By now, with once-neglected pianists like Elmo Hope, Herbie Nichols and Sonny Clark posthumously getting their due, it’s easy to assume that we’ve got the bebop generation fully mapped out at last. Wrong again. Last year Smalls Records issued We Loved You, the first album by the late pianist Frank Hewitt (1935–2002), then followed it up with the present disc, Not Afraid to Live. Producer Luke Kaven makes big claims for Hewitt in his (excellent but highly polemical) liner notes to both albums – but in this case the polemics are justified. Hewitt pushes the beboppers’ snaky linespinning as far as it will go, his right-hand lines becoming quicker, lighter and more elongated until he’s virtually skimming the keys, his left hand tapping out chords like a hammer knocking in a nail at the wrong angle. He takes a breathtakingly risky approach as a matter of course, doubletiming his improvisations even on faster tunes and dropping constantly into rapidfire passages of dissonant two-handed chording. Even though their approaches are otherwise completely different, listening to Hewitt is like hearing Monk for the first time: there’s the same “you can’t do that!” shock, and he’s got a similarly meticulously handmade keyboard technique and instinct for the right wrong note.

We Loved You was relatively low-key, concentrating on patiently unfolded ballads; Not Afraid to Live is brisk and boppish, perhaps reflecting the presence of veteran hard-bop drummer Louis Hayes in the line-up. The highlights are Hewitt’s surprisingly orthodox, upbeat solo on “Manteca”; a jabbing, jangled-nerves reading of “I’ll Remember April” (a stark contrast to the slow-as-molasses version on We Loved You); and the heart-in-mouth excitement of “Just One of Those Things” – nearly ten minutes of hectic, unflagging invention. Hayes had not previously worked with Hewitt, and occasionally seems unsure of his ground – on “Just One of Those Things,” for instance, he initially misjudges the tempo, and later on the pianist’s half-time coda catches him by surprise – but beyond such minor glitches the partnership works well, and bassist Ari Roland (Hewitt’s favoured accompanist in his later years) keeps everything rock-solid.

Any final estimate of Hewitt will have to wait until the shape and size of his legacy gets sorted out – apparently Kaven’s got still more material stashed away and, who knows, maybe there were others who had the nous to get Hewitt on tape – but the two already-released CDs are enough to argue his stature. Those looking for neatly trimmed piano jazz will doubtless find him uncomfortably wayward; but if you’re a connoisseur of classic bebop piano in all its harrowing intensity, then Not Afraid to Live is guaranteed to startle and bewitch.

Nate Dorward

Cadence, August 2005