A History Of Blue Note Records: 1952

Milt Jackson Quintet – April 7 1952

Richard Havers - Uncompromising Expression (Thames and Hudson) p82 After the Bechet session in November 1951, it would be five months before the next [inhouse] recording. Despite featuring an artist who had already recorded with Blue Note [see Notes etc.] this session could be considered as the start of the modern era for the company. Milt Jacson had first recorded for Blue Note in 1948 as part of [Thelonious] Monk’s band, but his April 1952 session included Lou Donaldson on saxophone, along with pianist John Lewis, Percy Heath on bass, and drummer Kenny Clarke – it was the Modern Jazz Quartet in the making.

Michael Cuscuna – Thelonious Monk and Milt Jackson (BNJ-61012) Liner Notes – 1985

Milt Jackson first came into the Blue Note sphere as a sideman on Thelonious Monk's fourth and fifth dates for the label in July of 1948 and 1951. His only other appearances would be his own session of April 7, 1952, and a Hank Mobley date on January 13, 1957 (BLP 1544).

Although variations of what was to be the Modern Jazz Quartet formed inside of Dizzy Gillespie's band and on several early Jackson dates, it was his April, 1952 dates for Blue Note and for Hi-Lo (now Savoy) that marked the stable personnel that would become the MJQ by the end of that year. On the Blue Note date, Lou Donaldson was added for several tunes.

All but three performances appear on BLP 1509. The other three are the master of "Don't Get Around Much Anymore", which was originally issued on 78, and alternate takes of that tune and "What's New". All three were once issued on a US double album (BN-LA-590-H2 and feature a swinging group that was not hampered by the later pretensions of the MJQ, which seemed preoccupied with chamber music and tuxedos. This is a band more rooted in its past with Gillespie than in its future as the premier third stream group of the fifties concert circuit.

Dom DeMichael – Milt Jackson – All Star Bags – BNLA-590-H2 Liner Notes – 1976

The instrument Milt Jackson plays has no generic name — vibe, vibraphone, vibraharp are all trade names — and there is no universally accepted way of playing it. One can look on it as a sort of chromatic drum the way Lionel Hampton may, or a metal xylophone å la Red Norvo, or a mini-piano as perhaps Gary Burton does.

Those three approaches are basically percussive.

Milt Jackson's approach to the instrument is different. It is percussive in the sense that to produce a sound he must hit a metal bar with a mallet. But what comes out often gives the impression that in his mind he is playing a saxophone, the most voice-like of wind instruments.

As a child, he wanted to play saxophone or trumpet but couldn't because he had asthma. That early desire may have something to do with the way he plays vibraharp. He's also something of a singer, which helps to explain the vocal quality of his work.

Jackson achieves such non-percussive effects by implication, of course — the shape of a phrase, its shading, subtly varied accenting, and sly use of grace notes, turns and other means of thickening his musical line are some of the ways he makes his instrument sing.

But those are merely means to an end. It is Jackson's mind-heart that determines what the end will be and which means best achieve it. Sometimes end and means merge into one great rolling, often rollicking, always blues-drenched, heart-wrenching flight of musical fancy.

A soulful player indeed is Milt Jackson.

Almost everybody who knows him agrees that he is a very soulful person. Soft-spoken, slight of build (but with two of the strongest wrists in the music business), his deep-set eyes mournfully surveying the scene, he sometimes gives the impression of being a melancholy man, a brooder. That illusion is shattered by his undisguised glee when something or somebody strikes him as funny or clever. Both his sides are evident in his music, sometimes in one solo, as can be heard in Blues For Diahann, one of several superb moments among this album's performances.

Be all that as it may, "soulful" is the best description of Jackson. In fact, when the word "soul" was first used as a descriptive term in the 1950's, it was often applied to Jackson's playing. And since "soul" soon became almost a synonym for "church" in the jazz world, it was aptly applied.

"Where Bags (Jackson's nickname) gets his rhythm," Dizzy Gillespie once observed, "is that his family's sanctified." The Jackson family were members of the Church of God in Christ, in Detroit, and the services were built around music, highly rhythmic, swinging music. As a boy, Jackson was fascinated with what he heard in church, and his desire to become a musician grew quickly. "Why, that's where it all started," he recalled.

He studied guitar and piano, both formally and informally, when he was quite young. By the time he entered high school, his life's course was set: he took a full music curriculum. He majored in drums so he could be in the school's band, he was eager to learn and finished the drum instruction book before the school year was out. Looking for some way to keep a good student busy, his music teacher suggested he try his hand at the school's new xylophone. It didn't take long for the youngster to fall in love with the instrument.

Then he heard Lionel Hampton playing vibes with Benny Goodman in the late '30s. The metallic version of the xylophone fascinated him even more than the school's instrument, and his father bought him one.

The die was cast.

"I had no eyes to play Hamp's way." Jackson declared, "I just got hung on the instrument."

Every vibes player in the world knows what he means, for once under the instrument's spell, no player escapes its attraction. He may curse its awkwardness, fight it when it refuses to speak as it should, swear he'll never touch it again, despair at its mechanical eccentricities, but leave it for good? Never.

And the instrument, the particular instrument, Jackson plays is an important part of his soulfulness. his uniqueness, his musical identity. When Jackson first made his mark. as a member of Dizzy Gillespie's 1946 big band, he had a rather beat-up set of vibes. "They sounded like milk bottles." Gillespie remembered. "They used to fall apart all the time."

In 1951, Jackson acquired a used 1937 Deagan Imperial, probably the best model the Deagan company ever produced. He still uses it, for its sound is like no other vibraharp's. The tone is deeper and darker than post-war Deagan's; probably because of the instrument's great weight. (The company keeps insisting to Jackson and others who hear what he hears in the instrument that there is no difference in the tones of the old model and the newer ones, as shown by an electronic device that measures such things. But science is science and sound is sound, and Jackson's old vibraharp has a better tone than any produced after the war.

Part of secret in extracting the tone lies in the mallets, their degree of and their weight. Up to a point, a heavy mallet of medium hardness gets a fuller tone than a light, hard one. At least since the Hank Mobley date included in this album, Jackson has used mallets by Fred Albright, a retired studio percussionist, and they draw tone out like no others. (Over the years, Jackson has used increasingly heavy mallets, to the point that today his mallets are so heavy that probably only he can play with them.)

The 1937 Imperial was different from 1951 Deagans in another important way - Jackson could vary the speed of the instrument's "vibrato."

Every set of vibes, no matter its manufacturer, has a motor that, by means of a rubber belt, turns two shafts which run the length of the instrument under the two rows of metal bars. Discs attached to the turning shafts break the air column produced by a struck bar as the air goes into and out of the resonator below the bar. This produces the illusion of a vibrato. (It is not a true vibrato because there is no pitch variation.)

In 1931, the motors on Deagan instruments were set at a constant, rather fast speed. Jackson's Imperial, though, had a motor with a rheostat, made it possible to slow the vibrato. The slow vibrato Jackson chose fit well with the slow vibrato favored by bop horn men, his playing companions of the time. Jackson's vibrato became the most readily identifiable element in his playing.

This perhaps too-detailed description of an instrument's mechanical aspects is meant only to point out that nonvocal music is the result of man and instrument. To hear the difference between Jackson's Imperial and a lesser instrument, compare the sound of his instrument the recordings with Lou Donaldson to that of the Hank Mobley session.

At the Donaldson date, Jackson played the Imperial. The tone, despite what sound like light hard mallets, is full. The vibrato is slow and expressive. A shallower tone or faster vibrato would have dulled the effectiveness of his improvisations on What's New? and the first and classic recording of Bag's Groove. His deft turns and grace notes on Lillie would have been in a sea of muddy sound.

Leonard Feather – Milt Jackson and the Thelonious Monk Quintet BLP 1509 Liner Notes – May 1956

AS TIME advances and jazz progresses, the perspective from which modern music is viewed undergoes certain subtle modifications. That which was an exciting novelty in 1946 may be, to the 1956 ear, a tale that was told too often and has lost its charm in the telling. But the creative minds, the genuinely original ideas with which the jazz scene was endowed during the middle 1940s have token on a significance that is clearer and more secure than that of any passing fad.

Such a mind is the mind of Milton Jackson, who to many of us in the 1940s was merely one of the first and best musicians to ploy what we then knew as bebop. Today, whether we hear him in person or survey his past accomplishments, the distinctive character of his work emerges in a brighter light. Bebop was the matter of his playing. At present we con examine the manner as well as the matter, and we can see that this, as much as the fact that he was the first vibraharpist to use bop ideas, is a determinant element in any analysis of his contribution.

When Dizzy Gillespie first brought him to New York from his native Detroit in 1945, Milton “Bags” Jackson was 22 years old; he had studied music at Michigan State, had played piano on several local jobs, and had begun to experiment on the vibraharp in what was, as Dizzy had been quick to observe, a style rhythmically, melodically and harmonically compatible with that of Gillespie’s trumpet.

During the crescent years of bop, Milt lent this style to the tonal requirements of small combos led by Howard McGhee, Tadd Dameron, Thelonious Monk, and even, in 1949, to the big-band demands of Woody Herman, when he replaced Terry Gibbs in the Second Herd. But the 1950s saw him back with Dizzy for a couple of years, doubling on piano; then, from 1953, the renewal of a partnership with John Lewis brought belated recognition of his true character, as an idea was developed that soon was to reach maturity in the guise of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

The manner of Milt Jackson’s style is one that blends an ever-present beat with an innate gentleness. The vibes motor is kept running slowly, to retain for Milt the slow vibrato that has become characteristic, just as the no-motor-at-all approach hos become a part of Red Norvo. Grace notes abound, and are used, aptly, with infinite grace and subtlety. The percussive feel that one finds in such vibes men as Hampton and Gibbs is seldom to be observed in Jackson’s work; it is as though he strokes the notes rather than hits them.

On these two sides you will find what are, to my mind, the best records Milt Jackson has ever made. The reason can be found in the personnels involved. On one date the men were the original Modern Jazz Quartet members — Milt, John Lewis, Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke — plus, on some numbers, Lou Donaldson’s aerostotic alto. On the second and third sessions, Thelonious Monk was the elder statesman in charge of operations.

Lillie, Bags’ own tune, represented in two different takes here, is a pretty melodic line played by the Quartet. On Tahiti Donaldson’s alto is added for a swinging minor-key Jackson original that shows the sympathy and similarities of the styles of Bags and John Lewis. What’s New is the Quartet again, slow, easy-going, the kind of number on which you can picture Bags looking up at the night club audience, as he does every so often, with that quizzical dead-pan reaction that seems to say: “Gee, that come out pretty nice, didn’t it!” Lou returns again for Bags’ Groove, a medium-tempo blues riff by Milt that hos since become a modern jazz standard, with many other versions recorded but none to top this first flight on Blue Note wings. On The Scene, which uses the I Got Rhythm changes as scenery, shows the Bird-like inclinations of Donaldson and the legato excursions of Jackson at a fiery tempo that drops off into a simple, slow ending on the tonic.

Down Beat 19 November 1952 Volume 19 Issue 23

One of the preferred vibes men is well represented here in a collation from two sessions; one with Lou Donaldson’s alto and rhythm by John Lewis, Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke, the other with Sahib Shihab plus Monk, McKibbon and Blakey. The first two titles and the last are vibes solos with rhythm, Milt is very relaxed throughout. Criss and Eronel are very thelonious tunes. Groove is an attractive blues. (Blue Note LP 5011)

Photo by Francis Wolff

Bob Blumenthal – Milt Jackson-Wizard Of The Vibes RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes (5 32140 2) 2001

Widely acknowledged as the seminal modern vibist, Milt Jackson (1923-99) is one of the great jazz soloists on any instrument and of any era. It is true that Jackson was at the center of innovation from the time he joined Dizzy Gillespie in 1945, and that his harmonically and rhythmically sophisticated ideas and slower vibrato redefined a jazz mallet style previously established by Red Norvo and Lionel Hampton; but his exceptional feeling for the blues and ballads, and his depths of what became commonly known as soul, were truly transcendent.

Jackson’s most familiar setting was the Modern Jazz Quartet, an ensemble with a roughly half-century history if one begins with its origins as the Gillespie big band’s rhythm section. This collection captures Jackson’s early work, before the MJQ was known as such. It includes two sessions — one under Jackson’s name and with his MJQ partners plus Lou Donaldson in support, another where he is featured on one of the key dates ¡n the discography of Thelonious Monk. Both find the vibist featuring ideas and a sound that would become his trademarks.

First on the program is Jackson’s only date as a leader for Blue Note. He had previously been heard under his own name on Galaxy, Savoy and Dee Gee, however, and a session for Hi-Lo was also recorded sometime in the same month. Pianist John Lewis, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Kenny Clarke would begin recording with Jackson under the name the Modern Jazz Quartet eight months later for Prestige; but in a sense the band’s studio prehistory began when bassist Al Jackson (Milt’s brother) and bongo drummer Chano Pozo joined Lewis, Clarke and the vibist for a 1948 Galaxy session. Two 1951 Dee Gee dates under Jackson’s name also include Lewis and either Ray Brown/Kenny Clarke or Percy Heath/Al Jones. Heath and Jones, like Jackson, were sidemen at the time with Gillespie, a job that found the vibist doubling on piano. Jackson and Heath had clearly struck a groove, and the bassist proved equally compatible with Lewis and Clarke. A fifth voice was added on this occasion in the of alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson, making the first of what would be numerous appearances on Blue Note. The quintet lineup also anticipated the tracks with Sonny Rollins that the MJQ cut for Prestige ¡n the following year.

“Tahiti,” in a minor key, features a vibes chorus by Jackson that typifies his spirited creations. He has a way of beginning each stanza with a rush of melody that lends a regenerative feeling to the overall improvisation. After Donaldson’s comfortable chorus, Lewis displays his more formalistic bent, which can also be detected in the arranged introduction and coda.

Alto sax is not heard on “Lillie,” a sentimental ballad line by Jackson that gains immeasurably from the slowly unfolding passion of the leader and the reserved and beautiful support of Lewis and Heath. The master take was cut first, and swings more fervently as Jackson’s solo develops.

“Bags’ Groove” ranks with “Now’s The Time” and “Walkin” as the most widely played blues line of the era. It would become Jackson’s signature tune for the remainder of his career, and he would revisit it several times on record with the MJQ, and in two famous Miles Davis All-Stars takes with Heath, Clarke and Monk. This is the debut recording, with fluent choruses by the three soloists and touches (Lewis’s discursive accompaniment, the interlude before the theme restatement) that anticipate the MiO arrangement.

“What’s New?” also became an MJQ staple, and is heard here in two takes. In this instance, the master was cut after the alternate. The scheme mirrors that on “Lillie,” with alto laying out and one-and-a-half vibes choruses after a brief introduction, though the more probing melody and structure of Bob Haggart’s classic ballad elicit superior responses. Lewis’s ability to “read” Jackson helps make both takes exceptional.

For a time, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” was the lost track from this session. While all six titles had originally appeared as 78 singles, it had been omitted from the original 10’ and 12” LP reissues. When the Ellington standard resurfaced on compact disc, a second, later take was also included. This was Donaldson’s feature, and the eight bars of additional solo space on each take compared to Jackson. The alto saxophonist is close to Charlie Parker in sound and ideas, if notably less spontaneous (he quotes “Goin’ Home” when reentering on both takes).

Donaldson wrote the simple “I Got Rhythm” variant called “On The Scene” that might be considered a training-wheel version of Parker’s “Merry Go Round.” Lewis got a piano chorus on that title, but not here, where the rather generic alto licks are overshadowed by a brilliant Jackson solo. Alfred Lion was clearly impressed with Donaldson, however, and used him on Thelonious Monk’s sextet session in May before giving him his own session in June.

Photo by Francis Wolff

Down Beat 16 July 1952 Volume 19 Issue 14

Bags (that’s Milt Jackson’s nickname) features his own vibes, John Lewis’ piano and Lou Donaldson’s alto in a neatly arranged, well-balanced, medium-fast blues. Lillie is a very pretty Jackson melody, played as a vibes solo with rhythm. (Blue Note 1593.)

Billboard 12 May 1956

Basically, this is a re-mastering of a 10-inch LP (BLP 5011), adding one number not previously released (Evidence) and an additional take on each of three tunes (Lillie, Misterioso and Four in Hand). Three changes of personnel are involved in these sessions, with interesting shifts of emphasis in Jackson’s style. On one date, he was backed by the original members of the Modern Jazz Quartet; on the second and third, Thelonious Monk was the principal assistant. This LP contains some of the real high points of Jackson’s music-making in his pre-MJQ period. Try a ballad like Willow Weep for Me as a starter and then dip in anywhere.

Down Beat September 24 1952 Volume 19 Issue 19 Lou Donaldson, the young alto man, buried in blues bands for some time, is emerging as a modern soloist to watch. Except for a couple of minor technical flaws, his work on the Ellington tune and on the I Got Rhythmish coupling here is fluent and exciting in the Bird tradition. Milt Jackson, John Lewis, Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke aid him. (Blue Note 1594.)

Notes etc.

Lou Donaldson’s first session for Blue Note

Milt Jackson had previously played on the July 2 1948 Thelonious Monk session, and then later in the year, on October 11 1948, with Howard McGhee/Fats Navarro.

Pianist John Lewis, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Kenny Clarke would begin recording with Jackson under the name the Modern Jazz Quartet eight months later for Prestige

BLP 1509 – Milt Jackson and Thelonious Monk Quintet was the first Blue Note 12” solely designed by Reid Miles