The Prestige Records Story
Bob Weinstock, founder of Prestige, one of the greatest and most prolific independent jazz labels, died recently. Rather than writing another obituary, I prefer to pay tribute by reviewing some of the great music he helped bring into the world. He started the label, at first called New Jazz, at the age of 20 in 1949 and ran it as an independent until he sold it to Fantasy in 1971. Though Prestige continues to produce new recordings, this four-CD set, compiled with Weinstock’s input, justly focuses on those first 22 years. Weinstock favored bebop and hard bop, and later soul jazz, especially featuring organists. Weinstock kept costs down by recording quickly, rarely going for more than one complete take. The music was either relatively uncomplex or (obviously in the case of the Modern Jazz Quartet) worked out in advance—learning tunes in the studio was a no-no—and he frequently put together jam sessions. Weinstock’s nose for the talent on the New York scene was obviously astute, and he signed many greats before they were famous, which also kept costs down but reaped benefits when they had hits.
Miles Davis – Chronicle: The Complete Prestige Recordings 1951-1956
One of the label’s best signings was Miles Davis, in the throes of a drug addiction at first. On Prestige he returned to small-group bebop, and in prolific 1956 sessions, Davis’s famous quintet with John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones created a series of masterpieces issued on four similarly titled LPs. Cookin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet (with Davis’s famously vulnerable “My Funny Valentine”), Relaxin’ with… (arguably the best of them, with the killer program of “If I Were a Bell,” “You’re My Everything,” “I Could Write a Book,” “Oleo,” “It Could Happen to You,” and “Woodyn’ You,” six of the finest small-group bebop tracks since Parker’s heyday), Workin’ with…, and Steamin’ with… , and much more great music, are all on this eight-CD box with lavish documentation and a more compact presentation that in the long run will save completists plenty of money.
Eric Dolphy – The Complete Prestige Recordings
Despite barely making it to age 36, Dolphy left a fair-sized recorded legacy, thanks mostly to Prestige/New Jazz. The nine CDs in this chronological box set display an amazing burst of creative energy. From his first album as a leader recorded April 1, 1960, through a pair of live dates in Copenhagen on September 6 and 8, 1961—under a year and a half—Dolphy was on 13 sessions producing 16 Prestige/New Jazz albums as a leader (9), co-leader with Ken McIntyre (1), or featured sideman on two Oliver Nelson dates and one each for Mal Waldron, Ron Carter, and the Latin Jazz Quintet, plus a date in the sax section of Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis’s big band (included to make this set truly complete). On his own albums especially, Dolphy crafted an utterly distinctive style by extending bebop into new, far-out harmonic realms, acting as a bridge between bebop and free jazz; besides mastering alto sax, he made bass clarinet and flute respectable jazz instruments and thus helped expand the genre’s sonic palette. He and his musical cohorts, especially Waldron, extended jazz composition into new forms and structures, freeing it from the show tune/blues templates and permitting new expression. But most of all, he was an amazingly exciting and inventive improvisor, as best demonstrated on the monumental 1961 Five Spot club gig with the even more ill-fated Booker Little (trumpet), Waldron (piano), Richard Davis (bass), and Ed Blackwell (drums). This was about as avant-garde as Prestige got.
Sonny Rollins – Saxophone Colossus
Rollins’s stature is aptly summed up by the title of Saxophone Colossus, a 1956 quartet album with Tommy Flanagan (piano), Doug Watkins, and Max Roach. It would be a classic even if it only contained “Blue Seven,” one of the most analyzed and respected improvisations in jazz, with Rollins’s often-subtle manipulations of motivic cells showing the influence Thelonious Monk (who made some fine and important music for Prestige on albums flawed by poor pianos) had on him. This is where it first became clear that Rollins was not merely great, but truly an exceptional player. “St. Thomas” reveals his fondness for calypso and his ability to take practically any music and make it top-flight jazz. Jazz improvisation rarely gets more ecstatic than Rollins in full flight.
John Coltrane – The Prestige Recordings
Like Miles Davis, Coltrane signed to Prestige when he was in a down period and then matured professionally to everyone’s benefit. Coltrane proved even more prolific in the studio than Miles; his 1956-58 work for the label fills 16 CDs here without even including the Davis sessions he plays on (a nice move by Fantasy to limit duplicate material). There are sessions led by Elmo Hope, Mal Waldron, Art Taylor, Red Garland, Ray Draper, Gene Ammons, and Tadd Dameron, as well as four leaderless sessions. By mid-1957 Coltrane was hitting his stride; his 1958 sessions as a leader are superb. Black Pearls is important, and Settin’ the Pace is thoroughly enjoyable, but Soultrane has arguably aged the best. He’s joined by drummer Taylor and Trane’s cohorts in the Miles Davis Quintet, Garland and Chambers, for first-rate bebop, highlighted by his first excursion on Billy Eckstine’s “I Want to Talk About You” and a hot jam on Count Basie and Dameron’s “Good Bait.”
Eric Kloss – Sky Shadows/In the Land of the Giants
Not all Weinstock’s signings achieved the fame of the above artists, of course, but the Prestige catalog is full of lesser-known but talented artists whose work is well worth exploring. Born blind, alto and tenor saxophonist Kloss was a child prodigy who recorded his first album at age 16 and had made eight before he turned 20. This reissue combines two of them, recorded a bit less than five months apart in 1968-69, both quintets including pianist Jaki Byard. Sky Shadows, which also features guitarist Pat Martino, found Kloss beginning to stretch out stylistically and move beyond the bebop and soul jazz of his earlier records. It’s on the Martino-penned title track where the most harmonic risks are taken; that and several other tracks feature unusual rhythmic patterns. The track list of In the Land of the Giants might suggest a retreat from these experiments, since it includes the Gershwin standard “Summertime,” Miles Davis’s “So What,” and Mercer Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be” in addition to two Kloss originals. But from the very beginning, Byard changes the harmonies of the familiar “Summertime,” and the solos on “So What” get pretty wild (and Byard’s comping goes outside changes). Martino is gone and there’s a two-horn frontline where Kloss—sticking to alto this time out—teams with tenorman Booker Ervin. Kloss retired in the early ‘80s and is unjustly forgotten. This reissue helps fill in the picture a bit and (at almost 76 minutes) is bursting with impassioned playing.
Lucky Thompson – Lucky Strikes
Thompson came out of swing but adapted to bebop similarly to tenorman Don Byas, something of an influence on Thompson. Besides being a fine tenor saxophonist, Lucky is one of the few beboppers of consequence to double on soprano sax. He’s heard on soprano on half this 1964 album’s eight tracks, accompanied by the imaginative and tasteful rhythm section of Hank Jones (piano), Richard Davis (bass), and Connie Kay (drums). Except for Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood,” given an affecting reading which progresses through increasingly elaborate ornamentation of the melody, and Bronislaw Kaper’s “Invitation,” the material’s all by Thompson, an underrated composer.
Sonny Criss – Portrait of Sonny Criss
Like his contemporary, the more famous (and more frequently recorded) Sonny Stitt, alto saxman Sonny Criss was deeply influenced by Charlie Parker but managed to emerge with a distinctive personal style that often emphasized naked emotion. Here, in a 1967 quartet recording with pianist Walter Davis, Paul Chambers, and drummer Alan Dawson, Criss starts out with a blatent Cannonball Adderley imitation penned by Davis but then blasts off with an uptempo “Wee,” the Denzil Best tune that was a favored blowing vehicle of the beboppers. He proves himself a fine ballad player on “God Bless the Child” and imbues “On a Clear Day” with a healthy dose of soul, roars through a blues, and swings through “Smile” alternating soul licks and flurries of bebop runs after opening the track with an entire unaccompanied chorus.
Yusef Lateef – Eastern Sounds
Even in this company, multi-instrumentalist Lateef stands out as a great individualist. He made numerous LPs for Prestige, mostly with fellow Detroit musicians; I pick this 1961 date with pianist Barry Harris, bassist Ernie Farrow (who doubles on the Turkish rabat), and drummer Lex Humphries because it best demonstrates the defining influence of world music on Lateef’s style. The prime example is “The Plum Blossom,” on which he plays the Chinese globular flute, a pentatonic instrument whose five-note range is compensated for by its affecting tone. He’s also heard playing tenor sax (on the wonderful standard “Don’t Blame Me” and a variety of originals), oboe (on “Blues for the Orient” and Alex North’s “Love Theme from Spartacus”), and the western transverse flute (on Alfred Newman’s “Love Theme from The Robe” and the exotic original “The Three Faces of Balal”). While this was relatively adventurous material for its time, Lateef makes it beautiful and accessible.
Steve Lacy – Steve Lacy Plays Thelonious Monk: Reflections
Soprano saxophonist Lacy’s fascination with the music of Monk led to this, the first LP entirely made up of Monk tunes that didn’t have the composer himself playing them. The piano seat is instead filled by Mal Waldron, a Prestige fixture as has probably become clear by this point; he’d been influenced by Monk but was very much his own man. Bassist Buell Neidlinger (with whom Lacy had already played in both Dixieland bands and in Cecil Taylor’s quartet!) and drummer Elvin Jones are empathetic partners on an album whose refraction of Monk tunes through a different perspective kept it a classic long after Monk’s perceived status had moved from eccentric on the fringes to genius in the jazz mainstream.
