LP-723

Ramsey Lewis Trio - Barefoot Sunday Blues

Released 1963

Recording and Session Information

Ramsey Lewis, piano; Eldee Young, bass, cello; Chris White, bass; Redd Holt, drums
RVG, Englewood, New York, August 20 1963

12559 Lonely Avenue
12560 Act like you mean it
12561 Don't even kick it around
12562 Barefoot Sunday blues
12563 Salute to Ray Charles
12564 Li'l mama please don't start
12565 Come on baby
12566 Island blues
12567 I spend my life
12568 Sarah Jane
12569 This 'n that
The train won't wait

Track Listing

Lonely Avenue	Doc Pomus	August 20 1963
Don't Even Kick It Around	R. Lewis	August 20 1963
Salute To Ray Charles	R. Lewis	August 20 1963
Barefoot Sunday Blues	Jullian Adderly	August 20 1963
Island Blues	Charles Lloyd	August 20 1963
I Spend My Life	Eldee Young	August 20 1963
Act Like You Mean It	Eldee Young	August 20 1963
Sarah Jane	Dave Grusin	August 20 1963
The Train Won't Wait	R. Lewis	August 20 1963
Come On Baby	Holt & Lewis	August 20 1963

Liner Notes

JAZZ is such a large and beautiful thing; and part of its beauty is the space and the freedom it allows for development of many diverse and dissimilar styles, which can still properly be called jazz. (Although, no one has yet come up with a definition of exactly what jazz is, for which we should all be extremely thankful). Another marvelous aspect of the music, is that even when one style or persuasion of it becomes outrageously popular, you will still be able to find some very gifted performers working in completely alien areas. So that no matter how ubiquitous Bossa Nova or Soul-Funk-Groove ideas become throughout the music, there will be other serious workmen who will not be very interested in getting on that particular bandwagon.

This is true with Ramsey Lewis and his group, to a large extent. Lewis, Eldee Young and Red Holt have been content for a long time now, to go pretty much their own way, playing music they feel moved to play, without much concern for who else is doing what. Lewis has been playing the music he wants to play, in a style that is by now readily identifiable as his own.

Lewis' playing, as well as his music does not follow in fthe most familiar tradition of Negro piano music. There is little of the percussiveness and tension that characterizes the most famous jazz piano styles, from Montana Taylor to Horace Silver. Instead, Lewis has been interested in developing a more "pianistic" technique on the instrument, utilizing a touch and attack that rely very directly on under-statement and the subtle exploitation of the melody. And there have been quite a few outstanding jazz pianists that thought along these same lines, e.g., Teddy Wilson, John Lewis, Hank Jones and some others; preferring a light swinging facility to the heavier rhythm inspired piano, that I suppose can be called Classic. But even so, like these other pianists who have thought in similarly pianistic terms, Lewis is still very conscious that jazz is a blues based music, as almost any tune on this album will readily attest (but especially on tunes like Lonely Avenue, Don't Kick It Around, Train Won't Wait). In fact, there is a bluesy exterior to all of Lewis' efforts, even on latin flavored numbers like Come On Baby, with its anonymous soul sister whispering her sensous refrain. In fact, there is a bluesy exterior to all of Lewis' efforts, even on latin flavored numbers like Come On Baby, with its anonymous soul sister whispering her sensous refrain.

The gospel influence is also very apparent in the Lewis style, for instance, on tunes like Salute To Ray Charles, which sounds like incidental music at a prayer meeting, or on the slow, gauzy ballad, Sarah Jane, which still has very clear echoes of a kind of popular "gospel" music, without losing its essentially fleshy nuances.

The point is that Lewis is able to come on a lot of different ways and still maintain his essential musical character. That is, whether he is playing a neo-gospel piece, a latin-blues production number or a dreamy ballad, Lewis and his trio are still able to keep their familiar musical identity intact, creating a music that is light and breezy or gayly introspective, but always with continous reference to the most classic of Negro music, the blues.

And Mr. Lewis' blues references are usually made in the most polished and sophisticated terms imaginable, combining the natural facility I have already mentioned with the lilting urbanity that is his trademark. No matter what the tempo, he is aided and abetted at every step by a very sympathetic rhythm section, Eldee Young and Red Holt (and on this album, by Chris White on two of the tunes). But this trio has been together long enough to get a closeness and musical rapport that many groups in jazz lack merely because they can't play together long enough to really find a common groove.

But Ramsey Lewis' music does not need long explanations, nor windy advertisements. It has a straightforward uncomplicated excitement that cancommunicate without any trouble at all. And one need only play this record to find that out. Your ears will help you.

LeRoi Jones

LP-722

Illinois Jacquet - The Message

Released 1963

Recording and Session Information

Illinois Jacquet, tenor saxophone; bassoon; Ralph Smith, organ; Kenny Burrell, Wally Richardson, guitar; Ben Tucker, bass; Ray Lucas, drums; Willie Rodriguez, percussion
RVG, Englewood, New York, May 5,7-8 1963

12447 On Broadway
12448 The message
12449 Turnpike
12450 Like young
12451 Bassoon blues 12452 Bonita
12453 Wild man

Track Listing

The Message	Ben Tucker	May 5,7-8 1963
Wild Man	I. Jacquet	May 5,7-8 1963
Bassoon Blues	E. Edwards, I. Jacquet	May 5,7-8 1963
On Broadway	Leiber, Stoller, Mann, Weil	May 5,7-8 1963
Like Young	Andre Previn	May 5,7-8 1963
Turnpike	I. Jacquet	May 5,7-8 1963
Bonita	E. Edwards	May 5,7-8 1963

Liner Notes

THE career of Illinois Baptiste Jacquet has been punctuated by commercial highs and lows. He served his musical apprenticeship in the Southland, largely in Texas where he was reared and he paid dues aplenty while learning his craft. When he joined the Lionel Hampton band in Los Angeles he was only eighteen and an unknown except to those restricted audiences privileged to have heard him play the tenor saxophone so exuberantly in obscure clubs and dreary dance halls. Hampton, always a discerning judge of musical talent, was startled the first time he heard him blow and immediately predicted greatness for him and an assured place in the pantheon of jazz. Jacquet worked with the Hampton organization for three turbulent years, polishing his style and learning from his accomplished boss all the tricks of showmanship. A year spent with both the Cab Calloway and Count Basie bands groomed him further for the stardom which came inevitably, and when in 1947 he decided to quit the role of sideman and lead his own group he had already been adjudged one of the most important and creative performers on his instrument.

If this latest album of Jacquet's, The Message, contains a message it is an emphatic statement that the Latin American influence on American jazz is pervasive and profound and that the Latin rhythms can be applied to the blues with exhilarating results. Much of this album is Latin but the idiom is American. All his life Illinois Jacquet has been sentimentally attached to French influence in art and music, but Latin melodies and rhythms have exerted an increasingly powerful impact on him. The Afro-Cuban explosion in U.S. jazz rocked him traumatically. The samba stirred him. The subtlety and melodic beauty of the Brazilian bossa nova fascinated him.

"Latin rhythms, played well with appropriate melodies, can create a wonderful, satisfying feeling", Jacquet observes enthusiastically. "Latin music gives you a grip, something exciting to work with. Making this album mainly in the Latin manner was an experience for Jacquet, precisely because his own small group seldom plays this of material or in this style."

Drummer Ray Lucas, who plays with the King Curtis group, inflamed the ardor of the other participating musicians and gave a priceless unifying drive to the sessions which were spread over two days. Lucas has a sureness of beat, great versatility and the ability to adrust to almost any problem posed. He avoids a fault of many contemporary drummers; creating unnecessary volume with the bass pedal. He communicates effectively and makes the soloist feel the rhythm patterns he creates. "You always know that Ray is there", says Jacquet, "and there is never any problem about time, the most important thing in music".

Like Young, an Andre Previn tune, is given a warm blues interpretation by the group, with organist Ralph Smith playing the bridge and guitarist Kenny Burrell taking two exquisite choruses. Nowhere else in the album is the Lester Young influence on Illinois Jacguet's playing more evident than in his first two choruses which recall the fluent, poetic Prez of the 1930's. All of Jacquet's reverence for the great Lester Young is present in his playing on this track. "I never realized I was so close to Prez until I heard this side played back", Jacquet confessed.

Ralph Smith is a Detroiter who moved to New York in 1962 and whom Jacquet hired after hearing him play one set at the Purple Manor in Harlem. A gifted and modest man, Smith injects his religious upbringing into his playing, has excellent techmque and is ambitious and studious. "Ralph Smith has a blues stream in his soul", Jacquet says poetically. "He could become one of the great organ players of our time".

The blues, Turnpike was written by Jacquet while playing an engagement at Lennie's Turnpike, a small club in West Peabody, Massachusetts, where he has a host of faithful fans who provide him with some of his best audiences. Jacquet venerates the blues, regards them as the foundation of his art. He has written many blues tunes and says "I've got many more blues to write". His earliest memories of the blues reach into his childhood in Houston, Texas where his father, Gilbert Jacquet, led a blues band which Jacquet listened to for hours. It was in Houston where Illinois aspired to become a dancer and formed a dance trio with two older brothers, Russell and Linton. He danced before he learned to play a saxophone. "We were born with the rhythm and raised on the blues", Jacquet says with pride. "If you can't play the blues, you're not a jazz musician".

Esmond Edwards, who was A & R man for this album, wrote Bonita, a minor blues-like number with Latin overtones. An oddly beguiling melody, Bonita provides Jacquet with an excellent vehicle for delightfully demonstrating the creative marriage of American jazz and Latin themes.

Bassist Ben Tucker, who wrote The Message, flew up from Washington to record the album at the invitation of Jacquet, who admires his instrumental talent as well as his compositional gifts. Ralph Smith plays the organ with fine restraint under Jacquet's soft but strong tenor line. What message does Ben Tucker here convey? Jacquet offers this explanation "Ben is saying who he is and where he came from, what he thinks and what he believes".

Wild Man, an uptempo blues, was written by Jacquet and dedicated to Boston disc jockey, Wild Man Steve Gallen. Jacquet, blowing with the big "Texas sound", that characterizes so much of his playing, dominates, but Kenny Burrell's long intricately-executed guitar solo is one of the memorable performances of this album. Jacquet knows a lot of disc jockeys around the country. "Disc jockeys are some of the most important people in this country", he maintains. "They are the salt of the earth for they spin musicians' records day and night for millions of people and thus help keep the business going".

Ever since that day in 1957 when he purchased a bassoon in Berlin while touring Europe with a Jazz at the Philharmonic troupe, Jacquet has wanted to play the instrument competently enough to record with it. A college music instructor visiting his Long Island home showed him how to assemble the instrument and explained the G Scale to him. Jacquet practiced on the bassoon usually when relaxing at home after grueling road tours. He played it in public for the first time last year at the Shanty Lounge in Boston and was encouraged. During the recording session it was decided that Jacquet should do a number with the bassoon and this blues theme was created on the spot. "I have a lot of blues in me", says Jacquet with a knowing smile.

Now 41 and a composed and reflective man, Illinois Jacquet is content to play the smaller clubs backed by Ralph Smith and drummer Jual Curtis. The lush years of the big money are behind him now, but he finds immense satisfaction in his attractive family and golf. Life has been good to him and he had no regrets today, even though his income does not approach the high-water mark of $250,000 he earned in 1947 and 1948. "It isn't the money you make", he says philosophically, "but how you live life that counts".

—Allan Morrison

LP-721

Budd Johnson - French Cookin'

Released 1963

Recording and Session Information

Budd Johnson, tenor saxophone; Joe Venuto, marimba, ,vibes; Hank Jones, piano; Kenny Burrell, Everett Barksdale, guitar; Milt Hinton, bass; Osie Johnson, drums; Willie Rodriguez, latin percussion
RVG, Englewood, New York, January 30 1963

12148 La petite valse
12149 Le Grisbi
12150 I can live with the blues
12151 Hugues' blues
12152 Under Paris skies
12153 Darling, je vous aime beaucoup
12154 Je t'aime
12155 Je vous aime

Track Listing

La Petite Valse	E. Ellington-Claire-Heyer	January 30 1963
Le Grisbi	Gimbel-Lanjeab-Weiner	January 30 1963
I Can Live With The Blues	Budd Johnson	January 30 1963
Darling Je Vous Aime Beaucoup	Anna Sosenko	January 30 1963
Under Paris Skies	Gannon-Drejac-Giraud	January 30 1963
Hugues' Blues	Budd Johnson	January 30 1963
Je Vous Aime	Sam Coslow	January 30 1963
Je T'aime	H. Archer	January 30 1963

Liner Notes

BUDD JOHNSON is a jazz musician. He plays tenor saxophone, composes and arranges. He has been an important contributor to jazz for more than thirty years, and has been a professional musician for almost forty of his fifty- two years. Most important of all the hard facts about Budd Johnson, however, is that he is a catalyst.

Wherever Budd is a participant in any sort of musical activity, from jam session to conducting a full orchestra, the sparks seem to fly. Other musicians are inspired to extend themselves and the results are most often exciting and memorable. This collection of French Cookin' is an excellent example of Johnson the catalyst in action, as well as Johnson the hard swinging and Johnson the tender tenor man. In addition, all the arrangements are his and he has contributed two originals, French drenched blues, dedicated to a long time friend, jazz critic Hugues Panassie.

Down through his career, Budd Johnson has had a catalytic effect almost everywhere he played. He first left his Dallas home at 14 as a drummer and soon wound up stranded in Oklahoma City. There, a rotund short order cook-cum-blues shouter named Jimmy Rushing fed the band for a week and then organized a battle of the bands with a local outfit, turning over all the receipts to the youngsters to get them home.

In 1926, Budd was back on the road as a saxophone player, but this time to stay. Incidently, although he concentrates on tenor, he plays all the reed instruments well. By the early '30s, he was co-leading a combo with Teddy Wilson in Chicago until they both joined Louis Armstrong in '33. From '34 to '42, our man in motion was featured with and wrote for Earl Hines' big band.

During the latter part of this period, a number of the young sidemen in the big bands were coming under the influence of a new movement in jazz playing which centered around Minton's Playhouse in New York's Harlem. Any night when they were not on the road, Budd, Dizzy Gillespie, Howard McGhee, Fats Navarro, Charlie Christian, Thelonius Monk and of course, Charlie Parker, could be found crowding each other the tiny bandstand to have a go at what later came to be called Bea»op or modern jazz.

Of all the figures involved in this evolutionary period Budd remains today the least publicized and most underrated, although he is constantly in demand in New York by other jazzmen for one or another of his talents.

During the first half of the forties, only a handful of big bands were associated with the new music and Budd Johnson was the most common denominator. He wrote for Earl Hines and Boyd Raeburn from '42 to '44, Billy Eskstine and Woody Herman in '44 and '45, and Dizzy Gillespie in '45 and '46, while playing in all but the Raeburn crew. He was also one of the chief talent scouts for all these bands, bringing in many of the new young players who achieved their own measure of fame through the association.

In the past decade, Budd was featured with Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman most recently with Count Basie, whom he left a year ago to concentrate on writing. playing around New York with his own combo, and golf. He still keeps his finger on the big band pulse by playing with and contributing arrangemeats to a new rehearsal orchestra organized in New York by Voice of America's Willis Conover and pianist-composer Lalo Shifrin.

The enclosed recording is the first in many years under Budd's own leadership. Even when he was a catalyst in the bop era, organizing the first such recording date for Apollo early in 1944, it featured Coleman Hawkins and Dizzy Gillespie and nowhere was his name mentioned. In choosing a group of French songs, Budd had two things in mind, first he wanted fresh material on which to improvise, since the date was designed as a showcase for his tenor talents. Second, he loves to play ballads and there are two unquestionably ballad melodies here, in Le Grisbi and Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup, both on side one.

Petite Valse, Je T' Aime, Under Paris Skies and Je Vous Aime are all familiar to most listeners, but listen to the unusual orchestral devices Budd employs to set up the proper mood for himself. All the numbers are scored for eight pieces, and the musicians were carefully selected by Budd for their empathy with one another. The entire recording was done in just over five hours one afternoon at Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey studio.

In addition to Johnson, the personnel reads like The Encyclopedia of Jazz, with Hank Jones, piano; Milt Hinton, bass; Osie Johnson, drums; Willie Rodrieaez, latin percussion; Kenny Burrell and Everett Barksdale, guitars and Joe Venuto, marimba, vibes and percussion.

Whether your tastes run to French Cookin', French songs, hard-swinging tender ballad improvisations, skillful orchestrating or just plain old-fashioned good listening, you'll find it here. This disc brings back to the leader's spotlight a vastly underrated and immensely talented giant of jazz. We welcome you to the rapidly expanding circle of his admirers!

—BOB MESSINGER