The Magnificent Thad Jones – Blue Note 1527

Man does not live by hard bop alone, even on Blue Note. Sometimes, you just got to have a ballad. When you’re in the mood, this is the record for you.

Thad Jones provides the horn, and he has never been better. Jones is best known as co-leader of the big band that bore his name, but this 1956 recording is his break-out moment as both a small-group leader and trumpeter. And while you may think of Jones as a hard bopper, five of this CD’s seven tracks are either ballads or slow blues numbers.

Add the fact that this is the recording debut of pianist Barry Harris – whose long career led to a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award – and you’ve got the makings of something special.

First, the bop. Two tunes show off the hard bop chops of Jones, Harris and tenor-man Billy Mitchell (backed by the impeccable rhythm section of Percy Heath on bass and Max Roach on drums).  “If I Love Again” and the 10-minute Jones original “Thedia” give each member a chance to play hard and fast. Harris and Mitchell particularly shine.

But it’s the slow stuff that stands out here, in a variety of ways.

The CD begins with the classic “April in Paris” – a slower, more subdued take than the famous version recorded by Count Basie just a year earlier. It continues with a slow blues original by Jones called “Billie-Doo,” a play on the French word for “love letter,” though it’s far more smoky and noir-ish than any love letter I’ve ever received.

The highlight – at least to these ears – are the final two cuts, which weren’t even on the original LP. The Gershwin classic “I’ve Got a Crush on You” is a fine piano-trumpet duet, with the bass and drums sliding in almost unnoticed nearly two minutes into the piece. Now this is what a love letter should sound like.

Finally, the CD closes with a quiet little duet of Jones and guitarist Kenny Burrell, with no rhythm section at all, on “Something to Remember You By.” It’s been done before, sometimes as schmaltzy ballad, sometimes as a fiery blues, but this dreamy little lullaby is the perfect way to end this almost-perfect CD.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Availability: Easy to get

Cost: $5 used

Introducing the Three Sounds – Blue Note 1600

This is the moment I’ve been looking forward to, and dreading. The Three Sounds. A piano trio I’ve heard of, but never heard. And what I’d heard about them wasn’t entirely nice. I was sure I would hate them, but still I was very curious.

The Three Sounds. Here’s a band that was intensely popular in the late 1950s and ‘60s, recorded 16 Blue Note albums in 10 years… and yet they have vanished practically without a trace. Many jazz books don’t even mention The Three Sounds, and those that do are not exactly complimentary.

I had read Richard Cook’s Blue Note Records: The Biography, and it didn’t exactly warm me to the Sounds. Cook wrote that the Sounds played “a kind of hip cocktail music” that was popular among “people who rarely listened to any other kind of jazz.” Their music, he wrote, was “light, bluesy, discreetly swinging” with “genteel intensity” and “modest improvisation.” In short, Cook concluded, The Three Sounds produced “smart background music.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Not the kind of write-up that made me quiver with anticipation.

And yet … here we are. Listening to Introducing the Three Sounds and thinking, “This is either going to be awful or a very big surprise.”

I was surprised.

The album starts with exactly the kind of kitschy lounge jazz that must have raised the hairs on Richard Cook’s neck. “Tenderly” is corny and cutesy and about the worst possible introduction to The Three Sounds. Until pianist Gene Harris goes into his solo, and suddenly it’s bluesy and wonderful. Wait – could The Three Sounds be both dreadful and a revelation at the same time?

From this awful/wonderful start, the album gets better. The jazz standard “Willow Weep for Me” is exactly what you expect – bluesy and swinging. “Nice and Easy” is, as the title says, a casual, almost Brubeck-ish tune. And then – wham! – “Blue Bells,” a song with Harris playing the dreaded celeste in the right hand and piano in the left hand. The celeste, as always, sounds like a toy piano, undercutting what would otherwise be a nice blues.

It goes on and on like this. A fantastic version of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Woody ‘N You,” but with a pointless, not-terribly-impressive drum solo. A corny version of “O Sole Mio,” with a jumping blues piano solo. A dull take on “It Might as Well Be Spring,” with a dull bass solo, and then an upbeat and swinging version of Duke Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”

What to make of The Three Sounds and their very first record? It has moments when I think I could really like this trio… and then moments when I think “What schlock!” A very mixed bag. But I want to hear more.

I’m still confused, and still curious. I want to hear the Sounds play with Nat Adderley, Johnny Griffin, Stanley Turrentine and others. I’m still intrigued, and that can only be a good thing.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Availability: Easy to get

Cost: $7.28 for a 4-CD package of 8 early Sounds albums – an awfully good bargain

Introducing Johnny Griffin – Blue Note 1533

In jazz and rock – heck, even in classical music – there is a sacred throne for those who play fast. Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson occupy such thrones. So do Jimmy Page and Eddie Van Halen. Fast is fun.

Johnny Griffin played fast – very fast. 

The evidence is here in Griffin’s very first album, Introducing Johnny Griffin. It’s a 1956 date with a quartet that includes Wynton Kelly on piano, Curly Russell on bass and Max Roach on drums. For 70 years, Griffin was a jazz giant, and this album, his first as a leader, is among his very best.

And fastest.

Griffin could play the hell out of a ballad. His sound is soulful and full-bodied. Two numbers in particular – “These Foolish Things” and “Lover Man” (yes, the same “Lover Man” that Billie Holiday immortalized a few years earlier) – show off Griffin’s beautiful tone.

But it’s speed you’re looking for, and you’ve come to the right place. The very first number, a Griffin original called “Mil Dew,” is blazingly fast. So is “Cherokee,” the album’s closer, but you expect that on “Cherokee.” You don’t expect it on Jerome Kern’s “The Way You Look Tonight,” which may be the fastest take of that song ever recorded. And you don’t expect a blazing solo on Cole Porter’s “It’s Alright With Me,” but Griffin delivers.

He is fast, absolutely, but also crystal clear, and clever. He is a bebopper (or hard bopper?) of the first order.

Johnny Griffin would go on to create many great albums. Arguably his best – “A Blowin’ Session” with fellow tenors John Coltrane and Hank Mobley – came just one year later. But it’s clear from the very beginning, from this album, that Johnny Griffin was destined for a legendary career. It starts here.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Availability: Easy to get

Cost: $4 used

Horace Silver: Six Pieces of Silver – Blue Note 1539

 Yep, this is the “Senor Blues” album. That’s not the name, obviously, but it could be.

This outstanding hard bop CD, recorded by Horace Silver’s quintet in 1956, has 10 tracks, and three of them are “Senor Blues.” No wonder. It’s arguably the best track in the collection – a Spanish-tinged slow blues toe-tapper.  Even so, three versions may be one too many.

First, there’s the album version. It’s a 7-minute original by Silver himself. It’s a groovy piece with a catchy hook, featuring nice bluesy solos by Donald Byrd on trumpet, Hank Mobley on tenor sax and Silver on piano.

Second, there’s the 45 version, which is 30 seconds shorter, but otherwise so substantially the same that I couldn’t tell the difference until I listened to both versions several times. Yes, different solos, but not hugely different – not enough, really, to justify including both versions, except maybe for completists.

Finally, there’s a vocal version – and it’s slower and cooler. Bill Henderson sings lyrics penned by Silver himself, in which we learn that Senor Blues is a lady’s man who lives “way down Mexicali way.” We learn he is “tall and good-looking, and he always knows just what to say,” but just when a senorita falls in love with him, she finds “Senor Blues done gone away.” This could be the theme song for The Most Interesting Man in the World – or at least the coolest cat of 1958. (It was recorded two years after the original album tracks.)

The rest of the album runs hot and cold, literally. Some smokin’ hard bop originals featuring the horns and piano (notably “Cool Eyes,” “Virgo” and “Tippin,” in which Junior Cook replaces Mobley on tenor) are mixed in with two so-so ballads by the piano-bass-drum trio (“Shirl” and “For Heaven’s Sake”). Overall, a pretty good record with one really outstanding song that is done, essentially, two ways.

(What’s up with the CD title? You’d think the original LP had six songs, based on the title, but no, it’s seven. Weird. And the CD release has 10 tracks. Granted, the original LP had six tunes written by Silver, but still…)

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Availability: Easy to get

Cost: $1 used – can’t beat that