PvV | Philip van Vleck | The Loner Hexilogy: Jazz Great Elmer Gibson’s Long Road Home

The Loner Hexilogy: Jazz Great Elmer Gibson’s Long Road Home

By Philip van Vleck

Jazz pianist and composer Elmer Gibson has a new album. Titled The Loner Hexilogy, it’s actually a very old album.
Twenty-five years ago, Gibson went into Soundtrax Studios in Raleigh intending to cut a solo piano album to use as a demo. Recording engineer Perry Cheatham informed Gibson that the studio had just purchased a Prophet 5000 analog synthesizer and were anxious for someone to use it.
As Gibson explained during a recent conversation at Whole Foods in Raleigh: “They offered me an opportunity to do this expansive bit of recording with the Prophet, plus my electric piano, an acoustic piano and a Minimoog. I was taken aback by the offer because I was not prepared for any such thing. I soon realized that I needed to think more seriously about this album — it could be more than just something to help me get gigs.”
After an interlude in which Gibson re-imagined his objective in cutting the album, he took up Cheatham on his offer and plunged into the emerging art of electronica. The result was an outstanding six-song record titled The Loner.
The album is a finely wrought jazz-fusion project. Gibson’s performance is marvelous, and his songs are vivid conceptual gems, but he got no love when he shopped the finished product.
Record labels couldn’t figure out how to market a jazz album with no drums. As it turned out, The Loner was an apt title.
Gibson explained that the original recording was done on 16-track tape, which was then mastered as a two-track stereo recording. Gibson dubbed off some cassette copies, but otherwise, the master was relegated to a storage locker.
When Elmer recently unearthed the master and listened to it, he was amazed by what he heard. He realized he had an album that was as sweet today as it was 25 years ago. Thanks to the sea change that has made it possible for artists to release their own material without having to deal with the dubious minds that run record labels, Gibson has at last released The Loner under a slightly amplified title.

Gibson recalled that he wanted a concept for The Loner.
“At this same time I’d been doing this family research with my son Oliver at the Museum of History. I thought I’d employ some of the information I’d found in this album I was calling The Loner. I visualized the six songs that are on the record as representing a larger story. Each one kind of crystallized a particular idea.”
The first song on the album is titled “Bobbin’ & Weavin’.”
“The idea here comes from an experience I had when I was living in Philadelphia back in 1966,” he noted. “I worked on Broad Street, and every morning when I was walking to work I’d see this black guy on the street. He was obviously a former boxer who’d gone too many rounds in the ring. He would be walking down the sidewalk like he was shadow boxing, up on his toes, sort of bouncing rather than walking.
“At first I avoided the cat,” he laughed. “He didn’t seem like someone you’d want to approach. I finally got up the nerve to speak to him, and one morning I got up beside him and asked him how he was doing. He said, ‘Just bobbin’ and weavin’, keep movin’.’“
That phrase stuck with Gibson, and he eventually wrote a song titled “Bobbin’ & Weavin’.” He intended to use the tune in his solo piano recording session, and he updated the piece when he got a chance to use the analog synthesizer.
“Now at the time there was this video game called ‘Galaga,’” Gibson said. “Everybody was playing it, including me, and you could really get caught up in it. One day I was in an arcade and this kid came in. He was the top guy in the city, and he was going around to all the arcades playing ‘Galaga,’ looking to log the top score, so his name would be number one on that particular game’s list, right?
“When I updated ‘Bobbin’ & Weavin’ I put those ‘Galaga’ sound effects in the opening of the song, like the coins dropping in the game and the shooting sounds. Then the song becomes how I felt about dealing with life, you know, bobbin’ and weavin’ and how you have to keep moving to avoid the knockout punch.”
The second song on the album, “Changes,” expresses Gibson’s frustration with all the changes life puts us through. He sees this as the beginning of a transformative process that hopefully leads to self-knowledge.
Gibson explained that the third tune on the record, “Peaches At The Disco,” is a reference to Nina Simone’s song “Four Women,” from her album Wild is the Wind (1966).
“She wrote this song describing four black women. The most defiant of them was Peaches. I thought I would visit her again, and I found out she had been co-opted and she was at the disco. At the end of the song you can hear me saying I found her and I’m outta here; I’m into something else. My son Oliver is the other voice on that song.”
The title track follows, and it’s a song that expresses a personal victory of sorts for Gibson.
“Having realized that I’d achieved this sort of state of grace, where I wasn’t affected by all the bobbin’ and weavin’ and all the changes, I then recognized that I had to figure out what I wanted to do,” he said. “How do you move on? How do you approach this new environment — this new reality?”
The song “Spirit Dance” grew out of Gibson’s genealogy research. He returned to the site in Gibsonville, NC, where his grandfather was born.
“I’d never felt any real connection with America,” he observed. “After I did all this research and found all this information about my grandfather and great-grandfather, I actually felt like I had a stake in the destiny of America. I felt like I had a foothold on some piece of property somewhere.
“I was trying to write this piece that was a dance. I was trying to invoke the spirit of my grandfather, to make him rise up out of the ground. The song is about wherever it is we go to get our solace.”
The last song, “Ecstasy,” is a vocal piece that Gibson sings. He remarked that he’s singing about, “how we live our lives and hope that we are what we think we are. It’s difficult to find someone to share that with, so ecstasy is that point where you do find that person.”
Gibson’s thoughts on ecstasy might also apply to creating music and sharing it with the larger world, even if it takes 25 years to complete that circle. The Loner Hexilogy is available online at www.cdbaby.com.

DISCOLOGY
Chet Baker: Chet in Chicago (Enja)
Trumpet wiz Chet Baker led a weird life. He was one of the masters of West Coast cool jazz, and when he was in top form, he had a sound that was gorgeous. He was also a major-league junkie, and his drug habit tended to erode his skills from time to time. Even his finale was bizarre. He fell out a second-story window in Amsterdam and the fall — actually it was the landing — killed him. Baker’s gigs in the 1980s were notoriously unpredictable. If he showed up, he might sound awful or he might sound amazing. Chet in Chicago, an unreleased studio session tracked in 1986, finds Baker in extraordinary form. Just check out “We’ll Be Together Again.” His sound is rich, and the silence between his phrases is as articulate as his supremely cool solo. On the bop gem “Ornithology,” Baker plays with a fine economy. His sound is fluid and easy. Tenor sax man Ed Petersen and pianist Bradley Young also turn in strong solo efforts on this number. The album finishes with a pair of Miles Davis tunes — “Sippin’ At Bells” and “Solar.” The former tune is of little interest, but they have a good go at “Solar.” Baker’s solos are nicely understated and, again, his tone is golden. The album also features a vocal version of “My Funny Valentine,” a song that came to be identified with Baker in his younger days. This track, however, is not a keeper. Chet in Chicago is more than a curiosity. Baker actually sounds quite good here, and his backing trio — Young on piano, Larry Gray on bass and Rusty Jones on drums, is proficient.