BLP 4098

Ike Quebec - Blue and Sentimental

Released - May 1963

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 16, 1961
Ike Quebec, tenor sax, piano; Grant Green, guitar; Paul Chambers, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums.

tk.3 Like
tk.4 Don't Take Your Love From Me
tk.15 Minor Impulse
tk.17 Blues For Charlie
tk.28 Blue And Sentimental

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Blue and Sentimental	Count Basie, Mack David, Jerry Livingston	16 December 1961
Minor Impulse	Ike Quebec	16 December 1961
Don't Take Your Love from Me	Henry Nemo	16 December 1961
Side Two
Blues for Charlie	Grant Green	16 December 1961
Like	Ike Quebec	16 December 1961
Count Every Star	Bruno Coquatrix, Sammy Gallop	16 December 1961

Liner Notes

OVER the years. Blue Note has developed a well-deserved reputation as a label which continually fosters new talent. It has not, as of 1962, slackened its activity in this direction. Newcomers Freddie Hubbard, Grant Green and Stanley Turrentine are testimony to this. It has also continued to present its established artists like Horace Silver, Art Blakey and Jimmy Smith at regular, well-regulated intervals. Last year, a new dimension was added: the fashioning of a comeback trail for deserving, neglected talents. Two veterans of the Forties who were successfully recorded under this program were Dexter Gordon (Doin' Allright 4077 and Dexter Caling 4083) and Leo Parker (Let Me Tell You 'Bout It 4087 and Rollin' with Leo 4095).

The most recent rediscovery is perhaps the happiest of all for Blue Note because of the personal relationship which has existed between the company and the musician for a long time. Actually, it is not so much a rediscovery, for although Ike Quebec did not record for Blue Note from the mid 1940s (Blue Harlem, Facin' the Face, Mad About You, etc.) until he did some 45s in 1959 and 1960, Alfred Lion of Blue Note kept in touch with him. On a Sonny Clark date (Leapin' and Lopin' 4091) Quebec made a guest appearance on one number. His full, warm performance on Deep in a Dream was perhaps the convincer needed for Blue Note to record him in a set of his own. What followed was Heavy Soul (4093) which served everyone notice that he was back!

Heavy Soul was done in the company of Freddie Roach, an organist who is anything but heavy; bassist Milt Hinton, a compatriot from Ike's days with the Cab Calloway orchestra; and dependable Al Harewood, the unobtrusive, steady drummer, most often heard on Blue Note with Horace Parlan.

For Blue and Sentimental, the supporting cast is completely changed. The bass-drums team consists of the combination which meshed so well in the Miles Davis group on so many occasions-Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. Instead of organ, there is the guitar of Grant Green, one of the bright new lights, on his instrument and a Blue Note recording star in his own right. On one number. Count Every Star, Sonny Clark is at the piano, returning Ike's visit to his date. Sonny, however, is not heard solo.

Any other time you hear a piano in the background, it is being played by Quebec, who started his musical explorations on that instrument long before he joined the Barons of Rhythm on tenor in 1940.

Like the majority of musicians who grew up in the big bands of the 1930s and the early 1940s, Quebec has a large, rich sound and an ability to play with other musicians, no matter whether the group be large or small. The knowledge and experience he brings to his instrument are things a musician cannot go out and buy. That combination of strength and tenderness, each called on specifically when needed, is not something acquired in a few years, either. Ike Quebec is old enough to have had the playing time and young enough in his thinking not to be dated.

In 1954, when the original edition of Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz was being prepared, Quebec answered the "favorites" section of his questionnaire with Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Stan Getz. Certainly, his general area of reference would be the Hawkins "school" but as Feather pointed out in the notes to Heavy Soul, it was evident in the 1940s that Ike had developed a personality of his own. Even his occasional and most welcome rasps are different than the similar effect that Ben Webster uses.

Quebec's style has undergone modernization since the mid-40s but in no abrupt or drastic manner. His admiration for Getz is not reflected in his playing and a mid-50s penchant for Sonny Rollins (I heard him playing in a Rollins groove one night at the Cafe Bohemia in 1955) does not seem to have remained. There are times when he coincides with Gene Ammons as they seem to meet at the same intersection from their parallel but different roads. Basically, Ike is himself and this is praiseworthy in itself. His playing represents the best of a period considered to be one of the most fruitful in jazz and certainly one of its most melodious. The last quality is something that is most welcome today, both for itself and as a leavener.

Ballads are a forte; Quebec's province, you might say. Ike does three lovely ballads here, including the title number which leads off the set. As a ballad balance, he has added two tunes of his own, the swinging Minor Impulse and Like. They fall between the sentimental of Blue and Sentimental, Don't Take Your Love from Me and Count Every Star, and the Blues for Charlie, Grant Green's tribute to Charlie Christian.

Blue and Sentimental is a tender rendition by Quebec which will put you in mind, in several places, of Count Basie's famous version featuring Herschel Evans and Lester Young. Most of all, it is Ike, pouring his heart into and out of his horn in a moving performance.

Minor Impulse, as its title implies, is in a minor key. It swings in a medium groove with fine solos by the wide-toned Quebec, the facile Green and Chambers. Notice the ease with which Ike swings.

Don't Take Your Love from Me is a seldom-played ballad from the '40s which Quebec happily revives. Ike's closing solo, after Green has made his point, demonstrates how he can be interesting at even the slowest tempo, a tempo which might drag in less capable hands.

Blues for Charlie is cast in a deep-dish blues mold by Green who sets the stage for Quebec's powerful statement with a poignant solo of his own. Talk about real soul-Ike's is the genuine article.

Like is a lively swinger whose chord structure sounds reminiscent of the Sposin' sequence. Quebec and Green move straight ahead, propelled strongly by Jones and Chambers.

Green's clear, singing single-line opens Count Every Star with Clark filling in quietly behind him. This is really Grant's vehicle for Quebec only has a short, albeit effective, solo before the guitarist returns.

Speaking of returns, it must be obvious to all by now that Ike's comeback is one of the most welcome in a long time. For those of you who have been laboring under the misapprehension that Quebec was in Canada, let me give you a little geography lesson. Montreal may be in Quebec, but Quebec is in New York and Blue Note's got him. Ike's got rhythm. Who could ask for anything more?

-IRA GITLER

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

1998 CD Reissue Liner Notes

Note: Ike Quebec's version of "Blue And Sentimental" has insured this album's entry into jazz history. But it is also fascinating for the sparse setting of guitar, bass and drums set against Ike's magnificent big sound. Two standards "That Old Black Magic' and "It's Alright With Me" from this session are issued here for the first time. It is likely that either Ike or Alfred Lion did not consider them up to par with the rest of the session because the original album release included "Count Every Star," which was actually done a week later at a Grant Green session. Nevertheless, with the luxury of historical perspective, these two discoveries are fine additions to this classic album.

-MICHAEL CUSCUNA

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT BLUE & SENTIMENTAL

Ike Quebec's relationship with Blue Note is among the most memorable examples of artist/label synergy in recorded jazz history. Quebec's recorded performances span his 1944 debut a bandleader and sessions taped mere weeks before his death on January 16, 1963, a period in which Quebec also introduced Alfred Lion and Francis Wolf to numerous musicians and acted as multi-purpose liaison in the studio.

At the outset of his career, Quebec played a primary role in Blue Note's documentation of exciting changes in small-group jazz. The five sessions he led between 1944 and '46 introduced a swing-oriented component to the traditional and boogie-woogie emphasis of the labels early years. Even after the final documentation of Quebec's Swingtet era, his appreciation of and friendship with Thelonious Monk, Tadd Dameron, and Bud Powell made these new voices comfortable at Blue Note, turning the label overnight into a significant home for modern jazz.

After seriously scuffling through much of the Fifties, Quebec reunited with Lion and Wolf in 1959 and resumed both of his previous duties. Dexter Gordon and Leo Parker, who Ira Gitler mentions as fellow bop-era rediscoveries featured on then-recent LPs, had been suggested by Quebec, and younger musicians including organist Freddie Roach were also signed at his suggestion. Quebec resumed his recording career on July 1, 1959, and participated in nearly two-dozen sessions at Rudy Van Gelder's studios in the succeeding 3 1/2 years. A large portion of the instances preceding those that produced Blue & Sentimental involved performances intended for release on 45-rpm discs. Quebec's initial success had been generated by such 78" hits as "Blue Harlem" and "I Surrender Dear, " and his warmth and immediacy guaranteed with a broad-based audience. The singles he produced at the start of his reunion run may be the last great examples of jukebox jazz.

It took more than two years for Quebec to record an LP of his own. His brilliant contribution on Sonny Clark's "Deep in a Dream" in November 1961 that Gitler references inspired three Quebec album sessions before year's end, plus two more and another 45" date in the early months of 1962. The majority of these ensembles, in both singles and long-play formats, featured the Hammond organ.

This was hardly surprising, as Quebec's tenor, funky before the term gained popularity, was an obvious fit with the instrument that figured the post-bop soul surge. Unlike others who worked in similar settings, Quebec generally employed upright bass with organ, and frequently (as on Heavy Soul, recorded three weeks before most of Blue & Sentimental, and It Might Spring, from only a week earlier) omitted guitar.

The present music has guitar throughout, no organ, and, with the exception of his own impromptu comping on "Minor Impulse" and "Don't Take Your Love from Me" and Sonny Clark on "Count Every Star," no piano. The guitar-bass-drum complement to Quebec's artistry is a brilliant choice, but was it one of necessity? Bringing Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones in as the rhythm team strongly suggests that the participation of an organist had not been anticipated, just as the history Quebec and Green shared with Sonny Clark (another Blue Note rediscovery of the period) can't help but suggest that a specific pianist's presence was expected. Green's single-string focus and general avoidance of the traditional gestures of a guitar accompanist, reinforced by the leader's occasional keyboard forays, add further evidence that Quebec and Lion may have begun with a quintet instrumentation in mind. Yet the leaner setting works perfectly, evoking an aura of relaxation and monumentality, with the deepest blue of accents, that recalls not only Quebec's initial triumphs of a decade earlier (where Tiny Grimes was frequently featured on guitar) but also the classic Kansas City Six sessions built around Lester Young and electric guitar pioneer Eddie Durham.

The two bonus tracks are standards recorded at the December 16 session that produced most of Blue & Sentimental. They are excellent performances, especially "That Old Black Magic," and could easily have been included on the original album from a quality perspective. Yet the more introspective mood of tracks one through five were better served by "Count Every Star," despite Quebec's relatively brief appearance. This was actually recorded a week after the other titles, and is one of several instances in which Quebec jumped from producer's aide to sideman when another artist was recording. Here the date was Sonny Clark's, the resulting Gooden's Corner album did not appear for two decades, and the heretofore incorrectly identified rhythm section includes Sam Jones on bass and Louis Hayes on drums.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2007