Listening to Prestige 515: John Wright

LISTEN TO ONE: Les I Can't

 John Wright is back in the Big Apple (more precisely, Englewood Cliffs) from his home on the South Side of Chicago for one more session with Prestige, his fourth of five, although it would be the last released, bringing one of his South Side soul regulars with him--drummer Walter McCants--and picking up some Detroit-to-New York soul with Gene Taylor, then working regularly as Horace Silver's bassist.

Wright's recording career was almost nonexistent outside of these five Prestige albums. He made one other recording for a small independent label 30 years later. Prestige brought him in to play piano on a recording by blues singer Arbee Stidham, where he transformed Brownie McGhee's folk blues "Pawnshop Blues"

into a jazz gem, but there's nothing at all beyond those. Unfortunately, the answer is that most of those intervening years were spent inside a bottle. Prestige "had big plans for me," he told an interviewer years later. "But my choice of getting high was whiskey, and that was my downfall."

When he finally did escape from that whiskey trap, he stayed at home in Chicago, where he began what became a Chicago tradition -- the Wright Gathering. First organized in his home in suburban Chicago, it featured his music and the cooking of his third wife Evelyn, who would prepare the whole year for it, cooking and freezing food for the big day. When Evelyn died in 2007, he thought that would be the end of the Wright Gatherings, but friends and admirers took over the cooking and organizing, and the now-popular event was moved to a nearby park.

Prestige had Red Garland, whose trio and solo albums were popular, but he was winding up his time with the label, and perhaps they hoped Wright would fill that slot. He certainly could have, had it not been for the booze. He was a wonderful musician. This session is a mixture of originals and standard ballads. The standards -- "Stella by Starlight," "But Beautiful," "More Than You Know," "Be My Love," "'Deed I Do," are all particularly beautiful melodies, given just enough of a blues treatment to reincarnate them in Wright's image. Wright has a way of playing, and of getting into a number, that gives one the feeling of a man completely in that moment, and giving his all to it. 

For me, this feeling comes across most powerfully in one of his originals, "Les I Can't." I don't know what the title refers to. A tribute to Les McCann? But McCann was on the West Coast, just getting started, hardly a household name yet. Sammy Davis Jr.? But that phrase would not be associated with the singer for another few years. It doesn't matter. John Wright can, and he does.

Wright would record one more album for Prestige, but this would be the last one released, being held in the can until 1965, by which time Wright was all but forgotten, so one suspects it didn't get heard much. If not, that's a shame. Listen to this one. It'll enrich your soul and your concept of soul jazz. Esmond Edwards produced, and the 1965 release was on New Jazz.