Steve Lacy's Monk Quartet, Solo Sax Albums Reissues

Transcript

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. The soprano saxophone of Steve Lacy is featured in two new reissues - a live recording of a 1963 Quartet that only played Thelonious Monk tunes and a later recording of music for solo soprano. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead has a review. He says Monk was always Lacy's biggest influence.

(SOUNDBITE OF THELONIOUS MONK SONG, "SCHOOL DAYS")

KEVIN WHITEHEAD, BYLINE: Trombonist Roswell Rudd and bassist Henry Grimes in 1963, two musicians who'd later drop out and then make big comebacks. That's from Rudd and Steve Lacy's newly reissued, low fidelity live classic "School Days." It's the only relic of a singular band that combined the very different collective improvising styles of Dixieland and free jazz. Lacy and Rudd had played both. Even weirder, they did it on tunes by the non-free, non-Dixieland modernist, Thelonious Monk. They roped together three divergent styles just like that.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE LACY AND ROSWELL RUDD SONG, "SCHOOL DAYS")

WHITEHEAD: The daring choices Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd made were mostly practical. Monk's music was built around thick piano harmonies. They didn't have a piano, so to thicken the texture, they'd fill in the blanks behind each other solos.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE LACY AND ROSWELL RUDD SONG)

WHITEHEAD: In 1963 and ever after, Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd had terrific chemistry - opposites attract. Lacy's soprano tone was thin, pure and cool, Rudd's trombone sound - big and argumentative. But they read each other very well. And their focus on the details of Monk's tunes make their improvised counterpoint very well ordered. Like Monk, they always mind the melody some kind of way. Their interplay is most aggressive on two trios recorded before the bass player showed up. The horns engage in free dialogues, even as they mark out the forms. On Monk's "Bahia," drummer Dennis Charles' Caribbean lilt sways their phrasing and lifts the bandstand.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE LACY AND ROSWELL RUDD, "BYE-YA")

WHITEHEAD: Decades later, Steve Lacy said when Roswell and I had our band in the early '60s, the idea was repertory. But the idea was so radical no one would touch us. Now everyone wants to play Monk tunes and repertory is institutionalized. He called that. Lacy was deep into Monk by the early '60s; he'd already recorded in all-Monk album and briefly played in the pianist's own group. The new edition of "School Days" on the Emanem label adds a couple of tunes Lacy played with Thelonious Monk at a 1960 Festival. This is "Evidence."

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE LACY AND THELONIOUS MONK, "EVIDENCE")

WHITEHEAD: Steve Lacy delved into Monk's music to analyze his composing. He ran with Monk's wisdom, beginning with the idea that your voice as jazz composer starts with your sound and timing as an improviser, that way your tune and your solo always fit together. Lacy learned from Monk about leaving space in the music and the attractions of childlike sing-song phrases that invite variation. Lacy blossomed as a composer in the 1970s when he also began playing a lot of solo concerts. That stark setting helped clarify his concept.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE LACY SONG, "WICKETS")

WHITEHEAD: "Wickets," from another Steve Lacy retrospective on Emanem, "Cycles." Two CDs collecting mostly unheard solo performances recorded from 1976 to 1980. Lacy's improvisations develop in such a clear, unhurried way, it's like we're eavesdropping on his thinking. These days, you hear Lacy's influence all over in Branford Marsalis's new solo album, in various works by the great soprano specialists Jane Ira Bloom and Sam Newsome. And in bands that spotlight Lacy's compositions, likes Ideal Bread and The Whammies. Improvising composers study Steve Lacy's music the way he studied Monk's - to grab good ideas and then make them their own.

(SOUNDBITE OF JAZZ MUSIC)

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead writes for Point of Departure and Wondering Sound and is the author of "Why Jazz." He reviewed the re-issues "School Days," featuring Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd and "Cycles" featuring Steve Lacy. This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.