Original Jazz Classics Celebrates 60 Years of Riverside with Evans, Montgomery, Baker, More

From its headquarters at 553 West 51st Street in New York, New York, the Riverside Records label presided over an impressive roster of jazz talent.  Founded in 1953 by Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer, Riverside was home at one time or another to Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Alberta Hunter, Johnny Griffin, plus a number of artists currently being recognized with deluxe reissues from the Riverside catalogue: Thelonious Monk and Gerry Mulligan, Cannonball Adderley and Milt Jackson, Chet Baker, Wes Montgomery and Bill Evans.  That “Who’s Who” of jazz is represented via five new titles as part of Concord Records’ Original Jazz Classics series celebrating Riverside’s 60th anniversary:

• Thelonious Monk and Gerry Mulligan, Mulligan Meets Monk (1957)
• Cannonball Adderley with Milt Jackson, Things Are Getting Better (1958)
• Chet Baker, Plays the Best of Lerner and Loewe (1959)
• Wes Montgomery, So Much Guitar! (1961)
• The Bill Evans Trio, How My Heart Sings! (1964)

All five titles are available now, newly remastered by Joe Tarantino and expanded with bonus tracks and new liner notes by writers including Neil Tesser (Mulligan and Monk), Willard Jenkins (Adderley and Jackson), James Rozzi (Baker), Marc Myers (Montgomery) and Doug Ramsey (Evans).  Producer Orrin Keepnews’ original notes have been reprinted, as well.  After the jump, we’ll take a closer look at each of them!

“The Very Best Of” Jazz: Concord Launches New Series With Davis, Rollins, Coltrane and More

If you’ve ever felt it might be a daunting task to “get into” jazz, Concord Music Group just might have the perfect releases for you.  Concord is home to many of the genre’s greatest labels, including Prestige, Contemporary, Riverside, Milestone, Fantasy and Pablo.  With the new series simply titled The Very Best Of, the Concord team has offered an affordable, entry-level look into five of the most influential musicians of all time: Miles Davis (trumpet), John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Sonny Rollins (tenor saxophone), Chet Baker (trumpet) and Wes Montgomery (guitar).  All five titles in the series are in stores now, and offer a selection of their most enduring music, primarily dating from the 1950s and early 1960s.  They capture these artists in the early portion of their careers, i.e. Davis before Columbia, Coltrane before Atlantic, Montgomery before Verve, when they were all breaking new ground and honing a personal style.  Each title – effective as either an introduction or a sampler – offers uniform design, remastered sound and new liner notes from authors including Neil Tesser, Ashley Kahn and Doug Ramsey.

For a musician who has influenced every guitarist from George Benson to Jimi Hendrix, Wes Montgomery is remembered for a body of work that lasted just over ten years.  Montgomery didn’t enter a recording studio until 25 years of age, didn’t record as a leader until another ten years had elapsed, and was dead ten years after that, felled by a heart attack at age 45.  The guitarist’s work can be divided into three distinct periods at different labels: Riverside (1959-1964), Verve (1964-1966) and A&M (1967-1968).  The latter two stints were spent under the aegis of producer Creed Taylor, who shaped Montgomery into a pioneer of the crossover jazz market, sweetening his recordings with strings and encouraging him to record the latest pop/rock hits. Concord’s The Very Best of Wes Montgomery is drawn from the pure jazz recorded at Riverside.  Montgomery’s sound was, even in his earliest days, instantly identifiable.  He made radical use of octaves (playing the same note on two strings, one octave apart) and chord melodies, and was inclined to play with his thumb rather than a pick, making his sound one of the most recognizable in all jazz.  The new set’s eleven tracks are drawn from eight of Montgomery’s Riverside albums, bookended by 1959’s The Wes Montgomery Trio and 1963’s Boss Guitar.  As you’ll find with all of these albums, a number of other luminaries appear as sidemen, here including Wynton Kelly (piano), Philly Joe Jones (drums), Milt Jackson (vibes) and Ron Carter (bass).  A number of Montgomery originals have been selected (“Four on Six,” “West Coast Blues,” “Cariba”) as well as covers of standards and pop songs (“Gone with the Wind,” “Canadian Sunset”) and jazz classics by Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk.  For those only familiar with Montgomery’s hit Verve and A&M albums, these eleven tracks will likely be a revelation.  In any event, they’re a solid starting point to explore the sadly-truncated career of a true great.

Among the artists chosen to inaugurate this series, Chet Baker stands out as the only one to have a career as both instrumentalist and vocalist.  Both sides of Baker are on display in The Very Best of Chet Baker, which consists of 14 tracks recorded between 1953 and 1965 from the Riverside, Prestige and Fantasy catalogues.  The collection’s earliest song, Rodgers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine,” hails from Baker’s 1953 debut as part of The Gerry Mulligan Quartet.  It quickly became a signature song for the young trumpeter, whose tone was one of restraint, intimacy and smoothness.  A major player in the West Coast school of jazz, the handsome young Baker was courted for motion pictures and groomed for stardom, but a drug problem kept him running from the law and the court of public opinion throughout his entire life.  Other than drugs, the one constant was his great musicianship, whether playing or singing.  Four of his vocals are represented here, including three from Chet Baker Sings: It Could Happen to You (1958) and one from Chet Baker with Fifty Italian Strings (1959).  Baker’s cool, relaxed take on “Do It the Hard Way” from Rodgers and Hart’s Pal Joey is a particular standout.  Many of Broadway’s finest songwriters received sympathetic treatment from Baker.  In addition to four songs from the Rodgers and Hart songbook, two come from Lerner and Loewe, and two more from Jerome Kern (with Oscar Hammerstein II and B.G. DeSylva).  Pianist Bill Evans joins Baker on two selections from 1959’s Chet, and Herbie Mann’s tenor sax enlivens “Almost Like Being in Love” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” both from 1959’s The Best of Lerner and Loewe.  Baker continued to record until his untimely, mysterious death from a hotel window in 1988 (Was it suicide?  Was it an accident?  Was it something else?), but this collection preserves the musician in his prime.

After the jump, we explore sets from John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and the Miles Davis Quintet, plus we’ve got full track listings with discographical annotation, and pre-order links!