Walter Perkins' MJT+3/Make Everybody Happy: Slipping Through the Cracks

As of late, my jazz collection has come to include artists bereft of fame. Not obscurities procured after a late night club gig, no, but individuals and groups lacking in notoriety and success nonetheless. Buddy DeFranco's conspicuous status as a minor figure is understandable considering he played the distinctly sexless clarinet but what about the MJT+3? How did a unit with such an abundance of talent manage to avoid even a cursory mention in jazz historiography?

Well, their bizarre, Modern Jazz Quartet-aping name certainly does them no favours particularly when it's impossible to figure out what it actually means.* Jazz units have never been particularly well-named and I've often wondered how much that contributes to their relative lack of success. Then, there's their label, the hapless Vee Jay who managed to flirt with some nice signings in blues, jazz and rock but ceaselessly bled money (how they went bankrupt following their fluke gold strike with The Beatles defies logic). But the biggest factor of all is the MJT+3 themselves and their inability to decide on which path to follow. Their indecision makes for frequently fascinating listening but the corollary is that they aren't even a footnote.

A brief introduction, Walter Perkins' MJT+3 acts as bonus tracks in advance to the more substantive and distinctive Make Everybody Happy. The lounge credentials of the musicians are well documented on the former but there are occasional hints that they yearn to break away from their roots and pound out some serious hard bop, particularly on the penultimate track, Harold Mabren's 'Rochelle'. Elsewhere, the playing is solid enough but largely forgettable, relieved only by some sporadically inspired playing from the quintet. But it is Willie Thomas' trumpet solo on 'Whiffenproof Song' that is the undoubted highlight of this set: his playing is at a such a high pitch that it's too much for the microphone enabling some unexpected distortion and left on the CD reissue either due to shoddy remastering or because I am not the only one who appreciates such a jarring moment.

Make Everybody Happy is, in my own opinion, named for the group's valiant attempt at merging their own creative desires with Vee Jay's desire to cash-in. The very fact that it didn't make anyone happy at the time is now beside the point but indicates that they weren't far off from attracting an audience. It's possible, however, that any potential audience may have been turned off by the reverential playing. The polar opposite of its predecessor, this is the sound of a hard bop unit exploring lounge music, though much more successfully. As it was in my Young Lions review, Frank Strozier continues to demonstrate that he was one of the most accomplished - albeit forgotten - sax stars of the era. But while Coleman, Coltrane, Rollins and the like were established leaders given lisense to go full throttle, the less renowned Strozier was stuck within the confines of a group setting. His extended solo on 'The Trolley Song' is a tour de force history of bop, cool and hard bop, distinctive only in that he managed to sound like everyone before him. On an instrument as maddeningly individual the sax, it's nice to hear someone playing with a nod to tradition. But that's probably not the way it was heard then or, as it were, not heard.

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* So close is the MJQ connection that it's all that allmusic can bring itself to mention on the group's behalf - and this is generous considering Wikipedia doesn't even have an MJT+3 entry.

The Young Lions: Exposing the Emptiness

The trouble with having a distinct sound is that it can eventually become staid. I went through a period a couple years' ago where I became obsessed with Blue Note's classic sound, in particular the many albums recorded in the home of engineer Rudy Van Gelder. One listen to the pounding open bars of 'The Chess Players' from Art Blakey's The Big Beat were enough to get me hooked - and I still am in a way: Blakey's sessions at Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey studio are all magnificent and Lee Morgan's Tom Cat and Jackie McLean's Old and New Gospel are among my all time favorite jazz recordings. The only trouble was it gave some of Blakey's proteges an unwelcome anonymity which proved to be the undoing of Blue Note in my eyes.

The Young Lions, committed to tape just six weeks after the Jazz Messengers laid down The Big Beat, captures the same sort of hot house fire of any RVG session but without the predictability that came part and parcel with the Blue Note/Van Gelder tag. All too often I find that the soloist's quota system ("make sure that Curtis Fuller gets a trombone solo that's just as lengthy as Freddie Hubbard's trumpet but be sure they don't take any attention away from Tina Brooks because he's the leader") could grow tiresome. Far too democratic for the creative process to flourish, there needs to be a competitive tension at the core to spark some truly magnificent solo duels (imagine Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young working under such a system in the thirties: their legendary all night 'anything you can do, I can do better' sax off would have turned into a dull, politically correct display of tenor sax relativism, if it would have occurred at all).

Some praise must be heaped on Frank Strozier for helping to guide this record through the wilderness. As the only Young Lion without prior experience working for Blue Note, it's no coincidence his alto sax provides a welcome layer of grit that only a Memphis-trained bar musician could provide. Wayne Shorter, for his part, seems up to the challenge for once, restraining himself on the all-too slick solos that have defined the bulk of his career and embarking on some booming tenor playing as well. I'll refrain from bowing down to Lee Morgan's alter, however; his concise, bellowing trumpet solos both suited the Blue Note sound and managed to overcome it. That's not to say there isn't some wonderful interplay as well: the three work just as well with as they do against.

I often used to wonder if Rudy Van Gelder and Alfred Lion would meet over coffee the morning of their sessions and choose the day's players the same way that Junior High phys ed students pick teams for floor hockey. I imagined their entire vaunted line-up crowding into Van Gelder's rumpus room, Lou Donaldson getting chosen ahead of Hank Mobley, Blue Mitchell over Donald Byrd. I can still imagine this scenario but I no longer think of it as complimentary to the label's virtues. Rather, it reminds me of just how restrictive Blue Note could be: by carving out a unique sound they unwittingly prevented their charges from developing one for themselves. The Big Beat, in spite of its many charms, could have been recorded by anyone on their roster; The Young Lions could have only been made by the Young Lions themselves.