TT 437: Benny Golson

A short appreciation

Benny Golson has passed away at 95. The era is drawing to a close.

---

Billy Hart is always friendly and gregarious on the road. The only time I’ve seen him overawed and somewhat inhibited was in 2018, when we quietly rode in the car with Benny Golson in Ligura. I could tell Billy was trying to think of things he should ask while he had the chance.

When we arrived at the venue I snapped a photo of master and disciple.

I didn’t know what to say to Benny Golson either, but finally I mustered the courage to thank him, “…for everything, but maybe especially for, 'Along Came Betty,’ which was really important to myself and a few associates like Mark Turner and Kurt Rosenwinkel. We practiced that song for hours.”

Golson smiled and replied, “Ah, Betty! I almost married her.”

---

“Along Came Betty” is in A-flat, a detail only revealed towards the end of the form. It winds its way hither and thither, denying the tonic. This graceful uncertainty is surely one reason why younger generations have kept remaking the song in their own image.

The original recording of “Along Came Betty” is on Art Blakey’s celebrated LP Moanin’, an album that helps define hard bop, featuring Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons, and Jymie Merritt. (The sexy strut in the rhythm section presumably honors the dedicatee.) Golson’s superb tenor solo is incandescent liquid fire. He was a close associate of John Coltrane and Jimmy Heath, three Philadelphia tenors who put Charlie Parker’s dexterity on the big horn. More than Coltrane or Heath, Golson kept something old-school in his conception: Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas, Ben Webster, Lucky Thompson. Big blues and Bird talk, threading the slippery changes over a fat groove. There’s literally nothing better.

---

Another famous Golson piece is “Stablemates,” featuring unusual phrase lengths and unfamiliar bass motion. Miles Davis played it with Coltrane, but that early rendition is a bit chaotic. (Miles later complained to Golson, “What were you smoking when you wrote that tune?”) The first definitive record might be on Benny Golson and the Philadelphians, the sparkly 1958 session with Lee Morgan, Ray Bryant, Percy Heath, and Philly Joe Jones. Again, Golson’s tenor preach is a highlight of the track.

(Note: The conventional wisdom of my peers holds the first chord of “Stablemates” to be E-minor seven, but on Benny Golson and the Philadelphians and other Golson records the first chord is B-flat seven augmented.)

If Mark Turner and Kurt Rosenwinkel have taken on “Along Came Betty,” then musicians a decade younger like Walter Smith III and Ambrose Akinmusire have taken on “Stablemates.” Just last month I heard Jason Palmer play an advanced original melody on “Stablemates” changes with Kim Cass and Marcus Gilmore.

---

One of my very first purchases, the Oscar Peterson Verve anthology Return Engagement, featured a live version of “Whisper Not” from the London House in Chicago with Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen. “My god,” I remembering saying to myself, “It starts in one key and ends up in another. How is that possible?” (I was probably 12 years old at the time.)

That fascinating opening two-bar sequence — opening strong in C minor, continuing C minor over B-flat, A half diminished, D seven, before doing it again on the G pitch level on the way to the real home key of D minor — has gone into the history books as the “Benny Golson progression.”

It wasn’t just Oscar Peterson who played “Whisper Not.” Everyone else did as well. Keith Jarrett even named an album Whisper Not.

A spectacular video of the composer playing “Whisper Not” in the late 1980’s with Freddie Hubbard, Mulgrew Miller, Ron Carter, and Smitty Smith boasts an astonishing tenor solo and over 200,000 views.

---

Not all of Golson’s most famous tunes are so unconventional. “I Remember Clifford” is a sweeping lyric ballad, “Blues March” is just what it says on the box. “Killer Joe” is funky and direct.

(Of course, being funky and direct has its own challenges. Ray Brown rose to the occasion on the Quincy Jones studio session for Walking in Space with “Killer Joe.” That’s really an incredible improvised bass line strolling amongst Golson’s repetitive changes.)

---

The Lord discography lists many recordings of key Golson repertoire.

I Remember Clifford 466
Whisper Not 368
Stablemates 212
Along Came Betty 176
Killer Joe 155

Golson prepared a piano folio of 15 pieces, many of which include a written-out hard bop piano improvisation. His note is helpful:

---

In the 1970s Golson was not so visible as player. It was the wilderness years for jazz, and he hung up his horn in order to write soundtracks in Los Angeles. A double whammy of free jazz and rock ‘n roll probably hastened this decision.

In an unfortunate juxtaposition, his fresh new collective The Jazztet with wonderful Art Farmer and Curtis Fuller had opened at the Five Spot alongside Ornette Coleman’s first engagement in New York in 1959.

Thanks to Ornette, hard bop was old hat overnight.

It was bad enough that the critics thought so, but far worse that many musicians agreed, Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis for starters. In his autobiography, Paul Bley makes a point of saying how terrible the Five Spot gig was for the Jazztet, and Charles Mingus went on the record during a blindfold test (even though he wasn’t even asked).

You didn’t play anything by Ornette Coleman. I’ll comment on him anyway…One night Symphony Sid was playing a whole lot of stuff, and then he put on an Ornette Coleman record…the fact remains that his notes and lines are so fresh. So when Symphony Sid played his record, it made everything else he was playing, even my own record that he played, sound terrible.

I’m not saying everybody’s going to have to play like Coleman. But they’re going to have to stop copying Bird.

Art Farmer said in his 1995 Smithsonian Interview that the Jazztet never got over this first gig....

Yeah, that was something down there at the Five Spot. We opened opposite Ornette Coleman, and everybody who was anybody was down there because they had heard about Ornette being the new thing. Monk was down there, Leonard Bernstein, Miles Davis, all kind of guys. Everybody had to come down to check it out, and we got kind of lost in the shuffle because compared to what Ornette was doing, what we were doing was done well, but it was more conventional. It just didn’t seem to be as adventurous, stepping out into the unknown like what Ornette was doing. Ornette got more notice than we did. I don’t think we ever recovered from that.

…and in a 2009 DownBeat profile by John McDonough, Golson is still steamed about Ornette Coleman. (Coleman’s name is omitted, but the context clues about clefs make it crystal clear. The system with a “fancy name” is of course Harmolodics.)

He won’t mention any names, lest he might harm a fellow musician. Yet he makes no secret of his views on the larger free-jazz musicology. “Bogus,” he said. “Completely and without any doubt. The lie cannot live forever.”

Many years ago, Golson said he approached a prominent young apostle of the new music. His mind was open and he was eager to understand its value.

“[This man] told me himself it was bogus,” Golson recalled, “though without knowing it. Do you know about bass and treble clefs? The clefs are there only for convenience. You would have too many lines without the clefs. But they have nothing to do with concepts. I asked how he arrived at what he’s doing. He said he played in the ‘tenor clef.’ It was ridiculous. There is no such thing.

“He was a clever man. He took what he didn’t know, and made it into something that seemed unique. He said that he played off the melody, not chords. This was his system, to which he gave a fancy name. What do you think Sam and Cephus said in the cotton fields when they were buck dancing and strumming the banjo? ‘Sam, I think that was a G7 in bar 10?’ Of course not. They played off of the melody. It was intuitive. What do you think professional musicians do today when they don’t know the song a singer is doing in some strange key? They play off the melody. It’s nothing new.

“Then one day I picked up the International Herald Tribune and read a story proclaiming this man a jazz genius who has come up with a new system. He plays off the melody.”

Golson rolled his eyes and slapped the table. “How can people be duped? Free jazz was a way out for a lot of musicians who couldn’t play the changes of ‘All The Things You Are.’ It opened the door to fakery.”

---

In 1962, Benny Golson recorded a terrific quartet session with Tommy Flanagan, Ron Carter, and Art Taylor. The album was ostensibly called Free because Golson was phrasing the melodies somewhat loosely, but there are hints that he is reacting to other musicians playing free jazz, for the liner notes conclude with his statement:

During that last year or so I’ve felt an insurgent need within me to do something else musically, not dernier cri (that “freedom” approach) — but rather an extension of what I have been doing…Time is a tattle-tale; it tells everything.

“Time tells everything.” This is a quartet of swingers, and the whole album is seriously great, concluding with a burning rendition of “Just in Time.” Again, I hear the whole glorious lineage of tenor saxophone, going back further than bebop, in Golson’s furry tone and robust articulation.

What a shame that the old and the new were not coexisting more peacefully at this moment. I blame capitalism.

---

While Golson never played outside the changes, there is an intriguing oddity from 1983, This Is For You, John, a Golson-helmed tribute to John Coltrane with Pharoah Sanders, Cedar Walton, Ron Carter, and Jack DeJohnette. At first glance this seems to be one of those comparatively pointless projects dreamed up by an outside producer. However, the liner notes penned by Golson make it clear that the inclusion of Pharoah Sanders — best known for raucous free jazz in Coltrane’s last band and hypnotic transcendental vamps as a leader — was Golson’s choice.

(I am not as certain that the rhythm section was Golson’s idea, and, indeed, he doesn’t mention them in the notes. A trio album was also recorded at the same sessions simply called Cedar Walton/Ron Carter/Jack DeJohnette. While these are three of my favorite musicians, neither LP works perfectly in terms of a settled-upon rhythm section dynamic. Walton might not be comfortable with the kind of chances DeJohnette is used to taking, and perhaps as a result Carter bears down to set them both straight. Of course, the playing from all three remains essentially excellent, this is a subtle point about chemistry.)

The diverse tenor titans meet each other respectfully in the middle. As the title says, “this is for you”: they are genuinely honoring their friend and mentor John Coltrane. Sanders deals with the changes of Golson’s hard tunes and Golson uses slurry effects and extended techniques. I like “Vilia,” a piece of fluff written by operetta composer Franz Lehár in 1905 and offered by Coltrane as a palate cleanser on the epic Live at Birdland LP. Golson is up first and works up a quite a head of steam. A tasteful Walton statement — with unusually raucous drumming in “accompaniment,” surely DeJohnette is remembering the churn of Elvin Jones on the original — is followed by Sanders at his most relaxed and swinging. At the end, both horns are heard in gentle counterpoint.

UPDATE: I’ve belatedly realized that today, September 23, is John Coltrane’s birthday.

---

A remarkable outdoor Benny Golson gig in 1993 or so with Kevin Hays, Dwayne Burno, and Tony Reedus was one of several revelatory performances I took in after moving to New York. Benny Golson or Cedar Walton or Ron Carter or Tommy Flanagan or Art Farmer or Billy Higgins. The real deal, played by the consecrated few.

Probably Golson is underrated as an improviser; certainly his large discography deserves more exposure and exploration. As usual when someone of Golson’s stature passes, I am filled with regret that I haven’t listened more, that I didn’t see more, that I didn’t study more.

---

Bonus track: As a composer, Benny Golson comes out of Tadd Dameron. (Wayne Shorter comes out of Benny Golson. That’s the lineage: Tadd Dameron to Benny Golson to Wayne Shorter.)

The book Dameronia: The Life and Music of Tadd Dameron by Paul Combs is highly recommended. Benny Golson’s striking foreword “Remembering Tadd Dameron” fills in some blanks about early rhythm ‘n blues, so I’m taking the liberty of reproducing it here.