Paul Gonsalves

I should clarify something from my last post. I mentioned that Jimmy Forrest was among the few Big Band tenors to record with both the big band icons, Basie AND Ellington. I should have qualified this with born after WWI. Paul Gonsalves was another. The significance of this point will be borne out in this post: the players born in the decade after WWI determined the path of jazz more than any generation before or after them.

Both Gonsalves and Forrest were born immediately following WWI, in 1920. An argument can be made that the decade of the 1920s was the Jazz Tenor Cambrian explosion: Jimmy Forrest, Paul Gonsalves, Illinois Jacquet, Yusef Lateef, Lockjaw Davis, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Zoot Sims, John Coltrane, Johnny Griffin, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath (though initially an alto player) are the players that come immediately to mind. Add Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson from the 1930s and the history of modern Jazz tenor is pretty much covered. Include Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman - in no way am I claiming this list is exhaustive; I'm making a point - and all contemporary jazz saxophone derives from these players.

As memory serves me, Gonsalves was from Boston (as was fellow Ellingtonian, Harry Carney). I mention this because I wonder if this led to him having such a distinctive sound? The majority of the other Tenors of the Twenties came from the American mid-west or south of Pennsylvania. To my ear his sound was highly idiosyncratic, like he was always playing the sh*t out of the tail-end of a really great reed. I'm not saying he plays or sounds like the tenor man I'm about to name, but I am saying he's idiosyncratic in a similar fashion to Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. No tenor player in the history of recorded jazz sounded anything like Lockjaw and the same can be said of Gonsalves.

I've always felt that his Newport performance on Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue eclipsed his other, more important playing. In this regard, Getting' Together is a great example. Every collection of modern jazz tenor MUST contain Gordon, Coltrane and Rollins, but is should contain this album, hence the purpose of this blog. The band cooks from track one to eight, featuring two-thirds of Miles' late 50s rhythm section. The remainder comes from the Cannonball Adderley Quintet: Nat and Sam Jones. I admit to always being a sucker for Nat Adderely, as he was the first trumpeter (cornetist) I listened to frequently: I was a big Cannonball fan in high school. I suspect we tend to fill our collections with additional Coltrane, Rollins and Dexter before we consider guys like Gonsalves (outside of the Ellington band).

Do yourself - and your collection - a big favour and buy this album on iTunes. You will listen to it frequently. Though the writing and arranging is not a focus - it's no Blue Note album; it could have been called Thrown Together - the playing is stellar. I've chosen to post J. and B. Blues, the title presumably a nod to Gonsalves' beverage of choice. I went through a phase where I listened to Gonsalves first chorus over and over again, convinced it was the greatest twelve bars of a blues ever played on tenor. My perspective has become more realistic over years of listening: it's the definitive twelve bars of Gonsalves' playing, not Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue.


I found the following site that has helpful biographical information on Paul Gonsalves, as well as some fine photos.

http://paulgonsalves.org/