Jackie McLean, John Coltrane and more.
 Jackie McLean, Prestige Profiles, Vol. 6 (Prestige) Prestige Profiles, Vol. 6: Jackie McLean The Profile of Jackie McLean draws on an early period of the altoist’s career, when he recorded lots of music he now disowns. You might sympathise with a guy who’d spent hours, weeks, and years trying to (so to speak) quit playing in a certain way. Fortunately, McLean is unlikely to have been plagued by that many people regretting his later work in favour of the fine stuff here. Which itself can’t be regretted. This is good stuff, for all that Prestige’s printers seem to have churned out his album sleeves like wallpaper. When cut-out racks were filled with Riverside’s bankrupt stock and—for not quite such drastic reasons—Prestige overstocks, anybody not fond of McLean could become hostile at the volume of his old albums that had to be shuffled through before finding something else. Prestige was indeed well ahead of the 21st century game of over-recording (see the Red Garland review above). This set is, however, seriously nice, all the way through to the moment McLean winds up matters after a literally beautiful demonstration of the blues-playing of Elmo Hope, one of the piano originals who grew up with Monk and Bud Powell, and who had a wonderful way of playing piano with a light, glancing touch and singing fingering. He, too, died young after hard times. Here, McLean is a thoroughly committed young musician, astringent on ballads, direct in blues, and with power where there’s anything uptempo. Mal Waldron’s on piano for many of the titles, on three or four there’s a trumpeter, and Hank Mobley’s tenor shows up on one title. The accompanying sampler selection is pretty good, with Gigi Gryce, several of whose compositions the exiled American altoist Allan Praskin celebrated when I heard him a while back. Lee Konitz is welcome, but I’d rather have heard Sonny Stitt on alto (plenty of options in the Prestige list) rather than on tenor in the 1949 masterpiece with Bud Powell. Miles Davis’s “Solar”, from Walkin’, is presumably there for Dave Schildkraut, who ought to have been named. “Dacor” from Art Taylor’s Taylor’s Tenors album has Frank Foster sounding distinctive from, but mutually congenial with, Charlie Rouse on two tenors in a jam with Walter Davis’s ebullient piano. Oddly, there’s only a short passage with both saxophonists. Sonny Criss died at 50, and his shrill alto was well worth featuring. Happily, Phil Woods was never so obscure, and for the title track of his album Pairing Off, he wrote a nice arrangement for his two front-line partners, trumpeters Kenny Dorham and Donald Byrd. A nice pair of CDs, this. |
 Kenny Burrell, Prestige Profiles, Vol. 7 (Prestige) Prestige Profiles, Vol. 7: Kenny Burrell Kenny Burrell is one of the jazz guitarists. His Profile‘s eight tracks are from eight different albums, comes in at just over an hour, and includes Tommy Flanagan on four titles from 1956-58, and a 1962 date with Coleman Hawkins. Mal Waldron appears on another two, while track five’s from a Jack McDuff organ-guitar record, with as much McDuff as Burrell. On “I Never Knew”, Paul Chambers is inspiring on bass with Jimmy Cobb’s drums. John Coltrane, who shared the initial billing, follows Burrell’s solo. Flanagan’s up with them, and Chambers solos as brilliantly as he accompanies. On Hank Mobley’s “Boo-Lu”, Burrell’s early chorded interlude opens up the palette displayed on his solo. That follows the underappreciated, omni-competent Jerome Richardson’s stunning flute work. Donald Byrd, Mobley, and Mal Waldron also solo well, almost guests on a flute-guitar feature. “Minor Mishap” from Flanagan’s 1957 album The Cats is lit by Idrees Sulieman’s brassy trumpet, and blazes through a tenor solo which demonstrates young Trane’s beginnings as an altoist. Burrell manages to follow him, beginning with an astounding entry. The fifteen-minute loping blues “All Night Long” opens with Frank Foster’s mastery of tenor. Donald Byrd’s at times fluffy-toned trumpet solo only disturbs the mood when he’s gone on too long, but Burrell stays relaxed, and nice chorded choruses sets things up for Flanagan—who almost rescues the tail end of Byrd’s solo—and obliges Doug Watkins’s long bass solo with neat support. You’ll realise that Art Taylor was a great drummer on the opener-unwinder, with Watkins and Waldron on “I’ll Close My Eyes” setting the medium tempo that “Montono Blues”, with Ray Barretto on congas, ups a bit. After Burrell, and Major Holley’s voice/bowed-bass unison solo, Coleman Hawkins is magisterial in ruffling velvet. “All of You” starts off as a real ballad, Flanagan perfectly simpatico with Burrell, before Watkins lifts the pace to the medium tempo preferred by this CD’s compiler. Good for the nerves, and Elvin Jones is wonderful on brushes. The accompanying sampler has Tal Farlow, George Benson, Jimmy Raney, Pat Martino, and Grant Green ridiculously not named as guitarist on a McDuff album title. The guitarist with Rusty Bryant isn’t identified either. And Boogaloo Joe Jones? I see his rocky record represented here was remarketed as acid jazz. |
 Lightnin’ Hopkins, Prestige Profiles, Vol. 8 (Prestige) Prestige Profiles, Vol. 8: Lightnin’ Hopkins Lightnin’ Hopkins is the token representative of the Bluesville imprint, collected on a not-too-badly assorted selection from his large output for Prestige/Bluesville. There’s a cover of his late 1950s R&B top ten hit “Mojo Hand”, but recorded on a day when he wasn’t quite up to playing the stinging run. Why is “Baby, Please Don’t Go” retitled and credited to McGhee-Terry? “Pneumonia Blues” has the legendary Buster Pickens on piano (their complete album has been reissued separately of late) and showcases more bite in the amplified guitar than on the acoustic of the first two titles. The next two tracks muddle credits between two sessions (no Pickens—but he does turn up on a celebration of astronaut John Glenn). Memphis Minnie’s “You Is One Black Rat” can’t mean the same as the original (explanation requires parental control), and other titles suggest Prestige had him record some famous songs. “Last Night Blues” has subdued guitar to match the East Coast harmonica of Sonny Terry. Hopkins was never less than good, but tracks somehow different are a rare necessity on his later albums. Terry inspires this deep, deep performance. The other sample of them together is quicker. “Blues in the Bottle” is more introverted, but the quiet guitar sound is distorted. “Goin’ Away” is interesting for Hopkins, as he leans on the jazz bass of Leonard Gaskin and Herbie Lovelle’s drums. The best Hopkins remains the earliest, with later highlights not, I’d thought, on Prestige/Bluesville. “I’m a Crawling Black Snake” is solo (the details printed are wrong), the amplifier turned up, the passion compelling (note: you must check out the album Soul Blues). If you’ve never heard Lightnin’s best, you might think this is marvelous stuff without being far wrong. The odd mixture on the sampler could interest people in the jazz company’s effort to have a blues catalogue too. Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry paid their bills by finding their way into the folkie circuit beside Pete Seeger & co. in 1940s New York, and play a jolly item with McGhee’s singing and guitar. They were a steady team that gradually went stale, but could be livelier when, later on, the blind unregenerate blues harmonica genius and the versatile guitarist had un-cordially come to loathe one another. Memphis Slim was a flash and messy blues pianist. Willie Dixon could sing after a fashion and swing mightily on the bass his bulk dwarfed. His other talent was songwriting, and “Built for Comfort” was an artistic success with Howlin’ Wolf roaring. The great Homesick James may still be working (aged between 90 and 100), his time-bending style on slide guitar is country dance music, but here, constrained within a band of Chicago bluesmen, he abstains from slide and it’s still splendid. Jimmy Witherspoon with organ sang a very different sort of blues, but the James title chosen avoids a lurch between the two. Sunnyland Slim was an unlettered country pianist who recorded lots and was fine here—though the use of organ on some Bluesville dates by blues singer-pianists seems perverse. Shakey Jake was a minor harmonica player-singer from Chicago, a professional gambler who somehow made two albums for Prestige. He has an OK instrumental. Lonnie Johnson recorded a lot for Prestige, in various contexts. Here his guitar is fairly loudly amplified and he belts the words out like a blues shouter and has Hal Singer (playing in a Vienna club in 2001, aged 80!) on tenor. Otis Spann recorded for Bluesville, sharing vocal duties with James Cotton on harmonica: the Muddy Waters band with the contractually-bound leader playing guitar (inaudibly, pseudonym “Dirty Rivers”!) and the track here is subdued, moving, and not dead dull like the rest of the album. Blind Gary Davis’s “Samson and Delilah” is a delight, sanctified Carolina ragtime extending almost into swing guitar. That man could play, and did so on the streets of New York. Big Joe Williams was an amazing itinerant, playing a guitar he had extended to nine strings, and on this track of a dozen latter-day choices, his swing and timing are something else (his one Bluesville set without Dixon’s bass!). And it’s live. Memphis Willie B[orum] was barely known outside of his two Bluesville recordings. He plays guitar and harmonica, the former not remote in style from Williams. Willie McTell, on the other hand, was one of the giants. He’d been playing his 12-string guitar for thirty years on Atlanta streets when the 1956 tapes that provided the Last Session Bluesville record were made. “Salty Dog” is representative of the raggy music he performed in a style broader than either his 1920s masterpieces or the 1940 Library of Congress sessions. Roosevelt Sykes seems to have had a heavy cold the day Prestige recorded him with a blues band for an album called The Return of Roosevelt Sykes, ending the second three-year period in a decade during which Sykes made no record. In fact, the second three-year period since 1929! Good blues history here. |
 John Coltrane, Prestige Profiles, Vol. 9 (Prestige) Prestige Profiles, Vol. 9: John Coltrane The Coltrane material collected here is from 1956-58, and Joe Goldberg’s note remembers the time as one when many exciting innovations were underway. He insists that Coltrane’s sound hasn’t dated, which is true, and that the alterations it underwent had nothing to do with fashion. Red Garland provides a striking chorded introduction to the set. “Russian Lullaby” is only the name of the tune; the performance itself is rousing. Garland solos with Bud Powell-like fire, with Chambers on bass and Taylor on drums. “The Way You Look Tonight” is also brisk—and the drummer, Ed Thigpen, along with Oscar Peterson, has just issued a new CD with classy local personnel in his longtime homeland Denmark. He’s no disadvantage. Idrees Sulieman and Sahib Shihab (very distinctive on alto) and the pianist, Waldron, all also spent time enhancing life in Europe. Did Julian Euell and his bass stay in the USA to keep Coltrane company? Tadd Dameron’s “On a Misty Night” is from Mating Call, a frequently controversial album by Coltrane with the great composer-arranger Dameron on piano in a quartet with the major swing style bassist John Simmons, and the future legend Philly Joe Jones on drums. Dameron plays what’s been called “composer’s piano”, meaning ad hoc and—though complex in terms of harmony textbooks—even slightly primitive sounding to the ear. (Tapes of Dameron playing solo were praised by the few who heard them before they were lost—maybe forever!). His left hand’s strong, full of harmonic implications, but with amazing propulsion. On “Come Rain or Come Shine”, Louis Hayes is the drummer (with Chambers and Garland), and in 1958 Trane was at his most imitable (with no sense of or any interest in technical complexity). Amazing directness nevertheless, Garland solos an incredible translation of full-blown Teddy Wilson style into hard bop, with the Wilson-like left hand work where feasible—and Chambers and Hayes where it’s not—and Wilson-like runs utilizing a harmonic vocabulary never found anywhere else. I almost forgot to mention that Byrd comes on and plays a youthful, vibrant solo as if he’d just dropped by. Waldron plays piano on “Dakar”, with a neatly arranged theme statement and long saxophone solos that sandwich Trane between the recognizably individual baritone giants Cecil Payne and Pepper Adams. The unusual lineup is striking in ensemble, but these were three big soloists. “I’ll Get By” is brisk and features initially soft-toned, lyrical Coltrane, Wilbur Harden’s trumpet sustaining excitement after Coltrane finished, Garland sounding like Flanagan, Chambers, and this time, Jimmy Cobb on drums. From the album Standard Coltrane, Trane ends with a bow in Lester Young’s direction. The same date as the opening track produced “Theme for Ernie”, which for two seconds sounds like a repeat of “I’ll Get By”, but immediately goes in another, sheer ballad direction, with an ending out of Dexter Gordon. The title track of its original album, “Bahia” alternates between static passages of improvisation over the theme’s main motif, then fleet soloing on chords, with Watkins bowing wide harmonies on bass, and Coltrane showing signs of things to come, as well as urgency to get there. When playing slow, he sounds as if he’s reining-back a tendency to race. In contrast, Byrd is rapid-fire, both opening and in solo. Garland’s fingers beetle urgently, and a drum solo on anything this breakneck bespeaks greatness in any survivor. Taylor’s merely OK. “Tootie” Heath replaces him on an “I Hear a Rhapsody”, which sure ain’t playin’ one. Presto! On “Trane’s Slow Blues” (aka “Slowtrane”), Earl May’s cleanly-played, very resonant bass supports well, suggestion of an abatement of urgency unheeded—slow is seldom this fast—and takes a solo. Taylor does too, on this sample from the pianoless trio album Lush Life. On the sampler that accompanies the Coltrane disc, “Four” is a Miles Davis quintet number with bop piano and tentative Coltrane. The pianist is presumably Garland, whose Bud Powellism gets a workout. When do the horns arrive? Next track, and Rollins obliges medium tempo. There should have been more Hank Mobley, as well as his pianist here, Barry Harris (always nice on solo, trio, and with Charles McPherson on other Prestige sets). “Fire Waltz” can be heard (cough!) elsewhere on this set of twenty. Eric Dolphy’s “Les”, from Outward Bound, is splendid. Who’s the beautiful trumpeter on the title track to Yusef Lateef’s Cry! Tender? The amazing percussionist? Does Lateef play both woodwind instruments heard? Can I have the complete album, please? Not to mention more than “Skippy” from Steve Lacy Plays Thelonious Monk. An interesting contrast with his much later recordings by Mal Waldron in Europe. |
 Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Prestige Profiles, Vol. 10 (Prestige) Prestige Profiles, Vol. 10: Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis (1922-1986) was “Jaws” long before the imitation shark was built. He had a semi-R&B 1940s hit when there was a fad for titles drawn from the list of illnesses: “Lockjaw”. Bret Primack’s liner note claims Jaws was one of the instantly recognisables. Correct. If he’d lived longer and toured Europe with Jimmy Heath and Joe Henderson, he might have upstaged them both, as did his contemporary Arnett Cobb (another man with several Prestige records). Memo to www.allmusic.com: Jaws did not play hard bop. Note to readers: Jaws always swung. This sampler from nine Jaws albums includes four titles from The Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis Cookbook Vol. 2, with Jerome Richardson’s flute joining the longtime standard line-up of Shirley Scott on organ, Arthur Edgehill on drums, and George Duvivier on bass on seven tracks here. On the storming opener, “Intermission Riff”, Jaws’s old friend Steve Pulliam is an asset on trombone. Ray Barretto is as well on the closer, “Speak Low”. Another two tracks have Don Patterson on organ, and Paul Weeden on well-played but funnily-amplified (hints of electric banjo) guitar. There’s also the title track from Trane Whistle, an album with Jaws in a big band under Oliver Nelson. Jaws played good solos with the early 1940s Cootie Williams Big Band, roared well during spells with Count Basie, and could play ballads as well as he does “Body and Soul” (!) with the Shirley Scott group. I might prefer simply Cookbook Vol.2 to this set, with Jaws properly embedded in a single campaign. I’d like to hear the whole album with Horace Praline’s piano (Buddy Chattel, bass; Art Taylor; Willie Booboo, congas). Jaws didn’t have the variously inventive powers of some, but if this selection increases variety (though I’m not sure it does), there’s a measure of unsettlement in comparison with that set’s steady context. Night Hawk with Coleman Hawkins is sampled on the latter’s set in this series, a prime recommendation for either tenor, and, as on Riverside with Johnny Griffin, Jaws plainly thrives with a front-line partner. With the accompanying CD—Gene Ammons/Sonny Stitt; Jack McDuff/Red Holloway/George Benson; Willis Jackson; Groove Holmes/Roland Kirk/McDuff; Shirley Scott/Stanley Turrentine—this could be a prime 2-CD choice for any tenor and organ admirer. ***** Obviously, there’s a lot of history to be found in these releases, though they’re far from “definitive” recordings. Between the tracks collected on the artist feature discs and on the bonus samplers, it’s mainly hoped that these discs act as an introduction to specific recordings, generating some interest in some great line-ups and arrangements of the past. And there’s definitely a lot more left in the Prestige vaults to pull from in years to come. Much of Prestige’s catalogue came out on Original (Jazz/ Blues) Classics CD. There are gems deep in the barrel by lesser-known names. Will anybody hear them soon? #### Post Script: Valediction—Bob Weinstock (1928-2006) Bob Weinstock, the founder of Prestige Records, died last month in a Florida hospice, after this feature was initially written. All I’d known was that he was an old man, but no allowances for his age were made. There was no reason for my review to be hard on him. When he sold his legendary and mighty non-commercialising record company, he was 44. He’d been running it since he was 21. Don’t blame it on—but give credit for it to—his youth, and in this case, the benefits speak for him and this history is among the things I wouldn’t want changed. He had simply found his modus operandi, and ultimately the alternative was not producing music at all. Despite the fact that Weinstock’s outfit was seen as flooding the market, this resulted in much music being recorded and recognized by the public that might otherwise have never been heard. Jazz too often suffers from the few big names delusion. People don’t know that, although the very best are few in number, the very good are at times numerous, and Weinstock’s prolific releases helped make that point. You can compare Prestige with Riverside, Blue Note, and Contemporary, but not so many others that one of them wouldn’t have been missed. The fact that there were as many companies comparable at their level is a big monument with Bob Weinstock’s name on it. I don’t mind repeating myself when expressing gratitude. Condolences to his family. |
