BLP 4020

The Three Sounds - Good Deal

Released - January 1960

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, May 20, 1959
Gene Harris, piano; Andrew Simpkins, bass; Bill Dowdy, drums.

tk.4 Tracy's Blue
tk.6 That's All
tk.8 Satin Doll
tk.10 Soft Winds
tk.12 St. Thomas
tk.13 Robbins' Nest
tk.14 Don't Blame Me
tk.15 Down The Track

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Robbins' Nest	Illinois Jacquet, Charles Thompson	20/05/1959
Don't Blame Me	Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh	20/05/1959
St. Thomas	Sonny Rollins	20/05/1959
Down the Track	Gene Harris	20/05/1959
Side Two
Tracy's Blue	Gene Harris	20/05/1959
That's All	Alan Brandt, Bob Haymes	20/05/1959
Satin Doll	Duke Ellington, Johnny Mercer, Billy Strayhorn	20/05/1959
Soft Winds	Fletcher Henderson, Frank Royal	20/05/1959

Liner Notes

BACK in the 1940s, about 1945 to be exact, the King Cole Trio really made itself known to a wide listening audience. They didn't reach Lombardo fans but people who weren't about to keep up with Charlie Parker lent their ears. Nat's trio set a small vogue in motion by their popularity. Trios mushroomed all over the place; most often they were composed of piano, bass and guitar in accedence with the style set by Cole and his cohorts.

In the '50s, the trio tradition is still with us but the guitar has been eased out in most cases by drums. Even Oscar Peterson's three, long based on the Cole format, switched over when Edmund Thigpen replaced Herb Ellis.

Integration, a word much in the news these days outside realm of music, is one of the essential elements in a really musical trio. Its presence, or the lack of it, is baldly apparent because of the specialized area of concentration a trio affords the listener. The piano trios of today sometimes lack this integration because their "name" pianist leaders are (a) constantly shifting their rhythm players or (b) the rhythm players are wandering from group to group in a nomadic game of musical chairs.

The Three Sounds, when they are nomadic, do it together. They have so much togetherness going that McCall's would not be remiss in doing a feature story on them. 1960 finds them in fourth year as a unit; this, in itself, is not something many groups can boast of.

Those of you who have their first two Blue Note albums know all about the group as far as individual and collective histories go. Those of you who are hearing them for the first time can learn all about them by merely listening. The Sounds are not hard to listen to. They have that "easy listening" quality which has distinguished all the "fly" little combos from Cole's to today but they have something else going too.

A nameless reviewer described hearing the music of The Three Sounds thusly: "The results are unobtrusive but seductive. It's like listening to pleasant background music at first, but you find yourself constantly cocking an ear toward the sound to hear what is happening with the piano, drums and bass, individually and in interplay."

This is only part of it. Once the sounds of the Sounds get your attention they refuse to let you go. It is a kind of musical hypnotism they practice but the subject is always fully awake and aware of what is happening. Actually you are too busy patting your foot to think about going to sleep. These three cats get moving and grooving and everything swings from bottom to top. Listen to Robbins' Nest (writing by pianist-organist Sir Charles Thompson and originally introduced in the '40s by Illinois Jacquet) and hear how the Sounds revitalize it. And talk about being downright funky, the blues here are from Skunk Hollow. Tracy's Blue is about the downest blues waltz you've ever heard; the Sounds swing in three-quarter time or any time. Down The Track moves right along the rails with Simpkins and Dowdy operating the hand-car and Harris capturing more of the Avery Parrish spirit than some of the recent recordings of Parrish's After Hours. The calypso, St. Thomas, is a rhythmic ball that never stops bouncing.

Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington are saluted with Soft Winds and Satin Doll respectively. The Doll receives a final ride-out that imparts a big band feeling.

Bob Haymes' tender That's All is treated in conventional ballad tempo unlike Don'f Blame Me which is grooved in the trio's fly, funky manner. Harris' keys seem to wink at you.

Incidentally, "fly" is an adjective, in use among musicians and their followers in the early '40s, meaning smooth, slick in a hip way. The Three Sounds by adding their basic "funk" have fashioned an amalgam which takes us right into the '60s.

Another expression which came into use in the '40s was "good deal". Now, a certain inflection of "cool" or a really affirmative "nutty" also sums up, for some, that everything is fine and dandy. Or if you want to go way back, you can even say "copasetic" as Bill Robinson used to do. Anyway it's said it adds up to a 'Good deal". In this instance it means a great deal — of music.

—IRA GITLER

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