Tad Richards' odyssey through the catalog of Prestige Records:an unofficial and idiosyncratic history of jazz in the 50s and 60s. With occasional digressions.
This is a Session of the Lost. The rhythm section is the same two guys who played with Jimmy Neeley on his one session as leader for Prestige, of which I can find no trace, although they were fine musicians. Bassist Michael Mulia played on one other Prestige session, for Etta Jones.
Rudy Lawless was one of that group of guys who grew up together in Harlem's Sugar Hill--the group that included Jackie McLean, Sonny Rollins and Art Taylor. His credits included stints with Andy Kirk, Blue Mitchell, Hank Jones and Roy Eldridge.
Al Sears and Willie Dixon, and we'll see him again later in the decade with a successful fusion album.
Wally Richardson made two albums for Prestige, with
Betty Roché, who did some important work with Ellington and got deserved acclaim for it. managed her own disappearing act, never recording again after this session. I've written more about her on-again, mostly off-again career in my entry on her first Prestige album.
The Ellington work, especially her two recordings of "Take the A Train," remains the benchmark of her career, and of this second Prestige album I can find only two cuts, "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" and "I Had the Craziest Dream," although it shouldn't be that obscure. It did get a CD release on Original Jazz Classics.
They are gems. "Polka Dots and Moonbeams," with melody by Jimmy Van Heusen, known for light but tuneful pop fare ("High Hopes," "The Tender Trap," "All the Way") and lyrics by Johnny Burke, is probably not all that familiar to the casual pop music fan, but it's become much beloved by jazz singers and jazz musicians, with over 300 versions. It's a musician's song, and Roché makes the most of it.
She should be more remembered. She should have done more to make herself more remembered. But listen to her "Polka Dots and Moonbeams." You'll love it.
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.
Listening to Prestige Vol. 4 is now in preparation!
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
This is another from the Swingville catalog. and every one of them has been an invaluable contribution to the story of American music. This is partly because they gave a voice to important American musicians who were being passed over in the rush to modernism that was mainstream jazz. This was a rush that could not be stopped or slowed down, and should not have been. Jazz in the mid-twentieth century was an unparalleled cultural phenomenon. But it's progenitors were not gone, and should not have been forgotten.
All right, so partly because Swingville gave a voice to these almost-forgotten musicians. What was the other part? The other part was the voice itself. As I've noted before, these were not re-creations of 1930s swing. The older musicians were making their music, not Charlie Parker's or Dave Brubeck's or John Coltrane's, but they were making it for a new age, and with full awareness that it was a new age.
I suspect producer Esmond Edwards had a good deal to do with that. But give full credit to the musicians themselves. They had ears, and they knew what was going on around them.
Ten years separate Shorty Baker and Doc Cheatham. Baker was born in 1914, and at the time of this recording, had been a semi-regular in Duke Ellington's orchestra for twenty years. He had also spent some time with Johnny Hodges during the early 1950s, when Hodges had his own band. He had participated in an earlier Swingville session with Bud Freeman. Prior to that, he had worked with Don Redman, Andy Kirk and Teddy Wilson.
Cheatham was born in 1905 in Nashville, and was not really exposed to a lot of jazz until he moved to Chicago in 1924 and met King Oliver. Before that, he had played in a pit band in a Nashville theater, where he had plenty of experience with the blues, accompanying both Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith among others. Meeting Oliver was a life-changing experience for him, but the real life-changer came a couple of years later, when Louis Armstrong joined Oliver. Armstrong became his mentor, and even asked Cheatham to fill in for him at a few performances. "It was hard to do," Cheatham said in an interview with National Public Radio, "because he was such a great player. I knew I wasn't capable, but I was young and I listened to what he was doing, and I learned what he was playing."
Cheatham went on to play with Chick Webb and McKinney's Cotton Pickers, among others, before landing a long-term gig with Cab Calloway. After that, he played with a number of Latin orchestras, including Perez Prado's and Machito's.
Some critics, while praising this album, have commented that Cheatham sounds a little old-fashioned compared to Baker. If that was so in 1961, it was not to remain that way. Baker died in 1966, and so did not live to witness the late-life renascence of his bandmate. In his sixties, Cheatham decided to completely rethink his music and reshape his career. He had always been a section man (Shorty and Doc was the exception), and he decided to work at developing not only the chops, but the whole mental approach to music necessary to become an effective soloist.
How well he succeeded is best described by a younger trumpeter, Jon Faddis:
One of the prime motivations in improvised music for jazz musicians is to be able to tell a story when we play a solo. Doc is a master at that, because you can hear all of his background and influences.
And the ability of Cheatham to stay relevant through seven decades of music was shown in his final album, a two-trumpet reprise of Shorty and Doc that paired the 91-year-old with 22-year-old Nicholas Payton. Cheatham died in 1997, on tour.
I'm guessing that Esmond Edwards may have had a good deal of input into choosing the songs for this session. One of them, "Chtlin's," is credited to him as composer, which is a rarity. But it's dead center for these two guys, starting with some blues wailing by Doc and moving into some lyrical playing by Shorty. It was the first tune on the album, and at nearly eleven minutes, the longest, giving the listener plenty of time to warm up to these old pros.
The first tune they actually recorded that day, the one where they got to warm up to each other, was "Baker's Dozen." the only original by either of the two leads. So we can pretty safely assume that Baker knew the tune pretty well, and probably Cheatham did too. The first sound we here is the intro by Walter Bishop Jr., and his contribution to this session is incalculable. A first-generation bebopper, Bishop's comps, lead-ins and solos sound nothing like the piano stylings of Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy or any of the other great swing era piano players. They give the music a very different edge, and then they fit right in. The two trumpeters contribute in much the same way they would in "Chitlin's," one wailing, the other lyrical, and they set a tone for the session.
Most likely Edwards brought in the next tune, the Jimmy Forrest take on a Duke Ellington riff that became a rhythm and blues classic: "Night Train." Bishop and J. C. Heard sets a syncopated but solid beat, and Bishop does some of his most boppish playing, while still making it worth with the Ellingtonian/rhythm and bluesian demands of this irresistible riff-driven melody. Both trumpeters hit all the right notes in their solos, and "Night Train" does its job.
Next they take on two standards. "Lullaby in Rhythm" is credited to Benny Goodman, Edgar Sampson ("Stompin' at the Savoy"), Clarence Profit and Walter Hirsch (lyrics). They pick up the tempo on this one. Again, Irresistible.
For the beautiful Rodgers and Hart tune, "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," the trumpets start it right off, and they set up two contrasting tones of sweetness, both of them loving the melody Bishop comes in later with an extended solo. Beautiful, all of it.
After "Chitlin's," they finish up with a tune from Baker's Johnny Hodges days. "Good Queen Bess," which brings everyone into the mix, but spotlights the two trumpets.
There is absolutely nothing not to like about this Swingville 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
Willis Jackson came to Prestige in 1959 with his longtime bandmates Jack McDuff and Bill Jennings. They had been playing the genre of jazz often dismissed as rhythm and blues, but with the cachet of the Prestige label, their music was now called mainstream jazz, and soon, soul jazz. By 1961, McDuff had gone out on his own, and was on his way to becoming one of the biggest stars on the Prestige label, forming a one-two organ punch with Shirley Scott. Bill Jennings would continue to play off and on with Jackson, creating a guitar sound that would deeply influence a future generation of guitarists, but would never win him stardom in his own career.
This was Jackson's first session with neither of his old cohorts, but he's still the same Gator, playing pretty for the people, and absorbing some lessons from his rhythm and blues years, when you played tunes that could fit on a 78, later 45, RPM record, and would get play on jukeboxes. The tunes could be long enough to fit on both sides of 45, like Bill Doggett's "Honky Tonk" or Cozy Cole's "Topsy," but mostly they weighed in at under three and a half minutes. He does have a couple of six-minute songs here (by the album standards of the day, still short), but most of the cuts come in around four minutes. The other lesson was pay attention to tunes and hooks. Give people something to respond to quickly.
These aren't the only criteria for making good music. In the age of Ornette Coleman, they might even have seemed a little quaint. But Jackson used them wisely and skillfully, and if he didn't make Down Beat's polls, nor is he remembered widely by today's jazz aficionados (did not make ranker.com's list of 200 greatest saxophonists of all time; by contrast, Jack McDuff is #16 on their organist list), he nevertheless made music that is beautiful, soulful, earthy, danceable, and well worth your nickel in the jukebox.
This session featured Jimmy Neeley on piano. Neeley, whose name was also spelled Neely from time to time, had visited Englewood Cliffs before at Prestige's behest: the previous December, he had led a
trio in a session that was released on Prestige's short-lived budget label Tru-Sound. And he might have had a longer history with the label; he worked with blues singer H-Bomb Ferguson, who recorded for Prestige in the early days, but as with a lot of vocalist recordings, the session musicians weren't noted. He played with rhythm and blues/jazz artists Mickey Baker and Red Prysock, and wit Roy Eldridge.
Gus Johnson had recorded for Prestige with Coleman Hawkins, Lem Winchester, Taft Jordan and Willie Dixon. Wendell Marshall was one of their most often-used bassists of the era, and Juan Amalbert was the leader of the Latin Jazz Quintet.
Benny Golson's "I Remember Clifford" had already become a standard since its first appearance on record, performed by Donald Byrd and Gigi Gryce. Jackson treats it with the love you'd appropriately give to a classic. He does the same with "Careless Love," here credited to W. C. Handy, although it's an old folk blues which predates Handy. He has a few of his own tunes, a couple from other sources. "Again," by Lionel Newman, was introduced by Ida Lupino in the film noir cult favorite, Road House. "Girl of My Dreams" was the only hit for Charles "Sunny" Clapp, who led a territorial band, mostly in Texas, in the 1930s. And I think my favorite tunes on the album are the two composed by Johnny Griffin: "Oatmeal" and "Sweet Peter Charleston," featuring some hot blowing by the Gator, and some tasty work by Amalbert and Neeley.
The album was Really Groovin', which also featured one track from a different session and with a different band. "Careless Love" and the Jackson composition "He Said, She Said, I Said" (two more favorites) were the 45 pm single. One tune from session, "Estrellita," was held back for a later Moodsville album, In My Solitude. Esmond Edwards produced.
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. Volume 4 is in preparation now! 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
Prestige hasn't gone in much for live albums, although with Bob Weinstock's spontaneous, recreating-a-jam-session philosophy, live recording would seem like a natural. But having made the decision to take the plunge with this one they went all in, and why not? Two wailing tenors and a cooking quintet at the jam session capital of the world, Minton's Playhouse on 118th Street in Harlem. Four sets of music.
What would you leave out?
Nothing? That's how they felt, too. Four sets became four separate albums, two of them released in 1961, the others a few years later.
A live session may not have the optimal sound you'd get in a studio, especially Rudy Van Gelder's studio, and there aren't any do-overs--or weren't, back then. More sophisticated recording techniques made it possible to go into the studio, correct a wrong note, and splice it in. These days, I suppose you wouldn't even have to do that: you could just autotune out all the clinkers. What balances that out, and makes a live set worth it, is the excitement that comes from playing off a live audience.
A lot of the time, that excitement is going to come from giving the audience what it wants. Perhaps the most famous description of the thrill of live jazz can be found in Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the scene that has been anthologized as "Jazz of the Beat Generation." when Sal and Dean find themselves in a jazz club in Oakland, with a behatted tenor player who:
was blowing at the peak of a wonderfully satisfactory free idea, a rising and falling riff that went from "EE-yah!" to a crazier "EE-de-lee-yah!" and blasted along to the rolling crash of butt-scarred drums hammered by a big brutal Negro with a bull neck who didn't care about anything but punishing his busted tubs, crash, rattle-ti-boom, crash. Uproars of music and the tenorman had it and everybody knew he had it. Dean was clutching hie head in the crowd, and it was a mad crowd. They were all urging that tenor man to hold it and keep it with cries and wild eyes, and he was raising himself from a crouch and going down again with his horn, looping it up in a clear cry above the furor...
Kerouac wonderfully describes an ecstatic moment, but what were Sal and Dean listening to in that club in Oakland? Not bebop, certainly. In the late 1940s, when Sal and Dean were on the road, bebop had yet to make a serious impact on the West Coast, not even in Los Angeles, where Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie had played a famous engagement in late 1945 and early 1946, to the enthusiastic support of fellow musicians and a few cognoscenti, most notably Ross Russell, who started the Dial record label to record Bird; But bebop hadn't really caught on, and when Sal and Dean were club-hopping in Oakland, and Bird was relaxing at Camarillo State Hospital, what were they listening to? From Kerouac's description, I'd say rhythm and blues. I've always wondered whether they might have happened in on a set by Big Jay McNeely.
The point of this is that a live set, in a live club, may not inspire the ecstasy that the behatted tenor man inspired in Dean Moriarty, but you are playing to an audience, and the music is only going to go by once. Proust says that if there are things that immediately grab you in a piece of music, you're going to go back to them over and over, and pretty soon you're going to start falling in love with other things about the same piece, and your love for it will deepen, but you'll gradually stop listening for the things that attracted you in the first place. This was true with Proust as he followed a popular composer around to his recitals in the salons of Paris; it's even more true in the era of recorded music.
Musicians working a live audience for a live recording are going to have to think of both: the effect on patrons of the club on that night, and the effect on buyers of the record. Of course, a sophisticated audience like the patrons of a New York City jazz club, especially Minton's, the birthplace of bebop, so they aren't going to be satisfied with the brutal hammering of butt-scarred drums, however bullnecked the drummer may be. But the guys on the bandstand are still likely to do well with material that the audience knows. The poet Billy Collins has described the poet as a sort of travel agent, starting the tour at a place his readers are familiar with, and taking them from there into new and unfamiliar realms. The modern jazz player may well want to do much the same thing, starting with a familiar melody -- a jazz standard, or a ballad from the Great American Songbook. Tuns that all the musicians on the gig are comfortable with, so that they know what they're doing and what they can expect from each other.
All of which is a roundabout way of noticing that this is what Griffin and Davis are doing--familiar jazz riffs like Charlie Parker's "Billie's Bounce," standards like "I'll Remember April"...and tunes by Thelonious Monk.
We're accustomed to think of Monk, today, as one of the great composers of the 20th century, but that reputation was slow in building. At this time, early 1961, only one jazz artist other than Monk had ever recorded an album of Monk's music (Steve Lacy, on Prestige, in 1956). So this much Monk on a series of live sets in a club suggests that his compositions are starting to be a common language not only of musicians (no surprise) but also audiences--and granted, this is Minton's, so even though it's not Minton's in 1946, it probably still has an audience closer to the cutting edge than most.
But I'm not exaggerating about how long it took for Monk's music to catch on. In the first set, Davis and Griffin perform "Epistrophy." One of Monk's classic tunes, written in 1948 it has been recorded 128 times, according to Secondhandsongs. But in 1961 it had been recorded exactly three times: by Milt Jackson in France, on a European label; by Bud Powell, on Verve; and by a group led by Art Taylor, on Blue Note.
"Well, You Needn't," the other Monk composition from the first set, had already achieved jazz standardhood, with 12 recordings by 1961, on its way to well over 200 to date. It also evoked an answer song -- common in rock and country, rare in jazz -- "I Didn't," recorded by Miles Davis.
From the late evening sets: "In Walked Bud," written and recorded by Monk in 1948, now a jazz standard with at least 130 recordings, had been recorded exactly once before 1961, by Sam Most for Bethlehem in 1957. And it's hard to believe that "Straight, No Chaser," now with 180 versions on record, was ever anything but a standard. It is now credited with being the second most widely recorded tune of 1951, trailing only "The Little Drummer Boy." But before the Davis-Griffin version, there had only been five others.
The jazz world would shortly see a second studio album of all Monk compositions, and we'll be looking at that before too long: it was Davis and Griffin (who had been closely associated with Monk), on Prestige.
Larry Gales and Ben Riley had close ties to Monk. They both played on the Davis-Griffin Monk album, played with Monk himself for several years, and then in 1990 made their Monk album, A Message from Monk, with Riley as nominal leader of the group. Gales had made one previous Prestige session, with Buddy Tate and Clark Terry. Ben Riley had been the drummer on the first Davis/Griffin pairing for Prestige.
Junior Mance made his return to Prestige after a ten-year hiatus, and his Davis-Griffin association would last through their Monk album. His career as a recording artist had started in 1947 with Gene Ammons (for Aladdin). but his performing career had started earlier than that. When he was ten years old, the saxophone player who lived in the Chicago apartment above his had a gig in a local roadhouse, and had lost his piano player. He had heard Junior practicing, and asked his dad (Julian Mance Sr.) if Junior could fill in. Roadhouses in those days tended to be lax about asking for ID, but even so, one might have guessed that they would have noticed a ten-year-old. Nonetheless, he played the gig.
He went from Gene Ammons to Lester Young, with whom he learned a valuable lesson. As he told Marc Myers in a 2011 interview:
I once made a mistake while playing something. I said, “Damn.” The guys told me never to say that. They said, “Play right through it.”
As Miles Davis said, " It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong."
He was back with Ammons (and Sonny Stitt) for his first Prestige recording. As he told Myers:
Jazz in those days was always competitive and supportive. We didn’t rehearse. What you heard on those records is what those guys came up with on the spot. We’d do the same thing on stage.
He also shared with Myers another great piece of advice he got from Jimmy Jones, when he first started working with Dinah Washington:
Look, when you’re working with a singer, imagine a portrait painting hanging in the museum. The singer is the subject of that portrait. What does the portrait need? A good frame. That’s you.
Prestige released an album called The Tenor Scene in 1961. It was the tunes from the second set of the evening, designated "the breakfast set": the Davis/George Duvivier composition "Light and Lovely." previously recorded with Arnett Cobb and Shirley Scott in 1959, "Straight, No Chaser," Dizzy Gillespie's "Woody 'n' You," Davis's "Bingo Domingo," and the standard "I'll Remember April."
In 1964, they began plans to roll out the entire performance, starting with the first set, and they titled the album The First Set. It featured the Charlie Parker tune and the two Thelonious Monk compositions: "Billie's Bounce," "Epistrophy," "Well, You Needn't." Added on, from the second set and first album, "I'll Remember April." This was followed by the third set, in an album entitled The Late Show, also in 1964.
1965 saw The Midnight Show, from the final set of the evening, followed by re-release of The Tenor Scene, this time titled The Breakfast Show, and maybe this explains the reason why the "breakfast" moniker was hung on this set.
Esmond Edwards produced.
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. Volume 4 is in preparation now! 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
Billy Taylor's piano trio albums, one of them augmented by the great percussionist Candido, were a staple of Prestige's first half decade. He stopped back in Englewood Cliffs for a brief interlude to usher in the 1960s, and he would be back once more to bookend the decade.
The 1960s would be a busy time for Dr. Billy Taylor, who would start getting the multiple honorary degrees that earned him his honorific (he would also earn an academic PhD. from the University if Massachusetts. He would keep on making music, most often in the trio setting, but his commitment to jazz found other avenues as well. In 1958, he became music director of NBC'sThe Subject Is Jazz, the first network TV show to be devoted to America's music, and in 1964, he founded what became one of New York's cultural treasures, the Jazzmobile that brought some of America's greatest musicians to underserved neighborhoods.
He had worked for many years with a regular trio of Earl May on bass and Percy Brice (later Charlie Smith) on drums, but here is tries on a different configuration. Doug Watkins was a frequent
contributor to Prestige recordings, and one of the best (and most underappreciated) bassists of his day. Ray Mosca was a New York-born drummer who worked regularly in those years, with singers and with a wide range of jazz groups.
Taylor and his partners focus on ballads for this Moodsville session, released as Interlude. The compositions are all Taylor's except for "You're Mine." The titles sound like titles of songs with lyrics, but I haven't been able to find vocal versions of any (the often recorded "Remembering all those little things / All of a sudden my heart sings" is a different song, as is the gospel tune with the same title).
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
Every year I look at the list of best albums of the year on rateyourmusic.com, a reader-voted website. The Down Beat poll gives us a look at what they were thinking back then; the rateyourmusic poll gives us a sense of what's endured.
It's always an idiosyncratic poll, with some definite surprises. It's also an ongoing poll, so while the albums at the top of the poll have accrued enough votes to be safely ensconced there. there can conceivably be fluctuation down at the bottom, BuT we're not going that far. Just the top 50, omitting the recordings that weren't jazz or blues:
1 Giant Steps
John Coltrane
Atlantic
Deserves its ranking, then as now. A major album, a giant step forward in jazz.
2 Blues & Roots
Charlie Mingus
Atlantic
One of the reviewers on rateyourmusic described it as “Arty enough for the avant-jazz types, energetic enough for the swingers,” and that’s not bad. Mingus, like Monk, has gained in stature over the years, and this ranking confirms that.
3 Sketches of Spain
Miles Davis
Columbia
4 The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery
Riverside
This was Montgomery’s second album for Riverside, and really the beginning of his domination of the instrument, and the jazz charts, in the 1960s.
6 Soul Station
Hank Mobley
Blue Note
8 Portrait in Jazz
Bill Evans Trio
Riverside
This was Scott LaFaro’s first album with Bill Evans. There would be three more, before LaFaro’s death in an auto accident, which left Evans so devastated he could not play for months. Many consider this the definitive Evans trio.
9 At Last!
Etta James
Argo
11Change of the Century
Ornette Coleman
Atlantic
12True Blue
Tina Brooks
Blue Note
Very good stuff, with Freddie Hubbard, Duke Jordan, Sam Jones and Art Taylor, and one example of the idiosyncratic voting of rateyourmusic voters. Not saying that this album shouldn’t be highly rated, just surprised that it is. Tina Brooks had a very short career – this was his only album as leader to be released during his lifetime. Recently, some long-buried sessions have been released, prompting a reconsideration of his essentially forgotten career, and some serious praise from jazz cognoscenti. I guess there are a lot of cognoscenti voting on rateyourmusic.
15 Blues-ette
Curtis Fuller's Quintet
Savoy
Amazing to me that this album is rated so high, and the more acclaimed “Meet the Jazztet” comes in at number 86. Again, not a reflection on the blowing here, but a surprise that the voting has gone that way.
16 Thelonious Alone in San Francisco
Thelonious Monk
Riverside
Monk alone, going with his first takes, and his solo version of “Blue Monk” alone Is worth the price of admission. But the same could be said of every other track.
17O amor, o sorriso e a flor
João Gilberto
Odeon
It took Stan Getz, in 1961, to launch the Brazilian samba/bossa nova craze, so this album was ahead of the curve. A recent CD reissue as part of a box set of Gilberto and Jobim may in part account for its popularity with the rateyourmusic crowd. There’s a very nice description by one of their reviewers:
Somewhat like the British Invasion in rock in the early 1960s, there was a Brazilian invasion in jazz and pop starting in the late 1950s. And just as the British Invasion can be traced back to two guys – John Lennon and Paul McCartney – the Brazilian invasion can be traced back to João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim. Gilberto single-handedly created bossa nova from samba, transmuting a rather boisterous dance form into a perfect vehicle for crooning intimiacies and meditations; Jobim supplied the songs, the arrangements, and the orchestra.
19The Big Beat
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
Blue Note
20Open Sesame
Freddie Hubbard
Blue Note
21Mingus Dynasty
Charles Mingus and His Jazz Groups
Columbia
22Piano in the Background
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
Columbia
24Blues in Orbit
Duke Ellington
Columbia
25Outward Bound
Eric Dolphy Quintet
Prestige
26Have Guitar, Will Travel
Bo Diddley
Checker
27House of the Blues
John Lee Hooker
Chess
28East Meets West
Ahmed Abdul-Malik
RCA Victor
30Ella Fitzgerald Sings Songs From "Let No Man Write My Epitaph"
Verve
31Sin & Soul
Oscar Brown Jr.
Columbia
32Work Song
Nat Adderley
Riverside
33Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson
Verve
34Muddy Waters Sings Big Bill Broonzy
Chess
35Satchmo Plays King Oliver
Louis Armstrong
Audio Fidelity
37Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger
Checker
38Blues & Ballads
Lonnie Johnson With Elmer Snowden
Prestige
39Travelin'
John Lee Hooker
Vee Jay
40Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster
Verve
41Quiet Kenny
Kenny Dorham
New Jazz
43Them Dirty Blues
The Cannonball Adderley Quintet
Riverside
44Otis Spann Is the Blues
Otis Spann
Candid
45Art Pepper + Eleven: Modern Jazz Classics
Art Pepper
Contemporary
47
Frank Sinatra
Nice 'n' Easy
Capitol
48Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas
Ella Fitzgerald
Verve
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