Liner notes for “Big Nick”
The musicians who resound through time are those with presence. It’s a quality that transcends styles and dates of birth. Olu Dara has it, and so does Doc Cheatham. It doesn’t depend on the size of the player’s sound. Both Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young had it. Presence does depend on the size of the musician’s spirit.
Some forty years ago, in a Boston club, I heard a tenor saxophonist whom musicians had been telling me about for some time. His name was George Nicholas, but everybody called him Big Nick. He played with a lot of authority, but what stayed in my mind was the warmth of his sound, the warmth of the man. Around that time I was spending many nights listening to Henry “Red” Allen at the Savoy in Boston; and he and Big Nick had a deep common bond. Not in terms of their styles, but rather the openness of both men to their own feelings. That’s what gave both such presence.
In the years after, Nick became a legend among musicians. Charlie Parker had learned tunes from Nick, and what to do inside those tunes. John Coltrane was another careful listener, and wrote a son, “Big Nick “, for him. But being an inside legend doesn’t always pay the rent. Nick worked, but seldom in the big leagues where he belonged. And strangest of all the curves in his career was the fact that he never had an album as a leader.
Now, if you look at any reasonably complete jazz discography, you will find a rather sizeable list of players with albums as leaders who, while assuredly are nice folks, are ephemeral musicians. Yet Big Nick, who is as durable as they come, was passed over. Until Bob Cummins, who has made India Navigation an especially valuable label, issued “Big Nick Nicholas / Big and Warm”.
The set got considerable attention. The enthusiastic consensus of the reviews can be summarized be the coda of Francis Davis’ account of the set in the Boston Phoenix:
“Musicians have raved about Nicholas for so long, with so little record evidence to back up their claims, that those of us who live outside New York have had little way of determining whether he was indeed a living legend or just another of the tall tales that musicians delight in spinning to remind critics and fans that the essence of jazz is rarely captured in the grooves of records. We’ll never know what part exaggeration played in the legends of Buddy Bolden and Buddie Petit, but “Big and Warm” proclaims that Big Nick Nicholas is no myth.”
And to underscore the resonant fact that the reality of Big Nick lives up to the bardic tales of his power, here is a second Big Nick album.
The opening “Body and Soul” illustrates on of Big Nick’s presence. The tune, Lord know, has been played at least as often as “Hail To The Chief” (but in more humane surroundings). So a player who is going to record the tune yet again had better have something very much of his own to say about what therapists call relationships and what Jimmy Rushing called “the most of all music: he-she songs”. Nick, who has seen so much and heard so much and transmuted so much into his music during all these years, put all that experience into a meditative, compelling lyrical “Body and Soul” that he has indeed made his own.
“Somewhere” is from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” and as played by Nick, it’s a further revelation of how passionate he is about his vocation. All of his art – the sound, the phrasing, the intimacy with time – is devoted, as Stanley Crouch said in the notes to Nick’s first album, “to make you feel better after hearing him than you did when you began listening”.
“Big Nick” was written for and about Nick by John Coltrane, and Nick plays it here in honor of Trane. “John,” Nick recalls, “was interested in my conception, and I showed him some things. As I did Bird, I showed some changes and how certain kinds of repertory can bring differences in how you sound. Actually what I taught was that the whole thing is the way you hear.”
That reminded me of what Duke Ellington told me once: “You know what I look for in a musician? Someone who knows how to listen.”
Nick heard “Down Home Blues” as sung by Denise LaSalle, a powerful singer – somewhat like Lil Green, he says- who works the South and sells a lot of records there. “She’s got a lowdown sound” Nick says. “She has that Mississippi twang. All them girls, they know. They’ve been through the whole thing.” And, as you can hear from Nick’s vocal, as well as his horn, so has Nick.
“Reverend John Gensel” is the minister of the jazz community. He’s based at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan, but his availability extends ecumenically anywhere a jazz musician has need of him. He marries them, buries them, and is a friend, a close friend, of more jazz players than any non-jazz musician has ever been. Gensel is astoundingly unpretentious, not in the least self-righteous, has a gentle but perceptive wit, and all in all, is almost too good to be true. But he is true.
Big Nick wrote this song for the pastor “because he has dedicated his life to music and to musicians. And he has done several things for me. He is so honest. So up front. If only all people connected with our music were like him.”
“A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing” is Billy Strayhorn’s. Strayhorn, as every school child should know, but doesn’t, was a long-time associate of Duke Ellington as arranger, co-composer, and creative listener. When Big Nick was the leader of the band, master of ceremonies and booker of the Paradise Club in Harlem in the early 1950’s, Strayhorn lived up the street from the club. “He’s bring people from all over the world into the Paradise,” says Nick, “Swea’ Pea liked the way I played and sometimes, when he was feeling good, he’d play piano there.”
“He used to give me advice. He’d say ‘ Nick, don’t do nothing but be yourself.”
The preceding “Two For The Road” and the succeeding “I’m Pulling Through” show additional ways in which Nick “speaks” through his horn. As Eric Snider wrote, in reviewing the first album for “Music Magazine”, “Nick spends more energy finding the right notes than cramming in as many as he can.” The reason for that is that he’s not just playing notes. He’s telling stories, real-life stories.
“Reincarnation of Sonny Clarke” came to Nick’s attention when he was in New Orleans with the Marsalis family ( Ellis, Wynton, et. al). “We did a concert, and a pianist, Mike Pellera, was also on it. He’s an admirer of Sonny Clarke, and he wrote and dedicated this song to Sonny in order to remind people how great he was.”
Working with Nick in this set is a consistently resilient, attentive, and anticipatory rhythm section. John Miller is described by Nick as “a great musician and a fine human being. He was Stanley Turrentine’s musical director for twelve years, and he often works with me.”
If I were putting together a television program on the challenge and great pleasures of jazz drumming, I’d make sure he Billy Hart had a featured place in it. He is an instructive, subtle delight to watch, as well as to hear.
“I first worked with Billy Hart at a fund raiser for a jazz radio station WGBO,” Nick says. “There was no rehearsal. He walked in cold and fitted right in. He’s a natural.”
Nick met bassist Dave Jackson a couple of years ago and was struck by “his musicianship, his dedication, and the fact hat he’s a gentleman.”
In directing this album, Nick adds, “before each tune, I’d explain what it was all about. And if it was a ballad, I’d read out the lyrics.” It’s all part of making the story clear and meaningful to the musicians and thereby to the listeners. That’s Big Nick’s passion. Or, as he puts it:
“At the last count, there were 6 billion people in the world and I would like o reach as many as I can with a big, deep and warm sound.”
Nat Hentoff