BLP 4138

Harold Vick - Steppin' Out

Released - January 1964

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, May 27, 1963
Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Harold Vick, tenor sax; John Patton, organ; Grant Green, guitar; Ben Dixon, drums.

tk.5 Trimmed In Blue
tk.7 Vicksville
tk.12 Steppin' Out
tk.14 Our Miss Brooks
tk.16 Dotty's Dream
tk.17 Laura

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Our Miss Brooks	Harold Vick	27 May 1963
Trimmed in Blue	Harold Vick	27 May 1963
Laura	David Raksin, Johnny Mercer	27 May 1963
Side Two
Dotty's Dream	Harold Vick	27 May 1963
Vicksville	Harold Vick	27 May 1963
Steppin' Out	Harold Vick	27 May 1963

Liner Notes

MORE and more, new musicians are coming to light as a result of work in what are generally called “organ combos,” as well as the various latter-day versions of the small rhythm-and-blues combos that proliferated in the forties.

One of the most striking of these musicians is a tenor saxophonist named Harold Vick, who plays a strong, direct, blues-base horn with great skill and emotional impact. After long tenure as a sideman, most recently for organist John Patton on the latter’s debut LP Along Came John (Blue Note 4130), he made an LP of his own, contained within these covers.

Vick is a quiet, soft-spoken young man who was born in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, on April 3, 1936. He attributes his initial interest in music to a pianist cousin, Thomas Cofield, who later introduced him to Charles Wood, director of the high school band in Rocky Mountain, who become Vick’s first teacher. Vick continues to feel a debt to Cofield and Wood for much of what he has learned.

By the time Vick had graduated high school, he knew that he wanted to make music his career, but he was also aware of the difficulty and disappointment which are often the lot of a would-be professional musician. Therefore, he decided that he would learn something else, in case he was not successful with music. Accordingly, when he enrolled in Howard University, in Washington, D.C., it was as a psychology major, with the intent of becoming a clinical psychologist. He had not picked a particularly easy field for his second choice, either.

During his third year in college, however, Vick was hired by Joe Henderson, who led the house band at the Howard Theatre in Washington, a theatre which Vick compares to New York’s Apollo. The big band experience was valuable to him, he says, teaching him, as it did, to play the many different kinds of music required by the travelling acts.

More convinced than ever that he would be a musician, he continued his studies in psychology, and was graduated from Howard University in 1958. But all thoughts of clinical psychology were shelved shortly after graduation, when he was hired to join the band of tenor saxophonist Red Prysock. Then ensued a series of rhythm-and-blues jobs, including work with Paul Williams, Ruth Brown and Lloyd Price. Vocalist Price’s band included two men who are on the present record: organist John Patton, who, at the time he worked for Price, was a pianist; and drummer Ben Dixon.

Leaving Price, Vick come to New York, where he worked briefly with Howard McGhee and Philly Joe Jones. Then, in 1960, he met organist Jack McDuff, with whom he has worked on and off ever since, and with whom he remains. When he first joined McDuff, a fellow worker was the guitarist Grant Green, who plays here, and who certainly needs no introduction to followers of the records released by Blue Note.

Asked about this, his first LP as a leader, Vick most especially stressed the quality of the personnel. It sometimes happens on a man’s first record that he is pressed into service with the local pros, whom he might not know or have worked with, and of whose reputations he might be so much in owe that a cold. nervous atmosphere is generated in the studio. This was not the case with Vick, “These are the guys I always wanted to be with on a record, if I ever got a date,” he says, “guys who understood my temperament, so things would be relaxed.” Perhaps only a psychologist would think in terms of temperament, but the attitude obviously paid off.

Vick, wisely, chose men whose work he knew well, and who, perhaps more important, knew his. Patton and Dixon were colleagues from the Lloyd Price days, Green from McDuff. The only person with whom he had not worked was the trumpeter Blue Mitchell. Vick had played sessions with Mitchell, though, and knew from that experience that Mitchell was the trumpeter he wonted if and when he recorded as a leader.

I, was, I think, an astute choice. Mitchell, a melodic, lyrical player, has recorded several times on his own, and will be familiar to Blue Note fans for the many records he has made under the leadership of Horace Silver. The tenor-organ date contains many traps, and it is easy for one to sound like another. Aside from the individuality of Vick and Patton, it is largely Mitchell, with an easy, gentle approach not often found in these situations, who con be credited with the unique qualities of this album.

Another factor, certainly, is the music. With the exception of the standard Laura, all the music is the work of Vick, There are five originals: Our Miss Brooks, a title Vick is reluctant to explain; Trimmed in Blue; Dotty’s Dream, named for a friend and fan of the McDuff group; the self-explanatory Vicksville; and the title track, Steppin’ Out. I see no need to discuss each track individually, but the tunes, particularly in some of the internal arranged passages, indicate a growing talent for composition and organization that help make this album unusual of its kind.

Composition is becoming more and more important in Vick’s mind. His first help with it come from Calvin Jones, trombonist with the Howard Theatre band. Recently, he has been spending quite a bit of time working with George Coleman, now tenor saxophonist with Miles Davis, who has shown him still more. One of Vick’s ambitions is to go to school in New York to study composition. McDuff, however, has been in such demand that Vick is never in one place long enough to apply himself seriously to studies, The choice, it can be seen, presents a problem.

In the meantime, Vick is growing in other areas. Originally a clarinetist, on alto player with Prysock, he still plays those instruments in addition to his tenor, and has recently begun to play flute on some numbers with McDuff. All of which indicates that as composer, flutist, or hard-driving, deep-toned tenorman, there will be much to look forward to from Harold Vick.

Cover Photo and Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

—JOE GOLDBERG