Tad Richards' odyssey through the catalog of Prestige Records:an unofficial and idiosyncratic history of jazz in the 50s and 60s. With occasional digressions.
There's a lot to be said for the thought behind this King Curtis session, but not much to say about it. Take a collection of really familiar chestnuts and give them the King Curtis treatment: the stuttering tenor sax, the red hot rhythm and blues combo, here augmented by Ellington veteran Britt Woodman, which can't be anything but good news. Also joining the group is Carl Lynch, one of the best session guitarists in New York, with mega-credits extending from Pearl Bailey to the Fugs.
This was a gambit frequently used by 1950s rock-and-rollers. Take a song that everybody knows, because everyone sang it in their grade school music classes, and give it a Duane Eddy twangy guitar treatment, and you have "Red River Rock," by Johnny and the Hurricanes. Or take something equally familiar--a Stephen Foster song--and if you're a genius, like Ray Charles, you can turn it into "Swanee River Rock." Or if you're a gifted satirist, like Stan Freberg, you can turn it into "Rock Around Steven Foster." Fast forward to the 1970s, and they're still doing it, with equally familiar, if more classical, sources: Walter Murphy's "A Fifth of Beethoven."
King Curtis and his band are not geniuses like Ray Charles; they are, however, better musicians than Johnny and the Hurricanes, and if they aren't exactly the satirists that Stan Freberg is, they do approach these old chestnuts with a sense of humor. They did the old chestnuts about as well as you could ask for. This isn't an album that's lasted, and that's kinda too bad. It's fun to listen to.
The Tru-Sound album is called Doin' the Dixie Twist. Twist, I guess, because if you stuck "twist" on any any collection of rhythm and bluesy instrumentals, you had a chance of selling a few more copies in those days, so they were definitely not shy about getting the word out there. Dixie, I guess, because a lot of the songs are associated with the South, or because they're associated with Dixieland jazz. That crown jewel of all Dixieland chestnuts, "When the Saints Go Marchin' In," became a Tru-Sound 45, along with "Free for All," from the King's January session.
King Curtis made his reputation with his thrilling solos to recordings by Atlantic rhythm and blues and doo wop performers in the 1950s. Then, later in 1962, he made a recording, "Soul Twist," for Harlem entrepreneur Bobby Robinson's Enjoy label, which hit Number One on the Billboard R&B charts, number 17 on the pop charts, and established Curtis as a star in his own right, with several more chart singles, culminating in the monster hit, Memphis Soul Stew, for Atlantic in 1967.
In between, he made six albums for Prestige, three of them for the "contemporary rhythm and blues" label, Tru-Sound. He worked on a number of other sessions, including several backing up singers for Bluesville. He worked with jazz musicians like Nat Adderley, or with his own working group, as here. This is the second of two sessions to include another rhythm and blues tenor legend, Sam "the Man" Taylor.
It was his association with the twist that brought stardom to Curtis, but really, "Soul Twist" was just a rhythm and blues number, and a good one--Curtis was one of the best R&B tenormen around. You could actually do the twist to any peppy tune with a back beat--it wasn't like the samba or the rhumba or the mambo, or even the bunny hop.
And the same with the tunes on this album. "The Twist" is the most Pavlovian response-inducing cultural phenomenon in American history. Hear Chubby Checker's voice singing "Come on bab-eeee..." even today, and a roomful of people will start gyrating and moving their arms as if drying their butts with an imaginary towel. Same probably with the Isley Brothers of the Beatles singing "Shake it up baby." Not so much with King Curtis's instrumentals, although I'm sure people were twisting the night away to them back then. Now they could still be for dancing to, if you chose, or you could just sit back and listen and snap your fingers and tap your feet. It's King Curtis's regular band, tight as can be, with a second star of the rhythm and blues firmament, Sam "the Man" Taylor (on all but two tracks).
These tunes all went onto the Tru-Sound album It's Party Time, along with four tracks from July 11, 1961, which utilized the same personnel, including Taylor. "Free for All," with "When the Saints Go Marching In" from a session in February 1962, was the first 45 RPM single to come from the session, followed by "Low Down" / "I'll Wait for You."
Two items of note, here. First, Eddie Kirkland himself, one of the great blues performers of his generation. Although outgunned in reputation by Chess Records's stable of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Bo Diddley and all, he was outgunned by no one when it came to delivering hard driving blues. Second, a rare, probably unique, opportunity to hear King Curtis and Oliver Nelson playing together.
That second one might be a bit of a letdown. King Curtis's band was brought in to back up Kirkland, and Nelson...? Perhaps he had stopped by the studio in Englewood Cliffs for some other reason, and decided it
would be fun to sit in, and a bit of something different. This was, after all, the blues and the concrete truth. Or perhaps there was a personal connection--Nelson would sit in again with the Curtis band on Kirkland's second Prestige session, the following year.
Neither Nelson nor Curtis solos, but the ensemble gives a fullness to what is first and foremost a Kirkland session, with the blues man's forceful and commanding voice, guitar and harmonica. It's the blues man, and it's the blues, man. Love gone wrong dominates the session thematically, and there's no arguing with that as a solid basis for the blues.
This was Kirkland's first album, and the only one on which the tag "Blues Man" was added to his name. If he was to be known by a nickname, it was more often "Gypsy of the Blues," because of his nonstop touring schedule. He did release one single--his first--as "Little Eddie Kirkland," on the West Coast RPM label, and he recorded a couple of sides in 1963 as Eddie Kirk. Those were for Volt Records, one half of the legendary soul labels Stax-Volt, during the time when he was bandleader for Volt's superstar performer, Otis Redding.
Kirkland was born in Jamaica but raised in Alabama. He toured with a medicine show in his teens, then joined the army, where a fight with a racist officer brought him a dishonorable discharge. From there he made his way to Detroit, where his mother was then living, and his guitar skills brought him to the attention of John Lee Hooker, with whom he toured from 1949 to 1962. From then on, following the gig with Otis Redding, he continued as a solo act, although he did also work with other artists, including Little Richard, Ben E. King, Ruth Brown and Little Johnnie Taylor. He died in 2011 in an automobile accident.
It's the Blues Man! was released on Tru-Sound, and it has come to be regarded by many blues enthusiasts as Kirkland's best work. One track from the session "Man of Stone," was covered by the British blues band John Mayall's Bluesbreakers,. Tru-Sound also released "Train Done Gone" and "Something's Gone Wrong in My Life" on 45 RPM, while "Chill Me Baby" was matched with "Have Mercy on Me," from Kirkland's second Prestige session, in 1962. the 45 was released in 1964 on the Prestige label, Tru-Sound being no more by that time.
"Train Done Gone" had a parallel life, being also released on 45 by the tiny Detroit blues and soul label, Lu Pine, with "I Tried" on the flip side. Lu Pine did a lot of good stuff, but they're probably best remembered by music historians for "Tears of Sorrow" / "Pretty Baby," by the Primettes. The record flopped, but another Detroit music entrepreneur, Berry Gordy, liked the group's sound, signed them to his own label, and changed their name to the Supremes.
Music writer Elijah Wald once said of him, "For pure energy and emotion, he may be the greatest blues artist alive."
Here's the difference between your jazz critic (or your anything critic) and your average fan. Your critic has heard it all, and he rejects the tired, the trite, the overdone, the same old same old. An album of the most over-played, over-listened to songs in the history of jazz...spare me.
The fan isn't sophisticated enough for that. "Night Train"? "Fever"? "Honky Tonk"? Great shit, man!
Musicians aren't immune, either. Here's a story I've told before, but it's a great story, and it bears retelling. It's Phil Woods's story, and his words.
I had just graduated from Juilliard in 1952 and was playing at the Nut Club on Seventh Ave. and Sheridan Square in the Village. After all of that great education, here I was playing "Harlem Nocturne" 10 times a night...I wasn’t happy with myself. I was saying to myself, “My god, I’m a Juilliard graduate, and I can play great jazz, and here I am playing "Night Train" and "Harlem Nocturne." I didn’t like my mouthpiece. I didn’t like my reed. I didn’t like my horn. I didn’t even like the strap.
...One night somebody came into the club and said, “Hey, Charlie Parker’s playing across the street. He’s jamming.” ...I was going on my break so I rushed over. When I walked in, there was this 90-year old guy playing a piano that was only three octaves long [laughs]. His father was on drums using a tiny snare and little tiny pie plates for cymbals. And there was the great Charlie Parker—playing the baritone sax. It belonged to Larry Rivers, the painter. Parker knew me. He knew all the kids who were coming up.
...I said, “Mr. Parker, perhaps you’d like to play my alto?” He said, “Phil, that would be great. This baritone’s kicking my butt.” So I ran back across the street to the Nut Club and grabbed the alto sax that I hated. I came back and got on the bandstand, which was about as big as a coffee table. I handed my horn to Bird and he played "Long Ago and Far Away."...As I’m listening to him play my horn, I’m realizing ...nothing was wrong with the reed, nothing was wrong with the mouthpiece—even the strap sounded good. Then Parker says to me, “Now you play.” I said to myself, “My God.” So I did. I played a chorus for him... When I was done, Bird leaned over and said, “Sounds real good, Phil.” This time I levitated over Seventh Avenue to the Nut Club. And when I got back on the bandstand there, I played the shit out of Harlem Nocturne. That’s when I stopped complaining and started practicing. That was quite a lesson.
This is my 500th entry on Listening to Prestige. That's six years of listening to great jazz and writing about it. Six years of putting a theory to the test--a theory that Peter Jones and I came up with, about the recorded jazz of the 1950s, our formative years...it was all good. We were young and we were learning, and we had those aforementioned critics to go by, and we had limited resources, and we tended to buy the albums that got four and five stars in DownBeat. Can it really all have been good?
Well, I've passed through the 1950s, and I'm two years into the next decade, and I've listened to every single track recorded on a pretty representative indie label, and so far our theory is holding up.
But after 500 recording sessions, and 500 blog entries, you'd think I'd have earned my status as jaded critic, wouldn't you?
But uh-uh. I'm with the average fan on this one. I'm with the guy in the Nut Club who wanted to hear "Night Train" and "Harlem Nocturne." I'm with Phil Woods, after he got schooled by Charlie Parker. Mr. King Curtis...no "Harlem Nocturne," on the September 19th session -- how could he have forgotten it? -- but he made up for it three days later, with a return to Englewood Cliffs. Definitely "Night Train." And "Fever," and "Tuxedo Junction," and "The Hucklebuck," and..."Honky Tonk."
Billy Butler, who co-composed "Honky Tonk" and played the guitar solo on Bill Doggett's original recording, was a part of King Curtis's band at the point, and he still knew how to wail on this timeless number. He would return to Prestige leading his own group near the end of the decade.
Also on guitar for this session was a youngster, Eric Gale, who would go to become one of the most sought-after studio musicians of the 1960s-70s, playing on over 500 sessions--jazz, funk, pop. He was a member of the funk supergroup Stuff.
Bassist Bob Bushnell was new with Curtis, and new with Prestige. His career actually stretched back to the 1940s when, fresh out of high school, he played a few gigs with Jimmy Heath, but it doesn't seem really to have taken off until the 1960s, when his resume started to fill up with what became really a wide and impressive variety of the biggest names in jazz, blues and rock.
Willie Rodriguez, whose big band credits ranged from Dizzy Gillespie to Stan Kenton to Paul Whiteman, had made his recording debut as leader with a big band of his own in 1960--an album called A Bunch of Bongos.
One of Prestige's stars, Jack McDuff, rounded out the group.
Not quite so well known are "You Came a Long Way From St. Louis," from the 1940s, and "Lean, Baby," from the 1950s.
There were only four songs on the second session, but they were all classics; "Harlem Nocturne," of course. "Soft" had been a hit for Tiny Bradshaw in 1952, "Tippin' In" for Erskine Hawkins in 1945. "So Rare,"dating back to 1937, had been a huge hit for Jimmy Dorsey in 1957, hitting Number One on the charts right after Jimmy's death. Jimmy, a great talent unjustly overshadowed in reputation by his brother, played it sweet; Curtis wails it out.
The album was released on Tru-Sound as Old Gold. A later re-release on Prestige was titled Night Train.
King Curtis joins with another giant of rhythm and blues, Sam "The Man" Taylor, for the first of two blowing sessions that would ultimately make a Tru-Sound album called It's Party Time with King Curtis.
And party time it is. A solid groove for dancing, a tight arrangement, not a lot of room for improvisation, but some goose-bump-inducing solos by two masters if the art of wailing sax, and two of the most in-demand session men in New York. If your saxophone break on the hottest rocker of the moment wasn't by Curtis, it was probably by Taylor.
They were backed up by Curtis's regular group, plus a couple of extra musicians who--uncharacteristically for a Prestige session at Van Gelder Studio--weren't identified in the session log. Those were the trumpeter and the bongo player, both of whom performed on "Slow Motion."
And dig him here, with a tight band, led by a man who knew how to run a tight ship and keep it loose and swinging. Amazingly, nothing from this session was released on 45.
Paul Griffin on piano and Jimmy Lewis on bass were Curtis's regulars. Ernie Hayes played on this and the second Party Time session, and would be called on for other Prestige sessions, but Curtis didn't always use an organ, so he can't really be called a regular.
Billy Butler joined Curtis from Bill Doggett's band, where he had co-written and played the guitar solo on "Honky Tonk." Like all of the other musicians on this session and in Curtis's orbit, he was one of the session players that made the New York sound of the 1950s and early 1960s so powerful. A recent movie has shown us the incredible Detroit musicians who were the anonymous backbone of the Motown sound in the soul era, but the contributions made by the guys in the studios of the Big Apple in the rhythm and blues/rock and roll era of the 1950s were equally important. New York was the jazz center of the world in those days. It's where people came to play.
And it provided its own talent, from its own streets. Drummer Ray Lucas is a case in point.
Lucas grew up in Harlem, where music was everywhere. He recalled those early years in an interview with Jim Payne for Modern Drummer magazine.
I was still in high school when I heard “Yakety Yak” by the Coasters, with King Curtis on sax. At that time I was playing bebop and jazz. I didn’t care nothin’ about rock ’n’ roll. I was born and raised in Harlem. All I knew was New York and bebop. If you didn’t know Blue Mitchell, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, you weren’t in my league. But Curtis had a unique style of playing, and when I heard him on that Coasters record, I was knocked out.
A few years later, when Belton Evans was leaving and Curtis was auditioning drummers, Eric Gale arranged for Lucas to try out. When he got to the audition, he found that he was to be judged by Curtis and Roy Haynes.
Afterwards Roy looked at Curtis and said, “That’s a good kid. He’s all right.” I was nineteen or twenty at the time. I played with Curtis from 1961 to 1966, and that was the best band I was ever in.
The artists that Lucas played for, and the records he played on, would fill a book. But here's Ron Carter, recalling one session.
I got a call to come by and do this record with a young singer named Roberta Flack playing with this New York band. Ray Lucas on drums — an incredible drummer — Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar and some wonderful arrangements. That record ["Compared to What"] put her on the map.
His resume would have to include the Beatles, for whom the King Curtis band opened on their second US tour. And here's Lucas remembering a young guitarist-singer whom Curtis hired:
Jimi Hendrix, man, you’re talking about one of the nicest guys. He was so kind and courteous. He played with his teeth and all that, but he could play. Jimi would play Curtis’s tunes and then do some of his own. He would sing more or less down-home blues, rather than the psychedelic things he got into later. We were doing mainly contemporary tunes. He stayed with us for about six months, and then he went on his own.
Jimi and I used to play together in the studio, just me and him. He’d try all kinds of different things. He’d plug into the Leslie speaker from the organ. I’d play a backbeat or a shuffle or whatever. This went on for maybe two or three weeks. It was a studio on 54th Street. That’s how he built his recordings. I never heard any of the final versions.
One day a little later I ran into Jimi on the street downtown. He said, “Hey, Ray, what are you doing?” I said I was in between gigs. He said, “Man, I got my passport and my papers from the State Department. I’ve been trying to do my thing here, but it’s not working out that great. I just got an offer from England. If you want to do it, I can get the finances together. Do you want to come with me?” Of all the drummers he knew, he asked me. I told him I couldn’t do it, and in less than two years he was the biggest thing out there.
And finally, here are some other musicians reminiscing about playing with Lucas:
Bernard Purdie: Ray was an absolutely phenomenal player. He had no problem doing
what he needed to do. He had great time and a superb touch. He could be the quietest person in the world and be in the groove, and when he had to be fatback, he had no problem. And he had no problem swinging either. That’s why I enjoyed him so much—he could change. Whatever the feel was, whatever the attitude needed, he had it.
Watching Ray, he was like an acrobat. So light on his feet—he danced on the pedals. He could take sticks and make them sound like brushes.
Chuck Rainey: I enjoyed playing with Ray. He had very good time, and he played jazz real well. Ray was always very amusing too. He laughed a lot and told a lot of jokes.
Cornell Dupree and Ray and I went out on the road with the Coasters—who were great—and with the Supremes and Patti LaBelle, and with Jim “Mudcat” Grant, who was a pitcher for the Cleveland Indians. He read poetry while we played.
When we opened for the Beatles, Ringo and Paul did everything they could to stay far away from all the acts from the States. John and George hung out with us on our part of the plane, though. They even came off their floor in the hotel and were very cool. We played cards, took pictures, stuff like that.
Ray played on my first record, The Chuck Rainey Coalition. I used to always get a kick out of him taking drum solos with his bare hands. He was sort of known for that. Not like congas—he played just like he had sticks in his hands. I’m proud to say that I came up with Ray Lucas.
Charles Collins (The O’Jays, MFSB, the Salsoul Orchestra): Ray Lucas was such a sweet cat, and he had a great touch. He could make one snare drum sound like 500 different snare drums, to give the music different colors. We’d do gigs back in ’71, ’72 with Dionne Warwick. [Collins was in a band called the Continentals, which opened for Warwick.] I learned how to play in auditoriums and in concert halls by listening to Ray. I’d go all over the room. Sometimes I’d go way in the back, and I’d still hear that snare drum—bow! bow!—and just different little tasty sounds he could do. He was very creative.
You've heard Ray Lucas, many times over. With Illinois Jacquet, Mongo Santamaria, Bobby Timmons, Shirley Scott, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick--with whom he toured for 12 years, then quit the business. Disco was coming in, and he just wasn't interested.
Annisteen Allen, as she was known through most of her career, had a good run in the 1940s and early 1950s, singing with Lucky Millinder and other top rhythm and blues ensembles. She was discovered singing in a club in San Antonio one night when Duke Ellington and Louis Jordan went out clubbing, and wouldn't you like to have been along for that ride? They both dug her singing, but as neither was in the market for a girl singer, they recommended her to Lucky Millinder, who hired her without even hearing her on the strength of their recommendations. Wouldn't you?
Her recording career with Federal/King ended on an odd note, when King Records was sued by another rhythm and blues label, Apollo, for copyright infringement over one of Allen's recordings. She did have a minor hit for Capitol in 1955 with "Fujiyama Mama," outsold, as many songs were in those days, by white pop singer Eileen Barton, later covered most successfully by Wanda Jackson. Still later, the Clash would perform it live in Tokyo with a vocal by bassist Paul Simonon's wife, Pearl Harbour.
She would continue to record, for Capitol and Decca and a couple of very small independents, but in 1958 she gave up touring and performing, taking a job in a hospital office.
The session for Prestige was her first full length album session, and the first under her real name. Perhaps her career over the previous five years had been obscure enough that Prestige felt "Annisteen" no longer had any drawing power, or perhaps she simply convinced Bob Weinstock not to use a name which she had acquired from a typographical error on an early press release, and which she had never liked. In any event, this resurrection, and this album, is one more thing we can thank Prestige for.
Allen had always played with first rate musicians, so this is not a rarity for her, but her producer--perhaps Ozzie Cadena, who worked most of the Tru-Sound sessions--surrounds her with an excellent supporting cast here, starting with King Curtis, and musicians who played with him regularly: Paul Griffin on piano, guitarists Al Casey and Chauncey "Lord" Westbrook, bassist Jimmy Lewis and drummer Belton Evans.
The session was released on Tru-Sound rather than Bluesville, and that makes sense. Tru-Sound was variously described as modern R&B or Prestige's pop label. The King Curtis combo gives it rhythm and blues credentials, and while there are some blues in the mix -- her Lucky Millinder hit, "Let it Roll," the R&B standard "I Want a Little Boy" (or girl, as in the best-known versions by Big Joe Turner and Ray Charles) and an original, "Miss Allen's Blues" -- most of the selections come from Broadway and Tin Pan Alley.
We have a lot to thank Prestige Records for--being in the center of some of the most important jazz movements of the American Century in music, creating a record of the creative growth of older musicians who were not part of the bebop revolution...and mixing it up. In so many ways. Weinstock's decision to record Miles Davis with different musicians, rather than having form a regular group as he was to do later, gives us a different and important context for this giant of 20th Century music. Bringing in contemporary jazz musicians
to record with blues singers. And sessions like this one. King Curtis's band brings a new bite to some old standards. With their kicking tempo and Allen's exuberant vocal, they give a new twist to the Gershwin brothers' "The Man I Love." In the classic versions by Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, there's such yearning for an unrealizable ideal. Both of these great singers give us hope against hope--that big and strong man is never going to come along, and they know it. Allen, with Curtis and the boys, are out for a good time. She kinda likes the idea of the man she'll love coming along, but she's having a good time now, and she doesn't really care all that much if he never does.
But the remake of "Let it Roll" is where they really let it roll. And rock. And they throw in some scat. And they stretch it out to nearly seven minutes, so while this is clearly the jukebox pick from the session, they have to put it on both sides of a 45.
Let it Roll is also the title of the Tru-Sound album. It was to be her last recording, In 1986, after she retired from her hospital job, she did play a few dates with Bull Moose Jackson (as Annisteen Allen). She died in 1992.
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
This is an extremely unusual addition to the King Curtis canon, and perhaps not the one you'd reach for first, in that it features Curtis as a singer. There's some saxophone playing, and it's good, but it definitely takes a back seat to the singing.
Which raises an interesting point. Curtis is a wonderful saxophone player, and it's great that he had the opportunity to show what he could do as a jazz musician on a number of recordings, many of them on Prestige. It's great that Prestige the 1950s-60s interregnum opened the door to an expansive definition
of jazz. Their Swingville label reminded people that there were plenty of great musicians around who had been passed over as the winds of innovation kept sweeping jazz forward. Producers led by Esmond Edwards made a particularly wise decision to let these people play creatively, not simply reproducing the sounds of the swing era. And as the soul jazz era began, Prestige had the insight to realize that there had been a previous soul jazz era, the one called rhythm and blues, and to record and release some of the musicians like Willis Jackson who had been overlooked by the jazz public.
In the late 1950s, as my passion for rhythm and blues developed, I bought a lot of records without ever having heard them first. You pretty much had to, if you lived in the country. I'd pick up records by Muddy Waters or Amos Milburn or Roy Brown. I'd pick up records because they were on Aladdin, or Checker. And I picked up a 45 by King Curtis on Atlantic -- "Just Smoochin'" b/w "Birth of the Blues." I think "Birth of the Blues" was the B side, but it was the side I wore out. I bought his first jazz album, Soul Meeting, when it came out.
But probably Curtis's most lasting impression came as the bandleader and saxophone soloist on a number of Atlantic rhythm and blues records. You listened to a record like "Saved" by LaVern Baker, you looked forward to every new release by the Coasters, partly for the outstanding vocal performances, partly for the innovative songwriting by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, but also--and this was very much a part of it--because you knew there was going to be a killer solo by King Curtis.
So why isn't this the same? A vocal recording with some hot instrumentals? Well, on the Atlantic recordings, the saxophone solos were always a highlight of the record -- you knew they were coming you waited for them, and they never disappointed. They had their own identity, a song within a song.
There's nothing like that here, and though Curtis is a good singer, his vocals don't strike to the gut the way his sax solos do.
But once you accept that, and listen to the album again, there's a lot to like.
For one thing, there's a fine eclecticism to Curtis's blues choices. "Nobody Wants You When You're Down and Out" is a depression-era classic, but actually it may have been prescient. Written in 1927, it preceded the stock market crash by two years. Bessie Smith's 1929 version captured the mood of the country, but, improbably, no one else touched until the 1950s, when it became a late-blooming standard. "Ain't Nobody's Business" is even older, dating back to 1922, and it's always been a standard for blues and torch vocalists, even though modern mores would disagree with Bessie Smith's and Billie Holiday's assertion that spousal abuse is nobody's business. "Trouble in Mind" also dates back to the 1920s, and is credited to composer Richard M. Jones, but its folk roots go back much farther. It is even more ubiquitous than "Ain't Nobody's Business."
"Bad, Bad Whiskey" was a 1950 hit for Amos Milburn, and Curtis was actually the first to cover it.
"Deep Fry" and "Jivin' Time" are the album's two instrumentals, and they were recorded at the end if the day. "Deep Fry" has the tenor sax spotlight. It's eight minutes long, with solo space for all the principals, and it does leave you wishing there were more tracks like it, but this is far from Curtis's only album, and he has a right to try something different. There's some nice tenor on "Jivin' Time" too, but even more nice work by the guitars. In general, Curtis leaves most of the instrumental turns to his bandmates, and they come through. Curtis does some guitar work, but mostly it's Al Casey, formerly with Fats Waller, is his regular guitarist, but on this session he's joined by Hugh McCracken, for contractual reasons using the pseudonym of Mac Pierce for this session, although it's hard to say why, because McCracken worked with pretty nearly everyone on every label. More likely, because this is a youthful McCracken at the outset of his career, it has to do with union status.
Trouble in Mind, recorded when he was 19, was one of his first gigs. He had dropped out of school at age 16 to make music and help support his family, His mother was working as a hat check girl in a New Jersey club where Curtis had an engagement. She convinced him to listen to her son, and he hired him for the session.
He once did sessions for Aretha Franklin and Paul McCartney in different studios for different labels on the same day, and he was McCartney's first choice as guitarist for Wings, but he elected to stay home with his young children and keep doing studio work. He had an approach to studio sessions that I suspect might not go over so well today, According to his obituary in the New York Times,
He would improvise his part once he apprehended the drift of a producer’s intention, his wife said. He arrived early the day Roberta Flack was recording “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and began fooling around on his classical guitar as he waited for the session to begin. Joel Dorn, the producer, asked him to play his riff again, and it became the song’s introduction.
Jimmy Lewis is a powerful presence on the electric bass throughout the session, and it was a relatively new instrument for him, He had played a standup bass with both Count Basie and Duke Ellington, among others, but switched to the electric bass when he joined Curtis. He would go on to make a record with a group that no one would expect to use an electric bass--the Modern Jazz Quartet. It was for a 1965 album, Jazz Dialogue, which featured the MJQ with a big band.
The King Curtis combo was pianist Paul Griffin's first major engagement, but hardly his last. He's probably best remembered for his work with Bob Dylan on Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, and Aja; he also played piano on Don McLean's mega-hit, American Pie.
Belton Evans played with almost everyone in the blues and traditional jazz field, and with almost as many different first names, although he always stuck with Evans.
"But That's All Right" has backing vocals by the Cookies. The Cookies had a substantial career as a backup group, and had a couple of hits in their own right ("Don't Say Nothin' Bad About My Baby"). At this time, their most important credit had been as Ray Charles's backup singers, and Charles's own group, the Raelettes, was formed around Margie Hendricks, an original Cookie. They give "But That's All Right" a real Ray Charles sound.
Trouble in Mind was released on Tru-Sound, a short-lived Prestige subsidiary. Tru-Sound had two different catalogs. One was all gospel, and the other was more varied, but albums by King Curtis made up the lion's share of their list. Two 45s came from the session, both released on Tru-Sound: "Trouble in Mind" b/w "But That's All Right" and "I Have to Worry" b/w "Jivin' Time."
Arbee Stidham was commencing a second career with this album, and although he was only 43, it was three decades after the start of his first career. From a musical family -- his father played with Jimmie Lunceford and his uncle with the Memphis Jug Band -- he had started his own band, the Southern Syncopators, by the time he was thirteen. Not too many 13-year-olds start there own band; fewer still get booked to tour with Bessie Smith, but Stidham did.
As a jazz musician, he toured with his own band, first in the south and then in Chicago, and played with Lucky Millinder in the 1930s-40s, . A recording contract in 1947 yielded a hit recording, "My Heart Belongs to You," which went to number one on the Billboard Race Records chart (later to become the Rhythm and Blues chart) in 1948.
Stidham was a tenor saxophone player as well as a vocalist, and thought of himself primarily as a jazz musician until injuries suffered in an auto accident left him unable to play the saxophone.
But, determined to persevere in music, he took up the guitar and became a bluesman. He was aided in this by fellow Chicagoan Big Bill Broonzy, who had undergone a metamorphosis of his own. Originally a jazz guitarist, Broonzy had discovered the newly emerging folk music circuit, and had reinvented himself as a folk blues singer, and as a songwriter of major importance. Following Lead Belly's example of tailoring the blues to appeal to a new audience of white leftists, he wrote a number of protest songs, from the ironic "WPA Blues" to the anthemic "Black, Brown and White."
Stidham learned his new instrument well, and added to his gifts as a blues singer and songwriter, it created new opportunities: a couple of singles for Atlantic subsidiary Abco in 1956, and then this album debut for Prestige Bluesville, followed by a 1961 album for Folkways, and a Folkways collaboration with Jazz Gillum and Memphis Slim that came out under Gillum's name. Then another recording drought until the early 1970s and two more albums, one for Mainstream, primarily a jazz label, and the other for Folkways. The 1970s also saw him venture into the academic world, as a lecturer on the blues at Cleveland State University.
There's plenty on this session to delight a blues lover who may not have heard Arbee Stidham before, and much for a jazz lover to appreciate. King Curtis sits in on saxophone, and on piano, the South Side soul of Chicagoan John Wright, who first recorded for Prestige in August, and would do four more sessions.
Wright is a dominant payer on a seven-minute version of Brownie McGhee's "Pawn Shop Blues," where his piano improvisation stretches out a normally song-length 12-bar blues into something else altogether. Stidham does mostly originals here, but features a few from other composers--why, it's hard to say. "Pawn Shop Blues" is a very good song, and favorite part of McGhee's repertoire, but melodically it's an interchangeable 12-bar blues. I guess it's a nice piece of change in Brownie's pocket, except that nobody ever made any money from having a jazz composition recorded, as Jackie McLean found out when he looked into suing Miles Davis for the composer credit to "Dig."
Two Big Joe Turner songs, the familiar "Wee Baby Blues" and the less familiar "Last Goodbye Blues" are also included, as is a song by drummer Armand "Jump" Jackson, "Teenage Kiss," which sounds more as though it would be given to Frankie Lymon than a fortyish blues singer, and in fact it does give King Curtis room for some hot rhythm and blues honking on the tenor. All in all, it's a fine outing for Stidham, especially if you don't listen to the words too closely, and you really don't have to. I once had a friend who told me that she loved the blues, but she really never listened to the words. I said. "That's like loving Rubens but not noticing the nudes." She said, "I do that too."
The others are all Stidham originals, including a remake of "My Heart Belongs to You," here retitled
"My Heart Will Always Belong to You." Stidham, for a latecomer to the guitar, sure knows how to play the blues on it. And as a veteran jazzman, he knows how to coordinate his blues with a couple of jazz greats. I've picked "You Can't Live in this World by Yourself" as my "Listen to One" because it shows off all of the above -- Stidham as songwriter, guitar player and blues singer, some nice ensemble work by Wright and Curtis.
And for a bonus, if you click through to the YouTube video, it's accompanied by some amazing street photographs -- by whom, I don't know.
Ozzie Cadena produced. The album came out on Bluesville, titled Tired of Wandering.
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. 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
I always had this fascination with jazz and with rhythm and blues. I grew up in a time and place where the adults I knew, at least the ones I was trying to emulate, were artists and intellectuals, who listened to classical music if they were old guard, jazz if they were on the cutting edge, rock and roll not at all. And if you were part of that world, or on the fringes of that world, and you loved rock and roll, you had a bit of an inferiority complex. You probably had it anyway.
I was never going to do what I really wanted to do, which was drop out of school, go to New York, find the Brill Building, camp out in front of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's office, and pester them until they took me in as an apprentice. Other teenagers like Carole King and Neil Sedaka were actually doing it, but I was so locked in to a certain world view that it not only never occurred to me to do it, it never occurred to me until much, much later that I had really wanted to do it.
So the part of me that was turning to jazz was looking for approval, the part that still loved rock and roll was still defensive. And the part that loved rhythm and blues...well, no one much noticed of cared about that part. Norman Mailer, in "The White Negro," described, in Nelson George's summary,
a new white outlaw...wandering the landscape, a "hipster," a "philosophical psychopath," whose primary inspiration was the music and sexuality of Afro-Americans...Yet in perpetuating the romance of blackness, supporting the notion that black juazzmen, for example, were in touch with some primal sexual energy, Mailer was as guilty of stereotyping blacks as the rednecks and social mainstreamers his white Negro opposed. While liberals hailed and debated Mailer's provocative rhetoric, many working class white teens were already living out the ideas Mailer articulated, infatuated as they were with black style and culture. But Mailer saw jazz as the crucial element in this new modern white personality; he had no idea of what most Negroes, or their white teenage fans, were really recording or buying.
I had a foot in both worlds. I read Norman Mailer, and I read Jack Kerouac's "Jazz of the Beat Generation" -- and I realize now, in hindsight, what Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty must have been really listening to in Oakland on that sweaty summer night in 1947. Charlie Parker's jazz revolution had not made it as far as Oakland; his 1946 gigs in Los Angeles had been pretty much of a fiasco, and had let to a six-month relaxation at Camarillo State Mental Hospital. Sal and Dean were most likely listening to rhythm and blues--someone like Big Jay McNeely. And they thought it was jazz because, dammit, they were right. It was jazz.
I didn't have Nelson George and his great book, The Death of Rhythm and Blues, as a guide then. My other foot was with the white teenagers listening to Fats Domino and Little Richard (a music that in 1960, post-payola, was running very thin) and a ways deeper, with the Negroes that George describes, listening to Muddy Waters and Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson and Amos Milburn. And with no brilliant theoretician like George to give me intellectual support, I remember how thrilled I was to buy this album when it came out: one of my rhythm and blues heroes, King Curtis, playing real jazz along with card-carrying modern jazzmen like Nat Adderley. Playing Ellington!
Soul Meeting is the name of the album (on a re-release intensified to Soul Meeting!), and it precedes the other, somewhat better known Soul Meeting between Ray Charles and Milt Jackson by a year. And certainly, soul is the meeting ground for these diverse and considerable talents. They do take on Ellington: "Jeep's Blues." written with Johnny Hodges and originally recorded in 1938 under his name, later and most famously on the 1956 Ellington at Newport album. Ellington knew his way around the blues, and so do these guys. They also show their skill with standards and pop ballads (Cole Porter's "What Is This Thing Called Love?" and the Sammy Cahn/Jimmy Van Heusen hit for Frank Sinatra, "All the Way"). But they really find their groove, and their bliss, in the three Curtis originals, which bring out the best in both lead instruments and in Wynton Kelly, who contributes solid accompaniment and some smashing solos.
Production credit is shared by Esmond Edwards and Ozzie Cadena, who would take over as chief of A&R for the label when Edwards left a couple of years later. The album was something of a Prestige producers' convention, as Don Schlitten, who produced two sessions for the label in 1957 and would do a bunch more later on, provided the art direction and album cover design to go with Edwards' photo of Curtis.
"Soul Meeting" and "All the Way" were released as a 45 RPM single on New Jazz.
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. 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
The day after backing Roosevelt Sykes, King Curtis and his group were back in the studio with another blues piano man, Sunnyland Slim.
It was a contrast in styles Both were from the Delta area--Sykes from Elmar, Arkansas, and Slim (Albert Luandrew) from Vance, Mississippi. They were they same age--54 at the time these recordings were made. Both called Chicago home, and were part of that Chicago blues scene, Slim even more than Sykes. He played, over the years, in the bands of Muddy Waters (Muddy was his guitar player for his first recording session), Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, and Robert Jr. Lockwood, whereas Sykes eschewed the electric blues sound,
decamping from Chicago to New Orleans in the early 1950s, as that style gained the ascendancy on the South Side.
But Sykes, who first came north in 1929 to record for Okeh Records in New York, adopted a more urban style. Slim's journey to Chicago led through Memphis in the 1920s, where he worked with Ma Rainey among others, and while his piano style reflected the modernity of his associations, his voice stayed in the Delta, with that rich rawness we associate with the Delta blues singers.
This makes for a different kind of collaboration with Curtis and his urban jazz/rhythm and blues musicians. On two cuts, "I'm Prison Bound" (by Brownie McGhee) and "Harlem Can't Be Heaven," Curtis sits out, leaving the field to Slim and Robert Banks, whose organ brings the arrangement up to 1960, while at the same time carrying that Delta feeling. By contrast, on "Shake It," a Big Joe Turner composition but a standard part of Slim's repertoire, he brings a lot more Chicago into his vocal, and Curtis provides a foot-stomping solo.
This admixture of styles makes for a fascinating album, where you never quite know what mixture you're going to get net. "Decoration Day" starts out with a moody blue intro from Curtis, and then Slim enters with his Delta voice and a real down home twelve-bar blues that nonetheless fits with what Curtis had started. Curtis returns with another sax solo, followed by Banks pulling out all the stops (or the equivalent on an electric organ). In other words, this is a session that gives the participants a chance to explore every possible way of playing together.
Of particular interest, the Leroy Carr classic "How Long Blues." just because it's such a great tune and it's interesting to hear anyone play it. And the two instrumental numbers, "Slim's Shout" (co-composer credit, Ozzie Cadena) and "Sunnyland Special," both of which feature just some great blowing. Chicagoan Slim pays an affectionate tribute to the Big Apple with "Harlem Can't Be Heaven."
Robert Banks should have had more of a prominent career than he did.
This is a great album.
A curiosity: Most of Slim's originals are credited to Sunnyland Slim, but one ("Sunnyland Special") is under his birth name, Albert Luandrew. And even odder. on "Every Time I Get to Drinking," co-composer credit is given to Luandrew and Slim.
Two Bluesville 45s came from the session: "Baby How Long" / "It's You Baby" and "I'm Prison Bound" / "Slim's Shout." Slim's Shout was also the name of the Bluesville album. "Every Time I Get to Drinking" and "Tired of You Clowning" were left off the LP, but added to the CD reissue.
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.
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.
This is Roosevelt Sykes' second album for Prestige. The first used a rhythm and blues lineup of tenor sax and rhythm section such as Sykes had used on his biggest hit, "The Honeydripper." That seemed to work well, so they've returned for it with this outing, but this time the Chicago session men from the first outing are replaced by King Curtis and a crew of some of New York's finest musicians from the rhythm and blues side of the jazz spectrum. Curtis regular Robert Banks, who joined the King or an Al Smith session on Prestige, is here on the organ, and Belton Evans, previously used by Prestige on a Swingville session with Al Casey, plays drums. The bassist is bebop veteran Leonard Gaskin, who
appeared on one of Prestige's first recording sessions with J. J. Johnson and Kenny Dorham, and more recently joined Curtis and Banks to back up Al Smith.
He's still in good form here, playing and singing the blues with a flair for double entendre, a powerful voice and a steady rolling piano that sets the tone.
What's really new here comes on the fourth cut of the day (and the third on the album), "Yes Lawd." It's the only song not written by Sykes--it was supplied by Ozzie Cadena, who would in a couple of years become a producer and head of Artists and Repertoire for Prestige. I've remarked before that the main practical difference between jazz and rhythm and blues in the 1950s was that jazz became an LP art form, while rhythm and blues was still essentially a singles art form. Jazz recordings opened up to take advantage of the greater length of the LP record, and so it is here with "Yes, Lawd." Every other track on the album is short -- "Miss Ida B.," at 4:57, is the only one that pushes the limits of the 45 RPM
single. "Yes, Lawd," is over 9 minutes, and allows for extended solos by Banks and Curtis, and one by Sykes as well.
Esmond Edwards produced. The album came out on Bluesville, and was titled The Honeydripper, although Sykes's signature song was not on it. A Bluesville 45 had "Miss Ida B." as the A side, "Satellite Baby" as the flip side.
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. 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
On the YouTube page for "Soul Street," the person who uses the nom de tube NAFTALI2 says:
Those who heard Jimmy Forrest in person said the most dreaded position on stage is being another tenor player along side of him.
NAFTALI2 may be a little biased in favor of Forrest:
In this cut, standing with jazz stalwarts, not amateurs by any means, guys who are more critically acclaimed, guys who got more studio time, guys you've heard of--from Jimmy's first flourish, you can sense they just want to go home. He continues his solo showing his harmonic complexity, incredible sense of rhythm and groove, the ability to move effortlessly from the beautiful to the honking blues, and the ability to build his solo.
That's going a little overboard. Nelson and Curtis contribute wonderfully to this session too, but he's not wrong about Forrest, an unjustly overlooked jazzman. I've checked a few internet lists of greatest jazz saxophonists, and he doesn't make any of them (well, he makes the Ranker.com list now, because I added him). And this is a real oversight.
Forrest is probably best known for "Night Train," one of the best-known rhythm and blues instrumentals. Forrest takes composer credit for the tune, developed from a Duke Ellington riff, and all in all he probably deserves it. He made the first recording of "Night Train," and it's been recorded over 120 times since, mostly but not always as an instrumental, including a 1982 version by Forrest with Shirley Scott.
Forrest's first appearance on Prestige was a 1952 session recorded live in a nightclub in his native St, Louis, with Miles Davis sitting in on trumpet. I wrote about it:
A few online reviews of this session tend to give it short shrift -- recording quality not all that great, playing competent but uninspired.
They couldn't be more wrong...this session, recorded live in a St. Louis nightclub, is the real thing. This is jazz in 1952, a piece of living history, jazz as it was, and played by working musicians in small clubs in the Midwest, music that came out of the legacy of the territorial bands of the 20s and 30s, the nighttime wail of America that John Clellon Holmes captured so vividly in The Horn, still the greatest jazz novel.
This is mostly an Oliver Nelson album, and I'll get on to him, but NAFTALI2's praise of Forrest's contribution to "Soul Street" is not misplaced. His solo is lyrical and raunchy, inventive and deeply satisfying.
NAFTALI2 finishes his encomium to Forrest with these words:
For years there were alto players in St. Louis who were disciples of Nelson, all the while never having heard Jimmy Forrest, who lived just around the corner. Upon hearing Forrest for the first time, they always asked why they hadn't heard of him before, shaking their heads in awe.
Forrest wrote "Soul Battle," and it was left off the original release of the album, only added as a bonus track for the CD release, perhaps another nail in the coffin of Forrest's legacy.
Nelson wrote all the rest of the tunes on the album except for Juan Tizol's "Perdido." He was rightly becoming recognized as a rising star and a brilliant composer. As I said in my notes to his previous Prestige session, it's amazing that his compositions really haven't broken through to become jazz standards. There are some terrific ones here.
"Blues at the Five Spot" opens with an evocative interplay between Gene Casey and George Duvivier, then introduces a repeated riff that morphs into some blues figures that are just right for three saxophone players who each have a feeling for the blues.
Nelson stays with the blues, and stays in New York, moving from the legendary downtown jazz club to the radio, with "Blues for M. F. (Mort Fega). Fega was one of New York's early champions of jazz on the radio, with a show that ran opposite the better-known Symphony Sid Torin on radio station WEVD. Nelson's tribute is a real atmospheric blues, with plenty of room, at nearly ten minutes, for soloists to explore all its possibilities.
"Anacruses" are the series of unstressed notes that come before the first complete measure of a composition, which makes an interesting title for this composition, because there aren't any. After a complex but driving drum roll by Roy Haynes, Nelson and cohorts hit the ground running in this very different take on the blues, powerful and aggressive.
"In Passing" begins as an almost nostalgic blues, and then becomes very modern--a striking and powerful transition.
Esmond Edwards produced the session. Except for "Soul Street," the tunes comprised the Prestige album Soul Battle, credited to the three tenormen. "Soul Street" appeared as the title track on a New Jazz album, a 1964 release joining numbers from different sessions.
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.
"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
Al Smith never managed to make a name for himself, perhaps in part because "Al Smith" was a hard name to make. Too much competition. Smith was never likely to be confused with New York governor Al Smith, the "Happy Warrior" who ran for president in 1928, or Al Smith the cartoonist who drew Mutt and Jeff for 50 years, or any of the professional athletes named Al Smith, but there were also two other Al Smiths playing and singing the blues. The best known was the Midwestern blues and jazz bandleader and bass player who may have inspired the old joke about the bass player sitting on the edge of the bandstand, crying his heart out. "What's the matter?" the bandleader asks solicitously. "The guitar player untuned one of my strings!" "Well, that's very childish of him, but I don't see why it's something to cry about." "He won't tell me which one!"
That Al Smith was a successful bandleader because he could always hustle up gigs and he paid his musicians on time, but he didn't know how to tune his own bass, and always had someone in the group tune it for him.
Another Al Smith sang with Jack ("Open the Door, Richard") McVea on the West Coast.
Prestige's Al Smith was a terrific singer who never emerged from the pack. He doesn't get an entry in Wikipedia, and AllMusic has a listing for him but no bio. The listing is a bit of a mess. His genre is described as Blues, Comedy/Spoken Word, and I'm not sure who they're confusing him with. His discography is correct--the two Prestige/Bluesville albums--but his list of song credits seems to encompass songs by all three Al Smiths, and maybe even a couple by the governor. His birth stats are given as Bolivar City, MS in 1923, which is the correct information for the untuned bass player (this Al Smith was born in 1936 in Columbus, Ohio).
Anyway, what you need to know about Al Smith is that he was a terrific blues singer. He could shout the blues, old style. He could croon the blues in a manner that suggested something of both of the premiere rhythm and blues stylists of the day, Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson.
He is given a different set of musicians this time around, headed by King Curtis, who had recently begun recording for Prestige. Maybe Bob Weinstock was looking to capture some of the rhythm and blues success of Atlantic Records, for which label Curtis contributed some memorable solos. But maybe not. Curtis is not really the dominant instrumental voice here. He has some terrific solos, particularly on "Don't Worry 'Bout Me" and "Ride On Midnight Special," as does guitarist Jimmie Lee Robinson, but the main instrumental voice is that of organist Robert Banks. Which makes a certain amount of sense. The rhythm and blues style of King Curtis is associated with 1950s hits like those of the Coasters, and the organ sound was very much in vogue in 1960.
Banks and Robinson are both new to Prestige. Banks would do a few more sessions for Prestige/Bluesville, and go on to have his greatest success as keyboardist for Solomon Burke. He has a discography note I've never seen before: a couple of songs that were released only on 8-track cartridge.
Robinson was a well-regarded session man around Chicago in the 1950s-60s, so actually he could have played with the other Al Smith, though there's no record of it. He did play with Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, and mentored Freddie King, who called Robinson his most important influence. He had a career renaissance in the 1980s.
The musicianship and arrangements on the session are first rate, as is the singing. In addition to the album, which was titled Midnight Special, Bluesville released two singles, "You're A Sweetheart" / "Ride On Midnight Special" and "Don't Worry 'Bout Me" / "Goin' To Alabama." None of it made a dent, and Smith would not record again.
Maybe he should have changed his name to something distinctive, like Brenton Wood. It worked for Brenton Wood, who had a couple of big soul hits in the 1960s, and who had in fact changed his name. From Al Smith.
Prestige has welcomed several of the rhythm and blues stars of the 1940a into the jazz mainstream (where they always belonged), and now the king of the rhythm and blues saxophone. If you were a rhythm and blues fan become jazz fan in the 1950s, you couldn't help but love King Curtis. His 45 RPM single of "Birth of the Blues" was one of my all time favorites, and it probably paved the way for me to fall under the spell of John Coltrane.
King Curtis is given the Prestige treatment, with Esmond Edwards producing and some major jazz figures making up an all star quintet, including Nat Adderley making his Prestige debut and Paul Chambers making and increasingly infrequent return to the label of many of his early triumphs.
But he brings the King Curtis sound with him. The other rhythm and blues veterans, like Hal Singer and Willis Jackson, bring a little nostalgia with them, remembering the R&B of the classic 1940s era. Newer players like Eddie Davis and Shirley Scott, are looking forward to the new soul era of the 1960s. Curtis, though he did begin his career with Lionel Hampton (and though he did play with Ornette Coleman in high school) is solidly right now. And why not? His sound, on countless records for Atlantic and other labels, defined the R&B saxophone of the 1950s. He explores a lot more possibilities here, but it's still the King Curtis sound.
The big difference between jazz and rhythm and blues of this era? Length. Jazz was an LP music, R&B was tailored to 45s, the jukeboxes, the radio DJs whose audiences were used to that three-minute format. That meant that an R&B instrumental number was built almost entirely around the main solo instrument, be it saxophone, guitar, piano or even harmonica. A jazz tune can easily, with extended improvisation and with solo space given to every member of the ensemble, go eight to ten minutes or longer. Obviously, this creates a whole different dynamic.
The other players here are a mixed lot. Nat Adderley pulled a stint with Lionel Hampton, but his career was almost entirely within the modern jazz idiom, In that, he finds plenty of common ground with Curtis. He turns out to have been a good choice. Wynton Kelly has a wide-ranging musical vocabulary, and he works well here. The most interesting work on the session is turned in by Chambers and Oliver Jackson, who seem to have come prepared to have a good time. Chambers does some of his signature virtuoso solos, including a very strange and haunting bowed bass at the end of "In a Funky Groove," but he also does some unusual stuff, particularly on "Da Du Dah," and Jackson just doesn't hold anything back.
I'm guessing "Little Brother Soul" is Nat Adderley composition, but it may be a Curtis original paying tribute to Cannonball's little brother. Aside from "Willow Weep For Me," the others are all Curtis originals, and he shows some nice range.
The album was called The New Scene of King Curtis. It was released on New Jazz.
Prestige recorded a bunch of blues singers during the year. They don't seem to have kept the same meticulous records for their blues sessions, because there are no dates on any of them. Rudy Ferguson and Bobby Harris were both in for two more songs each. They were released on 78, but no trace of them now. No information on the session musicians. Piney Brown, who took his name from the legendary Kansas City speakeasy proprietor remembered in a classic Big Joe Turner blues, was a legend in his adopted home town of Dayton, Ohio, and was remembered fondly when he died in 2009.
Bob Kent was another bluesman who seems to have left little trace behind, and might have left even less, except that his session for Prestige actually did have one musician whose name was recorded on the session notes -- a young tenor sax player from Lionel Hampton's road band who had just just arrived in New York to try and make a living as a session musician. His name was King Curtis. So this one can be found on a compilation album called Wail, Man,Wail -- all of Curtis's recordings from the 1950s, from well-known tunes like those of the Coasters to obscure artists like Bob Kent to surprising choices like Waylon Jennings. Kent's "Korea, Korea" is one of many blues songs about that war, perhaps because it was the first to be fought since the armed services had been integrated. Good blues, good King Curtis.
What else? Rateyourmusic.com, an always interesting site for user-voted lists of this and that, has a number of jazz albums on their list of best albums of 1952. I can't exactly figure out how the ratings on rateyourmusic are calculated, and I can't begin to figure out who does the rating. They're jazz fans -- 21 of their top 50 records are jazz. But who else are they? The others are some classical, some ethnic folklore from Mexico, Africa, Europe and Haiti, Dylan Thomas, some folk blues (no rhythm and blues), and Charity Bailey singing for first graders. Nonetheless, it's an interesting reflection of jazz in the year, so here it is -- the jazz selections from their top 50.
3. Nat "King" Cole
Unforgettable
Capitol
4. Milt Jackson
Wizard of the Vibes
Blue Note
5. Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday Sings
Mercury
8. Stan Kenton
City of Glass
Capitol
12. Erroll Garner
Body & Soul
Columbia
14. Gerry Mulligan and Allen Eager
The New Sounds
Prestige
15. Milt Jackson Quartet
Dee Gee
16. Charlie Parker
South of the Border
Mercury
18. Nat "King" Cole
Penthouse Serenade: Nat 'King' Cole at the Piano
Capitol
21. Louis Armstrong
Satchmo Serenades
Decca
23. Miles Davis
The New Sounds
Prestige
24. The Fabulous Sidney Bechet and His Hot Six
The Fabulous Sidney Bechet
Blue Note
28. Norman Granz
Norman Granz' Jam Session #1
Mercury
20. Stan Getz
Jazz at Storyville
Roost
30.Lee Wiley
Sings Irving Berlin
Columbia
31. Anita O'Day
The Lady Is a Tramp
Verve
39. Peggy Lee
Rendezvous With Peggy Lee
Capitol
42. Sidney Bechet & Mugsy Spanier
Duets
Atlantic
44. Jeri Southern
You Better Go Now!
Decca
45. Howard McGhee's All Stars
Howard McGhee
Blue Note
47. Sidney Bechet
Ambiance Bechet
Vogue
48. Anita O'Day
Singin' and Swingin'
Coral
These, of course, are 1952 releases, and my list is of recording dates. I'm a little surprised that Prestige isn't represented more vigorously, but you can't really complain about what is there. Other artists further down on the list are Art Pepper, Art Hodes, Ralph Burns, George Wallington, Sonny Rollins, Wardell Gray, Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Barbara Carroll, Sonny Stitt, Dinah Washington and Johnny Hodges.
Billboard called 1952 the best year for jazz, economically, since the '30s, as evidenced by
the increasing number of jazz platter served up by the established and new diskeries, the great success of the jazz road packages, and the healthy grosses racked up by top jazz artists as night club attractions.
Billboard notes that new club, the Bandbox, has opened in midtown in competition with Birdland, that an Illinois Jacquet album, straddling jazz and rhythm and blues, has sold over 100,00 units, Benny Goodman's newest has sold over 75,000, and "the average 78 RPM jazz release of quality can now sell between 5,000 and 10,000 a year, a much better figure than a number of years ago."
So maybe the story of bebop killing jazz as a viable commercial form were a little exaggerated. Of course, the story of the decline of the big bands seems to carry more weight. From Billboard again:
What is most important here, to the record company on one side and the dealer on the
other, is that most jazz platters use a small group and the diskery can get off the nut quickly, and that jazz disks continue to sell for many years.
I miss that old show biz journalism. Where are the diskeries of yesteryear? Billboard notes the success of Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic and other package tours, and the advent of the LP record.
A second article heralds the arrival of the Bandbox as neighbor and rival to Birdland.The Band Box is featuring JATP stars Flip Phillips, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Charlie Ventura, Oscar Peterson with Ray Brown and Barney Kessel, Charlie Shavers, Hank Jones and Teddy Napoleon. Or you could walk over to Birdland and catch the Lester Young Quintet, the Stan Getz Quintet and the Dave Brubeck Quartet...on the same bill. Think you could afford it? The Bandbox offered free admission and a $1.25 minimum. Birdland had a $1.25 admission and no minimum.
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