Happy Birthday, Wingy Manone!

Trumpeter, singer, and composer Joseph “Wingy” Manone was born on this date in 1900. As a boy in New Orleans, he lost an arm as a result of a streetcar accident, but this didn’t stop him from taking up a musical instrument. His nickname has to rank as a bit of gallows humor, although Manone’s 1948 autobiography was entitled Trumpet on the Wing. He used a prosthetic arm so naturally when playing trumpet that his disability was not immediately noticeable.

He first played professionally around New Orleans and then took to the road in the 1920s, playing with bands from coast to coast. His performance style was somewhat reminiscent of Louis Prima - hot and fast trumpet playing and vocals sung in a rough, gravelly voice. He played on a few early Benny Goodman recordings and his band had steady radio work in the 1930s. He also appeared in the film Rhythm on the River (1940), starring Bing Crosby and Mary Martin as musical ghostwriters.

As a composer, Manone’s tunes include “Tar Paper Stomp,” “There'll Come a Time (Wait and See)” (with Miff Mole; the song was recently used on the soundtrack of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), “Downright Disgusted Blues” (with Bud Freeman), and “Tailgate Ramble” (with Johnny Mercer). Manone played mostly in California and in Las Vegas from the 1950s onward, but he also continued to tour worldwide. He died in 1982.

Jazz violinist Joe Venuti, who was a notorious practical joker and good friend of Manone, used to send “Wingy” a single cufflink every year on his birthday.

Here is some rare footage of “Wingy” Manone performing.

Harold Land - A West Coaster Worth Surfing For

Hard bop saxophonist Harold Land (1928 - 2001) grew up in San Diego and started playing saxophone at the age of 16. He recorded some early sides as a leader in the late 1940s, but he really came into his own in 1954 when he joined the famous Clifford Brown/Max Roach quintet. He toured and recorded with the group for a couple of years before returning to Los Angeles to be with his family.

     Land remains lesser known because he spent his career on the West Coast, although his playing style does not fit the conventional definition of West Coast jazz. Rather, he falls well within the hard bop school. His tone was strong but had a somewhat melancholy edge to it, which added glints of emotion and even a certain vulnerability to his playing.

     In Los Angeles, he recorded with the likes of Curtis Counce on You Get More Bounce with Curtis Counce! (1956) and with Red Mitchell. In 1958, his leader date Harold in the Land of Jazz was released by Contemporary Records chased by The Fox the following year. One of my personal favorite Land albums, West Coast Blues!, was released in 1960. It was recorded in San Francisco, with Wes Montgomery on guitar, Joe Gordon on trumpet, and the rhythm section from Cannonball Adderley's quintet (Barry Harris, Sam Jones, and Louis Hayes). The title number is a good sample of the excellent playing throughout.

     In the late 1960s, he formed a group with vibes player Bobby Hutcherson, which recorded several albums with Blue Note Records. From this period onward, his playing took on a new level of intensity, which Land himself ascribed to the influence of John Coltrane. In the 1980s and 1990s, he toured with the Timeless All-Stars, sponsored by the jazz label of the same name. This group included Hutcherson, Cedar Walton on piano, and Curtis Fuller on trombone. Land was also a professor in the University of California, Los Angeles, Jazz Studies Program, along with guitarist Kenny Burrell. He died of a stroke in 2001.

For more on West Coast jazz, see "Sand, Surf, and Sax: West Coast Jazz Album Covers."

Happy Birthday, Jimmy Smith!

Jimmy Smith is the acknowledged master of the Hammond B-3 organ. In fact, the B-3 is the only instrument in jazz on which you'd find so little disagreement about who was the greatest player. And Smith took up the instrument relatively late.

     Smith was born on this date in 1925 (although some members of his family claimed he was actually three years younger) in Norristown, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. Both his parents were pianists, and young Jimmy took up that instrument as well. He joined the Navy in World War Two, where he played both piano and bass in segregated band. After his discharge, Smith attended the Hamilton and Ornstein schools of music in Philadelphia, studying piano and bass while working jobs in construction and on the railroad.

     In 1951, he was playing rhythm-and-blues piano with Don Gardner's Sonotones and toying with the idea of playing the B-3 organ. That's when he heard Wild Bill Davis, the "organ king" of the day, playing at an Atlantic City club and Smith knew he had to make the switch. He bought his first organ in 1954 and kept it in a Philadelphia warehouse, where he practiced on it.

     In January 1956, Smith made his debut in New York City at Small's Paradise in Harlem, then he made a splash at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival, and the rest is history. He started recording with Blue Note Records shortly afterward with the hit A New Sound, a New Star: Jimmy Smith at the Organ, and he made over 30 additional albums for the label, including The Sermon! (1958), Midnight Special (1960), Back at the Chicken Shack (also 1960), and Prayer Meetin' (1963).
     Smith played a winning combination of R&B-inflected blues and bop in an earthy groove that came to be called the "Philadelphia sound." He had a very percussive fingering attack on the organ and emphasized certain notes in the lower ranges much like someone playing a string bass. Before Smith, the organ got little respect in the jazz world - his appearance on the scene changed everything.

     He switched to Verve Records in the 1960s, with whom he recorded over 30 more albums. He worked with many of the great jazz musicians of the day, including Kenny Burrell, Grant Green, Stanley Turrentine, Lee Morgan, Lou Donaldson, Tina Brooks, and Jackie McLean. In the 1970s, Smith took a break from touring and opened an supper club in Los Angeles, where he regularly played. But in the 1980s and 1990s, he started recording and touring again, right up to his death in 2005. In his final year, Smith was awarded the NEA Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

     One of my favorite albums of Smith's is the aforementioned Midnight Special, where a quiet, swinging groove is maintained throughout by Kenny Burrell on guitar, Stanley Turrentine on sax, and Donald Bailey on drums. Here is a video of Smith playing the title tune from that album live in 1992.

Happy Birthday, Hampton Hawes!

Hard bop pianist Hampton Hawes was born in Los Angeles on this date in 1928. His father was a Presbyterian preacher and his mother was the church’s pianist. His interest in piano may have first begun as a toddler as he listened to his mother rehearsing, and he was already plunking out tunes by the age of three.

     When he was only in his teens in the 1940s, Hawes was playing with the likes of Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Shorty Rogers, and other musicians active on the West coast. At age 19, he spent eight months with the Howard McGhee Quintet, which included Charlie Parker.

     After serving in the Army in Japan from 1953 to 1954, Hawes formed his own group and hit the recording studios. His trio sessions from 1955 (Hampton Hawes Trio Vol. 1 - The Trio, This is Hampton Hawes Vol. 2 - The Trio, and Everybody Likes Hampton Hawes Vol. 3 - The Trio), with Red Mitchell on bass and Chuck Thompson on drums, are spectacular. His speed, rhythm, and innovative harmonies are all on full display. (Just listen to this fantastic version of “All the Things You Are.”) The All Night Session (three volumes) with guitarist Jim Hall, recorded as the name suggests in the course of a single overnight session, are also top notch, with Hawes incorporating elements of gospel and classical music into his brisk and bluesy pianism.

     In 1956, Hawes won the “New Star of the Year” award from Down Beat magazine. He had struggled with heroin addiction for many years and it finally caught up with him in 1958: he was arrested (on his birthday!) for selling heroin to an undercover cop. Hawes refused to squeal on other dealers and was given a ten-year sentence in a federal prison hospital, twice the minimum sentence.

     Here’s where things get strange. While in prison, Hawes watched the inaugural speech of President John F. Kennedy and immediately felt that Kennedy would give him a pardon. And in 1963, against all odds, the President granted Executive Clemency to Hawes.

     He continued playing, touring, and recording after his release. In 1974, he published his acclaimed autobiography, Raise Up Off Me, which detailed his struggles with drugs as well as his thoughts on jazz. Hawes died suddenly and unexpectedly of a brain hemorrhage in 1977 at the age of 48. Even today, Hawes remains one of the more obscure jazz piano greats, which is unfortunate because his bluesy, hard bop style, combined with a surprising emotional lyricism and astounding dexterity in playing, deserves to be widely heard.

Happy Birthday, Sonny Criss!

Saxophonist William “Sonny” Criss was born on this date in 1927 in Memphis. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was 15 and he remained there for much of his life. This may partly explain why, despite his obvious abilities, Criss never achieved due recognition - most West Coast musicians at the time usually made the trek to New York City in search of fame and fortune. But he was also an introspective man who didn’t toot his own horn except on the bandstand. Fellow saxophone player Teddy Edwards once said of Criss that he was like “a closet full of coats with the shoes underneath.”

     One of his earliest gigs was with Howard McGhee’s band, which also featured Charlie Parker. While clearly influenced by Parker, he was not merely a disciple as has sometimes been said. Criss had his own crisp, bluesy tone and was particularly strong on ballads and slow melodies. His playing is a mix of the sweetness of a Johnny Hodges with the urgency of a Charlie Parker. Criss cut his teeth with Al Killian, Hampton Hawes, Wardell Gray, and others on the Los Angeles Central Avenue scene. He moved from band to band, appearing on a few jam session recordings for Norman Granz and on sessions led by Johnny Otis and Billy Eckstine.

     In 1956, he made several recordings with Imperial Records, including Criss Cross and Sonny Criss Plays Cole Porter. He moved to Paris for a while, where he recorded the engaging Mr. Blues Pour Flirter, Vols. 1 and 2 (1963), among others. In the late 1960s, he made a number of fine albums, mostly in the hard bop tradition, for Prestige, including This is Criss and Sonny's Dream, which started to bring him a little more notice - he won the Down Beat award for “Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition” in 1968 (which sounds like a pretty thankless award if you ask me).

     On November 19, 1977, Criss committed suicide. He was still playing in top form and getting more widely heard at the time, so the reason for this was a mystery. Finally, more than a decade after Criss’s death, his mother, Lucy, revealed that he had been suffering with stomach cancer. I have lately been listening to his 1975 album, Out of Nowhere, where he is ably accompanied by the wonderfully named Dolo Coker on piano, and Criss’s playing is as full of emotion and inventiveness as ever. I guess, because of his tightly packed suitcase of a personality (to continue the clothing-related metaphors), Criss simply let his music do the talking for him, and perhaps that’s the way it should be.

Another Cause for Celebration: Harry “Sweets” Edison

While October 10th is rightly honored for the birth of Thelonious Monk, I want to celebrate another jazz musician who shares his birthdate, trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison. Edison was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1915, and spent part of his childhood in Kentucky, where an uncle introduced him to music. As a teenager, he played trumpet in local bands in Columbus.

     “Sweets” joined the Count Basie Orchestra in 1937 and stayed for 13 years. One can hear the Basie influence in the economy of his playing, in the ability to sound just the right note while playing a melody, make it swing, and give it so much meaning and feel at the same time. It was Lester Young (also in the Basie band) that gave Edison his nickname for just this quality. His sound is immediately recognizable.

     After leaving Basie, Edison recorded some albums as a leader and also traveled with Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic. He also played in the bands of Quincy Jones, Buddy Rich, and Louie Bellson at this time. He moved to the West Coast and did a lot of gigs as a studio musician in Los Angeles, including dates with Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday. He was the featured trumpet soloist with arranger/conductor Nelson Riddle for most of the 1950s.

     During the 1960s and 1970s, “Sweets” continued to do studio work for television shows (for Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Bill Cosby, and Della Reese, among others) and films, including the biopic about Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues (1972). He also worked in Las Vegas and toured extensively in Europe and Japan. He died in 1999.

     Among my favorite “Sweets” albums are two he did with Ben Webster, Sweets (1956) and Gee, Baby Ain’t I Good to You (1957), and the compilation The Swinger and Mr. Swing (1958). He can also be heard to good advantage - okay, he often steals the spotlight - on the Stan Getz album Jazz Giants ’58 (1958) and on the Duke Ellington/Johnny Hodges album Side by Side (1959). 
     In the video, which is from a 1964 concert in London, “Sweets” plays a lovely rendition of “Willow Weep for Me.”

Happy Birthday, Jimmy Blanton!

Bassist Jimmy Blanton was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on this date in 1918. He was the first great innovative jazz double bassist, known mainly for his recordings with Duke Ellington from 1939 to 1941. Before Blanton, the bass was used primarily to lay down the beat and provide the harmonic underpinnings for a tune. Blanton played his bass as a harmonic instrument, using both plucking and bowing techniques to create what have been described as “horn-like” solos. Ellington provided plenty of opportunities to showcase Blanton’s swinging soloing capabilities - so much so that the Ellington band at the time became known as the Blanton-Webster band (Ben Webster was the other featured player). The Blanton-Webster legacy has been well preserved due to some excellent recordings on the Victor label. Ellington also recorded some piano/bass duets with Blanton - their renditions of "Body and Soul" and "Sophisticated Lady" are exquisite. Unfortunately, Blanton’s career was cut short: he was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1941 and died the following year at the tragically young age of 23.

Curtis Fuller - Live in Chicago

Photo courtesy of T. Leasenby.

While on vacation last week, I had the pleasure of catching legendary hard bop trombonist Curtis Fuller at Andy’s Jazz Club in Chicago on September 16. Andy’s, just north of the Loop, was founded in 1951 by Andy Rizzuto and it is still one of the best places to hear jazz in Chicago, every day of the week. My friend Tim and I were sitting at a table literally abutting the front of the stage, with Fuller and his quintet playing a few feet in front of us.

     Trombonists rarely become famous, as they are not frequently leaders on recording sessions. Fuller, born in 1934, is one of a handful of recognized trombonists in the jazz world and is still going strong. He was born in Detroit and orphaned at a young age. Growing up, he was friends with fellow Detroit musicians Paul Chambers and Donald Byrd. During a stint in the Army in the early 1950s, he played in a band with Nat and Cannonball Adderley. He then was a member of Yusef Lateef’s quintet, made the move from Detroit to New York, and began recording.

     Influenced by J.J. Johnson, among others, Fuller was (and is) known for the lovely sonority of his trombone playing as well as his dexterity and speed. And it seems that 1957 was his breakout year, during which he recorded with a who’s who of jazz greats: Sonny Clark (Dial S for Sonny), John Coltrane (Blue Train), Clifford Jordan (Cliff Jordan), and Bud Powell (Bud! The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume 3). Listeners were impressed with this newcomer to the scene, as were his fellow musicians. As Bud Powell exclaimed, “Man, that cat can blow!” He also recorded as a leader that year on New Trombone (with Red Garland) and on my personal favorite of his albums, The Opener.

     Clearly, he was busy. Fuller continued to record prolifically over the next five years, including stints with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the Art Farmer/Benny Golson Jazztet, as well as under his own leadership on Blues-Ette (1959) and Soul Trombone (1961). Later in the 1960s, he played with the big bands of Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie. Recordings became less frequent in later decades, but he is still heading to the studio, with a new album this year, I Will Tell Her.

     Fuller was obviously enjoying himself at Andy’s, his playing energized by his young rhythm section and the trumpet of Pharez Whitted. The interplay among the musicians, and the concentrated listening that is necessary to play jazz - something often missed in more formal concert settings - was clearly on display in the intimate surroundings of Andy's. Fuller had some terrific solos on the slower ballads and nimble plunging on the fast numbers such as Oscar Pettiford’s “Oscarlypso” (also called “Oscalypso”; from The Opener). Catch this living legend in action if you get the chance.

Happy Birthday, Cat Anderson!

Jazz trumpeter William “Cat” Anderson (1916 - 1981) was born in Greenville, South Carolina. His parents died when he was only four years old, so Cat grew up in an orphanage in Charleston. It was here that he learned how to play the trumpet. Fellow orphans gave him the nickname “Cat,” not for his trumpet playing but for the way he fought on the playground.

     He played with various big bands in the late 1930s and early 1940s, including Claude Hopkins’ and Doc Wheeler’s groups, and he recorded with Lionel Hampton. In 1944, he joined the Duke Ellington Orchestra for the first of several long stays, punctuated by short breaks during which he attempted (unsuccessfully) to start his own bands. He was with Duke from 1944 to 1947, the entire decade of the Fifties, and from 1961 to 1967. After 1971, he settled in Los Angeles and mainly did studio work. He died of a brain tumor in 1981.

     Cat was famous for his high-note playing. He had a range of five octaves and could play up to triple C with astonishing power. But he was no mere blaster - he could also play in a swinging and subtle style with the mute, as seen in this video with the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1967.

Happy Birthday, Gene Harris!

Pianist Gene Harris (1933 - 2000) recorded prolifically during his long career. He started out playing in Army bands during the early 1950s. In 1956, he formed The Three Sounds with Andy Simpkins on bass and Bill Dowdy on drums. (Actually, it was originally The Four Sounds, but saxophonist Lonnie “The Sound” Walker dropped out after a year.) The group recorded exclusively with Blue Note Records from 1958 to 1962, including LPs with the likes of Lou Donaldson and Stanley Turrentine (the quietly grooving Blue Hour). Harris had a very warm, rich-bodied sound to his playing, very bluesy with a gospel tinge, a style that epitomized Blue Note’s soul-jazz of the period.

     The Three Sounds continued recording through the 1960s with Verve, Mercury, and Limelight up until the group disbanded in 1973. Harris was in effect retired in the late 1970s, although he played locally to his home in Boise, Idaho. He returned to touring and playing in the 1980s after Ray Brown convinced him to join his trio. He recorded with Brown and as a leader until his death from kidney failure.

     One of my favorite Gene Harris performances is a Ray Brown LP called Summer Wind (Concord, 1988), a recording of a live date at Santa Monica’s Loa Club. Here, Harris is featured on several numbers, including terrific versions of “Li’l Darlin’” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” (from the Broadway classic Show Boat). Here is the same lineup, with the addition of Herb Ellis on guitar, performing “Oh, Lady Be Good” during an appearance in Berlin in 1989.

I Like Ike

Saxophonist Ike Quebec, born August 17, 1918, was one of my favorite soul-jazz artists on Blue Note Records in the early 1960s. He had a full-throated sound (in the Coleman Hawkins vein), a sensuous and firm tone, rhythmically dynamic, and swinging. Quebec can be heard on breathy ballads, quiet bossa nova tunes, and more aggressive blues.

     He was born in Newark, New Jersey, and trained as a pianist and dancer, not switching to the tenor sax until his twenties. Early in his career in the 1940s, he earned his chops with a number of well-known bands and performers, including Roy Eldridge, Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Cab Calloway, and Ella Fitzgerald. He was also a sort of unofficial talent scout for Blue Note, helping to advance the careers of Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell.

     He struggled with drug addiction throughout the 1950s and recorded infrequently. However, later in the decade he started a comeback with Blue Note. He recorded a number of singles for the burgeoning jukebox market; a number of jazz labels were beginning to take note of the jukebox at this time, including Columbia with Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. Blue Note later released these Quebec sides as a two-CD set, The Complete Blue Note 45 Sessions.

     In 1961 and 1962, he recorded some terrific albums, including It Might As Well Be Spring (1961), a collection of quiet ballads. Blue and Sentimental (1961) is probably Ike’s masterpiece. He and Grant Green on guitar really stretch out on this collection of originals and standards, with some wonderful bluesy soloing. The title tune and Green’s “Blues for Charlie” are standouts. My personal favorite is Soul Samba (1962), recorded shortly before Quebec succumbed to lung cancer in January 1963. Here, he is joined by Kenny Burrell for a program of sultry, Brazilian-tinged tunes. His playing sounds as if it is coming from somewhere deep inside - just listen to his original tune “Blue Samba” - Ike playing beautifully until the very end.

Great Stuff

Stuff Smith, born on this date in 1909, was one of the three great pre-bop jazz violinists (along with Joe Venuti and Stephane Grappelli). In an era when the violin was considered a bit old-fashioned sounding for jazz, Smith’s playing was more raw and rhythmic, using a more Texas blues feel to knock any whiff of stale classicism out of his violin.

     Born Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith in Portsmouth, Ohio, Stuff’s father encouraged him to play classical violin, but he became a lifelong jazz devotee after hearing Louis Armstrong play - not an unusual occurrence in those days. In the mid-1920s, he joined a Dallas-based band that played jazz in a bluesy, free-form style. Stuff also played briefly with Jelly Roll Morton. In 1930, he formed his own group in Buffalo and then moved to New York City a few years later.

     Stuff Smith and His Onyx Club Boys, including drummer “Cozy” Cole, became a fixture at the Onyx Club on 52nd Street for several years. Smith performed in what became his signature get-up: an old top hat, sometimes with a parrot perched on his shoulder. He also was a pioneer in the use of an amplified violin. He developed a distinctive sound, a more aggressive and bluesy approach than the swing-inflected style of other violinists.

     In the 1940s, his career stagnated somewhat and his health suffered from years of heavy alcohol use. But in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Smith experienced a revival, recording several albums - including Have Violin, Will Swing (Verve Records, 1957); Cat on a Hot Fiddle (Verve, 1959); and Swingin’ Stuff (a recording of a live set with Kenny Drew on piano, Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen on bass, and Alex Riel on drums) - and touring in Europe up until his death in 1967. (His nickname, by the way, apparently came from his habit of referring to people whose names he’d forgotten as “Stuff.”) He is aptly remembered as “the cat that took the apron-strings off the fiddle.”

Happy Birthday, Paul Gonsalves!

Paul Gonsalves, born on this date in 1920, was a tenor saxophonist mainly known for his long association with Duke Ellington. He was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, but his parents were of Cape Verdean heritage. As a child, he and his brothers played Portuguese folk songs on guitar for family gatherings. They also played “hillbilly” and Hawaiian music. These family dates, however, became a chore and turned off the young Paul from playing music. Fortunately, he and his oldest brother, Joseph, became enamored of jazz, particularly Duke Ellington, which reignited his interest.

     At sixteen, he took up the saxophone. His main early influence was Coleman Hawkins. As Gonsalves said later, “There was something in his music that coincided with Duke’s, that for me denoted class.” After serving in World War Two, Gonsalves played in the Sabby Lewis Orchestra, and then with Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie. He joined Ellington’s band in 1950 after walking up and introducing himself to the Duke at Birdland one night. He stayed for the next twenty-four years.

     Gonsalves’ entire career is overshadowed by one event, his spectacular solo on Duke’s “Diminuendo in Blue and Crescendo in Blue” at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, which contained an astounding twenty-seven choruses. The rather diffident Gonsalves is about the last person in the Duke’s orchestra who would crave the limelight, but this was one of the first impactful extended sax solos in modern jazz history. The crowd went wild and it was a huge comeback for Ellington. (The performance can be heard on Ellington At Newport 1956 and here is a 1958 concert version from The Netherlands that gives some flavor of the Newport date, although before a much more restrained audience.) But in addition to his more straight-ahead melodic playing with Ellington (critic Gary Giddins called his playing “all liquid rhapsody,” although I’ve always heard a somewhat rougher edge in it), Gonsalves was an inventive player throughout his career and an experimenter with tonalities on the tenor sax. This can be heard to better advantage on some of his small group recordings, such as Gettin’ Together (1961) and Tell It the Way It Is! (1963).

     Unfortunately, alcohol and narcotics abuse cut Gonsalves’ life short. He died in 1974, just nine days before Duke Ellington’s death.

Happy Birthday, Hank Mobley!

Hank Mobley, born on this date in 1930, was a hard bop tenor saxophonist with a relaxed and melodic style. Instead of the hard-edged playing tone common at the time, he had a more sinewy sound, at least in the early and middle part of his career. Mobley himself described it thus: “not a big sound, not a small sound, just a round sound.” But he was a consistently interesting and inventive saxophonist with an assured ebullience in his playing. Despite a prolific recording career, his somewhat laid-back playing made him an under-appreciated musician and an underrated saxophone player compared to many of his peers.
     He was born in Georgia but grew up near Newark, New Jersey. Early on, he worked with Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie, and he also appeared on the landmark recording Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (1955). Other appearances as a sideman in the 1950s included dates with Lee Morgan, Art Blakey, Curtis Fuller, and Sonny Clark.

     Mobley is mainly remembered for his twenty or so albums for Blue Note Records as a leader, starting in 1955. These included some classic dates that epitomized the Blue Note sound of the era, including Soul Station and Roll Call (1960), Workout and Another Workout (1961), and The Turnaround and Dippin’ (1965). One of my favorite tunes from the period is “Dig Dis” from Soul Station, which displays the kind of tasty, cool groove that Mobley could achieve. He stopped playing in the 1970s because of lung problems and he died of pneumonia in 1986.

Tickle the Ivories, Elmo

Elmo Hope, born on this date in 1923, was a self-taught hard bop pianist and composer who never achieved wide recognition but was influential on other bebop pianists. He was actually childhood friends with Bud Powell - they listened to classical music (J.S. Bach, in particular) together. Hope had a percussive style of playing that was generally rhythmic, fast, and harmonically complex, although he could also play very slow, almost meditative music as well. In the early 1950s, he recorded with Sonny Rollins, Clifford Brown, Jackie McLean, and others. He also did some leader dates in trio and quintet formats with Frank Foster, Hank Mobley, Leroy Vinnegar, Philly Joe Jones, and Paul Chambers. Check out the Trio and Quintet compilation album from Blue Note Records, which includes this version of “Vaun-Ex.” Other albums include Informal Jazz, High Hope (an unfortunate name because of his difficulties with heroin addiction), and Homecoming!
     Due to drug problems, Hope lost his cabaret card in New York City, and so he moved to Los Angeles. Not a proponent of the West Coast jazz style, he nonetheless recorded with Harold Land and Curtis Counce. Los Angeles, however, did not light Elmo’s fire, so he returned to New York in 1961. His heroin use again caught up with him and he did a short stint in jail. He even did a recording called Sounds From Riker’s Island. After that, he played irregularly and did not record as much. His final recordings were made in 1966 and have only recently been re-released as The Final Sessions. In 1967, he spent time in the hospital with pneumonia - perhaps related to his drug use - and while still recuperating from that, Hope died of an apparent heart attack.

Not So Lucky at Life

Saxophonist Eli “Lucky” Thompson was born on this date in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1924, and spent his formative years in Detroit. He played tenor in the swing orchestras of Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, and Billy Eckstine in the mid-1940s. Thompson’s main influences were Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, and Don Byas. He was also the sax player that Dizzy Gillespie hired at this time to substitute for Charlie Parker, who was an erratic presence due to his drug problems (Parker set fire to his hotel bed one night in 1946 and was committed to Camarillo State Mental Hospital for six months). Lucky participated in Parker’s famous Dial sessions from this time.

     In the 1950s, Thompson evolved a more hard bop style and recorded with the likes of Miles Davis (Walkin’), Milt Jackson, and Oscar Pettiford. He recorded his first session as a leader as well, Brown Rose (Xanadu Records). This was also when Thompson began to grow increasingly disenchanted with the business side of music. “Vultures” is what he called club managers and record company executives, who he felt were exploiting the musicians. While many other successful musicians managed to thrive in the music business, Thompson seemed unable to abide it. He was also affected by the racism he encountered while working in the U.S.

     He was an expatriate for long periods in his life - France in the late Fifties and he moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, in the mid-1960s. He recorded several terrific albums there, including the aptly titled A Lucky Songbook in Europe. Other memorable sessions from this time include Lucky Strikes (1964) and Happy Days (1965). After the release of the former album, Thompson did some live dates at New York’s Half Note and Little Theatre, and these recordings, which show him at the top of his game, were just released last year on New York City 1964-65 (Uptown Jazz, 2009).
     He returned to the U.S. in the early 1970s and taught at Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, for a couple of years and also did his last recordings. But his distrust of the music business lingered and he abandoned performing completely and vanished. He apparently drifted around the U.S. and Canada, sometimes homeless, even apparently living in the Canadian wilderness for a time, growing his own food. Thompson eventually settled in Seattle, but suffered with Alzheimer’s dementia for years preceding his death in 2005.
     As his life went on, Lucky's nickname became increasingly ironic. While his difficulty with the music business was something he clearly paid a high price for, and may have made him a relatively obscure jazz exile, Lucky Thompson's recorded legacy is worth seeking out.

The Way It Went Down

Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer (2009) is a warts-and-all portrait of the great jazz vocalist, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 87. The film contains a trove of archival footage covering O’Day’s entire career, extended interviews with O’Day, and comments from other musicians and critics. While the filmmakers obviously adore her, they don’t shy away from the darker aspects of her life. Neither does O’Day herself - shy is not an adjective you could possibly apply to her.
     O’Day was born in Chicago in 1919 and was a chorus girl by the age of 17. She claimed a surgical mistake during a childhood tonsillectomy, which excised her uvula, left her incapable of singing with vibrato or able to maintain long notes. This forced her to develop the more rhythmic singing style that she was famous for.
     She got her big break in the early 1940s with Gene Krupa’s band. A short “soundie” musical film from the time shows a young, flirty O’Day upstaging trumpeter Roy Eldridge on "Let Me Off Uptown." She also spent some time with the Stan Kenton orchestra as the lead singer, although it was not always a happy collaboration.
     She launched her solo career in the late Forties, and this was also the start of her drug problems. She was arrested for possession of marijuana and sentenced to 90 days in jail. O’Day was one of the earliest embodiments of the “hip white chick” and she’s even mentioned in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. She asserts that the controversy actually helped her career.
     She recorded her first album, Anita O’Day Sings Jazz, in 1952 for the new label Norgran Records, Norman Granz’s precursor to Verve Records. In fact, it was the label's inaugural record and proved to be a popular success. O’Day recorded a total of seventeen LPs for Verve. At the same time, she was also arrested for possession of heroin, an addiction that would continue into the late Sixties and lead to her designation as “the Jezebel of Jazz.”
     Her appearance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival propelled her into stardom. Her spectacular performance of “Sweet Georgia Brown” while decked out in a short black dress and showy ostrich-feather hat is featured in Bert Stern’s documentary Jazz on a Summer’s Day, where she steals the show. This performance is shown in full here as well. After this, she continued to record in the 1960s and toured extensively overseas, particularly in Japan.
     She nearly died of a heroin overdose in 1968; in fact, she was pronounced dead before being revived. This experience convinced her to kick the habit. She is quite matter-of-fact about her drug addiction in her 1981 memoir, High Times, Hard Times, and in this film she refuses to sentimentalize or moralize about it. During an interview on the Today show, host Bryant Gumbel sanctimoniously delineates her many hardships: "Your personal experiences include rape, abortion, jail, heroin addiction..." She cuts him off - "It's the way it went down, Bryant" - the icy emphasis on the final “t” in his first name chills any attempt to elicit “valuable lessons learned” from her life. She’ll have none of it.
     This film shows her to be not only a great vocalist and hip white chick, but also - there’s no better way to put it - a tough broad. Her later career was uneven, as was her voice (intonation was not her strong suit), but she continued recording right up to the end - her last LP was the aptly named Indestructible! (2006). 
     Life of a Jazz Singer contains some great vintage material of O’Day: versions of “Let’s Fall In Love” and “Boogie Blues,” as well as “Love For Sale” and “Trav’lin’ Light” with a Japanese big band. Also included are a lightning-quick “Tea For Two” and a sensuous “Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square” from a 1963 Swedish performance. My personal favorite is a version of “Honeysuckle Rose” from a televised concert in Tokyo from 1963. The video quality is mediocre, but the performance is a swinging, joyous experience.

A Groovin' Groover

Organist Richard “Groove” Holmes (born May 2, 1931) must have been extremely fond of his nickname. Or the marketing people at the record labels he recorded for were just cashing in on his brand. For whatever reason, variations on the word groove appear in numerous album titles:

• Groovin' with Jug (1961)
• Blue Groove (1967)
• The Groover! (1968)
• Workin' on a Groovy Thing (1969)
• New Groove (1974)
• Groove's Groove (1991)

     Songs recorded with the same theme included “Groove’s Groove,” “Groovin for Mr. G,” and “Let’s Groove.” Holmes was firmly in the soul-jazz camp, with his playing characterized by articulate melodies in the upper registers and a pulsating bass - I hate to say it - groove laid down under other instrumentalists.

     Holmes first started recording in 1961, and probably his best-known tune was a version of “Misty” from the 1965 album Soul Message.  This is one of my favorite albums from Holmes - it also contains the doubly eponymous “Groove’s Groove” as well as a terrific version of Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father.”

     Holmes’ playing became funkier through the Sixties and Seventies. Some of his recordings showed a trend toward commercialization, which may have tainted his reputation somewhat. However, Holmes is credited with being one of the pioneers of acid jazz. In honor of that, the Beastie Boys included an organ track on their 1992 album Check Your Head called “Groove Holmes.” He died in 1991 after a long battle with prostate cancer.

Give “Gator” Some Respect

In 1964, sax man Willis “Gator” Jackson released the album Nuther’n Like Thuther’n on Prestige Records. This title neatly sums up the main criticism of Jackson: that he made a lot of records and they all sound the same. Granted, Jackson was no musical innovator, but one can still feel how his gritty, lowdown-blues blowing could stir a crowd in a dancehall on a hot Saturday night. Perhaps it’s the Sixties version of “dirty dancing”?
     Jackson was born in Miami in 1932 and was already touring with Cootie Williams, late of the Duke Ellington orchestra, and his band in 1949. He played a lot of rhythm and blues in the early Fifties. His honking and wailing sax style - in performances, he’d lie on his back and play - particularly on the song “Gator Tail” earned him his nickname. Jackson married R&B singer Ruth Brown and toured with her extensively. When he signed with Prestige in 1959, he modified his flamboyant style and became a proponent of soul-jazz playing. “Soul” signifying emotion in this case - something that Jackson wore on his sleeve when he played. Subtlety was not his game - Jackson was about expressing the emotion of the tune, not playing in a “style” per se.
     He was greatly influenced by Illinois Jacquet, who was also a honker in his day, and he admired Gene Ammons. Jackson had this to say about playing the sax: “So many of these saxophonists playing today [1961], they have what I call a ‘peashooter’ sound. They sound like an alto, they’re playing alto on the tenor. They’re wonderful technicians, they all have a good execution, but they don’t make the instrument sound like they should.” No one ever accused Jackson of being a peashooter. Just try sitting still while listening to Jackson’s version of “Swimmin’ Home Baby” from 1964.
     For the next ten years, Jackson made a slew of albums for Prestige, more and more of which are becoming available, including Please Mr. Jackson, Gentle Gator, and a compilation album called At Large. Over the years, he had long associations with both Jack McDuff and Carl Wilson on organ and with Pat Martino on guitar. “Gator” continued playing up until his death in 1987 and he left behind some swinging albums of bluesy soul-jazz, played by a master of the form.

A Hoot - Fred Jackson

Tenor sax man Fred Jackson released only one album as a leader, but it was a fine one. Jackson got his start playing in Little Richard’s band in the early 1950s. Later, he toured with rhythm-and-blues vocalist Lloyd Price, who was most famous for the single “Stagger Lee,” and he also recorded with B.B King. In 1961, Jackson appeared on Baby Face Willette’s Face to Face for Blue Note Records. His inventive playing on this album - he uses the whole bag of sax tricks available to him - landed him his own date as a leader the following year.
     In February 1962, Jackson stepped into Van Gelder Studio and recorded Hootin’ ‘n Tootin’ with other Lloyd Price veterans – Earl Vandyke on organ, Willie Jones on guitar, and Wilbert Hogan on drums. The result is a bluesy classic. Jackson’s playing is a mix of hard bop, earthy blues, and soul-jazz. The first tune, “Dippin’ in the Bag,” is an uptempo blues with Vandyke comping on organ and Jones and Jackson both taking extended solos. “Southern Exposure” is a more lowdown affair, a slow swinger with Jackson laying down the blues in a quiet wail (if that’s possible). The album continues to vary between swinging and shouting ravers and slower, R&B-inspired jazz, all showcasing Jackson’s searching solos.
     Jackson had a second recording session in April 1962 with the same band, with the addition of Sam Jones on bass. Unfortunately, Hootin’ didn’t sell well and the tunes from the second session weren’t released. Fortunately, for the reissue of Hootin’ in 1998, Blue Note tacked on these seven tracks. Again, it’s a mix of burners such as “Stretchin’ Out” (what’s Jackson got against including final g’s?) and “On the Spot” with more low-down blues such as "Egypt Land" and “Minor Exposure” (my personal favorite of all fourteen tunes).
     Jackson later recorded with organist Big John Patton and then basically disappeared from the jazz scene. His bluesy and inspired playing on the sax from his all-too-brief stint as a jazzman is worth seeking out.