BLP 1536

 J.R. Monterose

Released - December 1956

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, October 21, 1956
Ira Sullivan, trumpet; J.R. Monterose, tenor sax; Horace Silver, piano; Wilbur Ware, bass; "Philly" Joe Jones, drums.

tk.3 Wee-Jay
tk.7 Marc V
tk.9 The Third
tk.10 Bobbie Pin
tk.12 Ka-Link
tk.15 Beauteous

Session Photos

Wilber Ware

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Wee-Jay	J.R. Monterose	21/10/1956
The Third	Donald Byrd	21/10/1956
Bobbie Pin	J.R. Monterose	21/10/1956
Side Two
Marc V	J.R. Monterose	21/10/1956
Ka-Link	Philly Joe Jones	21/10/1956
Beauteous	Paul Chambers	21/10/1956

Credits

Cover Photo:	FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design:	REID MILES
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	LEONARD FEATHER

Liner Notes

THE first LP under his own name is an event comparable in importance for the jazzman with the coming-out party, the official social bow of a debutante; it is an event to which he looks forward, an occasion that must be carried off to optimum effect. J.R. Monterose was well aware, when Alfred Lion offered him a Blue Note date, that this was one time when the credit or blame would rest with him. "And fortunately," he adds, "these are the exactment I had in mind who would be able to do exactly what I wanted."

Before you run to the turntable for evidence of what he wanted and how it turned out, a little background information on the fledgling combo leader may be in order. Frank Anthony Monterose Jr. ("J.R." is simply a corruption of the Junior) is a native of Detroit, where be was born January 19, 1927. He is not, however, a Detroiter by any other token that the accident of birth, for before he was old enough to talk, let alone blow a horn, he was transplanted by his family to Utica, N.Y., which has been home base ever since.

J.R.'s musical studies were centered mainly on the clarinet; he had very little formal saxophone training. The first great influences were Coleman Hawkins and the late Chu Berry; but "the real inspiration that decided me to take up tenor seriously rather than clarinet or alto was, believe it or not, Tex Beneke."

J.R. was still in his early teens when his extra-scholastic musical experiences began to broaden, all the way from the Utica junior Symphony to a nearby strip joint. Meanwhile he was learning a few new things about modern harmony. "Most of my influences in learning chord changes were piano players. I dig pure harmonies; I'm for the Bud Powell school. Sam Mancuso, a guitarist and pianist with a real natural talent, helped me find the way."

After working with various territory bands in 1943 and '49, J.R. caught his first taste of the big time, in a somewhat distilled form, when he was invited to tour with an orchestra led by the late Henry "Hot Lips" Busse in 1950. "There was some good young fellows in the band," he recalls, " and once in a while there was an opportunity for a few solo bars." But after a long tour that wound up in California he felt sated with enough shuffle rhythm to last him for the rest of his life.

Back home, he worked locally around Utica and Syracuse through most of 1951 before spending six months with Buddy Rich - "That was when Buddy had a big band, with Davey Schildkraut, Allen Eager, and Philly Joe Jones playing second drums. But you just don't get enough blowing to do in a bag band. After six months I was drugged with my own playing, and I went back home and spent the next couple of years working in little joints, but with good men."

The next opportunity to display himself came in the Claude Thornhill band. Again, there were distinguished colleagues, among them Gene Quill and Dick Sherman, but again there was the frustration of big band limitations, and after a couple of months he decided he couldn't make it. Next came a steady gig for a solid year at the Nut Club in Greenwich Village with Nick Stabulas, under a liberal arrangement that allowed him to send subs any time he liked. This offered him chance for gigs with such intrepid modern jazzmen as Teddy Charles and Charlie Mingus. "I learned something from those associations; I didn't go about it the same way they did, from studying; I got it all from listening, but I guess I was doing what they wanted and they seemed to dig it."

Since then J.R. has free-lanced all around New York with many first-class musicians. Hawkins and Chu have been replaced by Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt among his idols and influences, as can easily be discerned by a a study of the performances on this LP.

While he was in Chicago about a year ago with Mingus, J.R. heard a young bass player named Wilbur Ware, and filed his name mentally for future reference. Ware later cam to New York, along with Ira Sullivan, as a member of the reorganized Jazz Messengers. Sullivan is one of those extraordinary musicians who can play virtually every instrument. "his father plays all the instruments and had them lying around the house, so Ira learned to play just about everything that has valves or keys," says J.R. Ira's trumpet and Wilbur's bass are allied here with the drums of Philly Joe Jones, whom J.R. had admired so much during his tenure with the Buddy Rich band, and the piano of Horace Silver, who was recently accorded yet another new honor when he was voted the "Greatest New Pianist" in the Musicians' Musicians poll taken among 100 jazzmen for The Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz.

Speaking of material used for his first session, J.R. says, "I was afraid it might sound like too much of me if we used nothing but my own tunes. Horace brought in the numbers by Byrd and Paul Chambers, and when I asked Joe if he had anything, he cam up with Ka-Link, so I think we have enough variety in the material to avoid monotony."

Wee-Jay, a Monterose original based on the chord changes on Out of Nowhere, kicked off the proceedings in an auspicious manner, as J.R.'s solo, with the repeated staccato third in the opening measures, shows the powerful swinging tendency that is maintained through three superb choruses. Ira's trumpet takes a few bars to get going, but by the end of the first chorus he is really cooking, and in the second he is clearly inspired. Horace's two choruses are simple and direct. The drums and bass trade fours for one chorus, then the theme returns and there is a pleasant retard at the end.

The Third, a minor opus by Donald Byrd, is based on a 12-bar construction, with solos by Horace, J.R., Ware and Ira. Notice the apparent Sonny Rollins influence in J.R.'s work here and the fine form and phrasing on Ira's solo.

Bobbie Pin, a happy-sounding, medium-fast opus, gives Ira the first solo, followed by a bass chorus that is almost guitar-like in the flexibility of its conception. J.R.'s solo here is particularly well-constructed and swings consistently. After Horace's choruses, there are a series of fours by tenor and drums before the theme returns, going out with an unexpected Latin-rhythm fade.

Marc V moves like mad, with Ira backing J.R. on the latter's second and third choruses, then taking a couple of his own. Following the piano and bass solos, Philly Joe gets a workout on this one with a few breaks before the theme returns.

Ka-Link, presumably a sound effect title for the cymbal beat that kicks it off, features J.R. in a long string of 12-bar choruses.

Beauteous, written by bassist Paul Chambers, is a a smooth unison theme played in a tempo that might be considered moderato by modern jazz standards, and using Latin rhythm on the release. After the Monterose and Silver solos, Horace has an interesting contribution that stays almost entirely within an octave or so of middle C. Wilbur Ware has a quietly effective chorus before the reprise of the theme.

Too many musicians in recent years have been afforded the opportunity of making their own LP before they were quite ready for it. Fortunately, in the case of J.R. Monterose, it is abundantly clear that he waited until the propitious moment, and that he was as ready, willing and eager to prepare this session as his rapidly-growing fan following should be to receive it.

-LEONARD FEATHER
(Author Of The Encyclopedia Yearbook Of Jazz)

Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Remastering by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT J. R. MONTEROSE

At time of its release, the present album provided one more piece of evidence that Blue Note producer Alfred Lion was an extraordinary talent scout. In its leader, tenor saxophonist J. R. Monterose, as well as in Sidemen Ira Sullivan and Wilbur Ware, it featured three new voices poised to become major contributors on both their respective instruments and the jazz scene in general. As was too often the case, however, the combination of the drug culture that surrounded jazz at the time and the music's growing commercial woes as rock and roll took hold with the mass audience led each player into various degrees of scuffling and obscurity.

Bassist Ware (1923-79), the most original of the three in terms of instrumental conception, gained the greatest attention after his brief stay with the reconstituted Jazz Messengers in the summer of 1956. His powerful rhythmic attack and bold harmonic choices were featured on several sessions at both Blue Note and Riverside, and jazz history remembers him as the original bassist in the 1957 Thelonious Monk quartet that also included John Coltrane and Shadow Wilson. Things took a bad turn, however, when Ware disappeared in the middle of a Monk perormance at the Five Spot. Further erratic behavior led even Ware's champions among musicians and labels to think twice before employing the bassist, and his presence on record sessions dwindled to a trickle by decade's end. For a sense of what might have been, hear Ware's brilliant work on the Riverside album Monk's Music and Sonny Rollins's Blue Note classic A Night at the Village Vanguard.

Monterose's plunge into obscurity was even more precipitous, despite what to the point of this recording had been a most impressive apprenticeship. His earliest sideman work in 1955. under the leadership of Teddy Charles, Jon Eardley, and Eddie Bert, demonstrated both comfort and command in what at the time were diverse wings of the modern jazz camp. This impression had been confirmed earlier in 1956 on what have proven to be Monterose's most widely known recordings, Charles Mingus's Pithecanthropus Erectus and Kenny Dorham's 'Round About Midnight at the Café Bohemia. Yet little was heard from Monterose as either leader or sideman after this album. He made an excellent quartet date tor the small Jaro label in 1959, then commenced two decades of drifting through small-town America and, by the late-1960s, several obscure corners of Europe. What recordings Monterose did make in the '60s were cut in such unlikely locales as Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois.

In the late-1970s, Monterose began performing and recording again, primarily in the Albany, New York area where he had grown up. From that point until his death in 1993, he would emerge every year or so on one or another small label, frequently sounding the worse for wear. He did make one exceptional duo album with Tommy Flanagan, which found him playing soprano sax as well as tenor, and making up in feeling what he occasionally lacked in execution. One of the date's originals, "Pain and Suffering and a Little Pleasure," summarizes Monterose's entire career.

Ira Sullivan has been luckier, and as these notes are written is still playing one or another of his many instruments. His brief stay with Art Blakey (where he primarily played tenor sax) was followed by a return to Chicago, where he focused on trumpet and flugelhorn in a strong quintet of his own that featured Nicky Hill on tenor sax. Occasional recordings with the likes of Johnny Griffin and Roland Kirk allowed Sullivan to demonstrate his multi-instrumental skills (on one session with Griffin, Sullivan is heard on alto, tenor, and baritone saxes, trumpet, and peck horn), but his disinclination to travel and limited recording activity made him the prototype of the local legend. The obscurity continued after he relocated to Miami, despite the excellent 1967 Atlantic album Horizons. It was not until a decade later, when he began to appear more frequently on record and joined old friend Red Rodney in a successful touring quintet, that the world at large began to give Ira Sullivan a portion of his due.

Regarding the present music, Donald composition "The Third" had first appeared on a June 1956 Jazz Messengers session featuring Sullivan and Ware under the title "L'il T, " then was recorded again by Byrd and Art Farmer in August on the Prestige album Two Trumpets as "The Third." (Adding to the confusion, a second Byrd piece from the Messengers date, originally titled "The New Message," was called "L'il T" on Lee Morgan's first 31ue Note album.) The Paul Chambers composition "Beauteous" was recorded in May 1957 on Chambers's own Blue Note album, Paul Chambers Quintet.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2008