Impact At Basin Street East - The Page 7

 

Steppin' In

Impact At Basin Street East

The Page 7

Recorded Live at Basin Street East, New York City

Recording Engineer: Bob Simpson

Mastering: Dave Hassinger

Produced by Joe Reisman

RCA Victor LSP-2810

1964

From the back cover: It was the impact on this swinging, exciting music that made the Page 7 an instant success when it made its debut at Page Cavanaugh's in Los Angeles in January 1962. Its impact there was so great that within five months the seven members of the band had opened a club of their own in the San Fernando Valley, also called Page Cavanaugh's.

It was the stunning impact of the music that some RCA Victor scouts heard there that led the company to bring the band into the RCA Victor corral.

And when The Page 7 made its first trip to New York to play at Basin Street East, the same walloping impact was felt once again. You can hear it in these recordings made while the band was playing there. Reader of the New York Times learned about it when the work "impact" appeared no less than three times in its glowing review of The Page 7.

What's behind all this impact?

At the heart of The Page 7 are four men who like to swing. At first, there was just one man – Page Cavanaugh, the pianist and singer who had his own bright and swinging trio for many years. Despite his success with his trio, Cavanaugh was a frustrated musician. When he really liked was the solid sound of a big band – the impact (there was that word already) of a group of horns over a driving rhythm section.

"What I particularly like is a bottom sound," he once said, "the sound of trombones and a baritone saxophone. One reason I like this sound is that you can play as loud and strong as you want all night long without bothering the listener the way a loud trumpet or a loud tenor saxophone would."

With this in mind, Cavanaugh wrote a batch of arrangements for a band – not a big band, but a small band that would sound like a big band – featuring a trombone lead. Then Fate stepped in to give The Page 7 even more impact then even Cavanaugh had dreamed of.

It just happened that, when he assembled a band to play his arrangements, Cavanaugh found that he had two trombonists, Lew McCreary and Dave Wells, both of whom also played bass trumpet. The palette of bottom sounds of The Page 7 began to expand with the possibilities that this introduced. Then it turned out that his baritone saxophonist, Bob Jung, also played alto saxophone and flute so that the coloration became even more varied.

Beyond all that, all three of these musicians were composers and arrangers whose ideas were very much in line with Cavanaugh's. (Page has described the basis for his arrangements as "the Tommy Dorsey-Sy Oliver style of the late Forties.") The band's library quickly expanded and developed group personality as all four made contributions to it.

In this collection there are samples of the special arranging talents of each of them. Lew McCreary wrote The Page 7 treatments of the two folk-tinged entries, Our Boys Will Shine Tonight and Walk Right In, as well as Ray Charles' hit, I Can't Stop Loving You, and Cole Porter's driving "It's All Right With Me. Cavanaugh's affinity for the big bands shows in his choice of tunes to arrange – that old Charlie Barnet swinger, Charleston Alley, the lovely piece that Neal Hefti wrote for Count Basie, Li'l Darlin', and Duke Ellington's invigorating Don't Get Around Much Anymore. He also contributed an original, Steppin' Out, which Bob Jung matched with another original, Steppin' In, while Dave Wells did the arrangement of the Nat Pierce composition, To Sum It Up.

The rollicking spirit and imagination of these men become quickly apparent in the way they rip into these arrangements. This is much in the great tradition of the Swing Era – melodic and rhythmic and compelling, with a broad appeal that extends far beyond the usual limitations of what is normally considered the audience for jazz. Part of the wonderful spirit that it projects is engendered by the free and easy attitude these musicians bring to their playing, an attitude that encourages such imaginative ideas as using a plunger mutes (those rubber cups on the business end of the a plumber's helper) not only on the trombones but on the baritone saxophone when the tree are combining on a riff. That's the kind of thinking that contributes to the astonishing impact of The Page 7.

Walk Right In

Blues In Hoss Flat

I Can't Stop Loving You

Satin Doll

Steppin' Out

Our Boys Will Shine Tonight

It's All Right With Me

To Sum It Up

Don't Get Around Much Anymore

Charleston Alley

Steppin' In