Wrapping up 1958 -- Part 3

Here’s my annual dip into the top albums of 1958 as seen from a contemporary vantage point, voted on by the participants in the rateyourmusic.com website’s poll. This is a snapshot of a moment in time,because the voting is ongoing, and albums may slip up and down in the ratings,although the ones on top have enough votes to be fairly securely ensconced John Coltrane has over 6000 ratings as of this entry, Cannonball Adderley over 3000.

Rateyourmusic uses some sort of algorithm based on the total number of ratings, and the value (1-5 stars) of each rating. What it is, I couldn’t begin to guess,and I really don’t want to know. It’s enough that this quirky, idiosyncratic, but exhaustive list (500+ albums in all) exists.This is very much the year of the independent jazz label, and specifically, very much the year of Blue Note and Verve.

I’ve only included the jazz albums, but every year those make up the bulk of the list, as jazz fanciers seem to gravitate here.

1.      Blue Train, John Coltrane (Blue Note)

With all the albums Trane made for Prestige in 1958, this is the one that has endured as the classic of that era in his career. That it, and not any of the 1958 Prestige recordings is so dominantly atop the RYM hit parade is partly due to the fact that Prestige didn’t release any of those sessions in 1958, largely due to the presence Miles Davis on this one, the only time the Dark Prince appeared on a Coltrane session.

2.      Somethin' Else, Cannonball Adderley (Blue Note)

Blue Train grew in popularity over the years. Somethin’ Else started hot and has stayed hot. Also with Miles.

Cannon’s only album on Blue Note.

3.      Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, Miles Davis (Fontana)

Completely improvised to a screening of the Louis Malle film, with Miles and a French quartet includingtenor saxophonist Barney Wilen and expatriate Kenny Clarke. This was a cult rather and mainstream favorite when  released, partly because it was on an obscure European label and hard to find (Fontana would become better known in 1960s as the label of several British Invasion groups). The RYM voters clearly include a serious cult coterie.

6.    A Night at the Village Vanguard, Sonny Rollins (Blue Note)

7.    Milestones, Miles Davis (Columbia)

8.   Misterioso, Thelonious Monk Quartet (Riverside)

9.   Cool Struttin', Sonny Clark (Blue Note)

Sonny Clark has definitely had a renaissance since 1958, and not because he stayed around long enough to reap late career recognition, like Marian McPartland. He died young, in 1963.

He doesn’t even make the list of top 30 piano players in the Down Beat poll, and the 30^th name (Ellis Larkins) gets only 18 votes. Clark was on a number of Blue Note albums during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and had several releases as leader. Cool Struttin’ features Art Farmer, Jackie McLean, Paul Chambers and Philly JoeJones. Clark’s presence three times in the top forty is a tribute to his music, to the searching and eclectic tastes of RYM listeners, and to the fact they’re not perfect. Sonny Clark Trio was actually not released until 1960.

Contemporary musician John Zorn has recorded an album of Clark’s compositions.

10.  Lady in Satin, Billie Holiday with Ray Ellis and His Orchestra (Columbia)

Pretty near the end for Lady Day. This is the album where her voice was a scratchy remnant, all the more raw andpainful for the lush string arrangements. But the emotional depth was still
there, and that makes it, for some, a favorite album. She would be dead a year later.

11.   Little Richard  (Specialty)    

Using my definition of a jazz singer as someone who can sing with jazz musicians and keep up, Little Richard here keeps up with some of the finest musicians in New Orleans, and if keeping up with the finest musicians in New Orleans isn’t credential enough for a jazz
singer, I don’t know what is. I’m talking about the tenormen Alvin “Red” Tyler and Herbert Hardesty, and especially drum innovator Earl Palmer. If Frank Sinatra, singing with Nelson Riddle’s lush orchestral accompaniment, is a jazz singer (and he is), Little Richard is a jazz singer. And rhythm and blues is jazz.

12.  Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (Capitol)

See above.         

13.   Relaxin' With the Miles Davis Quintet (Prestige)       

14.  Thelonious in Action, Thelonious Monk Quartet (Riverside)

A busy year for Monk, and a rewarding year for his fans, who have grown legion over time. This one was recorded live at the Five Spot, the best place to hear Monk live back in the day, with Johnny Griffin on tenor.

16. Songs for Distingué Lovers, Billie Holiday (Verve)

Again, that voice at the end of its tether, this time with some great and deeply simpatico musicians: Harry Edison, Ben Webster, Jimmy Rowles, Barney Kessel.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

17. For Musicians Only,Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie & Sonny Stitt (Verve)

I had not heard of this album, but the lineup was so intriguing I had to find it and listen to it. Not surprising it’s from Verve: this is the kind of all-star blowing session that probably no one but Norman Granz could pull together. It’s very much a Gillespie session,with two giants of jazz taking their cues from the master.

I thought I’d read this in Geoff Dyer’s But Beautiful, but I can't find it there, so it’s either an original thought (unlikely) or I owe it to someone else. Aficionados of other human enterprises can exercise their imaginations, thinking of what ifs: What about an outfield of Willie Mays, Babe Ruth and Ichiro? What if Beethoven could conduct Yo Yo Ma in the cello and piano sonatas?

In jazz, we don’t have to wonder. What if Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie were to play together? They did, even after Louis trashed beboppers in his parody of the Whiffenpoof Song. What would it have been like if you could have put Satch together with Ella Fitzgerald? We know, don’t we? Lionel Hampton and Stan Getz? Lester Young and Charlie Parker?

We have Norman Granz to thank for that last pairing, in his Jazz at the Philharmonic. And thanks for this one, too, Norman.

18. But Not for Me: Ahmad Jamal Trio at the Pershing (Argo)

Always a huge popular success, gradually a critical success with a strong boost from Miles Davis. Jamal and his trio were the house band at the Pershing Hotel in Chicago, and they recorded for Argo, the jazz subsidiary of the Chicago label Chess Records.

21. The Cooker, Lee Morgan (Blue Note)

Lee Morgan was 19, and had already recorded six albums, and had appeared on John Coltrane’s Blue Train just two weeks before.

22. Soulville, The Ben Webster Quintet (Verve)

You know, even before looking it up, that this has to be a Verve session. Again, another what if? made real through the magic of jazz. Webster with Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown and Stan Levey. One of my most treasured vinyl albums is a 1972 BenWebster recording with Tete Montoliu, Did You Call?  Which is another one of those only-in-jazz pairings, across styles and generations and continents.

Webster would die in 1973.

23. Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book (Verve)

24. Sonny Clark Trio (Blue Note)

26. Basie, Count Basie and His Orchestra + Neal Hefti Arrangements (Roulette)

27. Time Waits: The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 4 (Blue Note)

A couple of notes here. First, on the interesting and inscrutable RYM algorithm. Powell beats out Basie on the star-rating average, 3.88 to 3.79, but Basie has over 1000 ratings, Powell under 150. So by next week, these positions could be reversed, or Powell could be somewhere completely different. That’s interesting for a number of different reasons, principal among them that none of this matters. Count Basie had the 26th best album of 1958, and Bud Powell had the 27th best—as of the end of 2017? But by the beginning of 2018 that could change? Of course not. It means that in 2017 and 2018, people are still listening to these great jazz masters. And that a newer fan, running across this list, might go out and listen to both of them.

Also of interest. By 1958, Powell was already, in the eyes of most in the jazz world, in the grip of an irreversible decline. Contemporary Down Beat voters don’t vote him into the top ten, although he was still working and still recording. But looking back through the prism of time, just as listeners are still finding value in late Billie Holiday, they’re finding value in late Bud Powell. And not undeserved.

28. Newport 1958, Mahalia Jackson (Columbia)

No one really knew what to do with Mahalia Jackson back in1958. Everyone thought she would have been a great jazz singer, or a great blues singer, or even a great pop singer, but she would not sing anything except gospel, with anything except gospel instrumentation and arrangements. So she’s voted in on the strength of the awe she was held in, deservedly, in spite of the fact that she did not sing with jazz musicians. And other singers who did sing with jazz musicians don’t make the cut. Like Ruth Brown or LaVern Baker. Or lesser known fine singers like Varetta Dillard or Faye Adams. Because they were rhythm and blues singers, and everyone knows that’s not jazz.

29. Ray Charles at Newport (Atlantic)

If Ray Charles didn't sufficiently blur the lines between what people called jazz and what people called rhythm and blues, no wonder it was considered a hopeless cause, if anyone even bothered to call it a cause at all.

30. The Art Tatum - Ben Webster Quartet (Verve)

32. Volume IV, The Ahmad Jamal Trio (Argo)

33. A Night in Tunisia, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (RCA)

This was released on both the RCA Victor subsidiary Vik and on RCA. Blakey recorded for everyone, indie and major alike. In 1957-58 alone, he had recording sessions for Columbia, Blue Note (4 sessions), Elektra, Vik (2), RCA Bluebird (2), Cadet, Jubilee, Atlantic, Bethlehem, and the European labels Calliope, Jazzband, Fontana (3), Solar, and French RCA. And that doesn't count the recording sessions with Milt Jackson, Hank Mobley (2), Jimmy Smith (6), Clifford Jordan/John Gilmore,Johnny Griffin, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk (2), Cannonball Adderley (2), Tina Brooks, Gil Evans (3), and Kenny Burrell.

35. LaVern Baker Sings Bessie Smith (Atlantic)

The jazz establishment may not have recognized that LaVern Baker and Ruth Brown were jazz singers, but they surely did, and the Ertegun brothers of Atlantic Records surely did. Here are the musicians with Baker for this session: Buck Clayton trumpet), Jimmy Cleveland, Urbie Green, Vic Dickenson (trombone),  Paul Quinichette (tenor sax), Jerome Richardson, Sahib Shihab (baritone sax), Danny Barker (guitar), Nat Pierce (piano), Wendell Marshall (bass), Joe Marshall (drums), arrangements by Ernie Wilkins, Nat Pierce, Phil Moore.

36. I'm Jimmy Reed (VeeJay)

Robert Frost wrote that

 ...though there is no fixed line between wrong and right,
There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed. 

And we're pretty much stuck with that truth. The horn-based rhythm and blues of the two coasts, coming from Memphis and the urban centers of the South, is jazz, the guitar-based blues of Chicago and Detroit, coming from the Delta, isn't. So Jimmy Reed is really on the outside of this list. But there is a larger zone: the Great American Century in music, all of it with its roots in the blues. And if establishment America owes reparations to the black community for anything, surely it starts here.

 

37. Sonny's Crib, Sonny Clark (Blue Note)

38. Duets, Dizzy Gillespie with Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt (Verve)

Another fascinating and new to me collaboration between Dizzy and some of the finest jazz players around. But there is probably no year across five decades that would not find Dizzy Gillespie at the center of some of the most interesting music being made.

39. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk (Atlantic)

40. The Congregation, Johnny Griffin (Blue Note)

There you have it. A pretty good cross section of the jazz that was being played and recorded in 1958. RYM's list is 500 deep, and leafing through it is a guide to the Big Picture. 

Other musicians whose output got mention: Gerry Mulligan, Louis Smith, Max Roach, Ornette Coleman,  Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Cal Tjader, Red Garland, Nat "King" Cole, Benny Carter, Hampton Hawes, Barney Kessel, Shelly Manne, Red Mitchell, J. J. Johnson, Dave Brubeck, Gene Ammons, Clark Terry, Blossom Dearie, Chet Baker, Julie London, Horace Silver, Sam Cooke, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, Little Willie John, Sarah Vaughan, Dorothy Ashby, Tito Puente, Anita O'Day, Lou Donaldson, Blue Mitchell, Charles Mingus, Johnny Hodges, Yusef Lateef, King Pleasure, Modern Jazz Quartet, Allen Toussaint, Chris Connor, Barney Wilen, Steve Lacy, Peggy Lee, Jackie Wllson, Kenny Drew, Coleman Hawkins, Paul Gonsalves, Dinah Washington, Perez Prado, Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Giuffre, Mal Waldron, Harold Land Bob Cooper, Jimmy Raney, Machito, Bennie Green, Sabu, Eddie Costa, Fats Domino, Mose Allison, Benny Golson, Pepper Adams, Louis Prima, Roy Eldridge, Harry Edison, Anne Phillips, Dexter Gordon, Stephane Grappelli, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Beverley Kenney, Harry Belafonte, Frank Rosolino, Tiny Grimes, Erroll Garner, Jack Costanzo, Kenny Dorham, Abbey Lincoln, Donald Byrd, Dakota Staton, Peggy Lee, Philly Joe Jones, Kenneth Patchen, Mel Torme, Leroy Vinnegar, Wilbur Harden, Marty Paich, Louis Bellson, Gigi Gryce, Nat Adderley, Phineas Newborn, June Christy, Johnny Mandel, Wilbur Ware, Warne Marsh, PeeWee Russell, Herbie Mann, Bobby Jaspar, Laurindo Almeida, Bud Shank, Andre Previn, Sue Raney, Jonah Jones, Conte Candoli, Jean Thielemans, Woody Herman, Curtis Fuller, Al Hirt, Betty Carter, Jeri Southern, Billy Eckstine, John Jenkins, George Wallington, Ernie Henry, Tiny Grimes, J. C. Higginbotham, Lee Allen, Paul Bley, Stan Kenton, the Four Freshmen, Buddy DeFranco, Cootie Williams, Johnny Otis, George Shearing, the Hi-Los, Tal Farlow, Jimmy Rushing, Charlie Mariano, Phil Woods, Rosemary Clooney, Carmen McRae, Ernie Henry, Joe Houston, Charlie Byrd, Terry Gibbs, Candido, Hal McKusick, Ken Nordine, Morgana King, Shorty Rogers. A good year for jazz.

On to 1959!