Listening to Prestige 406: Arnett Cobb

A lot of the guys who have the hottest, honkin'est, rhythm-and-bluesiest tone on the tenor sax, also have the most sensitive, soulful approach to ballads, and Arnett Cobb is no exception. With Red Garland's accompaniment, this promises to be a listening treat, and the promise is delivered. This is a Moodsville set, and it could certainly set a mood for me, mixing familiar ballads with seldom-heard tunes.

The less familiar begins the set. "Hurry Home" has been recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, but even with Ella, it's not really a memorable melody. The

composers were Robert D. Emmerich and Joseph Meyer. Emmerich's obit credits him with having written songs for Fats Waller, so doesn't say what they were, so it looks as though he may never have had that breakthrough hit.

He did, however, write a song called "The Big Apple," and while it may not have been a hit, Walter Winchell liked the title so much he started using it for...well, you know the rest. Joseph Meyer is better known for his bubbly, catchy, anthem-y songs like "California, Here I Come" and "If You Knew Susie."

Well, people record songs for a reason. For Ella Fitzgerald, it may have been because she'd recorded everything else that there was to record, and "Hurry Home" is not likely to make anyone's list of her greatest hits. In the case of Arnett Cobb, however, he heard something in this melody that he responded to, and his warm-toned saxophone turns it into something beautiful, that melody that you can't quite place, but you know you've heard it somewhere, even if you haven't.  Like that laugh that floats on a summer night, that you can never quite recall. Cobb's warm tone burnishes the melody, and his improvisation takes it ever so subtly into the realm of honking Texas tenor--an oxymoron, but he makes it work. It ends up being one of the highlights of the album.

Well, people record songs for a reason. For Ella Fitzgerald, it may have been because she'd recorded everything else that there was to record, and "Hurry Home" is not likely to make anyone's list of her greatest hits. In the case of Arnett Cobb, however, he heard something in this melody that he responded to, and his warm-toned saxophone turns it into something beautiful, that melody that you can't quite place, but you know you've heard it somewhere, even if you haven't.  Like that laugh that floats on a summer night, that you can never quite recall. Cobb's warm tone burnishes the melody, and his improvisation takes it ever so subtly into the realm of honking Texas tenor--an oxymoron, but he makes it work. It ends up being one of the highlights of the album.

Count Basie, in collaboration with movie and TV tunesmiths Mack David and Jerry Livingston, is responsible for "Blue and Sentimental," and that melody has become a favorite of crooners and instrumentalists alike. Mack David, who wrote the songs for Cinderella and other Disney projects, is the older brother of Burt Bacharach's lyricist Hal David. Jerry Livingston and Jay Livingston, in spite of the fact that they dominated TV theme music in the 1960s (Jay wrote "Mr. Ed," Jerry wrote pretty much everything else) are not related. "Blue and Sentimental" appears to have particularly appealed to the ballad side of the hot tenor players of swing/rhythm and blues/soul jazz schools. It has been recorded by Gene Ammons, Georgie Auld, Sam (the Man) Taylor, Bill Doggett with Clifford Scott, Ike Quebec, Illinois Jacquet, Buddy Tate, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Jay McShann...It's a nice melody, sweet with a touch of Basie tartness and little Bibbidy-bobbidy-boo, and Cobb does a nice job on it,

"Darn That Dream" and "Willow Weep for Me" are the best-known songs from the session, the former by Eddie deLange and  Jimmy Van Heusen, the latter by Gershwin protégé Ann Ronell. Red Garland is certainly familiar with "Willow," because he recorded it for Prestige in 1956. This is a slower tempo than Garland took it in '56, understandably, because Cobb really likes to caress those notes, so Garland in his solo complements Cobb's approach. Garland has a very nice solo on this number, which at a little over seven minutes long is the longest one from the session, and very limited solo space elsewhere in the session. The other cuts are all jukebox-length, and follow the jukebox formula of one soloist as the dominant sound, although none of the songs from this session ended up being released on 45.

The Gordon Jenkins / Johnny Mercer "P. S. I Love You," written in 1934, had recently been a minor hit for the Hilltoppers, but it's not a memorable song. "Your Wonderful Love" is interesting, because Wikipedia lists it as written by two top-of-the-A-list songwriters, Dorothy Fields and Richard Rodgers, and I didn't know they'd ever written together, and I couldn't find a record of anyone else having recorded this song, except for Cobb himself, on a Columbia 78 in 1950. After way more digging than any sane person would do, I finally found a web reference to the Columbia disc. The song was written by Al Fields and Timmy Rogers (I've corrected Wiki). It's a decent song, and fits Cobb's ballad style nicely. He liked it enough to record it twice. But "Hurry Home" is still the highlight of the album for me.

The album was called Ballads by Cobb, a Moodsville release. Esmond Edwards produced.