Used-Bin Bargains: Andrew Hill - Passing Ships

R.I.P. Andrew Hill 1931-2007



Andrew Hill - Plantation Bag (Blue Note 2003, recorded 1969)

Andrew Hill – Passing Ships / Blue Note

"If musicians are just trying to be different, but don’t have a synergy with the audience, they have nothing."

Perfectly stated Mr. Hill. I respect and very much enjoy the avant-garde, but for me to be completely immersed in it rather than just gaping from afar, I need an accessible point of entry. This is why the late-60s are my go to point for jazz. The musicians were once again growing tired of the confines of what was becoming the norm (this time post-bop) and teasing it into new, typically atonal and experimental directions. By the time we get into the first few years of the 70s, the exploration had progressed so far that most free jazz was completely void of any relatable structure at all. And while I completely respect and understand the need for such music, I’d much rather experience it live than in a recorded setting. Andrew Hill greatly understood this aspect of musical balance. A composer first, the groundbreaking pianist built his compositions up from a post-bop foundation and took them on experimental trips that were heavily laced in spontaneity and sophistication. His music was certainly free, but with respect for the listener. Hill passed away Friday morning of lung cancer in his Jersey City home; he was 75. Passing Ships was on my to-get-to list for this column anyways, so it seems most appropriate to take a look at this excellent 1969 album now.

A Chicago native, Andrew Hill began playing the piano in his very early teens and was spurred on by “the first modern jazz pianist,” Earl Hines. The promising youngster was schooled both by local jazz composer Bill Russo and German classical composer Paul Hindemith, whose own style of combining neo-classicisms with jazz elements no doubt had a significant impact on Hill. As the 50s rolled on, he gigged regularly throughout the Midwest, gaining experience by sharing the stage with such bop luminaries as Charlie Parker and a young Miles Davis among many others, not to mention Chicago folks like Art Ensemble bassist Malachi Favors and hard-bop saxophonist Von Freeman. Before even out of his teens, Hill was composing original songs, but his era of most renowned creativity did not begin until 1963 after traveling to both coasts working with singer Dinah Washington and a no doubt influential stint in Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s band. Hill caught the ear of Alfred Lion during Blue Note’s waning years as a jazz powerhouse, and was signed in 1963 as part of their avant-garde movement (which when looked at in contrast to the early 70s avant-garde scene is really just slightly more exploratory post-bop). Lion referred to him as his “last great protégé.” From 1963-1970, Hill officially released a number of revered albums through Blue Note working with the cream of the forward-thinking post-bop crop, including Eric Dolphy, Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Richard Davis and John Gilmore. Frequent go-to points in his discography include 1964’s Judgement! and Point of Departure and 1965’s Compulsion.

Interestingly enough though, some of his accomplished works crafted in this era didn’t see the light of day until many years after their original completion. Passing Ships, recorded in November of 1969, was not rightfully released until just a few years ago after the master tapes were found in 2001. You may wonder how the hell this got left on the cutting room floor listening to it now, but looking at Blue Note’s state of debauchery in 1969, it makes much more sense. Lion had retired in 1967, Hill’s tenure was all but over, and the label, purchased by Liberty Records, was questioning the commercial viability of jazz (sigh) and heading toward populist funk. So Passing Ships, despite Hill’s advanced conceptual compositions and a nonet of acclaimed musicians including bassist Ron Carter, trumpeters Woody Shaw and Dizzy Reece, trombonist Julian Priester, French horn player Bob Northern, a very young Lenny White on drums and multi-instrumentalists Howard Johnson and Joe Farrell, did just as the title foreshadowed, drifted past into 34 years of obscurity.

One of the great aspects of Passing Ships is the way it is architecturally pieced together. There is a definite concern for spatial relationships, not just tonal or rhythmic. Hill will push the drums, miked from afar for one complete sound rather than each individual piece of the kit, to one side, then pull his patient, Monk-without-the-fire-of-relative-insanity piano to the other. Farrell, on which ever of his instruments (bass clarinet, alto flute, English horn, soprano and tenor sax) he decides to pick up at that moment will flurry from the left-center while Shaw and Reece’s trumpets cock and weave from the right-center. And of course, Carter, though maybe not at his most potent, plucks away from the center and fully rounds out the sound. If listened to in the right mindset, you can practically walk directly into the session, pull up a chair in the core of the semi-circle and enjoy the music coming to life around you. The barrage of finely toned instrumentation and Hill’s masterful arranging makes Passing Ships a pleasure to experience whether you are looking for an exploratory post-bop album or a very accessible free jazz one.

With the number of players and diverse instrumentation, the typical classification for such an album is progressive big band, but I feel this is slightly misleading. It sits at a comfortable mid-point between being a BIG band and a small ensemble; you get the structural possibilities of a larger number of players with varying talents, like the… er… cascading harmonies of “Cascade,” but the intimacy of a song like “Passing Ships,” which concentrates more on each player’s soloing over the piano/bass/drum groove without losing Hill’s masterful piano work in the mix. There is also a great deal of exoticism to the album, again thanks to the large color palette especially provided by Farrell’s ability to pick up a slew of different instrumentation and the low end augmentations on the tuba and bass clarinet by Johnson. The longer pieces, “Passing Ships,” “Plantation Bag,” and “Noon Tide” prove the most rewarding as Hill guides them through many passages from jazz-funk to free to post-bop to modern creative. Passing Ships may not be looked at as Hill’s quintessential creation, but it is an inventive, distinctive and highly enjoyable piece of music sorely overlooked for three decades that is absolutely worth your listening time.

Hill had two separate resuscitations of his career, both with short stints once again releasing material on Blue Note: the first in 1989 and the second just recently with 2006’s Time Lines being highly revered by critics everywhere. In between these times of recorded resurgence, he spent his time in academia, teaching at Portland State University and Colgate University as well as public schools and even prisons throughout California. Hill was also a rarity in the jazz world because of his widely regarded gentle and kind spirit and notable sanity. He may have shared artistic genius with many jazz greats, but not the usual personal demons that so often accompany it, which for better or worse also probably kept his legacy from sparking potentially widespread interest (the crazier the more interesting the story). Either way, jazz and musical in general lost a great artistic force in Andrew Hill on Friday morning, and if you haven’t explored his discography before now, it is as good of a time as any to enter his majestic aural world.