Search - Frank Hewitt :: We Loved You

Better late than never

N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 06/18/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There are plenty of sad stories of neglect in jazz but Frank Hewitt's is one of the saddest. He was born in 1935, & developed a lyrical bop piano style--his acknowledged masters were Powell, Monk & Elmo Hope, & he was part of the Barry Harris circle of musicians. (Hewitt also reminds me a lot of the pianist Chris Anderson, who seems also to have moved in the same circles. I also was reminded more distantly of Lou Levy, though I don't think there was any direct connection between the men.) Hewitt seems to have met or worked with just about everyone--the liner notes mention everyone from Coltrane to Billie Holiday, & state that he was one of the many musicians who in the early 1960s were part of the band for the Living Theater's production of _The Connection_. But he never recorded as a leader; in fact his only previous recording seems to have been a blink-&-you'll-miss-it appearance on the Impulse _Live at Smalls_ CD. He had a regular gig at Smalls for nine years, & this new CD, Hewitt's first as a leader--a set of trio performances recorded in 2002--is released on Luke Kaven's Small Recordings label. Sadly, Hewitt died before the disc was released.This is quintessential insider's jazz: gorgeous wrong-way piano, with a stumbling-butterfly piano technique & follow-your-ear harmonic sensibility. In the best Powell tradition he favours dark lefthand chords that growl at the listener, but instead of tangly bebop righthand lines Hewitt likes long runs that shoot off into the top of the piano, the notes falling off the keyboard like drops of water. When Hewitt plays "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" it's genuinely eerie, like hearing Bud Powell's spirit sit down at the piano bench. The choice of tunes is a time-capsule in itself: "Polka Dots", "Ghost of a Chance", "That Ole Devil Called Love", "I Remember You".... But there's nothing timelocked about the playing, which is as rich & fertile as Nile mud. "Cherokee" is pure excitement, because rather than in spite of Hewitt's pushing his fingers to the limit. His on-the-fly reharmonizations of ballads are sometimes so startling I had to laugh--I mean, what can you say when someone seems determined to prove in every way he can that you _can_ play a B-flat over an A-major chord, for 8 bars? & then there's the deepset, lilting groove, which comes out best of all on midtempo swingers like "I Remember You" & Tadd Dameron's "Lady Bird".The album has a couple minor flaws. The first is the order of tracks: there are four ballads (of eight tracks), & for some reason three of them are placed right at the start, so listeners may find the shuffle-play option necessary. The bassist, Ari Roland, plays well, but some listeners may find his old-fashioned-sounding bowed-bass features (as scratchy & nasal as Paul Chambers) a bit annoying, though fortunately they're quite brief (often just half a chorus). But neither of these flaws detracts from the excitement of hearing Hewitt himself--it's clear even from just this album, recorded at the end of his life, that he was a master pianist.Listeners who are looking for technically sussed, fully codified jazz piano will have little patience with _We Loved You_. But those who respond to the deep chordal voodoo & broken-spiderweb righthand lines of the classic bop pianists will find the disc meat & drink. Let's hope Kaven can dig some more Hewitt out of the archives--it would be a tragedy if this were all he left behind."