Listening to Prestige 636: Booker Ervin

LISTEN TO ONE: Eerie Dearie

 Booker Ervin is still in the middle of his six-year, 13-album sojourn with Prestige. Prestige knew what they had with Ervin, in more ways than one. They recognized his outsized talent--he was one of the most important young saxophone players to come along in the early 1960s. But they also could relate to his music. The label was very much staying abreast of current trends in jazz, recording some of the best of the avant gardists and the back-to-basics soul jazz artists, but its heart was still with the mainstream bebop that excited 19-year-old Bob Weinstock to form a new label in the first place. Indeed, when another decade rolled around and Weinstock sold the label, retiring from the business, he said that it was time--the music he loved wasn't being made any more.

Booker Ervin's sound, as Ira Gitler said in his liner notes to The Blues Book, was "of the '60s. but it has not lost touch with the tap roots of jazz." Gitler, one of the great chroniclers of the golden age of jazz represented by Prestige, went on to describe Ervin's sound as only he could:

Booker's phrasing (the highly-charged flurries and the excruciating, long-toned cries), harmonic conceptions (neither pallid nor beyond the pale) and tone (a vox humana) add up to a style that is avant-garde yet evolutionary, and not one that bows to fashion or gropes unprofessionally under the guise of "freedom."

 Probably the gateway album to the new avant garde was John Coltrane's Giant Steps, the first one he made after leaving Prestige for Atlantic, with new harmonic ideas but still accessible to the jazz lover raised on bebop. Ervin's "avant garde yet evolutionary" style can be said to place him in the Giant Steps generation, although Ervin's approach is nothing like Coltrane's. Like Coltrane's album of four years before, it has the thrill of the new, while still being rooted deep in solid earth--in this case, the earthy truth of the blues.

The group recorded five tunes for this session, four of which were included on The Blues Book. The fifth, "Groovin' High," would be the title cut of a later album culled from various Ervin sessions. The Blues Book has two tunes on each side of the vinyl release, one long, one short. The A side is "Eerie Dearie," checking in at 14:30, and "One for Mort," 6:24. '

"Eerie Dearie" is the whole package. It begins with a soulful piano vamp from Gildo Mahones, then a solid blues riff from the horns, opening up the door for an extended solo from Ervin. And yes, it's avant garde but evolutionary. Ervin shows just how free you can get, while still with a solid anchor in the blues. With fourteen and a half minutes to play around in, everyone gets a chance to solo, but it's Ervin you come away with.

Mahones is a solid Prestige veteran. Jones was new to the East Coast when he made this recording, and probably new to Ervin. Gitler, in his liner notes, makes a point of commending Don Schlitten as producer for putting the personnel together. 

Jones had been active on the West Coast since 1961, recording with Bud Shank, Gerald Wilson, Red Mitchell, Harold Land and others, including backing Sarah Vaughan in a series of West Coast recording dates in May and June of 1963. He came east to work with Horace Silver, and he had done one live recording with Silver's quintet, but it would not be released until 20 years later, so this was his real East Coast unveiling. He did work with Silver for a while, recording with him in late 1964 and early 1965, and he was to have a couple more Prestige gigs, one with Charles McPherson and one leading his own quintet.

Schlitten also brought in Richard Davis and Alan Dawson, about whom Gitler coments,

Although they had not met until they did The Freedom Book...and play together only in the studio on an Ervin recording, D&D are about as tightly fused a duo as you will encounter anywhere in the annals of jazz. There is no loss of rapport from one date to the next. They arrive, unpack their instruments, and they're off and flying.

They would unpack together again on Ervin's next album. Then Reggie Workman would replace Davis for a couple of sessions, and Davis would return for Ervin's last hurrah on Prestige in 1966.

 

Listening to Prestige 635: Bobby Timmons

LISTEN TO ONE: A Little Barefoot Soul

In my mind, Bobby Timmons was Blue Note. But the mind can play tricks. Timmons did record extensively on Blue Note, as a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and before that, with Kenny Dorham's Jazz Prophets, and with Lee Morgan. But to my surprise, He never recorded as a leader with Blue Note. His first record as a co-leader (with Clifford Jordan and John Jenkins) was on New Jazz. Then, starting in 1960, he recorded a series of albums for Riverside, while continuing to play and record with Blakey through 1961. This session marked his return to Prestige, the first of seven albums he would make for the label over the next two years.

Timmons has been something of a controversial figure in jazz criticism, with "underrated" being a term applied to him with surprising regularity, while other critics have suggested there wasn't much to him below the surface--that he was basically just a guy who wrote simple tunes, a few of which have clicked to become hits and jazz standards. 

His recording career is curious also. Between 1958 and 1961, from his first emergence on the New York Scene through his associations with Art Blakey and Cannonball Adderley, he was much in demand, playing on sessions with Pepper Adams, Chet Baker, Kenny Burrell, Arnett Cobb, Kenny Dorham, Art Farmer, Benny Golson, Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan and others. Then nothing. He continued to tour with a trio and to make records under his own name through the 1960s. Perhaps it was his heroin addiction that made him too unreliable as a sideman. His substance abuse problem was a serious one, and it led him to an early grave.

But soul jazz was marketable, and Timmons was a marketable name. "Moanin'" and "Dat Dere" had become hugely popular jazz tunes, the more so because they had had lyrics attached to them by two masters, Jon Hendricks and Oscar Brown Jr., respectively. 

Certainly his labels weren't shy about pushing the soul connection. Riverside, for whom he recorded from 1960-64, gave his albums titles like This Here is Bobby Timmons (included "Moanin'," "Dis Here" and "Dat Dere"), Soul Time, Sweet and Soulful Sounds. His debut album for Prestige was, if anything, even less subtle...Little Barefoot Soul,

There is nothing on the album anywhere near as catchy as Timmons's big three, for all the catchy titles. So this may not be the place to look for Timmons, the simple soul tunesmith. 

But it might be a good place to start considering Timmons, the underrated jazz pianist. Rather than depend on the restatement of catchy riffs, he engages here in thoughtful and often daring improvisation. He's accompanied on drums by King Curtis sideman Ray Lucas, who keeps him honest, and Sam Jones, who spurs his creativity. He would work with a variety of sidemen in his two years with Prestige, probably a result of his drug-fueled unreliability, but this is an excellent pair.

The producer credit for the session is a little ambiguous: longtime Prestige producer Ozzie Cadena is credited with "supervision," producer is listed as Joel Dorn, who also wrote the liner notes. 

Dorn was an interesting guy. He knew from age 14 that he had one ambition in life--to produce records for Atlantic, and at that young age he started writing to Nesuhi Ertegun, making his case. Ertegun finally relented, telling him he could produce one album by an artist of his choice. He chose Hubert Laws, and it was the beginning of a fabulously successful career, which included discovering the Allman Brothers and the Neville Brothers, and winning a Grammy for his production of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly with His Song."

He recorded Laws for Atlantic in April of 1964, the fulfillment of his lifetime ambition at age 22, so one has to wonder what he was doing in Englewood Cliffs in June of that year, working with a new Prestige artist. Perhaps Ertegun was waiting to see how The Laws of Jazz did before making a commitment. And maybe the problems Dorn enumerates in his somewhat defensive liner notes for the album might not have arisen had his head not been too swiveled toward the orange, black and green of Atlantic. The album, Dorn reports,

was supposed to have been a quintet date. But when Bobby arrived at the studio only one musician, Sam Jones, was on hand. Then came the inevitable phone calls with excuses from the sidemen for not showing up...So with practically two hours of recording time eaten away...it seemed the session would have to be cancelled. Fortunately, someone remembered that Ray Lucas was in town...and within half an hour had his drums set up and ready to record.

Dorn also refers, while declining to get into specifics, to "an air of antagonism...between the artist, the A&R man, and the engineer." It's not clear whether he's referring to himself or Cadena, but in any event, he was off to the Atlantic recording studios and Tom Dowd after this, while Timmons continued working with Cadena, Van Gelder, and a different crop of musicians. And after  two tunes that had to be thrown out because Lucas had trouble finding a groove with two musicians he'd never met before, everything clicked with "A Little Barefoot Soul" (the first word was dropped for the album title), and from there on things went smoothly. Perhaps the unexpected loss of two front men forced Timmons to improvise more than he had intended to, and the results are salutary.

The title track, with "Walkin', Wadin', Sittin', Ridin'" on the flip side, was released as a 45 RPM single.

Listening to Prestige 634: Gildo Mahones

LISTEN TO ONE: Blues for Yna Yna

 

Gildo Mahones had a near-legendary career that took him from Spanish Harlem to 125th Street, where his family moved to an apartment right behind the Apollo Theater and he got his first exposure to music. to Joe Morris's rhythm and blues band, where he played on Morris's big hit, "Any Time, Any Place, Anywhere," Then to the Army, where he became good friends with another young piano player, Berry Gordy, who had this dream of finding a few streetcorner doowop groups, rehearsing them, polishing their act...and then to Minton's Playhouse, where Kenny Clarke asked him to join a trio that would be the house band

at Minton's -- a trio that was soon augmented by Minton's manager Teddy Hill to include Milt Jackson, Sonny Rollins and Percy Heath. Trumpeter Jesse Drakes, who had played with the Minton's group, was joining a new band led by Lester Young, and he brought Gildo along. That gig lasted through most of the 1950s, and then in 1959 he fell in with a newly forming vocal trio, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, and stayed with them until they broke up in 1964.

Mahones got very little opportunity to record as a leader--two albums for Prestige, then one album in 1990 for a small label, Interplay, which put out some very good jazz records in the 1970s and '80s, but was pretty near the end of its run. Sessions by Mahones and Gil Coggins, another fine and little-remembered pianist, closed the door on Interplay. Of Mahones' two Prestige albums, the first one was intended to be a New Jazz release, but then Bob Weinstock folded New Jazz, and when the album was released on Prestige, it was barely distributed/ So this session, which became a double album, is probably the best-known example of his work.

It's enough to make one wish there were more, and certainly to make one wish that he would have gotten more recognition. This is a piano trio session of the sort that Red Garland was making a few years earlier, not the kind of funk-drenched organ/saxophone sound that was popular in 1964. But Mahones has his own approach to the blues, very individualistic and very much in the tradition, 

He's accompanied by George Tucker, very active on Prestige in this era, and no stranger to playing with Mahones, accompanying him on his own first session, and joining him in backing up Jimmy Witherspoon and Ted Curson. Sonny Brown, on drums, is even more obscure than Mahones, but people knew who he was back then, and he worked dates with Ray Bryant and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, among others.

With Ozzie Cadena producing, the trio had a full day of work, recording nearly enough songs for a double alum, and -- with the addition of a few songs from his earlier sessions, a double album it was, entitled The Great Gildo: Gildo Mahones Soulful Piano, the first part being a play on the popular radio comedy of an earlier decade, The Great Gildersleeve. I believe this is the first such packaging in Prestige's catalog. Neither the novelty of the two-disc package not the excellence of the music were enough to make Mahones' name better known, and he is one of the few Prestige artists whose work has never been rereleased on CD by Original Jazz Classics. Nor can it be found on Spotify, although, curiously, a 2018 interview, done shortly before his death, is available on Spotify. So it's up to the classic vinyl hunters, searching through the bins at places like Jim Eigo's Original Vinyl Records in Warwick, NY, to keep him alive. Let's hope that keeps happening.

Listening to Prestige 633: Oscar Peterson

LISTEN TO ONE: Tin Tin Deo

 Between 1964 and 1971 Oscar Peterson made a series of live recordings in Germany at the home of his friend Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, before a small invited audience. The series as a whole was called Exclusively for My Friends. Brunner-Schwer began releasing them in Europe on his own label, MPS Records, in 1968, and he licensed the first two of them to Prestige for American distribution, which is how Peterson, normally exclusive to Verve and other Norman Granz labels, came under Bob Weinstock's aegis. Which is nice for a follower and chronicler of Prestige, because it gives me the opportunity to spend some time listening to the most acclaimed piano player of his era, perennial poll winner, accumulator of a dizzying number of awards, all of these laurels richly deserved.

The Brunner-Schwer sessions were mostly trio recordings (one is solo piano) made during Peterson's various European tours, so his supporting cast varies, but is always first rate. Peterson's long-term trio with Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen was nearing its finish, but it was still together for the first of these concerts for friends.

Brown had been with Peterson since 1950. As a teenager, he had already found steady work around the Pittsburgh area, but in 1945, when he graduated high school, there was only one place for a young jazz musician with progressive ideas, and that was New York. He bought a one way ticket, and it might just as well have said on it Destination: 52nd Street. He knew Hank Jones, Jones brought him to Dizzy Gillespie, and Gillespie hired him on the spot.

As instant a click as there was with Gillespie, Brown clicked in the same way with Oscar Peterson. He also clicked, musically and otherwise, with Ella Fitzgerald. Musically, their union was a success. Otherwise...they divorced in 1953, after six years of marriage, though they continued to work together.

 Their original trio was piano-bass-guitar, with first Barney Kessel and then Herb Ellis as the third musician, When Ellis departed in 1958, they decided that he was irreplaceable, so they wouldn't try. They would hire a drummer instead, and that's when Ed Thigpen came aboard.

Thigpen had drumming in his genes; his father had been the longtime drummer for Andy Kirk. He brought an impressive list of credentials to the Peterson trio, including quite a history with Prestige, and he would go on to a distinguished career after, including several years with Ella Fitzgerald (no marriage, though).

They would both be moving on not long after this--there would be only one more trio album, that one live from a concert hall in Copenhagen. This session captures them at the peak of their creative and collaborative powers, featuring the standards that Peterson excelled at, a ballad composed by Billy Taylos ("Easy Walker"), and an excursion off the beaten track, "Tin Tin Deo." Composed by the legendary percussionist Chano Pozo, it was first recorded by Pozo with James Moody, and most famously by Dizzy Gillespie. Peterson's trio essays it without Latin percussion, but Peterson's piano is rhythmically tricky, and rhythmically persuasive enough to be completely satisfactory.

Encouraged by the live and intimate audience, Peterson gives a persuasive demonstration of why led all those polls for so many years.

The 1968 German LP was the result of two different house concerts at Brunner-Schwer's home, the first in late 1963, the second in May of 1964. It was entitled Action. The Prestige release, the following year (the year Peter Fonda's Easy Rider was released) was called Easy Walker. Brunner-Schwer produced.

Listening to Prestige 632: Jaki Byard

LISTEN TO ONE: European Episode

 Prestige, in its twenty-odd years of existence, left us an amazing legacy, a portrait of two of the most fruitful periods in American jazz. The middle part of its second decade is rich with some of the key figures of the avant garde, and some of the key figures of soul jazz. But one of the richest and most wonderful parts of that legacy is surely found in the 12 albums Prestige put out by Jaki Byard, a musician who fit in neither of those categories, or any other, really. His music has been described as "spanning the 20th century from ragtime to no time," and it's an apt description. It was not just that he could play anything from the most traditional to free jazz. Other skilled technicians, other dedicated artists, could do that. Byard spoke each language, each dialect of jazz like a native, and he could express himself with subtlety and nuance, with intellect and emotion, in every one of them.

And perhaps all of that is the reason why he is not remembered as well as he ought to be. An article about him on the web page of the Music Museum of New England (Byard was born in Worcester, MA) says that he "won many awards for his contributions over the years," but then it's hard pressed to come up with anything more than:

 In 1988 Mayor Ray Flynn awarded him the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions in Black Music and Presence in Boston. In 1995 NYC Mayor Rudolph Guliani presented him with an award for his outstanding contributions with the Apollo Stompers.

 This is Byard's third album as a leader with Prestige (he'd also appeared as a supporting player on several other dates, the most recent one being with Booker Ervin, who returns the gesture on the first of these two sessions). That was the May 21 session, with Richard Williams, Williams was also well known to Prestige collectors. Williams and Ervin sit out "Lush Life," as well as all of the second session.

On bass and drums for both sessions are Bob Cranshaw and Walter Perkins. Cranshaw had made his first Prestige recording just a few weeks earlier, with Shirley Scott and Stanley Turrentine, but he had already begun his long association with Sonny Rollins, and had been with Rollins on his 1962 recording of The Bridge for RCA Victor, the album that heralded Rollins's return from self-imposed exile. Perkins was by this time a familiar face in Prestige sessions.

The album shows a good deal of Byard's range and versatility, and in fact a few different styles and voicings are in evidence on a single cut--"European Episode," at just over 12 minutes more a suite than a single tune. One more facet of his versatility is showcased on "When Sunny Gets Blue," a leftover take from Byard's maiden session for Prestige in 1961, with Ron Carter and Roy Haynes, and featuring Byard on alto sax.

Esmond Edwards had produced the earlier session; the two that make up the bulk of this album were produced by Ozzie Cadena. The album was titled Out Front! "I Like to Lead When I Dance" and "After the Lights Go Down Low" were not included on the album, but made the later CD release.

Listening to Prestige 631 - Montego Joe

LISTEN TO ONE: Dakar

 Montego Joe spent most of his life closer to Sheepshead Bay than Montego Bay, but he was in fact Jamaican-born, and his first percussion experiences were on that island, where he drummed on every flat surface he could lay his hands on, and was inspired by the playing of the brilliant and short-lived percussionist Chano Pozo. 

Moving with his family to New York when he was six, he heard the drum styles of Gene Krupa, Art Blakey and Buddy Rich. But focusing on the Latin percussion instruments, he developed quickly, and as a teenager he was already playing with some of his percussion idols, including Blakey, Max Roach

and Olatunji. He made his Prestige debut in 1962 with Ahmed Abdul-Malik in a session that blended the approaches of three very different percussionists--Joe on congas and bongos, Rudy Collins on a Western trap drum kit, and Chief Bay on African drums. In the next couple of year he would get some regular work with the label, appearing with Willis Jackson (twice), Ted Curson and Jack McDuff / George Benson.

When it came time to make his debut as a leader, Joe tapped a group of musicians who had not recorded for Prestige before, nor did they have extensive credits on the jazz scene, but they seemed to fit Joe well, because the core of them -- trumpeter Leonard Goines, reed man Al Gibbons, drummer / percussionist Milford Graves -- would be back for Joe's second and final Prestige session a year later. And, like Joe, several of them would go on to make significant marks in the fields of education and youth work.

Leonard Goines grew up in Harlem a few blocks from the Apollo Theater, where his teenage chops and ability to read music attracted sufficient notice that when the house band was short a musician, he would be called on short notice to sub. After playing professionally with Ella Fitzgerald, Donald Byrd, Duke Pearson, Yusef Lateef and Buddy Johnson in addition to Montego Joe, Goines entered academia as a visiting professor in the Black Scholars program at Pennsylvania's Lafayette College, teaching jazz history. And Goines's academic credentials went beyond his instrumental skills. According to an article in the Morning Call, Lafayette's newspaper:

Goines' background includes degrees in anthropology, psychology, counseling, political science, music education and ethnomusicology - the study of music and its relationship to culture. He's studied with Margaret Mead, the anthropologist and Nadia Boulanger, perhaps the most famous composition teacher of the 20th century.

Milford Graves, who would become a professor at Bennington College in Vermont, was another polymath. He studied to become a medical technician and  worked in a veterinary lab, where he set up and ran clinical tests to investigate new medicines. The basement of Jamaica, Queens, home became a dojo where he taught yara, a martial art of his own devising, and a laboratory, where he studied cardiology, acupuncture, and herbalism, His study of medicine and his understanding of the workings of the human body may have extended his life for a couple of years when he was diagnosed with amyloid cardiopathy in 2018 and given six months to live. He died in 2021.

Graves's extramusical interests and accomplishments should not distract one from his contributions to music. He was one of the first drummers to separate the drums from the responsibility for keeping time, a musical philosophy which he brought to the free jazz of the 1960s, playing with Albert Ayler and the New York Art Quartet, among others,

Montego Joe. after making his second album for Prestige in 1965, threw himself into youth work, with the Arts and Culture division of HARYOU-ACT (Harlem Youth Opportunities, Unliniited---associated Community Teams. He was able to record the teenage percussion group that he assembled and worked with at HARYOU-ACT, for ESP-Disc Records.

Two musicians who were on the brink of major careers in jazz were Chick Corea and Eddie (here billed as Edgar) Gomez. Corea up to this point had mainly worked with Latin groups, but his 25-Grammy-winning career would encompass everything, as his web page bio lists, "from straight ahead to avant-garde, bebop to fusion, children's songs to chamber music, along with some far-reaching forays into symphonic works."  Gomez would often work with Corea in the coming years, and with virtually every other jazz artist on the planet as well as some classical ensembles, but he is probably best known for his eleven years with Bill Evans.

Al Gibbons's musical range is shown in his list of credits, from Woody Herman and Earl Hines to Stanley Turrentine and McCoy Tyner. Robert Crowder, also known as Baba Ibekunle Bey, was known for mastery of West African drumming styles, and mentored the Women's Sekere Ensemble, a group of African percussionists dedicated to preserving the heritage of traditional West African culture. Rudy Stevenson, as a guitarist, played with Lloyd Price, Nina Simone and Mercer Ellington, but was primarily known as composer and arranger.

Lew Futterman, who tended to work separately from Bob Weinstock and Rudy Van Gelder, produced the session at Regent Sound Studios in New York City. Prestige released the album as Arriba! con Montego Joe, and "Fat Man" / "Dakar" as a 45 RPM single,

Listening to Prestige 630 - Joe Dukes

LISTEN TO ONE: Greasy Drums

 The super-popularity of Brother Jack McDuff's quartet naturally meant Prestige wanted to get more product out there, and one way of doing it without overdoing it was to give each member of the quartet his own session. Well, there's nothing wrong with giving the people what they want, but this was more than just a marketing ploy: Jack McDuff was pretty serious about giving his bandmates a chance in the spotlight, and Bob Weinstock was happy to go along with it. Red Holloway was a seasoned professional who had already recorded one album as a leader for Prestige, separate from the McDuff orbit. George Benson was a budding superstar, about to take flight.

Joe Dukes was something else, practically Jack McDuff's other self. Though he was widely regarded in jazz circles as the quintessential soul jazz drummer, his career was almost entirely circumscribed by McDuff. He appeared on very few recordings that were not with McDuff, and when his tenure with McDuff was finished, he pretty much vanished from the scene. Wikipedia, which is pretty good on having at least something for many really obscure jazz musicians, has no entry for Joe Dukes. And this was the only session he ever recorded as leader. 

But Dukes was one of the key ingredients in the huge success of the McDuff quartet, and he's a lot more than window dressing here. This session is built around showcasing him. Except for the Dizzy Gillespie/John Lewis standard "Two Bass Hit," all the compositions are credited to Dukes and McDuff, all prominently feature drum solos, and all are engineered to bring out the drum sound.

The result? You can tell why Dukes was so highly regarded by his peers.

Dukes worked on 26 sessions with McDuff for Prestige between 1961 and 1966. McDuff then recorded several sessions for Atlantic between 1966 and 1968. He used Dukes on two of them, but mostly worked with other configurations, and much of his work for Atlantic was never issued. He recorded for Cadet (no Dukes) and then for Blue Note, where he brought Dukes back on board for one 1969 album, recorded over several days. 

Beyond that, he participated in a 1966 Hank Crawford session for Atlantic (one track on Crawford's Mr. Blues album), and two 1970 Lonnie Smith sessions for Blue Note. One of these resulted in the album Drives; the other, a live session. got stuck in Blue Note's vaults and would not be released until 1995.

After that, nothing. Dukes died in 1992, and the drummer once described by George Benson as "such a magnificent drummer that there were times I thought he was one of the greatest things that ever happened to mankind" was pretty much forgotten. The organ jazz phenomenon ran its course, but it still has its aficionados, and there are still younger fans, especially drummers, picking up a McDuff album and saying "My God -- who is this Joe Dukes?"

The album was entitled The Soulful Drums Of Joe Dukes With The Brother Jack McDuff Quartet, and  yielded one 45 RPM single, "Moohah The D.J." / "Greasy Drums," in both cases considerably abridged from the album versions. As with all McDuff product, the session was produced by Lew Futterman. 

Listening to Prestige 629: Don Patterson, Booker Ervin

LISTEN TO ONE: When Johnny Comes Marching Home

 As with George Benson, Prestige groomed Don Patterson for stardom before introducing him with his name above the title. Unlike Benson, Patterson would stick around to become on of the label's bread and butter soul jazz artists of the second half of the decade.

Patterson was put together with Booker Ervin for two sessions, which would produce two albums, which would be released in quick succession--and before the year was out, there would be a third album under Patterson's name, plus another with Sonny Stitt, and several 45 RPM singles. Prestige was into Patterson big time.

The first album to be released was called The Exciting New Organ of Don Patterson, and since by 1964, the idea of an organ-led jazz group was no longer new, it had better be exciting, and to help make it so, Prestige called on another one of its young heavy hitters--the full title of the album would be The Exciting New Organ of Don Patterson with Booker Ervin.

And yes, this was a combination capable of generating excitement, pressing the tempos, churning the music, generating hot but un-clichéd solos. The group was basically a trio, with Billy James, Patterson's long time associate, on drums. Alto saxophonist Leonard Houston was added for one track, "Hip Cake Walk." This appears to have been Houston's only recording on a recognized jazz label.

Five tracks from the session went onto Exciting New Organ. "S'Bout Time" is a Patterson original, and features a soaring Ervin solo, emerging with wings out of the opening riff, and urged on by the organ of Patterson, who then, in a solo of his own, lives up to the album title's hype, and also demonstrates what he was talking about when he was quoted as saying, "What I'm trying to do is keep the piano sound when I play the organ." "Up in Betty's Room" is attributed to both Patterson and James, and features some intricate but still funky work by the two lead instruments.

The rest of the album looks elsewhere for musical inspiration, and finds it in a variety of places, some not unexpected (Sonny Rollins' jazz standard "Oleo") and sone decidedly unexpected. "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" is a patriotic marching song most closely associated with the Civil War, although the tune is probably even older than that. It's a catchy melody, as could be expected from a tune that's lasted that long, but not one that would normally catch the ear of a jazz musician. But catchy is catchy, and Patterson clearly heard something he liked in this one, and it's his baby. He starts out with another patriotic lick, then goes into a funky-slippery interpretation of the familiar melody, with James playing a funky-not-entirely-slippery version of a military snare drum. It takes a while for Ervin to get into the mood, but when he does, he enters with the kind of solo that led his contemporaries to say that you could recognize a Booker Ervin solo after two notes. Patterson and Ervin end up by finding enough inspiration for ten minutes of improvisation on "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," ending up by playing the melody straight. It's quite a performance.

The final cut for the album was French composer Sascha Distel's moody ballad "The Good Life," providing a change of pace for Patterson and Ervin. Distel's melody was first titled "Marina," then, with French lyrics, "La Belle Vie." Willis Jackson had previously given Prestige a version of "The Good Life," and the tune was probably best known to American audiences through Tony Bennet's 1963 recording.

The rest of the session was parceled off to various destinations. "Hip Cake Walk," with alto saxophonist Leonard Houston added, became the title track to an album mostly recorded in July. "Love Me with All Your Heart" made it onto an album called Patterson's People. The people--not together--were Booker Ervin and Sonny Stitt. The album was leftover tracks from this session, an earlier session with Stitt, and a later session with Ervin.

"People" is the first Prestige recording since the advent of the LP era to be only released as a single, the flip side of a 45 headed by "Love Me with All Your Heart." "Up in Betty's Room" and "Under the Boardwalk" (from the July session) were also a 45 RPM single.

Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 628: Lightnin' Hopkins

LISTEN TO ONE: Let's Go Sit on the Lawn

 Bluesville is gone, but Prestige is not quite done with the blues, so here is Lightnin' Hopkins back in the studio for two days, and two albums' worth of songs.

The details of many early blues recordings under hastily thrown-together conditions and often for obscure fly-by-night labels are shrouded in mystery, but this is hardly an early recording or a fly-by-night label, and a certain amount of confusion abides.

Wikipedia's entry for for the first-released album,

Down Home Blues, lists it as a Bluesville release, and gives a catalog number, BVLP 1086. Stefan Wirz, the German blues discographer, lists it in his Bluesville discography, with a catalog number of 1086. Jazzdisco, the Japanese jazz discographical site, lists it as a Prestige release, catalog number PR 1086. 

Wirz's illustrated discography shows the album cover, and the same album cover can be found on the Wikipedia site and the Discogs site, so it would seem to be the only album cover. All of these covers bear the Prestige logo and not the Bluesville logo. Further, the Discogs site also shows the back cover, with the Prestige logo and the words Prestige 1086. Which should settle the matter...except...

Prestige has no PR 1000 line. And Prestige Bluesville did, and BVLP 1086, were it anywhere on the label or the packaging, would fit quite nicely into it, as the last Bluesville recording (save only BVLP 1089, the belated release of a 1961 session with Scrapper Blackwell protégé Shirley Griffith).

The rest of it is fairly straightforward. Well, maybe not. The sessions were recorded in New York City (Jazzdisco) or Englewood Cliffs (Wikipedia) with Ozzie Cadena producing (Discogs) or Sam Charters (Wikipedia). The sleeve of Soul Blues lists Ozzie as producer. 

Chris Albertson, a frequent Prestige producer who wrote the liner notes to both albums, says that:

The rhythmic accompaniment is supplied by bassist Leonard Gaskin who has recorded with Hopkins before but whose wide range of musical associations also include Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Eddie Condon, and drummer Herbie Lovell who counts Earl Hines, Arnett Cobb, Teddy Wilson and Buck Clayton among his past associates.

Which would seem to suggest that Gaskin and Lovell are once again recording with Hopkins. But The Penguin Guide to Blues Recordings posits that "Gaskin and Lovelle's parts were probably added at overdub sessions." That would not have been Prestige's normal way of doing things.

 

The recording took place over two days, with all of the songs that would appear on Down Hone Blues  and some that were destined for Soul Blues recorded on May 4, and the rest on May 5 -- Monday and Tuesday.

Hopkins was probably the most-recorded of all the country blues singers, under his own name and a variety of others. He has appeared on seven earlier Prestige recordings -- as a solo, with other Houston bluesmen, with New York jazz musicians. One would have to be awfully dedicated to collect everything he ever recorded. But if one wanted to start listening to Hopkins, or add a little to an ongoing collection, any of these Prestige recordings would be good. These two albums, or the Double Blues reissue put out by Fantasy on LP or CD, with Rudy Van Gelder's sound engineering, would be excellent.

Two 45 RPM singles came from this session: "Let's Go Sit On The Lawn" / "I Like To Boogie" and "I'm Going To Build Me A Heaven Of My Own," Parts 1 & 2.

Listening to Prestige 627 - George Benson, Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: The Sweet Alice Blues

 In an interview many years later, sometime in the 1990s, George Benson begins a story by telling the interview that a long time ago, he played in a band led by a guy named Jack McDuff. The interview must have been with a non-jazz publication, as by that time Benson was a crossover star, since McDuff continued to tour and record into the 90s, and in fact Benson rejoined his old boss to play on two cuts of a McDuff album in 1992, recorded in Germany and released on Concord Jazz.

The story, as with all of Benson's stories about his days with McDuff, was about how much he had learned from the veteran organist. But it seems that Prestige was already recognizing, if not that student would outstrip the master, at least that the fledgling was ready to spread his wings and leave the nest. Benson would record a few more times with McDuff, and then go on to superstardom beyond Prestige.

In one of Benson's reminiscences about his early days with McDuff (others are referenced here), he says:

Due to the fact that I couldn’t play very well, he would only give me one or two choruses in any song. So whatever I could play, I had to cram it into a chorus or two—which made me learn to fire up very early in my solo. I said: “Well, this is gonna be short”, and I’d just rumble away at a lot of notes, and throw in funky things, pretty things, every kind of thing I could think of. And it was good for records, because when I got in the studio I could do that naturally.

McDuff himself had been mentored by Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson, who encouraged him to switch from the bass to the organ. Jackson was, by some accounts, a particularly hard man to get along with, but he had a way of discovering and shaping young talent, from McDuff and Bill Jennings in the 1950s to Pat Martino in the mid-1960s, and he seems to have passed the torch on to McDuff.

And young George Benson clearly learned a thing or two from playing those one or two choruses. 

Red Holloway and McDuff join Benson here, but the rest of the rhythm section is different, and interesting. Bassist Ronnie Boykins was just in the process of branching out after having spent seven years with Sun Ra. Roger "Montego Joe" Sanders had played on Prestige sessions before, with Willis Jackson, Ted Curson, and Ahmed Abdul-Malik.

And another instrument is added to the mix on the first two cuts, "Shadow Dancers" and "The Sweet Alice Blues." McDuff's organ and piano are absent from these two cuts, and in their place is some very active work on the bongo drums--according to Chris Albertson's liner notes, "presumably...being played by McDuff." 

McDuff stays on organ the rest of the way, with the exception of "Easy Living," where he switches to piano.  Benson gives a lot of solo space to Holloway, but ultimately this is his album, and putting his name out front does make a difference. Listening to this music from the point of view of history, we're immediately aware of Benson from the first time his name appears on a Jack McDuff album, and we immediately start to track his development. But Albertson, who of course could have had no idea of the breakout future that awaited Benson, says in the liner notes:

It is highly probable that you are unfamiliar with the name of George Benson although it is very likely that you have heard hum play, either in person or on records, as a member of organist Jack McDuff's group.

And Albertson is not about to go out on a limb and say "A star is born!", either. He hedges that bet:

The Brother Jack McDuff quartet is a highly democratic one,  allowing each member a chance to record under his own name, with leader McDuff taking on the role as sideman.

Neither is Benson about to dominate the session. Holloway has as much solo space as he does. But it is clearly an important step. He would appear on five more Prestige albums in 1964-65: Three of them under McDuff's name, one under Joe Dukes', one under Red Holloway's. The Holloway album was produced by Lew Futterman, but neither McDuff nor Dukes appear on it (the organ part is played by Lonnie Smith). Then he was on to Columbia, where they had a better star-making machine, and where he began singing as well as playing.

This album was entitled The New Boss Guitar Of George Benson With The Brother Jack McDuff Quartet. "Shadow Dancers" and "Just Another Sunday" were the 45 RPM single release. Lew Futterman produced.   

 

Listening to Prestige 625: Jack McDuff - Benny Golson

LISTEN TO ONE: The Pink Panther

 Jack McDuff's manager Lew Futterman, in the liner notes for the next session, describes how he got Golson and McDuff together:

McDuff had opened [at Birdland], and I was down there to see him...Benny and I ended up at the same table. While I was well aware of his writing, playing and arranging, we had never before met. I asked him how he liked McDuff. He said, "Great!" Since he was unaware what my relationship was to Jack, I pushed him a little farther by telling him I didn't like Jack's playing. His response was immediate. "You're entitled to your opinion. But I've never heard a jazz organist play with the feeling this man has. He shows such a great emotional quality, such a sympathy for the music that I could listen to him all night."

...He proceeded to say what I had felt since first hearing Jack play but had never been able to verbalize so succinctly--namely, that Jack McDuff exhibits a rare intuitive understanding of jazz, and of music in general. Nothing he plays seems stiff or structured, moving instinctively from one musical idea to the next, with no apparent disparity between what he feels he wants to play and what he can play. The excitement he generates is organic, rather than forced, as if he were thinking with his fingers.

At that point, Futterman outed himself to Golson, and asked if he'd consider writing some arrangements for McDuff.

"Only if I can write what I want to." I started to give him a qualified "yes," but decided better of it. A man with Golson's talent...deserves a free hand.

It seems quite certain that Golson had a free hand, because how else explain Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther Theme" on a jazz album? Or such was my first thought, on hearing it. But "Pink Panther" was a huge hit in 1964, the year of the movie's release, and a few different jazz artists covered it. There was a rhythm and bluesy version by Earl Bostic, another organ interpretation by Jimmy McGriff, and another big band arrangement by Quincy Jones.

As it turns out, they're all worth a listen. As a composer, Henry Mancini may have been a master of the obvious, but the operative word there is "master." The tune may have been perky and ubiquitous to have even become the punch line of a joke (What did the Pink Panther say when he stepped on an ant? --Dead ant...dead ant...dead ant dead ant dead ant....), but it was brilliant in its own silly way, and it responded nicely to the big band treatment, and to McDuff's bravura organ work.

The album's cover, however, promotes another movie tie-in--the theme from The Carpetbaggers, which is odd, in that although The Carpetbaggers was a blockbuster movie, its score, by the redoubtable Elmer Bernstein, was not a breakout success. Secondhandsongs, the website that keeps track of cover versions of nearly everything, cannot find a single one for the Carpetbaggers theme. YouTube turns up one other, by Jimmy Smith. Still, it's Elmer Bernstein, which means it's bound to be a decent tune (if a little too reminiscent of Bernstein's more popular theme from The Man With the Golden Arm), and Golson and McDuff certainly make it worth listening to. 

Golson takes two from the movies, two from Broadway. The Broadway tunes are both from musicals of the 1960s. "Once in a Lifetime," by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, was one of the breakout hits from the musical Stop the World--I Want to Get Off, the star vehicle for Newley which had opened in 1962 and was still running. "You Better Love Me" was from the just-opened High Spirits, composed by Hugh Martin (best known for the songs from Meet Me in St. Louis) and Timothy Gray. One has to figure that all of these not-exactly-standards were chosen by Golson for how they'd sound with Jack McDuff counterpointed against an orchestra, and the proof is in the pudding. Golson was right.

McDuff brings his regular group. Golson brings an orchestra, personnel unidentified. The four tunes were all they recorded, and the B side of the album comes from McDuff's earlier date on the West Coast. Lew Futterman produced both sessions. The album is entitled The Dynamic Jack McDuff. "Pink Panther" and "Carpetbaggers" were released on 45. The version I've linked to on "Listen to One" is the 45 RPM version. Weighing in at 3:20, as opposed to the album's 5:15, which means more theme and less improvisation, but hey, it's the Pink Panther! Dead ant...dead ant...."Once in a Lifetime" was also released on 45, as the flip side of "Rail Head," from the earlier session.

Listening to Prestige 624: Kenny Burrell

LISTEN TO ONE: Soul Call

Kenny Burrell was certainly no stranger to Prestige's album shelf, but it had been a while since the label had given him the leader's baton -- seven years. He had recently worked with Jack McDuff, Shirley Scott, Gildo Mahones, Jimmy Witherspoon.

This a slightly unusual lineup in that it's a quintet with no horns. The basic rhythm section, and Burrell's guitar, are augmented by the always-welcome Ray Barretto. The other musicians on the date are less well-known. Bill English played on a few Prestige sessions; the other two are newcomers to Prestige, but members of Burrell's working group.

Will Davis, new to Prestige, had seniority in the jazz world. Born in 1926, he joined Howard McGhee's early West Coast bebop ensemble and recorded with McGhee in 1948. Then relocating to Detroit, he became a part of that city's high-flying jazz scene. As the house pianist at the Crystal Bar, he worked with many of bebop's royalty, including Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. After his move to New York in the late 1950s, he worked often with Burrell, although this was their only recording together. 

If Davis represented the Old Guard of modern jazz, Martin Rivera had something of a different background, making his first recordings with Les Jazz Modes, the experimental group organized by Julius Watkins and Charlie Rouse. He also worked frequently with Junior Mance, recording with him as a duo, and made a few albums with Burrell, although this would be the only one on Prestige.

So it's fair to say that Burrell was looking for a flexible sound--not the trendy sound of soul jazz, although the album's title, Soul Call, would seem to suggest otherwise. But any casual jazz fancier, picking up the 45 RPM single for a jolt of the popular soul jazz of the day, might have been sorely disappointed.

Any real jazz fan, not so. "Soul Call," over a rock solid (but not aggressively funky) riff from the rhythm section, is a is a wonderful rhythmic/melodic/improvisational interplay between two masters, Burrell and Barretto.

It's a Burrell composition, as is "Kenny's Theme," which is the flip side of the 45, and another opportunity for Burrell and Barretto to interweave their talents, with rhythmic delights by Bill English and Martin Rivera thrown in.

"Mark I" was written by Will Davis, and there's room for some piano-guitar interaction, but mostly it's a vehicle for some bravura work by Burrell.

Standards comprise the rest of the album, and one not-quite-standard: "Oh Henry," written by Gil Fuller and Ernie Henry. Henry was a talented saxophone player whose promising career was cut short by heroin overdose in 1957. Fuller, though his name is not quite a household word, was a gifted composer and arranger particularly known for his work with Dizzy Gillespie. He was co-composer and arranger on "Manteca," "Tin Tin Deo" and "One Bass Hit." He gives Burrell and company a spirited beboppish romp here, to cap off an album of much originality, much virtuosity, and if the group doesn't entirely answer the soul call, they provide a refreshing change of pace.

Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 623: Shirley Scott and Stanley Turrentine

LISTEN TO ONE: The Funky Fox

 By this time Shirley Scott and Stanley Turrentine are as blissfully united musically as we hope they are in their marriage life, though their marriage was destined not to last beyond 1971. But hey, you never know with marriages, and the music they recorded together remains an enduring testament to the best days of their relationship.

But just because they're perfectly attuned to each other, that doesn't mean they're slipping into too-familiar grooves. They're playing soul jazz to appeal to anyone with a pulse, but the way they play off each other gives each of them the opportunity for creativity and new discoveries. Scott, in particular, is always going to find new ways of approaching, and taking off from, a solid swinging musical idea.

Bob Cranshaw makes his Prestige debut here. He's best known for his five-decade association with Sonny Rollins, beginning in 1959, but he was always in demand for other sessions, including a number for Prestige throughout the decade with a variety of artists. One of his first recording gigs had been with Scott on a 1959 album for Impulse!, and although this is only Prestige session with her, he played with her on other albums for Impulse! and Atlantic.

"Flamingo" was first recorded by Duke Ellington in 1941, and taken to the top of the rhythm and blues charts in 1951. It became a crowd pleaser for club dates, and in fact was part of the Willis Jackson night that Prestige recorded live. "A Night at the Five Spot," a tribute to the great New York jazz club, was written by Benny Golson and recorded by Curtis Fuller and Art Farmer separately, and then by Golson, Farmer and Fuller together as the Jazztet in 1961. Scott and Turrentine made the next recording of it three years later, and after that it entered into the jazz standard repertoire. Bob Cranshaw may have brought along Sonny Rollins's "Grand Street."

The other tunes are by Scott, and they do an excellent job of showcasing the great organist and her talented husband. I particularly liked "The Funky Fox" -- perhaps a self-reference?

The album was released by Prestige as Blue Flames. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 622: Willis Jackson

LISTEN TO ONE: Gator Tail

 This would seem to be some indication of how well Prestige was doing with Willis Jackson in the mid-1960s. A night at a New York club, four sets captured live, released on four different albums over the next three years. Jackson's popularity didn't endure--you won't find his name on any contemporary list of best jazz saxophone players, perhaps because he's too closely identified with rhythm and blues, and jazz snobbery still exists. This is wrong, of course. Rhythm and blues is jazz. for one thing, and for another, Jackson's many Prestige albums were squarely in the mainstream hard bop tradition. A quick glance at the set lists

for this live date makes the point: He plays a couple of his rhythm and blues favorites, like "Gator Tail" and "Blue Gator," but a lot more jazz standards: "Polka Dots and Moonbeams," "Jumpin' with Symphony Sid," "Perdido."

And of these four albums, only a handful of tracks have been posted by jazz aficionados on YouTube. So Jackson is still collected, but assiduously.

And probably, Jackson's recordings from this era are mostly remembered for the presence of a very young Pat Martino, at the beginning of his career, still calling himself Pat Azzara, on guitar. The CD reissues of these and other recordings are all billed as Willis Jackson with Pat Martino. That's understandable -- Martino was already a standout guitarist, at the threshold of a great career. But the fervent Martino collector who finds these albums will be treated to a fine band, led by a very fine sax man.

Even at the time, Jackson's defenders faced something of an uphill battle. In the liner notes for Live! Action, Kansas City radio personality Tom Reed quoted Michael Gold's liner notes to an earlier Jackson album:

This music from a jazz critic's standpoint has been unjustly rated on many occasions. Many critics have confused the initial intent and purpose of the music which they evaluate with their own ideals and standards of merit. It is often startling to read that a record which is obviously aimed at the amusement and entertainment of the listener is mistaken and evaluated by the standards which should be used for work which projects itself with a different and contradictory intent.

Today many musicians have only contempt for critics. It is very difficult for an artist to have respect for a man who makes such obvious errors out of a profound ignorance or through a mistaken belief in the purpose of the music."

It's the old artists vs. critics battle. NBA star George "Iceman" Gervin said it well, and I'm paraphrasing from memory, when he explained why he didn't have much use for sportswriters: He said that he goes out every night and tests himself against some of the greatest athletes who ever lived, and who are these writers testing themselves against? Shakespeare? Hemingway? Not likely,

And there's something to be said for critics being in the vanguard, calling attention to new artists like Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy before the listening public at large is ready to give something so new a chance. And something to be said for pointing out that sometimes mass taste is just wrong, wrong, wrong, and saxophone players with one initial for a last name aren't really offering anything musically rewarding.

But there's very often something to be said for music that people like to listen to. Especially when it's being played by a pro's pro who knows how to give the people what they want in a hard-driving, sweet sounding, musically fulfilling way. Especially when the old pro has taken under his wing a 19-year-old guitarist who's already making people prick their ears up and take notice. The two hot young guitarists who were starting to play around town and make people sit up and take notice were Martino and George Benson, and Benson has talked about going to hear Martino and being turned on by him.

A live album, or series of albums, covering four sets on the same night, is a good place to put this theory to the test, as the band is going to be playing a lot of familiar material, the tunes that a live club audience is going to want to hear. Jackson, Martino and company pass that test with flying colors.

The four Prestige albums to issue from this night of live music (with "Blue Gator" on two of them) are Jackson's Action! Recorded Live, Live! Action (with Pat Martino pinning a new tail on the Gator with his solo on Jackson's signature song), Soul Night/Live!, and Tell It... Ozzie Cadena produced, and Prestige got good value out of an evening at the Allegro.

 

Listening to Prestige 621: Sonny Stitt

LISTEN TO ONE: Shangri-La

 Two 45 RPM singles were released off this session: "My New Baby" / "Misty" and "Shangri-La" / "Soul Shack," the last-named actually coming from a different Stitt-organ session, that one with Jack McDuff from 1963. I hope they got a their share of radio play and jukebox spins, because they're super-listenable, the kind of music that could have made some listeners want to hear more jazz. It's interesting that they didn't put out a 45 of "Mama Don't Allow," the ever-popular warhorse attributed to Cow Cow Davenport, which features a vocal by Stitt as well as a killer tenor sax solo and a crowd-pleasing drum solo by Billy James.

If that all adds up to something that sounds like a commercial venture, rest assured that I do not mean this in any way as a put-down. Some of America's greatest music was made for the masses, and while it's important to encourage experimentation, and give voice to the people who are ahead of the curve, there's nothing wrong with giving the people what they want, especially if it's a master like Sonny Stitt serving it up.

Prestige was getting ready to break Don Patterson out as its next big organ star. He and Billy James, along with guitarist Paul Weeden, had been working as a trio mostly in Chicago when they were hired to back up Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis on a 1973 Prestige session. Here, although Stitt got top billing, Patterson was also featured on the cover, preparing him for his next session, in two months' time, when he would be the session leader, he'd have Booker Ervin alongside him, and the album would be titled The Exciting New Organ of Don Patterson.

The marketing campaign apparently worked, because Patterson became one of Prestige's top talents for the next several years.

Good for Prestige, good for Patterson. If this album was part of the strategy, good for it. And good for the listener, too, that casual listener who might have heard a cut on Listening to Lacy and then plunked a nickel into the jukebox to hear it again, and the serious jazz fan for whom good music is always welcome.

I'm sure if you were playing--or even working as a server--in a lounge six nights a week, you could get pretty sick of "Misty" -- and a few other tunes. But as a music lover who listens to a lotta this and a lotta that, it's a familiar melody, and it's possible to appreciate that it's as familiar as it is because it's a beautiful melody, and when you have Sonny Stitt playing it, and improvising on it, it becomes a treat for the ears. The other offering from the standard catalog, not nearly as familiar, is "Shangri-La," written in 1946 by Matty Malnick and first introduced by his orchestra. It was a minor hit in 1957 for the Four Coins, one of those "safe to listen to, we're not rock and roll" groups that still hung onto the Top Forty in those days. While it's been widely recorded over the years, it's been mostly by groups whose sound is more at home in elevators than smoky basements. But it provides a good vehicle for Stitt and Patterson to blend their sound, and makes a good introduction to Patterson.

There are three Stitt originals on the album, all good listening, and two more that were recorded on the session and released later, along with some cuts from Patterson's May session with Booker Ervin, under the title Patterson's People: Don Patterson with Sonny Stitt and Booker Ervin. 

Shangri-La was the title of this Prestige release. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 620: Ahmed Abdul-Malik

LISTEN TO TWO: Spellbound
Never on Sunday

Ahmed Abdul-Malik's recording career was brief--a total of six albums as leader between 1958 and 1964, the last four on Prestige. And this was his swan song. He never led a group again, and played on only a small handful of other recordings, although he would reappear on record in 2005, more than a decade after his death and half a century after this momentous recording, when the John Coltrane/Thelonious Monk Town Hall concert of 1957 was finally releas

I don't know why this sudden halt, and I haven't been able to find out much more about it. Abdul-Malik lived into the 1990s, taught in the New York City school system, but doesn't seem to have been interviewed, and doesn't seem to have rated much in the way of obituaries. Curious neglect for such a striking talent.

Certainly this final album leaves one wishing for more, because it's so good, but also because it's so unusual. That he continued to create a fusion between Western jazz and Middle Eastern music is expected, and welcome. But to take as his source material theme music from Hollywood movies? That's not at all the choice that most of us would have made.

And what musicians would you go looking for if you were planning a session of jazz/Middle Eastern fusion? An oud player, certainly, Abdul-Malik, himself a master of the oud, had a keen ear for talent on the instrument, and he picked Hamza Aldeen, an Egyptian composer and oud master from Nubia, the upper Nile region where the oud originated. As Hamza El Din, he performed in the summer of 1964 at the Newport Folk Festival, and recorded an album for Vanguard entitled Music of Nubia, followed by a second Vanguard album in 1965. He has been cited as a major influence by avant garde composers Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and has recorded with the Grateful Dead and the Kronos quartet.

This was his only recording session with a jazz group, but his contribution is outstanding. He plays on two tracks, "Never on Sunday" and "Song of Delilah."

A musician with plenty of jazz credentials, but not one you'd immediately think of if you were planning an album of Middle Eastern music, is Ellington alumnus Ray Nance. Nance had joined the Ellington orchestra in 1940, and remained with them through 1963, leaving just before being tabbed to join Abdul-Malik for this session, As Ellington's first trumpet, he recorded one of the most famous trumpet solos in jazz, the Duke's original 1940 recording of "Take the A Train." He plays cornet here, on "Body and Soul" and "Cinema Blues."

Nance, of course, also became known as the only violin soloist in the Ellington orchestra, and he brings his violin to "Spellbound" and "Song of Delilah." Again, if you were putting together a cutting edge group to play an new kind of world music fusion, you might not immediately think to bring a sort of old school violin guy.

I have to assume that Abdul-Malik was completely given his head in assembling this group, because no one--not Bob Weinstock, not Don Schlitten--was going to say "World music fusion? Right. You'll need a violin, and an old school rhythm and blues guy on tenor sax."

That would be Seldon Powell. No, the choices must have been Abdul-Malik's own. And the choice of movie music? Who else would dream that up?

Anyway, assuming my assumptions are right, thank Providence they let Ahmed do it his way, because this is a wonderful album, and one is only left regretting that he didn't make any more. What would he have thought of next time?

Pianist Paul Neves was one of those local legends, in his case in two locales -- Boston and Puerto Rico. A fine player who didn't make it to New York, didn't tour with a New York or LA-based name band, didn't record -- this is his only recording date with a name group. It's good that we have him here.

I should give "Song of Delilah" as my Listen to One. It has some strong soloing by everyone. And if I didn't choose it, I'd be torn between the wonderful violin work by Ray Nance on "Spellbound," and the electrifying oud playing of Hamza Aldeen on "Never on Sunday." Well, I can't choose, and I can't reconcile. They're two such different cuts, with two such different musicians. So it's Listen to Two.

Another odd thing about this album: it was released on Prestige's lightly used and lightly distributed budget label, Status. I don't know why. Don Schlitten produced.

Listening to Prestige 619 - Reverend Gary Davis

LISTEN TO ONE: Maple Leaf Rag

This is the fourth and final album (not counting repackagings) by the Reverend Gary Davis, Harlem street singer and preacher. and mentor to nearly every young guitar player in New York. The first three were released on Bluesville, but Bluesville was no more, shelved along with Prestige's other jazz subsidiaries, New Jazz, Swingville and Moodsville. 

There were still some smaller subsidiary labels: Prestige International, Prestige Lively Arts and Prestige Folklore, more in competition with smaller independents like Folkways and Caedmon than with the other jazz independents. I haven't included them in my history/reminiscence of Prestige Records.

But since I have been following Gary Davis on Prestige, I'm including this Folklore release, which is an interesting addition to the Davis catalog, in that it's all instrumental. Davis was one of the great blues guitar stylists as well as one of the great teachers, and here plays some ragtime and some folk styles as well as blues, and also plays banjo and harmonica on this unaccompanied field recording by Sam Charters.

His harmonica (on "Coon Hunt") is reminiscent of Sonny Terry's, on "Fox Chase." He's really adept on banjo, which he plays on "Devil's Dream" and "Please Baby." His finger picking banjo style is reminiscent of nothing so much as his guitar style. And his guitar mastery is sufficient to make one glad that he put out an all-instrumental album. He has tempos from "Slow Drag" to "Fast Fox Trot," and from ragtime ("Maple Leaf Rag") to march ("United States March"), and a tribute to multitasking with "The Boy Was Kissing the Girl (And Playing the Guitar at the Same Time)."

This would be Davis's last recording for Prestige, but he continued performing, and recording, right up to his death in 1972. A performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 brought him to the attention of new audiences, and his last years were some of his most successful ones.

Listening to Prestige 618 - Eddie Chamblee with Dayton Selby

LISTEN TO ONE: The Honeydripper

 The second track of Eddie Chamblee's album is Rodgers and Hammerstein's "You'll Never Walk Alone," and if you had gotten up and tried to dance your way through the first track, "The Honeydripper," you might well be thinking of it as "You'll Never Walk Again." There's an urgency that's seldom matched on record to kickstart "The Honeydripper," and that urgency never lets up, as Chamblee, organist Dayton Selby and drummer Al Griffin keep kicking it down the road. Truth be told, although "You'll Never Walk Alone" is a breather, that's only in comparison with "The Honeydripper." This may not have been the sensitive approach that Rodgers and Hammerstein intended for their inspirational lyric and quasi-operatic melody, but who asked them?

They actually do slow down and take "Softly, as I Leave You" as a sweet ballad, Chamblee was a tenor player of the old school, and the old rhythm and blues school called for a tenor man to slow the tempo down and play sweet for make-out time for the dancers.

Chamblee was definitely one of those old school guys. Born in Atlanta, raised in Chicago, his pre-law studies at the historically Black Chicago State College were interrupted by service in World War II, and after the war he went back to the weekend gig he had held down during his college days--playing the tenor saxophone in clubs. His breakthrough came when he recorded the tenor sax solo on pianist Sonny Thompson's R&B hit "Long Gone." The song became his signature and his nickname, like Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson or Frank "Floorshow" Culley. Or Joe "The Honeydripper" Liggins, but that tune outgrew its composer to become a rhythm and blues and soul jazz standard, Chamblee's ass-kicking version being just one of many.

He led his own groups in the Chicago area before joining Lionel Hampton's band for its celebrated European tour in the mid-1950s, and he had an association with Dinah Washington that lasted musically for eight years and five albums (including some vocal duets in the style she would later perfect with Brook Benton), romantically a good deal shorter (he was briefly her fifth husband).

Dayton Selby was another veteran of the rhythm and blues era--his style is more suggestive of Bill Doggett than Jimmy Smith. He did record a couple of albums for for small labels, but this session with Chamblee is what he's best known for.

Al Griffin's obituary gives a sterling resume for a life in the music business: 

He trained in NYC with the world famous Cozy Cole & Gene Krupa at their music studio just before he started his career on the road touring and playing with Dinah Washington, Clark Terry, Eddie Chamblee, Henry "Red" Allen, Bob Crosby, Paul Anka, Dayton Selby, Milt Buckner, Billy Eckstine, Illinois Jacquet, Timmy Rogers, Redd Foxx, The Nat King Cole Show, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show, just to name a few, he was also part of the house band (drummer) for then Heavyweight Champion Sugar Ray Robinson at his club in Harlem "Sugar Ray's."

 And the Asbury Park African American Music Project quotes Griffin, who returned to Asbury Park as his music career wound down, to take over his father's dry cleaning business, on how he got his start in his home town:

I was sitting outside, and this fellow came by, a friend of mine, with some drumsticks. I said, “Where are you going with those drumsticks?” He said, “Just messing around.” I said, “Where’d you get them?” He said, “I got them at the West Side Community Center” – which was right around the corner from me. He said, “They’re starting up a drum and bugle corp,” so I’m going to try to get over there. And that’s what I did.

Bob Weinstock's record of commercial success with the rhythm and blues veterans he signed to capitalize on the soul jazz craze was hit or miss: a lot of success with Willis Jackson, not so much with some of the others, including Eddie Chamblee. But his record of recording damn good music continues triumphant. The Rocking Tenor Sax Of Eddie Chamblee With Dayton Selby At The Organ is a rocking good time for listening, and would make a super album for dancing, with its driving uptempo numbers, slowed down in the middle with "Softly as I Leave You." and winding up the evening with a "goodnight sweetheart" special: the 1950s ballad hit "Little Things Mean a Lot." Ozzie Cadena produced.