Listening to Prestige 534: Sonny Stitt-Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: 'Nother Fu'ther

 Sonny Stitt joins the organ-saxophone combo brigade. He had actually made one such record before: a live album at Chicago's Mckie's DJ Lounge,   one of the last clubs standing as Chicago, by the 1960s, was losing its luster as one of the nation's jazz hot spots.  That recording, for Chicago-based Argo Records, utilized a group of local musicians, including organist Eddie Buster.  

This session brings Stitt together with one of the leading lights of the new organ combo soul jazz movement, and it's interesting to compare the two albums. Stitt was used to touring alone, and picking up groups of musicians in

the cities he visited, as with the Chicagoans on At the D. J. Lounge. Those musicians, whether just playing for the club audience or knowing they were to be recorded, knew that the people in the club had gotten dressed up and come out and paid money to hear Sonny Stitt. This was still a bullish era for jazz in Chicago--Mr. Kelly's was still thriving, and the Regal Theater--and there were first rate jazz musicians available. Eddie Buster's organ playing is excellent, and adds an unusual and satisfying texture to Stitt's bebop.

Playing with McDuff is a little different, but in a way not so different. In this case the city is New York, the mecca of jazz. Sonny Stitt is a stalwart veteran of Prestige's catalog (14 appearances before this one), but Jack McDuff is one of its hottest young stars. But still, it's Stitt coming to town and playing with a group of locals.

And in a way, the effect is comparable. More than is the case with a lot of the organ-saxophone combos, this is a Sonny Stitt session. 

Jazz is a music of innovation, and it's easy to think of it as in an almost constant, churning state of out with the old, in with the new, but that's not exactly the way it is. Certainly change is a constant, and "in with the new" will always be the watchword, though not without resistance -- think of Charlie Parker in his day, Ornette Coleman in his. Or the commercial rejection of Miles Davis's nonet sessions that became Birth of the Cool. But that didn't necessarily mean out with the old, which is why jazz careers, health permitting, could last a long time, and Garvin Bushell could play with Bunk Johnson and Fletcher Henderson, and later with John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy.

And it 's why there are not always clear dividing lines. It's why, in the 1950s, we heard swing-to-bop from players like Zoot Sims and Coleman Hawkins. And now, in 1962, are we hearing something similar, with Sonny Stitt going bop-to-funk? You can certainly hear it "Pam Ain't Blue," where Stitt's bebop rides easily along with McDuff's funk, and even more in "'Nother Fu'ther," which seems to capture the essence of bop-to-funk. All of the original compositions on this session are by Stitt, but they're geared to this blend of styles, and one of them, "Ringin' In," is really McDuff's number, and he makes the most of it. The three ballads are very much in Stitt's wheelhouse, with Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne's "Time after Time" getting a particularly beautiful reading.

That producer Esmond Edwards did not intend this to be strictly a jazz funk session is reflected in his choice of sidemen. McDuff regular Eddie Diehl is on guitar, but veterans Art Taylor and Ray Barretto provide the percussion, and they are the right men for the job.

I wondered if all of this added up to an album that would be more to the taste of the real jazz fan than the young crowd hopping on the funk jazz bandwagon. And I meant that to sound as snobbish as it does, when I prepared to write it, but as I got it down, I was changing my mind. Not everyone has to be totally committed to the pure soul of music. There's nothing wrong with being young, and wanting to dance, and caught up in the "what's happening now" spirit of the times. And if that zeitgeist is created at the fingertips of Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott, Jack McDuff, all the better. Besides, the popular jazz of an era--funk, swing, Peter Gunn--can be a gateway drug, and of the young cats and kitties who pick this up for the organ groove, at least some of them will stay for the complexities of a Sonny Stitt improvisation. For the rest...you're only young once. God bless 'em.

The album was called Stitt Meets Brother Jack, and it was also released--presumably at the same time, with the same album number--as 'Nother Fu'ther, which was also the first single off the album, divided onto two sides of 45 RPM release. Also on 45 were "Pam Ain't Blue" / "Ringin' In," and "Thirty Three Ninety Six," parts 1 and 2.

Listening to Prestige 533: King Curtis

 

There's a lot to be said for the thought behind this King Curtis session, but not much to say about it. Take a collection of really familiar chestnuts and give them the King Curtis treatment: the stuttering tenor sax, the red hot rhythm and blues combo, here augmented by Ellington veteran Britt Woodman, which can't be anything but good news. Also joining the group is Carl Lynch, one of the best session guitarists in New York, with mega-credits extending from Pearl Bailey to the Fugs.

This was a gambit frequently used by 1950s rock-and-rollers. Take a song that everybody knows, because everyone sang it in their grade school music classes, and give it a Duane Eddy twangy guitar treatment, and you have "Red River Rock," by Johnny and the Hurricanes. Or take something equally familiar--a Stephen Foster song--and if you're a genius, like Ray Charles, you can turn it into "Swanee River Rock." Or if you're a gifted satirist, like Stan Freberg, you can turn it into "Rock Around Steven Foster." Fast forward to the 1970s, and they're still doing it, with equally familiar, if more classical, sources: Walter Murphy's "A Fifth of Beethoven."

King Curtis and his band are not geniuses like Ray Charles; they are, however, better musicians than Johnny and the Hurricanes, and if they aren't exactly the satirists that Stan Freberg is, they do approach these old chestnuts with a sense of humor. They did the old chestnuts about as well as you could ask for. This isn't an album that's lasted, and that's kinda too bad. It's fun to listen to.

The Tru-Sound album is called Doin' the Dixie Twist. Twist, I guess, because if you stuck "twist" on any any collection of rhythm and bluesy instrumentals, you had a chance of selling a few more copies in those days, so they were definitely not shy about getting the word out there. Dixie, I guess, because a lot of the songs are associated with the South, or because they're associated with Dixieland jazz. That crown jewel of all Dixieland chestnuts, "When the Saints Go Marchin' In," became a Tru-Sound 45, along with "Free for All," from the King's January session.

Listening to Prestige 532: Etta Jones

LISTEN TO ONE: Just Friends

 

LISTEN TO ONE: The Masquerade is Over

Etta Jones probably hit her peak of popularity with Don't Go to Strangers and Something Nice. Scott Yanow, in his review on AllMusic, describes this album as "a too-long-forgotten gem," and Jones herself could easily be described that way. She doesn't make UDiscover.com's list of the 25 greatest female jazz singers, compiled by critic Charles Waring representing a younger generation (although Etta James and Norah Jones do). The voters for Ranker.com, who I suspect are mostly younger, have her at number 24 on the day I checked (this is an ongoing vote, and can change), just ahead of Norah Jones, but considerably behind Etta James. Fortunately, she continued to work, and record companies continued to want her musical stylings, right in the mainstream of vocal jazz and always rewarding. She would do four more recording sessions with Prestige, and she would continue to tour, and perform, and record, her last session (a tribute to Billie Holiday) coming just months before her death from cancer in 2007;

Oliver Nelson was back again with her, arranging two different sessions on two days, the first with strings and the second with horns.

The rhythm section was the same for both dates. Pianist Lloyd Mayers had worked one previous Prestige session, in 1956 with Bennie Green; he would become, in 1981, the pianist and musical director for the Duke (by then Mercer) Ellington Orchestra for the Broadway musical Sophisticated Ladies. Wally Richardson had become an active Prestige participant, appearing with vocalist Betty Roché and with several instrumentalists, most recently Johnny "Hammond" Smith just a couple of weeks prior to the Jones date.  Bob Bushnell brought his bass to a King Curtis session in 1961, but as the decade rolled on he would figure in many more Prestige sessions. And drummer Ed Shaughnessy played across a wide spectrum of jazz groups and styles, before settling into the solid payday of Doc Severinsen's Tonight Show Orchestra.

The string section on day one is unidentified; the horn players of the second day are all Oliver Nelson veterans.

The songs are standards, and they justify the album's title. The sardonic "Makin' Whoopee" doesn't

exactly come from the heart, and it's not Jones's most effective outing, although it's still a pleasure to listen to. "You Came a Long Way From St. Louis," by John Benson Brooks and Bob Russell, also has a wry comic touch, but the wryness is mixed with warmth, and that's more in Jones's comfort zone.

Of particular interest is listening to Oliver Nelson arranging for the same singer, on successive days, with strikingly different instrumentation. Of the songs with strings, I was particularly struck by "Just Friends," a standard that's perhaps best defined by Charlie Parker, also with strings, but has been done by many vocalists. Oliver Nelson gives it a particularly arresting arrangement, starting with a sort of "Wagon Wheels" clippety clop opening, that then gets swallowed up by lush strings. 

For the larger group of songs with horns, it was hard to choose, but I think I'll go with "I'm Afraid the Masquerade is Over," a song that's been done by both Ettas, Jones and James, as well as singers from Sarah to Aretha. The definitive male version is probably George Benson's, and the Cleftones gave it a doowop spin. It's a song that allows for a lot of individuality in interpretation, and Jones and Nelson put their stamp on it, for sure.

From the Heart was a Prestige release, Esmond Edwards producing. "You Came a Long Way from St. Louis" was the 45 RPM single, with "Just Friends" on the flip side.

Listening to Prestige 531: Lightnin' Hopkins

LISTEN TO ONE: T Model Blues

 In his liner notes to this album, Mack McCormick notes that 

In a brief three years Lightnin Hopkins has become an international celebrity who receives fan mail from England, Australia, Sweden and Germany. A cascade of recordings, night club, concert and TV appearances have brought him to a glare of limelight of a kind accorded few blues singers.

That fame would date from 1959, when Hopkins was discovered by both McCormick and Samuel Charters. Charters recorded him on January 16, 1959, on a home tape recorder, one mike, in a furnished room in Houston, for Folkways. McCormick followed on February 16 and 26, with the same sort of basic equipment. His recording was released on Tradition, a folk music label started by Patrick Clancy of the Irish folk group the Clancy Brothers, along with Kenneth S. Goldstein, who would later run the Bluesville label for Prestige.

Hopkins, of course, had had a long recording history before being discovered by Charters and McCormick. going back to the 1940s and rhythm and blues labels like Aladdin, Modern, Harlem and Herald. Both Charters and McCormick had the idea of stripping the R&B commercialization from Hopkins, and having him sing the old-style Texas blues he learned from his cousin Texas Alexander and Blind Lemon Jefferson.

It was the right time and right approach for Hopkins, coming at the beginning of the blues revival of the 1960s, although McCormick may have been overstating the case for his celebrity by a bit. He may have gotten fan mail from England, Australia, Sweden and Germany, but Black musicians in America were still not getting the acclaim and adulation that went to Bobby Vinton or Connie Francis--and that's not even mentioning the white tsunami that is just a year away from sweeping in from Britain.

This is Hopkins's fifth album for Prestige, and by no means his last, so I'll digress a little and talk about Mack McCormick's liner notes, probably the strangest I've ever seen, 

McCormick could have been a real prototype for the Beat Generation, except that he spent most of his life on the byways of Texas and didn't cross paths with Kerouac and Ginsberg and that crew. A high school dropout, carnival worker, jazz buff, rambler, he stopped into a music store in New Orleans one day in 1946, got into a conversation with the store owner, who was compiling a jazz discography, and was hired on the spot to be its Texas editor. That brought him to Texas and Texas folklore, and the unearthing of many Texas bluesmen, most notably Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb.

But perhaps Hopkins was not sufficiently grateful? There's an undertone in the paragraph quoted above that Hopkins might not deserve all the acclaim, and that note becomes more strident as McCormick goes on: "In acknowledgement of my own position as mentor and monster-maker, I am continually asked, 'Has he changed much?'"

 McCormick hastens to let us know that he's not the one criticizing Hopkins, but "in the minds of some critics...college and coffee house crowds have corrupted him."

And McCormick goes on to deliver his verdict--Hopkins didn't even need "Hollywood night clubs, Harvard University and the State of New Jersey" to become corrupt. He has always been "consumed by self-pity and everlastingly trying to persuade the world that it is his valet."

I don't want to denigrate McCormick, whose contributions as a folklorist were enormous, but he certainly seems to have been caught in a mood when asked, probably by Kenny Goldstein, to write these liner notes. And he was very much a product of his time, a time marked, even for people with social and artistic consciences, with a heavy overlay of white privilege.

Does Lightnin' even have a right to sing the blues? His songs may "reflect the mistreatment which has been and, in lesser degree [white privilege creeping in] is the condition of Negro life. But...Lightnin' is not in any real sense subject to it in the way his neighbors are."

McCormick ticks off a few of the advantages that disqualify Hopkins from a right to sing the blues, including being "pursued by women of two races."

Hopkins, McCormick believes, is "free to exercise all but a fraction of the rights of first class cltizenship [but] nevertheless maintains he is victimized from all sides. He sees injustice in the fact that the police continually arrest him for drunk driving" (try explaining that to the families of Michael Brown or Taylor)...He goes to astonishing lengths to maintain himself in a pathetic, blues-producing state."

Lightnin' Hopkins had a right to sing the blues. He had a right to make a little money doing it, and the longevity of his career--he may have made more recordings than any other blues singer--is a tribute to the amount of work and dedication he put into his art form. Many blues singers of the twenties, many rhythm and blues and rock and roll and country and western singers of the 1940s, 1950s and on up, only made a handful of records, were "one-hit wonders," because they really only had one great song in them. This is, in itself, a heroic accomplishment. Most of us don't even have one great work of art in in us. But it puts Lightnin' Hopkins long history of accomplishment into perspective.

Smokes Like Lightning was produced by MeCormick, and he did a creditable job, this time in a professional recording studio (ACA Studios in Houston). McCormick produced a second session in February, which included three songs that filled out this album and enough material for a second album, Walkin' this Road by Myself. The latter session was actually released first, in 1962 (Smokes Like Lightning came out in 1963), so its liner notes found McCormick in a more positive frame of mind. 

The album  was a Bluesville release. "T-Model Blues" and "You Cook All Right" were released as a 45 RPM single on Prestige.