BOOKER ERVIN “THE IN BETWEEN” – Blue Note – Recorded for Blue Note in 1968, “The In Between” is considered a largely forgotten solo gem by Texas tenor saxophonist Booker Telleferro Ervin Jr., best known for his regular role in Mingus’s bands during his golden years (1959-63). (See him in the clip below in magnificent solo action at 2:56, before passing the ball with a velvet touch to an unleashed Eric Dolphy…)
That second curious Italian surname, Telleferro, has always evoked in the writer telluric images and red-hot irons that softly fall from the bell of his tenor, as it happened alongside the double bassist from Nogales, and is well documented in the powerful solos scattered in masterpiece albums such as Ah Uhm, Mingus Dinasty, Oh Yeah or Tonight at Noon….
A direct descendant of the formidable Texan saxophonist school, Booker Ervin was highly regarded among his fellow musicians at the time, and only a tragic fate meant that this album would be the penultimate of his all too brief career, as an untreated kidney failure would take away this Dioscuri of the tenor sax in 1970, just over the age of forty, interrupting an artistic career that, all things considered, maintained a coherence and a very high level, despite the fact that his name never rose to fame but continued to circulate underground, undervalued and only able to inspire a few cult venerations in small but long-lived colonies of enthusiasts.
These are details, hypotheses that are difficult to confirm but that nevertheless give even more affection and “truth” to the recording.
What emerges with great evidence is in fact the naturalness and extreme “honesty” of the saxophonist (“He’s natural and he’s honest,” Ed Williams writes in the liner notes, “If we accept him in these terms there can be no misunderstanding.”) Booker Ervin thus exploits the refined texture of the companions chosen for the occasion and, as is his custom and style, immediately finds a strong empathy with the listener thanks to the strength of his sound and the leadership with which he leads the group, continuously putting himself on the line, throughout the album. Ultimately, it comes out as a high-school performance, in which the saxophonist finds himself wonderfully in line-up with the brilliant trumpet of Richard Williams, another forgotten Texan, probably met at the time of the Mingusian collaborations and gifted with excellent technique, over the years put at the service of Duke Ellington, Gil Evans, Oliver Nelson, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis and many others, just to clarify that here we are talking about heavyweights, who go beyond times and fashions. Noteworthy is the contribution of the rhythm trio in which the sense of proportion and the drive displayed by pianist Bobby Few stand out (as above: another excellent musician worthy of rediscovery, listening to him dispensing class in “The Muse”, with Booker opening and closing on the flute, is good for the heart).
Curious is the hiring of Bobby Few, with whom the tenor player had not yet worked. New York in the 1960s was an extraordinary city, and in the same building as Few also lived Booker Ervin (upstairs), Randy Weston (on the same floor) and tenor saxophonist Frank Wright (downstairs). In practice, given the comings and goings of the period, it was a building populated by a “who’s who” of jazz. The pianist recounted many years later: “One day I was playing in my apartment, and Ervin came down from upstairs and knocked on my door and said, ‘Wow, what’s your name?’ And I said, ‘I’m Bobby Few, I’m from Cleveland.’ ‘Would you like to make a record with me?’ ‘Well, sure, and who?’ ‘Blue Note!’ And I was like, ‘Oh, yeah man!’ A few days later we were in the studio for ‘The In Between.’”
The entire session vibrates with an intense groove in which the inner urgency that harks back to the best pages of some beloved leaders is palpable. The mix of stylistic elements that oscillate between Don Byas and John Coltrane is simply explosive, without forgetting Dexter Gordon (perhaps the most marked saxophonist influence?) but all filtered through the classic “texas shout” that goes straight to your gut. The effluvium of Booker Ervin thus develops in a completely original way and admirably disciplined by a sort of torrid control, even when the exposition becomes more ecstatic and free.
The album is currently difficult to find both in CD and LP version, a used CD travels around 50 dollars on the restricted market, but the “Blue Note’s Connoisseur CD Series” version is currently offered by Spotify and in my opinion has only one flaw: the last track, “Tyra“, after seven minutes of persuasive construction suddenly fades away during a solo. A metaphor for the short life of a great outsider jazz musician who managed to steal our hearts, leaving traces of indelible jazz.
I realize only now that among the various types of articles among which our pieces are classified there is one that has languished since the beginning: “traces of the past”.
Let’s remedy the wrongdoing by inaugurating a series of small miniatures centered on particularly intense and significant pieces from past decades, real touchstones that allow us to put into scale the good, the ordinary and above all the negligible that circulate today.
There were also those who said it to themselves. Coming soon on these screens….
As far as I am concerned, I will take this opportunity to bring to your attention those I call the ‘unsung heroes’, musicians of great value who had the misfortune of appearing on the scene at a time when it was dominated by giants who, through no fault of their own, objectively relegated to the shadows colleagues who in other moments would have been recognized as authentic champions, and in some cases true masters.
It goes without saying that the big record industry then did the rest, leaving the masters of their albums on the shelves for decades: an oblivion that only in rare cases was broken by rare and not very accessible reissues, promptly grabbed and treasured by long-time enthusiasts. And this provided that the labels that originally published their works did not fall into the black hole of bankruptcies, dispersion of their catalogs, speculative hoarding of the rights to their material.
I hope that those of you who go through old records will come across this (very difficult) or some other of the precious ivory double albums produced by Michael Cuscuna’s Blue Note in the 70s. If you spot it, don’t hesitate! Inside, priceless essays by the best authors of the time.
Booker Ervin (1930 – 1970) is the best example of this fate. The mere 40 years of his earthly life tell a story: it seems that in the middle of the 20th century in the richest country in the world only jazzmen could die of diabetes, with all due respect to the mythology built around the omnipotent American medicine.
But in these few years our man has done many things: the most cultured jazz lovers will immediately mention his militancy in Charles Mingus’s groups of the early 60s and his soaring presence in several of his most famous recordings. But there is also the collaboration with Mal Waldron, who once again put him in comparison with Eric Dolphy, a couple that sparkles in their heterogeneity.
Booker came from Texas, an origin that means a lot in the tradition of the tenor sax: an instrument that our man had initially mastered as a self-taught, coming originally from the trombone (intensely practiced in the bands of the U.S. Air Force that Booker took over for a few years). Indeed, Ervin seems the prototype of the Texan tenor player: a big and sharp sound, ample and snappy phrasing, characteristics to which our man also added an intense emotional charge and an evident propensity to push forward, without losing sight of what was most advanced that was growing around him.
Only a few rather seasoned jazz fans will remember Booker’s masterpiece, however: the cycle of ‘books’ recorded for Prestige in the course of a single year, 1964. “The Song Book”, “The Blues Book”, “The Space Book” and “The Freedom Book” (pay attention to the titles…) await another exhumation from oblivion, we trust in Craft Recordings, which has long undertaken a praiseworthy, but unfortunately gradual reissue of the titles Prestige / Riverside / New Jazz / Pacific / Contemporary: I recommend keeping an eye on their Bandcamp page where they also sell their albums in digital format (an option worthy of much attention in these times).
And now I leave the floor to Booker, with one of the most intense, dilated and ecstatic ‘I can’t get started’ that have ever been recorded: here we are a neck and neck away from the happiest Coltrane…. If you like it (as a young man I wore out the relative LP…), look for it on some less chaotic and botched platform than YouTube, which I resort to for mere questions of breadth of access. Nine minutes and fifty-seven seconds that you will not regret.
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