It can be said that the seed for this whole project was planted in 1957, when I heard John Coltrane with the Red Garland trio through the AM radio in my dorm room at Bard College at 2 a.m. So that's why 1957 is particularly important for me. I could finally write about the albums that drew me into jazz. Trane, and Mose Allison. King Pleasure Sings/Annie Ross Sings also came out in 1957, although the recordings had been first issued in the early fifties.
Probably none of these would appear on most lists of the greatest jazz albums of all time. I would never make such a list, myself, but these remain touchstones for me, as I began my journey into the realms of gold, my first exposure to jazz as important to me as looking into Chapman's Homer was to John Keats.
Another of my first purchases, another 1957 release, is or ought to be on anyone's list of the most significant jazz albums of all time, and it goes back to 1949-1950, when 18-year-old Bob Weinstock discovered modern jazz, and went into the studio with Lennie Tristano to record the first release on what would become Prestige Records. Tristano was making some of the most advanced music of that time, and one of his close associates, Lee Konitz, was also in Capitol Records' studio, working with Miles Davis on another set of recordings that may have been too advanced for the time. But the world was certainly ready for Birth of the Cool when 78s were finally gathered into LP form in 1957.
It was a big year for Prestige. Seventy studio sessions were booked, all but three of them in the Van Gelders' living room in Hackensack, NJ. One of the albums that came out of that activity was voted the best album of the year by the idiosyncratic but always interesting voters of rateyourmusic: Saxophone Colossus, by Sonny Rollins.
Here are the jazz albums from rateyourmusic's top forty:
1 Sonny Rollins, Saxophone Colossus
Prestige
Hard Bop
2 Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners
Riverside
Hard Bop
3 Thelonious Monk Septet, Monk's Music
Riverside
Hard Bop
4 Miles Davis, 'Round About Midnight
Columbia
Hard Bop
5 The Miles Davis Quintet, Cookin'
Prestige
Hard Bop
7 Ella Fitzgerald with Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book
Verve
Vocal Jazz, Big Band
8 Charles Mingus, The Clown
Atlantic
Post-Bop
9 Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, Such Sweet Thunder
Columbia
Big Band
11 Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section
Contemporary
Cool Jazz
12 Sonny Rollins, Vol. 2
Blue Note
Hard Bop
13 Dizzy Gillespie At Newport
Verve
Bebop, Big Band
14 Cliff Jordan and John Gilmore, Blowing In From Chicago
Blue Note
Hard Bop
15 Billie Holiday, Body and Soul
Verve
Vocal Jazz, Standards
18 Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong, Ella and Louis Again
Verve
Vocal Jazz, Standards
19 Sonny Rollins, Way Out West
Contemporary
Hard Bop
21 Coleman Hawkins, The Hawk Flies High
Riverside
Hard Bop, Jazz
22 Miles Davis + 19, Miles Ahead
Columbia
Cool Jazz
24 Count Basie and His Orchestra, April in Paris
Verve
Big Band, Swing
25 Count Basie At Newport
Verve
Big Band, Jazz, Swing
27 Sonny Rollins
Blue Note
Hard Bop
29 Horace Silver Quintet, 6 Pieces of Silver
Blue Note
Hard Bop
30 Art Pepper Quartet, Modern Art
Intro
Cool Jazz, Hard Bop
31 Thelonious Monk, Thelonious Himself
Riverside
Hard Bop
32 Anita O'Day, Anita Sings the Most
Verve
Vocal Jazz, Standards
33 Johnny Griffin, A Blowin' Session
Blue Note
Hard Bop
34 Introducing Johnny Griffin
Blue Note
Hard Bop
35 Sonny Rollins, Rollins Plays for Bird
Prestige
Hard Bop
37 Barney Kessel with Shelly Manne and Ray Brown, The Poll Winners
Contemporary
Jazz
40 Lee Morgan, Vol. 3
Blue Note
Hard Bop, Jazz
Hard Bop is definitely the word du jour for 1957's output, sometimes used curiously. Miles Davis is labeled Hard Bop for 'Round About Midnight, Cool Jazz for Miles Ahead. So a musician can do both, but can he do both on the same album? Maybe yes, maybe no. Art Pepper is labeled as Cool Jazz for Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section , which is actually a little odd in that the rhythm section he met were East Coast Hard Boppers Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. But on Modern Art he is credited with the bi-coastal, bi-label quinella.
Cool Jazz for Miles Ahead is a bit of a stretch. Perhaps because it was a collaboration with Gil Evans, who was also on the Birth of the Cool album. Other critics have called it Third Stream, which is at least as vague a term as most of the others, so why not? Why not, for that matter, since it involves a 19-piece orchestra, call it Big Band? It's certainly big enough. But that label seems to only apply to bands of the swing era, unless they're led by Dizzy Gillespie.
Speaking of Birth of the Cool, 1957 was the year it finally came out in an LP format, nearly a decade after it had taken the jazz world by storm but had mostly been ignored by critics, the listening public, and executives at Capitol Records. By 1957, Cool Jazz was a thing. Gerry Mulligan had taken his arrangements and concept out to California, where it had been embraced by many, belittled by others. I'm not sure how excited Capitol was about releasing it even in 1957, or exactly how they should market it. "Hey, we were here first!" is not a great marketing strategy, but that's probably what was behind the name of the album. But it wasn't just another Cool Jazz album. It was exciting and groundbreaking, even if it was late to the party. I'd rank it as one of the most important albums of the decade, even more important than Miles' mega-bestseller Kind of Blue.
If a belated realization that were sitting on a masterpiece wasn't what spurred Capitol, what was? What else? Money. By 1957, the LP revolution was complete. Kids still bought 45s, but grownups -- classical music fans, jazz fans, Broadway show fans -- bought LPs to play on their new hi-fi, or even newer stereo equipment. And where there's new technology, there's a buck to be made in reissues, as record companies of the 80s and 90s discovered, when they began reissuing their entire catalogs on compact disc, at premium prices even though CDs cost less to produce than LPs.
Reissues in those days were called "compilation albums." Today, a compilation album is some artist's greatest hits, or the greatest hits of a year, or a genre, or what have you. Back then, it was bunches of old 78s that were being compiled, and this was a heck of a year for vintage jazz collectors to put their precious wax discs away and replace them with LPs, or for new fans to catch up on what they'd missed. Birth of the Cool is actually number three on the rateyourmusic compilation list, behind Muddy Waters and Ray Charles, but the Prestige reissues alone make up a set that could be the cornerstone of any collection: Thelonious Monk/Sonny Rollins; Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants (this actually was originally released on LP, but it was a 10-inch LP, and the 12-inch version added a couple of numbers, so I guess that makes it compilation); Walkin', from the Miles Davis Contractual Marathon sessions, and the first Prestige singles to be released only on 45 RPM; the Modern Jazz Quartet/Milt Jackson Quartet ; Evolution by Teddy Charles, compiling a 1955 session with Charles Mingus and J.R. Monterose that first saw life as a New Jazz 10-incher with two tunes from a 1953 West Coast date featuring Shorty Rogers and Shelley Manne, which had appeared on a 10-inch LP but had been left off the 1956 compilation of two West Coast sessions by Charles; Kaleidoscope, by Sonny Stitt, which goes back to early 78s from 1951 and 1952, including a couple from the mambo craze, When Farmer Met Gryce, compiling sessions from 1954 and 1955.
The 1957 Newport Jazz Festival was surprisingly heavy on traditional jazzers, considering how one thinks of it as a tine when the moderns dominated. But along with the moderns -- Brubeck, Silver, Mulligan, Gillespie, et al -- was one decidedly postmodern name: Cecil Taylor, who may have left some festival-goers scratching their heads a little.
In New York, the big news was Thelonious Monk finally getting a cabaret card, so that he could play in clubs again. John Coltrane did cold turkey in Philadelphia and, in addition to recording with Prestige, joined Monk in a quartet that played a memorable six month engagement at the Five Spot, and perhaps an even more memorable date at Carnegie Hall. The concert, which also featured Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, Sonny Rollins, and Chet Baker with Zoot Sims, was recorded, but the Monk/Coltrane sets were not released until their rediscovery in 2005.
If Monk, Trane and the Five Spot were the big news in New York jazz circles, it was news to The New Yorker, which continued to see jazz in terms of Eddie Condon's, Jimmy Ryan's, and the Metropole. They did list the Half Note, with Charlie (sic) Mingus, and the Café Bohemia, with Mose Allison and Horace Silver leading separate trios. And once again, my annual appeal for someone to digitize all of Down Beat.
Jazz deaths included Dean Benedetti, best known for his recordings of Charlie Parker in clubs in 1945 and 1946, which had attained the status of jazz legend by the time they were finally collected and released by Mosaic records in 1990.
Another posthumously released 1957 recording was Jimmy Dorsey's biggest hit, "So Rare." Dorsey died shortly after making the recording, and never saw it go to number 2 on the Billboard charts/
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