‘Civilization’: Tony Williams’ Cultured Cache Of Post-Bop Jazz
The drummer’s 1987 album for Blue Note Records highlighted his brilliance as a composer.
After the critical and commercial success of 1985’s Foreign Intrigue, his first album for Blue Note Records since 1966, the acclaimed jazz drummer/composer Tony Williams assembled a new band to take his music on the road. Except for saxophonist Billy Pierce, they were all rising young stars of the US jazz scene: Trumpeter Wallace Roney, pianist Mulgrew Miller, and teenage bass prodigy Charnett Moffat. For the drummer, then 39 years old, reverting to an orthodox jazz setting was an exciting prospect. “I’ve never had a band like this, a so-called traditional, straight-ahead acoustical group,” he enthused in 1986. “I had a desire to write some music for this style, and to put my own stamp on that genre with a different look at it – a more full-bodied and explosive attack.” After writing eight new tunes, Williams took his band to Capitol Studios in November 1986 and recorded Civilization, a cultured cache of post-bop jazz highlighting his brilliance as a composer.
A Chicago-born wunderkind who began his professional career as a thirteen-year-old, Tony Williams was a musical phenomenon who profoundly shaped jazz drumming in the post-bop era. He rose to fame with trumpeter Miles Davis, whose quintet he joined in 1963 at age seventeen. A year later, he recorded Life Time, his first album as a leader for Blue Note Records, which showed him embracing experimental avant-garde music. A progressive musician eager to explore new musical terrain, Williams left Davis in 1968 to form a new band, Tony Williams Lifetime featuring guitarist John McLaughlin and organist Larry Young. Their specialty was marrying jazz expression with rock and funk elements, an approach Williams continued to explore in the 70s.
The drummer was without a record deal when he was invited to play in a concert at New York’s Town Hall in February 1985. Dubbed “One Night With Blue Note,” it was a celebration marking the iconic jazz label’s relaunch. After hearing Williams play with fellow ex-members of the Miles Davis Quintet, the label’s new boss, Bruce Lundvall, offered the drummer a multi-album recording contract.
Civilization was Williams’ impressive follow-up to his 1985 Blue Note comeback album, Foreign Intrigue. Like that record, Williams presented acoustic straight-ahead jazz with a twist, augmenting his drum kit with a drum machine. But while Foreign Intrigue’s electronic touches were prominent, on Civilization they were subtler, mostly consisting of unobtrusive percussion sounds; a feature that has helped the album age well.
From the regal opener, “Geo Rose” with its stately pulse, to “Citadel,” the faintly exotic, hard-swinging finale, Williams and his cohorts served up a delectable feast of small group jazz defined by dazzling horn solos and tight-knit ensemble work. Other highlights included two waltz-time numbers: The African-tinged “Soweto” with sweetly blended brass, and the album’s slower, low-key title track, characterized by an elegant main theme voiced by the horns in tandem with Miller’s eloquent piano. Williams and his crew also showed with “The Slump,” a playful, off-beat number, how they could successfully assimilate rock music elements into the music.
Largely eclipsed by Williams’ explorations in the fusion and jazz-rock fields, the often-overlooked Civilization is undoubtedly one of the best albums the drummer made in a straight-ahead jazz setting. Packed with memorable, well-executed tunes and compelling performances, it reminds us that besides being an innovative drummer who could play any style of music, Tony Williams was also a formidable writer of music whose compositional endeavors deserved much wider recognition.
