If you were an alto saxophonist any time after 1940, the question was not whether Charlie Parker was inside your sounds, but how and what you did with that influence. Bird changed how people played jazz on every instrument, but in playing his instrument, it was tough to avoid comparisons to the master.
Jim Snidero learned to play the alto at a time when Parker’s influence was already incorporated into the styles of other great players — Phil Woods and Cannonball Adderley, say, or tenor saxophonists like Joe Henderson as well. As a leader and a sideman, Snidero’s playing across dozens of recordings recalls Parker a bit but has a more modern sound: at times more abstracted but also with a warm, rushing flow. He more directly recalls alto saxophonist Jackie McLean.
His new album, Bird Feathers, is his first real immersion into looking Parker square in the eyes. It is a delicious staring contest and a reconsideration of how to modernize the ultimate modern master of the alto.
Most tributes to Charlie Parker include at least one instrument to stoke the bebop fire with those tricky chords — a pianist or guitarist. However, the band on Bird Feathers is the same trio that recorded Snidero’s last album, with only bassist Peter Washington and drummer John Farnsworth supporting the leader. The result may be unique in the canon of Charlie Parker tributes, challenging the band to stay interesting.
“Ornithology” is a perfect example of how captivating this recording can be. Washington and Farnsworth play two bars in syncopated half-time before allowing Snidero to charge ahead with fast swing on this curlicued melody based on the chord changes to “How High the Moon”. Drums and melody are in constant chatter. Then, just as the head statement finishes, Farnsworth feeds Jim Snidero two fast bars of Latin groove that snap to a stop on the last melody note. Off you go, saxophone! The whole band dig into a hard-swung groove. Hold onto your hats.
Given that this is an uptempo bebop song, you might think it is where Snidero would most sound like he was aping Charlie Parker. While the saxophonist certainly plays plenty of bop phrasing here, there are many moments when he plays bluesy notes that cry like Hank Crawford or when he hits a few notes with a rhythmic attack that sound inspired by the more modernist approach of Julius Hemphill.
The swing is also powerful, though with a slower groove, on the trio’s interpretation of “Confirmation”. Farnsworth is very strong, popping his snare with authority and rock clarity, particularly when he kicks off the bridge and locks in moments later with Snidero. The leader’s alto saxophone sound is especially ripe, like a human voice, as he dances around the bebop phrasing. Bop playing can tempt players into a thin sound with its rhythmic displacements and chromatic movement. Still, Jim Snidero takes particular care in this performance to make every note like a ripe strawberry full of juice.
Kudos to bassist Washington, who carries a bigger load in this chordless format. On “Scrapple from the Apple”, Washington plays the main melody octaves with the alto, his intonation sure and sound every bit the match for Snidero’s. Then he shifts immediately to accompaniment, sliding in next to Farnsworth playing swing but deftly outlining the harmonies as he improvises a counterpoint to the saxophone solo. Washington’s “Scrapple” solo is witty and singable.
Washington and Jim Snidero share the spotlight on the ballad “These Foolish Things”, a Parker favorite. In and around his statement of the famous melody, the leader plays a set of more angular phrases that sound 30 years more modern than Bird but ooze with the master’s ease and creativity. Washington’s bass plays constant melodic counterpoint to the horn, making this ballad every bit as harmonically rich as it might have been with a pianist in the band.
On “The Nearness of You”, another ballad, Snidero veers away from the written melody early, in maybe the tenth bar, suggesting in his melodic choices that he, like so many of us, understands the lineage between Bird and Ornette Coleman. The great culture/jazz writer Francis Davis (who passed during the week of August 12) called Coleman “Parker’s country cousin” because of the way that Ornette took the bebop language and simultaneously freed it of constraint and simplified it a bit so that it expressed a Texas kind of blues cry. This performance never sounds “out” but includes a fresh dose of Coleman’s blues tonality and unfussiness.
This impulse to move Parker’s influence entirely into Jim Snidero’s 21st-century alto saxophone language comes through purely on the album’s last track, a solo saxophone rendition of “Lover Man” that takes a single, 32-bar pass at the famous tune written for Billie Holiday and recorded twice by Bird—in 1946 (Dial) when the master was in poor health and again in 1951 (Verve) to masterful results.
Snidero doesn’t emulate either Parker recording but uses his brief take to see Parker into the future. In his first pass at the central theme, Snidero mostly edits rather than embellishes the melody, sounding like the farthest thing from “simply” a Parker acolyte. In the second eight measures, he uses a few Bird-like licks to show how the master could shake a standard like this and find new harmonic pathways. Over the bridge, Snidero is still slightly more modern, outlining a couple of tart, surprising chords. Then, in the restatement of the first theme, he plays with remarkable blues feeling, even allowing his normally perfect intonation to wander just slightly, like a guitarist bending a string.
In an age when saxophonists are more likely to pay tribute to more recent ancestors, it’s fabulous to hear a modernist Like Jim Snidero refract Parker so masterfully through a fresh lens.
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