Frank Wess is back four days later, this time without Joe Newman, but with two thirds of the rhythm section from the previous gig, and this time the session is directed toward Moodsville, rather than Swingville.
Was Moodsville a dilution of the jazz mission of Prestige Records? Some still say yes. Chris Albertson, who produced a number of albums for Bob Weinstock during this period, has said "When I produced a session, it was a Prestige session--whether it came out on Prestige, Prestige Bluesville or Prestige Swingville, made no difference."
This album provides some evidence for the "Jackie Gleason clone" theory, if you're really looking for it, but not much. It's a good bet that the material was chosen with the awareness that this would go out on Moodsville. The songs are all dreamy ballads, even the original Wess tune.
But it provides overwhelming evidence for the "this is real jazz" theory, by being real jazz. Wess and Flanagan find the beauty in these ballads, and they never lose it, but they also find their jazz soul, their openings for improvisation.They don't need to sentimentalize the ballads, because the ballads themselves take care of that, but they are never insensitive to their beauty.
His own original, "Rainy Afternoon," needs to take a back seat to no other tune for dreamy beauty. Wess plays it on the saxophone, with all the smoky lyricism that instrument can provide.
"It's So Peaceful in the Country" was written by Alec Wilder, whose book, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950, did as much as anything else you can name to create the canon we now know as the Great American Songbook, and who contributed significantly to that canon as a composer/lyricist. This particular song, introduced by Mildred Bailey in 1941, has never attracted a huge volume of jazz improvisers (Second Hand Songs has it at 51st on the list of most recorded songs from that year), but it's had its share, starting with Mundell Lowe in 1956. Tommy Flanagan opens it with a sort of bluesy vamp, which suggests a certain urban touch, but Wess's flute moves it gently but firmly, and without irony, into the realm of bucolic peace.
"But Beautiful" is a Jimmy Van Heusen melody that lives up to its title. Tommy Flanagan is given an extended solo to start this one off, and perhaps because it's a much more widely recorded tune (6th most recorded of tunes from 1947), both he and Wess allow themselves a lot more latitude to improvise, but they keep it pretty, and they keep it interesting. Wess on flute again.
"Stella by Starlight" is by movie composer Victor Young, so you'd think it would be a movie theme, and it sort of is and sort of isn't. The melody was adapted by Young from music he wrote for a film called The Uninvited. Apparently at some point when he was writing the lyrics, someone must have pointed out to lyricist Ned Washington that at one point in the movie, Ray Milland tells Gail Russell (Stella) that he's serenading her by starlight, so Washington quick had to write that into the lyric--which did not come right away. It was introduced by Young as an instrumental piece in 1944, the year of the movie's release (and it's the third most recorded of all 1944 songs*), and the lyric didn't come along till 1947, when Frank Sinatra recorded it. It's one of those unusual pieces that's had a lot more instrumental than vocal recordings, not all of them jazz by a long shot. After Young introduced it, it became an orchestral staple until both Sinatra and Harry James recorded it in 1947, and it entered the jazz book when Charlie Parker recorded it with strings. Wess switches to the tenor saxophone for this one, with all the Ben Webster-type beauty that the instrument is capable of.
“Gone With the Wind" is decidedly not a movie theme, having been composed by Allie Wrubel a good three years before the movie. Wess stays with the tenor, and gives this one a more jaunty reading.
I won't go through every tune, but they all create a mood, and if you're not in the mood for a mood, but just want to hear some fine jazz, they give you plenty of that.
Since at this juncture the stars of the "Ville" recordings on Prestige are the labels themselves, this album is just called The Frank Wess Quartet. Esmond Edwards produced. "Rainy Afternoon" was released as one side of a 45.
* The most covered song of 1944 is "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," but schmaltzy "Stella By Starlight" gets beaten out for the number two slot by one of the hippest tunes ever written, Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight."
Listening to Prestige Vol. 3 makes a great Christmas gift for the jazz fan who has Volumes 1 and 2!
And for those who haven't, the complete set make a fabulous gift!
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