I dedicate this article to the British sometime jazz critic Peter Russell, now celebrating his 80th birthday. He was a teacher to many after opening up his jazz mail order shop in Plymouth, England, and he continued to write a fascinating miscellany of comments in the catalogue he updated regularly over the years, keeping all but a few early pages in print and reissuing the whole set now and then as a loose-bound volume.
Pete (I never met the man, but his attention remained personal) was a jazz enthusiast of old, much like Bob Weinstock, who started producing shellac discs in 1949. That was only the first step on Weinstock’s road to founding the Prestige recording company — the beginning of a maybe 15-year rise, before external factors precipitated a decline in the late 1970s. The company was sold to a bigger organisation in 1971, things having become ropey in the business (just as now, but for other reasons), so that some wonderful old Prestige vinyl issues I own carry the provisional name Status on their labels. I’m just glad they ever existed.
After the sale, a fair proportion of Prestige’s vast list came out on the Fantasy label, in several different presentations (vinyl twofers combining sometimes three LPs, sometimes selections from several). CDs can still be found on the Original Jazz Classics label, along with recordings from other independents that found a (capital F) real Fantasy home. More recently, Fantasy was absorbed by jazz publishing giant Concord Records, who decided to restore much the Prestige vault to its original name. And in a move designed to celebrate the return of Prestige, the label has gathered various material from its original active years as recorded by ten of its most famous artists, compiled them into a “profiles” series, and packaged them with bonus samplers reflecting similar works from the Prestige vaults.
If I say that the present set is fairly representative of what Mr. Weinstock seems to have initially had in mind, or hoped for, I have to call it a catalogue of sometimes unsurpassed performances by (often very) young musicians who became even more interesting as his company grew. I say unsurpassed because some of them were certainly equaled by productions from other enthusiasts, such as Messrs. Lion and Wolff, who’d started Blue Note 10 years before, premiering the later Prestige artist Thelonious Monk, subsequently Jackie McLean and Sonny Rollins, and quite a few others who moved to Prestige. Lester Koenig started Contemporary, while Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer founded Riverside in the 1950s, to whom Monk went from Prestige. Et cetera.
Riverside also ran into a storm in the late 1960s, but only after the now-defunct English independent Transatlantic (on the XTRA label) had debuted in Europe rather more than just those Prestige releases by the famous — not least Sonny Rollins’s Saxophone Colossus — as franchised by the biggie EMI. Prohibitive rates of tax and duty made imported records very pricey in UK shops, or from the mail order outlets some Americans also patronised (Pete was a major information source for many under American circumstances). The only thing that changed in that situation was British tax. As soon as it had been reformed, with promises of much lower prices, an oil crisis restored the old high prices by jacking up the cost of vinyl. Dammit!
A vast stack of Prestige vinyl filled an area of the old Mole Jazz shop at London’s King’s Cross a few years back; I’m not sure from whence it came. Though broke at the time, I found the exploration fascinating. What had become established as Prestige began, after a while, to — not exactly diversify — but to issue recordings on sub-genre labels: Swingville for the musicians represented briefly on the sampler accompanying the Coleman Hawkins Profile in this first batch; Moodsville, featuring Hawkins at less than his most exciting, and others in more mellow but not sell-out performances. Better to pay real musicians than be forced to pander on a model all too well described in anti-utopian satires.
For the New Jazz label, Weinstock’s first publishing endeavor, see the Eric Dolphy Profile. Bluesville speaks for itself (although the little blurb in the liners to these sets errs in calling Gary Davis a blues legend… he’d recorded two blues numbers in 1933, but usually performed gospel, though he was at times induced to play the Carolina guitar ragtime that was the basis of his sanctified accompaniments). Some of Bluesville’s blues band recordings were overproduced, and lacking in fire, although accessible documentation of some country blues performers and songsters (Pink Anderson) owes everything to Prestige.
Overproduced the jazz recordings weren’t. Sometimes a 1930s star hornman just played a routine set with rhythm, and with exceptions where musicians were on fire with something new, or were themselves well organised, or the occasional cases of serious planning, there were times when steam wasn’t raised to a proper level. Other than those involving the big names represented in this first Profiles list, Prestige did produce an impressive range, if not a huge number, of special recordings, such as Tommy Flanagan on piano with Pee Wee Russell’s unique clarinet in partnership with Buck Clayton, and a set with Dick Wellstood and Fats Waller’s musicians, sharing an LP with the pianist Cliff Jackson and 1920s veterans. The lately departed Al Casey was recorded in a classic set on acoustic guitar. A few more will be mentioned below.
The new management’s issue of the present series as Profiles rather than Best-Ofs is commendable, let alone the bonus CD inclusion of selected single items from the depths of the vaults with each main disc. Best-Ofs are issues which commonly fail to actually be the best of, and when they don’t fail in that, they can at times turn out as ill-sorted programmes planned on paper without thought to how it would sound to listen to these various tracks together. And the best what of? Best album? Remarket Kind of Blue as the “Best Of” Miles Davis? A Best of Miles Davis would have to draw on several companies’ work, including Blue Note and Columbia, and to pretend that title could apply to Prestige’s Davis list is horribly inaccurate. It wasn’t Bob Weinstock’s fault that he could only record Davis for a few years out of a career that spanned decades. I don’t have a high opinion of the decision to prepare and market these types of disc as Best Ofs, especially given that Davis, like John Coltrane and others, not only moved into making different music, but different music that earlier listeners disliked strongly (neither the artist, nor the customer, nor indeed many the company, is always right). These are problems beyond mere marketing, but it does matter what gets marketed. However, this hardly counts in the case of Prestige, who weren’t around for long enough with enough money to have artists’ catalogs with quite those problems.
Also, and too often, someone looking for the sort of general representation which might unrealistically be expected of a Best Of is, well, just after the wrong thing. One of an artist’s best albums might be the optimal choice for a beginner or for someone not ambitious enough to move beyond a beginner stage. Expecting a kind of overall summary is simply not possible. Buy one of the good ones — why would you need a mixture?
The fact is, the great artists produced handfuls of great complete albums, and didn’t need collections to prove their worth. Regardless of the number of albums he has produced, Sonny Rollins never needed to scrape together a few items in order to fill a whole album. Other musicians’ discographies have sometimes, however, been lumbered with whole sessions whose sole merit consisted in having got them paid. They’d already done the same thing several times on disc. With other musicians, we can only wish they’d had the chances to repeat themselves on record. But on to the Profiles!
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Prestige Profiles, Vol. 1: Miles Davis As stated above, there’s no way to succinctly collect a “best of” Miles Davis. And anyway, all the Miles from the 1953-56 period can be had in a big box of all the man’s Prestige recordings. The English critic John Postage long ago wrote an impressive essay on what he called the St. Louis trumpet style, represented by Joe Thomas (whom Prestige recorded), and Clark Terry, and Miles, but represented in its first little-recorded manifestation by Dewey Jackson. An album of Jackson’s work, recorded I think after this Miles set, should be due from Denmark in the near future. Regardless, Miles Davis might be one of the last musicians to appear and become famous above a certain level (far above it, too!) on the basis of a regional style. The opener here is “A Night in Tunisia”, with unusual timing in the melody statement, Philly Joe Jones on drums, and Oscar Pettiford (greatest of the day) on bass; the only quartet track in the set. The pianist is Red Garland, who, as the notes say, was doing the Ahmad Jamal thing Mr. Davis wanted him to do by the time they recorded “Surrey with the Fringe on Top”. Then come another three titles with Paul Chambers and Philly Joe that I don’t need to write any more about. Suffice to say, the tenorist’s name is Coltrane. If your collection is without any Miles Davis of this period, and you’re in search of one nice CD from then, you might be further encouraged to pick this one up by the second disc sampler. Here, the offering is selections by a Chet Baker Quintet, Sonny Rollins with MJQ, Kinny Dorham with Tommy Flanagan from the lauded Quiet Kenny, Davis’s sometime mate Gil Evans’s so-refined but good-natured “Jambangle”, Steve Lacy and Jimmy Cleveland (trombone), Coltrane’s “Traneing In”, and a title from an Art Farmer/Donald Byrd two-trumpeter set. |
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Prestige Profiles, Vol. 2: Red Garland Red Garland has his own Profile, culled from his numerous quintet recordings with Coltrane and Donald Byrd (Art Taylor, George Joyner on bass), or Oliver Nelson and Richard Williams (Charlie Persip, Peck Morrison on bass). Ira Gitler contributes an interesting memoir about the various Red Garland quintets that performed live gigs at the time, Coltrane’s spells with Monk, and Garland and Coltrane’s coming and going from Miles Davis’s band. Donald Byrd played trumpet on the studio dates with Coltrane, producing a relaxed “Billie’s Bounce”, Ellington’s “Solitude” with Garland’s locked hands opening, and nice ballad solos from Byrd and Coltrane — who, when not blowing hard, avoided overdrive and played with more flexibility. It’s something of a relief to hear Garland’s blurry version of Bud Powell opening “Soft Winds” after the block chords solo toward the end of “Solitude”. There’s more block-chording in the latter title, which has an OK tenor solo from Nelson and lively playing from the underappreciated Williams. Then, Garland opens his “Soul Junction” with playing that wouldn’t have been out of place on a late 1940s California blues record — before the block-chord imitation of Ahmad Jamal that Davis (deduct a penalty point) encouraged Garland to play — and the bassist toils to prevent the seven minutes of albeit impeccable slow blues choruses from declining into background music. He fails. Fragments of Avery Parrish’s “After Hours” are quoted in the course of Coltrane’s solo. Nothing that startling, but while “On Green Dolphin Street” with Nelson and Williams, and Tadd Dameron’s “Our Delight” with Byrd and Coltrane, are fair enough, they bring to mind Prestige’s occasional tendency to flood the market with routine, workmanlike sessions of yet more of the same old thing. Garland recorded so much for the label, and in trio, it might have seemed like a good idea to contemplate a selection of his quintet recordings. Gradually, but increasingly quickly, it becomes clear that it wasn’t. David Marchese’s admirable And Garland becomes wearying, so that on hearing the usually delightful Coleman Hawkins run through Billy Taylor’s “Mambo Inn” on the sampler, it’s surprising to find it instantly even duller than Garland’s own CD became. I could get to dislike a lot of Garland. “Blues by Five” is a classic by the Miles Davis band with Coltrane — and Garland. God bless Paul Chambers and Philly Joe for the life in it! “Eclypso” is, I believe, a Tommy Flanagan tune, from a date sampled on the Kenny Burrell Profile, with yet more Coltrane (albeit in better form than on the Garland CD). Even the early “Blue Monk” from its composer can’t lift a besetting gloom. There’s Mose Allison, far from Parchman Farm, “Groovin’ High” in piano trio, and the finesse of Ray Bryant’s cunningly titled “Blues Changes”. The special interest of an eighth title (Cedar Walton’s “Ugetsu”) is that it’s not even mentioned in any of the paperwork. The pianist is very interesting. At least he’s not Red Garland, whose Quintets CD I have by now decided I won’t listen to again. Oh, dear! |
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Prestige Profiles, Vol. 3: Sonny Rollins Sonny Rollins himself needs little comment. His Profile opens with “St. Thomas”, a Caribbean theme and one of his most famously uplifting, with Tommy Flanagan, Julius Watkins, and Max Roach on drums. “More Than You Know” has Art Taylor on drums, with Tommy Potter on bass, and Monk playing a wondrous long ballad solo, not let down by Rollins’s sequel to it. On “I Feel a Song Coming On”, the pianist is the undervalued Richie Powell, whose older brother Bud was so jealous that Jackie McLean had to provide an alibi to cover the times Richie was at piano lessons. Richie was killed in the same car crash almost fifty years ago that took the life of the trumpeter on this date, Clifford Brown, who was getting better and better at the time of his death (as can be heard from a tape of the gig after which he died on the Pennsylvania turnpike). George Morrow was the regular bassist in this Max Roach band, which I can’t commend too highly, and turns up on a performance of “My Ideal” with the questionable asset of Earl Coleman’s vocal and the undoubted one of another later Copenhagen resident, Kenny Drew, on piano. “On a Slow Boat to China” is another Rollins classic, one of several show tunes suited to Rollins’s good humoured irony and affection. Morrow and Roach are on the more usual jazz vehicle; Drew, Percy Heath, and Taylor are on “It’s All Right with Me”, with Ray Bryant on piano. John Lewis is, of course, on the Rollins-with-MJQ performance of “In a Sentimental Mood”. “Moritat” is from the same set as “St. Thomas”, the appropriately titled Saxophone Colossus album. Other folks call the tune “Mack the Knife”. Rollins’s own blues “Mambo Bounce” is with again with Percy H., Taylor, and Drew, whose piano sings! Tenor Madness was a two-tenor set with Garland, Chambers, and Philly Joe, with Coltrane spinning phrases almost in emulation of Rollins, who relaxes things after taking over on the title track here. Keep in mind; this is only one phase of the Rollins career: 1951-56. Nothing shallow, and a high road to a good mood. This time, the little sampler package begins with Davis’s “Oleo” from 1954, with Rollins, Monk, Percy Heath, and Kenny Clarke. Horace Silver alternates on piano with Monk, whose “Think of Me” has Rollins, the French horn of Julius Watkins, Percy Heath, and Art Blakey. I can’t be bothered looking up details of the excellent men with Clifford Brown on “Lover Come Bak to Me”, but Curtis Fuller and Ray Bryant are in the company of Benny Golson, though I do not know who’s with Dexter Gordon on “Airegin”. Richard Williams shows his worth on trumpet with Oliver Nelson on “March On, March On” from the Screamin’ the Blues album. Nelson and Eric Dolphy (wow!) solo, while Richard Wyands turns up on piano with Duvivier and Haynes. The closer seems to have been adapted from early Count Basie, with the four tenors of Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Hank Mobley, and John Coltrane playing a passage presumably scored by Cohn: “Tenor Conclave”, from the 1956 album of the same name. |
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Prestige Profiles, Vol. 4: Coleman Hawkins Coleman Hawkins certainly made some routine recordings for Prestige, especially the Moodsville imprint. Not among them is the set with Flanagan in a nice band with Joe Thomas of St. Louis on trumpet, Vic Dickenson on trombone, and stalwarts of the Swingville label Wendell Marshall (ex-Ellington) on bass and Osie Johnson drums. On “I’m Beginning to See the Light”, Thomas is lyrical, and Dickenson sardonic with throwaway quotes. On the other hand, “Greensleeves” has had a mixed reception. Hawkins was, it seems, so taken with the tune when he heard Bryant rattle through it while warming up that he mugged up on it in the studio and recorded it as an emotionally unrestrained slow ballad. Burrell and Ray Bryant make nice accompanying noises. On Jerry Valentine’s arrangement of “Since I Fell for You”, Jerome Richardson plays brassy alto before the old man blazes in, and Idrees Sulieman plays trumpet lead in a band with Pepper Adams on baritone. It’s all right. Other than “In a Mellow Tone”, from the amazing Night Hawk album with Lockjaw Davis, the rest of the set is Hawkins plus rhythm. With Flanagan, Marshall, and Osie J., “I’ll Get By” is taken at a steady mid-tempo with lightened tone (for Moodsville), while “Soul Blues” has Ray Bryant in his Me and the Blues mode, and Kenny Burrell duets with Hawkins before the tenor solo. On “I’ll Never Be the Same”, Hawkins is light and dreamy, Ron Carter’s bass and Andrew Cyrille’s drums produce momentum, and Burrell comes in on good form. Ronell Bright wasn’t the best-known pianist (an old album of his for Savoy is on CD), but he maintains the mood just as Cyrille’s cymbal-blows add lift now and then. Very nice. “The Sweetest Sounds” has Flanagan, Major Holley, and Hawkins’s usual drummer of the time, Eddie Locke, brisk but gentle. With Garland, Watkins, and Specs Wright on drums, “I Want to Be Loved” is breathier than the other ballad titles, and Garland mostly keeps to a sort of Hank Jones style. The last two titles are with Flanagan, Holley, and Locke. “Make Someone Happy” has an ingenious recasting of the theme; the playing is breathtaking in its mastery, the brief performance making the best of an unprepossessing tune. Very superior mood music is also represented by “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, no relation to the Hawk Eyes album (not represented here) with Charlie Shavers on trumpet and one of the best Hawkins albums for any label. This selection’s unspectacular, but well listenable. The accompanying sampler has a lot of interesting things, beginning with a sample from a four tenor jam with Hawkins, Lockjaw Davis, Buddy Tate, and Arnett Cobb. More preparation than the typical Prestige norm was involved in the Benny Carter set with Ben Webster, Barney Bigard (a rare mainstream date for the ex-Ellington clarinetist), and (not named) the trumpeter Shorty Sherock, from deep in the Prestige archives. Gene Ammons recorded several quartet albums for Prestige, likewise Illinois Jacquet, but one of the truly interesting sets was by Doc Cheatham with the Ellingtonian St. Louis trumpeter Harold “Shorty” Baker, a great lyrical player who died aged only 53. This set was a legendary rare Cheatham appearance on disc before he came to the fore in his seventies and eighties, if not nineties. Buck Clayton and Buddy Tate recorded two excellent albums for Swingville, which are featured elsewhere in this series. Prestige even recorded Tate’s celebrity Club Orchestra, whose paying job was to play while ladies undressed. That band was cherished by Tate’s contemporaries as a working band they could sit in with. I can’t really complain about a two-tenor jam with Stan Getz and Zoot Sims from a loose Woody Herman-associated set, or the early Prestige recording, from 78 rpm, of Wardell Gray’s “Twisted”, though there was room instead for more of the Swingville list. |
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Prestige Profiles, Vol. 5: Eric Dolphy The Eric Dolphy Profile — he too has a complete Prestige recordings boxed set — opens with a four-stars five-star quartet: Georges Duvivier on bass, Ron Carter on Cello, Roy Haynes on drums. Hear the bassist, bowing with Carter’s solo, and soloing himself. Dolphy’s on alto on this new thing sort of theme titled “Out There”. Roy Haynes is back on “On Green Dolphin Street”, Freddie Hubbard brilliant at that time. The liner note’s reference to Dolphy’s straining into a newer thing against a standard bebop rhythm section is rubbished by reference to George Tucker’s sometimes riffing bass, providing a perfect pulse, and Jaki Byard. Byard played like nobody else, especially on the conclusion, and always anything but “standard”. He’s on “Far Cry”, where the tragically short-lived Booker Little takes the opening solo on trumpet. He makes it speak. Dolphy solos on alto on a harmonic extension Byard keeps suggesting in his piano solo. Carter’s the bassist. Then we’re back to the quartet of the first title. On “Serene”, Dolphy does his wild alto thing on bass clarinet. Having bowed in unison in the theme statement, Carter joins in plucked duet with Duvivier after the bassist’s solo. Dolphy sat in with older men in Harlem, and when the veteran Cap Handy brought his alto out of New Orleans a couple of years after Dolphy’s horrifyingly early death in a diabetic coma, parallels were attempted. Reasonably. Dolphy’s harmonic complexity and far-outness had a primal jazz voice. “Miss Ann” brings back the Booker Little quintet, with Little inspired, Byard exercising his yen for the crazy. “Fire Waltz” has the unmistakable piano of Mal Waldron, who later continued the wonderful things he did on further records for Prestige. Dolphy’s duly economical with notes in his low-register alto solo, even implying Dexter Gordon. But isn’t that tenor rather than a trumpet? Yes. Did Richard Davis solo twice, the first time sounding like a cello, with incredible virtuosity? No. This “Fire Waltz” isn’t the one listed. Not Little… Booker Ervin was on tenor three weeks before the “Fire Waltz” supposedly here. Ron Carter played cello, and the bassist who doesn’t sound like Richard Davis was Joe Benjamin. And this CD has already been out as The Best of Eric Dolphy? It ain’t. The liner note seems to be describing the track listed on paper, rather than this excellent performance, which can also be heard, but duly scheduled, on the sampler included with the John Coltrane Profile. Prestige faux pas times two! “G.W.” is named for the very lively, recently recorded Gerald Wilson, something of a mentor to Dolphy (who came from the West Coast). Dolphy’s alto is more like extended bebop, Hubbard impressive (same date as “On Green Dolphin Street”), and Byard also plays in standard bebop manner, with Tucker propelling things, until the pianist gives both his hands free rein and they do the things only his hands ever did. On Byard’s several mightily impressive Prestige albums, he was said by several early reviewers to be able to sound like anybody else when he chose, without having a voice of his own. What were these people listening for when they wrote such nonsense about that most individual pianist, who sounded like himself by playing with unparalleled variety? “Glad to Be Unhappy” is the one representation here of Dolphy’s flute, recorded with Scandinavian rhythm in a students’ club in Copenhagen. There’s even a hint of oboe in his introduction, and he has a more dug-in sound than is usual on the instrument. The rhythm has to work to play quietly. The final twenty-eight minutes are taken up by two titles from the Five Spot. Richard Davis, lately on the Thad Jones tribute recording, solos into the cello register on bass. Little is here, too, with Ed Blackwell on drums. On “Booker’s Waltz”, Little solos at length, taking long pauses a couple of times while the rhythm section labours, and after three minutes it’s Dolphy’s bass clarinet. This was not, I’m sure, the very best of Eric Dolphy. I’d want “245”, and that unaccompanied bass clarinet solo from Denmark. It doesn’t mean this isn’t a nice record, but it could have had stronger appeal to listeners less curious about Prestige’s New Jazz list. Byard’s instantly recognisable on the sampler, in the tenorist Booker Ervin’s “A Lunar Tune” from The Space Book, stunning, with terrific drumming. Who? Ervin and Byard distinguished some wonderful Mingus recordings. Prestige did them both proud! “Blue 7” is from Sonny Rollins’s Saxophone Colossus album (personnel on the Rollins Profile). Coltrane’s “Bakai” has a solo from Pepper Adams, but the trumpet contributions are only in ensemble and I can’t recognise whoever it is. It’s not hard to recognise who’s playing on “Blues for the Orient”: who but Yusef Lateef used oboe? Apart from the Oriental intro, this is a standard blues performance distinguished by appreciation of special qualities of the oboe. Don Cherry and Steve Lacy are surpassingly oblique with bass and drums on Monk’s “Evidence”. Don Ellis was a cult figure who later ran a very big band, and used weird time signatures and rock effects which seem new now. He also had a four-valve trumpet to facilitate playing quarter-tones, but before that he worked with Byard on very musical, very under control avant-garde experimental music which never dated. To round off a very interesting sampler, there’s Ron Carter’s cello again, and Dolphy playing bass clarinet at least as interestingly as on anything on the CD dedicated to just him, plus some nice Waldron with Duvivier on bass and Charlie Persip drums. |
Jackie McLean, John Coltrane and more.
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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