Listening to Prestige 464: Anisteen (Ernestine) Allen

Annisteen Allen, as she was known through most of her career, had a good run in the 1940s and early 1950s, singing with Lucky Millinder and other top rhythm and blues ensembles. She was discovered singing in a club in San Antonio one night when Duke Ellington and Louis Jordan went out clubbing, and wouldn't you like to have been along for that ride? They both dug her singing, but as neither was in the market for a girl singer, they recommended her to Lucky Millinder, who hired her without even hearing her on the strength of their recommendations. Wouldn't you?

Her recording career with Federal/King ended on an odd note, when King Records was sued by another rhythm and blues label, Apollo, for copyright infringement over one of Allen's recordings. She did have a minor hit for Capitol in 1955 with "Fujiyama Mama," outsold, as many songs were in those days, by white pop singer Eileen Barton, later covered most successfully by Wanda Jackson. Still later, the Clash would perform it live in Tokyo with a vocal by bassist Paul Simonon's wife, Pearl Harbour.

She would continue to record, for Capitol and Decca and a couple of very small independents, but in 1958 she gave up touring and performing, taking a job in a hospital office.

The session for Prestige was her first full length album session, and the first under her real name. Perhaps her career over the previous five years had been obscure enough that Prestige felt "Annisteen" no longer had any drawing power, or perhaps she simply convinced Bob Weinstock not to use a name which she had acquired from a typographical error on an early press release, and which she had never liked. In any event, this resurrection, and this album, is one more thing we can thank Prestige for.

Allen had always played with first rate musicians, so this is not a rarity for her, but her producer--perhaps Ozzie Cadena, who worked most of the Tru-Sound sessions--surrounds her with an excellent supporting cast here, starting with King Curtis, and musicians who played with him regularly: Paul Griffin on piano, guitarists Al Casey and Chauncey "Lord" Westbrook, bassist Jimmy Lewis and drummer Belton Evans.

The session was released on Tru-Sound rather than Bluesville, and that makes sense. Tru-Sound was variously described as modern R&B or Prestige's pop label. The King Curtis combo gives it rhythm and blues credentials, and while there are some blues in the mix -- her Lucky Millinder hit, "Let it Roll," the R&B standard "I Want a Little Boy" (or girl, as in the best-known versions by Big Joe Turner and Ray Charles) and an original, "Miss Allen's Blues" -- most of the selections come from Broadway and Tin Pan Alley.

We have a lot to thank Prestige Records for--being in the center of some of the most important jazz movements of the American Century in music, creating a record of the creative growth of older musicians who were not part of the bebop revolution...and mixing it up. In so many ways. Weinstock's decision to record Miles Davis with different musicians, rather than having form a regular group as he was to do later, gives us a different and important context for this giant of 20th Century music. Bringing in contemporary jazz musicians

to record with blues singers. And sessions like this one. King Curtis's band brings a new bite to some old standards. With their kicking tempo and Allen's exuberant vocal, they give a new twist to the Gershwin brothers' "The Man I Love." In the classic versions by Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, there's such yearning for an unrealizable ideal. Both of these great singers give us hope against hope--that big and strong man is never going to come along, and they know it. Allen, with Curtis and the boys, are out for a good time. She kinda likes the idea of the man she'll love coming along, but she's having a good time now, and she doesn't really care all that much if he never does.

But the remake of "Let it Roll" is where they really let it roll. And rock. And they throw in some scat. And they stretch it out to nearly seven minutes, so while this is clearly the jukebox pick from the session, they have to put it on both sides of a 45.

Let it Roll is also the title of the Tru-Sound album. It was to be her last recording,  In 1986, after she retired from her hospital job, she did play a few dates with Bull Moose Jackson (as Annisteen Allen). She died in 1992.

Listening to Prestige Vol 4, 1959-60, now available from Amazon! Also on Kindle!
Volumes 1-3 are also 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