 Jazz Profiles Gil Evans: The Arranger as Re-composer (Part 5)
Gil: I rented a room a couple of blocks from 52nd Street, you know. When I got off the train, I got in a cab and I went right to 52nd Street.
I didn't have a place to stay. I threw my bag in a check room and I
just walked up and down The Street there and met a bunch of my heroes.
First night, I met all my heroes! I met Ben [Webster] and Lester
[Young], Erroll Garner and Bud Powell, all these people the first night. So
I got a room a couple blocks away, a basement room. Just one big room
with a bed and a piano and a record player and a sink. And I left the
door open for two years. Just left it open. I never locked it. When I
went out, I never locked it. So sometimes I'd come home and I'd meet
strangers. And most of the time I met people like Miles and John Lewis
and people like that. George Russell. We
talked a lot about harmony. How to get a "sound" out of harmony.
Because the harmony has a lot to do with what the music is going to
"sound" like. The instruments have their wave form and all that, but the
harmony means that you're putting together a group of instruments, and
they're going to get their own independent wave form, right? You can't
get it any other way except as an ensemble together. So Miles and I talked about that lots of times. And played chords on the piano. And that's how it happened. Ben: The "sound" that you did come up with so perfectly suited Miles' sound that it almost seemed like one gesture. Gil: That's right... Ben:
You talk about the extension of the Thornhill sound. You once said
about the Thornhill band that "the band was a reduction to inactivity, a
stillness..." Gil: Oh, it was. That's right. Ben: And "the sound would hang like a cloud." Gil: That's right. Oh yeah. Ben:
Part of what you created, then, in the "Boplicity" session is a new
approach to jazz, where even with a small group, it wasn't a separate
thing, a rhythm section and a horn section, but rather it was a "sound."
Almost a studio form before there were studio forms. Gil: Yeah, right. Ben: You mention the Miles Ahead big band session. "Boplicity" was recorded in 1949 ... Gil: We didn't get together again until '57...” [pp. 16-19]  |
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