Listening to Prestige 497: Yusef Lateef

LISTEN TO ONE: Plum Blossom

By 1961, Yusef Lateef had completed his move from Detroit to New York. In 1960, he enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music. He would continue his studies off and on, eventually getting a BA (1969) and and MA (1970), then going on to get his Ed.D. And he was, although still playing in a jazz context, using jazz musicians and recording for a jazz label, already moving counter to a lot of what jazz was expected to do, perhaps more toward what he would come to call autophysiopsychic music --“music from one's physical, mental and spiritual self.” He was continuing to work a lot with musicians who had come with him from Detroit--in this case, Barry Harris and Ernie Farrow,

half-brother of Alice McLeod, who became Alice Coltrane--and who had become accustomed to his middle eastern influence and his often unusual instruments. But he had begun working with a New Yorker on drums--Lex Humphries, who had been with him on two previous albums for Riverside.

Lateef called this one Eastern Sounds, and that's a fitting title. Most of the compositions are his, and they reflect his love for Arabic music, but not just that. The sounds are truly eclectic. "Blues for the Orient" is a good example of this, starting with the two-worlds yoking in the title. Lateef plays the flute, and to my ear it's more Near Eastern than what we used to call "the Orient" - China, Japan, Korea, etc. But it's haunting and multicultural. And at the same time, Barry Harris, accompanying him, is playing the blues.When Harris takes an extended solo, he starts off on his own world music tangent, but then brings it around to the blues--and not the soul jazz, funk-drenched blues that were becoming so popular in the early 1960s, but very boppish, very Detroit-ish blues, earthy and cerebral at the same time. He and Lateef complement each other in unconventional but undeniable ways.

"Plum Blossom" is in a way more western, in other ways not. Harris is definitely in a boppish mood, and Lateef is not far away, but he's working with a most unusual instrument. The session notes call it a bamboo flute, but that it is not. It's sometimes called a xun, sometimes a Chinese globular flute. It looks a little like an ocarina, with it's globular shape, but it's played more like a jug from a rural jug band, by blowing into the top, but with finger holes around the ovoid shape.

It's not hard to tell why Lateef reached out of his Detroit orbit to pull in Lex Humphries. Probably best known in 1961 as the drummer on Art Farmer and Benny Golson's immensely popular and solidly hard bop Meet the Jazztet album, but he was capable of reaching outside what were usually thought of as jazz time signatures, which is what made him so valuable to Lateef and later to Sun Ra. His drumming on this session is a revelation, outside the box but always on point. 

So you have three musicians, two from Detroit and one from New York, two searching outside the normal traditions of jazz and one working creatively within those traditions. Redefining jazz, yes, but jazz is always about redefinition, so it's not so far-fetched to say that Lateef, Harris, Humphries and Farrow are working in the tradition, playing jazz, finding new ways, and the old ways, to play jazz.

Ernie Farrow contributes importantly as well, playing bass and also an instrument called, in the session log and liner notes, a rabat, but Rabat is the capital of Morocco, not a musical instrument. He seems to have been playing a rabab, an Arabic stringed instrument played with a bow. Both the xun and the rababare ancient instruments.

But the biggest splash was not made by one of Lateef's compositions, but by an unlikely selection. One of the three non-Lateef numbers was Jimmy McHugh's "Don't Blame Me," from an obscure 1932 Broadway revue called Clowns in Clover, but that's not the unlikely one. Obscure Broadway revues or obscure grade B films often produced memorable tunes (like the melody from the forgotten 

prison break movie Unchained), and "Don't Blame Me" had already entered the jazz repertoire, with recordings by Teddy Wilson, Coleman Hawkins and J. J. Johnson. No, much more unlikely for an against-the-grain jazzman with a taste for the Near East were two lush orchestral themes from big-budget movies, "Love Theme from The Robe" and "Love Theme from Spartacus."

And even more unlikely, not only did  "Love Theme from Spartacus" become the breakout hit from the album, it remained one of Lateef's most popular numbers, and a lot of other jazz musicians subsequently had a go at it, including Bill Evans, Ramsey Lewis, Gabor Szabo and Ahmad Jamal. And it's not hard to see why. It has a good groove from Harris, very full and very beautiful, and exotic flute solos from Lateef. It gets to you.

Eastern Sounds came out on Moodsville, and it certainly sets a mood. It generated three 45 RPM singles, although two of them were "Love Theme from Spartacus," once with "Snafu" from this session, and once with "Sea Breeze" from the earlier Cry! -- Tender. The other 45 was "Blues for the Orient," which was coupled with the standard "I'll Remember April," from Into Something, recorded in December of 1961. Esmond Edwards produced. 

Listening to Prestige 488: Willie Wilson

This was Willie Wilson's only recording session. He had played in Dizzy Gillespie's big band, but had not recorded with them. He would die not long after this session was recorded. The 1961 session was originally recorded for Jazzline, but the label folded before the album could be released. It would come out in 1966, under Freddie Hubbard's name, in Europe from the Dutch Fontana label. Prestige released it under Duke Pearson's name in 1970, and Black Lion in 1988 under Hubbard's.

Yeah, there'd be no point in the subsequent releases coming out under Wilson's name. He was dead...and forgotten.

But he was respected enough by his peers to be able to call on some front line talent for his shot at the brass ring. In addition to Hubbard and Pearson, Pepper Adams is on board. So is Lex Humphries, who had been the original drummer with the Art Farmer/Benny Golson Jazztet, and had worked with John Coltrane on the Giant Steps sessions (the tracks featuring Humphries were not included on the album, but did appear on a subsequent album called Alternate Takes). Bassist Thomas Howard is obscure, though he did record again with Pearson.

Maybe Howard was from Atlanta. That was the hometown of Pearson and Wilson. Pearson remembered him:

Willie and I grew up together from kindergarten in Atlanta. We also took piano lessons from the same teacher. We were as brothers and his death came as quite a shock to me. 

But no jazz journalist was interested enough in Wilson to probe Pearson for more stories about his friend, so this is all we have. A reputation in Atlanta of 70 years ago, a short time with Dizzy, and this album. I like to look into the lives of wonderful musicians whom fame has passed by, b

The Willie Wilson Sextet cut seven tunes on this August afternoon at Bell Sound Studios in Manhattan. Because this wasn't a Bob Weinstock production, and they weren't frowning om retakes and reusing every scrap of tape, there are several takes of each cut. (We can thank Bell Sound for that, but not for the sacrilege they committed when they closed shop in 1976, and destroyed hundreds of priceless original masters.) Five of the tunes featured the sextet. The two Great American Songbook ballads on the session, "The Nearness of You" (Hoagy Carmichael, Ned Washington) and "Time After Time" (Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne) were a quartet, Wilson and the rhythm section. In both of them, it's just Wilson and the rhythm section, and he shows himself capable of handling the front line on his own. He's warm and sensitive and romantic, and he swings.

But I really loved the sextet numbers. How could you go wrong, with Freddie Hubbard and Pepper Adams joining you? The format is your classic bop small group, ensemble playing on the head, solo solo solo, then the ensemble again. You know, that old cliched format that John Lewis killed off, and Miles Davis killed off, and John Coltrane killed off, but no one has ever really been able to kill off, because it can be a template for such wonderful music.

Pearson ("Miss Bertha D. Blues," also known as "Number 5"). Adams ("Apothegm") and Wilson ("Blues for Alvina") all contributed tunes to the session, and they also used the composing talents of Tommy Flanagan ("Minor Mishap," which has become something of a jazz standard) and Donald Byrd ("Lex"). but for my "Listen to One" I'll give you "Blues for Alvina," and Wilson's one chance to shine as composer before an early death and undeserved obscurity.

If you want to listen to more than one, which I strongly recommend, it takes some digging. "Willie Wilson Sextet" finds nothing, either on Spotify or YouTube. A search for "Willie Wilson Quartet" will take you to the two quartet numbers. You can find everything from the Prestige album on either Spotify or YouTube by searching "Duke Pearson Dedication" or "Duke Pearson" and the individual songs. Some searching under "Freddie Hubbard" and individual titles on YouTube will get you to the Black Lion cuts, though not necessarily all of them--each tune except for "The Nearness of You" and "Time after Time" is represented by two different takes. Or, as always, buy the music. The Prestige album is still readily available, and the Black Lion album is findable.

Fred Norsworthy, who engineered the session, is listed as producer on the Prestige release, titled Dedication! Black Lion founder Alan Bates gets producer credit for the Black Lion rerelease, called Minor Mishap. The European release on Fontana was titled Groovy!, so two of the titles included exclamation points.

Listening to Prestige 364: Doug Watkins

Doug Watkins was one of the most prolific sidemen of the 1950s. He's been on 26 Prestige albums so far (including Sonny Rollins' Saxophone Colossus) and countless more sessions on other labels. He was so respected as a bassist that when Charles Mingus took to the piano for 1961's Oh Yeah (Atlantic), he picked Watkins as his bassist.  But he almost never stepped out as a leader. He had done one album for a small label in 1956, and nothing more until this session.

What made him decide to put himself out in front?

A newfound passion. One of the most respected bassists in jazz, Watkins, like Mingus before him, turns the bass duties over to someone else, and takes on another instrument: his newfound passion, the cello.

How newfound was this passion? It's said that he picked it up three days before the recording date.

Which you can get away with if you're from Detroit, because that means you have a crew of homeboys who understand jazz, and who understand you, and who understand experimenting with different sounds, especially if one of them is Yusef Lateef, and the others are guys who've played with Lateef.

It's a shame that Detroit has come to be known as a blighted, crime-ridden city, because it has been a cultural capital.  It was a cauldron of jazz before jazz came to be recognized as America's seminal art form. And it produced the man who was arguably the greatest poet of his generation, Philip Levine.

Levine nurtured his art on the assembly lines of Detroit, just as Yusef Lateef did, and also in the jazz clubs of Detroit, where he heard the greats who made it their home. Poet T. R. Hummer, in an essay in the literary journal Blackbird, says that:

Some were classmates of his at Wayne University as it was called then: the guitarist Kenny Burrell was there, as were the pianists Tommy Flanagan and Bess Bonnier; they were close friends and peers of Levine’s then, as was the great and inimitable baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, and the drummer Elvin Jones.

And he heard the greats who passed through, like Clifford Brown, whom he remembered as Benny Golson did:

I Remember Clifford

Wakening in a small room,
the walls high and blue, one high window
through which the morning enters,
I turn to the table beside me painted a thick white. There instead
of a clock is a tumbler of water,
clear and cold, that wasn't there
last night. Someone quietly entered, and now I see the white door
slightly ajar and around three sides
the light on fire. I remember once
twenty-seven years ago walking
the darkened streets
of my home town when up ahead
on Joy Road at the Bluebird of Happiness
I heard over the rumble of my own head
for the first time the high clear trumpet
of Clifford Brown calling us all
to the dance he shared with us
such a short time. My heart quickened
and in my long coat, breathless
and stumbling, I ran
through the swirling snow
to the familiar sequined door
knowing it would open on something new.

Shortly before he died in 2015, Levine collaborated with jazz saxophonist Benjamin Boone for a unique album of poetry and jazz. Hummer writes:

Boone said that he had suggested to Levine that it would be more efficient (as well as less taxing: it must not be forgotten that Levine was in his 80s

when this work was done) to record the music, at least the basic rhythm tracks, first and let him record his tracks after.

Levine’s response? “Why would I want to do that, Ben? I’ve sat in recording studios reading my stuff to myself plenty of times. I want to work with the musicians! That will be fun!”

And so the poet and the players convened session after session in a studio in Fresno, California, making the recordings. Another poet—especially one Levine’s age, who was also, by a certain point in the extended recording process, not in good health—might have found the lengthy, nitpicky process onerous. Levine loved it. He spent hours doing what is done in studios: sitting in a booth on a stool wearing headphones and staring at a microphone, recording take after take until everyone is satisfied, and then moving on to the next track. He stayed at it faithfully for the requisite long stretches.

The mixing of the album was not completed till after Levine died. When it came to mixing "I Remember Clifford," Boone was faced with a dilemma, according to Hummer:

For this poem, Boone composed a melody that is strongly reminiscent of, but not repetitious of, Golson’s composition. Anyone who knows Brown’s music is likely to know Golson’s composition, and so will be struck, as I was, by the extraordinarily tactful, effective work Boone did as a composer here.

But he did another excellent thing as well. Levine was always in the Fresno studio with basically the same core group of musicians. Boone is a saxophonist specializing in soprano and alto, each of which he plays wonderfully on most of these recordings (seriously, the man has deep and abiding chops; do yourself a favor and give him a listen) and he did the solo work on the original track. But as he listened to the playback of “I Remember Clifford” in the studio, and again and again at home, he found himself wondering, “Why is there a saxophone soloing in this? Clifford Brown played trumpet!”

“It was a tough decision, in terms of my own ego,” Boone told me. But in the end he contacted, through a friend of a friend, the trumpeter Tom Harrell. Harrell, now seventy-one, is a master musician who has played with just about everyone, from Stan Kenton and Woody Herman to Horace Silver on down. Who better to channel Clifford Brown?

So that's another part of Detroit. But here, for this session, the Motor City is represented by Lawson

on cello and Lateef on oboe as well as flute, so they're stepping outside of the jazz box. Detroiter Hugh Lawson is the pianist. a cat who came from Detroit with Lateef and spent many years with him before moving on to Sun Ra and others.  Detroiter Herman Wright takes the bass duties, and New Yorker Lex Humphries is the drummer, in his first session for Prestige.

They play three standards, two originals by Lateef and one ("Andre's Bag") by Watkins. The album, on New Jazz, would take its title, Soulnik, from a Lateef composition. Prestige would later rerelease it under Lateef's name as Imagination, but it's very much Watkins' session, but the creativity and versatility on display here in Watkins' pizzicato cello would get little chance to grow and blossom. This would be his second and last album as leader; in 1962 he died in an automobile accident.

Esmond Edwards produced.


It' not too late to give Listening to Prestige Vol. 3 as a Christmas gift for the jazz fan who has Volumes 1 and 2! 

And for those who haven't, the complete set makes a fabulous gift!
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