Listening to Prestige 360: Joe Newman

Swingville has done pretty well with recruiting Basie musicians and alumni, and why not? If there's a more swinging ensemble anywhere. I'd like to see it. Joe Newman had been with Basie on and off since 1943. Frank Wess and Eddie Jones were part of that 1950s ensemble which achieved popularity but not much critical acclaim (a shadow of its former Lester Young-dominated self, playing outdated music) but has since been recognized for the sterling aggregation that it was. Oliver Jackson never played in a Basie band, but surely this was an oversight. With credentials including  the Metropole, Teddy Wilson, Charlie

Shavers, Buck Clayton, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Earl Hines, Budd Johnson, Sy Oliver, he would have been right at home with Basie.

If you're  going to put together a group of Basie sidemen doing an outside gig, you're not going to have the Count at the piano, and if you're not going to get Count 1.1 Nat Pierce, as other Count's Men groups have done, then Tommy Flanagan is not a bad choice at all. Though a thoroughgoing Detroit bebopper, he's from that generation of piano players whose earliest influences were Art Tatum, Nat "King" Cole and Teddy Wilson, and he would go on to spend several years as Ella Fitzgerald.

Newman and his group are certainly not trying to escape their Basie association. The songs are all from the Basie repertoire, two of them ("Jive at Five" and "Taps Miller") composed by the Count himself, or else bluesy originals by Newman that would fit right into Basie's wheelhouse. But a quintet is going to be a lot different from the Basie big band, and although you can hear Basie in their individual voices, especially Joe Newman's, and Wess and Newman playing together can create a big sound, you hear a lot more than that. The soloists, with room to stretch out ("Taps Miller" is over eight minutes, "Wednesday's Blues" more than nine) move very naturally into that swing-to-bop territory, and especially on the Newman originals, all of them give some very interesting interpretations of the blues.

The Swingville album is titled Jive at Five.

Look for Listening to Prestige Volume 3: 1957-58 on Amazon!