Chick Corea: A Legend Passes
Chick Corea died last week, of an undisclosed form of cancer, aged 79. Strangely, I had been listening to his most recent album “Chick Corea Plays,” as background music, for the past few weeks. I find these short piano tunes (recorded live), deftly played, quite therapeutic during these difficult times. Such was the versatility of this great performer, there is scarcely any mood or situation that couldn’t be filled with Chick Corea’s music.
Corea was an Italian American, from the Boston exurbs, whose father was a traditional jazz musician. He began playing piano at a young age – and was a formally trained classical musician. Jazz was his calling. Arriving in New York City in the early 1960s he found work as a sideman in jazz clubs contributing to the hard bop scene. He performed on a multitude of recordings by Blue Mitchell (“The Thing You Do” is a Blue Note classic), Herbie Mann, Dave Pike, Sonny Stitt and others. “Sweet Rain” with Stan Getz is a stone cold classic (he later played on “Captain Marvel”). Corea’s Blue Note debut – “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs” was as one of the first Tone Poet reissues and it is fabulous – straight ahead jazz – bebop, post bop, hard bop – it is almost a preview of the 1980s in the 60s! But, before Corea could be pigeonholed into one style – he ventured off into the avant guard – and into a series of “groups” for which his long term reputation is derived.
On funked up electric piano, Chick Corea replaced Herbie Hancock in the Miles Davis group – and he performed on all of those seminal early jazz-rock fusion albums: “In a Silent Way,” “Bitches Brew,”” Jack Johnson,” “On the Corner” etc. He then joined up with Anthony Braxton, David Holland and Barry Altschul to form “Circle” a true free jazz fusion band. I spent a year once trying to source a copy of the (unbelievably powerful) “Paris Concert” – but had to settle for “Circulus” until ECM re-issued the former in 2017 (alongside Holland’s exceptional “Conference of the Birds“).
In 1972 – Corea went commercial – and recorded two albums “Return to Forever” (ECM released in 1975) and “Light as a Feather” (Polydor) – a latin tinged fusion-vocal album released, to rave reviews, in 1972. I must confess that I don’t particularly like either album – but they were important as the albums established (arguably) the most enduring partnership in jazz fusion history – between Corea and bassist Stanley Clarke – subsequently called the “Return to Forever (RTF)” band. Confusingly, there is a 1973 album called “Children of Forever” that, while under the leadership of Clarke, is essentially a RTF record, that included Lenny White.
Although jazz rock fusion has a mixed reputation these days (principally due to the hyper-retromania that tends to drag jazz back to the 1950s and early 1960s, that started with Wynton Marsalis in the 1980s), fusion was vastly more commercially successful than straight ahead jazz in the 1970s. It allowed versatile musicians like Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea to earn a good living while keeping one foot in the electric world and one in the acoustic one. RTF released a bunch of commercially successful albums in the 1970s. The most popular album was “Romantic Warrior” – my favorite is “Hymn to the Seventh Galaxy.” The second soloist was initially Bill Connors, and then Al DiMeola. Clarke played on everything, and White on everything worth hearing. In general, I find these 1970s RTF albums a bit “dated” to listen to. Hence, the first port of call for a new listener should be the three RTF reconvened albums released between 2009 and 2012: “Returns,” “Forever” and “The Mothership Returns.” These are all live albums featuring Corea/Clark/White and a differing cast of support musicians. “Returns” featured Al Di Meola (this is available on DVD/Blu Ray and CD). “Forever” is a trio – mostly unplugged – and it is fantastic. “The Mothership Returns” is my favorite of all of the RTF albums: Di Meola was replaced by Frank Gambale (guitar) and Jean Luc Ponty (violin) for the 2012 tour and it really rocks. There is a gorgeous 3xLP + DVD set available.
While all of the fusion stuff was going on, Corea had an independent solo career. Everything recorded on ECM and Concord Jazz is fantastic. The late 1980s “contemporary jazz” material on GNP – hmm – not so much. Alongside vibraphonist Gary Burton – Corea released a series of recordings “Crystal Silence” – between 1972 and 1979 on ECM and “New Crystal Silence” (2008) on Concord. Gorgeous straight ahead “modern” (in the ECM sense – “chamber” may be a better term) jazz. “Children’s Songs” from 1984 is a wonderful collection of simple piano tunes – that Corea revisited over and over. “Trio Music” from the same year paired him with Miroslav Vitous and Roy Haines, another bombastic live album that showcased that modern European-American approach to modern jazz.
Chick Corea played with, literally, everybody: “Rendezvous in New York” (2003) included, amongst others, Bobby McFerrin and Joshua Redman. “Five Peace Band” was like a Bitches Brew reunion with John McLaughlin. “Further Explorations” was a Bill Evans tribute album – that included in the trio Paul Motion and Eddie Gomez. In “Orvieto” Corea plays piano duets with Stefan Bollani. In more recent years he released two sumptious “Trilogy” albums with Brian Blade and Christian McBride.
If you don’t like jazz or fusion – don’t worry there was Corea the classical musician – he released a bunch of records featuring his own compositions, Debussy, Mozart – then there are the latin influenced records……He even found time to record a Scientology tribute fusion record “The Vigil” with a whole group of younger musicians, in 2013. A very late career partial fusion album “Chinese Butterfly” with Steve Gadd, is worth a shout out.
Corea, Jarrett, Hancock – will we ever see their like again? Musicians who have transcended musical genres and have had a massive impact on modern music over the last 60 years. Now Corea has passed, Jarrett is out of action and Herbie appears to have retired, it is time for the baton to pass.
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