Bickert, Ed - Bye Bye Baby

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	You’re In Love With Someone	04:21
	2	Bye Bye Baby	03:41
	3	Barbados	04:11
	4	It’s Time	04:03
	5	Nobody Else But Me	04:58

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Things Are Getting Better	04:34
	2	A Flower Is A Lonesome Thing	05:32
	3	Pensativa	04:46
	4	Keeping Myself For You	06:14

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Information/Write-up

In the April 27, 1961 issue of Down Beat, I reviewed a Verve album by a Canadian band led by Phil Nimmons, entitled “Nimmons ‘N’ Nine.” I gave it 4½ stars, praising some things and panning others. One of my most positive statements was: “Bickert is a first-class soloist.”

Bickert, of course, was Ed Bickert, one of the finest guitarists extant. Born in Hochfeld, Manitoba (11/29/32), he came east in the ‘50s to Toronto where he made a reputation with Nimmons, Moe Koffman and Ron Collier in the ‘60s and the ‘70s before being associated with Rob McConnell’s Boss Brass and backed visiting American hornmen such as Paul Desmond, Frank Rosolino and Charles McPherson.

Thanks to Desmond, more than a decade after the Nimmons LP, Bickert was heard at greater length because of the Canadian border. When the Dave Brubeck Quartet disbanded in ‘67, Desmond borrowed acoustic club work, making guest concert and festival appearances while recording and doing album liner notes. He also helped Mike Berniker at Columbia with Ruth Brown, Michel Legrand, Chet Baker and others. Berniker asked Paul to record for CTI, opened out his sidemen file to Bickert and Joe Desnoes a year or two earlier. These were the first records Ed had done for a major U.S. label, and they helped build his name.

Desmond’s discs—“Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Pure Desmond,” the first two for Horizon (A&M’s jazz label)—were followed by McConnell’s “Live In Digital,” “Brass My Soul” and “Big Band Jazz,” on which Bickert was featured and featured well.

The release of “Bye Bye Baby,” which was taped at Toronto’s Bourbon Street in August 1981, is Bickert’s first U.S. Concord LP. Steve Wallace and Hanna lay out as Bickert and McKenna team up in a dynamic duo on Robin’s title tune, Bye Bye Baby. Dave uses the joyously pulsating pace and then backs Ed’s spirited improvisation. This sense of swing coalesces into one great interplay that marks this as one of the high points of the set.

Hanna is back with a rhumba beat as Wallace states Parker’s blues theme, Barbados, before Bickert enters. The audience, already aroused, perks up for this upbeat tune. Bickert and McKenna do very fluid Nimmons-like unison work on It’s Time; this is 1/2 bar knowledge and Bickert breaks out in real recital conversation. A short one by Hanna brings Wallace to a symmetrical close—all choruses of the mentor, the backbeat is amazing.

Silver’s lovely swinger, N.S., Time, is swung nine right, with solos by Steve’s very solid bass, Wallace, and swinging depth by Jake. McKenna follows Bickert deftly, and the right hand rolls very strongly. And Ed’s exquisite follow-up licks and phrases just fit perfectly.

The band exits Goodbye Nobody Else But Me, and then plunges in for the closer, Keeping Myself For You. McKenna gets the groove going with a solidly right-fisted descending line before a guitar exchange that closes on a whole-note—held for the quietest seconds before the next phrase. Then Bickert and McKenna restate the lovely old tune with subtlety and grace.

Wallace gets in a down-home solo on Johnny Hodges’s Things Are Getting Better, and the rest of the group does similarly. McKenna’s subtle tapping in I’m In Love With Someone and then a broken chord sequence, one of those nice things he uses in solo transitions, leads to Wallace’s theme. This is one of Bickert’s most quietly emotional ballads. He plays with complete clarity, even in a few tasty chord clusters. His approach to the tune matches Ellington’s lyrics exactly.

The Ellington-Billy Strayhorn-Bobby Tucker classic, A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing, becomes lovelier in this version by the entire quartet, with McKenna’s lovely intro and arpeggios building to Bickert’s first entrance. He strokes his strings as though he’s drawing them into a life of their own.

Dave McKenna, a native of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and a Concord mainstay, has been working clubs for three decades and has recorded more than two dozen LPs for the label. He is widely respected as one of the best solo jazz pianists, and his solo recordings bear that out. He also is a consummate rhythm section pianist, as he demonstrates here.

Jake Hanna, from Boston, was on Woody Herman’s 1962 tour to Europe and a trip to Tokyo in 1963. He has worked with many bands and groups, notably with the Concord Jazz All Stars and George Wein’s Newport All Stars. He was the ideal drummer for Ed. For two weeks, it is agreed, he was. He has been recording with Steve Wallace on discs by Fraser MacPherson and Rob McConnell.

Wallace is the youngest member of the group. This is his debut as a Concord recording artist. He was born in 1956. This may be “Bye Bye Baby” but it’s also Hello Eddie (and welcome!)
-Ira Gitler, Jazz Times

Ed Bickert: guitar
Dave McKenna: piano
Steve Wallace: bass
Jake Hanna: drums

Produced by Carl Jefferson
Recorded live at Bourbon Street, Toronto, Ontario, August 1981
Engineered by Bob Simpson
Digital remix and mastering engineer: George Horn
Mastered at Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, California, USA

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