Listening to Prestige with Tad Richards

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

“Tad Richards will strike a nerve with all of us who were privileged to have lived through the beginnings of bebop, and with those who have since fallen under the spell of this American phenomenon.

His enthusiasm will impress you. But it's his sense of organization that will increase the pleasure of revisiting those wonderful sessions from the late 40s and early 50s, by making the process clear and easy. We learn who was on each date, the repertoire, and a recommendation for listening to one prominent track from that session.

All of our heroes from those days are here, with reminders of the sypporting cast and relationships that we may have forgotten, or just never known. Besides the kicks we get from reading those details, this can also be thought of as a one-of-a-kind reference book, that will surely take its place in the history of this music.”

- Dave Grusin

“The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen...great stories of when, how, who, etc. I loved reading this book because I knew everyone you write about, but I didn't know how each record date went down. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.”

-Terry Gibbs

What a good idea - listen to your favorite records and then write about them!

But while it may sound like a simple and easy thing to do, it’s far more difficult than one would imagine because as Peter Keepnews has succinctly put it:

“Those of us who have tried writing about Jazz know what a daunting challenge it can be to do it well. Expressing an opinion about a given musician or recording is easy; explaining what exactly it is that makes that musician or recording worth caring about is not.”

But that’s exactly what Tad Richards has consistently managed to do in Listening to Prestige, Vol. 1 1949-1953; Listening to Prestige, Vol. 2, 1954-1956; Listening to Prestige, Vol. 3 1954-1956.

These volumes are must reading for any serious Jazz fan and a wonderful introduction to the Bop and Hard Bop years [circa 1945-1965] as captured on these iconic Prestige Recordings. Tad's annotations are fun to read and full of useful insights. A labor of love on behalf of the music and one to be treasured. And lest I forget, each of the volumes have loads of Tad originals drawings which are a treat in and of themselves.

Tad explains how and why he went about the work of developing “Listening to Prestige” with a different emphasis in each of his introductions to the three volumes and I thought it might be simpler to just represent these explanations below.

All three volumes are available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions as well as directly from Tad through his website.

Listening to Prestige, Vol. 1 1949-1953

Introduction

“Prestige Records started in 1949. Bob Weinstock — like Milt Gabler with Commodore Records — started out as a record store proprietor, his store next to the legendary Metropole Cafe [NYC]. Musicians took to stopping by there, and jamming, and Weinstock got the idea of paying them to record some sides.

The record business was undergoing a sea change in the 1940s. Before World War II, it had almost entirely been the province of a few major labels, largely because they controlled the technology—not so much recording, but actually making records. They controlled the pressing plants.

During World War II, record production was even tighter. One of the principal ingredients in making a 78 RPM record was shellac, and that was needed for the war effort. There was also the Petrillo [Musicians Union] strike [against the major labels] of 1942-44, which meant a cessation of recorded music, with particularly unfortunate consequences for jazz. The legendary Billy Eckstine big band, featuring Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, went largely unrecorded; so did the early years of bebop.

After the war, record pressing became more available, and independent record companies popped up all over. This was the real birth of rhythm and blues, with labels like Specialty, Chess and Atlantic; but it was a fertile period for bebop and other experimental jazz styles. The big labels had dominated swing, but now jazz was finding more of a niche audience. Charlie Parker recorded his classic sides for Savoy, which started as a jazz label but eventually became better known for rhythm and blues. Dial was Parker's other label: it kept its focus on modern jazz, but did not last very far into the 50s.

If the 40s were the burgeoning decade for rhythm and blues independent labels, the 50s saw an incredible flourishing of modern jazz. Foremost among the independent jazz labels were Blue Note and Prestige. Blue Note had actually started in 1939 as a traditional jazz label, but by the late 40s it had begun to become known for its bebop line.

Bob Weinstock was a 19-year-old with his first business venture, a record store specializing in traditional jazz, when one day Alfred Lion came by, handed him a stack of records, and said, "I have something new: Thelonious Monk."

Weinstock's life was changed that day. Not long after, he arranged his first recording session, with Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz, and Prestige Records was born.

My life was changed in 1957, when I turned on the radio in the middle of the night, looking for an all-night rhythm and blues station, and heard something new, or new to me: John Coltrane with the Red Garland trio. It was jazz, and it was thrilling. And it was, I discovered when I went out and bought it, on Prestige Records.

The history of Blue Note has been told in more than one book, but with all the jazz literature that's out there, there's very little about Prestige. So I decided to do something. But what? I'm not a scholar, and I'm not a critic, and I'm not a musicologist. I'm just a guy who listens to jazz. A fan. So I began a fan's notes. Thanks to a very complete Japanese website, I had access to the set lists and participating musicians for every recording session every booked by Bob Weinstock for Prestige, and again thanks to the internet, I could listen to almost all of them.

So that's what I set out to do. I would listen to every Prestige recording session, in order, and blog about it.

This is that blog. I didn't look ahead as I was blogging; I just took each session as it came. A fan's notes on one of the great labels in one of the great periods of jazz.

I recommend listening along with me on this journey through a particular slice of jazz. I've suggested one cut from each session, where there is a cut available on YouTube if at all possible. Where the artist designation has changed (Oscar Pettiford became more famous than Serge Chaloff, so

subsequent album repackagings, and the YouTube listing, are under his name) I've indicated that.

Most of the Prestige recordings can be found on YouTube or on one of the subscription streaming services (I use Spotify). Some are very difficult. Most are in print, either as downloads or CDs from Original Jazz Classics, the current Prestige reissue label. The ones that aren't can generally be found on vinyl from eBay. And I strongly recommend using this a springboard to start your own collection, on CD, vinyl or download.”

Listening to Prestige, Vol. 2, 1954-1956

Introduction

“The years 1954-56 saw modern jazz ascendant. John Lewis was commissioned to write scores for movies — not in America, but at least in France, and Miles Davis would follow a year later. Actual jazzmen would still have to wait a few years, but jazz-influenced composers like Elmer Bernstein wrote movie scores, including The Man with the Golden Arm, which had on screen performances by Shorty Rogers, Shelly Manne, Pete Candoli and others.

For me, in writing and casually researching the blog entries that comprise this book, the regional jazz centers were fascinating, particularly Detroit, which sent an amazing array of jazz giants to New York over the course of the decade. St. Louis had Miles Davis and Chuck Berry, but it didn't have the kind of jazz subculture that nurtured talent. Miles came to New York young and roomed with Charlie Parker. His real artistic development came there. Kansas City, a jazz hotbed of a previous generation, had brought forth Parker at the end of its renaissance. But no other urban center compared to Detroit, though Chicago was impressive too. Detroit and Chicago both had a thriving manufacturing economy, a strong black working/middle class with disposable income, and, equally important, high schools with great music education programs.

The greatest loss to the world of jazz in this time period was, of course, Charlie Parker, dead at 35, in 1955, of a variety of complications all traceable back to addiction. Wardell Gray died just two months later, in Las Vegas, under suspicious circumstances that went uninvestigated by a racist police department. Other deaths during these years included Hot Lips Page and Papa Celestin in 1954, and James P. Johnson in 1955. Tommy Dorsey died in 1956, to be followed by his brother a year later, and so did Art Tatum, but the shocker of that year was the auto accident that claimed the lives of Clifford Brown and Richie Powell.

Prestige saw some of the greatest names in jazz pass through its doors in these years. Billy Taylor, Clifford Brown, Sonny Rollins, King Pleasure, Quincy Jones, Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims, Phil Woods, the Modern Jazz Quartet and Elmo Hope were some of those. Most spectacularly, Miles Davis wrapped up his Prestige contract with three marathon recording sessions, providing Bob Weinstock with material for new releases over the next several years.

Prestige was growing. Bob Weinstock was still doing almost all the producing, but that was beginning to change. Teddy Charles produced several sessions. Ira Gitler and Don Schlitten did a few. And most importantly, in 1954 Rudy Van Gelder began producing nearly all of the Prestige sessions.

As older artists cycled out of Prestige, new ones came in. Artists making their label debuts included Kenny Burrell, Red Garland, Mai Waldron, Paul Chambers, Art Taylor, Jerome Richardson, Donald Byrd, Art Farmer, Dave Schildkraut, Lucky Thompson, Frank Foster, Charlie Rouse, Candido, Jon Eardley.J.R. Monterose, Gigi Gryce, Gil Melle, Hank Mobley, Bill Hardman, Barry Harris, Barbara Lea, Moondog, Elvin Jones, and, of course ...

John Coltrane.

Welcome to three remarkable years.

[As of this writing, all of my "Listen to One" choices are available on YouTube. Or ... buy the albums. Buy more jazz, listen to more jazz, support more live jazz.]”

Listening to Prestige, Vol. 3 1954-1956

Introduction

“For me, in the course of chronicling these two years in jazz, the revelation, the Saul-on-the-road-to-Tarsus moment, came as I was listening to the May 27, 1958 session with Shirley Scott. I wrote about it then, and continued to write about it way more than was probably necessary, with the zeal of a new convert, so I will try very hard to restrain myself from repeating it all here.

The short version: the critics were wrong, all of them, in the 1940s and early 1950s when they relegated the rhythm and blues of that era to a back shelf, and refused to recognize it as jazz. Shirley Scott and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, who entered the Prestige family portrait near the end of this volume and would become so important as one decade gave way to another, made their first recording for King, a rhythm and blues label, in 1956, It was called Jazz with a Beat, and that's as good an alternate name as any for rhythm and blues.

That may be the big news in the jazz education of Tad Richards, but it's not the big news in the development of Prestige records over the years 1957-58. Certainly the main story for the label was the continued rapid development of John Coltrane into one of the most important new stars in the jazz firmament. Coltrane had nine sessions as a leader during this period, more as a sideman.

Mose Allison had one of the most auspicious debuts of the decade with Back Country Suite, and was in Hackensack four more times before the curtain rang down on 1958.

Midway through that second year, Shirley Scott and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis would bring their new sounds to Prestige, and they were our label's harbingers of a phenomenon that would mostly be associated with Blue Note, but which would sweep through the whole jazz world with an urgency, immediacy, and gut-level appeal: soul jazz.

Jazz was changing, and how could it not? Jazz was always about change.”

Although not all of us have Tad’s discipline in writing down our thoughts about what we are listening to, most Jazz fans are mentally annotating what they are hearing in recorded Jazz. It may be a thought about the lyrical beauty of a particular solo, or the striking effect a certain rhythm section or the sense of power generated by a big band, but we are all ongoing observers of the music as we are hearing it.

In a sense, what Tad is offering is akin to a listening party when a bunch of Jazz friends sit down together to check out a latest record or compact disc or music file and each offers his or her views of the music.

Another benefit of Tad’s “listening companion approach” is that I found myself hearing new stuff in old records, not only from Tad’s perspective, but also because I was listening to them more closely and discerning different nuances and features in the music.

And, lest we forget, Jazz fans rarely agree on anything, or put another way, they love to argue about who is the greatest instrumentalist, of what is the best album by a certain artist, or what is the greatest Jazz solo ever recorded. There's plenty of grist for that mill in these books as Tad is not shy about offering an opinion or two about race issues that have plagued the music throughout its history, the unacknowledged and unappreciated role of of rhythm and blues on the stylistic development of the music, and other injustices, grievances and assorted other trials and tribulations that are near-and-dear to Mr. Richards heart, but I'll let you discover these on your own.

Since Tad is doing all the "heavy-lifting" by researching writing and self-publishing all of this so, the very least we as readers can do is to accept these books as a forum for self-expression on things that matter to him about Jazz and its makers.

“Listening to Prestige” is a treat. Do yourself a favor an indulge in all three volumes. You won’t be disappointed.

Be sure and spell out “40” when looking for Tad’s page: www.opusforty.blogspot.com