Listening to Prestige 616: Jimmy Witherspoon

LISTEN TO ONE: I Wonder

 I love it that Jimmy Witherspoon starts off this set with "I Wonder." This song, written and originally performed by Cecil Gant, is frequently credited with being the first rhythm and blues hit. Gant recorded it in 1944, first for the tiny Black-owned Bronze label, and then, as it started to catch with another small but not quite so small label, the whine-owned Gilt Edge, with better chances at distribution. Appealing to WWII patriotism, Gant is "Pvt. Cecil Gant" on the label, and that underscored the poignancy of the song, with its lyric that suggested a lonely GI wondering if his girl friend back home was with another man. But "I Wonder" didn't need anything but itself. It was a winner, a beautiful blues ballad with Gant accompanying himself on the piano.

Nothing's ever entirely new, and Gant's soft, sensitive approach to the blues had been pioneered in the 1920s by Leroy Carr. But "I Wonder" ushered in a new era and a new sound--a sound that was so new it didn't have name in 1944, so when the record went to the top of the Billboard charts, the chart was the Harlem Hit Parade. It did not become rhythm and blues till 1949.

Gant's record was a hit, but "I Wonder," the song, was huge. Roosevelt Sykes recorded it for Bluebird, and with Sykes's popularity and RCA Victor's distribution, he had a Number One hit. And in an unusual moment in chart history, the record it replaced at Number One was Pvt. Cecil Gant's version of "I Wonder." Louis Armstrong recorded a gorgeous version of it in 1945, with the song giving Armstrong a vehicle for one of his most poignant and sensitive vocals. His recording went to number three on the charts, and "I Wonder" has been a staple ever since, right down to a recent duet by Tony Bennett and k. d. lang. We've heard an earlier version of the song on Prestige, by Etta Jones.

"I Wonder" represented a new era in music in more ways than one. The post-WWII manufacturing boom extended to record pressing plants, and small independent labels--the labels that pioneered rhythm and blues and modern jazz--had the ability, for the first time, to get records made on a large scale. And Gant's smooth, blues-inflected crooning style caught on. Rhythm and blues was a big umbrella, encompassing the raucous jump blues of Louis Jordan, the Delta-goes-electric of Muddy Waters, the New Orleans horns behind Fats Domino, Lloyd Price and Little Richard, but the crooning ballad style of Cecil Gant gave birth to a whole generation who came to be known as the "sepia Sinatras." Billy Eckstine and Nat "King" Cole were the mega-stars of this new style, but there were so many others, Sonny Til and Clyde McPhatter and Tony Williams and all the other wonderful voices who created the street corner harmonies known as doowop, on to Johnny Mathis and Sam Cooke.

To make a great record of "I Wonder," all you have to do is sing it, and let its magic come through you. That's exactly what Jimmy Witherspoon does, Ozzie Cadena has given him some extraordinary musicians to back him on this session, and they do their job too.

And, of course, 'Spoon doesn't stop there. Ever the aggregator of wonderful material, he does it again here. "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" was written in 1923 by Jimmie Cox, made unforgettable in 1929 by Bessie Smith, and became an anthem for the Depression. But its lyrics have resonated beyond its time. Again, as with "I Wonder," as is his approach, Witherspoon respects the song, and lets it express itself as only he can.

I won't go through the whole album, but the selections are eclectic and rewarding. One, "Blues in the Morning," is credited to Kenny Burrell, and features some wonderful playing by Burrell, Gildo Mahomes and Roy Haynes.

The Prestige release is entitled Blue Spoon. 

Listening to Prestige 602: Roy Haynes

LISTEN TO ONE: Modette

 Elvin Jones once said:

 The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer. 

Jones did, of course, see the world through a drummer-centric prism, but that doesn't make him wrong. And in sessions led by a drummer, the argument is made forcefully. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers set the tone for so much of Blue Note's

catalog. Max Roach and Tony Williams showed new directions in jazz through groups that they led. Across the Atlantic, expatriate Kenny Clarke showed how a drummer could conduct a large ensemble with the Clarke-Boland big band.

Roy Haynes was one of the most prolific drummers of his era, and his era is virtually an eon. He came on the jazz scene in the early 1940s, recording with Lester Young, then with Charlie Parker. As the 21st century entered its third decade, he was still playing, well into his 90s. I can never hear his name without hearing Sarah Vaughan, on her great 1950s recording of "Shulie a Bop," announcing her musicians, ending with "Roy (drumroll)....Haynes!" (drumroll). He is one of the most prolifically recorded drummers of all time, with 28 previous sessions on Prestige.

These include three previous sessions as leader. In 1958 he recorded We Three, a trio album with Paul Chambers and Phineas Newborn, Jr., and in 1960 he followed it with Just Us, this time with Richard Wyands on piano and Eddie de Haas on bass. While Elvin Jones's statement is meant to apply to the importance of the drummer in a large ensemble, you can hear it more plainly in a small group session where the drummer is the leader, and Haynes makes a powerful impression with these trio sessions.

In April of 1963, just five months before this session, he co-led a quartet featuring Booker Ervin. Ervin was really starting to establish himself as one of the major new jazz stars of the decade. Here he's back with the quartet format again, including worked with Ronnie Mathews and Larry Ridley, from the Ervin session, and Frank Strozier, who was heard once earlier on Prestige, playing alto sax in a group led by Booker Ervin. Here he plays flute as well as alto.

All three of these guys were young, near the beginning of their careers, and Haynes gives them all ample opportunity to shine. This includes the playing of their compositions--"Modette" and "La Palomeinding" were written by Strozier; "Go 'n' Git It" is by Mathews. All of them get the substantial benefit of Haynes's leadership on drums. Another Strozier composition, "Hag" (one of Haynes's nicknames) is included as part of a medley, unusual but not unheard of for a jazz album, and actually a frequent concluding number for Haynes's live sets, always including his own (with Richard Wyands) composition "Cymbalism," which had previously been on the Just Us album. Here they finish up with Sonny Rollins's jazz standard "Oleo."

"Cymbalism" becomes the title track for this LP, which was issued by New Jazz, and was the last album to be recorded for New Jazz, although several reissues followed it before the label was finally put to rest. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 589: Roy Haynes with Booker Ervin

LISTEN TO ONE: Scoochie

Booker Ervin had been in the studio for Prestige earlier in 1963, for a session with Larry Young, that was inexplicably shelved, not to see the light of day until many years later, in the CD reissue era, when it was coupled with an Ervin-Pony Poindexter recording which was made later in the year. He had appeared on one previous New Jazz recording, with Eric Dolphy and Mal Waldron. He was to become a mainstay of Prestige over the next few years.

Roy Haynes was already a Prestige mainstay, appearing with musicians covering the spectrum

from Willis Jackson to Phil Woods to Eric Dolphy. He'd played soul jazz with Shirley Scott, harp jazz with Dorothy Ashby, blues with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and a little bit of everything with master of eclecticism Jaki Byard. 

He had led his own trio (Phineas Newborn, Paul Chambers) in 1958, for a particularly beautiful album, We Three, and followed it in 1969 with another trio album (Richard Wyands, Eddie de Haas), Just Us. He had put together a couple of earlier sessions as leader with Mercury/EmArcy, and one with a smaller independent label. He told Ira Gitler that wanted to do more work as leader, because he could "set more of a pace," or as Gitler put it, he could "[pick] the tunes, the order they should be programmed in, and the tempo they should follow. The last, of course, is closest to the drummer's domain. Before he can do any of these things, a leader has to make his most important decisions--choosing the men who will play with him. Haynes has chosen well in the past, and his current quartet again reflects his good taste."

For his first Prestige album, Haynes had chosen two of the finest--and most talked about--of the younger musicians on the scene. For his second, he chose musicians who would never have the honors or name recognition of Phineas Newborn and Paul Chambers, but who were bold and sensitive, and delivered the music that Haynes was looking for. A 1962 session for Impulse! featured the rising star Roland Kirk.

Here, in Booker Ervin, he has another rising star, that would blaze forth through the rest of the 1960s on albums for Prestige and Blue Note, before Ervin's untimely death from kidney disease in 1970.

At 28, Ronnie Mathews was another young talent, and one who apparently appealed to the era's finest drummers--he had been discovered by Max Roach, and also worked extensively with Art Blakey. He had made his recording debut for Prestige in 1961 with Roland Alexander, and would lead a session of his own for the label later in 1963.

Larry Ridley was 26 when this record was made, and he had a fine career as a bassist ahead of, playing with Chet Baker, Kenny Burrell, Dexter Gordon and Stephane Grappelli among others, but perhaps an even more important contribution to the music was his work as an educator and administrator. He served as (and I'll just quote his Wikipedia entry here):

chairman of the Jazz Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and was the

organization's National Coordinator of the "Jazz Artists in Schools" Program for five years (1978–1982). Ridley is a recipient of the MidAtlantic Arts Foundation's "Living Legacy Jazz Award", a 1998 inductee the International Association for Jazz Education Hall of Fame (IAJE), an inductee of the Downbeat Magazine Jazz Education Hall of Fame, a recipient of the Benny Golson Jazz Award from Howard University, and was honored by a Juneteenth 2006 Proclamation Award from the New York City Council. Ridley is currently the Executive Director of the African American Jazz Caucus, Inc., an affiliate of IAJE. He is also the IAJE Northeast Regional Coordinator. He continues to actively teach as Professor of Jazz Bass at the Manhattan School of Music. Ridley is currently serving as Jazz Artist in Residence at the Harlem based New York Public Library/Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He established an annual series there dedicated to presenting the compositions of jazz masters that are performed by Ridley and his Jazz Legacy Ensemble.

  Haynes also utilized the composing talents of the musicians he brought in. Ronnie Mathews composed "Dorian" and "Honeydew." Booker Ervin contributed "Scoochie," and Haynes finished the session with his own "Bad News Blues." Randy Weston is represented by his tribute to Melba Liston, "Sketch of Melba."  

They play one semi-standard, "Under Paris Skies," originally composed by Hubert Giraud for the French film Sous le Ciel de Paris, later recorded by Edith Piaf. With English lyrics, it became a favorite of vocalists and mostly of sweet-music dance bands, although it has had some jazz adherents, most prominently Duke Ellington. Art Van Damme and Quincy Jones both also recorded it. Haynes liked the tune, and featured it in his club performances, often with Frank Strozier soloing on flute. Haynes's virtuoso lead-ins are a strong feature of all the tracks on this album, but on this one he really goes to town, driving all thoughts of sweet strings out of your head. Larry Ridley joins him on bass before--over thirty seconds in--Ervin enters, playing the familiar melody, and sticking mostly close to the melody for a full three minutes, as Haynes continues to kick it hard. The real improvisation starts with Mathews, and continues with Ervin, until the head is briefly restated at the end, this time by Mathews, perhaps somewhat sardonically. 

"Bad News Blues" is a first rate example of what sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder used to call a "five-o-clock blues" -- it's the end of a session, we've played all the tunes we came in with, let's just play some blues. Prestige founder and president Bob Weinstock loved a good jam session, and a lot of good ones came out of this approach, with "Bad News Blues" being a prime example, Haynes setting the pace and everyone getting some room to blow.

Mathews's "Dorian" is in the Dorian mode, the minor-key modal structure made most famous by Miles Davis's "So What" and here turned into a moody, emotionally stirring piece, particularly in Mathews's own solo. All of this is taken at a quick tempo, not what you'd think of as the first choice for moody introspection, but it works. "Honeydew" is altogether different, with Ridley playing the blues right out of the gate, with Mathews and Ervin joining to create a full-bore, major scale excursion into rhythm and blues with Haynes providing a complex but driving alternative to the back beat.

"Scoochie" is Ervin's, and it is not only scoochie, it is downright scorchy. Ervin had introduced the tune a few years earlier in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art, in a group led by Teddy Charles and also featuring Booker Little. If that rendition scooched the statues into life, this one would have scorched and singed them, with Haynes providing the beat, Ervin flying high, and Mathews turning in a piano solo that echoes and extends what Teddy Charles did in the Garden.

Haynes had entered a phase of his career where he wanted to work more as a leader, with his own groups, but he was only to make one more record for Prestige, and then one for Pacific Jazz, and nothing else in the 1960s, though the 1970s were a much more fruitful decade for him in the leader role, and he was to continue as a jazz stalwart, and a jazz legend, into his 90s.

Cracklin' was the title of the New Jazz album release,and the title credit was Roy Haynes with Booker Ervin. The two Mathews compositions, "Dorian" and "Honeydew," were a 45 RPM single. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 583: Frank Wess

LISTEN TO ONE: The Long Road

 This album wraps up Frank Wess's run with Prestige--in fact, it was his last recording session as a leader for the rest of the 1960s, although he continued to work steadily, with Count Basie, whom he had joined in the early 1950s and would stay with until 1964, and then with Clark Terry's big band. He brings two Basie bandmates with him, Thad Jones and Buddy Catlett, and they play a brand of jazz that was not the fashionable soul jazz or the disturbing free jazz of the time, but represented a mainstream of jazz that has never failed to find adherents and listeners, drawing on the Kansas City swing of Basie and Lester Young

and Coleman Hawkins, but even more on the modern sounds that were being explored by Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley, Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan. So while these Basie stalwarts bring a lot of Basie with them, they aren't just playing small group interpretations of Basie arrangements. There's a little of that in their music, but more of it is the classic jazz dynamic, head-solo-solo, that people come out to clubs to hear, to sit in close proximity to the musicians and get an intimate glimpse into their voices and personalities, to be present at the creation of improvisational ideas and the immediacy of musicians inspiring each other, as a master jazz player takes an idea, explores it, and hands it off to the next player to continue the exploration.

You get all of that throughout this session, but to particularly good advantage on "The Long Road," one of three Wess compositions (the other two are "Yo-Ho" and "Cold Miner"), where all five musicians have their chances to shine. Wess plays tenor on "The Long Road," flute on much of the rest of the album. Jones contributes one tune, "The Lizard."

The album was somewhat clunkily titled Yo-Ho! Frank Wess, Poor You, Little Me. A 45 RPM single release featured "Little Me," by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, the title song from the popular Broadway musical of the time, with Wess's "Cold Miner" on the flip. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 577: Ted Curson

LISTEN TO ONE: Fire Down Below

 Ted Curson is one of that generation that made Philadelphia such a cauldron of jazz in the 1950s. The Heath family lived around the corner from and Albert "Tootie" Heath was a classmate. "On Sundays," Curson recalled (in an AllAboutJazz.com interview with Clifford Allen, "Mrs. Heath would make dinner for any musicians who were coming to Philadelphia. You could see anyone from Miles to Duke Ellington to Sonny Rollins."

But it wasn't these greats who first lured young Ted into music. It was a neighborhood guy who wandered the streets selling newspapers, and carrying a silver trumpet. When he told his father he

wanted a trumpet, the old man, a Louis Jordan fan, tried to talk him into an alto saxophone, but Ted held firm. He got his first trumpet at age ten, started playing professionally at age 16 and not long after that, met Miles Davis. In those days, Curson told Allen, he worshipped Davis:

[I was] wearing my hair like Miles, I had a tie around my waist, I even made the mistakes that he made. I liked his approach to everything and I still do. He heard me play when I was around 15 or 16 and he gave me his card and he said 'if you ever come to New York, give me a call.' There was no conversation - he said that and left - and I kept that thing in my pocket for years. After I graduated, it was about three years before I finally moved there [at age 21] and I called up Miles. Miles said 'Ted Curson, that little guy from Philadelphia? We've been waiting for you for three years! Where the hell have you been?'

This was, of course, in the Prestige days, when Miles was still allowing himself to make mistakes.

Curson drew the interest of the Levy brothers, owners of the Birdland jazz club and Roulette records. He was to make his debut at Birdland, and his audition for Roulette, on the night that Mo Levy's brother Irving was shot and killed right outside the club.

Instead, Curson served an apprenticeship in New York's avant garde. He played with Cecil Taylor, and appeared on one Taylor record for United Artists. He drew the attention of Charles Mingus, or more accurately was brought to Mingus's attention:

I got a phone call from a friend of mine and he said "I got a call from Mingus and I don't want to play with that crazy motherfucker. You want to take my place?" It was in Teddy Charles' loft, and there were a 1,000 or something musicians in there jamming, and I met Mingus and we played and everybody dropped out and that was it. He said "maybe one day I'll call you" and about two or three months later I get a call at about midnight and it's Mingus. "Ted Curson? Charlie Mingus here. You start right now. I'm at the Showplace in the Village and as soon as you get here, you go to work." I got there and he said "Okay ladies and gentleman, here's your new band - Ted Curson and Eric Dolphy - and you other cats are fired!"

He made his debut as a leader in 1961, fronting an all-star group comprised of Eric Dolphy (on two tracks), tenor saxophonist Bill Barron (who would have a long association with Curson), Kenny Drew and Jimmy Garrison. Drumming, on different tracks, were Pete La Roca, Dannie Richmond and Roy Haynes. The album came out on Old Town, a New York rhythm and blues and doowop label that had no jazz presence at all (Arthur Prysock was one of their featured artists, but he as being pitched to the rhythm and blues market in those days) and almost no LP presence, so it was heard by very few (although you can hear it now on YouTube). So for all practical purposes, this Prestige album was his real breakthrough.

The Prestige album is called Ted Curson Plays Fire Down Below, which seems to suggest that there was an audience out there just waiting to hear the latest version of "Fire Down Below," which is even less likely than the possibility than a legion of jazz fans waiting to hear the latest Old Town release. "Fire Down Below" was composed by Lester Lee, a Hollywood journeyman with a raft of movie soundtrack songs to his credit (including a bunch of polkas), but very little of interest to jazz performers.

Curson makes something eminently listenable out of the Caribbean-tinged melody, originally written for a Robert Mitchum / Jack Lemmon thriller with a Caribbean setting, and maybe part of his youthful hubris in introducing himself to the jazz public involved showing what he could do with tunes no one else had looked twice at. 

If so, he did a hell of a job. Two of the tunes are recognizable standards, Lerner and Loewe's "Show Me" from My Fair Lady, and Rodgers and Hart's "Falling in Love With Love." Well, standards. I'm not sure Henry Higgins would have recognized what Curson and Co. do with "Show Me," although Eliza Doolittle, sick to death of the genteel reserve of the society she has been elevated into, might have appreciated the propulsive drumming and all-out solos of Roy Haynes and Montego Joe.

The rest are a curious lot. Harold Little ("The Very Young") is a trumpeter and composer about whom I could find very little. Robert Allen ("Baby Has Gone Bye Bye") carved out a career as an accompanist for Perry Como, Peter Lind Hayes and Arthur Godfrey, so he can't be counted among the hippest of the hip. "Only Forever," composed by James V. Monaco, was a modest hit in 1940, from a Bing Crosby film, and Monaco does have one sublime song to his credit, "You Made Me Love You," made famous by Judy Garland. So it's not the material, it's what Curson does with it, and what he did with it announced his presence as a new major talent on the jazz scene.

Roy Haynes and Montego Joe added a lot to this session. George Tucker was a reliable bassist. Gildo Mahones would go on to do more work for Prestige in the decade, including a couple of albums as leader, so I'll save a fuller discussion of him for later. At the time of this session, he was working with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.

"Fire Down Below" was the title song for the Prestige album, and it was also the 45 RPM single, with "The Very Young" on the flip side. Ozzie Cadena produced.

Listening to Prestige 573: Willis Jackson

LISTEN TO ONE: Cachita

 Willis Jackson becomes the latest Prestige artist to hop on the bossa nova bandwagon...sort of. The album is three tunes by Latino composers, two popular songs of the day, and one Jackson original. But I wonder if Prestige's marketing department was paying much attention to the product in this case. The three Latin tunes -- "Cachita," "Amor" and "Mama Inez" -- are all by Cubans. "Mama Inez," in fact, as "Ay, Mama Ines," composed by Eliseo Grenet, is a Cuban archetype. A 1933 article in Vanity Fair describes it thus:

The song of Cuba—a hundred dark throats have sung it; a thousand brown feet have danced it. O Mother Inés . . . all the Negroes drink coffee, drink thick black coffee. 0 Mother Inés, where are you hiding? We have searched for you everywhere and we have not found you. We have searched for you in the tough districts of Jesu-Maria—and we have not found you. Oh Cuba, my mother, my sister, my beloved! 

English language lyrics by L. Wolfe Gilbert are credited by many with popularizing the rhumba in North America. Here are some of them:

Oh, Mama Inez,
Oh, Mama Inez,
They hum and strum,
That's the rhumba for you.

Oh, Mama Inez,
Oh, Mama Inez,
Though others come,
Their "The Rhumba" won't do.

When I first saw the shebango,
I fell so hard for the tango,
But now this brand new fandango's got me
Like nothing's got me before!
Oh, Mama Inez,
Oh, Mama Inez,
No Cuban rum's
Like the rhumba for me.

Grenet fled Cuba after some of his song lyrics were seen as subversive by the Machado regime. He went to Europe and then to the United States, where he opened his own nightclub on 52nd Street, El Yumuri, where he is credited with introducing the conga to the US.

Montego Joe and Juan Amalbert were both native New Yorkers, Joe (Roger Sanders) African American, and Amalbert, later Emmanuel Abdul-Rahim, with a Puerto Rican father.

So, adding that all up: bossa nova? Not hardly. Kenny Burrell adds a couple of nice samba licks, but that's about it.

Do we care? We do not. This is wonderful music, a mixture of the mainstream jazz of Willis Jackson

who, like so many of the musicians who came out of the rhythm and blues subset of jazz, is unfairly overlooked, and Latin jazz, generally disgracefully overlooked by mainstream audiences. Ranker.com, a website where contemporary participants vote for the greatest this or that, lists Jackson at number 151 on their list of greatest saxophone players, and that's only because I added him. DownBeat's reader polls of this era, the era of the mambo and the cha-cha and the bossa nova, completely overlook Machito and Puente, Prado and Cugat, even in their dance band category. Allmusic.com's reviewer Ron Wynn gives the album four stars, with the note, "His second great album that year," so somebody is listening,

And for all the sales that Willis Jackson generated for Prestige in this era, somebody wasn't taking him seriously enough. Hence the marketing division's decision to market this as a bossa nova album, with bargain bin graphics on the front cover, and liner notes that must have been written by someone from the mailroom. Jose Paulo is listed in the session logs from jazzdisco.org as playing congas and timbales, on the back sleeve of the album as playing guitar. Jazzdisco isn't always right, but they're probably around 98 percent right, and since all of Paulo's other credits are percussion, I'm going to go with them.
Allmusic.com credits him on bongos, congas, guitar and timbales, but they're not always right either.

"I Left My Heart in San Francisco" is given the full-on Latin treatment. "What Kind of Fool Am I?" is more a straight-on ballad, and "Shuckin'" is Jackson playing Jackson, with Eddie Calhoun and Roy Haynes doing the rhythmic work. Calhoun was Errol Garner's regular bassist from 1955 through 1966 (he's on Concert by the Sea), and did very little other recording. Shuckin' became the title of a rerelease of the album, this time with liner notes by Philadelphia disc jockey Del Shields, mostly griping about how Willis Jackson doesn't get the respect he deserves from jazz snobs. Unfortunately, he was right.

"What Kind of Fool Am I?" and "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" were the 45. The album was a Prestige release, Ozzie Cadena producing.

 

Listening to Prestige 445: Shirley Scott

Shirley Scott, again with new musicians, this time including a second keyboardist (Ronnell Bright). This is a session that was shelved and then cut up for parts, becoming parts of two later releases, Workin' and Stompin'. The idea of naming albums with participles goes back to the series that came out of the Miles Davis Contractual Marathon, and in fact Workin' did double duty as a title for Miles and Shirley.  Workin' and Stompin' both came out in the same year, 1967, which is a little odd--you'd think if they were releasing both at the same time, they'd put all the songs from the sane session on the same album, but

I don't know what goes into making decisions like this. Nor do I know why a recording sits on the shelf for six years. In the case of Shirley Scott, it can't have been concern that they wouldn't sell. And it certainly doesn't appear to have been a concern for quality -- this is prime Shirley, listenable and musically rewarding. But if there is one thing I am sure of in this life, it's that I know nothing about marketing.

This new aggregation behind Scott is a solid one. Peck Morrison and Roy Haynes are as reliable as they come. Ronnell Bright is a welcome addition, and Wally Richardson is exemplary. The guitar-organ combination is getting to be a soul jazz staple, and although Richardson hadn't done any soul jazz sessions, he was certainly conversant with the blues. On Prestige, he had recorded with Al Sears and Willie Dixon, as well as jazz vocalist Betty Roché. Also during the 1950s, he had worked with blues and R&B figures as diverse as John Lee Hooker and Frankie Lymon.

Workin' was the first of the two to be released, and it included, from this session, the Scott original "Chapped Chops" and Nat Adderley's "Work Song." It was still a new tune when Scott recorded it in 1961, having just been debuted the year before, first by Nat and then in the two most famous versions: the one by both Adderley brothers, in a group led by Cannonball, and the other the vocal rendition by Oscar Brown Jr. But by the time the album was released, it had become virtually a signature song of soul jazz. Scott's version is a worthy addition to the canon. The tune sounds great on the organ, Scott's improvisation on it is compelling, and so is Richardson's solo.

Stompin' takes its name from "Stompin' at the Savoy," off of this session, and I love what Scott does with it, especially in the upper register of the organ. The rest of the session is two standards and a spiritual, and the album is mostly standards, so maybe that's why they divided the session the way they did.

Esmond Edwards produced.

Listening to Prestige 441: Jaki Byard

March of 1961 came in like a lion for Prestige. Wednesday, March 1, saw them back in the studio with one of the most important musicians of his era, Eric Dolphy, in a match made in heaven with Oliver Nelson. Then they didn't even wait a week. On Tuesday, March 7, they brought two groups out to Englewood Cliffs. First, probably their biggest star of the decade, Shirley Scott; then, a major new talent, Walt Dickerson. And the following Tuesday, they unveiled a monster talent.

Jaki Byard had recorded twice for Prestige, with Dolphy, who knew talent and who recognized the forward-thinking musicians who could keep pace with his rapidly expanding ideas.

He was not a youthful prodigy. When he made his debut as a leader with Prestige (there'd been one solo album for Candid the year before) he was 39 years old. He had actually made his first record in 1950, in Boston with Charlie Mariano, back in the days of 10-inch LPs, on the West Coast rhythm and blues label Imperial. A 1957 gig with Herb Pomeroy (he played tenor sax) was released on Roulette, but again, that was primarily a Boston audience.

Byard was to remain with Prestige throughout the decade, so I'll have a lot more to say about him as time goes on, and fortunately, there's a lot to say, because his creativity and originality was never-ending. Listening to Byard, and reading about him, makes me think of what people said about the young Sammy Davis Jr. That he was so gifted, and had absorbed -- and could reproduce -- so many styles, that he didn't really have a style of his own. Which

was wrong, of course. Byard was similar -- he could incorporate any style, or several different styles in the same piece. Nowadays, that's not so unusual. In the post-Wynton Marsalis era, young piano players have to be able to play ragtime, bebop, and Monk, just to get noticed. But Byard did it because that was who he was. He did with respect and humor at the same time, and he created a style that was unique and personal out of it.

This album contains five originals and three by other composers. The originals include "To My Wife," a tribute to a love affair that lasted four decades, and "Garnerin' a Bit," a tribute to Erroll Garner, one of his early heroes.

"When Sunny Gets Blue" was a 1956 vehicle for Johnny Mathis, and Byard shows off his own crooner chops with it, but on the alto sax. It was left off his debut album, but picked up a couple of albums down the road, on Out Front!

He takes on Gershwin in a Porgy and Bess medley, "Bess You Is My Woman Now" and "It Ain't Necssarily So."

And most interestingly, he becomes the first jazz artist to record a new version of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps," from the album that had revolutionized jazz just the year before. With Ron Carter and Roy Haynes, he takes it apart, puts it back together, reimagines it for the piano, makes something new out of something that was already startlingly new, and does it all in two minutes and 22 seconds, ending so abruptly it's almost in mid-phrase.

Here's Jaki  was produced by Esmond Edwards, and brought out 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. 

And Volume 4 in preparation!

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

Listening to Prestige 438: Oliver Nelson and Eric Dolphy

This would be the last Nelson-Dolphy session for Prestige, although they would continue to work together. Dolphy was featured on Nelson's important Impulse! album, The Blues and the Abstract Truth, recorded later in the year. With two multi-instrumentalists, both of whom loved to experiment with the textures of sounds, as leads, the sonic/textural possibilities of the album are varied indeed.

Straight Ahead is the title of the album, and straight ahead has come to be the name of a branch of the jazz tree. Wikipedia defines it as:

a jazz music style from the period between bebop and the 1960s' styles of Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. It is considered the lingua franca of jam sessions, and can usually be contrasted with smooth jazz.

It has the following characteristics:

• A walking bass
• A swing 4/4 time signature in the drums
• In the piano, syncopated chords in the left hand, and melodic, mostly single-note soloing in the right hand
• A head followed by a solo by each melody instrument, and sometimes drums and bass, followed by a reprise of the head
• However, many Latin rhythms are also sufficiently well-established to be considered straight-ahead.

 Allmusic gives a somewhat different definition. It's a lot longer, but essentially it's this: music of the 1980s and beyond that's characterized by a reaction against the jazz-rock fusion popularized by Miles Davis. They also say that " Straight-ahead musicians can be influenced by any jazz up through the 1960s, even including some early avant-garde jazz," which suggests it's also a reaction against the modal and free jazz of John Coltrane and those in his sphere of influence. Which would certainly include Eric Dolphy. But this session would fall under the heading of early avant-garde jazz, and except for the part about the 1980s, it would satisfy either definition.

I've just written about traditionalist Coleman Hawkins using avant-garde drummer Andrew Cyrille. Here it's sort of the reverse, with a couple of very progressive musicians, including one certified avant-gardist, using a much more mainstream rhythm section--particularly the bassist, George Duvivier, whose credentials are more along the lines of Gene Ammons, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Bob Wilber, Frank Sinatra.

It's hard to imagine a better choice. Duvivier keeps them to the straight ahead, and still provides inventive, mind-freeing bass lines which allow them room to wander. This is an album with much pleasure for avant-gardist and straught-aheadist alike.

With the exception of Milt Jackson's "Ralph's New Blues," all the compositions are Nelson's. They're all wonderful, but the one that's caught on and been recorded several times by other musicians is "Six and Four," so named because it moves from 6/4 to 4/4 time. It was tough choosing one for my listening pick, but I went with "Straight Ahead," a rousing five and half minutes of blowing, riffing, improvising, hitting bebop tempos, allowing room for solos by Richard Wyands and Roy Haynes, and stomping it out in style to wind up the session.

And wind it up they did. Joe Golberg, who wrote the liner notes, describes showing up at 3:30, figuring that with a one o'clock session call they'd just be getting through a quick rehearsal and ready to get down to serious recording. Instead, he found the studio empty except for Rudy Van Gelder and Esmond Edwards. The musicians had packed up and gone home. They'd played "Straight Ahead," and they'd played straight ahead, and they'd nailed it the first time through.

Was this the tune that gave the title to the movement two decades hence, or perhaps the movement that was getting under way as jazz bifurcated and trifurcated in the 1960s? It's hard to say. Compositions with the same title, one by Kenny Dorham and one by Mal Waldron, appeared right around the same time.  Maybe the name honors all three of them. This one certainly deserves all the credit it gets.

Edwards produced, and the album was released by 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. 

And Volume 4 in preparation!

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

Listening to Prestige 420: Eric Dolphy - Booker Little

This is one of the most storied pairings in jazz lore, like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, or Clifford Brown and Max Roach, and like them, it was destined to end much too soon. Bird, of course, was destroyed by drugs. Clifford Brown died in an auto accident. And both Eric Dolphy and Booker Little succumbed to illness--Little at the age of 23, less than a year after making this recording.

During a period in which Prestige was turning a lot of its attention to the tradition, with its Swingville and Bluesville sessions, Eric Dolphy was their standard bearer for what one of Ornette Coleman's album titles had described as the shape of jazz to come. Dolphy had last been in the studio as a leader on August 31, and that album had been titled Out There. The labelsthat were taking a chance on the new jazz were not at all shy about marketing its newness. Other Atlantic titles for Coleman were Tomorrow is the Question and Change of the Century. Albert Ayler's debut was Something Different!!!!!! (yes, with all the exclamation points). Cecil Taylor, who may have been the first important jazz figure to enter the avant garde, or this particular avant garde, put out albums called Jazz Advance and Looking Ahead! John Coltrane's step into the next incarnation of jazz was a little more modestly--but absolutely accurately--called Giant Steps.

This session by Dolphy would be titled--an evocative touch, rather than a manifesto--Far Cry, but it still carries the message. This was staking out new ground, and if Little hadn't yet gone quite as far into uncharted waters, Dolphy saw something there, and Little responded. The quintet they formed together played one memorable two-week gig (also recorded by Prestige) at the Five Spot in June of 1961, but by October Little was gone, a victim of complications from uremia.

It had already been a busy day for Dolphy by the time he got to Englewood Cliffs. Earlier in the day, he had participated in a groundbreaking Ornette Coleman session for Atlantic. The Atlantic album would be called Free Jazz, and it featured a double quartet--that is, two separate quartets, each playing over a separate stereo channel: on the left, Coleman and Don Cherry, with Scott LoFaro and Billy Higgins on bass and drums; on the right, Dolphy and Freddie Hubbard, with Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell. This one, like so much of the new jazz, was an opinion divider: Downbeat assigned it to two reviewers, of whom gave it five stars and the other, no stars.

Dolphy was well into the world of jazz by this album; it was a newer experience for Booker Little, but Dolphy hadn't picked him capriciously: he heard something.

The session begins with two Parker tributes: one to Charlie, one to his mother, both composed by Jaki Byard, who had also been with Dolphy on his debut album for Prestige from the previous April. "Ode to Charlie Parker" has a dirgelike quality at the head, but the soloists break free from that, each in his own way. Dolphy, playing flute, is certainly the freest. Little's solo comes next, and it gives the jazz listener who's grown up with bebop more reference points to hold onto, but it's still in keeping with Dolphy. Byard takes the third solo, and I love what he's doing too. One might say he keeps the melody a little more in mind, but then, it's his melody. When they come back to the head, it still starts with the dirge-like statement, but then, still playing it, they rise above it to a kind of exaltation, almost like the brass bands returning from a New Orleans jazz funeral. How's that for a cross-cultural reference? But that is what it feels like.

For whatever reason, Parker's mother gets the more uptempo, boppish tune. Dolphy plays bass clarinet on this one, but we don't get to him right away. The first solo goes to Little, and it'll make your head spin, for both its passion and its virtuosity. Byard keeps it up, and then Dolphy comes in and blows the roof off. This is a sound that can take you back to 1960, to the realization that the jazz torch is being passed to a new generation, and you're here to bear witness to it, and marvel at it, and if you listen closely, to tell yourself yes, this is the way it has to go.

Ron Carter dazzles with a bowed bass solo, and the number finishes with some ensemble playing that makes you rethink everything you ever thought you knew about playing together.

From there, they go into "It's Magic," a syrupy romantic ballad that was a favorite of crooners, not so much of jazz instrumentalists. In fact, this was probably the first jazz treatment of it, and there have precious few since. Little starts out with a surprisingly straight version of the melody, and then--well, you could say it's the standard bebop small group structure: head, solo, solo, solo, head. And why not? Not everyone agreed with John Lewis that jazz had to break free from that template. Musicians like Dolphy, Byard and Little were here to prove you could break free within that template. As they come back to an almost, but not quite, straightforward statement of the melody, still somewhat syrupy but not the way Little plays it, you know you've been taken a far cry from Doris Day and her Latin lover who introduced the song in a forgotten 1948 movie.

"It's Magic" featured Dolphy again on bass clarinet, and so does "Serene," a Dolphy composition that didn't make it onto the LP but was added to the CD reissue. "Serene" is the kind of title that jazz musicians often give to workouts that are anything but. However, in this case, there is a certain serenity to the tone, at least as serene as a group of avant garde musicians who are pushing limits can get. Little seems to keep taking more chances with each cut, and in this one especially, Dolphy keeps prodding him onward. Dolphy as a bandleader was famous for not giving a lot of verbal instruction to his bandmates, but it's pretty clear from this session that he didn't need to.

"Miss Ann" is a Dolphy composition which hasn't quite become a standard but has gotten its share of adherents and has been recorded several times over the years. "Far Cry" is the final Dolphy original. He plays alto sax on both of them, matching the instrumentation of the original Ornette Coleman combo with Don Cherry, but Dolphy and Little are finding their own paths to freedom, abetted by Jaki Byard (Coleman had a pianoless quartet), who is finding his own way, too.

"Left Alone" is Mal Waldron's tribute to Billie Holiday. "Tenderly" is the standard by Walter Gross, with Dolphy alone on alto sax, everyone else dropping out. It's lyrical and disturbing, respectful of the melody and willing to leave it behind at a moment's notice, It's lovely.

Far Cry became the name of the album, which was issued on New Jazz.. Esmond Edwards produced.


Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon.

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

Listening to Prestige 402: Lem Winchester

Reliving these jazz years through Prestige recording sessions is living in a dual reality. Part of you knows full well that you're looking back in time through the lens of age and distance, remembering your youthful excitement, appreciating the artists, and the recordings, that a perspective only brought by time and experience. But  part of you is back then, 20 again, hearing the new sound from Symphony Sid or Ed Beach or Speed Anderson or Chuck Niles, buying the new album at Sam Goody's (or the 45 at Sam Goody's Annex), thinking that was solid, Jackson...what comes next?

But that flight of imagination comes to a crashing halt with Lem Winchester. Because you've known, from the moment he burst on the scene the year before, that this was going to happen. Each of his sessions feels, to the contemporary listener following this chronology, like sands through a very small hourglass. It feels that way when we listen to Eric Dolphy, who's also just arrived on the scene with Prestige, and Booker Little, who would make his Prestige debut shortly. And with Lem Winchester, for whom the sands are running out. This was his last session as leader; he would appear in a week with Johnny "Hammond" Smith, and then no more.  In January the ex-cop would be dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, reportedly showing off a trick where you pretend to play Russian Roulette.

Winchester went out casual but tasty. No fireworks here. instead a quartet session of ballads intended for the Moodsville label. But they're all good tunes, and each one of them gets a swinging treatment, with lots of improvisational delights, and especially the pleasure of hearing some wonderful interplay between Winchester and Richard Wyands, where ideas are begun on piano and brought to fruition on vibes, or vice versa. This is Wyands' only recording gig in a group led by Winchester (he had joined Lem on an Oliver Nelson session), but they have a strong connection.

There's one Winchester original ("The Kids"). The rest are a mix of standards and current pop tunes. "Why Don't They Understand" was a 1957 hit, recorded by country singers as well as pop. Winchester's is the only known jazz interpretation. "To Love and Be Loved" is the Academy Award-nominated theme song from the 1958 movie Some Came Running, again not widely added to the repertoire of jazz musicians. It's a good mix. We may not have the same recognition for late 1950s pop hits that they received at the time (had they only thought of posterity, they might have taken on "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Sh-Boom" instead). but they still make for some very tasty jazz in the hands of Winchester and cohorts. And it's always a pleasure to hear a great jazz group's interpretation of beloved standards.

Esmond Edwards produced the session. The Moodsville release was titled Lem Winchester with Feeling.

Winchester got his start when a young trio, John Chowning's Collegiates, added him for a record date arranged by Chowning's father. The group planned to send the record to Leonard Feather as an audition for the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Feather passed on the group, but invited Winchester, then a Wilmington, Delaware police officer. Fifty years later, the three Collegiates reminisced about their sometme bandmate for the Current Research in Jazz website. Here's Chowning:

One can speculate whether Lem’s extraordinary talent would ever have been “noticed” at the level where it mattered if the recording had not been made. Perhaps not. Lem impressed us a man whose first love in music was the playing of it, not being a “name” in it. He had, we thought, more ambition for his notes than for himself.

At the time of the recording Lem was a successful officer in the Wilmington, Delaware, police force, assigned to what we now can call the African American community, where he was beloved by its inhabitants. The options for a smart and intelligent African American then were limited, especially one with a wife and young children. It was Lem’s mother, knowing that a police officer was at the pinnacle of power in her community, who persuaded him to join the police force in the first place. And she later was able to convince him to remain with the force, rather than joining his teenage friend and trumpet player, Clifford Brown, in the professional jazz scene.
...
To all of us Lem seemed content in a rewarding and stable career as a policeman — enriched by his stunning music on the side. He was revered by his community both as a police officer and by those who knew his music: he was welcomed into every musical setting he encountered.

In the spring or summer of 1958 my father, always our most unabashed supporter and spokesman, sent the LP to Leonard Feather... He was disappointed, I am sure, when the invitation came to Lem alone, but the three of us were not surprised. We were good enough players to recognize that Lem was a truly great jazz talent.

To my father’s credit, he maintained contact with Lem during the transition from police officer to professional jazz musician, and it was through him that the three of us learned of Lem’s tragic death in 1961.

George Lindamood

[I remember the first time Lem jammed with us. He] wore a gray sports jacket over his uniform so it would not be obvious that he was a policeman, but we kidded him about his regulation shirt, a shade of blue considerably darker than what was fashionable for business dress in those days. And then there was the bulge on his right hip that we knew to be his service revolver.

...a few weeks later...Lem had just finished one of his energetic solos and had lathered up a pretty good sweat in the process. When he took off his “plain clothes” jacket his police badge winked gold in the spotlight and the audience gasped in surprise... Without missing a beat, he laid the jacket on the piano top, unstrapped his holster and revolver, and dived back in for another chorus. The applause was at least fifty percent louder than before.

 It often took me a couple hours to come down after a gig, so it was pointless to try to sleep. Often I borrowed John’s car, a well-worn brown Kaiser, and tracked Lem down where he was walking his midnight-to-dawn beat in one of the poorer sections of Wilmington. Lem did not seem to mind having a scrawny not-quite-19-year-old white kid tagging along in that all-black neighborhood, although occasionally he had me wait at a distance while he handled a difficult situation. Most of the time we just walked and talked, with him providing stories and advice from his perspective as a black man ten years older. It was a wonderful education for me.

And David Arnold:

 The summer of 1957, our summer with Lem, was one of those years when the nation was in the throes of determining whether social tolerance would follow from the strengthening decisions that there must be legal tolerance. 

It is within that context that I most easily place Lem. I remember his music, of course, but he comes striding with it out of that dark part of Wilmington, that dark part of national history, carrying the bright light of refutation. He was a good man. An unforgettable man.

As George has recalled above, we — who were the John Chowning Collegiates — had thrown open the doors of Marshalls Restaurants for Monday night jam sessions.
The Collegiates, a musically literate trio learning new things with every performance, played what we hoped was jazz — and very often it was. But with Lem and his group there was no question. Marshalls lit up like fireworks. We were hearing what jazz was all about. He might call his style “down home” (another bit of modesty in a way) but it swung with a rhythmic curl and driving force that threatened the walls of the place. On top of it all was Lem’s intricate cascade of notes, at times more than could possibly come from just two mallets, and at other times simply and quietly a delicate, laid-back, slightly off-the-beat sounding of simple melody played in octaves. Push hard and pull back.
Lem was uncommonly gentle and forgiving. And he had that best thing of the best in music: the desire to teach, to pass it on.

It is that last thing I remember most — that and his matter-of-fact and unforced tolerance. Of all the musicians in Marshalls on those nights, I was by far the most unaccomplished... Yet Lem took the time to help, to give me some ideas. He might have seen promise. Or he might have been kind.

...certainly we could see his gift to us: the benefit, like a windfall, of being fronted by a genius on the vibes. He was among the very best, had friends among the very best — Clifford Brown for one — and so how did we deserve him? I have never stopped wondering.

The recording tells the story. On Lem’s cuts his playing transforms us into a different group. He lifts and drives, lightens the load, inspires. There is promise for us all....
In the end we Collegiates had graduations and careers to think about. But for Lem the recording made all the difference. We were both disappointed and relieved when Leonard Feather’s Newport nod went to Lem and not the rest of us but, as John says, we knew who the star was.
... In January of 1961 Lem was on the road, a professional musician, commercial recordings to his credit. But he carried with him a relic of his policeman days: a trick with a revolver in which all bullets but one were removed from their chambers. Gun to his head, bar-sitters watching, he would pull the trigger and the hammer would click as the cylinder rotated to an empty chamber. But that night in Indianapolis he used a different gun. The cylinder rotated in the opposite direction.

John Chowning went on to an unheralded but significant career in music. He studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Later, he discovered FM synthesis, "a very simple yet elegant way of creating time-varying spectra. Licensed by Stanford to Yamaha, FM synthesis led to a family of synthesizers (DX7) that became the most successful of all time."


Lem Winchester left a small but significant body of work. He touched lives both as a policeman and a musician.

Listening to Prestige 397: Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis

Down Beat's review of this album says, in part, "Perhaps the most significant aspect of this set is saxophonist Nelson's debut as a big-band arranger on four tracks."

That doesn't begin to tell the story. My writeup of this session was slowed down because I had to stop everything and listen the second tune of the day, "Trane Whistle," several times, to get a full appreciation of the arrangement, the way Davis's tenor takes on a horn section with the power of Joe Louis, the versatility of Bert Campaneris and the stamina of John Havlicek, and excitement enough to make a listener go crazy trying to find

comparisons. And what Nelson has the horns doing inspires Davis to get even crazier, with results that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

The over-the-top excitement of "Trane Whistle" made me go back and listen again to the first cut of the day, "Walk Away," another Nelson composition/arrangement, and I was glad I had. The arrangement isn't as bombastic, but it is as inventive, with an intriguing piano vamp by Richard Wyands to start things off, and some wonderful call-and-response work between tenor sax and horn session.

Next up is "Whole Nelson," and if one soloist working against amazing big band horn arrangements is good, how about two? Turns out that's good too, especially when you consider that the other one is Clark Terry.

The most celebrated cut on the album is "The Stolen Moment," because Nelson used it again on his most celebrated album (and with one of the great album titles of all time), The Blues and the Abstract Truth,  As "Stolen Moments," it became the most celebrated cut on that milestone album, famed for being the most notable use in jazz of the

symmetrical augmented scale, an alternative scale which I can't begin to explain but which was an important innovation in the work of early modernist composers like Bela Bartok, Milton Babbitt and Arnold Schoenberg. No augmented scale in this version, but some top-notch soloists, including a trumpet player I wasn't familiar with, Bobby Bryant, who was just passing through. He had come to New York from Chicago in 1960, and by the following year was out in Los Angeles, where he built a substantial career, including working on a number of albums with Oliver Nelson.

The arrangements on the last two tracks of the day were turned over to veteran arranger Ernie Wilkins: the Rodgers and Hart standard "You Are Too Beautiful" and the Davis original Jaws." Prime stuff.  And one would be remiss not to mention the extraordinary caliber of musicians who make up this big band. But Oliver Nelson is really the story.

Ttane Whistle was a Prestige release. A later re release capitalized on the later fame of the Nelson composition and was called Stolen Moments. Esmond Edwards produced, Don Schlitten did the photography and cover design, and come to think of it, that's also how Edwards got his start at Prestige.


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

Listening to Prestige 395: Etta Jones

Prestige got behind Etta Jones, whose career had been slow in developing, putting Frank Wess and a standout group of musicians behind her for her debut recording for the label in June, and it paid off, making her an overnight success at age 32, with the better part of two decades of performing behind her. Bob Weinstock and Esmond Edwards wisely brought her right back for this session with two of their brightest new jazz stars, Lem Winchester (this was to be his next-to-last session) and Oliver Nelson,

This was a session of mostly familiar standards, and why not? If you're trying to advance the career of a singer who decidedly deserves it, why not give her a bunch of songs that people like to here. "The More I See You." by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon, was very popular with jazz chanteuses, and even some chanteurs, in those days. A 1945 hit for Dick Haymes, it received ten other renditions in 1959-60 alone, plus four instrumental versions: interpreters included Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, Julie London, Brook Benton and the Four Freshmen. Celebrities liked it too, including Tony Perkins and Maureen O'Hara.  Jones is deliciously torchy on this one, with Winchester functioning as her alter ego and Nelson providing a short but moving solo near the end.

The Gershwins' wonderful "They Can't Take That Away From Me," originally recorded by Fred Astaire, is often a plaintive lament, but Jones belts it as a defiant album--nobody better try and take it away from me. This one is mostly Jones, but Winchester has an arresting, rhythmically interesting solo.

"That's All There Is to That" had been a recent hit for Nat "King" Cole, who had recorded a song called "That's All" several years earlier, and would recall another called "That's All There Is" a few years later. He sang "That's All There Is to That" for President Eisenhower at the 1956 Republican convention, but there doesn't seem to be any political message to it. It's a sensitive song of lost love and heartbreak as Cole sings it, and fatalistic in the extreme in Jones's version. No sentimentality. You love, you lose, and that's all there is to that. Richard Wyands is the instrumental star on this one. The song was written by Clyde Otis, who went on to a distinguished career as a songwriter and producer, but this was how it started for him: the Nat "King" Cole version of this song was his first hit.

"Easy Living" was written by movie composer Ralph Rainger, but it's become a jazz standard, thanks in great part to the 1937 version by Billie Holiday with Lester Young and Teddy Wilson. Jones stays close to what Lady Day did with the song--it's virtually an homage to the great singer who had died just months before.. The main solo here is Winchester, but Nelson very nearly steals the show with a much briefer one. It's interesting to compare Jones's 1960 recording with Holiday's 1937 recording, an era when the band, not the singer, was the star, and Holiday doesn't enter until more than halfway through the recording.

The Eddie Heywood "Canadian Sunset" was a big instrumental hit for Heywood in 1956, and many vocal versions followed. The lyrics by Norman Gimbel ("Killing Me Softly with His Song," English lyrics for "The Girl from Ipanema") sound a little tacked on, but not the way Jones sings them. Winchester propels her along for a snappy two and a half minutes, just the right length for a 45 RPM single, which this was.

Jones returns to Harry Warren for "I Only Have Eyes For You." a 1930s song which had been a big hit in a 1959 doowop version by the Flamingos. Jones echoes the Flamingos as she starts into the song, but soon takes it in her own direction, which is solid jazz singer. This is another 45-length cut, at just over three minutes, and I would have released it as a single. It's a great song, it's been a hit, and Jones takes it that step farther. But "That's All There Is to That" (not so short) and "Canadian Sunset" were the only singles from the album ("Canadian Sunset" would be rereleased as a single on the flip side of "Don't Go to Strangers"), and they didn't chart, so maybe Bob Weinstock decided that Jones was more an album kinda gal.

This is an interesting album in that some of 1960's finest jazz soloists (Nelson is sparingly used) are on the session, but there aren't any extended solos. And it works. Nothing wrong with tight. And when they do solo, as in Lerner and Loewe's "Almost Like Being in Love," which is about evenly divided between Jones's vocals and an instrumental break by Wyands and Winchester, the improvisation is tight, inventive, and...killer.

Much has been made of Jones's Billie Holiday influence. I didn't hear it so much in the first session--Dinah Washington came more to mind-- but it's definitely happening here, and it's all to the good.

The session would see daylight in two parcels, the 1961 release Something Nice ("That's All There Is to That," "Easy Living," "Canadian Sunset," "I Only Have Eyes for You") and 1963's Hollar.

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

Listening to Prestige 392: Oliver Nelson - King Curtis - Jimmy Forrest

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.

 He returned to the label in 1958, with the Prestige Blues-Swingers ensemble, then joined with fellow Midwesterners Jack McDuff and Bill Jennings to back up singer Betty Roché, made an album with McDuff and Lem Winchester, and just a month before this session, an album as leader with young organ phenom Larry Young. He would continue to record for Prestige through 1962.

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