Listening to Prestige 551: Latin Jazz Quintet

LISTEN TO ONE: Dorian

 This was the last Prestige album for Juan Amalbert and the Latin Jazz Quintet, and very near to the end of Tru-Sound Records. It featured Bobby Capers and Bill Ellington, but otherwise a different lineup for this ever-shifting group. Manny Ramos, who played on the Eric Dolphy and Shirley Scott sessions, returns. New on board are vibraphonist Willie Bivens, pianist Willie Gardner, and percussionist Victor Allende.

Bivens, whose father was also William Bivens and also a vibist with swing bands in the 1940s, would go on to play with Pucho and the Latin Soul Brothers. a late 1960s group that recorded for Prestige and merits a footnote in jazz history as the group where Chick Corea got his start. Bivens also was part of one Grant Green album for Blue Note.

Victor Allende played with other Latin groups, and on a couple of Prestige albums later in the decade--one with Willis Jackson, and the other with George Braith, and album that would become a cult favorite.

It's hard to chart Willie Gardner's career. He seems to have recorded with Johnny Hodges in 1968. Beyond that, it gets murky. There are a number of credits for pianist/organist Billy Gardner, but it's not at all clear whether they're the same person. In most sources, they seem to be divided. Billy Gardner is credited on Allmusic.com as recording with Dave Bailey, George Braith, Charlie Rouse and others, but not with Hodges or Amalbert, so that would suggest two different artists. On the other hand, though the personnel list on the album credits Willie Gardner, Billy Taylor, in his liner notes, calls him Billy.  

Amalbert's Latin Jazz Quintet was very much a jazz ensemble. Taylor describes him as:

...multilingual verbally as well as musically, [so] he has an unusually large heritage of rich, expressive and exciting sounds and rhythms to choose from. By carefully selecting musicians whose talents he admires and whose feelings are compatible with his own, the energetic leader of the LJQ has blended what he considers the best musical elements of the North and South American musical traditions and emerged with his own conception of "Latin Jazz."

Amalbert and Ellington appeared with Pharaoh Sanders on an extremely obscure album called Oh! Pharaoh Speak, which was credited to The Latin Jazz Quintet - Featured Guest Artist Pharoah Sanders - Under The Direction Of Juan Amalbért. There was a second collaboration between the LJQ and Eric Dolphy, but this one was without Amalbert. 

The Tru-Sound release was entitled The Chant, and the group was credited as Juan Amalbert's Latin Jazz Quintet  Esmond Edwards produced.

Listening to Prestige 419: Latin Jazz Quintet

The Latin Jazz Quintet appears not to have been locked into the idea of a set lineup, not even within the same session:two different piano players are used here. And they appear not to have been locked into the notion that a quintet should have five members: Here there six, or seven if you count both piano players. There was a great rhythm and blues/doo wop group of this same era named the "5" Royales, and they, too, were not exactly committed to the idea of being limited to five members, so maybe these guys should have called themselves the Latin Jazz "Quintet," but so it goes. Conguero Juan Amalbert and bassist Bill Ellington, at least so far, seem to be the only constants, appearing on their earlier recordings with Shirley Scott and Eric Dolphy.

Alto sax player Bobby Capers was part of Mongo Santamaria's band, where he played both alto and baritone. His younger sister, pianist Valerie, came onto the scene as a pianist later in the decade, and put together a substantial career. Will Coleman, Bill Ellington and Jose Ricci seem not to have recorded beyond the Latin Jazz Quintet, and I can find no further information about them.

Ernest Phil Newsom was better known, to the extent that he was known at all, as Phil Newsum. And within the confines of the Bronx, he was quite well known. Although he and other Latin music-loving African- Americans met with resistance from some in the Latino community, they became very much a part of the Bronx Latin music scene (the lineup of the Latin Jazz Quintet is evidence of that), and it was a vibrant and thriving musical hot spot. “There was all this intermingling of musicians,” Newsum told an interviewer for the Bronx Historical Society. “I don’t think African-Americans are as involved with this now.” African American and Puerto Rican singers came together in Harlem, too, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers were the result. An amazing treasure trove of oral histories of Black and Latin music in the Bronx can be found at Fordham University's Bronx African American History Project. Newsum also recorded with Sabu Martinez.

Two of the hottest spots for Bronx Latin jazz were club 845, at 845 Prospect Street in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, and the Blue Morocco on Boston Road. A New York Times article by Manny Fernandez, recalls a

Sunday afternoon in March 1946, [when] you could have stepped into Club 845 -- admission $1.25, plus tax -- and danced to a goateed, bespectacled trumpet player named Dizzy Gillespie.

And later, in the late 1950s, the Latin Jazz Quintet's Arthur Jenkins played piano at the Blue Morocco, accompanying two African American singers--first Irene Reid, who had already made a solid name for herself but had not cracked the supper club big time of Ella Fitzgerald. The Blue Morocco's second chanteuse of the era was Nancy Wilson, who was discovered there.

The one breakout career from the Latin Jazz Quintet belonged to Arthur Jenkins, who made his recording debut here on one track (which ended up on the cutting room floor), but who was the full time piano man when the six-man quintet next gathered in May of 1961. After his stint at the Blue Morocco, and his recording debut with Amalbert, Jenkins went on to a career that touched a lot of bases. He spent nine years with pop-reggae-soul star Johnny Nash, and while working with him in Jamaica, also participated in recording Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.  He recorded, toured with, and arranged music for Harry Belafonte. He had a hand in hit recordings in the disco field (Van McCoy's "The Hustle") and cool jazz (Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, Grover Washington Jr. and Bill Withers).

And as a result of being recruited to work on Yoko Ono's album Feeling the Space, he came to the attention of John Lennon. He played on Lennon's Mind Games album and on all his subsequent projects.

He worked in the Broadway theater, on commercials, and made two solo albums of jazz keyboards, which are worth a listen if you can find them. I love running across these stories of the under-the-radar lives in the music business.

The session included two originals (by Amalbert? not sure). two pop standards ("Summertime" and "Blue Moon") and two jazz standards ("Red Top" and "Round Midnight"). They're very percussion-focused, with Will Coleman's vibes the chief melody instrument. Bobby Capers's alto sax is much more sparingly used.

This and a subsequent Latin Jazz Quintet session each became part of two LPs--one on Prestige entitled Latin Soul, and the other on a short-lived Prestige budget imprint, Tru-Sound. That one was called Hot Sauce and the ensemble was billed as Juan Amalbert's Latin Jazz Quintet.

Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon.

And Vol. 4 is very close to completion. Watch for it!

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs