Junior Cook on “Confirmation”

Here we take a quick look at Junior Cook’s tenor solo on the Charlie Parker composition, “Confirmation.” Cook’s solo was recorded for jazz vocalist/vocalese legend Eddie Jefferson’s album “The Main Man.”

=====

“Vocalese” is a style of jazz singing in which lyrics are added to an instrumental soloist’s melody or improvisation. While some jazz vocalists only sing melodies, and others might sing a melody and “scat” an improvised solo with syllables and short phrases, “vocalese” added an element of skill, finding the right words to tell a story that aligns melodically and rhythmically with an instrumentalist’s improvised solo. Eddie Jefferson was a master of this style, as were the jazz vocal group of Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks, and Annie Ross, known as the trio “Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross,” and, among contemporary artists, Kurt Elling and George V. Johnson, Jr.

The art of vocalese is on full display on Jon Hendricks’ 1990 studio album, “Freddie Freeloader.” (The title track, “Freddie Freeloader,” is a tune from Miles Davis’ album “Kind of Blue.” “Kind of Blue” (1959, Columbia Records) is commonly heralded as one of the greatest jazz albums ever recorded.) Listen to the original, “Kind of Blue” recording of “Freddie Freeloader” here, and then listen to Jon Hendricks’ recording from 1990 here. An all-star cast recaptures the original solos and instrumentation with their voices, singing the melodic content of those original instrumental solos while also telling a story with lyrics aligned to the solos themselves: Bobby McFerrin takes on pianist Wynton Kelly’s solo; Al Jarreau tackles Miles Davis’ trumpet solo; Jon Hendricks is on John Coltrane’s tenor saxophone solo; and George Benson handles Julian “Cannonball” Adderley’s alto saxophone solo.

=====

OK….following that sidebar on vocalese…. this 1977 album, “The Main Man” was Eddie Jefferson’s last album recording before he was fatally shot outside a club in Detroit in May 1979 at age 60. The album is a case study in community and relationship — many of the arrangements on the album are penned by trombonist Slide Hampton, with whom Junior Cook collaborated from his earliest days in New York City. Alto saxophonist Richie Cole, a frequent collaborator with Eddie Jefferson, was reunited on this album with Junior Cook; Cole was a student at Berklee College of Music while Cook taught there briefly and lived in Boston, Massachusetts, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. (Cook takes a two-chorus tenor solo on “Freedom Jazz Dance” on this album as well.)

Take a listen to Cook’s one-chorus solo on Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation” from Eddie Jefferson’s album, “The Main Man,” here. Cook’s eighth-note drive is on display, as is his flowing feast of chord tones and a quick dip “out” with a tritone substitution in measures 17-18. (“What’s a tritone substitution?”, you ask? Here’s a short video on the music theory behind it. I won’t explain it here…I’ve already expended a sidebar on vocalese.) Enjoy.