At the annual Ystad Jazz Festival in Ystad, Sweden, it's business as usual. Since we are restricted in most places in the U.S. from public gatherings, many jazz clubs are closed and concerts have been postponed or cancelled. So Itta Johnson and my friends in Sweden sent along a link so you can enjoy what you're missing.
Over the weekend, I'll feature links to the entire festival thus far. For now, here's a 1 1/2 hour concert from yesterday evening at Ystads Teater with Scott Hamilton on saxophone backed by the marvelous Jan Lundgren on piano, Hans Backenroth on bass and Kristian Leth on drums, featuring Ulf Wakenius on guitar. Thank you, Itta, Jan and everyone else there. Sending much love...
Roy Ayers and Maceo Parker are two of my favorite jazz-soul and jazz-funk artists. Both recently released new albums. And both musicians started out as jazz players but invented new R&B forms during their careers—Ayers as a neo-soul vibraphonist and Parker as a bump-and-funk saxophonist. Their new albums are moody, funky and update earlier forms. Ayers is probably best known for his 1976 album Everybody Loves the Sunshine. Parker emerged in the 1960s as a saxophone soloist for James Brown and then in the 1970s with Parliament-Funkadelic. [Photo above of Roy Ayers courtesy of Roy Ayers media]
Ayers's new album, Jazz Is Dead 2, is a followup to Jazz Is Dead 001, released earlier this year on the Jazz Is Dead label. Both albums were recorded in partnership with A Tribe Called Quest DJ-producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad and R&B and hip-hop composer-producer Adrian Younge, who launched the label. The music is jazz-beat driven but has a future-forward soul feel. Improvisation drifts in and out, and nothing is distinct. It's a collage of hipness but clearly nestled in the jazz family.
The earlier compilation, Jazz Is Dead 001, paired Muhammad and Younge with artists such as Ayers, Gary Bartz, Joao Donato, Doug Carn, Marcos Valle and others. Jazz Is Dead 2 is a perfect marriage between two guys lodged in the outer limits of neo-soul and Ayers, the father of the genre. Don't get worked up over the title of the albums. Jazz is very much alive. These guys are just pushing it into new territory.
Maceo Parker's Soul Food: Cooking With Maceo (Funk Garage) is his first studio album in eight years. Parker unleashes a bag of funky tricks on totemic songs by Dr. John, the Meters and Allen Toussaint, as well as Aretha Franklin and Prince. Standouts include Allen Toussaint's Yes We Can Can, Gene McDaniels's Compared to What, Dr. John's Right Place, Wrong Time and Philemon Hou's Grazing in the Grass. Parker gets plenty of singing time in and wailing on his alto saxophone. A jazz-funk update.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Roy Ayers's Jazz Is Dead 2 (Jazz Is Dead) here. And you'll find Maceo Parker's Soul Food: Cooking With Maceo (Funk Garage) here.
JazzWax clips:Here's Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, featuring Roy Ayers, on Synchronize Vibration...
Guitarist Pat Martino cooked, especially in clubs. He's probably best known for his version of Sunny, recorded at New York's Folk City on his Live! album in 1972. Back in 2014, High Tone Records came into possession of previously unreleased live recordings made between 1968 and '69 at Club 118 in Louisville, Ky. Entitled Young Guns, the album featured Gene Ludwig (org), Pat Martino (g) and Randy Gelispie (d). These guys sounded like a suddenly lit pack of matches. [Photo above of Pat Martino courtesy of Pat Martino]
Back in the '60s and beyond, Martino always had a proper balance of soul and swing needed to play in organ combos authentically. Born in Philadelphia, he recorded during this early period with organists Don Patterson, Brother Jack McDuff and Richard "Groove" Holmes as well as saxophonists Willis Jackson, John Handy, Sonny Stitt, Charles McPherson, Eric Kloss and Junior Cook. All of these guys could burn.
Placed in a club, though, Martino easily caught fire. He used his guitar as a swinging whip, cracking it as he tore into blues and standards. As Young Guns demonstrates, Martino could stir up the scene with long, impeccable runs and give the organ a run for its money in the funky grease department.
Ludwig and Gelispie were both veterans of club circuits, where they had to bring their A-game when soloing and keep the temperature high when backing the soloist. You sense that studio recordings for all three musicians helped pay the bills while clubs were about passion and a free fall into another realm. Each track on this album has an energy level that raises hairs. [Publicity photo above of Gene Ludwig, right, and Brother Jack McDuff]
The album's fidelity is short on studio quality, but the microphone and tape recorder used were certainly good enough to capture the magic these guys were regularly capable of in public. They treat the three standards—Who Can I Turn To, Watch What Happens and Close Your Eyes—as a contact sport. The solos are extraordinary. [Photo above of Randy Gelispie]
John Coltrane's Mr. P.C. and Wes Montgomery's Road Song are loaded with groove and equally thrilling. The same goes for the remaining two songs—Sam Sack and Colossus. Martino digs in on solos and swings with a muscular snap.
Martino had two careers. In 1980, he suffered a brain aneurysm. After the successful surgery, he emerged with amnesia and zero recollection of his career or how to play guitar. He spent the years ahead re-learning the instrument that had built his early reputation. Which is remarkable on so many levels. Since 2018, he has been sidelined with health issues. For more about his condition and how you can help, go here.
Martino's red-hot ambition and feel are unmistakably great on his pre- and post-surgery recordings. But on Young Guns, one senses he's playing without realizing he's being recorded, or he forgot along the way. What results are three guys tearing into a night's work and spreading joy along the way. What a lucky audience.
Gene Ludwig died in 2010.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Young Guns (HighNote) on CD here and as a download here.
JazzWax clips:Here's a sizzling rendition of Who Can I Turn To. Dig how each solo outdoes the other...
In 1996, director Don McGlynn released a documentary on tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon entitled More Than You Know. What made the documentary special was that virtually the entire story of Gordon's life came out of his mouth. McGlynn culled footage of Gordon being interviewed from multiple sources to create a singular oral history. Here's a clean, color copy that went up at YouTube yesterday...
One of my favorite jazz albums of the year is a recently released collaboration between arranger Mark Masters and baritone saxophonist Gary Smulyan. The album is Night Talk: The Alec Wilder Songbook (Capri). If you're unfamiliar with Masters, now's a good time to explore. His arranging skills are imaginative and magnificent, and he has a long history of exceptional work. He also is president of the American Jazz Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to the enrichment and enhancement of the appreciation of jazz. In other words, a good guy. [Photo above of Mark Masters]
Recorded in December 2018 at Tritone Recording in Glendale, Ca., Night Talk features a team of eight instrumental tigers: Gary Smulyan (bs and featured soloist throughout), Bob Summers (tp), Dave Woodley (tb), Don Shelton (as, alto flt), Jerry Pinter (ts, ss), Ed Czach (p), Putter Smith (b) and Kendall Kay (d). These are busy but emotional arrangements, yet the octet handles them with polish and punch.
The Wilder songs are You're Free, Don't Deny, Ellen, Moon and Sand, Baggage Room Blues, I Like It Here, Night Talk, Lovers and Losers and I'll Be Around. All arrangements are by Masters, who has an incredible touch and wonderful sense of coloration. Gary on baritone is nothing short of spectacular. His blowing is assertive and flawless and, best of all, relentless in the manner of Pepper Adams. It's as if Gary is playing a chain saw at full throttle. [Photo above of Gary Smulyan]
Gary and Masters are a natural fit. They've worked together for years on albums, including Masters's The Clifford Brown Project (2002), Porgy & Bess Redefined (2003), Grachan Moncur III's Exploration (2004), Masters's Wish Me Well: Reflections on Gary McFarland (2005), Gary Smulyan's High Noon: The Jazz Soul of Frankie Laine (2008), Masters's Ellington Saxophone Encounters (2012) and Masters's Everything You Did (2013), a tribute to Steely Dan. I love all of these albums, but Masters's latest one with Gary is perfect in every way. His arrangements are relentlessly captivating and have the flavor of past great arrangers. Gary's playing has never been more exciting. As for the players, it's astonishing that there are only eight. It sounds like a full big band. Richly rewarding, and an album you'll play over and over in the same sitting.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Night Talk: The Alec Wilder Songbook (Capri) here.
This week in The Wall Street Journal, I interviewed Max Weinberg for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Since 1974, Max has been Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band drummer. Max talked about how he helped his family through a rough financial patch when he was in his teens and what he did during his Springsteen audition that won him the job. [Photo above of Max Weinberg courtesy of Max Weinberg]
Manfredo Fest. Last week, following my post on Brazilian keyboardist Manfredo Fest, Ellie Becker sent along the following:
Marc, thanks for the Manfredo Fest post. Your post made me think of Geraldo Flach, a superb pianist from Porto Alegre, Brazil, introduced to me by friends who live there. A more sophisticated improvisor, to my ear. Enjoy this clip...
Annie Ross. In the third and final itallment of my post on the late singer Annie Ross, here are my favorite recordings of her with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross:
Here'sOne O'clock Jump from Sing a Song of Basie in 1957...
Here'sLil Darlin' from Sing Along With Basie. (1958)...
Here'sFour on The Swingers! (1959), with a tenor saxophone solo by Zoot Sims and piano solo by Russ Freeman...
Here'sCloudburst from The Hottest New Group in Jazz (1959)...
Here's Horace Silver's Doodlin' on Playboy's Penthouse in 1960...
Here'sWhat Am I Here For? from Sings Ellington (1960)...
Here's Randy Weston's Hi-Fly from High Flying (1961), with the Ike Isaacs Trio...
Here'sWalkin' (1962) from an album for Columbia that was never completed...
And here'sA Night in Tunisia from the same unfinished album and the last recording by Ross with Lambert and Hendricks (1962), with Pony Poindexter on alto saxophone and Ron Carter on bass...
Bonus1:Here's Lambert, Hendricks and Yolande Bavan, who replaced Ross, singing on Ralph J. Gleason's Jazz Casual in February 1963...
Bonus2:Here's D.A. Pennebaker's documentary Audition at RCA, with a vocal group Dave Lambert assembled in 1965 with hopes of landing an RCA recording contract...
Annie Ross's recording career needs to be appreciated in two distinct posts—her solo work and her albums with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. Today, my 12 favorite solo recordings from the 1950s, mostly leading up to co-forming the vocalese trio:
Here's Annie Ross's first recording, Le Vent Vert, in Paris in 1950. The abstract song by James Moody is wordless (thanks, Dennis)...
Here's Ross with the Gigi Gryce Orchestra in Sweden singing The Song Is You in 1953...
Here's Ross singing Love You Madly with pianist and occasional drummer Tony Crombie in London in 1954...
Here's Ross with Crombie during a radio broadcast in Tel Aviv singing C'est Si Bon in 1955....
Here's Ross singing Don't Worry 'Bout Me with Crombie on piano in London in 1956...
Here's Ross singing I've Told Every Little Star with Crombie on piano in London in 1956...
Here's Ross singing Don't Let Him Know You from Cranks, a 1956 London revue that came to New York the following year...
Here's Ross with trumpeter Chet Baker and baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan in 1957 singing Give Me the Simple Life...
Here's Ross singing I Didn't Know About You on Gasser!, here featuring just Russ Freeman (p), Jim Hall (g), Monty Budwig (b) and Mel Lewis (d)...
And here's Ross singing Everything's Coming Up Roses from Gypsy in 1959, backed by Conte Candoli and Pete Candoli (tp); Frank Rosolino (tb); Herb Geller (as); Richie Kamuca (ts); Bill Perkins (bar); Russ Freeman (p); Jim Hall (g); Monty Budwig (b); Mel Lewis (d) and Buddy Bregman (arr). This album still ranks as my favorite of her solo recordings...
Bonus1:Here'sYou'll Never Get Away From Me, from Gypsy, featuring Ross in her solo prime...
Bonus2:Here's No One But Me, a super 2012 BBC documentary on Annie Ross directed by Brian Ross and produced by Gill Parry. The upload won't let me embed the film, so to watch you'll have to go here (thanks, Jim Eigo).
Annie Ross, a pioneering vocalese singer and songwriter, and the last surviving member of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross—arguably the best-known and most successful vocal group in modern jazz—died on July 21. She was 89. [Photo above of Annie Ross, courtesy of Annie Ross]
Writing lyrics to instrumental jazz standards and jazz solos and singing them at the same fast tempo was a mark of subterranean hipness in the late 1940s and early '50s. With roots in Ella Fitzgerald's scatting and Dizzy Gillespie's bop vocals, vocalese began in jazz clubs as a novel way for singers to stand out in the jazz realm and fill seats. Ross's first two vocalese sides for Prestige in 1952 were Twisted, based on a Wardell Gray solo, and Farmer's Market, based on an Art Farmer composition.
Ross wrote the lyrics to both songs, which became jukebox hits and put Ross in the same league as vocalese singers Babs Gonzales, Joe Carroll, King Pleasure, Eddie Jefferson, Dave Lambert and Buddy Stewart.
What set Ross apart in the early 1950s was a relaxed naturalism and muscular elegance akin to Billie Holiday, one of her early influences. An emigre from Scotland who arrived in New York in 1934 at age 4, Ross's pert looks and precocious talent landed her in a radio contest hosted by bandleader Paul Whiteman. She won and was awarded an MGM contract. In the depths of the Depression, she nested in Hollywood at the house of her aunt, Ella Logan, a Scottish-American singer and actress, while her parents returned to England. Ross and her aunt didn't get along.
As a child, Ross appeared in several short films and comedies. At 14, she wrote a song, Let's Fly, for a contest judged by songwriter Johnny Mercer. She won again. The song was recorded by Mercer and the Pied Pipers in 1949. But by then, Ross had returned to Glasgow, Scotland, sent home just after the war by her envious aunt. Miserable among virtual strangers, Ross left for Paris to join a trio led by pianist-composer Hugh Martin.
An affair in Paris with drummer Kenny Clarke produced a son, Kenny Clarke Jr. Clarke and Ross returned to the U.S. and first lived with their child in Pittsburgh, where Clarke had family. By the late 1940s, they moved into a one-room apartment in the Bronx in a building where Ross later said "everyone was on drugs."
Ross avoided pop and sang bop, finding work at the city's many clubs. But in the mid-'50s, as work slowed and vocalese was eclipsed by the American songbook, Ross found work in the U.K. Back in New York in 1957 with the British revue Cranks, she teamed with Lambert, who was primarily an arranger, and Jon Hendricks, a lyricist. They formed Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, and recorded the album Sing a Song of Basie, produced by Creed Taylor. It was one of the first albums to feature the multitracking of voices. [Cover above courtesy of Todd Selbert]
At the time, the group shattered several of society's norms. For one, it was an integrated singing trio, which presented challenges for them in segregated parts of the country. For another, Ross was a woman on par with her male counterparts, which ran counter to the compliant suburban housewife ideal at the time. Sing a Song of Basie was so popular and the group so talented and embracing that the trio overcame most resistance and was instrumental in helping to alter cultural norms.
Here's what Creed Taylor told me about the 1957 album in 2008...
JazzWax: How did Lambert, Hendricks & Ross’ Sing a Song of Basie come about in August 1957? Creed Taylor: Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks came to me with the idea. I already knew Dave. I used to run into him in Greenwich Village. He made chimneys for people and was a carpenter when he wasn’t singing. Dave and Jon told me what they had in mind: a vocal album of Count Basie tunes. The two of them would be joined by other vocalists, and they'd all sing the different instrumental parts.
JW: What did you think? CT: I loved the idea right away. Dave had already transcribed the Basie arrangements, and Jon wrote terrific lyrics for the songs. I thought the natural thing to do was to get the Basie rhythm section, man for man. So I made a few calls, and guitarist Freddie Greene, bassist Eddie Jones and drummer Sonny Payne were there for the date. Nat Pierce was on piano.
JW: Obviously something went wrong. CT: The studio singers Dave brought to Beltone Studios at 4 West 31st St. didn’t swing. We started recording, and about a half hour into it, I knew the session was a bust.
JW: What happened? CT: The singers were too rigid. I’m sure they were great at singing ad jingles, but this required phrasing and all the nuances that most studio singers don’t have.
JW: Did Basie’s rhythm section have problems with them? CT: Right away. It was devastating. The singers were all pros but they didn’t have the feel and couldn't pick it up. With Basie, it’s a swinging thing, meaning you have to sing behind the beat, not on it. Eddie Jones, the bassist, tried to help the singers, saying, “Look, this is the way the band plays it. It’s got to be laid back.” But they never got it. So I had to stop the date.
JW: What happened next? CT: When the singers cleared out, Dave offered up a solution. He asked whether he, Jon and Annie Ross could overdub all the parts. I said sure, let’s give it a try. Dave said Annie would sing all the trumpet parts, he'd do the trombones, and Jon would handle the saxes.
JW: So how did it work? CT: First I recorded the Basie rhythm section with Dave, Jon and Annie providing a guide track, which was a straight reading. Once that was done, we had the swing down. Then they overdubbed the additional harmonized tracks wearing headphones and listening to the guide track.
JW: No problems? CT: Actually we had a big technical one. I was recording at the studio with a great engineer named Irv Greenbaum, who loved jazz. We captured each track on a ¼-inch Ampex recorder, but the hiss was piling up like you wouldn’t believe. Each time you add a track to tape, hiss builds. When we got to the final master, we had some careful EQ-ing [equalizing] to do. In those days, the technical ability to manipulate tapes and get rid of small problems was non-existent. I sat there for days with Irv trying to fix the hiss. Finally we just rolled off 10 to 12k [kilohertz] from the sound, and the result was great.
JW: Did you know right away you had a hit? CT: Oh, sure. Annie frightened me, she was so good. I was in awe of her. And the session wouldn’t have existed without Jon’s great lyrics. He was totally engrossed in the Basie sections and his words brought the whole thing together.
JW: How many Grammy’s did the album win? CT: Two. One in 1958 for Best Jazz Performance by a Group and in 2000 when the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
JW: What did Basie think of the album? CT: I don’t know. Basie was on another road all the time. He was such a self-made bandleader. I’m sure he heard it, but he never mentioned it to me. And I never asked.
During this period, Ross also recorded a handful of smart albums for World Pacific, including Sings a Song With Mulligan! (1957), A Gasser! (1959) with Zoot Sims, and Gypsy (1959). But it was her six albums with Lambert and Hendricks that made her a star. Just as Ross reached celebrity status, she found herself battling a runaway addiction to heroin, which she attributed to stress and easy availability in jazz circles.
While on tour in London in 1962, she decided to take a break from the group. Her older brother, Jimmy, took her in, and Ross kicked her habit in Fintry, a tiny village in Scotland. She was replaced in the group by Yolande Bavan (read my 2007 interview with Yolande here). By the time Ross recovered, the rock era had arrived. While she continued to record and perform, Ross would never again achieve the same level of acclaim or fame.
It's impossible to calculate the challenges Ross faced as a woman during these years, when sexism, harassment and less pay than male counterparts was standard. Perhaps Ross's greatest legacy will be as an artist who inspired a generation of folk-rock female singer-songwriters who followed in the 1960s and '70s. Many, like Joni Mitchell, viewed her as a remarkable, original artist who fearlessly broke barriers while coping with a variety of personal and professional challenges. Whatever they faced, Ross had been there before.
Here's Annie Ross with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross in 1960, with Count Basie on piano...
And here's Ross singing her own lyrics to Twisted, with Basie on piano...
On the evening of Friday, December 17, 1999, saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. was on the set of the CBS's Early Show. He played four songs with his band, and the performance was taped for airing the following morning, on the TV new show's Saturday edition. In the green room after, Washington collapse and was rushed to the hospital. He died of a heart attack at age 56.
Washington recorded nearly 30 albums and is the father of smooth jazz—an easy-listening format that emerged in the late 1980s and early '90s with the rise of the compact disc, displacing the more esoteric jazz fusion. Washington's albums Inner City Blues (1972), Mister Magic (1975) and Winelight (1980) were among his most successful. Inner City Blues remains a significant work.
Here's Washington's final performance, airing on CBS's Early Show on December 18, a day after his taping...
Manfredo Fest isn't the name of a pop-culture convention or multi-day rock concert for kids. Fest was a Brazilian bossa nova and jazz keyboardist whose music was an eclectic and fascinating blend of bossa nova, classical and electronic fusion.
Fest's father was a German concert pianist who emigrated to Porto Alegre in Southern Brazil, near Uruguay, where he taught at the university there. Blind from birth, Fest learned to read music in braille and studied formally. Influenced by Bill Evans and George Shearing, Fest, at 17, turned to jazz. He gigged at bossa nova clubs in São Paulo in 1961 and recorded his first album, Bossa Nova, Nova Bossa, in 1963. The album remains a classic.
By the 1970s, Fest was exploring synthesizers. One of his best albums from this period was Brazilian Dorian Dream, with Fest on synths and Fender Rhodes, Thomas Kini on bass, Alejo Poveda on drums and Roberta Davis on vocals. Out of print for years, the album now has been reissued by Far Out Recordings. It's the closest you'll come to the beach this summer if you're wisely remaining indoors.
Stylistically, Fest on the album has much in common with Eumir Deodato and George Duke, blending bossa nova lyricism and swing with American fusion. The other bright light on this album is Roberta Davis, a little-known American jazz singer. Other than her recordings with Fest (Manifestations in 1978 and Braziliana in 1987), she recorded on Billy Higgins's The Soldier in 1979 for Timeless Records. A shame, given her enormous talent on Brazilian Dorian Dream.
Fest is barely known in the U.S., where other Brazilian artists such as Deodato, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Sergio Mendes were more prominent. Fest's music was unashamedly bossa pop, but his classical background added a layer of dazzling sophistication and churning intensity that your ear will pick up on. His albums are irresistible and much more than ear candy. Brazilian Dorian Dream is a solid entry point and perfect for the summer heat.
Manfredo Fest died in 1999; Roberta Davis died in 2007.
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.