Tad Richards' odyssey through the catalog of Prestige Records:an unofficial and idiosyncratic history of jazz in the 50s and 60s. With occasional digressions.
Most of this session went on a Moodsville album, along with four songs held back from an earlier date.
She had a new bass player for the date in George Tucker. Tucker had some experience accompanying organs, having played on Johnny "Hammond" Smith's two Prestige albums. She continued with Arthur Edgehill on drums.
She is perhaps a little more subdued for Moodsville. Musically, she continues to reward the listener, but with a more limited palette of sound. Rather than
seeking out new possibilities of electronic sound, she stays close to the sound of a piano, the percussive individual notes stretched just a little by the electronic sustain of the Hammond. So it is in its own way an experiment with the different possibilities of her instrument. As one of the most popular jazz musicians of the decade, she recorded a lot, both with Prestige and Blue Note, and later Impulse and Atlantic, and she was always going to find a way to make it interesting.
For the four Moodsville songs, she picked two Rodgers and Hart standards, "Spring is Here" and "I Didn't Know What Time it Was," and you can't go wrong with Rodgers and Hart. The other two are also ballads, and equally romantic, but from composers with interesting stories. "I Thought I'd Let You Know" was composed by Scott's fellow Philadelphian Cal Massey in an uncharacteristically romantic mood; Massey was to become best known for his uncompromising political stance on civil rights, which caused him to be blacklisted by some of the large corporate record labels.
Jimmy Davis (not the Louisiana governor who wrote "You Are My Sunshine") is best known for written for Billie Holiday which has become a classic, but his story is more than that, and worth remembering. Drafted in 1942, he refused to report to a segregated army and demanded that either be exempted or seconded to the Canadian army, which was integrated. When both demands were rejected, he chose prison over a segregated armed forces. He did eventually agree to join the army, and was sent to France in 1945 with a musical unit. He fell in love with the country, and eventually, like many other African-American musicians, became an expatriate.
"Lover Man," a song
"Bye Bye Blackbird" was held for a 1961 release, Shirley's Sounds; "Autumn Leaves" and her own composition, "Bridge Blue," had wait until 1966 and Workin'..
She also cut two tunes, "Crazy Rhythm" and "The Things You Are," with Earl Coleman. They were never released. Too bad. Coleman really never got his due.
Am I getting too much 1950s jazz? Is it all starting to sound alike?
No, and no.
Every album, every recording session, has been a unique and uniquely satisfying experience, and I continue to find this one of the most rewarding projects I have ever undertaken.
Obviously, I can't say that some sessions have been more uniquely satisfying than others, not if I have any respect for the English language. Each has been unique; each has given me something new and significant in my understanding and appreciation of jazz. But some have leapt out at me with particular force. Like the one before this, making me appreciate the richness of Tadd Dameron's compositions, made all the more special because he recorded so seldom.
On the other hand, I'm very familiar with Sonny Rollins's gifts as a composer and an improviser, and Lord knows his recording career has been prolific. But this one leapt out at me nonetheless. Why? Just because. Because his playing is so hot on this session: so creative, such high energy. Another reason could be that this is my farewell to Sonny on Prestige. He'll move on to a number of different labels: Blue Note and Riverside in New York, Contemporary on the West Coast. He'll record for RCA Victor for a while, and for various European labels. Then for Impulse, for Milestone, for lots of other folks. Anyway, I only found this out after I started reading background stuff, so it wasn't part of my immediate response.
The session contains three compositions by Sonny, and three songs by others. The Rollins compositions are the ones where the energy level really goes through the roof. "Ee-ah," in particular, combines the honking urgency of rhythm and blues with the creative daring of bop. I love it. 'B Quick" and "B Swift" are, if anything, taken at an even higher level of intensity, propelled by an unflagging and unforgiving Max Roach, over an incredible nine minutes for the first number. I like to imagine a spectator in the booth, drenched with sweat and exhausted just from listening to what these cats are doing, saying, "I betcha you can't do that again." "I betcha we can," Max retorts..."but maybe a little shorter this time." "B Swift is just as intense, but clocks in at five minutes."
And so to "Sonny Boy," which does what only jazz can do--it takes a familiar melody and turns into something entirely new. Screenwriter William Goldman, in his fascinating book, Adventures in the Screen Trade, discusses a screenplay he wrote for Gene Hackman, about a druggist who tries to break up an affair between his son and a married woman, but ends up having an affair with her himself. Goldman points out that the story is what it is because of a set of decisions that could as easily have gone in different directions. Instead of being a drama, it could have been a bedroom farce, which lovers hiding in closet s and under beds. If, instead of Gene Hackman, the producers had cast Faye Dunaway as the lead, it would have been story of a wife having to juggle not just one lover, but two, and then finding out that they were father and son. Or they could have cast John Travolta as a boy whose Oedipal problems take on a whole new twist. Or maybe they could cast Robert Duvall as the husband, a macho firefighter who loves his wife but has neglected her...
"Sonny Boy" was written by Tin Pan Alley stalwarts DaSylva, Brown and Henderson as a tearjerking vehicle for Al Jolson, and the emotional center of the song is the doting father. But in Sonny's version, we've changed the focus. Jolson as kindly, sentimental old father figure is no longer the star. Now it's Rollins as Sonny Boy, and he's not climbing up on anyone's knee. The song is completely transformed. It's macho, it swaggers...and it works. A number of jazz musicians, most notably Lester Young, have said that they always hear the words of a ballad when they play it. My guess is that Sonny pretty much tossed out the words when he did this one.
The two Earl Coleman cuts don't work quite as well, Coleman had cut loose from his Billy Eckstine roots in his last outing for Prestige, and was really beginning to develop as a contemporary jazz singer. Here, in spite of having Rollins, Drew and Roach to inspire him, he's back in the Mr. B. groove.
He's also working with not the best material. Every now and then, Prestige would give a contemporary hit ballad to one of its jazz acts, and they do that here with "Two Different Worlds," a 1956 chart hit for Don Rondo. The Great American Songbook had mostly closed by 1956, and a lot ballads from those years simply weren't that good. "Two Different Worlds," written by Al Frisch, known for not much besides this song (he did write "Broadway at Basin Street," an early Cannonball Adderley recording) and Sid Wayne, known for writing most of the really second rate songs that weighed down the Elvis movies, is one of those not very good ballads, and maybe a lush Mr. B-type approach is all you can do with it.
His second song is "My Ideal," written by Richard Whiting, one of the A-list tunesmiths. It's become a standard, and there have been some great jazz recordings, but for me the version that stands out is the one by Whiting's daughter Margaret, with the pure and lyrical innocence of a young girl yet to find her first love. That's not Mr. B., and it's not Earl Coleman.
Perhaps Bob Weinstock was looking for a cover record to Don Rondo's hit (Roger Williams / Jane Morgan and Nat "King" Cole also covered it), but if so, he must have changed his mind, because Coleman's numbers never were released on 45. "Ee-Ah" was, with "They Can't Take That Away from Me" from the Bird tribute album on the flip side. Let's hope that got some play on the rhythm and blues stations. It deserved to.
"Ee-Ah," the two "B" cuts, and the two Earl Coleman cuts were released in 1957 as Tour de Force. The same tracks plus "Sonny Boy" and minus Coleman came out as Sonny Boy" in 1961. Also on the latter album: "The House I Live In," written as a leftist anthem by Earl Robinson but co-opted as a patriotic ditty by Columbia and Frank Sinatra, and recorded earlier in 1956 by Rollins on the Bird session.
This is the second half of the Earl Coleman Returns session, with Art Farmer and Hank Jones returning along with Earl. Gigi Gryce is absent, and there are a new bass and drums.
The more I listen to Earl Coleman, the more I like him. I'm hearing a much more modern sound than I did before, and I expect that has to do with me more than Earl. The Mr. B. and Al Hibbler influences are still there, as is probably appropriate from a singer returning from the Forties, but I'm hearing a little Jon Hendricks as well, and maybe a little Joe Williams, Mostly, I'm hearing a distinctive singer.
Gigi Gryce hasn't left the building completely. "Social Call," probably the gem of the session, is a Gryce composition. And there's perhaps a reason for the Hendricks echo. He wrote the lyrics. "Social Call" has become a favorite of jazz instrumentalists and singers alike.
This version of "Social Call" also has beautiful solos by Art Farmer and Hank Jones, and that, I would say, tells you something about Coleman's musicianship.
Wendell Marshall was a veteran of the Ellington band, but I hadn't known his other Ellington connection -- he was the second member of his family to play bass for the Duke. His cousin was Jimmy Blanton. He had steady work as a Broadway pit musician, and was also one of the most sought-after session bassists.
Wilbur Hogan, also known as Wilbert Hogan and G. T. Hogan. like Marshall, could play both bop and R&B, and did a lot of work in the 50s and 60s, until health issues slowed him down..
Nothing from this album on YouTube, but I found "Social Call" here. It is very much deserving of a listen. This is a singer who should not be forgotten.
This is the first of two sessions that would be released by Prestige as Earl Coleman Returns, though what he was returning from, it's hard to say. Probably not the two Gene Ammons sessions that he appeared on, both of which were pretty much buried by Prestige. Perhaps a long-postponed return from his one big success--the 1947 session with Charlie Parker and Errol Garner that brought him his one hit record?
Actually, Earl Coleman never quite returned, never quite went away. His singing style, the rich Mr. B-type baritone, faded in popularity, but he hung on, singing in what one presumes were smaller venues, but always called upon to sing in some pretty distinguished musical settings. When he died in 1995, he received a featured obituary in the New York Times, which is something not given to every veteran jazz musician. including some who one might think of as having made more of a musical impact.
Coleman broke in in 1939, singing with Ernie Fields (he could only have been 14 at the time). The '40s saw him with Jay McShann, Earl Hines, and, interestingly, the Billy Eckstine orchestra, before his 1947 recording debut with Bird, and his one hit, "This is Always." He would also record with Howard McGhee and Fats Navarro.
In the 50s, he also recorded with Sonny Rollins and Elmo Hope, in the 60s with Don Byas (in Paris). with Gerald Wilson, and with Billy Taylor and Frank Foster. In the 8os, he worked and recorded for several years with Shirley Scott.
So what kept him, maybe on the fringes of jazz royalty, but still never far from those fringes, for a lot longer than a lot of the other Eckstine acolytes?
He was very good. And I really started to appreciate how good he was, listening to this session with some much younger musicians (and a veteran rhythm section composed of considerably older musicians--a very interesting group). His sound is very much influenced by Al Hibbler, as well as by Mr. B., and what's probably most important about him is that he works very well with musicians. He doesn't improvise a lot, but he listens to what they're doing, and he gives them a solid ground to solo from. This is true for Farmer and Gryce, and especially true for Jones.
Earl Coleman Returns was made up of this session and another later in 1956, with a smaller group.
No one has posted any of the Earl Coleman Returns tunes on YouTube, so to give you a sample, here he is with Billy Taylor;
This is another one of those What Were They Thinking? sessions. Not the musicians -- they were there to play, they delivered as promised: a beautiful ballad, a blues, and a rhythm and blues stomper that's so close to rock and roll that you could even call it that. And, in fact, they did. The tune is titles "Rock-Roll."
No, it's more a question of what was management thinking? They hired seven musicians, led by one of their most popular leaders, plus a singer, Earl Coleman, and they seem to have done very little with it. "Ghost of a Chance" seems never to have been released until many, many years later by Original Jazz Classics on an Earl Coleman CD reissue, at a time when there was very little interest in Earl Coleman. "Rock-Roll" was the flip side of a 45 that featured "Sock!" as the A-side, and it was the A-side of a 78 that had the other Earl Coleman vocal, "Haven't Changed a Thing," on the flip. Nothing from this session made it to an LP until the 1965 release of Gene Ammons--Sock! and then it was only the two instrumental numbers.
"Rock-Roll" was written by the great jazz composer/ arranger/ bandleader Chico O'Farrill, and it's a powerful recording--the kind of tune that used to open up a 1950s Alan Freed stage show, stirring up the audience and allowing space for a solo by one of the brilliant tenor sax players employed by Freed, Red Prysock or Sam "the Man" Taylor or Big Al Sears. In this case, it's Gene Ammons, with strong ensemble backing and some tasty licks by Cecil Payne.
Ammons brought a lot of new musicians into the studio with him. His previous session in June, while also very rhythm and blues-based date, had featured top name jazz musicians. Before that, in February, he'd led a group of excellent but unsung R&B cats, plus Earl Coleman, but the only holdover from that group to this was drummer George Brown.
Which meant it was kind of too bad for these guys that this session was so thoroughly buried, because most of them didn't get much more of this kind of exposure. Cecil Payne, of course, had a noteworth career. But I can't find anything about trumpeter Nat Woodyard, not even whether he was related to Ellington drummer Sam Woodyard. Edwin Moore not only played trombone here, he also contributed a really nice bluesy tune, "Blues for Turfers," but I can find no other mention of him anywhere.
George Brown went the expat route, and became a legend in Paris jazz circles, but before that he had fashioned a strong career in US jazz circles, most notably with Wes Montgomery.
Ernie Shepard was an expat of a different sort, eschewing the recording centers of New York and LA for most of his career, staying in Chicago, where there was lots of music, but not much or it committed to wax (or vinyl). In the mid-60s he toured and recorded with Duke Ellingon. Steve Wallace describes his playing on Ellington's live album, The Great Paris Concerts,, thus:
His sound is massive and vibrant, his beat irresistible and there’s a lot of interplay between the ideas he plays (even while simply walking) and the rest of the band and the soloists.
Which is pretty good description of his playing on "Rock-Roll."
Just because I can't find any discographies for Nat Woodyard or Edwin Moore doesn't mean that they didn't get work. Rhythm and blues session men are rarely noted. But I can absolutely guarantee that this was 20-year-old Lawrence Wheatley's only recording, and not because there was no demand for him. Wheatley was passionately committed to live jazz, and refused to record. Instead, for 40 years he led a weekly live jam session in Washington, DC, where he was revered as a "local musical godfather" and mentor to generations of Washington jazz musicians.
This is Gene Ammons's second recording session with this new group, so time to take a look at some of them. I can't find any information on Nat Howard, except to say that he sounds good here.
Henderson Chambers is one of those guys who straddled the fence between jazz and rhythm and blues, not that there was ever really much of a fence. He played with Al Sears and Tiny Bradshaw in the 30s, then Chris Columbus at the Savoy Ballroom in 1939-40, and then a few years with Louis Armstrong in the early 40s, followed by gigs with Don Redman, Sy Oliver, Lucky Millinder, and Count Basie. In the 50s, he played with Cab Calloway, Doc Cheatham, Duke Ellington, and Mercer Ellington. In the 60s, Ray Charles and Basie again. This was a cat who never lacked for work. He died in 1967.
I can't find much on Gene Easton, but he played with Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington, Sun Ra and Muhal Richard Abrams, so he had some range.
Earl Coleman was a singer in the Billy Eckstine mode, which as I've said, was going out of fashion by this time, although it had its adherents, including Mr. B. himself, who was still going strong into the 1980s, when he made a Grammy-winning recording with Benny Carter. Probably the most successful post-1940s work by a rich-toned baritone in the Eckstine tradition was Johnny Hartman's 1963 collaboration with John Coltrane.
Coleman recorded two tunes on this session with Ammons. One of them, "This is Always," a Harry Warren/Mack Gordon composition, was his attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle. He had had a minor hit with the song in 1947, but the success of that version may have had something to do with the other musicians on the date: Charlie Parker and Erroll Garner.
Probably the two instrumental tracks are the really memorable ones from this session, though. Ammons does a beautiful version of a great ballad: George Gershwin's "Our Love is Here To Stay." The other tune, "Blues Roller" (or "Blue Roller") is not exactly a blues rock and roller, although Ammons does take off from an easy rolling ensemble part to do some old fashioned Texas tenor honking.
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