Listening to Prestige 699: A. K. Salim

LISTEN TO ONE: Afrika (Africa)

 This album marked the finishing touch to A. K. Salim's career, though he lived to be 80 years old and died in 2003. But it was a distinguished career indeed, even if much of it was behind the scenes, and he's little remembered today, Most of his work was as an arranger and composer -- he had been forced to give up playing the alto saxophone due to a jaw injury.

Salim was born Albert Atkinson in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1922, but grew up in Chicago, where he attended DuSable High School, a fertile breeding ground for musicians -- his classmates included Bennie Green, Dorothy Donegan and Gene Ammons. When he embraced the Muslim faith and changed his name is unclear, but it must have been quite early -- his arrangements for a 1947 Gene Ammons session are credited to A. K. Salim.

His early work included arranements for Lucky Millinder, Cab Calloway, Jimmy Lunceford, Lionel Hampton and Count Basie as well as Ammons. He left music for the real estate business in 1949, but returned in 1956 to arrange a couple of the most important albums of that decade. Drummer Bobby Sanabria, in an interview with Marc Myers of Jazzwax, talks about those recordings:

Tito Puente had recorded Puente Goes Jazz in 1956 and Night Beat in 1957 for RCA. Both recordings featured the arrangements of A.K. Salim. Morris Levy, the head of Roulette Records, wanted to copy some of the success RCA had with these Latin-jazz albums. Since Levy used to book Machito and Tito in his club, Birdland, he asked Mario Bauza and Machito to record a Latin-jazz album using A.K. Salim to write some original tunes and arrangements.

Building on the success of those Latin jazz recordings, Salim made a series albums for Prestige under his name, as arranger/musical director. Flute Suite (1957) featured Herbie Mann and Frank Wess. Stable Mates (1957) had Salim's arrangements on one side, Yusef Lateef's on the other. Salim's side had an eight piece band featuring Johnny Griffin, Johnny Coles and Kenny Burrell. Pretty for the People, also in 1957, had another eight piece band with Griffin, Kenny Dorham, Pepper Adams and an all-star rhythm section of Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, Max Roach and, returning to the Latin influence, Chino Pozo. Finally, in 1958, Blues Suite utilized ten pieces, including Nat Adderley and Phil Woods. All of these fall into the general heading of straight-ahead jazz, and all are very, very good.

Afro Soul / Drum Orgy, recorded six years later, was markedly -- in fact, totally -- different. According to the liner notes by Robert Levin,

The idea for it came from A&R man Ozzie Cadena...to build the framework of the album out of African rhythms and for the music to be completely spontaneous -- no charts were used, and there were no rehearsals. All that was predetermined was the African context.

"The musicians came to the date cold," Salim says. "All the composing was done right on the date--we just talked over what we were going to do and did it--and with the exception of 'Salute to a Zulu' which was done in two takes, all the numbers were completed on the first take. The basic inspiration for the horns was drawn from whatever the drums were doing. Willie Bobo's assistance in getting us the drummers was most invaluable. For the most part I just told the drummers to get it started. Julio Callazo knew some African rhythms and helped to set patterns for the drummers. The horns were playing for sounds rather than the traditional or conventional jazz lines--their impressions of what Africa sounds like, inspired by the drums. They were really having a conversation, not just playing in a traditional jazz way.

My first thought here--you could get away with anything in the Sixties. But sometimes this top-of-the-head, Sixties-happening approach can work, and don't forget that the musical director here is A. K. Salim, veteran of the 1940s, a guy who knew a whole lot about music and a whole lot about bringing a band together. This isn't the sort of album a mainstream jazz lover is likely to return to again and again, the way Salim's Savoy albums are, but it's very interesting, it's worth a listen. As the horn soloists start to find their footing and open up to a different kind of improvisation on "Afrika (Africa)," the first tracj from the session and the first track on the album, you realize that this was an experiment very much worth undertaking.

Yusef Lateef was the perfect choice for this session, with his deep love of Middle Eastern music and hos familiarity with unusual ethnic instruments. Johnny Coles had worked with Salim before, on Stable Mates. This would be his only apprearance on Prestige, but hed a solid background in the jazz business, including work with Charles Mingus, a good grounding for work on the experimental edges of jazz. And if you wanted credentials for a genre-extending, open-improvisatory session, you could hardly do better than a decade with the Sun Ra Arkestra, which was Pat Patrick's background.

Julio "Julito" Callazo, who brought the knowledge of African rhythms to the percussion section, was a Cuban-born musician who came to the US to work Katherine Dunham's dance troupe; and later performed with  with Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Mongo Santamaría, Dizzy Gillespie and Machito.  Cuban Marcelino Valdes was from a musical family. Three of his brothers, including singer-composer Vicentico Valdez, were professional musicians, as is his son Marcelino, a popular bolero singer. Osvado "Chihuahua" Martinez played with a number of Latin groups, including Ray Barretto, and around the time of this session, released a couple of highly regarded albums of Afro-Cuban jazz under his own name. Juan Cadaviejo doesn't seem to have recorded beyond this session.

Philemon Hou was an actor as well as a musician. A Zulu tribesman, he was the only African in the ensemble. He had come to New York in the cast of a short-lived Broadway play,  Sponono, and according to Robert Levin, "Salute to a Zulu" was based on a melody he was improvising on the African xylophone. Hou would become much better known for another melody, a few years later, when trumpeter Hugh Masakela, a fellow South African, was doing a recording session in Hollywood for his debut album. They needed one more tune to fill out the album, and Masakela had a rhythmic idea, but no melody. While the band was laying down the rhythm track, Hou, who happened to be in the studio at the time, composed a melody on the spot. "Grazing in the Grass" became Masakela's biggest hit, and his signature song.

Willie Bobo, enthralled with music from a young age, became a band boy for Machito's orchestra in 1947 at age 12,  and shortly thereafter began to draw attention as a dancer. He played with Mary Lou Williams, Tito Puente and George Shearing in the early 1950s, then with Cal Tjader and Mongo Santamaria, with whom he had formed a deep friendship early on. Later, as a session musician, he worked with Carlos Santana, who would record his song "Evil Ways."  He had a long and successful career as a salsa bandleader, and appeared on two other Prestige sessions, with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davi and Dave Pike. 

Listening to Prestige 578: Dave Pike

 Dave Pike continues his south of the border explorations, this time moving to the Caribbean. The calypso craze of Harry Belafonte and the Tarriers and even Robert Mitchum, who recorded a calypso album in 1957, had passed its zenith, but Latin dances were still enough of a thing that everyone was looking for a new one to follow the mambo and the conga line and the cha cha and the bossa nova, and even though Trinidadian calypso wasn't exactly Latin, it was close enough for pop culture (there had even been a "cha-lypso" -"When the records start a spinnin', do cha-lypso while you chicken at the hop"), so 1962 saw Chubby Checker, who had ridden the crest of the most popular dance craze of all, hitting the charts with "Limbo Rock."

Dave Pike had captured some attention with his Bossa Nova Carnival album, so why not go after the same lightning again--and again with fledgling producer Eliot Mazer? There was certainly some commercial consideration here. Chubby

LISTEN TO ONE: My Little Suede Shoes

Checker's "Limbo Rock" is covered, as are "Matilda" and "Jamaica Farewell," two of the most popular songs from Harry Belafonte's Calypso album, then regarded as the most popular LP record of all time, and still up among the contenders. Mexican-American Richie Valens's hit "La Bamba" is included, as is Nat "King" Cole's semi-hit "Calypso Blues." Sonny Rollins is represented by "St. Thomas," one of the calypso melodies he would make his own, and "Mambo Bounce," which had been a 78 RPM single for Rollins off an early Prestige session. And four songs from Pike's session became 45 RPM singles.

But "commercial consideration" just means choosing and playing songs that people like, and there's nothing wrong with that, if the musicians come to play, and put their full virtuosic dexterity and creative energy into the project, which is what happens here. 

"Limbo Rock" isn't the most subtle of melodies, but with Willie Bobo and Ray Barretto handling the percussion, it's lively and fun to listen to. Throughout the session, Pike alternates between vibes and marimbas -- he chose the marimbas, he explained to Juliet Lorca, who wrote the liner notes for the album, because they have a sound that's close to Trinidad's steel drums.

On the other extreme, there's Charlie Parker's "My Little Suede Shoes." Some have theorized that Parker adapted the melody from a Caribbean folk tune--Juliet Lorca suggests as much in the liner notes--but it's more likely a mashup of two French pop songs which Bird heard on a 1950 trip to Paris. One of the songs, ""Le Petit Cireur Noir," has a lyric about shoeshine man who hates suede shoes because everyone is wearing them and he's being put out of business. But then he finds a wallet stuffed with cash, buys his own shoe store, and gets rich selling suede shoes. There's no mention as to whether any of them are blue. Parker's melody--recorded with Luis Miranda on bongos and Jose Mangual on congas--is wonderfully catchy, and full of island spirit. It's a perfect choice for Dave Pike and his group, and it's a can't miss recording.

If "Limbo Rock" and "My Little Suede Shoes" are miles apart musically, they're also some distance apart in terms of orchestration. The percussionists remain, but the rest of the band -- Leo Wright on reeds and Jimmy Raney on guitar--are gone. Tommy Flanagan moves in on piano, and Ahmed Abdul-Malik replaces George Duvivier on bass.

Dave Pike was, of course, not Latin himself, and he would not remain on a Latin kick. His next album (and the last for Prestige) would go in a markedly different direction, and the rest of his career, lasting throughout the rest of the century, would take some remarkable twists and turns, through free jazz, acid jazz, funk and psychedelia. So is this cultural appropriation? That was, of course, a concept that would not be named or defined for many decades to come. Dave Pike isn't Machito or Tito Puente, but nobody is. He did turn the spotlight on a wonderful and little-known (in the States) Brazilian composer on the first album, and he has a lot of fun with some pop songs and a great Charlie Parker composition, and to quote Paul McCartney, "What's wrong with that, I'd like to know?"

"Jamaica Farewell" / "Limbo Rock" was the first single, and "La Bamba" / "My Little Suede Shoes" was the second. The album, on New Jazz (a little surprisingly--I'd thought of New Jazz as primarily a home for the less commercial fare) was called Limbo Carnival.

He would spend much of his career in Europe, not so unusual for a jazz musician, a little more unusual for a white jazz musician.

Listening to Prestige 555: Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis

 

Percy Mayfield wrote and recorded "Please Send Me Someone to Love" in 1951, and its quality as a song was recognized pretty quickly. Dinah Washington recorded it in the same year (so, for that matter, did Dale Evans, showing the wide range of the song's appeal--after all, even cowgirls get the blues). And while jazz snobs might look down on rhythm and blues, at least some jazz musicians had more open ears. Count Basie and Joe Williams recorded it in 1955. 

I first heard the song, and fell in love with it, in the 1957 doowop version by the Moonglows. That same year, Red Garland introduced an instrumental version of it. Somewhere around that time, I was beginning to fall in love with jazz. That's not quite right. It implies a gradual process. Somewhere around that time, I fell passionately in love with jazz in the space of five minutes and one song. And somewhere not long after that, I heard Red Garland's "Please Send Me Someone to Love."

If you were a teenager in the 1950s, at some point you were supposed to outgrow rock and roll, or so we were told. And rhythm and blues, which was lumped together with rock and roll, and indeed shared many overlaps/ Well, I had heard the clarion call from John Coltrane's horn (and Red Garland's piano, as I would find when I bought the Prestige album). Did that mean that, like the babies in Mary Poppins who spoke their first words in human language and from that instant on could no longer talk to or understand the birds, that I had heeded the cry of battle, crossed the Rubicon, and forever left those other musical genres behind, as I was supposed to.

But I hadn't. And hearing the Moonglows' song (as I knew it then) transformed by Garland, but still the same haunting memory, went a long way toward reassuring me that I was all right.

And I learned to trust my taste. And other jazz musicians were listening, too. Ramsey Lewis recorded it in 1958, Les McCann in 1961. Both had a pop music following, but both were respected jazz musicians. I make that point because, at that time, all these gradations mattered, and to the real purists, any record on the charts was a sellout. 

Some other Prestige artists gravitated toward the tune. Davis's frequent collaborator, Shirley Scott, recorded it with an organ trio in 1958. Gene Ammons recorded it on his Argo session in 1962. And Davis included it, along with standards and originals, on this session.

By 1962, Percy Mayfield had endured a long and painful convalescence from an auto accident in which he had been pronounced dead at the scene. He no longer had a career as a rhythm and blues hitmaker, but one of his songs, "Hit the Road, Jack," had been picked up by Ray Charles, and on the strength of that hit, Charles had hired him as a full time staff writer, and would eventually record 15 of his songs.

He had become known as "the Poet of the Blues," and while "poet" is a term that's often thrown around too loosely, it has some validity in Mayfield's case. Specialty Records owner Art Rupe, for whom Mayfield made most of his hit records, praised his artistry while lamenting that he never had the confidence to present himself on a larger stage: "If he could have been encouraged more, he would have been seen as great as Langston Hughes.” I believe Rupe was right. 

I haven't posted a "Listen to One" because it would have to be "Please Send Me Someone to Love," and as of this writing, it's not on YouTube. You can find it, however, on Amazon and Spotify (and probably iTunes, but I don't use that service, so can't be sure). Davis plays it beautifully, finding all the yearning, for the fate of mankind and his own happiness, that Mayfield put into both the words and the melody.

I'm glad that Davis was sufficiently drawn to this tune to record it, because he too was affected by the stigma attached to rhythm and blues in those days. In the liner notes, he explains his choice of a piano- over an organ-led ensemble: 

I got to the stage where I'd had enough organ. It was always controversial, because a lot of people thought it belonged to R&B, and there's a faction that still refuses to accept the organ as a definite contribution to jazz. I made up my mind to go back to the conventional rhythm section.

This is Art Taylor's 68th appearance on a Prestige recording session, and he is a welcome addition every time. The other three musicians are all making their Prestige debut. 

Abandoned on the steps of an orphanage at birth, Horace Parlan developed polio at the age of five, which left him with the use of only two fingers. His adoptive parents encouraged him to play the piano to strengthen his hands, and it was thus that he discovered his true calling in life, though he also studied pre-law at the University of Pittsburgh. He is perhaps best known for his work with Charles Mingus. He would only make one other Prestige session (with Booker Ervin), but he worked and recorded widely with a number of musicians, including a stint in the 1960s as "house pianist" for Blue Note. He also made 31 records as leader--with Blue Note in the 1960s. with the Danish label SteepleChase after his move to that country in 1972, and with other European labels. 

Bassist Buddy Catlett built a significant regional reputation, living and working in primarily in Seattle, but also in Denver and other western cities, but he also had his share of the big time, including Louis Armstrong, Quincy Jones, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie. Willie Bobo was one of the foremost Latin jazz percussionists of his era, working with Perez Prado, Mongo Santamaria and Tito Puente while still a teenager, later with Mary Lou Williams, Cal Tjader, Herbie Mann and others. He recorded several albums for Verve as leader.

Goin' to the Meeting was the title of the Prestige LP release, and it was also the flip side of the 45 RPM single--"Please Send Me Someone to Love" was the A side. Esmond Edwards produced.