Listening to Prestige 616: Jimmy Witherspoon

LISTEN TO ONE: I Wonder

 I love it that Jimmy Witherspoon starts off this set with "I Wonder." This song, written and originally performed by Cecil Gant, is frequently credited with being the first rhythm and blues hit. Gant recorded it in 1944, first for the tiny Black-owned Bronze label, and then, as it started to catch with another small but not quite so small label, the whine-owned Gilt Edge, with better chances at distribution. Appealing to WWII patriotism, Gant is "Pvt. Cecil Gant" on the label, and that underscored the poignancy of the song, with its lyric that suggested a lonely GI wondering if his girl friend back home was with another man. But "I Wonder" didn't need anything but itself. It was a winner, a beautiful blues ballad with Gant accompanying himself on the piano.

Nothing's ever entirely new, and Gant's soft, sensitive approach to the blues had been pioneered in the 1920s by Leroy Carr. But "I Wonder" ushered in a new era and a new sound--a sound that was so new it didn't have name in 1944, so when the record went to the top of the Billboard charts, the chart was the Harlem Hit Parade. It did not become rhythm and blues till 1949.

Gant's record was a hit, but "I Wonder," the song, was huge. Roosevelt Sykes recorded it for Bluebird, and with Sykes's popularity and RCA Victor's distribution, he had a Number One hit. And in an unusual moment in chart history, the record it replaced at Number One was Pvt. Cecil Gant's version of "I Wonder." Louis Armstrong recorded a gorgeous version of it in 1945, with the song giving Armstrong a vehicle for one of his most poignant and sensitive vocals. His recording went to number three on the charts, and "I Wonder" has been a staple ever since, right down to a recent duet by Tony Bennett and k. d. lang. We've heard an earlier version of the song on Prestige, by Etta Jones.

"I Wonder" represented a new era in music in more ways than one. The post-WWII manufacturing boom extended to record pressing plants, and small independent labels--the labels that pioneered rhythm and blues and modern jazz--had the ability, for the first time, to get records made on a large scale. And Gant's smooth, blues-inflected crooning style caught on. Rhythm and blues was a big umbrella, encompassing the raucous jump blues of Louis Jordan, the Delta-goes-electric of Muddy Waters, the New Orleans horns behind Fats Domino, Lloyd Price and Little Richard, but the crooning ballad style of Cecil Gant gave birth to a whole generation who came to be known as the "sepia Sinatras." Billy Eckstine and Nat "King" Cole were the mega-stars of this new style, but there were so many others, Sonny Til and Clyde McPhatter and Tony Williams and all the other wonderful voices who created the street corner harmonies known as doowop, on to Johnny Mathis and Sam Cooke.

To make a great record of "I Wonder," all you have to do is sing it, and let its magic come through you. That's exactly what Jimmy Witherspoon does, Ozzie Cadena has given him some extraordinary musicians to back him on this session, and they do their job too.

And, of course, 'Spoon doesn't stop there. Ever the aggregator of wonderful material, he does it again here. "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" was written in 1923 by Jimmie Cox, made unforgettable in 1929 by Bessie Smith, and became an anthem for the Depression. But its lyrics have resonated beyond its time. Again, as with "I Wonder," as is his approach, Witherspoon respects the song, and lets it express itself as only he can.

I won't go through the whole album, but the selections are eclectic and rewarding. One, "Blues in the Morning," is credited to Kenny Burrell, and features some wonderful playing by Burrell, Gildo Mahomes and Roy Haynes.

The Prestige release is entitled Blue Spoon. 

Listening to Prestige 615: Shirley Scott and Kenny Burrell

LISTEN TO ONE: Call it Stormy Monday

Prestige puts two of its most creative talents of the 1960s together, and the results are as beautiful, as creative, and as unique as you might have predicted. The two of them challenge each other, complement each other. They put together a good selection of tunes, and they make music that's a joy to listen to. They're joined by bassist Eddie Khan, heard once before on Prestige with Ronnie Mathews and Freddie Hubbard, and drummer Otis "Candy" Finch, borrowed by Scott from husband Stanley Turrentine's group. Finch, from Detroit, was the son of Otis Finch Sr., tenor saxophone player with John Lee Hooker.

"Trav'lin Light" was written by Jimmy Mundy and Trummy Young, and brought by Young to a 1942 session Paul Whiteman was doing for the newly formed Capitol Records. Young had also brought along his then girlfriend, Billie Holiday, and not wanting to miss an opportunity, Capitol's co-founder Johnny Mercer took Young's tune, wrote a lyric to it, and put Holiday in front of a microphone with the new song. She was under contract to Columbia, so she was "Lady Day" for the recording. 

"Solar" is the famous Miles Davis composition, now a jazz standard, over 200 versions of it recorded, the first few bars of the melody engraved on Miles' tombstone...and almost certainly written by Chuck Wayne, not Miles. Be that as it may, it's a great romp for jazz musicians, Burrell playing it mainstream and wholly satisfying, Scott using the tune for one of her excursions to test the possibilities of the Hammond. They bring it off together, with some nice soloing by Eddie Khan.

"Nice 'n Easy" was a recent hit, written by Hollywood songwriters Alan and Marilyn Bergman for Frank Sinatra, and an instant standard, equally popular with crooners, swingsters, and jazz groups (Willis Jackson had brought the tune out to Englewood Cliffs just a month before Scott and Burrell). It's a catchy tune, and they catch hold of something, and swing it to life.

T-Bone Walker's "They Call it Stormy Monday" is a blues you can sink your teeth into. Blues singers love it, but jazz musicians have largely left it alone. Before Scott and Burrell, only Woody Herman had recorded it. Burrell actually had done it on record before, with Junior Mance, but that was backing up a blues singer, Billie Poole. Very few instrumental jazz renditions of it have been done since, and if Scott and Burrell (and Eddie Khan) are any guide, this is a mistake. This is the highlight of the album, a terrific blues--not soul jazz, the real blues.

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" has become a controversial song in recent years, with many decrying its lyric, but it's hard to find anything wrong with the sassy, tuneful Frank Loesser melody, and whatever you may think of the various male-female vocal duets, there's nothing at all wrong with the Scott-Burrell duet. It's delicious.

And speaking of songs that aren't normally done by jazz groups. this is probably the only jazz rendition you'll ever hear of the traditional Irish "Kerry Dance." It, too, is a delight, with some fancy stick work by "Candy" Finch.

What would you have released as your 45 RPM single? I think I would have gone with "Stormy Monday" and "Baby, It's Cold Outside," but Bob Weinstock and the marketing boys at Prestige chose "Travelin' Light" and "Kerry Dance." I can't complain. Anything from this album that I ever saw on a jukebox would get my nickel. Travelin' Light also became the album's title. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 608: Ronnie Mathews - Freddie Hubbard

LISTEN TO ONE: The Thang

Ronnie Mathews debut album as a leader might have been the start of a distinguished career -- and it was, actually, but most of that career was under the radar, and when he died (of pancreatic cancer, in 2019) most of his obituaries took note of the fact that he was not as well known as he might have been, considering the significance of his accomplishment. The New York Times gave us both sides of that picture:

Mr. Matthews spent most of his career out of the spotlight. But he was highly valued by many noted fellow musicians for his harmonic acuity, his imagination as an improviser and his sensitivity as an accompanist.

And his friend and colleague Cedar Walton said:

I like to equate Ronnie to a great character actor who may be well known in the business but not so well known outside of the business. If you go back, you could equate him to actors like Peter Lorre or Sydney Greenstreet. They were always around but not in the forefront so much. And the time that they had on the screen made an impact. That was Ronnie. He may have been underappreciated by the general public, but I’ll certainly never forget him. 

It';s a good bet that Cedar had recently watched The Maltese Falcon. Mathews would not record again as a leader until the mid-1970s, and then his output was on tiny labels with limited distribution. But as a sideman he continued to be in demand, and not altogether unnoticed. Reviewing a 1981 appearance at the Village Vanguard by Johnny Griffin, with whom Mathews worked frequently, New York Times critic John S. Wilson commented on "the dashing flair that [Griffin] brings to his playing, and then went on to say that:

His pianist, Ronnie Matthews, reflects [that flair] so well that he is a constant and provocative challenge to Mr. Griffin.

Even more than Mr. Griffin, Mr. Matthews is the energizer of the group, developing solos that rise out of preliminary single-note noodling to become swinging, swirling juggernauts. 

At the same that Mathews was poised to embark on four decades of respected obscurity, his partner for

this session, Freddie Hubbard, was on the brink of a career in the jazz limelight, appearing on some of the most important albums of the 1960s (Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz, Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth, Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage), and then attaining jazz superstardom in the 1970s.

You can hear all of that on this session: Mathews's power as a composer, improviser, and the glue holding the session together, Hubbard's untrammeled, hair-raising virtuosity. They make for a great combination--sort of what John S. Wilson heard that night at the Vanguard with Mathews and Johnny Griffin.

The rhythm section is rounded out by Eddie Khan and Albert "Tootie" Heath, another pair whose reputations were to go in opposite directions. Heath was a member of the gifted musical family who would perform together as the Heath Brothers in the 1970s. In 2020 he was honored as an NEA Jazz Master. Jazz buffs have had a hard time tracking down any information on Khan, who stopped playing in the 1970s, and died of cancer some years later in California. He is believed to have worked as a cameraman for CBS News in Los Angeles.

And baritone saxophone player Charles Davis made his mark on an instrument that doesn't get the headlines too often, so even though he won best baritone sax player in Down Beat's 1954 International Critics Poll, his name is hardly a household word, even in jazz households. But he had a long association with both Sun Ra and Kenny Dorham, and he was noteworthy as a producer of jazz events.

The tunes are Mathews's except for Duke Ellington's "Prelude to a Kiss" and one Charles Davis composition, "1239-A." Ozzie Cadena produced, and the Prestige release was entitled Doin' That Thang.