Mr. Jacquet's Texas Tenor still sounds tough

The late Illinois Jacquet certainly left his mark on musical history with so many outstanding recordings. The Man I Love is a marvelous reissue from the French Black & Blue label that I downloaded from emusic (I believe it is available on other download services such as amazon and itunes). A trio date with organist Wild Bill Davis and drummer Al Bartee, there are few musical surprises, but plenty of space for Mr. Jacquet's tough texas tenor as well as space for organ pioneer, Wild Bill davis to shine. Perhaps not a lot of surprises in the music contained as it includes classic big band swing numbers. Still Jacquet handles it in his own distinctive approach with a heavy blues foundation (and a bit of vibrato in the manner of Ben Webster) with a dash of Lester Young in how he phrases his solos. This can be heard in the marvelous trio rendition of Cottontail, a feature for Webster in the Ellington Band of the early forties. The title track is taken at a quicker tempo than usual for a song most probably identify with Billie Holiday's classic renditions. Of course Jacquet was one of the great ballad players as evidenced on Misty. There are also strong renditions of Herschel Evans blues ballad, Blue and Sentimental, and Ellington's It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got the Swing). I won't claim this is a definitive Jacquet disc, just one that has given me plenty of enjoyment after downloading it and well worth folks sampling.

Cleanhead's Blues

Among its recent releases, Delmark has just re-reissued Kidney Stew is Fine by Eddie 'Cleanhead Vinson. Originally issued on the French Black and Blue label, the disc has the shouter-alto saxophonist with an all star band that included Jay McShann on piano, T-Bone Walker on guitar and tenor saxophonist Hal ‘Cornbread’ Singer. Its a good mix of classic songs that Cleanhead made famous like the title track, Somebody’s Sure Got to Go, Juice Head Baby, Big Bill’s Just a Dream and Old Maid Boogie, along with Joe Turner’s Wee Wee Baby, Percy Mayfield’s Please Send Me Someone to Love, and Duke Ellington’s Thing's Ain't What They Used To Be. Vinson is in terrific form both vocally and instrumentally and the band swings wonderfully for a most enjoyable session that is welcome to be readily available.

As a postnote to this review, I note that when I first came across the various Black and Blue releases on vinyl in the 70s and early 80s I generally found the jazz releases (and this was one that was originally more oriented towards jazz audiences) was generally more satsisfying than the blues releases. In part it may have been because the bands were tighter and could handle the material, even if not fresh, with an authority that many of the label's blues releases could not quite achieve without sounding generic.

Incidentally, amazon still (3/23/08) shows the 1994 Delmark CD cover of this release on its website. I corrected this posting on 3/23/08