A disciple of bebop architect Charlie Parker, wunderkind alto saxophonist Jackie McLean was simply twenty when he made his recording debut on Miles Davis’ 1951 album Dig. Born John Lenwood McLean in Harlem, McLean rapidly lived as much as his early promise. Following his 1954 debut LP Introducing…Jackie McLean: The New Custom, he recorded a bunch of commendable arduous bop-style solo albums for Status. In 1959, after a stint in Artwork Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, his profession gathered momentum when he joined Blue Notice Data, extensively thought of jazz’s main unbiased label. McLean’s musical growth at Blue Notice from 1962 onwards was astonishing, releasing a collection of progressive albums that broke new floor whereas anchored, albeit loosely at instances, to the jazz custom. Of the 21 albums he recorded at Blue Notice between 1959 and 1967, Motion was certainly one of his greatest.
No different saxophonist appeared like McLean. Steeped in blues and bebop, his horn possessed a tart, astringent tone, a attribute that all the time gave his music a disquieting taste. It wasn’t till his eighth Blue Notice album, 1962’s Let Freedom Ring, that McLean confirmed how the “New Thing” – spearheaded by Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane – was starting to affect his method to jazz.
After Let Freedom Ring, McLean grew extra audacious with a succession of envelope-pushing LPs within the subsequent two years, together with One Step Past, Vacation spot … Out!, and It’s Time. The latter album launched Charles Tolliver, a 24-year-old trumpeter who give up his job as a pharmacist to pursue jazz professionally. McLean was so impressed by his new protege that he featured two Tolliver tunes on his subsequent album, Motion, recorded in September 1964.
In addition to Tolliver, Motion featured musicians McLean was accustomed to: Vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson – famend for his capability to play straight-ahead jazz and extra experimental music – bassist Cecil McBee, and drummer Billy Higgins. The album was minimize at Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey, Blue Notice’s most well-liked recording area run by pioneering sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder. Within the producer’s chair was the label’s co-founder, Alfred Lion. “We would rehearse for a couple of days during which he would time everybody with a stopwatch and decide how many solos there’d be,” recalled Tolliver in 2020. “Then we’d go off to Rudy Van Gelder’s studio and the recording would be done inside of three hours.”
An virtually ferocious sense of urgency propelled Motion’s opening title minimize, whose intro featured eerie harmonized horn motifs over martial drum rolls earlier than exploding right into a frantic groove pushed by McBee’s galloping bass. “The way the melody moves is the sound of something happening,” mentioned McLean, explaining the monitor to author Nat Hentoff. “Once the solo improvisations start, there are no chord changes and no scales to follow.”
After “Action’s” relentless propulsion, “Plight” is slower and extra mysterious, with Hutcherson’s glinting vibes including an otherworldly high quality. Tolliver, whose trumpet traces shimmer with a translucent magnificence, wrote the monitor together with “Wrong Handle,” a rigorously structured melancholic ballad with lyrical horn solos. In sharp distinction, the jazz normal “I Hear A Rhapsody” sees McLean fall again right into a hard-bop consolation zone. “I never want to go ‘outside’ for too long a time without coming back ‘inside’ again,” he defined to author Nat Hentoff. Motion’s curtain nearer was a driving bop-tinged unique which McLean enigmatically described as “a blues without being a blues.”
Balancing his extra progressive inclinations with deep bebop roots, Jackie McLean demonstrated with Motion a twin musical persona that allowed him to probe and discover jazz’s outer limits with out abandoning the music’s traditions. It proved probably the most satisfying and purposeful recordings of his profession.
Store for Jackie McLean’s music on vinyl or CD now.
