Cadet

The Eddie Fisher Quintet - The Third Cup

The Eddie Fisher Quintet The Third Cup (Cadet 1969)

- Francois Leave a comment

Eddie Fisher’s guitar sound is quite irresistible. Small wonder, then, that his jazzy and soulful 1969 debut on Cadet, The Third Cup, was a good seller.

The Eddie Fisher Quintet - The Third Cup

Personnel

Eddie Fisher (guitar), Phil Westmoreland (rhythm guitar), Bobby Selby (organ), Paul Jackson (bass), Kenny Rice (drums)

Recorded

in February 1969 at Saico Studio, St. Louis

Released

as Cadet 828 in 1969

Track listing

Side A:
Scorched Earth
A Dude Called Zeke
Shut Up
The Third Cup
Side B:
Two By Two
Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Be-Do-Da-Day
The Shadow Of Your Smile


Eddie Fisher was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1943. The teenage guitarist caught the traveling bug in the late fifties, touring first with Solomon Burke and subsequently stopping by Memphis, Tennessee. There Fisher mingled with Memphis stalwarts Isaac Hayes, Willie Mitchell, Booker T. Jones and Steve Cropper, receiving ample education. Settling in St. Louis in the mid-sixties, Fisher further delved into popular black urban music as guitarist and bandleader with blues master Albert King. Simultaneously, Fisher had honed his skills as a jazz player. In an interview with the Riverfront Times in 2002, Fisher says: ‘I really wanted to play jazz. (…) Albert let me do jazz instrumentals before he came onstage – tunes like Milestones and So What – so I was happy.’

In St. Louis, Fisher got associated with Leo Gooden, the 400-pound club owner, singer and politician and/or hustler who’d been a supporter of guitarist Grant Green a couple of years earlier. (According to Lou Donaldson, Leo Gooden assisted Donaldson and Green to Blue Note headquarter in New York in 1960, to recommend St. Louis resident Grant Green to Alfred Lion; the rest, as they say, is history) Fisher played in Leo’s Five, a group fronted by Gooden in his Blue Note club just out of East St. Louis in Alorton, Missouri. Also in that band were, at different times, saxophonists Fred Jackson and Hammiet Bluiett. Prominent visitors like Sonny Stitt, Miles Davis and Yusef Lateef sat in.

Fisher recorded the 45rpm single The Third Cup on Oliver Sain’s Vanessa label. The considerable airplay of Fisher’s debut on wax as a leader – it sold more than 5000 copies – prompted Cadet, the subsidiary label of Chess Records in Chicago, to release an entire album, also produced by Sain. The Third Cup was a good seller and Fisher’s follow up, The Next One Hundred Years, a big success. Fisher made another album for All Platinum in 1973, Hot Lunch, but then settled down in Centerfield, focusing primarily on social welfare projects with his wife.

On the surface, one may notice the influences of Fisher’s apprenticeship. The horn-like lines, integrated, repetitive blues riffs and blend of relaxation and bite point to fellow St. Louis cat Grant Green. There’s a bit of Kenny Burrell as well, the ease of the warm-blooded blues groove A Dude Called Zeke definitely brings to mind the work of the revered mainstream jazz guitarist. Big city blues, moreover, is in his veins. But, much like blues/jazz guitarists as Freddie Robinson, (although a bit more relaxed) it’s twisted to accommodate a definite, personal style. Fisher’s a fusion cook of note, combining lurid r&b swingers like the uptempo Shut Up and Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Do-Da-Day, the cookin’ boogaloo tune Two By Two (written, by the way, by fellow St. Louis resident, the future avant-gardist Oliver Lake) with the sick, rock jazz vamp of Scorched Earth.

The group’s take on Harvey Mandel’s The Shadow Of Your Smile is a stiff affair, since subtle swing isn’t the rhythm section’s strong point. The title track is better. The Third Cup travels along the borderland route of soul jazz and CTI-type smooth stuff. It’s also one of the examples of the quintet’s intricate, hi-quality interplay, the contrasting rhythm of drums and bass providing the clever and meaty bottom for Fisher and the excellent organist Bobby Selby to work with. Up front the group’s lively and tasteful accompaniment is Fisher’s unmistakable, plucky, ringing tone. Very alluring.

Eddie Fisher died of prostate cancer in 2007. The Third Cup was finally re-issued properly on vinyl in 2017.

Don Patterson - Goin' Down Home

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

- Francois 4 Comments

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.

Ray Bryant - Lonesome Traveler

Ray Bryant Lonesome Traveler (Cadet 1966)

- Francois Leave a comment

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.

128569

Bobby Bryant Sextet Ain’t Doing Too B-A-D, Bad (Cadet 1967)

- Francois Leave a comment

Bobby Bryant’s live album Ain’t Doing Too B-A-D, Bad is a commercial, forthright soul music affair and, when judged accordingly, a winner. Bryant’s exuberant, high-powered trumpet style sets the crowd in constant motion.

128569

Personnel

Bobby Bryant (trumpet), Hadley Caliman (tenor saxophone), Herman Riley (tenor saxophone), Joe Sample (piano), John Duke (bass), Carl Lott (drums)

Recorded

on February 1967 at Marty’s-On-The-Hill, Los Angeles

Released

as Cadet 795 in 1967

Track listing

Side A:
Sunny
Love Is Supreme
Blues For Ramona
Side B:
A Change Is Gonna Come
58th Street
Girl Talk
Don’t Say Goodbye


Communicating the blues evocatively, Bryant stays true to the roots of his place of birth, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Occasionally, however, Bryant puts his message in the corner by overzealously relying on gimmicks. Luckily, three factors keep Bryant in check. Firstly, his group lays down a tough groove. Secondly, the carefully crafted tenor charts unifies the varied repertoire. Finally, in contrast to many live recordings, solo’s are concise. It keeps fresh a date of this groovy nature.

After ‘calling the children home’ a capella, by means of upper register blowing, the perennial Sunny sets in. Its unusually slow drag is enticing. Neal Hefti’s much-covered Girl Talk gets the same treatment. Uptempo rocker and Bryant original 58th Street – a crowd pleaser par excellence – is perhaps the album’s most satisfying tune. It does without a Bryant solo, but his buoyant tackling of the theme and meaty way of ‘taking the tune out’ cracks everybody up. Pianist Joe Sample delivers an especially swift and funky solo.

Stix Hooper’s Blues For Ramona ignites ambivalent feelings. Herman Riley’s tenor solo is coherent and solid and the way Bryant backs Riley, and vice versa, is stimulating. Unfortunately, Bryant also creates havoc by soloing simultanuously with Riley near the end. It sounds disorientating and gets on your nerves.

Sam Cooke’s classic A Change Is Gonna Come fares better. Bryant retains a lot of the charged feeling Cooke’s gospel-soul classic embodies. Here his horn really sings from the heart. It’s difficult to stay untouched.

By 1967 Bobby Bryant was an experienced trumpet and flugelhorn player that had worked with Oliver Nelson and Charles Mingus. He was a firm part of the West Coast scene and acquainted and/or recorded with, among others, The Jazz Crusaders (of which the earlier-mentioned Joe Sample and Stix Cooper were part), Gerald Wilson and the lesser-known trombonist Lou Blackburn. Blackburn also played on Bryant’s 1971 album Swahili Strut and provided the picture for this album’s cheerful front cover.

Taking that brisk image into account, it is evident that Bobby Bryant indeed wasn’t doing too bad. Much in demand as trumpeter for Hollywood’s movie business, this album makes clear Bryant also had a foothold as soulful cooker in clubs such as Marty’s-On-The-Hill. Shouts from the audience in the opening track, that gave this album its name, attest to that honourable fact.