(swing) Toots Thielemans - The Soul of Toots Thielemans - 1959 (2010), FLAC (tracks+.cue) lossless

Not many European-born musicians have been admitted to the select inner circle of jazz innovators. One of them, of course is the Belgian Jean "Toots" Thielemans. The amazing capacity to coax real music from his harmonica made of him a true virtuoso. His harmonica was made especially for him, but a similar model would sell for about $15. Despite this rather insignificant sum, in the hands of Thielemans the harmonica becomes a true jazz horn.
Not surprisingly, Larry Adler was one of the first harmonica players "Toots" heard. "I wouldn't call him an influence, but he did make me aware of the possibilities of the instrument," Jean said. "This was in 1939. A few years later I began listening to jazz records, Benny Goodman in particular. He was a definite influence and I began striving for a clarinet sound on harmonica."
As a guitarist "Toots" also proved to be more than proficient at playing simple and eloquent. "I learned to play guitar while recuperating from an illness. It was in 1942 and I had been studying mathematics at the university in Brussels. By then, along with the big war, I was going through a tug of war between the music and the math. I think hearing Django Reinhardt solved the problem. I decided to become a musician," he stressed.
In this album "Toots" is heard on both instruments in a charming program of nice music carried forth with taste, creativity and restrain. A cohesive rhythm section joined him for the date, with pianist Ray Bryant, bassist Tommy Bryant, and Oliver Jackson on drums. A superb trio, with Bryant delivering some bright piano solos in addition to his background duties. By and large, the feel of this set is pleasant, relaxed and swinging. Let's all rejoice in the fact that they went to the studio and did it. —Jordi Pujol
This is by far the best album Jean "Toots" Thielemans has ever made and is besides one of the most thoroughly enjoyable jazz sessions in months. This categorical statement is based on long acquaintance with Toots and his music, beginning in Europe in 1950 and extending through his career in this country during which time he became best known for his long period as harmonica player and guitarist with George Shearing.
Jean regards this album "as a sort of graduate degree as the result of my assimilation of American life and the American jazz scene. Especially, my assimilation of the people who play, live and sing the blues. That's why I wanted 'soul' in the title of the album."
This album also presents Jean in context with three of the most sympathetic musicians—sympathetic to what he feels jazz to be—he's ever played with. Ray Bryant is the unique Philadelphia pianist who is entirely at home with older players like Roy Eldridge and Coleman Hawkins and is also at ease with the hard boppers or more lyrical moderns. He is a young modernist who so thoroughly knows the background of the jazz language—especially the blues—that he plays with the unselfconscious authority of the man who swings without worrying about whether he does or not, and who plays the right notes because he feels they are.
"Ray," adds Toots Thielemans, "is a pianistic player, who uses the instrument beautifully. Each note he hits is a big one. I think he plays about the biggest and fattest single notes of any pianist in jazz today." Of Ray's elder brother, bassist Tom Bryant, Toots says, "he too has that big sound, and although the word has been overused, his playing can best be described as 'soulful'."
Oliver Jackson, notes Toots, "has a very healthy beat and a hip soul. He fits perfectly with Ray and Tom." The Bryant brothers are Philadelphia-born. Jackson comes from Detroit. Jo Jones is his main influence, and he's worked with Yusef Lateef, Teddy Wilson, Dorothy Donegan, Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge, and Charlie Shavers. When he appeared with Coleman and Roy at the 1959 Newport Festival, he impressed several American and European writers who had not heard of him before with his firm yet resilient time, and the infectious quality of his swinging.
The variety and range of tunes Toots picked is unusual for a jazz album. You Are My Sunshine was "a typical hillbilly" request that was handed to Toots when he and Ray Bryant were working together one night. Manfully, they started to play it, and it turned out to be—to their surprise—very conducive to swinging. "Actually," says Toots, "it's a 16-bar tune, very similar in structure to The Preacher." As the engineer on the date said after this heated version, "this tune may never go back west."
Nuages by Django Reinhardt, the late gypsy guitarist, is described by Toots as "my humble tribute to my all-time idol. He's my idol on the instrument, and my other in jazz is Charlie Parker. I don't know which to choose. It's true that Django's rhythmic concept was not jazz, but his harmonic and melodic constructions were close to the American approach, and in both, he was ahead of his time. I especially have a great love for the kind of lyrical experience he was able to create on his instrument."
Five O'Clock Whistle, a jaunty tune, hasn't been used by jazzmen often although Duke Ellington recorded it in the forties with a vocal by Ivie Anderson. Toots, who's always looking for fresh tunes, chose it, and was eyed skeptically by Ray Bryant. "But when we started rehearsing it, Ray took more choruses than anybody. It's another of those songs that doesn't seem apt for jazz at first, but really is."
Toots wrote Soul and he terms it "just a blues. The main thing I learned in this country was the meaning of the blues. That was one experience I couldn't know from listening to records in Europe. I learned how important a single, simple phrase can be. It can be a phrase that looks like nothing technically, but is an expression of the life of an American Negro. It can just be a long, simple note played on the beat, but it's more than a note. This song is to underline what I learned in America."
Although Toots has perhaps been best known as a harmonica player—and on that instrument, no one can come close to him in playing modern jazz—he is also a first-rate guitarist. And Toots has never played guitar as well and in as relaxed a groove as in this album. Nor with as strong a beat. Toots arranged Lonesome Road, which has a characteristic Thielemans guitar solo, and Ray Bryant's comment on the take was "It's romping time."
Erroll Garner's Misty, like Nuages, demonstrates the other strong impetus in Thielemans' work besides the love for good, full-bodied swinging. He is also a romanticist, as is Ray Bryant in his more tender moments, and he has an affinity for softly lyrical statements. The tune itself has had unusual commercial success in 1959, particularly due to Johnny Mathis' vocal version.
Charlie Parker's Confirmation is taken here at a somewhat slower tempo than usual. "We sort of treat it," says Toots, "as a walking ballad rather than a fast, hard tune. We sort of sat down and played it rather than ran up and down and played it. After all, the tune is very melodic and that melody is shown off better at this tempo."
The other arrangements on this album were "heads" but Toots brought in a more formal treatment of Charles Trenet's beguiling Les Enfants S'Ennuient Le Dimanche (Children Are Bored on Sunday). Trenet, one of France's most brilliant popular entertainers, writes most of his own material—words and music. This song tells of how children have no fun on Sunday (the opening minor section). They have to wear Sunday clothes and can't play in the street. The song then goes on to a hymn in praise of the rest of the week (the major part of the theme) and in praise of the noise in the streets where children are then allowed to sing and play. Toots wrote the Bach-like counterpoint for the opening and close, and he also, points out the assurance and touch with which Ray Bryant played the background to the song.
Brother John is a fitting close to this graduate degree in jazz feeling. "It's like changing my name from Jean to John. It also combines several of the things I love to do—all at the same time. I mean the part where I'm playing the blues, playing the guitar, and whistling. The song is also a sort of little greeting to Ray Charles, because he does a lot of blues in three-quarter time like this one."
It's been a long, illuminating musical road for Jean Thielemans. Born in Brussels in 1922, Jean for a time majored in math at Brussels University, but was captured by jazz. He came to America for a visit in 1947, but had to return and wait out his visa to come back for good. In 1950, he played in Europe with Benny Goodman, and later with Roy Eldridge and Zoot Sims, and on his own. He came to America to stay at the end of 1951. From late 1952 until the middle of 1959, he was with George Shearing. Jean is now on his own, active in TV work and heading units in jazz clubs. He has thoroughly arrived as a jazzman, and this album both ends the period of apprenticeship and starts the major portion of Jean's career.
"The most important thing about Toots," summarizes drummer Oliver Jackson, "is not his technique, of which he has a lot. It's his feeling, on guitar and on harmonica. I haven't heard harmonica played with that kind of feeling since the fish fries at house rent parties in Detroit when I was growing up."
With that kind of tribute, Jean Thielemans has really become Brother John.
—Nat Hentoff, Co-Editor, The Jazz Review