Gene Ammons

[gmonahan]

I know I sound like a broken record on this one, but Jug just SO needs a box. And deserves it. But, unless Mosaic were to get its hands on the Prestige catalog, which seems unlikely, I think we'll see the Second Coming first.

gregmo

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

I believe it!! id go on tour with the jug too if i was around then. i also believe that 2nd part about his universal appeal.

But with Jug, the whole cultural relevance of jazz, especially in the black community,is just as significant. The corner bar, jukeboxes, etc. Porter told me that in the '60s he knew middle class blacks who planned vacations around Ammons' itinerary, always trying to hear him along the way. His appeal cut across every schism of class and style -- doctors, lawyers, pimps, factory workers, hipsters, squares, beboppers, avant-gardists.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

In fairness, I think others commanded the same sort of love and respect in the black community: Arthur Prysock is another or whom people were turning out and filling halls up to soon before his death in 1997.

MG

[JohnS]

The Prestige jam sessions get a lot of playing time here.

[JSngry]

Of all the many two groups of people into which the world surely must be divided, one would be People Who Get Gene Ammons & People Who Do Not Get Gene Ammons. Membership in either group is not a guarantee of anything, but now I wonder if members from each group who share a liking of other musics are actually hearing the same things?

Which kinda gets back to the "vocal" music thing, how much of voice is words and how much of it is sound, perhaps one cannot understand the words yet still feel the voice?

Also, what does the Venn Diagram of those who dig Gene Ammons and those who prefer to avoid singers look like?

All of this prompted by a few evenings falling asleep to Gentle Jug and hearing a very common vocabulary sung, not spoken, SUNG, in a most remarkably natural and personal manner, you may or may not know the lyrics, but there is no mistaking what is being sung, if there are such things as supra-words, these are them. Has that record ever been OOP?  God spare us if it ever should be.

[MomsMobley]

1970

1972

 

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

On ‎16‎/‎06‎/‎2016 at 3:45 AM, JSngry said:

Of all the many two groups of people into which the world surely must be divided, one would be People Who Get Gene Ammons & People Who Do Not Get Gene Ammons. Membership in either group is not a guarantee of anything, but now I wonder if members from each group who share a liking of other musics are actually hearing the same things?

Which kinda gets back to the "vocal" music thing, how much of voice is words and how much of it is sound, perhaps one cannot understand the words yet still feel the voice?

Also, what does the Venn Diagram of those who dig Gene Ammons and those who prefer to avoid singers look like?

All of this prompted by a few evenings falling asleep to Gentle Jug and hearing a very common vocabulary sung, not spoken, SUNG, in a most remarkably natural and personal manner, you may or may not know the lyrics, but there is no mistaking what is being sung, if there are such things as supra-words, these are them. Has that record ever been OOP?  God spare us if it ever should be.

I think I have very nearly everything Jug recorded as a leader now, except a live date issued on LP by a firm called Chazzer. And most of his sideman dates, too, except for the Woody Herman material I think (well I know I haven't got that).

I've been ripping stuff to my hard drives for months, and assembling albums I never bought like 'Soulful saxophone' (now THERE'S an understatement!) and, searching the web for cover photos realised there have been a bunch of compilations issued. So I thought I'd assemble those, too. And my GOD! 'Gentle Jug vol 3' (PR24249) is perhaps the most magnificent piece of programming I've ever heard.

If you only get one Gene Ammons album, this is the one to make you a fan, I reckon.

More later - Jug has been much in my thoughts these last months.

MG

[JSngry]

Ha, sweet, Gentle Jug vol. 3 just went into my car this AM and will be there until further notice.

[gmonahan]

Oh yeah, all the Gentle Jug albums are definitely keepers!

 

 

gregmo

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Sorry, this is quite a long post.

For about half a century, I’ve been saying, when asked and maybe on this board, that my all time favourite jazz musician was Grant Green. But for the past few years, Green’s work has become less and less important to me and Gene Ammons’ more and more, so I think I’ll change my plea and say it’s Jug now.

As I’ve ripped my collection to hard drives, I’ve been thinking more about his music and the way he was thought about, particularly by the other people who paid - record company bosses and record producers. As far as audiences - bums on seats to use a technical term – were concerned, no tenor saxophonist was so well LOVED by the black community as Gene Ammons. No tenor saxophonist had a sound as beautiful as Jug’s. He could honk, but almost never did. He could whisper sweet nothings in your ear, more sweetly and tenderly even than Ben Webster, and frequently did. He could play Bebop but never sounded at home with it; as if the constraints of Bebop didn’t free him to be himself. Bebop, created in the atmosphere of after hours cutting contests, required you to show your chops. But for players like Ben Webster, Ike Quebec, Grant Green, Gene Ammons and numerous others, who relied on having an expressive and beautiful BIG sound, and liked and needed to play deliberately enough to get their messages through in that wonderful sound, it was a trap. Of course, if you were Charlie Parker, you didn’t mind that playing fast ruined the beautiful sound you got when you played ‘Bird of paradise’. And if you were Sonny Criss, well, fast or slow didn’t make any difference; you could sound fabulous all the time.

But musicians like Criss are very rare, so Jug played Gene Ammons; at first when he could, then later, when the record company proprietors found that Gene Ammons playing Gene Ammons sold a shed load of records, more and more frequently.

Beneath Jug‘s beautiful big sound, however, was great power; power he could have used to honk the dancehalls full of knocked out audiences. But he seldom wanted to do that. He used his power sparingly, to emphasise the rhythm, to make even slow songs swing, to make everything good for dancers listening as much with their bodies as their ears. And when your lady or gentleman is in your arms, you understand deeply where that timing is leading you.

Jug had hits in the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies: ‘Red top’ in 1947; ‘My foolish heart’ in 1950; ‘Jug’ in 1951; ‘Bad bossa nova’ in 1962; ‘The boss is back’ in 1970; ‘Black cat’ in 1971; and ‘My way’ in 1972. Among the Soul Jazz fraternity, only Arthur Prysock managed something similar (though his hits in the forties were as lead singer with the Buddy Johnson band). And Prysock was a singer; that makes a hell of a difference to hit-worthiness.

Gene was the son of the great boogie-woogie pianist, Albert Ammons and was born and grew up in Chicago. He got his early music training at DuSable High School, where he studied under Walter Dyett, whose pupils included many of the greatest Chicago musicians. His early experience was with the well thought of band of King Kolax, a trumpet player. In the notes to ‘My buddy’, Sonny Stitt says… “I first met Jug in a club in Detroit. Sawdust on the floor… He was with King Kolax but I was with a big league band, Tiny Bradshaw.” In 1942, Bradshaw’s band was quite a long way from the big league, and Kolax even farther down the pecking order. But that was where you started if you were promising.

In 1944, he joined Billy Eckstine’s second new band, after Eckstine left Earl Hines. He ran his own small band, with Miles Davis and Sonny Stitt, for a while after Eckstine disbanded the orchestra and became a solo singer in 1947, then joined Woody Herman for a short period. In 1950, he started a two tenor duo with Sonny Stitt. So for six years, Jug was mostly associated with bands that played bebop. And this affected the way he was perceived by the record companies for which he recorded as a leader, to an extent that hindered what in hindsight we can say was the proper development of his career.

And unnecessarily so. He pointed the way in his first session for Mercury, with a hit record of ‘Red top’ (#3 on the R&B charts in 1947). Other material recorded at that and subsequent Mercury dates was usually rather or significantly boppish. But ‘Red top’ was true Gene Ammons material, at THE perfect Jug tempo, lithe and loosely arranged (by George Stone), with no showboating chops on display. But Mercury didn’t give Jug a chance to show his ballad style, either, until his final session, in October 1949. Still, there are plenty of nice blues among his Mercury recordings, fortunately.

However, Aristocrat recorded some lovely ballads by Gene, culminating in his whizzo recording with cavernous echo chamber of ‘My foolish heart’ in 1950. Mercury caught up when Gene recorded his last session for the label, and ‘Everything depends on you’ was recorded 4 October 1949, regrettably without the cavernous echo chamber of Universal Studios, deployed to great effect on ‘My foolish heart’.

On medium up numbers, Gene was right at home and both Chess and Prestige recorded lots of them. There’s a definitive Jug pace – the tempo of ‘Red top’ – which he made his own.

At Prestige, Ammons made quite a lot of recordings, as leader and sideman with Sonny Stitt. Most of them ended up on one of the four ten inch LPs of singles material that the label issued. It’s interesting to reassemble the three volumes of ‘Tenor sax favorites’. Each comes a little closer to a pure Jug album. Although all the material was issued as singles, volume three seems to have been intended as an album, as it was recorded at two closely spaced sessions, and concentrates on the kind of material Jug recorded in the early sixties.

With only one chart hit at Prestige (‘Jug’ #10 R&B in 1951 - a bit of a honker), but a good deal of other material that might have been thought of as hit material, Jug left Prestige, to seek more profitable channels.

He did a session for Decca, on 24 March 1952, which pretty well got lost. But it was a beautiful session. Jug sounded fabulous and ALL of it was pure Jug music. Gene was backed on that session by Bill Massey (tp), J J Johnson (tb), Sonny Stitt (bar), John Houston (p), Shep Shepard (b) and Bob Wilson (d).

Well, nothing happened and Decca, a company that had more or less stopped trying to cater for the black audience by then, never asked him to come back next week, so Gene tried a new Chicago label, United, and did his first session for them on 18 November 1952. It’s wondered by some why Gene went to United, when Chess in Chicago were doing so well. United may have been a new label, owned by a new player, a tailor called Leonard Allen, but it was managed by Lew Simpkins, who’d done a similar job for Lee Egalnik’s labels, Miracle, then Premium. After Premium closed, Simpkins took a good proportion of the Miracle/Premium artists with him to United. So Lew was a man with a track record; he had seen twenty of his productions become R&B chart hits since September 1947; seven of them had occupied the #1 slot for twenty weeks in total. And three of his productions had even got onto the pop top thirty. So, whereas a hit with some other company might sell in the tens of thousands, a hit with Simpkins might sell in the hundreds of thousands. Perhaps even more important; four of those #1 hits had featured jazz musicians: Eddie Chamblee; Tab Smith and Jimmy Forrest.

Chess had been successful, with 17 R&B hits since September 1948, but only 3 at #1, and only one other that made the top five. None had entered the pop chart. Chess’ great days as a money-making organisation were in the future. United’s were in the past, though no one knew it. But Simpkins died in 1953 and, though the firm made fine recordings later, it was all in the past. But the SOUND on Gene’s United discs was fantastic! United used the same studios as Chess and had that fabulous echo chamber (I can’t remember whether it was a toilet or a bathroom, the former, I think), but also a very high degree of hifi.

Savoy acquired Gene’s United masters (as well as a load of material by The Caravans) and put them together to make a ten inch LP, ‘The golden tone of Gene Ammons’. He did two more sessions for United, the last one after Simpkins’ death, in June 1953, then reported back for duty at Prestige, and remained with Bob Weinstock until his death, though moonlighting to Chess pretty frequently.

Weinstock had a new idea for him; to make albums with one long track per side, as Miles Davis had been doing so successfully; ‘Walkin’’ was the first great rent party album. Weinstock specifically wanted Jug to do jam sessions, which Miles hadn’t wanted to do. Gene went along with it – presumably Richard Carpenter – who managed both Miles and Jug – had told him how much he could make out of those kind of albums. The first was ‘Gene Ammons all stars’ PR211, one of the last ten inch LPs Prestige issued. Art and Addison Farmer, Lou Donaldson, Freddie Redd and Kenny Clarke were with him for this. The big number was ‘Woofin’ and tweetin’’

After the changeover to 12 inch LPs, Gene recorded several more jam session albums. The first of them was ‘The happy blues’, the title track was a number at Jug tempo and really suited Ammons. Though Jackie McLean and Art Farmer weren’t truly into this, as everyone else solos first, their playing doesn’t sound too bad. Gene followed it up with six more jam sessions for Prestige, before his first prison sentence began. The last, and best, was ‘Blue Gene’, again featuring a tune at Jug pace; ‘Blue greens and beans’, which became something of a jazz standard. All of the tunes were written by Mal Waldron, the pianist on the session. I think Mal was the pianist most in tune with and stimulating for Jug.

None of those jam session albums were totally satisfactory Gene Ammons records. One of the things Gene seemed to like was being in charge. He always seemed at his best when he was firmly in control of proceedings. Well, after all, he was the Boss Tenor. You can hear all the GOOD jam session tracks (except ‘Woofin’ and tweetin’’) on ‘Gene Ammons greatest hits: the fifties’ OJCCD6013. The rest just show how badly mistaken about what Jug should have been doing Weinstock was. None of those albums sold poorly, so Weinstock’s accounts books showed he wasn’t all THAT wrong.

When Jug got out of jail in 1960, he went back to Prestige. By that time, Esmond Edwards was the main producer. Edwards was a black guy and KNEW how the black audience felt about jug. Between June 1960 and September 1962, he produced fourteen Ammons albums. In the same period, Jug moonlighted, officially or unofficially, for Pacific Jazz, Argo, Verve and Winley, and made nine other albums. And there is not a dud among all twenty-three of them. I put a thread up about those albums a few years ago.

Then he did time again, and was away for seven years.

After his return, from November 1969 to March 1974, he made nineteen more albums, all but two for Prestige. Most of the Prestige studio material was produced by Bob Porter, another one who understood Jug very well. After Weinstock sold Prestige to Fantasy, Porter left or was fired and Jug’s studio albums were produced by Ozzie Cadena (very good), Ray Shanklin (a guy who did NOT get Jug), Duke Pearson (pretty good), and Orrin Keepnews (surprisingly magnificent). Seven of the albums from this period are live and are variable; the two done at the Left Bank in Baltimore are (along with ‘Groovin’ with Jug’ from 1961) the best. The two with Dexter Gordon are the worst. Although Jug LIKED bop – he’d grown up with it, after all - and generally played all kinds of material slightly too fast at live gigs, he was truly not fitted for bop.

I LURVE Jug.

MG

[robertoart]

Funny this mention of Grant Green and Gene Ammons. I had Youtube playing bout three weeks ago and was listening to the Grant recording of Lazy Afternoon while I was doing the dishes. Youtube went into autopilot while I drifted off...then I heard this beautiful tenor and I drifted back in...what I am I listening too...this is glorious...I ran to the macbook to check and it was the afore-posted Jungle Strut...yum. 

and here's Red Top and Ornithology a-la Maxwell Street from an historic recording...

 

Edited September 3, 2016 by robertoart

[John L]

Very nice post, MG.  Thanks.

I have also been a huge fan of Gene Ammons most of my life.  Jim's comment about about separate People Who Get Gene Ammons and People Who Don't Get Gene Ammons camps reminded me of an interaction back at Jazz Corner some years ago.  We were listing our favorite tenor saxophone players and I listed Ammons right near the top with Lester Young and John Coltrane.  None other than Bob Brookmeyer gave me hell for it - how could I possibly suggest that Gene Ammons might belong on a list together with these truly immortal names?  To each his own.  Like for MG, Gene Ammons is someone who has consistently brought me enormous musical enjoyment.   

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Thanks John. Actually Mr Brookmeyer was just plain wrong; so many reputable critics have seen him as the tenor player to link and reflect the styles of both Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins that it's foolish to doubt his deserving a place in the pantheon of tenor players, even if my knowledge of the nuts and bolts of music is inadequate to enable me to explain this cogently (or even incogently).

MG

[JSngry]

Bob Brookmeyer had an opinion about Gene Ammons? Based on what, exactly?

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Bob Brookmeyer had an opinion about Gene Ammons? Based on what, exactly?

Perhaps you're just being facetious, but in case you're not, while I certainly don't agree with Brookmeyer on Ammons, I assume his opinion was based the usual stuff we all base such opinions on -- recordings, live performances, his own background/assumptions/prejudices. Or maybe he just got it straight from Martin Willliams.

[JSngry]

Yeah, well, there's another one 

I spent a couple weeks in Des Plaines and have had stopovers at both airports, so let me give you my opinion about Chicago.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I'm sure for all that, that Mr Brookmeyer is a nice geezer, just as, despite your as yet unexpressed views on Chicago, I know you are

MG

[JSngry]

I have loved everything I've experienced about Chicago, really have. But I've never lived there. Now, I can go deep about where I have lived, but...just saying, if I wanted to commiserate with fellow Gene Ammons lovers, I would neither expect every jazz lover/musician to show up, nor would I fell ill towards those who didn't - except for the ones who gonna start talking shit about it. And to them my first question would be, based on what, exactly, are you talking all this shit? And a motherfucker better have a nuanced realitylifebased answer at the immediate ready or else, you know, BRRRRRRRRKKKKK disqualified, get the fuck out of my face, next.

Gene Ammons' music was no more (or less) difficult than everyday life, so the only valid answer is a simple acknowledgment that the everyday life which he spoke so vividly of  is not everybody's, just acknowledge that and it's all good. But get all snittybitchy and act like Judge Jazz, King One Size Fits All, hey, fuck that, I am not in the mood for that.

NOT in the mood.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

I have loved everything I've experienced about Chicago, really have. But I've never lived there. Now, I can go deep about where I have lived, but...just saying, if I wanted to commiserate with fellow Gene Ammons lovers, I would neither expect every jazz lover/musician to show up, nor would I fell ill towards those who didn't - except for the ones who gonna start talking shit about it. And to them my first question would be, based on what, exactly, are you talking all this shit? And a motherfucker better have a nuanced realitylifebased answer at the immediate ready or else, you know, BRRRRRRRRKKKKK disqualified, get the fuck out of my face, next.

Gene Ammons' music was no more (or less) difficult than everyday life, so the only valid answer is a simple acknowledgment that the everyday life which he spoke so vividly of  is not everybody's, just acknowledge that and it's all good. But get all snittybitchy and act like Judge Jazz, King One Size Fits All, hey, fuck that, I am not in the mood for that.

NOT in the mood.

I have to agree, BUT...

Some people are paid to act like Judge Jazz; what are you gonna do - send the buggers down the dole queue?

Freedom means people have a right to be wrong, and to be effin' stoopid as well. They probably have a right to be evil bastards too, though consequences for them may well arise. You can avoid listening, but if you did you'd be cutting yourself off from a lot of people you don't want to cut yourself off from. Water off a duck's back is my motto nowadays.

MG

(At least until next time )

[JSngry]

My motto is Fuck Judge Jazz, which is probably just a more aggressive version of yours.

[JSngry]

Also, I have Beaucoup love and respect for Bob Brookmeyer,  literally one of the first 25 or so jazz musicians I heard once I wanted to hear jazz (thank you, Side Two of California Concerts) and somebody whose work I've never been alienated by, but he did seem to be somebody for whom Personal Opinion & Absolute Opinion were the same thing, and even at that, hey have fun with that, but calling somebody out for digging Gene Ammons, hey, fuck you, Judge Jazz, bullshit called, and not even collect. I hold you in contempt and sentence you to one solid fuckoff. Deal with it, your honor 

Case closed, court adjugged.

[John L]

8 hours ago, JSngry said:

Bob Brookmeyer had an opinion about Gene Ammons? Based on what, exactly?

I was wondering the same thing.  Bob Brookmeyer had strong opinions about a lot of music and artists, sometimes very negative, and I am sure that he had good reasons for them.   He expressed a number of them while interacting with us at Jazz Corner, although did not always bother to provide justifications.  After all, he was Bob Brookmeyer and we weren't.

 

Edited September 3, 2016 by John L

[fasstrack]

I used to read Bob's blog, called Currents, and his sometimes-merciless public thrashings of very good musicians started to get to me.

So I reached out to him via email---prefacing my comments by saying he was a hero---and respectfully calling him out on some of the things he had written. He gamely responded, writing that he 'had some strong opinions. Maybe they are not correct, but I listen for a living'. Then he proceeded to tear into the same people again, if anything even more viciously. He called one guy who is a friend and a terrific player and person a 'fake', etc. 

OTOH, he was very supportive of and devoted to his students and their charts at the BMI workshop and elsewhere, and very devoted to and loving of friends he admired like Bill Finegan.

I suppose a person has a right to call them the way they see them. I just don't know where people are coming from sometimes, or what good especially pillorying people publicly does the world. Don't feature throwing wood on fires myself. I remain an admirer of Mr. Brookmeyer's playing, composing and thinking about same...   

Edited September 4, 2016 by fasstrack

[JSngry]

Brookmeyer raging within himself, hey ok. Brookmeyer not digging Gene Ammons to whatever degree, ok, whatever. Brookmeyer personally pissing on somebody else because THEY dig Gene Ammons, sorry, but Fuck You, Judge Jazz, not your jurisdiction bitch, get back on your own goddamn bench.

Why does nobody voice the likely possibility that apart from all his genuine gifts, the guy sure seems to have had abusive tendecies, not just an opinionated asshole, hey that's no sin, but genuine abusiveness, which does not rule out otherwise being great at a lot of things. But jeseus, people talk about the Buddy Ruch bus tapes like the guy was clinical, but Buddy was just one intense motherfucker. At everything. No illusions about Buddy. Brookmeyer really does seem to have been clinical about this shit, why doesn't anybody frame it like that and let's all disabuse ourselves of the cloud of hmmm and just move on?

Are his "lost years" a secret, or what.

No matter, Gene Ammons matters to me in a way that Bob Brookmeyer does not, so hey.

 

 

[fasstrack]

 I used to have this record. Patti Bown, piano, right? Had a different title, I think, but it was all ballads. So relaxed...