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SwingJournal #17
Hard Times
Artist : David Fathead Newman
Original Recorded Date : November 5, 1958
Original Label : Atlantic Records
Recorded Location : Atlantic Recording Studios, New York
Producer : Jerry Wexler and Nesuhi Ertegun
Engineer : Tom Dowd
Hard Times
Audio File
Download Sheet Music for Paul Mitchell’s “Hard Times“
Solo Guitar Arrangement/Performance by Hideaki Tokunaga
Weird Beard :
David Fathead Newman is known as a successful saxophonist who has been with the Ray Charles Band. Actor Bookeem Woodbine acted as David Fathead Newman in the Movie “Ray” 2004. Newman has been a most well-known soloist from Ray Charles Band and many of Ray Charles’ hit songs can’t be the same without Newman’s sound.
There are many interesting parts of this recording. First you will notice that Ray Charles appears here as a sideman. He is also a great accompanist and of course soloist (pianist) on this recording. When you listen to this track, you will soon realize that the band had a big influence from Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Many listeners can relate to Bobby Timmons “Moanin’” and “Dat Dere”. Compare to the first track “Hard Times”, trumpet has a leading melody line. Newman is a first soloist. Newman plays the tenor saxophone on this track. Hank Crawford plays the baritone saxophone solo, Marcus Belgrave plays the trumpet solo. Then Ray Charles plays the soulful piano solo. The chorus of “Weird Beard” is comprised in an AABBAA form and each section has 4bars. Each soloist plays only one chorus (36 bars).
Willow Weep for Me : Ray Charles opens up with his version of Honky Tonk solo style intro, but soon bassist Edgar Wills and drummer Milt Turner join and start playing in tempo. After Charles’ intro, Newman plays the melody with his also saxophone. Willow Weep for Me is a very well-known jazz standard and the head-in chorus is a quartet performance. After Newman’s soulful melody, trumpeter Belgrave joins as a first soloist. He plays only half chorus and Charles takes solos over on the bridge only. Newman returns at the last A section with Charlie Parker’s “Parker’s Mood” riffs. He plays solo for only few bars and switches to the closing melody.
Bill for Bennie : From this tune, we can enjoy an illuminated view of the BeBop era, but this time with aspects of Horace Silver Quintet’s influence. Especially on intro, while rhythm section hits one of each bar, horn section keeps playing eighth notes all ways to the top of the main melody. The composer for this track and next track "Sweet Eyes" is by a baritone saxophonist Hank Crawford who becomes a band director for Ray Charles Band after Newman leaves. Bennie is Hank’s real name. This compositions is a 12bar blues composition in the key of Bb. Newman plays the tenor saxophone and appears as a first soloist. Belgrave plays the 2nd solo with virtuosic Clifford Brown’s influenced eight notes. Belgrave’s tone is quite different from other great trumpeters in this era. Crawford plays the baritone saxophone solo with surprisingly with clean tones. The last notably movement here is Ray Charles’ bebop style solo. Charles’ solo reminds me of Horace Silver’s blues solo. Charles use alternative cycle 5th movement during his solo. In other words, he also has strong influence from Bud Powell.
Sweet Eyes
Crawford’s contribution toward this Newman’s debut album is big. I assume Crawford also arranged many of the compositions within this album. The chorus of “Sweet Eyes” is comprised in an AABA form and each section has 8 bars. During A sections, you can enjoy Charles’ response to harmonized unisons. During B section, Charles also plays the harmonized union along with horn players. After Newman completes 1 chorus solo, Crawford takes the second whole chorus solo. Then Belgrave steps in as a third soloist. Similar to the previous composition, Charles is the last soloist. But after Charles finishes his solo, Belgrave and Crawford play melodies without Newman. The arrangement is for Newman to keep blowing his solos over the melodies. But Newman joins the melody players on the bridge and concludes the whole composition with nice ending arrangement.
Fathead
Newman contributes only one of his original compositions to this recording. That is “Fathead”, and Fathead is his nickname. The composition is written in the key of Gm and the band plays the 14 bar melody to set up Newman to enter the solo. All solos are played by 12 bar Gm blues. The order is Newman as a tenor saxophonist, Belgrave, Crawford and Charles. Each soloist plays 2 chorus. The ensemble is swinging so hard and bebop vocabularies are so advanced. This is a meaningful performance from Newman with much attention paid to detail: the original composition was written while Newman was working for Ray Charles. His nick name is the title of the composition. It happened to be a blues composition and is accompanied by the most well-known blues singer, Ray Charles.
Mean to Me
The intro starts with Charles’s beautiful simple line with glissando at the end. Three horn harmonized melodies can be heard with many syncopation attacks. Belgrave plays the main melody on top register and Newman occasionally fills in the phrases here and there. On the bridge, Belgrave and Crawford lay out, and Newman plays the melody with the rhythm section. The head-in melody stops two bars earlier for Newman to enter his solo with a strong break.
Ray Charles accompaniment lets Newman, Belgrave and Hank shine but also adds depth in the bluesy moment and rhythmic accents in the medium swinging tunes. Belgrave plays solo on a half of the chorus and Crawford takes over solos from the bridge. When Charles takes over from the top of the chorus, he plays the melody with pick-up notes, then he switches to the blocked chords solo like Red Garland. Newman again returns from the bridge and the whole ensemble concludes with last A section. At the very last section, Charles stays for a just one single note.
Tin Tin Deo
For me, the uniqueness of this composition was the famous bass intro which has been played by many great bass players such as Percy Heath and Al McKibbon. On this version, Ray Charles and Edgar Willis have unison intro with Latin flavor, while Milt Turner plays the drums like bongo sound. Newman enters and plays the the melody with alto saxophone like sound. Belgrave and Crawford respond to Newman’s melody. Also Turner manages to play the shaker while he accompanies the whole ensemble. When the band plays the bridge, they switch to swing feel. The horn section has harmonized unison melodies.
The melody of "Tin Tin Deo" is comprised in an AABB AABB CCBB form and each section has 4bars. However the solos are played as AABB CCBB 32 bars with swing feel. Newman starts his solo with his deep tenor sound, and Belgrave follows. After they play one chorus each, Crawford plays baritone sax solo for a half chorus and gives the second half for Charles to play the solo. Newman returns but he does not play the melody and keep on playing his solo until bridge. On the bridge everyone returns with harmonized melody and they conclude with latin flavor. Charles repeats the last melody line, and the horn section has a unison hit for the ending.
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