted as a creative force, and of the achievement and dignity of the Negro within its framework. The pride and pleasure he found in Ellington's music has direct bearing on the cerebrations that went into the launching of the MJQ a decade or so later.
Dignity, incidentally, is a dangerous word to throw around in music. Ellington had it and has it; Lewis has had it as long as those of us have known him who saw him first in 1946, not long out of the Army, when he took over Theloniou Monk's chair in the Dizzy Gillespie orchestra.
Dignity, which need not be equated with pomp, circumstance or stuffed shirts, was the touch he added even to the romping Gillespie band when, presenting a new work at Carnegie Hall in 1947, he gave it the name Toccata For Trumpet And Orchestra. In those days it was considered pretentious, or at best slightly eccentric, to use such a title for a work played by a jazz group.
The same qualities he had brought to bear in the Gillespie band were evident when, in 1951, John and three other Gillespie alumni (Milt Jackson, Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke) held their first experimental Quartet session. To the younger jazz fan today it may be almost incredible, but until John Lewis established the MJQ there was practically no instance on record, in the entire history of jazz, that offered a small-combo performance of anything more than a string of 12, 16 or 21 bar choruses and the like. Changes of mood and tempo were rare; nothing ran over three or four minutes; the concept of a formalized composition in the classic sense, or of a full-blown suite, was unknown. Even the MJQ trod cautiously in its early, pre-Atlantic days, relying chiefly on standards and blues; but beginning with Atlantic and Contessa, the arrival of a new era in small group jazz became apparent. Only the long-forgotten John Kirby Sextet, which flourished in 1938-42, had gone to so much trouble to make a combo sound like a unit with an integrated personality, embedded in the exceptional ability of each member and in the power of the leader to weave those abilities together.
The past few years have seen an expansion so great in Lewis' musical interests that there have been constant rumors that MJQ will disband, that he has outgrown it and is more concerned with the special works commissioned for European concerts, the conducting of a larger ensemble, the need to concentrate on writing. But the MJQ and Lewis' other concerns never have been, and never need be, mutually exclusive. As he said in Down Beat five years ago: "I hope The Modern Jazz Quartet just goes on and on. There could even be a different piano player if there was a need; but at the present time there is no need."
Fortunately there is still no need. Lewis the pianist is undoubtedly the most underestimated of the several Lewises. Technically, though no Tatum or Newborn, he is thoroughly well equipped; improvisationally, his solos in the MJQ context are among the most meaningful single-note lines to be heard on record. His touch, ideas and phrasing are deeply rooted in the core of jazz; essentially, what he plays today in an up-tempo ad lib solo differs little from what he played as a sideman with the Lester Young and Charlie Parker combos 15 years ago.
This, to me, is one of the most admirable achievements of The Modern Jazz Quartet; that is has done so much to bring jazz ahead, to create and develop within a narrow form, yet at the same time it had not reduced the ability of its members to swing, to maintain firm and durable contact with indispensable traits that separate jazz from the rest of the body of modern music. – Leonard Feather
The Sheriff
In A Crowd
Bachianas Brasileiras
Mean To Me
Natural Affection
Donnie's Theme
Carnival
