Listening to Prestige 565: Dave Pike

LISTEN TO ONE: Carnival Samba

 It's been noted that one of the most remarkable things about jazz in the 20th century was the rapidity with which it morphed and transfigured itself. The progression from folk art to popular art to high art is common to almost all modes of expression, but with jazz the creative explosions and transfigurations happened with dizzying speed. Previous genres had no time to die out before their successors, and their successors' successors, grew from liminality to full flower. In mid-century New York City, it was possible to hear early New Orleans jazz from artists like Bunk Johnson and Baby Dodds, and of course Louis Armstrong when he was not off on a world tour as ambassador of American culture. Clubs like the Metropole Cafe and

Eddie Condon's thrived through the mid-1960s (Metropole) and even the mid-1970s (Condon's). The swing era was widely represented, with artists like the Dorsey Brothers and Benny Goodman playing venues like the Rainbow Room and the Roseland Ballroom, Count Basie at Birdland (and his style of music represented at Count Basie's in Harlem), Coleman Hawkins playing the Village Vanguard and the Village Gate. Rhythm and blues could be heard at the Apollo, and at Alan Freed's rock 'n roll shows, where his house band was led by jazzmen like Al Sears and Sam "the Man" Taylor. Bebop was everywhere, and soul jazz and free jazz and Latin jazz all had their venues,

Small wonder that a younger generation of musicians had a veritable smorgasbord of styles to choose from, and some chose to graze up and down, sampling here and there. A young Ray Bryant would play traditional jazz in the afternoon at the Metropole with Henry "Red" Allen, then head downtown to play with the moderns in the evening. Steve Lacy skipped right over the prevailing sounds of his own era, starting with trad jazzers like Allen, Zutty Singleton, Buck Clayton and Jimmy Rushing, and then moving straight into the avant garde with Cecil Taylor. 

Dave Pike was another. Always a confessed bebopper at heart, he had a restless spirit that responded to restless times, and he experimented over a range of musical styles. Born in Detroit in 1938, he was not to become a part of that still-fertile musical scene, as his family moved to Los Angeles when he was fourteen. He had begun playing the drums at age 8. Inspired by Lionel Hampton and especially by Milt Jackson, he gravitated toward the vibes, and by the time he was in his late teens, he was playing with West Coast musicians like  Curtis Counce, Dexter Gordon and Harold Land.

His first recording, however, was with avant gardist Paul Bley, in 1958. In 1961, after a move to the East Coast, he made his first recording as leader, and as proof that you can't altogether take Detroit out of the boy, Barry Harris was his piano player. This was a bebop session, with Harris and such bebop standards as "Green Dolphin Street" and "Hot House." A second album, for Columbia's Epic subsidiary, featured Bill Evans on piano and more straight ahead jazz.

By this time he had begun playing with Herbie Mann, whose group featured a lot of Latin music, so when he signed with Prestige in 1962, that became the focus of his work, 

Brazilian music was the hot Latin sound at that time, and Antonio Carlos Jobim was the hot composer.  Pike elected to go in a different direction, turning to another composer, one who was renowned in Brazil but whose reputation had not made the leap to the northern hemisphere. Joao Donado had worked with both Jobim and Joao Gilberto, but he perhaps got a little too experimental, and his popularity in Brazil started to decline as people complained they couldn't dance to his music. Relocating to the US, he played with  Mongo Santamaria, Tito Puente, Bud Shank, and Cal Tjader, and had some minot hits for Sergio Mendes, and a handful of songs fairly widely recorded by Latin bands, but he never did make that big time status reached by Jobim and Gilberto.

Pike and his group spent two days out at Englewood Cliffs, the first of which seems to have not been a complete success, in spite of having Clark Terry in the group. Two tunes, "Samba Lero" and "Serenidade," were rejected, and re-recorded the next day without Terry. 

The other headliner, Kenny Burrell, was there for both days, as were the rest of the musicians.

Rudy Collins had made his Prestige debut a couple of weeks earlier, with Ahmed Abdul-Malik. He would play on a few more Prestige sessions over the decade, but was mostly known for his work with Dizzy Gillespie and Herbie Mann.

This was Chris White's only Prestige recording, but not his only bossa nova recording, and not his only bossa nova recording in 1962. In June, he had recorded bossa nova albums with Lalo Schifrin for Audio Fidelity and with Quincy Jones for Mercury. In September, he was called back to finish the Quincy Jones project, and in October, more bossa nova with Schifrin for MGM. White was one of those young players, like Pike, Bryant and Lacy, who was drawn to different schools of jazz. He worked with Cecil Taylor in the 1950s, then with Nina Simone, and then for several years with Dizzy Gillespie. He also had a distinguished career as an educator, where one imagines his open-minded approach to musical schools must have stood him in good stead.

Brazilian percussionist Jose Paolo also played the two Lalo Schifrin recording date, and recorded with Stan Getz. He also recorded a couple of albums under his own name for a budget label, Evon. 

The album was released on New Jazz as Bossa Nova Carnival -- Dave Pike Plays The Music Of Joao Donato With Clark Terry And Kenny Burrell. "Samba Lero" and "Melvalita" were released on 45, with an interesting twist. Instead of just editing down the album cut to 45 RPM length, they recorded "Samba Lero" twice, a full length version and a 45 version. They also seem to have recorded a third version with vocals, which was not released. There's no mention of a vocalist on the session log, so I'm guessing it was probably Pike, who was known to vocalize -- and dance -- along with his solos. No second version of "Melvalita."

Elliot Mazer produced. Mazer's family were neighbors of Bob Weinstock's in Teaneck, NJ, and Weinstock first hired him as a gofer, gradually working him into the music end. Mazer would go on to be a successful producer of pop and rock acts, most notably with a long association with Neil Young. This was one of the few Prestige studio albums not recorded by Rudy Van Gelder.

Listening to Prestige 556: Clark Terry

LISTEN TO ONE: Nightlife

 Was the world really panting for a jazz version of All American? They hadn't exactly been panting for the original version of All American. The musical by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, who had hit it big with Bye Bye Birdie, ran for 80 performances on Broadway, panned by critics and unloved by audiences. An account of the show's history in Wikipedia is a compendium of wrong moves. 

First, the show's producers hired Mel Brooks  to write the book, which doesn't sound like a bad idea, except that Brooks was then young and inexperienced. He'd had some success as a TV gag

writer, but didn't know much about writing a play. For one thing, he discovered, plays are longer than sketches for Your Show of Shows, and you had to sustain momentum all the way through them. This proved too much for Brooks to handle, and he gave up when he discovered that after you'd finished the first act, you had to write a second act. So the producers brought in Joshua Logan, who had lots of experience as a successful Broadway director and script doctor, but not so much with the kind of broad sketch comedy favored by Brooks, so the second act ended up not exactly meshing with the first act. Then the producers, sensing trouble, brought in a star--Ray Bolger, the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz and a veteran Broadway star. So the script was rewritten around Bolger, which might have been a good idea except for two things: the story wasn't much of a fit for Bolger, and in 1962 no one cared about Bolger any more. Nothing good came out of all of this for the producers of All American, but something eventually did for Brooks: The Producers, inspired in part by this experience.

For all that, a musical can at least sort of succeed if it produces a few hit songs, though by 1962, that was also pretty much an idea whose time had passed. And the score of All American was not the most memorable. The website secondhandsongs.com lists cover versions of over 100,000 songs -- it's not complete by any means, but it's pretty comprehensive and a good resource. Only two of the songs from All American are listed at all on the site, so if there are any covers of the others, they are slim and scattered. "Once Upon a Time." first recorded by Tony Bennett, has had a good run of action among crooners, both pop and country, although not even the Bennett version cracked the Billboard Top 100. Instrumentally, it has mostly been picked up by orchestras like Lester Lanin's and Percy Faith's, with very little jazz interest. Charlie Byrd has recorded it, and Kenny Barron. 

The only other song from the score to get any cover action at all is "I've Just Seen Her," which has ten recordings, per secondhandsongs...and all by jazz performers. Terry, followed by Gary Burton, Pepper Adams, Scott Hamilton, Bill Charlap, Scott Hamilton with Bill Charlap. 

Nothing for any of the others. Perhaps they weren't very good songs. Certainly, they weren't the hippest of the hip. Nat Hentoff, in the album's liner notes, says rather charitably of Strouse and Adams:

Both are knowledgeable writers for the current state of the Broadway musical, but no one would claim that either or both has more than a peripheral acquaintance with jazz. 

One wonders who thought this was a good idea in the first place. Esmond Edwards? Bob Weinstock? Did Weinstock get such a cut rate deal on the score that he couldn't refuse? In any event, a silk purse had to be made out of a sow's ear.

The history of sow's ears into silk purses, in American culture, is an interesting one, and there have been some notable successes. Louis Armstrong turned a fairly pedestrian tune, "Sweethearts on Parade," by square's square Carmen Lombardo, into one of the most sublime jazz vocals of all time. Some would argue that history repeated itself, if not quite as sublimely, with "Hello, Dolly."

There's that great story of film director Howard Hawks trying to convince Ernest Hemingway to write for the movies. Hemingway said he didn't like movies, and every time he saw a movie based on a good book he hated it. "That's because good books don't make good movies," Hawks told him. "But sometimes a bad book can make a great movie. I'll prove it to you. I'll take the worst piece of garbage you ever wrote and turn it into a great movie." 

"What's the worst piece of garbage I ever wrote?" Hemingway demanded.

"No question about it. To Have and Have Not."

Hawks, like virtually everyone else, shortchanged To Have and Have Not, which is a pretty interesting novel. But he did make a great film of it.

The poet and classicist David R. Slavitt, who has been praised for his translations of Seneca and Ovid, also published a collection of a little-known Roman author, The Fables of Avianus. Because Avianus was an undiscovered gem? "Heavens, no," Slavitt told me. "Avianus was a terrible writer. This way, all the credit for quality is mine alone."

And it's been reported that Clint Eastwood wanted the challenge of making a quality film out of a perfectly awful novel. Hence, The Bridges of Madison County.

"It was clear to me," Oliver Nelson told Hentoff,

...that without the action on state, Ray Bolger's dancing, and the comedy, the music by itself needed quite special treatment to stand up on a jazz date.

In short, Nelson was nearly as accomplished a diplomat as he was an arranger.

So, did he do it? Did he make the silk purse?

Oh, my yes. It was silk, it was silk and satin and linen that shows, rings and things and buttons and bows. "I've Just Seen Her," the one tune from the show that intrigued some jazz musicians, may be the weakest track here. Nelson has crafted a pure delight, and unexpected delight. Probably no one much took this album seriously. The contemporary website AllMusic.com gave it three stars; there are no listener reviews at all on Amazon, no comments on the cuts on YouTube. So this is one of those gems of a golden age of American that's just waiting there for you to discover it. And it may not be the equivalent of David R. Slavitt and Avianus, because Strouse is certainly an adequate tunesmith, but this is Nelson's music. 

Clark Terry must have been scratching his head when Prestige contacted him about this gig. Also the diplomat, he describes, not his first reaction, but his second:

I was surprised at how much Oliver had been able to do with the tunes, not only with regard to making them more interesting harmonically, but also in terms of the naturally flowing rhythm patterns he set them in. And once we all got into it, it turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable date. As I think the recording shows, we all had a ball.

It does. There's no guarantee that a bunch of performers having a ball will translate into a good time for the audience--look at the Rat Pack's version of Ocean's Eleven -- but in this case, you can hear them having a ball, and you can also hear them digging into miraculous arrangements, and doing right by them.

The band was quite likely a Nelson-Terry collaboration. Les Robinson was a veteran section man with a number of big bands, and was probably known to both men--certainly to Terry, who had played with him on the West Coast. George Barrow was frequently called upon by Nelson, both on baritone, as here, and tenor. He played on Nelson's Prestige sessions, and on The Blues and the Abstract Truth.

Of Budd Johnson, Terry told Nat Hentoff:

It was a great help, of course, to have Budd Johnson along. First of all, no matter what you give him, Budd will swing it. And he has such a solid knowledge of chords that you can't lose him. He always knows what's happening and what can be done to make the proceedings more interesting. You listen to him here. He's like an old pitcher -- he's got so much "stuff" going for him, not only a fast ball, but curves and twisters and changes-of-pace. And always there's that big tone.

This comes back to Nelson again. Not to put down the excellent musicians, including some jazz greats tired of the road, who play in the pit orchestras of Broadway musicals, but the score of a show like All American isn't going to have chord changes so unexpected that they might lose a lesser musician than Budd Johnson.

Eddie Costa played on a couple of Prestige sessions in 1957. Terry singles him out for much-deserved praise as well. 

The man simply can't go wrong rhythmically. Eddie also contributed a lot to the good feeling that pervaded the session.

Costa's rhythmic brilliance, especially on the vibes, and his good camaraderie were both approaching a tragic end. In July of that year, just two months later, he would die in an auto accident at age 32. 

Esmond Edwards produced. The album was recorded over two sessions. It was released on Moodsville, although it was far from being a Moodsville album. The title, and I appreciate the gentle irony, is Clark Terry Plays the Jazz Version of All American.

 

Listening to Prestige 485: Clark Terry

Clark Terry has been a presence in the Prestige catalog, though largely under the radar, either playing in large ensembles or backing up a vocalist. His debut was early and auspicious--in 1950, the very early days of the label, joining Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Criss for a live blowing session. This is the kind of music, from one of the most exciting periods in jazz history, that excited Bob Weinstock into forming a new label, and it's wonderful to go back and listen to it again,

Then a decade would go by before he connected with the label again--a busy time, starting out with Count Basie, then moving to Duke Ellington and spending the rest of the decade with him. A lot of recording--by the time his career was finished, Terry had appeared on more than 900 records.  A lot of time on the road--much of his non-Ellington work was done in studios in LA or Chicago.

Then in 1959, he left Ellington, settled in New York, and took a job as a staff musician for NBC (he was the only African-American in the Tonight show band). This gave him a lot more time for various recording gigs, and he returned to Prestige in September of 1960 as a member of Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis's big band. That was followed by a much more prominent role in a quintet led by Buddy Tate, then in a Jimmy Hamilton ensemble, an Oliver Nelson orchestra backing Gene Ammons, and a session backing vocalist Clea Bradford.

The July session, his only one as leader for Prestige, put him at the head of a quartet Prestige semi-regulars Joe Benjamin and Charlie Persip, and a musician whose history with Prestige was remarkably similar to his own. Jumior Mance had made one recording for the label in 1951, then spent the rest of the decade elsewhere, returning to join Davis's big band. He would record a few more times with Davis for the label.

The music is mellow, as befits a Moodsville session, with emphasis on ballads, and Terry is your man for the job. His approach is intelligent, technically superb, warm and emotional without ever getting cliched or sentimental. He does standards, two originals. and one unusual choice for a jazz album, Brahms's "Lullabye"--not so unusual for Terry, though. It was a particular favorite, one that he played often and recorded more than once.

This is one of those albums where you're glad it's just a quartet, because you can appreciate the intimate time spent with Terry. Junior Mance's solos are also beautiful.

The Moodsville album was titled, appropriately, Everything's Mellow.

Listening to Prestige Vol 4, 1959-60, now available from Amazon! Also on Kindle!
Volumes 1-3 are also available from Amazon.
The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

Listening to Prestige 470: Clea Bradford

Clea Bradford's obituary (2008, conflicting reports as to her age) describes her as a perfectionist and a

 Renaissance woman of sorts—a world class chef (her culinary skills were documented in the Washington Star), a formidable painter, social activist, and composer, even penning blues numbers like “One Sided Love Affair” and “I’ve Found My Peace of Mind” for famed guitarist Pee Wee Crayton. 

Bradford, of Choctaw-Cherokee-Ethiopian descent, was the daughter of a minister whose parish was in rural southeastern Missouri, but when she was seven, her parents separated and she moved with her mother to St. Louis. She'd been exposed to church music at home, and had loved to sing it, but St. Louis opened up a new door for her. That door was next door, and her next door neighbor in the Gateway City was Jimmy Forrest.

Forrest's house was more or less an ongoing jam session, and when Clea ventured next door, she was likely to meet other young St. Louisans like Oliver Nelson and Miles Davis. Or Clark Terry, down on a pass from Great Lakes Naval Base. And gradually, as a young teenager, she began to join in. By 17, she was a part of the St. Louis club circuit, and then, hearing that there were more musical opportunities, she moved to Detroit--a great apprenticeship for any young musician. She made her first recording, a 45 RPM rhythm and blues single, for Detroit's Hi-Q label.

Then on to New York, and a reunion with old friend Oliver Nelson, who got her a recording date with Prestige. and brought Clark Terry along to play on the gig, a collection of standards. It's a curious record, in that neither Nelson or Terry does a lot on it. It is musically interesting, because Bradford is a good singer, but mostly because of the piano work of newcomer Patti Bown.

 Bown was 29 at the time of the session. She had made a record for Columbia in 1958. This was her second recording session, and her first for Prestige. She would go on to be very much in demand throughout the decade, frequently on Bob Weinstock's label. Like Clea Bradford with Oliver Nelson, Bown was able reconnect in New York with an old friend from childhood, who would hire her for his big band and connect her to others. In her case, it was Quincy Jones.

Bradford reportedly was not satisfied with her performance on the album, which I guess is one of the problems with being a perfectionist. She actually sounds quite good. There's a debt to Dinah Washington, but that's hard to avoid for a young jazz and rhythm and blues singer coming up in the 1950s. But in later interviews, she never spoke of it. But the dissatisfaction appears to have been just with herself, not with Oliver Nelson. She remained close friends with him, and they would work together years later in Los Angeles.

The album was released on Tru-Sound as These Dues, that being one of the two new songs from the session. I think a Bradford original; I'm not sure. Tru-Sound being Prestige's pop and "modern rhythm and blues" label, most of their recording sessions yielded at least one single, and "These Dues" would have been the logical choice, but no single was released, so maybe Weinstock wasn't excited enough with the results either. It would later be rereleased on New Jazz as Clea Bradford with Oliver Nelson and Clark Terry.

There would be one more jazz record for a New York label, Mainstream (Clark Terry was involved in that session too), and then at the end of the decade, a session for Cadet, a subsidiary of Chicago's Chess Records, By that time, she had become a mainstay of the various Playboy Clubs, a door opened for her by another old friend from St. Louis, comedian Dick Gregory. The Playboy Clubs, a very hot franchise in the 1960s, did not cater to a musically sophisticated audience but did feature top jazz names. Bradford had worked with, and become friendly with Kenny Burrell, who was on Cadet at the time.

Her album for Cadet was called Her Point of View. It was essentially a soul album, and its single, "My Love's a Monster," got good air play, and might have been a hit. Might have been, but it turned out that while Bradford may not have been satisfied with her performance on the Prestige album, the musical selections represented what she wanted to sing. On the strength of "My Love's a Monster," she got booked for soul reviews...where she refused to sing "My Love's a Monster," instead delivering jazz standards to a dissatisfied audience.

She continued to tour and sing through the 1970s and 1980s, then coming in off the road, she took a degree at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, and became a minister. Also in these years, she grew more in touch with her Native American heritage, changing her name to Clea Bradford-Silverlight.

Listening to Prestige 467: Gene Ammons - Oliver Nelson

As with Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Bob Weinstock seemed, as 1961 wound on, to be trying to get as much as possible out of Oliver Nelson before he moved on, and in as many combinations as possible. Here, four days apart, he goes from arranging strings and French horns for Etta Jones, to arranging a full jazz orchestra to support headliner Gene Ammons, Prestige's most prolific performer--this is his third session in 1961 alone. Ammons was a victim of the heroin plague, and this activity in 1961 was sandwiched between two prison sentences, one from 1958-60 and one from 1962-69.

We're hearing some musicians for the first time. Nelson was looking for a sound, not soloists, so he picked experienced section men: guys who could read music, who could follow a conductor's lead and get it right the first time, who would show up on time and ready to play.

Trumpeter Hobart Dotson had a lot of experience in big bands. He was in the dance bands of Gerald Wilson and Dan Belloc--and not all dance bands are alike. Wilson, who came up with Jimmy Lunceford (he replaced Sy Oliver), and played in the ensembles of Basie, Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Carter, was in the tradition of black dance bands; Belloc, who owned and operated a ballroom in Chicago, and worked with some rock and roll groups (including the Buckinghams, later), catered essentially to white audiences. Dotson also worked with edgier jazz orchestras, including Charles Mingus, Slide Hampton, and (edgier still) Sun Ra.

Red Holloway would also find plenty of work for Prestige in the 1960s, particularly with Jack McDuff. Chicago was his home base for most of his career, where he worked with blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll and jazz artists, recording with them and backing up touring artists.

Bob Ashton (baritone sax here; he also played tenor) made his Prestige debut in a 1960 recording of a big band led by Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, which also marked Oliver Nelson's debut as an arranger. He would also find his way onto a number of Prestige sessions during the 1960s.

George Barrow is in the tenor sax section for this session, but he was better known for his work on the baritone sax, which he played on Nelson's arranging debut with Davis, and on The Blues and the Abstract Truth. With the ensemble of jazz superstars (Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, Bill Evans) that Nelson put together for that recording, he was to single out Barrow for praise: "His baritone parts were executed with such precision and devotion that I find it necessary to make special mention of his fine work." Barrow would become a fixture on a number of Prestige recordings over the next few years.

Ammons has always liked the well-loved standards, and he does his share of them here, in front of Nelson's arrangements, along with some surprises from outside of the Great American Songbook catalog, like Savannah Churchill's rhythm and blues hit, "I Want to Be Loved." It's always worthwhile to hear a good song get the Ammons treatment, and even more so in this context,

"Too Marvelous for Words" is a good example. Written by Richard A. Whiting and Johnny Mercer in the 1930s, it was always popular with both vocalists and instrumentalists, but reached a zenith in the late 1950s with Frank Sinatra's vocal and Nelson Riddle's arrangement. Ammons sings this one on his saxophone, with a lovely brief solo from Richard Wyands. Nelson's arrangement satisfies--it does all the things one wants from a big band supporting a soloist--and it also surprises.

Esmond Edwards produced. As with Coltrane, Prestige did not release all its Oliver Nelson product all at once, and this session in particular was sliced and diced, as they also had to parcel out Gene Ammons's recordings after he was sent back to prison.

"Love, I've Found You" (another rhythm and blues ballad written by Gwen and Harvey Fuqua) and "Too Marvelous for Words" were first to appear, on a 1963 compilation album, Soul Summit, Vol. 2, which also included tracks from an Etta Jones session with Ammons and two Jack McDuff sessions, one with Ammons and one without.

"Things Ain't What They Used to Be," "I Want to Be Loved," "Makin' Whoopee" and "Lullabye of the Leaves" were all on 1964's Late Hour Special.

Jerome Kern's "The Song is You" waited until later in 1964, and was released on Velvet Soul.

"I Want to Be Loved" and "Love, I've Found You" were released on 45 RPM, though it would be a stretch to think that the Ammons-Nelson versions could be aimed at the rhythm and blues market, especially since by 1964 there was no rhythm and blues market.

Listening to Prestige Vol 4, 1959-60, now available from Amazon! Also on Kindle!
Volumes 1-3 are also available from Amazon.
The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

Listening to Prestige 444: Jimmy Hamilton

Jimmy Hamilton spent 25 years with Duke Ellington, which should tell you something about how good he was.  He replaced Barney Bigard in 1943, and was an important part of the Ellington orchestra for many of its greatest recordings, as well as a bunch more with groups of Ellingtonians led by Johnny Hodges. He released a handful of albums as leader during the 1950s on extremely obscure labels, and then this and one more on Prestige, but neither of his Prestige albums were ever reissued by Fantasy or Concord as part of their Original Jazz Classics series. You can't call him a forgotten man of jazz, because 25

years with the Duke gave him a certain recognition, but on the other hand, you sorta can. Jazz fans--certainly Ellington fans--know Hamilton as a section man par excellence. Not many know him as a soloist, improviser, leader.

This would be a good introduction, with Ellingtonians Britt Woodman and Clark Terry joining a solid rhythm section, playing all originals by Hamilton. It seems that when Jimmy breaks loose from the Duke, he gravitates toward the blues, reflecting his early days with Lucky Millinder and Bill Doggett. There's nothing like hearing a bunch of disciplined Duke's men letting their hair down and jamming on the blues, and I could listen to this all day.

A sextet is enough to get a full, almost big band sound if you know what you're doing, and these guys certainly do. They're all great section men as

well as being great soloists, so they can play together when called for, improvise when it's their turn.

Not known as a composer, although he does have one co-composer credit with Ellington ("Sunswept Sunday," from the Anatomy of a Murder soundtrack), Hamilton does not make a mistake in assigning the tunemaking chores for this session to himself. He has a good feeling for blues riffs that will sustain a whole song.

This was the first of two Prestige sessions for Hamilton, and it was released on Swingville.  After this, no more recording on his own for a long time. In 1968, he left Ellington and retired to the Virgin Islands, if you call teaching and playing music retirement.  In the 1980s, a couple of live sessions were captured and released. He died in 1994.

Esmond Edwards produced.


Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon. 

And Volume 4 in preparation!

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

Listening to Prestige 404: Buddy Tate with Clark Terry

Buddy Tate began recording for Prestige in 1959, as part of a Shirley-Scott / Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis session, made his first recording as a leader near the end of that year. This was productive period for Tate, who was also leading a group at Harlem's Celebrity Club, a gig that lasted over two decades, from 1953-1774.

Tate's involvement with Prestige was both the with the newer soul jazz sound (Scott-Davis) and the older Swingville sound, both of them connected by rhythm and blues, and both of them connected by the talent scouting and producing abilities of Esmond Edwards.

Edwards, born and raised in Harlem, had first been employed by Bob Weinstock as a photographer. Then Weinstock had him produce a couple of sessions, and by 1958 had put him in the position of recording director, and for the next several years he produced most of Prestige's sessions. Edwards was familiar with the Harlem jazz scene to a degree that Weinstock was not. He knew about places like the Celebrity Club/ He brought Tate and other musicians downtown, and out to Englewood Cliffs, and he found and signed up the younger musicians who were creating the soul jazz sound.

For this session, Tate is joined by Clark Terry, who did not come from uptown in those days. After solid stints with both the Basie and Ellington bands, he had a steady gig as a member of Johnny Tonight Show orchestra. He had appeared on a very early Prestige session, in 1950 with Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray,  and then not again until a September 1960 session with Scott and Davis. Terry is also responsible for the lion's share of the compositions on this session, beginning with "Groun' Hog," a slow blues which, at just over eight minutes, allows all the participants to stretch out and do some beautiful work, particularly Tommy Flanagan early on, and Tate later on. It's eight minutes well spent with some master players.
Carson's

20 Ladbroke Square is credited to Tate and Esmond Edwards as composers, and it's another blues, one that opens up and allows for some inspired blowing. The address is for an apartment building in the Notting Hill section of London, not an area traditionally associate with the blues. Well, maybe there's another Ladbroke Square. The rest of the session belongs to Duke Ellington, in ballad ("All Too Soon") and swinging ("Take the A Train") tempos. The combination of Ellington and these old pros is every bit as good as you would have imagined it to be.

Having dropped back in after a decade's hiatus, Clark Terry would stick around for the next couple of years and make a number of recordings for Prestige, New Jazz, Swingville and Moodsville.

Larry Gales was relatively new on the scene in 1960, and new to Prestige with this album, although he would hook up with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Johnny Griffin for several Prestige sessions, then move on to a career that found him playing with many of the greats, particularly Thelonious Monk for several years. He would take quite a while before making his own album as leader, however. His Monk tribute album, A Message from Monk, came out in 1990.

With Edwards producing, this Swingville release was titled Tate-a-Tate, after one of the other Clark Terry contributions. If it was Clark who came up with the pun, Buddy certainly liked it, as later projects were called Tete-a-Tate and Tate-a-Tete.

Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon.

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

Listening to Prestige 397: Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis

Down Beat's review of this album says, in part, "Perhaps the most significant aspect of this set is saxophonist Nelson's debut as a big-band arranger on four tracks."

That doesn't begin to tell the story. My writeup of this session was slowed down because I had to stop everything and listen the second tune of the day, "Trane Whistle," several times, to get a full appreciation of the arrangement, the way Davis's tenor takes on a horn section with the power of Joe Louis, the versatility of Bert Campaneris and the stamina of John Havlicek, and excitement enough to make a listener go crazy trying to find

comparisons. And what Nelson has the horns doing inspires Davis to get even crazier, with results that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

The over-the-top excitement of "Trane Whistle" made me go back and listen again to the first cut of the day, "Walk Away," another Nelson composition/arrangement, and I was glad I had. The arrangement isn't as bombastic, but it is as inventive, with an intriguing piano vamp by Richard Wyands to start things off, and some wonderful call-and-response work between tenor sax and horn session.

Next up is "Whole Nelson," and if one soloist working against amazing big band horn arrangements is good, how about two? Turns out that's good too, especially when you consider that the other one is Clark Terry.

The most celebrated cut on the album is "The Stolen Moment," because Nelson used it again on his most celebrated album (and with one of the great album titles of all time), The Blues and the Abstract Truth,  As "Stolen Moments," it became the most celebrated cut on that milestone album, famed for being the most notable use in jazz of the

symmetrical augmented scale, an alternative scale which I can't begin to explain but which was an important innovation in the work of early modernist composers like Bela Bartok, Milton Babbitt and Arnold Schoenberg. No augmented scale in this version, but some top-notch soloists, including a trumpet player I wasn't familiar with, Bobby Bryant, who was just passing through. He had come to New York from Chicago in 1960, and by the following year was out in Los Angeles, where he built a substantial career, including working on a number of albums with Oliver Nelson.

The arrangements on the last two tracks of the day were turned over to veteran arranger Ernie Wilkins: the Rodgers and Hart standard "You Are Too Beautiful" and the Davis original Jaws." Prime stuff.  And one would be remiss not to mention the extraordinary caliber of musicians who make up this big band. But Oliver Nelson is really the story.

Ttane Whistle was a Prestige release. A later re release capitalized on the later fame of the Nelson composition and was called Stolen Moments. Esmond Edwards produced, Don Schlitten did the photography and cover design, and come to think of it, that's also how Edwards got his start at Prestige.


Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon.

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

Listening to Prestige Records Part 33: Wardell Gray - Dexter Gordon

This one really shouldn't be hard to find. Who doesn't want to hear Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray, one of the legendary tenor sax pairings of all time, in their natural element, Los Angeles, and with a great supporting cast? But they're nowhere to be found on Spotify, and only sparsely on YouTube.

Which means no quiet listening time in my car, which is part of the reason for the delay in getting this entry up. The other part is that I've been going through a fairly painful period of writer's block, during which the only thing I could really write was this blog. Now I've broken through, at least a little, so this is competing with the writing I actually have to do.

So this is a live album, which is perhaps a first for Prestige (not sure about all their European albums). Wardell Gray did a live recording in Detroit, but it seems never to have been released. Certainly the first West Coast recording -- who knows what Weinstock's deal was on this one? -- and unquestionably an all-star session. Dexter Gordon is on board for "Jazz on Sunset," not for "Kiddo."

Sonny Criss, and especially Clark Terry, are stars in the jazz firmament, although Criss arguably never got the recognition he deserved. Jazz Profiles has an excellent appreciation of him as an "overlooked giant," including this assessment from early cohort and R&B giant Big Jay McNeely:

 Sonny Criss and I played together quite a while until I went to study with Joseph Cadaly [a first chair saxophonist at RKO Studies who taught reeds, harmony and solfège]. That’s when Sonny and I split up. He continued into progressive Jazz, and I went and studied.

When we split, he started going all up and down the Coast playing and going to Europe. But I don't know, it just didn't happen. He'd get records. People said he was great. They played his stuff. But it just didn't happen for him, and I think that kind of disturbed him. Especially when you put your whole soul and your whole life and just wrap up everything into something and it doesn't happen.

He was pioneering and when you're pioneering, it's kind of more difficult to get recognition …. You have to suffer when you're a pioneer. So that's what hap­pened, really, I think, with Sonny. He was just early.

Criss stayed on the West Coast, and West Coast jazz

was not a scene he fit into. It had moved away from bebop to the explorations of Gerry Mulligan and Dave Brubeck, the orchestrations of Henry Mancini and Andre Previn. And it was mostly white.

At the peak of his creative genius in the mid-50s, he recorded three albums for Imperial. But Imperial was mostly a rock and roll label (Fats Domino, Ricky Nelson), and secondarily a country label(SLim Whitman), and it didn't have the expertise or the inclination to do any serious marketing of modern jazz.

He did record for Prestige again, so we'll meet him again -- but much later.

In 1977, suffering from stomach cancer, he killed himself.

Jimmy Bunn, who also played piano on the famous Dexter Gordon/Wardell Gray recording of "The Chase," was arrested on drug charges, served hard time in San Quentin (where he played in the prison jazz band with Art Pepper), and was never able to restart his career.

Billy Hadnott, I find from the great rhythm and blues blog Bebop Wino, was very active on the West Coast R&B scene, playing with T-Bone Walker and Lloyd Glenn.

Chuck Thompson played in Hampton Hawes' great trio in the mid-50s.

This is wonderful music, with three great soloists (four when Gordon is added) challenging each other in the way only live recording allows. They're all individual as hell, they all surprise the listener (and, one would guess, each other) and they come together.

"Jazz on Sunset" is a reworking of Denzil Best's "Move," and "Kiddo" a version of Charlie Parker's "Scrapple from the Apple," itself deriving from a mashup of "Honeysuckle Rose" and "I Got Rhythm."

The YouTube recordings are full of surface noise, but for those of us who collected vinyl -- and collected it to play, and play again, not as an investment -- this is not really a drawback.


Here's parts one and two of "Kiddo":



And here's parts three and four of "Jazz on Sunset":