Gene Ammons

[Late]

That must've been quite the gig.

[Joe]

7 hours ago, Late said:

The Jug-a-thon persists! Okay, currently listening to this. You are so RIGHT. These two albums are Jug in top form. This comp is highly recommended, for both newbies and jaded enthusiasts. But the CD cover art is horrible! The typographer should've been fired. Why make something new and sub-par when the original jackets could've been used?

Bam. Two EXCELLENT Jug albums. Light a fire, pour the cognac.

Nice; I'd never seen the original art for these. 

Let us now praise Patti Bown for her contributions to the groove.

[Late]

Yes.

I've never heard this one:

OH — back to Ammons for minute — I just read last night that there are two different OJCs of Boss Tenor: the original 1987 U.S. compact disc edition in mono (manufactured by SANYO), and then a reissue (also 1987) in stereo. What?! Is the stereo edition re-channeled stereo? Or do both a mono and stereo copy of the album exist?

 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

"Boss Tenor" was recorded in 1960, so most certainly a stereo master tape. By 1960, Van Gelder's mono masters were fold downs of the stereo masters. I have the later RVG CD of "Boss Tenor", which I kept after doing an A/B to the old OJC. I don't remember which one I had so I can't help you there.

1960 original release LP cover...

[Late]

Yeah, my OJC is in stereo, so now I'm thinking a true mono edition (perhaps) doesn't exist. Either way, this album was one of Rudy's best efforts. Beautiful sound. I've always wanted to hear the XRCD of this title.

[Late]

Listening to the beautiful ballad "A Stranger In Town" from this album when I learned of Wayne Shorter's passing. Fitting somehow—from one tenor to another.

[Late]

Listened to the entirety of this album today:

What a badass album. But I hate the compact disc cover art.

Jug played two weeks at The Plugged Nickel upon his release from prison. This album was made not too long after. Apparently he received a standing ovation at the legendary Chicago club.

Buster Williams is a little too upfront in Rudy's mix, but a person really can't complain when it's Buster Williams who's laying down the bassline. Junior Mance also brought his A-game for the gig.

[jazzbo]

Junior Mance played with Jug near the beginning of his career for a while. He and Gene were a synched machine.

[Late]

35 minutes ago, jazzbo said:

Junior Mance played with Jug near the beginning of his career for a while. He and Gene were a synched machine.

Agreed. I guess they played together as early as 1947, but I don't think I've heard those recordings. I've listened to some of Ammons' 78 recordings, but not closely enough. There's a Prestige disc, which you probably know, that does a good job of compiling a lot of that 78 work. I don't own it, but I've listened to it on YouTube. 👍 These days I'm in the process of replacing a number of CDR's with real copies of Ammons albums. Kind of late in the game it seems, but why not.

What's fun is that I'm going through a Jug Renaissance listening period! I used to not appreciate his soloing when I was younger. These days, I really value the simplicity, depth of sound, and lack of strain in Jug's playing.

[jazzbo]

Prestige and Jug came together a few years later I believe than '47 -- '50 or '51. I have the three Chronogical Classics Ammons discs and can recommend them--they aren't hard to find. They reissue 78s from Mercury, Aristocrat, Chess, then Prestige and a few others. Mance is all over the very first one. Ammons was in all sorts of settings, quartet, quintet, sextet, backing singers, big ensembles. He paid his dues and delivered.

Edited March 4, 2023 by jazzbo

[mikeweil]

12 hours ago, jazzbo said:

Prestige and Jug came together a few years later I believe than '47 -- '50 or '51. 

The first session for Birdland/Prestige was held March 5, 1950.

[jazzbo]

Thanks, I hadn't yet opened up that Classics cd to check.

Edited March 4, 2023 by jazzbo

[sonnymax]

On 2/28/2023 at 9:55 AM, bresna said:

... I have the later RVG CD of "Boss Tenor" ...

One of my favorite tenor titles. I prefer the 2017 Analogue Productions SACD or the 1997 JVC XRCD.

[Late]

2 hours ago, sonnymax said:

I prefer the 2017 Analogue Productions SACD or the 1997 JVC XRCD.

I've heard neither, but would very much like to. 👍

On 2/28/2023 at 7:34 AM, Late said:

Yeah, my OJC is in stereo, so now I'm thinking a true mono edition (perhaps) doesn't exist.

After further internet sleuthing, my conclusion [corrections welcome] is that the first 1987 OJC of Boss Tenor was a mono fold-down of the stereo master. Not sure why that made it out onto the market. It was soon replaced by a stereo edition OJC, which notably states "STEREO" on the CD spine.

In a parallel case, the OJC of Blue Gene has a special note, in caps-lock, on the back of the CD:

"ALL PREVIOUS EDITIONS OF THIS ALBUM HAVE BEEN MONAURAL. HOWEVER, NEWLY DISCOVERED TRUE STEREO MASTER TAPES MAKE POSSIBLE THE PREMIER RELEASE OF THESE SESSIONS IN STEREO."

Was Rudy perhaps making mono fold-downs at the time (late 50's/early 60's) for the listening market of the day? I don't know enough about Van Gelder's transition from mono to stereo recording.

[Late]

Dusty Groove currently has this title for under $5. Required listening in a Jug-A-Thon. 

[HutchFan]

3 minutes ago, Late said:

Dusty Groove currently has this title for under $5. Required listening in a Jug-A-Thon. 

Oh yeah.  This listener agrees 100%.     

 

[danasgoodstuff]

Veen listening to a lot of Jug recently, early or late, big bands or small, doesn't even matter much to me.

[danasgoodstuff]

So, what's the story on the Nothing But Soul/House Warmin'/Heavy Sax session appearing on different label with different album titles and different names for the tunes and sometimes credited to Ammons and sometimes to Howard McGhee?

And why did Jug and Red Garland never record to together when they were both on Prestige?

[Big Beat Steve]

58 minutes ago, danasgoodstuff said:

So, what's the story on the Nothing But Soul/House Warmin'/Heavy Sax session appearing on different label with different album titles and different names for the tunes and sometimes credited to Ammons and sometimes to Howard McGhee?

Was on a Ammons listening trip a while ago too, so my curiosity was piqued by your post, and I checked your titles on Discogs. So it lookls like the "House Warmin'" LP on Argo credited to Howard McGhee was the original release. An odd one - though. No line-up on the sleeve, no Gene Ammons mentioned anywhere (maybe omitted because he was doing time at the time?) 

"Nothin But Soul" - the 1969 reissue - was on a budget label that looked budget-ish (Crown lookalike?) from a thousand miles away, and anything with artist credits can happen there. My guess is it was credited to Gene Ammons  because after his prison release and signing by Prestige he was fairly hot at the time - at least comparatively speaking vs. Howard McGhee.
"Heavy Sax" on Olympic (Everest!) from 1974 looks just as budgetish and may have been credited for similar reasons. Howard McGhee had nowhere near the LP presence on the jazz market that Ammons had in the late 60s/early 70s during his final years. This reissue must have been distributed widely - I distinctly remember seeing it in the shops way back, but never picked it up because the back cover blurb did not tell anything about where or when it came from exactly. And Everest (or its clones) was notorious (at least in my impression) for mixing its musical contents haphazardly. 

This reshuffling of album titles and covers (and leader credits) does not strike me as particularly odd - just highly annonying. And confusing for the collector - when you're in the receord shop this kind of mixups makes it hard to remember in each and every case what you have and what not. Happened to me more than once. A blatant example: Last spring I pulled a Woody Herman LP titled "All Star Session" on the Accord (huh??) label from the special offer bin of our local #1 brick-and-mortar record shop. Nondescript cover artwork and liner notes, but the presence of Eddie Costa mentioned on the back cover told me this must come from a time frame of interest to me. So I took it home, only to discover upon checking that this in fact was an 80s reissue of the 1959 "At The Roundtable" LP on Roulette - of which I already had picked up two copies from the Special Offers bin at different moments way earlier; a stereo copy with the original cover artwork (but on the Forum label - an early 1961 reissue) AND a mono copy on the (UK) World Record Club label (with a totally different cover and no mentioning of the Roundtable club). Oh well ... another one for the fleamarket vinyl crate ... 

Edited 3 hours ago by Big Beat Steve

[Dan Gould]

Any way you slice it House Warmin' is a great record.  I did in fact purchase s second copy once - the Nothin But Soul issue - at a record convention but it wasn't overpriced and as memory serves, I think it sounded better than my first copy, which was one of those black and white Argo reissues.

As for why no Ammons mention it seems pretty obvious to me that he was a Prestige recording artist and this was Argo.  Pretty sure that after he helped make Prestige such a successful label that Weinstock kept him as a contracted performer.

[Big Beat Steve]

4 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

As for why no Ammons mention it seems pretty obvious to me that he was a Prestige recording artist and this was Argo.  Pretty sure that after he helped make Prestige such a successful label that Weinstock kept him as a contracted performer.

Yes, this does make sense if his Prestige contract was maintained even during his prison sentence in the 60s. 

[mhatta]

I have the Japanese CD release. The personnel besides Ammons and McGhee seem to be Jake Fisher (g), Barney Richmond (b), Willie Mashburn (ds), and Waco (bongos). There's no information available about the sidemen, but they were likely Chicago locals active in the Soul, R&B, or Blues scene. Since it was released on Argo under the name Howard McGhee & The Blazers, perhaps there was a plan to market it similarly to The Aces (and not really about Ammons & McGhee?)