As two of Verve’s long-term contract artists, I suppose Wynton Kelly and Wes Montgomery were bound to be paired sooner or later (you can depend they’ll be getting Grant Green and Wes together one of these days) and the partnership is a happy, if unremarkable, one. Their efforts are relaxed, unpretentious and always swinging, but not especially inventive. Guitarist Montgomery and pianist Kelly offer nothing that we have not heard before and the same applies to their colleagues, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb. Such results are inevitable when artists of limited ability are ridiculously over-exposed. Even Thelonious Monk has arrived at a point where he falls back on repetition in solos and tunes. Here we find Kelly doing the same. If You Could See Me Now appeared on his last album (Verve VLP 9103), reviewed by Gerald Lascelles in our January issue. Admittedly Montgomery was not part of that performance, but Kelly’s treatment, including the tremolo introduction, is too close for comfort.
The title is misleading because only side one was recorded at the Half Note; the remaining titles emanated from Rudy Van Gelder’s three months later. If anything the studio session is superior; it certainly produced the finest improvising of the set on Montgomery’s rumbling vehicle Four On Six. The Miles Davis composition No Blues at nearly 13 minutes goes on far too long and forces both Wynton and Wes to fall back upon cliché-stringing. Tadd Dameron’s If You Could is spoiled by an abrupt change of mood halfway through Montgomery’s solo. Cobb unexpectedly shifts into a chopping groove, a device that long ago outwore its welcome. Unit 7, a Sam Jones line, combines modality with bossa nova in its theme and the contributions of the front men are in the hard bop style – strange mixture. What’s New? Well, certainly not this treatment. It’s pretty old hat really. Despite all my carping the record does contain spots where the smokin’ catches fire. If only there were more. Obviously neither Kelly nor Montgomery are represented at their best in the Verve lists. Wynton’s pearls are on Vee Jay, Wes’s on Riverside.
Discography
(a) No Blues; (a) If You Could See Me Now (21½ min) – (b) Unit 7; (b) Four On Six; (b) What’s New? (20½ min)
(a) Wynton Kelly (p); Wes Montgomery (g); Paul Chambers (bs); Jimmy Cobb (d). Half Note Club, NYC, June 1965.
(b) Same as (a). Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 22/9/65.
(Verve VLP 9118 32s. 6d.)
