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Buddy Tate Meets Abdullah Ibrahim: The Legendary 1977 Encounter

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Who would have thought that Buddy Tate and Abdullah Ibrahim (aka Dollar Brand) would record together someday ? Buddy Tate (1913-2001),a tenor sax master from the swing era, was a member of Count Basie's orchestra at the end of the thirties,and remained active in music after he turned 80 years old. Pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (born October 9,1934 in South Africa),was discovered by Duke Ellington.Duke even produced his first recording session, on the Reprise label (at that time,Abdullah was known as Dollar Brand),and also produced a record of Dollar's wife,singer Sathima Bea Benjamin.Then,Abdullah recorded several masterpieces,mostly in solo piano ("anthem for the new nations" on Denon,"ode to Duke Ellington" and "memories" on West Wind,"african piano" on ECM,"anatomy of a south african village" on Black Lion,and many others.
In 1977,producer Hank O'Neal had the crazy idea of inviting Dollar and Buddy to record together.This was the idea: Abdullah would teach Buddy some of his tunes ("Goduka Mfundi" and "Heyt Mazurki"),Buddy would teach Abdullah some of his ("doggin' around" and "just you,just me"), and a pair of standards would complete the session ("poor butterfly" and Duke's "in a sentimental mood").Bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Roy Brooks were hired for the session;they both recorded with Abdullah for Enja a few months before.Buddy Tate's playing is great,he really feels at home, and Abdullah's solos on standards is interesting to discover.After the first six tracks were taped,Buddy had to leave because he was playing at the Crawdaddy Club,NYC,so the trio recorded two more tracks which didn't appear on the original LP."shrimp boats", a Randy Weston original, sounds very african."Django", of course, is John Lewis' masterpiece, a tune dedicated to french gipsy guitar player, Django Reinhardt.After a haunting ad-lib introduction,with only drums,bass and voice (Abdullah's ?),the trio goes into a Coltrane-like exploration of the theme,without playing it.Abdullah's playing is very reminiscent of McCoy Tyner's,not based on the melody of the tune but only on the chords.THis is a very interesting meeting of two masters who maybe would never had the opportunity of playing together.And another marvel from Chiaroscuro,a label who commited some great records in the 70's.

This unlikely 1977 pairing turned out to be a bonanza for both men. Tate had not yet begun to lose his wind and Ibrahim was young and still open to the jazz influences he was searching for in America. Both men somehow conspired to bring out the best in the other. Ibrahim was so respectful of Tate that he entrusted his own opening tune, "Goduka Mfundi", to the captaincy of Tate and the rhythm section and sat out on piano. Tate never sounded better. Ibrahim's South African tonic was just the pick-me-up Tate needed as he entered the senior years of his career. And Ibrahim displays what a completely original keyboard voice he is on Duke's "In a Sentimental Mood" and the monumental, "Django". Thought you'd heard everything that could be done with "Django"? You haven't heard this. But perhaps the greatest revelation of this CD is bassist, Cecil McBee, who is liberally featured throughout and proves himself an absolute monster of the upright.If Hank O'Neal ever produced a better record I haven't heard it yet. This is jazz at its shining best.

as in the mid-seventies that I first saw and heard Buddy Tate--it was a Carnegie Hall concert featuring Benny Goodman, with Buddy Tate introduced to the full house as the first and best of the "Texas Tenors." That claim may be debatable, or it may depend on one's understanding of "Texas Tenor." But certainly Tate stands tall among tenor Titans from Texas (though Sherman, his birthplace, is about as close to Oklahoma as any Texas native is likely to get). He sounded commanding on his instrument at that time, and he sounds even more confident and in charge on this session.

But no less impressive and contributory to the album's success is pianist-composer Abdullah Ibrahim, whose Cape Town melodies are quickly seized upon and assimilated by Tate (check out "Heyt Mazruki" for a striking example of South African musical phrases filtered through Texas Tenor full-bodied blues playing). Ibrahim's solo contributions, moreover, are refreshingly plain and direct. He's far from a technician or "complete" piano player, but there's never as much as a hint that his musical ideas are hampered by limited facility.

This may indeed be a "legendary" session as the title claims. Buddy Tate certainly made some legendary recordings during his 15 years with Basie. But apart from any historical importance, it's a swinging affair between two compatible if different musical minds. As for the rhythm section, drummer Roy Brooks was always among the best, a player who seemed more impressive each time I caught him, whether with Silver, Mingus, the Heath Brothers, or Tate, and bassist Cecil McBee exhibits the skill that made him a musician's musician, a power player on the acoustic bass throughout the 1970's and 1980's. (One might quibble with the favoring of the bass in the sonic mix and the seemingly endless decay time of the instrument's tones--both details that tend to place this otherwise timeless music in the 1970's.)