You could say that the world is a confusing place. What I get from playing is clarity.
- Roswell Rudd
Roswell Rudd fell in love with jazz listening with his dad to 78 records of Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and Benny Goodman. His dad played along on the drums while he danced and pranced around the room.
In 1948 near his hometown, he saw a concert by Max Kaminsky, Miff Mole, Tony Parenti, James P. Johnson, Pops Foster, and Danny Alvin. These were all guys young Roswell heard on his dad’s 78 records. That concert had a big impact on him. He soon took up the trombone, which he continued to play while attending Hotchkiss School, a preparatory school in Lakeville, Connecticut.
Even while at Hotchkiss School, through his friendship with bassist Buell Neidlinger (who later played with Cecil Taylor), Rudd was already playing in Eli’s Chosen Six, a Dixieland band at Yale University, where he would enroll the following year.
Princeton University was the first of the Ivy colleges to show interest in jazz in the late 1920s. Bix Beiderbecke used to jam after proms with Edwin "Squirrel" Ashcraft, Bill Priestley, and other members of the Princeton Triangle Club jazz band - I think Steve “Steak” Stechschulte was in that band too. Although Princeton was first, the most popular of the collegiate bands was Eli’s Chosen Six, who recorded two albums for Columbia Records in 1956 and 1957.
However, Eli’s Chosen Six’s biggest claim to fame was a cameo role in Jazz on a Summer’s Day, a concert film set at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.
The film made its debut at the 1959 Venice Film Festival and features during the opening credits Eli’s Chosen Six driving through the streets in an old jalopy playing Dixieland music.
After college, from 1960 to 1962, Rudd befriended and worked with the legendary Herbie Nichols. He promoted Nichols’ music energetically throughout his career, releasing three albums featuring Nichols' compositions: Regeneration issued in 1983 by Soul Note; and The Unheard Herbie Nichols issued in two volumes in 1997 by CIMP. In 2000, he also published Herbie Nichols: The Unpublished Works, a music book of unpublished Nichols compositions:
In 1961, while exploring the idea that there were possibilities for the trombone outside bebop, Rudd joined a quartet led by Steve Lacy - playing exclusively Monk tunes. Unfortunately, no record companies were interested in this music; however, in 1975, Emanem did release School Days, a 1963 taped live performance at the Phase Two Coffee House in New York City, which was featured in last week’s journey.
In the summer of 1963, when Lacy went to Europe, Danish alto saxophonist John Tchicai came to America and with Ruud had the idea to form a quartet. They called themselves the New York Art Quartet. They played together in filmmaker Michael Snow’s loft, which led to recording the soundtrack for Snow’s film The New York Ear and Eye Control. In July 1964, ESP-Disk recorded the soundtrack for the film. Along with Rudd and Tchicai, the recording featured members of Albert Ayler’s band:
Here is this odd film - it’s a little over 30 minutes long (note that the film is silent until just after the 3:00 minute mark when the music starts and then again until the 9:43 minute mark):
The film premiered later that year in Toronto. Snow recalled, "I was surprised to see people getting up and leaving very early in the projection of the film." At a later showing in New York he recalled, "The audience catcalled, booed, whistled, and threw paper at the screen. The film ended, and surprisingly, there was also some strong applause. Two people in the audience jumped up and ran to the booth where I was standing with the projectionist. They were very excited and said, 'That was wonderful. Who did that?' I said that I was the maker of the film, and we had a short conversation, and they introduced themselves: Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga.”
During the 1960s in New York City, avant-garde music was primarily underground music. As a result, Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor had an idea to bring the music out into the public arena. As a result, they organized the October Revolution in Jazz, named after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Rudd and Tchicai’s quartet played at the four-day festival of new jazz music. It took place at the Cellar Cafe in New York City from October 1–4, 1964.
Over the next few months a series of similar events took place in New York City. One concert event was called the “Pre-Halloween Jazz Party” and ran from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am on October 30 - 31, 1964:
Another was called “Four Days in December” and ran from December 28 - 31 at Judson Hall:
Notice that Rudd and Tchicai’s Quartet shared the last night with Sun Ra.
The success of the October Revolution led directly to the formation of the Jazz Composers Guild. As Jazz historian Ben Young pointed out in his book Dixonia: A Bio-Discography of Bill Dixon, the Guild’s main goal was to support the idea that the music of these avant-garde musicians must and will no longer remain a part of the underground. Although the Guild was short-lived, it did inspire other musical collectives like the AACM in Chicago, the Black Artist’s Group in St. Louis, and Horace Tapscott’s Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra in L.A.
In 1964, the New York Art Quartet revolutionized jazz. Young described an interesting way of looking at the New York Art Quartet: “…to say that here is a step not only into a new variant on what the jazz impulse was about, but into something that probably wasn’t going to be safely called jazz music. And the New York Art Quartet was indicating that there is another generation…one further level of abstraction. They wouldn’t just experiment in that realm, they moved completely out of the jazz orbit and decided that this would be their new home.”
The Quartet consisted of Rudd and Tchicai along with Lewis Worrell on bass and Milford Graves on drums. On November 1964, the New York Art Quartet recorded a seminal album on the ESP-Disk label:
From that album, here is No. 6, with one of my favorite bass and drum solos on record:
In 1965, with the New York Art Quartet, Rudd went to Europe and later recorded a seminal live album with Archie Sheep and another master trombonist Grachan Moncur III at the Donaueschingen Musiktage in 1967. I think this album is one of the high water mark releases of 1960s avant-garde music.
This album was released on the German SABA label, which in 1968 became the legendary MPS label. To read more about the MPS label click here:
In 1974, Rudd recorded Flexible Flyer, an interesting album with Shelia Jordan. I’ve always liked Rudd’s playing on Hod O’Brien’s Waltzing in the Sagebrush:
Although Rudd recorded occasionally in the 1970s and 1980s, for mostly economic reasons, he worked a variety of non-musical jobs and spent time teaching at the college level. After denial of tenure at the University of Maine, he moved to New York and worked steadily at a hotel resort. However, the 1990s found Rudd busy in the music scene, recording steadily again for many years.
In 2002, Rudd began an amazing run of cross-cultural experiments with the Sunnyside label. The first was Malicool with Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté. From that album, here is Jackie-ing, a song first introduced by Monk in 1959:
In 2005, again with the Sunnyside label, Rudd recorded Blue Mongol with The Mongolian Buryat Band:
From that album, here is Rudd’s composition Honey On The Moon:
Roswell Rudd was so good at honoring the compositions of Nichols, Monk, and other Jazz masters and so convincing as an improvisor that the creativity and craftsmanship of his own compositions is overlooked. In my mind, he will always belong right there with the Jazz masters he so thoroughly admired.
Next week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in to explore the waters of Danish tenor John Tchicai.
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Until then, keep on walking….