JazzWax

J.J. and Kai: Stonebone

In 1967, Creed Taylor launched CTI Records as a subsidiary of the A&M label. Creed had just left Verve, where he headed the jazz label and pioneered new concepts in young-adult jazz, including covers with compelling color photography and jazz interpretations of pop-rock and pop-soul radio hits. In New York, Creed had complete autonomy over CTI. Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss (the A and the M) were busy in Los Angeles, and they envisioned CTI as a hip, easy-jazz imprint. In 1969, Creed struck a deal with A&M to leave the label, go off on his own and take CTI with him. At the time, A&M was pinning its hopes on L.A. rock and an expanding variation of pop. They had no problem letting Creed and CTI leave, since they had bigger fish to fry, included the Carpenters, whom they just had signed.

One of the last jazz albums recorded on the CTI label while still under the A&M umbrella was J&K/Stonebone, by J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding. The album's four songs were recorded in 1969. The reason most CTI fans know little or nothing about the album is that J&K/Stonebone was never released in the U.S.—on vinyl or digitally—and it remains one of CTI's rarest and priciest eBay purchases.

J&K/Stonebone was released only in Japan in 1970. When I asked Creed about the album months ago, he couldn't recall recording it or sending the tapes off to Japan, despite his name and large signature being stamped on the cover as producer.

The album was recorded over three days in September of 1969 at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. It featured J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding (tb); Herbie Hancock and, Bob James (el. keyboards); Ross Tompkins (el. keyboards on Recollections); George Benson (g); Ron Carter (b); Grady Tate (d) and J.J. Johnson (arr. on the first three tracks) and Bob James a(rr. on Recollections). The songs, in album order, are Dontcha Hear Me Callin' to Ya, Musings, Mojo and Recollections.

So why wasn't the album released in the U.S.? The answer rests with three different reasons or all of them combined. First, there were only four tracks on the album, two per side. From a sales perspective, four songs told the target buyer in 1969 that the music on the album was long-winded. Second, the shortest track on the album is a slow ballad that runs just over four minutes, which means there wasn't an AM radio single, a big sales shortcoming in 1969. Third, each side of the album runs just 18 minutes, which would leave buyers feeling shortchanged at new-album price levels then. 

So what happened? Given how many basic rules of Creed's own producer playbook the album violated, here are my guesses:

• J&K/Stonebone may have been only halfway finished when Creed left to set up CTI outside of A&M. If there had had been time, I'm sure Creed would have edited down the longer tracks to get in a couple more commercially viable shorter tracks that could be used on drive-time radio. Or perhaps he didn't want to edit them down (I wouldn't have touched them), which still put him in a bind.
• When Creed left to start CTI as a stand-alone label, the tapes for J&K/Stonebone likely belonged to A&M, whose executives surely didn't want to invest more in its production and promotion given its brevity and lack of shorter songs.
• Or maybe J&K/Stonebone took too long to record (three days for four songs seems excessive) and exhausted its budget.
• Or perhaps Creed let the album go so he could focus on new more ambitious CTI projects, such as Freddie Hubbard's Red Clay.
• Or maybe musicians who were on the first three days of recording had to move on to other projects, making them unavailable to record additional planned tracks for J&K/Stonebone.

Now that we have a rough sense of the possible reasons why the album wasn't released in the U.S., why was it put out only briefly by King Records in Japan?

• I'm guessing that Japan in 1970 wasn't as driven by radio and singles as the U.S. market, so the commercial risks were lower vs. what King paid to license the album.
• U.S. troops stationed in Japan might have been a stronger market for the jam-oriented LP, since the liner notes by Ira Gitler are in English.
• I'm also guessing that Ira was commission by King for the notes, not CTI; Creed steadfastly avoided adding liner notes on all of his CTI albums under the belief they were long-winded and got in the way of listeners enjoying the photos and music.
• A&M or Creed likely had an established relationship with Japan's King Records and was able to negotiate a deal to cover the  recording expenses. 

If you're asking me to guess about what happened, here's my take: Creed didn't have time to issue the album. He couldn't take the tape with him because it belonged to A&M. After Creed left to set up CTI, A&M didn't want to release the album for a variety of reasons mentioned above. To recoup the recording some or all of the costs, A&M licensed the album to King in Japan, which turned to Ira Gitler for liner notes. The reason they printed them in English was likely because they planned to market the album in the U.S. as an import and they wanted buyers to think it was part of the U.S. catalog.

How is the album today? It's a superb early psychedelic-jazz release. Johnson and Winding's trombones function almost like dueling electric guitars while Benson and the keyboards give the album a jam session feel. There's a dreamy quality to J&K/Stonebone and it certainly deserves to be re-issued here now, at least digitally. That would be Sony/Columbia, which inherited the CTI catalog. I love this album, and I often listen to it over and over in one sitting. It's a funky, melodically hypnotic masterpiece and a detailed panoramic snapshot of the jazz-fusion era in its infancy. [Photo above of Creed Taylor]

JazzWax tracks: How rare is this album? It seems to be going for around $600 in the U.S. If you want the vinyl, try Japanese sites.

JazzWax clip: Fear not. Here's the entire album...

Prez Day: Lester Young Clips

Here in the U.S. today, the country is celebrating President's Day, a national holiday set up in the 1880s to cover both George Washington's (22nd) and Abraham Lincoln's (12th) February birthdays. At JazzWax, we celebrate Lester Young today, whom Billie Holiday nicknamed the President or Prez of the tenor saxophone. Whether or not you're familiar with Prez and his music, below are eight of my favorite clips that splendidly illustrate his art over time. [Photo above by Herb Snitzer]

In short, Prez revolutionized the sound of the tenor saxophone starting in the late 1930s. Instead of the gruff and tough approach, his was cool, dry and more relaxed but no less inventive when improvising, as you'll hear below:

Here's the original Vocalion 78 recording in 1939 of Lester Leaps In, featuring Count Basie's Kansas City Seven: Count Basie (p), Buck Clayton (tp), Dicky Wells (tb), Lester Young (ts), Freddie Green (g), Walter Page (b), Jo Jones (ds)...

Here's Prez in 1943 playing Sometimes I'm Happy, with Johnny Guarnieri (p) Slam Stewart (b) and Big Sid Catlett (d)...

Here's Prez in 1950, lip-syncing along with the rest of the quintet to their brilliant rendition of How About You recorded earlier for a film. The quintet features Lester Young (ts), Bill Harris (tb), Hank Jones (p), Ray Brown (b) and Buddy Rich (d)...

Here's Prez in 1954 playing I Can't Get Started with the Oscar Peterson Trio, featuring Lester Young (ts), Oscar Peterson (p), Barney Kessel (g), Ray Brown (b) and J.C. Heard (d)...

Here's Prez in 1956 playing I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan, with Lester Young (ts), Roy Eldridge (tp), Vic Dickenson (tb), Gene Ramey (b), Teddy Wilson (p) and Jo Jones (d)...

Here's 40 minutes of the Birdland All Stars in Hamburg, Germany, in 1956, featuring Miles Davis, Lester Young and Bud Powell...

Here's Prez in 1958 playing Mean to Me on Art Ford's Jazz Party, a TV series in New York...

And finally, here's Prez in 1956, playing Louise, with Teddy Wilson (p), Gene Ramey (b) and Jo Jones (d)...

Michael, Felix and Gal

This week in The Wall Street Journal, I interviewed two-time Oscar winner Michael Caine for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Michael grew up in one of London's poorest neighborhoods and had to be evacuated several times during the Blitz between 1940 and '41. The movie Alfie changed his career. Every other actor in London had turned down the role. After Alfie, Michael only wound up with leading roles. As for Michael's favorite song associated with the film, he said Sonny Rollins's music for the score remains his favorite. [Photo above of Michael Caine and his mother in 1964]

Here's nine minutes of Michael as the cad in Alfie, with Sonny's saxophone and Oliver Nelson's orchestration as background (other film parts follow)...

Here's Sonny's Original Music From the Score to Alfie (all of the tracks follow each other)...

To read the JazzWax story of how Sonny Rollins came to record the music with Oliver Nelson for the movie and why Hal David and Burt Bacharach were then asked to write their hit single, Alfie, go here and here.

Supersax. Last week, I came across a wonderful video of Supersax playing Star Eyes in concert. From right to left, facing us, the reed section lineup looks like Jack Nimitz on baritone saxophone, Lanny Morgan on alto sax, Med Flory (the tall one) on alto sax, Jay Migliori on tenor sax and Ray Reed on tenor sax, with Conte Candoli on trumpet, Lou Levy on piano, Monty Budwig on bass and John Dentz on drums. Recorded sometime in the mid-1980s. Here's Star Eyes...

And here's the original Charlie Parker Quartet version in 1950, with Hank Jones (p), Ray Brown (b) and Buddy Rich (d), so you can compare...

Felix Grant. Last week, after posting about the start of America's love affair with Brazil's bossa nova and the crucial role that Washington, D.C., jazz radio host Felix Grant played, I received upward of 30 emails from readers who lived in Washington and recalled listening to him. Here's the Felix Grant Archives, which includes many of his on-air interviews with jazz musicians (including Jackie and Roy!) (go here).

New York transit. One hundred years ago, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) operated the Sixth Avenue Elevated. The line was built during the 1870s by the Gilbert Elevated Railway and was the second elevated line to go up in New York after the Ninth Avenue Elevated (underground subways first opened in New York in 1904). In 1919, someone mounted a movie camera in the last car and filmed a bit going down Sixth Avenue.

I know the opening segment is Sixth Avenue because The Hippodrome Theatre appears on the right. It stood at Sixth between 44th and 43rd Streets. The other locations are hard to decipher and my guess is that the film captures bits of different rides on different days. It's hard to know what park that is in the next scene, since the Sixth Avenue El didn't pass Madison Square Park nor did it pass Union Square or Washington Square Park that closely. It is most likely Battery Park at the bottom of Manhattan that the line skirted, but the architecture looks more like 14th Street and Union Square Park. The other intersections are hard to pin down as well and may be the Ninth Avenue El. There were only four elevated lines in Manhattan in 1919—on Second and Third Avenue Els on the East Side and the Sixth and Ninth Avenues Els on the West Side. I didn't have time to find a Manhattan map from 1919 showing parks that existed then but no longer do now or a map of businesses along the Els. Here's the clip...

Gal Costa, the Brazilian singer, launched her performing career in 1964 and released her first recording as a duet on Maria Bethânia's eponymous first album. Costa's first album, Domingo, was released in 1967. Here she is more recently singing Antonio Carlos Jobim's Wave...

What the heck: Here's the eternally charming Cilla Black singing Alfie on stage in 1966...

Oddball album cover of the week.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a quiet hour. I have no idea where that hour went but I'd love it back. By the way, great stage name for a singer. Perhaps the sister of May July?