The Magnificent Goldberg

I like a few: not all of them are authentic; in face, probably none of them are One of Chewy's favourite labels. The Hampton is my favourite. I put a track in a BFT a couple of years ago and, if I remember correctly, no one recognised Curtis Peagler on baritone sax. The Ramsey Lewis Bossa Nova album is pretty nice, too. Somewhat more authentic than the above. MG

Right, thanks Jim. MG

OK, time for a few comments on Jim's post. 3 Yes, I think you probably DO know this singer; but a fair bit later and in a rather different context. Sleeve notes don't say who was in the band, but I thought of Pepper and Shank, too. It IS an LA production, as I guess you could tell from the sound. 6 Jim R already got this one. 10 I do hope you don't rush outside and dive under a bus when you find out who this one actually WAS. I am CERTAIN you know this singer. 14 Brook Benton is a good, but inaccurate guess. Actually, Brook is one of the people SERIOUSLY missing from my collection. Always has been, dunno why. Bought one single back in '61 or so and loved it, though I flogged it eventually. Never bought anything else. 22 No historicals of note. This is just YET ANOTHER very excellent record from a very good pianist, who should probably be revered more than he is. 23 What do you mean civilians, Jim? Non-musicians? I don't understand. Or maybe I do, but don't want to think it out loud. MG

Phew! Lotta stuff you said there, Jim. Gonna do it in instalments... well, maybe. BOINGGGG!!! Starting with the correct answers, anyway, so people aren't kept in suspense. 2 Yes, one of your guesses hits the mark. It's Gator; 'Y'all' from the album 'Loose', and if anyone sez it's not like what I understand as being that tune, and it ain't from that album, 'cos I've got the CD, well, it IS from that LP, but never put on CD. The earlier tune of that name - a different one - was on the Willis Jackson & Johnny Hammond Smith album. 4 Yes, it's Ben E King. Sorry you don't like this; I do 7 Yes, that's Etta Jones. 8 Yeah, you got it eventually. And I don't know what band it was, because MGM didn't give a shit about lounge music and never told us. But it's been released twice; first, in 1962, on an album called 'Mist of the Orient', then it was called 'Sam Taylor in Tokyo', so you COULD be right about the Japanese band. Who knows? WERE there Japanese bands who could have played this in '62? Oh and the whole LP is WELL worth finding and listening to; this track weren't a fluke. 12 You got Little RIchard, too. It's not the Otis band - those cuts were done later for Peacock. This was from his first session, done in Atlanta for RCA Victor, and the bandleader, tenor player and, presumably, arranger, was the greatest jazz musician of all time, as my mate wrote on the wall of one of Dobells listening booths - Fred Jackson. 16 "who was Vernita Moss?" you said. Who indeed? As far as I can identify, this is the only cut on which she sang lead. It's from 1971. 17 Yes, it's Arthur Prysock, but I am slightly confused because it doesn't come from either of those albums you referenced. 18 Another Yes. Glad to be introducing you to Earl Grant so nicely. See if you can find the 45 of 'Sweet sixteen bars' - I don't think it was ever on an LP. One of my greatest mistakes was getting rid of mine. 19 Yes, Gloria Lynne. And the song is credited to Crowder, Eckstine, Hines, not Walker. Do you know who the players are? 20 I didn't think even you would get this. Yeah, it's George Adams playing with the Fatback Band. It is, by the way, the only track on which he solos. But THIS! 21 Yes to Red Prysock. Bloomin' 'eck, that's eleven correct answers. More comments later. MG

BOINGGGG!!!! You're right about #17, Jim. Yeah, the backing is VERY Basie-ish. It's from the Old Town album 'Everlasting songs for everlasting lovers'. No luck with #12, I see. It's a little while since I listened to my Roy Brown, but the connection on the way they pronounce words never got me. There's more of a connection in terms of both being 'mighty, mighty men', as it were. You should recognise the bandleader and tenor player, who is VERY well known around these parts. MG

You obviously haven't known the wrong people, Paul. I'm sure you're right and, no matter how much I love Gator Tail, for example, I can't think everyone would be so nearly unanimous about HIM. Or Mr T or Ben Webster, for that matter. MG

Thanks Jim, that looks like it might be an interesting thing to understand (or maybe not), did I understand it. In particular, I don't understand 'no nuance'. Seems to me that, with Jug, you didn't get improvisation so much as a cartload of nuance that you didn't have to try too hard to understand. Oh, of course, I'm talking about him playing ballads. Is that not what people meant by that? Sure, it's always the same thing the same way. Every jazz musician has their own cherished clichés. EVERY one. And we all do, whether we're musicians or not. I can get the idea of him not articulating phrases, though, again, that's something we all do. And it means something, whether it's me or Jug doing it. I suppose I really don't understand what an irritating pitch is, or might be. I do get the notion that a particular note is kind of represented by a small range of marginally different frequencies, which allows musicians to play slightly sharp or flat and yet still be 'in tune', even though I couldn't identify one even if it bit my ankle. But I can't think what about it might or might not be irritating. Can you explain so I can understand, please? MG

Yeah, thanks for putting that on, Bill. I haven't paid Jug's period with Herman much attention and, listening just now, I couldn't sit through a bunch of that band just for the odd Jug solo, though I do appreciate that there's stuff to be got from it. On one listen, a lot of the Mercury material seems to have a similar sound. MG Someone's taking the piddle MG

Message received from YouTube: the video is not available. But looking at the time - twenty minutes - I thought we were approaching people as religious fanatics, rather than those happy to make an album of jolly tunes MG

I don't have much in the way of strange combinations on my shelves, as I file everything by genre, though there are two of each genre now, as I'm keeping the ones ripped to my hard drive separate from those yet to be done. This makes finding a record to actually PLAY it somewhat problematical because, without looking at my computer, I often can't remember which is on it and which ain't. But in my database - I use Access - I just opened it up and there, a dozen albums down, found Abbey Lincoln between the AARC Mass Choir and Abdoulaye Diabate. A couple of pages down, there was Aicha Kone between Ahmad Jamal and the Air Light Swingsters. And Al Green between Al Casey and Al Grey. Also, Alicia Keys between Ali Farka Toure and Alioune Kasse, Alioune Mbaye Nder and Alpha Blondy. On the same page, there's Alphadio Dara, Alvin Queen, Alvin 'Red' Tyler and Alvin Robinson. I'm certain a very large number odd propinquity combinations abound in the database. MG

Funny you should mention Idris. I was listening to Blue Gene when I ripped the LP a few days ago and thinking that I'd never heard him so good; got to confess he's too much of a bopper for my taste. But ALL boppers can do other stuff if they want to, or if they're paid to. (Oh, I'm not sure about Jackie McLean, though , and it's definitely not true of Don Braden, though even he was pretty good on Jimmy Ponder's Christmas album. But Christmas is different; musicians become just people when doing a Christmas album.) Anyway, glad you liked the post. MG

No one's great all the way through. Jug didn't learn the first time, so he got seven years the second time. Many people thought that was excessive. But he ALSO didn't learn from Sonny Stitt's incarceration, which broke up their partnership ten years before he first did time. Well, you've got to take people as they are and accept that what happens is what happens. MG

Thanks for the warning Ubu. Here's what I think will be a plain text version of the long post. I copied it into Notepad and now I'm going to see what it looks like when I copy it back. Sorry, this is quite a long post. For about half a century, I’ve been saying, when asked and maybe on this board, that my all time favourite jazz musician was Grant Green. But for the past few years, Green’s work has become less and less important to me and Gene Ammons’ more and more, so I think I’ll change my plea and say it’s Jug now. As I’ve ripped my collection to hard drives, I’ve been thinking more about his music and the way he was thought about, particularly by the other people who paid - record company bosses and record producers. As far as audiences - bums on seats to use a technical term – were concerned, no tenor saxophonist was so well LOVED by the black community as Gene Ammons. No tenor saxophonist had a sound as beautiful as Jug’s. He could honk, but almost never did. He could whisper sweet nothings in your ear, more sweetly and tenderly even than Ben Webster, and frequently did. He could play Bebop but never sounded at home with it; as if the constraints of Bebop didn’t free him to be himself. Bebop, created in the atmosphere of after hours cutting contests, required you to show your chops. But for players like Ben Webster, Ike Quebec, Grant Green, Gene Ammons and numerous others, who relied on having an expressive and beautiful BIG sound, and liked and needed to play deliberately enough to get their messages through in that wonderful sound, it was a trap. Of course, if you were Charlie Parker, you didn’t mind that playing fast ruined the beautiful sound you got when you played ‘Bird of paradise’. And if you were Sonny Criss, well, fast or slow didn’t make any difference; you could sound fabulous all the time. But musicians like Criss are very rare, so Jug played Gene Ammons; at first when he could, then later, when the record company proprietors found that Gene Ammons playing Gene Ammons sold a shed load of records, more and more frequently. Beneath Jug‘s beautiful big sound, however, was great power; power he could have used to honk the dancehalls full of knocked out audiences. But he seldom wanted to do that. He used his power sparingly, to emphasise the rhythm, to make even slow songs swing, to make everything good for dancers listening as much with their bodies as their ears. And when your lady or gentleman is in your arms, you understand deeply where that timing is leading you. Jug had hits in the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies: ‘Red top’ in 1947; ‘My foolish heart’ in 1950; ‘Jug’ in 1951; ‘Bad bossa nova’ in 1962; ‘The boss is back’ in 1970; ‘Black cat’ in 1971; and ‘My way’ in 1972. Among the Soul Jazz fraternity, only Arthur Prysock managed something similar (though his hits in the forties were as lead singer with the Buddy Johnson band). And Prysock was a singer; that makes a hell of a difference to hit-worthiness. Gene was the son of the great boogie-woogie pianist, Albert Ammons and was born and grew up in Chicago. He got his early music training at DuSable High School, where he studied under Walter Dyett, whose pupils included many of the greatest Chicago musicians. His early experience was with the well thought of band of King Kolax, a trumpet player. In the notes to ‘My buddy’, Sonny Stitt says… “I first met Jug in a club in Detroit. Sawdust on the floor… He was with King Kolax but I was with a big league band, Tiny Bradshaw.” In 1942, Bradshaw’s band was quite a long way from the big league, and Kolax even farther down the pecking order. But that was where you started if you were promising. In 1944, he joined Billy Eckstine’s second new band, after Eckstine left Earl Hines. He ran his own small band, with Miles Davis and Sonny Stitt, for a while after Eckstine disbanded the orchestra and became a solo singer in 1947, then joined Woody Herman for a short period. In 1950, he started a two tenor duo with Sonny Stitt. So for six years, Jug was mostly associated with bands that played bebop. And this affected the way he was perceived by the record companies for which he recorded as a leader, to an extent that hindered what in hindsight we can say was the proper development of his career. And unnecessarily so. He pointed the way in his first session for Mercury, with a hit record of ‘Red top’ (#3 on the R&B charts in 1947). Other material recorded at that and subsequent Mercury dates was usually rather or significantly boppish. But ‘Red top’ was true Gene Ammons material, at THE perfect Jug tempo, lithe and loosely arranged (by George Stone), with no showboating chops on display. But Mercury didn’t give Jug a chance to show his ballad style, either, until his final session, in October 1949. Still, there are plenty of nice blues among his Mercury recordings, fortunately. However, Aristocrat recorded some lovely ballads by Gene, culminating in his whizzo recording with cavernous echo chamber of ‘My foolish heart’ in 1950. Mercury caught up when Gene recorded his last session for the label, and ‘Everything depends on you’ was recorded 4 October 1949, regrettably without the cavernous echo chamber of Universal Studios, deployed to great effect on ‘My foolish heart’. On medium up numbers, Gene was right at home and both Chess and Prestige recorded lots of them. There’s a definitive Jug pace – the tempo of ‘Red top’ – which he made his own. At Prestige, Ammons made quite a lot of recordings, as leader and sideman with Sonny Stitt. Most of them ended up on one of the four ten inch LPs of singles material that the label issued. It’s interesting to reassemble the three volumes of ‘Tenor sax favorites’. Each comes a little closer to a pure Jug album. Although all the material was issued as singles, volume three seems to have been intended as an album, as it was recorded at two closely spaced sessions, and concentrates on the kind of material Jug recorded in the early sixties. With only one chart hit at Prestige (‘Jug’ #10 R&B in 1951 - a bit of a honker), but a good deal of other material that might have been thought of as hit material, Jug left Prestige, to seek more profitable channels. He did a session for Decca, on 24 March 1952, which pretty well got lost. But it was a beautiful session. Jug sounded fabulous and ALL of it was pure Jug music. Gene was backed on that session by Bill Massey (tp), J J Johnson (tb), Sonny Stitt (bar), John Houston (p), Shep Shepard (b) and Bob Wilson (d). Well, nothing happened and Decca, a company that had more or less stopped trying to cater for the black audience by then, never asked him to come back next week, so Gene tried a new Chicago label, United, and did his first session for them on 18 November 1952. It’s wondered by some why Gene went to United, when Chess in Chicago were doing so well. United may have been a new label, owned by a new player, a tailor called Leonard Allen, but it was managed by Lew Simpkins, who’d done a similar job for Lee Egalnik’s labels, Miracle, then Premium. After Premium closed, Simpkins took a good proportion of the Miracle/Premium artists with him to United. So Lew was a man with a track record; he had seen twenty of his productions become R&B chart hits since September 1947; seven of them had occupied the #1 slot for twenty weeks in total. And three of his productions had even got onto the pop top thirty. So, whereas a hit with some other company might sell in the tens of thousands, a hit with Simpkins might sell in the hundreds of thousands. Perhaps even more important; four of those #1 hits had featured jazz musicians: Eddie Chamblee; Tab Smith and Jimmy Forrest. Chess had been successful, with 17 R&B hits since September 1948, but only 3 at #1, and only one other that made the top five. None had entered the pop chart. Chess’ great days as a money-making organisation were in the future. United’s were in the past, though no one knew it. But Simpkins died in 1953 and, though the firm made fine recordings later, it was all in the past. But the SOUND on Gene’s United discs was fantastic! United used the same studios as Chess and had that fabulous echo chamber (I can’t remember whether it was a toilet or a bathroom, the former, I think), but also a very high degree of hifi. Savoy acquired Gene’s United masters (as well as a load of material by The Caravans) and put them together to make a ten inch LP, ‘The golden tone of Gene Ammons’. He did two more sessions for United, the last one after Simpkins’ death, in June 1953, then reported back for duty at Prestige, and remained with Bob Weinstock until his death, though moonlighting to Chess pretty frequently. Weinstock had a new idea for him; to make albums with one long track per side, as Miles Davis had been doing so successfully; ‘Walkin’’ was the first great rent party album. Weinstock specifically wanted Jug to do jam sessions, which Miles hadn’t wanted to do. Gene went along with it – presumably Richard Carpenter – who managed both Miles and Jug – had told him how much he could make out of those kind of albums. The first was ‘Gene Ammons all stars’ PR211, one of the last ten inch LPs Prestige issued. Art and Addison Farmer, Lou Donaldson, Freddie Redd and Kenny Clarke were with him for this. The big number was ‘Woofin’ and tweetin’’ After the changeover to 12 inch LPs, Gene recorded several more jam session albums. The first of them was ‘The happy blues’, the title track was a number at Jug tempo and really suited Ammons. Though Jackie McLean and Art Farmer weren’t truly into this, as everyone else solos first, their playing doesn’t sound too bad. Gene followed it up with six more jam sessions for Prestige, before his first prison sentence began. The last, and best, was ‘Blue Gene’, again featuring a tune at Jug pace; ‘Blue greens and beans’, which became something of a jazz standard. All of the tunes were written by Mal Waldron, the pianist on the session. I think Mal was the pianist most in tune with and stimulating for Jug. None of those jam session albums were totally satisfactory Gene Ammons records. One of the things Gene seemed to like was being in charge. He always seemed at his best when he was firmly in control of proceedings. Well, after all, he was the Boss Tenor. You can hear all the GOOD jam session tracks (except ‘Woofin’ and tweetin’’) on ‘Gene Ammons greatest hits: the fifties’ OJCCD6013. The rest just show how badly mistaken about what Jug should have been doing Weinstock was. None of those albums sold poorly, so Weinstock’s accounts books showed he wasn’t all THAT wrong. When Jug got out of jail in 1960, he went back to Prestige. By that time, Esmond Edwards was the main producer. Edwards was a black guy and KNEW how the black audience felt about jug. Between June 1960 and September 1962, he produced fourteen Ammons albums. In the same period, Jug moonlighted, officially or unofficially, for Pacific Jazz, Argo, Verve and Winley, and made nine other albums. And there is not a dud among all twenty-three of them. I put a thread up about those albums a few years ago. Then he did time again, and was away for seven years. After his return, from November 1969 to March 1974, he made nineteen more albums, all but two for Prestige. Most of the Prestige studio material was produced by Bob Porter, another one who understood Jug very well. After Weinstock sold Prestige to Fantasy, Porter left or was fired and Jug’s studio albums were produced by Ozzie Cadena (very good), Ray Shanklin (a guy who did NOT get Jug), Duke Pearson (pretty good), and Orrin Keepnews (surprisingly magnificent). Seven of the albums from this period are live and are variable; the two done at the Left Bank in Baltimore are (along with ‘Groovin’ with Jug’ from 1961) the best. The two with Dexter Gordon are the worst. Although Jug LIKED bop – he’d grown up with it, after all - and generally played all kinds of material slightly too fast at live gigs, he was truly not fitted for bop. I LURVE Jug. MG Hope that's OK. If not, I'll send you an e-mail. MG

I haven't seen that before. Bloomin' WONDERFUL! Well put together little series of interviews. But one has to stop and think - how can anyone talk about Jug better than he did on sax? Thanks very much, Roberto. MG

Fly Dude Don Covay Jana Cova

Yeah! BOINNNNNG!!!! First score to you Jim. #6 is indeed Louis Jordan. It was recorded about three months after Wild Bill Davis' original had been done and, of course, features Wild Bill too. I got my copy in the Louis Jordan Bear Family box. Expensive but worth every penny. I thought people might guess Wild Bill Davis for #18. And it ain't. The correct version is researchable, however. MG

I have to agree, BUT... Some people are paid to act like Judge Jazz; what are you gonna do - send the buggers down the dole queue? Freedom means people have a right to be wrong, and to be effin' stoopid as well. They probably have a right to be evil bastards too, though consequences for them may well arise. You can avoid listening, but if you did you'd be cutting yourself off from a lot of people you don't want to cut yourself off from. Water off a duck's back is my motto nowadays. MG (At least until next time )

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

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

Discogs is often a very helpful site. See, you didn't need me to tell you that MG

No. The CD of 'Up tight' collates the sessions separately. The 17 October '61 session - with Bish - is on tracks 1-7, the 18th job is tracks 8-14. Personally, I prefer the uncollated stuff for this one (perhaps because I'd had the 'Up tight' LP since the sixties) so, when I ripped the CD, I uncollated it. I think Bob Weinstock (or Esmond Edwards) made good decisions about those sessions. Well, you pays yer money and takes yer choice on the hard drive. MG If you want to give me a preferred running order and send me a nice pic to use as the sleeve, I'll do you one. MG

Sorry Bill, zero correct answers so far. Title of #1 isn't even 'Sheik of Araby boogie" But 21 is 'There will never be another ewe'. Not Jug, but a player fairly well known around these parts. MG

Phew! I was going to put a different track from that King Fleming LP into my BFT. All three of those Argo albums are very nice indeed. MG

Hear hear. I got one from Allen back in '09 and the price (inc postage to UK) was astoundingly good. The album is worth a LOT more than what I paid. MG PS - I used to have the album with Sir Charles Thompson - 'Swing organ' on Columbia, but didn't keep it for many years before I got poor. I managed to get another copy about a year ago and, whereas I'd have agreed earlier that it was geared for radio plays and not allowing much room for stretching out, now I don't think that's important. What I think is important, is: 1 Mr Armstrong never had trouble getting across within 3 minutes in the twenties. 2 Percy's sound - like that of so many other tenor players of his approximate era - damn well speaks for itself. 3 OK, he can do other stuff. Fine. But he did this, too, among not a very great deal of recording, so let's listen to it for what it is, not what it might have been had it been recorded for Prestige or Blue Note. MG

OBO110X - I haven't got Prestige PR 24046 Various Artists - 25 Years Of Prestige, which Jim referenced in the initial post. Well, that's one Jug track of interest I haven't got. Damn, learn something every day. Anyway, I HAVE collated the Mal Waldron 196s session because it always seemed to me to be a big mistake on Bob Weinstock's part to spilt it up over a bunch of other LPs. So I did it in 2008 ago and I've lived with it for eight years. It makes a cracking album! If anyone wants it, I'll happily bung you a copy to download. Now featuring my own amateurish sleeve design MG