soul jazz

Jazz is a genre that has no problem leaning on compositions from past times, other players and even other genres. In fact, it’s in this pastiche of influence that has resulted in some of the most amazing heights of the genre. Coltrane reworking what was ostensibly a song from popular music’s catalog or Miles imagining standards as his own playground to unloose his laid back style are hallmarks of the genre. And by the time the sixties were in full swing, rock and roll, blues and soul music were as important to jazz music as it was to radio stations.

With the work of guitarists like Grant Green and the organ theatrics of Brother Jack McDuff, the line between jazz and dance music had become blurred recalling times during the thirties and forties that found the genre at the top of every chart.

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The soul jazz genre doesn’t offer up to many different traits as to greatly differentiate from one player to the next. And especially when an organ is concerned, it’s anyone’s guess as to whose playing apart from those so deeply imbued with background information as to render one a liner note.

With Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff and Brother Jack McDuff functioning as the players who basically decided how the organ was going to function in the genre, it’d be easy to relegate every other performer to second tier status. That’s not necessarily void of merit, but the fact that so many people took part in this mostly late ‘60s and ‘70s based explosion of recording, the perspective’s a bit reductive.

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After the Great Migration, the promise of proper employment and serving in a World War black folks figured that the government probably wasn’t going to provide too much in the way of social services, job training or any kind of authentic assistance in their neighborhoods.

In response to that perception, a great many organizations sprung up in urban centers across the country. Coupling leadership and scholarship based on everyone from Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcom X and the pharaohs of Egypt, groups like the Black Panthers began programs to feed children and secure neighborhood’s safety. While cells of the organization would crop up in major cities across the country, a number of towns counted a few other socially conscious groups that worked towards the betterment of people’s lives.

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Sidemen sing the blues and Red Garland is one of them. Performing alongside some of the most important innovators in jazz history afforded the pianist the ability to hear and witness some of the most important musical shifts in the history of American music, but it still didn’t make him a star. Surely, he got to lead a number of dates – and even incorporated some of those better known associates into the proceedings – but he never become supremely famous. And by the time that the mid ‘60s rolled around, Garland headed back to his native Texas for a few years in semi-retirement. That life obviously didn’t suite him and as the ‘70s dawned he headed back into the studio.

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Attempting to complete a discography for Lee Morgan would be akin to replicating Mount Kilamanjaro with peanut butter. It sounds good – or delicious – but would probably prove too difficult to ever achieve. Over just 33 years on this god forsaken earth, Morgan performed with Gillespie, Coltrane, Blakey and Moncur III, got Wayne Shorter a job and inadvertently launched soul jazz into the charts with a song that he believed was filler. “Sidewinder” isn’t a joke, but when looking into Morgan’s catalog, it’s understandable as to why the trumpeter felt that some of his more challenging material wasn’t given the same deference by the Blue Note folks, who he primarily worked with.

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Houston Person began pounding out music on a piano when he was pretty young. Shortly, though, he switched to the saxophone, which would be the instrument that he spent the rest of his life with. He would go on to study music in college in his native South Carolina. But he was also necessitated to join the army. And oddly enough, while in service, he was introduced to and played with Eddie Harris, Cedar Walton, Leo Wright as well as Don Ellis.

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