Stepping Up With Cedar

Profile Entertainment, the company that gave the world Run DMC, is at it again, blazing new trails through the music business.

So what is it up to this time? A new take on urban street sounds in the ‘90s? Not exactly. Next week, Profile releases the first albums on its new Astor Place label, which is dedicated to the exploration of a somewhat longer-lived kind of urban music: jazz.

And the first jazz artist Astor Place has signed is pianist-composer Cedar Walton. His initial album, “Composer,” scheduled for release June 11, features a full program of Walton compositions played by an all-star sextet.

On the face of it, it seems like an odd coupling.

Why would a prosperous rap record label take its maiden voyage into jazz with a performer best known for his much admired skills as an accompanist rather than one of the charismatic new jazz lions? Why would a company that has built its success around a roster of young talent elect to kick off a new product line with an underappreciated veteran performer?

In part because Profile Entertainment President Steve Plotnicki is an inveterate jazz fan and a longtime admirer of Walton’s work. But also because Plotnicki--whose marketing skills were crucial to the company’s rap music success--sees the signing of Walton as “a good story.”

“It’s about a 62-year-old pianist,” Plotnicki says, “who played with Art Blakey (Jazz Messengers)--the most famous hard bop group of all time--wrote some of the most famous jazz tunes, never really made it big, yet made a good living doing it for the last 30 some years.

“All of a sudden the new young guys are playing his tunes. . . . Then a new record company comes along, signs the guy and gets a bunch of those young guys to play on the record. That’s a good story.”

Or, at least, the beginning of a good story. And, from Walton’s point of view, it’s one that he’s been waiting to hear for a very long time.

“I was amazed,” Walton says in a conversation at his West L.A. apartment, “when Steve came to me and said, ‘Cedar, nobody’s really highlighted the composer side of your musical productivity,’ and asked me to write totally new material for a recording. Maybe another way of putting it is to say I was in total ecstasy. ‘This must be a dream,’ I thought.”

Less a dream and more of a practical business decision for Plotnicki. Walton fits into a three-part plan that is the foundation for Astor Place development.

“First of all,” Plotnicki says, “I think there is a commercial marketplace for great jazz compositions to be performed in a fresh way. And that’s where Cedar fits into our plans. Second, I think there’s a market for new repertoire to be performed with jazz sensibilities. So we’re also releasing a [saxophonist] David Murray album in which he performs tunes by the Grateful Dead. And third, Astor Place--like Profile and GRP and Windham Hill--will be logo-driven.”

In that scenario, according to Plotnicki, listeners will anticipate the next Astor Place album because they have a strong sense of what the “style and quality” of the music will be. And, eventually, the product will move beyond jazz into an “eclectic mix of music.”

“The thing I like about Steve,” says Walton, “is that he is a guy who loves the music, but who still pays attention to the numbers.” Paying attention to the “numbers” has not always been a priority in jazz, and Walton is right in suggesting that a more coherent balance between commerce and art--of the sort that recently has resulted in successful concept albums from Cassandra Wilson and Joe Henderson--is going to play a crucial role in the music’s future.

*

The Walton album, a substantial contemporary jazz document, also appears to have considerable sales potential.

Using his experience with the Blakey band and the Art Farmer/Benny Golson Jazztet (another former employer) as a reference point, Walton has crafted a set of jazz tunes played by a sextet that manage to be accessible to a wide audience without losing their sense of adventurousness.

“I think my strength as a writer came from working with [Blakey’s] Messengers and the Jazztet,” Walton says. “I didn’t always do a lot of writing for them, but I learned a lot through trial and error, and that’s really where I got this sextet format, with three horns.”

Walton’s “strength” also traces to a warm, amiable personality that allows him to work with musicians in a way that gets past the notes and into the heart of the music.

“When we were recording,” says Walton, his voice still tinged with a trace of his native Texas accent, “I told the guys what kind of mood I wanted. On one tune, I told them, ‘OK, now we need to be on about 113th and 1st Avenue in Harlem.’

“Then on the next piece, Christian [McBride] said, ‘Are we still in that part of town,’ and I said, ‘No, man, we went to Brazil. Now you gotta have a passport.’ I think the younger cats enjoyed that approach, which I try to do all the time--use a figure of speech to designate the feeling you’re trying to get in a piece.”

The net result is that the ensemble, which includes bassist McBride, trumpeter Roy Hargrove, saxophonists Vincent Herring and Ralph Moore and drummer Victor Lewis, performs Walton’s crisp, upbeat compositions with a bright enthusiasm and vigor. It is music that reveals a comfortable connection between the young lions and the old master.

Tuesday night, Walton brings a sextet to Catalina Bar & Grill for a six-night run, with two of the players from the recording--Moore and Herring--on the bandstand.

The album’s musical success won’t come as a surprise to anyone aware of the first-rate work Walton has produced in his busy career. More unexpected is his stepping forward as a leader.

Up until now, Walton has been the jazz manifestation of a role player. On a baseball team, he might be a dependable utility infielder; on a basketball team, an effective rebounder.

Walton describes much of his work in character actor terms. “You do this part, then you do another part,” he says, “changing locations, knowing that in the next month you’ll move on to something else.”

Since the ‘60s, he has been one of the primary, first-call rhythm section players. Mention a major jazz name of the last three decades and Walton has very likely played piano on one of their recordings. Sonny Rollins, J.J. Johnson, Abbey Lincoln, Lee Morgan, the Jazztet and Blakey’s Jazz Messengers are only a few of his major associates. He has been a co-leader of Eastern Rebellion, and he had a brief flirtation with funk, fusion and rock via a group called Soundscapes.

But Walton has made little effort to take the visible mantle of leadership in the style of a Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter or Eddie Harris, all former colleagues. His failure to do so has been due in part, ironically, to the remarkable success he has had as an accompanist.

The role of a pianist in a jazz rhythm section can take many forms. Some players busily fill in all the open spots; some simply punch out rhythmic clusters of harmony. There are unique stylists such as John Lewis, who uses crisp, contrapuntal lines behind a soloist (notably Milt Jackson in the Modern Jazz Quartet), and McCoy Tyner, who laid down dense clouds of sound in his work with John Coltrane.

But in a broader sense, the jazz pianist and the classical accompanist face similar issues. A jazz pianist is obviously not locked into written music the way a classical pianist is, but each must make a decision whether to take an active, generative role or to offer dependable but transparent support.

Walton is clearly capable of doing both, although he has come to favor the more active approach.

“Max Roach was the person who introduced me to that style of accompaniment,” he recalls, of the great drummer and composer. “I had a rehearsal once with Abbey Lincoln, and Max basically said I should ignore the singing. ‘If a singer can’t sing while you play, she’s not a real singer,’ he told me. He mentioned Teddy Wilson with Billie Holiday and Wynton Kelly with Dinah Washington. They were all over the piano, just wide open, soloing.

“And I said, ‘Damn,’ because that’s when I understood the division between being a meek accompanist and being an aggressive accompanist. Because if the singer has to tell you to cool it, then she’s probably insecure. At least that was Max’s theory. And I agree with it, maybe 98%. I mean, you don’t want to get obnoxious. But when it works, it can be beautiful--more ofa duet thing instead of just sympathetic accompaniment.”

The qualities of adaptation that have made Walton such an admired musical associate are surely rooted in a childhood that he recalls with considerable contentment. He was born in Dallas, Jan. 17, 1934, and raised during World War II and the postwar years in an environment that he describes as a “kind of sheltered society.”

“It was a society, at that time, which, for a guy growing up, wasn’t that unpleasant,” he says. “It was really a kind of society within a society. My father had a great jukebox in his restaurant with records by Count Basie and some of the blues artists, like John Lee Hooker. I used to love to go there to work, just to get to put quarters in that jukebox.”

Walton also has vivid memories of the darker aspects of growing up in the segregated South.

“At the 5-and-10-cent store, they had separate fountains for ‘whites’ and for ‘colored,’ ” he recalls. “And when you’re a kid you have to have adults tell you how offensive that is. But you learn fast, too, especially when you come in contact with it directly, the way I did when I was about 8, and this white guy pushed me aside as I was walking into a hardware store in front of him. I couldn’t believe it the first time I experienced it. But I learned.”

It is characteristic of Walton’s personality, however, that his recollections focus more on the sense of community present in his childhood and the role that music played within that close-knit social framework.

“Ellington visited town once,” he says, “and there was this lady who used to cook things for him. She came in all excited and said, ‘Duke called me from Kansas City. He’ll be here soon.’ And she cooked this great meal for him. Man, she could really cook.

“Then,” Walton adds with a laugh, “I found out later that Duke had a network of ladies like that all over the country.”

He remembers keeping an autograph book of signatures from performers such as Billy Eckstine and savoring the special times when traveling musicians stayed at his parents’ house.

“It was a communal thing,” Walton says, “in which people in the community opened their houses--[saxophonist] Willie Smith would stay at this person’s house, [trombonist] Juan Tizol at someone else’s house.

“I remember one night after I’d been sent to bed, and we had a pianist at my house. I never did find out who it was, but I heard him playing after I’d been sent to bed. And I just lay there listening, thinking, ‘Oh, wow, isn’t that something.’ ”

Musicians have been saying the same thing about Walton’s playing for quite a while. It may now be time for a much wider audience to have a similar response.

Profile’s Plotnicki says he believes that “you need a story to catch people’s interest.” And he’s betting that the Walton story--the tale of a veteran jazz role player who finally steps out to the front of the stage--is one that will captivate record buyers.

Walton, accustomed to praise for his work, views the current call to leadership with a bemused smile.

“Well, you know, it’s not really something new,” he says. “Art Blakey was the one who kept hammering it in to me: ‘You’ve got to be a leader.’ And I’d say, ‘But Art, I’m happy this way. I want to be a sideman like [pianist] Hank Jones.’ And he’d say, ‘No, no, you have to be a leader.’ So, maybe Art was right, and now’s the time.”

But, pleased as he is about current developments--in addition to his new recording, he has been commissioned to write a half-hour work for the Monterey Jazz Festival in September--Walton would not be discontented if his life continued at the same even pace that it has since he moved to Los Angeles from New York in the late ‘80s.

“Things are great; I’ve got this Steinway B,” he says, pointing to his large grand piano. “I’ve got my Volvo, and I’ve got a place to park that doesn’t cost nearly as much as my apartment--the way it would in New York. I’ve got plenty of work, a new record deal, and the roads out here don’t have any potholes.”