Jazz Records

Jazz once meant improvised music. Now jazzmen have taken to improvising musical instruments. Some of the weirdest recorded jazz sounds currently around come from a "gooped up" harpsichord and a clavichord caught by a closeup microphone. They are the products of two men from different sides of the musical tracks: 48-year-old Texan Red Camp, who supports himself by giving piano lessons in Corpus Christi, and Manhattan's Bruce Prince-Joseph, 32, the pianist, harpsichordist and organist of the New York Philharmonic.

Jazzman Camp wields his gallused, honky-tonk style on an Emory Cook record called The New Clavichord. The old-fashioned clavichord has a gentle tinkle, but partly through the recording technique, Camp gives such numbers as Wing and a Prayer and Cocktails for Two an ice-edged, splintered sound full of white fire and ghostly glimmer. In Slow Slow Blues he etches some wonderfully spidery lines. The sound is not for everybody, but Camp is convinced: "It brings out the contrapuntal lines. It lends itself to blues beautifully."

If Camp works in ice and acid, Pianist Prince-Joseph, in his album Anything Goes (RCA Camden), coaxes surprisingly sensuous sonorities out of his pedal harpsichord. His album achieves a fusion of styles that he refuses to label either jazz or classical. In I Could Have Danced All Night, for instance, he starts with a theme from Rodolfo's aria, Che gelida manina from La Boheme, develops the second chorus as a Mozart sonatina, cuts loose briefly with a sample of stride harpsichord, returns to Boheme in the coda. The album should send hi-fi bugs skittering, but no sound on it is as fascinating as the musical imagination that puts them together.

Other jazz records:

John Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio (Prestige). Tenor Saxophonist Coltrane swings his raucous solos like a truncheon in such numbers as Trancing In and Bass Blues, but the honors here go to Pianist Garland, whose lean, light-fingered attack and delicate sense of mood never falter.

The Cooker (Lee Morgan, trumpet; Pepper Adams, baritone sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; "Philly" Joe Jones, drums; Blue Note). A talented group cooks up some minor frenzies, e.g., A Night in Tunisia, Heavy Dipper, with unabashed spontaneity and irresistible drive. The prize sound is Gillespie Protege Morgan's trumpet, which speaks hard and clear even when it is going like sixty.

Great Ideas of Western Mann (Herbie Mann's Californians; Riverside). Flutist Mann abandons his favorite instrument for one of the least likely of solo instruments--the bass clarinet. The fudge-thick sound has a wistful, funky charm, but often Soloist Mann evokes a fat man in a conga line.

Swedish Modern Jazz (Arne Domnerus and His Group; RCA Camden). The Swedes swing lightly and flexibly through Topsy Theme, Gone With the Wind and other numbers with the air of men with their hearts in their horns, but in their cooler moments (Relax, Blue Moon) they sometimes seem about to fade off the record. Alto Saxophonist Domnerus wanders through some seamless lyric flights translated from Charlie Parker's and Benny Carter's books.

Most Likely . . . (Dick Johnson, with Dave McKenna, piano; Wilbur Ware, bass; "Philly" Joe Jones, drums; Riverside). An alto saxophonist with wit and a springy, willow-green reed sound, Johnson bounces through a few of his own sunny fancies (Aw C'mon Hoss, Me 'n' Dave), gives fresh nuances to some twilit standards (It's So Peaceful in the Country, The End of a Love Affair). Among his best: a gusty frolic called Lee-Antics, which rings its intricate changes with geysering exuberance, builds to a stunning solo flight on the drums.

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