Cootie & Rex In The Big Challenge

 

When Your Lover Has Gone

Cootie & Rex 

In The Big Challenge

Producer: George T. Simon

Recording Engineer: Ernie Delrich

Photographer: Kal Weyner

Jazztone Society J1268

1957

Personnel:

Cootie Williams - Trumpet

Rex Stewart - Cornet

Coleman Hawkins and Bud Freeman - Tenor Saxes

Lawrence Brown and J. C. Higginbotham - Trombones

Hank Jones - Piano

Billy Bauer - Guitar

Milton Hinton - Bass

Gus Johnson - Drums

From the back cover: The Big Challenge is both a challenge and a reunion. It pits against one another some of the greatest swingers in the history of jazz. It also brings back together two of the foremost trumpeters of all time.

The idea for this record came about when a friend of mine mentioned that Cootie Williams, once my favorite of all trumpeters, was still blowing great horn with his rock-and-roll type band at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom. This was great news! I hadn't Cootie, nor even much of him, for almost ten years. But I knew that if he were playing even only half as well as he used to, when he was a star with Ellington and Goodman, he'd still make an exceptional disc.

I phoned Cootie at home. Much to my dismay, he wasn't overly enthusiastic. "I made some of those jazz dates nine years ago," he explained, "and I didn't like the way they were run. They did me more harm than good."

So the next thing to do was to organize a session that would be attractive to Cootie and could do him some good. I contacted Rex Stewart, his friend and trumpet partner with Ellington and before that with Fletcher Henderson. Rex, intensely enthusiastic and cooperative, just as he'd been a couple of years ago when we'd organized his first jazz date in eight years, dropped by the Savoy to talk with Cootie. Meanwhile, I'd contacted Coleman Hawkins, whom I knew Cootie idolized (and vice versa). "Count me in," said Hawk.

Cootie warmed up. The prospects of playing with Hawk and of challenges with Rex appealed to him. Soon the challenge idea spread to the other horns. The date was on!

(For the sake of the less initiated, a challenge is a sort of friendly competition that breeds inspiration. It's been a part of many a dance act and has been used in jazz mostly on informal jam sessions, with musicians exchanging anything from two bar phrases to entire choruses.)

And who would challenge Hawkins, long the recognized king of the big blowing, full-bodied tenor style? None other than the originator of the light, harmonically inventive tenor style, from which has since emerged the Lester Young and Stan Getz schools, the imaginative Bud Freeman. Except for a brief appearance on a record many years ago, they'd never been recorded together, and certainly had never been pitted against one another. The idea was most intriguing to everyone – including Bud.

As for the trombonists, it was only natural to ask Lawrence Brown, a warm, personal friend and former fellow-Ellingtonian, to rejoin Cootie and Rex. Larry has also once been a member of Louis Armstrong's band, so it seemed most appropriate to call in another ex-Satchmo trombonist, who, like Cootie, had been absent from the jazz recording scene for much too long, the wonderful J. C. Higginbotham.

The contrast in the styles of all six soloists is most attracting. Cooties' trumpet is strong, vital, forceful, and highly emotional. Rex's horn (he actually blows a cornet) is cuter, more coy, humorous, but still extremely feelingful. The Hawkins sax is powerful, majestic, sonorous; the Freeman tenor is witty, imaginative and extremely rhythmic. Brown's trombone is mellow, moody and lush; Higginbotham's is brittle, driving and intensely exciting.

One important request from Cootie: a steady, swinging rhythm section, including a guitarist with a loose, strong beat – precisely what Bill Bauer has, and has always had ever since his Woody Herman days. For an intelligent, tasty, swinging pianist, Hank Jones was the ideal choice. Few, if any drummers today, lay down such a sure, steady, swinging beat as does Gus Johnson, the mammoth of a man who used to rock Count Basie's band. And of course, for sheer, swinging, enthusiastic bass playing – the ever-present Milt Hinton.

One final plea from Cootie: "Don't just put us in the studio and tell everyone to blow – please!" So Ernie Wilkins, who's written such swinging things for Basie, sketched five sets of opening and closing choruses, between which all the men could blow solos, and that experienced recording arranger, Joe Thomas, who has written for Cootie of late, worked out the backgrounds for the two numbers that spotlight Williams.

The record was made at two different sessions in RCA Victor's Webster Hall studio. Side One was cut on April 30th, 1957; Side Two just one week later. So that the music could be issued on stereophonic tapes, the horns were divided into two trio sections (note photo on front cover), with Rex, Bud and J.C. at the left and Cootie, Hawk and Larry at the right.

I'm Beginning To See The Light

Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me

Alphonse And Gaston

I Got A Right To Sing The Blues

Walkin' My Baby Back Home

When Your Lover Has Gone

I Knew You When