Tad Richards' odyssey through the catalog of Prestige Records:an unofficial and idiosyncratic history of jazz in the 50s and 60s. With occasional digressions.
Showing posts with label Thornel Schwartz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thornel Schwartz. Show all posts
This was Larry Young's third and last album for Prestige, and his last album in the Jimmy Smith soul jazz genre. There would be a couple of years' hiatus, and then when he resumed recording in late 1964 for Blue Note, he had moved in a different direction for himself, and for jazz organ--a much more Coltrane-influenced sound.
As such, it's a somewhat overlooked album, and undeservedly. Young may be better known today for his later work. Only 22 when he recorded it, Young had the chops, and he had the soul, and he had the love of making music that comes through loud and clear. He worked on this session with two familiar musicians, guitarist Thornel Schwartz and drummer Jimmie Smith, his cousin, who usually spelled his name with an "ie" to differentiate himself
from the organist. Schwartz, 13 years Young's senior, had begun his recording career with the organist Jimmy Smith on the latter's debut album in 1956, and had made a name for himself as the go-to guitarist for the organ-guitar sound.
New to the Young orbit, and to Prestige, is tenor saxophonist Bill Leslie, who brings an old school rhythm and blues sound to 1960s soul. Yoked with Young and Schwartz, he adds a third distinctive solo sound, making it the kind of record that elicits an "Oh yeah!" with the start of each new solo.
This session is a stop on the road for Young, similar in style to his earlier Prestige albums. He was about to leave all of that behind--Prestige and soul jazz--so I'll take a little time here to look at Leslie, who doesn't get much attention elsewhere.
Leslie did very little recording. There's this album, and two for Argo (produced by Esmond Edwards). On one he shares co-leader billing with Schwartz, who was his contemporary (Leslie was born in 1925) from Philadelphia--it's likely that Schwartz recommended him for the session with Young. That one is generally billed as a Thornel Schwartz album, and was in fact Schwartz's only album as leader.
The other is Bill Leslie's only album as leader, and his last credited appearance on wax. He was abetted by Schwartz, Tommy Flanagan, Ben Tucker and Art Taylor. The album was called Diggin' the Chicks, and it featured tunes about women, including the Lead Belly classic "Goodnight Irene," and -- surprising and ambitions for a swing-rhythm and blues-soul jazz guy, Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman."
He did a creditable job tackling a challenging tune, but it was not to be a harbinger of things to come.
Unlike Larry Young, Leslie does not seem to have followed the trail blazed by Coleman / Colttane / Dolphy. Reports have him staying home and continuing to play soul jazz in the Newark / Philadelphia axis. He died in 2003.
"Groove Street" was the title tune from Young's album, and also a two-sided 45 RPM single. Another original, "Talkin' About J. C.," showed his growing interest in Coltrane. He would record it again for Blue Note with Grant Green, and Green would also put it on an album. Esmond Edwards produced the session.
This is my 400th entry in this Listening to Prestige project, and I started it almost exactly five years ago--June 14, 2014. I've learned a lot, listened to a lot of great music, brought myself up to a new decade, and still enthusiastic. The artists and the music of the 1950s, the bebop and hard bop eras, are the most familiar to me, so now I'm venturing into uncharted waters.
The organ was the hot new sound as the decade rolled over, and soul jazz gained prominence. Shirley Scott was Prestige's big organ star, either with her trio, as in the September 27 session we just listened to, or in a quintet with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis -- and still to come, with Stanley Turrentine. Prestige also introduced Jack McDuff, who came to the label with Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson, but went on to
become a major star in his own right, and Johnny "Hammond" Smith, who added the organ to his name to differentiate himself from guitarist Johnny Smith, and ultimately dropped the Smith part altogether and became Johnny Hammond.
And Larry Young, the youngest of these new organists, 19 when he made his debut album for Prestige and still a week shy of his 20th birthday on this session, for his second album. Young was really just passing through Prestige--he would only make one more album for the label--and for that matter, he was just passing through this phase of his career, the Jimmy Smith-influenced popular soul jazz sound of the day.
Young's muse was to be a restless one, taking him into Coltrane-influenced free jazz and then into fusion, but these Prestige albums, though not predictive of the explosive changes he was going to go through, certainly give us a healthy serving of his youthful talent. Guitarist Thornel Schwartz and drummer Jimmie Smith are back from the previous session, joined by Prestige veteran Wendell Marshall on bass. They play some Young originals, one standard ("Little White Lies," by Walter Donaldson, dating back to 1930), and three tunes by his contemporaries: Ray Draper, Horace Silver, and Morris "Mo" Bailey, Philadelphia-based saxophonist-composer-arranger.
That's enough variety to keep a session interesting, and though this is generally thought of as being Young's Jimmy Smith apprenticeship period, and although he's working in the soul jazz idiom that he would leave behind, there's plenty of individual voice here, and plenty of excitement.
"African Blues" is a good representative of his composing skills, and how he works with his own material. Soul jazz is supposed to be a sort of simplified form, and certainly there's a danceable groove here, but Shirley Scott has shown how much experimentalism an organist can bring to a solid beat, and so does Young. His groove is, if anything, even solider and funkier, and his inventiveness -- and that of Thornel Schwartz, whose rapport with him is always centered -- is a thing to enjoy.
"Little White Lies" is a cute tune, and vocalists like it, but it hasn't drawn all that much attention from jazz musicians. Maybe vocalists like it because the negativity of the lyrics makes a nice contrast to the bouncy tune, and that gets lost in an instrumental. But Young and Schwartz have some evil fun with it, and make the journey very worthwhile.
Nobody knows funk better than Horace Silver, and he has few peers as a composer, so "Nica's Dream" is a solid choice for young Mr. Young. It's become a jazz standard, mostly instrumental, although DeeDee Bridgewater wrote a vocalese lyric to it and killed it in performance, and a few others have essayed her version, notably Yvonne Sanchez, a Cuban-Polish jazz singer now making an expat career in Czechoslovakia. Silver first recorded it in 1956 with the Jazz Messengers. In 1959 Art Farmer and Blue Mitchell each did it, and then in 1960, as soul jazz was gaining a foothold, it was really discovered, and recordings were made by Young, Sabu Martinez, the Mastersounds (the Montgomery brothers), Curtis Counce, and Horace Silver again. Since then, it's become a beloved standard. Young does it proud.
He also showcases a Philadelphia comrade and not so well known composer, Mo Bailey, whose career as a saxophonist was cut short by illness, but who remained active as a successful composer and arranger into the disco era and beyond. His "Midnight Angel," as interpreted by Young, is haunting but funky.
This was released as an album on New Jazz, Esmond Edwards producing. No singles were released from the session.
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 two Newark youngsters, Larry Young (19) and Jimmie Smith (22), are teamed up here with a seasoned professional for their second record date, a week after their debut under Young's name. Hard to say why. They'd given a veteran journeyman (Joe Holiday) for two cuts in his initial outing, and very good cuts they were, but he had surely shown he didn't need guidance. But whatever the reason, it's hard to complain about the results.
Jimmy Forrest was the veteran. He had started with Fate Marable, the riverboat bandleader who discovered the young Louis Armstrong, and around the time that Larry Young was born, he was joining Jay McShann's orchestra in Kansas City.
Forrest was a midwesterner. Born in St. Louis, he spent a good deal of his professional life in the heartland, including a 1952(?) live session at a small club in St. Louis, The Barrel, with Miles Davis. This was during the period of Miles's self-imposed exile, after the nonet's non-acceptance and before the Prestige years. I wrote about the session:
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 with (essentially the same guys with whom he would record "Night Train") 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.
Forrest was in New York by the late 1950s, and had been working his way into the Prestige family, starting with a 1958 session with the Prestige Blues Swingers (Art Farmer, Pepper Adams, Tiny Grimes, etc.) He did two dates with Jack McDuff, one backing up vocalist Betty Roche, the other a McDuff session, while also going back to the Midwest to make a couple of albums with the Delmark label of Chicago (like Forrest, originally from St. Louis). This would be the beginning of a productive three-year, five-album association with the label, during which time he would also back up Jack McDuff (again) and Oliver Nelson.
This is a fantastic session, with the range of bebop, the guts of rhythm and blues, the soul of soul jazz. It's the kind of album you immediately want to listen to again--first just to groove with the soloists, and second to catch all the other stuff you were aware was happening but weren't focusing on: what Young is doing behind Forrest's solos, what Schwartz is doing behind Young's solos. By an odd coincidence, Forrest's perhaps-1952 session with Miles lists an unknown conga player among the personnel, and so does this session. Very odd--Prestige didn't generally forget to add names to its session notes. Ray Barretto? Maybe. Very good whoever he is.
The session starts out with Einar Aron Swan's "When Your Lover Has Gone," written in 1931 for a Jimmy Cagney musical, an unlikely source for a jazz standard, but it entered the jazz repertoire almost immediately, when Louis Armstrong and his orchestra recorded it in an oddly sweet arrangement, until he starts singing, and it starts to take off, and then his trumpet solo is as hot and brilliant as anything you could imagine. But Armstrong or no, the tune went back into the hands of pop singers until 1955, when there were suddenly versions by Earl Bostic, Bud Shank/Bob Brookmeyer, Urbie Green and Coleman Hawkins, and since then it seems to have gone to the front of every jazz musician's fake book. Forrest's recording starts out with the mystery conga player setting the beat, and is mostly Forrest, with a nice solo break by Young,
Then they get down to some hardcore swing-to-bop to soul, in other words some serious blowing with tunes from Dexter Gordon ("Dexter's Deck"), Milt Jackson ("Bags' Groove"), Doug Watkins ("Help," the only non-self-referential title) and Forrest ("Jim's Jam"). These are all hot, but the hottest is "Dexter's Deck," with smoking solos by both of the lead instruments, plus some continued hot work from the conga player.
The session winds up with Irving Berlin's "Remember," like "When Your Lover Has Gone" a favorite among ballad singers. Hank Mobley recorded this same tune right around the same time, for Blue Note. His album. Soul Station, is considered the pinnacle of his career, and his version of "Remember" a sort of gold standard for the tune, but Forrest, Young and Schwartz do a version that should not be forgotten. Album title notwithstanding, Mobley's version is more bop than soul, whereas Forrest's group sets the soul standard. It was the last number they cut that day, and the firsttrack on the album. It was also the track chosen for 45 RPM release, and here YouTube gives us a nice little demonstration of what happens when a jazz track is edited for single release. As I've mentioned before, in discussing King Curtis:
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.
And you can hear that perfectly illustrated here. The album version, at 5:27, has solos by not only Forrest and Young but also Schwartz (and a very tasty one); the 45 is 2:48 and all Forrest.
Forrest Fire is the name of the album. Esmond Edwards produced the New Jazz release.
Larry Young's real importance in jazz history would come later, in his Blue Note years (1964-69), when he became the first organist to follow the path blazed by John Coltrane(with whom he jammed but never recorded), into the avant garde. Teaming with Coltrane's drummer Elvin Jones, he took the organ out of the soul jazz groove which had been laid out for it by Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott and others. And he never looked back. He went on to an uncredited appearance on Miles Davis's Bitches Brew album, joined Tony Williams and John McLaughlin in Lifetime, and McLaughlin and Carlos Santana for Love Devotion Surrender. He made groundbreaking albums in both free jazz and jazz-rock fusion, before succumbing to pneumonia and dying at 37.
So it would be easy to overlook Young's debut album for Prestige, at age 19, and the Prestige/New Jazz albums that followed it, and that would be a huge mistake. Artists grow, mature, and develop in different ways over the course of lifetimes, but that doesn't negate the importance of their earlier work. I've written before about how today's young Coltrane fans betray a great impatience with Trane's early work on Prestige with the Red Garland trio, and I've said how much of a mistake I think that is. And sometimes artists grow and develop in ways that not only don't eclipse their earlier work, but don't live up to it.
What's the best Miles Davis? Some would say the groundbreaking nonet sessions for Capitol in 1948-49. I've argued that Birth of the Cool, and not Kind of Blue, is the most important album of the 1950s, but many would disagree. Kind of Blue remains the most popular jazz album of all time, and its fans are legion. Others would argue for the jazz-rock fusion of Bitches Brew. Others--probably fewer--would go for the later stuff like Big Fun and Jack Johnson. But while many would not want to make the case that Miles kept getting better and better, few would argue that he should have kept doing the same thing.
Igor Stravinsky had a long and successful life as a composer, but his youthful Rite of Spring and The Firebird are what he's remembered for most. William Wordsworth lived to be 80, and wrote poetry all his life, but he's remembered for the work he did before the age of 30.
The Beatles are celebrated for Rubber Soul and Sergeant Pepper, but for sheer enjoyment, it's hard to top "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or "Ticket to Ride." And so it is with Larry Young. Jazz changed a lot over the years that Young was making music, and he changed with it, but if you love soul jazz, it's hard to beat the burning, churning music that this teenager turned out on his debut album.
Young came from Newark, halfway between the jazz mecca of New York City and the organ hotbed of Philadelphia. He had begun to make a name for himself with rhythm and blues bands in his father's Newark clubs when he was signed by Prestige. He came into the session young, but fully formed in technique and jazz awareness.
He leads a trio for most of this session: organ, guitar and drums. The guitarist is Philadelphian Thornel Schwartz, who we've heard before on two Johnny "Hammond" Smith sessions, and who was developing a reputation as an organist's guitar player. He would eventually work with nearly all the major jazz organists.
If someone tells you they're going to play you an organ album featuring Jimmie Smith, you don't expect him to be the drummer, but in this case, that's exactly what you get. This is the other Jimmie Smith, like Larry Young a Newark native, and youthful. He was fresh out of Juilliard and making his recording debut. He would go on to have a fine if mostly unheralded career. He starts the session off with a blistering drum intro to J. J. Johnson's bebop standard "Wee Dot," taken here in a version that favors soul over bop, and gives a whole new feeling to the tune.
They are joined on the second number by an old favorite, at least an old favorite of mine: Joe Holiday, whose melding of mambo and bebop in three 1953-54 albums remains a highlight of my Prestige Odyssey. Holiday contributes an original composition, "Exercise for Chihuahuas," and comes back again later in the session to take the lead on a familiar standard, "Flamingo," best known for Earl Bostic's R&B chart-topping version in 1951.
If you think turning a bebop standard like "Wee Dot" into a soul jazz burner is a feat, how about making a soul jazz conflagration out of a Sigmund Romberg warhorse, "When I Grow Too Old to Dream"? But they do that too, and the same with Rodgers and Hart's "Falling in Love With Love."
The rest of the album is two Larry Young originals. "Some Thorny Blues" is a virtuoso piece written for Thornel Schwartz, and he comes through. "Testifying" is a remarkable piece of soul, with catchy rhythm and blues riffs morphing into the sonority of a church pipe organ.
So if you think you know Larry Young from his fusion and free jazz phases, it's worth going back and checking out where he started from. This is soul jazz and hot and fresh as sweet potato pie from a Muslim street baker in Newark. Testifying was the name of the album, and Esmond Edwards produced.
Johnny "Hammond" Smith and his Philadelphia cohorts go after some familiar standards here, and I do mean familiar. That gives him a more difficult task than you might imagine. These are super-familiar standards because people love them, so he's got to not alienate the multitudes who love them, while at the same time appealing to the esoterica-loving jazz hipsters who would rather run naked through Sam Goody's than listen to another rendition of "My Funny Valentine."
Or, especially, of "Autumn Leaves." This is 1959, and although there have already been several jazz interpretations (Jimmy Smith, Ahmad Jamal, Errol Garner), the one that's been inescapable since
1955 has been the recording by Roger Williams, with its arpeggios run amok through jukeboxes, radio stations both top forty and traditional, and your aunt's living room, where her 9-year-old won't stop sliding his fist from top to bottom of the keyboard, yelling out "Hey, I'm playin' 'Autumn Leaves!'"
So, does Mr. Smith, otherwise known as Mister Hammond, succeed in keeping it recognizable, while at the same time making it hip, at least a little sardonic, different, and ultimately musical? To these ears, yes.
I'm not saying that every listener to Lacy, or to Martin Block's Make Believe Ballroom, would have pricked up his ears, tapped his feet, and said "It's not Roger Williams...but I like it." But they should have. And I'm not saying that every jaded jazzer would offer a knowing smile and say "Hey, that's hip." But I did.
I like standards. I always cringe a little when a young jazz musician, especially a vocalist, announces that this set will be all originals, because not everyone is that good a composer. They call them standards because they set a standard, and it's a good standard to measure yourself against. Even the Beatles on their early albums, even Thelonious Monk -- and we're talking about composers on a level that you and I and the young jazz trumpet player in the next apartment can only dream about -- recorded their versions of standards (they're called "covers" in pop and rock; in jazz we call it playing music). The challenge Smith sets for himself--and he lays it right out there with "Autumn Leaves"--is not the
usual jazz player's challenge to seek out and reclaim neglected standards, but to go toe to toe with the Great American Songbook's Greatest Hits: "My Funny Valentine," "Bye Bye Blackbird," "I'll Remember April."
Well, now. "I'll Remember April." I was tempted to choose that as my "Listen to One," except it's not exactly reminiscent of anything except itself. This is an April that seems to have been remembered in a barnyard, with pigs and ducks and other farm animals doing the remembering, I love it. It's worth a trip to YouTube to check it out.
Charlie Parker's "Billie's Bounce" is a little different, Your task in playing a composition by Bird is not to find a new and hip way of interpreting it, but just to do it justice, and Smith comes through here, too.
Finally, balancing out the set, we have two Smith originals. The whole set has been about delivering that good feeling, and his own composition, "That Good Feelin'," is all about that--jaunty, bluesy and tuneful, and a good stretch on the Hammond. The other original, "Puddin'," also has a dropped "g," and also delivers in much the same way.
That Good Feelin' was the title of the New Jazz album. The 45 RPM single was "I'll Remember April," an interesting choice. Maybe not the one I would have picked if I were looking for maximum air and jukebox play, but refreshing. The flip side is "That Good Feelin'," which you can't argue with.
And...OK, I can't resist. Here's "I'll Remember April."
Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1954-1956 is here! You can order your signed copy or copies through the link above.
Tad Richards will strike a nerve with all of us who were privileged to have lived thru the beginnings of bebop, and with those who have since fallen under the spell of this American phenomenon…a one-of-a-kind reference book, that will surely take its place in the history of this music.
--Dave Grusin
An important reference book of all the Prestige recordings during the time period. Furthermore, Each song chosen is a brilliant representation of the artist which leaves the listener free to explore further. The stories behind the making of each track are incredibly informative and give a glimpse deeper into the artists at work.
I've ignored an important milestone in jazz of the 1950s. In midsummer of 1959, Rudy Van Gelder moved out of his parents' living room and into his new studio at 445 Sylvan Avenie, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. This studio, designed by architect David Henken in consultation with Van Gelder and inspired, as so much architecture of the era was, by Frank Lloyd Wright, had 39-foot cathedral ceilings, and reminded many of a cathedral: Ira Gitler said that it could give you "a feeling of religion." It is a shrine to modern jazz, but even more than that, it was a great working studio, and Van Gelder kept developing it and improving it and recording music in it until shortly before his death in 2016.
Ike Quebec was the first artist to record in the new space, on July 20, and Coleman Hawkins and Red Garland were the first Prestige artists, on August 12. My apologies for carelessness, and when this gets assembled in book form, it will be back to its correct chronology.
Johnny "Hammond" Smith's nickname was not to distinguish him from other organists, because they all played the Hammond, but to distinguish him from other Johnny Smiths, particularly the acclaimed jazz guitarist. Like many organists, he began on the piano, and like many before him, the sound of a pioneering organ virtuoso inspired him. Since he didn't come from Philadelphia, it wasn't Jimmy Smith. Born in Louisville, KY, Smith moved to Cleveland, where he first heard Wild Bill Davis. He was working at the time (1958) as Nancy Wilson's piano accompanist, but the organ won him over, to the point that when he made his 1959 debut as a leader, he had already folded "Hammond" into his name.
Smith had a real feeling for the funky qualities of the organ, and he would become known as the instrument's funkmeister as his career developed, and he was plenty funky as he began with Prestige, but he also showed his dexterity with standards, as was expected of an organ group in those days: "The Masquerade is Over," "Pennies from Heaven" and "Secret Love,," not quite a standard yet, although it certainly became one. Smith's was one of the first jazz renditions.
All of the musicians with Smith are also new to Prestige. Guitarist Thornel Schwartz understands and contributes to the guitar-organ dynamic which is developing as an important new thing in jazz, and he's a new phenomenon: a guitar-organ specialist. Schwartz was from Philadelphia, and he began his career with Jimmy Smith. He would go on to play with Larry Young, Charles Earland, Jimmy McGriff and Richard "Groove" Holmes.
George Tucker flew under the radar of publicity during his short life (he died of a brain hemorrhage in 1965, at age 38) but he left a powerful impression as a musician. On an Internet forum devoted to the discussion of jazz bass, a young fan writes about hearing him on a session with Earl Hines and Coleman Hawkins, and laments that he can't find anything about him: "Is George Tucker a highly regarded player? If so, why is there so little about him on the net?"
No one on the forum knows anything about him, but everyone, it seems, has a favorite recording:
Mr. Tucker plays on one of my all-time favorite "sleeper" discs, Jaki Byard's Live!! at Lennie's On the Turnpike.
Not to mention an Illinois Jacquet date with Alan Dawson and Barry Harris also live from Lennie's called Bottoms Up.
Check out a Zoot side w.Dave McKenna and Dannie Richman on drums playing more trad type tunes...the album is called Down Home.
I came across George Tucker's playing on the Stanley Turrentine record, Look Out! I particularly appreciate the amount of space and bluesy-ness Tucker applies to his solo on 'Yesterdays'.
And there are more. Young bassists love his work with Walt Dickerson, Andrew Cyrille, Freddie Redd, Horace Parlan, Booker Ervin.
Tucker had already built an impressive resume by the time he made his Prestige debut with Smith: Curtis Fuller, Bennie Green, John Handy, Slide Hampton, Melba Liston. He would become a mainstay of Prestige recording during the early 1960s before his death.
Leo Stevens had been with Smith from the beginning, and remained with him for many years. He doesn't appear to have moonighted beyond his work with Smith, but he was an important part of Smith's jazz-funk sound.
Maybe the best word for Smith's debut recording is "ingratiating." His general attitude seems to be "there's no way you're not gonna like this, and unless you're an unreconstructed organ combo-hater, that's going to be pretty much true. "Sweet Cookies" is a pretty good place to start hearing how that works. It's a Smith original, and it opens with a groove nearly as irresistible as "Honky Tonk," to draw you in, and then without ever losing that, it develops textures, does those things with tonality than only an organ can do, and includes terrific guitar solo from Schwartz.
The album was released from New Jazz as All Soul, and the title cut, b/w "The Masquerade is Over," was released on 45 RPM two different ways: under the Prestige label, with "Masquerade" as the A side, and on New Jazz, with "All Soul" on top. The significance of an A side was basically that when the record was advertised in the trade publications or promotional cards were sent to record stores, the A side got the major ink. On jukeboxes, the A side was the top listed. When the record was sent to disc jockeys, it was sent with instructions (perhaps along with payola) to play the A side, and generally those instructions were followed, although there are famous stories of B sides that eclipsed their leaders, including one funky organ classic. "Behave Yourself" by Booker T. and the MG's was going nowhere until a few enterprising DJs flipped it over and started playing the B side, "Green Onions."
"Sweet Cookies" was also a New Jazz 45, with "Secret Love" on the flip side.
Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1954-1956 is here! You can order your signed copy or copies through the link above.
Tad Richards will strike a nerve with all of us who were privileged to have
lived thru the beginnings of bebop, and with those who have since
fallen under the spell of this American phenomenon…a one-of-a-kind
reference book, that will surely take its place in the history of this
music.
--Dave Grusin
An important reference book of all the Prestige recordings during the time
period. Furthermore, Each song chosen is a brilliant representation of
the artist which leaves the listener free to explore further. The
stories behind the making of each track are incredibly informative and
give a glimpse deeper into the artists at work.
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