Listening to Prestige 604: Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Jive Samba

Prestige Records, Ozzie Cadena and Rudy Van Gelder took a bit of a breather in the fall of 1963, between the September 17th date of Jack McDuff, without his group, joining Sonny Stitt for a session, and October 10, when McDuff regular Red Holloway recorded a date without Brother Jack. 

But in the interim, one of Prestige's mainstays was recorded live out in San Francisco, and the results released on Prestige. The club was the Jazz Workshop, and the headliner none other than Brother Jack.

San Francisco, especially the North Beach area, was a hot epicenter for jazz in the 1960s, with such a cluster of clubs that Dizzy Gillespie, playing one night at the Jazz Workshop, could tuck his horn under his arm, walk across the street to a club where Carmen McRae was headlining, and accompany her on a swinging version of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." The Workshop was particularly fertile ground. Barry Harris recorded a live album there in 1960, and he was followed by Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderley, James Moody, Larry Coryell, and perhaps most famously, Thelonious Monk, whose 1964 appearance was recorded but unreleased. When it finally saw the light of day in 1983, it was hailed as one of Monk's finest efforts.

Jack McDuff hit Frisco with a big sound, including his two tenormen of the moment (usually he used one or the other), Harold Vick and Red Holloway, and his hot new guitar find, George Benson, and they all came ready to play to a responsive audience.

The date included four originals by McDuff, including "Grease Monkey," a staple of his live sets, and a tune previously recorded on an album with Kenny Burrell. 

"Somewhere in the Night" was written by noted arranger Billy May as the theme music for the gritty New York-based police drama Naked City, and it had become a crowd pleaser for jazz ensembles.

"Passing Through" was from a young West Coast musician who was starting to make a name for himself as a sax player/composer/arranger with Chico Hamilton. Charles Lloyd would go on to become one of the biggest jazz stars of the rest of the century, and into the next millennium. 

Finally, "Jive Samba"  had recently been recorded by Cannonball Adderley, from the pen of his brother Nat. It had already become a hit in jazz circles, and has remained a staple of the jazz repertoire for major artists and school groups alike.

Jazz Workshop was a great place to play, and its knowledgeable and enthusiastic audiences drew the best out of the musicians that played there. This album, entitled Brother Jack at the Jazz Workshop--Live!,  produced by Lew Futterman and Peter Paul, yielded two 45 RPM singles off the initial release, "Passing Through" / "Somewhere In The Night" and  "Dink's Blues / Grease Monkey." A third single,  "Rock Candy / Grease Monkey" was released in 1969. The group is identified as the Brother Jack McDuff Quartet, despite the presence of five musicians.

Listening to Prestige 603: Sonny Stitt, Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Soul Shack

 Back in February of 1962, Prestige put Sonny Stitt and Jack McDuff together, that time along with Gene Ammons. Stitt was already considered one of the legends of jazz, going back to Charlie Parker and bebop's golden days in the 1940s. Ammons was probably Prestige's most consistent seller, and McDuff one of its hottest new stars. In a way, they represented three generations of jazz styles, although they were very close to the same age.

When Stitt and McDuff got together again in September, Ammons was already in prison on drug charges; but, as with the previous session, the

legend was the center, the hot new guy the support. McDuff had his own tight-knit group, with drummer Joe Dukes, considered by many to be the pulse of soul jazz, and a young George Benson, a future supernova in the jazz world. Instead, the quartet was filled out with two solid professionals--the versatile Leonard Gaskin, and the perhaps even more versatile Herbie Lovelle. Lovelle was becoming one of the drummers Prestige liked to call, with six previous sessions for the label. But calls for his sticks and brushes were far-flung, and by the time he was finished, he had played drums for everyone from Hot Lips Page to Teddy Wilson to Bob Dylan to the Monkees.

So this is essentially a Sonny Stitt album. Stitt is everything one looks for in a jazz legend--swinging, melodic, inventive, endlessly listenable. McDuff, even in his solos, is a part of that sound--tasteful, not overpowering, yet still individualistic.

And soulful. We can't forget soulful. The name of the album is Soul Shack, and the title track, composed by Stitt but certainly with McDuff in mind, is the soul highlight of the session, with the two of them getting free to get down, and never let up.

Three of the tunes chosen for the album are much-recorded standards dating back to the 1920s-30s, played by this group with fond familiarity, but given their own stamp. "Sunday" was written by Chester Conn in 1926, and has had 500-odd recordings, most often by vocalists, but with many pure jazz variations, from the original version by Jean Goldkette through Benny Carter, Gerry Mulligan and Ben Webster, Tommy Flanagan and Jaki Byard. "For You" comes from a Mack Sennett movie in 1930 and has also entered the lexicon of American song, from jazz vocalists to Ricky Nelson, as well as a few jazz interpretations. "Love Nest" also dates back to 1930, and as Dan Morgenstern comments in his liner notes, "most modernists race through this as though it were an establishment built for rabbits, but not so Sonny...he sets a calm yet springy pace...Jack McDuff waxes lyrical."

"Hairy" and "Shadows" were also written by Stitt, and "Shadows" is a blues and pure beauty, with lyrical playing by both Stitt and McDuff.

Soul Shack was a Prestige release, Ozzie Cadena producing. I can find no record of  A 45 RPM single,  unusual for a McDuff session of the time, but YouTube has a three minute edit of the track, so maybe there was a single.

Listening to Prestige 602: Roy Haynes

LISTEN TO ONE: Modette

 Elvin Jones once said:

 The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer. 

Jones did, of course, see the world through a drummer-centric prism, but that doesn't make him wrong. And in sessions led by a drummer, the argument is made forcefully. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers set the tone for so much of Blue Note's

catalog. Max Roach and Tony Williams showed new directions in jazz through groups that they led. Across the Atlantic, expatriate Kenny Clarke showed how a drummer could conduct a large ensemble with the Clarke-Boland big band.

Roy Haynes was one of the most prolific drummers of his era, and his era is virtually an eon. He came on the jazz scene in the early 1940s, recording with Lester Young, then with Charlie Parker. As the 21st century entered its third decade, he was still playing, well into his 90s. I can never hear his name without hearing Sarah Vaughan, on her great 1950s recording of "Shulie a Bop," announcing her musicians, ending with "Roy (drumroll)....Haynes!" (drumroll). He is one of the most prolifically recorded drummers of all time, with 28 previous sessions on Prestige.

These include three previous sessions as leader. In 1958 he recorded We Three, a trio album with Paul Chambers and Phineas Newborn, Jr., and in 1960 he followed it with Just Us, this time with Richard Wyands on piano and Eddie de Haas on bass. While Elvin Jones's statement is meant to apply to the importance of the drummer in a large ensemble, you can hear it more plainly in a small group session where the drummer is the leader, and Haynes makes a powerful impression with these trio sessions.

In April of 1963, just five months before this session, he co-led a quartet featuring Booker Ervin. Ervin was really starting to establish himself as one of the major new jazz stars of the decade. Here he's back with the quartet format again, including worked with Ronnie Mathews and Larry Ridley, from the Ervin session, and Frank Strozier, who was heard once earlier on Prestige, playing alto sax in a group led by Booker Ervin. Here he plays flute as well as alto.

All three of these guys were young, near the beginning of their careers, and Haynes gives them all ample opportunity to shine. This includes the playing of their compositions--"Modette" and "La Palomeinding" were written by Strozier; "Go 'n' Git It" is by Mathews. All of them get the substantial benefit of Haynes's leadership on drums. Another Strozier composition, "Hag" (one of Haynes's nicknames) is included as part of a medley, unusual but not unheard of for a jazz album, and actually a frequent concluding number for Haynes's live sets, always including his own (with Richard Wyands) composition "Cymbalism," which had previously been on the Just Us album. Here they finish up with Sonny Rollins's jazz standard "Oleo."

"Cymbalism" becomes the title track for this LP, which was issued by New Jazz, and was the last album to be recorded for New Jazz, although several reissues followed it before the label was finally put to rest. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 601: Red Holloway

LISTEN TO ONE: Monkey Sho' Can Talk

 Red Holloway first came to Prestige as part of a large ensemble put together by Oliver Nelson for a Gene Ammons session, then appeared on a session with Brother Jack McDuff, with whom he was to remain for several years. But Bob Weinstock liked his stuff, both musically and commercially, enough that he was to bring out four albums with Holloway as leader over the next few years, with an emphasis on "jazz with a beat" -- the liner notes to this album emphasize, a touch melodramatically, that this music has a good beat and you can dance to it.

Although he was born in Arkansas, Holloway was a true musical son of Chicago, where his family moved when he was still in school. He attended DeSable High School, that cradle of jazz education, where one of his classmates was Johnny Griffin. He left Chicago for the army, but returned to

spend his formative years there, playing with a wide range of musicians. He was active in Chicago's blues and rhythm and blues scene, joining Roosevelt Sykes's band, and playing with Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon, Junior Parker, Lloyd Price, and Bobby Bland. He accompanied a range of visiting jazz stars, including Dexter Gordon, Yusef Lateef, Ben Webster, Sonny Rollins, Wardell Gray, and many more. He worked with vocalists -- Billie Holiday, Dakota Staton, Joe Williams, Aretha Franklin. He toured with Sonny Stitt, Memphis Slim, and Lionel Hampton. 

And all of this -- the rhythm and blues, the modern jazz, the entertainers, the soul jazz -- can be heard in Holloway's own sound, making him a good fit for Jack McDuff, and a good bet for recordings under his own name. To quote the teenage record reviewers on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, Holloway's records had a good beat. You could dance to them.

Holloway first brought a group to Rudy Van Gelder's studio on August 27. It was a quiet time (for Prestige, not for Rudy, who rarely had down time) between the two Gildo Mahones sessions, but even so, they did not spend much time with Red. He recorded two tunes, one a standard "Moonlight in Vermont") and one an original ("Miss Judie May"). 

Some of the musicians on this date shared a Chicago connection. Thomas "Tiaz" Palmer worked with a number of Chicago doowop and rhythm and blues groups as well as jazz groups, and in the 1980s would reunite with another ex-Chicagoan, Amina Claudine Myers, for a recording. He also toured and recorded with the Coasters frequently. Trumpeter Hobart Dotson was a music veteran, having been a member of Billy Eckstine's big band in the 1940s. He had also been a stalwart on the Chicago jazz scene, recordint with a number of groups. 

Bob Durham also had his start in doowop, working with the Orioles at 16, He went on to a long and distinguished jazz career, highlighted by an an association with Norman Granz that found him playing with many of Granz's artists, including Oscar Peterson, whose regular drummer he was through much of the 1960s.

But two sides were all that this group cut, and only one of them was used. "Miss Judie May" was shelved, to be recorded again when Holloway convened a completely different group on October 10.

This one was anchored by two Prestige mainstays, Leonard Gaskin on bass and Herbie Lovelle on drums. The other players were all new--and again, relying on his Chicago connections.

Paul Serrano made his mark on the Chicago music scene not only as a trumpeter but also as a recording engineer. After playing with Woody Herman, and appearing on hundreds of recordings for Chess and other Chicago-based record labels, Serrano opened his own South Side P. S.  Recording Studios in 1966. In 1992, as he began to suffer from Parkinson's disease, he closed his studio and went to work for Delmark Records as their head engineer. Ramsey Lewis, who recorded frequently with Serrano, remembered that "being a musician, he knew what the instruments were supposed to sound like." Lewis also recalled Serrano's generosity with musicians who couldn't afford to pay.

Big John Patton, like many organists, started on piano, accompanying Lloyd Price as a teenager. Switching to organ in the 1960s, he cut two records with Lou Donaldson, then served an apprenticeship of sorts with Jimmy Smith, playing tambourine on an early session by the soulmaster. By the middle of the year he was fronting his own group for Blue Note. He became one of their soul jazz stalwarts throughout the decade, then had a resurgence of his career in the 1980s with avant-gardist John Zorn.

This is a very early session for guitarist Eric Gale (he had made his Prestige debut on a King Curtis session), who wouldn't really hit his stride until the 1970s, when he became one of the most sought-after session guitarists around. His recordings with supergroup Stuff are some of the best examples of 1970s jazz-funk.

The album was released on Prestige as The Burner. "Monkey Sho' Can Talk" and "Crib Theme" were the 45 RPM single, the latter a rare composition credit for Ozzie Cadena, who produced both sessions.