JazzWax

Creed Taylor: Shades of Green

Today is Creed Taylor's birthday. He's 92. The fabled producer had a significant influence over the direction of recorded jazz from the mid-1950s on. His first job was at Bethlehem Records in New York in the summer of 1954, attracting talent and overseeing the recording of jazz singers and instrumentalists on the East Coast. Creed's vision was to get Bethlehem to start releasing 12-inch records, which he felt was the future of the LP. [Photo above of Creed Taylor by Chuck Stewart]

A year later he moved to ABC-Paramount, where he met the demand for albums with an emphasis on the kind of jazz he loved—small groups with a great sound. Part of the deal with the label was that Creed's signature would appear on the backs of albums he produced. Am-Par, as the label was known, was fine with that. If an album tanked, he'd take the heat. 

But Creed was willing to take the risk and focused on the up-side. If the album did well, no one could steal credit from him. He simply focused on going after top New York artists he liked and encouraged them to be themselves. The result was a bonanza of superb recordings. Creed then pushed to start his own jazz imprint at Am-Par. Given the green light in 1960, he called the label Impulse! Six releases later, Creed abandoned Impulse for the top A&R job at Verve, which had a much bigger jazz footprint in the marketplace. There, he repeated his success on a much larger scale.

By the mid-1960s, Creed was at A&M, where his success with Wes Montgomery led to his own in-house imprint, CTI. When Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss decided to move the entire operation to Los Angeles, Creed struck a deal to go off on his own with CTI, where he created a completely new style of FM jazz that wasn't acoustic or fusion. At the height of component stereo systems, album covers on CTI and its subsidiaries were notable for their richly colorful photography by Pete Turner and glossy-wet reflective surfaces.

On Creed's birthday, I thought I'd focus on his first album for Am-Par—trombonist Urbie Green's Blues and Other Shades of Green, a brilliant title that was pure Creed (Blues and the Abstract Truth also was Creed's, among many others). Green had recorded for Creed at Bethlehem as a leader and sideman. The album was the second LP issued by Am-Par, #101. The first (#100) was Alec Templeton's Smart Alec, produced by Sid Feller.

Recorded on October 12, 1955, the album featured Green's confident, powdery slide and valve trombone backed by Dave McKenna (p), Jimmy Raney (g), Percy Heath (b) and Kenny Clarke (d). Instead of sitting in his ivory tower, like so many jazz producers at the time, Creed knew New York held a wealth of special jazz talent that was eager to record as leaders. Creed also needed product volume, since he had production quotas to fill in terms of new albums rolling out of Am-Par's printing plants.

So during the day, he'd visit the many Midtown watering holes, like Charlie's Tavern (above), where musicians hung out between recording sessions as sidemen. By befriending them, Creed was able to develop a keen understanding of their art, build trust and harvest enormous talent for Am-Par recording sessions. They were relationships that lasted his entire career, no matter where he was producing.   

Creed loved Green's aggressive but velvety trombone playing. On the album, the quintet recorded Reminiscent Blues, Thou Swell, You Are Too Beautiful, Paradise, Frankie and Johnny, One for Dee, Am I Blue? Dirty Dan, It's Too Late Now, Warm Valley and Limehouse Blues. He also got DJ Al "Jazzbo" Collins at NBC to write the liner notes. As Creed told me during our many conversations, "I was just recording jazz I wanted to listen to in my home, without the long jam-session solos favored by some other producers."

Happy Birthday, Creed!

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Blues & Other Shades of Green here and, on vinyl, here.

JazzWax clip: Here's the entire album in individual tracks. An incredible quintet...

Herbie Steward: Three Horns

Herbie Steward was a crackerjack reed player. He toured and recorded with some of the toughest big bands of the late 1940s, including Artie Shaw, Alvino Rey, George Handy, Jack Teagarden, Ralph Burns and Woody Herman. Steward is probably best know for being one of the saxophones on Herman's original recording of Jimmy Giurffre's composition and arrangement of Four Brothers. He also was on Ralph Burns's Summer Sequence Part IV, which was immortalized by Getz's solo that was so sweet and lyrical that it became a song known as Early Autumn. The "four brothers" were Steward, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and Serge Chaloff.

Throughout the 1950s, Steward recorded and toured extensively with Harry James, who by then had revamped his big band with powerhouse arrangements. When Steward recorded on small-group sessions, he was always a sideman. For whatever reason, Steward didn't record many albums under his own name, probably because he didn't have to. His first leadership album was So Pretty in 1962. His second and perhaps his best was The Three Horns of Herb Steward.

Recorded for Harry Lim's Famous Door label in March 1981, the album featured Steward on alto saxophone, clarinet and soprano saxophone. He was backed by Smith Dobson and Tee Carson on piano (on different tracks), Eddie Duran (g), John Mosher (b) and Eddie Moore (d). [Photo above of Eddie Duran]

The tracklist included Take the "A" Train, Serenata, The Song Is You, Madeleine, Too Close for Comfort, Gone With the Wind, Body and Soul and Herb's Blues. Carson's piano can be heard on Take the "A" Train, Too Close for Comfort and Body and Soul. Steward played soprano saxophone on Too Close for Comfort, clarinet on Body and Soul and alto sax on the rest. In addition to Steward, the standout here is Duran, whose tasteful, confident guitar had been featured extensively with Vince Guaraldi and Cal Tjader.

Among Steward's best known small-group sideman dates were Buddy Childers' Sam Songs (1955), Chet Baker's The James Dean Story (1956), The Four Brothers: Together Again (1957) and The Pepper Adams Quintet (1957).

Given how great The Three Horns is in 1981, one can only imagine how amazing Steward would have sounded had he been featured extensively as a leader during the 1950s and '60s.

Herbie Steward died in 2003.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find The Three Horns as a two-fer here.

JazzWax clips: Here's the full album in individual tracks...

Getz Meets Mulligan in Hi-Fi

There's a cross-dressing quality about the first three tracks on the CD version of Getz Meets Mulligan in Hi-Fi. As you listen to the baritone and tenor saxophones, things seem a little inside out. The baritone has Stan Getz's mildness and the tenor has Mulligan's bouncing attack. In fact, Verve producer Norman Granz recorded those tracks with the two jazz stars on each other's instruments. At first, the switch might seem pointless but it kind of grows on you. Both are lacking slightly, since the baritone doesn't sound nearly as commanding and the tenor doesn't sound as airy or as sweet. But somehow it works as a novelty on Let's Fall in Love, Anything Goes and Too Close for Comfort, forcing you to hear the instruments differently. Or rather, you wind up listening for the Getz feel on the baritone and the Mulligan feel on the tenor.

By the fourth track—That Old Feeling—Getz and Mulligan are on their signature horns for the remainder of the album. Getz is roosted on the high end of the tenor's register and soaring off the top while Mulligan bops along with barking-seal accents on the baritone. That's when the album's pairing of these two giants gels. And how could it not? If they were playing wooden recorders they'd sound great. After Lester Young, they were among the smoothest, most lyrical saxophone swingers of the 1950s. 

Recorded in October 1957, the mono hi-fi version was released in November '57 but the stereo version didn't come out until 1960, when more jazz record-buyers owned systems with two separate speakers that maximized the wider sound. As Tom Fine noted in an email to me, Granz likely added echo to the mix to simulate stereo. The mono version in 1957 appeared at the peak of the high-fidelity craze that began earlier in the '50s and just before stereophonic sound caught on in '59 and '60.

A little history: Shortly after pop albums began appearing on 12-inch albums in 1955, they quickly replaced the 10-inch disc. Better playback equipment was manufactured and marketed to the public as all-in-one, hi-fi consoles. Albums on the larger format were issued with improved audio production and more dynamic instrument placement. They were meant to sound better on these improved units. Album covers proudly exclaimed that the music inside was "in hi-fi" or they used a half-dozen other terms to say the same thing, including "orthophonic sound," "living sound" and "360 sound." Getz Meets Mulligan in Hi-Fi let you hear the two saxophones coming through your console's speaker more distinctly and seemingly in two different places.

As for the three tracks with Getz and Mulligan, Granz revealed in early liner notes that Mulligan was responsible for the swap. In his notes, Granz wrote: "Mulligan suggested at one juncture that they trade horns, so you find that on side one of the album that Getz plays baritone and Mulligan plays tenor; and on the other side they reversed the procedure so that each played his primary instrument—Stan the tenor and Gerry the baritone. The session, by the way, produced a second album, which will be released shortly after this one, so there will be something for fans to look forward to as further minutes of this history meeting."

From these notes, it would seem that the earliest release came on two 10-inch albums, but it's hard to imagine why the 10-inch format would have been used in 1957. As for the rhythm section, Granz writes they were selected by Getz "with Mulligan's approval." They are: Lou Levy (p), Ray Brown (b) and Stan Levey (d).

Stan Getz died in 1991; Gerry Mulligan died in 1996.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Getz Meets Mulligan in Hi-Fi (Verve) here.

JazzWax clip: Here's the full album...