Review of Frank Hewitt / We Loved You by Charles Walker from Sudden-Thoughts.

What an unfortunate, unpromising task for the reviewer, but more importantly, how patently unfair to the musician – trying to take one posthumous release and telescope it into a discussion of an underserved, undervalued career. But such is the case with the unostentatious talent of pianist Frank Hewitt as it unfolds in surprise after subtle surprise across the length of this disc. Can a collection of blues and standards – no matter how agilely rendered – capture the whole story, all the triumphs and heartbreaks, the small revolutions and long-term accomplishments encapsulated in the story of a musician like Hewitt, another casualty of the wars between big money music, pretentious prophets of the new thing, and the overall fickle fads of a thoroughly unforgiving industry? Not in any explicit way, certainly, though the sheer maturity of the voice found here - its commanding, spry originality - speaks volumes about all of those manic twists and turns; the fact that this is the late musician’s first (!?!) date as a leader slyly reprimanding the squareness of a silly world that would let talent like this slip away without so much as an apology for its ignorance and brute insensitivity. Even those of us who appreciated firsthand what Hewitt could accomplish on a nightly basis at his long-term haunt Smalls (the now-defunct NYC jazz club) should pause to reprimand ourselves for failing to trumpet those small and large-scale astonishments to impossibly deaf public ears. And yet the whole album, made possible by an intelligent few, foregoes such bitterness in favor of a more productive tack; written into the very title of the disc, We Loved You is first and foremost an act of gratitude, and that is probably how we should look at it too. Thankful for Hewitt’s resilience and persistence, we can also thank those who finally brought him and his two working trios (all Smalls regulars) into a Manhattan studio in the summer of 2001, to mark the high water line of a talented wave that would ebb irrevocably outwards little more than a year later.

Still, in the very nature of the disc, there is a very real possibility that it will slip by much as Hewitt himself did; appreciated by a grateful handful, all but unknown to the rest. After all, how inspiring does a piano trio running at mid tempo through tunes like “Polka Dots and Moonbeams,” “I’ll Remember April,” and “Ghost of a Chance” really sound? The easy answer is that much like the pianist’s subtly evolving rendition of these old classics, first appearances can be deceiving. The saving grace is Hewitt’s highly intelligent utilization of that age-old jazz motif, spontaneity. Written into the very structure of his arrangements here – each tune announced on the fly, given one chorus of lyrical introduction, and then spun outward through sometimes-gradual, sometimes-jarring permutations – the originality is stunning if given an attentive ear, but unlikely to register if the hushed dynamics and hovering tempos are mistaken for too much traditionalism. One can hear the likely set of lazy comparisons the critical establishment will cling to drifting about in the background, a host of misplaced, superficial similarities to a Powell, an Evans, or occasionally a Monk (a sudden clattering burst of dissonance does not a Monk disciple make). But more than usual, such sloppy work is a supreme disservice to what is really going on here – the development of an original voice, forged in the tension between the formal structures and the loose and easy, exhilarating liberties to which they give rise. Hewitt has a determined fondness for the melodies that frame these tunes (the reading of “Polka Dots” is almost stubborn in the luxurious way it clings to the melody’s contours from the first measure to the last), but his truly fascinating vocabulary of individual tics circles around them with suspenseful abandon. The three-fingered trills that bubble, hang, and re-emerge on “That Ole Devil Called Love,” the rest-heavy descent of his two-fingered phrases in the first full-band chorus of “Ghost of a Chance,” and the shunted, almost glancing dissonance of his turnarounds on “I Remember You” – these and a host of other examples reveal a restless voice committed to a constant exploration of internal possibilities, working hard to find the inevitable resolutions in unexpected places.

I’m not sure how appropriate it is, considering the circumstances, but the other major trait that emerges across the length of these sides is a heartfelt sense of joy. Certainly not the ebullient razzamatazz of a Clark Terry “Mumbles” routine, but the feeling of reminiscing (in tempo?) with an old friend after a long, unexplained absence. A track like “Frank’s Blues” feels its way at a more demanding tempo, taking a familiar structure and cavorting across it with a fantastic set of personalized phrases, while the two-handed high wire act that tumbles through the middle third of “Cherokee” is just irresistibly enticing. This is only one side of a musical personality that keeps a couple of other tenets central to its approach; still, these tracks are the clearest examples of the thoroughgoing relish for spontaneous invention that endows nearly every track on We Loved You with a joyful, lived-in feel, a sense of modest satisfaction over a job well done and smiling about the next one which will be done even better. Perhaps this is also partly a factor of the gorgeous introduction verses Hewitt favors – establishing a clear dynamic within familiar territory, they set everyone at ease, even if it is an ease with ears fully perked. Perhaps also they are one of the deceptive elements in Hewitt’s craft, one of the causes of its undeserved obscurity: the lush left-hand chords, coy grace notes, and up front rhythmic attack on the intro to “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” gives little hint of the brilliant surprises that slowly surface across the rest of the track’s length. Commitment to the art of storytelling (beginning-middle-end) means finishing in a different place than one started, submitting original materials to an organic process of change; a society built around the virtue of the short attention span will always exit stage left just when the show is truly getting underway. Hewitt may have been the victim, but it is surely us who have something to regret in the end.

All of which is undercut by the unfairness of balancing a long career of accomplishments against such a brief document of it. Producer Luke Kaven refers to this as only the first volume in a projected series featuring the late pianist’s work; not exactly pretending to make up for lost time, but undoubtedly tipping the scales in the right direction. And yet, in the end, the most appropriate response is to be genuinely thankful that what we do have to show for Hewitt’s recorded career is so spontaneous, joyous, and emotionally direct. There is a brilliant balance at work, between the harmonic sophistication and knotty, complex improvisations, and the easy-going melodies and relaxed rhythmic flow that surround them, the kind of endlessly satisfying combination that deserves a second, third, and fourth listen, and beyond. The other, more sinister tension that rides through the album – between the magisterial poise of the leader’s mature voice and the disheartening realization that this is only a debut recording – should certainly give pause and force reflection about what factors could drive such an incongruous state of affairs. But the blow is immediately softened somewhere amidst the eruptive, two-fingered clusters, swift, ten-fingered runs, and subtle, two-handed harmonies that drive this gracious document.

- Charles Walker