Listening to Prestige 402: Lem Winchester

Reliving these jazz years through Prestige recording sessions is living in a dual reality. Part of you knows full well that you're looking back in time through the lens of age and distance, remembering your youthful excitement, appreciating the artists, and the recordings, that a perspective only brought by time and experience. But  part of you is back then, 20 again, hearing the new sound from Symphony Sid or Ed Beach or Speed Anderson or Chuck Niles, buying the new album at Sam Goody's (or the 45 at Sam Goody's Annex), thinking that was solid, Jackson...what comes next?

But that flight of imagination comes to a crashing halt with Lem Winchester. Because you've known, from the moment he burst on the scene the year before, that this was going to happen. Each of his sessions feels, to the contemporary listener following this chronology, like sands through a very small hourglass. It feels that way when we listen to Eric Dolphy, who's also just arrived on the scene with Prestige, and Booker Little, who would make his Prestige debut shortly. And with Lem Winchester, for whom the sands are running out. This was his last session as leader; he would appear in a week with Johnny "Hammond" Smith, and then no more.  In January the ex-cop would be dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, reportedly showing off a trick where you pretend to play Russian Roulette.

Winchester went out casual but tasty. No fireworks here. instead a quartet session of ballads intended for the Moodsville label. But they're all good tunes, and each one of them gets a swinging treatment, with lots of improvisational delights, and especially the pleasure of hearing some wonderful interplay between Winchester and Richard Wyands, where ideas are begun on piano and brought to fruition on vibes, or vice versa. This is Wyands' only recording gig in a group led by Winchester (he had joined Lem on an Oliver Nelson session), but they have a strong connection.

There's one Winchester original ("The Kids"). The rest are a mix of standards and current pop tunes. "Why Don't They Understand" was a 1957 hit, recorded by country singers as well as pop. Winchester's is the only known jazz interpretation. "To Love and Be Loved" is the Academy Award-nominated theme song from the 1958 movie Some Came Running, again not widely added to the repertoire of jazz musicians. It's a good mix. We may not have the same recognition for late 1950s pop hits that they received at the time (had they only thought of posterity, they might have taken on "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Sh-Boom" instead). but they still make for some very tasty jazz in the hands of Winchester and cohorts. And it's always a pleasure to hear a great jazz group's interpretation of beloved standards.

Esmond Edwards produced the session. The Moodsville release was titled Lem Winchester with Feeling.

Winchester got his start when a young trio, John Chowning's Collegiates, added him for a record date arranged by Chowning's father. The group planned to send the record to Leonard Feather as an audition for the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Feather passed on the group, but invited Winchester, then a Wilmington, Delaware police officer. Fifty years later, the three Collegiates reminisced about their sometme bandmate for the Current Research in Jazz website. Here's Chowning:

One can speculate whether Lem’s extraordinary talent would ever have been “noticed” at the level where it mattered if the recording had not been made. Perhaps not. Lem impressed us a man whose first love in music was the playing of it, not being a “name” in it. He had, we thought, more ambition for his notes than for himself.

At the time of the recording Lem was a successful officer in the Wilmington, Delaware, police force, assigned to what we now can call the African American community, where he was beloved by its inhabitants. The options for a smart and intelligent African American then were limited, especially one with a wife and young children. It was Lem’s mother, knowing that a police officer was at the pinnacle of power in her community, who persuaded him to join the police force in the first place. And she later was able to convince him to remain with the force, rather than joining his teenage friend and trumpet player, Clifford Brown, in the professional jazz scene.
...
To all of us Lem seemed content in a rewarding and stable career as a policeman — enriched by his stunning music on the side. He was revered by his community both as a police officer and by those who knew his music: he was welcomed into every musical setting he encountered.

In the spring or summer of 1958 my father, always our most unabashed supporter and spokesman, sent the LP to Leonard Feather... He was disappointed, I am sure, when the invitation came to Lem alone, but the three of us were not surprised. We were good enough players to recognize that Lem was a truly great jazz talent.

To my father’s credit, he maintained contact with Lem during the transition from police officer to professional jazz musician, and it was through him that the three of us learned of Lem’s tragic death in 1961.

George Lindamood

[I remember the first time Lem jammed with us. He] wore a gray sports jacket over his uniform so it would not be obvious that he was a policeman, but we kidded him about his regulation shirt, a shade of blue considerably darker than what was fashionable for business dress in those days. And then there was the bulge on his right hip that we knew to be his service revolver.

...a few weeks later...Lem had just finished one of his energetic solos and had lathered up a pretty good sweat in the process. When he took off his “plain clothes” jacket his police badge winked gold in the spotlight and the audience gasped in surprise... Without missing a beat, he laid the jacket on the piano top, unstrapped his holster and revolver, and dived back in for another chorus. The applause was at least fifty percent louder than before.

 It often took me a couple hours to come down after a gig, so it was pointless to try to sleep. Often I borrowed John’s car, a well-worn brown Kaiser, and tracked Lem down where he was walking his midnight-to-dawn beat in one of the poorer sections of Wilmington. Lem did not seem to mind having a scrawny not-quite-19-year-old white kid tagging along in that all-black neighborhood, although occasionally he had me wait at a distance while he handled a difficult situation. Most of the time we just walked and talked, with him providing stories and advice from his perspective as a black man ten years older. It was a wonderful education for me.

And David Arnold:

 The summer of 1957, our summer with Lem, was one of those years when the nation was in the throes of determining whether social tolerance would follow from the strengthening decisions that there must be legal tolerance. 

It is within that context that I most easily place Lem. I remember his music, of course, but he comes striding with it out of that dark part of Wilmington, that dark part of national history, carrying the bright light of refutation. He was a good man. An unforgettable man.

As George has recalled above, we — who were the John Chowning Collegiates — had thrown open the doors of Marshalls Restaurants for Monday night jam sessions.
The Collegiates, a musically literate trio learning new things with every performance, played what we hoped was jazz — and very often it was. But with Lem and his group there was no question. Marshalls lit up like fireworks. We were hearing what jazz was all about. He might call his style “down home” (another bit of modesty in a way) but it swung with a rhythmic curl and driving force that threatened the walls of the place. On top of it all was Lem’s intricate cascade of notes, at times more than could possibly come from just two mallets, and at other times simply and quietly a delicate, laid-back, slightly off-the-beat sounding of simple melody played in octaves. Push hard and pull back.
Lem was uncommonly gentle and forgiving. And he had that best thing of the best in music: the desire to teach, to pass it on.

It is that last thing I remember most — that and his matter-of-fact and unforced tolerance. Of all the musicians in Marshalls on those nights, I was by far the most unaccomplished... Yet Lem took the time to help, to give me some ideas. He might have seen promise. Or he might have been kind.

...certainly we could see his gift to us: the benefit, like a windfall, of being fronted by a genius on the vibes. He was among the very best, had friends among the very best — Clifford Brown for one — and so how did we deserve him? I have never stopped wondering.

The recording tells the story. On Lem’s cuts his playing transforms us into a different group. He lifts and drives, lightens the load, inspires. There is promise for us all....
In the end we Collegiates had graduations and careers to think about. But for Lem the recording made all the difference. We were both disappointed and relieved when Leonard Feather’s Newport nod went to Lem and not the rest of us but, as John says, we knew who the star was.
... In January of 1961 Lem was on the road, a professional musician, commercial recordings to his credit. But he carried with him a relic of his policeman days: a trick with a revolver in which all bullets but one were removed from their chambers. Gun to his head, bar-sitters watching, he would pull the trigger and the hammer would click as the cylinder rotated to an empty chamber. But that night in Indianapolis he used a different gun. The cylinder rotated in the opposite direction.

John Chowning went on to an unheralded but significant career in music. He studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Later, he discovered FM synthesis, "a very simple yet elegant way of creating time-varying spectra. Licensed by Stanford to Yamaha, FM synthesis led to a family of synthesizers (DX7) that became the most successful of all time."


Lem Winchester left a small but significant body of work. He touched lives both as a policeman and a musician.

Listening to Prestige 401: Brownie McGhee

This is listed in Prestige's Bluesville catalog as a Brownie McGhee session, although longtime partner Sonny Terry is omnipresent, at least omnipresent on harmonica--all the vocals are Brownie's.

Prestige's Bluesville presentations of traditional blues performers are generally given that Prestige touch by the addition of jazz musicians. Shirley Scott accompanied Al Smith, and she was joined by Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis for Mildred Anderson's first album. King Curtis accompanied Smith on his second album, and Al Sears and Robert Banks on her second. They brought in Harold Ashby to play with Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon, Hal Singer to play with Lonnie Johnson (who already was as much jazzman as bluesman), and Jack McDuff and Bill Jennings to back up Shakey Jake,

Although Brownie McGhee had tried his hand at rhythm and blues in younger days,  he was solidly established in the folk blues tradition, and producer Ozzie Cadena chose not to mess with that. He does bring aboard a third musician, but it's guitarist Bennie Foster, who appears to be from the same Piedmont school of blues as McGhee and Terry, and may just have  an old friend Brownie brought along to the session. He's good, and he adds some fullness to the sound, but doesn't take it in a new direction. And I can find out no further information about him.

So this is a Brownie McGhee-Sonny Terry session, of which there were many, mostly for Folkways but a surprising number for Prestige Bluesville--and more surprisingly, one each for Roulette and World Pacific. You probably wouldn't need to own all of them, even if you were a hard core blues fan, but it's nice to know they're all there, and each one delivers satisfaction with solid professionalism and blues feeling.

Professionalism? Hell, yes. These were working class guys who depended on music to make a living and put food on the table. In fact, like many blues singers of their generation, they got into music because physical disabilities made it impossible for them to work in the fields. They were going to rehearse, to show up on time, to earn their paychecks.

This Bluesville release was entitled Brownie's Blues.

                                   *                        *                                   *

I wrote a lot about the Blue Bird Inn in Detroit when I was covering the mid-1950s, and the arrival in New York--and Prestige--of one Detroit jazz great after another. Nearly all of them had gotten their start at the Blue Bird. So it was wonderful to see, in a news story today, that the Blue Bird Inn, at 5021 Tireman Street in Detroit, abandoned since the bar's last owner passed away in 2003 (it had stopped presenting jazz much earlier), is being restored.

The Detroit Sound Conservancy, a nonprofit f ocused on music preservation in the city of Detroit, is restoring the building,which will eventually serve as a home to the nonprofit, a depository for its archives of Detroit music history, as well as a live music venue. This is a major piece of America's history, a cultural treasure, and it's great to see it being recognized.

This is part of an urban renaissance in this once-desolate city.  As so often happens, artists paved the way. The city set up special low-cost housing for artists. Once they moved in and started creating, and galleries and cafes sprang up, the yuppies and hipsters followed. Now, of course, the artists can no longer afford to live there and they are being evicted.

Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon.
The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

Listening to Prestige 400: Larry Young

This is my 400th entry in this Listening to Prestige project, and I started it almost exactly five years ago--June 14, 2014. I've learned a lot, listened to a lot of great music, brought myself up to a new decade, and still enthusiastic. The artists and the music of the 1950s, the bebop and hard bop eras, are the most familiar to me, so now I'm venturing into uncharted waters.

The organ was the hot new sound as the decade rolled over, and soul jazz gained prominence. Shirley Scott was Prestige's big organ star, either with her trio, as in the September 27 session we just listened to, or in a quintet with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis -- and still to come, with Stanley Turrentine. Prestige also introduced Jack McDuff, who came to the label with Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson, but went on to

become a major star in his own right, and Johnny "Hammond" Smith, who added the organ to his name to differentiate himself from guitarist Johnny Smith, and ultimately dropped the Smith part altogether and became Johnny Hammond.

And Larry Young, the youngest of these new organists, 19 when he made his debut album for Prestige and still a week shy of his 20th birthday on this session, for his second album. Young was really just passing through Prestige--he would only make one more album for the label--and for that matter, he was just passing through this phase of his career, the Jimmy Smith-influenced popular soul jazz sound of the day.

Young's muse was to be a restless one, taking him into Coltrane-influenced free jazz and then into fusion, but these Prestige albums, though not predictive of the explosive changes he was going to go through, certainly give us a healthy serving of his youthful talent. Guitarist Thornel Schwartz and drummer Jimmie Smith are back from the previous session, joined by Prestige veteran Wendell Marshall on bass. They play some Young originals, one standard ("Little White Lies," by Walter Donaldson, dating back to 1930), and three tunes by his contemporaries: Ray Draper, Horace Silver, and Morris "Mo" Bailey, Philadelphia-based saxophonist-composer-arranger.

That's enough variety to keep a session interesting, and though this is generally thought of as being Young's Jimmy Smith apprenticeship period, and although he's working in the soul jazz idiom that he would leave behind, there's plenty of individual voice here, and plenty of excitement.

"African Blues" is a good representative of his composing skills, and how he works with his own material. Soul jazz is supposed to be a sort of simplified form, and certainly there's a danceable groove here, but Shirley Scott has shown how much experimentalism an organist can bring to a solid beat, and so does Young. His groove is, if anything, even solider and funkier, and his inventiveness -- and that of Thornel Schwartz, whose rapport with him is always centered -- is a thing to enjoy.

"Little White Lies" is a cute tune, and vocalists like it, but it hasn't drawn all that much attention from jazz musicians. Maybe vocalists like it because the negativity of the lyrics makes a nice contrast to the bouncy tune, and that gets lost in an instrumental. But Young and Schwartz have some evil fun with it, and make the journey very worthwhile.

Nobody knows funk better than Horace Silver, and he has few peers as a composer, so "Nica's Dream" is a solid choice for young Mr. Young. It's become a jazz standard, mostly instrumental, although DeeDee Bridgewater wrote a vocalese lyric to it and killed it in performance, and a few others have essayed her version, notably Yvonne Sanchez, a Cuban-Polish jazz singer now making an expat career in Czechoslovakia. Silver first recorded it in 1956 with the Jazz Messengers. In 1959 Art Farmer and Blue Mitchell each did it, and then in 1960, as soul jazz was gaining a foothold, it was really discovered, and recordings were made by Young, Sabu Martinez, the Mastersounds (the Montgomery brothers), Curtis Counce, and Horace Silver again. Since then, it's become a beloved standard. Young does it proud.

He also showcases a Philadelphia comrade and not so well known composer, Mo Bailey, whose career as a saxophonist was cut short by illness, but who remained active as a successful composer and arranger into the disco era and beyond. His "Midnight Angel," as interpreted by Young, is haunting but funky.

This was released as an album on New Jazz, Esmond Edwards producing. No singles were released from the session.

Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon.
The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.– Terry Gibbs

Listening to Prestige 399: Shirley Scott

Shirley Scott is back with her trio and some timeless standards from the best: Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer. In other words, more Moodsville than soul jazz, and this was in fact a Moodsville release.

Of course, just because it's on Moodsville, that doesn't make it easy listening. Producer Chris Albertson has said that when you went in to the studio, you weren't thinking Moodsville, Swingville or Bluesville, you were making a jazz album for Prestige, and that's what Esmond Edwards and Scott are doing here. The album leads off with a Scott original, "Like Cozy," and while George Duvivier and Arthur

Edgehill lay down a solid groove, Scott gets off some of the swooping experimental voicings that she's so fond of, before settling into a soulful melody.

"Little Girl Blue" was already a solid standard by 1960. Written by Rodgers and Hart for a 1935 musical, it really entered the pop/jazz lexicon when Margaret Whiting recorded it in 1947. It was the title song from Nina Simone's 1958 album on Bethlehem, and while "I Loves You Porgy" was the hit single off that album, "Little Girl Blue" was also released as a single, got a lot of air play, and became the definitive vocal version for many. Bud Shank made the first jazz instrumental version in 1954, and after that the floodgates opened. in 1955 alone it was recorded by Dave Brubeck, Tal Farlow, Johnny Smith and Gerry Mulligan, and it's still being brought into the studio by vocalists and instrumentalists alike. Scott gives us a smoky piano veraion here, very much suggesting that she'd absorbed a lot of what Simone was doing, but still very much Shirley.

Johnny Mercer's "Laura," from the movie of the same name, is one of the most widely recorded songs in the canon--in 1960 alone, there were at least a dozen versions. So if you're going to play it, you've got a double task. First, if you put "Laura" on your album, your audience is going to want to hear "Laura," because it's a beautiful, haunting melody, and second, you've got to distinguish your version from the others. Scott manages to meet both demands, with every note sustained virtually forever, giving the haunting melody a haunted quality, and changing the tone from the wistful single notes of "Little Girl Blue" into something rich and strange.

Then she snaps that mood again with Cole Porter's "You Do Something to Me" - piano again, upbeat and percussive, lotsa improvisatory flights, lotsa room for Edgehill and Duvivier, with some very nic stuff by Duvivier.

And that's how the album goes--some organ, some piano, some experimental, some reassuring, a variety of moods, and all Shirley. Good stuff for her fans, good stuff to listen to years later, when the organ trios have faded into history. No single releases from this session, I guess on the theory that Moodsville fans were album fans. The album was released as "Like Cozy."


Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon.

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

Jon Richards Cartoon - Normandy

Listening to Prestige 398: Mildred Anderson

This was Mildred Anderson's second and last album for Prestige, and after that...nothing. Nothing at all. Never recorded again for another label. There is virtually no record of her existence after this session, not even an obituary. I can find no record of where or when she was born. There is only a small handful of recordings, best documented by the French novelist and blues scholar Gerard Herzhaft in his blog, Blue Eye. A 78 RPM single with Albert Ammons, another one with Hot Lips Page and one with Bill Doggett, that last one in 153. Then nothing till the two Prestige sessions, and then nothing. Herzhaft offers this

further information sent to him by blues scholar Bob Eagle:

Post-recording info re Mildred Anderson: Mildred and Hortense worked together at the Key Club, 1325 Washington Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota during April 1961, backed by Gene (Bowlegs) Miller and his band.  Mildred married Philadelphia-based businessman Bob Freeman in about September 1961.  Hortense Allen was also involved with Rufus Rockhead at Montreal, Quebec, Canada, during July 1962, also featuring Mildred Anderson.  Mildred almost lost her voice in the 1960s.  In November 1970, having recovered her voice, she substituted for Candy Rae at Cyrus Scott’s Sahara Supper Club, Philadelphia.

And that's it. Of the people named by Eagle: Gene (Bowlegs) Miller was a trumpeter whose resumé stretches back as far as working with Ma Rainey, but his biggest success as a bandleader came in the 1960s. He is credited with discovering and launching the careers of Peabo Bryson and Ann Peebles. But his whole career seems to have been centered in Memphis, so what he was doing in Minneapolis it's hard to say. Rufus Rockhead opened his jazz club, Rockhead's, in Montreal in 1928, and until it closed in 1980, it was the jazz club in Montreal. Everyone who was anyone played there,  so if he booked Mildred, it shows that someone was still paying attention. The only Hortense Allen I could find was Hortense Allen Jordan (married Mr. Jordan in 1955), a choreographer who created and worked with an African-American chorus line, so she might have brought Mildred from Minneapolis to Montreal. The Sahara Club in Philadelphia featured local jazz talent, of which there was an abundance, but I can find nothing on Candy Rae. So maybe she was settled in Philadelphia, happily married to Bob Freeman, and singing the occasional night when called upon to sub for a friend.


The Ammons recording, "Doin' the Boogie Woogie," was a minor hit. Her own composition, "No More in Life," a torchy ballad,  was one of the Bill Doggett cuts, and is the title track for this album.

And it's impossible to say why. As a showcase for her talents, you couldn't ask for better than these two Prestige albums. The first, with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Shirley Scott, was amazing, with two jazz musicians who were unparalleled in their approach to working with singer.  And this one is pure gold. I love everything about it.

Her backing band is led by Al Sears, the tenorman who replaced Johnny Hodges with Chick Webb and Ben Webster with Ellington. and who led Alan Freed's stage bands for his all star rock and roll shows.  His one earlier Prestige date was with the Swingville Allstars, co-led with Taft Jordan and Hilton Jefferson, and he would be back for a couple more Swingville dates.

Organist Robert Banks would do a lot of Prestige blues sessions. He was best known for his work in the 1960s with Solomon Burke. Guitarist Chauncey "Lord" Westbrook made his Prestige debut here. He was an active session man across the spectrum of jazz, pop and rhythm and blues.

Mildred Anderson takes on a broad spectrum of songs and handles them all in a way that is both direct and artful. Her first obligation is always to the song, and that means that simplicity and directness can take different forms, depending on the demands of the song. Her musicians do the same.

Her musicians? She was a nobody, with a career that had been not much of anywhere and was destined to go absolutely nowhere after this late summer day in 1960. Prestige had given her its A list of musicians for her debut album; for this one, musicians with not quite the same marquee value, although of undeniable quality, brought in for a gig. But yes, her musicians is what it feels like, because you get the sense of dedication to the song from all of them.

Here's a look at each, in the order in which they appear on the album.

She starts with a tune of her own composition, one of two on the album. Her first session, Person to Person, had also included two originals, which seems to suggest that Prestige was taking her seriously as an all-around talent, which once again makes you wonder what happened. "Everybody's Got Somebody But Me" is a torchy 12-bar blues with a bridge, a good, satisfying lament. It starts with a lengthy opening vamp by Banks with a solid backbeat by Gaskin and Donaldson that sets a modern, 1960 feel for a more traditional, 1940s-style vocal, all of which fits together.  Al Sears comes in for a searing instrumental break in which he interacts with Banks's organ in much the same way Anderson has been interacting with it, and then she comes back with powerhouse final verse to tell the world in no uncertain terms that it's a lowdown dirty shame the way her lover treats her.

"I Ain't Mad at You," credited Count Basie, Freddie Greene, and Milton Ebbins, a music business professional who was Basie's manager, and whose own musical background suggests that he was a lot more than just one of those guys who slaps his name on someone else's work. He was highly respected in the industry, and he was also the guy who escorted Marilyn Monroe onstage at Madison Square Garden to sing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President," and how many of us can make that  statement?  This is a classic riff and vocal line, put together in a song first by Dwight "Gatemouth" Moore in 1943, then by Jesse Price in 1946. Basie, Ebbins and Greene take a songwriting--and given that Ebbins was involved, almost certainly a publishing credit. Well, why not? It's one of those traveling blues that comes up different every time someone does it, and credit was fluid back in that more innocent era. In any event, the riff pops up all over. It's interpolated into Sarah Vaughan's scat classic, "Shulie a Bop." It's the basis of Huey "Piano" Smith's "Roberta," also recorded by the Animals. And it becomes the refrain of a very strange patter song by Frances Faye, a daisy chain of unrequited lust, LGBTQS-style (that's Lesbian-Gay-Bi-Trans-Queer-Straight). In other words, it's about fun, even though the guy is every bit as rotten as the one in the previous song ("Just as soon as my back was turned / Another chick stepped in") and if anything, even worse. He takes out insurance on her, hoping that she'll soon die. Anderson and her boys know that a no-good, mistreating man can be funny as well as tragic, and they hit it, Basie-style.

Lord Westbrook steps forward on "Hard Times," another 12-bar blues, and Anderson gets into into it, answering the elaborate guitar-blues improvisations with some straightforward blues wailing. The song is credited to Esmond Edwards, so he must have been around, even though he does not take producer credit for the session, and it shows that you can have hard times even without a no-good man ("My rent is overdue, landlord is gonna put a padlock on my door / But it don't make no difference nohow, 'cause I ain't got no clothes no more").

So, the picture is starting to become clear. Anyone can take a straightforward approach to a song about a foggy day in which even the British museum has lost its charm, trusting in the musical and lyric genius of the Gershwins to carry the day. Anderson and her cohorts are finding the simple truth in songs where you have to look for it.  Good songs. But not ones where half the work is done for you.

"No More in Life" is the other Anderson original, and she does seem  to gravitate toward songs of lost love, this one with an "I Will Survive" vibe. It's short (2:42), showcasing the vocal, and it builds up to a belting finish.

"Roll 'em Pete" was written by boogie-woogie pianist Pete Johnson and blues shouter Big Joe Turner, and it's inextricably tied to them, although in latter years it's become a blues standard. Not so in 1960. It had been recorded twice more, once (superbly) by Count Basie and Joe Williams, once by Jimmy Witherspoon with Gerry Mulligan and Ben Webster. In other words, plenty macho stuff from some of the best male blues shouters. Anderson takes them on and comes out unscathed, using the new sound of the soul jazz organ instead of the Kansas City piano of Johnson or Basie. She takes the leering seduction invitation of "You're so beautiful but you've got to die some day / Gimme a little lovin' before you pass away" straight on--with a sliding note along "die" which will stop you in your tracks. Turner's happiness comes from his baby buying him a brand new choo-choo toy, which i s undeniably salacious. Williams--and Anderson follows his lyric--gets, instead, a Hydramatic kiddie car, which certainly must be salacious, because this is the blues, after all, and anything can be a metaphor for sex, but it's less clear how, exactly. Al Sears has an appropriately dirty solo, and this is one of the highlights of the album.

"What More Can a Woman Do? was written by Peggy Lee and her husband, guitarist Dave Barbour, so you might think Lord Westbrook would be stepping more out in front, but it's primarily Banks. Lee's version does feature Barbour's guitar, and it's cool where Anderson is hot, but both of them tell the story.

"That Old Devil Called Love" is by the songwriting team of Allan Roberts and Doris Fisher, who had a string of hits in the 1940s, most notably "You Always Hurt the One You Love." This one has the lilting arrangement of a 1930s collaboration between the young Billie Holiday and Lester Young, with Anderson capturing some of the vulnerable yet plucky spirit Billie had. "Mistreated"is the third Anderson original, and it has a nice blues vocal part, but it's mostly the showcase for Lord Westbrook that "Old Devil" turned out not to be. And the title alone should tell you that it's another reworking of Anderson's favorite theme.

"I'm Lost" was a hit for Nat "King" Cole. It was written by Otis René, best known for "When It's Sleepy Time Down South," and founder, with his brother Leon, of one of the first West Coast rhythm and blues labels. They were also one of the first independents to purchase their own record pressing plant, which turned out to be a spot of bad luck for them. Their plant pressed 78s, and they coudn't afford to have it retooled for 45s, so when the new format took over, they went broke. "I'm Lost" is a sweet torch song. Cole did it with his trio in 1944, the Mello-Moods in 1953 for Prestige (one of the label's rare forays into group harmony) and Sarah Vaughan with strings in 1958. Anderson does it as essentially a duet with Robert Banks. He takes a very short solo, but it's mostly the two of them back and forth.

Ozzie Cadena produced No More in Life, and it was released on Bluesville. Most Prestige releases got recycled in one way or another, but neither of the Mildred Anderson releases did. Person to Person did yield one 45 RPM single; none from this session. Maybe stepping away from Davis and Scott meant that Weinstock had already decided not to extend a two-record deal. Concord's Original Blues Classics line has released both of them on CD, but my guess is they'd be hard to find. So goodbye, Mildred Anderson, and I hope you found joy in your anonymous life. Those who find your recordings will be rewarded.

Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon.

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs