Listening to Prestige 691 - Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: 'Sokay

 July, 1964. was a busy time in dear old Stockholm. Jack McDuff, now solidly Brother Jack McDuff, was there too, recorded live in Stockholm's Golden Circle  with his group, and then in the studio with a Swedish big band. I do wonder if Benny Golson was tempted, after his previous success with McDuff and a big band, to bring the organist and is group into his Stockholm project, but probably not. Golson was looking in a quite different direction. More likely, perhaps, McDuff got the idea of using a Swedish big band from dropping in on his old friend Benny's recording session. More likely yet is the theory that Lew Futterman, McDuff's manager/producer, who had also produced Golson's Stockholm session, was the organizing force behind all of this, and the one who, as before, brought Golson in to arrange the big band session.

LISTEN TO ONE: Au Privave

Soul jazz and the organ combo was still a relatively new sound to Scandinavia--indeed to most of Europe. Jimmy Smith had toured, but European audiences, having graduated from le jazz hot to bebop, were sufficiently skeptical that Futterman had a tough time booking McDuff's tour. As Futterman observes in his liner notes to The Concert McDuff:

Whether or not European jazz audiences, noted for their attraction to the cerebral, would take to McDuff was highly dubious.

But as Futterman goes on to note, at their first stop, the Jazz Festival on the Riviera,

McDuff and his group stole the show. According to Nice Matin, "McDuff a vaincu tout le monde." And in Sweden, the amazed proprietors of Stockholm's famous jazz club, the Golden Circle, saw their audiences dancing in the aisles.

There was enough musical depth in McDuff's music to satisfy the most cerebral of Europeans. And it seemes as though those intellectuals hadn't forgotten how to respond to le jazz hot.

From a historical perspective, it's tempting to focus on the development of young George Benson in McDuff's group, and certainly by the time of this live show at Gyllene Cirkeln (the Golden Circle), he could no longer be considered an apprentice. But while Benson went on to become an international superstar, still regarded to this day as a living legend, and Red Holloway is remembered, if at all, as one of a number of very good tenor saxophonists of the era, it would be a mistake to underestimate Holloway's contribution. His solo on "'Sokay," from the live album, may well be the highlight of that number.

The band that Golson put together for the McDuff/Stockholm studio session is labeled The Big Soul Band, which seems an odd choice for a bunch of Swedes, but it's not out of place. If anyone knew how to arrange a big band to back up Jack McDuff, it was Benny Golson, and the soul is provided by McDuff, Dukes, Benson and Holloway. It's an album very much worth listening to, if you can find it. It doesn't appear to be on Spotify or Amazon Music, and "'Sokay" is the only track I've found on YouTube, which is becoming more and more my source for hard-to-find jazz. 

The live album is titled The Brother Jack McDuff Quartet Recorded Live! In Concert Around The World - The Concert McDuff, or more familiarly The Concert McDuff. The Big Soul Band numbers became part of an album called Silk and Soul, which incorporated tunes from two other sessions and was released in 1965. Lew Futterman produced all of the sessions.

July, 1964, was a busy time for Jack McDuff, in and out of Stockholm. During the same month (presumably on his return from Europe, though there are no precise dates for any of these sessions) he was back in New York for a hardworking session during which he recorded nine songs with his basic quartet. all of them in that groove that you can call soul jazz, or funk, or hard bop, or rhythm and blues. Or you can call it by a name that hadn't been invented yet, but which McDuff, Holloway, Benson and Dukes may have pioneered, as several of these cuts would later be collected in an anthology collection called Legends of Acid Jazz. 

At the time of their recording, they weren't collected anywhere, exactly. McDuff would make a couple more albums for Prestige before moving over to Atlantic in 1966, so Bob Weinstock's label mixed and matched for a few more releases. "Scufflin'," the first tune off the session, had been added to Silk and Soul. "East of the Sun," "Au Privave" and "Hallelujah Time" made it to Hallelujah Time!, a 1967 album that threw it together with one cut from a 1963 session and a few from a later date. Another bits and pieces album, Midnight Sun, also issued in 1963, contained "Misconstrued," and yet another, 1968's Soul Circle, found room for "Lew's Piece" and Horace Silver's "Opus de Funk." Ray Charles's "I Got a Woman" is the title cut to a 1969 release, and again in 1969, Steppin' Out included "Our Miss Brooks."

 

 

Listening to Prestige 630 - Joe Dukes

LISTEN TO ONE: Greasy Drums

 The super-popularity of Brother Jack McDuff's quartet naturally meant Prestige wanted to get more product out there, and one way of doing it without overdoing it was to give each member of the quartet his own session. Well, there's nothing wrong with giving the people what they want, but this was more than just a marketing ploy: Jack McDuff was pretty serious about giving his bandmates a chance in the spotlight, and Bob Weinstock was happy to go along with it. Red Holloway was a seasoned professional who had already recorded one album as a leader for Prestige, separate from the McDuff orbit. George Benson was a budding superstar, about to take flight.

Joe Dukes was something else, practically Jack McDuff's other self. Though he was widely regarded in jazz circles as the quintessential soul jazz drummer, his career was almost entirely circumscribed by McDuff. He appeared on very few recordings that were not with McDuff, and when his tenure with McDuff was finished, he pretty much vanished from the scene. Wikipedia, which is pretty good on having at least something for many really obscure jazz musicians, has no entry for Joe Dukes. And this was the only session he ever recorded as leader. 

But Dukes was one of the key ingredients in the huge success of the McDuff quartet, and he's a lot more than window dressing here. This session is built around showcasing him. Except for the Dizzy Gillespie/John Lewis standard "Two Bass Hit," all the compositions are credited to Dukes and McDuff, all prominently feature drum solos, and all are engineered to bring out the drum sound.

The result? You can tell why Dukes was so highly regarded by his peers.

Dukes worked on 26 sessions with McDuff for Prestige between 1961 and 1966. McDuff then recorded several sessions for Atlantic between 1966 and 1968. He used Dukes on two of them, but mostly worked with other configurations, and much of his work for Atlantic was never issued. He recorded for Cadet (no Dukes) and then for Blue Note, where he brought Dukes back on board for one 1969 album, recorded over several days. 

Beyond that, he participated in a 1966 Hank Crawford session for Atlantic (one track on Crawford's Mr. Blues album), and two 1970 Lonnie Smith sessions for Blue Note. One of these resulted in the album Drives; the other, a live session. got stuck in Blue Note's vaults and would not be released until 1995.

After that, nothing. Dukes died in 1992, and the drummer once described by George Benson as "such a magnificent drummer that there were times I thought he was one of the greatest things that ever happened to mankind" was pretty much forgotten. The organ jazz phenomenon ran its course, but it still has its aficionados, and there are still younger fans, especially drummers, picking up a McDuff album and saying "My God -- who is this Joe Dukes?"

The album was entitled The Soulful Drums Of Joe Dukes With The Brother Jack McDuff Quartet, and  yielded one 45 RPM single, "Moohah The D.J." / "Greasy Drums," in both cases considerably abridged from the album versions. As with all McDuff product, the session was produced by Lew Futterman. 

Listening to Prestige 625: Jack McDuff - Benny Golson

LISTEN TO ONE: The Pink Panther

 Jack McDuff's manager Lew Futterman, in the liner notes for the next session, describes how he got Golson and McDuff together:

McDuff had opened [at Birdland], and I was down there to see him...Benny and I ended up at the same table. While I was well aware of his writing, playing and arranging, we had never before met. I asked him how he liked McDuff. He said, "Great!" Since he was unaware what my relationship was to Jack, I pushed him a little farther by telling him I didn't like Jack's playing. His response was immediate. "You're entitled to your opinion. But I've never heard a jazz organist play with the feeling this man has. He shows such a great emotional quality, such a sympathy for the music that I could listen to him all night."

...He proceeded to say what I had felt since first hearing Jack play but had never been able to verbalize so succinctly--namely, that Jack McDuff exhibits a rare intuitive understanding of jazz, and of music in general. Nothing he plays seems stiff or structured, moving instinctively from one musical idea to the next, with no apparent disparity between what he feels he wants to play and what he can play. The excitement he generates is organic, rather than forced, as if he were thinking with his fingers.

At that point, Futterman outed himself to Golson, and asked if he'd consider writing some arrangements for McDuff.

"Only if I can write what I want to." I started to give him a qualified "yes," but decided better of it. A man with Golson's talent...deserves a free hand.

It seems quite certain that Golson had a free hand, because how else explain Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther Theme" on a jazz album? Or such was my first thought, on hearing it. But "Pink Panther" was a huge hit in 1964, the year of the movie's release, and a few different jazz artists covered it. There was a rhythm and bluesy version by Earl Bostic, another organ interpretation by Jimmy McGriff, and another big band arrangement by Quincy Jones.

As it turns out, they're all worth a listen. As a composer, Henry Mancini may have been a master of the obvious, but the operative word there is "master." The tune may have been perky and ubiquitous to have even become the punch line of a joke (What did the Pink Panther say when he stepped on an ant? --Dead ant...dead ant...dead ant dead ant dead ant....), but it was brilliant in its own silly way, and it responded nicely to the big band treatment, and to McDuff's bravura organ work.

The album's cover, however, promotes another movie tie-in--the theme from The Carpetbaggers, which is odd, in that although The Carpetbaggers was a blockbuster movie, its score, by the redoubtable Elmer Bernstein, was not a breakout success. Secondhandsongs, the website that keeps track of cover versions of nearly everything, cannot find a single one for the Carpetbaggers theme. YouTube turns up one other, by Jimmy Smith. Still, it's Elmer Bernstein, which means it's bound to be a decent tune (if a little too reminiscent of Bernstein's more popular theme from The Man With the Golden Arm), and Golson and McDuff certainly make it worth listening to. 

Golson takes two from the movies, two from Broadway. The Broadway tunes are both from musicals of the 1960s. "Once in a Lifetime," by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, was one of the breakout hits from the musical Stop the World--I Want to Get Off, the star vehicle for Newley which had opened in 1962 and was still running. "You Better Love Me" was from the just-opened High Spirits, composed by Hugh Martin (best known for the songs from Meet Me in St. Louis) and Timothy Gray. One has to figure that all of these not-exactly-standards were chosen by Golson for how they'd sound with Jack McDuff counterpointed against an orchestra, and the proof is in the pudding. Golson was right.

McDuff brings his regular group. Golson brings an orchestra, personnel unidentified. The four tunes were all they recorded, and the B side of the album comes from McDuff's earlier date on the West Coast. Lew Futterman produced both sessions. The album is entitled The Dynamic Jack McDuff. "Pink Panther" and "Carpetbaggers" were released on 45. The version I've linked to on "Listen to One" is the 45 RPM version. Weighing in at 3:20, as opposed to the album's 5:15, which means more theme and less improvisation, but hey, it's the Pink Panther! Dead ant...dead ant...."Once in a Lifetime" was also released on 45, as the flip side of "Rail Head," from the earlier session.

Listening to Prestige 614: Jack McDuff, Red Holloway

LISTEN TO ONE: Wives and Lovers

Red Holloway, Jack McDuff, Joe Dukes and George Benson found themselves in Los Angeles--they were one of the most popular touring jazz groups in the country at this point, and they could have been found almost anywhere on any given date. But they were in LA, along with Lew Futterman, McDuff's manager and producer, and with no shortage of recording studios in the city of angels, Futterman brought them in for two days of recording in various formats, and under various names. 

LISTEN TO ONE: What's New

First came a session that would be released under Holloway's name, as it was largely a showcase for his gifts as a composer. It was the basic quartet, plus West Coast bassist Wilfred Middlebrooks, and it began with two ballads before moving on to Holloway's various variations on jazz funk.

"This Can't Be Love" was a familiar Rodgers and Hart standard from the 1930s. A ballad taken at a brisk tempo, it featured McDuff moving over to piano for the first time on record.

"Wives and Lovers," a recent hit by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, was on its way to becoming as popular as any ballad from the Great American Songbook. A 1963 release that would win crooner Jack Jones a 1964 Grammy, it would go on to become a favorite of lounge singers, and a wide assortment of instrumental aggregations, from Lawrence Welk and Jerry Murad's Harmonicats to Stan Getz and Thad Jones / Pepper Adams. It was a song in a sort of new genre, the "exploitation song." Wives and Lovers was a movie with Janet Leigh and Van Johnson, and Bacharach had been engaged to write a song, but not for the movie's soundtrack. The producers wanted--and got--a top 40 hit that would get the movie's title out there, and draw attention to it. Bacharach had done this once before, for movie that seemed an even more unlikely inspiration for a hit song, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Holloway demonstrated some nice versatility as a composer, keeping the blues a thematic base. His compositions took front and center for Prestige's two 45 RPM single releases from the album, "Denise / Wives and Lovers" and "No Tears" / "Shout Brother." Billing was "Red Holloway with the Jack McDuff Quartet," and the album was entitled Cookin' Together.

LISTEN TO ONE: Redwood City

The Holloway session is listed as having taken place on February 6 (a Thursday), the other two on February 6-7. Which seems odd. For the middle session, the quartet, they drop the bass player and go back to their regular quartet lineup. For the final session, a bass player returns, but a different one, and they add another horn. It seems unlikely that they would have done a little with the quartet and a little with the sextet on Thursday (after having done a seven-tune set with the quintet) then called it a day, then a little more with both lineups on Friday. In any event, all this music was made in two days. The last lineup, the sextet, recorded as the Nomos, which may well have meant "No mo' of this jive, we're getting back on the road."

The quartet sounds good, as always, with each member getting ample solo space, and young George Benson sounding better and better. The material is a standard, Bob Haggart and Johnny Burke's "What's New?" and two originals by McDuff.

It seems each soloist gets a session as composer. The Nomos do two tunes by Benson, "Redwood City," a long and a short version, and "Step Out and Get It." A third, "Long Distance," presumably also by the guitarist, was canned. The quartet is augmented by a bassist, Tommy Shelvin, and New Orleans native Alvin "Red"Tyler on baritone sax. Tyler was a veteran of Cosimo Matassa's studio in New Orleans, and had played on recordings by Little Richard and Fats Domino, and he adds a richness to the sound. Benson would record "Redwood City" again with his own group. 

The quartet sessions would be added to a second session with Benny Golson and a full orchestra. "Rail Head" would be on a 45 RPM single, with one of the tunes from the Golson session on the flip side. The Nomos didn't get an album. The long version of "Redwood City" would be included on a 1970 release, Gene Ammons/Richard "Groove" Holmes/Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis With Shirley Scott/Willis Jackson/The Nomos/Brother Jack McDuff - The Soul/Jazz Giants (Previously Unissued Material). The short version, and "Step Out and Get It," became a 45 RPM single. Futterman handled the production for both days and all lineups.

Listening to Prestige 609: Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: A Kettle of Fish / Carry Me Home

A big band backing a soul jazz organ combo is a unique idea, but these are the guys to make it work.

I'm always interested in the guys who are part of the rich fabric of jazz, even though their names aren't in the forefront. Here's what I could find about the musicians Benny Golson gathered for this session. Jerry Kail we've seen before as a member of Oliver Nelson's orchestra for his 1961 recordings. Billy Byers was on the same session, and made an earlier Prestige date as a member of Hal McKusick's quintet in 1957. Danny Stiles was on TV with the Merv Griffin show's orchestra, and played in two of the best big bands, Woody Herman's and Gerry Mulligan's. He also stepped out of the sections to make one album as co-leader with Bill Watrous, for the Famous Door label. 

Burt Collins was tabbed for inclusion--usually on trumpet-- by virtually everyone who ever put together a big band, including, surprisingly enough, Albert Ayler. In the 1970s, he formed a group with Joe Shepley, and one of their albums was a jazz tribute to Paul McCartney. He also cut albums for Music Minus One.

Tom McIntosh hardly belongs in this group of background figures. A distinguished composer as well as a trombonist, he was named and NEA Jazz Master in 2008. 

Don Ashworth joined the Tonight show orchestra when Johnny Carson took over its helm in 1962 and, like Johnny, remained there for the next 30 years. 

Bob Northern, after working as a session musician for many of the top names in jazz during the 1950s and 1960s, became interested in world music in the 1970s, went to Africa to study, and released several albums during that decade.

Marvin "Doc" Holliday can be heard playing and talking about his career in music on YouTube. 

George Marge, on baritone sax here, played nearly every reed instrument and was in wide demand as s a session musician, not just with the jazz greats but also with pop stars like Paul Simon and John Denver.

Put them all together with McDuff's usual group, plus Mel Lewis joining Joe Dukes on drums, and Benny Golson leading the band, and one can only be surprised that no one thought of it before. Golson's arrangement and some serious professionalism from the musicians provide a rich and full-throated backing for McDuff, who is solidly equal to the task of fronting this aggregation. The classic big bands were about good time music, soul jazz is about good time music, and between them, they let the good times roll.

The session was produced by Lew Futterman and Peter Paul, who had previously given us Brother Jack live in San Francisco, and away from the friendly confines of Rudy Van Gelder's studio. The album was entitled Prelude, after the Benny Golson tune which was on the album, along with McDuff originals and standards. "Prelude" was also on one of the two 45 RPM singles, along with "Oh, Look at Me Now," composed by Joe Bushkin, made famous by Frank Sinatra. The other 45 was two McDuff tunes, "A Kettle of Fish" and "Carry Me Home."

Listening to Prestige 604: Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Jive Samba

Prestige Records, Ozzie Cadena and Rudy Van Gelder took a bit of a breather in the fall of 1963, between the September 17th date of Jack McDuff, without his group, joining Sonny Stitt for a session, and October 10, when McDuff regular Red Holloway recorded a date without Brother Jack. 

But in the interim, one of Prestige's mainstays was recorded live out in San Francisco, and the results released on Prestige. The club was the Jazz Workshop, and the headliner none other than Brother Jack.

San Francisco, especially the North Beach area, was a hot epicenter for jazz in the 1960s, with such a cluster of clubs that Dizzy Gillespie, playing one night at the Jazz Workshop, could tuck his horn under his arm, walk across the street to a club where Carmen McRae was headlining, and accompany her on a swinging version of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." The Workshop was particularly fertile ground. Barry Harris recorded a live album there in 1960, and he was followed by Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderley, James Moody, Larry Coryell, and perhaps most famously, Thelonious Monk, whose 1964 appearance was recorded but unreleased. When it finally saw the light of day in 1983, it was hailed as one of Monk's finest efforts.

Jack McDuff hit Frisco with a big sound, including his two tenormen of the moment (usually he used one or the other), Harold Vick and Red Holloway, and his hot new guitar find, George Benson, and they all came ready to play to a responsive audience.

The date included four originals by McDuff, including "Grease Monkey," a staple of his live sets, and a tune previously recorded on an album with Kenny Burrell. 

"Somewhere in the Night" was written by noted arranger Billy May as the theme music for the gritty New York-based police drama Naked City, and it had become a crowd pleaser for jazz ensembles.

"Passing Through" was from a young West Coast musician who was starting to make a name for himself as a sax player/composer/arranger with Chico Hamilton. Charles Lloyd would go on to become one of the biggest jazz stars of the rest of the century, and into the next millennium. 

Finally, "Jive Samba"  had recently been recorded by Cannonball Adderley, from the pen of his brother Nat. It had already become a hit in jazz circles, and has remained a staple of the jazz repertoire for major artists and school groups alike.

Jazz Workshop was a great place to play, and its knowledgeable and enthusiastic audiences drew the best out of the musicians that played there. This album, entitled Brother Jack at the Jazz Workshop--Live!,  produced by Lew Futterman and Peter Paul, yielded two 45 RPM singles off the initial release, "Passing Through" / "Somewhere In The Night" and  "Dink's Blues / Grease Monkey." A third single,  "Rock Candy / Grease Monkey" was released in 1969. The group is identified as the Brother Jack McDuff Quartet, despite the presence of five musicians.

Listening to Prestige 594: Brother Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Rock Candy

 This is a big deal in the Brother Jack McDuff story and the Prestige story: the debut of a young man who will be one of the biggest jazz stars of the rest of the century, and on into the next millennium. George Benson would record several Prestige albums with McDuff, and one under his own leadership. before venturing on to stratospheric fame (there aren't many jazz players who have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame).

Benson started out as a child prodigy on the ukulele in his native Pittsburgh, taught by his father, although when he switched to guitar, his father let him go his own way--because, as Benson remembers it, his father thought the guitar began

and ended with Charlie Christian. It wasn't until years later that his father finally agreed to listen to him, and Dad had to agree that Charlie Christian had a rival.

Benson played mainly rhythm and blues in local clubs around Pittsburgh, though he did get nudged into more modern sounds when a certain musician used to come to town courting a woman. Stevie Wonder eventually married the girl, but on his trips to town, he would occasionally come and sit in with George. As Benson recalls it, his audiences refused to believe it was really Stevie Wonder, because what would he be doing in a dinky club in Pittsburgh sitting in with a kid guitarist?

It was another established musician who took him out of Pittsburgh, and brought his musicianship to another level. Benson was 19 when Jack McDuff brought him into his band, and he had a lot to learn. He recalled in an interview,

I had just started playing chord changes or jazz tunes, and I didn’t know very much about what was happening. He would have me play lines in unison or harmony with the saxophone player, and they would be at ridiculous tempos. And by the fact that the saxophone player did them, I didn’t question the fact that they could be done. I decided it was just my ability at fault; I’d go home and practise them, play them sideways, until I came up with a way to play these tunes that I didn’t even understand. And eventually I began to fit into his repertoire, and became a valuable member of the group;

It wasn't always easy. McDuff and his longtime drummer Joe Dukes were solid professionals, and very exacting. They would let him have it with both barrels if he didn't measure up, and with no shortage of obscenities.

Finally, after a particularly nasty rant, I snapped: "If y’all don’t lay off, I’m gonna take y’all outside and beat y’all old men up! I’m nineteen years old! Y’all can’t take me! We’re going out in the alley, right now!" McDuff and Dukes just stared at me for a second, then they both pulled out switchblades. But that didn’t stop me: “I don’t care! Y’all don’t scare me! Bring your switchblades into the alley! I’ll beat y’all up anyhow!” Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed: nobody went into the alley, and nobody got beaten up. But it got them off my back.

By the time they got to the Front Room in Newark in June of 1963, Benson had learned a thing or two.

This is one of those rarities--a Prestige live album. In engineering it, they play up the live aspect, with spoken introductions to the tunes, ad libs and a lot of crowd noise. It was a good choice for a live album, as it turned out, though Bob Weinstock and the Prestige team couldn't have predicted just how good at the time. The recording gives you that "present at the creation" feeling when Benson launches into his solo on "Rock Candy," the first tune of the set. There's even a false ending, as McDuff appears to wrap up the tune, followed by a moment of silence, followed by Benson ripping into it, and one can

even imagine oneself at the Front Room in Newark, suddenly looking up and saying "Who is this guy?"

"Rock Candy" would become a staple of McDuff's live sets. He would record it again in 1996 with Joey DiFrancesco, and Benson would record it with his own group in 2006.

The crowd at the Front Room got their money's worth on this night, as the group pulled out all the stops. Well, McDuff didn't pull out all the stops on Gershwin's "It Ain't Necessarily So," although he gives a bravura performance, restricting the organ to its percussive possibilities, while Benson and Holloway take care of the melodic parts.

McDuff never forgot he was a jazzman, but he also never forgot he was an entertainer--a good lesson for the young guitarist. He always included familiar songs with catchy melodies that people would like -- such as "Whistle While You Work," the dwarves' song from Walt Disney's Snow White, with drum work by Joe Dukes that makes one understand why Benson described him as "such a magnificent drummer that there were times I thought he was one of the greatest things that ever happened to mankind."

And "Undecided," a tune written by Charlie Shavers, who was torn between two poetic and evocative titles for his new composition, so he sent it off to his publishers marked "Undecided" -- title yet to come. They, however, misunderstood, thought that "Undecided" was the title, and sent it off to lyricist Sid Robin. The point of no return was reached for the song when Ella Fitzgerald recorded the lyric, and as "Undecided" it became a huge hit for the Ames Brothers in 1951.

McDuff's own compositions are always riff-based and accessible, and one of them, "Sanctified Samba," is an excellent object lesson in something else Brother Jack told the young guitarist:

I learned the blues from my former boss Brother Jack McDuff. He kept stressing, “Man, put some blues in that stuff, man.” I said, “Wait a minute, man, it’s not a blues song.” He said, “I don’t care! Put some blues in it.” I asked him why he liked the blues so much, and he told me that no matter where you are in the world – you could be in America or in China – if you play blues, they understand it.

So that’s why it’s so valuable to me. I’ve experimented with that philosophy over the years and have found that he’s correct. People like the blues no matter where you are all over the world. So it became something that I decided should be a part of everything I did. The blues is like street music. It’s like the language of the street.

This album is a riveting introduction to a budding superstar, but it's also a tight ensemble album, held together by the always masterful Dukes and featuring stellar playing by Red Holloway.

Production was handled by Lew Futterman, a recent Cornell graduate making his producing debut. He would go on to achieve success as an independent jazz producer, and greater success as a rock producer, and mega-success, ultimately, as a real estate developer, thus answering the question, "How can I make millions of dollars producing jazz?"

Brother Jack McDuff--Live! was the title of the Prestige album, with a few cuts not making it. The alternate version of "Undecided" was held off for 1967's Hallelujah Time!, and "Love Walked In" and "The Midnight Sun" appeared on The Midnight Sun, in the same year.  The session threw off its share of 45 RPM singles -- first "A Real Good 'Un" / "Rock Candy," then "Sanctified Samba" / "Whistle While You Work." A few years later, in 1967, "Rock Candy" would be the A side of a 45, with "Grease Monkey," from a different session. The singles are one indication of McDuff's huge popularity at the time; the number of times Prestige brought him back into the studio is another. But, as the song says, fame if you win it comes and goes in a minute. In recent interviews, greying superstar George Benson has had to explain that Jack McDuff was an organist who gave him his first start.

Listening to Prestige 585: Kenny Burrell - Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Call it Stormy Monday

 This session has a little something for everyone, with the soul jazz organ of Jack McDuff teamed up with the technical wizardry and stylistic range of Kenny Burrell, and the brilliant Latin percussion of Ray Barretto thrown into the mix for good measure.

Burrell certainly knew how to play with an organ combo, as his long association with Jimmy Smith attests to, and he jumps right in here, starting with the first number on the session, a McDuff composition called "Grease Monkey," which has the fire and energy of the finest rhythm and blues, with Burrell pushing McDuff's riffs, and McDuff creating the kind of riffs that can sustain three and a

half minutes of solid dancing or listening.

"The Breeze and I," by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, is probably more associated with lounge acts than jazz combos, but it's had its share of jazz interpreters too (both Curtis Fuller and Wes Montgomery recorded versions of it at around the same time), and why not? If you have Ray Barretto nailing the mambo beat and Joe Dukes laying down that archetypal soul jazz rhythm, you've got a great start, and then when Kenny Burrell does what he does, which is improvise stunningly while never losing sight of the melody, you come to appreciate what a good melody it it. Lecuona was one of Cuba's leading composers, and the melody which became known as "The Breeze and I" was originally a part of his well regarded Suite Andalucia.

Barretto and Dukes don't stop the carnival, as they tear into "Nica's Dream," Horace Silver's tribute to the jazz baroness and protector of Thelonious Monk. Between the two of them over these two selections, they threaten to turn this into a percussion session to rival Art Blakey at his most intense.

"Call it Stormy Monday" is one of the most recorded of blues songs, but it took a while to get there, and for Walker to start realizing any royalties on what would become his most famous composition. When Woody Herman and his Swinging Herd (then including Bill Harris, Richie Kamuca, Victor Feldman and Vince Guaraldi) released the first cover version in 1957, ten years after Walker first recorded it, there weren't many blues classics because nobody much was recording cover versions of great blues songs. When Herman recorded his Blues Groove album for Capitol, whoever wrote the blues for the back sleeve was had to find a way to sell the concept, and he came up with "Woody Herman and his Herd combine the beat of rock and roll with the dynamic sounds of swinging jazz." Jazz with a beat, as Shirley Scott and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis described it in the title to their first album together, but not many people were looking to catalog of blues originals for material. Ralph J. Gleason, in the liner notes to Blues Groove, looked forward hopefully but uncertainty: "There may come a time when the blues will be regarded as the true folk art of America."

That was 1957. The blues had already, as Muddy Waters was to point out later, "had a baby and they named it rock and roll," but jazz fans still shunned that birth as illegitimate, and to true music aficionados like Gleason, the mainstreaming of the blues into American culture was still a wistful dream.

Bizarrely enough, the next performer to take it on, in 1960, was Pat Boone. Even more surprising, his version isn't bad, with Boone adding some crooner's touches, but respecting the blues, and a nice band behind him.

But then it was the 1960s, and Ralph Gleason's dream for the blues started to become a reality. And T-Bone Walker's dream of royalty checks for a great song, as it was recorded by Nancy Wilson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Bobby Bland, and Lou Rawls with Les McCann. Kenny Burrell liked the song so much he would record it again for Prestige the following year, with Shirley Scott.

And also in 1964, "Call it Stormy Monday" was recorded by Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, the first British blues band, and that brought it all back home, as the showed the Yanks what the true folk art of America was. 

Burrell and McDuff seize on this classic-to-be as a license to play the blues, and that's what they do. This is soul jazz, yes, but at its heart it's the blues, the whole blues, and nothing but the blues.

Most of this session went onto the LP Crash!, credited to Kenny Burrell with the Brother Jack McDuff Quartet. "Moody McDuff" went on to a 1966 McDuff album, Steppin' Out, which is interesting because it pulls together tracks from five different sessions utilizing three of jazz's greatest guitarists, all of whom worked with McDuff at different stages of his career: Burrell, Grant Green, and George Benson. Apparently by the time the album was released, Burrell had already stepped out of his Prestige contract and into an exclusive contract with another label: he is credited as K. B. Groovington. "The Breeze and I" and "Nica's Dream" were released on 45 RPM. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 581: Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Somethin' Slick album version

LISTEN TO ONE: Somethin' Slick 45 RPM version

 Jack McDuff welcomed in the new year with a January 2nd session in Englewood Cliffs featuring an eight piece band, which apparently didn't go so well. Only two tunes were recorded, one of which was unissued, the other of which eventually made it onto a compilation album called The Soul Giants. It was one of Prestige's PRST releases of the late 1960s and early 1970s--tracks re-engineered for stereo release, not always successfully. 

He was back again a week later, on January 8, with a different lineup, only tenorman Harold Vick and his regular drummer Joe Dukes. McDuff was by this time solidly into the soul jazz groove that would make him one of the most popular jazz artists of the decade. 

It's hard to say what could have gone wrong with the January 2 octet session, with some first rate musicians aboard, but by the time the following Tuesday had rolled around, he had a tight group of players who knew just what to do. Joe Dukes was steadily building a reputation as one of the premier soul jazz drummers. He would make a career, and a good one, as Brother Jack's drummer, and pretty much fade out of sight as the the soul jazz decade of the 1960s came to an end. 

Harold Vick was to make his first recording as leader later in the year with Blue Note, and would go on to make several albums with as many different labels, never quite seizing the brass ring, but making some solidly good music. He would continue to work with McDuff through 1964. 

Eric Dixon only climbed aboard the McDuff cavalcade for this one session, but he knew how to swing to a solid groove, as his years with Count Basie demonstrate. And Kenny Burrell and Ray Barretto make any session better.

Sometimes it's hard to understand the vagaries of contractual obligations in the recording industry, especially the jazz end of it. Burrell is credited as K. B. Groovington on one track, "Shaky," which was buried until 1969 and finally released on a PRST compilation of McDuff sides from various Prestige sessions, Steppin' Out. . A track from a February McDuff session also ended up on Steppin' Out, so maybe by 1960 Burrell was under contract with a label that precluded the use of his name on compilations? Hard to believe. But I'm not an entertainment contract lawyer.

Five of these tunes--the title tune, "How High the Moon," It's a Wonderful World," "Smut" and "Our Miss Brooks" comprised McDuff's next LP, Somethin' Slick. "Love Walked In" was held over for a subsequent album with Burrell, "Shaky" got shaken down to the stereo compilation, and "Easy Livin' didn't make the cut at all, or at least hasn't yet. It may still end up on some streaming service.

"Somethin' Slick" was released on 45 RPM, at about half the length of the album cut (6:34 to 3:01), and I've included both versions as a sort of Listen to One and Listen to One (a), to demonstrate how a tune was edited down to fit the demands of jukeboxes. There's actually a third version available on YouTunes, a promotional copy sent to DJs, whittled down to 2:53

Listening to Prestige 571: Brother Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: He's a Real Gone Guy

This is the first time that Jack McDuff is identified on the record label and sleeve with the sobriquet he was to use for the rest of his career. He's Brother Jack McDuff, and he's pulling out all the stops on that powerful church organ sound to make music that is pure funkadelic--screamin' that funky music, as the album's title suggests.

This time he has Kenny Burrell as the other half of that now-popular guitar-organ sound. Joe Dukes, his regular drummer, is on board, and they are joined by Leo Wright, a Texas-born player who had begun making a name for himself in the orchestras of Charles Mingus and Dizzy Gillespie, and who had also recorded with Burrell. Wright would do some

good work in the early 1960s, including a few more sessions with Prestige. He also made records on Impulse!, Verve and Blue Note, before decamping for Europe, where he took the expatriate route. It meant that he's now not much remembered except by the most encyclopedic jazz fans, but who's to say he was wrong? Red Garland went back home to Texas out of a feeling that rock had taken over the American consciousness, but he had already established a major reputation. Wright probably made a living in Europe that he would not have been able to equal here, unless he did what a number of musicians did, playing with Dixieland bands at Disney World, or got regular Broadway show pit work like Wendell Marshall.

There were a number of guitarists, like Thornel Schwartz, who made a specialty out of playing in organ-guitar combos, and Burrell certainly isn't one of them. He plays Kenny Burrell guitar alongside the screamin' funk of McDuff and Wright, and makes it work--jazz is probably unparalleled in its

hospitability to unlikely combinations of musicians.

McDuff plays two originals and four standards: Count Basie's "One O'Clock Jump," Avery Parrish's "After Hours," and two songs most vividly associated with singers. Lots and lots of people of singers have covered "I Cover the Waterfront," but no one quite like Billie Holiday. Nellie Lutcher wrote and performed "He's a Real Gone Guy," and while hardly any singers have covered Lutcher's original, the tune has had some popularity with jazz instrumentalists.

McDuff and his group cover a lot of stylistic ground here, but they really nail it with the flat-out screamin' of the title, and the best screamin' numbers are "One O'Clock Jump" and "He's a Real Gone Guy."

Screamin' was a Prestige release, Ozzie Cadena producing. "He's a Real Gone Guy," parts 1 and 2, was the first 45 RPM single, followed by "Screamin'" b/w "Somethin' Slick," from McDuff's next session.

Listening to Prestige 529: Jack McDuff - Gene Ammons

LISTEN TO ONE: Mellow Gravy

 One day after Smith and Powell shook the cathedral rafters of Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey studio. another organ-sax combo took up residence, with no sign of slackening the intensity. And these were two of Prestige's top moneymakers. Jack McDuff was challenging Jimmy Smith for pre-eminence in the organ department (sexism still held Shirley Scott back, as good as she was and as popular as she was). Gene Ammons was probably the most popular artist in Prestige's history. Drugs were to catch up with Ammons before the year was out, and he was back in prison, this time for seven years. When he was finally

released in 1969, he signed again with Prestige, the most lucrative contract Bob Weinstock had ever given to an artist. And even after Weinstock sold Prestige to Saul Zaentz of Fantasy, and it became strictly a reissue label, they put out a couple of new Ammons albums.

So these guys were not going to let any other organ-sax combo steal a march on them. Smith and Powell had unleashed a killer album? Kill this, motherfuckers!

I'm making that up, of course. But it was one day later. Esmond Edwards was at the controls for both sessions. And McDuff and Ammons were smoking hot.

McDuff used the group that he had made into a super-tight ensemble. Harold Vick and Joe Dukes had been with him for a few albums, and would be sticking around for a while -- especially Dukes, regarded by many as the ideal jazz-funk drummer. Eddie Diehl would be around for a while longer, before getting  off the road and entering a new career as a guitarmaker. He had also worked before with Ammons, so they were no strangers to each other, either. 

The album. Brother Jack Meets the Boss, was a Prestige release. "Mellow Gravy" was a two-sided 45 RPM release, and the album was also released as Mellow Gravy, with a different cover but the same catalog number.

Listening to Prestige 512: Jack McDuff

LISTEN TO ONE: Your Nose is Open

Jack McDuff did a lot of recording during this period, and a lot of it, like this session, would be held back and released a good deal later. But the soul jazz sound, and the organ-tenor sax-guitar quintet sound, of which he had been one of the pioneers with Willis Jackson and Bill Jennings.

It's the second session of his association with Harold Vick, which would last for four years. Vick would go on to a successful career across the spectrum of soul and jazz, coming back in the 1970s to the soul jazz-organ sound with Shirley Scott and Jimmy McGriff.

Grant Green had been the guitarist on the earlier McDuff/Vick session, but he had moved on, and the new guitarist was Eddie Diehl, who would do a couple more sessions with this lineup. Diehl was a highly respected guitarist, but he became even more respected in a second career as a luthier, when he had left the hurly-burly of the big city and moved up the Hudson River to Poughkeepsie. 

Joe Dukes joined McDuff for this session, and remained his drummer for much of the decade. After he found Dukes, McDuff pretty much had to stop looking, because he was, by most accounts, just about the perfect soul jazz drummer. Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, he grew up steeped in blues and and soul. Critic François van de Linde in Flophouse Magazine, a jazz blog, describes him this way:

The chemistry between McDuff and drummer Joe Dukes was unbelievable, soul jazz drum pioneer Joe Dukes anticipated every move of McDuff and the tune changes with an assault of continuous accents and rolls, adapting big band style to the blues. 

And George Benson, who joined McDuff later in the decade, simply said of him (quoted in van de Linde's blog):

Such a magnificent drummer that there were times I thought he was one of the greatest things that ever happened to mankind.

 Dukes could also be a tough taskmaster, as the 19-year-old Benson was to find out when he joined McDuff:

Finally, after a particularly nasty rant, I snapped: ‘If y’all don’t lay off, I’m gonna take y’all outside and beat y’all old men up! I’m nineteen years old! Y’all can’t take me! We’re going out in the alley, right now! McDuff and Dukes just stared at me for a second, then they both pulled out switchblades. But that didn’t stop me: “I don’t care! Y’all don’t scare me! Bring your switchblades into the alley! I’ll beat y’all up anyhow!” Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed: nobody went into the alley, and nobody got beaten up. But it got them off my back.

Dukes's powerful assistance is heard to full measure on this session, as were the other musicians. McDuff learned a good lesson from his mentor Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson about choosing musicians who were not only first rate, but also absolutely compatible with him. Dukes and Diehl did not go on to become celebrated names in the jazz world--Dukes because he mostly stayed in McDuff's shadow, making only one album (for Prestige) as leader, Diehl because he left the limelight for the Hudson Valley and guitar-making--but just a listen to this session will tell you how good they were, and how right for McDuff's soulful sound.

Strangely enough, as popular as the organ-sax-guitar guitar sound was at this point, and as good as this group was, and as hot as McDuff was becoming, Prestige shelved this session and didn't release it until 1971, as On With It! One cut, "Scram," a Leonard Feather composition, came out on 1963's Soul Summit Vol. 2 ,  made up of cuts from four different sessions, mostly featuring Gene Ammons and released shortly after Ammons went back to prison.

Esmond Edsards produced.

Listening to Prestige 482 - Jack McDuff

Grant Green was already hitting it big with Blue Note when he showed up for this, his second session with Jack McDuff, and as busy as Blue Note kept him, he was lucky to have time for lunch, let alone doing any more sideman gigs for Prestige. After his February debut with McDuff, he did a live date at Minton's with Stanley Turrentine (four sets that became two Blue Note albums), a session with Dave Bailey for the short-lived Canadian label Jazztime, Blue Note sessions with Kenny Dorham (unissued) and Hank Mobley (issued), before getting his first Blue Note date as leader of his own group in April. Then an organ trio led by Baby Face Willette in May,

another leader date and a date with Horace Parlan in June, before reconnecting with McDuff in July. Then back to Blue Note for two sessions in August, resulting in two albums; two sessions in September (Stanley Turrentine and Lou Donaldson), and another session as leader in October. He had November off for Thanksgiving, then back to business in December with a Sonny Red session for Riverside's Jazzland subsidiary, and two Blue Note sessions with Ike Quebec, one under Quebec's name and the other under his own. And he was off to the races, well on his way to becoming the most recorded artist in Blue Note's catalog.

As Green was exiting, Harold Vick was entering, and he would spend five years--and eleven albums, nine for Prestige--with McDuff.

So this would be the only album the three of them played together on, and you might well think "Wow, just the one session, and they're as tight as any three guys I ever heard," until you remembered all those sessions with McDuff, Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson, and Bill Jennings. So perhaps it's time to give McDuff credit for being able to fit right in the pockets of the cats he played with. Maybe that's partly the blues-based simplicity of McDuff's music -- and Vick, also, had a background in rhythm and blues -- but it's not all that simple, and it is all that tight,

The boys go for a simple melody when they reach into the rhythm and blues catalog for the album's title cut, "Goodnight, It's Time to Go." Originally recorded as "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight" by the Chicago doowop group The Spaniels, it has become standard for pop, rock and even country vocalists, but this is probably the only jazz treatment. But with some sweet swing, and especially some inventive solos by Green, they make it a satisfying six minute performance, They also take on a Tin Pan Alley standard ("I'll Be Seeing You," by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal) and some Benny Goodman swing ("A Smooth One"). But for me, the highlight of the album is the McDuff composition "Sanctified Waltz," where McDuff and Vick are two hearts beating as one through a barn burner of a tune.

"Godiva Brown" was held back, and eventually surfaced on a later album, Steppin' Out.

Joe Dukes spent much of his career with McDuff, although he was in demand as a session drummer for both soul jazz and soul music. He would be the drummer when McDuff put together another tighter-than-tight organ-guitar-tenor group with Red Holloway and George Benson. That one impressed Prestige president Bob Weinstock so much that he offered each of the sideman an album as leader. Benson, of course, was well on his way to a mega-career, but that would be Dukes's only album as leader.

Esmond Edwards produced, and Goodnight, It's Time to Go came out on the Prestige label. "Sanctified Waltz" and "Goodnight, It's Time to Go" were the 45 RPM single.