Lockjaw

Celebrating Saxophonist Eddie Davis

Montana update! These are my neighbors, the cows. Every couple of weeks, they come down from wherever they usually graze and stand around just behind my apartment building, eating the grass. They’re not huge, so I guess they’re dairy cows rather than beef cows? I don’t know anything about cows, but they seem well cared for: they all have orange tags in their ears, they’re clean, and they seem very chill and happy. So the other night when they turned up, I went outside and took that picture. Yes, I said “night”: This photo was taken about 8:30 PM, and sundown is about 9:45 at this time of year.

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Video premiere! Steve Moore of Zombi and Overcalc (aka Nick Skrobicz of Multicult, who were written up on BA in 2019) have a new collaborative project. They’re releasing a five-track EP, Calyx, this Friday, and we’re premiering the video for the title track, which Moore filmed while driving around the Southwest. He says, “For anyone who hasn’t been to that part of the country, the sense of scale and awe that it conveys is something truly sublime. ‘Calyx’ was such a great new headspace to explore, musically, and the images of yawning arid chasms and desert flora were the apropos hallmarks of the adventurous mood that song evokes, in my mind.”

Here’s the video!

Calyx is out via Sleeping Giant Glossolalia, and you can buy it on Bandcamp.

A few years ago, I read a book that absolutely spun my head around. Soul Jazz: Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975 was written and self-published by Bob Porter, who was a legend in the jazz business: He produced close to 200 albums, wrote liner notes for hundreds more, served as a reissue producer for the Savoy and Atlantic labels (he put together the incredible Atlantic Rhythm & Blues 1947-1974 box, which is an absolute must-own), and was a DJ on Newark, NJ jazz station WBGO for close to 40 years. He died in 2021. (Read Giovanni Russonello’s New York Times obituary.)

Soul Jazz, to put it simply, is a work of much-needed historical revision. As Porter explains in the introduction, “While jazz writers have routinely dealt with musicians of all races, their work has generally reflected the point of view of an integrated community. In an ideal world, perhaps that is the way it should be. But that is not the way it was in the period covered by this book. The America of 1945 was a segregated country, and while the legal underpinnings of discrimination would fall during this time, the effects of those policies would linger. Black communities had their own heroes, and black fans of jazz had their own way of responding to the music. Those attitudes rarely reflected the values represented in the jazz press: most jazz writers of the fifties and sixties did not come to Harlem to hear music.” So the artists he writes about were known to the jazz critical community, but their primary audience was Black listeners in Black clubs.

One of the most popular forms of jazz in the Black community was the organ combo. And in the late ’50s and early ’60s, saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis was one of the pioneers of the form.

Davis’s jazz pedigree was impeccable. Born in New York in 1922, by 1940 he was hanging out at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, where manager Teddy Hill put him in charge of deciding who got to participate in the club’s legendary jam sessions, which were crucial incubators of bebop. He played with Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, and his own mid ’40s band featured Fats Navarro on trumpet and Denzil Best on drums.

I first started listening to Davis a few years ago, when I discovered the Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis/Johnny Griffin Quintet, an absolutely burning band that originally existed from 1960-63 with pianist Junior Mance, bassist Larry Gales, and drummer Ben Riley. (Davis and Griffin would occasionally reunite in the 1970s with other rhythm sections.) I bought a budget 4CD box that compiled the studio albums Tough Tenors, Griff and Lock, Blues Up and Down, and Lookin’ at Monk!, and the live albums The Tenor Scene, Live! The First Set, Live! The Midnight Show, and Live! The Late Show (all of which were recorded on a single night — January 6, 1961, at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem). It’s high-energy hard bop and blues featuring absolutely locked-in unison melodies from the two saxophonists, building up to solos that are wild and unfettered in the best way. You’d think the sole exception would be Lookin’ at Monk!, on which they play tunes like “Well, You Needn’t,” “Ruby, My Dear,” “Epistrophy” and “Round Midnight,” but even there, they give Monk’s off-kilter compositions a force and swing that few others who’ve recorded his music have managed.

(Important side note: Lookin’ at Monk! was recorded in February 1961, and almost exactly three years later, drummer Ben Riley joined Monk’s band, recording the album It’s Monk’s Time between January and March 1964. A year later, Larry Gales joined him, and they stayed in the group until 1967, appearing on the albums Monk., Straight, No Chaser and Underground.)

Anyway, before forming the quintet with Griffin et al., Davis had a long-standing creative partnership with organist Shirley Scott. They started working together in 1955 and made 14 albums together before going their separate ways in 1960. On most of those, they were backed by bassist George Duvivier and drummer Arthur Edgehill. That alone was somewhat unusual — a lot of organ groups consisted of just an organ, a second instrument (guitar or saxophone), and a drummer.

Davis, Scott, Duvivier and Edgehill recorded a lot in 1958. They booked sessions in March, May, June, September, and December 5. Tracks from those last three sessions were split across a total of five albums. Four of those five have recently been reissued in a 4LP or 4CD box, Cookin’ With Jaws and the Queen.

The first in the series, The Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis Cookbook, was recorded on June 20, 1958. It features the core group, plus Jerome Richardson on flute. That gives the music an element of surprise — when the first track, “Have Horn, Will Blow,” kicks off, you expect a hard bop burner, and it is that, with Davis honking and squalling over Scott’s thick, baseball-game organ, but Richardson’s flute is surprisingly disruptive when it comes through. Interestingly, Scott falls silent when Richardson is soloing — he gets Duvivier and Edgehill all to himself.

The Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis Cookbook Vol. 2 was recorded on December 5, 1958 and released in 1959, and is very much a formulaic album for this band. It opens with a nine-minute blues, “The Rev,” and includes two tracks with cooking titles (“Skillet” and “The Broilers”; the first volume offered “The Chef” and “In the Kitchen”), a ballad — “Stardust” — and also adds a version of the standard “I Surrender, Dear,” which wasn’t written by Thelonious Monk but is strongly identified with him (he’d recorded it the previous year on Brilliant Corners, and would record it again in 1965 on Solo Monk). Richardson gets some excellent solo space on that piece.

The third volume in the series, released in 1960, featured four more tracks from the December 5 session. Two others were taken from a session on September 12, the bulk of which — eight tracks — was issued as the album Jaws, also in 1959 but not included in this box for some reason. It also includes the most titles related to the culinary arts, including “Heat ’n Serve” (on which Richardson switches from flute to baritone sax), “The Goose Hangs High,” “Simmerin’,” and “My Old Flame” (kiss my ass — it’s my newsletter, and I say it counts), along with versions of “I’m Just a Lucky So and So” and “Strike Up the Band.”

Smokin’, which despite its title is considered part of the Cookbook series, was also culled from the September and December sessions, but it wasn’t released until 1964, marking it as an attempt to clear the vaults of whatever was left. On that one, we get “High Fry,” “Pots and Pans,” and “Smoke This.” The album also includes a surprising version of “Pennies From Heaven,” on which Edgehill is particularly impressive.

All these albums are very much of a piece. They were recorded within the same calendar year, after all, and this was clearly a band that knew what it was there to provide to its fans. You could quite easily play this set on shuffle — in fact, I encourage you to do so, just to see how many variations on a few simple concepts a truly killing group can come up with. Then compare this group’s work with the albums by the Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis/Johnny Griffin Quintet, particularly the albums Griff and Lock and Blues Up and Down. I think you’ll come away with a real appreciation for Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, a guy who put everything he had into every tune he played.

Before you go: My latest Stereogum column is up now. It features an interview with Chief Adjuah (fka Christian Scott), who’s got a really fascinating new album out this week, on which he lays down his trumpet and picks up the bow, a harplike instrument he designed and had custom built. I also review new albums by Tyshawn Sorey, Knoel Scott (of the Sun Ra Arkestra), the latest in the Jazz Is Dead series featuring the late drummer Tony Allen, and the newly discovered John Coltrane/Eric Dolphy live album Evenings At The Village Gate, among other things. Here’s the link.

That’s it for now. See you next week!