Tony Scott - Germany 1957 Asia 1962

Scott, Tony

101743

For the previous nine months, as Harry Belafontes musical director, Tony Scott had not touched his instrument. Now he used the occasion to concentrate on his two principal role models: Charlie Parker, whose polyrhythmic playing and asymmetric phrasing fascinated him, and Ben Webster, who had taken him under his wing as a young musician and whose emotional, melodious ballad playing had inspired him to adopt the same unusually warm and gentle tone on the clarinet. Both sides came across significantly in Scotts playing: the thin, brittle, almost shrill tone of his virtuoso, up-tempo bebop lines contrasted with the inimitable intimacy and warmth of his legato ballad style, a sound Scott literally breathed into the clarinet unlike anyone. The two approaches are equally characteristic of the recordings Scott made in April 1957 as a guest at the Stuttgart radio broadcaster SDR, as well as the live performances recorded for posterity by Joachim-Ernst Berendt on behalf of SWF in Hong Kong and Singapore in 1962 under far from ideal conditions using a portable tape recorder and a single microphone. Despite certain acoustic deficiencies, most notably audible on the track from Singapore, these recordings are deserving of our attention as rare testimony to a hitherto little documented phase in Scotts career.

CD x 1

Jazzhaus

30.09.14

807280174397