Roy HAYNES - Cymbalism 1963

Roy HAYNES - Cymbalism 1963
Label: Ojc
Release Date: Aug 20, 2002

Jazz

When he made Cymbalism in 1963, Roy Haynes was a 38-year-old veteran drummer who had played with an astonishing array of jazz artists. As a Boston teenager, he worked with swing stars like Pete Brown and Frankie Newton. He went on to engagements with Luis Russell and Lester Young. Then, as bebop was breaking out, he became a favorite drummer of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Stan Getz, and Thelonious Monk, among many other leading musicians of the era. He brought to his role as leader the musical wisdom accumulated with those masters, a knack for management, and an ear for rising talent. The careers of pianist Ronnie Mathews, bassist Larry Ridley, and alto saxophonist Frank Strozier got big boosts when Haynes chose them for his quartet. The snap, crackle, and pop of Haynes's drumming informs Cymbalism throughout, always with swing as infectious in support as when he solos.
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Well into his septuagenarian years, Roy Haynes is still going strong as a leader behind his venerable drum kit. His sticks and brushes have stoked the fires on countless sessions from early work with Lester Young to later stints with likes of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. Only a handful of living drummers can claim such a lengthy resume of prestigious employers. Back when this recently reissued record was waxed, Haynes was in the midst of an artistically fertile contract with the New Jazz label. He was also fortuitously entrenched at the epicenter of modern jazz, and as such could call on the trio of resourceful and forward thinking sidemen who join him for the date.
Thanks to the ubiquitous Rudy Van Gelder the album features beautiful stereo separation of the instruments, with Strozier’s effusive flute banking melodically off the firm rhythmic resolve of his partners on “Modette.” Ridley moves to the fore for the closing bars of the composition, thrumming out a fast encapsulation of the guiding harmonic current before diffusing into silence. Strozier’s salty alto breezes through the changes of the old warhorse “I’m Getting Sentimental…” setting up a series of breaks by Haynes that measure out sizeable strength with sophisticated subtlety. Strozier’s reentry and subsequent string of choruses follows an analogous path of swinging urbanity up to a fluttering end. The brief, but highly grooving “Go N’ Git It!” spotlights Matthews and the pianist pays his debt to the gospel-inflections of one Horace Silver with some funky rolling comping. Strozier shows some soul by sashaying through the theme and into a solo steeped in hot buttered blues. A lengthy medley winds things up, and the seams between the trio of themes are well stitched. Haynes’ crisp press rolls and cymbal accents are the guideposts alongside Ridley’s rock solid harmonic anchors. Strozier serves up some of his most ebullient playing of the session, particularly on the closing snippet of Sonny Rollins’ classic “Oleo.” Even Ridley has plenty of room to move and makes invigorating use of the space with carefully orchestrated plucks. Haynes rep was well cemented at the time of this session and has only grown in the intervening decades, but it’s a privilege to have access to one of his early dates
as a leader just the same.
By Derek Taylor.
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Roy Haynes- (Drums)
Frank Stozier- (Alto Sax, Flute)
Ronnie Matthews- (Piano)
Larry Ridley- (Bass)
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01. Modette (9:47)
02. I'm Gettin' Sentimental Over You (5:37)
03. Go 'N' Git It! (3:53)
04. La Palomeinding (6:40)
05. Medley: Hag - Cymbalism - Oleo (11:06)
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