TAB
SMITH
Crazy Walk
Delmark
Alto saxophonist Tab Smith is one of the truly
underappreciated jazz figures of the quarter century beginning
around 1935. While his smooth-as-silk sound is similar to
that of Johnny Hodges, his attack is fleet--yet has a swagger
that usually enables me to distinguish him from the Rabbit.
As part of trumpeter Frankie Newton's band,
which had the house gig at Café Society Downtown
in the late 1930s, Smith solos on the famous Billie Holiday
Commodore session of 1939 that produced "Strange Fruit"
and Billie's first recording of "Fine and Mellow."
He guested on one studio date with the Basie band in May
1940, providing arrangements for and soloing on two numbers,
and was a member of the Count's band during all of 1941.
For the next two years he returned to Lucky Millinder, in
whose band he had started prior to joining Newton. In the
second half of the '40s he participated in a number of all-star
recording sessions--on a 1944 Keynote session with Coleman
Hawkins, Don Byas, and Harry Carney, he arguably steals
the date.
During this period and throughout the next
decade he also led his own band, recording almost one hundred
sides during the '50s for the United label. Though those
records may have been aimed at the R&B market, they
involved no change in Smith's approach to his instrument
or the musical integrity of his arrangements. Today they
are mainly of jazz interest.
Crazy Walk, is the final volume of Delmark's
complete reissue of Smith's work for United. It's of interest
for the several tracks on which he get to hear him play
tenor (or both alto and tenor), and as a contrast to previous
reissues in the series in that the keyboard accompaniment
mostly takes the form of the organ. And also because eight
of these tracks are being issued for the first time.
A majority of the tunes use the twelve-bar
blues form one way or another. But as is the case with a
much earlier Delmark reissue, Mellow Mama, a compilation
of Dinah Washington's mid-'40s recordings for the Apollo
label on which every track is a blues, the variety of treatments
with regard to rhythm--slow, fast, relaxed, intense, chug-chug
feel, balladic--and to a lesser extent with regard to combination
of instruments, is such that it never seems like one is
listening to the same thing over and over. Interspersed
are a couple of covers of pop tunes of the time--"Pretend"
and "Stardust" (which, although much older was
a big hit for Nat King Cole in the mid-'50s)--and standards--"Mean
to Me" and "Someone to Watch Over Me."
Of particular jazz interest: (1)while its
most immediately apparent feature is the rhythm supplied
by a bongo or conga drummer, "Dansero" has a very
attractive melody, which sounds to me like it's based on
the "Perdido" changes--I doubt if many R&B
musicians could pull that off; (2) on the first chorus of
"Caravan" the good, unidentified trumpeter is
out front on the first 16 bars and the last 8. The first
16 bars of the second chorus are played in unison by the
unidentified horns, and at that point Tab and the drummer
play a virtuoso duet that is reminiscent of his great unaccompanied
cadenza on "Sunny Side of the Street" on that
1944 Keynote session with Hawk, Byas, and Carney; (3) "I
Want You to Love Me," the track which most conveys
a rock 'n roll feel (due to its rhythm--not because of any
honking by Tab), is a different tune from the one with the
same name that was done on a Billy Valentine session, around
1950, that was recently discovered to contain substantial,
very early solo work by John Coltrane.
Whether you begin with this disc or one of
the other Delmark reissues, treat your ears to the great
alto stylings of Tab Smith.
--Mark Ladenson--
