Listening to Prestige 247: John Jenkins - Clifford Jordan - Bobby Timmons

John Jenkins, Clifford Jordan and Bobby Timmons were all young in 1957; they were barely out of short pants when Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker first hit 52nd Street. Jordan and Jenkins, both 26, were newly arrived in New York from Chicago, where they had been classmates at DuSable High, and part of the Windy City jazz scene with Ira Sulivan, Johnny Griffin and others. Timmons, four years younger, had been the first one to arrive in New York, in 1954. He had played gigs with Kenny Dorham and Chet Baker among others, but 1957 was his breakout year.

They were heading in very different directions. Timmons would become associated with the soul jazz movement, and write some of its greatest hits, like "Moanin'," "Dis Here" and "Dat Dere." His compositions have become jazz standards, and "Moanin'" is probably still one of the most recognizable tunes in the jazz repertoire. As with "Moody's Mood For Love," its popularity was enhanced when lyrics were set to it (by Jon Hendricks), but the melody was ubiquitous before that.

Timmons was part of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers when he wrote "Moanin'," and he's probably mostly associated with that group, and its Blue Note recordings, but he would record several albums as a leader for Riverside, and then return to Prestige for several more in the mid-sixties. He would die young, at 34, another victim of heroin.

Jenkins would record only two more albums as a leader, both in 1957, but soon after circumstances in life forced him to the streets, where he would hustle a living as a pedlar and street musician for the next three decades.

Jordan would have a long and distinguished career, known as a musician's musician, not really associated with any one school, playing with funksters (Horace Silver), experimentalists (Eric Dolphy), funky experimentalists (Charles Mingus), touring Africa with Randy Weston. Jordan's style was strongly influenced by Lester Young, at a time when Young's influence was diminishing, but he drew from a multitude of sources, including Nobel Laureate Herman Hesse's novel The Glass Bead Game, and the songs of folk blues artist Lead Belly.

The decades after the Prestige era. the 70s and 80s, saw a different breed of independent label, and Jordan recorded for several of them. Muse was the creation of Prestige alumni Joe Fields and Don Schlitten. Many of the later small indies were formed by musicians. One such was Strata-East (Charles Tolliver and Stanley Cowell), which released a number of Jordan titles. Others like SteepleChase and Soul Note came from the European love for American jazz. Jordan would ultimately make over 40 recordings, and in 1990. he would bring John Jenkins off the streets for a final recording.

Jenkins and Jordan would go out together, dying within a couple of months of each other in 1993, DuSable High School. Their shared background shows in the intuitive closeness they bring to this session, abetted by another DuSable graduate, Wilbur Ware. Dannie Richmond, who had just begun his long association with Charles Mingus, is on drums.
just as they had come in together from Chicago in 1957. Chicago is best known today as the cauldron of the postwar electric blues sound (and both these young horn players played in rhythm and blues bands in their home town), but it has a powerful jazz history too, beginning with the New Orleans diaspora of King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, and their young white acolytes from a local high school. Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer. Later it was to become a hotbed of the avant-garde, with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. But in between, as the bebop revolution inspired musicians throughout the country, it had a music scene to be reckoned with, with many of the young cats (including Jordan) getting their start at

The album was released on New Jazz as Jenkins, Jordan, Timmons.

Listening to Prestige 232: Jackie McLean - John Jenkins

Jackie McLean was known, especially early in his career, as Bird's foremost acolyte, and starting off the session with a Parker tune shows that he's not quite ready to shake off that mantle. "Bird Feathers," as it turns out, did not make the cut for the album that emanated from this session (though it did eventually see vinyl), but it does set the tone.

On this session, McLean is paired with another Bird acolyte, John Jenkins, and two altos, plus LP technology (hardly a new development at this point) mean that they can do something that Bird was not able to do on his original waxing of this tune, and that's go on twice as long. More, actually. The original Parker/Miles Davis cut came in at under three minutes, 78 RPM dimensions, and McLean
and Jenkins take it to nearly ten minutes. In fact, all the cuts from this session are extended, which is why  they weren't able to fit them all on one album.

Even in Bird's late recordings, he didn't go much beyond five minutes, the exception being the live Jazz at Massey Hall. So length is one of the interesting features of this session. Not to say this gives us an insight into what Bird would have done with ten minutes or more to develop an individual piece in the recording studio, since no one can tell what Bird might have done with anything had he lived long enough to develop his genius further. And it goes without saying, not to say it gives us an insight into what if there had been two Charlie Parkers. Still, it's interesting.

The session shapes up much like a Parker session too, with one original ("Bird Feathers") and two standards, one ballad tempo ("Easy Living") and one uptempo ("The Lady is a Tramp"). The other two cuts are both John Jenkins originals, and he brings something of value to the party. In fact, his "Windy City" is probably my favorite cut. Art Taylor contributes a blazing drum solo to "Windy City," and Wade Legge is equally powerful.

We've heard Legge once before--on another Charlie Parker tribute session, that one led by Sonny Rollins. Legge himself was too young ever to have played with Bird, but he did tour and record extensively with Dizzy Gillespie. This session and two with Charles Mingus were his last on record. He would shortly return to his native Buffalo, and die a few years later at the age of 29, perhaps by his own hand.

Alto Madness was the title of this album, and "Bird Feathers" became the title cut of the New Jazz compilation album it eventually found its way to, with cuts from the March Phil Woods/Gene Quill session, and a later date with Hal McCusick and Billy Byers--which was not, oddly enough, devoted to Parker compositions.

 



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Listing to Prestige 223: Prestige All Stars

This is one of the more obscure All Stars sessions. I couldn't find it at all on Spotify, and had no luck on YouTube searching under Prestige All Stars. Finally, I decided to search under the names of individual band members and struck gold on the first try: Teddy Charles. YouTube has the tracks under Charles' name. AllMusic credits the session to the leadership of Charles and Mal Waldron, who was certainly a strong organizing force at Prestige in those days. Wikipedia gives producer credit to Charles, rateyourmusic gives it to Bob Weinstock. The Teddy Charles discography website, maintained by Noal Cohen, describes it as a session by the Prestige Jazz Quartet with guests. In any event, you can find the tunes on YouTube under Charles's name.

Waldron contributed two tunes to the session; Charles, Idrees Suleiman and John Jenkins one each. A Charles session could go one of two ways: very avant garde or very mainstream. This is definitely in the latter category, as was only appropriate. Teddy Charles as producer or no, this was still a Prestige All Stars session, which meant a Bob Weinstock session: loose, mostly unrehearsed jamming. Jazz like it should be, with all really good players meshing well.

Charles, Waldron, Addison Farmer and Jerry Segal were playing together for the first time here, and were not yet known as the Prestige Jazz Quartet, but they would work a few more sessions together under that name.

Drummer Jerry Segal had done an earlier Teddy Charles recording for New Jazz, and had recorded with Terry Gibbs, so he knew something about playing behind vibraphonists. He would join Mose Allison for a few albums after Allison's move to Columbia.

This was John Jenkins's recording debut. 1957 would be his busiest year, touching the heart of New York indie jazz, as he recorded with Prestige, Blue Note, Savoy and Riverside. Like Teddy Charles, he would leave jazz a few years later to take up other pursuits, but unlike Charles, he doesn't seem to have found a more secure profession, For most of his non-jazz years, he was a street pedlar, and when he returned to music in the mid-1980s, it was as a street musician. This is no reflection on his ability--the world of street music in New York is highly competitive, and of a very high level. He did record once more, with Clifford Jordan, before his death in 1993.

The album was entitled Coolin'. The 1949 Miles Davis nonet sessions were finally released on LP by Capitol right around the time of this session, and were receiving the acclaim from the jazz public that they had always had among musicians,  so that may have influenced the choice of title. And of course gerunds with dropped g's had been, and would continue to be featured in Prestige's releases of the Miles Davis Contractual Marathon sessions. All this seems to have had more to do with marketing than with the music.But whatever marketing strategy went into the naming of this album, there seems to have been not much followup. It was not released until 1959, and then only on New Jazz, and there were no repackagings of it under Teddy Charles's name. In fact, no repackagings at all, until finally a release on Concord's Original Jazz Classics series.

 



 Order Listening to Prestige, Vol. 1 here. It makes a great Christmas gift for the jazz lovers on your list. And you can tell them that Volume 2 should be ready for next Christmas!