What was Jazz like in January 1960, before Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz and John Coltrane’s “Live” At The Village Vanguard LPs had ever hit the scene? I find it difficult to look back objectively at Jazz now, knowing the changes that would take place in the 1960s. For many musicians, the wild current of 1960s avant-garde was too strong, and they were caught up in it. For others, the slow and steady backwaters of conventional, swinging jazz were preferred - but it did come at a cost.
Some labels like Atlantic and Impulse! embraced the avant-garde. Others, like Columbia, were less enamored of it but rather focused their time and effort on big-name artists like Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck. For example, in 1960, Atlantic was pushing Coleman’s Change of the Century and Columbia was pushing Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain - two totally different worlds. This market-based approach in some respects created two separate realms - the realms of day and night. Bordering each other, these realms, in effect, placed the major label musicians up on the curb and left the minor label musicians with “one foot in the gutter”.
One such little-known, minor label was Epic Records, where in the latter half of the 1950s before the seismic changes divided that Big River Called Jazz, many fine musicians had been recording.
For marketing jazz and classical music that did not fit the theme of their more mainstream Columbia label, in 1953 they started Epic Records. By the 1960s, Epic provided a haven for jazz musicians looking for shelter from the storm. As I think about it now, this is what I feel makes Epic such a distinguished, although not often discussed, jazz treasure. However, the origins of this record label are difficult to track down. If I had to guess, I’d say George Avakian had something to do with it.
Back in the 1940s, CBS created a subsidiary called Columbia Records, and the President, Edward Wallenstein, wanted someone to produce a jazz re-issue series. On the recommendation of John Hammond, Columbia tapped Avakian, and he assembled the Hot Jazz Classics series. Here’s a classic from that series:
After World War II, Avakian would also champion contemporary classical music recordings. So it seems natural that the 1953 creation of the jazz and classical-focused Epic label might have been his brainchild.
I’d like to shed some light on the Epic label by focusing on the records of two outstanding and underrated musicians, alto saxophonist Phil Woods and drummer Dave Bailey.
Phil Woods
Over the summer of 1947, when he was 15 years old, Phil Woods would take field trips from Springfield, Massachusetts to New York City for music lessons with Lennie Tristano.
It was through Tristano that he met his hero, Charlie Parker. Woods recalls that meeting:
“I just wanted to go to New York because Charlie Parker was there. Studying with Tristano was a good excuse. I’d just take a day trip to New York, you know. When kids talk about a field trip, that was a field trip for me and my friend, Hal Serra. He was a piano player who lived up the street from me. He had a couple of years on me. His family knew my family and he looked over me.”
“After one lesson Tristano said, ‘Are you going to 52nd Street tonight? I’m opening for Charlie Parker, and I thought you kids would like to meet him,’ We held back on the pasta and the records so we could buy two Coca-Colas, showed up early at Three Deuces, and got our usual spot by the drums. Tristano’s trio played the first set, and then somebody took us backstage—well, it was a papier mache curtain and a small space behind the bandstand—and there was Charlie Parker sitting on the floor with a cherry pie. He said, ‘Hi, kids! Would you like a piece of cherry pie?’ ‘Oh, Mr. Parker, cherry is my favorite flavor.’ We sat on the floor with Bird, and he pulled out his knife, cut us a big slab. We wolfed it down and talked about music. Then we went back and listened to the genius of the world play the saxophone.”
Woods went on to study at Juilliard in New York City and graduated in 1952. Within a year, he was jamming with Charlie Parker at Arthur’s Tavern in Greenwich Village. Woods was amazed at the overall accessibility of the jazz masters at that time. Woods recalls:
“All of these masters were there for you to talk to and learn from and play with. I got to know Dizzy and all the guys this way. We all used to hang out at the same bar - Charlie’s Tavern, up on 51st St. between Broadway and Seventh Ave. There was no presidium. There was no, ‘They’re on stage and you’re in the audience.’ We were all at the musician's union hall or at Charlie’s Tavern, learning and listening and talking.”
In 1954, Woods recorded his first album, Pot Pie, released on the Prestige label. Based on the success of his early albums, in 1956 he joined Dizzy Gillespie’s big band for a world tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
In 1957, Phil Woods recorded Warm Woods, his first album on the Epic label.
That was also the year he married Chan Parker, the common-law wife of Charlie Parker, and became the stepfather to Chan’s daughter Kim. Here is Waltz For A Lovely Wife from that album, which is dedicated to Chan Parker:
Phil Woods was able to bridge those difficult years in the 1960s and 1970s and the jazz world finally caught up with him. He would go to be nominated for 18 Grammy Awards, winning 4 - his first in 1975 for best jazz performance by a big band on the RCA album Images with Michael Legrand and Orchestra.
Dave Bailey
Dave Bailey studied drumming after serving in the military as a pilot in World War II. He got his big break working in the Gerry Mulligan band in 1954.
The first time I became aware of Dave Bailey was on a used Gerry Mulligan Quartet record on the American Recording Society (ARS) record I bought at Ray’s Jazz Shop in London. I remember buying it along with a Lennie Tristano 78rpm box set on the Mercury label - two oddities to find in a London record store in the mid-1980s. The ARS label was founded in 1951 to promote American composers, principally of classical music like Charles Ives. On December 17, 1955, as a means to distribute some of his previously unissued recordings, Norman Granz, founder of Verve, Clef, and Norgran labels, signed an agreement with ARS to release jazz recordings through the ARS Jazz Series.
Another of my early jazz purchases was the soundtrack to the movie The Subterraneans, released by MGM in 1960. Again, Dave Bailey is Gerry Mulligan’s drummer.
In 1961, as part of Willis Conover and the Jazz Committee for Latin American Affairs, Bailey recorded this classic in Rio de Janeiro. This isn’t on the Epic label, but I like the track Ismaaa. Bailey plays on this album along with Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Curtis Fuller, Kenny Dorham, and Herbie Mann:
Perhaps the highlight of Dave Bailey’s recording career are his three live recordings with all-star groups for the Epic label between 1960 and 1961: “One Foot In The Gutter”,
and 2 Feet in the Gutter,
and Into Somethin’. Here’s Slop Jah from that album:
Interestingly, in 1969, Bailey would leave the jazz scene and return to the military as a pilot and flight instructor.
During the later 1960s, the Epic label moved into the rock and roll scene, signing newer bands like The Dave Clark Five, The Hollies, Donovan, The Yardbirds, and Jeff Beck. By 1968, the Epic label was introduced in the UK and distributed by CBS, and their focus on jazz diminished.
The 1970s and 1980s were two commercially successful decades for Epic Records, and Michael Jackson's 1982 album Thriller became the biggest selling album in history. Epic Records still remains a major force in pop music today, but it will always be remembered, at least by some, as a treasure for jazz music.
Here’s one more for the road, You Don’t know What Love Is from the 1961 Epic album Yeah!, with Charlie Rouse on tenor and Dave Bailey on drums. This one’s for my friend and musical mentor down in Jupiter:
Next week, on that Big River Called Jazz, we’ll paddle down that winding river to another artist who recorded with the Epic label, Herbie Mann.
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Until then, keep on walking….