1954 - May 12

George Wallington And His Band – May 12 1954 

 

Leonard Feather: George Wallington And His Band Liner Notes – BLP 5045 

ALTHOUGH George Wallington has been a major actor on the modern jazz stage for several years, most of his roles have been played in small stock companies, principally with rhythm trios. Now Blue Note presents him, for the first time, with a seven-piece dramatis personae of his own choosing, in which his performances stand out in fuller relief by virtue of their handsome setting. 

The name Wallington, selected more or less at random by its owner, hides a colorful cosmopolitan background, for George Figlia, as they called him when he made his bow in Palermo, Sicily in 1923, was the son of an Italian opera singer and grew up in a classical setting, but grew out of it into the jazz world when he first listened to Basie and Lester Young. 

George was only 15 when he quit high school to work in Brooklyn and Greenwich Village, playing with small bands for "pocket money and hot dogs," as he recalls. A chance meeting with Max Roach led to his participation in the birth rites of the bop movement. With Max, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Pettiford and Don Byas, he became one-fifth of the first real bop combo ever to play on 52nd Street, in 1944. 

Later, working with Charlie Parker, Georgie Auld, Red Rodney et al, he became a constant protagonist of the new jazz school. In recent years he has been heard most often with his own trio. He made one previous Blue Note appearance in the Gil Melle LP 5020. 

In the summer of 1953 George joined Lionel Hampton's band for a trip to Europe. This was the sum total of his experience as a big band pianist, and while the musical profits may have been meager, the personal associations that resulted were indeed fruitful. Two of his colleagues in the Hampton band, Quincy Jones and James Cleveland (both of whom followed George out of the band shortly after the European tour) contributed invaluably to this LP. 

Quincy's is one of the brightest and youngest minds on the new jazz scene. Born in 1933 in Chicago raised in Seattle, he went to Boston on a Schillinger scholarship in 1951 and soon began to make a name for himself as trumpeter, pianist and arranger. It is in this last capacity that he functioned on the Wallington date. George, though he has composed such popular instrumental numbers as Lemon Drop and Godchild, leaves it to others to orchestrate his works. The collaboration with Quincy on three Wallington originals, and on the other material in t is set, was a prime factor in the success of the session. 

Jimmy Cleveland will be known, before long, as one of the truly original trombone men. His entire professional experience, from 1949 to '53, was with Hampton, whom he joined soon after leaving Tennessee (he was born in 1926 in Nashville and went to Tennessee U.) He is now free-lancing around New York. 

Prominently featured in this album is Frank Foster, currently with Count Basic. Now 26 years old, he comes from Cincinnati and has already achieved considerable prominence not only through his work with Basic, but also as a combo leader on his own Blue Note LP 5043. His virile tenor sax style provides some of the outstanding solo moments on this session. 

Completing the Wallington front line are Dave Burns and Danny Bank. Burns, who played with Dizzy Gillespie's big band, has been featured for some time with James Moody and was heard in Moody's Blue Note LP 5006. Danny Bank, a Brooklynite who grew up with Al Cohn, has been with every top name band from Goodman and Shaw to Barnet and both Dorseys. 32 years old, he has scarcely ever been heard in a solo role (on this occasion he made an exception ). 

George's rhythm teammates, Oscar Pettiford and Kenny "Klook" Clarke, are of course familiar through their long record of service to the modern movements, including many fine Blue Note sides. 

It is Oscar who takes the first featured part in this set, introducing the ageless 12-bar melody of Frankie and Johnnie. Ensemble, piano, muted trumpet, tenor and a closing ensemble lend variety to this attractively voiced Quincy Jones treatment of the blues standard. 

Baby Grand is a simple melody mainly in long notes, with some outstanding Foster tenor, some fleet Burns trumpet and Jimmy Cleveland soaring in from the treetops to share a chorus with George. 

Christina is one of George's melodic charmers, as pretty as the young lady to whom it was dedicated (she is the three-year-old daughter of publicist Virginia Wicks). Playing the melody, George is opulently set off as the horns provide a fine background. The beauty of this work lies as much in the harmonic structure as in the melody. 

Summertime acquires a Latin touch, with Danny Bank switching to flute, Cleveland peppering the horizon with sixteenth notes in an extraordinary solo, and further contributions by Wallington, Pettiford and Foster. 

On Festival, a lively and catchy theme, effective use is made of a three-against four rhythmic feel (by means of dotted quarters). George, who wrote this number just after returning from Europe, must have been happy to get home. His own solo, in crisp and incisive single-note lines, is preceded by some fine Foster tenor and followed by one of Burns' best solos, after which the theme returns. 

The closing opus is Bumpkins, in which a Quincy Jones 12-bar theme is the bread for which a series of superb y integrated ad lib choruses are the meat in a highly palatable blues sandwich, It is on this item that Danny Bank comes out of his shell to show that he, too, can blow the blues. 

A concluding word should be added on behalf of the engineer who balanced this date. The excellence of both solo and ensemble sounds is a tribute to performers and recording alike. 

George Wallington has long been one of the outstanding pianists in contemporary jazz, but this LP should add still further to his ever-rising reputation. 

Cover Design by JOHN HERMANSADER 

 

Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF

Pete Welding: The Beginning And End Of Bop Liner Notes – B-6503 

Something of the extent to which bop transformed America's music is indicated in a comparison of the music of the Moody bop octet and that of George Wallington And His Band, heard on this album's second side. If the music of Moody and his bopsters is successful in indicating something of the excitement and creative ferment that marked bop's early years, the music of the recording sextet led by the stimulating pianist Wallington some six years later reveals how profoundly bop had affected the course of modern jazz. The music of the Moody octet strikes the ear even today as harsh and angular, while that of the Wallington group impresses with its urbanity, sophistication, polish and utter, flowing ease. It's as smooth as butter, and apparently as natural a mode of expression to the participants as the English language. Bop had won its battle, and the revolution was complete. 

The leader of this tasty, imaginative small band is one of the important innovators in modern music. Born Giorgio Figlia in Palermo, Italy, October 27, 1924, the son of an opera singer, George Wallington was brought to the United States the following year. He studied music privately for a number of years and was a full-fledged professional at the age of 15, when he worked with a number of local bands in the New York City area, Early drawn to the innovations of the bop masters, Wallington quickly became a member of the music's inner circles and was pianist in the first regularly constituted bop combo, a quintet Dizzy Gillespie organized for a 1944 engagement at the Onyx Club, on New York's 52nd Street, Wallington speedily developed as one of the most fluent, inventive bop pianists in the mid-'40's and was active in a large number of important small groups of the period. He contributed a good number of compositions to bop's growing literature, including "Godchild," "Lemon Drop," and the compositions heard here. The sessions were held in New York in the summer of 1954 and resulted in five important performances in mature bop style. All but "Christina" are included here. (Incidentally, "Festival" here was originally titled "Summertime Festival," perhaps in acknowledgment of the recording season.) 

Though an extraordinarily gifted composer, Wallington did not orchestrate and always employed others to score his music, On this set of recordings, this was done by the young Quincy Jones, then free-lancing on the New York scene after having left the trumpet section of the Lionel Hampton band after a two-year stay, His charts are full-bodied, harmonically arresting, and enhance Wallington's lines perfectly, The musicians comprising the Wallington sextet constitute some of the freshest and most accomplished young post-bop men, as well as several bop veterans, on the New York scene of the mid-'50s. Tenor saxophonist Frank Foster had just instituted an association with the Count: Basie orchestra that was to be as fruitful as it was long-lived. The facile and inventive trombonist Jimmy Cleveland had left the Hampton band to try his hand in the New York recording studios, where his prodigious technical and interpretative gifts have stood him in good stead since. The underappreciated Dave Burns had been a member of Gillespie's epochal big band of the late '40's and was also featured in James Moody's bop octet. Oscar Pettiford, one of the giants of modern bass, had co-led the first working bop unit with Gillespie in 1944. He had been a featured member of the Charlie Barnet Orchestra and was one of the most in-demand performing and recording musicians all through the '40's and '50's, working with a wide variety of leaders. Kenny Clarke was of course the founding father of modern drumming, a key figure in the shaping of the rhythmic basis of bop. He was a participant in most of its major activities and a charter member of the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1952. 

Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF

Billboard January 8 1954 

Diskophiles, particularly of the modern jazz school should be familiar with pianist Wallington as a small combo leader. Here, tho, he fronts a group of seven modernists, including Dave Burns, Jimmy Cleveland, Danny Bank, Frank Foster, Oscar Pettiford, Kenny Clarke and the leader's piano -playing some slick arrangements by Quincy Jones. Two standards and four originals, ranging from moody and melodic to fast and fifty, make up a neat collection of small band sounds which should be of particular interest to those seeking the new sounds. It's all beautifully recorded and spores some fine solo passages as well as scholarly band sound. (Blue Note 5045) 

Notes etc. 

George Wallington’s second and final recording for the Blue Note label. The first was the first Rudy Van Gelder session for the label, the Gil Melle session on March 2 1952. 

Session Information 

Dave Burns, trumpet; Jimmy Cleveland, trombone; Frank Foster, tenor sax; Danny Bank, baritone sax, flute; George Wallington, piano; Oscar Pettiford, bass; Kenny Clarke, drums; Quincy Jones, arranger. 

Audio-Video Studios, NYC, May 12, 1954 

BN572-3 tk.4, Summertime, Blue Note BLP 5045, B-6503 

BN572-4 tk.5, Summertime (alt) 

BN573-2 tk.8, Festival, Blue Note BLP 5045, B-6503 

BN573-3 tk.9, Festival (alt) 

BN574-2 tk.12, Christina, Blue Note BLP 5045 

BN575-0 tk.13, Frankie And Johnnie, Blue Note BLP 5045, B-6503 

BN575-1 tk.14, Frankie And Johnnie (alt) 

BN576-1 tk.16, Baby Grand, Blue Note BLP 5045, B-6503 

BN577-0 tk.19, Bumpkins, Blue Note BLP 5045, B-6503 

BN577-1 tk.20, Bumpkins (alt)