Don Patterson - Goin' Down Home

Don Patterson Goin’ Down Home (Cadet 1963/66)

I can’t tell you how excited I was when I picked up organist Don Patterson’s Cadet album Goin’ Down Home at that indelible Little Giant of a record store, Waxwell Records in Amsterdam. Collector’s frenzy. Shaky hands, dizzy spells, blood pressure climbing high into the sky blue sky…

Don Patterson - Goin' Down Home

Personnel

Don Patterson (organ), Paul Weeden (guitar), Billy James (drums)

Recorded

in January, 1963 at Ter-Mar Studios, Chicago

Released

as Cadet 787 in 1964

Track listing

Side A:
Little Duck
John Brown’s Body
I’m Just A Lucky So And So
Frankie MC
It’s Magic
Side B:
Goin’ Down Home
Trick Bag
1197 Fair
Work Song


Why so elated, you ask? It’s hardly one of the Holy Grails of jazz collecting, right?

Because it’s Don Patterson, for Chrissake!

Stumbling upon Goin’ Down Home is bingo for a Hammond organ geek (slash: Don Patterson completist). You’re bound to find one on eBay, but seldom in a record store, at least not in my zip code area. What’s more romantic than zip code area record collecting? It sure beats watching High Fidelity with my favorite inflattable doll.

Goin’ Down Home is Patterson’s session debut as a leader in 1963, but it wasn’t released until 1966. By then, Patterson was one of the premier modern jazz organists. Possibly, Cadet eventually tried to capitalise on the growing reputation of Patterson as an artist on the Prestige label.

I’ve written extensively about Don Patterson in the past. Recap: the Columbus, Ohio-born Patterson was a pianist who, inspired by Jimmy Smith, started playing organ in 1956. The trio of Patterson, guitarist Paul Weeden and drummer Billy James struck up a fruitful cooperation with saxophone giant Sonny Stitt from 1959 to 1964 (Patterson and Billy James kept recording with Sonny Stitt throughout the sixties); Patterson also played on albums of Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and sax prodigy Eric Kloss. Many of his Prestige albums included the crackerjack guitar work of Pat Martino.

Drugs-related problems haunted Patterson at the turn of the decade. Patterson made a comeback in the early seventies with two albums on Muse, arguably Patterson’s ‘masterpieces’: The Return Of Don Patterson and These Are Soulful Days. Patterson kept performing, if under the radar, till his passing in 1988.

Overshadowed by pioneering legend Jimmy Smith and ‘the Coltrane of organ jazz’ Larry Young, Patterson nevertheless contributed significantly to organ jazz playing. A melodic player and a master of restraint, Patterson squeezed every little bit out of the tenor/organ combo format and cooperated with first-class adventurous musicians as Booker Ervin and Eddie Daniels. Having started out as a pianist, Patterson favored a combination of long, flowing bebop lines and tasteful blues statements.

If not a quantum leap, Patterson’s development from Goin’ Down Home to his official 1964 debut as a leader, The Exciting New Organ Of Don Patterson, is remarkable. His Cadet album fits nicely in the format of the Chess subsidiary label, focusing on basic but nifty r&b and blues lines. A big foot remains in the field of forefather Wild Bill Davis, as Patterson employs a rather dated ‘open register’. It’s the kind of work Patterson delivered on the 1962 albums of Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis, I Only Have Eyes For You and Trackin’ and Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons’ Boss Tenors In Orbit. Excellent chops, rather cheesy sound.

A smaller foot is set in the area of intense, linear playing with the modern jazz sound as invented by Jimmy Smith. Patterson’s rare ability to stack surprise upon surprise in John Brown’s Body (a tune Patterson played on Stitt/Ammons’ Boss Tenors In Orbit and revisited on Satisfaction) cautiously foreshadows the adventurous hard bop of ’S Bout Time from The Exciting New Organ Of Don Patterson.

A striking aspect of the album is the spirited interplay between Patterson and Billy James. And you’ll want this album for Patterson’s version of Duke Ellington’s I’m Just A Lucky So-And-So. Blues seldom comes as graceful as this.

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Don Patterson Satisfaction (Prestige 1965)

Don Patterson operated within the classic organ combo format – a quartet consisting of organ, guitar, drums and saxophone. On Satisfaction the horn is left out. It’s not sorely missed. Patterson keeps things interesting in many areas: that of technical ability, harmonic coherence and, last but not least, that of the blues.

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Personnel

Don Patterson (organ), Jerry Byrd (guitar), Billy James (drums)

Recorded

on July 19, 1965 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Released

as PR 7430

Track listing

Side A:
Bowl Full Of Yok
Goin’ To Meeting
Side B:
John Brown’s Body
Satisfaction
Walkin’


Patterson had been working with drummer Billy James for four years, notably as backing group for Sonny Stitt. They don’t dwell on matters and head into two uptempo blues shuffles, Bowl Full Of Yok and Goin’ To Meeting, commenting on each other’s phrases ebulliently. Patterson is a great storyteller and capable of stretching out to the limit. Bowl Full Of Yok’s many choruses never have a dull moment. After the theme is stated guitarist Jerry Byrd immediately grabs attention in dissonant vein and launches into a solid solo. Byrd flavors his personal style with touches of Charlie Christian and Pat Martino. In this session Byrd takes some interesting solo’s; his guitar sound is a bit distorted, which enlivens the down home-type proceedings.

Jagger/Richard’s Satisfaction has gotten a lighthearted, funky treatment. On John Brown’s Body – a marching song about an abolitionist in the American Civil War – the resemblance of Patterson’s play to the famous character that influenced him to take up the organ in the first place, Jimmy Smith, is most striking.

At the time, liner note writers more often than not referred to the schism that existed between stuffed shirts who detested the organ genre (and its popularity!) and aficionados that defended it as a worthy addition to the art of jazz. Bob Porter, who wrote on the back of Satisfaction’s sleeve, is no exception. The battle may seem absurd nowadays, as generally people finally got hip to it; I’m on the side of, as one might have expected, Bob Porter & Co. Naturally, it would be hard to deny that there have been more than enough mediocre organ sessions between 1955 and 1975. But Patterson didn’t partake in any of them; and Satisfaction is but one example that the jazz of the Hammond B3 could simultanously be entertaining, smart, soulful and inventive.

YouTube: Goin’ To Meetin’