Elder Statesmen of Jazz Saxophone
Today (Sunday 8/27) Sonny Rollins will play a free concert in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center. There is probably not a more universally respected saxophonist alive. I started thinking about the other elder statesmen of jazz saxophone. A top 10 list inevitably followed. The ground rules are simple: at least 75 years old (Phil Woods can join the list in November) and an unquestioned great. Rather than attempt to rank them in order of quality – they’re all so good it might as well be ten men tied for first place – I’ll list them in order of age (years of birth in parentheses).
Lateef, a devout Muslim, objects to defining his music as jazz because of the sexual origin of the word. Considering how multi-faceted his music is, no label can contain it all; world music and classical music are in there too (when he won a Grammy in the New Age category, he and had to ask what that was). Lateef started out playing swing, but by the 1960s he’d moved beyond bebop and with Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane was exploring scales from around the world. Besides his fine tenor work, he’s also a virtuoso oboist and flutist and commands a variety of world instruments as well.
Where to start: Other Sounds (New Jazz/Prestige)
Giuffre also started out in the swing era, and his composition “Four Brothers” was a popular feature of the Woody Herman big band. The tenorman added baritone sax and, more prominently, clarinet to his instrumental arsenal and explored new jazz textures in a trio with trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and guitarist Jim Hall (having no pianist, bassist, and drummer was unique at the time). His 1961 trio with pianist Paul Bley and bassist Steve Swallow also pioneered, exploring the quieter end of the free jazz spectrum. Eventually he began playing flute and soprano sax as well. His health has been poor this decade and he has not been able to maintain his career.
Where to start: 1961 (ECM) [contains the complete sessions for the Verve albums Fusion and Thesis]
Another multi-instrumentalist, but tenor sax is definitely his strongest suit. While on the Boston scene, Rivers started a free-improvisation group that included drummer Tony Williams, then 13 years old. Having been educated at the Boston Conservatory of Music and Boston University, Rivers came at the new genre from a more intellectual, classically inspired perspective (the same could be said of Cecil Taylor, who rose out of the same scene). In 1964, Rivers was briefly in the Miles Davis Quintet (he can be heard on the album Live in Tokyo) but was too far-out for Miles. In 1970 Rivers and wife Bea opened the loft studio Rivbea, which became a locus of New York’s free jazz scene and filled the gap left by the major clubs’ distaste for booking avant-garde music. He’s spent the past two decades living and working in Florida but made a triumphant return to NY this summer as the honoree of the annual Vision Festival.
Where to start: Sam Rivers/Dave Holland, vol. 1 (Improvising Artists, Inc.)
If you hear screaming alto sax on a Sun Ra album, odds are it’s Allen blowing up a storm. Allen was stationed in Paris with the U.S. Army in the 1940s and eventually studied at the Paris Conservatory of Music (there’s a line you won’t see on many jazz musicians’ resumes!). After moving to Chicago, he joined Sun Ra’s Arkestra in 1958 and has remained with it ever since, in his devotion to it sacrificing his own career.
Where to start: Sun Ra & His Astro-Infinity Arkestra: Pathways to Unknown Worlds/Friendly Love (Evidence)
Originally an alto saxophonist whose similarity to Charlie Parker was much-noted, he escaped that pigeonhole by switching to tenor (and he was hardly the first or last to do so for the same reason), and is also a fluent soprano saxist and flutist. Many jazz listeners who have never heard him play are nonetheless familiar with his compositions “C.T.A.” and “Gingerbread Boy,” both recorded by Miles Davis and many other performers. But Heath’s a superb hard bop player as well as a great composer and arranger, as the recommended album – which gives him plenty of solo space – proves.
Where to start: On the Trail (Riverside)
Maneri’s first released album appeared in 1991, but he should have had an earlier start: He recorded a demo for Atlantic Records in 1963 that was too far-out for them to release as an album (it eventually came out in Japan 35 years later as Paniots Nine on John Zorn’s Avant label). They weren’t ready for a microtonalist (playing not just the twelve notes of the tempered scale but also degrees between them – in theory, Maneri plays using 72 notes per octave), and he was also using unusual meters and a drummer who didn’t state the beat. Maneri is also a master clarinetist and besides jazz is also an adept practitioner of klezmer and other Eastern European musics.
Where to start: Going to Church (AUM Fidelity)
Cool jazz wouldn’t have sounded the way it did without Konitz, one of the few ‘50s altoists who wasn’t a Parker clone. He first gained notice with the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, and then was an integral part of Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool nonet. But he was always creatively restless and much more than “just” a cool player. Joining the circle around the innovative Lenny Tristano, Konitz participated in the first recordings of free improvisation (in 1949!). Then he moved west and joined the Stan Kenton Orchestra, after which he mostly worked as a leader in a seemingly infinite number of settings yielding a most prolific recorded output that continues with two new discs on the Omnitone label this month.
Where to start: 12 Gershwin in 12 Keys (Philology)
For some reason, tenor players are especially competitive, so it was truly a noteworthy distinction that until Coltrane came on the scene, Griffin was considered the fastest tenor player around. Of course, it takes more than fast fingers for a player to be respected, but Griffin had the whole bebop package and remains an imaginative player even after slowing down.
Where to start: A Blowin’ Session (Blue Note)
Nobody on this list was more controversial than Ornette. Of course, many people misunderstood his music, but the reason some jazzmen unleashed their vitriol on him was precisely because when this altoist came to New York with his groundbreaking quartet with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins and Atlantic released The Shape of Jazz to Come, these old-school jazzmen understood that in a way Ornette’s music was a rejection of most or all of what they held sacred, especially harmony as a major determinant of music’s shape and sound. Little did they know that in a few years he’d be playing even more radical music. And when he started playing trumpet and violin, and later “went electric” in the ‘70s, he managed to offend new groups of purists.
Where to start: This Is Our Music (Atlantic)
Then blow your mind with: Free Jazz (Atlantic)
And again: Dancing in Your Head (A&M)
Yup, Sonny’s the youngest man on the list (two days shy of six months younger than Ornette). That makes him last, but certainly not least; many consider him the greatest living tenor saxophonist. Soon he’ll have a new album out on his new label. All the criticisms you’ll inevitably read of it will be based on the superhuman standard to which Sonny is held: the standard of his past work.
Where to start: Saxophone Colossus (Prestige)
And then hear him go outside on: East Broadway Rundown (Impulse!)
