Listening to Prestige 704: Bobby Timmons and Don Patterson

LISTEN TO ONE: White Christmas

LISTEN TO ONE: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

 A Christmas album! From Prestige!

Yes, it's true.

It's more than true. There are two of them. Bobby Timmons, and then Don Patterson, leading their respective trios through a more or less conventional mix of traditional carols and Christmas pop songs. Fortunately, it was 1964, so most of the really awful Christmas pop songs hadn't been written yet, and Bobby and producer Ozzie Cadena know enough to stay away from "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," "Jingle Bell Rock" and "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree," at least with Timmons. By the time Ozzie got to Patterson, on the next day, he did let "Rudolph" slip in. Both Timmons and Patterson do, however, essay "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

There are two reasons for buying an album of Christmas songs. One, there's a choir singing the songs so you can sing along with them, a beat behind if you don't remember

the words. Two, they're all or mostly instrumental, so you can have them as background music while you're trimming the tree, wrapping presents, or trying to seduce the receptionist from the accounting department, If you're Mantovani or the Melachrino Strings, you're playing the melody pretty straight through, so that people can sing along. If you're a jazz group, you're going to be improvising, but staying close enough to the melody that people remember what it is that you're playing.

There's probably a third. You hate Christmas music, and would rather just be listening to some good jazz, but your spouse, or your boss, or somebody, insists that you pick up a Christmas album to play at the office party or the tree trimming gathering, so you get something that says "Holiday Soul" on the cover, put it on, dig it quietly until the boss says "What is this shit?" and then you show him the album cover -- "See? It says 'Holiday Soul'!" and then, if you're lucky, Bobby Timmons comes in with the melody to "Deck the Halls," and plays it pretty close to recognizably straight for the last thirty seconds of the cut. This is, of course, if you're at an office party in 1964. Today's young whippersnapper boss probably won't recognize the melody to  "Deck the Halls," and will want to know why Timmons isn't playing "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." Or "White Christmas." Oh, that was "White Christmas"? Where was the melody?

It's not quite that extreme. Well, it is for "White Christmas." For the most part, both Timmons and Patterson do at least allude to the melodies of their Christmas standards, but each allows himself plenty of room to just stretch out and play jazz, and that is something each of them does very satisfactorily.

Well, probably "Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer" was a mistake if you're looking for holiday soul.

Timmons finds considerably more soul in the 16th century Welsh melody of "Deck the Halls" than Patterson does in Johnny Marks's ditty, composed during the bebop era, recorded around the time that Bob Weinstock was lining up Lennie Tristano for Prestige Records' inaugural recording session. Gene Autry didn't want to record "Rudolph," and there's a good chance Don Patterson wasn't a lot more thrilled. 

Still...hey, it's Christmas. And with some good jazz, you can make it through the season. Ozzie Cadena produced both sessions.

Listening to Prestige 596: Booker Ervin

LISTEN TO ONE: Mooche Mooche

 For as long as there has been small group jazz, there have been artists rebelling against its strictures--the "formula" of head-solo-solo-solo-head. Well, it's not a formula, any more than the sonnet or the ballad or the three-act play is a formula. It's a form, and forms persist because they work. They can also be broken, rebelled against, turned inside out, but in a sense that's just a tribute to their durability.

Of course, the reason why the small group, head-solo-solo-solo-head formula works is twofold. First, it works because American music is full of great melodies and great riffs that are a pleasure to play and a pleasure to listen to, and pleasure is at the

heart of all music that lasts. Second, and most important, it works because it gives wonderful musicians a chance to express themselves -- a showcase to be heard in a supportive context, and space to express themselves through tonal quality and improvisational inspiration.

One such wonderful musician who flowered in the 1960s was Booker Ervin. Ervin had burst onto the scene in 1958 in the ensemble of Charles Mingus, with whom he enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship. He had recorded with Mal Waldron and Roy Haynes for Prestige, and with Horace Parlan for Blue Note, and had made three records as leader (for Bethlehem, Savoy and Candid), so he was hardly an unknown quantity when came to Englewood Cliffs for this session, but it was the beginning of his most fertile period, with ten albums for Prestige. 

Prestige in this period was open to a wide range of music, from the free experiments of Eric Dolphy to the soul fundamentalism of Jack McDuff, and the tradition-maintaining sounds of Swingville and Bluesville, but Ervin came perhaps as close as any to the jazz heart of this label. Working with like-minded musicians, he used this premiere performance of his Prestige years to add a new sound to the library of small group masterpieces.

Frank Strozier had the admiration of his peers. Here's tuba virtuoso Howard Johnson:

No one was ever really up to the task of playing with that much technical proficiency, deep harmonic expression and all the while keeping a foot deeply in the blues. For me, Frank is joined by Harry Carney, Benny Golson, Sonny Red and Paul Gonsalves in the league of players who were never imitated because their way was too hard to figure out, much less execute. And at the same time they were as deeply inspirational as some of the widely acknowledged innovators.

He recorded with a wide variety of musicians, but never quite broke through to the level of popularity he deserved. Finally, in the late 1980s, he gave up playing the saxophone and returned to his first instrument, the piano. He never recorded on the piano, but his concerts were well reviewed and appreciated by those who heard them. Then he left music to become a math and science teacher.

Horace Parlan was also a Mingus associate. It was he who first heard Ervin when he came to New York, and recommended him to Mingus, and Ervin played on two records Parlan made as leader for Blue Note. His unique piano style, marked by heavy emphasis on the left hand, was formed by a childhood bout with polio which robbed him of the use of three fingers on his right hand.

I've written about Butch Warren on his one previous Prestige gig, with Walter Bishop Jr. He was much in demand during the early 1960s, but substance abuse and mental health issues caught up with him, and he left the rat race of big time jazz and returned to his home in Washington, DC, where he played but little. 

Walter Perkins began his career in Chicago with Ahmad Jamal, and as leader of his own ensemble MJT+3, which included Frank Strozier. He came to New York in 1962, and immediately became ubiquitous, with several sessions for Prestige alone before signing on for this gig. They included Gene Ammons, Etta Jones, fellow Chicagoan John Wright, and Dave Pike.

I said earlier that the basic small group jazz form has endured because of good musicians and good music. That's in evidence here. Broadway was still yielding up tunes with the feel of standards, such as Jule Styne's "Just in Time," from Broadway (1956) and Hollywood (1960) hit Bells Are Ringing. Fats Waller was the source for "Black and Blue." The others were originals from either Ervin ("Mooche Mooche" and "Tune In") or Perkins ("Mour," which Ervin liked enough to record again for Blue Note), or the two of them together ("No Man's Land"). All good stuff, but I've chosen "Mooche Mooche" as our "Listen to One" for sustained excitement and top notch solos from all concerned.

Exultation! was the title of the Prestige album. Short versions of "Just in Time" and "No Man's Land" were issued as a 45 RPM single, and later added to a 1971 re-release. Don Schlitten produced.

Listening to Prestige 546: Walter Bishop Jr.

LISTEN TO ONE: The Bishop Moves

 This is a fascinating and nearly unclassifiable piano trio outing with a strange and totally unclassifiable parentage. It was originally part of an album on two British labels, Operators and Stateside. The album was called A Pair of "Naturals," and it was a most unnatural pairing indeed: on the one hand, Walter Bishop Jr., known as a bebop pianist; on the other, the Peter Yorke Orchestra featuring the London Strings and the Top Brass of London. Yorke was, as you may have surmised from his billing, a conductor and composer primarily of light classical music, also noted for his orchestrations for dance bands. So

perhaps they got together when Bishop was over in London playing a gig with a dance band? No, they don't seem to have gotten together at all. Yorke's contributions to the album were recorded in London, Bishop's in New York. 

Perhaps a clue in the labels they recorded for? Not much there, either. Operators was a short-lived label that brought out a handful of 45 RPM singles by singers so obscure that I can find no biographical information on them (except one, "Johnny Lindy," only because he gave up singing and became a successful TV producer under his real name). They recorded no other light classical music, no other jazz, and no other LPs. Stateside was more successful, but equally un-oriented toward either light classical or jazz. They basically did the same thing Operators did -- licensing American pop records for British release, but they had quite a few hits, starting with Freddy Cannon's "Palisades Park" and grabbing the early Motown catalog, before Motown established its own British presence.

Peter Yorke had a fine and successful career in Britain, having nothing to do with either jazz or Prestige, but Walter Bishop's contribution, from this and a later session, was eventually brought out by Prestige as The Walter Bishop Trio/1965, although the recordings were made in 1962 and 1963, and the record was released in 1970.

So, nothing more to do but talk about the music itself, and it deserves mention, although I'm not quite sure what to say about it except that it's wonderful. Bishop's main claims to fame are as a bebopper, but this is a long way away from bebop. It's almost jarring and perverse enough to be free jazz, but it can in no way be remotely compared to what Coleman or Coltrane, Dolphy or Ayler or even Cecil Taylor, were doing. Bishop's left hand lays down a solid groove, but this is not remotely soul jazz. So...bebop but not bebop, free but not free jazz, solid groove but not soul jazz, and not exactly a solid groove, either...throw in some block chords and it's sort of like Thelonious Monk, then? Yes, except for not being at all like Monk. Best to take a listen for yourself, and then talk it over with a real musical expert.

Wilbert Hogan, also known as Wilbur Hogan, Granville Hogan and G. T. Hogan, has appeared on Prestige a couple of times before, with Earl Coleman and Jesse Powell. He was working regularly with Bishop in the early 1960s. Butch Warren was a youngster of 22 who had already collected quite a resume. The son of a part time musician in the Washington DC area, he grew up in a house full of musicians, and began playing the bass when an instrument got left behind in his father's music room by Billy Taylor (the Ellington bassist, not the piano player). At 14, he started playing in his father's band. At 19, he was asked to sub for a bassist who didn't show up for a Kenny Dorham gig, and Dorham invited him to come to New York, where he made his first recording on an album initially released on a tiny label as The Arrival of Kenny Dorham, and later, sadly, as The Kenny Dorham Memorial Album. Drug addiction and mental illness cut Warren's career short, and by the mid-1960s he had retreated from the jazz scene.

You have the history of this recording session. Time to check out the music.