BLP 1513

 Thad Jones - Detroit - New York Junction

Released - May 1956

Recording and Session Information

Audio-Video Studios, NYC, March 13, 1956
Thad Jones, trumpet; Billy Mitchell, tenor sax #1,2,4,5; Tommy Flanagan, piano #1,2,4,5; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Oscar Pettiford, bass; Shadow Wilson, drums #1,2,4,5.

tk.3 Tariff
tk.14 Blue Room
tk.19 Little Girl Blue
tk.28 Scratch
tk.30 Zec

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Blue Room	Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers	13/03/1956
Tariff	Thad Jones	13/03/1956
Little Girl Blue	Hart, Rodgers	13/03/1956
Side Two
Title	Author	Recording Date
Scratch	Thad Jones	13/03/1956
Zec	Thad Jones	13/03/1956

Credits

Cover Photo:	FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design:	REID K. MILES
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	BABS GONZALES

Liner Notes

Ever since it lost its amateur standing as a rural folk music and began to earn attention as an esthetic American art form in the view of the literati, jazz has been undergoing a process that might best be described as "citification."

Because of the emergence of several of the early jazzmen from its nether regions, the first community thus to be citified in jazz was New Orleans, even though simultaneously with the alleged birth of jazz in that town there was no shortage of similar music in Memphis, Tenn, or Sedalia, Mo, or even New Brunswick, NJ. After that we had Chicago jazz, later Kansas City jazz, and more recently Los Angeles has produced something often described as West Coast jazz.

The citification of music may have no exact musical basis in some of these instances; in any case, rapid communications via radio, records, and traveling musicians made every style the property of jazz as a whole almost as soon as it had developed. A major factor that has tended to citify jazz is the concentration of almost all the important technical facilities in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. It is not until a musician or group migrates to one of these three that he has much of a chance for international recognition nowadays.

Thus, the title "Detroit - New York Junction" signifies a happy marriage between the rapidly growing musical produce of the Motor City and the magnetic tape of the Big Apple.

Thaddeus Joseph Jones is the latest and greatest talent to emerge from America's automotive areas. Born March 28 1923 in Pontiac, Mich, he is almost five years younger than his brother Hank, the distinguished pianist heard lately with Benny Goodman. A third brother, Elvin, is beginning to make a name for himself as a drummer.

The three Jones boys had their own combo for a while in the late 1930s around Detroit and neighboring towns. Thad worked in Saginaw with a Bostonian who had wandered westward, saxophonist Sonny Stitt. After some more local work in Michigan and a couple of years of army service from 1943—46, he had his own band for a while in Oklahoma City. Back in Detroit, he spent two years in a combo led by Billy Mitchell, the tenor sax man heard as Thad's own sideman on this LP. (Billy, at this writing, is bringing the doctrines of modern jazz to audiences in Pakistan and points East as a member of the State Department-blessed Dizzy Gillespie band.)

Thad joined the Count Basie orchestra in May 1954. It was not long before musicians, then critics, then fans began to acclaim him. He should have won the Down Beat Critics' Poll in 1955 as new trumpet star of the year, but missed it by a hair (half a vote, to be precise).

Actually Thad, in more than two years with Basie, has had less of a chance than one might expect to display his talent fully. For one thing, he has to share the solo chores with another great trumpeter, Joe Newman; for another, his harmonic conception on solos may be a little in advance of those of the accompanying rhythm section or ensemble. At all events, for those whose picture of Thad is conceived in the memory of that everlasting "Pop Goes the Weasel" quote his first on "April in Paris," Blue Note LP may come as an ear-opener.

The combo with him is just small enough to set him off perfectly, just large enough never to leave a bare setting. Kenny Burrell, the guitarist, and Tommy Flanagan, the pianist, are both fellow Detroiters who have lately made their mark on the New York scene. Oscar Pettiford is too well known to need any formal presentation, while Shadow Wilson, among other credits, played drums with Hampton, Hines, and Herman, as well as with Basie, Jacquet, and Garner.

"Blue Room" is treated in a buoyant, blithe fashion at an easy tempo, with the full-bodied Mitchell tenor, the loose, easy Burrell guitar, and incredibly agile Pettiford's bass all featured before Thad moves in cautiously, gracefully, like a panther about to pounce. There is a similar elegance to the grace notes of "Tarriff" as they trip gently over the tenor's second line in the ingenious ensemble. And on "Little Girl Blue" played simply by trumpet, guitar, and bass, you may perhaps find the most distinctive moments of the entire set. The verse is played as a waltz; Oscar Uses bow; Kenny uses chords; Thad uses every weapon at his disposal, and with the dexterity of a master. This is ballad jazz of a high order.

It is on the lengthy '"Scratch," though, that you may find your dearest and fullest view of the magnificence of Thad Jones's talent. The long-note phrases, in which contrasting accents compensate for the scarcity of notes, are followed by peppery passages alive with sixteenth notes. Thad's symmetry of construction is one of his most telling virtues: hitting on a fanciful idea, he may decide to repeat it with the accents or the harmonic placement changed for the sake of variety. In other words, when he builds a solo he constructs a continuous melody, which is the end to which every improvised jazz solo should aspire, and one that few can attain.

"Zec" is another original, kicked off much faster than "Scratch" and played in trumpet-tenor unison, a boppish melody that sails right into Thad's first solo. Flanagan's single-note lines on his swinging solo earmark him as one of the year's brightest new piano discoveries.

In view of Alfred Lion's past record for nurturing new jazz talent, I'm not at all surprised that it was he who engineered this felicitous Detroit-New York junction.

-LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Encyclopedia of Jazz)

Cover Design by REID K. MILES
Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT DETROIT-NEW YORK JUNCTION

Thad Jones's first Blue Note album reinforces its title by including two of the trumpeter's associates from his days at Detroit's Blue Bird club. "I had a band at the Blue Bird," Billy Mitchell recalled in a 1997 conversation. "It was a quartet until Thad sat in one night. The next night, he was working with us permanently. We recorded for Dee Gee records which was jointly owned by Dizzy Gillespie and Dave Usher, when Terry Pollard was still in the band — she was later replaced by Tommy Flanagan. Terry played vibes and piano, and when she took a vibes solo on the recording session, Thad comped for on piano. Thad's brother Elvin was in the band at the time, too. In fact, Elvin had never played in a professional band before that."

The Dee Gee session Mitchell mentions, most readily available on the Savoy anthology Swing, Not Spring, is often listed in discographies as having taken place in 1948, although Mitchell confirmed that it was more likely done in 1951 or '52. Among its four titles are "Zec" (erroneously titled "The Zec" and attributed to Mitchell on the Savoy reissue) and the arrangement of "Blue Room" heard here.

Flanagan and guitarist Kenny Burrell also represent the Motor City on the present album. Both of these giants-to-be had recently arrived in New York and wasted no time in establishing their uncommon musicianship and flexibility. Burrell got into the studios first, recording with Franks Foster and Wess on Savoy a week earlier; and the guitarist employed the rhythm section heard here a day earlier when he cut the bulk of what would become Kenny Burrell, Volume 2. Two of the era's most accomplished and already established musicians, bassist Oscar Pettiford and drummer Shadow Wilson, complete the sextet. As a sign of the present band's compatibility, note that it contains Basie sidemen past (Wilson), present (Jones), and future (Mitchell), as well as one participant who had already made an important contribution to the recorded legacy of Thelonious Monk (Pettiford), and two who would do so in the near future (Wilson and Jones).

As Leonard Feather points out, Jones was in danger of becoming known as the Basie trumpeter who solos infrequently and likes to start with outrageous quotations. (His turn on a second Basie classic from 1955, "Corner Pocket," had commenced with a citation from "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White.") Yet there was much more to the trumpeter's conception, as his small-group work on Debut and Period had already made clear, and as the infrequent yet invaluable combo sessions he subsequently produced only reinforced. Jones was closer to Dizzy Gillespie than most second-generation modern trumpeters, in part because he possessed the technical capacity that others lacked; but he put his own audacious spin on his source, much the way in which Henry "Red" Allen had built on Louis Armstrong in an earlier period.

The three Jones originals here also illustrate a singular approach to writing, one that would be overlooked by many until the Thad Jones/MeI Lewis Jazz Orchestra was formed a decade later. "It wasn't like bebop," Flanagan once explained, "it was just the way Thad wrote. He just had a way of making things sound familiar, but as far as I know most of his chord structures are completely original. There was one that I tried to match with some other tunes, but I could never work it out. I guess it was just one of those 'Jonesisms.' Many of his originals are just that — very original."

Of the writing here, "Tariff" (misspelled "Tarriff" on the original LP) contrasts a dancing trumpet line against held notes by the tenor. "Scratch," not to be confused with compositions of the same name associated with the Jazz Crusaders and Kenny Barron, is 36 bars long and one of the trumpeter's familiar-sounding forms that recalls "I Remember You" in spots. "Zec" was a tribute to Mitchell. "l was the bandleader in Detroit and did all of the business," the saxophonist explained, "so they called me 'The Executive."' "Zec" has had the longest life, later appearing on Pepper Adams's Critic's Choice in 1957, Steve Coleman's Rhythm in Mind in 1991 , and Flanagan's all-Jones album from 1994, Let's, which also includes the pianist's version of "Scratch."

— Bob Blumenthal, 2006