Gene Ammons

The title is a concession to the twist dance craze of 1961, but the music is pure soul jazz: Joe Newman's brassy trumpet, Jack McDuff's churning organ, and Ammons's tenor riding over a Latin-tinged rhythm section. Wendell Marshall's bass adds a foundation that the organ-only format sometimes lacks, and Walter Perkins drives everything with a backbeat that sits right in the pocket.

Newman is an inspired choice of front-line partner. Coming from the Count Basie Orchestra, he brings a different sensibility than the bebop trumpeters who had populated the earlier dates. His tone is bright and punchy, and he swings with the easy authority of a big-band lead player. Against Ammons's darker, deeper sound, the contrast works beautifully.

The dance-craze packaging may have dated, but the music has not. This is a fun, unpretentious blowing session that delivers exactly what it promises: two horns, an organ, and a groove that does not quit for the full length of the record. If you can get past the title, you will find one of the more enjoyable small-group sessions from this prolific period.

Another Ammons/Stitt encounter, this time over the organ of Jack McDuff instead of a piano rhythm section. The format change alters the character of the battle: McDuff's organ fills so much sonic space that the two saxophonists are pushed closer together, trading shorter phrases in a denser harmonic environment. Charlie Persip keeps the whole thing moving with his characteristically crisp timekeeping.

McDuff was at the height of his powers in this period, recording steadily for Prestige with his own group, and his presence here is more than accompaniment. He is a third voice in the conversation, sometimes supporting, sometimes challenging, always funky. The organ trio format was Prestige's bread and butter, and adding two heavyweight saxophonists to the formula was a commercial no-brainer.

The record is not as focused as Boss Tenors, partly because the organ dominates the texture in a way that a piano trio never does, and partly because the material feels more like a jam session than a planned date. But the individual moments of inspiration, the passages where Ammons and Stitt push each other to places neither would reach alone, are worth the price of admission.

The sequel to Boss Tenors, this time with an organ combo instead of a piano trio, recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio for producer Creed Taylor. Don Patterson was a rising organist in 1962, and his playing here has a leaner, less bombastic quality than McDuff's. Paul Weeden's guitar adds rhythmic comping in the Wes Montgomery mold, and William James keeps the drums crisp and uncluttered.

The shift from piano to organ changes the dynamic between Ammons and Stitt. The organ fills more harmonic space, leaving less room for each saxophonist to stretch out. The solos are shorter, the exchanges more frequent, and the overall feel is closer to a club date than a concert. This is not necessarily a bad thing: the energy is high and the grooves are deep.

It does not reach the heights of the first Boss Tenors, but sequels rarely do. What it offers instead is a different texture: warmer, funkier, less cerebral. Patterson's organ provides a cushion that the Chicago piano trio never did, and both saxophonists sound relaxed and comfortable in the format. It is the dessert course after the main meal, and it goes down easy.

Built from two different 1962 sessions rather than a single date, Soul Summit Vol. 2 has a slapdash feel that the first volume avoided. The Ammons/Stitt/McDuff/Persip cuts from February 19, 1962 belong to the same date that produced the original Soul Summit. The Etta Jones vocal tracks come from a separate April 13 session with Patti Bown on piano, George Duvivier on bass, and Walter Perkins on drums. The album is essentially leftovers from one session sequenced with vocal tracks from another.

The problem with assembling a record this way is coherence. The instrumental Ammons/Stitt cuts swing with the same heat as the first volume, but the vocal tracks pivot the album into a different idiom. Etta Jones is a fine singer, and the April 13 quartet behind her is first-rate, but the contrast with the organ-combo material is jarring. It is two good half-records sharing a sleeve.

The instrumental tracks are where Ammons and Stitt are in their element, and on those cuts the album earns its keep. The vocal tracks are a pleasant detour rather than a destination. This is the weakest of the Soul Summit projects, interesting as a curiosity but frustrating as a listening experience. Original mono LP collectors get a slightly different sequence than the CD reissues, which have at times added bonus tracks from completely unrelated sessions.

A meeting of equals: McDuff was by now a star in his own right on Prestige, and this session is co-led rather than one man sitting in with the other. Harold Vick adds a second tenor, Eddie Diehl provides the guitar chair, and Joe Dukes, McDuff's regular drummer, keeps the beat with the authority of a man who plays this music every night.

The two-tenor-and-organ format is unusual and surprisingly effective. Vick is a younger, lighter-toned player whose contrast with Ammons is different from the Stitt pairing: where Stitt matched Ammons in authority, Vick complements him in timbre. McDuff uses the sonic density to his advantage, building layers of sound that the two tenors cut through in different registers.

This is an underrated date in the Ammons catalog, overshadowed by the higher-profile Stitt encounters. But the playing is consistently strong, the grooves are deep, and the pairing of Ammons with McDuff's regular working group gives the session a tightness and cohesion that some of the other organ combo dates lack. If you love soul jazz organ combos, this one deserves a place in the rotation.

Eleven religious hymns, straight from the church, played by a quartet that sounds like it belongs in one. Sleepy Anderson's organ is the thread that connects this to the gospel tradition, and Ammons plays the melodies of hymns like "Rock of Ages" and "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" with a reverence that never tips into piety. Sylvester Hickman and Dorral Anderson keep the rhythm section sparse and churchy.

The concept could have been corny, but Ammons treats the material with the same respect he gives any good melody. His tone, always warm, takes on an almost vocal quality here, as though he is singing the words through the horn. The tempos are slow to medium, the dynamics gentle, and the overall mood is contemplative rather than celebratory.

This is a unique entry in the Ammons catalog, and a surprisingly touching one. The combination of his secular, blues-drenched tone with sacred material creates a tension that gives the music emotional depth it would not otherwise have. You do not need to be religious to hear the sincerity in this playing. It is one of the most personal records he ever made.

The second Moodsville album, following Nice an' Cool, and another exercise in after-hours balladry. Patti Bown's piano is more assertive than Richard Wyands's was on the earlier date, and George Duvivier's bass has a richer, more resonant tone than Watkins brought to that session. Ed Shaughnessy keeps the time with brushes throughout.

The mood is entirely intimate, a record for two in the morning when the clubs have closed and the streets are empty. Ammons caresses each melody with the patience of a man in no rush to be anywhere. His sub-tone playing, where the reed barely vibrates and the note seems to whisper, is particularly effective on the slower pieces.

The limitation is the same one that affects most mood-music albums: the dynamic range is narrow, and by the sixth or seventh ballad the textures start to blur. Ammons's tone is so consistent, so reliably beautiful, that the individual tracks lose their distinctiveness. It is background music, beautifully played, but background music nonetheless.

Every jazz label jumped on the bossa nova bandwagon after Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd scored a hit with "Deserto Sertanejo" in 1962, and Prestige was no exception. Ammons was an unlikely candidate for the treatment: his huge, vibrato-heavy tone is about as far from the bossa nova aesthetic as tenor saxophone gets. But here he is, backed by two acoustic guitars, bongo, and Hank Jones at the piano, attempting the style.

Jones and Burrell are the saving graces. Jones plays with the harmonic sophistication the Brazilian material demands, and Burrell's acoustic guitar provides the rhythmic lift that makes bossa nova work. Pizzarelli adds depth to the guitar texture. Al Hayes keeps the percussion light and Latin.

The awkward truth is that Ammons's tone is too big, too heavy, too rooted in the blues for this music. Where Getz's cool, vibrato-less sound floated over the rhythms, Ammons's vibrato sits on top of them. It is not bad, exactly: the band is excellent, and some of the less Brazilian, more blues-oriented tracks work well enough. But the concept is a mismatch, and no amount of excellent sideman work can change that fundamental problem.

A curiosity and a document of a remarkable pianist's brief return to recording. Dodo Marmarosa had been one of bebop's great pianists in the 1940s, recording with Charlie Parker and Artie Shaw, before mental health problems essentially ended his career. This 1962 Chicago session pairs him with Ammons, Sam Jones on bass, and Marshall Thompson on drums, but it sat in the Prestige vault for a decade before seeing release as a double LP in 1972.

Marmarosa is the story. His touch is lighter than the pianists Ammons usually worked with, more Bud Powell than Mal Waldron, and the interplay between his delicate bebop lines and Ammons's massive tone creates an unexpected and often beautiful contrast. On the trio tracks where Ammons sits out, Marmarosa's playing is a window into what might have been if his career had not been interrupted.

The double-LP length works against the session: there is more material here than the quartet format can sustain, and the later tracks drift toward routine blowing. But the best moments, the tracks where Marmarosa's fragile elegance meets Ammons's certainty, are genuinely moving. This is not a great Ammons album, but it is an important Marmarosa document, and the interplay between two very different musical personalities gives it a character that none of the other records from this period share.