Listening to Prestige 570: Red Garland

LISTEN TO ONE: My Honey's Lovin' Arms

 This is Red Garland's 39th album for Prestige, either as leader or sideman, and no, that's not too many. Garland always delivered, either as part of an ensemble, leader of a trio, or solo. He began as a member of the original Miles Davis quintet, and in 1956, on one of the Contractual Marathon sessions, Miles and John Coltrane sat out and let the trio play a number, as sort of an audition for Bob Weinstock. It worked: after Miles left for Columbia, Weinstock signed Garland, Paul Chambers and Art Taylor to continue to record for Prestige.

Garland returned to Prestige after making four albums for Riverside subsidiary Jazzland, for what would be not only his last Prestige session, but his last recording for the next decade. When the Beatles invaded America, he saw the handwriting on the wall for jazz, and went back to Texas to take care of his invalid mother. He would make a comeback in the 1970s, recording a number of albums -- some for Galaxy, a subsidiary of Fantasy, which by this time owned Prestige, and some for Muse, a label started by one-time Prestige executive Joe Fields.

Garland's albums were always distinguished by his eclectic choice of tunes, and this one was no exception, as here he gives us a cross section of familiar tunes that have hardly been touched by musicians from the progressive jazz fraternity. Too familiar? Too corny? Not the way Garland, Wendell Marshall and Charlie Persip play them.

He starts out with the Al Jolson standard "Sonny Boy," written by DeSylva, Brown and Henderson, giving the tune rather more subtlety and thoughtfulness than Jolson ever gave it.

"My Honey's Lovin' Arms," composed by Joseph Meyer, also dates back to the Jolson era. Originally recorded by Isham Jones in 1922, it's become a staple over the years, but a staple of traditional and Dixieland groups. I can't find a record of any other modern jazz artist recording it. Garland relishes the corny but catchy melody, hits that downbeat, and still turns it into something altogether different, with the powerful collaboration of Persip.

"St. James Infirmary" is the old familiar blues ballad, and it's been recorded by everyone from jazz musicians to blues singers to folkies to rock and rollers to country singers, and even a Latin band (Perez Prado). But again, Garland stands out as one of the rare -- and probably the first -- modern jazz musicians to give it a whirl. As with "My Honey's Lovin' Arms," he starts out in a traditional style, nudged on by Wendell Marshall, and then proceeds--with Marshall and Persip--to make something new.

"I Ain't Got Nobody" goes back even further, to 1915, composed by Spencer Williams. New Orleans born, New York bred, ultimately European expatriate. The song became a huge hit in 1956 when Louis Prima recorded it as part of a medley with "Just a Gigolo." Prima and Sam Butera put it on an album called The Wildest; Garland, Marshall and Persip make it just as wild, in their own way.

"Baby Won't You Please Come Home" is another Spencer Williams tune, and a hugely popular one over the years. This one has had at least one other modern jazz version--by Garland's old boss, Miles Davis. Davis's version is dark and moody. Garland's isn't quite an uptempo romp, but the comparison of the two really brings home how much Garland likes these old chestnuts, and how much he enjoys playing them and making something new out of them.

The traditional spiritual "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" (first published in 1867 but much older than that) rounded out the album. One more song -- and one more old chestnut -- was 1927's "My Blue Heaven," which did not make the LP, which was titled When There Are Grey Skies, but was included on a later CD re-release. "Sonny Boy" and "Baby, Won't You Please Come Home?" were two sides of a 45 RPM single. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 540: Dizzy Reece

LISTEN TO ONE: Spiritus Parkus

 Dizzy Reece took a long way around to New York and Rudy Van Gelder's studio and the jazz kitchens of Blue Note and Prestige, and the music once known as New York music, later to be given to an unsuspecting and at first unwelcoming world as bebop. By the time that Reece recorded this session for Prestige, other strains of jazz were mixed into his broth, but bebop was always at the center of it.

And it was not exactly his birthrigh at, as it was for his New York and Detroit-born contemporaries. Reece was born and raised in Jamaica. His father was a musician who played piano accompaniment for silent movies. His biographies point out that he took up the trumpet at age 14, switching over from

the baritone saxophone, which is remarkable in itself--a 12 or 13-year old boy would not have been much bigger than than that unwieldy instrument. But the trumpet was where he found himself, and by age 16 he was playing professionally in  a swing band. At 17, in 1948, he was ready to expand his musical horizons. and he set sail -- not for New York, but for London.

His first bookings did not take that far from home musically. On his passage across the Atlantic, he made the acquaintance of a calypso band, also England bound, and since they had gigs lined up in Liverpool, he joined up with them. He did not make it to London until the following year, where he first discovered bebop, and was completely won over by the new music on a trip to Paris and the first International Jazz Festival, where he heard Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

He made his first recordings in London in 1955, and, while still in England in 1958, recorded an album for Blue Note (Donald Byrd played on the session). The following year, with the encouragement of Miles Davis, whom he had met in Paris, he came to New York. He made three more albums for Blue Note before being dropped from the label. He did this one session for Prestige, then pretty much disappeared from the recording scene. He joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band in 1968, and made a few records for small labels in Europe and New York in the 1970s. He remained active, if mostly unacclaimed, into the 21st century, and not only as a musician. He's had exhibitions of his paintings, he's made documentary films. and he told an interviewer in 2019 that he was just putting the finishing touches on a 750-page autobiography.

Asia Minor is solidly grounded in bebop, but it incorporates some of the newer ideas of the jazz

experimentalists of the era, and--as the title suggests--some of the sounds of the Near East and North Africa which were being explored most prominently by Yusef Lateef. All of these influences can be heard on "Spiritus Parkus (Parker's Spirit)," a Cecil Payne composition.

Baritone saxophonist Payne was no stranger to Prestige, having played on a John Coltrane-led Prestige All Stars session, and with Kenny Burrell, Tadd Dameron, Gene Ammons, and mambo jazzer Joe Holiday, in sessions going back to 1953.

Joe Farrell, just 24 when these recordings were made, had recorded with Maynard Ferguson, but was really just embarking on a career that would blossom in subsequent decades, most notably with Chick Corea's Return to Forever. He died young, of myelodysplastic syndrome, in 1986. One his compositions, "Upon This Rock," has been the subject of a series of lawsuits by his daughter against a number of hip-hop artists for unauthorized sampling.

Perhaps Reece's Jamaican background made him particularly conscious of rhythms, a subject that he frequently came back to in interviews -- "Charlie Parker played drums on the saxophone." he told one interviewer, and he prided himself on always working with great rhythm sections, which he certainly has here, with Hank Jones, Ron Carter, and especially Charlie Persip, whose rhythmic inventions go way beyond bebop here. Persip, who worked with swing, bop, and free jazz groups over his long career, was really coming into his own as a distinctive and innovative drummer in these years, as he became one of the most sought-after jazz drummers.

New York proved to be not all that hospitable to Reece. He never quite broke through to major recognition, and his marriage suffered from a resistance to an interracial couple that he had not experienced in England. His wife ultimately left him and took their daughters back home to England. Reece, too, would return to England and Europe for many years, though New York ultimately beckoned him home, mostly to anonymity. When an interviewer found him in 2019, he was greated with, "I'm surprised you didn't think I was dead!"

Asia Minor was a New Jazz release. Jules Colomby produced.

Listening to Prestige 536: Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Sleeping Susan

 It was a busy few days for Mr. Stitt, and a lot of trips out to Englewood Cliffs. On Friday, recording with Jack McDuff. On Sunday, a Verve recording session, as Norman Granz joined Sonny with Gene Ammons for a mainstream blowing session in Rudy Van Gelder's cathedral of recorded jazz. Then the two saxophonists might as well have booked a couple of rooms on the Jersey side of the river, as they were back in harness on Monday, joining "youngster" McDuff (actually all three were just about the same age, but McDuff was a new star in the jazz firmament, and the two tenormen were solidly established veterans).

These are three guys who really represent three different genres of jazz: Stitt the bebopper, Ammons the old school boppin' the blues, McDuff the soul jazz of the 1960s. So, although "Soul Summit" is a bit  of cliche, it's also an accurate description of this gathering. They are three kindred spirits who've meshed well in dyads, and mesh equally well here in a triad, with the propulsive assistance of Charlie Persip on drums. Persip and McDuff are the entire rhythm section, so Brother Jack is largely in a supporting role here, but he makes the most of it. He and Persip provide more than a cushion for the two soloists--their work is complex and provocative. 

The set is two standards, two originals by Ammons ("Tubby" and "Shuffle Twist"), one by Stitt ("Dumplin's"), and one more obscure tune from an underrated composer, Jimmy Mundy. Mundy is underrated partly because one of his most famous compositions, "Walkin'," the Miles Davis standard, is not credited to him. On the Library of Congress copyright certificate for the tune, the original title (and

the tune has been recorded under a number of different titles) is wiped out, and the name of Richard E. Carpenter is written in as composer. Carpenter was not a composer, and is best known for cheating and exploiting various jazz musicians. Mundy is credited as co-composer (with Johnny Mercer and Trummy Young) of a gold star standard, "Travlin' Light." And he is the composer, here, of "Sleeping Susan," which proves to be an excellent choice.

You might think that "Shuffle Twist" would have been earmarked as the single, just for the title alone. But instead an edited-down version of "Tubby" was the choice, on the flip side of "Love, I've Found You," from Ammons's 1961 session with Oliver Nelson. The 45 RPM single was issued under Ammons's name.

Esmond Edwards produced Soul Summit.

Listening to Prestige 494: Oliver Nelson-Joe Newman

LISTEN TO ONE

It's hard to listen to this one directly after the Joe Newman-Oliver Nelson-Shirley Scott session and not miss Shirley, but of course, that's not the way anyone would have listened, especially since the album with Scott wouldn't actually be released for another five years. And once you shake your head free and listen to this one for its own sake, it has much to offer. A great deal to offer.

It has Newman and Nelson, of course. But it also has Ray Barretto, who brings a certain something to every session he plays on. And it has Hank Jones. 

This is Jones's sixth session for Prestige, but he had been on the scene since the mid-1940s, when he joined Hot Lips Page at the Onyx Club on 52nd Street. Like Newman, he was of the swing-to-bop school, a style of music that may not have been cutting edge in 1961, but was, and is, timeless. Nelson could play straight-ahead jazz too, and write for a straight-ahead group. but his abilities as a composer always kept him around the cutting edge.

Nelson composed four of the six tunes on this album ("Main Stem" is Ellington; "Tangerine" is Johnny Mercer and Hollywood composer Victor Schertzinger), and they're very much tailored to this group. "Tipsy" is my favorite, tuneful and inventive, with room for solos by Oliver, Newman and Jones, with propulsive backing by George Duvivier, Charlie Persip and Barretto (with an inventive solo bt Duvivier).

I've written about Joe Newman's later work as an educator with Jazz Interactions. But here's a little about where he came from: New Orleans, where "I thought that jazz had been here ever since the world began." In an interview for the national jazz archive, he talks about his father, who he knew as a chauffeur, until he suddenly discovered he was also a musician, and the music his father brought into the house, and how he became part of it.

started playing trumpet when I was six years old, and I learned to play it within two years, by myself. At eight, I had my first formal lesson.

That came about when some musicians were having a band rehearsal at my house with my father; I was out on the back step, blowing along with them. They heard me, and they stopped, but I was still out there blowing. I didn’t see them standing there at the screen door; next thing I heard was: “Why don’t you give that kid some lessons?” That’s really how I got started.

Before that, I’d wanted to play tenor saxophone. I used to have a lead pipe plumbing fixture, and it was sort of shaped like a saxophone; I blew that and made music with it.

Another kid played a banjo, my brother had a trumpet made from some tubing and a funnel, and we used to play little parties. Then one of my playmates stole my lead pipe; so I had another one made, that looked more like a saxophone.

At eight years old, I could play some songs, and I started to do gigs with some of the same men my father had worked with. My mother would let me go if they’d come get me and bring me home. These were three and four piece bands; then after a while I started working with some bigger bands around New Orleans—about thirteen pieces, something like that. Such as Henry Hart, Bill Phillips. Richard Gray and his Society Syncopators—that was one of the first bands that operated in the Carlton area, what they called Uptown in New Orleans. 

All that was just part of his life, just part of growing up in New Orleans. 

It wasn’t until recently, when I started to put together lectures on Louis Armstrong, for colleges and different places, and I was reading books to gather material, that I saw these names of so many guys that I grew up around—playing with my father, friends of our family. These guys were creating it then, man, and I didn’t know it. Some of the earlier history was being made. 

 

The album was called Main Stem, and the 45 RPM single that came from the album was the title track, split over two sides. Esmond Edwards produced for Prestige.

Listening to Prestige 485a: Etta Jones

Esmond Edwards and Oliver Nelson put Etta Jones together with a string section over three recording sessions. The first one had been back on June 9. This one was followed by another three days later.The string sections were anonymous; the other players, except for George Duvivier on the bass, are all new from the June session. A reed section is added, and the two French horn players from June are cut down to one.

This French horn belongs to Ray Alonge, mostly a classical musician (he was first chair in the Indianapolis symphony while still in high school), but with some impressive jazz credentials too: Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, Milt Hinton. And going farther afield, he played on recordings by Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Female singers with strings became a thing after Billie Holiday did it, and it generally wasn't a bad thing, if not necessarily a good thing. In this case, with Oliver Nelson arranging and conducting, the results are good. Jones veers toward the Billie Holiday side of her personality, which is probably understandable, since Holiday more or less set the template for jazz singers with strings.

One song from the July 25th session, "You Better Go Now," is associated with Holiday, and Jones would record again in 2001, on her last studio album, A Tribute to Lady Day. Interestingly, the 1961 version owes a lot more to Lady Day than the later version. She also recorded it in 1994 with Benny Green, the pianist--not to be confused with Bennie Green, the great trombonist, or Benny Green, the British saxophonist. The song had originally been performed in 1936 as part of the Broadway revue New Faces of 1936 (the only new faces of note were Imogene Coca and Van Johnson), but it had not broken out as a hit, and was never recorded again until Holiday found it in 1947.

"And This is My Beloved" is another interesting choice, perhaps dictated by the orchestral instrumentation. From the Broadway show Kismet, it never achieved quite the breakout status of "Stranger in Paradise" or "Baubles, Bangles and Beads," but it's had quite a life as a vehicle for pop singers with operatic ambitions like Jim Nabors or Jackie Wilson (granted, quite a range of styles there) or opera singers with pop ambitions like Richard Tucker, but one thing hasn't particularly beem is a vehicle for jazz singers. or jazz instrumentalists (with one odd exception--Sun Ra). Jones basically sticks to the melody, but she has some nice jazz-tinged phrasing, and it makes for a satisfactory outing,

"Unchained Melody," from the July 28 session, is another unusual choice, although not so unusual when you consider how popular a choice it was, and has become, From the soundtrack of a 1955 grade B movie, it attracted twelve different reco

Dating from 1955, it is one of the most popular songs of all time,, with over 450 versions (and if you think that the mid-1950s were so rock 'n roll dominated that a ballad didn't have a chance, think again. "Unchained Melody" isn't even the most-recorded ballad of 1955; "Cry Me a River" beats it out). It's been recorded by pop singers, rockers, country singers, almost everyone except jazz singers, although one of the biggest hit versions was by Al Hibbler. Even in the hands of an Al Hibbler or an Etta Jones it's not exactly a jazz tune, but Oliver Nelson's string arrangement is one of his most interesting, and Jones works with it in inventive and creative ways. There may not be a whole lot you can do with improvisation on "Unchained Melody" with strings, although Jones makes some interesting choices, but there's a lot you can do with dynamics, and there she comes through.

"Unchained Melody" was the 45 RPM single. On the other side was "Hurry Home," written by Buddy Bernier, Bob Emmerich and Joseph Meyer, not a well-known tune (I'd never heard it before), but a good one. It had been a hit for Kate Smith in 1938, and Ella Fitzgerald recorded it on Verve in 1957. Jones and Nelson give this one a jazz reading, and a good one--I like her version better than Ella's. The album was called So Warm.

Listening to Prestige Vol 4, 1959-60, now available from Amazon! Also on Kindle!Volumes 1-3 are also available from Amazon.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

Listening to Prestige 485: Clark Terry

Clark Terry has been a presence in the Prestige catalog, though largely under the radar, either playing in large ensembles or backing up a vocalist. His debut was early and auspicious--in 1950, the very early days of the label, joining Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Criss for a live blowing session. This is the kind of music, from one of the most exciting periods in jazz history, that excited Bob Weinstock into forming a new label, and it's wonderful to go back and listen to it again,

Then a decade would go by before he connected with the label again--a busy time, starting out with Count Basie, then moving to Duke Ellington and spending the rest of the decade with him. A lot of recording--by the time his career was finished, Terry had appeared on more than 900 records.  A lot of time on the road--much of his non-Ellington work was done in studios in LA or Chicago.

Then in 1959, he left Ellington, settled in New York, and took a job as a staff musician for NBC (he was the only African-American in the Tonight show band). This gave him a lot more time for various recording gigs, and he returned to Prestige in September of 1960 as a member of Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis's big band. That was followed by a much more prominent role in a quintet led by Buddy Tate, then in a Jimmy Hamilton ensemble, an Oliver Nelson orchestra backing Gene Ammons, and a session backing vocalist Clea Bradford.

The July session, his only one as leader for Prestige, put him at the head of a quartet Prestige semi-regulars Joe Benjamin and Charlie Persip, and a musician whose history with Prestige was remarkably similar to his own. Jumior Mance had made one recording for the label in 1951, then spent the rest of the decade elsewhere, returning to join Davis's big band. He would record a few more times with Davis for the label.

The music is mellow, as befits a Moodsville session, with emphasis on ballads, and Terry is your man for the job. His approach is intelligent, technically superb, warm and emotional without ever getting cliched or sentimental. He does standards, two originals. and one unusual choice for a jazz album, Brahms's "Lullabye"--not so unusual for Terry, though. It was a particular favorite, one that he played often and recorded more than once.

This is one of those albums where you're glad it's just a quartet, because you can appreciate the intimate time spent with Terry. Junior Mance's solos are also beautiful.

The Moodsville album was titled, appropriately, Everything's Mellow.

Listening to Prestige Vol 4, 1959-60, now available from Amazon! Also on Kindle!
Volumes 1-3 are also available from Amazon.
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

Listening to Prestige 473: Taft Jordan

This blog grew out of a few different impulses, but one, certainly, was something that Peter Jones and I had agreed on, coming out of one of our many discussions of the music of our youth: that the recorded jazz of the 1950s, on the great independent jazz labels like Prestige and Blue Note and Riverside, had all been good.

Was it really? Or were the rose-hued glasses of nostalgia coloring our vision? After all, we couldn't have listened to everything. And our limited teenage record-buying budget meant that we were mostly spending our money on albums that had gotten four or five stars from Down Beat. And the Jazztone Society's album of the month, during the time of that great but failed experiment. And the

Columbia Record Club, which wasn't necessarily on the cutting edge of jazz (they did have Miles) and certainly wasn't on the cutting edge of rhythm and blues, but hey, who could resist that initial offer of ten albums for ten cents, or whatever it was?

Listening to every single recording session from the entire decade seemed like a pretty good test/ And the conclusion was yes. It was all good.

The 50s were our decade of pure passion, and I wasn't so sure the 60s were going to measure up, but so far, so good. And more of it is new to me. Some of it is surprising, some of it amazing. Mal Waldron, Eric Dolphy, Booker Ervin, Ron Carter...an album I'd never heard, that ascends to the level of greatness. And fresh, orginal, revolutionary--even 60 years later. That shouldn't be so surprising. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk sound fresh, original, and  revolutionary 80 years later. And Louis Armstrong, 100 years later. But this was music I'd never heard of before.

You're not going say the same thing about Taft Jordan playing Ellington. Letting the world know that Mal Waldron was one of his era's great composers is a thrill in itself. If I tell you that Duke Ellington was one of his era's great composers, I'm not exactly going to be in the vanguard, am I? And if I tell you what a service Bob Weinstock performed for posterity by recording some of the older jazz artists on Swingville and Moodsville, this is worth saying, but I've said it before.

So I don't have anything exciting to tell you today, except that the string continues. All good.

How could it not be? Ellington veteran Taft Jordan playing some of the Duke's best-loved tunes, and the reason why they're best-loved is...you can't help but love them. 

Kenny Burrell! After a few years' absence, he's back for two Prestige sessions in 1961: Coleman Hawkins in February, and now on board here with Jordan. Always welcome. He'll be back off and on over the decade.

It tool Listening to Prestige to introduce me to Richard Wyands, and now that I know about him I smile whenever I see name on a session. I know he's going to be giving me some good piano.

And what about Joe Benjamin and Charlie Persip? From the angularities and intricacies of Waldron/Dolphy to the sweet swing of Ellington/Jordan. What time is the gig and where is the studio? Thank you, ma'am, and let's play some jazz. Play it pretty for the people. Play it loud, play it clear, for the whole world to hear. Play everything cool for me and my baby. Taft and fellas. You've got me in the palm of your hand.

Listening to Prestige Vol 4, 1959-60, now available from Amazon! Also on Kindle!
Volumes 1-3 are also available from Amazon.
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

Listening to Prestige 472: Mal Waldron

Mal Waldron was recognized in his time by those who paid attention, and for more than just being Billie Holiday's pianist on the night that Frank O'Hara immortalized in "The Day Lady Died," even though he didn't get the votes in the Playboy or Down Beat reader's polls. Billboard, in reviewing this album, said, "As a composer and pianist in avant garde jazz, Mal Waldron has few peers." The Billboard reviewer put "composer" first, and that's no mistake. For whatever reason, the general public, even the Down Beat reading public, never got the message, but musicians and jazz record producers surely did. On  virtually every session that Waldron was called to play on, he was asked to compose a few tunes (look at my comments for his sessions of May 2 or  September 26, 1958.

"Soul Eyes," written for John Coltrane, is his best known composition, but "Fire Waltz," from this session, written for Dolphy, has attracted its share of musicians, especially in recent years. One of the many pleasures of this album is getting the chance to reconsider and re-appreciate Waldron as a composer. All the pieces recorded this day were his.

Billboard puts Waldron with the avant garde, and although his talents and interests covered the breadth of modern jazz, being asked to compose for a session with Eric Dolphy certainly gives him an opportunity to spread his avant garde wings, and he's up to the task.

There were two important jazz musicians in this era who were named after the pioneering African American educator Booker T. Washington, and both died of illness way before their time. Trumpeter Booker Little, whose collaborations with Dolphy can only leave us wondering what more the two of them might have achieved, died on October 5, 1961, at age 23.

Ervin died at age 40, in 1970...both of them of kidney failure. He had a chance to leave behind a substantial body of work, much of it on Prestige.

Originally from Texas, he got his start in the southwestern territorial band of Ernie Fields, then moved to New York in 1958, where he very quickly caught the attention of Charles Mingus. Although Dolphy and Ervin were both part of the Mingus family, they only appeared together on one recording, the Complete Town Hall Concert. This appears to be their only other joint outing.

I won't comment on each selection individually. I'd like to, but I don't have the knowledge or the vocabulary. I will say that this session made me stop and listen over and over again, and not want to go on. Charlie Persip's drumming kicks and drives and complicates the rhythm. Joe Benjamin's solid bass makes it possible for Ron Carter to move his cello up to the front line. The cello is always a touchy instrument for jazz, but Waldron finds a place for it that works. And while Waldron always adds something unique and valuable to any group that he's in, his solos on his own compositions are particularly expressive. This is a beauty of an album.

It was released on New Jazz as The Quest. Esmond Edwards produced. It would later be rereleased on Prestige under Dolphy's name as Fire Waltz. The tune, "Fire Waltz," was also played by Dolphy, Booker Little and Waldron on the Dolphy/Little Live at the Five Spot sessions, and in recent years, it has gone into the repertoire of a number of jazz musicians.

Listening to Prestige Vol 4, 1959-60, now available from Amazon! Also on Kindle!
Volumes 1-3 are also available from Amazon.
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

Listening to Prestige 469: Ron Carter

This is Ron Carter's debut as a leader, but he had already begun to make a considerable name for himself as a skilled and original bassist who could play in almost any context. He had already appeared on six sessions for Prestige alone, and had showed his prowess on the cello in one of those sessions, with Eric Dolphy. Dolphy was just coming into his own at this juncture, and he would be bound to come in for a large share of the attention any time he appeared on a session (some later reissues bill this as an Eric Dolphy album), but Carter has the presence to justify his billing as leader, including two tracks where Dolphy sits out.

"Bass Duet," as advertised, is exactly that, featuring Carter on pizzicato cello and George Duvivier on bass, counterpointing each other with shifting tempos and melodic lines. "Where?",  a Randy Weston composition, features Carter's bowed cello and Mal Waldron's moody piano.

"Saucer Eyes" is another Weston composition, one that's been in the repertory of a number of groups. "Yes Indeed" is the Sy Oliver gospel-tinged rhythm and blues classic that's probably best known in the 1958 rendition by Ray Charles, and you can almost hear the call-and-response as you listen to Carter and Dolphy.

The Sigmund Romberg melody, "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise," has Carter soloing on bowed bass and accompanying Dolphy pizzicato. They take a lot of adventurous liberties with the old operetta aria, and they make it all work. And this is as good a place as any to mention Charlie Persip's drumming, which adds so much to the session, but is particularly striking here.

"Rally" is a Carter composition and a powerful showcase for everyone involved in the session. Carter is on cello, so George Duvivier gets in on the action. Mal Waldron has solo space, and I've certainly had plenty of occasion to write about how highly I regard Waldron, as this is his 33rd Prestige session. My only regret is that none of his original compositions are featured here.

Esmond Edwards produced for New Jazz. The album was titled Where?

Listening to Prestige 458: Don Ellis

You can't necessarily count on it that an album that calls itself "new ideas" will actually deliver new ideas, but this one does. Don Ellis not only presents a departure from anything Prestige has been doing in this new jazz era, each track of the album is a departure from the track before.

Ellis came from very nearly out of nowhere. He had played with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. He had played with the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra, which was a good deal more progressive, but still a dance band. Then suddenly he was in the center of the avant garde, working with George Russell, Paul Bley, Steve Swallow. He made one album in 1959

with Charles Mingus (Mingus Dynasty) and a couple in 1961 with George Russell. One was with Russell and Eric Dolphy for Riverside, but that one wasn't released until years later.

Even the photos of him follow the same out of nowhere pattern. The earliest shows him crew cut, chubby faced and whiter than Wonder Bread. A photo taken around the time of New Ideas shows him gaunt, still white, but looking more like Andre Gregory than Glenn Miller.

His first album as leader in 1960 was How Time Passes, for the Candid label, with Jaki Byard, Ron Carter and Charlie Persip. A second album for Candid, featuring Paul Bley and Steve Swallow, was recorded in April of 1961, just three weeks before New Ideas, but it would not see the light of day until 1988. Time Passes was all Ellis originals. The second album came to be called Out of Nowhere, and in 1988 it must have really seemed to be coming out of nowhere. And it came out of nowhere considering the direction Ellis's music was taken, because this was an album of standards, and ones that were so standard they were virtually chestnuts -- "My Funny Valentine," "I'll Remember April," "Just One of Those Things." Perhaps Candid didn't release the album because they were expecting something more like How Time Passes, a real Don Ellis album, not a bunch of standards. Or perhaps they decided not to release it because they  were expecting an album of standards, and they got...certainly not something Glenn Miller or even Maynard Ferguson would have recorded. In other words, a real Don Ellis album.

Whatever that nay be. Ellis's muse was forever dancing on ahead. This was his only album for Prestige, and as he moved through record labels (pausing for a few years and several albums on Columbia), he moved through ideas and formats. Much of his later and best-known work was for larger ensembles.

At this point in his career. the George Russell influence is certainly there. There are suggestions of Tristano, still a powerful influence on the jazz avant garde. Suggestions of Gil Mellé, though he's more of a musician than Mellé was. Like Mellé, he would go on to film scoring, The French Connection being his best known. He was known for his experiments with time signatures, but he's nothing like Dave Brubeck. For one thing, he had a sense of humor. One of his compositions is called "Beat Me, Daddy, 7 to the Bar;" one of his time signatures is 3½ / 4 and another is 15/16. One can hear in his work suggestions of avant garde composers like Moondog (he somehow manages to suggest some of Moondog's ambient street noises on the trumpet). How Time Passes was subtitled Third Stream Jazz, and no less an authority on the third stream than Gunther Schuller said of him, when Ellis was his student in 1960 at the Lenox, MA, School of Jazz:

[Ellis] represents one of the few true syntheses of jazz and classical elements, without the slightest self‐consciousness and without any loss of excitement and raw spontaneity that the best of jazz has always had.

By the time of New Ideas, the Third Stream was no longer a dominant force in Ellis's development, but you can hear it.

We've heard Jaki Byard on three earlier Prestige sessions, one with a trio and two with Eric Dolphy. Equally at home in mainstream or avant garde settings, he was also one of the first to bring jazz to the world of higher education, creating the Jazz Studies program at the New England Conservatory of Music.

Ron Carter and Charlie Persip are more associated with mainstream than avant garde, but they both make important contributions. Persip is inventive and unexpected. So is Carter, but he's also the pulse of the ensemble, keeping it on track through time signature changes.

New Ideas features a remarkable vibes player named Al Francis, and his entire recorded output seems to have been this album and a trio session from 1986 called Jazz Bohemia Revisited. Why there's not more, or why Ellis didn't go on working with him, it's impossible to say, but the jazz world lost a distinctive and original voice when they passed over Francis. It's painful to think of all the music he made between 1961 and 1986 that we'll never hear.

Ellis would go on working with small groups for a couple of years, often with Paul Bley.  In 1963, he was trumpet soloist for the New York Philharmonic with Leonard Bernstein conducting, and again with Gunther Schuller conducting, for Schuller's composition Journey into Jazz.

In 1965 he put together his first orchestra, and the work with large ensembles became his best known.  He's also known for an instrumental innovation, the four-valve trumpet, which was more than just a gimmick: it allowed him to play quarter-tones.

Ellis died young, at 44, leaving behind him several lifetimes worth of experimentation.

Esmond Edwards produced the session, and New Ideas was released on New Jazz.

I'm making a Listen to Two for this Ellis session, because it's the only album he made for Prestige, and since one track is not enough to do justice to his range. Neither are two, actually.

Listening to Prestige 442: Red Garland

In 1961, Red Garland went into the studio with a quintet featuring Oliver Nelson and Richard Williams. to record a number of tunes for Prestige, including "Soft Winds," and in 1961 Prestige released the Red Garland quintet's High Pressure, which included "Soft Winds."

That makes sense, right? Only thing...the version of "Soft Winds" released in 1961 had been recorded  by Garland in 1957, and featured John Coltrane and Donald Byrd.

And perhaps because of that, the new version, along with three-fifths of the session, went into the vault, not to be released until 1977 as part of a collection called Rediscovered Masters.

I listened to both versions. Conclusions:

• "Soft Winds" is a beautiful tune. Written in 1939 by Benny Goodman, it's become a favorite of swingsters and boppers alike--interestingly, almost always as an instrumental, although Dinah Washington does an excellent vocal version. It's too tuneful to be called strictly a riff-based composition, but maybe too riffy to please most vocalists. But you could say the same about "Satin Doll," and vocalists love that one.
• John Coltrane and Donald Byrd are jazz superstars (although in 1961, Byrd had not yet climbed onto that pedestal. It's not hard to see why Bob Weinstock decided not to release two versions of it at the same time.
• That being said, is it a better version? Don't expect me to answer that one. There's no choosing between them. Coltrane and Byrd, superstars. Oliver Nelson...cult figure? Maybe. Not that widely known to the general public, but a legend to jazz cognoscenti. Richard Williams--only one album as leader in his career, so perhaps an easy name to forget, but if he wasn't that good, why did so many top jazz artists want him to work with them. And he was in demand for symphony orchestras as well. At nearly fourteen minutes, the Garland/Coltrane recording is a tour de force for all its soloists, very much including Garland. At just over six minutes, the Garland/Nelson version is tighter, less a vehicle for virtuoso performance--except, surprisingly enough, by bassist Peck Morrison. I'm glad we have both of them.
  

Also held off until rediscovery: "Skinny's Blues." a Garland composition featuring Nelson and Williams joining together on some blues that tell the concrete truth. "Avalon" is the Al Jolson vehicle that became a jazz standard, here kicked off by some powerful block chording from Garland, driven mercilessly by Morrison and Charlie Persip, and knocked off the table by Oliver Nelson. This one travels on way beyond Avalon.

The other two tracks didn't see daylight right away either, but in 1964 they were blended with an earlier session from July 1960. They are two tunes that are part of every jazz musician's repertoire, Bronislaw Kaper's "On Green Dolphin Street" and Tadd Dameron's "If You Could See Me Now." They're so widely played, and widely recorded, because they're beautiful tunes that have enough complexity to allow for a wide range of interpretation and improvisation. For a later CD reissue, one more tune was added from 1959.

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 Volume 4 in preparation!

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

Listening to Prestige 418: Budd Johnson

Budd Johnson never lacked for work over a five-decade career. The gig he's best known for is Earl Hines, for whom he worked in the 1930-1940s, and then again in the 1960s-1970s, but when he wasn't with Hines he was with someone, from the Kansas City sound of Jesse Stone to the hot jazz of Louis Armstrong to the swing of Roy Eldridge, Ben Webster and Benny Carter. When the Count met the Duke, he was there. When Coleman Hawkins went to 52nd Street to help develop bebop, he was there, and he played with beboppers like Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Sonny Stitt, with soul jazzers like Cannonball Adderley and Jimmy McGriff, with jazz

singers like Carmen McRae and rhythm and blues singers like Ruth Brown And that just scratches the surface. For a few years in the late 1950s-early 1960s he recorded as a leader (just this one album for Prestige), and again for a few years in the early 1970s. He certainly had the stuff to step out front under his own name, as he proves here, and he shows his range and versatility, from the sweet sound of "Someone to Watch Over Me" to the hard-edged drive of his own "Uptown Manhattan" and "Downtown Manhattan," to the bebop subversion of Harry Warren's "I Only Have Eyes For You." The sentimental, dreamy side of this tune had recently been brought to the fore with the Flamingos' doowop hit; Johnson and his group romp and stomp through it.


The group includes Johnson's older brother Keg on trombone. Budd had the more prominent career of the two brothers, but both claimed their place in jazz history.  They started out together in Dallas playing in their father's band and also--an unusual credit--in the ensemble of Portia Washington Pittman, the daughter of Booker T. Washington and a noted music educator in Dallas. They played in bands together in Dallas and later in Kansas City, but then Keg struck out on his own for Chicago, where he joined Louis Armstrong's ensemble. He put together a solid career in music, including 15 years with Cab Calloway. This was his only recording with his brother. Shortly thereafter, he would join Ray Charles's band, and remain in that group until his death in 1967.The rhythm section of Tommy Flanagan, George Duvivier and Charlie Persip is impeccable, and all three are active participants, especially Duvivier and Persip. Duvivier has some memorable exchanges with Budd, and Persip some infectious solos.Duvivier by this time was a solid regular on many Prestige sessions. Persip had done a few others, starting in 1956 with Phil Woods and Donald Byrd. And he had been a spectator at a memorable early Prestige session--the 1954 Miles Davis Quintet, where Miles and Monk almost came to blows. Persip had been invited along as a protégé of Kenny Clarke, the drummer on the session, and his account of the conflict, and the story behind one of Monk's oddest piano solos, is in our entry on the date.

Tommy Flanagan, straight from Detroit in 1956, had made his Prestige debut  that same year on a Miles Davis session. In those days, coming from Detroit was virtually all the credential one needed to gain a foothold in New York's highly competitive jazz world, but Flanagan was one of the best Detroit had to offer. He had already played on over two dozen Prestige sessions, and would do many more, including a few as leader later in the 1960s. He is particularly strong here on "Blues by Budd," my favorite cut, and my "Listen to One."

The album was called Let's Swing!, and it was appropriately released on Swingville. Esmond Edwards produced.

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

Listening to Prestige 288: Jerome Richardson

The fullness and power of orchestral music, with its sections and soloists, is undeniable, as is the energy and vitality of big band music. But there's something uniquely entrancing about music made by a small ensemble, where each instrument has its own kind of clarity, and the melds are shifting and subtle. This is true of chamber music, but it's perhaps especially true of small group jazz, for all kinds of reasons, some of them obvious, some less so.

I've talked before about getting my first hi-fi, and suddenly realizing that there was more going on than just Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. I could suddenly hear Larry Bunker, and especially Chico Hamilton, and I suddenly had a whole new appreciation of the complexity of the music I was starting to love.

In a jazz ensemble, the instruments are so different from each other, and they have so many ways of interacting. Improvisation opens up the possibilities exponentially, and because the different members of the group are given space to improvise, the time it takes to play a given piece is variable, as Miles Davis found out when John Coltrane started playing his extended solos. This makes it strikingly different from a composed piece. Terry Riley's In C plays with that boundary. It is entirely composed. There are 53 separate musical phrases, and each instrument--it's written for an indeterminate number of instruments--is instructed to play each figure, in order, from beginning to end, but they don't have to start together, and each one can repeat each figure as many times as he or she chooses before going on to the next one. Still, duration is not much of a variable in most composed pieces. Even John Cage's 4'33", which involves silence, is written to last four minutes and 33 seconds.

So I'm in the car alone, my favorite way of listening to Prestige, and I've lined up the Jerome Richardson session, and "Caravan" comes on, the Duke Ellington-Juan Tizol warhorse, which has been recorded over 350 times, not always by jazz groups--sometimes just for its exotic melody. That makes it, like "Taboo" which we've recently heard recorded by both Yusef Lateef and Dorothy Ashby, just a little bit suspect: will it fall into the clichés of exotica? Which makes me particularly interested in listening to it. And this being the car, with me driving, I can't refer to the session notes, and I haven't really looked at them. I know that Richardson has Jimmy Cleveland on trombone, since brass always comes first in the personnel listing, but that's all.

It starts with a faint, exotic but not at all clichéd rhythm on the ride cymbal, but then the bass enters with the first strong voice, and it's a repeated but unnerving figure, no less unnerving when the piano joins in. Richardson enters, playing the melody, but he's distant, behind the bass and piano. So the first all-out solo goes to Jimmy Cleveland, improvising, and then it's Richardson again, out front this time, playing the melody again, sort of haunting, sort of mocking, sort of appreciative, and then they're off into uncharted territory, with Richardson beginning an extended solo, and now we're about three minutes into the piece, and we're just getting started, so this will be, yes, of indeterminate length, and the melody will be left in the desert dust. A lengthy Cleveland solo is next, followed by...what's this? Kenny Burrell? He's on this session too?

Well, yeah, since this is the Jerome Richardson Sextet, I should have remembered that there would be a third front line instrument. So we have flute, trombone guitar. not your everyday lineup, which brings me back to what I was saying about the different permutations of sound in a small jazz ensemble. The standard Bird-and-Diz quintet lineup of trumpet and saxophone is endlessly varied enough in the hands of jazz masters, but this group is very hip, and it's an instrumental lineup you don't hear that often--and it's varied even more when Richardson switches to tenor sax.. Which brings me back to duration as a unique function of jazz's uniqueness, especially in the LP era. With room for six different soloists to stretch out and create their own take on not only the melody and chord structure, but also the solos that have come before them, this version runs close to eleven minutes. A 1950s rock and roll version by steel guitar duo Santo and Johnny basically plays the melody, and clocks in and two and a half minutes. A pop instrumental by Gordon Jenkins, strictly playing the melody, is even shorter.

The rest of the group is Hank Jones on piano, Joe Benjamin on bass, and Charlie Persip on drums. Benjamin, never very far from the front, comes back after Kenny Burrell, and then there's an extended drum solo that captures the exotica of...well, of exotica, the complexity of bebop, and the excitement of a great drummer doing an extended drum solo.

We've heard Jimmy Cleveland before, with  Art Farmer septets a couple of times, and as part of Gil Evans' tentet. Here he gets a more featured role, which is all to the good, particularly on "Way In Blues." Which reminds me to give a tip of the hat to another Prestige alumnus, Bennie Green, a great trombone bluesman, who would record through the 1960s on various labels, then settle in Las Vegas and hotel bands. Cleveland was one of those guys who could play with everyone, from blues (Ruth Brown) to soul (James Brown) to soul jazz (Cannonball Adderley) to big bands to bop.

Hank Jones accompanied vocalist Earl Coleman on a couple of Prestige albums, and played with Curtis Fuller on another. He'd be back for several more appearances on the label, but that was a tiny part of his prodigious output as leader and sideman over seven decades, with multiple honors including the National Medal of Arts two years before his death in 2010. He also has a unique credit for a jazzman: he accompanied Marilyn Monroe on her legendary performance of "Happy Birthday, Mr. President."

Joe Benjamin makes his Prestige debut, but his name is forever imprinted on my brain because he's one of the musicians Sarah Vaughan introduces in her live recording of "Shulie-a-Bop," arguably the greatest bebop vocal ever, made for Mercury Records in 1954, the same year that Mercury had her record "Make Yourself Comfortable," with a syrupy orchestra led by Hugo Peretti. This was the beginning of Mercury's project to make Vaughan into a commercial success by recording insipid pop songs with insipid arrangements. "Make Yourself Comfortable" is a clever song, and she sings it wonderfully, but come on. Is this really the best way to utilize Sarah Vaughan? It worked, for what they were trying to do. "Broken Hearted Melody," in 1959, which Vaughan regarded as the worst record she had ever made, was her biggest seller.

Fortunately, they did also let her record for EmArcy, their jazz subsidiary, where she did the great Clifford Brown sessions, and the ones with Joe Benjamin. But I digress.

This is actually the second member of Sarah's trio to appear on a Prestige session in the fall  of 1958. Roy (drumroll) Haynes (drumroll) had been on the Dorothy Ashby date just three weeks earlier. I wonder when John Malachi will show up? But I continue to digress.

Artie Shaw's "Lyric" joins Ellington's "Caravan," and the other three tunes are Richardson originals. I've commented before that I miss the bad puns and other plays on words in the early bebop recordings, like "Ice Cream Konitz" and "Flight of the Bopple Bee." Richardson brings the word play back with rather more sophistication on "Minorally" and "Delirious Trimmings," which I hope is not a reference to anything that anyone in the band is going through.

The album was released on New Jazz as Midnight Oil.



Order Listening to Prestige Vol 2

Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1954-1956 is here! You can order your signed copy or copies through the link above.

Tad Richards will strike a nerve with all of us who were privileged to have lived thru the beginnings of bebop, and with those who have since fallen under the spell of this American phenomenon…a one-of-a-kind reference book, that will surely take its place in the history of this music.

                                                                                                                                                --Dave Grusin

An important reference book of all the Prestige recordings during the time period. Furthermore, Each song chosen is a brilliant representation of the artist which leaves the listener free to explore further. The stories behind the making of each track are incredibly informative and give a glimpse deeper into the artists at work.

                                                                                                                --Murali Coryell