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Dennis Sandole
The Sandole Brothers & Guests
(Fantasy)
Dennis Sandole
was an invisible but palpable presence on the Philadelphia jazz scene when I arrived there in 1971. A guitarist who never performed, he was "the teacher" who had schooled John Coltrane in music theory.
A taste of Sandole's gifts, as arranger, orchestrator and guitarist, has finally emerged from nearly 45 years of neglect. The Sandole Brothers & Guests has ten creations from a 1955 octet session, Sandole's version of Davis' "Birth of the Cool" sessions. But this was cool and hot, sometimes in the manner of bebop with a horn's mad-cap tempo answered by growling choruses; sometimes in that Kenton-esque or Mingus-styled modernism of moods over rhythm; a taste of Miles at Carnegie; music with time shifts, chaste brass voicings that swell and subside, double baritone vocings, and the interspersing of solos with no ensemble backing.
What's missing is the guitar—Sandole is barely heard, but when he is, as on "Perhaps One Touch Of," one hears a melodist who dared to depart from chords, give a burr to his electrified sound, use Monk's artifice with rhythm, and otherwise stand apart from the crowd and the octet.
The music, overall, is that fifties "modern" sound—still swinging, cooking with bop's spices, and tapestries of melodies that are not songs but designs. And with exemplary musicians who excelled at both difficult charts and improvising—Milt Hinton, Art Farmer, brother Adolph Sandole on baritone, Sonny Russo, John LaPorta [who has 4 of his own trio tracks as an add-on to this CD] and Teo Macero—this resurrection transcends the "Dennis Sandole mystique" and stands on its own.
— Jules Epstein, February 2001
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last update 23 February 2001