Tad Richards' odyssey through the catalog of Prestige Records:an unofficial and idiosyncratic history of jazz in the 50s and 60s. With occasional digressions.
Jaki Byard’s importance was always recognized by the jazz community, not l.ways by the general public. That he was so widely recorded — at least 35 albums as leader, more than 50 as sideman - are a testimonial to the willingness of jazz record labels to want to record the best people, even if not many people are buying those records. That almost all of these records were made for tiny labels suggests that maybe the majors and major independents aren’t all that willing to record artists who don’t sell a lot.
That the sole exception to that generalization was Prestige—12 albums over 8 years, from 1961 to 1969–is a pretty solid testimonial to Bob Weinstock’s
commitment to excellence in jazz. And one should include the Prestige front office team in general—5 more of Byard’s albums were made for Muse and High Note, labels started by Joe Fields, who had been an executive with Prestige through most of the 1960s (although the three High Note albums were only released after Byard’s death).
This was Byard’s second Prestige album as leader (there had also been two with Eric Dolphy and one with Don Ellis). Like the first, it was a trio album, and like the first, it featured Ron Carter on bass. For this session, Pete La Roca replaces Roy Haynes on drums, for his only Prestige session.
La Roca was in demand as a drummer throughout most of the decade. Later, he decided he would no longer work as a sideman, and since opportunities to record as a leader were sparse, he also followed other pursuits, including studying for a law degree. This education came in handy when a record company which had released one of his two dates as leader rereleased it under Chick Corea’s name. He sued them and won.
This session was made up of three originals, four covers, and one sort of odd attribution. I'll concentrate for today on the non-originals, because they tell a story of their own.
The odd attribution is "Excerpts from Yamecraw." Yamecraw was a symphonic piece written in 1928 by James P. Johnson, orchestrated by Willian Grant Still, and premiered with Fats Waller as pianist. Byard, interviewed by Nat Hentoff for the liner notes, describes being approached by music publisher Perry Bradford, who had been making the rounds trying to find a jazz pianist interested in doing the piece, with no takers.
That was perhaps not surprising. Bradford had been an important figure, as a performer and composer, but primarily as one of the first Black music industry executives. It was Bradford who convinced Okeh records to take a chance on recording his song, "Crazy Blues," with a Black singer, when the conventional wisdom of the day was that no one would buy a record by a Black singer. Mamie Smith's recording of "Crazy Blues" was a surprise hit, and ushered in the recorded blues craze of the 1920s.
But by the 1960s, Bradford was a hanger-on, a forgotten figure, and no one was much listening to him. It's probably more surprising that Byard did. But Byard was one of the great students of piano jazz of every era, and Johnson and Waller were two of his heroes. The curiosity is that "Excerpts from Yamecraw," which is described by Hentoff as "Jaki excerpted a 12-bar phrase from the suite and constructed his own absorbing variations on that base" is listed as a Byard composition.
And there's nothing wrong with that. Brahms did the same thing, and his "Variations on a Theme by Haydn" or "Variations and Fugue on a theme by Handel" are unquestionably the work of Brahms. But isn't this pretty much what all jazz musicians do? Coleman Hawkins famously ushered in the modern jazz era with his recording of "Body and Soul," where he basically never plays the melody. But it's "Body and Soul," and Johnny Green gets composer credit and royalties. Eddie Jefferson's "Moody's Mood For Love" is his lyrics to James Moody's improvisation, not to the original tune, but Jimmy McHugh sued and won a share of the composer credit and royalties.
Often jazz musicians have successfully gotten around the royalty issue by taking the chord changes to a song they liked and building a completely new melody around them -- much the same as what Hawkins did with "Body and Soul," except that they also changed the name of the piece, like Charlie Parker's "Ornithology." built on the changes to "How High the Moon," or the dozens of pieces written to the chord changes of George Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm."
So when does the invention of a jazz musician (or a classical composer, like Brahms) become a new composition? It does matter, because songwriters get screwed out of royalties all the time. But it also sorta doesn't.
What's important about "Excerpts from Yamecraw" is Byard's homage to Johnson and Waller. And the other outside compositions in Hi-Fly provide insights into his mind and his musicality, starting with the title track, composed by Randy Weston.
About "Lullabye of Birdland," Byard told Hentoff, "I know it's fashionable to put down George Shearing, but I feel he's made a contribution, and this tune of his has certainly lasted." Shearing had come over from England as one of the most original modern jazz pianists around, had jammed with Charlie Parker, and had gradually tempered his style to more accessible "cocktail jazz." At the time, with modern jazz so identified with rebellion, playing in a cocktail lounge was considered the very definition of selling out. Ahmad Jamal had the same label hung on him, until Miles Davis revealed that he was a fan of Jamal's rich improvisational skills. So it's no surprise that Byard, who listened to everything, picked up on Shearing.
"Round Midnight" is Monk, and here's what Byard had to say about the great pianist/composer:
For me, the most astounding thing about Monk as a composer is his lyric sense. Monk's pieces could be show tunes. You take a bunch of his originals, and you'd have a good musical. His melodic sense is so strong that you can sing anything he writes, and always, you know it's him.
"Blues in the Closet" was written by Oscar Pettiford, but it's still a tribute to another piano hero of Byard's--Bud Powell, for whom it became a signature piece. Of Powell, Byard told Hentoff:
Bud was the main influence for all of us in terms of showing what could be done with single-line playing,
So many influences--and in Byard's case, "influences" doesn't do his art justice. Generally an influence is one overriding master whom the artist works through to find his or her own style. Byard absorbed and used and created something new and original and constantly changing, out of so many different voices.
I've chosen "Blues in the Closet" for my "Listen to One." Each piece on the album is a distinctive look into Jaki Byard, but "Blues in the Closet' also showcases Carter and La Roca effectively.
Was Byard always destined to be underappreciated? Nat Hentoff seemed to think so as early as 1962, when he wrote this on the liner notes to Hi-Fly: "Whether or not it is true that the thunderbolt of sudden fame has missed Jaki...."
Hentoff goes on to hedge his bet a little:
I expect that his reputation will continue to grow on so solid a base of accomplishment that in a few years, it will suddenly occur to many jazz listeners that Jaki has been a major jazz figure for quite a long time, no matter what the polls have said.
And still today, "Jaki Byard" and "underappreciated" seem to be almost synonymous. On one recent online list of the 50 greatest jazz pianists, this one compiled by a critic, Byard is listed at #41, and critic Charles Waring had this to say:
Though revered by the critics, Byard’s unique sound was less well-received by the public.
In Ranker.com. reflecting today's jazz listening public, with votes open to everyone who chooses to participate, Byard is nowhere to be found, in a list of 150 piano players. One might question the collective judgment of the Rankers (Bill Evans #72?), but it is what it is. Much of today's jazz audience has forgotten Jaki Byard. Rateyourmusic.com's voters are often quirkier and more perspicacious than Ranker's, but they rate Hi-Fly well below the top 200 albums of 1962 (again, voter polls on the internet are always subject to change, especially on the lower levels).
Should he have been higher than 41 in the critic's judgement? Higher than whom? It's not for me to say. In the 530 entries I've written to Listen to One, you've never seen me use the word "overrated." I never have, and never will, deprecate the contributions of any of the gifted and dedicated musicians who have contributed to this great American art form. But surely Jaki Byard was one of the very best.
Hi-Fly was released on New Jazz. Esmond Edwards produced.
One day after Smith and Powell shook the cathedral rafters of Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey studio. another organ-sax combo took up residence, with no sign of slackening the intensity. And these were two of Prestige's top moneymakers. Jack McDuff was challenging Jimmy Smith for pre-eminence in the organ department (sexism still held Shirley Scott back, as good as she was and as popular as she was). Gene Ammons was probably the most popular artist in Prestige's history. Drugs were to catch up with Ammons before the year was out, and he was back in prison, this time for seven years. When he was finally
released in 1969, he signed again with Prestige, the most lucrative contract Bob Weinstock had ever given to an artist. And even after Weinstock sold Prestige to Saul Zaentz of Fantasy, and it became strictly a reissue label, they put out a couple of new Ammons albums.
So these guys were not going to let any other organ-sax combo steal a march on them. Smith and Powell had unleashed a killer album? Kill this, motherfuckers!
I'm making that up, of course. But it was one day later. Esmond Edwards was at the controls for both sessions. And McDuff and Ammons were smoking hot.
McDuff used the group that he had made into a super-tight ensemble. Harold Vick and Joe Dukes had been with him for a few albums, and would be sticking around for a while -- especially Dukes, regarded by many as the ideal jazz-funk drummer. Eddie Diehl would be around for a while longer, before getting off the road and entering a new career as a guitarmaker. He had also worked before with Ammons, so they were no strangers to each other, either.
The album. Brother Jack Meets the Boss, was a Prestige release. "Mellow Gravy" was a two-sided 45 RPM release, and the album was also released as Mellow Gravy, with a different cover but the same catalog number.
Johnny "Hammond" Smith was one of the most hard-driving, no holds barred jazz funk organists out there, and it's no surprise that when teamed with rhythm and blues veteran Seldon Powell, he churns up some high-powered excitement on this session. Perhaps a little more surprising is that they included a vibes player in the mix, and that he adds another dimension of heat to an already combustible mix.
The vibes player was Clement Wells, and although Powell would work again with Smith on a number of occasions, this is Wells's only recording date with the organist, and apparently his last recording session altogether. He seems to have been one of those who preferred a settled life to the vagaries of the road.
Wells's settled life was in Washington, DC, which must have had a pretty decent, if unheralded jazz scene in those days. Guitarist Charlie Byrd was the best known Washingtonian. He became nationally known while playing a regular gig at the Showboat Lounge in Washington, much the same as Ahmad Jamal at the Pershing Lounge in Chicago. But others who had gotten out of the rat race chose Washington as their home, including another Prestige veteran, trumpeter Webster Young. Percussionist Buck Clarke, who did actively pursue a career (including several Prestige sessions with Willis Jackson) was another Washingtonian, and he used Wells on his Argo album Drum Sum, the vibist's only other record date.
Wells did live on, however, in the form of a tune given to Oscar Peterson by Seymour Lefco, best known as "the jazz dentist," among whose many musical patients were Peterson and Ray Brown. "You Look Good to Me" became a staple of Peterson's repertoire, It's credited to Lefco and Wells, but it's pretty certainly Wells's tune.
Guitarist Wally Richardson was a versatile player whose credits included jazz, rhythm and blues, funk, and even Motown. As an on-call session player for Prestige, he recorded with Oliver Nelson , Sam “The Man” Taylor, Buddy Tate, Al Sears, Groove Holmes, Etta Jones and Betty Roche. Leo Stevens was Smith's regular drummer.
The album was titled Look Out! and it came out on New Jazz. Esmond Edwards produced.
It's been said that jazz is the only musical genre in which the vibraphone is used as a lead instrument, and that's probably not exactly true, especially if you extend the discussion to all mallet-played melodic-percussive instruments. French composer Camille Saint-Saëns was perhaps the first classical composer to write for the instrument (in his case a xylophone) for his 1874 Danse Macabre. Handel and Mozart (most famously The Magic Flute) wrote parts for the glockenspiel, which is similar to the vibraphone but tuned to a higher pitch. Modernist composer Darius Milhaud wrote a Concerto for Marimba and Vibraphone in 1947. The marimba, probably African in origin, further developed as an instrument in Latin America, has become a staple of Japanese music, particularly in the work of composer Keiko Abe.
But the instrument certainly has a special prominence in jazz, starting with Lionel Hampton. Hampton, the story goes, was playing a gig on drums in the NBC radio studios. NBC always had a vibraphone on hand to make the three-note NBC call signal; Hampton noticed it, started fooling around on it, and was hooked.
After Hampton, Milt Jackson created a new vibraphone model for the bebop era, and the instrument has stayed relevant in jazz, as Gary Burton brought it into the jazz fusion era, and Stefon Harris (also a renowned classical musician) into the 21st century.
Burton, Dickerson and Bobby Hutcherson were probably the three most prominent vibraphonists of the 1960s. Dickerson, signed to Prestige as they lost their vibe star Lem Winchester in a handgun incident, was the first of the three to gain prominence, as he was named New Star of the Year by DownBeat. But Burton's and Hutcherson's careers extended longer, and Dickerson has faded into an undeserved obscurity, as he left the jazz scene in the mid-1960s, and never recovered that lost momentum. On his return, he focused a lot on solo playing and music as part of an ongoing spiritual quest, the latter following the example of John Coltrane, with whom he had played as a young man in Jimmy Heath's big band. Coltrane's and Philly Joe Jones's recommendations had gotten him his recording deal with Prestige.
Dickerson used a special kind of mallet that gave him what he described as a "plush" sound, softer than that of most vibraphone players. He described the sound in more detail in an interview with Mike Johnston:
My approach has always been to be physically close to the instrument, very close. This is different than the approach that is taught on the instrument. I was unable to play intricate things on the instrument with the commonly taught approach. The music that the creator sends me is not of a cosmetic nature; it seems to come as streams of intricate passages of flowing imagery. This means that I can’t use the common approach to the instrument in order to perform these passages. So I’ve modified a complete personal style or technique so I can play the music I receive. So, in adapting my personal approach to playing my instrument my sound has adapted as well. Both are a part of the projection.
That unique sound is heard to excellent advantage on this album, consisting of three standards (one by Gershwin, two by Vernon Duke) and four originals. Dickerson is the principal voice throughout, but the musicians playing with him are awfully good, and very attuned to him. Austin Crowe is sensitive throughout. His work with Dickerson is so good that one can only wonder why he didn't do more--Dickerson in a later interview suggested that the jazz life on the road may not have agreed with him. Ahmed Abdul-Malik has a wonderful solo on "It Ain't Necessarily So," and Andrew Cyrille is consistently arresting, but I'll single out his work on "Relativity," the title track.
Relativity was released on New Jazz. Esmond Edwards produced.
King Curtis made his reputation with his thrilling solos to recordings by Atlantic rhythm and blues and doo wop performers in the 1950s. Then, later in 1962, he made a recording, "Soul Twist," for Harlem entrepreneur Bobby Robinson's Enjoy label, which hit Number One on the Billboard R&B charts, number 17 on the pop charts, and established Curtis as a star in his own right, with several more chart singles, culminating in the monster hit, Memphis Soul Stew, for Atlantic in 1967.
In between, he made six albums for Prestige, three of them for the "contemporary rhythm and blues" label, Tru-Sound. He worked on a number of other sessions, including several backing up singers for Bluesville. He worked with jazz musicians like Nat Adderley, or with his own working group, as here. This is the second of two sessions to include another rhythm and blues tenor legend, Sam "the Man" Taylor.
It was his association with the twist that brought stardom to Curtis, but really, "Soul Twist" was just a rhythm and blues number, and a good one--Curtis was one of the best R&B tenormen around. You could actually do the twist to any peppy tune with a back beat--it wasn't like the samba or the rhumba or the mambo, or even the bunny hop.
And the same with the tunes on this album. "The Twist" is the most Pavlovian response-inducing cultural phenomenon in American history. Hear Chubby Checker's voice singing "Come on bab-eeee..." even today, and a roomful of people will start gyrating and moving their arms as if drying their butts with an imaginary towel. Same probably with the Isley Brothers of the Beatles singing "Shake it up baby." Not so much with King Curtis's instrumentals, although I'm sure people were twisting the night away to them back then. Now they could still be for dancing to, if you chose, or you could just sit back and listen and snap your fingers and tap your feet. It's King Curtis's regular band, tight as can be, with a second star of the rhythm and blues firmament, Sam "the Man" Taylor (on all but two tracks).
These tunes all went onto the Tru-Sound album It's Party Time, along with four tracks from July 11, 1961, which utilized the same personnel, including Taylor. "Free for All," with "When the Saints Go Marching In" from a session in February 1962, was the first 45 RPM single to come from the session, followed by "Low Down" / "I'll Wait for You."
This Moodsville collection finds Coleman Hawkins bringing the Hawkins touch to Broadway, and a collection of show tunes plucked from, for the most part, not the most obvious of sources, but from some very good composers, and, given Hawkins's ear and chops. some very good results.
Sigmund Romberg. composer of old-fashioned operettas, seems an unlikely source for jazz inspiration, but he's proved surprisingly fertile, particularly from The New Moon, his final Broadway production, in 1928. "Lover, Come Back" has proved an enduring standard, and "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise" has been nearly as popular an inspiration. The other best known composition from The New Moon is "Stout Hearted Men," and it would take indeed a stout
hearted jazzman to try to make something out of that one. "Wanting You" has been pretty nearly completely passed over. Roger Williams, not exactly a jazz pianist (although he did study with Lennie Tristano and Teddy Wilson) recorded it, as did Mario Lanza, who drew much of his repertoire from operetta. And no one else.
Except Coleman Hawkins, and he makes you wonder why it hasn't found more champions. It's a very good melody, and Hawkins finds all the right ways of developing it.
Another lightly recorded song from a powerful composer is Kurt Weill's "Here I'll Stay" from a 1948 musical, Love Life, which had a not-terrible run on Broadway in 1948-49, 252 performances. It sounds as though it would have been worth seeing. Book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, directed by Elia Kazan (who knew he directed musicals?), choreography by Michael Kidd. And an intriguing plot: a couple get married in 1791 and stay married through 1948, during which time they never age, but undergo marital differences that reflect different times and mores.
"Here I'll Stay" was the most successful song from the show, unless you count the number that Lerner reworked, with new music by Frederick Loewe, for the 1958 movie Gigi -- "I Remember it Well." And it's had a modest but continuing life as a vehicle for pop singers, but no jazz artist had ever taken it on between its inception in 1948 and this 1962 recording. Gerry Mulligan must have liked what he heard from the Hawk, because he recorded it in 1963, after which it mostly fell back into jazz oblivion.
Most of the rest of the tunes were recognizable standards, as befits a tribute to Broadway, although one is a ringer -- the Harold Arlen/Ira Gershwin "The Man that Got Away," from the movie A Star is Born.
This was an exciting time for jazz, with Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy--tremendously exciting to hear sounds that pushed the envelope, that took music to places it had never been before. But there's always a place for great old tunes, played by a master. Two masters, as Tommy Flanagan takes the piano chair for the date.
And we have two newcomers to Prestige, both seasoned veterans from the jazz cauldron of Detroit. Major Holley was an instrumental prodigy from a musical household and a graduate of Cass Technical High School, which bred so many jazz greats. Holley took up the bass in the Navy, then jumped right into the mainstream of jazz upon his return to
civilian life, playing with Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker and Ella Fitzgerald, doing duets with Oscar Peterson, The 1950s were an expat time for him, but not Paris or Sweden like many others: he moved to London, where he worked at the BBC for a few years before returning to America. Though he developed a trademark sound of vocalizing along with a bowed bass (a style pioneered by Slam Stewart), he was also much in demand because he could work as an asset to any musicians in any situation. As he put it,
When I was in Duke Ellington’s band, I sounded like Duke’s bass players. I remained applicable to the circumstances of where I was - whether it was Coleman Hawkins or a Broadway show or Judy Collins.″
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