Modern Jazz Quartet: Pyramid

The quartet's 1959 album Pyramids is paired with Patterns, containing MJQ readings of John Lewis's score for the film Odds Against Tomorrow

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Larry Hart was long dead before the Modern Jazz Quartet was even founded, but in 1939 he wrote a lyric entitled I Like To Recognize The Tune. It may well have applied to this record. Pyramid includes It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing and How High The Moon, both of which I know well, yet I listened in vain for one recognisable note from either tune. In full spate, the MJQ smoke with the best of them, and that, really, is all I ask.

There are actually two albums here – Pyramid and Patterns. The latter LP was recorded by the MJQ in between the sessions for Pyramid and consists of six John Lewis compositions. The original 1954 version of Django has also been added as a bonus.

The Patterns pieces come from the score Lewis wrote for the film Odds Against Tomorrow. By the late 1950s movie producers had begun to see jazz as something more than a novelty, and were commissioning people like Duke Ellington – and John Lewis – to compose serious background music.

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By the time the MJQ recorded these two albums its line-up was long established. The original drummer, Kenny Clarke, finding the restrictions imposed by John Lewis too stifling, had long quit the group, and his replacement, Connie Kay, fitted in both immediately and seamlessly.

In short, this is an album that can be savoured equally by an ignoramus like me and an alumnus of Juilliard groaning beneath the weight of diplomas. The set comes with a comprehensive 16-page booklet.

Discography
Vendome; Pyramid; It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing; Django; How High The Moon; Romaine; Skating In Central Park; No Happiness For Slater; A Social Call; Cue 9; A Cold Wind Is Blowing; Odds Against Tomorrow; Django (76.27)
Collectively: John Lewis (p); Milt Jackson (vib); Percy Heath (b); Connie Kay, Kenny Clarke (d). Lenox, Mass. and New York, 1954-60.
Poll Winners Records 27263

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