Ellis Marsalis, 1934-2020

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

Usually when the name “Marsalis” appears on an internet page or in a print publication that has anything to do with Jazz, the first name immediately associated with it is “Wynton.”

Given his huge presence on today’s Jazz scene, Wynton Marsalis will be a part of this feature, but the real reason for this piece is to memorialize the passing of pianist Ellis Marsalis on April 1, 2020.

When Dizzy Gillespie said of Louis “Pops” Armstrong - “No him, no me”- he meant it metaphorically, but when applied to the relationship between Wynton and Ellis, the meaning is literal as Ellis was Wynton’s father.

Ellis Marsalis does have a modest discography under his own name, however, not surprisingly, those recordings he made with his famous son are more well-known including his appearance on Wynton Marsalis, Standard Time Vol. 3 The Resolution of Romance [Columbia CK 46143].

It’s part of a six volume Standard Time series issued from 1987 - 1999 by Columbia/Sony, with the first volume winning the Grammy Award.

Ellis and Wynton are a native New Orleanians and they are joined on Wynton Marsalis, Standard Time Vol. 3 The Resolution of Romance by two musicians based in the Crescent City: bassist Reginald Veal and drummer Herlin Riley.

Here are some excerpts from Stanley Crouch’s insert notes to Wynton Marsalis, Standard Time Vol. 3 that speak to Ellis’s influence in Wynton’s development, elements of which can also be viewed as having formed the basis for the entire six volume Standard Time series.

“Besides Marsalis' own development, the force of heart and the rhythmic finesse heard in the lyricism of this recording are due to the presence of his father, Ellis, at the piano. "I always wanted to do an album with him, but I never felt prepared because I didn't play well enough on changes and have a sound good enough to pay the kind of homage to my father that I really felt. Just having the opportunity to listen to his sound for all of those years when I was growing up was a tremendous inspiration for me and for my brothers, all of us. The greatest influence on me was seeing his dedication to music during the many times when he wasn't playing gigs that much. Even without any work and no money coming in from music, he had such true love for the music that he didn't let anything shake his confidence in the power that comes from really working on your sound and not trying to avoid any of the things you have to know if you're truly going to be a jazz musician. The kind of belief he had in music would make you realize that you can only go forward by facing the obligation of mastering the weight of what the titans of the idiom have laid down."”

Born in 1942 Ellis Marsalis Marsalis played and taught for many years in his native New Orleans with no recognition whatsoever beyond his playing circles. But he also sired a family of musicians who have gone on to become the most famous jazz dynasty of their day. Their success has also afforded him some wider exposure….

The founder of the Marsalis dynasty is no mean player himself. One can hear where Wynton got his even-handed delineation of melody from and where Branford's aristocratic elegance of line is rooted. Marsalis isn't beyond tossing in the occasional surprise, but mostly he favours careful interpretations of standards, sparsely harmonized and delicately spelt out, with a few simple but cleverly hooked originals to lend a little extra personality.”

Ellis is also the subject of a biography by D. Antoinette Handy: Jazz Man’s Journey: A Biography of Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr. [Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1999].

In her Preface, Ms. Handy writes: 

As early as 1982, I was convinced that there was a need for collective coverage of the Marsalis family, with emphasis on the father. The general public, as well as those involved in the music business, needed to understand where it all came from—the source. As Ellis III (third of six Marsalis boys, computer consultant, and Baltimore resident) stated to the author,

“I become irritated when people say, ‘Your father is 'cashing in' on the success of Wynton and Branford." I have to correct them. The old man's been doing his thing for a long time. High standards always; he's been very consistent. There's been no "cashing in." He's been playing forever. As children, we'd go to gigs with him. There weren't many in the audience. But it didn't bother him. He plays what he plays and is not fazed by what others do.1”

Village Voice journalist Gary Giddins wrote, "A veteran New Orleans-based pianist who sprang to the fore on the coattails of his amazing brood" (emphasis added) in announcing a New York City club date.2 New York Times music critic Peter Watrous, reviewing an Ellis Marsalis performance, wrote, "[H]e basked in obscurity until the fame of his children brought him attention" (emphasis added).3 The editors of All Music Guide to Jazz wrote, "It is a bit ironic that Ellis Marsalis had to wait for sons Wynton and Branford to get famous before he was able to record on a regular basis, but Ellis has finally received his long overdue recognition."4 

These questions arise: To what extent are these statements "the gospel truth"? What are these writers suggesting? How valid are their points of view?

Ms. Handy, a musician, with degrees in music from some serious music schools and who retired as Director of the Music Program for the National Endowment for the Arts, missed the point with her self-righteous indignation over the comments made by Gary Giddins, Pete Watrous and the All Music Guide to Jazz.

The fact of the matter is exactly as they state: Ellis was a New Orleans based working musician and educator until the success of his sons brought him to national attention in their wake, so to speak.

He garnered a little national press as a member of trumpeter Al Hirt’s band [1967-70], but as Ms. Handy describes in her book, Ellis was like many fine Jazz musicians who preferred to make a living playing and/or teaching locally and helping to raise a family in their hometown.

After reading the chapter on “Career Highlights,” in Ms. Handy’s bio, one comes away with the impression that Ellis spent the majority of his career doing just that: in educational administration and the politics associated with the advancement of music in educational curriculum while,at the same time, maintaining a private piano studio for individual instruction and taking on the occasional solo piano and recital gigs.

It looks to have been a balanced blend of the personal satisfaction that comes from a vital and active family life with a professional career based on the stability that music education afforded such that Ellis didn’t have to depend on playing Jazz to earn a living.

A loving wife, six talented and successful children, a steady gig in education and playing Jazz on the side; one is tempted to think that Ellis Marsalis, Jr. was a lucky man and a happy one at that.

Senor Blues - City Rhythm Orchestra Featuring Joey DeFrancesco

Electrifying Sounds Of The Paul Jeffrey Quintet Made Minor Blue

The Electrifying Paul Jeffrey by Simon Spillett

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

It's always a treat when Simon Spillett reaches out with one of his informative and well written essays and offers to have it posted to these pages.

The piece that follows is from the notes prepared for Electrifying Sounds Of The Paul Jeffrey Quintet Harkit HRCD8611.

Simon Spillett is a Jazz tenor saxophonist and an authority on the music of many of the great players of the instrument who blossomed during the second half of the 20th century, both in Great Britain and in the USA.

He is the author of The Long Shadow of the Little Giant: The Life, Work and Legacy of Tubby Hayes which Equinox has recently published in a second edition. You can locate my review of it by going here.

In addition to fronting his own quartet and big band, Simon has won several awards for his music, including the tenor saxophone category of the British Jazz Awards (2011), Jazz Journal magazine, Critic's Choice CD of the Year (2009) and Rising Star in the BBC Jazz Awards (2007).

Simon has previously shared essays on Hank Mobley, Hank with Miles Davis, Booker Erwin, Stan Getz, Jim Hall, and Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. on this page, and he has his own website which you can visit via this link.

© -  Simon Spillett, copyright protected; all rights reserved, used with the author’s permission.

Electrifying: a new look at Paul Jeffrey 

“Paul who? 

Even to those deep within the jazz cognoscenti the name Paul Jeffrey is unlikely to ring any significant bells. Despite being a featured sideman with two of the music's most demanding bandleaders – Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus – and holding down several notable academic posts, the last of which at North Carolina's Duke University helped two generations of aspiring jazz performers gain valuable practical insights into the art form –  Grammy© winning trumpeter Terence Blanchard prominent among them – Jeffrey spent the majority of his lengthy career tagged with a label that can be as much a curse as an endorsement – that of “musicians' musician.” 

It was true though. Indeed, by the time he cut this, his début album, in 1968, the 35 year old saxophonist had worked through a highly catholic variety of musical appointments; besides the stints with Illinois Jacquet, Maynard Ferguson and Howard McGhee mentioned by annotator Rudi Blesh in his original sleeve notes for Electrifying Sounds of The Paul Jeffrey Quintet, there were also spells with Wynonie Harris, Big Maybelle, B.B. King, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie, each adding to Jeffrey's journeyman hands-on apprenticeship within the broad mainstream of mid-20th century Afro-American musical culture. The results were instantly apparent in his playing, which drew on all the best elements of the leading tenor saxophone voices of his time – Lester Young, Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. How successful he was in synthesising the styles of these giants into his own dialect can be measured by those who considered him an equal. From the mid-1960s up to his death aged 81 in 2015, Jeffrey was a close personal friend of Sonny Rollins, a man who certainly knows a thing or two about real deal saxophone talent (the two can be seen practising together on New York's Williamsburg Bridge in the Dick Fontaine film Who Is Sonny Rollins?, shot the same year as this album was taped.). Coltrane loved him too. In J.C. Thomas' Chasin' The Trane, Jeffrey remembered how on their initial meeting “he gave me his address and said to stop by whenever I was in the neighbourhood”. As well as being a powerful instrumentalist, Jeffrey was also a prolific composer and arranger, forming his own octet in the 1970s, once again utilising what he'd learned first hand from the best. 

Fittingly for a début album, Electrifying Sounds tried to capture all these facets; there are reminders of Jeffrey's blues-playing/dues-paying past, a nod to the classic tenor ballad traditions of Young and Webster, and, in his own writing, suggestions of his appetite for musical adventure. As such, the record comes up as something of a portmanteau of jazz in the late-1960s, one which, had it not appeared on a label which had by then all but disappeared from the jazz racks, might have gained more cachet upon its original release. Imagine, for example, that this was a Blue Note or Impulse! release; how much more value  - both fiscal and artistic - would it now have?

It's worth pausing for a moment to explore this point further; by 1968, Savoy Records was a company in decline. Barely twenty-years earlier it had been the home of Charlie Parker, a great deal  of whose seminal early work had been taped for the label, and during the 1950s, the imprint had captured the first steps of future icons such as Cannonball Adderley, Donald Byrd and Lee Morgan. By the early years of the following decade, however, it had begun to run out of steam. Although they signed a small share of interesting talent during the 1960s – pianist Paul Bley, tenorist Bill Barron and clarinettist Perry Robinson – Savoy's profile was now built primarily upon gospel music, leaving whatever jazz it taped marooned in an otherwise sanctified sea.

Paul Jeffrey's album was among the last jazz records ever released by the label, its production values giving a sad indication of how much things had changed. By 1968, Savoy's early regime of taping its sessions at Rudy Van Gelder's celebrated studio was long over. Like its other 1960s jazz sessions, Jeffrey's date was most likely recorded at Medallion Studios in Newark, New Jersey, a facility whose somewhat dull acoustics hardly helped the music on offer. There were other signs of marginalisation too; the rear of the LP carried the legend “The Soul Sounds Are On Savoy!!”, a clear enough indicator as to where its producers saw the future. Even the front cover design spoke more of expediency than artfulness - Jeffrey, his saxophone and German Shepherd snapped in the open air in a photo shoot that must have taken all of five minutes to organise.

By far the most obvious contemporary tell-tale was the albums' title, the Electrifying part of which wasn't just an attempt to generate excitement but which referred to the fact that for much of the record Jeffrey's tenor was hooked up to a Gibson Maestro Octave box, which enabled him to add either a higher or lower parallel musical line to whatever he played. He was by no means the only jazz hornman to try the effect. Indeed, as jazz went head-to-head with rock music -  and all its attendant amplification - during the late 1960s, Clark Terry, Roland Kirk, Sonny Stitt (on record) and even John Coltrane (in private) all tried plugging in, if not going the whole hog, as Miles Davis was shortly to do, nevertheless equally willing to see if a new sound could supplement their existing methods. Most of these experiments now sound rather time-locked, and Jeffrey's are no exception, sometimes causing one to wonder if a little too much time was spent in trying to graft the effect on to what was otherwise a unreconstructed straight-ahead date. Occasionally though, the Gibson creates something worthwhile; on The Dreamer, Jeffrey's tone is transformed into that of the worlds' hippest bassoonist; on Green Ivan, a sort of updated Jordu, the Maestro unit is set to mimic the melody an octave down, the ensemble sound emerging being oddly reminiscent of the records John Coltrane and tubaist Ray Draper had made a decade earlier.

Fortunately, Jeffrey's sidemen didn't add to the electrified stunts. Instead they offer a neat encapsulation of a whole era, each man a representative of the last wave of jazz musicians to emerge before the great jazz/rock/fusion explosion. Trumpeter Jimmy Owens, then just 25 years of age, had already turned heads as a member of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band, and was a player of startling maturity and self-assurance, sounding neither in thrall to the prevailing Hubbard/Shaw influences nor like a would-be Miles Davis. Pianist George Cables – later to be a hand-in-glove partner for saxophonists Art Pepper and Dexter Gordon – comes on like a felicitous amalgam of McCoy Tyner and soul-jazz pioneers Horace Silver and Les McCann, while the bass and drums team of Larry Ridley (who would shortly become a colleague of Jeffrey's in the Thelonious Monk Quartet) and soon-to-be Herbie Hancock sideman Billy Hart form the backbone of a rhythm section that tackles every demand the leader makes of it with aplomb. In fact, the various approaches Jeffrey uses over the course of the album make for a record which maintains consistent interest; contrast the boogaloo/The Sidewinder groove of Ecclesiology (a track today's jazz performers really should dust down, such is its dance friendliness) with the shifting metres of The Dreamer, or the playful appropriation of the avant-garde in A.V. G., a breakneck burner whose dissonant fanfare-like theme propels the leader into a garrulous, fevered improvisation revealing an ear attuned to Coltrane and Rollins. 

The track that undoubtedly says most about Jeffrey isn't one of his originals though; it's his solo feature rendition of I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry, a 1944 Jule Styne composition immortalised in jazz by Dexter Gordon's epic 1962 reading on the Blue Note album Go. Jeffrey is less full-on than Gordon, but he's definitely connected to the same stylistic tree, his hollowed out tone and warm, affecting vibrato echoing the grand traditions of swing-era tenor, carried forward the dawn of the 1970s. 

And it was to be that decade in which Jeffrey's career-visibility peaked, a success story that sits rather awkwardly with the folk-memory of the Seventies being an age in which acoustic jazz went to ground. Recruited by Thelonious Monk in 1970, he appeared on the majority of the pianists' final engagements up to around 1975 (The New York Times' John S. Wilson praised him as “an unusually skilful interpreter of Mr. Monk's music”), remaining a close personal associate during Monk's sad mental decline. Simultaneously, he became a musical aide and confidant to Charles Mingus, as the bassists' health also began to falter. 

Despite never really breaking through to wider critical notice, Jeffrey's association with men like Monk and Mingus said it all: both were imposing musical figures, who'd always sought out highly compatible partners to amplify their innovations, as had Dizzy Gillespie, the third man in a triumvirate of modern jazz pioneers to employ Jeffrey. In fact, we shouldn't be at all surprised that Jeffrey prospered (musically at least) during the early 1970s. After all, this was a decade in which so much front-rank tenor talent was missing from the New York jazz scene: Coltrane was gone: Rollins was again in retirement; Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin and Stan Getz had departed for foreign shores. Jeffrey may never have truly been a pretender for their titles, but his was a honest voice, steadfastly maintaining the core values of the music at a juncture in which jazz otherwise looked to be in deep trouble. 

Ultimately though, his wasn't the career of a globally renown instrumental innovator – rather it was that of a facilitator, one gifted with a knack for identifying others' artistic ambitions. More than a touch of Jeffrey's later role as an educator can be felt in the Electrifying Sounds, in which he does exactly what he'd subsequently do at Duke University and his other seats of learning, helming a band of young Turks, giving them both challenges and their heads. Nobody would argue that this album is a ground-breaker, but in these days of all-too-frequent musical pretence, lessons like these are priceless.”

Simon Spillett

September 2017

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paul Jeffrey Quintet

Paul Jeffrey (tenor sax); Jimmy Owens (trumpet);  George Cables (piano); Larry Ridley (bass); Billy Hart (drums) 

Possibly Medallion Studios, Newark, New Jersey, August 8th, 1968

Made Minor Blue

I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry (Styne/Cahn)*

The Dreamer

Ecclesiology

Green Ivan

A.V.G.

All compositions by Paul Jeffrey except*

Originally issued on Savoy MG 12192 (released 1969)

Yusef Lateef YUSEF'S MOOD

Monty Alexander on Ray Brown, John Clayton & Jeff Hamilton

Shorty Rogers and The Wizard of Oz

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

“If ever a “Wiz there was” at adapting superior popular songs to big band modern jazz, it's curly-bearded Shorty Rogers.”

- John Tynan, West Coast Editor Down Beat 

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to continued its visit to Mr. Rogers neighborhood - no, not Fred, Shorty - and thought we’d focus on one particular album to discuss the nature and structure of his big band arrangements which Ted Gioia describes this way in his seminal work on the subject of West Coast Jazz, Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960:

“ … [Shorty’s] arrangements could swing without ostentation; his solos were executed with untroubled fluency; his compositions seemed to navigate the most difficult waters with a relaxed, comfortable flow that belied the often complex structures involved.”

Put another way, Ted associates this “swing without ostentation” with the concept of  -“Sprezzatura” - “The ability to do difficult things with apparent ease.” [ the concept is attributed to Baldassare Castiglione, count of Casatico, Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier and prominent Renaissance author].

Since the Renaissance was a 15th and 16th century Italian reawakening largely based on the rediscovery of the cultural and artistic achievements of ancient Greece and Rome, perhaps it's appropriate to apply the following Roman maxim to Shorty's talents and skills as it parallels sprezzatura”:

“Ars Est Celare Artem” - “The perfection of art is to conceal it.”

- Ovid, Roman poet; Proverbs 12:23

As Ted Gioia also points out ” Rogers recorded prolifically between 1951 and 1963e but his visibility in jazz was hindered by his virtual retirement from performing situations since the early 1960s.  Rogers [had not ]actually left the music world; … [he]simply applied … [his] skills elsewhere, in studio work or academic pursuits. Rogers But his lengthy absence from the jazz world has meant that his work, once widely known, is now largely unfamiliar to many jazz fans and critics.” [paraphrased].

Not surprisingly, there is another ancient Roman saying that describes this development as well, although the original intent of the adage may have been different:

“Ut Saepe Summa Ingenia In Occulto Latent” - “How often the greatest talents are shrouded in obscurity.”

- Plautus, Roman playwright [c. 254-184 BC]

We’ve been doing our part to remedy this Shrouded Shorty Situation [sorry, I couldn’t resist] with periodic features about Rogers on this page.

Although Shorty often expressed his fondness for the easy swing of the Count Basie band and tried to reflect that in his big band arrangements, I’ve long been of the opinion that Shorty also had an affinity for some aspects of Duke Ellington’s approach to writing for a big band.

I don’t want to force comparisons here because the Duke maintained his own orchestra for almost 50 years, while Shorty would assemble a band as needed for recording projects.

But both men tried to reflect the singular features of members in their band by voicing arrangements to reflect, incorporate or emphasize certain aspects of their tone, timbre, range, improvisational style or just the unique sound of the instrument itself.

With regard to the latter, the Duke was one of the first to add the baritone saxophone to his sax section; he employed a valve trombone; emphasized muted trumpets and plunger trombones.

Shorty came of age during a period of high register trumpets, pedal tone bass trombones, electric guitars and vibraphones and blended all of these in his arrangements, along with French horns, tubas, piccolos and flutes.

So Duke takes into consideration the singular characteristics of trumpeters Cootie Williams, Ray Nance and Clark Terry, trombonist Tricky Sam Lofton, valve trombonist Juan Tizol, alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges and baritone saxophonist Harry Carney when voicing his arrangements.

Shorty, on the other hand, would score for upper register trumpet screamers like Maynard Ferguson and Al Porcino, the master of the clarinet’s lower register, Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Enevoldson’s valve trombone, Frank Rosolino’s tenor trombone, John Graas’ French horn, Gene Englund’s tuba,  the flutes of Paul Horn and Bud Shank, Art Pepper’s alto saxophonist, vibraphonist Larry Bunker, and guitarist Barney Kessel. Of course, you need to leave lots of room in your arrangements for kicks, licks and fills by Mel Lewis, the personification of big band drumming in the modern era, and Shorty certainly accommodated this “need.”

Duke wrote much of the music for his band and seldom arranged the works of other composers. Shorty, too, wrote many compositions for his big band recordings but he wasn’t averse to orchestrating the music composed by others, especially the songs composed by those usually associated with the Great American Songbook.

Which brings me to the album featured in the title of this piece Shorty Rogers and his Orchestra featuring The Giants The Wizard of Oz and other Harold Arlen songs which was released in 1959 as RCA Victor LPM-1997 and reissued on CD in 1996 [RCA BMG Spain 74321453792].

John Tynan, the West Coast editor of down beat magazine and a great fan of Shorty and his music, wrote the following liner notes for the 1959 LP.

If ever a “Wiz there was” at adapting superior popular songs to big band modern jazz, it's curly-bearded Shorty Rogers. Shorty's singular quality in this area is his capacity to get the most out of the music at hand from the standpoint of orchestration, yet hew strictly to a swinging jazz line. The success of his recent album, CHANCES ARE IT SWINGS (LPM/LSP-1975), in which the tunes were those of Robert Allen, is a perfect case in point. This time the lure was the superlative songs of Harold Arlen who, with lyricist E. Y. Harburg, wrote the score for M-G-M's film version of the fantasy. In addition to the Oz music, this album proffered a tempting opportunity to present five other enduring Arlen melodies.

Results of the trumpeter-arranger's jazz pilgrimage to the Emerald City of Oz for an audience with the Wizard are tangible evidence that in jazz it's not only what you do but the way you do it. As Shorty sees it, the issue reduces itself to a two-way proposition—the manner in which one handles certain music and the substance of the music per se.

Contemplating the score from the Judy Garland film classic, Rogers confesses he's been wigged by the Wiz since childhood. And from time to time, the vagrant thought occurred that a jazz adaptation of this music should prove an interesting challenge to him as arranger-orchestrator. "The one thing that gassed me about this music," he declares, "is that it's so well suited to a fairy tale. It's gay, light in spirit... and even when done in jazz it's still got that cute, merry quality."

As Shorty tells it, this album might never have happened had it not been for pianist Lou Levy's choice of tunes in his album SOLO SCENE, recorded under Shorty's supervision some years ago. "Lou's album was the first I did for Victor," Rogers recalls, "and from the production end it's my favorite. Anyway, one of the tunes on the date was Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead. This revived my interest in the music from The Wizard of Oz' and from that time on I've wanted to orchestrate it — but in a special way. Lou's treatment of the tune was so great, I wanted to orchestrate it in a similar style — I mean to use Lou's solo as direct basis for the instrumentation. And that's just what I did here. In several sections of the arrangement all I did was merely orchestrate what Lou played. So, in a way you could say that Lou Levy is indirectly responsible for this album." Also included on the SOLO SCENE album were Harold Arlen's That Old Black Magic and that perennial vehicle for jazz improvisation, Get Happy. In the Rogers' arrangements of those songs in this set, the Levy influence is again apparent. The out chorus of Get Happy is taken straight from Levy's solo.

As in CHANCES ARE IT SWINGS, Rogers has utilized the small-band-within-a-big-band format, one integrated with the other or in opposition. There are frequent occasions, also, when the arrangement is split between small and big units. On Let's Fall in Love, for example, the small group — consisting of vibes, guitar, clarinet and muted trumpet with the rhythm section —  take over on the first bridge from the block-busting brass. Again, in If I Only Had a Brain, the big and small groups alternate, creating a framework for the soloists.

Heard throughout in solo spots both on trumpet and flugelhorn is the effervescent Shorty constantly chased by the horns of Jimmy Giuffre (clarinet and tenor), Barney Kessel—(guitar), Bob Enevoldsen (valve-trombone), Herb Geller (tenor), Bud Shank (alto and tenor), Larry Bunker (vibes), Don Fagerquist (trumpet in the small group) and Frank Rosolino, whose gymnastic solo trombone is heard only in The Merry Old Land of Oz. Joe Mondragon is responsible for the occasional bass interludes, and his rhythm mate, Mel "The Tailor" Lewis, sews up the time with relentless imaginative drive. Pete Jolly whose piano is an unfailing asset both in rhythm section and solo, takes charge on Over the Rainbow which here takes the form of a miniature concerto for Pete's considerable talent. In keeping with the overall ebulliency of this album the opening Afro-Cuban track proclaims in overture fashion, We're off to See the Wizard. There can be no doubt that Shorty and the boys were granted the sought-for audience in Oz.... Quite obviously, the Wizard dug the scene.”                                                                                                      —JOHN TYNAN

Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Big Band - Long Yellow Road (1)