ANDREW HILL — Black Fire (review)

Album · 1964 · Post Bop

3/5 · 2011-07-06
Sean Trane

It is the JMA site’s categorising of Hill in the avant-garde “genre” (now readjusted) and two different discussions in its forum that pushed me to rediscover and, if need be, reassess my outlook of the Chicago-born pianist’s career. Indeed it seemed to me (and still is so) preposterous to call some artiste like Andrew Hill as avant-garde in 63 and link him to names like Cecil Taylor or Ornette Coleman and to a lesser extent Coltrane), when this album and the following ones were so “standard” (to me anyway) and didn’t seem to surpass much of the year 59’s most memorable works. Reading over the liner-notes of Hill’s debut Blue Note album (his second overall) that indeed shows how some of these genres can be screwed up and skew the historical appreciation of the different movements of certain musical genre. Indeed, Spellman’s notes directly call out for Andrew Hill as avant-garde with this album in mind, when Brubeck’s Time Out (from 59) was at least as adventurous and groundbreaking

So if the “avant-garde” is (or should be) groundbreaking, it’s not quite immediately obvious why Black Fire should be labelled as such, especially when comparing to Sun Ra or Coleman’s albums from that year, which were years ahead of many of these classic Hills or Don Byrd. The saying in French goes as: “une guerre de retard”, about the French digging trenches in preparation for the upcoming WW2, while the German tanks would plainly roll over the rabbit holes. As an aside, the Poles were not one, but two wars behind, as their cavalry committed suicide by charging the German tanks. Anyway with all due respect to Hill’s rather excellent but fairly-standard works, I’d tend to prefer much the post-bop “fourre-tout” (all-encompassing) label, rather than the now-misleading avant-garde moniker, because to be fair… avant-garde is one of the more overused, misused and clichéd label around, even if it was used back then. But in a historical context, I find AG to be wrong, because at one point or another in jazz’s history, Satchmo or Duke were also avant-garde.

Ok rants aside, let’s get to BF, which was a meriting (in the consolidation sense) album, but by no means as outstanding as the partisan scribbling on the sleeve’s back side (a big reason why I avoided reading them for decades), not least in its splendid line-up that includes Henderson on sax and Davis on bass. Ok, the counter-liner notes point out (rightly so) that the quartet sometimes chose to work as a trio (sometimes drum-less or sax-less), thus allowing for some kind of variety. I suppose it is so, but it’s really not fundamental or groundbreaking or even a real advantage in terms of musical spectrum. Andrew Hill’s splendid piano playing graces the entire album, but sometimes peaks almost wildly like on the 8-mins Subterfuge or Cantarnos, his works being reminiscent of Bud Powell, Hank Jones or to a lesser extent Thelo Monk. However, the title track or Tired Trade or the insignificant McNeil Island sound like barely-updated 50’s mainstream (not sure this is the right word) jazz.

Soooooo, if you’ll not agree with my opening rant on the present review, I guess you’ll probably not agree with many of my reviews of this following works, as I never considered Hill to be a groundbreaker or innovator, but more like a follower, consolidator or second-line (with all due respect) artiste, and the album being produced by the legendary Van Gelder and released on Blue note won’t change much to the issue. Don’t get me wrong though, this is still a good classic album (prefer it to PoD), but if you’re looking for something more than “nice”, like gut-wrenching or challenging, than you’d better head directly to Compulsion (his most-advanced) or look/listen elsewhere.