Listening to Prestige 604: Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Jive Samba

Prestige Records, Ozzie Cadena and Rudy Van Gelder took a bit of a breather in the fall of 1963, between the September 17th date of Jack McDuff, without his group, joining Sonny Stitt for a session, and October 10, when McDuff regular Red Holloway recorded a date without Brother Jack. 

But in the interim, one of Prestige's mainstays was recorded live out in San Francisco, and the results released on Prestige. The club was the Jazz Workshop, and the headliner none other than Brother Jack.

San Francisco, especially the North Beach area, was a hot epicenter for jazz in the 1960s, with such a cluster of clubs that Dizzy Gillespie, playing one night at the Jazz Workshop, could tuck his horn under his arm, walk across the street to a club where Carmen McRae was headlining, and accompany her on a swinging version of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." The Workshop was particularly fertile ground. Barry Harris recorded a live album there in 1960, and he was followed by Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderley, James Moody, Larry Coryell, and perhaps most famously, Thelonious Monk, whose 1964 appearance was recorded but unreleased. When it finally saw the light of day in 1983, it was hailed as one of Monk's finest efforts.

Jack McDuff hit Frisco with a big sound, including his two tenormen of the moment (usually he used one or the other), Harold Vick and Red Holloway, and his hot new guitar find, George Benson, and they all came ready to play to a responsive audience.

The date included four originals by McDuff, including "Grease Monkey," a staple of his live sets, and a tune previously recorded on an album with Kenny Burrell. 

"Somewhere in the Night" was written by noted arranger Billy May as the theme music for the gritty New York-based police drama Naked City, and it had become a crowd pleaser for jazz ensembles.

"Passing Through" was from a young West Coast musician who was starting to make a name for himself as a sax player/composer/arranger with Chico Hamilton. Charles Lloyd would go on to become one of the biggest jazz stars of the rest of the century, and into the next millennium. 

Finally, "Jive Samba"  had recently been recorded by Cannonball Adderley, from the pen of his brother Nat. It had already become a hit in jazz circles, and has remained a staple of the jazz repertoire for major artists and school groups alike.

Jazz Workshop was a great place to play, and its knowledgeable and enthusiastic audiences drew the best out of the musicians that played there. This album, entitled Brother Jack at the Jazz Workshop--Live!,  produced by Lew Futterman and Peter Paul, yielded two 45 RPM singles off the initial release, "Passing Through" / "Somewhere In The Night" and  "Dink's Blues / Grease Monkey." A third single,  "Rock Candy / Grease Monkey" was released in 1969. The group is identified as the Brother Jack McDuff Quartet, despite the presence of five musicians.

Listening to Prestige 585: Kenny Burrell - Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Call it Stormy Monday

 This session has a little something for everyone, with the soul jazz organ of Jack McDuff teamed up with the technical wizardry and stylistic range of Kenny Burrell, and the brilliant Latin percussion of Ray Barretto thrown into the mix for good measure.

Burrell certainly knew how to play with an organ combo, as his long association with Jimmy Smith attests to, and he jumps right in here, starting with the first number on the session, a McDuff composition called "Grease Monkey," which has the fire and energy of the finest rhythm and blues, with Burrell pushing McDuff's riffs, and McDuff creating the kind of riffs that can sustain three and a

half minutes of solid dancing or listening.

"The Breeze and I," by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, is probably more associated with lounge acts than jazz combos, but it's had its share of jazz interpreters too (both Curtis Fuller and Wes Montgomery recorded versions of it at around the same time), and why not? If you have Ray Barretto nailing the mambo beat and Joe Dukes laying down that archetypal soul jazz rhythm, you've got a great start, and then when Kenny Burrell does what he does, which is improvise stunningly while never losing sight of the melody, you come to appreciate what a good melody it it. Lecuona was one of Cuba's leading composers, and the melody which became known as "The Breeze and I" was originally a part of his well regarded Suite Andalucia.

Barretto and Dukes don't stop the carnival, as they tear into "Nica's Dream," Horace Silver's tribute to the jazz baroness and protector of Thelonious Monk. Between the two of them over these two selections, they threaten to turn this into a percussion session to rival Art Blakey at his most intense.

"Call it Stormy Monday" is one of the most recorded of blues songs, but it took a while to get there, and for Walker to start realizing any royalties on what would become his most famous composition. When Woody Herman and his Swinging Herd (then including Bill Harris, Richie Kamuca, Victor Feldman and Vince Guaraldi) released the first cover version in 1957, ten years after Walker first recorded it, there weren't many blues classics because nobody much was recording cover versions of great blues songs. When Herman recorded his Blues Groove album for Capitol, whoever wrote the blues for the back sleeve was had to find a way to sell the concept, and he came up with "Woody Herman and his Herd combine the beat of rock and roll with the dynamic sounds of swinging jazz." Jazz with a beat, as Shirley Scott and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis described it in the title to their first album together, but not many people were looking to catalog of blues originals for material. Ralph J. Gleason, in the liner notes to Blues Groove, looked forward hopefully but uncertainty: "There may come a time when the blues will be regarded as the true folk art of America."

That was 1957. The blues had already, as Muddy Waters was to point out later, "had a baby and they named it rock and roll," but jazz fans still shunned that birth as illegitimate, and to true music aficionados like Gleason, the mainstreaming of the blues into American culture was still a wistful dream.

Bizarrely enough, the next performer to take it on, in 1960, was Pat Boone. Even more surprising, his version isn't bad, with Boone adding some crooner's touches, but respecting the blues, and a nice band behind him.

But then it was the 1960s, and Ralph Gleason's dream for the blues started to become a reality. And T-Bone Walker's dream of royalty checks for a great song, as it was recorded by Nancy Wilson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Bobby Bland, and Lou Rawls with Les McCann. Kenny Burrell liked the song so much he would record it again for Prestige the following year, with Shirley Scott.

And also in 1964, "Call it Stormy Monday" was recorded by Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, the first British blues band, and that brought it all back home, as the showed the Yanks what the true folk art of America was. 

Burrell and McDuff seize on this classic-to-be as a license to play the blues, and that's what they do. This is soul jazz, yes, but at its heart it's the blues, the whole blues, and nothing but the blues.

Most of this session went onto the LP Crash!, credited to Kenny Burrell with the Brother Jack McDuff Quartet. "Moody McDuff" went on to a 1966 McDuff album, Steppin' Out, which is interesting because it pulls together tracks from five different sessions utilizing three of jazz's greatest guitarists, all of whom worked with McDuff at different stages of his career: Burrell, Grant Green, and George Benson. Apparently by the time the album was released, Burrell had already stepped out of his Prestige contract and into an exclusive contract with another label: he is credited as K. B. Groovington. "The Breeze and I" and "Nica's Dream" were released on 45 RPM. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 581: Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Somethin' Slick album version

LISTEN TO ONE: Somethin' Slick 45 RPM version

 Jack McDuff welcomed in the new year with a January 2nd session in Englewood Cliffs featuring an eight piece band, which apparently didn't go so well. Only two tunes were recorded, one of which was unissued, the other of which eventually made it onto a compilation album called The Soul Giants. It was one of Prestige's PRST releases of the late 1960s and early 1970s--tracks re-engineered for stereo release, not always successfully. 

He was back again a week later, on January 8, with a different lineup, only tenorman Harold Vick and his regular drummer Joe Dukes. McDuff was by this time solidly into the soul jazz groove that would make him one of the most popular jazz artists of the decade. 

It's hard to say what could have gone wrong with the January 2 octet session, with some first rate musicians aboard, but by the time the following Tuesday had rolled around, he had a tight group of players who knew just what to do. Joe Dukes was steadily building a reputation as one of the premier soul jazz drummers. He would make a career, and a good one, as Brother Jack's drummer, and pretty much fade out of sight as the the soul jazz decade of the 1960s came to an end. 

Harold Vick was to make his first recording as leader later in the year with Blue Note, and would go on to make several albums with as many different labels, never quite seizing the brass ring, but making some solidly good music. He would continue to work with McDuff through 1964. 

Eric Dixon only climbed aboard the McDuff cavalcade for this one session, but he knew how to swing to a solid groove, as his years with Count Basie demonstrate. And Kenny Burrell and Ray Barretto make any session better.

Sometimes it's hard to understand the vagaries of contractual obligations in the recording industry, especially the jazz end of it. Burrell is credited as K. B. Groovington on one track, "Shaky," which was buried until 1969 and finally released on a PRST compilation of McDuff sides from various Prestige sessions, Steppin' Out. . A track from a February McDuff session also ended up on Steppin' Out, so maybe by 1960 Burrell was under contract with a label that precluded the use of his name on compilations? Hard to believe. But I'm not an entertainment contract lawyer.

Five of these tunes--the title tune, "How High the Moon," It's a Wonderful World," "Smut" and "Our Miss Brooks" comprised McDuff's next LP, Somethin' Slick. "Love Walked In" was held over for a subsequent album with Burrell, "Shaky" got shaken down to the stereo compilation, and "Easy Livin' didn't make the cut at all, or at least hasn't yet. It may still end up on some streaming service.

"Somethin' Slick" was released on 45 RPM, at about half the length of the album cut (6:34 to 3:01), and I've included both versions as a sort of Listen to One and Listen to One (a), to demonstrate how a tune was edited down to fit the demands of jukeboxes. There's actually a third version available on YouTunes, a promotional copy sent to DJs, whittled down to 2:53

Listening to Prestige 529: Jack McDuff - Gene Ammons

LISTEN TO ONE: Mellow Gravy

 One day after Smith and Powell shook the cathedral rafters of Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey studio. another organ-sax combo took up residence, with no sign of slackening the intensity. And these were two of Prestige's top moneymakers. Jack McDuff was challenging Jimmy Smith for pre-eminence in the organ department (sexism still held Shirley Scott back, as good as she was and as popular as she was). Gene Ammons was probably the most popular artist in Prestige's history. Drugs were to catch up with Ammons before the year was out, and he was back in prison, this time for seven years. When he was finally

released in 1969, he signed again with Prestige, the most lucrative contract Bob Weinstock had ever given to an artist. And even after Weinstock sold Prestige to Saul Zaentz of Fantasy, and it became strictly a reissue label, they put out a couple of new Ammons albums.

So these guys were not going to let any other organ-sax combo steal a march on them. Smith and Powell had unleashed a killer album? Kill this, motherfuckers!

I'm making that up, of course. But it was one day later. Esmond Edwards was at the controls for both sessions. And McDuff and Ammons were smoking hot.

McDuff used the group that he had made into a super-tight ensemble. Harold Vick and Joe Dukes had been with him for a few albums, and would be sticking around for a while -- especially Dukes, regarded by many as the ideal jazz-funk drummer. Eddie Diehl would be around for a while longer, before getting  off the road and entering a new career as a guitarmaker. He had also worked before with Ammons, so they were no strangers to each other, either. 

The album. Brother Jack Meets the Boss, was a Prestige release. "Mellow Gravy" was a two-sided 45 RPM release, and the album was also released as Mellow Gravy, with a different cover but the same catalog number.

Listening to Prestige 512: Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Your Nose is Open

Jack McDuff did a lot of recording during this period, and a lot of it, like this session, would be held back and released a good deal later. But the soul jazz sound, and the organ-tenor sax-guitar quintet sound, of which he had been one of the pioneers with Willis Jackson and Bill Jennings.

It's the second session of his association with Harold Vick, which would last for four years. Vick would go on to a successful career across the spectrum of soul and jazz, coming back in the 1970s to the soul jazz-organ sound with Shirley Scott and Jimmy McGriff.

Grant Green had been the guitarist on the earlier McDuff/Vick session, but he had moved on, and the new guitarist was Eddie Diehl, who would do a couple more sessions with this lineup. Diehl was a highly respected guitarist, but he became even more respected in a second career as a luthier, when he had left the hurly-burly of the big city and moved up the Hudson River to Poughkeepsie. 

Joe Dukes joined McDuff for this session, and remained his drummer for much of the decade. After he found Dukes, McDuff pretty much had to stop looking, because he was, by most accounts, just about the perfect soul jazz drummer. Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, he grew up steeped in blues and and soul. Critic François van de Linde in Flophouse Magazine, a jazz blog, describes him this way:

The chemistry between McDuff and drummer Joe Dukes was unbelievable, soul jazz drum pioneer Joe Dukes anticipated every move of McDuff and the tune changes with an assault of continuous accents and rolls, adapting big band style to the blues. 

And George Benson, who joined McDuff later in the decade, simply said of him (quoted in van de Linde's blog):

Such a magnificent drummer that there were times I thought he was one of the greatest things that ever happened to mankind.

 Dukes could also be a tough taskmaster, as the 19-year-old Benson was to find out when he joined McDuff:

Finally, after a particularly nasty rant, I snapped: ‘If y’all don’t lay off, I’m gonna take y’all outside and beat y’all old men up! I’m nineteen years old! Y’all can’t take me! We’re going out in the alley, right now! McDuff and Dukes just stared at me for a second, then they both pulled out switchblades. But that didn’t stop me: “I don’t care! Y’all don’t scare me! Bring your switchblades into the alley! I’ll beat y’all up anyhow!” Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed: nobody went into the alley, and nobody got beaten up. But it got them off my back.

Dukes's powerful assistance is heard to full measure on this session, as were the other musicians. McDuff learned a good lesson from his mentor Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson about choosing musicians who were not only first rate, but also absolutely compatible with him. Dukes and Diehl did not go on to become celebrated names in the jazz world--Dukes because he mostly stayed in McDuff's shadow, making only one album (for Prestige) as leader, Diehl because he left the limelight for the Hudson Valley and guitar-making--but just a listen to this session will tell you how good they were, and how right for McDuff's soulful sound.

Strangely enough, as popular as the organ-sax-guitar guitar sound was at this point, and as good as this group was, and as hot as McDuff was becoming, Prestige shelved this session and didn't release it until 1971, as On With It! One cut, "Scram," a Leonard Feather composition, came out on 1963's Soul Summit Vol. 2 ,  made up of cuts from four different sessions, mostly featuring Gene Ammons and released shortly after Ammons went back to prison.

Esmond Edsards produced.

Listening to Prestige 482 - Jack McDuff

Grant Green was already hitting it big with Blue Note when he showed up for this, his second session with Jack McDuff, and as busy as Blue Note kept him, he was lucky to have time for lunch, let alone doing any more sideman gigs for Prestige. After his February debut with McDuff, he did a live date at Minton's with Stanley Turrentine (four sets that became two Blue Note albums), a session with Dave Bailey for the short-lived Canadian label Jazztime, Blue Note sessions with Kenny Dorham (unissued) and Hank Mobley (issued), before getting his first Blue Note date as leader of his own group in April. Then an organ trio led by Baby Face Willette in May,

another leader date and a date with Horace Parlan in June, before reconnecting with McDuff in July. Then back to Blue Note for two sessions in August, resulting in two albums; two sessions in September (Stanley Turrentine and Lou Donaldson), and another session as leader in October. He had November off for Thanksgiving, then back to business in December with a Sonny Red session for Riverside's Jazzland subsidiary, and two Blue Note sessions with Ike Quebec, one under Quebec's name and the other under his own. And he was off to the races, well on his way to becoming the most recorded artist in Blue Note's catalog.

As Green was exiting, Harold Vick was entering, and he would spend five years--and eleven albums, nine for Prestige--with McDuff.

So this would be the only album the three of them played together on, and you might well think "Wow, just the one session, and they're as tight as any three guys I ever heard," until you remembered all those sessions with McDuff, Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson, and Bill Jennings. So perhaps it's time to give McDuff credit for being able to fit right in the pockets of the cats he played with. Maybe that's partly the blues-based simplicity of McDuff's music -- and Vick, also, had a background in rhythm and blues -- but it's not all that simple, and it is all that tight,

The boys go for a simple melody when they reach into the rhythm and blues catalog for the album's title cut, "Goodnight, It's Time to Go." Originally recorded as "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight" by the Chicago doowop group The Spaniels, it has become standard for pop, rock and even country vocalists, but this is probably the only jazz treatment. But with some sweet swing, and especially some inventive solos by Green, they make it a satisfying six minute performance, They also take on a Tin Pan Alley standard ("I'll Be Seeing You," by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal) and some Benny Goodman swing ("A Smooth One"). But for me, the highlight of the album is the McDuff composition "Sanctified Waltz," where McDuff and Vick are two hearts beating as one through a barn burner of a tune.

"Godiva Brown" was held back, and eventually surfaced on a later album, Steppin' Out.

Joe Dukes spent much of his career with McDuff, although he was in demand as a session drummer for both soul jazz and soul music. He would be the drummer when McDuff put together another tighter-than-tight organ-guitar-tenor group with Red Holloway and George Benson. That one impressed Prestige president Bob Weinstock so much that he offered each of the sideman an album as leader. Benson, of course, was well on his way to a mega-career, but that would be Dukes's only album as leader.

Esmond Edwards produced, and Goodnight, It's Time to Go came out on the Prestige label. "Sanctified Waltz" and "Goodnight, It's Time to Go" were the 45 RPM single.