Allison/Cardenas/Nash :Tell The Birds I Said Hello

Herbie Nichols (1919-63) was a very original pianist and composer who never really made it during his lifetime. A contemporary of Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, Nichols only had opportunities to record his own music on three albums, all of which featured him in a trio. Much of his career was spent playing Dixieland in lower-level clubs (the trad jazz musicians appreciated his playing) and most of his compositions were not documented until long after his death. Decades later several groups, including one called the Herbie Nichols Project, unearthed some of his works from the Library Of Congress and recorded them for the first time.

60 years after the composer’s passing, the trio of bassist Ben Allison, guitarist Steve Cardenas and tenor-saxophonist Ted Nash on Tell The Birds I Said Hello debuts six Herbie Nichols compositions plus revives two others that were not initially recorded until 2000.

Nichols’ music has probably never been heard with this instrumentation, and most of these songs were never played in public before.

Of the more memorable selections, “She Insists” has an unpredictable melody that one could imagine Eric Dolphy writing, “The Afterbeat” is a medium-tempo jazz waltz, “Tell The Birds I Said Hello” has a sweet melody, and “Van Allen Belt” swings hard while having unusual chord changes. Unusual is a term that can generally be applied to most of Nichols’ music for rarely do his melodies go where one would expect, and his chord changes are generally quite original and a bit futuristic. However the Allison-Cardenas-Nash trio’s mellow tone masks the music’s complexity a bit while bringing out the beauty in Herbie Nichols’ music.

Any listener with an interest in Herbie Nichols or in hearing “new” music from an earlier great will find Tell The Birds I Said Hello to be well worth acquiring. It is available from www.benallison.com.