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 the second Prestige Bluesville session for the Reverend Gary Davis. He was billed for the previous one as Blind Gary Davis, which was also accurate, but his blindness is probably less significant in an understanding of his importance, when compared with (a) his spiritual message, and (b) his tremendous influence on younger blues guitarists, as discussed in my earlier essay.
Probably the best known of the gospel songs that Davis recorded on this day in Rudy Van Gelder's studio is "You Got to Move," a traditional spiritual that had first been recorded in 1944 by the Baltimore gospel quartet, the
Willing Four (not to be confused with a later gospel group, the Willing Four of Chicago). "You Got to Move" is probably best known to modern audiences from the 1971 version by the Rolling Stones, a virtually note for note cover of Mississippi Fred McDowell's 1969 recording. McDowell, in turn, followed a recording of the song by Davis, but not this recording. Davis had done it previously, in 1953, with Sonny Terry. His 1961 version of the song is more uptempo, which actually makes sense. If you've got to move when the Lord calls you, maybe you'd want to move to a rhythm like this. I've included a bonus Listen to One here--the 1953 version with Terry.
Listening to the 1961 Bluesville version, it's easy to tell why so many aspiring young guitarists made that pilgrimage to Harlem in the 1950s-1960s to study with, or at least get a few pointers from, the Reverend. His guitar sings, it rings, it talks, it moves. And that's true of every song on this album. Given its best possible showcase with the recording genius of Rudy Van Gelder, we can hear every nuance of one of the blues guitar masters.
The songs are mostly traditional gospel songs or original compositions by Davis, and if you had to guess which are which, you'd be hard pressed. His own songs have the depth and the spiritual fervor of songs that have moved the faithful for a hundred years.
The one other modern composed gospel song is "I'll Fly Away," written in 1929 by Albert E, Brumley, and often noted as the most widely recorded gospel song of all time. Most commonly a bluegrass number, it adapts winningly to Davis's blues-gospel style.
"Motherless Children" is listed as "traditional" on the album's credits, but it was recorded in 1927 by Blind Willie Johnson, and may well have been written by him, at least in its current form. Other sources list Johnson as composer. It has also been widely recorded, though not nearly as widely as "I'll Fly Away." Bob Dylan, Steve Miller and Eric Clapton are among modern rockers who have taken it on. Rosanne Cash, Ralph Stanley, Lucinda Williams and others have done it from the country/bluegrass/Americana side. It's another one that was first done on the 1953 Stinson album with Sonny Terry.
And I like the cautious hope expressed in "There's a Bright Side Somewhere" and "I'll Be All Right Someday."
The Bluesville album, produced by Kenneth S. Goldstein, was called A Little More Faith. "You Got to Move" and "I'm Glad I'm in That Number" were released as a 45 RPM single.
This was Willie Wilson's only recording session. He had played in Dizzy Gillespie's big band, but had not recorded with them. He would die not long after this session was recorded. The 1961 session was originally recorded for Jazzline, but the label folded before the album could be released. It would come out in 1966, under Freddie Hubbard's name, in Europe from the Dutch Fontana label. Prestige released it under Duke Pearson's name in 1970, and Black Lion in 1988 under Hubbard's.
Yeah, there'd be no point in the subsequent releases coming out under Wilson's name. He was dead...and forgotten.
But he was respected enough by his peers to be able to call on some front line talent for his shot at the brass ring. In addition to Hubbard and Pearson, Pepper Adams is on board. So is Lex Humphries, who had been the original drummer with the Art Farmer/Benny Golson Jazztet, and had worked with John Coltrane on the Giant Steps sessions (the tracks featuring Humphries were not included on the album, but did appear on a subsequent album called Alternate Takes). Bassist Thomas Howard is obscure, though he did record again with Pearson.
Maybe Howard was from Atlanta. That was the hometown of Pearson and Wilson. Pearson remembered him:
Willie and I grew up together from kindergarten in Atlanta. We also took piano lessons from the same teacher. We were as brothers and his death came as quite a shock to me.
But no jazz journalist was interested enough in Wilson to probe Pearson for more stories about his friend, so this is all we have. A reputation in Atlanta of 70 years ago, a short time with Dizzy, and this album. I like to look into the lives of wonderful musicians whom fame has passed by, b
The Willie Wilson Sextet cut seven tunes on this August afternoon at Bell Sound Studios in Manhattan. Because this wasn't a Bob Weinstock production, and they weren't frowning om retakes and reusing every scrap of tape, there are several takes of each cut. (We can thank Bell Sound for that, but not for the sacrilege they committed when they closed shop in 1976, and destroyed hundreds of priceless original masters.) Five of the tunes featured the sextet. The two Great American Songbook ballads on the session, "The Nearness of You" (Hoagy Carmichael, Ned Washington) and "Time After Time" (Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne) were a quartet, Wilson and the rhythm section. In both of them, it's just Wilson and the rhythm section, and he shows himself capable of handling the front line on his own. He's warm and sensitive and romantic, and he swings.
But I really loved the sextet numbers. How could you go wrong, with Freddie Hubbard and Pepper Adams joining you? The format is your classic bop small group, ensemble playing on the head, solo solo solo, then the ensemble again. You know, that old cliched format that John Lewis killed off, and Miles Davis killed off, and John Coltrane killed off, but no one has ever really been able to kill off, because it can be a template for such wonderful music.
Pearson ("Miss Bertha D. Blues," also known as "Number 5"). Adams ("Apothegm") and Wilson ("Blues for Alvina") all contributed tunes to the session, and they also used the composing talents of Tommy Flanagan ("Minor Mishap," which has become something of a jazz standard) and Donald Byrd ("Lex"). but for my "Listen to One" I'll give you "Blues for Alvina," and Wilson's one chance to shine as composer before an early death and undeserved obscurity.
If you want to listen to more than one, which I strongly recommend, it takes some digging. "Willie Wilson Sextet" finds nothing, either on Spotify or YouTube. A search for "Willie Wilson Quartet" will take you to the two quartet numbers. You can find everything from the Prestige album on either Spotify or YouTube by searching "Duke Pearson Dedication" or "Duke Pearson" and the individual songs. Some searching under "Freddie Hubbard" and individual titles on YouTube will get you to the Black Lion cuts, though not necessarily all of them--each tune except for "The Nearness of You" and "Time after Time" is represented by two different takes. Or, as always, buy the music. The Prestige album is still readily available, and the Black Lion album is findable.
Fred Norsworthy, who engineered the session, is listed as producer on the Prestige release, titled Dedication! Black Lion founder Alan Bates gets producer credit for the Black Lion rerelease, called Minor Mishap. The European release on Fontana was titled Groovy!, so two of the titles included exclamation points.
It's very easy, as a fan who's become a student of Prestige's history, to think Wow, everyone who is anyone has played on a Prestige record at one time or another. But of course that's not true. There are are lots of the all time greats who have never recorded for Prestige. But just as you resign yourself to that, another name from your bucket list pops up. And lo and behold, it's Zutty Singleton. The drummer who anchored Louis Armstrong's Hot Five after Baby Dodds left. The drummer on "West End Blues." And the drummer who kicks this ensemble along smartly, especially on a tune written for him, "Brush Lightly" (one of his specialties, but that's not all he does).
And he's in good company here, for a session that completes the LP project begun by Cliff Jackson's Washboard Wanderers. Wellstood and the gang also have a colorful name, if not quite as colorful: Dick Wellstood's Wailerites. For the Wailerites, Herman Autrey and Sedric are both new to Prestige, and both made their first entry into the big time with Fats Waller. And how did they get from there to Prestige? One never knows, do one? And they can play jazz, and they can play the music the way Wellstood wants it played.
And how are we to describe what that music is? Well, given what Wellstood had to say about it:
You see, there are really two musics--the one the musicians think they are playing and the one the audience thinks it is hearing.
I'm almost afraid to say anything at all. Wellstood's Wailerites are closer to the tradition established by Coleman Hawkins and other Swingville labelmates than they are to Cliff Jackson and the other side of this record. Jackson and his bandmates could have come right out of the 1930s, or even the 1920s. Wellstood and his group are in that Swingville style--musicians who've listened to bebop, and absorbed what it has to offer, but who have chosen not to play it.
Wellstood probably couldn't go back to the music of the 1920s even if he wanted to...not that he wasn't musician enough. For one thing, when the guys in his band were busy making their mark with Fats Waller and others, Wellstood was busy being born. Born in 1927, he was seven years younger than Charlie Parker, a full decade younger than Dizzy Gillespie. And he was living proof that bebop wasn't the only way to be inventive. As guitarist Marty Grozs described him, he “was always doing these little things that were going against the grain.”
On this album, or one side of an album, he plays three tunes, two his own compositions and one, "Yacht Club Swing," credited here to Herman Autrey, but in other places to Autrey, Fats Waller and J. C. Johnson. It was first recorded by Waller and Autrey in 1938, and there had only been a couple of other recordings before Wellstood; it has since become something of a standard for trad bands, especially ones with an international flavor.
Although Wellstood was frequently compared to Waller, and although here he uses two Waller sidemen to excellent effect, he did not particularly like the comparison. His idol had been stride pianist James P. Johnson, and he preferred to say he was playing in the style of Johnson. But the truth is, he has his own style, rooted in stride, but not bound by it. Listen to variations on stride, and the improvisations on the melody, that he runs through in "Yacht Club." The earlier musicians, bound by the limitations of 78 RPM, made brevity a virtue: Waller's recording of "Yacht Club" is three minutes of sustained brilliance. Wellstood is able to open it up to seven minutes--more room for solos all around, more room for exploration, and Wellstood's Wailerites take full advantage of it.
Wellstood played with Odetta, played with Bob Dylan, and also took a ten-month break from performing to practice law (yes, he had a law degree). But he came back to the keyboard. ''The firm liked my work, and I could have stayed there,'' he told John S. Wilson of the New York Times. ''But I realized that all those years in music had ruined me for something like the law.''
Going back in time, to pick up a session I had not been able to find at the time: Willis Jackson with his original partners, Jack McDuff and Bill Jennings.
Conguero Buck Clarke makes an interesting addition to this version of the Jackson group. Clarke, born and raised in Washington, DC, is not a percussionist in the Latin tradition--perhaps more Afrocentric. He contributes strongly to the group's sound, particularly on the showpiece of the session, the ten-and-a-half-minute "Keep on a-Blowin'." Jackson, of course, made his reputation as a hard-blowing rhythm and
blues tenor man, with titles like "Blow, Jackson, Blow." The classic honking tenor instrumentals of rhythm and blues were cut for the 78 and later 45 RPM jukebox market, and their intensity was tailored to three minutes and generally one soloist. "Keep on a-Blowin'" is very different from that. There's enough blowin' by the Gator, with some solid fills and call-and-response by McDuff, to make for a very satisfactory two-sided 45, and in fact Prestige did release one. But there's more, and appropriately so, with two sidemen as good as McDuff and Jennings. In fact, the over ten-minute cut is more or less divided into thirds, with Jennings soloing in the middle and McDuff at the end. I don't know how the tune was edited for the 45 RPM release, but they certainly could have done it the way it was done on Bill Doggett's classic two-sided "Honky Tonk": tenor sax solo on one side and guitar on the other.
Rudy Van Gelder keeps Buck Clarke's conga beat prominent throughout the number, and it's a welcome addition. Even with Ray Barretto's work on a number of recordings for Prestige and other labels, hand-propelled drums were still a rarity in jazz, and were rarely thought of in any context other than Latin music, which is why Buck Clarke didn't get a lot of dates.
A fact acknowledged by Clarke in a 1988 interview, looking back on his career. He had fallen in love with the congas early, and had never been tempted to switch to a more popular instrument.
The interview, by James Graves, and now posted on YouTube, gives another fascinating look into a less-known life in the jazz business. Clarke, born and raised in Washington, DC, went to work as a young teenager for a man who owned a sign company, and was Duke Ellington's cousin. His boss used to play jazz records for him -- the Duke, of course. and Oscar Peterson. "Then Dizzy Gillespie, and I was hooked."
The hook was sunk in deeper when his boss played him records of Gillespie with Chano Pozo:
and knew I wanted to play percussion. Something spiritual happened to me, as though someone had said to me “this is what you will do.” It was tough, because there was little or no interest in bongos or congas for jazz at that time [the late 1940s].
Clarke started out playing the black vaudeville circuit, known at the time as "jig shows," then started to get gigs around the DC area with dance bands who wanted to include a few rhumbas -- this was before the mambo and cha-cha craze. On one of those dance gigs, with a band called Wesley Anderson and his Washingtonians (not Duke Ellington's Washingtonians), he found that the band was to be augmented by a guest star:
I was excited to be asked because they had some great musicians in that band, including Eddie Jones who had played for several years with Count Basie. But I was really excited when I found out who else had been hired for that one gig—Charlie Parker.
Bird and I hit it off right away. There were even moments on the stage when it was no one but me and him playing. It didn’t get recorded, but it’s recorded in my head, and it will be until I leave this world.
I never saw Bird again, but in my mind I could hear him telling me, OK, kid go for it. You got it, now go for it. So I hit the road.
Clarke hit the road, playing his congas and bongos, playing everywhere someone would let him, still resisting the temptation to switch instruments:
And still I had people asking me, “When are you going to play a real instrument? You want to play jazz, you need to pick up a saxophone or something.” But for me, playing percussion was like touching the earth.
A highlight of those days included a gig with Arnett Cobb when he was 19 or 20, where he says he really learned how to play with a band, and finally arriving in New York, where he got a chance to play with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
Clarke made an album for the tiny Offbeat label in 1960, and two more for Argo in 1961 and 1963, but as far as getting called by name jazz musicians went, the Willis Jackson gig was pretty much of a one-off. But when a new decade rolled around, and percussion became the staple of jazz music that Clarke had always predicted it would, things changed, He recorded in the 1970s with Les McCann, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Smith, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Nina Simone, the Isley Brothers, John Mayall and others.
The session, produced by Esmond Edwards, ended up all over the place, which is probably one reason that it didn't create much of a calling card for Clarke. "Sportin'" (by Jackson and Jennings) and "Where Are You?" went to Cookin' Sherry. "Keep on a-Blowin'" (Jackson and McDuff) went on Cool "Gator." "This Nearly Was Mine" was on Blue Gator. "It Might as Well Be Spring" and "This'll Get to Ya" were on Together Again!, which had put together leftover tracks from various sessions, and was released in 1965, after Jackson, Jennings and McDuff had gone their separate ways. "Dancing on the Ceiling" was held off until 1966 and Together Again, Again!
"Keep on a-Blowin'" was one two-sided single, and "This'll Get to Ya" was the other.
Esmond Edwards and Oliver Nelson put Etta Jones together with a string section over three recording sessions. The first one had been back on June 9. This one was followed by another three days later.The string sections were anonymous; the other players, except for George Duvivier on the bass, are all new from the June session. A reed section is added, and the two French horn players from June are cut down to one.
This French horn belongs to Ray Alonge, mostly a classical musician (he was first chair in the Indianapolis symphony while still in high school), but with some impressive jazz credentials too: Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, Milt Hinton. And going farther afield, he played on recordings by Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
Female singers with strings became a thing after Billie Holiday did it, and it generally wasn't a bad thing, if not necessarily a good thing. In this case, with Oliver Nelson arranging and conducting, the results are good. Jones veers toward the Billie Holiday side of her personality, which is probably understandable, since Holiday more or less set the template for jazz singers with strings.
One song from the July 25th session, "You Better Go Now," is associated with Holiday, and Jones would record again in 2001, on her last studio album, A Tribute to Lady Day. Interestingly, the 1961 version owes a lot more to Lady Day than the later version. She also recorded it in 1994 with Benny Green, the pianist--not to be confused with Bennie Green, the great trombonist, or Benny Green, the British saxophonist. The song had originally been performed in 1936 as part of the Broadway revue New Faces of 1936 (the only new faces of note were Imogene Coca and Van Johnson), but it had not broken out as a hit, and was never recorded again until Holiday found it in 1947.
"And This is My Beloved" is another interesting choice, perhaps dictated by the orchestral instrumentation. From the Broadway show Kismet, it never achieved quite the breakout status of "Stranger in Paradise" or "Baubles, Bangles and Beads," but it's had quite a life as a vehicle for pop singers with operatic ambitions like Jim Nabors or Jackie Wilson (granted, quite a range of styles there) or opera singers with pop ambitions like Richard Tucker, but one thing hasn't particularly beem is a vehicle for jazz singers. or jazz instrumentalists (with one odd exception--Sun Ra). Jones basically sticks to the melody, but she has some nice jazz-tinged phrasing, and it makes for a satisfactory outing,
"Unchained Melody," from the July 28 session, is another unusual choice, although not so unusual when you consider how popular a choice it was, and has become, From the soundtrack of a 1955 grade B movie, it attracted twelve different reco
Dating from 1955, it is one of the most popular songs of all time,, with over 450 versions (and if you think that the mid-1950s were so rock 'n roll dominated that a ballad didn't have a chance, think again. "Unchained Melody" isn't even the most-recorded ballad of 1955; "Cry Me a River" beats it out). It's been recorded by pop singers, rockers, country singers, almost everyone except jazz singers, although one of the biggest hit versions was by Al Hibbler. Even in the hands of an Al Hibbler or an Etta Jones it's not exactly a jazz tune, but Oliver Nelson's string arrangement is one of his most interesting, and Jones works with it in inventive and creative ways. There may not be a whole lot you can do with improvisation on "Unchained Melody" with strings, although Jones makes some interesting choices, but there's a lot you can do with dynamics, and there she comes through.
"Unchained Melody" was the 45 RPM single. On the other side was "Hurry Home," written by Buddy Bernier, Bob Emmerich and Joseph Meyer, not a well-known tune (I'd never heard it before), but a good one. It had been a hit for Kate Smith in 1938, and Ella Fitzgerald recorded it on Verve in 1957. Jones and Nelson give this one a jazz reading, and a good one--I like her version better than Ella's. The album was called So Warm.
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
Lightnin' Hopkins may have produced more blues recordings than any other artist.
Partly, this was because he lived and recorded in the LP era. If Blind Lemon Jefferson had been brought into the studio, as Hopkins was, to record whole albums worth of music on the same day, he might have recorded more. Lead Belly died in 1949, before the LP era, which I knew without thinking about it, but I've only seen LP releases of his music, so this actually comes as a little surprise to me. His voluminous recordings for the Library of Congress were released as LPs. But because of his prison time, Lead Belly's recording career was relatively short.
There was a perfect convergence for Hopkins. He lived in the LP era, he lived a long time, he managed--unlike Scrapper Blackwell, for example--to keep himself in the public eye and in the recording studio. But there's another reason why one musician recorded output is plentiful while another's is sparse.
Like Jefferson and Lead Belly, and others who recorded a lot, he knew a lot of songs.
And this is significant. Obvious, if you think about it. But there are reasons why -- in blues, in rhythm and blues, in country, in rock and roll--you see so many brief careers, or one-hit wonders. There are other reasons, early death being right up there. Or addiction, or bad career choices, or prison. But an important reason is simply not having enough songs. You see it a lot in the doo-wop groups of the 50s, groups like the Penguins, whose "Earth Angel" is one of the most beloved and popular recordings of the era, but who never had another hit. And often, if you follow the careers of these groups, as Marv "Unca Marvy" Goldberg has, you discover that these one-hit groups made a number of other recordings, often moving from label to label, trying to catch that lightning in a bottle again. And if you listen to a few of these other, less successful recordings, you often discover that these singers really only had that one idea. That one spark of genius that produced a great harmonic idea wedded to a great beat--and the rest were imitations of that one spark.
Hopkins was as prolific as he was because he knew a lot of songs, because he could improvise moments of his life into song, and because he was subtle. The twelve-bar blues is a constant form, but Hopkins's lyric gifts were such that he could craft a lot of stories, and his variations on guitar licks and vocal approaches made each song a new experience.
This session for Prestige is a perfect example of that. It's just him and an acoustic guitar, which means he can set (and vary) his own tempos. He starts with two songs by others, "Buddy Brown's Blues" by his cousin Alger "Texas" Alexander, and the rhythm and blues standard "Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee" by Stick McGhee. The lyric is mostly same, let's all get together and drink some wine, but the acoustic accompaniment, and Hopkins's introspective vocal styling, give it a very different feeling.
The rest are listed either as "Traditional" or by Hopkins, and it's sometimes hard to tell where the distinction falls. Some of the songs are little slices of Hopkins's life, like his ride on a DC-7 (His mama says "Son, you almost been to heaven." He says, "What you mean, Mama?" She says "Son, you been ridin' that high-flyin' DC-7.") "My Grandpa is Old Too!" is part sung, part spoken--a tribute to his grandpa who has "been takin' care of me ever since I was a boy," and who now deserves a little peace and quiet, not to be bothered. It's not sentimental wallowing like Eddie Fisher singing the English language version of the German song about my Papa who was so wonderful. or hero worship like Randy Travis thinking that his grandpa walked on water. It's the blues, and the blues are about how things are. And it's very moving.
"Beans, Beans, Beans" is jointly attributed to Hopkins and Traditional, which is really a little odd, since all these traditional songs are given alterations and tailored to fit Hopkins. This one is a mixture of song and story, mostly story, about working in the fields, and I would guess that the traditional part is the smallest. "Goin' to Dallas to See My Pony" run is listed as traditional, but it's new to me. But as I said, Lighnin' Hopkins knows a whole lot more songs than most people.
Houston folklorist Mack McCormick and Kenneth S. Goldstein produced. Since the session took place in Houston, so Hopkins needed no DC-7 to get to it, that probably means McCormick did the hands-on producing, which mostly meant getting a mike and sticking it in front of Hopkins. Well, nothing is ever that simple. But simplicity was the key here, and Hopkins nailed it.
Blues in My Bottle was the title of the album. "Sail On, Little Girl, Sail On" and "Death Bells" were the 45 RPM single.
Clark Terry has been a presence in the Prestige catalog, though largely under the radar, either playing in large ensembles or backing up a vocalist. His debut was early and auspicious--in 1950, the very early days of the label, joining Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Criss for a live blowing session. This is the kind of music, from one of the most exciting periods in jazz history, that excited Bob Weinstock into forming a new label, and it's wonderful to go back and listen to it again,
Then a decade would go by before he connected with the label again--a busy time, starting out with Count Basie, then moving to Duke Ellington and spending the rest of the decade with him. A lot of recording--by the time his career was finished, Terry had appeared on more than 900 records. A lot of time on the road--much of his non-Ellington work was done in studios in LA or Chicago.
Then in 1959, he left Ellington, settled in New York, and took a job as a staff musician for NBC (he was the only African-American in the Tonight show band). This gave him a lot more time for various recording gigs, and he returned to Prestige in September of 1960 as a member of Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis's big band. That was followed by a much more prominent role in a quintet led by Buddy Tate, then in a Jimmy Hamilton ensemble, an Oliver Nelson orchestra backing Gene Ammons, and a session backing vocalist Clea Bradford.
The July session, his only one as leader for Prestige, put him at the head of a quartet Prestige semi-regulars Joe Benjamin and Charlie Persip, and a musician whose history with Prestige was remarkably similar to his own. Jumior Mance had made one recording for the label in 1951, then spent the rest of the decade elsewhere, returning to join Davis's big band. He would record a few more times with Davis for the label.
The music is mellow, as befits a Moodsville session, with emphasis on ballads, and Terry is your man for the job. His approach is intelligent, technically superb, warm and emotional without ever getting cliched or sentimental. He does standards, two originals. and one unusual choice for a jazz album, Brahms's "Lullabye"--not so unusual for Terry, though. It was a particular favorite, one that he played often and recorded more than once.
This is one of those albums where you're glad it's just a quartet, because you can appreciate the intimate time spent with Terry. Junior Mance's solos are also beautiful.
The Moodsville album was titled, appropriately, Everything's Mellow.
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
While the cats were away (at the Five Spot) the mice were playing. although very much an older generation of mice. While Eric Dolphy and Booker Little were finishing up their groundbreaking engagement at the Five Spot, Rudy Van Gelder had re-ensconced himself in his cathedral of recorded jazz in Englewood Cliffs to capture the sounds of Cliff Jackson and his Washboard Wanderers. And if many of the Swingville albums featured swing era musicians playing a mid-20th century version of swing, such was not always the case. These gents weren't even playing swing, mid-century style or otherwise. They were going
back earlier, to the music dubbed by its 1950s revivalists as Dixieland, and featuring instruments of an earlier time and sensibility: washboard, kazoo, banjo. And they were cats who were born in the first decade of the century--Floyd Casey and Elmer Snowden as the century dawned, Ed Allen even earlier, in 1897.
So, not cutting edge. But that doesn't me they aren't worth listening to. The banjo had been retired as a jazz insttrument for about 40 years by this time, and "The Sheik of Araby" as a jazz tune for nearly that long, but listen to what Elmer Snowden does with his solo. Listen to Ed Allen and Rudy Powell. Hell, if you want to hear real jazz played on a kazoo, listen to Floyd Casey. And before long, you realize you're not just tapping your feet, you're pricking up your ears. And you want to play it again.
Ed Allen began his career as an itinerant musician in the 1910s, and by the end of the decade was playing on the Mississippi riverboats and then leading his own riverboat band, the Whispering Gold Band. In the 1920s, he made that classic trad jazz pilgrimage from New Orleans to Chicago, where he worked with Earl Hines, Clarence Williams, Bessie Smith and King Oliver. At the time of this recording, he and Rudy Powell were both playing around the New York area in a dance band led by Benton Heath.
Abe Bolar cut his musical teeth with the Southwestern territorial bands, and recorded in Kansas City with Joe Turner and Pete Johnson--he played bass on the original Decca recording of "Piney Brown Blues." He left KC for New York with Hot Lips Page, and made New York his home from the end of the 1930s on. He played briefly in Count Basie's and Lucky Millinder's ensembles.
Floyd Casey, as a kazoo and washboard player (he also played drums) was limited in the kinds of ensembles he could play for, but he did work regularly in old-timey bands, and went back with Ed Allen to the riverboat days and Allen's Whispering Gold Band.
Three of the Washboard Wanderers' songs date back to the 1920s. Composer Ted Snyder of "Sheik of Araby," one of the most prolific and successful songwriters of the first two decades of the 20th Century, had retired from writing music by 1930. Harry B. Smith, co-lyricist with Francis Wheeler, died in 1936, but by then he had written the lyrics to over 6000 songs, and is said to be, to this date, the most prolific songwriter in the American canon,
"Wolverine Blues" was written by Jelly Roll Morton, and has always been a favorite of traditional bands. Equally popular, and also with a distinguished pedigree, is "I Found a New Baby," written by Jack Palmer and Spencer Williams.
The fourth selection is the trad jazz version of that Rudy Van Gelder favorite, the Five O'Clock Blues. It features the guys jamming on a slow blues, and making some very tasty music.
This session formed one side of a Swingville album, Uptown and Lowdown. The second side went to a group led by Dick Wellstood, in the studio a week later.
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
In the 1940s, a revolution in American music took place in New York City, in the nightclubs along 52nd Street and the great after-hours clubs, Minton's and Monroe's, in Harlem. New York was the place, to such an extent that when people were looking for a name for the music that came to be known as bebop, one of the names that was used for a while was New York music. By the end of the 1950s, a new revolution was taking place in American music, and New York was still the white-hot epicenter, but the locus had shifted. Now it was downtown, along the edge of Greenwich Village, in a neighborhood that was then called the Bowery or the Lower East Side but would later be rebranded as the East Village, and specifically in one club: the Five Spot.
The Five Spot had begun its move toward the cutting edge in 1957-58, when Thelonious Monk, newly reinstated to legal status with a cabaret card, took residence with a group featuring John Coltrane. Then in 1959, it opened its stage to Ornette Coleman's quartet, a group no one wanted to book, and not everyone wanted to hear, but no one could stop talking about.
Probably the three most important figures of the new jazz, or "free jazz" as it came to be called, were Coleman, Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, and in July of 1961, Eric Dolphy brought a quintet to the Five Spot.
The quintet included drummer Ed Blackwell, who had played with Coleman. Bassist Richard Davis had most recently been working with Sarah Vaughan, but he understood what Dolphy was doing. Mal Waldron was on piano, and anyone who's followed this history of Prestige knows what I think of him, both as a player and as a composer. He has one piece here, the fire-breathing "Fire Waltz," which they had played on a Prestige session led by Waldron just a couple of weeks earlier, and which has been recorded a number of times in succeeding years by different artists.
Finally, Booker Little, the brilliant young trumpeter who had played on Dolphy's last studio album, and would be dead within three months of the Five Spot dates. Little was ten years younger than Dolphy, eight years younger than Coleman. He had grown up under the spell of Clifford Brown, and he had played for a few years and made several albums with Max Roach, but he was ready for the new sound, and ready to spread his wings with the new music Dolphy was making.
Dolphy was an interesting musician in so many ways. He was so much in the vanguard of the new music, and one of its most important innovators, but he was able to play in such a wide variety of contexts. He was very often the most advanced musician in whatever ensemble he was playing with--the Prestige albums with the Latin Jazz Quintet are a perfect example--but he left no musician behind.
This club date with Little is not master and student--Dolphy was never like that. But it is Dolphy leading the way. Little has come a long way in the six months since his studio album with Dolphy, and we can only imagine what more he would have had to offer.
The two albums, Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot Vol. 1 (New Jazz) and Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot Vol. 2 (Prestige) were both from the same night at the club, and were recorded by Rudy Van Gelder. "Fire Waltz," "Bee Vamp" and "The Prophet" were on Volume 1, with the alternate take of "Bee Vamp" included on the CD reissue. "Aggression" and "Like Someone in Love" were Volume two, with "Nunber Eight" and "Booker's Waltz" added to the CD reissues. A couple of numbers, "Status Seeking" and Dolphy's unaccompanied "God Bless the Child," were on another album, Here and There.
Esmond Edwards produced.
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
Grant Green was already hitting it big with Blue Note when he showed up for this, his second session with Jack McDuff, and as busy as Blue Note kept him, he was lucky to have time for lunch, let alone doing any more sideman gigs for Prestige. After his February debut with McDuff, he did a live date at Minton's with Stanley Turrentine (four sets that became two Blue Note albums), a session with Dave Bailey for the short-lived Canadian label Jazztime, Blue Note sessions with Kenny Dorham (unissued) and Hank Mobley (issued), before getting his first Blue Note date as leader of his own group in April. Then an organ trio led by Baby Face Willette in May,
another leader date and a date with Horace Parlan in June, before reconnecting with McDuff in July. Then back to Blue Note for two sessions in August, resulting in two albums; two sessions in September (Stanley Turrentine and Lou Donaldson), and another session as leader in October. He had November off for Thanksgiving, then back to business in December with a Sonny Red session for Riverside's Jazzland subsidiary, and two Blue Note sessions with Ike Quebec, one under Quebec's name and the other under his own. And he was off to the races, well on his way to becoming the most recorded artist in Blue Note's catalog.
As Green was exiting, Harold Vick was entering, and he would spend five years--and eleven albums, nine for Prestige--with McDuff.
So this would be the only album the three of them played together on, and you might well think "Wow, just the one session, and they're as tight as any three guys I ever heard," until you remembered all those sessions with McDuff, Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson, and Bill Jennings. So perhaps it's time to give McDuff credit for being able to fit right in the pockets of the cats he played with. Maybe that's partly the blues-based simplicity of McDuff's music -- and Vick, also, had a background in rhythm and blues -- but it's not all that simple, and it is all that tight,
The boys go for a simple melody when they reach into the rhythm and blues catalog for the album's title cut, "Goodnight, It's Time to Go." Originally recorded as "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight" by the Chicago doowop group The Spaniels, it has become standard for pop, rock and even country vocalists, but this is probably the only jazz treatment. But with some sweet swing, and especially some inventive solos by Green, they make it a satisfying six minute performance, They also take on a Tin Pan Alley standard ("I'll Be Seeing You," by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal) and some Benny Goodman swing ("A Smooth One"). But for me, the highlight of the album is the McDuff composition "Sanctified Waltz," where McDuff and Vick are two hearts beating as one through a barn burner of a tune.
"Godiva Brown" was held back, and eventually surfaced on a later album, Steppin' Out.
Joe Dukes spent much of his career with McDuff, although he was in demand as a session drummer for both soul jazz and soul music. He would be the drummer when McDuff put together another tighter-than-tight organ-guitar-tenor group with Red Holloway and George Benson. That one impressed Prestige president Bob Weinstock so much that he offered each of the sideman an album as leader. Benson, of course, was well on his way to a mega-career, but that would be Dukes's only album as leader.
Esmond Edwards produced, and Goodnight, It's Time to Go came out on the Prestige label. "Sanctified Waltz" and "Goodnight, It's Time to Go" were the 45 RPM single.
