JAZZ REMAINS INTRIGUINGLY UNPREDICTABLE because it continually attracts so many new players who seem to have the capacity to make singular contributions to the music. In most cases, however, it takes considerable time to be reasonably sure which of the "new stars" are not just auditory illusions. Only rarely, in my own experience, have I been convinced at a first hearing that an unknown is most surely going to become known, and for a long time to come. One such occasion was in Contemporary's studios early in 1958 when I listened to Ornette Coleman for the first time. Another was in the course of reviewing Joe Gordon's Lookin' Good (Contemporary M3597, S7597). One man on that session, alto saxophonist Jimmy Woods, seized my attention with such force that I had no doubts at all that a major awakening was taking place, and this album Woods' initial set as a leader-strikingly reinforces that impression.
The qualities most immediately evident in Wood's playing are his passionate, penetrating sound and speech-like phrasing; fiercely secure sense of swing; and an empirical commitment to freedom that leads him into new ways of expanding the jazz language. He is not, it should be emphasized, a follower of Ornette Coleman or any of the other tradition-expanders of this newly restless jazz generation. By himself, Woods has developed his own intensely distinctive style. For all of his provocative daring, moreover, Woods has a much stronger, built-in feeling for cohesiveness than many of the more re-nowned frontiersmen of contemporary jazz.
W OODS CAME TO JAZZ in mid-adolescence. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, October 29, 1934, Woods moved to Saginaw, Michigan, when he was seven, and four years later, to Seattle. At eleven, he started to play clarinet, but aside from school marching band experience, his musical horizons were limited until four years later when he hung around rehearsals of Bumps Blackwell's band for which Quincy Jones was an arranger. By the latter part of 1951, Woods was a member of a rhythm and blues combo led by Homer Carter. From 1952-56, he served in the Air Force, and though he did play tenor saxophone at officer's club dances and similar func tions, he had few chances to play jazz except for occasional furloughs to Los Angeles where he sat in at sessions.
After being discharged from the Air Force in September 1956, Woods took a job as a stock boy at Bullock's department store in Los Angeles, and there he met elevator operator Ornette Coleman. He was not influenced by Coleman's way of playing. If he had any influence at that time, it was Sonny Rollins. Essentially though, Woods has always worked out his own directions because, for one thing, he has never had enough money to collect records or to visit jazz clubs.
As music jobs became scarce, Woods started to study ac-counting in February 1957, but an opportunity to go on the road with Roy Milton's rhythm and blues combo intervened. After some four months with Milton, other rhythm and blues gigs followed, but diminishing work and the theft of his tenor in 1958 caused Woods to withdraw from music for several months until he picked up a friend's alto from a pawn shop. He immediately felt more comfortable with that instrument.
In February 1959, Woods went back to Los Angeles City College. His major was music and he received an Associate in Arts Degree two years later. Woods took occasional rhythm and blues gigs to make extra money, but he hadn't had a jazz job for almost two years when he was asked to replace Walter Benton in Horace Tapscott's unit. When that job ended in December 1960, Woods put his horn away again until Joe Gordon, who had heard him with Tapscott, called for him for the Lookin' Good sessions in July 1961. "I was at my wit's end then," Jimmy recalls. "That seemed like my last chance.
If I didn't make it, I felt I'd really be strung up and never be able to do what I wanted."
However, Woods was signed by Contemporary, and Awak ening! is the first result. Jimmy continues going to school, and supports his family as a night attendant in the Probation Department at Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles. "I still want to make my career in music," Jimmy emphasizes, "but I took this job because I felt that if I couldn't play, I could at least communicate with people in this way."
On the basis of this extraordinarily personal and powerful album, I expect that, as difficult as the jazz life can be, a place will have to be made in jazz for this quality of musical com-munication. Woods, as you will hear, is not only a startingly stimulating player, but a a fresh addition to the comparatively thin ranks of indigenous jazz composers.
AWAKENING, LIKE MOST OF WOODS' compositions, was shaped gradually over a period of time. "I hear part of a melody," says Woods, "write it down, and then I may not hear more of it for days." This song took form as Woods paced the corridors of Juvenile Hall by night. Structured in thirty-two bars, the tune starts with an eight-bar interlude, and the interlude is repeated between the bridge and the last eight bars. There is an intriguing contrast between Martin Banks' crisply cohesive solo and Woods' statement which, though wilder in sound and design, is not less organized.
Circus illuminates one aspect of Woods' lyricism; Woods, like all major and potentially major jazzmen, is essentially lyrical in the sweeping ardor of his conception. In his work, the "cry of jazz" is uninhibited. A lonelier evocation of that "cry" is heard in the piercingly poignant, Not Yet. The tune is in forty-eight bar form, and contains a remarkably con ceived and executed solo by bassist Gary Peacock, who has grown markedly in the past few years.
Woods' rhythm assurance is also resiliently clear in Not Yet. "Music, before it sounds good to me," says Woods, "has to be rhythmic." New Twist indicates further how inventively rhythmic Woods can be.
The opening of Love for Sale telescopes two basic elements in Jimmy Woods playing the spare but rhapsodic tender-ness of the a cappella introduction and the surging virility of his plunge into regular jazz pulsation. A third element-the ability to continually surprise-is also explosively evident in this track, and for that matter, throughout the album.
Woods' own favorite number in the album is Roma, an eighty-bar ode to his wife, Romanita. "She's been an inspira-tion to me," Woods says, "as I've attempted to combine music, and education and work. She's understood and accepted the many disappointments we've suffered. I feel this tune, even in its angry moments, expresses the unity and sincerity of our relationship." Roma is in 3/4, and rarely has a jazz soloist superimposed so absorbing a series of rhythmic variations on that meter.
Little Jim is Jimmy Woods' son. Before going to work one evening. Jimmy had scolded him. The impetus for the song came from a symphonic piece which Woods heard on the radio at work that night. "Little Jim itself," Woods explains, "is not a literal offspring of the symphonic work, but I was feeling sad, and I was influenced by the melancholy of the classical melody." A feeling of regret at having to hurt someone you love-even if it is for his own good-pervades Little Jim. Here, as in Woods other originals, the immediacy of emotion comes from the fact that Woods' playing and writing is a direct extension of his daily experiences, hopes, and frustra-tions. There are no barriers of self-conscious "artistic problem-solving." For Woods, music is part of speech, a more thorough way of expressing who he is and who he wants to be.
Anticipation was written in 1957. "When I did this on the date," Woods says, "I decided to write two bars of 3/4 and one bar of 2/4 in two sections of the tune so that the anticipatory beat on the fourth beats of the third and seventh measures would sound more pronounced. During the saxo-phone and trumpet choruses, the tune is played alternately in 4/4 and 3/4. The piano choruses are in 4/4; the bass choruses in 3/4; and the drum chorus in 4/4."
Anticipation is an apt title with which to close Jimmy Woods' first album as a leader, because it presages an im-portant career and a steadily evolving style which will add new stimulus to the growing desire among jazzmen for more meaningful freedom. In trying to explain the irrepressible force which keeps leading him to freer improvisation, Woods says, "Some of it is probably born of frustration. You're trying so hard to do something, and it doesn't seem like you're suc-ceeding. And so, you get angry playing, and sometimes you feel sad playing. It's pretty difficult to express all those emotions fully unless you really try to get everything you feel out of your horn. And gradually, you do begin to get a sense of direction and some confidence. Then, you know a certain thing goes there. Even if everybody else says it doesn't, you know that it just has to be that way. The main thing is to have an idea, and then work it out from there, wherever it leads you. I know I'll never find what I'm looking for, but just the searching for it to see what comes up is what keeps me going." And what Woods finds in that search is certain to absorb more and more listeners. His is a bold new voice to add to the "sound of surprise" which is jazz.
By NAT HENTOFF March 20, 1962
diegodobini2
Jimmy Woods – Awakening!! (1962)
https://youtu.be/JU3smUyw56I
2nd option :) https://youtu.be/1jhWrIuGkzg
Original Liner Notes:
JAZZ REMAINS INTRIGUINGLY UNPREDICTABLE because it continually attracts so many new players who seem to have the capacity to make singular contributions to the music. In most cases, however, it takes considerable time to be reasonably sure which of the "new stars" are not just auditory illusions. Only rarely, in my own experience, have I been convinced at a first hearing that an unknown is most surely going to become known, and for a long time to come. One such occasion was in Contemporary's studios early in 1958 when I listened to Ornette Coleman for the first time. Another was in the course of reviewing Joe Gordon's Lookin' Good (Contemporary M3597, S7597). One man on that session, alto saxophonist Jimmy Woods, seized my attention with such force that I had no doubts at all that a major awakening was taking place, and this album Woods' initial set as a leader-strikingly reinforces that impression.
The qualities most immediately evident in Wood's playing are his passionate, penetrating sound and speech-like phrasing; fiercely secure sense of swing; and an empirical commitment to freedom that leads him into new ways of expanding the jazz language. He is not, it should be emphasized, a follower of Ornette Coleman or any of the other tradition-expanders of this newly restless jazz generation. By himself, Woods has developed his own intensely distinctive style. For all of his provocative daring, moreover, Woods has a much stronger, built-in feeling for cohesiveness than many of the more re-nowned frontiersmen of contemporary jazz.
W OODS CAME TO JAZZ in mid-adolescence. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, October 29, 1934, Woods moved to Saginaw, Michigan, when he was seven, and four years later, to Seattle. At eleven, he started to play clarinet, but aside from school marching band experience, his musical horizons were limited until four years later when he hung around rehearsals of Bumps Blackwell's band for which Quincy Jones was an arranger. By the latter part of 1951, Woods was a member of a rhythm and blues combo led by Homer Carter. From 1952-56, he served in the Air Force, and though he did play tenor saxophone at officer's club dances and similar func tions, he had few chances to play jazz except for occasional furloughs to Los Angeles where he sat in at sessions.
After being discharged from the Air Force in September 1956, Woods took a job as a stock boy at Bullock's department store in Los Angeles, and there he met elevator operator Ornette Coleman. He was not influenced by Coleman's way of playing. If he had any influence at that time, it was Sonny Rollins. Essentially though, Woods has always worked out his own directions because, for one thing, he has never had enough money to collect records or to visit jazz clubs.
As music jobs became scarce, Woods started to study ac-counting in February 1957, but an opportunity to go on the road with Roy Milton's rhythm and blues combo intervened. After some four months with Milton, other rhythm and blues gigs followed, but diminishing work and the theft of his tenor in 1958 caused Woods to withdraw from music for several months until he picked up a friend's alto from a pawn shop. He immediately felt more comfortable with that instrument.
In February 1959, Woods went back to Los Angeles City College. His major was music and he received an Associate in Arts Degree two years later. Woods took occasional rhythm and blues gigs to make extra money, but he hadn't had a jazz job for almost two years when he was asked to replace Walter Benton in Horace Tapscott's unit. When that job ended in December 1960, Woods put his horn away again until Joe Gordon, who had heard him with Tapscott, called for him for the Lookin' Good sessions in July 1961. "I was at my wit's end then," Jimmy recalls. "That seemed like my last chance.
If I didn't make it, I felt I'd really be strung up and never be able to do what I wanted."
However, Woods was signed by Contemporary, and Awak ening! is the first result. Jimmy continues going to school, and supports his family as a night attendant in the Probation Department at Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles. "I still want to make my career in music," Jimmy emphasizes, "but I took this job because I felt that if I couldn't play, I could at least communicate with people in this way."
On the basis of this extraordinarily personal and powerful album, I expect that, as difficult as the jazz life can be, a place will have to be made in jazz for this quality of musical com-munication. Woods, as you will hear, is not only a startingly stimulating player, but a a fresh addition to the comparatively thin ranks of indigenous jazz composers.
AWAKENING, LIKE MOST OF WOODS' compositions, was shaped gradually over a period of time. "I hear part of a melody," says Woods, "write it down, and then I may not hear more of it for days." This song took form as Woods paced the corridors of Juvenile Hall by night. Structured in thirty-two bars, the tune starts with an eight-bar interlude, and the interlude is repeated between the bridge and the last eight bars. There is an intriguing contrast between Martin Banks' crisply cohesive solo and Woods' statement which, though wilder in sound and design, is not less organized.
Circus illuminates one aspect of Woods' lyricism; Woods, like all major and potentially major jazzmen, is essentially lyrical in the sweeping ardor of his conception. In his work, the "cry of jazz" is uninhibited. A lonelier evocation of that "cry" is heard in the piercingly poignant, Not Yet. The tune is in forty-eight bar form, and contains a remarkably con ceived and executed solo by bassist Gary Peacock, who has grown markedly in the past few years.
Woods' rhythm assurance is also resiliently clear in Not Yet. "Music, before it sounds good to me," says Woods, "has to be rhythmic." New Twist indicates further how inventively rhythmic Woods can be.
The opening of Love for Sale telescopes two basic elements in Jimmy Woods playing the spare but rhapsodic tender-ness of the a cappella introduction and the surging virility of his plunge into regular jazz pulsation. A third element-the ability to continually surprise-is also explosively evident in this track, and for that matter, throughout the album.
Woods' own favorite number in the album is Roma, an eighty-bar ode to his wife, Romanita. "She's been an inspira-tion to me," Woods says, "as I've attempted to combine music, and education and work. She's understood and accepted the many disappointments we've suffered. I feel this tune, even in its angry moments, expresses the unity and sincerity of our relationship." Roma is in 3/4, and rarely has a jazz soloist superimposed so absorbing a series of rhythmic variations on that meter.
Little Jim is Jimmy Woods' son. Before going to work one evening. Jimmy had scolded him. The impetus for the song came from a symphonic piece which Woods heard on the radio at work that night. "Little Jim itself," Woods explains, "is not a literal offspring of the symphonic work, but I was feeling sad, and I was influenced by the melancholy of the classical melody." A feeling of regret at having to hurt someone you love-even if it is for his own good-pervades Little Jim. Here, as in Woods other originals, the immediacy of emotion comes from the fact that Woods' playing and writing is a direct extension of his daily experiences, hopes, and frustra-tions. There are no barriers of self-conscious "artistic problem-solving." For Woods, music is part of speech, a more thorough way of expressing who he is and who he wants to be.
Anticipation was written in 1957. "When I did this on the date," Woods says, "I decided to write two bars of 3/4 and one bar of 2/4 in two sections of the tune so that the anticipatory beat on the fourth beats of the third and seventh measures would sound more pronounced. During the saxo-phone and trumpet choruses, the tune is played alternately in 4/4 and 3/4. The piano choruses are in 4/4; the bass choruses in 3/4; and the drum chorus in 4/4."
Anticipation is an apt title with which to close Jimmy Woods' first album as a leader, because it presages an im-portant career and a steadily evolving style which will add new stimulus to the growing desire among jazzmen for more meaningful freedom. In trying to explain the irrepressible force which keeps leading him to freer improvisation, Woods says, "Some of it is probably born of frustration. You're trying so hard to do something, and it doesn't seem like you're suc-ceeding. And so, you get angry playing, and sometimes you feel sad playing. It's pretty difficult to express all those emotions fully unless you really try to get everything you feel out of your horn. And gradually, you do begin to get a sense of direction and some confidence. Then, you know a certain thing goes there. Even if everybody else says it doesn't, you know that it just has to be that way. The main thing is to have an idea, and then work it out from there, wherever it leads you. I know I'll never find what I'm looking for, but just the searching for it to see what comes up is what keeps me going." And what Woods finds in that search is certain to absorb more and more listeners. His is a bold new voice to add to the "sound of surprise" which is jazz.
By NAT HENTOFF March 20, 1962
1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 43