In a sense, Steve Lacy had it made from the beginning. His route was so individual that he was bound to attract the kind of attention the avant-garde world of the fifties was only too ready to lavish on mavericks. Skipping from Dixieland (with Max Kaminsky et al) to the outer reaches (with Cecil Taylor) and bypassing bebop and its children, Lacy developed a strange jazz patois – a personal tongue that found kindred spirits in other oddballs like Monk and Taylor. Not only that, Lacy chose as the main tool of his trade the then eldritch soprano. Since in the fifties no other modernist had expressed any real interest in the instrument, Lacy had the field to himself.
The originality of Lacy’s path of development is reflected in the wayward path which his solos generally take. That he hadn’t paid much attention to bebop shows in the way he skirts around the harmony of Donna Lee, in touch with the changes, but viewing them from some distant parallel. The tenuousness of his approach is emphasised by baritonist Davis’s more conventional negotiations. As the record progresses it becomes evident that themes and harmonies matter less than Lacy’s eccentric piping, which is finally the most consistent element on the record. Viewed from behind the apron strings of convention, his playing is unpretty and unsentimental, but time has shown that it was worth his while to sound like nothing else in jazz.
Discography
Louise; Introspection; Donna Lee (18.17) – Played Twice; Air; Criss Cross (17.48)
Steve Lacy (ss); Charles Davis (bar); John Ore (b); Roy Haynes (d). Recorded NY, 1960.
(Candid 9007)