Last week, I posted on composer-arranger and alto saxophonist Gigi Gryce and his Jazz Lab partnership with trumpeter Donald Byrd in 1957. I also mentioned that that their union came to an end when Byrd went off to Paris for six months starting in July 1958. Upon his return in December, Byrd began recording as a leader for Blue Note, starting with Off to the Races. Today I want to pick up with the Gryce storyline. [Photo above of Gigi Gryce by Esmond Edwards/CTSIMages]
In the year that followed Byrd's European trip, Gryce spent much of 1959 playing as a sideman and arranging. His album dates included Dizzy Gillespie's The Greatest Trumpet of Them All, Betty Carter's Out There With Betty Carter, Jimmy Cleveland's Rhythm Crazy, Curtis Fuller's Sliding Easy and Buddy Rich v. Max Roach.
Eager to resume a leadership role, Gryce formed a New York quintet in the fall of 1959 that featured trumpeter Richard Williams and pianist Richard Wyands. The quintet recorded three studio albums in 1960 for New Jazz, a subsidiary of Prestige—Sayin' Something (March), Hap'nin's (May) and Rat Race Blues (June). In addition to these, Gryce and Williams recorded Reminiscin' in November.
Then in 2011, Uptown Records put out Doin' the Gigi, featuring three previously unreleased Gryce sessions. Two of them were with Williams—one an unissued studio session in 1960 and a Birdland broadcast in 1961.
Overall, Gryce and Williams were a superb match. As Gryce noted in the liner notes of one of his albums, "Richard Williams is our trumpeter. He is a student at the Manhattan School of Music. He has been with me for over a year. He is one of the sincerest musicians and individuals I know. I have the same regard for him as I had for Clifford Brown."
Williams had an open tone that crackled with warm power and confidence, and he hit high notes with ease. But he also knew how to take his foot off the gas and leave space around his notes, giving the listener's ear a chance to catch up. In this regard, he was a perfect mate to Gryce's fluid, high-register alto sax. As you'll hear, Gryce and Williams were exceptional together and as soloists. [Photo above of Richard Williams, second from right, in the driveway of Rudy Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs, N.J., studio with the rest of the musicians on Oliver Nelson's Screamin' the Blues recording session in late May 1960]
After these quintet recordings, Gryce's jazz career and personal life went into a rapid tailspin. Highly sensitive but determined, Gryce seemed to suffer from anxiety and emotional exhaustion given the pressure he was under to record and tour, raise a family and tend to his publishing companies—Melotone Music and Totem Music.
In the liner notes to Doin' the Gigi, Noal Cohen and Michael Fitzgerald write: "In the early 1960s, many of the composers who had placed their music with Gryce's companies were now leaving, presumably under pressure from record companies. Gryce became more and more withdrawn and fearful, and while his countenance could be seen adorning reed advertisements, his performing activities decreased dramatically. By late 1963, Gryce's bizarre and irrational behavior had reached the point that [his wife] Eleanor felt compelled to take their children and leave her husband for good. This was also the year his publishing companies were dissolved."
Gryce turned to public-school teaching for the balance of his career He died in 1983 at age 57; Richard Williams died in 1985 at age 54.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find the albums mentioned above by the Gigi Gryce Quintet and the Gryce "Orchtette" at Amazon, Fresh Sound and Spotify. Fresh Sound offers four of the albums on one two-CD set (go here).
JazzWax clips: Here's Sonor from Doin' the Gigi...
Here's Nica's Tempo from Hap'nin's...
And here's Boxer's Blues from Rat Race Blues...
A special thanks to David Langner and Peter Coppock.
JazzWax note: Richard Williams' daughter, Rebecca, hosts a blog, Confessions of a Bathrobe Blogger, here.
JazzWax pages: For more on Gryce, see Noal Cohen and Michael Fitzgerald's Rat Race Blues: The Musical Life of Gigi Gryce, which came out in paperback in 2014 (go here).
