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  • We Loved You

    SRCD0001

    Artist: Frank Hewitt

    Label: Smalls Records

    Frank Hewitt (piano), Ari Roland (bass), Jimmy Lovelace (drums,1-5),Danny Rosenfeld (drums, 6-8) Recorded 5/16/01 & 6/5/01 at The Studio, New York.

    Frank was the featured artist at Smalls, appearing two or three times weekly for nine years running. During that time, he was heard by tens of thousands of Smalls fans, among them numerous jazz pianists from around the world who came to listen and learn. The history of jazz is often mistaken as the history of jazz recordings; but in truth, the history of the music is constituted by sessions, night after night, only a few of which are ever recorded. In a club like Smalls, where Frank was featured weekly, we had the unique opportunity to experience the long process of coming to appreciate the depth and breadth of his music, its expressive force, and its melodic and harmonic ingenuity. We cannot afford you the same experience on records. But we feel these recorded performances attain the highest level of achievement, and that repeated listening will yield continual rewards.

    The two sessions highlighted here show Frank in two distinctly different moods, affording the listener new to Frank's music some appreciation for his expressive range. Frank is accompanied throughout by his long-standing bassist Ari Roland. They are joined on one session by veteran drummer Jimmy Lovelace, and on the other, by up-and-coming drummer Danny Rosenfeld. These two groups represent Frank's two working trios from Smalls. The level of interplay in...

  • Fresh From The Cooler

    SRCD0016

    Artist: Frank Hewitt

    Label: Smalls Records

    Frank Hewitt (piano), Ari Roland (bass), Jimmy Lovelace (drums). Recorded 10/5/96 in closed session at Smalls, New York.

    On this fourth volume of the recordings of pianist Frank Hewitt, we move to the first recording we made together--ten years ago exactly--on the memorable afternoon of October 5th, 1996. Sixteen tunes were recorded at Smalls in an extended closed session. The only retake was the sound check tune for technical reasons. Frank said that there were no outtakes. We’ll be covering this date in two parts.

    The session was exactly like a live date, except the club was closed. We had the great working trio with Ari Roland on bass and Jimmy Lovelace on drums. Frank moved spontaneously from tune to tune playing his trademark introductory verses. He never needed to tell that band what tune he was going to play, because everybody just knew how to converge into a groove at the right moment somehow. Leading off here is Frank’s stunning rendition of “I Waited For You,” one of his signature ballads. A very slight squeal from the brakes of the M8 cross-town bus stopping upstairs punctuates the beginning of the first solo chorus. This performance is sheer musical poetry with a searing beauty. I always come back to this track again and again. It had to be first. On this date, Frank actually did call one tune, and I’ve included it as a short preamble to “Cherokee.” Hewitt asks Lovelace to “start up Cherokee…seriously up” (meaning “up-tempo”). After a few moments, Frank ...

  • Not Afraid To Live

    SRCD0007

    Artist: Frank Hewitt

    Label: Smalls Records

    Frank Hewitt (piano), Ari Roland (bass), Louis Hayes (drums). Recorded 4/10/02 at The Studio, New York.

    This is the second volume of recordings of pianist Frank Hewitt for Smalls Records. For listeners new to the series, Frank Hewitt was the featured artist at Smalls, appearing 2-3 times weekly over nine years, until his premature death in 2002 at age 66. He is increasingly argued to be the most overlooked pianist of his generation, debuting as a leader on recordings only posthumously (on We Loved You / Smalls Records SRCD-0001).

    The failure of record labels and jazz critics to recognize Frank Hewitt in his own lifetime points out – more so than with any artist in recent memory – systemic malignancy in the jazz business and the major jazz press. My act of putting out Frank Hewitt’s recordings is a deliberate provocation, a challenge to this pathological legacy for the sake of artists now and in the future. In one part, it is an angry act, a response in part to specific injustices I witnessed during the years I knew Frank (which merit a more detailed exposition in a subsequent essay). But in the second part, it is an attempt to promote a dialectic, and ultimately, rehabilitation. Without a doubt, any writer who undertakes a review of these recordings is walking into a minefield.

    In this volume, we move to Hewitt’s last studio session from April 10, 2002. This session features Frank with his preferred bassist, Ari Roland, and the great Louis Hayes on drums. As ever...