Illinois Jacquet - Bosses of the Ballad
Released 1964
Recording and Session Information
Illinois Jacquet, tenor saxophone; 18 strings, woodwinds, harp, french horns and rhythm, Benny Golson, Tom McIntosh, arranger
Regent Sound Studios, New York City, October 29 + 30 1964
13521 Begin the beguine
13522 All through the night
13523 Use your imagination
13524 It's all right with me
13525 Do I love you?
13526 I've got you under my skin
13527 So in love
13528 Get out of town
13529 I love you
13530 I concentrate on you
13531 You do something to me
13532 Every time we say goodbye
Track Listing
| I Love You | Cole Porter | October 29 + 30 1964 |
| Get Out Of Town | Cole Porter | October 29 + 30 1964 |
| So In Love | Cole Porter | October 29 + 30 1964 |
| I Concentrate On You | Cole Porter | October 29 + 30 1964 |
| You Do Something To Me | Cole Porter | October 29 + 30 1964 |
| Everytime We Say Goodbye | Cole Porter | October 29 + 30 1964 |
| Use Your Imagination | Cole Porter | October 29 + 30 1964 |
| All Through The Night | Cole Porter | October 29 + 30 1964 |
| Begin The Beguine | Cole Porter | October 29 + 30 1964 |
| It's All Right With Me | Cole Porter | October 29 + 30 1964 |
| Do I Love You | Cole Porter | October 29 + 30 1964 |
| I've Got You Under My Skin | Cole Porter | October 29 + 30 1964 |
Liner Notes
COLE PORTER'S fabulous talent has left an indelible effect on the American popular music and musical comedy scene. Yet the use of his enormous output by jazz artists has been curiously limited. Tentative explanations for this neglrct have not been convincing. One of these, offered by one of the most discerning avd productive jazzmen, might offer a clue to the mystery. "Cole Porter", he said, "was a tremendous composer, but his tunes were written mainly for use in the theater. His melodic lines were unusually long, and perhaps this fact discouraged jazz musicians from making greater use of them." Whatever the reason may be, the fact is that except for a handful of Cole Porter compositions, his repertoire has been largely ignored by jazz instrumentalists. This album proves conclusively that there was no musically valid reason for this omission.ILLINOIS JACQUET is an accomplished ballad interpreter in his own right, but never before has he recorded so many ballads at one time. He has recorced ballads before, but not more than one or two in an album. During night club engagements he sprinkles his ballads gingerly, one or so to every half dozen tunes. Nevertheless, some of his most successful recordings have been ballad tunes. During the early 1940' Illinois scored strongly with a particularly exquisite recording of the ballad "I Don't Sand A Ghost Of A Chance With You". This was followed by "Memories Of You", recorded after gruelling, though commercially-rewarding tours of duty with the Lionel Hampton and Cab Calloway bands. In the 1964 Argo album "DESERT WINDS", he included the ballad "You're My Thrill" in a poignant performance.
Jacquet, one of the most disciplined and self-demanding of musicians, has given deep thought and study to the ballad. "The ballad is the most demanding test of jazz performers", he believes. "Musicians playing ballads require an exceptional ear. The instrumentalist must possess a full, rich tonal quality that comes only after long training. When I play a ballad, I approach it the way a singer would. I read the lyrics over and over, and then I try to interpret their meaning through my instrument: Jacquet regards this album as a significant departure from the norm for him. "The ballad soothes the heart when properly played", he explains. "It is supposed to induce romance. And there is a great need for peace in our world, and for love."
Illinois Jacquet was 16 years old, and playing spiritedly, though not with his present brilliance and maturity, in the orchestra of the all-Negro Phyllis Wheatley High School in Houston, Texas, when he first made musical contact with the genius of Cole Porter. Jacquet was then playing a B flat soprano saxophone, and also first alto, in the orchestra's reed section. He admired Cole Porter in his youth as a prolific compose€ and a rare musical talent. "Cole Porter was a master of the ballad form", he says. "His music is melodically exciting and moving. He felt his melodies. Porter's music conveyed tremendous feeling. I knew the man, Cole Porter, only through his tnusic, but it was a warm, close, and fascinating friendship."
Cole Porter had won world fame as a composer and lyricist long before his death. Porter lived a life of alrnost baroque elegance, made possible by inherited wealth, and had cultivated expensive tastes. Music to him was more a hobby, and an outlet for his enormous creative energies, than a means of livelihood. He wrote sumptuous scores for numerous Broadway musicals and films, and his tunes were hummed and sung by millions. Between World Wars 1 and 2, he gravitated gaily between America and Europe, consorting with a slick, super-charged international set which was addicted to a glossy high life. In those free and frivolous, but highly productive years, his hone base was mainly Paris — where he maintained a luxurious home on the teaming and tumultuous Left Bank. In 1919. he settled in Paris with his new wife. Although Paris, the French Riviera, and Venice were his favorite playgrounds, all Europe was his territory and he explored it in exotic fashion. Many of his most famous songs, which breathe America so intimately, were actually written in places like Paris, Rome, or on a yacht cruising up the Rhine. Porter was a fabulous gourmet with an enormous zest for life, and did not permit his appallingly active social schedule to blunt his creative process.
Porter was admired for his craftsmanship by the most distinguished writers of his time. Perhaps the greatest praise of all came from Richard Rodgers, who said: "Few people realize how architectually excellent his music is. There's a foundation, a structure, and an embellishment. Then you add the emotion he's put in, and the result is Cole Porter."
Born on a farm in Peru, Indiana, Porter played the violin at six, the piano at eight, and when he was ten composed his first published song, "The Bobolink Waltz". He was educated at the fashionable Worchester Academy in Massachusetts, at Yale, and at Harvard, where he studied both law and music. Porter's life differed from that of most American composers in that he never had to face the bitter battle to earn a living from his music. A wealthy family solved that problem for him. His father, Samuel Fenwick Porter, was a prosperous fruit grower, and his maternal grandfather, J. O. Cole, had struck it rich in the lumber business. After college, Porter devoted himself somewhat arrogantly to a life of ease, elegance, pleasure and casual musical creation.
He was a master of the ballad form which he employed delightfully — both musically and ivrically. His scores for Broadway musicals are studded with some of the greatest hits in musical history. The ballads which comprise this album are played with imagination and taste. All were written for a series of Broadway shows beginning in 1928 with "PARIS", (which was really a play with music) and concluding in 1955 with "SILK STOCKINGS". In the intervening years, Cole Porter wrote scores for such musicals as "FIFTY MILLION FRENCHMEN" (1929), "THE NEW YORKERS" (1930), "WAKE UP AND DREAM" (1929), "ANYTHING GOES" (1934), "JUBILEE" (1933), "RED, HOT AND BLUE" (1936), "LEAVE IT TO ME" (1938), "DUBARRY WAS A LADY" (1939), "PANAMA HATTIE" (1940). "SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS" (1943), "MEXICAN HAYRIDE' (1944), "KISS ME KATE" (a 1948 musical interpretation of Shakespeare's Taming Of The Shrew". which was his most stunning commercial triumph) "CAN-CAN" (1953) and "SILK STOCKINGS" (1957) which closed an astonishing career of writing brilliant scores for musical comedies.
Pain darkened and saddened Cole Porter's last years. Crippled, as a result of a riding accident in 1937, he underwent thirty operations in twenty years, culminating in the amputation of his right leg in 1938. What once was a life of hectic pleasure, changed to a harsh and physically miserable existence. He withdrew from the world of fun and excitement he had loved so much. When Porter died at the age of 72, (on October 15, 1964) Esmond Edwards of Argo Records, a long-time Cole Porter admirer, decided that one significant way to memorialize Porter would be to have his works interpreted by a jazz artist of stature. Illinois Jacquet, one of the acknowledged 'bosses" of the tenor saxophone, was selected to explore a series of Cole Porter ballads. This album represents the musical summation of Jacquet's findings.
One final word of admiring acknowledgement is in order for two gifted orchestrators responsible for the arrangements. Benny Golson arranged and conducted "GET OUT OF TOWN", "SO IN LOVE", "I CONCENTRATE ON YOU", "EVERYTIME WE SAY GOODBYE", "ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT", "IT'S ALL RIGHT WITH ME" and "DO I LOVE YOU". Tom McIntosh, the brilliant trombonist-arranger, orchestrated and conducted "I LOVE YOU', "I'VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN", "YOU DO SOMETHING TO ME", "BEGIN THE BEGUINE" and "USE YOUR IMAGINATION'.
Tempos range from the slow and subdued, to the lively and exuberant. Jacquet continually weaves lush tapestries on the melodic structures created by Cole Porter. His interpretations are richly evocative of the composer, and form a sentimental man whose life has become a fable of our times.
ALLAN MORRISON
New York Editor
EBONY MAGAZINE
