(Soul Jazz, Swing) Hank Crawford - More Soul & The Soul Clinic - 1960 & 1961 (2012), FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

This inspired and talented group under the leadership of altoist/arranger Hank Crawford, is the Ray Charles band, minus Ray. Bat it is also a striking unit in its own right. The big-little-band sound on these two exciting albums, "More Soul" and "The Soul Clinic," is compellingly arranged and orchestrated, equally arresting on incendiary, swinging up-tempo performances as it is on blues-drenched ballads. And it provides a frame for notably lyrical and melodic soloists. The result is a joyous blend combining order and vitality in equal measure. Crawford - who also plays piano, when it is heard - is revealed as a moving and beautifully singing post-Bird alto player whose highly vocalized horn displays an instinctive understanding of structure and the tension-release qualities of good jazz. And, while bearing a relationship to what became known as "soul" music, it is also a reaffirmation of the validity of the original concept of that feeling. Remarkably, given the way that jazz and blues suffused its DNA, the unique voice of this gripping Ray Charles small-band operated only in concert or dance halls, outside the jazz club circuit.
Original liner notes from the Atlantic album "More Soul" (SD1356)
Soul. There's a word that's really getting batted around these days. This didn't hit me so forcefully when Down Beat devoted a special issue to "Soul" some time ago - but when I ambled down Seventh Avenue roundabout Birdland the other day and saw a big sign in a chili parlor's window reading "WE SERVE SOUL FOOD" it was, like, food for thought. Before getting too glum over the prospect of "Soul" on cigar wrappers and tubes of toothpaste, remember something Bobby Timmons said: "You can't take a thing like real soul and wrap it up in packages and sell it and say 'this is soul' and 'that is not soul.' It is not so easily determined as that. Soul is an innate thing in people. Some people have it, and some don't. You can't just snatch it and throw it around like it's nothing."
Having a good deal of respect for the word "soul," I assure you that "soul" is not only appropriate in Hank Crawford's case, but it is the indispensable word. Hank is a veteran of the Ray Charles band, and his saxophone has long contributed a more than ample share of the "soul" that goes into Ray's sound. In this first album of his as a leader, Hank impresses us here as a strong-minded individual whose conceptions, and yes, soul, are worth exploring on their own account.
Sincerity, jazz writers seem to agree, is the sine qua поп of "soul." The best short definition of it, I believe, is John Tynan's: "Soul simply means heart and conviction, an unconscious feeling for jazz roots that emerges in a musician's playing and makes it authentic." That not only sums up "soul" very well, it also epitomizes the qualities in Hank Crawford's music that strike the listener most forcefully on first hearing.
In this album, Hank says, his aim was to "present a swingy, soulful program that would have an instinctive, emotional appeal" for his listeners. "I want to move people, not impress them," he said. The most attractive feature of the "Soul" school is this return of a concern for communicating to the audience, of getting the music across emotionally. As in gospel, the music demands that the listener himself participate. Hank demonstrates in this album that music that frankly stresses communication on an emotional level does not have to sacrifice qualities of interest on technical and formal levels.
Hank Crawford was born in Memphis, Tennessee on December 21, 1934. He attended public schools in Memphis and then went on to Tennessee State University in Nashville, from which he took his Bachelor of Music degree. His first instrument was the piano, on which you also hear him in this album. In high school he took up the alto saxophone (he now plays baritone and tenor saxes as well).
The first time Hank heard Ray Charles was in 1956 in Nashville. Hank happened to know some of the members of the band and tried to get them to arrange an audition with Ray Charles, hoping that Ray might hire him. This never seemed to work out, but in 1958 Ray needed a baritone saxophone player in a hurry, and then at the urging of Hank's friends in the band, Ray sent for Hank and hired him. He played baritone sax in the band for a year and a half; then Ray enlarged his band and Hank got the chance he had been looking for, to play alto. The contemporary saxophonists that interest Hank most are Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, James Moody and Eddie Davis. What their influence on Crawford is will be argued, but, in general, his is a sparer, more lyric, flowing line than any of these.
The musicians with Hank on this album are his colleagues in the Ray Charles band. Without a piano here, the group produces a sound for which it would be easy to develop a taste. A piano-less rhythm section, in the opinion of some, is generally cleaner, crisper and less cluttered than one with a piano. The arrangements, with only one exception, are Hank's own and are fresh and articulate, knowingly designed for the specific talents of the individual members of this group.
Several of the tunes in this album are what might be called "soul" standards. Like Sermonette, The Preacher and Dood-lin', they have established themselves as "blowing" numbers of great popularity with musicians who are of the "soul" persuasion. One of the most interesting in this album is the enigmatic Dat Dere, the sequel to Bobby Timmons' This Here, perhaps his most famous composition. Of it Hank says, "Actually I like Dat Dere better than This Here. I believe it has more to say."
Sister Sadie, which John Coltrane kiddingly refers to as one of Horace Silver's "amen" numbers, is also one of the staples of the rapidly growing "soul" repertoire. The arrangement, with its witty Ellington "East Saint Louee" touches, is one of Crawford's finest, and inspired some of the best solo flights in the album.
James Moody is a musician that Hank likes personally and professionally. He said, "I like Moody's band very much, and if I had my own band, it would be built along those lines." Two pieces in this album are tunes that the Moody band plays: Boo's Tune and The Story. Of the former, Hank says, "It's a tune that stays in your ear. We have styled it in our own way. We play it faster and with a different mood. The Story is a number we all particularly like, and Ray Charles and the band often play it in public. In fact, Ray contributed this arrangement of the tune for my album." Crawford has outdone himself in these two tracks. He gives a brilliant performance in both cases, and gives the listener a charged message of impressive force.
Tour-Five-Six is an original composition of Crawford's. It is a medium tempo jump that works itself up to a stomping break-down. A particularly interesting feature of this selection is the baritone solo of Leroy (Hog) Cooper. Leroy is a big fellow, weighing about 300 pounds, and he lays down a lot of saxophone.
A word about the beautifully expressive work of Hank Crawford on ballads has been deliberately left until last. Angel Eyes and Misty feature Crawford's alto and he is supported most of the way only by brushes and bass pizzicato. It is very difficult to sustain a languorous mood with such fragile support, but in both cases Hank creates a tenuous emotional scene with such spontaneous power that one is not ever likely to forget it.
"In order to appreciate soul" (if I may quote Bobby Timmons once more), "you must have some of your own." To you fellow "soul" listeners, I strongly commend this debut album of Hank Crawford, a musician with more soul.
—Gary Kramer
Original liner notes from the Atlantic album "The Soul Clinic" (SD1372)
In the expanding universe of jazz album releases, it sometimes seems as if a good portion of today's jazz was all done by the same people, recorded on some giant tape 20 miles long and then cut up into lengths suitable for release on a single LP and issued one at a time. The first thing that struck me when I heard Hank Crawford's initial Atlantic album was that here was a man who sounded completely and thoroughly himself. And on playing the test of this, his second album, I was struck by the same thing again. You won't mistake Crawford for anyone else and while that alone is not all that it takes to make a distinctive, important jazz voice, I know of none of the important ones of whom it cannot be said. It is certainly a prerequisite, and possibly the most important one.
For the benefit of those who are coming late to the Crawford sound (stop here and pick up on his first Atlantic LR More Soul, Atlantic 1356) Crawford is one of the important members of the band that accompanies the great singer, Ray Charles. Usually heard on alto (as on this album), Crawford also doubles on flute, tenor, baritone and piano and arranges (as he has done on all of these tracks). The personnel here—as on the previous Crawford album—is actually the Ray Charles band without Ray. The piano, when it is heard, is played by Crawford.
In a world of jazz improvisation in which the premium has been placed on chord substitution and intricacies of invention, Hank Crawford burst like a return to real life. His style, if you will excuse the juxtaposition of piano and saxophone, reminds me in some ways of the Erroll Garner style in that there are really two Hank Crawfords, like there are two Erroll Garners. One of them stomps and shouts and wails on the jazz tunes and the other plays a slow ballad with an exquisite tenderness, lyricism and elegance unmatched on his instrument.
On this album, there are two examples of Crawford's ballad style: the classic Easy Living and his own Lorelei's Lament. All the words dealing with beauty have been so thinned out by overuse and irresponsible application that it seems totally inadequate to employ them here.
Yet what I want to say about Hank Crawford's ballad style can only be expressed by using these traditional, if now threadbare, words. He does play beautifully. He is positively eloquently lyrical when he improvises. There is such a sense (for me, at any rate, and I hope for you as well) of communication that even when there are no words, no lyric to the song (as in Lorelei's Lament), you think there must be, he speaks so plainly.
Like Johnny Hodges and like James Moody, Crawford sings out when he plays ballads, in a human-sounding way that makes his improvisations magnetic in their effect. You can't take your ears away when he is playing, once you are caught in the net of his thoughts. Again the truth of the adage "it ain't what you do" is demonstrated by the way in which Crawford has developed the lyrical improvisations on the basic changes of the tune, phrasing it all in terms of the original melody. He has brought a new meaning to this type of approach, one which commands instant respect because of the intensity
It is also interesting (as well as a thoroughly delightful experience) to observe how this style of approach carries over from Crawford to Phil Guilbeau, the trumpet player who is featured on What a Difference a Day Made, surely one of the most moving ballad interpretations by a jazz trumpet player in recent years.
The instrumentation on this LP (two brass, three reeds, bass, drums) is exploited limitlessly by Crawford in a fashion that gives it a really unique big band sound on the
up-tempo stomping tunes. On the ballads he uses space and time so astutely that sometimes when the soloist is accompanied only by bass or drums and then the band falls in behind him for a beautifully phrased figure, it sounds like 20 pieces. Because of its continuity of existence, this band has the same sort of group unity and cohesion that Basie and Ellington possess. As a result, they can drop tempos down to a walk and still keep swinging. The fact that they play for dancing a good deal of the time is a factor in this, too.
One other thing: The title of this album is The Soul Clinic, and no matter how thin that word "soul" has been made by senseless application to every soloist throwing in a blues phrase in a ballad, its original meaning is quite clearly expressed by the way in which Crawford, Guilbeau and the rest of the band play here (and elsewhere). To play with "soul" really means to play with great warmth and feeling—and in a directly communicative style of personal expression. Those words, even though I believe them to be accurate, are no substitute for the strong message of the music itself. Hank Crawford's music really does speak for itself, eloquently, elegantly and with a brilliant, sometimes exotic and sometimes movingly sentimental, lyricism. It is good to hear and it bears hearing over and over again.
—Ralph J. Gleason