TO BE PERFECTLY "CANDID" WITH YOU.......

Don’t you hate the way people regularly preface what they’re saying with “To be perfectly honest with you”?

I mean, are they making some painful confession? No.

Are they implying that otherwise you would think they were lying? No.

Are they carefully distancing themselves from the dishonesty of hypocritical politicians? I wish!

It’s actually a meaningless cliché, as annoying as peppering sentences with “like” and “you know” every few words.

 Right. Got that off my chest. To be perfectly honest with you, it has nothing to do with what follows.

 In my last musing, I was recalling the delights of hearing Watermelon man, The sidewinder and other Blue Note rock’n’roll hits of the early sixties. These were the years when my passion for jazz was growing apace at school and university shortly before I started playing professionally.

 Let me now wax lyrical about something else from that era – the short lived American CANDID record label which operated between 1960 and 1964. Records were released up to 1963 although recording had ceased earlier..

These were a luxurious indulgence for the impecunious record collector. All imports from the States to the UK were expensive. Unfairly so, it seemed to me, compared with what original American albums cost in, say, Scandinavia. In the case of the PRESTIGE label, there was the added fact that many of these albums were being issued here by Carlo Krahmer’s ESQUIRE home-grown record company.

But I remember drooling over the adverts in Jazz Journal (particularly Dave Carey’s Swing Shop back page), where BLUE NOTEs were priced at 45/- and CANDIDs at an “eye-watering” 50/-!!  Now bring inflation into account and you find that 50bob or two pound ten in 1960 is today worth almost 20 times as much. So 50 shillings in 1960 would be fifty quid in 2021.

But never mind the price – feel the quality. And hear it too. CANDID albums were beautifully recorded at the Nola Penthouse sound studios, New York. The pressings were good. The covers were satisfyingly thick and beautifully designed by Frank Gauna. The whole enterprise was overseen by producer and Artists & Repertoire man NAT HENTOFF.

 The label shut down in 1964 because CANDID’s parent company Cadence records was sold off (to singer Andy Williams!). Years later, in 1989, Alan Bates’s  UK label BLACK LION bought the Candid catalogue and name and put out reissues and new recordings as Candid Records UK.

 However, let me return to CANDID’s original incarnation. There were altogether 34 releases. The musical policy bears the clear stamp of Nat Hentoff’s tastes, leavened by his involvement in radical left politics. There was blues (Otis Spann, Memphis Slim, Lightnin’ Hopkins), protest statements (Max Roach We insist, The Jazz Artists’ Guild Newport rebels) and avant-garde (Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy) as well as jazz giants like Coleman Hawkins, Pee Wee Russell, Charlie Mingus and Clark Terry.

I cherish the few CANDID original lps I own. (They’ve been reissued on vinyl and CD of course.) Let me share my enthusiasm for them with you:

 Max Roach “We insist! Freedom now suite” Candid 8002

A fierce condemnation of the racist South. The front cover has a photograph of three young blacks defiantly sitting at a lunch counter while a white barman glowers in the background. The music is uncompromising.

 The highspot is the first track “Driva man”. “Poor white folks hired theirselves to slaveowners and rode the roads at night and whipped you if they catched you off their plantation without a pass.” Abbey Lincoln (Max’s beautiful wife) sings bitterly and Coleman Hawkins takes a magnificent solo.

 Mingus presents Mingus  Candid 8005

This is a classic jazz recording for posterity. Mingus, Ted Curson, Eric Dolphy and Dannie Richmond all play with joyous abandon at the top of their game. “DAMN, that Dolphy played!” exclaimed an exultant Mingus at the end of the session.

My favourite track has to be “Fables of Faubus”, a skittish tune with a wickedly disdainful set of lyrics sung with relish by drummer Dannie Richmond, ridiculing the infamous segregationist governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus. (I used to play this tune with Alan Barnes but nobody attempted the vocal line……….)

Clark Terry  Colour changes  Candid 8009

Clark is one of my very favourite trumpeters and I particularly like the way he was playing, especially his sound, in 1960. He had just left the Ellington band. Having contributed so memorably in the role of Puck in Such sweet thunder, he had apparently got fed up with being allotted just one feature (Perdido) every night and it would not be long now before he teamed up with Bob Brookmeyer.

 This is a delightfully conceived octet album featuring Jimmy Knepper, Julius Watkins, Yusef Lateef, Seldon Powell and Tommy Flanagan. The arrangements are rich but lightly voiced. It’s a one-off in Terry’s discography and a real gem.

.Cecil Taylor  Jumpin’ punkins  Candid 8013

Hentoff recorded the maverick Cecil Taylor on several CANDID albums and three of them comprise tracks from a session co-led by bassist Budd Neidlinger.  Across two of these lps are to be found three alternate takes of (of all things) Mercer Ellington’s Jumpin’ punkins  which was a Duke Ellington band hit from 1941.

I couldn’t resist putting one take of this on the Music page.

It’s such a bizarre choice for a group including Roswell Rudd, Steve Lacy and Archie Shepp. The results are pretty weird harmonically but Archie Shepp plays great and the clincher for me is the presence once again of CLARK TERRY (although he had not been with Ellington in 1941!)

 Booker Ervin  That’s it!  Candid 8014

Booker Ervin’s contribution to the CANDID catalogue is superb. The moaning Texas tenor blends perfectly with a rhythm section to die for – Horace Parlan, George Tucker and Al Harewood.

Eddie Myer of the QOW trio and I share an enormous enthusiasm for George Tucker along with Wilbur Ware. Just dig their big gut-string tone, swing and choice of notes.

Al Harewood is the epitome of a swinging, driving drummer who nevertheless remains unobtrusive and never puts a stick wrong.

As for HORACE PARLAN, who appears here for contractual reasons under the pseudonym of “Felix Krull”, he is the consummate bluesy pianist who has forged a totally original style out of the polio damage to his right hand. (Talking of nommes de disque, ”Buckshot LaFunke” was the obvious one for Cannonball but I wonder where Horace Parlan’s alias came from. Was he a fan of Thomas Mann?)

Booker went on to play with more adventurous accompanists like Jaki Byard and Alan Dawson but he always blows in the same searing intense style. An acquired taste. I for one have acquired it.

Pee Wee Russell & Coleman Hawkins  Jazz Reunion  Candid 8020

My final CANDID choice is an uncharacteristically mainstream one.  The lugubrious Pee Wee and the magisterial Bean are a magic combination and Emmett Berry and Bob Brookmeyer are also contributors. The legendary Papa Jo Jones is on drums.

They play two Ellington numbers (All too soon and What am I here for?), Tin Tin Deo (composed for Dizzy by Chano Pozo and Gil Fuller), a standard and a couple more originals.

It’s a wonderful session, well up to proof (as Tony Bell would say) and thoroughly recommended.