Albums Revive Bandleader Ellis’ Legacy

Think of a combination of Stan Kenton and Jimi Hendrix. Toss in a bit of Dizzy Gillespie and Leonard Bernstein, and that comes close to describing the picture of trumpeter and bandleader Don Ellis in action.

In the wildly colorful, musically eclectic ‘60s and ‘70s, Ellis was one of the most visually and aurally vibrant of all performers, bringing the psychedelic look and surging rhythms of rock to big-band jazz. Leading his large ensembles with sweeping, Kenton-esque gestures, wearing brightly hued, Hendrix-look garb, playing hard-driving Gillespie-influenced trumpet solos, and putting it all together with the theatrical drama of a Bernstein, he was a sight to behold.

Ellis died of heart problems nearly 20 years ago in December 1978. He was 44 years old. Although he recorded in some quantity--with small groups as well as his various large ensembles--his music has largely been in eclipse since his death. And that’s a shame, because Ellis at his best was a cutting-edge innovator, constantly pushing the jazz envelope, often doing so in otherwise commercial settings. His appearances before young, rock-oriented audiences at venues such as the Fillmore auditoriums in San Francisco and New York, for example, were filled with excursions into unusual rhythms, quarter-tone melodies and novel instrumental combinations.

A long-overdue Ellis revival--no doubt stimulated by the upcoming 20th anniversary of his death--finally seems to be taking root. Blue Note has just released “Don Ellis: ‘Live’ at Monterey,” and “Electric Bath” will be issued by Columbia on Tuesday. The former album chronicles the first high-visibility appearance by a large Ellis aggregation, a performance that electrified audiences at the 1966 Monterey Jazz Festival. The latter was the first in a string of Ellis recordings for the then-rock-oriented Columbia label.

Both albums are utterly fascinating. Despite the frequent comparisons to Kenton, Ellis’ music was not quite like anything heard in jazz, either before or since. Yes, he adapted traditional elements. Blues forms frequently move through his music; his ensemble textures were clearly affected by his tenure as a sideman in ensembles ranging from Charles Mingus’ to Maynard Ferguson’s to George Russell’s; and his trumpet playing owes as much to Roy Eldridge as it does to Gillespie.

But Ellis transformed all these elements into his own personal voice. The most dominant quality in that voice, of course, was his fascination with unusual meters--rhythmic time signatures. Not only did he thoroughly explore meters such as 5/4, 7/4 and 9/4, he also added rhythm rows--a sequence of beats, for example, such as 3 3 2 2 2 1 2 2 2, which became the title of one of his works, and the opening track on the Monterey album. (His musicians became so comfortable with the disjunct rhythms of his compositions that--on a rare occasion when he presented them with a work in traditional 4/4 time--he described it humorously as “5/4, minus a beat.”)

Despite the sometimes exotic qualities of the rhythms, however, Ellis’ themes almost always cruised through the familiar territory of jazz riffs. A first-rate melodist, he delivered lines so appealing that listeners often began tapping their feet in the underlying odd rhythms without realizing that they were keeping time in, say, 9/4.

Ellis’ recording career lasted a bit more than a decade and a half. Despite the sheer sumptuousness of his big bands, some of his most intriguing work was done in the early ‘60s, in edgy, experimental ensembles with performers such as pianists Jaki Byard and Paul Bley and bassist Steve Swallow, on albums such as “How Time Passes,” “Out of Nowhere” and “New Ideas.” Other material from this probing period in his artistic evolution remains unreleased. One can only hope that an Ellis revival, as it unfolds, will move beyond the kaleidoscopic big-band outings to include a complete look at the work of one of jazz’s most adventurous talents.

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Feather Online: Leonard Feather, the late Los Angeles Times jazz critic, will be honored with an online tribute this month at N2K’s Jazz Central Station Web site (https://www.jazzcentralstation.com). The tribute, part of the site’s “Jazz Journey” series, surveys Feather’s work as a writer, producer (of artists such as Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and others) and songwriter (with works performed by Washington, B.B. King, Mel Torme, etc.), and includes rare photographs taken during his career.

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Marsalis Time: Wynton Marsalis makes his annual trip to Marciac, a small town in southwestern France, this weekend for a jazz festival he has visited since 1980. The event has become so connected with Marsalis that, in 1997, Marciac commissioned a bronze statue of the trumpeter. This year, the first page of each of the 14 movements of Marsalis’ “Marciac Suite” will be engraved into the Place du Marciac Square in the center of the town. Marsalis simply says, “I like the food here, the sunshine, the people.”