Jim Hall: 'Something's Coming!,' 1963
The guitarist joins vibraphonist Gary Burton, bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Larry Bunker
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Now on to today’s post.
Vibraphonist Gary Burton recorded just four albums with guitarist Jim Hall—a Boston Pops LP led by Stan Getz called A Song After Sundown (1966); Jim’s Live at Town Hall, Vols. 1 and 2 (1990); Jim’s A Jazz Christmas: Hot Jazz for a Cool Night (1991); and Gary’s Something’s Coming! (1963). [Photo above of Gary Burton; photographer unknown]
Today’s post is on the last album on that list, recorded on August 14, 15 and 16 of 1963. It’s their only small-group session together, with Gary Burton (vib), Jim Hall (g), Chuck Israels (b) and Larry Bunker (d). The record was Gary’s third as a leader, and he was just 20 years old. [Photo above of Jim Hall; photographer unknown]
Four of the seven songs on the albums are standards. Three are originals—one by Jim and two by Michael Gibbs, an English jazz composer, conductor, arranger and producer as well as a trombonist and keyboardist. Gibbs was studying at Boston’s Berklee College of Music at the same time as Gary in the early 1960s. [Photo above of Chuck Israels by Tom Copi courtesy of Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images]
What’s interesting about Something’s Coming! is that the music covers multiple styles. While most swing, Jim’s blues, Careful, has a Third Stream feel and Gibbs’s Six Improvisatory Sketches is proto-fusion. Dig Larry Bunker and Chuck Israels on this one. [Photo above of Larry Bunker, photographer unknown]
Gary, of course, was one of the first jazz musicians to explore jazz-rock fusion in 1967 with Duster. It’s interesting to hear Jim in that mode as well.
The tracks:
On Green Dolphin Street
Melanie (Michael Gibbs)
Careful (Jim Hall)
Six Improvisatory Sketches (Michael Gibbs)
Something’s Coming
Little Girl Blue
Summertime
What I love most about this album is how Hall plays off of Burton. Both the guitar and the vibraphone ring naturally, with lingering bell-like notes. Hall and Burton maximize these tones throughout.
Also, I love how Burton and Hall transform ho-hum standards—Something’s Coming, Little Girl Blue and Summertime—into intriguing works. Listen how they re-energize the songs, giving them a fresh new feel.
Among the highlights, Hall takes a remarkable solo on Something’s Coming. Little Girl Blue is slowed down and juiced up with ringing notes, while Summertime is taken at a brisk tempo, giving it an entirely new personality. A shame this quartet didn’t record a few more LPs.
To read my interview with Gary Burton, go here; for my interview with Jim Hall, go here; and for my interview with Chuck Israels, go here.
Here’s the complete Something’s Coming!…
“Transforming ho-hum standards” — much is made today, and deservedly so, of the Great American Songbook, but back in the mid-twentieth century those songs, not yet known by that name, were getting a little shopworn. The pop singers and erstwhile big band singers were challenging the upstart rock and roll with songs like “Ricochet Romance” and “Cross Over the Bridge,” and nothing very exciting was coming out of Tin Pan Alley. It was left to two very different groups to breathe new life into the old standards — modern jazzers and doowoppers.
Wow! This is the only time I have heard "Summertime" and "Little Girl Blue" referred to as "ho-hum standards. I surely first heard those songs almost 70 years ago. All these decades later they remain, well, not "ho-hum." Sorry, Marc. We have to disagree on this one. Those songs were, and remain, great music.