Norman Simmons (piano), Victor Sproles (bass), Vernel Fornier (drums)
Recorded
in 1956 in Chicago
Released
as Argo 607 in 1956
Track listing
Side A: Capacity In Blues/Stella By Starlight/Jan/My Funny Valentine/Peppe
Side B: Chili Bowl/Moonlight In Vermont/You Do Something To Me/Love Is Eternal/They Can’t Take That Away From Me/Tranquility
This gets you through the night. Good bounce, sassy Carribean touches and original arrangements. Gift from a man who isn’t a household name. Simmons worked mostly in the background, letting others flower and flourish, whether it was singers as Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Helen Humes, Anita O’Day and Joe Williams or hard boppers like fellow Chicagoan Johnny Griffin.
In the early stage of his career, Simmons worked at the Beehive in Chicago as house pianist, backing Prez and Bird, no less. There’s no better education than the bandstand. Truism all too forgotten these days. Simmons honed his chops and perfected the feel of his trio, which most of the time consisted of bassist Victor Sproles and New Orleans-born and bred drummer Vernel Fournier, best-known through his association with pianist Ahmad Jamal.
So when it was time to hit the studio, they were ready for a mixture of standards and originals, perceived in their own refreshing image. One has to hear for itself how attuned to each other’s ears a good piano trio can (should) be and one can do without a weathered track-by-track analysis. Worth to point out, however, are their original takes on Stella By Starlight and My Funny Valentine, both rhythmically inventive and suspenseful. Not to mention the uplifting rhumba vibe of Simmons’s Jan and the nuanced interplay of Chili Bowl, which is usually credited to Duke Ellington.
Simmons is anti-flash, a pianist that cares about the value of balance and thoughtful phrasing, perhaps the result of his various enterprises in accompaniment. He plays like a respected baker kneading dough and carrying on all the right steps to the end product, experienced means to a tasteful end.
Simmons recorded two handfuls of records during his lifetime, which took him two years shy of a half century. (Two of those feature tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander in the 00’s, who’s always been keen on working with unsung heroes) His debut Trio wasn’t followed up until the release of 1976’s Ramira The Dancer. Much better title, quite intriguing, no doubt inspired by a lady whose steps equaled the versatile beat-ness of Simmons.
Norman Simmons passed away at the venerable age of 92 in 2021.
Bud Shank (alto saxophone, flute), Claude Williamson (piano), Don Prell (bass), Chuck Flores (drums)
Recorded
on May 7 & 8, 1956 at Capitol Studio, Los Angeles
Released
as PJ-1230 in 1956
Track listing
Side A: A Night In Tunesia/Tertia/All Of You/Theme
Side B:Jive At Five/Softly As In A Morning Sunrise/Polka Dots And Moonbeams/The Lamp Is Low
West Coast and alto saxophone. First artist that comes to mind is the legendary Art Pepper, a hell of a player that lived a troubled and hectic life that perfectly suited the myth making that’s so conducive to the world of jazz and entertainment. Bud Shank’s life may not have been tailored for highly publicized reports or memoirs. But as far as capabilities and talent is concerned, he was hot on the heels of Pepper. One just needs to take some time to delve into the work of the Dayton, Ohio-born saxophonist to realize that, he too, was a hell of a player, and then some. With delving, I mean that, fun records as they may be, best option may be to put aside Shank’s commercial albums from the 1950’s and 1960’s – titles as Theme Music From “The James Dean Story”, The Swing’s To TV, Michelle, Bud Shank In Africa, California Dreamin’ and Folk ‘n’ Flute – and check out the real stuff. Like Featuring Claude Williamson, which includes not only the fine pianist that is credited on the sleeve but also other West Coast stalwarts, Don Prell on bass and Chuck Flores on drums. We’ll get to that. First, in a ‘noteshell’, Shank’s life and career. Went to California in the late 1940’s and broke through in the famed Stan Kenton band in the early 1950’s. Highly proficient on both alto saxophone and flute. Was one of the first advocates of what came to be known as world music, playing Brazilian-flavored music with Laurindo Almeida in 1953 and India-styled stuff with Ravi Shankar in 1962. Worked in the Hollywood studios and played the alto flute solo on pop hit California Dreamin’ by The Mamas And The Papas in 1965.
Shank recorded prolifically on World Pacific in the 1950’s and 1960’s – the beforementioned mix of commerce and real jazz – but as the 1960’s winded down, seemed to have landed in a rut, tired of working in the entertainment business. Perhaps appropriately, Shank burned down the tail end of the decade with his last recording on Pacific, Let It Be, which included songs as Let It Be, Something, The Long And Winding Road, Both Sides Now, Didn’t We and For Once In My Life, featuring Roger Kellaway, Dennis Budimir, Carol Kaye and John Guerin, almost all men and ladies who made good money in the studios and had to resort to play jazz after hours.
The L.A. Four came to the rescue. His association with Ray Brown led to a highly successful period of recording and touring in the 1970’s and 1980’s (1974-82), no less than 10 albums, featuring, subsequently, Chuck Flores, Shelly Manne and Jeff Hamilton on drums and Laurindo Almeida on guitar. Better days. I wondered how it came about that Shank rose from the ashes of the studio grind. As the former Swiss producer Jean-Michel Reisser-Beethoven, former manager of Ray Brown and friend of many now long gone jazz legends, tells it on the phone with Flophouse, it was rather Phenix-like.
“Bud was one of the first call musicians. This guy could read and play anything and he was fabulous on alto, flute, tenor and baritone. He told me about his average working day. You show up at 8 in the morning, get your charts, you got two minutes to read through it, then it’s time to record. And movies had sequences where nothing was written out, you had to watch and improvise, create on the spot. That’s very difficult. Bud was one of the greatest in that field.”
“The problem was, Bud was a jazz guy. After all those years in the studios, he was tired and depressed. It was so bad that he got suicidal. He wanted to quit. His wife was very upset and anxious. She called Ray Brown. That’s what everybody does. There’s a problem? You call Ray. So, eventually, Bud was on the phone with Ray and he said, ‘I wanna do jazz again, let’s get a group together’. Ray said, ‘Well, jazz is in the toilet, nobody wants to hear jazz anymore, let me think about it…’ He said, ‘I got an idea. I’m doing a lot of gigs with Laurendo Almeida, we do classical, bossa, Cuban, jazz, everybody loves it’.
“So, the L.A. Four started after those phone calls. Suddenly, that was the second life of Bud Shank. Ray wanted him to play a lot of flute. Ray had it all figured out, made up an unusual line up of flute/sax and guitar, bass and drums, no piano. It was easy to book, easy to travel and after a while, with jazz somewhat back on its feet in the 1980’s, Bud was a hot ticket. How did Ray and Bud met each other? Bud told me that he first met Ray in 1949, when Bud was in the Stan Kenton band and Ray came to Los Angeles. He met Ray at a JATP concert. Ray told me that everybody talked about this young guy, this motherfucker was supposed to be good. Everybody loved Bud because he was a very honest and funny guy. He didn’t take drugs and he was always on time.”
Reisser-Beethoven continues, in praise of Shank. “He is acclaimed as a great sax player. He’s one of few guys that, though he learned a lot of his lessons, didn’t play like Charlie Parker. He didn’t sound like Parker and was very original. And he is a very great flute player too. I will tell you a story. On many occasions, the jazz players that played for the movies and did the jingles and stuff, they were shit upon by the classical musicians. Often, when the flute parts were to be recorded, the classical guys couldn’t play them. The studio called in Bud Shank. He was the only guy that could play those parts. The classical guys were horrible, they said, ‘call this jazz guy’. They never mentioned his name. Bud came in, took five minutes to play his part, everybody was happy and could go home. One night when he told me this, he was still hurt by the way the way he was treated, practically in tears. I said, ‘Hey man, you fuck them! They couldn’t play it, you could!’ It isn’t like that anymore, but it was like that back then, the jazz guys had a hard time.”
“I organized tours with Bud from 1992 to 1994 with Dado Moroni, Pierre Boussaguet, Alvin Queen. Everybody loved it. It was great because it was well-deserved. He was one of the greats. Once, Benny Carter told me about his five favorite alto players in jazz. Naturally, he picked Charlie Parker and Johnny Hodges as the two greats. The remainder included Cannonball Adderley, Phil Woods, Bud Shank… That tells you something about his stature.”
Shank was back on track. He started to record again as a leader on Concord. And a prolific late career saw him recording on various labels including Contemporary and Fresh Sound. By then, Shank had long since stopped playing flute and focused on alto saxophone. Dutch drummer Eric Ineke, who played with Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Raney, Chet Baker, George Coleman and countless others, also played with Bud Shank from the 1990’s onwards. He praises Shank in his book The Ultimate Sideman, noticing a change of tone.
“Bud was special to me, I liked his no nonsense straightforward attitude. (..) The first time I played with Bud was in 1989, together with Bill Perkins on tenor, also from the West Coast. They were not playing West Coast Jazz, they were burning. After the first tour we did many more with the trio of Rein de Graaff. He became more and more a hardcore blower and I think he really wanted to get rid of the West Coast stigma the critics gave him in the fifties.”
“His sound changed because he was getting older, the sound was deeper, he burned harder, swinged harder, he took a lot of chances. When you hear his old records, it’s cleaner and calmer, now he’s got more of everything and he just wanted to blow.”
Wisdom comes with age. Guys like Pepper and Shank were like old rocks in the hills of Big Sur. They erode more and more each year, but each new spring season as new flowers come up, the purple and yellow and red bed of blossom seems more beautiful than the preceding year. They played some of their best stuff late in life. Earlier on? Cleaner and calmer, as Ineke states in the case of Shank. But swinging. That’s Bud Shank circa 1956, a clean-cut fellow, almost, but not quite, the boy-next-door. Rising in the ranks in Hollywood, but ready and armed for the real jazz deal.
Highlights? The Lamp Is Low is top-notch, introduced by flute, segueing into fluent swing with alto, and Claude Williamson high on the heels of Shank. These guys gelled very well, like strawberries and whipped cream. Shank’s flute work in the smoothly swinging take on Night In Tunesia is rather stunning. Polka Dots And Moonbeams is turned into a stately fugue. Best of all is Williamson’s unusual Tertia, also classical-tinged, in the introduction, and developing into a kind of bop suite. Walking bass. Flute melody lines. Blues changes. Sassy riffs. Drum break. Then the supple alto madness of Shank and the route on the keys from Powell to Hines by Williamson.
Cliché but the veritable truth. Ms. Pitts is nothing short of exciting, especially in a live setting.
Personnel
Trudy Pitts (organ), Wilbert Longmire (guitar), Bill Carney (drums)
Recorded
on May 24, 1968 at Club Baron, New York City
Released
as PRST-7583 in 1968
Track listing
Side A:
Trudy ‘N’ Blue
Never My Love
Side B:
Autumn Leaves
W.T. Blues
Husbands and wives. There’s Shirley Scott and Mr. T, but let’s not forget Trudy Pitts and Mr. C. Wife and husband. Only difference is, Stanley Turrentine was a tenor saxophonist, whereas Bill Carney was a drummer. Equally soulful, Carney had previously worked with Shirley Scott and encouraged Trudy to pursue a career on the Hammond organ. Mr. C subsequently assisted her on four Prestige records. Pitts, formerly a pianist and music educator that had studied at Juillard, also cooperated with Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt. Why there hasn’t in the wordplay world of jazz been a record by the name of Stitt’s Pitts is beyond me. Missed opportunity.
At any rate, Pitts furthermore recorded with Pat Martino (El Hombre) and Willis Jackson (Star Bag) and came to be part of the increasingly quirky career of Roland Kirk in the ‘70s, appearing on, among others, Other Folks’ Music, as dryly comical a title as they come.
The title of The Excitement Of Trudy Pitts is a dime a dozen. A matter of insignificance, because it’s the subtitle that counts: Recorded Live At Club Baron. Among the Prestige records of Trudy Pitts, who hailed from the stronghold of organ jazz Philadelphia and was acclaimed for her blues-drenched style, dynamic settings of the organ and foot pedal work and mentored ‘another Scott’, namely the young Rhoda Scott, The Excitement Of Trudy Pitts stands out. Whereas her other records focused on diverse and concise standards and popular tunes, her fourth and final album on Prestige is a full-blown affair of groove and grease.
What’s so alluring about records like The Excitement Of Trudy Pitts is that they give you a feeling of how things went at the tail end of the chitlin’ circuit era, during which clubs offered accessible, soulful musical entertainment to the predominantly black community, which was lining up in clubs in cities like Newark, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Syracuse, Chicago, Atlantic City. Hammond organ combos were very popular. Foot pedal style or bass lines on the keyboard obviated the need for a bass player, which was cheaper for club owners. Most of all, crowds were taken in by the multi-dimensional sounds of the organ, which sounded familiarly like church and related to the vocalizing of blues singers.
This time the place is Club Baron in New York City and the aural snapshot is provided by Ms. Pitts, who rocks the joint with the help of guitarist Wilbert Longmire and her other half, Bill Carney. Four tunes, two on each side. Pitts rips and roars through the up-tempo 12-bar blues progression of Trudy ‘N’ Blue. The feeling that she coaxes out of the organ during Never My Love equals the bittersweet yearning of the soul singer and is underlined by a subtle, perky beat.
The other beats that Carney provides are jubilant, groovy, raucous and bring Club Baron to boiling point in combination with Wilbert Longmire’s dirty but nimble-fingered playing style. Autumn Leaves gets a hard-cookin’ treatment and W.T. Blues is the kind of backbeat-heavy blues that induces a couple of slightly inebriated gents and dames to start to point their fingers at what lingers in the middle of their bodies.
Miss Pitts was exciting, remember? To be sure, she is not a cheap sensationalist but gets the message across with plenty of ideas and plenty of skills. Plenty is the word here. As T-Bone Walker once sang, “let your hair down baby, let’s have a natural ball.” Baron had a ball. Wouldn’t you? After five decades, this stuff is definitely still fresh enough to arouse your spirits.
Listen to W.T.’s Blues on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCLV9y3tsj0
The Adderley Brothers get down to the nitty gritty in the cradle of jazz with Ellis Marsalis and friends.
Personnel
Nat Adderley (cornet), Nat Perrilliat (tenor saxophone), Cannonball Adderley (alto saxophone), Ellis Marsalis (piano), Sam Jones (bass), James Black (drums)
Recorded
on May 19, 1962 in New Orleans
Released
as Jazzland 75 in 1962
Track listing
Side A:
In The Bag
Sister Wilson
R.S.V.P
Low Brown
Side B:
Mozart-in
New Arrival
Chatterbox
Finding themselves in New Orleans in early 1962, Nat and Cannonball Adderley noticed that there were quite a few excellent, blues and swing-drenched jazz players. Leave it to Cannonball to act upon his intuition, just like he did when he called Riverside label boss Orrin Keepnews in 1959 when the quintet was firing on all cylinders at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, which led to smash hit and perennial favorite Live In San Francisco. From New Orleans, Cannonball called in on Keepnews again and requested that they record with a couple of good but relatively unknown NO musicians. And so Nat Adderley’s In The Bag came to pass. That was the advantage of being part of the independent music business.
The cats that the Adderleys met were tenor saxophonist Nat Perrilliat, drummer James Black and pianist Ellis Marsalis, supposedly the first time that the beloved educator and head of the Marsalis dynasty was recorded on wax. Many recordings would follow, if only decades later, after two of his six sons, Wynton and Branford, broke through in the early 1980’s. Marsalis sadly passed away from Covid-19-related pneumonia in 2020.
It was a good idea to represent modern jazz from New Orleans, since it was rather underrepresented in The Big Easy, town of traditional jazz and rhythm and blues. In The Bag was certainly not the ‘first modern jazz session in New Orleans’, as Keepnews claims in the liner notes, though it is evident that practically all modernists worked in rhythm and blues and traditional settings to earn a living and were into their own thing exclusively at after-hours spots, notably artists like clarinettist Alvin Batiste and Ed Blackwell, the unique drummer who would join the groundbreaking free jazz group of one-time New Orleans-resident Ornette Coleman in Los Angeles in the late 1950’s.
Contrary to Keepnews’s statement, there had been modern jazz recordings in New Orleans, even if they were very few, among those Golf Coast Jazz Volume 1, recorded by the American Jazz Quintet featuring Marsalis, Blackwell, Batiste, saxophonist Harold Batiste and bassist Richard Payne in 1959. Modernists as saxophonist Mouse Bonati and pianists Ed Frank and Frank Strazzeri were represented on various New Sounds From New Orleans albums, though they, to be sure, were not New Orleans-born. But to the credit of Keepnews, these recordings were very obscure and only reissued decades later. His remark raises the question how many modern jazz recordings there approximately have been in New Orleans in the bop and hard bop period of the 1950s-60’s and which releases and artists are we actually talking about?
In The Bag, on the strength of the high-profile presence of the Adderley Brothers, has been reissued over the years. It’s a fine, blues-drenched session. Nat Adderley’s catchy line In The Bag ends with a coda full of naughty odd notes. It becomes immediately clear that the hard tone and sassy playing of Nat Perrilliat is a great asset. James Black’s Sister Wilson is a first-class hard bop burner. Adderley’s ballad playing on cornet on Marsalis’s R.S.V.P. has the right touch of control and emotion. Marsalis, a saucy accompanist throughout, takes vivid center stage during Yusef Salim’s mid-tempo Low Down, spurred on by Black’s gritty accents.
Mozart-in refers to its composer Alvin Batiste, who was nicknamed “Mozart” because of his prolific composing career. It features another jubilant solo by Nat Adderley, who isn’t afraid to engage in buoyant high whoops, appropriately Satchmo-like as vivaciousness is concerned. The band also took Chatterbox from the Alvin Batiste book, familiar terrain for the New Orleans clan, having been recorded earlier on the beforementioned Golf Coast session by the American Jazz Quintet.
The Adderleys made every effort necessary to limelight unsung cats. Cool guys with a big heart.
Clifford Jordan (tenor saxophone), Cees Slinger (piano), Ruud Jacobs (bass), Han Bennink (drums), Steve Boston (percussion); Jacques Schols (bass), Martin van Duynhoven (drums)
Recorded
on September 10, 1969 at VARA studio, Hilversum; on June 3, 1970 at Paradiso, Amsterdam
Released
as NJA 2401 in 2024
Track listing
Vienna
Impressions Of Scandinavia
Doug’s Prelude
Quagadougou
Girl, You’ve Got A Home
I Can’t Get Started
The Girl From Ipanema
Unmistakable tone defines the greats, whether it’s icons like Lester Young or John Coltrane or acquired tastes like Lucky Thompson or Clifford Jordan. You’ll spot Jordan in a cacophony of thousands. Lovely tone. Clear as a blue sky, pure as goat’s milk. His tone is a precious satin cloth that traveled westward through the Silk Road. A touch of the blues. A dog’s wail from the back porch.
Chicago-born. Middle name: Laconia. This is also the title of an exciting Latin-tinged tune from his fourth Blue Note debut album Cliff Craft from 1957. Jordan was a promising, Rollins-inspired tenor saxophonist who found himself a spot in the vanguard of hard bop, recording with Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Horace Silver and Max Roach.
As the years went by, Jordan followed a progressive route, playing with Charles Mingus in the 1960’s alongside Eric Dolphy. He was interested in the movement of black rights and consciousness. Typically, Jordan wanted to take matters in his own hands and produced recordings of favorite artists and himself under the heading of The Dolphy Series. Though his efforts of releasing those tapes by himself stranded, his recordings eventually found a home on the groundbreaking Strata-East label from Stanley Cowell and Charles Tolliver. Jordan’s participation in Strata-East and influence on the avant garde is a feat that is too often neglected.
Glass Bead Games, often cited as a perennial favorite by jazz fans and a major inspiration to following generations of players, was released by Strata-East in 1973. Part of that album represented the start of a stellar quartet that would come to be known as The Magic Triangle: Jordan, Cedar Walton, Sam Jones and Billy Higgins.
A year before, Strata-East released In This World, a set of original tunes by Jordan from 1969, featuring Don Cherry, Kenny Dorham, Julian Priester, Wynton Kelly, Richard Davis and drummers Ed Blackwell, Roy Haynes and Albert Heath.
It is the repertoire of In This World that, among others, is played by Jordan on a top-notch new release by the Dutch Jazz Archive: Beyond Paradiso. Jordan was booked to play in Paradiso, Amsterdam’s hub of the counterculture movement in 1969, but the club was closed for a month due to circumstances and Jordan and his band of Dutch stalwarts – pianist Cees Slinger, bassist Ruud Jacobs and drummer Han Bennink – were transferred to the VARA studio in Hilversum. A year later, Jordan was offered a second chance and played in Paradiso with Slinger, bassist Jacques Schols and drummer Martin van Duynhoven.
The Hilversum date is positively explosive. Jordan presents a ballad, Doug’s Prelude, a hip blues line, Quagadougou, and Vienna and Impressions Of Scandinavia, both enticing modal canvases, open for a lot of suggestions, and everybody rises to the occasion, Slinger in a McCoy/Herbie-inspired role and the tandem of Jacobs/Bennink notably propulsive. At times, Jordan wails like a gladiator to the gods, but, typically, he always remains in balance, flowing with long graceful lines. There never is any strain, a great feat. As liner note writer Tom Beek says – he did a great job by the way – Jordan is quite the king of understatement.
At Paradiso, though the sound, not surprisingly, is a bit dry and muffled, Jordan kept up his charged but balanced playing and, this time, plays the standards I Can’t Get Started, The Girl From Ipanema and Jordan’s Girl, You’ve Got A Home, the latter, which applies to the whole program of Beyond Paradiso, making abundantly clear that the Dutch cats convincingly stood their ground.
In this world, better said, flood, of archival releases, this applies to the Dutch Jazz Archive as well.
Clifford Jordan
Buy Beyond Paradiso at Nederlands Jazz Archief here.
Mr. Smith goes to Copenhagen. As a matter of speaking.
Personnel
Louis Smith (trumpet, flugelhorn), Junior Cook (tenor saxophone), Roland Hanna (piano), Sam Jones (bass), Billy Hart (drums)
Recorded
on April 13, 1979 in New York
Released
as SCS 1121 in 1979
Track listing
Side A:
One For Nils
Chanson de Louise
Ryan’s Groove
Side B:
Prancin’
I Can’t Get Started
Fats
Short but sweet. That is what you would call the career of trumpeter Louis Smith in the late 1950’s. There’s one session from Transition that was purchased by Blue Note: Here Comes Louis Smith featuring Cannonball Adderley credited as ‘Buckshot La Funke’. A month later, Smith walked into the studio of Rudy van Gelder in Hackensack, New Jersey, meeting up with Charlie Rouse, Sonny Clark, Paul Chambers and Art Taylor: Smithville. Treasured Blue Note goodies for the jazz geek, excellent stuff, the latter, as yours truly is concerned, having the upper hard bop hand.
Memphis, Tennessee-born Smith was the nephew of Booker Little. Now there’s a hip trumpet blood lineage. While attending University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, young lion Smith shed wood with the likes of Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Stitt. Smith quit the scene after his Blue Note releases and focused on band directing at Booker T. Washington and University of Michigan and teaching at Ann Arbor public schools. After long radio silence, Smith reappeared on the Danish Steeplechase label of Nils Winther in the late 1970’s. Steeplechase was a safe haven for many stalwarts of mainstream jazz during the fusion and disco-infested years of torture. We’re talking Duke Jordan, Kenny Drew, Horace Parlan, Jimmy Knepper, Chet Baker, Walt Dickerson, Tete Montoliu, Hilton Ruiz and many more. It is still going strong as one of the to-go-to independent jazz labels. Quite a feat.
Smith recorded no less than twelve albums for Steeplechase from 1978 to 2004, though he remarkably succeeded to stay under the radar of the jazz universe until the end of his life in 2016. Dutch pianist and concert organizer Rein de Graaff, always on the hunt for unsung heroes, invited Smith to perform during De Graaff’s famed Stoomcursus Bebop lectures and concerts in The Netherlands. As he recounted recently, De Graaff also played with Smith in Detroit in the famed Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, “before an all-black audience.” De Graaff: “He was a very sweet man. The Steeplechase albums are good in general, but his Blue Note period is the real deal. Back then he was in his mid-twenties and on top of his game.”
Louis Smith didn’t have to travel to Denmark to record for the Danish-based label. It was Greenwich Grooving Time in NYC and the trumpeter was in the good company of tenor saxophonist Junior Cook (a Steeplechase recording artist in his own right), pianist Roland Hanna, bassist Sam Jones and drummer Billy Hart. They play a solid set of hard bop, mid-and up-tempo swingers that feature the flexible style and bright sounds of Smith and the typically half-lazy phrasing of the great Junior Cook, who found a nice spot in the jazz realm between the legendary stylings of Hank Mobley and Dexter Gordon.
The thing that hooked me though is Smith’s balladry on flugelhorn. He added a ballad or two on every one of his twelve Steeplechase records. Smith’s lovely buttery soft lyricism is all over his Chanson de Louise. Furthermore, Smith builds a beautiful seven-minute solo during I Can’t Get Started, the Gershwin/Duke standard that suffers from silly lyrics (“I’ve flown around the world in a plane/I’ve settled revolutions in Spain/The North Pole I have charted/But I can’t get started with you…”) but boast a beautiful melody and attractive chord changes. It has always been a perennial favorite of jazz musicians and singers.
The importance of the American Songbook for jazz – and how well jazz musicians recreated Tin Pan Alley in their own image – cannot be overestimated. Smith runs away with I Can’t Get Started here, a man of sorrow and resilience and more than a couple of emotional nuances in between. A gem, no less. Pleasurable result of browsing through the Steeplechase catalogue of records by what back then were acclaimed or unsung middle-aged jazz men.
Pony Poindexter (alto saxophone, soprano saxophone), Booker Ervin (tenor saxophone), Al Grey (trombone), George Tucker (bass), Jimmy Smith (drums)
Recorded
on June 27, 1963 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Released
as NJ-8297 in 1963
Track listing
Side A:
Front ‘O Town
Happy Strut
Creole Girl
4-1-44
Side B:
Back ‘O Town
Muddy Dust
French Market
Gumbo Filet
Pony Poindexter spent most of his life on the West Coast, in Spain and Germany, but he was born and raised in New Orleans. So, he had every right to dedicate a record to The Big Easy. It’s a goodun. Nothing stunning or sensational but you can feel that it’s from the heart, Poindexter sharing his memories of growing up in the unique melting pot in the Delta, bringing those memories to life with a batch of entertaining, buoyant and blues-drenched tunes. He’s giving us lots of different flavors, little stories about funeral parades, creole girls, gambling and food, not to mention, the indispensable ingredient of voodoo, that mythical catch-all for all kinds of weird forms of superstition, as manifest a link to African roots as they come.
Till age 11, Poindexter lived in New Orleans, when his parents moved to San Francisco. It was there that Poindexter hooked up with the Billy Eckstine band, a playground for many jazz greats like Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Gene Ammons. Poindexter played in Eckstine’s band from 1947 to 1950, subsequently joining Lionel Hampton, also a quick-witted assembler of marvelous talent. The great singing group of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross was Poindexter’s next notable employer in the early 1960’s. In 1963, Poindexter stayed in Paris. As so many American jazz artists, he liked what he saw. Poindexter permanently moved to Europe. He lived in Spain and Mannheim in Germany for almost twenty years. Finally, Poindexter returned to the USA. He passed away in Oakland in 1988.
Relatively underrecorded, Poindexter started as a leader with Pony’s Express on Epic, which sports a staggering line-up including Eric Dolphy, Dexter Gordon, Ron Carter and Elvin Jones. He then continued with Plays The Big Ones on New Jazz, a shamelessly commercial affair that included a take on Elvis’s Love Me Tender. Then, in Europe: out of sight, out of mind. Poindexter seemed to concentrate on gigging mainly, though Alto Summit with Lee Konitz, Phil Woods and Leo Wright stands out.
Plays The Big Ones featured pianist Gildo Mahones, bassist George Tucker and drummer Jimmy Smith, who were Poindexters’s colleagues from Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Poindexter took them into the next session that spawned Gumbo!, which is much more personal and much better. Poindexter further assembled tough but modernist tenorist Booker Ervin and trombonist Al Grey, magnificent growler, perfect foil for that ol’ feelin’ that Poindexter likes to convey.
So, here we have a trip from Front ‘O Town to Back ‘O Town, via the French Market, a fellow meeting up with a sassy and hardboiled Creole Girl, yeah, it’s a Happy Strut, playing the numbers 4-1-44 in a back alley, scoring some love potion Poindexter calls Muddy Dust, ending at momma’s place and devouring the one-of-a-kind mix of crawfish, alligator tails and spices and herbs and whatnot, Gumbo Filet. Can’t be beat. Poindexter calls the children home on alto and soprano, Booker Ervin wails, typically, like he’s a bluesman on the corner, as greasy a modernist as they came.
A good idea, this, working from a very personal experience, and played out joyfully and with swinging grit.
