BST 84343

Reuben Wilson - Blue Mode

Mati Klarwein - original artwork

Released - 1970

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 12, 1969
John Manning, tenor sax; Reuben Wilson, organ; Melvin Sparks, guitar; Tommy Derrick, drums.

tk.5 Bambu
tk.9 Bus Ride
tk.14 Twenty-Five Miles
tk.19 Orange Peel
tk.23 Blue Mode
tk.25 Knock On Wood

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Bambu	Melvin Sparks	December 12 1969
Knock on Wood	Steve Cropper, Eddie Floyd	December 12 1969
Bus Ride	Reuben Wilson	December 12 1969
Side Two
Orange Peel	Reuben Wilson	December 12 1969
Twenty-Five Miles	Johnny Bristol, Harvey Fuqua, Edwin Starr	December 12 1969
Blue Mode	Reuben Wilson	December 12 1969

Liner Notes

Mode is a word of many meanings, in and out of music. Kind, form, state of being, mood, modality, fashion — you can take your pick even when the adjective "blue," with all the connotations of jazz, is applied to it.

The organ groups, among which Reuben Wilson's grows constantly in public esteem, work primarily within a blue mode. Their audiences know what they want, and have tastes very little influenced by what is fashionable with, say, the Greenwich Village intelligentsia. They want blues-flavored music with a swinging beat, and plenty of animation on the part of the soloists. But that is not to say that they want the same thing over and over, or the blues in only the traditional twelve-bar format. The propulsive potential of a simple eight-bar foundation can be rhythmically great, as this set testifies.

The jazz organ, of course, is still not accepted on a broad national level. To a considerable extent, it is segregated by snobbery and ignorance. Despite the evident popularity it enjoys on phonograph records, you would have a hard time finding it in, for example, the clubs of mid-town Manhattan. Nor would you expect to encounter it very often on network TV shows like Ed Sullivan's, where teenage amateurs are nevertheless regularly invited to bawl and twang.

The organ circuit, in fact, operates almost like an underground so far as the general masses are concerned, although there is acute awareness of it within the black communities. When Reuben Wilson first came east in December, 1966, he worked at Count Basie's and Barron's in Harlem, and at Arthur's Round Table in the Bronx. Branching out from the New York area, he circulated through such rooms as the Famous Door in Springfield, Mass., Estelle's in Boston. the Pythodd in Rochester, the Cadillac and Key clubs in Newark, and the Kenya in Bayonne. He even got to break it up at Cobo Halt in Detroit, where he shared concert billing With Ramsey Lewis and others.

There is, in other words, a whole lot of action in the world of organ music that doesn't get written about in otherwise trend-conscious magazines. Perhaps that is because it isn't eccentric, or exaggerated. or incomprehensible. Instead, it fulfils a function. If you go into one of those rooms around midnight, you will find — to borrow one of the late Fats Wailer's phrases — that '"the joint is jumpin'." As you open the door, the sound will have an almost physical impact, but once inside you become a part of it, and a part of the party. There, perhaps, is the fundamental difference between the appreciation of jazz uptown and downtown, and yet another example of racial polarization, to use a contemporary catch-word. Uptown, the music is for partying, having a good time, and reducing tensions. Downtown, it is for furrowed brows, deep thoughts, analysis, and a game of frosty one-upmanship with the not-so-hip, the non-members of your cult.

Should you stop and talk to Reuben Wilson between sets, you'll soon get the impression that he doesn't find life an unmitigated drag, and that he really enjoys making music. Those who find this reprehensible, should stay away from the organ circuit in future, because that is the attitude with which it is chiefly concerned.

There was always a piano around the Wilson home in Oklahoma, where the organist was born on April 9th, 1935, and he was always interested in music. His sister played clarinet, one brother played trombone and saxophone, and another played guitar and sang. Boxing, however, side-tracked Reuben's interest in music for many years. His return to it was fortuitous.

He had moved to California, and was married. His wife was a singer, and one night he accompanied her to a gig in a Santa Monica ballroom, where there were three bands playing. As he wandered around, he met Johnny Pope, Jr., who asked if he would like to play.

"I had previously played a little piano," Wilson recalled, "and it was a groove to play with professional musicians. Johnny thought I had potential and offered to come by my pad and help me evenings. A friend of his had an organ in Los Angeles, and later he asked me to play it. So, in 1962, I began playing off-nights—Tuesdays — at the Intermission Room in Los Angeles. From there, I went to the Caribbean Club for a year-and-a-half."

Engagements in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Las Vegas built a sufficient reputation locally to justify — in 1966 — a trip east, where he soon found himself working with such musicians as Sam Rivers, Roy Haynes and Grant Green. Broadening experience in clubs and recording studios led inevitably to his own group and albums under his own name. This is the third on Blue Note, the others being On Broadway (84295 BLP4295) and Love Bug (84317 BLP4317).

As an organist, Wilson was strongly influenced by Richard "Groove" Holmes and Jimmy Smith. "But after a while I found too many organs were sounding alike," he said. "lt was then I started listening a great deal to pianists, and from them I got a different approach."

Of his accompanists, Tommy Derrick, who hails from Detroit, had previously worked with him in Los Angeles. John Manning and Melvin Sparks are both from Houston, Texas, where they had worked together. Manning has obviously heard John Coltrane's message, but, like so many other tenor saxophonists from Texas, he has an individual and virile drive. Sparks, an imaginative player, should remind us that the organ groups, if they have done nothing else, deserve much credit for their introduction of many attractive guitarists.

It is the guitarist's rhythmically infectious original, Bambu, which opens the set, and his solo choruses are among the performance's highlights, but the number also demonstrates the leader's skill both as a soloist and in providing the group with a mobile foundation. The popular Knock On Wood opens quietly and deceptively before exploding into exciting organ, saxophone and guitar statements. Contrasts between ensemble and solos similarly distinguish Twenty-five Miles.

The quartet's real character, however, is best displayed on the leader's three originals. Bus Ride is self-descriptive. Of Orange Peel, he said, "Have you ever noticed that people seem to like titles with fruit or animals in them? This was one of our most successful numbers at the Detroit concert" Derrick makes an invaluable contribution on it.

Blue Mode is self-descriptive, too, and have you ever noticed that record companies like to end albums with a very strong performance? That's so you'll get up and put the record on again. It wasn't really necessary in this case, for the mood induced by these six compelling, foot-tapping numbers quite clearly induces an instant replay.

STANLEY DANCE

75th Anniversary Reissue Notes

After an all-star second album entitled "Love Bug" with Lee Morgan and Grant Green on board, Reuben Wilson returned to the format of recording with his working group. Tommy Derrick had been his drummer since he moved to New York in December 1966. Tenor saxophonist John Manning and guitarist Melvin Sparks had worked together in their hometown, Houston, Texas. Sparks had moved to New York in 1966 and logged time with Jack McDuff, Lonnie Smith and Lou Donaldson before joining Wilson for this date. He also contributed the opening track "Bambu". Manning is an excellent Texas tenor player, but beyond appearing on Melvin Sparks's Prestige album "Sparks!" a year after this album, little is known about him.

The album features two R&B hits — "Knock On Wood" and "Twenty-Five Miles" but ironically the tracks that proved club favorites in the '80s and popular samples were Reuben's three originals: "Bus Ride", "Orange Peel" and "Blue Mode".

Michael Cuscuna