Personnel:
Buddy Collette, Teddy Edwards (ts), Gerald Wiggins, Joe Castro (p), Joe Comfort, Leroy Vinnegar (b), Bill Douglass, Billy Higgins (d)
Reference: FSRCD1154
Bar code: 8427328611541
Buddy Collette (1921-2010) and Teddy Edwards (1924-2003) were two prominent, individual jazz musicians whose beginnings were firmly rooted in the Los Angeles Central Avenue jazz and R&B scene of the 1940s.
Buddy, born in Los Angeles, gained recognition in 1946 as an alto saxophone and clarinet player, performing alongside musicians like Lucky Thompson and Charlie Mingus. In 1950, he became the first Black musician to work in Los Angeles film and TV studios, further establishing his reputation in jazz through his versatility as a woodwind player. His collaborations with the Chico Hamilton Quintet and his own albums as a leader showcased his talents as a composer and thoughtful jazz musician.
Teddy, a native of Jackson, Mississippi, was credited with recording the first bop solo on tenor saxophone in 1946 on "Up in Dodo’s Room" with Howard McGhee’s sextet. He was an early associate of jazz greats like Dexter Gordon, Sonny Criss, Art Pepper, Max Roach, and Clifford Brown. Known for his charging, up-tempo, bluesy style, Edwards was equally adept at producing a sweet, burnished tone from the tenor sax, making him a significant influence on other tenor saxophonists like Harold Land and Sonny Rollins.
Throughout their extensive careers, both musicians remained deeply connected to Los Angeles as their home base and source of inspiration.
In the tracks included on this CD, recorded between 1959 and 1960, we hear Buddy Collette and Teddy Edwards in two rare quartet sessions, navigating through a set of blues and originals. The uniqueness of these recordings lies in the fact that they were originally scattered across several Crown label albums, without any personnel or composer information, often indiscriminately attributed to different jazz artists, with the musicians not always properly credited. Here, for the first time, they are grouped together in a single collection.
—Jordi Pujol
"The West Coast produced a sizable number of gifted jazz tenor saxophonists in the late 1940s and '50s who either were born there or settled there. Among them were Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Bill Holman, Harold Land, Bill Perkins, Bob Cooper and Jack Montrose. Two other exceptional West Coasters were Buddy Collette and Teddy Edwards. A new album from Fresh Sound features both artists leading separate quartets for Crown Records.
Buddy was an accomplished and prolific multi-instrumentalist who recorded as a leader and a sideman and appeared on many Hollywood pop recording sessions, including those by Frank Sinatra. Teddy Edwards also worked steadily, composed and was the first saxophonist in the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet in 1954.
What gave these two their "jump" were gigs in the mid and late 1940s in R&B bands and orchestras and Los Angeles bebop groups. Many of the clubs on L.A.'s Central Avenue sought out players who could solo for extended periods and thrill audiences.
Crown Records was a subsidiary of the Modern label run by Saul, Jules and Joe Bihari. Why did two superb players wind up on a budget label? Probably because the Bihari brothers let them record what they wanted. By the late 1950s, other labels were either pop-minded or jazz specialists run by founders with a vision and under pressure to turn a profit.
This album features both Buddy and Edwards in a freewheeling jump-blues groove with a bop overlay. The music is superb all the way through. Uniting the musicians' Crown recordings on a single CD was very clever by Fresh Sound's Jordi Pujol."
—Marc Myers (October 10, 2024)
https://www.jazzwax.com/
__________________________________________________________________________________________
When LA was truly “La La Land”
"Jazz musicians had it nice in LA in the 1950s and 60s, making good money playing in the studios for movies and TV shows and then hitting the clubs at night for hip gigs. And they could all afford to buy a house in the suburbs! What could go wrong?!?
Here is a Fresh Sound Records reissue that prove jazzers didn’t have to suffer to be creative.
You can argue until you’re blue in the face why Buddy Collette and Teddy Edwards didn’t become household names in jazz, but the probable reason is that they simply wanted to stay home in one place, and who wanted to leave LA in the 1950s?!? (people currently living under the governorship of Gavin Newsome may find this quite incredible) Buddy Collette, best known for his work with Charles Mingus and Chico Hamilton, is featured on the tenor on this swinging session with Angelenos Gerald Wiggins/p, Joe Comfort/b and Bill Douglass/dr. Collette is a master here, bopping on “What’s Up”, showing a big sound on “The Groove” and hip as all get out on “Hideaway”, with Wiggins sleek on “Evergreen” and Douglass digging in on “Reunion”. Edwards had a Lester Young tone and milked it for all it was worth (and it was worth a lot) on this bopping session with Joe Castro/p, Leroy Vinnegar/b and Billy Higgins/dr. Edwards floats over Higgins’ brushes on “The Grind’ and swaggers on the gunslinging “I’ll Get Away” hard hitting on the snappy “Across Town”.
When it was hep to be hip!"
—George W. Harris (October 14, 2024)
https://www.jazzweekly.com
