Listening to Prestige 551: Latin Jazz Quintet

LISTEN TO ONE: Dorian

 This was the last Prestige album for Juan Amalbert and the Latin Jazz Quintet, and very near to the end of Tru-Sound Records. It featured Bobby Capers and Bill Ellington, but otherwise a different lineup for this ever-shifting group. Manny Ramos, who played on the Eric Dolphy and Shirley Scott sessions, returns. New on board are vibraphonist Willie Bivens, pianist Willie Gardner, and percussionist Victor Allende.

Bivens, whose father was also William Bivens and also a vibist with swing bands in the 1940s, would go on to play with Pucho and the Latin Soul Brothers. a late 1960s group that recorded for Prestige and merits a footnote in jazz history as the group where Chick Corea got his start. Bivens also was part of one Grant Green album for Blue Note.

Victor Allende played with other Latin groups, and on a couple of Prestige albums later in the decade--one with Willis Jackson, and the other with George Braith, and album that would become a cult favorite.

It's hard to chart Willie Gardner's career. He seems to have recorded with Johnny Hodges in 1968. Beyond that, it gets murky. There are a number of credits for pianist/organist Billy Gardner, but it's not at all clear whether they're the same person. In most sources, they seem to be divided. Billy Gardner is credited on Allmusic.com as recording with Dave Bailey, George Braith, Charlie Rouse and others, but not with Hodges or Amalbert, so that would suggest two different artists. On the other hand, though the personnel list on the album credits Willie Gardner, Billy Taylor, in his liner notes, calls him Billy.  

Amalbert's Latin Jazz Quintet was very much a jazz ensemble. Taylor describes him as:

...multilingual verbally as well as musically, [so] he has an unusually large heritage of rich, expressive and exciting sounds and rhythms to choose from. By carefully selecting musicians whose talents he admires and whose feelings are compatible with his own, the energetic leader of the LJQ has blended what he considers the best musical elements of the North and South American musical traditions and emerged with his own conception of "Latin Jazz."

Amalbert and Ellington appeared with Pharaoh Sanders on an extremely obscure album called Oh! Pharaoh Speak, which was credited to The Latin Jazz Quintet - Featured Guest Artist Pharoah Sanders - Under The Direction Of Juan Amalbért. There was a second collaboration between the LJQ and Eric Dolphy, but this one was without Amalbert. 

The Tru-Sound release was entitled The Chant, and the group was credited as Juan Amalbert's Latin Jazz Quintet  Esmond Edwards produced.

Listening to Prestige 463: The Latin Jazz Quintet

This is an unusual session for Juan Amalbert's Latin Jazz Quintet, in that the personnel hasn't changed from the group's last recording session. And in fact, the tunes from the two sessions mixed and matched over two different albums, and over two different imprints--Prestige and Tru-Sound.

Tru-Sound was a short-lived curiosity in the Prestige stable. I had described it earlier as a budget imprint, but that's not exactly right. Billboard, in chronicling the debut of a new label, describes as a

pop label [that] concentrates on what the company president, Bob Weinstock, calls modern r&b--that is, rhythm and blues with a strong modern jazz feeling.

This is, of course, nothing like the glossy pop which is passed off today as modern r&b, but the nomenclature didn't stick, and the label didn't, either. To some extent it lived up to Weinstock's initial salvo--King Curtis was its principal artist. But it also became the home for the small gospel catalog that Prestige assembled.

It would be a stretch to call the Latin Jazz Quintet modern r&b, but the title of the fruits of this session on New Jazz was Latin Soul, and that's not a bad description.

Latin jazz has always gotten the short end of the stick from the jazz establishment. Every year since I started this project, when I get to the year end review, I rail against the way the Down Beat readers' poll ignores the great Latin musicians--not even giving them votes for dance band, at a time when everyone in the world was doing the mambo and the cha-cha-cha!

So it's to Weinstock's credit that he gave the Latin Jazz Quintet as much of a chance as he did--albums on their own, with his new rising star Eric Dolphy, and later with his soul jazz superstar, Shirley Scott.

It's a more usual session for them in that they typically don't worry too much about how many people there are in a quintet, and I won't go over the personnel of the group here, because I just did that for their last session the past November. The selections are the kind of mix we've seen before: a pop standard, a jazz standard, and a bunch of originals from different members of the group. "Monk's Bread" is by Bill Ellington, "Mambo Bobbie" by Juan Amalbert. "Sunday Go to Meeting" is by Gene Casey, a sometime quintet member not along for this session.

"Milestones" is the Miles Davis tune, and the Latin edge serves it very nicely. "Out of This World" is the standard (Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer), and it was the tune picked for a two-sided 45 RPM release.

I think I would have picked "Ain't Dat Right." It has a strong riff and that Latin soul feel that made hits out of  tunes like "Watermelon Man" and "Grazing in the Grass."

Hot Sauce was the Tru-Sound release, Latin Soul was New Jazz.

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Listening to Prestige 419: Latin Jazz Quintet

The Latin Jazz Quintet appears not to have been locked into the idea of a set lineup, not even within the same session:two different piano players are used here. And they appear not to have been locked into the notion that a quintet should have five members: Here there six, or seven if you count both piano players. There was a great rhythm and blues/doo wop group of this same era named the "5" Royales, and they, too, were not exactly committed to the idea of being limited to five members, so maybe these guys should have called themselves the Latin Jazz "Quintet," but so it goes. Conguero Juan Amalbert and bassist Bill Ellington, at least so far, seem to be the only constants, appearing on their earlier recordings with Shirley Scott and Eric Dolphy.

Alto sax player Bobby Capers was part of Mongo Santamaria's band, where he played both alto and baritone. His younger sister, pianist Valerie, came onto the scene as a pianist later in the decade, and put together a substantial career. Will Coleman, Bill Ellington and Jose Ricci seem not to have recorded beyond the Latin Jazz Quintet, and I can find no further information about them.

Ernest Phil Newsom was better known, to the extent that he was known at all, as Phil Newsum. And within the confines of the Bronx, he was quite well known. Although he and other Latin music-loving African- Americans met with resistance from some in the Latino community, they became very much a part of the Bronx Latin music scene (the lineup of the Latin Jazz Quintet is evidence of that), and it was a vibrant and thriving musical hot spot. “There was all this intermingling of musicians,” Newsum told an interviewer for the Bronx Historical Society. “I don’t think African-Americans are as involved with this now.” African American and Puerto Rican singers came together in Harlem, too, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers were the result. An amazing treasure trove of oral histories of Black and Latin music in the Bronx can be found at Fordham University's Bronx African American History Project. Newsum also recorded with Sabu Martinez.

Two of the hottest spots for Bronx Latin jazz were club 845, at 845 Prospect Street in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, and the Blue Morocco on Boston Road. A New York Times article by Manny Fernandez, recalls a

Sunday afternoon in March 1946, [when] you could have stepped into Club 845 -- admission $1.25, plus tax -- and danced to a goateed, bespectacled trumpet player named Dizzy Gillespie.

And later, in the late 1950s, the Latin Jazz Quintet's Arthur Jenkins played piano at the Blue Morocco, accompanying two African American singers--first Irene Reid, who had already made a solid name for herself but had not cracked the supper club big time of Ella Fitzgerald. The Blue Morocco's second chanteuse of the era was Nancy Wilson, who was discovered there.

The one breakout career from the Latin Jazz Quintet belonged to Arthur Jenkins, who made his recording debut here on one track (which ended up on the cutting room floor), but who was the full time piano man when the six-man quintet next gathered in May of 1961. After his stint at the Blue Morocco, and his recording debut with Amalbert, Jenkins went on to a career that touched a lot of bases. He spent nine years with pop-reggae-soul star Johnny Nash, and while working with him in Jamaica, also participated in recording Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.  He recorded, toured with, and arranged music for Harry Belafonte. He had a hand in hit recordings in the disco field (Van McCoy's "The Hustle") and cool jazz (Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, Grover Washington Jr. and Bill Withers).

And as a result of being recruited to work on Yoko Ono's album Feeling the Space, he came to the attention of John Lennon. He played on Lennon's Mind Games album and on all his subsequent projects.

He worked in the Broadway theater, on commercials, and made two solo albums of jazz keyboards, which are worth a listen if you can find them. I love running across these stories of the under-the-radar lives in the music business.

The session included two originals (by Amalbert? not sure). two pop standards ("Summertime" and "Blue Moon") and two jazz standards ("Red Top" and "Round Midnight"). They're very percussion-focused, with Will Coleman's vibes the chief melody instrument. Bobby Capers's alto sax is much more sparingly used.

This and a subsequent Latin Jazz Quintet session each became part of two LPs--one on Prestige entitled Latin Soul, and the other on a short-lived Prestige budget imprint, Tru-Sound. That one was called Hot Sauce and the ensemble was billed as Juan Amalbert's Latin Jazz Quintet.

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Listening to Prestige 386: Latin Jazz Quintet/Eric Dolphy

This is the second outing for the Latin Jazz Quintet and a Prestige star, following their July 8 outing with Shirley Scott.  The lineup is 4/5 the same, with a bongo player dropped and vibist Carlie Simons added. I talk more about the other members of the group in the Scott entry, and I can't find any information at all on Simons, not even after plowing past all the Carly Simon links that Google starts you out with. Another source gives his name as Charlie Simmons, but I can't find anything under that name either.

The LJQ was primarily Juan Amalbert's group, with the rest of the personnel given to fluctuation. They made a second recording with Dolphy for United Artists a year later, and only Amalbert and Bill Ellington remained of the original group.

Critics have described this session as a mismatch, with Dolphy and the quintet paying little attention to each other. I've seen the same criticism leveled at Charlie Parker's collaborations with Machito (and for that matter at some of the Prestige recordings featuring Ray Barretto). I don't buy it. Bird in his day, and Dolphy in his, were far too aware, and far too appreciative of a wide range of musical styles and voices, to come into a session so contemptuous of their fellow musicians that they wouldn't listen to what was being put down, or to simply not be able to follow Latin rhythms. I don't buy it, and they sound good to me. The Quintet have a busy, agitated style of playing for the most part, and Dolphy gets with them and then takes them in directions that are his own. He's a better, more inventive musician than they are, but he's a better and more inventive musician than almost anyone, and he works with them to create something that's musically satisfying to this listener, at any rate. And it must have been sufficiently musically satisfying to all concerned that they agreed to do it again.

I particularly liked Dolphy playing flute on Gene Casey's "Sunday Go Meetin'," which also features some impressive piano work by Casey, a versatile composer who is responsible for three of the tunes on this album, the others being "Caribé" and "First Bass Line." "Blues in 6/8" and "Mambo Ricci" are co-credited to Amalbert and Jose Ricci, a sometime member of the Quintet who is not in their lineup for this session.

As always, it's good to hear the new sounds and new approaches that come out of one of Weinstock's Mis and Match sessions.

Caribé was a New Jazz release, Esmond Edwards producing.

Listening to Prestige Vol. 3, 1957-58 now includes, in its Kindle edition, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. Available from Amazon.

Listening to Prestige 378: Shirley Scott

The Latin Jazz Quintet, as an ensemble (although a somewhat different ensemble each time) recorded twice for Prestige in 1960, the second time with Eric Dolphy. The Dolphy collaboration is probably better known, but this one with Shirley Scott certainly bears listening to. I've written a lot about Scott, and will be writing a lit more, so I'll focus here on the LJQ.

The leader of the quintet was conguero Juan Amalbert, who would later change his name to Emmanuel Abdul-Rahim. Information about him is hard to come by, but tantalizing. A complete list of the artists he has worked with as musician, producer, conductor or arranger is available at the website of Tomas Pena, and it is staggeringly impressive. He has appeared on record with Duke Ellington's orchestra twice, once as Amalbert and once as Abdul-Rahim. Of that latter appearance, on an album calledThe Jaywalker, critic Norman Weinstein wrote:

So what makes The Jaywalker memorable? The Ellington band is joined by a percussionist, Emmanuel Abdul-Rahim. The empathy between Abdul-Rahim on conga drums and Ellington on piano is as imaginative as anything you'll find in Ellington's output during these years. What Chano Pozo was to Dizzy Gillespie, Abdul-Rahim might have been to Ellington, had they had a longer musical relationship. Odd that Ellington didn't establish more working relationships with conga drummers, but we can be grateful for the ecstatic conversation that Abdul-Rahim and Ellington establish.

He appears to be still performing with a group called the Swing Prophets. They have an active Facebook page with the message that "we The Swing Prophets are hitting as many clubs and festivals as possible in 2018."

Gene Casey had a remarkably varied career. He would appear on a handful of Prestige albums in the 1960s, and then reappear as musical director and pianist for LaBelle on their debut album, released in 1971. The sources for career as a jazz and funk musician do not mention a second career as a composer, and the website for the Pioneer Drama Service, a theatrical resource, don't mention his jazz-funk work. There, he is primarily noted for "Hubba Hubba, a 1940s style musical that premiered in 1970 at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut and had a run at the Manhattan Theatre Club." Pioneer also credits him with:

co-writing "The Orphan's Revenge," which had extended runs at Ford's Theatre in Washington and the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas.  His children's musical, "The Magic Weave," has toured extensively nationwide.

Casey also wrote songs for two Gallagher comedy television specials and for "Trapper John, M.D.," "McCloud" and other TV series.  As an accompanist, he played piano for an array of performers, including Edie Adams, Kaye Ballard and Liza Minnelli. 

We know that Duke Ellington's mother called him Bill, but this is a different Bill Ellington altogether. He is primarily known for his work with Amalbert/Abdul-Rahim, but he also performed with Mal Waldron and others.

Felipe "Phil" Diaz is listed in the session notes as playing bongos, but he was primarily a vibraphone player and can be heard playing some mean vibes on this session, particularly on "Mucho Mucho." He may also being playing bongos, but if so, they're less audible.

On this date, they do a couple of standards, a couple of Scott originals, and a slam-bang version "Walkin'," best known from Miles Davis's Prestige recording, written by Jimmy Mundy but credited to this day to notorious song thief Richard Carpenter (not the one from the brother-sister duo).

"Mucho Mucho" is an extended jam that takes up the better part of one side of the album, and became the title cut. Esmond Edwards produced.

Listening to Prestige Vol. 3, 1957-58 is now available!

and also:

Listening to Prestige, Vol. 2, 1954-56

Listening to Prestige, Vol. 1 1949-53