Extra-large jazz artists typically wound up with colorful nicknames that suited their silhouettes. But what if we were to assemble an ensemble of musicians whose names fit the bill, forgetting about whether or not they were contemporaries or even that portly? Here's my list of entries for our playful Giants of Jazz sextet, complete with a vocalist and arranger...
Fats Navarro (trumpet)
Tubby Hayes (tenor)
Porky Cohen (trombone)
Fats Waller (piano)
Chubby Jackson (bass)
Big Sid Catlett (drums)
Big Joe Turner (vocals)
Neal Hefti (arranger)
If you have names of other musicians who belong in this "big" band, please add them to the Comments section. [Pictured above: Chubby Jackson]
Among Mundell Lowe's finest albums (and there are many) are the two TV Action Jazz LPs he recorded in 1959 and 1960. Most jazz fans think of Mundell solely as a polished guitarist in both club and studio settings. In fact, Mundell also is a terrific swinging arranger, and the TV Action Jazz albums bear this out.
The first one, recorded in February 1959, was called TV Action Jazz! The album featured Donald Byrd (tp), Jimmy Cleveland (tb), Herbie Mann (fl,ts), Tony Scott (cl,bar), Eddie Costa (p,vib), Mundell Lowe (g), Don Payne (b) and Ed Shaughnessy (d). The album's concept was to take the hottest detective shows on TV at the time and create swinging arrangements of their themes. Quite a challenge considering how hip these themes already were.
The track list will bring back memories for those who remember what TV was like in 1959. On the album are jazz interpretations of the themes to Peter Gunn, Mike Hammer, Perry Mason, 77 Sunset Strip, M Squad, The Thin Man, Naked City and Fallout!
Among the highlights are the late-night ballad treatment of the Naked City theme and the rapid-fire The Thin Man. Throughout, Mundell offers juicy, thick guitar lines, with nifty solos by each of the players, particularly trombonist Jimmy Cleveland and Tony Scott on baritone sax.
The second album, simply called Themes From... was recorded in June 1960. The personnel shifted slightly: Clark Terry (tp); Willie Dennis, Urbie Green and Frank Rehak (tb); Rod Levitt (b-tb); Phil Bodner (reeds); Eddie Costa (p,vib); Mundell Lowe (g); George Duvivier (b) and Ed Shaughnessy (d). By featuring Clark Terry on solo trumpet and beefing up the trombone section, the second volume has an even more detective-y feel. For some reason, trombones best express the hip, cool nature of TV's private eyes.
The tracks on the second album are themes to Tightrope, Hawaiian Eye, Mr. Lucky, The Untouchables, Bourbon Street Beat, Detectives, Markham and Johnny Staccato. Of particular note are Tightrope, Mr. Lucky and Markham.
As Mundell said in the first album's liner notes:
"One thing that impressed me strongly while I was doing this is what a pleasure it is to watch a TV show on which the music has been composed and recorded in this country. There's such a difference not only in the quality of the playing but the writing and recording, too."
Or put differently, it was great back then to flip on the tube and hear jazz themes behind the shows. What's particularly interesting about these two albums is that they are East Coast interpretations of West Coast TV-studio themes. All of Mundell's charts have a New York feel and all featured largely East Coast musicians. Very snappy stuff.
JazzWax note: For Part 1 of my interview series with Mundell Lowe, go here.
JazzWax tracks: Now for the big surprise. Are you sitting down? Good. Because instead of shelling out upward of $40 for the CD that combines both albums, I noticed that the first album, TV Action Jazz!, is now at iTunes for just $5.99. But if you want the second volume, too, both are available together for $15.99 on Complete TV Action Jazz (LoneHill) here.
JazzWax clip:Here's Nelson Riddle's Naked City Theme, to give you a sense of how cool this song is. Mundell Lowe's arrangement, by contrast, is slower and moodier, and likely based on the show's end theme as credits rolled...
One of pianist Horace Silver's most haunting and sophisticated compositions is Ecaroh, a song that defied convention and gravity, for that matter. The song packs an eclectic punch, shifting restlessly between major and minor keys and employing several brooding rhythms that build with drama and mystery. There's the mildly Latin introduction, which halts abruptly and springs into swing before resolving in funk. The song's urgent motifs never seem to repeat, and yet they do, in variation. [Photo by Francis Wolff]
To me, Ecaroh (pronounced EK-ah-row] sounds like someone running through the interior of a cloister, with each sanctuary different and no clear path out of the monastic setting. Or a giant wooden puzzle with different shaped pieces that are impossible to replace once you remove them. Which makes you wonder how Silver ever managed to compose this intricate and singular work.
Interestingly, Silver recorded Ecaroh only twice—once in 1952 and again in 1956. It's unclear why he never bothered to revisit the song with his own quintet. Then again, given his prolific composing career, he perhaps didn't feel the need to or didn't think to bother.
Ecaroh was first recorded by Silver in October 1952 in a trio setting for Blue Note with bassist Curly Russell and drummer Art Blakey. Despite the year, what Silver records isn't bebop. It's something else—something more complex and introspective. There are touches of Baptist gospel here along with the tautness of mambo and temperament of swing. Ultimately, Ecaroh's density and purpose would pave the way for hard bop in the years that followed. But in 1952, it clearly was way ahead of its time from a harmonic and chromatic standpoint.
The second version of Ecaroh was recorded in May 1956 for The Jazz Messengers, a Columbia album released under the direction of producer George Avakian. The group on this date featured trumpeter Donald Byrd, saxophonist Hank Mobley, Silver on piano, bassist Doug Watkins and drummer Art Blakey. This later version has a more fully formed hard bop feel, with Silver building drama percussively and Blakey adding press rolls and random stick patterns. It also struts harder, with rooster-like insistence.
Silver shed some light on the song's title in his autobiography Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty:
"When I gigged around Connecticut with some of the other teenage musicians, we got into a kick of calling each other by our names spelled backward... I was Ecaroh. Later, when I started my own music publishing company, I named it Ecaroh Music Inc."
His thinking behind the song and how he came to write it remain a mystery. Nevertheless, the two versions are fun to compare. For example, listen to Silver's left hand in the 1952 introduction function almost like a one-note stride player, hitting bass notes like a metronome. On the 1956 version, Silver hits a tight chord to create a Morse code pattern, countering Blakey's drums.
Without belaboring the point, Ecaroh is a fascinating song with a house of mirrors feel that charms and captivates as it pulls you in. Just trying to figure out whether sections repeat will keep you busy for hours.
JazzWax tracks:Ecaroh appears on two albums: Horace Silver (Blue Note) and The Jazz Messengers (Columbia). They can be found at iTunes or here and here. Both are must-own albums.
JazzWax clips: Here are the two versions of Ecaroh. First, here's the 1952 trio version...
And here's the version from The Jazz Messengers in 1956...
Jazz versions of rock hits usually bomb. In most cases, the results sound like music played at a wedding reception, convention center or worse. But in a handful of cases, the union worked, especially when the rock tune, the arrangement and the instrumentalist's feel came together. Readers certainly have favorites of their own. Please add them to this post's Comments section so all can read and share. [Photo by Diane Arbus]
Here are eight of my favorite lesser-known jazz covers of rock hits:
Light My Fire—Wynton Kelly. From Last Trio Session (1968), featuring Paul Chambers (b) and Jimmy Cobb (d).
I Want to Hold Your Hand—Grant Green. From I Want to Hold Your Hand (1965), featuring Hank Mobley (ts) Larry Young (org) and Elvin Jones (d).
Up, Up and Away—Sonny Criss. From Up, Up and Away (1967), featuring Cedar Walton (p), Tal Farlow (g), Bob Cranshaw (b) and Lennie McBrowne (d).
Mother's Little Helper—Joe Pass. From The Stones Jazz (1966), with Tommy Pederson (tb), Vern Friley (v-tb), Bill Perkins (ts), Victor Feldman (vib), Herbie Harper (p), Dennis Budimir (g), Chuck Berghofer (b), Frank Capp (d) and Bob Florence (arr,cond).
Mr. Tambourine Man—Gerry Mulligan. From If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em (1965), featuring Pete Jolly (p), John Gray (g), Jimmy Bond (b) and Hal Blaine (d).
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is—Grant Green. From Visions (1971), featuring Wooten (vib), Emmanuel Riggins (el-p), Chuck Rainey (el-b), Idris Muhammad (d) and Ray Armando (cga).
So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright—Paul Desmond. From Bridge Over Troubled Water (1969), featuring Herbie Hancock (el-p) Sam Brown (g), Ron Carter (b), Joao Palma, Bill Lavorgna (d), Airto Moreira (perc), plus horns and strings, and Don Sebesky (arr).
End of the World—Bud Shank and Chet Baker. From California Dreamin' (1966), featuring an unknown a choir and band.
Jazz piano in the seven years immediately after World War II took several major twists and turns in its development. Art Tatum was the dominant force through the 1940s and into the 1950s. Like Tatum, Erroll Garner and Nat Cole were entertainers and showmen, bringing polish, wit and vibrancy to the instrument. Then came the brooders—Bud Powell, Al Haig and John Lewis—who as bebop artists gave the instrument a new roiling sophistication. Thelonious Monk was even more introspective, while Oscar Peterson at the dawn of the 1950s extended Tatum's mantra that more is, well, more. But perhaps the pianist who most changed the instrument's personality in the early 1950s—and the sound of jazz going forward, for that matter—was Ahmad Jamal [pictured].
Like the new glass-and-steel architecture being conceived in the early 1950s, Jamal's approach was about light, transparency and the esthetics of simplicity. From his first trio recordings in 1951 for Okeh, Jamal exhibited a minimalist approach with hands that tickled the keys rather than beat them into submission. By his Chamber Music of the New Jazz in 1952, Jamal was fast becoming as famous for the notes he didn't play as the ones he did. Jamal's gift was the import of suggestion. Jamal purposefully left out notes under the assumption that listeners were sophisticated enough to hear what wasn't there. Or he'd drop out momentarily so you could hear the snap of Vernel Fournier's brushes on the snare or the pulse of Israel Crosby's bass.
Interestingly, Jamal played the way Frank Sinatra would sing a short time later at Capitol, swinging behind and in front of the beat, adding only what was needed and nothing more to engage the listener. Miles Davis picked up on Jamal's quiet intensity. By listening intently to Jamal and understanding fully the impact of what he was creating, Davis altered his own way of playing, allowing for air and space to boost the music's tension and drama. Davis eventually hired Red Garland to mirror Jamal's sound and phrasing.
Jamal's greatest period was between 1956 and 1962—years in which he recorded 12 albums, many of them live club sessions. Mosaic has just assembled all of these albums in a nine-CD box set The Complete Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions 1956-62. The remastered sound quality and music taken as a whole is as emotionally rewarding as rediscovering a virgin waterfall in a forest. To listen to these recordings in chronological order brings a new and finer appreciation of Jamal (and the trio sound) and how much he transformed jazz and influenced a generation of pianists.
Like you, I've owned a number of these Jamal recordings individually. But they've always existed for me as separate planets. What you have in this box set is the entire Jamal solar system, and the remastering and in-depth liner notes by drummer Kenny Washington are passionate and comprehensive. Listening to the recordings one after the next makes the 136 tracks seem like one long Jamal album, especially if you import them into iTunes. Each tune is more provoking and seductive than the next, and the set is seamless. Best of all, Jamal's sound echoes in your head long after the music is off.
Highlights include 23 previously unissued tracks. There also are dozens of standards that are given the Jamal touch. These include Gal in Calico (from Portfolio of Ahmad Jamal), It's You Or No One (from Live at Alhambra), Falling in Love With Love (from At the Blackhawk) and What Is This Thing Called Love, in which Jamal moves along as quiet as a mouse, only to erupt suddenly in a series of Gatling gun chords. Also included is Ahmad Jamal at the Penthouse, a delicate trio-and-strings date.
One of the big revelations for me during this fresh journey through Jamal's Argo works was just how fascinating and remarkable a drummer Vernel Fournier was. His commanding use of the brushes was truly unparalleled and his sound provided a perfect frame for Jamal's swinging lyricism. Fournier was firm but always breathy, his wire wisps hitting the drums like the determined swish of a horse's tail.
I remember seeing Fournier in 1986, at Barry Harris' Jazz Cultural Theater in New York. He was accompanying pianist Chris Anderson, with Victor Sproles on bass (Lodi Carr was singing, if I recall). On a break I went over to introduce myself but there were too many people milling about, making it difficult to get through and past the tables and chairs. For a moment, the small crowd parted slightly and I caught sight of Fournier sitting at his drums fixing one of the heads. He looked up at me and I looked at him. I simply pointed at him and mouthed, "The Pershing." At which point Fournier, without changing his inviting expression, responded by hitting his snare and cymbal with his brushes the way he did on those live Ahmad Jamal albums. Fournier was all class.
JazzWax tracks:The Complete Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions 1956-62 (Mosaic) features nine CDs, a 24-page booklet with photos and discography. The limited-edition box can be found here.
Marc Myers writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and is author of "Anatomy of 55 More Songs," "Anatomy of a Song," "Rock Concert: An Oral History" and "Why Jazz Happened." Founded in 2007, JazzWax has won three Jazz Journalists Association awards.
