Red Allen Chapters 9 - The Jazz Archive

- 104 -
Martin Williams “JAZZ MASTERS OF NEW ORLEANS”pp251-274 - HENRY RED:
...At least he was very early for some recording he did in
the summer of 1962. Allen had been using a quartet for
successful appearances in such semi-posh lounges as the
Embers in New York, the London House in Chicago, the
Theatrical Grill in Cleveland, and on college tours with
comedians Shelley Berman and Bob Newhart, and he was
asked by Prestige Records to make an LP with the group.
Prestige, like several New York jazz record companies, uses
the studios of an ex-optometrist named Rudy Van Gelder,
who began high-fidelity recording as a hobby and ended up
with a successful business on his hands. Van Gelder´s
studios are located just across the George Washington
Bridge from Manhattan Island in the New-Jersey suburbs,
and Red Allen pulled up his shiny black Cadillac in front of
Van Gelder´s large, backyard brick building early-almost
forty-five minutes before the date was to begin. Van Gelder
is more used to show-business lateness than earliness, and
he was not only surprised but dismayed at the arrival of
Allen and his quartet. However, once he had made the firm
announcement that recording would not begin until the
scheduled 1 p.m. he opened the studio door and let the
players wait inside.
Allen soon regained the composure he was so determined to
preserve, and inside the high-ceilinged, wooden beamed
studio he found of time to prepare. "Early?"muttered Jerry
Potter setting up his drums, "This group is always early!"
It was better to be inside. The day was overcast; there was a
drizzle which turned into a heavy rain by late afternoon.
Allen donned a pair of classes that gave him a studious air,
an air that few people who have watched the exuberant and
powerful Red Allen on a night club bandstand would
recognize. He leaned over the back of the studio piano,
studying his list of repertory with the quartet and going some
of his lyrics.
Before long there was a casual exchange of players at the
piano bench-first the group´s bass player, Frank Skeete, and
then Allen. Lanny Scott, the quartet´s pianist, is the
professional, of course, so it would not behoove him to play
for such casual amusement. Musicians take this sort of thing
for granted-nearly everyone plays a little piano and enjoys it,
but it is often surprising to outsiders.
(*) A little before 1 p.m. Esmond Edwards arrived.
Edwards had set the date up and he was to supervise it for
Prestige. (In other fields of endeavour he would be called a
producer; in recording, he is called an A & R man-meaning
artists and repertory.) He was frankly surprised to find the
musicians all present and ready to go. He took his place
inside Van Gelder´s control booth, behind the large glass
panel which is broad and high enough to take in the whole
barn-like studio at a glance. Van Gelder soon had his machines
threaded with tape and was seated behind his complex
control panel. The date was officially ready to begin.
On the other side of the glass the musicians began running
through the first piece, Cherry, to warm up and to cheek the
placement of the microphones. Red Allen was swinging
from the first bar, and his very personal, often complex
phrases rolled off his horn with an apparent, almost casual
ease. He was also showing his fine control of the horn; he
would begin with an idea at a mere whisper of trumpet
sound, and develop it to a powerful shout at the end of his
phrase-the kind of dynamics that few other trumpeters know
how to employ.
After the run-through, Edwards suggested that drummer
Jerry Potter try sticks instead of brushes. Everyone agreed.
Then Cherry was going onto the tape, take-1 -an inventive
opening by Red, but he stopped after his vocal. "I goofed the
words all up." Another take, but the bass wasn´t balanced.
First numbers on a record date usually go this way.
Then, Cherry –3. Everyone was working; the group was
concertedly alive. Allen was truly inventive, for he used only
one brief phrase that he had played in any previous version
of Cherry so far. "That man really improvises,” someone in
the booth said, as Edwards and Van Gelder nodded. "I
wonder if he could himself, even if he wanted to.” As the
ending rang out through the wooden rafters and across the
mikes, echoing the power and drive of the performance.
Edwards laughed. "They don´t play like that any more!” "Can
we hear that back?" Red asked-“How. do we sound in here?"
A bit later they began running through Sleepy Time Gal,
Allen´s lines were weaving in unexpected directions and he
was beginning to show his command of the full range of his
horn, with the perfectly played low notes that are almost his
exclusive property. His melodies were still gli-ding over the
rhythm section and basic time, with sureness and inner drive,
and no excess notes.
The first take of Sleepy Time Gal was much simpler than the
run-through, and there was some trouble with the
introduction. Allen is still more used to recording for the old
flat acetate record blanks rather than tape, and he had been
counting off the tempos to the group at a whisper. But with
tape it´s easy to cut splice, and remove a downbeat or a countoff.
“You can count it off out loud, Red,” Edwards reminded
him.
At the end of another take, Edwards apparently saw
something was about to happen, and he reached for his mike
to say over the studio loudspeakers, “ How are the chops?
Can we do one more right away?”
"Yeah, sure, my man!” immediately from Allen. And then
they did the best Sleepy Time Gal yet.
This time Allen came into the engineering booth to hear the
playback and sat beside Van Gelder´s elaborate array of dials
and knobs. He raised and curved his eyebrows at a
particularly lyric turn of phrase in his own improvising, pretty
much the way any listener would in following the music.
By 2 p.m. they were into I Ain't Got Nobody; on his vocal
Red was gliding through as many as six notes in singing just
the opening word “I.” After the run-through, Edwards
suggested that Allen blow another trumpet chorus on the final
take. Again, Allen´s ideas were fresh and different each time
they ran the piece down, and he still glided over the basic
one-two-three-four of the rhythm with perfect poise. His
trumpet alone might make the whole group swing. He
counted them off loudly now for the final take, “ONE!
TWO!” And at the end, after the reverberations had settled,
there was the inevitable Red Allen genial cry of "Nice!”
Almost his trademark.
Then, a short break as some visitors arrived, Van Gelder
immediately gave them a firm invitation to sit quietly in the
studio and stay out of the booth. Jerry Potter came in to ask
for a little more mike on his bass drum. “Can you bring it up a
little?” Then I can relax. I have to keep leaning on it
otherwise.”
“Okay, we´ll try. It´s not easy to do.”
In the studio designer and photographer Don Schlitten, there
to get a picture for the LP album cover. had his lights and
shutters going. Allen wasn´t bothered. Nervous or not, Red
Allen had been strictly business from the beginning. And he
was obviously impatient to get back to work.
Later, they were well into a new version of one of Allen´s
early recordings, There´s a House in Harlem, and Red was
getting deep growl effects the way he does on his open horn,
without a plunger. Again, every version was different. Van
Gelder remarked for about the third time that they should be
recording everything including the warm-ups and runthroughs.
And again, he shook his head in appreciation of
how well Red was playing.
Edwards stopped the take, remarking on the intro, and
drummer Lannie Scott and bassist Frank Skeete worked it out
together before the tape was rolled again.
They began Just in Time, a more recent show tune, from
Bells Are Ringing. “Everybody plays that thing now,” a
visitor remarked. “I guess it´s become a jazz standard already.
I heard Art Farmer do it the other day.” There was some
trouble again with the intro so Red took it himself
unaccompanied. They went through the piece once and Allen
was after Jerry Potter again. “Let me hear a little more of that
bass drum, please." The ending was “up,” loudly and broadly
signaling the finish of the piece, just as the group does to a
club audience.
Another break, this one officially called by Edwards. Red
was still anxious to get back to work and he toyed around on