[Dixielandjazz] An Overworked Orchestrator - Oliver Nelson

[Steve barbone]

Not 100% OKOM, but some on the list besides Dr. Fred Spencer (who has
published about early deaths of jazz musicians) will enjoy this article.

Oliver Nelson worked with all sorts of jazz artists from Pee Wee Russell to
Thelonious Monk. My favorite Nelson arrangement is mentioned below as; "the
Zimbabwean import "Skokiaan" that is equal parts Dixieland, swing band, and
African high life." Now that's jazz. :-) VBG.

Cheers,
Steve

An Overworked Orchestrator

NY SUN - By WILL FRIEDWALD May 8, 2006

Among short-lived jazz performers, the main causes of early death are the
road (Clifford Brown), substance abuse (Charlie Parker), and jilted lovers
with guns (Lee Morgan). For arrangers and composers, however, overwork is a
more formidable foe. Particularly in the 1950s and early '60s, when a large
portion of recorded pop songs, television music, and movie scores still had
a jazz sensibility, there was an almost unlimited amount of work available
for workaholic orchestrators.

Oliver Nelson, who died of pancreatitis at the age of 43, was especially
masochistic. Not only did he pursue a full-time career as a commercial
arranger working on assignments from Hollywood studios, but he
simultaneously composed, arranged, and recorded a stunning number of his own
albums as well. Compounding the problem, Nelson wrote every note himself,
unlike other prolific arrangers such as Quincy Jones (who employed a battery
of copyists and also subcontracted to other arrangers).

Still, a major benefit of doing something so obsessively is that you get
better at it, and Oliver Nelson was perhaps the greatest jazz orchestrator
and composer of the postwar era. A new six-CD box set, "Oliver Nelson: The
Argo, Verve and Impulse Big Band Studio Sessions" (Mosaic Records, MD6-233),
which contains 15 albums and 100 tracks recorded between 1962 and 1967, is a
testament to Nelson's frenetic activity and to the quality of his music.

Nelson was born in St. Louis, MO in 1932, and began his career by playing
alto saxophone in several Midwestern bands. He played briefly in Louis
Jordan's big band, then served in the Army for two years. He formally
studied composition in the mid-1950s under the G.I. Bill, then moved to New
York in 1959. Upon arrival, he worked regularly with Louis Bellson and Wild
Bill Davis, and he subbed with both Duke Ellington and Count Basie. He made
an auspicious debut as a leader that same year with "Meet Oliver Nelson," in
which he shared the front line with the marvelous trumpeter Kenny Dorham.

Between 1959 and 1961, Nelson appeared on 11 albums for Prestige as both a
leader and sideman. Early in 1961, Nelson began working with the young
producer Creed Taylor. Their collaboration began with one of the great
albums of the 1960s, "Blues and the Abstract Truth," in which Nelson
combined elements of bop and postmodern jazz in a fresh and original way -
in the company of an all-star cast of Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Bill
Evans and Roy Haynes.

In 1962, Mr. Taylor produced the aptly titled "Full Nelson," the composer's
first album as a big-band leader, and the earliest album on the Mosaic set.
He also began orchestrating for a growing roster of star singers and
instrumentalists, most notably the organist Jimmy Smith. Nelson and Smith
did 10 albums together between 1962 and 1968, most of which are included in
the Mosaic box, including a team-up between Smith and the dynamic guitarist
Wes Montgomery. There are also collaborations with organist Shirley Scott,
the team of vibraharpist Milt Jackson and bassist Ray Brown, and one of
jazz's great individualists, the clarinetist Pee Wee Russell.

As an orchestrator, Nelson had a distinct palette of tonal colors and a firm
command of his tools. At times it's hard to tell the difference between a
Nelson original and an arrangement. He seems to have approached the task of
arranging a piece of music composed by someone else as if it were a de facto
collaboration. He had a unique talent for doing everything his own way: When
he had the hankering to write in waltz time, he satisfied that urge by
putting a melody in 9/8 or some unusual rhythm designed to test the mettle
of his players; if he wrote a blues, it usually wasn't exactly a blues, but
an original composition that used blues ingredients and alluded to the form.

Interestingly, the only time he plays a traditional blues straight-up is
when he's arranging someone else's work. Even then, the results are
strikingly original, as when he uses dream-like suspended chords in his
recasting of W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" for trumpeter Joe Newman. That
same 1966 session includes a blues in the classic 12-bar format, but as the
saxophonist and scholar Kenny Berger points out in the invaluable annotation
that accompanies the box set, Nelson superimposes it over a 12-tone row,
calling it "Twelve Tone Blues." Nelson's ability to do something new with
the blues was frequently called into play during his work with Jimmy Smith,
as on his funky recasting of "Walk Right In," a folk-blues introduced by
Cannon's Jug Stompers in 1929 and successfully revived in the hootenanny
boom of the early 1960s.

The albums released under Nelson's name veer off in all sorts of unexpected
directions. One of the quirkiest songs is a short treatment of the
Zimbabwean import "Skokiaan" that is equal parts Dixieland, swing band, and
African high life.

Nelson's most serious and least jazzy work is "The Kennedy Dream," a suite
composed in 1967 for a large orchestra of strings and woodwinds. This is
jazz-classical fusion of the highest order, and Nelson's idea to begin most
of the eight sections with the recorded voice of the martyred president only
increases its freshness. His 1966 suite "Peter and the Wolf" succeeds as a
hybrid of American and European music: It doesn't merely put Prokofiev into
jazz time, but reconstructs the Soviet children's classic as a jazz
orchestral work, with Smith's organ filling the familiar function of
narrator.

The most successful extended work in Nelson's canon is "Jazzhattan Suite"
(1967), a 32-minute tonal portrait of New York. It's divided into six
movements, each of which seems completely different from the others,
although they somehow form a unified whole. The opening section switches
time signatures frequently to convey the confusion of "A Typical Day in New
York," while "The East Side/The West Side" is a 12-bar blues in a 9/8 meter.
"Penthouse Dawn" is a beautiful, sonorous ballad featuring Nelson's favorite
soloist, the alto saxophonist Phil Woods. "One for Duke" recalls Ellington's
many musical depictions of his favorite city, and begins with Ducal
chromatics from pianist Patti Bown.

Although "Jazzhattan Suite" was recorded in New York - and performed in
Central Park and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on one memorable day in
1967 - Nelson had already relocated to Los Angeles, where he was working
around the clock scoring TV dramas like "Ironsides," "Columbo," and "The Six
Million Dollar Man." In addition, Nelson may have contracted malaria in a
1969 trip to Africa, according to his son. Whatever the case, his system was
severely weakened by stress and overwork, and he died from liver disease in
1975.

Though Nelson left us 30 years ago, his music continues to be performed:
Count Basie and Quincy Jones both recorded "Hobo Flats"; Joe Lovano and Hank
Jones continue to play "Six and Four" in his memory; "Blues and the Abstract
Truth" and "Stolen Moments" have been performed by big bands and vocalists
all over the world, and there have been well over 100 recordings of
"Moments." The ongoing presence of Oliver Nelson's music offers some
compensation for all the moments with him that were stolen from us.