Music Minus One Records

[JSngry]

I've had these play-along records since high school. A rhythm section laying down a coupleof chouruses of standards for you to blow over. Occasionally the accompanists step ot for a solo.

Who are these accompanists?

On Volume One, it's Nat Pierce, Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton, & Osie Johnson. Volume Two has Don Abney, Jimmy Rainey, Oscar Pettiford, and Kenny Clarke. With Volume 3, there's Abney, Mundell Lowe, Wilbur Ware, & Bobby Donaldson.

I also have a MMO thing called FOR SAXES ONLY, which is a sax section of Hilton Jefferson, Bob Wilbur, Jerome Richardson, Seldon Powell, and Danny Bank playing Wilbur's charts with Dick Wellstood, George Duvivier, and Panama Francis. There's solos on this one too. I also remember Mal Waldron leading a few, and as a perusal of THIS SITE shows, some "name brands" are to be found on thees records.

So, so these sessions make the discographies or not?

Thanks in advance.

[Philip]

They are in Lord and also the Goldmine Collectible Jazz Records 2nd ed of 1994.

[mikeweil]

Bruyninckx lists them too.

There were some on Signal, later bought and reissued, but only the version with the horn soloist, on Savoy.

[JSngry]

Thanks to all!

[JSngry]

Thanks to all!

[Larry Kart]

I have an Aebersold Music Minus One-type record with Jimmy Raney -- as I recall the deal is that you can play duets with Raney, who can be made to sound like he's on one channel -- and it's some of the best Raney around.

[Christiern]

In the mid 1970s, when I was a regular reviewer at Stereo Review, one of my monthly review assignments included an album by a new singer Cattina Savina (I think that was the name). Her name was new to me, but there were impressive players listed among the accompanists. Others could not, according to the notes, be named "for contractual reasons," but there was no such problem with two reed players who actually would have been better off remaining anonymous.

The vocalist and two reed players were so bad that I had to wonder what on earth made someone decide to record them, and the fact that the rhythm section was was so contrastingly professional compounded my wonderment. Well, you guessed it, I finally figured it out: Ms. Savina and the two wretched reed players were performing to Music-Minus-One recordings, and the members of the rhythm section who could not be named were, in fact, all deceased (incl. Oscar Pettiford and Osie Johnson).

Other than that it had the same name as a major book publishing house, I don't recall the label, but I think this was its sole release. MMO was, of course, a part of Inner City Records, which had a small but interesting catalogue.

Edited December 5, 2003 by Christiern

[Rooster_Ties]

Thanks for posting this, Chris. GREAT story!!!

[brownie]

I have an Aebersold Music Minus One-type record with Jimmy Raney -- as I recall the deal is that you can play duets with Raney, who can be made to sound like he's on one channel -- and it's some of the best Raney around.

And there's another Jimmy Raney Music Minus One album where he plays with a tenor sax player by the name of Stu Berry who happens to be Stan Getz! Hal McKusick also plays on that MMO.

Hal McKusick by the way recorded several MMO albums that I have never seen listed in discographies.

[king ubu]

I've got a Lee Konitz MMO LP, gotta check it out again. He plays some classics and standars, if I remember right. Basin Street Blues and such stuff. But I cannot really remember. Gotta dig this LP out.

ubu