Crazy – Elmo Hope
This composition certainly is "Crazy!" It's not an easy one to learn, but there's something irresistible about it. It will make a very impressive addition to any set. Lead sheets, second parts and C condensed score available.
- Recording: Elmo Hope - New Faces-New Sounds: Elmo Hope Quintet, vol.2
- Recorded on: May 9, 1954
- Label: Blue Note (BLP 5044 10" LP)
- Concert Key: B-flat minor
- Style: Swing (medium up)
- Trumpet - Freeman Lee
- Tenor Sax - Frank Foster
- Piano - Elmo Hope
- Bass - Percy Heath
- Drums - Art Blakey
Video
- Bassist Putter Smith recalls how he felt when playing with Elmo Hope as a young musician in California.
from the same session also available.Video: Bertha Hope, Jerry Dodgion, and Putter Smith talk about the great Elmo Hope. Elmo Hope was a classically trained pianist with technique rivaling that of his childhood friend Bud Powell and a composer of music whose inventiveness and complexity approaches that of Thelonious Monk. In fact, Elmo, Thelonious and Bud used to hang out so much together they became known as "The Three Musketeers."
Bertha Hope was married to Elmo Hope until his passing in 1967. She is an accomplished pianist herself, who studied with Richie Powell (Bud's brother) in Los Angeles.
Jerry Dodgion, saxophonist, knew Elmo during the time that he was living in California.
Putter Smith has been an in demand bass player in Los Angeles since he was a teenager. He played with Elmo Hope for a six week residency in Los Angeles when he was 17 years old.
This is the first recording of Crazy. Elmo revisited it in a trio context in 1961 at the less "crazy" tempo of ca. 196. You can read more about this first session by checking out Elmo Hope's Chips.
More titles from this album are available. The original album cover shows Elmo sitting outside the rear door of Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack studio, next to Rex, Van Gelder's dog.
For more details about Elmo Hope's recordings, check out the Elmo Hope Discography on Noal Cohen's Jazz History website.
Elmo Hope
June 27, 1923 – May 19, 1967
An imaginative pianist who valued subtlety over virtuosity in the landscape of bebop, Elmo Hope never achieved the fame that his close friends did, perhaps because he so rejected stylistic norms of the time. Elmo was a classically trained pianist with technique rivaling that of his childhood friend Bud Powell and a composer of music whose inventiveness and complexity approaches that of Thelonious Monk. In fact, Elmo, Thelonious and Bud used to hang out so much together in the late 1940s they became known as "The Three Musketeers." Powell, in Francis Paudras' book "Dance of the Infidels" is quoted as saying, "You gotta hear Elmo. He's fabulous. His stuff is very hard. He does some things that even I have trouble playing." Read more...