As a New Year Begins, a Look Back at Gems From the Catalog

Let’s turn the tables, for once, and start the year with a look back--in a few cases, fairly far back.

Here’s why. Jazz may not have the quick-hit, easy-come, easy-go stars of pop music, cranking out multimillion-selling hits for a few brief years of superstardom. But it does have longevity; it does have an audience with a continuing, long-term interest in artists.

And in the record business that means catalog. Some major labels virtually survive on their catalogs, using income from those sales to support recordings by new artists. And numerous small labels, as well as distributors, actively work catalog material, sometimes repackaging it, almost always seeking to re-release items from the pre-CD era.

For jazz fans, that means a bonanza of available material. Name your favorite jazz artists and it’s likely that their work--some of it unheard--is being made available on a continuing basis.

So here’s the look back via a quick survey of some interesting releases that were received as 2000 rolled to a conclusion:

Booker Little, “Booker Little and Friend*” (****, Bethlehem Archives). There is dark irony in the fact that trumpeter Booker Little was seen by many--with considerable justification--as the successor to Clifford Brown, who died in an automobile crash in 1956 at the age of 25. Little passed away in 1961, at 23, the victim of uremia. His far-too-brief career included albums with Max Roach, John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, among others, and four outings as the leader of his own groups. This was the last album, recorded in August and September, before his death in October. And what emerges, sadly, is the work of an enormously gifted artist--a stunning improviser as well as an imaginative composer. That he bore stylistic similarities to Brown is self-evident, but it is equally apparent that he was moving forward on his own path, as well. The compositions--originals except for a lovely ballad rendering of (more irony) “If I Should Lose You”--further suggest potent, but largely unrealized, possibilities. The asterisk in the album title underscores the fact that this is a second reissue of a recording originally released with a confusing reference to a “friend.” Presumably the players--trombonist Julian Priester, tenor saxophonist George Coleman, pianist Don Friedman, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Pete La Roca--were all friends, but there is no otherwise hidden significance in the label.

Various artists, “The Prestige Legacy, Vol. 2: Battles of the Saxes” (****, Prestige/Fantasy). Saxophone madness would have been an equally appropriate title for an 11-track collection that features no less than 18 tenor saxophonists, eight alto saxophonists and one baritone saxophonist. The opening track--”Battle of the Saxes”--takes a big bite out of that lineup with the five-tenor section of Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Allen Eager and Brew Moore. A classic encounter between Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt follows in “You Can Depend on Me,” with other tracks showcasing Phil Woods, Wardell Gray, Jackie McLean, Gene Ammons, Oliver Nelson, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Coleman Hawkins and Buddy Tate, as well as the utterly superb combination of Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane on “Tenor Madness.” And what may be most striking about this constantly entertaining collection is the individuality of so many of the players. Yes, the Lester Young-impacted playing of Getz, Sims, Cohn, etc., tends to produce a certain similarity of sound and method (although even here unique personalities break through). But unlike much of the bop-revisited music of the past decade, there is little cookie-cutter anonymity in this marvelous collection of gifted artists.

Various artists, “The Prestige Legacy, Vol. 1: The High Priests” (****, Prestige/Fantasy). As with the “Battles of the Saxes,” the title here is right on target. And it doesn’t get much better than this 16-track CD, which is a virtual overview of the astonishing burst of creativity in jazz in the few years between 1951 and 1958. The names included here are now icons--Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins. And it’s worth remembering that they were relatively young men at the time--all in their 20s, with the exception of Monk, who was in his 30s. But what they produced is timeless. Monk’s “Little Rootie Tootie,” “Bemsha Swing” and “Hackensack”; Rollins and Monk on “Let’s Call This”; Rollins’ “Valse Hot”; Davis’ “Solar”; and Coltrane working out his utterly personal style on “Bass Blues” and “You Say You Care.” There’s not a false note on the album, not a passage that doesn’t leap out and demand attention. A classic, yes, but also a set of listening experiences as alive today as the day they were created.

Al Cohn & Zoot Sims, “Easy As Pie: Live at the Left Bank” (*** 1/2, Label M). Individually, Cohn and Sims were among the hardest swinging of the Lester Young-influenced tenor saxophonists. Working in tandem, they took no prisoners, generating a buoyant, enthusiastic drive admired by musicians and fans alike. This 1968 set is part of a treasure trove of material recorded by a variety of groups at Baltimore’s Left Bank Jazz Society. Because the best way to hear Al and Zoot (as they were universally identified) was in the heat of battle, this is an irresistible set of this brilliantly compatible duo at its best.

Paul Desmond, “Lemme Tell Ya ‘Bout Paul Desmond” (*** 1/2, Label M). To paraphrase the old Sara Lee commercial, nobody doesn’t like Paul Desmond. Or, at least, almost nobody. Because who can resist his velvet tone, his spirited improvisational style, with its traces of classical influence, and the subtle sense of irony that’s often a subtext in his solos? Label M has accomplished the unusual task of bringing together Desmond performances from several different record companies--BMG/RCA, Columbia/Sony and A&M--into; a kind of cross-platform “best of” album. And there will be few disappointments with the results, which encompass his offbeat-meter hit “Take Ten,” some larger ensemble outings for A&M; (including a lovely rendering of Paul Simon’s “El Condor Pasa”), and several stunning examples of his sophisticated way with a ballad (“Skylark” is a particularly telling example).

Sam Jones, “Something in Common” (***, 32 Jazz). Bassist Sam Jones has generally been known as a sturdy, dependable rhythm-section player. But he was also an effective composer and a skilled leader. For this date, recorded in 1977 (four years before his death), he assembled a sterling ensemble that includes pianists Cedar Walton, trombonist Slide Hampton, trumpeter Blue Mitchell, saxophonist Bob Berg and drummer Billy Higgins. With that kind of talent, there surely must have been a temptation to simply lay down a few blues tunes and a jazz standard or two, and unleash the soloists. While the soloing is universally impressive, the session has the ensemble cohesiveness and briskly energetic interaction that belie the fact that it was simply a group assembled for a recording session. At its best, it was a first-rate, hard-bop outing, and one that deserves to be rescued from obscurity.

Denny Zeitlin Trio, “As Long As There’s Music” (***, 32 Jazz) This is one of the shorter-range looks back--only to 1997, actually, when pianist-psychiatrist Zeitlin got together with bassist Buster Williams and drummer Al Foster for a solid collection of classy, straight-ahead jazz improvisation. Performing in this context, Zeitlin delivers with a far brawnier, more hard-swinging approach than was generally the case in his more pensive performances with bassist David Freisen. Williams seems especially compatible with Zeitlin, sometimes moving in tandem with him, sometimes ranging off into contrapuntal interaction. The results--in a program that includes standards such as “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and “The Man I Love” as well as John Coltrane’s “Cousin Mary” and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Triste”--are always rewarding, sometimes much more than that.

Joe Roland, “Joe Roland” (** 1/2, Bethlehem Archives). The little-known Roland was a vibist prominent during stints with Oscar Pettiford’s Sextet, Artie Shaw’s Gramercy Five and the George Shearing Quintet in the early ‘50s. In 1955, he organized the group chronicled here, featuring pianist Freddie Redd, guitarist Dick Garcia, bassist Dante Martucci and drummer Ron Jefferson. Vestiges of the familiar Shearing sound surface frequently in a set of material that often drifts toward cocktail jazz, rescued primarily by Redd’s Bud Powell-like piano solos and Roland’s crisp vibes.

Jimmy Smith, “Organ Grinder Swing” (** 1/2, Verve Master Edition). Smith wasn’t the first to try his hand at playing jazz on the Hammond organ, but he was--and continues to be--one of the instrument’s most insistently hard-swinging practitioners. There aren’t a lot of surprises on this 1965 recording, with Kenny Burrell on guitar and Grady Tate on drums, but there is some nonstop grooving from a trio of players with a deep understanding of the blues. However, the program, at less than 40 minutes, is seriously truncated, well beneath the content one ordinarily expects on a CD (thus the lower star rating)--an unfortunate bit of synchronicity, given Smith’s frequent tendency to play short sets in his live appearances, as well.