BLP 5067

Lou Mecca Quartet

Released - 1955

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, March 25, 1955
Jack Hitchcock, vibes; Lou Mecca, guitar; Vinnie Burke, bass; Jimmy Campbell, drums.

tk.2 You Go To My Head
tk.4 Bernie's Tune
tk.6 Stan's Invention
tk.8 All The Things You Are
tk.10 Just One Of Those Things
tk.11 The Song Is You

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
All The Things You Are	Kern-Hammerstein	March 25 1955
You Go To My Head	Coots-Gillespie	March 25 1955
Bernie's Tune	Bernie Miller	March 25 1955
Side Two
Stan's Invention	Stan Purdy	March 25 1955
The Song Is You	Kern-Hammerstein	March 25 1955
Just One Of Those Things	Cole Porter	March 25 1955

Liner Notes

Lou Mecca, guitar; Jack Hitchcock, vibes; Vinnie Burke, bass; Jimmy Campbell, drums.

IT WAS to be expected, after the noteworthy showing made by Lou Mecca in his two LP appearances with Gil Melle on 5054 and 5063, that this brilliant new guitarist would soon be presented in a session of his own. Before going into details about the Lou Mecca Quartet, a few words about the leader himself might be in order.

Louis John Meccia (he had the i removed as a result of frequent mispronunciations), was born Dec. 23, 1926 in Passaic, New Jersey. His father, whose musical career began several decades ago in Italy, was a trumpet soloist for many years in leading symphony orchestras, and it was on trumpet, under his father's guidance, that Lou undertook his first musical tuition, at the age of eight.

"But I was too thin — I didn't have enough wind," recalls Lou, so a year later I switched. I went to a place called The Master School of Music where they charged fifty cents a lesson and supplied you with the guitar, too."

Quitting high school in his fourth year to become a professional musician, Lou went to work with a quartet at a bar in Passaic knew seven tunes and just kept playing them all night long.").

It was around the same time that Lou began a second career as a teacher. Working for a school of music in New Jersey, he found himself gaining wide experience in musical areas he had never dreamed of invading; "They just gave me a pile of books and told me to go ahead and teach other instruments. I wound up giving instruction in just about everything from alto to zither. In fact, for years I made my living teaching and just playing gigs on weekends."

Around 1947 Lou got to know Johnny Smith very well. The first time he heard Johnny, the latter was playing trumpet in an Army band. After his discharge he visited the Mecca household a couple of times a week. In recent years, following the Smith process of doubling on brass, Lou has resumed his trumpet playing and for one season played second trumpet with the Clifton Symphony. He declares, however, that he can read music better than he can fake it, and has no immediate expectations of giving Clifford Brown any serious competition.

Lou worked with Archie Bleyer and Julius LaRosa at Loew's State in his normal guitarist role, and has also been heard in combos accompanying such name singers as Joni James and Alan Dale. For the past two years he has been working at the Café Williams in Carlstadt, New Jersey, with a combo led by pianist Stan Purdy, one of whose compositions is featured on this LP.

For the present quartet session Lou called on the services of Jack Hitchcock, a vibraphonist from Long Island who, coincidentally, also doubles in brass (he is said to play first rate trombone).

Jimmy Campbell, the drummer, will be familiar to Blue Note fans who heard him on the Sal Salvador LP (5035). Recently he has been heard with the Matt Dennis Trio in New York. Vinnie Burke, the bassist, is a Newark musician who has been featured with Tony Scott, Marion McPartland and many other combos around New York.

The keynote for this session was informality; a relaxed, free-style jazz feeling was the mood sought.

All the Things You Are opens with the guitar playing a second line as counterpoint to the vibes' melody. Later the vibes "feed" Lou during his solo, just as a piano or guitar would punctuate a chorus by a horn. You Go To My Head features Lou mostly in single-note style, but with some pretty chord ideas added in the later passages. Bernie's Tune is a simple riff number, written by a since-deceased jazzman in Washington, D. C., that is rapidly assuming the proportions of a jazz standard. Vinnie Burke's solo is an outstanding fast-fingered feature here.

Jack Hitchcock's vibes work ingeniously both in unison and in harmony and counterpoint with Lou's guitar on Stan's Invention by the above mentioned Mr. Purdy who, by the way, has written the music for several Mickey Spillane movies— Spillane has promised Mecca a spot in his next picture. The ad lib passages in the Invention are based on the traditional twelve-bar blues format, in an interesting contrast with the less conventional construction of the prearranged passages.

The Song Is You is a swinging interpretation of the Kern-Hammerstein standard, with Campbell establishing a beautifully light, swinging beat on the brushes. Just One Of Those Things, aside from a touch of rhumba rhythm on the bass by way of introduction and coda, consists entirely of an improvisation by Lou—three 64-bar choruses in which his firm yet gentle tone, his perfect sense of time and his well constructed rhythmic and melodic ideas recall at times the style of Lou's personal favorite, Tal Farlow ("He's my whole inspiration — I listen to his records all day long.").

As we mentioned above, this is Lou's first LP as a leader. Sometimes it takes a while to establish a reputation as a jazz figure, but it seems safe to bet that after hearing his work here, a large number of musicians and fans, be they guitarists or merely enthusiastic non-participants, will be making the pilgrimage to Mecca.

LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Encyclopedia of Jazz)

Cover Design by JOHN HERMANSÅDER
Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording Engineer: Rudy Van Gelder.