Thursday, May 15, 2025

Hoagy Sings Carmichael With Johnny Mandel and The Pacific Jazzmen [From the Archives]

 © -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


Hoagy Sings Carmichael With The Pacific Jazzmen [Pacific Jazz CD 0777 7 46862 2 8] has sat in my collection for a long time, but I never knew its origins until I read the following in Richard M. Sudhalter’s Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael [Oxford/2002].


Sadly, like Bing Crosby, Hoagy Carmichael and the impact he had on American popular music, especially during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, is pretty much lost to 21st century music listeners.


But if you do have an interest in the life and music of Hoagy Carmichael, as his son, Hoagy Bix Carmichael states on the book’s dust jacket: “There’s nobody on the face of this musical earth better suited to write a book about my father than Dick Sudhalter. And as expected, he has done a wonderful job.”


“Toward the end of 1956, Hoagy’s Decca recording contract, in force since 1938, finally expired. …


However inauspicious a way it might have been to end so long and fruitful an association, it also formed a prelude to one of Hoagy Carmichael's finest moments on record. Richard Bock, owner of World Pacific Records, had been a fan for years; now, with Hoagy free of record-company commitment, nothing prevented him from recording the songwriter in a new and challenging setting.


New Yorker Johnny Mandel had done his band business apprenticeship toying trombone with, and arranging for, Jimmy Dorsey, Boyd Raeburn, Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw's short-lived 1949 bebop band, and — perhaps most telling of all — Count Basie. He'd worked as a radio staff arranger in New York, studied at Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard, contributed scores to NBC television's Your Show of Shows, arranged an album for singer Dick Haymes.[Mandel’s career as a composer of many beautiful songs including Emily, Close Enough for Love, The Shadow of Your Smile, et al was yet to come].


Bock's idea was simple: feature Carmichael singing his own songs, backed not by slick studio bands, tack-in-hammer pianos, or warbling vocal trios, but by a tightly knit group of ranking modern jazzmen, playing carefully textured and swinging arrangements.


"We went out to visit him," said Mandel. "Forget now whether it was in Hollywood or Palm Springs. Found him there behind the bar, mixing drinks; really hospitable and gracious. We just got right to talking. He had pretty clear ideas of what he wanted to do, and what he didn't want to do. He realized he wasn't a straight ballad singer, didn't want to do things like 'One Morning in May,' that had all sorts of sustained notes and big intervals. He didn't try to sing 'I Get Along Without You Very Well,' for instance. But he could always do the character-type ballads, like 'Baltimore Oriole,' 'Georgia,' and the rest."


Mandel, in the process of winning respect as a master songwriter in his own right, chuckled at the memory of those first "brainstorming" sessions. "Hoagy hated bebop ... I remember he came to hear Woody's band when it was really hot, and said something like, 'Aw, give me an old bass horn any time.' He meant it, too.


"When I was with Basie, around 1953 or so, we came to town and Hoagy was there — he was doing this TV show, Saturday Night Revue. He just kinda walked around thinking, with his tongue in his cheek, looking kinda glum, and I took him for just a kind of moody guy. Also, some of the guys on the band had told me he was a real far-right Hoosier-type Republican, kind of an Indiana cracker. Johnny [Mercer] was a bit like that too, I guess-though I never saw it in either of them."


Hoagy Sings Carmichael was recorded at three sessions, September 10,11, and 13, 1956 — with a band full of outstanding jazzmen: trumpeter Don Fagerquist had been in Les Brown's brass section for the 1955 "Hong Kong Blues" date; Harry "Sweets" Edison was an honored Basie veteran, then enjoying a career renaissance through his muted obbligato work on the arrangements Nelson Riddle was using to showcase Frank Sinatra; Jimmy Zito, another Brown alumnus, had ghosted the "Art Hazard" solos for Young Man With a Horn.


Alto saxophonist Art Pepper was new to Hoagy, as were pianist Jimmy Rowles and drummer Irv Cottler. An old Carmichael friend, Nick Fatool, replaced Cottier on drums for the third session. Said Mandel: "I spotted his vocals wherever I thought they'd be most effective, stuck 'em in the middles, usually. Remember, I didn't have a big band there — rather, a small band trying to sound big. So voicings were important.


"As a singer? He was a natural. Knew what to keep and what to throw away. Didn't try to be a capital-S singer: more often he approached the songs conversationally, like an actor, like Walter Huston doing 'September Song.' And you know, those are really the most effective readings for those sorts of things, rather than somebody doing something with a straight baritone. You never knew beforehand how he was gonna sing something: when be was going to talk it, where he was gonna leave spaces."


He not only leaves spaces, but on several songs confines his vocals to a decidedly secondary role, giving the major melody expositions to the band. Again and again, his vocals strike the ear as measured, thoughtful, Carmichael taking his time, never pushing his vocal resources beyond their limits, He opens "Two Sleepy People" with only Al Hendrickson's unamplified guitar; carries "Rockin’ Chair" away from its familiar role as a piece of quasi-vaudeville material and returns it to its origins as an end-of-life valedictory, with Rowles, on celeste, underscoring its reflective, pastoral quality.


Art Pepper gets most of the solo space and is particularly distinctive on "Ballad in Blue" — incredibly, the song's first vocal treatment on record since its publication twenty-two years before. "Two Sleepy People" teams him with a cup-muted Fagerquist for a closely intertwined duet, distantly echoing the long-ago "chase" choruses of Bix and Frank Trumbauer.


But the saxophonist's — and perhaps the album's — most stirring moment belongs to "Winter Moon," newly published at the time, with one of Harold Adamson's most affecting lyrics. Pepper establishes the melody, a heartfelt cry in icy emptiness:


Where is love's magic?
Where did it go?
Is it gone like the summertime.
That we used to know?
(The song remained in his mind. Twenty-two years later, his life shattered by heroin addiction and a decade in prison, Pepper recorded it again.
Though cushioned by strings and rhythm, it is a performance of almost unbearable intensity, glowing in a clear, glacial light, hypnotic, agonized.)


The line of descent from "Ballad in Blue" to "Winter Moon" is clear. The desolation of love lost shadows both lyrics, casting both melodies in minor-mode darkness. But unlike its predecessor, "Winter Moon" allows no ray of light to penetrate its interior. Melodically and harmonically sophisticated, emotionally complex, it is a work of its composer's maturity, a regretful backward look at a brighter past, "a kind of art song," in singer Barbara Lea's words. "Not at all what you'd think of as 'typical' Hoagy Carmichael except in its air of longing, something once had and now lost."'


Mandel concluded Hoagy Sings Carmichael with a swinger, a Basle-inflected recasting of "Lazy River" with a sassy, strutting trumpet solo by Sweets Edison. Again, Hoagy rises to the task. "You could tell from that, especially, that he would have been a great jazz musician," the arranger said. "In singing 'Lazy River,' he ... didn't try to sing the line exactly, [because] he realized what would fit his range and vocal quality, especially at that tempo. He was very smart about that, [and] his approach was very jazzy."


George Frazier's sleeve essay spoke for all concerned in declaring that


“...it strikes me as enormously reassuring that an individual who in bygone years made music with men of approximately his own age, background and attitude should be sufficiently uninstitutional to record with a group of musicians (with one exception) so lately undiapered that some of them had not yet been born when Star Dust was becoming the theme song of a whole era. To me, the results of this collaboration sound absolutely marvelous.''


Here are the rest of George Frazier’s excellent sleeve notes with the above excerpt placed in the larger context of his essay on the album.


The trouble with most institutions is that they're too institutional. In their resolute resistance to change, their anachronistic aversion to progress, and their almost insular insistence upon continuing, so to speak, to stock high-button shoes, they permit themselves to become period pieces — often, to be sure, redolently recherche du temps perdu period pieces, but, nevertheless and notwithstanding, almost always very, very aging ones as well. Providentially, no such indictment can be brought against Hoagland (Hoagy) Carmichael, who, institution though he he, has neither a closed mind nor, rather more pertinently, a closed ear.


At any rate, here, in Hoagy Sings Carmichael, a man approaching the ordinarily stodgy, look-before-you-leap age of 58, a man whose earliest musical inspiration was the silvery explosiveness of Bix Beiderbecke's cornet; whose "Lazy Bones" was a delight as long ago as the summer dusks of the '30s, when, with the waters slapping against the shores of the Glen Island Casino, the Casa Loma (ave atque vale) used to play it, as the radio announcer so quaintly phrased it,"for your dancing pleasure"; and whose "Riverboat Shuffle" remains, after all these fickle years, the rousing anthem of the chowder and marching societies that gather nightly in unsolemn conclave in such Dixieland mosques as Jazz, Ltd. in Chicago and Eddie Condon's Sign of the Pork Chop in New York — here, in Hoagy Sings Carmichael this man, or, if you will, this institution, this tradition, this living legend — joins with some of the more explorative spirits in contemporary jazz to achieve fresh interpretations of a batch of his most appealing compositions.


I do not think it either maudlin or churlish to say that Carmichael — his croaky voice, casual manner, diminutive, wizened figure, and bulging songbag — is somehow part of all of us who love worthwhile popular music — the way, for instance, that Tommy Dorsey was, part of us, which is to say that when Tommy died, the part of us that had responded to his "Marie, Song of India," "I'll Never Smile Again," and all those other untarnished treasures died a little too. Carmichael, who was horn in Bloomington. Indiana, on November 22, 1899, has been part of us for quite a while.


Although he spent considerable extracurricular time playing piano with school and college bands. Carmichael would probably have become a practicing attorney (an occupation for which he prepared himself at Indiana University) had it not been for the fact that the Wolverines, a group he admired prodigiously, dazzled him by recording his first composition. "Riverboat Shuffle," for the Gennett label. Subsequently, when the Paul Whiteman Victor of his "Washboard Blues" sold far beyond his most youthfully intemperate expectations, he made up his mind to become a full-time songwriter. It was a salutary decision, for since then he has composed the music to such memorabilia as "Stardust," "Lazy Bones," "Georgia on My Mind," "Rockin' Chair," "One Morning in May," "Snowball,""Lazy River,""Small Fry," "In the Still of the Night," "Judy," "Two Sleepy People," "Skylark," "The Nearness of You," "Old Buttermilk Sky," "Doctor, lawyer, Indian Chief,""Ivy," "Memphis in June,""Blue Orchids,""Hong Kong Blues," "I Get Along Without You Very Well," "New Orleans," "Baltimore Oriole," "Winter Moon" and "Ballad In Blue." As if that were not enough, though, he has managed to bolster his reputation by being a fairly ubiquitous (and almost invariably engaging) performer, not only on radio, television and phonograph records, but also in such motion pictures as Young Man with a Horn, Canyon Passage. The Best Years of Our Lives, Johnny Angel and To Have and Have Not (in which, by the way, he miraculously succeeded in lending individuality to a role almost infringingly in direct apostolic succession to Dooley Wilson's Sam in Casablanca).


Everything considered, it strikes me as enormously reassuring that an individual who in bygone years made records with men of approximately his own age, background and attitude should be sufficiently uninstitutional to record with a group of musicians (with one exception) so lately undiapered that several of them had not yet been born when "Stardust "was becoming the theme song of a whole era. To me, the results of this collaboration sound absolutely marvelous. How they will sound to Hugues Panassie*, however, may be rather a different story. [*Panassie was a French Jazz musician/critic who basically had little use for modern Jazz.]


I wonder what Hugues Panassie's reaction will be to the lovely, understated instrumental stuff behind and between Carmichael's singing — to Art Pepper's alto saxophone, Don Fagerquist's trumpet. Jimmy Rowles's piano, Harry Klee's flute and Johnny Mandel's arrangements. (I omit mention of Harry Edison, one of the chief participants, because once upon a time he played with Count Basie and I would therefore imagine he could be faulted by Panassie only on the grounds of the company he keeps in this album.) I hasten to state that this is no gratuitous crack, which is why I should probably explain that I was a Panassie man even before Bullets Durgom was a band-boy and just about the time that Le Poivre Martin was running the bases like no other wild horse of the Osage in history. As a matter of fact, if memory serves me, it was in 1931 that the monsieur himself persuaded me to abandon the Harvard backfield and become a regular contributor to a wilful little French periodical called Jazz-Tango-Dancing could not have cared less whether the hell I punted on third clown or not. As its guiding light, its father confessor, its raison d'etre really, M. Panassie was simply superb — sensitive, informed, communicative, dedicated, stimulating, and, above all, not the slightest bit tactful. Indeed, in those headstrong years, he was, I think, as provocative and, more often than not, as competent a jazz critic as has ever raised his voice in a Down Beat poll. And as time went by and his book, Le Jazz Hot (literal translation: Le Jazz Chaud), was published in this country and (without any connection whatsoever) people started shagging shamelessly in the aisles of a movie cathedral in Times Square, he — M. Panassie, naturellement! — became an institution. That was all to the good, and, God wot, it still would be if only he had not allowed himself to become so damned institutional! I think somebody should inform mon capitaine that we employ the T-formation these enlightened days.


A week or so ago I received a copy (complimentary!) of a hook called Guide to Jazz ("Valuable information," says the jacket blurb, "on every aspect of jazz, by Hugues Panassie. author of Le Jazz Hot, and Madeleine Gautier.") Inasmuch as I was soon to commence setting down these observations, I thought I'd better have a look at what Papa Panassie had to report about Art Pepper, Johnny Mandel, Jimmy Rowles. Harry Klee and Don Fagerquist. As it turned out, my old squadron leader seems never to have heard of them. At any rate, their names do not appear in Guide to Jazz or, as the expression goes, Sonny Tufts! I do not mind saying that I find this appalling. There is, of course, line upon line about the likes of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, which is as it should be, for the Ellington band, after all, is as incandescent as they come and Louis is a perpetual pure blue flame and, to my ears, no jazz record of the past decade was any more exciting and enduring than his "Mack the Knife." Still and all, though, a guide — a truly eclectic and informative guide — should be mindful of the fact that any art form progresses and that, as it does, it breeds bright new voices. I think that Panassie should realize, at infuriatingly long last, that many of the new, even the experimental, forms are now being absorbed into the mainstream of jazz and that Gerry Mulligan and Pee Wee Russell have more to say to each other than he, Panassie, would like to believe. In any event, it is true that the progressives — the moderns, the cool ones, or what you will — have modified their radicalism and, in doing so, grown close to the basic jazz. In the course of this, they have broadened, enriched and revitalized an art form that, like any other, cannot endure by remaining stagnant, by sitting back and preserving the status quo.
Hoagy Sings Carmichael, which utilizes eleven musicians and Carmichael, was recorded in Los Angeles at the Forum Theatre, a large legitimate house with excellent acoustics. Carmichael feels that the background in the modern idiom — the fresh instrumental voices and the imaginative Mandel arrangements — stimulated him to sing differently and perhaps better than ever before. The highly contemporary accompaniment, he says, made him feel younger, a fact that I think will be immediately obvious to anyone acquainted with his records of other years. I also think that it is equally obvious that he might have done much to inspire the boys in the band, as the saying goes.


There is great, great beauty and talent in this album. For one thing, the Mandel arrangements are marvels of unobtrusiveness designed to highlight the singing. Indeed, subtle is the word for the whole enterprise. Although I dislike programmatic album notes — notes, that is, that inform you, rather patronizingly, what you should like, and so forth — I'm afraid that I cannot resist a few observations along such lines. One is that Art Pepper, who has been away from music for much too long a time, is simply superlative, with bite to his attack, body to his tone and a disciplined architecture to his improvisation. He is, mon capitaine Panassie notwithstanding, a great alto saxophonist. As for Harry Edison, well, there has never been a time when his playing failed to move me deeply. But the other trumpeter, Don Fagerquist, who takes solos in "Skylark," "Winter Moon," "Rocking' Chair" and "Ballad In Blue," was new to me. I think he's simply fine. And so, for that matter, is Jimmy Rowles, who plays so sensitively in, among other things, "Two Sleepy People."


But enough of this sort of thing. I'm beginning to sound as dogmatic as Pappa Panassie.”
— George Frazier
Original liner notes


Tuesday, May 13, 2025

It Ain't Necessarily So

Lord I'm On My Way

It Ain't Necessarily So - Nueva Manteca

Check out the incredible trumpet work by Toon de Gouw and Jarmo Hoogendijk on this arrangement by Jan Laurens Hartong.

Porgy and Bess Goes Latin - Nueva Manteca [From the Archives with Additions]

 © -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


The Gods who control media platforms in their infinite wisdom and power deleted the video from the original posting. Luckily, I was able to retrieve another version of the "Overture" to Nueva Manteca's tribute to this Gershwin operetta and amend it to the bottom of this post.


For background information regarding the PORGY AND BESS GOES LATIN phase of our continuing theme of Jazz interpretations of the Gershwin opera, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought these insert notes from Nueva Manteca which was released by the Dutch-based Latin Jazz group in 1994 [Lucho 7714-2] might prove helpful.


“The idea of performing the gorgeous songs from Gershwin's masterwork 'Porgy and Bess' in a jazz format has been realized often in a most convincing way. One only has to think of the deeply moving version by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong with the Russ Garcia Orchestra or that other classic: The Miles Davis-Gil Evans collaboration. Remarkably enough a Porgy and Bess album has never been recorded in a Latin version. 


George Gershwin himself loved jazz and greatly admired Thomas 'Fats' Waller and Art Tatum. He also had a deep interest in what we nowadays call 'World Music'. In 1932 he embarked for Havana, Cuba. Enjoying the good life, Gershwin found Cuba 'most interesting, especially for its small dance orchestras who play most intricate rhythms most naturally', as he wrote to a friend upon his return. 


Inspired by his short visit to Cuba, Gershwin wrote the symphonic work 'Rumba'. According to his own words, in Rumba “... [he] endeavoured to combine the Cuban rhythms with his own original thematic material.” On the title page of the score Gershwin instructed that the players of four of the Cuban instruments he had brought back from Cuba — bongos, gui'ro, maracas and claves — should be placed in front of the conductor's stand, visible to the audience.


In 1934 Gershwin made another field trip. This time he travelled from New York to Charleston, South Carolina. His purpose was to visit the setting of his opera 'Porgy and Bess'. He also wanted to meet the people about whom librettist, DuBose Heyward, had written. From Charleston, Gershwin took the ferry to Folly Island. This island belongs to the group of Georgia Sea Islands. The Afro-American inhabitants speak the Gullah dialect with a vocabulary comprising some four thousand words. This dialect seems of West African derivation.


Although Gershwin found himself in a totally foreign environment far away from the glitter of Broadway, he immensely enjoyed 'going native' and immersed himself in the social and musical life. He frequently attended prayer meetings, participating in the so called 'Ring Shout'. The Ring Shout is a shuffling dance in anticlockwise direction accompanied by complex rhythmic patterns beaten out by feet and hands. Ring Shouts are a familiar characteristic of the 'Sanctified' and 'Pentecostal' churches and are believed to be derived from West African dances. The term 'shout' possibly stems from an Arabic word 'saut', said to be used by West African Muslim pilgrims to indicate the procession around the Kaaba [sacred Black Stone] in Mecca [Saudi Arabia]. 


Gershwin's friends discovered that the summer of 1934 spent on the Sea Islands was to the composer more like a homecoming than an exploration. The big city songs and the pulse of New York had found their counterpart in the haunting spirituals and body rhythms of the Gullah People. Gershwin had come under the spell of World Music, his masterworks 'Rumba' and 'Porgy and Bess' being the lasting reflection of it.


SUITE PORGY AND BESS GO LATIN - All compositions by George Gershwin.


All tracks arranged by Jan Laurens Hartong except nos. 2 & 6. 'Summertime' arranged by Ben van den Dungen. 'Bess, you is my woman now' arranged by Ben van den Dungen and Jarmo Hoogendijk.


NUEVA MANTECA:

JAN LAURENS HARTONG Piano, leader

TOON DE GOUW Trumpet

JARMO HOOGENDUK Trumpet

BEN VAN DEN DUNGEN Saxophones

BOUDEWIJN LUCAS Acoustic bass, bass guitar

LUCAS VAN MERWIJK Drums & percussion, bata drum (Itotele)

MARTIN VERDONK Tumbadora, quinto, chekere, bata drums (Yia ami Okoukole)

NILS FISCHER Timbales, conga's, bongo's and bata drums

guest; ALAOR SCARES Brazilian percussion


The following video features the group’s unique Overture to their Latin Jazz version of Porgy and Bess:








Sunday, May 11, 2025

Superwoman - The Phil Woods Six

I thought the title of this tune was appropriate for today's [May 11th] celebration of Moms because who among us doesn't recognize them as SUPERWOMAN?
Phil Woods is certainly no stranger to recordings made either in the studio or in performance, as a leader or as a sideman, in a big band setting or with a combo. In 1987, Paolo Piangiarelli founded the Philology label in Macerata, Italy to record him and many of his contemporaries like Lee Konitz and Chet Baker.
Phil always brings his best to each recorded endeavor but in my opinion, his playing on these Showboat recordings is full of surprises and astounding inventiveness.
A few years before these 1976 performances, Phil had disbanded his very successful European Rhythm Machine, moved back to the states from Paris, relocated to California for a while and fronted a group that used electronic keyboards and sound effect devices. He found California to be a wasteland, both professionally and personally [he went through a divorce].
But by 1976, he had relocated to the Delaware Gap area of the Poconos mountains in Pennsylvania, married Jill Goodwin and formed a new group with his brother-in-law Bill on drums which would be together for about 40 years until Phil’s death in 2015.
His personal life was together and he was happily leading a hot new band; this contentment certainly shines through his playing on these recordings.

Saturday, May 10, 2025

Three Thousand Miles Ago Milt Jackson, Monty Alexander, John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton

Milt Jackson [1923-1999] - A Vital Force on the Vibraphone [From the Archives with Additions]

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


“Improvisation is raised to the level of an art when it involves two factors which pull the performer in opposite directions: Imagination, on one hand, and restraint, on the other. Unbridled imagination may be fascinating for brief periods but without a sense of restraint it soon becomes so cluttered with dead ends, fallacious decorations and excursions into musical limbo that the merits are lost under an accumulation of trash..


Because he has both an active, creative imagination and taste which is another way of getting at restraint  —  Milt Jackson holds a leading position among the relatively small group of true and effective improvisers in jazz today. His playing is almost invariably lean, spare and direct, swinging straight along a purposeful line without recourse to a fringe of musical foliage that might distract the listeners ear from any lapses or

shallowness in the main line. Jackson, quite literally lays it on the line in his playing.”

- John Wilson, liner notes to Milt Jackson, Blues & Ballads [Atlantic 1242].


Every so often, I find it fun to reference an article from the Jazz literature, add a video or two which abound on YouTube these days and share these with you.


Such is the case with vibraphonist Milt Jackson [1923-1999] who is probably best known for his 44 year association with the Modern Jazz Quartet.


The following overview of Bags career can be found in Kenny Mathieson’s informative and easy to read Cookin’: Hard Bop and Jazz Soul, 1954-1965. [2002]


“If the 'classical' aspects of their music [Modern Jazz Quartet - MJQ] attracted most comment, both for and against, familiar standards and jazz tunes were an ever-present element at its centre, Milt Jackson's apparently limitless ability to come up with fresh and inventive blues lines and lustrous (if occasionally over-sentimental) ballad interpretations remained equally central to the group's musical identity, and they always swung. Improvisation also remained at the core of their music, and it is often difficult to tell where composition ends and improvisation begins.”


Yet, there were still some Jazz fans who viewed the MJQ as an artificial setting for Jazz and who labelled it a form of “pardon-me-while-I-swing chamber music.   


One of the things which irked those recalcitrant fans most was the idea that Milt Jackson was somehow being prevented from unleashing the full flow of his gutsy, blues-drenched playing in the context of Lewis's imposed classicism. That may have happened in some of the band's projects, but for much of the time, Milt had plenty of space and opportunity to stretch out, especially in a concert setting, and the MJQ's large roster of recordings has no shortage of prime vibraharp solos from the master. Lewis's light, formal structures provided more sympathetic settings for Jackson than has often been allowed, and the sense of exuberant release when the vibraphonist was set loose from some passage of intricate group interplay to spin one of his dazzlingly inventive flights often gave the resulting solo even greater impact than if it had emerged from a driving bop setting. His vibrant solos provided a sharply contrasting coloration within the MJQ's palette, and he profited from Lewis's firm sense of direction and purpose, even where the settings ran contrary to his natural instincts. Jackson never really developed as an innovative leader in his own right, and generally blossomed when others were in charge and he was free just to play, something that applied equally to his work with Monk and Miles.


He was a hugely gifted soloist with a musical conception which was steeped in the earthy pragmatism of gospel and the blues, and had already made classic contributions to jazz with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, trumpeters Howard McGhee and Miles Davis, and the Woody Herman Orchestra by the time the MJQ formed. He was the first musician to work out a viable approach to playing bebop on his favoured instrument, the vibraharp, a slightly larger variant of the more familiar vibraphone. He took a distinctly different route - in both technical and expressive terms - to those established by Lionel Hampton and Red Norvo, developing a linear approach to melody and a style of rhythmic accenting which owed more to the example of Parker and Gillespie than to either of his two great swing predecessors on the instrument.


In addition, he manipulated the actual sound of his instrument by reducing the speed of the oscillator, the rotating vanes which sustain the sound of a note on adjustable models of the instrument. The slower rate provided a richer, warmer sound when he allowed a note to ring, and brought the timbre and expressive qualities of the instrument closer to the human voice. In an interview with jazz critic Nat Hentoff in 1958, Jackson explained his allegiance to the older adjustable instruments by noting that the single-speed vibraphone which became popular after the war failed to provide 'the degrees of vibrato my ear told me I had to have. Having the right vibrato makes a lot of difference in the feeling. It's evident in a sax player, and to me it's something a vibist can have too. My own vibrato tends to be slow.'


According to Thomas Owens in Bebop, “Jackson runs it at about 3.3 revolutions per second, instead of the 10 rps used by Hampton. The result is that his long notes have a beautiful, subtle motion instead of the nervous shimmy that originally was the norm on the vibraphone. He often exploits that beautiful sound by ending a piece with a slow arpeggio of a simple major triad, letting the notes ring for several seconds” (a tactic which was an especially effective device on ballads). When combined with his penchant for subtle shadings of dynamics and expressive weighting of selected notes, it gave him an instantly recognisable signature, and pushed the possibilities of the instrument in a different direction to that explored by Hampton and Norvo, who preferred to work with no vibrato at all.


Milton Jackson was born in Detroit on 1 January, 1923, and was proficient on several instruments by the time he left school, including guitar, violin, piano, drums, tympani, xylophone and vibes. He sang in a gospel group called The Evangelist Singers while simultaneously playing jazz with local groups on the Detroit scene, including working with saxophonist Lucky Thompson, an association which enabled him to make his recording debut with singer Dinah Washington. He almost joined the Earl Hines band in 1942, but instead was drafted, and served two years in the army. On his return to Detroit in 1944, he set up a jazz quartet called The Four Sharps, which Dizzy Gillespie heard while on tour. Suitably impressed, Gillespie encouraged him to move to New York in 1945 with the offer of a place in his band. By this time, he had acquired the nickname 'Bags', derived from the pouches under his eyes (he claimed the name had originated in the aftermath of a heavy drinking session to celebrate his release from the army).


He accompanied Gillespie and Charlie Parker to Los Angeles in 1945, partly as insurance against the saxophonist not turning up for gigs, to fulfil a famous (or notorious) engagement at Billy Berg's club. He remained with Gillespie's sextet when they returned to New York early in 1946, and moved on to the trumpeter's ground-breaking bebop big band. He was playing both piano and vibes at this point, but chose to concentrate on developing the possibilities offered by the latter instrument. He cut sides for Savoy in 1949 with a septet which included Julius Watkins on French horn, and the various sessions gathered on The First Q in 1951-2, but his most impressive legacy of the pre-MJQ period lay in the contributions he made to Thelonious Monk's classic sessions for Blue Note in 1948 and 1951, released in two volumes as The Genius of Modern Music.


Monk was also present on a famous session for Prestige on 24 December, 1954, in which a band led by Miles Davis and featuring Jackson laid down the definitive version of his most famous composition, Bags' Groove. It features one of Jackson's most dazzling solos on record, and was released on LP under the trumpeter's name as Bags' Groove. The tune, a blues, served as a template for many of his subsequent compositions, and was also a signature item in the MJQ's concert repertoire.


Jackson established a pattern of working six months or so each year with the MJQ, and devoting the rest of the year either to leading his own groups, or collaborating with other stellar names, including albums with Coleman Hawkins (Bean Bags for Atlantic in 1958), Ray Charles (Soul Brothers and Soul Meeting, both on Atlantic in 1957-8), John Coltrane (Bags and Trane for Atlantic in 1959), Wes Montgomery (Bags Meets Wes for Riverside in 1961), and, as part of a flood of albums recorded for Norman Granz's Pablo label between 1975-82, two big band albums with Count Basie. He compiled a considerable discography in over five decades of recording, quite apart from the MJQ's also substantial efforts, taking in a variety of settings, from small groups to big bands, all-star jam sessions to carefully arranged outings with strings, but he sounded most at home blowing on bop chord sequences. His own records do not bear out the charge that Lewis radically transformed his approach -the settings are often more down-to-earth, but Milt's flowing solos are instantly identifiable counterparts to his work with the MJQ.


In addition to the Dee Gee, Hi Lo and Savoy sides already mentioned, Jackson cut a session for Blue Note in April, 1952, which featured the MJQ-in-waiting, and alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson. Originally issued as a 10 inch LP, it was later combined with two of his dates with Monk (from 1948 and 1951) on LP, simply entitled Milt Jackson. The Monk material is indispensable, and the later session is only a little behind, with Jackson in fine form, and Donaldson's directly expressive alto fitting nicely on top of the evolving quartet, which stays firmly in bop territory.


The MJQ were an established fact by the time he went back into the studio as a leader for a Prestige date on 16 June, 1954, followed in turn by a second date on 20 May, 1955, and a series of sessions for Savoy in 1955-6 which remain among his strongest outings as a leader. Highlights are not easy to find in Jackson's output, which is notable for having little in the way of peaks and troughs. He played at a very high level of feeling, invention and execution virtually all of the time and in any setting, and the kind of sessions he liked to play when left to his own devices provided scope for consistent quality, but rarely either pushed him to ultimate heights, or threatened to pull the rug from under his feet.


Particular recommendations can sometimes be made on the basis of the company he kept on a given disc, and the Savoy sessions with saxophonist Lucky Thompson fall into that category. Eli 'Lucky' Thompson was born in South Carolina, but brought up in Detroit, and the two men first worked together in the city as teenagers. They made highly compatible partners, and their pleasure in playing together shines through in everything they did on these sessions, recorded on 5 and 23 January, 1956, with a rhythm section of Hank Jones (piano), Wendell Marshall (bass) and Kenny Clarke (Wade Legge replaced Jones on the second date).


The saxophonist's rather light, lustrous tenor provides a beautifully judged complement to Jackson's fluent, endlessly resourceful mastery of his instrument, while the rhythm section swings with a tougher edge than was usual in the MJQ. Otherwise, the idea that Jackson was a very different player away from Lewis's influence is firmly quashed. This material has been issued in various forms, including the individual discs The Jazz Skyline and Jackson's-Ville, and is high on the list of essential Jackson. The quintet date from October, 1955, with Frank Wess on tenor, issued as Opus De Jazz, is also a good one, although a little less absorbing.


The earlier Prestige sessions featured pianist Horace Silver, and took place right on the cusp of the emergence of hard bop. That feel is certainly in evidence in the resulting material, although given Jackson's intense relationship with the blues and gospel (he identified the music he grew up with in church as 'the most powerful influence on my musical career'), that is hardly a surprise. Tracks like Silver's Opus de Funk and Buhaina are tailor-made for the vibraharpist, and he takes full advantage, boosted by a driving rhythm section completed by Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke, with the less familiar Henry Boozier on trumpet.


The second date featured just a quartet, with Connie Kay replacing Clarke. The standout on the latter session is Stonewall, a blues on which Jackson unwinds in classic fashion over thirteen choruses of brilliant, flashing invention. The original discs were issued as Milt Jackson Quintet and Milt Jackson Quartet respectively, but have also been available under various other titles, including Opus de Funk, a Prestige two-fer which also contained Invitation, his solid 1962 date with Jimmy Heath and Kenny Dorham for Riverside.


The MJQ's association with Atlantic inevitably brought recording opportunities for both Lewis and Jackson, including the discs with Coleman Hawkins, Ray Charles (Jackson is heard briefly on guitar on Soul Brothers) and John Coltrane mentioned earlier, and further sessions in January, 1957, which featured Horace Silver on piano in all-star groups with Lucky Thompson and Cannonball Adderley, which can be found on the Plenty, Plenty Soul album. Another significant addition to his roster was Bags' Opus, recorded for United Artists on 28-29 December, 1958, and subsequently reissued on Blue Note. The date paired the vibist with saxophonist Benny Golson and trumpeter Art Farmer, and a rhythm section of pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Connie Kay. Jackson stretches out on his own Blues for Diahann (named for singer Diahann Carroll, who was married to Monte Kay), and spins delicately evocative lines on Lewis's Afternoon In Paris and Golson's two famous compositions, I Remember Clifford and Whisper Not.


He signed to Riverside in 1961, opening his account with Bags Meets Wes, and laying down several more discs for the label, including Invitation in 1962, and Live At The Village Gate in 1963. For Someone In Love, cut in 1962, featured a brass orchestra with fine arrangements by trombonist Melba Liston. He recorded albums for Impulse! and Verve, and had a brief and less productive association with Creed Taylor's CTI in the early 1970s. 

His association with Pablo added a dozen titles, but did not tell us much we had not already known about his playing, also true of his recordings made in the 1990s, including a series of records at the behest of Quincy Jones for his Qwest label. The settings varied from straight blowing quartets to string orchestra, and are consistently and impressively listenable.


Jackson had remained busy while the MJQ lay in abeyance, and continued to be so even after its reformation. He led his own small groups featuring pianist Mike LeDonne and drummer Kenny Washington, toured extensively as a soloist playing with local rhythm sections, and co-led a band with bassist Ray Brown for a time in the late-1980s. Although he was forced to cancel a number of engagements through ill health in 1998, he was able to return to playing, and did so until shortly before his death from liver cancer on 9 October, 1999, in New York City. He was reunited with Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson for an engagement and live recording at the Blue Note club in New York at the end of 1998, and recorded with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra in 1999, a final coda to an extensive and important recorded legacy. Even in these late recordings, Jackson's deep roots in the blues remain evident, and if they do not possess the excitement which marked out his music in his prime, they still have the depth of feeling and sparkling invention which characterised his playing, and made him not only a truly major voice on the vibes, but also one of the great jazz improvisers, irrespective of instrument.”