John Abercrombie...RIP

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

"Guitarist John Abercrombie, a supremely eloquent and lyrical player whose career over the last four decades included seminal jazz fusion music and eminently refined ECM albums alike, died Tuesday of heart failure. He was 72.
Abercrombie had had health problems in recent years, including a stroke earlier this year.

Born in Port Chester in Westchester County, New York in 1944, Abercrombie did not begin playing guitar until he was 14. A few years later, in 1962, he attended the Berklee College of Music. His breakthrough album was the 1975 ECM disc Timeless, which featured him with drummer Jack De Johnette and keyboardist Jan Hammer. Abercrombie would record more than 30 records as a leader, the bulk of which were on ECM, including this year’s album Up and Coming, which featured him with his latest working band, which included pianist Marc Copland, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Joey Baron." - Ottawa Citizen Obit.

RIP.

BN.

[burning dog]

RIP

Not a fan of Timeless but really like Gateway from the same period

[eighthobstruction]

....I rate John A above many of the 'great' jazz guitarists of the age....

.....I remember though getting into really good moods listening to his albums and colaborations only to be thrown by really very jarring tracks just seemingly thrown into the mix that would make me jump or anticipate so as to get to the stylus before the track started....

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

ECM Website : John Abercrombie, one of the great improvisers, died on August 22, after a long illness. He will be much missed, for his sensitive musicality, his good companionship, and his dry humour which enhanced many a session. He leaves behind an extensive discography which will be studied as long as people continue to play jazz guitar.
John made his first recording for ECM, the appropriately-titled “Timeless”, in the summer of 1974, with his lifelong friend Jack DeJohnette on the drums, and Jan Hammer on organ. Over the next four decades, he was active as leader, co-leader and sideman on dozens of ECM projects. A creative writer of jazz tunes, John also loved to play freely as much as he loved to play standards. Many of his albums combine all of these resources, unified by his fluid, silvery tone and improvisational eloquence. In conversation he would speak of his enduring fondness for Jim Hall and Wes Montgomery, primary influences, and also of the liberating examples of Ornette Coleman and Jimi Hendrix; Bill Evans’s sense of lyricism was also of crucial importance to him.
John Abercrombie led a number of very fine bands, and he was particularly proud of his last quartet with Marc Copland on piano, Drew Gress on double bass, and Joey Baron on drums. This quartet released two albums, “39 Steps” and “Up and Coming”, the latter released in January 2017.
Highlights in his recording career were many and include the Gateway trio albums with Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette, the duo albums with Ralph Towner, the Special Editions albums (with DeJohnette, Lester Bowie and Eddie Gomez), Jan Garbarek’s “Eventyr”, Charles Lloyd’s “The Water Is Wide”, Collin Walcott’s “Grazing Dreams” (where John and Don Cherry play together), Enrico Rava’s “The Pilgrim and the Stars”, Kenny Wheeler’s “Deer Wan” … the list goes on."

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

I was really saddened to hear this news as John Abercrombie was one of my absolute very favourite musicians.

I cannot remember when I first heard his music but back in the mid 1980's I became obsessed with ECM and being given a lavishly illustrated catalogue of the labels records put me on a course to explore his music as he quickly became my favourite musician on that label. As a consequence, I have a large collection of his albums from "Current Events" onwards and then only stopped when he formed a quartet with the violinist Mark Feldman whose presence put me off somewhat. In between, I also snapped up quite a bit of his back catalogue including the brilliant record "Sargasso Sea" where he was in a duo with the acoustic guitarist , Ralph Towner. This remains one of the most beautiful duos any jazz label has put out.

I think that the appeal of JA's work was the wide range of dynamics his groups could achieve coupled with the ability to pen tunes which were extremely catchy. There cannot be many jazz numbers quite as infectious as "Clint", "Sidekicks", "Etherreggae" "Ralph's piano waltz" or the whole swathes of tunes he cut with the organ trio that featured Adam Nussbaum and Dan Wall. I honesty feel that John Abercrombie was the most consistent artist ECM had on their roster. Some of ECM's artists like Keith Jarrett or Jan Garbarek were over-indulged by Manfred Eicher but JA always seemed to hit pay-dirt. For me, Abercrombie had a knack of putting together great bands as well as appearing in a number of intriguing line ups including players like don Cherry, Collin Walcott and Lester Bowie which might have seem incongruous but were indicative of the fact that during the 1970's and 80's ECM was by far the most interesting label in jazz. Perhaps more noticeable than most, JA's records display a wider range of emotions beyond Eicher's usual penchant for melancholia and the fact that Abercrombie's records were categorically more "jazz" than most of his stablemates, I feel that his discography is far more reliable than many of his colleagues on ECM. There is a wealth of exciting and intriguing music in his discography.

The odd thing for me about his guitar playing is that although there were elements where he sometimes came out of rock and was prepared to rough things up (such as on the excellent "Red & Orange" from the "Timeless" album, he later embraced the standard repertoire and cited Bill Evans as an influence which became increasingly apparent as he dispensed with playing with a pick. You can start to hear this on the records by the trio with Peter Erskine and Marc Johnson which was one of the best jazz groups of the 1980's. The influence of Bill Evans has not always been a rewarding one and the proliferation of "introspective" piano trios which swamps ECM's catalogue these days seems to have dissipated the originality of Evans' earlier works, especially the initial trio with Motian and La Faro. Over the years, the influence of Bill Evans has been diluted by pianists as it is so ubiquitous. Personally, I think that it is not unreasonable to say that John Abercormbie's guitar playing on standards represents the most creative and unexpected influence to have come out of Bill Evans's original, radical concept.

The 1980's was an excellent time for jazz guitar. I don't think John Abercrombie was quite as "hip" as Scofield and lacked the radical approach of Bill Frisell but as an out and out jazz guitar player, he was simply unbeatable. His playing is as representative to jazz guitar as the great work of jazz horn players in the 1960's.

I was fortunate to hear his perform live on two occasions. The last time was in a duo with pianist Marc Copeland which dug deep in to the Bill Evans' style of jazz and displayed his incredible sense of harmony and ability to string out lyrical improvised lines. The audience was quite surprised by Abercrombie's dry wit in between numbers. My first opportunity was when he appeared in Southampton with the organ trio. That group produced music that was visceral and exciting - a contemporary re-working of something that the lesser Grant Green might have produced. My Dad went along too and was fascinated by the B3 Hammond and came away enthused by this group too. It would almost be impossible to compile a one hour JRR dedicated to John Abercrombie's music because there is such a wealth of music to choose from.

[Richard Barrett]

Very nice post, Ian, thanks. I was just listening to Timeless - there was always something about even JA's most fusionesque outings that gave them an extra touch of flexibility and sophistication. Did he ever record anything that was completely "out"? I think he would have been good at that.

[Serial_Apologist]

Very nice post, Ian, thanks. I was just listening to Timeless - there was always something about even JA's most fusionesque outings that gave them an extra touch of flexibility and sophistication. Did he ever record anything that was completely "out"? I think he would have been good at that.

I'm not as au fait on Abercrombie as Ian, but there were some remarkably zany guitar/sax and guitar/trombone duo excerpts amid the Kenny Wheeler big band annual Radio 3 broadcasts when Evan Parker and Paul Rutherford were in the line-up. I wonder if anyone there can dig some of those unforgettable broadcasts out - the 1990 Cheltenham Festival one in particular was extraordinary.

[Ian Thumwood]

One of the most imaginative records Manfred Eicher came up with was "November" where John Abercrombie's trio with Erskine and Johnson was paired with John Surman. There was a comment on this board last week lamenting Surman's transformation from the free-booting playing with The Trio but this disc is something of a revelation. It think it came out in the early 1990's. Like so many of his records, this does include some freely improvised pieces but what is amazing about this record is that they are performed at a break-neck tempo. I love these time / no changes tunes and JA always seemed to be able to navigate this stuff with aplomb. The ability to freely improvise and still swing is a kind of "double whammy" for exciting music.

It is odd how often "Timeless" comes in to the discussion. If you go on line if is clear from the comments by fans that most people saw this as a seminal record at the time and you get the sense that JA was a bit tired about being continually asked about it. I don't think that it is a typical "Abercrombie record" and I think worthwhile noting that although he was one of the first guitarists to be influenced by Hendrix (he is one of the guitarists of Gil Evans' Hendrix tribute), he was also one of the first to abandon this route. He did the same thing later in the late 1980s when he dabbled with a guitar synth which he then famously put back in the garage! Even the organ trio with Dan Wall is more in the jazz mainstream despite sharing the same line up. His latest album with an acoustic quartet was very subdued but is demonstrative that he was perhaps the most accomplished jazz guitarist in a straight ahead setting - a player who really listens , has an readily recognisable and beautiful tone on his instrument and was not afraid to swing even when the decibel levels were right down.

The 1980's were a decade dominated by guitar players, whether it be Frisell, Scofield , Metheny, the resurgent Jim Hall or Terje Rypdal reimagining himself as a Nordic equivalent of Prince. However, John Abercrombie very much belongs to that pantheon and I am minded to consider him perhaps the pick of the bunch. In the context of jazz since the 1970's, John Abercrombie is easily one of the most significant players of that era and few musicians have been as consistently excellent. He always seemed fully committed to the music he was recording and his records frequently have moments that can be considered to have swung far harder than many of his contemporaries - the reconstituted Gateway line up with Jack DeJohnette and Dave Holland being a prime example.

[Richard Barrett]

I do like Timeless but I'm not so familiar with his subsequent work, though I used to have a few of his albums back in the LP days. The quartet with Surman sounds very interesting, I'll certainly be giving that a listen. I can see how it might be thought that JA was the pick of the crop of guitarists of his generation and I feel somewhat ashamed that I don't know his work better.

[Ian Thumwood]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/November-John-Abercrombie/dp/B000024B66/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503605632&sr=8-1&keywords=john+abercrombie+november

Richard - link to November CD.

There is also a DVD of freely composed stuff with Greg Osby albeit the live at the VV session with Brecker from the late 80's is fabulous

[Richard Barrett]

So I finally had a chance to get some belated Abercrombie listening done. After the first couple of tracks of November which didn't do a lot for me (though I'll return to them later on) I put on the solo disc Characters which gave me quite a shock because it was all so familiar despite my not having heard it for quite a few years, a bit like meeting a long lost friend and feeling as if the years since the previous time had suddenly disappeared. It's quite a mellow album of course, but a very attractive confluence of JA's influences and his originality.

[Ian Thumwood]

Richard

I don't have "Characters" although there is a sizeable chunk of John Abercrombie in my collection.

I share your enthusiasm for "Timeless" even though it is perhaps not typical of his work. Alyn had a thread on JRR which invited suggestions for the "hottest record in jazz" and the blazing tune "Red and Orange" is one record that would certainly fit this bill. The next stop should be the duo album with Ralph Towner called "Sargasso Sea" which is archetypal ECM and a genuinely complimentary pairing which would be amongst my top ten on that label. It is introspective chamber jazz yet I would have to say there are few duos as sympathetic as this one.

When I was discovering Abercrombie's music the current group he led was the trip with Marc Johnson and Peter Erskine. I can never understand why this group was billed as "fusion" because it was squarely in the 1980's mainstream. "Current Events" has all the best tune and like the following "Getting there" which featured Michael Brecker as a guest, it does share some of the production values of that time. I really like both albums and both are more immediately appealing that the live trip recording which delves in to a lot of Broadway standards . "November" was the group's final offering and was the most restrained record the band did but I feel that it scores because of John Surman's playing. This is a really good album.

The organ trio with Adam Nussbaum cut three albums of which #I have the two studio offerings. Both are great although the first, "While we were young" is littered with great tunes and offers a fascinating take on this format - never bowing down to Soul Jazz cliché and eschewing the Tony Williams' approach. Both albums are good. I wish I had picked up "Aminato" which featured the synthesized orchestras of Vince Mendoza with the guitarist backed by Jon Christenson. For me, all these albums are atypical of so much of ECM (excluded "Sargasso Sea" ) and maybe are a lot earthier than you would anticipate for the label. The third "Gateway" album with Holland and DeJohnette is as good as anywhere to explore Abercrombie's credentials and similarly refreshes the jazz tradition - a DeJohnette tune "7th D" reimagines the 12 bar blues but is so screwed up that it takes a while to realise what they are playing.

I regret that I switched off when Mark Feldman joined his next quartet as I really dislike his violin playing. Jazz violin is a curious thing for me as the less "violin-like" the playing, the more I like it. Feldman's approach comes out of Classical music and , whilst I recognise his skill, I don't like this sound he generates. I think that so much g JA's best work was in the 70's, 80's and early 90's. I did acquire the last album he produced but this was remarkably restrained.

I suppose the thing for me that strongly appeals is that John Abercrombie's career straddled the best era for ECM and was captured at a point when the label was at it's most creative. More than any other artist on it's roster, he could unleash some very hard-swinging performances as well as produce material that had an immediate hook. As a ballad player and composer of more introspective material, I feel that it some ways he took over the baton from Bill Evans. If you like, he seemed to be the next development on from Jim Hall in this respect. There is a kind of paradox about his playing insofar that whilst he could play quite outside and was also not adverse to really wailing, there is a sense for me that he was the most orthodox "jazz" artist on the label.

[Richard Barrett]

Richard I don't have "Characters" although there is a sizeable chunk of John Abercrombie in my collection.

I do have Sargasso Sea of course, that's for tomorrow. I also listened to Gateway (the first one) which I've always liked. I agree with you about JA's work coinciding with a golden age at ECM, and about Mark Feldman whose work seems to me often to consist of classical licks joined up a bit haphazardly