Suggestion sold, whether it was in movies, music or fiction. I’ve got plenty of vintage, lurid pulp books with covers depicting women in various poses in various ever-so-slightly see-through negligés. I’ve got plenty of vintage records with illustrations of beautiful women that were supposed to lure soul jazz lovers into buying the finished product in the record shops. Shamelessly sexist covers are rare but there are a few examples which if they were created in the postmodern world could by artist’s intent pass as cultural commentary and/or would raise a fuzz, but back then, were clear-cut marketing tools.
Were men the only buyers of records? History of (black) culture proves that this is surely not completely the case, so imagine a couple or a family walking into a record store or a barber shop or a supermarket and browsing through a bin. Wow, this looks really cool, young Charlie ponders while pulling his father’s trousers legs. What’s with the lock, dad?
Mr. McGriff’s label seriously got down to business. Kenny Clark/Francy Boland’s office took the arty route.
Female buyers were either totally neglected or scared off like mice in the kitchen. I couldn’t resist to show a perennial favorite (joke) among jazz collectors, Herbie pushing the limits of the bearable. And what about avantgardist Albert Ayler? Sassy goatee, man! Yuk. You won’t find Wild Bill Davis in any controversial or ludicrous pose. Nor find any of his labels exploitative. No hesitation to accuse Coral of bad and scary taste, though. If this is supposed to be lust you might as well throw it to the dogs.
The temporary home of Brother Jack in the UK was an abandoned rectory full of funky junk and mysterious red and yellow pills. Peace in the vivacious valley.
Personnel
Brother Jack Mcduff (organ, piano), Martin Drover, Terry Noonan & Bud Parks (trumpet), Norman Leppard, Dick Morrisey, Jack Whitford, Dave Willis (saxophones), John Bennet, Adrian Drover (trombone), Dave Statham, Willie Watson (French horn), J.J. Jackson (piano), Chris Parren (electric piano), Terry Smith (guitar), Typhena Partridge (harp), Peter Chapman, Larry Steele (bass), Trevor Armstrong, Phil Leaford (drums), Debrah Long, Jerry Long (vocals)
Recorded
on March 23-26, 1970 at Island Studios, London
Released
as Blue Note 84348 in 1970
Track listing
Side A: Yellow Wednesday / Come And Carry Me Home / Mystic John / Side B: Hunk O’Funk / Seven Keys For Seven Doors
They shot Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968 and and all hell broke loose, looters swarmed the cities, shouting ‘revolution’. Riotous black cats threatened to burn down Detroit during James Brown’s gig at Boston Garden on April 5 and it took the brave Boss ‘o’ the Funky Beat to quit things down. Whiteys preached the power of the flower in their hairs and danced to the groove of Brown, just like their black counterparts, it was funk here and funk there, an explosion of steam boat beats, horny grunts, wild horns, the stench of garbage in the gutter, the smell of saucy ribs and the sizzle of the hot sun on the tenement roofs.
There was a fusion and Miles Davis started to toy with the rhythm of the asphalt jungle. Jazz mingled with rock, psychedelica, soul and suddenly you had broad-minded birds like Lou Donaldson, Sly & The Family Stone, Chambers Brothers, Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express. Jazzers like Rusty Bryant, Reuben Wilson, Grant Green, The Three Sounds, Jimmy Smith all picked up the bat and took a few soulful swings, not least organist Brother Jack Mcduff.
Yeah, Brother Jack, the churchiest of the great organists, who had been popular since 1960, led the hottest band in the mid-1960’s with guitarist George Benson, tenor saxophonist Red Holloway and drummer Joe Dukes, made some soul-tinged records in the summers of love, peace and happiness, went all out at the tail end of the decade, way out. By then the bla bla bla of the hippies, though still vivid, had endured the blow of the killings during the Stones concert on Altamont. Afro-Futurism promised a way out of the mess in the hood, a coming of supreme blackness.
Sly Stone was on smack. He made a dark record, There’s A Riot Goin’ On.
The jazz labels promoted stylish and gritty, upbeat funky stuff, hoping for a hit cover version of a popular soul or funk song. Or they trusted their artists to pick and make funky tunes. Brother Jack had covered Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come in 1966. He’d done his own soulful Marvin Gaye/Curtis Mayfield-ish Let My People Go in 1968. Brother Jack cared about his people and cared about good-time uplifting jazz.
A year later, the Champaign, Illinois-born organist, alumnus of the Prestige, Cadet and Atlantic labels, was on the roster of Blue Note and had become a colleague of Lou Donaldson, Grant Green, Reuben Wilson, Lonnie Smith, John Patton. A whole lotta heavyweight soul jazz. At first, in 1969, Brother Jack handed in Down Home Style, which was just that, pure and earthy funk and blues with a band of adept unknown jazz funkateers.
Intriguingly, his subsequent albums expanded on his gritty vision. Moon Rappin’ was truly weird, a mix of funk jazz and spaced-out vibes, and poetry to boot. Then came 1970’s To Seek A New Home, and, half a year later, Who Knows What Tomorrow’s Gonna Bring, a quirky booming boogie affair with American stalwarts as Randy Brecker, Joe Beck and Tony Levin, mostly written and arranged by Ray Draper.
(A year later, now back on Cadet Records, McDuff recorded The Heatin’ System, which included a wild and wicked title cut, maybe best described as voodoo funk.)
To Seek A New Home is a collaboration between down-home McDuff and a bunch of English musicians, presumably recorded while the Hammond B3 beast was on tour in the U.K. But it’s not an ad hoc affair, by any means. All tunes are by McDuff, one co-written by pianist J.J. Jackson, sole American cook on Masterchef McDuff’s groove gumbo. Probably an expat who was familiar with the British cats. I’m not familiar with these British cats. Among guys like Martin Drover, David Stratham, Jack Whitford, Chris Parren, Peter Chapman, Trevor Armstrong, Jerry Long, Terry Smith, only Dick Morrisey rings a big bell. A figurehead of English jazz (rock) who played and recorded with everybody from Tubby Hayes, Jack Bruce, Steve Gadd to Paul McCartney.
There’s a striking British feel, Yellow Wednesday is prog-y, modal-tinged, flavored with a blue-eyed soul feeling, Mystic John makes use of an Indian strain and wouldn’t be out of place on records by Brian Auger, Rod Argent, Spooky Tooth, Gong, you name it, marked by parts of flute and harp, courtesy of Typhena Partridge. Gospel-tinged Come And Carry Me Home and greasy Hunk O’ Funk work out well, notably because of the slick combination of Hammond and Chris Parren’s electric piano. Solo spots by Morrisey on tenor and flute and by Terry Smith on guitar (his pal from jazz-rock outfit If, I had to look that up) are positively nifty. And the American boss on the B3 puts in his spirited five cents.
The album climaxes with Seven Keys For Seven Doors, esoteric soul jazz hodgepodge that develops (somehow, in mildly bewildering ways) from low-bottom drone, slow groove, riff, straight swing to psychedelic coda, and, sign of the times, ending with the sound of a gong. Peace y’all! To Seek A New Home strikes a pleasant balance between gritty and mellow, oddball and deftness, and should appeal to aficionados of the quirky side of soul jazz.
Brother Jack McDuff (organ), unknown (alto saxophone), unknown (guitar), Garrick King (drums)
Recorded
in June 1982 at Parnell’s Jazz Club in Seattle, Washington
Released
as SBM 007 in 2022
Track listing
CD1:
Make It Good
Untitled D Minor
Déja Vu
Fly Away
Another Real Good’n
Blues In The Night
Satin Doll
Night In Tunesia
CD2
Killer Joe
Greensleeves
Take The A-Train
Wives And Lovers
Walkin’ The Dog
Lover Man
Blues 1&8
The ongoing revival of the Hammond organ is unescapable. The iconic B3 is omnipresent, occasionally integrated in the modified aesthetic of avant-leaning electronic artists but more often as the prima donna of roots music. Countless organ groove outfits roam the prairies of the land of grease from Los Angeles to Osaka, Milan to Jakarta and Rotterdam to Stockholm. All of them are influenced by the likes of Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Lonnie Smith, Booker T. Jones and Cyril Neville.
And, unmistakably, Brother Jack McDuff. As a hot modern jazz player, skilled bass pedal player and excellent arranger, McDuff was as all-round as one could get. Above all, Brother Jack (on his first live record for Prestige in 1964, McDuff stated during his introduction that they ‘call me Brother Jack for a reason, once you got that church in ya it’s hard to backslide all the way’) was an unparalleled churchy screamer, getting the club circuit flock excited to no end. One of the most popular organists of the golden age of soul jazz in the 1960’s, he reached a particular peak with his killer mid-sixties group of tenor saxophonist Red Holloway, guitarist George Benson and drummer Joe Dukes.
The dynamic journey of Laurens Hammond’s tone wheel-driven invention evolved from church life, theaters, the American household, black chitlin’ circuit of clubs to the jazz world and, eventually, soul, (prog) rock music and, in sampled formats, the world of hip hop. But by the early 1970’s, the dominating forces of disco and digital keyboards pushed the organ to the outer fringes of music and society. Some warriors dabbled with electronics, many of them quit, lone rangers kept bringing their top-heavy instruments to the remaining dives or supper clubs in tailor-made vans. Many finally rode the waves of the organ revival that was spawned by renewed interest in soul jazz, notably stimulated by English deejays, breakbeat producers and the ‘acid jazz’ movement. From then on, former popular organists as The Smiths, McGriff, Groove Holmes, Rhoda Scott and McDuff toured Europe and Japan to much acclaim. Back home, bands from guys like McDuff were breeding grounds for ‘woodshedding’ young lions. Among others, Cecil Bridgewater, John Hart, Chris Potter, Joe Magnarelli, Eric Alexander, Roy Hargrove and Art Porter learned to take care of business in Brother Jack’s relentless groove machine.
But by the early 1980’s, McDuff was one of the half-forgotten warriors, bereft of places to perform. However, as can be heard on Live At Parnell’s`, Brother Jack hadn’t lost his touch. By all means, he was swingin’ like mad and burnin’ like hell. Live At Parnell’s has an incredible back story, beginning with rusty private recordings of engineer Scott Hawthorne that dwelled on the internet in the late 1990’s to a brand-new sound palette engendered by Artificial Intelligence in 2022. Considering the apparent flaws of the original tapes, Live At Parnell’s sounds very good, apart from a relatively harsh saxophone sound and occasional distortions of Brother Jack’s Leslie Speaker. This is not bootleg fare but a genuine album.
And Brother Jack’s on a roll, assisted by top-notch “unknowns” on alto saxophone and guitar and drummer Garrick King. Hearing Brother Jack’s typical grit and grease, a couple of modern jazz classics and Ellingtonia, the audience at Parnell’s had it made. McDuff’s funky Fly Away is marked by a gorgeous gospel introduction. Another Real Good’n is the final installment of McDuff’s blues Good’ns that he started in his glory days, in this case McDuff’s eponymous band with Bad Benson, Holloway and Dukes. McDuff’s medium-tempo blues burning highlight abundantly shows that the altoist, guitarist and Garrick are worthy heirs.
McDuff swings Night In Tunesia and Benny Golson’s Killer Joe to the ground. His sweetly rendered Satin Doll attests to a fine understanding of the Ellington aesthetic. Perhaps best of all is Burt Bacharach’s Wives And Lovers (check out Red Holloway’s version on 1964’s Cookin’ Together) which strikes a perfect balance between hot Summer and breezy Spring. Both the saxophone player, whose fervor reminds of Booker Ervin, and six-string bender, whose clear lines and punchy attack shadow box with the ghosts of Pat Martino and Grant Green, demonstrate a satisfying penchant for breaking out of the changes. McDuff is full of energy, never more so than during Duke Pearson’s Make It Good, putting chili pepper in everyone’s ass on the bandstand.
1982 definitely was a good year for Brother Jack, as this valuable release showcases abundantly.
Jack McDuff
Addendum: The sleeve of Live At Parnell’s mentions saxophonist Danny Wollinski and guitarist Henry Johnson. However, it turned out that this information most likely is incorrect. Henry Johnson did play with McDuff in the early 1980’s but communicated to Soul Bank Music’s executive Greg Boraman that he worked with none other than Ramsey Lewis at the time. So his tour diary said.
Boraman gave a copy to the recently deceased, lamented organist and multi-instrumentalist Joey DeFrancesco backstage at Ronnie Scott’s in London in July. Passionate B3 geek DeFrancesco had heard the tapes way back when and was enamored by the restored Live At Parnell’s release and stated: “Jack is playing his ass off on this date.”
Familiar with Garrick King’s playing, DeFrancesco said that he was 99% certain that it is King holding the drum chair at Parnell’s. Duly noted.
There were a couple of tracks from organist Brother Jack McDuff’s performance at Antibes on YouTube, and now Jazz3+ uploaded 36 solid minutes of McDuff’s quartet on the Côte d’Azur in France. See here. Unforgettable stuff!
McDuff’s quartet consisted of tenor saxophonist Red Holloway, guitarist George Benson and drummer Joe Dukes. None of McDuff’s groups, in my opinion, matched this quartet in drive and fire, few if any of the other organ combo’s of that period in fact. Definitely his hottest band. At times, Brother Jack McDuff seemed possessed, effortlessly incorporating the fire and brimstone of the black church in his modern style. He had been a popular recording artist on Prestige since 1960.
The chemistry between McDuff and drummer Joe Dukes was unbelievable, soul jazz drum pioneer Joe Dukes anticipated every move of McDuff and the tune changes with an assault of continuous accents and rolls, adapting big band style to the blues. Red Holloway did time on the r&b circuit and was a strong-sounding swinger. Young Benson joined McDuff in 1963. It was his first break. Benson was a flashy lightning bolt of a guitarist, also drenched in r&b, and quickly developed into an exciting jazz player. McDuff’s quartet was on the road for two straight years on the East Coast and in the Mid-West.
Here’s a fragment from Benson’s biography, Benson recounting his journeyman years with “bad” boss McDuff:
McDuff and Joe Dukes were excellent teachers but tough customers. McDuff regularly shouted obscenities to Benson on stage, ‘if he had just the right (or wrong) amount of booze or weed.’ Joe Dukes, ‘such a magnificent drummer that there were times I thought he was one of the greatest things that ever happened to mankind’ was especially hard on the 19-year old prodigy, who alledgedly picked up too many girls for the taste of the envious drummer.
“Finally, after a particularly nasty rant, I snapped: ‘If y’all don’t lay off, I’m gonna take y’all outside and beat y’all old men up! I’m nineteen years old! Y’all can’t take me! We’re going out in the alley, right now! McDuff and Dukes just stared at me for a second, then they both pulled out switchblades. But that didn’t stop me: “I don’t care! Y’all don’t scare me! Bring your switchblades into the alley! I’ll beat y’all up anyhow!” Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed: nobody went into the alley, and nobody got beaten up. But it got them off my back.”
“In retrospect, I’m glad they stayed on my back; granted, their methods were barbaric, but for the most part, it was about making me a better musician so we’d be a better band.”
Great story. One of the better bands indeed. The McDuff Quartet fired on all cylinders, as you can see on the Antibes footage. Enjoy!
Grantstand ranks among guitarist Grant Green’s finest dates. A gathering of aroused spirits in Rudy van Gelder’s famed Englewood Cliffs studio.
Personnel
Grant Green (guitar), Yusef Lateef (tenor saxophone A1, B1, B2, flute A2), Brother Jack McDuff (organ), Ben Tucker (bass), Al Harewood (drums)
Recorded
on August 1, 1961 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Released
as BLP 4086 in 1962
Track listing
Side A:
Grantstand
My Funny Valentine
Side B:
Blues In Maude’s Flat
Old Folks
Green, the most prolific Blue Note artist of the early and mid-sixties, was just shy of his second year as a new guitar man on the NYC block. He was in great company. Tenor saxophonist and multi-horn player Yusef Lateef would join Cannonball Adderley’s group in late december of 1961, staying till 1964. Green is further assisted by organist Brother Jack McDuff, the second time they cooperated, the first being McDuff’s The Honeydripper, recorded half a year earlier on February 1 on Prestige. Drummer Al Harewood was regularly featured on straightforward Blue Note recordings, notably as a member of the in-house trio Us Three which further consisted of pianist Horace Parlan and bassist George Tucker.
Good vibrations. Sparkling shreds of fire shooting upwards, curling around the beams of the RVG Studio’s high-domed, temple-like ceiling. A set of smokin’ blues tunes alternated with a melancholy ballad and a sprightly standard. Wrap it in shiny paper, lace it up and send it to your closest jazz pal with best wishes. Grantstand, the title track, bubbles, sizzles like a copious amount of ribs on a Saturday night BBQ. Hungry men. They tackle the uptempo, catchy blues riff like wolves jumping the lamb. The band catapults Green into action and stimulates the blues-drenched, former St. Louis citizen to fire off razor-sharp lines, adding slightly slurred, repeated phrases for dramatic effect. Green provides crunchy chords and plucky bass lines behind Yusef Lateef, who excels with a relaxed, down-home and layered tale, the chapters are recited without hurry, slowly but surely gathering momentum.
And the sound of these guys! Green: sustained, shimmering, fluid gold. Lateef: resonant, full-bodied, grandaddy-puffs-on-a-cigar-sound. McDuff chimes in with the roar of the minister, spitting a sermon into the faces of the flabbergasted flock. Intriguingly, McDuff succeeds to marry the gospel with the spirit of pure-bred rock&roll.
RVG, 1924-2016
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey (The Three Sounds & Stanley Turrentine)
A bouncy version of Old Folks and a classy take on My Funny Valentine add variety to Green’s repertory, while Blues For Maude’s Flat continues the dip into bluesland. After hours vibes. The juices are flowing, the bottle of moonshine’s nearly empty. It could very well be that Green, Lateef, and McDuff arrived in New Jersey fresh from a gig in one of those dingy clubs the giants of jazz made their money in back then, like Chicago’s Theresa’s Lounge, Newark’s Front Room or Lennie’s On The Turnpike in Peabody, Massachussets. Blues In Maude’s Flat is a slow walk with a canny intermezzo of tension and release that serves as a springing board for the vibrant bunch of Lateef, Green and McDuff. Tenor/organ combo stuff of the grittiest and highest order, with the propulsive, already very authoritative leader on top of his game.
A while ago, a friend sent me this fantastic footage on YouTube of organist Brother Jack McDuff at the Antibes Festival in France in 1964. At the time, Jack McDuff’s quartet consisted of tenor saxophonist Red Holloway, guitarist George Benson and drummer Joe Dukes. (Read the recent review of The Soulful Drums Of Joe Dukeshere)
The popular organists of the sixties, like Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff were both true entertainers and true musicians. They entertained but not with cheap tricks. If you played with cats like that, you had to have game. In his autobiography, George Benson tells a number of exciting and insightful stories about his time with McDuff.
Benson joined McDuff in 1963. It was his first break. Benson was still basically an r&b guitarist, dreaming of the high standard of his predecessors in McDuff’s group, Grant Green, Eddie Diehl and Kenny Burrell, but as McDuff would soon acknowledge, a ‘baaaaaad’ picker. Benson slowly but surely developed into a jazz player, absorbing the music of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers on the road, who traveled the same circuit. Plenty time to learn, because McDuff’s quartet was playing nightly for two years time around the East Coast and Mid-West.
By 1964, the group fired on all cylinders. McDuff and Joe Dukes were excellent teachers but tough customers. McDuff regularly shouted obscenities to Benson on stage, ‘if he had just the right (or wrong) amount of booze or weed.’ Joe Dukes, ‘such a magnificent drummer that there were times I thought he was one of the greatest things that ever happened to mankind’ was especially hard on the 19-year old prodigy, who alledgedly picked up too many girls for the taste of the envious drummer.
“Finally, after a particularly nasty rant, I snapped: ‘If y’all don’t lay off, I’m gonna take y’all outside and beat y’all old men up! I’m nineteen years old! Y’all can’t take me! We’re going out in the alley, right now! McDuff and Dukes just stared at me for a second, then they both pulled out switchblades. But that didn’t stop me: “I don’t care! Y’all don’t scare me! Bring your switchblades into the alley! I’ll beat y’all up anyhow!” Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed: nobody went into the alley, and nobody got beaten up. But it got them off my back.”
“In retrospect, I’m glad they stayed on my back; granted, their methods were barbaric, but for the most part, it was about making me a better musician so we’d be a better band.”
