Savoy, Ozzie Cadena, Newark, Organ Bands

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

This occurred to me, thinking about Ozzie Cadena and reading the 2006 interview with him that Larry Kart posted.

So, we’re in the late fifties. Jimmy Smith had proved that there was a big market for the jazz organ. And yet the jazz record companies got onto this rather slowly.

Blue Note recorded no other organists, apart from Ed Swanston on a 45 session with Ike Quebec, until the sixties.

King recorded Shirley Scott, with Jaws, in 1956 and 1957, then Roulette/Roost and finally hit Prestige in 1958. She also had a date that year with Joe Newman on Coral.

Prestige recorded Austin Mitchell and Wild Bill Davis with Arnett Cobb in early 1959; and Jack McDuff with Gator Tail and Bill Jennings later that year. Johnny “Hammond” Smith first recorded for Prestige that year, also.

Riverside recorded Mel Rhyne with Wes in 1959.

Atlantic, Pacific Jazz, Contemporary, Argo/Cadet, Verve – zilch.

When you look at it like that, it’s a pretty paltry showing for something new and commercially very attractive. And there was Savoy, with a producer who (admittedly later) proved he knew all there was to know about making great organ records, in the centre of the action, with Larry Young, Freddie Roach, Lou Bennett, Rhoda Scott, Gloria Coleman, Don Patterson and others I can’t think of just at the moment, playing on their doorstep. Many have cast aspersions on his musical taste but, to my knowledge, no one ever said that Herman Lubinsky was uninterested in making commercial recordings; indeed, he’s on record somewhere (I think the Ruppli discography) as having stated that his motive for forming Savoy in 1939 was to make money out of black folks.

So, why didn’t it happen?

My own theory is that Lubinsky always relied on having A&R men who knew the music very much better than he. And that Kenny Clarke, who was also employed by Savoy as an A&R man of some sort, was pretty keenly focused on bop, not the kind of organ music that was around in the locality. So it was missed out and, come the early sixties, Lubinsky closed down the jazz and R&B sides of his business and just kept going with Fred Mendelson and Gospel music. But the lack of a record company in the immediate vicinity (Market Street, where Savoy was located, crosses Halsey Street, where the organ rooms were) was, I feel, to the detriment of musicians like Rhoda Scott, Gloria Coleman and Lou Bennett.

Does anyone who knew the main people involved have any other ideas about this?

MG

[Swinging Swede]

Your question is interesting, but just one remark: Kenny Clarke moved to Europe in 1956 AFAIK, so I don't think he was a factor.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Your question is interesting, but just one remark: Kenny Clarke moved to Europe in 1956 AFAIK, so I don't think he was a factor.

Ah, I thought it was later. Thanks.

Something else, then.

MG

[Dan Gould]

Being too lazy to pull out the Mosaic, when did Pacific Jazz start to record Paul Bryant with Curtis Amy, or Charles Kynard?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Being too lazy to pull out the Mosaic, when did Pacific Jazz start to record Paul Bryant with Curtis Amy, or Charles Kynard?

Paul Bryant 1960

Groove Holmes 1961

Charles Kynard 1963

Billy Larkin 1964

MG