Clifford Jordan Beyond Paradiso (NJA 2024)

June 18, 2024June 18, 2024 - Francois Leave a comment

Clifford found his Jordanaires in Holland.

Personnel

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.

The Vara show is also available on vinyl.

Louis Smith Prancin’ (Steeplechase 1979)

June 16, 2024June 20, 2024 - Francois Leave a comment

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.

Listen on YouTube to Prancin’, Chanson de Louise and I Can’t Get Started.

Pony Poindexter Gumbo! (New Jazz 1963)

May 29, 2024 - Francois Leave a comment

Pony in the parade.

Personnel

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.

Listen to Gumbo on YouTube.

Curtis Amy & Frank Butler Groovin’ Blue (Pacific Jazz 1961)

April 23, 2024 - Francois Leave a comment

While writer Charles Bukowski played the piano drunk as a percussion instrument until his fingers began to bleed a bit in East Hollywood, two hardboiled jazz men blew the roof of a studio a mile or so further down the boulevards of broken dreams.

Personnel

Curtis Amy (tenor saxophone), Carmell Jones (trumpet), Bobby Hutcherson (vibraphone), Frank Strazzeri (piano), Jimmy Bond (bass), Frank Butler (drums)

Recorded

on December 10, 1960 at Pacific Jazz Studio, Los Angeles

Released

as PJ-19 in 1961

Track listing

Side A:
Gone Into It
Annsome
Bobblin’
Side B:
Groovin’ Blue
Beautiful You
Very Frank

It isn’t all light-footed and laid-back jazz what the clock struck on the West Coast. Yes, there was a sunny and breezy and carefully pre-cooked Californian phenomenon that came to be known as West Coast Jazz. But there had been similar tightly arranged chamber jazz endeavors on the East Coast. And hadn’t Los Angeles itself churned out its share of groove and grease normally associated with the Mid-West and East? Les McCann was an incredibly popular Calif-based gospel-infused burner. A lesser-known hard swinger is tenor saxophonist Curtis Amy.

As a matter of fact, strictly defined, the Houston, Texas-born Amy (1925) is West nor East but a Texas tenor-inspired blower. His is a style that punches faces with strong fists and tattooed knuckles. His sound is solid and meaty, like a spicy stew of chili beans and pork ribs. He’s a modern cat that is drenched in blues and the booming licks of the likes of Illinois Jacquet. Lone Star swagger.

Intermittently residing in Tennessee, Amy reached Los Angeles in the late 1950’s. He recorded for Pacific Jazz, a strong series of records that featured organist Paul Bryant, valve trombonist Roy Brewster, bassist Clarence Jones, drummer Johnny Miller, pianist Victor Feldman and vibraphonists Bobby Hutcherson and Roy Ayers. When the name of unsung hero Amy crops up nowadays, it’s usually through Katanga, Amy’s hard bop gem from 1963 that was generally neglected during his lifetime but enjoyed a high-profile Tone Poet reissue in 2021. Katanga featured the enigmatic and brilliant trumpeter Dupree Bolton.

His mate on Groovin’ Blue is drummer Frank Butler. The Kansas, Missouri-born Butler also was not of the ‘lite’ variety but a heavy calorie modernist and drummer of choice for Curtis Counce, Art Pepper, Hampton Hawes and Elmo Hope. Anybody familiar with Harold Land’s furious The Fox knows what unsung hero #2, Frank Butler, is about.

They are groovin’ blue with trumpeter Carmell Jones, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, pianist Frank Strazzeri and bassist Jimmy Bond. Groovin’ Blue flows nice ‘n’ easy and gritty ‘n’ greasy and fast ‘n’ furious from start to finish, the start being Amy’s blues swinger par excellence Gone Into It, the finish consisting of the tenorist’s Very Frank, a boppish explosion that builds on a Frank Butler drum intermezzo.

This set of Amy tunes includes the mid-tempo blues groove of Groovin’ Blue, which is right up the alley of Curtis Amy, a sort of Stanley Turrentine with a harder and more edgy sound if you will. Butler is a propulsive and sizzling force and graces Annsome with a short but sweet solo, all meaningful simplicity and built on a march figure, as if he’s a drummer kid in the second line. Everything he plays is sassy and oozes fun. Beautiful You is a ballad that revolves around a story by Bobby Hutcherson, which certainly deserves the adjective of beautiful. The most original tune is Bobbin’ and juxtaposes waltz with 4/4 groove and features fine solo’s by Jones, Amy, Hutcherson and Strazzeri.

That’s tenor, trumpet, vibes and piano, which makes up for a sparkling sound palette, one more reason to get Groovin’ Blue while you can.

Red Rodney Superbop (Muse 1974)

March 28, 2024March 28, 2024 - Francois Leave a comment

Red alert.

Personnel

Red Rodney (trumpet), Sam Noto (trumpet, flugelhorn), Jimmy Mulidore (alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, alto flute), Dolo Coker (piano), Ray Brown (bass), Shelly Mann (drums)

Recorded

at Wally Heider Recording Studio in Los Angeles

Released

as MR 5046

Track listing

Side A:
Superbop
The Look Of Love
The Last Train Out
Side B:
Fire
Green Dolphin Street
Hilton

The crook or the outlaw does everything that you and I don’t dear dream of. He roams the country with a bunch of thieves and gypsies. Beats up a guy that throws plastic baskets from McDonalds out the window of his SUV on the freeway. He’s down and out and sleeps off hangovers on the beach. Understanding everything and nothing at the same time, he’s liable to brooding between stretches of high action. It’s what you would call ADHD nowadays, but in his world, the realm of Attila the Hun and Mickey Spillane, ADHD is just another painkiller on the market.

His whole life is a statement about the illusion of freedom. He’s hard as a brick except when it comes to animals. He lives by his wits and the sorrow of the world hangs on his lapels as backpacks on the coat racks in school. His life is a crust of blood on the forehead. Honor is his middle name. To the point of madness. He sometimes travels with his stepson. He says he’s the happiest man on earth and that’s the one thing that bothers his stepson’s mother. What bothers hím is that the further away he is from reality, the better he understands it.

Red Rodney knew all this. He lived a life that transcends the absurd. It is a life story that is well-known by the serious jazz fan, written down unforgettably by Gene Lees in his seminal book Cats Of Any Colors. Born Robert Roland Chudnick in Philadelphia in 1927, Rodney played in the bands of Jimmy Dorsey and Benny Goodman before breaking through in the band of Charlie Parker. It was all bebop from that point on. As the only white member of the group, Rodney was billed as “Albino Red” during stints below the Mason Dixie line. Unfortunately, he also committed himself to the lifestyle of Bird and became a heavy user of heroin and assorted substances.

(Red Rodney; Charlie Parker & Red Rodney watching Dizzy play; Sam Noto, Rodney’s frontline partner on Superbop)

Beboppers were the cultural outlaws of the 1940’s. Often derided by conservative colleagues or critics, their music was not only an extreme jazz evolution, it also reflected the signs of the times, its seemingly frenzied but highly complex and structured sounds in sync with war and post-war upheaval and the acceleration of developments in American society. They were the underdog, people that were rock & roll before the term existed, people that, to paraphrase an evergreen, ‘couldn’t go home again’ although the one that formalized it, Dizzy Gillespie, ultimately was a dedicated family guy.

Rodney was far from home. Luckily, the trumpeter succeeded to survive while other boppers like Dick Twartzik, Serge Chaloff and Sonny Clark fatally overdosed, but after his long and successful stint with Parker, Rodney gradually dropped out of sight. He made a couple of records in the late 1950’s but generally took to theft to sustain his habits. Rodney immersed himself in swindling and fraudulent activities and took no half measures. At the height of his crookdom, Rodney conned various insurance companies for major sums of money and impersonated as a doctor in order to obtain and sell prescriptions. Grand schemes, as if the crew from Ocean Twelve was united in one person.

Rodney’s most outlandish adventure in the 1960’s was his impersonation as a USA Army general and robbing money and secret documents from the vault of an army base. It was only a matter of time before Rodney got caught, no matter how ingenious his games of hide and seek with the law. Rodney served several jail sentences, although his uncommonly special rapport with prison managers and other servants of the law stood him in good stead. Often, the disadvantaged institutions didn’t care for the publicity and confined to deals with the red-headed stranger. Note that the ‘gentle crook’ eschewed from robbing his fellow man/woman but instead focused on the anonymous establishment.

Rodney spent years in the pit bands in Las Vegas, while his teeth were in horrible condition, and this looked like the end of his jazz career, until he met a fine lady in the late 1970’s in New York City. She cleaned him up and Rodney obtained new dentures, enjoying a highly unexpected, minor comeback, functioning as an older and wiser mentor to many young lions and recording frequently until his death of cancer in 1994.

He apparently was in bad shape in the 1970’s. So, it’s quite surprising that Rodney did manage to make a couple of excellent records. His first album in 14 years in 1974, Bird Lives, was fine though had its share of weaker moments, but the follow-up from the same year, Superbop, was flawless from start to finish. Hi-octane, to boot. It coupled Rodney with fellow trumpeter Sam Noto, saxophonist Jimmy Mulidore, pianist Dolo Coker and the heavyweight rhythm section of bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne.

Of course, it would be hard to find a weak session when Ray Brown is aboard, giant of the double bass and the Big Boss Mann of the studio. So, that might be one of the main reasons that Superbop worked out so well. Rodney and Noto work together on the sparkling ensembles as Siamese twins and hunt each other in the choruses as foxes and rabbits. Interestingly, Noto is the first soloist on five of six tunes, which reveals the generosity of the veteran to the underrated Kenton and Basie-ite. This is fish in a barrel for Brown and Manne. Brown particularly, and typically, is a forceful presence, now and then walking in duet with Rodney, and providing great suspense to boot.

Superbop, a line that’s derived from the solo by Clifford Brown from Daahoud, thrives on the vitality of Rodney and Noto’s trumpet stylings. The vibe of Burt Bacharach’s The Look Of Love, featuring muted Rodney, is pleasantly reminiscent of Miles Davis. Dolo Coker seizes his Bud Powell-ish opportunity on the fast-pased Last Train Out, a Sam Noto tune. Rodney and Noto’s Fire is a rapidly expanding forest fire and it’s a line that reminds of Salt Peanuts. Plenty salty but predominantly oozing with the sharpness of chili pepper. The Latin-tinged treatment of Green Dolphin Street is no slouch either.

This is superbop indeed, fusion and synths and odd meter be damned. Though the modal mid-tempo Hilton, written by Mulidor, points out that Rodney was not stuck in rigid traditionalism. He’s just doing what he does best, thrivin’ on an unbeatable and rather riveting riff.

Listen to Superbop on YouTube here.

Eddie Harris The In Sound (Atlantic 1966)

February 25, 2024 - Francois Leave a comment

Folk hero in his prime.

Personnel

Eddie Harris (tenor saxophone), Ray Codrington (trumpet A1, B1, B2), Cedar Walton (piano), Ron Carter (bass), Billy Higgins (drums)

Recorded

on August 9 & 25 in New York City

Released

as Atlantic 1448 in 1966

Track listing

Side A:
Love Theme From “The Sandpiper” (The Shadow Of Your Smile)
Born To Be Blue
Love For Sale
Side B:
Cryin’ Blues
‘S Wonderful
Freedom Jazz Dance

“El Cheapo.” That’s how Eddie Harris apparently called himself in the mid-1980’s. The tenor saxophonist was recording in the studio of engineer Max Bolleman in Monster in The Netherlands and Max was thinking that this was kind of weird. Harris introduced and continued to define himself as “El Cheapo.” His toying with various electronical devices, especially when broken down due to faulty wiring, was accompanied by self-deprecating remarks. “Oh yeah that figures, I’m ‘El Cheapo’”.

It is weird. Perhaps best ranked in the realm of irony? Chicago-born Eddie Harris started out with a big bang and enjoyed a major hit with his version of the theme song from the movie Exodus in 1960. A beautiful, breezy tune that showcased Harris’s upper register sounds of the tenor saxophone. He changed course in the mid-1960’s and followed his own path on the Atlantic label, recording a series of gritty avant-soul jazz records featuring amplified saxophone. Another unlikely hit was scored with the live Swiss Movement LP with pianist Les McCann in 1971. Okay, but to get back to irony, Harris subsequently released various surprising albums with r&b and vocals, among those the comedy album The Reason Why I’m Talking Shit. His best-known tune from the period is Eddie Who? Seriously funny tune. And ambiguous, mentioning various contributions of Harris to jazz. I remember when you used to play with Count Basie / That was Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis / My name is Eddie Harris / I’ve got one of your videos jack / That was Eddie Murphy / My name is Eddie Harris.

We haven’t forgotten you, Eddie. On the contrary. Which jazz musician has enjoyed two major hits in his career? He may have been under the radar in the latter part of his life. But various people have sung praise during his lifetime and since his death in 1996. Just a few examples, staying close to the premises of Flophouse Magazine. Tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander considered Harris’s solo on You’ll See on Jimmy Smith’s All The Way as the ‘best blues solo in F ever’. Swiss drummer Florian Arbenz recorded a different version of Harris’s Freedom Jazz Dance on every issue of his twelve-LP saga Conversations. Finally, Dutch alto saxophonist Benjamin Herman praised Harris courageous crossover mentality, mentioning Mean Greens as one his favorite records.

Freedom Jazz Dance was featured on The In Sound, released in 1966. It was the first record after his mainstream period on VeeJay and Columbia that demonstrated a will to experiment, albeit not yet with ‘electric sax’ or various amplified instruments. It was the first album that put Harris’s thorough understanding of Coltrane’s playing in the limelight. The LP featured Cedar Walton, Ron Carter and Billy Higgins. Major-league company, in its prime.

Evidently, Freedom Jazz Dance is the album’s high-profile and lasting composition. It was famously covered by Miles Davis on Miles Smiles in 1967. It is still marvelous and fresh. If only for the tremendous groove, kickstarted by the gritty counter beats of Carter, Walton and Higgins, which is strengthened by the churchy pattern of the tambourine. Carter’s booming sound and long notes ring through the breaks like school bells. On top of all this is the playful, Ornette Coleman-ish melody. It’s hypnotic, it’s like being at a party that grows more cheerful and intense by the hour, like being among people with uncommonly good, uplifting vibes, merging in a trance in a dance in a buffalo stance.

Eddie blows a fuse. It’s the climax of a record that started with Harvey Mandel’s The Shadow Of Your Smile from The Sandpiper, Harris was asked to add another movie theme song and says in the liner notes that he said why not, making it his own with his typically punchy, no-nonsense tone and down-to-earth, well-paced phrasing. He blows a meaty ballad and a roaring blues and goes Gershwin, everything vivid and accessible. He’s pushing the envelope but giving people their money’s worth. A wild man, a kind of Rufus Thomas on sax.

He goes Porter with the hard-hitting Love For Sale, marked by an overwhelming tornado of notes, as if the sound of the heavy tread of the heavy feet from the lonesome cop that introduces the nocturnal endeavors of the tale’s world-wary prostitute in the red light district is washed away by the frenzied footsteps of a dozen violent gnomes.

Eventful transitional record by El Cheapo. Nothing cheap about it, mind you.

The Eddie Higgins Trio Soulero (Atlantic 1965)

January 24, 2024 - Francois Leave a comment

Fine pianist from the periphery of the jazz landscape recorded his third album on the incomparable Atlantic label.

Personnel

Eddie Higgins (piano), Richard Evans (bass), Marshall Thompson (drums)

Recorded

in 1965 at Universal Recording Corporation, Chicago

Released

as Atlantic 1446 in 1965

Track listing

Side A:
Tango Africaine
Love Letters
Shelley’s World
Soulero
Side B:
Mr. Evans
Django
Beautiful Dreamer
Makin’ Whoopee

Eddie? You mean, the Eddie? Sure, man, you don’t have to tell me who is who. Eddie is a fine pianist, we used to hang at the Brass Rail, colorful guy.

Perhaps this is the question-and-answer query of quite a few jazz dinosaurs. Not mine though, to be honest. It was only after discovering Eddie Higgins on an online jazz forum that I started to listen to him and finally acquiring some of his records, including Soulero. And it was only after I started to dig into his career info that I found out, oh, it’s thís Eddie, I heard him but it somehow didn’t register. Because Mr. Higgins played on Lee Morgan’s Expoobident, Wayne Shorter’s Wayning Moments and Wes Montgomery’s One Night In Indy. That’s right. Not bad. By the way, the late Wayne Shorter asked him back for 2002’s All Or Nothing At All and 2013’s Beginnings.

It all started in Chicago for the Cambridge, Massachusetss-born Higgins. A pianist that was versed in swing and bop and led various bands in The Windy City opposite fellows like Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Dizzy Gillespie and Wes Montgomery. He played with the likes of Coleman Hawkins, Jack Teagarden, Oscar Peterson and Sonny Stitt and was the house pianist at the high-profile London House from 1957 to the late 1960’s. He made quite a few records in the USA with Milt Hinton, Rufus Reid, Ray Drummond. It seems that he was very popular in Japan, having released 20+ records on the Venus label with, among others, Scott Hamilton from 2000 till 2008. Where was I? I don’t have a clue. Probably, as cult country star and the world’s funniest whodunnit-writer Kinky Friedman would say, out there where the buses don’t run.

I was alert enough, though, to notice an online comment on Higgins by jazz buff and reviewer Randy L. Smith. Smith, based in Japan, saw him perform in Fukusaki in 2006 and 2007. He provided me with an interview with Higgins in Cadence, written by Dan Gould. Interestingly, Higgins, who lived in Florida by the time of the interview, tells of his surprising refusal to act upon the request of Art Blakey to join his band in 1960. It was just after Higgins’s feature on the Morgan album on October 14, 1960, which included the famed Buhaina. In theory, Higgins would join the then-current line-up of Morgan, Shorter and Jimmy Merritt and would be the replacement of Bobby Timmons. But he refused, seeing one huge plus – immediate acclaim and world-wide touring – but a lot of negatives: (with kind permission of Dan Gould)

“First of all I’ve got a great job here in Chicago in the London House and my kids were very little at that point. And the idea to be on the road all the time and not seeing my children grow up is a negative. Number two, this is pretty much an all-junkie band and I’m not only nót a junkie, I don’t even drink or smoke pot or anything at all. I would be out of the loop as far as the social life of the band, plus the fact that I’m the only White guy in the band. And at that time in jazz history there was a very strong Crow Jim feeling that if you’re White, you couldn’t play. And obviously they knew I could play or I wouldn’t be on these record dates or asked to join the band, but still there’d be a… definite racial bridge to cross there working with the Jazz Messengers and playing in probably mostly Black clubs for mostly Black audiences and so forth. And third, I heard by the grapevine that when payday came the first guy that got the money was the connection for the heroin, and not just Blakey but the rest of the band, too. And if there’s any money left over then they pay the hotel bill and if there’s anything left over from that then maybe the guys will get a few bucks. I had a family and rent to pay and insurance payments.”

Blakey replied: ‘You’re kidding’. Because as Higgins says, to get an offer from The Jazz Messengers is like being touched on the shoulder by God. In the end though, it seems a perfectly logical decision.

Atlantic somehow got wind of Higgins. Perhaps, Ahmet or Nesuhi Artegun were conscious of the fact that Higgins served as producer for Chess Records. Anyway, they got him in the Universal Recording Corporation studio in Chicago with his long-standing rhythm section of bassist Richard Davis and drummer Marshall Thompson.

Soulero was the end result. Hip sleeve. The look of love sells, doesn’t it. Atlantic was pushing Higgins in the direction of soul jazz. There is a decidedly Ramsey Lewis-style vibe. Richard Evans and Marshall Thompson were worthy and prolific contenders in the jazz business. They are sophisticated while working up quite a storm. There is a notable diversion of groove, divided between Higgins’s Tango Africaine, the ‘bolero’ of Soulero and the bass-driven swinger Mr. Evans. Folk melody Beautiful Dreamer and Bill Traut’s Shelley’s World represented the lighter touch of Higgins. A baroque introduction defines Love Letters. Higgins intriguingly works his way through the bridge of the iconic, John Lewis’s Django. Makin’ Whoopee is made into a nifty and entertaining flagwaver and is developed from nice ‘n’ easy to fast and, finally, furious Speedy Gonzales-tempo.

Certainly not a waste of time. The Ertegun Bros seemed to agree, as they released The Piano Of Eddie Higgins the following year, even going to the expense of adding an orchestra. They knew he was a fine pianist. But there are many fine pianists out there and Higgins seemed to have a knack of flying under the radar.

Listen to Soulero on YouTube here.

FLOPHOUSE

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