If we didn't play 'Django' in a concert, we risked getting stoned. I mean in the thrown-at sense.
- Percy Heath in 2003

The Modern Jazz Quartet—or simply the MJQ—was one of the most enduring jazz ensembles of the second half of the 20th Century. Characterised by the sound of the vibraphone, their music was smooth, cool, and chic, as were the quartet members themselves. Whereas other jazz musicians placed little emphasis on appearance, the MJQ members invariably presented in well-tailored, modern fashion suits. While all jazz musicians have an innate ability to feed off each other musically in real-time, the MJQ just seemed to be a single organism, each player being audible with crystal clarity, yet never needing any electronic amplification to achieve a perfect balance between their instruments. Their style has sometimes been described as 'chamber jazz'.

The Vibraphone

The vibraphone, also known simply as the vibes, is an instrument with horizontally-mounted tuned bars which are struck by hand-held hammers. It is similar to the xylophone and the marimba, with three principal differences: the bars are made of aluminium rather than wood; below each bar is a vertically mounted resonator tube, closed at one end, the length of each tube being set to enable the column of air inside it to resonate at the right frequency for that bar; a motor drives a rotating butterfly flap mounted at the top of each resonator tube. It is this rotating flap that causes the amplitude of the sound coming from the resonator tube to increase and decrease alternately, giving the characteristic tremolo effect. The speed of rotation of the motor, and hence the speed of tremolo, is controlled by the player. In addition to the tremolo, the metal bars have a natural sustain to the sound they make, which can ring for several seconds. A foot-operated damper is used to control this.

Formation

The original 1951 line-up—as the Milt Jackson Quartet—comprised Milt Jackson (vibes), John Lewis (piano), Ray Brown (bass) and Kenny Clarke (drums). One night (or more likely early morning), the quartet were driving home together in Jackson's car (a gilded Cadillac nicknamed the Golden Dragon) from a rather unsatisfying appearance at a club. Lewis said he was tired of the format of the music they were playing, and wanted to form a band of four independent contrapuntal performers and to open up a new style of jazz to a new audience. By the time the Golden Dragon arrived home, the Milt Jackson Quartet had become the Modern Jazz Quartet, and John Lewis had become the quartet's musical director.

MJQ Members

Ray Brown was replaced by Percy Heath in late '52, and Kenny Clarke was replaced by Connie Kay in 1955, but the resulting line-up of Jackson, Lewis, Heath and Kay was to remain unchanged for the next 40 years.

Milt Jackson

Milt(on) Jackson was born on New Year's Day, 1923 in Detroit, in his early years singing gospel and playing guitar and piano. He took up the xylophone and vibraphone as a teenager, then studied music at Michigan State University. Between 1942 and 1944, Jackson served in the US Army, a call-up which prevented him from joining the band of pianist Earl Hines. In 1945, he was back in Detroit, playing guitar, piano, vibes and singing in a jazz group called the The Four Sharps, when he was spotted by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, who brought him to New York to play in his sextet¹. Part of Gillespie's thinking was that Jackson could potentially be a replacement for the unreliable Charlie Parker, albeit on a different instrument. The following year, the sextet morphed into a big band. During this time with the Gillespie band in New York's 52nd Street jazz hot-spot, Jackson sat in with many great players, including saxophonist Charlie Parker and pianist Thelonious Monk. A common association with Gillespie's big band brought the future MJQ members together—the band's rhythm section comprised essentially Jackson, Lewis, Brown and Clarke. After that band broke up in 1950, the four men came together to form the Milt Jackson Quartet.

John Lewis

Prior to the MJQ, John Lewis—born 3 May, 1920 in La Grange, Illinois, but grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he studied anthropology and music at the University of New Mexico—served in the US Army from 1942-5 and it was here that he met Kenny Clarke. In 1946, Lewis joined Gillespie's big band and toured Europe with him, after which he played with others including saxophonists Lester Young and Charlie Parker, and trumpeter Miles Davis. Lewis returned to study again, in 1953 gaining a Masters degree at the Manhattan School of Music, where he developed a special interest in music of the Baroque era. Many of Lewis's compositions had JS Bachian influences, something that gave Milt Jackson cause to moan on more than one occasion—his own leanings were more towards blues.

Ray Brown

Ray Brown—born 13 October, 1926 in Indianapolis—had only been playing bass professionally for two years when he moved to New York and joined Dizzy Gillespie's sextet and subsequently the big band. From 1948-52 he was married to jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. He parted from the MJQ late in 1952.

Kenny Clarke

Kenny Clarke—born 2 January, 1914 in Pittsburgh—had been part of the legendary New York group, with Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Charlie Christian and others, that had, at Minton's Playhouse in the early 1940s, developed the style of jazz known as bebop. He served in the US Army from 1943-6, after which he, Brown and Lewis toured Europe with the Gillespie big band. Clarke eventually parted from the MJQ in 1955, the style established by Lewis's arrangements not being so much to his liking.

Percy Heath

Percy Heath—born 30 April, 1923 in Wilmington, North Carolina—studied bass at the Granoff School of Music in Philadelphia in 1946, before becoming a jazz club house bass player. In 1947 he moved to New York, where he played with, among others, Miles Davis. Joining Dizzy Gillespie's band in 1950, he also sat in on sessions with Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, before joining the Milt Jackson Quartet in 1952.

Connie Kay

Self-taught drummer Connie Kay—born 27 April, 1927 in Tuckahoe, New York—before replacing Kenny Clarke in the MJQ, had played with jazz greats Miles Davis, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins and Stan Getz.

The Music of the MJQ

Playing music that was more composed and less improvisatory than many of their jazz contemporaries—for which they drew criticism from some quarters—they were the clean-cut boys of jazz, not getting involved with drugs and alcohol, and never turning up late or not appearing at their concerts.

Initially they signed for the Prestige record label, then for a much longer period with the Atlantic label. The best of the Prestige material is undoubtedly the 1956 album Django. Recorded over three sessions between June 1953 and January 1955, when Kenny Clarke was the group's drummer, Django opens with the title track, John Lewis's seven-minute tribute to guitarist Django Reinhardt. The album also includes the 'La Ronde Suite'—another Lewis composition—a four-movement piece in which each instrument has a showcase movement in the sequence: piano, bass, vibes and drums. It derives from another piece simply called 'La Ronde', which itself is derived from the 'Two Bass Hit' number that Lewis wrote for the Gillespie band. Other tracks are: 'One Bass Hit', 'The Queen's Fancy', 'Delaunay's Dilemma', 'Autumn in New York', 'But Not For Me' and 'Milano'.

The first album with Connie Kay on drums was Concorde, released on the Prestige label in 1956. The group's first album for Atlantic was Fontessa, also released in 1956. The title track, which closes side one of the album, was described by John Lewis as 'a little suite inspired by the Renaissance Commedia dell'arte. I had particularly in mind their plays which consisted of a very sketchy plot and in which the details, the lines, etc were improvised.' The suite opens and closes with a short prelude, between which are three pieces with improvised parts by the vibraphone, piano and drums respectively. The Fontessa album also includes the famous Milt Jackson composition 'Bluesology' and Dizzy Gillespie's 'Woodyn You'.

The Music Inn

A concert in Red Rock Canyon, near Denver, Colorado, in the summer of 1955 brought together jazz musicians from all over the US, including the clarinettist Jimmy Giuffre. Giuffre and the MJQ talked almost immediately about the possibility of playing together. The opportunity to do so arose in August of the following year, when Giuffre spent a week at the annual jazz studies and performance festival at the Music Inn at Lenox, Massachusetts—a conscious equivalent to the classical music festival at the not-far-off Tanglewood Summer School. The MJQ were Quartet-in-Residence at the Music Inn and an album—The Modern Jazz Quartet at Music Inn—was duly recorded on 28 August, 1956. It included three tracks with Jimmy Giuffre as guest: 'A Fugue For Music Inn', 'Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West', both Lewis compositions, and Giuffre's own composition entitled 'Fun'. A second volume album released two years later included tracks that featured Sonny Rollins on tenor saxophone, playing two of the quartet's regular compositions with them: 'Bags' Groove' and 'Night in Tunisia'.

The MJQ in the '60s

Despite being primarily a live performance ensemble, the MJQ reached a wider audience by releasing more albums in the 1960s, some studio recordings, some tapings of live concerts. Third Stream Music from 1960 is a jazz-classical music fusion album driven by the work of composer Gunther Schuller, who conducts the small string- and wind-ensembles that accompany the MJQ on a large part of the album. Two other tracks once again feature Jimmy Giuffre on clarinet and tenor saxophone. More albums followed, including Lonely Woman (1962), the title track of which was a cover version of a number by saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Other albums from this decade include The Sheriff (1964), Blues at Carnegie Hall (1966)—a live recording of a benefit concert for the Manhattan School Of Music, where John Lewis had gained his Masters degree, and Live at the Lighthouse (1967)―another live concert, this one taped at the Lighthouse Café on Hermosa Beach, California.

Fracture

During the 1960s and early 70s, the band had spent their summers pursuing their own interests, but after more than 20 years of touring with the MJQ, Jackson wanted to develop a solo career, so in July 1974 the group disbanded. All four musicians continued to work—Jackson as a soloist, Lewis teaching at Harvard and the Davis Centre for Performing Arts at City College of New York, Percy Heath forming The Heath Brothers band with siblings Jimmy and Albert ('Tootie'), and pianist Stanley Cowell, Connie Kay freelancing in New York City with, among others, Benny Goodman, and being the house drummer at Eddie Condon's club in Greenwich Village.

In 1981, after seven years of resisting public demand, Milt Jackson relented and the Modern Jazz Quartet was reformed, initially for a reunion concert in Japan, then subsequently on a permanent but more part-time basis, touring and recording into the 1990s. In early 1992, the MJQ's 40th anniversary, Connie Kay suffered a stroke which kept him out of the group for 15 months; his place was taken by Mickey Roker. He returned to playing in 1993, but died on 30 November, 1994 in New York. Percy Heath's brother, 'Tootie', took over from Kay, but an outsider coming into a close-knit unit after 40 years of playing together was a bridge too far. In addition, Jackson once again wanted to further his solo career, and Percy Heath had tired of life on the road, so the MJQ disbanded for the last time in 1995.

Post-MJQ

After the final break-up of the MJQ, Milt Jackson performed with a number of combos, some of which he fronted. He continued to perform, record and appear at jazz festivals until a few months before his death in New York on 9 October, 1999. Jackson was one of the greatest vibes players of all time, at least on a par with, and arguably greater than the other virtuoso of the instrument—Lionel Hampton. One of the things that distinguishes Jackson from Hampton is the relative speeds of their respective tremolos; Jackson's was only about a third that of Hampton. This enabled him to change the instrument from being principally a percussive one to one with a singing, vocal quality.

John Lewis remained an active musician until his death from liver cancer in New York on 29 March, 2001.

In 1995, Percy Heath more or less retired and devoted his time to fishing. He died in Southampton, New York 28 April, 2005.

Ex-member Kenny Clarke died in Montreuil-sous-Bois, France on 26 January, 1985, and fellow ex-member Ray Brown died in Indianapolis on 2 July, 2002.

And Finally...

Milt Jackson's nickname was 'Bags', a reference to the bags under his eyes that resulted (according to his own witness) from excessive late night partying following his discharge from the Army.