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.''
And a good thing, too.
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