Great Black Music Of The 1950's -- The Sound of Prestige

Great Black Music Of The 1950's

THE SOUND OF PRESTIGE

By John Sinclair

Gene Ammons: The 78 Era (Prestige 24058)

Kenny Burrell/John Coltrane: The Cats (Prestige 24059)

Wardell Gray: Central Avenue (Prestige 24062)

Oliver Nelson/Eric Dolphy: Images (Prestige 24060)

Zoot Sims: Zootcase (Prestige 24061)

John Coltrane: Traneing In (Prestige 24003)

Miles Davis: Collectors Items (Prestige 24022)

King Pleasure: The Source (Prestige 24017)

Charlie Parker: Live Bird (Prestige 24009)

Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie/Bud Powell/Charles Mingus/Max Roach: The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever (Prestige 24024)

Current mass-media mythology to the contrary, the 1950's were one of the richest periods in all of American musical history. Not only were many major musical tendencies from the first half of the century still flourishing, but Afro-American musicians across the spectrum from blues to jazz were developing a variety of musical syntheses with which to give expression to the rapid changes in their lives and in American society as a whole during the post-World War II period. Bebop jazz, urban rhythm & blues, street-corner harmonizing to secular concerns, the birth of rock and roll -- these were new and different, and the older strains of black folk and popular music were quick to adapt elements of these new musics into their own approaches, forming new syntheses and mutations on top of mutations.

Although most of the music under discussion here never reached the attention of white Americans and their mass media during the years of its currency in any term vaguely relating to "art", we have no reason today to continue to obscure the genius nature of the Great Black Music of the 50's just because our forebears were too racist and stupid to know what was going down. On hearing the evidence fifteen to twenty-five years later we can look back and completely reassess the official judgments of the period, adding literally thousands of recordings to the accepted lists of music worth hearing and vastly widening our musical horizons in the process.

Of the wealth of newly-available recordings from the 50's (and the 20's, 30's, 40's and 60's), the continuing series of more than sixty two-record sets on the Prestige label holds tremendous interest for music lovers of all stripes. Prestige Records, founded by one Bob Weinstock in New York City in the late 40's, specialized in jazz and jazz-based music, recording first for 78-rpm single release and then for 10" and finally 12" Lp release, with the occasional 45 single issued for jukebox play. (It is good to remember here that the 12" long-play album -- the standard format of today -- was only an exotic device at the opening of the 50's and did not become fully established until the mid-fifties.)

Weinstock hustled hard to sign and record the musicians he thought could sell records to the increasing body of modern jazz listeners on the east coast, in the midwest and on the Pacific coast. His A&R and production work was exemplary -- an incredible number of important classics of the 50's were cut by Prestige -- and he was skilled enough at marketing his product to keep the company viable and growing throughout the decade. Artists signed to Prestige during the 50's included Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Jackie McLean, Zoot Sims, Wardell Gray, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, King Pleasure, Annie Ross, James Moody, Yusef Lateef, Stan Getz, and so many others it would take the rest of our space just to list them.

One of the label's most popular artists in the early 50's was the tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons, a full-toned, hard-swinging, emotionally expressive stylist who straddled the line between jazz improvisation and rhythm and blues repetition -- much to the benefit of Prestige Records, which realized a number of jukebox smashes and a steady volume of sales from its Ammons releases. Much like, say, Grover Washington today, Gene Ammons (or "Jug," as he was popularly known) backed up his recording successes with constant touring and an exciting stage presentation, keeping his fans happy and building new listeners all the time.

Unfortunately Jug's success was repeatedly undercut by his harassment at the hands of police authorities, who jailed the saxophonist several times (his last term extended to seven years) on the basis of his addiction to heroin. Like many prominent black (and white) musicians of the period, including the central figure Charlie Parker, Ammons found heroin to be an indispensable component of the jazz life and used it for many years -- seeming never to diminish his creative powers thereby. While on the streets Jug enjoyed a steady stream of successful recordings, reaching an early peak with his sides for Prestige in 1950-51, many of which featured fellow saxophone star Sonny Stitt and a small (trumpet, trombone, 2 saxophones, piano, bass & drums) but powerful ensemble in the manner of James Moody.

Ammons, Stitt and Moody were giants then, major recording and performing stars in black communities throughout Afro-America. Charlie Parker was releasing his masterful recordings with strings, voices, big band backing, "south of the border" arrangements, and other commercially potent experiments for Norman Granz at Mercury Records (now available on various MGM/Verve Records repackages); Savoy and Blue Note Records were coming up with jukebox hits on Bud Powell, Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Tadd Dameron, and other "purer" jazz artists; rhythm & blues greats like T-Bone Walker, Louis Jordan, Joe Liggins, Roy Brown, Amos Milburn, and many others competed for hits with the newly-emerging vocal groups -- the Clovers, the Orioles, the Cardinals, the Ravens and any number of others -- and jazz/r&b borderliners like Illinois Jacquet, Lionel Hampton, and Lynn Hope; and great popular artists of earlier years were issuing some of their strongest work, including Basie, Hawkins, Billie Holliday, Ellington, Armstrong, and their peers from jazz's first 50 years.

Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson, and other urban blues giants were just making their first electric-backed sides for Chess and Modern and related companies; Elvis Presley, Cari Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and their friends in Nashville and Memphis were just stepping out of their trucks and into Sam Phillips' Sun Records office to talk about cutting some sides; Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys, and dozens of country and western music greats were selling lots of records across the south and midwest; gospel groups like the Swan Silvertones, Five Blind Boys, Pilgrim Travelers, and the like were being recorded and released by labels like Peacock and Specialty and Savoy alongside their blues and R&B and jazz artists.

Although all of this music was being composed, performed, recorded, released and marketed in the same time and place -- America at the turn of mid-century -- the common approach has been to regard each strain of the music as a separate and wholly distinct musical discipline, existing in a world of its own definition and unrelated to anything but other music of the same ilk. However comfortable this outlook may be for those of academic or commercial bent, the reality is that these musics blended together in the streets of Afro-America, and in the minds and bodies of the people who populated those streets, to form a veritable rainbow of sound, emotion, poetry, and general intelligence which has permeated the widest reaches of the American mass consciousness in the years since -- either directly or, more to the point, through the popularizers and imitators of the original musical creators.

But it is the originals we must study, if only because their work is usually far superior to that of their followers, and always because that is simply where it started. Going back to the mood of the turn of the 50's, one could scarcely do better than to audition the second of two live dates by the Charlie Parker Quintet to be included on the Prestige Charlie Parker set (24009), a set recorded at a dance in the St. Nicholas Arena, Harlem, New York City, February 18, 1950, and originally issued by bassist Charles Mingus on his own Debut Records label (the recording appears on Prestige through a lease arrangement between Debut and Fantasy Records of Berkeley, California, which company now owns the Prestige label and its masters as well as the old Riverside Records catalog).

Here we have Bird in his natural habitat, leading a hot quintet (Red Rodney, Al Haig, Tommy Potter, Roy Haynes) through a program of bebop originals, standards, and blues to the delight of the dancers and diggers at St. Nick's. The other record in this set, originally issued as Bird on 52nd Street and dating back to 1947-48, takes the Miles Davis-Duke Jordan-Tommy Potter-Max Roach band through a similar set of material but in a nightclub -- rather than a dance -- setting, where the intricacies rather than the broad outlines of the music are paramount and the improvisation is just a little bit hotter. The sound quality should take you back, too-the wire recorders available for home and casual use were "low-fi" in the extreme, and their shortcomings can be heard at great length on these Parker sides.

Happily the studio technology of the period was at a considerably higher level, and the 1949-1950 recordings by tenor saxophone great Wardell Gray are marked by the richness and depth of their sound almost as much as by the music contained in the grooves. Central Avenue contains the Nov. 11, 1949 date that produced the very famous "Twisted" (vocal versions by Annie Ross, Lambert Hendricks & Ross, Joni Mitchell.and Bette Midler), "Easy Living," "Southside," and "Sweet Lorraine"; a live session recorded at the Hula Hut, Los Angeles, in August of 1950 with Clark Terry, Sonny Criss, and Dexter Gordon; four tunes recorded in Detroit (April 25, 1950) with the local rhythm section of Phil Hill, Beans Richardson, and Art Madigan (see our Elvin Jones interview, Sun, Vol. 4 No. 5 ); and a pair of L.A. dates from 1952 and '53 with (among others) Art Farmer, Hampton Hawes, Teddy Charles, and Sonny Clark.

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PRESTIGE

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Wardell Gray grew up in the Detroit of the 20's and 30's; he left town in 1943 with the Earl Hines Orchestra, joining Charlie Parker in the saxophone section and later recording with Bird for Ross Russell's Dial Records label. Settling in Los Angeles in 1945, Wardell gained national attention in 1948-49 when he was a featured soloist with Benny Goodman's bebop band. The Prestige recordings, his most famous, followed, and his career was brought to a brutally abrupt end in December, 1955 when his body -- the neck broken -- was found in the desert outside Las Vegas, where he had joined the Benny Carter band for the grand opening of the Moulin Rouge club.

Gray's playing -- along with that of Parker, Ammons, Stitt, Moody and tenorist Dexter Gordon -- was among the most influential of the period, inspiring a whole school of post-war saxophonists and considerably shaping the attack of the young John Coltrane, who was serving his apprenticeship with the bands of Dizzy Gillespie, Bull Moose Jackson, and Earl Bostic at that time. A disciple of the great Lester Young, whose fluent, cooking recordings of the same period can be heard on the recent Blue Note Masters release, Lester Young: The Aladdin Sessions, Wardell Gray had a sort of counterpart in the young white tenorman of the time, Jack "Zoot" Sims, who is heard at some length on the current Prestige reissue, Zootcase.

Zoot, still active as an improvising musician based in New York City, was one of the large crop of young white musicians who staffed the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton big bands of the late forties and early fifties; possessed of a firm, round tone, a fertile imagination and a relentless sense of swing, Zoot pursued the Lestorian mode without pause throughout the 50's, cutting most impressively for Prestige. Hence the Lp under discussion here, which has the added historical interest of containing "the very first Prestige session involving records made for long-play release, rather than just as three-minute singles!"

Zoot's "extended play" date was cut August 14, 1951; a month and a half later, on October 5th, Miles Davis took a group including the 21-year-old Sonny Rollins and the 19-year-old Jackie McLean into the Prestige studios to cut a session specifically for Lp release. The bulk of the session was issued as Dig (Prestige 7012), but two cuts ("Conception" and "My Old Flame") can be found, along with some additional Miles Davis ephemera, on the Prestige two-fer Collector's Items.

The other three sessions represented here include the legendary "Serpent's Tooth" -- "Compulsion" -- "Round About Midnight" date with Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker ("Charlie Chan" for contractual reasons on the original issue) of Jan. 20, 1953; the equally legendary Miles-Mingus-Teddy Charles-Britt Woodman-EIvin Jones collaboration of July 8, 1955 ("Nature Boy," "Easy Living," "Alone

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Together" and "There's No You"), originally on Debut as Blue Moods; and the apocryphal Miles-Sonny Rollins-Tommy Flanagan-Paul Chambers-Art Taylor session of March 16, 1956, which produced the classics "Vierd Blues," "No Line," and "In Your Own Sweet Way."

Anyone who listens to the Miles Davis of the past ten years owes it to themself to go back and check out his landmark work of the 50's, of which the music contained in this album is some of the finest. Prestige also has two double sets by the Miles Davis Quintet (John Coltrane-Red Garland-Paul Chambers-Philly Joe Jones) which offer some of the finest improvisational music ever recorded in the history of the human race.

I can't say enough about the great King Pleasure album, The Source. King Pleasure (born Clarence Beeks) and the inestimable Eddie Jefferson pioneered the vocalese approach to the jazz vocal, composing original lyrics shaped to fit the improvisations of such jazz masters as Bird, Lester Young, Moody, Wardell Gray, and others. King's great work was done for Prestige in 1952 ("I'm in the Mood for Love" or "Moody's Mood For Love"), 1953 ("Red Top," "Jumpin' with Symphony Sid," "This Is Always," "Sometimes I'm Happy," "Parker's Mood" and "What Can I Say, Dear?"), and 1954 ("I'm Gone," "Don't Get Scared"). Incidentally, one should compare King's version of "Parker's Mood" (which Bird detested more than anything else in life) with Eddie Jefferson's equally compelling -- if less specifically personal -- vocal rendition of the same blues by Bird.

Also included with King Pleasure's historic Prestige material is the whole of an album cut for the HiFiJazz label in April of 1960, most of which is markedly inferior to the earlier work. The liner notes by Jon Hendricks, King's most illustrious pupil, are an extra groove, as are the annotations for almost every record in the set.

The real prize in the entire Prestige catalog is the Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie-Bud Powell-Charlie Mingus-Max Roach collaboration of May, 1953, which has been issued under the modest title, The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever. Another Debut special, the concert was recorded at Toronto's Massey Hall by Mingus, who had made the arrangements for the show with the Toronto New Jazz Society. They had wanted the best of the bebop players, and what they got were the masters of their instruments, playing their mature asses off, blowing each other all over the Canadian stage. Bird is characteristically brilliant, witty, fluid and precise; Diz matches Bird step for step; Bud Powell is the greatest, and he gets a whole two sides to himself, with Mingus and Roach doing it to death as usual. "Salt Peanuts," "A Night in Tunisia," "Wee," "Hot House," "Perdido" and "All the Things You Are" make up the evening's program, and there's no way you can go wrong in investing an hour of your life in this beautiful improvisational music. Why not try it today?

The other three records are from the mid-50's -- the two Coltrane sets -- and the end of the decade, which takes us through Oliver Nelson and Eric Dolphy, two prematurely deceased saxophonists who had a lot to do with the creative improvisational music which emerged in the 60's. The Coltrane Quartet sides, originally out as Traneing In (1957) and Soultrane (1958), present the giant saxophonist during his Miles Davis Quintet/Thelonious Monk Quartet period, with Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Arthur Taylor backing him up, and a better exposition of Trane's 1957-58 work is not to be found.

The Kenny Burrell/John Coltrane set is really a Detroit reunion with Trane as a special guest. Pianist Tommy Flanagan, who is scheduled to be in town for the Homecoming Festival, put the band and the music together basically for two sessions in 1957 and 58, but the effect is not so overwhelming as one might hope. Interesting music in the mid-50's Prestige "blowing session" mold (see the Jackie McLean section in A.B. Spellman's great book, Four Lives in the Bebop Business, for a finer picture of the period), but not up to the rest of this stuff.

Finally, the Oliver Nelson/Eric Dolphy sets -- originally known as Screamin' the Blues and Straight Ahead -- are two of the prettiest, juiciest, musically most satisfying records you could possibly want. Words will not do to describe the beauty and depth of these performances; as Dolphy said late in his life (he passed unexpectedly in the summer of 1964): "Once you hear music, it's gone, in the air -- you can never capture it again." These records give the lie to that adage, and wonderfully so. Please make use of them in your lives. That's what they're for, after all!