Sadik Hakim: "Forgotten Duluthian"

A fine profile of Sadik Hakim, one of the unsung heroes of the musical revolution we call “bebop”—and subject of one of our earliest posts—appears in the first issue of Zenith City, an online newsletter devoted to all things Duluth. David Ouse, author of Forgotten Duluthians and a research librarian for “the air-conditioned city’s” public library system, deserves the gratitude of jazz lovers for helping solidify Hakim's place in the history of the music in the popular mind. For as of 2012, that place largely depends on the ability of information-hungry jazz fans to notice, recall, and connect the scattered references to him in the biographies and memoirs of others. 

Mr. Ouse enriches his few paragraphs with just enough genealogical and sociological detail to help us envision Hakim's journey from a Black working-class musical household in Duluth just after World War I, to 52nd Street in New York in its glory days in the mid-'40s, his conversion to Islam, his participation in the recording of the bop classic "Ko-Ko," to the concert halls of Japan "before enthusiastic crowds" in 1979-1980.  (It brought me great satisfaction to learn the last-cited fact.)

Sadik Hakim (1919-1983)

If there is to be a sequel to Mr. Ouse’s book, I hope Sadik Hakim finds a place in it.  In that spirit of recovery, we are pleased to refer again to Tom Surowicz’s 1990 “Forgotten Man,” a substantial appreciation of Hakim for the Twin Cities Reader, available via this blog. (Last year Dave Lull provided me with that article, scanned with the resources of the very library Mr. Ouse serves, and tipped me off to the latter’s recent item only today. Thanks again, Dave!)

Wes Montgomery and Harold Mabern, Coltrane's "Impressions," March 27, 1965

The great pianist Harold Mabern turned 76 last Tuesday. He's on several of my favorite sides: Grant Green's earliest recordings (with Jimmy Forrest, December 10, 1959), 1964's now-classic Inside Betty Carter and, the subject of today's post, Wes Montgomery's trio dates in Paris and Belgium 1965.  As Thom Jurek describes it for his CD Universe review of the recording of the Paris concert, performed 48 years ago this evening:

Wes Montgomery's 1965 concert at the Theatre des Champs Elysees [let Google translate the French for you, if necessary.--T.F.] in Paris is one of the greatest live dates ever recorded from the decade. Here, Montgomery, pianist Harold Mabern, drummer Jimmy Lovelace, bassist Arthur Harper, and saxophonist Johnny Griffin—who guested on three selections at the end of the gig—tore the City of Light apart with an elegant yet raw and immediate jazz of incomparable musicianship and communication.

Montgomery was literally on fire and Mabern has never, ever been heard better on record.  From the opening bars of "Four on Six," Montgomery is playing full-on, doing a long solo entirely based on chord voicings that is as stellar as any plectrum solo he ever recorded.  Mabern's ostinato and legato phrasing is not only blinding in speed, but completely gorgeous in its melodic counterpoint.  And while the bop and hard bop phrasing here is in abundance, Montgomery does not leave the funk behind.  It's as if he never played with George Shearing, so aggressive is his playing here.   

Nowhere is this more evident than in the tonal inquiry that goes on in the band's read of John Coltrane's "Impressions," in which the entire harmonic palette is required by Montgomery's series of staggered intervals and architectural peaks in the restructuring of the head.  Likewise, in Griffin Montgomery finds a worthy foil on "'Round Midnight" and the medley of "Blue and Boogie/West Coast Blues." Montgomery assumes the contrapuntal role as Mabern floods the bottom with rich, bright chords and killer vamps in the choruses. Highly recommended. 

A few weeks later in April of 1965, Montgomery and Mabern appeared (again with Arthur Harper on bass) on Belgian television and, thanks to YouTube, we can get a glimpse of what Mr. Jurek enthused over:

Although we lost Wes on June 15, 1968, Harold Mabern has been teaching several generations of jazz musicians at William Paterson University. He also continues to perform, often in ensembles led by tenor saxist (and one of his former WPU students) Eric Alexander.  Last year he gave a priceless interview in which he tells about his being "at the right place at the right time" in late 'fifties and early 'sixties in Chicago and New York (including his first Birdland gig) and, more touchingly, about the trauma of witnessing the murder of his friend, Lee Morgan (at Slug's jazz club forty years ago last February 19).  


Simply put, Mabern has played with nearly all of the jazz greats who were his contemporaries. But now he's one of the greats with whom it is the privilege of others to play.  A belated Happy Birthday, Harold!  Thanks for keeping the flame.

Sadik Hakim Duluth Clippings and Wes Montgomery Birthday Release

I am surprised, and a bit ashamed, to note that it has taken me a full year to post some rare clippings of Sadik Hakim (see other posts by clicking on his name in the right column) that a correspondent supplied me.  Dave Lull, who works in Minnesota, went out of his way to photocopy these valuable portals into the past from a library, preserved on microfilm, scan them to .pdf's, and send them to me. Unfortunately, making them available to others got kicked down my list of priorities—a rather poor way to show my appreciation to Dave for his research. Thanks again, Dave! 


On a new page of "The Jazz Annex"—here's the link—are hyperlinked titles of two articles about Hakim.  The first, "Duluth Native Hakim to Give Concert Here," is a News Tribune piece, dated May 16, 1976 (the jazz great, who died in 1983, was still with us then). Underneath that scan is an imperfect copy of the second article, one of the fullest accounts extant of Hakim's career, written with enthusiasm by jazz journalist Tom Surowicz for the Twin Cities Reader, a weekly paper. (If you don't scroll past Tom's piece, you'll miss a great photo of Hakim at the piano, arms outstretched as though he were excitedly amplifying a point of conversation. I copied it onto that Annex page).  


Dave later provided me with a better scan of "Forgotten Man: Duluth Pianist Sadik Hakim, Unsung Hero of Minnesota Jazz," now accessible through this link and the second link on the Annex page. (Be assured that the text is all there; in order to follow it, however, you must "page down" from the bottom of the first column on the first page to the top of the first column on the second, and then back to the top of the second column of the first page.  I'm sure you'll find doing more intuitive than it sounds.)


Separately: long-buried tracks of live and studio dates of Wes Montgomery's from late '50s Indianapolis were released on CD today, the 89th anniversary of his birth.  Echoes of Indiana Avenue is available in .mp3 files, but the CD comes with a booklet packed with historical and pictorial goodies, so that's what I'm getting.