Hadley Caliman / Pete Christlieb: Reunion

At the end of the first decade of the new millennium, one of the most gratifying developments in jazz is the late blossoming of Hadley Caliman. In 2008, at 76, he released Gratitude, his first recording as a leader in 31 years. It was followed in 2010 by Straight Ahead. They created a buzz on the jazz street. It is not just that he has lasted long enough to finally get the attention he deserves. Hadley Caliman is currently playing his ass off.

He attributes it to retirement. He taught at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle for 22 years. He gave up his day gig several years ago and says, "Now I can get up in the morning and practice and search for the right sound. I think I've started to figure some things out."

If someone has been good for a very long time, is it appropriate to call him a late bloomer? Hadley was good enough in the 1950's to be considered a peer by other tenor saxophone players of the Los Angeles Central Avenue scene, like Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Harold Land, and Teddy Edwards. He was good enough to become Carlos Santana's featured reed player. (He appears on Caravanserai and Carlos Santana & Buddy Miles Live!) He was accomplished enough to be a mentor to several generations of music students at Cornish, and to become an icon on the Pacific Northwest jazz scene. Perhaps what Hadley has recently "figured out" is how to let it all come together. In his absolutely distinctive mode of saxophone expression, you hear a significant compilation of jazz history, including the cooler West Coast culture from which he emerged but also the East Coast edge that he always respected. You hear a diversity of antecedents including Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker. (Hadley says, "Everything I come up with has a basis in Charlie Parker.") You hear the hard times. (Hadley is open and frank about his involvement in the Central Avenue drug scene and the early years he lost to addiction and incarceration.) You hear the humility and wisdom of a survivor. It is an intensely human tenor saxophone language. Its emotional truth is not simple. It deals in ambiguity at the edges of ideas, sometimes reaching and slipping off but never surrendering the quest.

Gratitude and Straight Ahead, Hadley's comeback albums on the Origin label, used mostly younger Seattle players. The new album, Reunion, reaches deep into Hadley's rich past. Reunion has a co-leader, the world-class tenor saxophonist Pete Christlieb. Pete and Hadley go way back.

They go back, specifically, to a club called Marty's, on 58th and Broadway in mid-1960's Los Angeles. At the time it was part of an active L.A. club scene that included Donte's and Shelly's Manne Hole. Hadley says, "It was right after I got out of my drug hell. I was on parole. They required that I have a steady job. I was lucky enough to get a regular gig in the house band at Marty's. Bobby Bryant was the leader. He played trumpet, and there were two tenor players, Herman Riley and me. Herman would go out on the road with Pearl Bailey and Louie Bellson, and this skinny white kid, this string bean, would come in and sub. That was Pete. Damn, he could play. He was just a kid but he was way ahead of me technically. He really knew music. He doubled on flute and clarinet too."

Pete remembers some facts the same and some differently: "The band was Bobby Bryant on trumpet, two tenors, organ, and drums. When Herman Riley was on the road I was there every night and twice on Sunday. I was just 20. Hadley looked out for me. There's such a thing as bandstand etiquette. I never knew anything about it. I just tried to knock everybody's socks off. At Marty's, two tenor players meant a sword fight. Hadley looked out for me, but he also gave me a lot of whuppin's. He whupped the crap out of me, but it builds character. I got a history lesson and a music lesson. I came out of there at 22 a much more seasoned guy."

Hadley and Pete went separate ways. Hadley joined Gerald Wilson's big band, then moved to San Francisco, played with Santana, and eventually settled in the Pacific Northwest. Pete has had a distinguished career in music. He has been associated with many big bands, from Woody Herman and Louie Bellson and Bill Holman to the Metropole Orchestra and Doc Severinsen's NBC Orchestra on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. That last gig continued for 20 years, in the 1970's and 1980's, and made Pete the one jazz saxophonist whose face and sound were familiar to the American mass culture. His occasional volatile 16-bar breaks on the Tonight Show were viewed by millions. He was in demand as an educator and studio musician (he soloed on Steely Dan's hit "Deacon Blues"), made major contributions to countless jazz projects as a sideman, and led his own groups (including a 10-piece ensemble that is about to release an album of Bill Holman arrangements). In 2009, at a studio in Seattle, he found his way back to Hadley Caliman.

Until Reunion, with one exception, they had not played together in over 40 years. There was one gig at a jazz festival in Portland Oregon many years ago. It had gone well enough that there had been talk of forming a band. Nothing came of it. Pete says, "We were both busy, and two states apart." When they came together to make Reunion, the cutting sessions of the old days at Marty's, now filtered through two lifetimes of musical and human experience, became the deep background for an intimate conversation. Pete says, "The important thing is to listen to your partner and complement his efforts. It was brotherly love in that studio."

There is a paradox at the center of this album. Reunion can be heard both as a testament to aesthetic and spiritual compatibility and a study in stark contrast. Pete and Hadley are very different players. They suggest the wide spectrum of what is possible on the tenor saxophone. The opening track, "Little Dex," sets the rules of engagement. Bill Anschell, the pianist on the date, brought in the tune and its "Rhythm" changes as a blowing vehicle to show off the two tenors. Pete blasts the "A" sections and Hadley plays on the bridge. Pete takes command with the first solo. His tone is powerful, bright, clearly articulated. Hadley says that Pete reminds him of Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis: "Pete sounds like a very modern Lockjaw. Pete is no doubt a better saxophonist than Lockjaw was, but I hear the same kind of abandonment and recklessness."

Bill Anschell describes the contrast between Pete and Hadley this way: "Pete is so brash and assertive, yet everything he plays is kind of perfect. Hadley is more searching." Hadley's first search comes at 2:19 of "Little Dex." When Pete finishes and Hadley begins, it is like going from a man hollering proclamations to a seeker maneuvering toward an elusive goal. Pete charges down the center of ideas but Hadley slides into them sideways. Hadley's tone is not as strong and "perfect" as Pete's, but it is more like a mortal human voice, more existential in its moment-to-moment emotional impulses and cognitive discoveries.

"Little Dex" is what they called Hadley when he was first coming up. Dexter Gordon is only one of the echoes in Hadley's sound now, but Hadley says that back in the day, on Central Avenue, "Dexter was a god, and I had Dexter down. I parted my hair like him. I even had knock-knees like Dexter. The only thing was, I wasn't tall enough."

The other eight tracks offer continuous varied rewards. "Up Jumped Spring" is a song about ecstasy. Hadley played it with its composer, Freddie Hubbard. Pete takes the first solo. Hadley wrote "Comencio" in prison. It is also on Gratitude, but a version with Pete Christlieb is necessarily hotter. Hadley says, "It's the first tune I ever wrote that made sense." Hence the title. Hadley goes first. What makes him an exciting soloist, as he darts and dodges around his subject matter, is the sense that he might go anywhere. His provisional, spontaneous brush strokes always come upon a painting. "Gala" is an old tune by Hadley, who plays the head and takes the first solo. He describes it as "a song with strong audience appeal." No wonder. Its two-chord vamp is exotic and haunting. Hadley says, "Musicians can take it wherever they want." Bill Anschell takes it in a long arc, from quiet circling pools to insidiously accumulating intensity. It is the best of Anschell's many strong solos. An interesting subplot of this album is the striking work of Chuck Deardorf. Over the years he has anchored a vast array of Pacific Northwest jazz projects, but few recordings have allowed him this much space to display his poetic creativity as a bass soloist. "Nasty Green" is Pete's tune, a burner, but relaxed. The first clarion tenor solo is unmistakably Pete's. "East Side Crawl" is Bill Anschell's infectious long-form 16-bar blues. Pete plays the head and Hadley solos first. On "Love For Sale," Hadley plays the head. It is a rollicking version of a sly, witty Cole Porter song, but you still hear the yearning in Hadley's call. Pete plays the bridge and first solo.

Reunion is a joint venture, a celebration of a bond between two kindred spirits, long separated. It is also an album alive with fervent energy, set in motion and sustained by the lithe, strategic drummer John Bishop. It is therefore surprising that the two most memorable tracks are individual features, and ballads. Pete's original "Dream On," an improvisation on "Darn That Dream" changes, is a full revelation of his imposing saxophone resources, his unique ability to reconcile passionate reckless abandon and perfection. As for Hadley, his "I Thought About You" is a moving real-time human document, a meditation that could only come from someone looking back, undefeated, on a long hard road.

That description would probably sound grandiose to Hadley, who is modest and matter-of-fact about his art. He would be more likely to describe "I Thought About You" as one more attempt to "figure things out." He says, "I do what I do. If people like it, it's the greatest feeling in the world."

Liner Notes copyright © 2024 Thomas Conrad.

Reunion can be purchased here.

Contact Thomas Conrad at All About Jazz.
Thomas travels frequently writing about jazz outside the borders of the United States.

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