Leroy Carr's legacy is perhaps not as appreciated today as it once was. A major recording star, his duets with guitarist Scrapper Blackwell, are classic blues recordings. Furthermore, he contributed countless classic blues songs that have become standards. Today we have an "In the Evening" playlist kicking off with his original recording.
While Ray Charles has also recorded this, let us not forget Charles Brown, who was an early influence on Brother Ray.
Big Bill Broonzy did this as hear here.
Robert Lockwood had a fondness for Leroy Carr as did most folks of his generation. Here he is playing his 12 string guitar and singing this classic.
Big Joe Turner did a nice rendition of this.
Here is Jimmy Witherspoon with a band that included Jay McShann on piano and was led by former Basie-ite, Budddy Tate.
Here is Ella Fitzgerald singing it for Decca Records,
Here is a Count Basie trio recording of this classic.
Here is Big Joe Williams and his 9-string guitar.
And here is the shouter Joe Williams at Newport in 1963 with a band including Howard McGhee and Clark Terry.
Here is Ernestine Anderson with Milt Jackson and others.
Then there is Gary Clark Jr. at the White House doing it.
Then there is Yusef Lateef's recording on the oboe.
I could include many more renditions, but here is a ringer to close this post with. I wonder if the Carr estate gets royalties for Robert Johnson's recording, Love in Vain, that uses Carr's music.
Tuesday, December 01, 2015
The Complete Jazz Casual Series
EFOR Films
Many of you may be aware of the legendary public TV show, Jazz Casual, that was hosted by the late music critic Ralph Gleason. Shows from this series featured a number of jazz legends including John Coltrane, Count Basie, Sonny Rollins, Louis Armstrong, Art Farmer, Jimmy Witherspoon with Ben Webster, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Earl Fatha Hines, Art Pepper, Art Farmer, Charles Lloyd Quartet (with Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette), Joe Sullivan, Mel Torme and others. A number of these performances have been available on VHS tapes and DVD. EFOR Films has issued a box with 8 DVD's containing the complete series of performances mixed with Gleason's cogent interviews of these artists. Also included is a booklet with an overview of the series and the artists included.
I purchased this video box set. This is one of a number of short reviews I have written for the 2015 Holiday Guft Guide edition of Jazz & Blues Report. Here is John Coltrane performing "Alabama," from his performance on this show.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
The British Ace Records label has been reissuing numbers reissues from the catalogues and archives of Modern Records and its affiliates. Among its recent reissues is Beating the Petrillo Ban: The Late December 1947 Modern Sessions, a two-CD compilation with 49 selections that were recorded in late December 1947 as part of the label’s efforts to stock up on recordings in anticipation of the Recording Ban that the American Federation of Musicians were going to start at the start of the 1948 New Year. Like other labels, the Bihari Brothers' Modern Records engaged in a flurry of recording sessions. Between November and December, Modern recorded almost 130 masters by 16 different artists.
The two discs of Beating The Petrillo Ban contain 49 performances from between December 17 and New Year’s Eve of 1947, and while some of the recordings were issued, many were not at the time, nor have they been reissued in prior Ace releases. Tony Rounce, in his liner notes in the accompanying booklet, notes that 80% of the selections have previously never been issued previously (some are alternate takes of recordings that were issued on 78 or on various LP or CD reissues.
The opening performances are by an early vocal group, The Ebonaires. One of Modern’s biggest stars in its early days was Hadda Brookes and there are three sessions (12 selections) by her including instrumentals and vocals (There is a nice The Best Things In Life Are Free) in a Nat King Cole Trio vein with sophisticated piano and deft guitar accompaniment along with her vocals. This serves as a nice introduction to Brookes for whom Ace has several reissues of.
Drummer Al ‘Cake’ Wichard is heard on two sessions (12 selections) of jump blues that showcase shouters Duke Henderson and Jimmy Witherspoon who are both in fine form. Henderson’s “Gravels in My Pillow” and Witherspoon’s T.B. Blues are terrific examples of their music here along with a hot instrumental Cake Jumps. Spoon is also heard on a nice interpretation of That’s Your Little Red Wagon Ace also has a reissue of titles recorded under Wichard’s name with more Henderson and Witherspoon. There may be duplication of songs, but as noted, most of the selections here are unissued or alternate takes.
Another jump blues artist was Guitarist Gene Phillips heard with his Rhythm Aces as he tells his “Snuff Dipping Mama” to stop snuffing and button up her bottom lip. Its a nice band and Phillips clean single note picking is featured on “Gene’s Guitar Blues,” a reworking of “Floyd’s Guitar Blues.” Another session in this vein was with saxophonist Little Willie Jackson. Jackson was part of Joe Liggins Band and Modern signed Jackson who recorded with The Honeydrippers minus Liggins. The four numbers range from a jumping “Little Willie’s Boogie”, the sweet instrumental “Shasta” (similar in tone to Liggins’ “Tanya”) and the swinging sweet ballad “Baby.”
The Art Shackelford Sextette is led by a guitarist about which Tony Rounce advises little is known. His guitar leads the pleasant swing-based instrumentals that includes a rendition of the early New Orleans standard Jazz Me Blues and an untitled blues instrumental that Ace titled Beatin’ The Ban for its release here. Butch Stone was vocalist with Les Browns’ Band of Renown and heard on songs in the vein of Louis Jordan, Fats Waller and others including Baby Face and Waller’s Your Feets Too Big retitled as My Feets Too Big). As Rounce observes, Stone wisecracks and ad-libs his way on these performances in the zany manner of Harry ‘The Hipster’ Gibson.
The final performances on this compilation are the gospel songs from Ida Mae Littlejohn. Rounce observes her music was informed by Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Arizona Dranes, "Who both employed the same animated vocal style." Her fervent renditions of Lonesome Road Blues (which you have to walk all alone’), He’ll Make The Way (I know the Lord will make a way”); and the rollicking Go Devil Go (with a vocal chorus) have piano and guitar as accompaniment.
Beating the Petrillo Ban: The Late December 1947 Modern Sessions is another outstanding Ace compilation from the Modern Archives. It is a varied collection of a diverse group of performers and music. Presentation is up to Ace’s usual high standards with Tony Rounce’s liner notes in the accompanying booklet providing background on the second Petrillo band and the recordings contained here which are presented here in the order of recording.
I purchased this. Here is a video of Hadda Brookes (or Brooks).
Jimmy Witherspoon is among my favorite singers in the blues and jazz realms, who was able to sound good in a variety of settings. His earliest recordings were made on the West Coast with Jay McShann in strong little big band combos while in latter years his recordings with Robben Ford impressed in their own vein. Few could handle material made famous by his hero Big Joe Turner as well as that of Jimmy Reed with equal conviction. The following review appeared in the April 2007 Jazz & Blues Report (issue 292).
Among the most recent releases in the Mosaic Singles series this classic 1957 recording by Jimmy Witherspoon with Jay McShann and His Band, Goin' to Kansas City Blues. Originally on RCA, I believe this has been on CD but undoubtedly deleted. Mosaic has made available the entire album with three other recordings from the sessions that had been issued on a French vinyl reissue.
Opening up with Jumpin’ the Blues from the pen of McShann and Charlie Parker, Witherspoon handles other McShann classics as Hootie Blues and Confessin’ the Blues, along with Until the Real Thing Comes Along, the classic ballad made famous by Andy Kirk’s Clouds of Joy along with the Joe Turner-Pete Johnson Piney Brown Blues. Witherspoon contributed a couple of originals, Rain is Such a Lonesome Sound and Blue Monday. He shines throughout backed by the swinging big little band McShann led. Others on the session included Kenny Burrell on guitar, Hilton Jefferson on alto sax, Seldon Powell on tenor sax, Al Sears or Hayward Henry on baritone sax, Emmett Berry or Ray Copeland on trumpet, J.C. Higginbotham on trombone, Gene Ramey on bass and Mousey Alexander on drums. Stereo masters were found for all but two of the thirteen songs heard here.
Much has been written about the late blues shouter, Jimmy Witherspoon. The Arkansas native who first attracted notice singing with with Teddy Weatherford’s Band in Calcutta which regularly broadcast over Armed Forces Radio Service, he made his first recordings with Jay McShann in 1945, recording “T'ain’t Nobody’s Business,” which became one of the biggest records of the times. With changing times, and the new rock and roll turning Witherspoon’s brand of jumping blues out of style, it was an appearance at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1959 that returned Witherspoon to the spotlight, although now viewed in a context as a performer at jazz venues. He made a number of recordings in the contexts of jazz masters like Ben Webster, Roy Eldridge, Gerry Mulligan, and T-Bone Walker, along with a set of Kansas City jazz with Jay McShann (last reissued as a Mosaic single). Recordings with Webster were particularly wonderful but I dare say that none of his influences or contemporaries could belt out a boogie woogie as well as caress a ballad as consistently strongly as Spoon could. Then in the seventies he began an equally fruitful association with Robbin Ford that was equally fruitful, a terrific session with Panama Francis and the Savoy Sultans for Black & Blue (I downloaded this session online), and a solid JSP album with Hal “Cornbread’ Singer on sax if memory serves me right, and he made some sides with sympathetic backing from Duke Robillard and friends at the end of his career.
A few months ago I purchased “Singin’ the Blues” (JazzBeat), an augmented version of a 1959 World Pacific album that included Teddy Edwards on tenor saxophone, Hampton Hawes on piano, Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison or Gerald Wilson on trumpet and others. It was a terrific pair of sessions with Spoon in great voice from the opening “S.K. Blues,” that was a smash for Big Joe Turner, but which Witherspoon makes his own, or “Then the Lights Go Out” a Willie Dixon penned tune (for some reason credited to Spoon) that was originally on Chess or Checker, with Edwards taking a terrific booting solo here, and “All That’s Good,” a derivative of “T’ain’t Nobody’s Business,” with Hawes featured as Herman Mitchell strums on guitar during the solo while blasts off on the break on “Jimmy’s Blues,” with Edward’s’ adding some tasty obligatos behind Spoon’s vocal. On “It Ain’t What You Thinking’,” Gerald Wilson (Best known today as an arranger) contributes very nice muted trumpet, while Sweets’ muted trumpet weaves around Spoon’s strong vocal on “T’ain’t Nobody’s Business,” while Edwards takes a terrific solo that gets down into the nitty gritty during Spoon’s authoritative take on “Wee Baby Blues.” Another highpoint is “Sweet’s Blues,” opening with Edison playing muted trumpet, with Edwards taking the solo in the middle. This album concluded with an Edwards original, “Midnight blues, a tasty mid-tempo romp with Edwards playing quite strongly and I would not be surprised if Wilson contributed the arrangement here.
In addition to the original twelve recordings, seven tunes are included from a 1960 session with Edwards but a smaller band (no other horns). “Goin’ to Chicago” features strong tenor from Edwards and a nice guitar solo from Mitchell, but Spoon’s vocal is a bit more muffled in the mix. Spoon’s vocal is stronger on “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good To You,” followed by the easy rocking “Loser Blues.” “Life’s Highway,” is a slowed down “Key to Highway,” with a bit R&B feel. The last of the seven tracks from this session is “Wee baby Baby,” taken at a quicker tempo, as pianist Paul Moer quoting Ray Charles on his intro to the number. From a 1958 session that likely has Edwards as tenor saxophonist is “Coming Home” (a retitled “Going Down Slow”), that opens with some guitar that suggests some of Chuck Berry’s blues recordings before Spoon delivers his vocal. Some hots guitar runs along with some more great tenor from Spoon contribute to a strong performance. The last two tracks come from a 1970 album, “Handbags and Gladrags,” on whom can be heard Sweets Edison along with Plas Johnson on electric sax. Mel Brown and Arthur Adams are credited on guitar. On “Spoon’s Beep Beep Blues,” a censors beep overrides him as he sings ‘shit.’ The backing is a bit too rocked out, including the guitar solo and unlike the recordings from a decade earlier, these sound the most dated even if Spoon sounds good. Even with a couple of throw away tracks, this remains a good listen and over 70 minutes of music, much of it first-rate.
I purchased from JazzLoft, and Amazon lists this as available as well, so you might check your favorite jazz and blues retailer for this CD reissue. It is not available as a download I believe.
“You Know I Can’t Reuse: The Bill Heid Sessions,” (Eastlawn) is one of those discs that straddle the blues and jazz categories, so unfortunately sometimes get lost in the mix of new recordings. Drummer RJ Spangler is one of those musicians who has championed the swinging blues and rhythm pioneers of his native Detroit as well as providing solid, idiomatic support that helped revive the careers of such folks as Johnnie Bassett, Detroit’s Blues Queen Alberta Adams and the late Motor City legends as Joe Weaver, Stanley Mitchell and Kenny Martin. RJ tours with his Rhythm Rockers and plays in different combos such as RJ Spangler’s Blues Four which reunites him here with Bill Heid, one of the unsung blues and jazz keyboard players of the past thirty-five odd years. The Pittsburgh native has lived in Chicago for several years where he was on Alligator recordings by Koko Taylor, Fenton Robinson and Roy Buchanan. He later recorded for a variety of labels including several excellent organ recordings for Savant as a leader, in addition to recordings by Johnny Bassett and others for Cannonball. He lived in Detroit for about two decades developing a bunch of followers including RJ and played a major role in helping getting Johnny Bassett some international exposure. More recently, he has been part of the Baltimore and Washington jazz and blues scene. This new disc that RJ Spangler produced has Pat Prouty on string bass and Keith Kaminski on saxophone with Johnnie Bassett adding his guitar to several selections.
As the disc's subtitle suggests, Heid is the focus here. Heid plays piano and handles the vocals on a set of jazz-inflected blues or blues-inflected jazz. A good part of the 11 songs here derive from the repertoire of such jump blues legends as Floyd Dixon and Jimmy Witherspoon although it opens with a rollicking rendition of Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Ninety Nine,” with Heid’s Amos Milburn-Floyd Dixon inspired boogie piano complementing his unforced off-the-cuff vocals embellished by Bassett’s nice solo. Dixon’s “Red Cherries,” is a sophisticated uptown number with the, “Cherry a day will keep the doctor away,” has him singing about the fun in getting cherry juice on his tongue. Next is another Dixon classic, though more in the Charles Brown-Little Willie Littlefield vein, “Baby Lets Go Down to the Woods,” as Bassett’s guitar conjures up Oscar Moore. The tempo picks up for Leiber-Stoller’s “Too Much Jelly Roll, a popular part of Jimmy Witherspoon’s fifties repertoire. While he can’t shout the blues like Witherspoon, Heid’s delivery appeals in its own fashion on Spoon’s “Failing By Degrees,” with the down-in-the-alley piano ably supported by Prouty’s bass and Spangler’s brush work. Heid's “Boogie For Mr. B.” is a fine original boogie woogie. Heid’s piano also adds a fresh feel to the Joe Turner and Pete Johnson classic “Piney Brown Blues,” with Kaminski telling his bluesy story on tenor sax, while Jimmy Witherspoon’s “Times Getting Tougher Than Tough,” gets rollicking piano along with Kaminski’s tenor sax punctuation. The title track, originally by Detroit’s Five Dollars backed by Joe Weaver & the Blue Notes, has a tasty rumba groove while Johnny Bassett, who played on the original, adds his guitar here.
RJ, in the album notes, mentions outside of Bill’s original boogie, these are songs that Bill would play with RJ and the cats iover the years but had never recorded. I add that none of these numbers have been done to death. In any event, Heid adds his own inflections to his performances making for a set that should appeal to fans of jazz and blues, and artists like Jay MacShann, Charles Brown, Floyd Dixon, Amos Milburn and Mose Allison who defy category borders. Kudos to Spangler for putting together such an strong session. It is available at cdbaby.com and bluebeatmusic.com, to name two of the sources listed on http://eastlawnrecords.com.
Can there be little doubt we are blessed in terms of the availability of some terrific rhythm & blues from the music’s golden age of the forties through the sixties with the reissue of so much material. Add to this abundance of musical riches a new reissue from Ace Records in the UK from the Modern Records vault, “Cake Walkin’: The Modern Recordings 1947-1948,” by the Al ‘Cake’ Wichard Sextette. Wichard, born in Arkansas, but resident as a drummer, and participated in a number of the early post-war sessions out in the West Coast.
This is small group jump blues at the highest level which benefited from the presence of the great Jay McShann on piano for a number of tracks. It certainly did not hurt that the group was also fronted by vocalists Duke Henderson and Jimmy Witherspoon. Some of the selections by Spoon may have been issued on one of the Ace Witherspoon reissues (“Geneva Blues”), but others are alternates such as the risque “Daddy Pinocchio,” “Sweet Lovin’ Woman,” “Big Fine Gal,” and “Thelma lee Blues.” Some of the earlier sides were issued under Wichard’s name as McShann and Witherspoon were under contract to Mercury at the time. Included is Spoon’s excellent rendition of “I Want a Little Girl,” associated with Jimmy Rushing, and “Roll ‘Em Boy,” a thinly worded take on “Roll ‘Em Pete,” that Joe Turner waxed with Pete Johnson. Henderson himself accounts himself quite well on “His Majesty's Boogie,” and “Gravels in My Pillow.”
Several instrumentals are interspersed here like the two takes of “Junction Drive,” featuring McShann. The last two selections, “Boogie Woogie Basement,” and “Boogie Woogie Upstairs,” may have McShann on piano but feature guitarist Pee Wee Crayton. I’m not sure who the guitarist is on the McShann instrumental “Slow Lope,” but his playing is excellent as is McShann’s. There is also some excellent tenor saxophone (like behind Spoon on “Good Lover Blues,” which employs the “T’Ain’t Nobody’s Business” melody). Tony Rounce’s annotation details what we know about these recordings and Wichard and completes this superb jump blues reissue.
This is available from Bluebeat Music and other better internet stores.
Mosaic Records has a well deserved reputation for superb boxed sets of many different giants of jazz. In recent years they have started new series of reissues including Mosaic Select, three CD sets by various artists (often underlooked) and most recently Mosaic Singles that makes available out-of-print classic albums. Among the most recent releases in the Mosaic Singles series is a classic 1957 recording by Jimmy Witherspoon with Jay McShann and His Band, Goin’ to Kansas City Blues. Originally on RCA, I believe this has been on CD but undoubtedly deleted. Mosaic has made available the entire album with three other recordings from the sessions that had been issued on a French vinyl reissue. Opening up with Jumpin’ the Blues from the pen of McShann and Charlie Parker, Witherspoon handles other McShann classics as Hootie Blues and Confessin’ the Blues, along with Until the Real Thing Comes Along, the classic ballad made famous by Andy Kirk’s Clouds of Joy and the immortal celebration of a legend of KC night life by Joe Turner-Pete Johnson, Piney Brown Blues. Witherspoon contributed a couple of originals, Rain is Such a Lonesome Soundand Blue Monday. He shines throughout backed by the swinging big little band McShann led. Others on the session included Kenny Burrell on guitar, Hilton Jefferson on alto sax, Seldon Powell on tenor sax, Al Sears or Hayward Henry on baritone sax, Emmett Berry or Ray Copeland on trumpet, J.C. Higginbotham on trombone, Gene Ramey on bass and Mousey Alexander on drums. Stereo masters were found for all but two of the thirteen songs heard here. This is a most welcome reissue and available directly from Mosaic at http://www.mosaicrecords.com.
This is an edited version of my review that first appeared in Jazz & Blues Report. www.jazz-blues.com.
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