Lucky Thompson & Gérard Dave Pochonet All Stars (Swing 1956)

(Un) Happy go lucky.

Personnel

Lucky Thompson (tenor saxophone), Jo Hrasko (alto saxophone), Marcel Hrasko (baritone saxophone), “Sir” John Peter (Jean-Pierre Sassoon, guitar), André Pacquinot, Charles Verstraete (trombone), Christian Bellest, Fernand Verstraete (trumpet), Benoit Quersin (bass), Gérard “Dave” Pochonet (drums)

Recorded

on April 17 & May 29 in Paris

Released

as Swing LDM 30.039 in 1956

Track listing

Side A: Quick As A Flash / Parisian Knight / Street Scene / Angel Eyes / To You Dear One / But Not Tonight / Side B: A Distant Sound / Once Upon A Time / Still Waters / Theme For A Brown Rose / A Sunkissed Rose / Portrait Of Django

Ain’t nobody like Eli “Lucky” Thompson, whose aim in life was to blow sweet ‘n’ pretty regardless of circumstances in life and music, a rose that grew out of concrete, a sunflower amongst nettles.

His own man in the continuous flux of jazz music, the saxophonist, great tenor player and early innovator on soprano, was as prime dot in the connection from swing to bop, that interesting period of classic jazz marked by a tension between entertainment and solipsism, even beats and idiosyncrasy, reefer and smack, old guard and new breed, perhaps too simply put but broadly accurate.

For a guy like Thompson, Columbia, South-Carolina-born, Detroit, Michigan-raised, who played in the Lionel Hampton, Billy Eckstine Count Basie and Stan Kenton bands, with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Milt Jackson, his recording career as a leader was erratic, though littered with plenty gems. And mind you, he appeared on game-changing albums by Thelonious Monk (Genius Of Modern Music Volume 2) and Miles Davis (Walkin’).

One gets the impression that Thompson was a sensitive guy, based on his views on the malicious practices in the jazz business (that he expressed with his typically mellow, humble voice in the introduction of his 1961 Candid album Lord Lord Am I Ever Gonna Know?) and on the latter stages of his life, when he all but disappeared in the 1970’s and even led a homeless life in Seattle in the 1990’s.

Like many of his contemporaries, Thompson found himself in France in the 1950’s and if anything this seems to be a fulfilling period of admiration by the jazz-loving Frenchmen. He enjoyed very productive years in 1956-57, playing with the cream of the French crop, which had been early in picking up on the bebop giants in the 1940’s and had grown into a bunch of high-quality players.

I’ve been enamored by Thompson’s French records ever since I found a 7inch featuring guitarist Jean-Pierre Sassoon many years ago, see below. I’m counting a total of six albums featuring French stalwarts as pianists Martial Solal and Henri Renaud.

That’s 7inch plus 4 LP’s minus the above-shown subject of today, plus the inevitable, veritably and typically topnotch compilation CD from Fresh Sound Records, which also includes pianist and singer Sammy Price’s elusive Avec Lucky Thompson LP, you still with me or does this sound, just like they said about bebop, like Chinese algebra? Raise a finger or a trust fund for confused Flophouse fans if it does. (to add to the pleasant confusion of record collecting, & GPQ Vol. 1 was reissued in the USA immediately by Dawn, & GPAS Vol. 2 by Transition and by Xanadu as Brown Rose in 1985)

Whether you say it in Mandarin, French, English or Dutch, it’s evident you’ll need to state that Lucky seemed to be happy and on a lucky streak. All albums feature small and big ensembles with guys on the same wavelength and Thompson swings suavely and flexibly on sets of tightly arranged standards and original tunes. The one with Martial Solal, & Gérard Pochonet Et Son Quartette Vol.1, gives Thompson ample time to stretch out, it’s a very good one though there’s nothing wrong with the big ensemble albums with shorter tunes, notably Vol.2. This album also features Solal, drummer Gérard Pochonet, guitarist Jean-Pierre Sasson and, among others, curiously, two sets of brothers, alto and baritone saxophonists Jo and Marcel Hrasko and trumpeter and trombonist Fernand and Charles Verstraete. It’s all in the family.

You can’t but be helpless against Lucky’s sensuous notes of joy and sorrow, phrased like he didn’t want to put too much bite on them, like he wanted it to be like breathing, soft as velvet, like a language that doesn’t needs words to be understood. Not to be mistaken for a sentimental journey, a fest of marshmallows and candy canes, no, there’s also the murmur of the after hours juke joint in Kansas City to Lucky’s tone and style and the French, in 1956, understood this very well, spurring him on with elegance and verve.

There is, as they say, something for everyone, mid-tempo swing, fast burners, bittersweet ballads, all packaged in a lush big band sound, featuring excellent little tastes of Solal – The Parisian Knight – and Sasson – Portrait Of Django – and many fine moments of Thompson, immaculate balladeer of Angel Eyes and bop-ish swinger of Still Waters.

You love Lucky Thompson like you love Hank Mobley, admiring his one-of-a-kind spin on what went before, his crafting of what is simultaneously mellow and smoky, and good to the ear and heart.

Lucky Thompson passed away in 2005 in Seattle.

Listen a.o. to & Gérard Dave Pochonet All Stars on In Paris on Fresh Sound below:

Richard Holmes & Gene Ammons Groovin’ With Jug (Pacific Jazz 1961)

Good good good good vibrations.

Personnel

Richard “Groove” Holmes (organ), Gene Ammons (tenor saxophone), Gene Edwards (guitar), Leroy Henderson (drums)

Recorded

on August 15, 1961 at The Black Orchid, NYC

Released

as PJ 32 in 1961

Track listing

Side A: Good Vibrations / Willow Weep For Me / Juggin’ Around / Side B: Groovin’ With Jug / Morris The Minor / Hey You, What’s That?

The Camden, New Jersey-born and raised Richard “Groove” Holmes hit his stride in Los Angeles in the early 1960’s, found a place in the Pacific Jazz roster as the prime organist and led the houseband at the Black Orchid club, accompanying various incoming jazz luminaries. In 1961, Gene Ammons was in town and quick-witted cats in the biz had already fixed a few dates before the tenor saxophonist had landed on the Coast from Chicago.

Small wonder. You don’t let up the chance to book “Jug”. Catch him while you can. Ammons, son of boogiewoogie great Albert Ammons, steeped in bop, swing, r&b, was a people’s champion whose soulful and earthy style and big, meaty sound fell on good soil, second only as far as popularity in the jukebox and chitlin’ market went to organist Jimmy Smith, enjoying hits in the 1950’s like My Foolish Heart, Exactly Like You and Blues Up And Down with Sonny Stitt.

He’d had a great run of blowing sessions on Prestige in the late 1950’s with John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, Donald Byrd, Mal Waldron and other assorted young lions. But he’d also had his share of trouble, having done time in jail for possession of narcotics from 1958 to 1960. Boss Tenor from 1960 was a high-quality return to success. Unfortunately, a new jail sentence would put him off the street and the scene from 1962 to 1969.

Groove Holmes was at the start of his recording career. His debut on Pacific Jazz in 1960, “Groove”, was a beautiful, sassy collaboration with Ben Webster and Les McCann, a perennial Flophouse Favorite.

An equally impromptu session like “Groove” (which was put together as a side project to a Les McCann Sings date), Groovin’ With Jug shows no sign of nerves on the part of Richard “Groove” Holmes, nor on the part of his cookin’ rhythm section of Gene Edwards on guitar and Leroy Henderson on drums. Actually, the studio session preceded the live gig, an afternoon job as opposed to the late night performance at The Black Orchid.

It’s a sassy session with catchy blues lines by Gene Ammons and Groove Holmes, a cookin’ affair, The Boss blowing hot and steamy phrases one after another and another, and Groove’s band jumpin’ the blues in most sprightly manner. But it’s the live performance that grabs attention, all participants more loose and relaxed and playing off the exultant mood of the audience. Again, blues all around, and Jug and Groove take care of business, uptempo (Frank Foster’s flag-waver Juggin’ Around), mid-tempo (Art Farmer’s Good Vibrations) and slow tempo (Ann Ronell’s evergreen Willow Weep For Me).

The Boss makes everybody feel okay, he’s familiar, like dad who gives you a pat on the head, or, yes, like the pater familias who threatens to kick you in the ass if you come home late, like the preacher behind the pulpit, and the barber who knows all the inside scoops. He’s one of us. How? The feeling of his voice, brimming with trademark blues patterns and hoots and hollers. The no-frills lines, slight hints of bebop, full of the blues, firm but flexible, clichés but Jug’s clichés, the Big Sound, a steamship coming in from the fog, imposing sight.

Groove Holmes’s accompaniment is subtly swinging, he takes care not to overpower Jug, and he stretches out on the blues with zest and flair. The CD reissue presented two bonus tracks, Exactly Like You and Hittin’ The Jug. Enough material to complete a full-length live LP. Missed opportunity? What do you think? I’m not a fan of different vibes on one piece of wax.

At any rate, can’t go wrong with Jug and Groove’s band. They got the feelin’!

John the Baptist

JOHN RUOCCO – RIP

American reed maestro John Ruocco sadly passed away on Wednesday, May 21 in The Hague. He was 72 years old. The New Haven, Connecticut-born saxophonist and clarinetist migrated to Europe in the early 1980’s, initially teaching at the Conservatory of Liėge in Belgium from 1981-85, then landing a spot at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in The Netherlands in 1987. He taught reeds and combo ever since and led the royal big band since the early 1990’s.

Ruocco was well-loved in the international jazz realm. The Hague jazz community mourns one of its most unique figureheads. It is not at a loss for words, crowding social media with bittersweet memories and homages. Ruocco was admired for his vast knowledge, uncompromising critical opinions, caustic wit and quirky wisdom. A mentor to myriad Dutch and international jazz artists.

Ruocco chose to live mainly out of the limelight, a humble touch of style that rather obscured his tremendous capabilities. Ruocco played with Dizzy Gillespie, Art Farmer, Toots Thielemans, Philip Catherine, Barry Harris and many others. On clarinet, Ruocco was among the best of his generation. Not to mention an authority on stage.

Ruocco recorded sporadically, among others with Peter Herbolzheimer, Hein van der Geyn, Ricardo del Fra, John Abercrombie, Eric Ineke, David Liebman, Philippe Aerts and Richard Rousselet.

Lieb Plays The Beatles is a particular favorite of Flophouse, a collaboration of rare sensitivity and creativity also featuring Marius Beets and Eric Ineke. John Ruocco will be sorely missed.

A Sullivan Is A Something Thing

SULLIVAN FORTNER – Star pianist plays in Porgy & Bess in Terneuzen on May 21.

Sullivan Fortner makes a special solo appearance at Porgy & Bess in Terneuzen on Wednesday, May 21. See below.

https://www.porgyenbess.nl/productie/sullivan-fortner/

38-year-old Sullivan Fortner grew up in Louisiana and New Orleans and made his mark in the jazz world as one of the new stars on piano, working with luminaries Cécile McLoren Salvant, Joe Farnsworth, Fred Hersh and Peter Bernstein. He’s a collaborator of hip contemporaries as trumpeter Theo Croker and hiphopper Kassa Overal.

He played in Roy Hargrove’s band for seven years. (three times in Porgy  Bess) His lively and angular playing style oozes Thelonious Monk and Jaki Byard. Jubilance, the Spanish tinge and a strong left hand piano groove might all be defined as typically New Orleans. Fortner displays those assets in convincing fashion, while subtly displaying a knowledge of classical composition.

I had the pleasure of seeing him perform two months ago at Bimhuis in Amsterdam. His versatility, deeply rooted style, and spontaneous creativity were striking.

In my interview with Fortner for Jazzism last year, he said that it is his desire to play with the innocence of a child. Fortner: “We do play games as adults. But these are often about money and competition. It is very intriguing to see how children play. I’ve been observing the children in my family for a long time. See how a toddler takes a pen and paper and manipulates those objects in various ways. In its mouth. On the wall. When it does draw, it dryly states that its mysterious scrawl is a portrait of momma. This is all a game, free and easy. It’s playing for the sake of fun.”

He also made a brutally honest confession. “I’m always very nervous. At every gig, at every moment in the studio. Will this be the day that I’ll fall flat on my face? That everybody realizes that I’m really not that very good? You might say that I’m quite a paranoid freak! After a performance or release, it’s waiting for the judges. I always immediately wonder what people think was good or bad about it.”

Buck him up a bit at Porgy & Bess!

Franck Amsallem The Summer Knows (un été 42) (Continuo 2025)

NEW RELEASE – FRANCK AMSALLEM.

Personnel

Franck Amsallem (piano), David Wong (bass), Kush Abadey (drums)

Recorded

on June 18,  2024 at Samurai Studios, NYC

Released

as Continuo Jazz CC777.841 in 2025

Track listing

Blue Gardenia / La Chanson d’Helene / Unforgettable / You Won’t Forget Me / The Summer Knows (un été 42) / Agrigento / Cotton Trails / It Never Was You / Morning Star / Disclosure

If you feel like you’re listening to music that is similar to that of personalities like Hank Jones or Benny Green, you know you’re in for a treat. Immaculate taste. Logical architecture of lines. Space between those lines. Franck Amsallem, past associate of Gerry Mulligan, Joe Chambers, Gary Peacock and Roy Hargrove, is part of a respected legacy and has added his own flavor to jazz piano for decades, in New York, nowadays back in Paris. He makes little stories full of crisp, clear sentences at relaxed tempos, making you feel as if you’re the co-driver in his convertible, plenty time to take in the beautiful surroundings.

Intriguing repertoire of standards and originals and his warm-blooded band sound are further examples of Amsallem’s good taste. Amsallem not only digs up warhorses like Blue Gardenia, vehicle for Dinah Washington and Nat King Cole, but also obscurities like Morning Star, a sparkling melody by Rodgers Grant first released by flutist Hubert Laws in 1972. Amsallem’s Agrigento turns up the heat with modal tinges.

His ballads are gorgeous tastes of his French heritage, notably Michel Legrand’s The Summer Knows, a bittersweet gem from someone who with a sudden jolt in the gut distinctly remembers that little trace of her lipstick on his cheek and her faint odor of lilies of the valley. An experienced man at work, on his eleventh album since 1992, who doesn’t need flash to get his message across.

Find The Summer Knows (un été 42) on Bandcamp below:

https://amsallem.bandcamp.com/album/the-summer-knows-un-t-42

Art Pepper + Eleven (Contemporary 1960)

Red hot chili pepper.

Personnel

Art Pepper (alto & tenor saxophone, clarinet), Jack Sheldon, Pete Candoli & Al Porcino (trumpet), Herb Geller, Bud Shank & Charlie Kennedy (alto saxophone), Bill Perkins, Richie Kamuca & Bob Enevoldson (tenor saxophone), Dick Nash, Bob Enevoldson (trombone), Med Flory (baritone saxophone), Vincent DeRosa (French horn), Russ Freeman (piano), Joe Mondragon (bass), Mel Lewis (drums), Marty Paich (arranger, conductor)

Recorded

on March 14 & 28 and May 12,  1959 at Contemporary Studios, Los Angeles

Released

as Contemporary M 3568 in 1960

Track listing

Side A: Move / Groovin’ High / Opus De Funk / ‘Round Midnight / Four Brothers / Shaw ‘Nuff / Side B: Bernie’s Tune / Walkin’ Shoes / Anthropology / Airegin / Walkin’ / Donna Lee

What would Charlie Parker sounded like if he’d lived to be an elder statesman? Questions like these regularly pop up in the jazz freak community. If you ask me, I’d rather have seen Bird quit the game and go play go games with Chinese friends in the park. He’d said all, full stop. Brave men dare to call it quits, remember Don “Captain Beefheart” van Vliet? Switched to painting and walking in and out of laundry shops. Bravo.

Of course, you can’t blame those that battle on. Certainly not Art Pepper, who was in jail for long periods of his career and strived to make up for lost opportunities. So, with guys like Art Pepper, the question may be superfluous, though he never reached the age of the typical elder statesman. But another common jazz question arises, namely what period in his career do you prefer? So nice of you to ask!

Well, actually, I think that Art Pepper played better, or better said more beautifully,  in the last stage of his career, free from habits, demons (more or less, I guess), paranoia, manhunt. I’ve been reading a lot of old Downbeat issues from the 1950’s lately, and in a period of two years I’ve come across three interviews with Art Pepper, all focusing largely on his addiction. It probably was regarded as a good thing back then that these issues were openly discussed (at least, in a niche magazine) but even to today’s media standards, one could argue, isn’t this overkill, and, what’s with the melodrama. Bird never talked about drugs, only thing he said to his friends was, don’t do it, please. Mostly in vain.

Enough of that. I veer to late Pepper largely on account of live footage on YouTube and Thursday At The Village Vanguard. (Plus Friday, Saturday and More Or Les from the same tenure at the legendary New York club from 1977) Featuring George Cables, George Mraz and Elvin Jones. Pepper’s richly varied ideas keep coming at you like refreshing raindrops and sweet-hot sun beams and he’s not afraid to jump out of his flexible story with sudden bursts of weeps, singing on his horn. Plainly beautiful highlight of his career.

So, I’ve always thought that flexible and dynamic Art Pepper was one of the top alto players arriving on the scene in the 1950’s, just like Bud Shank and Phil Woods, but that there was something inhibited in his playing, that he was not really himself. (Regardless of excellent albums like Modern Art, Smack Up, Meets The Rhythm Section – the latter’s special because of the East Coast line-up Garland/Chambers/Jones, though not the masterpiece it’s cooked up to be in my humble opinion, an opinion that agrees on one real highlight, the superb fast version of Birks’ Works; by the way, I’ve always loved the obscure release The Art Of Pepper, though largely on account of the fantastic pianist Carl Perkins)

Curiously, while continuing my scrolling through Downbeat issues, I stumbled upon an interview from 1960. It turned out that, actually, Art Pepper wasn’t all too sure about his playing in the past at that point, that he said things that confirmed my intuition.

Call it a hunch, the hard-boiled detective would say. I’m not priding myself on it or anything, it’s simply a case of serendipity and the world of jazz freaks may disagree. Agree to disagree, right, hard to come by these days.

Paraphrase: (Downbeat issue of April 14, 1960, article titled The Return of Art Pepper) In the late 1950’s, Art Pepper, who’d served a jail sentence from 1954 to 1956, was in bad shape. The former successful Stan Kenton-ite had resorted to playing in a rock & roll band and selling accordions (!) to make a living. But he was feeling good now, playing with the Howard Rumsey All-Stars at The Lighthouse. He was unhappy about his playing in the past but happy with how + Eleven, partnership with his old pal Marty Paich, had turned out.

Quotes: “That Eleven album is written with a lot of taste, and the voicing is excellent.” Pepper was inspired by Coltrane, Rollins, Coleman, Miles and Monk. “Doing something you like and not worrying what anybody will think about it.” This realization of artistic purpose was frustrated in the past. “Because of the white environment on the coast, I was forced into set ways of playing that I didn’t really feel. I’d go somewhere and play the way I wanted, freely, and the guys would like at me as though I were crazy. See, if I felt I wanted to honk once in a while, then I’d do it. I’d honk or squeal or do anything I felt like at that moment. But the other cats just didn’t accept it. So I began to conform to the kind of playing that was acceptable an I fell into lethargy – and out of music.” 

Subject: + Eleven. Great modern jazz compositions, Denzil Best’s Move, Dizzy Gillespie’s Groovin’ High and Shaw ‘Nuff, Horace Silver’s Opus De Funk, Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round Midnight, Jimmy Giuffre’s Four Brothers, Gillespie/Parker’s Anthropology, Sonny Rollins’ Airegin, Miles Davis’ Donna Lee, Richard Carpenter’s Walkin’, Leiber/Stoller’s Bernie’s Tune and Gerry Mulligan’s Walkin’ Shoes. The latter two songs are good but I prefer the bebop and hard bop tunes, bouncy and enthusiastic like dogs in the park.

+ Eleven swings like mad and the line-up is top draw West Coast, including drummer Mel Lewis, bassist Joe Mondragon, pianist Russ Freeman, trumpeter Jack Sheldon and saxophonists Bill Perkins, Bud Shank, Richie Kamuca. Marty Paich provided an alluring bottom of trombones and French horn and sinuous secondary motifs and dynamic switches between big sounds and rhythm section, a saucy stew that challenges Art Pepper, who makes the most of it, weaving in and out of the changes of these short, punchy classic songs with limber lines, at ease as if he’s the star player of the L.A. Dodgers in top form, and, most of all, on fire. His work on alto saxophone, his true voice, is outstanding, but his other features on tenor and clarinet, his first instrument, are superb as well. Trumpeter Jack Sheldon, mind you, also meets the challenge, giving his fiery and flexible all.

One day I will browse through Downbeat issues of the 1960’s and I will stumble upon another Return of Art Pepper. Because, unfortunately, soon after + Eleven, Pepper would be arrested again and serve long sentences from 1960 to 1965. He kicked the habit in 1969 and enjoyed a decade of fruitful recording and recognition until his lamented passing in 1982 at the age of 56.

Joep van Rhijn Between Fact And Fiction (Poclanos 2025)

NEW RELEASE – JOEP VAN RHIJN

Personnel

Joep Van Rhijn (flugelhorn), Yuonseung Cho (piano),

Recorded

in 2024 at Brickwall Studio, Seoul

Released

as Poclanos 25C00002 in 2025

Track listing

Vergane Glorie / Zweefmolen / Morgenrood / Vertier / Trust / Op Pad / A Lady / Wowuwowuwow

The further away one travels and the longer one stays abroad, the more intense one now and then is overwhelmed by feelings and thoughts about one’s roots. It’s a paradoxical phenomenon that most likely is familiar to trumpeter and flugelhorn player Joep van Rhijn, Dutchman who makes his living in South-Korea. His latest album is a duet with pianist Yuonseung Cho and (partly) uses Dutch titles as the starting point for melodies and improvisation.

Van Rhijn stately and melancholically ruminates on Vergane Glorie (faded glory, decay) and ponders about Morgenrood (think: the famous Dutch horizons that inspired the Great Dutch Painters) while happily reminisces about childhood pleasures in Zweefmolen (carrousel).

Van Rhijn says: “The discussion about fact and fiction in journalism is very serious and important, but in music, the tension between fact and fiction is what makes it magical. This album is a search for a balance between transparency and clarity in music while leaving space for the listener’s imagination.”

Van Rhijn’s flugelhorn sound is like whipped cream and bittersweet and he focuses on bright, lyrical lines, balladeering smoothly on A Lady, which also features a niftily constructed Bill Evans-ish solo by Cho. Van Rhijn and Cho interact emphatically throughout this album of sweet and sour and playful songs.

Check out Joep’s website https://joepvanrhijn.com/