Creed Taylor Produced

Sometime back I wrote a piece about Feather’s “If Jazz Is Dead” comment that can be heard of the CTI All-Stars live album, and the backstory and column it was published in ^[1]http://ctproduced.com/jazz-is-deadnot/. It has been a reoccurring theme since Jazz first emerged as a serious art form in the 1920’s. For Leonard Feather though, it seems like it was a mission statement that read ~ “Keep Jazz Alive”.

In another of the the issues of the San Francisco Chronicle that appeared recently, I came across this April 11th, 1971 column of Feather’s. It’s one of the earliest to cover the independent CTI and covers some interesting early ground.

The column is reproduced here as accurately as possible, while not using the original layout and typeface. Punctuation is as close as possible to the original but may have been changed to aid readability. Spelling has not been changed. For reference, the original column can be seen below.

On the Verge of A Jazz Revival

By Leonard Feather

“WE ARE BEGINNING TO get mail from Colleges and young people in general, who admit to growing boredom with rock. Our culture is definitely on the verge of a jazz revival. In fact, jazz is very much alive for my company, and, I might add, in a more straight-ahead legitimate way than in the recent past.”

This news from the jazz record front, where seldom is heard an encouraging word, is part of a letter I received last week from Creed Taylor, the producer who played a vital role in establishing Wes Montgomery, Stan Getz, Jimmy Smith and many others as hit-makers.

Taylor presently heads his own CTI records, an organization seemingly dedicated to good music at large, with jazz as an often-present element.

One of the most extraordinary examples of Taylor’s resourcefulness is an LP that has gone almost unnoticed, possibly because neither reviewers nor dealers knew how to categorize it. Entitled “Afro-Classic,” (CTI 60061), it brings to center mike a New York flutist named Hubert Laws.

Drawing on Mozart, Bach, James Taylor and Francis (“Love Story”) Lai for its material, Laws engaged the protean arranger Don Sebesky to arrange, reconstruct and/or adapt the material. The idea, it is stated in the notes, was to provide a setting in which classic and African forms could co-exist, but “where these forms go beyond coexistence and intermix, it was an unscheduled development that happened during the sessions — the natural outcome of improvisation.”

Discreet use is made of electric flute, cello, piano and fuzzpedal vibes, but without dependence on amplication or distortion for its own sake. In a 15-minute treatment of Bach’s Passacaglia in C minor, the nine musicians bring to this work a delicacy and subtlety that defies categorization. Is it classical music? Electronic? Jazz? Rock? To all such questions, yes and no, according to the particular passage you have in mind.

In fashioning concepts such as those heard on “Afro-Classic,” Hubert Laws may not develop into the best selling flutist on the market, but he may well become the most respected.

Recently received from the same fearless company is “Bill Evans: Montreaux II” (CTI 6004). Recorded live last summer at the Casino de Montreux, Switzerland, this flawless set is composed mainly of pieces recorded by Evans on other pianos in other years, yet it would be hard to conceive that a loyal admirer would be any the less eager to hear how he deals today with the same material.

With his matchless amalgam of sensitivity, intelligence and musicality, Evans is a cry for peace and sanity in a society that finds itself on the verge of a global nervous breakdown. CTI 6004 is better medicine than any psychiatrist can prescribe.

A surprise entry is “Oklahoma Toad” (CTI 1004) by Dave Frishberg. Formerly known as a jazz pianist around New York, Frishberg offers ten original compositions which he plays on various keyboard instruments, and sings in a slightly nasal drawl that suggests a southwestern version of Mississippi’s Mose Allison. The imagery of his songs (“One Horse Town,” “The Secret of Success” and a splendid piece about a pessimist called “Prophet of Doom”) could establish him as a sort of non-neurotic male counterpart of Dore Previn.

Freddie Hubbard, a trumpeter for today, is carrying into the 1970s some of the precepts established a few years ago (but since abandoned for more abstract values) by Miles Davis. His “Straight Life” (CTI 6007) consists of three long tracks on which all hands (among them Herbie Hancock, piano; Joe Enderson ^[2]Joe Henderson https://www.discogs.com/artist/10079-Joe-Henderson, tenor sax; George Benson, guitar) stretch out with the audacity, flexibility and unpredictability that are the marks of a contemporary jazzman.

It is a comforting thought that a profusion of brilliant LPs such as those listed above can squeeze out, as victims of pressure on space, at least a dozen new jazz releases of variable interest and quality. It’s enough to make you suspect that Creed Taylor, with that inquisitive ear to the ground, must be picking up the right vibrations.

L.A. Times Service