Jay McShann, Last of the Blue Devils

Jay McShann, like Joe Turner, bridges the world of jazz and blues. The Last of the Blue Devils represents a new Atlantic issue (SO 8800) where he is joined by Paul Ouinichette, Joe Newman, Buddy Tate, John Scofield, Milt Hinton and Jackie Williams. McShann is known as the leader of the big band from which Charlie Parker emerged. Ouinichette a well known tenor player also was associated with McShann. McShann's band was known as a band that played the blues. Recordings in the 1940s with singer Walter Brown were quite popular and led to a limited view of his own talents which hopefully this album will rectify (along with other recent recordings including the wonderful duet album he did with Buddy Tate on Sackville).

This album should win McShann many new fans. It swings with a vengence with lots of bluesy swinging piano that shows slight traces of Art Tatum. McShann takes five persuasive relaxed vocals. He redoes "Confessin' the Blues" which he recorded with vocalist Walter Brown and has since been done by Little Walter, B.B. King and the Rolling Stones. Bird, Brown and McShann composed "Hootie Blues" which features some nice electric piano from him capturing an almost organlike flavor. McShann's singing is quite like bluesman Lowell Fulson and it may be more than coincidental that both come from Oklahoma.

Besides the five blues vocals, there are five instrumentals including one solo piece. McShann is in good company with especially good work from Tate and trumpeter Joe Newman. All told a most wonderful album that any lover of jazz or blues can iII afford to be without. Atlantic may be part of the WEA conglomerate but releases like this show that label founder Ahmet Ertegun still hasn't forgotten the music that the label was built on and we are grateful. Mr. Ertegun, may we have more of the same, please.

This review originally appeared in the Buffalo Jazz Report March 1978 Issue 49. I likely received a review copy from the Buffalo Jazz Report, now Jazz & Blues Report. This may be available on CD used or digital. Here is "Blues Devil Jump" from this album,

 

Esther Phillips Never Stopped Confessin' The Blues

With a career spanning five decades, Esther Phillips left an impressive legacy of music. She is of course known as a blues singer from her early recordings as Little Esther as part of the Johnny Otis Show. As a thirteen, she recorded “Double Crossing Blues,” with the Robins and had other hits on Savoy with Otis including “Mistrusting Blues” with Mel Walker and “Cupid Boogie” among a number of hit recordings. Later she signed with Federal where she only had one chart record, “Ring-A-Ding-Doo,” but had some great sides including “Brother Beware,” and “The Deacon Moves In,” the latter with the Dominoes. She also had a fine interpretation of Big Mama Thornton’s hit, “Hound Dog.”

In the mid to late fifties, she was still touring the western states where Kenny Rogers, then a struggling performer, saw her and introduced her and introduced his brother, Lelan who co-owned the Lenox label. Signed to Lenox, she recorded, in 1962, her first hit in a decade, a remake of an old Ray price C&W charter, “Release Me,” leading to her recording her an album of country and western songs. After Lenox went bust, Esther ended up on Atlantic which bought her Lenox masters as well as recorded a number of superb sessions. her first hot for Atlantic was “ And I Love Him,” a cover of the Beatles hit that so enamored the British stars that they flew her over to England to perform on a British television show with them.

If one looks at some blues references works such as the Euro-centric Penguin Guide as well as the latest edition of Blues Records, one does not find Esther Phillips recordings represented after her Federal days. This means that her Atlantic albums “ Burnin’” and “Confessing the Blues,” are not considered. “Burnin’” and “Confessin’ the Blues,” are paired on a Collectables reissue and also were sampled in Rhino’s compilation of Esther’s Atlantic Recordings.

“Blues Records” does state that it is a selective discography, but one notes that perhaps they should have listened to some of these albums. The Penguin Guide generally ignores even Bobby Bland’s recent recordings, including some selected by The Blues Foundation for its Hall of Fame, while including recordings that would not be out of place in a book on rock recordings.

It might reflect that some African-American recordings often do not like to be described as blues singers. The late Tyrone Davis was one, not that he didn’t like or respect the blues, but they felt that they could sing so much more. Perhaps reflecting the time in the post-war era when black singers were usually given blues material to perform. I recall Ruth Brown in the eighties might have made a similar statement, although a decade later the great rhythm and blues pioneer would show no such qualms with being called a blues singer, and she continued to record more than simply blues. Whites want to be called bluesmen or blues women because it supposedly lends them credibility. When they play rock, it allegedly is taking the blues in new directions. I realize this commentary is oversimplified, but many of these same folks will be among those criticizing hip hop as having no connection to blues, ignoring the facts that both blues and rap (soul, doowop, gospel, jazz) are part of the African-American River of Song).

Both of these recordings have made a strong impression on this listener. “ Burnin’” is a live recording that was recorded at Freddie Jett's Pied Piper, in L.A. The live recording was with a trio or maybe a quartet I believe, and later King Curtis overdubbed horns, and other musicians. He did a rather startling good job in the overdub as it sounds seamless. It is a mix of material from standards and pop tunes to the blues. It opens with a marvelous swinging rendition of Aretha’s “If I Lose This Dream,” that displays her growth into a more mature, richer singer with a nasally vinegary sound mixed with a strong does of the Queen, Dinah Washington, with the overdubbed punchy horns extremely effective. Her wonderful rendition of the Beatles’ “And I Love Him,” is dedicated to the lovers in the audience is followed by her “Cry Me A River Blues,” in which she transforms the torch song identified with Julie London into a hot jump blues with her incorporation of Leroy Carr’s “After the Sun Goes Down,” and the Pete Johnson-Joe Turner classic “Roll ‘Em Pete.” For those who have “The Johnny Otis Show Live at Monterey,” this is a separate contemporaneous recording of this. “Release Me” follows and shows that 8 years after first waxing this, she displays a similar soulful approach to country material as did Ray Charles. If the marvelous vocalist, Janiva Magness, did a similarly styled rendition of this number, would folks claim this ain’t blues. The fact that she was at home in a sophisticated vein to do “Makin’ Whoopee” or handle the ballad, “If It’s the Last Thing I Do,” does diminish the blues core of the music here, and can their be any complaint with her wonderful rendition of Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Someone To Love.”

And the fact that “ Confessin’ the Blues” finds her with her big band does not make this stunning Atlantic studio date any less a blues album than Joe Williams with Count Basie, Sonny Parker with Lionel Hampton, Jimmy Witherspoon or Walter Brown with Jay McShann or Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson with is own groups. What a delicious selection of material including “I'm Gettin' 'Long Alright,” which sounds like a tough number out of the Dinah Washington songbook (and it may well be), the classic Cecil Gant ballad “I Wonder,” the Walter Brown-Jay McShann hit “Confessin’ the Blues.” She gets so seductive on the Lil Green classic “In the Dark,”while she shows how she can boogie her man’s woogie on “Cherry Red.” Then there is a terrific big band arrangement for her interpretation of Leroy Carr’s “In the Evening.” The highlight though is a terrific medley taken primarily from Dinah Washington (“Blow Top Blues” and “Long John Blues” and Billy Eckstine (“Jelly Jelly Blues”) that also incorporates bits of Eckstine’s “Stormy Monday Blues” (not T-Bone’s “(Call It) Stormy Monday”) and other songs. It is also a medley she would perform in Monterey with Otis. The disc also includes a couple of standards but doesn’t change the fact that this is an album substantially of blues performances of the highest order. Maybe that is the problem in that Esther is a vocalist and that the album lacks the focus on rocking blues guitars and is too ‘sophisticated’ to be blues for some blues ‘authorities.’

Both of these recordings show how good the blues could sound when handled by someone who certainly had lived through some real hard times in both her relationships and her addiction, yet was an experienced and mature vocal stylist. Paired together by Collectables, this is a terrific “Blues” CD that may have overlooked by some.

Esther continued to make significant and powerful recordings and I will consider an Australian compilation of her Kudu recordings tomorrow.

I purchased this CD.

Solomon Burke RIP

2009-0430_NOJazzFest_Day_4-1593, originally uploaded by NoVARon.

Word was just received that the great Solomon Burke has passed, dying in Amsterdam at the age of 70. Burke, known as the King of Rock'n'Soul was scheduled to perform in the Dutch City. The Philadelphia born Burke was a major soul artist of the sixties and seventies after having made his debut recordings as a gospel artist while very young. When he signed to Atlantic in 1960 he began a series of pioneering recordings such as "Down in the Valley," "Everybody Need Somebody", "Tonight's the Night," and "Cry to Me." The legendary Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler once referred to Burke as "the best soul singer of all time." He may never have achieved the popularity of Marvin Gaye or James Brown but he truly was a great singer and many of his songs have become staples of modern music.

Here is a clip of him singing "Down in the Valley.

In an interview with this writer, he was proud that "Down in the Valley" was one of the earliest soul renditions of country music. At the interview as he regaled me of his days as a child gospel singer, selling box lunches and the great days sharing the stages with so many other folks who were his peers, and also musical giants. He had a presence (charisma) about him that one felt when talking with him.

He also was a positive person and when discussing others like the great Big Maybelle (whose song "Candy" he recorded for the early 1990s Black Top album "Soul of the Blues"), he didn't discuss her problems but recalled her as a great performer. He recalled for me a performance at Chicago's Regal Theatre, as she somehow made it down the steps to the stage with folks wondering if she would. But once she was on stage, it was like nothing was wrong as she belted out her songs. Then she somehow made it back upstairs to the dressing room.

Here he sings "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love"

In live performance, he did more than simply introduce songs and sing them. One of the recordings that this writer would recommend was "Soul Alive" on Rounder where his preaching background was most evident in his medley of his recordings for which he would weave a lesson in living for us. One the stands in my mind was when he preached about "The Woman of Today," and how men have to learn new ways to love and cherish them.

In the eighties and nineties,Rounder Records and Black Top Records issued superb recordings by Burke, that was followed by recordings produced by Joe Henry which presented Burke in different contexts and singing different material and all these introduced him to new audiences while reintroducing him to older audiences.

I only saw him perform once, at the 2009 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and he still had the voice as he sat on his crown and mesmerized the Congo Square stage audience. It was one of that year's JazzFest highpoints.

Here are some suggested recordings by him:

Very Best of Solomon Burke

Home In Your Heart: The Best Of Solomon Burke (a double CD collection)

Soul Alive

Soul of the Blues

Don't Give Up On Me