This is a review of a “ghost” album from long ago.I read the news today (April 1, 2010.) Herb Ellis died due to complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 88 year old. That leaves none.
The news took me back to my junior year of high school. It was 1974 and I was living on a diet of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Deep Purple and John Lennon while playing rhythm guitar in local cover bands. My American History teacher had a phonograph on which he would play “American” music – Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Billy Holiday, Jimmie Rogers, Hank Williams, Pete Seger. One morning I walked into class and the live album Seven Come Eleven was playing on the turntable. From that point my guitar playing, and musical tastes, were never the same.
Seven Come Eleven combined the guitar mastery of Herb Ellis and Joe Pass with stand up bass legend Ray Brown, and powerhouse jazz drummer Jake Hanna, in a live show at the Concord Pavilion (for you young’ns, that is what the Chronicle Pavilion in Concord, CA was called years before it was expanded and sold to corporate interests.) The Concord Jazz Festival which was founded by the late Carl Jefferson, a Contra Costa County automobile dealer. By 1974 it had a major U.S. jazz festival (unfortunately it died in the 1990’s.) In 1972, Jefferson formed the record label “Concord Jazz,” which later became known as “Concord Records,” and obtained the rights to record performances at the Festival. One of the performances he recorded was the 1974 appearance of Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, Ray Brown and Jake Hanna which he called Seven Come Eleven after one of the tracks on the album – a blistering jazz guitar duel between Pass and Ellis.
Ellis got his start playing guitar in big bands with Jimmy Dorsey and was well known for his work with the Oscar Peterson Trio. For many years he toured as a sideman with Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie. Les Paul said of Ellis, "If you're not swinging, he's gonna make you swing. Of the whole bunch of guys who play hollow-body guitar... I think Herb Ellis has got the most drive."
Pass, who died in 1994, played guitar for Les McCann and George Shearing and became a sideman for Luis Bellson, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Williams, Della Reese and Johnny Mathis. He also recorded with many others including Benny Carter, Milt Jackson, Zoot Sims, Duke Ellington, Herb Ellis and Ella Fitzgerald. Pass used to provide guitar playing seminars in the early 1980’s while on tour. I attended two – one at the Great American Musical Hall and one at the now defunct Kimball’s East. Pass said “If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterwards” and with that changed my approach to guitar forever.
Ray Brown passed in 2002. In the 1940’s Brown played bass for Gillespie, Art Tatum and Charlie Parker. In the 1950’s he became a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet, toured with and married Ella Fitzgerald, and played with Oscar Peterson for the first time. By the 1960’s Brown settled in as the go-to jazz bassist in Los Angeles and worked with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Quincy Jones. He remained a well-known and respected bassist with the Ray Brown Trio right up until his death.
Jake Hanna left us this past February. He was an icon of a jazz drummer. He played with Toshiko Akiyoshi and Maynard Ferguson in the late 1950’s and Woody Herman’s Orchestra in the early 1960’s. He was probably most well known as the drummer for the big band of the Merv Griffin Show from 1964 through 1975, although he did extensive studio work with hundreds of artists.
At the 1974 festival Pass, Ellis, Brown and Hanna took Pass’ sage advice and produced an awe-inspiring live album. This is interpretative jazz of jazz standards. The album contains a scant seven tracks - all classics. The Duke Ellington icon “In A Mellow Tone” gives Ray Brown a chance to show off his skills. Pass and Ellis burn through the Charlie Christian tune “Seven Come Eleven.” The comments between the cuts, as the musicians joke and carry on with each other and the audience, add to the intensity of the music and the moment. From the romantic “Prelude To A Kiss,” through the bittersweet “Perdido” to the bluesy “(I’m) Confessing (That I Love You)” followed by the up tempo “Easy Living,” Seven Come Eleven delivers instrumental mastery, warmth and emotion. The best are caught at their best, and enjoying it.
It is fitting that the album should end with “Concord Blues,” an on-the-spot improvised number attributed to Ellis and Pass (for some ASCAP) that lets them fade out after trading hot smooth jazz licks. Carl Jefferson and the Concord Jazz Festival are gone. Now, so are some of the greatest musicians to ever play the Festival – Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, Ray Brown and Jake Hanna. Yet, what they accomplished lives on in this album “Seven Come Eleven” and makes them impossible to forget.
-- Old School
Buy here: Seven, Come Eleven
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