Supersax Plays Byrd

 

Be-Bop

Supersax Plays Byrd
Produced by John Palladino
Executive Producer: Mauri Lathower
Recorded at Capitol Records Studios

Recording & Remix Engineer: Jay Ranellucci
Disc Mastering at Capitol Records Studios: Wally Traugott
Art Direction: John Hoernle
Photography: Rick Rankin

Capitol Records SW 71177
1973

Trumpets: Larry McGuire, Conti Candoli & Ralph Osborn
Trombones: Charley Loper, Mike Barone & Ernie Tack

From the back cover: It is a rare occurrence in contemporary music when a new group is organized whose premise, while uniquely fresh and exciting in execution, is based, on a concept deeply rooted in the best traditions of the past. Supersax is just such an instance.The premise is simple. Charlie Parker's solos, exactly as improvised while being committed to records, were of such inspired and awesome originality that they constituted de facto compositions in their own right. In other words, when Bird blew a series of choruses based on the chord pattern of some standard song, the product was a work of art worthy of being extracted from its context and expanded through the medium of orchestration.

There have been occasional isolated cases in which ad lib solos were developed in this manner. Two of the earliest were the Bix Beiderbecke solo on Singin' The Blues and Bunny Berigan's contribution to the Tommy Dorsey version of Marie, both of which were transcribed off the records and voiced for trumpet sections. Vocally, of course, the idea was picked up by a long line of singers, from Eddie Jefferson to King Pleasure to Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

The unprecedented use of this precept as the basis for an entire instrumental library grew out of Med Flory's association with the late Joe Maini, a widely respected alto player who died in 1964. "Joe was working in a big band I had around Los Angeles," Flory recalls, "when I wrote out the Parker solo on Star Eyes for a full saxophone section. Then I did the introduction on Just Friends and Joe Maini, who had memorized Bird's solo note for note, gave me the lead line for the rest of the chart. It seemed like a great idea, but nothing came of it, and after Joe's death it was more or less forgotten. Then one night a year or so ago Buddy Clark, who'd played bass on that band with us, said 'Wouldn't it be great if we could have a whole book of Bird things like that, and play jobs with it?'

"I said, 'Fine, but who's going to write it?' Buddy said, 'Let me try it – just show me what to do.' I gave him a few hints on which way to go, and he started writing. I was busy at the time on a movie script, so I was too hung up to do many of the arrangements myself." (Flory has long led a triple life as TV actor, professional script writer and studio musician.)

A band coalesced to meet the formidable challenge of reading and sensitively inter- preting these uncommonly demanding ar- rangements. After one or two changes the personnel heard on this album was arrived at, with Flory and Joe Lopes on alto saxes, Warne Marsh and Jay Migliori on tenors, Jack Nimitz on baritone, Conti Candoli on trumpet, Ronnell Bright on piano, Jake Hanna on drums and Clark on bass. On Just Friends, Repetition and Moose the Mooche, a seven-man brass section was added.

The common bond among these men that canceled out the diversity of their back- grounds was an intense love for and understanding of the contribution of Charlie Parker. Two of them actually worked with Bird briefly, Ronnell Bright in Chicago and Jay Migliori in Boston. The others came up in music just in time to be aware of the bop revolution, and of Parker as one of its two chief architects (along with Gillespie) while it was happening along 52nd Street and proliferating on records.

When, after 11 months of patient woodshedding, Supersax finally was presented to the public at Donte's, a question came to the minds of some listeners: does this concept constitute living in the past, or is it rather a case of relevance-through-renovation?

My own feeling immediately was that a new dimension had been added to these timedefying solo lines, as though a Picasso painting had become a sculpture, or an Old Master restored. In fact, just to hear, sectionalized and harmonized, the incredibly fast choruses based on the phenomenal Ko-Ko solo, is an experience such as Bird himself surely would have dug.

This, in effect, is how Charlie Parker would have sounded had he been able to play five saxophones at once, in harmony.

Med Flory wrote the arrangements for Be- Bop, Star Eyes, Moose the Mooche and Just Friends; the other charts were all written by Buddy Clark. As Clark points out, "Most of the way we had the baritone sax double the melody line. That was the simple, logical way to do it. Everything moves so fast in a Bird solo that if you start breaking it up, it becomes kind of logy."

"Besides," added Med, "the lines themselves are as important and timeless as Mozart, so we didn't dare do anything that would tend to understate them."'

The reed team is balanced so that Med's lead alto is the strongest voice, the baritone is next, and the three harmony parts are just about equal. Occasionally, on the more sustained passages, the voicings were changed to add a little sonority (one instance is the second chorus of Star Eyes), but the group's basic sound is that of the two parallel melody lines an octave apart.

Since Charlie Parker made many of his definitive recordings before the age of the long play record, and because he usually accorded part of the limited solo space to his sidemen, in many cases there was not enough improvisational Bird, on any one record of each tune, to constitute a full length Supersax arrangement. Buddy and Med resolved this in several tunes by using a composite of solos from two different versions of the same number. Hot House, says Buddy, is "a combination of all kinds of Bird riffs from various records he made on these changes, either as Hot House or as What Is This Thing Called Love."

Ko-Ko, possibly the greatest Bird master- piece of all, is based on the original 1945 recording, just as Parker's Mood derives from the master take cut in 1948. Similarly drawn from a single source is Just Friends, from the chart that became the most celebrated of the precedent-setting Parker-With-Strings date taped Nov. 30, 1949. Even Mitch Miller's brief oboe solo following the first chorus was retained in this faithful translation by Med of the Jimmy Carroll arrangement. Oh, Lady Be Good! was taken in its entirety from a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert record cut in Los Angeles in 1946.

Regardless of the sources of their inspiration, most important of all is that steeped as they were in the subject, the Supersax musi- cians succeeded in retaining the spirit as well as the letter of Bird's one-to-a-century genius.

"Just say," Med Flory enjoined me as we discussed my notes for the album, "that this was our affectionate tribute to a man we've respected and idolized through the years."

The comment was almost redundant, for on every track in this extraordinary set of performances you will hear the overtones of a project conceived and written with patience and dedication, executed with honesty and warmth. Supersax Plays Bird, as much as any album I have heard in recent years, is a thoroughgoing labor of love. – LEONARD FEATHER (Author of From Satchmo To Miles, Stein & Day)

Ko-Ko
Just Friends
Parker's Mood
Moose The Mooche
Star Eyes
Be-Bop
Repetition
Night In Tunisia
Oh, Lady Be Good!
Hot House