Tad Richards' odyssey through the catalog of Prestige Records:an unofficial and idiosyncratic history of jazz in the 50s and 60s. With occasional digressions.
Showing posts with label Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. Show all posts
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.
Percy Mayfield wrote and recorded "Please Send Me Someone to Love" in 1951, and its quality as a song was recognized pretty quickly. Dinah Washington recorded it in the same year (so, for that matter, did Dale Evans, showing the wide range of the song's appeal--after all, even cowgirls get the blues). And while jazz snobs might look down on rhythm and blues, at least some jazz musicians had more open ears. Count Basie and Joe Williams recorded it in 1955.
I first heard the song, and fell in love with it, in the 1957 doowop version by the Moonglows. That same year, Red Garland introduced an instrumental version of it. Somewhere around that time, I was beginning to fall in love with jazz. That's not quite right. It implies a gradual process. Somewhere around that time, I fell passionately in love with jazz in the space of five minutes and one song. And somewhere not long after that, I heard Red Garland's "Please Send Me Someone to Love."
If you were a teenager in the 1950s, at some point you were supposed to outgrow rock and roll, or so we were told. And rhythm and blues, which was lumped together with rock and roll, and indeed shared many overlaps/ Well, I had heard the clarion call from John Coltrane's horn (and Red Garland's piano, as I would find when I bought the Prestige album). Did that mean that, like the babies in Mary Poppins who spoke their first words in human language and from that instant on could no longer talk to or understand the birds, that I had heeded the cry of battle, crossed the Rubicon, and forever left those other musical genres behind, as I was supposed to.
But I hadn't. And hearing the Moonglows' song (as I knew it then) transformed by Garland, but still the same haunting memory, went a long way toward reassuring me that I was all right.
And I learned to trust my taste. And other jazz musicians were listening, too. Ramsey Lewis recorded it in 1958, Les McCann in 1961. Both had a pop music following, but both were respected jazz musicians. I make that point because, at that time, all these gradations mattered, and to the real purists, any record on the charts was a sellout.
Some other Prestige artists gravitated toward the tune. Davis's frequent collaborator, Shirley Scott, recorded it with an organ trio in 1958. Gene Ammons recorded it on his Argo session in 1962. And Davis included it, along with standards and originals, on this session.
By 1962, Percy Mayfield had endured a long and painful convalescence from an auto accident in which he had been pronounced dead at the scene. He no longer had a career as a rhythm and blues hitmaker, but one of his songs, "Hit the Road, Jack," had been picked up by Ray Charles, and on the strength of that hit, Charles had hired him as a full time staff writer, and would eventually record 15 of his songs.
He had become known as "the Poet of the Blues," and while "poet" is a term that's often thrown around too loosely, it has some validity in Mayfield's case. Specialty Records owner Art Rupe, for whom Mayfield made most of his hit records, praised his artistry while lamenting that he never had the confidence to present himself on a larger stage: "If he could have been encouraged more, he would have been seen as great as Langston Hughes.” I believe Rupe was right.
I haven't posted a "Listen to One" because it would have to be "Please Send Me Someone to Love," and as of this writing, it's not on YouTube. You can find it, however, on Amazon and Spotify (and probably iTunes, but I don't use that service, so can't be sure). Davis plays it beautifully, finding all the yearning, for the fate of mankind and his own happiness, that Mayfield put into both the words and the melody.
I'm glad that Davis was sufficiently drawn to this tune to record it, because he too was affected by the stigma attached to rhythm and blues in those days. In the liner notes, he explains his choice of a piano- over an organ-led ensemble:
I got to the stage where I'd had enough organ. It was always controversial, because a lot of people thought it belonged to R&B, and there's a faction that still refuses to accept the organ as a definite contribution to jazz. I made up my mind to go back to the conventional rhythm section.
This is Art Taylor's 68th appearance on a Prestige recording session, and he is a welcome addition every time. The other three musicians are all making their Prestige debut.
Abandoned on the steps of an orphanage at birth, Horace Parlan developed polio at the age of five, which left him with the use of only two fingers. His adoptive parents encouraged him to play the piano to strengthen his hands, and it was thus that he discovered his true calling in life, though he also studied pre-law at the University of Pittsburgh. He is perhaps best known for his work with Charles Mingus. He would only make one other Prestige session (with Booker Ervin), but he worked and recorded widely with a number of musicians, including a stint in the 1960s as "house pianist" for Blue Note. He also made 31 records as leader--with Blue Note in the 1960s. with the Danish label SteepleChase after his move to that country in 1972, and with other European labels.
Bassist Buddy Catlett built a significant regional reputation, living and working in primarily in Seattle, but also in Denver and other western cities, but he also had his share of the big time, including Louis Armstrong, Quincy Jones, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie. Willie Bobo was one of the foremost Latin jazz percussionists of his era, working with Perez Prado, Mongo Santamaria and Tito Puente while still a teenager, later with Mary Lou Williams, Cal Tjader, Herbie Mann and others. He recorded several albums for Verve as leader.
Goin' to the Meeting was the title of the Prestige LP release, and it was also the flip side of the 45 RPM single--"Please Send Me Someone to Love" was the A side. Esmond Edwards produced.
Prestige hasn't gone in much for live albums, although with Bob Weinstock's spontaneous, recreating-a-jam-session philosophy, live recording would seem like a natural. But having made the decision to take the plunge with this one they went all in, and why not? Two wailing tenors and a cooking quintet at the jam session capital of the world, Minton's Playhouse on 118th Street in Harlem. Four sets of music.
What would you leave out?
Nothing? That's how they felt, too. Four sets became four separate albums, two of them released in 1961, the others a few years later.
A live session may not have the optimal sound you'd get in a studio, especially Rudy Van Gelder's studio, and there aren't any do-overs--or weren't, back then. More sophisticated recording techniques made it possible to go into the studio, correct a wrong note, and splice it in. These days, I suppose you wouldn't even have to do that: you could just autotune out all the clinkers. What balances that out, and makes a live set worth it, is the excitement that comes from playing off a live audience.
A lot of the time, that excitement is going to come from giving the audience what it wants. Perhaps the most famous description of the thrill of live jazz can be found in Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the scene that has been anthologized as "Jazz of the Beat Generation." when Sal and Dean find themselves in a jazz club in Oakland, with a behatted tenor player who:
was blowing at the peak of a wonderfully satisfactory free idea, a rising and falling riff that went from "EE-yah!" to a crazier "EE-de-lee-yah!" and blasted along to the rolling crash of butt-scarred drums hammered by a big brutal Negro with a bull neck who didn't care about anything but punishing his busted tubs, crash, rattle-ti-boom, crash. Uproars of music and the tenorman had it and everybody knew he had it. Dean was clutching hie head in the crowd, and it was a mad crowd. They were all urging that tenor man to hold it and keep it with cries and wild eyes, and he was raising himself from a crouch and going down again with his horn, looping it up in a clear cry above the furor...
Kerouac wonderfully describes an ecstatic moment, but what were Sal and Dean listening to in that club in Oakland? Not bebop, certainly. In the late 1940s, when Sal and Dean were on the road, bebop had yet to make a serious impact on the West Coast, not even in Los Angeles, where Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie had played a famous engagement in late 1945 and early 1946, to the enthusiastic support of fellow musicians and a few cognoscenti, most notably Ross Russell, who started the Dial record label to record Bird; But bebop hadn't really caught on, and when Sal and Dean were club-hopping in Oakland, and Bird was relaxing at Camarillo State Hospital, what were they listening to? From Kerouac's description, I'd say rhythm and blues. I've always wondered whether they might have happened in on a set by Big Jay McNeely.
The point of this is that a live set, in a live club, may not inspire the ecstasy that the behatted tenor man inspired in Dean Moriarty, but you are playing to an audience, and the music is only going to go by once. Proust says that if there are things that immediately grab you in a piece of music, you're going to go back to them over and over, and pretty soon you're going to start falling in love with other things about the same piece, and your love for it will deepen, but you'll gradually stop listening for the things that attracted you in the first place. This was true with Proust as he followed a popular composer around to his recitals in the salons of Paris; it's even more true in the era of recorded music.
Musicians working a live audience for a live recording are going to have to think of both: the effect on patrons of the club on that night, and the effect on buyers of the record. Of course, a sophisticated audience like the patrons of a New York City jazz club, especially Minton's, the birthplace of bebop, so they aren't going to be satisfied with the brutal hammering of butt-scarred drums, however bullnecked the drummer may be. But the guys on the bandstand are still likely to do well with material that the audience knows. The poet Billy Collins has described the poet as a sort of travel agent, starting the tour at a place his readers are familiar with, and taking them from there into new and unfamiliar realms. The modern jazz player may well want to do much the same thing, starting with a familiar melody -- a jazz standard, or a ballad from the Great American Songbook. Tuns that all the musicians on the gig are comfortable with, so that they know what they're doing and what they can expect from each other.
All of which is a roundabout way of noticing that this is what Griffin and Davis are doing--familiar jazz riffs like Charlie Parker's "Billie's Bounce," standards like "I'll Remember April"...and tunes by Thelonious Monk.
We're accustomed to think of Monk, today, as one of the great composers of the 20th century, but that reputation was slow in building. At this time, early 1961, only one jazz artist other than Monk had ever recorded an album of Monk's music (Steve Lacy, on Prestige, in 1956). So this much Monk on a series of live sets in a club suggests that his compositions are starting to be a common language not only of musicians (no surprise) but also audiences--and granted, this is Minton's, so even though it's not Minton's in 1946, it probably still has an audience closer to the cutting edge than most.
But I'm not exaggerating about how long it took for Monk's music to catch on. In the first set, Davis and Griffin perform "Epistrophy." One of Monk's classic tunes, written in 1948 it has been recorded 128 times, according to Secondhandsongs. But in 1961 it had been recorded exactly three times: by Milt Jackson in France, on a European label; by Bud Powell, on Verve; and by a group led by Art Taylor, on Blue Note.
"Well, You Needn't," the other Monk composition from the first set, had already achieved jazz standardhood, with 12 recordings by 1961, on its way to well over 200 to date. It also evoked an answer song -- common in rock and country, rare in jazz -- "I Didn't," recorded by Miles Davis.
From the late evening sets: "In Walked Bud," written and recorded by Monk in 1948, now a jazz standard with at least 130 recordings, had been recorded exactly once before 1961, by Sam Most for Bethlehem in 1957. And it's hard to believe that "Straight, No Chaser," now with 180 versions on record, was ever anything but a standard. It is now credited with being the second most widely recorded tune of 1951, trailing only "The Little Drummer Boy." But before the Davis-Griffin version, there had only been five others.
The jazz world would shortly see a second studio album of all Monk compositions, and we'll be looking at that before too long: it was Davis and Griffin (who had been closely associated with Monk), on Prestige.
Larry Gales and Ben Riley had close ties to Monk. They both played on the Davis-Griffin Monk album, played with Monk himself for several years, and then in 1990 made their Monk album, A Message from Monk, with Riley as nominal leader of the group. Gales had made one previous Prestige session, with Buddy Tate and Clark Terry. Ben Riley had been the drummer on the first Davis/Griffin pairing for Prestige.
Junior Mance made his return to Prestige after a ten-year hiatus, and his Davis-Griffin association would last through their Monk album. His career as a recording artist had started in 1947 with Gene Ammons (for Aladdin). but his performing career had started earlier than that. When he was ten years old, the saxophone player who lived in the Chicago apartment above his had a gig in a local roadhouse, and had lost his piano player. He had heard Junior practicing, and asked his dad (Julian Mance Sr.) if Junior could fill in. Roadhouses in those days tended to be lax about asking for ID, but even so, one might have guessed that they would have noticed a ten-year-old. Nonetheless, he played the gig.
He went from Gene Ammons to Lester Young, with whom he learned a valuable lesson. As he told Marc Myers in a 2011 interview:
I once made a mistake while playing something. I said, “Damn.” The guys told me never to say that. They said, “Play right through it.”
As Miles Davis said, " It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong."
He was back with Ammons (and Sonny Stitt) for his first Prestige recording. As he told Myers:
Jazz in those days was always competitive and supportive. We didn’t rehearse. What you heard on those records is what those guys came up with on the spot. We’d do the same thing on stage.
He also shared with Myers another great piece of advice he got from Jimmy Jones, when he first started working with Dinah Washington:
Look, when you’re working with a singer, imagine a portrait painting hanging in the museum. The singer is the subject of that portrait. What does the portrait need? A good frame. That’s you.
Prestige released an album called The Tenor Scene in 1961. It was the tunes from the second set of the evening, designated "the breakfast set": the Davis/George Duvivier composition "Light and Lovely." previously recorded with Arnett Cobb and Shirley Scott in 1959, "Straight, No Chaser," Dizzy Gillespie's "Woody 'n' You," Davis's "Bingo Domingo," and the standard "I'll Remember April."
In 1964, they began plans to roll out the entire performance, starting with the first set, and they titled the album The First Set. It featured the Charlie Parker tune and the two Thelonious Monk compositions: "Billie's Bounce," "Epistrophy," "Well, You Needn't." Added on, from the second set and first album, "I'll Remember April." This was followed by the third set, in an album entitled The Late Show, also in 1964.
1965 saw The Midnight Show, from the final set of the evening, followed by re-release of The Tenor Scene, this time titled The Breakfast Show, and maybe this explains the reason why the "breakfast" moniker was hung on this set.
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. Volume 4 is in preparation now! 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
The brain trust behind Swingville, primarily Bob Weinstock and Coleman Hawkins, had a lot of good ideas, and surely pairing Coleman Hawkins and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis was one of the best. Davis cited Hawkins as one of his chief influences, which is no surprise, since Hawkins influenced everyone who came after him.
This was 1960, and stereo was still a novelty. In 1958, people had bought, and listened awestruck to, the sound of a locomotive passing from one channel to another (You can hear it! Going across the
room!) Ornette Coleman made more creative use of the new technology with his double quartet, one quartet playing over one channel and the other over the other. Hawkins and Davis may not be as adventurous as Ornette, but they had their go at stereo separation, with one tenor saxophone in each channel.
Technology, these days, has moved in a different direction, and someone listening to a streaming service over their iPad speaker is not going to get the full effect available to the 1960 stereo buff, with his speakers placed exactly such and such many feet and inches apart, exactly so many inches off the ground, exactly at such and such an angle, standing exactly so many inches away. stooping if you were over six feet tall, getting up on a stepstool if you were...but that was rarer. Not many women were as likely to make fools of themselves over technology in those days.
And it's kinda too bad. The stereo separation of tenors was sort of a gimmick, but it was a nice one, especially on "In a Mellow Tone," which they start out with a channel-combining unison on the head, then proceed to battle stations on the right and the left for their solos. The master and the disciple, now a full-fledged star in his own right, trading solos with love and respect and lot of competitive fire.
Tommy Flanagan, at 30, was already a veteran of countless recording sessions--this made his 24th appearance on Prestige alone, playing with everyone, but especially the swing-to-bop veterans. (Certainly not exclusively--he had been the piano player on John Coltrane's groundbreaking Giant Steps.) He could always be counted on to do everything well, Ron Carter was still at the beginning of his jazz Odyssey. Gus Johnson, for Prestige, had played the blues with Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon, swing with the Swingville All Stars, and modern with Lem Winchester. He was a decade younger than Hawkins and at least that much older than everyone else in the group, and a perfect fit.
The album was released on Swingville (and later on Prestige, with "Lover," left off the original package, added in) as Night Hawk, after its only Hawkins original. 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. 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 EXPECT VOLUME 4, 1959-60, BY THE END OF THIS YEAR.
The Davis/Griffin pairing, two intense, hard-blowing, hard-bop tenor saxophonists, is legendary among jazz aficionados, but it was surprisingly short-lived. This, their first pairing, was also their only studio album for Prestige, although an extended live recording was released on four different albums over the next several years, so the recorded output of their partnership lasted a good deal longer than the partnership, or than Griffin's tenure on this side of the Atlantic. They also recorded a few albums together for the Riverside subsidiary Jazzland, and Griffin on his own for Riverside, before the diminutive "Little Giant" of the tenor decamped for Europe. where years later they would reunite for one more session.
Johnny Griffin had made plenty of music before he got together with Mr. Jaws, starting as a student at that cradle of jazz, Chicago's DuSable High School, where at age 15, in 1943, he was already playing in T-Bone Walker's band. Immediately after graduation, in 1945, he joined Lionel Hampton's band, which became a proving ground for many future beboppers.
Still primarily working out of Chicago, he made his first recording as leader in 1956, for the Chess subidiary Argo, after which he came to New York as a Blue Note artist, and his first Blue Note session became the first album to actually be released under his own name.
There were recordings for Riverside, and some memorable sessions with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and with Thelonious Monk, including one album with a group co-led by the two jazz giants, before Bob Weinstock and Esmond Edwards got him together with Davis.
This is a full-throttle session, starting with "Pull My Coat," a tune written by Richard Evans. Since there are several composers named Richard Evans, it took some digging to find the right one, but the digging was worth it, as it uncovered another fascinating jazz story of a young Chicagoan and contemporary of Griffin's, who also made his recording debut (and only album as leader) for Argo.
Let's digress a little and find out more about Evans, who grew up in Chicago in the 1940s, going to
...the Regal Theater. Later, I found out it was part of what they called the chitlin circuit. I remember being about nine years old and going there. You could watch two movies, and then watch Count Basie live, Duke Ellington live, and Fats Waller live. And we loved Fats Waller because at the end of the show, he’d take the curtain, wrap it around his belly, and shake it. [laughs] Cab Calloway was there too. I tell you this because, for some reason, we knew we were getting something special and that we were privileged to see these people live.
And if you turned on the radio, you had Al Benson, a Black disc jockey who’d play Black music. And when the Black programming was done, you’d hear Polish programming and their music. And I never turned the radio off. I listened to all kinds of stuff. I knew polkas, how they went, and how they sounded. Chicago has the largest Polish population outside of Warsaw, so I absorbed a lot of Polish tunes and their distinct style. My stepfather was [actually] a farmer and began working the steel mill when the war started. When he’d make us breakfast, he’d listen to country music, so that’s how I heard country. So I had listened to jazz, the blues, Polish music, and country, and Minnie Pearl even.
As a kid, I didn’t know I was gonna grow up to be a musician. It just worked out that I came across diverse stuff when I was young. Plus, later I found out I could listen to a song once and arrange it without reading the sheet music.
Evans knew he wanted to be an artist, but he hadn't connected with music until his older brother, in a letter from Guam, told him he should be a musician, and since he idolized his older brother, he started playing the bass, because
...it was a quiet instrument. People could see me play it but could not really hear it, so they wouldn’t know that I wasn’t a real musician.
But when his brother got out of the service and went to work in the steel mill, he saved up his money
and bought young Richard a bass, and then the boy knew that he couldn't let his hero down. He had to become a real musician. He went on to become a musician (with Sun Ra), composer and producer--for Cadet, which was Argo with a new name, and for whom he produced Marlena Shaw (he wrote her biggest hit, "Woman of the Ghetto"), Donny Hathaway, and Woody Herman, in spite of Leonard Chess's misgivings:
Leonard Chess called me and said, “You signed that old fade Woody?” I told Leonard that I could still get a hit out of him. So we went to a hotel ballroom in North Chicago and rehearsed some songs. We only had four tracks: one track for reeds, one for rhythm, one for solos, and one for brass. We cut that whole album, Light My Fire, in two and a half hours. It turned out to become a Grammy-nominated album.
Another life in the jazz business. There eight million stories in the Naked City, three million stories in the Windy City, and Lord knows how many in the disapora of jazz, and they're all good. This has been one of them.
Does "Pull My Coat" reflect Evans's early Polish influence? Maybe only the title -- "The Pull My
Coat Polka?" -- sounds like a hit for Jimmy Sturr, doesn't it? Certainly not the way Griffin and Davis play it. It's bebop you can dance to, driving and wailing and riff-driven and lyrical at the same time.
The rest of their set list is wonderfully eclectic. They go to Fletcher Henderson for the little-heard "What's Happening?", which includes a romping and stomping piano solo from Norman Simmons, and Simmons himself contributes the next number, "Abundance," which is a vehicle for a dialogue between the contrasting sounds of the two boss tenors.
"63rd Street Theme" is a Griffin original, down and dirty, with lots of room for great blowing, and you could dance to it. "Hey Jim" is solidly from the bebop era, by Babs Gonzalez and James Moody,.
And "If I Had You"is a chestnut from the 1920s by Jimmy Campbell and Reg Connelly, composers of the drunkard's anthem "Show Me the Way to Go Home," and the romantic ballad "Try a Little Tenderness," co-written with Tin Pan Alley veteran Ted Shapiro. It was the last tune of the day for them, the only ballad, and the one song from the entire set that can be called a standard, with admirers in virtually every genre. Every genre? Well, in 1955 alone, it was covered by jazz singer Barbara Carroll, pop singer Margaret Whiting, avant-gardist Lennie Tristano, and country singer Rusty Draper. We've heard it recently on a Prestige session by Etta Jones. Davis and Griffin give it that classic bebop treatment of starting sweet and opening up to some wild and creative blowing, before cycling back to the head again.
The players in the rhythm section are all making their Prestige debuts. Pianist Norman Simmons was Johnny Griffin's homeboy from Chicago, and like Griffin, had made his debut as a leader for Argo in 1956. He would become probably best known as an accompanist to some of jazz's finest singers, including Betty Carter, Anita O'Day, Etta Jones and Dakota Staton, with long and fruitful collaborations with both Carmen MacRae and Joe Williams. He was also in demand as an arranger, working with Johnny Griffin's big band and others--most famously, arranging Ramsey Lewis's hit record "Wade in the Water."
Victo Sproles was also part of that Chicago gang. He and Simmons started out together, playing with Red Rodney and Ira Sullivan on an album called Modern Music from Chicago. He was part of Griffin's big band, and teamed up with Simmons behind Joe Williams.
Ben Riley played on all the Davis/Griffin sessions for Prestige and Riverside/Jazzland, and a lot more--over 300 albums to his credit. In an obituary, Michael J. West, for WBGO's web page, described his style:
His drumming was noted for understatement, and for a slightly skewed rhythmic conception that could keep the listener off balance. If these seem contradictory, it was perhaps Riley’s greatest gift that he reconciled them.
On this album, particularly on "Abundance," you can hear him doing exactly that.
Esmond Edwards produced the session, which was released on Prestige as Battle Royal. "Pull My Coat" also came out as a two-side 45 RPM disc, edited down for the jukeboxes and the dancers to feature the two saxophones--Norman Simmons's piano solo is cut.
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 vokunes 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.
What a difference Ray Barretto makes to a session!
Of course, it's not just him. Davis and Scott blow the cathedral ceilings off Rudy Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs shrine, and if you ever wondered if Moodsville meant "you can sneak this record on for your Jackie Gleason fans, and maybe they won't notice it's jazz," you can forget that right now. This is a session that left me thinking two things, and two things only. One, I'm so glad I'm a jazz fan and I get to experience music like this, and two, How is it possible that I never heard this before? So pardon me if I'm speechless for a while, as I just listen to the music a few more times, all the way through.
OK, I'm back. Still amazed. Eddie Davis plays right on that sweet spot at the cusp of bebop and rhythm and blues. Ray Barretto is the musician's musician on congas, equally adept at playing Latin or bebop, but sensitive as he is to the boppish tempos of Mr. Jaws, this one has that Latin edge all the way through. And Shirley Scott is the perfect accompanist to Davis's bebop and the perfect spur to send the music into the next decade. My God, she could play! And she was so inventive.
The Moodsville album which uses the bulk of this session's material begins with two numbers from an earlier trio session. Then it starts afresh with "Give Me a Goodnight Kiss," by Lee Morse, a singer of whom I was previously unaware, but she was a big deal in the 1920s, matched only by Ruth Etting for record sales.
Curious, I listened to Lee Morse's recording of "Give Me a Goodnight Kiss." She's a very nice singer, and in those days she had her own band, which included Eddie Lang and a couple of new kids named Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. She puts a twist of yearning into the song, Davis hears it a bit differently.
It's interesting that he hears it at all. Morse kept performing through the late 1940s, but by the end or th3 1920s alcohol had pretty much destroyed her. Her jump to superstardom was supposed to come in 1927 with the starring role in a Zeigfield musical, but on opening night she was too drunk to go on, and her place was taken...by Ruth Etting. Etting's signature songs, like "Love Me or Leave Me" and "Ten Cents a Dance" (should have been Morse's; it was from that musical) have become standards, but I can find no other version of "Give Me a Goodnight Kiss."
Davis takes the first solos at a good but not breakneck tempo, abetted by some tasty work from Wendell Marshall and Ray Barretto, nicely completing each other's thoughts, and some always ingenious comping from Scott. When she comes in about two thirds of the way through for her solo, you realize that as good as Davis has been, this is what you've been waiting for. She builds up to a series of crescendos, and then Davis comes back for a final version of the head, again with Barretto and Marshall, and with a sweet, yearning quality that's reminiscent of Lee Morse.
This is the beginning of an eclectic set. They follow with Frank Loesser's "Moon of Manakoora," originally sung by Dorothy Lamour in a movie (and yes, she was wearing a sarong). It's had a number of pop recordings, and a few jazz interpretations, starting with Benny Carter and also including Wayne Shorter and Jimmy Rowles. Davis, Scott and Barretto get pretty seriously into it, eleven minutes worth, Barretto starting the game with a challenging and seductive rhythm.
"Just Friends" was composed by John Klenner, who is not known for much else, but pretty nearly
everyone has recorded "Just Friends," with the honors probably going to Charlie Parker with strings. This version would have to be right up there, though, with the three principals spurring each other to new heights. "Speak Low" has a haunting melody by Kurt Weill, sensitively handled by Davis with Barretto providing a rhythmic counterpoint. Davis gets wilder as the number progresses, and by the time Scott joins in all bets are off, although Davis comes home to the melody at the end.
"I Wished on the Moon" was written by Ralph Rainger, who had an impressive career before dying young in a plane crash. It finishes up the album, but was the first tune to be recorded that day.
The Moodsville release was entitled Misty. and hit the shelves in 1963. The odd tune out for the day was Cole Porter's "From This Moment On." It was added to a 1967 release, Stompin'.
Ballads, standards, moods for Moodsville, and a couple of novelties for a 45 RPM release and the Christmas trade.
This is mostly Eddie Davis's album. Shirley Scott plays a supporting role, and a lot of it, session log to the contrary, is on piano. Her piano solos show that if she had chosen to stay on that instrument, she would have had a very fine jazz career.
"It Could Happen to You" was written by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke. First recorded in 1943 by Jo Stafford, it moved into the jazz repertoire in 1951 when both Errol Garner and Bud Powell cut it, and since then, it has been beloved by jazz musicians. Burke also co-wrote "What's New" with Bob Haggard for a 1938 Bing Crosby recording, and it became a jazz standard in the early 1950s with recordings by Milt Jackson and Errol Garner before it really became a pop standard. Although both of these entered the jazz repertoire as piano pieces, Davis dominates here, and he is a fine ballad player, sensitive and atmospheric, Scott's solos are shorter, but she packs a lot into them, Jerome Kern's "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" has never wanted for performers, either vocal or instrumental, to take on its subtle loveliness. This track is Davis's throughout, with Scott providing support. The Gershwins are responsible for "The Man I Love," and it's even older, going back to the 1920s and Adele Astaire, and if anything even more popular, with over 300 recorded versions.
"The Very Thought of You" (Ray Noble), "Serenade in Blue" (Harry Warren) and "I Cover the Waterfront" (Johnny Green) can't quite match Kern and Gershwin, but they're also well-loved standards.
"Man With the Horn" was written by Bonnie Lake, one of the most successful woman songwriters of her era, and dedicated to her husband and co-composer, Jack Jenney, a trombone player who would die not long after. It became a staple for horn players, although Jenney may have been its only trombonist, and Davis recorded it more than once.
The Moodsville album is simply and eponymously title Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Shirley Scott, because at this point "Moodsville" was the prominent feature on the new label's covers. The Christmas songs were not included. They had their own niche as a seasonal 45.
VERY CLOSE TO BEING READY TO TAKE ORDERS FOR LISTENING TO PRESTIGE VOL 3!
Bob Weinstock continues his streak here: finding wonderful blues singers, putting them together with first rate musicians, and not really achieving the kind of success one would hope for.
Mildred Anderson had recorded a couple of sides in the 1940s and a couple more in the 1950s. This session, and a followup for Prestige, are generally considered to be her best work, but they didn't bring her much fame. She faded into obscurity--in fact, into oblivion. There appears not even to be a record of her death. Or her birth, for that matter.
Anderson had worked with first rate musicians before. She'd had a minor hit with Albert Ammons ("Doin' the Boogie Woogie"), and had recorded with Hot Lips Page and Bill Doggett. But "Doin' the Boogie Woogie" really wasn't a very good song, although it had a nice solo by Ammons. And on the Prestige session, she gets the label's stars, plus Esmond Edwards' producing talents, and, of course, Rudy Van Gelder engineering the session.
She has a full day of studio time. And she has an interesting collection of songs.
Here again, we've moved into a new era. Edwards and Anderson, or whoever picked out the songs for this session, are not looking back at the composers who compiled the Great American Songbook, now closed, gift-wrapped, and sent to Ella Fitzgerald. Those songs aren't necessarily appropriate for a contemporary blues singer, anyway. This is a different and a motley bunch, but professionals with some interesting hits to their resumes.
"I'm Gettin' 'Long Alright" and "Connections" were written by Charles Singleton (who also wrote "I'm Free" and Bobby Sharp. Sharp, who grew up in a two-room Harlem flat where his parents entertained the likes of Roy Wilkins, Thurgood Marshall, Langston Hughes and Duke Ellington, wrote "Unchain My Heart." Singleton wrote "Strangers in the Night."
Rhythm and blues great Chuck Willis wrote "Don't Deceive Me (Please Don't Go)." Anderson herself wrote the two blues numbers, "Hello Little Boy" and "Cool Kind of Poppa," and they're both solid songs, well suited to her style. Another blues legend, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, wrote "Kidney Stew Blues," along with Leona Blackman, who wrote a number of R&B tunes for artists like Big Maybelle, but "Kidney Stew," as originally performed by Vinson, was her biggest hit.
"Person to Person," which became the title song of the album, was written by Wally Gold, who had a bunch of hits, including "It's Now or Never" and "Good Luck Charm" for Elvis Presley, and a song he was called in on to finish up for a part time songwriter, who had been inspired by a tantrum thrown by his teenage daughter, when informed she had to invite her grandparents to her Sweet Sixteen. When he tried to calm her down, she retorted "It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to."
Mildred Anderson is a terrific singer who deserved more recognition than she got. The musicians backing her up, Scott and Davis and their regular rhythm section, George Duvivier and Arthur Edgehill, are amazing. I commented before, regarding their session with Al Smith, that "Shirley Scott's understated but impassioned organ work, on every cut,
really pulls the album together. It makes you wish she'd done a lot more
work with singers." That's as true, and more, on this session, but if I singled out Scott that time, I might not be able to do it this time. She and Davis are equally impressive. They do wonderful work backing up the singer, accenting her and bringing out the best in her, and they move from that into solos that take on their own importance, yet never stop being part of the song. I can't say more than that, because every time I try to single out one of them, and one cut off the album, so many others jump out and demand equal time.
Maybe Davis and Scott were born out of their time. In the 1930s, the bandleaders were the stars, and the singers were just part of the show. By the 1950s, that only worked for Johnny Otis. But if Davis and Scott could have added a vocalist and put together a package like Tommy Dorsey or Glenn Miller...
"Person to Person," b/w "Connections," is the 45 RPM single. "Connections" was not included on the album. Nor was "Ebb Tide," and neither of them are listed on the CD reissue, either, although you can find "Connections" on YouTube, which is all to the good. It's a nice raunchy song. Unfortunately, the single didn't make much of a dent. Maybe if they could have gotten a different Wally Gold song, like It's My Party." Well, maybe not.
Ray Barretto makes a welcome return to the Van Gelder studio, this time bringing with him a fellow conguero, Luis Perez. Barretto moves over to bongos for the session.
know that. Contemporary star Matthew McConaughey has gained some notoriety for playing the bongo drums naked, but that's getting too irrelevant.
Ray Barretto needed no electronic devices. He was as much a master of the bongos as he was of the conga, and adding a second Latino percussion instrument to the traditional small jazz group (by this time the organ-tenor sax combo was fast becoming traditional) made a huge difference.
The hand-played percussion instruments are not restricted to Latino music, not that that's a restriction. But Barretto, in particular, grew up playing both swing and Latin rhythms, and he was hugely influential in bringing swing rhythms to the traditionally Latin percussion instruments, as can be heard here. But there's always a special excitement that a great percussionist brings to any recording, and that goes double here.
It's interesting that Shirley Scott lays out much more than she does on other recordings. The intros to the tunes are mostly Barretto and Perez, and she generally stays outta the way when Davis is soloing. This has the effect of giving a powerful prominence to Barretto and Perez, not only when they're taking the lead, but when they're playing behind Davis.
This gives Scott a whole new role in the combo. When she solos, she's not stepping into the limelight, continuing and extending moods and ideas she's begun while comping for the tenor sax. Instead, she's making an entrance. It's dramatic, it's different. Of course, as new as the organ still was to jazz prominence, and as inventive as Scott was, everything she did in these recordings was different.
The session includes a nice complement of standards--"Sometimes I'm Happy" "That Old Black Magic," "Come Rain or Come Shine," "When Your Lover Has Gone." The Latin-tinged "Dansero" was originally a hit for its composer, Richard Hayman, in one of the decade's more unusual arrangements--harmonica and full symphony orchestra.
They turned to James Moody for two tunes. "Last Train From Overbrook" had been recorded by Moody as an instrumental for Argo in 1958, and also with Eddie Jefferson singing his own vocalese lyrics."Dobbin' with Redd Foxx" may have been something Davis heard Moody play on a package tour, because Moody himself had only just recorded it a couple of months earlier, again for Argo, and it surely had not been released yet. And if you're wondering what "dobbin'" is, don't ask Moody. When he recorded it. the title was the even more enigmatic "Darben the Redd Foxx." In any case, it's nice to see a 1959 tribute to Redd Foxx, when he was at his guttermouthed raunchy peak. Later on, with Sanford and Son, he was still a comic genius, but considerably reined in.
Davis is the composer of "Fast Spiral," and I am quite sure there was never a temptation to call it "Slow Spiral." This is an uptempo rampage.
The album was produced by Esmond Edwards. It was released on Prestige as Bacalao,
Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1954-1956 is here! You can order your signed copy or copies through the link above.
Tad Richards will strike a nerve with all of us who were privileged to have lived thru the beginnings of bebop, and with those who have since fallen under the spell of this American phenomenon…a one-of-a-kind reference book, that will surely take its place in the history of this music.
--Dave Grusin
An important reference book of all the Prestige recordings during the time period. Furthermore, Each song chosen is a brilliant representation of the artist which leaves the listener free to explore further. The stories behind the making of each track are incredibly informative and give a glimpse deeper into the artists at work.
This is first release in Prestige's third and most controversial subsidiary label, Moodsville. Moodsville wasn't, and still isn't, very controversial, but maybe a little. The purposes of Swingville and Bluesville were pretty clear, but what was Moodsville, exactly? Swing veterans like Coleman Hawkins played on the first, blues musicians like Willie Dixon on the second, but Moodsville's first recording was by mainstream Prestige regulars Red Garland and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, so what set it apart?
Jackie Gleason, beginning in 1953, had released a series of albums that more or less invented mood music. The first was called Jackie Gleason presents Music for Lovers Only.The album cover had two cigarettes, two wine glasses, and a lady's clutch purse. The music was syrupy and easy to listen to. It did feature jazz great Bobby Hackett, but beyond that it had nothing much to recommend it except that it set the all time record for most consecutive weeks in Billboard's top ten.
What accounted for its amazing popularity, and the popularity of the Gleason recordings that followed it? Gleason's name (which actually may have been all he gave to the project)? The romantic cover art? Or maybe Gleason had just tapped into a hitherto unrealized visceral human desire for...mood music?
Well, why not? As Gleason realized, if Clark Gable needed romantic background music to play a love scene in a movie, shouldn't some guy in Brooklyn need it even more?
Mood music became elevator music, became Easy Listening. Bobby Hackett or no, it was, in the slang of the day, strictly from Squaresville. So is Moodsville really a subdivision of Squaresville?
This question was debated on the Organissimo internet forum, an often interesting place for jazz discussion. Some said yes, sort of: "Generally, my perception is that the Moodsville albums are more sedate, simpler, and somewhat less 'jazz intensive." Scott Yanow, reviewing for Allmusic, tended to agree: "[Moodsville] was designed to provide mood music for courting couples... Due to the overly relaxed nature of much of this music and the lack of variety, this is not one of the more essential Red Garland sets."
But the Organissimo consensus, and a fairly informed consensus, was otherwise. Contributor Dan Gould, who had discussed the question with Weinstock, recalls:
One thing Bob told me is that the number of albums, and the creation of the subsidiary labels, were a direct result of cash flow. In order to avoid showing too much in profit and paying taxes on it, Bob wanted to put the money into production.
Which, from a vantage point of the jazz-starved new millennium, is a very nice thing to hear--that a small independent label fiercely devoted to modern jazz would have to worry about the problem of showing too much in profit. Chris Albertson, who produced a number of Prestige sessions, had this to say:
I really don't think there was any serious marketing decision involved in the creation of the Bluesville, Swingville, Moodsville, etc. series. Remember, these were not stand-alone subsidiary labels--it was always Prestige Moodsville, Prestige Swingville, etc. I don't recall if the pricing was different--if so, that may have been a factor. As a dj when these first came out, and later as a Prestige employee, I never thought of them as anything but Prestige albums with a series name.
Sometimes I think that consumers/collectors make more out of such details than the facts call for. When I produced a session, it was a Prestige session--whether it came out on Prestige, Prestige Bluesville or Prestige Swingville, made no difference.
I was never aware of there being any deliberate effort to alter the nature of a Moodsville album from that of, say, somebody's ballad album. If there ever was an instruction from Bob Weinstock to do so, it must have flown off my desk--a desk that saw its share of memos!
Albertson was not yet aboard when this session kicked off the Moodsville line. Esmond Edwards produced, and he didn't exactly have a reputation for pandering. And it's hard to imagine Red Garland, Sam Jones, Art Taylor or Eddie Davis deciding to dumb down their music.
So how does it sound? It sounds great. It's an afternoon devoted to ballads, which are lovely to listen to, but ballads have always been a part of jazz. They play the melody, and with beautiful melodies like this, why wouldn't you? But they use it as a springboard to improvisation, just like a real jazz session, and the improvisation is of the quality of a real jazz session, and what else do you need? If the Moodsville label let the prospective buyer know that he could probably safely play it for an evening at home with his girlfriend who'd stalk out the door if he put on Change of the Century, the names of the musicians should have let him know that he wouldn't be embarrassed playing it for his college roommate with the goatee and the sunglasses after dark.
Davis plays on three numbers, "We'll Be Together Again," "When Your Lover Has Gone," and Garland's own "Softly Baby," the last named a recording that did get a new life in the new millennium when it was featured on the TV show American Horror Story.
"We'll Be Together Again" is a particularly beautiful and haunting melody, written by Carl T. Fischer, who has the distinction of being one of the few Native Americans to have a significant career in jazz. Fischer was Frankie Laine's accompanist at the time he wrote the song, and Laine contributed the lyrics. Davis is sensitive to the melody, but at the same time puts his own spin on it. If this were on a jukebox at a place where I hung out, I'd play it a lot.
Davis also played on Garland's "Untitled Blues," which didn't make the Moodsville cut, but was included on later CD packages.
This is a great album if you're in the mood, but what music is that not true of? From Lefty Frizzell to Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique, you'd pull out the album, slide out the vinyl, and place the needle on the first groove if you were in the mood to hear it.
The album cover emphasizes Moodsville. Other than that, the album is eponymously titled.
A new side of Shirley Scott here, as she really steps forward as a composer, and delivers some solid stuff.
I think composing on a organ must be an entirely different experience from composing on a piano--or anything else, for that matter. But piano is the preferred instrument of composers, unless you're composing for voice -- writing a song -- in which case a guitar will do just as well. But these pieces sound different, even when they're doing more or less the same thing, like the classic catchy riff end-punctuated by a two-note fanfare. Miles Davis' "So What," from Kind of Blue, is a familiar example. Scott uses the same pattern on "Duck and Rock," but it sounds different. It is different. It's not just the difference in hearing the two-note response played on the organ. She does that on Bobby Timmons' "Moanin'" (Every mornin' finds me moanin' -- oh,
yeah!) "Duck and Rock" is different. Different fanfare. Different way of getting there. Different places to go to from there.
It's altogether a fascinating listening experience, through four originals: "Duck and Rock," "Boss," "Plunk, Plunk, Plunk," and "Soul Searchin'." You wouldn't automatically assume from its title that "Plunk. Plunk, Plunk" is an organ tune. The title makes it sound more like a banjo tune, but Scott plunks away at that organ and comes up with something that's a lot more great organ jazz than it is plunkety plunk. "Boss" changes the pace by changing the tempo. You don't necessarily think of an organ, with its great capacity for sustained notes, as being the perfect vehicle for a wild uptempo number, but Scott, as we know, is a great believer in trying to discover everything an organ can do.
"Soul Searchin'" is the title cut, and it's anchored by the soulful bass of Wendell Marshall. "Soul" is gaining in popularity as a music-related word. Charles Mingus's Mingus Ah Um, released earlier in the year, had included "Better Git It in Your Soul." Ray Charles' Genius + Soul = Jazz was still just beyond the horizon, as was self-described original soul artist Solomon Burke. So put Scott up near the head of the line.
As for the tunes by other composers, it's hard to beat Bobby Timmons' "Moanin'" for soulfulness. Scott does flammable things with dynamics on it, and uses the whole keyboard, with sacrificing its simple tunefulness. She tears up Sy Oliver's "Yes Indeed," not so soulful when it was originally recorded in 1941 by Bing Crosby (although Connee brings some soul), much more so when it was revived by Ray Charles in 1958. Don Redman ("Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good to You") and Buddy Johnson ("You Won't Let Me Go") are both good sources in the search for soul.
They added a "g" for the album title: Soul Searchin'. "Duck and Rock" b/w "Ebb Tide" was the first single off the album, followed by "Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good to You?" / "Moanin'."
"Uh-Oh" and "Misty" are both on the set list for this session, but they were Scott-Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis collaborations, and he's not listed as being part of the mix. But the two made a 45, with "Misty" as the A side, under Davis's name, and "Misty" would be released again on 45 some years later, with "In the Kitchen" as the B side. Both would also appear on a later Davis-Scott album.
Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1954-1956 is here! You can order your signed copy or copies through the link above.
Tad Richards will strike a nerve with all of us who were privileged to have lived thru the beginnings of bebop, and with those who have since fallen under the spell of this American phenomenon…a one-of-a-kind reference book, that will surely take its place in the history of this music.
--Dave Grusin
An important reference book of all the Prestige recordings during the time period. Furthermore, Each song chosen is a brilliant representation of the artist which leaves the listener free to explore further. The stories behind the making of each track are incredibly informative and give a glimpse deeper into the artists at work.
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