Listening to Prestige 495: Gene Ammons - Sonny Stitt

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This was recorded in 1961 for Argo as Dig Him!, but then was rereleased in 1968 on Prestige as We'll Be Together Again. If it were just a Prestige/Fantasy or Prestige/Concord Original Jazz Classics rerelease, I wouldn't count it, but this was Prestige vinyl from the 1960s, so it counts. 

Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons are together again for this outing. They were mainstays of Prestige in the early days, with eight albums together, but there had been a ten year hiatus. The title song (at least for the Prestige release) is appropriate for their partnership, and they do right by this romantic ballad, led by Ammons, whose approach to romantic ballads was always spot on.

Who was the most romantic balladeer in jazz? That question will get  wide variety of answers. Miles Davis. Wynton Marsalis. Bill Evans. Bobby Hackett. Chet Baker. Gerry Mulligan. Erroll Garner. But most of the answers will be tenor sax players. That instrument was brought into its own by Coleman  in the 1930s. Along with the violin, it is said to be the instrument closest in emotional nuance to tie human voice. So of all the romantic ballad voices in jazz, the tenor sax is the one you're going to keep coming back to. Coleman Hawkins, who staked out the territory with "Body and Soul" n 1939. Ben Webster. Lester Young. Dexter Gordon. Earl Bostic.

And as I've written before, some of the sweetest romantic sounds to be coaxed out of the tenor sax have come from guys who are more associated with the frantic, honking, driving sounds that cone from the rhythm and blues end of jazz. David "Fathead" Newman. Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson. Hal "Corn Bread" Singer (still going at 103, and a survivor of the terrible 1921 Greenwood massacre in Tulsa, OK), Big Jay McNeely, Arnett Cobb.

And Gene Ammons.

He and Stitt, who can also handle a ballad, do some pretty ones here. "We'll Be Together Again" was written by Frankie Laine's musical director, Carl T. Fischer, with lyrics by Laine. Laine, it turns out, was quite a prolific lyricist, but this was the only one for which he had much of a hit. 

"Red Sails in the Sunset" was written by Jimmy Kennedy and Wilhelm Grosz (as Hugh Williams). Grosz was a refugee from Nazi Germany and known as an avant-gardist, but he had a number of successful collaborations in the pop field with Kennedy. Kennedy is also known for a couple of not-so-romantic songs, "Teddy Bears' Picnic" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)."

"But Not For Me" is by the Gershwins, who need no introduction, and "My Foolish Heart" is by Ned Washington and Victor Young, who don't need much of one, especially if you're a movie fan. "Autumn Leaves" is one of the most familiar songs in the pop music canon, even if its composer, Hungarian Joseph Kosma, isn't a household name. Jazz historian Phillippe Baudoin has labeled it the eighth-most recorded song by jazz performers, which is either some nifty research or an interesting guess. And "Time on My Hands" is by three solid pop music professionals,  Harold Adamson, Mack Gordon, and Vincent Youmans.

The rest are Stitt compositions. "New Blues Up and Down" is Ammons and Stitt, and is a followup to their popular "Blues Up and Down," from a 1950 Prestige album. And they add up to a hell of a showcase for the talents of these two saxophone wizards, from romantic to wild, with some swinging mid-tempo ("Red Sails," "But Not for Me") in the middle.

This session was recorded in Chicago, with a group that Ammons and Stitt had on the road. John Houston goes back a long way with Sonny Stitt--he was on a 78 RPM session for Prestige in 1952 that cut two songs, "Blue Mambo" and "Cool Mambo." And he has another interesting historical mention. In 1957, John Coltrane led a quartet at the House of Jazz in Philadelphia. This group must have been preparing some of the ideas that would emerge full blown a few years later, because McCoy Tyner and Reggie Workman were in it. But on the nights when Tyner couldn't make it, the pianist who filled in was Houston.

So perhaps this band was put together in Philadelphia, because that's where they also picked up Buster Williams, heard here on his first recording session. Charles "Buster" Williams is credited as "Charles Williams" here, and that's interesting, because the bassist with Ammons and Stitt was nearly another Charles Williams--Buster's father.

Charles Williams, Senior, was a bass player called on for a lot of gigs around Philadelphia and his hone town of Camden, NJ -- sometimes more than he could make, and he started recommending his son, then in high school, when he was double booked. Young Buster was a recent high school graduate when Dad recommended him to Ammons and Stitt for a Philadelphia gig, and the two jazz legends liked the kid enough to take him along on the road. It was the beginning of a successful career in jazz for Buster, which would bring him back to Prestige late in the decade.

Drummer George Brown is a little harder to trace, partly because there's another George Brown who who achieved more fame as a drummer, with the funk group Kool and the Gang. Brown the jazz drummer spent most of his career in France, but he did record with Wes Montgomery among others.

Ammons recorded a second session in Chicago a few days later for Argo, with an organ trio, but that one was only rereleased as Original Jazz Classics.

The Prestige release came in 1968, at which point the title was bittersweet, as Ammons was in prison for a second time for narcotics possession, and we can only imagine what music was lost to these terrible laws and their racist enforcement.