LP-671

The Ramsey Lewis Trio in Chicago

Released 1960

Recording and Session Information

Ramsey Lewis Trio
Ramsey Lewis, piano; Eldee Young, bass; Redd Holt, drums
Live "The Blue Note Club", Chicago, IL, April 30, 1960

10113 Bags' groove (unissued)
10114 I'll remember April
10115 What's new?
10116 Delilah
10117 Greensleeves (unissued)
10118 Blues
10119 Old devil moon
10120 Put your little feet right out (unissued)
10121 Embraceable you (into) (unissued)
10122 You don't know what love is (unissued)
10123 Scarlet ribbons (unissued)
10124 C. C. Rider [See See Rider]
10125 Sandu (unissued)
10126 Summertime (unissued)
10127 The more I see you (unissued)
10128 Bei mir bist du schon
10129 Carmen
10130 Folk ballad
10131 Where or when (unissued)
10132 Two degrees east, three degrees west (unissued)
10133 My ship (unissued)
10134 Song of India (unissued)
10135 Here 'tis (unissued)

Track Listing

Old Devil Moon	Lane, Harburg	Aptil 30 1960
What's New	Haggart, Burke	Aptil 30 1960
Carmen	Arranged By – Ramsey Lewis	Aptil 30 1960
Bei Mir Bist Du Schon	Cahn, Chaplin, Secunda	Aptil 30 1960
I'll Remember April	Raye, De Paul, Johnson	Aptil 30 1960
Delilah	Nicholls	Aptil 30 1960
Folk Ballad	Arranged By – Young, Lewis, Holt	Aptil 30 1960
But Not For Me	Gershwin & Gershwin	Aptil 30 1960
C. C. Rider	Arranged By – Young, Lewis, Holt	Aptil 30 1960

Liner Notes

MENTION the Blue Note to any jazz fan, especially one who lives around Chicago, and you're likely to be answered by, "Wasn't that a shame!"

Because just a few weeks after this album was recorded there, the club that for more than a decade had hosted every top name in jazz had to shut down. The entertainment center of Chicago moved from The Loop across the river to the Near North side, and the Blue Note was left isolated, head still high but without a nickel in its jeans.

A lot of us who had been regulars at Frank Holzfeind's establishment ever since he first opened remembered the big years and were unhappy. Years when it was just about the only game in town, and you could walk in and hear Basic or Kenton or Woody or Brown or James or even Elliot Lawrence or Charlie Parker with strings or Lester Young carefully picking his way through the audience after a set to head back to the dressing room where the gin was poured in larger than one ounce quantities.

Or the one bill some years ago that featured Maxine Sullivan, Doc Evans' band, Slim Gaillard's trio, and a young, good-looking pop singer named Harry Belafonte. Or Charlie Ventura in the halcyon days with Jackie and Roy singing those wild lines and drawing crowds of the size that Miles and Jamal do now. Or Lee Wiley and Bobby Hackett, or Red Norvo, or Lennie Tristano, or Duke Ellington playing the annual Christmas parties at which kids who could barely walk heard their first big band and were big-eyed. Or Sarah Vaughan coming in time after time, year after year.

It was one helluva club, believe me, and if you never made it there you missed something.

Ramsey Lewis got there just under the wire and it was almost like old times the Saturday night we recorded him. Al greeted you at the door and Frank was already in his office (first table to the right as you walked in), martini at hand.

The audience was of healthy size, and it included a couple of disc jockeys who dropped in to see what was happening and a night life columnist who used to fall by almost every night for a quick blast before being subjected to such indignities as having to review Liberace.

The trio was comfortably set up on the big bandstand that was really designed for Kenton and Basic and those-type housewreckers.

Not much happened the first set. Ramsey and Eldee and Red were conscious of the recording mikes and were playing safe. They skated easily through Bags' Groove and Greensleeves and two or three more, sounded good, got a nice hand, and that was about it.

The next two sets were something else. The trio forgot about the mikes and began playing to the audience. They had no diffnculty establishing the warm rapport they almost always get with people, and thus nourished by sincere applause and attention, they opened up.

This 38 minutes of music is the cream of those two sets. By the fourth set the crowd had thinned considerably, the piano was drifting noticeably out of tune (Ramsey and Oscar Peterson not only play pianos, they almost destroy them at a single sitting), and the party was just about over.

You judge for yourself how good the music is. I am of the opinion it's the best the group has ever sounded on records. Happy, dynamic, swinging, colorful, it is the sort of trio you are not likely to forget once you it.

At the end of the evening. Frank, fresh martini held in steady grip. mentioned idly, "You know, in all the years we've been going, no one has ever cut an album at the Blue Note before. Ramsey's will be the first."

It will also be the last. But it's a good one, and that's the way it should be.

Jack Tracy

LP-670

Milt Buckner - Please, Mr. Organ Player

Released 1960

Recording and Session Information

Jimmy Campbell, alto saxophone; Milt Buckner, organ; Reggie Boyd, guitar; Richard Evans, bass; Maurice Sinclair, drums
Chicago, May 26 & 27 1960

10228 You're looking good
10229 Sermonette
10230 Cry me a river
10231 'Round midnight
10232 Blue prelude
10233 Buck 'n' the blues
10234 Long gone
10235 Don't let the sun catch you cryin'
10236 Gee baby, ain't I good to you?
10237 This here (1) (unissued)
10238 Please, Mr. Organ player

Track Listing

Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying	Greene	May 26 & 27 1960
You're Lookin' Good	Milt Buckner	May 26 & 27 1960
Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You	Redman, Razaf	May 26 & 27 1960
Blue Prelude	Jenkins, Bishop	May 26 & 27 1960
Long Gone	Thompson, Simpkins	May 26 & 27 1960
Please, Mr. Organ Player	Milt Buckner	May 26 & 27 1960
Sermonette	N. Adderley	May 26 & 27 1960
Round Midnight	Monk, Hanighem, Williams	May 26 & 27 1960
Buck'n The Blues	Milt Buckner	May 26 & 27 1960
Cry Me A River	A. Hamilton	May 26 & 27 1960

Liner Notes

Milt Buckner could serve as the prototype of the jolly round man. Always in fine humor and chuckling incessantly, he plays music with the same buoyancy and elan he displays in day-to-day living.

A key to Buckner's personality lies in the title tune of this album, Please, Mr. Organ Player. He and alto saxist James Campbell put their heads together and did this happily swinging instrumental in one take, with Campbell providing the talk. It was done just for fun.

But another side of Buckner is revealed throughout this album, too. It is the bluesy way in which he will state a melody, yet playing with organ sound, perhaps the truest played by any organist in jazz. It is this quality that so endears Buckner to the many jazzmen who have worked With him, young and old.

Milt's skill as a musician, first as a pianist then as organist and for years as band arranger, is well-known, From his earliest days as the pianist with McKinney's Cotton Pickers through his long (1941-'48 and '50-'52) association with Lionel Hampton, then as a leader of his own group, he has won admiring looks from both listeners and fellow musicians.

As Hampton's pianist, Buckner became famous as the Hamp's Boogie-Woogie soloist and as the first to popularize the "locked hands" jazz piano style, since widely imitated. He also was One Of the first to play rhythm-and-blues on Hammond organ, and you will hear excellent examples of that here on such tracks as Long Gone and Buck'n The Blues.

His ability to play pensively, yet with strong, undoubted jazz attack probably is best heard on Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying, the old Joe Greene tune brought back to prominence recently by Ray Charles.

You're Lookin' Good is typically Buckneresque — bouncy and happy. Gee Baby, a standard in so many jazz repertoires, is treated with warm care here. "This one should really be dedicated to my cousin, Fritz Scott," says Buckner. "He's been after me to do it for years."

Gordon Jenkins' Blne Prelude is played in a manner which makes it obvious that Buckner has done a good deal of big band writing.

A tip of the hat to Nat Adderley and Thelonious Monk comes with Milt's versions of Sermoneette and 'Round Midnight, with Buckner especially pleased at the way the latter composition came out. "We get a lot of requests for that one every place we play," he adds.

Cry Me A River, a fairly recent ballad of much beauty, winds up the album.

Milt's personnel included his regulars. saxist Campbell and drummer Maurice Sinclaire, plus the addition of two talented young Chicagoans, bassist Richard Evans and guitarist Reggie Boyd, both well-known young jazzmen.

Al Portch

LP-669

Roland Kirk - Introducing Roland Kirk

Released 1960

Recording and Session Information

Roland Kirk Quintet
Ira Sullivan, trumpet; tenor saxophone; Rahsaan Roland Kirk, tenor saxophone, stritch, manzello, whistle; Ron Burton (as William Burton), piano, organ; Raphael Donald Garrett, bass; Gerald "Sonny" Brown, drums
Chicago, June 7, 1960

10249 Jack the Ripper
10250 Spirit girl
10251 Our waltz
10252 The call
10253 Soul station
10254 Love is here to stay

Track Listing

The Call	Kirk	June 7 1960
Soul Station	Kirk	June 7 1960
Our Waltz	D. Rose	June 7 1960
Our Love Is Here To Stay	Gershwin & Gershwin	June 7 1960
Spirit Girl	Kirk	June 7 1960
Jack The Ripper	Burton	June 7 1960

Liner Notes

"HELLO? This is Roland Kirk,", said the apprehensive long-distance voice. "Ira Sullivan said to call you about coming up to play one of your sessions. We jammed together here in Louisville last week."

After overcoming my apprehensiveness (garnered through years of hearing "cats that had jammed with. etc.") arrangements were made and Roland Kirk did indeed play one of my sessions. Johnny Griffin was on the stand when Roland, his pianist, William Burton, his drummer, Sonny Brown (both heard herein), AND his THREE HORNS AND entered upon the heated scene. He's been keeping that scene equally heated ever since! When he burst upon Chicago he created as much or more excitement than many of the top name artists that have performed at my sessions throughout the years. He almost immediately equaled in populatity my mainstay draw attractions, Ira Sullivan, Johnny Griffin, and Gene Ammons.

Roland is 24 years of age, is from Columbus, Ohio, is blind, and has mastered the techniquc of playing up to three saxophones simultaneously!

The horns concerned are the standard tenor sax; the manzello, a sort of enlarged Sherlock Holmes pipe, related to the soprano sax (but in certain ranges also suggestive of trumpet and oboe sounds); and the strich, a straight version of almost an alto sax. He also uses a siren whistle for certain effects and signals to the other band members, and plays flute as well.

He uses no special harness, just three separate and quite ordinary saxophone neck straps. The manzello hangs around his neck tucked horizontally under his right arm while he plays either the tenor or elongated strich in legitimate fashion, and then suddenly it is flipped out and up into Roland's waiting embouchure to provide a double voicing. Other times, as in The Call, all three horns are tucked tightly in Roland's mouth as he distributes his hands back and forth amongst them creating moving lines and varying chord structures.

At times Roland sticks to one horn, as he does here on his beautiful manzello version of Our Love Is Here To Stay. The two-horn approach is not only used to create exciting backgrounds for other soloists, as behind Ira's trumpet on Spirit Girl, but is also used during Roland's own solos to switch him from one horn to another, creating the impression of two different soloists. In The Call, for example, during Roland's tenor solo he flips in the manzello with the tenor to provide a hooting chord then lets the tenor hang limp and continues full blast on the manzello.

Some important events have occurred for Roland Kirk since he first played that "cooker" for me; an important engagement at the Sutherland Lounge (one of Chicago's top jazz clubs) with his co-star Ira Sullivan; his placing second as a "New Star" in the miscellaneous instruments category of the 1960 International Down Beat Critics Poll; and a full page feature article in Down Beat (Aug. 4. 1960). Some quotes from that article about this record date seem in order:

"It turned out to be one of the wildest dates engineers and bystanders could remember. In ensemble passages, two lone horn men were creating an astonishing variety of voicings. Sometimes Kirk would be pushing out chords on his three horns with Sullivan's trumpet or his tenor to add a fourth. Sometimes Kirk would do it the conservative way: he'd play only two horns in ensembles.

"Then came the real kicker: as Sullivan took off on a stomping tenor solo ("I consider myself closer to mainstream than anything"), Kirk would take the siren whistle hung around his neck on a string and let out a wild blast.

"I quit using my whistle because cats put me down for it at sessions. They think it's a gimmick. But it's not. I hear sirens and things in my head when I play. Imet a cat said he could make me a great big one..."

"One observer in the control room gave an apt description of Kirk: 'He has all the wild, untutored quality of a street musician coupled with the subtlety of a modern jazz man."

"When the session was over, Argo recording director Jack Tracy gave his view of Roland Kirk.

'I didn't record him because he's got a gimmick," Tracy said. "I like the way he plays. He's got something to say. But let's face it, a guy who plays three horns at once isn't exactly bad commercially."

All in all, for me, and I trust for you, the new Roland Kirk fan, this LP will provide an intriguing and exciting venture into a further road of exploratory jazz.

Joe Segal