Listening to Prestige 290: Shirley Scott

Prestige is still pointing Shirley Scott toward the jukebox market, just as they did were her first trio session in May. Several songs are 45 RPM length, running counter to the trend of jazz in the LP era. And why not? Scott was fulfilling their expectations as a good seller. Prestige had even had a hit with the Scott-Davis number "In the Kitchen." Billboard, a few years down the road, would point to Scott and Gene Ammons as Prestige's most commercially successful acts.

The organ is an interesting instrument. Scott was drawn to it, she said, because "on the organ, no one knows how many different sounds you can get. It's an infinite number of tones. The only problem is taste."

It has its admirers and its detractors. The admirers are legion. Scott was one of Prestige's big sellers, Jimmy Smith was one of Blue Note's huge sellers. Brother Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff and Richard (Groove) Holmes all did well, and all had followers beyond the hard core jazz set. Moving over to the rhythm and blues side of jazz, Bill Doggett made one of the most successful instrumental records of all time in "Honky Tonk," as did Booker T. a little later with "Green Onions." Doc Bagby had chart hits, and was a sought-after session musician. On the pop side of things, Dave "Baby" Cortez soared to the top of the charts with his roller-rink anthem, "The Happy Organ."

Which leads us to the detractors. Your true jazz fan (kidding here, folks) doesn't like anything, especially anything popular. And for some, the organ can never escape its ancillary associations: church and the roller rink, particularly the latter.

To some extent I share the roller rink prejudice, which, when you think about it, is a little odd. Why should a roller rink raise instant prejudice? They're kinda fun, especially if you're a teenager, and besides, I doubt very much if today's roller rinks are playing a lot of Dave "Baby" Cortez. It would be different if organs were played a lot at dentists' offices.

You probably could roller skate to Shirley Scott. She's got a good beat, helped immeasurably by George Duvivier and Arthur Edgehill. But it's certainly music to listen to. When Scott is playing as part of a quartet or quintet, she tailors her playing to the group. Her husband and musical partner Stanley Turrentine said of her:

She didn't try to overpower you like a lot of other organists.... She played with you.... And when she played, she could sound like a big band at times and then [at other] times she would sound like a trio or whatever we wanted to sound like.

But leading a trio, she does reach out to explore as much of that infinite variety of tones as she can. She's still being or romantic or upbeat, whatever the song calls for, but she's always looking for different things the organ can do, and--fitting for an infinte number of tones--no two are alike. In this session, as the last, she does three-minute-and-under pieces that are suitable for 45 RPM release, and more extended pieces which are still relatively short for the era, generally clocking in at less than five and a half minutes. She does standards from the likes of Irving Berlin and Vincent Youmans, a contemporary Broadway show tune ("Mr. Wonderful" again), jazz standards from Don Redman and Percy Mayfield, and two original compositions, "Hong Pong" and "Takin' Care of Business."

Esmond Edwards produced the date. Most of the songs appeared on an album entitled Scottie. Four The Shirley Scott Trio. A 1961 release, Shirley's Sounds, was mostly later material, but included "Can't See for Lookin'" from this session. The last to see daylight were  "Out of This World" and "That's Where It's At," which were held off for a much later release, 1967's Now's the Time, featuring songs left over from a number of sessions.
songs -- "Sweet Lorraine," "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You," "That's Where It's At" and "Until the Real Thing Comes Along" were held back for a 1960 release on one of Bob Weinstock's new labels, Moodsville, about which I'll have more to say when the label actually debuts. The Moodsville LP was simply titled

Songs from this date made it onto five different 45s, the first one being a two-sided "Please Send Me Someone to Love," the Percy Mayfield ballad being the one exception to the shortness rule. "Diane" / "Cherry" followed almost immediately: one is number 135 in the Prestige 45 RPM records catalog, and the next is 136. So either "Please Send Me Someone to Love" flopped, which I find hard to believe, or there was a real demand for Scott product. "Hong Pong" / "Time on My Hands" and "Summertime" / Takin' Care of Business" were too far behind, at 145 and 147. And don't forget this is Scott's second trio session for the label, so they had done this hurry-up release pattern once before, with catalog singles 117 and 118. And two tunes from the first session were released as 156, so yes, definitely, there was a demand for Scott product. "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You" was held off to be paired with Bobby Timmons' "Moanin'" from a later session.

If you like to compare different versions of a tune, as I do, you have some interesting Prestige pairings from right around this time -- Red Garland did "Can't See for Lookin'" and "Mr. Wonderful."

In "Until the Real Thing Comes Along," and a couple of others, Scott sets the organ to play percussive pianolike notes as the lead instrumental sound, with the sonorous sustained sound of the organ providing a kind of backing sound, until the point where the organ swells up and takes over. But of course, that's a manufactured sound, since an organ is not a percussion instrument like the piano, which works when a hammer strikes a string, causing it to vibrate. So how does an organ make a sound? I realized I didn't know. Told you I don't know anywhere near enough about music.

A pipe organ is one of those wind instruments that you don't blow through. The air is forced through the pipes by some sort of bellows. I knew that. An accordion, the same. A wind instrument that you don't blow through. So the Hammond B-3 similar?

Not so. Just as the sweet potato and the potato are unrelated, so the pipe organ and the Hammond B-3, which generates sound " by creating an electric current from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup, and then strengthening the signal with an amplifier so it can drive a speaker cabinet (Wikipedia)." So it's more closely related to the theremin than the pipe organ.

Anyway, "Until the Real Thing Comes Along" is my "Listen to One" selection partly because it's really good, and partly because we have another comparison coming up. Coleman Hawkins is about to go into the studio and play it on the next session we'll be listening to.

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