Listening to Prestige 365: Tommy Flanagan

When you think about, it's amazing how many songs make up the canon of American popular music, and are there for interpretation by jazz musicians. The Great American Songbook? Well, not all the songs were great, and not all the tunesmiths were great. The Golden Age of American Song? It was maybe one of them. Not the age that Chuck Berry and Merle Haggard and Holland, Dozier and Holland lived in, but still a pretty impressive, populated by Olympians and journeymen. And a virtually inexhaustible well of material, some of it sublime, all of it at least pretty good, all of it grist for the improviser's mill. And every one of those tunes is someone's favorite. Someone courted to it cried to it, was conceived to it.

I started thinking about this as I listened to Tommy Flanagan play a bunch of standards, and I realized that I've now listened to the better part of twelve years' worth of music from Prestige artists, most of whom included at least some standards on every session, and with the probable exception of "In a Sentimental Mood," which somebody must have played, I believe that within the confines of this project, I have never heard any one of these songs before.

With the aid of secondhandsongs.com, I did a quick survey.

"You Go to My Head" has a melody by J. Fred Coots, whose biggest hit, "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," was almost rejected by his publisher on the grounds that it was just a kids' song and no one would listen to it. "You Go to My Head" might not have bought Coots the mansion that "Santa" certainly could have, but it would have been good for a couple of nice cars and a weekend in Myrtle Beach. It became jazz standard as well as a pop standard, recorded by Bud Powell, Dave Brubeck, Al Haig, Lennie Tristano, Joe Bushkin, Ahmad Jamal, Bill Evans, Tete Montoliu, David

Lahm, Kenny Barron, Steve Allen, Ran Blake, Barry Harris, Eric Reed...and that just covers the pianists. But no other Prestige recordings (although Gene Ammons did record it for another label).

So there you have depth and breadth in jazz. You can go a dozen years with a prolific record label and still not begin to mine the possibilities of American song, and you can follow the same song through a plethora of artists and interpretations.

The same is true with nearly all the other ballads, although Gene Ammons would do "Born to Be Blue" on a Prestige album a couple of years hence. The only exception is a single recording of Duke Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood," a song whose over 400 versions include three more on Prestige. Sonny Rollins and the Modern Jazz Quartet did it in 1953, for a 78 RPM release, Shirley Scott did it in 1959, and Lem Winchester and Oliver Nelson delivered their version just a month before Flanagan. And if you want a quick lesson in how differently great jazz artists can interpret a great composition, you've got it here.

This is a Moodsville release, and of course it's more than just a sentimental mood. This is three exquisite artists who are also consummate professionals. Roy Haynes brought 35 years of life and jazz experience to the session, and he was at the top of his game. Today, still playing, he brings 93 years of experience, and he's still at the top of his game.

Tommy Potter was still at the top of his, from the evidence of this album, but people were starting to DownBeat reader's poll, Potter did not get a single vote. Nor did Russell or Kotick.

forget. This was the age of the virtuoso bassist--Paul Chambers, Doug Watkins, Charles Mingus, Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford. Leroy Vinnegar and others on the West Coast. Potter, like Curly Russell and Teddy Kotick, was in at the creation of bebop. He could keep time when the responsibility for that was shifting more and more to the bassist, and he could handle the fast tempos and tricky rhythms of the beboppers. But he wasn't a soloist. In the 1959

The Tommy Flanagan Trio came out on Moodsville. Esmond Edwards produced.

It's not too late to give Listening to Prestige Vol. 3 as a holiday gift for the jazz fan who has Volumes 1 and 2! 

And for those who haven't, the complete set makes a fabulous gift!