Haven't had as much time as usual to listen to music the last few weeks. One of my favorite series has always been the Live at Maybeck Hall series. I've listened to isolated albums from it quite a bit, but I'm now attempting to make my way through it methodically, quite a treat. At first I thought of writing up a disc by disc breakdown, but my notes on Brackeen and Mckenna exceeded 1,000 words and I just don't have time for that.
One of the artists I was most favorably impressed with was Hank Jones. Jones died in 2010 at 91 and recorded his maybeck recital in his 70's. He had a 67 year recording career, and played with pretty much everyone who was anyone in that time period, from bebop, bop, post bop, hard bop, zip zop boobity bop, modal and free jazz originators all the way to a duet album with charlie haden in 2010.
One thing that is always of interest in jazz to me is seeing how artists change over the course of their career. I sort of break it into 4 categories:
1) Those who are like reeds, just sort of playing whatever style is popular at the time to stay relevant. These artists tend not to have a "voice" of their own - they are just really good at applying "styles" to various standards.
2) Those who are changing, but it is real change - as a result, they sort of change the Jazz landscape. They help propel change as sources instead of sourcing others' innovations. I sort of see these artists as having many "voices" - all of which are very distinctly their own, at various stages of their life.
3) Those who are cedars - they start out playing a certain way and they'll play like that until they die, whatever innovations may be made in the rest of the music world during their career. This is from lack of talent, creativity, and open-mindedness more than anything else.
4) Those who have a voice so distinct that they never really change over time. They could easily incorporate different new elements into their style of play, but just feel it isn't them. These voices are usually easy to discern, whether playing solo or in groups.
Anyway, that whole preamble was just to setup what I noticed about Jones - while he did change in the sense of who he was playing with - accompanying Ella he played differently than how he played with the Great Jazz Trio he formed, which was different than his solo offerings... but comparing his first leading recording, Hank Jones Piano, with his work at the Maybeck almost 50 years later, his fundamental "voice" had not changed at all. Very lyrical, with a bluesy harmonic sense, but technically rock solid, Hank was Hank no matter what (even during his failed experiments with the electric harpichord on his album with Oliver Nelson.) You've probably heard Hank before as an accompanist without knowing it - heck, he was the piano player when Marilyn sang "Happy Birthday" to JFK. He knew when to be unobtrusive but didn't hold back from rich, melodic improvisation when given the chance. Well worth a listen.
