Review

Herb Ellis Meets Jimmy Giuffre (Verve 1959)

- Francois Leave a comment

The finest early album of the down-homiest picker among modern jazz guitarists.  

Personnel

Herb Ellis (guitar), Jimmy Giuffre (tenor saxophone, arranger), Richie Kamuca (tenor saxophone), Art Pepper, Bud Shank (alto saxophone), Jim Hall (rhythm guitar), Lou Levy (piano), Joe Mondragon (bass), Stan Levey (drums)

Recorded

on March 26, 1959 at Radio Recorders Studio in Los Angeles

Released

as MV-G 831 in 1959

Track listing

Side A: Goose Grease / When Your Lover Has Gone / Remember / Patricio / Side B: A Country Boy / You Know / My Old Flame / People Will Say We’re In Love

Incredible LP. One that makes you jump and shout and way wow wow wow and hmm this is something else.

He wasn’t much on my mind, Herb Ellis, back in the days. I was obsessed by crackerjack guitarists like Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino. Also, I was put off by the first Ellis record that I bought, Nothing But The Blues. Too much cliché patterns for my sake.

Of course, his work with Oscar Peterson couldn’t be neglected. Rhythm guitarist beyond peer. The Freddie Green of modern mainstream jazz. (Later on, I learned that Ellis – who started out with the Casa Loma Orchestra and Jimmy Dorsey, got famous with O.P.’s trio, worked in the L.A. studios for years, returned on Concord with dozens of records – was also part of the mostly forgotten trio Soft Winds with pianist/vocalist Lou Carter and violinist Johnny Frigo, ahead of their time with a chamber music-ish format that combined Nat King Cole with MJQ and foreshadowed The Hi-Lo’s. Versatile cat, Herb Ellis.

Then came, after the excellent debut Ellis In Wonderland and Nothing But The Blues, wow wow wow and booom: Meets Jimmy Giuffre.

Why does it affect me so strongly?

Is there anybody as down-home among modern jazz guitarists as Herb Ellis? Take a listen to Ellis/Giuffre’s Goose Grease, sassy opening cut, the most hill-billy-ish tune on the album, or A Country Boy, Herb’s bluesy winner. Ellis comes from Lester Young and Charlie Parker, but earthy is his middle name and I love that so much: slurs, bends, all those little connecting licks you’ve heard somewhere else… T-Bone Walker, Lefty Frizell, Jimmy Bryant. Dirty boots walking through the mud in the Appalachian mountains. Scent of magnolia fields. Fresh apple pie. Back porch bliss!

Besides, the development of his solos is textbook stuff, creative pattern after pattern building up tension to smoothly resolved finales.

It’s the combination with Jimmy Giuffre’s arrangements that does another trick. The music runs smoothly and with gusto like Kris Kristofferson’s convoy. Comforting warm blend of saxes, no brass. Deceptively simple, nifty and effective underscoring of Ellis’s lines. Check out the bittersweet mood that is conveyed by the sax section during When Your Lover Has Gone‘s finale. Or the subtle shift of tempo at the end of Remember. Everything about the fast-paced People Will Say We’re In Love is meaningful and connected.

(Can’t say enough of Jimmy Giuffre, super-creative guy whose stature among jazz fans continues to grow as time goes by).

And how’s that for a band? Giuffre and Richie Kamuca on tenor, Art Pepper and Bud Shank on alto, Jim Hall on rhythm guitar, Lou Levy on piano, Joe Mondragon on bass and Stan Levey on drums. West Coast-based modernists par excellence.

Truly irresistible stuff. Finally really felt what Herb Ellis was about!

Listen to the full album on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI9AoqfKibI&list=RDgI9AoqfKibI&start_radio=1

Lee Morgan Leeway (Blue Note 1960)

- Francois Leave a comment

His (real) way or the highway. 

Personnel

Lee Morgan (trumpet), Jackie McLean (alto saxophone), Bobby Timmons (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), Art Blakey (drums)

Recorded

on April 28, 1960 at Rudy van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as BLP 4034 in 1960

Track listing

Side A: These Are Soulful Days / The Lion And The Wolff/ Side B: Midtown Blues / Nakatani Suite

There’s a Kurt Vonnegut meme that’s floating around like a turtle in the high tide. It’s the one (paraphrase, FM) where the writer recounts his wife saying why on earth should he go out buying envelopes while all he needs to do is send his friend an email. Vonnegut replies that there are benefits to going out. He’ll have a chat with the paperboy, hear a song come out of a cab, hear the rustling of the leaves or see a cop on a horse click-clack by. Something to stir the imagination.

Grandaddy speaking, perhaps. But implied deep meaning disguised as cliché, no less. This comes from a man who didn’t want – was unable – to write about the horror of the Dresden bombing at the end of World War II. But Dresden eventually came to Vonnegut, as he, somewhat the Dalai Lama of literature, was fooling around with this and that. Ergo: Slaughterhouse Five.

It’s a bit sad that Vonnegut’s wisdom needs repeating (ironically, through the internet and social media) but it has become all the more poignant and relevant in the overwhelming age of artificial intelligence, virtual reality and the constraints of algorithms. (Not to be confused with the wisdom of slow food, slow traveling, slow fashion, slow sex – admirable efforts but the difference is Vonnegut shared it for free while ‘slow culture’ needs to make a profit)

Let’s read it as a call to arms.

If AI benefits our general health and welfare, let it blossom. Even as an efficiency tool to journalism, what the hell. But ho, ho and ho. Ask questions first. Do we want it to make human journalism disappear? And step back and consider this. Who is behind A.I.? We don’t know who, behind the surface, has access to information and so is actually running the show, yet we give up privacy and “Open” A.I. is making billions. No disclosure. Disclosure first, then we’ll see. Thoughts that better minds work out in depth elsewhere, but it needs reminding.

How do we get from A.I. and algorithm to Lee Morgan? Oh, no problem, listen here. Question. How would you like it if A.I. gets so perfect, having incorporated all Lee Morgan and Blue Note data, that it will be able to produce new Lee Morgan records on Blue Note, seemingly indistinguishable from the real thing. Or make it able for anyone with a laptop to produce ersatz Morgan records. Pro or con? Think hard.

(Mellow D73879: “My violet information brain cell is telling me that they used to play a thing called jazz from 1917 till approximately 2188. There were 4 or 5 people on a stage that banged on goat skins and blew air through copper tubes and there were people called ‘the audience’ that applauded after every song.”

Mellow D11255: “Sounds absurd. Wait a second, let me check my violet information brain cell. Yes, I see. They also pressed black discs from poison and used a diamant needle to send air waves from speakers into a room. Cool, but rather primitive.” 

Mellow D73879: “The freedom of creating musical ideas on the spot, without a safety net. That’s bad. That’s probably where all the trouble started, don’t you think? Wait… Yes, that’s it. Freedom was the cause of chaos and the end of civilization.” 

Mellow D11255: “Of course, that’s easy to say from our point of view. We’ve got our monthly shots of happiness ‘n’ bliss.”

Words aren’t spoken here. Feelings and discussions between the Mellow D’s are transmitted through globs of glutinous slime. Tangible things like earth, eyes, metal, underwear, dirt, aren’t relevant anymore. There are only dimensions and digits.

Mellow D11255: “It seems jazz was connected with what they used to call a culture. First it was used to move your hands and feet. Then it was mainly a thing to be digested by the ear and the intellect. It consisted of sounds – the air waves you spoke of – that reflected the plight of people with brown skin, who were suppressed by people with white skin. What is skin?”

Mellow D73879: “It all sounds positively ludicrous har har har!”)

Listen some more. The record that is pictured above was bought in a record shop in The Netherlands long ago and though this in itself is no big achievement, it is the opposite of letting yourself being swept away in the wasteland of Spotify’s fast food. Record store equates with discovery, Spotify (not downgrading evident advantages) equates with conformity and dulling of the senses. (not least exploitation of artists, other subject)

Not having a monopoly on realness, interchangeable with several other vintage modern jazz records, though a perfect example, Leeway stands for realness on several levels. Don’t you agree Lee Morgan (and Blue Note) is the real thing?

As if it needs confirmation. But aye! Damn right. Grounded in bebop, Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan added his own brand of modernism, a virile mix of fire and a brassy full trumpet tone. He’s a go-getter. Doesn’t fool around, what you see is what you get though he’ll give you a certain margin to move around with your opinions and feelings…

Streetwise. Timbres and accents, slurs and whoops are adjectives of sassy sentences of saucy and sometimes lurid tales he tells. You see him hanging onto the bar rail for dear life, cracking up from laughter. Having a fight with his girl. Making up with his girl. Candy Candy Candy I can’t let you go… 

Candy lived in affluent times, the Korean War was over, the future looked bright, the suburban sprawl developed like a rash on a giant’s body. Neighbors competed against each other with bigger fridges, bigger cars, almost everybody saw Ed Sullivan introducing Elvis Presley, even the overtime workers in Detroit car factories, black and white, the blacks still worse off, always on guard for a racist cop. Morgan talks with a hustler who talks with a bricklayer that is out of a job who talks with a chorus girl whose boyfriend won a lottery and lends a dime to a beggar to hop on the bus to visit a friend in the Sing Sing jail…

It’s all there on his cooperation with Jackie McLean, Bobby Timmons, Paul Chambers, Art Blakey. McLean’s urgent alto sax, controlled passion. Timmons’s classy piano playing, ringing notes, barrelhouse tinges. Rumbling Blakey rolls, the fat Blakey sound! Super tunes, plainly awesome. Courtesy of pianist/composer from Philly, Cal Massey. These Are Soulful Days, unforgettable and beautiful melody, a celebration of life and communal spirit. Nakatani Suite a good contender, kids with mouths like razors playing hide and seek in Chinatown.

Morgan takes McLean’s Midtown Blues by the balls, a hot rod going for the extra mile. Finally, his homage: The Lion And The Wolff.

Yes, the Blue Note guys, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff. The legendary label, now part of the corporate structure, back then factually a little independent company, was as real and authentic as they came. It nurtured the musicians they believed in (one of the prime BN artists, Lee Morgan, started recording at age 18 in 1956, was into his eighth album with Leeway in 1960, would stay with the company until his untimely death in 1972). Gave them time to rehearse. Music, production, imagery was top-tier.

Still an example for fab contemporary labels like Cellar Music, small wonder.

Blue Note was out there hocking real stuff. Morgan was out there night after night, pouring out his heart, blowing the blues. Jackie McLean too, Bobby Timmons, Paul Chambers, Art Blakey. It’s a realness people crave (again) more and more, a desire reflected by various YouTube channels, podcasts, new record stores popping up or old ones doing fine.

We want realness, we want people with passion sharing obsessions with other people with passion. (We have, in jazz, real cats: arrived figureheads like Christian McBride, Joshua Redman, Dado Moroni, new breed like Emmet Cohen, Sarah Hanahan, Erena Terakubo.) The biggies may have to scratch their heads and wonder if strict adherence to algorithms suffices to keep customers aboard.

We’re desperately trying not to be constantly staring at a tiny screen all the time, developing a swan neck and nearsightedness and hypertension. Erosion of soul, while soul is paramount. Sometimes buying an envelope on a soulful day is all we need.

Lee Morgan
Cal Massey
Lee Morgan envelope

(Lee Morgan; Cal Massey; Envelope)

Listen to Leeway on Don Kaart’s super jazz channel All That Jazz on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hurvE1QmrHo&list=RDhurvE1QmrHo&start_radio=1

Grassella Oliphant The Grass Roots (Atlantic 1965)

- Francois Leave a comment

The enigmatic multi-tasker Grassella Oliphant made an absolute corker in 1965 with vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. 

Personnel

Harold Ousley (tenor saxophone), Bobby Hutcherson (vibraphone), Ray McKinney (bass), Grassella Oliphant (drums)

Recorded

on January 19 & 2, 1965 in New York

Released

as Atlantic 1438 in 1965

Track listing

Side A: One For The Masses / The Descendant / Star Dust / Uptown Hours / Mrs. O  / Side B: Haitian Lady / Shiny Stockings / Grandfather’s Waltz / Step Lightly / Mood Indigo

Quite the adventurer, this Grassella Oliphant, for many jazz fans either an unknown or enigma. The story goes that young Grassella, born in 1929 in Aliquippa near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a kid who’d won dance amateur shows with his brother and crouched behind drum kits in clubs as a boy, had enlisted in the Army at the (under-)age of 15. One of those know-nothing adolescents and romantics looking for excitement that you read about in Im Westen Nichts Neues. He ended up playing in the Army jazz combo. His mother wrote a letter to President Roosevelt. Before the teenager was sent overseas, the truth came out and he was sent back to his hometown.

Oliphant worked in a steel mill and attended business school. He played in Pittsburgh with Ahmad Jamal, guitarist Ray Crawford and Tommy Turrentine before moving to Washington, D.C. in 1949. Then, and this is not a novelist’s tale, this is the plain truth, he became an IBM computer programmer and worked for almost two years in Okinawa, Japan. Back in Pittsburgh, he joined the Ahmad Jamal trio featuring Ray Crawford and bassist Eddie Calhoun and accompanied Sarah Vaughan. Consequently, in D.C. again, he managed the Abart’s International jazz club and led the house band, appearing with visiting luminaries such as Art Farmer, Charlie Rouse, Gene Ammons, Lucky Thompson, Lou Donaldson, Kenny Burrell and Oscar Pettiford.

This tells you he’d gained plenty experience before entering the studios to add his drummer’s touch to records of organist Shirley Scott (The Soul Is Willing, Soul Shoutin’) and pianist Herman Foster (The Explosive Piano Of Herman Foster). Among few others. Oliphant is an under-recorded drummer.

Oliphant made two records under his own name, The Grass Roots and The Grass Is Greener, puns intended. Two winners. The latter featuring Grant Green and Big John Patton was reviewed in Flophouse Magazine years ago. See here: http://flophousemagazine.com/2014/03/17/grassella-oliphant-the-grass-is-greener-atlantic-1967/ A good’n. But not nearly as good as The Grass Roots, a first-class sleeper.

Grassella Oliphant - The Grass Is Greener
Shirley Scott - The Soul Is Willing
Herman Foster - The Explosive Piano Of Herman Foster

In 1965, the strongest asset of Oliphant’s label, Atlantic, which had made jazz history with John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, was Eddie Harris. They would strike gold with Charles Lloyd, who appealed to the burgeoning hippie crowd, a year later. Oliphant fell through the cracks, but he made his mark with a record of blues, ballads, Basie, Ellington and modal-tinged tunes.

He got Bobby Hutcherson aboard, a progressive cat who was making fresh avant-leaning records for Blue Note Records. The combination of Oliphant, writer and saxophonist Harold Ousley and Hutcherson pays off, not least because, as the liner notes make clear, this was a working band for some time. They’re sharp as knives, Oliphant is perceptive and precise and The Grass Roots is a powerful Atlantic record with the sound resonant and upfront, kicking your ass through the stable.

Ousley’s The Descendant and Uptown Hours wouldn’t have been out of place on, say, one of Jackie McLeans’s mid-60s Blue Note albums, finding Hutcherson in fine form. Ousley’s solo in Joe Henderson’s slow blues Step Lightly reminds of Stanley Turrentine, soul feeling and all, high praise.

I can’t say enough of Grandfather’s Waltz. To start with: ‘it’s the melody, stupid!‘ It’s one of the most beautiful melodies that I’ve ever heard. Sometimes all you need is a beautiful melody, sometimes (as much as possible I would say), all you need is musicians thriving on the melody.

The way this band performs critic Gene Lees’s beauty is par excellence. It’s a real tearjerker, at least it always keeps hitting me in the gut and bringing bittersweet memories and making me feel the pain and the joy of love.

Oliphant dropped out of the scene in the 1970’s. He – no, this is not made up – was manager of a golf course. Letting all those wankers work on their swing. He did came back though to jazz up the New Jersey area in the 00’s for a while. Oliphant passed away in 2017 at the ripe old age of 88.

Here’s The Descendant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEX6ZwlSL3U&list=RDgEX6ZwlSL3U&start_radio=1

Here’s the stunningly beautiful Grandfather’s Waltz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqAE5WFZ8Jw&list=RDHqAE5WFZ8Jw&start_radio=1

Eddy Louiss Our Kind Of Sabi (MPS 1970)

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2 Michelin Stars for the chef de cuisine of European organ jazz.

Personnel

Eddy Louiss (organ, piano), John Surman (baritone saxophone, soprano saxophone), Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (bass), Daniel Humair (drums)

Recorded

on August 27-29, 1970 at Nippon Columbia Studio Akasaka, Tokyo.

Released

as MPS 15049 in 1970

Track listing

Side A: Our Kind Of Sabi / Zafe Ko Ida / Side B: Song For Martine / Out Of The Sorcellery

Granted, the Americans could hardly be accused of completely ignoring the fantastic organist Eddy Louiss, since critics of Downbeat Magazine voted him “Organ Player Number One” in the category “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition” in 1969/70. But the general jazz buying public never caught up with him and it could be said that Louiss is still undervalued among American classic jazz lovers and Hammond aficionados.

The enigmatic Eddy Louiss refused to be pigeonholed. Although the influence of the groundbreaking pioneer Jimmy Smith didn’t leave him untouched, Louiss took different paths. To begin with, Louiss’ background was wonderfully quixotic, starting with a teenage career in vaudeville, playing in his father Pierre’s orchestra. Besides, he sang in the extremely popular vocal group Les Double Six from 1961 to 1963.

He played bop piano among France’s finest in the Parisian scene in the 1950’s. Louiss switched to the organ, deepening bebop and hard bop with flair, climaxing with a superb session recorded in 1968, Eddy Louiss Trio with guitarist René Thomas and drummer Kenny Clarke. But he had more up his sleeve. There was an exotic tinge to the style of Louiss, whose Creolian forebears hailed from the island and colony of Martinique, who had visited the island on family trips and soaked up folks songs played on the island and in Paris.

His style was dynamic and possessed the energy and sound of rock pioneers Keith Emerson and Brian Auger. He’d played furious post bop with violinist Jean-Luc Ponty in the mid-sixties and ultimately made it his business to mix jazz with world music. A far cry from maestro Smith and his many blues ‘n’ bop ‘n’ funk disciples. Different, as well, as that other modern pioneer, Larry Young, though there are similarities.

His career-defining highlight on Stan Getz’s Dynasty was recorded live in 1971. It featured five compositions by Louiss, who was a prolific tunesmith.

Before he’d joined the high-profile outfit of Stan Getz, Louiss had already recorded two of those tunes on Our Kind Of Sabi, his 1970 album with English saxophonist John Surman and his long-time musical brother, Swiss drummer Daniel Humair: the title track and Song For Martine.

Where Dynasty, with Getz, is fluid like mountain streams, Our Kind Of Sabi, with Surman, is rugged earth, hot sun streaks on the remains of the gold mine. Title tune Our Kind Of Sabi is an unforgettable, misterioso melody, handled sweetly by Louiss like a baby, set up by Surman on baritone, set on fire in the ensuing ten minutes, Surman stretching the limits of his baritone saxophone, a man with a hellhound on his trail, a man wearing the pain in his heart on his sleeve, leavened by Louis, whose Hammond is firm but balanced, a motorcyclist taking a ride on the beach, flexibly staying upright.

Surman is the exorcist, angry, maniacal, persistent, exuberant, on soprano on Song For Martine, avant groove that is akin to late-career Coltrane, segueing into Out Of The Sorcellery, a hefty duet between Louiss and Humair, which feels like early Soft Machine, perfectly dirty and rebellious. Zafe Ko Ida is traditional Martinique folkore, arranged by Louiss,  who interprets it on piano and marimba.

Too free for my taste as a result of Surman’s extremist inclusion, I can only take this for a couple of spins, preferring the unbeatable Dynasty, but Our Kind Of Sabi is certainly a unique organ combo album and a wild and woolly ride.

Horace Silver Silver In Seattle: Live At The Penthouse (Blue Note 2025)

- Francois Leave a comment

Silvermine.  

Personnel

Woody Shaw (trumpet), Joe Henderson (tenor saxophone), Horace Silver (piano), Teddy Smith (bass), Roger Humphries (drums)

Recorded

on August 12 & 19, 1965  at The Penthouse in Seattle

Released

as Blue Note in 2025

Track listing

Side A: The Kicker / Song For My Father / The Cape Verdean Blues / Side B: Sayonara Blues / No Smokin’

If you had to believe the majority of the jazz press in the mid-1960s, everything but the ‘new thing’ was irrelevant. Take the constant appraisals of the ‘spiritual’ Coltrane  and ‘primal screams’ of Albert Ayler. Fine, jazz is synonymous with change. But life went on. Though the original sparks of hard bop were gone, figureheads such as Horace Silver and Cannonball Adderley kept the flame burning with catchy music that entertained large audiences through hits as Silver’s Song For My Father and Cannonball’s Mercy Mercy Mercy (written by Joe Zawinul). Meanwhile, they embraced progressive patterns, Silver by collaborating with Woody Shaw and Joe Henderson, Cannonball by recruiting Yusef Lateef and Charles Lloyd.

One of this year’s top-rate archival releases, Silver In Seattle: Live At The Penthouse, proves my point. Actually, Silver – the consummate Blue Note artist – would keep on forming bands with cats that expanded on the tradition, notably Bennie Maupin and Randy Brecker. Seattle features young Woody Shaw and Joe Henderson, who both had been making heads turn in 1965. Woody Shaw had worked with Eric Dolphy and was featured on one of Blue Note’s most beloved albums, Unity by organist Larry Young. Henderson had already recorded a couple of adventurous records on Blue Note and the label was about to release Mode For Joe at the time of the Penthouse gig in August.

The band was completed by bassist Teddy Smith and drummer Roger Humphries. The drummer had been part of the superb Silver albums Song For My Father, The Cape Verdean Blues and The Jody Grind, while Shaw was featured on Cape and Grind and Henderson on Song and Cape. As Silver In Seattle makes abundantly clear, a well-oiled machine.

They swing like mad on Henderson’s The Kicker, Silver’s No Smokin’, stretch out on Sayonara Blues and get into a sassy exotic groove on Song For My Father and The Cape Verdean Blues. Shaw and Henderson mix funk with dips into the outskirts of the chords, Silver is his typical propulsive self, his densely clustered chords keeping energy level high, his solo lines spicy and engaging. Humphries beautifully delineates all melodic twists and turns, spirited like a Jaguar on an empty coastal road. Have you heard him play on Carmell Jones’s Jay Hawk Talk? Awesome drummer with a great sound.

So, this year we’ve had Freddie Hubbard’s On Fire: Live From The Blue Morocco on Resonance and now there’s Silver In Seattle, another archival (Zev Feldman-produced) release that sounds fantastic, as if you’re in the room, pure joy for the lover of classic post and hard bop.

Here’s Alvin Queen, Eric Ineke and Jarmo Hoogendijk on Silver, Henderson and Shaw. 

Horace Silver - ©Ron Eckstein
Joe Henderson
Woody Shaw

The legendary drummer Alvin Queen (also featured in the liner notes of Silver In Seattle) played in Horace Silver’s band in 1969 and reconnected with the pianist in the early/mid 1970’s. He speaks with the utmost reverence regarding Horace Silver, but also has a few laughs about the way it went back then. Here’s a fragment from our interview in August 2023:

“When you make a hit record, that’s what people want to hear. I was sick of Song Of My Father! Horace said that we had to play it and we sometimes played it two or three times a night. That was the way it went. Miles had to play So What, Coltrane My Favorite Things and Cannonball Adderley Mercy Mercy Mercy by Joe Zawinul. We also played Sēnor Blues and Filthy McNasty. But then Horace changed up and started going into spirituality and recorded the United State Of Mind records. One night I said, ‘Horace, all that Hare Krishna stuff, God, what is going on?’ He said, ‘Alvin, I haven’t changed my music, it’s just the lyrics’.”

Alvin’s Dutch colleague Eric Ineke, who played with everybody from Dexter Gordon and Dizzy Gillespie to Jimmy Raney and Johnny Griffin, not least Woody Shaw and Joe Henderson, talks about the unique time feel of Joe Henderson in conversation with Dave Liebman in his book The Ultimate Sideman:

“His time was floating, a drummer’s dream. He had such great ideas and to follow that stuff was a lesson. Joe was so hip and smooth.” (Liebman: ‘The bar line did not exist when Joe was on. Is that true?’) “Yes, it was difficult. I really had to be there all the time with my head and listening, but what amazes me was that he had so much freedom with the time. You would think some guys taking a lot of freedom in the time would affect a drummer’s playing. But not with Joe Henderson… he was like a snake and it never affected your playing. You can just play on! It’s unbelievable, because he goes in and out without disturbing the thing…”

Ace Dutch trumpeter Jarmo Hoogendijk, formerly from Jarmo Hoogendijk/Ben van den Dungen Quintet and Nueva Manteca and nowadays an admired conservatory teacher, knew Woody Shaw very well in the mid-1980s. Here are his memories of Woody in Flophouse Magazine from 2023:

“I met Woody in 1986. I went to George’s Jazz Café in Arnhem with Ben. Woody played with the Cedar Walton Trio. We got to talking. From then on we met at concerts. Woody regularly stayed at the place of road manager Bob Holland. I met him over there and we chatted and studied together. Sometimes I took him out on a trip or to concerts or he visited my shows with Nueva Manteca. At some point, he was at my place and asked if he could stay overnight. Eventually, he stayed a couple of weeks and that was the last time that I saw him. It was pretty intense because Woody was quite a volatile character. People that act on such a high creative level are sensitive and vulnerable and sometimes self-destructive. And probably as a consequence things can get rough. Woody was like that. Wise but someone who in reality doesn’t know how to cope with life. But despite all of this, we also laughed a lot.”

“We were listening to music, chatting. Doing groceries, cooking. And going to jam sessions. Back then I lived right beside café De Sport, a flourishing and legendary jazz spot. At that time in his life, Woody rarely touched his instrument. But one day he said, ‘Ok, I feel like playing a bit’. We went to De Sport where the regular trio of pianist Frans Elsen featuring bassist Jacques Schols and drummer Eric Ineke was playing. Physically, Woody was in bad shape. But his playing was totally enchanting. I remember that he played The Man I Love, very subdued and humbling. When we finished, Woody made clear that he wanted to go home and have some sleep. This was very unlike Woody! He said, ‘I believe that this was the last time that I played.’ Incredibly and unfortunately, it was.”

“If there is one trumpeter that embodies the whole history of jazz but who is totally original, it’s Woody. What more could you ask for? His playing echoed Louis Armstrong and at the same time was super hip. It’s the max. When Shaw lived in Europe during the last years of his life, few musicians actually knew who he was or how great he was. If you ask about Shaw nowadays, many trumpeters pick him as their big favorite.”

“How can someone who lives such a chaotic personal life act at such a continuous high level? It’s astonishing. On his posthumous live albums and bootleg cassette tapes, that’s when you hear him playing totally different and original versions of the same compositions night after night. Truly amazing. His memory was fabulous and his ears were pitch-perfect. Woody was absurd. His constitution must’ve been very strong. Woody studied eight or nine hours every day, then went to a gig and a jam session afterwards. Every day, every week, on and on. Who can put that thing in his mouth for so long? His son Woody III told me that he should not dare to come in his dad’s room with this or that message, like ‘telephone’ or ‘dinner’s ready’. He just didn’t hear him and kept on playing! He was one with the trumpet. But he also partied hard.”

Party hard and start with Horace and the gang killing it on The Kicker below.

Richard Twardzik The Last Set (Pacific Jazz 1954/62)

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Hell-bound alchemist of bop and assorted varieties of modern music left this world much too soon, leaving a concise but charged legacy of jazz piano. 

Personnel

Richard Twardzik (piano),  Carson Smith (bass), Jimmy Bond (bass, B4), Peter Littman (drums), Chet Baker (trumpet B4)

Recorded

on October 24, 1954, 1954 at Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey and (B4), on October 11, 1955 at Studio Pathé Magellan, Paris

Released

as PJ-37 in 1962

Track listing

Side A: A Crutch For The Crab / Yellow Tango / Bess, You Is My Woman / Just One Of Those Things / Side B: Albuquerque Social Swim / I’ll Remember April / ‘Round Midnight / The Girl From Greenland

For a talent like Dick Twardzik, a footprint of one solo record is rather scant. And then only released eight years after his passing, well tough luck.

Of course, this is not an unlikely scenario for someone who dies from an overdose in a Parisian hotel room at the age of 24.

Part of the deal. For many, in those days. Nothing to mythologize, as we jazz fans are wont. Plain misery. Rotten teeth. Sick like an oil-poisoned turtle. Skin as dry as sandpaper, infected with hideous purple marks. Eyes like death. Emphatic powers below zero in Siberia.

Reportedly, Twardzik believed that his playing benefited from the needle. True or not, Boston-born Twardzik (1931) was somewhat a prodigy who befriended baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff and was taught a lot of classical stuff by Chaloff’s mother. He played with Charlie Parker. An original mind that sought ways to add to the innovations of Bud Powell, akin in some ways to Lennie Tristano and Herbie Nichols.

A crazy bird that temporarily ended up in California, hooked up with Chet Baker., quite literally as well. While on tour in Europe and France (the hotel room, the heroine overdose, the death), he was featured on Chet Baker’s sublime Chet Baker Quartette, which showcased the compositions of Bob Zieff. Take a listen to that album, to Baker and Twardzik. If it would’ve been Bill Evans playing on it, everybody would go about singing halleluja.

Only eight years after his passing, well good luck, it is said above. Well, not completely true. The session from October 11, 1955 with bassist Carson Smith and drummer Peter Littman was released in 1956 on the A-side of Trio on Pacific Jazz, which featured fellow pianist and Baker associate Russ Freeman on side B. Fine, but a weird idea.

Freeman moved on, Twardzik stepped on a rainbow. Then, in 1962, owner of Pacific Jazz, Richard Bock, put out The Last Set and included two bonus tracks (one with Chet Baker), a sincere homage to Twardzik though another weird idea in an era of new jazz innovations and fads. How many copies did Bock expected to sell?

Glad he was willing to stick his neck out, though. Seemingly essential Twardzik. His piano is a bit out of tune, sounds spooky, slightly woolly, appropriate counterpoint to  the scrawny fellow’s stuttering crescendos, percussive bombs, oddball dissonant little phrases, long, intense lines that boil like green peas on a blackened pit.

Quirky, beautiful tunes. A Crutch For The Crab, which oozes the freedom within constraints of veterans like Teddy Wilson and Earl Hines, who were able to make notes quiver like radio waves, tempos slide by like cruising Cadillacs on the boulevard. Yellow Tango, tango indeed, tinged with the weight of the macrocosmos. Twardzik’s take on Bess, You Is My Woman is a bittersweet dream. The fast-paced Just One Of This Things finds him in the mood of a Bebop Bach.

Certainly an if-only-guy that needs to be checked out and kept in the limelight.

Jimmy Forrest Sit Down And Relax (Prestige 1961)

- Francois Leave a comment

And have a natural ball.

Personnel

Jimmy Forrest (tenor saxophone), (Calvin Newborn, guitar), Hugh Lawson (piano) Tommy Potter (bass), Clarence Johnston (drums)

Recorded

on September 1, 1961 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as Prestige 7235 in 1961

Track listing

Side A: Tuxedo Junction / Organ Grinder’s Swing / Moonglow / Side B: Tin Tin Deo / Rocks In My Bed / The Moon Was Yellow

The longer ago an event took place or a place has been in the public, or in jazz’s case, in the aficionado’s eye, the more myth is attached to it. Bird and Dizzy’s appearance at Billy Berg’s in Los Angeles. Longer ago, rowdy Storyville in New Orleans, where brothel musicians touched upon a new musical thing some people soon called ‘jass’.

If only you could take a time machine and experience how it was, is an all-too familiar sentiment.

Fate Marable on the riverboat. Major-league folklore. Marable led dance bands on steamboats that plied the Mississipi River early in the 20th Century and the paddlewheel line that navigated around New Orleans decades after. Mentor to Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Jimmy Lunceford, Chick Webb, Count Basie.

So, if you read about some jazz cat or other and see he’s played with Fate Marable, you say ‘wow, heavy’.

Jimmy Forrest played in Marable’s band on the riverboat. So say ‘wow heavy’, y’all. That’s going back a long way! The tenor saxophonist was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1920. A teenager in the middle of the development from ‘jass’ to swing. Onwards from 1940, Forrest played in the bands of Jay McShann, Andy Kirk, Duke Ellington and Count Basie.

Of course, he’s Mr. Night Train. That tune, derived from Johnny Hodges’ That’s The Blues, Old Man and Duke Ellington’s Happy-Go-Lucky-Local, was a nr. 1 hit on the r&b charts in 1952.

Forrest led various small combos. Blues-drenched, entertaining music that cooks. Something to sit down to and relax with, well, nothing wrong with that, though likely you’ll find yourself tappin’ your feet, strolling around, snapping your fingers.

One of his best records, Sit Down And Relax With Jimmy Forrest, no mistaking, ís a relaxed album. A good almost nonchalant groove and a sense of relief pervades his set of old warhorses as much as sustained energy and lively blowing. He’s got his mind set on a good story, working his way to slightly uprooting climaxes, Ben Webster-style.

Forrest brings us back to the ‘ol days’, the source. Erskine Hawkins’ Tuxeco Junction (Louis Jordan), Hudson/Mills/Parish’s Organ Grinder’s Swing (Jimmy Lunceford Orchestra), Hudson/Mills/DeLange’s Moonglow (Joe Venuti, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw), Duke Ellington’s Rocks In My Bed (Ivie Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald), Ahlert/Leslie’s The Moon Was Yellow (Dorsey Brothers, Frank Sinatra).

A band of cats that rarely caught the public eye. Pianist Hugh Lawson, associated with Yusef Lateef. Guitarist Calvin Newborn, brother of Phineas Newborn, taking a bunch of bossy, fat-toned solos. Bassist Tommy Potter, alumnus of Charlie Parker’s bands. Drummer Clarence Johnston, collaborator of James Moody, Sonny Stitt, Freddie Roach. A good band, earthy, driving, relaxed…

Good match for the ‘star of the show’, Jimmy Forrest, perhaps daydreaming about uncle Fate, blowing smoky and saucy, wrapping it up at Van Gelder office in New Jersey, time for a drink, a talk, a bite, anything to settle down after an afternoon of good-time, spontaneous swing.