Tuesday, March 18, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
"I never met Bud," Chick Corea was saying, "but I saw him play once toward the end of his life, in 1965, when he came back to Birdland (a New York City jazz club). I was down there; he was a monster. I was completely bowled over by what I heard and saw that night.
"It was kind of difficult, too. I started listening to Bud in the late '40s, but I didn't see him play till '65. After all those years of his music being in my life, it was hard to sit and listen because there was the man in front of me. A lot of that memory was the shock of seeing him."
Corea, of course, is speaking of Bud Powell, whose advances on the piano in the mid-'40s paralleled -- some say preceded -- Charlie "Yardbird" Parker's on alto saxophone.
"Factually, I don't know (if Powell preceded Parker in bebop), but my guess is that he did. Other musicians say so, that Bud developed his bebop language totally separate of Bird (who is widely credited with the advancement). You hear little quips and stories where Bud was working with Bird and would be playing so good in Bird's band that Bird would cut him off.
"That," Corea says, "was a bad guy."
The pianist's respect for the bebop pioneer is evident in a new recording ("Remembering Bud Powell") by Corea and an all-star band and a tour featuring the same lineup sans tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman.
Despite the young saxophonist's absence, the group is still about as formidable as it gets, with alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett, trumpeter Wallace Roney, bassist Christian McBride and veteran drummer Roy Haynes, a frequent Parker accompanist.
With Redman aboard, they embarked on a six-week summer tour in 1996, then went into the studio to record the 10-tune compact disc, which features nine Powell-penned tunes and one by Corea, the aptly titled "Bud Powell."
"He's been a major piano and composition and musical inspiration for me," Corea says. "The sound of his music and what he does with the piano has been with me since I started playing piano. His compositions really have never been explored. They've been played and recorded -- Miles (Davis) recorded some of Bud's tunes early on -- but he's really a wonderful writer.
"This tune (on "Remembering Bud Powell") called 'I'll Keep Loving You' is on the level of any Gershwin or Irving Berlin piece of music. He's a great composer, plus the musicians know him well and are inspired by him. I thought an exploration of his compositions would spark everybody."
Redman, who recently appeared in Las Vegas with his own group, was unable to commit to the second-leg of the tour because of scheduling conflicts and an impending marriage. This junior version of the summer tour -- a three-week jaunt -- begins this week in Seattle.
Corea says he initially wasn't thinking so much of paying homage to Powell as playing with these particular musicians. It wasn't until he had them assembled when the idea for the tribute, which he'd been kicking around for a time, solidified.
"I had listened to Christian, and I actually participated in one of his recordings. I had a ball playing with him in the studio in New York, and on the date Kenny played alto sax. We hit it off really, really good.
"I had played with Wallace several times before that, and I love the connection. When I thought of putting Roy into the equation, and Roy was interested, it all clicked together. I thought that with this band, it might be a good opportunity to do this idea that had been hanging around in my mind a long time."
Corea had never performed with Redman prior to the tour, but had listened to his albums and liked what he heard.
"I called him on the phone and talked about the project, and he got excited to make it."
The problem with many all-star sessions begins with an assumption: that you can take a group of great players, throw them together and automatically have the sparks fly in a single recording session. The results often fall short of the expectations.
There is no substitute for a continuously working band, and the quality of "Remembering Bud Powell" is the outcome of just such an arrangement. By the time they reached the recording studio, they knew the material inside and out.
"Well, you know, it's really hard to say (if recording before touring is the wrong order). It depends on how everybody feels would help make the music happen the best," Corea says. "I know I always get requests and sometimes pressure from managers and concert promoters to want to have a new recording to promote (when you go on tour). It's sorta like putting the egg before the chicken.
"Really, the important thing is to make the music have some guts to it and have it be smooth, so it has a greater impact. That takes developing it and working, which means playing in front of an audience. Because of the lineup of this band, we were able to get booked practically anywhere without a record. It made it possible for us to go ahead and do it that way, which I prefer."
Corea's post-tour plans include reforming his duet with vibraphonist Gary Burton and recording and performing his first piano concerto, which he wrote in 1983.
"We have a bunch of concerts set up and a recording in May," he says of his collaboration with Burton. "It really sparks every time we play. We got together (recently) to do a couple of isolated dates ... and it was as if it was the first time we had played. We were quite happy about it and decided to do more."
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