Listening to Prestige 286: Dorothy Ashby-Frank Wess

There's a moment during "Bohemia After Dark" when Dorothy Ashby and Herman Wright are doing a harp-bass dialog, and then it's Wright and Frank Wess doing a flute-bass dialog, and you're not quite sure when the crossover occurred. That's how well these musicians play together.

This is the second and last Ashby recording session for Prestige. She would pack a lot of music into it, and she would pack a lot of music, art, writing and performance into her short 58 years on this earth. She was from the jazz hotbed of Detroit, and she would continue to make Detroit her home, although she toured and recorded widely. For five years in the 1960s, she and her husband, John Ashby, had a jazz radio show in Detroit, where they "talked about the new jazz releases, about the problems of jazz, and about the performers" (from an interview with her and Cannonball Adderley). She reviewed jazz records for the Detroit Free Press.

And she and her husband founded a theater company in Detroit, the Ashby Players. John wrote the scripts and Dorothy the songs, music and lyrics. She even performed in at least one of the plays. Unfortunately, none of this work has been released to the public, although it's said to exist on reel-to-reel tapes.

But plenty of her other work survives. She recorded eleven albums as leader of her own group, including one with Terry Pollard, another Detroit woman who broke through jazz's glass ceiling. And she wasn't just a specialty act, either--"Hey, let's build an album around this chick who plays the harp." She was in serious demand as sidewoman, recording with jazz groups (Bobbi Humphrey, Wade Marcus, Stanley Turrentine, Sonny Criss, Gene Harris, Freddie Hubbard) and vocalists (Bill Withers, Minnie Riperton, Stevie Wonder, Billy Preston, Bobby Womack). She recorded with Japanese new age musician Osamu Kitajima. She's been sampled by hip-hop artists.

And if the harp wasn't enough, she brought another unusual sound into jazz: the koto, a Japanese multi-stringed instrument which she played on The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby, a remarkable album released in 1970 on Cadet, a Chess Records subsidiary, an album which also featured an electric harp, and Ashby's vocals.

Ashby was active up until shortly before her death in 1986, but she had some interesting things to say about the era we're looking at now, also in the joint interview with Adderley:

I speak often of the decade of 1950-1960 as being the best for the Black jazzman. The economy of the country was in pretty fair shape. What we missed out on in the way of post-war adjustments, we "made up for" with the Korean venture. The United States was becoming aware of jazz's role in international goodwill. The jazz festivals were born, giving jazz some of its greatest and most diverse audiences. Jazz was used in the films, like Odds Against Tomorrow, No Sun in Venice, and Miles' The Elevator to the Hangman.

Another nail in the coffin of the myth of the 1930s being the golden era of jazz's popularity.

This album features standards, and two compositions by Ashby, "It's a Minor Thing" and "Rascality." One sort of expects a minor thing to be moody and subdued, but this one is rowdy, rambunctious and bursting at the seams. "Rascality" is a hell of a piece of music. It's hard to say what makes one jazz tune into a widely recorded standard, while another doesn't make it beyond its first recording session. Oscar Pettiford's "Bohemia After Dark," which Ashby and Co. start off the day with, is one such standard. "Rascality" is not, perhaps because nobody thinks a melody written by a harpist can translate into other instrumentations. Ashby discussed that in an interview with jazz historian Sally Placksin:

Even arrangers admit that often they don’t know how to write what they’d like to write. What they would be willing to write for harp often doesn’t work, because they’re writing from a pianistic point of view, or maybe another instrumental point of view, and that doesn’t work on a harp, because you can only change two pedals at a time, and various other technicalities…. The harp has complexities that a person has to be able to work out in their head while they’re spontaneously creating jazz on it.

The only other version I've been able to find is one by contemporary jazz harpist Destiny Muhammad, in a concert tribute to Dorothy Ashby. But a great tune is a great tune, and jazz musicians have made a mistake by not picking up on this one.

Detroiter Herman Wright, who often worked with Ashby, contributes, as does drummer Roy Haynes, who is always one to make his presence felt, and who ain't gonna play no chamber music. There's a terrific interplay between Haynes and Wess at the beginning of "Taboo," which is a number one plays only at the risk of slipping into the clichés of exotica. There's no slippage here.
The album was released on New Jazz as In a Minor Groove, and much later (1969) on Prestige as Dorothy Ashby Plays for Beautiful People.

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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