Tales of Taylor

As a DJ on WLIB in New York City during the 1960s, Billy Taylor played music by his friends and musical associates, and shared stories of the jazz life with his thousands of listeners. Photo from "Jazz: The First Century"

Ladies and gents, Billy Taylor: jazz's forgotten jack of all trades. The guy could play like Tatum, composed and arranged over 300 tunes, performed on hundreds of record albums, hosted his own jazz radio programs locally in New York City and nationally over NPR, did television shows for NBC and NET, created Harlem's Jazzmobile, taught college level jazz courses, and could speak with the erudition of PhD candidate. Wiki says over the course of his career he amassed 23 honorary doctoral degrees. I believe it. 

So why is it that today Billy Taylor is largely overlooked when jazz aficionados congregate? Why isn't his music taken more seriously? Even Oscar Peterson, himself a Tatum follower with a tendency to indulge in easy stylistic grandstanding, gets more props than Dr. Billy. It's a mystery.

I first started listening seriously to Dr. Taylor's music back when he went on air with "Jazz Alive!" on NPR back in the mid-'70s. Every week he featured real jazz players (at least, I considered them so) in live performance. I heard Rollins, Max Roach, the Heath Brothers, Dizzy, Mingus and many others on his broadcasts. But I also heard Braxton, Sam Rivers, Chico Freeman, the Art Ensemble and other leaders of the creative music movement. I taped many of the segments and still listen to them today. Billy may not have liked all the music he featured, but he brought it to the airwaves for all of us to share regardless of his feelings. For that alone, I deeply respect him. Nobody else did that.

But then there was his playing. The guy could play, and while he was not a genius like Bud Powell or a visionary like Cecil Taylor, he could surprise and delight with the best of them. 

Case in point, this hoary Roost recording. A compendium of earlier sessions, the music comes from the early '50s and captures Taylor under the joint sway of Tatum and Powell. His performances are brisk and pyrotechnic, and if you've not really heard his early work before, this LP is for you. The sound is iffy in places, due in large part to a previous owner's bad needle, but I think the download is definitely worth the price of admission. Dubbed, as always, from the original wax, fear not!

Taylor Made Piano 

Billy Taylor
Roost LP 2222

Billy Taylor, p; Chuck Wayne*, Mundell Lowe, g; Earl May, b; Frank Colon, cnga; Zoot Sims, maracas; Charlie Smith, Jo Jones*, d. 
New York, NY; November 1, 1951; May 2, 1952; autumn 1952.

1. Just Squeeze Me*
2. Feeling Frisky (Taylor)*
3. Making Whoopee
4. Tiroro (Taylor)
5. Moonlight Saving Time
6. Cu-Blu (Taylor)*

Billy Taylor, p; Charles Mingus, b; Marquis Foster, d.
Storyville Club, Boston, MA; Autumn 1952

7. I'm Beginning to See the Light
8. All the Things You Are
9. Lady Bird

Find it here: https://www.mediafire.com/?5w2hv7x1i1b7oqw

Chazz Workshop

The Baron steps up to the mic. Wonder if this was also a broadcast? A photo
from several decades earlier than the period represented by this download,
probably taken on 52nd Street. Bob Parent photo

Well, gang, this here's our 100th posting on Gems of Jazz. Where does the time go? Since it's a special occasion, I thought I should post a real rarity. Not that many of the other items on Gems aren't in that category, but this one is – as far as I know – only available here. I've been saving it for a banner moment, and now that moment has arrived. 

You all know Charles Mingus. You probably know that his last great quintet was the one that featured Jack Walrath, George Adams and Don Pullen along with Dannie Richmond and the boss. You may also know that there are very few live recordings of this stellar group. 

Well, here's one more.

The Jazz Workshop (and Paul's Mall) on Boylston
Street in the mid-1970s.

To wit, the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop at the Jazz Workshop, 733 Boylston Street in good ol' Boston. The band appeared there on May 7 and 8, 1975, just before heading off to the Montreux Jazz Festival on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Mingus was in Boston for two nights, playing two sets each night and working out some of the new material he was going to perform in Switzerland. He was in declining health, suffering from the first symptoms of Lou Gehrig's disease. But his playing – and especially that of his new quintet – was superb.

At the time, I was working at Discount Records in Allston (see a previous post on Walt Dickerson) and was lucky enough to get free tickets to the second of those nights at the Workshop, courtesy of our WEA rep (Mingus was on Atlantic at the time). The first night's show, I learned, was going to be broadcast live over WBUR, Boston University Radio. It was a Boris Rose moment: I decided I had to tape the broadcast.

The record store where I worked had a sideline selling cheapo stereo equipment, stuff that was made somewhere in Asia but was stamped with the CBS brand (CBS owned Discount Records). I didn't own a tape recorder, so I talked my boss into letting me borrow a cassette tape deck that was the store's demo model. I took it home and figured out how to wire it up to an old GE FM tube radio that I'd bought at a yard sale during my college days. I tuned in WBUR, ran tape, and to my great surprise and delight, was able to get a decent test recording. I eagerly waited for the 9 p.m. Jazz Workshop broadcast.

When the program began, I started the tape deck and hoped for the best. The show got underway a little late (jazz time) and the audio was pretty funky at first, but then suddenly there was Mingus and the band and some pretty amazing music. The demo deck performed flawlessly, considering that it was a bargain-basement piece of equipment. I used a 90-minute CBS cassette and had to hurriedly flip it once Side 1 ran out. But the recording came out OK, as you will hear, given the limitations of WBUR's engineering and my device. There's a persistent tape hiss, but I hope you can overlook that.

Here's Mingus during an earlier
visit to the Jazz Workshop in 1975,
courtesy of Warren S.

The next night I went with a friend to the Jazz Workshop and caught Mingus' first set. Charles smoked a cigar through the whole performance and at one point I remember its ash leaving a dusty trail down his shirt front. George Adams sang an outrageous version of Gatemouth Brown's "Devil Blues," and Don Pullen deconstructed the piano repeatedly. It was the only time I saw Mingus live, and it was transcendent.

These shows are not listed in the Jazz Discography Project's page on Mingus, so apparently no recording has survived. Until now. So grab this one and enjoy the sound of the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop and my Boris Rose moment.

As an added bonus, here's George Adams performing "Devil Blues" at the aforementioned Montreux Jazz Festival. The trumpet player isn't Jack Walrath – I'm not sure who he is, but the rest of the band is there. (Note to self: After doing a little checking, the trumpeter is Claudio Roditi.)

Charles Mingus Quintet
WBUR Broadcast

Mingus, b; Jack Walrath, tp; George Adams, ts; Don Pullen, p; Dannie Richmond, d.
Jazz Workshop, Boston, MA; May 7, 1975

1. Introduction/Nobody Knows
2. Fables of Faubus
3. Peggy's Blue Skylight
4. Noddin' Your Head Blues
5. Ornithology/Cherokee

Find it here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/f2isbxte8c28n9c/Mingus_Workshop.rar

Rare Strings

Mingus during his insurance salesman period. Actually, the Baron was recording for Fantasy at the time – the early 1960s – and the garb was most likely a hedge against San Francisco's famous fog. Photo by William Claxton

Well, gang, I'm pleased to announce that I have come across the Holy Grail of record collecting – at least, to me. Ironically, this Gem comes from eBay, a place where I rarely spend more than a buck for a record. But a very nice fellow was selling a couple hundred LPs for a nominal price, and buried within them was this EP from 1952 (the year of my birth). I just happened to notice it as I was killing time at work going through the cheapo listings on the auction site.

The last photo in the posting had the gold,
including "Stings and Keys." Lots of other nice
10-inchers, too.

Right there, in one of the photos of a his collection, plain as day, was Charles Mingus' first release on Debut, a record the bassist recorded in the early 1950s with pianist Spaulding Givens. They waxed it for another label but later released it on Mingus' own imprint. It's historic because it's the first independently-produced record by a jazz artist, and because it's rare Mingus. The initial pressing was probably only 500 EPs.

The seller seemed to know very little about jazz, and I was curious about the collection, because much of it was Mancini, Bert Keampfert, Les Brown and other easy-listening stuff. But mixed in were some pretty heavy and rare jazz recordings, mostly by bass players. There were also several bass instruction records. It seemed like an odd mix.

When I met up with the seller to make the buy, he told me the collection had been his grandfather's. He said the old gent had been a swing bass player and that he'd played in bands most of his life. He lived in the Corning, NY, area and worked most often with an big band called, curiously enough, the Mohicans. I found listings for them in old newspapers in my newspaper's morgue. Judging by the collection, the bassist started out playing bebop but later switched to the more conventional swing style, probably in an effort to make a little money. Not much call back in the 1950s for "Ooh Bop Sha'bam" in upstate New York, I'm guessing. He bought the easy-listening stuff so that he could practice the popular tunes that dancers wanted to hear.

Marian McPartland and the trio from a decade
or so before this recording was waxed. Joe
Morello on drums with Vinnie Burke on bass.

The other gem in this posting is a very rare EP from the late, lamented Marian McPartland. This one also comes from eBay and I don't know why nobody else bid on it. But I got it for 99 cents, and was very pleased that I did. It features Ms. McPartland actually playing some muscular stuff, unlike what she'd been recording for Capitol prior to this date. The strings are here, yes (including the ever-present Harry Lookofsky), but the arrangements by Frank Hunter are a cut above the usual treacle that backed Marian following her London House days. Phil Bodner is also present, playing flute quite nicely. The Sesac label was one that didn't last long, and this little disc features four of the twelve tunes that were recorded on this date back in 1964. There must have been an LP release, but I've never seen it.

So here's an extremely rare Mingus recording and another rarity that we offer as a tribute to Ms. McPartland. As always, these files were dubbed from the original vinyl. The Mingus tunes have a lot of hiss to them, but I suspect that's how they sounded when the record was new (the vinyl is visually pristine). The notation on the cover was made by the previous owner – and I left it there as a tribute to him. Dig!

Strings and Keys
Charles Mingus and Spaulding Givens 
Spaulding Givens, p; Charles Mingus, b.
New York, NY; April 1952; Debut DLP 1

1. What Is This Thing Called Love
2. Darn That Dream
3. Yesterdays
4. Body and Soul
5. Blue Moon
6. Blue Tide

It Swings
Marian McPartland 
Marian McPartland, p; Phil Bodner, fl; Harry lookofsy, Leo Kruczek, vi; Harold Coletta, viola; Alan Shulman, cello; Barry Galbraith, g; George Duvivier, b; Dave Bailey, d; Frank Hunter, arr.
New York, NY; June 1964; Sesac AD 92

1. The Magpie
2. Y'know What I Mean
3. Warmin' Up
4. Don't Panic

Find them here: https://www.mediafire.com/?h657ef6qvccn36l