Listening to Prestige 718: Don Patterson

LISTEN TO ONE: Satisfaction

 This is the first example of a jazz cover of a contemporary rock sone by a Prestige artist, and Don Patterson was the right guy to attempt it. And the liner note, by the great Bob Porter (soon to become one of the leading soul jazz producers for the label, and author of Soul Jazz: Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975) is refreshingly unapologetic about it:

"Satisfaction" was a big hit for the Rolling Stones during the summer of 1965. The Stones are closer to the authentic big city R&B feeling than any of the British groups and it is not surprising that one of their tunes fits well in a jazz context.

That's it. 'Nuff said. One cannot imagine this from a previous generation of jazz writers.

And Porter is right. "Satisfaction," in Don Patterson's hands, becomes pure soul jazz. The Stones' drummer, Charlie Watts, always thought of himself as first and foremost a jazz drummer, and I'm sure if he heard this version, he approved of how Billy James set the rhythmic pattern.

Patterson gives Miles Davis the soul jazz treatment too, and as with Mick, Miles emerges none the worse for it. Patteson is having fun with these tunes, and they're fun to listen to. "Walkin'" is from the Prestige Contractual Marathon sessions. Composer credit is given to Richard Carpenter -- not Karen Carpenter's brother, but the music publisher/thug. Secondhandsongs gives this account of the song's composer credit:

Written by Davis, the composition royalties for "Walkin'" were credited to his friend Richard Carpenter. Not a performing musician himself, Carpenter took the simple outline from the 1950 single "Gravy" by Gene Ammons, and structured a blues number around it as "Walkin'"; Miles Davis first recorded the arrangement in 1952 as "Weirdo" for Blue Note, crediting himself as composer, but decided to re-record the tune for Prestige on April 29, 1954, with Carpenter now receiving composer credit.

Which quite likely doesn't tell the whole story. Miles certainly was no stranger to claiming credit for music, the most famous example being "Dig," written by 19-year-old Jackie McLean for an early Prestige Miles Davis session, claimed by Miles as his own. Years later, when asked if McLean really wrote the song, Miles replied, "Yeah. So?" 

But Miles was the leader of the session that McLean brought "Dig" to, and it wasn't unheard of for a session leader to claim composer credit for a piece that was brought in by a sideman and developed during the session. Richard Carpenter was another story. His songwriting technique was an interesting one. He would take a tune written by someone else, apply whiteout to the composer's name, and write in his own. He was one of the real bad guys of the jazz profession in those days.

So anyway, "Walkin'" by someone, most likely Gene Ammons, is a great tume, and Patterson does it just fine.

This was Jerry Byrd's first recording on a label of any significance. As a young musician in Pittsburgh, he had made a record on a local label with Gene Ludwig, He had hooked up with Rahsaan Roland Kirk when Kirk was in Pittsburgh, and played in his ensemble. He was a protege of Wes Montgomery, and also played with Jack McDuff and Sam Rivers.

"Satisfaction" was, unsurprisingly, the first 45 RPM single off the album, with a Patterson composition, "Goin' to Meeting" (how's that for a soul title?) on the flip side.

"John Brown's Body," a nontraditional reimagining of the traditional Civil War marching tune, is divided into parts 1 and 2 on another 45, and retitled "John Brown's Soul" on the label.

Satisfaction! with an exclamation point is the album title. Cal Lampley produced.

 

Listening to Prestige 704: Bobby Timmons and Don Patterson

LISTEN TO ONE: White Christmas

LISTEN TO ONE: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

 A Christmas album! From Prestige!

Yes, it's true.

It's more than true. There are two of them. Bobby Timmons, and then Don Patterson, leading their respective trios through a more or less conventional mix of traditional carols and Christmas pop songs. Fortunately, it was 1964, so most of the really awful Christmas pop songs hadn't been written yet, and Bobby and producer Ozzie Cadena know enough to stay away from "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," "Jingle Bell Rock" and "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree," at least with Timmons. By the time Ozzie got to Patterson, on the next day, he did let "Rudolph" slip in. Both Timmons and Patterson do, however, essay "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

There are two reasons for buying an album of Christmas songs. One, there's a choir singing the songs so you can sing along with them, a beat behind if you don't remember

the words. Two, they're all or mostly instrumental, so you can have them as background music while you're trimming the tree, wrapping presents, or trying to seduce the receptionist from the accounting department, If you're Mantovani or the Melachrino Strings, you're playing the melody pretty straight through, so that people can sing along. If you're a jazz group, you're going to be improvising, but staying close enough to the melody that people remember what it is that you're playing.

There's probably a third. You hate Christmas music, and would rather just be listening to some good jazz, but your spouse, or your boss, or somebody, insists that you pick up a Christmas album to play at the office party or the tree trimming gathering, so you get something that says "Holiday Soul" on the cover, put it on, dig it quietly until the boss says "What is this shit?" and then you show him the album cover -- "See? It says 'Holiday Soul'!" and then, if you're lucky, Bobby Timmons comes in with the melody to "Deck the Halls," and plays it pretty close to recognizably straight for the last thirty seconds of the cut. This is, of course, if you're at an office party in 1964. Today's young whippersnapper boss probably won't recognize the melody to  "Deck the Halls," and will want to know why Timmons isn't playing "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." Or "White Christmas." Oh, that was "White Christmas"? Where was the melody?

It's not quite that extreme. Well, it is for "White Christmas." For the most part, both Timmons and Patterson do at least allude to the melodies of their Christmas standards, but each allows himself plenty of room to just stretch out and play jazz, and that is something each of them does very satisfactorily.

Well, probably "Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer" was a mistake if you're looking for holiday soul.

Timmons finds considerably more soul in the 16th century Welsh melody of "Deck the Halls" than Patterson does in Johnny Marks's ditty, composed during the bebop era, recorded around the time that Bob Weinstock was lining up Lennie Tristano for Prestige Records' inaugural recording session. Gene Autry didn't want to record "Rudolph," and there's a good chance Don Patterson wasn't a lot more thrilled. 

Still...hey, it's Christmas. And with some good jazz, you can make it through the season. Ozzie Cadena produced both sessions.

Listening to Prestige 695: Sonny Stitt, Booker Ervin, Don Patterson

LISTEN TO ONE: Flyin' Home

 What happens when Prestige puts one of its greatest veteran beboppers together with two of its brightest young stars?

Jazz happens. That's all you can say, and that's the very best you can say.

But I'll say a little more. Two saxophones, and Don Patterson's organ making up two thirds of the rhythm section--no piano, no bass. None of them strangers to each other. Patterson and drummer Billy James were close associates; the two of them had worked a number of times with Ervin, and they'd done a previous Prestige recording with Stitt. Ervin and Stitt are a new combination, and why'd it take so long? They have a lot to say to each other.

This is a real collaboration between three remarkable talents, and it would be hard, and ultimately futile, to try to single out one as the dominant voice, but there is a certain nod to Stitt as the old master. Side one of the LP is devoted to two Stitt compositions, "Soul People" and "Sonny's Book," and side two is standards that one would probably associate more with Stitt's era, Duke Ellington's "C-Jam Blues" and a medley of two from the Great American Songbook, "I Can't Get Started" and "The Masquerade is Over." The medley, particulatly, starts with an extended solo by Stitt in the manner of a ballad from the bebop era, but as the idea is developed by Ervin and Patterson, and Stitt again. it becomes very much a mutual exploration, and very much in a contemporary mode.

Those four tracks make up the LP, but there was a fifth tune cut at the session, although it didn't see the
light of day until 1971, when it was tossed on to an album cobbled together from outtakes from Don Patterson sessions. That was "Flyin' Home," the Lionel Hampton tune that was a favorite of swing and rhythm and blues musicians. common ground for these collaborating generations in that it was a part of the repertory of neither, but certainly a tune to have some with. "Flyin' Home" is most famous from its renditions by 1930s-1940s players who the restriction of a 2 1/2-minute 78 RPM record. These guys stretch it out to ten minutes, give it a little bebop, a little hard bop, a little soul, a little swing, and more than a little money's worth for the listener. I love "Flyin' Home," and I'm delighted by what these guys have done with it.

Soul People was the natural choice for an album title in 1964, and Prestige didn't shrink from it. "C-Jam Blues" was released as a two-sided 45, credited to Sonny Stitt and Booker Ervin. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 637: Don Patterson with Booker Ervin

LISTEN TO ONE: Just Friends

 This is not your father's organ-saxophone trio album, and anyone looking for Jimmy Smith or Brother Jack McDuff or Shirley Scott and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis is going to go away scratching their heads. And I say this with all due respect, and appreciation that every one of the above named is an individual with a unique sound.

But these two are going there own way. Booker Ervin already had forged a reputation as one of the most original and important new voices on the jazz scene--not as defiantly anti-establishment as Ornette Coleman or Albert Ayler, but definitely a new sound. Don Patterson was starting to make a name for himself, and the idea that his approach to the

organ would mesh well with Booker Ervin's fresh approach resonated with the Prestige brain trust from the start. After putting putting him on sessions with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Sonny Stitt, they gave him Ervin as a partner for his first session as leader, and it worked well enough to reunite them here.

Perhaps the most interesting result of this pairing comes on "Just Friends." The tune is a sentimantal ballad from the 1930s that served as a vehicle for the likes of Kate Smith, Russ Colombo and Morton Downey, but it became a jazz standard after Charlie Parker included it on his Charlie Parker with Strings album. After that, a number of artists picked it up--it even had a soul jazz organ treatment by Jimmy Smith--but Bird with strings is still the version most jazz fans will think of when they hear the title.

So it's hard to resist comparing the two, especially because Ervin (like every jazz man who came of age in or after the 1940s) is very aware of Bird's version, and his "Just Friends" is very much of a dialog with the master.

Bird enjoyed the lush romanticism of his string section, though he certainly was not linited by it. And

just as Bird both honored and subverted the genre, so Ervin and Patterson both honor and subvert the organ-saxophone soul jazz genre. If there is such a thing as soul jazz-free jazz fusion, they find it here.

"Sister Ruth," "Donald Duck," "Rosetta" and "Under the Boardwalk" were put together with an 18-minute jam from Patterson and Ervin's previous session, "Hip Cake Walk," and issued as an LP under that name. "Sister Ruth" and "Donald Duck" were issued as a 45 RPM single, as was "Under the Boardwalk," paired with another tune from the earlier session, "Up in Betty's Room." The cover of the newly released smash hit by the Drifters is a natural for the jukeboxes. Patterson and Billy James have a good time with it, and it shows.

"Just Friends" was saved for a later album, Tune Up!, incorporating tunes from a bunch of different sessions, and released in 1971, after Ervin's death.

Ozzie Cadena produced the session.

Listening to Prestige 629: Don Patterson, Booker Ervin

LISTEN TO ONE: When Johnny Comes Marching Home

 As with George Benson, Prestige groomed Don Patterson for stardom before introducing him with his name above the title. Unlike Benson, Patterson would stick around to become on of the label's bread and butter soul jazz artists of the second half of the decade.

Patterson was put together with Booker Ervin for two sessions, which would produce two albums, which would be released in quick succession--and before the year was out, there would be a third album under Patterson's name, plus another with Sonny Stitt, and several 45 RPM singles. Prestige was into Patterson big time.

The first album to be released was called The Exciting New Organ of Don Patterson, and since by 1964, the idea of an organ-led jazz group was no longer new, it had better be exciting, and to help make it so, Prestige called on another one of its young heavy hitters--the full title of the album would be The Exciting New Organ of Don Patterson with Booker Ervin.

And yes, this was a combination capable of generating excitement, pressing the tempos, churning the music, generating hot but un-clichéd solos. The group was basically a trio, with Billy James, Patterson's long time associate, on drums. Alto saxophonist Leonard Houston was added for one track, "Hip Cake Walk." This appears to have been Houston's only recording on a recognized jazz label.

Five tracks from the session went onto Exciting New Organ. "S'Bout Time" is a Patterson original, and features a soaring Ervin solo, emerging with wings out of the opening riff, and urged on by the organ of Patterson, who then, in a solo of his own, lives up to the album title's hype, and also demonstrates what he was talking about when he was quoted as saying, "What I'm trying to do is keep the piano sound when I play the organ." "Up in Betty's Room" is attributed to both Patterson and James, and features some intricate but still funky work by the two lead instruments.

The rest of the album looks elsewhere for musical inspiration, and finds it in a variety of places, some not unexpected (Sonny Rollins' jazz standard "Oleo") and sone decidedly unexpected. "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" is a patriotic marching song most closely associated with the Civil War, although the tune is probably even older than that. It's a catchy melody, as could be expected from a tune that's lasted that long, but not one that would normally catch the ear of a jazz musician. But catchy is catchy, and Patterson clearly heard something he liked in this one, and it's his baby. He starts out with another patriotic lick, then goes into a funky-slippery interpretation of the familiar melody, with James playing a funky-not-entirely-slippery version of a military snare drum. It takes a while for Ervin to get into the mood, but when he does, he enters with the kind of solo that led his contemporaries to say that you could recognize a Booker Ervin solo after two notes. Patterson and Ervin end up by finding enough inspiration for ten minutes of improvisation on "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," ending up by playing the melody straight. It's quite a performance.

The final cut for the album was French composer Sascha Distel's moody ballad "The Good Life," providing a change of pace for Patterson and Ervin. Distel's melody was first titled "Marina," then, with French lyrics, "La Belle Vie." Willis Jackson had previously given Prestige a version of "The Good Life," and the tune was probably best known to American audiences through Tony Bennet's 1963 recording.

The rest of the session was parceled off to various destinations. "Hip Cake Walk," with alto saxophonist Leonard Houston added, became the title track to an album mostly recorded in July. "Love Me with All Your Heart" made it onto an album called Patterson's People. The people--not together--were Booker Ervin and Sonny Stitt. The album was leftover tracks from this session, an earlier session with Stitt, and a later session with Ervin.

"People" is the first Prestige recording since the advent of the LP era to be only released as a single, the flip side of a 45 headed by "Love Me with All Your Heart." "Up in Betty's Room" and "Under the Boardwalk" (from the July session) were also a 45 RPM single.

Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 621: Sonny Stitt

LISTEN TO ONE: Shangri-La

 Two 45 RPM singles were released off this session: "My New Baby" / "Misty" and "Shangri-La" / "Soul Shack," the last-named actually coming from a different Stitt-organ session, that one with Jack McDuff from 1963. I hope they got a their share of radio play and jukebox spins, because they're super-listenable, the kind of music that could have made some listeners want to hear more jazz. It's interesting that they didn't put out a 45 of "Mama Don't Allow," the ever-popular warhorse attributed to Cow Cow Davenport, which features a vocal by Stitt as well as a killer tenor sax solo and a crowd-pleasing drum solo by Billy James.

If that all adds up to something that sounds like a commercial venture, rest assured that I do not mean this in any way as a put-down. Some of America's greatest music was made for the masses, and while it's important to encourage experimentation, and give voice to the people who are ahead of the curve, there's nothing wrong with giving the people what they want, especially if it's a master like Sonny Stitt serving it up.

Prestige was getting ready to break Don Patterson out as its next big organ star. He and Billy James, along with guitarist Paul Weeden, had been working as a trio mostly in Chicago when they were hired to back up Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis on a 1973 Prestige session. Here, although Stitt got top billing, Patterson was also featured on the cover, preparing him for his next session, in two months' time, when he would be the session leader, he'd have Booker Ervin alongside him, and the album would be titled The Exciting New Organ of Don Patterson.

The marketing campaign apparently worked, because Patterson became one of Prestige's top talents for the next several years.

Good for Prestige, good for Patterson. If this album was part of the strategy, good for it. And good for the listener, too, that casual listener who might have heard a cut on Listening to Lacy and then plunked a nickel into the jukebox to hear it again, and the serious jazz fan for whom good music is always welcome.

I'm sure if you were playing--or even working as a server--in a lounge six nights a week, you could get pretty sick of "Misty" -- and a few other tunes. But as a music lover who listens to a lotta this and a lotta that, it's a familiar melody, and it's possible to appreciate that it's as familiar as it is because it's a beautiful melody, and when you have Sonny Stitt playing it, and improvising on it, it becomes a treat for the ears. The other offering from the standard catalog, not nearly as familiar, is "Shangri-La," written in 1946 by Matty Malnick and first introduced by his orchestra. It was a minor hit in 1957 for the Four Coins, one of those "safe to listen to, we're not rock and roll" groups that still hung onto the Top Forty in those days. While it's been widely recorded over the years, it's been mostly by groups whose sound is more at home in elevators than smoky basements. But it provides a good vehicle for Stitt and Patterson to blend their sound, and makes a good introduction to Patterson.

There are three Stitt originals on the album, all good listening, and two more that were recorded on the session and released later, along with some cuts from Patterson's May session with Booker Ervin, under the title Patterson's People: Don Patterson with Sonny Stitt and Booker Ervin. 

Shangri-La was the title of this Prestige release. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 574: Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis

LISTEN TO ONE: The Way You Look Tonight

 Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis's partnership with Shirley Scott was a key milestone in the development of the tenor sax/organ sound that came to play such a dominant role in 1960s jazz. Scott moved on to another partnership, this one involving marriage, with Stanley Turrentine.

Davis would mostly move in other directions, but he did return to the organ combo mode for this lengthy session, picking up a trio that had worked together extensively in the past. Don Patterson, Paul Weeden and Billy James had even made a record together in Chicago, for Cadet. Patterson and James would go on working together throughout the decade, as Patterson became one of Prestige's most prolific recording artists.

Paul Weeden was an Indianapolis native who was friends with another young homeboy, Wes Montgomery, and together they developed the thumb-plucking style of jazz guitar that Montgomery was to take to such heights. Moving on from Indiana to Philadelphia and New York, he joined up with Patterson and James, and the three of them, in addition to playing as a trio, started working with horn players. They are on the Sonny Stitt/Gene Ammons Verve album, Boss Tenors in Orbit, and also worked with Stitt on albums for Roost and Riverside's Jazzland subsidiary.  

Weeden would choose the expatriate route, moving first to Sweden, where he taught at the University of Stockholm, and then to Norway, where he would spend the rest of his life, recording over 20 albums. He did spend some time with the Count Basie orchestra, stepping in when Freddie Green died in 1988.

The group had started out as the Paul Weeden Trio, but when he left it became Don Patterson's group,

with Billy James his partner on drums, and they would record 16 albums for Prestige during the 1960s, featuring such horn players as Booker Ervin, David "Fathead" Newman, Blue Mitchell and Sonny Stitt. Pat Martino became a frequent collaborator on guitar, and Grant Green worked with them later in the decade. They also -- with Martino -- made Prestige albums with Sonny Stitt and Eric Kloss.

Patterson, Weeden and James certainly knew how to play together, and they knew how to play with a saxophone. Davis knew how to play with this lineup, and he knew how to jam. And as Paul Weeden's son Ronald told an interviewer, about his father's recordings:

The greatest ones in his opinion he ever played in were the jam sessions where the artist would just come in and play. They may have done a gig all night long and they would come in play into the wee hours of the morning. 

That was Prestige. And that was this group of musicians. The tunes were almost all familiar standards, and once they found a groove for a tune, they could work it. And once they found a groove for a session, they could go all day and all night--which they very nearly did, recording 13 tunes -- 14 if you count an early-in-the-session unissued version of "Beano," discarded after they did a presumably more satisfying version of the Davis original later on.

The grooves were set by James and veteran bassist George Duvivier. Often, organ combos don't bother with a bassist. Rhoda Scott recalled that the leader of the first group she played in as a teenager was glad to get her an organ, rather than a piano, because the organ could carry the bass part and he didn't need to pay another musician. But in this case, Duvivier is an invaluable asset.

He and James drive the group, and they drive 'em hard. There's no wistful romanticism in a tune like "I Only Have Eyes for You" or "The Way You Look Tonight," one of my favorite wistful romantic tunes, but in this case I'm happy to let these guys rock out, and ride along with them. 

There's not much subtlety here, but you wouldn't want it. There's great virtuosity, and above all, there's great communication. The solos all find new and satisfying avenues of inventiveness and expressiveness, without ever losing that drive and coherence.

Ozzie Cadena produced, and my guess is that his main job was to say "Don't stop...keep going...let's do one more!" until they had enough for two albums. The first was called I Only Have Eyes for You, and was credited to Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis with the Paul Weeden Trio. The second, Trackin' (Prestige continued to love those gerunds with the "g" cut off for titles), was Davis alone.

"I Only Have Eyes for You" had been a huge pop hit for the Flamingoes in a doo-wop version that quickly became the definitive version of the song, and Davis's group doesn't try to compete, swinging it hard instead, but that was reason enough to make it the first 45 RPM release from the session, along with "Sweet and Lovely." it was followed by "Robbins Nest" / "A Foggy Day," and then "Beano," Parts 1 and 2.