In the 1950s, Toshiko Akiyoshi was a force to behold. Inspired early on by pianist Bud Powell's bop attack and lightning-fast fingers, she grew up in Japan after World War II when her parents moved back to the country from Manchuria, China. She began playing piano at age 7, entertained U.S. troops in Japan and fell in love with jazz after hearing a Teddy Wilson recording of Sweet Lorraine.
In 1953, under the direction of record producer Norman Granz, Akiyoshi recorded her first album with Oscar Peterson's rhythm section: Herb Ellis on guitar, Ray Brown on bass and J. C. Heard on drums. The album was released as Toshiko's Piano in the U.S. and Amazing Toshiko Akiyoshi in Japan. Akiyoshi then studied jazz at the Berklee School of Music in Boston in the mid-1950s on a full scholarship.
She is perhaps best known for her later small-group collaborations in the 1960s with husband, alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano, and big band recordings with her second husband, tenor saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin, whom she married in 1969. But her early work still knocks me out and is a must listen.
Now, Fresh Sound has released a two-CD set of Akyoshi's 1950s work that has been remastered with 24-bit technology: Toshiko's Blues: Toshiko Akiyoshi - Quartet and Trio, 1953-1958. The set includes material from her albums Toshiko's Piano (1953), George Wein Presents Toshiko (1956), Toshiko: Her Trio, Her Quartet (1956), Toshiko and the Leon Sash Quartet at Newport (1957), The Many Sides of Toshiko (1957) and the two tracks from her appearance on TV's The Subject Is Jazz in 1958.
Akyoshi's playing on her first album was a staggering tornado of speed, daring and perfection. Squatty Roo is hair-raising, but her solo treatment of the ballad Laura is exceptional as well. Her trio on the George Wein Presets Toshiko for Wein's Storyville label features Toshiko (p), Paul Chambers (b) and Ed Thigpen (d). The playlist is a mix of beautiful standards such as It Could Happen to You and Softly As in a Morning Sunrise and originals that include the meditative Kyo-Shu and the peppy Manhattan Address. Throughout the first album, you get to experience Chambers's beefy-thick bass behind her.
The three trio tracks from Toshiko; Her Trio Her Quartet feature Oscar Pettiford (b) and Roy Haynes (d) playing No Moon at All; Pea, Bee and Lee; and Thou Swell. On the four tracks from Toshiko and the Leon Sash Quartet at Newport, Akiyoshi was paired with her trio Gene Cherico (b) and Jake Hanna (d). (Leon Sash was a gorgeous accordionist who played with his own quartet.
The Many Sides of Toshiko for Verve features the same trio playing Akyoshi's compositions and a range of standards, including a marvelous Bag's Groove, which sounds far removed from the original by Milt Jackson. And finally, two tracks from The Subject Is Jazz, an NBC show in 1958 hosted by Gilbert Seldes. The 3d Movement is a fascinating bop workout.
What you'll notice listening to Akyoshi on this set is the iron power of her left hand and the lucidity of her fingers. And like Hazel Scott and Dorothy Donegan, Akyoshi would probably have been a household name if she had been a man. Such was the state of jazz. And it's a shame she didn't get to play and record with Charlie Parker. One of Granz's shortsighted failures, since both were on his Clef label in 1953.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Toshiko Akiyoshi: Quartet and Trios, 1953-'58 (Fresh Sound) here.
JazzWax clips: Here's Squatty Roo...
Here's Kyo-Shu...
And here's a very inventive Lover...
Bonus: Here's Akiyoshi in action on The Subject Is Jazz in 1958 playing her original composition The 3rd Movement and Duke Ellington's I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart. The first announcer is Gilbert Seldes and the second is the Voice of America's Willis Conover...
And here she is in France in the early 1960s performing her original The Village...
