The Blues and the Abstract Truth | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | August 1961 [1] | |||
Recorded | February 23, 1961 | |||
Studio | Van Gelder Studio Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey | |||
Genre | Post-bop [2] | |||
Length | 36:33 | |||
Label | Impulse! | |||
Producer | Creed Taylor | |||
Oliver Nelson chronology | ||||
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Alternate cover | ||||
Audio sample | ||||
"Teenie's Blues" (stereo mix) |
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
DownBeat (Original Lp release) | [3] |
AllMusic | [4] |
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide | [5] |
Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [6] |
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings | [7] |
The Blues and the Abstract Truth is an album by American composer and jazz saxophonist Oliver Nelson recorded in February 1961 for the Impulse! label. It remains Nelson's most acclaimed album and features a lineup of notable musicians:Freddie Hubbard,Eric Dolphy (his second-to-last appearance on a Nelson album following a series of collaborations recorded for Prestige),Bill Evans (his only appearance with Nelson),Paul Chambers and Roy Haynes. Baritone saxophonist George Barrow does not take solos but remains a key feature in the subtle voicings of Nelson's arrangements. [8] The album is often noted for its unique ensemble arrangements [9] [10] and is frequently identified as a progenitor of Nelson's move towards arranging later in his career. [11]
Among the pieces on the album,"Stolen Moments" is the best known and has become a jazz standard:a 16-bar piece with solos in a conventional 12-bar minor blues structure in C minor. "Hoe-Down",inspired by the fourth section of Aaron Copland's Rodeo, is built on a 44-bar structure (with 32-bar solos based on rhythm changes). "Cascades" modifies the traditional 32-bar AABA form by using a 16-bar minor blues for the A section,stretching the form to a total of 56 bars. The B-side of the album contains three tracks that hew closer to the 12-bar form:"Yearnin'","Butch and Butch" and "Teenie's Blues" (which opens with two 12-bar choruses of bass solo by Chambers). [8]
Nelson's later album, More Blues and the Abstract Truth (1964),features an entirely different (and larger) group of musicians and bears little resemblance to this record.
Writing in the December 21,1961,issue of DownBeat magazine jazz critic Don DeMicheal commented:
Nelson's playing is like his writing:thoughtful,unhackneyed,and well constructed. Hubbard steals the solo honors with some of his best playing on record. Dolphy gets off some good solos too,his most interesting one on "Yearnin'". [3]
The Jazz Journal International cited the album as "one of the essential post-bop recordings." [2]
It was voted number 333 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). [12]
The composition "Stolen Moments" has been recorded and performed by numerous musicians including Phil Woods,J. J. Johnson,Frank Zappa,Ahmad Jamal,Booker Ervin,the United Future Organization and the Turtle Island Quartet. The first eight bars of Nelson's solo on the bridge of "Hoe-Down" were quoted by Ernie Watts and Lee Ritenour in the song "Bullet Train" from their 1979 album Friendship. [13] "Teenie's Blues" was used as a 2009 show-opener by Steely Dan. [14]
In 2008 pianist Bill Cunliffe released the tribute album The Blues and the Abstract Truth,Take 2 ,featuring new arrangements of the original pieces.
Jews and the Abstract Truth was the debut album by experimental klezmer band Hasidic New Wave (whose members included improvisers trumpeter Frank London and saxophonist Greg Wall),released on Knitting Factory in 1996. [15]
All tracks composed by Oliver Nelson.
No. | Title | Order of solos | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "Stolen Moments" | Hubbard, Dolphy, Nelson, Evans | 8:47 |
2. | "Hoe-Down" | Hubbard, Dolphy, Nelson, Haynes | 4:43 |
3. | "Cascades" | Hubbard, Evans | 5:32 |
No. | Title | Order of solos | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "Yearnin'" | Dolphy, Hubbard, Evans | 6:24 |
2. | "Butch and Butch" | Nelson, Hubbard, Dolphy, Evans | 4:35 |
3. | "Teenie's Blues" | Dolphy, Nelson, Evans, Chambers | 6:33 |
Chart (2021) | Peak position |
---|---|
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100) [16] | 52 |
Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade) [17] | 74 |
Eric Allan Dolphy Jr. was an American jazz alto saxophonist, bass clarinetist and flautist. On a few occasions, he also played the clarinet and piccolo. Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain prominence in the same era. His use of the bass clarinet helped to establish the instrument within jazz. Dolphy extended the vocabulary and boundaries of the alto saxophone, and was among the earliest significant jazz flute soloists.
Frederick Dewayne Hubbard was an American jazz trumpeter. He played bebop, hard bop, and post-bop styles from the early 1960s onwards. His unmistakable and influential tone contributed to new perspectives for modern jazz and bebop.
Roy Owen Haynes is an American jazz drummer. He is among the most recorded drummers in jazz. In a career lasting over 80 years, he has played swing, bebop, jazz fusion, avant-garde jazz and is considered a pioneer of jazz drumming. "Snap Crackle" was a nickname given to him in the 1950s.
Paul Laurence Dunbar Chambers Jr. was an American jazz double bassist. A fixture of rhythm sections during the 1950s and 1960s, he has become one of the most widely-known jazz bassists of the hard bop era. He was also known for his bowed solos. Chambers recorded about a dozen albums as a leader or co-leader, and over 100 more as a sideman, especially as the anchor of trumpeter Miles Davis's "first great quintet" (1955–63) and with pianist Wynton Kelly (1963–68).
Impressions is an album of live and studio recordings by jazz musician John Coltrane, released by Impulse! Records in July 1963.
Out to Lunch! is a 1964 album by jazz multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy. His only recording on Blue Note as a leader, it was issued as BLP 4163 and BST 84163. Featuring Dolphy in a quintet with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, bassist Richard Davis and drummer Tony Williams, it was generally considered by critics as one of the finest albums issued on Blue Note, and widely viewed as one of the high points of 1960s avant-garde jazz. The album cover designed by Reid Miles features a photo of a "Will Be Back" sign displayed in a shop window showing a seven handed clock.
Oliver Edward Nelson was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger, composer, and bandleader. His 1961 Impulse! album The Blues and the Abstract Truth (1961) is regarded as one of the most significant recordings of its era. The centerpiece of the album is the definitive version of Nelson's composition, "Stolen Moments". Other important recordings from the early 1960s are More Blues and the Abstract Truth and Sound Pieces, both also on Impulse!.
Amos Leon Thomas Jr., known professionally as Leon Thomas, was an American jazz and blues vocalist, born in East St. Louis, Illinois, and known for his bellowing glottal-stop style of free jazz singing in the late 1960s and 1970s.
William Henry Cunliffe Jr., is an American jazz pianist and composer.
Africa/Brass is the eighth studio album by jazz musician John Coltrane, released on September 1, 1961 on Impulse! Records. The sixth release for the fledgling label and Coltrane's first for Impulse!, it features Coltrane's working quartet augmented by a larger ensemble to bring the total number of participating musicians to 21. Its big band sound, with the unusual instrumentation of French horns and euphonium, presented music very different from anything that had been associated with Coltrane to date. While critics originally gave it poor ratings, more recent jazz commentators have described it as "amazing" and as a "key work in understanding the path that John Coltrane's music took in its final phases."
Coltrane "Live" at the Village Vanguard is a live album by jazz musician John Coltrane, released in February 1962 on Impulse Records. It is the first album to feature the members of the classic quartet of Coltrane with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones, as well as the first Coltrane live album to be issued. In contrast to his previous album for Impulse!, this one generated much turmoil among both critics and audience alike with its challenging music.
"Stolen Moments" is a jazz standard composed by Oliver Nelson. It is a 16-bar piece though the solos are on a conventional minor blues structure. The recording of the song on Nelson's 1961 album, The Blues and the Abstract Truth, led to it being more generally covered. The tune was given lyrics when Mark Murphy recorded his version in 1978.
The Blues and The Abstract Truth, Take 2 is a 2008 album, released on the Resonance label, by American jazz pianist Bill Cunliffe. It is a tribute to Oliver Nelson, particularly to his 1961 album The Blues and the Abstract Truth.
Straight Ahead is a jazz studio album by saxophonist Oliver Nelson. It features acclaimed musicians such as Eric Dolphy on sax, clarinet and flute, and Roy Haynes on drums. It was recorded in March 1961 at the celebrated Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs. All the pieces were first takes; Joe Goldberg recalls: "The session was scheduled for one in the afternoon and I arrived at 3:30, thinking that by then the music would have been rehearsed and the men would be starting to play. What I found was a studio empty of everyone but A&R man Esmond Edwards", the supervisor, "and engineer Rudy Van Gelder, who were packing up to leave and looking very satisfied." Released in 1961 for the Prestige/New Jazz label and remastered in 1989, the album is notable for its long and thoughtful horn duets by Dolphy and Nelson. Don DeMicheal described the album "All in all, a warm, very human record".
More Blues and the Abstract Truth is an album by American jazz composer, conductor and arranger Oliver Nelson featuring performances recorded in 1964 for the Impulse! label.
Oliver Nelson Plays Michelle is an album by American jazz composer, arranger and saxophonist Oliver Nelson, featuring solos by Nelson and Phil Woods, recorded in 1966 for the Impulse! label.
The Africa/Brass Sessions, Vol. 2 is a posthumous compilation album by American jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane, released in 1974 by Impulse Records. It compiles outtakes from the same 1961 sessions that produced his Africa/Brass album. "Song of the Underground Railroad" and "Greensleeves" were recorded on May 23, while "Africa" was recorded on June 4. On October 10, 1995, Impulse incorporated the tracks issued here into a two-disc set entitled The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions.
Screamin' the Blues is an album by American saxophonist Oliver Nelson, originally released in 1961 on New Jazz Records.
Trane Whistle is an album by saxophonist Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis' Big Band with arrangements by Oliver Nelson and Ernie Wilkins recorded in 1960 and released on the Prestige label.
George Barrow was an American jazz saxophonist who played both tenor and baritone saxes.
Jews and the Abstract Truth may owe little to Oliver Nelson, but it is a fine recording and an excellent introduction to the genre.