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.