Trumpeter
Dave Burns fronted two albums for the Vanguard label in the first half of the '60s, both of which are of serious interest to lovers of hard bop. The self-titled
Dave Burns follows a familiar pattern in artist and record company relations in that the production scale is somewhat smaller than the 1964 follow-up entitled Warming Up. The 1962 event featured a smaller group with mostly unknown players, in contrast to the lineup in 1964 involving stars such as trombonist
Al Grey and vibraphonist
Bobby Hutcherson. Pianist
Kenny Barron is the best known player here, but at the time this session was taped he was still in the first few years of his recording career.
Barron and bassist
Steve Davis are obviously influenced by the then current directions in rhythm section playing, including use of modes and an opening up of harmonic movement. These influences are subtle, to be sure, sort of like the early
Coltrane sides that
Davis also played on, not the kind of openings a free jazz player could drive a truck through. Which brings up tenor player Herbie Morgan, certainly a name to suit a jazzman but quite obscure. His playing here is stylish and suitable; he later expanded his name to Rahman Herbie Morgan and collaborated with poet
Amiri Baraka. Fans of organist
Larry Young will already know this tenor player -- Morgan played on at least five of the organist's releases. A long blues kicks off the album, a performance that will either open up a comfort zone for listeners or confirm early on that nothing unexpected is going to happen, other than the fact that this was the first hard bop album released by Vanguard. (The only other one is the aforementioned 1964
Burns date.) The original
Burns material also seems to have been put together quickly, like someone folding an airplane, with titles like "Something Easy" and "Straight Ahead." Nonetheless some paper airplanes fly quite magnificently, and these are happening performances.
Barron's "Rhodesian Rhapsody" and a composition entitled "Tali" written by
Tom McIntosh both have the exotic international bouquet that scented many jazz themes from this period. On the standard side, "Secret Love" gets the bouncy
Horace Silver treatment in a performance that seems artificially shortened, maybe with someone's mind on the jukebox. "Imagination" also gets a run-through, maybe not the most imaginative yet hardly disrespectful of the original's tunes melodic core; the
Burns solo on the tune at the least reveals the trumpeter has been following the advice of the great
Lester Young on how to play a ballad: learn the words first. ~ Eugene Chadbourne