Although he’s covered a song or two on previous releases, The Literature (Pine Eagle) marks Rich Halley’s first full immersion into other people’s compositions. The adventurous Portland, Oregon-based saxophonist selected a dozen tunes by touchstones such as Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus and Sun Ra, interpreting them in his muscular, edge-walking tenor style alongside
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That mix of broad-shouldered blues and fiery abstraction forms the foundation for much of Halley’s aesthetic. A strutting swagger propels his read of Ornette’s “Broad Way Blues,” his roisterous gait shadowed by Reed’s menacing bass, and he goes from jagged and threatening to slinky and sinuous on Mingus’ “Pussy Cat Dues.” He also nods to R&B honkers like Red Prysock on a version of Sun Ra’s “Kingdom of Not,” as he and Carson double up on the handclaps. Naturally, Halley utilizes riffs, hooks and blues motifs as a launch pad from which to extemporize. But he makes an exception for Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo,” which he plays fairly straight, his breathy, textured tenor woozily leaning on a walking bass line and lightly applied cymbals and snare. “I felt like I didn’t want to try and turn it into some kind of super-abstract thing because it’s such a great mood piece,” the saxophonist says.
With the inclusion of tunes by Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family and Hank Williams, Halley reveals another facet of his musical architecture. Maintaining the melodic integrity of these Americana gems, Halley also raises their emotional temperature with explosive improvisations. “When I was pretty young, I used to work out in the woods, on trail crews, planting trees, things like that,” he says. “The people were mostly rural in origin, and they listened to country-western music. So I went back and listened to the history of it. I was interested in how it interfaced with jazz. There was more common ground than you would think, back in the early years.”
The majesty of nature provides another important element in Halley’s paint box. A hiker and mountain climber, he craved wide open spaces and scenic vistas, eventually gravitating back to the Pacific Northwest. This was after he completed a master’s degree in field biology at the University of New Mexico, where he researched rattlesnakes along the mountainous Arizona-Mexico border. And no, he never got bitten. “It wouldn’t be good because the venom of most rattlesnakes causes tissue damage,” he says, pondering what that would have done to the hands that work the keys on his sax. “So I was really careful. I had a great time. It’s a beautiful area.”
It may seem incongruous for jazz to be inspired by landscapes devoid of the buildings and bridges of its usually urban milieu. Halley relates how he blew the minds of fellow climbers in Yosemite when he brought his horn to the campfire rather than a guitar or harmonica. He also led the seven-piece Outside Music Ensemble, a group that performed only outdoors in natural settings sans amplification. One such setting was Powell Butte Nature Park. “The audience actually had to walk maybe three-quarters of a mile to the top of this butte,” he recalls. “You can see all the mountains, there’s no roads around, and we just set up in a little meadow. I really loved playing up there.”
Still, Halley does return to more citified environs on occasion. In August, he traveled to New York to record with pianist Matthew Shipp, bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor-Baker. A completely improvised session, the album is slated for release on Halley’s own Pine Eagle imprint. The label name bespeaks the saxophonist’s family origins in rural Oregon: his father hailed from Pine Valley, his mother from nearby Eagle Valley. And while his connection to the land is more explicit on previous recordings — his 2017 duo recording with Carson, for example, is titled The Wild — the impression is indelible.
“What was it Charlie Parker said? ‘If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn,’” he says. “The way you play is strongly related to your life and your experiences. So I don’t spend a lot of time consciously thinking, ‘I’m going to write this tune to evoke this specific thing about a mountain’ or something like that. I just write or play music, but because a lot of the rest of my life is involved with those things, it comes through.” - Bob Weinberg
