Listening to Prestige 551: Latin Jazz Quintet

LISTEN TO ONE: Dorian

 This was the last Prestige album for Juan Amalbert and the Latin Jazz Quintet, and very near to the end of Tru-Sound Records. It featured Bobby Capers and Bill Ellington, but otherwise a different lineup for this ever-shifting group. Manny Ramos, who played on the Eric Dolphy and Shirley Scott sessions, returns. New on board are vibraphonist Willie Bivens, pianist Willie Gardner, and percussionist Victor Allende.

Bivens, whose father was also William Bivens and also a vibist with swing bands in the 1940s, would go on to play with Pucho and the Latin Soul Brothers. a late 1960s group that recorded for Prestige and merits a footnote in jazz history as the group where Chick Corea got his start. Bivens also was part of one Grant Green album for Blue Note.

Victor Allende played with other Latin groups, and on a couple of Prestige albums later in the decade--one with Willis Jackson, and the other with George Braith, and album that would become a cult favorite.

It's hard to chart Willie Gardner's career. He seems to have recorded with Johnny Hodges in 1968. Beyond that, it gets murky. There are a number of credits for pianist/organist Billy Gardner, but it's not at all clear whether they're the same person. In most sources, they seem to be divided. Billy Gardner is credited on Allmusic.com as recording with Dave Bailey, George Braith, Charlie Rouse and others, but not with Hodges or Amalbert, so that would suggest two different artists. On the other hand, though the personnel list on the album credits Willie Gardner, Billy Taylor, in his liner notes, calls him Billy.  

Amalbert's Latin Jazz Quintet was very much a jazz ensemble. Taylor describes him as:

...multilingual verbally as well as musically, [so] he has an unusually large heritage of rich, expressive and exciting sounds and rhythms to choose from. By carefully selecting musicians whose talents he admires and whose feelings are compatible with his own, the energetic leader of the LJQ has blended what he considers the best musical elements of the North and South American musical traditions and emerged with his own conception of "Latin Jazz."

Amalbert and Ellington appeared with Pharaoh Sanders on an extremely obscure album called Oh! Pharaoh Speak, which was credited to The Latin Jazz Quintet - Featured Guest Artist Pharoah Sanders - Under The Direction Of Juan Amalbért. There was a second collaboration between the LJQ and Eric Dolphy, but this one was without Amalbert. 

The Tru-Sound release was entitled The Chant, and the group was credited as Juan Amalbert's Latin Jazz Quintet  Esmond Edwards produced.