OK, has Percy Heath metamorphosed into Ray Brown? No matter. Posted by “Behjoh”
About forty years ago, I lived in Pittsburgh and stumbled across my dream radio program, “Just Jazz,” with Ed Beach, a two-hour syndicated program that I believe was available seven days a week. Ed’s taste in jazz just about paralleled mine perfectly. I would tape my favorite shows and play them over and over again. One of my favorite of favorites was the MJQ program, and my favorite number was a live recording of Charlie Parker’s “Now’s the Time.” The number’s special charm was in part a flaw. Milt Jackson (aka “Bags,” for the uninitiated) couldn’t time his entry properly to pianist/leader John Lewis’s lead. Bags was sometimes early, sometimes late, but never on time. But when he finally gets it right, when the gears finally mesh, the relief is delicious.
I listened to that tape dozens of times, but, eventually, my tape deck and tapes went the way of all flesh, and I could never find that recording anywhere. I felt that it must be on the MJQ double album, “The MJQ in Europe,” a collection of live recordings from the fifties. I searched and searched, but it never came out on CD. Then about ten years ago it did come out on CD and I bought it, but no “Now’s the Time.” Well, two months ago, I finally tracked it down, via the “Avid Jazz” collection, “John Lewis: Four Classic Albums,” which includes what is actually half an album, “The Modern Jazz Quartet at the Opera House,” what turned out to be the very last leg of Norman Granz’s celebrated concert series, Jazz at the Philharmonic.
“John Lewis: Four Classic Albums” is double CD set, a treasure trove of early fifties “explorations in modern music,” pairing Lewis with Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, JJ Johnson, Jim Hall, Stan Getz, and a host of others, including the famously unlucky Lucky Thompson. An excellent match is “Milt Jackson: Four Classic Albums,” which has more Lucky. And be sure to check out Milt’s seventies albums on Pablo, Granz’s “new” label, matching Milt with Joe Pass and Ray Brown, among others. The sound on these later albums is really nice, esp. if you’ve got a five- or seven-speaker system. Revel in the reverb, dude! The vibes will never ring this well again!
