ESTHER PHILLIPS - CONFESSIN' THE BLUES
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ESTHER PHILLIPS - CONFESSIN' THE BLUES
| SIDE ONE I'M GETTIN"LONG ALRIGHT I WONDER CONFESSIN' THE BLUES ROMANCE IN THE DARK C. C. RIDER CHERRY RED IN THE EVENIN' |
SIDE TWO I LOVE PARIS IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU BYE BYE BLACKBIRD a. BLOW TOP BLUES b.JELLY JELLY BLUES c.LONG JOHN BLUES |
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I'M GETTIN"LONG ALRIGHT | ||
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I WONDER | ||
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CONFESSIN' THE BLUES | ||
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ROMANCE IN THE DARK | ||
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C. C. RIDER | ||
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CHERRY RED | ||
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IN THE EVENIN' | ||
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I LOVE PARIS | ||
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IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU | ||
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BYE BYE BLACKBIRD | ||
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a. BLOW TOP BLUES - b.JELLY JELLY BLUES - c.LONG JOHN BLUES | ||
| There are overtones to many
of the lyrics sung by Esther Phillips in this album that lends them an
almost autobiographical quality. So much of the misery of the blues, as
well as the paradoxi¬cally jubilant spirit and the life¬saving sense of
humor; seems to parallel the story of a girl-woman whose career started her running almost before she could walk. "Little Esther," as they called her on the billing when Johnny Otis introduced her as the 13 year old discovery with his band, has had more than the normal share of rocks in her bed; but to quote a title in this set, she has found herself a new life and is getting along alright. Reviewing Esther in a 1969 ap¬pearance at Redd Foxx's Club in Hollywood, I observed: "She offers soul-shaking evidence that there is no better lesson in the art of singing the blues than a graduate course in living it. Esther Mae Jones, from Galveston, Tex., made her first entry into the charts in 1949, not long after she had won an amateur contest at Otis' Barrelhouse Club in Watts (where she sang an old blues of mine which she had picked up from Dinah Washington's record). Another song in her early reper-• toire, Double Crossing Blues, proved to be the ground-break¬ing hit. It was followed by several more before the Otis band broke up. Barely out of her teens, with six years of stardom behind her she drifted into illness, obscurity and near-oblivion. The transition from Little Esther, child star, to Esther Phillips, adult singer, took her along a tortuous route. Reactivated but still in¬secure from the traumas of her early years, she resumed working as a local attraction in Houston; but the real turning point was a country song, Release Me. Recording it as a single for a small firm in Nashville, she became a star on a far greater scale than she had ever thought possible in her rhythm and blues days. The follow-ups were impressive: a top-selling version of the Lennon-McCartney And I Love Him, which led to her singing it with the Beatles on BBC; jazz festival appearances, starting at Newport in 1966; and several albums for Atlantic, the best re-. membered of which is "Burnin'," taped live at Freddie Jett's Pied Piper (SD 1565). The new-found confidence that had infused Esther with a deter¬mination to go straight ahead with her career stands out in sharp relief on the two provocatively contrasted sides in this album, recorded during that same period but never previously released. The selections oti, the first side are set against the background of a swinging 17-piece band under the direction of a funky but scholarly arranger from Fort Worth, Tex. by the name of Onzy Matthews. Onzy was a natural to empathize with Esther; he had been through some of the same changes in his career as she in hers, and had a similar dedication to the eternal verities of the blues. Onzy's credentials (he had studied at Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles) included charts for such singers as Lou Rawls, Della Reese, Ruth Price and Gene McDaniels. The seven tunes he scored for Esther were recorded at two sessions with slight varia¬tions in personnel. On the date that produced In The Evenin; Romance In The Dark and I Wonder; Herb Ellis was the guitarist whose solos and obbli¬gatos decorate all three tracks. The trombone solo on In The Evenin' is by Lou Blackburn. On the session that produced C. C. Rider; Cherry Red, Confessin’ the Blues and I;m Getting’ long Alright, Ellis is replaced by the French guitarist Francois Vaz, who has worked with Rawls, Carmen McRae and many other jazz and blues singers. The alto who launches Cherry Red is one of the most underrated of Los Angeles eminences, William Turner "Sonny" Criss. The selection of material for these Phillips-Matthews collaborations constitutes a virtual cross section of great urban blues lyrics of the 1930s and '40s. Five of the seven compositions are based on the orthodox 12 bar blues structure that provided Esther with her first (Some would say foremost) iden¬tification. The exceptions are Romance In The Dark, a 1940 blues-ballad introduced by the late Lil Green, and I Wonder , written and recorded by one Pvt. Cecil Gant; for whom it Was his solitary hit, in 1945. It is not a common occurrence nowadays for a down home blues singer to team up with a big jazz ensemble in the Basie tradition. In fact, it has happened very rarely since Jimmy Rushing be¬came the first vocalist so identified (he was with the Basie band from 1935-50). Given Esther's most unique attribute—her tart, nasal tone quality and the latent sardonic humor in much of her lyrical in¬terpretation—the mix comes off remarkably well. I would single out as.most successful the old Joe Turner standard Cherry Red (which Turner sang to Pete John¬son's boogie woogie piano in Kansas City circa 1935) and Confessin' The Blues, which brought fame to the late Walter Brown and to Jay McShann, with whose band he recorded it in 1941. Side Two is in effect an encore for everyone who was turned on by the "Burnin'" album, since it was recorded at the same location, the Pied Piper in Los Angeles, with essentially the same rhythm section. Too often,-critics have tended to exaggerate the resemblance be¬tween Esther and the late Dinah Washington. The temptation is strong when you consider the common elements: the caustic, cutting sound, the mordant edge that both singers could bring to a song, rib matter how trivial its content; the use of similar material; and even the same musical associates. Jack Wilson Jr., who was Esther's accompanist in the late '60s, had toured with Dinah in the late '50s. The Chicago-born Wilson, a Los Angeleno for the past decade, has fortified the rhythm sections for innumerable singers, combos and bands: Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, Eartha Kitt, Sammy Davis, Gerald Wilson, Shelly Manne, Howard Rumsey, Clark Terry. Bassist Ike Isaacs (once with Lambert, Hendricks & Ross) and drummer Donald Bailey (organist Jimmy Smith's aide de camp for eight years) both worked with Wilson almost con¬tinuously for a couple of years and are sensitively attuned to each other as well as to the re¬quirements of Esther's material. Cole Porter's I Love Paris pro¬vides a stunning example of her ability to turn a song that is seem¬ingly out of character into as perfect a vehicle as it was for Lilo in Can Can 20 years ago. It Could Happen To You, a 1944 Burke-van Heusen pop tune, is similarly subjected to Ms. Phillips' unique manner of twisting a phrase, delaying a beat, adding a hidden meaning and a few extra words if they seemed appropriate to the message, or necessary to fill in a few beats. Wilson's doubled-tempo solo and all-ears obbligatos contribute potently to this astonishing performance. Bye Bye Blackbird goes back close to half a century but has gained new currency over the past decade among jazz and soul singers. Esther takes it out of tempo for a full chorus, with splendid use of syllable-splitting (or melisma, as the music teachers would call it). For the second chorus, the rhythm section eases her into the medium-tempo swinging style more commonly associated with the song. Wilson & Co. carry the ball for 32 bars before Esther recaps the final eight bars with a tag. Finally we get to the very roots, the essence of Esther. Jack sets the mood with a chorus of slyly funky blues before Esther devotes, an introductory lyrical gambit to such bare-bones statements as "Yeah, yeah... hey baby... ooh, ooh... Lawd, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd..." — then takes it into the well-remembered first line, "I got bad news baby, and you're the first to know," immortalized by Dinah Washington when I wrote it for her to sing with Lionel Hampton, more years ago than I care to remember. Esther sang this again during a reunion with her old boss Johnny Otis at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1970. The blues routine turns into a composite, using verses from the Billy Eckstine-Earl Hines Jelly Jelly (would you believe B. recorded it with Earl Hines in 1940?), and - back to Dinah Washington again for Long John, her immortal tribute to a seven-foot tall dentist who answered every call. How can I help selecting this as • my favorite track? Who, in fact, can resist the groove established here, the everloving, everlasting spirit of the blues? It will endure as long as there are soulful sisters like Esther around to keep it alive; but let us not wait for proof of that. The great lady is with us here and now, and your blues class is about to be called to order. LEONARD FEATHER (Author/Editor, The History of the Blues, Piano/Vocal Edition, Charles Hansen Music) |
| SIDE ONE I'M GETTIN"LONG ALRIGHT By Bobby Sharp & Charles Singleton I WONDER By Cecil Gant & Raymond Leveen CONFESSIN' THE BLUES By Jay McShann & Walter Brown ROMANCE IN THE DARK By Lil Green C. C. RIDER By Chuck Willis CHERRY RED By Bill Lazarus & Jack Moon IN THE EVENIN' By Leroy Carr & Don Raye |
SIDE TWO I LOVE PARIS By Cole Porter IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU By Johnny Burke & Jimmy Van Heusen BYE BYE BLACKBIRD By Mort Dixon & Ray Henderson a. BLOW TOP BLUES By Leonard Feather & Jane Feather b.JELLY JELLY BLUES By Earl Hines & Billy Eckstine c.LONG JOHN BLUES By Tommy George |
| On Side One the personnel is: Gabriel
Baltazar & Sonny Criss, alto saxes; Louis Ciotti & Ira Schulman, tenor
saxes, Jay Migliori, baritone sax; Robert Rolfe, Melvin Moore, Bill Clark & James Smith, trumpets; Louis Blackburn, Richard Leith, Ronald Myers & Peter Myers, trombones; Rodgers Grant, piano; Francois Vaz, guitar; Victor Venegas, bass; Charles Grant, drums. On I Wonder Romance In The Dark & In The Evenin' Gabriel Baltazar is replaced by Raymond Triscari on alto sax, Ira Schulman is replaced by Teddy Edwards on tenor sax, James Smith is replaced by Al Porcino on trumpet and Francois Vaz is replaced by Herb Ellis on guitar. Arranged and conducted by Onzy Matthews - Recorded at Western Recorders, Hollywood, California with the exception of I Wonder Romance In The Dark & In The Evenin' which were recorded at United Studio, Los Angeles, California. Recording engineer: Jimmy Lockhart PRODUCED BY NESUHI ERTEGUN On Side Two the personnel is: Jack Wilson, piano & elec- tric piano; Ike Isaacs, bass; Chuck Rainey, fender bass; Donald Bailey, drums. Recorded live at Freddie Jett's Pied Piper Club, Los Angeles, California. Recording engineer: Wally Heider PRODUCED BY KING CURTIS Entire album re-mixed at Atlantic Recording Studios, New York, New York. Re-mix engineer and production coordinator: Ilhan Mimaroglu Mastered at Atlantic Recording Studios, New York, N.Y. Mastering engineer: George Piros Front cover photo courtesy of Redferns Other albums by Esther Phillips on Atlantic Records: "And I Love Him!" (SD 8102) & "Burnin' Live At Freddie Jett's Pied Piper LA!' (SD 1565). ATLANTIC RECORDING CORPORATION 75 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10019 LEONARD FEATHER (Author/Editor, The History of the Blues, Piano/Vocal Edition, Charles Hansen Music) |
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