LP-626

Paul Gonsalves - Cookin'

Released 1958

Recording and Session Information

Sheldon Recording Studios, Chicago, August 6, 1957
Clark Terry, trumpet; Paul Gonsalves, tenor saxophone; Willie Jones, piano; Jimmy Woode, bass; Sam Woodyard, drums

Festival
Clark's Bars
Daddy-O's Patio
Blues
Impeccable
Paul's Idea
Phat Bach
Milli Terry
Funky

Festival	Paul Gonsalves	August 6 1957
Clark's Bars	Clark Terry	August 6 1957
Daddy-O's Patio	Clark Terry	August 6 1957
Blues	Paul Gonsalves	August 6 1957
Impeccable	Paul Gonsalves	August 6 1957
Paul's Idea	Paul Gonsalves	August 6 1957
Phat Bach	Clark Terry	August 6 1957
Milli Terry	Clark Terry	August 6 1957
Funky	Paul Gonsalves	August 6 1957

Liner Notes

Those who were in attendance of the Newport jazz festival in 1956 won't forget the name of Paul Gonsalves. As one of the featured soloists with the Duke Ellington band, he rocked an audience of more than 7,500 persons with his hard-charging solo on Ellington's Dirnuendo and Crescendo in Blue.

Nat Hentoff, writer for Down Beat, remembered it this way:

"Then came the deluge, the Diminuendo and Crescendo with the 27 rocking choruses in between by Paul Bunyan Gonsalves that turned the final Newport night into Dionysian rites and convinced everyone present, including me, that a memorable event was occurring...There is a gripping, rising excitement in the remarkable length and spare consistency of Gonsalves' solo over a rhythm section rocking in a uniquely heated groove...And the long, climbing ensemble close over a gyrating, shouting audience of 7 ,500 is also an experience that will chill you."

In this Argo set, Gonsalves attempts to recreate, in a different atmosphere, the passionate fire he warmed Newport hearts with in '56.

On August 6, 1957, during the Ellington band's stay at Chicago's Blue Note, Gonsalves led three compatriots from the Ellington band and a local pianist into Sheldon Recording studios. Five hours later, the quintet emerged and Paul's Festival had been revisited. From the opening Festival, exclusively Paul's, to the closing Funky, Gonsalves had restated his case, with the assistance of Clark Terry, Willie Jones, Jimmy Woode, and Sam Woodyard.

Bostonian Gonsalves was born 37 years ago on August 12. He began to satisfy his desires for a career in music when he was 16, by playing guitar. Switching to tenor a few years later, he was featured with Sabby Lewis's band in Boston during the early 1940s, After a stint in the army, he worked with the Count aasie band (1946). He worked with Dizzy Gillespie's big band in 1949-50, then joined the Ellington band. Except for a few weeks with Tommy Dorsey's band in '53, he's been a member of the Ellington reed section ever since 1950.

Clark Terry, whose trumpet playing has illuminated many record sessions, was also born in 1920. He was active in music in high school, majoring on valve trombone. He left his St. Louis home to serve in the navy during World War II and was a member of an all-star band at Great Lakes, from 1942 to 1945. After he obtained his service discharge, he worked, successively, with the bands of Lionel Hampton, George Hudson (in St. Louis), Charlie Barnet, Charlie Ventura, Count Basie. In November, 1951 he joined the Ellington band and, as already mentioned, has been with it ever since.

Twenty-nine-year-old bassist Jimmy Woode is a formally trained musician. His father was a music teacher in Philadelphia. Woode studied piano at the Philadelphia academy of music, at the Boston university school of music, at the Boston conservatory, and under bassist Paul Gregory. During a navy stint he sang with a navy band, Atter his service tour, he worked with a singing group, then formed his own trio. He spent two years as house bassist at George Wein's Boston jazz emporium, Storwille, and toured with Flip Phillips, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald. He worked with Nat Pierce's band, then joined Ellington in early 1955. Recently, he's been composing and arranging for the Ellington band, in addition to capably handling the bass chores.

Drummer Sam Woodyard, 33, is a self-taught musician. He was born in Elizabeth, N.J. and acquired considerable experience working with groups in the Newark area. He worked with Joe Holiday, Roy Eldridge, and Milt Buckner before joining Ellington in 1955.

Willie Jones is a Chicago pianist, in his late 30s, who has had his own trio and has worked with many name jazzmen in the Midwest. His piano style is in the Milt Buckner tradition.

Gonsalves is credited with three charts for this session: Festival, Blues, and Paul's Idea. Terry contributed Clark's Bars, Daddy-O's patio (for Chicago's leading jazz disc jockey Daddy-O Daylie), Impeccable (written by Terry and Marion Michaels), Phat (a Terry collaboration with a trumpet-playing postal clerk, Sykes Smith), Milli Terry, and Funky. Several of these charts, notably the attractive ballad, Impeccable, and the marching Milli Terry, assist in elevating this session above the mass of uninhibited blowing sessions being issued on record today.

This, then, is a four-Ellingtonians-plus-one session, with glimpses of Newport revisited, the imaginative Clark Terry compositional approach, and Gonsalves' passionate tenor sound enhancing the basic value of the LP.

It is another chapter in the history of the Ellington influence and the men who have made the Ellington band one of infinite significance in the history of jazz in America.

Don Gold
Associate Editor
Down Beat Magazine

LP-625

Chubby Jackson's Big Band - I'm Entitled To You!!

 

Released 1958

Recording and Session Information

Chicago, November 4 1957
Joe Silva, Don Geraci, John Howell, Bill Hanley, Don Jacoby, Porky Panico, trumpet; Cy Touff, trumpet; George Jean, Paul Krum, Bill Harris, trombone; Howard Davis, alto saxophone; Sandy Mosse, Vito Price, tenor saxophone; Willie Caulkins, baritone saxophone; Marty Rubenstein, piano; Ray "Remo" Biondi, guitar; Chubby Jackson, bass; Don Lamond, drums; Jackie Paris, vocals; Manny Albam, Al Cohn, Bill MacRae, Bob Brookmeyer, arrangement

I'm Entitled To You
To Seek
New York To Chicago
Move My Way
Gus's Blues
Slap That Bass
Big Fat Nothin
Yesterday Is Here
Do Me Sump'n
Mister Duff

I'm Entitled To You	C. Jackson	November 4 1957
To Seek	C. Jackson	November 4 1957
New York To Chicago	C. Jackson	November 4 1957
Move My Way	C. Jackson	November 4 1957
Gus's Blues	Gus Johnson	November 4 1957
Slap That Bass	George and Ira Gershwin	November 4 1957
Big Fat Nothin	C. Jackson, M. David	November 4 1957
Yesterday Is Here	C. Jackson	November 4 1957
Do Me Sump'n	Jackson	November 4 1957
Mister Duff	C. Jackson	November 4 1957

Liner Notes

In the recent lean years of jazz, there was a lot of confusion as to what to play and how to play it. But certain champions have stood for what they believe despite the urging of big business to do otherwise. By sticking to their convictions, they have kept the truth of our music alive and have given courage to the rest of us to go on. My new prediction is for a prosperous era of jazz. More and more good jazz is being exposed in albums. I feel a lush period ahead for those who play for the love of it.

Usually, when someone sits down to plan what he hopes will be a hit album, he gets advice and counsel from all sides to copy other successes, to alter the style he believes in, etc. He's got to wind up without saying his own story. I'm proud to say that Leonard and Phil, Chess, the two men behind Argo records, told me point-blank to do whatsoever I chose, to take a free hand in the entire production of the album. No meetings, no conferences, no stop-lights no nuttin'!

Up to date, I've never really imposed my writings on other musicians. I wrote some for Woody that he accepted and played only because it was my Woody and I never felt ashamed of presenting him with any of my thinking. Strangely enough, most people feel that a bass player's function is solely to supply rhythm and nothing else. A careful listening to the great melodic efforts of such bassists as Jimmy Ihanton, Red Mitchell, Oscar Pettiford, Ray Brown, Charlie Mingus and many others too numerous to mention would quickly set such people straight. I have found strength from the music of these men, and in this album decided to do the majority of the writing, to tell and to see what my story happens.

I love to play bass in a big band! Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the cute lines of a small group and the solo efforts of solo artists who are really artists who know how to make their statements clear once you open a hole for them. But the drive of the big band machine has always been my number one love. Like, I'd rather watch the Chicago Bears football machine operate than sit in the sun and watch a tennis match.

In choosing certain artists to feature in this album, I immediately called on my favorite instrumentalist of all time, my friend and associate Bill Harris. All I can say is that when I try to write a ballad form, I automatically visualize Big Bill playing it, so in this album you'll hear Bill on three ballads especially written for him. And for perhaps the most important instrument and instrumentalist in the entire album - Mr. Don Lamond, a swingin" guy who has never stopped swingin'. I know that most jazz musicians would back up that statement. My years of association with him make me appreciate his fantastic knowledge of music. I also felt that album needed the presence of an honest wailer with the voice to express his feelings. The great success of Jackie Paris at the Newport Jazz Festival reminded me that he was the guy to fill that need. I predict that Jackie is going to be a big star in the near future. He makés his messages clear with a big display of heart. In his efforts, I'd like you to meet the guy who supplied the lyrics on two of the songs, Marvin David. You'll hear a fresh approach to writing, and to add his construction to the feeling I wanted in this album just seemed to come naturally.

Then, too, I'm extremely fortunate in having such outstanding newer soloists as Vito Price, Cy Touff and Sandy Mosse. Each chair in this band was carefully chosen. First of all I was looking for four 1st trumpet players with big band experience, and we've got them. The big fat trumpet sound...there's nothing like it. The saxes with the standard alto, tenor and baritone fill in the rest of the meat of the ensembles. Along with Don Lamond on drums, Marty Rubenstein on piano and myself on bass, I feel the emergence of a rhythm guitarist by the name of Remo Biondi. He's our Freddy Green from the Count's band. He's too much.

We've tried to do a couple of things here that, to my knowledge, haven't been done on record before. For instance, in "Gus's Blues", you'll hear an entire ensemble from beginning to end, based note for note on a record of the same name done by the great Zoot Sims and arranged by the famous Bobby Brookmeyer. Also the two Bill Harris ballads, called "Yesterday Is Here" and "To Seek", for just one chorus with a small tag. Bill MacRae arranged these tunes with a great deal of finesse. Jackie does three different vocals, "Do Me Sump'n", "Big Fat Nothin" and "I'm Entitled to You", in which you'll hear mostly ensembles behind him. I'm proud to say that Manny Albam did all the arrangements for Jackie, On "N.Y. to Chicago" and "Mister Duff", you'll hear two arrangements by Al Cohn featuring some of the soloists. He also made up a tune for me featuring the bass — a not too well known show tune by the Gershwin brothers called "Slap That Bass." I can't quite agree with their suggestion, but I'll do my best. Then we'll hear Bill Harris again on "Move My Way", playing with the standard big band sound behind him. This one was also arranged by Bill MacRae.

This album will quickly tell me if I calculated correctly or not in my free choice of musical messages. I hope it makes it. At any rate...this is me. I'm teling my story. I'm entitled to you ! ! !

LP-624

Johnny Griffin Quartet - J.G.

Released 1958

Recording and Session Information

Chicago, 1956
Johnny Griffin, tenor saxophone; Junior Mance, piano; Wilbur Ware, bass; Buddy Smith, drums

I Cried for You
Satin Wrap
Yesterdays
Riff Raff
Bee-Ees
The Boy Next Door
These Foolish Things
Lollypop

I Cried for You	G. Arnheim, A. Lyman, A. Freed	1956
Satin Wrap	J. Griffin	1956
Yesterdays	J. Kern, O. Herbach	1956
Riff raff	W. Ware	1956
Bee-ees	J. Griffin	1956
The boy next door	V. Youmans, S. GReene, J. Strachey	1956
These foolish things	H. Link, E. Maschwitz, J. Strachey	1956
Lollypop	J. Griffin	1956

Liner Notes

There is in Chicago, a long curving boulevard down which flows more traffic per minute than goes through many a healthy sized town in an entire day. This boulevard, called South Parkway, passes by more churches, bars, kitchenettes and people per square inch than perhaps any other street in the United States. South Parkway is a busy street and it was on this busy street that I called to Johnny Griffin one afternoon after DuSable High had Ict out for the summer. "Hey Johnny, where you goin'!" "To music lessons"' He yelled over the dominant sevenths, flatted fifths and wild D minors of the wailing jitney cabs and Chicago Motor Coach horns. And the little boy with the slicked back wavy hair and the horn case that was almost as big as he was cut through the crowd of cabs and vanished around Forty-Sevcnth Street — to lessons.

That was nearly fifteen years ago and we, Johnny and I, were both fourteen years old and drapes were the coolest thing on the scene. Johnny's hair isn't slicked back anymore and his horn, which wailed even then (enough to prompt Lionel Hampton to hire him before he was eighteen) knows who's boss. Johnny is not "little Johnny Griffin" anymore. His sound is his and nobody else's. His ideas come when he calls them. Johnny Griffin knows his horn and plays as if he does, — with power, assuredness and, when he wants to, as fast as any tenor man alive.

Things have happened to Johnny since those days in the big gymnasium-looking band room of DuSable's Captain Walter Dyett: fame, experience, much travel and of course some bad things too. For if you cross Chicago's South parkway often enough or New York's Lenox Avenue or Kansas City's Eighteenth and Vine, the bad things are bound to happen and these too were Johnny's lessons...bitter, but there.

There is anger in Johnny Griffin's sound, the surge — without waiting — around the chord changes, the piling of idea upon idea, the stacking of climax upon climax: this is an exciting sound, an angry sound. When you hear Johnny Griffin on this album, you shall be hearing the cry of an Angry Young Man — angry but ever so down-with-the-game of the big city blues. Here is the sound of a man with a full grown soul. Johnny Griffin has something to say — listen and you shall hear.

FRANK LONDON BROWN
Frank London Brown, is 31, a Roosevelt graduate and an ex-jazz singer . His forth-coming novel, "Trumbull Park", has won for him the coveted "John Hay Whitney" award for creative writing for 1957... He is currently featured at the Joe Segal-sponsored Monday nite jam sessions at the "Gate of Horn" doing his fictional "Readings In Jazz" to improvised musical background...

Herein are recorded for posterity the first jazz recordings ever made by Johnny Griffin...When originally cut, Johnny was a fairly obscure Chicago tenorman, who a handful of people could recall as one of the two Flying Home experts employed by one of the early Hampton earth-movers...

Many important events have taken place since this ARGO LP was cut; events which, to Johnny Griffin have meant the difference between spending his entire musical career playing in one South-side club after another, or, as is now the case, garnering some of the much deserved fame and fortune that every truly creative jazz artist should taste of before his days are over! Such important things as a very worthwhile stint with Art Blakey's Messengers; numerous recording dates; a rebuilding strictly along Jazz lines of his repetoire and approach, a currently fruitful N. Y. stand with Thelonious Monk and most recently, his making fourth position in the "new star" tenor division of the 1958 Down Beat Critics poll...

Julian Junior Mance, a veteran of an early Lester Young group, and most recently known as the groovily comping piano-man with the hard-swinging "Cannonball" Adderley quintet is one-third of Johnny's rhythm section...

Bassist Wilbur Ware, who has, since these sides were cut, gained nation-wide stature as the bass-man of today from whom tomorrows stylings will derive, readily exhibits the talents that make the aforementioned comments so appropriate...The international Down Beat Critics poll of 1958 has placed him first in the new star division...

And, the important percussion chair is most capably manned by Chicagoan-by-adoption, Buddy Smith, originally from New Orleans...

I Cried For You: First made popular, jazz-wise, in the early thirties by Benny Goodman's small group version, I Cried For You, has maintained its standing among succeeding generations of ballad improvisors...

In his interpretation, Johnny Griffin chooses a relaxed, softly swinging approach that enhances the original melody; until Mance's urgent comping sends him into a gradual finger-snapping shout of Johnny Get Your Gun; which he does, in no uncertain terms! Jr's. ringing piano solo leads to a bass walk-out and into thc ensemble statement of the rousing, rocking ending...

Satin Wrap: Johnny's original, Satin Wrap follows, and after the beautifully simple statement of the theme, Wilbur Ware takes over melodically to walk matters right into Junior's Country Gardens, which JG coolly enters and proceeds to raise the temperature to a driving riff figure that gives way to the once again simply stated theme figure...

Yesterdays: a classic in popular music annals, is given a one chorus treatment by Johnny, in which, with his tone-wise reminder that Coleman Hawkins is one of his favorites, "says more", perhaps, than many a tenor man will during an entire career. His explosive change runnings and always lyrical plaintifness end the tune with an extended tag not unlike those which endeared Billy Eckstine with so many fans of yore...

Riff Raff: The flavor of the great Thelonious Monk permeates the proceedings of Riff Raff, a Wilbur Ware original...Most reminicent of Well You Needn't...The changes are pretty, and challenging, and each man has a ball with them, especially Mance, who in one part of his solo calls the thoroughbreds to the starting gate. Ware's solo here, indicates just exactly why he has since been termed "Monk of the Bass"... And so ends Side one...

Bee Ees: another Griffin original opens the second side, with Johnny's singing sound dominating throughout...Buddy's sizzle-work behind Johnny's first chorus, his appropriate "toning down" behind Mance's bright solo, and his humorous drum break after Johnny's second run-filled chorus, label him as one of the more tasteful drummers on the scenc today.

The Boy Next Door: Long has been one of Johnny's most requested in-person tunes. He takes this ever-green at a medium bounce tempo, and embellishes to just the right degree the already lovely melody...Johnny's "Boy" turns out to be simultaneously quite strong, and engagingly tender. Mance's locked-hands offers an interesting conceptual contrast to that of Griffin.

These Foolish Things: A six note quote from Bird's immortal BeBop solo; one from Rhapsody In Blue, and another from, Can't Help Lovin' That Man, dot this 1 1/2 chorus soul-felt rendition of These Foolish Things, in which Johnny's big-toned tenor runs rampant from logically sequenced runs to stretches of straight melody, and ends most humorously with yet another quote, from an old German beer song, I believe...

Lollypop: Just as a good set in any jazz club will close with a strong-swinging rocker, so does this LP, with yet another Griffn original, Lollypop Johnny's muscular tenor sets the groove with Mance soloing in his own style and then "Basieing" it behind Wares walking bit...Johnny really wails it into Buddy's drum break, and the ensemble brings this swinging set to a happy close...

I imagine a musician of Johnny's stature, when finally he receives some public recognition, after having had years of scuffle and experience poured through his horn and whole being, must feel as though a tremendous weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Having known Johnny for many of those "nothing" years, I have the same feeling; people no longer look at me in that strange "who?", or "so-what" manner when I extol one of my very favorite tenor saxophonists...Finally, they have come to realize, that what they've been hearing and taking so much for granted for so many years, was, when they first heard it, a signal of things to come And, by gosh, they've finally caught up to the improvising genius that is Johnny Griffin.

JOE SEGAL
Chicago Columnist,
Metronome Magazine

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