Monday Jazz Odyssey March 3, 2024
Black Hawk Down, Manne Up, Jutta Hipp, Booker Ervin, Nubya Garcia & More!
Dateline: September 1959 at San Francisco’s Black Hawk Club. The seismic year of jazz was heading into autumn, with Miles Davis’s game-changing modal megahit Kind of Blue in shops only a month, but already in the hearts and minds of jazz musicians everywhere. Shelly Manne led his quintet onto the bandstand, the red light on the tape deck glowed, and with almost imperceptible snare drum and cymbal adjustments amidst the clinking of patrons’ silverware, the evening’s program began. As the strains of a laconic (but not lazy) “Summertime” came to life with bass and muted trumpet introduction, there was no hint that anything out of the ordinary was afoot. But there was magic in the air, and for three nights at the Black Hawk, Shelly Manne and his Men invoked their muse. It was the right music, played by the right combo at the right time, with a recording engineer who understood the assignment. The results are among the most extraordinary live sets of jazz ever recorded.
Drummer Shelly Manne was predominantly associated with the flexibly defined “West Coast Scene,” which irritated him. Manne believed those categories would put his skills in a restrictive box—no matter how loosely defined that box might be. Manne makes a good point. He recorded and toured prolifically and opened The Manne Hole, one of Los Angeles’s most notorious jazz spots. In addition to leading his rotating cast of talented “Men,” he made legendary records like Way Out West with Sonny Rollins and connoisseur favorites like Art Pepper’s Living Legend. I respect any drummer with the chops to record with Frank Zappa and Barry Manilow. Not simultaneously, of course, before you start scouring the web for a recording that doesn’t exist! He led a trio of Andre Previn and Leroy Vinnegar interpreting the music of My Fair Lady—a pioneering album in that it was the first focus solely on a single Broadway show—and, at the same time, was among the earliest to jump in the New Thing end of the pool in 1959 with Ornette Coleman’s Tomorrow Is The Question! Now that’s flexibility!
Manne worked in duos, trios, quartets, and big bands. He played hard-bop, modal, soundtracks, and jazz-fusion—the man liked the variety and worked hard, and no matter the style, his ability to lead with the subtlest brush accents was uncanny. While he wasn’t one to raise his voice like Buddy Rich or overwhelm you with energy like Elvin Jones, when he wanted your attention, he could power a snare thwack that’d knock you into next week. But Manne always chose tone and swing over flash and has a well-earned place amongst the most tasteful jazz drummers ever.
In 1959, Manne and his regular "Men" working group had been doing a lot of soundtrack work in Hollywood, so this trip up the coast to San Franciso for an engagement at the Black Hawk was good medicine for everyone—a chance to get out of town for a couple of weeks and stretch. Scheduling conflicts meant Manne needed a replacement for regular pianist Russ Freeman, and Manne made an inspired choice in Victor Feldman. The UK-born Feldman had cut his teeth with Ronnie Scott and was predominantly known as a vibraphone player before making his way to the West Coast. He joined Manne, Joe Gordon—trumpet, Richie Kamuca—tenor sax, and Monte Budwig—bass as they set up shop at the legendary Black Hawk in San Francisco for two weeks.
As the story goes, Manne was so enthused by the early sets that he phoned Contemporary Records head honcho Lester Koenig to make an unprecedented request to record the group live on the bandstand while they were red hot. Koenig had a load of gear and ace engineer Howard Holzer onsite at the Black Hawk the next day. From September 22 to 24, nearly five hours of music was captured to tape. Plans to issue the best performances on a single LP were quickly scrapped when playback revealed gigs of such remarkably consistent strength that the only way forward was to release as much as possible. All in all, four volumes of Shelly Manne & His Men At The Black Hawk became the legacy of this run in the 1960s, with a fifth volume of the remaining unissued material appearing in the CD era.
I can’t choose a favorite volume, but if I were to pick a favorite track from each to compile a playlist, I’d go with “Step Lightly” (from V2), “Whisper Not” (from V3), “Cabu” (from V4), “Summertime” (from V1), and “This is Always” (from V5).
To my ears, Victor Feldman makes the difference in elevating these performances from great to legendary. Not that Feldman plays so much better than anyone else—everyone is evenly matched, and it’s a team effort 💯. It’s Feldman’s vibraphone DNA that influences Freeman's stylings. Feldman’s tendency to take a more percussive approach to the piano than Freeman fuels Manne’s imagination. Sometimes, he relaxes his oversight of the pulse to let Feldman drive the rhythm as he explores the edges, but he never strays far, ensuring that when Feldman has a “new guy” moment, Manne is there to take the wheel.
Craft Recordings reissues Vol 1 on March 15, and the early pressing they've sent me sounds terrific. As with others in their Contemporary Records reissue series, the vinyl is a wonderful cut by legendary mastering engineer Bernie Grundman that’s free of the irritating defects (warps, off-center labels, under-sized spindle holes) that have become all too commonplace these days. The original recordings by Howard Holzer are FANTASTIC, as are the original Contemporary Records pressings and subsequent reissues, so don’t look for a dramatic improvement in the new Craft edition with one major caveat. If you’re looking to save a few dollars picking up a second-hand copy of an OG or reissue, it has been YEARS since I’ve seen one in the wild that wasn’t either well-loved (groove wear) or significantly scuffed. And I’ve now A/B’d this new cut against my original stereo edition and the 1996 Analogue Productions pressing—they’re close enough that I can’t recommend paying a premium for an original or audiophile edition when a clean, brand-spanking new pressing can be yours for a lot less money. The new Craft LPs are selling for around $30US. My original pressing still gets top marks from a sound perspective, even with a bit of surface noise. But it’s not THAT far ahead of the Craft reissue. Put another way, if you can afford a playback rig that points out a more significant gap between the two, you can probably buy a Mint condition original without breaking the bank. But otherwise, the new Craft edition is the official Jazz and Coffee recommendation.
As a live recording enthusiast, the entirety of Manne’s Black Hawk recordings remain in my Top Five live jazz recordings of all time. I hope Craft continues to roll this series out of the vault, as I recommend you hear every note and the spaces in between.
In Case You Missed It On Instagram:
Jutta Hipp with Zoot Simms
Jutta Hipp’s 2003 New York Times obituary says she “turned her back on jazz” after a brief career. Let’s unpack that phrase for a moment. She grew up loving jazz in Leipzig, Germany, but she was forced to conceal it like the rest of her country in those days. The Nazi regime frowned on “the music of the enemy,” given jazz was predominantly performed by Blacks and Jews (as if we needed **ANOTHER** reason to hate Nazis). Displaced after her home was bombed during the war, she lived homeless as a refugee for a time, malnourished and struggling. Unexpected parenthood by an American G.I.—unable to claim responsibility as Black servicemen in the still-segregated armed forces were forbidden from doing so—forced her to give up her son Lionel (named for Lionel Hampton) for adoption. Discovery by legendary US jazz critic/writer Leonard Feather gave Jutta a fleeting glimpse of the sun, but the relationship with Feather faltered. Spurning pressure to perform his original material (and allegedly, his romantic advances) was a career-limiting move. Her mixed feeling about her musicianship was exacerbated by mental health issues, alcoholism, stage fright, under-confidence, and ongoing incidents of men treating her like shit. There’s an uncorroborated tale of Art Blakey coaxing her to the bandstand one evening despite her protestations that she’d had too much to drink and wasn’t up to the task, only to intentionally embarrass her by performing a tune she couldn’t keep with, then publicly tear her down in a moment of Euro-xenophobia. Rechanneling her creative energies towards painting and taking work in textiles, Jutta Hipp disappeared from the music business so completely that Blue Note couldn’t even send her a royalty check for decades, tracking her down only a few years before she died of pancreatic cancer. So, did she willfully “turn her back” on jazz, or did many of the men around her conspire to make that happen? While the plural of anecdote isn’t fact, Jutta Hipp’s life of challenges was made MORE difficult by many men who could have chosen to raise her up rather than put her down. We need much more than Women in JaMonthnth—we need a whole freakin’ century.
Booker Ervin ‘Tex Book Tenor’
Postman: “You the one they call Syd the Kid?”
Me: “What’s it to ya?”
Postman: “I hear you been askin’ about a session. A session locked up so long, most only heard rumors. You know somethin’?”
We stared each other down at the mailbox, eyes narrowed. The tension was thick.
Me: “What you’ve got in that box never got a fair day in court. But there’s a couple of new Sheriffs in town. Lawgivers by the name of Harley and Gray. They believe in jazz justice. And, like me, they live for danger. Now, hand over the package.”
The postman never broke eye contact, his nerves betrayed only by the beads of sweat on his forehead and a slight tremble as he handed me the 12X12 cardboard mailer.
Postman: “That’s some big talk about a small box. When you say danger...”
Me: “I mean, Woody Shaw rips into the material with the fury of a Category 5 tornado tearing through the metaphorical cornfield of your mind. I mean Booker Ervin going after Shaw, all guns blazin’, because this was HIS session, and ain’t NOBODY gonna cook the books hotter than him. I mean Kenny Barron playing with such swing and clarity that at the end of it all, maybe he’s top dog, and his name should appear as leader. I mean a quintet that kills every performance on this record with reckless precision. I’m talking about a session that never should’ve been locked up in the first place, and now that it’s been liberated, Tex Book Tenor is coming for your turntable, and their revenge is a dish best served at maximum velocity.”
Postman: “You fixin’ to hear that alone and unarmed?”
Me: “I got a wife. A dog. Coffee. Other stuff’d just be extra.”
Postman: “Reckon I’ll be on my way, then.”
He was visibly nervous now as he tried not to look like he was running to his truck.
Me: “STOP! You’re forgettin’ somethin’ REAL important. Somethin’ that might save your soul.”
He turned in his tracks, trembling, eyeballing the package as if a tsunami of flying cobras might burst forth at any minute…