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| 4.776 Ft
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| 1. | Foggy Day
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| 2. | All the Things You Are
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| 3. | I've Got You Under My Skin
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| 4. | When the Sun Comes Out
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| 5. | I Concentrate on You
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| 6. | Summertime
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| 7. | Let's Fall in Love
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| 8. | Every Time We Say Goodbye
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| 9. | World on a String
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| 10. | Right as the Rain
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Jazz
Recorded at Avatar Studios, New York, 2002
Phil Woods saxophone & clarinet
Bill Charlap piano
Steve Gilmore bass
Bill Goodwin drums
Brian Lynch trumpet
Produced by Bill Goodwin and Suzanne Severini
In writing about Phil Woods for my column in Jazz Times, the headline I chose was:
"Phil Woods: The Irrepressible Spirit of Jazz."
I likened Phil's passionate improvising to that of Roy Eldridge, because "like Roy, he never coasts." I've heard Phil in diverse settings, and no matter the size or composition of the audience, Phil plays, like Roy, as if it's the last chorus he'll ever take.
As a composer and an arranger, moreover, Phil is also unpredictably imaginative. Years ago, for Candid Records, I recorded an extended work of his, "The Rites of Swing." It revealed the quality of naturally flowing invention that you can hear in this set in his unexpected, subtly intriguing arrangements of, among other tracks, "All The Things You Are", "I've Got The World On A String", and a luminous recreation of "Summertime" that makes me want to hear much more of his scoring of classic standards - and of originals.
For Phil, this set represents, as he puts it, "coming back to the great American songbook. I've been training for it my whole life. Many of my other albums have focused on obscure pieces by Duke Ellington and Oliver Nelson, my originals and blowing sessions. But I've never before done a recording just of songs in settings like these."
In an interview included in the third volume of "Dizzy in South America: Official State Department Tour, 1956" (Red Anchor), Phil was already talking enthusiastically about the classic American songbook. Often overlooked, he said, is the "Jewish-European harmonic contribution to jazz. But Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and the rest of those composers fed the bebop soul. They weren't all Jewish. Cole Porter, for example. And Dizzy collated all of that." "Along with the rhythm, his mastery of rhythm, Dizzy absorbed and expanded the harmonic sophistication of that tradition. With him, you got the whole package." It wasn't only Dizzy, of course. "Where would Charlie Parker have been," Phil said to me recently, "without Jerome Kern?"
As a connoisseur of the American songbook, Phil pays affectionate attention to the verses, as you'll hear in these arrangements. I told him that Lester Young once told me that he never played ballads unless he had first learned the lyrics, including the verses. That way, as personally and distinctively as he transformed the ballads, he took care to respect the core intentions of the composer and lyricist. So too with Phil.
The performances here are also classic in terms of the collective personality of the quintet. Each of the players has ample space for soloing, but there is also a continual interplay between them that is the essence of jazz ensemble democracy. What makes this combo rare in jazz history is the celebratory fact that Phil, Bill Goodwin and Steve Gilmore have been together for some 29 years! And pianist Bill Charlap, whom I've heard fuse naturally into all kinds of jazz contents, fits easily and authoritatively here as well. Equally integral to the wholeness and the spirit of the quintet is trumpet player Brian Lynch, whose swinging credentials include stays with, among others, Horace Silver, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Jack McDuff and Art Blakey. He's been with Phil since 1992.
In Ben Sidran's valuable book "Talking Jazz" (Pomegranate), Phil Woods gets to the core of the emotional intensity that has always characterized his ensembles: "You've got to be a passionate player...That's the great tradition of making music from the voice...Some of the cats, they forget the thrill they had the first time they sounded good." And, Phil told Sidran, the passion has never left him: "I love to go to work...anything to do with music. I'm not too full of fire unless I'm involved with music. It's my hobby, my profession, it's what I do. Except build model airplanes and watch football."
In "The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD- 5th Edition", by the uncommonly perceptive Richard Cook and Brian Morton, they write that from the beginning of his jazz life, Phil "sounded like a mature player" and his music "has been deepened by persistence and a bottomless appetite for playing." During the recorded interview while he was with Dizzy Gillespie's big band, Phil can be heard exuberantly distilling his life: "I'm so lucky to be a jazz musician!" One of my favorite Duke Ellington songs, too seldom played, is titled "What Am I Here For?". Phil has always known the answer to that. And that's why you're hearing him in such an enlivening performance.
This acute pleasure in being able to say who you are - as you feel it at the moment - but based on all you've lived - is the very essence of the jazz experience when, individually and collectively, the players have found the groove. And it is that rare quality of fully realized creative identity that flows directly into the listener, thereby stirring his or her own memories and desires. That is the Phil Woods Experience - a title he might give his combo - across the spectrum of jazz, from hard, exultant swinging to intimate, lyrical romanticism. All of that is in this set.
--- Nat Hentoff
Phil Woods
Active Decades: '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s
Born: Nov 02, 1931 in Springfield, MA
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Big Band, Bop, Post-Bop, Hard Bop, Mainstream Jazz, Progressive Jazz, Standards
One of the true masters of the bop vocabulary, Phil Woods has had his own sound since the mid-'50s and stuck to his musical guns throughout a remarkably productive career. There has never been a doubt that he is one of the top alto saxophonists alive, and he has lost neither his enthusiasm nor his creativity through the years.
Woods' first alto was left to him by an uncle, and he started playing seriously when he was 12. He gigged and studied locally until 1948, when he moved to New York. Woods studied with Lennie Tristano, at the Manhattan School of Music, and at Juilliard, where he majored in clarinet. He worked with Charlie Barnet (1954), Jimmy Raney (1955), George Wallington, the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, Buddy Rich (1958-1959), Quincy Jones (1959-1961), and Benny Goodman (for BG's famous 1962 tour of the Soviet Union), but has mostly headed his own groups since 1955, including co-leadership of a combo with fellow altoist Gene Quill in the '50s logically known as "Phil & Quill." Woods, who married the late Charlie Parker's former wife Chan in the 1950s (and became the stepfather to singer Kim Parker), was sometimes thought of as "the new Bird" due to his brilliance in bop settings, but he never really sounded like a copy of Parker.
Woods popped up in a variety of settings in the 1960s -- on Benny Carter's classic Further Definitions record, touring Europe with the short-lived Thelonious Monk Nonet, and appearing on studio dates like the soundtracks to The Hustler and Blow Up. Always interested in jazz education (although he believes that there is no better way to learn jazz than to gig and travel constantly), Woods taught at an arts camp in Pennsylvania in the summers of 1964-1967. Discouraged with the jazz scene in the U.S., he moved to France in 1968. For the next few years, Woods led a very advanced group, the European Rhythm Machine, which leaned toward the avant-garde and included pianist George Gruntz. Their recordings still sound fresh and exciting today, although this venture would only be a detour in Woods' bebop life. In 1972, he returned to the U.S. and tried unsuccessfully to lead an electronic group that featured keyboardist Pete Robinson.
In 1973, Woods formed a quintet with pianist Mike Melillo, bassist Steve Gilmore, drummer Bill Goodwin, and guitarist Harry Leahey that had much greater success. Their recording Live at the Showboat officially launched the band, which today, after a few personnel changes, still tours the world. After Leahey left in 1978, it was known as the Phil Woods Quartet until trumpeter Tom Harrell (1983-1989) joined; his spot has since been assumed by trombonist Hal Crook (1989-1992) and trumpeter Brian Lynch. Pianist Melillo went out on his own in 1980, and his successors have been Hal Galper (1980-1990), Jim McNeely (1990-1995), and Bill Charlap; Gilmore and Goodwin have been with Woods since the group's start. Not just a bebop repertory band, Woods' ensembles have developed their own repertoire, taken plenty of chances, and stretched themselves while sticking to his straight-ahead path.
Woods contributed the famous alto solo to Billy Joel's hit recording of "Just the Way You Are" and has been one of Michel Legrand's favorite artists, guesting with Legrand on an occasional basis; he has made dozens of rewarding recordings himself through the years. He debuted as a leader in 1954 and has since recorded for Prestige, Savoy, RCA, Mode, Epic, Candid (the brilliant The Right of Swing in 1961), Impulse, MGM, Verve, Embryo, Testament, Muse, Omnisound, Enja, and Chesky, and has recorded with his QuintetQuartet for RCA, Gryphon, Adelphi, Clean Cuts, SeaBreeze (two sets adding Chris Swansen's inventive synthesizer to the band), Red, Antilles, Palo Alto, BlackHawk, Denon, and quite extensively for Concord. Some key sets include 1960's Rights of Swing on Candid, 1974's Musique Du Bois on 32 Jazz, 1981's Birds of a Feather from Antilles, and 2002's Americans Swinging in Paris from EMI.
An Italian label, Philogy (which has some broadcasts and live performances from Woods' bands), is named after the popular and still brilliant altoist. Still going strong well into the 21st century, Woods cut a live session with the Los Angeles Jazz Orchestra in 2005 that was released by Jazz Media in 2006. American Songbook, which features Woods' treatment of pop and jazz standards, appeared from Kind of Blue later that same year. In 2009, after years of attempting to secure the rights to interpret the work of writer A.A. Milne, Woods released Children's Suite -- a tribute to Milne's classic book Winnie the Pooh.
---Scott Yanow, All Music Guide |
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