TT 523: Tommy Flanagan and Steve Kuhn at the Village Vanguard
(Al Foster part 3)
Both Tommy Flanagan and Steve Kuhn recorded live trio albums at the Vanguard in 1986 with Al Foster on drums. The passing of the drum legend offers an excuse to travel back almost 40 years and re-listen.
Tommy Flanagan was one of the Detroit bebop pianists, a powerful group that included Hank Jones, Barry Harris, and Roland Hanna. Flanagan occupied the piano chair on many famous albums from the 1950s, including Sonny Rollins Saxophone Colossus and John Coltrane Giant Steps. When the bottom fell out the jazz market, Flanagan spent a decade accompanying Ella Fitzgerald. He stayed in the game, though, and by the 1980s had become an in-demand trio pianist. Indeed, during the last two decades of his life, Tommy Flanagan was one of those treasured souls that made New York City New York City, playing a few times a year in the better clubs for audiences hanging on every chord.
Chords: Flanagan never played a wrong voicing. Each moment in the harmony is always creative and correct. The Flanagan ballads are particularly gorgeous, although he certainly was a hard-hitting swinger when he needed to be.
All the Detroit pianists loved George Mraz, and Nights at the Vanguard offers a good showing for the bassist. On some sessions I find Mraz a bit too hot in the mix, but here he fits inside the band well and takes several virtuosic solos. The engineer is Rudy Van Gelder, who for all his fame has a mixed track record after 1970. This CD sounds good, though.
Al Foster played unassuming trio with all the living authentic bebop piano players, including names that don’t come up every day like Sadik Hakim, Duke Jordan, and Walter Bishop. Did anyone live more of a double life than Al Foster? He would be playing driving funk beats on single chord jams lasting 40 minutes or more in stadiums with Miles Davis…and then tipping quietly for Jordan or Hakim in a dive somewhere the next night.
Flanagan and Foster did several albums together. All of them are good; in terms of piano performance, my choice might be the rather rawly recorded The Magnificent Tommy Flanagan from 1981, mainly because that set list is mostly favorite standards. While the playing on Nights at the Vanguard is naturally beyond reproach, some of the rather bland and forgettable repertoire choices are a bit inexplicable. Best is the opening “San Francisco Holiday” by Monk, and I’ll listen to a Detroit pianist play “All God’s Children Got Rhythm” any day.
Benny Golson’s “Out of the Past” is another strong track, and it also shows off Foster’s unique drum language in a relatively conservative context. Who else would dare knock on one and three like Foster? It shouldn’t work but it does. Once they get into it, the trio is seriously swinging.
Uptown Records was the passion project of Robert E. Sunenblick, a rare producer who seemed to love bebop above all. Many of the archival releases are essential, like Bird and Diz at Town Hall and Sonny Clark trio in Oakland, but the original Uptown product is also of interest, including another superb Tommy Flanagan album, …And A Little Pleasure, duo with relatively obscure saxophonist J.R. Monterose—the only time Flanagan made a duo album with a horn player.
My early record collection had a fair number of items from the high end label Blackhawk Records. (I seem to recall placing a mail order with the company during a promotion: you could get six LPs for the price of five or some such.) Blackhawk made a proper go of it, but they didn’t stay open for long, and many of these discs are comparatively hard to find these days. It’s too bad, for Blackhawk’s batting average for presenting killer straight ahead jazz was unusually high for the mid-’80s. (Herb Wong was the founder; Wong’s Wikipedia article is valuable.)
I’d rank all these Blackhawk sides as a must-hear for those with an interest in any of these particular artists:
Kenny Barron 1+1+1
Tom Harrell Play of Light
Abdullah Ibrahim Water From an Ancient Well
Stan Getz Voyage
Sheila Jordan The Crossing
Steve Kuhn Life’s Magic
In the ‘60s, Steve Kuhn was neck and neck with Keith Jarrett and Denny Zeitlin, part of a new breed coming up with fresh approaches to jazz piano in the wake of Bill Evans, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman. In the ‘70s Kuhn recorded moody modal sounds for ECM, with the poetic solo LP Ecstasy (1974) deserving consideration next to the solo ECM albums by Jarrett, Chick Corea, and Paul Bley.
Life’s Magic with Ron Carter and Al Foster was perhaps a bit unexpected, just because it was so straight-ahead, boldly opening with three swingers right in row. But how smart, even necessary, to swing with Ron and Al in peak form. While there’s a lot of tremendous Ron and Al out there, I’ve never heard better Ron and Al than on Life’s Magic. It is just awesome. In the liner notes, Stanley Crouch writes that Ron and Al were essentially the house rhythm section at the Vanguard around this time. Those were the days! (These were also the days when Crouch was fairly ubiquitous himself, for Crouch also did the liners for Flanagan’s Nights at the Vanguard.)
Kuhn’s piano style is rich and a shade “classical,” although he never overplays in the manner of some others who also possess a big reservoir of traditional piano technique. As a composer he made an impact with modal drones, and there is one those here, “Trance.” On the other hand, “Two by Two” is an original medium bluesy confection with a memorable melody. (All three musicians sound just thrilled to be playing “Two by Two.”) The set is carefully organized by Kuhn. While Jarrett’s new standards trio in the same era (with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette) prided themselves on never having an arrangement, Kuhn’s concept when playing standards like “Little Old Lady” and “Jitterbug Waltz” owes much to the tight template of Ahmad Jamal with Israel Crosby and Vernel Fournier.
David Baker’s engineering on Life’s Magic is untraditional and hotter than many Vanguard records: bright and clear, with reverb added in post-production. (It would impossible to guess that Flanagan’s Nights at the Vanguard and Kuhn’s Life’s Magic were recorded in the same room the same year.)
While it is somewhat rare for a drum solo to be an unqualified highlight of a piano trio record, “Mr. Calypso Kuhn” starts with Foster at his most melodic, contrapuntal, and compositional. Just marvelous drumming.
After Carter joins Foster in the calypso celebration, Kuhn chooses restrained patterns that highlight the bass and drums.
I listened to this record a lot as a teenager! It is an undeniable influence. When I did a little trio gig of my own at the Zinc Bar with Ron and Al in 2019, I was careful not to play any tunes from Life’s Magic.
Unlike the rest of the Blackhawk catalog, Life’s Magic had a second life as a reissue by Sunnyside, and even has a Bandcamp page. A second album’s worth of music from the same week came out on Owl as The Vanguard Date, and the trio reconvened twenty years later for Live at Birdland on Blue Note.
When I asked Steve (at the Vanguard, at the time) how he felt playing with Ron and Al, his face brightened way up and he said, "Like a kid in a candy store!"
Tommy Flanagan was a national treasure! I first listened to him when he was a sideman on the Coltrane LP, "Giant Steps." When I lived in Jersey City from 1979 to 1990, I saw him perform at Bradley's, Jazz Forum, and the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival. I was able to talk to him at Joanna's. I last saw him perform at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago. The performance I most recall is with Mr. Flanagan and Barry Harris live on the west side of Manhattan!