At this year's Beacons In Jazz gala awards show presented by New School University's Jazz & Contemporary Music Program in New York, Hank Jones took home a trophy in recognition of his lifelong service to jazz. Fellow honorees included Jimmy Heath, Billy Taylor and Ruth Brown. Not only was Jones, at age 86, the oldest recipient, but he was also the most soft-spoken in his acceptance speech (especially coming in the wake of Brown's spunky and high-strung trip to the podium). Without fanfare, without sweeping gestures, Hank quietly and humbly expressed his appreciation, then returned to his seat.
It couldn't have been a more fitting image of Hank Jones, one of jazz's most imaginative and refined pianists, who in the past year has been both prolific and critically acclaimed. In the Top 10 of 2004 compiled by The New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff, Jones was prominently showcased on the No. 1 and No. 2 albums. Jones was featured in I'm All for You, Joe Lovano's quartet date of ballads (with rhythm team George Mraz on bass and Paul Motian on drums), as well as the Great Jazz Trio's Someday My Prince Will Come, the last session the Jones brothers Hank and Elvin recorded before the latter's death. (The Lovano project was so successful that he returned to the studio with the quartet to record the follow-up, A Joyous Encounter, starring Jones, to be released this year.)
Hank Jones is no showboat or dazzler. He gently commands the piano with grace and soul, in service to the song and with reverence to its composer. "I'm not into the hard-driving style," says Jones, who makes his Justin Time debut with For My Father. "I'm about trying to appeal to people who appreciate the subtleties of jazz. And I'm always trying to be cognizant of a song's writer, to establish the melody and be true to the tune."
Hank, of course, is the elder member of the royal Jones jazz family that included both his younger brothers: trumpeter and big band leader Thad, who passed away in 1986, and volcanic drummer Elvin, who died in 2004. The three Jones bros represent one of jazz's most significant bands of siblings, along with the Heaths (Percy, Jimmy and Tootie) and the Marsalis clan (Ellis, sons Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason). For Hank, the family connection runs deep, hence the name of the new trio CD, For My Father, a collection of elegantly performed tunes (most of which are off-the beaten-track "standards") with Mraz on bass and Dennis Mackrel on drums.
"That title is proper," Jones says. 'We owe everything to our parents. My father had a lot to do with my early upbringing. He loved music, but he didn't approve of jazz on Sundays because he was deeply religious. I remember working a dance on Saturday night when I was 14 or 15. It was 11:45 p.m. and my father showed up and made me leave the bandstand. I won his approval by playing the piano and organ in church, but he thought jazz was a bad influence because back then it was associated with places of ill repute and people of questionable backgrounds. He pauses and laughs. "And he was right. I was always running into people like that, but I was also able to disassociate myself from that part of the scene."
With regard to the title of the recording, Justin Time A&R director Jean-Pierre Leduc notes, "My dad had just passed away, and Hank and I were talking about our fathers. He talked about his dad who was a man of principle, who lived the straight and narrow. Hank always felt strongly about doing something in honor of him."
For My Father is a straight-up masterwork that eternally swings with the lightness of down. Jones' playing is delicate yet powerful, respectful and deceptively laid back. There's nothing fancy about the performance, yet Jones and co. use the songs as launching pads for adventure. For My Father opens with the trio rendering Al Foster's "Pauletta," a lyrical, bossa nova-tinged beauty that Jones first performed with the drummer on a date a decade ago. "This is a pretty tune that hasn't been done justice," Jones says. "I like the melody, the movement, the light feel. It hasn't been played enough."
That's followed by a bouncing take on the Denzil Best/Thelonious Monk classic, "Bemsha Swing," which has never suffered from lack of performance or airtime. While Jones has no doubt covered the tune dozens of times, here he plays it as if he were doing so for the first time: "I changed the harmony a bit," he explains. "I have a tendency to do that. My objective every time I play a song is to improve it, to play it to my own personal taste. At the same time I try not to hurt it. I just try to make it more interesting. That's what makes music exciting. It can always be played differently. It broadens everyone's horizons."
Jones then renders James Black's "Queen of Hearts" with a sunny, easy-going gait. It's played in 5/4 time and was given to Jones by the composer some 15 years ago at a recording date. "But this is the first time I've recorded it," he says. "It's another one of those tunes that's just too good not to be played." The middle section of the recording is dominated by the Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn camp, with two gorgeous takes of the former's "Sophisticated Lady" and "Prelude to a Kiss" and swings through the latter's "Johnny Come Lately" and "Lotus Blossom." Jones comments: "Duke and Billy were so much alike in their thoughts and style. I can imagine Duke writing "Sophisticated Lady" and in my opinion the two Strayhorn numbers are the most underplayed of his songbook. They're harmonically different from his other material."
The collection concludes with five more tunes that Jones says don't get played much but that deserve more attention. He covers Milt Jackson's "SKJ," a blues with a walking bass line ("Milt was such a talented writer that every album should include one of his tunes," says Jones); swings brightly through Cole Porter's "Easy to Love" ("There's a dance tempo that's naturally built into the beat'); renders the harmonically rich Tom Harrell song "Because I Love You" ("Fifty years from now, people will still be playing this"); and embarks on a serene spiritual journey with Harold Mabern's "Grace Of God" ("This is all about meaning that is over and above jazz aspiration").
The record ends with Oscar Hammerstein & Sigmund Romberg's "Softly As In A Morning Sunrise," another gentle gem that Jones feels has always been played too fast. "It's really a ballad where we keep a beat," he says. "I guess you could call it a walking ballad. But we stay true to the character of the song." Jones laughs and adds, "And of course, we definitely don't hurt it."
In a recent conversation I had with Joe Lovano, he praised the pianist for his spirit of improvisational inquiry. "Hank is such a treasure," he said. "He's so creative and such a modern improviser. He explores new harmonies and never plays a song the same way. His intros and voicings are always different. He plays very free even though he's playing structured forms and harmonies. It's as if every note Hank plays is a new harmony and he's playing all the keys all the time."
Jones laughs at the assessment. "I'd like to think I can cover all the keys all the time, but you know, there are limitations. A pianist once told me that it took him twenty years to learn what to leave out when he was playing. You don't have to play every note. Just enough to paint the picture."
On For My Father, Hank Jones is a Van Gogh of the keys. Landscapes, portraits, moods: all painted with the hues of the pianist's harmonic palette, all imagined with the new colors of his dreams. |
