Verve Records

[captainwrong]

  paul secor said:

  Captain Wrong said:

All this talk of the non-jazz artists on Verve and not a mention of Howard Tate? There, I just did it.

Get It While You Can is probably my favorite male vocalist Southern Soul album, and no less than Otis Redding declared it the bible of Southern Soul. If also has some of the most pointless Leonard Feather notes I've read and was probably the album that turned me off reading liner notes.

Howard Tate and writer/producer Jerry Ragavoy were both from Philadelphia - Tate was born in Ga., but was raised in Philly. Maybe they were from South Philly?

But hey, labels of any kind - Southern Soul or whatever - don't mean a lot. It's the music that counts. Great record and great call, Cap.

LOL, well, you're right about geography, but I think it's fair to say Tate's record sounds much more Memphis than Philly.

Either way, it's the music that counts. Too true and this is really a gem of soul music, whatever you wanna call it.

[captainwrong]

  Hot Ptah said:

  Big Beat Steve said:

  The Magnificent Goldberg said:

The Mothers were on Verve.

Weren't they on their own (?) label BIZARRE that was distributed through Verve?

From what I have read in books about Zappa, the first few Mothers albums were on Verve, but Verve's censorship of the "We're Only In It For The Money" album led Zappa to leave Verve for another label.

And Bizarre as a label started when Zappa left Verve for Reprise in 1969. IIRC there's a mention of Bizarre as a production company on the inside of Lumpy Gravy, which was one of the last of the Verve albums.

[kenroizu]

  The Magnificent Goldberg said:

Charlie Parker

Dizzy Gillespie

Count Basie

Stan Getz

Roy Eldridge

Coleman Hawkins

Illinois Jacquet

Lester Young

Ben Webster

Billie Holiday

Ella Fitzgerald

Sonny Stitt

Johnny Hodges

Duke Elington

Oscar Peterson

Bud Powell

Louis Armstrong

Teddy Wilson

Art Tatum

Harry Edison

Lionel Hampton

Lee Konitz

Gene Krupa

Stuff Smith

Gerry Mulligan

John Lewis

Kid Ory

Red Allen

on the other hand

Junior Mance

Flip Phillips

Ruby Braff

Buddy de Franco

Joe Sullivan

Ralph Sutton

All of these performers recorded for Verve in the fifties. I may have missed a few but this is the bulk of Verve's jazz catalogue from that period. What strikes me immediately is how extremely skewed the artist roster is. The vast majority of leaders on Verve/Clef/Norgran were acknowleged masters. A mere handful of ordinary mortals made records for the label. And most of those had already made what reputation they have by the time they arrived at Verve. The only one in this list whose career seems to have been positively developed b Verve is Oscar Peterson.

On this view, Verve was not much like the other independent jazz companies. The other companies took risks, recording people who weren't well known, helping their careers along. Norman Granz played it safe. In this, he seems to have been acting rather more like a major than an indie.

Strangely enough, the firm became more adventurous after it had been sold to MGM and Creed Taylor came in. Sure, the firm still took on acknowledged masters

Wes Montgomery

Jimmy Smith

Gene Ammons

Cal Tjader

but they also recorded

George Benson

Curtis Amy

Wynton Kelly

Willie Bobo

Kai Winding

Walter Wanderley

Grant Green

Donald Byrd

(I expect there are quite a few I've missed, but I don't mind.)

On the other hand...

Suppose there had not been a Verve to take on these people? Quite likely they'd not have been beating a path to Blue Note, Atlantic, Chess, Riverside, Contemporary, Pacific Jazz, Roulette, Roost, King etc. More than likely most would have gone to a major. And have been put under the usual pressures to which jazz musicians at major companies are subject.

So it's not all bad, is it?

MG

What areyour three favorite CDs (not reissues) Verve has released in the last 10 years? I want to get a sense of the best of what they have been doing lately. Thanks.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

  TryNeutral said:

What areyour three favorite CDs (not reissues) Verve has released in the last 10 years? I want to get a sense of the best of what they have been doing lately. Thanks.

I haven't bought anything they've released in the last ten years. The most recent Verve I've bought was Pharoah Sanders' "Save the children", which was released some time in the first half of 1998.

MG