Jazz

50 YOUNG, Lester. Lester Swings Again. Los

Cloud remembers him commenting about the young saxophonists playing across the street at Birdland, ‘They’re picking the bones while the body is still warm’” (Porter, p. 29). Young’s signature is decidedly uncommon, and extremely so on records; this is just the second we have handled. 12-inch vinyl LP (Norgran MG-N 1093); original pictorial laminate cover and glassine inner sleeve which is protected in recent plain card sleeve. Cover a little rubbed, laminate starting to lift at the open edge, rear panel slightly finger-soiled and a touch yellowed at the edges, minor split at the lower edge, glassine browned, crumpled and splitting at the edges, but complete, disc still bright and without scuffs. ¶ Richard Cook & Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings, 2008; Lewis Porter, Lester Young, 2005. £3,750 [147721]

with Gerald Holtom’s CND “peace sign” formed by two arms with hands clasped in solidarity crossing another giving the “V” for victory sign, tied together by a loose smoky grey wash circle suggestive of the Enso of Japanese Zen calligraphy. The pianist, arranger, and composer Mary Lou Williams’s career in jazz traced a line all the way from the Kansas City scene of the late 1920s through the swing era, bop, the 1950s jazz expatriate community, and an academic job at Duke in the late 1970s, also helping to pioneer sacred jazz in the early 1960s. After converting to Catholicism in the mid-1950s, Williams maintained an ultra-low profile in the jazz world, emerging just briefly in 1957 to play with Dizzy Gillespie at Newport. In the early 1960s she began composing jazz pieces with religious underpinnings, culminating in a series of jazz masses. The present album is widely considered her “magnum opus of

Angeles: Norgran Records, 1956 signed for jazz doctor luther cloud

Late period Pres, backed by select rhythm sections – Oscar Peterson with Gene Ramey and Barney Kessel, and John Lewis with two different set-ups, one pairing Ramey with Jo Jones – signed on the rear panel of the cover, with an abortive skidding “Lester” on the front slick. This release is Norgran MG-N 1093, a reissue of MG-N 1005 recorded 1950–2. Originally purchased from the Jazz Record Center, NYC, with brief note of provenance describing purchase from the widow of psychologist Dr. Luther Cloud, an addictions specialist and friend of baroness Nica de Konigswarter, who counted Young, Mingus, Billie, Max Roach and Monk among his patients. A collection of sides that feed into the controversy over the quality of Young’s work at this time, Cook and Morton identify two tracks in particular as “test cases in the Lester Young debate … ‘Lester Swings’ does just that, while ‘Slow Motion Blues’ is as painfully dragged out and mournful as anything Lester ever committed to disc. It would be tempting to play it as evidence of the saxophonist’s mental decline except that there is a sardonic humour to its long line which suggests that something else may be in play”. Alarmed at the musician’s decline jazz, musicologist Marshall Stearns introduced Cloud to Pres “to determine the causes of his depression … Young’s own fame and influence, ironically had brought him unhappiness. So much modern jazz was based on [his] innovations, and so many of his ideas were played note for note by younger musicians that he began to feel obsolete.

they were supplemented with the trio recordings of December 1952, with Slam Stewart on bass and Everett Barksdale on guitar. “Like no other performer in the history of jazz, Tatum summarized everything that had preceded him stylistically, and did so in a super-charged manner which opened doors not only for generations of pianists but for practitioners of other instruments as well” (Priestley, p. 626). 12-inch vinyl LP (Capitol T 216), new plain paper sleeve, original album cover. Cover partially split at top and bottom edges, some wear to spine with loss of surface paper, light soiling from album show-through, slightly affecting Tatum’s signature; disc in excellent condition. £8,500 [144444] 48 WEBB, Chick, & Ella Fitzgerald. The Pi Xi Chi Fraternity presents its First Annual “Swing Cotillion” … Featuring Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb and his N.B.C. Orchestra. America’s Greatest Dance Band. See! Hear! Them in Person. Baltimore, MD: Alcazar Ballroom, 1937 Wonderfully exuberant and decidedly uncommon handbill featuring the image of an ecstatic drummer in diamond-studded shirt, red ringmaster’s tailcoat and checkerboard waistcoat set against a background of floating notes and a stave of music. The verso carries an “Open Letter to Dance Lovers of this City” puffing Webb’s orchestra as “America’s Greatest Rhythm Band” (“this fact has been definitely proved by their fan mail which exceeds that of Guy Lombardo, Casa Loma and Rudy Vallee”).

Chick Webb was a native of Baltimore and the Alcazar Ballroom, one of its chief nightspots: “a fabulous palace of dance, with a domed ceiling and beaded chandeliers” ( The Baltimore Sun ). By April 1937 Ella Fitzgerald was “playing a significant role in helping the Webb band establish a national profile” (Nicholson, p. 50). Handbill (228 × 151 mm), printed both sides in red and black. Slight crease and mild discolouration along top and right-hand edges, very good. ¶ Stuart Nicholson, Ella Fitzgerald: The Complete Biography , 2004; Brian Priestley, Jazz: The Rough Guide , 1995; Ken Vail, Charlie Parker & Jazz Club Memorabilia , 421 (illustrated at p. 110). £850 [149283] 49 WILLIAMS, Mary Lou. Music for Peace – signed album with DSM cover design. New York: MaryRecord Co., 1970 Inscribed copy – “Sincerely Mary Lou Williams” – of her “magnificent and variegated” mass (Cook & Morton), the summation of her efforts to express her religious and social perceptions though her music. Performed by “Mary Lou Williams … and her friends” and issued on her own MaryRecords label, featuring a typically well-judged cover by David Stone Martin

47 TATUM, Art. Art Tatum. Los Angeles: Capitol Records, 1956 a black tulip among jazz autographs Signed cleanly by Tatum on the back cover in blue ballpoint pen, “To Al, Your Friend, Art Tatum”. Though nearly blind from childhood, Tatum learned to read and write standard script as well as Braille. Unsurprisingly Tatum’s is an extraordinarily difficult signature to obtain, and its presence on an album is nigh unheard of. An earlier 10-inch album released by Capitol in 1950 under the same title featured solos recorded in Hollywood in July and September 1949; for this release

religious jazz: Mary Lou’s Mass . A landmark recording which addressed many of the social ills of the 1960s and 70s, Newsweek called the score ‘an encyclopedia of black music, richly represented from spirituals to bop to rock’. It is perhaps the most openly religious jazz recording made at that time. In her own words, it is ‘Music for the Soul’” (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings reissue blurb). 12-inch vinyl LP (MG-7–202, 488); original sleeve with striking design by David Stone Martin, and inner sleeve with lyrics. Light dampstain to the open side of the sleeve, more visibly discoloured on back than front, inner sleeve also slightly affected with associated short split, disc clean and surface bright, overall very good. ¶ Cook & Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings, ninth edition , 2008 (awarding three stars of a maximum four). £575 [141645]

JAZZ

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