Albuquerque Tribune
Keith Roether : 10/24/1979
Flanagan album a ‘gem’

Seeing saxophonist Sonny Rollins on a recent edition of “The Tonight Show” brought Tommy Flanagan, among many things, to mind.

Flanagan, known amicably by his colleagues as The Professor, was Newk’s pianist for many productive years, including those when Saxophone Colossus (1956) was recorded.

Few pianists have been so consistent in their music, whether on record or in live performance. Despite a fairly long stretch when he wasn’t recorded (especially as a leader), Flanagan has set an example of reliability and musical taste most others can’t hope to match.

Flanagan doesn’t make bad albums. And he doesn’t give lackluster performances, even if he’s fighting cocktail talk at Bradley’s or some other New York haunt.

He is a quiet, unsung hero who, if recognized or remembered at all, is familiar for his ten years as Ella Fitzgerald‘s accompanist. Others will recall the halcyon days with Rollins, but few will grant him more than sideman status even now.

Recently, however, Inner City records producer Mathias Winckelmann has has gone about rectifying the oversight. Two years ago, he reunited Flanagan with his long-time friend from Detroit, drummer Elvin Jones and added bassist George Mraz for a trio recording called Eclypso.

Last November, Winckelmann brought Flanagan and Mraz back into the studio for seven duets, the results of which are just out on Ballads and Blues.

The album is a gem.

All of the Flanagan trademarks are here: solid sense of form, a playing approach that is at once graceful and forceful, clear articulation, sparkling tone, wit and charm.

Mraz, who never seems out of place with any pianist is a fine match for The Professor with his broad tone and impeccable time. These two have no need of a drummer, so strong is the rhythm they carry.

As its title suggests, the album is essentially blues and ballads. Star Eyes, the DePaul-Raye standard, enjoys a fresh treatment here, too.

Two blues, Flanagan’s own Blue Twenty and Dizzy Gillespie‘s classic Birk’s Works, are jewels of the form. And what renderings from Flanagan and Mraz. The two mean business – no nonsense about it.

You might have trouble finding Ballads and Blues in town. What else is new? If you do, writer Inner City directly at 423 W. 55 St., New York, NY, 10019. Ask for a free catalog while you’re at it.

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Coda
Trevor Tolley : October, 1980

Tommy Flanagan was heard on countless records in the fifties. In the sixties, Time or Newsweek ran a brief story on him as everybody’s favorite accompanist. He was present superbly in that role on records as diverse as Rollins‘ Saxophone Colossus and Pee Wee Russell‘s Swingin’ with Pee Wee (both on Prestige). He accompanied Ella Fitzgerald for a decade; and the contention of the album notes that his “consistency is remarkable” is nothing but fair. In 1977 he made a trio recording with Elvin Jones and George Mraz – Eclypso (InnerCity 3009). He he follows it up in a duo with George Mraz. Mraz is one of my favorite bassists of his generation, superior (I feel) to his European comperes Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and Miroslav Vitous. His delicate tone and unostentatious fluency suit him well as a partner for the always immaculate Flanagan. On Blues for Sarka he plays the melody statement arco with the ease and lyricism of a tenor saxophone. He and Flanagan get a particularly good interplay on the ‘bop’ pieces Scrapple from the Apple and Birk’s Works, where they achieve a springy brightness. Of all the pianists reviewed here, Flanagan is the only one whose work reminds one at times of Powell. But his music is open and happy, whether on the sprightly Blue Twenty or in the ballads They Say It’s Spring and With Malice Towards None. There is, admittedly, a harmonic predictability in Flanagan’s playing – as in that of most players; but this is a delightful album that grows on one.

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Hartford Courant
Owen McNally : 10/21/1979
Flanagan, Mraz Simpatico Duo

Being Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist over the past decade or so must have been a profitable and pleasant enough tour of duty for pianist Tommy Flanagan.

But all that steadiness and all that security also tended to place his estimable soloing talents in the shadow’s of Ella’s elegance and irrepressible elan vital. Flanagan is such a sensitive and highly accomplished accompanist that he was invariably supportive and never obtrusive. After all, the show was Ella.

Recently, however, the pianist has been getting his due as a leader and soloist on discs distributed by Inner City Records, Pablo Records and Galaxy Records, the mainstream subsidiary of Fantasy Records.

The latest in this relatively small but very lovable parade of sides with Flanagan as leader is an excellent new disc on Inner City which pairs the peerless pianist with bassist George Mraz, Czechoslovakia’s handsome gift to the jazz world.

Consisting of seven pieces, the new LP is entitled Ballads & Blues.

Flanagan’s acoustic piano and Mraz’ acoustic bass are simpatico from start to finish.

The start is a Flanagan original, Blue Twenty, a 20-bar blues graced with the pianist’s patented, long, fluid phrases. Under all this Flanaganesque fluidity are Mraz’ rock hard bass lines.

Flanagan’s next flight is Charlie Parker‘s Scrapple from the Apple. Both musicians are fleet and deft as they navigate the bop changes with sound and fury signifying very much.

After Scrapple from the Apple, the pair tastefully pare Tom McIntosh‘s With Malice Toward None to a tight and savory core. Besides much loveliness, Flanagan’s phrases exude a beautiful logic, with each one fresh and surprising in its own way, yet leading ineluctably to the next dazzling pattern.

Side B opens with a Mraz original, Blues for Sarka. Mraz is featured here both in pizzicato and arco passages, all executed with flawless intonation. The tune itself is at least as pretty as the other ballads on the disc.

This is followed by Star Eyes, one of the best tracks on this side, and then by They Say It’s Spring, a tune written by Bob Haymes, brother of Dick Haymes, the singer.

The finale is Birk’s Works, a tune written some years back by one John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie. This bop warhorse is given much the same sort of royal workout as that given earlier to Parker’s Scrapple from the Apple.

Flanagan and Mraz work so well together that a drummer might well have been irrelevant. Theirs is not that extrasensory rapport that crackles between a Bill Evans and an Eddie Gomez. But their rapport – although not on that most rare, rarefied level – is strong and fruitful. Mraz is always there with the right support for Flanagan’s solos. And Mraz himself also gets to stretch out a bit on each track.

This session grew out of an earlier recording date that matched Flanagan with Mraz and drummer Elvin Jones on the Inner City release, Eclypso.

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Newsday
Bob Micklin : 10/18/1979

The elegant pianist plays here with bassist George Mraz, offering exactly what the album title describes. From Flanagan’s own Blue Twenty, with its 20-bar construction, through Charlie Parker‘s Scrapple from the Apple and the standard Star Eyes to Dizzy Gillespie‘s rolling Birk’s Works, Flanagan and Mraz make a terrific team. The pianist shows his rich harmonic sense as well as dextrous right hand runs that have both glitter and substance, while Mraz anticipates and enhances Flanagan’s every musical idea. Outstanding piano jazz.

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Los Angeles Times
Leonard Feather : 11/25/1979

So many records of this caliber are gushing forth that we tend to take them for granted. What we have here is 43 minutes of pure, bop-rooted piano jazz, with tunes by Gillespie, Parker, Flanagan and his bassist George Mraz, among others. Flanagan’s gentle touch makes it seem deceptively easy. Mraz plays a splendid bowed solo on his own Blues for Sarka.

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Ottawa Citizen
Lois Moody : 12/21/1979

It’s taken a long time, but pianist Tommy Flanagan finally seems to be getting opportunities to be featured as leader of his own recording sessions. Since the late 1940s, Flanagan has played with the best – John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Gene Ammons, Jim Hall, Dizzy Gillespie and fellow Detroiters Kenny Burrell and Milt Jackson – and in recent years has spent considerable time leading a trio behind Ella Fitzgerald.

The association with Fitzgerald has led to some of his own albums for producer Norman Granz on the Pablo label, but the one that is worth special attention is a duo album with bassist George Mraz for Inner City. It’s called Ballads and Blues and it’s a near-flawless session by two masters of taste. Both incorporate delicacy, thoughtfulness and controlled but swinging strength in their playing. The sounds here are rich and full, with each man sharing responsibility for rhythmic foundations and direction.

Remembering his starting-out days with the bop crowd, Flanagan has picked Charlie Parker’s Scrapple From the Apple and Gillespie’s Birk’s Works for this set. The love for a beautiful melody shared by both Flanagan and Mraz shows in the ballads Star Eyes and They Say It’s Spring. Of the originals contributed for the date, Flanagan’s Blue Twenty follows traditional blues form, looping happily along to a steady walking beat behind a minor theme that both Flanagan and Mraz rephrase with wit and imagination. The Mraz tune Blues for Sarka, also used as the title track for an album he cut with his cohorts in the New York Jazz Quartet, is balladic in structure and reflective in mood, a memory of a friend perhaps. Whoever Sarka may have been, he’s bene treated with an understanding and gentle brilliance by this duo. In an album that is completely satisfying, this cut still has a special edge.

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Down Beat : January, 1981
Fred Bouchard : 4 stars

Of the two original “blues” that open both sides of Tommy Flanagan‘s first duo album, one is a stretched from (8-8-4) by the pianist and the other is a solemn, haunting 32 bar song, set for its composer’s bass. Of the “ballads,” there are the perennial Star Eyes, Bob Haymes‘ long forgotten Spring and Tom McIntosh‘s stately Malice, remember from Flanagan’s years with neighbor Tom’s New York Jazz Sextet (late ’60s) all taken at moderate clips. The “true” blues are Dizzy‘s Works and Bird‘s Apple, whipped silky and lyrical with plentiful bop references ineffably infused.

It’s no surprise that Flanagan takes the blues beyond bop; his Detroit upbringing (occurring chronologically between lyrical genii Hank Jones and Roland Hanna, who are both similarly enjoying a recording revival) seems ever to have stuck in him the delicate balance between the funky and the flowery, the swinging and the singing. Only one so thoroughly versed on the pop and bop vernaculars as Flanagan could so effortlessly insert Parker’s Marmaduke into his Scrapple, and Cole Porter‘s Piccolino into Spring.

As lines require more support than a triangle, duos sag without mutual empathy. Mraz met Flanagan during the former’s 1972 tour with Oscar Peterson and they first played during his subsequent brief replacement of Keter Betts in Ella Fitzgerald‘s trio. Their lines have been long drawn and interwoven from extensive explorations at Bradley’s and other New York rooms, and their collaborations have been documented before on Eclypso (another Enja side licensed by Inner City) in a trio filled out by Elvin Jones.

Flanagan and Mraz go head to head nicely; they trade support evenly, share the singing, and channel some driving groovers. They show they don’t really need the kit, not even Elvin’s deft and supple brushwork, to move along with resilience and fervor. They might have varied the pacing a bit more, however; nearly every tune slips into a medium temp, more or less. Best tracks by me are Sarka, Mraz’ buzzy arco framing a warm, lingering version more intimate and more wistful than the New York Jazz Quartet’s, and Spring, one of those rare tunes whose title you can hear right in the melody.

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Liner Notes by Andrew Sussman
from the US pressing on Inner City Records IC 3029

Sometimes, there is magic. Not often. Usually when musicians are summoned into a recording studio and ordered to play the result is forgettable, to say the least. But occasionally there is just the right spark of creativity and relaxation and sensitivity and anticipation. And it doesn’t seem to hurt if the stars are in favorable positions, some salt is tossed over the shoulder, all the black cats are locked neatly away in the basement, and one knocks on wood and carries a horseshoe for good measure. None of these things can hurt; but of course the most important factors are the musicians themselves, and Tommy Flanagan and George Mraz don’t leave room for disappointment. It’s just not part of their vocabulary.

Tommy Flanagan’s consistency is remarkable. He quite simply does not make bad records, and if the rest of us must plod along fallible and bungling it doesn’t seem to faze him at all. He just keeps right on making album after impeccable album, and the best thing for the rest of us to do is sit back and enjoy them.

Of course there was a long period of time when he was hardly recording at all, at least not as a leader (remember that he was Ella Fitzgerald‘s accompanist for nearly a decade). But recently that situation has to some extent been rectified, and Ballads & Blues must certainly rank as one of his most ambitious sessions yet.

It was in 1977 that producer Matthias Winckelmann first approached him. The idea was to reunite Flanagan with fellow Detroiter Elvin Jones for the first time in twenty years. Since Tommy had been working with bassist George Mraz in New York he was the logical choice to round out the trio.

The result was a masterpiece: a rare combination of taste and expertise and mutual respect which so fired the imaginations of all concerned that they were able to capture something truly special – even by Tommy Flanagan’s standards! It was called Eclypso (InnerCity 3009), and it was acknowledged by the music industry at large that same year when it was nominated for a Grammy.

Towards the end of 1978, Mr. Winckelmann felt it was time to once again turn to the majestic Flanagan for a new recording, and what better or more logical extension of the first encounter than to pair him for a second time with the brilliant Mraz – this time as a duo.

“He heard us working at Bradley’s (a club in Greenwich Village),” Flanagan recalls. “We worked there a few times. I guess he liked the tunes we were doin’, the rapport we had together, and he wanted to hear how it would sound on record. And so did I, you know.

“The first time I think I played with George was on a job with Ella. He worked with us for a short time – this was after his working with Oscar Peterson. That was my first association with George Mraz, in the early ’70s.

“After that he came to settle in New York and I more or less started working here a lot and we just sort of got together. I mean he’s an excellent player that doesn’t need a lot of rehearsing to play. He can hear almost anything, so it’s very easy. A sympathetic player… you know, he’s a beautiful cat!”

Flanagan himself is hardly ordinary, and the accolades come easily. His style is graceful and delicate; melodic, but with a steady undercurrent of passion and grit. There is wit and charm and a polite subtlety which draws the listener deeper and deeper; and exceptional sense of construction and form. His tone sparkles and his marvelously clear lines exude a warmth which should be impossible. There is a fluidity, a wholeness, an ability to ponder and reflect without breaking the creative spell; a touch light and lyrical, caressing each chorus as one would fondle a gem; a sound so pungent and rich and full of vitality that one is drawn alternately into fits of laughter and poignant soul-searching. Unpretentious yet with an enviable technique, his music draws a portrait of the man; a modest, sincere human being, clever, sensitive. His solos are marked by deftly stated runs and flurries punctuated with luxuriously voiced chords. Phrases that tell a story which is the story of us all.

George Mraz is perhaps the perfect choice for a partner in an excursion of this sort. Capable of evoking a roar from an instrument usually relegated to the background, he is also tender and sympathetic. He utilizes the entire range of the bass, weaving masterfully and with virtuosic control, catching each note and turning it into an inspiration.

“It was more or less a very relaxed session,” Flanagan remembers. “I think we finished it in one afternoon. It went down very easily and we had a nice rapport. We felt good while we were doing it; I doubt it we played more than two takes on anything – some of them were only one. We’d played most of the tunes before so we didn’t need to rehearse that much – just to get an idea of the length of time we would play, some kind of arrangement. But most of it is like a pretty impromptu right on the spot kind of thing.

“I played some songs that I’ve played but never recorded before. It gets to be a problem sometimes, you know, so you don’t repeat yourself, you gotta find songs that you like to record.”

Blue Twenty is a Flanagan original, composed especially for this date. “It was a progression that I had been thinking about for some time,” he noted. “I had a melody for it – a different melody – but this one is mostly improvised on the form of a twenty bar blues.” It sets the mood: buoyant yet thoughtful, a marriage of contradictions with a strange twist made palpable in the blues.

Scrapple From The Apple is by Charlie Parker, who was Tommy’s idol and whose joyous intensity and singing tonal quality Flanagan has miraculously transferred to the keyboard.

With Malice Toward None is a beautiful, haunting ballad which is also appropriately the longest cut on the album and offers some of the most inspired improvisations. It carries on the theme, the bitter-sweet aura which permeates much of the music. “I recorded it with Milt Jackson once before on Atlantic Records,” stated Flanagan. “But I just love Tom McIntosh‘s writing. I think he’s one of the best writers around; a real Americana style writer.”

Another touching ballad, Blues for Sarka, is a George Mraz contribution and points out the special compositional skill he possesses. George’s solo here is also exquisite, and note his fine intonation and sensitive arco statement of the theme.

Star Eyes is, of course, a standard. Yet Flanagan lets loose all reigns in this version and imprints it indelibly as his own. Listen to the way he turns a bebop phrases, and how he quotes from popular songs like I Can’t Get Started.

They Say It’s Spring is the type of tune that Tommy Flanagan thrives on and interprets better than almost anyone. It is highly melodic and emotive, allowing just the right framework for his ringing chords and starkly piercing runs. Written by Bob Haymes (singer Dick Haymes‘ brother), Tommy remembers that “Blossom Dearie brought it to my attention. I heard her doing it and I like it and showed it to my bass player friend from Detroit, Doug Watkins, and he liked it and he used to play it and I always thought about playing it. It’s just one of those rare type of songs that needs more exposure. I like to do things that haven’t been done too much.”

The album is rounded out with a swinging blues by Dizzy Gillespie: Birk’s Works. This is a finger-snapper all the way, and an appropriate way to windup the proceedings.

Whitney Balliett once remarked that “It is rare to come away from hearing Flanagan without something new and ingenious.” One listen to Ballads & Blues confirms the obvious. You can be sure that whatever else Tommy Flanagan will do, whatever direction he will take in the future, that is one statement which will always hold true.