The Swingers - Lambert, Hendricks & Ross

 

Now's The Time

The Swingers!

Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks & Annie Ross

With Zoot Sims, Russ Freeman, Freddie Green, Jim Hall, Ed Jones & Sonny Payne

Recorded in Hollywood at The Crescendo

World Pacific Records WP-1264

A Division of Pacific Enterprises, Inc.

1959

From the back cover: As far as I am concerned, Lambertm Hendricks & Ross (along with being one of the greatest kicks in music today) are the Gilbert and Sullivan of jazz. They are performing jazz operettas five, six and seven minuets in length and have created a litany, language and literature of reference that is unique and operative on a complex, multi-level basis.

Anyone can dig them. They have a message that is easily understood, but just as a knowledge of Dubin and the Iris and English literary world of that particular period is essential to understanding much of Joyce, so is a prior knowledge of jazz musician slang and of the social and musical culture of jazz essential to a full understanding of The Trio.

It also helps, to have had a prior knowledge of the instrumental numbers to which Jon Hendricks has written his remarkable lyrics and which the group sings. When you have this knowledge, the whole glorious thing becomes real. Thus exposed to the full impact of The Trio's work, one can find as much delight in it as a Savoyard does in "Pinafore" and which the student of T. S. Eliot gets from reading that delicious tour de force, "The Sweeniad."

It takes a peculiarly agile mind to create lyrics that fit exactly to trumpet, saxophone and trombone solos played in fast tempos. Jon Hendricks has done this. Each lyric line takes off from the original title and develops a full story in jazz artgot that expands into a dialogue and then a three-way conversation as the other instruments (represented by the other two voices) join in. Reed and brass riffs are presented, almost classically, as a chorus bbehind the soloist. And, infall of the, Hendricks has managed to do what no other jazz lyricist, including Johnny Mercer, has been able to do – write lyrics for jazz creations without reshaping them into the popular sonf format.

Hendricks not onmlyh has an unusual voice (as do both Annie Ross and Dave Lambert) but he has the unique ability to take on the timber of the instrument whose solo he is singing. A bass player (Monk Montgomery of the Mastersounds) fell apart what he first heard "Swingin' Till The Girls Come Home." "He's got Pettiford's sound," he almost shouted. Hendricks, of course, has been a musical (he was a drummer in Toledo, Ohio, bands some years back  and picked up on jazz originally from his neighbor, Art Tatum) and in recent years has been "thinking about the bass." Annie Ross wrote an original lyric to "Twisted" (the Wardell Gray tenor solo) a few years back and it won her some fame as the new Freudian vocalist when it was released. Dave Lambert, a former tree surgeon, drummer and vocal group organizer, has been the organizer here again. "He was always after me to work up new things," Jon Hendricks says.

How doe Jon Hendricks pick tunes to do? "I just listen for one that songs to me," he says. "All of them sing to me, but one that sings very clear is the one I pick. If you listen long enough, you'll hear it finally. Then after a time, words begin to come to you. Whatever the horn is saying; they just form themselves."

On this LP, you'll find some starling example of songs that sing to Jon Hendricks. I hope they also sing to you. – Ralph J. Gleason, Editor Jazz and syndicated columnist whose Rhythm Section appears in such papers as the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Globe.

Airegin

Babe's Blues

Dark Cloud

Jackie

Swingin' Till The Girls Come Home

Four

Little Niles

Where 

Now's The Time

Love Makes The World Go 'Round