Listening to Prestige 544: Willis Jackson

LISTEN TO ONE: Thunderbird

 Question: What's the difference between classic rhythm and blues and soul jazz? 

Answer: About three minutes.

That's the difference between the Lester Young-influenced, Illinois Jacquet-influenced, Texas roadhouse-bred, Apollo-developed, blues-based sound tenor saxophone wailing and improvising over a rock-solid groove in the 78-45 RPM era, and the LP era. Jazz With a Beat, jazz with a funky beat. And with, in the soul jazz era, a little more room to open up and try different improvisational attacks over that groove.

What about the organ, that distinctive signature sound for soul jazz? Doesn't that make it different?

Not entirely. Bill Doggett, Sil Austin, Doc Bagby and others had had rhythm and blues hits. Jack McDuff had joined the Gator to play rhythm and blues, and when the group signed with Prestige, they brought their saxophone-organ-guitar sound with them, and used it to play the longer form jams--in other words, the ones they had always played on the chitlin' circuit, but had had not been able to bring to the recording studio.

Willis Jackson had brought McDuff into his group as a bass player, and had made the inspired choice to convert him to an organist, so he knew something about nurturing organ talent. That means it's no surprise to find Freddie Roach, on the cusp of a breakout career, joining Jackson's band for this session. Roach had recorded two albums with Ike Quebec for Blue Note, and by midsummer of 1962 he was back at Blue Note to record four albums as leader. He would return to Prestige for a couple more sessions in the late 1960s, after which he stopped recording. He lived in France for a while, then California, by which time his interest had switched from jazz to the theater, where he gained something of a reputation--apparently under another name--as a playwright. He died in 1980.

Roach, along with frequent Jackson collaborators Bill Jennings, Wendell Marshall and Frank Shea, create the groove. Ray Barretto, in his second sax-organ soul jazz gig, adds the extra touch that he always does. And Jackson provided the rest. All of this comes together most emphatically on the Jackson composition "Thunderbird." When you put "Bird" in the title of a jazz composition, it's always going to suggest one thing. Bird With a Beat certainly became a rhythm and blues staple, with "Now's the Time" becoming the basis for Paul Williams's hit instrumental "The Hucklebuck." Here, there's no one Parker tune that "Thunderbird" takes off from, but Bird's improvisations on the blues are a strong inspiration.

Willis Jackson had become a mainstay of Prestige records and would remain so throughout the 1960s. This, produced once again by Esmond Edwards, was his seventh album for the label. It was released on Prestige, as was the 45 from the session, "Thunderbird," also the title of the album, "Thunderbird" was the flip side of Jackson's version of "Jambalaya."