During the period of the 1950s, new stylistic movements emerged within U.S. jazz, borrowing from African American music and the aesthetic and formal forms of European classical music.
In contrast to the Cool Jazz of John Lewis, Miles Davis, and Lennie Tristano, West Coast Jazz took shape on the California coast.
That music scene consists mostly of white musicians who play melodiously refined, academically oriented jazz with clear reference to the European cultured school: drummer Shelly Manne, saxophonist and clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre, baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, trumpeter Shorty Rogers and others.
Against the backdrop of West Coast Jazz, on the East Coast of the United States, in New York City, an aggregate of young African-American musicians committed to broadening the theoretical and performance horizons of the harmonic and techno-instrumental knowledge available to them is forming in continuity with the earlier revolutionary experience of the boppers.
On these premises, as was the case with Bebop, a technically advanced, aggressive, and powerfully vital style called Hard bop or Soul jazz developed, often unconsciously. The new jazz course builds on the Afro-American music of the origins;spirituals are contaminated by elements traceable in jazz and blues, giving birth to soul, or rather to that way of expressing oneself through the instrument that cannot disregard the epidermic feeling of music, a spiritual feeling but always and yet attached to the “earthly.”
Among the champions ofHard bop or Soul jazz are drummers Art Blakey and Max Roach, trumpeters Clifford Brown and Lee Morgan, tenorsaxophonist Sonny Rollins, and saxophonist John Coltrane.
In the same period during which a mainstream type of jazz was established, the musical phenomenon of rock and roll was born and became popular in the United States: in 1954 the song Rock Around the Clock, sung by Bill Haley, was released, and two years later, Heartbreak Hotel, recorded by Elvis Presley on the RCA Records label, went straight to No. 1 of the U.S. rankings.
New trends within jazz, rock’n’roll and rhythm and blues are having a major impact on the musical preferences and tastes of Italian audiences, consequently involving the artistic choices of musicians.
The gradual international spread of changing styles and genres of music also involved Italian jazz musicians, particularly since the mid-1950s. These move away from the amateurism of earlier seasons in favor of a professionalism in which a greater quality of performance is made, still, on closer inspection, far from promoting an original vocabulary that is not derivative from that of American jazz exponents.
Every Italian jazz soloist or ensemble takes some inspiration from West Coast Jazz orEast Coast Jazz.
Contributing to this was the increasing presence of American musicians in Italy, such as trumpeter Chet Baker, who in Gerry Mulligan’s own quartet, had worked predominantly, without relying on the harmonic fabric given by the piano, on the melodic line of the composition, take their cues from the counterpoint techniques of the European classical school.
The ensemble that illustrated this decisive transitional phase toward an accomplished renewal of the Italian jazz scene was, without a shadow of a doubt, the Basso-Valdambrini Quintet: trumpeter Oscar Valdambrini and saxophonist Gianni Basso, together with other musicians from the Milanese jazz scene, militate in the orchestra led by pianist, arranger and conductor Giampiero Boneschi.
From the orchestral ensemble came first the Italian Sextet, which made its official debut in March 1955 in the fifth edition of the National Jazz Festival at Milan’s Teatro Manzoni, and later the Basso-Valdambrini Quintet.
In 1956 the Quintet took part in the first edition of the San Remo Jazz Festival, organized by the well-known critic Arrigo Polillo. The lineup during that period changed personnel several times, alternating between pianists Renato Sellani and Gianfranco Intra, double bassists Giorgio Azzolini and Berto Pisano, and drummers Gianni Cazzola and Gil Cuppini.
In 1959 the Quintet’s first record was released by the Music Italia label (in the United States by the Verve label), while the following year the lineup participated in the fifth edition of the Sanremo Jazz Festival with an eight-piece ensemble featuring Franco Cerri on double bass.
Franco Cerri in his early career played both guitar and double bass, embarking on a full-time jazz career, still a rarity in Italy at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s.
But he is not alone in opting at that time for this certainly not easy choice. As mentioned earlier, a group of Italian musicians between the late 1950s and the mid-1960s was going on to define the physiognomy of the Italian jazz musician.
They are trained musicians, aware of their own means and willing, a not insignificant aspect, to sacrifice themselves in order to “live on jazz”; a mindset that will have its full realization only from the 1970s onward.
Along with professionalism comes gradually for Italian jazz musicians notoriety and acclaim from audiences and critics internationally.
A case in point is Gil Cuppini ‘s participation, much to the praise of specialized critics, in the 1958 edition of the Newport Jazz Festival, an event founded four years earlier by pianist and Boston club owner George Wein.
With the entry in 1960 of trombonist Dino Piana, the Basso-Valdambrini formation became a sextet. The record Valdambrini Bass Plus Dino Piana, to be followed by numerous recordings and tours over a span of forty years, until the passing of Oscar Valdambrini.
Note 1: In 1956, there were 17 Elvis Presley songs in the U.S. Top 100.
Note 2: Baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin participated in the recording of the Basso-Valdambrini quintet’s record entitled New Sound From Italy. He also plays with the Gil Cuppini quintet and participated in the 1958 recording of Piero Umiliani’s score for the film “I soliti ignoti,” directed by director Mario Monicelli
Paolo Marra
