The Magnificent Goldberg

BFT150 Answers Well, my goodness, 20 correct answers out of 23. Bloomin’ ‘eck, Tucker! The ones no one got were #9, though if Jim Sangrey were drunk and in a funny mood, what he said MIGHT have indicated that he knew it, but he didn’t say so J #13 #23 Randy Herson got the theme. OK, he said the links between pop music and jazz, and I think of it in terms of jazz being just another kind of pop music, before WWII the most important kind, so that most other forms of pop music that have come along since have been influenced by it. But we mean the same kind of thing, I think. 1 Camille Howard – Goldberg boogie – Specialty SPCD7062 (Extemporaneous boogie). Recording date & personnel undocumented. OK, this IS in the BFT because of the title. It’s been waiting its turn for years! Camille was the pianist with Roy Milton’s Solid Senders in the forties. She was a reasonably good vocalist, too. She notched up four minor R&B hits. Hot Ptah got this one. I was somewhat amazed to see anyone knew it. 2 Willis Jackson – Y’all – Prestige PR7273 (Loose). NYC, 26 Mar 1963. Willis Jackson (ts), Frank Robinson (tp), Carl Wilson (org), Bill Jones (g), Joe Hadrick (Yusef Ali) (d) This track from Gator’s first LP with his new working band after Brother Jack left (though Pat Martino hadn’t yet joined), was orphaned. When the album was issued as part of the twofer ‘After hours’, it was omitted due to lack of space. Various bloggers have claimed that another Willis Jackson tune of the same name, which was recorded about a year earlier, on the LP ‘Willis Jackson cooks with Johnny Hammond Smith’ is the track from ‘Loose’, but it’s an almost exactly different tune. Jim Sangrey got this one. 3 Gene McDaniels – Straight no chaser – Liberty LST7311 (The wonderful world of Gene McDaniels). LA, 1963. Arr/cond Marty Paich. Others unknown. I hate labels like Liberty and MGM, because they just don’t think customers are interested in who’s playing on their albums. They spend a fortune producing and marketing, and can’t be asked to get someone to put the details on the sleeve, even when there’s tons of space. And yet we can hear there are some damn good jazz musicians playing here. Rant over. Jim Sangrey got this one, after phoning a friend. Thom got it WITHOUT phoning a friend! 4 Ben E King – In the midnight hour/Lay lady lay – Maxwell ML88001 (Rough edges). Probably New York, probably 1970. Arr Bob Crewe & Hutch Davie. No further details. And here’s another of ‘em. I like this album. I don’t think anyone’s really worked out what kind of singer Ben E King was, taking him in the round. I think he was maybe a pop singer, who could do a bit of this, a bit of that, all of it somewhere between pretty good and excellent. Jim Sangrey got this one. 5 Jimmy Dawkins – Chitlin’s con carne – Delmark DS641 (Blisterstring). Chicago, 1976. Jimmy Dawkins (g), Jimmy Johnson (rh g), Sonny Thompson (p), Sylvester Boines (b), Tyrone Centuray (d) Jim R got this one. Good listening. I had the feeling it would be you who got this. 6 Louis Jordan – Azure-te Decca 28211 (from Let the good times roll – Bear Family 15557). NYC, 30 April 1952. Louis Jordan (as, voc), Bob Mitchell (tp), Jimmy Peterson (p), Bert Payne (g), Bob Bushnell (b), Charlie Rice (d) Louis’ hit-making days had been over for almost a year, when he recorded this. I don’t think he was looking for hits any more. Jim R gave the first correct answer in the BFT to this one! 7 Etta Jones – Misery is a thing called Moe – Victor 20-7282. NYC, 8 Oct 1947. Etta Jones (voc), Budd Johnson (ts), Luther Henderson (p, ldr), Herman Mitchell (g), Trigger Alpert (b), Denzil Best (d) See #15. Jim Sangrey got this one – I think, because he didn’t say really J. 8 Sam ‘The Man’ Taylor – It’s a lonesome old town – MGM SE4066 (Mist of the Orient). Prob Tokyo, 1962. Sam "The Man" Taylor (ts), Norio Maeda (arr), others uncredited. This album was reissued a couple of years ago, with ten bonus tracks. It’s ALL good, despite being lounge music, so get it while you can. Jim Sangrey got this one, after a bit of thought. 9 Rufus Thomas – Fine and mellow – Stax 45-140 (B side of Walkin’ the dog). Memphis, 17 Jun 1963. Rufus Thomas (voc), Wayne Jackson (tp), Charles ‘Packy’ Axton (ts), Floyd Newman (bars), Booker T Jones (p, org), Steve Cropper (g), Lewis Steinberg (b), Al Jackson (d) I bought this single the day it came out and I’ve still got the same copy. And it was because of THIS side, not the A side. 10 Koko Taylor – Blue Prelude – Checker unreleased. First issued on ‘What it takes’ 2 LP set 1991.Prob Chicago, 1967. I don’t have a discography of Koko’s work, so I don’t know when it was recorded, but it sounds just like the session at which she recorded ‘Insane asylum’ which appeared in 1967. Jim Sangrey got this one, with help from Mr Google. 11 Gene McDaniels – The old country - Liberty LST7311 (The wonderful world of Gene McDaniels). LA, 1963. Arr/cond Marty Paich. Others unknown. See #3 above. Jim Sangrey got this one, too, with friendly help. Thom got it WITHOUT phoning a friend! But he actually KNEW Gene McDaniels! This Forum amazes me! 12 Little Richard – Get rich quick – RCA Victor 20-4582. Atlanta, 16 Oct 1951. Willie Mays (tp, ldr), Albert Dobbins (as), Fred Jackson (ts), J Hudson (bars), J Wimby (p), George Holloway Jr (b), Donald J Clark (d) Well, thumbs down to all of you who didn’t recognise Hurricane Fred Jackson. Jim Sangrey got this one. 13 Big Al Dupree – The thing and I – Fedora FCD5007 (Positive thinking). Dallas, 29 Apr 1998. Big Al Dupree (ts, p), Hash Brown (g), Charles Nugent (b), T J Johnson (d) And shame on Jim Sangrey for not recognising a local guy. 14 Ben E King – My foolish heart – Atco 33-137 (Songs for soulful lovers). NYC 21 Dec 1961. Ben E. King (voc), Joe Newman, Ernie Royal (tp), Romeo Penque (fl, as), Seldon Powell (ts), Paul Griffin, Robert Mosely (p), Don Arnone, Al Caiola (g), Wendell Marshall (b), Gary Chester (d), Bob Rosengarden, Joe Venuto (perc), unidentified 11 strings, Claus Ogerman (director) See #4 above. Jim Sangrey got this one, after a bit of work. 15 Etta Jones – Among my souvenirs – Victor 20-1998. New York, June 11, 1946. Etta Jones (vcl) acc by George Treadwell (tp) Dickie Harris (tb) Budd Johnson (ts) Jimmy Jones (p) Al McKibbon (b) J.C. Heard (d & ldr) These two Etta Jones sessions for Victor are really weird. These aren’t the only strange songs she did on those days. I simply CANNOT imagine what the company was thinking to get this newish singer to sing this really off the wall material. Almost all of the other tracks done at the three Victor sessions: 11 Jun ’46; 11 Mar ’47; 8 Oct ’47; are odd in some way. One of them’s a lullaby! Surely SOMEONE was buying them, because they invited her back TWICE! But my mind just boggles. Or maybe not. Maybe there was an administrative cock-up at Victor, for which Etta paid the price – it looks as if Victor spread the word about her, because it was nearly ten years before she got another record date. Jim Sangrey got this one. 16 The Raelettes – Leave my man alone – Tangerine TRC1515 (Yesterday…Today…Tomorrow). LA, 1971. The Raelettes (Vernita Moss (lead), Susaye Green, Mabel John, Dorothy Berry, Estella Yarborough, voc), Ray Charles (kbds) As far as I know, this and ‘Try a little kindness’ are the only two Raelettes songs on which Vernita sang lead. Jim Sangrey got this one. 17 Arthur Prysock – Close your eyes – Old Town 2007 (Everlasting songs for everlasting lovers). NYC, 1964. With Mort Garson’s band. Jim R got this one first, too. 18 Earl Grant – Azure – Decca DL74338 (Midnight sun). LA, 1962. Earl Grant (org), Plas Johnson (ts), others unk. And here’s another one. I’ve got a soft spot for Earl Grant and a VERY soft spot for Plas. Jim Sangrey got this one. 19 Gloria Lynne – Stormy Monday Blues – Everest LPBR 5022 (Miss Gloria Lynne). NYC, 1 Nov 1958. Gloria Lynne (vcl), Harry "Sweets" Edison (tp) Sam "The Man" Taylor (ts) Eddie Costa (vib) Wild Bill Davis (org) Kenny Burrell (g) Milt Hinton (b) or George Duvivier (b) , Tommy Bryant (b) Jo Jones (d) Wild Bill Davis probably also plays piano, possibly overdubbed. This is from Gloria’s first album, which has been reissued fairly recently and is very good all the way through. It’s the best one she did for Everest, although the two live ones she did with the one and only Herman Foster are pretty good. Jim Sangrey got this one. 20 Fatback Band – Give me one more chance – Perception PLP28 (Let’s do it again). NYC, 1972. George Williams (tp), George Adams (fl, ts), Earl Shelton (ts), Johnny King (g), Johnny Flippin’ (b), Bill Curtis (d, perc), Wayne Wilford (cga) Bill Curtis was the leader of this band which made lots more worse records than their first album. Aficionados of Mainstream’s soul jazz albums will know he was in a co-operative quartet with Charles Williams (as), Bubba Brooks (ts) and Don Pullen (org). I’ve often wondered whether Adams and Pullen knew each other from way back or if it was through Bill Curtis they got to know each other. Jim Sangrey got this one. 21 Red Prysock – There will never be another you – Forum Circle FC9083. Unknown personnel, location & date, but prob 1964. This is kind of unknown. BSN says the Forum Circle label was some kind of label connected to Roulette. Morris Levy did every fiddle under the sun, so it’s not surprising this is very dim. I wonder if anyone got paid for the session or if they just didn’t get shot. Funny that Jim S was going to put this on one of his BFTs, too. He got this one, of course. 22 Ray Bryant – Congolese children – Sue 1033 (Cold turkey). NYC, 1964. Ray Bryant (p), Tommy Bryant (b), Walter Perkins (d), Big Black (perc) I don’t know why Ray Bryant’s recordings for Sue and Cadet are so out of jazz enthusiast’s ken. Any suggestions, anyone? Randy got this one, after some intelligent research. 23 Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson – Mr Cleanhead steps out – Mercury 2031. NYC, Dec 1945. Ellis "Stumpy" Whitlock, John Hunt, Joe Bridgewater (tp), Leon Comegys, Rip Tarrant (tb), Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Frank Dominguez, Ernest "Lee" Turner (as), Lee Pope, Red Carmen (ts), Greely Walton (bars), Earl Van Riper (p), Leonard Swain (b), Gus Johnson (d) We all do keep forgetting that Cleanhead was a Bebop pioneer who gave it up in favour of R&B and making money. MG

Swiss Family Robinson Swiss Tony Tony! Toni! Tone!

Cowboy Copas Shepherd of the Hills The Man Mountain

Just buy all the separate albums and rip 'em to your hard drive. Swot I did and it's bloomin' great! I doubt VERY much if there are any alternative takes or unreleased material in the Prestige files. MG

Big Beat Steve’s post yesterday was an excellent debunking of this general proposition. What people mean by a question like that – not just those kinds of people who write silly articles or make silly documentaries for news media, but everyone in their everyday speech – is ‘when did the kind of people I know about and care about, professionally or personally, stop thinking jazz was cool?’ But there’s NO kind of music that commands unanimous support throughout America. None even command MAJORITY support, not even pop music. In the period 1955-2001, according to Joel Whitburn’s book ‘Top pop albums 1955-2001’, which uses RIAA certified sales figures, only five albums sold more than twenty million in the USA. Here they are: Eagles – Greatest hits (27m) Michael Jackson – Thriller (26) Pink Floyd – The wall (23) Led Zeppelin – 4 (22) Billy Joel – Greatest hits (21) Far more common (77 in the period) are albums that sold between 10 and 19 million. But even the biggest selling albums – even if each was bought by a different person, which is doubtful (my daughter trashed her first copy of ‘Thriller’ and had to get another) – aren’t bought by a very large proportion of the US population, even if you divide the population by four to get the rough number of families. So ALL forms or music are a minority taste. And jazz is just one of those minority tastes, perhaps a bit bigger in terms of the charts than C&W. In the period covered by Whitburn’s book, there are over 2400 jazz or jazzish (it’s hard to separate out, say, the James Brown albums that have no jazz content whatever) albums in there, so I’m not expecting many to agree with that number. But it’s not peanuts, folks. The number of hit jazz records has been declining since the middle forties. Before that time, jazz records seem to have formed the majority of popular records since some time in the 1920s. So one answer to the question might be, since the end of WWII. But most people wouldn’t say THAT was what the question was about, and of course, they’d be right. So I’ve looked at the numbers in the 1980s and in the period 1990-2001. During the 1980s, I’ve got 388 jazz albums in the list, in the nineties, 269. And yes, a LOT of the jazz albums are what’s called ‘smooth jazz’. But still, there’s a lot of stuff no one in their right mind would call non-jazz: in the nineties, Pat Metheny had 7 hits; Grover Washington Jr and Miles Davis had 4; George Duke, Joe Sample and Nat ‘King’ Cole, all had 3; Bob James, Cassandra Wilson, Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, Us 3, and Wynton Marsalis all had 2. Billie Holiday, Branford Marsalis, Doc Severinson, Gil Scott-Heron, Jazz Crusaders, John Coltrane, Lonnie Liston Smith, Ray Charles and Roy Ayers, to mention a handful, all had hits, too. So jazz IS commanding a smaller audience. Well, some of us are dying, I guess. But guys like Kenny G, Dave Sanborn, George Howard and Gerald Albright don’t seem to have had too bad an income from jazz that lots of people actually thought was really cool (albeit that lots of people who think of themselves as ‘real’ jazz fans think it sucks or ain’t even jazz). And note, Big Jay McNeely, not the most creative of jazz musicians, is STILL making a good living, honking his brains out all over Europe. And I do agree with Jim Sangrey; why should he WANT to bring something to the people, any more than they should be made to WANT to listen to him? We've all got different rules we live our lives by and I reckon that's GOOD. MG

Big John Patton Big Bad John Jimmy Dean

YEAH!!!!! MG

Boots Brown Boots Mussulli Boots

Coleperson Hawkins George Coleperson Gloria Coleperson

DL for me, too. But I think, when you hit the link, you get a free choice. MG

Lee Otis Bass III (bass player) Ray Pounds (on the drums - Les McCann said it!) Two Ton Tessie

Correct Randy! 'Bout time SOMEONE got Ray Bryant. You ALL know his work, I'm sure. MG

Well, I dunno - never seen anything like that. MG

Honkers and screamers 1942-1954 ‘The tenor is a rhythm instrument and the best statements negroes have made, of what their soul is, have been on tenor saxophone. Now you think about it, and you’ll see I’m right. The tenor’s got that thing, that honk, you can get to people with it. Sometimes you can be playing that tenor and I’m telling you, the people want to jump across the rail.’ (Ornette Coleman, quoted in sleeve note to ‘Ornette on tenor’.) Honking and screaming is an extreme activity. So are walking the bar and leading the dancers jitterbugging out onto the street, to the dismay (or perhaps delight) of the police. So, for that matter, are falling out in church and speaking in tongues. And so are zoot suits, though not they’re not donned entirely for the same reasons. Another difference between the wearers of zoot suits and those not wearing them; to buy a zoot suit (and keep it out of the pawn shop) took some significant cash, and a decent degree of conviction about where to spend it, was a more deliberate act than speaking in tongues in church. In a sense, they can all be regarded as showboating, though there is a slight difference between the musicians and the jitterbuggers; the musicians do know what they’re doing. Earlier in the thread – about twelve years earlier - Larry quoted Lewis Porter defining what a honk actually is: "Normally one approaches the lowest register of the saxophone cautiously, using a controlled embouchere and a moderate air flow to minimize the contrast with the middle register. The honk is a conscious exploitation of that contrast. The player loosens his embouchere and speeds up his air flow." Fine, but what we call honking both now and five or six decades ago is and was a lot more than just that. It’s shorthand for Honkin’ and Screamin’. But even that’s an umbrella term for all sorts of other sounds that players make – the percussive sucking kinds of sounds that Fred Jackson and many others made, knocking noises, growls, and even what I’ve seen Pharoah Sanders do – take the sax out of his mouth and play the keypads. Sonny Rollins did that, too, on a George Braith album. Musicians – particularly jazz musicians – were quite sharply divided between those who approved of and were probably part of the honking school and those who didn’t and weren’t. Benny Golson was profoundly shocked to see John Coltrane walking the bar. But Trane never had a bad word to say about the honkers and quite obviously learned a thing or two from the experience that he later used to very different (or was it really different?) effect. As did Albert Ayler and others. What all these extreme activities had in common was the need for individuals to affirm themselves as part of a group. In terms of honking and riotous behaviour, which were new activities, this had become important partly as a result of civil rights successes during the war – enabling the black community to fight in front line units and to work in well paid jobs in arms production factories. There was at the time a feeling that, after the war, change should come, had to come, damn well WOULD come, though no one thought it would just drop into their hat. The double V sign was the emblem of this; not just victory abroad but at home as well was required, though it was always recognised that there’d be a struggle, for which unity was going to be needed. With this background in mind, it’s not hard to see why these various aspects of group identification started or became more important in this period. But it’s important to avoid the thought that people were doing these extreme acts for political reasons. They weren’t. They were encouraged to do them by a powerful music; jazz. A feedback loop develops between dancers and musicians, which drives them all higher and higher, as Ornette Coleman explained. But the music was only encouraging what was already in there – in both musicians and audience – to come out and be part of the event. However, change didn’t come; not overnight; not by the mid fifties, either. And things calmed down, or were made to do so. But in the late forties and early fifties, we have all this nice loud extreme music, which was recorded by the new independent record labels, often to their great profit. Honking records were very successful, particularly after the beginning of 1948: from mid-February that year until April of 1954, fifty-one honking singles made the R&B or pop charts; between July 1948 and April 1952, seven of them spent a total of 34 weeks at #1 on the R&B chart – just over one week in six, at a time when Louis Jordan ruled the R&B chart. It was almost entirely a black phenomenon. In this period, only four honking records made the pop charts for a total of six weeks. Strangely, the last honking hit, Rusty Bryant’s 1954 take on ‘Night train’ – ‘All night long’ didn’t make the R&B chart at all. Effectively, the craze was over by mid 1952; what was left was moving towards something new (by way of something old). Although the occasional honking record had a vocal, almost all of those hits were instrumentals. To be pointed about it, they were jazz instrumentals; most of the musicians involved were men who’d worked in the territory bands, or in many cases in the top bands such as those of Ellington, Shaw, Hampton and Gillespie. They didn’t give up jazz to make those records. Only, some might argue, taste. This seems to be a view from a false perspective; what was happening was that the sax was being used as a drum, as Red Allen had used his trumpet a decade earlier and as James Brown was to do two decades later, but with his whole band and to rather different effect. Showboating Here’s a nice photo of Herb Hardesty writhing on the floor at a Fats Domino gig at the 54 Ballroom, Los Angeles, honking his brains out. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mk52dZWJCzM/UIwcaTBvVvI/AAAAAAAAE90/bONN1PWADp0/s1600/DominoEffect.JPG The song they were playing, according to the sleeve note of Fats’ CD ‘The Imperial singles vol 2 1953-1956’ was ‘Don’t you know’, which was a hit in early 1955 (in fact the one before ‘Ain’t that a shame’). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M21ep9U37co Lying on your back and honking your brains out wasn’t the only form of showboating the honkers used. Walking around the dance hall, or parading up and down the bar were as common. Less common, but not infrequent, was leaving for the street, still wailing. Individual musicians had their own gimmicks. Big Jay McNeely had his sax coated with luminous paint and had all the lights turned off (though this may have been when technology caught up with his ideas). Paul Williams had a different idea, which was reported in the sleeve note of ‘Honkers and screamers’ (Savoy SJL2234). “The theatre had a set-up, typical of the era, that involved microphones mounted below the level of the stage. A system of pulleys raised or lowered the mikes… A stagehand named Charley squeezed in next to the mikes, manning the pulleys. Paul began his set playing alto and then switched to the baritone for a number called ‘The twister’… It’s a frantic riff tune, and as the excitement rose, Paul started dipping lower and lower towards the floor of the stage while honking in his big horn’s bottom range. The lower he dipped, the lower Charley pulled the microphone, until finally, at exactly the right moment, Paul blew one mighty honk with the horn almost scraping the stage, and the microphone disappeared under its flap. ‘The place was in an uproar,’ [Teddy] Reig remembers. ‘People started screaming and running up on stage as I was closing the curtain, I ran out there and grabbed Paul’s arm and said, “Let’s get out of here!”’ “‘The word got out,’ says Paul. ‘Maan, that saxophone player down there blowed the mike into the FLOOR!’” Another of Paul’s gimmicks was to hire a midget to walk along the top of the bar while he walked beside him, honking. The fact that the honkers, and their colleagues, enthusiastically used gimmicks needn’t obscure the fact that those guys could play. Here’s a cut from Big Jay McNeely’s first session; originally titled ‘Benson’s groove’, then ‘Deacon’s groove’, then ‘Cool blood’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21D3AayTKas It ain’t bebop, but wasn’t supposed to be. And long after the honking saxes had ceased to command chart places, those gimmicks continued to enthuse audiences, especially when in the control of people who could play – Fats Domino inching a grand piano across the stage with his stomach in time to the groove is a really good one. In the hands of the less gifted, like Bill Haley’s Comets, those tricks just appeared to be the tricks that they were. It’s paradoxical that the gimmicks outlasted the substance. But while it lasted, the substance was substantial. Illinois Jacquet Illinois Jacquet was the original tenor honker. Although born in Louisiana, he was brought up in Texas and did his apprenticeship with the Milt Larkins band, between 1937 and 1939, when he moved to Los Angeles. Nat ‘King’ Cole introduced him to Lionel Hampton, who was putting a big band together after leaving the Benny Goodman band. ‘Flyin’ home’ was recorded at Hampton’s third session for Decca, on 26 May 1942 and was a hit on the pop charts in August that year; there was no R&B chart then, but the record eventually got on that chart and made #3 in May 1943. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45sVjkW6d30 Illinois’ solo isn’t overwild, but perennially the starting point for all other soloists playing the tune. The band’s live performances of it seem to have been pretty wild, however, as Illinois left Lionel in 1943 and joined Cab Calloway for a quiet life! He was soon back, and honking, however. He was one of the musicians in the first JATP concert and the common verdict is that ‘Blues part 2’ would have been a smash if Moe Asch, owner of the Disc label on which it was first issued, had had marketing muscle. The record was issued on three 12” sides; Jacquet’s solo took up most of part 2. Here’s part 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN7WqpnHaPw Illinois had two more honking hits. The first was ‘Mordido’, in theory by the JATP All Stars, but featuring another gut-rending solo from our hero. It was released on 78 in 4 parts and one of them, I assume the one with Illinois all over it, slipped noisily into the R&B top 15 for one week in April 1949. Illinois’ second hit was the much more celebrated ‘Port of Rico’ (Mercury 89001, #3, 1952) which had a stay of 11 weeks on the R&B chart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38HFJf8tVMM One honk, that’s all Norman Granz would allow, by the sounds of it. The organist on this one was Count Basie. In between 1944 and 1952, Illinois put a band together, with Leo Parker on baritone and Sir Charles Thompson on piano and organ, and recorded for Aladdin, Apollo and RCA Victor, before signing with Clef. Arnett Cobb Arnett, a graduate of the bands of Chester Boone, Floyd Ray and Milt Larkin, took Illinois’ place in the Hampton band. The first session he made with the full band, in March 1944, included ‘Flying home no 2’, featured him playing Illinois’ famous solo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5ettrTgQLo Cobb left Hampton in 1947, formed his own small band and began recording for Apollo. He didn’t do a great deal of honking for Apollo; much of the material was strong medium paced numbers with interesting, swinging solos. Here’s ‘Dutch kitchen bounce’ from that year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riFrFvAChp4 On the B side, however, was what Arnett made of Red Allen’s 1934 opus with the Mills Blue Rhythm Band – ‘Go Red, go’ – and this one does honk a bit, as it was always intended to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYpfUwvgkOo Arnett’s career was dogged by illness and injuries; he had a spinal operation in 1950; a car crash in 1956 which put him on crutches for the rest of his life; and some time someone seems to have cut him across both lips with a switchblade – a terrible injury for a saxophonist, but one which is never mentioned. You can see it well in one of the photos on this YouTube clip of his 1959 recording of ‘Smooth sailing’. It comes in after about 35 seconds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Unyudwl7VM There’s a degree of personal heroism in the way Arnett carried on, despite these medical problems, which is really quite unprecedented. Billy Eckstine Eckstine’s band was a lot more of a bop engine than a honking organisation – but he made (one of) the first tenor sax chase recordings – ‘Blowin’ the blues away’ – between Gene Ammons & Dexter Gordon (though Billy sings ‘Mr Jackson’, there’s no alto sax) – in which Jug and Dex do rather get carried away. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB4t9gT5hw0 That was recorded for De Luxe on 5 December 1944, a few months after the JATP concert at which ‘Blues’ was recorded (though that may not have been appeared on disc by then). Jug had some other successful honking recordings. ‘Blues up and down’ and ‘Stringing the Jug’ had moderate honks (the latter from Stitt as well as Ammons) and his 1951 hit, ‘Jug’ was pretty enthusiastic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L28Wu1JtLAw Yes, there are some real honks and squeals in there; moderate but real. Even more are to be found in ‘New blues up and down’ from January 1951. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXDM7WBnMpg So Jug and Sonny weren’t averse to honks, but it’s noticeable that they never carried it to excess. Yes, it was something you did when you were steaming. But it wasn’t a style; you still had to PLAY; a point Illinois Jacquet had never failed to notice from the beginning. In the black community, Gene Ammons was a powerful influence and the latish honkers, relatively mild as they were, may have contributed to the feeling that something else should happen. Wild Bill Moore Wild Bill Moore was an early bebopper who turned to honking. The series of concerts recorded in July 1947 by Ralph Bass for the Bop label, featuring Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray and Sonny Criss, including long jams on ‘Disorder at the border’ and ‘Byas-a-drink’, were hosted by Moore, who also played a set with Russ Freeman in his band. But he’d previously worked in Louis Armstrong’s band. He soon moved to Detroit where he hooked up with Paul Williams. His first single was ‘Bubbles’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcwvyiYz_mw His only hit was ‘We’re gonna rock, we’re gonna roll’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxwcebAqPg8 Moore wasn’t a terribly important soul jazz musician, but he was pretty good. He made few jazz recordings, but was often in the Motown studios. He’s somewhat celebrated for his solo on Marvin Gaye’s ‘Mercy, mercy me (the ecology)’. In the eighties, he worked with blues singer Jimmy McCracklin. Hal Singer Hal Singer is another of the guys who got his start with territory bands in the south west, working with Terence ‘T’ Holder, Geechie Smith (a trumpet player who later worked with Ernie Fields and, in the late forties, recorded for Capitol as a leader and sideman), Ed Christian, Nat Towles, Tommy Douglas, Ernie Fields and Jay McShann, fetching up in New York with that band. After work with Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith, Chris Columbus, Earl Bostic, Roy Eldridge, Big Sid Catlett, Don Byas and Red Allen, he joined Hot Lips Page’s band in 1947 and took the tenor solo on Wynonie ‘Mr Blues’ Harris’ ‘Good rockin’ tonight’, a justly celebrated #1 R&B hit. He also got a contract with Savoy and put out his major hit, ‘Cornbread’; a number #1 R&B hit in 1948. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbiUfp9YnOE Hal recorded prolifically for King, backing lots of Wynonie’s great records, and played on numerous Rock & Roll records in the fifties, but he never really ‘made it’. Hal joined Earl Hines’ band in the mid sixties and stayed in France after the band returned home, making a long career in Europe. A justly celebrated underground favourite is his 1969 album ‘Paris soul food’, which includes a very nice version of ‘Green onions’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-AxJcXH1I Another cut celebrated amongst the underground dance crowd is ‘The soukouss’, a 45 he made in 1971 with Manu Dibango, a couple of years before ‘Soul makossa’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7pgJ19-a9E Hal’s still living in France; still busy training French musicians. His latest album is ‘Challenge’ (Marge) a free jazz album I don’t like much with David Murray, recorded in April 2010, when Hal was a lad of 90! http://img.cdandlp.com/2014/01/imgL/116467379.jpg Paul Williams Paul Williams was a baritone saxophonist. Among honkers, THE baritone player. The baritone sax has a built-in advantage when it comes to honking, so it’s puzzling that no one else seriously tried it (though Leo Parker did a bit with Illinois Jacquet). His big hit, ‘The hucklebuck’, was the fifth of eight of his cuts to make the R&B chart. It was the biggest honking hit, by quite a long margin, spending 32 weeks on the chart, 14 of them at #1. Based on ‘Now’s the time’, like Lucky Millinder’s ‘D natural blues’, it features a very nice bebop solo (which annoyed the hell out of Herman Lubinsky, who thought it would ruin the record’s commercial potential) from Phil Guilbeau, later a stalwart of the Ray Charles and Hank Crawford bands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du6Y7umZRH8 Paul had more R&B hits than any other honker, yet he’s always remembered for Hucklebuck, which was the biggest R&B hit of 1949 and has become a standard in ALL kinds of music. Its most recent hit recording was by the Irish country band Crystal Swing, which made the Irish charts in 2010, eight years after Paul’s death. You can see the Paul Williams band, backing many of the greatest R&B artists of the day on the videos of Showtime at the Apollo, done in 1954 and now all on YouTube. He last recorded in 1963, as part of King Curtis’ band, backing Doris Troy at the Apollo. What was he doing for the next 39 years? Perhaps living on the royalties of Hucklebuck. Earl Bostic Bostic was an alto player who was a bit of an exception, almost never using his sax as a drum, but playing melodies. He was a great player for melodies. But his sound was the essence of honking – a sound as overwhelming as being run over by a cement mixer. Here’s his first hit single ‘Temptation’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWSjRW4iu9E Earl had tenor players in his band and did encourage a bit of honking – Lowell ‘Count’ Hastings does a bit of honking on ‘Don’t you do it’ and Earl joins in the fun in the chase at the end. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJD71aE-L-E One very important thing Bostic did was to train people. John Coltrane said that Earl knew more about the actual playing of the saxophone than anyone else he knew. The list of great musicians who worked with him as young men is quite astounding and includes Don Byas, John Hardee, Shep Shepherd, Jaki Byard, Keter Betts, Jimmy Cobb, Ike Isaacs, John Coltrane, Blue Mitchell, Benny Golson, Tommy and Stanley Turrentine and George Tucker. Cootie Williams After his successes with Hit Records, Cootie moved to Capitol for a couple of years, then back to Hit, by which time the label was called Majestic, then to Mercury, on Mercury’s purchase of the firm. And Sam ‘The Man’ Taylor was – after a long gap – replaced by another distinctive tenor player – William ‘Weasel’ Parker, who recorded far too little. A few days before the end of 1947, ‘Typhoon’ was recorded. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvQohgoAEiY Aptly named, isn’t it? One of the great honking and screaming recordings, with Parker honking and Cootie screaming. Weasel was replaced by Willis ‘Gator Tail’ Jackson. So here’s ‘Gator tail’ part1 in 1949. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_qVyMMRtAk and part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmfpLDfEICs Yeah! That was only a regional hit, around New York. It is, I think, the most extreme example of honking I’ve heard. Willis gets sounds I’ve never heard from any other tenor player (before Albert Ayler, that is). Great though those honking records are, Cootie was simply following the trend of the time. It’s on his early forties recordings that he shows that he could hit powerfully on all three of the main elements of contemporary jazz; swing, bebop and blues. Jimmy Forrest Well, ‘Night train’ was the last honking single to make ‘#1 on the R&B chart in the early fifties, so it’s kind of a stopping and looking around at the scenery record. Jimmy was another trained in territory bands; he was in Don Albert’s orchestra in St Louis in 1938/9. He joined Jay McShann’s band in 1942, then Andy Kirk’s, then Duke Ellington’s. Good progress, Jimmy. After leaving Ellington, Jimmy formed his own band back in St Louis and, in 1951, recorded ‘Night train’ for United. The tune is based on Ellington’s ‘Happy go lucky local’ which Jimmy had played with the band, though he was never in any Ellington recording of the tune. Like Jacquet’s on ‘Flying home’ Jimmy’s solo became part of the tune. The tune became a standard, probably because it commanded instant popularity with strippers, for whom the bump and grind of the stop time honks was a perfect way of exercising their pelvises. Some songs become standards in unauthorised manners. Surely everyone knows this recording, but here it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxqQxJt_LQI Very strange to have a photo of Gene Ammons instead of Jimmy Forrest at the end! Jimmy had another hit on the R&B charts, one that has also been recorded frequently by other artists. That was ‘Hey Mrs Jones’ and it made #3 on the R&B chart at the end of 1952. Jimmy Witherspoon, Ramsey Lewis, Jimmy McGriff and Bill Jennings have all made nice versions of the song. In the early sixties, the song had a bit of a revival. A search on the web brought up a rock & roll version by Tiny Tony & the Statics from 1962, with a very growly tenor solo. And there was a Northern Soul favourite, from 1961, by the Check Mates. Rod Piazza recorded the song in 2009. Like ‘Hucklebuck’ and ‘Night train’, ‘Hey Mrs Jones’ is another song that just keeps going. After Mrs Jones, the fifties were a bit dull for Jimmy (he got a two year sentence for selling drugs), though he did work with the Horace Henderson band in 1954, and made a few singles of his own, none of which made any noise whatever. By the late fifties, people had come to recognise his worth. But two heart attacks in the sixties put him out of action for quite a while during the late sixties. Frank ‘Floorshow’ Culley Culley had two hits; ‘Coleslaw’, which got to #3 on the R&B chart, in 1949, for an 11 week stay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rviX3WsX5wY As you see from the label, it’s another Jesse Stone number, previously called ‘Sorghum switch’. His other hit was ‘After hours session’; not as big a hit, but a very nice single, with great piano from Van ‘Piano Man’ Walls, one of the three great blues pianists who backed up sessions in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles (the others were Sonny Thompson & Lloyd Glenn). Walls played piano on all of Floorshow’s Atlantic sides, except the last, on which Randy Weston held down the piano chair. Frank is pretty restrained until 2 and a half minutes have gone by, and then, watch out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5gdvEU3IvI There was a lot more going on with Floorshow than honking. Here’s a very honking number, Hamp’s ‘Central Avenue breakdown’, the B side of ‘Coleslaw’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5zCpdENr6A ‘Rhumboogie Jive’, the B side of ‘After hours session’ was another very hot number, a great feature for Piano Man Walls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p2Wdemhv04 Your heart will bleed for the guy who posted that one on YouTube; his copy arrived broken and, in repairing this side, he made the A side unplayable. In 1955, Floorshow cut some less successful tracks for Baton and that’s the last we hear from him. Lynn Hope Lynn’s only hit was ‘Tenderly’, very much an easy listening type of record. But he was a strong tenor player with a vision not unlike that of Earl Bostic’s. I first heard of Hope when I read Leroi Jones’ short story ‘The screamers’, which was about a gig Hope did in Newark, in which he led his band out of the dancehall and sparked a riot. I thought it was fictional, as I’d never come across the name Lynn Hope before. When I heard that there actually WAS a musician of that name, I eagerly looked for recordings and eventually found an album. ‘Tenderly’ was a great disappointment for me. But many of the tracks on that album were definitely not. Here’s ‘Blues in F’, a real honker with a lot of playing in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeFySiz581I In ‘Blues for Anna Bacoa’, you can just see the crowd doing the conga down Broad street, Newark. (Well, I think I can.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN9qVWrZ0jc And the extremely funky ‘Eleven ‘til two’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sskUiHG5_WU Like Earl Bostic, Lynn usually recorded with a vibes player; Bobby Martin. His sister, Myriam Hope, was on piano, marimba or organ. Two other relations, Khalid Ali and Unis Ali were on bass and drums respectively. His last recordings, in 1960, for King, had King’s studio guys with him. I like his ballads, performed at a Bostic medium walk, but I’ve got to say, I’d prefer them if Bostic were playing, or if Hope’s sound weren’t so bland on them. It’s rumoured that he and family moved to Philadelphia and that he became prominent in the local mosque – whatever that may imply. Big Al Sears Johnny Hodges, perhaps the world’s least likely candidate, had two hits among the honkers – both featuring very nice solos from Big Al Sears. ‘Castle rock’, (Mercury 8944) in 1951, made #4 and lasted 9 weeks (and also scraped into the pop charts, presumably to amaze Johnny’s white fans). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4KjHZsNSHo ‘A pound of blues’ (Mercury 8961) made #4 as well, but only lasted five weeks in 1952. It’s a much more conventional cut but still features some nice Sears tenor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEPoNxZIu3Q Al Sears isn’t ever given the credit he deserves. I first heard him on ‘The Madison’ by Al Brown’s Tunetoppers, in 1959, though I’d never heard his name. That single was overshadowed commercially by Ray Bryant’s version, featuring Buddy Tate (who could have made a fortune as a honker but never tried), but I always liked it better (and I still have my second copy). Sears played tenor solos on countless R&B and Rock & Roll records in the fifties and sixties. Eddie Chamblee Eddie Chamblee had only one hit as a leader – ‘Back street’ (Miracle 133, #9, 1949). But as the tenorman on the Sonny Thompson band’s recordings for Miracle, he was the main attraction on five other hits, including two that made #1, one of which was the classic ‘Long gone’ (Miracle 126). It seems that he learned to play sax in the army. His first recordings were made in June 1946, for Miracle Records, as part of a three-sax sextet under the leadership of one Dick Davis. (These were the first recordings Miracle made.) Success came through a bunch of sessions Miracle held in late 1947 to stockpile material for the forthcoming strike. Sonny Thompson’s ‘Long gone pts 1 & 2’ was one of the products of those sessions. The record made #1 on the R&B chart, staying there 3 weeks out of a 31 week run. It also spent a week at the bottom of the pop chart and sold 200,000 copies, presumably in 1948. It was recorded at two different sessions, for the first of which, on 5 November 1947, Eddie wasn’t present. Eddie was on hand for the 27 November session, to play on part 2, which seems to have been an afterthought at the end of a mostly unissued Browley Guy session. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy5Itwnscg8 The label of part 1 is as you see it on the video. Part 2 says it’s ‘Sonny Thompson with the Sharps and Flats starring Eddie Chamblee (tenor sax)’. Most of Eddie’s future collaborations with Sonny on Miracle gave him a separate billing (though I don’t suppose he was paid any more). I can’t say it’s very frantic honking but it’s very, very rocking train music. Another session, on 7 December, produced another #1 hit, ‘Late freight’. Not as big a hit as its predecessor, it still managed 3 months on the chart. And Eddie, still in the rocking train mode, honks and growls a good bit more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETH3B-hgnhI Three more, small, hits followed for Sonny and Eddie, then Eddie’s own single, ‘Back street’, which was an altogether more serious honker and was recorded around July 1948. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TiqTwaHPfE That was a respectable hit, making #9 and saying on the chart for 8 weeks. But it was his only one. I love the lyrics to ‘Dureop’, so I’m putting part 1 on. Part 2 features guitar and piano (damn fine) but part 1 is seriously relaxed honking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LXn6k01cNg This relaxed aspect to so much of Eddie’s work is particularly nice. He never seems to go bonkers; he just plays strong music. He seems like Sonny Stitt, in the ease with which his music seems to flow out of him but, as Stitt said, ‘this shit ain’t easy, baby.’ And you know that those guys had to really know what they were doing to make it come out with such a relaxed flow. Eddie, unlike Stitt, didn’t do high speed stuff often; he liked walking or strolling, rocking all the time, and always with a bit of genial humour in his playing, as if he’s saying, ‘have some fun, people.’ After some more recordings with Eddie, Lee Egalnick closed Miracle in the summer of 1950, and most of the masters were acquired by King. Eddie moved to Egalnick’s new label, Premium and did a couple of sessions for that label, then Chess, Coral and United, before hooking up for one with his childhood sweetheart, Dinah Washington. But he made another session for United, then one for Chess, with Jimmy Witherspoon. In the mid-fifties he recorded a good deal with bluesmen; Lowell Fulson used him on several sessions in LA and Chicago for Checker, and he was on sessions by Amos Milburn and T-Bone Walker. He spent a couple of years in Lionel Hampton’s band, too, recording all over Europe with him. Back in Chicago, he recorded for Mercury and participated in more of Dinah’s sessions up to 1963. Don Wilkerson Everyone around back in those days could, and often did, honk. Amos Milburn’s ‘Sax Shack boogie’ (Aladdin 3064, #9, 1950) is, of course, a vocal, but features not one but three fine honking solos by one of the all time great soul jazz saxophonists, Don Wilkerson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYYMfEXm4fw And a lot of good piano by Amos. Most of Don’s solos with Amos were of the honking variety. He was good at it. Schoolboy Porter ‘Schoolboy boogie” (Chance), from September 1950, was the first recording by John Schoolboy Porter, a Chicago tenor player who’d worked in the Cootie Williams band in 1947, apparently before Weasel Parker joined. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf80j-HjUds Porter is accompanied by Jesse Hart (p), Walter Broyle (b) and Carl Scott (d). Unfortunately, only three of the six tracks recorded in his first session are available on YouTube. A second session, in November, produced a side called ‘Walk heavy’ on which he played baritone sax and, apparently, ‘could have given Leo Parker a run for his money’. His third session, on 25 July 1951, had Jack McDuff on piano. Again, that would be very interesting to hear. And for a fourth and final Chance session, on I May 1952, McDuff played organ. (I have two of those sides on a filthy tape and they’re damn good!) It’s a pity no one picked up this material. There’s enough for a 12” LP. What I’ve heard is fine! There’s a lot about Porter here: http://myweb.clemson.edu/~campber/chance.html Lorenzo Holden Lorenzo played with the Happy Johnson band in the mid forties. He was one of Johnny Otis’ sax players in the early fifties. He didn’t record much or go out on tour with the band more than once, because he preferred to stay at home with his wife, so he remained obscure. Like Schoolboy Porter in Chicago and Jaws in New York, he was the man who developed the tenor/organ combo concept in his area. In 1953, he teamed up with Ernie Freeman, who was playing only piano in those days and made a series of singles that varied from decent to pretty damn good. In 1954, Freeman started playing the organ in public and ‘Hunting with the Hunter’ was their first effort as a tenor/organ combo; the first on the west coast. Before that, earlier in 1954, there was the wonderfully titled, ‘Cry of the wounded juke box’, a rip from ‘Lester leaps in’ by one of the Bihari brothers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg1EViDriRo No slouch on the honking tenor, Lorenzo! It’s Freeman on piano, Red Callender on bass and Ray Martinez (who was later with Big Jay McNeely) on drums. Tiny Bradshaw Bradshaw’s band, ironically for one that rocked and screamed so hard, showed the way out of honking. ‘Soft’ spent 14 weeks on the R&B chart in 1953, rising to #3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zFzreHG8_I ‘Heavy juice’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf79KkukB5A Those two featured Red Prysock, Arthur Prysock’s brother, on tenor. ‘Heavy juice’ wasn’t anywhere nearly as big as ‘Soft’ making #9 for 1 week. Red was replaced by Sil Austin and in July the band didn’t have a hit with ‘Later’ (Bill Hardman and Sam Jones were in the band, too). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HfqkaPAh6o ‘Stack of dollars’ features Noble ‘Thin Man’ Watts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSCo3uLk5k4 Nice trumpet solo from Bill Hardman in there, too. ‘Cat fruit’ is from one of the band’s last sessions, in 1954. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZNgPEAXgYA Nice work from both Rufus Gore (who should be noticed rather more than he is) and Noble ‘Thin Man’ Watts. ‘Soft’ and ‘Heavy juice’ were the last honking records to hit the R&B charts. It’s clear that they were quite a way away from ‘Gator tail’ – there’s a very Basie-like feel to the rhythm and while Red’s solos are virile and muscular, they’re by no means extreme. Of course, honking is limited as well as extreme and couldn’t really be sustained as a movement for very long. So the musicians and audiences had to move on. There was still an audience out there that wanted the music and good honking records were made for a few more years. The audience was changing, though, and no more hits came along. That was true of ALL kinds of jazz. Only three jazz records made the R&B charts between August 1953 (when ‘Heavy juice’ was a hit) and January 1956 (when Ernie Freeman’s ‘Jivin’ around’ hit). They were two by Buddy Johnson (‘I’m just your fool’ and ‘(Gotta go) upside your head’) and one by Count Basie (‘Every day I have the blues’ featuring Joe Williams). Rock and Roll was beginning and Rudy Pompilli’s imitation honking was claiming attention, briefly, before electric guitars took over Rock and Roll. But if you skip those couple of years and listen to ‘Jivin’ around’, here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muO07c2izzo I think you’ll find there’s not all that much difference (except the lack of a tenor player, which Bill Doggett soon rectified when ‘Honky tonk’ came out). The honkers were becoming jazzers. The honkers found other employ. A lot turned into studio musicians, playing solos of varying honkiness on R&B recordings, like Sam ‘The Man’ Taylor (there’s a nice example of this from 1962, in my latest BFT). Others returned to more straight-ahead jazz, while others quit music altogether. A bandleader on the west coast exemplifies this interestingly. The Great Gates & Marvin Phillips Edward White was known, in the late forties and early fifties, as ‘The Great Gates’ and worked on the west coast as a pretty good, though unexceptional, jump blues singer; one able to maintain a band for several years on the strength of live performances. He made several recordings, only one of which was a hit, and none of the companies for which he recorded invited him back for a second session. He moved to Chicago in 1952, gave up jump blues in the mid fifties and took up the jazz organ! His own band on the west coast usually included a great honking tenor player – Marvin Phillips, whose part time job at the time was as a singer. He was later one of the duo Jesse and Marvin, with Jesse Belvin, who had a #2 R&B hit with ‘Dream girl’ in 1953, and later that year, and in the same period, one of Marvin and Johnny, with Carl Green as Johnny, then with Emory Perry as Johnny, with whom he had two more hits. But he was a damn fine tenor player. The Great Gates’ ‘Ain’t got no money’, has a good honking solo by Phillips, the B side of which is an instrumental featuring Marvin (but that’s not on YouTube). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blTw-ri9NFY And here’s his only hit – ‘Late after hours’, with a nice, somewhat less frantic, solo from Marvin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3Gq_yPI_YU You may be able to find an LP with a good selection of The Great Gates’ singles from 1949-52 in some old bin somewhere. http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc187/boogiewoody/TGGfrontsmall.jpg If you do, it’s the real stuff. Don’t miss this exciting slab of obscure history. Willis ‘Gator Tail’ Jackson Willis was never with a territory band. Cootie Williams hired him off his mother’s doorstep in 1949. His mother had made him turn down an offer the previous year from Lionel Hampton, but Cootie volunteered to send Willis back home every month, for inspection! ‘Gator tail’ was Willis’ feature with the band at the Savoy Ballroom and, according to Willis, ‘it would tear the place down, so I guess that’s why we made the record.’ The record, on Mercury, was very popular and was probably a regional hit in the New York area, but not big enough to get onto the national charts. But it got him out on his own, recording for Apollo, then, after he took up with Ruth Brown, Atlantic, and finally De Luxe. One of the most interesting things about Gator’s early recordings is the wide variety of music they encompassed. Yes, there were plenty of honkers. But also popular ballads like ‘Can’t help lovin’ dat man’, ‘Here in my heart’ and ‘Try a little tenderness’ as well as material from farther afield, like ‘Estrellita’. There was always a lot more to Willis than tearing the place down. In addition, there was session work. Quite a lot was with Ruth Brown, with whom he was living in the mid fifties, though they didn’t marry. But some very nice stuff was done with Little Willie John, including his first hit, ‘All around the world’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XHC-qZXOyI He teamed up with Bill Jennings in 1957 and did a session for King with one James Orville Johnson on organ, another six months later, with Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez on organ, backing Titus Turner, then began to assemble his first great organ band with Brother Jack McDuff. By that time, he seldom honked. Red Prysock Before Red joined Tiny Bradshaw’s band, he had already notched up one hit, as the tenor player in Tiny Grimes’ band, which soon became The Rockin’ Highlanders. He joined Grimes fresh from the army, where he’d learned to play the sax his sister had given him. So, no history of working in territory bands for Red, either. ‘Midnight special’ was Tiny Grimes’ only R&B hit single and the first of thousands for Atlantic records. It’s not frantic; it’s based on ‘CC rider’, but Red plays powerfully enough to get noticed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7diCMxVMDbQ When Grimes decided that all his Rocking Highlanders should wear kilts, Red left and joined Roy Milton’s band, which wasn’t the right kind of band for him. So he quickly moved to Tiny Bradshaw’s and made a series of great records with Bradshaw, not only under Tiny’s name, but backing up a number of King’s great R&B singers, such as Roy Brown, Wynonie ‘Mr Blues’ Harris and Bullmoose Jackson. He formed his own band in late 1953 and started recording for Mercury the following year. He had no hits but ‘Hand clappin’’ (Mercury, 1955) was used by Alan Freed as his theme tune and is said to have sold more than half a million, over a period; a LOT more than most R&B hits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPJap6Z_6ZI Of course, as can be seen from the sleeves of his Mercury LPs, a probable majority of his customers would have been white. http://cdn.discogs.com/Dh3dA1dkVF_aikjUndULB-mmzoI=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(96)/discogs-images/R-3097375-1315602169.jpeg.jpg And young. http://ring.cdandlp.com/rabbitrecords/photo_grande/115134563.jpg Unlike Willis Jackson, there’s a kind of one dimensional aspect to Red’s playing on most of those fifties Mercury records; great when you feel like it, but that’s not nearly all the time. It’s as if there’s nothing there but what you can hear; no connection with black society. His 1958 album, ‘Swing softly, Red’, with a big band behind him and a dozen standards to play, looks better, though his 45 of ‘Willow weep for me’ is also one dimensional, so it might not be. However his ‘Battle royal’ album with Sil Austin, with Milt Hinton, Kenny Burrell and Panama Francis in the combo, is a LOT better. But with the exception of that album, he persisted in making these one dimensional honking records until 1961, probably entirely for people who wouldn’t or didn’t know the difference. ‘The big sound of Red Prysock’, a track from which was in my last BFT, is more substantial. Sil Austin Sil followed Red into the Bradshaw band in 1953. He’d previously followed Willis Jackson into the Cootie Williams band. He soon had a good number in ‘Later’, which wasn’t a hit, but sold enough for him to get himself a contract with Mercury. He had one hit with Mercury, ‘Slow walk’, in 1956, which was quickly covered by Bill Doggett. Sil’s original version outsold Bill’s, but not by much; Sil’s got to #3 in the R&B chart and #17 on the pop chart, while Bill’s made numbers 4 and 27 respectively. So Sil would have got good composer royalties out of the tune. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y_tnrrGhFM By the early sixties, Sil had turned to lounge music for a living and was very good at it. Rusty Bryant The last honking hit was Rusty’s ‘All night long’, a faster version of ‘Night train’, with some other stuff in there, too. It didn’t make the R&B charts, but scraped into the pop charts at #25 on 3 April 1954, leaving the following week. It’s a clear indication that the honking sax had lost favour with black audiences but that white audiences were beginning to catch on (as is also indicated by Red Prysock’s recordings for Mercury). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRLPunnoSH0 It was Rusty’s first recording, done in 1952, and he kept plugging away at the formula until about 1956. When Dot had moved from Nashville to Los Angeles, he made a couple of albums of not terribly inspiring straight jazz material. Then Hank Marr took over the band and Rusty became his sideman for a series of very nice recordings for Federal. Jimmy Coe Sometimes the jazz community reveals a hidden gem. Jimmy Coe is one of those. He didn’t begin to reach a wider audience until the inclusion of his 1953 single, ‘After hour joint’ in the Delmark compilation ‘Honkers and barwalkers’ in 1988. Coe is another musician who never made the R&B chart. He got into the business a little late, it seems. A lot of information is to be found on the Red Saunders Research Foundation page about him. He was born in 1921, in Kentucky, but his parents moved to Indianapolis when he was two, and he remained there all his life (he died in 2004), except for periods with the army in the war and on tour with various bands. After a couple of years with Buddy Bryant’s band in Indianapolis, he joined Jay McShann’s band in late 1941, playing baritone sax. When Charlie Parker was out of the band, Jimmy had to take the alto seat. Not an easy task for anyone, but as you’ll hear, Jimmy’s ideas and approach were almost exactly unlike Parker’s. After a year with McShann, Jimmy joined the Tiny Bradshaw band (yes, everyone played with Bradshaw). He said he ‘takes some credit for promoting the transition from the two alto-two tenor sax section that most bands still carried (with perhaps some doubling on baritone) to a five-man sax section with a full-time baritonist. He… wrote baritone parts for everything in the McShann book, and while in the Bradshaw band he did the same, inspiring Bradshaw to hire his own full-time baritonist when Coe left.’ Some people leave strange marks in the sand, don’t they? After Army service, he rejoined Bradshaw for a while, then returned to Indianapolis and obscurity. He had a slight association with King Records and cut a single for them, which the firm put out as by Jimmy Cole, and also credited him that way for a Tiny Bradshaw session he was on in 1952. Not a terribly helpful association? After King had no time to listen to a demo he’d done of ‘After hour joint’, Coe took it to Chicago and offered the song to United/States Records. They bit and the record was cut on 1 February 1953. It’s based on an Indianapolis after hours joint called the Royal Roost which features similar clientele to those appearing on the record. Earl ‘Fox’ Walker (the drummer) does most of the talking, with the ensemble joining in here and there. This was the one that appeared in ‘Honkers and barwalkers’. Jimmy’s comment was that ‘I have never honked, but I have walked the bar.’ Well, his playing is the essence of honk, without the frenzy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHzCmoaASnE 1953 was a bit too late for this to be a hit, but it must have sold reasonably well, as States wanted a follow up, which was ‘Raid on the after hour joint’, recorded in October 1953. Lew Simpkins, who produced most United material, including Coe’s first session, had died by then, so Leonard Allen, the owner of United/States, took the session (and also plays the part of the policeman). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwjVs8pehpM I can’t say the raid single is as good as the first, but it was clearly necessary. So, good for Leonard Allen to get the follow up made. About six months later, the Robins, later known as the Coasters, recorded ‘Riot in cell block #9’ and, a few months later, ‘Smokey Joe’s café’, and I can’t help thinking that Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller must have heard these Jimmy Coe records, while they were woodshedding what to do with this vocal group they’d got out of their relationship with Johnny Otis. ‘Riot in cell block #9’ wasn’t a hit, but “Smokey Joe’s café’ hit the R&B top 10 for a couple of weeks at the end of 1955. So these slice of life little dramas weren’t a terribly commercial idea (yet), but this was the right time for them. And this was pretty new stuff, when Jimmy recorded ‘After hour joint’. There had been some conversation type of records before; ‘Double crossing blues’ by Little Esther and the Robins and ‘Gabbin’ blues’ by Big Maybelle both had some spoken conversation, but they were very much a part of the tradition of sung duets, even though there was some speech. And ‘Open the door Richard’, was another in the same tradition. But there’s no singing in either of the Jimmy Coe records; they’re spoken conversations over a music background. Lew Simpkins, however, had made an attempt at this kind of thing before, in January 1947, when he was producing for Miracle Records. ‘Memphis train’, a dramatization of two travellers, a porter and a lady on the train from Chicago to Memphis, by tenor player Dick Davis, was a miserable failure. Sonny Thompson was one of the passengers. The content of the drama is totally undramatic; the conversation is delivered with no animation or enthusiasm whatever; and the timing was absent. Dick Davis wasn’t as good a tenor player as Coe, either. This sort of thing has to be done very well indeed to be effective, or it’s worthless – except as a lesson in what NOT to do. But, if you’re interested in really ineffective recordings, here it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__qppNMMNeY When ‘Honkers and barwalkers’ came out in 1988, ‘After hour joint’ sounded like the first rap record. Delmark issued an album (‘After hour joint’) of all of Coe’s recordings for States, which included the raid single, too. These aren’t the only good things Coe recorded. There’s also a splendid version of ‘Lady be good’, which has what was the only honking violin solo the world has known (by Remo Biondi), and is a cut not to be missed. http://eil.com/images/main/Jimmy-Coe-After-Hours-Joint-548617.jpg It’s deleted now, but you can still get vinyl copies from Amazon and elsewhere. His position in Indianapolis was a long way from the recording industry, so Coe was not nearly as well recorded or known as he should have been. In a sense, this may have been an advantage. No one in the record business was pressing him and his band to sell a million or even to try to address a national audience. So they just had their local customers, who would have known Jimmy had played with many of the greatest jazz musicians, to please. In those circumstances, Coe and his musicians could stray from the authorised path, as did Wes Montgomery, a guitarist who was later an occasional member of Jimmy’s band, when he decided to try to improvise in octaves. Coe did become better known through the reissue of these recordings and, a short while before his death in 2004, was invited to Europe. It was then that he made this nice video with a local band and Red Holloway, in Locarno, Switzerland, 14 Sep 2002. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfVfVPn_BZg You can find out a lot about Jimmy Coe’s life and career here: http://myweb.clemson.edu/~campber/coe.html Big Jay McNeely Big Jay McNeely was different from all the others. He kept honking until he quit in 1971 and became a postman. He’d started his own record label, Big J, in the fifties and was possibly one of the first jazz musicians to do so. In 1983, when European teenagers were beginning to appreciate the danceable qualities of soul jazz, which they termed acid jazz, Big Jay took up his sax again, and is STILL out there honking, mostly in Europe. He was honking outside the Quasimodo Club in West Berlin on the night the Berlin Wall came down – and the German press jokingly called him ‘the modern Joshua’ after the rumour went around that Big Jay helped blow it down with his horn. His latest album, ‘Life story’ was issued in 2013 and probably recorded in 2012. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JMZI0S07L._SX450_.jpg Big Jay was about 85! It ain’t easy, but someone’s gotta do it! Anyway, here are a couple of McNeely cuts. First, his #1 hit from 1948, ‘Deacon’s hop’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo_0_dp1irE Of course, the man CAN play – here’s something from ‘Life story’. http://www.jazzwax.com/2013/01/big-jay-mcneely-life-story.html It’s not just good for a guy well into his eighties, it’s just plain good. Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis If there’s one musician whose style was ALWAYS the essence of honk, it’s Jaws. Like Big Jay, Jaws never stopped honking. ‘I could never understand how Jaws was playing,’ Johnny Griffin told Bob Bernotas in 1994. ‘He played more for sound than for notes.’ That’s the essence of honking; sound in time, not notes. And no one could get the sounds Jaws did. For him, it wasn’t a passing fad, not a commercial thing to do at the time; it was the way he played the saxophone. And he applied that way of playing the sax to all kinds of music, including, of course, the roaring rhythm numbers that were the meat and drink of late forties and early fifties audiences. He’d even honk and scream on bebop tunes (is nothing sacred?). Here’s ‘Stealing trash’ with Fats Navarro, Al Haig, Huey Long, Gene Ramey & Denzil Best on Savoy, a cut from a 1946 session by Eddy Davis & his Beboppers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=micok4uF2xE ‘Lockjaw’ was another bebop recording, from May 1946. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBzApX-WpCU And, from the same session, ‘Athlete’s foot’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwNTYSHaffQ From the following year, we have ‘Leapin’ on Lennox’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTsuOM2_pHk This is the very best of honking! Finally, one done at the end of a Cleanhead Vinson session in 1949, with (almost certainly) Wynton Kelly on piano. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYbwcqFJrzc That’s ‘Huckle boogie’, which is supposed to have Bill Doggett on organ, but Kelly and Jaws are on the Vinson session, which has adjoining King matrix numbers. Certainly, ‘Huckle boogie’ was meant to be a honking sax record. But it’s kind of unusual in Jaws’ work. Mostly, that huge range of impossible noises he made come out of his horn was simply a part of the language he used to play jazz. It was as if he had the jazz equivalent of Tourette’s Syndrome; to say what he wanted to say, he had to use every resource the sax could provide – bad language is as much a part of the language as good and greatly needed sometimes. So there was never any need for him to stop. And he never did. Afterwards Afterwards, honking, although declining as a commercial venture, except, perhaps, for those catering to a rock & roll audience, was found to have entered the language. Many of the great honkers of this period never gave up those low honks or those high pitched screams. They used this new (bad) language with discretion, however. And so did the people they influenced, who usually were to be found among the new wave of Soul Jazz. So too, did the people they didn’t influence. Mainstream players like Ike Quebec, boppers like Teddy Edwards and Sonny Stitt, even later modernists like Joe Henderson, all absorbed the language in an un-gimmicky way and used it as part of their expression. And so did earlier players like Ben Webster. Because honking really never was any more than a part of the jazz language. It wasn’t an end in itself, any more than is the word fuck. It’s something to be used to get your message across. So the best honkers used that new language with some discretion. The live recording of Illinois Jacquet’s band done in Toronto in 1947, shows this very clearly. It’s a pity more of the honkers weren’t recorded live in their prime time; perhaps more than any other kind of jazz, the music these guys made was totally oriented towards live performances and they are vital tools of understanding how the music worked in its proper context. Not many musicians have changed the language of jazz. Illinois Jacquet should be revered as greatly as Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. But it won’t happen. MG

Funny, I get neither of those messages. Perhaps it's because I haven't updated iTunes. I can't be bothered with firms' eternal updates, unless they want to tell me what I'm actually going to get for them. MG

Thank you, Rod. I think you're wrong, but I can live with that explanation. However (there's ALWAYS one) 'it's a courtesy, not a nefarious plot or an attempt at insult. There's a click-box: "Do not ask me again" if you never want to be asked again. Done.' OK, as far as it goes, but personally, I do find it useful to have that because if I DID hit the delete button, meaning to hit 'insert' or 'end', I know it'll make me check. MG

What you're missing is, when it asks you to verify it does so in a way that's counter-intuitive to the way human beings think. The options it offers are Delete and cancel, whereas everyone confronted by the question 'Are you sure you want to ...' will instinctively want to reply Y or N, because that's common to every culture on earth, iTunes wants you to press D or C. All the others expect Y or N. Why is Apple different? They want to be different. Well, bollocks to 'em, from The Magnificent Goldberg. MG

Just found this old thread. Worth adding to in a day or two. So I'm saying something now MG

MG

Blind Man Blind Willie McTell Blind Blake

I'm glad you liked most of this, Thom. Jim jumped in early with damn good guesses and good research. But having other stuff to do is a VERY good excuse. MG

Yeah, I'M the one who said he hated iTunes. Not because it don't work, but because Apple insist on trying to make me think like them. I don't do other people's minds, only mine. MG

Well, I'll be 73 in a couple of weeks and I can't be arsed to eff around with things that other people want me to do before I die MG

If you want to delete an album from iTunes, you click it to select it, press your delete button then, like Windows or most other stuff, it'll ask if you do want to delete the songs (no asshole, I've selected an album, don't wanna delete songs but the whole shebang and there are no songs, just a fifty minute sermon ). THEN you can't say yes or no, but you have to say delete. Sorry, that's not the way people in every culture respond to such a question. In other software they expect, rationally, that you'll say yes or no. MG

I hate iTunes (and Apple generally), not because I don't think their stuff's any good, but because iTunes, with my iPod the only bit of Apple I come into contact with, in order to make themselves seem different from everyone else and, thus, be easily identifiable, adopt an anti-human policy. For example - you ask ANYONE in the world, speaking any language you like, if they really want to do something they've said they want to do, they'll respond 'YES' in whatever language. Apple doesn't believe in yes. If you wanna delete something, you have to press D. It's not a big thing, but what it means is absolutely HUGE. And that's not the only thing. So much of the programme is deliberately counter-intuitive it's almost alien. And I REFUSE TO EVER GET USED TO IT. MG