Listening to Prestige: Chronicling Its Classic Jazz Recordings, 1949–1972, my history of Prestige Records, can be ordered from Amazon or through your local independent bookstore.
LISTEN TO ONE: Carmell's Black Forest Waltz
Carmell Jones had taken up residency in Germany when this recording was made, where he would remain until 1980. There he made the acquaintance of Nathan Davis, a Kansas City musician who had played with Jay McShann and, remarkably, with the great all-woman band the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, during their later year when they would, very occasionally, hire a man to fill out a section.
Davis came to Germany not with a touring "ambassadors of jazz" group like the Lionel Hampton big band, but by the same route as another young musician -- a guitar player named Elvis Presley. Like Elvis, Nathan was drafted, and shipped overseas to Berlin. Unlike Elvis, he stayed.
He had more reason too -- no Hollywood/Vegas superstardom awaiting him back home, plenty of racial prejudice awaiting him back home, and an international cultural life that was burgeoning in Berlin, including a jazz scene and the kind of appreciation for jazz that its practitioners would not always find in their home country. So after he mustered out in 1962, Davis stayed in Europe.
It was most likely in Berlin that he first met fellow expatriate Kenny Clarke and his musical partner, the Belgian pianist Francy Boland, with whom he struck up a musical fellowship, although he does not appear to have been a part of their big band. But when he connected in 1965 with newcomer Carmell Jones, an old schoolyard pal and early bandmate from Kansas City, it was Clarke, Boland, and their bass player, expatriate Jimmy Woode, whom he brought in for a recording session deep in the Black Forest.
That Black Forest studio, SABA-Tonstudio, had already begun to develop a reputation, one that would only grow through decade. It was most famous for the legendary solo and trio recordings by Oscar Peterson released as Exclusively for my Friends. The studio, built by Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, a gifted engineer who was also an audiophile and jazz lover, was widely acclaimed for the excellence of its sound reproduction, and it certainly did right by this quintet.
The session is considered a high point in the careers of both. Their Kansas City background shows (and don't forget a Kansas City/Jay McShann background includes an early exposure to Charlie Parker). They are both soulful and modern, as demonstrated in the aptly titled "That Kaycee Thing." It's a Davis composition, as are most of the tunes from the session. One exception is a Jones tribute to Herr Brnner-Schwer's studio and its exotic location, "Carmell's Black Forest Waltz."
The quintet recorded seven tunes that day, all of which appear on the German release, The Hip Walk, credited to the Nathan Davis Quintet Featuring Carmell Jones. Prestige licensed four of them for its 1969 release, Carmell Jones In Europe; 1965-66. The other two tracks were recorded at a jazz festival in Frankfurt the following year with a group including Jimmy Woode and featuring Pony Poindexter and Annie Ross, singing her hit composition "Twisted."
Nathan Davis, who held a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology. returned to the United States in 1916 to become professor of music and director of jazz studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was also was also founder and director of the University of Pittsburgh Annual Jazz Seminar and Concert, the first academic jazz event of its kind in the United States.
