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ANDREW HILL'S UNIQUE VISION
by Jeff BadgettIt's a familiar but much too common story--the gifted African American composer, pianist, and bandleader producing extraordinary music for decades, receiving scant rewards for his or her efforts. But of course, what keeps these stories from being "common" are the artistic personalities of these individuals.
Since the beginning of the modern jazz era, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols, Cecil Taylor all have, to varying degrees, become known to the public and jazz audiences in particular. Nichols and his work threatened to disappear entirely until his rediscovery by critics and the revival of his oeuvre by Steve Lacy, Mal Waldron and Mischa Mengelberg, among others. Andrew Hill, a vital part of this composer-pianist tradition, would also be threatened by obscurity but for his extraordinary recorded legacy and his live performances. A distinctive artistic vision, a keen compositional sense, and an unflagging drive to experiment have attracted some of the best musicians from the beginning of his career.
Well, I could begin with Andrew Hill's birth in Haiti, but in fact he was born in Chicago in 1937. He thought having Caribbean origins would assist his early career, but it didn't really help. He was an intelligent child, sent to special schools in Chicago. He formed a little act when he was six of dancing, singing, and playing the accordion. When he was 13, he took up the piano and learned his first blues changes from future Sun Ra star saxophonist Pat Patrick. By 1953, he was playing his first rhythm and blues gigs on piano and baritone sax. The next year he cut his first record sides for the Vee Jay label under the name of the bassist, Dave Shipp.
Not surprisingly, he was heavily influenced by the modern jazz saints of the piano--Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell as well as Art Tatum. He felt an affinity for Monk's music in the strong personal stamp of the composer and he loved the white-hot speed and technical fire of Powell. As many musicians would later realize, he knew that running conventional chord changes would eventually lead to a dead end, so he knew that he would have to find something different.
He sent a composition to Paul Hindemith at Yale and studied with him over a two-year period when he would come to Chicago. He embedded himself deeply in the local scene, working with Wilbur Ware, Johnny Griffin, and Ira Sullivan. And he soaked up as much as he could from travelling musicians such as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Howard McGhee and Ben Webster. He led a trio in 1957 at Roberts' Lounge, which led to some sides under his own name on the Ping label. His session-mates included Von Freeman, Malachi Favors, and Pat Patrick.
In 1959, a trio with Favors on bass and James Slaughter on drums appeared on an album, So in Love with the Sound of Andrew Hill. Hill's first national gig came when Dinah Washington came to Chicago and hired him as pianist. When the tour landed in New York, he stayed. There he nurtured his particular style, appearing on Walt Dickerson's For My Queen and altoist Jimmy Wood's Conflict and worked with Roland Kirk on his Domino album. Shortly thereafter, he met up with Joe Henderson, who brought him to the Blue Note label. Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, the proprietors of Blue Note Records, recognized Andrew as a distinctive and significant talent. Andrew was a part of Joe Henderson's second album, Our Thing and Hank Mobley's No Room for Squares. Hill played some of his compositions for Alfred who realized what a major force Hill's artistic vision was and let him record with plenty of rehearsals and the best musicians available. Blue Note was his base and allowed him to present his music exactly as he wished. And his Blue Note output is somewhere between breathtaking and extraordinary. The breadth and density of music he recorded between 1963 and 1967 is such that space does not allow us to examine it in detail. But the personnel list is extraordinary--Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, Joe Chambers, Roy Haynes, Joe Henderson, John Gilmore, Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Richard Davis, Bobby Hutcherson, and Sam Rivers.
We can watch the evolution of Hill's compositional style, more conventional at first (but still uniquely his) then expanding into slightly freer territory. This freedom does not supercede structure and Hill's idiom has never been completely free in the most commonly understood sense of that term. These compositions are carefully thought out and have a sense of rightness to them, but they travel untrod ground and really loosen up in the solos. This is a happy merging of structure, discipline and coherence with inspiration, intuition and improvisation to produce a rarified plane of music making. By 1966, Hill was verging toward the avant-garde with loosely structured but harmonically freer pieces. A quartet session recorded that year remained in the can until the mid-1970's. The musicians--Sam Rivers, Walter Booker and the seldom-recorded, often sublime drummer J.C. Moses--push their constraints and attempt new techniques (Hill even plays harpsichord behind some of the bass solos). The Blue Note sessions track Joe Henderson at the beginning of his recording career and Eric Dolphy a few months before he died. Throughout Hill's solos are dense, gleaming statements like well-burnished metal in a dark room. His session-mates seem energized by the high level of composition and both solos and theme statements are precisely executed with real feeling. Any listener would be aware that something rare is happening here.
As the sixties wore on, tastes in music and jazz in particular were changing. This was true for Blue Note as well as Hill. He contributed The Rumproller; a piece Lee Morgan recorded as a follow-up to his hit The Sidewinder. Hill himself experimented with funk and some avant-garde sessions with mixed results. The type of sessions he made earlier was made more difficult as musicians left the label and he could find very few of the caliber required to play his music. He left the label in 1970.
He freelanced a lot for two years, doing college concerts and clubs. But work opportunities thinned as he became squeezed between the shift in music from jazz to rock on the one hand and unstructured, fully improvised avant-garde on the other. Squeezed as he was, he would not accept gigs that were not up to his standards. He persevered to produce quality music.
From 1972 to 1974 he attended Colgate University to teach and get his Doctorate. From 1974 to 1976 he made a few records for different labels--Arista/Freedom, Steeplechase and Japanese East Wind and received a Smithsonian Fellowship in 1975. After a move to California in 1977, he performed courtesy of the state Arts Council and performed in schools and prisons. In 1978, he recorded a solo LP, From California with Love. The eighties saw him record four albums for Soul Note, two in 1980 and two in 1986. The revitalized Blue Note label recorded him in 1989 and 1990. He recorded Earth Prayer in a quartet setting in 1992 with alto saxist Russell Baba and as part of a group with Reggie Workman's "Summit Conference" on the album Postcards with Sam Rivers and Pheeroan akLaff in 1994. He moved to Portland, Oregon and teaches at Portland State. He tours sometimes in a quartet with tenor saxophonist Greg Osby.
Andrew Hill has spent his musical career doing things his way in following his artistic vision. He's composed some of the most interesting and challenging music in modern jazz, has gotten some of the best musicians to record it, and documented his efforts. And although he has remained aware of different music in the air around him, he has never been swayed by passing trends. He has remained true to his vision, a pioneer with a touch of traditionalism, a man whose work will stand the test of time. By all means, hear him play at The ArtsCenter. You might find yourself challenged, amused, stimulated but you will not be bored.
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