Ashby Mahler

Issued on Cadet in 1970, The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby is really a left-field offering for the jazz harpist. But being a jazz harpist was – and remains – an outside thing in the tradition. Her previous offerings on Prestige were pure, hard bop jazz with serious session players soloing all over them…

While not the first male or female jazz harp player (Casper Reardon of Jack Teagarden's bands, Adele Girard performing with her husband Joe Marsala, or Corky Hale set precedents), Dorothy Ashby was the very best and most swinging performer on the multi-stringed instrument associated with the gates of heaven. Here on Earth, Ashby adeptly plucked and strummed the harp like nobody else, as evidenced on a single reissue containing her two best LPs for the Prestige and Prestige/New Jazz labels from 1958 - Hip Harp and In a Minor Groove. Alongside her prior efforts for the Savoy label, they collectively represent a small but substantive discography for the Detroit native in small group settings. With the exceptional flute sounds produced by Frank Wess, the combo plays music that is oriented via a unique sonic palate, further enhanced by the principals in the standards and originals they have chosen…

There have been very few jazz harpists in history and Dorothy Ashby was one of the greats. Somehow she was able to play credible bebop on her instrument. As a pianist she studied at Wayne State University, and in 1952 she switched to harp. Within two years, Ashby was gigging in jazz, and in 1956 she made her first recording as a leader. Between 1956-1970, she led ten albums for such labels as Savoy, Prestige, New Jazz, Argo, Jazzland, Atlantic, and Cadet, guested on many records, and was firmly established as a top studio and session player. She moved to the West Coast in the 1970s and was active up until her death.

Born in Detroit in 1932, Dorothy Ashby can be easily recognized as the woman who gave the harp a jazz voice. In her hands, the harp, an originally classical instrument which seemed to just scare people, became a highly versatile swinging voice able to drive a whole jazz rhythm section. Recorded in 1958 by master Rudy Van Gelder and originally released on the Prestige label, Hip Harp is a perfect example of Ashby's artistry. At the head of a fine quartet featuring the great Frank Wess on flute, Herman Wright on bass, and master Art Taylor on drums, Ashby creates a unique combination of deeply jazz elements expressed through a totally new sound.

A finely balanced recording places the voices in ideal relationship with the orchestra which itself is given a well-aired, clean sound (although the Amsterdam sound of 13 years ago for Bernstein is no less truthful). It supports a performance that is predictably – given the BPO/Abbado partnership – shipshape in execution, nothing in Mahler’s highly original scoring overlooked. As is customary with this conductor’s Mahler, the approach tends to be objective and disciplined. In that respect it is at the opposite pole to the concept of Bernstein who, in my favourite version among many available, is more yielding and, to my ears, more idiomatically Mahlerian in mood and in subtlety of rubato, those little lingerings that mean so much in interpreting the composer – yet Bernstein is no slower as a whole.