#benny bailey

Gerry Mulligan & Benny Bailey, Montreux, 1975.

A FLG Maurepas upload - The Upper Manhattan Jazz Society - Mr McGee - S...

Ernest Harold "Benny" Bailey (13 August 1925 – 14 April 2005) was an American bebop and hard-bop jazz trumpeter.

Biography

Bailey was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He had some training in piano and flute in his youth, but switched to trumpet, and concentrated on the instrument while at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He was influenced by his hometown colleague, Tadd Dameron, seven years his elder, and subsequently had a significant influence on other prominent Cleveland musicians including Bill Hardman, Bobby Few, Albert Ayler, Frank Wright and Bob Cunningham. Bailey also played with "Big T" Tony Lovano - Joe Lovano's father.

In the early 1940s he worked with Bull Moose Jackson and Scatman Crothers. He later worked with Dizzy Gillespie and toured with Lionel Hampton. During a European tour with Hampton he decided to stay in Europe and spend time in Sweden. This Swedish period saw him working with Harry Arnold's big band. He tended to prefer big bands over small groups and became associated with several big bands in Europe including the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band. Later he began to work with Quincy Jones and that led to a brief return to the United States in 1960. During this time, he was invited to the studio as part of Freddie Redd's sextet to record the Blue Note Records album Redd's Blues after meeting the pianist during a tour in Sweden, where Bailey had been residing at the time. Shortly thereafter, he returned to Europe first to Germany, and later to the Netherlands, where he would settle permanently.

In 1969 he played on Eddie Harris and Les McCann's album Swiss Movement, recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, even though it was not his usual style of music, and including a memorable unrehearsed solo on the Gene McDaniels' song "Compared to What". Then in 1988 he worked with British clarinetist Tony Coe and kept producing albums until 2000 when he was in his mid-70s.

Bailey died at home in Amsterdam on April 14, 2005.

Discography

Quincy - Here We Come (Metronome, 1959) also released as The Music of Quincy Jones on Argo in 1961

Big Brass (Candid, 1960)

Soul Eyes - (MPS 1968)

Folklore in Swing (MPS, 1966)

The Balkan in My Soul(MPS, 1968)

Soul Eyes: Jazz Live at the Domicile Munich (MPS 1968)

Mirrors (The Amazing Benny Bailey) (arranged & conducted by Francy Boland (Freedom 1971)

The Rainbow People (Steeplechase, 1974 [2002]) with Dexter Gordon

Islands (Enja 1976)

Serenade to a Planet (Ego 1976)

East of Isar (Ego 1978) - The Sal Nistico-Benny Bailey Quintet

Grand Slam (Jazzcraft 1978)

While My Lady Sleeps (Gemini 1990)

No Refill (TCB Records1994)

Angel Eyes (Laika 1995)

Peruvian Nights (TCB 1996)

I Thought About You (Laika 1996)

The Satchmo Legacy (Enja 2000)

The Rainbow People (Steeplechase 2002)

With Count Basie

Basie in Sweden (Roulette, 1962)

With the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band

Jazz Is Universal (Atlantic, 1962)

Handle with Care (Atlantic, 1963)

Now Hear Our Meanin' (Columbia, 1963 [1965])

Swing, Waltz, Swing (Philips, 1966)

Sax No End (SABA, 1967)

Out of the Folk Bag (Columbia, 1967)

17 Men and Their Music (Campi, 1967)

All Smiles (MPS, 1968)

Faces (MPS, 1969)

Latin Kaleidoscope (MPS, 1969)

Fellini 712 (MPS, 1969)

All Blues (MPS, 1969)

More Smiles (MPS, 1969)

Clarke Boland Big Band en Concert avec Europe 1 (Tréma, 1969 [1992])

Off Limits (Polydor, 1970)

November Girl (Black Lion, 1970 [1975]) with Carmen McRae

Change of Scenes (Verve, 1971) with Stan Getz

With Eric Dolphy

Berlin Concerts (1961)

With Stan Getz

Imported from Europe (Verve, 1958)

With Dizzy Gillespie

The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (Bluebird, 1937-1949, [1995])

With Benny Golson

Stockholm Sojourn (Prestige, 1964)

With Dexter Gordon

Sophisticated Giant (Columbia, 1977)

With Quincy Jones

Quincy's Home Again (Metronome, 1958) - also released as Harry Arnold + Big Band + Quincy Jones = Jazz! (EmArcy)

I Dig Dancers (Mercury, 1960)

With Freddie Redd

Redd's Blues (Blue Note, 1961)

With Sahib Shihab

Companionship (Vogue Schallplatten, 1964-70 [1971])

With Randy Weston

Uhuru Afrika (Roulette, 1960)

With Jimmy Witherspoon

Some of My Best Friends Are the Blues (Prestige, 1964)

With Phil Woods

Rights of Swing (Candid, 1961)

Les McCann, Eddie Harris, "Compared to What"

I found out today that the great Les McCann died Friday, age 88. He and Harris, who put on this now-legendary gig at Montreux as an unplanned gig, had long careers on their own, before and after. On this day in 1969, they walked onstage without rehearsal or ever having played together and did it, working under the additional pressure that this unscheduled performance was being recorded and filmed.

This added a little fillip to the story:

Despite the pressure, or perhaps because of it, as Mr. McCann recalled in the liner notes for the 1996 CD reissue of the concert album, which was released in 1969 as 'Swiss Movement,' “Just before we went onstage, and for the first time in my life, I smoked some hash.”

When he got to the bandstand, he wrote, “I didn’t know where the hell I was. I was totally disoriented. The other guys said, ‘OK, play, man!’ Somehow I got myself together, and after that, everything just took off.”

Even if you know the song, watching them perform it is a treat.

JazzX5#262. Les McCann – Eddie Harris: “Compared To What” [Swiss Movement (Atlantic Records, 1969)] [Minipodcast] Por Pachi Tapiz

“Compared to What” Les McCann – Eddie Harris: Swiss Movement (Atlantic, 1969) Les McCann (piano), Eddie Harris (saxo tenor), Benny Bailey (trompeta), Leroy Vinnegar (contrabajo), Donald Dean (batería). La composición es un tema de Gene McDaniels. © Pachi Tapiz, 2021 JazzX5 es un minipodcast de HDO de la Factoría Tomajazz presentado, editado y producido por Pachi Tapiz. JazzX5 comenzó su andadura…

Compared to What

I thought I’d jump back to one of the most popular soul jazz albums of all time that I introduced on Tuesday, Swiss Movement, and take a look at the first track Compared to What.

It’s 1969 and the last night of the Montreux Jazz Festival, an impromptu throw together for a gig, and a real party atmosphere, but the funky backbeat and the joyful atmosphere belie the gravity of the lyrics being soulfully belted out by Les McCann.

Composed by Gene McDaniels in 1966, Compared to What is a "topical rant" against issues of the day, such as the Vietnam War.

The President, he's got his war Folks don't know just what it's for Nobody gives us rhyme or reason Have one doubt, they call it treason We're chicken-feathers, all without one nut. God damn it! Tryin' to make it real, compared to what? (Sock it to me)

B. Lee Cooper (music critic) described the rant as contrasting "the social myth of equality and the economic reality of poverty in the stratified American society." 

I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. 

I love the way the party atmosphere in this song builds. Les McCann who is the real deal when it comes to full-on soul jazz piano, lays down an opening riff and is joined by Donald Dean keeping time on a cowbell, then Leroy Vinnegar joins the engine room on bass, and they steadily build the momentum. By the time Eddie Harris joins on tenor sax at about 1:20 it’s really cooking, so they need to  bring it down to a simmer to start the vocals. 

Benny Bailey doesn’t make his appearance on trumpet until between the verses, and eventually takes a couple of solos after verses three and four. Before we get to the last verse McCann starts another build with the whole band taking us through some modulations to finally arrive at verse five. 

When the final rant has been ranted, McCann and Harris bring the whole thing home with Dean’s cymbals and McCann’s right hand sixteenths ensuring it never goes off the boil. 

– Bozzie 🎷

Cold Duck Time

Sometimes success is serendipitous. It emerges without planning or expectation, from just the right people playing just the right stuff at just the right time.

The album Swiss Movement is one such success. It’s a recording of a session on the last night of the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival. The gig was truly an impromptu event - this particular line up had never played or rehearsed together before, and at least half of the group had no idea what material they were going to play as they took the stage. But that’s the joy of playing jazz.

Cold Duck Time is an extrapolated blues vamp in the key of F, with a soul jazz groove, a catchy head melody, and a hook in the turnaround that just screams “good times”. It was written by Eddie Harris who had a penchant for these kind of groove based songs.

I never understood the title of the song but came across this rant from a reviewer, which I have truncated just before it descends into obscenities

...titled after a horrid sparkling libation invented by a winemaker in Detroit (!) based on a “recipe” from an 18th century Saxon prince who liked to mix all the dregs in the bottom of the wine bottles with Champagne.

Perhaps it’s the sort of party atmosphere you’d expect from such a drink. You can hear the crowd enjoying these musos who are enjoying themselves – playing together for the first time, playing a piece they’d never seen before, yet listening to each other and responding, and figuring it all out on the fly and anticipating where the others will go. You can hear the fruit of that listening and anticipation when Eddie (sax) and Benny (trumpet) come together on the head after the solos with a strong flourish.

I can’t help but think this concert wouldn’t have had the same spontaneous funk and joyous feel had this been a carefully planned, prepared and rehearsed session. It’s effectively a jam session with a live audience, and it turned out to be a gas.

The tapes of this impromptu concert were recorded by the festival's organisers, who with hindsight should have charged a lot more for them. Atlantic Records purchased them for less than one hundred dollars. The album sold millions of units and was nominated for a Grammy Award for best jazz performance, small group. It reached No. 1 on Billboard's jazz album chart, No. 2 on the R&B chart, and No. 29 on the LP chart.