Thad Jones on Blue Note, 1956

One of the greatest jazzmen to emerge from the Detroit area, Thad Jones was born in Pontiac, MI, in 1923 and in time would become known as a trumpeter, arranger, and composer. He came, of course, from a musical family (his brothers, Hank and Elvin Jones, made names for themselves as pianist and drummer respectively) and began his professional career playing with Sonny Stitt and Billy Mitchell. It was, however, as a sideman with Count Basie in the 1950s that Jones began to rise to prominence. Even though he was forced to share solo duties with the equally accomplished Joe Newman, Jones got a chance to compose and arrange while with the Count, and this experience would later prove extremely valuable. In the early '60s, Jones started to concentrate on arranging, and by 1965 he had teamed up with drummer Mel Lewis to organize the popular and influential Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, an outfit that boasted both established musicians and some outstanding young talent among its ranks. By the late 1970s, though, Jones had quit the orchestra and moved to Denmark, where he kept working steadily until his passing in 1986 at age 63.

Jones's first session as a leader for Blue Note took place at the New Jersey-based Rudy Van Gelder studio on March 13, 1956, and it was issued as Detroit-New York Junction, a tip of the hat to Jones's own roots. Overall, it's a very satisfying affair and already points to even greater things to come. It also gave Jones a chance to reunite with tenorist Billy Mitchell in a sextet that also features Kenny Burrell on guitar, Tommy Flanagan on piano, Oscar Pettiford on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums. As the leader, Jones commands a great deal of attention with his spontaneous-sounding hard bop playing, yet there's also room for interesting solos by Burrell and Flanagan, and Pettiford's work on bass is never less than wonderful. The album also showcases Jones's talent as a composer, with three originals ("Tariff," "Zec," and the lengthy "Scratch") that seem tailor-made for his fresh, boppish approach, as well as for the rest of participants to show off their wares. The two standards selected are by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and while the opening track, "Blue Room," sets the pace perfectly for the whole album, it's the ballad "Little Girl Blue" that stands out, a highly lyrical reading with just trumpet, guitar, and bass. The word that critic Leonard Feather repeats the most in his original liner notes for the LP is "elegance," which is indeed appropriate when applied to this date and to the six musicians that make up this memorable Detroit-New York junction.

Count Basie in Stockholm with Louis Bellson, 1962

In 1962, drummer Sonny Payne was involved in a car accident and had to bow out of the Count Basie orchestra's impending tour of Sweden, forcing the Count to find a suitable replacement quickly. And a suitable bench man he did find when he hired the great Louis Bellson for the tour, which took the band all over Sweden, playing mostly in small towns but also in bigger cities like Gothenburg, Malmö, and of course, Stockholm. In the Swedish capital, Basie and his crew played a five-night engagement at Gröna Lunds Tivoli, which included both a nightly concert and a session strictly for dancers. Someone at Roulette Records had the good presence of mind to tape some of the music played at these sessions for dancers, and some of these tracks appeared on Basie in Sweden, which turned out to be Basie's final LP for the label—and a very enjoyable one at that.

Drummer Louis Bellson

At these more informal sessions, the band sounds extremely relaxed, inspired to take exciting solos, and properly propelled by Bellson's high-octane drumming. Though perhaps not quite as explosive as Payne, Bellson has a very personal flair for swinging, and his drumming always sounds classy and elegant. This later edition of the Atomic Basie band features a lineup full of legendary sidemen, among them reedmen Frank Wess and Frank Foster, trumpeters Thad Jones and Benny Bailey, trombonists Benny Powell and Ake Persson, and guitarist Freddie Green. As one would expect, there's plenty of swing to go around, from the album opener, "Little Pony," to its closer, "Peace Pipe," and many others in between ("Corner Pocket," "Splanky," "Four, Five Six"). It's almost a cliche now to describe the Basie outfit as a well-oiled swinging machine, and these recordings provide ample proof that there's a lot of truth behind that cliche. But the band can also take it easy whenever necessary, as on the rather subdued reading of Neal Hefti's "Plymouth Rock" or on the standard "April in Paris," the latter with some fine contributions by Thad Jones. Duke Ellington's "In a Mellotone" is another highlight of a live album full of highlights, and Basie even has room to spotlight vocalist Irene Reid's bluesy tribute to Bessie Smith on "Backwater Blues." The 1991 CD reissue, which has some very informative liner notes by Basie bio-discographer Chris Sheridan, includes four previously unreleased tracks, but the music is so good that it still leaves you hungry for more from this unique teaming of Basie and Bellson.

Keepin' Up with the Jones Brothers, 1958

The Leonard Feather-produced album Keepin' Up with the Joneses, cut in 1958 for MGM, is one of the most obscure dates by a quartet that called itself The Jones Brothers. In reality, only three of the four participants (trumpeter Thad Jones, pianist Hank Jones, and drummer Elvin Jones) were brothers; bassist Eddie Jones simply shared their last name, yet the idea of billing the band as brothers probably was a gimmick that came from Feather himself, which would perhaps explain the scarcity of information about the identity of the quartet members on the cover of the LP. The choice of material also seems to be mandated in part by yet another inside joke: as the cover reads, the band is "playing the music of Thad Jones and Isham Jones." While it makes sense that the date would include compositions by Thad Jones, who plays flugelhorn here, the three tunes by Isham Jones, a prominent songwriter and bandleader of the 1920s and '30s, were most likely chosen because of his last name. Of course, like Eddie Jones, Isham wasn't related to the three Jones brothers, but whatever the reason behind the choice, the three selections written by him (all of them included on side B) are dependable standards that are among the highlights of the album, in particular "It Had to Be You," which features a lengthy piano solo by Hank. "On the Alamo" is taken at an agreeable, easy-swinging tempo and, again, is clearly dominated by Hank's piano before Thad even gets a chance to play his muted flugelhorn part. Another memorable moment is the closer, "There Is No Greater Love," which becomes the perfect vehicle for an intimate musical dialogue between Thad and Hank.

Thad Jones wrote many of the tunes for this date

The rest of the tunes are all Thad Jones originals, and accordingly, Thad's flugelhorn is most often spotlighted, as in the album opener, "Nice and Nasty," a blues-tinged melody that lends itself easily to improvisation and even leaves some room for Eddie Jones to take a brief bass solo. "Keepin' Up with the Joneses" is based on a very catchy riff introduced by the trumpet and repeated by the piano. Both Thad and Hank have ample room to shine here, Hank showing his versatility by switching to organ halfway through the performance. "Three and One," whose title possibly makes reference to the fact that Eddie Jones isn't actually kin to the other three Jones boys, is a lovely mid-tempo number, and "Sput 'n' Jeff" features Thad's rather understated flugelhorn in contrast with Hank's quick, rippling piano runs. The brief dialogues between Elvin's unusually soft drumming and Eddie's noticeably quiet bass add freshness to the latter track. Though not always easy to locate, this forgotten session was reissued on CD back in 1999 and is particularly interesting and unique because the three Jones brothers didn't record together very often in the years following this date.

Sarah Vaughan Swings Again, 1967

Not that Sarah Vaughan had quit swinging by 1967, but she had been concentrating on more pop-oriented albums such as Viva! Vaughan, Sarah Vaughan Sings the Mancini Songbook, Pop Artistry, and The New Scene in 1965-66 alone. For her final Mercury outing, she was back on jazz territory with a swinging big band session that was issued under the very appropriate title of Sassy Swings Again. The psychedelic look of the album's cover has more to do with the time period than with the music in its grooves. For this project, Vaughan enlisted the help of four different arrangers—Bob James, J.J. Johnson, Manny Albam, and Thad Jones—but the results are surprisingly consistent, as though only one arranger had been employed. The sessions, held over two days in January 1967, included such top jazzmen as Kai Winding, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Newman, Benny Golson, and Phil Woods, so the sound is powerful and exciting. In the company of these outstanding musicians, Sassy was definitely swinging again.

The energy is evident from the very first track, a scat-filled version of "Sweet Georgia Brown," taken at a characteristically breakneck tempo. The song selection is full of classic standards ("S'posin'," "I Want to Be Happy," "Take the A Train"), all of them sung at a medium or fast pace, without much room for ballads. Vaughan even extracts some swing out of Irving Berlin's "All Alone," which Frank Sinatra had recently used as the title track of one of his lesser-known slow albums, and digs deep for some rarely heard numbers like Richard Rodgers's "The Sweetest Sounds," Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh's "On the Other Side of the Tracks," and Alan Jay Lerner's "I Had a Ball." Sassy's elegantly swinging reading of the Tony Bennett hit "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" is impressive, and she also has a chance to prove that she can tackle a blues standard convincingly on "Everyday I Have the Blues," one of the standout tracks on the LP. This isn't Vaughan's best-remembered album (in fact, it wasn't until a Facebook friend recently alerted me to it that I was even reminded that it existed; thanks Luis!) but it's a wholly satisfying jazz date with some high-class sidemen that deserves a serious listen.

Giant Steps: Woody Herman in 1973

By 1973, bandleader and occasional vocalist Woody Herman could look back on several decades of memorable recordings and consistently outstanding bands, the numerous editions of his Herds that he'd led over the years. It had been an amazing career, though full of vicissitudes and financial ups and downs, all the way back to those earliest days of the Swing Era, when his orchestra was dubbed "The Band That Plays the Blues" because of its appealing blues-tinged sound. Herman's recorded output was also full of ground-breaking recordings, such as those featuring the saxophone section known as the Four Brothers, which included, among others, legendary names  like Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Serge Chaloff, and Herbie Steward. Herman had been celebrated for his willingness to listen to new ideas, try out different arrangements, and showcase the budding talents of the younger musicians within his bands, thereby becoming instrumental in bridging generation gaps in jazz. To a certain extent, his open-mindedness had allowed him to make music that remained current and exciting throughout the decades, way past the demise of the Big Band Era. It had been an amazing career, I say, and Herman was regarded as a living legend of jazz, but that wasn't enough for him. So that year he went into the studio with his big band and recorded one of his most successful, forward-looking albums for Fantasy—Giant Steps.

The record is absolutely fantastic, a creative whole that is even more engaging than the sum of its parts, an LP that sounds modern because it is modern and that features Herman surrounded by a group of excellent musicians including guitarist Joe Beck, bassist Wayne Darling, percussionist Ray Barretto, trombonist Jim Pugh, trumpeter Bill Stapleton, and saxophonist Frank Tiberi, among others. The song choice is rather eclectic, from the opening track, Chick Corea's "La Fiesta," a high-powered, Latin-flavored tune that sounds incredibly exciting in the hands of this band, to "The Meaning of the Blues," a lovely slow-paced number written by Bobby Troup that is only tangentially related to the blues form. In between there are highlights such as the funky "Freedom Jazz Dance," driven by the horns and the electric bass, "The First Thing I Do," with Beck adding some wah-wah effects to his electric guitar, and of course, the version of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" that lends its title to the album. Herman's reading of this Trane classic is so good that one can't help but wish someone had kept the producer from fading the song out. Gems like these somehow deserve to last longer than a mere 4 minutes. Thad Jones's "A Child Is Born" sets an atmospheric mellow mood that is the perfect counterpoint to the explosive "Giant Steps," which precedes it. Herman even has time to step into contemporary pop territory on Leon Russell's "A Song for You," and the album is brought to a close with a swinging rendition of Alan Broadbent's "Be-Bop and Roses." Giant Steps is one of the many highlights of Herman's career, an LP that has definitely stood the test of time, and listening to it today, it's not hard to see why it was awarded a Grammy back in 1974.