Dewey Redman, 1931-2006
Dave King has the perfect phrase to describe the late Dewey Redman, who died yesterday: “Warm modernism.” "Warm modernism" means be abstract; be surreal; be irrational—but also be an earthy motherfucker. “Warm modernism” is also what TBP tries to be. Dewey has been one of our important teachers, and we will continue to study him. (Reid Anderson was listening to Dewey just a few hours before hearing the sad news today.)
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Jazz listeners were introduced to Dewey Redman in a famous moment on Ornette Coleman’s 1968 Blue Note album New York is Now! :
Ornette was proud of his new saxophonist. “Dewey Redman could play the keys off the saxophone,” he said. Ornette was so proud that he decided to bare his neck and be sacrificed for Dewey on the first track, “The Garden of Souls.” It’s a long track—too long. Ornette’s solo lasts for six or seven minutes, during which time the rhythm section and Ornette do not hook up once. Finally, Ornette stops burbling away. Pause. Dewey Redman enters.
Dewey Redman enters with a shattering roar, literally screaming while playing the saxophone. The earth opens up and you contemplate the multitudes of strange large brown insects that burrow and feed near the ancient runes. Dewey plays for less than two minutes, but it is more than enough to make you completely forget that long alto solo.
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Dewey and Charlie Haden could fluidly improvise free harmony together. This magical association was a crucial element of three of jazz’s greatest bands:
The Ornette Coleman quartet with Dewey, Charlie, and Ed Blackwell. This band played a lot of gigs but did not make a studio record. There are several bootlegs, all of which are amazing. Friends and Neighbors is easy to get and has good sound, too. Of the other Ornette/Dewey records, Science Fiction (which we consider to be just about the best record ever) has the working quartet with other musicians and an immortal Dewey solo on “Law Years.” On Crisis, with Don Cherry, Charlie and 12-year old Denardo Coleman, Dewey’s solo on “Comme Il Faut” is a concentrate of beauty.
The Keith Jarrett quartet with Dewey, Charlie, and Paul Motian. See the 1973-1990 post. Classic Dewey solos with this band include “(If the) Misfits (Wear It),” “Gotta Get Some Sleep,” “Byeablue,” “Rotation,” and countless others. The last live performance of this band together is documented on Eyes of the Heart. The legend is that Dewey was drinking wine backstage and ignoring the gig. This seems to be true, since almost the whole first two sides of the three-sided two-LP set is a boring piano vamp. Finally, near the end of side B, Paul Motian crashes in. Dewey puts down the wine, picks up the horn, and for five minutes plays only the notes of a pure minor scale with heartbreaking intensity. After this cataclysm, the encores on the last side have the quartet playing some of the most joyous music ever recorded.
"Old and New Dreams," with Don Cherry, Dewey, Charlie and Ed. After Ornette formed Prime Time, his most devoted disciples formed a band to continue the Coleman acoustic tradition. Our favorites are the first session, Old and New Dreams on Black Saint, and the live set on ECM, Playing. Dewey’s outrageous/genius musette is a confirmed asset in this context.
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Early on, Dewey told Keith Jarrett that he couldn’t play changes:
“Basically, he thought he was not as good at it as he really was. But I remember one night, at the Village Vanguard, it was the day Don Byas died, and Dewey played a solo on a tune with chords. Usually he’d ignore the changes, but he got into the chords, and he became Byas that day, as a sort of tribute thing. The rest of us just stared at him and I said to myself, ‘Jesus Christ, he doesn’t realize some of the things he could really do.” (Keith Jarrett quoted by Neil Tesser in the liner notes to Mysteries: The Impulse Years 1975-1976.)
Dewey knew enough about the immaculate threading styles of Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins to tread carefully. He also probably thought that “running the chords” was a bit outdated in the early seventies. He was right, at least for the moment: his recorded output with the harmonically advanced Jarrett proves again and again that if you have heart, imagination, the blues, and “the sound of the earth opening up” coming out of your horn, you don’t need to play changes.
Perhaps feeling a need to show the world that he wasn’t just an “out” saxophonist, Dewey started playing standards and jazz classics when he was older. A rhythm changes tune like “Second Balcony Jump” was threaded very well, but hard tunes like Coltrane’s “Lazybird” weren’t his best thing. (His son could run rings around him then.) Maybe if his innovations with Coleman and Jarrett had become widely accepted as fertile soil for exploration and elaboration by other musicians he wouldn’t have needed to change. With the exception of Bill McHenry, Mike Lewis, and a few others, most modern tenor players have not seriously considered Dewey Redman, choosing instead to slice and dice advanced harmonic realms without playing a note of surreal irrationality. This is our loss, because music-making is not just about the grid, it is about the ineffable. For conjuring the ineffable, Dewey Redman was king.
