Nathan Davis Sextet – Peace Treaty

Around the middle of the sixties, Paris was a center for… American jazz. This was really nothing new as the “Ville lumière” had always attracted a number of American musicians who found there a promised land of sorts.

At the “Chat qui pêche” among other jazz places, impressive musical contests unfolded in the night and our local French stars did not necessarily have the upper hand. The pianist Rene Urtreger for one, who was invited on this particular session: had he not recorded with Miles Davis the famous film music for “Ascenseur pour l’échafaud”?

As for Jean-Louis Chautemps, here giving a hand to the “blowers” on baritone sax, had he not already played with a number of musicians from beyond the Atlantic – Chat Baker, Johnny Griffin and Dexter Gordon to name but a few.

Besides the piano, the rhythm section also included two most European of American born musicians: Kenny Clarke who lived in Paris since 1956, on drums, and Jimmy Woode, who had settled in Europe at the beginning of the sixtles, on bass.

In 1965, at the time when this recording was made in a studio, the tidal wave of free jazz was sweeping the planet jazz and, around a few suns like John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman, gravitated stars of lesser fame. If, in the eyes of many, the galaxy of tenor sax and trumpet playing was fully occupied by Coltrane and Don Cherry, they did tow in orbit musicians like Nathan Davis, a coltranian star, or others like Woody Shaw whose roots were to be found further afield (his style had initially developed from associating with Dizzie Gillespie, Bix Beiderbecke and Bunny Berigan and, like so many trumpet players, he was most probably influenced by Clifford Brown’s style).

However, staring straight at the sun can be dangerous and if the brilliance of Coltrane dazzled many a sax player, a number of listeners were unable to perceive the softer radiance of such musicians as Nathan Davis. Though he was of course, influenced by Coltrane, it did not prevent him from developing a language of his own with its own syntax and flowy phrasing. His mode of expression does not have the urgency one detects in Coitranes, but his strength resides in the weight he gives the notes, in a relative concision which serves the indisputable lyricism underlined by obvious rhythmic qualities.

Woody Shaw died very recently. Though he never was a star of the “free jazz”, this musician who worked with Eric Dolphy in particular managed to establish a style which did not need labeling.

Don Cherry epitomized modernity, but few indeed ware the trumpet players who attempted to find there own path leaving behind the most ferocious “avant garde” and neo-bebop.

Booker Little, who also worked with Eric Dolphy and who died very young, Don Ellis, who also left this world too soon and Freddie Hubbard are among these rare exceptions.

Time is a precious help in allowing us to discover, more than twenty years later, the greatness of musicians who never stood in the limelight but who quietly brought their contribution to the language of jazz, a cosmos within which large incandescent suns obscure the light of relatively unknown stars the light of which takes longer to reach us.