Downbeat Magazine

April 2006

Smalls Records Documents Unheralded Pianist Hewitt

By Ken Micallef

Jazz is littered with stories of the giants who were never heard, the renegades who might have become legends if only the stars had cast a little light and love their way. All too often, these are simply tall tales told by fanatics intent on recapturing some jazz dream that never was. But in one case, fiction is fact.

Before he died in 2002 at the age of 66, pianist Frank Hewitt was a fixture at Smalls, a tiny dive that served New York’s underground jazz community until it closed in 2003 (it has since reopened). Hewitt only officially recorded once at Smalls, for Impulse!’s Jazz Underground: Live at Smalls. While his romantic playing recalled Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell expressed through a playful extravagance, Hewitt has become forgotten. Then again, Hewitt was never known.

“As a person and an artist, Frank’s expression was poetic,” said Luke Kaven, whose Smalls Records label has posthumously released three Hewitt recordings: We Loved You, Not Afraid To Live, and Four Hundred Saturdays. “Frank’s playing exhibited a hard-won sentimentality, an optimism borne of adversity. Frank dug deep as far as entering a stream of consciousness. He had a surprising amount of facility at any speed and he internalized the deep theory of people like Elmo Hope. He wasn’t educated or worldly, but he was smart. He was used to being underestimated, but he never underestimated himself.”

Hewitt held a regular 3 a.m. Sunday spot at Smalls, after which he would often sleep in the club’s walk-in refrigerator. He worked the room for nine years. Practically homeless and a heavy drinker, Hewitt’s outward demeanor was less than appealing. But his playing shows a largesse of spirit, a peculiar majesty and a command of the instrument.

Kaven points to the Impulse! recording as an overt case of record label malfeasance.

“Frank was shunted into playing in a manufactured quintet (sextet),” Kaven said, “playing a song that wasn’t in his book. All six members of the band soloed on a short track, which gave Frank two choruses. He didn’t even get going. The producer didn’t approach Frank in good faith. Frank is a sideman on his own feature.”

Born in Queens but raised in Manhattan’s Sugar Hill neighborhood, Hewitt was part of a musical family. His mother was the organist at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Acquiring gospel and classical skills from her, Hewitt soon began working all over town. He appeared with Cecil Payne in The Connection in 1951 and recorded with saxophonist Jesse Powell. During the ‘50s and ‘60s he shared the bandstand with Howard McGhee, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington and John Coltrane. The ‘70s hit Hewitt hard, but by the ‘90s Hewitt found a home at Smalls.

“It took a while to get Frank’s trust so I could record him,” Kaven recalled. “He had been so bitter about having been denied a place on records where he legitimately should have been.”

Hewitt’s three recordings which were recorded in studio, show nothing of his bitterness. He’s a musician living in the moment and playing wonderfully. Hewitt chose classic standards and filled them with beauty and romance. When Hewitt solos, time nearly stops, his peculiar choice of notes, lush chords and bittersweet logic matched by wildly angular Monkish runs and lithe fingering an flying tempos. Kaven plans on releasing another six Hewitt recordings.

“Frank was not out of control when we recorded,” Kaven said. “He was not mean spirited or crazy. Frank was bright and fairly mild-mannered. His spirits lifted the more we worked together. He felt something good was going to happen, and he believed in it.”

Errata:

Hewitt appeared in The Connection in 1961, and not 1951

The CD “Five Hundred Saturdays” was recorded live at Smalls, and not in the studio