John Haley “Zoot” Sims (October 29, 1925 – March 23, 1985) was an American jazz saxophonist, playing mainly tenor but also alto (and, later, soprano) saxophone.
He first gained attention in the “Four Brothers” sax section of Woody Herman’s big band, afterward enjoying a long solo career, often in partnership with fellow saxmen Gerry Mulligan and Al Cohn. (wikipedia)
The Modern Art of Jazz by Zoot Sims (also released as One to Blow On) is an album by American jazz saxophonist Zoot Sims recorded in 1956 and released on the Dawn label.
These early 1956 sessions feature Zoot Sims in top form playing a pair of standards and originals by members of the quintet. Bob Brookmeyer is the perfect foil for the tenor saxophonist, as they seamless interweave intricate lines throughout the record, especially in an upbeat take of “September in the Rain.” Pianist John Williams contributed the cool “Down at the Loft” and solos brilliantly on every track. Brookmeyer penned the slinky “Our Pad” with drummer Gus Johnson, a track that would have fit a typical Gerry Mulligan date (with whom both Sims and Brookmeyer worked from time to time).
Zoot Sims & Bob Brookmeyer:
Sims contributed three originals, but the hottest solos come in the closer, appropriately titled “One to Blow On.” Anchoring the rhythm section is the great bassist Milt Hinton, who is easily identifiable after just a few notes during his solos. Though most of this music was reissued on the Biograph CD The Rare Dawn Sessions, “September in the Rain” was unjustly omitted, so serious fans of Zoot Sims will want to look for this rare LP as well. (by Ken Dryden)
Personnel:
Bob Brookmeyer (trombone)
Milt Hinton (bass)
Gus Johnson (drums)
Zoot Sims (saxophone)
John Williams (piano)
Tracklist:
01. September In The Rain (Warren/Dubin) 5.08
02. Down At The Loft (Williams) 4.31
03. Ghost Of A Chance (Young/Washington/Crosby) 6.39
04. No So Deep (Sims) 7.03
05. Them There Eyes (Pinkard/Tracey) 6.01
06. Our Pad (Brookmeyer/Johnson) 4.45
07. Dark Clouds (Sims) 4.34
08. One To Blow On (Sims) 5:31
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09. When The Blues Come On (Cohn/Darwin) 4.42
10. Buried Gold (Sims) 6.16
* (coming soon)
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More from Zoot Sims in ths blog:
Norman Luboff (May 14, 1917 – September 22, 1987) was an American music arranger, music publisher, and choir director.
Donald Christopher Barber OBE (17 April 1930 – 2 March 2021) was an English jazz musician, best known as a bandleader and trombonist. As well as scoring a UK top twenty trad jazz hit with “Petite Fleur” in 1959, he helped the careers of many musicians. These included the blues singer Ottilie Patterson, who was at one time his wife, and Lonnie Donegan, whose appearances with Barber triggered the skiffle craze of the mid-1950s and who had his first transatlantic hit, “Rock Island Line”, while with Barber’s band. He provided an audience for Donegan and, later, Alexis Korner, and sponsored African-American blues musicians to visit Britain, making Barber a significant figure in launching the British rhythm and blues and “beat boom” of the 1960s.
Mary Mayo first got started as a radio singer in North Carolina just after the end of World War II. Gifted with a four-octave range, she was spotted by Tex Beneke, who was leading the post-war version of the Glenn Miller Orchestra. While singing with Beneke, she married Al Ham, an arranger and bass player in the band.
Richard Hyman (born March 8, 1927) is an American jazz pianist and composer. Over a 60-year career, he has worked as a pianist, organist, arranger, music director, electronic musician, and composer. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters fellow in 2017.
Pieces and similarly arranged and performed for Miles Davis: Porgy and Bess, a choreographed production of the Dance Theater of Dallas. In 2007, his Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which had been commissioned by the John G. Shedd Institute for the Arts, and set by Toni Pimble of the Eugene Ballet, premiered in Eugene, Oregon.
Kenneth Earl Burrell (born July 31, 1931) is an American jazz guitarist known for his work on the Blue Note label. His collaborations with Jimmy Smith produced the 1965 Billboard Top Twenty hit album Organ Grinder Swing. He has cited jazz guitarists Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt as influences, along with blues guitarists T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters. Furthermore, Jimi Hendrix has cited Burrell as an influence.
Sir George Shearing, OBE (13 August 1919 – 14 February 2011) was a British jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group that recorded for Discovery Records, MGM Records and Capitol Records. The composer of over 300 titles, including the jazz standard “Lullaby of Birdland”, had multiple albums on the Billboard charts during the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s. He died of heart failure in New York City, at the age of 91.
In 1947, Shearing emigrated to the United States, where his harmonically complex style mixing swing, bop and modern classical influences gained popularity. One of his first performances was at the Hickory House. He performed with the Oscar Pettiford Trio and led a jazz quartet with Buddy DeFranco, which led to contractual problems, since Shearing was under contract to MGM and DeFranco to Capitol Records.
Alternate frontcover
An extremely popular player in the ’50s, Don Elliott was a fine soloist in the swing mode. He first studied piano and accordion, then played baritone horn and mellophone in his high school band. He switched to trumpet while playing in local dance bands, and as a teen worked with fellow teen Bill Evans. Elliott studied harmony at the Institute of Musical Art in New York in the mid-’40s, then played trumpet in an army band. Following that, he studied arranging and vibes at the University of Miami in 1947. When he returned to New York, Elliott played with George Shearing, Teddy Wilson, and Benny Goodman. He later performed and recorded with Terry Gibbs and Buddy Rich before forming his own band. Elliott took “miscellaneous instrument” honors in Down Beat five straight years in the late ’50s. During the ’60s and ’70s, he did Broadway shows and composed film scores and songs for radio and television commercials. He returned to jazz in 1975, serving as a guest soloist with the New York Jazz Repertory Company at Carnegie Hall. (by Ron Wynn)
Besetzung:
Tracklist:
This LP comes from a 1956 concert at Northwestern University, at a time when Broonzy had returned to his rural roots and was playing the folk circuit. (He would die two years later at age 55.) Like a lot of folk shows of that time, it includes several old chestnuts that we have by now heard too many times – “Midnight Special” (the only real duet by Broonzy and Seeger), and “This Train Is Bound for Glory”, “Crawdad Hole”, and “Why Don’t You Come Home Bill Bailey”, all performed by Broonzy. On “This Train” (perhaps most notable for the inclusion of some civil-rights lyrics) and “Crawdad Hole”, Broonzy basically limits himself to rhythm guitar, employing a sort of do-wacka-do pattern; on “Bill Bailey”, he adds a lot of fills. There’s also a play-party song attributed to Leadbelly, “Green Corn”, led by Seeger, that doesn’t really get anywhere. Other than that, though, the material is pretty interesting. Seeger contributes “Mrs. McGrath”, an uptempo Irish traditional song with antiwar lyrics, and “Goofin’ Off Suite”, an instrumental on banjo that includes his interpretation of “Ode to Joy”. Broonzy plays three blues. The first, “Backwater Blues”, is a 12-bar blues written by Bessie Smith about a late-1920s flood in Mississippi, and is the only slow blues on the record; it gives him the chance to stretch out some on both guitar and vocals. The other two are originals – “Willie Mae”, another 12-bar blues but one on which Broonzy varies the length of the lines greatly, and “Alberta,” featuring a dramatically drawn-out a cappella intro (a device he uses on a number of tracks). But the real surprise is “The Glory of Love”, an old Tin Pan Alley song that Broonzy gives a Piedmont-blues treatment and on which he really shows off his prowess on guitar. The LP also has a couple of distinguishing characteristics that go beyond the music itself – the between-song patter, and the sense of listening in on a moment in history when the folk song revival was, in the words of Studs Terkel (who supplied the somewhat-overwritten liner notes), in its infancy. (fatpidgeon)
Jacqueline François (born Jacqueline Guillemautot) was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, in January 30, 1922, died March 7, 2009 in Courbevoie, Hauts-de-Seine, France).
The labels from the Brazil edition
ManyFantasticColors 