1952 - March 2

Gil Melle Sextet – March 2 1952 

 

Richard Havers - Uncompromising Expression (Thames and Hudson) p83 

If there were stirrings of something new in Blue Note’s 1952 output, on the last day of 1953 there was a seismic shift in the recordings issued by the label. Tenor saxophonist Gil Melle had caught Lion’s interest by playing him four sides he had recorded at a studio in Hackensack, New Jersey. As a result, Lion agreed to release the records as singles and offered Melle a recording contract. 

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

[Gil] Melle’s importance to Blue Note was not limited to what he could bring to the company as either saxophonist or designer. He also introduced Alfred Lion to the man who would become the next most important contributor to Blue Note’s identity. Hitherto, nearly all Blue Note’s recordings the late forties and early fifties had been set down in the WOR Studios in Manhattan. usually under the supervision of engineer Doug Hawkins. During the period of transition between metal and tape masters. Blue Note's fidelity was about as good as could be expected - no better or worse, really, than most of their independent colleagues.  

Rudy Van Gelder typified both a new generation of sound engineers who would accompany the march of microgroove technology, and a determined spirit and believer in excellence for its own sake that made him kindred to Lion, Wolff and their company philosophy.  

Van Gelder remembers: “He (Melle) had a nice little band, and came to me through this other label, I think it was Progressive Records. Alfred acquired that record. he bought it and released that on Blue Note as a ten-inch LP. and then he wanted to make another one. At that time, Alfred was going to a studio in New York which was incidentally also a radio studio, WOR Studios, and they had a business of making their recording facilities available. So. That's where Alfred went and he took that album to the engineer there and he said: ‘I want it to sound like this.’ So the engineer listened to it and told Alfred. ‘Look, I can’t make it sound like that, you better go to the guy that did it’ 

Rudy Van Gelder
Photo by Francis Wolff

Gil Melle – The Complete Fifties Sessions CD Reissue Liner Notes 

I wrote my first ever composition, "The Gears," during the time that I worked as a messenger on the Lehigh Valley Railroad (hence the title) at the age of 14 while also struggling with a tenor sax, the boxcars at Washington Street serving as my sole practice "studios." It was virtually unheard of in those days to use the voice as an instrument (excepting "scat") as I did in this piece. Notable. "Mars," "Four Moons" and "Venus" were composed soon afterwards and interspersed with many drawings and paintings, one of which won first prize in a Red Cross competition. Working in my favor was an insatiable passion for jazz spawned by a reasonably complete collection of Ellington which I had amassed from used record shops with my school lunch money. I was eight when I started collecting them. Duke's inventiveness on the Brunswick label. .. "Tishomingo Blues," "Black and Tan Fantasy" and especially "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" became heady stuff for me. I also saw the band at the Paramount and Adams theatres and can still name all of the players. At 13, Monk's music became the main occupant of my skull. The notion that I could ever be a jazzman, however, was, in Oscar Wilde's, words "a dream that far exceeds reality," a calling as privileged as priesthood and so I entertained no delusions of grandeur except, perhaps, to think of how Thelonious might approach playing the saxophone as a basis for my style. 

Rudy Van Gelder's parents house
in Hackensack, New Jersey

My heated discussions with Max concerning the "unheard-of-at-the-time" false ending on the binary composition "Mars," blood dripping from my fingers (an accident) and down my horn while playing chorus after chorus and on the Patterns in Jazz date and arguments with Oscar concerning the use of a flatted ninth in the bass against a major chord at the very end of "Long Ago And Far Away" stand out in my recollection of myriads of anecdotes and incidents connected with these records. The picture of Pettiford and I that graces that album was taken at the height of our. ..shall I say... disagreement. 

Down Beat 22 October 1952 Volume 19 Issue 21 Four Moons / The Gears Gil’s sextette has Joe Manning on vibes, Eddie Bert on trombone plus George Wallington, Max Roach and Red Mitchell. Moons is a Kentonish original by Gil, the theme introduced by ex-Kentonite Bert followed by good vibes and tenor solos. Gears starts off like the Ventura group of 1948, girl bop singer and all, but it doesn’t develop from there. Mellé is obviously a tenorman of promise with a modern sound and fluent ideas. (Triumph 1001.)

Down Beat 25 March 1953 Volume 20 Issue 6 “This is my sunset concerto,” intones Monica Dell, and thereupon turns the mike over to Mr. Melle’s theme, as interpreted by by composer on tenor and Eddie Bert on trombone, for a very short but valid side that gets a slow groove mood. Mars, which has Monica speechless in the Jackie Cain or Annie Ross tradition, gets a good beat going, then relinquishes it for a choppy change of tempo that doesn’t seem to fit. Joe Manning’s vibes plus George Wallington, Max Roach and Red Mitchell complete the sixsome. (Blue Note 1607)

Session Information 

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, March 2, 1952 
Eddie Bert, trombone; Gil Melle, tenor sax; Joe Manning, vibes; George Wallington, piano; Red Mitchell, bass; Max Roach, drums; Monica Dell, vocals #2-4. 

Session Purchased from Guy Statiras' Triumph Records

BN461-3 (tk.4) Four Moons 
BN462-3 (tk.8) The Gears 
BN463-0 (tk.9) Mars 
BN464-0 (tk.10) Sunset Concerto