Straight-Ahead Jazz - "No Fusion, No Confusion"

Over the decades, jazz has been sliced and diced into dozens of different styles, including Dixieland, Swing, Bebop, Cool, Hard Bop, Modal, Acid, Free, Avant-Garde, Post Bop, Fusion, Afro-Cuban, Soul, and Contemporary. I enjoy and collect just about every conceivable permutation -- with the exception of Free Jazz and Acid Jazz, which are just not my thing.

While I consider myself to be mostly a jazz omnivore, I admit that the style of jazz that I listen to most often is what is generally described as Mainstream or Straight-Ahead jazz. The two terms are not exactly the same, although they are quite similar. 

The term Mainstream jazz was coined in the 1950s by Stanley Dance, a legendary British jazz critic, producer, and music historian. As the big bands mostly collapsed under their own (economic) weight, smaller groups began to dominate the jazz scene. The newly fashionable small-group jazz bands divided roughly into two camps: traditional melodic jazz (including styles like Cool Jazz and Swing) and Bebop. Bebop focused on blazing tempos, advanced harmonic progressions, and rapid-fire improvisation, while Mainstream bands kept the focus on melody and harmony, with improvised solos that were smoother and more lyrical. In order to distinguish between the two, Dance began referring to non-Bebop groups as Mainstream. For reference: Dizzy Gillespie was Bebop; Chet Baker was Mainstream.

Sweet Papa Lou Donaldson

The term Straight-Ahead jazz served more or less the same function as Mainstream; it was used to distinguish traditional jazz from emerging new styles. In the late 1960s and 1970s, jazz musicians began incorporating electric keyboards and basses, special-effects pedals, Minimoogs and synthesizers, all instruments that had been popularized by rock 'n' roll. The new style they created was a jazz rock hybrid that became known as Fusion. Even though Fusion was hugely popular (for about 10 minutes), lots of jazz fans rejected the new electrified approach and remained loyal to jazz's acoustic roots. To distinguish "real" acoustic jazz from Fusion, fans and critics began using the term Straight-Ahead jazz. Among the most outspoken defenders of traditional jazz was alto saxophone great Lou Donaldson, who was known to open his live shows by announcing to the audience that there would be "No Fusion, no confusion." 

The reason I mention all this is because I've been on a bit of a buying spree of late, picking up albums by Straight-Ahead jazz artists who came up in the 1970s and 80s. Because these decades marked a low ebb for acoustic jazz, very few of the musicians who started out during this time became well known or sold a lot of records. Except for a few big-name artists, most Straight-Ahead jazz musicians in during this time survived by playing in clubs, working studio sessions for TV shows or ad jingles, sitting in on recording sessions, and occasionally recording an album as a leader for one of the dwindling number of jazz labels.

That said, many of these overlooked Straight-Ahead albums from the 1970s and 80s are terrific. But since they typically didn't sell many copies, there aren't many left floating around, and they can be hard to track down. Even worse, by the late 1980s, many labels stopped releasing vinyl altogether and shifted their output to cassettes and CDs. Nevertheless, it's well worth seeking out LPs from this era by talented Straight-Ahead players. For starters, look for releases on U.S. labels like Concord Jazz, Muse, Pablo, Choice, Contemporary, Inner City, Milestone, Xanadu, Galaxy, Pausa, Famous Door, and Landmark. Likely European labels include SteepleChase (Denmark), Storyville (Denmark), Soul Note (Italy), Enya (Germany), Criss Cross (The Netherlands), and Black & Blue (France).

Here are some great Straight-Ahead favorites I've been listening to lately:

Peter Leitch Trio - On A Misty Night, 1987 (Criss Cross Jazz 1026) 

Some years ago, I wrote a post about the Criss Cross Jazz label. Based in the Netherlands, it was run by the late, great Gerry Teekins. Between 1981-89, Teekins released 39 mainstream jazz LPs (before switching to CD only). While the LPs included a few big names such as Chet Baker and Jimmy Ranney, most were quality second-tier players such as Peter Leitch. Born in Canada, Leitch got his start in Toronto before moving to NYC in the early 1980s. He had a long, successful career, recording as a leader for several different labels, as well as arranging and producing. On A Misty Night was the first of two releases by Leitch on Criss Cross. On this outing he is backed by bassist Neil Swainson and drummer Mickey Roker. The album is a swinging, tasteful collection in the style of Wes Montgomery or Kenny Burrell. The tracks are mostly standards, but include two Leitch originals. [Fun fact: Gerry Teekins' son, Jerry Jr. is now running Criss Cross Jazz, and he is once again releasing vinyl, including a must-have 2023 reissue of Bill Charlap's 1998 album, All Through The Night, which originally only came out on CD.]

Joe Bonner - Impressions Of Copenhagen, 1981 (Theresa Records TR114)

 

Joe Bonner was the second most famous jazz pianist to emerge from Rocky Mount, NC, the first being Thelonious Monk. Like Monk, Bonner made his way to NYC where he established himself, playing with the likes of Pharoah Sanders, Freddie Hubbard, and Billy Harper. Bonner first traveled to Denmark with Harper's band in 1978 and liked it so much that he went back in 1979 to cut his first (of six) albums on the Danish SteepleChase Records label. Back in the U.S., he released Impressions Of Copenhagen in 1981, on the Los Angeles-based Theresa Records label. Impressions Of Copenhagen is a stunner. Bonner's sextet is backed by a string quartet and then overdubbed with chimes. The chimes give the album an ethereal quality that's unlike anything else I can think of in modern jazz. This is a brilliant effort and has become one of my all-time favorite jazz albums period. The original 1981 Theresa release is rare and pricey. Luckily, the German label Pure Pleasure put out a fabulous-sounding, all-analog reissue in 2020.

 

Hugh Lawson - Prime Time, 1978 (Storyville SLP-4078)

 

Pianist Hugh Lawson, who was born in Detroit in 1935, doesn't quite fit my profile of musicians who came up in the 1970s and 80s. Lawson cut his chops in the 1950s and 60s playing and recording as a member of Yusef Lateef's band. He also played on albums with Charlie Rouse, Roy Brooks, and Kenny Burrell. However, this 1978 album, Prime Time, was Lawson's first session as a leader. (His only other album is a 1983 release on the Italian Soul Note label.) Prime Time was originally issued in 1978 on the short-lived Danish Jazzcraft label, and then reissued in the U.S. in 1982 by Storyville Records. Lawson's influences include Bud Powell and Bill Evans. The rhythm section on Prime Time is Ben Riley on drums and Bob Cranshaw on bass. Lawson's playing is fluid and inventive. The production, by Lars Johansen, is stellar, particularly the sound of Cranshaw's bass. Lawson contributes two originals to go with tracks written by Mingus, Jule Styne, Bud Powell, and Clifford Jordan. Nice copies are cheap and readily available. Snap one up.

 

Ralph Moore - Round Trip, 1987 (Reservoir 104)

 

Moore was born in Brixton (south London) in 1956, where he took up the saxophone before moving to the U.S. with his American father in 1972. After high school, he moved to Boston to attend the Berklee College of Music. He moved to NYC in 1981 where he worked with numerous veteran players and soon joined Horace Silver's band. Round Trip, recorded in 1985 (but not released until 1987), was Moore's first album as a leader, released on the Reservoir Records label. Reservoir was a tiny jazz label founded in 1987 by producer Mark Feldman. Everything about this release is first rate. It features a stellar lineup of Rufus Reid on bass, Kenny Washington on drums, Benny Green on piano, Brian Lynch on trumpet, and Kevin Eubanks on guitar. The sound is excellent, as you might expect for an album that was recorded, mastered, and cut by the legendary Rudy Van Gelder. On this his first release, Moore showcases his hard blowing tenor style on the up tempo tunes, and a lovely, burnished tone on the ballads. While Moore shines, this is a real group effort where all the players have plenty of room to stretch out. A stellar debut. Excellent copies available online for a pittance.

 

Peter Sprague - Na Pali Coast, 1985 (Concord Jazz CJ-277)

 

Peter Sprague was born in Cleveland in 1955. While still in grade school, his family settled in Del Mar, California, north of San Diego. He started learning guitar at age 12 and after high school moved to Boston to study classical guitar. While there, he also took lessons from Pat Metheny. Sprague began his recording career with the Xanadu label, cutting four albums between 1979-83. In the liner notes to Sprague's second Xanadu album, called The Path, critic Leonard Feather wrote that "This 24 year old guitarist has it all together. A strong sound, confident ideas, and loyalty to the roots of pure jazz." 

 

Sprague's 1985 release Na Pali Coast was his second of two LPs for Concord Jazz. The cover photo of the Na Pali coast on the island of Kauai in Hawaii tells you just about everything you need to know about the music. Sprague and flutist Steve Kujala weave intricate melodies that are airy and mesmerizing with light Latin and Samba notes. You can almost feel the ocean breezes. Ahh. The rhythm section features Peter Erskine on drums and Bob Magnusson on bass. Copies are a little scarce, but still affordable.

 

I'll close with a note about Concord Jazz. If you are a fan of Straight-Ahead jazz, then Concord Jazz was made for you, literally. Founder Carl E. Jefferson was a huge jazz buff who owned the Lincoln Mercury car dealership in Concord, CA. He was also one of the founders and biggest supporters of the Concord Summer Jazz Festival. Jefferson started the Concord Jazz label in 1974 because he could no longer find the kind of traditional Straight-Ahead jazz he liked to listen to. So, he decided to just make the albums himself. Jefferson famously picked artists and music that he liked, regardless of whether he thought the releases would sell. The result is a catalog of more than 650 Mainstream titles. You could blindly pick out one or even a dozen Concord releases and not go wrong.

 

Enjoy the music!

The Way-Back Machine Is Set For September 6, 1969

Every generation thinks that the music they grew up with was the greatest ever. I have some older neighbors who still enjoy their Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, and Tommy Dorsey albums. And they're not wrong: The Big Band music of their youth was some of the greatest popular music ever made. 

And the same is true for music fans who grew up with jazz, punk rock, hard rock, classic rock, progressive rock, hip-hop, grunge, garage, rap, alternative, folk, country, Emo, roots, electronic dance music, and disco (well, OK, not disco). Over the last 75 years, and across all those genres, there have been countless great artists and outstanding albums that resonate strongly with Boomers and the various X, Y, and Z generations. 

As I wrote in a column a few years ago, nearly everyone identifies most closely with the music that was popular when they were 13-16 years old, i.e. the music we listened to during puberty. It is hard wired into our brains.

That being said, and with all due respect to everyone else's favorite music, the 1960s was the greatest, most influential decade in the history of modern popular music. Full stop.

This thought occurred to me recently when I was checking the "New Album Releases" in the September 6, 1969 issue of Billboard Magazine to try to confirm the reissue date for an LP I picked up called Guitars Galore (left), by the great jazz guitarist George Barnes, originally released in 1961. And, yes (thanks for asking), the Wing/Mercury reissue (SRW-16393) appears in a list of "New Releases" in the September 6, 1969 Billboard Magazine. Whew. [Brief aside: Guitars Galore is an interesting album that showcases an early use of multi-track recording technology to allow Barnes to overdub different guitar parts on each track, creating a sort of George Barnes guitar ensemble. The result is a bit too gimmicky, but it does feature some fine playing by Clark Terry and Al Cohn, so if you happen to see it in the wild for a few bucks, it's still worth picking up.]

As I continued to flip (online) through the September 6, 1969 copy of Billboard, I came to the list of the "Billboard Top LP's" for the week, better known in the industry as the "Hot 200" chart. 

Billboard began publishing a "Top Ten" chart (of the best-selling 78rpm singles) in 1936. The "Hot 100" album chart debuted in 1956, and morphed into the "Top LP's" in 1967, a ranking of the top 200 best-selling LPs for the week. 59 years later, Billboard continues to publish the Top 200 list.

It was interested to check the rankings for the best selling albums in the September 6, 1969 issue. As I've already asserted, the 60s were the pinnacle decade in the history of modern popular music. And 1969 may have been the zenith, culminating in Woodstock, the epic music festival that took place in August of that year, just a few of weeks before this issue of Billboard was released.

Given all that, I was still astounded by the list of chart topping albums for the week of September 6. [Although to be honest, I suspect there are very few weeks in the entire decade that didn't see the release of one or more classic pop or rock masterpieces. And that's not even mentioning all the seminal jazz albums released during the 1960s.]

Without further ado, the top selling album for the week of September 6, 1969 was Johnny Cash at San Quentin. The album had been on the charts for 10 weeks, and was spending its second week in the number 1 spot. It was followed by Blind Faith at number two (after only four weeks on the charts), Blood Sweat & Tears, Best of Cream, the original Broadway soundtrack for the musical Hair, Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix, The Doors' The Soft Parade, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly, Best of the Bee Gees, and the movie soundtrack from Franco Zeffirelli's hit film Romeo And Juliet. Wow.

 

The second ten may be even better, featuring Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline, This Is Tom Jones, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Led Zeppelin, Bayou Country by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Three Dog Night's Suitable For Framing, Age of Aquarius by The Fifth Dimension, Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul, Aretha's Gold, and at number 20, the ground-breaking rock opera Tommy by The Who. And just as a bit of icing on the cake, sitting at number 21 was The Chicago Transit Authority. Holy guacamole, what a lineup! If you owned nothing else but these 21 albums you'd be well on your way to an outstanding classic rock collection.

And the stunning thing is that five of these LPs were debut albums: Blind Faith, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Led Zeppelin, and Chicago Transit Authority. What a time to be listening to and collecting music! I wonder if there has been any other week in the last 56 years that has included such an amazing list of debut performers?

As a testament to the quality of these top 21 albums, the majority of them are still in print. What's more, looking at the entire list of the top 200 albums that week, nearly every album - with a few exceptions - has held up pretty well. A sample of releases further down the list (that were either on the way up or the way down) includes Jack Beck's Beck-Ola, The Beatles (The White Album), Last Exit by Traffic, Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant, Popcorn by James Brown, and Preflyte by The Byrds.

Skimming through old copies of Billboard is akin to musical and cultural time travel. It's particularly revealing to look at the advertisements to get a real glimpse of the zeitgeist of the time. For example, the September 6, 1969 issue features a full-page ad (right) for a new Saturday morning cartoon series called "The Hardy Boys" about a rock band that tours and solves mysteries wherever they go. It was one of a string of late 60s and early 70s cartoons about rock bands, including the cartoon Beatles, The Archies, and Josie And The Pussycats. 

[Fun fact: The Hardy Boys was one of the first ever integrated cartoons, as the drummer, Pete Jones, was Black.]

Even though I was an aficionado of Saturday morning cartoons during the 1960s, I completely missed the Hardy Boys phenomenon. In fact, until seeing the ad in Billboard, I had never heard of the show. The series produced two actual spin-off albums by The Hardy Boys, which I've also never seen before. Keep your eyes peeled and report back if you come across them. A few of the cartoon episodes and some of the animated music videos from the show are available on Youtube. NB: They have not aged well.

Cassettes and eight-track tapes were introduced in the U.S. in 1964 and 1965 respectively. By 1969, the tape business was booming. The September 6, 1969 issue of Billboard is chock-a-block with trade ads for tape duplicating equipment and services, as well as direct-to-consumer promotions for tape decks. 

One ad (left) asks the burning question: Can a groovy chick like Millie find happiness with the family stereo? The answer is "You Bet!" The small print advises that: "The Roberts cassette deck really 'grooves.' Drop in a cassette, and gloriosky!" Millie just needs to plug her Roberts cassette deck into the family's console stereo (patch cord included!) and rock out (maybe with her Hardy Boys tapes?). 

Naturally, there are also numerous ads in the issue of Billboard promoting new music releases, including classics like the Ike and Tina Turner hit "River Deep - Mountain High," Jeannie C. Riley's "Harper Valley PTA," The Rolling Stones' collection Through The Past Darkly, a Judy Collins' best-of called Recollections, and Nancy Sinatra's new single "Drummer Man," featuring an incredible performance by session drummer Hal Blaine of the Wrecking Crew. [You can watch a live video performance of "Drummer Man" here, taken from Nancy's 1969 live show at Caesar's Palace in Los Vegas. Hal Blaine, playing a kit that appears to have about 25 different drums and cymbals, absolutely burns the place down. Seriously, go watch it now. I'll wait.] 

Perhaps even more interesting are the full-page ads promoting releases by artists who never quite made it, including Any Way That You Want Me by Evie Sands (a very good debut album), Love Of The Common People by The Winstons (no clue), and Make A Joyful Noise by Mother Earth (at left) which features Boz Scaggs on guitar and isn't half bad.

The entire library of Billboard back issues is available here. It's fun to pick a random issue and read the music industry news, enjoy the vintage ads, and check out the new music releases and top sellers for that week. 

Just for fun, I pulled up Billboard's "Best Sellers" listing for December 2, 1957, which reports on the top hits from November 23, the week I was born. If you click on the photo, you can see a larger image. 

I'm pleased to note that the top songs for the week include such classic hits as "You Send Me" by Sam Cooke, "Jailhouse Rock" by Elvis Presley, "Wake Up Little Susy" by the Everly Brothers, "Rock And Roll Music" by Chuck Berry (soon to be made more famous by the Beatles), "Peggy Sue" by Buddy Holly, and, debuting on the list at number 28, the rollicking "Great Balls Of Fire" by Jerry Lee Lewis.

Who knows if I heard these songs as an infant - maybe over the AM car radio or one of those newfangled transistor radios that came out in 1954. Either way, it's interesting that the songs from way back then still resonate with me today. 

Enjoy the music!