Listening to Prestige 280: J. C. Higginbotham - Tiny Grimes

I love it that the unexpected keeps cropping up in the Prestige catalog. J. C. Higginbotham was an unreconstructed swing trombonist, best known for his work in Luis Russell's orchestra in the late 1930s,  but also with Chick Webb, Fletcher Henderson and Benny Carter. The late 1950s saw him resuming his career after losing several years to the bottle. He played a regular gig with Henry "Red" Allen at the Metropole Café in Times Square, the traditional jazz club next to which Bob Weinstock had opened the record store which commenced his jazz Odyssey--an Odyssey that very quickly took him away from the Metropole's brand of nostalgia and into the newer world of bebop. But here Higginbotham is, playing with an eclectic group of musicians, and fitting in quite nicely, thank you.

If Higginbotham was unreconstructed, Tiny Grimes was almost continually reconstructed. He played swing, and even sang with a swing vocal group (The Cats and the Fiddle). He played Art Tatum's almost unclassifiable brand of jazz when Tatum, for a short period, formed a trio. He played with Charlie Parker. He played rhythm and blues.

Tiny Grimes came to the guitar late in life--as he put in an interview with Stanley Dance, "when I was very, very old." In other words, about 20. In his youth he had played the drums until they were washed away in a flood, and then the piano. He was self-taught on the guitar. As he told Dance for his book of interviews, World of Swing (quoted in James Lester's biography of Art Tatum. Too Marvelous for Words):

No one ever learned me nothing! ... The way I learned my chords, I used to find sheet music with ukulele diagrams on them. I got my own little system going, found out how to make certain things, and just translated the music my way... I used to lock myself in my room all day, every day... after three months of sitting up in that room day in and day out, I could make little gigs.

Perhaps learning from ukulele diagrams is why Tiny chose the four-string tenor guitar? Perhaps, but it would have been tricky. Tiny played the standard tenor guitar, tuned just like the four high strings on a standard guitar. Ukulele in standard tuning has essentially the same intervals, but three steps higher, so you could more or less transpose the chords, but it would still sound a little different, because the highest string on the uke jumps up an octave. In any case, Tiny was going for a different sound, and he found it, because within a few years, he had taken the place of the Air Force-bound Slim Gaillard in Slam Stewart's guitar-bass duo, and when Tatum decided, in 1943, that it would be to his economic advantage to form a piano-guitar-bass trio along the lines of Nat "King" Cole's, he called on Stewart, which meant he also got Grimes.

In 1944, he had a recording session as leader for Savoy, and his band included a cat who was making his recording debut for Savoy, although there would be a lot more: Charlie Parker.

Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis would be doing a lot with Prestige, both with and without Shirley Scott. His Prestige years coincide with the soul jazz years, but his complete discography is a lot more than that...and here again, I have to go against the accepted wisdom. The writer of Davis's Wikipedia entry, and it's a good, knowledgeable piece of writing, says that "he played in the swing, bop, hard bop, Latin jazz, and soul jazz genres. Some of his recordings from the 1940s also could be classified as rhythm and blues."

So why is rhythm and blues the poor stepsister, hunched up beside the cinders? Why not say "he

played in the swing, bop, rhythm and blues, hard bop, Latin jazz, and soul jazz genres"? Why is the work Wilbur Harden did with Ivory Joe Hunter less important than the work he did with Curtis Fuller?

So put them together, you have three  cats who can play the blues. Two of them could walk into any room in the world where musicians were playing in any blues-based genre, sub-genre, or alt-genre, and sit right in.

And they had the right three guys in the rhythm section, especially Ray Bryant, who was as progressive as they come, but could just as easily be found sitting in with Red Allen and J. C. Higginbotham at the Metropole.

And what would you call this music? I don't know. I'd just listen to it. Although Higginbotham gets co-leader credit, it's Tiny's session--all the tunes except "Air Mail Special" are his--but everyone makes it work. It's got the blues, it's got rhythm, it swings, it bops, it's got some great improvisation, it's got what it takes.

"Grimes Times," "Air Mail Special," "Callin' the Blues" and "Blue Tiny" were all included on the album Callin' the Blues, released in 1958. It would also be rereleased when Weinstock started his Swingville subsidiary in 1960. The other two ultimately were folded into a compilation album called Guitar Soul, on Prestige's budget Status label,




Order Listening to Prestige Vol 2

Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1954-1956 is here! You can order your signed copy or copies through the link above.

Tad Richards will strike a nerve with all of us who were privileged to have lived thru the beginnings of bebop, and with those who have since fallen under the spell of this American phenomenon…a one-of-a-kind reference book, that will surely take its place in the history of this music.

                                                                                                                                                --Dave Grusin

An important reference book of all the Prestige recordings during the time period. Furthermore, Each song chosen is a brilliant representation of the artist which leaves the listener free to explore further. The stories behind the making of each track are incredibly informative and give a glimpse deeper into the artists at work.

                                                                                                                --Murali Coryell