Victor Feldman and Frank Rosolino: The "Lost" Recordings

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

For about two years in the late 1950s, I had the pleasure of hanging out with pianist/vibist Victor Feldman and trombonist Frank Rosolino who were then regular members of bassist's Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse Cafe All-Stars in Hermosa Beach, CA.

These were my formative years in Jazz and I always thought of the many nights at I spent at the club listening to set after set of the Lighthouse All-Stars as my “undergraduate education.”

The drummer with the All-Stars at that time was Stan Levey When I mentioned to him something about lessons, he turned me over to Victor saying: “He even knows the name of the rudiments.” [Stan was just being defensive as he was self-taught and not all that technically conversant with “drum speak.” He just played his backside off instead.]

As to Victor's skills as a drummer, I soon found out that before he turned to vibes and piano, Victor had been a World Class drummer [think Buddy Rich - Yes, he was that fast].

The closing time for the club was 2:00 AM, but on weekdays, most of the patrons were gone by midnight. At the witching hour, the musicians sometimes congregated in the back of the club to relax, have a smoke and conduct Jazz 101 with aspiring, young musicians before playing a last set.

Often, Jazz 101 consisted of war stories and one night while I was sitting in the back of the club with Victor and Frank Rosolino, Victor told a heart-breaking tale of the “lost tapes” he had made a few years earlier with a rhythm section of Hank Jones on piano, Bill Crow on bass and Kenny Clark and Joe Morello on drums [they split the two, recording sessions].

Before leaving Woody Herman’s Big Band and settling in with Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars for a three year stint beginning in 1957, Victor had made a prior arrangement to record an album for Keynote Records and set about making arrangements for the date.  Bassist Bill Crow tells the tale of this ill-fated Feldman, Keystone recording session in his book From Birdland to Broadway [New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 119-120].

“One night [in 1955] a young man sat at the Hickory House bar listening and smiling as we played [the Marian McPartland Trio featuring Bill Crow on bass and Joe Morello on drums]. When our set was finished, he introduced himself as Victor Feldman. The talented English vibraphonist had just arrived in New York, and had come to meet Marian. He said he liked the way Joe and I played together.

‘I’m doing an album for Keynote,’ Victor told us, ‘and I’d like you guys to do it with me. I’ve already sort of promised it to Kenny Clarke, so I’ll have him do the first date and Joe the second. I’ve got Hank Jones on piano.

Both dates went beautifully. Victor had written some attractive tunes, and he and Hank hit it off together right away. We couldn’t have felt more comfortable if we’d been playing together for years. Victor was glad to have the recording finished before he left town to join Woody Herman’s band.

The next time I ran into Vic, he told a sad story. The producer at Keynote had decided to delay releasing the album, hoping Victor would become famous with Woody. But the next Keystone project ran over budget, and when he needed to raise some cash, the producer sold Victor’s master tapes to Teddy Reig at Roost Records. Vic came back to New York, discovered what happened, and called Reig to find out when he planned to release the album.

‘Just as soon as Keystone sends me the tape,’ said Reig.

Vic called Keystone to ask when this would take place, and was told the tape had already been sent. A search of both record companies offices failed to locate the tape, and as far as I know it was never found. It may still be lying in a storeroom somewhere, or it may have been destroyed.

Since Keystone announced the album when we did the date, it was listed in Down Beat in their “Things to Come” column, and that information found its way into the Bruyninckx discography, but now that Vic and Kenny are both gone, that music exists as a lovely resonance in the memories of Joe, Hank and myself.”

Frank and I were horrified. “Some Christmas present,” Frank said, reflectively. He went on to say: “That better not happen with the tapes from the session we just finished.”

The recording session that Frank was referring to occurred on December 22, 1958 and while the outcome was not as irrevocable as was the case with the never-found tapes of Victor’s Keystone tapes, it DID happen that the Rosolino tapes were also, never released, at least, not until almost thirty years later [Frank died in 1978].

In 1987, Fantasy acquired the tapes from the December 22, 1958 Rosolino session and finally released them on LP as Frank Rosolino: Free For All [SP-2161]. The date was also released on CD in 1991 [Specialty Jazz Series OJCCD 1763-2].

Leonard Feather explains the story this way in his insert notes to the CD.

“Surprises of the kind represented by this album are as rare as they are welcome. The appearance of a hitherto undocumented album by Frank Rosolino makes a valuable addition to the discographical annals of an artist whose memory is cherished by admirers around the world.

His career seemed, on the surface, to have been reasonably successful. Born in Detroit in 1926, he came up through the big band ranks, playing with Gene Krupa, Bob Chester, Herbie Fields and Georgie Auld, then leading his own group in Detroit before joining Stan Kenton in 1952.

Two years later, he settled in Southern California and became, for several years, a regular in Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars in Hermosa Beach. His free-wheeling, extrovert style did not conform to the then prevalent image of West Coast jazz as tightly organized, laid back and somewhat derivative.

Moreover, Rosolino was known from the early days as an incurable comic, whose bop vocal on "Lemon Drop" with the Krupa band marked his first appearance on film. As Benny Carter once commented, "Frank was a fantastic musician, but behind that cut-up personality was a troubled man. He was like Pagliacci.”

Frank made his recording debut as a leader with a 1952 session for the short lived Dee Gee label. There were other dates for Capitol, Bethlehem and Mode, but by the mid-1960s the only available Rosolino album was a Reprise set that featured him mainly as a comedy singer. The existence of the present volume was unknown except to those who had taken part in it — and, particularly, the man who produced it, David Axelrod.

"Frank and I were excited about this album," Axelrod recalls, "because it was going to be the first hard bop album recorded and released on the West Coast. We wanted to get away from that bland, stereotyped West Coast image. We worked for weeks on planning the personnel and the songs. The results were terrific. It was a great disappointment to us both that the record, for reasons we never understood, wasn't released."

Rosolino confirmed this view in a letter he sent to Specialty some nine months after the session. "I feel it's the best album I have ever recorded; everyone who was on the date feels the same. I've played the dub for numerous musicians and they all think it's just great."

Harold Land, whose tenor sax shared the front line with Frank's trombone, was already well established as a proponent of the more vigorous California sound; he had toured with the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet in 1954-5 and went on to lead various combos in addition to working, off and on ever since 1955, in the Gerald Wilson Orchestra.

Victor Feldman, who had arrived from England in 1955 and settled in Los Angeles after touring with Woody Herman, has worked for many years in studios, often playing mainly percussion and vibes, but his jazz reputation (primarily on piano) is a formidable one. Two years after these sides were made he joined Cannonball Adderley; in 1963 he recorded and gigged with Miles Davis.

Stan Levey, one of the foremost bebop drummers of the 1940's, played with everyone from Dizzy and Bird to Herman and Kenton, then joined the Rumsey group at the Lighthouse. By 1972, tired of boring studio jobs, he gave up playing in order to concentrate on his growing success as a commercial photographer.

Leroy Vinnegar, born in Indianapolis, settled in Los Angeles in 1954 and has worked with innumerable groups led by Stan Getz, Shelly Manne, Jimmy Smith, Shorty Rogers, Buddy Collette, and the Crusaders.

Typical of Frank Rosolino's ingenuity is the opening cut; he tackled Love for Sale in 6/4, moving into a fast 4/4 for the bridge. His own solo and Land's establish immediately that this is a tough, no-holds-barred blowing session.

Twilight is a beguilingly pensive example of Victor Feldman's talent as a composer.

There is no improvisation here until the solo by Land, who also plays under Frank's eloquent excursion.

Frank deals with the melody, while Harold offers appropriate fills on Henry Nemo's Don't Take Your Love From Me. Note the easy moderate beat sustained behind Frank's solo, the typically inventive Land outing, and Feldman's evolution from single note lines to chords.

Chrisdee, an original by Stan Levey, was named for his sons Chris and Dee and is a bebop line based on a cycle of fifths, with a somewhat Monkish bridge. After Frank and Harold have adroitly negotiated the changes, there is a series of fours, with Leroy walking a passage and Stan in a couple of brief solo statements.

Stardust is Rosolino throughout, a masterful example of his approach to a well-worn standard into which he breathes new life. The verse is played slowly, the tempo picks up a bit for the chorus, and the beat is later doubled, with Frank's sinuous lines growing busier before he closes it out on the dominant.

Frank composed Free Fall the album's title tune as a funky blues theme that offers 24 bars to Leroy, four choruses (48 bars) to Frank, three to Harold and two to Victor before the theme returns, ending with a suddenness that was typical of the hard bop era.

Frank worked out the routine on There is No Greater Love, an Isham Jones standard that dates back to 1936 and is as much in use as ever at jam sessions a half century after its debut. The unison horns kick it off at a bright pace,- after Harold's and Frank's solos, Victor gets into a single-note bop bag.

Finally, Frank's own Sneakyoso provides the quintet with an ingenious vehicle, its attractive changes providing good opportunities for Frank to work out. Note the fine comping Victor furnishes for Harold Land before taking over for his own solo. The two horns engage in an exchange with Stan Levey before the head returns.

All in all, this is a superior, even superlative example of the genre of music it represents. Frank was right to be so proud of it. Talking to Stan Levey while preparing these notes, I was not surprised when he remarked: "I never heard anyone else quite like Frank. He put into his music much more than he ever achieved out of it. I remember this session well, and I'm happy it's being made available."

Sadly, Frank did not survive to see its release. … [He died under tragic circumstances] in November of 1978 …..

Free for All is a very welcome reminder of an exceptionally gifted artist who left us much too soon.”

Leonard Feather, 1986 (Leonard Feather is the Los Angeles Times jazz critic.)

Who knows Maybe one day, someone will find the tapes of Victor’s 1955 session for Keystone and I can change the title of this piece from “lost” to “found.”

Basin Street Blues

A brilliant reharmonization of this Jazz standard by pianist Victor Feldman. 

Miles never played better than when he was in a reflective mood. When he was, you could really hear what Gil Evans meant when he said that Miles "changed the sound of the trumpet."

With Ron Carter on bass and Frank Butler on drums.

Victor Feldman - Blindfold Test with Leonard Feather [From the Archives]

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

Regular visitors to these pages are by now familiar with the personal and professional relationship I had with Victor Feldman during his and my formative years on the West Coast Jazz scene in the late 1950’s. He was my teacher and my friend.

Victor, who passed away in 1987, was best known as an excellent pianist, vibraphonist and composer [he penned Joshua and Seven Steps to Heaven both of which were recorded by Miles Davis]. He also performed with alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley’s quintet and recorded with trombonist J.J. Johnson’s quartet, before resettling in Los Angeles and becoming a fixture in the West Coast Jazz scene and a mainstay in the southern California studios.

What most musicians in the States were not aware of is what a brilliant career as a drummer Victor Feldman had before coming to the USA in 1956 to perform with Woody Herman’s Band primarily as a vibraphonist.

Woody knew. He knew he had a Buddy Rich-quality drummer in Victor and every night he would feature him in what was essentially a 10 minute solo on drums and congas on Mambo the Most [The Mambo swept the USA as a dance craze during Victor’s time on Woody’s Band although I would challenge anyone to dance to the stuff that Victor was laying down during his time in the solo spotlight].

Victor’s comments about drummers in England and Europe should be taken in this context - he knew what he was talking about. The fact that calf-skin drum heads were still in wide use in abroad should also be kept in mind [American drummers had already made the switch the plastic heads which held the tension better and as a result got a sharper more crackling snare drum sound].

At the time of Vic Feldman's last Blindfold Test (Down Beat, Dec. 22, 1960) he had been with the Cannonball Adderley Quintet for a couple of months. The association with Adderley, which lasted for nine months, was priceless in two respects.

It gave Feldman the most significant musical experience of his adult career, one from which he emerged an even better musician; and it earned him a degree of acceptance among jazz fans and critics that would have been hard to come by in any other surroundings.

For his latest test, I included a couple of items with special relevance for him: the Kenny Drew track includes his rhythm section teammates from the Adderley quintet; Woody Herman was his first employer after he arrived in this country almost six years ago; the Jazz Couriers, of course, include musicians he knew and worked with in England. He was given no information about the records.

The Records

1. Richard “Groove” Holmes. That Healin' Feelin' (from Groove on Pacific Jazz). Holmes, organ; Ben Webster, tenor saxophone; Lawrence Lofton, trombone. No bass.

“The organ player might have been Shirley Scott, but it sounded a little more to me like a man playing. I notice a Fender bass in there; that could have been Monk Montgomery. I don't know who was on tenor or trombone. The trombone player sounded as though he was very much influenced by Bill Harris. I think they got a groove for what they were trying to do. It came off well. Four stars.

2.  Woody  Herman. Panatela  (from The Fourth Herd, Jazzland). ZootSims, tenor saxophone;  Nat Adderley, cornet; Eddie  Costa, vibes; Al Cohn, composer,   arranger. Recorded  Aug. 1, 1959.]

I think that was Woody Herman's band, and the tenor player on the first chorus sounded a lot like Zoot. The trumpet sounded like Nat Adderley. The arrangement ... I don't know . . . sounds a little like Al Cohn.

I didn't like the recording; it was sort of echo-y. I don't know if that's the band Woody's been traveling with, because it sounds like they just got together for that date. The vibraphone player sounds like the one who plays with Buddy Rich — Mike Mainieri — I'm not sure. I've heard so many better, really swinging records by Woody. Two stars.

3. Kenny Drew. The Pot's On (from Undercurrent, Blue Note). Drew, piano; Sam Jones, bass; Louis Hayes, drums; Hank Mobley, tenor saxophone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet.

I'll start with the rhythm section: I think the bass player's Sam Jones, the drummer sounds like Louis Hayes — I'm not sure, and the piano sounds like Barry Harris — here I'm not sure because I've heard him play much better than that.

I worked with Sam and Louis with Cannonball. Being with that group did me a world of good musically. The tenor player played like Sonny Stitt used to play, but I'm sure it's not Sonny. Could be Hank Mobley. The trumpet ... is there a trumpet player named Freddie Greenwood? The record was swinging . . . played well. Four stars.

4. Curtis Fuller. Chantized (from Boss of the Soul-Stream Trombone, Warwick). Fuller, trombone; Walter Bishop, piano; Stu Martin, drums; Buddy Catlett, bass.

I don't know who that is. Could be Benny Green on trombone. If it is Benny, he sounds a little bit like Curtis Fuller. I thought it was kind of uninteresting because of the melody . . . the line . . . the rhythm all the way through. Some pieces can have the rhythm all the way through and be interesting, but this was monotonous.

The soloists didn't have much to say. Coltrane can do this kind of thing and make it interesting. Two stars.

5. Cannonball  Adderley. A Foggy Day (from Cannonball EnRoute, Mercury). Adderley, alto saxophone; Nat Adderley, cornet; Sam Jones, bass; Jimmy Cobb, drums; Junior Mance, piano. Recorded,1957.

That was Cannonball and Nat Adderley. The record must be two or three years old; I think Sam's on bass, and the piano player could have been Junior Mance. I don't know the drummer; it didn't sound like Louis. I enjoyed listening to it ... it was good . . . not exceptional.

The group has changed. Nat and Cannon both play differently now — like all musicians, the longer we play, the more we hope we improve. They're much greater now, yet the standard and the feeling are still there. Now they have more excitement and group feeling. They had more when I was with them than they do here. Three stars.

6. The Jazz Couriers. Whisper Not (from Message from Britain, Jazzland). Ronnie Scott, tenor saxophone; Tubby Hayes, vibes; Kenny Napper, bass; Phil Seamen, drums; Terry Shannon, piano. Recorded in London.

Sounds like an English group. The tenor player sounds like Tubby Hayes, but he didn't take a long-enough solo for me to really tell. The ensemble playing sounded like Tubby. The vibraphone player . . . that threw me a curve . . . gets a very nice sound. I don't know anyone in England who sounds like that. There's a vibraphone player in this country, whom I heard a couple of years ago, who's very good — Bobby Hutcherson — but I don't know how he sounds now.

The recording ... the general sound ... the drums ... the whole rhythm section . . . make me believe that it is an English or a European group.

Quite a few musicians, orchestrators, and arrangers I've spoken to here feel that they record better in England. I don't agree. The difference is partly the recording and partly the performance. The weak point of English jazz is the rhythm sections. They don't have the same environment musicians do here. They don't see these musicians all the time in person and talk to them and discuss things as they can here.

Drummers in England play in clubs which are underground and very damp, so they have a terrible job tuning their drums; it really makes a difference. Rhythm is improving though. There are a couple of wonderful bass players — Kenny Napper — in fact, that could have been him here — and Lenny Bush. I heard some good drummers, too, when I was there a couple of months ago. I recognized Terry Shannon on piano. Two stars.

7. John Coltrane. Every Time We Say Goodbye (from My Favorite Things, Atlantic.) Coltrane, soprano saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano.

That was John Coltrane playing soprano sax, and the piano player was McCoy Tyner. It's a very pretty tune; I like the changes Tyner plays. All I can say is that it was pleasant. The saxophone sounded out of tune on a few notes.

I hate to be unenthusiastic, but I think this deserves three stars.

Source:

Downbeat Magazine

February 1, 1962

Victor Feldman All-Stars Plays Soviet Jazz Themes

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

Drummer, vibraphonist and pianist Victor Feldman was such a superbly talented musician and accomplished reader that he made his primary living in the Hollywood studios during their heyday in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  He was also dependable, prompt and courteous, not to mentioned very well-liked by the coterie of contractors and first-call studio players that populated that scene.

Although he didn’t have to “go on the road,” occasionally some great opportunities to do so came up such as his stint with Cannonball Adderley’s sextet in 1961.

Another, much briefer road trip, turned up in the form of Benny Goodman’s tour of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics which commenced on May 28, 1962.

It took the first several weeks in April for the personnel of the group to be finalized; but when it was, the band was a dynamite cast of musicians. Joya Sherrill was the featured vocalist. Zoot Sims; Jerry Dodgion, Gene Allen, Phil Woods and Tommy Newsome were the saxophone section. Joe Newman, Jimmy Maxwell, Joe Wilder and John Frosk made up the trumpet section while the trombonists were Jimmy Knepper, Willie Dennis and Wayne Andre. The rhythm section consisted of Bill Crow on bass and Turk Van Lake on guitar, and featured Victor on vibes and Teddy Wilson on piano.

Upon his return from the Soviet Union, Victor signed an exclusive recording contract with Fred Astaire’s Ava records.

The first project that Victor completed for the label was to record three “Jazz Impressions of …” tracks with Bob Whitlock [b] and Colin Bailey [d] that augmented the release of the original soundtrack by Mark Lawrence to the highly acclaimed film – David and Lisa: An Unusual Love Story [Ava-AS-21].

But while at Ava records, Victor was at work preparing a real gem of a recording based on compositions that he and Leonard Feather had come across during his trip to Russia with the Goodman band.

Released in 1963, The Victor Feldman All-Stars Play Soviet Jazz Themes [Ava-AS-19] is comprised of two recording sessions involving three Soviet Jazz originals, both featuring the rhythm section of Bob Whitlock on bass and Frank Butler on drums. The first took place on October 26, 1962 with Victor on vibes, Nat Adderley on cornet, Harold Land on tenor saxophone and Joe Zawinul on piano and the second session was done on November 12, 1962 with Victor on piano and vibes, Herb Ellis on guitar, Carmel Jones on trumpet and Harold Land once again on tenor.

Here are Leonard Feather’s original liner notes that offer a perspective on both the Cold War politics of the time as well as on the Soviet Jazz musicians and their music which Victor represented on this recording.

“There has never been an album quite like this before in the annals of recorded jazz.

The very existence of Soviet jazz, of artists who could play or write it, was virtually unknown outside the USSR until 1959. That was the year when two intrepid Americans named Dwike Mitchell and Willie Ruff, in the guise of Yale choral group members, entered the Soviet Union and let it be bruited around that they were really jazz musicians. The resultant impromptu concerts led them to discover that a cadre of young musicians existed whose interest in the American jazz world, bolstered by Voice of America broadcasts, was as deep and intense as their feeling for the music.

Three years later, on a more official and far more broadly publicized basis, Benny Goodman's band, the first American jazz orchestra of modem times to play the Soviet Union (under U.S. State Department auspices) opened May 30, 1962, at the Central Army Sports Arena in Moscow. On this tour the brilliant and versatile Victor Feldman played vibraphone in the small combo numbers; and most valuably, during the six weeks of the tour, he gained a fairly broad picture of the musical life of the Russians, the Georgians and other citizens of this endless land.

I was lucky enough to be in Moscow for the opening. and later to spend a little time in Leningrad. At a press conference I heard much talk of arranging for local jazzmen to sit in with Goodman and show him some of their music. The plans failed to materialize however, for B.G. never sought out these Soviet youths whose music amazed those of us who did get together with them. And aside from token gestures such as the use of a couple of Soviet pop songs, there was no acknowledgement in the band's program that such a phenomenon as Soviet jazz existed.

The aims of Victor Feldman's LP are, first, to compensate for this omission; second, to provide a program of modem jazz by superior soloists with plenty of blowing room; third, to point up the similarities, rather than the differences, that can be found in a comparison of jazz composition as it is conceived in Moscow, Tbilisi or Leningrad vis-À-vis New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.

Soon after arriving in Moscow, we found out that homegrown jazz, supposedly taboo in the USSR, not only wasn't underground or outlawed as had long been believed, but was actually flourishing on a modest scale. It even had young. growing outlets at a Moscow jazz Club, where students earnestly discuss the latest news about John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman, and at a couple of Youth Cafés, where music by the new Soviet jazz wave is often heard live.

Writing in Down Beat about a visit to the Café Aelita. I observed: "It is the closest Moscow comes to a night club … serves only wine, closes at 11pm, and is decorated in a style that might be called Shoddy Modern, though radical by Moscow standards ... the shocker was the trumpet player, Andre Towmosian. who is 19 but looks 14, plays with the maturity of a long-schooled musician, though in jazz he is self-taught."

I learned that Towmosian was acclaimed in the fourth annual Jazz festival at Tartu, Estonia. (It was amazing enough to learn that there had been any Soviet jazz festival, let alone four.) He was also featured with his quartet at the Leningrad University Jazz Festival; and one of the souvenirs I brought home was a tape, given me in Leningrad, of Towmosian playing Ritual, the original heard in this album.

Also on tape were some of the compositions of Gennadi (Charlie) Golstain, the alto saxophonist and arranger whose apartment I visited in Leningrad. Though nicknamed for Charlie Parker, clearly he has at least two other idols, for side by

side on the wall of his living room I noticed adjacent photographs of two men: Nikolai Lenin and Julian (Cannonball) Adderley.

Golstain's tapes featured him with a combo similar to the Feldman group on these sides, but he works regularly with a large modern orchestra headed by Yusef Weinstain and writes most of the band's book. He is a soloist of considerable passion,as yet incompletely disciplined and subject to multiple influences, but his dedication is beyond cavil and his writing shows an intelligent absorption of the right influences.

“Several of the fellows in Benny's band jammed a couple of times with Gennadi at our hotel, the Astoria in Leningrad," Victor recalls, "and some of us, including Phil Woods, played with him at the University., He was eager for knowledge and information, like so many of the musicians we met."

Goldstain is the composer of three of the lines in this set - Blue Church Blues, Madrigal, and Gennadi - as well as the arranger. or virtual re-composer, of the folk song Polyushko Polye.  (For those curious about the first title, it should be pointed out that the church Gennadi had in mind was not Russian Orthodox, but probably Southern Baptist.)

Also represented here is a young arranging student named  Givi Gachechiladze, the composer of "Vic." He lives in Kiev," says Victor, but he's studying at Tbilisi; and when we arrived at the airport there, he and a group of his friends were at the airport to meet us - with flowers. The next day he gave me this tune, dedicated to me and named for me.'

The rapport that grew between the Soviet musicians and the Goodman sidemen showed in microcosm the kind of amity that could exist on all social levels if meetings were possible between men and women of the two countries who have common interests. All of us who tasted the hospitality of these devoted jazz musicians and students were touched by their sincerity, their lack of political animosity (many seemed totally apolitical), and their obvious desire to discuss things shared rather than differences.

The young musicians like Towmosian, Golstain, Constantin Nosvo and Gachechiladze, none beyond their 20s and many in their teens. have not yet gained substantial recognition in their own country.  It is ironic that this is the first album featuring Soviet jazz compositions that has ever been recorded, not merely in the U.S.A., but anywhere in the world. For decades American jazz was a prophet un-honored at home; Europeans were the first to give it profound critical attention. Now, in a strange reversal, Americans are the first to draw attention to a set of swinging, unpretentious Soviet jazz pieces that are still waiting to be recorded on home ground.

The group selected for these two sessions is in itself further reflection of the "United Notions" character of jazz. Here are the works of writers in the Soviet Union, performed in America by a group under the leadership of Victor Stanley Feldman, who came to this country in 1955, at the age of 21, from his native London (the native city also of this writer, who helped organize the sessions); and on the tracks that feature Feldman's vibes the piano is taken over by Joe Zawinul, a superb modern pianist who was born in Vienna and did not arrive here until 1959, Zawinul works regularly with the sextet of Cannonball, whose brother Nat is heard on three tracks (Ritual, Madrigal, Blue Church Blues.)

Harold Land and Herb Ellis, both from Texas, and Carmell Jones of Kansas are well known to the Soviet insiders, as are drummer Frank Butler from Kansas City and the Utah-born bassist Bob Whitlock

Certainly these sides, because of the historic precedent they set and because of the esteem in which Feldman and his colleagues are held in what used to be thought of as the borsch and balalaika belt, will be among the most desirable collectors' items when the first copies reach the Soviet Union. For listeners in this country it is to be hoped that they will help reinforce a concept not of the jazz-as-propaganda-weapon cliché, but the unifying image of this music gathering strength and growing stature as part of a single world.”