Sonny Stitt

A West Coast rhythm section gives this date a different feel from the New York Verve sessions. Lou Levy's piano is lighter and more spacious, Leroy Vinnegar's walking bass has a distinctive melodic quality, and Mel Lewis swings with the kind of relaxed authority that made him one of the most sought-after drummers on the West Coast scene. Stitt sounds invigorated by the change of scenery.

The blues focus continues from Only the Blues, but the setting is less intense, more conversational. Stitt's alto is in beautiful form, his tone warm and full, his lines flowing with an ease that suggests a musician completely at home with his material. This is not a record that pushes boundaries; it is a record that perfects what it does.

Mel Lewis's brushwork deserves special attention. His time feel is impeccable, and his ability to shift the rhythmic weight within a bar without disrupting the groove is a subtle art that not every listener will consciously notice but everyone will feel. A polished, deeply satisfying quartet date.

The same West Coast rhythm section as Blows the Blues, and the same high standard of playing. The modest title suggests Stitt was feeling confident, and the performances back up the claim. His alto playing across these sessions is among the most fluid and inventive of his career, the lines pouring out with a seamlessness that makes the most complex bebop vocabulary sound like casual conversation.

Lou Levy's accompaniment continues to impress: his voicings are clean and supportive, never crowding the soloist, always offering harmonic information at exactly the right moment. Vinnegar and Lewis provide the same steady, swinging foundation they brought to the previous session.

If you own Blows the Blues, you need this one too: the two records together represent the peak of Stitt's West Coast Verve sessions. Neither album reaches for anything beyond what a great quartet can achieve with good material and great execution, and both succeed completely on those terms.

Recorded live at the Hi-Hat club in Boston in 1954 but not released until 1960, this is a rare glimpse of Stitt in the club environment where he was at his most ferocious. The rhythm section is a local Boston group, not names that jazz history remembers, but they swing competently and stay out of Stitt's way as he tears through standard after standard on all three saxophones.

The live recording captures something the studio dates cannot: the competitive fire that drove Stitt on the bandstand. His solos are longer, more daring, with extended double-time passages that push the tempo to its breaking point. The audience responds audibly, and you can hear Stitt feeding on their energy, playing harder as the room gets louder.

The sound quality is adequate rather than good, and the local rhythm section lacks the precision of his studio collaborators. But as a document of Stitt the live performer, the man who reputedly could outplay anyone who dared share a bandstand with him, this is invaluable. The baritone saxophone appearances are a particular treat, revealing a voice he rarely recorded in the studio.

The most famous of the Stitt-Ammons collaborations, and the one that defines the tenor battle subgenre. Gene Ammons, son of boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons, had a tenor sound as big as a house: warm, round, and drenched in blues feeling. Stitt's tenor was leaner and more aggressive, his bebop conception pushing against Ammons's earthier approach. The contrast is electric from the first notes of "Blues Up and Down."

The two tenors had been playing together since the Billy Eckstine band in the late forties, and the years of familiarity show in the way they anticipate each other's moves. The trading is not combative so much as conversational, two old friends who happen to speak in saxophone trying to tell the same story from different angles. Houston, Williams, and Brown provide a no-frills rhythm section that stays out of the way and swings.

The album's strength is its directness. There are no arrangements, no production tricks, no attempt to be anything other than two great tenor players blowing on blues and standards. It is raw, exciting, and utterly unpretentious. The definitive Stitt-Ammons document and one of the essential jazz party records.

Every saxophonist of this era made a strings album, and few of them are essential. This is Stitt's entry in the genre: Ralph Burns's arrangements are lush and professional, the string writing warm without being cloying, and Stitt plays over the top with his usual assurance. The problem is that the format neutralizes his greatest strengths: the rhythmic intensity and competitive fire that make his best records so exciting.

The ballad performances are the album's best moments. Stitt's tone, particularly on alto, is genuinely beautiful, and Burns gives him enough space to phrase with the rubato expressiveness that the strings setting demands. But the uptempo arrangements feel constrained, the strings adding a layer of politeness that Stitt's playing does not need or want.

A pleasant album that showcases an underappreciated side of Stitt's musicianship, but not one that belongs alongside his quartet and quintet recordings. The strings records of this era were commercial projects designed to broaden an artist's audience, and this one fulfills that brief competently without ever catching fire.

The organ combo format was the jukebox sound of early sixties jazz, and Stitt took to it with relish. Jack McDuff's Hammond B-3 provides a swirling, churning harmonic bed that frees Stitt from the rhythmic obligations of a piano-bass-drums trio and lets him blow with abandon. Eddie Diehl's guitar adds rhythmic chording, and Ray Barretto's congas give the whole thing a Latin undertow that keeps the groove from ever settling into predictability.

Stitt's tenor is at its most uninhibited on these tracks. The organ's sustained chords and bass pedals create a cushion of sound that supports extended, blues-drenched solos, and Stitt exploits the format to its fullest. His phrasing is looser and more rhythmically adventurous than on the Verve dates, the organ combo context encouraging a rawness that the more refined rhythm sections sometimes inhibited.

Art Taylor's drumming is the key ingredient that keeps this from becoming a purely commercial exercise. His jazz sensibility, honed on hundreds of Blue Note and Prestige sessions, ensures that the groove never dumbs down, and his interaction with Stitt on the extended tracks is genuinely creative. A strong entry in the organ-combo genre.

The sequel to Boss Tenors replaces the piano trio with an organ combo, and the shift in texture changes the character of the tenor battles. Don Patterson's organ fills the room with a soulful warmth that makes the whole date sound like it was recorded in a juke joint at midnight. Ammons and Stitt respond accordingly, playing bluesier and more relaxed than on the first Boss Tenors date.

The organ combo format was commercially savvy in 1962, and this album clearly aims for the same audience that was buying Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff records. But neither Ammons nor Stitt compromises their jazz vocabulary for the format: the solos are long, complex, and full of the bebop harmonic sophistication that distinguished both players from the average bar-walking tenor man.

Not quite as essential as the first Boss Tenors, partly because the novelty of the pairing has worn off and partly because the organ combo format, for all its charms, lacks the rhythmic flexibility of a piano trio. But the playing is consistently excellent, and Patterson's organ adds a new color to the Stitt-Ammons palette.

A tenor battle with a twist: Paul Gonsalves, Duke Ellington's star tenor soloist since the late forties, brings a completely different vocabulary to the encounter. Where Ammons was earthy and bluesy, Gonsalves is expansive and rhapsodic, his long, flowing lines shaped by years of playing in Ellington's orchestra. The contrast with Stitt's sharper, more rhythmically insistent approach produces some of the most interesting two-tenor interplay of the decade.

The rhythm section is superb. Hank Jones is one of the great accompanists in jazz history, his touch lighter and more harmonically adventurous than the typical hard bop pianist. Milt Hinton's bass has the warm, resonant tone of a man who had been recording since the swing era, and Osie Johnson's drums are crisp and swinging. This is a rhythm section that could make any front line sound good, and with Stitt and Gonsalves it sounds magnificent.

Impulse!'s characteristic recording quality, rich and resonant, gives both tenors a presence that the earlier Verve dates sometimes lacked. You can hear every nuance of the two contrasting approaches, and the result is one of the most satisfying tenor summits of the era. A record that deserves to be mentioned alongside Boss Tenors as one of the essential Stitt collaborations.

The album Stitt's career had been building toward. After years of avoiding the Parker comparison, he confronts it directly: an entire album of Charlie Parker compositions, played on alto saxophone, with a rhythm section drawn largely from the Modern Jazz Quartet. It is an act of supreme confidence, and the performances justify the audacity completely.

John Lewis and Connie Kay bring the MJQ's characteristic elegance to these arrangements, and the addition of Jim Hall's guitar gives the group a cool, chamber-music quality that sets the Parker material in a new light. These are not recreations of Bird's recordings; they are reimaginations, with Stitt finding his own way through the melodies and changes while acknowledging the debt with every phrase.

Richard Davis's bass is the rhythmic anchor, his intonation perfect, his time impeccable. Hall's comping behind Stitt's solos is a marvel of taste and sensitivity. And Stitt himself plays with a freedom and emotional openness that suggests the act of confronting Parker's music directly was liberating rather than constraining. One of the great tribute albums in jazz, and one of the finest records Stitt ever made.

Stitt returns to the organ combo format with McDuff, and the chemistry remains strong. Leonard Gaskin's bass adds a bottom end that the organ-only bass pedals sometimes lack, and Herbie Lovelle's drumming has a pocket feel that keeps the groove centered. The material is a mix of blues, standards, and originals, all treated with the same funky directness.

The title is accurate: this is music designed for a specific kind of small, smoky room where the jukebox and the live band compete for the same audience. Stitt's ability to play with intellectual sophistication while sounding like the most accessible musician in the room was one of his defining gifts, and it is on full display here.

Not as essential as the first Stitt Meets Brother Jack, but a solid addition to the organ combo catalog. McDuff is in fine form, his solos concise and bluesy, and Stitt's alternation between alto and tenor gives the session welcome variety.

Another tenor summit, this time with Zoot Sims, whose Lester Young-derived approach was the polar opposite of Stitt's Parker-rooted conception. Where Stitt attacks the beat, Sims floats behind it; where Stitt's lines are angular and incisive, Sims curves and flows. The contrast is subtler than the Ammons battles but equally rewarding for listeners who appreciate the finer points of saxophone style.

The Chicago rhythm section of Young, Kidd, and Thomas is workmanlike but effective, providing steady time without attempting to match the front line's sophistication. This is a blowing session in the truest sense, and the value lies entirely in the interplay between the two horns.

The most interesting moments come when Stitt switches to alto, and the timbral difference between his brighter, sharper sound and Sims's rounder tenor creates a more dramatic contrast than the two-tenor tracks. A solid if unspectacular blowing date that rewards close listening.

A curiosity piece. The presence of Rufus Harley, the only jazz bagpipe player of note, gives this album an unusual texture that is more interesting as a concept than as a sustained listening experience. Harley's bagpipes drone and wail against Stitt's saxophone, creating moments of genuinely surprising beauty alongside passages that feel more like novelty than art.

Robin Kenyatta's alto adds a second saxophone voice, and Wilmer Mosby's organ provides the harmonic foundation. The instrumentation is unusual enough to make every track an adventure, though not every adventure leads somewhere rewarding. Stitt plays with his usual authority, but the unconventional setting sometimes pushes him into corners where his bebop fluency is not the right tool for the job.

The album's best moments come when the bagpipes recede and the organ-saxophone combination takes over, producing the kind of funky soul jazz that Stitt handled with ease. As a complete statement it is uneven, but as a document of mid-sixties eclecticism it has a charm that grows on repeated listening. Not essential, but not dismissible either.