Listening to Prestige 317: The Modern Jazz Disciples

One of the joys of this project is finding wonderful musicians I had never heard of before, like Joe Holiday or Jon Eardley or just now, Bill Jennings. But here we have a whole group I’d never heard of, which arrived on the scene as a group, stayed together, and vanished together.

Groups with collective names, rather than the name of the leader on that date, are relatively rare in jazz as opposed to other musical genres. Rock and Roll has the Beatles and the Champs, rhythm and blues the Orioles and the Clovers, pop music the Ink Spots amd the Crew Cuts, country music the Oak Ridge Boys and Lady Antebellum, classical music the Amadeus String Quartet and the Kronos Quartet, and of course, all of these are just scratching the surface. In jazz, if you named two random representative groups, you’d have a hard time coming up with a third. The Modern Jazz Quartet is the gold standard, of course, but even the MJQ, for all their decades together, are four jazz musicians who had forged individual reputations.

But this is a band. You don't listen to them because hey, you've always liked Art Farmer, let's check out who he's playing with now. You've pretty much either heard of the band, or you haven't heard of any of them.

They came together in Cincinnati, all locals except for Belfast, Ireland-born drummer Ronald McCurdy. Leader and alto sax player  Curtis Peagler had played with Red Prysock, but the others were just homegrown talent that had come together. They were gigging locally around town when Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis heard them and encouraged them to make a demo tape for him to take to Bob Weinstock at Prestige.

Which piqued my curiosity. Was that common back then? Demo tapes certainly became a big deal in later days, but in 1959?

How did new acts get heard and signed? Doowop groups would go to the offices of indie record label owners and audition. A country and western hopeful like Loretta Lynn might cut a record, which was possible. Independent record labels like Sun also rented out their facilities  for anyone to come in and record a birthday gift for Mom, which is how Sam Phillips of Sun discovered Elvis Presley. The young country hopeful might then drive around to radio stations in the south, aLynn did, trying to get it played.

But jazz musicians? In the first place, they generally weren’t self-contained bands, so the idea of an unknown band trying to get a record deal is a little unusual. They were bass players, or trumpet players, or even tuba players, and my assumption was they’d come to New York or LA or even Chicago or Philadelphia, sit in on jam sessions, try to get noticed by an established jazz star who’d hire them for a club gig or a record date.


But a demo tape it was. Bob Snead, writing the liner notes for the Disciples' debut album, is a little uncomfortable withe the term, and clearly not sure his readers will know what it is. He calls it a demonstration tape, and later, a refers to a "demo." And it did the job. Perhaps its rarity was part of its charm. Certainly Weinstockk listen

Weinstock signed them to New Jazz, and brought them in to Rudy Van Gelder's studio, where they proceeded to demonstrate that they were worth the shot. They were a tight ensemble, versed in bebop, a fresh sound.

Second horn player William "Hicky" Kelley brings something a little unusual to the table in his choice of instruments: the euphonium and the normaphone. The euphonium is a brass instrument, lower-pitched than the trumpet or flugelhorn, more in the baritone range. Euphonium players are often also tuba players. It's rare enough in jazz that I can't find any example of its use on record by a well-known jazz musician.

The normaphone, Kelley's preferred instrument, is even odder, and I can't find a reference to anyone else ever having played it. Apparently, they were made in Germany in the late 1920s, and only about a hundred of them were ever made. There might have caught on, given a chance, but the jazz craze in the German Weimar Republic was snuffed out by the Third Reich as decadent, much like the Kit Kat Club immortalized in Cabaret. The normaphone has the bell of a saxophone, the three valves of a trumpet, and the sound, more or less, of a valve trombone. Kelley insisted he wasn't just playing it as a novelty, and I believe him. If someone gives you a normaphone, you might first be pleased with the novelty of it, but then you might well fall in love with its sound. The German instrument makers of the early twentieth century, inspired by their spiritual godfather Adolphe Saz, were very good.


And the proof is in the playing. Peagler, Kelley and the rest play what could be called a textbook

lesson in bebop, except there's nothing of the textbook in it. They play bebop because they love it, and it's fresh and original and winning in their hands. Cannonball Adderley's "A Little Taste" gives a little taste, and a tasty one, of what they can do. They feature originals by Kelley/Peagler and by bassist Lee Tucker, give Charlie Parker his due with "Perhaps." "Slippin' and Slidin'" (not the Little Richard song) has no composer credit on the record label itself, is credited to an Edward Baker on AllMusic's website, and to Slide Hampton on the liner notes.."After You've Gone," by Henry Creamer and Turner Layton, is a classic that goes back 1918 and vaudeville days.

I guarantee you won't regret spending some time with these guys. The album was released on New Jazz, eponymously titled, with one cut held over for their second album.

Listening to Prestige 316: Benny Golson

This is the second of three albums Benny Golson and Curtis Fuller made for Prestige, before they linked up with Art Farmer and went off to form the Jazztet. A tightly planned sextet had been on Golson’s mind for a while, and when he approached Farmer with it, Farmer shot back a note saying he’d been thinking along the same lines, and been on the point of contacting Golson.

This one features Golson playing more standards than originals. Which is actually the balance on Meet the Jazztet, too, though that album is mostly remembered for the great Golson original compositions, “I Remember Clifford,” “Blues March,” and especially “Killer Joe,” which was the new one. The originals for this album didn’t become classics, although “The Stroller” was originally written for Lou Donaldson, and has been recorded by Italian bandleader Giorgio Azzolini.

If "The Stroller" and "My Blues House" haven't become standards, hey certainly could have. They're in competition with some pretty high-level work in the Golson catalog, but as "lines... meant to be vehicles for blowing," in Golson's words, they fill the bill quite nicely.

"The Stroller" does anything but stroll, although its name doesn't come from its tempo, but from the practice of "strolling," playing a solo without piano backing. It's a high-octane thrill ride in bebop tempo,  powered by Art Blakey, with exciting solo space for everyone, leading off with three minutes of nonstop strolling by Golson, an including Paul Chambers on his signature bowed bass. "My Blues House," same good stuff, more relaxed tempo.

It's a little unusual to see one of Blue Note's marquee performers moonlighting on a Prestige session, but Blakey is here in support of one of the mainstays of his great late 1950s version of the Jazz Messengers. In addition to playing and composing, Golson also mentored the Messengers' Bobby Timmons through writing "Moanin'."

 
"Drum Boogie" is the Roy Eldridge/Gene Krupa classic vehicle for Krupa, generally including a vocal, most famously Anita O'Day.  It's so closely associated with Krupa that it's not all that often taken on by other artists, but we have heard it before on Prestige, from a Kenny Burrell-led group featuring Cecil Payne and Elvin Jones. Interestingly, even with the presence of Blakey on the one cut and Jones on the other, two of the most expressive and individual drum soloists in jazz, both groups treat it more as an ensemble piece, with a relatively short drum solo.

Golson's gone to two of the masters, Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern, for the rest of the session.

Golson, in Ira Gitler's liner notes, discusses the musicians he chose for this session, starting with Curtis Fuller:

If I couldn't work with Curtis...I'd probably use another instrument for a two-horn grpup. We blend together so well, and he's always listening.

Fuller does a fair amount of listening here, as this is more of  a Golson showcase than the later Jazztet albums will be, but when he does solo, you can absolutely hear what Golson means about how well they blend.

Of Ray Bryant: "His harmonics are great and he is so melodic too." Of Paul Chambers:

For his age, Paul seems to have attained maturity on his instrument that usually takes years to acquire. His melodic conception is uncanny. When you're strolling ... you can

lean on him without ever having to worry.

And about his old boss:

I consider it an asset having Art Blakey on any record date I make. He has made it very hard for me to play with most drummers because he swings so hard and so constant. He's a dynamo. And such a feeling for the drums--he can express himself like a horn player.

 A note in passing. It's been often remarked that jazz became mainstreamed into American culture during this era with jazz themes for TV shows like Henry Mancini's "Peter Gunn" and Count Basie's "M Squad, jazz soundtracks for movies like John Lewis's Odds Against Tomorrow, Duke Ellington's Anatomy of a Murder, and Elmer Bernstein's Man with the Golden Arm. Perhaps even more indicative of the mainstreaming of jazz was the way that TV and movie producers, even when they weren't looking for a marquee name for a highly promotable soundtrack or theme, still looked to jazz musicians. Benny Golson composed and arranged soundtrack music for any number of movies and TV shows, including Mannix and Mission Impossible(main themes by Dizzy Gillespie alumnus Lalo Schifrin), Ironside, M*A*S*H, and even The Partridge Family.

Groovin' with Golson was released on New Jazz. Esmond Edwards produced.

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

Listening to Prestige 315: Bill Jennings

Willis Jackson brought two stablemates with him to Prestige, and they both got turns of their own as leaders. Jackson, Jack McDuff and Bill Jennings were all unique, remarkable musicians, but Jennings may well have been the most unique, and I know that’s impossible. You’re either unique or you’re not. But Jennings had a style and an approach that set him farther apart from other musicians, partly because although he was left handed, he played a conventionally strung right-hander’s guitar, which meant he played it upside down. And of the three, his career trajectory was the shortest, and he was all but forgotten until a 2014 double CD release of

his music from the early 1950s, mostly with saxophonist Leo Parker, but also featuring Willis Jackson and Bill Doggett.

Jennings was from Indianapolis, a town that was part of the black music circuit but not one of its creative centers, which meant that if you were as good as Jennings you would be called upon to play with whoever came to town: bebop, swing, jump blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, even country and pop. It also was a town you’d want to get out of if you had aspirations to test yourself on music’s bigger stages, and Jennings would do just that, going on the road with Louis Jordan and Stuff Smith, before he found the partnership with Leo Parker that brought him a number of recordings in 1950s, and through which he met Willis Jackson and drummer Alvin Johnson.

Jennings’ eclectic background is evidenced in some of the unusual material he chose for this session. “Dark Eyes” is a Russian cabaret number that’s more often used by Olympic gymnasts and figure skaters than jazz musicians, and Jennings’ version of is fascinating, starting with a lengthy, stately guitar solo before bringing his group in to swing with him. “Volare,” The recent pop hit for Italian Domenico Modugno and Italian-American Dean Martin, is such an unlikely jazz selection, unless one happens to be a gypsy, that I couldn’t help checking to see if any other jazz musicians had done it. Turns out there were a few. Joe Lovano recorded it with European chanteuse Juliette Greco, and instrumental versions have been cut by three artists representing a wide spectrum of jazz styles: Louis Armstrong, Ran Blake and Joey Difrancesco. Willis Jackson also did a version, but with Bucky Pizzarelli rather than Jennings on guitar.

Bill Jennings-Enough Said! was issued on Prestige. One cut, “It’s Alvin Again,” missed the cut and came out later on a Status compilation album. “Enough Said” was a two-part 45, and was also included in a compilation album of Bluesville, the second of the three Prestige subdivisions.

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

Listening to Prestige 314: Tiny Grimes

Prestige follows up its Swingville debut with another Swingville set, this one led by Tiny Grimes, another traditional player, for an album that's steeped in the blues--and as Grimes comments in the liner notes, "If a man can't play the blues he won't last very long."
Everyone here could play the blues. Jerome Richardson, who played with Lionel Hampton and Earl Hines, certainly could.  He was fast becoming Prestige's go-to guy in 1958-59. He appeared with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Gene Ammons, the Prestige Blues Swingers led by Art Farmer, the Prestige All Stars with Donald Byrd, Hank Mobley and Kenny Burrell, and his own group with Kenny Burrell and Jimmy Cleveland.

The songs are a mixture of familiar folk songs, not always a first stop market for jazz musicians, "Ain't Misbehavin'," so familiar and beloved a melody that it could almost be a folk song and originals by Grimes and Doretta Crawley, about whom I can find no biographical information and no other writing credits, so I'm guessing a romantic liaison of some sort. Whether Crawley helped a lot, I don't know, but she certainly didn't hurt. These are tunes that roll up the blues and lay them flat out. “Down With It” and “Home Sick” are slow blues, redolent of the juke joint,  vehicles for Grimes’s bent notes and unreconstructed feeling. Grimes is really the center here, but Richardson weighs in with a flute solo on “Down With It” that makes as good a case for the flute as a blues instrument as you’re likely to here, then comes back with the tenor sax for the final statement of the theme. “Home Sick” gives Ray Bryant some great solo space and duet space with Grimes. “Durn Tootin’” kicks up the tempo and puts Richardson in the driver’s seat, which changes a lot of things. It gives Tiny a different direction, so that without giving away any blues cred, he stretches out his jazz chops a lot. They're one-shot tunes, just for this album, so limited royalties for Ms. Crawley, but they sound good.

Tiny in Swingville was the second Swingville release. "Annle Laurie" and "Durn Tootin'" were put out as a 45, and got a nice heads up from Billboard:

Annie Laurie: Tiny Grimes is featured on guitar on this swinging version of the familiar folk tune. Good side for jazz boxes. Durn Tootin: Jerome Richardson and Ray Bryant join Grimes on this happy riff effort that should appeal to modern jazz buffs.

And that hits it pretty well. Swingville's marketing, and the presence of Tiny Grimes, was a signal to the swing fans and the classic rhythm and blues fans that there was something here for them, and yet Prestige was not losing sight of its modern jazz soul.

Esmond Edwards produced.

Listening to Prestige 313: Coleman Hawkins and Red Garland

There's never a time when you're not going to enjoy listening to Coleman Hawkins. The rich tone, thr the beautiful phrasing, the easy swing, the improvisational flights, the sheer beauty. And this session with Red Garland and a new trio is more to enjoy, more to sit back, listen, and not think of anything but how good it sounds.

So let's look in a different direction. Although we've had sessions with Coleman Hawkins before, and other sessions with musicians from that era that would come out on Prestige or New Jazz rereleased on Prestige's Swingville subsidiary, this is the first session specifically recorded for the new label, and it would be the first Swingville release.

I've often wondered what it must have been like to be the 19-year-old Bob Weinstock, suddenly finding yourself the guy who is recording some of the greatest musicians in the world, suddenly the guy who has to get records pressed and distributed, get them noticed in Down Beat and Billboard, get them shelf space in record stores and space on jukeboxes (which were largely mob controlled, as were many of the record pressing plants), get air play with the tiny handful of radio stations that programmed modern jazz (probably not much payola, because there wasn't enough money in jazz).

He had come along at the right time--social and technological changes made the 1940s and 1950s a fertile time for independent record labels. It was still a business, with all the headaches of starting and running a small business...but the business was that you got to make records with these great musicians.

Weinstock started Prestige because he had fallen under the spell of bebop, but before that he had been a traditional jazz lover and record collector, and now here he was, able to make records with pretty nearly anyone he wanted to. So there were the occasional swing musicians--even Dixieland, with Jimmy McPartland--and some rhythm and blues, and even some folk blues.

Those had been hit-or-miss, and probably not as well promoted or distributed as the modern jazz recordings on which he was building his label's image. But they showed that he still had eclectic tastes.
Now, Prestige was celebrating its tenth anniversary, and Weinstock wasn't a kid any more. He had the experience, and apparently the talent, for making smart business decisions, and he still had the passion for music.

The new labels may have been born out of a little of both. Some have commented that it was probably a smart bookkeeping and tax strategy to have diversified record labels. And probably the older musicians didn't have record companies clamoring around their doors, so they came relatively cheap. But also, there must have been a sincere desire to present these older guys who were not only still around but still healthy and creative and productive, to an audience that remembered them, and to a new audience.

I've described this music as "post-swing." Weinstock wasn't trying to recreate what had been done in the 1920s and 1930s, and with a musician like Coleman Hawkins, who never stood still, it would have been impossible anyway. Here, he puts Hawkins together with Red Garland, a musician probably best known for his work with Miles Davis and John Coltrane, certainly a modern.
The Red Garland trio assembled for this session is not quite the group one thinks of as "Red Garland Trio"--Paul Chambers and Art Taylor. That classic trio would not record together again. Here it's Doug Watkins, the bass mainstay of many a Prestige session, and Charles "Specs" Wright, who often played with Ray Bryant, and had made one Prestige recording with him. For material, they gathered together originals by Hawkins, Garland and Watkins, a song that was a hit for rhythm and blues star Savannah Churchill, and a number called "It's a Blue World," that could hardly have less to do with the blues. It was written by George Forrest and Robert Wright, best known for Kismet, the Broadway musical borrowed from Russian composer Alexander Borodin, originally performed by Glenn Miller, and sung by Tony Martin in a movie musical.  When Hawkins and Garland get through with it, it's bluesy enough.

Hawkins' alternate nickname was "Bean," supposedly in reference to either the shape of his head or the considerable quality of what was inside it, and it's a nickname that features prominently in tunes of his own composition or tunes dedicated to him. So it is here, and there's an interesting contrast between his "Bean's Blues" and Garland's "Red Beans."

"Bean's Blues" begins with 30 seconds of unaccompanied traditionalist tenor sax, at which point Red Garland enters with some block chords, and finds his place. "Red Beans" begins with about two and a half minutes of modernist piano solo before Hawkins steps up. Basically, what this shows is that there are more ways to the woods than one, and if Coleman Hawkins and Red Garland are setting out the paths, they're all good.

Garland, Watkins and Wright stuck around for a few more after Hawkins packed up his horn, playing some originals and some standards, although “Mr. Wonderful” had a short shelf life for a standard. It was recorded often while Sammy Davis Jr. was still wowing them on the Broadway stage, but rarely after that. The trio played enough of a session to fill out an album, but it didn’t end up that way. “Satin Doll,” “The Man I Love” and “A Little Bit of Basie,” along with a few cuts from a live recording a couple of months later, were on the album titled Satin Doll, which was not released until 1971, when Bob Weinstock was winding up his association with Prestige. The others would have to wait to become bonus cuts on later CDs.

Coleman Hawkins with the Red Garland Trio became the first Swingville album, and Swingville almost could have been the album’s title. Weinstock announced the name of his new label in huge type, which took up more than half the cover.

Orrin Keepnews made a guest appearance producing these two sessions for Prestige. Keepnews was the man at the helm of another of New York’s great independent jazz labels, Riverside.

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

Listening to Prestige 312: Benny Golson

Benny Golson is a jazz legend for all sorts of excellent reasons: saxophone great, composer, and co-leader of a legendary if short-lived 1960s group, the Jazztet.

As a composer, he can lay as legitimate a claim as any to the title of Third Most Important Modern Jazz Composer--Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington will always be one-two, although their order can be debated. Then there are Dave Brubeck and Dave Grusin, Tadd Dameron...and others, but Golson is in that group. Few can match him for the number of compositions that have become jazz standards-- the

tunes that every jazz musician can be expected to know if they're called at a jam session, and that virtually every jazz ensemble has recorded at one time or another. "Killer Joe" has been recorded over 50 times; "Stablemates," the tune that first drew attention to Golson as a composer, has over 70 versions, as does "Whisper Not;" musicians have gone into the studio with "I Remember Clifford" well over 100 times. And these are all jazz standards, not popular songs with lyrics which have also become favorites with instrumentalists.

"Stablemates" was first recorded by Miles Davis in 1955, when Golson was 26, but the story of how it got to Miles goes back to Golson's childhood in Philadelphia, a city that spawned a lot of young jazzmen (and women: don't forget Shirley Scott). Young Benny had studied piano until, at 15, he went to hear Lionel Hampton in concert, and when Arnett Cobb stepped out in front to play his solo, he knew that there was nothing else to do but play the saxophone. If he only had one. And if he knew which saxophone he wanted to play. He told his mother of his longing, and she asked which saxophone he wanted. "Oh...the one with the curve in the neck."

The Golsons were about as poor as you could get. Mrs. Golson took in washing, and one day young Benny found her crying because she didn't have five cents to buy soap to do her loads of wash. But she somehow put together the money to buy her son a saxophone with a curved neck.

He and his friends began practicing and playing together by the open window of his mother's apartment, to the bemusement of their long-suffering neighbors, but as Golson recalls it, they knew they were starting to get good when their neighbors started calling requests in through the window.

Benny went to Howard University and studied music theory, then started playing professionally with rhythm and blues bands: Tiny Grimes, Bull Moose Jackson, Earl Bostic. Jackson's band included Tadd Dameron on piano, and Dameron became his mentor and strongest influence as a composer. He was more and more drawn to writing music, and he began handing out lead sheets to every bandleader and musician he met. He didn't know if anyone actually looked at them until he gave one to his best friend from the open window days. John Coltrane had just been summoned from Philadephia, on the recommendation of fellow Philly cat Philly Joe Jones, to join Miles Davis' band, and he brought the lead sheet for "Stablemates" with him. When that record came out, musicians all over began digging through their piles of lead sheets and saying "Golson? Wasn't that the name of the kid who...?"

Tadd Dameron once said that the most important element to him in a composition was beauty, and that's a lesson that Golson learned. His work is simple, direct, melodic and beautiful. If a tune like "I Remember Clifford" weren't complex and capable of great musical exploration, it wouldn't have been recorded so many times, even by young musicians who don't remember Clifford. But the simplicity and beauty come first.

And although there aren't any greatest hits from Golson's pen on this album, those qualities are very much in evidence -- beauty, simplicity, melody.

"Stacatto Swing" is a play on one of his big ones, "Blues March," recorded the year before by Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. "Blues March" was an unlikely combination. When Golson told Blakey he was writing it, Blakey advised him to forget it. No one wanted to hear a march, and nothing could be a march and the blues at the same time. But when they debuted it at Smalls Paradise, a club known for a listening, not a dancing audience, chairs were kicked back right and left as couples couldn't keep to their seats. "Stacatto Swing" is not as insistently stacatto as "Blues March" is with its smoky march beat, but it's a melody as lovely as any in Golson's better known songs.

Curtis Fuller is the other horn on the session, and he would stay with Golson in 1960 as they joined forces with Art Farmer to make the Jazztet. Ray Bryant is a continuing supportive presence, and here he brings his brother Tommy to take over the bass duties. Al Harewood makes his Prestige debut here. but he was an in-demand drummer, and had worked with Curtis Fuller on two other recent sessions, one of which--for Savoy--had also included Golson.

The session was produced by Esmond Edwards. The album appeared on New Jazz as Gone With Golson. Curtis Fuller's one contribution as composer, "A Bit of Heaven," was left off the album but included in a later CD rerelease.

Benny Golson continues to perform as of this writing.

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

Listening to Prestige 311: Art Taylor

Art (here Arthur) Taylor has recruited two veteran tenor players here, given them a lot of room, and returned Prestige, for this session at least, to that bopcentric universe from whence it sprang. He’s made the wise decision to enlist the services of Thelonious Monk in two different ways. First, he plays two of Monk’s best known compositions, “Rhythm-a-ning” and “Straight No Chaser.” Second, he calls in Charlie Rouse, just as Rouse is beginning an association with Monk will will last a decade and beyond, and make him the musician most closely associated with the master. You could even make a case for a third connection, in that Taylor and the group also play a Rouse composition.

Both of Taylor’s tenors are guys with long-term musical commitments: Frank Foster spent many years with Count Basie, and became the leader of the Basie orchestra, just as Rouse would later form Sphere, a group dedicated to playing Monk’s music. 
 
So...a front line made up of the quintessential Monk guy and the quintessential Basie guy. An impossible mismatch? No. This is jazz. Bebop is a lingua franca. So is the blues. So is improvisation, because when you're playing a tune which is going to go from the written melody to an improvised line by one soloist that will create something new in that moment, it demands of the other musicians that they listen, and be prepared to build on something that's rooted in a chord structure, but that has no precedent, and will demand an equal level of creativity.

New to Prestige with this session is Walter Davis Jr. Davis had been making a name for himself in

New York jazz circles throughout the 1950s, playing with many of the top names in jazz, including Charlie Parker, Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie, and he had recorded with Gillespie's big band, but 1959 was really his breakthrough year on wax. He had played on a Jackie McLean session for Blue Note in early May, for which he had contributed four original compositions. Then, at the end of the month, a busy time. In the studio with Charlie Rouse and Art Taylor for a Donald Byrd Blue Note session on May 31, then back again on June 3, with Rouse and Taylor again, for his Prestige debut. He was making a name for himself as a composer as well as a pianist, contributing two originals to the Byrd session and one to the Taylor session, and in August he would make his debut as a leader, again for Blue Note, in an album of all originals.

Back is Sam Jones, one of the bass-playing greats (great solo on "Fidel," and presiding is Art Taylor, whose drum solo on "Little Chico" will stand alongside any drum solo you care to name. Composing credits, in addition to Monk, Rouse ("Little Chico") and Davis ("Cape Millie"), go to Taylor ("Dacor") and one absent friend, Jackie McLean ("Fidel").

I'm finding myself fascinated with discovering the newly emerging (and mostly new to me, since I missed it the first time around) tenor sax/organ combos, and following the new direction that jazz will be taking into the 1960s, but I'm not quite willing to let go of bebop and hard bop either, and this album is deeply satisfying, partly because it gives me back that music I love, but also because you could have played this album on any day of any year and would be just as satisfying. It's that good.

It's hard to pick a "Listen to One," but I'm going to go with "Rhythm-a-ning." You can never go wrong choosing a Monk tune. The ensemble work by the two tenormen on that great tune is beautiful, and when they each get going, pushing each other, trading ideas, taking it further and further out, you have as good as definition of what's to love about jazz as you're likely to get. There are also solos by Davis and Taylor that make the whole package even better.

Taylor's Tenors was a New Jazz release. A few years later, this and the earlier Taylor's Wailers were released on Prestige as a double album, or a "Prestige Jazz Bonus Pack (2 albums for the price of 1)" with the Prestige All Stars labeling, that is, all performers getting equal billing, under the title Hard Cooking.

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