Live in 3 2/3 4 Time: Liner Notes

[liner notes are for educational use only]

The Pacific Jazz Festival

"Orientation" was the opening work of our performance at the Pacific Jazz Festival. It is in 7/8 plus 9/8 (or 16) and is divided 3-2-2, 3-2-2-2. The meter is a folk rhythm that was shows to me by a pianist in Buffalo, New York. The mode is one of our "favorites": the Phrygian. Ira Schulman is the tenor soloist, and Chino Valdes is heard on conga.

"Angel Eyes" is one of my favorite ballads, and I decided to do something quite different with it. Eddie Harris wrote the great line "Freedom Jazz Dance," and I saw how the basic rhythmic riff of the song (which is from the old swing days) would fit beautifully into seven. It features Dave Mackay on piano, and Tom Scott on saxello.

Shelly's Manne-Hole

Leonard Feather called "Barnum's Revenge" a "wildly surrealistic 7/4 reshaping of 'Won't You Please Come Home Bill Bailey,'" after hearing in the club one night. It is written by Ruben Leon, and is all in seven (divided 3-2-2) except for one _ bar somewhere in the middle. The tenor soloist is Ira Schulman, and the Dixieland combo consists of John Magruder on clarinet, Dave Wells on trombone, and myself on trumpet. I guarantee you that this is the only Dixieland you will find anywhere in the world in seven!

"Upstart" is in 3 2/3 / 4 meter (11/8). We hadn't played this one for some time before the night of the recording, and I pulled it out just to give the band a chance to play something a little different. The thing got cooking so well that I changed the arrangement on the spot and threw in a clarinet solo, and Ira Schulman proceeded to amaze everyone. We had never heard him play clarinet before!

Hank Levy scored "Thetis" for us. The rhythm section gets an interesting beat going which is part samba, part rock and part jazz. Ruben Leon is heard on soprano sax and Dave Mackay on piano.

- Don Ellis

Duke Ellington once observed that success is the product of the confluence of four elements (I don't remember the precise words, but this is a close paraphrase): being in the right place, before the right people, doing the right thing at the right time.

By these standards, Don Ellis was long predestined to be a success. The signs have pointed in his direction for several years, but the Ellington four-element formula presented itself last September at Monterey, where, with his 21-piece orchestra, Ellis brought the crowd to its feet with his astonishing repertoire of unpredictable, metrically eccentric, ingeniously scored performances. To the factors pointed out by the Duke, one might add a few more that could be considered no less vital in the pursuit of maximal achievement. They include determination, which Ellis clearly has in abundance; physical advantages (Ellis is about six feet, trim, handsome, neatly bearded and totally designed to disarm the resistance of every female member of the crowd); an articulate, out-going personality (Ellis could easily build himself a full-time career as lecturer or panelist); and an awareness of the importance of publicity, coupled with a talent for self-promotion - in this department Ellis is so well fortified that it was obviously just a matter of time before his talent broke through. (I am assuming, a priori, of course, that genuine musical ability is a prerequisite without which the other qualifications cannot sustain anyone.)

If Ellis becomes, as some of us have predicted, the Kenton of the 1970s, his arrival at this summit will be the culmination of at least five years of concentrated effort to express himself as an individual through every channel available to him - playing, leading, thinking, composing, writing for magazines, teaching, studying, organizing, searching. His success will also be, interestingly enough, the first one in a quarter of a century established by a big band in Southern California (it was 25 years ago last spring that Stan Kenton started out at the Balboa Ballroom; Gerald Wilson's magnificent band is still on the brink of a breakthrough).

Ellis might be classified as a Third Streamer, an avant-gardist, or simply as a nonconformist. He himself is not too deeply concerned with the semantics involved. "There is no definite style indicated by the term 'new swing,'" he has said. "We are now at a time of experimentation where rules are not yet codified into clichés. So much the better. Too many jazzmen have been conservative, afraid of change. This is strange in an art that was born in change, whose very essence is the improvised, the unexpected.

"Anyone who plays even a little creatively or differently from the established school seems to be called avant-garde, especially if he makes any unusual sounds on his instrument. By this definition, the most avant-garde and consistently interesting player I heard during a visit to New York last year was Henry 'Red' Allen."

Similarly, last June another story appeared under his by-line: "The Avant-Garde is Not Avant-Garde!" He amplified in the article: "By current avant-garde I refer to those playing the type of music associated with such musicians as Artie Shepp, Albert Ayler and most of the artists of the E.S.P. Records catalogue. The predominant elements of this music (such as the lack of a definite rhythmic pulse or melodic or structural coherence, the use of myriads of flat notes with no overall direction and the at-one-time-unusual shrieks, honks and bleats) have now become commonplace and clichéd. And as for 'newness' itself, these elements all date back some years."

If this type of incessant chattering and stream-of-consciousness meandering is no longer avant-garde, Ellis went on, then what is?

He answered himself: "Music based on solid audible structural premises... music that is well conceived and thought out (as opposed to the 'don't bother me with the technical details, man - I'm playing pure emotion' school)... music with new rhythmic complexity based on a swinging pulse with new meters and super impositions... music with melodies based on principles of musical coherence, utilizing the new rhythms along with intervals (pitches)... music making use of new harmonic idioms based on principles of audible coherence (in contradistinction to the 'everybody-for-himself-with-12-tones-Go!' school)... musical worth or greatness is of the utmost importance. Whether something is avant-garde or not has no bearing on this."
These reflections are the fruit of years of experimentation in many directions. Ellis, born July 25, 1934, in Los Angeles, earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Boston University. During the late 1950's he worked his way through a variety of big bands (Ray McKinley's Glenn Miller outfit, Charlie Barnet, Herb Pomeroy, Sam Donahue, Claude Thornhill, Woody Herman, Lionel Hampton) as well as a period of U.S. Army bands. It was in the Maynard Ferguson band that I first heard him, during a concert tour in 1958. Though there was no chance for any avant-garde or highly individual expression during his brief solos, it was clear already that here was a talent to be watched. During the 1960-62 period Ellis managed to rid himself of the big-band-sidemen image. He led his own trio at the Village Vanguard, played in Harlem with a quartet at Wells', was a member of the George Russell combo, and was closely associated during much of this time with a Boston friend, pianist-saxophonist Jaki Byard (who had also been a member of the Ferguson band).

He made three combo albums of value. One, on the defunct Candid label, produced by Nat Hentoff, featured him with Byard, Ron Carter, and Charlie Persip. An entire side was devoted to an "Improvisational Suite" using a 12-tone row as a point of departure. New Ideas, a Prestige LP, used the same personnel with Al Francis on vibes added. As Don observed then, "All these players are skilled in the technique of standard jazz improvising on chord progressions, but they can also create without chords, and on tone clusters and tone rows. They are not limited in their approach to a mere ignoring of the changes to sound 'far out,' but have the ability to control both the vertical and horizontal elements of the music." Don has always sought out musicians with these qualifications; today he is lucky enough to have a whole big bandful of them.

Don has been heard in Europe twice: at the Warsaw Jazz Jamboree in 1962 and in Scandinavia in 1963. In 1962, he recorded, in Hollywood, a set for Pacific Jazz with Paul Bley, Gary Peacock, and Gene Stone or Nick Martinis on drums. In 1963, he formed a group called the Improvisational Workshop, making several live and TV appearances. He was a featured soloist in a performance that year of Larry Austin's "Improvisations," with the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein. Returning to Los Angeles, he began graduate studies at the University of California; in 1964 he formed his Hindustani Jazz Sextet and expanded his already profound interest in Indian music.

"Indian classical music," he says, "possesses the most highly developed, subtle and complex system of organized rhythm in the world. The best and most technically advanced jazz drummer that has ever lived is a rank novice compared to a good Indian drummer when it comes to command of rhythms. The same thing applies to melodic instruments also. For many months I had the good fortune to study the art of North Indian drumming under Harihar Rao, who has been associated with Ravi Shankar for almost fifteen years. Harihar is a marvelous drummer and sitar player, his sense of time is so accurate that he can keep a steady slow beat while talking, reading or doing anything else. He is extremely bothered by the irregularities in time of the finest electronic metronomes he has heard."

Harihar Rao appeared with Ellis and the Hindustani combo in Hollywood clubs, and in Ellis' joint appearance with Kenton's Los Angeles Neophonic last year (1966). It is undoubtedly through his influence that Ellis became more preoccupied with the use of unconventional metres in jazz. Don started his big band as a workshop experiment in 1964, but by 1965 was working one night a week at a Los Angeles club. A year and a half ago he moved into Bonesville, a moribund club in Hollywood operated by trombonist Walt Flynn.

Ellis has done everything in his power to promote himself, his band and the club. He even had bumper stickers reading "Where is Don Ellis?" that were seen on the backs of dozens of cars at the Monterey and Costa Mesa festivals. He knows that the thing to do it study, develop something of value, get yourself talked about, find places where the right kind of people can hear you, and then convince them.

Without hesitation I predict that at year's end Don and his band will have been the No. 1 jazz success story of 1967. He has a set of principles that just can't miss.

- Leonard Feather
(original liner notes)

The Bonus Tracks

The additional performances on this CD are all drawn from the Shelly's Manne-Hole club taping of March 27, 1967. "Opus Five" and "Seven Up" were both written by Howlett Smith, a blind pianist and student in Ellis' UCLA extension course in arranging. Joe Roccisano arranged the pieces for the band. Ellis is featured on both, which he re-recorded a year later for his second Columbia album, Shock Treatment. The soloists on this alternate version of Freedom Jazz Dance are Dave Mackay on piano and Roccisano on alto sax. Two charts for the band make their only recorded appearance here. "Bossa Nueva Nova" [Note: this tune was recorded on Electric Bath as "Alone". Same tune and same arrangement.] is by Hank Levy, a frequent contributor to both the Stan Kenton and Ellis bands. Don is the trumpet soloist. Jaki Byard's "Johnny One Note" features Dave Mackay and Ellis.

- Bob Belden