THE BLUES AND ABSTRACT TRUTH

The Blues and Abstract Truth, Oliver Nelson, Analogue Productions Ultra Tape ¼”, 15ips, CCIR REVIEW s I try to catch up on several tape reviews, I have stored up in between house move and recent Hifi shows, I have chosen one that has been on the shelf and on my deck here at McIntosh Towers for some months, so is well overdue for the light of day as it were. For any self-respecting jazz fan the thought of an album comprising a quintet of Bill Evans, Roy Hanes, Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard and Paul Chambers is enough to have you reaching for your wallet and your best listening chair – making it a sextet by adding well known big band leader, Oliver Nelson as arranger as well as player is enough to tip most over the edge - but that’s exactly what you have in the 1961 recording of The Blues and Abstract Truth.

Originally recorded in stereo (a mono vinyl version is also available) for Impulse Records in February of 1961, with the magic fingers, and ears, of one Rudy van Gelder at the helm this is an all-analogue transfer has been recorded real-time on an ATR customised Ampex 102 and is remastered by the eminently skilled Kevin Gray. Having previously owned the brilliant vinyl version of this I was immediately excited to spot it on tape. The packaging and finish are superb in a double-skin thick card outer holding the 2 individually boxed reels and with full-colour cover images, tape-back photos and liner notes as well as Analogue Productions’ own care and handling note.

Taking a slight detour for a moment its worth commenting on the Ampex 100 series itself as despite it being a “vintage”, manufactured circa 1976, it was renowned (based on my research) for its smooth operating and low noise in part due to capstan design as well as the use of forward-looking technology such as ferrite heads and was so successful in the high-end studio market Ampex followed it with the ATR 102 version 2 years later. Reading through Larry Zides’ “The Making of the Ampex 100” in the December 1976 edition of Sound Engineering Magazine really provides insight into the top-class engineering that went into these machines across such aspects as motor and capstan as well as the use of those “advanced” Ferrite heads. These gave multiple benefits at high-speed including consistent running of the tape over the head over time due to reduced wear, less head noise dominating the frequency response and lastly, ferrite heads allowed for sufficiently high bias frequencies to avoid aspects of modulation noise–stepping up recording quality – which for us as listeners all add up to a better dynamic range and realism of recording on tape. For recording engineers other new aspects of tape transport were relished, making it a firm favourite for many.

Detour over (still with me?), let’s dive into the recording itself. A sextet of this level is always going to impress – be is Evans’ piano work, Dolphy’s abstraction, or Hubbard’s trumpet – adding Nelson as arranger and stepping in on both alto and tenor sax means we are now into serious post-bop excellence territory. With blues at the heart of the arrangement Nelson plays with the usual 12-bar structure at times contrasting the 12 measured solos with abstractions in 16, 8 and even 2 bars Nelson tells tell the story of his journey into Jazz as a departure from his more “classical” big band pieces and wow does he do it with aplomb.

Nelson, born in St. Louis Missouri, in 1932, picked up the saxophone at age 11 after initially learning piano. Interestingly, he hails from a very musical family including his brother, also a sax man and his sisters (more of them later). Oliver started arranging around 1950 while touring with Louis Jordan before entering armed service in 1952 and playing woodwinds in the military band which is where, during a tour in Japan, he attended a concert of Ravels Ma Mare l’Oye (Mother Goose in English) performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and it changed his life, and subsequently that of many players back in St. Louis. On his return to Missouri, he started to study music more formally and then to arrange in larger productions with the Harlem Apollo Theatre before working alongside the likes of Count Basie and Duke Ellington. He soon began to record with Prestige Records, but “Blues and Abstract Truth” was his breakthrough and has been rightly hailed as one of the most important albums of the era.

Split across 2 10.5” reels, each with the Analogue Productions Ultra Tape logo you get 6 tracks, totalling just under 40 minutes of a quite unique meeting of players. We lead off with “Stolen Moments, originally written in 1960 as a 16-bar composition derived from blues in C minor which has since gone onto become a jazz standard recorded by everyone