Lonson, good to know. I am going to hold out for now to try to find the original but good to have that in my hip pocket. I only have a few grails right now and the Yusef is up there.
That other material is well worth having and some of it is only officially reissued on cd in this set. . . . Just saying.
I think the "lack of transition" was a conscious choice for this material to distinguish it. I may be wrong and it may be just a "blowing session" accommodation. Anyway, I really like this material, we're all different. And thank goodness.
I freely admit I am a sucker for the structure where the frontline all play the theme together. A song like Lee Morgan’s Search for a New Land hooked me from first listen. It has such a beautiful ebb and flow to it, where they all play the theme and then someone launches into their solo , then repeat. That’s not all I listen to tho and the endless variety is the beauty of jazz and why you have 1000 pages on your thread!
Havnt posted on here for a while because I havnt added anything new from this series, but later today the Yusef Lateef Prayer to the East should arrive at my house and will give it an initial listen and response tonight. Archtop gave a nice summary earlier in the thread. Really looking forward to it as Yusef’s Jazz Moods from this same series I cant get enough of. It was $16 on discogs plus a little shipping (but US at least).
Funny, this same topic was on an episode of Cash Cab that I was watching yesterday. This is an American game show where taxi cab riders agree to play a trivia game on their route to earn money. The question about the flugelhorn was the very last one for this group of participants who ended up getting it right. Anyway, I typically love its inclusion within the jazz idiom.
We’ll go with Wilbur Harden is playing the fh. Really like this album Prayer to the East. It isn’t overall as creative and enchanting to me as was Jazz Moods but I think it will grow on me as I listen more. I would describe it as very playful while Jazz Mood was more dramatic. Fortunately the lone ballad, Lover Man was put at the end. Opens with A Night in Tunesia, awesome version of this jazz staple. To open, over gongs Yusef plays what I think is an arghul but Archtop could be right that it is an oboe. When I first heard it I said that almost sounds like a bagpipe and the arghul (argul) is a double windwood with one side drone and one side like a flute, and I know he plays this on later albums. Anyway it is a nice stretched out version at about 10 min, Yusef long tenor solo and Harden does well too. Endura - really like the trumpet playing of Harden on this, 13 min long and needs a few more listens to really appreciate. A solid bop number. Prayer to the East - brings in some mideastern influence but not as much as the title suggests. A very relaxing strolling number. Love Dance - the most exotic song on the album, a Yusef original, lots of different sounds, really like this one 2nd only to Night in Tunesia on this album Lover Man - ballad, nothing else to add.
Great looking CD and package as are all these Savoys. Quality Control on the inserts was a little lacking. Inside it is Wilbur Hardin, on front and back Harden. Note the composer of Night in Tunesia - didn't know Horace Silver did that? And who is this Cadena guy that did 3 songs? Love Dance was Yusef as stated above and the title track was composed by the drummer’s brother.
Ozzie Cadena was the producer so there must have been some situation where they needed to have his name down, or he just put it there. I'm not sure...
Things to note, and some of my observations with Savoy Records over the years. The 78 era from 1940 something-1961-1962 was their prime era for Jazz, Rhythm & Blues, and Blues. They recorded Negro Spirituals from the late 1940's, became a major innovator in that arena. When the late 1950's era came to a close, the Savoy label gradually became much more reliant on Spirituals for their main livelihood, though the label continued to reissue their past catalog. Arista eventually purchased or leased out the Savoy Jazz, Blues, and R&B catalogues, then Nippon Columbia purchased those catalogues from the then owners of Savoy, the Negro Spiritual catalogue became owned by Malaco, Inc, who continued making new recordings in that genre for quite some time. Along the way, in the later 1990's Nippon Columbia/Denon fell victim to the Japanese economy, and sold the Denon audio business to D&M Holdings, now under new ownership as Sound United, which also curtailed if not outright stemmed the flow of classic Savoy reissues of non Religious music from the peak era. Sad observations and commentary, I'd love to know who owns Savoy Jazz and Blues now.
I visited the owners of Muse Records in NYC at the time that they negotiated a sale of the Savoy label to Denon in Japan. They still had the archive, as they owned it all, including contracts signed by Bird, other communications with Bird and all of the historic masters and acetates. They told me that they discovered someone had recently stolen some portion of the historic documents. I don't recall if any masters or other acetates had been stolen. I never heard if the thief had been revealed or if anything was recovered. If any such historic artifacts ever go up for auction, that is likely where they came from. Barney at Muse was very generous and gave me a complete run of all of their Savoy products, as they could no longer sell them.
One interesting thing about Savoy jazz, especially their Charlie Parker recordings. Bird on Savoy has never been out of print since the sessions were first recorded over 70 years ago. There are very few jazz recordings, even by legends, that have achieved that status. Back in 1969-1970, I was very worried that these sessions might be lost in the corporate takeover frenzy that was beginning to dominate the record industry. Several insiders assured me that Charlie Parker's Savoy sessions would always be in print. Dial, now that is another matter.
The back covers of those early-90s Savoy CDs have a lot of errors like names misspelled & wrong songwriting credits.
Thanks, Great historical perspective that we had not had in the thread yet. Tribute, do you have a few favorites from the series?
Thanks, great historical perspective that we had not heard yet. (For some reason my multi quote did not work)
So, in the historic timeline on Savoy, Muse Records then appeared to have acquired the label from Herman Lubinsky, the original founder and owner of the label, or from his estate. Thanks for this history. So it appears then that Arista licensed the catalog from Muse Records. And that being the last issues before the Denon purchase of the label.
I think more about the sessions themselves rather than one particular reissue, mastering or pressing. In general, I like the bop quintets, but that is nearly all of the Savoy jazz sessions. Of course Bird is a special favorite. I seriously love Parker's "Barbados" and any record that has it. I enjoy finding Savoy 78's and I have a pile of them. I never pay auction prices or serious collector prices for them, just when I find them at garage sales or in bargain bins of 78s. I really enjoy classic gospel music. It is a great shame that the Savoy catalog of gospel music has never been given anything close to a serious reissue campaign, the way the Specialty label gospel catalog was treated on CD. If the owners won't do it, why don't they license it? This also applies to the Savoy label series of vintage R & B recordings. There has been some reissue of these on LP and CD, but not a serious definitive reissue campaign. The underlying fault for lack of serious reissues of the Savoy gospel and R & B sessions rests with the tendency of jazz listeners to ignore that music and often be dismissive of it. That is too bad. Missing the passion!
Again, the Savoy Gospel catalog is owned by a different entity (and they may not own the old Savoy Gospel masters either). A major consideration. The Savoy R&B Catalogue and their Blues lineup did get some reissue action from Arista when they licensed the Savoy Catalog (Denon even reissued a few of those comps on CD alongside the Jazz program, they were available for a few years). Our earlier poster, the one with the Muse Records information could tell us much more about the state of the Savoy Gospel earlier catalogue. I agree that Savoy R&B, Blues, and Gospel needs a healthy reissue campaign.
I am not certain of the details of that sequence, but the owners of Muse definitely owned the Savoy catalog, perhaps under some other legal business name (?) and were the owners just prior to the label being shipped (physically as well as legally) to Japan. My story about the historical files going missing just prior to Savoy going to Japan is definitely true. It might have been the significant majority of those priceless files, but I cannot recall. I do know that the folks at Muse were very unhappy about it. That was before the unbelievable escalation in prices of historical documents, caused by hedge fund owners investing in autographs. Those files weren't just session notes, but contracts, letters, communications with the jazz artists. Numerous autographs of jazz legends.
