Recording of the Week, Clark Terry & Big B-A-D Band, 'Live in Holland 1979'

A composer, educator and pioneer of the jazz flugelhorn, Clark Terry was many things, not least a surprisingly influential figure in the genre’s mid-twentieth-century period. Primarily a trumpet player by trade, Terry came to rise in the era of swing and big bands, and after playing valve trombone in the United States Navy big band he was picked up by both Count Basie and Duke Ellington for their respective orchestras – Ellington supposedly poaching Terry from Basie’s band without the other bandleader knowing – establishing himself quickly as a player just as technically proficient as he was good-humoured.

Terry’s career as a professional musician would go on to last 70 years, including three decades spent playing regularly with the pianist Oscar Peterson and even a ten-year stint in The Tonight Show Band from 1962 to 1972, becoming the first African-American musician to hold a regular position in the band of a major television show. By the time of his passing in 2015, Terry had amassed over 900 recording credits; on top of all this Terry was a mentor to numerous jazz musicians, many of whom went on to become arguably more recognisable names than the man himself; Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, Pat Metheny and Quincy Jones are just some of the musicians he helped bring up – the latter of whom even pens a rather personal tribute to Terry in the liner notes of today’s Recording of the Week, Live in Holland 1979.

This live set reissued by Storyville Records finds Clark Terry fronting his Big B-A-D Band, a sixteen-piece jazz orchestra roughly nine years into its existence by the time of this recording – and for a period in jazz where fusion and funk was largely dominant, it’s promising to hear that Terry’s Big B-A-D Band are still in good playing shape. This recording also comes right about the time when Terry was concentrating his efforts more and more on the flugelhorn, and you’ll hear him taking both on this recording as well as a handful of vocal spots; the Terry original ‘Mumbles’ makes an appearance towards the end of the set, named after his unique style of scat singing that earned him the same nickname during his time on The Tonight Show – see if you can actually make out what he’s saying on that one! That signature humour is still there on Live in Holland, and you’ll hear Terry bantering with both his bandmates and the audience throughout the recording in between tracks and solos.

Terry’s band are tight as anything on Live in Holland – just listen out for the big stabs on the opening track ‘A Toi’; all sixteen of Terry’s bandmates seldom miss a beat throughout the album. Terry himself is a great soloist in a band full of similarly great soloists; you can’t miss his distinctive style informed by early swing and hard bop, but just as much time in the spotlight is given to the rest of his band including the piano-led opening to Billy Strayhorn ‘Take the A Train’ or the low-end-spelunking saxophone solo on Rick Henderson’s ‘Carney’. There’s plenty of variety in the programme too, a mixture of upbeat tunes that have the whole band blaring like the Phil Woods arrangement that opens the record, to more balladic numbers like Wilton Gaynair’s ‘Don’t Speak Now’ with its soaring trumpet melodies, and the music of Terry’s former pupil Quincy Jones even makes an appearance with the suitably swanky ‘Blues All Day, Blues All Night’. Live in Holland 1979 makes for a fun little time capsule of this 20th Century jazz sage, and although Terry would later have to disband the Big B-A-D Band due to financial difficulties, it remains some of his most beloved output – with Live in Holland 1979 making for a lovingly-presented recording of the band on top form.