Search - Terry Gibbs :: Terry Gibbs Quartet

Simply the best

Music Man | Boulder, CO | 06/05/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album deserves 10 stars. I had the tremendous fortune to study vibes with Terry from 1968-1971, and aside from the fact that I learned EVERYTHING about music from Terry, I heard a lot of his music. I should say I was a fan of Hamp before I ever heard of Terry, and still consider Hamp the king. Nevertheless, this album stands out as an absolute classic IMO. It is pure, inspired, fun, melodic, and blisteringly hot. The band swings big time as the other reviewer wrote, and this remains, of all the TG albums I have - and I have the original vinyl on this - my favorite. As an aside, I played with Bert Dahlander in the early 90s in Aspen in a stage musical - we actually traded off as the drummer in the big band on different nights, and he told me some pretty wild TG stories from the 50s (I was born in '53). If you are into the vibes and swing, get this album."

Two Terrific Terry's

Samuel Chell | Kenosha,, WI United States | 10/15/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This eponymous album, made in 1954 for Mercury's EmArcy label (I don't know where All Music Guide came up with Brunswick), was Gibbs' first recording under his own name and established him as "the wild man of the vibes" (he still is!). The nine tunes are Gibbs' originals and swing era-classics, with only one ballad (Van Heusen's "Imagination") to give the listener a chance to catch his breath before the next onslaught of all-out swing.



Gibbs roots are in Kansas City and the swing era, rather than Charlie Parker and bebop, and what's missing in harmonic sophistication and rhythmic complexity is more than compensated for the unrelenting pace and visceral impact of the music. Frequently, Gibbs can be heard in the background shouting directions to the band or encouragement to his pianist.



The pianist it the obscure and little-recorded but extraordinarily talent Detroit musician, Terry Pollard, the first of three female pianists in a succession of Gibbs' quartets throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. Her place would be taken by the still-performing Pat Moran (now Patty Moran McCoy), whose chair would be filled in the 1960s by Alice McCleod (soon to be Alice Coltrane). Without a doubt, Pollard swings the hardest, practically matching Gibbs with the percussive incisiveness of her attack, the relentless energy and drive, the building toward climaxes, and the facility for serendipitous musical quotes in the middle of her solos.



McCleod was the most fluent though least swinging of the three, while Pat Moran (who once had a piano trio with bassist Scott LaFaro), falls somewhere in between, reflecting some of the "grooving" feel of a Red Garland or Gene Harris. On the first album, Gibbs also has a rhythm section willing to sacrifice and do whatever it takes for a swinging result: bassist Herman Wright, a cousin to jazz bassist Eugene Wright, and Nils-Bertil Dahlander (Bert Dale), an eccentric Swede who played as though swing were the "only" thing.



Sadly, most of the albums by all three groups have never be reissued but are well worth hunting down on LP. This first session is the freshest, most vibrant and, to my ears, the best-recorded of the three, with Gibbs vibes sounding especially full and present. Still, it's worth listening to if only for Terry Pollard, a major player who was inexplicably overlooked at the same time Marian McPartland, Barbara Carroll and Toshiko Alkiyoshi were receiving considerable attention from both the press and major labels."