Listening to Prestige Part 151: Miles Davis

Does Miles already have one foot out the door? Certainly he's thinking about it. He must at least have a couple of toes out. It's just a couple of weeks since the Newport Jazz Festival jam session after which he was approached by George Avakian, wooing him for Columbia Records.

Avakian wanted Miles to put together a group that he'd work with consistently. Today, using one of the words I've grown to loathe, this would be called a brand. It was opposite from the approach Bob Weinstock had taken, having Miles record with different musicians in different combinations.

So if Miles had those couple of toes out the door, he had to have been at least to some degree auditioning young musicians. He obviously wasn't going to recruit Milt Jackson or Percy Heath, but the others were all possibilities.

Miles had kicked his heroin habit by this time, and he was understandably impatient with young musicians who had not. That meant young Jackie McLean, then 24, would not make the cut. Miles said of him later,

Jackie was so high at this session that he was always scared he could not play anymore. I don't know what's the shit was all about, but I have never hired Jackie after this session.

McLean only appears on two cuts "Dr. Jackle" and "Minor March." Miles would have the same problem with the saxophonist he did choose, John Coltrane, and they went through some rough patches, with Miles at one point firing Trane and disbanding the quintet, then putting it back together.

Art Taylor, at 26, was beginning a long association, not with Miles, but with Prestige. He may have been the drummer on a 1954 session with Art Farmer (this is up in the air), but he was definitely on this session. He would work off and on again with Miles over the years. but we would become known as the "house drummer" for Prestige, working on many sessions. Unlike Miles, he would also record again with Jackie McLean--and he had worked with him before. The two of them, and Sonny Rollins, had grown up in the same Harlem neighborhood, and had played music together as teenagers.

For 24-year-old Ray Bryant, 1955 was his breakout year, but he had actually first recorded at age 14.

This was in his native Philadelphia, in a band that included John Coltrane (on alto) and Benny Golson. And continuing my policy of never meeting a digression I didn't like, especially when it involves the twisting careers of working jazz musicians. the band was led by drummer Jimmy Johnson, who must have kept working and getting his name known in jazz circles, because 15 years later he was hired by Duke Ellington.

Trombonist Gino Murray later worked with Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, but doesn't seem to have recorded with them,

Bassist Tommy Bryant didn't quite achieve the renown of his younger (by one year) brother, but he had a solid career, playing and recording with both his brother and Benny Golson from the 1944 session, and also with Dizzy Gillespie, Jo Jones, Roy Eldridge, and may others.

But the really interesting career out of this aggregation belongs to trumpeter Henry Glover. In the mid-1940s, that burgeoning time for independent jazz and rhythm and blues labels, he was touring with Lucky Millinder, and met Syd Nathan, who had recently started King Records as a country label, but was discovering that there was a market for the sort of jazz that bands like Millinder's played, which was soon to be called rhythm and blues.

Nathan hired Glover to build a rhythm and blues presence on his label, and, incidentally, to build him a studio. But Glover ended up doing more than that. Originally from Arkansas, Glover had grown up listening to country music on the radio, and -- like his contemporaries Ray Charles, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino-- loving it. So Glover found himself producing country artists like Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins (those two would die int he plane crash that killed country legend Patsy Cline), Grandpa Jones, and the Delmore Brothers, with whom he co-wrote "Blues, Stay Away From Me," which became their signature song and a country music standard. Glover was almost certainly the first successful African American producer in the country field.

He had his first rhythm and blues hit with Bull Moose Jackson, and went on to record Lucky Millinder, Tiny Bradshaw, Wynonie Harris, Bill Doggett, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Little Willie John, and Jame Brown. Later moving to Roulette, he came back into the jazz fold, producing records for Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington and Sonny Stitt, as well as creating a rock 'n roll presence on Roulette with the k\likes of Ronnie Hawkins. He became close to Ronnie Hawkins' backup band, later to become The Band, and in the 1970s moved to Woodstock where he helped Levon Helm found his own independent label. As a songwriter, he wrote "Drown in My Own Tears," a hit for Ray Charles, and one of the biggest hits of the 60s, "Peppermint Twist."

The record that Glover, Bryant and the gang made was never released, and the personnel list for the session comes from the memory of Benny Golson.

Bryant would go another four years before getting a record date, this time with Tiny Grimes' Rockin' Highlanders. Grimes was another one of those cats who made music at the intersection of jazz and R&B. I know that tenor sax great Red Prysock, who was on this session, quit Grimes shortly thereafter because of the bandleader's insistence that his band members all wear kilts. So...Ray Bryant in a kilt? Or Philly Joe Jones?

Then nothing till 1955, Bryant's breakout year. Before the Davis session, he had recorded with Toots Theilemans on Columbia, with Betty Carter on Columbia subsidiary Epic (the label for which he would record most often, and then with the same trio (Wendell Marshall, Jo Jones) under his own name. He would record again for Prestige in December, with Sonny Rollins.

Miles and Milt Jackson had played together before, on the notorious Miles/Monk session, They play off each other beautifully here, and so does Jackie McLean. Although he's only on two tracks. "Dr. Jackle" and "Minor March." He gets composer credit on both, and fairly extensive solo space. "Bitty Ditty" is a Thad Jones composition that's been widely recorded; "Blues Changes," also known simply as "Changes," is Ray Bryant's. All the cuts are extended--from 6 1/2 to 9 minutes long -- giving plenty of room for improvisational experimentation.

Again, we have to grateful to Weinstock and Prestige for giving Miles this kind of exposure, in different settings and with different musicians. And, as in the case of this session, with different musicians bringing different material.

The session was planned for a 12-inch LP, with just over 15 minutes on each side, but the album wasn't released right away, for whatever reason. It came out as Prestige PRLP 7034, and is variously known as a Miles Davis or Miles Davis/Milt Jackson album (see the typefaces on the album cover.

The cover art is that muted color photo reproduction which would appear on a lot of Prestige covers; the photo is by Bob Weinstock.

Listening to Prestige Part 149: Modern Jazz Quartet

This is the first MJQ album with Connie Kay, and the last for Prestige, before they decamped for their long and fruitful association with Atlantic.

Kenny Clarke was beginning to feel a little claustrophobic within the strict confines of the MJQ. One of the pioneers, and one of the most prolific drummers of the bebop era,  He was the original house drummer at Minton's, which means he played with everyone -- and as the modern jazz decade progressed, everyone wanted him, or Max Roach or Art Blakey, to play with them.

In 1955, after severing his ties with the MJQ, Clarke made fouralbums for Savoy as leader of co-leader:a septet session with Ernie Wilkins;  The Trio, in which all three players--Clarke, Wendell Marshall and Hank Jones--go co-credit; Telefunken Blues, for which he enlisted MJQ-mates Jackson and Heath, along with a front line of Henry Coker, Frank Morgan and Frank Wess; and a third album featuring a rhythm section of Horace Silver (Hank Jones on one track) and Paul Chambers, and a front line of Donald Byrd on trumpet and Jerome Richardson on tenor sax and flute. He also gave two young brothers their first exposure on record: a trumpeter and alto sax player named Nat and Julian Adderley. It's safe to say that Cannonball made an impressive debut--impressive enough that Bohemia After Dark has often been re-released under his name.The session was successful enough that two weeks later the same two brothers and the same rhythm section recorded under Cannonball's name, and two weeks after that under Nat's name, with Jerome Richardson replacing Nat's brother.

He also recorded with Gene Ammons (Prestige), Eddie Bert (Savoy), Donald Byrd (Savoy),Milt Jackson (three albums on Savoy), Hank Jones (two more on Savoy in addition to The Trio), Duke Jordan and Gigi Gryce (Savoy),  Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh (Atlantic), Charles Mingus (Savoy), Thelonious Monk (Riverside), and Little Jimmy Scott (Savoy).

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. He also  recorded with:

• Johnny Mehegan, best remembered for his seminal books on jazz improvisation. 
• Wally Cirillo (Cirillo's album, also featuring Mingus and Teo Macero, included what is probably the first recorded jazz composition written in a 12-tone scale).
• Johnny Costa, whom Art Tatum dubbed "the white Art Tatum" and who later became musical director of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. It's nice to remember, in this day of disappearing live music, that Fred Rogers employed a live jazz trio, which played (per Wikipedia), "the show's main theme, the trolley whistle, Mr. McFeely's frenetic Speedy Delivery piano plonks, the vibraphone flute-toots as Fred fed his fish, dreamy celesta lines, and Rogers' entrance and exit tunes."
• Chuz Alfred, who made two albums as leader in 1955, then gave up jazz to play with Ralph Marterie's dance orchestra, then returned to Columbus, Ohio, where he became a charter member of the Columbus Musicians' Hall of Fame. And you thought the only musicians' hall of fame in Ohio was the one in Cleveland.
• Johnny Coates, who as Jazz King of the Poconos, employed the young Keith Jarrett as a drummer.
• Mike Cuozzo, described by Marc Myers of Jazzwax as "a gifted player... a Lester Young sound with a Lennie Tristano vibe." He gave up music to become a building contractor in New Jersey, but not before making an album with Mort Herbert, who would become deputy district attorney of Los Angeles,
• Al Caiola, who branched out from jazz to record hit versions of the themes from The Magnificent Seven and Bonanza, and who recorded with  Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Percy Faith, Buddy Holly, Mitch Miller, and Tony Bennett, among others.

Not only is that just 1955, that's just Savoy.

Clarke might have been able to keep up this prodigious schedule and still make dates with the MJQ, but he was also feeling claustrophobic about America, By 1956, he was a full-time resident of France, where he could make more money and deal with less racism. He played many sessions with visiting American musicians, and led the Clarke-Boland Big Band with Belgian pianist Francy Boland.

Connie Kay had followed Kenny Clarke before he followed him into the Modern Jazz Quartet. He became the house drummer at Minton's.

Before that, as a teenager, he had worked at a club called Ann's Red Rose in his Bronx neighborhood, getting the gig a week after he had bought his first drum kit. The house drummer for the Red Rose had quit suddenly, and someone at the bar said "Well, there's a drummer around the corner because I hear him practicing every night as I come home from work." So he played for comedians, singers, tap-dancers and chorus girls (from the NY Times obituary and a NY Times profile).

He moved from there into the jazz world, playing behind every major figure at Minton's, and also in Lester Young's band for several years. He was also putting his Ann's Red Rose experience to good use as the drummer for various rhythm and blues ensembles, including that of Frank (Floorshow) Culley, who had had a hit for Atlantic Records with "Cole Slaw." Culley brought him in to Atlantic in early 1951 to record a demo for The Clovers, who had just signed with the label. The song was "Don't You Know I Love You," and the bass player didn't show up for the session, so Kay had to double his part on the bass drum. He got paid for the gig, and thought no more about until a couple of weeks later, when "I'm driving my car and hear the tune and I say, 'Wait a minute, that sounds like the tune we made a demo of.' A week later I went to Atlantic and I went into Ahmet Ertegun's office and he said: 'Man, I'm glad to see you. We've been trying to find you. I like the beat you used on that record.' From that time on they kept calling me for record dates. When I couldn't make record dates, they'd postpone them.''

Supposedly, the "concept album" began with Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which began with a vague idea by the Beatles to make an album that would represent a collection of songs by a fictitious village band, an idea which got discarded pretty quickly, but floated around the album sufficiently that "concept album" became the goal of mostly some pretty pretentious rock groups. If you wanted a real concept album, what about My Fair Lady Loves Jazz or Dave Digs Disney, or for that matter any Broadway show original cast album? Or Louis and the Angels? Or Birth of the Cool, which wasn't even made as an album but is still one of the greatest concept albums of all time?

Anyway, Concord is a concept album in that the concept was that it would be an album. It was the third recording session scheduled by Prestige to produce a full 12-inch LP's worth of music: in this case, six selections, and over 36 minutes worth of music.

It's an album that's mostly standards. Perhaps in Lewis's mind, the group already had one foot out the door, so they were saving original material for Atlantic--although in fairness, the MJQ tended to be standard-friendly until later in its career, and the first Atlantic album only had three originals. The originals are Jackson's "Ralph's New Blues" and Lewis's title track. I'd wondered if "Ralph's New Blues" was a tribute to Ralph Ellison -- I'd sort of hoped it was -- but appears to be for jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason, which is pretty good too. It's built on an irresistibly bluesy riff, and is the catchiest number on the record.  "Concorde" is another Francophile nod from Lewis, and inspired the Eiffel Tower cover of the album. It has a richness of tone, a catchy melody, and an uptempo swing.

Lewis and Jackson know how to sustain a note for dramatic effect, and they know how to let loose a torrent of notes. But as always, the the MJQ is a quartet, not a leader and sidemen, and you're always aware of the contribution each member is making to the sound.

"Softly as a Morning Sunrise" was released as a two-sided 45. The album's initial release, as noted, was the 12-inch LP.

Listening to Prestige Part 143: Milt Jackson

Again the other MJQ, with Horace Silver instead of John Lewis, and yes, it's a very different sound. Not necessarily funkier, however, even though the session was rereleased in 1962 on album called Soul Pioneers. Silver had not yet made the fists-first commitment to funk that would bring him his greatest acclaim, and this was a session heavy on ballads, composed by some impressive balladsmiths.

"I Should Care" was co-composed by orchestra leaders Axel Stordahl and Paul Weston, with lyrics by Sammy Cahn.. Stordahl had been an arranger for Tommy Dorsey when Frank Sinatra joined the band, and he became the arranger and orchestra leader for Sinatra's Columbia recordings. The Modern Jazz Quartet would later record the same tune, so it's interesting to look at the differences. The MJQ's arrangement is, unsurprisingly, the more intricate, with some very closely worked-out duet work between John Lewis and Milt Jackson. The version by the other MJQ is much more built around Jackson, and he explores different territories, with a lot more reverb and a lot more pushing the upper register.

One significant difference between the Milt Jackson Quartet and the Modern Jazz Quartet is the part given to Percy Heath. Heath certainly gets solo time with Lewis's MJQ, but he seems more assertive here, particularly on Rodgers and Hart's "My Funny Valentine." "Valentine," as well as Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You," are very familiar tunes, and with good reason. There are two ways a jazz player can handle a melody like this, both with value. You can get outta the way, and give the melody a chance to express itself. Or, like Jackson and Silver, you can count on everyone knowing the melody, and just use it as a point of departure and a point of reference.

The group gets more uptempo, too, for instance in "Stonewall," with a lot of walking bass and and lot of  virtuoso vibing. I do love the ballads, but I might take "Stonewall" as a favorite from this session.

"Stonewall," in two parts, was released as a 45. Milt Jackson Quartet was Prestige PRLP 7003. Before it (PRLP 7002) came a Stan Getz reissue, featuring one session from 1949 and two sessions from 1950.

Listening to Prestige Part 135: Modern Jazz Quartet

I've mentioned that the MJQ was formed in part out of John Lewis's dissatisfaction with the head-solos-head format that had become ubiquitous in bebop, and this recording session, in its own unique way, is a break from that format, in that it's solo-solo-solo-solo.

Well, not exactly. But perhaps Lewis, in his own way, is simultaneously playing tribute to the classic bebop form and standing it on its ear.  "La Ronde" in a shorter version was part of an earlier MJQ session. The shorter version was a reworking of an earlier Lewis composition, "Two Bass Hit,"originally composed for the Dizzy Gillespie orchestra. The newly Europeanized title -- La Ronde is a fin de siecle play by the Viennese playwright Arthur Schnitzler -- is in keeping with the European classical -- and particularly Francophile -- overlay that Lewis was putting on American bebop. Under either title, it's a good piece, and as "Two Bass Hit" it's become a jazz standard.

As "La Ronde," it makes more sense in its extended suite version. The Schnitzler play is a tag team

series of sexual encounters, and "La Ronde Suite" is a sort of tag team, as well. It's in four sections, with each section featuring a different member of the group in an extended solo.

Kenny Clarke is the drummer for the "La Ronde Suite," and it was his last recording with the group. By their next session, in July, Connie Kay had replaced him.

Most people think of Kay as the quintessential MJQ drummer, and with good reason. He was with them for 40 years. He was a perfect ensemble drummer, in a group that emphasized the ensemble sound. Clarke was one of the innovators of bebop drumming, and like his fellow pioneers Max Roach and Art Blakey, he was much more of a soloist. "La Ronde Suite" would have been different without him.

"La Ronde Suite" was first issued on a 10-inch, The Modern Jazz Quartet Vol. 2, but it's most famous as part of the MJQ's Django album.

Listening to Prestige Part 131: Miles Davis

This is an all-star's all-star session, and one might wonder why they didn't do it more often, but the wonder seems to be, instead, how they got through it at all. In terms of personality clash, it's one of the great disasters in jazz history. In terms of music, it's magnificent.

The big story that came out of the session was Miles and Monk almost coming to blows. Or so some say. Miles says no. Actually, everyone says no, as far as actual blows being landed.

Monk says no: "Miles'd got killed if he it me."

Miles agrees: Monk "was too big and strong for me to even be thinking about fighting."

But there was an argument. You can hear part of it on take one of "The Man I Love," at which point Miles may have been a little fed up with Monk. Monk can be heard asking when he should start playing, and Miles breaks in, telling Rudy Van Gelder, "Hey Rudy, put this on the record, man – all of it!"

So all of it is there.

If Monk's question seems a little odd, it's because Miles had told him, earlier in the session, to lay out -- to stop playing during Miles's solo -- and Monk had not taken kindly to the suggestion.

But no fisticuffs. Ira Gitler, who was there for part of the session but did not produce it, writes,

things were not serene when I left towards the dinner hour (the session had started somewhere between two and three in the afternoon). Later that night, at Minton's, I saw Kenny Clarke who answered my "How did it go?" with "Miles sure is a beautiful cat," which was his way of saying that despite the obstacles Miles had seen it through and produced something extraordinary and lasting.

One of those obstacles is described by drummer Charli Persip in a video interview. Persip had been invited to the session by his mentor, Kenny Clarke, and as he tells it,

I'm sitting there in heaven. Here I am in the same room with Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis. And Monk...there's one spot on one tune where Monk's solo -- he started playing ding-da-ding-ding-ding-ding, ding-ding-ding, ding-da-ding-ding-ding -- what happened was, he had a beer, and he knocked it over on the floor, and he was trying to get that beer up

before Rudy Van Gelder would see it, because he knew there'd be hell to pay, so he's fumbling around down there trying to get the bottle to stop it from leaking on the rug, and at the same time he was still playing the solo! And after, to keep Rudy off of him -- Rudy came in with a rag, and he was fussing and carrying on, but he wasn't really too upset, because it wasn't his equipment, it was just the rug. But Monk wanted to impose his will on [Persip says "Rudy" here, but I'm sure he means Miles], so every time [Miles] would start playing, he'd stand up and look stupid, just look off into space...Everybody broke up, every time he did it."

And the story gets a little mumbly here, but basically Miles told him to cut it out, which is probably why, by the time they got to  "The Man I Love," Miles told Rudy to leave everything in.

And once again, one has to tip one's hat in gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Van Gelder, who no doubt had to deal with the beer stains on their living room rug.

The session itself...what more can you say than that it's great? And, fortunately, take one of "Bags' Groove" was preserved, so we hear Monk's beer solo. And one could say, with Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy, that this shows you could get away with anything in bebop...but it's actually a wonderful solo. A little strange, but musical. And reaching up from the floor, scrambling around for his beer, Monk still swings. And appropriately enough, Bags finds the groove and adds some appropriate fills.

At any event, this is the only studio album Miles and Monk ever made together, and it may help to explain why the Columbia album Miles and Monk at Newport actually features the two cats leading two different groups, in two different years.

The ready-for-prime time version of "Bags' Groove" made it onto a 10-inch, Miles Davis All-Stars, along with "Swing Spring," a Davis original.  Monk's "Bemsha Swing" and the approved version of "The Man I Love" are on a second 10-inch, Miles Davis All-Stars Vol 2. Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants, on the short lived 16 2/3 format, had the whole session, along with an earlier 1954 session. All except for the two versions of "Bags' Groove" also appeared on the standard 33 1/3 RPM 12-inch LP of the same title, released in 1959. The two versions of "Bags' Groove" were on an LP of the same name, released in 1957.

Listening to Prestige Part 113: Milt Jackson

There was an MJQ before there was a Modern Jazz Quartet, and it had essentially the same lineup, with Milt Jackson and John Lewis and Kenny Clarke (Percy Heath hadn't joined yet). That MJQ was the Milt Jackson Quartet.

So here's another MJQ, this time a quintet, with Horace Silver filling the piano spot.

The Modern Jazz Quartet is one of the most justly revered of all jazz groups, but it wasn't always so. The MJQ were going their own way as bebop was turning into hard bop, and a lot of devotees of the harder sound professed to find the MJQ too safe, too genteel. They weren't, of course, but that was what their detractors said.

But nobody didn't like Milt Jackson, and it was an article of faith among the detractors that the MJQ was holding Jackson back, not letting him play the funky, bluesy, hard-boppy music he was capable of, and secretly wanted to play.

That way of thinking is long behind us, along with the wars between the beboppers and the moldy figs, but we still do have the recordings that Jackson made apart from the Modern Jazz Quartet, and yes, with Horace Silver on board, it is a different sound.

The fifth musician here is trumpeter Henry Boozier, and his inclusion certainly suggests that Jackson was going for a funkier sound. Boozier is probably better known for his work in blues and rhythm and blues, which is an odd way of putting it, since blues bands didn't generally list all their personnel on their recordings. So not better known to the general public, but better known in the sense that he'd more likely be called to work on a blues date. He recorded with B. B. King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams. His song, "Ask Me 'Bout Nothin' but the Blues," was recorded by Bland, Boz Skaggs, and others. He doesn't seem to have any other jazz recording credits, but Jackson brought him back in 1960 to record with his octet.

"Funky" has been around as long as jazz has been around: 

I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say
Funky-butt, funky-butt, take it away.

 And according to at least one authority, it has an African etymology. According to Yale art historian Robert Farris Thompson in his 1984 work, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy:

The slang term 'funky' in black communities originally referred to strong body odor, and not to 'funk,' meaning fear or panic. The black nuance seems to derive from the Ki-Kongo lu-fuki, 'bad body odor,' and is perhaps reinforced by contact with fumet, 'aroma of food and wine,' in French Louisiana. But the Ki-Kongo word is closer to the jazz word 'funky' in form and meaning, as both jazzmen and Bakongo use 'funky' and lu-fuki to praise persons for the integrity of their art, for having 'worked out' to achieve their aims. In Kongo today it is possible to hear an elder lauded in this way: 'like, there is a really funky person!--my soul advances toward him to receive his blessing (yati, nkwa lu-fuki! Ve miela miami ikwenda baki) Fu-Kiau Bunseki, a leading native authority on Kongo culture, explains: 'Someone who is very old, I go sit with him, in order to feel his lu-fuki, meaning, I would like to be blessed by him.' For in Kongo the smell of a hardworking elder carries luck. This Kongo sign of exertion is identified with the positive energy of a person. Hence, 'funk' in black American jazz parlance can mean earthiness, a return to fundamentals.

However, I wouldn't have thought of "funk," as a noun referring to a genre of music, to have been commonly used much before the 60s, but we have it here, in a Horace Silver composition, and an opus de funk it is, with some great interplay between Silver and Jackson, and a solo by Boozier that shows solidly why Milt Jackson called on him for this gig.

Silver also composed "Buhaina," presumably a tribute to Art Blakey, who had taken the Muslim name Abdullah ibn Buhaina, though he continued to use what many black Muslim converts would come to call his slave name. This one has some striking interplay between Jackson and Boozier, and later between Silver and Percy Heath--and, a little surprisingly, no extended drum solo for Kenny Clarke.

Jackson composed the other two. "I've Lost Your Love" is sort of an unusual title for a modern jazz instrumental, and I'd love to hear the story behind it. It's a ballad, and it features a knockout trumpet solo by Henry Boozier.

"Soma" is another Jackson composition, and maybe what I love most about it is the ensemble work on the head. You don't every day hear a trumpet, vibes and piano working as an ensemble front line. Jazz surpasses expectations so often, and in so many ways.

Listening to Prestige Records Part 94: Sonny Rollins / Modern Jazz Quartet

The Modern Jazz Quartet were a fairly rare phenomenon in jazz in the 50s -- a stable group that had a collective name, as opposed to, say the Gene Ammons Septet or the Stan Getz Quartet, which would be Gene or Stan and whoever else was in town for the recording or club date. The musicians had come together as Dizzy Gillespie's rhythm section, and then had become the MJQ -- that is, the Milt Jackson Quartet. As the MJQ¹, they were, as far as anyone knew, three guys whom Milt Jackson had gotten together for a gig. As the MJQ², they were a different entity, but no one knew what. Certainly, no one knew that they would, with one change, be together for the next 40 years, thus becoming not just rare but unique.

So what had Prestige done with them to date?

John Lewis had done a number of sessions for Prestige, starting in 1949 with J. J. Johnson's

Boppers, when he was 29 and already a veteran of the New York jazz world, from his days newly out of the army with Dizzy Gillespie through his work as one of the major contributors to the Miles Davis nonet. He worked with Zoot Sims, with Miles and Sonny. And even after the first MJQ session--it was pretty clear how good these tunes were, and it had always been clear how good these musicians were, but there was no hint that they were to become. probably rivaled only by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, the most legendary sustained unit in the history of jazz. Yes, there have been other legendary units, like the Miles Davis quintet of the 50s, but that group was only a small part of Miles's career, and only a small part of Coltrane's. So they went on working. Lewis and Kenny Clarke worked on one Prestige recording date with Miles, Lewis and Percy Heath on another. Heath also played on the Miles and Bird (Charlie Chan) session. And they did sound good together, no doubt about it. The three of them were brought in to back up King Pleasure and the Dave Lambert Singers, and the quartet was brought in for a session with Sonny Rollins, and although Rollins was the featured performer on the gig, the Modern Jazz Quartet was credited as such. This would change, a few years later, when Atlantic would bring out The Modern Jazz Quartet at Music Inn, Vol 2 -- guest artist, Sonny Rollins.

The Atlantic album has been in my collection since the 50s, but I'd never heard this earlier collaboration before. It's a fascinating one. This is definitely a Sonny Rollins session, but it's definitely MJQ, too. This is probably the first time all four of them had worked as the MJQ with another artist, and it's an experiment worth listening to.These guys knew how to play together as a rhythm section, and they show that here. But they also knew who they were, and they show that here, too. And all five of

them make a pretty convincing argument that bebop is not dead.

They would go on to make enough tunes for Prestige to fill  two 12-inch albums which are no strangers to Greatest Jazz Albums of All Time lists. But before they were legends, they were working musicians playing the gigs that they got -- sort of unlike the Brubeck Quartet, who pretty much made it clear that they were legends to begin with. And working musicians like these are always worth listening to. 

These came out on 78, 45, EP, 10-inch and ultimately 12-inch LP.

Listening to Prestige Records Part 89: Modern Jazz Quartet

The 1956 12-inch LP that contained this session, Django, was in my collection and on turntable a lot. I don't remember when I bought it -- certainly not 1956, because I wasn't listening to jazz that early. Probably 1959 or so. By that time, the Django LP had been out long enough to become a classic, and the original releases on 10-inch, 45 and 78 had been out even longer, so I don't know what the first critical reaction was. I'm guessing they hadn't heard anything quite like "The Queen's Fancy" before.

But they had, really. It's still Dizzy Gillespie's rhythm section, guys who'd been around since the birth of bebop, guys who were present at the creation of modern jazz and were playing modern jazz--who had, in fact, even named themselves after modern jazz. And if "The Queen's Fancy" starts out with a fugue that could have been written by Bach, why not? The musical tradition that these great musicians came out of was everything that came before them, the music they were looking to make was everything that lay ahead. Dale Turner, the fictional jazzman played by Dexter Gordon, surprises his French host when he acknowledges his debt to Debussy, but there should be no surprise there, either, any more than a debt to Louis Armstrong, Russian Jewish immigrant composers, or the blues. Duke Ellington was exactly right when he said that there are only two kinds of music, good and bad.

So these beboppers developed something beautiful. Tadd Dameron said it always has to be beautiful, and Lewis, Jackson, Heath and Clarke knew that too. They made beauty out of a fugue, and out of a bebopper's tribute to the hot jazz of the Hot Club of Paris, and out of compositions by Vernon Duke and George Gershwin -- transforming beauty into beauty, which may not sound alchemical, but it surely is.

You take what you know, and take it somewhere new. If you're like John Lewis and his cohorts, you know a lot, and you can see the road ahead with clarity and excitement. I interviewed the poet Billy Collins some years ago, and he described what he did as “a kind of travel writing, a genre in which the poet can take the reader on vicarious trips to places that may be otherwise inaccessible...[I find] a common ground that the reader and I can both stand on...and try to deliver pleasure by taking the reader into a state of suspended animation, where the subject matter is left behind, and other explorations begin." The Modern Jazz Quartet does something very similar, and for that experience to be happening for the reader/listener, it has to be happening for the artist as well, whether that artist be a poet like Collins, a composer like Lewis, a master improviser like Milt Jackson.


This comes from a total involvement with your art. Larry Audette, himself a fine jazzman, told me of a conversation he recently had with Tootie Heath about his brother. Percy, on his deathbed, was still listening to music through headphones. Finally, when it was time, his wife took the headphones off, and he slipped quietly away.

"The Queen's Fancy" and "Autumn in New York" were released as a 45 RPM single. The other two songs weren't, although all were released on 78, in a different configuration -- "The Queen's Fancy" b/w "But Not For Me," and "Delaunay's Dilemma" b/w "Autumn in New York." Odd to think that in 1953 the 78 was still the dominant format, but 78s lasted well into the 50s. According to the Yale Library's guide to music cataloging, the 78 was pretty much phased out by 1955, although there's no exact record of the last 78 to be issued -- in fact, according to Yale, some children's records came out on 78 as late as the 70s. I bought my first record in 1954. I was 14, and it was rock and roll -- "Bazoom," by the Cheers, the first rock and roll hit by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, whose songs I would come to worship with a passion. I think that by the end of that summer, I was buying more 45s than 78s, and by the next year nothing but 45s, so my personal history pretty much tracks the Yale Library, The four songs also came out on a 45RPM EP, which seems to have been a form favored early by Prestige, before they'd really embraced the 45 RPM single. There was a 10-inch LP, and then the classic Django in 1956, and many later repackagings and reissues.

Listening to Prestige Records Part 74 --: The Modern Jazz Quartet

The first sound you hear, on the first tune of the first recording session by the Modern Jazz Quartet, is the driving walking bass of Percy Heath, punctuated explosively by  Kenny Clarke's drums. And there's a surprise, not just because Clarke was the only musician to leave the group, but because you don't exactly think of the MJQ as a drum-dominated group. But here's Clarke, front and center on "All The Things You Are" - and perhaps, even more so on "La Ronde," the second tune to be recorded that historic day. Does that mean that the MJQ didn't start out as the ensemble-driven sound that we associate with them? Not at all. But they were, first and always, an ensemble of individuals. A lot of critics of the MJQ in later years, those who,complained that the group was too stodgy, too careful, too polite, tended to except Milt Jackson from this criticism, and say that he was a real individual, and what was he doing letting himself be tied down? Let's Bags be Bags! But they were all individuals, all powerful players all creators and improvisers and strong personalities.

Percy Heath, in an interview by Mike Zwerin in Paris in 2003, recalled the founding of the Modern Jazz Quartet from four musicians who had come together as the rhythm section of Dizzy Gillespie's big band. Gillespie had featured them separate from the band, and they had also started playing club gigs as the Milt Jackson Quartet (originally with Ray Brown on bass).

In 1951 the Milt Jackson Quartet - Heath, John Lewis and Kenny Clarke (soon replaced by Connie Kay) - was driving home to New York after performing in some sad and disagreeable outlying club. All four of them - they were big men - were squeezed into Milt Jackson's tired old gilded Cadillac, which they had named the "golden dragon." Lewis said he was weary of this kind of life, and of the same old head-solos-head rhythm section format that went with it. He wanted to form a band that would be like a chamber group with four independent contrapuntal lines going simultaneously and be accepted in theaters and concert halls where jazz had never before been heard. The Modern Jazz Quartet was named then and there in the golden dragon.

So this was a powerful zeitgeist as the 40s turned into the 50s. Miles Davis, who had been a protege of Charlie Parker, was feeling it. John Lewis, playing in the Dizzy Gillespie big band, was feeling it. There had to be more than just the same old head-solos-head formula. It was time to break out of bebop.

As it turned out, bebop had a lot more life, and a lot more creativity, to share with the world, but these questing musicians were right too. John Lewis had been an integral part of the music that came out of those all-night sessions at Gil Evans's apartment, had played on the Birth of the Cool sessions and contributed three tunes. The nonet had failed commercially, but the idea that jazz could move in new directions was still a vivid one.

The quartet recorded two standards and two Lewis originals on that first session, both of which were to become staples of their repertoire. "La Ronde" was expanded into "La Ronde Suite," about which more later. "Vendome" is perhaps the most representative of the direction the group would become famous for, classical in structure and tightly arranged.

All four songs were released on 78 RPM and on a 10-inch LP -- one of the first Prestige LPs to take cover art seriously.The cover was designed by David X. Wilson, noted not only for his jazz album art, but for jam sessions at his illegal loft. From his obituary in the New York Times:

The loft, in an industrial building at 821 Avenue of the Americas, near 28th Street, became a gathering place for the greats of jazz, including Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie, as well as for utter unknowns who simply yearned to play.

Known simply as ''the Sixth Avenue loft,'' it was one of maybe a half-dozen places where musicians gathered at a time when various strains of jazz -- mainstream, bebop and cool, among others -- were percolating. Situated in the heart of the flower district, it was the epicenter of what became known as loft jazz.

''By most accounts, it drew the biggest names, showcased the latest talent and lasted the longest,'' said an article in the fall 1999 issue of Double Take magazine.

''Guys played with people they'd never seen before,'' Bob Brookmeyer, a trombone player, said in the article. ''Whites, blacks, old guys, young guys. Nobody cared about that stuff. We were all outlaws. Our profession wasn't considered respectable. There was a sense we were all in it together.''

There was no lock on the loft's front door, and it was considered bad form to arrive before 11 p.m. There always seemed to be many pretty young women present, and ample bourbon and marijuana. It was a spot where Salvador Dali, Norman Mailer or Willem de Kooning might show up, entourage in tow. ''The locus of mad freedoms,'' Mr. Young once called the scene that his rent bargain made possible.

Happy Birthday Milt Jackson

Jazz on the Tube has a great tribute.