The Source - King Pleasure

 

Parker's Mood

Tomorrow's Another Day

The Source

King Pleasure

Remastering: Rudy Van Gelder

Art Direction: Tony Lane

Back Cover Photo: Jim Marshall

Prestige 24017

1972

Personnel

On "I'm In The Mood For Love" and "Exclamation Blues" (recorded 2/19/52)

King Pleasure - Vocals 

Blossom Dearie - Vocals

Merril Stepter - Trumpet

Lem Davis - Alto Sax

Ray Abrams - Tenor Sax

Cecil Payne - Baritone Sax

Teach Wiltshire - Piano

Leonard Gaskin - Bass

Teddy Lee - Drums

On "Red Top" and "Jumpin' With Symphony Sid" (recorded 12/12/53)

King Pleasure - Vocals

Betty Carter - Vocals

Ed Lewis - Trumpet

Charlie Ferguson - Trumpet

Ed Swanson - Piano

Peck Morrison - Bass

Herbie Lovelle - Drums

On "Sometimes I'm Happy", "This Is Always" (recorded 9/19/53) and "Parker's Mood", "What Can I Say?" (recorded 12/24/53)

King Pleasure - Vocals

The Dave Lambert Singers - Vocals

John Lewis - Piano

Percy Heath - Bass

Kenny Clarke - Drums

On "Don't Get Started", "I'm Gone", "You're Crying" and "Funk Junction" (recorded 12/7/54)

King Pleasure - Vocals

Jon Hendricks - Vocals

The Three Riffs - Vocals

J.J. Johnson - Trombones

Kai Winding - Trombone

Lucky Thompson - Tenor Sax

Danny Bank - Bariton Sax

Jimmy Jones - Piano

Paul Chambers - Bass

Joe Harris - Drums

Quincy Jones - Arrangements and Direction

On side three and four (recorded 4/14/60)

King Pleasure - Vocals

Accompanying Vocals unknown on "I'm In The Mood For Love"

Gerald Wiggins - Piano

Harold Land - Tenor Sax

Teddy Edwards - Tenor Sax

Matthew Gee - Trombone

Earl Palmer - Drums

Wilfred Middlebrooks - Bass

From the inside cover (gatefold): King Pleasure was the first to popularize the concept of applying original lyrics to well-known lines of jazz improvisation. Following the path, and enjoying a more durable public acceptance, was the Lambert-Hendricks-Ross organization, one of whom pays tribute to his mentor in the accompanying notes, Despite Pleasure's early hit with "I'm In The Mood For Love," he spent little time in the studio and this compilation from the Prestige and Hifijazz catalogs represents almost his total recording output. Such was the man's respect from instrumentalists that he was able to attract some of the best jazzmen of the time to work with him in these sessions.

Also from the inside cover: King Pleasure is a jazz musician who plays tonsils. To understand a singer like Pleasure, who has been too long on the shelf, one must understand the art of singing, as well as the man himself, which takes us back to when Man expressed his first feelings in song, before separation had begun and speech and separation had begun and speech and song were one.

Man must have made his first musical instruments in imitation of his own voice. The song Mother Nature sang, in the sound of waves against the shore, in the sound of beast and the sound of bird, and more, was his only other choice. Was it the sound of the wind through river reed that tempted primeval man to answer a primary need, to bing the reeds together as best he can, creating the pipes-of-Pan?

The idea that Man is an astral being created after the cosmos according to musical laws was Plato's basic position, so he allowed no one into his school who was not a musician. In the most ancient temples at Memphis and Thebes choirs of singers accompanied religious rites, and Solomon had a choir of male voices as one of his temple's delights, together with a choir of wind instruments, a most wise choice, since they imitate the human voice. Deep down in a catacomb under Rome early Christians met secretly and in spite of qualms, read the epistles and chanted some psalms, the chanter, the one who sang the best, leading all the rest, later becoming the Cantor, while the congregation joined in on "Hallelujah!" and "Amen!," just like those earlier Christians with that Cantor.

In our church the music had no hues, but outside the church the Spirituals are called the blues, and when you play 'em through a horn jazz is born. They say it was Louis Armstrong forgot the words to "Heebie-Jeebies" and invented scat and showed everybody where it was at. Everybody with ears had great big eyes for what Pops was doin', and wanted to get to it and do it.

Leo Watson could scat. He was a very funny cat. He liked to play the drums. I remember one night in my hometown, Toledo, Ohio, in the Waiter's and Bellman's Club on Indiana Avenue, Leo sat in on drums and played, and played, and played, for days! Finally, two cats had to pick him up bodily and carry him out of the club, and all the way through the joint Leo is beating on everything in sight, tables, glasses, the walls, his shoes, people's heads, everything! And spread across his face all the while is a beautiful smile. Leo Watson. He scatted with a trombone sound, a different instrument from Pops, and gave us all more room to move around, because if you did it with a trumpet sound, well, Pops had already laid that down, so, unless you were out of your mind, out quit while you were behind, because the way Pops did it, it was so high you couldn't get over it, so low you couldn't get under it, so wide you couldn't get around it, you had to come in at the door. We all had to scat through that.

After Leo and his vocal trombone came Bon-Bon, who scatted with Jan Savitt's orchestra and had a distinctive style of his own. And then from out of the sky a Bird flew by. What kind of Bird? Well, the peacock preens his pretty plumage as he struts by and he catches your eye, though his beauty does not last long and he sings you no song. This was a song Bird, who sang a song he heard in the heavens on high, a song Dave Lambert and Buddy Stewart heard as Bird flew swiftly by, and they took scat to where it was at, to where be-bop is, and Joe Caroled it with Liz, who can scat too. So can James Moody, who is quietly very, very bad, (which means very, very good). Clark Terry can scat too, like a good trumpeter player should. Jack Jones can scat, and so can Mel Torme, but when it comes to scatting a la Bird, Philly Joe Jones does it best that way. And so we all did it and we all still do it, try to scat be-bop non-stop, and we all love it and we all try to swing it, knowing that the next thrill had to be someone giving it word so we could sing it, it being well known that Babe Gonzales is in a class all his own.

King Pleasure provided the word and that thrill. I'll never forget and I don't think any of us ever will. He moved a musical idiom a whole steps forward in its evolution, and in his own lifetime, while he was still young. He sang a song unlike any that had yet been sung. He and Eddie Jefferson opened up a whole new world of sound. A new idiom had been found, for which there still exists no proper name. Some say "vocalese," some say "vocalmentals," but however you pronounce it, it's all the same. "Moody's Mood For Love" struck a chord in my soul that meant freedom from the 32-bar restriction that had left all my story untold. In lyricising instrumental solos the song title becomes the subject, the first 32-bars become the plot and the horns become characters and their solos arias, just as it opera, although more like bopera. It was on this foundation that my lyrics to "Sing A Song Of Basie" by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross were based. Although I endeavored for the first time to lyricise arrangements of a big band, Pleasure's work was the basis of my plan, and it was "Moody's Mood For Love" that made me want to go and write me a taste.

And so King Pleaure has advanced the art of Jazz singing by giving it word so that it can be more easily heard, and led to a revolutionary approach to songwriting, making it more exciting. When he asked me to do "Don't Get Scared" with him all he gave me was the Stan Getz record and a copy of his words to Stan's solo.

"Where are my words?" I asked.

"Write your own," he said. "I wrote mine now you write yours," and exited laughing, striding cooly away with a combination of the Hasting Street Strut and the L.A. Getaway. Pleasure definitely had style, to the core. Nobody walks away like that anymore.

Singing, as we have shown, is an old as Man from the start, Who, then can claim to have been instrument through which has come something new in so ancient an art? Step into the light and let me see your face. Of such a claimant there is not a trace. Who can stand in King Pleasure's place? And what manner of man is this who has been instrumental in creating a new vocal art form? This kind of person being as rare as hen's teeth, there is, of course, no norm, however, I believe that such a one is a poet, first and last, possessed of a certain elasticity of mind encompassing a certain elasticity of mind encompassing a certain secret knowledge of a most uncommon kind from a age long past, a knowledge which finally renders whose possessing it deaf, dumb and blind, a knowledge one would most highly prize, since it lies beyond anything the five senses can cognize. But, then, poets have always been mysterious. The world laughs at them, and they are always serious.

Finally, it remains quite possible that one on such a path finds the knowledge he seeks obscured by the false glow of the limelight. Would he not, therefore, seek to remove himself from its sight, lest it obscure that true light all truly wise men seek to find: The light in our own mind? Let it now be fully understood just why Clarence Beeks has not given us Pleasure for Lo, these many weeks, and towards what pursuit he has occupied himself these months past, nor must I speak further of such pursuit, lest I infringe on what should remain secret. Therefore, let us leave this subject – fast!

As far as biographical data on King Pleasure is concerned, you get little or none from me. It's not that I'm unaware that such date has its place. It's just that in a world in which poets live with Pleasure there is no time or space.

As to those of you who are hearing King Pleasure for the first time; I many not know your name, but I know that if you dig him you'll never be the same.

King Pleasure is his name and jazz singing is his game, and what he sings is right because it's what he wrote, and what he wrote is right because right is the only way he ever wrote, unquote. He swings because he has a lineage behind him of a culturally swinging kind, with a spiritual basis behind. He has been out here a long time and he has paid his due, and so he gets, understands and sings the blues. Constantly. He can be singing "This Isn't Sometimes, This Is Always," which has no hues, and it'll come out as "This Isn't Sometimes, This Is Always Blues." You can rely on that. This is what makes Pleasure such an extraordinary cat, a real jazz singer, who swings down to his little finger.

In this set you will hear very hip stuff which Pleasure has put down for posterity, deeply serious, yet full of hilarity, loaded with creativity, warmth, beauty, charm and wit, and with this reissue he still ain't quit, and never will, because what he first put down is still it. There's a swingin', scatting' little cat here on the London scene named Bobby Breen. He knows what I mean.

Those of us who have experience Pleasure before must only remember that an eclipse of the sun does not mean the end of light, which forever returns burning more bright. Who knows how many newly-generated ears will pick up on this sound and spread it electrifyingly around? So now I've said my say and done my thing. Now it's time for The Man to sing.

Measure for measure.

To invite you to listen to King is my very great Pleasure. – Jon Hendricks (London, England, March, 1972)

I'm In The Mood For Love (1952)

Exclamation Blues

Red Top

Jumpin' With Symphony Sid

Sometime I'm Happy

This Is Always

Parker's Mood

What Can I Say

After I Say I'm Sorry

Don't Get Scared

I'm Gone

You're Crying

Funk Junction

I'm In The Mood For Love (1960)

The New Symphony Sid

Don't Worry 'Bout Me

Little Boy, Don't Get Scared

Parker's Mood (1960)

Golden Days

Tomorrow Is Another Day

No, Not Much

All Of Me

Sides one and two previously released as Prestige 7586 – King Pleasure / Original Moody's Mood

Sides three and four previously released as Hifijazz J425 – King Pleasure / Golden Days

Tracks one, two, three and four on side one produced by Teacho Wiltshire

Tracks five and six on side one and tracks one and two on side two produced by Ira Gitler

Tracks one, two, three and four on side two produced by Bob Weinstock

Sides three and four produced by Dave Axelrod