A History Of Blue Note Records: 1947

The Tadd Dameron Sextet – September 26 1947

Leonard Feather - The Fabulous Fats Navarro, Volume 1 Liner Notes

What manner of man was Theodore Navarro? So many of today's record collectors were still shy of their teens when he died that the childlike wistfulness of personality, the Don Newcombe profile, the Ciceronian eloquence of his horn were denied them forever. Able to meet Fats only through records, they can be thankful that Blue Note was able to preserve the evidence of his creativity at its height.

The retention in Blue Note's files of everything recorded at these sessions has made it possible to include alternate masters, never previously released, as well as the original masters on most tunes. Thus you will hear a flock of improvisations completely new to LP annals. You will notice in some instances, notably Our Delight, that Fats replays certain phrases almost note for note and retains something of the same general contour of the solo in both takes while the melodic line undergoes some modifications. This is even true of a performance based on as general a theme as the blues: on The Squirrel Fats carries ideas over in both his 12-bar choruses.

The alto of Ernie Henry, recently back in the jazz forefront, and the tenor of Charlie Rouse are heard extensively, as well as some samples of Tadd Dameron, who played what is usually called "arranger's piano". Tadd's themes for this date offered a simple and never constrictive framework for Fats and the other soloists.

Ira Gitler – Fats Navarro Prime Source Liner Notes

Of interest to collectors is that the last time these selections were available on LP, there were 22 tracks in The Fabulous Fats Navarro, volumes 1&2 (Blue Note 1531 & 1532). This reissue contains 26 cuts, the extra ones being the original masters of Wail, Bouncing With Bud, Dance of the Infidels and 52nd Street Theme from the Bud Powell date.

First is the Tadd Dameron Sextet of September 1947. Basically it is the quintet from the Onyx Club with Charlie Rouse added on tenor. An extra horn doesn't make that much difference in some groups but Dameron wrote such wide voicings that the third instrument in the front line was an especially valuable tool in his hands, As a pianist, Tadd was a vigorous, percussive accompanist who did not care to feature himself in a soloist's role. But he sure knew how to put a band together and make it cohere on the stand. The rhythm section here is completed by bassist Nelson Boyd, who also worked with Coleman Hawkins and Dizzy Gillespie; and Shadow Wilson, already celebrated as an excellent big band drummer with Count Basie, with Illinois Jacquet's big little band, and who later also made his mark with Woody Herman, Erroll Garner, Ella Fitzgerald and Thelonious Monk.

Another future Monk cohort, Charlie Rouse, having served a tour of duty with Dizzy Gillespie's big band of 1945, was already exhibiting some of the very idiosyncratic characteristics that have made him one of the most recognizable stylists to come out of the '40s but some of his early influences were showing, too.

Alto saxophonist Ernie Henry (later with Gillespie's big band and Monk's group, played in a personal version of Charlie Parker's idiom at a time when that particular thing was very difficult for an alto player to do.

Our Delight, a Dameron composition like all the selections on the first two sides, had been recorded by Gillespie's big band, and became a jazz standard in the '40s and '50s. The beautiful ensemble passage that is the out chorus, except for Tadd's chorded bridge, is typical of Dameron's ability to write a variation on his opening theme to really climax a performance, Rouse sounds like a cross between Dexter Gordon and Ben Webster in the original master and Fats is particularly brilliant.

The Squirrel, a jumping blues with call and response between piano and horns, supposedly came to Tadd while he was watching a bushy-tailed rodent in Central Park, It first showed up as a background in his arrangement of Cool Breeze for the Eckstine band, Rouse, in retrospect, occasionally parallels the Morris Lane of the Bebop Boys date that Fats made for Savoy. Henry cries a little like Sonny Criss, He could really play the blues, Fats begins both his solos with a quote from The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down, but the second one is more polished with some high register stuff ala Diz.

The Chase, also known then as Tadd's Chase to differentiate it from The Chase of Wardell Gray and Dexter Gordon, contains an opening phrase like A Kid Named Joe, a quote that Bird made famous.

Dameronia is Tadd's version of Monk's Well You Needn't. There is a "new" ensemble passage in the last eight bars of the out chorus and a broadly-voiced Dameronian ending. Henry, sounding more Bird-like than usual, and Rouse split a chorus while Fats has a whole one to himself.

Screenland March 1948 Volume 52 Issue 5

TAD DAMERON SEXTET: Step over into the bop department, please, for an ample sample of this merchandise at its “gonest” by Tad Dameron, one of the foremost arrangers and pianists of the modern school. He’s coralled Fats Navarro on trumpet, Charlie Rouse on tenor, Ernie Henry on alto, Nelson Boyd, bass and Shadow Wilson on drums on a cookie that’ll thrill you to your lymphatic passageways. There’s “Our Delight” and “The Squirrel” to chase out any bad sound that may be cluttering your aural cavity. (Blue Note)

The Record Changer March 1948

This seems to be a pretty nearly ideal record. The record is wonderful. the pressing clean, and the music top notch. Of the two sides our delight impresses us for several reasons. Fats Navarro is in fine form with that big tone and Charlie Rouse plays a raucous abandoned chorus. A highly polished group, they play together and they play separately with intelligence and imagination.

Tadd, besides being a fine arranger, is a skillful ensemble pianist. He plays penetrating chords throughout the solos and arranged parts always with a good beat. Fats has something of his own—power, technique, ideas and his solos on both sides are beautifully executed. Ernie Henry and Charlie Rouse are a good team. Henry is a cool, fast thinking alto man and Rouse is very exciting. Almost all of the above for The Squirrel, too

All in all, Blue Note has done a grade A job in this their first instrumental be-bop release and deserve to be complimented. (Blue Note 540)

Richard Cook - Blue Note Records: The Biography – Secker and Warburg 2001

Tadd Dameron counts as one of the more star-crossed figures in jazz, surviving bop's most iniquitous temptations (unlike Navarro) but losing his way in the fifties and hardly building on the promise of his earlier compositions. He wrote all eight of the originals set down at the two sessions with Navarro, and several of the tunes - 'Our Delight', 'Dameronia', 'Lady Bird' - are superb rationalisations of the bebop idiom within a composers rigour. Dameron already had years of experience behind him, having been working as an arranger for Harlan Leonard in the late thirties, and subsequently for Gillespie. His two key sessions for Blue Note were recorded almost exactly a year apart - September 1947 and September 1948 - but both feature Navarro as principal soloist, the second taking place during a period when Dameron was leading the house band at the important 52nd Street club, the Royal Roost. Dameron's music wasn't something that sprang out of bop: while it is hard to date these compositions, several of them may have gone back several years, perhaps to a pre-bop situation. Certainly, ifs possible to hear the voicings of such as 'Our Delight' in the ranks of one of the more progressive swing orchestras, and Dameron's gift for writing melodious lines set him apart from much of bop's abstraction.

When coupled with Navarro's electrifying playing, the results are heady indeed. Like Clifford Brown after him, Navarro lived too briefly (he died in 1949, ruined by both tuberculosis and heroin) and left a short but overpowering legacy. The four titles made at what was really Blue Note's first genuine bebop date have spirited contributions from all hands, but it's Navarro's solos which stay in the mind. Made three days after his twenty-fourth birthday, they show his precocity as a horn player - quick, ebullient, daredevil - yet suggest that he had a surprising maturity on his side too. The solos on 'The Squirrel' and 'Our Delight' are mercurial and dazzling, but clever in their balancing of excitement and logic; and listening to the alternate takes of each title suggests that if he didn't exactly rely on a routine, Navarro had a plan in mind before he started his improvisation. 'I'd just like to play a perfect melody of my own. all the chord progressions right, the melody original and fresh - my own.’

Carl Woideck - The Complete Blue Note And Capitol Recordings Of Fats Navarro And Tadd Dameron

For his first recording for Blue Note (September 26, 1947), Dameron chose a three-horn front line consisting of Navarro, alto saxophonist Ernie Henry and tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse. Joining Tadd in the rhythm section were Nelson Boyd on bass and Shadow Wilson on drums. “The Chase” is a Dameron composition (as are all but one of the first CD), and is in a 32-bar AABA form. Unusual for Tadd is the improvised B (or “bridge”) section, unlike Charlie Parker, Dameron most often wrote out every part of his compositions. Navarro plays with a cup mute on the head, then switches to open horn for his solo. Both the originally-issued and the alternate take find Navarro playing with fresh ideas, on the quicker master take he is particularly crisp and coherent. “The Squirrel” is a simple call-and-response blues which, according to Ira Gitler, came to Tadd while watching a squirrel in Central Park. Fats’s penchant for clever quotations is heard in his reference to “The Merry-Go Round Broke Down” in opening both takes. The AABA-formed “Our Delight” was originally composed and arranged for the Dizzy Gillespie big band. For this combo version, Tadd changed the key from the original Db to Ab and added an effective half-chorus “shout” section (with Navarro using cup mute) during the last chorus. Fats solos articulately on both takes. The chord progression and melody of the A sections of Tadd’s “Dameronia” strongly resemble those of Thelonious Monk’s “Well You Needn’t” which Monk would record for Blue Note exactly four weeks later (the songs’ B section chord progressions are completely different, however). Perhaps both composers drew upon a melody and chord that were “in the air” much as Coleman Hawkins and Monk did with their similar pieces “Rifftide” and “Hackensack.” Navarro handles the song ‘s chord progression well on both takes and even plays some comparatively rare double-time during the bridge on the alternate.

Down Beat 17 November 1948 Volume 15 Issue 23 The unquestioned star of these sides is the fluent Fats Navarro, who is one of the few bop trumpeters who handles his horn as if he knows not only where he is going but even more important to the continuity of a bop solo, where he has just been. His solos have form and structure as well as push and enthusiasm. Dameronia has a rather intriguing theme, and Fats does play well, but the tenor and alto split chorus is nothing to write home about. Chase, which comes on like Citation, has good solos all around including a double-decker for trumpet. Tadd is on piano, and Ernie Henry and Charlie Rouse are alto and tenor respectively. (Blue Note 541).