Booker Ervin

Pony Poindexter Gumbo! (New Jazz 1963)

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Pony in the parade.

Pony Poindexter - Gumbo

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.

Roy Haynes Cracklin’ (New Jazz 1963)

- Francois 2 Comments

Cracklin’ is as good a title as any for an album by drummer Roy Haynes, also known as ‘Snap Crackle’.

Roy Haynes - Cracklin'

Personnel

Roy Haynes (drums), Booker Ervin (tenor saxophone), Ronnie Matthews (piano), Larry Ridley (bass)

Recorded

on April 6, 1963 at Rudy van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as NJLP 8286 in 1963

Track listing

Side A:
Scoochie
Dorian
Sketch Of Melba
Side B:
Honeydew
Under Paris Skies
Bad News Blues


You can’t miss Snap Crackle. Let us pick a ‘few’ groundbreaking and/or iconic albums on which the currently 93-year old drummer appeared: Bud Powell’s The Amazing Bud Powell, Sonny Rollins’s The Sound Of Sonny, Thelonious Monk’s Thelonious In Action and Misterioso, Eric Dolphy’s Outward Bound and Out There, Oliver Nelson’s Straight Ahead and Blues And The Abstract Truth, Andrew Hill’s Black Fire, John Coltrane’s Impressions and Newport ’63 and Jackie McLean’s Destination Out. This series spans fifteen years (1949-63) of the seven decades in which Haynes has been active.

Haynes was part of Charlie Parker’s regular group from 1949 till 1952. A different time and place. Flyin’ with Bird, The One, in angst-ridden post-war USA, which saw The Russians marching. Uncle Sam, great Allied Force that had liberated Europe, had at the same time dropped The Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing thousands of innocent yellow-ish fellow human beings, and back home kept the black ‘citizen’ locked up in a cage. Astonishingly, lynchings were still not completely extinct below the Mason-Dixie line. Black men and women had to sit in the back of the bus. Job discrimination was commonplace, as were lower salaries. The elites feared a loss of the status quo and protected their privileges to the bitter end. Some said it was fear for and jealousy of abandon and sex that troubled them. That’s the old and worn paternalistic view that implies the only thing the black man and woman stand out with is swing. Instead, the elite felt discomfort with life as hollow men. The hollow man looks in the mirror and sees The Other, a free spirit! And suddenly is scared shitless.

Against the odds, Bird and his musical buddies, ibis birds, storm petrels and nightingales like Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, rare birds indeed, preached Beauty, Communion, Understanding, Empathy, through the unique art of spontaneous improvisation. They were musical masters with the kind of intuitive intellect that stuck a finger in the bloody wound of racism and said ‘Dear Lady, how do you do?’. Moreover, they were on a daring enterprise that the average American still knows nothing of. That’s probably because in the ensuing years, TV send him up to the couch, where he could watch Johnny Carson hide the miserable truths about life on the other side of the track. Was it any better in Europe? Yes, for a while Europe was keener in its appreciation of the (black) jazz message. And it takes better care of its professionals – white or black – that immerse themselves in the art of improvisation. But here too, few see the whole picture, here too Starbucks has won over more fans than Charlie Shavers. Rather silly. A flat cup of coffee may still give you a buzz. But jazz feeds the soul: it stimulates independence and interaction. One has to be his own man/woman and at the same time listen closely to the other. The most democratic of arts that crosses racial, age and gender boundaries and is not about division but inclusion and unity!

So Haynes flew business class with Bird and, stimulated by the innovations of Kenny Clarke, strayed away from the 4/4 beat on the hi-hat, going for a ‘ride’ cymbal accompaniment in sync with the Parker/Gillespie-intervals, with hectic life under the White Umbrella. (Parker, obviously, never hectic or nervous, instead revealing remarkable clarity and order at outrageous tempos) They acted upon their growing sense of melodic swing, Haynes creating many intriguing drum patterns particularly, a package that is or should be a benchmark for aspiring drummers to this day. As a logical consequence of his authority, Haynes recorded prolifically as a leader. His first album, Busman’s Holiday, was released in 1954 on Emarcy. His 1960 album on Impulse, Out Of The Afternoon, featuring Roland Kirk, Tommy Flanagan and Henry Grimes, is a perennial favorite of jazz fans around the globe. The sizzle and responsiveness of his playing on the 1968 Chick Corea classic, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, is so beautiful it, well, is liable to bring tears. Late in life, Haynes made not one but two Grammy-winning albums: Fountain Of Youth (2004) and Whereas (2006).

Cracklin’ was released on New Jazz in 1963. It featured tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin, pianist Ronnie Matthews and bassist Larry Ridley. The date of the session is April 6, 1963. It is interesting to note that in that period, Haynes played with John Coltrane on the Newport Jazz Festival, on July 7 to be precise. While Cracklin’ smoothly stears along the coasts of hard bop, post bop and modal jazz, Haynes was cookin’ on another planet with Coltrane, replacing Elvin Jones, who was out for a snack on Alphabet Street. Both sessions rely on the Haynes specialty of snare rolls, Newport ’63 more heavily, spirited and sharp as a tack, an interesting change of vibe in contrast with the broader scope of Elvin Jones.

The Haynes snare is a superhero, Cracklin’ the blockbuster movie. In the winter, the drummer uses up the firecrackers of the stock that was left from New Year’s Eve and on summer camp Haynes is the leader that produces a light from stone and wood. From the word go, the light sets Scoochie in motion, a composition by Booker Ervin. Ervin thrives on the hard swing of Haynes. Haynes responds to the growing fire of “Book”, dancing through it like a dervish. Booker Ervin is a stimulating presence on any session, Cracklin’ is no exception. Generally, Ervin has been compared with John Coltrane. This doesn’t make much sense. There are shades of Coltrane in Ervin, but Ervin’s style, albeit thoroughly modern and obviously not without a certain amount of harmonic prowess, is less complex and has an emotional directness that reminds us of the Tough Tenors from Texas. Ervin was born in Denison, Texas in 1935. His indelible blues wail lands in your gut like a saucy and hefty kidney stew.

Then there’s pianist Ronnie Matthews, adding nimble lines that parade through downtown Dorian like supple jumping horses. Dorian is a tune by Matthews. It might refer to a lady, it might refer to a scale, either way it makes use of a ‘Trane-ish drone kept up vigorously by Haynes. Haynes also makes something special of the lovely melody by Hubert Gireaud, Under Paris Skies. His beat behind the piano solo of Matthews is ‘jungle’ at its most sizzling and groovy. His breaks on one of the album’s blues tunes, Ronnie Matthews’s Honeydew, are the drum equivalent of the soul shout ‘sock it to me!’

The message is loud and clear.

Cook, Book!

- Francois Leave a comment

BOOKER ERVIN – THE GOOD BOOK

Booker Ervin - The Good Book

Acrobat released a 4CD set of Booker Ervin: The Good Book – The Early Years 1960-1962. It is a compilation of performances from Ervin’s debut album The Book Cooks, That’s It and guest appearances on albums by Horace Parlan, Mal Waldron, Teddy Charles and Bill Barron. At the time, the Denison, Texas-born Ervin had just made his mark in the group of Charles Mingus, his forceful, fire and brimstone-style being a big asset on classic albums as, among others, Mingus Ah Um and Blues & Roots. Ervin was ready to capitalize on his recent exposure through the Mingus association, but regardless of his recording activity life as a freelancer in New York was tough. It turned out that the tenor saxophonist never really gained the public acclaim he deserved.

There are a number of misunderstandings about the life and career of Booker Ervin, a tenor saxophonist adored by legions of classic jazz fans and, to be sure, certainly also derided by some because of his supposedly ‘superficial’ wailing style. For one thing, Booker Ervin is a sincere, passionate and unique saxophonist but not the harmonically advanced Coltranesque musician a number of critics and aficionados believed him to be. The English saxophonist and writer Simon Spillett, who wrote the liner notes to The Good Book, tackles other myths as well about the life and style of Ervin, who died in 1969 at the age of 39. Rarely does the jazz fan encounter such extensive and insightful essays. Spillett has written the definitive account of Ervin’s life and offers a balanced evaluation of his legacy in a booklet that would look far from silly as a separate publication. On the contrary.

Booker Ervin - That's It!
Reissue of Mal Waldron's The Quest
Bill Barron - Hot Line

The Book Cooks showed Ervin’s potential, That’s It perfectly nails his singular aesthetic. The contrast of his style with Eric Dolphy’s on Mal Waldron’s The Quest is one of the reasons why that album is epic. Acrobat also picked intriguing albums by Bill Barron (Hot Line – The Tenor Of Bill Barron) and Teddy Charles (Metronome Presents Jazz In The Garden At The Museum Of Modern Art), both very collectable LP’s. Hopefully Acrobat will focus on mid-and late career in the future.

Check the Acrobat website here. Buy The Good Book here.

Andrew Hill Grass Roots (Blue Note 1968)

- Francois 2 Comments

One of the most accessible albums of pianist Andrew Hill’s imposing stretch of Blue Note releases in the sixties, 1968’s Grass Roots is still a thoroughly challenging affair.

Andrew Hill - Grass Roots

Personnel

Andrew Hill (piano), Lee Morgan (trumpet), Booker Ervin (tenor saxophone), Ron Carter (bass), Freddie Waits (drums)

Recorded

on August 5, 1968 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as BST 84303 in 1968

Track listing

Side A:
Grass Roots
Venture Inward
Mira
Side B:
Soul Special
Bayou Red


Hill, who had one foot in the avantgarde, one foot in the mainstream, never received the kind of recognition like pianists Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner but was highly acclaimed by serious jazz fans and critics. Though more under the radar, the pianist, who passed away in 2007, tread a similar path of the creative elder statesman who’s admired for legendary recordings on Blue Note in the sixties. Mention Black Fire, Point Of Departure or Judgment to any self-respecting, avant-leaning jazz fan and goosebumps will start to pop up on his/her arms like ants on a smashed lollypop on the sidewalk. 24-carat classics in which rhythm, harmony and melody are altered extremely in order to find fresh ways of expression. Hill doesn’t buy the method of discarding them for the sake of freedom, which turns out to be illusionary anyway, but favors a bottom-up approach: change through evolution. In this regard, the title of Grass Roots is telling.

Cerebral, introspective. Call his style what you like, at any rate, Hill’s notes cannot but have a strong pull on the listener. If notes are words, Hill is describing a descent into the mysterious abyss of the mind. A labyrinth of ephemeral sensations, a place Hill searches and researches like a child a playground. The playground isn’t necessarily dark and damp, the search is intense but strangely uplifting. For Hill, life is sweet, sour, a ‘dance macabre’. And his yearning to explore it is the essence of his art.

A ‘pianistic’ intellectual? Certainly not. Hill’s longing is also firmly focused on rhythm, the root of his trade – jazz. Hill’s beats are clever, complex constructions that nonetheless often remain surprisingly close to the toe-tappin’ sounds commonly flowing out of a Harlem BBQ joint. His penchant for playing against the rhythm is evident in Bayou Red, a modal piece with majestic solo statements by the bandleader. Hill’s other modal tune, Venture Inward (yes, do!) boasts sparse, dense chords that are accompanied by meandering lines which are spiced with, sometimes sliced by, clusters of seemingly jangling but remarkably precise notes. How nice to be ‘out’, ‘in’, ‘in’, ‘out’, ending up with the best of two worlds, like the kid daughter with a dollar who said ‘no’ to daddy when he asked her if mom’d given her the pocket money.

The concise, hip line of Grass Roots has a circular nature, like a viper who keeps biting his tail. The compositions has a sly groove and finds Hill in elegant form. Soul Special’s a boogaloo, Hill-style, the measures slightly differing from the standard blocks of eight. The bunch that gathered at Van Gelder Studio on August 5, 1968 proves sensitive to Hill’s needs. It’s a major league crew. Ron Carter and drummer Freddie Waits, a versatile drummer who, for instance, played on both Ray Bryant’s 1966’s soul jazz gem These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ and Richard Davis’ deconstruction of Bird and Monk, the 1973’s Muse album Ephistrophy/Now’s The Time, are obviously enjoying the extended chord of Bayou Red’s A-part, hanging on to it like a windsurfer to his sail, subsequently relishing the release with booming, sizzling fills. Carter would continue his collaboration with Hill, playing on the subsequent albums Lift Every Voice and Passing Ships.

Lee Morgan attunes nicely to the repertoire. Generally heated, Morgan alternates his fiery approach with subdued toyings with the beat and measured valve effects, particularly in Soul Special. His bright ensemble playing with Booker Ervin lingers in the mind. Booker Ervin’s lines in Bayou Red make up the musical equivalent of a snake that dances in the basket of a Punjabi snake charmer. Ervin, Mr. Blues Wail, the roaring, advanced player who came into prominence with Charles Mingus in 1959, is relatively subdued, perhaps under the influence of the bandleader’s organic jazz menu. Bon appetit, this dish is the bomb.

Booker Ervin The Freedom Book (Prestige 1964)

- Francois 3 Comments

The Freedom Book is one of Booker Ervin’s finest recordings. The grossly underappreciated tenor saxophonist displays all his strong points: a strongly individual, emotional style that communicates directly to the listener, long flowingly coherent lines and last but not least, that forceful, throat-grabbing, wailing sound.

Booker Ervin - The Freedom Book

Personnel

Booker Ervin (tenor saxophone), Jaki Byard (piano), Richard Davis (bass), Alan Dawson (drums)

Recorded

on December 3, 1963 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as PRLP 7295 in 1964

Track listing

Side A:
A Lunar Tune
Cry Me Not
Grant’s Stand
Side B:
A Day To Mourn
Al’s In


Ervin is best known for his long association (1959-64) with Charles Mingus, appearing on landmark albums as Mingus Ah Um, Mingus Dynasty and Blues & Roots. He also made lasting contributions to albums by Don Patterson (Hip Cake Walk, The Exciting New Organ Of Don Patterson), Roy Haynes (Cracklin’) and Mal Waldron (The Quest), among others. From 1964 till 1966, and again in 1968, Ervin worked in Europe. He also performed in Nigeria in 1960 with friend and pianist Randy Weston. While Weston gained quite a lot of recognition with his ‘world musical’ jazz approach, Ervin never really got a foothold in Europe and returned to the US in 1968.

Geeky info: Downbeat Magazine ran a eulogy of Booker Ervin in their issue of October 15, 1970. Coincidentally, at the bottom of the page is a tiny news report on the fact that Randy Weston opened a jazz club in Tangiers, Morocco. By 1970, Booker Ervin had lived for nearly three years in Randy Weston’s apartment in NYC. Ervin died of kidney disease on August 31, 1970.

The “Book” series released by Prestige (Ervin was nicknamed “Book”) constitute some of Ervin’s best recorded output. The Freedom Book is the first album in a row that includes The Song Book, The Blues Book and The Space Book. The hi-voltage energy of The Freedom Book is particularly apparent in A Lunar Tune. The quirky blues melody puts you on the edge of your seat. Subsequently, the charged work of the fabulous rhythm section and furiously wailing, coherent phrases of Ervin are sure to leave you breathless, almost to the point of suffocating! It’s a stellar performance. Jaki Byard, a longtime member of the Mingus group as well, demonstrates his idiosyncratic, masterful blend of bop and tradition to full effect.

Two tunes suggest that Booker Ervin digested more than a dose of classic swing. He blows a tough ballad, Randy Weston’s Cry Me Not, displaying the assertiveness and big sound of Coleman Hawkins and Don Byas. At the same time, Ervin’s fluent lines reveal the influence of Dexter Gordon. Both Ervin and Gordon are seldom, if ever, short on ideas and their harmonic sense is keen. Grant’s Stand comes across as a swing tune for the new age, wherein Ervin sounds like a hybrid of Illinois Jacquet and John Coltrane. All the while, Booker Ervin’s indomitable wail reminds us who we are dealing with.

A Day To Mourn – that presumably deals about the emotions following the JFK assassination on November 22, 1963 – is a moody piece with a vivid middle section. Drummer Alan Dawson’s Al’s In veers from a slow Eastern-flavoured intro into a fast part that is an example of the energetic, responsive interplay of the group.

Arguably, Ervin never got the popular recognition that was his due because his hybrid style didn’t fit in the neat, small-minded categorizations both critics and audiences often firmly held unto in the sixties. Booker Ervin may not have been as advanced as Coltrane or Sonny Rollins, nor as influential as Dexter Gordon. But he surely belongs to the top rank of his tenor sax generation. Ample evidence abound. The Freedom Book is just one piece of it.

Don Patterson The Exciting New Organ Of Don Patterson (Prestige 1964)

- Francois Leave a comment

A very confident Don Patterson made the most of his de facto debut (Goin’ Down Home was a Patterson session as a leader for Cadet in 1963, but was not released until 1966) on Prestige. Eschewing the use of guitar, The Exciting New Organ Of Don Patterson stresses the potential of the organ in the era of advanced hard bop.

Don Patterson - The Exciting New Organ

Personnel

Don Patterson (organ), Booker Ervin (tenor sax), Billy James (drums)

Recorded

on May 12, 1964 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as PR 7323 in 1964

Track listing

Side A:
S’Bout Time
Up In Betty’s Room
Oleo
Side B:
When Johnny Comes Marching Home
The Good Life


Presumably, as it goes, Prestige headquarters called it The Exciting New Organ Of Don Patterson for marketing purposes primarily, along the same lines of, for instance, Atlantic’s idea behind Ornette Coleman’s The Shape Of Jazz To Come; not a title Coleman was said to be particularly fond of, and I assume Patterson also was too bright and modest to appreciate his album title very much. Furthermore, isn’t it a bit shaky on a linguistic level? Naturally, it isn’t the organ of Don Patterson that is exciting. As if said Hammond B3 would make an entree in some corner bistro, where two Scarlett Johansson-type dames’d whisper: “Wow, that organ’s really exciting!” Albeit a tad overweight, one might add. Of course, what they say, either consciously or winsomely, is that the man seated behind that giant machine made up of wood, metal tonewheel, electromagnetic pick-up, a row of keyboards and countless pulls and stops, creates quite a fervor. In that case, they’re correct. As far as ‘new’ (music) is concerned: the adjective had become stale even by then; in jazz, as in most art forms, an artistic endeavor is never completely new, but adds fresh (entertaining and/or often disconcerting) views to an already rich heritage. It’s partly new though in the manner hereafter discussed.

Three years of experience playing alongside tenor and alto giant Sonny Stitt saw Patterson cooperating with guitar player Paul Weeden, and the remaining decade he would strike up an engaging companionship with Pat Martino. Martino and Patterson certainly inspired eachother to career heights. Without the guitar, however, Patterson is far from handicapped. The dynamics are not so much better as different. A whole bit of elbow room is created and judged by the manner in which Patterson takes it, for him it must be assumed a welcome deviation from the organ/sax/guitar-format.

Whereas in When Johnny Comes Marching Home Patterson doesn’t stray far from the methods of Jimmy Smith (who recorded the traditional tune on Crazy Baby in 1960) – in renaissance terminology Patterson surpasses imitatio and comes close to aemulatio – Patterson original S’Bout Time is a whole different ballgame. By far the album’s greatest achievement, (eclipsing the rendition of Sonny Rollins’ Oleo, itself a fine performance that receives meticulous attention to its tricky theme and a fair dose of fast-fingered bop-blues riffs from Patterson and tenorist Booker Ervin, and Up In Betty’s Room, a lively blues composition containing some freewheeling improvisation as well as a too distorted B3 sound near the end) S’Bout Time stretches the boundaries of soul jazz by way of a modal “feel” reminiscent of the work of contemporaries such as Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. Horn and piano players, yes, since theirs is the broad-minded approach Patterson felt comfortable with and challenged by.

A sassy build-up from drummer Billy James and Patterson’s “walkin” bass lines is followed by a simple melody that is somewhat in the vein of (a speeded-up) So What, from whence Booker Ervin takes off. And I do mean take off! Ervin, an astute contributor to many of Charles Mingus’ finest recordings, is fiery all the way, splendid in his combination of blues and the depth of Coltrane. Patterson’s answer to Ervin’s spontaneous combustion is dynamic, coherent, unashamedly freeflowing. With only two chord changes to play with, and no percussive guitar obstacles, Patterson really stretches out, leaving smart spaces, playfully running up and down the scale and veering from robust behind-the-beat-accents to delicate, suave bopeology. Patterson uses his right hand almost exclusively and the effect is mesmerizing. After four and a half minutes of classy soloing, Ervin re-enters for a few heated bars and the trio trades fours down to the coda.

It’s a powerful statement from a refreshing record of organ jazz.

YouTube: ‘S Bout Time

Don Patterson Tune Up! (Prestige 1964/1969)

- Francois Leave a comment

Tune Up! is one more example of a record company’s policy to keep an interest in the career of a musician when he or she is absent with no apparent return ticket attached; in this case Don Patterson, whose hard road of drug abuse at the end of the sixties had become strewn thick with heavy rocks and barbed wire.

Don Patterson - Tune Up!

Personnel

Don Patterson (organ), Booker Ervin (tenor saxophone A1-2), Sonny Stitt (tenor saxophone A2, B1), Houston Personn (tenor saxophone B2), George Coleman (tenor saxophone B2), Virgil Jones (trumpet B2), Grant Green (guitar B1), Billy James (drums A1-2, B1), Frankie Jones (B2)

Recorded

Recorded on July 10 & August 25, 1964 and June 2 & September 15, 1969 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Released

as PR 7852 in 1969

Track listing

Side A:
Just Friends
Flying Home
Side B:
Tune Up
Blues For Mom


It didn’t affect his playing on the title track, this album’s most interesting cut, a leftover from a September ’69 session that spawned two high-standard releases – Brothers 4 and Donnybrook. It would be hard to follow up Grant Green’s amazing solo on Miles Davis’ fast-paced composition – Green (credited as Blue Grant) showing no loss of remarkable straight jazz skills during his burgeoning funk jazz period – were it not that Don Patterson rises to the occasion, not tempted to flex his muscles in bragadocious manner, but instead stringing one dynamic, coolly delivered bop run to another, like multiple toy beads.

It’s difficult to make head or tail out of an album that presents four tunes from four different sessions, ranging from ‘64 to ’69. This nevertheless belies the good quality of these sessions, what with the standing of Patterson and sidemen such as Stitt, Ervin, Coleman and Jones, who confidently blow their way through standards and blues.

YouTube: Tune Up