Jim Hall - "Unalloyed Beauty"
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
“Every Jim Hall solo is a masterpiece of construction, each phrase evolving logically from its predecessor, his rhythmic sense always in perfect balance and his harmonic and melodic concepts always subtle and oblique.”
- Whitney Balliett
“There was a time when it would not have seemed unusual to state of an album by a guitarist that its central quality was unalloyed beauty. In these mid-1970s, however, we find meretricious gimmickry, tonal distortion and high-energy assaults on the eardrums an unavoidable part of our milieu. At such a time, a man of Jim Hall's caliber, representing esthetic values that are all but lost, stands out like a gem surrounded by zircons. Egregious displays of technique or technical bravura are antithetical to Hall's nature.”
- Leonard Feather
“Tal Farlow, Jimmy Raney, Johnny Smith, and Billy Bauer used a softer tone and less pronounced attack to mold the guitar into a cool Jazz voice. This style - with emotionalism present but constrained, and always secondary to more cerebral concerns - enlisted its strongest disciple in Jim Hall ….”
Neil Tesser
Lately, it seems that I have been giving a lot of thought to developing features that center around some of its favorite recordings.
This idea was prompted by a recent listening of guitarist Jim Hall’s Concierto which was produced by Creed Taylor and released on CBS Records [ZK 40807] in 1975.
While reading through the following insert notes to the CD by Leonard Feather, I suddenly realized that Whitney Balliett’s 1975 profile on Jim from The New Yorker magazine would make an excellent Substack feature about Jim.
It doesn’t get much better on the subject of Jazz than Jim Hall, Leonard Feather and Whitney Balliett.
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