Like fellow Modern Jazz Quartet member Milt Jackson, pianist John Lewis (1920-2001) recorded prolifically outside of the revered jazz group on various solo projects. Unlike Jackson, whose solo records tended toward more swing and bluesy-ness than the MJQ, however, Lewis’ solo endeavors often swung toward film and ballet scores and outré or altogether non-jazz efforts.
Essence is one such record. Here, the pianist focuses specifically on the early and idiosyncratic compositions and arrangements of Gary McFarland (1933-71). McFarland was having something of a moment in jazz in the early sixties, when he exploded on to the jazz scene as one of the most interesting and exciting arrangers and writers since, as some put it then, Duke Ellington.
John Lewis and Gary McFarland first met in 1959 at the Lenox School of Jazz, a two-week summer program of jazz education at the Music Barn in Lenox, Massachusetts, that ran from 1957 to 1960. Lewis was among the faculty and McFarland was among the students – and participants.
(The Lenox School is also where and when McFarland first met and befriended pianist Steve Kuhn. The two would go on to record the albums The October Suite [1967] and Steve Kuhn [1971] together. A CD of the 1959 Lenox School of Jazz concert performance would eventually be issued in 1990 – prominently featuring performances by Ornette Coleman and Kenny Dorham that also featured Kuhn. But the McFarland performances here were not at all included.)
At Lenox, McFarland debuted such pieces as “Monk’s Sphere” and “Summer Day,” while playing vibes elsewhere. Lewis instantly became an early mentor of McFarland’s – even securing the composer’s publishing rights, through his own MJQ Music, for a brief period early in the younger man’s musical career. (The Modern Jazz Quartet covered McFarland’s “Why Are You Blue” on its 1962 album Lonely Woman.)
The first Essence session remains Gary McFarland’s earliest professional recording experience. But the record, which also includes sessions from two years later, mysteriously went unreleased until late 1964, a full two years after those later sessions. Why? Who knows?
McFarland’s star rose elsewhere, working with Gerry Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band, Anita O’Day and Johnny Hodges and waxing Stan Getz’s memorable Big Band Bossa Nova. All of this at Verve, where producer Creed Taylor was able to utilize the young McFarland’s service. Indeed it was Taylor that launched McFarland’s career with the arranger’s popular and critically well-received The Jazz Version of ‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying’ (1961).
Meanwhile, Lewis was busy scoring an Italian drama (“A Milanese Story”) and waxing albums with Danish violinist Sven Asmussen and German trombonist Albert Manglesdorff (!) – all records that were released before Essence ever even showed up.
Essence, which was released at about the same time in late 1964 as McFarland’s genre-busting, yet commercially successful Soft Samba, is a mixed blessing. Perhaps that’s the reason it was delayed for so long. On the one hand, it’s a successful union of pianist John Lewis’ third-stream stylings and Gary McFarland’s deft compositions and signature charts. On the other, though, it feels like an uneasy mix of traditional jazz forms with music-school touches.
There’s a surprising unity among each of the songs, despite three recording sessions and differing instrumentation. That is primarily due to the consistency, if not predictability, of both Lewis’s approach to the piano and McFarland’s breezy, if not altogether cheeky, approach to composition and instrumentation. Unfortunately, the result yields little that is memorable.
Each of Essence‘s three sessions features John Lewis on piano and fellow MJQ member Connie Kay on drums, with McFarland arranging and conducting each track (he does not play any instrument here). The September 1960 session, yielding “Night Float,” also features:
Herb Pomeroy – trumpet
Gunther Schuller – French horn
Eric Dolphy – alto sax
Benny Golson – tenor sax
Jimmy Guiffre – baritone sax
Jim Hall – guitar
George Duvivier – bass
(Tracks from this session not released include “Afternoon in Paris,” “If You Could See Me Now” and “Round Midnight” – none of which are McFarland compositions.)
The May 1962 session, which yielded the Ellingtonian “Notions,” “Wish Me Well” and “Hopeful Encounter,” features:
Freddie Hubbard, Louis Mucci – trumpet
Mike Zwerin – trombone
Bob Swisshelm, Bob Northern – French horn
Don Butterfield – tuba
Billy Bean – guitar
Richard Davis – bass
The October 1962, session, which yielded “Tillamook Two” and “Another Encounter,” features:
Harold Jones – flute
Eric Dolphy – alto flute
Phil Woods – clarinet
William Arrowsmith – oboe
Loren Glickman – bassoon
Don Stewart – basset horn (a type of clarinet)
Gene Allen – baritone sax
Jim Hall – guitar
Richard Davis – bass
(McFarland’s “By My Side” was also recorded at this session but went unissued. The song was previously recorded in 1959 on the Berklee School of Music disc Jazz in the Classroom Volume IV. McFarland later repurposed the song for a Volvo commercial!)
While such significant soloists as Freddie Hubbard, Benny Golson, Phil Woods and Eric Dolphy are all involved here, it is really only Lewis and guitarist Jim Hall who are featured in any significant way. None of the horn players take any solos. The most engaging tracks remain the album’s highlights and include “Notions,” “Night Float” and “Wish Me Well.”
The album’s liner notes were written by the Turkish composer and arranger – and, later, a multiple Grammy Award-winning producer – Arif Mardin (1932-2006), a classmate of McFarland’s at the Berklee School (now College) of Music during the lone semester McFarland attended (Mardin was there for three years and later went on teach at Berklee).
Several months after the final Essence session, John Lewis and Gunther Schuller formed the similarly-minded Orchestra U.S.A. Lewis served as musical director and pianist, while Schuller served as the orchestra’s principal conductor. Orchestra U.S.A. issued the first of three recordings in 1963, the appropriately-named Debut.
A number of the Essence musicians turned up on Debut as well, including Herb Pomeroy, Phil Woods, Eric Dolphy, Jim Hall and, of course, Connie Kay. Here, Gary McFarland played percussion and contributed two originals, “Milesign” and “Grand Encounter,” but he likely did not participate on the orchestra’s next two recordings (both issued in 1965).
Because Essence was released a full year after Debut, it likely appeared to record buyers as a sequel, rather than the prequel that it really was.
“The combination,” wrote DownBeat’s John S. Wilson in his four-star review of Essence, “of McFarland’s pleasant melodic gifts as a composer, his thoughtful arranging, and Lewis’ skillfully selective piano solos make this a consistently interesting collection.” Wilson noted some bumpy parts of the record, notably “Notions,” but adds that “it is Lewis’ marvelously swinging simplicity that energizes the disc and carries it over its occasional rough spots.”
This listener isn’t as certain that it is Lewis whose “swinging” saves the day here so much as it is that elegant rhythm section and guitarist Jim Hall’s always welcome moments in the spotlight that come to the rescue.
Essence was issued on CD in 2000 by the Collectables label, paired with the 1961 Lewis ballet suite Original Sin. The disc was also issued as a stand-alone CD several times in Japan, in 1992, 2012 and 2017. “Wish Me Well” as well as the Lenox School tunes “Monk’s Sphere” and “Summer Day” were later covered by the Mark Masters Ensemble on Wish Me Well (2006), while “Notions” was covered by Michael Benedict – who was married to McFarland’s widow, Gail, until her death in 2006 – on his Circulation: The Music of Gary McFarland (2015).
Afterword: Gary McFarland began expressing his admiration for The Beatles’ music around the time of Essence‘s 1964 release. Indeed, he was among the first jazz leader to do so and he remained steadfast in his positive regard for the Fab Four throughout the remainder of his brief career.
In an odd, but trippy coincidence, John Lewis’ Modern Jazz Quartet signed with The Beatles’ Apple Records label in 1968 (the year McFarland co-founded his own label, Skye Recordings, with Gabor Szabo and Cal Tjader). The MJQ recorded only two albums for the label – Under the Jasmin Tree (1968) and Space (1969) – but both are iconic and among some of the group’s strongest and most revered work (and nary a Beatles cover within earshot).
The unusual arrangement came about as Apple executive Ron Kass (1935-86) was good friends with the MJQ manager Monte Kay (1924-88) and sought to bring prestige and variety to The Beatles’ otherwise pop-focused label. Shortly thereafter, Kass was ousted from his position by the arrival of Allan Klein in The Beatles’ already fracturing sphere, the MJQ returned to Atlantic Records.
#McFarlandMonday