Prestige in 1960 began its second full decade in the jazz business (second of two--there had been one year in the 1940s, and there would be a couple in the 1970s) by looking ahead, looking back, and looking straight at the present.
Looking back is what they did by the formation of the Swingville and Bluesville labels. As to looking back at the immediate past...not so much. As with Bill Clinton and the era of big government, the era of bebop seems to be over for Bob Weinstock and associates. Comparing their releases of 1957, just three years earlier, one finds an overlap of exactly two names: Red Garland (three sessions in 1957, three in 1960) and Tommy Flanagan (one and one). No Gene Ammons, though he was absent by force of incarceration, and would be back. No more Jackie McLean, Kenny Burrell, Phil Woods. Some, like John Coltrane, Art Farmer, Mose Allison, had moved along. Prestige was a great launching pad for young talent, musicians would go on to sign with bigger labels who would give them more money, more promotion, more exposure.
Looking back through Swingville and Bluesville gave the label a deeply enriched catalogue that has only grown more valuable through the years. We look back at the 1950s as a golden era of jazz not just because of the new music that was being created, but because it was a time when every era of jazz still existed. Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Dizzy Gillespie became international ambassadors. And so many of the titans of jazz, from virtually every era, were still playing, often in obscurity.
One such titan was Coleman Hawkins, still so revered that as the era of John Coltrane was ushered in by his Prestige recordings and brought to full flower by his Atlantic recordings, the Down Beat critics', polled for their leading jazz artists of 1960, still named Hawkins as the top tenor saxophonist. Prestige brought Hawkins into the studio four times in 1959, three more in 1960. He had played with the Prestige Blues Swingers, in which moderns like Idrees Suleiman, Jerome Richardson and Pepper Adams joined forces with blues guitarist Roy Gaines and future star Ray Bryant. He had recorded with swing veterans Charlie Shavers and Tiny Grimes for an album that was originally released on Prestige, but may well have given Bob Weinstock the idea for Swingville, because soon after that the label was launched, and this became one of its first titles. Under the catchall name of Prestige All Stars, he recorded with Buddy Tate and Arnett Cobb, soon to become Swingville regulars, and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Shirley Scott, two of the brightest stars in Prestige's new soul jazz firmament. He worked in a quartet session with the Red Garland Trio and another trio led by Tommy Flanagan, and in a sextet setting with swing veterans Vic Dickenson and Joe Thomas. And on a December, 1960 session with Flanagan and Davis, he brought aboard a youngster just starting out in the jazz business--Ron Carter.
Hawkins would go on to have an active decade of recording, with Prestige and other labels, in a wide variety of musical settings, from blues veteran Ida Cox to Sonny Rollins. Who wouldn't want the chance to play with the Hawk? He died in 1969.
In addition to Tate and Cobb. Prestige Swingville also recorded Buck Clayton, Al Casey, Claude Hopkins, Budd Johnson, Bud Freeman. And guys who made their bones in rhythm and blues also joined the Swingville roster: Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson, Al Sears, Jimmy Forrest, King Curtis, Bill Jennings.
A lot of the new Prestige/Swingville/Bluesville roster was the work of Esmond Edwards. Edwards was African American, which was something of a rarity in those days for someone in the production/management end of the music business, and his familiarity with the smaller clubs and music establishments in Harlem and the Bronx led to a lot of these signings, both the rhythm and blues veterans and the new soul jazz players.
In at least one case, those two categories overlapped. Willis Jackson's long-time associate was organist Jack McDuff, and he would go on to become one of the big selling artists of the soul jazz world.
Shirley Scott was the star of Prestige's soul jazz roster, and one of the players, along with Jimmy Smith, to really popularize the organ sound in jazz. Along with Scott and McDuff, Prestige had Johnny "Hammond" Smith, Robert Banks, and Larry Young, who would go on to a trailblazing career after leaving Prestige.
Bluesville was an interesting label, and Prestige's blues roster was always interesting to follow. They recorded legends like Memphis Slim, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Willie Dixon, Lonnie Johnson (who was plucked from obscurity by producer Chris Albertson), Sunnyland Slim, Roosevelt Sykes,Tampa Red. They also recorded some blues singers who never made it beyond obscurity -- Arbee Stidham, Shakey Jake, St. Louis Jimmy, and particularly the marvelous and completely forgotten singers Al Smith and Mildred Anderson.
They were forward-looking, too. Eric Dolphy was their real torchbearer for the new generation, and he was to die young, before the end of the decade. Booker Little joined him on his last album of 1960, and for some memorable live sessions in 1961, but death was to overtake him before the year was out. Oliver Nelson was an important new composing talent; his most famous work, though, was to come the next year, when he recorded Blues and the Abstract Truth. Lem Winchester had a bright future ahead of him, an he was just beginning to glimpse it, when a freak accident took him in 1961.
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