Review

Sam Lazar Space Flight (Argo 1960)

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Very little is known of organist Sam Lazar’s life. The liner notes of his early sixties Argo releases represent about the only information available. He hailed from St. Louis and played piano in the groups of Ernie Wilkins and Tab Smith, when a gig he attented of modern organ jazz progenitor Jimmy Smith inspired him to take up the Hammond B3.

Sam Lazar - Space Flight

Personnel

Sam Lazar (organ), Grant Green (guitar), Willie Dixon (bass), Chauncey Williams (drums)

Recorded

on June 1, 1960 at Ter-Mar Studio, Chicago

Released

in 1960 as Argo 4002

Track listing

Side A:
Dig A Little Deeper
We Don’t Know
Caramu
Ruby
Gigi Blues
Side B:
Space Flight
Mad Lad
Funky Blues
Big Willie
My Babe


Liner note writer of Lazar’s Argo debut Space Flight, DJ E. Rodney Jones, praises Lazar as ‘the best organist now playing jazz’, which is goofy, considering his mention of master Jimmy Smith. Biased or perhaps intent on sales, Jones ignores the facts that Wild Bill Davis was generally acknowledged as a pioneer of pre-modern organ jazz and that the start of the sixties brought a batch of top notch, tasteful players such as Shirley Scott and Jimmy McGriff, who were more advanced than Lazar.

It’s not a put-down of Jones, who was an important black radio pioneer. It’s just to be taken with a grain of salt. And though Lazar may not be part of the Hammond major league, he deserves his place in organ jazz history. Of his three Argo releases – the other ones being Playback and Soul Merchant – Space Flight is the most alluring, containing snappy, unpolished r&b-type tunes and furthermore, remaining relevant for including fellow St. Louis musician Grant Green, the unsung hero of modern jazz guitar.

Space Flight was Green’s second recording. (following Jimmy Forrest’s All The Gin Is Gone of December 1, 1959) Green was part of Lazar’s working band. Just a while later alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson would introduce Green to Alfred Lion and Green’s Blue Note and New York career would be underway. A little research proves my point that, in contrast to general opinion, the late fifties 45rpm single that the tiny label Cawthorne released of Sam Lazar, Space Flight part 1/part 2, was Green’s recording debut instead of the Jimmy Forrest album. (Space Flight part 2, by the way, is represented on the album titled Big Willie)

Green delivers a series of fleet, blues-drenched solo’s, that make it easy to imagine why he was already making such an impression on fellow musicians. The flagwaver Gigi Blues, Mad Lad and the heavily shufflin’ title track are cases in point.

The line-up also includes blues icon and bassist Willie Dixon, which also explains the overriding blues atmosphere of Space Flight. The group plays Dixon’s classic My Baby.

Argo was a subsidiary of Chess Records, Phil and Leonard Chess’ legendary Chicago label that trusted heavily on Dixon’s input. The overall sound of the session is pretty distorted, not unlike that of the era’s Chicago blues music. The kind of raucous music that grew out of and boosted black neighbourhood life. Grant Green’s sophisticated playing style contrasts well with the straight-laced surroundings.

Lazar puts in a couple of solo’s that sound-wise place him in the realm of swing rather than modern jazz. Style-wise, Lazar shows some signs of modernity, particularly in the album’s highlight, the dynamic and fleetly phrased Mad Lad.

However, generally Sam Lazar’s playing style stayed close to the blues, as Space Flight proves convincingly.

Ray Bryant Lonesome Traveler (Cadet 1966)

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Jazz is also for dancing and sometimes it prompts me to do just that. Honestly, do you really think I’m cookin’ on another planet when I admit that Ray Bryant got me shufflin’ through the living room like the juke joint customers of lore? You gotta be kiddin’.

Ray Bryant - Lonesome Traveler

Personnel

Ray Bryant (piano), Clark Terry (flugelhorn), Snooky Young (flugelhorn), (Jimmy Rowser (bass A2, A4, B1, B3-5), Richard Davis (bass A1, A3, B2), Freddie Waits (drums)

Recorded

in September 1966 at RCA Studios, NYC

Released

as Cadet 778 in 1966

Track listing

Side A:
Lonesome Traveler
‘Round Midnight
These Boots Are Made For Walkin’
Willow Weep For Me
Side B:
The Blue Scimitar
Gettin’ Loose
Wild Is The Wind
Cubano Chant
Brother This ‘N’ Sister That


Lonesome Traveler is one of pianist Ray Bryant’s grittiest recordings and his second album on Cadet – the subsidiary of Chicago blues and r&b label Chess. The other ones that fulfill Bryant’s ‘Travel’-concept trio of albums on Cadet are (the equally exciting) Gotta Travel On and (the slightly under par) Slow Freight. By 1966, Bryant, a pianist with a lot of gospel and blues feeling and an uncommonly firm, propulsive left hand had a satisfactory decade to look back upon. Appreciated by colleagues, the Philadelphian had recorded with Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Max Roach and Sonny Rollins, among others. Bryant was a noted composer of catchy tunes and a popular leader in his own right. The Madison Time (which went number 30 on the Billboard chart and number 5 on the r&b chart), Little Suzie, Monkey Business and Cubano Chant are well-known Bryant compositions.

Cubano Chant was recorded by Art Blakey and Bryant on Blakey’s album Drum Suite in 1957 and Bryant re-visits it for Lonesome Traveler. It’s one of the examples on the album of the great left hand playing of Bryant, a feature that suggests the influence of the boogiewoogie masters, highly proficient and entertaining. Coupled with a strong and fluent right hand, this album is full of gems, of which the version of Lee Hazlewood’s song These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ (of Nancy Sinatra fame) is absolutely crazy! The combination of Freddie Waits’ backbeat and Richard Davis’ bass (especially the strongly plucked, well-known ascending bass figure) is irresistable. Ray Bryant’s voicings of the theme near the ending are smart and mix well with the flugelhorns, which are added throughout the album for harmony only.

Willow Weep For Me has another fine Bryant solo, an ongoing, virile flow of ideas. Ray Bryant really likes to play. He also doesn’t shy away from transforming Monk’s great ballad ‘Round Midnight into a medium-tempo bossa tune, which builds in tension, swinging ebulliently like Oscar Peterson. Bryant reserves ballad mode for Wild Is The Wind, a tender and intricate winner. Never a one trick pony, Bryant rounds off the album with the down home mover Brother This ‘N’ Sister That. Innate tradition, a bag of blues and exciting modern jazz playing all-in-one.

Bar’s open.

Hank Mobley Hank Mobley Quintet (Blue Note 1957)

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Pick anyone of Hank Mobley’s extended string of Blue Note albums of the late fifties and the early sixties and you’re in for a treat. Soul Station (1960) is widely regarded as the tenor saxophonist’s masterpiece. It’s hard to disagree! However, 1957’s Hank Mobley Quintet also ranks among’s Hank Mobley’s finest efforts. At its centre is Mobley’s unique silky sound.

Hank Mobley Quintet

Personnel

Hank Mobley (tenor saxophone), Art Farmer (trumpet), Horace Silver (piano), Doug Watkins (bass), Art Blakey (drums)

Recorded

on March 8, 1957 at Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey

Released

as BLP 1550 in 1957

Track listing

Side A:
Funk In Deep Freeze
Wham And They’re Off
Fin De l’Affaire
Side B:
Startin’ From Scratch
Stella-Wise
Base On Balls


Mobley once described his tone as ‘round’. Veteran Dutch pianist Rob Agerbeek, who toured Europe with Mobley in 1968-69 and whom I talked to a year ago for Flophouse Magazine, succinctly put it like this: “It came out naturel, like breath, ‘whooosh!’”

Tone wasn’t Mobley’s sole asset. The man possessed first-rate chops and a gift for writing unconventional, smoky tunes. The way Mobley embraced a melody and spun lyrical, flowing lines is exceptional. What more could one ask for?

There’s the famous remark of legendary critic Leonard Feather, who dubbed Mobley ‘the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone’ in the liner notes of 1961’s Workout. Feather believed, in terms of both fame and style, that Mobley belonged neither to the heavyweight category of Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, nor to the lightweight school of Stan Getz. Feather suggested that Mobley’s uncommon, relaxed but driving phrasing unjustly kept him under the radar.

But among musicians and label bosses Mobley was indisputed and in constant demand. The tenorist from Philadelphia recorded with, among others, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Lee Morgan, Cedar Walton, Kenny Dorham, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Donald Byrd, Kenny Drew, Elvin Jones, Grant Green… The list is endless. His well-known cooperation with fellow original Jazz Messengers Art Blakey and Horace Silver is of the utmost historic value. Mobley’s subtle methods gelled surprisingly well with the explosive approach of Blakey. It’s a rather mysterious but inspiring blend that’s showcased on the landmark albums that were quintessential in spawning hard bop, Horace Silver And The Jazz Messengers and At The Bohemia I and II. The line-up of Hank Mobley Quintet constitutes the original Messengers line-up of the above-mentioned albums minus Kenny Dorham.

Mobley’s Soul Station is remarkable for the fact that the relaxed but insistent swing of Mobley seems to nurture a gentler Blakey attack: a quiet storm. Blakey places more pushy accents, press rolls and cymbal crashes on Hank Mobley Quintet. That’s pretty swell too. Wham And They’re Gone sizzles, boils and, like a jolly giant, threatens to tear out of its turtleneck sweater. Mobley goes about his business of stacking breathy flurries of notes while retaining a sense of elegance and sophistication. Cuts like Funk In Deep Freeze, a twisty-turny melody taken at medium tempo, are gems of a group of players that know each other inside out.

Mobley knew how to handle ballads. His original ballad, Fin De l’Affaire, is a gorgeous melody that leans heavily on the dark-hued bass of Doug Watkins, and which Mobley graces with understated pathos. Horace Silver plays ‘full of silence’, a beautific way of giving substance to a solo that’s both romantic and bluesy. Art Farmer is an authoritative presence on the album, alternating between open horn and mute. These guys are pioneers of hard bop that lift more average material like Stella-Wise and 12-bar blues Base On Balls to a higher level. Hank Mobley functions as suave leader of the pack.

What a refined player, nary a corny phrase around.

Tina Brooks True Blue (Blue Note 1960)

- Francois 1 Comment

In spite of being the Einstein and Heisenberg of the modern jazz recording business, Blue Note label bosses Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff occasionally seemed to suffer from a black out. Why else did they release only one album – True Blue – out of four excellent sessions of tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks?

Tina Brooks - True Blue

Personnel

Tina Brooks (tenor saxophone), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Duke Jordan (piano), Sam Jones (bass), Art Taylor (drums)

Recorded

on June 25, 1960 at Van Gelder Studio, Inglewood Cliffs, NJ

Released

as BLP 4041 in 1960

Track listing

Side A:
Good Old Soul
Up Tight’s Creek
Theme For Doris
Side B:
True Blue
Miss Hazel
Nothing Ever Changes My Love For You


Fifty-five years after the fact, one can only speculate. Jack Chambers, in a May 2005 Coda issue, suggested that Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff effectively killed the career of Brooks. (Who Killed Tina Brooks? – read here) A lot of conjecture. I’m sure that The Lion & The Wolff couldn’t be bothered with the fact that Brooks, a reserved, shabby-dressed, corner bar jazz cat, didn’t look as good on a record cover than Hank Mobley. They used Brooks on only a handful of sessions, but Jimmy Smith’s The Sermon, Kenny Burrell’s Blue Lights Vol 1 & 2 and Freddie Hubbards’s Open Sesame were notable albums, not cautious try-outs destined to be shelved. Whatever the reasons, it definitely is a pity that a career as a leader for Blue Note didn’t work out for Brooks in his heyday of 1958-61.

Another mystery though: why didn’t Brooks, seeing that Blue Note apparently had other priorities, tried to find a place in the roster of related companies like Prestige?

If it weren’t for ace producer Michael Cuscuna, whose influential re-issue company Mosaic released The Complete Recordings Of The Tina Brooks Quintets in 1985, (which in turn led to seperate re-issues of his albums by Blue Note in the nineties) we wouldn’t have known that not only True Blue showed potential, but that other sessions displayed a mature instrumentalist with a sinewy yet edgy tone and ability to string together cliché-free line after line. Brooks was also a prolific writer.

And stood his ground amidst a bunch of top-notch figures of the day, like Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, Lee Morgan and Paul Chambers. 1958’s Minor Move, 1960’s Back To The Track and 1961’s The Waiting Game were mastered, numbered and designed but, ultimately, shelved.

It’s hard to pick a winner. I would say the quintessential Tina Brooks-statements were ignited by Philly Joe Jones’ blistering sparks on The Waiting Game.

True Blue was recorded a week after Freddie Hubbard’s Open Sesame, the debut album of the promising trumpeter, which depended significantly on the input of Tina Brooks as composer and sideman. Brooks had functioned as Hubbard’s mentor for some time.

Fitting the company’s hard bop aesthetic like a velvet glove, the album boasts such almost inexplicably charming, blues-based, minor key tunes as Good Old Soul (including a great off-centre solo by Brooks) and True Blue. (the tune is upbeat, catchy and the employment of tension without release is nifty) There’s the langourous, beautific melody of Miss Hazel, wherein Brooks and Hubbard are right on the money and Art Taylor puts in stunning rolls, and the moody but sprightly Theme For Doris.

Brooks may not have been a pioneer like Dexter Gordon or an innovator like Joe Henderson. But his all-round package of chops, authority, melodic panache and gift for writing should’ve led to more than just one album as a leader. Addicted to heroin and suffering from liver damage, Brooks passed away at the age of 42 in 1974.

Hank Marr Sounds From The Marr-Ket Place (King 1964/1967)

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I bet ya organist Hank Marr’s incredibly swinging album Sounds From The Marr-Ket Place will prompt even the worst couch potato to clap hands, stamp feet, shake hips, and well… shake everything else it’s got with it. It has not only a contagious, soulful vibe, but is also intriguing for the fact that it marks the recording debut for future avantgardists James ‘Blood’ Ulmer and George Adams.

Hank Marr - Marr-Ket Place

Personnel

Hank Marr (organ), George Adams (tenor saxophone), James ‘Blood’ Ulmer (guitar), poss. Taylor Orr (drums)

Recorded

in 1964

Released

as K5-12-1025 in 1967

Track listing

Side A:
The Marr-Ket Place
Soup Spoon
Smothered Soul
I Remember Acapulco
Greens-A-Go-Go
Side B:
Down In The Bottom
My Dream Just Passed
Home Fries
Come And Get It
Get On Down


Marr had always been ready and able to work up a storm, having released series of meaty r&b-type singles designed for the jukebox market in the late fifties and early sixties. Two of those singles for Syd Nathan’s King label, Greasy Spoon and Silver Spoon, were minor hits. King – and its subsidiary label Federal – included in its roster, among others, James Brown, Hank Ballard, Freddie King and fellow organist Bill Doggett.

A bunch of singles ended up on the compilations Teentime Latest Dance Steps (1963) and Greasy Spoon (1969). Marr’s 1964 live gig in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, Live At Club 502 and Sounds Of The Marr-Ket Place were all-round albums. Marr’s recorded output of albums wasn’t voluminous. Clearly, the livelyhood of musicians like Marr depended very strongly on gigs in Eastern and Mid-Western clubs that tended to the growing audience of organ jazz in the wake of pioneer Jimmy Smith’s popularity. In the eighties, Marr concentrated on teaching and lecturing at Ohio State. Marr recorded three albums in the nineties on the Double Time label, among them Hank And Frank in 1996, with tenorist Frank Foster.

Marr has a blues-drenched style and ‘burns’ like the best of them. But he’s also a refined player with a crafty approach to the Hammond B3’s settings. His solo in The Marr-Ket Place rocks like crazy and is splendidly executed. The tune’s a fast swinger. It’s not the only exciting Marr bit. The album is varied, alternating between uptempo, catchy swingers, boogaloos, slow blues and rumba.

George Adams went on to become one of avantgarde’s most beloved tenor saxophonists from the seventies onwards, at the same time firmly rooted in the blues. He cooperated with Charles Mingus and Gil Evans, but is perhaps best known for his extended work with Don Pullen. His deadpan delivery of quirky blues bits in The Marr-Ket Place and big, smoky sound and honky style which brings to mind both Stanley Turrentine and Willis Jackson in slow blues Soup Spoon are cherries on the album’s top. Same goes for James ‘Blood’ Ulmer, whose 1983 album Odyssee is a vanguard classic. His playing on the album suggests the influence of the era’s soul guitarists and the twangy, biting work of Johnny Guitar Watson. Smothered Soul finds Ulmer also soloing in octaves.

Marr’s marketplace is one rocking joint.

YouTube: Sounds From The Marr-Ket Place

Kenny Drew Undercurrent (Blue Note 1961)

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Kenny Drew’s Undercurrent isn’t called Undercurrent for nothing. The opener and title track is the pièce de résistance of the album in which every member of the band is on fire. Following it up with a set of excellent hard bop is quite an achievement.

Kenny Drew - Undercurrent

Personnel

Kenny Drew (piano), Hank Mobley (tenor saxophone), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Sam Jones (bass), Louis Hayes (drums)

Recorded

on December 11, 1960 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as BLP 4059 in 1961

Track listing

Side A:
Undercurrent
Funk-Cosity
Lion’s Den
Side B:
The Pot’s On
Groovin’ The Blues
Ballade


That hard bop was a development from bebop to more expressive playing of the down-home kind is true, but there was more to it. Near the end of the fifties, there were many different tastes. Pianist Kenny Drew, who played with Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins and Howard McGhee, among others, possessed his share of ‘funk’, but his touch was light as a feather, as opposed to the more common percussionist approach. Drew spun precise, logical but animated lines and was a fine accompanist, who worked extensively for Dinah Washington.

Drew’s blues tunes – Funk-Cosity and Groovin’ The Blues – are medium tempo groovers, distinctive for articulate, swinging Drew solo’s. The Pot’s On is a Horace Silver-type tune with an attractive old timey feeling. Lion’s Den (Obviously, Blue Note boss Alfred Lion’s pad) is a happy swinger that makes use of trademark hard bop interludes of suspended rhythm that boost the soloists considerably.

Ballade is a-typical for the period, eschewing double time or louder four/four-sections, instead opting for balanced, sweet and sour balladry. It’s charming.

Not only Kenny Drew, who wrote all six tunes, is in top form, Hank Mobley and Freddie Hubbard are spot-on as well. At the time, Hank Mobley, a young veteran of classic Art Blakey groups, had completed future classic albums Soul Station, Roll Call (including Hubbard) and Workout. Freddie Hubbard was a young, versatile lion who’d made a big impression on colleagues, recording his first two Blue Note albums in 1960 (Goin’ Up including Mobley) and appearing on dates of Tina Brooks and Eric Dolphy. He would appear on Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz ten days later on December 21 and join Art Blakey in 1961 for a stunning stretch of Blue Note and Riverside albums.

To complete the Blakey pedigree in this respect, Kenny Drew also played with the famed drummer and band leader, albeit for the shorter time of two months in 1957. However, Drew’s most renowned effort in that year is his work on John Coltrane’s imposing Blue Train album. Drew was part of many other sessions of the period, among them those of Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean and Kenny Dorham. Drew struck up a long association with Dexter Gordon onwards from the early fifties (Daddy Plays The Horn, Dexter Callin’, One Flight Up) and, like Gordon, became a longtime, widely acknowledged expatriate in Paris and, especially, Copenhagen. In a weird twist of fate Drew and Gordon even appeared in a Swedish, hippy-ish soft porn movie called Pornografi!

By then, about a decade had passed since Drew recorded the title track of this album. The partly modal theme includes the swirling arpeggios that aptly explain the sea-image title, which give an otherwise noteworthy composition even greater distinction. Best of all, the band is inspired almost beyond belief, with the essential inclusion of drummer Louis Hayes and bassist Sam Jones. Their experience as a rhythm tandem of many sessions of the day and Cannonball Adderley’s Quintet in particular stands them in good stead. They’re red hot, with a controlled intensity that would keep many a devil at bay. Louis Hayes’s temperature especially surpasses that of Lucifer with more than a few degrees!

The title tune is not only crisp and driving, it’s also full of immaculate solo work. Kenny Drew’s ideas keep flowing, his lines stretching over bars extensively. Mobley and Hubbard, triggered by Drew, Hayes and Jones, work up a sweat, and there are no parttime choruses. Mobley’s smoky sound and Hubbard’s buoyant style contrast pleasantly.

Undercurrent was Drew’s last album in the United States before he went to Paris in 1961 and settled in Copenhagen in 1963. Not a bad way to say goodbye to the American jazz life.

Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis Afro-Jaws (Riverside 1960)

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Blue Note is admired for immaculately organised sessions. In this respect, Riverside should also be granted a place under the sun. When founder Orrin Keepnews signed Thelonious Monk in 1958, he decided to dedicate the pianist’s label debut album to the work of Duke Ellington, revealing challenging conceptual thinking. Riverside also created new vistas for its roster. Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis’ Afro-Jaws is a case in point. It’s a well-rehearsed session involving carefully chosen personel and repertoire.

davis_eddie_afrojaws~_102b

Personnel

Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis (tenor saxophone), Clark Terry (trumpet, flugelhorn), Ernie Royal (trumpet), Phil Sunkel (trumpet), John Ballo (trumpet A3-4), Lloyd Mayers (piano), Larry Gales (bass), Ben Riley (drums), Ray Barretto (conga, bongo), Gil Lopez (arranger)

Recorded

on May 4 & 12, 1960 in NYC

Released

as RLP 343 in 1960

Track listing

Side A:
Wild Rice
Guanco Lament
Tin Tin Deo
Jazz-A-Samba
Side B:
Alma Alegre
Star Eyes
Afro-Jaws


Tough Tenor Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis adapts well to the Afro-Cuban setting reminiscent of Dizzy Gillespie’s groups. Should we expect otherwise? Davis blew horn on stage at Minton’s Playhouse amidst the bop innovators in the late forties and early fifties, functioning as de facto jam session MC. He is known for his work in the classic organ combo format of, notably, Shirley Scott and extended cooperations with the equally hard blowing, fellow tenorist Johnny Griffin, but also had journeyed through the big bands of Cootie Williams and Count Basie. Experience abound.

Gil Lopez wrote four out of seven infectious tunes and his arrangements are in your face, perfect foil for the gutsy sound of Davis. A major part of the tight group sound is the rhythm tandem of drummer Ben Riley and bassist Larry Gales, who would go on to form a good team the following years for Griffin, Davis and, in the mid-to-late sixties, Thelonious Monk.

Wild Rice sets the album’s pace, opening with a mix of heavy percussion, tenor and brass before leading to the buoyant theme and four/four solo section. The rest of the album follows the same course more or less. Davis has a suave way of weaving through the themes and his solo outings are on the money, both displayed with a relentless beat.

Alma Alegre is the odd one out, a slow, grinding piece that has Davis beautifully riding the waves of an intricate, multiple bar theme. Ever since Dizzy Gillespie introduced Chano Pozo and Gil Fuller’s Tin Tin Deo into the jazz realm, musicians have been fond of playing it. ‘Jaws’ kickstarts himself into furtive action after a couple of curious, worn clichés and Clark Terry is his usual masterful self.

The tempo of ballad Star Eyes, the sole standard off the album, is taken up a few notches and graced with a honky ‘Jaws’-solo. Davis’ Ben Webster-like mindset works equally well in the jivy bop riff Jazz-A-Samba. The album ends with the title track Afro-Jaws, a relentless groove.

Special mention for the slightly surrealistic record cover. Very carefully ‘organized’ as well.