A companion site to 'The Vintage Bandstand,' this is a series of brief posts about all kinds of good jazz, written and published by Anton Garcia-Fernandez in Martin, Tennessee, U.S.A.
Though perhaps he isn't as well remembered today as his achievements deserve, the career of North Carolina piano man Billy Taylor was full of milestones: in the 1950s he worked as house pianist at New York's Birdland; in the 1960s he became the first black musical director of a major network television program, on the popular David Frost Show; and in the 1970s, he earned a doctorate in music from the University of Massachusetts. Taylor was also very involved in spreading the good news about jazz on the radio and on television, but he always found time to play live and enter the studio regularly for over fifty years, recording a respectable amount of albums for labels such as Prestige, Savoy, Impulse, and Capitol, among others. Born in Greenville in 1921, Taylor moved to NYC in the early 1940s playing and sometimes recording alongside great jazzmen like Slam Stewart, Ben Webster, and violinists Stuff Smith and Eddie South. While working at Birdland, he formed his first trio, the setting in which he felt most comfortable throughout his career, and cut his first of many records as a leader. Taylor passed away in New York in 2010 at age 89, leaving behind a solid musical legacy that's in need of rediscovery.
Those who have criticized Taylor for not being innovative enough should listen closely to what I consider to be his best album—My Fair Lady Loves Jazz, recorded for Impulse in NYC over the course of three separate sessions in January and February 1957. This was at a time when the successful show by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe had been running on Broadway for about a year, and in fact, there was even a release party for the LP that was attended by most of the theatrical cast. Taylor's trio features bassist Earl May and drummer Ed Thigpen, but it's augmented for this project by several excellent horn players like trumpeter Ernie Royal, baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, altoist Tony Ortega, and trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, to mention just four. The horns, arranged by none other than Quincy Jones, are a perfect complement for the elegant sound of Taylor's trio, which they enrich greatly. This is evident from the very first bars of the opening track, "Show Me," which also features Royal on trumpet prominently, and the rest of selections always leave room for solos by Taylor and his guests—Ortega shines on the ballad "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" and Cleveland contributes a fine solo to the bouncy "Get Me to the Church on Time," for instance. Jones's charts underscore the jazz elements of great tunes like "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "On the Street Where You Live" without straying too far away from the melodies, and Taylor obviously feels extremely comfortable in the company of May and Thigpen, for whom he only has words of praise in the liner notes. The result is classic, boppish Taylor, a thoroughly satisfying album that serves as the perfect introduction to his music. Other jazz treatments of My Fair Lady, like those by Shelly Manne (for Contemporary, 1956, with André Prévin and Leroy Vinnegar) and Chet Baker (his 1959 Lerner & Loewe songbook for Riverside), may be better known, but Taylor's approach to that memorable musical is one of the most interesting ever recorded.
Due to a recent trip to Europe, I haven't had the chance to publish anything in Jazz Flashes, but I did write some very brief reviews of jazz albums I heard and/or purchased while overseas on my Facebook page. Now that I am back, I have compiled these two-sentence reviews on this post. I hope you find something to your liking among these outstanding records—and stay tuned for the forthcoming second part! Buddy Tate and His Buddies (Chiaroscuro, 1994) Saxophonist Buddy Tate's buddies—trumpeter Roy Eldridge, saxist Illinois Jacquet, pianist Mary Lou Williams, guitarist Steve Jordan, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Gus Johnson—are mostly jazz royalty, musicians who feel at ease in each other's company and enjoy playing together. This powerful, blues-drenched 1973 New York City date is truly a masterclass in first-rate small-group swing and blues, five selections that give all participants plenty of room to shine and surprise the listener with their inventiveness and exciting knack for improvisation.
Emil Viklicky—Live at the Box (Petr Bielicky, 2014 / Fog Arts, 2017) Always the experimentalist, Czech jazz pianist Emil Viklicky feels at home distilling a mixture of jazz, classical, and Moravian folk music, as he does in Live at the Box, recently reissued for digital download and streaming by the Stockholm based Fog Arts label. This 2011 live date finds Viklicky in a trio setting, with Frantisek Uhlir on bass and Josef Vejvoda on drums, running through a varied selection of his highly personal compositions, the kind of eclectic jazz that surprises and grows on the listener with each play, with the highlight being bassist Uhlir's "Father's Blues."
Gerry Mulligan & Scott Hamilton—Soft Lights and Sweet Music (Concord, 1986) Though perhaps not as well known as it deserves to be, this is a memorable tenor-baritone saxophone meeting between Scott Hamilton and Gerry Mulligan, cut in the mid-1980s for Concord in a quintet setting with Mike Renzi on piano, Jay Leonhart on bass, and Grady Tate on drums. It's a mostly uptempo affair with a fair share of Mulligan originals, and the mutual understanding between both saxophonists makes for some extremely satisfying listening.
Howard McGhee—Maggie's Back in Town (Contemporary, 1961) After quite a spell away from the studios due to drug-related problems, trumpeter Howard McGhee came back on the jazz scene with this amazing album that showcases his bop-inflected playing in the company of fantastic musicians like pianist Phineas Newborn, Jr., bassist Leroy Vinnegar, and drummer Shelly Manne. The result is one of the best bop records of the early 1960s, an inventive, exciting run through a few standards, an original composition by McGhee, and two Teddy Edwards tunes, all of which makes it clear that Maggie (as McGhee was known to his friends) was definitely back!
