Miles Davis - It Ain’t Necessarily So (1958)

More from Miles on his birthday.

Sonny Clark - Deep Night (1958)

From Sam Stephenson’s article, Sonny Clark: Melody and Melancholy, in the most recent issue of Tin House Magazine:

I asked the novelist Haruki Murakami, who once owned a jazz club, why Cool Struttin’ is so popular in Japan. He attributed it to the rise of the “jazz kissa” (jazz coffee shops) in the 1960s.

“The popularity of Cool Struttin’ was not driven by professional critics or by sales,” wrote Murakami by e-mail, “but instead by youths who didn’t have enough money to buy vinyl records, so they went to coffee shops to hear jazz on the house record player. This was a phenomenon particular to Japan, or at least very different from America.” 

Clark’s buoyant blues fit the underground mood of Japan’s postwar youth. It didn’t hurt that his tragic life made him an unconventional, forlorn icon, too.

Philly Joe Jones during rehearsal for Donald Byrd’s Catwalk session of May 2 1961, New York City (photo by Francis Wolff)

Kenny Dorham - Sunset (1961)

From Ira Gitler’s original liner notes:

This is an expressive piece. You can almost feel the chill of evening descending after a hot, dry southwestern day. Kenny’s muted trumpet sensitively heralds the night and Mobley’s tenor suggests the lengthening shadows. 

I have a big soft spot for each one of these hard bop heavies, but especially for the Dorham/Mobley front line. This LP is magic all around and highly recommended.

“Miles Davis and Philly Joe Jones at Peacock Alley,” St. Louis, 1956. Photograph by Bernie Thrasher.

Hank Mobley - Up a Step (1963)

Philly Joe Jones was so on for this session—a session that includes some of my favorite all-time jazz cuts—it becomes a musical moment in time where a player lifts the playing of everyone around him into the stratosphere. The rat-a-tat-tat of the snare drum is so singular, you know it can’t be anyone else back there behind the trap kit. 

This cut—recorded a few days after Mobley participated in Donald Byrd’s A New Perspective and a few days before he contributed to Herbie Hancock’s My Point of View—captures Mobley’s hard bop at its zenith, with a hard-swinging head, deft soloing from Byrd and Hancock, and Mobley’s about face to a more economical, austere mid-60s solo approach, sacrificing more notes for more feeling.

Sonny Clark - Tadd’s Delight (1957)

Tadd Dameron’s absolutely delightful, syncopated yet swinging head leads into a terse Mr. P.C. bass solo and then into Sonny Clark’s long, flowing, jaunty lines, lines that have haunted and besotted this listener for a while now.

Paul Chambers - Whims of Chambers (1956)

Kenny Burrell and Paul Chambers face off.

Ike Quebec - Blues for Charlie (1961)

Quebec doubles on piano and sax in this down-home Grant Green blues written for Charlie Christian, one of Green’s primary influences. All the necessary ingredients are lined up, including the incredible Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers underpinning the deliciously bluesy proceedings.

Ike Quebec and Philly Joe Jones during Quebec’s stellar Blue and Sentimental session, Englewood Cliffs NJ, December 16 1961