Video of the Week #71

New Orleans soprano saxophonist (and clarinetist) Sidney Bechet (1897-1959) was one of jazz's earliest soloists. He spent his last couple of decades in France, where he was a national hero. Here he is in July, 1958 at the Cannes Jazz Festival. He is accompanied by Teddy Buckner, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Sammy Price, piano; Arwell Shaw, bass; and Roy Eldridge (!), drums.

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Horace Silver (1928-2014)

It's gone pretty much the way I wanted it to, the way I dreamed that it would. I've gotten to work with many of my idols, Coleman Hawkins, Pres, Miles, Art Blakey. I'm a happy man.

                                                                                       Horace Silver (1996)

Pianist, composer and band leader Horace Silver died Wednesday, June 18, of natural causes, at his home in New Rochelle, NY. He was 85. Horace Silver was the defining pianist of the hard bop movement of the 1950s. During his long association with Blue Note Records, from 1952 to 1979, he produced a string of 27 critically acclaimed and financially successful albums. He is known for such compositions as “Opus de Funk,” “The Preacher,” “Doodlin',” “Senor Blues,” and his masterpiece, “Song For My Father,” simple, catchy tunes that you find yourself humming days after hearing them.

Horace Silver was born in Norwalk, CT on September 2, 1928. His father, John Tavares Silva, was an immigrant from the Cape Verde Islands, an archipelago off the West coast of Africa. He changed the family name to Silver and worked in a rubber factory. His mother, Gertrude, was a maid who sang in a church choir. As a child, he studied piano, and was exposed to Afro-Portuguese folk music as well as gospel.

After he developed a reputation as a jazz pianist in Hartford, tenor saxophonist Stan Getz heard him and hired him as a member of his quartet in 1949. He moved to New York in 1951, and became the house pianist at Birdland. In the '50s, bebop music gradually split into two rival, but overlapping, genres: cool jazz, which was predominately West Coast and white, and hard bop, which was mostly East Coast and black. Stan Getz was a leading exemplar of cool jazz. Hard bop introduced elements of blues, gospel and Latin music into bebop, and was ultimately more successful.

Horace Silver first recorded for Blue Note in 1952 with a trio consisting of drummer Art Blakey and various bassists.

In 1953, he and Blakey co-founded the Jazz Messengers, the prototypical hard bop quintet. Their first recording, Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, featured Kenny Dorham on trumpet, Hank Mobley on tenor sax, and Doug Watkins on bass. 

Silver made seven other LPs with the group under the name of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, including the 3-volume set, A Night at Birdland, with Clifford Brown and Lou Donaldson. He also served as a sideman at sessions by Miles Davis, Coleman Hawkins, Milt Jackson and others. In 1956, he left to form his own group, beginning his series of hit albums with Six Pieces of Silver. 

Like his friend Blakey, Silver was known for discovering and developing young talent, including trumpeters Art Farmer, Blue Mitchell, Woody Shaw, Charles Tolliver, Tom Harrell and Dave Douglas and saxophonists Benny Golson, Junior Cook, Joe Henderson, Bernie Maupin and Michael Brecker.

Horace Silver hit his creative peak in 1964 with Song For My Father, and its followup, Cape Verdean Blues. (By coincidence, I posted a live version of “Song For My Father” on Father's Day.)

In the late '60s, he flirted with success on the pop charts with funky classics like The Jody Grind and Serenade to a Soul Sister.

In the 1970s, Silver embarked on somewhat of a spiritual quest and began recording songs with preachy lyrics that reflected his interests in Eastern philosophy and New Age politics. They were not well received. He formed his own record label, Silveto, in 1980, without much success. In the 1990s, he returned to his roots with comeback albums for Columbia (featuring vocalist Andy Bey) and Impulse.

Horace Silver was recognized as a Jazz Master by the National endowment for the Arts in 1995 and inducted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame in 1996. He retired in the late '90s.

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Video of the Week #69 ("Song For My Father")

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Donald Byrd (1932-2013)

Video of the Week #70

From the 1965 American Folk Blues Festival, boogie-woogie pianist Roosevelt Sykes sings and plays "Gulfport Boogie." (Who's that guy peeking in the window?)

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Little Willie Littlefield (1931-2013)

Jimmy Scott (1925-2014)

In my adult life, people have looked at me as an oddity. I've been called a queer, a little girl, an old woman, a freak, and a fag. As a singer, I've been criticized for sounding feminine. They say I don't belong in any category, male or female, pop or jazz. But early on, I saw my suffering as my salvation.

                                                                Jimmy Scott, from David Ritz, Faith in Time

One of my favorite song stylists, Jimmy Scott, died in his sleep on Thursday, June 12, of congestive heart failure at his home in Las Vegas. He was 88.

Narratives of Jimmy Scott's life usually emphasize his almost unrelenting hard luck. He was born with Kallman syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that also affected one of his brothers and two uncles. It prevented him from reaching puberty, which stunted his growth, left him with a high-pitched voice, made him infertile, and caused secondary health problems, including a heart condition. He also suffered a number of career setbacks (noted below), which led to long periods of inactivity. In 2000, New York Times critic Joseph Hooper described him as “perhaps the most unjustly ignored singer of the 20^th century.” His eventual success—more critical than financial—did not come until his late sixties.

He was ultimately able to turn his contralto voice to his professional advantage. He typically sang very slowly, behind the beat, with deep emotion. His pauses, emphases, and unusual phrasing brought new meaning to the lyrics of familiar songs. He was a favorite of many other singers.

James Victor Scott was born in Cleveland on July 17, 1925, the third of ten children. He learned to sing in church choirs. His mother was run down and killed by a drunk driver when he was 13. Since his father was absent, this led to his placement in a series of orphanages and foster homes. In 1944, he joined a traveling vaudeville show headlined by Estelle “Caldonia” Young, a dancer and contortionist.

In 1948, he came to the attention of Lionel Hampton and became a singer with Hampton's band under the name “Little Jimmy Scott.” His only hit record, “Everybody's Somebody's Fool,” reached #6 on the R&B charts in October, 1950. However, he received little recognition, since the record label listed only Hampton and his Orchestra. (This was unusual; most big band records listed the names of vocalists on the label.)

Throughout the '50s, he recorded a succession of mostly ballads for the Roost, Coral, Savoy and King labels. Despite their consistent high quality, none of these records sold well, perhaps because he was a pop singer recording for R&B labels. Here's a favorite of mine, "Rain in My Eyes," from Roost in 1952. (The person who posted it illustrated the song with a scene from a 1950s Italian movie. I don't recognize the film, but I'm pretty sure the actress is Silvana Mangano.)

In 1962, his friend Ray Charles personally produced what many consider his best album, Falling in Love is Wonderful, for the Tangerine label. However, Herman Lubinsky, owner of Savoy Records, one of the prototypical villains of the early days of rock and roll, claimed to have Jimmy Scott under “lifetime contract,” and the album was withdrawn. It was finally released 40 years later. The threat of a Lubinsky lawsuit also prevented the release of The Source, which he recorded for Atlantic in 1969.

As a result, Jimmy Scott largely retired from show business, working as an elevator operator, hospital orderly and shipping clerk, while performing only occasionally. He suffered from a drinking problem, which he admits contributed to the breakup of four of his five marriages. (He was married to his fifth wife, Jeanie, for ten years at the time of his death.) At age 37, he experienced an unexpected growth spurt, which changed his height from 4' 11” to 5' 7”. Doctors suggested a treatment that might cure his Kallman syndrome, but he declined due to its unpredictable effect on his singing voice.

His rediscovery came in 1991, when he agreed to the request of his longtime friend, songwriter Doc Pomus, that he sing at his funeral. Another friend of Pomus, Lou Reed, heard him and invited him to record and tour with him. (The only time I saw Jimmy Scott was at Radio City Music Hall, opening for Lou Reed.) Also present at Pomus' funeral was Seymour Stein, owner of Sire Records, who invited him to record an album. Suddenly, Jimmy Scott became a favorite in elite circles. He sang “Sycamore Trees” on the finale of David Lynch's TV series, Twin Peaks, and performed at an inaugural ball for Bill Clinton.

His first Sire album, All the Way (1992) was nominated for a Grammy in the jazz vocal category. It was followed by several other well-received albums, and created a market for the reissue of his Savoy recordings. 

In 2007, Jimmy Scott received the National Endowment for the Arts' Jazz Master award. He was also named a Living Jazz Legend by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He was especially popular in Europe and Japan. Here he is singing at a 1997 Carnegie Hall concert honoring a Scott fan, Clint Eastwood. The pianist is Kenny Barron.

Jimmy Scott continued to tour with his backup group, the Jazz Expressions, until two years ago, sometimes singing from a wheelchair. His final recording sessions took place a couple of months ago.

I strongly recommend the video documentary, Jimmy Scott: If You Only Knew, and David Ritz's biography, Faith in Time. A good selection of his early recordings, up through and including the Tangerine album, can be found on Jasmine Records' recent release, Great Scott.

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Video of the Week #69

Since it's Father's Day, here's the Horace Silver Quintet doing an outstanding 18-minute version of "Song For My Father" on Danish TV in 1968. The quintet is Horace Silver, piano; Bill Hardman, trumpet; Bennie Maupin, tenor sax; John Williams, bass; and Billy Cobham, drums. Maupin rules.

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Video of the Week #68

Back to the roots of the Video of the Week:  the soundies. Cab Calloway is a performer I'd rather listen to than watch. Here he is with the Cabaliers and his Orchestra doing a fairly straight performance of "Blues in the Night" from 1942. I recognized only trumpeter Jonah Jones and drummer Cozy Cole in the background.

Jonah Jones was a big contributor to Cab's band. In this undated short, he sings and plays "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" with a small group from the band. I find Cab's attempts to upstage him painful to watch.

Several other filmed performances by Calloway are available on You Tube.

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Two More Lead Singers Have Died

Little Joe Cook (1922-2014)

Little Joe Cook, the high tenor/falsetto lead of the Thrillers, died of cancer on April 15 in Framingham, MA at the age of 91. He was born in South Philadelphia on December 29, 1922. His mother, Annie Bell, was a blues singer. His nickname can be attributed to the fact that he was 5' 4" tall. As a teenager, he formed a gospel group with his cousins. They recorded as the Evening Star Quartet for Gotham and Apex in the late '40s and early '50s, and had a minor hit, "Say a Prayer for the Boys in Korea," in 1951. He was acquainted with fellow Philadelphian Billy Ward, and it is rumored that he was considered as Clyde McPhatter's replacement in the Dominoes, but the job went to Jackie Wilson.

In 1956, he formed an R&B group, Little Joe and the Thrillers, that included Farris Hill, second tenor; Richard Frazier, tenor; Donald Burnette, baritone; and Harry Pascie, bass. They are unrelated to the Thrillers that recorded for Herald in 1954. Their first release for OKeh, "Let's Do the Slop," was moderately successful, but their second, "Peanuts," was a smash in the Northeast and reached #22 on the national pop chart.

"Peanuts" was released at a time when kiddie leads were popular, following the success of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. Most people assumed that Little Joe was a teenager, but he was actually 35 at the time. He explains the origin of the song in the interview below. He cashed in when it was used in a Skippy peanut butter commercial.

The group had eight more releases for OKeh, but were unable to repeat their initial success. Joe recorded steadily through the early '70s, both with reformed Thrillers groups and as Little Joe Cook. For the most part, he dropped the falsetto and sang in the soul style that was popular at the time. Here's a song he recorded for Bobby Robinson's Fury label in 1962.

Joe Cook settled in the Boston area in the late '60s and had a regular gig at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge from 1980 until he retired in 2007. He released three CDs on the Beantown label, the last in 2003. Here is a brief TV interview he did on his 90th birthday.

Joe "Speedo" Frazier (1943-2014)

Joe "Speedo" Frazier, lead singer of the Impalas, died on April 1 at the age of 70.  Not much is known about his life. He was born in New York City on September 5, 1943.  The Impalas were a street corner group from Brooklyn formed in 1958. Frazier was the only black member. The others were Tony Carlucci, first tenor; Lenny Renda, second tenor; and Richard Wagner, baritone.

Their first record, "First Date" on the Hamilton label, went nowhere, but they came to the attention of Alan Freed, who arranged an audition with Cub Records, an M-G-M subsidiary. Their first Cub release, "Sorry (I Ran All the Way Home)," peaked at #14 on the R&B charts and #2 on the pop charts in 1959. However, the followup, "Oh, What a Fool," only reached #86. 

After two more singles and an album, Cub dropped them. Following one release on 20th Century in 1961, they faded from sight.

Joe Frazier sang with Love's Own in 1973. In the '80s, he reformed the Impalas and performed in oldies shows. Here they are singing their signature tune at one of T. J. Lubinski's Pittsburgh shows.  

  

The Impalas had one release on Ronnie Italiano's UGHA label in 1982 that was arguably better than anything they recorded in the '50s.

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Dean Barlow (1924-2013)

Two More Vocal Group Losses

Video of the Week #67

Buddy Guy just makes it under my (arbitrary) 1970 cutoff. This is from Supershow, advertised as the last great jam of the '60s, a 1969 London concert that combined jazz, blues and rock musicians. In the first clip, Buddy plays and sings "Mary Had a Little Lamb," backed by Dick Heckstall-Smith and Chris Mercer, saxophones; Jack Bruce, bass; and Buddy Miles, drums. It is followed by "My Time After a While," with Bruce and Miles.

Here's an unusual pairing from the same show.  Buddy Guy sings "Stormy Monday Blues," accompanied by Rahsaan Roland Kirk on tenor sax (along with his manzello and stritch), Kirk's accompanist Rahn Burton on organ, Bruce on bass and Jimmy Hope on drums.

You can see the entire 71 minute show here. Others featured include Eric Clapton, the Modern Jazz Quartet and Stephen Stills.

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