Last week, I wrote about the fantastic vibe player, Bobby Hutcherson, and it only seems right to mention his younger contemporary and equally marvelous vibe player Walt Dickerson.
If Hutcherson was notable for his ability to stay relevant even as jazz artists embraced hard bob, modal, fusion, and funkified flavors of music, Walt Dickerson charted his own course and embrace both modal and then a more distinctly avant-garde sound throughout his career.
I have four albums that by Walt Dickerson that make me very happy especially on cold, but sunny Sunday afternoons where the low sun and dusty air creates just the right glow in my comfy sitting room.
First, there’s To My Queen, from 1962 with Andrew Hill on piano, George Tucker on bass, and a young Andrew Cyrille on drums. This is quiet music and asks soft questions and rewards patient listening. Tucker’s basslines are worthy of particular attention and the gentle interplay between him, Hill, and Dickerson reminds of me three people describing a winter sunset. Cyrille’s playing is just right.
The next two albums are a pair separated by over a dozen years and both feature Sun Ra. The first is apparently a reinterpretation of the score from the Sidney Poitier film A Patch of Blue called Impressions of “A Patch of Blue”. You can read more about the backstory in Rodger Coleman’s study of this album in Sun Ra Sundays and listen to it here (“Bacon and Eggs” is just great). While Sun Ra’s playing has the capacity to take over any recording (as does Andrew Hill’s!), on this album he and Dickerson have a great rapport and Coleman’s observation that this gives the album “a loose, late night feel” that apparently reflected the intense conversations that Ra and Dickerson had concerning matters of race and music.
These conversations continued 13-years later after Dickerson reemerged from a self-imposed musical exile. Dickerson and Sun Ra recorded Visions which has a more Sun Ra vibe to it. The interplay between Sun Ra’s piano which alternates between probing and elegant flourishes and Dickerson’s vibes which sound positively unworldly gives the space-age sound of Sun Ra’s music a kind of warm familiarity of a lazy Martian afternoon. This is evening music, by the fire place, with a couple of dogs to keep you grounded and a glass of pleasant tequila to help you drift.
Last week, I mentioned Bobby Hutcherson’s 1975 album Montara which some critic called the most 1975 album ever. Dickerson released an album that year with Wilbur Ware and Andrew Cyrille that offers a deeply engaged reminder that there was a lot of stuff going on in 1975 that did not make much of an impact in commercial jazz circles. While the Ware on bass and Cyrille on drums might not be an intuitive pairing, the percussive Ware complements the understated Cyrille and impactful Dickerson in delightful ways. There is so much space on this album, it begs you to be quiet. This is not commercial music, but it is compelling and wonderful.
It’s only two tracks:
Finally (and this is a bonus album), I have a soft spot for solo jazz recordings especially when they’re on instruments that don’t usually get solo treatments. Solo vibes. It’s a tonic for whatever overheated encounters punctuate your existence.