The Magnificent Goldberg

Around these parts, there's the term 'mingin(g)' - stinking to high heaven - and 'minger' - one who does/is this. I always liked that one. MG

Interesting one.... This afternoon Tommy Dean - Deanie Boy plays hot rhythm and blues - Official Fanta Damba - S P presente - Sacko Production (Tangent) (That's the original sleeve. My edition isn't on the web.) Delois Barrett Campbell & the Barrett SIsters - God so loved the world - Creed MG

All the best to you all. MG

Fopp never meant much in Cardiff. I think it closed about 2006, after being open only a couple of years. MG

James Brown - Christmas songs - King MG

I think I should have mentioned before in this thread that, despite indie shops moaning about the likes of HMV and Virgin undercutting their prices, an indie could cut a deal with a major. Spillers used to have a deal going with Blue Note (80s/90s I think) which enabled them to undercut HMV and Virgin by a pound. And another under which they sold Blue Note/Spillers mugs! I have one (of course!) which has the BN logo with 'The finest in jazz since 1939' on one side and 'Spillers of Cardiff the world's finest record shop since 1894' on the other. Is it lack of imagination or business acumen that has made the indies commit suicide? MG

YAAAAYYYYY!!!! Vonski with Boogaloo Joe Jones!!! MG

MG, thanks for this history. As I think I said elsewhere, Esmond Edwards may not have been exactly empathetic with Baby Face Willette. Ajaramu, drummer on the Behind The 8-Ball date, said the producer had Baby Face in tears and he (B.F.) had to drink a quart of whiskey to complete the session. Note that Argo liked to have its artists record 3-minute tracks. That's most interesting, John. I hadn't heard or seen it before. What's a quart - 2 pints? I'm surprised he could even SEE the organ, much less play it! Argo/Cadet did have shorter tracks than Blue Note or Prestige, but there were often, perhaps even usually, longer ones mixed in - and few that I've seen (other than R&B albums) have six cuts per side. 'Song of the universe' is just over 7 mins, so Baby Face seems to have been able to get something out of his whiskey MG

MG

Arnett Cobb - Is back - Progressive MG

Well, I've got to say, that interview with Lee Morgan was crap. If he wanted jazz to be an elite music, he shouldn't have been arguing for it to be pushed on Merv Griffin type shows. And he should have known well that jazz WASN'T an elite music in 1972. The following artists had albums on the pop or R&B charts in 1972: Billie Holiday Brian Auger Buddy Rich Cannonball Adderley (2) Chase Chuck Mangione David Newman David T walker Doc Severinson Eddie Harris (2) Esther Phillips (2) Fred Wesley Freddie Hubbard Funk Inc Gene Ammons Grant Green Grover Washington Jr (2) Hank Crawford Herbie Mann (Jazz) Crusaders (2) John McLaughlin (3) Johnny 'Hammond' Smith (3) King Curtis Les McCann (2) Lou Rawls (2) Luis Gasca Miles Davis (2) Nancy Wilson Nite-liters Quincy Jones (2) Ramsey Lewis Sarah Vaughn Stan Kenton Stanley Turrentine Weather Report Plus, less hard core records (?) by Bobby Short Buddy Miles (2) If John Mayall (Jazz blues fusion) Ray Charles (4) Sergio Mendes Tower of Power If Morgan and the others had had any sense of how to really make an argument stick, they'd have said, 'Look, jazz is fucking popular. So you go and put jazz on, because the people out there like it.' No, I want it to be an elite music, so it'll be supported by whoever supports classical music. Well, Lee, that's what you've fucking got now, with Lincoln Centre. Are you turning in your grave? MG

Following the sad news about Inez andrews, Inez Andrews - Lord, don't move the mountain - Songbird (ABC) (Produced by Gene Barge) That was #1 on the Billboard gospel chart in '73. RIP Inez. MG

Yes, yes. 'This is not the first time I've been last' is a wonderful album. Produced by Gene Barge in the ABC/Peacock era, with all the usual mid-seventies suspects, and it works superbly! (I think ABC tried to keep their hands off Peacock, except for a few of the more recent groups; the Dixie Hummingbirds, Mildred Clark & the Melodyaires, Rev Oris Mays, Rev Leo Daniels, as well as Inez, all made great albums in the ABC era.) MG

I gotta listen to those first two singles ... I always thought of them as of a piece with the Vee Jay sides but maybe I didn't pay enough attention to his piano and was just concentrating on the vocals. Very good, MG and someday ... we're gonna find that other Peri Lee recording! Other? I've only got the one I got from you, Dan. Which of the two others have you got that I haven't? MG From your comment about the earliest, L.A. recordings, I assumed you had them as you describe them "in Milt Buckner/Lionel Hampton mode." I have a cassette transfer of his Hollywood 45, in rather muddy multi-generation sound - wouldn't call them in a Buckner/Hampton mode myself but as I said, I should listen again. It's the enthusiasm, which is pure Buckner/Hampton. MG

And Dorothy Norwood - or has she died, too? And Lou Rawls, though in a different group. RIP Inez. MG

MG

YAAAAAYYYY!!! Now spinning Erskine Hawkins - Swingin' in Harlem - Vocalion (Tax) MG

Oh, I should also have mentioned Fred Anderson. I think both 'From the river to the ocean', with Hamid Drake, and 'Duets 2001' with Robert Barry (both on Thrill Jockey) would find a welcome in this vein. MG

I love this set! The Atlantic New Orleans Jazz sessions MG

Yes, there are some from the fifties on the Long Gone box set. MG

MG

The two jazz performances of spiritual material that I find most convincing are Les McCann - The gospel truth - Pacific Jazz and, even more so, Gene Ammons - Preachin' - Prestige (originally recorded ex-contract for Argo) Gene takes all this material quite seriously and doesn't try to 'jazz it up' - or not much; he couldn't help the way he played, I guess MG

This evening, it's been Bobby Timmons - Holiday soul - Prestige and Organissimo - Christmas tunes for you - Have Jim et al made up a sleeve for this? MG

You're probably right. I just listened to it again and, although the discographies say organ, you can hear that the intro is a piano. As for the rest of the track, I couldn't be certain. In this, the world's discographies (well, the ones I've seen) should bow to you, JIm. Oh, I haven't got, or heard, the B side. Have you? Perhaps Doggett played organ on that, otherwise it's hard to see how the error crept into Jepsen and Lord (as well as Proper's own sleeve note). I gotta listen to those first two singles ... I always thought of them as of a piece with the Vee Jay sides but maybe I didn't pay enough attention to his piano and was just concentrating on the vocals. Very good, MG and someday ... we're gonna find that other Peri Lee recording! Other? I've only got the one I got from you, Dan. Which of the two others have you got that I haven't? MG

Part 5 – Later followers of Davis For some later organists, Jimmy Smith didn’t say it all. Despite the amazing success Smith was having, these musicians developed their own styles, based on the more orchestral approach of Wild Bill Davis. Johnny “Hammond” Smith and Hank Marr had been around for a little while and had got their heads together on piano. Earl Grant was a singer, much in the vein of Nat ‘King’ Cole, who died in a car crash in 1970. He had quite a few hit albums and singles in the period 1958-1969. He also played Davis-inspired organ. Quite a bit of Earl’s recording career was taken up with polite R&B or slightly tough lounge music. Plas Johnson is on a lot of it and there’s always a little bit more going on than just what seems to be happening. Got a soft spot for Earl, I have. Johnny ‘Hammond’ Smith is one of the greatest players of ballads the organ world has seen. He said he took up the organ in 1958, but by late ’58 or early ’59, he had made his first album as a leader (‘Imagination’ for Warwick) and his style was already fully formed. It’s a style that was based partly on Smith, partly on Davis and partly, it’s said, on Erroll Garner. I’m not very familiar with Garner’s piano style but I can remember quite a lot of trills in his ballad playing; that comes out in Johnny ‘Hammond’ Smith’s work, too. In the seventies he seems to have been quite influenced by Charles Earland, to an extent that fooled me on the bonus cuts to Stanley Turrentine’s ‘Don’t mess with Mr T’ (CTI), but Creed Taylor didn’t record him playing ballads Hank Marr was a great organist who seems to me to have been equally influenced by Jimmy Smith and Wild Bill. He was, for a long time, associated with Rusty Bryant. He was Bryant’s pianist in the band Rusty ran at the Carolyn Club, in Columbus Ohio (with Paul Weeden on guitar, aficionados of Don Patterson will be interested in knowing). That band had a sizeable hit with ‘All night long’ (Dot 15134), a fast version of ‘Night train’. Surprisingly, it didn’t make the R&B charts but did make #25 in the pop charts for one week in April 1954. Rusty’s career ran down after that; he disbanded and made a couple of LPs for Dot, then wasn’t heard of for a while. In the meantime, Hank had been working on organ and, after Bill Doggett left King for Warner Bros, Hank was signed by King as their ‘new’ Bill Doggett, recording for them first in December 1960. And Rusty Bryant was now working for Hank! There was a lot of Doggett in Hank’s style at that time, as well as Davis. Gradually he moved towards a more modern approach, but one which was always distinctively bluesy and greasy. He was, I think, the first organist to employ a two tenor approach (Rudy Johnson was the other player) and some of his arrangements for the two saxes were really very interesting to me. The name of (Jerome) Tyrone Parsons is almost entirely unknown. As far as I know, he only recorded twice. He was a west coaster who emerged suddenly in 1963, playing with a lot of Wild Bill Davis feel, but a very different sound (which makes me wonder whether he was playing a B3), and a few different ideas that make him quite an interesting inheritor of the Davis legacy. His first recording was as leader of his own trio, with an uncredited guitarist and drummer, on the Imperial LP “Organ-eyes” (LP9231, 28 March 1963). While there are two numbers out of the Davis book – “Stolen sweets” and “Azure-te” - in the album, there’s quite a bit that Wild Bill wouldn’t have done. A superfast version of “Begin the beguine” allowed Tyrone to show the kind of chops he had. Two fast cuts in 6/8, “Gravy waltz” and “Organ-D waltz” are also well off the Wild Bill map of those days. The following year, Tyrone appeared on half of the tracks of “This is Ernie Andrews” (Dot 25778). And that’s it for Tyrone Parsons. Jiggs Chase deserves to be a LOT better known than he is. As far as I know, he didn’t record until 1964, with the Joe Thomas/Bill Elliott band on the Sue LP ‘Speak your piece’. He also appeared on one track of Buddy Terry’s LP ‘Natural soul’ on which Larry Young played piano! In subsequent years, he was mainly associated with Joe Thomas but also appeared on one side of Pharoah Sanders’ India Navigation LP ‘Pharoah’ in 1976. On all these jazz sides, he showed himself to be a late follower of Wild Bill Davis. It seems, on first blush, very odd to find him in Pharoah’s company but the other side of that LP features Bedria Sanders on harmonium so that was obviously a sound that Pharoah wanted. Later, he became a producer for Sugar Hill records and produced, co-composed and arranged one of the greatest Rap classics ever – ‘The message’ by Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five. He also produced, arranged and wrote for Gloria Gaynor, Patti LaBelle, Kool & the Gang, Cheena, the Sequence and other rap and soul artists. Who knew? Perri Lee was born in 1925 and played piano on the west coast in a number of bands from the mid forties on. She was inspired to take up the organ when she was playing a gig with Wild Bill Davis’ trio as the other band. That was around 1956, it seems. She made her first recording in 1957, “Presenting Perri Lee Blackwell” (Combo 600). She moved to New York in about 1960 and recorded live leading a trio with Eddie Chamblee on tenor and John Kreigh on drums; “A night at Count Basie’s” (Roulette 52080) is a hell of a jumpin’ album (and thanks to Dan for this!) While in New York, she played on part of Sonny Stitt’s LP “Sonny Stitt and the top brass” (Atlantic 1395, July 1962), Her last album was “Miss Perri Lee at the Parisian Room” (Dot 25729, 1966). Trivia: Perri also sang and appeared in films. She accompanied Doris Day in “Pillow talk”. Finally, there’s Dayton Selby, who only made one recording that I’ve ever come across; “The rocking tenor sax of Eddie Chamblee” (Prestige 7321) was recorded as late as February 1964 and shows not a trace of Jimmy Smith’s innovations. But it shows how an organist of the Wild Bill persuasion could equally well boot a tenor player beyond the stratosphere into pure hysteria or provide a soft, romantic cushion under a ballad. Er... discuss. MG