LISTEN TO ONE: Call it Stormy Monday
This session has a little something for everyone, with the soul jazz organ of Jack McDuff teamed up with the technical wizardry and stylistic range of Kenny Burrell, and the brilliant Latin percussion of Ray Barretto thrown into the mix for good measure.
Burrell certainly knew how to play with an organ combo, as his long association with Jimmy Smith attests to, and he jumps right in here, starting with the first number on the session, a McDuff composition called "Grease Monkey," which has the fire and energy of the finest rhythm and blues, with Burrell pushing McDuff's riffs, and McDuff creating the kind of riffs that can sustain three and a
"The Breeze and I," by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, is probably more associated with lounge acts than jazz combos, but it's had its share of jazz interpreters too (both Curtis Fuller and Wes Montgomery recorded versions of it at around the same time), and why not? If you have Ray Barretto nailing the mambo beat and Joe Dukes laying down that archetypal soul jazz rhythm, you've got a great start, and then when Kenny Burrell does what he does, which is improvise stunningly while never losing sight of the melody, you come to appreciate what a good melody it it. Lecuona was one of Cuba's leading composers, and the melody which became known as "The Breeze and I" was originally a part of his well regarded Suite Andalucia.
Barretto and Dukes don't stop the carnival, as they tear into "Nica's Dream," Horace Silver's tribute to the jazz baroness and protector of Thelonious Monk. Between the two of them over these two selections, they threaten to turn this into a percussion session to rival Art Blakey at his most intense.
"Call it Stormy Monday" is one of the most recorded of blues songs, but it took a while to get there, and for Walker to start realizing any royalties on what would become his most famous composition. When Woody Herman and his Swinging Herd (then including Bill Harris, Richie Kamuca, Victor Feldman and Vince Guaraldi) released the first cover version in 1957, ten years after Walker first recorded it, there weren't many blues classics because nobody much was recording cover versions of great blues songs. When Herman recorded his Blues Groove album for Capitol, whoever wrote the blues for the back sleeve was had to find a way to sell the concept, and he came up with "Woody Herman and his Herd combine the beat of rock and roll with the dynamic sounds of swinging jazz." Jazz with a beat, as Shirley Scott and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis described it in the title to their first album together, but not many people were looking to catalog of blues originals for material. Ralph J. Gleason, in the liner notes to Blues Groove, looked forward hopefully but uncertainty: "There may come a time when the blues will be regarded as the true folk art of America."
That was 1957. The blues had already, as Muddy Waters was to point out later, "had a baby and they named it rock and roll," but jazz fans still shunned that birth as illegitimate, and to true music aficionados like Gleason, the mainstreaming of the blues into American culture was still a wistful dream.
Bizarrely enough, the next performer to take it on, in 1960, was Pat Boone. Even more surprising, his version isn't bad, with Boone adding some crooner's touches, but respecting the blues, and a nice band behind him.
But then it was the 1960s, and Ralph Gleason's dream for the blues started to become a reality. And T-Bone Walker's dream of royalty checks for a great song, as it was recorded by Nancy Wilson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Bobby Bland, and Lou Rawls with Les McCann. Kenny Burrell liked the song so much he would record it again for Prestige the following year, with Shirley Scott.
And also in 1964, "Call it Stormy Monday" was recorded by Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, the first British blues band, and that brought it all back home, as the showed the Yanks what the true folk art of America was.
Burrell and McDuff seize on this classic-to-be as a license to play the blues, and that's what they do. This is soul jazz, yes, but at its heart it's the blues, the whole blues, and nothing but the blues.
Most of this session went onto the LP Crash!, credited to Kenny Burrell with the Brother Jack McDuff Quartet. "Moody McDuff" went on to a 1966 McDuff album, Steppin' Out, which is interesting because it pulls together tracks from five different sessions utilizing three of jazz's greatest guitarists, all of whom worked with McDuff at different stages of his career: Burrell, Grant Green, and George Benson. Apparently by the time the album was released, Burrell had already stepped out of his Prestige contract and into an exclusive contract with another label: he is credited as K. B. Groovington. "The Breeze and I" and "Nica's Dream" were released on 45 RPM. Ozzie Cadena produced.
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