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https://soundprojections.blogspot.com/2019/11/booker-ervin-1930-1970-legendary-iconic.html 


PHOTO:  BOOKER ERVIN (1930-1970)

 


 
 
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/booker-ervin-mn0000097426
 

Booker Ervin 

(1930-1970) 

Biography by Scott Yanow

 

The Freedom Book  

A very distinctive tenor with a hard, passionate tone and an emotional style that was still tied to chordal improvisation, Booker Ervin was a true original. He was originally a trombonist, but taught himself tenor while in the Air Force (1950-1953). After studying music in Boston for two years, he made his recording debut with Ernie Fields' R&B band (1956). Ervin gained fame while playing with Charles Mingus (off and on during 1956-1962), holding his own with the volatile bassist and Eric Dolphy. He also led his own quartet, worked with Randy Weston on a few occasions in the '60s, and spent much of 1964-1966 in Europe before dying much too young from kidney disease. Ervin, who is on several notable Charles Mingus records, made dates of his own for Bethlehem, Savoy, and Candid during 1960-1961, along with later sets for Pacific Jazz and Blue Note. His nine Prestige sessions of 1963-1966 (including The Freedom Book, The Song Book, The Blues Book, and The Space Book) are among the high points of his career.

Booker Ervin 

Booker Ervin had a large hard tone like an r&b tenor saxophonist, but he was actually an adventurous player whose music fell between hard bop and the avant-garde. Ervin originally played trombone but taught himself the tenor when he was in the Air Force in the early 1950s. After his discharge, he studied music for two years before he made his recording debut with Ernie Fields in 1956. During that year he first performed with Charles Mingus and he was a key part of Mingus’s groups during 1956-1962, offering a contrast to the wild flights of Eric Dolphy. During 1963-1965, Ervin led ten albums for Prestige and each has its rewarding moments. "Exultation!" matches Ervin with altoist Frank Strozier in an explosive quintet. "The Freedom Book" has Ervin interacting with the unbeatable rhythm section of pianist Jaki Byard, bassist Richard Davis, and drummer Alan Dawson. "The Song Book," with Tommy Flanagan in Byard’s place, features the intense tenor interpreting a set of veteran standards. "The Blues Book," with trumpeter Carmell Jones and pianist Gildo Mahones, is comprised of four very different blues and more variety than expected. The Space Book has adventurous improvisations by Ervin, Byard, Davis, and Dawson while Settin’ the Pace features two lengthy and exciting jam-session numbers with fellow tenor Dexter Gordon and a pair of quartet pieces that showcase Ervin. The tenorist is particularly passionate on the stretched-out performances of The Trance and stars with a sextet on Heavy. Released years later," Groovin’ High" contains additional material from The Freedom Book, The Blues Book, and The Space Book sessions while Gumbo! (part of which was issued for the first time in 1999) has Ervin sharing the spotlight with altoist Pony Poindexter and on five songs leading an organ trio with Larry Young. Booker Ervin died much too young from kidney disease. He is one of the underrated greats of jazz history, a true individualist.

https://www.villagepreservation.org/2023/06/23/booker-t-ervin-the-jazz-musicians-favorite/ 

Booker T. Ervin: The Jazz Musician’s Favorite
by Shannen Smiley
June 23, 2023
Village Preservation

We’ve recently unearthed information about another great African American jazz musician who called our neighborhood south of Union Square home, and have added him to our South of Union Square map’s music and African American history tours. Born in Dennison, Texas, on October 31, 1930, Booker T. Ervin was a tenor saxophonist who resided at 204 East 13th Street. The son of a saxophonist, Booker began his musical journey at a very young age. Upon completing high school, Ervin enlisted in the United States Air Force. While stationed in Okinawa, he learned to play tenor sax, enrolling in the Berklee School of Music following his service in 1953. Following his time at Berklee, Ervin traveled to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he played the tenor saxophone alongside another Jazz great, Ernie Fields.

Moving to New York City in May of 1958, Ervin would quickly befriend Charles Mingus and join the well-respected Mingus Jazz Workshop. From then on, Ervin would perform alongside Mingus and Randy Weston, who once also resided at 204 East 13th Street. In 1959, Ervin contributed to the monumental Mingus Ah Um album. In addition to playing alongside Mingus, he recorded various albums throughout the 1960s. Signed to Prestige Records in 1963, these albums included: The Blues Book, The Space Book, The Freedom Book, and The Song Book. 

References to ‘the Book’ were described by Ervin’s close friend Randy Weston for his album, “African Cookbook,” in 1969: “the African Cookbook, which I composed back in the early 60’s, was partly named after Booker because we (musicians) used to call him “Book,” and we would say, “Cook, Book.” Sometimes when he was playing we’d shout, “Cook, Book, cook.” And the melody of African Cookbook was based upon Booker Ervin’s sound, a sound like the north of Africa.” (1993)

Despite the breadth of his compositions, Ervin remained underappreciated in jazz. As a result, he packed up with his wife Jane and two children for Europe. Heading overseas in October of 1964, Ervin would initially perform at Copenhagen’s Montmartre Club, followed by acts at the Blue Note Club in Paris, amongst others. Some additional countries that Ervin performed in included France, Holland, Sweden, Italy, and Germany. However, the country that held Ervin’s attention the longest was Spain. Locked in at a Jamboree Club gig, Ervin found stability in this Catalonian venue – extending his stay in Europe to 1966. 

Upon his return, Ervin moved into 204 East 13th Street. Ervin would record his song, “204,” to honor his time in this building. The family would remain in the building throughout the remaining years of his life before Ervin passed away from kidney failure at the age of 39 on August 31, 1970. Having supported and worked closely with some of the Jazz industry giants, Ervin also holds a high honor among fellow musicians of the past and present – demonstrating his true talent as a great among the greats.

You’ll learn more about Booker Ervin’s amazing life and story on South of Union Square map’s music and African American history tours. You’ll also learn more about great musicians like Roy Orbison, Benny Goodman, Art Blakey, Tim Buckley, Frank Zappa, the Lovin’ Spoonful, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, Patti Smith, Junior Vasquez, the Clash, The Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, and Charles Mingus, and critical figures in African American history like W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Billie Holiday, Robert Earl Jones, Audre Lorde, Malcolm X, and Paul Robeson. 

 

Sources:

 
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/06/part-4-booker-ervin-good-book-by-simon.html

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/ervin-booker-t-jr

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Handbook_of_Texas_Music/

CE8xiT3pV6QC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=booker%20t.%20ervin%20jr.

https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2015/07/charles-mingus-and-jazz-workshop.html

http://www.randyweston.info/randy-weston-discography-pages/1966monterey.html 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_Ervin

Booker Ervin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Booker Telleferro Ervin II (October 31, 1930 – August 31, 1970)[1] was an American tenor saxophone player. His tenor playing was characterised by a strong, tough sound and blues/gospel phrasing. He is remembered for his association with bassist Charles Mingus.

Biography

Ervin was born in Denison, Texas, United States.[2] He first learned to play trombone at a young age from his father,[2] who played the instrument with Buddy Tate.[3] After leaving school, Ervin joined the United States Air Force, stationed in Okinawa, Japan, during which time he taught himself tenor saxophone.[3] After completing his service in 1953, he studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.[2] Moving to Tulsa in 1954, he played with the band of Ernie Fields.[3]

After stays in Denver and Pittsburgh, Ervin moved to New York City in spring 1958,[2] initially working a day job and playing jam sessions at night. Ervin then worked with Charles Mingus regularly from late 1958 to 1960, rejoining various outfits led by the bassist at various times up to autumn 1964, when he departed for Europe.[2] During the mid-1960s, Ervin led his own quartet,[2] recording for Prestige Records with, among others, ex-Mingus associate pianist Jaki Byard, along with bassist Richard Davis and Alan Dawson on drums.

Ervin later recorded for Blue Note Records and played with pianist Randy Weston, with whom he recorded between 1963 and 1966.[2] Weston said: "Booker Ervin, for me, was on the same level as John Coltrane. He was a completely original saxophonist.... He was a master.... 'African Cookbook', which I composed back in the early '60s, was partly named after Booker because we (musicians) used to call him 'Book,' and we would say, 'Cook, Book.' Sometimes when he was playing we'd shout, 'Cook, Book, cook.' And the melody of 'African Cookbook' was based upon Booker Ervin's sound, a sound like the north of Africa. He would kind of take those notes and make them weave hypnotically. So, actually the African Cookbook was influenced by Booker Ervin."[4]

Between October 1964 to summer 1966, Ervin worked and lived in Europe, playing gigs in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands. Basing himself in Barcelona, Spain, he featured regularly at the city's Jamboree Club. He recorded and broadcast while overseas, making albums with his own quartet, Dexter Gordon and Catalan vocalist Núria Feliu, featuring on various radio programmes and appearing at several jazz festivals, including a guest slot at the 1965 Berlin Jazz Festival, during which he performed a 25-minute improvisation. This performance was issued as "Blues For You" on the album Lament For Booker Ervin (Enja Records) in 1977.

Following his return to the United States in summer 1966, Ervin led his own groups in jazz clubs throughout the country, and appeared at both the Newport Jazz Festival (1967) and the Monterey Jazz Festival (1966) performing with Randy Weston; a recording of their performance was issued on CD in 1994. In 1968, Ervin again appeared at clubs and festivals in Scandinavia, broadcasting with the Danish Radio Big Band. He recorded again for Prestige, but in late 1966 was signed to West Coast label, Pacific Jazz, for whom he taped two albums, Structurally Sound and Booker 'n' Brass (1967), before switching to Blue Note. Ervin recorded two Blue Note albums under his own name, In Between and Tex Book Tenor, the latter going unissued during his lifetime, initially being released in the 1970s as part of a double album shared with recordings (on which Ervin features) made under the leadership of Horace Parlan (Back from the Gig). In 2005, Blue Note issued as single CD of Tex Book Tenor in its limited edition Connoisseur series.

Ervin's final recorded appearance occurred in January 1969, when he guested on a further Prestige album headed by teenage multi-instrumentalist Eric Kloss.

Ervin died of kidney disease in New York City in 1970, aged 39.[5] Most biographical accounts of Ervin's death give an incorrect date. His gravestone in The National Cemetery, East Farmingdale, New York, clearly shows the date as August 31, 1970.

In 2017, Ervin was the subject of a mini-biography written by English saxophonist and author Simon Spillett, published as part of an anthology package titled The Good Book (Acrobat Records) 

 

Tributes

 

Booker Ervin has been remembered by many artists, Ted Curson called one of his albums Ode to Booker Ervin; the band "Steam", in their album Real Time, called one of their tracks "Tellefero"; and others... 

 

Discography

As leader

 

As sideman

With Bill Barron

With Jaki Byard

With Teddy Charles

With Ted Curson

With Núria Feliu

  • Núria Feliu with Booker Ervin (Edigsa, 1965)

With Roy Haynes

With Andrew Hill

With Eric Kloss

With Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan

With Charles Mingus

With Horace Parlan

With Don Patterson

With Sonny Stitt

With Mal Waldron

With Randy Weston

http://www.jazzshelf.org/ervin.html

Bold-toned tenor saxophonist Ervin (1930-1970) played for Charles Mingus and also made several albums under his own name.

The Freedom Book
December 1963 / Prestige

This album reminds me of some of Jackie McLean’s Blue Note dates, where an impassioned bop and blues based saxophonist (who sometimes blows off pitch) explores new pastures but doesn’t abandon swing and chord changes. The rhythm section of Jaki Byard, Richard Davis, and Alan Dawson does some notable work here, and Ervin wails up a storm, starting with the modal “A Lunar Tune”. Ervin’s powerful tenor mixes microtonal cries, twisted motifs, and altered bop runs into a riveting solo that seems constantly in flux. This tune also has solos from Byard (mostly modern ideas, none of that old-timey stuff) and Davis, whose bass is so well recorded you can hear every pluck clear as day. Dawson’s lickety-split precision is impressive, and he sometimes shifts suddenly from a ride cymbal to tom-tom riffs and so forth. (Rather like his student Tony Williams, in fact.)

After “A Lunar Tune” comes “Cry Me Not”, a ballad that doesn’t sit very well in my ear due to Ervin’s off-key fluctuations. Horn players often lean sharp or flat for expressive purposes, but there’s a point where you’re just out of tune. I’m also not fond of Ervin’s tendency to let notes trail downward, which can sound crude in a tune such as this. “Grant’s Stand” is the most direct and exciting track, a blues in a pointy coat of armor that charges hard and gets a heated solo from Ervin. “A Day to Mourn”, recorded just a couple of weeks after Oswald’s crime, is a reflective elegy occasionally brightened by more affirmative patches. “Al’s In” begins in a dramatic way - almost like Coltrane’s “Drum Thing”, with the ritualistic mallets and bassline - and after picking up steam it turns to a lengthy Dawson solo. The Prestige RVG bonus track “Stella By Starlight” (originally released on a different LP, but recorded with the rest of the Freedom Book tracks) is perky and brief, although I’m again wary of Ervin’s tapered notes.

The Freedom Book is a unique record, parts of which display a progressive sixties attitude. That being said, this music has none of the harmonic mystery or rhythmic ambiguity you would get from Shorter, Hancock, Hill, etc. Ervin has a more straightforward ethos, which makes it more obvious when he’s stepping out, so to speak.


Tex Book Tenor
June 1968 / Blue Note Connoisseur

That’s Tex as in Texas tenor, which I assume refers to Ervin’s big tone and the bluesy curvature of his notes. He’s also got some Harlem in his horn, able to dive into a complex run in an instant. Both traits are heard on this fine hardbop-based album, recorded with a lineup of trumpeter Woody Shaw, pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Jan Arnet, and drummer Billy Higgins.

Flanagan’s sneaky groove “Gichi” opens with a slow funk bassline and a melody that owes a nod to “Blue Train” and “Canteloupe Island”, though Ervin’s wavering solo imports a foreign mystique to the track. The other solos are just as deep, and the rhythm vamp proves flexible when needed. Next up are a couple of meatier numbers, “Den Tex” (a tune that could have suited Blakey’s Jazz Messengers) and Shaw’s “In a Capricornian Way”, a 6/8 workout into which Ervin drops sustained calls and rapid bop lines. “Lynn’s Tune” is an ambling two-chord piece that may or may not sound too laid back, depending on how much fire one expects from an Ervin session, but it brings some relaxation after the two preceding tracks. The disc ends with the blowout “204”, a simple theme with improvisations that turn up the heat for ten solid minutes, including some thrilling passages from the leader.

I don’t know enough about Ervin’s catalog to objectively rate Tex Book Tenor against his other titles, but it’s strong on its own, and it certainly stands as a quality Blue Note of the hardbopping mold. The tunes are right to the point, and there’s lots of soloing interest from Ervin and Shaw, so I recommend it.


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 https://www.popmatters.com/booker-ervin-the-freedom-book-2496214960.html

Music
 

Booker Ervin: The Freedom Book
by Robert R. Calder 
27 September 2007
PopMatters

A real master cut off in his prime, an individual tenor saxophonist mature beyond his years and in an ideal quartet.

Booker Ervin

The Freedom Book

Subtitle: Rudy Van Gelder Remasters
Label: Prestige
First date: 1964

US Release Date: 2007-05-01
UK Release Date: 2007-06-11
For years I've been meaning to catch up seriously on Ervin's own albums, notably the series of them on the Prestige label referred to as Books. Ervin was known as "Book", and this set's name really means "The Freedom Booker Ervin". The music shouldn't be confused with the "Free Jazz/free form" that was starting to appear with some prominence around the time this album was originally issued in 1963 (barring "Stella by Starlight", added here, but initially issued on a sampler), and for which Prestige's Free Jazz label was initiated.
In fact, this music shouldn't be confused with any other movement of any particular past time. It has a freshness not often found these days, and the freedom reference is mainly to the creative freedom of a tenor saxophonist as incapable of musical compromise as was Thelonious Monk. Ervin innovated in expression and substance without needing to be any kind of blatant revolutionary.

During a relatively short career ended by cancer in 1970, when he was barely forty, Ervin worked well with people doing the same serious thing he did, most famously Charles Mingus. The pianist in the perfectly organised quartet here is Jaki Byard, not only another sometime Mingus alumnus, but one of the great jazz pianists, and the most individual. The opener, "A Lunar Tune", might seem by name to belong rather to the Space Book album in this valuable series, but here we are with Byard's unique and heavy, confining chords. The startling rhythmic-harmonic structure resists possibilities of melodic development, so that when Ervin finds his improvisational line, it is -- it had to be -- intense and inspired. Though the complex chords are so much in Byard's fingers that the composition really seems his, it's in fact Ervin's. The empathy is startling throughout this session. There is a considerable sense of 'cry' in Ervin's sound, passion and melancholy and a focussedness more to be expected from a soprano saxophone, rather than a tenor. I would compare him with Dexter Gordon. Though he takes more emotional risks than that unsentimental master, he's never guilty of the least sentimentality. He might have learned from Coltrane's sound, and from Texan and midwestern tenor playing, but he is his own man.

"Cry Me Not" is a Randy Weston tune, from when the pianist's direction was more mainstream melodic (he has since gone to Africa, not least North Africa, for a new musical focus). Ervin also worked with Weston, and here the plaintive, lamenting presentation of direct melodic lines has aconsiderable emotional and spiritual depth. This is the plainer on Ervin's "A Day to Mourn", with its obvious allusion to JFK's murder in Dallas not so long before. It's almost a suite, with sections at different tempo, in different moods, and profoundly moving. Byard plays wonderfully lyrically, for once you might not know it's specifically him, but there can be no doubt that here's the extraordinary expressiveness of a major musician.

"Al's In" is named for Alan Dawson, the thoroughly admirable drummer who helped distinguish quite a number of Byard dates beside the present one. Through the melancholy opening, Dawson makes a considerable contribution, and then the pace picks up and Byard and the drummer are playing energetically and obliquely as Ervin weaves his way through choruses at once melancholy and driving, tending to produce something worthy of Fats Waller's phrase "fine Arabian stuff." The timekeeping work is in the extremely able hands of Richard Davis, a very great bassist, another musician who has been at the top of his profession a long time. Davis has the power to lead the band in after a tour-de-force solo on which Dawson makes use of tuned drums. There are also solos of a high order throughout from the bassist, very notably on the slightly modified, energy-filled blues "Grant's Stand", where -- as on every track here -- everybody is on strong form.

These musicians are plainly concerned to say something all the time; they're not just superlative technicians. By 21st century standards, they don't lack anything in that respect, or in musical daring, least of all Byard. The session was supervised by the legendary Rudy Van Gelder, and this is another of the series now appearing on the Prestige label in his remastering. I've not much to say about that, since by today's standards the music has such unusual depth it's hard to listen for anything else. It retains the abiding newness of any art which says important things: a very mature player, Ervin.
The lighter note of the added "Stella" is welcome at the end, but since it might well have been recorded specially and separately for the sampler it appeared on, it does allow a complaint unusual in this century. It's not shallow, but it's too short.
https://www.jazzviews.net/booker-ervin---the-good-book-the-early-years-1960---621.html 

BOOKER ERVIN - The Good Book 
  
(The Early Years 1960 - 62)  
Acrobat ACQCD 7121 (4 CD set)

Every time I play I try to play as if it’s the last time I’m ever going to blow.’  If one quote can sum up a musician this one has a great deal to say about Ervin.  The passion and urgency of his music is writ large on these four CDs.

His three earliest albums - ‘The Book Cooks’, ‘Cookin'’ and ‘That's It!’ are there complete, together with appearances on recordings led by Teddy Charles, Mal Waldron and Bill Barron.  In total there is material from seven albums featured.
 
 Ervin came from Texas and the R and B circuit.  He was a Texas tenor and all that implies in the jazz world.  Scuffling for a time on $5 a day he came up the hard way.  That was his strength and also his weakness because many critics and taste-makers pigeon-holed him and failed to see beyond his origins.

Ervin was conscious of his lack of acceptance. After ‘The Book Cooks’, he experimented with the third stream and ‘Jazz In The Garden At The Museum Art’ was originally issued under vibraphonist Teddy Charles’s name. Mal Waldron’s album The Quest on the fourth CD is almost avant-garde, the pianist features alto saxophonist Eric Dolphy.
 
 ‘Uranus’ on CD2 taken very slowly is an impressive ballad performance, with Booker’s characteristic gruff, romanticism.  The same quality is heard on ‘Booker’s Blues’ as Ervin soars above George Tucker’s walking slowly bass. 
 
Status Seeking on CD4 has Ervin with Eric Dolphy and Mal Waldron. The bass figures are played by Ron Carter. Eric Dolphy is unrestrained but does not out-do Ervin who is passionate, broad-brush and more obviously appealing.

 One additional reason for buying this collection is the notes by Simon Spillett.  I have praised Spillett’s writing in the past but he has excelled himself here.  Ervin was never given the critical plaudits that he should have received during his life and the literature about him is not easy to find.  Spillett in the 51 pages here does not limit himself to the period of the recordings, he covers the life.  What you have is a short book about Booker, including his early years in Texas, his time with Prestige, and when he was with Mingus.  It is probably the best writing about Ervin anywhere. Spillett endeavours to answer questions about Ervin’s style and whether he can be considered an innovator.  Spillett believes, and he argues it convincingly, that Ervin’s defining quality was honesty

 This is a scholarly package. Playing through this CD you start to think about what is the right place for this musician in the jazz hierarchy and why such an important soloist is not widely recognised.  He made a serious impact on many of the records that Mingus made at his peak but he was more than that and this selection of his early recordings looks at aspects of his work that were developed later: the passion, the velocity, the unique sound.
 
 Reviewed by Jack Kenny

https://hhbrady.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/on-booker-ervin/

On Booker Ervin

Booker Ervin 2 

He played with Charles Mingus a bunch; he’s got a very hard, brash tenor sax sound, coming from a setup that used a very narrow metal mouthpiece with a fairly pliant reed– he sounds like Don Byas 15 year later– and from Texas. Coltrane if he were more lyrical, a bit less sharp, and more traditional in his approach to melody and accompaniment. Again, basically Don Byas if he were younger.

I like his “books” series of records the best– they were called, chronologically, The Freedom Book (hard bop), The Song Book (standards), The Blues Book (I-IV-V), and The Space Book (the most “out there” of the four, but still “in,” see below). They were some very nice sessions, recorded through Prestige records from 1963 thru 1966.

There are also some early works that I really like, like “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” and “Well, well.” [See video, below.]

Want some late-period Ervin, like Tex Book Tenor? Getchu some “204,” if you want an introduction to that album– an album where the “new thing,” usually called “free jazz,” was coming into being, and you could tell that despite his background in Texas, blues-based, gutbucket, bartop-strutting indoctrination and love as a player, he really wanted to just lose it and get outer and outer as a player– you can practically feel his childlike enthusiasm for the new thing– but that Texas in him is still, somehow, stronger than that– and lets him flirt, over and over again, with free jazz, but still always sound like the Texas hard bop purveyor he is.

Booker Ervin 

Plus, I love the fact that he always looks like a blerd, and yet has this hard, aggressive, full tenor sound and manner of playing and making melodies. Texas sax nerds from hell, so to speak.

 

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fer13

ERVIN, BOOKER T., JR. 

ERVIN, BOOKER T., JR. (1930–1970). Tenor saxophonist Booker T. Ervin, Jr., was born in Denison, Texas, on October 31, 1930. His father played trombone with Buddy Tate and taught Booker the instrument at an early age. After finishing high school Booker joined the United States Air Force and was stationed in Okinawa, where he learned to play the tenor sax. When his service was completed in 1953 he enrolled at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he learned the essentials of music theory. The following year he moved to Tulsa and joined fellow Texan Ernie Fields.
Though Fields's band was primarily a rhythm-and-blues outfit, Ervin's playing became more refined, and he developed a sense of self-confidence that in 1958 led him to New York City, where he became highly regarded in local jazz circles. Shortly after his arrival he met jazz legend Charles Mingus, who was impressed with his style. Ervin joined the Mingus Jazz Workshop, and this creative association led to a string of recordings, including the 1959 masterpiece Mingus Ah-Um. Mingus was demanding and at times dictatorial, but he nurtured creativity and encouraged his musicians to improvise. Ervin soon developed a reputation as one of New York's finest young sax players. His playing could be explosive, yet his sensitive touch was powerful. Though he continued playing with Mingus through the 1960s, Ervin also recorded several solo albums for Prestige Records, including The Blues Book, The Space Book, The Freedom Book, and The Song Book. He died of kidney disease on August 31, 1970, in New York City and was buried in Long Island National Cemetery. He was survived by his wife, Jane Wilkie Ervin; a son, Booker; and a daughter, Lynn.


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

New York Times, September 2, 1970. 
Dave Oliphant, Texan Jazz (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996). 
Brian Priestly, Mingus: A Critical Biography (New York: Quartet Books, 1982). 
Gene Santoro, Myself, When I Am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Graded on a Curve:

Booker Ervin
The Freedom Book

by Joseph Neff 
May 3, 2012
The Vinyl District



While he’s remembered foremost as a key contributor to the bands of jazz titan Charles Mingus, tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin also recorded a slew of outstanding albums as a leader, none of them better than his 1963 outing The Freedom Book. If the accumulated weight of post-bop’s golden era can sometimes feel like an unfathomable musical avalanche, this casually faultless quartet outing is unquestionably one for the hearing.

If Booker Ervin had somehow managed to appear on only one specific LP in his career as a horn man, his historical significance would still be solidly in the pocket. That record is Mingus Ah Um, the 1959 classic from bassist Charles Mingus, an album that’s rightfully considered as a core document of the whole jazz experience. But Ervin not only thrived as the go-to tenor guy for Mingus’ most creatively fertile period, he also cemented his reputation through a wealth of sessions as both a crucial sideman and as a leader, debuting under his own name in 1960 with the superb The Book Cooks for the Bethlehem label and following it up with Cookin’ on Savoy later that same year.

If 1961’s That’s It found him bouncing around the label scene as a leader (this third record was issued by Candid) he kept busy not only with Mingus but also through appearances on vital dates by pianist Mal Waldron (The Quest), vibist Teddy Charles (Metronome Presents Jazz in the Garden at the Museum of Modern Art), drummer Roy Haynes (Cracklin’), and fellow tenor man Bill Barron (Hot Line). His fourth LP Exultation! hit racks in ’63 and with its release Ervin found a sturdy home through the Prestige imprint. His next four albums were all completed through the backing of that legendary company and they form a thematic quartet of releases that stand for many listeners as the collected highpoint of Ervin’s career as a bandleader.

The Freedom Book inaugurates this group of four, followed in quick succession by The Song Book, The Blues Book, and The Space Book, and for those unacquainted with Ervin’s work the series easily serves as the best place to begin. And while it’s not essential to the experience, sequential listening greatly enhances the achievement of these sleek beauties, their diverse and dynamic contents laid to tape in under a year’s span. And The Freedom Book not only provides an ample helping of Ervin’s edgy, blues-inflected tone, but it presents the debut of what’s arguably his strongest overall band.
For starters, there’s fellow Mingus alum Jaki Byard, simply one of the most interesting pianists of the ‘60s, as anyone that’s heard the Mingus Sextet’s 2CD Cornell 1964 or any of his own prime works for Prestige will attest. As a living breathing textbook of jazz styles, in some ways Byard is similar to multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk (with whom he frequently played), though he’s far less of a showman and more a stately maverick of uncommon subtlety and versatility. On his own he could run the gamut from ragtime to free, but when working in support he always adjusted his talents to the vision of the leader without sacrificing his own personality; he could connect with the unconventional ideas of an composer like Don Ellis, lend context to a harbinger of the New Thing ala Sam Rivers, and flesh out the strategies of a Texas tenor like Ervin.

Bassist Richard Davis has anchored so many top flight records that his status is ultimately immeasurable. Not only a contributor to undisputed masterworks by Eric Dolphy (Out to Lunch) and Andrew Hill (Point of Departure), he was also Stravinsky’s bassist of choice and played a defining role in the achy splendor of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. 

Equally comfortable behind a trad vocalist like Sarah Vaughan, an R&B inflected tenor like Jimmy Forrest, or a more cerebral musician like vibist Bobby Hutcherson, Davis is what’s called an all around mensch.

If drummer Alan Dawson is a rather unheralded name, it should be noted that like Byard and Davis he was also an teacher; he just jumped into academe much sooner than his counterparts, signing up at Boston’s Berklee School of Music in the late ‘50s, far ahead of the jazz educational curve. And because of this, Dawson’s status for many is relegated to being the tutor of the great Tony Williams. But that’s a rather disrespectful miscalculation, for he played on a bunch of high quality records; the majority of them just didn’t catch the world on fire. In addition to Ervin, he backed some of Byard’s best sessions, assisted dates from august names like Sonny Criss, Dexter Gordon, and Sonny Stitt, and sounds particularly strong on one of Illinois Jacquet’s best late albums Bottoms Up.

The result of putting these four in a room is unsurprisingly exquisite. Opener “A Lunar Tune” has Ervin presenting a teetering, somewhat knotty opening theme before falling in with the rest of the band and laying down an extended, fiery solo. There are detectable similarities to John Coltrane in his tone, though Ervin is a bluesier player, if no less inclined to experiment. Like Jackie McLean, he’s been described as an inside-outside guy, and his flirtations with the textures of the emerging avant-garde always feel natural and individual; “A Lunar Tune” makes clear that The Freedom Book is a study in advanced bop, a serious album interested in extending the possibilities of the form instead of just elevating it’s norms. After Ervin drops out, Byard solos with typical grace before Davis and Dawson get down to some fine rhythm business. In fact, Dawson shines throughout the track, using his full kit without ever feeling busy or overextended. Then Ervin comes back in with the head to wrap things up.

As is expected with post-bop studio outings, “A Lunar Tune” gives way to a change in tempo, the group working through Randy Weston’s ballad “Cry Me Not” (notably, the four other tracks are all Ervin originals). Here the saxophonist explores the gentleness required of the composition without slipping into sentimentality or cliché, his tone ranging from bold to introspective, and indeed all the players are actively involved in shaping the song’s success, never falling into the role of inexpressive support.

“Grant’s Stand” is what’s called a blowing tune, the sort of deceptively nonchalant excursion that can raise the heat and bring down the house, and in this Ervin nods to the stomping tradition of his Texas roots. And again, The Freedom Book doesn’t really divert from post-bop formula as much as it just pushes it forward with unvarnished mastery; here as on “A Lunar Tune” Ervin opens with an extended and ripping though never flustered solo and then lays out for Byard, who opens a little like Monk and then shifts into something a bit reminiscent of McCoy Tyner minus the block chords before hinting at some angularity that’s mildly associative of early Cecil Taylor or the yet to make the scene Don Pullen. To sum up Byard in two words; incalculably valuable. From there Davis’ brief spot soars with creativity, never falling into the giant rubber band tropes that often plague the bass solo. After some nice give and take between Ervin and Dawson, the tune concludes having packed a wealth of ideas into just eight minutes.

“A Day to Mourn” was written as a tribute to John F. Kennedy and recorded less than two weeks after his assassination. It’s a spacious, meditative dedication and a fitting one in how it avoids any sense of predictability; the tempo thoughtfully shifts, Davis’ pizzicato bass work and the diversity of Dawson’s percussion register less as solos or strategies than as highly effective shadings of mood, and Byard moves from contemplative to jaunting with nary a hiccup. But it’s in the sound of Ervin’s horn that the composition really succeeds in hitting home a half century after it was recorded. Innovation can be a fleeting thing, but inspiration and sincerity cut through the fog of time.

Closer “Al’s In” begins at a simmer and then shifts impeccably into a full boil, Ervin saving his most dynamic blowing for last as the rhythm section, particularly the thorny and assertive Byard and the wickedly committed Dawson go to work with vigor. The latter’s solo spotlight, one of the album’s brightest moments, is a clinic in non-hackneyed drum motion, the range of his expression capping the album, though the brief reemergence of the full quartet before a slow fade out leaves the ear nagging for more.
Of which there was, of course. The subsequent entries in the Book series found Ervin shuffling and adding some members, subbing pianists Tommy Flanagan and Gildo Mahones for Byard and adding underrated trumpeter Carmell Jones before returning to this splendid lineup for the final installment. And while the whole set is indispensible, The Freedom Book sits a little above the rest. Thankfully there is no mandate limiting ownership of Booker Ervin releases to just one LP, for he never recorded a bad one. But if that foul edict ever came down, this sweet pup would very likely be the one to choose.
Graded on a Curve: A+

Review

Music Reviews

No Need To Cook The Books: Booker Ervin's Debut LP Reissued


 NPR
 
https://www.npr.org/player/embed/244528394/244529858
 
Booker Ervin on the cover of The Book Cooks, his debut album. Courtesy of Bethlehem Records

Tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin came to New York in 1958. Pianist Horace Parlan heard him and invited Ervin to sit in one night with a band he worked in. That's how Ervin got hired by bassist Charles Mingus, who featured him on albums like Blues and Roots and Mingus Ah Um. Before long, Ervin was making his own records, like The Book Cooks, which has just been reissued on the re-revived Bethlehem label.

Ervin came from Northeast Texas on the Oklahoma line, field hollers coming at him from the east and cattle calls from the west. He punctuated his lines with high lonesome hollers before he got to New York and discovered that John Coltrane had a similar move. Ervin got ideas from Coltrane after that, but that cry was always his own. Coltrane's tone was as glossy as varnished hardwood. Booker Ervin's sound was more coarse, like a cane stalk shooting up out of rich earth.

For the ensemble shouts and background riffs, Booker Ervin is flanked by trumpeter Tommy Turrentine from Max Roach's band, as well as a Lester Young disciple and big-band vet, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims. Sims could blow cool — he'd once recorded with Jack Kerouac — but also liked locking horns with fellow tenors. The saxophonists square off in a friendly way on The Book Cooks. Sims' tone is a little softer and rounder than Booker's.

The late '50s and thereabouts served as a great period for jazz rhythm sections — mighty bass players in particular. Nowadays, most bassists set the strings low to the neck so their fingers don't have to fight so hard. Back then, strings were higher and players couldn't get around so quickly. But they could pluck a string so hard, it made bass a percussion instrument. In "The Blue Book," for example, the great George Tucker's bass beat and Dannie Richmond's hi-hat and cymbals mail his message home.

The Book Cooks was Booker Ervin's first album under his own name, and it kicked off an early-'60s hot streak. He'd make the classics The Freedom Book and The Space Book with another great rhythm section, and recorded other good dates involving Tommy Flanagan, George Tucker or Dannie Richmond. But what really makes all those records is Booker Ervin's Texas shout on tenor saxophone, a sound that's both down-home and majestic.

 

https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2015/05/booker-ervin-1930-1970.html 

Monday, May 25, 2015

Booker Ervin: 1930-1970

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Originally a trombone player, Ervin taught himself saxophone while in the services and instinctively veered towards the kind of blunt, blues-soaked sound of fellow-Texans like Arnett Cobb and Illinois Jacquet. He had his big break with Mingus, who liked his raw, unaffected approach. The career was painfully short, but Booker packed a lot in. He's still missed.”
- Richard Cook and Brian Morton,  
The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.
“Booker Erwin is a powerful, swinging, story-teller.” 
- Ira Gitler, insert notes to Booker Ervin/Groovin' High [OJCCD-919-2/P-7417]

During a recent listening of tenor saxophonists Booker Ervin and Zoot Sims on Booker’s The Book Cooks [Bethlehem Avenue Jazz R2 76691], I was really taken by the difference in sound that each got on the same instrument.

While Zoot’s tone was its usual bright, buoyant and bouncy self, Booker’s was darker, denser and more driving; one floated over the rhythm while the other pushed through it.

Hailing from Denison, Texas it’s easy to associate Booker’s style with the big bluesy, and wailing style that has become known as the Tenor Tenor Sound, a sound that the late Julian Cannonball Adderley once described as “the tone within the moan.”


Or as Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler describe it in The Encyclopedia of Jazz: “With a sound as big as the great outdoors, and a tidal rhythmic drive, he was in the lineage of the Texas Tenors.”

While Booker’s approach to Jazz improvisation was certainly rooted in The Blues, it seemed more expansive and more expressive. But what were the qualities that made it so?

I thought it might be fun to share some observations by other Jazz writers and critics whose ideas about Booker’s approach to Jazz helped shed light on my quest to know more about how he achieved his singularity.

Sadly, Booker didn’t have long to share his secrets as he died in 1970 at the age of 40!

Let’s begin with this overview of his career by Mark Gardner which is drawn from The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz:

“Booker Ervin (b Denison, TX, 31 Oct 1930; d New York, 31 Aug 1970) was the son of a trombonist who worked for a time with Buddy Tate, and he inherited his father's instrument: between the ages of eight and 13 he played trombone. He taught himself to play saxophone while in the air force (1950—53), then studied music in Boston for two years. His first professional engagement was with Ernie Fields's rhythm-and-blues band, with which he made his earliest recordings (c!956). Ervin rose to prominence as a member of Charles Mingus's group (1958-62). He also worked frequently in a cooperative quartet, the Playhouse Four, with Horace Parlan, George Tucker, and Al Harewood, and with Randy Weston. His best work as a leader was on nine albums recorded for Prestige (1963—6).

Ervin was a powerful player whose hard tone and fondness for the blues marked him as a member of the Texas school in the tradition of Buddy Tate, Arnett Cobb, and Illinois Jacquet.

He never allowed his formidable technique to obscure the emotional intensity of his playing, and he was one of the very few tenor saxophonists of his generation to remain untouched by the influence of John Coltrane and develop a wholly personal style.”

[There seems to be some debate about Coltrane’s influence on Booker, for example, Ira Gitler maintains that “Although Booker named Coltrane as his favorite, he was less indebted to him than were the majority of his contemporaries.”The Encyclopedia of Jazz.]

Continuing on with Ira’s assessment of Booker’s talents, the following is drawn from one of the many “Book” LP’s that Erwin made for the Prestige label from around 1963 66.

“If jazz had a bible it surely would be known as The Book of the Blues, for without the blues, jazz would be a salt-water fish in fresh water. This album is not the The Book of the Blues but it is The Blues Book [Prestige OJCCD-780-2/P-7430], or how Booker Ervin feels about the blues. "There's all kinds of blues," said Booker, "and I just wanted to play some of the different kinds."

That is stated simply enough (the blues for all their variety are basically simple, too) but when Ervin becomes involved in his highly emotional blowing, all is not that simple. It is not a matter of having to break your brains to comprehend his story — Booker plays from the heart of jazz directly to your heart — but the depth, breadth, and width of his approach arm it with ramifications that are anything but plain.

The pressure exerted in a hard, extended kiss doesn't always indicate the lack of equal intensity behind it, but if that surface force is really representative of the underlying feeling then you are dealing with something powerful. The loudness or hardness of a musician's delivery doesn't necessarily stand for true depth or sincerity, but if it does, look out, for you are in for a steam-cleaning from the convolutions of your cranium down to your entrails.

Booker Ervin's tenor is like a giant steamroller of a brush, painting huge patterns on a canvas as wide and high as the sky. There is nothing small about his sound, his soul, or his talent. … His passionate music is of the '60s but it has not lost touch with the tap-roots of jazz.

Booker's phrasing (the highly-charged flurries and the excruciating, long-toned cries), harmonic conception (neither pallid nor beyond the pale), and tone (a vox humana) add up to a style that is avant garde yet evolutionary, and not one that bows to fashion or gropes unprofessionally under the guise of "freedom".
 

Dan Morgenstern, the esteemed author and now-retired Director of The Institute for Jazz Studies, offered this perspective on Booker’s playing in his insert notes to Booker Ervin: The Song Book [[OJCCD- 779-2/P-7318]:
“As I am writing these notes for Booker Ervin's third Prestige album, the yearly chore of filling out my Down Beat Critic's Poll ballot is very much on my mind. It is a chore because there are so many excellent musicians to choose from, and one is often forced to make rather arbitrary exclusions. But there are always a few instances in which there can be no doubt or equivocation. This year, Booker Ervin's name is one of those I'll put down without the slightest hesitation.

‘There's nothing on earth I like better than playing music,’ Booker Ervin once told me. His playing sounds like that. It is full of fire and conviction: nothing about it strikes the ear as forced, contrived or meretricious. It is no wonder that Charlie Mingus—a man who likes his music naked—has used Booker whenever he could get him.

Booker is his own man now, though. Not that that means he can't play with others ... his work with Randy Weston and Mingus in recent months proves well that he can. It does mean, however, that Booker has his own stories to tell and that he knows how to get them together without being coached. The best proof of that is his playing on his two previous Prestige albums …
And even better proof is the album at hand. Not that it is necessarily a better album all around; each of them has its points. It's that it is an album of great pieces from the jazz repertoire, and that such a collection represents a challenge to a player: the challenge of saying something definitively on themes that have already had definitive readings; the challenge of proving that you have your own voice not only when playing your own things on your own turf but also when playing on regulation fields with traditional rules. That's major league stuff, and Booker has what it takes.”

Perhaps Ed Williams summed it up best when he wrote this about Booker in his insert notes to Ervin’s 1968 Blue Note LP - The In Between [CDP 7243 8 59379 2]:

“BIG, FULL, OPEN, "LOUD." There are other ways of describing Booker Ervin's sound. Those just happen to be a few that I think are particularly apropos. "LOUD" as I mean it, connotes a basically honest projection of his emotions, without any special regard for modulation. That, coupled with his appreciation for the "big," "full" sound his instrument is capable of producing makes him seem "loud." The important thing is the fact that it's Booker, and his way of doing it. Self-expression is indeed a precious possession.”


The following video features Booker performing his original composition "Dee Da Do" with Richard Williams, trumpet, Horace Parlan, piano, George Tucker, bass and Danny Richmond, drums. 


Booker Ervin


Randy Weston has no end of praise for Booker Ervin. Weston’s tonal portrait of his mother, “Portrait of Vivian,” was introduced on his 1963 recording, African Cookbook. He says that “only Booker Ervin could play the song.” And in his autobiography, African Rhythms, he says that Ervin’s solo on “Vivian” at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966 was “one of the greatest… I would put that solo alongside any other tenor solo. Booker literally cries on the tenor saxophone.”
Ervin worked with Weston between 1963 and ’66. The group Weston led at Monterey included Ray Copeland on trumpet, Cecil Payne on baritone sax, Vishnu Wood on bass, Lennie McBrowne on drums, and Big Black on congas.  On his website, Weston points to this outfit with pride and calls it “an incredible band because number one, we had Booker Ervin, [who] for me was on the same level as John Coltrane. He was a completely original saxophonist. I don’t know anybody who played like Booker. But Booker, he was very sensitive, very quiet, not the sort of guy to push himself or talk about himself…He was a master saxophonist, and the song I wrote for my mother, ‘Portrait of Vivian,’ only he could play it; nobody else could play that song.
“In fact, African Cookbook, which I composed back in the early 60’s, was partly named after Booker because we (musicians) used to call him “Book…” Sometimes when he was playing we’d shout, “Cook, Book.” And the melody of African Cookbook was based upon Booker Ervin’s sound, a sound like the north of Africa. He would kind of take those notes and make them weave hypnotically. So, actually African Cookbook was influenced by Booker Ervin.”
Ervin’s career on the New York scene lasted only a decade before his death from kidney disease in 1969 at age 39. Notwithstanding his major contributions to the music of both Weston and Charles Mingus, he drew little attention during his lifetime, and he’s become a largely forgotten figure since. This is regrettable, for Ervin’s recordings maintain the raw power and emotional force for which they were known in their time.
We’ll hear the first of the series of “Books” that Ervin recorded for Prestige in tonight’s Jazz à la Mode. The Song Book features pianist Tommy Flanagan and includes one of the first recordings of “Come Sunday” that was made outside the realm of Ellingtonia. 
Here’s a rare glimpse of Booker Ervin in action on Miles Davis’s seminal original, “Milestones.”:
 

Booker Ervin, tenor 
Ted Curson, trumpet 
Pony Poindexter, alto 
Nathan Davis, flute 
Kenny Drew, piano 
Jimmy Woode, bass 
Edgar Bateman, drums
 
 http://www.thejazzrecord.com/records/2019/1/7/booker-ervin-the-freedom-book

Leading His Own Way: Booker Ervin - "The Freedom Book"







The Tracks:
A1. A Lunar Tune
A2. Cry Me Not
A3. Grant’s Stand
B1. A Day To Mourn
B2. Al’s In
 
Booker Ervin Quartet:
Booker Ervin - Tenor Sax
Jaki Byard - Piano
Richard Davis - Bass
Al Dawson - Drums
When I originally picked up this beautiful second pressing of “The Freedom Book” I almost immediately set it back down in the rack, simply because these “blue trident” Prestige labels always seem like such a let down from the possibility that you could have found an ever-so-classic yellow and black “fireworks” label pressing. And, of course, there is that stupid modern day stigma of it not being a first pressing, even though I always try not to let that color my decision making when I come across a classic vintage jazz title to add to the collection.
A quick check on the smartphone showed that “The Freedom Book” dated from 1964, meaning it was entirely possible that the “blue trident” label could indicate a first pressing, and while that is not the case here, it turns out that 1964 was the year that Prestige switched label designs (couldn’t they have come up with something a little more creative looking?!?) and this album appears to have had a short run on the yellow “fireworks” label and was then quickly re-pressed on the label version seen here.
It turns out that while neither the first or second pressings from 1964 are easy to come by, they are also not all that sought after either: the original “fireworks” pressing recently fetched $200 on eBay, while the second blue label version could be had in VG+ for under $100. No one seems interested in the original black and silver “stereo fireworks” pressing, and if you aren’t a label snob it was repressed on the lime green label in the early-1970s (which have always sounded just fine on my turntable and are always a great way to grab a classic Prestige title at a bargain price). I scored my VG+ copy for $40 (after bargaining down from the original sticker price of $80), so I’m more than pleased with my purchase from a marketplace point of view. As far as the blue trident label, loyal readers know I’m far from a first-pressing snob, but these generic looking labels always get me down - I guess I’ll just have to come to terms with my design bias and learn to turn the other cheek and just enjoy the music!

The Music:

These days Booker Ervin is usually remembered for his association with Charles Mingus, a fruitful period that resulted in some amazing albums, most notably the all-time classic Mingus Ah Um (but also the great Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus which I wrote about here). Ervin, however, also had a great run of solo records on Prestige from 1963 through 1966, the best of which are his “Book” series which began with the release of The Freedom Book in 1964 (and continued with The Song Book, The Blues Book and The Space Book).  
In the liner notes, Ervin gives some insight into the title:
“I never cared to play with a big band,” states Booker flatly, “It’s more secure I guess, but it restricts your freedom. You can’t play the way you really want to, you know? I guess you have to choose and I’d rather have the freedom.”
And freedom suits Ervin perfectly. He has a muscular and hard-edged tone that is distinctly his, and he puts it to great use on this record. The quartet assembled here isn’t a working group - Ervin put the group together specifically to record the album - but their rapport is excellent. He had played with Jaki Byard during his time with Mingus (Byard is one of the true underrated talents of jazz), but he hadn’t played with drummer Alan Dawson in nearly a decade and Richard Davis on bass was a relative newcomer to the jazz scene at this point. The four musicians got together for the first time on the very same day that they recorded The Freedom Book, a risky undertaking to be sure, but as the resulting music shows, these cats meshed perfectly. It’s a testament to not only their talents, but also to the skills of Ervin as a leader. 
The music the group lays down is definitely not “chilling-out-on-a-sunday-morning” jazz, but rather a set of challenging tunes that demands the listener’s attention. Ervin is definitely doing his own thing here, not concerned with which way the winds of popular jazz were blowing in the early 1960s, perhaps a trait he learned from his time playing with Mingus, a jazz cat at the top of the heap when it comes to following one’s own musical vision. The Freedom Book takes a hard bop base, adds a little post bop to the mix, and finishes things off with just a touch of the avant garde to create a record that has more than stood the test of time, and is certainly an album worthy of many repeated enjoyable spins on the turntable.
The Videos:
A couple of super cool video clips for your viewing pleasure, the first one here features the Charles Mingus Sextet performing “I’ll Remember April” at the Antibes jazz festival in 1960, with an all-star group featuring Bud Powell on piano, Booker Ervin on tenor, Eric Dolphy on alto, Ted Curson on trumpet and Dannie Richmond on drums. A truly historical clip with some of the best jazz players of their day.
 
https://www.npr.org/player/embed/244528394/244529858

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin came to New York in 1958. Pianist Horace Parlan heard him and invited Ervin to sit in one night with a band he worked in. That's how Ervin got hired by bassist Charles Mingus, who featured him on albums like "Blues and Roots" and "Mingus Ah Um." Before long, Ervin was making his own records. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a reissue of Ervin's debut, "The Book Cooks."

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KEVIN WHITEHEAD, BYLINE: Saxophonist Booker Ervin's sextet, playing a blues in the style of a sometime-boss Charles Mingus. It's from 1960's "The Book Cooks," back out on the re-revived Bethlehem label. Ervin came from Northeast Texas, on the Oklahoma line, field hollers coming at him from the east and cattle calls from the west.

He punctuated his lines with high, lonesome hollers before he got to New York and discovered John Coltrane had a similar move. Ervin got ideas from Coltrane after that, but that cry was always his own. Coltrane's tone was glossy as varnished hardwood. Booker Ervin's sound was more coarse, a cane stalk shooting up out of rich earth.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

WHITEHEAD: For the ensemble shouts and background riffs, Booker Ervin is flanked by trumpeter Tommy Turrentine from Max Roach's band, and a tenor saxophonist who traveled in different circles, Lester Young disciple and big-band vet Zoot Sims. Zoot could blow cool - he'd once recorded with Jack Kerouac - but also liked locking horns with fellow tenors. The saxophonists square off in a friendly way on "The Book Cooks." Zoot's tone is a little softer and rounder than Booker's.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "1960")

WHITEHEAD: Booker Ervin and Zoot Sims' "1960," with Mingus' drummer Danny Richmond, and Tommy Flanagan taming an untuned piano. The late '50s and thereabouts was a great period for jazz rhythm sections - mighty bass players, in particular. Nowadays, most bassists set the strings low to the neck so their fingers don't have to fight so hard.

Back then, strings were higher, and players couldn't get around so quickly. But they could pluck a string so hard, it made bass a percussion instrument. Listen to the great George Tucker's bass beat and how Dannie Richmond's hi-hat and cymbals mail his message home.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

WHITEHEAD: Trumpeter Tommy Turrentine, playing the blues. "The Book Cooks" was Booker Ervin's first album under his own name, and it kicked off an early-'60s hot streak. He'd make the classics "The Freedom Book" and "The Space Book" with another great rhythm section, and recorded other good dates involving Tommy Flanagan, George Tucker or Dannie Richmond. But what really makes all those records is Booker Ervin's Texas shout on tenor saxophone, a sound that's both down-home and majestic.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead writes for Point of Departure, Down Beat and eMusic, and is the author of "Why Jazz?" He reviewed the reissue of "The Book Cooks," featuring tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin on the Bethlehem label.

Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved.

https://store.bluenote.com/products/booker-ervin-tex-book-tenor-lp-blue-note-tone-poet-series

Booker Ervin - Tex Book Tenor LP (Blue Note Tone Poet Series)

Ships on: August 21, 2024

Following sideman appearances with pianist Horace Parlan in the early 1960s, Booker Ervin cut two stellar Blue Note records as a leader in 1968 including Tex Book Tenor which had to wait nearly 40 years until 2005 for its first standalone release. With a sleek post-bop quintet featuring trumpeter Woody Shaw, pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Jan Arnet, and drummer Billy Higgins, the Texas-born saxophonist slices through a set of compelling bandmember originals including Barron’s sinuous tune “Gichi” and Shaw’s lilting waltz “In a Capricornian Way,” as well as Ervin’s lovely ballad “Lynn’s Tune” and the hard-swinging “Den Tex,” named for his hometown of Denison. 

Blue Note Tone Poet Series

The Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series was born out of Blue Note President Don Was’ admiration for the exceptional audiophile Blue Note LP reissues presented by Music Matters. Was brought Joe Harley, a.k.a. the “Tone Poet,” on board to curate and supervise a series of reissues from the Blue Note family of labels.

Extreme attention to detail has been paid to getting these right in every conceivable way, from the jacket graphics and printing quality to superior LP mastering (direct from the master tapes) by Kevin Gray to superb 180g audiophile LP pressings by Record Technology Inc. Every aspect of these Tone Poet releases is done to the highest possible standard. It means that you will never find a superior version. This is IT.

This stereo Tone Poet Vinyl Edition was produced by Joe Harley, mastered by Kevin Gray (Cohearent Audio) from the original analog master tapes, pressed on 180g vinyl at Record Technology Inc. (RTI), and packaged in a deluxe tip-on jacket.


Tracklist:

A1: Gichi
A2: Den Tex
A3: In A Capricornian Way

B1: Lynn's Tune
B2: 204

 
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/06/part-4-booker-ervin-good-book-by-simon.html

Saturday, June 2, 2018

Part 4: BOOKER ERVIN – THE GOOD BOOK, by Simon Spillett

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


Simon Spillett authored this article on Booker Ervin to accompany a 2017 release on the Acrobat label - Booker Ervin: The Good Book (Acrobat ACQCD 7121) which compiled his three earliest albums - The Book Cooks, Cookin' and That's It! together - with sideman appearances on recordings led by Teddy Charles, Mal Waldron and Bill Barron.

This boxed set received favourable reviews in several English jazz publications (Jazzwise, The Jazz Rag) and one nationally circulated newspaper, The Financial Times, who gave the collection a four star rating, praising Ervin's "passion with a positive vibe".

Although this is essentially the same piece included in the booklet for the Acrobat box, I have corrected some minor errors and added a small amount of significant "new" information. I believe this may be the first extended essay on Ervin and his work.”

In addition to fronting his own quartet, Simon has won several awards for his music, including the tenor saxophone category of the British Jazz Awards (2011), Jazz Journal magazine, Critic's Choice CD of the Year (2009) and Rising Star in the BBC Jazz Awards (2007).

Simon has his own website which you can visit via this link.

© -  Simon Spillett, copyright protected; all rights reserved, used with the author’s permission.
QUITE A FAMILY MAN -  316 East 6th St., NYC: Jane, Lynn and 'Mr. Boo Boo'
“Alan Dawson's abiding memory of Booker Ervin was that of “quite a family man.”
 
“Actually, that was one for the things that we spoke about during the first week we worked together”, he remembered in 1970. “He said he enjoyed the playing and everything but then he said to me “Boy, I miss my family.”

Ervin had married Jane Wilkie around 1959, and within a year they'd had a child, a boy named - with inevitable continuity - Booker Telleferro Ervin III, but, as a baby, known affectionately by the nickname 'Mr. Boo Boo.' Soon after, the couple also had a daughter, Lynn. Both children were commemorated in Ervin's composing – Boo named for Booker Junior and an eponymous song for Lynn, recorded in 1968.

Home for the Ervin family during the early 1960s was 316 East St., an apartment which became the hub of Booker's career up to the end of 1964 when he, Jane and the children headed to Europe. To those that knew Ervin, it was apparent that, away from the demands of music, family was everything to him. “His main concern was taking care of them, and everything he tried to do, he had them in mind,” remembers the artist Richard 'The Prophet' Jennings, a close friend  best known jazz-wise for his cover contributions to Eric Dolphy's Prestige albums Outward Bound and Out There and for whom Ervin would pen Tune for Richard, heard on Horace Parlan's Happy Frame of Mind.

At home, Jennings remembers Ervin being “a fun-loving regular guy who could be kind of devilish.”

It was the saxophonists wife, however, who best knew Ervin's ups and downs, the true price of the his hard-wired devotion to his craft. Life as a freelance jazz musician in New York in the early 1960s – especially a tenor saxophone playing one – was a frustrating, never-ending game of finding work and suitable remuneration. Despite signing a contract to Prestige Records in 1963 (whose advances were by no means as generous as those Coltrane and Rollins were enjoying at Impulse! and RCA-Victor at the same time) and the ardent support of his producer at the label, Don Schlitten, life could still be a struggle financially. Interviewing Ervin in early 1965, English journalist Mike Hennessey found the tenorist remarkably open about his cares and woes. “He sits crouched behind an Art Farmer moustache and heavy-rimmed glasses and he worries,” Hennessey began. “For five years I've been saying things'll get better. They never have. I can't really complain personally but I haven't got rich, but I'm living comfortably.”

“I still get discouraged. I feel I can do a lot better,” Ervin went on, “and I suppose I'll go on striving until I die. Sometimes things get very lean and I feel like throwing the horn out of the window. But my wife, Jane, keeps me going. She really lifts me up.”

Hennessey also learned how Ervin's dedication and ultimate commitment sometime rubbed up against a blasé attitude among his fellow players. “It's the thing that bugs me most – the lack of enthusiasm in musicians when they play. If you have guys like that with you, you get two different things going...I think if I were coming up now, I'd give up. It's not an encouraging scene for young musicians.”

Nor was in an encouraging scene for those who had already gained some sort of a reputation.“The Freedom Book [Ervin's 1963 album for Prestige, released in mid-1964] had caused a lot of excitement in New York,” remembers Michael Cuscuna. “But New York isn't America...which meant that [Ervin's] triumphs were mixed with incomprehensible dry spells.”

“He was so underrated in the sixties,” adds another respected jazz scribe, Gary Giddins, who as a young fan in New York witnessed first-hand what public indifference was doing to Ervin's career. “Everybody was talking about Coltrane and Shorter and Rollins and the big guns, and Ervin was really something of a cult figure. Those Prestige records were hardly best-sellers.”

Ervin eventually cut a total of seven albums for Prestige – which if there's any justice at all should be gathered together and given the boxed set treatment – all of which have gripping moments, but it was The Freedom Book of which he remained most proud. Ervin's Saxophone Colossus or Soul Station – if not quite his A Love Supreme – it's an album brimming with the leaders personality, and remains an essential jazz document of the times, not least for A Day To Mourn, Ervin's unusually moving tribute to John F. Kennedy, assassinated two weeks prior to the recording. (In an eerie coincidence, on the morning of his murder, November 22nd 1963, Kennedy had flown from Ervin's old air force stamping ground, Carswell Air Force Base, to Dallas)

The personnel for the album – pianist Jaki Byard, bassist Richard Davis and drummer Alan Dawson -  although all friends of Ervin's, had never previously played together as a unit, but so felicitous were the results of this initial session that Prestige united them again for The Space Book (1964)  and Heavy!!!! (1966) with Davis and Dawson also going on to grace the albums The Blues Book and The Song Book. As a rhythm section they were unlike anything else in jazz - in the words of Michael Cuscuna, “as elastic, innovative and exciting as the trio of Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams, which Miles Davis was incubating at the time.” And with such individuality on hand, there was no way an Ervin quartet date could truthfully be mistaken for one by any other tenorist then operating. The Freedom, Space and Song Books proved hands down that Ervin most certainly wasn't a Coltrane clone.

But he wasn't Davis either. There simply wasn't enough work to maintain a steady band of his own, and he could only watch as others gained the plaudits. “I know he felt under-appreciated,” says Richard Jennings of his friend. “Without him saying it specifically, I knew what he meant. That's one of the reasons he went to Europe – to get recognition and to make a living for his family.” Other reasons may have fuelled this decision to quit New York; in 1964, Ervin won the tenor saxophone category of the annual Talent Deserving Wider Recognition poll conducted among leading jazz critics by DownBeat magazine (a profile of him had appeared in the magazine two years earlier, one of very few pieces ever written about the saxophonist during his lifetime) but like many such accolades in jazz, the net result was largely academic; following the win there was still no more work forthcoming and the very title of the award itself seemed almost to offer a patronising affirmation that, a decade into his New York career, Ervin was still seen as a “second-string” talent only appreciated by the cognoscenti. According to Michael Cuscuna, by 1964, things were getting desperate for the saxophonist. On a scene in which you were “either a revolutionary or a cliché” Ervin's choices were stark - “you exiled yourself to Europe or starved.”

Ervin's European sojourn began in October 1964, following the offer of a months' worth of work at Copenhagen's celebrated Montmartre club, a venue that had already enticed several other US saxophonists, including Johnny Griffin, Don Byas and Dexter Gordon (a broadcast from Ervin's Montmarte stint can be heard on YouTube). All three men were by then living in Europe, part of a veritable exodus of American jazzmen to the continent, lured not only by work opportunities and increased critical respect (“Jazz musicians were, in America, just horn-blowers. A kind of musical weirdo” – Dexter Gordon) but also by the prospect of living free of the United States' frightening domestic issues. With John F. Kennedy dead, America seemed on the brink of social implosion and for Ervin - a black man in a mixed marriage - the clincher had been the hoo-hah surrounding Senator Barry Goldwater's election bid in 1964. “I really thought he would win,” he told Mike Hennessey. “I saw him on TV and I said 'What!' It reminded me of those old movies about Hitler. The racial business really frightened me. I didn't want to be caught up in that – so I planned to come to Europe for good.”

EUROPE 1964-1966 - “Not the musicians' paradise...”

American jazzmen had been living and working in continental Europe since the 1930s, each, almost to a man, following the pattern laid down by Coleman Hawkins' during his epic pre-war stint as a peripatetic soloist; secure one firm booking and let word of mouth do the rest. This method had certainly worked for others, most notably Dexter Gordon, who arrived in England to play Ronnie Scott's club in the autumn of 1962, moved on to play engagements in Paris and Copenhagen and then wound up staying for the next fourteen years (with annual trips home to record and see family). Ervin went one further, packing up Jane, Booker junior and Lynn to take his chances where and whenever they might come. After the initial Montmartre gig – which found him working with fellow ex-pat, pianist Kenny Drew – he headed to the Blue Note in Paris (Ervin had visited France four years earlier with Charles Mingus). For a hot minute, it seemed he had found what he was seeking, with news filtering back to New York that “there seems to be no indication that “[he] will be coming back to the United States for quite a while” (Ira Gitler, The Space Book). But it was all a false alarm. Almost straight away, it was apparent that there were as many obstacles to be surmounted in this new racially tolerant, artistically respectful environment as there had been in New York's frustrating maze of thwarted opportunity. Local indifference was by no means exclusive to the US jazz scene. By mid-1965, Crescendo magazine pointed out “Booker Ervin, who intended to stay a while in Paris [has] gone south to Spain because [he] was unable to find work in France.”

Although he would perform in several countries during his European episode – including Holland, France, Germany, Sweden and Italy (the 1966 San Remo Festival) – the place where Ervin and family put down its firmest roots was Barcelona, which, according to well-respected Catalonian jazz legend, drummer and composer Rámon Farrán, the tenorist had been hipped to by Lionel Hampton and Dexter Gordon. Another plus was the presence of the blind piano virtuoso Tete Montoliu, a player whose reputation extended far and wide, and who was a close friend of Gordon's. It was Montoliu who alerted Farrán to Ervin's arrival “calling me up and asking me to come to Barcelona to meet 'a very good American sax player'.

By all accounts, Ervin loved Barcelona, not just because of a regular gig at its Jamboree club, but also out of an affection for Antoni Gaudi, Catalan's great modernist architect, whose work is scattered throughout the city. The city's musicians loved him too. “He was very friendly and handsome”, remembers Farrán. “We did two or three concerts organised by Tete, [I think] in Valldoreig, Terrassa and Sabadell.” Sadly, owing to touring commitments the drummer missed an opportunity to record with Ervin on an album featuring vocalist Núria Feliu, his place being taken by another expat American, Billie Brooks.

While in Barcelona, Ervin also met English jazz saxophonist Ronnie Scott, en route to Majorca to work at Farrán's Indigo club. England was a notable omission from Ervin's European jaunt and he never ever graced the stage of Scott's famous club in London. Nevertheless the two men became friends, as Scott remembered in one of Ervin's obituaries; “He was a marvellous guy, and we kept in touch with each other. In fact, we were hoping to have him in the [Ronnie Scott] club the next time he came over [to Europe]. He really knocked me out – a great player, very virile and forceful and, from my brief knowledge of him... a really nice person.”

The recording with Feliu wasn't the only session Ervin taped during his European stay. He also featured on an album under the leadership of old Mingus colleague Ted Curson – the magnificent Urge (Fontana, 1966) – and his contract with Prestige remained active, leading to producer Don Schlitten and aid David Himmelstein flying out to Munich in October 1965 to tape a summit meeting between Ervin and his original musical idol Dexter Gordon, yielding the album Setting The Pace. The planning – or rather lack of it – at the German end of the deal was almost farcical (and is explained at length in Himmelstein's impressionistic sleeve note to the resulting LP) but nevertheless the music is classic – two stretched out jams on Gordon's title track and Dexter's Deck – with Ervin showing a number of distinct facets: respect for his hero, a hint of gauntlet throwing and, above all else, remarkable originality. Listening to the two men together is like witnessing the handing on of a musical baton. That same long night, Ervin and the rhythm section of Jaki Byard, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Alan Dawson, also cut a quartet album, The Trance, the title track of which commemorated bassist George Tucker, a close friend from the days of the Play House Four, who had died of a cerebral haemorrhage in New York seventeen days before the recording, aged just 38. The loss hit Ervin like a sledgehammer and was certainly one of the contributory factors to what has become one of the most talked-of and controversial of all his recordings, that made two days later at the Berlin Jazz Festival, rescued from a radio broadcast and commercially released by the German Enja label in 1977 on an album titled Lament For Booker Ervin. (Ironically, given it was intended as an overdue memorial, even this records sleeve notes succeeded in getting the date of Ervin's death wrong.)

The circumstances behind this recording reveal a great deal about Ervin and his mindset at the time. Promoter Joachim-Ernest Berendt's assembly of American jazz soloists for the Berlin weekend was nothing less than starry, covering everyone from Swing Era veterans like Earl Hines and Roy Eldridge, through cool school mavens Lee Konitz, Lennie Tristano and Gerry Mulligan, right up to the avant-garde, in the controversial shape of the Ornette Coleman trio. The presence of so many star names also led Berendt to assemble several never-to-be-repeated jam sessions, one of which, held at Berlin's newly opened Philharmonic Hall on October 29th 1965, created some of the most provocative music of the festival. Strap-lined “The Six Tenor Giants” the concert showcased Ervin as part of a truly mouth-watering line-up including Dexter Gordon, Ben Webster, Don Byas, Brew Moore and Sonny Rollins, accompanied by a rhythm section of Kenny Drew, Neils-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and Alan Dawson. Any real collaboration was almost instantly rendered impossible by Webster's all-too-apparent inebriation, the veteran tenor getting into a harangue with the audience before being marched off the stage by Berendt.  Already raw from the recent news of George Tucker's death – just one of “many other emotional problems” Jane Ervin remembered from the night – this handling of Webster incensed Ervin. With each tenorist allotted a feature number, and a plan for them all to join in a six sax jam to conclude the gig, time was of the essence, but as Ervin began to play his chosen piece – a simple blues titled Grant's Stand, dedicated to New York DJ Alan Grant, and already recorded on The Freedom Book – the muse was suddenly upon him. Although he estimated the length of the performance incorrectly (it ran for 27 rather than 45 minutes), English journalist Bob Dawbarn's memory of the event, published in Melody Maker the following week captures the mood of the moment; “After 20 [minutes] the natives were naturally getting a bit restive. By the 30-minute mark, they were slow hand-clapping and the number ended amid scenes of general uproar.”

In spite of its apocryphal reputation as Ervin's Chasin' The Trane moment, the performance is not among the most creative of Ervin's discography, although its length and sheer stamina do make it a gripping listen. Nor did its commercial release support the legend of the night. “Berlin audiences can be the most critical in the world and they never hesitate to let you know if they are displeased,” recalled drummer Alan Dawson in the albums notes. “But they loved Booker and at one point they stated egging him on to keep blowing.” Kenny Drew too thought the solo a major statement, urged on by the crowd.

We hear some of this encouragement certainly, but also (around the twenty-two minutes in) we also hear a voice on-stage – possibly that of compère Goetz Kronburger – actually shout “Stop him! Stop him! Stop him!” And there are as many boos as cheers as the performance finally hits the buffers five or so minutes later.

Many questions remain. Had Ervin actually done himself a disservice with such an extended outing? Was it a good thing to make heroes like Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon wait in the wings? (A three-tenor joust between them broadcast the same night can now be heard on YouTube) Having won his DownBeat gong just before his European self-exile, was Ervin, in fact, seizing this as his chance - at last – to prove his mettle within the big leagues? Is this the sound of a man almost literally fighting his corner? It's now impossible to know for sure, although he really does weigh in like a meaty contender. The only definite thing Blues For You (a title Enja appended the track, taken from Ervin's opening announcement) provides is a durable, highly evocative souvenir of his time as a European expat, an expedition that had so quickly moved from optimism to cold, hard reality. As Mike Hennessey recorded of the saxophonist in January 1965, barely three months into his trip, “he's already discovered that Europe is not quite the musicians' paradise it is sometimes cracked up to be”, an observation supported by his friend Richard Jennings. “That [stay in Europe] had its ups and downs; I don't think he ever got what he was looking for.” 
 
“Plenty of work, but few musical challenges,” is Michael Cuscuna's summary of Ervin's time overseas, but while the saxophonist may not have uncovered what he himself sought, he did leave behind him something extremely valuable – one of the few surviving film clips of him in action, said to have been taped in Belgium around January 1966, in the company of a team of fellow ex-pats, including altoist Pony Poindexter and trumpeter Ted Curson. This line-up plays a succinct version of Milestones – you can find it on YouTube, apparently posted by Ervin's son – in which he takes a typically forthright solo. Filmed up-close, we finally get a chance to see what lay behind the torrential outpourings heard on disc. The result is actually rather disarming. Ervin stands virtually motionless, his mouthpiece buried beneath his extensive moustache, and he plays with an almost nerveless passivity. There are no Coltraneish knee-bends, no Rollinsesque horn waving, just – as Nat Hentoff noted earlier - “the implacable stance of a man for whom taking care of business was first and not second nature.” In fact, the only spectacle is the lack of spectacle, and therein may lay another key to Ervin's failure to gain acknowledgement; by the late 1960s, jazz had entered a period of of overt on-stage emoting – think of Coltrane's agonised expression or those fierce collective improvisations led by a dashiki-clad Archie Shepp (another tenorist Eddie Lockjaw Davis characterised this approach as “a guy in a sheet going rootle-tootle up and down the scale”). Ervin, on the other hand, looks smart and stands solidly – and we all know how infrequently words like smart and solid were used to describe the jazz styles of the time.

CALIFORNIA 1966: “There's a lot of love in the air ...”

“In the summer of 1966, Booker Ervin returned to the United States...because, he says, there are no musical challenges involved in working abroad,” Michael Morgan's notes for the LP The Trance conclude. “One hopes that his talents will be better appreciated by the American public now that he has returned. It's high time that people came out of their trance and got hip to Booker's.”

For a time it looked as if they might. In September, a week after cutting his final album for Prestige, Heavy!!!, a sextet outing including young guns trumpeter Jimmy Owens and trombonist Garnett Brown, Ervin headed to California to play the Monterey Jazz Festival as a guest with Randy Weston's sextet. The gig was recorded and eventually issued by Verve in 1994, bringing to light two of Ervin's most powerful post-European performances, the ballad Portrait of Vivian and a sprawling, fevered 25-minute version of African Cookbook.

It was this latter performance – and its effect on the Monterey crowd in particular -  that piqued Richard Bock's interest in Ervin. Bock operated Pacific Jazz, the independent label that had gone on from its initial unexpected success with cool-school discs of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet a decade earlier to encompass a much wider swathe of post-bop jazz, ranging from the organ-soul of Richard 'Groove' Holmes to the nascent funk of The Jazz Crusaders and beyond. Hearing Ervin, Bock thought he'd make a nice addition to the Pacific Jazz roster and so that fall he signed to a deal resulting almost instantly in the album Structurally Sound, a record rarely spoken of as such but arguably one of Ervin's best. Unlike Prestige, Pacific Jazz allowed more studio time – in this instance three days – and, based in Los Angeles, their production values were altogether more glossy and Californian, by this point even favouring gatefold sleeves. Featuring a quintet with trumpeter Charles Tolliver in the front-line – the latest in a series of interestingly non-fashionable names Ervin would chose as his musical partners – Structurally Sound was almost a post-bop catch-all, mixing jazz classics (Oliver Nelson's Stolen Moments, Billy Strayhorn's Take The 'A' Train), original material and choice standards (You're My Everything, Dancing In The Dark), but despite the potency of its improvisational content, the foreshortened nature of the tracks indicated where the label were to push Ervin next. When the album was reissued on CD in 2001, the discovery of a discarded version of White Christmas said it all: Pacific Jazz were really after an airplay hit not a genre-defining album. With commercial forces now leading over artistic desire, the fate of Structurally Sound was typical of that of many fine late-1960s hard bop-and beyond records – good as it was it simply got lost in a market becoming fixated with the latest innovations of Coltrane, Davis and Shepp and co. If anything, its follow-up was an even more spectacular miss-hit.

On paper Booker and Brass looked promising. Taped in New York over three days in September 1967, with the saxophonist fronting an all-brass ensemble featuring Freddie Hubbard, under the direction of another less-than-celebrated tenorman Teddy Edwards, it might have been Ervin's match-up to Coltrane's Africa/Brass or Sonny Rollins Brass/Trio were it not for the A&R decision that the music on offer document a travelogue of the United States. Thus Ervin fought his way – with some success – out of an unlikely repertoire embracing St. Louis Blues, Harlem Nocturne and even I Left My Heart In San Francisco. It spoke volumes for his integrity that he did so with no little style and although some of these covers – Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans, in particular – were surprisingly affecting, the albums best shots were Ervin's two originals, East Dallas Special -  a shuffling, blues-wail recalling his youth – and LA  After Dark, a grooving cooker that if had it appeared a few years earlier might have provided Ervin's Sidewinder moment.

Nevertheless the critics were baffled – where was the edgy, daring saxophonist of The Space Book? Had he now gone forever? “If Ervin and Edwards had been allowed to combine [on more tracks like LA After Dark] something might of happened,” reported Billboard. “As it is, the album is a picture of a man often rising above his material. That says a lot about the size of Ervin's talent.”

For some of his time signed to Pacific Jazz, Ervin had stayed in California. A change of climate couldn't however overcome the chill winds of critical indifference blowing toward his brand of jazz. Los Angeles had never been an especially easy city in which to be a black jazzman and now, with the hippy movement in full swing  and with the sounds of soul capturing many young Afro-American fans, he found himself fighting a losing battle. The recollections of one young listener, Dennis Wong, then serving in the Air Force – who caught a gig by Ervin in tandem with fellow Texan tenor Harold Land at this time – could almost serve as a summary of the saxophonist's fortunes at this moment; “me and four other people went to a now defunct jazz club in the Watts area in LA. The jukebox was playing Coltrane's 'Ascension' and we were the only people in the club but these cats really wailed with Booker the stand out. [Afterwards] Booker came over and thanked us for coming, and smiled and said, "There's a lot of love in the air".

Love there may have been, but audience there was not, and by early 1967 Ervin had returned to once more make New York City his permanent home.


NO MISUNDERSTANDING: The final years 1968-1970

Booker Ervin's final years in New York mirror almost exactly those during the time immediately prior to his relocation to Europe. He was back home but nobody much noticed.  Indeed, the jazz capital had hardly trumpeted news of his return, although DownBeat did see fit to run a feature on him in its March 7th 1968 issue. From around the middle of the same year, he and his family occupied 204 East 13th Street, the apartment once lived in by Randy Weston, who had then just relocated to Morocco (Ervin commemorated the favour in his theme 204, heard on Tex Book Tenor). The same old worries applied: playing music and keeping a family had never quite added up, but as acoustic bop-derived jazz began to hit a period of doldrums, Ervin found himself playing to a city which didn't seem to know his worth. As Michael Cuscuna has noted he was now “suddenly too modern and sophisticated to play uptown, and too traditional and mainstream to play downtown.” As cute as this assessment sounds, at its heart was a very real truth that Ervin's cross-pollinating musical approach – straddling the border between post-bop ambition and tradition-honouring sensibilities – made him a hard sell. At one level he could still pull a crowd – the newsletter of the Hartford Jazz Society, Connecticut for spring 1967, for example, reported that his gig for them was “the pleasure predicted. He attracted nearly 150 listeners” - but in the Apple things were less enthusiastic. Gary Giddins remembers seeing Ervin play “as a sideman in Ted Curson’s quintet at a little mob-controlled joint in the Lincoln Center district called La Boheme”, still delivering his full-force playing to a small, less than enthralled crowd. Just occasionally, there were bigger gigs - a trip to guest with the Danish Radio Big Band in summer 1968, a further stint at Copenhagen's Montmarte and an appearance with his own quartet at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1967, for which Ervin recruited the young Chick Corea. Despite his own work concerns, Ervin maintained a keen interest in new, younger players, pooling his sidemen from such left-field names as pianist Bobby Few, drummer Lenny McBrowne (a particularly inspiring partner) and now virtually forgotten bassists Jan Arnet (a Czech he'd worked with in Europe) and Cevera Jefferies. And, when the occasions arose to lock horns with another front-liner he'd plump for people like Jimmy Owens, Woody Shaw and Charles Tolliver. On some gigs he even found himself going head-to-head with musicians in whom he had spiritual heirs. Fan Jon King remembers “a session in Queens, hosted by one of the DJ's from WWRL...[at] a nondescript, carpeted basement” in which “Ervin was playing alongside Billy Harper, just arrived in New York from Texas, Junior Cook [and] Steve Grossman. The music was so hot...”

King remembers this gig as taking place around 1969, by which point Ervin's recording career had cooled off almost completely. During the late 1960s, Pacific Jazz was operating under the corporate umbrella of Liberty Records, who'd also purchased Blue Note, and with Ervin now back permanently in New York it was expedient to transfer him to the latter label. The trouble was, by the time Ervin arrived on Blue Note, the demands of Liberty's head office had began to filter down to the shop floor. In fact, the only album Blue Note released of his (it taped a second and gave it a catalogue number but never issued it, the material first surfacing on the double LP Back From The Gig in 1976, then later as a single CD Tex Book Tenor) The In Between, is almost an archetype of the kind of records the label were producing in the final years of the 1960s - the music spirited and committed (indeed, Ervin's playing is, if anything, more together than at any time in his career) and yet missing something – the spark, freshness and imprint-associated “style” of the earlier Blue Notes, the music now smoothed out, more produced and far more generic than of yore. The records title also registers irony on many levels - just as Blue Note was was no longer the house of the cutting edge, Ervin was similarly caught between a rock and a hard place, neither as capricious and unfettered as Albert Ayler and Pharaoh Sanders, whose very out-ness actually made them a marketable commodity, nor as inside as veterans like Stitt and Dexter Gordon.

The In Between also showed another, subtle but significant sign of things being somewhat amiss; Ervin had recycled two existing compositions – Mour and Largo, taped earlier for Prestige and Bethlehem respectively – once upon a time an unimaginable sin on a Blue Note date (everyone knows the story of Sonny Stitt's one and only date for the label, ended by producer Alfred Lion storming into the studio as Stitt launched into Bye, Bye Blackbird, shouting in his loaded German accent 'who vants anuzzer version of zat?!). It was, perhaps, a worrying indication that, close to the end, Ervin's well was beginning to run dry.

Between August 1968 and the beginning of January 1969, he made just two more on record appearances as a sideman, on pianist Andrew Hill's Grass Roots, an album which was something of a stylistic volte face for Hill, aiming for the archetypal Blue Note jazz funk hit a la The Sidewinder, and even including Lee Morgan among its cast, and on blind reed sensation Eric Kloss's In The Land of Giants, his last known recording, reuniting him with both Prestige and the Byard/Davis/Dawson line-up that had earlier made the classic 'Book' series. There was tragic irony in Ervin's discography petering out at this point, the only real juncture in his career where there could have been said to be a genuine “gap in the market” into which he'd fit. Coltrane was now gone, Sonny Rollins was once more in retirement, Stan Getz had emigrated and Dexter Gordon and Johnny Griffin had yet to make a permanent return to the USA – Ervin may not have be a true contender for the crowns of these men, but he undoubtedly remained a worthy prince.

The only thing these final years really provided in Ervin's favour was a fairer, more rounded critical assessment of his own voice, typified by Ed Williams' notes to The In Between; “He's natural and he's honest,” wrote Williams. “If we accept him on those term there can be no misunderstanding.” Others agreed. In October 1969, Ervin was subject of a short study in the British music weekly Melody Maker, written by Alan Twelftree, who was quick to praise two of the tenorists greatest attributes – his connection to the “tradition” (“He is old enough to remember the way the others sounded when they all wore hats”) and his on-record reliability (“in the very best way...a very rare and enviable quality”). The article also spoke of Ervin's next possible step, with Twelftree thinking him “young enough to have evolved a style which should remain valid for a long time to come.”

Free from the over-cooked expectations of earlier writers like Ira Gitler and Michael Morgan, would the 1970s be the decade in which Booker Ervin might finally step onto the pantheon?

Alas, it was not to be.

Ervin's playing on these last dates is as it always had been – strong, hard-boiled, brimming with energy - and it provides no evidence whatsoever of his fast failing health. And yet, throughout this time, cancer was eating away at one of his kidneys. If there were no clues to this in his playing, there had been perhaps been other warning signs; Ervin's weight had fluctuated during the 1960s – a classic sign of the disease. Just look at the slim young man you see in those photos from the sessions for Charles Mingus' Ah Um album in 1959 and compare him to the bulky, bloated figure one sees on the inset to Booker and Brass.

There was little that could be done. Admitted to New York's Bellevue Hospital during summer 1970, he was operated on to remove a kidney but never fully recovered, passing away on Monday August 31st, exactly two months shy of his fortieth birthday.

Ervin's funeral took place at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in New York, his eulogy delivered by The Reverend John G. Gensel, a pastor who worked closely with the city's jazz community and of whom Max Roach said “[he was] our spiritual guru, our psychiatrist.” As such, Gensel knew that any funeral for a jazzman was as much a celebration of his work as a formal closing of his life, even more so with those who, like Ervin, had never really got the breaks. Regardless of whatever ranking critics may have held him in, Ervin's fellow musicians knew him for what he was – a strongly individual performer, fiercely committed to the cause of jazz who had delivered a powerful message on the New York scene for a dozen years. He was part of their village, their tribe, their kith and kin. And, should the measure of Ervin's talent still have remained in doubt, there was no better confirmation of its true level than to look at the list of those who attended who lined St. Peters that day, many far better-know, far more influential, and far better documented than the man to whom they'd come to offer their respects, among them Charles Mingus, Roland Kirk, Don Byas, James Moody, Kenny Burrell, Ernie Wilkins, Joe Newman, Cecil Payne and Jaki Byard.

Ervin's death made the New York Times and DownBeat. It also prompted two especially thoughtful pieces in the English jazz press, one a remembrance of the saxophonist by his close friend and colleague, Alan Dawson, published in Jazz Journal in November 1970, the other by Richard Williams in Melody Maker, drawing in a series of tributes from leading British jazzmen. Dawson's memories mixed the personal  (Ervin's love of the drummers children, his driving to Grand Central Station to personally collect Dawson for the Freedom Book session)  and the professional (the saxist's attitude to recording, his dedication to musical spontaneity) while Williams' article contained a well-balanced and refreshingly free-thinking evaluation of Ervin's role within the wider jazz world. Summing up, Williams called him, quite rightly, “a force of nature...the stuff of which jazz is made.”

Besides the fact that Ervin had died right at the very moment when he could have filled the gaps left by the absent Gordon's and Griffin's of the world, his passing contained another deep irony, one which went unrecorded at the time: he had survived Denison's other famous son, Dwight D. Eisenhower, by eighteen or so months, Ike passing away in March 1969. The two men's lives couldn't have been more different - Eisenhower had died at 78, after a career which had seen him reach the highest office, that of President of the United States. Ervin had been moved on from Denison inspired by another kind of president – Lester Young – but had ultimately failed to gain a seat at the top table, dying not yet 40. Other than through an accident of birth the two men's lives did not intertwine – although, like Ervin's employer Charles Mingus, Ike had also once faced down Orval Faubus – but, if it's at all permissible to twist words from one context to another, Eisenhower did once utter a pithy statement that could serve just as well for those who fail to realise Booker Ervin's worth as it did for the students at Dartmouth College to whom it was addressed in 1953; “Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.”


COMPLETELY HIMSELF – appendix to The Book

So who's fault was is it that Booker Ervin never reached the top of his tree -  the critics, the record labels, the club owners of America, other musicians? And who's to blame for his name being, if not exactly burned from the history books, then at the very least scorched around the edges? The answers, of course, can't be pinned incontestably on any one individual or attributed to some sort of critic-led conspiracy. It lies simply in the fact that Ervin was born at exactly the same time as a hell of a lot of other marvellous jazz tenor players and that's that – nothing more, nothing less. He simply got lost in the shuffle of talent the like of which the jazz world will probably never see again. Those in that pack who pushed furthest ahead – the Coltrane's, Mingus's and Ornette Coleman's – understandably got the best press, those like Ervin - whose music wasn't nearly so controversial - simply weren't shiny and new enough to catch the child-like attention of much of the days jazz press and record industry. Ervin was by no means unique in this. Indeed, like all but a few jazz musicians, he left no real legacy outside of his recordings and the impression he personally made upon those who knew him or heard him live, a list that, as the years pass, grows ever shorter. No-one now would dare make the claims some writers made for him during the 1960s – especially those who placed him on a par with Coltrane or Rollins. These arguments haven't worn well, nor should they. In fact, without the need for contemporary sycophancy, we now see Ervin as he must rightfully be seen –  as he should always have been seen – as one part of the vast, exciting, individual-filled jazz scene of the 1960s, a single player in a huge game of musical excellence, capable of moments of true brilliance, shouting out with a voice like no other. Without doubt, the thing he possessed in spades right from the very first notes heard on-record was a sound, one so unmistakably his that in the long-game it actually played to his favour, although he himself never lived long enough to learn it. Unlike Coltrane, Charlie Parker or even his first musical hero Lester Young, Ervin's sound never found a successful imitator – it is still too personal, too much a part of him, too hard to truly define that it simply can't be served in pastiche or, when all was said and done, really codified. Apart from all the purple prose about its heat, urgency and drive, people still don't talk much about Ervin in definable, harmonic terms. In fact, as we've seen, if those writers who praised him during the 1960s had taken him under a microscope they'd have seen more blues-based fervour than harmonic filigree  – and this, in these days of worldwide jazz education, perhaps the only real way in which jazz styles can now be passed on, is certainly unteachable. To Booker Ervin sound – that “real hard, loud tenor sound” - was everything.

No, Ervin's lot wasn't ever that of the innovator – nor was it either that of an anonymous musical footsoldier, a studio hack or an also ran. He remains forever somewhere in between. In fact, there is no better summary of his career than that found in one review of The Space Book, by English writer Mark Gardner who wrote how Ervin “hovered on the brink of greatness for a number of years.” Gardner penned those words in 1968, and knowing now what we do about how little time Ervin had left at this point, this assessment takes on a new meaning. Ervin never did achieve “greatness” in quite the way Gardner and others would have liked to have seen – instead, even today, he hovers like a satellite, close to the orbit of jazz innovation, in particular through his work with Charles Mingus, but never quite at the centre of things; an out-there talent still.

Who best to sum up Ervin's appeal and legacy then? First, Gary Giddins, the respected author and hugely panoramic jazz observer who has always had a knack for getting to the essence of those he appraises. What does he think made Ervin notable? “You know it's him after two notes” he says. “There is no more distinctive player than Booker Ervin. I wouldn't say he is more distinctive than Coltrane or Rollins...nor would I say that he is a great as them, and I wouldn't say that in his overall conception he is an original, and yet he is completely himself.” Another long-term fan, Michael Cuscuna delivered a useful overview of Ervin's place within a wider context in 2005, calling him “one of those immensely creative people who did not hold a proper official place in the evolution of jazz and did not have a whole school of followers or imitators...there was only one Booker Ervin, and there'll never be another.”

It's a recurring theme  - that of identity - and one that begs the question, if one listens to jazz to hear how each musician in turn expresses the music, then if someone is “completely himself” then he maybe he does have all the hallmarks of true greatness, the only greatness that, when all's said and done, really matters in jazz – that you're great at being yourself. Ervin can certainly be said to have achieved that.

Ultimately, that's all that matters to us now; that Ervin existed and set down music that can still intrigue, enchant and entertain us on its own terms. If it offers a connective thread to the broader fabric of the times in which it was made, then that's all well and good, and if in it we can hear how Ervin's voice fitted within the jazz tenor jigsaw that surrounded him then it's provided some stylistic and chronological enlightenment too. We should also take with us that he was one of jazz's great many taken-too-soon casualties – not hugely eulogised like a Coltrane or a Parker, but missed all the same. He was a committed musician, for sure, but he was, as we've seen in the recollections of Alan Dawson, Richard Jennings and others, an equally committed family man. Let's not forget that he was a young father he died, leaving a young wife and two small children, who would never grow up to witness a further expansion (much less further recognition) of his talent.

I have no idea of the whereabouts of Jane Ervin, or even if she is still living, and have been unable to trace Booker's daughter Lynn, but his son is out there, leaving an online footprint of a military, aeronautical and aerospace industry-based career which has taken him across the US in much the same way that his father once journeyed as a touring musician. I have no idea if Booker Telleferro Ervin III will ever read these words, but if he does then perhaps I can speak for the many of us who believe his father was a musician of extraordinary personality, and who continue to find something enchanting in his bluff, “this is me” performances. The heat of his playing may have failed to melt New York's impasse of critical indifference, but it retains is warmth and power to move us, right here, right now.

By all accounts, Booker Ervin II was a warm man himself, softly spoken and gentle, who seemed to be able to express himself verbally with the same sort of no-nonsense candour that characterises his playing. The last word must surely therefore go to Booker himself. “There's nothing on earth I like better than playing music,” he once said.  

When a man expresses himself with such commendable focus then the very least he deserves in our total, rapt attention in return.”

Simon Spillett
August 2017
 

Booker Ervin - The Freedom Book [1963]



Booker Ervin - That's It! (Full Album)

Booker Ervin (1965) - The Space Book (Full)


Booker Ervin - The Blues Book [Full Album]


Booker Ervin - Lament For Booker Ervin (Full Album)


Don Patterson With Booker Ervin – Hip Cake Walk



Roy Haynes With Booker Ervin - Cracklin' (Full Album)




Booker L̲i̲t̲t̲l̲e, Booker E̲r̲v̲i̲n̲ ̲– S̲o̲u̲n̲d̲s̲ O̲f̲ T̲h̲e̲ I̲n̲n̲e̲r ̲C̲i̲ty̲ (1̲9̲6̲0̲)̲

 

Booker Ervin With Dexter Gordon – Setting The Pace (FULL ALBUM)

BOOKER ERVIN the in between (1968)


Booker Ervin - Structurally Sound (1966) 


Booker Ervin 1966 - Deep Night





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