CD Review: Back On The Corner - Dave Liebman

by Tom Watson.

Back On The Corner (2007, Tone Center) is the latest release from multi-instrumentalist Dave Liebman (tenor sax, soprano sax, piano, synthesizer, wooden flute) and Liebman's "regular working unit of the last 15 years" of Tony Marino (acoustic, electric, and stick bass), Vic Juris (guitar), and Marko Marcinko (drums, percussion, and keyboard programming on "Bela"); and, as Liebman puts it in the liner notes, "To make it a bit different and unique I decided to double up the bass and guitar chairs, adding Anthony Jackson [contrabass guitar] and former Miles sideman, Mike Stern [guitar]...".

Though the album is divided into 11 distinct tracks, it is, in a sense, a concept album or suite and functions as a unified whole, from the opening "5th Street" to the closing "J.B. Meets Sly/5th Street Reprise", though it might take a few listens before the nuances of its cohesive nature surface, which in turn is one of the many delights of Back On The Corner - it succeeds on many levels.

Dave Liebman describes the underlying concept in the liner notes: Back On The Corner celebrates Liebman's musical roots, with a special emphasis on Miles Davis with whom Liebman recorded and performed.

"It happens to be that the first music I liked as a kid growing up in Brooklyn, NY was '50's rock 'n' roll with the tenor sax front and center as the main soloing instrument (stylistically bowing with more than a nod to the rhythm and blues honking style), before I heard Coltrane and jazz. So playing Miles' music was sort of a natural extension for me. This recording celebrates those musical roots as well as a look back to the "On the Corner" recording. [Back On The Corner liner notes by Dave Liebman]

The original On The Corner is an album recorded by Miles Davis in 1972 for Columbia Records, which is essentially two suites of music, "On The Corner" and "Black Satin" with various sub-sections that are separately titled. It was recorded in three sessions ("On the Corner" with variations on June 1, 1972 [session notes], and "Black Satin" with variations on June 6, 1972 [session notes]) and July 7, 1972 (session notes), at the Columbia Studio in NYC. Dave Liebman played on the June 1 session (soprano sax) and the sax chair was held by Carlos Garnett (alto and tenor sax) on the June 6 and July 7 sessions. The June 1 and June 6 sessions also included two different guitarists - John McLaughlin on June 1 and David Creamer on the 6th. Another session was held on June 12 (with Garnett appearing on soprano sax) (session notes) during which "Ife" (a Miles Davis tune named after the daughter of percussionist James Mtume Forman) was recorded that appears on the album Big Fun.

Although Liebman did not play on the original studio recording of "Ife" (a tune which is included on Back On The Corner), he did perform it with Davis at the Montreux Convention Center on July 8, 1973, which appears on Miles at Montreux (original release date, 1973, box set re-release by Sony in 2002).

But, relax, I don't include this trivia because it's essential to enjoying Back On The Corner. You can pop the CD in without context and in a heartbeat your head will bob and weave with the groove and that's the beauty of the album - it's a polished combination of simplicity and complexity that allows the listener to take what he will. On the surface, it might be viewed as a Liebman stroll down memory lane, and as such it's a sweet stroll, especially for fellow musicians who grew legs in the '60s and '70s, but below this smooth sounding surface lies a serious celebration of a style and approach to music making (and improvisation) that has influenced subsequent generations of players, whether or not they're aware of it.

I include this trivia because the excellence of the music on Back On The Corner might prompt you to peek beneath the surface.

We often make the mistake of thinking that the history of music is defined by our record collection. It's not. Recorded music is a pale reflection of living, breathing music that's in a constant state of flux, a chaotic mix of past, present and future that unfolds nightly on stages in no-name towns around the world. Records are a snowflake on the tip of an iceberg.

Miles Davis was not the father of fusion, world music, hip-hop, punk, heavy metal, etc. He was a world class musician who spent quality time in recording studios and on concert stages exploring what he found happening in the world, most of which came as no surprise to working musicians and a complete shock to working music critics who live in the frozen world of vinyl.

On The Corner was released in 1973 (some sources say it was released in 1972, but that's unlikely given the dates of the recording sessions) and, in general, was panned by jazz critics, some of whom hailed the music as anti-jazz. Today, it's become fashionable to take the opposite stand, to herald the album as something new and a breakthrough, and simply misunderstood when it was released. But, in truth, On The Corner represented on vinyl what musicians had been doing in after-hours clubs for years - jamming to the grooves of the day.

Much of the music played in the club scene from the mid-'60s through the early '70s was R&B and soul, and many of the groups working in clubs featured a horn section. As a club band playing covers, your job was to get people to drink and dance, not dazzle listeners with extended solos. Face it, if you were a horn player in those days you'd spend four hours a night playing backup riffs while doing choreographed steps. There simply wasn't a lot of room in "Soul Man" for an extended trombone improv.

But, in after hours clubs where musicians congregated to jam it was a different scene. There might be a bass player, drummer, guitarist, and keyboard player on stage with a couple of trombone, sax and trumpet players, each of whom had just finished a four hour gig of Otis Redding-type covers. Now it's time to jam. No charts, no lengthy, "What are we going to play?" negotiations. The drummer or bass player would start up a groove, the sax player might introduce a melody line or riff motif (theme), and everybody had a turn or two at improvising. It was the groove that united the various musicians, who might be R&B players, rock (a la Blood Sweat and Tears), soul, or jazz, and who might or might not be familiar with a particular "song", but who could all relate to a groove. This structure, of intro - groove - theme - solo - theme - groove - solo, etc., and variations thereof, was a language players throughout the world could relate to and used to jam long before 1972.

However, what Miles Davis did in the early '70s was to bring this approach to music making to vinyl, and to a larger audience. He helped transform a musician's language into a listener's language, and the distinction is important.

Toward the end of the '60s the attitude of many non-musician listeners began to change. Prior to the growth of FM album rock and well-publicized events like Woodstock, the vast majority of performed music was about the listener, not the player. The listener was the customer and it was the player's job to deliver what the customer wanted. Attempts by a player at extended improvised self-expression, especially if that expression tampered with a predictable dance beat, was, to put it mildly, scorned upon. The bread and butter of working groups was delivering 2-3 minute danceable covers, period. But, by the early '70s, a growing number of live-music listeners wanted to hear what musicians had to say through extended improvisation. It became more and more common for nightclub crowds to sit on the dance floor as if they were at a concert instead of being entertained by a human jukebox.

By the early '70s the dichotomy between recorded music and music as it was being performed had grown wide. Recorded music, by and large, was controlled by conservative to ultra-conservative organizations who retained very rigid ideas as to what record buyers wanted. Mainstream radio too held on to a listener profile that favored 2-3 minute hooky pop tunes. However, casting the record companies and mainstream radio stations as the evil-conservative suits versus the real music of the streets is also an unfair characterization because, frankly, what took place in after hours clubs and at some concert venues reached only a very tiny portion of the listening public. The development of player-centric performance was primarily, and may still primarily be, something that occurred within a small sub-sect of the musician community and a devoted listener underground.

So, it comes as no surprise that when a mainstream jazz name like Miles Davis has the courage and clout to put on major label vinyl what was happening on one front of the musical fringe in the early '70s, mainstream radio, critics, and listeners would be shocked and dismayed. The "My Funny Valentine" Miles Davis had joined the revolution. Actually, this wasn't the first music revolution Davis had joined, nor would it be his last, but rare was the music critic who was prepared in 1973 for the Davis trumpet a la wah-wah - not only was Davis going anti-jazz, he was going anti-Establishment.

Actually, though, the grossly summarized story above is simply another eruption of the age-old aesthetic tension between listener-centric and player-centric music, a tension that dates back to J.S. Bach, if not before. There has always been an unacknowledged war between what listeners want to hear and what players want to play, with players usually capitulating to keep the customer satisfied and earn a decent meal. What's interesting about the '60s and '70s (and yes, I could add the Beats and various experimental music movements of the '50s and my apologies for not mentioning Ornette Coleman) is that this musical revolution coincided with a larger, social counterpart in which various forms of freedom were central - freedom of speech, of self-expression, freedom from discrimination, etc. Freedom, in all its various forms, was the goal.

Take a close look at the cover art for On The Corner.

There's a great deal going on this artwork, but focus on the simple phrase "Free Me" on the front cover. If you're familiar with Miles Davis, you know what a loaded statement that is. If you're not familiar with Miles, I strongly recommend reading the December 13, 1969, Miles Davis Rolling Stone interview by Don DeMichael.

What prompts this Miles Davis wool gathering is wondering to what corner Dave Liebman is returning with Back On The Corner. The title references On The Corner, as does Liebman's own words in the liner notes, and the CD contains a tune ("Black Satin") from the original album plus "Ife", which Liebman performed with Davis (note: Liebman, as said earlier, did not play on the original studio recording of "Black Satin", but did perform it with Davis). As said earlier, Back On The Corner is intended as Liebman's celebration of his musical roots, including "...a look back to the 'On the Corner' recording."

Back On The Corner is not a Miles Davis tribute album. It is Liebman's celebration of his musical roots. Liebman's time with Davis obviously had an important impact on Liebman, and Back On The Corner is very Miles Davis-ish with respect to structure and approach, but there's more going on here than a Davis tribute. Liebman has taken the early '70s Davis jam band, percussion based approach, solidified it, expanded it (in a vein similar to earlier Davis periods) and used it as a theme for his personal foray into musical nostalgia that yields a very contemporary look back.

As mentioned earlier, Back On The Corner, though presented as 11 different tracks, functions as a whole, a suite, in which the listener journeys down an imaginary street delighting in the various musical styles that influenced Liebman. It's as if we're walking through The Village and stopping into different clubs to sample a variety of music styles, which, though different, are united by one or more of these elements: a focus on rhythm; structure (bass or percussion intro - theme - improvisation - theme); or, the bridging use of interludes that set the stage for our next stop.

Our journey starts and ends on "5th Street", a Liebman tune that gives a nod to On The Corner primarily through its structure and groove. I asked Dave Liebman what was on 5th Street (I assumed it was NYC) that inspired the title and he told me, "I grew up on East 5th Street in Brooklyn, NY."

From the opening track to the closing, we make seven stops ("5th Street", "Ife", "Black Satin", "Bela", "New Mambo", "Mesa D'Espana", and "J.B. Meets Sly/5th Street Reprise") with four transitions ("Bass interlude", "Drum interlude", "Acoustic guitar interlude" [Vic Juris], and "Electric guitar interlude" [Mike Stern]) portraying a variety of grooves (such as shuffle, latin, funk, and Spanish), and, as Liebman puts it, textures and colors, including 20th century classical by way of "Bela", which was inspired by Bela Bartok (who also inspired Davis via Bill Evans).

Along the way, we're treated to contemporary jazz or fusion (label it as you like), at its finest: a tasteful mix of simplicity with complexity and a display of the aesthetic war horse, unity within diversity, by way of superb arrangements and some fine improvisations. Overall, the tune structure is simple, but it's a simplicity that allows these players the freedom to develop a complex range of self-expression.

One of the most successful aspects of Liebman's album is its ability to fuse the rhythms of the street with seasoned musicianship. Played too tight, these tunes could come off skeletal and dry, but played too loose they could meander into nothing more than a light and disposable ad hoc jam. Liebman and crew deliver an artistic combination of blood and brain.

Doubling the guitar and bass chairs was a good move that helps layer the sound and rhythms. The players and arrangements show an excellent sense of restraint and all work together in developing theme and variation, while each adds elements of his own root influences. Mike Stern (interview) fans will hear him smoothly introduce a number of styles within the same improvisation that could sound disjointed in the hands of a lesser player. Especially enjoyable is Stern's solo on the opening track, "5th Street", that builds from soft and distant to highly charged and heartfelt.

When Vic Juris solos you sense the kinship between Juris and Liebman in their somewhat similar approach to developing a simple motif, though Juris tends to be more linear while Liebman likes to surprise with unexpected twists and turns. What the two have in common is a natural thoughtfulness, their lines work like well-connected meaningful sentences that modulate between poetry and prose. Juris, by the way, has recently joined the faculty of Mike's Master Classes, a guitar instruction website featuring live and interactive master class lessons from some contemporary jazz greats.

The doubling of the bass chairs is interesting for a couple of reasons. While on the one hand, it makes sense given the roots that are being celebrated (who wouldn't understand two basses on a piece like "J.B. [James Brown] Meets Sly [Stone]/5th Street Reprise" - Miles Davis, who was influenced in the late '60s and early '70s by artists such as James Brown and Sly Stone on many levels, felt that On The Corner would be the album for which the black community would remember him), on the other, there's the risk of a bottom-heavy lopsidedness. But, as it does in many respects with this album, restraint saves the day. Tony Marino, who in addition to acoustic and electric bass makes several appearances playing stick bass, works extremely well with contrabass guitar player Anthony Jackson, so well that you'll often forget the chair's been doubled. Those not familiar with the contrabass guitar (six string bass) might want to learn more about Jackson and the electric contrabass he champions.

But, the ultimate theme weaver on this album is Liebman who drifts in and out, up and around, throughout, introducing styles that range from R&B honk to Baroque-ish theme and variation. Equally varied is his emotional range that runs the gamut from sweet and tender to "let's get it on".

Back On The Corner delivers a developed, disciplined, musical sense of freedom. It demonstrates that artistry lies somewhere between rote chart reading and other-worldly self-indulgence and provides a mature balance between passion and intelligence. Back On The Corner is a rare gem: the more you listen the more you hear and listen often you will.

Related Links
Dave Liebman
Shrapnel/Tone Center Records
Back On The Corner on Amazon.com

More articles by Tom Watson

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