Art Farmer: Portrait of Art Farmer

When a recording that is over six decades old sets a listener to thinking many different things, it is clearly something special. Art Farmer was something special. With a bump or two along the way, virtually everyone—except perhaps Art—knew it too. He and his twin brother, bassist Addison Farmer, began their careers in Los Angeles in the '40s, where the Central Avenue bop scene was an especially vibrant and creative one. As if total immersion there was not enough, Art and Addison moved on to New York to work, study, and find their place in the music world. It did not take long.

Art had done considerable recording with Prestige, especially with Gigi Gryce, before making this recording in 1958. According to Nat Hentoff's liner notes, Farmer said he was happiest with this one because he had complete freedom in his choice of personnel, tunes and approach. The tunes were a blend of originals (such as a Bb blues), a now-classic (Benny Golson's "Stablemates"), standards ("The Very Thought of You" "By Myself," and "Too Late Now") and George Russell's avant-garde "Nita." Farmer is joined by his brother Addison, Roy Haynes on drums, and crucially, Hank Jones on piano. Jones in particular is a sympathetic presence, nudging, suggesting, concluding, or just punctuating. He never gets in the way, but is always there. This pressing, done from the original tapes by Bernie Grundman, has the very happy result of bringing Addison Farmer out in a way which makes it clear why Art was so high on him. Not just nepotism. Addison has a strong pulse and a full sound which was lost on some earlier editions, but is room-to-room resonant here. This seems to be a particular virtue of the Craft series: bringing rhythm sections back into their proper balance, restoring a dimension which was simply absent. The pressing is immaculate.

So much could be said about Art Farmer; it really is not true that he was unappreciated by sophisticated listers as he was just underrated by the public at large. There were other great players around, some of whom, such as Clifford Brown or Fats Navarro, influenced Farmer, but never got the ink that Miles Davis did. It is not obvious that this mattered at all to Farmer, whose pursuit of musical beauty—"the perfect note," he called it—was really what mattered, a lifelong quest, even to the extent of hatching the flumpet—a hybrid flugelhorn-trumpet invented by instrument-craftsman David Monette—where he could explore the upper brass register yet maintain a mellow sound at an age when most trumpet players were thinking about avoiding the added stress upstairs.

That quest for beauty is evident everywhere in Portrait of Art Farmer. Even in 1958, Farmer, who could fly when he wanted to, was seemingly moving toward an introspective, reflective style which really blossomed in his later recordings on flugelhorn. His time, harmonic sense, and phraseology did not really change all that much over the years. They simply deepened. One can hear early Art in late Art, or vice versa. And this exceptional recording is someway midway along a lengthy personal and musical journey. There are other recordings which could admirably introduce a listener to Art Farmer, but certainly none is better than this audiophile edition.

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