Listening to Prestige 621: Sonny Stitt

LISTEN TO ONE: Shangri-La

 Two 45 RPM singles were released off this session: "My New Baby" / "Misty" and "Shangri-La" / "Soul Shack," the last-named actually coming from a different Stitt-organ session, that one with Jack McDuff from 1963. I hope they got a their share of radio play and jukebox spins, because they're super-listenable, the kind of music that could have made some listeners want to hear more jazz. It's interesting that they didn't put out a 45 of "Mama Don't Allow," the ever-popular warhorse attributed to Cow Cow Davenport, which features a vocal by Stitt as well as a killer tenor sax solo and a crowd-pleasing drum solo by Billy James.

If that all adds up to something that sounds like a commercial venture, rest assured that I do not mean this in any way as a put-down. Some of America's greatest music was made for the masses, and while it's important to encourage experimentation, and give voice to the people who are ahead of the curve, there's nothing wrong with giving the people what they want, especially if it's a master like Sonny Stitt serving it up.

Prestige was getting ready to break Don Patterson out as its next big organ star. He and Billy James, along with guitarist Paul Weeden, had been working as a trio mostly in Chicago when they were hired to back up Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis on a 1973 Prestige session. Here, although Stitt got top billing, Patterson was also featured on the cover, preparing him for his next session, in two months' time, when he would be the session leader, he'd have Booker Ervin alongside him, and the album would be titled The Exciting New Organ of Don Patterson.

The marketing campaign apparently worked, because Patterson became one of Prestige's top talents for the next several years.

Good for Prestige, good for Patterson. If this album was part of the strategy, good for it. And good for the listener, too, that casual listener who might have heard a cut on Listening to Lacy and then plunked a nickel into the jukebox to hear it again, and the serious jazz fan for whom good music is always welcome.

I'm sure if you were playing--or even working as a server--in a lounge six nights a week, you could get pretty sick of "Misty" -- and a few other tunes. But as a music lover who listens to a lotta this and a lotta that, it's a familiar melody, and it's possible to appreciate that it's as familiar as it is because it's a beautiful melody, and when you have Sonny Stitt playing it, and improvising on it, it becomes a treat for the ears. The other offering from the standard catalog, not nearly as familiar, is "Shangri-La," written in 1946 by Matty Malnick and first introduced by his orchestra. It was a minor hit in 1957 for the Four Coins, one of those "safe to listen to, we're not rock and roll" groups that still hung onto the Top Forty in those days. While it's been widely recorded over the years, it's been mostly by groups whose sound is more at home in elevators than smoky basements. But it provides a good vehicle for Stitt and Patterson to blend their sound, and makes a good introduction to Patterson.

There are three Stitt originals on the album, all good listening, and two more that were recorded on the session and released later, along with some cuts from Patterson's May session with Booker Ervin, under the title Patterson's People: Don Patterson with Sonny Stitt and Booker Ervin. 

Shangri-La was the title of this Prestige release. Ozzie Cadena produced.