The Zone: Live at the Yardbird Suite

OVERDUE OVATION
I like to pay my debts," said trumpeter David Weiss in our recent Q&A. So do I, and one of them is to pianist Hal Galper, whose jazz theory course I took at The New School for a full year (1987-88, if memory serves). You did not leave that class the same, not me at least. Now at the age of 86, Hal has been posting some longer commentaries on Facebook, often on the themes we covered that year—and we covered way more than notes on a whiteboard, believe me. A year is a long time.

Hal is tough, direct, with a genuine sense of humor, a Salem, Massachusetts native with the full Chick Corea Boston accent—harmony is thickly pronounced "hahmony." I knew something of his credentials but was about to learn way more. For one thing, he succeeded Joe Zawinul and George Duke in the Cannonball Adderley Quintet—a major, historically significant band right at the cusp of the fusion era, a bridge between straightahead, soul-jazz, funk and everything else that was coming. Hal is on the Adderley albums Inside Straight, Pyramid and the eyebrow-raising Love, Sex, and the Zodiac (all on Fantasy, 1973-74).

The time I spent in Hal's class was at the peak of his tenure in the Phil Woods Quintet, alongside Tom Harrell on trumpet, Steve Gilmore on bass and Bill Goodwin on drums. This was a lesson in itself, because Hal talked about that band, a lot. He rhapsodized about "Tommy" Harrell, then in his early 40s, now 78, as a giant of a musician, with incredible ears and even his own style on the piano, which irked Hal a bit. He talked about Phil Woods of course, he talked about James Moody, Sam Rivers, Bobby Hutcherson, Slide Hampton, Stan Getz, Chet Baker—all the people he'd worked with, not to name-drop but to teach the music for real, to pull lessons directly derived from his experience. He also spoke compellingly and with deep insight on topics such as stage fright. This was long before TED Talks and he was great at them.

Hal's latest post is about something he shared with us in class. It's about an impromptu lecture that one Julian "Cannonball" Adderley gave the band in the hotel after a gig. The lecture was about getting lost—i.e., losing your place in the tune during a solo, playing over the right chord changes but at the wrong time, out of step with the band. It's about the worst thing that can happen, pure embarrassment for the soloist and not looked kindly upon by bandmates, who now sound bad by association. Cannonball's point, according to Galper, was that anybody can get lost, doesn't matter how amazing you might be. So it's all about recovery, about how fast you can get un-lost. And that is a skill, it's a muscle.

Now I teach my guitar students as young as eight about musical recovery, because one is never "too young" to learn this. In fact, it's the only way forward, because there will be many mistakes, and many recoveries. Becoming a strong musical recoverer takes conscious effort and experience—and that experience starts now, in my lesson, where no one's judging anyone. In these moments I am directly recalling Hal's lesson about Cannonball. The kids don't need to know that.

I took at least one private lesson from Hal, at his loft apartment in the Flower District. He comped for me and listened to me improvise on "Just Friends." I suspect he read me exactly right, as someone who was not going to get down in the trenches and play jazz for life. I say that because later when we were done, he asked me flat-out (a paraphrase): "Do you have a choice? If you have a choice in life other than playing jazz, it's very likely you're going to make that other choice." He was not being mean. He spoke a truth that he knew in his bones, and he tried to get it across to a 19- or 20-year-old who might or might not be ready to hear it.

I have notebooks from Hal's class somewhere, but in our day it's more useful to consult videos like this, this, this and this. He's been leading a group of young players in a project called Body Music near his home in upstate New York. His '70s working band with Michael and Randy Brecker remains a touchstone from the period, however overlooked. It's documented on The Guerilla Band and Wild Bird (both Mainstream), Reach Out! (SteepleChase), Speak with a Single Voice (Century, reissued in 1997 by Double-Time as Children of the Night), and the previously unavailable Live at the Berlin Philharmonic, 1977, produced for release in 2021 by Hal and Origin Records head (and longtime Galper trio drummer) John Bishop. Hal's subsequent output for Enja, Concord and Origin is deep, and much like Tom Harrell, he's created a highly distinctive group sound in whatever he does.

Also like Harrell, though even more so, Galper is underappreciated for the master that he is. This is something he talked about in class, though he didn't make it about himself. He called it back then the problem plaguing the mid-career musician: too old for the "young lions," too young for an elder statesman or legend. And it typically doesn't get better as the mid-career musician continues to age. One goal of JazzTimes is doing what we can to remedy this state of affairs. This is our first Overdue Ovation of the new JT era, and we'll keep striving to honor and celebrate the achievements and the lessons of our jazz masters.