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Capacity for artistry and sheer beauty
An album uniting the jazz talents of confreres John Coltrane and Ray Draper gives CHRIS SEARLE much to be thankful for
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The Complete Ray Draper Quintet Sessions with John Coltrane (Acrobat)
THE tuba has not been a common component of the jazz soundscape, but there have been some remarkable virtuosi of the instrument who have gone far beyond the sonic ballast effect which has frequently been its role in marching bands and brass ensembles.
Its capacity for artistry and sheer beauty has been shown by musicians from Howard Johnson — who led a tuba-emphatic band called Gravity, recording two throbbing albums for the Verve label in the 1990s, Right Now and Gravity — to Bob Stewart, who held the tuba chair in Lester Bowie’s band, Brass Fantasy.
In Britain too, tuba specialists George Smith and Andy Grappy have made powerful contributions to Mike Westbrook albums like Marching Song (1969) and Westbrook-Rossini (1986), and the outstanding Orel Marshall is a former key brass element of the contemporary quartet Sons of Kemet, who now have the rampaging Theon Cross as their tuba dynamo.
But there has been no-one else like Ray Draper, born in New York in 1940 and a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, who was the truly pioneering bop exponent of the tuba and who played and recorded with some of the stellar pathfinders of his time from Max Roach and Jackie McLean to Donald Byrd and Archie Shepp. He also made two albums in 1957 and 1958 when he was still a teenager, with the mighty John Coltrane (pictured), and these have been brought together in a marvellous “twofer” on the Acrobat label.
The first was called The Ray Draper Quintet featuring John Coltrane, and with them were pianist Gil Coggins, bassist Jimmy “Spanky” DeBrest with Larry Ritchie on drums, and as soon as the opener, Draper’s own Clifford Kappa, gets into its mettle with Coltrane striding over the rhythm with his tidal sound, you know this is going to be an exceptional session. Draper’s sonorous wind is also agile and spry, the weight of his sound belying its nimbleness.
Filidia, another Draper composition, shows Ritchie’s drum prowess before Coltrane’s tenor steams into motion with beautiful authority before Draper’s rocking solo, blowing tumbling cadences, levitates over DeBrest’s earthy bass and Coggins’s angular solo. Two Sons makes a trio of consecutive Draper tunes and Coggins’s leaping notes are a prelude to a lithe, vaulting chorus. Can a tuba skip and frolic? Draper’s can, out of and then back into the depths of sound with prodigious skill.
Sonny Rollins, clearly a Draper favourite, wrote Paul’s Pal and the fivesome lap it up lovingly with Coggins leading the way before Coltrane’s horn sprays its notes all over Rudy Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio and Draper huffs and swings in delight, as he does too on Under Paris Skies, prefacing a solo with Coltrane in awesome power.
In November 1958 the same quintet (with John Mayer replacing Coggins) were back recording another album, Ray Draper: A Tuba Jazz, which begins with another Draper tune, Essii’s Dance, in which he sounds even more assured and endlessly inventive, inspiring the inspiration as Coltrane soars into new skies of beauty. Their living breath of innovation blows through the side-by-side Rollins anthems, Doxy and Oleo.
An unlikely foray into Lerner and Loewe’s ballad I Talk to the Trees, and two more American Songbook items, Yesterdays and Angel Eyes, transform the mood. Draper’s huge horn sounds almost winsome before Coltrane’s tenor glory, making unsung words take on a new melodic serenity.
Draper’s vast talent never really prospered. He was jailed on drugs charges in the late 1960s but later beat his addiction and made a living playing fusion (including with Jimi Hendrix) before being killed by a 13-year-old mugger on a New York street in 1982. Another jazz tragedy among many more of his generation. So I give a thousand thanks for recording studios and the jewels they made, like this one.
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