Listening to Prestige 354 - Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Shirley Scott

What a difference Ray Barretto makes to a session!

Of course, it's not just him. Davis and Scott blow the cathedral ceilings off Rudy Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs shrine, and if you ever wondered if Moodsville meant "you can sneak this record on for your Jackie Gleason fans, and maybe they won't notice it's jazz," you can forget that right now. This is a session that left me thinking two things, and two things only. One, I'm so glad I'm a jazz fan and I get to experience music like this, and two, How is it possible that I never heard this before?

So pardon me if I'm speechless for a while, as I just listen to the music a few more times, all the way through.

OK, I'm back. Still amazed. Eddie Davis plays right on that sweet spot at the cusp of bebop and rhythm and blues. Ray Barretto is the musician's musician on congas, equally adept at playing Latin or bebop, but sensitive as he is to the boppish tempos of Mr. Jaws, this one has that Latin edge all the way through. And Shirley Scott is the perfect accompanist to Davis's bebop and the perfect spur to send the music into the next decade. My God, she could play! And she was so inventive.

The Moodsville album which uses the bulk of this session's material begins with two numbers from an earlier trio session. Then it starts afresh with "Give Me a Goodnight Kiss," by Lee Morse, a singer of whom I was previously unaware, but she was a big deal in the 1920s, matched only by Ruth Etting for record sales.

Curious, I listened to Lee Morse's recording of "Give Me a Goodnight Kiss."  She's a very nice singer, and in those days she had her own band, which included Eddie Lang and a couple of new kids named Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. She puts a twist of yearning into the song, Davis hears it a bit differently.

It's interesting that he hears it at all. Morse kept performing through the late 1940s, but by the end or th3 1920s alcohol had pretty much destroyed her. Her jump to superstardom was supposed to come in 1927 with the starring role in a Zeigfield musical, but on opening night she was too drunk to go on, and her place was taken...by Ruth Etting. Etting's signature songs, like "Love Me or Leave Me" and "Ten Cents a Dance" (should have been Morse's; it was from that musical) have become standards, but I can find no other version of "Give Me a Goodnight Kiss."

Davis takes the first solos at a good but not breakneck tempo, abetted by some tasty work from Wendell Marshall and Ray Barretto, nicely completing each other's thoughts, and some always ingenious comping from Scott. When she comes in about two thirds of the way through for her solo, you realize that as good as Davis has been, this is what you've been waiting for. She builds up to a series of crescendos, and then Davis comes back for a final version of the head, again with Barretto and Marshall, and with a sweet, yearning quality that's reminiscent of Lee Morse.

This is the beginning of an eclectic set. They follow with Frank Loesser's "Moon of Manakoora," originally sung by Dorothy Lamour in a movie (and yes, she was wearing a sarong). It's had a number of pop recordings, and a few jazz interpretations, starting with Benny Carter and also including Wayne Shorter and Jimmy Rowles. Davis, Scott and Barretto get pretty seriously into it, eleven minutes worth, Barretto starting the game with a challenging and seductive rhythm.

"Just Friends" was composed by John Klenner, who is not known for much else, but pretty nearly

everyone has recorded "Just Friends," with the honors probably going to Charlie Parker with strings. This version would have to be right up there, though, with the three principals spurring each other to new heights. "Speak Low" has a haunting melody by Kurt Weill, sensitively handled by Davis with Barretto providing a rhythmic counterpoint. Davis gets wilder as the number progresses, and by the time Scott joins in all bets are off, although Davis comes home to the melody at the end.

"I Wished on the Moon" was written by Ralph Rainger, who had an impressive career before dying young in a plane crash. It finishes up the album, but was the first tune to be recorded that day.

The Moodsville release was entitled Misty. and hit the shelves in 1963. The odd tune out for the day was Cole Porter's "From This Moment On." It was added to a 1967 release, Stompin'.

Listening to Prestige 353 - Shirley Scott

Most of this session went on a Moodsville album, along with four songs held back from an earlier date.

She had a new bass player for the date in George Tucker. Tucker had some experience accompanying organs, having played on Johnny "Hammond" Smith's two Prestige albums. She continued with Arthur Edgehill on drums.

She is perhaps a little more subdued for Moodsville. Musically, she continues to reward the listener, but with a more limited palette of sound. Rather than

seeking out new possibilities of electronic sound, she stays close to the sound of a piano, the percussive individual notes stretched just a little by the electronic sustain of the Hammond. So it is in its own way an experiment with the different possibilities of her instrument. As one of the most popular jazz musicians of the decade, she recorded a lot, both with Prestige and Blue Note, and later Impulse and Atlantic, and she was always going to find a way to make it interesting.

For the four Moodsville songs, she picked two Rodgers and Hart standards, "Spring is Here" and "I Didn't Know What Time it Was," and you can't go wrong with Rodgers and Hart. The other two are also ballads, and equally romantic, but from composers with interesting stories. "I Thought I'd Let You Know" was composed by Scott's fellow Philadelphian Cal Massey in an uncharacteristically romantic mood; Massey was to become best known for his uncompromising political stance on civil rights, which caused him to be blacklisted by some of the large corporate record labels.

Jimmy Davis (not the Louisiana governor who wrote "You Are My Sunshine") is best known for written for Billie Holiday which has become a classic, but his story is more than that, and worth remembering. Drafted in 1942, he refused to report to a segregated army and demanded that either be exempted or seconded to the Canadian army, which was integrated. When both demands were rejected, he chose prison over a segregated armed forces. He did eventually agree to join the army, and was sent to France in 1945 with a musical unit. He fell in love with the country, and eventually, like many other African-American musicians, became an expatriate.

"Lover Man," a song

"Bye Bye Blackbird" was held for a 1961 release, Shirley's Sounds; "Autumn Leaves" and her own composition, "Bridge Blue," had  wait until 1966 and Workin'..

She also cut two tunes, "Crazy Rhythm" and "The Things You Are," with Earl Coleman. They were never released. Too bad. Coleman really never got his due.

Esmond Edwards produced.

Listening to Prestige 352: Al Casey

This is Al Casey's first recording as a leader, but a long way from being his first rodeo. He started his career working with Fats Waller in 1933.

It was also a long way from being his last rodeo. In 1981 he would embark on what may have been his biggest success when he joined the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band. This was the opposite end of the spectrum from Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, whose members had to retire when they reached 16. To join the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band, you had to be at least 80. Founded in t973, it is still going--needless to say, with none of its original members. At various times, it has been graced with the presence of Doc

Cheatham, Eddie Durham, Eddie Chamblee, Peck Morrison, Jay McShann, Claude Hopkins, Cozy Cole,  and many other working jazzmen and women who'd lived long enough and could still play strong enough.

Casey, in 1960, had a regular gig with King Curtis. For this session, he drew on the Curtis band for sidemen, but went back to his Fats Waller days for musical inspiration, and even for musical talent, with reed man Rudy Powell.

When Casey joined the Waller band as a wet-behind-the-ears 18-year-old, Powell was 26 and a veteran of a number of regional bands including Rex Stewart's. He would hook up with Waller and Casey in 1935. He was still in demand in the 1960s, working with Jimmy Rushing, Buddy Tate and Ray Charles. He would eventually join the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Belton Evans was no newcomer to recording, but he may have been new to recording under the name of Belton. Previously, he had recorded as Sammy "Sticks" Evans, and every possible variation of that name: Sammy Evans, Sammie Evans, Sticks Evans, Stick Evans. So it seems that he finally decided to settle in, and use his real name?

Not exactly. Samuel Evans does appear to have been his real name; Lord knows where he came up with Belton. And his range as a drummer was as varied as his choice in names, from King Curtis and Wynonie Harris through LaVern Baker and Aretha Franklin through John Lewis, Bill Evans, Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman.

Jimmy Lewis was a guy who knew how to change with the times, moving from double bass with Count Basie to electric bass as that instrument became popular. Like Evans, he was on call for a wide range of recording sessions, from Wilson Pickett to the Modern Jazz

Quartet (he didn't replace Percy Heath, but added an electric bass to a session that featured the MJQ with a big band). He was a first call for gigs, too, as evidenced by some of the live albums he can be heard on: Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, Alberta Hunter's Downhearted Blues: Live at the Cookery, and some live recordings of Otis Redding at the Apollo. This was his first Prestige session, but he would become a familiar face during the 1960s.

Herman Foster is mostly known for his work with Lou Donaldson, but he was with Casey in King Curtis ensemble at the time of this recording.

The music is just flat-out rewarding. It's always great to hear the Fats Waller classics, and of pariculat interest is "Buck Jumpin'," a tune originally written by Casey for the Fats Waller Orchestra, and here revived by the composer..

Buck Jumpin', appropriately, is the title of the album, and it was a Swingville release.

Listening to Prestige 351: Lonnie Johnson - Elmer Snowden

This may have been the best known of Lonnie Johnsons albums for Prestige. It featured a second guitarist who was also a second  Chris Albertson career revival: Elmer Snowden, an important bandleader in the 1920s and 30s who had recorded little, and had completely fallen off the radar. Like Johnson, he was working a menial job in Philadelphia when Albetrson found him.

Elmer Snowden has one particularly unusual credential, He was the leader of a  Washington, DC-based group called the Washingtonians. He brought the band to New York, but was having trouble getting bookings, so he sent to DC for an up-and-coming piano player, fella named Duke Ellington. You know the rest of the story

.In addition to Washingtonians like Bubber Miley and Tricky Sam Nanton, Snowden over a long career as bandleader had Count Basie. Jimmie  Lunceford. Benny Carter, Roy Eldridge and Chick Webb, so he must have been no slouch at developing and mentoring future bandleaders. He had started out as a banjo player, but as the call for the banjo in jazz faded away, he switched to guitar (though he would make a jazz banjo album for Riverside in the 1960s).

Accompanied by Wendell Marshall on base, the two guitar players had a day of it, recording 22 songs, of which ten were chosen for the original vinyl album release, although almost all of them would eventually come out on CD. There were some vocals, more instrumentals, as Johnson got his wish to be seen as more than just a blues singer. Just a couple of old guys who know everything and can play all night.

The ten selections that made the album are pretty representative of the whole session. "Haunted House" is an original 12-bar blues by Johnson. He also sings the Eubie Blake-Andy Razaf chestnut "Memories of You" with a lighter, breezier voice: Lonnie Johnson the jazz singer.

"Blues for Chris" is their first instrumental, a tribute to their rediscoverer and producer Chris Albertson. Composer credit is given to Albertson and Elmer Snowden, and it's a fun piece, with some nice blues licks by both guitarists and some solid work by Wendell Marshall.

"I Found a Dream" is another Johnson composition, but this one a dreamy ballad. The two guitars manage some bluesy licks with a Charles Brown feel, but the vocal channels pop balladeers of a different era. Johnson doesn't seem to have listened much to contemporary balladeers like Sam Cooke or Clyde McPhatter. He draws more on the style of Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, or the Irish tenors of his generation like Morton Downey or Dennis Day. But he ramps up into full vaudeville mode with "St. Louis Blues," not paying too much attention to W. C. Handy's careful construction, just having fun. And it is fun. Then he sort of marries all these styles, including his blues style, in an old pop song, "I'll Get Along Somehow," written by Arthur Marks and Buddy Fields. Listening to this one, my first thought was, "this could be the hit single," and it appears that Bob Weinstock thought the same thing, as it became a 45 RPM release.

Johnson and Snowden put their guitars together for a jam session on a traditional jazz tune, Kid Ory's "Savoy Blues," and the results are delightful. It's only one like it on the album, but "C-Jam Blues" and "Lester Leaps In" did eventually get released.

Johnson had recorded Bessie Smith's "Backwater Blues" back in the 1920s, and with Snowden's help on guitar, he gives it the full blues treatment here.

Snowden's "Elmer's Blues" has a decidedly modern rhythm and blues feel. Well, maybe not modern for 1960, but certainly modern for 1950; not bad for a couple of old guys from the 1930s. Pretty damn good, in fact. And they finish up with Johnson's "He's a Jelly Roll Baker," which also made it onto a later Bluesville anthology called Bawdy Blues.

The album was called Blues & Ballads, and was a Bluesville release. "I'll Get Along Somehow" was the first 45, with "Jelly Roll Baker" on the flip side, and it was also the second 45, this time with "Memories of You."

Listening to Prestige Vol. 3, 1957-58, is just about ready to go to press! I'll announce shortly when I'm ready to start taking orders.

Listening to Prestige 350: Red Garland

Of the subsidiary labels that Bob Weinstock created to swing into the new decade, Moodsville is the most debatable. Swing and blues are undeniably important and arguably underserved genres, at least in this time frame, but mood music? Isn't that just watered-down jazz?

Except it isn't. Chris Albertson has asserted that every session produced for Prestige was held to the same high musical standards, and if you look at the artists in the Moodsville catalog, they're not watered-down anything.

You can raise the chicken-and-egg question. Did Weinstock say, "Hey, let's bring Red Garland in for a solo piano session, and we can release it on Moodsville"? Or did Red lobby Weinstock for solo session, and did Bob then, listening to the finished product, say, "Hey, that could work for Moodsville"?

It's questions like this that keep me up at night. And I'm entitled. In fact, as both an intellectual and a jazz fanatic, I'm doubly entitled to wakeful nights pondering pointless and unanswerable questions.

Why don't I just shut up and listen to the music? I do that too.

You can get a lot of music in when you've just got a solo piano, and Garland recorded two albums' worth on this balmy April day (I looked it up; temperatures were 15 degrees above normal). In spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love, but Garland was playing alone, and his fancy turned to being alone, to songs about love lost. He was also thinking random thoughts about the blues, and apparently playing tunes as they came into his mind, so ultimately they were separated out to make two albums, and I'll take the songs album track by album track, starting with Red Alone, which became the third Moodsville release.

He begins with "When Your Lover Has Gone," written by Einar Swan for the James Cagney movie Girl Crazy. Swan was a dance band musician turned composer, and you'd think there'd be next to nothing written about him, which was true until 2006, when Scandinavian historian chanced upon a mention of him, noted his unusual first name, decided he must be Finnish (he was--the family name was Joutsen, Finnish for Swan), decided to research him and ended by writing a 90-page biography. Swan's father emigrated from Finland because he heard that American workers had an 8-hour day which meant he would have time to study music. All his children were musical, and there was a family orchestra.

"These Foolish Things" was written by British composer Jack Strachey, who also composed "A Nightingale Sang in Barclay Square." It's one of my favorite ballads.

The rest are mostly the work of composer royalty--Rodgers and Hart, Duke Ellington, Hoagy Carmichael, Victor Young.

"Nancy with the Laughing Face" was written by Jimmy Van Heusen and Phil Silvers, and is generally thought to have been written for Frank Sinatra's wife, but it wasn't. Silvers had originally written as "Bessie with the Laughing Face, but that was apparently considered either too ethnic or too bovine.

Man does not live by Red Alone, so the remaining titles were gathered together in a second, album, Alone with the Blues, and as one can expect from Red Garland, there's a wide-ranging selection process, delivering a veritable history of the blues. Classic blues is represented by Leroy Carr's "In the Evening (when the Sun Goes Down)." We take a trip to Kansas City for Pete Johnson and Big Joe Turner's "Wee Baby Blues." Ahmet Ertegun (as A. Nugetre) and pianist Harry Van Walls wrote "Chains of Love," which was an Atlantic recording for Big Joe. Jazz is represented across the decades: "Cloudy" by Mary Lou Williams; "Sent for You Yesterday (and Here You Come Today)" by Count Basie, Eddie Durham and Jimmy Rushing; "Blues in the Closet," by Oscar Pettiford; and John Coltrane's "Trane's Blues." All of it given the Garland touch.

Listening to Prestige Vol. 3, 1957-58, is just about ready to go to press! I'll announce shortly when I'm ready to start taking orders.

Listening to Prestige 349: Eric Dolphy

We move away from the old pros of Swingville. They were wonderful, but it's time to look to the future, and the future enters like a panzer division with Eric Dolphy. He was one of the most important musicians, along with Coleman and Coltrane, in tearing up the old rulebook and writing a new set of rules.

Or maybe not. Leonard Feather, interviewing Dolphy, tried to figure out just what those new rules were, but he didn't get very far.

LF: For one thing, I would I would like to make it clear that I don't think I understand...as a musician you know certain things I don't understand about what you are doing and I...would like to maybe get them clarified in my own mind so that I can make it clear for the average reader ... what is happening and what people like you are doing harmonically. It's very hard to explain, very hard to analyze. Can you put it into words?

ED: Well, it, you know, it always depends on the subject of what you're improvising on of course, and then, uh... Of course if you're playing freer forms and the harmony...  improvisation is much more freer and you have much more things that you can play...the lines are not held to no chord patterns, harmonically.

LF: No, but, what I don't understand is what ARE they held to? I mean what is, what is the difference between the limitations, there must be some limitations otherwise it, you would be arbitrary, you could just play any notes that you like.

ED: Well that's the idea you CAN play every note that you like. Of course, you only can play what you can hear, and quite naturally... more or less I guess what I hear is not to your hearing, to what you're hearing. So quite naturally, I hear, uh, more notes on uh, on the same thing that's been said before.

Robert Frost famously said that writing free verse was like playing tennis without a net. Maybe Blowup, without a ball. Only you and whoever you're playing with know where the ball is going and whether you've hit it squarely. But there are spins and trajectories and lobs and smashes that only you can hear. If you get it right, you're Eric Dolphy and Freddie Hubbard. Get it wrong, and you're that tenor saxophonist on Jazzmobile who was told by Frank Foster to "feel something in B-flat, motherfucker."

playing free jazz is like Michelangelo Antonioni's tennis match in

This is Dolphy's debut album as leader. He had recorded in Los Angeles with Chico Hamilton, and also with Clifford Brown, although that one has an odder history. Dolphy was a native Los Angeleno, and his dad, ever supportive of his music, built him a recording studio, and a lot of musicians--not just his friends, but serious musicians, would come by to jam with the kid. One of these sessions, with Brownie, was recorded and the recording was saved, to be released in 2005. He would pack a lot of recording into the next four years of an all-too-brief life, both as leader and sideman, including a lot of work with Charles Mingus. Much of his output would not be released until after his death in 1964.

It marks a return to the cutting edge Prestige. Esmond Edwards produced. Dolphy recorded three of his own compositions, two standards, and one tune by a contemporary, Charles "Majeed" Greenlee.

Freddie Hubbard would later become known for a more crowd-friendly style, but in these younger days he was very much in tune with the avant-garde, recording with both Coltrane and Coleman in addition to Dolphy. When there are no limitations, it puts an interesting burden on the second soloist. He has to follow in a path laid out for him by someone who adhered to no path but an inner one--what he could hear.  If he scurries back to the road more traveled, he'll seem tame by comparison. If he's faking it, or he doesn't know what he's doing, it's "feel something in B-flat, motherfucker."

All this reminds me somehow of a poem I once wrote about the wilderness mapping itself, which I'll append to the end of this.

Jaki Byard, a multi-instrumentalist although the piano was his main instrument, was new to Prestige but a jazz world veteran, though mostly in Boston, where he had played and recorded with Herb Pomeroy and Charlie Mariano. This was his first New York recording gig, and the beginning of a long and important career, including a number of albums for Prestige. He also had a distinguished career as an educator, including establishing the jazz studies program at the New England Conservatory of Music.

George Tucker, like Dolphy, would not be around for long. He died in 1965 without achieving the outsized reputation of Dolphy, but being quietly respected by his peers and by younger bassists. It easy to understand why, listening to his work on this session. As the bassist, it's his job to keep the beat, and he does so, but with a full appreciation of the complexity of the music and the need of the beat to reflect that.

And it's not hard to understand why Dolphy chose Roy Haynes rather than a younger drummer more identified with the free jazz movement. All you have to do is listen.

The Dolphy compositions are freer. The standards are still grounded in melody and chord structure, although Dolphy moves further and further out as he develops his improvisation. The Charles Greenlee composition is a bit of a surprise. Although Greenlee began his career in Detroit in the 1940s, he's probably best known for his avant-garde work in the late 1960s and 1970s with Archie Shepp, so the surprise is that "Miss Toni" is really the most boppish piece of the day.

The balance is a good one, for the listener of the day to get used to the direction Dolphy was headed in, and maybe for the musicians who were playing with him, too.

Most of this session was released in 1960 as Dolphy's first Prestige album, Outward Bound. The alternate takes of "G. W." and "245" would eventually see daylight on much later compilation releases, and "April Fool" would be included in a posthumous release, 1966's Here and There. Outward Bound was first released on New Jazz, later on Prestige.

Listening to Prestige 348: Swingville All Stars

I despaired of ever finding this album on a streaming service. Nothing on Spotify by Swingville All Stars. YouTube had some cuts by Swingville All Stars with Pee Wee Russell, but nothing by this ensemble. And it looked so good. I was dying to hear it. No immediate success when I searched separately under Taft Jordan, Hilton Jefferson and Al Sears.

A streaming music hint: Sometimes something is just plain not there, but sometimes it's there if you look hard enough, and try enough different search terms. One good tactic is, if there's a song on the album you want that hasn't been recorded a whole lot, try that as a search. "New Carnegie Blues" is an Al Sears composition, and he's recorded it on his own, but not much outside of that. I found it first on YouTube, then on Spotify. Having found the tune, I selected "Go to album" and was taken to a collection called Mood Indigo by Taft Jordan which is a Prestige reissue of various Ellington-identified songs by the former Ellington trumpeter, and includes all of the tunes on the Swingville All Stars set.

It was worth the hunt. This is a totally pleasurable set by three veterans who know how to play pretty for the people. Taft Jordan, 45 when this recording was made, had made his reputation over a decade with the Chick Webb/Ella Fitzgerald Orchestra, and later played with Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. He also made a stop on the modern side of the street in the orchestra that Gil Evans and Miles Davis put together for Sketches of Spain.

Hilton Jefferson, 57 when he made this date, also had stints with Webb and Ellington, but his big long-term association was with Cab Calloway. He had begun his professional career in 1929 with Claude Hopkins.

Al Sears was 50, so there was age spread between them, but they all had Chick Webb and Ellington in common, with Sears as the most prominent Ellingtonian— he took Ben Webster’s lead tenor sax chair when Webster left the Duke. The late 1950s saw him onstage with Alan Freed for his big rock ‘n roll Christmas extravaganzas, where he was known as Big Al Sears.

As a New York musician, Don Abney always got a lot of work, in jazz and as a studio musician. He recorded with many of the day's top singers, including Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Eartha Kitt, and Pearl Bailey. But his career really prospered when he loved to LA, and became musical director for Universal Studios. His work there included an on-camera stint as Ella Fitzgerald's piano player in Jack Webb's Pete Kelly's Blues.

The session begins with the Al Sears composition, "New Carnegie Blues," and its mellow sound reminds of a reminiscence by a college professor about meeting Sears. Sears had a gentle demeanor and a bespectacled, professorial look, so the prof asked him about the meaning of the title of his most famous tune, "Castle Rock." Was it a mythological or literary reference? Sears explained, "A rock is a fuck, and a castle rock is a really humongous fuck."

"New Carnegie Blues" sets a mellow tone for a mellow album of ballads and jump numbers. "Rockin' in Rhythm," the Ellington/Harry Carney number, is the most boisterous. Neil Hefti's "Li'l Darlin'" jumps but in a more relaxed way. It features a nice piano intro by Don Abney to set up the solos and ensemble work by the three leads, which is flawless here as always. Mercer Ellington's "Things Ain't What They Used to Be" is the other relaxed jumper, and features some very interesting work on the bass by Wendell Marshall.

"Willow Weep for Me" by Gershwin protege Ann Ronell, is one of the few songs to be inspired by the trees on an Ivy League campus. "Tenderly" was written by Walter Gross for Margaret Whiting as a breakup song after she had broken his heart, but I don't believe she ever recorded it. The three soloists are all particularly moving on the slow ballads.

The session was produced by Esmond Edwards. The Swingville release was entitled Rockin' in Rhythm.

Listening to Prestige 347: Pee Wee Russell

Listening to Prestige continues to be an enriching experience beyond what I even expected, as the Swingville catalog expands and showcases exemplars of a style of music I haven't always paid enough attention to. Pee Wee Russell played jazz over five decades, making a name for himself as one of the leading Dixieland and Chicago-style musicians, playing for most of his career with solid traditionalists like Eddie Condon and Henry "Red" Allen, yet always known as an odd duck in a field that did not always take kindly to odd ducks. Dixieland players, especially as, like Eddie Condon, they dug in their heels against modernism, prided themselves on hitting notes squarely, but Russell never exactly did that. His style was always punctuated by growls, swoops, yelps, and off-notes that would have felt right at home in a bebop setting. Indeed, he is certainly the only traditional jazz musician ever to play the Newport Festival as part of Thelonious Monk's group. With Condon, partly because of his unorthodox style and partly because of his hangdog looks, he was the comic relief for Condon's stage schtick, but there was nothing ridiculous about it when he stepped out front and started soloing.

Russell was on a comeback that had almost seemed impossible. In 1951, alcohol had caused a physical breakdown that sent him to the hospital, where many thought he would not recover.

Esmond Edwards, for his Prestige debut, put him together with a versatile group of musicians. Buck Clayton is perhaps best known for his work with Count Basie, and for a swing-era style, but in his time with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic he played with everyone, including Charlie Parker. The rhythm section is equally versatile, and together, they create a session that is satisfyingly mainstream and still full of surprises.

In fact, everyone in this session is capable of delivering up surprises, and they do--even Wendell Marshall, who's tasked with keeping everyone in line and is up to the job, his walking bass weaving in and out among the soloists. Osie Johnson delivers a couple of stinging solos.

And Tommy Flanagan, raised in the bebop hotbed of Detroit but capable of playing with anyone, raises some serious eyebrows here. He doesn't come close to staying within the conventions of traditional jazz, and yet everything he does works, making this a session that is absolutely located within Swingville, but rewarding for anyone of any jazz taste who takes the time to give it a listen.

The best YouTube presentation is the whole album, so that's what I've put up, but if I were able to single out a Listen to One, it would be "Lulu's Back in Town"--a Dixieland chestnut, but not the way they play it.

The Swingville album was titled Swingin' with Pee Wee.

Listening to Prestige 346: Claude Hopkins

I can't find a producer credit for this, but it has to be part two of Chris Albertson's welcome into the Prestige fold. He had brought Claude Hopkins on board with the Lonnie Johnson session, and Hopkins would stick around to do a couple of sessions as leader for Bob Weinstock's labels--something he did remarkably little of, in a long career. He did record with his orchestra in the early 1930s, but after that nothing. In fact, it would have taken a dedicated aficionado like Albertson to even remember him, though once remembered, he wouldn't have been that hard to find. Unlike Lonnie Johnson, he hadn't vanished from sight. He always found work with trad jazz or Dixieland ensembles.

A few thoughts about Bob Weinstock and his Swingville label. Looking back, it seems like a natural. All those great musicians were still around, and it would have been a shame if their later music had gone undocumented. And from a business standpoint, it had to have been a good gamble. No jazz musician made the really big bucks, but Claude Hopkins had to come a lot cheaper than John Lewis or Erroll Garner.

But remember the era. We were past the 1940s, but the jazz wars between the progressives and the moldy figs were not entirely over, and they had been fierce. Nowadays, on your mixtape if anyone still made them, on your Spotify playlist or Pandora radio station, you might perfectly easily go from Ornette Coleman to Jimmie Lunceford, and be admired for it by that discerning friend who happened to be looking over your shoulder. But back then, you really were expected to choose sides. You had to stand with Eddie Condon, who said, "We don't flat our fifths, we drink 'em!" or Louis Armstrong, who railed against bebop as "Chinese music," or Tommy Dorsey who said it had set music back twenty years. Or you could be like the Down Beat critic dismissing Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby's "Now You Has Jazz" from High Society with "Jazz? I'm still waiting to hear it."

In 1960, we stood on the brink of change. Rock and roll would turn in rock, would start becoming culturally respectable, would make a new trend out of what jazz had always done by inventing "supergroups" and jams. The blues would be rediscovered (Weinstock was again ahead of his time with the Bluesville label), and the jazz culture wars of the 1940s and 1950s would fade into oblivion, But there was some serious apostasy in a bebop/progressive label embracing the moldy fig sound the way that Weinstock did with his Swingville line. He may have played it safe out of the box with Coleman Hawkins, because no one of any age or musical taste was going to put down the Hawk, but with this group led by Claude Hopkins, the mold was seriously on the fig,

And we, in the 21st century, can only be grateful.

Hopkins is joined by Emmett "Chu" Berry on trumpet, Buddy Tate on tenor, Prestige stalwart Wendell Marshall on bass and J. C. Heard on drums. Tate is a Prestige veteran by this time, having debuted with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Shirley Scott and then led his own session. Berry had been with Fletcher Henderson (replacing Roy Eldridge) and Count Basie. He had also been featured on some of Billie Holiday's classic recordings. Heard, like Marshall, was equally at home with swing and bop ensembles. He had begun his career with Teddy Wilaon, had worked for the Big Three (Armstrong, Goodman, Ellington),  and had also played with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

They play standards, a Bessie Smith blues, and the Sy Oliver swing composition that became the title tune, and which was having a renaissance, with recent versions by Ray Charles and Shirley Scott. They play uptempo swing and moody blues. They take great solos and work together in ensemble sections like the old pros they are. Wendell Marshall demonstrates his facility as a swing bassist.

Yes Indeed! was released on  Swingville. A later CD release saw Hopkins sharing leader credit with Tate. Nothing on 45, and there could have been. Swing was, after all, the original dance music.

Listening to Prestige 345: Oliver Nelson

I am sadly unable to find anything on the next Prestige session, a septet led by Rex Stewart and featuring kazoos, among other instruments for an album called Happy Jazz. So instead of a visit back to the happy land of trad jazz, we move into the not necessarily happy, but certainly adventurous future with the modernism of another musician who, like Gigi Gryce played the alto sax (also tenor) and who, also like Gryce, became better known as a composer.

This would be the second in a string of albums that Nelson would make for Prestige, and taken together, they make a strong case for not being taken together. Nelson uses different combinations of musicians on each, different sets of powerful individual voices. And if you could say that taken together, they show Nelson's remarkable range as a composer and arranger, you could actually say that about the compositions that make up each separate album. Certainly Taking Care of Business is adventurous enough, and certainly it's an Oliver Nelson album. He uses the skills of gifted improvisers, but the way their solos are stacked against each other adds up to an adventurous, unexpected and satisfying whole.

On his first Prestige outing, he used the archetypal bebop saxophone-trumpet quintet, but with the

unique voice of Kenny Dorham on trumpet. This time he ventures farther afield. Saxophone and Hammond organ have become a recognizable turn-of-the-decade sound thanks to Eddie Davis and Shirley Scott, but what Nelson and Johnny "Hammond" Smith do with them takes that sound in a whole new direction -- and then, he adds the vibraphone of Lem Winchester to make it a truly unique front line. Winchester had made his Prestige debut a few months earlier with Benny Golson.

At nearly ten minutes, "Trane Whistle" shows all of this: the bold composition, the juxtaposed solos, some bacchanalian duet work, dynamic range, and an overall feeling that manages to be both tight and discursive.

The two non-Nelson originals are Sonny Rollins' "Doxy" and the Cahn-Van Heusen standard "All the Way."

Esmond Edwards produced, and Taking Care of Business came out on New Jazz. "Trane Whistle" became a two-sided 45, also on New Jazz. I'm not sure it was your typical 45 RPM fare, but it must have turned a few heads when it was slipped on the record changer.

Listening to Prestige 344: Gigi Gryce

Of all the major jazz talents of his era, Gigi Gryce is probably one of the most under-recorded, and certainly one of the most unjustly unremembered by contemporary jazz fans, and even contemporary musicians. JazzTimes conducted a survey of 17 young alto saxophonists to find out what they considered the most important alto sax recordings: "Great performances that helped shape the jazz alto saxophone tradition." Each artist submitted a list of half a dozen or so recordings, and, eclectic as they were, Gryce did not make any of them. The website ranker.com, which gives a window into the tastes

of contemporary jazz fans, has a poll on the top saxophonists of all time. Since this is a continuing poll, there's a lot of fluctuation on the lower levels, but on the day that I checked, Gigi Gryce was number 88 on the list.

Partly this is due to a career cut short. This was the first of three recording sessions Gryce did for Prestige in 1960. Late in the year, he did one more for Mercury. Then that was it. A couple of years later, he would leave music behind completely.

But if he is largely forgotten as a saxophonist by today's jazz audience, he has never been forgotten by other musicians as a composer. "Modernity," recorded back in the 1950s by Art Blakey, Cannonball Adderley, Cal Tjader and Art Pepper, among others, continues to be a favorite to this day, with a recent recording by Cyrus Chesnutt and another by the Dutch vocalist Eva Scholten. "Social Call" has remained popular as an instrumental, but even more so as a vocal performance, with Jon Hendricks' lyrics. Earl Coleman first recorded it in 1955, and it has become a standard, most recently covered in 2016 by Heather Masse with Roswell Rudd.

His disillusionment with the music scene was principled. In addition to his considerable gifts as a player and as a composer, Gryce was ahead of his time in standing up for musicians' rights.

The 1940s and 1950s were a time of the discovery of a lot of new and exciting talents in all musical fields -- jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, even country. That meant a lot of new names entering the music world, most of them young, many of them minorities, almost all of them lacking in business experience. They knew what a recording contract was, and they knew that they wanted one, but mostly they did not know what publishing rights were, or why they were important. 

This meant that it was all too easy for them to sign away their publishing rights, which might often be the most lucrative part of a deal. If a young black artist had a minor hit on the rhythm and blues charts, with a song that he had written, and the song was later covered by a white artist who took it to the top of the pop charts and a gold record, that meant a very nice payday for the composer of the song--if he still owned the rights to it. All too often, he didn't. 

In these days, when "cultural appropriation" has become a watchword, there's a lot of criticism of whites stealing from black culture, and a lot of it is justified, but on the level of making music, it's always been more complicated. The greatness of the American Century in music, one of history's greatest artistic flowerings, has always come from its polyglot, mongrel nature, styles and sounds and songs and influences flowing in every direction. But when it came to the business end of music, cultural appropriation was alive and well through much of that century, and the money only flowed one way, from black talent into white pockets.

This was true in jazz as well as in rhythm and blues and rock and roll. One of the biggest crooks in the business was Morris Levy, who ripped off the publishing rights from innumerable young black artists, particularly the doowop groups signed to the New York labels that he owned. But Levy also owned Birdland, and his biggest label, Roulette, also issued jazz records. One of the characters in the HBO series The Sopranos was based on him--a Jewish gangster who had gotten rich in the 1950s by screwing young black artists out of their rights. But it wasn't just Mo Levy. It was ubiquitous. Chuck Berry was surprised to discover that he had co-written "Maybellene" with Alan Freed, but that was the price he was told he had to pay to make sure that Freed played his record.

I used to read record labels as though they were sacred texts, and I noticed all these things, although I didn't know what they meant at the time.

Gigi Gryce was one of the people who knew exactly what it meant, and one of the few who tried to do something about it. He set up an independent, black-owned music publishing company, and worked at signing up black jazz artists and getting fair publishing deals for them. Nowadays most recording artists, as well as most composers and songwriters, set up their own publishing companies. Not so back then. Gryce was not able to buck the racism and the gangsterism and the other obstacles thrown in his way, and he left the music business, never to return. He converted to Islam, took on the Muslim name of Basheer Qusim, and became a highly respected educator. The school in the Bronx where he taught for many years was renamed in his honor, the Basheer Qusim Elementary School.

This is the first of three albums that Gryce, with Esmond Edwards producing, recorded for Prestige. He brought some new musicians onto the Prestige horizon, and most of them remained for all three sessions, so I'll catch up with them later. Reggie Workman would make just this first date. He was new on the scene--this was his debut on record--and fast making a name for himself, He was also moving in a more avant-garde direction. He would rejoin Gryce for the end-of-the-year recording session for Mercury, then move on to join John Coltrane's quartet.

He contributed three originals to this date: the fiery "Leila's Blues," the exotic "Blues in the Jungle," and a beautiful ballad, "Back Breaker." None of them went on to have a life beyond this album, but they all showed Gryce as a master composer, and one can't help but wonder who might have picked up "Back Breaker" if it had had a more evocative title. The other three are by Gryce's contemporaries, Curtis Fuller ("Down Home") and Hank Jones ("Let Me Know") and {Jones' Bones). One can speculate that Gryce may have had something to do with the publishing contracts for Fuller and Jones.

Sayin' Somethin' was released on New Jazz, as the subsequent sessions would be.

Listening to Prestige 343: Lonnie Johnson

I've skipped over one session, with guitarist Al Casey. I'll come back to it as soon as I find my notes.

Prestige plucked Lonnie Johnson from obscurity for this recording, and a few more that he'd make for their Bluesville line, but then he kind of fell back into it. As the blues craze of the 1960s developed, it was a rising tide that lifted two kinds of boats. The ethnic folkie crowd, energized by Columbia's release of Robert Johnson's 1936-37 recordings, started looking for and resurrecting the careers of Mississippi Delta bluesman like Son House, Furry Lewis and Mississippi Fred McDowell. The young British blues enthusiasts who came to dominate the American pop charts loved the high-octane, electrified Chicago blues. The Rolling Stones demanded that Howlin' Wolf be featured on the white teen-oriented TV show  Shindig when the made their American debut in 1965, and the careers of artists like Wolf, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker were in the ascendant.

Lonnie Johnson fit neither of these categories. He was from an earlier generation than the Chicago bluesmen, and he was from a different musical aesthetic than the Delta bluesmen, closer to jazz. He was, in fact, the first and most important innovator of the single-string guitar solo, the basis of nearly all jazz guitar improvisation.

Johnson made his first mark as a blues singer, winning a recording contract with Okeh at a 1925 blues competition.

But that was 1925, right in the middle of the decade of the first blues craze. After the unexpected commercial success of Mamie Smith's recording, "Crazy Blues," had shown that there was a black audience that would buy records, all the record companies wanted a piece of it, and they all figured that the way to get it was through the blues. At first that meant the urban, jazz-oriented blues of Mamie Smith, Alberta Hunter, and especially Bessie Smith. Then it meant the rural blues of street singers and rural juke joint performers like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charley Patton.

And those guys weren't necessarily bluesmen. They were songsters. They were trying to make a buck, and that meant playing anything their audiences wanted to hear. Sometimes those audiences were black, and sometimes they were white. Sometimes they wanted to listen and sometimes they wanted to dance, so the songster had to be prepared. You can hear a vestige of this in Robert Johnson's "Hot Tamales and They're Red Hot."

Then an important audience became the record company, and the record companies wanted blues, so they became bluesmen, and the best bluesmen were successful. Lonnie Johnson, later in life, would come to resent the label a little, feeling it was too restrictive and did not show the scope of what he could do. But in 1925 he was desperate to get a recording contract, and the blues was his ticket of entry, though once inside the door, he was able to expand his scope, recording with both Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, among other jazzmen, including guitarist Eddie Lang, with whom he made some exciting recordings even though music was supposed to be made on a strictly segregated basis in those days.

But the blues was his meal ticket, and so it remained until that cafeteria dried up.The Depression was a time of shrinkage and retrenchment for the record companies, and the black artists were the first to be retrenched.

With the rise of independent rhythm and blues labels in the 1940s, he began to build a second career, but it ultimately dried up too, and he had settled back into obscurity for most of the 1950s.

His next comeback, and the contract with Prestige, coincided with another Prestige debut. Iceland-born Chris Albertson, who had begun making a career in radio in England, Iceland and Norway, latched onto American Armed Forces Radio as a disc jockey in Iceland, and followed his love of jazz to the United States, where found work as a disc jockey with a Philadelphia radio station. His special interest was in traditional jazz and blues, and one night he played some records by Lonnie Johnson, wondering over the air what had happened to the forgotten blues great.

He didn't have to wonder for long. A listener called the station. The hotel where he worked had a janitor named Lonnie Johnson, and though he never talked about music, he was always very careful of his hands. Could it be...?

It was. Albertson had him as a guest on his show, then brought him to Bob Weinstock's new Bluesville label, where Johnson was signed as an artist and Albertson as a producer.

Albertson put him together, for his first effort, with some first rate jazz musicians, all of them veterans with roots in traditional jazz, but nonetheless representing two different generations,

Pianist Claude Hopkins was Johnson's contemporary, born in 1903 to Johnson's 1899, and when Johnson was making his first blues recording in 1925, Hopkins was on his way to Paris as musical director of Josephine Baker's revue.

There's always work for a good piano player and bandleader, and Hopkins stayed busy throughout the following decades, including the 1950s, as there was still a demand for a pianist in the traditional style, not everyone being on board with this modern stuff. In fact, 52nd Street, once the cathedral of bebop, was by the end of the 1950s represented only by two Dixieland clubs, Eddie Condon's and Jimmy Ryan's.

When Johnson made that first recording for Okeh, his other future bandmates were barely out of diapers. Tenor saxophonist-to-be Hal Singer was six, bassist Wendell Marshall five and drummer Bobby Donaldson three.

All three of them were seasoned veterans by 1960, and all four of Albertson's musicians could play the blues, especially Singer, whose instrumental "Corn Bread" had topped the rhythm and blues charts in 1948. Together, they add jazz depth to a session that is Johnson's. and very rightly so. His single-string guitar soloing may not have been revolutionary any more, but few did it as well as he.

The album came out on Bluesville as Blues by Lonnie Johnson. The 45 RPM single was "You Don't Move Me" / "Don't Ever Love."

Listening to Prestige 342: Roosevelt Sykes

I wrote this about blues singer Al Smith's debut album for Prestige Bluesville:

Al Smith is a remarkable singer. How remarkable? Well, take his cover of a Ray Charles tune.

Ray Charles was a wonderful songwriter, and his songs have been widely covered: "I Got a Woman," "This Little Girl of Mine," "What'd I Say?" But nobody else that I've been able to find has covered "Night Time is the Right Time," and with good reason: the distinctive raw, pleading response vocals of Margie Hendrix make it virtually uncoverable. 

But Smith makes it work. His gospel-tinged blues singing is sufficiently different from Charles's to make his approach unique--and while it's equally different, it has enough of Hendrix's fervor to power his singing of both parts.

And I stand behind it 100 percent--about my praise for Smith, and about the near-impossibility of covering what Ray and Margie Hendrix did with "Night Time is the Right Time." I stand behind it, except for the part that I got 100 percent wrong.

Ray Charles didn't write "Night Time is the Right Time."

Roosevelt Sykes did.

Sykes' version, with his boogie-woogie piano, and his classic blues shouter style, was of course dramatically rethought and retooled by the time it got to Ray, but it turns out there was yet another intermediate version. Sykes' song was revamped to the point that it was considered a new song, and copyright and writing credits were given to Herman Lubinsky, the head of Savoy Records (writing as Lew Herman), Nappy Brown, and Ozzie Cadena, then a producer for Savoy, later for Prestige. Nappy Brown recorded it on Savoy, and his version is terrific, and rhythmically similar to Ray's, but Ray and the Raeletts and Ray's great orchestra still own the song.

Sykes' version is terrific too, in its own very different way, both as originally recorded in the 1930s and as recorded here in this 1960 session for Bluesville.

Bluesville in a way was the most interesting of Bob Weinstock's three subsidiary labels, because it was the most amorphous. He knew exactly what he wanted for Swingville--the older musicians who still had a lot to say, the Basie alums and Coleman Hawkins and the rhythm and blues/swing guys like Buddy Tate. And Moodville--it was like Chris Albertson said, these weren't Jackie Gleason records, they were real Prestige jazz by some of the label's finest artists, playing mostly standards and setting a mood. 

But Bluesville was more of an experiment. He'd showcased little-known but deserving blues singers like Al Smith and Mildred Anderson. He'd presented blues veterans like Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon. Understandably, he leaned more toward a jazz-shaded blues format, and this was a good thing. It gave the Prestige blues releases a quality of their own. Smith and Anderson were backed by Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Shirley Scott. Dixon, one of the chief architects of the Chicago blues sound, had been the bass player for a lounge jazz trio modeled after the Nat "King" Cole Trio and Johnny Moore's Three Blazers.

Sykes was a veteran bluesman, whose recording career went back to the 1920s (he had first cut "Night Time is the Right Time" in the 1930s). A lot of his recording was piano blues and boogie-woogie in the tradition of Albert Ammons or Pete Johnson, with some of the jazz inflection of Leroy Carr. But he'd had success in the 1940s with a recording of Joe Liggins' "The Honeydripper," and adopted that title as his stage nickname. In 1944, he put together a band, and made some recordings as Roosevelt Sykes and the Honeydrippers. By the turn of the decade, his career had pretty much played out, and he had slipped into obscurity.

Weinstock wanted to develop that "Honeydrippers" aspect of his musical personality, and he put him with a five-piece combo. The musicians who worked with him on this two-day Prestige session are pretty much forgotten today, with the exception of Armand "Jump" Jackson, one of the best-known drummers on the Chicago blues scene of the 1940s, so probably these were all guys who had worked with Sykes in Chicago. But they can play, and Clarence Perry, Jr., has an arresting tone on the tenor sax.

Sykes sticks to the 12-bar blues format for the most part, with vocals that are powerful and sensitive, but each song allows plenty of room for instrumental improvisation. "Runnin' the Boogie" is a good example. It was a staple of Sykes' repertoire, and YouTube has an excellent video of him performing it as a solo piano number at a 1970 blues festival. But this recording has the piano giving way to some hot guitar licks, followed by an instrumental frenzy that features Perry worrying the blues riffs like a bulldog shaking a rat.

Sykes and company spent two days in the studio. The resulting album is called The Return of Roosevelt Sykes, and it was indeed a return. It was also a debut of sorts--the first time he had recorded a group of songs for an LP record. No 45 RPM singles were released from either session, which is interesting. Weinstock must have felt that there was no singles market for traditional blues, and he was probably right. Even with the modern sound of the group backing him, Sykes was essentially a traditional blues shouter, and the market was essentially that which had been cultivated by Moe Asch at Folkways.

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Listening to Prestige 341: Arnett Cobb

Two days in the studio with Arnett Cobb and a quintet, rhythm section augmented by congas, but with a different piano player and a different conguero each day, continuing the pattern he had established on his previous Party Time session for Prestige, with Ray Bryant and Ray Barretto.

The piano guys were two more of the best young players on the scene, 30-year-old Tommy Flanagan and 25-year-old Bobby Timmons. Flanagan had made his Prestige debut in 1956, newly arrived from Detroit, on an abbreviated Miles Davis session.

He would shortly thereafter be tabbed for one of the decade's most important albums, Sonny Rollins' Saxophone Colossus, and would make his debut as leader the following year with a trio: Overseas, recorded in Sweden. By the time of this recording, he was a solid regular with the label, with 15 recording dates as leader or sideman.

Flanagan's versatility could be amply illustrated right at this moment in time: just two weeks before he went to Englewood Cliffs to record with one of the veteran masters of good-time, mainstream jazz, he had seen the release of a session with young players who would be standing jazz on its year: John Coltrane's Giant Steps.

Bobby Timmons had recorded once previously for Prestige, with Clifford Jordan and John Jenkins, but he was best known for his work with Blue Note, particularly with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

Danny Barrajanos took the conga chair for the first day. He was primarily known for his work with Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba. Buck Clarke, who came in for the second day, was more of a jazz figure, with credits that would include Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock and Les McCann.

Latin percussion was still a somewhat outside-the-box idea for a modern jazz album, and one might think of Cobb as an inside-the-box kinda guy, but boy, does he know how to make it swing! Listen to the work they do on "Blue Lou," composed by Edgar Sampson, one of the few composer/arranger/ musicians of his era to move back and forth between mainstream and Latin jazz. He played with Duke Ellington, Rex Stewart, Fletcher Henderson and Chick Webb (for whom he composed "Stompin' at the Savoy" and "Don't Be That Way"); and worked as an arranger for Marcelino Guerra, Tito
Rodgriguez and Tito Puente. And raised a musical family--his daughter Grace co-wrote "Mambo Inn" with Mario Bauzá. "Blue Lou" is a killer, with Barrajanos pushing the beat throughout, getting some wild and crazy sax playing of Cobb and smoking solos from Flanagan, Taylor and himself.

"Blue Lou" was followed on the session by a Cobb original called "Blue Me." One can't help but wonder if the original title had been a mite dirtier.

The second day found the musicians in a mellower mood, but Buck Clarke shows how much a conguero can contribute there, too. Listen to "The Nitty Gritty," a Cobb original. It's interesting that Cobb didn't use any Bobby Timmons originals, as hot a composer as he was then. But Timmons adds his soul jazz piano to Cobb's already soulful playing, and his Illinois Jacquet-style honking.

The sessions became a little mixed on record. "Down by the Riverside" is Timmons and Clarke, but it Arnett Cobb--More Party Time, which otherwise comprised tunes from the first day. The traditional spiritual joined Stephen Foster's "Swanee River" as tunes you wouldn't necessarily bring to a modern party. "Fast Ride" was slipped back to Movin' Right Along to complete the trade. Both albums were released before 1960 was out.
was included on

"Lover Come Back to Me," from the Flanagan/Barrajanos session, was a two-sided 45 RPM single release. The Sigmund Romberg melody is from New Moon, the last operetta to be produced on Broadway. One tends to think of operetta as a form more likely to produce cornball chestnuts like "Stout Hearted Men," which is also from New Moon, but "Lover Come Back to Me" has proved a most satisfying challenge to many a modern jazz musician. So has another aria from New Moon, "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise," which Cobb recorded on the second day.

"Ghost of a Chance" was the single from the second session to be released on 45 RPM, as the flip side of "Smooth Sailing," from Cobb's first Prestige album.

Esmond Edwards produced both sessions.


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Listening to Prestige 340: Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis - Shirley Scott

Ballads, standards, moods for Moodsville, and a couple of novelties for a 45 RPM release and the Christmas trade.

This is mostly Eddie Davis's album. Shirley Scott plays a supporting role, and a lot of it,  session log to the contrary, is on piano. Her piano solos show that if she had chosen to stay on that instrument, she would have had a very fine jazz career.

"It Could Happen to You" was written by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke. First recorded in 1943 by Jo Stafford, it moved into the jazz repertoire in 1951 when both Errol Garner and Bud Powell cut it, and since then, it has been beloved by jazz musicians. Burke also co-wrote "What's New" with Bob Haggard for a 1938 Bing Crosby recording, and it became a jazz standard in the early 1950s with recordings by Milt Jackson and Errol Garner before it really became a pop standard. Although both of these entered the jazz repertoire as piano pieces, Davis dominates here, and he is a fine ballad player, sensitive and atmospheric, Scott's solos are shorter, but she packs a lot into them, Jerome Kern's "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" has never wanted for performers, either vocal or instrumental, to take on its subtle loveliness. This track is Davis's throughout, with Scott providing support. The Gershwins are responsible for "The Man I Love," and it's even older, going back to the 1920s and Adele Astaire, and if anything even more popular, with over 300 recorded versions.

"The Very Thought of You" (Ray Noble), "Serenade in Blue" (Harry Warren) and "I Cover the Waterfront" (Johnny Green) can't quite match Kern and Gershwin, but they're also well-loved standards.

"Man With the Horn" was written by Bonnie Lake, one of the most successful woman songwriters of her era, and dedicated to her husband and co-composer, Jack Jenney, a trombone player who would die not long after. It became a staple for horn players, although Jenney may have been its only trombonist, and Davis recorded it more than once.

Scott goes back to the organ for the two Christmas songs. I think I prefer "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," which is sprightly and doesn't take itself too seriously, to Mel Tormé's "The Christmas Song," which has always thought of itself as a better song than it probably is. Scott does some very clever organ fills on it, though.

The Moodsville album is simply and eponymously title Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Shirley Scott, because at this point "Moodsville" was the prominent feature on the new label's covers. The Christmas songs were not included. They had their own niche as a seasonal 45.

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