Listening to Prestige 533: King Curtis

 

There's a lot to be said for the thought behind this King Curtis session, but not much to say about it. Take a collection of really familiar chestnuts and give them the King Curtis treatment: the stuttering tenor sax, the red hot rhythm and blues combo, here augmented by Ellington veteran Britt Woodman, which can't be anything but good news. Also joining the group is Carl Lynch, one of the best session guitarists in New York, with mega-credits extending from Pearl Bailey to the Fugs.

This was a gambit frequently used by 1950s rock-and-rollers. Take a song that everybody knows, because everyone sang it in their grade school music classes, and give it a Duane Eddy twangy guitar treatment, and you have "Red River Rock," by Johnny and the Hurricanes. Or take something equally familiar--a Stephen Foster song--and if you're a genius, like Ray Charles, you can turn it into "Swanee River Rock." Or if you're a gifted satirist, like Stan Freberg, you can turn it into "Rock Around Steven Foster." Fast forward to the 1970s, and they're still doing it, with equally familiar, if more classical, sources: Walter Murphy's "A Fifth of Beethoven."

King Curtis and his band are not geniuses like Ray Charles; they are, however, better musicians than Johnny and the Hurricanes, and if they aren't exactly the satirists that Stan Freberg is, they do approach these old chestnuts with a sense of humor. They did the old chestnuts about as well as you could ask for. This isn't an album that's lasted, and that's kinda too bad. It's fun to listen to.

The Tru-Sound album is called Doin' the Dixie Twist. Twist, I guess, because if you stuck "twist" on any any collection of rhythm and bluesy instrumentals, you had a chance of selling a few more copies in those days, so they were definitely not shy about getting the word out there. Dixie, I guess, because a lot of the songs are associated with the South, or because they're associated with Dixieland jazz. That crown jewel of all Dixieland chestnuts, "When the Saints Go Marchin' In," became a Tru-Sound 45, along with "Free for All," from the King's January session.

Listening to Prestige 526: King Curtis

LISTEN TO ONE: Low Down

 King Curtis made his reputation with his thrilling solos to recordings by Atlantic rhythm and blues and doo wop performers in the 1950s. Then, later in 1962, he made a recording, "Soul Twist," for Harlem entrepreneur Bobby Robinson's Enjoy label, which hit Number One on the Billboard R&B charts, number 17 on the pop charts, and established Curtis as a star in his own right, with several more chart singles,  culminating in the monster hit, Memphis Soul Stew, for Atlantic in 1967. 

In between, he made six albums for Prestige, three of them for the "contemporary rhythm and blues" label, Tru-Sound. He worked on a number of other sessions, including several backing up singers for Bluesville. He worked with jazz musicians like Nat Adderley, or with his own working group, as here. This is the second of two sessions to include another rhythm and blues tenor legend, Sam "the Man" Taylor.

It was his association with the twist that brought stardom to Curtis, but really, "Soul Twist" was just a rhythm and blues number, and a good one--Curtis was one of the best R&B tenormen around. You could actually do the twist to any peppy tune with a back beat--it wasn't like the samba or the rhumba or the mambo, or even the bunny hop.

And the same with the tunes on this album. "The Twist" is the most Pavlovian response-inducing cultural phenomenon in American history. Hear Chubby Checker's voice singing "Come on bab-eeee..." even today, and a roomful of people will start gyrating and moving their arms as if drying their butts with an imaginary towel. Same probably with the Isley Brothers of the Beatles singing "Shake it up baby." Not so much with King Curtis's instrumentals, although I'm sure people were twisting the night away to them back then. Now they could still be for dancing to, if you chose, or you could just sit back and listen and snap your fingers and tap your feet. It's King Curtis's regular band, tight as can be, with a second star of the rhythm and blues firmament, Sam "the Man" Taylor (on all but two tracks).

These tunes all went onto the Tru-Sound album It's Party Time, along with four tracks from July 11, 1961, which utilized the same personnel, including Taylor. "Free for All," with "When the Saints Go Marching In" from a session in February 1962, was the first 45 RPM single to come from the session, followed by "Low Down" / "I'll Wait for You."

Listening to Prestige 513: Eddie Kirkland

LISTEN TO ONE: Train Done Gone

Two items of note, here. First, Eddie Kirkland himself, one of the great blues performers of his generation. Although outgunned in reputation by Chess Records's stable of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Bo Diddley and all, he was outgunned by no one when it came to delivering hard driving blues. Second, a rare, probably unique, opportunity to hear King Curtis and Oliver Nelson playing together.

That second one might be a bit of a letdown. King Curtis's band was brought in to back up Kirkland, and Nelson...? Perhaps he had stopped by the studio in Englewood Cliffs for some other reason, and decided it

would be fun to sit in, and a bit of something different. This was, after all, the blues and the concrete truth. Or perhaps there was a personal connection--Nelson would sit in again with the Curtis band on Kirkland's second Prestige session, the following year.

Neither Nelson nor Curtis solos, but the ensemble gives a fullness to what is first and foremost a Kirkland session, with the blues man's forceful and commanding voice, guitar and harmonica. It's the blues man, and it's the blues, man. Love gone wrong dominates the session thematically, and there's no arguing with that as a solid basis for the blues.

This was Kirkland's first album, and the only one on which the tag "Blues Man" was added to his name. If he was to be known by a nickname, it was more often "Gypsy of the Blues," because of his nonstop touring schedule. He did release one single--his first--as "Little Eddie Kirkland," on the West Coast RPM label, and he recorded a couple of sides in 1963 as Eddie Kirk. Those were for Volt Records, one half of the legendary soul labels Stax-Volt, during the time when he was bandleader for Volt's superstar performer, Otis Redding.

Kirkland was born in Jamaica but raised in Alabama. He toured with a medicine show in his teens, then joined the army, where a fight with a racist officer brought him a dishonorable discharge. From there he made his way to Detroit, where his mother was then living, and his guitar skills brought him to the attention of John Lee Hooker, with whom he toured from 1949 to 1962. From then on, following the gig with Otis Redding, he continued as a solo act, although he did also work with other artists, including  Little Richard, Ben E. King, Ruth Brown and Little Johnnie Taylor. He died in 2011 in an automobile accident.

It's the Blues Man! was released on Tru-Sound, and it has come to be regarded by many blues enthusiasts as Kirkland's best work. One track from the session "Man of Stone," was covered by the British blues band John Mayall's Bluesbreakers,. Tru-Sound also released "Train Done Gone" and "Something's Gone Wrong in My Life" on 45 RPM, while "Chill Me Baby" was matched with "Have Mercy on Me," from Kirkland's second Prestige session, in 1962. the 45 was released in 1964 on the Prestige label, Tru-Sound being no more by that time.

"Train Done Gone" had a parallel life, being also released on 45 by the tiny Detroit blues and soul label, Lu Pine, with "I Tried" on the flip side. Lu Pine did a lot of good stuff, but they're probably best remembered by music historians for "Tears of Sorrow" / "Pretty Baby," by the Primettes. The record flopped, but another Detroit music entrepreneur, Berry Gordy, liked the group's sound, signed them to his own label, and changed their name to the Supremes.

Music writer Elijah Wald once said of him, "For pure energy and emotion, he may be the greatest blues artist alive."

Listening to Prestige 500 - KIng Curtis

LISTEN TO ONE: Honky Tonk

Here's the difference between your jazz critic (or your anything critic) and your average fan. Your critic has heard it all, and he rejects the tired, the trite, the overdone, the same old same old. An album of the most over-played, over-listened to songs in the history of jazz...spare me.

The fan isn't sophisticated enough for that. "Night Train"? "Fever"? "Honky Tonk"? Great shit, man!

Musicians aren't immune, either. Here's a story I've told before, but it's a great story, and it bears retelling. It's Phil Woods's story, and his words. 

I had just graduated from Juilliard in 1952 and was playing at the Nut Club on Seventh Ave. and Sheridan Square in the Village. After all of that great education, here I was playing "Harlem Nocturne" 10 times a night...I wasn’t happy with myself. I was saying to myself, “My god, I’m a Juilliard graduate, and I can play great jazz, and here I am playing "Night Train" and "Harlem Nocturne." I didn’t like my mouthpiece. I didn’t like my reed. I didn’t like my horn. I didn’t even like the strap.

...One night somebody came into the club and said, “Hey, Charlie Parker’s playing across the street. He’s jamming.” ...I was going on my break so I rushed over. When I walked in, there was this 90-year old guy playing a piano that was only three octaves long [laughs]. His father was on drums using a tiny snare and little tiny pie plates for cymbals. And there was the great Charlie Parker—playing the baritone sax. It belonged to Larry Rivers, the painter. Parker knew me. He knew all the kids who were coming up.

...I said, “Mr. Parker, perhaps you’d like to play my alto?” He said, “Phil, that would be great. This baritone’s kicking my butt.” So I ran back across the street to the Nut Club and grabbed the alto sax that I hated. I came back and got on the bandstand, which was about as big as a coffee table. I handed my horn to Bird and he played "Long Ago and Far Away."...As I’m listening to him play my horn, I’m realizing ...nothing was wrong with the reed, nothing was wrong with the mouthpiece—even the strap sounded good. Then Parker says to me, “Now you play.” I said to myself, “My God.” So I did. I played a chorus for him... When I was done, Bird leaned over and said, “Sounds real good, Phil.” This time I levitated over Seventh Avenue to the Nut Club. And when I got back on the bandstand there, I played the shit out of Harlem Nocturne. That’s when I stopped complaining and started practicing. That was quite a lesson.

This  is my 500th entry on Listening to Prestige. That's six years of listening to great jazz and writing about it. Six years of putting a theory to the test--a theory that Peter Jones and I came up with, about the recorded jazz of the 1950s, our formative years...it was all good. We were young and we were learning, and we had those aforementioned critics to go by, and we had limited resources, and we tended to buy the albums that got four and five stars in DownBeat. Can it really all have been good?

Well, I've passed through the 1950s, and I'm two years into the next decade, and I've listened to every single track recorded on a pretty representative indie label, and so far our theory is holding up.

But after 500 recording sessions, and 500 blog entries, you'd think I'd have earned my status as jaded critic, wouldn't you?

But uh-uh. I'm with the average fan on this one. I'm with the guy in the Nut Club who wanted to hear "Night Train" and "Harlem Nocturne." I'm with Phil Woods, after he got schooled by Charlie Parker. Mr. King Curtis...no "Harlem Nocturne," on the September 19th session -- how could he have forgotten it? -- but  he made up for it three days later, with a return to Englewood Cliffs. Definitely "Night Train." And "Fever," and "Tuxedo Junction," and "The Hucklebuck," and..."Honky Tonk."

Billy Butler, who co-composed "Honky Tonk" and played the guitar solo on Bill Doggett's original recording, was a part of King Curtis's band at the point, and he still knew how to wail on this timeless number. He would return to Prestige leading his own group near the end of the decade.

Also on guitar for this session was a youngster, Eric Gale, who would go to become one of the most sought-after studio musicians of the 1960s-70s, playing on over 500 sessions--jazz, funk, pop. He was a member of the funk supergroup Stuff.

Bassist Bob Bushnell was new with Curtis, and new with Prestige. His career actually stretched back to the 1940s when, fresh out of high school, he played a few gigs with Jimmy Heath, but it doesn't seem really to have taken off until the 1960s, when his resume started to fill up with what became really a wide and impressive variety of the biggest names in jazz, blues and rock.

Willie Rodriguez, whose big band credits ranged from Dizzy Gillespie to Stan Kenton to Paul Whiteman, had made his recording debut as leader with a big band of his own in 1960--an album called A Bunch of Bongos.

One of Prestige's stars, Jack McDuff, rounded out the group.

Not quite so well known are "You Came a Long Way From St. Louis," from the 1940s, and "Lean, Baby," from the 1950s.

There were only four songs on the second session, but they were all classics; "Harlem Nocturne," of course. "Soft" had been a hit for Tiny Bradshaw in 1952, "Tippin' In" for Erskine Hawkins in 1945. "So Rare,"dating back to 1937, had been a huge hit for Jimmy Dorsey in 1957, hitting Number One on the charts right after Jimmy's death. Jimmy, a great talent unjustly overshadowed in reputation by his brother, played it sweet; Curtis wails it out.

The album was released on Tru-Sound as Old Gold. A later re-release on Prestige was titled Night Train. 

Listening to Prestige 478: King Curtis

King Curtis joins with another giant of rhythm and blues, Sam "The Man" Taylor, for the first of two blowing sessions that would ultimately make a Tru-Sound album called It's Party Time with King Curtis.

And party time it is. A solid groove for dancing, a tight arrangement, not a lot of room for improvisation, but some goose-bump-inducing solos by two masters if the art of wailing sax, and two of the most in-demand session men in New York. If your saxophone break on the hottest rocker of the moment wasn't by Curtis, it was probably by Taylor.

They were backed up by Curtis's regular group, plus a couple of extra musicians who--uncharacteristically for a Prestige session at Van Gelder Studio--weren't identified in the session log. Those were the trumpeter and the bongo player, both of whom performed on "Slow Motion."

And dig him here, with a tight band, led by a man who knew how to run a tight ship and keep it loose and swinging. Amazingly, nothing from this session was released on 45.

Paul Griffin on piano and Jimmy Lewis on bass were Curtis's regulars. Ernie Hayes played on this and the second Party Time session, and would be called on for other Prestige sessions, but Curtis didn't always use an organ, so he can't really be called a regular.

Billy Butler joined Curtis from Bill Doggett's band, where he had co-written and played the guitar solo on "Honky Tonk." Like all of the other musicians on this session and in Curtis's orbit, he was one of the session players that made the New York sound of the 1950s and early 1960s so powerful. A recent movie has shown us the incredible Detroit musicians who were the anonymous backbone of the Motown sound in the soul era, but the contributions made by the guys in the studios of the Big Apple in the rhythm and blues/rock and roll era of the 1950s were equally important. New York was the jazz center of the world in those days. It's where people came to play.

And it provided its own talent, from its own streets. Drummer Ray Lucas is a case in point.

Lucas grew up in Harlem, where music was everywhere. He recalled those early years in an interview with Jim Payne for Modern Drummer magazine.

I was still in high school when I heard “Yakety Yak” by the Coasters, with King Curtis on sax. At that time I was playing bebop and jazz. I didn’t care nothin’ about rock ’n’ roll. I was born and raised in Harlem. All I knew was New York and bebop. If you didn’t know Blue Mitchell, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, you weren’t in my league. But Curtis had a unique style of playing, and when I heard him on that Coasters record, I was knocked out.

A few years later, when Belton Evans was leaving and Curtis was auditioning drummers, Eric Gale arranged for Lucas to try out. When he got to the audition, he found that he was to be judged by Curtis and Roy Haynes.

Afterwards Roy looked at Curtis and said, “That’s a good kid. He’s all right.” I was nineteen or twenty at the time. I played with Curtis from 1961 to 1966, and that was the best band I was ever in.

 The artists that Lucas played for, and the records he played on, would fill a book. But here's Ron Carter, recalling one session.

I got a call to come by and do this record with a young singer named Roberta Flack playing with this New York band. Ray Lucas on drums — an incredible drummer — Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar and some wonderful arrangements. That record ["Compared to What"] put her on the map.

His resume would have to include the Beatles, for whom the King Curtis band opened on their second US tour. And here's Lucas remembering a young guitarist-singer whom Curtis hired:

 Jimi Hendrix, man, you’re talking about one of the nicest guys. He was so kind and courteous. He played with his teeth and all that, but he could play. Jimi would play Curtis’s tunes and then do some of his own. He would sing more or less down-home blues, rather than the psychedelic things he got into later. We were doing mainly contemporary tunes. He stayed with us for about six months, and then he went on his own.

Jimi and I used to play together in the studio, just me and him. He’d try all kinds of different things. He’d plug into the Leslie speaker from the organ. I’d play a backbeat or a shuffle or whatever. This went on for maybe two or three weeks. It was a studio on 54th Street. That’s how he built his recordings. I never heard any of the final versions.

One day a little later I ran into Jimi on the street downtown. He said, “Hey, Ray, what are you doing?” I said I was in between gigs. He said, “Man, I got my passport and my papers from the State Department. I’ve been trying to do my thing here, but it’s not working out that great. I just got an offer from England. If you want to do it, I can get the finances together. Do you want to come with me?” Of all the drummers he knew, he asked me. I told him I couldn’t do it, and in less than two years he was the biggest thing out there.

 And finally, here are some other musicians reminiscing about playing with Lucas:

Bernard Purdie: Ray was an absolutely phenomenal player. He had no problem doing

what he needed to do. He had great time and a superb touch. He could be the quietest person in the world and be in the groove, and when he had to be fatback, he had no problem. And he had no problem swinging either. That’s why I enjoyed him so much—he could change. Whatever the feel was, whatever the attitude needed, he had it.

Watching Ray, he was like an acrobat. So light on his feet—he danced on the pedals. He could take sticks and make them sound like brushes.

Chuck Rainey: I enjoyed playing with Ray. He had very good time, and he played jazz real well. Ray was always very amusing too. He laughed a lot and told a lot of jokes.

Cornell Dupree and Ray and I went out on the road with the Coasters—who were great—and with the Supremes and Patti LaBelle, and with Jim “Mudcat” Grant, who was a pitcher for the Cleveland Indians. He read poetry while we played.

When we opened for the Beatles, Ringo and Paul did everything they could to stay far away from all the acts from the States. John and George hung out with us on our part of the plane, though. They even came off their floor in the hotel and were very cool. We played cards, took pictures, stuff like that.

Ray played on my first record, The Chuck Rainey Coalition. I used to always get a kick out of him taking drum solos with his bare hands. He was sort of known for that. Not like congas—he played just like he had sticks in his hands. I’m proud to say that I came up with Ray Lucas.

 Charles Collins (The O’Jays, MFSB, the Salsoul Orchestra): Ray Lucas was such a sweet cat, and he had a great touch. He could make one snare drum sound like 500 different snare drums, to give the music different colors. We’d do gigs back in ’71, ’72 with Dionne Warwick. [Collins was in a band called the Continentals, which opened for Warwick.] I learned how to play in auditoriums and in concert halls by listening to Ray. I’d go all over the room. Sometimes I’d go way in the back, and I’d still hear that snare drum—bow! bow!—and just different little tasty sounds he could do. He was very creative.

You've heard Ray Lucas, many times over. With Illinois Jacquet, Mongo Santamaria, Bobby Timmons, Shirley Scott, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick--with whom he toured for 12 years, then quit the business. Disco was coming in, and he just wasn't interested.