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.
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!
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1918, Howard McGhee was one of the most prodigiously talented trumpeters of his generation, on a par with legends like Dizzy Gillespie, and he was instrumental in bridging the gap between swing and bop. He was, however, a late comer to the instrument, having started out on the saxophone and the clarinet, but once he picked up the trumpet, there was no turning back. In the original liner notes to the album we're discussing today, Maggie's Back in Town, written by Nat Hentoff, McGhee attributes his tendency toward playing more notes than other trumpeters to the fact that he was a saxophonist and clarinetist first, and he also remembers that his parents weren't in the least pleased about his interest in jazz: "I used to sneak a radio into my room and listen to Roy [Eldridge] on the air. My folks were church people. They didn't like jazz, and they didn't want me to play it, but that was what I wanted to do, and nothing could stop me." Roy Eldridge and Louis Armstrong were his earliest influences, and he in turn influenced a host of trumpeters who came after, among them the great Clifford Brown. During the Swing Era, Maggie--such was his nickname, to which the title of the LP makes reference--was a member of several bands, including those led by Lionel Hampton, Andy Kirk, Charlie Barnet, Count Basie, and Georgie Auld, and he distinguished himself for his powerful, exciting style that can be heard, for example, on "McGhee Special," recorded while with Kirk. The year of 1945 marks a turning point in McGhee's career: he joined Coleman Hawkins and relocated to California, where he played countless live dates and cut some forward-looking records for Dial, including sessions with Charlie Parker. Bop classics such as "Rifftide" and "Stuffy" originated during these extremely important years.
Unfortunately, at the same time that his career was thriving, a host of drug-related problems began to dramatically affect his personal life, and as a result, McGhee's recordings throughout the 1950s are very scarce. He did make a worthy comeback album of sorts for Bethlehem in 1956, The Return of Howard McGhee (with Sahib Shihab, Duke Jordan, Percy Heath, and Philly Joe Jones), but it wasn't until 1961, when he released Maggie's Back in Town on Contemporary Records, that he was truly back on the scene--and this time to stay. The album was cut during the course of a single session, which took place in Los Angeles on June 26, 1961, and finds McGhee in the excellent company of pianist Phineas Newborn, Jr., bassist Leroy Vinnegar, and drummer Shelly Manne. Around this time, McGhee and Vinnegar had been playing at the Town Hill in L.A., and their mutual understanding is obvious on this recording, as is Maggie's affinity with Newborn. The opening track, "Demon Chase," is the only McGhee original, and it starts off with an interesting call-and-response structure that gives way to lovely solos by both McGhee and Newborn. Two of the tunes were composed by Teddy Edwards: his classic "Sunset Eyes" and "Maggie's Back in Town," which Edwards obviously wrote for this session and which is given a ten-minute treatment that allows for plenty of room for everyone to solo. There are also three standards ("Willow Weep for Me,""Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise," and "Summertime"), all of them taken at a rather brisk tempo, with McGhee mainly playing muted trumpet (except in the release of "Willow") and offering some inventive improvisation on the melodies with the help of Newborn and the rhythm section. Finally, the album closes with "Brownie Speaks," a masterfully played salute to Clifford Brown, a trumpeter that McGhee influenced and also deeply admired, both as a musician and as a composer. Though McGhee would cut a few more notable albums before his passing in 1987, this comeback LP that Original Jazz Classics reissued on CD 1991 remains one of his most enduring statements on record and is absolutely recommendable.
