Listening to Prestige 561: Jimmy Grissom

LISTEN TO ONE: I've Got You on My Mind

 Jimmy Grissom is not the first name that springs to mind when one thinks of jazz vocalists, but he had an active career that spanned a good decade and a half from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, and even included -- sort of -- one of the most important live performances of the era to be captured on record -- Duke Ellington's 1956 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival.

Sort of, because of course Grissom is not on the famous Ellington at Newport LP. But, as we now know, that LP wasn't exactly Ellington at Newport. The Duke was not completely satisfied with the Festival suite, and elected to redo it in the studio. The actual live concert was pieced together from various tapes and issued as a 1999 CD release, and Grissom is on that version, singing the Rube Bloom / Johnny Mercer standard, "Day In, Day Out." 

Duke Ellington was not known for working with the A-list vocalists of his day. Although he wrote some of the greatest songs in the Great American Songbook, his focus was always on his orchestra and its extraordinary soloists, and the singers were secondary. Nonetheless, you didn't get hired by Ellington without being very good.

Grissom, the nephew of Jimmie Lunceford vocalist Dan Grissom, performed and recorded around the Los Angeles area starting in the late 1940s, appearing on various independent rhythm and blues labels. He had a minor hit with "Once There Lived a Fool," written by Jessie Mae Robinson, an underappreciated (but widely recorded) songwriter. "Once There Lived a Fool" was covered by Jimmy Witherspoon, Charles Brown, Savannah Churchill, and later Tony Bennett and Dakota Staton.

He joined Ellington in 1953, and was with him through the Newport concert. He only made a few recordings after that, and his Prestige association was a brief one. It would seem that Bob Weinstock and Co. had initial high hopes for him, putting him together with Oliver Nelson, and it would also seem that they changed their minds rather quickly. They only cut four songs on this date. Two of them were released as a 45 RPM single, the other two were shelved, which seems a shame. One of the shelved songs, "Get Yourself Another Fool." is a lovely blues ballad, recorded by a number of first rate performers, including Charles Brown, Sam Cooke, and even Paul McCartney. 

Nelson brought along Hank Jones, Wendell Marshall and Ed Shaughnessy, all of whom he had worked with often, and a string section, and organist Dick Hyman, an unusual choice. Hyman was a keyboard wizard who could play in nearly any style, but one that he was rarely accustomed to was the trendy soul jazz style of the moment, and in fact he stays away from that genre here, working in a more mainstream style, providing fills and swirls around the complex rhythmic patterns laid down by Marshall and Shaughnessy. All of this takes just over two minutes, backing up Grissom's rhythm and bluesy ballad vocal. It's on the short side even for a pop single, and it's hard not to wonder if there wasn't a more extended LP-intended version somewhere, edited down for 45 RPM release. Why else call in Oliver Nelson and a rhythm section as gifted as Jones, Marshall and Shaughnessy, and strings, and especially why else bring in Dick Hyman? Weinstock and Esmond Edwards (I'm guessing -- no producer credit here) must have had something different in mind, and maybe they decided it was too different (why put an organ on a record in 1962 if you're not going for the soul sound?) or not different enough. Grissom's delivery is excellent, but maybe they decided it was too 1950s, and it wasn't going to make a dent in the new market of the Kennedy era. If only they had known. Within a year, the Kennedy era was over, and a group of rock and rollers from England were going to change everything about what music was listened to, and how it was listened to.

So there's just this one single. And it's good. And worth a listen.