Listening to Prestige 538: Big Joe Williams

LISTEN TO ONE: Mink Coat Blues

 This is the second Big Joe Williams  session to be released on Prestige Bluesville. This is a live album, which is newsworthy for a couple of reasons. First, Prestige very rarely released live albums. Second, it was recorded at Gerde's Folk City in New York's Greenwich Village. 

Greenwich Village had a long history as the center of New York's Bohemia, and that was still very much the case in 1962. That meant entertainment for the niche audience that was Bohemia, and for the brave souls from the suburbs and the outer boroughs who wanted to see what life had to offer beyond Connie Francis and Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians. Jazz was represented in clubs like the Village

Vanguard. And folk music -- the music of the people, the music of protest, the music discovered in tiny Appalachian communities by folklorists and brought to the folkies of Bohemia in publications like Sing Out!

And, increasingly, it was the music discovered by folklorists like Samuel Charters and Mack McCormick. The blues explosion of the 1960s had arrived, as New York's Bohemia played host to such blues musicians as John Lee Hooker, who was backed up by a young white guy named Bob Dylan, making his first appearance on the Folk City stage. And such blues musicians as Big Joe Williams. 

It was a new experience for New York's Bohemians. A previous generation had learned of the blues through Leadbelly, who was a towering talent, and who was savvy enough to tailor his blues message to his audience, singing about not being mistreated by no bourgeoisie. Or through Big Bill Broonzy, a jazz guitarist who realized he could have a second career if he reinvented himself as a folk bluesman, and reinvented the definition of folk bluesman to include songs about getting together and breaking up the old Jim Crow. The blues was a music of realism in the face of an harsh, unchanging world. The white leftists who made up this new audience believed that the world could be changed, and responded most enthusiastically to songs which reflected that belief.

The new young blues audience of the 1960s was looking for a more authentic experience: the gritty realism of the rural south, and later, especially as it got filtered back to them through British blues enthusiasts, of the urban north. And the blues singers got some new paydays, through clubs like Folk City, college campuses, blues festivals (those came later in the decade) and even European tours. 

For the listener of today, it's an opportunity to hear one of the best of the old bluesmen in an intimate live setting. Williams gets a unique sound from his 9-string guitar, and voice is strong and persuasive, and his observations on life trenchant.

The Bluesville album was entitled Big Joe Williams at Folk City.

Listening to Prestige 537: Sam Taylor

LISTEN TO ONE: Love Song from Suzie Wong

Anastasia

 Prestige adds another rhythm and blues giant to its jazz roster, proving once again that rhythm and blues is a legitimate form of jazz, and that these players fit seamlessly into a more bop-oriented context. Up this time is Samuel Leroy Taylor Jr., known as Sam "the Man" Taylor when he led Alan Freed's stage band, but simply Sam Taylor when he recorded in more respectable settings (similarly, Ellingtonian Al Sears was "Big Al" when he performed and recorded with the Alan Freed band).

Taylor had been something of a pioneer in the sax-organ combo business, having recorded an album with Dick Hyman for MGM back in 1957, with a very different approach from the soul jazz sound that had become popular in 1962. But he

eschews the sax-organ sound here, going instead with a quintet. Pianist Lloyd Mayers's carer spanned decades, and twenty years after this session, he would be named musical director of the Broadway revue of Duke Ellington's music, Sophisticated Ladies. Wally Richardson was a very active session guitarist in those days, with a number of sessions for Prestige. Art Davis, whose reputation as one of the finest bassists of his generation, classical or jazz, was matched only by his social conscience, had appeared on two previous Prestige sessions. And that a classical cat can get down with a rhythm and blues cat is as good as any tribute to the breadth of the language of jazz. And add Ed Shaughnessy to the mix and you have a pro's pro, whose best known gig, with Doc Severinsen's Tonight show orchestra, didn't begin to scratch the surface of his range.

The album's format is a little gimmicky--movie themes that celebrate women's names (or attributes, like "The Bad and the Beautiful," and it was released on Moodsville, which was sometimes accused of being a little gimmicky as a label. But I am here to say I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. It was probably a lot of fun coming up with the gimmick, and then finding the movie themes that would work. This included classics like "Laura," and tunes that had immediate popularity and proved to have legs, like "The Bad and the Beautiful," written by David Raksin and recorded by jazz musicians from Barney Kessel (1957) to Bill Frisell (2016). And a couple of sleepers. "Love Song from Suzie Wong" has never been recorded by anyone else that I know of. It was written by George Duning, a frighteningly prolific

composer with 180 film scores to his credit. In 1960 alone, the year of The World of Suzie Wong, he scored six other movies. But someone had a good ear, and "Suzie Wong" came out well enough to be the 45 RPM single release from the session, with "Anastasia" on the flip side. 

"Suzie Wong" / "Anastasia" was released as a Prestige single, "The Bad and the Beautiful" as a Moodsville single. The album, with the same name, also came out on Moodsville. "Ruby" (written by Heinz Roemheld for the movie Ruby Gentry) was later released on a compilation album for Prestige's budget label, Status, entitled Lusty Moods, and credited to Sam "the Man" Taylor.

Listening to Prestige 536: Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Sleeping Susan

 It was a busy few days for Mr. Stitt, and a lot of trips out to Englewood Cliffs. On Friday, recording with Jack McDuff. On Sunday, a Verve recording session, as Norman Granz joined Sonny with Gene Ammons for a mainstream blowing session in Rudy Van Gelder's cathedral of recorded jazz. Then the two saxophonists might as well have booked a couple of rooms on the Jersey side of the river, as they were back in harness on Monday, joining "youngster" McDuff (actually all three were just about the same age, but McDuff was a new star in the jazz firmament, and the two tenormen were solidly established veterans).

These are three guys who really represent three different genres of jazz: Stitt the bebopper, Ammons the old school boppin' the blues, McDuff the soul jazz of the 1960s. So, although "Soul Summit" is a bit  of cliche, it's also an accurate description of this gathering. They are three kindred spirits who've meshed well in dyads, and mesh equally well here in a triad, with the propulsive assistance of Charlie Persip on drums. Persip and McDuff are the entire rhythm section, so Brother Jack is largely in a supporting role here, but he makes the most of it. He and Persip provide more than a cushion for the two soloists--their work is complex and provocative. 

The set is two standards, two originals by Ammons ("Tubby" and "Shuffle Twist"), one by Stitt ("Dumplin's"), and one more obscure tune from an underrated composer, Jimmy Mundy. Mundy is underrated partly because one of his most famous compositions, "Walkin'," the Miles Davis standard, is not credited to him. On the Library of Congress copyright certificate for the tune, the original title (and

the tune has been recorded under a number of different titles) is wiped out, and the name of Richard E. Carpenter is written in as composer. Carpenter was not a composer, and is best known for cheating and exploiting various jazz musicians. Mundy is credited as co-composer (with Johnny Mercer and Trummy Young) of a gold star standard, "Travlin' Light." And he is the composer, here, of "Sleeping Susan," which proves to be an excellent choice.

You might think that "Shuffle Twist" would have been earmarked as the single, just for the title alone. But instead an edited-down version of "Tubby" was the choice, on the flip side of "Love, I've Found You," from Ammons's 1961 session with Oliver Nelson. The 45 RPM single was issued under Ammons's name.

Esmond Edwards produced Soul Summit.

Listening to Prestige 535: Lightnin' Hopkins

LISTEN TO ONE: Happy Blues for
John Glenn

 A month after his January session, Lightnin' Hopkins was back in the studio for two more dates with Mack McCormick,now with an amplified guitar and different members of the band that he customarily used for club dates around Houston for each session. They were:

Buster Pickens on piano (second session). He was one of the west Texas piano players who had roots going back to the 1920s and were known as the "Santa Fe group," but not because they had any connection with that New Mexico tourist mecca. They used to travel to gigs around Houston, Galveston, Richmond and other southwest Texas destinations by hopping freights on the Santa Fe railroad line. He recorded with many blues singers, including Texas Alexander, Hopkins' mentor and perhaps his cousin. Pickens recorded an album of his own in 1960

Billy Bizor on harmonica (first session). After playing on several Hopkins recordings in the early 1960s, he got to do two recording sessions on his his own in 1968 and 1969, but they weren't released for a couple of decades, or long after Bizor's death.

Donald Cooks on bass (second session). He was the go-to bass player for a number of Texas bluesmen, recording with Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Smoky Hogg, Goree Carter and others. 

Spider Kilpatrick on drums (both sessions). He was raised in the same New Orleans orphanage that Louis Armstrong sprang from him, worked with Hopkins for many years, and was praised in the liner notes to an Arhoolie recording:

Finally here was a musician who could follow Hopkins wherever he went, plus one providing a snappier beat that the guitarist could hang phrases of a bit more aggressive nature than usual on.

One of the reasons Hopkins had such a long and prolific recording career is that he had a vast repertoire. Of course he did repeat himself from time to time, but he also knew a whole lot of songs. had written a whole lot of songs, and was able to extemporize a whole lot of songs. One such, on this album, is "Happy Blues for John Glenn, about which Mack McCormick says in his notes:

Most of them...are lost as the impulse and the circumstances which occasioned them fade away. That "Happy Blues for John Glenn" was caught in a recording session is an accident resulting entirely from the flight having fallen on the date for which studio time had been booked...Ordinarily, he would have forgotten it in a night or two, and as a matter of fact at this writing Lightnin' says he can't remember the song.

Walkin' This Road by Myself was a Bluesville release, producer credit to Kenneth S. Goldstein and Mack McCormick, although McCormick was the only one with actual hands on down in Houston. Three 45 RPM singles were released from the session. "My Baby Don't Stand No Cheating" / "Katie Mae" came out on Bluesville.