Blue Mitchell
Jazz Blues Fusion....
…as a small boy…I used to lie and listen to my father play Beethoven…To my young mind, it all spoke a language that stirred me strangely, and I’ve since learned that it was the language, beyond all words, of the human heart.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
In the early to mid-1970s, music was not omnipresent, as it is today.
In those days, if you were lucky enough to have a stereo in your house, you could play 45s or LPs. Outside of the house. There were no iPhones and the first portable audio player, the Boombox, didn’t really show up in the U.S. until some ten years later.
If you had a transistor radio, you could pick up music that way. But most often, you listened to music in the car on the car radio. There were a couple of stations you could program on the car’s push-button radio, like this one.
So, back then, music was very likely to come at you in a pretty regimented fashion. My first memory of music was in this progression: Sunday church music; mom and dad’s stereo console; car radio; and then transistor radio. Out of all this music, only a few of the albums from my mom and dad’s meager record collection hit home with me.
Our stereo console looked like this:
The records that I liked were: Victory At Sea - songs from the High Seas composed by Richard Rodgers; South Pacific soundtrack with Mary Martin and Enzo Pinza; Whipped Cream & Other Delights by Herb Albert’s Tijuana Brass; and Carousel soundtrack with Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae. However, there was one other very important and less regimented source of music that interested me - the music I heard on the TV.
As I chronicled over a year ago in my first few editions of this journey, which I’ll point out again now, the early soundtracks to Fred Astaire and James Bond movies moved me much more than the sounds on the records in our stereo console, and songs on the car radio or on the radio that played in the warming house at the elementary school skating rink, where I spent many a winter night.
I guess it is important to point out that up until then I had never categorized music. I either liked the music I heard or I did not - regardless of the source or genre. But things changed in about 1976 when my brother returned from college.
As I have mentioned before, my brother brought back from college a treasure trove of music and a record player with headphones. To me, his record collection was just albums with pictures. I did not know any of them. They were not something I would have heard on the radio or TV. These were altogether different. One of the first albums I remember playing was The Best of John Mayall, a double album set released on Polydor in 1973.
One song in particular stood out, Change Your Ways:
I loved the trumpet and guitar right away. As it turns out, the trumpet player was Blue Mitchell and the guitar player was Freddy Robinson - both established jazz musicians. I would later find out that this song was from Mayall’s 1972 Jazz Blues Fusion album. Mitchell and Robinson were not strangers, as they had both been on the LA music scene for some time. In fact, they recorded together on Mitchell’s Blue Note album Bantu Village, recorded in LA in 1969.
I think it was with this album that I understood for the first time, in my mind, the idea that music was categorized: Blues music; Jazz music; Rock music: etc. But at the same time, I did not really understand the need - it was all just music that either reached me or not. Some years later, Ornette Coleman in the liner notes to his 1977 album Dancing in Your Head wrote, “Any person in today’s music scene knows that rock, classical, folk, and jazz are all yesterday’s titles. I feel the music world is getting closer to being a singular expression with endless musical stories of mankind.” Yes! That was what I was feeling back then listening to John Mayall.
So I heard Blue Mitchell’s trumpet long before I knew who he was or ever saw his face. Only over the years would I make the connection - that was the fabulous Blue Mitchell on those Mayall albums….
After high school, Blue Mitchell worked primarily with R&B bands like Earl Bostic’s band.
In 1948, he met Cannonball Adderley in Tallahassee, who set up an audition for him in Miami with Orrin Keepnews, a record producer at Riverside Records. Keepnews liked what he heard and signed him to the label. He moved to New York, where he recorded on Adderley’s Portrait of Cannonball and later began to record as a leader.
In 1958, Mitchell joined pianist Horace Silver’s quintet, where he stayed until 1964. During this time we also released records under his own leadership, like Blue Soul released in 1959 by Riverside. Here’s a nice tune from that album, Park Avenue Petite:
Here’s a favorite from his work with Horace Silver, Too Much Sake from Silver’s The Tokyo Blues released on Blue Note in 1962:
As it would turn out, Blue Mitchell would also play on a couple of my favorite albums, both by Tina Brooks: Street Singer and Back To The Tracks, both recorded for Blue Note in late 1960. He hangs right in there with Jackie McLean, Tina Brooks, and Kenny Drew on Street Singer:
Even though he released many first-rate albums as a leader for both Riverside and Blue Note, Blue Mitchell tends to be overlooked today. Unfortunately, cancer forced Mitchell to retire from playing in October of 1978. He died on May 21, 1979 in Los Angeles, California. He was only 49 years old. Blue Mitchell will always have a special place in my heart as the trumpet player whose sound pointed me in the direction of a new sound - Jazz.
Next week, On that Big River called Jazz, we’ll revisit Sun Ra and his last recordings from 1989 to 1992. I think these are some of his more under-valued recording sessions….
If you like what you’ve been reading and hearing so far on our journey and would like to share this with someone you think might be interested in learning more about our great American art form: Jazz, just hit the “Share” button at the bottom of the page. Also, if you feel so inclined, become a subscriber to my journey by hitting the “Subscribe” button here:
Also, find my playlist on Spotify: From Fred Astaire to Sun Ra.
Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that.
Until then, keep on walking….