BLP 5010

Max Roach et al. - New Sounds

Released - 1952

Recording and Session Information

WOR Studios, NYC, December 22, 1947
Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Howard Bowe, trombone; Edmund Gregory, alto sax; Orland Wright, tenor sax; Ernest Thompson, baritone sax; Walter Bishop Jr., piano; LaVerne Barker, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

BN322-3 The Thin Man
BN323-1 The Bop Alley

Lausanne, Switzerland, April 30, 1949
James Moody, tenor sax; Art Simmons, piano; Alvin "Buddy" Banks, bass; Clarence Terry, drums; Al Edwards, vocals.

ST3004 Just Moody

Studio Technisonor, Paris, France, May 15, 1949
Kenny Dorham, trumpet; James Moody, tenor sax; Al Haig, piano; Tommy Potter, bass; Max Roach, drums.

ST3010 Prince Albert
ST3012 Tomorrow (aka Yesterdays)
ST3013 Maximum

Lausanne/Paris sessions leased from Vogue

Session Photos

December 22 1947

Photos: Francis Wolff

Credits

Cover Photo:
Cover Design:	JOHN HERMANSADER
Engineer:
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Prince Albert	Kenny Dorham-Max Roach	May 15 1949
Maximum	Kenny Dorham-Max Roach	May 15 1949
The Thin Man	Kenny Dorham	December 22 1947
Side Two
Tomorrow	Kenny Dorham-Max Roach	May 15 1949
Just Moody	James Moody	April 30 1949
Bop Alley	Dawud	December 22 1947

Liner Notes

...

1991 CD Reissue Liner Notes

Notes for the December 22 1947 session (incorrectly cited below as December 27)

This album is completed by another octet, which was an offshoot of a big band. The band was Art Blakey and the 17 Messengers, a group made up primarily of Moslem musicians who drafted Blakey as the leader. On December 27, 1947, an abbreviated edition of the ensemble recorded four titles for Blue Note: Kenny Dorham's "The Thin Man", "Bop Alley" by trumpeter Talib Dawud of the Gillespie band, Musa Kaleem's 'Musa's Vision" and "Groove Street", a vehicle for baritone saxophonist Ernie Thompson. It should also be noted that the alternative take of "Bop Alley" on this album is a later one than the master take.

Certainly, Dorham, Blakey, Sahib Shihab and Walter Bishop are well known and prolific contributors to the music since the forties. About the others, little is known. Musa Kaleem (born Orlando Wright) resurfaced in the late fifties, playing baritone sax in James Moody's band and playing flute on a Tiny Grimes-Coleman Hawkins date for Prestige and an unissued Dizzy Reece session. Horace Silver recorded his tune "Sanctimonious Sam" in 1963.

Shihab, like James Moody, was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925, a coincidence too tempting to let pass. Shihab has always been a unique soloist with a rhythmic sense all his own and a disarmingly dry tone. He and Blakey worked beautifully together on Thelonious Monk's first record date, just one month before this Messengers session. They appeared together again under Monk's leadership in 1951. It is on those dates that the work of these two men during this period can be better assessed.

Dorham was already a mature and assured player by this time and a true improviser who approached a tune completely differently with each succeeding take. Of course, the musical collaboration of KD and Blakey would make history some nine years later with the formation of the Jazz Messengers.

If the Jazz Messengers were almost without peers in launching and defining hard bop and imbedding the quintet format in the public's mind, James Moody throughout the fifties steadfastly maintained a septet rooted in the tradition of these bebop octets. But by 1963, he disbanded and joined Dizzy Gillespie' quintet. Economics figures far more prominently in evolution of art than many would care to admit.

- MICHAEL CUSCUNA