Avant Slant

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Avant Slant (One Plus 1 = II?)
Studio album by
The John Benson Brooks Trio
ReleasedSeptember 1968
Recorded1962–1968
Genre
Length45:37
LabelDecca
ProducerMilt Gabler
John Benson Brooks chronology
Alabama Concerto
(1958) 		Avant Slant (One Plus 1 = II?)
(1968)

Avant Slant (subtitled One Plus 1 = II?[1]) is an album by American jazz ensemble the John Benson Brooks Trio, released in September 1968 by Decca Records. Produced by Decca A&R executive Milt Gabler, it was pianist and bandleader John Benson Brooks' third and final released recording, arriving ten years after his previous record, the acclaimed Alabama Concerto (1958).

The record is a

found sounds
. Themes of war, racism, identity and personal freedom underpin the record.

On release, Avant Slant was a critical and commercial disappointment. Although reviews ranged from positive to negative, many expressed puzzlement at the record. Some critics and listeners who enjoyed Brooks' prior work in

pop culture-centric D.J.-ology snippets. Despite this, the album has gone on to be credited as a prophetic release in the fields of sampling and mashups
.

Background and recording

Prior to Avant Slant,

twelve-tone serial and chance idioms.[5] Heavily influenced by Ornette Coleman, it was ultimately the trio's only public show.[2][nb 1]

The genesis of Avant Slant came when Brooks created a tape entitled D.J.-ology, described by

atonal jazz with excerpts from electronic music albums.[8]

In 1966, Brooks conceived the idea of creating "

household economy."[10] The record was a collaboration between Brooks and producer Milt Gabler, who worked as an A&R executive at Decca Records.[11] Brooks gave Gabler tapes of both The Twelves and D.J.-ology. Gabler then created much of the album; he added some of his own recordings and, according to Ralph J. Gleason, "let them sit for months while he played with them" before finally arriving at the finished album.[5] Ford credits Gabler for finding the majority of the records's samples, sequencing most of its parts, writing lyrics for five of its six original songs and conceiving the "quick lines and snatches of dialogue read by actors" that also appear. An early problem was managing the costs of licensing all the intended audio excerpts, which was sometimes averted by Gabler re-recording clips he was unwilling to pay for.[8][nb 2]

Composition

Avant Slant is a

mixed-media collage.[6][nb 3] The 1962 Brooks ensemble performance forms the spine of the album.[2][5]

The different source materials are often presented in a linear and consecutive manner without any layering.

LeRoi Jones.[5]

In Ford's description, Brooks used Avant Slant to envision, represent and adapt to "the pop

break-in records".[2] In Marianna Ritchey's estimation, the record's combination of music and recorded soundscapes was merely one assortment of ideas from Brooks' archival work and, as Ford argues, thus could only be understood by Brooks.[18]

Release and reception

Avant Slant was released by Decca in September 1968

pop cultural nature of the album's D.J.-ology elements devalued The Twelves, including Gil Evans, who dismissed them as "entertainment". Brooks predicted these reactions, as – according to Ford – the record was a product of the moment where "jazz intellectuals could feel themselves being shoved aside by a new pop culture that did not share their modernist values."[11]

Cash Box commented that Avant Slant provides "a highly unusual listening experience" in which the four twelve-tone jazz improvisations are "broken up to allow space for 'ghost-voices' of contemporary figures, which reflect today's complex confusions."[4]

In

Dadaism. He believed it to be a "turned on affair that will strike you as either a relevant piece of art or as a big put-on, depending on how you view such things."[13] Similarly, David Atkinson of The Kansas City Star described it as a "montage of social comment and musical experimentation, but there are many elements of each which can be enjoyed, depending on the listener's point of view."[17]

Legacy

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[22]

Despite the critical and commercial failure of Avant Slant, it has been credited with anticipating "aspects of collage,

The Los Angeles Times that the album had become "hard-to-find".[7] Retrospectively, AllMusic have named Avant Slant an "Album Pick".[22]
The authors of The Essential Jazz Records Volume 2 (2000) highlight Brooks and Heckman's work in improvisation and composition, but believed that Avant Slant presented them "in an extremely unsatisfactory manor", due to how it mixes segments of their music with excerpts of pop, poetry and radio broadcasts "in ways that make it impossible to decide what they had achieved and whether there was a further potential." [24] Academic writer Casey Nelson has called it a "deeply strange jazz/pop/found-sound fusion album".[25]

Track listing

Side one

  1. – 10:41
    1. "The King Must Go" (Segments) (John Benson Brooks)
    2. "The Gods on High" (Brooks, Milt Gabler)
    3. "Pie in the Sky" (Brooks, Gabler, lyrics by John Donne)
    4. "El Bluebirdo" (Brooks)
    5. "A Bird Can Be" (Gabler)
  3. – 12:11
    1. "Cherries Are Ripe" (Brooks)
    2. "What's a Square?" (Brooks, Gabler)
    3. "Slapstix" (Jack Shaindlin)
    4. "True Blue Heart" (Shaindlin)
    5. "Little Boxes" (Excerpt) (Malvina Reynolds)
    6. "But, Where Are You?" (Brooks, Gabler)

Side two

  2. – 13:07
    1. "Ornette" (Segments) (uncredited)
    2. "Love Is Psychedelic" (Brooks, Gabler)
    3. "The Life I Used to Live" (Lightnin' Hopkins)
    4. "When I First Came to To Town" (uncredited)
    5. "Mend Them Fences" (Brooks, lyrics by Robert Graves)
    6. "But, Where Am I?" (Brooks, Gabler)
  4. – 9:38
    1. "Satan Takes" (Segments) (Brooks)
    2. "Pie in the Sky" (Brooks, Gabler, lyrics by Catherine Lee Bates)
    3. "We Shall Overcome" (Thomas Jefferson)

Excerpt credits

Personnel

Adapted from the liner notes of Avant Slant.[15]

The John Benson Brooks Trio
  • John Benson Brooks – piano
  • Don Heckman
    – alto saxophone
  • Howard Hart – snare drum, cymbal
Others
  • Milt Gabler – producer, editing supervisor
  • Ernie Stone – voice actor
  • Herb Hartig – voice actor
  • Jack Gibson – voice actor
  • Joyce Todd – voice actor
  • Judy Scott – voice ("The Gods on High", "What's a Square?", "But, Where Are You?", "But, Where Am I?")
  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti – voice ("El Bluebirdo")
  • Jack Shaindlin – piano ("Slapstix", "True Blue Heart")
  • The Tarriers - performer ("Little Boxes" (Excerpt))
  • Frank Hamilton
    – voice ("We Shall Overcome")
  • Guy Carawan – voice ("We Shall Overcome")
  • LeRoi Jones
    – voice ("We Shall Overcome")
  • Pete Seeger – voice ("We Shall Overcome")
  • Zilphia Horton – voice ("We Shall Overcome")
  • Emil Korsen – engineer
  • George Chandler – engineer
  • Joseph Curran – engineer
  • Rudy May – engineer
  • Joan Franklin – recording
  • Robert Franklin – recording
  • Steinweiss – cover
  • John Clellon Holmes – liner notes

Notes

  1. ^ Heckman described Brooks' method as one of "improvising using 12-tone rows and rhythms structured around non-metric time units," and commented that Avant Slant "preserved" the use of his system.[7]
  2. ^ In his discussion of Avant Slant and its use of sampling, David Toop writes that Gabler's "foresight into the future of the record of the record business also contributed to the intellectual and economic origins of sound sampling", citing how, in the 1930s, he was the first to license and reissue previously released recordings on his own labels. Toop adds, "To recycle music as a commodity in this way was a conceptual breakthrough that affected the creative and historical implications of mechanical reproduction as well as its economic structure.")[2]
  3. ^ The liner notes describe Avant Slant as "a collage-in-sound, in which fragments of poetry, pop tunes, radio broadcasts, and Feiffer-like babble intermingle to form an aural history of 'Right Now.' It is also a twelve-tone: jazz concert, an electronic poem composed in several media, and the first example of what may be a radically new art form."[15]

References

  1. ^ Reilly, Peter (March 1969). "Don Heckman" (PDF). Hi-Fi/Stereo Review: 118. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  2. ^
    ISBN 1852427892
    .
  3. ^ a b c d Ford 2013, p. 181
  4. ^ a b "CashBox Album Reviews" (PDF). Cash Box: 38. October 26, 1968. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Gleason, Ralph J. (September 22, 1968). "What's After 'Sgt. Pepper'? 'Avant Slant'". The San Francisco Examiner: 32. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  6. ^ a b Pace, Eric (November 24, 1999). "John B. Brooks, Jazz Arranger, Composer and Songwriter, 82". The New York Times. Retrieved September 1, 2023. It's a good trick and it works out as valid jazz, he added. Other jazz albums of Mr. Brooks's music were Alabama Concerto (1958) and Avant Slant (1968), which was a mixed-media collage featuring a performance of his 12-tone jazz work, The Twelves. .
  7. ^ a b Heckman, Don (December 11, 1999). "San Francisco Embarks on Year-Round Programming". The Los Angeles Times: D4. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  8. ^ a b c Ford 2013, p. 194
  9. ^ Ford 2013, p. 192
  10. ^ Ford 2013, p. 179
  11. ^ a b Ford 2013, p. 193
  12. ^ a b Heining, Duncan (October 5, 2012). "Is Jazz Dead? Or Is It Just Pining for the Fjords?". All About Jazz. Archived from the original on October 5, 2022. Retrieved September 4, 2023.
  13. ^ a b c Burgess, Paul (October 27, 1968). "Avant Slant; The Turned on Sound". Sunday Press: 12. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  14. ^ Ford 2013, p. 183
  15. ^ a b c Avant Slant (One Plus 1 = 11?) (liner). The John Benson Brooks Trio. Decca Records. 1968.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  16. ^ Ford 2013, pp. 186–187
  17. ^ a b Atkison, David (December 1, 1968). "Jazz Records". The Kansas City Star: 4F. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  18. ISBN 9780226640372
    . Retrieved September 4, 2023.
  19. ^ "Decca's 'New Directors' Unveiled at Meet" (PDF). Cash Box: 26. September 28, 1968. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  20. ISBN 9780306796128
    . Retrieved September 4, 2023.
  21. ^ "Review of Avant Slant". Coda. 9 (2): 19. August 1969.
  22. ^ a b "John Benson Brooks - Avant Slant". AllMusic. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  23. doi:10.1353/not.2014.0153
    .
  24. ISBN 9780720118223
    . Retrieved August 4, 2023.
  25. doi:10.1017/S147924431500044X
    .

Bibliography

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