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.