I love gorgeous jazz flute albums, and there are so many of them. Off the top of my head, there's Ernie Wilkins's Flutes & Reeds, Harold McNair's Flute & Nut, Buddy Collette's Swinging Shepherds and Swinging Shepherds at the Cinema, Billy Taylor's With Four Flutes, A.K. Salim's Flute Suite, Yusef Lateef's The Golden Flute, The Herbie Mann–Sam Most Quintet, Art Van Damme's Squeezing Art & Tender Flutes and many more. Here's one more for you. [Photo above of Johnnie Pate]
In 1957 and 1958, bassist and arranger Johnnie Pate recorded Swingin' Flute for the Federal label in Chicago. On the November 1957 session, Swinging Shepherd Blues, The Elder, Easy Does It and Five O'clock Whistle were recorded by Lenny Druss (fl), Floyd Morris (p), Wilbur Wynne and Johnnie Wynne (g), Pate (b) and Vernell Fournier (d). Pate had a national hit with Moe Koffman's Swinging Shepherd Blues, which reached No. 17 on Billboard's R&B chart in the spring of 1958.
In March and April 1958, Pretty One, Muskeeta, Satin Doll, Double Promotion Blues, Whistle Blues, Deeno Dantay, Little Pixie and I Can't Go Through Life were recorded by Ronald Wilson (fl,ts) Billy Wallace (p), Wilbur Wynne (g), Johnnie Pate (b) and Donald Clark (d).
Both Lenny Druss and Ronald Wilson were multi-instrumentalists. They played saxophones, oboe, clarinet and flute on recording sessions. Despite playing all of these instruments beautifully, both musicians were fairly obscure and remain so today. Neither Druss nor Wilson have a Wiki page, for example. As for Johnnie Pate, he led trios in Chicago in the early and mid-1950s and eventually crossed over to arranging later in the decade. One of his last albums on bass was James Moody's Last Train From Overbrook in 1958.
Throughout the 1960s, Johnnie arranged for Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions and he arranged pop albums for artists such as Nancy Wilson. In the '70s, he composed and arranged for black action films such as Shaft in Africa (1973), Bucktown (1975), Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976) and Sudden Death (1977).
Having interviewed Johnnie for my WSJ essay on Mayfield's People Get Ready (go here), I can tell you he's a wonderful, elegant guy.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Johnnie Pate's Swingin' Flute here.
JazzWax clips: Here's Swinging Shepherd Blues...
Here's I Can't Go Through Life...
And here's Pretty One...
