The Magnificent Goldberg

The Muesli Left Lefty Frizzell T W Frizell

Damn! Forgot about that! One of the great classics. Oh, I never actually saw them PERFORM. They never came to Tonyrefail Working Men's Club MG

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Big Tiny Little Roy Eldridge Eldridge Cleaver

Does she count as a musician And I suppose it's a moot point as to whether these are costumes or George Clinton's normal clothes

Well, true. Both of those hits were excellent examples of what was going on in their respective days. While most of his references in the book are just listing territory bands with whom some of the great tenor players learned their stuff, one does briefly discuss his seventies work for Black & Blue with some of those same musicians. And Black & Blue material is not unimportant in the wider scheme of things because there was the best part of bugger all going on for those guys in the USA after the early seventies. MG

There are so many great players missing or merely just mentioned, to really do justice to them all would be quite impossible. And frankly, a list of names and references doesn't make a book (unless it's a discography ) What Bob Porter's done has been to give us the story truthfully and, in my view, he's chosen the limited number of people to explore very wisely. What more can you ask of a history? MG

Sometimes an album just passes you by and you never see it, never get to know it. Sometimes an album just got lost in the welter of releases in the sixties. And sometimes an album just had the wrong title. ‘Well, I’ve got Jimmy McGriff’s “I got a woman”; what do I need McDuff’s for?’ In this case, however, I suspect it just got lost because it was too damn late; it didn’t come out until 1969, by which time Jack had made four albums for Atlantic, three for Cadet and would make his first two for Blue Note that year. So I never saw this album. Never even knew it existed until I bought Michel Ruppli’s Prestige discography in the late seventies and then… well, what do you know about an album in a discography? But I ripped all my Jack McDuff CDs to my hard drive a couple of weeks ago. Bob Weinstock had a hard time with McDuff’s later recordings, I reckon. It looks from Ruppli’s book as if Peter Paul and Lew Futterman, who managed him, Benny Golson and Jimmy Witherspoon, were just recording Jack and the others whenever they liked and sending the recordings to Prestige when they thought about sending some stuff; some of those recordings have no precise dates or locations. So what Weinstock was sent seems usually to have been a mish-mosh of cuts, which he put together into albums as seemed to work OK. And when Fantasy decided to reissue all that material on twofers, not a lot of it made discographic or release sense. So stuff is strewn around those CDs, as best seemed to the Fantasy staff to work. There’s a difference between listening to an album and a compilation put together in that way. Those twofer CDs are fine; good music in the McDuff style. But they have no thrust, the way an album that’s put together deliberately with an aim or objective does or can. So, as far as I’m concerned, they just don’t command my attention in the same way. So I thought I’d like to put the McDuff material back together as it was originally issued on LP, just to see what it was like. Because it’s definitely different listening to a bunch of cuts on a miscellaneous CD, to hearing an album. And when I listened to “I got a woman” (PR7642) my mind BURNED! “Jesus, I could have been listening to this album for fifty years already!” OK, here’s the sleeve. A great photo of Jack and Joe Dukes by Don Schlitten (in my view a much better photographer than record producer, though there were some very good ones I concede). LP tracklist How high the moon (6:24) (Silken soul) English country gardens (4:22) (Prelude) Spoonin’ (6:01) (The concert McDuff) I got a woman (8:33) (Legends of Acid Jazz) Twelve inches (8:08) (The last good ‘un) The title track is a trio effort: McDuff, Benson and Dukes done in New York in July 1964. “English country gardens” is the trio again, plus Red Holloway and a band conducted by Benny Golson, from early 1965. “How high the moon” is from a February 1966 session in New York with Holloway, Dukes, Harold Ousley and Pat Martino. “Twelve inches” is from a 1965 session in New York with Holloway, Benson, Dukes and Montego Joe. “Spoonin’” is from a late 1965 or early 1966 done in New York, with Holloway, Martino and Dukes. OK, you might perhaps say the track with the Golson band needn’t be there. Perhaps that’s right; perhaps “Silk and soul”, a really GREAT burner, would have worked better. But, by the time Weinstock received many of those tracks, “Silk and soul” had been issued. And anyway, a nice relaxed swinger goes well in the mix, contrasting with the high intensity work on the other material, whether it’s burners like the title cut, or “Spoonin’”, a medium-paced blues in the vein of “A real good ‘un”. Paul and Futterman may have been good managers, but they weren’t record producers. And, to be pointed about it, they weren’t album producers. So Bobby Weinstock was in a heck of a fix when it came to making the kind of decisions he had to. So, the album came out and no one gave a toss. Sorry Jack. Putting it together was a revelation. This is an album to note among Brother Jack’s very best. You can put your own copy together from the twofers, but you need a hell of a lot of ‘em: each cut comes from a different CD! Get the sleeve from Discogs. And let your mind burn, too! MG PS The sleeve of "The concert McDuff" CD says "Spoonin'" was recorded at Van Gelder's studio in HACKENSACK! in late '65 or early '66.

Well, if you can find evidence of a chart entry for that, I'll be surprised, but agree MG

I think the really valuable thing about the book is that, without ever coming out and saying so, it puts before the public a clear notion that there's no such music as Soul Jazz. When I spoke to him in '96, he defined Soul Jazz as 'entertainment for black adults'. I wondered what the difference was, in that light, between Houston Person and Louis Armstrong in the 1920s, Sammy Davis Jr and Pam Grier. Thinking more about it, over the years, I fell in that Soul Jazz, unlike all other kinds of jazz, has no specific aesthetic; no central idea(s) or concept around which the music's built and against which it may be judged by critics. All comers were welcome on the Soul Jazz stage, whether they were swing musicians like Jacquet, beboppers like Stitt, hard boppers like Lee Morgan, jump band singers like Cleanhead, blues singers like Junior Parker, soul/funk singers like James Brown, and the material that had come out of those specific kinds of music, and also doo-wop and some avant garde jazz, was all used and welcome on those stages. Because it's a pop music and, like white pop music, it consumes all that comes near it. So it doesn't matter much what the musicians actually play. But, well, it had to swing. That's as near an aesthetic judgement as one can make and encompass all of what Porter's talking about. And it had to be played in certain locations that were focused on that community, which is not an aesthetic matter but was important. And it had to come out of and be at one with whatever its specific audience was thinking/doing at the time, also not an aesthetic matter except insofar as GETTING HOLD OF THAT meant that the people involved in various bits of the industry of getting money out of the pockets of one lot of people and putting it into the pockets of another lot had to be keyed into that community or they couldn't get a result and, consequently, neither could the musicians with whom they were involved. MG

Yeah, definitely - one tiny pop chart entry. But, sorry Jim, how many hits did Charlie Parker have? One, "Barbados' made #15 on the R&B chart for one week in December 1948. Freddie was the first jazz musician to follow the path he pioneered. THAT makes him worthy of mention, not his hit-making record. MG

Yeah, as you've said in the thread already a few times - and the point can't be emphasised enough - Bob Porter tells no lies. But he DOES have his personal views. I argued with him vehemently about his view that Freddie McCoy was an unimportant Soul Jazz musician: the first to start moving jazz in the funk direction, only months after "Out of sight" and "Something you've got". But I failed to persuade him. Bob surely had a good deal of influence at Fantasy in the period they were producing all those Soul Jazz twofer CDs. And not one McCoy album was ever reissued on CD. It was left to Ace in the UK to mine McCoy's discography for classic dance material. I think Ramsey Lewis is another example of him undervaluing someone. It's not hard to find out that he had more hit albums (32) than any other jazz artist except Nancy Wilson (36). (Even Miles Davis only got 31 hit albums, in case anyone wants to know.) So Bob MUST know this. And Ray had only 2 hit albums. But in fairness, Ray WAS having hit singles a long time before Lewis poked his head above the parapet. And indeed, was probably only the second jazz pianist (after Ahmad Jamal) to get hits. (Though by that token, Dakota Staton had a top 4 album which spent a year on the pop chart - "The late late show" - 8 months before Jamal's monster hit featuring the fabulous groove cut of "Poinciana", and SHE was included in a list of singers.) So well, I don't mind the man having opinions. But you've gotta have done the work to know when an opinion is an opinion or a truth and, as you note somewhere, it's probably impossible for that work to be done now as too many people have died. Bob's one of the last around to know those people. Oh, and I've got to point out two beautifully sarcastic things that made me laugh a lot. One's a reference to Basie ceasing to keep an arrangement of "Take the A train' in his band book after Ellington's death, which "could be played in answer to a request by an important white person who didn't know the difference between Duke Ellington and Count Basie." The other was the story of the difficulties cause by the Musicians Union when Bob Weinstock had done a deal with Fantasy. "Rather than call a lawyer to settle the dispute, Weinstock called his old friend and business partner (in Birdland Records) Morris Levy. The problem promptly disappeared." I greatly enjoyed those bits. MG

Yeah - it just so happened... Shrug. MG Actually, I thought you wrote "Norah Jones" and was HIGHLY confused for a second. Well, there's not a lot on jazz in that, though a goodly bit on R&B. MG

Well, I’ve got this book now and finished reading it today. You all know Soul Jazz is MY music, so no one should be surprised that I think it’s the best book on jazz I’ve ever read. There’s not a lot in it that’s new to me, as I’ve got a lot (if not all) of the records by the main Soul Jazz artists. But it’s VERY well put together, in my view. There are very useful discussions at the right times of developments in the record and radio industries, and in sports and legislation, which are vital to understanding the social background against which Soul Jazz developed. It contains perhaps not quite enough about record producers, DJs, distributors. But that may be a personal prejudice, because I’ve always been more interested in those guys than in musicians themselves. But it’s the first music history that has treated music as if it were what it really is; a part of society which has no valuable existence independent of the society it comes from and serves. And he makes an important point on timing that I’d failed to notice before. In the late fifties and early sixties, four black guys moved into very influential positions in some of the leading record companies dealing in jazz: record producers Esmond Edwards at Prestige; Syd McCoy at Vee-Jay; and musicians Ike Quebec at Blue Note; and Cannonball Adderley at Riverside. I’d always noted the conjunction between Edwards and Quebec, but hadn’t put it together with the others. Only Atlantic and Chess lacked black advocates for jazz, and Edwards moved from Prestige to Argo in 1962. I think this is interesting. Porter is not, in my view, saying that white people can’t produce great black music records. No one would be so foolish as to make such an assertion as the vast preponderance of great black music recorded in the forty years since the recovery from the Great Depression really got under way was recorded by small firms owned by white people. But those four guys in key positions were clued into black society in a way that enabled them to appreciate more immediately what was going on and gaining in popularity (and potential profitability) than the generally white owners of those companies. They made a big difference to the kind of jazz musicians brought into the studios. And I’ve found that a fascinating conjunction to have thrust down my throat. Also, there’s discussion of a few people I’ve ignored, for example Jonah Jones. So it’s a quick trip to Discogs to find out what he did and then see what I can pick up around and about. I only noticed one error. It was so slight and unimportant (the number of albums someone made for some label) that I didn’t make a note of it and can’t now find it. What has disappointed me about the book is that there’s no discussion about Soul Jazz vocalists. To briefly list the most important Soul Jazz vocalists: Etta Jones; Gloria Lynne; Esther Phillips; Arthur Prysock; Lou Rawls; Della Reese; Irene Reid; Little Jimmy Scott; Dakota Staton; and Nancy Wilson. Rawls doesn’t get a mention. Lynne, Reese, Reid and Staton all get mentioned in a list of lady singers on the Soul Jazz circuit. Prysock gets seven mentions, Jones and Wilson five, and Phillips and Scott four. That is not very much at all about very important artists, not obscurities. What makes those singers Soul Jazz singers and Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald and, on the other side, Etta James and Jimmy Witherspoon not? I don't really know and would like to find out. I KNOW Bob knows more about this than I do and I’d hoped to learn. But that said, I’m really glad Bob wrote it, and glad I read it. Thank you Bob. MG

My daughter got me a FABULOUS T-shirt: Wearing it now! MG

See what you miss if you don't come here (embarrassed grin). Just ordered it. MG See what you miss if you don't come here (embarrassed grin). Just ordered it. MG

And best wishes for a good New Year. MG

Anything you'd care to relate to serious fans, Chuck? MG

T S Eliot Eliot Ness The Untouchables

MG