Whoops of Joy

Squeezing the 17 members of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis big band onto the tablecloth-size stage of Manhattan's Village Vanguard is like trying to wedge the master singers of Nuremberg into Rodolfo's garret hole in Paris. The jam requires the four trumpeters to stand against the rear wall all night long. If he is not careful, a sax player can easily get a shot in the ear from a sliding trombone.

But that is not the real reason why the members of this band pay one another close attention. Their group is not just the only concert big band they get to play in these days, it is the only one they get to listen to regularly. As they blow, beat or belt their way into a complex piece like Thad's Tiptoe, which halfway on involves something very like a musical multiple-choice quiz between Drummer Mel and everybody else, the players follow each other's fun as avidly as the audience. Laughter, even whoops of joy fly out. Back at the rear wall, an extra-special solo flight by one trumpeter is guaranteed to bring an energetic handshake from another.

When its engagement began on Feb. 7, 1966, the band served mainly as an escape from the endless round of TV and jingle jobs through which its individual members actually make a living. In the ensuing years, playing the Vanguard on Monday nights, the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis group has reached a level of perfection and invention now matched only by the Duke Ellington band.

Brassy Bursts. In the minds of many jazz fans, the big band epitomizes today's vogue for the nostalgia trip. Jones and Lewis, in fact, met at a "battle" of the big bands--Count Basie v. Stan Kenton--in a Detroit hotel 15 years ago. Thad was a trumpeter with Basie, Mel the drummer behind Kenton's brassy behemoth. They both might be forgiven any nostalgia they cared to indulge in. Neither of them cares to. They would no more ape Woody Herman or Tommy Dorsey than sit behind monogrammed music stands. Besides, yesterday's big-band era was all about dancing. Today's audience does not dance: it listens. Thad, Mel & Co. hold their fans' attention with a blend of instrumental voices as tightly woven as Kenton at his best, and as much Kansas City freedom as Basie at his. Each member is a soloist. The bane has some 100 arrangements and plays expertly from them. But when people like Pianist Roland Hanna, Bassist Richard Davis and Saxophonist Eddie Daniels start mixing things up, it is anybody's guess when the printed music will be used again.

The switch to improvisation is a bit like exchanging gold for diamonds. Most often the written music consists of Thad's arrangements and compositions. And whether he is cropping instrumental voices closely for an original ballad like Consummation, or unleashing brassy, rhythmic bursts for a freewheeling tune like Fingers. Thad manages to blend the traditional and the contemporary in a way that is always intriguing. But it is never far out enough to confuse. Thad is a man restlessly in search of an elusive chord. Let him into a friend's living room, and he will quickly locate the piano and begin searching with his fingertips, softly, sensuously. Standing in front of his band, he will raise his flugelhorn (a bovine-sounding brother of the trumpet) to his lips and begin picking out notes in the middle of an already crowded chord. "You don't know what effect it will have," says Thad, "but you hear a little crack that could be sealed and you hope that'll do it."

Though jazz has seen some hard times lately, its commercial prospects have improved in the past year. The large selling power of Miles Davis' aleatory electronic jazz tone poems, for example, seems sufficient proof that today's young have developed the curiosity and attention span that jazz demands. Jones and Lewis have stirred a strong enough reaction to make them dream of success in the land of the gold record and top-40 hit. That will mean reaching the pocketbooks of the rock-reared young, a difficult proposition at best.

Meantime the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band will have to settle for the respect of a worldwide jazz community, which should grow broader when the group visits Europe and Japan again later this year. The band regularly finishes near the top of Down Beat magazine's polls, and its latest LP, Consummation (Blue Note), is up for a top prize at next week's Grammy Awards.

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