Recapturing the past isn’t always a good idea, but on many of the albums he made with Pablo, Granz got away with it. I’ve been listening a lot to a series of albums he recorded, centering, really, around guitarist Joe Pass, and including such musicians as Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson, and Mickey Roker. Gillespie didn’t have quite as much lung power as he did in the early days, but otherwise the jazz is just as good, and the sound is much better than the fifties recordings. This clip, from the Montreux Jazz Festival, back at 1977, shows trumpeter Clark Terry, Pass on guitar, Jackson on vibes, Ronnie Scott, tenor sax, Oscar Peterson, piano, Niels Pedersen, bass, and Bobby Durham, drums. The tune, “Sweethearts on Parade,” was written by the infamously “sweet” Guy Lombardo and made famous in jazz by Louis Armstrong’s volcanic 1930 recording.
Joe Pass—“Sweethearts on Parade”
Back in the fifties, the rise of rock ‘n roll was taking a lot of the fun out of jazz, causing Norman Granz to sell his entire Verve catalog, one of the richest in jazz, and move to Europe. A very rich man, he used his money to attract a lot of big names, including Pablo Picasso. I don’t know if Pablo liked Norman or just liked his money, but Granz appeared to be having fun. In the early seventies, he moved back to the U.S. and started up Pablo Records, recording many of the musicians he had recorded twenty years earlier.
