I have had two experiences as a co-producer of Jazz recordings: one involving Italian Jazz pianist Dado Moroni and the other with Jazz pianist Christian Jacob’s tribute album to the music of the late French pianist, Michel Petrucciani.From my limited participation, I can assert unequivocally that everything that Jack Tracy states about the process of producing Jazz recordings is true: it involves a great deal more talent, ability and hard work than most people realize.
What follows in Part 3 of the continuing JazzProfiles feature on Jack are his remembrances from his Producer Days.
- [C] Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
What is a Jazz Record producer?
In 1958 Mercury Records, based in Chicago, offered me the opportunity to join the company as the director of its jazz wing and in that move I found myself now producing the recordings I previously had been reviewing and writing about. I took a rather brief exit to serve the same function with Argo Records, a Chess Records jazz operation, in 1960, but returned to Mercury at the instigation of Quincy Jones and remained there into the late '60s.
During my years with those companies, some of the artists whose recordings I was responsible for were Cannonball Adderley, Art Farmer and Benny Golson's Jazztet, Gerry Mulligan, Roland Kirk, Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, James Moody, Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis and singers Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Jon Hendricks, Ernestine Anderson and the Four Freshmen.. It was a new world that I continued to live in until I retired from the record business in the 1970s. Rock and roll came in, jazz was in a terrible state, and I got out.
A few years ago I read an online contribution by a man who contended that anyone could call himself a jazz record producer. I offered the following response:To suggest that anyone can call himself a jazz record producer is undoubtedly true. To suggest that anyone can BE a jazz record producer and come up with results that are generally regarded as worthy of critical appraisal and produce profitable sales is not always true.
To suggest that all one need do is go into a recording booth and be a cheerleader or a nodding yes-man and be called the producer is to misunderstand the functions that apply to that title.
A producer is responsible for the creation of a finished product and must be involved to some degree in all the following:
*The overall budget
*Concept of the recording
*Selection of the recording studio and the engineer and recordist
*Hiring of the musicians if the recording is not being done with an already established personnel
*Selection of the compositions to be recorded
*Supervising the recording sessions
*Confidence in the producer's ear by the musicians, particularly the leader.
*Preparing all of the paperwork necessary for the payroll department, the musicians
union and the publishers performance societies so that the many legal and financial
requirements are satisfied.
*Editing the results (often with the artist not there--he may be out on the road),
selecting the master takes, arranging the sequence and mixing the tracks to
prepare a test CD for the artist to listen to and approve
*Mastering the final results with an engineer whose ear he can trust.
*Selection of the artwork for the CD and the liner note writer
*Consulting with the promotion department to determine the best venues for marketing the record.
In all honesty, however, that there was at least one instance when I received producer credit for an artist that was probably undeserved.
Some of the producers at Mercury like Quincy Jones, Pete Rugolo and Bobby Scott were also recording artists, and it was decided that they should have another staff member as their producer, someone who could handle a lot of the niggling details that take away from the time really needed to write arrangements and get ready for the recording dates.Quincy and I had become very close friends, so I was handed the title of producer for Q. Well, to tell the truth, I was no more producer for Quincy Jones than you were, except that I got to remind him of deadlines (he was notorious for pushing the envelope where they were concerned), attend the recording sessions and stay the hell out of the way.
Sort of like a cheerleader.
Mercury – Chess - Argo
Among the many record labels that sprang up after World War II, two that were based in Chicago became important players in the game, Mercury and Chess. The former began to develop a roster of singers that made a huge dent in the pop market—Patti Page, Vic Damone, Georgia Gibbs and Frankie Laine led the way—and created jazz and country/western departments that were significantly serious. Chess was a blues label headed by Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley that began to have success in jazz as well, and then came up with a smash hit in Ahmad Jamal and became a real jazz contender.Both companies were headed by men who were tough, demanding and, unlike the heads of the large and unwieldy major labels, were able to move swiftly to respond to any situation and establish a personal relationship with key disc jockeys and radio stations that enabled them to get all-important airtime for their records. They didn’t hesitate to spend money for whatever it took to get that done.
Leonard Chess ran the company that carried his name, and Irv Green headed a cadre of WW II vets who ran the A&R (Artists and Repertoire), sales and promotion departments at Mercury.
Irv Green was an experienced record man whose father had owned the old National label. He was big, forceful, intimidating and not always easy to get along with. I never heard anyone refer to him as "a really nice guy," although when he wanted to steal an artist from another company he could be remarkably charming and persuasive.
This incident might give you an idea of his personality and business acumen:
When we had a surprise hit on our Philips label with "The Singing Nun," a 45 rpm side that found its unexpected way out of an expensively packaged specialty album, there was a rush to get quantities of the album into the stores to cash in on the single's huge sales. At one of the Monday staff meetings that kicked off each week, Green asked the art director how the production of the jacket was progressing. He was told that one of the fancy artwork gimmicks on the cover was slowing down the printing process considerably, and it would be a while yet before we could get it out in quantity.
Green, face red and veins bulging, slammed his fist down on the conference table and roared, "I don't give an eff if you put the effing record in a brown paper bag, get that goddamn thing out there, do you here me? I don't give a shit what it takes. You get it out and get it out fast or you're gone."
Irving B. Green was definitely one of a kind, and anyone who ever worked for him will never forget him.
Leonard Chess [above] came to the United States with his parents and younger brother Phil from Poland when he was just a boy. The elder Chess was a junkman, a rags and old iron guy with a horse and wagon. Leonard helped. As the little Chess junkyard grew in size they figured a truck would be a good investment.
So after a lot of looking around and shopping for the best deal they could find on a used truck, they bought one. Leonard hand-painted the sign on the door. It read:
Chess Junkyard
Truck #2
Truck #2
Little by little Leonard and Phil turned a South Side Chicago bar into a tiny record label started on practically zero dollars into a company with three labels (Chess, Checker and Argo), a recording studio, a music publishing company, a radio station, a pressing plant and who knows what else. Leonard was a canny, tough, shrewd businessman who viewed with suspicion every invoice he saw and every bill he had to pay. I would guess that every check that left the building met his eye.
His attitude, although I never heard him express it in just these words, was, “I’ll take a chance and record some of your songs and put ‘em out. If I make any money on them, I’ll give you some.”
He never did understand jazz musicians, let alone their music. Jazz musicians expected to be paid union scale for recording dates and any overtime. They had their own publishing companies and wanted to control the rights to their own compositions.
They expected to get their royalty statements on time, and they were able to read them. Some of them even had (God forbid!) attorneys and/or agents representing them, people who asked for things like promotion budgets and ads in the trade papers and recording sessions with strings! The six strings on one guitar were about as much as Leonard figured was necessary.
But, boy, was he a record man! I brought The Jazztet, Art Farmer and Benny Golson’s group, to Argo. Shortly after their first album came out, a Philadelphia disc jockey called to say that one of the tracks, “Killer Joe,” was getting a lot of listener response. Within five minutes of that call Leonard had me in the studio editing “Killer Joe” to suitable singles length, and the next day it was being pressed and deejay samples were readied for radio play. “Killer Joe” sold some 50,000 copies, a very large number for a jazz single, and opened the door for the group’s success.
His attitude, although I never heard him express it in just these words, was, “I’ll take a chance and record some of your songs and put ‘em out. If I make any money on them, I’ll give you some.”
He never did understand jazz musicians, let alone their music. Jazz musicians expected to be paid union scale for recording dates and any overtime. They had their own publishing companies and wanted to control the rights to their own compositions.
They expected to get their royalty statements on time, and they were able to read them. Some of them even had (God forbid!) attorneys and/or agents representing them, people who asked for things like promotion budgets and ads in the trade papers and recording sessions with strings! The six strings on one guitar were about as much as Leonard figured was necessary.
But, boy, was he a record man! I brought The Jazztet, Art Farmer and Benny Golson’s group, to Argo. Shortly after their first album came out, a Philadelphia disc jockey called to say that one of the tracks, “Killer Joe,” was getting a lot of listener response. Within five minutes of that call Leonard had me in the studio editing “Killer Joe” to suitable singles length, and the next day it was being pressed and deejay samples were readied for radio play. “Killer Joe” sold some 50,000 copies, a very large number for a jazz single, and opened the door for the group’s success.
One more story about Leonard.He had a hideaway office tucked behind the recording studio in the building in which he could conduct those aspects of business that required closed doors. Rumor has it that once, when some of Chicago’s bent-nose guys made an appointment with him to tell him they had decided to become his partners, Leonard had a mike installed behind his desk, ran the line to the studio control room and taped their entire conversation, one in which he told them that there would be no partnership.
When they called the next day to tell him his health might suffer if he did not reconsider, he told them about the recording he had and to whom he might send copies. And so Phil remained his only partner and they were sole owners of the company until Leonard’s death in 1969.
The record business doesn’t have any Leonard Chesses anymore. It has lawyers and accountants and people who talk about demographics and world markets and conglomerates, but no one who takes a disc jockey to dinner and helps the guy out if his new house needs carpeting.
It’s a different ballgame.
Benny Goodman
There are, of course, scores of stories about Benny Goodman and his foibles, his absent-mindedness, his treatment of musicians and his reluctance to spend money. I have one to add.When I was at Argo we had an opportunity to acquire enough unreleased material in Benny’s personal stockpile to put together an album. It required that I fly to New York and be driven to Benny’s Connecticut home by his brother Harry.
Goodman and I spent two or three hours in his private retreat off the garage that served as a practice site, music room and even rehearsal space for a small group if need be. When at last we decided on the tracks to be purchased Benny asked if I’d like to come in the house, meet his wife and have a drink before Harry and I hit the road back to Manhattan. I of course agreed, and we went in, passing the carefully manicured surroundings that included a personal trout stream.
“What do you drink?,” Benny asked. When I told him Scotch on the rocks would be just fine, he reached up to an impressive section of shelves holding what must have been many hundreds of dollars’-worth of cut glass, selected one, and then opened a cupboard beneath.
He pulled out a pint bottle of White Horse with perhaps 1/4 an inch of Scotch left in it and asked, “Do you think this will be enough for a drink?”
I managed to offer a yes without raising my eyebrows..
There was no second.
Woody Herman
You have to be almost a golden-ager to remember where you were the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
I can tell you where Woody Herman was, and where I was, and where Bill Chase, Sal Nistico, Jake Hanna, Nat Pierce, and some other names known well to this group were on that 22nd day of November in 1963.
We were all at the A&R Recording Studio in New York, in the midst of making a record album that would be titled "Woody Herman: 1964." I was the producer.We had taped one three-hour session two days previous, and we had two more to go, this one on the 22nd and the final on the 23rd. I lived in Chicago at the time, was in New York to do the dates, and had arranged a reunion lunch on the 22nd with two former Chicago neighbors.
We enjoyed a leisurely meal and decided to walk to the studio, which was on the second floor of a building on 48th St. right next to Jim & Andy's, the well-known musicians' bar and hangout. As the three of us walked in and headed for the elevator, a radio was playing loudly in the lobby cigar stand and a voice was excitedly yelling something about someone being shot. We were in the elevator behind closed doors before we heard anymore.
The grim news awaited us when we entered the control room. Kennedy, in an open convertible, had been shot at from a window in the Dallas Book Depository and had been rushed behind screaming police sirens to the Parkland Memorial hospital.
Stunning.
Woody and the band were already there. So was the recording engineer, Phil Ramone. A radio was on and was pouring out whatever facts were known. It was shortly after the shooting. No one seemed to know whether Kennedy had been seriously wounded or not. We just looked at each other.
"What do you want to do, Woods?" I finally asked. He was quiet for a few seconds,
then said, “Let's go ahead with it. We don't have much choice."
Indeed, we didn't. Their itinerary had been wrapped around these sessions, and after the next day the band would be out on a string of dates that would make it impossible to have the album finished anywhere near the deadline that had been set for its release.
Woody went out into the studio and talked to the guys. They agreed it would be better to get the job done now than to cancel the session and sit around and do nothing. Professionalism prevailed.And so for the next three hours we recorded three of the nine charts that make up the album. It was not an easy time, especially at the point when the flash came that JFK was dead. We took a long break then, and I can't forget the look on Phil Ramone's face when we heard those words. He had done some special assignment recording for Kennedy on several occasions and knew and admired him. Tears welled up in his eyes and he looked stricken. I guess we all did. I silently pushed the bottle of J&B that was sitting on the console desk over to him. He took a hit, nodded his thanks, and we went back to work.
When it was over, everyone quietly packed up instruments and headed off. Woody and I went downstairs to Jim & Andy's and watched the events as they unfolded on the bar's TV set. When Air Force One landed at Andrews Field and the casket was unloaded there was an aching quiet in the room. People just looked at each other and shook their heads in disbelief. There were some tears. And there were some curses.
I walked with Woody back to his hotel and then headed off to my own. The streets of Manhattan, usually a Babel of voices and a concerto of car horns and traffic sounds, were eerily silent. It could have been a small town we were walking through, Elm St., not Broadway.
We finished recording the next day.
It was a fine album and still holds up well after some 40 years. But if it doesn't seem to have quite the fire and crackle and joyful exuberance the band showed in the two great ones that preceded it, perhaps you'll understand why.
It’s hard to be joyfully exuberant when you’re grieving.
Roland Rahsaan Kirk
Certainly the most unusual recording artist I ever encountered was Roland Kirk, who later added “Rahsaan” to his name. Shortly after I joined Argo, Ramsey Lewis told me he had recently heard a remarkable player in Louisville and had told him if he was ever in Chicago to be sure to look me up.
It was perhaps a month later that the receptionist rang me and said there was a man named Roland Kirk in the lobby to see me. I went there and was met by an extraordinary sight: there stood a man in dark glasses, raggedly dressed and carrying a white cane. Beside him was an old golf bag with two wheels attached that allowed it to be pulled. In it were some strange horns that looked like reed instruments. Over his shoulder in a separate cloth bag was a tenor sax. He was alone.
I greeted him, brought him into the office, and he produced an LP he had recorded some time previous for a small label in the Midwest. I played it and was immediately taken by his extraordinary ability to play several instruments at the same time and with great jazz feel. Kirk told me that he and his rhythm section had driven to Chicago to look for a gig and to take a chance that I would record him. I would and did. We got a contract signed, a recording date was set, and the resulting album was issued as “Introducing Roland Kirk”.
My next album with him would be for Mercury. Shortly after “Introducing” was issued I was rehired by them to direct their jazz program, and with agreement from Argo, I was able to take Roland with me.Our first Mercury album, done in New York, was titled “We Free Kings,” and became the album that really brought Kirk to the attention of disc jockeys, jazz fans and musicians. It was his growling, moaning, utterly unique flute playing on one track that created all the attention.
After the first take on a yet-unnamed blues, a friend of mine, Phil Moore, the noted vocal coach, drew Roland aside before we did take 2 and quietly suggested to him that he further personalize his performance by thinking of it as a story and giving it continuity. What resulted was an extraordinary and ground-breaking solo that culminated in Kirk growling an impassioned “You did it, you did it,” thereby creating the tune’s title and making Roland suddenly well-known.
Kirk’s refusal to let blindness keep him from trying almost anything that appealed to him made for some interesting situations. My favorite was the time I picked him up at his motel to take him to a recording date. He got into my car, but before I could turn the key to get started he asked, “Can I drive?” I just looked at him as if he was insane. “How the hell can you drive?” I asked.
“Just tell me what’s ahead and I’ll be ok,” he said.
I told him no.
John Lennon
Here's how I learned of John Lennon's death.
I was at Donte's jazz club in the San Fernando Valley and the TV set above the bar was tuned to the Monday night football game. The band was on a break. Howard Cosell made his now-notable announcement that Lennon had been shot and killed outside of his New York apartment. It was silent. Then Jake Hanna looked up at the screen from his bar seat and proclaimed firmly in his best W.C. Fields voice, "One down, three to go."
You gotta love the guy.....to be continued in Part 4.
Live music? Any night of any week you wanted to hear jazz there were at least two dozen places you could go to hear swing, bebop, Dixieland, mainstream jazz, excellent singers—take your pick. There’d be big names and big bands at the Chicago Theater, the Regal and the Oriental, and seemingly everywhere local talent waiting to break out nationally. You’d hear them at any of the many local bars and restaurants that would sporadically give music a try. A number of smaller local clubs made jazz their steady policy.
The South Side, Chicago’s vast black community, was like a city unto itself. Places with live music abounded, and on the bandstands would be performers as varied as Gene Ammons, Muddy Waters, Lurlean Hunter, Frank Strozier, Willie Dixon, Von Freeman, Sun Ra, Jody Christian, Joe Williams, Tom Archia and John Young, plus the likes of stars such as Charlie Parker, Dinah Washington, Sonny Stitt, Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis at clubs like the Bee Hive and the Sutherland Lounge.
Jimmy Yancey, the venerable Chicago boogie-woogie and blues pianist, died In September, 1951, and Dizzy Gillespie was playing with his quintet at the Capitol Lounge at that time. A memorial was planned for Yancey for the following Saturday afternoon, to be held at a local watering hole which occasionally featured a Dixieland band or solo pianists like Don Ewell, a standby. I told Gillespie I planned to be there and asked if he’d like to join me. Somewhat to my surprise he said yes.
In 1994, more than 40 years later, I received in the mail from a friend who I had once told about that special night the picture you see here—he had attended a record collectors’ event, saw the picture among a group of miscellaneous photos for sale, bought it and sent it to me.
Erroll agreed immediately and they went to the bandstand. Garner tried out the battered upright piano and shook his head at what sounded like at least four or five grossly out of tune chipped and yellowed keys. Jeru honked a couple of warm-up notes and they started to play.
"Lennie Tristano deliberately chose drummers who would just keep time softly, with few accents. He wanted to do all the rhythmic accenting himself. I heard him at the Half Note one night with a last minute replacement drummer who I thought put a lot of life and swing into Lennie's music, but Lennie didn't like him at all. Most of the jam sessions I played at Lennie's studio were with drummers who just played brushes very softly, usually with just a snare drum and hi-hat."
Every night someone would organize a session in which some of the staff would participate, so one of the nights I was there I persuaded Lennie and Max to play together. I can't recall the bassist, or if there even was one. It could have been Percy Heath.
Our mutual regard never wavered over the years, even though my moving to California and he to New York, then back to Chicago, precluded much of any contact except by phone and email. And so our lunch was a delight (great Italian food, of course), a couple of hours of reminiscences, laughs and bread-breaking. We may even have told a lie or two.
But I do want to say this about him: A lot of people are going to remember his name and his accomplishments for a very long time. Google him if you don’t believe me. I’m one of them, although in my case “a long time” has a great deal of relatively attached. And I must add that I was very fortunate to be around when he accomplished them.
Jimmy's instrumental tour de force at that time was David Rose's "Holiday for Strings," played at a full-speed-ahead tempo and featuring him on alto sax. Well, he couldn't quite make it that night, and had to start over after a few bars, at which point he got a loud raspberry from a guy in the front row.
Hoping to get an interview with one or both of them I went to the stage door and introduced myself to the band boy. He suggested I come by the next afternoon before the first show and he’d try to help me out.
Frank Holzfiend
I was one of Don Fagerquist's great admirers. I first heard of him when
Dorothy Donegan was a tall, striking lady who was a great piano technician and a good jazz player. She once played Chicago’s London House, and opening night found the usual dozen or more press people at a long table down front. Donegan wore a fawn-colored, satiny, strapless gown and she looked elegant
I'd like to tell you a little about Big Sid Catlett, who in early 1951 was the feature attraction at Chicago's prime Dixieland establishment, Jazz Ltd.
Somewhere there is a recording of the quintet that Chubby Jackson and Bill Harris once toured with, but I don't have it and wish I did. Not only did they have a swinging little group that is well worth remembering, but both had outrageous senses of humor, and what I really wish is that I had a photograph of what would happen at some point during every night of their Blue Note 1953 two-week gig.
Speaking of Oscar Peterson, which we weren't, but are now, I vividly recall an evening when his trio (O.P., Herb Ellis and Ray Brown) was at the London House. "If you feel like it," I asked one night, "do you think you might play some stride the next set?" He just nodded briefly and went to the piano.
It was another opening night for Duke Ellington at the Blue Note, this one in 1956, and the usual large crowd of Ellington enthusiasts and more than several members of the press were all there. Midway through the second set Paul Gonsalves was head-down and nodding in his seat amidst the saxes, quite obviously the worse for wear. He was ignored by the rest of the band.
Back in the sixties, during a two-week engagement at a New Orleans club called Economy Hall, Zoot found himself with two-thirds of a rhythm section when his bass player took ill. The only reasonably competent bassist available locally was far below Zoot's level and knew it. "Don't worry about it," Zoot told him. "Do what you can do. We'll get along fine." The bassist did what he could, but the first couple of nights were rough for him. Zoot was swinging magnificently while carrying his timorous bass player and adjusting his own improvisation to help the pianist provide simple harmonic guidelines. By the end of the first week the bassist was adequate. Zoot could have called New York for a replacement. Instead, he continued to bring along the New Orleans substitute. Night by night, the improvement was audible. When the engagement ended, the man was a considerably better bass player. And he idolized Zoot Sims.
Zoot married Louise Choo in 1970. To the casual observer it might have seemed an unusual pairing, the itinerant tenor player and the charming, sophisticated assistant to Clifton Daniel, managing editor of The New York Times. But it was one of the most graceful and affectionate of marriages, full of regard, appreciation, and laughter. A couple of years ago in San Francisco, where they had taken an apartment during Zoot's engagement at Keystone Korner, I picked them up for dinner. When I pulled up in front of the building, Zoot, his trench coat collar turned up against the foggy chill and the bill of his plaid car cap low over his eyes, was laughing at something Louise was saying. Then he spoke and she laughed, and as they entered the car they continued chatting and laughing, like the best friends they were. That was at a time when the medical news was not good for either of them and Zoot seemed frail, his Joseph Cotten good looks edged in gauntness. It was typical of their relationship that in the most uncertain of times they brought out the best in one another.
In the mid-seventies Norman Granz began recording Zoot extensively, and there is now a series of fifteen Sims albums on Granz's Pablo label. They are all at least very good, and most of them are excellent. A sampler called The Best of Zoot Sims [PACD 2405-2406] contains representative tracks. One of the most recent releases, Quietly There: Zoot Sims Plays Johnny Mandel (Pablo 2310-903), is among the best recordings in his forty-four-year career as a professional musician.
Primarily a tenor saxophonist, Sims was also respected for his work on alto sax and, in recent years, on soprano. Arnie Astrup, a Danish saxophonist and critic, may have summed up the feelings of many musicians and listeners when he said, "I hate the soprano saxophone. It is a clown instrument. They should be burned, all. But when Zoot plays it, I like it."
One of the Pablo albums, Zoot Sims: Soprano Sax (Pablo 2310-770), is devoted entirely to the instrument. He played it with such passion, involvement, and straightforward swing that I can't imagine anyone's not liking it.
As for his alto work, Zoot Sims Plays Four Altos (reissued on Impulse 29060) is one of the most admired saxophone records, not only for Sims's creativity and his accomplishment of overdubbing four alto parts but also for the ingenious compositions and arrangements by George Handy. Zoot's alto work is also outstanding on The Big Stampede (Biograph BLP-12064), a recording with his superb 1956 band, which included pianist John Williams and trumpeter Jerry Lloyd, two excellent, nearly forgotten musicians.
Here is Ira’s review of Body and Soul [Muse MCD 5356; 32jazz 32017] as published in Tom Piazza’s Setting the Tempo: Fifty years of Great Liner Notes [New York: Anchor Books Doubleday, 1996, pp. 120-126].
Off the stand they drank together, played softball together, visited each other's apartments, and generally strengthened the bond between them. In 1957 they finally formalized their musical affinity by forming a working quintet which spotlighted the two tenor saxophones and occasionally featured their assorted other horns. Although for the next two years they recorded and worked within the new format on an intermittent basis, the group really came into its own in 1959, when Sims and Cohn began working regularly at the old Half Note. Between the several engagements each year at the club on Manhattan's Lower West Side, there were visits to the jazz spots of other cities. Al continued to write arrangements for a multitude of aggregations (including the Cohn-Sims quintet) and both men recorded on their own as well as team-style.
Cohn, the Brooklyn native transplanted to the Poconos, is renowned as a raconteur of droll and ribald stories. The lost art of telling a joke has not gone astray because of his efforts. And he's not bad with a pun-ishing ad-lib, either. He was an S. I Perelman head while still in his teens and into the Marx Bros. and W. C. Fields then, too. Al loves to do The New York Times crossword puzzle, is an avid fisherman, and sleeps in a Saran Wrap nightshirt on a bed of pine needles.
The repertory of a working Cohn-Sims group is, of course, well stocked with originals by Al, but it also contains material from other writers from the jazz ranks, like trombonist-arranger Billy Byers, whose Doodle Oodle is based on the changes of There'll Be Some Changes Made. When there are some changes to be made, Al and Zoot negotiate them rather adroitly as in this up-tempo, romp-stomp of an opener. Al's keening choruses - with a finishing quote from the old Paramount News theme, The Eyes and Ears of the World - precede Byard's, and Zoot's - with overtones of Ben Webster in his throaty sound - follow Jaki. Duvivier does some walking on his own before the tenors, in the same order, engage in a round-robin with Lewis.
Next is the Samba Medley. We are long past the fad period of the bossa nova, but the good that it rendered unto American music has survived. Zoot did Djalma Ferreira's Recado Bossa Nova in 1962 at the height of the craze. The lilting, minor-key melody lends itself well to the kind of torrid rhythmic impulses that regularly throb through the Sims tenor.
That's the music, an immaculate execution of a body and soul-pleasing array of songs. I use immaculate in the sense of a perfection that is achieved as a by-product of professionalism that can be reveled in and marveled at because it never loses anything at those really important levels. Al says it well when he talks about Zoot's current work. "He's playing better than ever," comments Cohn. "He's never lost that spontaneity and he's be come more polished. Some players get polished and, with it, more mechanical. Not Zoot. I enjoy his playing more than ever."
Sims was referring to Cohn's busy writing schedule, which takes precedence over his playing hours. Recently, he has arranged part of the score of Raisin, the musical version of Raisin in the Sun.
“Zoot Sims has been an active member of the Jazz fraternity ever since lie Joined Kenny Baker's orchestra in 1941 at the age of' 16. since that time lie has worked with Bobby Sherwood. Bob Astor, Sonny Dunham. Benny Goodman and an innumerable number of small groups, including that of Gerry Mulligan. which he left in mid-1956 to form his own unit. Yet it has been only of late that his playing has begun to earn the respect among musicians and fans alike that it deserves.
Zoot, as Bob Brookmeyer says, "plays earthy." He is direct, simple, logical, and above all, emotional.
And here are excerpts Mike Hennessey’s insert notes to Zoot Case [Gazell GJCD 1021].
Alvin Cohn … [is] a prolific composer and arranger and a witty, intelligent soloist Cohn was largely a musician’s musician and much underrated by the jazz public. … Nat Hentoff described Zoot as 'one of those musicians who had the power to make everyone in the room feel the way he does. He speaks to those who need more from music quick tricks.’
The official Al Cohn-Zoot Sims Quintet recorded debut occurred on January 24th, 1956 when it made some sides for RCA Victor with Hank Jones, Milt Hinton and Osie Johnson.
Brookmeyer and Zoot became the foundation. They thought about music in the same way that Gerry did. If you listen sextet charts for The Lady is a Tramp, Westwood Walk and Bernie’s Tune on those early Mercury [Emarcy] records, you can hear a lot of the devices that Gerry and Bobby Brookmeyer would use when they wrote those big band arrangements later.
I asked him about our old pal Zoot and he got this weird grin on his face and he said: ‘Swinging as ever. Zoot made the West Coast concerts and a European tour, but he’s really busy doing his thing with Al [Cohn] and with his own band. He’s really a small group guy at heart. But I miss him because he adds so much Life to everything he touches.’ [emphasis mine].”