The Jazztet - Hard Bop at Its Refined Best

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

“The Jazztet was formed in 1959, and evolved from a series of associations in several contexts involving trumpeter Art Farmer, tenor saxophonist Benny Golson and trombonist Curtis Fuller. Two of these players, Golson and Fuller, also put in time in the ranks of Art Blakey's outfit, but The Jazztet is not consistently identified as a group in quite the same way as the Jazz Messengers these days (both the All Music Guide to Jazz and the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD simply list their records under Art Farmer, presumably on the rather non-analytical basis of alphabetical order).

Nonetheless, and despite considerable fluctuation of personnel around the core pairing of Farmer and Golson, The Jazztet created their own sophisticated sound within a basic hard bop framework. Farmer and Golson had worked briefly together in 1953 in Lionel Hampton's band, and again in 1957 with Oscar Pettiford. The trumpeter played on Golson's New York Scene (Contemporary) in 1958, and the saxophonist returned the compliment on Farmer's Modem Art (United Artists) the same year.

All three backed Abbey Lincoln on her It's Magic album for Riverside in 1958, and Golson and Fuller made several recordings together, including Golson's The Other Side of Benny Golson (Riverside), Gone With Golson, Groovin’ With Golson and Gettin’ With It (all Prestige New Jazz), and Fuller's Blues-ette (Savoy), as well as a date with Philly Joe Jones on Drums Around The World (Riverside), and Farmer's Brass Shout (United Artists), a brass tentet session for which Golson supplied the arrangements. Farmer also played on Fuller's third date for Blue Note in December, 1957.

The trombonist assembled a sextet with Lee Morgan and Hank Mobley for Sliding Easy (United Artists) in March, 1959, with some Golson arrangements. The Jazztet name first appeared on record on a Curtis Fuller album for Savoy, Curtis Fuller Jazztet featuring Benny Golson, recorded on 25 August, 1959, but with Lee Morgan on trumpet (a second Savoy session in December, Imagination, also featured a sextet, but not under the Jazztet name this time, and with Thad Jones on trumpet).

The official debut of The Jazztet took place three months later on 16 November, 1959, playing opposite the Ornette Coleman Quartet at the Five Spot in New York. Curtis Fuller, who would leave the band within months, recalled the circumstances of its formation in a Down Beat interview in March, 1981: 'Benny Golson and I had a quintet. That's how it started. He was leaving the Messengers and I was leaving Quincy Jones's band. Anyway, we formed this group and I called it The Jazztet; but there was a little shakeup there. Art Farmer and Benny Golson, being older and the two real musicians of the group, were the power brokers. We got McCoy [Tyner] out of Philadelphia and that made it a sextet. Before that, Lee Morgan and I had been playing in the John Coltrane sextet, so this was in the works anyway - the jazz sextet.'

The Coltrane sextet which he mentions here had recorded the saxophonist's classic Blue Train in 1958, his only date for Blue Note. Miles Davis's great sextet with Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley was also active at this time, but with a front line of trumpet and two saxophones rather than trombone (Miles had dabbled with a trombone in several short-lived bands, including a line-up which briefly included Fuller). Golson had already featured a sextet on his album The Modern Touch for Riverside in 1957 (with Kenny Dorham and J. J. Johnson as the brass players), and the idea of a new working unit in that format was in his mind when he left The Jazz Messengers in 1959, having played a major role in restructuring both the band and its book.

He had been playing regularly in a quintet with Fuller, and the pieces fell neatly into place for the new band, as he described in a Down Beat interview in May, 1960: 'It was very sudden. I was planning to start a sextet last fall. And I heard that Art was leaving Gerry Mulligan. I planned to ask him to join the sextet, In the meantime, unknown to me, he was planning a quintet, and he was thinking of asking me to join him. When I called him, he started laughing. So we got together and consolidated our plans.'

The new band made their studio debut for Argo in February, 1960. Meet The Jazztet featured the three horn men with a rhythm section of McCoy Tyner on piano, Art Farmer's twin brother, Addison Farmer, on bass, and Lex Humphries on drums, but the band was never to achieve much stability of personnel beyond the key Farmer-Golson association at its heart (a reality already reflected in their more prominent billing on the cover).

As the All Music Guide suggests, this album is a genuine hard bop classic. It included three of Golson's best known compositions, the first recorded version of Killer Joe, and the band's takes on I Remember Clifford and Blues March. The principal soloists are in disciplined but inventive mood throughout, while Golson's arrangements add interest beyond the routine ensemble heads of the period, but without tying up the music in overly elaborate fashion. The overall effect is both less driving and more thoughtful than the general run of hard bop.

By their second date for Argo in September, 1960, only Farmer and Golson remained from the earlier line-up. Fuller had left the band in not entirely amicable fashion in June (Down Beat reported that the trombonist 'pulled out without giving notice at the end of a one-day engagement at the Brooklyn Paramount theater'), to be replaced in quick succession by Willie Wilson, Bernard McKinney and, by the time of the record date, Tom Mclntosh.

McCoy Tyner had joined John Coltrane (Golson has told the story of how his old Philadelphia buddy had helped rescue a stranded Tyner when he broke down en route to New York to join The Jazztet, then promptly 'stole' him for his own band, although Coltrane had the pianist in mind prior to his arrival in New York in any case), to be replaced firstly by Duke Pearson, then Cedar Walton. Tommy Williams had taken Addison Farmer's place on bass, and Tootie Heath, another Philadelphian, occupied the drum seat.

That version of the band recorded Big City Sounds in September, and the game of musical chairs settled down long enough for the same personnel to record two more albums for the label. In December, 1960, they met up with pianist John Lewis for a session released as The Jazztet and John Lewis. It featured six of Lewis's own compositions which he had arranged specifically for the date, including versions of Django, Milano and 2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West. They closed their account at Argo with The Jazztet at Birdhouse, a live set recorded at the Chicago club of that name on 15 May, 1961.

Big City Sounds again foregrounded Golson's skills as a composer and arranger, including four of his own tunes, The Cool One, Blues on Down, Bean Bag, and the evocative Five Spot After Dark. His subtle harmonies and voicings again lent a sophisticated air to the music, providing both attractive ensemble passages and a productive framework for the soloists. Golson described his aims as a composer in the original sleeve notes for the record: ‘I don't want to venture too far out. I don't want to be too complex. Basically I'd like to stay simple. I'd like to write melodically, and pretty harmonically. I'm not looking for anything that's going to revolutionize music. I like, most of all in writing, beauty.'

Farmer, on the other hand, was an infrequent composer - he had contributed one tune, Mox Nix, to Meet The Jazztet (it had previously appeared on Modern Art), but none on this session. The other selections include a sparkling version of Randy Weston's Hi-Fly, with Walton in scintillating form, their interpretations of Dizzy Gillespie's Con Alma and J. J. Johnson's Lament, and the standards My Funny Valentine and Wonder Why.

Mclntosh is not Fuller's equal as a soloist, but holds his own, while Farmer and Golson vie with one another to produce the most fluent, lyrical soloing, and trade glowing exchanges in Five Spot After Dark. The live setting on the Birdhouse disc allows the band to stretch out, notably on an extended version of Farmer's Farmer's Market and Monk's ‘Round Midnight, both arranged by Golson, and an arrangement by J. J. Johnson of his own Shutterbug.

At their best, The Jazztet leavened the visceral, earthy appeal of hard bop with a more sophisticated approach to arranging, and achieved a highly effective balance between the two. While their command of uptempo material was exhilarating, one of the most vivid examples of their approach is found in their live version of ‘Round Midnight from the Birdhouse set.

Golson's arrangement opens unexpectedly, with a single declamatory brass note. Walton begins an atmospheric introduction which glides into Farmer's opening statement of the melody on flugelhorn, eventually harmonised by a lovely voicing on the other horns. Golson comes in with a warm, romantic tenor statement, quickening the pace in deft fashion just ahead of another declamatory ensemble statement. Farmer's bold second entry is on trumpet, again supported by delicate horn fills, and provides a striking contrast with his earlier contribution.

Golson's tenor solo is the centrepiece of the performance, a buoyant, lyrical creation which gradually deepens and darkens, growing in both invention and emotional intensity. It is as good a statement of his gifts as a soloist as exists on record. Farmer returns on flugelhorn, imposing a reversion to a gentler mood, and generating an evocative late-night atmosphere within another impeccably controlled narrative.

Walton opts for a bluesy feel in keeping with Farmer's mood, expanding his original idea in a short but inventive solo. Mclntosh is more prosaic in his own solo, but retains the evolving feel of the piece, and the other horns again weave subtle background statements around his trombone, leading into the concluding ensemble finale, which supplies a quietly dramatic ending to a quietly epic performance. As an example of the way in which they were consistently able to marry imaginative soloing with meticulous structural integrity, it can hardly be bettered.

The band made only two more records in this first phase of their existence, both for Mercury. Here and Now was recorded in February and March, 1962, and Another Git Together followed in May and June. Both featured another new version of the group, in which Farmer and Golson were joined by Grachan Moncur III on trombone, Harold Mabern on piano, Herbie Lewis on bass and Roy McCurdy on drums. The other notable change on these discs is the increasing use of flugelhorn, an instrument which Farmer quickly came to favour over trumpet.

Both these sessions produced strong albums, but The Jazztet did not succeed in making any real financial success, and the co-leaders decided to call it a day. The two principals went in contrasting directions.”   [Sources Argo and Mercury LP insert notes and Kenny Mathieson’s Cookin’].”

Benny Golson: “Soul Me”

“Although he has contributed several staple pieces to the hard-bop repertoire, Benny’s playing style owes more to such swing masters as Coleman Hawkins and Lucky Thompson; a big crusty tone and a fierce momentum sustain his solos, and they can take surprising and exciting turns ….[paraphrase, p.585]

Richard Cook & Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6^th Ed.

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

It seems that I have loved Benny Golson’s compositions from the moment I first heard them. They are based on easy-to-remember melodies, which is something that drummers cherish because you can carry these tunes in your head while others are improvising on them.

Benny’s songs just seem to fall so logically on the ear.

Whisper Not, Along Came Betty, I Remember Clifford, Killer Joe, Domingo, and Blues March, among a host of others, are all Jazz standards whose tonal patterns are instantly recognized by Jazz fans all over the world.

As Dan Morgenstern has commented: “… Benny Golson’s gifts as a composer, arranger and player are of the sort that can stand the test of time.”

Fortunately, Benny is still around, still making music and doing interviews like the following one with the “Dean” of Jazz writers, Nat Hentoff.

After Benny’s chat with Nat, you’ll find some thoughts and anecdotes about Benny by Gene Lees, another esteemed Jazz writer.

By NAT HENTOFF

The Wall Street Journal April 1, 2009

© -Nat Hentoff/The Wall Street Journal, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“When the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was preparing its Jan. 24 tribute, "Benny Golson at 80," I was asked for a couple of lines to be included in the introduction. Hearing in memory Benny's "I Remember Clifford" and "Whisper Not," I told the producer: "His melodies are so natural and lasting, it's as if they invented themselves, as Benny keeps doing."

After the event, Benny reminded me that, in 1957, I produced the album "Benny Golson's New York Jazz Scene" for Contemporary Records, his first as the leader of his Jazztet. Back then, as now in his new Concord Music Group release "New Time, New 'Tet" (Amazon), I was drawn -- in his tenor saxophone improvisations and compositions -- to their flowing sense of ordered liberty, with the inner warmth of an adventurous romanticist.

Benny also reminded me that in 1958 -- when I was asked to phone some of the musicians chosen for the historic Art Kane photograph in Esquire magazine, "A Great Day in Harlem" -- I had told him where and when to be at 10 that morning on a Harlem street. Although Benny was a Dizzy Gillespie sideman at the time, he was not yet a member of the jazz pantheon and, he recalls, he felt like asking for autographs from such legends there as Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Roy Eldridge and Rex Stewart.

Since then, after joining Art Blakey and then heading his own series of groups in an abundance of recordings -- with his original compositions being performed by many other leaders, too -- Benny has become an international jazz master, having also received that designation by the National Endowment for the Arts.

He now has over a thousand manuscript pages of his autobiography (tentatively titled "Whisper Not") during which, he tells me, "I have more to say about Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Farmer, Clifford Brown and John Coltrane than anybody else."

Benny and Coltrane were friends in Philadelphia when Benny was 12 and John two years older. In a January "Down Beat" interview, Benny said of his fellow boyhood student: "He was always a little ahead of the rest of us. When we got to where he was, he was always somewhere else, always reaching. . . . He always got to it."

During my conversations with Coltrane years later -- when, as influential as he had become, he was still urgently searching -- he told me, "This music is as serious as life itself."

Hearing me recount that memory, Benny nodded in agreement. "That's why," he said, "when I play, I can't assume the role of an entertainer. Entertainers second-guess their audience, working to find out what they want to hear. My first obligation is to myself, when I play and when I write -- to say who I am, what I'm feeling, exploring in this jazz adventure, and what my dreams are."

A few weeks before, I'd heard Benny on National Public Radio during the Saturday morning program hosted by Scott Simon, an informed, intuitive interviewer. He asked Benny: "Is it a time of your life when you ask what you hope people take from your music?"

Said Benny: "I hope they can look into my heart's core to understand that what they hear is the reflection of my inner parts -- my thinking, my curiosity, my imagination."

In his current, often surprising recording, "New Time, New 'Tet,'" they'll also hear his twilit tribute to Chopin ("L'adieu"), a favorite composer when he was exploring, as a child, his first instrument, the piano. And, also unexpectedly, a virile, joyful celebration of "Verdi's Voice" (credited to Giuseppe Verdi, arranger Benny Golson).

Among other intriguing signs of Benny's insistence on continuing to renew himself are a rejuvenated "Whisper Not"; the Thelonious Monk-Kenny Clarke "Epistrophy"; and "Gypsy Jingle-Jangle," which comes from a time when, watching a Frankenstein movie on television at 4 in the morning, Benny's imagination lit up on seeing "a band of gypsies dancing around a campfire, accompanying themselves with a violin, accordion, tambourine, hand claps and cheerful shouts, as women danced wildly, spinning and jumping up and down. As my head matched their beat, I envisioned a band of hip jazz musicians walking into that happy camp-fire scene, asking shyly, 'Can we sit in?'"

You may find yourself at the campfire, moving in new ways, with Benny, Eddie Henderson (trumpet), Steve Davis (trombone), Mike LeDonne (piano), Buster Williams (bass) and Carl Allen (drums). For Benny and his new Jazztet comrades, music is indeed as serious as their continuing memories, fantasies and delights in being jazz musicians.

One performance especially, Benny's "From Dream to Dream," reminded me of conversations I had in my younger days with other jazz-struck friends about which tracks on which albums to play when making love. Jazz can be intimately erotic -- as when Johnny Hodges or Ben Webster of Duke Ellington's band was playing a ballad and, Duke told me, "a yearning sigh would come out of the dancers and become part of the music."

"'From Dream to Dream,'" I said to Benny, "may lead to a slight increase in the population. Where did this song come from as you started to conceive it?"

"It was based," he said, "on life. Life's rewards and disappointments. And disappointments are followed by dreams. I'm a dreamer. In life, in my music, I'm always involved in what's coming, in what could come. That's part of the adventure."

For listeners around the world, Benny Golson's past is also continually rewarding. Another recording released by the Concord Music Group is "The Best of Benny Golson" (Amazon), in which he is joined by such soul mates between 1957 and 2004 as Art Blakey, Art Farmer, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Ray Bryant and Paul Chambers.

Included in this set from Benny's 1957 first album as leader is the first "Whisper Not." In his notes, Marc Myers, host of JazzWax.com (a site often recommended by musicians), writes: "Benny's arrangement opens with a 'quiet-please' cymbal roll before proceeding like a cat walking on a fence. Listen as gently rising and falling lines are echoed by Julius Watkins's French horn and Jimmy Cleveland's trombone.

Benny recalls that the melody came so fast when he wrote it that he could hardly get the notes down on paper."

"Whisper Not" has been recorded 189 times. He often gets requests for it and "I Remember Clifford Brown," among his other classics. Of course, he never plays them the same way twice.

At one point in our conversation, Benny suddenly said, "I'm so privileged to be a jazz musician -- to say who I am and get paid for it."”

© -Gene Lees, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Often one finds that the friendships of prominent jazz musicians go back to sem­inal high schools such as Cass Tech in Detroit, Wendell Phillips and Austin high schools in Chicago, Granoff in Philadel­phia, and Jefferson High in Los Angeles. And even when they do not originate in the same school, many such relationships go back to early youth. One such case is that of Benny Golson and a boy from North Carolina named John Coltrane. They grew up together musically, playing in rowdy local commercial bands to learn their craft. And they got fired together from one. Benny's mother consoled them: "One day both of you are going to be so good that that band will not be able to afford you."

Benny studied music at Howard Uni­versity, whose faculty officially frowned on jazz. The saxophone was not considered an "appropriate" instrument. Benny signed up for clarinet and practiced the saxophone in the laundry room, where no one could hear him. Already, composition was one of his main interests. He grew impatient with the academic rigidity he found at Howard and left before gradua­tion, joining the band of Bull Moose Jack­son and going on the road. He worked with Tadd Dameron and the big bands of Lio­nel Hampton (1953) and Dizzy Gillespie (1956-57), then joined drummer Art Blakey, with whom he worked in 1958 and '59. Blakey, like Horace Silver, was a major mentor of young jazzmen, and Benny's reputation, both as a composer and player, grew.

Many of Golson's compositions, such as "Killer Joe" and "I Remember Clif­ford," have become part of the permanent jazz repertoire. In 1959, he and Art Farmer —a Silver and Gerry Mulligan alumnus — formed their Jazztet, a sextet that at first featured trombonist Curtis Fuller and Art's brother Addison on bass. The group lasted until 1962.

Then Benny broke into television and film scoring in Hollywood, writing scores at all the major studios. He moved back to New York City in 1987, where he soon found himself busier than he had ever been, in all forms of composition and as a player too. In May 1992, Benny was awarded an honorary doctorate by William Paterson College. He teaches there.

One year, backstage at the Newport Jazz Festival, Benny ran into John Coltrane, who reminded him of the time they got fired in Philadelphia. "Remember what your mother said?" John asked. "Do you think they'd be able to afford us now?"”

Art Farmer, Benny Golson and The Jazztet

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

“It's amazing when you think back about how many great musicians were working together then. You need a little mileage to see how good it was."

While reading the above statement by tenor saxophonist, composer, arranger Benny Golson in Bob Blumenthal’s notes to the booklet that accompanies The Complete Argo/Mercury Art Farmer/Benny Golson/Jazztet Sessions  [Mosaic MD7-225], it brought to mind the seemingly endless recombinations of musicians into combos that populated the New York Jazz scene in the 1950’s and 60’s.

One of my favorite combos from this era was the Jazztet. The group’s music was particularly appealing to me because it was made in the form of a sextet that added a trombone bass clef to the usual treble clef, front line of trumpet and tenor saxophone and because as Gene Lees noted in his 1960 essay for Downbeat about the Jazztet’s music:" [it offered] a balanced amalgam of formal written structure and free blowing — the long-sought Grail of jazz."

More about the Jazztet’s personnel, how the group came about and its uniqueness is contained in the following excerpts from Bob Blumenthal’s insert notes to the seven-disc Mosaic Records set which Bob has graciously allowed us to feature on these pages.

One of the musicians who seemed to be “everywhere” on the New York Jazz scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s was pianist Cedar Walton who before joining the Jazztet was with trombonist J.J. Johnson sextet. After his stint with the Jazztet, Cedar joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Not a bad five years of work. Cedar has always been one of my favorite Jazz pianists and he is featured performing Randy Weston’s Hi-Fly on the Jazztet video that closes this piece.

© -Bob Blumenthal, copyright protected, all rights reserved and used with the author’s permission.

“The three years of music in this collection represent one peak in two exceptional jazz careers. Art Farmer (August 21, 1928—October 4, 1999) enjoyed, and Benny Golson (horn January 29, 1929) still enjoys, varied and lengthy lives as musicians, with several triumphs as soloists and, in Golson's case, composer/arranger. As a team, they left a recorded trail of their collaborations that spans four decades, yet the pinnacle of that association was clearly the sextet they co-led under the name the Jazztet. While Farmer, Golson and original member Curtis Fuller revived the group 20 years after it had initially disbanded, the six original Jazztet albums included here remain at the core of the Farmer/Golson legacy.

Farmer and Golson hardly set their individual development aside during the time of their partnership. As the six additional sessions here underscore, they were making great strides as soloists — Farmer, in his shift from trumpet to flugelhorn, and Golson through a stretch of stylistic soul-searching that (his compelling performances here notwithstanding) ultimately led him to set aside the saxophone. Yet, as with many successful partnerships, the Jazztet experience allowed them to reach beyond individual glory in search of a collective goal that Gene Lees described in a 1960 Down Beat cover story as "a balanced amalgam of formal written structure and free blowing — the long-sought Grail of jazz." The band's failure to achieve sustained commercial success says much about how the jazz world revised this notion of balance as an ultimate goal during the years in question.

A soft-spoken style combined with equally determined personalities and a wealth of similar experience made Farmer and Golson natural partners. Farmer was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa and raised in Arizona. By the time he was 16, he and his twin brother, bassist Addison Farmer, were living in Los Angeles and part of a youthful coterie (also including Sonny Criss, Teddy Edwards and Hampton Hawes) that eagerly greeted the West Coast arrival of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in 1945. Work with the rhythm and blues band of Johnny Otis brought Farmer to New York, where he remained for a couple of years before returning to California for work with such modernists as Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray. A seat in Lionel Hampton's trumpet section brought Farmer back Fast in 1953. Golson, a Philadelphia native who came of age with fellow saxophonists Jimmy Heath and John Coltrane, attended Howard University for two-and-a-half years, and then traveled with various rock and roll bands before landing a job in Atlantic City with Tadd Dameron during the summer of 1953.

"My relationship with Art goes back to 1953," Golson recalled recently. "What happened was that Clifford Brown, Gigi Gryce, Cecil Payne, Jymie Merritt, Philly Joe Jones and I were all working with Tadd, while Quincy Jones, Monk Montgomery. Alan Dawson and Art were already in Hamp's band. Quincy heard Tadd's group one night then went back and told Hamp about Clifford, Gigi and me. I would have left for that European tour that Clifford and Gigi made, but Tadd's manager made me stay so that I could tutor all of the new guys they had to bring in. I did end up in the Hampton band myself for a hot minute, although I didn't last long because Hamp and I couldn't come to terms financially. It's amazing when you think back about how many great musicians were working together then. You need a little mileage to see how good it was."

For the next few years after their Hampton experience, Farmer and Golson followed distinct yet related paths. Farmer began recording under his own name for Prestige in 1953 (an affiliation that would last three years), then

issued albums on ABC-Paramount and Contemporary; but with the exception of a few months in 1955 during which he co-led a quintet with Gryce in 1955, the trumpeter spent most of this period working as a sideman, primarily with Horace Silver and Gerry Mulligan. In addition, because Farmer was excellent as both a reader and an improviser, he became one of the most active personalities in what were still the thriving New York City recording studios. Golson made his mark as well, primarily through his writing skills. James Moody was the first to record Golson's music in 1955, and Miles Davis helped make STABLEMATES Golson's first jazz standard in that same year; but Golson's big break came when he joined Dizzy Gillespie's reorganized big band in 1956. The stint with Gillespie helped to popularize other Golson classics such as WHISPER NOT and I REMEMBER CLIFFORD, and finally brought about his recording debut as a leader on Contemporary in 1957 — BENNY GOLSON'S NEW YORK SCENE, with Farmer featured on trumpet. A year later, in a brief stint as musical director of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Golson was the primary force behind the popular Blakey recording that included Bobby Timmons' MOANIN' as well as three of Golson's own compositions. When Golson left Blakey after a European tour at the end of 1958, he got together with trombonist Curtis Fuller. "Curtis and I went into the Five Spot for two weeks, and stayed for months after that," Golson explains. It was during this period that the pair recorded four albums together under Golson's name for Riverside and Prestige/ New Jazz and three under Fuller's for Savoy. One of the latter, ARABIA, was issued under the name of the Curtis Fuller Jazztet.

At the same time, Farmer and Golson were solidifying the relationship they had inaugurated in the Hampton band six years earlier. "Art and I were thrown into each other's company in the New York studios, on albums like George Russell's NEW YORK, N.Y., and I just loved how he played," the saxophonist recalls. Oscar Pettiford, Jimmy Cleveland, Abbey Lincoln and Milt Jackson also found occasion to employ the trumpeter and tenorman on the same record dates. By the end of 1958 both Golson and Farmer were recording for the United Artists label. Golson appeared on Farmer's quintet album MODERN ART and contributed two compositions as well as all of the arrangements for the trumpeter's tentet album BRASS SHOUT. "I was interested in forming a sextet at the time," Golson says. "There were so many quintets around, and I wanted to hear one more voice in the band. When I called Art with the idea, he just started laughing, because he was ready to leave Gerry Mulligan and had been about to call me to be the tenor saxophonist in his new sextet."

The pair came up with a straightforward solution lor completing the bund. "We decided to each pick two ol the other sidemen," Golson explains. "Art picked his brother Addison as the bassist and drummer Dave Bailey, who had also been in the Mulligan quartet. I wanted Curtis as the trombonist, and this 19-year-old pianist I had worked a job with in Philadelphia named McCoy Tyner. Art had to be persuaded about McCoy because he had never heard him — not many people had at that point — but it was my choice and he ultimately went along."

Kay Norton, an executive with the United Artists label who would take producer or co-producer credit for the majority of the albums in this collection, became the manager of the new band. An official debut gig was obtained at New York's Five Spot in November 1959, on the bill that introduced the Ornette Coleman quartet to the East Coast. All that was lacking was a name for the new ensemble. "Art and I couldn't come up with anything," Golson laughs, "and we finally asked Curtis Fuller if we could use 'Jazztet,' which he had coined for one of our Savoy sessions. So while the Jazztet was always Art's and my band, it was Curtis' name."”