Joe Daley/Joe Daley Trio

[JSngry]

One of the cuts on my recent Blindfold Test that seems to have stirred up some curiosity is The Joe Daley Trio playing "Dexterity", from his RCA album THE JOE DALEY TRIO AT NEWPORT (1963). Daley and his band (Russell Thorne on bass & Hal Russell on drums) seem to have been into sommething rather unique if this album is indicative - a music firmly based in hard bop, yet one that gladly (and naturally, it feels like to me) welcomed Ornette Coleman's liberation from the rigid strucutres of song-form jazz. These guys both played "with" form, and "played with" form, if you know what I mean, a very attractive "middle ground" between conventional structures and total freedom.

Daley apparently was a teacher of legendary status in Chicago for several decades, but his recording history was incredibly spotty. The RCA album, one cut on a Charlie Parker Memorial Concert album recorded in Chicago, and a duet album with Rich Corpolongo that seems to focus on free improvisation and electronics (I've yet to hear it). I know that Larry Kart & Chuck Nessa have stories to tell of this man and/or the trio that made the RCA album, so I'll solicit input from them. But any discussion of Daley (in or out of the context of the Thone/Russell trio) is welcome here.

Edited January 3, 2004 by JSngry

[couw]

AMG tells me he is also present on a Kenny Dorham Sextet 1970 album. Is this correct?

[couw]

Here's a page on Daley from the Jazz Institute of Chicago:

link

[king ubu]

Jim, I really loved that cut! Maybe my favorite of your two great CDs!

Now let them gentlemen step up and tell us some stories!

ubu

[Sundog]

Daley apparently was a teacher of legendary status in Chicago for several decades, but his recording history was incredibly spotty. The RCA album, one cut on a Charlie Parker Memorial Concert album recorded in Chicago, and a duet album with Rich Corpolongo that seems to focus on free improvisation and electronics (I've yet to hear it). I know that Larry Kart & Chuck Nessa have stories to tell of this man and/or the trio that made the RCA album, so I'll solicit input from them. But any discussion of Daley (in or out of the context of the Thone/Russell trio) is welcome here.

Small world, my guitar teacher is cutting an album with Rich Corpolongo over the next couple of weeks. I have an invite to go to one of sessions. If the opportunity presents itself, I'll see if I can get some information about Mr. Daley.

[Larry Kart]

I'll try not to repeat any info from the Jazz Institute-lined pieces mentioned above. One question: Was Daley Irish-American (as his name suggests) or Italian-American? I always felt it was the latter because of his stylistic affinity with other, younger Italian-American Bird/Rollins players who later picked up on Coltrane -- Joe Farrell (Farrintello), Sal Nistico, et al. While I don't think Farrell was a Daley student, both were on the Chicago scene circa '57, and Farrell certainly sounds like he picked up on some of Daley's things.

Daley himself, while obviously gifted, always struck me as a rather laborious player -- in the sense that he seemed to be thrusting his "labor," especially his harmonic learnedness, at you as though it were something that was supposed to have a whole lot of meaning in itself (in that vein, note in that 1979 interview his singling out Joe Henderson and Dave Liebman for praise). By contrast, on the Chicago scene of the mid- to late-50s, Johnny Griffin and Ira Sullivan seemed to be far more natural players -- not that there wasn't a lot of hard work in their music, but it wasn't presented that way. Even Griffin's mind-boggling displays of speed didn't come across as proof of labor -- they were about fun and dazzlement, magic, smoke, and flames.

As for the Joe Daley Trio, I think it was a mostly mixed marriage or a mis-marriage. Daley seemed to come at outside playing from the outside, so to speak. Unlike the two Russells (especially Thorne at that time--Hal R.'s full-scale emergence lay some years ahead), he didn't feel its logical necessity; for him it was more like decor laid on top of bebop roots. There are tapes of the trio in live performance that may emerge some day (cleaning up the sound seems to be the main problem) that are much better than the RCA album (I was at a lot of the gigs those tapes are drawn from, though I haven't heard the tapes myself). But the trio got better IMO because Thorne and Hal Russell's ideas of how the music should go were winning out over Daley's (this was a turbulent bunch of guys in every way), and understandably Daley was not happy about this; he expressed satisfaction when Thorne left , and he preferred (or said that he preferred) Thorne's more straightahead (at least at that time) replacement Donald Garrett. As I recall, this second version of the Daley Trio was short-lived and was more or less in a Rollins at the Vanguard bag, which probably was where Daley had wanted things to be all along.

[brownie]

AMG tells me he is also present on a Kenny Dorham Sextet 1970 album. Is this correct?

That's on the 'Charlie Parker Memorial Concert' LP twofer that came out on Cadet. The music was recorded at the August 197O at Chicago's North Park hotel.

Joe Daley played tenor in a group that included Kenny Dorham, Ray Nance on trumpet and violin, Richard Abrams, Rufus Reid and Wilbur Campbell. The group plays 'Just Friends' and 'Summertime' with Daley being featured for fiery contributions on 'Just Friends'. He does not solo on 'Summertime'.

The other groups include:

- Red Rodney, Dexter Gordon, Von Freeman, Jodie Christian, Reid and Roy Haynes,

- Howard McGhee, Vi Redd, Christian, Reid and Campbell,

- Arthur Hoyle, Lee Konitz, John Young, Reid, Philly Joe Jones and Eddie Jefferson.

It does not look that this album made it to CD yet.

[JSngry]

But the trio got better IMO because Thorne and Hal Russell's ideas of how the music should go were winning out over Daley's (this was a turbulent bunch of guys in every way), and understandably Daley was not happy about this;

Larry, is this something you could elaborate on?

Besides the "personality conflicts", how much of this tension between "pushing out" and "holding in" existed at the time amongst the players of roughly this generation that you knew?

FWIW, I think that Thorne's playing on the RCA album is incredibly ahead of tis time, getting into Gary Peacock territory before Peacock did? Where did Thorne "come from" in terms of experience and attitude?

[Chuck Nessa]

Larry, is this something you could elaborate on?

Besides the "personality conflicts", how much of this tension between "pushing out" and "holding in" existed at the time amongst the players of roughly this generation that you knew?

FWIW, I think that Thorne's playing on the RCA album is incredibly ahead of tis time, getting into Gary Peacock territory before Peacock did? Where did Thorne "come from" in terms of experience and attitude?

Joe was really into Rollins and resisted all movements forward. Thorne and Hal forced him into Ornette. All this info is from Hal and one short conversation with Russell Thorne. I first heard the band at the DownBeat fest in '65. By then Clyde Flowers (another unsung hero) was the bassist.

Joe is very important to a bunch of white guys in Chicago, but this is very easy to over-estimate. He was also a nice guy, good techinician, etc.

DJ Linda Prince created a "reunion" in the late '70s at Rick's Cafe Americain and the resulting interview on the local NPR station was a mess.

Sometimes tenor players are "the bane".

[Larry Kart]

Jim -- Chuck's post explains the tension perfectly, though I think Daley also was drawn to "the new thing" on his own to some extent, but more along the lines of the label than because there was any deep link between what he liked and could do musically and what Ornette et al. were about. Among that generation of tenormen in Chicago, I thought Nicky Hill had a much better grasp of what was at stake there. And of course there's Von, who was ahead of or beyond almost everything, but he wasn't around town then, I believe, but in Vegas with the Treniers.

I thought Russell Thorne was a genius. He had classical training, played with the Duluth Symphony, I think (imagine there being a Duluth Symphony if you've ever passed through Duluth), and he knew the modern classical compositional scene inside out, could improvise arco as fluidly as LaFaro or Peacock could pizzicato -- sounded like a swinging Webern string quartet. And it wasn't virtuoso bullshit; he was a structural thinker, everything he played made sense, a new sense. Who knows what he might have become if he'd stuck with it, but he was a very high-strung guy and decided to go another way. He now runs (maybe owns) an occult bookstore in Chicago. About his relationship to LaFaro and Peacock in a "who came first?" sense, I don't know for sure, but I'd bet it was as much a something in the air thing as direct influence.

I sure hope that live Joe Daley Trio stuff comes out, because unless my memory is shot, Thorne on RCA was maybe one-half or one-third of what Thorne was at his best.

[JSngry]

Sometimes tenor players are "the bane".

Occupational hazard...

Seriously, I'm fascinated by Thorne. The RCA album mentions a "strong classical backgrouns" and him being " a former symphony musician who was drawn to the work of the most advanced contemporary composers as well as to jazz", but that's it. I know from private conversations that Thorne kind of "went spiritual" in later years, but I've been able to find nothing of his background. Anybody got anything?

[relyles]

I had the opportunity to listen to this album for the first time this week. Reading the previous comments illuminated something that I was thinking. Daley shows himself to be a very interesting improvisor, but it is Thorne's contribution that make this a special recording to me. He plays with a lot of imagination and I love his sound on bass. The Newport recording is very good IMO, but if there is better by this group I sure would love to hear it.

Anyone know whether Thorne can be heard on any other recordings?

[JSngry]

I've searched in vain for other recordings of Thorne. Bummer.

[couw]

After listening to the entire album twice, I thought I'd unearth this thread to add some praise for the bassist. It seems others heat the same thing as I do. What an amazing player! Pity he didn't record anything else (or so it seems).

Reading throught this thread with the music in mind makes it all the more interesting.

[ZOOT]

Had to join this site to reply about Joe Daley! I have the amazing "At Newport" LP (since 1963!) - a lost gem of an album. The "Charlie Parker memorial Concert" has been released on CD. I had it and sold it ( D'oh!)

[JSngry]

Hey there, Zoot. What prompted you to buy the album back in the day? You from Chicago?

[ZOOT]

Hi JSngry, I'm from Rugby, England. The album is sort of shared between an old buddy n' me. He bought it originally, and I'm looking after his records while he moves house. We dig guys like Curtis Amy, Marchal Ivery, Harold Land, David Newman as well as all the usual suspects!

[rockefeller center]

Jennifer Pendur evolved her eclectic multidimensional musical aesthetic

from many sources, including early exposure to Cleveland radio during its

experimental, non-commercial heyday. As a child she cheerfully absorbed

musical influences from anywhere and everywhere, discovering in her teens

the works of John Cage, Morton Feldman, Arnold Schoenberg, Ornette

Coleman, and Charles Mingus. The interplay of natural environmental

sounds and "noise" has always fascinated her, and she began composing with

magnetic tape in eighth grade, when she became fascinated with collage and

its application to sound and begged her parents for a tape recorder.

While she has also studied french horn, piano, flute, guitar, and

dulcimer, her bass and her voice are her primary instruments at this time.

She took up the upright bass after moving to Chicago in 1974, and has

studied at length with the legendary Russell Thorne, and also recorded

with him in the Giordanisti Trio and Emergency Theatre Ensemble. During

her tenure in the Midwest improvised music scene, she has also performed

with the likes of Donald Raphael Garrett, Chicago free-jazz legend Hal

Russel (who began his avant-guarde career with Russell Thorne in the Joe

Daley Trio), and Milwaukee instrument-inventor Hal Rammel. She has

appeared numerous times with the astonishing jazz-rock guitarist, Elijah

Israel (now tragically deceased) in the psychedelic jam-band Earthen

Vessels.

Does anyone of you know if these recordings have been issued?

[JSngry]

I know that bio answers the question, but who is Jennifer Pendur, and where did you find this info? I Googled Russell Thorne a few weeks ago (and have the scars to prove it!), and came across nothing like this!

[couw]

I know that bio answers the question, but who is Jennifer Pendur, and where did you find this info? I Googled Russell Thorne a few weeks ago (and have the scars to prove it!), and came across nothing like this!

the second link

[JSngry]

I know that bio answers the question, but who is Jennifer Pendur, and where did you find this info? I Googled Russell Thorne a few weeks ago (and have the scars to prove it!), and came across nothing like this!

the second link

Your browser is not accepting our cookies. To view this page, please set your browser preferences to accept cookies (code 0).

Uh, that's not it. Must be a firewall issue. Oh well.

But yeah, what about those recordings?

[couw]

Jim, try via the google cache.

[JSngry]

Wow, I clicked on "Try Again", it did, and it worked. Imagine that.

All right then, the search is on for recordings by the Giordanisti Trio and Emergency Theatre Ensemble, whomever they may be!

[couw]

nothing yet. nothing on Ms. Pendur either, save that she will be performing with the No Earth Trio in some coffee house on 21 feb.

[rockefeller center]

I remember there's a board member from Madison, no? This member will have to attend this concert (a fundraiser) and ask Jennifer Pendur about those recordings.

http://www.motherfools.com/calendar.php?uri=calendar